The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  And so Bisochim cast a second spell, a spell that would show him not What Would Be, but What Was. He saw the Blue-Robes as they sought one another across the sands of the Isvai. And he drew upon the power he had gained to send storm after storm across the Isvai, harrowing and scouring the desert with lethal Sandwinds until not one of them remained alive.

  To accomplish this task was the work of many days, for to call and control a Sandwind—many Sandwinds—with such precision required constant attention, and Bisochim had no desire to harm the desert or its creatures any more than he must. But his enemies must be destroyed for the good of all.

  Bisochim slept only rarely now, for stronger and stronger spells sustained him, and the day did not hold enough hours. To listen for the subtle voices of the fire took all his concentration and skill, yet those voices contained the information to guide him—both to restore the Balance, and to keep his people safe. In gathering the tribes, he had been too long away from them, lost precious time. But when he was done with this task, exhaustion claimed him, and Bisochim surrendered to a rare period of true and precious sleep.

  “MASTER? MASTER?”

  The soft voice of one of his inhuman servants woke him. It had taken all his art to give the creature a voice, for it was simple enough to give stone the shape of a man and the semblance of life, and nearly as simple to conjure watchers and guardians out of the air itself, but to give either the power of speech was a skill that had eluded him for years. He had only bothered to do it for one of his servants, for what would they need to talk to him about? Now he was grateful that he had.

  “Yes?” He sat up and regarded the stone statue he had named Zinaneg wearily. He knew the creature would not have roused him except for something he himself would consider urgent.

  “Your kinsmen fight among themselves. There is blood,” the creature said in its soft inhuman voice.

  Bisochim rolled quickly from his sleeping mat and flung on his blue robes. For so many years he had refused to wear them, for he disliked the deference the tribes had given him. The deference, he had thought then and still believed, should be accorded to the Gods of the Wild Magic, and to the Balance, not to those who only did what they could to keep the Balance. Now the robes had become necessary once more.

  By the time he reached the garden below the lake, the fight was over. The ring of watchers—a mixture of Laghamba and Tabingana Isvaieni, with a few scattered watchers from other tribes—parted like a dune before the Sandwind at the sight of his blue robe. At its center, one man stood over another, his blood-smeared geschak in his hand.

  “Tharam, what have you done here?” Bisochim kept his voice calm and level as he walked forward and knelt at the side of the blood-stained body lying upon the grass. Breath yet remained in the still form, though the wound was deep and had been meant to kill. He stretched out his hands, slowing the bleeding, drawing upon Saravasse’s power to begin the work of healing. Around him, he heard the watchers murmur in amazement, for he had asked no aid, called upon none of the watching Laghamba Isvaieni to contribute power to the Healing, as would have any of the other Wildmages they knew.

  “Limrac insulted me, Wildmage,” Tharam said. “How could I let such a thing go unpunished?” His voice was troubled now that his anger had passed, for while quarrels and feuds were as frequent among the Isvaieni as among any people anywhere, they began and ended in harsh words. For a man to shed the blood of another of his own tribe was cause for immediate banishment. At the Gathering of the tribes, all were bound by the Gathering Peace, and to shed the blood of a member of another tribe would be cause for the same instant banishment.

  But this was not the Gathering, and the Gathering Peace did not bind the Isvaieni now. Now, for the first time, the thousands of Isvaieni were forced into each others’ company not for days, but for moonturns.

  On the march it had not mattered, for no Isvaieni was fool enough to brawl with his neighbor on the move, when the desert lay all around them, an eternal and unsleeping enemy. And when they arrived at their new home, amazement at so much luxury—endless grass for the flocks, and sweet water, and unfamiliar trees bearing delicious fruit—had kept the Isvaieni quiet for a few sennights more. Thus it was that, in the first days after their arrival, Bisochim saw none of the things that he saw so clearly now, kneeling beside Limrac’s Healed body.

