The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  “Cast the shield! Cast it now!”

  Suddenly the sky over the city bloomed with purple light.

  “Did you see him?” Tiercel demanded, sounding frantic. He jerked himself free of Harrier’s grip and stumbled away. “The man—the one we saw in Ysterialpoerin! The one I saw on the Plains—the one who couldn’t see you! He’s here!”

  There was so much conviction in Tiercel’s voice that Harrier actually looked around. But there was nobody on the roof except them.

  “No,” Harrier said quietly. “No, Tiercel. I didn’t see him.”

  “He’s here,” Tiercel said. “I don’t know how he got into the city, but he did. He’s been following us since we left the Veiled Lands. He didn’t want to come near me while Ancaladar was with me, but he came back.”

  It would have sounded reasonable, except for the fact that it was impossible. Not that they couldn’t have been followed—because whatever that thing was, Harrier knew it wasn’t human. It might even have taken it this long to find them again after they’d vanished through the Magedoor into the Veiled Lands and come back out the other side.

  But what he did know was that nobody had entered the city since Tiercel had put up his shield, and that there was nobody on the roof.

  “C’mon, Tyr,” he said gently. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  AFTER THAT, HARRIER was too worried to leave Tiercel alone with anyone else. When the Telchi came to join them a few hours later, Harrier told him what Tiercel had said.

  “Who is this man?” the Telchi asked. “What does he look like?”

  “I don’t think he’s a man,” Harrier said slowly. “Tiercel thought he was something, well, not human. But we were never sure what.” He shook his head in frustration. When they’d gone with Ancaladar through the Magedoor, there’d been so many new things to think about all at once—and then, when they’d left Karahelanderialigor, and he’d gotten his Three Books, there’d been that—that he’d almost forgotten about the strange red-haired man. When Tiercel’s visions had returned outside the Veil, Harrier had worried about their attacks resuming, but as the sennights passed, it had almost become a habit of paranoia rather than that he’d actually expected something to happen.

  He described the man—for lack of anything better to call him—as best he could. If he’d been the strange bear that attacked them just north of Sentarshadeen, they’d seen him three times: once there, once on the Plains just before they’d met Roneida, and once—perhaps twice—in Ysterialpoerin. And each time, except for the red coloring, he’d looked different.

  The Telchi frowned when Harrier was done, weighing his words. “This is troubling news. The Endarkened, it is said, could change their form so.”

  “Yeah,” Harrier said, sighing. “But Tyr said he didn’t think it was really evil, whatever it was, and whatever it was trying to do. And if it was one of the Endarkened, I don’t think either of us would be alive right now.”

  “Very true,” the Telchi agreed. “Still. A red-haired man in the city should be simple to find.”

  Harrier nodded. He and Tiercel stood out here because they were both so fair, and because his hair was red and Tiercel’s was blond. The southerners were the descendants of High Reaches folk; Harrier hadn’t seen anyone with blue eyes since he’d come to Tarnatha’Iteru, and everyone’s hair was some shade of dark brown. There’d been other northerners in the city when they’d arrived, but the last of them had left a moonturn before—whether because they believed in the danger, or simply because they thought the city was unsettled didn’t matter: they weren’t here now.

  “If he’s here,” he said.

  “I saw him.”

  Though Tiercel was right there in the room while the two of them were having the conversation, he’d simply stared silently off into the distance, and after a few minutes, both of them had almost managed to forget that he was there.

  Harrier hesitated. He didn’t want to say that Tiercel was probably seeing a lot of things that weren’t there right now, but he was thinking it. Tiercel’s eyes were sunk into his skull, and he looked more than exhausted: he looked ill. Harrier couldn’t imagine how he was managing to stay awake.

  “You think I’m crazy,” Tiercel said.

  “I think you’ve been awake for four days,” Harrier said.

  “I saw him,” Tiercel repeated stubbornly.

  “We will search for this creature Harrier has described,” the Telchi said. “If we see it, we will tell you.”

  Tiercel nodded. “I’m going to … stay awake,” he said vaguely.

