The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  “Where is—”

  “He’s dead.” And because Harrier just didn’t think he could face having Kareta ask him any more questions (because the answer to so many of them would be: “they’re dead”) he gave her a quick summary of everything he and Tiercel had been doing since she’d left them. He tried to skip all the ugly-sounding parts, even if the story did end up not making a lot of sense that way.

  “You’ve changed, you know,” Kareta said seriously.

  “I suppose so,” he said, sighing. He really didn’t want to think of all the ways in which he and Tiercel had changed since they’d left Armethalieh thinking they were just going to take a quick trip up to Sentarshadeen.

  “You’ll need to go soon,” he said to Kareta. “I know you pretty much just got here, and you came a long way, but . . . when the sun rises, it’s going to get really hot, really fast. But I need to know—”

  “Magic has rules,” Kareta interrupted tartly. “Even the Wild Magic. I appreciate not being Summoned and Bound—though not as much as you’d have had cause to regret doing it—so I’ll do anything I can, but you have to agree to pay.”

  “Yes—fine—all right,” Harrier snapped. “Tell me what the MagePrice is so we can get on with this.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Kareta said.

  Harrier took a deep breath and forced himself to calculate the stowage capacity of an Out Islands hull that had been in service sixty years, regular maintenance, crew of eighteen and five passengers, making a three-legged trip between Bralkmy, Mirnadain, and Asturlin but taking on no new passengers, only cargo. When he was sure he wouldn’t just try to strangle Kareta, he said: “Who does?”

  “You do,” Kareta said quietly.

  “I’m sorry?” Harrier wasn’t quite sure he’d heard her correctly.

  “I’d thought about not coming at all, you know. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have incurred much of a MagePrice at all. But you’ve done enough studying of the Wild Magic to know there’s always a spell-price, and normally the Wild Magic sets it. But since you cast so non-specific a spell, and let me choose whether or not to answer, you get to choose your Price. Either come away with me now, tonight, before sunrise, or later, at a time not of your choosing, you must give up the thing you most value in the world.”

  “Is there a third choice?” Harrier asked, because the first choice was unthinkable, and he really, really, really hated having something else—even if it was the Wild Magic—take his choices away from him.

  “No,” Kareta said, almost sadly. “The first choice or the second.”

  Harrier sighed. It wasn’t as if he’d ever really believed he’d be leaving the Madiran again. What else could the Wild Magic mean his MagePrice to be but his life—or maybe Tiercel’s life? And they’d already been planning to give them up anyway.

  “The second,” he said aloud, and felt the shivery sense of presence and listening that meant he’d just entered into a contract as binding as any his Da had ever witnessed at Dockside Armethalieh. He’d promised, and he wasn’t sure what would happen if he changed his mind when the time came to pay his MagePrice: there were a lot of stories about Wildmages, and not much real information, and his Three Books contained lots of helpful advice on how to practice the Wild Magic well and exactly no threats about what would happen to you if you screwed up.

  “All right,” Harrier said levelly. “I’ve agreed to the MagePrice and so you have to help. Tell me where Ancaladar is and how I can get there. We need him back. Tiercel needs him.”

  “I know,” Kareta answered. Harrier had seen her in a lot of different moods, including angry and embarrassed and actually scared, but he’d never seen her in a mood quite like this one. For the first time, he really believed that Kareta was what everybody had always said that unicorns were—wise and compassionate helpers of those lost and in danger. “I don’t know where he is, Harrier. I know that Tiercel is still Bonded to him—I can sense that—but I can’t sense Ancaladar anywhere at all. If I knew anything else—even a direction for you to start looking—I’d tell you. I don’t. There isn’t any point in casting a Seeking Spell. There’s nothing to seek. At least you know that if the Bond is intact, Ancaladar is alive. Somewhere. And I’m sorry your MagePrice is so high for so little, but it is.”

  There was no point in getting angry at Kareta. When he’d accepted the MagePrice, she’d been bound by the Wild Magic just as much as he had. He knew she’d given him all the help she had to give. He’d hoped for more, but at least this was something. If Ancaladar was alive—anywhere—he’d come back to Tiercel if he possibly could. If he couldn’t, well, the two of them would just have to figure out a way to start looking for him as soon as they could.

