Maggie Furey - Harp of Winds

With a wrenching snap like a whiplash across his soul, the light shut off abruptly. It was as though his heart had been torn out of his breast. Anvar, dazed and bereft and tingling from the aftershock of so much power, came back to his senses with a jolt. He still did not possess the actual Harp, Even though it had claimed him, it was not yet his to wield, And where, in all this time, was his enemy? Had he destroyed her with the Staff? Anvar doubted it. No doubt she was somewhere nearby, recouping her powers—and when she returned, he had better be ready.

“I will unseal your eyes,” whispered the starry voice of the Harp. The dazzling afterimages of the beam cleared from the Mage’s sight. Anvar, blinking, saw a vast, circular chamber that encompassed the interior of the tree trunk. He perceived the walls with a different vision now. No longer that silvery amalgam of wood and stone, they were translucent, like sunlight shining through a shell. Within, he saw the pulse of the tree’s life moving up, in slender, nacreous streams, through channels in the trunk. And there, on the opposite wall from where he stood, he saw the silver outline of a harp. It glittered dimly, as though submerged within the wood like a salmon beneath the surface of a river. Anvar’s heart leapt. Running across the chamber, he thrust the Staff into his belt and pressed his hands against the wall, feeling for the outline of the Harp. To his utter astonishment, his fingers sank into the wood, as easily as slipping into water. The song of the Harp swelled to a crescendo in Anvar’s mind, “Free me,” it sang. “You must free me . , .”

The Mage took a steadying breath, and plunged his fingers deep into the tree. His hands closed on an irregular shape, and his fingers felt the smooth swirling outlines of carvings. A paean of joyful starsong flooded Anvar’s mind as he lifted the Harp free from its prison and held it aloft in triumph.

The Mage could not take his eyes from the Artifact. He was spellbound and awestruck by such beauty. The Harp was formed, not from wood, but from some strange, translucent crystalline substance that glittered like diamond in the fire of its own internal light. Carved around the frame was an endless, ever-changing series of winged shapes: birds of many different species from lowly wrens and sparrows to great, majestic eagles and swans. Turning the frame in his hands, Anvar saw owls, bats, glittering moths, and iridescent dragonflies. His fingers passed, not without a shudder, the tiny shape of a winged woman. All creatures of the air paced the Harp of Winds, framed in fluid swirls of silver that seemed to be the very wind incarnate. In all his life, Anvar had never seen anything so perfect. Except for one thing. The glittering frame bounded naught but empty space.

“Oh gods—where are the strings?” In his dismay, Anvar did not realize that he had uttered the words aloud. A cackling laugh came from behind him, and the Mage whirled in alarm.

The Lady of the Mists stood there, her face young and flawless, her hair frost-white against the blackness of her feathered cloak. “Did you really think it would be so easy, Wizard?” she mocked him. “Just reach into the tree and take it? Why, any idiot might have done the same!”

“I think not,” Anvar retorted coldly. “Not without the Harp’s consent.” He detected a gleam of approval in the Cailleach’s eyes.

“As I remarked earlier, you are a most perceptive Wizard,” the Lady answered, “and an honorable opponent. I would have you know I do not fight you willingly—but I am charged to protect the Harp, and that I must do. Only one who is truly worthy may win it, for it is a perilous thing indeed to be returned to the mundane world.”

“And?” Anvar’s reply was a challenge.

The Lady smiled. “So far, you have succeeded in your first two tests. You overcame the succubus, and then won the Harp’s acceptance so that you could free it. Believe me, Anvar, had the Harp not willed it otherwise, you would have died in agony the instant you put your hand into the tree. Now, like the Staff of Earth, the Harp of Winds must be re-created. You hold the frame, Wizard—with what would you string this Artifact of the High Magic?”

The Harp was no help. In the back of his mind, it sang: “You must complete me—make me whole once more.”

“How?” asked Anvar.

A shimmering sigh came from the Harp. “I may not tell.”

Anvar looked at the Cailleach, aghast. He knew in his heart that she spoke the truth. He had known it all along. But how to accomplish his task, and win the Harp? Remembering Aurian’s tale of her encounter with the dragon, he asked:

“May I ask questions?”

“No,” the Lady said. “You may not.”

“Then give me time to think.” But for all the churning of Anvar’s restless mind, he could come up with nothing. This was ridiculous, he thought. When Aurian had described her ordeal, it had sounded so much easier than his own!

“Why not give it up?” The Cailleach interrupted his train of thought. “Stay here, instead, and be my love. I can be any woman—all women ...”

Before Anvar’s eyes, she began to change, her flawless features altering, her hair changing color, time after time . . . With a pang like the twinge of an old wound, Anvar saw Sara. He saw Eliseth’s cold and perfect beauty, and saw his mother as Ria must have been in her youth . . . The succession of women went on and on, each more beautiful than the last. Angrily, Anvar turned away. “Stop doing that!” he snapped. “Fair you might be, Lady, but I have no interest in remaining here with you. My heart is already given—elsewhere.”

“Indeed?” the Lady said silkily. “From what I gleaned of your thoughts as you approached the Timeless Lake, your loved one’s heart is also given—and not to you.”

“That’s a lie!” Anvar cried. “She needs time, that’s all!”

“How much time? A month? A year? Forever? Your Lady is intractable, Anvar, and grief has turned her fey. Can you be certain she will ever betray the memory of her dead lover? And with the one who, indirectly, caused his death?”

The power of the Cailleach’s voice was insidious. Her moonstone eyes held the Mage’s gaze, hypnotic and glittering as a serpent’s stare. He wanted to protest—to deny what she was saying, but he could frame no words, for she had touched with cruel precision on the dark core of doubts in the depths of Anvar’s soul.

“Why risk it, Anvar? Why take such a chance, when I can be everything that Aurian is—and more!” As the Cailleach spoke, she was changing form again—and the Mage found his beloved standing before him. Aurian, as she had been long ago in Nexis, before hardship had made her haggard, and grief and her desire for vengeance had put that steeliness into her gaze. Instead, Anvar found her looking at him—him with an expression in her eyes that had always been reserved for Forral. Anvar tightened his fingers around the frame of the Harp, to stop his hands from shaking. Aurian took a step forward, her arms outstretched to embrace him. “My dearest love ...” she breathed.

“. . . As long as I have you, I have hope.” As the Mage’s last true words to him echoed in Anvar’s mind, the Cailleach’s spell was abruptly broken.

“Get away from me,” snarled the Mage. “What need have I for a shallow substitute, when I have my Lady’s love in reality?”

In a blinding flash, the vision of Aurian vanished. The Cailleach stood before him in the form of an old woman—and to Anvar’s utter amazement, she was smiling. No longer the seductress, no longer a mighty figure of awe and majesty, she looked like a wise and kindly grandmother. “Wizard, you have passed the test,” she said softly. “Indeed you are worthy of the Harp—for only someone with a loving, faithful heart could be trusted to take such power out into the world once more.”