The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  Though there was little people could do from the top of the wall but either jump to their deaths or—perhaps—climb down the outside of the wall using ropes, desperate men might try, and Tarnatha’Iteru did not possess enough guards to keep watch on all four of the staircases leading to the top of the city wall, and so when Harrier and Tiercel were led up the heavily guarded stairs beside the Main Gate and onto the wall itself, they saw that the other staircases had been smashed to rubble with hammers. It would be impossible to get up to the wall from anywhere but the Main Gate now.

  They reached the portion of the wall that was over the South Gate. There the Telchi came to join them—he had been out patrolling the city and the walls, as Harrier would have been under other circumstances. It seemed almost pointless to stand guard over the walls when the city was surrounded by MageShield, but nobody (Harrier supposed) really understood that, and it was just as well to give people something to do.

  “Okay,” Tiercel said in a low voice. “Here goes.”

  He didn’t raise his hands, or make any elaborate gestures like the Mock-Mages in the Festival-Day plays, and Harrier couldn’t remember whether he’d waved his hands around when he’d cast MageShield in the first place. It was just that one moment the city was surrounded by a glowing wall of purple fire that made Harrier’s eyes ache to look at it…

  … and the next moment it wasn’t.

  He blinked. The morning light was sharp and clear and honest, and he could feel the last of the night cool roll in off the desert, and the promise of the baking day’s heat to come. The Isvaieni army was almost too far away to see, but when he looked carefully he could see that the groves a few miles distant were filled with black tents. Even in summer the trees were normally in full green leaf, but now the trees were bare. Harrier supposed the shotors had eaten the leaves.

  The Guardsmen on the wall gazed around themselves in alarm, and then at Tiercel. They started toward him, and Harrier stepped forward to block their paths, knowing the Telchi was doing the same thing on the other side.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Tiercel has a plan. This is part of it.” He felt like an idiot, and all he could hope was that these men would believe him. The Consul had called him and Tiercel “boys,” and they were, and that was all that anyone seeing them would see. It was easy to forget that, when Jermayan and Idalia and Ancaladar had all treated them like men.

  “He will still defend us?” Simac asked worriedly. The young Guardsman was about Rial’s age. He might even be Rial’s cousin—Rial had said that his family was still in the city, and Harrier knew that the post of City Guard was one that was coveted in the Iteru-cities. It carried a higher status than being a member of the City Watch did back home.

  “Yes,” Harrier said, because explaining all the details of everything just wouldn’t be terribly useful. All anybody really wanted to know was that Tiercel would protect them and Tarnatha’Iteru wouldn’t be overrun.

  The Isvaieni saw that the shield was down. The sound of their distant shouting began to reach Harrier’s ears, and then it was drowned out by the sounds of the people in the city behind him. The noise built slowly, shouts and screams and scraps of sentences. Demands for information. The crash of something falling. The sounds of people shouting at each other until their voices blended into a blur of sound that simply rose in volume. Five minutes passed, and ten, and slowly the distant noise from the Isvaieni army increased until it could be heard over the noise from the city, as the Isvaieni stumbled from their tents, and saddled their shotors, and began to move toward the city in a vast wave.

  “Don’t you think—” Harrier said.

  “Wait,” Tiercel said, his voice tense.

  The ground shook as the shotors galloped forward, and the Isvaieni howled in fury; a bone-chilling sound. The army raced closer to the walls, and closer still, and showed no sign of stopping at all. Then Tiercel gestured, spreading both hands as if he were in the middle of an argument with Harrier and was making a point. And the wall of MageShield fire sprang into place once more, only scant feet away from the noses of the lead shotors. The Isvaieni had no warning. The first ranks of the army slammed into the barrier at full speed. The shotors’ riders were flung from their backs by the impact, falling beneath the feet of the animals behind them.

  “Light defend them,” Tiercel said quietly.

