The Enduring Flame Trilogy 003 - The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  He felt Ancaladar’s snort of amusement in his mind. Am I not Ancaladar Star-Crowned, Bonded? But you will stop him, if I do not.

  “Yeah, right. Come on. We have work to do.”

  While everything else had been going on, the survivors had organized themselves, just as they had after every battle. There was no panic and little confusion; nearly everyone here was a veteran of a long and bitter campaign. Ummarai took stock of their people, determined who was most gravely injured, who could wait for Healing, what must be done at once, what might wait, what would be good to have if only the world were the world they wished it to be.

  Before he began to deal with the injured, Harrier conjured enormous blocks of ice into being on the floor of the Barahileth. It was something he’d never thought he’d be able to do, but he’d seen Bisochim do it, and Ancaladar had trained Jermayan and trained Tiercel, Ancaladar could give him a few pointers. It was surprisingly easy: the regh was still sodden from the sennights of unrelenting rain, so there was a lot of water available. The ice-blocks would melt quickly, but they’d provide shade for a few hours, and a little coolness in the furnace heat of the Barahileth.

  Once that was done, he began Healing people.

  It was a disorienting sensation to Heal without counting the cost or hearing the tiny implacable voice of the Wild Magic seeking his acceptance of MagePrice. It didn’t matter that he would never again need to worry about being able to pay spell-cost, or need to seek out people willing to share spell-price, or that his Bonded’s power was his without asking. Harrier asked. Permission of those he Healed. Permission of Ancaladar to draw upon the freely-given gift. It would be too easy to think that this was something he had a right to otherwise. He’d lied to Tiercel, once upon a time, telling him that the Wild Magic had asked him to renounce his Books when Ahairan was destroyed. He’d come too close, today, to having his Books renounce him.

  Ancaladar warned him—and Harrier assumed (correctly) that he warned Tiercel as well—that when he passed through Pelashia’s Veil, they might sense a disruption in the Bond. Harrier found that having the Veil between him and Ancaladar was like having the roaring of surf constantly in his ears, and he couldn’t hear Ancaladar’s voice any longer. He was surprised at how much of a wrench it was to lose a Bond that had only been in place for a few hours, and he told himself he didn’t care, because it didn’t affect his ability to draw on Ancaladar’s power, and that was the important thing right now.

  Harrier worked his way through the serious injuries: infected blisters and open sores and burns, because even rainclouds were no protection from the brutal desert sun. There were a thousand interruptions—people wanting to know what they’d do now, what they should do next—and Harrier didn’t have any answers. He was so busy that he barely registered hearing Ancaladar’s voice again. Ancaladar told him that he’d been to Githilnamanaranath and spoken to Vairindiel Elvenqueen, and that Vairindiel Elvenqueen said that she would send help immediately. Harrier was pretty sure he had a good idea of the Elves’ “immediately” by now. He dismissed Ancaladar’s comment and went on working.

  THE tents were up. The babies and the youngest children were under shelter. It was as much as they could do: Harrier had asked, and even the High Magick couldn’t turn regh into fuel. They could do a little cooking. After that, what they butchered would have to be eaten raw.

  There was so much to do, and he wasn’t even half finished doing it, but Harrier was walking away from their makeshift Healing tent (no tent at all, just carpets out in the open) to renew the ice-blocks, because they’d melted, and he needed to put up more. They weren’t much in the way of shelter, but they were something. He glanced at the stone corrals, and wondered if Tiercel could make whole buildings. Light knew they didn’t want to stay here, but they couldn’t leave at this exact moment, either.

  He was feeling just a little grumpy, because when you’d won you ought to get to celebrate, not be handed a whole new manifest of problems, when he saw an enormous shadow flicker across the regh. He looked up and saw Ancaladar spiraling down through the sky, and saw Tiercel running across the desert to meet him.

  “Don’t you know better than to run during the day in the desert yet, Tyr?” Harrier muttered under his breath, and walked sedately out to join them.