  As soon as the shock of reaching their unfamiliar new home wore off, the trouble would have begun. There were nearly three dozen tribes who called the Isvai “home.” Some tribes counted their members in the hundreds, and their tents would fill even Sapthiruk Oasis when they came to water their flocks. Other tribes—like the Nalzindar—could not number even two score among their people. All were used to days spent in hard labor. The Isvaieni were not accustomed to idleness, and there was little for them to do here. There was nothing for them to hunt in the Barahileth, and there was food in abundance—even for so many—from Bisochim’s flocks and herds and fields and orchards. Nor need the Isvaieni tend them, for Bisochim’s magical servants did that work. And the Isvaieni’s own beasts need not be herded and guarded either, for they would not wander away from the water and rich forage—there was nothing beyond it but sterile sand.

  Without the fountains that constantly misted the air with water, all that grew would wither away and the air itself would be too hot to breathe. And for this reason, there was as little place for the people to go to escape each other’s company as there was reason for their animals to stray. In deep night, when the sands cooled, the Isvaieni could leave the protection of the gardens and their fountains and go out into the desert, it was true, but during the day they must remain packed into intolerable closeness to one another. Grievances that could be ignored during a Gathering, or set aside during a chance meeting at an oasis, festered and grew until they must be answered in blood. This might be the first such quarrel, but he knew—with sinking heart—that it would not be the last. He must craft a net for the anger of the young warriors—and quickly.

  “How could you do the work of our enemies for them?” Bisochim said quietly, rising to his feet.

  As Limrac sat up, groaning, two of his kinsmen hurried forward to lift him to his feet and carry him back to the Laghamba tents.

  “Hear me—all of you,” Bisochim said, raising his voice. “You have followed me here because I spoke truth to you and you listened. The Balance of the world is out of true, and because we alone, of all the world, can see this, we are in danger. Because we see the truth, the enemies of the True Balance seek to place us in bondage.

  “I have told you that the road to success and freedom would be as long and as hard for us as it once was for the Blessed Saint Idalia and Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy. I told you that in order to win our freedom we must set aside the differences between tribe and tribe—to become, not many tribes, but one. Would you rather squabble like children until the armies of the north sweep down upon us to destroy the Isvaieni forever? I do not wish to see that day.”

  “No one wishes that, Bisochim.” It was Calazir who spoke, the leader of the Tabingana Isvaieni. His hair and beard were gray, and he had led his people with wisdom and justice for many years. “Yet are we the fat dwellers of the Iteru-cities, to pitch our tents so close by one another that one need not even leave his tent to have a conversation with a neighbor? Such closeness and idleness wears upon us all. We would hear of the battles we must fight.”

  “Your words have wisdom, Calazir,” Bisochim answered, though the last thing he wanted was to either lead or send the Isvaieni into battle. “I will think upon them until the counsel I may offer is as wise as yours.”

  Calazir bowed and retreated. The circle of watchers were retreating as well, returning to their encampments. As Calazir had suggested, none of them had far to go.

  Bisochim could double—even triple—the area protected by fountains, and it would not be enough—not for a people who had once roved over the entire Isvai. And a life of indolence did not suit the Isvaieni temper. No
r could he forbid them to fight among themselves—they knew him as a Wildmage, but the Wildmages counseled the Isvaieni, they did not lead them. Nor was there a Chief of Chiefs among the tribes—there had never been. Each tribe looked to itself alone. And even if all the leaders of all the tribes together agreed that their people must not fight among themselves, even that would not be enough: should the members of a tribe dislike the counsel of the one who led them strongly enough, that one would be banished from their tents.

  He must think of something else.

  As Bisochim brooded upon what he must do, he walked through the encampment. He had not attended a Gathering of the tribes since he left the tents of the Adanate, but all around him now he saw the tents of the peoples who lived between Sand and Star, each distinct in its patterns and weaving: Adanate, Kamazan, Khulbana, Barantar, Binrazan, Fadaryama, Thanduli, Laghamba, Hinturi, Kadyastar, Tabingana, Kareggi, Aduzza, Tunag, Tharkafa …

  But—as he had known before this journey began—the tents of the Nalzindar were not among them.

