Harp of Winds

13 Incondor’s Lament

The great cat limped across the shattered rocks of the valley, her faltering feet trailing smears of blood across the cruel stones. Her massive form, dwarfed by the desolate immensity of the mountains, seemed pitifully frail to Anvar; her protruding ribs cast stripes of light., and shade across the dull, matted coat that hung on her sunken flanks. Her muzzle, where her teeth were clenched grimly around the Staff of Earth, was covered in blisters and scabs, and saliva hung from her jaws in thick, slimy strands.

“Shia! Great Gods, Shia!” Anvar cried, unable to bear the sight of the great cat’s suffering.

She glanced up at him, her yellow eyes dull and glazed. “What do you want?” she said briefly, without a pause in her painful, monotonous plodding.

“Shia! Where are you? Are you all right? Dear Gods, what happened to you?”

The great cat snarled around her mouthful of Staff. “Do I look all right?” she snorted. “To answer your other stupid question—what happened to me is that this thing I’m carrying is trying to kill me by slow degrees—but it won’t succeed, whatever it thinks . . . And it does think—though not in the usual sense. The process is more like instinct—since I cannot wield it, it tries to destroy me. You Magefolk should know about that...” She staggered, grunting with pain, and began to speak again as she resumed her weary pacing. “As to where I am—I’m on my way! Aurian asked me to bring this wretched object to you, so that you can escape Aerillia, and go to her aid...”

The valley seemed to be filling with silvery mist that streamed along its floor like a relentless tide. Anvar was losing Shia. . , She was vanishing before his eyes. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she snapped, “Stop this nonsense at once and get back into your body! A fine fool I’ll look if I drag this horrendous thing all the way to Aerillia and you’re dead! Don’t you dare let Aurian down that way! She needs you...”

Shia and the valley were gone. All that remained was the clinging, silvery fog . . . Which cleared to show him Aurian, huddled by the fire in the squalid little upper room in the Tower of Incondor, the weary droop of her shoulders betokening utter dejection. Anvar’s heart went out to her. “Aurian—. . .” he called, longing to comfort her, but without her powers, she could not hear him. After a time, she lifted her head, blinking, and he saw the yellowing bruises on her face, left by Miathan’s hand. Rage boiled within him. It was vital that he escape and rescue her—but how? What had Shia said? Get back into your body ... drag this thing all the way to Aerillia and you’re dead . . . Anvar gasped. “Is that what’s happening to me? But I can’t die now!” Frantic, he blundered through the viscous fog, seeking a way back to his body, more panic-stricken with each moment that passed. Help met someone—oh Gods, I can’t get out . . . Help me, please . . .

“Come on, lad—brace up!” That gruff, gentle voice, with its memories of reassurance and long-ago kindnesses, cut through Anvar’s terror, warming his heart and stiffening his resolve like a draft of strong spirits. Anvar’s terror vanished as fierce joy exploded through him.

“Forral? Forral, is it really you? But you’re—”

“Yes, I am dead—and so are you, pretty nearly, which is why I can reach you.”

Anvar could almost see him now—the glimpse of a broad, shadowy figure through the swirling mists, the ghostly glimmer that could only be that quick, flashing smile.

“Come on, lad, we must get you back quick, before they find out what I’m up to. I’m not supposed to be doing this, you know!”

There it was—that familiar wicked chuckle. Anvar did not have to see Forral to know that the old twinkle was back in his eyes—just as it used to be when he and Vannor had done something to outwit the Archmage. A callused hand engulfed his own . . . How can I feel this, if we’re supposed to be dead? the Mage thought wildly , . . There was a whirling sensation—and Anvar found himself back in the cave, looking down at his own gray face, pinched and gleaming with fever. His body was twisting fretfully beneath the furs, and a white-winged figure knelt over him, frowning, one hand on his heart,

“Better get in there quick—you don’t have long!” Forral’s voice advised him. Though he could not see the swordsman, Anvar felt the pressure of arms around his shoulders, embracing him hard. Forral’s voice was pleading: “For the sake of all the Gods, lad—take care of Aurian . . .”

