Harp of Winds

23 The Bridge of Stars

Iscalda, terrified by the ravening wolves, had fled the tower. Not even her love for Schiannath could override her animal instinct to escape so many foes, Down the hill she raced, flattening her ears at the cries of the startled guards who were battling the wolves. Hands reached out to grab her as she thundered past the beleaguered men, but she was moving too fast to be caught. Across the flat ground toward the cliffs, then through the narrow stony gates of the pass, Iscalda sped across the snow as though her feet were winged. The white mare had no idea where she was going. She simply knew she must flee, as fast as possible, far from the howling pack and the scent of blood. Her hoofbeats echoing hollowly in the narrow slot between the cliffs, Iscalda hurtled through the pass, up and along the ridge beyond, and down into the valley on the farther side.

Concerned only with her fears, she was not looking out for danger. No sounds reached her ears, above the drumming of her hooves. So it was that Iscalda rounded a rocky outcrop that thrust far into the valley floor, and ran headlong into the troop of riders.

Xandim! These were her people! Even as she reared and tried to plunge aside from the leading horses, Iscalda recognized old friends and companions. Shamed by her exile, ashamed to be seen in such a state of unreasoning fear, she whirled on her hind legs and tried to race back the way she had come. But a horse, black as midnight’s shadows, leapt out from the knot of riders and raced after her. One terrified glance over her shoulder told Iscalda the worst. Phalihas was after her! In her consternation at seeing her former betrothed once more, she gave no thought to the strange figure perched astride his back.

The mare was trembling with weariness now. As the white heat of panic cooled from her blood, her sweating limbs began to stiffen in the chill of the mountain night. The black horse was gaining: she could hear his hoof-beats coming closer and closer, and from the corner of her eye she saw his great dark shape move up beside her shoulder. Suddenly a hand reached out, and caught the rope that the wretched Khazalim had fastened around her head! Her head wrenched cruelly, Iscalda came bucking and skidding to a halt in a spray of snow,

“Whoa, whoa now. Easy, lovey—there’s a girl,” The rider, still clinging tightly to the rope, jumped down from the Herdlord’s back and came round to her head,

Iscalda leapt back with a snort of surprise. This wiry little man was no Xandim! Why had Phalihas consented to carry such a creature? The stranger continued to stroke her gently, and the mare stood trembling, her ears twitching at the sound of that rough voice that crooned soothingly in some foreign tongue, She rolled one white rimmed eye to look round at the Herdlord, and wondered, with a flash of anger, why Phalihas had not reverted to human form.

“He cannot. He is bound with the same spell as you.”

Iscalda let out a squeal of rage as the Windeye came into view. The Outlander who had been riding Phalihas dodged to one side as her forefeet flailed around his ears. Iscalda jerked the rope from his hands and charged at Chiamh, teeth bared, eyes flaming. The Windeye did not flinch. Instead, he held up his hand, and began to speak the words of a spell

. And Iscalda was sprawling, facedown in the snow, as her four legs suddenly changed to two. Stunned, she struggled up on her elbows, looked down at her hands-two human hands—and burst into tears of utter joy. When she lifted her head again, she saw a hand extended to help her up. Chiamh was looking down at her, his expression both apologetic and compassionate. “Phalihas is no longer Herdlord,” he said softly. “I have waited so long for this day! You’ve been on my conscience ever since you were exiled. Welcome back to the Xandim, Iscalda.”

Iscalda ignored the outstretched hand, and looked at him coldly. “And Schiannath?” she demanded.

The Windeye nodded. “Schiannath’s exile is also revoked.” Narrowing his nearsighted eyes, he peered around him.

“Where is he?”

“Light of the Goddess!” Iscalda scrambled to her feet. “I left him in the tower, with that woman!”

“Woman?” Chiamh’s gaze suddenly became intense. “A captive?”

Iscalda nodded. “How did you know?”

But the Windeye was no longer looking at her. “Parric!” he yelled. “I think we’ve found her!”

