“Show yourself,” she said harshly, dragging the atish’ban-shotor to a halt.
Released from the complex web of spells she had woven around it to shield it as it ran, the spell-twisted beast stood gasping and trembling, its entire body shuddering with the thundering beat of its heart. Blood-tinged foam dripped from its mouth as it sank to its knees, and as Ahairan stepped delicately to the sand, it gave one last convulsive heave, rolled to its side, and died. Almost absently, she drew the last ebbing flickers of its life into herself, though its pain and incomprehension were far sweeter and more satisfying. Before she was finished, the whirlwind had stilled, the sand it had held falling to the sand below with a soft drumming. The figure that stood revealed was one that Ahairan knew.
“Firecrown,” Ahairan said. “Have you come to pledge me your fealty?” She did not fear the Firecrown—it had already served as her ally once. Instead, she cast about for some new being which she could entrap and make atish’ban, for it occurred to her now that she had released the atish’ban-shotor’s life too quickly for her purposes. Already she could sense intelligences moving toward her in response to her summons. Some she would reshape, some she would feed upon, some were hers already, roused from their long sleep by her presence.
“Not yet, Ahairan,” the Firecrown answered. “I have come to speak.”
“The time for speech is past,” Ahairan answered sharply. “You who were cast down and forgotten—at least you were worshiped once. Your hunger to receive that again is nothing—nothing at all—to mine to receive it for the first time! But I will be generous and merciful. Aid me now, and I promise you shrines and worshipers of your own.”
The sun beat down upon both of them from a cloudless sky, and beneath her bare feet Ahairan felt the heat of the desert sand. Wind moved over her skin, stirred her robes and her hair, carrying with it the sere and complex scents of the desert. Heat—color—form—life—so much complexity and abundance that its mere existence was nearly sustenance enough.
“It is simple enough to promise that which is not yet in one’s gift,” the Firecrown answered.
“It will be,” Ahairan said confidently. The Time-bound were oblivious to the realities and truths of the realm through which they moved. Their ignorance would lead to their destruction.
“So you believe,” the Firecrown told her. “You believe it will be a simple matter to discover a Mage who will give you that which you must have: blood and power tied to this world, from which you may breed up the race which will make it your throne.”
“I have seen into the mind of the one who brought me here,” Ahairan answered haughtily. “The power of Darkness was broken and banished long ago—so they believe. Those whom they name the Endarkened are barely a legend. None among them will believe that any of their race would be foolish enough to open that door again. I may go where I please and take whom I please. They will not know me for what I am until it is too late.”
“If that were so, then how could it be that your summoner feared opposition to his task? If you gazed deeply enough into his mind to see all that you say that you have, then you have seen that also. For what other reason did he waken me from my sleep save to serve as his weapon, though I am no man’s servant. He thought he had conjured up an Elemental Spirit that he could force to serve his will, not knowing that he had awakened in truth what he had named in mockery. I have walked the world for a full wheel of the seasons, seeking out that which was the cause of my interrupted rest, and so I tell you: your coming has been foretold.”
“What does that matter? My power is still greater than theirs. Or do you mean to do the bidding of He-Who-Has-Called-Me after all? Do not think he will honor the bargains he has made with you any more than he meant to honor his promises to me,” Ahairan answered.
“He has made me no promises,” the Firecrown answered. “And I have not yet made any to you. I merely tell you that your coming has been foretold. If you mean to journey northward to find Wildmages garbed in robes of blue you will search in vain. Since that day many years ago when a certain child whom the Wildmages call the Fire-Crowned Boy was brought to one of them to be Healed of an illness, all Wildmages have known he was the destined Champion of the Light, and no Champion is ever born if one will not be needed against the Darkness. They have known since that day that you would come in his lifetime, and the Elvenkind have known of your coming for even longer. Do you still think it will be so easy a matter to go into the Northern Lands and claim that which you seek?”
