And they hadn’t been.
Tiercel frowned, thinking. So then it would have been the middle of—Fruits? Yes. At the latest. And Magistrate Vaunnel wasn’t a stupid woman. She would have sent a team of post-riders south immediately—they could make the journey over the Trade Road in less than a sennight—and dispatched a regiment of Militia to follow them. The post-riders in case there’d been a delay—or a disaster—and the Militia to deal with it. Had Chief Magistrate Vaunnel’s people come all the way south? If they had, even the post-riders would have arrived at Akazidas’Iteru sennights after its inhabitants had left. He hoped some of the Commissioners could tell them what state the city had been left in. It would explain what the Militia had found—if they’d gotten that far. Maybe Ahairan had just left an empty and deserted city for them to find.
Tiercel wanted to be hopeful. He wanted to think that the Commission’s disappearance meant that Chief Magistrate Vaunnel had already sent post-riders or even Wildmages to the Elven Lands to bring warning and ask for help. But he didn’t. If her troops had gotten as far as Akazidas’Iteru, he didn’t think Ahairan had let them leave again, but Harrier hadn’t mentioned seeing Militia uniforms among the Shamblers, and Tiercel knew he’d been looking for them. That didn’t really mean anything. Ahairan had a lot of different ways to kill people. And if the Militia and the post-riders had both simply vanished, Chief Magistrate Vaunnel didn’t have any more actual hard evidence of trouble here in the south than the Commission’d had. He decided to talk all this out with Harrier, but when he rode down the line looking for him, he found him flanked by Ciniran and Shaiara and obviously sound asleep.
Tiercel nodded to Shaiara, indicating he didn’t intend to wake him. While his speculations were nerve-wracking, they could wait. He thought Harrier could use all the sleep he could get before they stopped.
THE caravan halted when the sun was a handspan away from midheaven. Liapha was leading it today; left to her own choices, the Kadyastar Ummara would choose a longer midday halt but would travel farther into the night. The caravan had barely come to a stop when the Armethaliehans were making their shotors kneel and climbing down from their saddles. Tiercel only saw them when Magistrate Perizel, Lord Felocan, Mistress Pallocons, Kave, and Eugens all went hurrying past the head of the caravan after Harrier. He’d woken up when his shotor stopped and ridden out to check the area for Sandwalker burrows, and he’d been on the far side of the column from the Armethaliehans, so Tiercel’s sight of them was blocked until they moved out onto the open sand.
“I have to stop them,” Tiercel said, reaching for his goad.
“Huh. Why?” Thadnat asked in contempt. “Northerners can find Sandwalkers as well as Harrier can.”
“Because Eugens Northerner is blood-kin to Harrier, and the northern Blue-Robes do not leave their tents as ours do!” Ciniran said in exasperation. “I will go, Tiercel.”
She swung her shotor out of the line and clucked to it, flicking it on the shoulders with her doubled lead-rope. It began moving forward at the pacing walk that didn’t look very fast at all until you had some landmarks to measure the speed by. Very quickly she’d crossed in front of the line and then moved to confront Eugens and the other three Armethaliehans, moving her hands as if she was shooing a stubborn goat back into the herd. Tiercel was too far away to hear what she said, but whatever it was, it was enough to make them turn around and head back the way they’d come. Quickly.
“So they have the beginning of wisdom,” Thadnat said sneeringly.
“And would you show as much, in their land?” Kamar asked. “We have all heard Tiercel’s stories of its strangeness—a place where tents are made of stone, and ice falls from the sky, and the whole land is like Abi’Abadshar, green and wet.”
“How could anyone wish to live in such a place?” Thadnat said, still looking disgusted.
“Perhaps it is why they came here,” Shaiara said, in a tone that silenced further discussion.
Tiercel didn’t know whether to be relieved or uneasy when Harrier rode back and announced that this was a safe place to make camp. He was always glad to stop riding and to get out of the midday heat, but he didn’t think today’s rest break would be very restful.
