Suddenly he heard Bisochim’s voice, loud over the whistle of the wind. “The desert—it is filled with light!”
Tiercel hadn’t thought it was possible, but Saravasse seemed to run even faster, so fast that now he could feel invisible hands pulling at him, dragging him backward along her spine. He wanted to protest, to say that if people were meant to go this fast they weren’t meant to do it on the ground, but he couldn’t catch his breath in order to speak.
“Coldfire!” Saravasse cried a moment later. Her voice was so breathless that Tiercel couldn’t tell what she thought. If it was Coldfire, it had to be Harrier. He opened his eyes, squinting against the wind, and if his grip on Bisochim hadn’t been automatic by now, he would have let go.
The desert was filled with light. There was so much Coldfire that Tiercel couldn’t count the individual globes. By their light he could see hundreds of black dots that had to be shotors.
Doesn’t he know that Ahairan will see them?
In the same moment, he realized that Saravasse was stopping. She couldn’t slow herself by spreading her wings now. Tiercel gritted his teeth against a series of bone-jarring hops and bounces, clinging to Bisochim as hard as he could.
Then—suddenly, finally—they were no longer moving.
“What are you doing here?” a familiar voice demanded.
Tiercel blinked, shoving his now-filthy chadar out of his eyes, and looked down at Harrier and Shaiara.
“I journey to Telinchechitl,” Bisochim said in confusion.
“Well don’t bother—there’s nothing there,” Harrier snapped. He tapped his shotor on the shoulder. “All the fountains stopped working the day you left. So we left.”
He stepped from his shotor’s back and walked toward Saravasse. She crouched down, and Tiercel slid off her back and all the long way down along her side with a groan of relief. His legs had gone numb during the long jarring ride, and when his feet struck the road, they buckled under him. He sat down on the ground with a grunt of surprise. Harrier walked over to him and stared down at him.
“Tell me you got to the Veiled Lands before whatever happened to Saravasse happened to her. Tell me that’s why you’ve been gone so long. Tell me there’s a good reason Bisochim didn’t Heal her,” Harrier said urgently.
“There’s a good reason,” Tiercel said. He looked past Harrier’s shoulder, to the sky filled with Coldfire. He couldn’t imagine how long it had taken Harrier to make all of that, or why he had. “Har—why—she’ll see you. You—You’re—”
“We were attacked by Goblins last night,” Harrier answered harshly. “They got all of the livestock, and twenty-three people. I’m sorry if the fact that I want to be able see them when they come back annoys you.”
Tiercel scrambled quickly to his feet and stared at the ground in distrust. Harrier was still looking at him, waiting for his answer.
“We didn’t reach the Veiled Lands,” Saravasse said, answering for him. “I am sorry. I tried.”
Harrier swung toward Saravasse. “You can talk,” he said, sounding stunned. Tiercel realized that while he’d had a fortnight to get used to the fact that Saravasse talked, the last time Harrier had seen her she’d been mute and cowed.
“How surprising,” Saravasse replied cuttingly, her patience exhausted.
“Why didn’t you keep going?” Harrier demanded. “If you could run back here, you could have run there.”
“Don’t you even care that she’s hurt?” Tiercel demanded. “Ahairan attacked us and tore her wing off! We fell out of the sky! You don’t even care that we were almost killed!”
“But you weren’t killed!” Harrier shouted back. “You’re alive! I told them help was coming”—he gestured back in the direction of the Isvaieni—“and it isn’t! You could have kept going! You could at least have gotten to Armethalieh—warned somebody! And all you did was turn around and come back here! You—He—How could you—He wouldn’t even Heal her!”
“He can’t!” Tiercel yelled, just as loudly as Harrier had. “You can’t! No one can! If you’d just—”
He yelped and jumped back as Saravasse thrust her enormous head between them, separating them before words could become blows. “If you would both stop shouting and start listening, I will explain,” she said tartly.
Her explanation was quick and concise. Ahairan’s attack. The spell Ahairan had cast upon her. Bisochim’s decision to return because he feared Telinchechitl’s magic was failing.
“Well, he was right about that,” Harrier muttered.
“Quiet,” Saravasse snapped. “And so we returned. Why did you leave?”
