Chapter 3 - Festival of Wind

 
 
   Lirael woke up slowly.
   Where was she? The last thing she remembered was falling, with the ground swinging crazily up towards her. But now she was in her own little cream-colored bed, with bright sunlight flooding over her face, and voices were calling from her window.
   “Lirael? LIRAEL?!”
   A sleepy black head poked out of the window and looked down. A sheaf of sapphire-blue hair and a mist of fine silver stared back up at her.
   “Morning,” Lirael yawned grumpily. “Whassrong? Why’re you over so early?”
   “Are you still asleep[/i]?!” Rana demanded. “How did you manage[/i]?! I barely slept a wink!”
   “Get down[/i] here!!” Alanis cried. “Did you already forget what happened last night?!”
   “Last night?” Lirael jumped as though she had received an electric shock. “LAST NIGHT!!! You guys, I had the WEIRDEST DREAM EVER. I have got[/i] to tell you about it RIGHT NOW!!”
   Lirael went through her room like a whirlwind, was dressed in record time, and flew out the door without as much as a glance at her breakfast. Mother started to yell after her, shook her head, and turned back to the stove instead.
 
      *  *  *
 
   “Sarah Mikadzuki visited you in the middle of the night?!?![/i]”
   Alanis’ voice rose to a piercing squeak as Lirael recounted the events of the night before.
   “Yes,” Lirael said. “It was the weirdest [/i]dream I’ve ever had. But do you think…do you think maybe any of it is really what happened?”
   “I don’t think it was a dream at all,” Rana said positively. “You know what, Lirael? I think you received a visitation[/i].”
   Alanis gasped.
   “From Miss Sarah[/i]?!” Lirael shook her head violently. “No way!”
   “It has to have been,” Rana said. “Because it’s either that, or you’ve been reading a lot more than I have. Even I didn’t know all of that about our world.”
   “But why would Miss Sarah send a visitation to me?” Lirael demanded. “Why not Mr. Kagetsu, or Miss Tiara?”
   “I don’t know!” Rana snapped back. “I’m not pretending I know why Miss Sarah is doing what she’s doing. But why not send you a visitation last night? She appeared to us yesterday. Why to us and not to Mr. Kagetsu? He’s her brother!”
   “There’s one way to find out!” Alanis said excitedly. “Let’s go ask Miss Lena!”
 
      *  *  *
 
   “WHADDAYA MEAN, ‘SHE’S GONE ON A JOB’?!?!?!?!”
   Lirael, Rana, and Alanis stared openmouthed at Miss Lena’s housekeeper, a strict, stern-faced woman with a tight grey bun of hair and a frosty white apron.
   “Just what I said,” the housekeeper said testily. Miss Lena’s housekeeper did not like children. She thought they were too noisy. “She’s away. She’ll be back in a month or so.”
   “A MONTH?!?!?!”
   “That IS what I said,” the housekeeper snapped. “Good day. I have cleaning to do.”
   And with that, the housekeeper slammed the door shut in their faces.
   “A MONTH?!?!?!”
 
