Maggie Furey - Aurian

“The child?” The two words contained a world of questions.

“I care about the child because I owe Forral a debt, but also because—well, I feel there’s a bond between us. It’s like me, the offspring of a Mage and a Mortal, not quite one thing or the other. I know how that feels, Aurian, and though it can’t be the child of my body, it is the child of my heart—not least because of what I feel for its mother.”

Aurian looked at him wonderingly. “I never knew. Somehow I never thought of it like that.”

“You don’t mind?” Anvar held his breath.

She shook her head. “How could I mind? Besides, with my powers due to leave me . . . well, I’m not ashamed to admit that I need you, Anvar, we both do.” At long last she smiled, and Anvar had to steel himself not to ruin their fragile bond by kissing her then and there. Instead he hugged her and ruffled her hair, trying to mask the tenderness in his voice with briskness. “Well, now we’ve settled that, I suggest we get some sleep. It’ll be time to leave soon.”

Anvar awoke at dusk, with Aurian asleep in his arms. In her unguarded slumber the glory of the Staff had dimmed, and she looked worn and vulnerable, and all too human. Beneath the thin blanket, the slight bulge of her pregnancy could now be seen, and he felt awash with tenderness for the Mage and her unborn child. Wayward tendrils of her hair, which she had never been able to control since she’d cut it, straggled across her face, moving gently with the rhythm of her breathing. Anvar smiled, thinking of her hair when it had hung past her waist in a cascade of fiery crimson, and how he had combed it for her the night that Forral had died. How wonderful its silken weight had felt, running through his fingers! I loved her then, he thought. I loved her, and couldn’t admit it to myself. How could I, as nothing but 4wr servant? How dare I admit it now?

- She’ll never love me, he thought sadly, not with all that stands between us—the memory of the past, and the ghost of Forral shadowing our lives. If I had not gone to him that night, he might still be alive now. No matter how Aurian excuses it, how could I ever expect her to love me after that? In that moment, as he looked down at the sleeping Mage, Anvar’s decision crystallized. I still owe her a debt, he thought. A debt of blood, for Forral’s life. Even if it costs me my own life, that debt must be repaid—and one day, I’ll find a way to do it.

Anvar reached out, as though touching her would seal his vow, and gently brushed the wayward curls from the Mage’s face. To his dismay she stirred, opening her eyes, and he snatched his hand back as though he had been burned as the raw power of the Staff of Earth blazed into life within her once more. But already she was learning to control it. Even as he watched, the glory dimmed as she strove to contain it within herself.

Aurian sighed. “Morning already?” she murmured sleepily. Anvar glanced toward the mouth of the cavern, wishing that they need not always be so driven, longing for some time alone with her. But such a luxury seemed as unattainable as the moon. “Nightfall, I think,” he told her. “We had better wake the others. It’s time to go.”

The remainder of the journey across the desert took a score of days, some of the worst days that Aurian could remember. Ever wary of the imminetite of the storms, Yazour pushed them hard, driving the companions and their horses to the limits of their endurance. Aurian found herself envying Raven, who had flown on ahead, following the string of oases to reach safety at the desert’s edge as fast as she could. Since Yazour had been unable to bring any tents for them, the companions were forced to spend the broiling hours of daylight in the open, shaded by makeshift shelters of blankets and with their eyes, and those of the horses, bound in layers of cloth to filter the blinding glare. They had no pack animals, so food and water were tightly rationed and everyone suffered badly from hunger and thirst.

Worst of all, there was the unrelenting heat. During the earlier part of their journey, there had always been the restless night breeze to cool them as they traveled, but this had ceased with the weather’s unseasonal change, turning the desert into a suffocating oven. Each night the day’s stored heat rose in a wave from the desert floor to engulf the riders, leaving the air turgid and stifling. The encrusted coats of the horses were dark and soaked with sweat, and their breathing, clogged by clouds of gem dust, came thick and wheezing from their laboring chests. The riders were drenched in sweat that ran stingingly into their eyes beneath their cloying veils, sweat that left their desert robes clinging clammily to their bodies as the life-giving moisture was lost to the dry desert air.

Shia, with the thick furred coat of a mountain dweller, suffered badly. At least the others were able to ride, but she was forced to lope along behind the horses on her own legs. Built for short bursts of speed, she was finding the grueling race across the burning sands almost beyond her endurance. In addition to her dreadful weariness and thirst, her paws became raw and blistered from the friction of the hot gem dust, and before long, she was leaving a track of bloody prints behind her as she ran.

Only her love of the Mage kept her going. And each day, when Aurian should have been resting to conserve her own energy, she spent herself in Healing the exhausted and suffering cat, trying to lend Shia enough of her own faltering strength to continue. Anvar, who was looking increasingly worried as time went on, did his best to help, but he was no Healer, and his efforts were of little practical use except that they loaned the Mage an increment of strength to keep her going from day to day.

As time went on, Aurian became more and more frantic. The crossing of the desert was a race against time, and she knew she was losing. Her body was beginning to grow ungainly now with her advancing pregnancy, and already she was finding riding more uncomfortable. Even with the Staff of Earth, she knew that she was overtaxing her own fading powers, and because of this, they were failing rapidly. Soon they would vanish completely, and—Whenever she thought of it, she was overwhelmed by a wave of choking panic. How could she help Shia then? How could she safeguard herself and her child, and defend her friends from the evil of the Archmage and his cohort Eliseth?

The worst of it was, that under the Law of the Desert, Shia ought to be abandoned. On the worst days, the cat even begged them to do it, gazing pitifully up at the two Mages with eyes that were distant and glazed, and pleading with them to leave her, or put her out of her misery. Aurian would grit her teeth, forbidding Anvar with her steely glare to tell the others what Shia had said. But they were already thinking it—she could see it in Nereni’s frequent tears, and in the guilty way that Eliizar and Yazour were avoiding her eyes. Even Bohan, her loyal tower of strength, was beginning to look uncomfortable, and eventually, she knew, she would have Anvar to contend with. Although he had so far refused to press her on the subject, knowing how much Shia meant to her, she knew that his concern for herself and the child were pushing him toward the unthinkable option. All that Aurian could do was to expend herself mercilessly, forcing herself with the entire strength of her indomitable will to defy them all, to keep Shia going somehow until the end of the journey.

They were still a few days from the desert edge when the worst happened, and Aurian finally succumbed to the heat and her own exhaustion. The others, having always lived in this hot climate, had been able to endure the broiling temperatures, and Anvar had built up a certain amount of resistance from his grueling captivity in the slave camp. Aurian, however, had been cossetted; first as one of the Arena’s chosen, and then in the cool comfort of Harihn’s palac?. Even so, she might have managed— except that she was driving herself beyond the ends of endurance. Each day her suffering grew worse, until at last she was overcome by what Yazour called the heat sickness.