He was right. In fact, they’d barely started getting the midday tents unpacked when the Armethaliehans found Harrier. He was discussing landmarks with Shaiara and Liapha: when they’d been heading directly toward Armethalieh, Harrier could guide them, but now that they were trying to find a place he’d never been to before, his peculiar Knight-Mage gift was useless. Shaiara was the best tracker in the entire caravan—Tiercel had heard it said by more than one person that a Nalzindar hunter could follow the shadow of a thought across the sand—and Liapha was one of the very oldest Isvaieni still with them. The Kadyastar were a Deep Desert tribe whose wealth had been in gauhars—which they’d mined at a place that Liapha would not divulge even now—and Liapha had gone to Sapthiruk more times from more different places in the Isvai than anyone else. Between their skills and memories, Harrier was hoping to locate Sapthiruk without having to spend too much time casting around for it, since the desert landmarks everyone knew were now useless.
As Tiercel saw the Armethaliehans approach—moving much too fast for the hammering heat, and in a tightly-packed group that made Tiercel think uncharitably of ducklings—he assumed that they’d wait for Harrier to finish his conversation with Shaiara and Liapha before asking all the questions he knew they must have.
They didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Magistrate Perizel said as soon as she reached them, “I need to speak to Master Gillain now.” She spoke with the quiet firmness of one used to being obeyed.
“You can mind your manners, girl, and hold your tongue until we are finished speaking with Harrier,” Liapha said, barely pausing in what she’d been saying to Shaiara. “Now, as I said, marking by where the sun goes down this time of year, and I don’t like to—”
“I am tired of being put off!” Magistrate Perizel snapped. She stepped even closer, and Kave put himself at her elbow just as Tiercel stepped to place himself between her and Liapha.
“Madame Magistrate—please,” Tiercel said. “I appreciate your concern. Harrier really wants to speak to you”—Harrier would probably rather have eaten broken glass, if they’d had any, but Tiercel was trying to stop a fight, not start one—“but right now he and Ummara Shaiara and Ummara Liapha are trying to determine the best method to use in order to find Sapthiruk Oasis. Because Ahairan destroyed everything in the Isvai, all the landmarks have shifted.”
“We’re lost?” Magistrate Perizel said, sounding confused and displeased.
“No,” Tiercel said. “He just doesn’t want to spend a lot of—ah, more time looking for it than he needs to.”
“I see,” she said, not sounding as if she did at all. “Now, this is really something I’d wanted to bring up to him, but—since you say you’re in authority—I don’t think we should stop at this, ah, Sapthiruk Oasis at all. In my opinion, it’s a much better use of our resources to head directly for Armethalieh.”
“Ah . . . that’s nice?” Tiercel said uncertainly.
Magistrate Perizel sighed, as if Tiercel was a very backward student who was missing the point. “Lord Tiercel, as the duly-appointed representative of the Magisterum, founded by High Magistrate Cilarnen for the governance by Law and Justice of the Nine Cities and all lands which look to them for rule and care, I am formally taking charge of this . . . whatever-it-is. If you and Harrier would like to assist me, I’ll be happy to take your advice under consideration, of course, but I really can’t promise that either of you will continue to have the same degree of autonomy and authority that—”
“What’s a Sandwalker?” Tiercel asked, interrupting her sharply. “How do you defend an encampment against Shamblers? What are atish’ban-jarrari, and what do you do if you encounter one? How do you find water here? How do you keep the livestock alive? What do you do if you’re attacked by Ba
lwarta? Or Goblins? If the Tabingana and the Kareggi are arguing, whose side do you take—and why? How do you make a shotor move when it doesn’t want to? How long can one go without water? Without food? What are the signs that a Sandwind is coming, and what do you do? Who is Ahairan? What does she want? How do you recognize her? How do you recognize her creatures? How do you stop her? Oh. And: where are we—exactly?”
“Yes, yes, Lord Tiercel, you’ve demonstrated that you and young Master Gillain are necessary and useful,” Lord Felocan drawled. “We really didn’t have any intention of leaving you behind, you know.”
“ ‘Leaving us behind?’ ” Tiercel said blankly.
“You may think you have some reason to linger here in this Light-forsaken sandpit. I assure you I don’t, and the Chief Magistrate . . .” for just a moment Lord Felocan’s gaze unfocused “. . .will be eager to receive our report. As Helafin says, there’s no reason to stop at Sapthiruk at all.”
“That’s settled,” Harrier said, walking out of a completely different conversation and into this one. He glanced at Tiercel. “What?”
“Magistrate Perizel is taking over as supreme authority in the Isvai,” Tiercel said, not sure whether he was trying to keep from laughing or yelling at somebody. “She’s willing to let us help.”