Anvar’s head throbbed, and his mouth was dry and foul. He felt queasy, and his body ached as though he had been brawling. It was only when he tried to struggle upright that he saw the low, fanged roof of the cavern, and the youthful, fine-boned face that frowned down at him beneath a mass of snowy, silken hair. The figure was cloaked in folded white wings, and beyond him, at the cavern’s entrance, stood an armed guard clad in black.

“What—” Anvar’s mouth was so dry that the word stuck in his throat. His chest was constricted, and he could only breathe in shallow gasps. He coughed, and pain knifed through his ribs. A cup was pressed to his lips, and he felt his head supported by a bony arm. Anvar drank eagerly, choking, not thinking beyond the needs of the moment until his dreadful thirst had been eased. He opened his mouth to speak again, but was interrupted.

“Hush, now. Save your strength. You were fevered, from your journey here, and privations you had undergone before.” The winged man frowned, suddenly seeming older. “The contagion settled in your lungs,” he went on. “You were a feather’s fall from Walking the Paths of the Sky Anvar shuddered. No matter how you put it, he thought, dead is still dead! Something was nagging at the back of his mind, but the Skyman was speaking again, driving all thought away. “I must leave now’ he was saying, “but I have built up the fire, and there is broth by the side of it, and wood to hand. At all costs, you must keep warm! There is medicine in this flask, for your, cough ... I will return when I can,” he added, and with that he was gone, leaving Anvar gaping after him.

There was pain, and only pain. It encompassed her entire world. Raven lay crushed beneath the fearful weight and burden of the pain that rolled over her in pulsing waves. She opened her eyes to see the leg of her night table, a section of floor—and blood, so much blood, spattered over every surface that her tiny circle of vision could encompass. Clumps of mangled black feathers were embedded in the sticky mass, and tiny splinters of bone. Raven retched, and shrank from the sight, and the movement flayed her nerves with knives of fire as she tried to will herself back into unconsciousness, to escape the memory of blows pounding down on her, the agony of torn flesh and shattered bone. Oblivion had been welcome then. Wishing for death, she had embraced the darkness as once she had embraced Harihn. A self-mocking laugh, as bitter as bile, bubbled in Raven’s throat, and she flinched from the pain of it. Blacktalon had played her for a fool. He had duped her again. Given the refined cruelty of his nature, she should have known that death had been the last thing he had in mind for her. The last, no doubt, in a long line of torments. But no torment could be worse than this fate, which had led Incondor to bitter ruin. She would never fly again. The free exhilaration of the skies was denied her forever. Oh, but that blackguard of a priest was cunning! In wedding her, he might seize power as her Consort, but she would still be Queen, and always a threat to him. He could scarcely have kept her imprisoned—she and her mother must still have supporters within the Citadel, This way, however, he would have it all She was the last of Flamewing’s line, but crippled like this, she would never be permitted to rule. It was against the Law of her people. As long as Blacktalon could get a child on her, he could spend a lifetime as Regent to a puppet heir. And to keep the Royal line alive, her people would permit it. At that point, of course, she herself would become dispensable—unless he decided to keep her alive for his own amusement.

Raven shuddered. Live? As a cripple, an object of derision, or worse yet, of pity? And then it came to her—and her laugh, a real laugh of triumph this time, shrilled through the deserted room. Oh, but she could beat him yet—and how sweet it would be, to fulfill her only remaining desire while thwarting her enemy.

Even the smallest movement seemed to take forever, Oh Mother, it hurts! Make it stop] The room began to fade around her, and Raven bit her lip, blinking hard, and breathed as deeply as she dared, until her vision came back into focus. In the background, she could hear the keening of the wind in the spires of the temple, Incondor’s Lament, her folk called that sound. The nightmare edifice of the Temple had been built to mark his fall—and his fate. Incondor’s Lament . . . Now Raven could understand the anguish of a soul tormented, which lay within that frightful sound. With dreamy detachment she watched her hand—a white spider streaked with rusty blood—as it crept, inch by painful inch, toward the spindly leg of the night table. At last the fingers touched, then circled, the smooth, cold metal. Good. The legs had always been unbalanced—she remembered nagging her mother to get it fixed . . . Raven braced herself and clenched her teeth. Don’t pass out! she harangued herself. Princess of the Skyfolk, don’t you dare pass out! Then, as sharply as she could, she pulled—

The shriek exploded against her clenched teeth, emerged as a whimper that was drowned by a crash of splintering crystal that receded as everything went black. Blast you, Raven, don’t pass out!. Somehow, the Princess clawed herself back from the brink of the abyss by muttering every oath she had learned from Aurian, until the pain had reached the point of merely unbearable. She opened her eyes again. And there it was. The cup of her crystal goblet had splintered into shards, but the thicker stem had snapped off intact, as she had hoped, leaving a jagged, pointed edge.

