Maggie Furey - Sword of Flames

“Want me to get rid of it?” Anvar’s hand crept inside his cloak to touch the Harp of Winds, slung across his back on cunning straps wrought by the skilled Xandim leatherworkers. A thrill of starsong in the back of his mind sent pleasurable shivers through his body as he touched the crystalline frame, and he gritted his teeth to resist its allure. Because he had not, as yet, completely tamed the power of the Artifact, the Harp was always trying to tempt him with its siren music into unleashing its magic upon the world.

“Anvar—wait!” Aurian captured his hand in her own. Anvar had lately discovered that she was aware, from her own early experiences with the Staff of Earth, of his difficulties in controlling the Harp, and she had helped him tremendously in recent days. He sighed, and she squeezed his hand sympathetically. “Don’t worry—you’ll get your chance shortly,” she told him. “But since this blasted storm has been blowing two solid days already, who knows how much longer it may last? If we can get Parric’s Nightrunner friends to send their ships for us, we may need you to calm the ocean so that they can get across. Too much tampering at this stage might bring us worse problems later.”

“Then how will you reach the Leviathan?” Anvar protested. He had a feeling that he didn’t want to know the answer. He was right.

“I’m going to go find him now.” Aurian’s mental tones brooked no argument. Already she was reaching up to unfasten her cloak. “I’m damned if I’m going to wait around any longer.”

“Aurian, don’t be stupid!” Anvar snatched at her hands. “You’ll kill yourself!” His old terror of deep water rushed back to overwhelm him.

“I won’t.” Gently, Aurian pushed his hands away. “If I really thought so, I wouldn’t even consider this, believe me—not now that I have you and Wolf.” Her mental tones were softened with a smile for him. “It’s impossible to drown a Mage, remember? Besides, the storm was worse than this on the night of the shipwreck, and we both survived that with the help of the Leviathan. All I have to do is avoid getting dashed to pieces, and if you look down there on the eastern side of the headland, you’ll see a kind of inlet where the water swirls round. If I enter the water in the right place, the current should be pulling me away from the rocks.”

“What?” Anvar demanded. “Have you lost your mind?”

“No—just my patience,” Aurian retorted, scraping her wet, windblown hair out of her eyes for what seemed to be the hundredth time. “Judging from the last time I met the Leviathan, it may take them a while to make up their minds to help us. If I can make contact now and state our case, we can all go back to that fishing settlement we passed to wait in comfort; and all being well, the messengers can be on their way just as soon as the storm blows out.”

Anvar sighed. He recognized that obdurate glint in his soulmate’s eye and knew that no matter how long he attempted to dissuade her, the result would be the same in the end. It would save a lot of time if he simply bowed to the inevitable, trusted her judgment, and let her get it over with. “Go on, then—but for the sake of all the gods, be careful.”

Aurian kissed him. “For the sake of you and Wolf, I will.” Then she was gone, running along the headland down the narrow track worn by the Xandim fisherfolk. By the time he caught up with her, delayed by the puzzled queries of Chiamh and Shia, she was already on the rocky shore of the inlet, shedding her clothing. “Ugh!” she muttered through chattering teeth. “Me and my bright ideas.”

“Serves you right,” said Anvar callously, taking her cloak and the linen shirt and leather tunic and breeches—Xandim garments all—before they could blow away. He weighted them down with her sword and boots, but thrust the Staff of Earth, which she gave carefully into his hands, into his own belt, where its proximity to the Harp made both Artifacts combine their energies in a blaze of joyful radiance, setting the very air thrumming and sparkling with their conjoined and augmented power.

“Stop that!” Anvar muttered irritably, wanting to keep all his concentration for Aurian. As he extended his will to damp the surge of power, the incandescent green-white blaze died away, leaving only a soft, defiant humming. When he looked up, Aurian was already a pale and distant figure, picking her cautious, barefoot way along the jutting reef of rocks that protruded into the little bay.

“You might have waited.” Anvar sent his mental message in injured tones.

“Why? To freeze to death?” came the abstracted reply. “I can talk to you just as well from—ouch! These blasted rocks are sharp!”

The next minute she was gone, diving out over the end of the rocks into the churning waves. Anvar sighed and, clutching her bundled clothing to his chest, sat down on a nearby boulder to await her return. She was right, he thought, shifting uncomfortably. The blasted rocks were very sharp. After a time Shia and Chiamh joined him, having sent the others back toward the settlement. As the shrouded sky darkened toward night, they waited together on the storm-swept beach.

As Aurian had struggled, shivering, along the wicked knife-edged rocks, she had wondered how she was going to find the courage to take that first, agonizing lungful of water that would adapt her breathing to survive beneath the sea. As it turned out, she need not have worried. When she entered the water, the sea was so cold that she gasped involuntarily, and after a moment’s frantic thrashing in pain and panic, she found herself breathing quite naturally beneath the ocean.

It was as well that the struggle had been brief. Already, the current was changing, trying to pull her back to be battered against the cruel rocks of the reef. Staying underwater, out of reach of the crashing waves above, Aurian began to swim outward, fighting the current with all her strength. Because she didn’t have to surface into the teeth of the storm, the going was easier than she had expected, and soon she began to settle into a rhythm. Had it not been for the thick murkiness of the water, cloudy with sand churned up from the bottom by the waves above, and the unrelenting coldness of the northern ocean, she would have quite enjoyed the swim.

When the Mage had traveled farther out from the shore, she found that the deeper water was much clearer, and the conflicting currents no longer tugged her this way and that. She could dive down deeper now, to calmer water where the fury of the storm above was little more than a distant memory. At last she decided she had gone far enough, and settled in the water to call the Leviathan.

Reaching out with both her voice and her mind, Aurian began to sing the poignant, plangent, swirling song that would travel for leagues through the storm-tossed waters, summoning the Whalefolk from their far wanderings. Especially, she called to Ithalasa, the old friend who had rescued her from the shipwreck and had given her sage counsel and a great deal of additional help besides.

For a long time she sang, and then she listened, praying that she would hear a distant reply. But so far, there was nothing. Aurian suppressed a stab of impatience, remembering that the fierce emotions of the land-dwellers were anathema to the Leviathan race. But it was so hard to have to wait! While she knew that part of her water-breathing adaptation would let her survive in the freezing sea far longer than she would otherwise have done, there was still a limit to the time she could spend submerged before the deadly cold took its toll—and her life. And as well as needing Ithalasa’s assistance once more, she was simply looking forward to seeing him again. She had much to tell him, concerning the finding of the Staff and the Harp, and her search for the Sword of Flame.