Maggie Furey - Harp of Winds

“Shia, I will come with you,” Khanu offered eagerly.

“The great cat glared at the younger male. “You will not!”

“Why not?” Khanu sulked. “If you can do it, so can I—and you will need me when you reach the top. There are many foes upon that mountain, as well as Anvar.”

Shia sighed. “Khanu, you may be right. But hear me out. I have good reason for wanting you to stay behind, for if I should falter and fall, then you must take my place, and climb with the Staff in my stead.”

Khanu’s eyes grew very wide, but he said nothing, Shia, taking his silence for acquiescence, turned from her friends with soft words of farewell, and began to climb,

Anvar, safe from the blizzard in the cave above, was frantic. He cursed, and drew a weary hand across his eyes. During his illness, the Mage had lost track of how many days he had spent in this accursed hole, but he was sure that the birth of Aurian’s child must now be imminent. Only sheer Magefolk stubbornness had prevented him from giving up hope over these last days, and Shia’s sudden appearance with the Staff had seemed nothing less than a miracle. Now, however, it was as though the cup of hope had been offered to him by the capricious gods, only to be dashed from his lips once more.

Shia’s sendings were becoming progressively weaker; as the cats struggled on in the teeth of the storm, fighting their way forward against the bone-piercing blast of the wind that heaped the snow ever deeper in their path. Pacing back and forth across the stony floor of the cave, Anvar raged against his helplessness. Gods, if only I could help them, he thought. There must be something I can do! Then, as if to add to his torment, the rough old voice of a strange cat flashed into his mind, with a message that turned him cold with dread.

“Human—we can find no other way up. Shia has to climb up to you, so it will be as well if you do not try to speak to her for a while. She will need all her concentration, if she is to survive.”

“Stop her! She mustn’t do this!” Anvar cried. “It’s not possible to climb that cliff!” In his mind, he heard the cat’s dry, humorless chuckle.

“It’s too late to stop her. Already she climbs. But bear in mind that what is impossible for a human may not be so for a cat. Her claws can find the tiniest crevices, and she can stretch her limbs for distances that a mere human could not reach.”

Then Anvar heard a note of doubt creep into the old cat’s voice, “That is, if her strength holds out.” Hreeza’s voice faded into a sorrowful silence.

Anvar rushed to the cave mouth and hung perilously over the edge, trying to peer down through the layers of cloud and twisting veils of snow, h was hopeless. The storm obscured everything. Realizing that it would take Shia some time to accomplish her climb, and that it would serve no purpose to stay out here and freeze, Anvar returned to his fire. Numb with horror, he sat down, staring sightlessly at the flickering, frost-blue flames, and began to pray. At the foot of the cliff, the old cat turned from her conversation with the frantic human—and found herself alone. Above her head she caught a flicker of movement, as Khanu’s tail vanished into the blizzard. Hreeza’s own tail lashed in anger. “Come back, you young fool,” she roared. “Shia ordered you to stay down here.”

From above her, Khanu’s voice came strained and stilted as he struggled to maintain his hold on the sheer face of the mountain. “Shia was wrong,” he interrupted flatly. “I have no doubt that she’ll reach the top—and when she does, she will need my help.” A note of cunning entered his voice, “Of course, if you were to tell her what I’m up to, it might prove a fatal distraction—but that is between you and your conscience, old one. Now leave me alone—this climb is harder than it looks.”

Hreeza, snarling with frustration, turned away from the dreadful cliff. She had no gods to invoke, and lacked the human relief of cursing. Her companions, discounting her as too old, worn out, and spent to attempt the climb, had not even thought of including her in their plans. Driven by the urgency of their quest, they had left her to survive the blizzard as best she might. Rage and resentment flashed through Hreeza, sending a surge of hot blood through limbs that were already growing stiff and numb. Leave her to perish in the snow, would they? Well, she’d see about that! There was life in the old cat yet—and she would sell that life dearly, and on her own terms!

How long had she been climbing? Shia had no recollection. Time had stretched so that eternity encompassed this icy stretch of cliff to which she clung with the strength of pure desperation; yet the boundaries of her world had narrowed and shrunk to a scant few feet of stone, and the next, narrow chip or chink in the rock that might provide a slender purchase for her blunted, shredded claws.

Shia’s head was swimming with weariness, and the Staff, clenched in her aching jaws, interfered with her breathing and obstructed her vision. Her limbs, unnaturally splayed to hold her close to the cliff and locked for so long in that one position, felt as though they were strung together by strands of searing fire that ran into her body to bind her laboring lungs in a viselike embrace. With her entire weight suspended from her claws, Shia dared not think of the endless plunge to oblivion that awaited her should she weaken, even for an instant. She very carefully kept her thoughts away from the near-impossibility of the task that she had set herself Instead, she simply kept on going, refusing to give in, fighting an endless series of small battles for each new burning breath, and moving laboriously, one paw at a time, inch by inch, like a small black fly that crawled across the face of that vast, unyielding wall of stone.

“Shia?” Anvar’s tentative voice cut across her concentration like a whipcrack. Jerked abruptly from its of suffering, exertion, and endurance, the will of the great cat faltered. Shia’s weight seemed to suddenly double, and her claws scrabbled frantically at the slick stone surface as she slid for several inches, almost dropping the Staff, her claws digging deep grooves in the crumbling rock, her heart leaping into her throat, until she reached a spot where the cliff leaned slightly backward, and she could find her hold again.

Anvar’s cry of horror still echoed around the rocks above her. When the pounding of blood in her ears had quieted, Shia heard him cursing himself in an uninterrupted stream of oaths, in a voice that shook more than a little. The great cat leaned her head wearily against the icy stone and waited for her breathing to steady and her limbs to stop trembling. In the meantime, she diverted her thoughts from her brush with death by telling Anvar exactly what she thought of him. It took quite a while, and by the time she had finished, Shia felt ready to go on,

Now that she was aware of her surroundings, the cat noticed that the blizzard was slackening—and she also saw why Anvar had been forced to risk distracting her.

“You need to move across to your left now, Shia,” he told her, “You were going to miss the cave entirely,”

Shia forgave him at once. Above her, the cliff stretched on and on beyond the dark blot that marked the cave mouth, and Shia shuddered at the thought of climbing endlessly, until her strength gave out and she fell—

“Stop that!” Anvar’s voice cut firmly across her despairing thoughts. “Come on, Shia,” he wheedled, “you can do it now. Why, you’re almost there!”

His words put new heart into the exhausted cat Anvar was right, of course. Why, given the distance she had already come, this last little stretch would be nothing! “At times like this, I can see why Aurian is so fond of you,” she told the Mage gratefully, Buoyed by the warmth of her friendship with this human, Shia gathered the last dregs of her faltering strength and began to climb again.