The Phoenix Endangered

by James Mallory

  Bisochim knew that whatever the Isvaieni had captured, they had not captured Demons. In the days when he had first Bonded to Saravasse and begun to study how to set the Balance to rights, he had walked long in the land of dreams that showed the world as it had once been, and there he had seen the Ancient World and its creatures, and the monsters known as the Endarkened. He knew that whoever or whatever it was that Zanattar had captured, it was not Endarkened, no matter how much Kazat named it “Demon” and “monster.” The problem with the world as it was wasn’t too much Darkness, but too much Light. Nor—despite what he had heard—did he think that what Zanattar had captured were any sort of Otherfolk. Mages, certainly—enemies and tools of the Light. But Mages could bleed and die. Bisochim had proved that himself, when he had slain the Wildmages of the Isvai.

  Kazat nodded. “Zanattar felt that you would know best how to kill them. He said that if we kept them blindfolded and drugged upon sweet wine they could do us no harm.”

  “He has done well,” Bisochim forced himself to say.

  It was many hours before Bisochim could leave the feast of welcome, for it would have seemed strange indeed did he not stay to welcome Kazat’s band and Hargul’s band and those who had fought beside them in the name of the True Balance. Many were the stories told, there among the tents, of young warriors—hundreds of them—whose bones now lay upon the sand, of their bravery and sacrifice and fierce courage. More of the young warriors arrived during the feast—for there were many paths to the edge of the Barahileth, but only one road through it—and so places must be made for them upon the carpets and the tales must all be told again, from the first foolishness of the city-dwellers at Orinaisal’Iteru to the hard-won victory over Demon-magic at Tarnatha’Iteru.

  When Bisochim at last was able to leave the feast and return to his fortress, Saravasse was gone. He wondered if she’d only come to gloat over his disaster. Surely, in her restless flights over the desert, she had seen all that had occurred. Once she would have hastened to his side with the news the moment she had seen the first attack on the first city, so that the two of them could have ridden forth and stopped it.

  Once.

  It is all for you, my lady, Bisochim thought desperately, all that I do. It is for you. Though even as he thought the words, hoping she would hear them, he knew that they were only a part of the truth. Since he had first taken up his Three Books as a child, Bisochim had known there was some great work set out for him, a work that only he could accomplish. Long before he had met Saravasse he had known the Balance was out of true. It was her power that had given him the strength to do something about it—and their Bond that had given him the need and the will to go on working through the endless years of disappointment and frustration.

  And so he prepared his strongest wards to hold the captives Zanattar would bring to him. He did not risk a spell to see where Zanattar was, or to discover the nature of his captives. The wards around the Lake of Fire were impenetrable … unless magic was worked through them. Then the spell itself could serve as a conduit back to its caster. If whoever had sent these Mages was seeking them, they would certainly notice his magic. He would not risk revealing the sanctuary of his people. And so, knowing that the Enemy had already reached the Isvai, he could do nothing as he waited for Zanattar’s arrival but attempt to master his unruly spirit. So many of his people lost and dead! And in battles that need never have been fought—for surely, surely, once the Balance had been restored, everyone would see there was no need to fight at all? Why fight a battle that was already lost—or won?

  He could show nothing of this anguish to his people. They thought they had triumphed. They thought they had done precisely as he had wished them to do. He had told them, after all, that they were surrounded by enemies that wished them harm. He had promised them wars and great battles. The fact that it had been a trick, a lie told out of love to save them from the terrible future his visions foretold him, was a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Nineteen

  Strangers from the Sky

  THE MOON HAD waxed and waned six times when danger came to trouble the Nalzindar’s existence in Abi’Abadshar. In that time Shaiara’s people had never succumbed to the foolishness of thinking themselves safe, for there was a saying among the Isvaieni: One is only safe when they are dead, or when they are yet unborn. And no people between Sand and Star took these words to heart more than the Nalzindar.

