The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  Then, when the wall was clear, the Isvaieni took oil and rags and fire, and shot flaming arrows over the walls into the city until they tired of the game.

  And then they waited for night.

  As they waited, they swept through the surrounding countryside. There were fat flocks set out to graze, and they slaughtered every single animal. Soon the luscious scent of roast meat wafted up into the city—along with the screams of the unfortunate herdsmen, though the screaming did not go on for long.

  There were also orchards surrounding Ilukhan’Iteru. When the Isvaieni had finished their feasting, they stripped the trees of their fruit, then cut them all down, for on the march toward Ilukhan’Iteru, Zanattar had pondered the question of how he might gain entrance to the city if its rulers should prove wiser than those who had overseen Orinaisal’Iteru had been. He knew nothing of cities, but there were many in his army who had actually walked the streets of an Iteru-city, and so Zanattar knew that each of the Iteru-cities had four gates, and that the gates opened inward, and his own eyes told him that three of the gates were made of wood, and any fool knew that wood burned. Zanattar directed his army to pile the wood at three of the four gates leading into the city. It was quite safe for them to do so, as his archers shot anyone who appeared upon the walls.

  When night fell, they set fire to the pyres they had built against the gates. Once the smell of the smoke reached the city-dwellers, men rushed to the walls again, but the Isvaieni had a great supply of arrows. No one was able to pour water down upon the pyres from above, nor to drop heavy stones upon the blaze to scatter the wood, nor succeed in doing any other thing to quench the burning. Soon, even over the sound of the blaze, Zanattar could hear the sound of the soft city-dwellers shouting and quarreling with each other, and he smiled.

  On three sides of the city, his army stood visible in the light of the burning pyres. Some held torches, and others fired upon the guards upon the walls. On the fourth side, the side where the Great Gate stood, all was darkness and silence.

  And soon enough, the great metal gates swung inward as people attempted to flee the city.

  Then the warriors that Zanattar had concealed there when darkness fell, rushed upon those who fled, and slit their throats with sharp geschaks, and rushed into the city, howling a cry of victory.

  It took them much longer to kill everyone here, for this city was much larger than the last, but in the end they were victorious. A few Isvaieni died in the fighting, but only a few. Despite which, Zanattar felt each death keenly.

  This time, there was no dispute as to whether the Iteru should be poisoned. As soon as the killing was done, and their own water supply replenished, and each shotor had drunk its fill, it became a game to find the deadliest poisons with which to taint the water. They found a storehouse of ishnain, and slit bag after bag of the choking white powder, throwing it into the cistern below until the water turned white. Salt, too, so much that the Iteru would never run sweet again, and several sacks of dust that Baralda found in one of the shops and said was a metal-poison that his people traded: it turned the water blue as the jashyna-stone, or the sky at sunset.

  Then they filled the well with bodies, and tore down the remains of the gates. This time Zanattar decreed that all that could be burned should be heaped around the walls before they set fire to the town, for the walls were high, and thick, and he did not know how else they might be brought down.

  They stayed to watch the city burn, hoping for a sign from the Wild Magic that they were doing that which it asked of them. Zanattar hoped most of all, for in his heart, despite his brave words to Kazat and Larazir, he hoped for true guidance and certainty. He was the son of Kataduk, who had raised him to succeed her as the leader of the Lanzanur Isvaieni, but never had he thought to lead so many to do so much. Nor had he thought to ask such things of the people he led, for in ordinary times the leader of a tribe settled small disputes, set dowries, helped his people to keep the Balance, led them in matters of hunting and trade.

  But these were not ordinary times, and now the Balance—the True Balance—had called Zanattar to lead a greater tribe than any he had ever imagined to keep a greater Balance than any he had ever suspected. And there was no storyteller or song-weaver beside him, no Wildmage to come out of the desert at the time of greatest need. Nor could he rely on the ancient desert custom that his enemy would stop with harsh words and blows and perhaps the raiding of flocks. No, this enemy sought his life-blood and that of all Isvaieni. And so, though he told himself that Bisochim would come to them if this course were not what the Wild Magic willed, now Isvaieni blood had been spilled, and Zanattar knew in his heart that he must seek a sign from the Wild Magic itself if he was to lead his people onward. And so he watched Ilukhan’Iteru as it burned, and waited.

  And to his joy, and to that of all who followed him, they saw great cracks appear in the walls, and the section over the Great Gate collapsed entirely. It was not as glorious a sign as if the earth had opened and swallowed the city whole, but they were not children, who needed to be taken by the hand and shown wonders. It was a sign. It was enough.

  They continued onward.

  There were times when they must wait outside a city for a sennight and more before it fell to them, and times when the city’s defenders rushed out at the first sight of them to do battle. The road between the Iteru-cities was a hard one, for the small traveler’s wells had never been meant to provision an army in its thousands, and with each day that passed, more Isvaieni came to them from out of the desert, until all who had ridden out of Telinchechitl had joined them. Zanattar thought bleakly that did the fat city-dwellers know how exhausted and thirsty the army that stood outside their gates was, they would not be so afraid. Often, only sheer numbers saved the Isvaieni from destruction—Zanattar could not count the number of times he had yanked one of his exhausted brethren from the path of a killing blow.