  The outer edges of the army, seeing the danger, desperately tried to rein in or turn aside. A few of them could, only to find themselves jammed against the barrier further down by other riders who were also desperately trying to escape the carnage. More of the Isvaieni army was swept into a collision with the MageShield by the momentum of the riders behind them, and the center of the column had no place to go. Riders plowed into each other, crushing those ahead of them against the barrier. Injured and dying shotors thrashed and screamed.

  The men on the wall cheered at the sight. In the city behind them, the mob-noises slowly turned to cheers when the people saw the shield appear once more.

  “I had to,” Tiercel said desperately. “I had to.”

  “It was the right thing to do,” Harrier said, even though he felt sick. He knew some people had died down there when Tiercel had flung up the shield right in their path, and he knew Tiercel knew it, too. They could both still hear the bleating of the injured animals—and worse, the cries of injured people.

  He wasn’t going to tell Tiercel that it was okay to have done it because the Isvaieni were going to kill them if they could, because it just wasn’t.

  “It wasn’t right,” Tiercel said, his voice agonized.

  The rear of the army—about two-thirds of it—had been able to save itself completely. Those people milled about in confusion. Some riders were retreating from the fallen, some riding after fleeing—riderless—shotors, others were moving forward to aid the injured.

  “You convinced them that your spell failed. That you got it back into place at the last possible minute. You needed to do that, Tyr. They’ll expect something like this to happen the next time. They won’t rush it again.” It wasn’t much comfort. But it was all he could give, because Harrier knew that Tiercel wouldn’t accept anything less than the truth. So it would have to be enough.

  Tiercel turned away from the edge of the wall, staggering blindly. He would have gone right off the inner edge and down a hundred feet to the street if Harrier hadn’t grabbed his elbow and dragged him back.

  “Is the Mage ill?” Simac asked, sounding worried.

  “Tired,” Harrier said.

  “I shall accompany you,” the Telchi said.

  “Leave me alone,” Tiercel snarled at Harrier.

  “Shut up,” Harrier said, and the Telchi said: “Not here.”

  One on each side of Tiercel, they walked back along the wall.

  It was a long walk. The Consul’s Palace and the Great Gate were at one end of the city, and the South Gate—where they’d been standing—was at the other. It was a distance of several miles, and going out, Harrier and Tiercel had both been glad to stretch their legs. But going back, all the guardsmen on the wall wanted to stop them and congratulate Tiercel on killing so many of the enemy. Harrier could tell that Tiercel found hearing their praise almost unbearable. He knew he should protect Tiercel. Stop them. Do something.

  But it was all he could do to keep from shouting at them himself, to keep from drawing his swords and simply forcing everyone out of their path. He killed a bunch of people and you think that’s a good thing? Harrier wanted to shout.

  Only he knew it was. Their whole plan was based on being able to kill all of those people out there, and Harrier knew that in a few days he’d be one of the people riding out of here with a sword to do it, and he was angry and terrified and he hated the thought.

  And then he thought of everyone in Armethalieh. His ma and da, and his brothers and their wives, and his nieces and nephews, and Tiercel’s parents and his sisters and his baby brother, and, oh, pretty much everyone either of them had ever m
et. And if they didn’t manage to get out of this city alive and find the Lake of Fire and do something, all of those people were going to be in as much trouble as everyone here was in right now, because the Endarkened were coming back.

  The Telchi stepped forward and said firmly that the Mage needed to rest and meditate after casting his spell. It was a ridiculous notion, but then again, nobody here had any more notion of what a High Mage did than Harrier’d had this time last year. Nonsensical as his words were, they made the guardsmen step back and leave Tiercel alone, and when the three of them reached the foot of the steps at the Main Gate, and the servant from the Audience Chamber approached them to say that the Consul wished to see them, Harrier simply repeated what the Telchi had said, and added that they’d see Consul Aldarnas when his master had refreshed himself.

  “YOU DIDN’T JUST say ‘when my master has refreshed himself,’” Tiercel said in disbelief. The moment Harrier had come in he’d known the rooms were empty—it was a weird feeling—but he’d still wanted to check. He’d been right. There was nobody here but the three of them.

