Aurian smiled and shook her head. “Can you pick yourself up by your own boots?” she countered, and turned back to Anvar. “Come on, let’s go and finish healing Hreeza.” She was about to beckon her winged bearers, when, frowning in sudden recollection, she looked around. “By the way, what happened to the little girl who found her? In all the excitement we forgot to thank her…”
“I would leave that for now, if I were you.” Anvar gestured over his shoulder, and Aurian, gathering her wits after the draining apport spell, became aware of a commotion taking place in the shadows some distance away. A scolding voice and a flurry of slaps followed by a rising wail told the Mage that the winged child’s mother had passed the point of relief and had reached the stage of exasperation. Aurian winced sympathetically. “Poor mite,” she murmured.
“Wait until it’s your turn,” Shia interjected slyly. “You have all these joys of motherhood still to come.”
Aurian raised her eyes to the heavens. “May the gods help me, she muttered.
Cygnus turned hastily away as Aurian approached, calling for her bearers to fly her back to her tower. The young physician-priest was unwilling to show the Mage his face, lest she divine his most secret thoughts. In a blaze of bitterness and envy he had watched her Healing powers at work, knowing in his heart that he was wrong to resent such miraculous gifts, but unable to help himself. How could the gods be so unjust, the white-winged physician wondered, as his mind went back to the depredations of the dread, uncanny winter, and his own inability to help his suffering people. Why should these freakish wingless ones possess such powers while his own race, once Magefolk in their own right, remained impotent and bereft?
Across the shadows Cygnus looked at Anvar, who was clambering into a net to be transported across to his tower. As the Mage pushed a hampering fold of his cloak aside, the Skyman glimpsed the eldritch glimmer of the Harp of Winds, strapped securely to Anvar’s back. The physician clenched his teeth, seething with resentment. Why should this alien, this interloper, possess the most precious heirloom of the Winged Folk? What right had he to keep it, when it truly belonged to its creators? Perhaps, just possibly, the precious Artifact could be used to restore the lost and stolen powers of the Skyfolk … “And if I possessed the Harp,” Cygnus murmured to himself, “I might become a true Healer at last…”
Eliizar stood in the open doorway of the Tower of Incondor, blind to the beauty of the rich spring landscape that spread out before him like a colorful tapestry, and deaf to the song of the returning bird life and the cheerful calls and chatter of the warriors who brushed past him as they bustled in and out of the tower, preparing to set out for their various destinations. It seemed to the one-eyed swordmaster that he was the only one who wasn’t busy on this second day of the miraculous spring, and—with the possible exception of Parric, the leader of the Xandim band, who by his demeanor, appeared to have a weight of worries on his mind—Eliizar was certainly the only one who wasn’t cheerful.
The swordmaster sighed, feeling low in spirits and very much alone. Nereni had gone off some time before, toward a nearby stream, carrying a tottering pile of dirty laundry and singing cheerfully to herself. Bohan was sitting in a sheltered patch of sunlight in an angle of the tower wall, with the two great wolves that Aurian had selected to be foster parents to her son in her absence stretched out beside him, for all the world like shaggy gray hounds. In the eunuch’s lap, on a blanket, lay the tiny cub that was the Mage’s child. Eliizar shuddered, nauseated by the sight of the accursed creature. How could Aurian bear it? he wondered. How could she possibly love such an abomination? How could she be so calm about the whole dreadful business?
If only Yazour would return from Aerillia! Apart from the practical difficulties that Eliizar’s little group had been encountering because their translators were all away in the lands of the Skyfolk, the one-eyed warrior desperately needed to talk to someone who might understand. He had lain awake all night, wrestling with the dilemma that had beset him, and in the bleak and solitary watches of the night he had reached his decision at last—the only decision, he had decided grimly, that made any sense. Unfortunately, he knew that Aurian would be far from happy about it—and Nereni wasn’t going to like it at all. Nonetheless, the matter must be addressed, and there was no point in putting it off. Squaring his shoulders, the former swordmaster of the Khazalim Arena set off in search of his wife.
Guided by a drift of fragrant woodsmoke on the breeze and the sound of distant singing, Eliizar soon found her where the stream ran out of the thicket below the tower. A large old caldron that had hung from a hook in the tower hearth was now scrubbed free of rust and dirt and was steaming gently over a crackling fire. Blankets and various items of clothing had been spread to dry on the bushes at the thicket’s edge. Nereni was kneeling on a folded cloak at the water’s edge, beating a linen tunic against the rocks that edged the stream and singing softly to herself as she worked.
Eliizar hesitated for a moment at the edge of the coppice, screened from his wife’s view by a patched gray blanket and a curtain of fresh green leaves. It had been a long time since he had seen Nereni happy like this, and now he must be the ruin of her newfound contentment. As he stepped out reluctantly to greet her, she scrambled to her feet, the dripping tunic still clutched in her hands, her face beaming with additional joy at the sight of him. “Eliizar! I was wondering where you could be! I…” As her voice faltered, the swordmaster knew his expression must have given him away.
“Why, Eliizar, whatever ails you?” Nereni was frowning now. “How can you seem so gloomy on such a wonderful day?”
“I must speak with you.” Eliizar was hoping—praying—that she would forgive what he was about to say to her. “Nereni, our kinfolk are leaving tomorrow,” he plunged on quickly. “They are returning to the forest at the desert’s edge to build homes and make new lives for themselves, away from cruel kings and magical battles. Jharav has asked us to join them, and I—I firmly believe that we should go.”
“What?” Nereni’s expression was growing stormier by the second. “Leave Aurian? Leave Anvar? Absolutely not, Eliizar! How in the Reaper’s name could you even suggest such a dreadful thing?” As if to emphasize her words, she hurled down the tunic that she had been washing. It hit the surface of the stream with a resounding slap and began to float away on the current as the little woman rounded on her husband, her water-wrinkled fingers clenched into fists.
Eliizar took a hasty step backward. He had never seen his gentle spouse so angry. “My dearest one, only listen for a moment…” he begged.
“Only listen? Why should I sully my ears with such treacherous, ungrateful talk?” Nereni shouted. “Aurian is our friend, Eliizar! How could you even think of leaving her? Who will care for her if I do not? These Magefolk may be powerful, but practical? Why, neither one of them can so much as boil a pot of water without burning it!”
Eliizar sighed. He had known that this was going to be difficult. “They have other powers that will more than compensate,” he insisted, “and other companions who can help them far better than we, on their northward journey. Hear me out, Nereni—please. It is not our business to involve ourselves in this unnatural sorcery, and this is our last chance to leave before we become hopelessly embroiled in their fight against these other Magefolk.”
Eliizar was talking quickly, not giving his wife a chance to interrupt. “We cannot pass through the mountains alone, without aid,” he went on urgently. “We either leave now, with our own folk—our own kind, Nereni—or embark on a road that has no turning back. And what will the future hold for us, as strangers in a foreign land—a land beset by blackest sorcery?”