The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  It was funny, Tiercel thought (except it wasn’t). He’d been the one who’d had the dreams that had gotten the two of them into this whole mess, and Jermayan and Idalia had been so certain that the Elven prophecies about the return of Darkness were all supposed to apply to him: Tiercel Rolfort, High Mage. Harrier becoming a Knight-Mage was just something kind of . . . tacked-on afterward, an afterthought by the Wild Magic after the two of them had left Karahelanderialigor. Even Harrier insisted—even after everything that had happened—that Tiercel was the important one, the one who could (even now) find an answer if there was an answer. But Tiercel was the one who felt like the afterthought, and he’d felt that way for so long that there were times he wondered if the Elves had gotten it all backwards, if his whole purpose had been to bring Harrier with him and make sure that Harrier had the chance to become a Knight-Mage.

  He wished Ancaladar were here. Not for the power the Dragonbond would give him. Just to talk to. Just to ask. Ancaladar had always had a way of helping him sort through his thoughts and see things clearly, and Tiercel missed that more than all the magic he could no longer do, more than flying through the sky, more than the glamour of being able to say, even if only inside his own mind: I am a Dragonbond Mage.

  He missed his friend.

  But there was nothing to do about it, except to torture himself, one more time, with all the things he could have done differently that day, that sennight, that moonturn, to make things turn out some other way. And that was both exhausting and too familiar. He sent himself to sleep with it anyway.

  And he dreamed.

  It wasn’t a real dream—those were jumbled and illogical, and so bizarre that Tiercel jarred himself from one to the next even while he was dreaming by recognizing their improbability—and it wasn’t one of the horrible eavesdropping dreams where it was as if Ahairan was whispering her thoughts into his ear. Those were just as chaotic and irrational as his real dreams—only he couldn’t turn them into a different dream—and when he woke up he knew he’d dreamed them, and he felt angry and unclean, but he couldn’t quite put what he’d dreamed into words. It wasn’t one of the strange clear visions he’d had back at the beginning either—and he was grateful for that.

  No, it was something else entirely.

  It was almost as if it was a memory of a dream, faint and indistinct, as if he was trying to imagine someone else’s dream from their description of it. But he was asleep, and dreaming. Only his dream had no color, no form, no shape. It was like trying to construct the dream . . .

  . . . and failing.

  Are you ready to remember me? someone kept asking him. Are you ready to remember me?

  And he wasn’t. He couldn’t.

  When he woke up, Tiercel felt as if his head was overstuffed and he hadn’t slept at all. Someone was arguing—loudly—outside the tent, and at first he could only hear one side of it, until finally the other person raised his voice too.

  Harrier. And Eugens.

  There was a sudden soft light as someone inside their tent uncovered the lantern. Tiercel looked around. Everyone was awake. “It’s his brother,” Tiercel said. “I guess he woke up.” He’d told Shaiara when he’d come back to the tent last night that one of the people they’d saved that day was Harrier’s brother Eugens, and that Harrier hadn’t known until after he’d talked to Fannas that evening.

  “Here is a tangle of jesses knotted past saving,” Kamar said, listening to the voices outside.

  “You have said that this brother is the eldest,” Shaiara said, as Tiercel reached for his boots. “And the Golden City is far from here—far, even, from Akazidas’Iteru. Does he not have duties there?”

  She wasn’t asking him—because she knew perfectly well he didn’t have answers—but Shaiara never chattered idly. These were questions that she wanted answers to, and Tiercel knew she expected him to get them. He shrugged, tapping his boots and then yanking them on. That done, he got to his feet. “I can see what I can find out. I should go sit in the other tent anyway, in case the others wake up. I mean, if Eugens is awake . . .” his voice trailed off.

  “That is a good thought, Tiercel,” Ciniran said warmly. “They will wish to know that they have been rescued from their enemies.”

  Sort of, Tiercel thought. He’d developed a theory about why the Armethaliehans were here—it would account for why one of the City Magistrates and someone like Lord Felocan was here, anyway, and he didn’t like it much. He’d just reached the doorway of the tent when Harrier came careening through it, not looking where he was going. If Tiercel hadn’t grabbed him by the shoulders and held on, they both would have fallen.

  “Are you . . .” Tiercel said, and stopped, and tried again. “Everyone could hear.”

