He was just getting ready to try again when he heard the screams.
HARRIER had spent most of the last fortnight complaining about the Isvaieni, if only in the privacy of his own mind. Good-for-nothing, lazy, childish, unreasonable, argumentative, unrealistic, disorganized, indecisive, incompetent.
Tonight he changed his mind.
From the moment he looked idly skyward and noticed the stars flickering to the time when the first Balwarta swooped low over the tents was barely two-thirds of a chime—if that. The camp was spread out over almost fifty hectares. There was no hope of carrying a warning to everyone in time. Yet at each tent he reached, Harrier discovered that all he had to do was name the danger and hurry on. Every tent held at least one man or woman who’d ridden with Zanattar. Behind him, fires were doused, lanterns quenched, children and hounds taken inside the tents, and from each tent, at least one person sprinted off into the night—armed with whatever weapons they could snatch up in seconds—to pass on the alarm. He saw a boy and girl who couldn’t be more than ten half-coax, half drag a grunting and protesting shotor toward the open desert. Shotors had a better notion of their rights than any dockyard magistrate. They knew the tents had been pitched, and so they saw no reason to move.
He reached the edge of the tents. He didn’t know if those Balwarta-things needed light to see them, but he knew the archers would need light to aim. He’d move the Coldfire out over the desert, then go back. It might help. He grabbed for the canopy of Coldfire to pull all the globes together to make a brighter single globe, but as he tried, he felt them resist.
Who—? What—? Why—? Harrier couldn’t imagine any reason he couldn’t move the Coldfire he’d made other than a spell, and he couldn’t imagine any source for such a spell but Ahairan.
If Ahairan’s here, we’re dead.
She could kill everyone here and probably convince Bisochim she’d done it for their own good and Harrier still wasn’t sure why she hadn’t killed Bisochim already. He didn’t want to think about the fact that Bisochim had conjured up a Demon without being Tainted and who knew what he might do next without being Tainted and if Bisochim wasn’t Tainted, Harrier probably wouldn’t know there was something wrong until the day he woke up dead and the world was filled with Demons and everybody else he knew was dead, too, just because he’d been too stupid to kill somebody just to make sure. He hauled at the Coldfire as hard as he could, felt a last resistance give way, and finally the pale globes of magic began to move at his command.
When the attack came, it was on the eastern edge of the camp—and Harrier was at the far southern edge, having veered that way through the tangle of tent-ropes and around the obstacles of kneeling shotors. In the distance, by the Coldfire’s light, he saw two dark blurs drop from the sky. He stood where he was—though every instinct howled to him to run, to help—because he couldn’t do that and shift the Coldfire both, and damn it, they needed light. He forced himself to block out the shouts and screams, the howling of the ikulas, the outcries of the Isvaieni as they raced across the camp toward the threat, the weird deep-voiced wailing of the panicked shotors. The Coldfire was swirling together now, cloud more than ball, and he knew that if he let go of it now it would simply vanish, and there was no moonlight. Somewhere at the back of his mind he could hear Tiercel’s voice talking about all the parts of a spell: constructing it and empowering it and setting it so it wouldn’t just dissolve when you were finished. He’d said “Why don’t you just do it?” and Tiercel had answered, “Because it isn’t that easy.”
Finally the Coldfire settled into something almost too bright to look at. With a sharp sigh of relief, Harrier released it again and ran toward the Balwarta. It was difficult to navigate because there were no clear streets set out between the tents, and the last thing he wanted was for the Wild Magic to be helpful and show him a clear route, because he found that enormously distracting. But as he worked his way eastward, he almost changed his mind. More than half of the tents were down—when the shotors had panicked and bolted, some of them had run through the tents trying to get away, because the Isvaieni had followed custom and simply settled their animals beside their tents for the night. If we survive this, we have to start keeping them all in one place, Harrier thought at the back of his mind.