Harrier gave her a sullen suspicious look, as if he still wasn’t sure why she’d suddenly started talking. Tiercel reminded himself again that Harrier had only seen Saravasse once, briefly, a fortnight before. For Tiercel this wasn’t a sudden change. For Harrier, it was.
“The Isvaieni chose to leave Telinchechitl because they had regained their senses, and knew that Bisochim had fed them upon the bread of lies,” Shaiara said.
Saravasse tipped her head to regard Shaiara. A dragon’s face wasn’t shaped to display expression, but if Saravasse could have glared, she would have.
Shaiara ignored her. “Nor was there safety there. For them, should Ahairan return, or for us, who had come to slay her, for Zanattar, son of Kataduk, would not believe that Harrier was not a Demon, and Bisochim was not there to set his word against that of the foolish Lanzanur.”
“Also, all the water had dried up and the lake was probably going to disappear any minute,” Harrier interrupted. “So it didn’t matter much when he changed his mind—which he did.” Shaiara glared at him. “Are we done?”
“This cannot be all the people,” Bisochim said, staring out at the desert.
“No,” Harrier said. “Since I’m not an amazing Dragonbond Wildmage, they had to split up into small enough groups to be able to use your stupid wells. Come on. We need to go and tell everyone that you’re back.”
THEY walked back up the road together. Harrier and Shaiara led their shotors, and Tiercel and Bisochim walked with them. Every several dozen steps of theirs, Saravasse would take one careful step—the ground still quivered—and then wait for them to draw ahead again. After a few minutes, Harrier said: “Unless you’re planning to bespell several hundred shotors all at the same time, Saravasse should probably wait outside the camp. It’d be nice if you could figure out a way to round up any of the missing livestock we lost last night, too.”
Harrier’s tone was so rude that Tiercel was tempted to just haul off and hit him. He didn’t know what Bisochim was thinking.
“I shall do what I can,” Bisochim said quietly.
A few minutes later, Saravasse lay down in the middle of the road and announced that she would stop here. Harrier began coaxing his shotor to kneel. He didn’t know why it hadn’t just bolted at the sight of Saravasse—Shaiara’s hadn’t because it had gotten used to Ancaladar, and Harrier guessed that one dragon was pretty much like another if you were a shotor—but possibly his new mount was just really apathetic.
“Come on,” he said to Tiercel. “Let’s get back so we can tell everyone we’re stopping for the day.”
“I’d rather walk,” Tiercel said. He was still aching from the long jarring run and didn’t want to ride anything, but from the way Harrier turned away, Tiercel suspected that Harrier thought that his answer meant that they were still fighting. And maybe they were.
“I, too, shall remain,” Bisochim said. “I wish solitude to weave what spells I may.”
“Don’t take too long,” Harrier said briefly. His shotor was rising to its feet. Without waiting for an answer, he clucked to his mount and it began to trot off up the road. Shaiara followed.
“Your friend has much anger in him,” Bisochim said. He sounded vaguely puzzled, just as if the last time he’d seen Harrier, Harrier hadn’t also been issuing threats and demands.
“Yeah, well, he always did,” Tiercel said awkwa
rdly. “I think he was counting on us coming back with help.”
“Does he think it was our idea not to?” Saravasse said irritably.
Bisochim had never really recovered, Tiercel thought, from the shock of discovering that he’d summoned a Demon and been responsible for the death of uncounted thousands of people—both the Isvaieni who’d died destroying the Iteru-cities, and the people who’d lived in them. Sometimes—in the last fortnight—he’d seemed almost normal, but more of the time he’d spent silent and withdrawn, locked in the prison of his own thoughts. Saravasse more than made up for any silence on his part with her forceful—not to say acerbic—presence.
“No, no, of course not,” Tiercel said hastily. “It’s just that—” Harrier never wanted to be here. I don’t either, but he had more of a choice than I did. And I know he doesn’t want to have to spend all of his time being nice to the Isvaieni army. He gestured helplessly. He had no idea what he meant, much less of what to say.
“You should go and talk to him,” Saravasse said, more gently now. “And now that you know that we are not to travel to Telinchechitl, you must decide what to do next.”
“I know,” Tiercel said. “I’ll try to make him . . .” Calm down? See reason? He didn’t finish that sentence either. He raised his hand in a half wave and began walking up the road.
