Maggie Furey: Harp of Winds

Bohan waited as he had waited for days, stubbornly keeping vigil on the ridge at the edge of the desert. He was not alone, though—his companions made sure of that. One of the others was always with him—one-eyed Eliizar, once the swordmaster of the Arena; or Yazour, the courageous young warrior who had fled his Prince’s service to join Aurian’s odd little band. Always, always, they had guarded the eunuch as he watched the empty sands; never leaving him alone. Bohan was tormented by guilt at having let them lull him into leaving his Lady’s side, and now he was unable to return for her—because they wouldn’t let him.

Bohan’s thoughts were bitter. They all assumed that because he was mute, he was also stupid. Everyone, that is, except his beloved Aurian. Her kindness had won his devotion—but he had left her in the desert to die, together with his friends Anvar and black, flame-eyed Shia, the great cat with an intelligence that was more than human. Though Eliizar had been forced to knock the eunuch unconscious to get him away from the Mages, Bohan still blamed himself. He had abandoned his Lady—and now, after the first lethal sandstorm had ravaged the desert, he was forced to face the truth. Aurian was dead; her breath choked off by the suffocating sands; her eyes and skin eaten away; her bones flayed bare by the knife-edged particles of gem dust.

For a long time, Bohan had clung to hope—against all evidence, against all sense. Hope had prevented him, over the last few days, from simply setting out into the desert and defying the others to use their weapons on him. He had always believed that Aurian would win through in spite of everything—that at any time, she would appear over the dazzling horizon of glittering dunes. That was why he had succumbed to the reasoning of the others. I must be stupid, after all, the eunuch thought. I let them persuade me: Yazour, Eliizar, and Nereni, with their cunning words:

“If she comes, she comes, Bohan. Nothing we can do now will help or hinder that.”

“If anyone can come through this, she and Anvar will.”

“The last thing Aurian would want is for you to throw your life away.”

And now it was too late. Hiding his face in his hands, Bohan choked on a soundless sob, and tears drenched the gauzy veils that covered his eyes to protect them from the desert’s blinding glare.

A hand, gentle in sympathy, touched his shoulder. He looked around to see Nereni, Eliizar’s wife, and her voice, when she spoke, was muffled with tears of her own. “Come away, Bohan, it does no good to linger here. Eliizar says—”

Suddenly she drew a sharp breath, and the eunuch felt her hand tighten on his shoulder. “Bohan, wait! They come! They come!

The first one to reach the eunuch was the great cat Shia, with whom he had formed such a mysterious bond. She threw herself at him, purring ecstatically, and despite his great strength, Bohan was hurled to the ground by her massive weight. But when he heard Aurian call his name, the eunuch could wait no longer. Untangling himself from his boisterous reunion with Shia, he hurled himself over the brow of the rise and plunged down through the steep cutting toward the flat expanse of the Jeweled Desert, kicking up clouds of glittering gem dust as he ran.

Aurian staggered toward him, helped along by her fellow Mage Anvar. She was clearly exhausted; her blood-streaked skin was smeared with gleaming gem dust, and her robe was a tattered rag. With tears streaming down his face the eunuch swept her up in a crushing embrace, wishing desperately that he could tell her that he had not wanted to abandon her in the desert; that Eliizar and Yazour had made him leave. He wanted to tell her how he had fretted and grieved for her, and, once the sandstorm had blown up, had despaired of ever seeing her again. Instead, all he could do was embrace her, putting all his heart into his eyes.

“Let me breathe!” Aurian gasped. She was laughing and crying all at once, and her face was radiant with joy. “Oh, my dear, dear Bohan, I’m so glad to see you!”

“And he is glad to see you.” Yazour approached on noiseless feet, his voice, as always, soft-spoken and low. His handsome face was disfigured by a swollen eye that had darkened to lurid purple, but he was grinning happily. “You have no notion of the time he’s given us since we last saw you, Lady,” he went on. “We had to knock him senseless to get him to leave you, and Eliizar and I have been forced to guard him ever since to stop him from going back in search of you. When the storm came, we could barely restrain him—he went completely wild.” The young warrior touched his blackened eye and gave a rueful shrug. “What a blessing you arrived when you did. I think he knocked out all of Eliizar’s teeth!”

“Not all—just some of them,” Eliizar muttered through swollen lips. “And I can spare them in a good cause!”

“It’s a good thing Yazour got the bruised eye, and not you,” Anvar teased him. “You couldn’t spare another!” Eliizar turned to pound the tall, blue-eyed Mage on the shoulder. “By the Reaper, Anvar, I’d have given my eye to see you both alive and safe after that storm! What did I say?” he added in baffled tones, as his companions collapsed into gales of laughter.

“What could you see without your eye, old fool?” Nereni told her husband with a fond chuckle. “Come, Eliizar—save this chattering until Aurian and Anvar are safe in our camp.” She turned to the Mages. “Come, my dears—you need a bath, and a rest, and a good hot meal . . .”

The eunuch gathered Aurian into his arms and carried her up the sandy bank, with Nereni’s good-natured duckings following him every step of the way. Yazour and Eliizar, still grinning, helped the weary Anvar climb the steep incline. Bohan had to step carefully to keep from tripping with his precious burden, for Shia, who had befriended him when she and Aurian had escaped the Arena in the Khazalim city of Taibeth, was weaving her sinuous black body back and forth around his legs as he went, rubbing against him and purring with pleasure at seeing him again. At the top of the rise was a narrow ridge, overgrown with low thornbushes and fat-leaved succulents, and dotted with scrubby, wind-twisted pines that had managed to survive the tearing blasts of the desert’s lethal sandstorms. At the far side of the rise the land dropped down again; and here, cradled in the arms of a long valley that swelled up on its further slopes to meet the foothills of the mountains, a dense forest arose like a vast green cloud. Cradling Aurian gently in his great arms as though she might break, the eunuch crossed the plateau, bearing the weary Mage along the rough path that had been hacked through the thornbushes. Then stooping low to avoid the vault of overhanging branches, he plunged downhill and into the forest itself.

Because of its tenuous foothold at the edge of the desert, the forest had the tough, spare, weather-beaten look of a true survivor. The trees were cypress and pine; gaunt and darkly forbidding, but welcome after the harsh, arid Khazalim lands—and an unexpected blessing had brightened their grim and ancient gloom. Snow melt from the dreadful winter that had locked the mountains had threaded the temperate foothills with lively new streams that sped down the boulder-strewn slopes to form shining pools in sheltered hollows. With this extra water, the forest had bloomed. Flowers splashed color wherever the eye fell. Drifts of misty blue and lively pink; delicate, lacelike white and clusters of yellow gold like spilled coins—blossoms abounded in all shapes and sizes, attended by an ecstatic court of butterflies and bees, and mingling their perfumes with the tingling incense of the evergreens to make every breath a new delight.

Having spent his life in the arid Khazalim lands, Bohan was entranced by the forest’s beauty. After the desert, this shaded green woodland seemed a miracle, and the eunuch smiled to himself at Aurian’s exclamations of pleasure as they went on their way. He could hardly wait to show her all the wonders of this astonishing place!