The Enduring Flame Trilogy 003 - The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  Perhaps a hundred heartbeats passed as Bisochim poured power into his spell of Making, his brow furrowed with fierce concentration. The mist darkened, took on the warm hues of living flesh. At last the spell was complete. Lying upon the stone, looking as if she merely slept, was a woman who might have drunk kaffeyah unnoticed in any of the tents on the plains above. Her skin was the pale amber of wild honey, and her hair was as black and shining as the stone upon which she lay. She was perfect in every detail. All she lacked was the spark of life . . .

  As he stood regarding his creation, the moments ticked past. Too late, too late, too late, whispered the voices in his mind. Begin the Spell of Calling now, and by the time it was cast, the conjured body would not hold the spirit. But all was well. This had only been a test. The last one. With a wave of his hand he unmade the unmoving and imperceptibly-rotting form at his feet, unbinding it into the essential elements of its creation. A puff of air, a flare of heat, and a pool of water that lay glistening upon the rock—to unmake a thing was far easier than to make it.

  He drew a deep breath, suddenly as nervous as a boy about to embark upon his first hunt. No more practice. No more tests. The chain of spells must be cast now. When his work was complete, the Isvaieni could scatter. Bisochim would go in search of his enemy to announce his victory. Then—when they understood that further battle was useless—his task would at last be complete.

  Once more he stretched out his hands above the stone. Once more the beautiful lifeless form of an Isvaieni woman appeared out of mist. And then, in the very instant its flesh coalesced, he began the spell he had never been able to practice in its entirety—the delicate dangerous conjuration that would embody the Darkness Itself in a living—all-but-mortal—form. The voices in the fire wailed in his ears as never before, as if they wished to give voice to the triumph he should feel at his long-deferred success. Bisochim did not acknowledge them, for he could not spare anything from his concentration upon the spell. Celebration would come later.

  As much as he wished to hurry, he dared not. Each unvoiced word, each mental image, each imagined gesture, must be absolutely precise, or the spell itself would fail—or complete itself in some unimaginably disastrous fashion. He dared not even take a portion of his attention away from his conjuration to consider how much time had passed since he had begun, or to pray that his original calculations had been correct. All he could do was continue.

  Bisochim had spent years of his life journeying as a spirit through the realms of What Once Was, seeking the answers to his questions. The mortal senses of men were not equipped to sense all he found there, and so it was as if one thing became another, until it had become something he might understand. So it was now, as Bisochim sensed the Planes of Manifestation turn upon one another like the rings of a puzzle-box, until a gap between one and the next was formed through the power of his Calling . . .

  . . . and the Elemental Spirit of Darkness slipped free.

  But to free it was not enough: he must bind it, not once, but three times: once into flesh, next into an eternal spell of unchanging sleep, last of all into a prison forged from the living rock, so that it could neither escape its prison of flesh, nor be freed by any other. He had kept the knowledge of the spells of stone and sleep from the voices in the fire, and they had sworn to him that he would have their assistance for the spell of flesh. And so it was, for not even a heartbeat passed between the moment when the Spirit of Darkness crossed the last of the Planes of Manifestation across which Bisochim had summoned it and the moment that the woman on the stones drew her first breath. It was the work of an instant to cast the single spell of all the spells he must cast this day that he had been able to prepare in advance, and Bind Elemental Spirit fast to now-living flesh.

  She rose gracefully to her feet and shook out her long flowing hair.

  “I have given you form, as I promised your masters I would do, and it is for you to grant the payment that I will name for the service I have rendered,” Bisochim said harshly. Immortality would be his: the voices in the fire had told him that gift would be within the spirit’s power to grant. His immortality would gain immortality for Saravasse as well.

  The woman laughed.

  Her laughter, wild and cold, rang from the walls of the black glass chamber, and when she met his eyes, Bisochim saw with a thrill of disquiet that they were not black, as he had expected them to be, but bright hawk-gold. Her lips curved in a mocking smile.

  “It is I who will choose the coin of your payment, Wildmage, not you. Foolish creature of clay—did you truly think that you could presume to call Ahairan to you as if she were your hound and then chain her up once she had done your bidding? You are fortunate that I do not strike the life from your body in this instant.”