After a few minutes he heard the sound of hammering begin to echo across the desert. The Isvaieni were making camp for the day. The tents went up quickly, covering the pale regh with dark tents and sparks of cookfires. None of the tents was pitched on the Dove Road, or very close to the well, so there was one cluster of about twenty or so on the western side of the road, and another cluster about twice as big on the other side. Tiercel was surprised to see that the well had been left open to the sky. Ikulas, shotors, and a few goats wandered back and forth. When he saw a cloaked figure step out of one of the tents and come walking up the road toward him, he stopped in confusion, but as she approached, she pushed back the hood of her cloak so that he could see her face, and he saw it was Ciniran.
“Come, Tiercel. There’s a fire at our tent, and food, and Harrier has gotten a cloak for you.” She glanced at his clothing. “Perhaps they can be cleaned at least,” she said, shaking her head.
Away from Saravasse’s heat, the night had been cold enough to make him shiver. “But I don’t—How can he—” He hadn’t learned much about the Isvaieni during his stay in Abi’Abadshar, but their rules about charity were one thing that had been made very clear to him.
“This is a time of great change for the Isvaieni,” Ciniran said, her voice solemn. “And the Blue Robes are above all custom. Come.”
The tent she led him toward wasn’t the same one they’d left when the storm had struck. This one was dun-colored instead of black, and the patterns of the carpets inside and in front—that was new—were different.
“Sit,” Shaiara said. “There is water.”
Tiercel sat down on the carpet and pulled off his chadar. It had been filthy ever since he’d fallen out of the sky and bled all over it, and it had only gotten dirtier each day since, and he couldn’t decide whether Saravasse’s run across the desert had blown all the dust out of the fabric or filled it with new dust. It felt odd to be sitting on a fine woven rug in the middle of nowhere, too. Shaiara dipped a mug into a barrel and handed it to him. The water was cold and fresh; it must have just come from the well.
“I don’t know if they’re going to go for it, but I asked,” Harrier said, walking around from the back of the tent. “They’re still arguing. Anipha’s against it, Sathan’s just trying to annoy her, Zanattar’s making speeches about the Breaking of Tribes, and Liapha isn’t saying one way or the other. There you are,” he added, seeing Tiercel. “Is that blood all over your robe?”
Tiercel blinked at him warily. Harrier’s mood seemed to have changed completely in the time it had taken Tiercel to walk a mile or so. “Uh . . . yeah. I think it’s mine. I fell out of the sky, Har,” he said, just in case Harrier had missed it the first time he’d mentioned it. “Bisochim saved my life. Uh . . . Zanattar’s here?” he added.
Harrier grimaced. “For the last ten days. The Lanzanur are one of the tribes in the group right behind us. Zanattar decided to ride up to tell me that as soon as we get to the Isvai, we’re all going Demon-hunting,” he said contemptuously.
“I, um . . . we are?”
“Use your head,” Harrier said reproachfully. He dropped into a sitting position with a sigh of exhaustion. “If we don’t hold all the rest of the arrows in common, parts of the line will be defenseless when we’re attacked again,” he added, apparently adding to the previous conversation for Tiercel’s benefit. “The Kadyastar hate the Barantar, the Barantar hate the Kamazan, and the Nalzindar . . . ?” He looked at Shaiara.
“The Nalzindar hate no one. But neither do we have any arrows,” Shaiara said dryly.
Harrier made an amused noise, and poured himself a mug of water.
“If you hate all of these people, why are you trying to save them?” Tiercel asked in frustration.
Harrier gave him a startled look. “I don’t hate them. Most of them. Mostly they’re just idiots. If you want to know why we’re riding with them, hey, it’s not like the three of us could exactly sneak out of Telinchechitl without anybody noticing after you left. And the grass was dead by noon. And—”
“Okay. Fine. You had a bunch of very good reasons for bringing all of them with you,” Tiercel said.
“You weren’t there,” Harrier said. There was a faint note of warning in his voice now. “And now that you are here, we have to decide what to do.”
Tiercel stifled another flare of resentment. He’d gone with Bisochim. Both he and Harrier had thought Bisochim might be crazy, but they’d been desperate. Harrier had expected him to be gone a day at most. He’d come back a fortnight later, and said he’d been attacked by Ahairan in person, and said he’d barely escaped with his life, and said he’d had to walk halfway across the Isvai, and all Harrier did was yell at him for not having walked to the Elven Lands instead. Even now Harrier hadn’t said that he was glad he’d survived, or had been worried that he hadn’t.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Bisochim?” Tiercel asked.