  “Gens wants me to go home with him,” Harrier said, and his voice wavered so much that Tiercel wasn’t sure whether Harrier was going to laugh or cry. “He says that Da will be a little mad at first, but everything will work out. He thinks you’re crazy, though.”

  “Oh, Har,” Tiercel said. He couldn’t think of what to say. He knew that Harrier wouldn’t want false comfort, and if the truth was going to be horrible, he wouldn’t want that either. “I’ll go sit with him for a while.”

  Harrier nodded and walked across the tent. Tiercel wasn’t really sure he had any idea of where he was going. Tiercel glanced toward Ciniran and Shaiara, hoping he didn’t look as helpless as he felt, and walked out of the tent. It wasn’t quite dawn, and still freezing cold. The desert always had an odd “wet-paper” smell at this hour—at least the Isvai did. The Barahileth had always smelled sharp and raw in the early morning, a smell composed of ishnain and salt flats, until the baking heat overwhelmed everything with the scent of dust, as it would here in only an hour or so.

  He pulled his desertcloak tighter around himself and walked over to Eugens. Eugens had gotten to his feet, and looked as if he might be thinking of walking off somewhere. “You really ought to stay here. On the carpet. Until we can find you a pair of boots, at least,” Tiercel said.

  Eugens turned at the sound of his voice. “Tiercel,” he said, and stopped, as if he’d simply run out of things to say. After a moment he ran a hand through his hair and said: “You know, I have no idea of where we are.”

  “About a sennight away from Sapthiruk Oasis. We’re planning to stop there for a while,” Tiercel answered.

  “I—You know, you shouldn’t. You should just keep going. We need to get out of this desert as fast as we can,” Eugens said. He looked around nervously.

  “You don’t have to worry about the Shamblers—those things that had you,” Tiercel said. “Bisochim destroyed all of them. Look, I know I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through. But I understand more than you think.”

  Eugens laughed, and the sound was loud and ragged. “How can you?”

  “Because a year ago last Flowering I started having visions of a Demon returning to the world,” Tiercel said, taking a deep breath. “And she did. Here. Her name is Ahairan. She created the Shamblers, and she destroyed Akazidas’Iteru, and—”

  “You summoned her up?” Eugens asked in horror.

  “No!” Tiercel blurted in horror. “I . . .” He realized he was going to have to explain most of it, and he tried to remember what he’d put in the last letter he’d sent from Ysterialpoerin, even though he hadn’t known the half of what he faced then. “The Elves had a prophecy that Darkness would be reborn. And that a High Mage would be born who would be able to figure out how to destroy it. I went to the Elven Lands, and they told me it was me.”

  “You?” Eugens said in disbelief, and Tiercel winced.

  “Yeah, well, I guess they got that part wrong,” Tiercel snapped, irritated in spite of himself, “because the Darkness has been reborn, and I haven’t done much about destroying it. But I didn’t summon her up.”

  “A Demon,” Eugens said. He stared at Tiercel. “I don’t . . . The Wildmages will protect us. I . . . They have to.”

  “I’m
sorry, Eugens. Almost all the ones in the Madiran are dead, and I don’t think the ones in the North know about this yet. It would be nice if they did, but . . . Wildmage magic won’t have any effect against Ahairan. Just against most of her creatures,” Tiercel said as gently as he could.

  “You’re just a boy, Tyr. You shouldn’t be here at all,” Eugens said again. He sounded dazed.

  “Well, I am here. I’ve been here for the last five moonturns, trying to stop her,” Tiercel said, still trying to make his voice gentle. “And you really can’t tell me anything more horrible than the things I’ve already seen.”

  “In another two days, we would have been on the road for home,” Eugens said, sounding weary and bitter. He looked down at himself, and then held out his hands to inspect them, frowning. “This isn’t right. My hands . . .”

  “Bisochim and Saravasse Healed you after we rescued you,” Tiercel said.

  Eugens turned away from him, staring out over the desert. The Nalzindar’s tent was always on the western side of the square, so the desert was still nearly dark, but only the brightest stars remained visible in the sky. “You remember Tarrel Arhaus, don’t you, Tyr?” Eugens asked, after a long pause.

