The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  THEY WERE STILL in the forest when the light began to dim; tonight, at least, Ancaladar would be able to give him a good idea of how much longer he’d have to travel through it, and what lay beyond. There might have been another hour or two of light if they’d been out in the open, but not here in the depths of the forest. Harrier was starting to decide he hated trees.

  “Far enough,” Harrier said aloud, reining the horses in. He swung down from the bench and began the work of making camp. Eventually Ancaladar would notice that they’d stopped and bring Tiercel back for the night.

  It took him a while to notice that Kareta was hanging around watching him work.

  It wasn’t as if she was always either particularly close by or completely absent during the day. It was true that she tended to kind of pace the wagon as it traveled, but she frequently wandered off entirely. And it was also true that she always showed up at mealtimes, but at the end of the day, Harrier had gotten used to being pretty much left to himself while he got the camp ready for night. Having her hover like this was … unusual.

  It took him until the horses were fed and watered—and Ancaladar and Tiercel had showed up, and Tiercel had collected his stuff, and the two of them had gone off for Tiercel’s practice session—to figure out what was going on.

  “You’ve never actually been outside the Elven Lands, have you?” he asked.

  “Of course I have!” she answered indignantly, tossing her head. He knew better, though, than to believe her just because she told him something—or denied it, for that matter.

  Harrier sighed, and leaned against the wagon wheel. “Look,” he said. “You’ve brought me the Books. I’ve even—okay, I’ve done some looking into them, all right? So you can go on back now. Go on. Shoo. Scat.”

  “Harrier Gillain, don’t you dare shoo me as if I were a—a—a housecat! I’m going to go precisely where I want, and stay there as long as I want to! Besides, you need my help!” she answered huffily.

  “Exactly what do I need your help for?” Harrier demanded, exasperated now.

  “In the first place, you need me to help you find water—”

  “Tiercel can do that!” Harrier was almost sure of that.

  “—and in the second place, if you’ve actually looked at your Books—which I doubt—I’m perfectly certain you haven’t done one single spell. Have you?” she demanded.

  “What does that—”

  “Have you?”

  “No! And I’m not going to, either!”

  “Why not?” Kareta challenged, now sounding just as irritated as he was.

  “I don’t want to!” Harrier bellowed at the top of his lungs.

  “Oh, that’s a very good reason,” Kareta said, snickering.

  A moment later Tiercel came charging through the trees, waving his Wand as if it were a sword, and looking worried and out of breath. “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking from Harrier to Kareta.

  “Nothing,” Harrier muttered.

  “He doesn’t want to do magic,” Kareta answered, managing to sound as if she were personally offended by Harrier’s refusal.

  “Well did you think he did?” Tiercel asked after a long pause. “Light deliver us, this is Harrier you’re talking about.”

  “Thanks a lot, Tyr,” Harrier said.

  “Well,” Tiercel said, shrugging as if the statement needed no further explanation. “From the way you were yowling, I thought someone was being murdered.”

  Kareta snickered again.

  “Go away,” Harrier said. “You, too,” he said to Kareta, once Tiercel was gone. “Back through the Veil, I mean.” Because it wasn’t fair to make her go off into the forest by herself alone, especially now that it was getting dark. “I mean, in the morning.”

  “No,” Kareta said simply.

  He didn’t waste breath in arguing with her. In the morning, he’d get Tiercel to talk her into it. Right now, he had dinner to make.

  Ancaladar didn’t have to eat every day, but he did have to eat. And while he didn’t like having to hunt for himself, he could. When Ancaladar had accepted his Bond to Jermayan, Jermayan had promised him he would never have to hunt his own food again, but certainly Ancaladar was willing to be reasonable. If Tiercel had been in a position to feed him, Tiercel would have; since he couldn’t, Ancaladar was willing to hunt. It was not, after all (he’d explained), as if there were Endarkened hunting for him now, so it didn’t matter too much if he were seen. And Ancaladar’s willingness to hunt for himself extended to hunting for them as well, which meant venison stew for dinner.