      *  *  *
 
   Abruptly their only means of salvation had disappeared. What were they going to do without Miss Lena?
   “There’s Miss Tiara,” Rana suggested as they meandered miserably through the fields.
   “But we don’t know where she lives,” Alanis said morosely.
   “We could ask.”
   “Who would tell us?”
   Rana considered. “Who do we know who would talk to us like we’re worth talking to, and would still know where Miss Tiara lived?”
   They all thought.
   “Maybe, just maybe, Sarah might help us,” Lirael said slowly.
   “Miss Sarah?” Rana asked, eyebrows raised.
   “Like you pointed out, Miss Sarah already came to us yesterday,” Lirael said. “She was that little girl. And she talked to me last night. She might be able to help us out. We may not even need to find Miss Tiara!”
   Rana and Alanis exchanged looks, telling each other clearly what they thought of this idea.
   “I guess that’s possible, but we’ll need a backup plan,” Rana said practically. “What else could we do?”
   “We could stay at the Elder’s Palace until she showed up,” Alanis said helpfully. “She’d have to go there sooner or later.”
   Automatically their steps twisted to the side as their path was blocked and redirected by the canyon. A gust of wind kicked up from behind them, sending their hair flying up in a great spray of black and blue and white—they fought their hair back around into order just in time for another gust, this one coming as though it had been thrown from the top of the Plateau of Ribbons, to seize the unruly locks and spray them out of control again.
   Lirael cast a dark glance at the Plateau. “Sarah’s just up there, isn’t she?” the black-haired girl said grumpily. “And we can’t reach her.”
   Alanis cast her own glare upwards. “It’s those stupid Living Robes,” she complained. “If they weren’t there, we could just walk on up and see her!”
   “Yes, but they are[/i],” Lirael said, still grumpy. “If we knew some MAGIC, we might actually be able to get rid of them, or get past them, but…”
   Rana sighed. “Magic…I wish we could use it.”
   They stood there for a moment.
   Then their thoughts were interrupted by an earsplitting fanfare. The canyon walls might have quaked before the sound. Lirael, Rana, and Alanis certainly did. The trees were buffeted by sudden blasts of wind which seemed to come from every direction at the same time. Then there was the sound of tambourines.
   “THE FESTIVAL!!!”
   Even Sarah was forgotten in the light of this excitement. How could they have forgotten?! TODAY WAS THE FESTIVAL OF THE WIND!!!
   Immediately they turned and ran towards the tambourines. Their music was shaking faster, and the sound of woodblocks and drums were rising to meet them, causing the very wind to dance in time.
   They came into sight of the Festival Stage just as the Festival Dance began.
   The Stage was festooned with long carmine and pearl ribbons, dancing eagerly in the air. Flowers, the same colors as the ribbons, garlanded the poles standing in a semicircle about the circular Stage. Behind the poles, a huge wooden replica of the Eye of Yord gazed down upon the Stage. Rising seats stood on the other side, filled with people dressed identically in long, colorful robes, sashes, and scarves. They all wore black glass plates over their faces, and it was impossible to tell who was who. One person in the seats was the Wind Dancer this year, and it was everybody’s challenge to guess who it was.
   Months before Festival Day, a Princess had been chosen to be the Wind Dancer. It was a great honor—the Wind Dancer was the great Goddess who had defeated the evil beasts roaming the Guardian World, and this festival was in her honor. The Throne of Yord also figured into it somehow, but they weren’t sure how. Regardless, being chosen to be the Wind Dancer was a fantastic privilege indeed, as well as the subject of much debate among the rest of the Guardian World, as people bet on who the title had fallen to this year. The chosen Princess often diverted attention away from herself by betting on somebody else.
   The Elder sat on the top seat. He was like the manager of the Guardian World. He was neither Princess (obviously) nor Neutralizer, but he[/i] was allowed to visit and speak with the Throne of Yord. He was very old and very wise, and used a magical crystal to gaze around the universe and guide Princesses and their Partners to rogue magics. He stayed in his Palace for most of the year; the Festival was one of the very few times he came out into public.
   The girls watched, entranced. Although they were all slightly disappointed that they were so late, too late to get a good seat in the stands, they said not a word. Nobody was allowed to talk during the Festival, least the Dancer be discovered prematurely as the one Princess who wasn’t there.
   The opening bars of the song of the Festival of the Wind fell into silence. Everybody waited with bated breath.
   Masked dancers linked together by wide red ribbons they held ran out onto the stage from beneath the Eye of Yord and knelt down in a circle, readying themselves to begin.
   The girls waited.
   The audience waited.
   The wind waited.
   Instruments tapped out a quick beat.
   Then the entrance notes stopped, and the real song began, and the dancers leapt seamlessly into circular dance. Right two three cross four left two three cross four jump right two three cross four left two three cross four jump…
   It was a complex, uneven dance, made more difficult by the rhythmic melody. The gusting winds didn’t help much either; they snatched at the dancers’ ribbons and costumes, teasing them around waists and feet in an attempt to trip an unsuspecting dancer. But they were experts, and never missed a step.
   Then Rana gasped.
   “What?” Lirael muttered, mesmerized by the dance.
   “Magic[/i],” Rana breathed. “Can’t you feel it?”
   Lirael and Alanis looked at her briefly, and suddenly an overwhelming force hit them. It was definitely magic, VERY powerful magic, and it hit them like a ten-ton weight. It felt like the air was alive, and it had a definite, malicious intent.
   Suddenly the festival was no longer enchanting and entertaining. The quick beat and howling winds sounded suddenly like a battlefield of cosmic proportions. The ribbons whipped and cracked in the wind. Lirael felt the evil in the air most clearly, and thought she could hear screams and yells of battle. Rana heard the trees creaking, fighting to keep their foliage safe, while flowers were battered to death by the high winds. Alanis heard the wind, just the wind, keening a horrible banshee dirge.
   Then the dancers scattered as another dancer, dressed like a horrible beast with the Eye of Yord on its head, came roaring out onto the stage. The dancers danced lightly away to the other side of the stage, and the Wind Dancer walked out onto the stage, long golden hair shining in the wind, a silver blade in her hand.
   Then the Wind Dancer and the beast began an intricate fighting dance, carefully choreographed to ensure suspense with constant safety. But to the three little girls on the canyon wall, the scene shifted to a real battle between a shining figure and a mass of bloody eyes, oozing blackly, the figure was burning the eyes, there were screams and cries and blood OH the blood was everywhere…screaming…eyes…
   This is the truth behind the Festival of the Wind[/i].
   Before they knew it they had turned and ran, anywhere, everywhere. Just not there, amid the blood and the carnage of the planet.
 