  “You’d better go,” he said. He could already feel the morning breeze picking up—the air was cold here, but a couple of thousand miles east the sun was already high in the sky, and that hot air was rolling toward them like an ocean wave, and it didn’t cool by the time it got here, and . . . that made wind. Some winds, anyway.

  He put his arms around Kareta’s neck to hug her goodbye. He hadn’t gotten to say a proper goodbye to her the last time she’d left him, and, well, there wouldn’t be a next one. “Take care of yourself. And try not to annoy anybody else as much as you’ve annoyed me, okay?”

  Her horn pressed against his cheek for just a moment. It felt strangely cool. Then he released her and she stepped back.

  “This is the last time I’ll ever be able to do this,” she said. “I can already tell. I—”

  “—know these things,” Harrier finished. “Yeah. You keep telling me that.”

  “You are a very stupid and annoying boy. If you think I was ever in the least fond of you—well I wasn’t. At all. But do take care of Tiercel, because I’ve actually gotten quite fond of him,” Kareta said, stamping her foot.

  Before Harrier could decide what to say about that, Kareta turned away and began to run. Within moments she wasn’t running, but bounding, the deerlike leaping gait that was the unicorn’s fastest speed. Within less than a quarter-chime she was a tiny fleck of light in the distance again, and Harrier realized it wasn’t really dark any longer. Dawn in two chimes, day in four, heat in six, unbearable heat by two hours from this moment. He should go inside.

  On the other hand, how often did he get the chance to watch the sun come up these days? He went back, found his place on the chunk of stone that used to be part of a city about ten times older than Armethalieh, and settled down to wait.

  IT had been four days since he and Harrier had descended to the tenth and lowest level of the underground city that lay below the surface of Abi’Abadshar. He and Harrier and Ancaladar, and even thinking Ancaladar’s name sent a sharp spike of grief through Tiercel’s chest. Ancaladar was gone.

  Tiercel knew Ancaladar was Harrier’s friend, and that Harrier was honestly worried about him. But Ancaladar was more than Tiercel’s friend. Ancaladar was his Bonded, and nobody who wasn’t Bonded could understand what that relationship was like. And having it taken away again . . . ?

  Tiercel wished he could be selfish enough to wish for death. Having the Dragonbond gone felt like being wounded—being horribly injured, and not being able to hope the injury would ever heal. His bereavement wasn’t even something he could talk about to his best friend. Partly because there weren’t any words to describe it—half of a Dragonbond never survived the death of the other half—and partly because (even to Tiercel) it would sound just too much like whining. He’d only accepted Ancaladar’s Bond in the first place to give himself the power to cast the spells of the High Magick, because all magic had to be paid for, and the High Magick didn’t have MagePrices and MagePrice and sharing the energy cost of the spell among all those whom it would benefit the way the Wild Magic did. All High Magick required was power—the kind of power that back in the Time of Legend had been generated by the people of an entire city.

  Tiercel hadn’t accepted this terrible gift lightly. Ancaladar’s oth
er Bonded had to die to transfer the Bond, and another Elven Mage and his dragon had to give their lives to cast the Great Spell that even made it possible. But without the power to use the spells of the High Magick, Tiercel couldn’t fight the Dark. And now Ancaladar was gone because Tiercel had doubted his ability to win that fight and had been looking for something—some weapon, some knowledge—that would help. Now he had less than he’d begun with. No weapon, no knowledge, not even the ability to cast the spells he’d spent so many moonturns painstakingly learning. He’d lost his Bonded, his friend . . .

  And he still couldn’t quite bring himself to give up.

  He’d spent another nearly-sleepless night in the back corner of the tent that he and Harrier shared with half-a-dozen other people. If he and Ancaladar hadn’t been able to raid the abandoned camp at Tarnatha’Iteru, they’d probably all be sleeping in one tent now instead of three. Or at least around it, because the tents were large, but they weren’t that large.

