The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  Maybe by tomorrow, Harrier thought hopefully. Then all of this will be someone else’s problem.

  Shaiara frowned and glanced up at the sky. “Fools,” she said crossly. “Do they think that the sun will wait upon their pleasure? We must go now.”

  “It’s only half a night to the first well,” Harrier said. I hope so, anyway. He also hoped there was water in it when they got there. He remembered now that the ground had shook yesterday while he was herding goats at the demand of the Wild Magic. He thought that might be why all the fountains had gone dry. He hoped the wells hadn’t gone dry too.

  “Huh,” Shaiara said dismissively. “When we reach Abi’Abadshar, Ciniran and I shall go aside and bring the Nalzindar to the road so that we may all return to the Isvai,” she added quietly. “Fear not for yourself, Harrier. The wearer of the Blue Robe can seek food and a bed in any tent. It is no charity to shelter one who speaks for the Wild Magic.”

  Harrier glanced toward Ciniran, but she was making a last check of their animals and equipment. He wasn’t sure whether she hadn’t heard Shaiara, or was just being tactful and arranging to be somewhere else while Shaiara told him her plan. He shook his head. He knew that Shaiara could take care of herself a lot better than he could take care of himself, but . . . “I’d feel a lot better if I went with you to Abi’Abadshar, Shaiara.” Just in case Ahairan shows up somewhere she shouldn’t. Because what’s to stop her from following you and Ciniran to Abi’Abadshar no matter how well it’s hidden behind spells, just the way Tiercel and I followed the Dove Road to Telinchechitl? He looked skyward uneasily. If Ahairan came here . . .

  Shaiara wrinkled her nose in dismissal. “Your place is with the people,” she said, as if it was self-evident. “Should the wells upon the Dove Road fail before Bisochim returns, all will die. Nor is Kannatha Well great enough to succor us at the end of our journey.” Harrier’s face must have showed his shock, for she reached out and covered his hand with hers. Her clasp was strong and warm. “All will be well. You can call water to a dry well. I know this. There is not one among us down to the least suckling babe who will not share the MagePrice.”

  Harrier took a deep breath. Twenty days to the Isvai. Almost three sennights. Bisochim will be back by then, or Tiercel will come with a bunch of Elven Mages. I don’t have to figure out how to do those things. I won’t have to figure out how to do those things. “Yeah,” he said aloud. “Okay. Fine.”

  “Hah,” Shaiara said in triumph as the shotor ahead of them surged to its feet. The bells and tassels on its bridle clinked and swayed. From her perch upon its back Liapha gazed around herself, looking pleased.

  Shaiara seated herself upon her own shotor’s back and tapped it upon its shoulder. It rose gracefully to its feet—in silence. Harrier settled himself into his own saddle, and Lightfoot grunted and rose to her feet as well. Slowly the first segment of the long caravan began moving into the night.

  And once again Harrier stopped himself from looking skyward.

  If Ahairan returned, there was nothing he could do.

  TIERCEL hadn’t realized how quiet the open desert could be. There was nothing around him but cream-white sand and blue-white sky and wind. The sand beneath his feet crunched and squeaked as he walked across it. It had a hot and dusty smell that was different from the baked regh of the Barahileth. There were long looping arcs of dark liquid spattered across the surface, and he realized that he was looking at the drops of blood from the ruin of Saravasse’s wing. She couldn’t fly now. Bisochim didn’t dare Heal her. Even if they could somehow find someone else who had the power, Tiercel didn’t think that person could do it either. Saravasse had said she was a trap for Bisochim, but Tiercel didn’t think Ahairan would have done something that specific. And if he was right, anyone who cast a spell on Saravasse would open a channel between themselves and Ahairan, allowing her to Taint and Overshadow them.

  His headache had settled to a dull bearable pounding as the nausea and dizziness faded. He pulled his chadar even farther forward to shield his eyes from the glare. The green-and-white stripes hadn’t seemed so bright back at Telinchechitl, but here in the bright dryness of the desert, the contrast between the wide bars of grass-green and white was eye-poppingly lurid. The front of his gray robe was stiff with dried blood. His robes were soaked with it. He wondered how he’d been injured before Bisochim had Healed him. Behind him, he could hear the faint sound of voices as Saravasse and Bisochim spoke together, but the sound was too low for him to make out the words. Tiercel sat down where he was and wrapped his arms around his knees. What were they going to do now? They couldn’t get to the Veiled Lands. They couldn’t even send a message.