   They finally slowed and dropped down, gasping for breath, gulping down sobs.
   “What…was…that?” Lirael huffed.
   “I don’t wanna know!” Alanis whined. And Alanis could be very whiny when she tried. “Don’t tell me even if you know!”
   “Don’t worry,” Rana cried, her face ghostly white. “I have no idea and I don’t WANT to have any idea.”
   Lirael looked around them. Their terror had taken them quite some ways—they had retraced and passed beyond their old trail, and gone all the way up to the bottom of the Plateau of Ribbons. There was no living thing in sight.
   For a moment, this puzzled Lirael, puzzlement feeling unusual in the middle of her still-powerful terror. Then she realized why, and her terror exploded away.
   “OH YORD!!!”
   Rana and Alanis, nerves strung to the breaking point, screamed.
   “The Robes,” Lirael whispered.
   They were gone. The Living Robes had vanished, completely and totally.
   “This,” Lirael said, terror giving way to the thumping adrenaline of opportunity, “is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. We need to go now[/i]!”
   Rana and Alanis knew she was right. Without another word exchanged, the three tiny girls charged up the path. Around any corner there could be more Living Robes, ready to stop them with bared steel.
   But there were no Living Robes.
 
   And at the top, there was no painting.
   There was, in fact, nothing of any importance. It was so anticlimactic that Lirael could have screamed. There were three small rock pillars, made of roundish stones stacked roughly on top of each other. Strings tied from the top stones to the ground hung almost invisibly in midair, spindly gossamer bodies clothed in a faint drift of ragged white ribbons. The Eye of Yord was carved into the top stone of each pillar.
   “I don’t like this place,” Alanis whimpered.
   “Why?” Lirael was advancing on the closest pillar. “What’s wrong with it?”
   “The wind. It’s gone.”
   Lirael stopped. She was right. The Plateau was eerily silent. The ragged ribbons hung sedately down, barely moving. And all around them, magic weighed heavily like strings of iron blocks around their necks.
   Then there was the sound of footsteps.
   “Behind a rock!” Rana dived for one. Alanis and Lirael exchanged frightened glances and ducked behind the same rock.
   “Hold your dresses down,” Rana hissed, wrapping her own tightly around her ankles. “And your hair, too.”
   Lirael threw her hair around her neck like a scarf. Rana followed suit. Alanis’ hair was short enough that she didn’t have to bother.
   “What’s going on out there?”
   “Quiet! They’ll hear you!”
   “Well, peek out and at least see who it is!”
   Alanis carefully slid her head around the rock.
   “It’s a bunch of girls holding ribbons,” she whispered back. “And the Elder.”
   The Elder! Lirael and Rana nearly fainted. The Elder was, as previously mentioned, the oldest and most powerful citizen in the Guardian World. Sometimes it was a man, sometimes a woman; it didn’t matter. This one was a particularly serious and unforgiving man, and he would NOT look kindly upon their intrusion. Turning them into toads for a century would be mild punishment coming from him.
   Yet he did not turn them into toads, for he had not yet seen them. His voice boomed over the plateau like the most colossal of gongs.
   “Submit to the Throne of Yord, to bring good fortune to the people!”
   All three girls stared at each other with raised eyebrows. What the heck was this[/i] all about?
   “For the glory of the country! Praise the Throne of Yord, which offers us a safe haven with unwavering promise!”
   It does? The three girls couldn’t help it—they wriggled about close to the ground until they could just barely peer out around the sides of the rock. What was going on?
   “As witness to our mutual pledge, endure for all of eternity, thou Throne of Yord!”
   Pledge? What pledge?
   A powerful gust of wind shook the plain. The ribbons on the threads surrounding the stone pillar were ripped apart and blown away into the gale. Slowly, almost trancelike, the girls surrounding the Elder stepped forward and placed their new ribbons onto the threads. The wind died down, and the girls backed away again.
   The Elder raised his arms, and there was a flash of magic. The ribbons slid up the strings, spacing themselves unevenly all the way up to the top stone.
   Then the Elder turned to the girls, and his voice boomed out into the once-again still air, proclaiming the glory of the Throne of Yord.
 
