The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  “This is wise,” Sathan said slowly, as if he was looking for some reason to say it wasn’t.

  “A Barantar would say a ram was white when it was black,” Anipha said. “Or merely wish it white when all could see it was black. When has a Blue Robe spoken other than wisdom?” She got to her feet. “Now I will sleep. Perhaps you will wish to walk across the desert and petition Sand and Star for more water to fall from the sky.”

  “I’d say not to fight,” Harrier said tiredly, getting to his feet as well, “but I’m not going to waste my energy. Do whatever you please. You’ll either survive whatever Ahairan does—or you won’t.” He stepped over to the door and ducked out through the flap, shutting it behind him as quickly as he could. As he walked back to the Nalzindar encampment, he thought that Da would have given him a hiding he’d remember for a long time to hear him talk to men and women twice his age the way he just had. But they were the Ummarai of their tribes. They’d all seen the Goblins last night. And all they could think of to do now was argue about goats like a classroom full of his age-mates.

  The sun was already two hands above the horizon, and their surviving shotors were already settled on the ground around their tent. Harrier hated the fact that Lightfoot’s death mattered more to him than the deaths of all the people who’d died last night. But he hadn’t known them. And Lightfoot had been ugly and she’d stank, and she’d spit on him more than once, but she hadn’t asked to be here and she hadn’t wanted to be eaten alive.

  He ducked into their tent. There was a waterskin hanging from the central tent-pole, and he took a couple of sparing swallows. By the time he’d stripped down to his under-robe, Shaiara was ducking into the tent and turning to tie the tent flaps closed.

  “It’s six days to Abi’Abadshar, and six days back,” he said wearily. “You know you don’t dare go there now. It’s too dangerous.” He didn’t want another argument, especially now, but there was no real point in delaying it, either.

  “We will speak of it later,” Shaiara answered quietly. “Together we will number the dangers and take counsel.”

  It was the best he was going to get. He was exhausted. He slept.

  Eight

  An Unlikely Alliance

  DESPITE HIS TIREDNESS, Harrier was awake an hour earlier than usual. The heat was like a heavy weight, and he could tell by the color of the light that it was just before sunset. Knowing that they were still half a night’s ride from the next well made him even thirstier than usual. He dressed quickly and slipped outside. The whole camp was eerily silent. Tents dotted the regh for hectares around—featureless tight-closed objects in every shade of dun and gray and charcoal, their colors ruddy in the red-gold brightness of late afternoon—each one surrounded by the sand-colored mounds of sleeping shotors. This morning, for the first time since they’d left Telinchechitl, no awnings had been erected to provide shelter to the flocks, because the flocks were gone. As he stood looking around, Harrier realized that he was counting tents, as if he felt a need to make sure that something hadn’t come for the Isvaieni during the day.

  He’d liked it better when he’d still been able to hate them.

  But day by day, hour by hour, they’d been turning into smaller and smaller groups in his mind. First they’d just been “the Isvaieni army.” Then the army who’d ridden out and the people who’d stayed behind. Now they were just Liapha and Kisrah and Marnet and Sathan and Rinurta and Hadyan and a hundred others, and some of them had ridden with Zanattar and some of them hadn’t, and Harrier was ashamed because it no longer made any difference to him who had and who hadn’t. They’d all become people he cared about. It made him feel as if he was being unfaithful to everyone who’d died at Tarnatha’Iteru. In all the Iteru-cities. But those people were dead, and these people were still alive. He didn’t know what to think. Not really.

  He managed a rueful smile. You’re just lucky that the Wild Magic isn’t about thinking, aren’t you? You’d really be stuck now if Kareta’d said you had to become a Preceptor of the Light.

  And then there was movement at a few of the other tents, and the camp slowly woke into life.

  WHILE Harrier was helping to strike the Nalzindar tent, Hadyan came to find him. Hadyan would ride back along the Dove Road with five other messengers, all Kadyastar, so that in case of attack, one of them would make it through with Harrier’s message. As Harrier went over his message with Hadyan and the others in Liapha’s tent, Harrier realized unhappily that he had no way to make the other Ummarai do what he wanted. They’d do it—or not. He shrugged mentally. One is only safe when he is dead, or when he is yet unborn. If he didn’t get out of this damned desert soon, nobody was going to be able to understand a word he said back on the Docks.