  The fire-voices sang a mocking song of triumph, and Bisochim suddenly knew that he had been betrayed.

  The voices in the fire had meant him for their tool, to free the Darkness, not chain it. Yet he had been Isvaieni before he became Wildmage, and Wildmage long before he became the voices’ pawn. The spells of Sleep and Stone were knowledge he had kept from them. He raised his hand to send the creature that had named itself Ahairan into the spell-fed sleep from which there would be no awakening.

  But before he could cast his spell, he fell to his knees. Every nerve and sinew in his body had kindled into fire, and it was all that he could do to keep from crying out in agony. “Aid . . . me . . .” he gasped, looking toward the Firecrown.

  “Oh, Wildmage, you are a fool.” Ahairan knelt before him, gazing into his eyes, and try as he might, Bisochim could neither look away nor raise his hand against her. “I was born in fire, and fire knows its own. The names of those who once called upon the Firecrown are no longer known. Their songs and dances are not remembered. The Children of Water have taken all of their places, and you have made of Holy Fire a thing you kill a thousand times a day with air and with water. The Dark killed all the Children of Stars even as they begged for the aid of their god—the Firecrown did nothing to save its own children, yet you, you, are the people Great Firecrown will aid?” She laughed softly. Her breath was as hot as the desert wind and smelled of burning stone, and her hair was no longer true black—if it ever had been—but shone with highlights of deep gold and red. “No, Wildmage. Do not look to the Firecrown for help.”

  She rose to her feet and stepped away and—just as suddenly as it had come—the pain was gone.

  “I was willing to allow you to spread Darkness across the land at my side. Not only immortality, Wildmage—for both you and your pet—but power such as even the Kings of Men have never dreamed of. You should have worshiped me for my beauty. Instead, you chose to demand payment—I should strike you dead for such insolence! But I shall give you one more chance to freely yield yourself to me. Beneath my hand, you shall gain such knowledge as you have not yet imagined.”

  When she had released Bisochim from the fire in his bones, weakness had taken its place, but now horror at her words lent him strength. If he had summoned Darkness back into the world, he could at least deny it a body with which to breed up a new race of monsters. Once more he summoned up the Spell of Unmaking, and swept it toward Ahairan’s golden body.

  It had no effect.

  Ahairan laughed as she ran soft hands over her breasts and down her thighs. “Wildmage, truly you are twice a fool! No spell a Wildmage may cast can slay me now that I have been given form.”

  “Destroy her!” Bisochim said to the Firecrown. “I command it!”

  “How shall you command without understanding?” the Firecrown answered. “And yet I say this to you: that which you first asked of me is not yet complete.”

  Once more Ahairan’s mocking laughter rang out, and then she was gone, running lightly from the chamber toward the narrow doorway—darkness opening into darkness—that led to the narrow spiraling flight of stairs. She was chained in flesh, trapped in a single form, but that was the only curb upon her power—and with time she might find som
e way to defeat that limitation as well.

  Staggering with weakness, Bisochim forced himself to his feet. He leaned heavily against the wall of the chamber, shuddering at the unnatural chill of the stone. The enormity of what he had done was like a terrible wound—one he dared not yet acknowledge. For more than half his life he had been working toward this moment. He had meant to set the Balance right by returning Darkness to the world. Now that he had succeeded, he knew he had committed a crime more terrible than he could begin to imagine. He had not set the Balance right. He had destroyed it.

  But if he could not unmake Ahairan, he could at least destroy his unruly servant. To unbind an Elemental Force would be more difficult than to unbind a mere form of flesh, but he would find the strength. He looked toward the Firecrown and raised one trembling hand.

  “You must look to your people,” the Firecrown said.

  And then, without moving a step, the creature simply vanished.