He began to smell smoke and blood. When he got close, he could see that there were two Balwarta. One was on the ground, standing in the middle of three or four smashed tents, and the air was hazy with smoke. Its clubbed barbed tail was curved menacingly up over its back. The other Balwarta hovered in the air above it. The Isvaieni were shooting at both Balwarta. Once again—as when the Goblins had attacked—some of the Isvaieni were simply throwing themselves at the Balwarta as if they thought they were invulnerable. It wasn’t working out very well, and Harrier didn’t know why anybody wasn’t trying to stop them. Some of the others—brave without being crazy—were trying to get close to the one on the ground with awardans or spears, but the arrows bounced off the armor of the Balwartas’ upper bodies, and nobody could get close enough with a sword. Not and live, anyway. The claws—and the tail—were obviously deadly.
Even if they couldn’t kill it, the Isvaieni were trying to lure the one on the ground away from the wreckage. Harrier thought there must be people still trapped in some of the collapsed tents, and maybe they were even still alive. Not for long, though. The tent-fabric was already smoldering, and if a fire got started, anybody trapped would be burned alive. Worse—because more deadly—a fire could spread through the whole camp carried by wind-borne sparks. Everything was tinder-dry, and there was only one source of water.
The Balwarta both seemed confused by the screaming, waving Isvaieni. Or maybe they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. We’re going to die here, Harrier heard himself think very clearly, and sometimes in the past when he’d thought that he’d been disbelieving, and sometimes he’d been resigned, and sometimes he’d been terrified, but right now, for some reason, he was really annoyed. He saw Shaiara among the archers, and pointed at the Balwarta on the ground. Then he turned toward the one hovering in the air and Called Fire onto its wings.
At the first touch of his spell, it rose into the mass of Coldfire that filled the sky. Now he couldn’t see it, but that didn’t matter. He had just long enough to worry that it wasn’t going to work, to wonder when he’d gotten the idea that setting living things on fire was a good idea, when it came falling back down through the glowing canopy. It beat the naked vanes of its burned wings wildly as it fell, as if it thought it could still fly, and Harrier drew a sharp breath, thinking about Bisochim’s dragon. How high up had she been when she fell?
The Balwarta hit the regh a few hundred yards away. Harrier felt the ground shake with the impact; because of the noise from the camp, it was as if it happened in silence, even though it didn’t. He was sure the Balwarta was dead, but the fall didn’t seem to have even dazed it. It flipped over from its back onto its legs and began to scuttle forward, its tail curled high over its back. Harrier drew his swords, running out on the regh so the battle wouldn’t take place inside the camp. There was a slim chance. Strike behind the huge murderous claws—if he could—avoid the mandibles—if he could—hope its blood wasn’t poisonous and that it couldn’t jab him with its tail before he could get out of the way . . .
If he could.
He wasn’t thinking past the moment when the Balwarta would be within range. To think was to be doing something other than reacting to your opponent’s attacks; that was a hard-won lesson Harrier did not intend to forget now. But it was still yards away when there was a sound like tearing cloth and a flash of light so bright he shouted in alarm, bringing his arms up instinctively to shield his face. With the light came heat as abrupt as if someone had suddenly opened the door of a furnace, and the hideous stench of burning . . . something.
He couldn’t see. He was blinded by the intense light of a lightning strike where none should have—could have—been. But even whi
le he was still trying to stumble back out of the way of the Balwarta’s attack—in case it might still be coming—he heard a full-throated roar of fury, loud enough to cut through the shouts and screams: “Get out of my way!” He didn’t need sight to turn in Saravasse’s direction.
Wait. No. Wait. Something not even as strong as his earlier hunch that had let him know Bisochim was coming nagged at him now. Something he’d seen. Something he’d forgotten.
If he could just hear himself think, he could remember what it was—but they could probably hear the noise from the camp all the way in Armethalieh right now. Harrier sheathed his swords and desperately rubbed at his eyes, but all he could see was light. Too much and not enough.
