Maggie Furey: Sword of Flames

“Oh, for Yinze’s sake, don’t be stupid!” the winged child told herself sharply, speaking aloud to boost her faltering courage. “There’s no such thing as ghosts—they don’t exist!” Nevertheless, a tactical retreat at this point seemed a very good idea. After all, she told herself, Lark just might wake and be afraid to find himself alone… Linnet needed only to find a souvenir, some distinctive item, to prove to her friends that she had actually been there.

Linnet stooped, peering narrow-eyed into the gathering gloaming, and wished she’d had the sense to bring a torch. Then, as she scrabbled among the cold, rough, sharp-edged stones, a blood-chilling sound came tingling to her ears: a low, bubbling moan that reverberated through the rocks below her feet and rose to an eerie, wailing crescendo. With a breathless squeak of terror, the fledgling spread her wings to flee—and went sprawling to her hands and knees as her left foot slipped between two loose chunks of masonry and twisted, unbalancing her and pulling her down. And though Linnet, oblivious in her panic to the pain, tugged with the strength of terror, the foot remained obstinately jammed. She was trapped.

Linnet bit her lip to stop herself from crying aloud—a fleeting glimmer of common sense told her that the last thing she needed was to draw attention to herself. The wailing came again, softer this time, as though whatever creature was making the anguished sound had gone beyond the limits of its strength. Linnet wet herself. The warm, spreading dampness was an utter humiliation, noted in some deep, buried place at the back of her mind—the part of her brain that dealt with normal, everyday occurrences. But the terrified core of her had taken control. The fledgling wrenched again at her unyielding foot, too scared even to cry out as another white-hot lance of pain pierced tier leg. All at once, time seemed to slow as her mind began to work with the speed of desperation. Linnet analyzed her predicament in a lucid flash or inspiration born of extremity. She saw that the two great chunks of stone trapping her foot were too heavy for her childish strength to shift, but they were bedded on a base of loose rubble. If she could dig that out, she might unbalance one of the blocks and free herself…

Sobbing with fear, Linnet clawed frantically at the loose, surrounding stone until her fingers bled, hoping to shift the balance of the larger blocks. Then, as she cleared a space, her stinging, abraded fingers met with something warm, soft, and yielding. Something that moved. Into the fledgling’s mind came the faintest whisper of a harsh, old voice: “Help me… You can hear me—help me. …”

One of the palace revelers, having slipped briefly outside to clear the wine fumes from his head, heard a scream of terror ripping through the night. The unnerving sound came from the vicinity of the temple. Gray with shock, he swooped back inside on shaky wings to raise the alarm.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Aurian, kneeling in the shallow pit from which the rubble had been flung hurriedly aside, laid a fleeting hand on Shia’s broad head. “So this is your old friend Hreeza that you thought was dead!” She laid her hands on the cold, battered body that lay before her and shook her head in amazement. “Well, she’s incredibly lucky to be alive—that’s all I can say!”

“That remains to be seen.” Shia, with Khanu peering anxiously over her shoulder, poked Hreeza’s body with an anxious muzzle. “Will she survive, do you think?”

Aurian caught the underlying thread of anxiety in the great cat’s tone. The caring was different, she mused. Shia, though speaking in extremity, and in tones of deepest concern, had never spoken of the Mage or Anvar or any of their party in that same way. But this time, the casualty was one of her own folk. Aurian wished she had a comforting answer, but she could never bring herself to lie to Shia. Their relationship went too deep.

Aurian probed Hreeza with her Healer’s senses, but the response of the old cat was not encouraging. Nonetheless, she tried to remain positive. “If the stubborn old fighter has such a stranglehold on life, I’d say she has every chance, so long as we act quickly.” The Mage shook her head in amazement and dismay. “Broken bones—the lot!” she muttered. “She must have been unconscious for over a day or you’d have heard her, Shia. I would guess that the child must have disturbed her and brought her out of it in some manner. Somehow, in the depths of her being, she must have realized it was her only chance of rescue—but that one last, desperate struggle to seek help was almost enough to finish her.”

Even as she spoke, Aurian was summoning her Healing powers, augmented by the might of the Staff, to pull the old cat back from the brink of death. Swiftly she worked at knitting fragile bones and restoring sundered tissue, losing herself in the complexity of the task—yet half-aware, after a time, that Anvar was by her side, his hand on the Staff, steadily feeding her with energy to supplement her own, so that she would not be too depleted at the end of her work. Chiamh knelt by the great cat’s head, using his own spells to force air in and out of Hreeza’s lungs, keeping her breathing while Aurian worked. The winged physicians Elster and Cygnus hovered behind the Mage, peering rapt with fascination over her shoulders and marveling at her Healing powers.

Aurian’s repair work was basic, and carried out as swiftly as possible to minimize the threats of cold and shock to her fragile old patient. After a time, she rose swiftly to her feet. “Very well,” she said briskly, “that’ll hold her for now, but we must get her quickly to warmth and shelter without disturbing the remainder of her injuries or jeopardizing these delicate new repairs.” Aurian turned to her fellow Mage. “Anvar, I’d like you to back me up as you’ve been doing—but in place of a steady feed of energy, I need all the power you can give me in a single, massive surge. I want to take Hreeza out of time for a few minutes and use my mother’s old apport spell to send her safely to our quarters.”

Anvar’s eyes widened. “What, simultaneously? Isn’t that a little drastic?”

Aurian shook her head. “Not really. It’ll be tiring for both of us, though—I’m still out of practice, having recovered my powers so recently—and I want to leave some energy in reserve to finish Hreeza’s Healing. That’s why I need your help.”

Once more, Anvar placed his hands on the Staff. “You can always count on my help,” he told her—and for an instant their eyes met in a warm, unspoken communion.

“Get on with it—please,” Shia growled, and the Mages, sensing her anxiety, turned quickly back to their patient.

The time spell was simple enough, and Aurian sent a brief prayer of thanks to the spirit of her old friend Finbarr, who had taught her that particular piece of magic while she was still a girl. Once Hreeza was safely immobilized, Aurian prepared herself for the apport spell. She grasped the Staff firmly, feeling Anvar’s hands, warm and steady, touching her own as she opened herself to the power of the Artifact. Concentrating hard, she wrapped the web of her power around the old cat, cradling Hreeza in a sheath of magic that shimmered with the Staffs unearthly green light. Then, visualizing the desired destination—her own tower rooms—Aurian gathered her will and pushed.

In a flash of emerald radiance, Hreeza vanished. Air rushed in with a thunderclap to fill the space the cat had occupied, and the watching Skyfolk leapt back with startled oaths and cries, rubbing the dazzle from their streaming eyes. Aurian sagged against Anvar, feeling, despite his assistance, as though she had carried Hreeza every inch of the way on her own back. That was the trouble with apport spells, the Mage reflected ruefully. They might move objects quickly and easily, but their range was very limited, and they took every bit as much energy as the more conventional methods.