Marveling, the Mage followed the tale to its end, where Avithan, once the son of the Chief Wizard but now called Father of the Gods, had led his followers, the six surviving Wizards, to seek sanctuary Between the Worlds, by the Timeless Lake. And in the final picture . . .
The depiction was in a different style from all the rest. It showed a face—female—surrounded by a swirling mane of hair, cunningly carved so that it caught up Anvar’s Magelight and glowed back at him with a frosty gleam. The face, hawkish and high-cheekboned, reminded the Mage of Aurian, but it was older, somehow, and different, in a way he could not place. The great, fierce round eyes were not the eyes of a human, but an eagle. They seemed to hold Anvar’s gaze, piercing deep into his mind, uncovering his innermost thoughts . . .
The Mage had no idea how long he stood there, spellbound and entranced. He looked up at last to see a different light before him, framed in a yawning maw of blackest stone. A sky of deepest indigo, sprinkled with bright stars. With a gasp of relief, Anvar left the unnerving carving and hastened outside.
Another shred of memory, vivid and brief, flicked through Anvar’s mind. The black, curving backs of hills, shouldering one another, outlined against a starry sky . . . But this time, it was mountains. A peaceful valley, its swelling flanks clothed in a fragrant patchwork of bracken and pine, and cupped like a jewel, a calm and starlit lake. As he reached the tunnel mouth, some sense of circumspection returned to Anvar. He crept cautiously out, looking about him and listening hard, to emerge upon a narrow beach, all covered with smoothly rounded stones about the size of his clenched fist, sloping down to a strip of shingle that fringed a deep-cut bay at the head of the lake. There was not a sound, except the murmurous lapping of wavelets and the rhythmic rasp of rolling shingle at the water’s edge.
At first, the Mage felt horribly exposed upon the open beach, yet as the peaceful stillness of this place seeped gradually into his soul, he felt his spirits lighten, filling him with a calm confidence and sense of certainty. Hark lake seemed to draw him, washing away all the pain and anxiety that had been his constant companions over these last months, and replacing them with a lulling sense of warmth and welcome.
Anvar walked down to the edge of the mere and looked into the still, dark waters. For a moment he experienced a giddy sense of disorientation. Stars, he saw—depth upon depth filled with endless stars, as though, instead of looking down, he looked up and up into the infinite night sky. Just stars, reflected in a lake—and yet ...
It took a moment for Anvar to identify that nagging sense of wrongness. With a gasp, he looked wildly up at the sky, then down into the lake again. Then cursing, he scrambled back, away from those waters as though they had been deadly poison. The stars! The stars were wrong! The sky that was reflected in those obsidian depths was not the clear night sky above!
The wind was rising. A clump of reeds at the lake edge began to rattle and whisper, hissing with wild laughter. The lake’s reflected stars were lost as the waters grew choppy. Small waves, growing larger, charged the strip of beach like cavalry, white tossing manes at their crests. Anvar, still backing, turned and ran/or the secure shelter of the tunnel—only to fetch up against a blank, black wall of stone.
A grating rumble, growing to a thunderous roar, made the Mage turn back again, toward the lake. In the center, the waters were boiling, bubbling, rising up in a sleek and twisting hump. A great black fang broke through the tortured surface, flinging the waves aside in a vast white blossom of foam. Huge arcs of spray glittered skyward, clawing at the stars with silver fingers before crashing back, spent, into the lake.
Up from the wind-tossed waters of the mere, an island rose. A towering black crag like a decayed and jagged tooth. Lake waters, churned from black to vibrant white, cascaded from its rising flanks.
Anvar, flattened against the sheer cliff at his back, shrank away as great waves thundered up the beach toward him. His old fear of water, of drowning, almost swamped his senses—until, after a moment’s choking terror, he realized that though the waves were crashing at his very feet and spray and spume leapt up around his head, his skin and clothes were still dry, as though protected by some invisible barrier beyond which the waters dared not go. The breakers stopped just short of him, like ill-used curs that darted in to snap at his boots, but were afraid to come any closer. Was he being warned? Gritting his teeth, the Mage reminded himself why he had come here. Only the Cailleach, the Lady of the Mists, could send him back to his own world. Only through her grace could he win the Harp of Winds. He could only accomplish these things by meeting with her—and now, it seemed, he had attracted her attention.
Well and good ... or so Anvar tried to convince himself. But the Lady of the Mists was one of the Guardians: far above those that Magefolk legend had named as gods. Her powers transcended even those of Hellorin, for the Phaerie merely wielded the powers of the Old Magic. The Cailleach was one of those powers incarnate—and she had the Wild Magic, most dangerous of all, at her call besides.
By this time the island had emerged completely, and the waters were beginning to settle. Anvar’s strip of shingle was slowly appearing, oddly reconfigured, as the lake grew calm. The valley became still once more—but without its former sense of peace. Now the atmosphere was tense with brooding anticipation.
Anvar waited . . . and waited, until he could bear the suspense no longer. It seemed as though time, and reality itself, must snap, twanging like a frayed and taut-stretched bight of rope. Then the Mage remembered how Aurian had won the Staff of Earth, and what she had told him of her encounter with the dragon. Nothing had happened until she had taken action, and broken the spell that took the golden Fire-Mage out of time .
Anvar braced himself. It was obvious that the Cailleach was aware of his presence. The next move, then must be up to him. “Lady, I am here,” he called. “In the name of the ancient Magefolk, the Wizards that once you sheltered, I greet you.”
There was no reply—not in human tongue, at any rate. Instead, just as Anvar was beginning to wonder what to do next, a skein of fragile music crept out across the lake. An alien music so wild, so ethereal, so heart-breakingly beautiful that the Mage found his throat growing thick and tight. His sight blurred with tears, and all unknowing, he wiped them away with his sleeve in an unconscious echo of Aurian’s childlike gesture.
It was the music of a harp. As each note drifted, clear and perfect, across the darkling waters, it became visible to Anvar’s sight: a cascade of music like a starfall with each crystal note a clear and perfect point of light. The Mage watched, lost in wonder, as a bridge of song arced forth across the stillness of the mere.
As the last, entrancing phrase chimed to a close, a final cluster of stars fell to the stony beach, grounded, and took hold. The Mage took a deep breath, closed his fingers tightly around the Staff of Earth, and stepped onto the bridge of stars.
24
Lady of the Mists
The Windeye patted Aurian clumsily on the shoulder, and she welcomed his gesture of sympathy. “You say your companion, the other Bright Power, is in Aerillia?” he asked her. The Mage nodded, unable, despite her worry, to keep from smiling wryly at his description of Anvar. She’d taken an instant liking to this round-faced, shy young Seer with the delightful smile.
“You said earlier that you might be able to help me. How?” she asked.
“I will use my Othersight to ride the winds to Aerillia,” the Windeye told her. “There, with luck, I should be able to locate your companion.”