“Yes!” Ahairan shouted. Anger was tied to flesh, and rage was a new sensation, one which she relished as much as she relished heat and cold and pain. She refused to believe there was anything she could not do, for she was Ahairan, the Darkness-in-Flesh, and soon this world would be hers to do with as she chose. “Your words are empty—they cannot turn me from my path!”
“Perhaps they cannot,” the Firecrown agreed. “And perhaps you will only find destruction where you hope to claim victory. The sleep of the Great Powers has been long—longer even than that of the children of the Dark—and it may be that even such as we may die, if we are forgotten for long enough. That I know not, but I know this: your kind are truly mortal.”
Ahairan recoiled with a hiss. The World of Form held so many things that she and her brethren craved desperately, but it also held one thing they feared: in this Time-bound realm it was possible for all that they were to be unmade beyond all possibility of resurrection.
“Then join me and ensure that you are remembered forever!” Ahairan urged again. “You are a Great Power—neither truly of the Light nor of the Dark! Those who once worshiped you are gone—join your power to mine, and together this world will be ours!”
“You make an interesting offer, though it would be far more interesting were it tendered by a Queen in the fullness of her power. Will you continue north—and set yourself—alone and without allies—against the gathered power of the Elven Lands in the fullness of their strength? Or will you remain here, and bring one of the Wildmages here into your service? Or perhaps the High Mage, for even he will do.”
Ahairan hesitated. The Firecrown’s words must hold some hidden trap. She was certain of this, for why else would the Firecrown not ally itself with her immediately and instead require her to prove her power first? Perhaps it meant her to destroy herself, so that it could regain its ancient power and be worshiped once more as it had been so long ago. No matter what promises she made, Ahairan had no intention of sharing her worship and her power with any but her own kind. And yet . . . the Firecrown embodied the essence of the race which had once worshiped it, and the Firesprites’ great gift had been the art of prophecy. Perhaps it could already see its future betrayal?
But no. If that were the case, it would already have attempted to strike her down, and it had not. It could not see what she intended, any more than He-Who Had-Called-Her had been able to gaze upon the moment of her embodiment in flesh and see his fate.
Yet if the Firecrown could not see its own fate, it could still see hers, and so Ahairan knew that of the two choices it had set before her, one must lead to her destruction and the other to her victory. But which should she choose?
Obviously, to venture northward against an enemy forewarned was madness, and so her wisest course was to remain here. She had fled from He-Who-Had-Called-Her once, but with sufficient time and cunning she could tempt him, Taint him, cause him to despair. Thus, she should abandon her plans to go into the Northern Lands. Remain here, take He-Who-Had-Called-Her for her consort prince as she had originally planned, and make this place into her stronghold.
But . . . what if remaining here was the path of folly? What of the Fire-Crowned Boy? If the Elvenkind had believed him to be the destined Champion of the Light, perhaps he had the power to interfere in her plans? Then, surely, to go on as she had first intended was the wiser course.
“I should destroy you now,” she snarled, angry that no course of action seemed clear.
“If
you could, I would have felt no need to warn you, for your power would already be so great that nothing could withstand it,” the Firecrown said simply. “I have spoken nothing but truth. The Elvenkind count many powerful Dragonbond Mages among their numbers, and they have known of your coming for many lifetimes of the Kings of Men. This is truth. From the moment the Fire-Crowned Boy sought Healing, the Wildmages have known he would grow to be the Champion of the Light. This, too, is truth. The Wildmages of the Northern Lands do not go among their people openly. Instead, they work in secret, and no man may say if any he encounters is a wielder of the Wild Magic. Truth again. There are three here who know you for what you are and who will serve the purpose of your magic. This is the last truth I have for you, Ahairan. I will offer you no more gifts.”
She hesitated, thinking even now of setting her power against that of the Firecrown. Here. Now. Perhaps, despite its words, she was the stronger. But “perhaps” was not enough certainty. Though she could not gaze into its thoughts as she could with the mortal Bound-in-Time, she could see far more of its true self than such as they might see. And for all her arrogance, Ahairan reluctantly had to admit the possibility that a Greater Power might perhaps be a match for Elemental Darkness.