  When he was finished, he put the messengers’ fates out of his mind as best he could and returned to the matter of getting ready to travel. Shaiara was right: they didn’t dare stay in the Barahileth one moment longer than absolutely necessary.

  Tonight he was riding a new shotor. Shaiara hadn’t had any animals to spare—all the ones she’d gotten from Liapha were carrying their supplies—and as far as Harrier had been able to make out, she’d simply gone and stolen one from the Barantar. “Harrier of the Two Swords has need of a shotor,” she’d said, walking up to the tent next to theirs, and the Isvaieni saddling animals had put a lead-rope into her hand. “And a saddle,” she’d added, and the man had brought a saddle out of the tent and set it on the shotor’s back.

  “Shaiara! You can’t just do that!” he’d said, when she’d come walking back to their tent with the saddled shotor. “Isn’t that charity?” he’d added in an undertone.

  “How so, when it is provided to the Wildmage who by his magic has saved the lives of all?” Shaiara asked coolly. “Did I think you would have asked your due of the Barantar unprompted, I would have left you to do it. I have walked across the Barahileth, Harrier. It is better to ride. Cut the bells from the saddle first.”

  So he did. Rode, and made Coldfire, and thought.

  Harrier’s second-oldest brother, Carault, had been apprenticed on a Deep Ocean trader since Harrier was eight and Carault was sixteen. Whenever Bold Venture was in port, Carault had entertained himself by forcing Harrier to listen to lectures on everything the future captain of such a vessel would need to know. Harrier had hated it at the time, especially since he’d thought he’d never leave Armethalieh, but if he could, he’d thank Carault for all his aggravating speeches. From the moment he’d realized that he’d be leading the Isvaieni through the Barahileth, Harrier had drawn on those lessons. And what Carault had passed on to him was even more important now that there was an active threat. People could panic just like goats. Panicking, running away; they couldn’t afford any of it. So Harrier spun globes of Coldfire from his hands as he rode that night and pretended he wasn’t terrified, remembering the Second Law of the Sea: if the captain is calm, the crew will think there’s nothing to fear.

  The Isvaieni weren’t his crew, he wasn’t their captain, and the Barahileth wasn’t the sea. The First Law of the Sea was that the captain’s word was law, and Harrier could barely make suggestions. And none of that mattered. They’d still panic if they saw he was afraid, and they were less likely to if they saw he wasn’t.

  By the time it was fully dark, Harrier had created enough Coldfire to light most of the desert to full-moon brightness. It was a little more than a moonturn since the four of them had set out from Abi’Abadshar; the moon was just past dark now. He could not count on any help from the moonlight to discourage the Goblins. He wasn’t sure that even the Coldfire would be enough. At least this was the smallest group of Isvaieni traveling across the Barahileth. The Kadyastar were a wealthy tribe, but not large. Its wealth came from deep-desert mines, trade, and alliance. The Kamazan were another small tribe—he thought, from listening to Anipha argue with Sathan, that it had less than two hundred members. Most of the Isvaieni here were Barantar. The Barantar’s wealth was sheep and goats, and mo
st of it had been eaten last night. The only good thing anyone could say about that was that it had made Sathan willing to listen to suggestions tonight, and so tonight the Isvaieni traveled less as a disciplined caravan than as a widely-scattered horde, but the most important thing was not to travel a tight cluster that would be attractive to hungry . . . things. Harrier didn’t want anything to happen, but at the same time, the fact that nothing did gave him too much time to worry.

  And the thing he worried about most was that Tiercel still hadn’t come back.

  Hadn’t come back—and hadn’t sent help.

  IT was a few hours before midnight when the next well came into sight. They’d lose hours of possible travel time filling the waterskins and letting the shotors drink, but they had no choice. The caravan was closing around the well when suddenly Harrier’s attention was pulled northward as sharply as if someone had shouted his name. There was nothing to see in the darkness, and he barely kept himself from groaning out loud. Something was coming. But dragons would fly, and this was moving along the ground, and he’d be able to see the light of a unicorn’s body from miles away.