  He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before he felt the ground shake with the impact of dragon footsteps. A long shadow covered him. He looked up to see Saravasse and Bisochim.

  “I know not what we may do now, child,” Bisochim said helplessly.

  “It isn’t just you, is it?” Tiercel said. His voice was cracked and rough—with thirst, with the screaming he’d done when Bisochim Healed him. “Anybody who tries to Heal Saravasse will be Tainted, won’t they?” It didn’t matter right now—he didn’t have any Healing spells. But Harrier did. Any Wildmage did.

  “Yes,” Saravasse said softly. “I will never fly again.”

  “I will not believe that,” Bisochim said in anguish. “Beloved, I cannot.”

  Tiercel put his head down on his knees. This was how it would end. Bisochim had held off Healing Saravasse once, in the heat of the moment—but how long could he stand to watch her in agony? Tiercel didn’t know how long Saravasse’s injury would take to heal on its own, but from a conversation he’d had with Ancaladar once (oh, Ancaladar!) he knew that dragons healed very slowly. Normally this was no problem: a Bonded dragon would be Healed by his or her Bonded; an unBonded dragon would simply go off and sleep—for years, or even decades—until the injury had healed naturally. He didn’t think Bisochim could maintain his resolve that long.

  “Fine,” Tiercel whispered. “Go ahead and Heal her. And give us all to the Dark.”

  “I know what you must think of me,” Bisochim said.

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Tiercel answered, his voice a scratchy croak. “But it doesn’t really matter. We’re in the middle of the desert. We don’t have any . . . things. We can’t go anywhere. You probably shouldn’t have bothered to Heal me, because—”

  “Water is a simple matter,” Bisochim said. He stretched out his hand.

  Tiercel yelped in dismay, and tried to scrabble out of range of the spell, but he couldn’t manage in time. His headache went from something he’d almost managed to forget to something that pounded so viciously that lights flashed behind his eyes with each beat of his heart, and renewed nausea cramped his stomach.

  “It hurts! I told you it hurts!” Tiercel shouted at the top of his lungs. He curled up in a ball on the sand, wrapping his arms around his head. He was being childish, but he was tired of pain, tired of loss, tired of failure. He’d expected to die, but not of something as stupid as being lost in the desert without supplies. He felt Bisochim place a hand on his shoulder. “Go away,” he muttered, not moving.

  “I am sorry, Tiercel,” Bisochim said softly. “I shall not forget again.”

  “I’m sorry too.” Tiercel sat up slowly.

  It was irritating to feel guilty and justified at the same time. He’d always been good at everything, and he realized, with a lurch of despair, that this was actually the first thing in his entire life that he’d failed at. He was . . . He was seventeen now, he realized. I got a Dragonbond as a Naming Day present, Tiercel thought, and swallowed hard. And he’d succeeded at everything in his life up until this. His relationship with his parents was good. His schoolwork had always been easy. He hadn’t made any enemies among his age-mates. And deep inside, he realized that he’d been expecting to succeed at this too.

  And he hadn’t.

  “We may drink as we please,” Bisochim said
, breaking into Tiercel’s unhappy reverie. He pointed, and Tiercel saw a pool of water where none had been. Its surface shimmered brightly in the sunlight, and he winced again in pain. “And Saravasse can give us warmth and shelter.”

  “So we’re all right as long as Ahairan doesn’t come back,” Tiercel said.

  Without waiting for an answer, he crawled over to the pool. Blood swirled away into the water as he dipped his hands into it to wash his face, then he drank until his stomach ached with cold. He sat up and looked at Bisochim.

  “I cannot slay Ahairan, and she has made it impossible to summon aid,” Bisochim said bleakly. “And you say that your Bonded is beyond your call.”

  “I lost him. He just vanished.” Now all the things he hadn’t told Bisochim before came tumbling out of Tiercel in a rush of words. About discovering the hidden city of Abi’Abadshar. About how Ancaladar had disappeared. How Harrier had Called Kareta. How Kareta had said Ancaladar was still alive. Somewhere. He began to explain that Abi’Abadshar had been built in the time of Elven Mages and their dragons and was a repository not only of ancient magic, but ancient lore as well.