  Three moonturns ago Shaiara had at last taken the terrible risk of sending a few of her people into the Barahileth, for with all the bounty that Abi’Abadshar granted them, there was one thing it did not supply: salt. She had feared for all her people every moment that the salt-gatherers were gone. In ordinary times, she would never have thought that any of her people would betray the tribe, no matter what torture they were put to, but she had seen how Bisochim could bend the minds of strong men with nothing more than simple words, and she did not believe that anyone could withstand him. Had she been his prey that day at Sapthiruk Oasis, and not the minds and hearts of others, she would not be here now, strong-willed though she was.

  But her people had returned safely, their shotors laden down with enough salt so that it would be another year, with care, before such a journey must be risked again. It was only then, listening to her heart, that Shaiara came close to despair, for she realized then that she did not believe that one wheel of the year would be enough to set the world to rights. The thought that they would have to spend a year, two years, even three, moored to this one place left Shaiara feeling as if she were trapped in the Third Descent without light, shivering in the suffocating blackness. The Nalzindar were used to going where they wished across the sands of the wide Isvai. It was true that Abi’Abadshar held bounty beyond their dreams. But it was not freedom.

  Marap, Narkil, and Turan had harvested with care, disguising their work so that the scars they had left upon the desert would not resemble the work of human hands. They led the salt-burdened shotors down into the passage to divest them of their burdens, and Shaiara could see that the shotors were not the only thing that must be unburdened, for Marap’s face plainly showed that the Nalzindar herb-woman was the bearer of evil news. Such news properly belonged to all the tribe, but it was Shaiara’s right to hear it first, and alone. When the shotors had been unloaded and turned free to graze, Shaiara took Marap aside to hear words she already knew they both wished could remain unsaid.

  “There is a road across the Barahileth, Shaiara,” Marap said grimly. “It runs as straight as the flight of doves fleeing the hunting falcon. Worse. There is water. Wells.”

  Shaiara did her best to school her features to smoothness so that Marap would not see her dismay. Marap well knew this was grim news; Shaiara would not allow her own reaction to make the burden of the telling heavier. But when the time came to share this information with the tribe, it would be impossible to render the bitter words sweet, even if such had been the custom among the Nalzindar. As well to say there were unicorns in the Barahileth as water! Save that a unicorn could come to the Barahileth, so the storysingers said, and every child of the desert knew that there was no water here.

  “The Shadow-Touched has made them,” Shaiara said slowly.

  Marap nodded. “We did not disturb them.”

  Shaiara nodded in approval. Who knew what spells the Shadow-Touched might have set upon his wells? A man who could go against every teaching of the Three Books might well go so far as to poison water.

  When the time came to share it, the people took the news of the road through the Barahileth calmly. The Wild Magic had led them to this refuge. It would continue to protect them, or it would not. One could not drink the kaffeyah before it was brewed; the trouble of the Shadow-Touched’s making was so strange a thing that its manifestation was impossible to predict. They would face it upon the day, and before the day, they would not fret over what they could not control.

  Later, when the camp had become quiet, Shaiara questioned Marap carefully on all
the details of her journey, settling them in her own head until she knew exactly where this strange dove-road was in relation to Abi’Abadshar. She was relieved to hear it was nearly eight days’ journey to the east; in the Barahileth, where one day’s travel must be counted as four, none of those who now followed the Shadow-Touched would stumble across the Nalzindars’ refuge by accident, and even if they did so, her people were well-hidden.

  But it troubled her that she had taken her people, even unwittingly, not away from Bisochim, but toward him. Yet what else could she have done? Abi’Abadshar was the only place of safety she had been able to imagine. And the more she thought about it, the more she thought that remaining in the Isvai, vast as it was, would not have saved them. A road—with wells along its path—must exist for a purpose. Bisochim had not merely taken the rest of the Isvaieni into the Barahileth to remain there as her people remained within Abi’Abadshar. They must travel in and out of it. To what purpose?

