The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  Harrier set down the cup, got to his feet, and threw back the hood of his cloak, unclasping it so it dropped to the carpet. He tightened the straps of his sword-harness so that the swords rose up into their proper position over his shoulders. As an afterthought, he dragged his chadar down away from his nose and mouth—in the dampness of the air here, it was just irritating anyway. “So—Noble’dy—if you’d be so kind as to take me to Bisochim now, I guess one or the other of us will finish the job.”

  “Harrier!” Tiercel said, aghast. Ciniran stared at him, her dark eyes wide in horror.

  “Oh, come on, Tyr,” Harrier said. “What did you think was going to happen now? We can’t leave, and we can’t hide.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Tiercel said to Liapha, getting to his feet and flinging off his cloak as well. “I’m the one who was sent here. The Elves sent me here. The Light told me to come.”

  “Did it?” Liapha asked with interest.

  “Shut up, Tiercel!” Harrier said furiously. “Don’t you listen to him, Noble’dy—he’s sun-touched. He follows me everywhere, and I can’t get rid of him.”

  “You—You’re lying!” Tiercel said, horrified. “He’s lying! Ciniran—Shaiara—tell her he’s lying—”

  “Fool of a northerner!” Ciniran spat, bounding up from her place on the carpet and glaring at Tiercel furiously. “Are you so eager to die?”

  “Grandmother!” Rinurta came running out of the interior of the tent, a basket of bread and dates in her arms. At the sight of Harrier and Tiercel standing over Liapha she dropped it, scattering its contents everywhere, fell to her knees, and began to wail. At the sound of her howls, all the men and women inside the tent came rushing to the entrance. Several of the women knelt down and began asking Rinurta anxiously if she was all right, while the men began demanding who Harrier and Tiercel were and what they had done to her. Rinurta continued to wail.

  “If you’d just let me—” Harrier began, raising his voice to be heard over the clamor.

  “I was the one supposed to—” Tiercel shouted right back.

  “Kadyastar barghus!” Ciniran spat in contempt.

  “Who are you?” A young man had come running up the line of tents at the sound of shouting. He was mud-spattered, and one side of his face was scarred, the eyelid sewn shut over a missing eye. “Northerners!” he said, his hand going to his geschak.

  Harrier stepped back, grabbing Tiercel by the arm and dragging him back beside him.

  “Hadyan,” Liapha said. “And Rinurta.”

  Though her voice was quiet, it managed to cut through the noise of the crowd. Hadyan lowered his hand from his knife and Rinurta’s wailing stopped as abruptly as if she’d been gagged, though it did little to decrease the noise level. “But Ummara—do you not see what they are?” Hadyan demanded. “Explain yourselves at once!” he demanded again.

  “They are under the protection of the Nalzindar!” Ciniran shouted at him. “They need not explain themselves to a Kadyastar!”

  “The Nalzindar are fools!” Hadyan bellowed in return. “To spurn the truth when it was offered them—to run and hide like cowards and pakh!”

  “Better to hide like the sheshu than slaughter innocent children like a pack of maddened feneric!” Ciniran spat hotly.

  “Will you just stay out of this?” Harrier demanded, turning to her, but it was useless. He thought that the only reason Ciniran was alive right now was either because she was unarmed or because Liapha had served her kaffeyah before the shouting had started. The Telchi had managed to teach him as much about avoiding fights as about winning them, and here in the south there were a lot of rules about exactly when you could attack somebody. Over a meal was not one of those times.

  People were arriving at Liapha’s tent from everywhere now, men with awardans unsheathed in their hands, women carrying lances and bows. There was no hope now of staying hidden. If there was anyone in the entire camp who didn’t know what was going on, they were either unconscious or a couple of miles away. All around him Harrier could hear versions of the story being passed, told and retold as the crowd gathered. Bisochim’s name figured frequently in the tale. He drew a deep breath, forcing himself not to reach for his swords. From the corner of his eye he could see that Shaiara was still seated on the carpet at Liapha’s side. The two of them were the only ones who were. He thought about what he’d heard before all the shouting had started—that Liapha was Shaiara’s grandmother. Even if she was, it didn’t seem to matter much. Just like the fact that he was a Knight-Mage didn’t matter much. He actually wondered why Liapha hadn’t ordered somebody to shoot them yet.