   Many minutes later, the plateau lay deserted, the Elder and the young girls gone, the new ribbons hanging still in the silent air, every last vestige of the old ribbons ripped away into nothingness. Not so much as a cockroach scuttled over the dry ground of the plateau. Not so much as a single note of birdsong reached the tall earthy expanse. Not so much as a single living thing was visible amid the rocks and ribbons.
   Until Rana unceremoniously booted Lirael and Alanis out from behind the rock. “You’re squishing me!!”
   “Sorry,” Lirael said, rubbing her head where it had met the ground.
   “But what was that[/i] all about?” Alanis asked.
   “The Elder being boring, what else?” Lirael jumped up. “Who cares about that? What’s with these pillars?”
   “The Throne’s supposed to be a painting, isn’t it?” Rana asked slowly. “And the painting’s in the Sky Tower. So…what’s on this plain, anyway?”
   Alanis and Lirael stared at Rana. “The Throne of Yord…is in the Sky Tower?”
   “Yes, didn’t you know that?”
   “No…”
   Suddenly the girls had a very bad feeling in the pit of their stomachs. If the Throne wasn’t on the Plateau of Ribbons…then what was?
   Then the magic slammed into them.
 
   Lirael hit the ground hard, the breath snapped from her lungs in an instant. Magic pressed down on her like an invisible hand, crushing her to the ground. Beside her, Alanis was slammed face-first into the earth. Lirael tried to look around for Rana, but couldn’t lift her head. Her scream was lost in a roar of wind and magic.
   Then there was a brilliant, dazzling flash of light and a mind-bending, soul-snapping will bent on them. The magic weighed on them heavier than ever, and the light was so bright that it nearly blinded them. Out of the light loomed the huge pillar surrounded by ribbons, a dark, stark contrast against the blinding light. Then an explosion seemed to take place, and scarves of white and blue light whirled about in the dazzling brilliance surrounding them.
   And from the whirling lights came a thought, a thought so powerful that it shook the very molecules of their being.
   YE CHILDREN OF THE THRONE! OBSERVE, AND SEE THE POWER THAT IS MINE!!!
   Then the light slowly began to take on a strange form. It was the form of a woman, with long, icy hair, garbed in shimmering wind and light. She touched the pillar, and the pillar shattered like ice, revealing a sword. The ribbons whipped through the wind and blew away into the brilliance.
   The woman reached for the sword’s hilt. It was long and thin, more a rapier than a sword, formed out of clear, flawless crystal. It was like a long, perfect icicle, with a hilt of silver set with scintillating sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds that glittered like stars in the brilliance about them. And as the woman’s long fingers reached for the hilt, a feeling of pure horror blossomed within the little girls. Somehow they knew that this woman should not have this sword. They knew that nobody[/i] should have this sword, and if this woman retrieved it, there would be catastrophe like none had ever dreamed of.
   Then there was a huge explosion that was at once louder and softer than every noise ever made, and the light seemed to jerk and be swallowed by something else. Lirael had a brief vision of a tremendous Eye before the brilliance vanished and they were back on the Plateau of Ribbons. And when the afterimages had finally cleared from their eyes, they saw the woman standing on the Plateau; and between the woman and the girls was Sarah.
   Sarah’s long lavender hair snapped in the air like a whip as the wind accelerated to a howling pitch.
   “Detestable!” Sarah shouted at the woman. “How dare you speak such to these children of the Throne, you who was exiled from this planet when you fought the Throne and lost?! You false goddess!!”