“Harrier—come! We must move—now—” He’d sensed Shaiara’s approach even before she spoke. Still unable to see, he reached slowly out toward her. Shaiara grabbed his hand and pulled. “Come.”
“No. Shaiara, tell me what you see,” he said urgently.
“Saravasse attacks the flying jarrari—”
“In the sky. Look in the sky.” He could feel Isvaieni all around him, running out into the desert—away from the fight—but he held Shaiara still.
“The Coldfire is gone. The sky, I . . .” Her voice stopped, and the silence was all the answer he needed.
Three of them. There were three of them.
“Find Bisochim. He has to be nearby,” he said quietly. He closed his eyes. His eyesight was coming back—he could tell—but he wouldn’t have decent night vision for at least a chime. Too late.
They didn’t have Knight-Mages in the Selken Isles. Harrier would never have stood in a Selken Shrine and pledged his skill to the Sword-Giver and the Lady of Battles, but the Telchi had trained him as if he would’ve. And so he’d stood on the practice sand blindfolded and done his best to defend himself against what he couldn’t see. “Let your skin be your eyes,” the Telchi had told him. “Your eyes will lie. Your skin will not.” The Telchi had never meant his training to serve for this—locating a target a mile or more away and in the sky—but it had to. It’s out there, he told himself. Find it.
Night and desert cold and look at all I’ve done for you already and he hardly knew that he was praying, and the smell of smoke and what had to be burning Balwarta was coming from somewhere in front of him and if the Dark wins there won’t be anyone left to do whatever it is you want us to do, he told the Wild Magic, and screaming and sobbing and ikulas howling in the distance and I’ll pay your Price just tell me what it is and the shouts of people running across the regh and shotors bawling and I need to get it out of the sky so Bisochim can kill it, I just need to slow it down that’s all and he realized there were no sounds of fighting behind him now and he hoped that Saravasse had won and he realized that if she hadn’t Bisochim was already dead and then:
There.
He couldn’t have described the feeling. It didn’t go into words—not for him. He’d never been good with words. He just knew because he knew, and there was no time to stop to hope or wonder if he was right. He struck at his target with all the anger inside him—the hatred for every senseless death, for every moment of cruelty and sacrifice and loss that had led him to stand here tonight and realize that it might not be today or tomorrow or even a sennight from now, but he was going to die trying to protect the people who’d taken Macenor’Telchi from him—who’d taken his own life from him. Harrier wasn’t even dead, and it seemed petty to resent that so much more than everything else they’d done—to resent anything on his own behalf when the stakes were so high—but he did, and he poured that rage into his spell until the energy he’d sent into it brought him to his knees.
Harrier realized after a few moments that he was staring at his hands, and that he could see them clearly. He got to his feet, looking warily toward the sky—he didn’t want to be looking into a lightning bolt again tonight.
And then the sound began.
At first he wasn’t sure what it was. It almost sounded like cries for help, but then the sound grew louder as it was taken up by more people—behind him, in front of him, people everywhere around him—and suddenly he could tell what it was.
Cheering.
They’d won.
THE third Balwarta just dropped out of the sky right before Shaiara reached Bisochim, dead before it hit the ground. Bisochim had killed the one whose wings Harrier had burned, and Saravasse had killed the other one.
There were more dead.
Searching the wreckage wasn’t easy. Anything soiled with either venom or ichor couldn’t be touched with bare hands. Several falconry gloves had been sacrificed to the task—the need to find trapped survivors was urgent. There weren’t many. Harrier tried not to look when the dead were taken from the wreckage. Most of the dead were children. The lucky ones had been smothered.
“You would honor them did you aid them in laying the dead upon the sand,” Shaiara said quietly.