  He pondered for a few moments, then sought out Liapha, who ruled over the Kadyastar Isvaieni. Liapha had left the bodies of three husbands upon the sand, and borne a dozen children, but it was her cousin’s son, of all her large family, who would follow her as leader of the Kadyastar. The Isvaieni could not afford to let the leadership of the tribe pass to the weak or the foolish. The day was near when Hadyan would take the staff of office from her hands, but it had not come yet.

  And so Bisochim came to her tent, and bowed low, and waited to be welcomed inside, and sat upon the rug at her side, and allowed her granddaughter to serve him kaffeyah. And he ate dates, and patiently drank three cups of the hot bitter black brew, as Liapha shared the gossip of the enormous camp.

  “I say, Wildmage, that I am not surprised that there was blood. Tharam was ever a fool. I would not let any daughter of mine go to that tent. Nor is Calazir overprudent. He has too many young men without wives within his walls. Well! He was ever shortsighted, asking too high a bride-price but never giving one. That is no Balance.”

  “It is not,” Bisochim agreed.

  They spoke a while longer of problems he could not yet see a way to solve. The desertfolk chafed at such close proximity to one another: tempers flared and they had no understanding of how to live together in peace.

  At last, Bisochim was able to broach the actual matter that had brought him to her tent. “I believe I see the tents of every tribe which calls the Isvai home … save one,” he said.

  Liapha regarded him shrewdly. “The Nalzindar have not come,” she said. “Well, they were never ones to go where others led.” Her expression turned sober. “I fear for them, Wildmage.”

  “As do I,” Bisochim answered somberly. But he did not fear for the Nalzindar as much as he feared them. The sennights of the Ingathering had been time enough for the message he had preached among the tribes to reach Shaiara. He had not sought out each chieftain himself—there had not been time—but he had persuaded many, and they had convinced the rest. He had been certain that one of them must have sought Shaiara out.

  He knew her. If she had doubts of what she heard, she would have come to him. He would have convinced her.

  But she had not.

  The Nalzindar were a tiny tribe, the smallest between Sand and Star. They kept no flocks, and only such shotors, hawks, and ikulas as they needed for hunting—and perhaps as many more shotors as might be needed to transport such tents and possessions as the shotors ridden on the hunt could not accommodate.

  “Though … it has been many moonturns since the last Gathering,” he said slowly. Such a tiny handful of people might vanish between one season and the next, through the harsh mercy of the Isvai, and leave no trace of their passage.

  Liapha nodded. “So I had thought at first. And the Nalzindar are not ones to seek out the company of others at this Iteru or that. Yet their absence troubled me enough that I asked among the tents, for surely someone must have seen them since that time. And so word came to me that Malbasi of the Tunag traded many fine robes to Shaiara of the Nalzindar at Sapthiruk Oasis for a great parcel of green-cured fenec skins. Nor, so she said, did Shaiara tarry to bargain overlong. I do not know why she did not stay to greet you, Wildmage, for you were there upon that day.” Now Liapha looked even more troubled.

  “Do not concern yourself. All goes as the Wild Magic wills.” The words he had heard and spoken all his life fell easily from Bisochim’s lips, but for the first time they tasted bitter. If Shaiara had been at Sapthiruk upon that day—as Liapha said—the Nalzindar had not simply vanished.

  As soon after that as good manners permitted, Bisochim left Liapha’s tent. She had given him much to think about. Three moonturns ago the Nalzindar had been alive between Sand and Star. Worse, Shaiara had been at Sapthiruk when he had been there to speak to Calazir, to Bakuduk, to Fannas, to half a handful of other leaders among the Isvaieni. And she had not made her presence known to him, nor had any among the Isvaieni seen her after that. Nor did what he had observed in his spells of foreseeing comfort him. The Wildmages had not gone to the Nalzindar now, and they would not have done so in the future. None of Bisochim’s spells—of what was or of what could be—had showed him the Nalzindar at all.

