The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  Tiercel looked up at the sun. “Maybe. The desertfolk don’t like to travel by day. So they’ll be in camps right now. Shotors should be easy to steal.”

  “If I was a shotor and got grabbed by a dragon, I’d bolt as soon as my feet touched the ground again.”

  “Well, that’s why I’ll—” cast MageShield around Ancaladar as soon as he lands, Tiercel had been about to say, but in the middle of his sentence Harrier got fluidly to his feet.

  He flipped Roneida’s sword out of his belt toward Tiercel—it landed in Tiercel’s lap with a stinging thump—and drew both his swords. “Come out,” Harrier said harshly, his back to the wall. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.”

  SHAIARA WAS PRUDENT. Even though it was the hottest part of the day, because the quality of the intruders remained unknown, she sent a group of hunters out through one of the escape passages and over the sand to come at the Iteru-courtyard from the terraces while she led a second band through the passage. She did not mean for the intruders to escape. Nor, if by any chance there were others with them that Raffa and Ciniran had not seen, would knowledge of their presence escape the Nalzindar. Her people would not be able to escape their fate at Bisochim’s hands if their sanctuary here had been discovered, but they would at least be able to make their peace with Sand and Star before the end.

  She knew from her own experience how long it would take the others to cross the miles of sand that lay between the escape route and the courtyard, and timed her own group’s stealthy procession toward the mouth of the passage accordingly, for there was no real cover between the entrance to the garden-chambers and the exit to the outside. The only concealment was distance and darkness.

  But even that failed her, for when Shaiara’s band were still so far down the passage that the two intruders were no more than faint specks against the brightness, one of them sprang to his feet, and Shaiara saw the glitter of steel in his hands.

  “Come out,” she heard him say. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.”

  His companion scrambled to his feet far less gracefully, and though the weapon the first intruder had thrown to him clattered to the stone, he did not stoop to retrieve it.

  “Harrier? What?” she heard the second intruder say. When she heard his voice she realized that neither of them was a man grown, as she had first thought. Both boys, but she would not make the mistake of thinking them less dangerous for their youth.

  “This place is not deserted,” the one called Harrier said in tones of disgust.

  Hearing that, Shaiara allowed herself a tiny spark of hope. If they had not come seeking her people, if they, like the Nalzindar, had come in search of a deserted refuge …

  What still mattered most at this moment was how such innocents had come so far into the Barahileth, as much as who they were. She saw no bows or stone-throwers in their hands, merely swords, and her people were armed with many of both, as well as hunting spears such as she herself carried, so she motioned to Kamar to nock an arrow and continued forward.

  “Are you sure?” Harrier’s companion said. “Because—”

  “Light and Darkness, Tyr! There are people out there, okay! Pick up the damned sword!”

  “Um …”

  The one Harrier called “Tyr” did not reach for a weapon that Shaiara saw. But he gestured, and suddenly the passage was blocked with purple light.

  No one knew what to do. But the purple light did not move, and so Shaiara ran down the passageway toward it until she was within range, and flung the spear in her hand with all the strength she possessed. To her anger and despair, it struck the light and bounced away just as if she had thrown it against stone.

  “Hello?” she heard from the other side of the light. “Hello? We don’t want to hurt you. We didn’t know anybody was here. I’m Tiercel and this is my friend Harrier, and—”

  “Oh, for the Light’s sake, Tyr, they’re probably more of those people who burned down Tarnatha’Iteru! Do you think they’re going to listen to you?”

  “We have burned nothing,” Shaiara called, taking another cautious step toward the glowing wall.

  “Shaiara!” Kamar said urgently from behind her. She raised a hand to silence him. The wall was not moving, and they must learn as much as they could about this new enemy. She had little doubt now that they were enemies. Only the Endarkened or their creatures could wield such unnatural power, and all knew that the mouths of the Endarkened were stuffed with lies.

  “Well someone did,” the one called Harrier responded. She wondered how he could be a warrior skillful enough to sense the approach of a Nalzindar hunting party and still bawl as loudly as a shotor that did not wish to be loaded. Surely his enemies must hear him coming for miles away.

