The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  “A Dragonbond Mage to seal the bargain—power the spell—I don’t know. It could be Bisochim or me, the Firecrown doesn’t care. But if it’s Bisochim, Saravasse dies too. You’ve said yourself that Bisochim’s better at magic than I am, and you’ll need that. So it’s me. Har, we’re out of time. We have to take the chance. Look.”

  Harrier took him by the arm before he looked away—as if he thought Tiercel might be intending to pull one last trick while his attention was diverted. But it wasn’t going to be necessary. From their vantage point here at the top of Telinchechitl, in the crystalline brightness of the morning light, they could see the Dove Road. Advancing down it was a long line of Isvaieni.

  Hundreds. Thousands. Everyone they’d left behind in Abi’Abadshar.

  Twenty

  Bones in the Desert

  THEY COULD SEE Ahairan still waiting patiently with her monsters. Tiercel imagined he could hear people sobbing and babies crying, but he was too far away for that. Some of the Isvaieni coming up the Dove Road were riding shotors. Some were stumbling along on foot beside them. There were animals following them—goats and sheep and ikulas and some that Tiercel couldn’t identify at this distance. Ahairan must somehow have gotten every living creature to leave Abi’Abadshar and come to her.

  “There she is,” Tiercel said savagely. “Right over there with her Darkspawn army, and all I have to do to stop her is die. I’ve always known I was going have to die for this—you have too.”

  He heard Harrier drag in a long shuddering breath. “Yes. Be quick.”

  Tiercel nodded and closed his eyes. I do this freely and by my own will. I choose this. He took a step toward the crushing heat.

  And suddenly the lack—the crippling absence—in his mind was filled between one heartbeat and the next.

  Ancaladar! he shouted inside his mind.

  Bonded, I am here—I am here!

  Tiercel felt the roiling turmoil in Ancaladar’s mind—to be in the depths of Abi’Abadshar one moment and then, a heartbeat later, falling through the open sky. From Tiercel’s thoughts Ancaladar took the knowledge of how much time had passed. For Ancaladar it had been only an instant—stepping onto the stone of the Tenth Descent, a flash of light—then falling through the sky, the confused desperate scramble to spread his wings and fly, casting about frantically for his Bonded—

  For Tiercel it had been more than half a year. Alone. Crippled. Incomplete. Grieving. Lost. He could feel Ancaladar’s bewilderment, determination, anger as if they were his own emotions—and mixed through them, mirrored in Ancaladar’s mind and returned to his, the incredulous joy he felt to be re united with what he’d thought lost to him forever. He knew he’d started crying, but the heat of the Lake of Fire dried his tears as soon as they formed. He’d wanted this for so long. Memories of Ancaladar had been what he’d clung to when everything else hurt too much to think about. Moments of stolen joy and friendship in the depths of horror and despair. Now Ancaladar was flying westward as fast as he could—he knew he was somewhere in the east, so far distant that in all his centuries of life he’d never been here—but it didn’t matter how quickly Ancaladar flew toward Telinchechitl. He’d never reach it. Tiercel would be dead in a few moments. Ancaladar would die with him.

  He felt Ancaladar’s love enfold him for what would be the last time. Yes, Bonded. Yes. This is the end we were meant to have, you and I.

  Tiercel took another step toward the edge of the platform.

  “Oh, Light, no. Please,” he heard Harrier say.

  The anguish in Harrier’s voice made him turn, made him look, because Tiercel knew that Harrier had made his unhappy peace with his sacrifice and wouldn’t protest against it. But when Tiercel looked back out over the desert, he saw that the Black Dogs were running toward the spellbound Isvaieni still trudging obliviously up the Dove Road. Zanattar and the war-band were on their way toward them—they’d seen the column of Ahairan’s helpless victims when Ahairan had dropped her spells of concealment, just as Tiercel had—but even with their head start, Zanattar’s riders couldn’t reach the other Isvaieni before the Black Dogs did. And all they could do was die beside them.

  It was reflex—futile, stupid reflex—that made Tiercel encircle the pack with a wall of MageShield. It would only hold until he died. And now Harrier knew.

  “Ancaladar,” Harrier said, almost as if he were praying. “He came back.” He turned and began to walk toward the Lake of Fire, his face set.

