Aurian ran to the top of the stairs and looked down into the lower room of the tower. She saw Schiannath in the doorway, arguing with Yazour. And behind the Xandim, sword drawn and cursing impatiently . . . “Parric!” Aurian shrieked. “Yazour, let him in!”
For a moment, Parric simply stood there gaping, taken aback by the subtle changes in the Mage. What a fool he had been! All the time he had been searching, he had entertained a romantic picture of himself as the dauntless hero coming to rescue a lost and frightened young girl. He was completely unprepared for the new maturity in her haggard face: the firm, wry set of her mouth and the grim and steely glint in her eyes.
Suddenly, the years rolled back and the Cavalrymaster remembered returning from his very first campaign. The face that had looked back at him from the mirror then had reflected these same changes. She had been tested, then, by pain and adversity—and by the looks of her expression, had given back as good as she’d got. Flinging wide his arms, Parric gave a whoop of joy, then he was running upstairs and she was running down. They met in the middle with an impact that threatened to send both of them crashing to the bottom, and stood there, hugging the breath from one another.
“Parric! Oh gods—I must be. dreaming!” The Cavalrymaster felt Aurian’s tears soaking his shoulder—and that made him feel better about his own streaming eyes. Before she and Forral had come into his life, the Cavalrymaster had spurned tears as a sign of weakness, but now he knew much more about love—and loss. It was not the only way in which, he had grown, he reflected. He had commanded an army, however unwilling, of his own, and had brought them safely through the perilous mountains to ... What?
Aurian was trying to tell him so much, all at once, that Parric couldn’t comprehend it all. The most startling piece of news was that Anvar also seemed to be one of the Magefolk! Despite the fact that Meiriel had told him about Miathan’s curse on the Mage’s child, he was alarmed at first, thinking she had lost her mind, when she dragged him upstairs and showed him the wolf cub. Dismayed, he was trying to take her arm, to steer her out, when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“The child is there. It is human.” It was the voice of the Windeye. Parric turned to see Chiamh standing behind them, his eyes once more that alarming, reflective silver, as he gazed at the cub with his Othersight.
Aurian’s eyes widened at the sight. “Who’s this?” she asked Parric.
“A very good friend,” the Cavalrymaster told her. “He saved our lives when we were captured by the Xandim.” With that, he introduced Chiamh, whose eyes, by now, had cleared to their normal shade. To Parric’s amusement, the Windeye looked awestruck.
“Lady.” Chiamh bowed deeply. “I am greatly honored to meet, at last, one of the Bright Powers that I saw so long ago.”
“You saw me?” The Mage’s brows creased in a puzzled frown. “Where? When?”
Chiamh told her of his Othersight, and the vision he had beheld that stormy night so long ago. Parric could see that Aurian was fascinated by the Windeye’s brief account of his powers. “I must hear more about this,” she said. “In fact, we all have so much catching up to do . . . But first, I want to try again to contact Anvar.” She bit her lip. “I’m worried, Parric. I thought I’d be able to reach him once my powers returned, but so far, I can’t. If you want to wait downstairs, I’ll join you in a little while.”
“Lady?” Chiamh caught hold of the Mage’s arm. “May I assist you? My Othersight can reach across many miles.”
Aurian smiled at him gratefully. “Why, thank you, Chiamh. Right now, I’m so anxious to find Anvar that I’ll take all the help I can get.”
The wind was gusting fitfully as Aurian and Chiamh climbed up through the trapdoor to the tower roof. The brooding sky in the east was beginning to show the pale glimmer of dawn, and the Mage could feel the hint of moisture in the air that presaged another fall of snow. As she rounded the corner of the chimney stack, Aurian was startled to hear a faint moan, and saw the figure of a winged man, rolling and writhing in a glistening, dark patch of what looked to be his own blood.
“Skyfolk!” Chiamh hissed. Aurian heard the scrape of steel as the Xandim drew his knife.
“No, wait!” She stayed the Windeye’s hand. “We may need him to take a message to Aerillia.” Squatting down beside the Skyman, she reached out with her Healer’s sense to determine the extent of his injuries. He was not hurt as badly as she had feared. The sword cuts from which he had lost the blood were not life-threatening, though he had taken a very hard knock on the back of his head that had left him struggling for consciousness. Quickly, Aurian tore strips from the hem of the blanket that she was using as a cloak to bind him, hand, foot, and wing, before she bent to her work of Healing.
Once she had attended to the winged man’s wounds, the Mage crossed to the parapet with Chiamh, and stood, looking out across the mountains, facing northwest where the sky was darkest. For a time, she tried with all her strength to stretch her will out across the miles to Aerillia, calling and calling to Anvar and Shia, then straining with all her might to hear an answer. But there was nothing. Dismayed, she turned back to the Windeye, who had been waiting patiently beside her all this time. “I can’t hear a thing,” she whispered. “Maybe the distance is just too great for mental communication, but—Chiamh, I think that something has gone terribly wrong.”
The void was gray and featureless, sheathed in ghostly, clinging mist. Anvar hesitated, momentarily at a loss as to which way to proceed. Behind him, he heard the comforting tones of Hellorin’s voice. “Take three steps forward, Anvar—and do not look back. You’ll find that the way will become clear to you.”
Anvar shuddered at the thought of stepping out into that formless nothingness, yet ... The Forest Lord must know what he was doing. He had opened the way into this Place Between the Worlds, cleaving the fabric of reality with an outstretched hand to produce this eerie doorway.
“Take courage, young Mage—this is a safer road than the one you traveled with the Moldan—which admittedly is saying very little.”
The rueful humor that lurked behind the Forest Lord’s words heartened Anvar. Besides, the Mage reminded himself, this was the only way back to his own world—and Aurian. He had already said his farewells to Eilin and Hellorin, so there was no reason to linger. Anvar swallowed hard, and stepped forward into the gray mists. The glimmer of warm light from the Forest Lord’s chamber was cut off abruptly as the Door Between the Worlds closed behind him, destroying all hope of returning or retreat.
From somewhere, Anvar found his courage and marshaled his racing thoughts. Three steps, had the Herd-lord said? Well, so be it. The ground, if ground it could be called—certainly it was not earth—had a soft, clinging resilience beneath his feet. Counting, Anvar began to pace . . .
At the third step, the gray mist vanished. The uncertain surface beneath his feet took on the reassuring solidity of stone. Anvar, startled, raised a hand to his face, and saw his fingers, as he had seen them once before, wreathed in a ghostly glimmer of blue Magelight, as though his magic had taken on a physical form of its own, to cover his earthly flesh. He experienced a fleeting flash of memory—a vision of a carven gray door—and then the thought was gone. Grimly practical once more, Anvar lifted the glimmering hand to illuminate his surroundings.
He was in a tunneclass="underline" a narrow corridor roughly hacked from some hard, gleaming, faceted black rock. To his astonishment, it was scored along its length, at roughly eye level, with strange, indecipherable runes and angular pictures. Anvar, moving slowly along the length of the tunnel, gasped. There, outlined in the gleam of his Magelight, was the entire history of the Cataclysm!