  AFTER spending so many moonturns complaining about how the Elves never did anything soon enough, both Harrier and Tiercel were amazed at how fast they could act when they wanted to. Against all of Harrier’s expectations, Vairindiel Elvenqueen had actually meant “immediately” when she said “immediately.” Less than an hour after Ancaladar arrived, the sky over Telinchechitl was filled with dragons from the Elven Lands. Harrier was happy to let the Elves take charge of the enormous task of feeding and sheltering and Healing thousands of people. Now dragons in every possible color basked on the stone at the foot of Telinchechitl and along the steps leading to the top, and the desert was filled with enormous flower-bright Elven pavilions—enough to hold all the refugees and half the livestock, too. Harrier found it wildly disconcerting that tents made of fabric so thin that he could see shadows through them managed to be morning-cool on the inside while it was still the same old Barahileth on the outside. Shaiara didn’t like them at all, and Harrier found himself pressed into service once more, reassuring the skittish Isvaieni that the arrival of the Elder Kin wasn’t a just a prelude to some new disaster. Harrier barely found time to eat the food Shaiara shoved into his hands in passing—the members of the war-band were the only ones whole and healthy enough to deal with the many tasks that the Elven Mages simply couldn’t: Elves had lived apart from Men for so many centuries that they understood the Isvaieni as poorly as the Isvaieni understood them, and after fighting Ahairan for so long, the desertfolk were not so much mistrustful as wildly paranoid—and it hardly registered on Harrier that for the first time in nearly a year he was eating fresh-baked bread, and cheese, and savory spiced meat.

  It was late in the afternoon before the immediate needs of Ahairan’s last victims were dealt with—every last person and animal fed, and Healed, and sheltered—and Harrier was looking for some place to simply lie down and rest when Ancaladar told him that he and Tiercel had been summoned to an audience with Vairindiel Elvenqueen.

  HARRIER felt as if he ought to wipe his boots before he stepped onto the carpet inside the royal pavilion, only there wasn’t any place to wipe them, and the only thing on his boots was dust, anyway. He shivered when he walked inside and once again the temperature dropped sharply. Maybe Shaiara had a point.

  He really didn’t want to be here.

  Tiercel had apparently found time not only to take a bath and shave sometime in the last several hours, but to get some new clothes. They were all in shades of cream and sand and gold: tunic and leggings and boots and long sleeveless vest and glittering complicated sash. Seeing Tiercel in the Elven outfit looked odd after so many moonturns of seeing him wearing the same filthy tattered desert robes Harrier was wearing, and it only reminded Harrier sharply of how he must look. His once-blue Wildmage robes were faded and ragged, grimy with dirt and ash and black rain and blood. He had most of a year’s growth of beard on his face and the last thing he’d had that had even halfway resembled a bath had been ice cold and without soap, rinsing salt and ash from his skin in water from Abi’Abadshar’s iteru.

  The desert sun shining through the green silk made the inside of the tent look like the inside of a forest. The tent was filled with furniture—tables and chairs and carpets and lanterns. Harrier still wasn’t sure where all of that had come from, because when the dragons had landed, they’d all been wearing carrying baskets, but all of this stuff just wouldn’t fit . . .

  Tiercel nudged him with his foot in a “pay attention” way. He could tell Tiercel was amused and exasperated, but he couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking—not in actual words—and Harrier was very grateful. At least the part of the Bond where they were living inside each others’ heads seemed to be going awa
y. Being Bonded to Ancaladar was wonderful. Being Bonded to Tiercel Isallen Rolfort was . . . well, once upon a time Harrier would have said it was his worst nightmare, except now he knew it didn’t even come close. He’d still rather not be, though.

  At the far end of the tent, Vairindiel Elvenqueen was sitting on an ordinary chair just like all the other chairs Harrier had seen around the camp. Except for the narrow circlet of silvery metal around her head, and the ring with the green stone on her hand, she was dressed just like all the other Elves here—pretty much like Tiercel, in fact—but there was no doubt of who she was. Tiercel walked forward, and Harrier walked forward because Tiercel did. They stopped a few paces away from the front of her chair.

  “All the Peoples of the Light owe you—both of you—more than any of us can ever repay,” Vairindiel Elvenqueen said. “But it is the Elves who shall discharge the debt. And so to you I say this: ask what you will of us, to the end of your lives, and your children’s lives, and your children’s children’s, and it shall be granted, to the last measure of our ability. I so pledge the word and the honor of the House of Caerthalien in witness of my oath.”