  It seemed like a bizarre question, but Tiercel nodded slowly. “He was in my class at the Normal,” he answered. Tarrel, like Harrier, had been destined for an apprenticeship, not University. Unlike Harrier, he would have entered into it that summer.

  “His family apprenticed him to Da. He had a good head with numbers. His older brother Rhon is First Mate on the Mayfly. Does the Out Islands run, married to the middle Carmasien girl—I never can remember her name—Margoree? I think. Yes. Margoree. So I thought Tarrel could do with some seasoning, and Master Arhaus and Da were of a mind, so I brought him along south with me. Ah, what in the name of the Light do I tell his mother? How can dead men stand up again and walk?”

  “Ahairan did it,” Tiercel answered. “She made the Shamblers. She’s been doing it for a while now. I’m sorry.” He saw Eugens shiver—with cold as much as with grief and horror. “Come on back inside the tent. We can find you a cloak later, but at least you can wrap up in a blanket now.”

  When he went inside the tent with Eugens, he saw that the other sleepers were beginning to stir.

  Magistrate Perizel was young to be holding even the post of Junior Magistrate (so Tiercel’s father said). Tukildu and Gindin and Thara had done the best they could with her long blonde hair, but in the end they’d simply had to hack it off, since there’d been no way to comb the mats out of it. She had the fine-boned build that people always called “Old Armethaliehan,” which was just silly, since Harrier’s family had been in Armethalieh since before they’d put up the first walls, practically, and Harrier was about as fine-boned as a mule.

  Her clerk, Kave Breulin, was probably about five or six years younger than she was. Tiercel could only guess so closely because Breulin had exactly the sort of job he would have had if he’d gone on to Armethalieh University and graduated: Magistrate’s Clerk. He was dark-haired where Tiercel was fair, but other than that, Tiercel and Kave looked enough alike to be cousins. There was probably some relationship between the Breulins and the Rolforts, actually, if you traced the lineages back far enough; all the noble families of Armethalieh had done a lot of intermarrying at one point.

  Lord Felocan was the oldest of anyone here, and Tiercel wondered how he’d managed to survive what had to have been a brutal journey. His curly sandy-blond hair had been pulled back into a tightly braided club and then wrapped with ribbon, so they hadn’t had to cut it. It looked odd fluffed out around his face now, because even in sleep, there was nothing soft about him. He had a heavy gold earring in one ear, studded with red cabochon stones, and Tiercel wondered why the earring looked so strange until he realized that none of the others was wearing any jewelry at all.

  The other four people they’d rescued he didn’t know. There was a girl who looked as if she might be a year or two older than he was, whose long coppery hair, the Tabigana had said, might be saved if she had the patience to comb through it; two brown-haired men who looked as if they’d probably once been heavyset and now had the slack jowly skin of people who have lost too much flesh too fast; and a blonde woman—also once-plump—whose hair, at least, had been short to begin with. Tiercel wasn’t sure why he thought the last three were Merchant class. He just did.

  Lord Felocan awoke first, going from sleep, through the dazed half-consciousness that followed a Healing Trance, to full wakefulness so quickly that the intermediate state might almost not have been there at all. He sat up, brushing the hair out of his face, and looked around in bafflement. “Master Gillain,” he said in bafflement, his voice hoarse with disuse. His gaze then passed to Tiercel.

  “Tiercel Rolfort,” Tiercel said quickly. He was saved from having to start the same long circular explanation he suspected Harrier had made to Eugens by Magistrate Perizel’s awakening, and by the time he’d introduced himself to her, Eugens had already begun explaining, well, something to Lord Felocan, and the others were also beginning to awaken.

  Very quickly everyone was awake, and Tiercel discovered that the young woman was Vianse Pallocons, Lord Felocan’s Chief of Staff, and that the other three were Master Benke Froilax—who served on the Council of the Provenderers Trade Guild back in Armethalieh—Goodlady Leiled Oriadan, and her husband, Goodsir Arhos Oriadan. Goodsir Arhos Oriadan was Master Froilax’s brother-in-law. Tiercel could hear the morning sounds of the camp being struck coming from all around them, but no one inside the tent paid any attention. They were too busy talking—to Tiercel and to each other. His sister Handene, Goodsir Oriadan proudly announced to Tiercel, was happily married to Master Froilax and at home in their lovely house in the Valley with their six fine children. The statement struck Tiercel as so bizarre under the circumstances that he simply stared. Goodlady Oriadan smacked her husband sharply on the back of the head and called him a pushing fool, then went on to explain to Tiercel that she and her husband were both Clerks of the Provenderers Guild.