  “And you have come here to blame us?” Shaiara demanded scornfully.

  “We have come here to—”

  “Harrier!”

  “Tiercel!”

  “All I was going to—”

  “Shut up.”

  Were the situation not so grim, Shaiara would have been moved either to disbelief or to mirth. She hardly knew what to think. They wielded the weapons of the Endarkened. But they argued like children.

  “Hello?” It was the one Harrier had called both “Tyr” and “Tiercel.”

  “I am still here,” Shaiara said stiffly.

  “Oh. Good. I can hear you, but I can’t see you. It’s dark in the tunnel, and the MageShield isn’t completely transparent. It won’t hurt you. It’s just a spell of the High Magick.”

  “Oh, yeah, great, Tyr, tell them everything.”

  “Well, Har, unless they’re Endarkened, there isn’t much they can do with the information. And if they are Endarkened, they already know. And—oh, yes. We’d both already be dead.”

  “We are not Endarkened,” Shaiara said stiffly, coming closer.

  “No, no, no. I wasn’t saying you were. I don’t think you are. I mean, I really hope you aren’t,” the one called Tiercel said. His stumbling copious words were those of a child, and he spoke as if without wisdom, but the more she pondered, the less Shaiara thought it could be true. No foolish child could wield such power as he had already displayed.

  “I hope you are not as well,” Shaiara said politely. Unwise as it might seem to be so trusting, she found it unlikely that Endarkened wouldn’t simply have killed them already. Instead of—as these two seemed to wish—attempting to drive them mad.

  “Oh, we’re not. We’re not. I mean, we’d say we weren’t, even if we were—”

  “Tiercel!”

  “—but we really aren’t. Besides, I don’t think MageShield is an Endarkened spell. No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Anyway, we’re here to destroy the Endarkened. Well, not here. But, um, near here.”

  “Oh, fine, fine.” That was the one called Harrier again. Shaiara was beginning to have some sympathy for him.

  There was a silence from the other side of the cold purple fire. Shaiara was close enough to it now that if it had given off heat she would have felt it, and it did not. “What is the High Magick?” she asked cautiously, when she heard the two of them say nothing else.

  “A very old kind of—good—magic that was used to fight the Endarkened during the Last War,” the one called Tiercel said. “Oh, and Harrier wants me to tell you that I’ve put up MageShield at the other end of the tunnel, too, so the people you sent around the other way can’t get at us either. So don’t bother.”

  Shaiara turned back to the other Nalzindar. She could not see if the strangers’ words were truth, but if they were, she would not leave her people out in the afternoon sun if they did not need to be. All had heard the one called Tiercel’s words; she flicked her fingers at Natha, and he began running, light-footed as an ikulas on the hunt, toward the nearest exit to the surface. He would find Ciniran and the others, and tell them that if they saw purple fire at the entrance to the passageway, they should choose one among them to remain on watch and the rest should return to the safety
of their secret underground lair.

  “It’s okay, though,” the one called Tiercel continued. “I know you don’t want to trust us. I guess you’re probably hiding here. Maybe you’re hiding from the other Isvaieni? The ones who burned the Iteru-cities? We, um, really aren’t sure exactly why they did that….”

  “Because the Shadow-Touched has corrupted them,” Shaiara said brusquely. Burned the Iteru-cities? She hoped with all her heart that it wasn’t true, but it made a terrible sense. Bisochim had said that all the peoples of the world save the Isvaieni rejected the True Balance and would seek to kill all those who walked in the true ways only Bisochim and his followers now saw. If that were true, then the logical thing to do was to carry the war to the enemy. First.

  “Oh, good,” Harrier said. “I was hoping there was a reasonable explanation, after hearing Zanattar go on about False Balances and True Balances and how we were all evil before he and his friends came and killed several thousand people.”

  “Zanattar?” Shaiara asked sharply. “Zanattar of the Lanzanur Isvaieni?”

  “Um … we really aren’t—” Tiercel began.

  “Yes,” Harrier said, and his voice was hard. “That’s who he said he was.”