  They spent longer in each Iteru-city recovering after each battle, and did all that they could to find ways to carry sufficient water with them. And every one of them knew that there was no possible way that it could be done—not if there were ten pack-shotors for every Isvaieni here. And there were not.

  Food was no difficulty. There was food in abundance in each Iteru-city that fell to them, theirs for the taking. And here in the Madiran, game was plentiful. It was water that they lacked. Water for their shotors. Water for themselves.

  But never, no matter the cost to them, did they fail to destroy the Iteru at the heart of each city that they burned. Every Isvaieni believed the truth of what Zanattar had said: to destroy the wells from which the Iteru-cities drew their life was to destroy the ability of the enemy to rebuild the cities themselves.

  Perhaps eight thousand Isvaieni had ridden out of the Barahileth to search for the Nalzindar. They were the future of the tribes, for all that remained behind were old men and women, and children too young to go. Of that number, something over six thousand remained when Zanattar approached the walls of Tarnatha’Iteru. Of the dead, some had fallen to enemy blades and arrows, some to weakness upon the march. The names of all would be remembered as heroes, valiant warriors in the first battles that the Isvaieni had fought against the Darkness that sought to claim them all.

  The road north from Laganda’Iteru was harder than many before it, for the Wild Magic seemed to have turned its face from them from the moment they reached its gates. The city was roused to its danger long before they drew near. They drummed and chanted as they always did, but never before had the city-dwellers seemed to be aware of their peril. Here the walls were ringed with torches immediately, and the arrows of the city-dwellers blackened the sky.

  Zanattar’s people could not shoot back—they had exhausted the last of their arrows sennights ago, and they could scavenge no replacements. The bows of the city-dwellers used a longer shaft; it would not fit the short desert bows of the Isvaieni. But by now his people well knew the distance an arrow fired by one of the City Guard could travel
. They drew back and waited, as always, slaking their hunger on the city’s flocks. This time they could not build pyres against the gates, for they could not approach the city walls in safety, and Zanattar would not spend the lives of hundreds of his people to set fires their enemies would quickly quench. Instead, they burned the trees where they stood, for the wind was with them, and the thick black smoke rolled over the city. And Zanattar waited, hoping for a sign that their great enemy had not turned his attention to the Madiran once more, hoping he had not led his people to their deaths out of carelessness and pride.

  He nearly despaired, but at last he knew that the True Balance had not forsaken them, for in the depths of the night, the gates of the city opened—not one gate, but three, and Zanattar was not slow to take advantage of this gift, though it was a two-handed gift, giving and taking away in equal measure, for the people of the city fled into the night, and the Isvaieni dared not follow. Zanattar heard the fleeing hoof-beats, but his warriors were on foot—rushing toward the open gate before it should be closed again, before the guards should think to look outside the wall instead of in. Half his army, moving stealthily through the night, the other half to guard their tents and shotors against unforeseen attack—for to lose those was to lose all—and to pretend to any who watched that they were the whole of the Isvaieni army, waiting in plain sight.

  But Zanattar’s chosen Faithful took the gates. They held the gates, and ran up the stairs, and took the walls, and flung the men upon them to their deaths, and Zanattar and Luranda’s men and women filled the city.

  But this time, as they killed, the city burned around them, for those who had fled had set fires to cover their tracks, and the fires spread. The Isvaieni were forced from the city by the flames before their work was done. They killed everyone who tried to follow them, but when the work was done and the cost of the battle was reckoned, there was wailing and lamentation among the tents of the Isvaieni, for many who had entered the city in Bisochim’s name did not come forth again.

  It was three days before the fires died and the army could enter Laganda’Iteru again. When they did, the Isvaieni discovered that the mechanisms that could be used to draw water up out of the Iteru had been burned away. Zanattar searched for Luranda’s body everywhere, but he did not find it. Everything had been burned away—what had been city was now charred waste—there were pieces of what had once been city-dweller houses, and piles of broken stone, and the air swirled with choking gray dust. They had saved the bodies of those that they had killed outside the walls to defile it, and were grateful now that they had, for within the city itself there were no bodies left with which to poison it. With the pumping mechanisms gone, it was the work of a full day to provide the army with even the bare minimum of water, and what they drew up tasted of charcoal and ash. In those long hours, Zanattar came to know that the Wild Magic had not turned its face from him—but he also knew that the face that the Isvai showed to her children was often unforgiving and merciless.

  “We are being tested,” he said when they left the city. His chosen chaharums, the trusted men and women who did all just as he would do it, carrying his words among the great army—for Zanattar himself could not be everywhere among so many—gathered around him. They would hear his words and pass them to the people, so that his words could be known by all. “As a father tests a son, or a master hunter tests one who comes to him for teaching. To cleanse this city has been hard. We have all lost friends and comrades. I say to you: our road shall become harder yet. I will think badly of no Isvaieni who wishes to return to Bisochim now. You have all won many victories. He will welcome you. Give me no answer now, but carry my words to all the people.”