Harrier sighed. “I don’t know. I sent you to get help. You didn’t. Shut up,” he added, when Tiercel opened his mouth to protest. “Ahairan didn’t kill you, and didn’t Taint you—she just set things up so that if Bisochim Heals Saravasse he’ll be Tainted. So Saravasse can’t fly, but Bisochim can still use her magic. Nobody can live at Telinchechitl. I’d figured Ahairan had gone off somewhere—Light Alone knows where—but last night we were attacked by Goblins. I think she sent them. I also think you still need to go and get help, and Saravasse is the fastest way.”
“We can’t just go and leave you here,” Tiercel said.
But Harrier wasn’t listening anymore. He’d gotten to his feet and was staring toward the north, frowning. “There shouldn’t be anything in the sky,” he said slowly.
Now Shaiara and Ciniran were standing and staring too. Tiercel got up and looked northward, but he couldn’t see anything. There was so much Coldfire in the sky over the camp that it was almost impossible to see the stars; the camp itself was lit, not as bright as day, but brighter than the brightest full moon could ever have lit it. Even Pelashia’s Veil was dim and faint, though at least it was visible—a broad white band against the blackness of the night sky. Automatically Tiercel’s eyes followed it, past the edge of the Coldfire, to the empty sky beyond. He couldn’t see anything, but somehow the sky looked . . . wrong.
He remembered when Harrier hadn’t been willing to even try to make Coldfire, and that his first attempts had always disappeared the moment his attention was elsewhere. Now there was so much of it that Tiercel couldn’t count the individual balls of glowing azure fog. He wondered, with desperate inappropriateness, if Armethalieh in the Time of Mages had been lit this way at night. He knew he was only tryi
ng to distract himself from what might be coming. Please don’t let it be Ahairan. Please.
“Something flies there,” Shaiara said, her voice tight with dread. “Something large.”
When she said the words, suddenly Tiercel could see what she saw. Beyond the canopy of Coldfire, the stars were winking out and reappearing as something passed in front of them.
“How big—?” Harrier began, and without needing to ask Tiercel knew what he was asking. How big was the creature that attacked Bisochim’s dragon?
“As big as Saravasse,” Tiercel said. “Bisochim called it a Balwarta. It looked like a jarrari with wings.”
Harrier growled deep in his throat, a sound of anger and hopelessness. “Ciniran—Bisochim is up the road. Get him.” Ciniran ran into the tent for weapons. Harrier poured the last of the water in his mug onto the coals, extinguishing the cookfire with a hiss and a puff of steam. “Shaiara—”
“The children and the ikulas to the tents, the fires and lanterns doused—and we must drive as many shotors into the desert as we can,” she said. “Perhaps they are just hungry.”
Harrier nodded and Shaiara took off at a run. Ciniran came back again, her bow and quiver slung over her shoulder, carrying a saddle. “Go inside,” Harrier said to Tiercel.
“I—But I can help,” Tiercel protested.
“You can’t shoot a bow any more than I can, and nobody here will listen to you. Go inside,” Harrier repeated, and ran.
Yeah, but at least I can keep this whole camp from being lit up like Demon banquet! Tiercel thought angrily. He didn’t know how they’d gone from being partners in trying to stop the Dark from coming back to being almost enemies. He didn’t like it.
The sounds of fear grew slowly louder as the warning spread from their campsite, and all around him cookfires were being doused, but the globes of Coldfire still hung over the entire camp, making everything easy to see. Coldfire. MageLight. The same result. Maybe even the same spell. The High Magick had come from the Wild Magic. Even if Harrier had made them, Tiercel should be able to move them. He concentrated, just the way he did when he wanted to move one of his own globes of MageLight. It was harder than he’d thought it would be. For a moment he almost felt as if he’d touched something, and then a wave of nausea and dizziness made him stagger and fall to his knees. It was like a combination of the worst of the times when he’d tried to cast a spell without having the power for it and being next to Harrier or Bisochim when either of them cast a spell of the Wild Magic.
The Phoenix Transformed Page 25