  “But”—and in all the years since she had come to lead the Nalzindar, Shaiara had never felt so lost and bewildered—”how could the Lanzanur destroy one of the Iteru? They are not a numerous tribe.”

  “All the tribes banded together,” the one called Harrier said, and now his voice was no longer that of a boy, but that of a warrior, filled with the darkness and quiet of one who held the lives of men in his hands to do with as he chose. “All of them. Except yours. If you’re Isvaieni. Which I guess you’ve got to be, if you’re out here in the middle of the Isvai. It would be kind of nice to know how you escaped getting ‘; Shadow-Touched.’”

  “We fled,” Shaiara answered, and her voice was as hard as his. “The Shadow-Touched came to Sapthiruk preaching his new doctrine of a False Balance and a True. At first I could not believe what my eyes told me: that the greatest of the Wildmages should have fallen to the Shadow, or that he would use the Wild Magic to bend the minds of others so. But I saw the light of reason leached from the eyes of the leaders of a dozen tribes that day as Bisochim spoke of war. And before I or my people could fall under his spell as well, we came here.”

  “It’s a great story,” the one called Harrier answered. “And I’d be more likely to believe it if the road to his fortress didn’t go right past your front door.”

  “Nor do I believe whatever story you will eventually choose to tell,” Shaiara answered steadily.

  “Now, see? That’s the great thing about being a High Mage,” the one called Tiercel said. “We don’t actually have to wait around here for anybody to believe anybody.”

  Suddenly Shaiara heard shouts of dismay—audible even through the barrier of purple fire—from the surface outside.

  “It’s all right! It’s all right!” she heard the one called Tiercel shout. “It’s just Ancaladar!”

  LESS THAN AN hour later, the Nalzindars’ tent had been brought up and pitched on the sand in front of the Iteru-courtyard. Their new mats of woven grass had been brought up and laid upon the sand—for Shaiara was determined to do all honor to their guests—and a kaffeyah service had been brought. They did not have much kaffeyah left—and no way to get more—but Shaiara was grateful that they had husbanded their meager supplies in order to be able to offer it now.

  It was not possible to argue with the reality of what her own eyes showed her—to dispute truth was not something the Nalzindar did. And what her eyes showed her was the presence of Ancaladar Star-Crowned, who had ridden the winds before the Isvaieni had come to the sands of the south, and who had helped to cast Darkness into oblivion so very long ago.

  Tiercel and Harrier were not well-versed in the proper way of telling a tale. They came from far away in the Great Cold, and Tiercel said that there everything was written down in books, which must be (Shaiara supposed) why they spoke so badly—and perhaps why they spoke so loudly as well. But she was patient, and soon enough she had the whole of the tale. It meshed with hers like the fingers of two hands. To know with certainty that Bisochim’s intention was to call back the Endarkened filled Shaiara with despair.

  “Why?” she said.

  “Because they’re evil?” Harrier said.

  It had taken him far longer to trust her and her people than it had taken the Nalzindar to extend their own trust. The tale they brought explained much of that. But Tiercel simply insisted that they must be allies, for no better reason than because Shaiara’s people had not attempted to kill them yet.

  “No,” Tiercel said. “Why would this Bisochim do what the Endarkened want, if he’s a Wildmage? You wouldn’t.”

  Shaiara looked at Harrier in surprise. He shrugged, but did not deny what Tiercel implied. She would require him to state it plainly later, however—she was not entirely certain she trusted the peculiar speech of the North. “Maybe they—I don’t know—lied to him,” Harrier said.

  Tiercel frowned. “Somebody told him he needed to fix the Balance.”

  Shaiara saw him glance at Harrier, and saw Harrier shrug. “There’s nothing wrong with it that I know of,” he said slowly. He hesitated. “It’s a good story, though.”

  “An excellent one,” Shaiara said bitterly, “since it has called my brethren to war.”

  Harrier sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “So he’s going to fix the Balance—which isn’t broken, by the way—by killing everybody?”

  “No,” Tiercel said, and he sounded certain of this. “He’s going to do it by bringing back the Endarkened. Think, Har. What did Zanattar say?”