  THE MAGESHIELD FLICKERED twice that night, but it wasn’t something Tiercel did intentionally. Each time, Tiercel simply lost control of his spell. Fortunately Harrier was sitting up with Tiercel and was able to shake him hard enough to make him set the spell again. But Harrier thought that the time was coming—soon—when that wouldn’t work, and Tiercel’s shield would fall once and for all. Four days, maybe five, in the baking sun with minimal water—was it enough to weaken the army outside their gates to the point where the men of Tarnatha’Iteru could overwhelm them? He’d only spent one night without sleep, keeping Tiercel company, and his eyes felt as if they were filled with sand. He couldn’t imagine what Tiercel felt like by now.

  “You have to wake Ancaladar up,” he told Tiercel urgently. It was dawn. Five days now.

  “No,” Tiercel mumbled. “Isn’t time.”

  “It is,” Harrier said pleadingly. “It really is. Come on, Tyr. Do you think anybody in the city’s going to notice one little dragon at this point? So he’s hungry. He can eat all the Isvaieni shotors.”

  “No,” Tiercel repeated stubbornly. Harrier wasn’t really sure whether Tiercel heard him, or understood him, or was just holding onto the last clear idea he’d had days ago: that Ancaladar would be vulnerable to the spears of the Isvaieni army. He coaxed and argued until Tiercel became terrifyingly hysterical, but he couldn’t make him change his mind.

  The Telchi entered the room, drawn by the shouting.

  “Do not try to reason with him,” he said quietly. “He is too tired to see reason. And you will only exhaust him further.”

  “I won’t!” Tiercel said—one last refusal of Harrier’s arguments. He shambled over to the window and stood gazing out, ignoring both of them.

  “I just—” Harrier began, and stopped. This wasn’t the time to care about who was right or wrong. “Yeah. I think we need to plan on attacking the Isvaieni soon,” he said, lowering his voice although he doubted Tiercel was still paying attention. “I don’t think Tiercel’s going to be able to hold the shield in place much more than another day. If that long.”

  “In truth, I am grateful we have been granted this much time,” the Telchi said. “The City Guard and the Palace Guard are both well-trained and drilled. The Militia has some training. In the last four days, arrangements have been made to stockpile weapons at the Main Gate, and in a number of places throughout the city, so that when the signal is given that the shield has fallen for the last time, everyone who is willing and able to fight may arm themselves quickly.”

  “Horses? Shotors?” Harrier asked.

  “Very few,” the Telchi answered. “And not trained for battle. But neither are the mounts of our foes. This battle will be fought on foot.”

  “They’ll need to stay away from the city wall,” Harrier said, half in a daze. “You can’t let the Isvaieni back them against it and trap them. Out the North Gate, swing wide, straight west, then back. If you’re lucky, you can come at them from behind.”

  “If the Lady of Battles is kind, our fortunes will run just so,” the Telchi agreed. “I know you had meant to come with us, Harrier. But I think your place will be here.”

  “I… what? Here?” Harrier said, confused. “No. I—”

  “You stay by his side now to keep him awake as long as possible,” the Telchi said. “And when we go forth, the gates will be barred behind us, but the enemy may still gain access to the city. Would you leave
him defenseless? Worse, what if he should wake again, and, not knowing what he does, cast his spell once more?”

  Harrier winced at the image the Telchi evoked. He didn’t know what would happen if you were actually in the middle of MageShield when it was cast, and he really didn’t want to. He nodded reluctantly.

  “Good,” the Telchi said, satisfied. “Now, come and eat. And see if you can persuade Tiercel to eat as well.”

  FOR THE WHOLE of that fifth day, Harrier felt as if he was in a race—a slow terrible nightmarish race where the consequences of losing were too terrible to imagine. Tiercel no longer dared even sit down, for fear of falling asleep; he leaned against the walls, blotting his face and neck with towels dipped in ice water, moving restlessly from place to place to try to stay awake.

