Читать книгу Element. Flame of Elisar онлайн

The gift turned out to be a finely made bird with a long tail, studded with gems and decorated with patterns. The only point was that the bird’s head was missing. Elcha and I stared at each other, both puzzled.

I took the box from my sister’s hands, and feeling that there was something behind it all, tapped the bottom. The missing part dropped on the bed. The bird’s head transformed smoothly into a small dagger, thin and sharp, made of the same star ore casting its bright highlights.

“What is it?” Elcha gasped.

I picked both parts and found the groove joining them together. The dagger entered the

sheath… Click! The two parts became one.

“Hairpin,” I said, still examining the thing. “That’s what you call the Master Truvle style. Typical!”

An outside man would never get to the secret in this little thing.

Elcha took the hairpin and looked closely at it. She then pressed softly the bird’s eye, a green piece, and pulled it. Click! The blade yielded and came back smoothly.

“Wow!” she exclaimed, and just next moment her hair was already gathered in a bundle fixed with the gift.

She circled in front of the mirror in admiration. But then she froze settling her enthusiastic gaze on my face.

“And you? What did he give to you?”

I could not help smiling as I held the cloak open. Elcha screamed as she swept her eyes over the daggers. “Show them to me! Show! Any secret, too?”

“Yes, here,” I exposed the blades and let the chains out trying to be as cautious as I could. That made my sister’s eyes pop even more, and even more questions showered on me.

I told her about Truvle’s making an ass of me, and how I witnessed a Vernor being made. Elcha was listening, all absorbed in the story and looking at the daggers with her eyes full of dreams.

But then her face grew dark and she added, in a quite serious voice, “Nargara must have been really scared then, so even I have to get a gift with a sting now.”

Despite her young age and talkative nature, Elcha had an amazing capacity to notice, at certain points, the very essence of things.