  Tiercel grabbed him. “No!” he shouted. “Har! It won’t work! You can’t! The Firecrown’s sacrifice has to be a Dragonbond Mage!”

  Harrier struggled to get loose while not throwing both of them into the tehuko. Tiercel didn’t want to hope that Ancaladar’s return meant that now he and Bisochim could destroy Ahairan in the way the ancient Mages had destroyed the Endarkened. What if he was wrong? If they failed, he didn’t think the Firecrown would give him a second chance to fulfill the bargain he’d made.

  He didn’t think he could nerve himself up to do this a second time.

  He was working so hard to hold onto Harrier, to hold the spell penning up the Black Dogs in place as long as he possibly could, that he missed the moment when Bisochim climbed the last of the steps to the platform.

  “No—wait! No—don’t!” Tiercel cried. “Ancaladar came back! You saw! We can stop her without this!” He tried to get to Bisochim, but now it was Harrier who wouldn’t let go of him. “Don’t!” Tiercel shouted again.

  But Bisochim ignored him. He walked without hesitation to the edge of the platform, then turned to look back toward the staircase where Saravasse stood. She raised her head proudly.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Beloved!”

  Bisochim turned and flung himself from the lip of the platform.

  “A Dragonbond Mage. One who goes willingly,” Tiercel whispered, his voice thick with tears.

  FROM the moment he’d found out that the Lake of Fire was back at Telinchechitl, Harrier had suspected that somebody was going to get thrown into it, and he’d doubted it would be Ahairan. He’d known all along that Tiercel knew more about the “bargain” he’d made than he was saying, and Harrier had suspected that the payment for the Firecrown’s cooperation would be Tiercel’s life and Bisochim’s. He knew more about the Great Powers than Tiercel thought he did—wasn’t Great Ocean one of them, the last and greatest?—and he knew that the Great Powers were cruel, and merciless, and always hungry. Bisochim had woken the Firecrown up, and Tiercel had asked for its help, and the Firecrown would exact payment. It wouldn’t be fair to Saravasse, but she’d be joining about ninety thousand other people who hadn’t gotten a lot of fairness recently.

  What Harrier had been most afraid of, in the long sennights between that moment and this day, was that what Tiercel meant to do here wouldn’t work. Because if he and Bisochim did it—and it didn’t—Harrier would be the only Mage left in the Isvai, and he wasn’t sure he could hold out against Ahairan by himself. He’d hated the relief he’d felt when he’d found out the Firecrown’s sacrifice only had to be Tiercel, but it hadn’t been much relief. Kareta had warned him moonturns ago that his MagePrice would be heavy. He’d been waiting a long time to pay it, and when he’d stood on top of the wall at Sapthiruk and seen the fire in the distance, he’d known he’d pay it at Telinchechitl. He’d always known that paying it meant giving up the thing he most valued in all the world, but in the long sennights since he’d taken up the Three Books, he’d come to love and hate and fear and trust the Wild Magic. It had let Bisochim kill all the other Wildmages in the desert as part of its unknowable purpose. What would it ask him to do?

  When he’d seen the bespelled Isvaieni, Harrier had felt the crushing sense of warning that meant his time to pay MagePrice had come, but he still didn’t know what it was. Then Tiercel had cast a spell—a big one, no Mage-Light or Fire—and Harrier had realized that Ancaladar was back.

  He saw Tiercel hesitate on the edge of the tehuko—and nobody wanted to die, e
specially by jumping into a lake of liquid rock—but someone had to, and maybe the Firecrown would accept him even if Harrier didn’t have a dragon. Only when Tiercel dragged him back, shouting at him that he wasn’t good enough—and Harrier wondered in horror whether what he had to do was pull both of them over the edge—the fine points of his MagePrice were revealed to him.

  You must Bond with a dragon.

  Harrier didn’t know where he could get a dragon—let alone how Bonding with one equaled giving up what he most valued—and if somebody didn’t go over the edge of the tehuko right now Ahairan was going to not only wipe out the last of the Isvaieni but them, too—when suddenly it didn’t matter.

  Bisochim made the sacrifice, and Saravasse was alone.

  Harrier had always thought that dragons vanished at the moment their Bondmates died—or at least died. On the other hand, Ahairan had sent one of her Balwarta toward the top of Telinchechitl when Bisochim had started up the steps, and Harrier was staring right at it, and it was hanging motionless in the air, and its wings weren’t moving at all.