  Why in the name of the Light hadn’t he kept his mouth shut? Just because some sun-touched old grandmother was saying the same thing everybody here believed was no reason for him to argue with her and make speeches about the Wild Magic and the Balance. If convincing people were that easy, Zanattar would never have destroyed Tarnatha’Iteru. Now they had no chance of getting to Bisochim. He could cut his way out of the crowd, Harrier knew that—just as he knew he wouldn’t, for more reasons than he could count. He didn’t think he could get Tiercel, Ciniran, and Shaiara free as well, and if he could, they had nowhere to run to. Finding Bisochim by himself—even if he could—didn’t mean Harrier could do anything about him. That was Tiercel’s job. It always had been.

  The noise all around them had actually started to level off when Harrier saw the people at the back of the crowd stagger as they were jostled aside, and a man forced his way through the press of bodies. Among the dozens of anonymous Isvaieni surrounding them, that was one face Harrier knew and would not forget.

  “Stand aside! I will protect you from these Demonspawn, Ummara Liapha!” Zanattar bawled furiously.

  “Zanattar of the Lanzanur, son of Kataduk who is Ummara—as yet—of the Lanzanur—should I require protection, my own blood stands ready to aid me. Nor do I see Demons here,” Liapha said mildly.

  Now Liapha levered herself to her feet, leaning on Shaiara’s shoulder for support. The ring of onlookers had gone absolutely silent as she spoke. Liapha looked sternly at Rinurta, who fled back into the depths of the tent and returned bearing a tall smooth staff, its wood polished with age. Liapha transferred her grip from Shaiara’s shoulder to the staff.

  “Ummara, these are Demons,” Zanattar said again, now as confused as he was angry. “At Tarnatha’Iteru I faced them—they slew hundreds of my army—your own kin!”

  Harrier opened his mouth to protest, but Tiercel gripped his arm tightly. He closed it again. Tiercel was right. Shooting his mouth off hadn’t gotten them anywhere. The fact that he did want to kill Zanattar, and he’d never wanted to kill someone before, was something he had to keep under control. As abruptly as if someone had spoken in his ear, Harrier remembered the words of the Book of Sun: Anger is the greatest tool of the Knight-Mage. They hadn’t made sense to him at the time, and they still didn’t, but they held him still and silent.

  Liapha nodded, as if she were giving Zanattar’s words serious consideration. “And so you took them prisoner, fearing to kill them lest their Demons fly free. You meant to bring them to Bisochim, but a great black dragon came and freed them, so you have said. And many others have said the same, so you need not glower at me, son of Kataduk, as if I impugn your honor. And now, here they are, and they have asked to be brought to Bisochim themselves. I fail to see where in any of this lies an occasion for the drawing of steel.”

  “So the Nalzindar have sheltered Demons—no wonder we sought them in vain!” Hadyan said contemptuously.

  “Hadyan, you tempt me to try to live forever,” Liapha said tartly. “My only consolation is that if there are to be no tribes, then there will be no Ummarai either. It will comfort me when I go to lay my bones upon the sand. For now, I shall bring these so-called Demons to Bisochim and we shall seek his counsel, for should their dragon seek to aid them, then surely his dragon will succor him in turn.” She paused, regarding the group surrounding them—about
fifty people now, Harrier judged. “There are not so many handspans of light remaining to us to gather up our herds and set our camp to rights. Or do my eyes mistake me, and is all accomplished? Or perhaps it is merely that the Isvaieni have grown so wealthy since this day’s dawn that we can afford the loss of more beasts than would be slaughtered did we feast in celebration for an entire moonturn?”

  But if some of those present were shamed into slinking off, Zanattar was not. “You were not at Tarnatha’Iteru, Ummara Liapha,” he said steadily. “You did not see what destruction these creatures wrought there.” He glared at Harrier.

  “Not as much as you did,” Harrier answered, glaring back.

  “Then that is well,” Zanattar said, smiling coldly. “A good beginning.”

  Five

  The Stronghold of Illusion

  ENOUGH!” SHAIARA SAID sharply. “I shall not insult the tents of the Lanzanur by answering you as your words deserve. But if we are to seek Bisochim, it will be now.”