She had wanted to drive it into her breast. But as she lay there, shaking, every muscle and bone unstrung, Raven knew she would not have the strength. Besides, the hearts of the Winged Folk were hard to find, protected as they were by the great, keeled breastbone that served to anchor the muscles of the mighty wings.

Oh Father of Skies—why did they take my wings! At last, Raven permitted tears to escape her, for the glories that she would never know again. The exhilaration of the hunt, soaring over endless changing cloudscapes, swooping through drifts of coldest gray to see the majestic mountains wheel below . . . And the light! The pure, lambent hues, which changed each hour of the day . . .

Drunk on the glory of a long-forgotten sunset, Raven groped for the broken stem of the goblet and gouged the jagged crystal across the veins of her outstretched arm . . .

Cygnus sat reading, perched on the solitary stool in his tiny cell in the vaults below the Temple of Yinze. At least he was trying to read. The wind was still high, and the screeching wail from the spires above could easily penetrate the ells of solid rock that stood between the young physician-priest and the source of the appalling sound. Cygnus groaned, though the sound went unheard against the general background din. Incondor’s accursed Lament! Not only was it interfering with his concentration, but the eerie howls had been setting his teeth on edge for some time. Much more of this, he thought, and I’ll bid fair to lose my mind! Blackest heresy though it might seem, Cygnus wished that the creator of the Temple might have considered the poor priests who had to live below!

Apart from the torture of the Lament, the young physician-priest had too much on his mind to concentrate. The master physician Elster had also attended the Queen in her last illness, and Cygnus knew that she must have recognized the effects of the poison he had used on Flamewing on Blacktalon’s orders. Only Master Elster’s savage glare and her iron grip digging into the bones of his wrist had let slip the fact that she knew what he had done-yet the depth of his respect for his old teacher had prevented him from blurting out the truth and betraying her. It would have meant the death of his aged mentor—Blacktalon’s spies were all over the Citadel, and he had ears in every room. It was Elster who had been responsible for Cygnus eschewing his career as a Temple guard for the Path of Light, as the Winged Folk called the pursuit of the healing arts. With a single act, the physician had changed his life forever. Cygnus, in those days, had been the carefree scion of a prominent family, blessed by a lighthearted spirit and quickness of both mind and body. As was to be expected in the caste-ridden society of the Skyfolk, he joined the Syntagma, the elite warrior guard of the Priesthood, and had prospered—until the day he had almost caused the death of Sunfeather, his closest friend.

The accident took place during a training exercise, in a violent midair collision that was entirely the fault of his own inattention. Cygnus, with the airspace in which to correct his flailing spin, escaped the penalty of his carelessness. Sunfeather, already unconscious from the collision, had plunged straight into the mountainside. Stricken beyond words, Cygnus had joined the somber knot of his cohorts gathered round the victim, in time to see his friend stop breathing. It was then that Master Elster had appeared.

Fragile, aged, and disheveled from her hasty summoning, Elster had briskly cleared a path through the crowd with a few sharp words. Her frowning, fine-boned face was webbed with wrinkles beneath a mass of silken hair that was dramatically streaked in mingled black and white. Her bony, angular figure was cloaked in folded wings with pied and boldly patterned plumage. Cygnus, with an increasing sense of disbelief, watched awestruck as she smote Sunfeather’s chest and breathed into his lungs her own breath of life, until his friend was breathing for himself once more. Sunfeather survived that fall, and to Cygnus it seemed a miracle. Not only had Elster spared him much grief, but she had also freed him from the burden of a lifetime’s guilt. His admiration for the elderly physician was little short of worship. How had she achieved the miracle of bringing the dead back to life? Suddenly, it seemed to Cygnus a far more worthy deed to save lives, rather than to take them, as he had been trained to do.

