Maggie Furey - Aurian

The winged girl returned to the plateau to rest. She tired easily after the night’s exertions, and she needed to think—and eat. Having no experience of journeying, she attacked the contents of her bag voraciously, with no thought of where her next meal might come from. As she ate, she considered her next step. Raven had left the palace with no idea of where she might go, or how she was to live.

For the first time, Raven was truly afraid. What if the folk out here were like Blacktalon or worse? But the thought of the High Priest and the fate that awaited her was enough to steel her resolve. She would have to find help, however. Raven was a pampered Princess, and she had sense enough to realize that she had no notion of how to survive alone. Besides, she told herself, if they threaten me, I can always fly away again. The question of where to go was easily decided. She could not return north. They would be hunting for her now. The thought of pursuit made her shudder. It was essential that she go immediately. South, away from the mountains of her birth. The sparkling sands seemed to provide enough light for her to travel by night. Taking a deep breath, Raven flexed her wings and launched into the air—heading south, across the glowing desert,

“Behold, fair Dhiammara!”

“You’re joking!” Aurian turned to Yazour in patent disbelief. By the eighteenth night of the journey, the desert’s beauty had begun to pall. The gem dust got everywhere— in her hair, her throat, even inside her clothes—and because the oases they had visited were needed for vital drinking water, bathing had been forbidden. The Mage felt unspeakably filthy, and she itched. Her babe stole the nourishment from her slender rations, leaving her constantly ravenous, even though Bohan and Anvar always forced some of their food upon her. The intensive teaching sessions with Anvar had deprived them both of much-needed sleep and she felt tired and short-tempered, her eyes gritty and stinging from the dazzle of the sands. She was definitely not in the mood for jokes.

Aurian slowed her horse, lifting the veil from her eyes, and squinted against the glare. Silhouetted against the moon-bright sky, the solitary mountain loomed impossibly high. Its top was oddly truncated, as if it had been lopped off by some gargantuan sword, and the sheer sides gleamed with a mirror brightness, as though polished. The structure showed no signs of weathering, and that too, in this place of scouring sandstorms, was absolutely impossible.

“That can’t be a natural formation!” Aurian accused.

“I agree, though no one knows its history,” Yazour replied. “Close up, its scale is staggering. It may look enormous now, but distance is deceptive in the desert.”

He was right, Aurian discovered. It took several hours’ hard riding to reach the towering peak, and by the time they approached its sheer walls the horizon was growing pale. The mountain was immense, its size exaggerated further by the fact that the land did not rise gradually toward it. The slender cone erupted cleanly from the surrounding sands, like an island from the sea. For the last miles of the ride it had been impossible to take in the entire structure, and now they had reached its feet, all that could be seen was a vertical wall of darkly gleaming rock that stretched out of sight above them and for miles to either side. Yazour turned aside, parallel to the polished wall, and in a short time Aurian saw a darker shadow on the stone, a narrow opening just high enough to admit a horse.

One by one the riders led their animals through the entrance and into the cool darkness beyond, and torches, stacked to one side of the opening, were kindled and set into brackets on the walls. As the light grew, Aurian stared around her in disbelief. The cavern was huge, its ceiling lost high in the shadows above. To her left, half of the floor space was taken up by two pools, the higher set on a stony shelf, its waters trickling down in a small cascade to the lower. A sloping stone ramp led to the upper pool, where the horses and mules were being taken to drink. The floor of the cavern was level rock, drifted in places with glowing gem sand that had been blown inside by the wind. This, along with the reflections from the glassy walls, served to augment the torchlight.

“This place is incredible!” Anvar, at the Mage’s side, was looking around him with wide eyes.

“The lower pool is for bathing,” Yazour said. “We keep a goodly stock of food and fuel here, so we can replenish our supplies—and today we’ll feast, or so it will seem, after all this rationing. We will rest here for two or three days before going on.”

“Wonderful!” Aurian smiled at him, tacitly apologizing for her recent moodiness. “I never thought I’d get tired of riding, but right now I never want to see a horse again! I could kill for a bath, a hot meal, and a long sleep.”

“Then you shall have them.” Anvar put his arm around her and led her away to the right, where a series of small fires were being kindled close to a vent in the rock that drew the smoke away out of the cavern.

Since Anvar had regained his powers and started learning from the Mage, their relationship had altered subtly. Everyone except Bohan and Shia, who were party to the secret, accepted him as Aurian’s husband, but even when the two of them were alone, Anvar’s old subservience had dropped away, to the point where he had been very firm about her taking extra food from himself and the eunuch. Aurian, to her surprise, had found herself not minding Anvar’s new assertiveness. Since their escape from Nexis she had been forced to be the strong one, to shoulder the burden of their journey, and having someone share j the responsibility had come as a relief. Although her occasional 1 lack of patience as a teacher, coupled with their mutual exhaustion, had led to some sharp words between them—Anvar, it seemed, had Magefolk stubbornness to match her own—a close and comforting friendship had developed between them that did much to ease the loneliness that was their common bond. The Mages shared a fire with Eliizar and Nereni. While they waited for supper to cook they talked, glad of the opportunity after the enforced isolation of the desert camps. Eliizar, free of the Arena and back with a military company where he belonged, seemed to have shed years during the journey. His one eye glowed with enthusiasm as he spoke of the desert that he loved. Nereni, plump and smiling, was also glad to have left the Arena, but was finding the journey a trial. Aurian sympathized. If she, an expert horsewoman, was wearied by the continuous riding, she hardly dared imagine what it must be like for a beginner like Nereni.

Anvar, who’d had little opportunity to ride during his time at the Academy except when Aurian had invented the occasional errand to give him an outing, was also feeling the strain. “It’s all right for you,” he teased Nereni, rolling an expressive eye at her rounded backside. “At least you’ve got some padding between you and the saddle!”

She threw a spoon at him, making him duck, and the four of them collapsed in gales of mirth. Bohan, having cared for the horses, joined them thereat, as did Shia, who had been exploring the cave. “I don’t like it,” she told Aurian. “I see nothing, but it feels—prickly.”

The Mage, intent on Nereni’s delicately spiced stew, was not paying much attention. “Maybe you have sand in your coat,” she replied absently, and soon forgot the conversation. Now that she was full of good food, she found that her eyes refused to stay open any longer. The outline of the flames seemed to dance and blur in her vision, and the quiet sounds of conversation receded.

“Here you are, sleepyhead. Do it properly.” She blinked, brought back to herself by Anvar’s voice. He was holding out a blanket. “I wanted to bathe—” she protested, but the words were swallowed in a yawn.