“I think not,” Anvar retorted coldly. “Not without the Harp’s consent.” He detected a gleam of approval in the Cailleach’s eyes.
“As I remarked earlier, you are a most perceptive Wizard,” the Lady answered, “and an honorable opponent. I would have you know I do not fight you willingly—but I am charged to protect the Harp, and that I must do. Only one who is truly worthy may win it, for it is a perilous thing indeed to be returned to the mundane world.”
“And?” Anvar’s reply was a challenge.
The Lady smiled. “So far, you have succeeded in your first two tests. You overcame the succubus, and then won the Harp’s acceptance so that you could free it. Believe me, Anvar, had the Harp not willed it otherwise, you would have died in agony the instant you put your hand into the tree. Now, like the Staff of Earth, the Harp of Winds must be re-created. You hold the frame, Wizard—with what would you string this Artifact of the High Magic?”
The Harp was no help. In the back of his mind, it sang: “You must complete me—make me whole once more.”
“How?” asked Anvar.
A shimmering sigh came from the Harp. “I may not tell.”
Anvar looked at the Cailleach, aghast. He knew in his heart that she spoke the truth. He had known it all along. But how to accomplish his task, and win the Harp? Remembering Aurian’s tale of her encounter with the dragon, he asked:
“May I ask questions?”
“No,” the Lady said. “You may not.”
“Then give me time to think.” But for all the churning of Anvar’s restless mind, he could come up with nothing. This was ridiculous, he thought. When Aurian had described her ordeal, it had sounded so much easier than his own!
“Why not give it up?” The Cailleach interrupted his train of thought. “Stay here, instead, and be my love. I can be any woman—all women ...”
Before Anvar’s eyes, she began to change, her flawless features altering, her hair changing color, time after time . . . With a pang like the twinge of an old wound, Anvar saw Sara. He saw Eliseth’s cold and perfect beauty, and saw his mother as Ria must have been in her youth . . . The succession of women went on and on, each more beautiful than the last. Angrily, Anvar turned away. “Stop doing that!” he snapped. “Fair you might be, Lady, but I have no interest in remaining here with you. My heart is already given—elsewhere.”
“Indeed?” the Lady said silkily. “From what I gleaned of your thoughts as you approached the Timeless Lake, your loved one’s heart is also given—and not to you.”
“That’s a lie!” Anvar cried. “She needs time, that’s all!”
“How much time? A month? A year? Forever? Your Lady is intractable, Anvar, and grief has turned her fey. Can you be certain she will ever betray the memory of her dead lover? And with the one who, indirectly, caused his death?”
The power of the Cailleach’s voice was insidious. Her moonstone eyes held the Mage’s gaze, hypnotic and glittering as a serpent’s stare. He wanted to protest—to deny what she was saying, but he could frame no words, for she had touched with cruel precision on the dark core of doubts in the depths of Anvar’s soul.
“Why risk it, Anvar? Why take such a chance, when I can be everything that Aurian is—and more!” As the Cailleach spoke, she was changing form again—and the Mage found his beloved standing before him. Aurian, as she had been long ago in Nexis, before hardship had made her haggard, and grief and her desire for vengeance had put that steeliness into her gaze. Instead, Anvar found her looking at him—him with an expression in her eyes that had always been reserved for Forral. Anvar tightened his fingers around the frame of the Harp, to stop his hands from shaking. Aurian took a step forward, her arms outstretched to embrace him. “My dearest love ...” she breathed.
“. . . As long as I have you, I have hope.” As the Mage’s last true words to him echoed in Anvar’s mind, the Cailleach’s spell was abruptly broken.
“Get away from me,” snarled the Mage. “What need have I for a shallow substitute, when I have my Lady’s love in reality?”
In a blinding flash, the vision of Aurian vanished. The Cailleach stood before him in the form of an old woman—and to Anvar’s utter amazement, she was smiling. No longer the seductress, no longer a mighty figure of awe and majesty, she looked like a wise and kindly grandmother. “Wizard, you have passed the test,” she said softly. “Indeed you are worthy of the Harp—for only someone with a loving, faithful heart could be trusted to take such power out into the world once more.”
Taking a silver knife from her belt, the Lady of the Mists cut off a lock of her long hair. Reaching out to the Harp, still clutched in the startled Mage’s grasp, she passed her hand across the glittering Artifact, The snowy lock vanished, transformed into a waterfall of silver strings that bridged the crystal frame. Power blazed up within Anvar, as his mind was flooded with joyful star-song. Green light blazed up from the Staff of Earth in his belt, to join the silver incandescence of the Harp. The Lady raised her hand in farewell ...
And Anvar found himself standing on a snowy mountaintop, looking at the sun rising over the city of Aerillia, One last message from the Cailleach echoed in his mind—and in his hands was the Harp of Winds.
The Skyfolk bearers were terrified of the growing blaze of incandescence within the shell of the temple. Only the fact that they were even more afraid of Aurian, made them take her there at all. They dropped her, net and all, into the midst of the ruined building, and fled as if for their very lives.
The Mage released herself from the meshes of the net, and began to pick her way across the stretch of rubble and shattered stone toward the source of the unearthly light. Her sword—her dear, familiar Coronach, which she had recovered safely from the Tower of Incondor, was in her hand, but she found herself desperately missing the reassuring power of the Staff of Earth. She had no idea what lay behind the flaring knot of rainbow brilliance—but for certain, it would be beyond the scope of any human weapon. But despite the fear that set her heart racing, Aurian went on into the heart of the blaze, irresistibly drawn, like a moth to a candle.
As the Mage walked forward, the scintillating radiance began to shrink and coalesce to form a human shape, clad all in blinding light, A long-limbed, rangy, heartbreakingly familiar figure ...
“Anvar!” Aurian cried. Then she was running forward, ignoring the stones that tilted perilously beneath her feet, her heart flying ahead of her across the intervening space. Then they were embracing, both of them laughing and crying and trying to talk all at once,
“I thought I’d never see you again!”
“Thank the gods you’re safe!”
“Is the child all right?”
“Where have you been?”
As their words tripped over one another, both of them started laughing again, clinging to one another as they rocked with the slightly hysterical mirth that stemmed from pure relief, Aurian dashed away happy tears, and looked into Anvar’s face. His blue eyes connected with her own like a flare of lightning, and Aurian trembled, half amazed by her own longing. “My dearest love ...” she breathed,
Anvar pulled her toward him, and as his lips touched her own, she felt the sudden flash fire of desire spark between them—that same explosive, powerful surge of love and longing that she had used unknowing, so long ago, to release Anvar from the clutches of Death in the slave pens of the Khazalim. And, just as it had happened then, their very souls seemed to touch—to meet and meld, as Aurian felt Anvar’s joy, and her own, commingling to lift them both on the brightest of wings . . .
Aurian gasped. No one had ever told her it would be like this between Magefolk! Having formerly had a Mortal lover, she had never known that this deep, intense linkage of hearts and minds and emotions existed. The Mage felt Anvar’s amazed delight in her mind, matching and augmenting her own dizzy joy. His mouth fastened on hers with a greed that matched her own as his hand explored her face and body, kindling a desire she had missed so long. They never noticed the sharpness of the stones as they sank to the ground, their cloaks their only shelter. And there, in the remains of the Temple of Yinze, in the ruins of an evil priest’s dream, Anvar and Aurian fulfilled at last a love that had started with the seeds of need and mutual dependence, and taken them halfway across the world, through friendship, into passion.