  Time had stopped.

  Then suddenly its wings flapped down, and Harrier could feel Tiercel gripping his arms, and having a dragon—especially one who hated him—was really going to suck, but paying his MagePrice meant that Saravasse didn’t have to die too, and he was tired of everybody around him dying. He tried to pull away from Tiercel to get to Saravasse, but Tiercel wouldn’t let go of him. The pressure of unpaid MagePrice was crushing him to the point that Harrier thought he might die when Saravasse did—

  And then he wasn’t thinking anything at all.

  THIS was why he’d been born a High Mage. This was why the Wild Magic had sent him to Karahelanderialigor and given him Ancaladar. This was why it had made Harrier into a Knight-Mage. This was why he and Harrier and Ancaladar had been sent to Abi’Abadshar, why Ancaladar had been taken from him, why Ancaladar had been returned how and when he had, even why Ahairan had set her trap-spell on Saravasse. All for this moment.

  In Abi’Abadshar, Bisochim had told him about the moment of the Three Becoming One, a prophecy that couldn’t be fulfilled until a form of magic unknown in Great Queen Vieliessar Farcarinon’s time entered the world. The High Magic.

  Tiercel’s magic.

  Ancaladar had prepared Tiercel to fight a Demon; Ancaladar had prepared him to seek every possible advantage in the battle, even listening to whatever unguarded thoughts his enemy might have. The curse and the glory of the High Magick was that it could be used for any purpose—Light and Dark and Good and Evil meant nothing to a magick that was nothing more than a machine in the hands of Men. The spell-to-be that Harrier radiated sent chill waves of nausea through Tiercel, but he steeled himself against it as he would have forced himself into battle with Ahairan. He plunged himself into Harrier’s magic and cast a spell of his own—on Harrier. He wasn’t a Wildmage who needed to ask permission of those he bespelled before he acted. In that single moment, Tiercel understood the terrible power and temptation of the High Magick, and why the ancient High Mages had been so feared and hated. He could not promise that he would always—or ever—ask permission to cast his spells. But he would always understand the terrible responsibility his freedom carried.

  Now he could feel the full weight of Harrier’s MagePrice as if it were lightning gathering itself to strike. The raw touch of the Wild Magic filled Tiercel’s mouth with bile, but in that instant, he knew everything that Harrier did about his MagePrice—and he knew things that Harrier didn’t. He knew that whether Harrier wanted to or not, he was about to Bond with a Dragon. He knew that the Wild Magic would allow Harrier to offer Saravasse the Bond; but that Saravasse could—would—reject the Bond Harrier offered. She was injured, grief-stricken, spell-trapped by Ahairan. She’d refuse, the last precious seconds of her life would trickle out, and the magic that was all that she was would be unbound everlastingly.

  And to pay his MagePrice, Harrier had to Bond. Now. He could force Saravasse into a Bond against her will—or he could refuse to pay his MagePrice. To do either would destroy him as a Wildmage.

  But there was another way.

  There was another dragon.

  Ancaladar had already changed Bonds once, just as the ancient Elven dragons had. He wasn’t injured. And he wouldn’t be giving up Tiercel to do it—that was what the Prophecy meant. Three become One. It could work because the Bond formed between Dragon and Mage through the magic itself, or the possibility of it—and the High Magick and the Wild Magic were utterly different in every way there was.

  They could do this, High Mage and Knight-Mage and dragon together. It was time, at long last.

  Are you ready? Tiercel asked. Ancaladar didn’t need to be present in order to Bond with Harrier. Tiercel was.

  It will be interesting, Bonded, Ancaladar replied.

  Tiercel laughed wordlessly—and cast the second spell that swept the imminence of Harrier’s MagePrice into the Dragonbond with him and Ancaladar.

  And Three became One.

  Tiercel remembered the moment he’d Bonded with Ancaladar—but Ancaladar’s was an ancient, disciplined mind. Ancaladar had lived as half of a Dragonbond for a millennium before the day he Bonded with Tiercel. And from the moment Tannetarie the White had made her Pact and the first dragon had been born, all dragons had been meant to Bond.