  Ancaladar had taken down a buck three days before. They’d eaten fresh meat that night and the next day, and then Harrier had cut up the rest of the meat into strips and cooked it thoroughly. Packed in salt to dry it out further, it would keep for a week or so, and the salt could be brushed off and reused. Of course, that also meant a certain amount of work was involved if you wanted to eat it later (and have anything palatable), but Harrier was firmly convinced that eating was better than not eating. Once the stew was started, he got working on the flatcakes. They’d never rival his Ma’s breads and biscuits, but they were edible. The first couple off the griddle always burned, but Kareta never seemed to mind eating them.

  “You know,” she said, chewing, “if you’d just learn to make Coldfire you wouldn’t need to light all those lanterns. Or wait for Tiercel to come back with his Magelight (because he doesn’t make Coldfire, you know, he makes Magelight). And it wouldn’t be as dark.”

  “It’s not that dark,” Harrier said, just to be difficult. “And I’m about as likely to start making things glow in the dark as dinner is to get up and walk again, so don’t hold your breath.”

  Kareta made a rude noise and said nothing.

  Tiercel and Ancaladar showed up about the same time they always did; Harrier had the idea that all of Tiercel’s practices took just about the same amount of time for the same reason any other training session would; no matter what you were practicing, you had to be careful not to overtrain.

  Harrier refused to admit that the additional brightness from Tiercel’s Coldfire (or Magelight or whatever) was welcome in the darkness beneath the trees, and he refused to ask Tiercel to refrain from dispelling the globe of light the way Tiercel always did every night once he’d finished eating and went to climb into his bedroll. After the meal was over, Harrier washed up, using as little water as possible. He’d be just as glad to get out of the forest—Ancaladar said another day or two and they’d be back in open country. He also said that in another sennight or so they’d be back on a road, and maybe that meant they could find another stream.

  “A road?” Harrier had said indignantly. “Why would there be a road out here if there aren’t any people?”

  “I never said there were no people here,” Ancaladar had answered primly. “You did.”

  And Tiercel had laughed, and even Harrier had to admit that was true. But on the other hand, he knew they were east of the Bazrahils, and the only thing beyond Windalorianan—so he’d always been taught—was empty wilderness and the Elven Lands. A thousand years ago, there hadn’t even been any humans living as far east as Valwendigorean, and that was one of the cities of the Dragon’s Tail today. While Harrier didn’t think he would have been notified specifically, he was certain that if there was a momentous historical fact in the history of the Nine Cities available to bore him with—such as settlements extending beyond the ancient bounds of the Nine Cities—his teachers would have done it some time in the last twelve years of his school days.

  He’d know soon enough.

  TIERCEL WAS ASLEEP from nearly the moment that he rolled himself into his blankets. He wasn’t sure whether he ought to try to feel guilty about leaving all the work of the camp to Harrier, or ought to try not to feel guilty, because he was certainly working hard, even if what he was working on was magic, and not on keeping the two of them fed. It wasn’t fair to Harrier to leave Harrier to do all the day-today work now that Harrier had his
own magic to figure out. But Tiercel knew that Harrier didn’t really want to figure it out just yet. In another moonturn maybe. Harrier usually took at least that long to make up his mind about something. Tiercel knew he ought to talk to him about it soon.

  But he’d been able to practice—really practice—the complex spells of the High Magick for barely a moonturn, and he was just starting to master the fifty-two glyphs of the High Magick by themselves, and they had thousands of combinations, and practicing them and memorizing them and getting them right was exhausting. And all of that was only the foundation of the High Magick: the glyphs and cantrips and wards and the incredibly basic spells like Magelight and Fire and some of the Lesser Summonings and Transmutations. If he ever wanted to become a real High Mage …

  Well, he never would be. He was willing to face that fact squarely, even if Harrier wasn’t. He would have to have begun his training ten years ago. With different teachers. In a different world.