  She moved between Harrier and Zanattar, and simply began to walk forward as if Zanattar weren’t there at all. To Tiercel’s surprise, Zanattar stepped back, and the crowd reformed around them as they began to move.

  Shaiara, Liapha, and Zanattar were ahead of him, and Ciniran and Harrier were beside him. The rest of the Isvaieni who had not gone about the vital tasks of restoring the camp followed them, and Tiercel did his best not to feel as if the four of them had been taken prisoner, but it was difficult when that was obviously the way most of the people with them were thinking of them: as prisoners. He wished now he still had his cloak—it would have been too hot, but it would have given him more protection from the sun than just his chadar did. Even after so long in the Madiran and the Barahileth, it was hard for Tiercel to believe that in only a few more hours the temperature would drop to freezing.

  It was hard for him to tell whether things were going right or horribly wrong just now. Right (he guessed) if they were going to get to see Bisochim. Not all that right if they were going to be escorted there by a mob of Isvaieni who thought they were Demons. And really wrong if Harrier lost his temper and tried to kill Zanattar. Tiercel thought they had bigger things to worry about right now, though. “Should their dragon seek to aid them, then surely his dragon will succor him in turn.” He wasn’t sure if Harrier had heard Liapha’s words and was just ignoring them, or had missed them because he was obsessing on Zanattar. If Bisochim was Bonded to a dragon . . .

  Tiercel knew a Dragonbond didn’t mean that Bisochim couldn’t have fallen to the Dark, because so many Mages and their dragons had done just that more than two thousand years ago. No one in Armethalieh particularly remembered the Second Endarkened War. It was barely a footnote to the Flowering War: “And then, once again, did the Endarkened rise up from the Shadow to strike at the Light.” But “once again” had lasted over a hundred years, and the greatest casualty of that war had been the dragons—and the Wildmages Bonded to them. Over and over, the Dark had used its power to seduce and Taint Dragonbond Mages, promising them—so the Elves had written—immortality for themselves and thus for their dragons if they renounced the Light. Maybe the Endarkened would even have made good on their promises. No one knew. None of the Dark-corrupted Dragonbonds had survived more than a few years.

  Tiercel didn’t want to think about Ancaladar, especially now. If Harrier hadn’t lied to him—if the Bond was still intact—when he died here, he’d be killing Ancaladar. Knowing this had always been what was going to happen—knowing that if Ancaladar had stayed with Jermayan he’d already be dead—didn’t make Tiercel feel any better. And if Bisochim did have a dragon, they’d be killing it if they managed to kill Bisochim.

  He almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of the thought. There really wasn’t a single thing he—or any of them—could do except explain to Bisochim that what he was doing was wrong. And since the Dark was already free, that would be pointlesss, so why worry about whether he was going to succeed or fail? He already knew the answer. Unless . . . He stopped walking so suddenly that Ciniran bumped into him from behind. She shoved him—hard—and he stumbled forward. Harrier reached out a hand to steady him, shooting him a questioning look.

  “Bisochim has a dragon,” Tiercel said in a low urgent voice.

  “I know he has a dragon, Tyr,” Harrier said irritably. “Noble’dy Liapha said so.”

  “No, no, no—don’t you see, Har?” Tiercel said, his words tripping over each other in his excitement. “That’s the key—that’s the answer! All I have to do is convince him to go to the Veiled Lands—he can do that if he has a dragon—he can go to the Elves—they’ll explain to him—” That he’s been wrong. Then he’ll tell them what he did, and they’ll do something to fix it, and he’ll come back and explain to the Isvaieni that he was wrong about the Balance, and—

  “Yeah. You can tell him yourself in about a chime,” Harrier said brusquely, cutting him off.

  Tiercel clamped his teeth shut, forcing himself to stop talking. Harrier never wanted to hear anything he had to say, even when it was something that was important and might be about to save all of their lives. Tiercel didn’t say that either. It would do no one any good—not him to say, nor Harrier to hear.