“Oh,” Harrier said, and he didn’t even sound angry. He just sounded as if he couldn’t imagine what he was supposed to say. Finally he glanced at Magistrate Perizel. “You’re planning to take over leading the Isvaieni north?”
“I am the appropriate authority to take charge here,” she pointed out.
“That’s right, Har,” Tiercel said seriously, nodding. “She is. The Consuls hold—held—warrants from the Magisterium, making them subsidiary to the Magistrates.”
“Okay, yeah. But the Ummarai don’t answer to the Consuls. Although they’d probably agree that Chief Magistrate Vaunnel was the High Ummara of the Nine Cities, just like Vairindiel Elvenqueen is High Ummara of the Elves,” Harrier said meditatively.
“Oh, for the Light’s sake, Har—this isn’t a debate!” Eugens said. “Magistrate Perizel is a Magistrate!”
“Nobody’s said she isn’t a Magistrate, Gens,” Harrier said reasonably. “She’s just going to have as much luck leading the Isvaieni anywhere as that goat over there will have calculating tonnage capacity for a Deep Ocean Trader. Look, a couple of the tents are almost up. Everybody grab a saddle, we’ll go sit in the shade, you can yell, and I can find out what happened to you.”
THE first tent up—as always—was Fannas’s. It was also one of the largest. When they came inside, Harrier said that they didn’t need all of it, just a corner of it. Tiercel could tell that Fannas was grateful—and rightly so, since (as Tiercel had learned by now) Harrier could have claimed “Wildmage business” and thrown Fannas and his family out, and nobody would have said a word. Harrier and Tiercel had carried their own saddle-seats, and so had Eugens and Kave. Kave gave his to Magistrate Perizel, and Eugens surrendered his to Leiled Oriadan, and both of them sat on the carpet. When the others saw that their choice was between sitting on the carpet or going back out to get saddles to sit on, there was a few moments of grumbling before Mistress Pallocons and Goodsir Oriadan went out into the sun again, returning with saddles that Lord Felocan and Master Froilax promptly claimed.
After Harrier had passed three waterskins around and they’d been drained dry, he said, “I know you’re all scared. Coming in here and trying to make this place into Armethalieh and these people into Armethaliehans isn’t going to make things better. I’m sorry. There’s a Demon out there. If she can’t be stopped very soon, it’s going to be worse than the Time of Kellen all over again. No one knows she’s here but us. There’s nobody we can tell. There’s no way to get a message out. We can’t kill her. Akazidas’Iteru is three moonturns travel from here. From what you say—and what I saw yesterday—it’s fallen to Ahairan and everyone in it is dead.”
Mistress Pallocons began to weep noisily, covering her face with her hands. Kave put an arm around her. His face looked stricken. Goodlady Oriadan reached out her hand—blindly—to her husband. He gripped it with both of his.
“I know you think Tyr and I are too young to be here and doing this,” Harrier continued quietly. “So do we. We’ve been saying that since the beginning. But you can’t do any of this for us, or instead of us, or better than we are. If you try without having all the facts, you’ll just get yourselves—and maybe a lot of other people—killed.”
Harrier looked calm, and he sounded calm, and Tiercel knew how much of it was fake. This was just another one of the schoolyard games Tiercel had played all his life, and they hadn’t been lighthearted then, when he’d been trying to keep from getting beaten up or keep Harrier from starting another fight, and they were a thousand times grimmer now. He studied the faces of the eight people in front of him. All adults—except, maybe, for Mistress Pallocons, who looked as if she might be nearly their own age—but if none of this had happened, he would have spent six years at University then walked out into their world.
Kave looked shaken and grim. Tiercel already liked him a lot, but he couldn’t trust him to go against Magistrate Perizel’s orders or the Magisterium’s interests. Kave had taken the same Oath of Service that she had, that Magistrate Vaunnel had, that Tiercel’s father had, that Tiercel would have been expected to in order to become a Clerk Ordinary for the Magisterium.
Magistrate Perizel looked shocked and angry. No matter what Harrier said right now, or what she came to believe, or what had happened to her in Akazidas’Iteru and afterward, Tiercel didn’t think today would end this fight. She had a duty to the Chief Magistrate, to the Magisterium, and to the Nine Cities, and she wouldn’t set it aside just on someone’s word. On anyone’s word. Who’d want somebody in the Magisterium who would?