  “Wait here,” he said to Shaiara and Ciniran. He tapped his shotor on the shoulder with his goad, urging it down the road at a quick trot.

  “WHICH part of ‘wait’ did you not understand?” Harrier demanded a moment later, as Shaiara’s shotor drew level with his. He glanced toward her once, then away, peering into the darkness. There was still nothing to see.

  “Someone must carry news of your death!” she cried, her tone equally exasperated.

  He didn’t bother to argue further, and he didn’t try to force his shotor from a trot to a gallop. Its trot was bad enough; he wasn’t sure he could stay on the saddle at the gallop. He missed Lightfoot, whose gaits had been smooth and easy. Only now that she was gone did Harrier realize that she must have been a queen among shotors.

  Soon Harrier could see a cloud of dust on the horizon—a large one. For one wild moment he thought that First Magistrate Vaunnel’s army had already arrived. But even if she meant to send an army against the Isvaieni, it couldn’t have gotten here so fast. He tapped his shotor again, signaling it to stop. He wanted to make more Coldfire, and he couldn’t do that while the shotor was bouncing down the road. Shaiara trotted a few paces past him, then circled back, seeing what he’d seen. “It comes quickly,” she said, her voice somber.

  “Yeah,” Harrier said, “it does.” The dust cloud was already much bigger than it had been when he’d first seen it. “I don’t know what it is.”

  FOR the first several days they spent in the Isvai, it didn’t even occur to Tiercel to ask where they were going. Saravasse was badly injured and—once the first shock of the injury wore off—in terrible pain. Bisochim had washed her wounds clean, straightened the broken wing-ribs, helped Saravasse fold the shattered wing, and tied it closed with strips torn from his sash. There was nothing more he could do. Her wounds had gone on bleeding for several days before they’d finally closed. A dragon’s blood was a shade of red so dark it was nearly violet.

  Her pain made her moody and irritable and the injury made her ravenous. Bisochim had to spend hours each evening and morning calling enough prey to feed her now-ravenous appetite. When she ate, Tiercel tried to be as far away as possible. Watching Ancaladar eat had never bothered him, but now the sights and sounds reminded him too much of his dreams.

  In between those times—several hours in the morning, until it got too hot—several hours in the afternoon, until it was time to stop and hunt—several hours at night, until it got too cold—they walked. At night, when they couldn’t walk any longer, they lay down, huddled against Saravasse’s enormous body for warmth, and slept. And every night Tiercel woke Bisochim with his screams.

  At least now Tiercel was certain that he was having nightmares and not visions, because they were a jumble of his most terrible memories and his deepest fears. He always dreamed of Ahairan stalking through the streets of Tarnatha’Iteru, her scarlet robes fluttering in the wind. Behind her walked everyone Tiercel had ever known—his friends, his family, his teachers—but all of them were dead. His only comfort was that he didn’t dream of Armethalieh and he didn’t dream of Harrier. If he’d dreamed of either one, he might have gone mad with fear, but he knew Tarnatha’Iteru was gone. He’d destroyed it himself.

  But one, then two, then five days had passed without Ahairan returning. First Tiercel was grateful that she hadn’t come back to kill them, then he was afraid that she was doing something horrible somewhere else. Then he realized that they still had to do something. Saravasse had regained a lot of her strength, and the bleeding from her shattered wing had stopped. It was true she could no longer fly, but she could still walk, and maybe, soon, even run.

  And then he realized that they’d been going somewhere for almost a sennight.

  “YOU know,” he said cautiously one morning, “I’m not an expert on Elven Magery, but maybe when we get through Pelashia’s Veil, the Elven Mages can think of a way to Heal Saravasse without getting Tainted by Ahairan.”

  Saravasse made a wordless noise of derision.

  When Bisochim Called game to feed Saravasse, he Called game to feed the two of them as well. He had his geschak, and so he was able to skin and dress the animals he summoned, and either he or Tiercel could have Called Fire to light a cookfire. But here, in the midst of the endless dune sea, there was nothing to use as fuel. They ate their meat raw, just as Saravasse did. Tiercel could barely stomach it.