  The chaharums did as Zanattar had bid them, and he waited a full day and a night, and not one of the Isvaieni chose to leave.

  WHEN THEY REACHED the gates of Tarnatha’Iteru, Zanattar knew he had been right to fear the Wild Magic’s harsh testing. They approached by night, and in stealth, but guard-dogs alerted the city, and warning-beacons were lit, and the wall was ringed with torches. His people were weary with the long journey here, and there had been little food and less water on the long days of the journey. They must take the city, and take it soon, if they were to survive.

  It was for this reason that when the two children—bold and unafraid—rode out to face his army, Zanattar did not slay them immediately. Such foolishness, such madness, must be another sign, and he wished to interpret it before he acted.

  One boy had hair the color of a newborn shotor’s coat, and eyes the color of the desert sky. The other had hair the color of embers, and he bore twin swords upon his back, and gazed at Zanattar as if he wished him to die. Yet it was the sky-eyed one who spoke, offering bold words of question and challenge, and Zanattar answered him fairly, even though he said—plainly—that he served the False Balance.

  Zanattar wondered if this—this—was what all the tests and ordeals he and his people had been sent by the Wild Magic had been for. If, perhaps, Zanattar had been given the power through his passion and his sacrifice to convince those who followed the False Balance to turn from their error. For surely, if he could turn strangers from Armethalieh Itself to the way of the True Balance, then perhaps it would be time to follow a new way, a way of words and persuasion? He spoke long and carefully, bringing forth all the words he had kept in his heart, all the words he had heard Bisochim say, all the words he knew to be true and good.

  And the child rejected them all.

  Zanattar knew, then, that they must be the first to die, as a sign to all who remained within the city. Perhaps this was why they had been sent forth: so that the people of Tarnatha’Iteru, seeing them die, would allow their own deaths to be quick. He reached for his awardan—

  —and a sudden wall of light, bright and shocking, appeared between him and the children. He shouted in surprise at the unnatural thing, and his shotor bawled in terror, and all around him, the people were cast into confusion and terror.

  By the time he could force his beast to kneel and return to the purple light, the city was gone. All that remained was the light, covering it like a great upturned bowl. He drew his awardan and struck it, but the steel only rang off the light, as if he had struck stone. And then Zanattar knew the true reason why they had been tested so long and so hard, given so many chances to turn aside from their path. Their great enemy had already returned to the Madiran. He had come in the form of children—did not all the ancient story-songs teach that the Endarkened could take on many forms that were fair and pleasing?

  The story-songs also taught that the power of Darkness was weak at first, requiring allies and sacrifices. They must have come seeking both. But if his people were strong enough, and strong in their devotion to the Wild Magic, they could yet prevail. And victory would be won for the True Balance here.

  Fourteen

  City Under Siege

  HARRIER AND TIERCEL rode back to the Main Gate. The wall of MageShield was closer here than it was between the south wall of the city and the Isvaieni army, forming a corridor about twenty yards wide. Their horses kept shying, both from the sight of their own shadows on the city wall, and then from the glowing wall of MageShield. While the shape of the shield was firm and immobile, and it wasn’t at all warm, the light of its surface rippled and shifted like flames, and the horses didn’t like that at all.

  After a few minutes, the noise began.

  It had never really been quiet, because the city had been filled with shouting even when they left. But now everyone in the city had seen the sky turn bright glowing purple—even if they couldn’t see the fact that the city was surrounded by walls of purple fire—and it sounded as if there were riots going on in the city. Harrier only hoped the Militia was actually being of some use and keeping order, because if they weren’t, people were going to be killing each other soon.

  It wasn’t just the city making noise now, either. The refugees from Laganda’Iteru had all said that the Isvaieni army had approached thei
r walls making a lot of noise. They’d approached Tarnatha’Iteru in silence, but they weren’t silent now. They were shouting, and it sounded like chanting, and there were a lot of them. Too many to make out anything like words—it just sounded like the worst kind of winter storm back home—wind and rain and the ocean beating against the docks. Every once in a while Harrier would glance up at the top of the wall. Guardsmen stood all along the top, looking down at them, but they were all wearing their helmets, and Harrier couldn’t see any of their expressions.

  It seemed as if something like their return to the city ought to take place in eerie and utter silence, but it didn’t. There was so much noise he could barely hear himself think. He couldn’t tell what was coming from within the city, and what was coming from outside of it, and all that noise wasn’t making the horses any calmer, either. The ride back to the Main Gate seemed like the longest journey he thought he’d ever taken, and even if the inside of the city was probably just about as bad as the middle of the Isvaieni army right now, Harrier couldn’t wait to get inside, and, looking at Tiercel, he was pretty sure he felt the same way. When they got to the Main Gate, Harrier shouted up to Batho to open them up and let them in.

  And Batho refused.

  “Who are you?” he shouted down. He had to shout, because between the noise from the city behind him and the noise from the Isvaieni army outside of it, it was rapidly becoming impossible to hear yourself think.