And beyond these things, her magic told her that—just as it had said—the Firecrown had not lied.
“Upon the day that I possess the power of a Mage of this world, will you come and lay your crown at the foot of my throne?” Ahairan demanded.
“Upon that day, I shall do all that you wish,” the Firecrown answered gravely.
Ahairan nodded, and turned her back upon it, walking back into the desert.
She would build a stronghold . . . here. She would do her work in secret—choosing her consort, gaining his fealty, establishing her fortresses, summoning her armies, and—when all had gone as she wished—breeding up a new race of Demons to rule here. If He-Who-Had-Called-Her could not be made to serve her desires, there were two more. Should all three fail her . . .
Then she would go into the Northern Lands.
Six
Prelude to War
TIERCEL AWOKE AS the sky began to lighten. He was cold and disoriented.
He remembered going for a walk last night. It had been cold, but he hadn’t wanted to go back to the others, so he’d gone around the far side of one of the big piles of sand and then down by the lake, because he’d known it would be warm there. But in the predawn chill the air was filled with a thick wet mist that had risen from the surface of the lake, so even though Harrier had obviously come down after he was asleep and covered him with a makeshift blanket, and even though the lake still radiated heat, Tiercel was freezing. He couldn’t see anything but the faint grayness of the mist.
His confusion was increased by the fact that he knew he’d been dreaming—vividly—of the desert at midday. Of the Red Man and the Fire Woman. It was odd, after so long, to think of them by other names. Firecrown. Ahairan. He wondered if it had been a dream at all, or simply another sort of vision. If it had been, it was the useless kind he couldn’t remember anything much about once he awoke. He just had the uneasy feeling that something had happened that he ought to remember and didn’t.
He wondered why he still had visions. He wondered why he’d ever had visions in the first place. The Wild Magic was a living thing, alive enough for Harrier to argue with it as furiously as if it were one of his older brothers, but the High Magick was as much a machine as one of the dockyard cranes at Armethalieh Port. It could do many things, but it contained no spells of prophecy in its vast library of spells. Either what Tiercel was seeing was happening now . . . or his visions weren’t related to the High Magick at all.
He decided not to think about that right now. There wasn’t anything he could do about it one way or the other. And if he was lucky—very lucky—it wouldn’t be important.
“ ‘Or perhaps the High Mage, for even he will do,’ ” Tiercel muttered aloud.
He wondered where the words had come from. A scrap of his visions? In that case, he wished he remembered more of it, because he was the High Mage. He was the only one there was. You had to be born with the MageGift to master the High Magick, but you wouldn’t know you had it until you were in your teens. Then there would be “signs”—according to the ancient histories that he’d read—but none of them said what they were. What they did say was that if the MageGift wasn’t trained, when the “signs” appeared, the young High Mage would die. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d first played with the High Magick, and for moonturns after that, everybody’d wondered why he was so sick. But the question Tiercel now knew they should all have been asking was why was he still alive. He should have died long before he and Harrier had set off for Sentarshadeen. He thought that the reason he hadn’t died from the MageGift was because of the Wildmage who had Healed him when he’d been a baby. He wondered if the reason the MageGift hadn’t been appearing anymore was because Wildmage Healers simply cured everyone who was brought to them showing signs of it. He wondered if they’d stop Healing the MageGift now that the High Magick was necessary once more. He wondered if there’d be time for another High Mage to grow up.
Maybe. If they could trap Ahairan now. A day, even an hour, might be precious.
He got to his feet. Every muscle protested, cold and stiff and aching. He ignored them. Today he’d find Bisochim. Somehow. And today he’d make him listen, no matter what he had to do.