  “We go to Telinchechitl,” Bisochim said. “Ten days—no more—will see us to the edge of the Barahileth. We must cross it in a night.”

  “I shall not fail you in this, Beloved,” Saravasse said proudly.

  “I—Wait—What? We’re . . . but we have to tell somebody. We have to get help,” Tiercel said. He’d had little appetite for breakfast. Now he lost that little appetite entirely.

  “My madness and pride have already caused the death of thousands of those whom I was charged to protect,” Bisochim said. “To call water from the deep earth to quench the Lake of Fire, I fear I have once more set a desert in place of a garden. It may even now be too late to save them.”

  “The storm wouldn’t . . .” Tiercel began, although he didn’t think arguing would do any good.

  “Not the storm, child!” Saravasse snapped. “Or didn’t you happen to notice the lake? There was a tehukohiakhazarishtial there before. A large hollow mountain filled with liquid rock,” she added, seeing Tiercel’s look of incomprehension.

  “Oh,” Tiercel said quietly. “I’d wondered what happened to it.”

  He wondered if Harrier was already dead.

  “I DO not know how we can journey to the far land where the Sword of Light lies,” Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy said. “For Anigrel the Black is the true son of the Endarkened Queen, and he has placed a curse upon my head, that if my foot touches the ground within the Lands of Men once the sun has risen, then I will be turned to stone.”

  And the Magic Unicorn Shalkan laughed, and his laugh was like silver bells. “Only set yourself upon my back, Prince Kellen, and I shall run over land and sea, and we shall be in the Land of the Elves before the sun shall rise, and the foul curse of Anigrel the Black shall be broken.”

  And Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy had great wonder in his heart at the words of Shalkan the Magic Unicorn, but he did as he was commanded, and Shalkan began to run, faster than the very wind itself . . .

  The Song of Kellen’s Ride was a popular part of Kellen’s story. It didn’t make a good play, but there were countless songs and poems written about it. Some good, some bad, and the most famous, of course, was the one every child learned in the nursery, with the chorus: Run, run, Shalkan, run, the sun is at your heel / and you shall guide your Rider through the depths of his ordeal. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Tiercel had listened to Kareta and Ancaladar bicker about which of them was faster.

  The moon had been dark when he, Harrier, Cinira
n, and Shaiara had left Abi’Abadshar. It was dark again—maybe a day or so past—when Tiercel stood with Bisochim and Saravasse beside Kannatha Well and watched the sun slide toward the horizon. Then he and Bisochim climbed onto Saravasse’s back.

  And Saravasse began to run.

  In the air a dragon was fast, able to cover hundreds of miles in a day, but it didn’t seem fast, because there were no landmarks in the sky to tell you how fast you were going. On the ground, it was different.

  “I do not know how we can journey to the far land where the Sword of Light lies . . .”

  Shaiara had said it took the Nalzindar a fortnight to go from Kannatha Well to Abi’Abadshar. Tiercel remembered that it had taken the four of them ten days to go from Abi’Abadshar to Telinchechitl. The Dove Road ran straight across the Barahileth from Kannatha Well to Telinchechitl, so it would take less time for them to get from here to Telinchechitl than the time from Kannatha Well—to Abi’Abadshar—to Telinchechitl, but whether it was a fortnight or a sennight didn’t matter. They had to get there before sunrise. “Run, run, Shalkan, run, the sun is at your heel—” Tiercel’s mind chanted. But this was no wondertale whose ending he knew. Only one thing was the same as in The Song of Kellen’s Ride. If they were in the wrong place when the sun rose, they’d die.

  At first Tiercel could keep his eyes open. Then the sound of the wind passing over Saravasse’s wings—one tightly folded, the other carefully bound closed—rose from a moan to a whistle to a scream, and he had to close his eyes. He counted his heartbeats, lost count, and began counting again. It was useless. There was no way for him to keep track of time. He only knew that it began to seem as if Saravasse had been running forever. The wind flattened his chadar smotheringly against his face and made the loose folds of his robes snap with the loud sounds of whipcracks.