  Ancaladar. His thoughts kept coming back to Ancaladar. And it wouldn’t stop hurting. At least Harrier had been off somewhere else tonight. Tiercel didn’t really care where. He just knew that every time he woke up—the way he kept doing over and over again all through the night every night, his mind reaching out for something that simply wasn’t there anymore—he always woke Harrier, and tonight he didn’t have that guilt to add to everything else.

  The nights always went on forever now.

  At least this last time when he woke up the Nalzindar in the tent were beginning to stir. Tiercel wanted them gone. He wanted to be left alone. He didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to pretend to listen to one more conversation between Harrier and Shaiara about what supplies they’d need to follow the trail the rest of the Isvaieni had left. He tried to care, but he didn’t know why they couldn’t see that it didn’t matter.

  For over a year, Bisochim had been casually tossing spells at him and Harrier as they journeyed halfway around the world to end up maybe three moonturns from their own front door. They’d been stalked by creatures of the Dark that hadn’t been seen since the Time of Legend. They’d been stalked by creatures that hadn’t even been seen in the Time of Legend. They’d escaped by luck (at first), by hiding in the Elven Lands, by the fact that—for a brief time—Tiercel had actually possessed nearly the same amount of power as his unseen and unknown enemy. But that power was gone now, and it was true that Harrier was a Knight-Mage, but Tiercel wasn’t sure that Harrier would be able to defeat the Dark all by himself. If it were that simple, the Wild Magic would have just summoned up someone to become a Knight-Mage years ago, wouldn’t it? And then none of them would be in this mess right now.

  For the last four days Tiercel had been holding on to the hope that he could think of something. And he couldn’t. The two of them couldn’t even go back to the Veiled Lands and ask the Elves for more help, because it had taken them nearly half a year just to get to the edge of the Madiran, and there was no chance at all now that they could reach the edge of the Madiran from here. Tiercel thought of the miles of sand that Ancaladar had flown across in just a few hours, and held his breath until the urge to sob aloud had passed. At least the tent was empty now. He turned over, and pressed his face against the heavy felt of the back wall, and tried to pretend it was a sennight ago and Ancaladar was still here.

  He was still concentrating as hard as he could on not being here when he felt a presence behind him. Not Harrier. Since he’d truly become a Knight-Mage, Harrier had developed a really unnerving knack for moving silently, but Harrier also got bored easily, and when Harrier got bored he’d thump and clatter just the way he had in the old days. The Nalzindar, on the other hand, moved silently all the time, as if they couldn’t imagine a reason for moving any other way.

  “Tiercel? It is day, and I have brought you food,” Ciniran said.

  “I’m not hungry, Ciniran. Thank you.” He propped himself up on one elbow but didn’t turn around. She didn’t have to wait on him. He didn’t know whether or not she was Nalzindar nobility, but he did know that none of the Nalzindar waited on anyone else. Even Shaiara, the tribe’s leader, fetched her own food and poured her own kaffeyah just like anyone else.

  “You must eat, Tiercel. It has been a long time. Your body will grow weak without food,” Ciniran said coaxingly.

  “I’ll eat something later,” Tiercel said. He couldn’t remember when the last time was that he’d eaten anything, but he really wasn’t hungry.

  “It is later now,” Ciniran said.

  Tiercel sat up. The ground seemed momentarily unsteady, and the dull headache he’d had for as long as he could remember got worse, darkening slowly behind his eyes like twilight at the end of day. Ciniran was kneeling beside his sleeping mat—and how he missed his own room and his own bed in the Rolfort town house in Armethalieh! Tiercel even missed his familiar sleeping-roll and sleeping out under the Elven traveling-wagon that Jermayan and Idalia had given them. He didn’t want to be here, and he didn’t want to be thinking about how badly he’d failed.

  “It isn’t later,” he said carefully. “It’s morning, and the day is just starting.”

  Ciniran regarded him with her mouth set in a stubborn line. “Yesterday you said you would eat later. Now it is later.”