  IT actually took them a bit more than two chimes—half an hour—to make their way through all the tents, across an enormous meadow, and to reach the place where Bisochim was, since Liapha moved slowly and apparently nobody was going to suggest that she go back to her tent. Nobody was willing to speak to him or Harrier, but Liapha seemed to take a malicious delight both in answering the questions of the people they passed (in great detail) and in talking to Shaiara about anything that happened to cross her mind, so Tiercel heard that in the middle of the day everyone had suddenly found themselves standing beneath the Cliffs of Telinchechitl as water fell from the sky, and that now the Cliffs of Telinchechitl had been erased entirely.

  “It was the work of Demons,” Zanattar growled. Tiercel wasn’t sure whether Zanattar meant the rain, or the disappearance of the cliffs, but several of the others in the crowd muttered agreement.

  “I am certain that it was, Zanattar,” Liapha said placidly. “And I am as familiar with The Book of the Light as you are. I doubt, therefore, that if these children were Demons you would have been able to capture them once, nor that they would have been trapped twice. But Bisochim will know.”

  “Yet will he speak truth?” Shaiara asked bitterly. Liapha simply pretended not to hear the question.

  Once they got out of the encampment itself, the crowd shifted to encircle them completely. Tiercel didn’t know how many people it contained by now—it had picked up more than it had held when they’d left Liapha’s tent, he thought. He might not be as paranoid as Harrier, but it was clear that most of the people surrounding them saw the two of them—possibly even the four of them—as the enemy. That made him nervous, because he couldn’t really see anything but the backs of the people ahead of him. All he was completely sure of was that they were walking over grass.

  Finally everyone slowed, then stopped. Liapha poked at the people ahead of her with the end of her staff until they moved aside. When they did, Tiercel could see enormous piles of sand and drifting wisps of steam. They were at the—former—cliffs. Through the steam, beyond the sand, he could see sunlight sparkling on water—a lot of water—stretching off into the distance. He’d come in search of a Lake of Fire, and all that was here was . . . a lake.

  Oddly, there were pieces of furniture in the sand, either broken or half-buried, and dishes, and jars, and rugs, and Tiercel swallowed hard as he realized that the wreckage reminded him of what had been left of Tarnatha’Iteru after he’d turned everything stone in the city into water.

  A man got to his feet. He’d been sitting in the midst of the wreckage, so still that Tiercel hadn’t seen him until he moved. He walked slowly toward them.

  This had to be Bisochim.

  Tiercel wasn’t sure what he’d expected Bisochim to look lik
e. It was difficult to tell his age—older than Zanattar, Tiercel guessed, younger than Liapha. Bisochim looked like any other Isvaieni, and even though everyone—even Shaiara—had called him a Wildmage, he wasn’t wearing blue robes. His open vest was gray with a darker stripe, his overtunic had probably started out white, and his sash was missing. But he looked utterly ordinary.

  “Bisochim, these are the Demons I told you of!” Zanattar announced loudly. “They have come to seek your life!”

  Tiercel heard Harrier growl in frustration. At Zanattar’s words, the half-circle of spectators opened out even more, leaving the four of them, Zanattar, and Liapha in the center of a large open space.

  “And I say this is not so!” Shaiara spoke up loudly, stepping away from Liapha and Zanattar and turning to face the crowd. “I am Shaiara, Ummara of the Nalzindar, and these two have been guests in my tents for two turns of the moon. If you slay my guests you must slay me and bring such shame to the tents of your kin as will be spoken of between Sand and Star for as long as either endures. I say this also: it is in my ears that you made war against the Iteru-cities with the thought that they had slain the Blue Robes. Will you slay one of the Blue Robes in turn? Harrier of the Two Swords holds the Three Books. Kill him and his companion, and become the evil you fear.” Her voice was harsh with contempt.

  An excited hissing ran through the crowd as the Isvaieni whispered to each other. Liapha turned and stared hard at him and Harrier, but Tiercel wasn’t sure of how to interpret her expression. Liapha walked slowly to the edge of the crowd, to where Hadyan and Rinurta stood, and placed herself between them.

  “I thank you for bringing them to me.” Bisochim spoke for the first time. Tiercel wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting—the hissing of Demons? The cracked voice of someone utterly inhuman? In his dream visions, he’d never heard the voice of the man to whom the Fire Woman spoke. Bisochim’s voice was hoarse, and he sounded tired, but he sounded just like anyone else. “But this is business best left to Wildmages, and I would hear their words alone.”