  Shaiara had taken the Nalzindar somewhere—but where? She would no more leave the deep desert for the Iteru-cities than she would raise a hand to the people she had sworn to shepherd and protect. Bisochim knew Shaiara as well as he knew himself—she was a creature of silence and the open sand, and could no more live within walls among the herds of city-dwellers than she could slit her own throat. Yet even if some unimaginable necessity had taken her there, it was impossible that she would have been absent from his vision of What Might Be, for the Wildmages would have sought out the only remaining tribe of the Isvaieni that they could find, just as the Nalzindar would have sought out their only possible allies.

  He returned to his stronghold and paced through the vast stone chambers, the open courtyards, the gardens. He stood upon the battlements as the hot wind blew—from the desert, from the lake. The gusts of droplets from the fountains that kept the air breathable spattered over his skin like the rain he had heard of but never seen. And he thought of what he must do.

  The Nalzindar were in hiding. No man hid from a friend.

  Some Wildmage, some enemy—perhaps the Light Itself—had sought out the Nalzindar and filled their hearts with poison as a tainted well was filled with salt. They would not believe the truth now, even if he came to them and told it.

  Yet even though they were in the service of the enemy—pawns at least, but no less dangerous for that—Bisochim could not bring himself to hate them. He had spent too many years sworn to protect the Isvaieni, as were all who held the Three Books. If the other Wildmages had forfeited their trust, he had not. There must be a way to protect the Nalzindar without endangering the other lives in his care. There must.

  But to do that, he must find them first. Find them, and remove them from their bondage to whatever enemy had seduced them. Once he had done that, he would find a place where they could be safe. Protected. Where their tragic delusions could not spread to his true and faithful Isvaieni.

  When the True Balance had been restored … the words the Nalzindar might speak to his faithful would not matter then. And when his battle was ended, they would see the truth. Shaiara was wise and long-sighted. She would not persist in error when she could embrace truth, and her people would accept her counsel. Or that of her successor, should she have left the tent of her fathers to give her body to the desert sands.

  He must only find them.

  IT HAD BEEN many years since any task Bisochim had set his will to had been beyond his means. There were only two things Bisochim had not yet accomplished. He had not yet restored the True Balance. And he had not yet won back Saravasse’s love.

  Both, he was certain, could be accomplished with time. And if he succeeded in the first, he would have all the tim
e he needed to accomplish the second.

  To find the Nalzindar was a matter, he now realized, as vital as discovering a way his Isvaieni could live together in peace, so once again he set aside the vital work of listening for the voices in the fire. His duty to his people must come before even that, for there was no one else to care for them now.

  And so he summoned Saravasse to his side.

  She came when he called her—as she must—but she would no longer speak to him. She had not spoken in years, even when he spoke to her, even when he begged her to speak. Her silence filled him with a dull heavy anger. How dare she mock him with silence, she who had once been so bright and clever, sharing her stories of far lands and centuries in the hours they had spent together in a thousand places upon the sand?

  He loved her. Even now.

  Through the Bond they shared, he felt her grief, as she felt his anger. Grief and anger bound them where once there had been only love and joy, and Bisochim dared not ask, even in the depths of his thoughts where he knew she could not hear, what had brought them to such a place in their lives. Sometimes he almost thought it would be better to abandon his grasping at the future in the name of what was. But to do that would be to betray the Wild Magic and to kill Saravasse, for when she had bound herself to him, she had bound her years to his. In two handspans of years—surely not three—he would be dead. And she would die with him.

  And so when she came, he held his temper and his tongue, and set himself upon her back, and sent her soaring out over the desert, searching for the Nalzindar—and for a solution to a problem that magic could not solve.

  Even three moonturns after the last time anyone had seen any of them, traces of their presence should have been easy to find, for one who rode upon the shoulders of the wind itself. The Nalzindar moved as the shadows of shadows, but hawks rose upon the sky, even the smallest cookfires made smoke, and no one could conceal tents and shotors upon the open desert—and the Nalzindar hunted with hawks, cooked their dinners, and slept in tents as did any other Isvaieni. Though the wind would wipe their footprints from the sand—and they might keep to the dunes for just that reason—if they ventured across the hard-baked clay, the faintest trace of sandaled foot or shotor’s pads would take many seasons to wear away, and those traces would be visible from above.