  Shaiara saw Harrier’s brow furrow in concentration. Were he one of her own people, she could be certain Zanattar’s words would be rendered exactly. Now, she could not be sure. But when he spoke, she heard the echo of the Isvaieni in his words.

  “‘Since the time of the Great Flowering, the Balance of the World has been out of true, for the Light destroyed the great evil that beset the world in that time—as was only right—but those who kept the Light in those days did not stop where they should have, and so ever since that day, the Great Balance has been tipping more and more away from what the Wild Magic means it to be. Generation after generation has followed this False Balance, upholding it for their own purposes—’”

  He went on to the end of the words Zanattar had spoken to him. They were not Zanattar’s words, though, Shaiara knew. They were Bisochim’s.

  “So he must think—or have been convinced—that because the Endarkened have been destroyed, there’s something wrong with the Wild Magic now, and the only way to fix it is to … bring the Endarkened back,” Tiercel said. His voice wavered with a disbelief Shaiara understood all-too-well.

  “I’m not even going to mention how stupid it is to decide to fix the Wild Magic, considering he’s been corrupted by Endarkened,” Harrier said in disgust. “The only question now is, what do we do about it?”

  “You?” Shaiara asked, and though she did her best to school her voice, she knew her tone conveyed her disbelief.

  Tiercel smiled shyly at her. “The, um, the Elves …”

  “Wanted Tiercel to come up with an idea to solve this whole problem,” Harrier said bitterly.

  “Could you do better?” Shaiara asked sharply.

  “No!” Harrier blurted. “That isn’t the point! This is the Endarkened we’re talking about, Noble’dy. Yes, Tyr is the first High Mage born since the Great Flowering—okay, almost, Tyr. That doesn’t mean he has a better idea of how to destroy the Endarkened than the Elves do. And they aren’t doing anything.”

  “They just don’t want to tell me what to do because—”

  “—they think they’re going to make the same mistakes they made with Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy, and frankly, I don’t think that—”

  “Enough!” Shaiara said. Both of them regarded her in su
rprise. “It does not matter why the Elder Brethren will not help, if they will not,” she finished, more mildly.

  “Yes it does,” Tiercel said. “You see—”

  “Shut up, Tyr,” Harrier said. “Okay, there’s a long really boring explanation that doesn’t make any sense, Noble’dy. But it’s pretty much that they’re afraid to make things worse. And … I guess we’re afraid to ask anybody else for help, too. In case they believe in this ‘; False Balance’ thing.”

  Shaiara nodded. That much made sense to her, who had seen her fellow Isvaieni throw aside all that she had once thought they knew of truth and sense between Sand and Star to do that which she would have believed they would have died rather than do. “It does not explain how it is that you will accomplish the task which the Elder Brethren have set you.”

  “Perhaps the answer is here,” Ancaladar said. “This place is far older than I. Yet I recognize its like.”

  “A city of Demons?” Shaiara asked in disbelief, using the oldest name for the Endarkened.

  The Star-Crowned blinked slowly. “Not Demons, Shaiara. They do not build cities, nor do their creatures build cities in the light. This was once a place of Elves. And—if I am correct—of my kind as well.”

  “It must have been a really long time ago,” Tiercel said, looking around.

  “Elves and dragons together, and Ancaladar doesn’t remember it?” Harrier frowned. “That would be, um …”

  “From the time of Great Queen Vieliessar Farcarinon,” the Star-Crowned answered. “And thus, from a time long before there were truly Men at all.”

  “Elven Mages,” Harrier said, as if he’d solved the answer to a riddle.

  “Yes,” the Star-Crowned said, sounding pleased. “In that age, the Elves held all the world. Then He Who Is came, intending to make it his, and his children’s, and Vieliessar Farcarinon made the Great Bargain, to win our aid for her battle.”

  “But, um,” Tiercel said, looking puzzled.

  “And then, yes, the Endarkened were cast down, and Vieliessar Farcarinon paid the second half of her Price. She renounced magic on behalf of the Elves forever.”