Shia gave him a forbidding look. “Where Aurian goes, 1 go,” she said severely.
“I don’t wish to be anywhere else.”
“Well, you might try asking her to go where you want to go, for a change,”
Khanu retorted, unabashed. Delicately, he ran his tongue over his nose and whiskers. “Already I can scent the changes that will soon be happening within you, Shia. It will not be long before—” His words were cut off in a strangled yowl as a heavy paw cuffed him across the nose.
“BE SILENT!” Shia told him furiously. “Stay out of matters that are not your concern.”
“Not my concern?” Khanu’s moonlit eyes glinted wickedly.
“As the only male within hundreds of miles, it can’t help but be my concern—and I’m far from sorry.”
Shia’s tail lashed back and forth. “If you say any more, I’ll make you worse than sorry,” she warned him with a rumbling growl.
“You’re foolish to ignore what will soon happen. Sooner or later, Aurian or no Aurian, you’ll have to face it,” Khanu muttered sulkily. When Shia snarled again, he took himself quickly out of reach of her swift paw with its flashing claws. “I’m going to explore this big place across the courtyard,” he said, with a pathetic attempt at nonchalance.
“Don’t hurry back,” Shia snapped at him, and went on trying to eavesdrop on the conversation Aurian was having upstairs. Just as she was thinking about giving it up as a bad job and actually going to find the Mage, she heard Khanu’s mental calclass="underline" “Shia, listen ...” In the distance, from the other side of the courtyard, Shia’s acute feline hearing could just pick up a distant sound, very muffled and faint.
“Did you hear that?” Khanu demanded. “I think it’s coming from underground.—You had better talk to Aurian. That sounded to me like a human, screaming.”
As she listened with horrified fascination to the swordsman’s tale, Aurian found her anger beginning to ebb away. Despite everything that had happened this was still Forral, her first love, and as he told her of his ordeal in the endless grey monotony Between the Worlds her heart ached for him. She heard how he had used the Well of Souls, until Death stopped him, to watch over her—no wonder she had often felt that he was close—and how he had learned that by dipping a hand into the waters, he could send his shade into the world to help her as he had done in Dhiammara.
Then Forral related the mysterious arrival and departure of Vannor. Aurian’s heart gave a lurch as he mentioned Death’s admission that the merchant had been poisoned by none other than Eliseth. A dreadful suspicion had entered her mind. Her fingers tightened on the Staff as her thoughts began to race. “Damn that bitch to endless torment,” she snarled, but collected herself quickly.
“Go on, Forral,” she urged the startled swordsman. “I’m beginning to guess what must have happened—but tell me the rest.”
But when Forral’s tale came to Anvar and his plight, Aurian could scarcely bear to listen to his account of Anvar’s arrival in the realm of Death. “I tried to talk to him,” the swordsman told her. “I was desperate for news. If Anvar was dead, what had happened to you? Death tried to persuade him—both of us in fact—to come away. He said we couldn’t stay there—it wasn’t safe.—Someone was misusing the Caldron of Rebirth ...”
Dear Gods, Aurian thought wildly. I knew it then she noticed that Forral had stopped speaking. He bit his lip and looked away from her. “You were probably right to blame me,” he muttered. “It must have been my fault. Maybe Anvar would have come back to his body if I hadn’t delayed him—but you see, Death had tried so many times to get me to enter the Well of Souls and be reborn—I thought he was trying to trick me again.” He frowned. “I don’t exactly know what happened then—everything was confused—but I think that whatever the Caldron does to bring people back, it caught hold of me instead of Anvar.” He held out his hands beseechingly. “Aurian, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t do it deliberately—I was just taken. Even if I had worked out what was happening—well, I simply wouldn’t have known how to put myself into Anvar’s place.”
Forral looked unflinchingly into the Mage’s eyes. “We’ve been apart too long if you could even suspect that I’d do such a thing—but do you want to know the truth, love? I thank the Gods I was never called on to make that choice—because I missed you so much, there’s no telling what my heart might have misled me into doing.”
When she heard the plea for understanding that lay behind Forral’s words, and saw his distress so plainly written on Anvar’s face, the anger seemed to go out of Aurian. There was no doubt that he had told her the truth. If nothing else, his final admission proved it. Besides, if Forral had been able to return unaided, surely he would have done so long before now. At least now the Mage knew who was truly responsible for this disaster. Only Eliseth was sufficiently inventive to inflict such an agonizing dilemma on her enemy—and she was now in possession of the Chalice of Rebirth.
What a bloody awful mess! And there seemed to be no way out of it. Even if she could get hold of the grail, would she be able to bring Anvar back? And if she did, it would mean sacrificing Forral all over again. The Mage’s shoulders slumped, and for a moment she was left vulnerable and uncertain. Then she became conscious of Forral’s eyes on her.
The swordsman was still holding out his hands, waiting for some kind of answer.
“I believe you,” Aurian said softly. “You aren’t to blame for this. I should have known better—and I’m sorry I doubted you.” Then, steeling herself to put the heart-wrenching thoughts of Anvar and his plight out of her mind for the present, she reached out and took Forral’s hands. “We’ll get through this somehow—and at least it gives us a chance to be together again.”
“For a while, anyway,” Forral said—and then, to the Mage’s relief, he changed the subject abruptly, as though aware that they were straying once more on to dangerous ground. “Aurian, it’s a long time since Death allowed me to look into this world. What about our son? Where is he now? Is he all right?”
Oh Gods—Forral didn’t know. Aurian’s heart sank. How can I answer him? she thought. How can I tell him that Miathan cursed his son to take the form of a wolf—and then I abandoned the poor child so that I could fight Miathan and Eliseth? Why, I don’t even know where Wolf is now—or if he’s alive at all. How can I confess that to Forral?
The Mage was spared from having to break the dreadful news by a message from Shia. “Aurian, come quickly. Someone is here. Khanu went into the big place across the courtyard. He says he heard screams coming from somewhere underground.”
11
The Messenger
The feeble moonlight stood little chance of penetrating the thick stained glass of the library’s windows, and it was pitch-black within. Aurian created a slip of ghostly Magelight and sent it floating ahead to light the way. This was the first time she had set foot in the library since Finbarr had met his fate, and she looked around in dismay at the moldering, rat-gnawed volumes, many of which had been dislodged from their shelves and lay open on the floor like birds with broken wings, barely recognizable beneath layer upon layer of mildew and dust. The Mage was glad to reach the filigreed metal gates at the opposite end of the vast chamber. Though she had been dreading the thought of entering the maze of freezing black catacombs beneath the library, it came as a welcome relief to escape the heartbreaking sight of such needless ruin and destruction.
Aurian had not heard the screaming. By the time she had reached the door of the library it had stopped, and now the passages beneath were silent, cold and dark. Aurian was glad that Anvar—no, Forral—stayed close to her, always keeping to her right, so that his sword hand stayed free. He was keeping a wary distance from the great cats, even though Aurian had explained that to friends they were not as fierce as they looked. Clearly the swordsman was far from inclined to take her at her word, and Shia wasn’t helping the situation.—Having looked into his mind and found someone other than her beloved friend Anvar, she had flattened her ears and was looking sidelong at him with a baleful glare.