Master Froilax looked like someone who was trying to be angry so he wouldn’t have to think about how scared he was. The Oriadans just looked terrified. The Merchant Class had been the backbone of Armethalieh all the way back to the Time of Mages: getting things done, keeping things going, baking the bread, tending the shops, making the clothes, and producing a large portion of the men and women who’d done none of those things, but had written and played the music, painted the pictures, sculpted the statues, and taught Armethalieh’s next generations how to do those things and more. And without the Guild-leaders, none of that would have happened at all. Harrier’s father said that an army might run on its stomach and a ship on the wind, but a city ran on meetings and bureaucracies. Especially one as large as Armethalieh. Tiercel thought the Oriadans would do what Master Froilax said, and Master Froilax would do what Magistrate Perizel said.
Eugens was the one—out of all the Commissioners Magistrate Vaunnel had sent—that Tiercel knew best. That made him hardest to figure out. Lord Rolfort had said once that all the Gillain men were kindhearted and simple and stubborn, and that Tiercel should never think that “simple” was the same thing as “stupid.” Eugens had seemed the most shaken by his ordeal . . . but he’d also awakened first. Now his emotions seemed to be a mixture of anger at the appalling way—so he saw it—that Harrier was behaving, relief at finding him alive, disbelief at finding him so changed . . . and panic at the thought of having to think about Akazidas’Iteru again.
Lord Felocan was another matter. Lord Felocan was trouble, and since Tiercel knew that Harrier thought they were all trouble, he wasn’t sure Harrier would see it. But the Nobles had been in Armethalieh since before there’d been Magistrates at all, and even though a thousand years had passed since the days of Cilarnen First Magistrate, you could still hear some of the Noble families complain that there was no reason for them to obey the Magistrates when by rights they should, at the very least, be equal to them. Tiercel thought that Lord Felocan had come south for his own reasons, not—even though he’d been a member of the Commission—to serve the Magisterium, or not entirely. He thought that of all of them, Lord Felocan had been the
least frightened by the disaster. And that if Magistrate Perizel didn’t intend to make things happen here the way Lord Felocan wanted them to, he’d do it himself.
“Then perhaps you won’t waste any more time, Master Gillain, and give me the facts,” Magister Perizel said calmly. “After what . . .” She stopped and took a deep breath. “You say that one of the Endarkened has returned. After what all of us have seen, I’m not going to deny it. I believe you.”
“I wish it were one of the Endarkened,” Harrier said. “We’d know what it would take to kill her if it was. Ahairan is an Elemental Spirit of Darkness. Her offspring will be creatures much closer to the Endarkened from the Time of Mages. Look. She usually attacks us a couple of times a day, and she hasn’t hit us yet today, so what I need right now is everything you can tell me about what happened at Akazidas’Iteru, and how you got here. If you saw something we haven’t seen yet, we need that information.”
There was a moment of silence. No one spoke.
“Please, Gens,” Harrier said.
“There were more of us at first,” Kave said in a low trembling voice.
“Kave, no,” Magistrate Perizel said, quickly, leaning forward and reaching down to place a hand on his shoulder. He reached up to cover it with his own. His other arm was still around Mistress Pallocons’s shoulders.
“No, Madame—Helafin. They . . . Harrier says they need to know. I need to know . . . If I can tell someone.”
Magistrate Perizel nodded, sitting back and biting her lower lip.
“We were making ready to leave in three days,” Kave said. “Our messengers would be departing in the morning, once the city gates opened. The sky was still light—it was, I should judge, about three chimes before First Night Bells—an hour past what they call, here in the south, the First Hour of Night. I was making sure all the documents were properly packed and sealed for our return journey, and sealing the preliminary report. I’d just finished transcribing it . . .” He stopped, and stared off into space for a moment. No one spoke. “Abail Travise—my assistant—came to my office, and said that Madame Magistrate wanted me. She brought me to the roof of the Consul’s Palace. You can overlook the whole city. You could . . .” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice was quicker, more determined, as if he meant to tell the tale and tell all of it. “Consul Tacanin and some of his advisors were there with her. I could see that the walls were filled with City Watch. The desert beyond was covered with people. Thousands of them, just standing there, silently. The Consul said that the Captain of the Watch said they’d simply appeared.
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