Maggie Furey - Harp of Winds

Hard and urgent, he thrust himself inside her, and Raven hissed with pain. “No!” she shrieked, hurling curses in the Skyfolk tongue. Her nails, like talons, raked him, snatching at his eyes.

Harihn flinched aside, deep gashes scarring his cheeks. “Savage!” he spat. His blood dripped hot on her face as he kissed her again, more gently. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “We were so long apart, and you are so beautiful ...”

His hand squeezed between their bodies, slipped between her legs—Raven whimpered with pleasure and arched against him. “I hate you,” she gasped. “I hate you,” she chanted over and over, to the quickening rhythm of their thrusting. “Ill kill you! Oh!” Her talons gouged him as they climaxed, ripping his robe and scoring the skin of his back. They rolled apart stickily; filthy, bleeding, and bruised; gasping for breath. Harihn blinked, as though emerging from a dream. Raven watched through her eyelashes as he reached out to brush away the sweaty tangles of hair that clung to her cheeks. He kissed her bruised face, his breath tickling her damp skin. “Poor child—can you forgive me?” he murmured.

Raven, in the aftermath of the passion that had seized her at the last, simply nodded. He had changed, just in time—as if, for a while, he’d been someone else—and the real Harihn had returned to save her from humiliation. She was thankful for that. Little did he know, the Princess thought, that she was forced to forgive him. Skyfolk mated for life, and now she was committed.

A shiver ran through her, but Raven was not a princess for nothing. She touched the scratches on Harihn’s face, with a little curling smile of smugness as he flinched. “I paid you back,” she told him, and the shadow cleared from his eyes.

“Vixen!” he muttered.

“It serves you right!” It was one of Nereni’s phrases, and at the reminder, Raven shot bolt upright. “Yinze on a treetop! Nereni expected me long ago!”

Harihn’s smile switched off. Like the sun passing through a cloud it reappeared—but more sinister, now. As it had been at the start, when he had taken her so violently . . . Raven flexed her talons, but Harihn made no move toward her.

“I have a surprise for you, Princess,” he told her. “The Mages have come safe from the desert, and Nereni plans to celebrate with a feast.”

“A feast?” Raven cried. “While my kingdom goes to wrack and ruin, and not one of them will lift a finger to help me-”

“Hush.” Harihn kissed her into silence. By the Reaper, what a credulous fool she was! “You have no need of them, my jewel, for our time is ripe. You know I have a powerful ally. If we help him capture Aurian and Anvar, he will give you whatever assistance you need to recover your kingdom.”

“I hope so. I’ve had precious little help from the others.” The winged girl’s voice betrayed her bitterness, and in the darkness, Harihn smiled. It was so easy to manipulate her! “Persuade your companions to head into the mountains and make for the Tower of Incondor, the ancient watch post of your people,” he told her. “If they reach it before Aurian regains her powers, they can easily be ambushed by my folk.”

Raven thought of Nereni, and hesitated. “Harihn—you promise they won’t be harmed?”

“My dearest one, you have my word.” The darkness hid the lie in Harihn’s face. Nereni’s husband had betrayed him—as had that renegade Yazour, and the eunuch Bohan. They all deserved to perish, and Nereni with them. Harihn smiled at the thought. Unable to resist the idea of taking her again, he stroked her hair and bent to capture her lips once more.

Later, as he groped his way back to his camp, Harihn was still smiling, while Raven struck out for home, flying high over the trees as the mountains faded into night.

Within a short time, the Prince had stirred his camp into a frenzy of activity. “My remaining warriors leave tonight for the north, where I will join them shortly,” he told his household folk. “In my absence, you must stay here and amass supplies for us. Winged folk will come to take what you have gathered.” His people, startled by this sudden change of plans, eyed their prince warily, whispering behind his back. He had never been the same since he had entered this forest, and sometimes they had even caught him talking to himself, when he thought he was unobserved. And as for his association with the winged creatures—that went far beyond the pale of decency!

Harihn’s behavior had been growing ever more bizarre. Soon after their arrival in the forest, he had sent most of his warriors, their horses laden with supplies, away north with a winged warrior as a guide, leaving his folk with only a token guard—and now he planned to abandon them completely! But they were Khazalim, schooled in subservience to authority; and Harihn was their prince. He had promised to return for them, and with that they must be content. Harihn’s people sighed—but they obeyed.

The Xandim had never been a race that attached importance to roofs and walls. It had been fortunate, Chiamh thought, that folk so lacking in the skills of construction had round a ready-made stronghold. No one knew who had built it; the Windeye’s Grandam had attributed it to the ancient race of Powerful Ones, from across the sea. Chiamh doubted that—though its creators must have wielded incredible power, for the fastness had survived the depredations of time, and not surprisingly. It would take more than passing centuries to humble such a solid construct.

Set in a deep embayment in the cliff, the fastness was a solid, massive keep extending out of the towering curtains of stone that were part of the Wyndveil. The building formed a hollow square around a courtyard, with the main living areas backing on to the cliff. Though the fortress seemed impressively large, its size was deceptive, for the building had been extended back into the cliff itself, with mile on mile of corridors and chambers hollowed out of the mountain. In times of need, the fastness was large enough to accommodate the entire Xandim race—but its size was not its most staggering feature. The entire edifice, both inside and out—had been formed from a single stone!

The green slope below the fortress was scattered with other, lesser buildings. With their outlines softened by growths of green, cushiony moss and gold and silver lichens, they looked from the outside like rough-sculpted rocks that had fallen from the cliff above. Their appearance, however, was deceptive. Chiamh’s investigations had proved that the structures were not boulders at all. They extended underground and seemed, like the fastness, to be outgrowths of the mountain bedrock. Each of them had a small, square door, and a hole in its top to admit light and allow smoke from the hearth to escape. Still more astonishing were the interiors, for the walls and floor were raised and ridged to form beds, shelves, and benches. Like the fastness, their origin was a mystery, but the Xandim accepted these structures as part of the landscape. Unless the weather was extreme, they rarely bothered with these ready-made homes.

The Xandim were a hardy, active outdoor folk who preferred the freedom of temporary shelters in the sweeping foothills or the open plains to fixed settlements and walls of stone. As humans they hunted, fished, gathered, and traded—when in equine shape, their food grew in abundance around them. They had a basic written language of signs, but rarely bothered with such niceties. Instead they told stories, the taller the better, and sang many songs. Their history was simply passed down by word of mouth, much to Chiamh’s frustration. He was certain that most of it was muddled, and much was missing.

The Windeye arrived, soaked, bruised, and gasping for breath, at the massive, arching gate of the fortress. The building gave him a feeling or unease, as though unseen eyes watched him from under its eaves. He looked nervously up at its looming structure. The unusual silver veining in the rough brown stone gleamed softly in the afterglow of dusk, and in the deceptive ghostlight, the towers and windows, balconies and buttresses of the building’s fascia seemed to suggest, to Chiamh’s imperfect vision, the dignified lineaments of a craggy old face. For the first time, he wondered why he had never thought of viewing the fastness with his Othersight. The Goddess only knew what such a seeing might reveal—but there was no time now for such frivolous experiments.