  Tiercel just blinked, slowly, several times. Harrier didn’t think this was the time to mention that they were probably going to be calling in that pledge before morning. The Isvai was the Isvaieni’s home, but right now there wasn’t one plant, one oasis, one animal anywhere in it—unless there was something left at Sapthiruk. The tribes had never been completely self-sufficient, either—some of them had traded with the Iteru-cities, and those that hadn’t had traded with those that had. Even the Nalzindar wore cloth woven on city-looms. Now the Iteru-cities were gone, and with them, the trade in spices and medicines and textiles and rugs that had flowed north. It would take more magic than that possessed by two half-trained Mages, Dragonbond or not, to remake an entire desert.

  “And you, Harrier Gillain, once of Armethalieh, your gift to us was the greatest of all. Tiercel has told us of how you accepted the Three Books from Shalkan’s daughter so that you could aid him on his journey, at great cost to yourself.”

  Harrier was so busy trying to reconcile “Shalkan’s daughter” with “Kareta” and wondering if Vairindiel Elvenqueen meant the Shalkan, and thinking (in a horrified way) that she probably did, that he nearly missed the moment that Vairindiel Elvenqueen held out her hands to him. He started to recoil, started to stumble through an explanation of how he hadn’t done anything, and if he had, he hadn’t done it for the Elves, or for a bunch of Peoples of the Light that he’d never even met, when he felt a sharp kick to his ankle.

  He glanced sideways suspiciously. Tiercel looked completely innocent. He’d learned exactly how much that innocent act was really worth. So he shrugged just a little and took the last few steps forward that he needed to take to clasp the hands of the Queen of the Elves. They were slender and smooth and pale and jeweled, and Harrier thought of Shaiara’s hands, blunt and brown and strong and calloused, and he knew which he preferred.

  “Tiercel has told me that it is now The Time of the Three Becoming One. Tannetarie the White’s prophecy has been fulfilled, and you have done this through your acceptance of the Bond with Ancaladar,” she said.

  Before Harrier could stop her, she raised his hands—scarred and actually dirty—to her lips and kissed them. He barely managed to keep from yelping in alarm or yanking them free.

  “Know that my joy—and the joy of all Elvenkind—is beyond measure, beyond words,” she said, finally letting go of him. “Know that—for this reason above all—the claim of the House of Gillain upon the House of Caerthalien shall endure as long as Leaf and Star.”

  Harrier was suddenly far colder than the helpful Elven Magery could account for. He hadn’t learned a lot about the Elves during his brief visit to Karahelanderialigor, but he’d learned enough to know that this was their most binding oath. As long as Vairindiel Elvenqueen had descendants—or her brothers and sisters or anyone related to her had descendants—and he (or Gens or Brelt or Carault and probably even all of his cousins, both the Gillain ones and the Auvalen ones) had descendants, his descendants could ask hers for things, and they’d have to give them to them. That was what “House of” meant. That was what “as long as Leaf and Star endures” meant.

  “You have honored me far beyond what I deserve,” he said with utter sincerity. “I will live the rest of my life striving to be worthy of it.”

  “You are worthy already,” Vairindiel Elvenqueen assured him. “But I will not keep you now. Your labors have been long. Now is a time for rejoicing.”

  “THAT’S the tactful way of saying ‘you smell like a goat,’ ” Tiercel said, as the two of them walked out of the royal pavilion a few moments later.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t exactly see any bath houses around here,” Harrier grumbled.

  Tiercel pointed across the desert to a pavilion of bright yellow silk. A year ago he might have smirked in triumph. Now he just sighed faintly.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Harrier said in disbelief.

  “Har, we lived in Karahelanderialigor for an entire moonturn and spent at least one more stopping at farms and villages on our way out of the Elven Lands. Can you imagine the Elves going anywhere and not bringing a bathhouse?”

  “Maybe not,” Harrier said grudgingly. Tiercel had to have taken a bath somewhere, after all. “You might have warned me she was going to kiss me. I’d also like to point out that it’s the middle of the day and you aren’t wearing a chadar.”