  “All very nice, but not terribly useful,” Saravasse interrupted tartly. “We are here, not there, and I cannot fly. Once Ahairan realizes my Bonded does not intend to Heal me, she will return to kill us all.”

  “No,” Tiercel said. He felt sick and unhappy as he worked it out, but it was logical, and as much as he hated thinking it, he knew he was right. “She doesn’t want Bisochim to die. She wants Bisochim to surrender. Think about it. She’s a Spirit of Darkness. What does she want?”

  “To kill everyone,” Saravasse said. “And eat them.”

  “To destroy the Light,” Bisochim said.

  “Maybe,” Tiercel said doubtfully. “But I had visions of Ahairan for a whole year and she always wanted you to go to her. If she just wanted to kill you, she could have done that already. There has to be something else that she wants. Something more.”

  There was a long moment of silence. “There is,” Bisochim said at last. “She wants to make more of her kind.”

  Tiercel stared at him, not understanding. “But . . . aren’t there more? I saw them. Oh, Light, please tell me she can’t open the doorway to that place by herself!”

  “I think perhaps she could,” Bisochim said quietly. “But not quickly, nor easily.” His face twisted in anguish. “And what passed from that world to this would be naught but bodiless shadows. They might do harm, yes. Great harm. But only to Blight, not to Taint.”

  Tiercel frowned, trying to understand what Bisochim had just said. If he’d had the spellbooks he’d lost at Tarnatha’Iteru—If he’d had Ancaladar—He took a deep breath. “They couldn’t turn a Wildmage to the Dark,” he said carefully.

  “No,” Bisochim said. “Nor could such bodiless shadows drive a creature from its body and take it for their own. They could kill, yes, and drive to madness again and again, and I know not if they could be slain. But nothing such as Ahairan can do. And it was I who crafted her a body, thinking I forged a prison—and not a weapon.”

  Tiercel closed his eyes tightly. Harrier would know the right questions to ask. All he had was the certainty that whatever ones he asked would be the wrong ones, and that he’d miss things he couldn’t afford to miss. “She wants to make more of her own kind,” he said, repeating Bisochim’s own words.

  “To breed a new race of Demons—here. Sprung from Men as the Endarkened were once created from the Elves,” Bisochim answered bleakly.

  “She wants you,” Tiercel said in horror. It all made sense now. His visions. Why Ahairan would injure and bespell Saravasse. If Tiercel had not survived the fall—If Bisochim had not stopped to Heal him first—If Saravasse had not been able to warn him—If Bisochim had not been willing to listen—He shuddered with sudden chill, even in the heat of the desert sun.

  “She said to me that she would make me King of Men if I would bow down and worship her. Do only that, and she would grant all that I wished.” Bisochim’s voice was anguished.

  “I would rather die now—here, today—than live for eternity as a servant of the Dark,” Saravasse said quietly.

  Immortality, Tiercel thought. Ahairan might not be one of the Endarkened, but she’d been offering the same coin they’d always paid in. He blew out a short sharp breath and tried not to look as nauseated as he felt. Ahairan wanted Bisochim as her consort, to father a future race of Demons.

  “It probably doesn’t have to be you,” Tiercel said aloud, unsure of whether or not he was offering comfort with his words. “Any Wildmage she could manage to Taint would do.”

  “Small consolation,” Saravasse commented dryly.

  “It might be,” Tiercel said thoughtfully. “I don’t know any nice way to say this, Bisochim, but . . . You have Saravasse. There was something Ahairan could offer you that you might have wanted enough to do what she wanted.”

  “But he didn’t!” Saravasse said hotly.

  “I know,” Tiercel said apologetically. “I’m sorry. But the thing is, Bisochim is the only Dragonbond Wildmage there is, right? Because all the other dragons are Bonded to Elves.” Except for Ancaladar . . .

  “True,” Saravasse admitted grudgingly.