  The shield kept flickering—gone and back so swiftly that if Harrier hadn’t been watching for it, half-sick with knowing what the instability represented, he wouldn’t have noticed what was happening. It would have been a beautiful job of pretending that the shield was about to fail at any moment. If Tiercel had been pretending.

  IT WAS THE middle of the night. They’d gone up to the roof garden. Tiercel had insisted, saying it would be cooler there, although no part of the city was very much cooler than any other part with the MageShield in place. He kept walking over to the very edge of the roof and looking down, which was more than enough to keep Harrier wide awake—even in the middle of his second day without sleep—because the roof was flat, and there was no wall or anything at the edge, just a sheer drop. Harrier kept leading him back to the center of the roof, and Tiercel kept wandering away to the edge again.

  They weren’t alone. Rial was sitting on a bench inside one of the wooden buildings—they were really just roofs and pillars—reading a copy of The Litany of the Light by the light of a lantern. Several of the Palace Guard stood near the top of the staircase. They were there to turn away anyone else who tried to come up to the roof rather than to guard Tiercel, and Harrier was grateful for their presence.

  “He’s out there somewhere, you know, Har,” Tiercel said in a dreamy voice. “He’s waiting.”

  “He can’t get up here,” Harrier said. There was no point in arguing with Tiercel that the Red Man wasn’t out there. Tiercel would only get upset.

  “He doesn’t have to,” Tiercel said, still in that frighteningly calm voice. He took a step toward the edge of the roof again, swaying dangerously as he did. “He’s crowned in fire. We’re all going to burn. I—”

  Harrier never found out what Tiercel’s next words might have been, because his eyes rolled up in his head and his knees buckled. He fell forward.

  And the MageShield above them vanished.

  Harrier dropped to his knees beside Tiercel and rolled him onto his back. Tiercel’s mouth was bleeding where he’d bitten his lip when he fell. Harrier shook him and slapped him, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t rouse him.

  “Sound the alarm,” he said quietly. “It’s time.”

  It seemed like forever before the guards began to move.

  Harrier stared down at Tiercel. He touched his forehead. It was cold and clammy, as if a fever had finally broken.

  “Let me help you carry him to his bed,” Rial said quietly, coming to kneel beside Harrier.

  “You’ll need to go home,” Harrier said. “To your family.”

  “My youngest sisters and my young kin go to seek shelter in the Light-Temple,” Rial said. “The rest of my family goes to arm themselves. As shall I. Preceptor Larimac has said that the Light does not ask us to seek battle or to avoid it, only to choose it carefully and wisely, doing no more injury than we must. I shall be proud to stand at his side today.”

  “I could—” Harrier said, torn between knowing he needed to protect Tiercel and needing to do what he thought of as his duty: help to protect the people of Tarnatha’Iteru.

  “Your place is with the Mage,” Rial said gently. “Come. Help me lift him.”

  Harrier took Tiercel’s shoulders and Rial took his feet, and they carried him over to the stairs and down. When they were halfway down the staircase, Harrier heard the warning horns begin to sound throughout the city.

  People were running through the corridors of the Palace, but though everything looked chaotic, Harrier didn’t get the sense that anyone was panicking. He wondered if it was because the disaster they’d all anticipated for so long was finally here, or because they all had clear instructions of what to do and were certain of their victory.

  They’d only gotten Tiercel part of the way toward their rooms when Harrier pulled them all to a halt. “No,” Harrier said. “Wait. Here.”

  “But—” Rial said.

  “I know,” Harrier answered. “But it has a view of the Main Gate.”

  He and Tiercel had been in this room a couple of days ago while they’d been waiting to see the Consul—Harrier wasn’t quite sure what the room was for, but it had a couch and some tables and a set of enormous windows that opened onto a tiny balcony that overlooked the Gate.

  The horns had stopped blowing now. Their warning had been given.

  He and Rial carried Tiercel into the room and laid him down on the couch. There was a small lamp burning on one of the tables, barely enough to give the room a little light. Tiercel looked as if he was dead, but he was breathing shallowly.