It had taken longer to convince Elster that he was serious in his newfound ambition. Only when he had resigned his post in the Syntagma and had consequently been cast out by his family, did she finally and grudgingly agree to take him under her wing as her apprentice. She was certain that he would never endure the long years of arduous and complex training. Cygnus had set out to prove her wrong, winning her admiration and affection in the process—until, with the coming of the fell winter, he had abandoned her for another, more sinister mentor.

When the White Death closed its jaws around their mountains, the Winged Folk began to perish. All around the beleaguered Cygnus, the population of Aerillia succumbed to slow, lingering deaths from cold, disease, and privation. The young physician could not defeat the monster—all the arts in which he had taken such pride were powerless against it. Cygnus began to doubt himself and his skills, and the futility of all his actions closed over him, leaving his spirit adrift in a sea of darkness.

Drowning in a morass of bitterness and despair, Cygnus clutched in desperation at the last, faint spark of hope. Blacktalon and his sacrifices. Because he had nothing left to believe in, Cygnus slowly came to accept the notion that if the High Priest could somehow restore the lost Magical powers of the Winged Race, then at last it would be possible to perform the legendary feats of healing described in the ancient annals, Reluctantly at first, but with increasing willingness, he had come to accept Blacktalon’s tenets—and methods of achieving his ends.

It had been some time now since Cygnus had thrown his energies behind Blacktalon’s ruthless, ambitious schemes, but by Yinze, Flamewing’s death had sickened him! She had fought for existence tooth and talon, incurring in her stubbornness much suffering that she might otherwise have been spared. Cygnus remembered her, black-faced and vomiting, choking for air, her limbs twisted and convulsed almost to breaking with her dreadful agony. And yet she had still found strength from some inner depths of endurance to curse Blacktalon with her very last breath. Later that night, in the confusion that attended the death of a Queen, he had slipped away, flying in the snarling face of a newly returned storm, until he was safely far from Aerillia. There, shivering on a lonely pinnacle, he had finally begun to question his involvement with the Priest—yet now, despite the many days that had passed since that terrible night, he still had no answer to the promptings of his conscience.

Cygnus frowned. Despite Blacktalon’s attempts to eradicate it, rumor was always rife within the Citadel. It must have been the guards who had assisted in his capture who had first spread the tale of the captive sorcerer, and his mate who was imprisoned in the Tower of Incondor. Nonetheless, Cygnus had been shocked beyond speech when master Elster, in a tremendous hurry, had appeared in his chambers to tell him he was needed to attend the prisoner.

“I’d go myself,” the old physician added coldly, “But the High Priest has forbidden it.” Her pied wings, with their intricate feathered fan-patterns of crisp white and shimmering blue-green-black, were half raised in anger as she darted the young man a significant glance beneath her shaggy white-streaked brows. “In any case, do what you can…”

Another pointed glare. The young man’s breath had frozen in his throat. Elster’s disapproval was tangible, and it still hurt him to think that he had failed her.

Well, Cygnus had done his best for his old teacher. Squirming under his burden of guilt, he had reported back to Blacktalon that the prisoner’s illness was beyond his own poor skills, and that Elster would be needed. It was the best he could do to ensure her safety, for since the death of the Queen, he had been concerned about her fate. Who knew what might happen to her if she started questioning Flamwings’s demise?

Cygnus jumped as the door to his cell crashed open, and an ashen-faced Temple Guard appeared. “Come quick,” he shouted, dragging the physician off his stool. “The princess… Master Elster needs your urgent assistance!”

Cygnus could have wept when he saw her lying, tiny and frail and so alone, somehow, in the gore-splattered chamber. Her skin had a ghastly pallor, her left forearm bore a ragged, gaping gash. And her wings—oh, Father of Skies—were a crumpled, mangled wreckage of bloody feather and bone. The murderous urge to take hold of the High Pries and twist his scrawny, wrinkled neck overwhelmed Cygnus…

“Pull yourself tighter! I can’t keep this tourniquet on much longer!” Elster’s tense words were like a drench of icy water in his face. “Help me lift her, “ she muttered. “We must do our moving and manipulating while she’s senseless.”