HARRIER wasn’t sure which was worse: expecting to be dead and then not being dead, or not being sure whether or not he was happy to still be alive. Or maybe the worst part was that he was starting to lose count of how many times he’d been in this situation. Was this the third time? Or the fifth? He wasn’t sure. Of course, this was the first time he’d ever found out that Darkness had definitely been summoned back into the world again for the first time since the Great Flowering and was free to do as it pleased. So that part was new.
He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t even really sure of what not to do. What he was sure of was that Bisochim wasn’t Shadow-Touched. Bisochim had been tricked, just like Lycaelon the Mock-Mage in the Festival tales, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been really stupid, and it didn’t mean he shouldn’t pay for what he’d done, because it didn’t matter how badly you’d been tricked, or how much you wanted to believe something was true . . . summoning up Demons was just never a good idea.
Harrier had spent a long night thinking about it last night—some of it staring into the fire, some of it walking back to check on Tiercel, some of it just walking around making sure that Zanattar and the rest of the Isvaieni were as cowed and obedient (or at least as somewhere else) as the two Nalzindar seemed to think they’d be. Shaiara had spelled him for a watch or two, but despite his exertions over the long hard day, Harrier had been too keyed-up to sleep. There’d been too much to think about. And this might be the last chance he had for the peace and quiet in which to do it.
He never wanted to kill anyone again as long as he lived. But there were a lot of people in the world, and if killing Bisochim would’ve saved all of them from Ahairan, he’d have done it. He didn’t think it would. And punishment and revenge were perfectly good reasons to kill Bisochim, too, except that Bisochim wouldn’t be the only one who died. Saravasse would die too.
Harrier had never thought about dragons all that much, except at Flowering Festival every year, when the story of the Great Flowering was told, and with it the tales of Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy and the Magic Unicorn Shalkan, of Vestakia the Redeemed, Cilarnen First Magistrate, the Blessed Saint Idalia, Jermayan Dragon-Rider and Ancaladar Star-Crowned. Nobody ever talked about the price Ancaladar had to pay so that Jermayan was able to go to war against the Endarkened. And Elves lived for centuries instead of decades.
For moonturns, Harrier had watched Tiercel worrying about Ancaladar’s life being cut short, just as if Tiercel’s life wasn’t going to be cut short too. Bisochim had probably been worrying about the same thing
from the moment he Bonded with Saravasse. Worrying and looking for some way around it. Harrier wasn’t sure what would make you crazier: listening to Demons until you thought it was a good idea to call one of them up—or finding out afterward that was what you’d done. It hardly mattered, since Bisochim had done both. He knew that Tiercel couldn’t see that Bisochim was crazy (not evil, Harrier admitted—scrupulously fair even in his own mind—just crazy), because Tiercel never saw the worst in anybody. He hadn’t been willing to see it in Zanattar outside Tarnatha’Iteru. And he couldn’t see it in Bisochim now.
And what does that make you? Harrier asked himself. Because you can see it. And you’re still planning to send Tyr off with the crazy Wildmage and his dragon—and oh, here’s a thought: Ancaladar said that he could hear Tyr’s thoughts, so what if Bisochim’s driven Saravasse as crazy as he is?
There’s no other choice, he told himself. And though he tried to think of some other—better—solution, when the sky began to lighten, he still hadn’t thought of one.
AFTER spending so many sennights getting used to the diamond-bright aridity of the desert air, finding everything suddenly shrouded in morning mist was another unexpected change. Harrier added more charcoal to the brazier while Ciniran and Shaiara went down to the lake to bring back water. There wasn’t much charcoal left, but they couldn’t stay here long anyway—and keeping warm would be the least of their worries soon. An hour, maybe two at most, and they’d need to seek shelter from the sun. And the only shelter to be found was in the Isvaieni tents.
About the time Harrier thought he was going to have to go looking for Tiercel, Tiercel came wandering across the grass toward him, the heavy length of curtain fabric Harrier had found to use as a makeshift blanket folded and slung over one shoulder. He looked rumpled and damp and unsettled, though Harrier knew Tiercel had slept for at least part of the night.
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