  The eight of them were the only members of The Armethaliehan Commission to Inquire into the Madiran Unrest who’d survived, but none of them had said what they’d survived.

  “It is good to see someone from Armethalieh, Lord Tiercel,” Magistrate Perizel said. “After we have eaten, you must take us to someone in authority, so that we may make plans on how to deal with this situation.”

  Tiercel assumed that Eugens had explained to Magistrate Perizel how she and the others had gotten here, but he couldn’t imagine what to say to her now. Just then Ciniran looked in at the doorway.

  “Shaiara wishes to know if we may strike the tent now, Tiercel. And Kamar has brought some boots that he thinks may fit, so they may choose.”

  “Tell her to give us a handspan, please,” Tiercel said, then turned back to the Armethaliehans. He’d thought for moonturns that he was an outsider, a stranger, someone who would be eternally confounded by the Isvaieni and their ways. But now he realized that he was looking at these people and thinking “them,” not “us,” seeing how awkward Eugens was in his robes—the outer sash knotted all wrong, no chadar at all—and he realized that he’d become more a part of the desert than he’d realized. Great, he thought. Now I don’t belong anywhere. Not that it was actually going to be a problem if Ahairan had her way. “Look, you need to get dressed, then you need to choose boots, then we have to go,” he said. “We lost a lot of time yesterday because of the Shamblers, and we have to get moving. I know this is all really confusing, and I’ll try to explain as much as I can once we’re on our way.”

  “Now see here, Lord Tiercel,” Lord Felocan began.

  “Will it help if I tell them to get moving?” Saravasse asked sweetly, poking her nose into the tent. Vianse and Mistress Oriadan squealed in fright and cowered back.

  “Oh for Light’s sake!” Tiercel snapped. “This is Saravasse! She’s Bisochim’s dragon—or Bisochim’s her Wildmage. Good mo
rning, Saravasse.”

  “Good morning, Tiercel. Did you sleep well?” Saravasse asked, still in the same tones of honey-sweet innocence, as if she couldn’t see an entire tent full of people cowering away from her in shock.

  “Not really,” Tiercel admitted. “I’m okay though. Where’s Harrier?”

  “Off terrorizing the baggage train, just as he does on any other morning. Huh. So these are Armethaliehans. Well. Not very impressive,” Saravasse said dismissively.

  Lord Felocan recovered first—although, Tiercel noticed, he hadn’t actually reacted very much. He made an irritated noise, turning to Vianse Pallocons, who was clinging to his arm in terror. “For Light’s sake, Vianse, stop behaving like a cloudwit! And get dressed! I hope they can offer us a decent meal.”

  “A little mutton broth,” Tiercel said. “I’m sorry, but Ahairan destroyed most of our supplies. We might have more once we get to Sapthiruk.”

  “Ah well,” Breulin said, offering up an effortful smile. “It’s better than no mutton broth, isn’t it?” He reached for the pile of garments and began to dress.

  Since Eugens was already dressed, Tiercel took him outside first. It wasn’t full light yet, but there was enough light for Saravasse to be plainly visible. She hadn’t bothered to approach the line of tents particularly closely in order to stick her nose in to the Armethaliehans’, of course, so she was standing about thirty feet from the end of the carpet now. Eugens stared at her in confused wonder until she huffed in annoyance and walked away. Daintily—all things considered—but the ground still shook.

  “I never thought I’d see an actual live dragon,” Eugens said. “I mean, I know they exist, but . . . they’re all in the Elven Lands.”

  “This one isn’t,” Tiercel said briefly. “You should pick out some boots.” He glanced around. There were a dozen pairs of desert boots neatly lined up on the carpet. All the other tents on the row had already been flattened and were being folded and packed, and in less than an hour, they’d be on their way. “Just find a pair of boots that look like they fit you,” Tiercel said. “Be sure to shake them out every time you go to put them on, just in case of jarrari. Oh, and you need to put your chadar on. Where is it?”