“What do you mean?” I asked. “They fly, just like you and the Hoohan.”
“They dost fly,” he agreed dubiously. “Yet they move...wrongly. Their wings do not bite the air the way they should. They do not descend like those of avian descent. They plummet like stones.”
We all turned to study the phoenix’s flight some more. Shaw’s judgement on these matters was impeccable, though to my eyes it was hard to see much difference at first. Yet, the drake was on to something.
I’d spent a fair amount of time watching griffins fly during my time at the Reykajar aerie. While there, I’d observed how griffins could use warm thermals to their advantage. They didn’t hover so much as make lazy ovals in the sky while only using the occasional wing beat to stay aloft. I felt a twinge deep inside at the memory of observing Shaw’s children perform this very feat while on a hunt.
By comparison, the phoenix was somewhat ungainly in the air. When the raptor turned, it didn’t pivot on a wingtip the way a bird might. Instead it banked more like a large passenger jet. When changing altitude, the phoenix either dropped straight down, or drifted straight up.
A very strange sort of magic was at work here. But then, magic was the only way to explain the griffin’s flights as well. How such large and heavy creatures could take off and maintain altitude would have been a nightmare for an aerospace engineer to puzzle out.
“I don’t think it sees us yet,” Liam observed. “Is that Korr, the one who visited Fitzwilliam’s royal court?”
“I can’t tell at this distance,” I said. “In fact...let me try something.”
I put a hand to my temple, closed my eyes, and envisioned myself shouting Korr’s name. I did this a few times, then opened my eyes. The phoenix was nowhere to be seen.
“Our quarry disappeared over the western horizon,” Galen explained. “Were you trying to call him mentally?”
“I figured it was worth seeing if we were in range,” I admitted. “Since we’re not, how about we keep moving?”
I got nods and murmurs of assent in response. Liam led us generally westwards again, this time up-and-down over rockier, more heavily sloped terrain. The going was made easier as the snow gradually diminished from knee-high to ankle-high and finally to rills of frost.
As we went on, I got the sensation of travelling down a wide rill or depression cut into the rock. All around us, high peaks jutted up skywards, their steep sides heavy with gleaming slabs of ice. Curious, I looked down to see that even the final traces of frost had vanished from the bare stone of the high mountains.
“Galen,” I said suddenly. “Can you switch off your climate spell for a few seconds?”
The wizard gave me a curious look, but nodded. “Certainly.”
He gestured, and a tiny ‘pop’ echoed in my ear. I braced myself for an icy wind that never came. The air around us remained close to room temperature. My three companions and I looked at each other, amazed.
Galen held his hand up. “Bide a moment. The air is pungent with...”
My nostrils caught it then. A hint of sulfur, followed by the earthy scent of charcoal. Liam’s little black deer nose twitched, and he trotted forward a couple dozen yards, to where the slope fell away.
“Come see!” he said excitedly. “The Vale lies down there!”
I jogged over in the dusty wake of my centaur and griffin companions. Even though I loved my friends dearly, I still had to tamp down a feeling of frustration over being the slowest one in the group. I made out dancing flickers of red light emanating from below as I drew near.
The vista that spread out below was nothing short of astounding.
A warm gust of air blew up from the valley below. The ‘Vale’ of the Seraphine was a triple set of volcanic caldera. Each flat circle of dark volcanic stone overlapped the other two, giving the place the shape of a lopsided three-leafed clover.
The two smaller, cauldron-like depressions were stippled with vents that shone a baleful raspberry-red. A couple of these vents huffed out an occasional plume of yellow vapor or puff of black smoke. The largest of the caldera remained dark and quiet, a flat expanse peppered with gleams from chunks of glassy obsidian and hummocks of loose black rock.
A deep orange glow emanated from off to the side of the dormant caldera. The light illuminated dozens of caves pockmarking the cliff face across from where we stood. One of the Seraphine walked or hopped its way from one of the entrances and spread its wings.
The creature didn’t take off. Instead, the phoenix began to vary its illumination the way a person might twist the rotary dimmer switch on a lamp. It was able to do so quickly, emitting long and short bursts of light.