  At Sapthiruk Oasis, Bisochim had promised the tribes that he would lead them to war. It was a thing too terrible for Shaiara to imagine, but one thing she did know: if her tribe had remained in the Isvai, surely they would be lost now.

  THREE SENNIGHTS AFTER Marap and the others had returned from the salt-gathering expedition, Shaiara sat in a patch of sunlight in the garden, a basket of shotor-wool by her side, and a carved wooden spindle in her hands. She would far rather be anywhere but here and doing anything but this—and if the thread snapped yet again, she would lose her patience as she had not done with any task since she had been a young child. It was why she had come away from the tent, so that she might practice in private—she was not ashamed to fail at a thing before her people, but she was ashamed to lose her temper at her failure. And spinning was a skill that did not come easily to her, but Singi had built what he said was a loom, and if they were to have cloth, there must be yarn, and if there was to be yarn, the Nalzindar must spin it, for there was no one—now—to trade with. In the past, Shaiara had left the spinning to others—the Nalzindar spun the wool of their shotors, but only for trade, or to braid into small items. Not to weave.

  But now their cloth must be of their own weaving. Much yarn would be needed, and all must spin. And Shaiara feared, just a little, that here in this land of boundless plenty the Nalzindar might succumb to indolence. It might well be hard for them to leave such a pleasant place. If we ever do, she thought bleakly. Just as well, against such an unfortunate possibility, that they all still have hard tasks to occupy them now. And how could she ask them to do what she would not? So it would be just as well if she could spin, if not well, then at least not hissing and spitting with frustration like an infuriated fur-mouse.

  And so it was with as much irritation as relief that she marked the sound of footsteps running toward her refuge. She quickly set aside the basket of combings that she was attempting to tease into a yarn fine enough for weaving and rose to her feet, sacrificing her concealment behind the scrim of sweet-smelling bushes.

  Ciniran bounced to a stop on the soft ground when she saw Shaiara appear.

  “I am grateful to find you so swiftly.” Though her tone was urgent, her voice was soft, as if someone might overhear.

  “For what cause?”

  “There are strangers in Abi’Abadshar.”

  “Tell me of them. How came they here?” Shaiara willed herself to calm. Neither anger nor fear would help them now.

  “There are only two.” Ciniran sounded both puzzled and worried. “And they are not Isvaieni. They speak in loud foolish voices and behave as children, yet they have the shape of men. I know not how they came.”

  Ciniran’s tale was simple and troubling. She and Raffa had been searching for new routes to the surface, a constant task of the hunters. They had found one—a slanted opening that would only allow a single body to move through it at a time, but it was possessed of the advantage that it did not require the scaling of walls. They had both climbed up it in order to see where it came out, for distance was a deceptive thing here in the underground world. When they reached the surface, they found themselves nearly a mile from the Iteru-chamber.

  “And then we heard voices—loud voices—complaining of the heat. We went to see where they came from, and there, in the Iteru-chamber, we saw them. But there were no tracks of shotors upon the sand—nor any shotors. And their own footprints began suddenly, as if they had swept them away, and then grown tired of sweeping. Raffa and I watched them for many minutes, but all they do is sit in the passageway and complain of the heat.”

  They could not have come to Abi’Abadshar without shotors. And while the Nalzindar did not keep a constant watch upon the desert—for nothing could approach the ancient city without being visible hours, even days, in advance of its arrival—they did keep watch. Unless the strangers had simply dropped down out of the sky, they could not have approached the city unseen between one period of scrutiny from the cautious Nalzindar and the next. And it was unheard-of for non-Isvaieni to venture into the deep desert at all, much less into the Barahileth.

  If they had been sent by Bisochim, the Nalzindar were already doomed: whether the strangers vanished here and now with no trace to mark their passing, or returned to their master and told him of a vast ruined city in the desert, the result was the same. Abi’Abadshar could no longer serve as a safe haven for the Nalzindar, and there was no other refuge anywhere between Sand and Star that could hide them.