  “Now I leave you,” Rial said. “The Light be with you, Harrier, and with Tiercel.”

  “And with you,” Harrier said. “I’ll see you again soon.”

  “I regret what I am about to do,” Rial said softly. “I hope those poor people outside our walls will be granted peace by the Light.”

  “So do I,” Harrier said. “Give me—” he said impulsively.

  “Of course,” Rial answered, and before he left, he called down the blessing of the Light on both Harrier and Tiercel.

  WHEN RIAL WAS gone, Harrier took a spill and lit one of the larger lamps in the room. He closed the door, then dragged one of the large tables across it to block it. He wasn’t worried about being attacked, but the door had no lock, and he didn’t want the two of them to be disturbed.

  He went over to the window and folded the shutters back. The Main Gate was distant, but the few buildings between the Consul’s Palace and the Gate were low, and Harrier could see it clearly. A crowd filled the entire plaza—visible only by the torches they carried—and as he watched, they began to pass out through the Gate. Hurry, Harrier thought, clenching his hands into fists. Hurry.

  It was strange, after so long behind Tiercel’s MageShield, to see the blackness of the sky and feel the cold night wind on his face. The column of marchers moved so slowly, and Harrier was guessing at what was out there as much as seeing it. From the height of some of the torches, some of the people were mounted. Most were not. He could hear a faint distant babble of noise from the moving crowd.

  He stepped out onto the balcony, and listened, but he heard no other sounds at all.

  He thought he must have stood and watched for almost an hour before the Plaza was dark, and faintly, in the distance, he heard the booming sound of the gates being thrown shut again. The guards on the walls would watch and wait to see when it was time to open them again. He glanced at the sky. The position of the stars told him it was at least an hour, maybe two, until dawn. And no moon tonight. He wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.

  Still no sound, and he began to worry. Almost two hours, now, since the shield had failed. His imagination showed him what his eyes could not. The people from the city would have gone out the Main Gate, swinging wide of the wall and heading south—

  Oh, Light, no—Harrier thought in horror, just as he heard the first screams.

  “Stupid. We were so stupid,” he groaned aloud. He pounded his fist on the balcony rail in frustration, wanting to blot out the sounds he heard. And he couldn’t. He drew a long shuddering breath. “The horns. It was the horns.”

  Now—when it was far too late—he realized he’d m
ade a horrible mistake. It hadn’t even been his to make—he hadn’t been consulted on how the Consul planned to rouse the entire city when it was time for the final attack—and even if he had been, he wasn’t entirely sure the man would have taken his advice. Harrier wasn’t sure what advice he would have had to give—when the shield fell, the city needed to be alerted quickly.

  But he might have, Harrier told himself furiously. You know he might have. He did before. You could have come up with something.

  But he hadn’t. He didn’t. And the Isvaieni had heard the horns, and known this time was different than the times before. And they’d had the strength to lay an ambush of their own.

  It wouldn’t have mattered, Harrier told himself. Their plan—their entire plan—was based on the Isvaieni being too weak to fight. Whether they were warned or not shouldn’t matter. But it has, Harrier thought in anguish. It did.

  The sound of battle grew louder. Human screams, and the shrieks of wounded shotors, and an unearthly wailing that was the sound of a mortally wounded horse. The sounds made his blood run cold. And what was worse—far worse—was that he knew to the last man how many men there were in the City Guard and the City Militia. There were—perhaps—a hundred men in the Palace Guard. Add to that everybody in Tarnatha’Iteru able and willing to carry a weapon …

  … and they were still outnumbered by the Isvaieni army two to one. And the Isvaieni were desperate to win. It won’t take their whole army to wipe out everything we can send against them, Harrier thought. Where will the rest of them be?

  We have to get out of here.

  He went to drag the table away from the door.

  Sixteen

  Crowned in Fire

  HE WASN’T SURE where they should go. All of his instincts told him to help, to fight, but Tiercel was helpless, and Harrier needed to protect him. Once the Isvaieni entered the city, the Consul’s Palace would probably be one of the first places they’d come.