  “Oh. Right.” Tiercel snapped his fingers. The air above their heads shimmered and darkened, and suddenly they were both standing in shadow.

  Harrier just shook his head, halfway between amused and uneasy. (In the moment he framed the question, Harrier already knew the answer: Tiercel hadn’t sheltered all the Isvaieni from the sun this way because he could only cast Shield directly over himself. He might have been able to make it large enough to cover six thousand people, but he wouldn’t have been able to do anything else. And they would have panicked. And Harrier didn’t think he’d get used to knowing Tiercel’s motives, and Tiercel’s understanding of how the High Magick worked, for a very, very long time.) “Show-off,” he said.

  “It’s nice to be able to,” Tiercel answered a little forlornly. “And—what did you expect her to do? Think, Har. Who came here from Githilnamanaranath?”

  “Elves,” Harrier said promptly.

  “On?” Tiercel prompted.

  “Dragons,” Harrier answered.

  “Which?” Tiercel asked patiently.

  “Oh. Oh,” Harrier said as the realization sank in.

  “Right. Elven Mages who flew here on dragons, idiot. Queen Vairindiel’s dragon is Ostelare, and she’s really happy right now that Ostelare the Golden isn’t going to have to die when she does.”

  “Which would be in about five hundred years or so anyway,” Harrier muttered rebelliously. “Prophecies suck,” he added.

  Tiercel sighed in exasperation. “Do you know how old Ancaladar is?”

  “Nooooo . . .” Harrier drawled.

  “Neither do I. But since he saw the Great War and the Flowering War both, he’s at least two thousand years old. And he’s probably older. Dragons don’t die, Har. Not unless their Bondmates do.”

  “Two Bondmates—and the ability to add a new one whenever you need to—means they don’t ever have to die,” Harrier said. “So when I kill you—which will probably be soon—Ancaladar and I can just go find somebody else.”

  “More or less,” Tiercel said. “I might be able to talk Shaiara into dropping you down a well instead, though.”

  “I don’t believe we’re still alive,” Harrier said slowly, shaking his head. He knew it would be days—sennights—even moonturns—before it really sank in, and far longer than that before he stopped startling awake at every sound in the night. All these moonturns, he’d planned for every possibility except being alive after Ahairan was gone. He didn’t object to being alive, but it w
ould take some getting used to.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to take your first bath in half a year,” Tiercel said. His tone was light, but his eyes were shadowed. He looked up to the sky, and Harrier followed his gaze.

  Far above, Saravasse was circling Telinchechitl, mourning her lost beloved.

  LEAVING Harrier to his own devices (there wasn’t much trouble you could get into in a bath house), Tiercel walked back toward the tents. Ancaladar’s presence was a comforting weight against his mind, and somewhere beneath that, like a constant irritating grumble of thunder, was Harrier. He wondered how he sounded to Harrier. Just as irritating?

  That will pass with time, Ancaladar said.

  “Oh, Light, I hope so,” Tiercel said. “But how do you know?”

  Not all Bondings are comfortable at first, even when they are irresistible, Ancaladar replied.

  “Good to know,” Tiercel muttered. It was just a little, well, daunting to think about living for years and decades and becoming as old as Liapha and someday having to accept a Wildmage who wasn’t Harrier into the Dragonbond, because Harrier would be dead. Of course, maybe it would be Harrier who would have to find a new High Mage. Tiercel felt deep sympathy for that High Mage, whoever he or she was.

  That day is far, far away, Bonded, Ancaladar said fondly.

  Of course—Tiercel thought unwarily—Ancaladar might die first. Dragons were immortal but not invulnerable.

  Should that happen, Bonded, both of you will die at once, Ancaladar said sadly.

  “We’ll skip that, then,” Tiercel said hastily.

  He was heading for the Nalzindar tent mostly by habit. Though most of the Isvaieni were housed now in Elven pavilions, the war-band had traveled with ten tents—having selected both the smallest and therefore lightest of the surviving tents back in Abi’Abadshar, and bringing more than they actually needed, both to have spares in case of trouble and to provide dry storage space in the rain—and now that the tents weren’t needed as emergency shelter, the Nalzindar had claimed one of them.