“What is it doing?” Liam breathed.
“It may be charging up its metabolism,” Galen suggested. “Preparing for flight, perchance.”
“Heads up, we’ve got company,” I said, as the phoenix we’d seen at the waterfall reappeared high overhead. It began a series of light pulses as well. Those pulses reminded me of something from my childhood, only not from winter this time. Of late-summer evenings after the family cookout, when I’d go hunting with a butterfly net and a clean mason jar with little holes punched in the lid.
A little click and it came together in my head.
“Fireflies,” I said, almost laughing as it became clear. “Well, that’s something I didn’t expect. The Seraphine communicate with each other like fireflies!”
Liam stared at me, aghast. “Your world has flies that can set things on fire?”
“Nay,” Shaw admonished him. “She doth mean that her world has flies made of living fire, like the phoenix.”
“Truly, I wish I could see such a marvel!” Galen breathed.
“No, no, they’re just insects,” I explained hastily. “Some people call them lightning bugs.”
The wizard brightened at my words. “By chance does that mean–”
I shook my head. “No, they don’t cast lightning, either.”
Galen gave a grunt of disapproval. “Your world’s archivists ought to strive for a better level of accuracy in bestowing names upon their creatures.”
“Regardless,” I pushed on, “Fireflies communicate via pulses of light. At least for mating. Males flash from the air, while females flash back from the ground if they’re receptive.”
Shaw let out a deep chuckle. “Could yon birds of fire be in ‘heat’, then?”
I rolled my eyes. Trust a drake to add some masculine humor to the situation. “I don’t think so. That’s an awfully complex set of flashes to use for a simple mating ritual.” I thought back to our observations of the phoenix from back at the waterfall. “Remember how the Seraphine couldn’t pick up my thoughts? If they can only do that for a short distance, then speaking in combinations of long or short light pulses would allow them to talk over a very long range.”
The pulse combination reminded me very much of Morse code. It was startling the more I thought about it. The Seraphine had evolved their own naturally occurring, visual version of the telegraph.
My thoughts were interrupted as the phoenix that soared aloft spotted us. It dimmed its radiance and plunged down towards us at breakneck speed. Then, with a hiss of rainwater on a hot campfire, it blazed back to full brightness to hover before us. Korr’s familiar voice boomed in all of our heads.
“The Quester and the Quester’s friends come. Good. Join us at the bottom of the Vale.”
With that, Korr made a wide bank to circle the Vale once more, settling in next to the second phoenix at the center of the largest caldera. Liam craned his neck off to the right, nodding as he spotted what he’d been searching for.
“There is a winding trail down the cliff face on this side of the Vale,” he said, indicating the way with a toss of his head. “We can make it down safely over here.”
“Then I shall meet up with thee below,” Shaw declared, as he launched himself into the air.
“I could transport us down,” Galen considered. “But I still have misgivings about our ho
sts. Should I use up more of my magic, I shall be hard-pressed to enter combat while retaining the power to transport all of us away from here.”
“Let’s take the long way, then,” I decided.
Galen and I followed Liam as he picked out a path down the rocky trail. Ash-gray basalt made up both cliff face and caldera floor. As we made our way down, I saw more and more hummocks of black rock.
Now that I could see them better, I realized that the rock comprising the mounds wasn’t loose at all. The stones had been fused together like chunks of glass tossed into a hot kiln. Similarly shaped structures appeared as waxy-sheened ebony blisters embedded in the rock face along the path.
My feet, as well as my companions’ hooves, kicked up sooty dust as we reached the caldera’s floor. The scent of sulfur increased, to the point that it stung my eyes and left an astringent taste in my mouth like especially strong sauerkraut. I did my best to ignore the discomfort as we rejoined Shaw, who stood defiantly before the larger pair of phoenix.
Korr looked as resplendent as ever, his plumes twitching with anticipation or excitement at our arrival. His companion looked identical in terms of size and shape, but not in color. The second phoenix burned orange-yellow instead of red-hot scarlet, as if it were a gas burner running low on fuel.