  He didn’t blame Ancaladar for the fact that he could never become the thing that he’d been born to be, the thing that having the Magegift said he could have become. Ancaladar knew that—it was one thing Tiercel could be sure of, thanks to the Bond they shared. Ancaladar was a wonderful teacher—probably better than he deserved. It was just that Tiercel was trying to learn something starting too late. And trying to compress what would be (or have been) a lifetime of study—decades and decades—into … well, he didn’t know how long he had before he was going to need as much as he’d been able to learn, but he doubted he had even as much as one year, let alone decades.

  And he didn’t think that—no matter what happened—he and Harrier were going to survive looking for the Lake of Fire, let alone finding it. And that meant Ancaladar wouldn’t survive either. He’d left a letter with Idalia back in Karahelanderialigor, for her to try to get to his family if—and only if—she was sure he was dead. He was fairly sure Harrier had left a similar one behind for his family. And he really didn’t want to think about that at all. Because he was sixteen and Harrier was seventeen and thinking about dying was unbelievable and planning for it was somehow worse. It was just as well that he never had the energy to stay awake to brood about it for very long at the end of the day.

  Since he’d left Ysterialpoerin for Karahelanderialigor, Tiercel hadn’t had one of the horrifying prophetic dreams that had begun at Kindling. Normally he didn’t remember his dreams—he remembered that he dreamed, but not what his dreams were about. Not for long, anyway. The ones about the Lake of Fire were different, but of course they weren’t really dreams. He hadn’t thought about them much lately, except to think that perhaps they might be over for good—their purpose had been served, after all. So he wasn’t worried about falling asleep tonight any more than he had been on any of the other nights.

  SINCE HE’D LEFT Armethalieh, Tiercel had seen lakes. Blue with reflected sky, their surfaces ruffled by the wind. Sometimes edged with reeds. Usually filled with fish.

  This lake was orange, its surface veined with brighter gold. Its surface didn’t shimmer, but the air above it did, because the lake wasn’t filled with water, but with fire. He could smell burnt rock, and sulfur, and scents that came from things burning that should never be able to burn at all. And standing in the middle of the lake—on the surface of the fire—was a woman.

  The ancient books Tiercel had read so many moonturns ago in the Great Library of Armethalieh had said that Elven women were dazzlingly beautiful and dangerously seductive, and he had to admit that the ones he’d seen in Karahelanderialigor were very pretty. Prettier than anyone he’d ever seen in Armethalieh, or (for that matter) in all his travels beyond it. And the Fire Woman was more beautiful than the most beautiful of the Elven women.

  But the Elven women were … just beautiful. And you might not know what you could possibly say to them, and it might be impossible to imagine them ever saying anything to you, but they weren’t actually terrifying.

  The Fire Woman made Tiercel want to run as far away from her as he could run.

  The fire of the lake gleamed off her naked skin, so that Tiercel couldn’t tell what color it was, and the heat rising from the lake’s surface made her long hair lift and swirl. Her hair was the same color as the surface of the lake; he could tell that much. She stood in the center of the Lake of Fire, on the surface of the fire—she’d never, in any of his visions, so much as moved one step—and he didn’t understand why the sight of her filled him with the need to escape. It was as if just seeing her was the most dangerous thing that had ever happened to him; as if the sight of her was as toxic as poison. All Tiercel knew was that dangerous or not, poisonous or not, there was something so wrong about the Fire Woman—something he couldn’t see, but could sense—that the sight of her made him ill with revulsion.

  He wondered how the Other could bear it.

  Because the Other wasn’t just dreaming about her—Tiercel knew that somehow—he was wherever she was. He was the one she was calling—or perhaps he was calling her. But there was something she wanted from the Other, something more horrifying than she was herself.