The physician’s voice was all brisk business, but one glance at her set, gray-tinged face told Cygnus that Elser really needed to go straight to the window and vomit.

To the relief of the young physician, the girl made no sound as they moved her to the bed. “Cover he as well as you can,” Elser muttered, frowning at the injured arm. “Shock and blood loss are our chief foes – she must be kept warm.”

She gestured at the small brazier that she used to boil water for her needles and blades. “Stoke that as best you can—it won’t put out much heat, but.” She probed at Raven’s ragged wound. “Normally, I’d let you deal with this, but she made a dreadful mess of these veins, and time is of the essence.”

Cygnus straightened up from feeding wood into the tiny stove, his eyes wide with horror. “She tired to take her own life?”

“What do you think? Elser was flushing out the wound with a cleansing infusion. “Look what those brutes have done to her wings!” Her hands always been the steady hands of a master and a surgeon. Cygnus had never seen them shake before. Elster took a deep breath. “Besides, she is not the Princess, but the Queen—and we’d do well to bear that in mind as we work!” she added waspishly. Like a true master, Elster had herself back under control. Cygnus wished he could have the same for himself.

“Now..” Elster muttered, bending low over Raven’s arm. “Cygnus, will you be so good as to start cleaning up those wings before the poor girl wakes? Take the greatest care to piece tighter all that remains – the Queen may never fly again, but cast me from top of Yinze’s temple if I’ll amputate! The poor child has been mutilated enough…”

Cygnus could bear no more. The thought of one of the Skyfolk—the very Queen—bearing two mangled stumps instead of her wings was enough to finish him. At least he made it to the window before he started vomiting.

“Come on, boy! Are you a physician or not?” Elster barked.

Cygnus made a superhuman effort to pull himself together—and succeeded. He took a long swig from the Master’s waterskin, poured some of the cleansing infusion into a bowl to wash his hands—and bent grimly to the grisly, painstaking work of piecing together Raven’s shattered wings.

“Well done, boy! I couldn’t have done a neater job myself!”

Cygnus blinked, wiped sweat from his brow, and looked up—or tried to. His neck and back seemed to have frozen in position. Someone had filled his eyes with boiling sand, and his aching fingers were rigid with cramp. A host of candles and small oil lamps were burning around him, their twinkling flames dancing in the gloom of a room gone dark, and outside the window, the sky was the rich and vivid blue of almost-night. Then, with a jolt of shock, he realized that it was not dusk, but dawn!

The crack of his bones as he stretched was like the snapping of kindling. Elster, red-eyed and haggard of face, was beaming at him, and gesturing at the wing that was stretched out before him, Cygnus looked at it, shaking his head in disbelief—and suddenly his weariness was forced aside by an expanding glow of pride and satisfaction. Father of Skies, he marveled. Did I really do that? What had been a mangled mass of bloody feathers and bone looked like a wing again; the major skeletal framework was firmly splinted; the fragile bones that supported the structure of the pinions were pieced together like a fledgling’s puzzle and held in position by an intricate framework of slender spills of wood—the lightest he could devise. Damaged muscle and torn skin had been stretched back into place and secured with hundreds of tiny stitches.

The wing looked like a wing again—almost. Cygnus, thinking back over his handiwork, remembered bones chipped and splintered beyond repair, and pieces never found. Slippery curls of tendon that could not be reattached and muscles that would be forever weak—if they worked at all. Whether circulation had been restored to the wings through the damaged vessels, only time would tell. Even now, his painstaking work might still have gone for naught. Cygnus felt his glow of satisfaction turn to ash within him, and turned away with an oath. “What difference does it make in the end?” he said bitterly. “She will never fly again.”

Elster, who had been completing a similar miracle of restoration on the other wing, sighed. “That’s right,” she said mildly. “We might as well have saved our time and just hacked the useless things off in the first place! The Queen is crippled already—what difference will it make to her if she is deformed besides?”

Cygnus felt his face grow hot with shame. “I never thought of that,” he confessed.

Elster raised an eyebrow “Ah, but that is why I am the Master and you are not. There are two things that the true physician must never be without. Skill—and compassion. Always compassion,” Cygnus nodded, accepting the wisdom of Elster’s words. “But Master,” he continued meekly, “what will happen when she wakes and discovers the truth?”