  “Gather the people together,” Shaiara said to Ciniran. “If this is a trap, we shall lay a trap of our own.”

  TIERCEL LEANED AGAINST the wall and watched Harrier jitter. He could think of a lot of consoling things to say. The trouble was, they’d all make Harrier hit him, and if Harrier missed, he’d hit the wall, and then he’d be even more irritated than he was right now. It was funny, Tiercel mused. He’d always used to think that Wildmages were wise and serene all the time. Even meeting Roneida hadn’t completely convinced him otherwise, because she’d seemed pretty wise and at least moderately serene. But he’d known Harrier all of both of their lives, and there were three things Tiercel knew for sure right now: one, that Harrier was a Wildmage (or a Knight-Mage, to be precise), two, that Harrier was about as wise as a rock, and three, that Harrier was exactly as serene as a windstorm.

  So much for the things “everybody knew” about Wildmages, and telling Harrier that at least they hadn’t managed to get to the Lake of Fire so that they were both dead now probably wouldn’t be a really helpful thing to say, either. There were times that Tiercel thought that the Wild Magic had a far greater sense of humor than the Light-Priests had ever spoken of, considering that to help him oppose the forces of Darkness, it had made Harrier Gillain a Wildmage.

  Even though Tiercel didn’t want to die—he hadn’t wanted to a year ago and he still didn’t—he’d gotten closer to accepting that there wasn’t any alternative, especially after he’d visited the Veiled Lands. It was daunting to think something like that, especially now that he was linked to Ancaladar, but it was precisely because he was Bonded to Ancaladar that Tiercel had slowly come to believe that the part he’d been given to play in all of this wasn’t to win, but merely to try. Even Bonded to Ancaladar Star-Crowned, he couldn’t master all the contents of the spellbooks of First Magistrate Cilarnen in a few months. And First Magistrate Cilarnen hadn’t defeated the Endarkened alone.

  The study of the High Magick taught you discipline. Tiercel’s love of knowledge had always let study come easily to him; what he’d needed to learn in order to master what little he had of the High Magick had built upon that foundation, teaching him a discipline he’d come to be grateful for later, when he’d realized the sheer cost of the course of action he’d committed himself to. He supposed the Elves were right to have told him so little. If he’d known everything before he’d left Armethalieh, he wouldn’t have come. He wouldn’t have let Harrier come. He wouldn’t have accepted Ancaladar’s Bond. He wouldn’t have come to the Madiran.

  He thou
ght of the screams of the dying outside the walls of Tarnatha’Iteru, on one of the last days of the siege he remembered clearly. He thought of Harrier’s blood-covered clothes in the orchard outside the city afterward, how Harrier had stood in the ditch and scrubbed himself until his skin was red, and sworn—at first—that all the blood was his. Had the Isvaieni spared their lives because Harrier had killed so many of them? There was no way to know.

  It wasn’t something the two of them were ever going to talk about.

  And all the death and the sacrifice and the killing had done—because one of the two of them had to see things clearly, and Tiercel thought it was going to have to be him—was allow them to survive to get here. Closer to where the three of them were going to die. Because Tiercel couldn’t imagine any spell that he possessed that was strong enough to destroy one of the Endarkened.

  “What if we went back to Armethalieh?” he said. At least Harrier would be safe there.

  “What if we didn’t?” Harrier said, sounding a combination of bored and irritated. “How do you know that there aren’t already people there going on about the False Balance? I’d rather stay here.”

  “It’s hot here.”

  “It’s summer. It’s hot there, too.”

  “It’s not as hot,” Tiercel pointed out reasonably—and accurately. They were in shadow, but even so, the rock beneath his hand was warm. And in direct sunlight, the rock was hot enough to burn. It was so hot here that Harrier—for a wonder—hadn’t complained once about being hungry, though they’d both been too nervous to eat breakfast, and it was well into afternoon now.

  “It’s still hot,” Harrier said, in the tones of one determined to win the argument. “There. Do you think Ancaladar will be back soon?”