  Harrier’s mind was a place of rage and confusion. He had only the vaguest understanding of magic as Tiercel knew magic—and he only knew it as something to be used to attack. Linking himself to Harrier’s mind was like flying into a Sandwind. Naked. In the first instant of Bonding, Tiercel felt Harrier’s shock as the spell struck him—his futile attempt to form some sort of defense against what he knew was magic and what he thought must be a Demonic attack—his realization that it was a Dragonbond—his wild struggle to reach out to Saravasse instead—his furious surrender to the Wild Magic and the seal of MagePrice paid—and oh, all the times that Harrier had spoken of paying MagePrice, he’d made it sound like a transaction that was over-and-done-with, and in this moment of fusion, Tiercel understood that when you paid MagePrice it changed you forever. It was a thing that was never finished—not like a spell of the High Magick that could be cast and forgotten.

  He felt the moment when Harrier realized what he’d done, and—mixed with Harrier’s incredulous joy at the Dragonbond, as the friendship Harrier had shared with Ancaladar became something infinitely richer and deeper—Harrier’s outrage. Not with Tiercel—Tiercel understood that in an instant—but with the Wild Magic itself. Tiercel grasped in the moment that Harrier did, in the moment of Harrier’s mutinous surrender, that his MagePrice was not to Bond with a dragon, but to Bond in this tripartite fusion of mind and memory, magic and will, paying the MagePrice of an ancient Elven Queen, and in doing that, surrendering his freedom, his solitude, his autonomy—forever.

  And in Harrier’s acceptance of his MagePrice—paid not gladly, but willingly, just as Tiercel had meant to honor his bargain with the Firecrown—he felt Harrier’s grief at knowing Tiercel would always blame himself for Bisochim’s death. It was a perfect union: not only of the High Magick and the Wild Magic, but of minds as well. In that one timeless moment of awareness, of joining—not only with Ancaladar, but with each other as well—the two young Mages each realized something neither had known until that moment.

  You’ve been getting this magic stuff all wrong, Harrier said.

  No. You have, Tiercel answered.

  From the moment he’d realized he was a High Mage, Tiercel had assumed that he’d been given his Magery in order to fight a war against the Dark. But when the War Magick became the High Magick millennia before, it had expanded beyond the arts of war. Though never a magic of the natural world, it had still been used for healing, for the diagnosis of ills, for the discovery of new knowledge, to uncover hidden truths. Tiercel’s true strengths lay in building, not in destruction, in identifying problems in order to solve them through peace, not force.

&
nbsp; And Harrier was a Knight-Mage, and so he’d believed that he had to use his Knight-Mage gifts to fight wars and kill people. He could if he needed to, but his greatest strength lay in analyzing things. He could improve a city’s defenses, but that was because he wanted to make them work better: he could do the same thing to its flour mill, if anyone asked him to.

  You mean that both of us are supposed to make everybody happy and healthy? Harrier demanded in wordless indignation.

  Sure. I’ll tell them that they don’t need to argue with each other. You fix the underlying problem, Tiercel answered.

  Won’t work here.

  I have an idea . . .

  The experience of accepting and changing the Dragonbond into something new and wonderful seemed to go on for hours—but less than a heartbeat passed before both Tiercel and Harrier opened their eyes. Even so, Saravasse’s form was already beginning to shimmer into dissolution.

  “Heal Saravasse!” Tiercel cried.

  Healing spells weren’t a part of the High Magic, but they were a part of the Wild Magic, and by now Harrier knew them well. He ran to the staircase, plunging down it, past Shaiara, past Saravasse’s head, halfway along the length of her neck where it lay stretched at full length along the staircase. He placed both hands against her neck. Ancaladar’s near-infinite power was his to draw on. Tiercel’s skill showed him how.

  Nothing like this had ever been done. Not in the time of Tannetarie the White, not in all the centuries afterward. To keep the severed half of a Bonded pair alive simply by pouring Healing energy into them . . .

  It could never have worked if Tiercel had not spent days of horror holding his MageShield around the walls of Tarnatha’Iteru when every bone and muscle in his body cried out for him to quit. To surrender. It could never have worked if Harrier had not spent moonturns in the Isvai, pushing body and mind to their limits each day and each night, keeping the Isvaieni alive by nothing more than his determination that they would live.