  Tiercel didn’t remember a lot of yesterday, since he’d spent it sitting under a bush in the farthest corner of the underground garden he could find. He’d come back at evening, though, since he knew if he didn’t, Harrier would come and find him. Harrier always came and found him. Harrier always came and risked his life to save him every time Tiercel went and did something stupid, the way he had ever since Tiercel could remember. Harrier had come along when this was supposed to be a simple trip to Sentarshadeen, and Tiercel had never—at Sentarshadeen, at Ysterialpoerin, at Karahelanderialigor—sent Harrier back to Armethalieh where he belonged, and so now Harrier was going to die too.

  “Just leave it here,” he said to Ciniran. “I’ll eat it in a little while.”

  “I do not believe you,” Ciniran answered with quiet stubbornness. “For these are words that one speaks who wishes to say both ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and this is not a thing well done.”

  Tiercel ran a hand through his hair, dragging the long blond strands back to the base of his neck. “You know, I’m sorry, but I don’t really care a lot about that right now. I appreciate your—I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Ciniran. But I’m not hungry. I won’t starve.”

  “Indeed, he speaks truth,” a new voice said sharply. Shaiara strode into the back of the tent. She folded her arms on her chest and raked Ciniran and Tiercel with a withering glance. “He is no child, nor are you the mother of a child. If he wishes to feign injury when he has taken no wound, let false injury become injury in truth—it will not be the first time that cowardice has worn the cloak of sickness. To cross the Barahileth in search of the Tainted One is a journey in which a man’s life might be forfeit regardless, and Tiercel of the Cold North may console himself in knowing that perhaps the Light will send another champion before the Darkness despoils the tents of his family and scatters their bones upon the sand.”

  After all he’d done to get this far—the friends who’d died so he could reach this point—the people he’d been forced to kill with his magic—Shaiara’s words made Tiercel suddenly furious.

  “Wait. You think I’m afraid to go? You—There isn’t a Dark-damned thing I can possibly do now at the Lake of Fire except die—but if you won’t be satisfied until you see that for yourself, well—fine! I’ll go! And I’ll try to arrange to be the first one Bisochim kills!”

  He’d always known, somewhere deep inside, that the battle with the Dark was something he wouldn’t survive, but saying it aloud for the first time—even though it was true—was a jolt. But his shock was nothing to the horror he saw on Ciniran’s face, or the silent anger on Shaiara’s. It was true that it was no secret among the Nalzindar that they were in hiding—or who they were hiding from, or why.
But Tiercel had never heard any of them talk about it. He felt shame for his rudeness, but at the same time he felt anger that Shaiara couldn’t see how useless everything he knew now was, that she thought he was a coward. He wasn’t. If he’d been a coward, he’d be back in Armethalieh right now.

  Shaiara was drawing breath for a reply when Harrier appeared beside her. Almost literally: in the way that the Elves seemed to appear out of nowhere, so that one moment you were staring at empty air, and the next you were looking at an Elf. He was dressed for outdoors, and even though he and Harrier had both been wearing Isvaieni robes since the fall of Tarnatha’Iteru, it was still odd for Tiercel to see his friend in the long tunic, overrobe, and headscarf of the deep-desert dwellers, especially since Harrier wore the crossed swords of a Selken Warrior strapped across his back as well. That always gave his cloak a peculiar outline, but Tiercel had watched him practice, and knew that Harrier could unclasp the cloak and have both swords in his hands before it hit the ground.

  Shaiara turned toward him as he entered.

  “If you wouldn’t mind giving the two of us some privacy, Noble’dy?” Harrier asked. His words and tone were respectful, but there was little doubt that this was more in the nature of a demand.

  There was a long moment of silence before Shaiara nodded sharply. “Ciniran,” she said, and the other woman rose gracefully to her feet. Ciniran walked from the tent, pausing in the outer doorway to look back once at Tiercel, then turned away and walked on. Shaiara turned and followed.

  Tiercel leaned forward and rested his forehead on his knees. “Go away,” he said.

  “Yeah. No. Yum. Weird mushy something for breakfast again. I don’t even want to know what the meat is,” Harrier said, sitting down beside Tiercel and picking up the bowl.