Maggie Furey - Harp of Winds

As the echoes of the avalanche died away, Aurian, her knuckles clenched tight against her mouth, stepped forward with Yazour and Eliizar, and looked down into the pass. Crystalline clouds of powdered ice hung in the air as a silvery haze above the snow slide, obscuring what lay below. Raven landed beside them. “We must wait until it settles.” She sounded very subdued. “I can see nothing down there.”

Aurian cursed. “You wait. I’m going now.”

“Let me—I can move faster on that slippery surface.” It was Shia. “Follow—but take care, my friend. We want no more falls today!” With a bound, the great cat was gone.

Behind the Mage, Bohan and Nereni were picking themselves up. Barring a bruise or two, the eunuch seemed unhurt, and went limping off to gather up the reins of the horses. A shaken Nereni had to be helped to her feet by Eliizar. Her face was streaked with tears, and blood poured from a cut in her forehead, where she had been caught by a flying hoof. Aurian, numb with shock over Anvar’s disappearance—she would not let herself call it more than that—found herself thinking that the woman was lucky to be alive . . . With that, the Mage’s thoughts returned to Anvar. At the top of the pass, the rocky trail had been swept almost bare of snow. What was left had been smoothed and impacted in patches by the avalanche until it looked like glass. Aurian felt a shiver of dread. Automatically, she groped in her belt for the Staff of Earth to help her balance—and stopped dead, her eyes wide with horror. Dear Gods, if the Staff had been lost . . . Flinging caution to the winds, she started down.

Luckily, Yazour caught up with her before she had gone more than a step or two—and even that had been almost enough to send her hurtling to the bottom of the defile. He caught her arm as she floundered for balance.

“Take care!” he scolded, handing her one of the stout walking staffs that Bohan had cut for her companions before they left the forest. “You should have waited.”

“But—” Aurian protested.

The warrior hushed her. “I know,” he told her sadly. “We have no choice, however—we must go slowly, if we hope to reach the bottom intact”

Though Aurian was frantic with fear for Anvar, not to mention the fate of the Staff, it was impossible to descend the pass with any speed. Visibility, between the heavy gray sky and the steepening walls of the defile on either side was poor, and the trail was like glass underfoot. She had to test her footing with each step before she could put her weight on it, and to make matters worse, she was continually unbalanced by the bulk of the child she carried.

Partway down, they came across the unfortunate horse. It lay broken and bloody beside the trail, its neck and limbs wrenched askew at impossible angles. Aurian turned away, with tight throat and clenched teeth, unable to stop herself thinking of Anvar. Yazour’s hand tightened on her arm. One look at his grim and pallid face, and Aurian knew that his thoughts were similar to her own. “Perhaps we should wait for the others?” he suggested tentatively.

The Mage shook her head. “It’s no use putting it off.”

It was then, in that darkest of moments, that Shia’s voice burst into Aurians mind. “ Anvar is alive !”

It was as well that the avalanche had already spent itself. Aurian let out a whoop that unbalanced her again, and sent her slithering down the trail. Yazour caught at her, and they slid for several feet before coming to an unsteady halt against the rocky wall of the defile, while Yazour blistered the air with curses. Aurian hugged him. “He’s all right, Yazourl Shia says he’s all right!”

Abruptly, the warrior stopped swearing. “You sorcerers! How in the Reaper’s name did he manage that?”

Anvar, lying half stunned in a pile of snow at the bottom of the trail, was wondering much the same thing. Shia looked him over anxiously, poking him from time to time with her great black muzzle. “Nothing broken?” she asked sharply.

“I don’t think so ... I can move my arms and legs . . .”

“I suggest you move them, then, before you freeze!”

Anvar groaned, and used the Staff, which he’d clung to with all his strength down every inch of the wild and terrifying slide, to help pull his aching body to unsteady feet. Shia pushed her massive body against him, propping him as he stumbled. “Idiot!” she snarled. “Aurian warned you to stay back!” She looked back at him over her shoulder, her golden eyes ablaze, and the Mage, his hands buried in the thick, warm fur of her back, gave her a sheepish grin. Her mental tones, though sharp with the aftershock of fear for him, lacked the stinging edge of true anger, and he knew she was thankful to see him alive and in one piece, more or less.

Anvar’s head was still swimming from the fall, and he sat down abruptly in the snow, hugging the cat for more than warmth. “I’m glad to see you too,” he told her sincerely.

He was even more glad to see Aurian come slithering down the track with Yazour, whose face split into a grin of relief to see him. The warrior clapped Anvar hard on the shoulder, making him wince, before fading tactfully back up the slippery defile to help Eliizar with the horses, leaving the two Magefolk alone with Shia. The Mage looked wretched, a grim expression on her ashen face. Anvar braced himself for the storm of her wrath, certain that this time, at least, he deserved it. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “You warned me, and I should have listened.”

The Mage dropped to her knees in the snow beside Anvar, wanting to curse him, to pound him with her fists for putting her through this ordeal. But she couldn’t. When she saw him there, blue-lipped and shivering, his clothing torn and wet, his skin scraped and already beginning to bruise in places—well, how could she be angry when she was so glad to see him alive? She wanted to embrace him—she was almost ready to weep with relief to see him safe. But the sick feeling of horror when she thought she had lost him remained within her, like a ball of lead in the pit of her stomach. Instead of his face, she saw the cold, lifeless features of Forral, after the Wraith had struck him down. Aurian felt her hands beginning to shake. Rather than face the bleak and horrifying possibility of another loss, she took refuge in briskness. “I understand, Anvar. I should have known—the Staff has so much power! I remember how it was in Dhiammara, the first time I held it, and the city fell apart around me . . .”

Anvar looked startled. “But that wasn’t your fault! That was a spell of the Dragonfolk, surely!”

“Well, maybe,” Aurian conceded, “but even if the destruction had been my fault, I couldn’t have prevented it! What happened today was my mistake, Anvar. Since you’d already used the Staff in the desert, I thought you would be all right, but that time, the power was channeled into the battle—it had somewhere to go! When you disappeared in that avalanche—Gods, I thought ...”

Aurian knew she had betrayed herself when Anvar put an arm around her shoulders. “And Shia called me an idiot!” he scolded. “Why blame yourself? You trusted me with the Staff, you warned me to be careful—how could it be your fault? In fact,” he went on, “it was the Staff that saved my life, I think. Its power seems to surround me and cushion me from the worst of the fall . . . I remember rolling and sliding, very fast . . . Thank the Gods, the worst of the avalanche had already gone before I started to fall, or I’d have been dead for sure.” Anvar, shuddering, fell silent. Aurian didn’t want to think about it. “Come on,” she said brusquely, “you mustn’t sit and freeze. Let’s find you some dry clothing in the packs. We ought to go on now. We stand a better chance of surviving this night if we can find the tower before dark.” She helped the shaken Mage clamber to his feet, and retrieved the Staff of Earth from his grasp. Without looking back at Anvar, she scrambled up toward the place where Eliizar and the others were bringing the horses down the trail.