  THE ascent was a long one, and by the time Bisochim had ascended the stairs to the surface, weariness had layered itself upon exhaustion and shock until only desperation drove him onward. He had been betrayed on every side—by those he had been arrogant enough to think he had tamed into becoming his allies, by the servant he had crafted from the magic of the Lake of Fire itself. He knew not what he could do to atone for his terrible offense—against the Wild Magic, against the Light, against all the Peoples of the Light. Death would be too quick and too kind, and he would take with him the one stainless innocent creature whose life he had begun this madness hoping to save.

  Saravasse.

  She had begged him a thousand times to turn away from this quest for knowledge, and he had refused. She had grown cold and silent and distant, and Bisochim had told himself that when he had secured immortality for her he would have centuries to win back her love. Instead, he had secured nothing but her hatred, and the hatred of every living creature, all through his arrogance and pride. Bisochim, greatest of the Blue Robes! He had drunk so deeply of their praise in the years of his youth that he had poisoned himself with it.

  He hardly knew where he walked—only that he climbed up, and up, and up—until he found himself stepping out into the sunlight. He was standing upon one of the terraces of his palace—his spirit cringed, hearing his own thoughts, for what use did an Isvaieni have for a great stone palace?—overlooking the vast gardens he had created on the plains of Telinchechitl. Once, he had turned the waste of salt and ishnain into a garden simply because he could. Later, he’d had cause to be grateful that the thousands of hectares of orchards and grasslands were there as a refuge for his Isvaieni.

  He groaned aloud. They were not his. They were their own. He had been poisoned by the words of Demons and fed the desertfolk upon the bread of lies. He had made each one of them a murderer a hundred times over, and bathed them in innocent blood. How could he go before the Ummarai, the chaharums, and say to them that he had lied? That he had cloaked his arrogance in words of concern for their safety, used the Wild Magic to steal their judgment, made their children into bandits and killers, and destroyed their future?

  His mind was still filled with the magnitude of his betrayal when he reached the edge of the terrace. He gazed out over the Plains of Telinchechitl, his thoughts still hazy with the enormity of the treason for which he had been the instrument. He could not imagine what he must do next. But what Bisochim saw when he looked down stopped the breath in his throat.

  It was nearly midday, and all the Isvaieni should be within their tents, resting through the time of greatest heat. But from his vantage point, he could see movement beneath the trees. The people were coming forth from every tent. Elders carried small children. Mothers carried babies. All moved toward the cliffs with silent and deliberate purpose. For several moments, Bisochim could only watch in disbelief. At first, the only thought within Bisochim’s mind was that they must be coming to exact justice for what he had done. He did not know how they could know of it, but the weight of his guilt was a crushing thing, too overwhelming to permit clear thought.

  Then he saw Her.

  She was at the very base of the cliff, seated upon a shotor such as had never been foaled, for its coat was as black as a jarrari’s carapace. Its saddle and lead-rope were not such as any of the Isvaieni would ever use, for the saddle gleamed with beaten gold, and the lead rope was of silk as red as blood. It was the same color as the billowing desert robes she wore—thin scarlet silk that the hot winds molded against the sinuous curves of her slim body. She looked up toward him, and he saw her white teeth flash in a smile of mocking triumph. “Oh, Wildmage, you are a fool.” It almost seemed to Bisochim that he could hear her voice whispering within his mind, just as the voices in the fire had whispered for so very long, and in that moment he truly began to understand the full horror of what he had done.

  He had brought Darkness back into the world, and clothed it in flesh.

  In The Time of Legend, a race called the Endarkened had wielded the powers of Darkness, and the Peoples of the Light had named them “Demons.” They had been what Ahairan’s descendents might yet become: Elemental Darkness fused perfectly to living flesh, not merely bound within it, as she was. In their time, the Endarkened had taken their sorcerous power from blood and pain and death: in his journeys upon the spirit-roads of What Once Was, Bisochim had seen horrors enough that he had taken great care to render the Spirit of Elemental Darkness that he would summon into the world weak and helpless.

  He had failed.

  And now Ahairan meant to feed, just as the Endarkened once had fed. The Isvaieni were not coming to seek him out. They were coming—at Ahairan’s summoning—to ascend the steps that led to the Lake of Fire and cast themselves into it.

  He must stop them.