  The Fire Woman raised her arms, beckoning to that unseen Other. She wanted the Other to come to her. That was what she always wanted—what she’d wanted from the beginning, and the Other never would. And because—this time—Tiercel wasn’t alone, he was actually able to wonder why.

  Are you ready at last to accept the gifts I have for you?

  It was the question she always asked. And though the answer was still “no,” it was so much closer to “yes” than it had ever been before that the knowledge was enough to thrust Tiercel into terrified consciousness.

  He sat up, looking around groggily. I’m not there. It isn’t really happening. Not here. Not yet. Not to me. I’m here.

  Harrier was on his feet, rumpled and barefoot but clutching the sword Roneida had given him. Kareta was standing, staring at him, coat fluffed out … and her horn was glowing.

  Even Ancaladar was up. He hadn’t actually moved, but he’d lifted his head enough to crane around the wagon to peer down at Tiercel.

  “I woke everybody up,” Tiercel said tentatively.

  Harrier made a rude sound that might have been laughter, and Kareta simply shuddered all over—possibly in sympathy to what Tiercel had seen in his dream; he couldn’t quite tell.

  “I have been expecting this, Bonded,” Ancaladar said.

  “You might have said something,” Harrier snarled, and went to build up the fire.

  A few minutes later Tiercel was sitting with a cup of warmed cordial in his hands. He could tell by the way that the air felt that it was an hour or so before dawn; under the trees it was too dark to see. Slowly, haltingly, he told the details of what he had dreamed, but he knew that telling it couldn’t convey how it had felt.

  But there was one person here that he didn’t have to explain anything to. He and Ancaladar were Bonded, and Tiercel knew that meant Ancaladar had a certain amount of access, not only to everything he saw, but to his thoughts as well.

  “You have a difficult task ahead of you, Bonded,” Ancaladar said quietly.

  “Did you …?” Tiercel asked hopefully, but Ancaladar blinked slowly in denial.

  “I did not recognize the place you see.”

  “Wait—wait—wait—” Harrier sputtered. “You—He—Ancaladar could see what you were dreaming?”

  He sounded outraged, Tiercel thought, as if Ancaladar had been spying on him while he slept. Tiercel knew that Harrier had accepted his Bond with Ancaladar, and called Ancaladar a friend—something Harrier didn’t do either easily or lightly—but Tiercel didn’t think that Harrier really understood what the Dragonbond was.

  “Yes,” Ancaladar said simply.

  “Fat lot of good it did,” Harrier said. He got up to get the tea-things.

  “It did some good,” Ancaladar said. “I have seen, through my Bonded’s mind, the nature of the enemy which you face.”

  “Dark magic,” Harrier sa
id dismissively. “We knew that already.”

  “Worse,” Ancaladar said, and Harrier stopped.

  “Tell me how it can be worse than the Dark coming back,” he said tightly.

  Ancaladar seemed to sigh. He stretched out his neck, so his chin rested on the ground beside Tiercel’s knee, and Tiercel shifted around until he could reach the place behind Ancaladar’s eye to stroke it gently.

  “It is the way in which the Dark returns, Harrier. I will explain, if you like.”

  “Oh, no,” Harrier said. “I’d much rather not know a thing about what we’re facing. Let me get dressed first.”

  A few minutes later Harrier came back, dressed for the day. He made another cup of hot cordial for Tiercel, refilled the kettle and started the water brewing for tea, and set some dried fruit to soak for griddle-cakes. “Okay. Now. Ruin my day,” he invited.

  “You have known for some time—as did the Elves since before Tiercel was born—that Darkness is returning to the world.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you’re actually going to tell us something?” Harrier said mockingly.

  “Shut up, Har,” Tiercel answered affectionately.

  “I just—” Harrier began, but Tiercel found a pebble on the ground and threw it at him, and Harrier broke off to dodge.

  “Anybody would think you didn’t want to know what’s going on, you know,” Kareta said.

  “Not if it’s bad,” Harrier said untruthfully.