“Salutations and welcome to the Vale of the Seraphine, Dame Chrissie,” Korr said, in his basso rumble. “I and my mate, Jett, offer you greetings and good fortune to those who quest to help us.”
I did my standard bow, which I’d gotten a little better at since my investiture. I wasn’t all that thrilled with the fact that Korr had neglected to welcome my friends, so I introduced them in turn to Korr’s mate.
“You and your companions are well-acclaimed,” Jett said. The female phoenix had a breathy, feminine voice that reminded me of a well-tuned flute. “Truly, we are glad you have decided to assist our great and noble people.”
“Uh-huh,” I said curtly. “Speaking of which...where are your ‘great and noble’ people? I was at least expecting you to introduce us to Pirr, the Quondam Seraphine.”
Korr and Jett traded knowing glances.
An uneasy quiet settled over the caldera, broken only by the hissing and popping of the nearby gas vents. A coldness settled down in my gut. No matter the species, I’d come to recognize that a glance like that meant that I wasn’t going to like what came next.
“There is much to explain,” Jett said plaintively. “We do not know whether you, as mere sparks, will understand.”
“Try me,” I said tightly.
“We are the Ones Who Burn and Rise Again,” Korr began. “Jett and I were the last to sleep, thus were slated to be the first to rise. Or so we thought. The cycle has been broken, changed, and you must learn what we are, what we were, to understand what we now face.”
I looked around at my friends. Liam’s cervine ears were pricked and attentive. Galen had pulled a scroll from one of his sangria-colored jacket pockets and was taking notes. By comparison, Shaw looked faintly bored and disinterested. That was mostly an act – the griffin could leap into action in a split second if any of us were threatened.
But a threat didn’t appear to be in the offing. Rather, the Seraphine, despite looking down on creatures they thought of as ‘sparks’, seemed to genuinely want to be understood. Sighing, I gave an encouraging nod.
“Go on,” I said. “We’re listening.”
Chapter Nineteen
“We Seraphine are elemental creatures,” Korr intoned. “We are born of the earth, and the fire that forever eats at and consumes the earth from deep within.”
I caught Shaw nodding to that statement, as if Korr had confirmed a thought. Jett picked up where Korr had left off, her heady voice ringing in my mind like a bell.
“As elementals, we have not one, but two forms: Active and Inert.” Jett made the capital letters clearly heard, then paused a moment to spread her wings and arch her neck. Her head plumes wavered like an exotic set of palm fronds as she did so. “This glorious form is for when we deign to be Active.”
“And what about when you are Inert?” I asked.
Jett looked to Korr, who bobbed his head. The female Seraphine folded her wings in gracefully. An ear-tickling TAH-SCHICK echoed like a gunshot across the Vale. Where Jett had perched in her Active ‘bird’ form, there now stood an ovate, meter-high gemstone the exact color of lemon jade.
“Astounding!” Galen breathed. “For what duration can your mate ah, remain ‘inert’ while staying alive?”
“The boundaries of life and death willingly bend for such magnificent creatures as we,” Korr stated proudly. “One of the Seraphine may remain inert for millennia if need be, though in practice we choose not to do so. The Seraphine prefer to remain Active, to grace the universe with their glory. Only after many hundreds of years, when we have tired of the world, do we desire to return to our Inert forms and sleep.”
“Who sets your alarm clock?” I inquired. I got a puzzled look from Korr, so I added, “I mean, what decides when you wake?”
“In olden days, it was the natural and random cycles of the land. As the millennia came and went, our Inert forms could slough off the beauty of form and crumble to ash. Then, only through a spark of fire could the ash revive into a smaller, weaker version of our splendid selves.”
That explained the phoenix myth I’d heard, I realized. To die and be reborn anew from the ashes.
“In more recent times, the waking of our people takes place all at once, and it is led by a mated pair chosen by our leader, the Quondam Seraphine. This was the task given to Jett and I: To be the last to sleep, the first to rise. And if the times were welcoming, to wake each of our people from their long slumber as the Inert.”