  “Hey,” Harrier answered, mock-indignantly, “I wasn’t the one who decided I was your attendant back in the Audience Chamber.” At least Tiercel didn’t look quite so much as if he wanted to hit somebody now.

  “So now you’re my servant?”

  “Oh, you wish,” Harrier said feelingly. He walked over to the side-table. The breakfast dishes were gone, but there was a selection of fruit and pastry set out, a beaker of cold mint tea, and a kaffeyah service all set up and ready. Looking at it, Harrier thought that Rial had probably thought the brazier in his bag had been part of a kaffeyah set, because it looked very much like the little brazier that went under the pot to heat the water.

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly argue,” Tiercel said.

  “It’s always been my life’s ambition to wait on you hand and foot.” Any other time, Harrier would have found this conversation annoying. Now he was just grateful that Tiercel was talking about something—anything—besides what had just happened on top of the wall. He picked up the tray with the kaffeyah service and brought it over to the table. He’d prepared kaffeyah for the Telchi often enough. “Light that, will you?” he said, when he was done setting up the pot.

  “Do it yourself,” Tiercel said sulkily.

  Harrier laughed. “What am I, your servant?” Sympathy was the last thing that would be good for Tiercel, even if it was what he deserved.

  “Hah. Funny.” Tiercel pointed a finger at the brazier beneath the pot, and it whooshed into life.

  “I CAN’T DO that again,” Tiercel said a few minutes later.

  He’d been staring off at nothing as the kaffeyah brewed. Daspuc and Rial had come to the outer room—because they were supposed to be here and do something or other with Tiercel today, if just help him read through all his High Magick books—and Harrier had gone and sent them away, telling them to come back after midday. It felt very odd to him to be giving orders to Sub-Preceptors of the Light, but Tiercel’s safety (and comfort) was more important.

  At first Harrier thought that Tiercel was talking about hurting people. Every time he closed his eyes, Harrier could see the mass of bodies and hear the screaming. It had to be far worse for Tiercel—he’d caused it to happen.

  But to his surprise, Tiercel ran a hand through his hair and said: “I’m tired,” and Harrier realized that what he was talking about was walking for miles from one end of the city to the other. He frowned. There wasn’t any other way to get to the wall above the South Gate. Not anymore.

  “I shall go,” the Telchi said. “You may stand upon the wall here, and I shall alert you when it is time to replace the shield again. I shall allow them to approach closely, but not to be trapped within it.”

  “Don’t you need to see where it goes?” Harrier asked curiously.

  Tiercel gave him a long-suffering look. “I couldn’t see all sides of the city the first time, Har. No. Just… I don’t…”

  “In any event, it would be imprudent to cause great loss of life among the Isvaieni’s shotors,” the Telchi said reprovingly, before Tiercel could tell him that he didn’t want to make anything like what had happened today ever happen again. “Our purpose is to deny them the resources to feed their army.”

  And the Isvaieni would simply cook and eat the dead animals.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON Tiercel and Harrier went to another audience with the Consul; this time in his private rooms, not the Audience Chamber. The Consul thanked Tiercel for all he was doing to save the city, and promised him that once this was over, Tiercel would have all the help he could provide in locating the Lake of Fire. It was a gracious gesture, though it was hard to imagine what help that would be, unless Consul Aldarnas had information that even the Merchants’ Guild lacked.

  After they returned to their rooms, the Telchi insisted that Harrier resume his lessons—there was little else for either of them to do, he pointed out, and a shaded garden outside at their disposal. The two of them spent the entire afternoon at sword-work, and Harrier felt much better after resuming his routine.

  Tiercel dropped and recast the shield once again late that night. He told Harrier about it when Harrier got up the following morning. By then Tiercel had been awake for two days, and he was beginning to look as bad as he had back in Armethalieh when they’d both thought he was dying of something.