Schiannath, in his equine shape, met the Xandim army on the ridge. He had finally bested his second winged opponent on top of the tower, only to look down, alerted by the commotion below, to see the wolves wreaking carnage among Harihn’s struggling guards—and the white shape of Iscalda, streaking away into the woods. With an oath, he had scrambled back down the side of the tower, forgetting Aurian and Yazour—forgetting everything in his anxiety for his beloved sister. Once away from the guards and wolves, he had changed into his equine form, and galloped after her, following the line of tracks that stitched the long, clear sweep of snow between the bottom of the hill and the pass. As he breasted the top of the ridge Schiannath stopped and stared, amazed at the array of horses and riders picking their way up from the floor of the valley. While he was still hesitating, unsure whether to stay or to run, he heard a clear voice calling his name. A beloved voice that he had never thought to hear again, “Iscalda!” he cried, forgetting, in his joy, that he still wore his equine shape. The word came out as a long, high-pitched whinny, and Schiannath changed hurriedly back to his human form as his sister came running up the hill toward him.

It was too much to take in all at once. Schiannath, an outlaw no longer, looked incredulously from face to face, as the Windeye began to explain the changes that had been taking place among the Xandim since his exile, Iscalda, nestled into the curve of his arm, was grinning more and more broadly at her brother’s bemused expression.

Suddenly a balding, bandy-legged little man thrust his way to the front of the crowd. “Where’s Aurian?” he demanded sharply. His words, despite clearly being in a strange tongue, were somehow understandable, and Schiannath realized that the Windeye must be using some form of spell to translate the foreign speech,

“Aurian?” Schiannath gasped. “But how—”

The stranger was scowling, “Who else?” he barked, “We can waste time with pleasantries later. Show us die way to the tower that your sister mentioned.” Turning on his heel, he sprang in one fluid motion to the back of the great black stallion that was Phalihas in equine form.

“What do you think of the new Herdlord, then?” Chiamh chuckled softly in Schiannath’s ear.

He turned to gape at the Windeye, “That is the new Herdlord? He defeated Phalihas? Light of the Goddess-how did it happen?”

Chiamh shrugged. “We live in strange and momentous times, my friend—and as well for you that we do! At least, by the grace of Parric, you and Iscalda are no longer exiled.”

“Are you two going to stand there talking all bloody year?” roared the new Herdlord. With a guilty start, Schiannath remembered Aurian, at the mercy of the wolves. Wasting no more time, he changed back into the shape of a great, dark gray horse. Waiting only for Iscalda to leap onto his back, he set off at a gallop, back toward the pass.

Aurian awoke. An obscure, bitter darkness clouded the edges of her mind like the dregs of a nightmare beyond recollection. She had no wish to remember. Her mind was numb, registering only the simple, immediate messages of her senses: the dank, mildewy smell of the tower room; the rough walls of gray stone stained black with soot above the bracket where a torch burned with a fitful, smoky flame. The dying embers in the hearth, like a scattering of rubies. Pain, discomfort, and an urgent need to relieve herself.

The Mage struggled across the chamber to the drafty drain in the corner, still carefully guarding the numbness in her mind. She mustn’t think—not yet. To think would send her over the precipice of madness . . .

Using the wall as a support, Aurian made her way to the hearth, where a bowl of water was keeping warm in the ashes, and cloths to cleanse herself lay nearby. Methodically, Aurian healed the damage to her body, concentrating hard upon the task. It was difficult. She was still very weak, and the effort left her drained and shaking. Only then did it suddenly come home to the Mage that her powers had returned. With a cry of triumph, she leapt up, ignoring her staggering feet, and launched a bolt of fire at the ceiling to explode in a vivid shower of sparks. Oh, the sheer, breathless, glorious relief! Laughing and crying for joy, she followed her starburst with a blue fireball, another in red, then a green, juggling the spheres of incandescent light as she had done when she was a child.

Only exhaustion limited her exuberant display. Aurian sank to her knees on the cooling hearth, belatedly wondering where everyone was. Concern overshadowed her triumph. Whether the battle with the guards had been won or lost, surely Nereni should have been here! And who had removed the Prince’s body, and washed her chamber clean of blood? As soon as she caught her breath, she would investigate . . .

From the nest of cloaks where she had been sleeping came a muted whine. Aurian froze, appalled; the hand that had so joyously loosed her magic clenched in a white-boned knot. Oh Gods! It had been no nightmare: she had known that from the start—but to face it now, so soon . . .

It came again—the fretful whimper of an animal in distress. The sound, too urgent to be ignored, stabbed like a knife into her heart. The Mage braced herself, walked slowly across to the makeshift bed, and looked down at her son. Her breath congealed in her throat.