Elster ran a distracted hand through her black and white streaked hair, and gestured bleakly at the bandage on Raven’s arm. “You think she does not know already?”

Cygnus nodded. “I guessed as much, All the time I was working on that wing, I was thinking: What if it were me? And I knew then, that in the Queen’s position, denied the skies forever, I would have no desire to live. And it seemed to me that to save her life, I had to fix that wing so that it could be used again, or it was all in vain.”

The Master put an arm around his shoulders. “I know,” she said gently. “I watched you, as I worked—laboring on those tiny fragments with such determination on your face—and I bled inside for the grief that you must face. But all physicians, soon or late, come to this pass, where the best they can do will not suffice. My boy, only Yinze himself could make her fly again. It would have been kinder by far to have simply let her die where she lay, as she most surely wished. But she may not.” Her voice grew hard, “Now that Flamewing is dead, that frail, crippled little girl is the Queen—and she will be needed, if—” With a gasp, she caught herself up quickly. “If our folk are to have a ruler. Unfortunately, someone must make her see that—and the task will fall to us.”

Cygnus opened his mouth, but after the murder of Flamewing and the mutilation of her daughter, he could find nothing to say. Though he had been acting under Blacktalon’s orders, Flamewing’s blood was on his own hands. It was entirely due to his actions that Raven must live as she was: motherless, crippled—and Queen.

Suddenly the sight of Raven’s mutilated body vanished behind a blur of tears. Cygnus buried his face in shaking hands, “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Oh Gods, I’m sorry!”

“So you should be sorry—but that isn’t good enough,” Elster told him astringently. “Yinze only knows what possessed you, Cygnus. You, a healer—my most talented pupil—to become involved in such evil! Why, with such skill at your disposal, did you turn to destroying, instead of healing?”

Like floodgates bursting, it all came pouring out of Cygnus—his doubts, his despair, his feelings of inadequacy when the evil winter struck down his people. “You say I have skill,” he cried bitterly, “but had I been any use at all, I could have saved them! I failed them, Elster—I failed my people when they needed me! And if my way—the way that you taught me—was no good, then what was left? I was so desperate to accomplish something, and Blacktalon seemed to hold out the only hope!”

Cygnus looked into Elster’s eyes, and saw tears glinting faintly in the drear dawn light. “Oh, you poor fool,” she whispered. “Poor blind young fool. Why did you not talk to me, and share your doubts? My dear boy, there is not a healer in the whole of history that has not entertained such dark thoughts at one time or another!” She shook her head. “There are ills and evils in this world that we cannot heal, for all our wishing—but that is no reason to adopt them!”

It was as though a void had opened beneath the young physician’s feet—as though nothing in his world would be solid or secure again. “I didn’t know,” Cygnus whispered. “Master, I didn’t dare share my doubts with you. You were so reluctant to accept me at first ... I didn’t know you’d understand ...”

Cygnus dropped to his knees at her feet, and held out his dagger in a shaking hand. “Master, I’ve been an utter fool, and far worse than that.” His voice sounded cracked and distant to his ears. “Take my life, I beg you, for nothing less will serve as restitution for my wrongs, or wash the stain of evil from my spirit.” Closing his eyes and breathing deeply, he waited for his mentor to take the dagger and end his wretched existence.

“Oh no, my boy—that’s very dramatic, but it isn’t good enough!” At the sound of Elster’s humorless chuckle, the young physician’s eyes flew open in shock. Elster plucked the dagger from his limp hand, and with a flick of her wrist, sent it flying out of the window, “Death is too easy a way out—you can damn well live on and suffer, and take responsibility for your deeds like the rest of us!”