  During the day that followed, he dropped and recast the shield another three times. Each time—the Telchi told them—the Isvaieni mounted their shotors and rode down toward the city. But by the middle of the second day, only a few hundred would come. The guards on the walls would shoot at them while the shield was down, but only if they came close enough that they could be sure of shooting the riders and not the shotors.

  By the fourth day, Tiercel didn’t bother to search through his books for spells any longer.

  “I can’t concentrate,” he said.

  His voice was slurred. He was never left alone now—Haspuc or Rial or Harrier or the Telchi or someone else was always with him to help him stay awake. The Telchi said that by now the Isvaieni were undoubtedly very weak. He also said that they certainly wished to seem weaker than they were, so Tiercel must hold out as long as he could. And he must do it on will alone, and whatever help kaffeyah could give him. The city’s Healers had drugs to summon sleep—and drugs that would banish it, too. But too much or too little of either could have the opposite effect—and an overdose of either drug could kill. They didn’t dare take the chance.

  “So don’t,” Harrier said agreeably. “Just pay attention.” Harrier still wasn’t completely clear on how the High Magick worked, but Tiercel had said back at the beginning that the MageShield would only be there as long as he was conscious to hold the spell in place, and Harrier had to figure he knew what he was talking about.

  “I can’t,” Tiercel whined.

  Reflexively, Harrier glanced through the open doorway to the sleeping room’s window. But the light was still purple. The MageShield was still in place.

  “It’s hot in here,” Tiercel sighed. He rubbed his eyes. “I keep saying that, right?”

  “You’re running a fever,” Harrier said. “I guess it’s from staying awake.”

  Certainly Tiercel looked as if he was running a fever. His eyes were red-rimmed and glittering, his skin was pale, and his cheeks were flushed. Harrier was starting to wonder if maybe Tiercel ought to be let to try to get a couple of hours of sleep—surely the Isvaieni couldn’t get over the wall in a couple of hours. Except maybe a lot of them could. And he didn’t think that after four days awake they could wake Tiercel up after an hour or two asleep.

  Tiercel nodded jerkily. “Yeah,” he said, far too slowly. “I guess …” he trailed off and stopped, as if he’d forgotten what he wanted to say right in the middle.

  Just then Daspuc walked into the room and bowed. The young Light-priest had lost much of his fear of this peculiar situation in the last four days
. You can get used to anything with enough time, Harrier thought. “Master Harrier,” he said quietly. “It is time.”

  “Come on, Tyr,” Harrier said, taking Tiercel by the elbow and guiding him from the room.

  BY NOW HARRIER was pretty familiar with the layout of the Consul’s Palace. He led Tiercel through several private corridors and up a flight of stairs that led to the roof. Yesterday Tiercel had been unsteady on the stairs, but today he stumbled so badly on every step that Harrier practically had to drag him.

  The roof of the palace was another garden. There were plants in pots—Harrier could identify less than half of them, but all of them smelled nice—and little ornamental wooden buildings where you could sit and look out over the city, and (if the city wasn’t covered in MageShield) be cooled by the evening breeze. All Harrier cared about was that it wasn’t as far for Tiercel to walk as up to the top of the wall.

  “Okay, Tyr,” he said. “Drop the shield.”

  “Okay,” Tiercel said docilely.

  The shield vanished. Since it had been doing that every once in a while for the past few days and had always come back, nobody in the streets below paid any attention any more.

  And by now they weren’t bothering with spotters, either. They were just timing it out to the point where Tiercel put it back into place. Five minutes here, ten minutes there, because they knew by now that it would take the army at least half an hour and maybe longer to move its scouts toward the city.

  Harrier counted slowly; he knew Tiercel was too. When they got to a hundred, it would be time for Tiercel to cast the spell again. He reached a hundred.

  Nothing happened.

  “Tiercel?” he said.

  Tiercel was staring off into space, weaving slightly back and forth on his feet, his eyes unfocused. Harrier grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him violently. Tiercel gasped and stared at him wildly. “What? What?” he stammered.