Maggie Furey - Harp of Winds

Vannor was taken to Miathan’s chambers and forced down to his knees on the rich crimson carpet. Waving the guards aside, the Archmage stood in silence, looking down at the merchant with the glittering, expressionless gems that were his eyes. Vannor shuddered. Miathan’s face had altered—the harsh hauteur of his former days had been recarved into deeper lines of bitterness and cruelty. The skin on his masklike face was waxen and unhealthy, and twisted into livid scars around his gutted eyes. Only his clawlike hands, rubbing and writhing against one another, betrayed his glee. The merchant knew fear, the like of which he had never before experienced, not even the Wraith that had slain Forral had filled him with such terror, which mocked at hope and drained his courage as though the lifeblood were being leeched from his very veins.

“So,” Miathan whispered. “I have you at last.”

“You won’t have me long, you bastard!” Vannor spat at the Archmage’s feet.

“Vannor, you would be amusing, were you not pitiful,” the Archmage mocked him. “You are correct, however; your presence will not plague me long. In your case, the end will come much sooner than you think—for who will help you now?” He smiled coldly. “Here we are, back where we started—but there is no Forral to help you this time, and no Aurian to interfere! Your friends from the Garrison are scattered or dead. You have no one, Vannor. No one but me. And before I am done, you will beg for death a thousand times. But first, I shall require some answers—such as the names of your companions, and where they are hiding.”

The hissing voice, the glittering, malevolent eyes, struck chills through Vannor. The merchant gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, but he could not shut out Miathan’s insidious, gloating voice that turned him sick to his soul with loathing. The worst of his horror was not for his own fate—that (he promised himself, and tried hard to believe it) he could stand. But he knew that sooner or later, he would tell the Archmage everything he wanted to know. Vannor shuddered. Blinded by his love for his daughter, he had betrayed his friends. Mortal men he could deal with, but this monster wielded powers that went far beyond Vannor’s worst imaginings. A wave of nausea overwhelmed him as he remembered the hideous creature that had slain his old friend Forral, and only the stubborn core of courage that had supported him throughout a rough, hard life kept his limbs from trembling. Saving a miracle, his life could be measured in days, at most. And Vannor knew that those few days would be very bad, indeed.

Nonetheless, he intended to go down fighting. Scowling, he looked up into Miathan’s expressionless eyes. “Why?” he grated. “You’re the bloody Archmage! You know full well that you could pick whatever information you wanted out of my mind as easily as picking up a piece of fruit from that bowl over there. In fact ...” Another shudder convulsed him.

“In fact, you may have already done it.” Was it true? Was it? Taking a ragged breath, he tried to control his racing thoughts. “So why are you threatening me with torture?”

“For revenge.” Miathan’s smile reminded Vannor of the snarling wolf that he had seen so long ago in the Valley.

“Revenge for all those years of being balked, hindered, and opposed on the Council. And your suffering will be far greater when you hear the words that betray your companions coming from your own lips—and know that you have failed them,”

Again, the wolfish grin. “But there is more to it than revenge, my dear Vannor, Consider the sources of magical power. Abandoning the Mages’ Code has brought me certain… opportunities. Bear in mind, when you are dying in torment, that your terror, your agony and anguish, will all be serving to fuel my magic and increase my power.”

With that, he lifted his hand. Every nerve and muscle in Vannor’s body went into spasm as a bolt of agony consumed the merchant’s spine like white fire. Vannor toppled like a falling tree, writhing on the crimson carpet as his spine arced backward like a tensioned bow. Though he bit his tongue to keep from crying out, the last thing he heard, as his senses left him, were his own agonized cries.

As Yazour slowly recovered from his wounds, his lessons in the speech of the Xandim continued. It was not so difficult as he had expected, for he already knew a little of the language—had been taught it, as all Xiang’s officers had, to equip him for his scouting expeditions to raid the Xandim studs. There were certain similar roots shared by the two tongues, which made the learning easier. Besides that, the two men had only each other for company, they had nothing else to do but talk—and each of them was bursting with curiosity as to what the other was doing in this bleak and lonely place.

After several frustrating days, Yazour managed, in halting Xandim that relied heavily on both mime and pictures scratched with a charred stick from the fire on the smooth stone floor of the cavern, to explain that he and his companions were fugitives fleeing the wrath of the Khazalim King—and that their captor who occupied the tower was Xiang’s son. On hearing this news, Schiannath grew excited, and broke into a torrential spate of Xandim that left Yazour completely at a loss. After a good deal of repetition, and many attempts to get his strange companion to slow down a little, the warrior finally understood that Schiannath too was an outlaw in exile from his people, though the nature of the Horse-lord’s crime remained unclear.

Yazour suspected that Schiannath was being deliberately vague on this point, and it gave him some uneasy moments, until he remembered that this man had rescued him, fed him, and tended his wounds. After all, Yazour reflected, I never told him why we were forced to flee the Khisu. Schiannath may be thinking just as badly of me—yet still he shows me unstinting care! It was a sobering thought.

Once the outlaw had discovered that Yazour was an exile like himself, Schiannath’s manner thawed toward Yazour a great deal, and despite his own hostility, the young warrior found himself responding in kind. Though the ghost of his slain father would occasionally rise in his mind to berate him for befriending an enemy, making him sullen and taciturn for a time, the levelheaded Yazour could not help but realize that this former foe had proved a better friend than Harihn’s soldiers, those erstwhile companions who had dealt him the wounds that Schiannath was doing his best to heal. For Yazour’s recovery was not straightforward. Sometimes, when his wounds flared into fever, Schiannath would mix soothing poultices and cool his burning face with icy water; sometimes when the bruise on his forehead throbbed, the Xandim would give him infusions of herbs to still the pain. And at these times, Yazour’s confusion became so great that the young warrior felt as though his head—or maybe his heart—was threatening to break apart.

Yet the deepest part of Yazour’s anguish was not for himself but for the companions he had left behind in the tower when he fled. What had happened to Aurian and Anvar? What of Bohan, and Eliizar and Nereni? What had become of Shia, all alone in this wintry waste? And worst of all, why was he stranded here on his back, helpless as an upturned turtle, when he should be out there helping them?

As the days progressed, the warrior’s frustration festered within him. His outer hurts were mending slowly, but the wounds to his spirit grew ever worse. Yazour grew terse and fractious, lacking the words and the inclination to explain to Schiannath that his anger was turned upon himself. The fragile bond of trust that had been growing between himself and the Xandim was strained to breaking point, and Yazour even resented Schiannath’s hurt and bewildered expression as he tried to answer his companion’s unspoken needs, and was rebuffed again and again.