Shaking her head, Elster looked sternly down at her gaping pupil. “A whole lifetime won’t be long enough for you to make amends to this poor girl, so you had better start at once!” Pulling a resisting Cygnus to his feet, she looked deep into his eyes, “That is, supposing you truly wish to make restitution for what you have done.” Her expression hardened, “Cygnus, if you still feel any remaining shred of loyalty toward the High Priest after his deeds this day, then you should stay away from the Queen in future—as far away as possible, I recognize poison when I see it, boy, I know you were responsible for Queen Flamewing’s death, and I find intolerable the idea of that poor girl being attended by her mother’s murderer. That aside, if you still support Blacktalon after what he has done, then you are unfit to associate with any decent being, let alone the Queen of the Winged Folk.” Elster’s eyes burned fiercely. The young physician, writhing with shame, found himself unable to meet his mentor’s gaze, “I’m done with Blacktalon,” he vowed. “I’ll do whatever you feel is necessary to convince you of that,”

Elster looked at him gravely. “Brave words, boy—but can you put them into effect?” Her eyes glinted. “I want you to take care of Queen Raven. Be her constant companion, her comfort, her support. She won’t want to live, Cygnus—and so it will be up to you to convince her otherwise.”

Cygnus gasped. “I cannot! Elster, please, ask something else of me! What can I say to her? I cannot face her, with her mother’s blood on my hands!”

“Too bad.” Elster was inexorable. “The more difficult you find it to face her, the greater your chance of atonement. If you ever find the suffering too much for you, Cygnus, try putting yourself in her place.”

Her brutal words brought Cygnus up short. The chastened young physician bowed his head. “I’ll try, Elster, he whispered.

“Don’t try—do!” Elster told him brutally. “That girl’s life is in your hands, Cygnus—don’t make a mess of filings. You’ve done enough damage already.” She tempered her harsh words with the ghost of a smile for him. “If it’s any consolation, boy, I have faith in you.”

“I can’t think why.” Cygnus looked at Raven once more. He took a deep breath, and straightened his shoulders. “But I promise, Master, that I’ll do my best to be worthy of your confidence.”

“Thank Yinze—I have my pupil back!” Elster embraced the young physician. Though she grieved for his pain, she was somewhat reassured by his crisis of conscience. She had long been dismayed by his espousal of Blacktalon’s bizarre ambitions, and had been appalled when she had realized his part in the murder of the Queen. I ought to hate him, the Master thought—but her understanding of Skyfolk nature and the frailty of Skyfolk spirit had persuaded her that matters were not so simple. She was convinced that Cygnus had not fallen irredeemably into evil—and that being the case, if she could save him and bring back his proper sense of values, it was her duty to do so. The thought of all the future good he could do with his skills was enough to make the effort worthwhile—and besides, though she would die rather than admit it, she was fond of him.

Breaking the embrace, Elster held her pupil away from her at arm’s length. “Now, go and eat,” she told him, “and have something sent up here for me. And at all cost, stay away from Blacktalon until you can keep your feelings from your face. You’ve done good work tonight—but alas, there is no rest for the physician. Your other patient still awaits you, in the cave below.”

Cygnus gasped. “I had forgotten the sorcerer!”

“Hush, boy,” Elster cautioned him hastily. “Not so loud!”

“But Master, I forgot to tell you—” Cautiously, he lowered his voice. “I told Blacktalon his illness was beyond my skills—lest the High Priest should decide to kill you after you had seen what happened to the Queen!”

Elster gasped. “You were thinking of me?” She was astonished that it should mean so much to her. Sentimental old fool! she scolded herself. Pulling herself together, she turned her attention back to her pupil. “Is he, then?”

“Is he what?” Cygnus looked baffled.

“Beyond your not inconsiderable skills,. of course.”

“No—though for a time I thought otherwise! It was a fever, brought on no doubt by cold and privation—and much mishandling by the Temple Guards. For a time I despaired of his life, but he is safe now.” For the first time in that long, weary night, Cygnus allowed himself to grin.

Elster returned his smile. “Go and tend your patient, then. Afterward, get some rest, then come back here to sit with the Queen, and I will visit our mysterious prisoner.” Her eyebrow lifted. “Never having seen a human, let alone a sorcerer, I must confess to some curiosity. A sorcerer, from distant lands, with powers such as we cannot fathom ...” She shrugged. “Oh, never mind. Just remember what he is, and take due care. And for Yinze’s sake, boy,” she added in a whisper, “get him on our side!”

Cygnus nodded, made as. if to go—then he hesitated, looking down at the Queen. Grief and rage twisted in his guts like a knife. “Master. . . . Will she be all right?”

In that moment, Elster seemed to age so much that the young physician was sorry that he had spoken. “Her body? Yes, it will survive. Her mind? Yinze only knows what will become of that,”