“What do I do?” he asked. He knew he sounded far more frightened than he had when he’d faced two Balwarta, but this was the first time he’d seen dead bodies since Tarnatha’Iteru. He remembered thinking once that nothing could be too horrible for the people who’d destroyed the city and killed Macenor’Telchi. But these were children. He found himself studying the faces of the Isvaieni, both those working through the wreckage and those gathered to watch. None of them looked like bereaved parents or husbands or brothers. Harrier didn’t think it could be possible that they didn’t care, but it was as if just when he thought he was starting to understand the Isvaieni, he’d been reminded that he never would.
The dead were all Barantar; the Balwarta had landed on the Barantar tents. As they’d been recovered, each body had been laid on a carpet brought for that purpose. Each was stripped of all clothing—not to save it, because the Barantar performing that task would cut and tear the cloth if they must—but for custom’s sake. At last the body was arranged carefully, but without formality.
“Walk with them when they go. That is all. I do not know what more you may do in the Cold North,” Shaiara said, and Harrier nodded.
Finally it was time to go. Harrier stepped to the head of the carpet, signifying that he would walk with them. Sathan took his place beside him. Four Isvaieni gripped each end of the carpet. They all began to walk. Half a mile out into the desert they stopped and set the carpet down.
Harrier thought of funerals in Armethalieh. Of candles and incense and the Preceptor saying that the Loved One had become “one with the Eternal Light.” Down by the Docks they always added “and Great Ocean, too,” and the Temple Preceptor frowned at them but didn’t say anything, and he’d never yet refused to accept a body for burning just because the seafaring families chose to remember the Great Power that shaped their lives in their time of loss. And then afterward they’d add a new name to the memorial tablet in their House Shrines and life would go on. Here they simply lifted the bodies from the carpet and set them on the regh and rolled up the carpet and walked back.
BECAUSE of the Balwarta’s contamination, the Isvaieni had to burn eight tents and all their contents, which meant more losses for Sathan. He stalked over to Liapha’s tent to demand that she replace them, saying that Harrier had said she had to. That meant Rinurta came and got Harrier, who’d been overseeing the burning, and brought him to Liapha’s tent. Harrier found himself stumbling through an explanation of the fact that he’d said they should hold arrows in common, not tents, getting angrier and more frustrated all the time. By the time Zanattar and Anipha showed up, Harrier had just about decided that Liapha entertained herself with loud screaming fights and none of her own people were willing to oblige her any longer.
“Thieving pakh!” Anipha snarled when she saw Sathan. “Two-legged barghus! You would suck the water from a shadow if you could! You only wished to come away from Telinchechitl so quickly to claim the best grazing in the Isvai for your herds! Where are your herds now, thief of every tent?”
“I, a thief? I?” Sathan cried. T
he ikulas sitting at Liapha’s feet raised their heads in interest. “When it is known from Kannatha Well to Lomazuntur Oasis that the Kamazan survive from Gathering to Gathering upon charity—”
Anipha’s answer was a wordless shriek of rage.
“Does anybody in this tent happen to remember that we were attacked by a Demon tonight?” Harrier bellowed at the top of his lungs. His voice was loud enough to shock everyone there to stillness: he’d learned to make himself heard over the racket of Armethalieh Port.
“Just so,” Liapha said happily into the stunned silence. She beamed at Harrier. He restrained himself from glowering at her with an effort. She was Shaiara’s grandmother.
“You,” Harrier said, turning to Sathan. “No tents. You still have more tents than anyone else here. You,” he said, turning to Anipha. “I don’t care what you think of Sathan. We are all going to be civil to each other. I’m not finished with you,” he said, as Sathan was leaving.
“You do not command me, Blue Robe,” Sathan said icily.
“No,” Harrier agreed. “But the Balwarta weren’t the only things that knocked down tents tonight. Shotors did a lot of damage. Every time we’re attacked, they’re going to bolt. We need to keep all the shotors together, someplace where, if they get spooked and run, they can’t do too much damage.”
“I shall not give my shotors into your hands so that you can steal them,” Sathan said hotly.
“Trust a Barantar to think first of theft!” Anipha spat.
The Phoenix Transformed Page 26