   “Your ‘children’ turn from the Throne and worship me as the Goddess who snatched this world from the brink of destruction!” the woman shrieked back. “Their worship these years has strengthened me beyond your measly power, you representative! You weaver of ribbons! You dare challenge a Goddess?!”
   Sarah was silent. Then her shoulders began to shake and, to everybody’s great confusion, she threw her head back and laughed heartily.
   The woman looked beyond furious. “How dare you, you mortal creation!!!”
   Sarah’s laugh began to deepen and warp, and slowly it was not just Sarah’s laugh anymore, but the laugh of her and another, a man’s laugh, deep and low and threatening.
   “My dear Meirene, how long it has been,” said the voice-that-was-both-Sarah’s-and-a-man’s. “It has been what…three thousand years, since our last collision? Once I feared you—once before that I adored you. But now I have learned much more than you. My ‘mortal creations’ place their faith in me. They borrow their power from me! And you try to attack me on my own planet, on the day when their faith in me is strongest?” Sarah’s voice sharpened like a blade. “You disappoint me, Meirene.”
   “Your people worship me[/i], Yord!” Meirene screamed. “It is to me[/i] that they pay homage to this day! You know as well as I that the battle they act out this day is the same as that which occurred between ourselves that time, many millennia ago! And it is through their worship that I[/i] stand before you now, armed with the Vaineire once more!!”
   Sarah-and-the-man-Yord chuckled, a sound that was at once the ringing of silver bells and the grumbling of the earth. “Meirene, if their little play of the Wind Dancer strengthened you half a whit, don’t you think I would know and stop it? You try to trick me into destroying my own source of power—my people—when it is clear you have borrowed most extremely from another Demon. Which was it which lent you your powers? Andromeda? Cassiopeia? Orion?”
   A dark blue blush swept over Meirene’s cheeks, and for an answer, she leveled the Vaineire sword at Sarah-Yord within the space of a millisecond. A blast of magical lightning crackled from the edge and arrowed at Sarah-Yord.
   “No, those Demons are all too honorable to lend power to a backstabber such as yourself,” Sarah-and-Yord said thoughtfully as the lightning was blocked by a sheet of black flames which absorbed it like a sponge. “Was it Fornax? Nebiru? Perhaps Betelgeuse? Tell me, Meirene, am I getting warmer?”
   Meirene screamed in fury and unleashed a massive burst of power from the Vaineire.
   “You girls must leave now,” said Sarah-Yord calmly as this magic too was absorbed by the sheet of black flame. “And you will[/i] stay away from Sarah. She is not your concern. You will leave her alone[/i].”
   And suddenly the magic that had been pressing down on Lirael, Rana, and Alanis vanished with the wind that screamed about the plateau.
   “GO NOW!!!!![/b]” Sarah-and-Yord shouted, unleashing a massive blast of antimatter at Meirene.
   Their nerves were keyed so tightly from these events that the little girls were primed. At the resounding shout all three girls scrambled towards the path off the plateau as fast as their hands and knees could carry them. Just as they got off the bottom path, there was a monumental explosion behind them and the Living Robes went rushing up the path, followed by several wild-eyed Princesses and Neutralizers who were far to intent on the roaring maelstrom of magic on the Plateau of Ribbons to notice three cowering little girls.
   “What do we do now?” Lirael gasped.
   “Run for our lives!” Rana whisper-screamed.
   It was good advice.
 

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