Korr tapped the Jett-gem with an outstretched wing. A small blue spark leaped from the wingtip to the top of the egg. With a second TAH-SCHICK, Jett was animate and fully aflame again. Korr nuzzled his mate, murmuring in her ear for a moment before she spoke again.
“And yet...from our very beginnings, a shadow has lain on the fate of our people.” Jett’s plumes drooped plaintively for a moment. “Eons ago, we rose and re-rose by the light of the Heart.”
“Light of the hearth?” Liam asked quickly. I saw what he was getting at. Could that be the answer to one of the riddles posed by Belladonna’s visions, about one who ‘lay beyond the light of the hearth?’
“Not the light of the hearth,” Jett corrected him gently. “The light of the Heart. Our most venerable tales tell of several Hearts of the Mother’s Body.”
Liam’s deer nose twitched. “Beating hearts? Like ones inside our bodies?”
Jett shook her head. “The old stories speak of the ancient gemstones birthed from the earth, as we were. But over the eons, the light from the Heart faded, along with our memories of where to find another.
“Our people need energy to fuel their magic, the magic that gives us our Active form and allows us to speak, fly, and grace the universe with our glory.”
I came close to rolling my eyes. Again with how glorious they all were. These creatures’ haughty attitude could get on one’s nerves. But, it was fascinating stuff nonetheless.
“We switched to eating the things that came from down where the earth’s inner fire gnaws at the roots of the land,” Korr resumed. “The black rock that burns. The viscous, black slime that that burns. All became the fuel to power our fire from within.”
Black rock and slime that burns? I thought, amazed. Did Korr just describe...coal seams and crude oil? If so, that makes the phoenix the first beings I’ve met that can survive on unprocessed fossil fuel.
I had to confirm that amazing feat of xenobiology. “Korr, can your people really survive on...combustibles from the earth?”
“Only a people as precious to the universe as ours can,” he confirmed. “Though to replenish our bodies, to grow in size, to grow as a people, or to repair injury, we must have other food. So, we Seraphine smother wood as we heat it with our bo
dies, and then consume it.”
I nodded. That explained the scent here in the caldera. Charcoal was made by cooking wood in a low-oxygen environment, which changed the raw wood into pure carbon. My mind tumbled to the next question just as Liam stepped forward and took the words out of my mouth.
“Dame Chrissie has introduced me as the Fayleene Protector of the Forest,” he said, his cervine form looking ludicrously fragile before the pair of fire-creatures. “Yet, she did not mention that the forest I look after is the one to the east of your mountains. If you eat charred wood, are you responsible for the slices of burned ground within my land’s boundaries?”
Again, Korr and Jett traded glances. Their eyes flicked back-and-forth uneasily, as if in discussion. I had to wonder whether, at this close range, the Seraphine could communicate mind-to-mind on a kind of private channel. Korr turned back towards Liam and nodded wearily.
“Yes, we are responsible. We saw no claim to ownership, we saw none of your people. All is a quiet wasteland within a day’s flight north and east. Yet one must not fret. It is considered a blessing for ones as exalted as the Seraphine to feed upon one’s demesne.”
“It is true, you saw no one,” Liam admitted. “The fayleene opposed a dragon in battle and drove it off. In the process, the forest was badly burned. We reside elsewhere for but a few short years until it regrows.”
“We understand.”
“That is good.” Liam let out a snort and pawed the ground. His hoof made a screech against the hard rock. “But it cannot regrow...if it is being nibbled at. Even by a people who accord themselves such a glorious image.”
I sensed a dig in Liam’s response, but the phoenix ignored it.
“Fear not,” Jett said quickly. “We shall not return to your woods, for we shall only feed to the north, beyond the distant pass.”
Liam tipped his antlers respectfully. “Then I am satisfied.”
“Besides, I am afraid that your woods do not taste all that good.” The phoenix made a face. “Too much peppermint!”
Galen discretely covered his mouth with his hand. I bit my lip to keep my expression appropriately serious. Galen and I had discovered when I’d first visited the Fayleene Woods that Liam’s forest did carry the scent of a wintergreen candy factory.
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