  Since he had first chosen to set aside the Blue Robes of the Wildmage and live a life of solitude and secrets, Bisochim had known the spells that could overshadow the minds of men and women. Until he had compelled the Ummarai to lead the tribes to Telinchechitl, the only purpose he had used them for was to allow himself to pass unquestioned in a land where the presence of any stranger aroused suspicion. And because The Book of Stars said “that which harms can also heal,” those same spells could restore free will to one from whom it had been stolen. He gathered his strength, he drew upon Saravasse’s power, and he cast the spell that would free the Isvaieni from their malign enchantment.

  Nothing happened.

  They did not falter by so much as one footstep in their inexorable progress toward the staircase.

  Again Bisochim cast the same spell—to no effect—and then he tried every other spell he could think of that might serve. Spells that would drive illusion from the mind. Spells that would drive fear from the heart. Spells to permit clear-seeing. Spells to steal the strength from the limbs, so that the vast column of advancing Isvaieni would fall down where they stood. Spells to cast them into sleep. Spells to steal their will a second time and force them to his will as Ahairan had forced them to hers. He drove himself to the edge of exhaustion.

  And nothing worked.

  Soon the first of them would reach the stair and begin to climb, and behind that one, five and ten and twenty and fifty—thousands to climb the hundreds of steps that led to the lip of the caldera, and there, to cast themselves down into the lake of molten rock within. There was only one thing left for him to do.

  Grain by grain, sand had become stone had become steps and floors and walls. Magic did not bind it, any more than magic bound any dwelling-place of quarried stone. But magic could unbind it. He reached out with his mind and Set the Spell of Unmaking as he had once set a dozen spells to make and shape and bind. The wall beneath his fingertips softened, shifted, began to dissolve. He stepped back from the edge of the terrace as it crumbled into sand and blew away.

  Behind him, around him, all that was stone returned to sand—slowly at first, then faster as the working of the spell gained momentum. The lower half of the staircase cascaded downwa
rd with a soft hiss, what had been steps and balustrades pouring outward onto the grass below like spilled grain. The water of a hundred fountains sprayed wildly into the air as their fountains and conduits and channels dissolved around them. The palace that had held a thousand rooms hissed and slid away down the side of the cliff, carrying upon its wave of sand chests, carpets, draperies—everything it held that was not made of stone. In moments, the fortress that had been poised near the top of the black cliff was no more than an inexorable spill of sand sliding down its face.

  Yet Bisochim survived. He had been born to the tents of the Adanate Isvaieni, a tribe of the deep desert, and the Adanate well understood the natural hazards in making their way across the soft and shifting face of the great dune sea, where an unwary misstep might bury a man—or a string of shotors—beneath the sand in instants. It had been many years since Bisochim had needed the skills to keep his footing atop an uncertain surface of constantly moving sand, but his body had not forgotten them. Almost without thought, he rode the flowing cascade of sand earthward, walking back up against the rushing tide of sand to keep himself from being buried beneath it. And when the rush of sand slowed, Bisochim stood upon the apex of the great dune and gazed about himself.

  The air was thick with dust swirled upon the wind, and the sand sprayed outward in every direction from the central dune as if it were a carelessly-dropped bag of meal. If he had hoped to bury Ahairan beneath the sandspill, Bisochim was disappointed. She still sat upon her shotor a score of trayas away, still smiling her feral terrible smile. The Isvaieni still advanced. And Ahairan looked from the advancing Isvaieni toward the cliff and nodded, as if in satisfaction, and Bisochim could not help but look behind himself.

  In building his fortress, Bisochim had done more than craft a stronghold of stone and seal it to the cliff-face. He had built it into the cliff itself, digging down deep below the surface of the earth. Behind him he could see the flat sheared places on the cliff wall where the fortress had rested . . . and the bright-shining cracks in the stone through which fire would soon begin to seep. Worse, only the bottom of the staircase had been dissolved away by his spell. The top half was cut into the cliff itself. Though it would be more difficult for the Isvaieni to reach it now, it would not be impossible—especially if Ahairan chose to aid them by turning sand to steps once more.