He was tiny. Small, pathetic, and bedraggled; his eyes sealed shut like all newborn wolf cubs, his body covered in dark gray fuzz. He crawled weakly in a blind circle, whimpering, seeking the lost warmth of Aurian’s body. The Mage, responding automatically to his helplessness, reached out a hand toward the cub ... It hovered, trembling, just above his body. She couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t. Anger scoured through her: rage and grief and gray despair. Was this what she had carried beneath her heart through long months of struggle and anguish? Was it for this that she had lost her powers, when she needed them? Was this blind, mewling scrap of fur her sole legacy of the love that she and Forral had shared? It was all too much for her. Retching, shaking, sick to her very soul, Aurian turned away ... And, for the first time since he had left the haven of her body, she felt the bright, tentative touch of the child-mind on her own. He was cold. Cold and lost and blind and hungry—and human. Human! Aurian had known wolves from her childhood, and these were not wolf thoughts. Not animal thoughts at all. His body might be that of a wolf cub, but his mind was the mind of her son. Her son!

“My baby!” Aurian’s voice broke on the words as she lifted the wolfling, cradling him to the warmth of her body. Warm tears of relief flooded her face. His joy, the joy of her son, flooded her mind as at last he found his mother. Gods, but he was cold! And no wonder! Aurian, appalled by her neglect and suddenly fiercely protective, was galvanized into action. Cradling her son close, she crossed to the dying fire. Feverishly she hurled logs into the fireplace with her free hand and ignited them with a quick-hurled fireball, feeling again the incandescent blaze of joy as her newly recovered power surged through her. Then she returned to her bed and sat down, awkwardly pulling one of the cloaks around her shoulders. How could she not have noticed before how cold the room had become? Hunger. Ravenous hunger pulsed from the thoughts of her child, and for a moment Aurian hesitated, at a loss. This business of motherhood was all new to her. But the child was hungry . . . Aurian shrugged, and put her son to her breast. Well, she thought, I expect we’ll learn together . . .

It was a struggle, but the instinct to feed was strong in the wolfling, and Aurian, with her Healing magic, could adapt herself a little. They managed eventually, helped by their unique mind-bond, and the deeper bond of love that lay between them. Aurian looked down at the cub as he fed. Little wolf, she thought, remembering an old childhood tale that Forral had told her; about a Mage-child who had lost his parents in the wildwood, and had been reared by wolves. He had gone on to become a mighty hero, and his name, in the Old Speech, had been Irachann—the Wolf. Aurian smiled wryly to herself at the way the tale had been reversed. Irachann, she decided. I’ll call him Wolf. The cub had fallen asleep in her arms. As the Mage sat, looking down at him, she cast her mind back over the confusing welter of events that had attended his birth. The wolf, she thought, remembering the great gray shape that had leapt, snarling, across her chamber. It was the wolf that saved me from Miathan, when it tore out Harihn’s throat. But surely, before the wolf had come to her aid, she had heard her child’s first cry—the thin, unmistakable wail of a human infant! And she remembered—oh, now she remembered Nereni’s voice crying “A boy!”

The Mage recalled the day of her capture, when Miathan, in Harihn’s body, had revealed that her child was cursed.

“When it is born,” he had said, “you will beg me to kill it.”

Aurian swore viciously as the meaning of those words became all too clear. Her child had been born human—before she’d seen the wolf. Forral’s son had taken the shape of the beast. So that was the nature of Miathan’s curse! There must be a way to change him back. But though Aurian tried and tried, probing the tiny cub with her Healer’s sense, the child remained in the shape of a wolf. I will change him back, though, Aurian thought. When Miathan cursed Wolf, he had the power of the Caldron to draw on. Once I regain the Staff of Earth . . . Her thoughts flew to Anvar and Shia. How could she have forgotten them? Aurian tried to reach out with her mind to her missing friends, but to her dismay she could not find an echo of response, no matter how hard she tried.

She was interrupted in her attempts at communication by the sound of a sudden commotion in the room downstairs. Not more fighting, surely? Carefully placing the cub back in its nest of blankets, Aurian ran to the door—and as she opened it, it suddenly struck her that she was free. Miraculously, unbelievably free! At last she could leave this hated chamber, and never have to look on it again!

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 tunnel: 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!

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.