  “So unless Ahairan can hide what she really is from a Wildmage until she can figure out some way to trick them into doing what she wants, she can’t get a Wildmage to do what she wants. None of them would help her willingly, no matter what she promised them. The only other Wildmage here is Harrier, and he sure wouldn’t.” It abruptly occurred to Tiercel that it was because of what Bisochim had done that there were no other Wildmages in the south now, and he found the idea that Bisochim had been acting on behalf of the Wild Magic when he’d murdered Light knew how many people too disturbing to think about. “But that’s what Ahairan wants,” he said, talking very fast to keep himself from thinking about it. “A Wildmage to Taint. So she isn’t going to try to kill you. She needs to Taint you.”

  “Or you, Tiercel,” Saravasse said softly. “You are not a Wildmage, but you do have magic. All you need do is bow down and worship her, and she would grant you anything you asked.”

  “She can’t bring Ancaladar back,” Tiercel said roughly. “And that’s all I want.”

  WHEN Harrier was a small boy—whenever he was tempted to hit things and yell—both his Ma and the Preceptor of the Light always told him to make a list of all the things in his life that made him happy. Right now that wouldn’t do a lot of good, because there was pretty much only one thing on it. The wells along the Dove Road were in fine shape and so far nobody was dead. All right, that was two things on his “happy list,” but that was about the only thing turning out better than he expected.

  They traveled surrounded by bawling, complaining, footsore livestock, in the midst of a caravan of crying babies, crying children, constant chatter, and the eternal clanging bells. Harrier was pretty sure by now that the Nalzindar had the right idea in having saddles and bridles without ornaments. It was a fortnight since they’d left Telinchechitl and Tiercel was still gone. Shaiara was in a foul mood, and Harrier didn’t even need to wonder why. The caravan wasn’t managing to cover the distance from one well to the next in a night’s travel, and when they reached a well, getting all the water out of it that they needed took hours. That meant that instead of twenty days in the Barahileth, they’d be here closer to forty. There were newborn babies and people more than twice Harrier’s age in the caravan. Shaiara had mentioned casually that forty was old among the Isvaieni and sixty was ancient, and Harrier was pretty sure that Ummara Liapha must be even older than that because Shaiara had said scornfully—in Liapha’s hearing—that Liapha should have laid her bones on the sand a dozen years before. If they spent close to six sennights in the Barahileth they wouldn’t have to worry about Ahairan, because the desert itself would kill them.

  To add to his misery, Harrier hadn’t been able to avoid Zanattar, either. A band of Lanzanur outriders led by Zanattar
had caught up to the lead caravan a sennight after they’d left Telinchechitl. Zanattar had ridden forward to the lead caravan specifically to tell Harrier that once they got back to the Isvai they were all going to go Demon-hunting.

  Harrier hadn’t seen Zanattar at all since their confrontation in the orchard, but apparently that meeting had convinced Zanattar that since Harrier was a Knight-Mage, and since Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy had been a Knight-Mage, and since Kellen had managed to help the Blessed Saint Idalia destroy the Endarkened, Harrier could destroy one little Demon all by himself since he had all of the Isvaieni to help him.

  “THAT idea is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in the entire history of stupid things,” Harrier snarled very quietly. For once he was grateful for the eternal feuding between the tribes—since the Nalzindar tent was set at the edge of the Kadyastar tents, it meant that Zanattar’s tent was on the other side of the encampment, at the edge of the Barantar tents. Otherwise, he was sure Zanattar would have wanted to be next-door neighbors with his new hero, Harrier Gillain.

  “Men are fools,” Shaiara said briefly.

  “Thank you,” Harrier said, inclining his head in a sarcastic bow. It was just dawn, and the three of them were sitting in their tent. Shaiara and Ciniran had unbraided their hair and were combing it out. Once they were finished, they’d braid it up again. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to when they did it; they’d done it every night so far, but they hadn’t done it at all during the journey to Telinchechitl.

  “A man will place his faith in a thing, and have that faith broken,” Shaiara said, speaking to the bone comb in her hand. “Yet he will not then see that faith is a precious thing he must hold close. Instead, he hastens to bestow his faith again.”

  Harrier sighed. He knew what Shaiara was saying to him. “Zanattar is looking for something to believe in,” he said, grimacing. “Does it have to be the idea that I’m going to lead him on a Demon-hunting crusade? I just want him to go away.”