“I hope I don’t,” Harrier said in a low voice.
“But you would? You’d do that? You’d go?” Tiercel demanded.
“Don’t ask me that!” Harrier begged. “Do you . . . oh Light, do you have any idea at all how many unpaid MagePrices I’m carrying right now? Every Finding Spell, every minor Healing, every Sleep spell I’ve cast—they all carry Prices, you know, and I haven’t paid a fraction of them. I can feel all of the ones I haven’t, waiting for me.”
“Well . . . pay them,” Tiercel said blankly.
Harrier shook his head. “That’s not how it works. The magic chooses what I pay and when. I don’t. And I might even argue with the Wild Magic, but I’m going to listen to it. In the end. Not to Magistrate Vaunnel. Not to Vairindiel Elvenqueen. And now we both have the answer to why Wildmages don’t tell anybody who they are and work in secret. So they never have to tell anybody what I’ve just told you.”
Tiercel didn’t know if what Harrier was telling him about Wildmages was actually true or not. It didn’t contradict anything Tiercel knew about Wildmages, but Harrier was the first Wildmage Tiercel had spent any time around, at least that he knew of. Roneida didn’t count and Bisochim wasn’t exactly a regular Wildmage—not because of Saravasse, but because spending so long trying to Summon Ahairan had left him damaged in a way that nothing except—perhaps—time itself could heal. What Harrier was saying sounded almost like lunacy, but in a way, it was a relief for Tiercel to have his suspicions confirmed. If that was what you believed, then that was how you’d behave.
Tiercel remembered that even when Harrier had been absolutely convinced Tiercel was crazy, he’d stuck by him. Sennight after sennight with no more proof than Tiercel’s word that he was having actual visions, and the visions were of something real, and had gone off with him to Sentarshadeen—and beyond. He could do at least as much for Harrier now. Maybe Harrier was crazy, and maybe Harrier was wrong—but the grim fact was, Tiercel didn’t have any better plans to put forward.
“I guess being a Wildmage must be kind of awkward,” Tiercel said.
“You have no idea,” Harrier said feelingly. “I wish if I’d had to have magic, I’d been born a High Mage.”
“No you don’t,” Tiercel said. “Think of all those books.”
“I can read,” Harrier said aggrievedly.
“Oh sure,” Tiercel said, pretending to be unconvinced. “But some of those spells take almost a full chime to recite, and then you have to draw all the glyph-trines just so, and you have to memorize all two thousand, seven hundred, and four different combinations of the fifty-two glyphs—and that’s just for the simple spells.”
Harrier snorted. “Don’t forget bringing a stove with you everywhere. Oh, and an apothecary’s shop. And a library,” he said. “And you wondered why the High Mages stopped being High Mages.”
Neither one of them mentioned Ancaladar.
A few minutes after that Tengi, a Night Guard over the livestock, came to ask Harrier if he could come to take a look at something back in the meadow. He’d just seen a plant, Tengi said, that he had not seen grow there before and he feared to let the animals near it until a Wildmage said it was not poison. Harrier nodded, and told Tiercel to go on ahead.
Tiercel waved in salute, but as soon as Harrier had gone off with Tengi, he ducked down along a line of tents and went off in another direction entirely. There was really only one place he could take his uneasy thoughts to try to get them untangled. Fortunately, he didn’t have far to search. In the early evening, before the herd had settled to sleep, Saravasse could almost always be found out on the desert just beyond the shotor grounds. Whether she was guarding against the animals taking fright and bolting or sizing up a future meal was anyone’s guess. He walked up to her and leaned against her scaled side.
Moonturns ago—when he and she and Bisochim had been marooned probably no more than a few hundred miles from where they all were right now, he’d hated being near her because everything about her reminded him of Ancaladar. It still did, but he’d become fond of Saravasse as well. Not in the same way—that could never happen—but as a friend. Someone he’d come to trust.
“I grant you that there isn’t much in our days to be merry about,” Saravasse said, “but you seem even less joyful than usual this evening, Tiercel.”
“Does it show?” he asked mournfully.
“My dear child, every thought your grandparents ever had is plain to read on your face. I’d say the same about Harrier, but he doesn’t have that many,” she added, and Tiercel snorted with laughter.
“Oh, stop. I think he’s been having too many lately,” Tiercel protested.
“Huh,” Saravasse said in disbelief. “What is it now?”
“Do you—I mean—I, well, it didn’t matter as much before, but tonight he talked to Magistrate Perizel, and . . . Saravasse, do you think he’s crazy?” The horrible question—the question at the heart of Tiercel’s fears—came out in a rush.
“Dear Tiercel, I think all of you born-mortal creatures are entirely mad,” Saravasse said, after a startled pause. “I don’t think that Harrier is madder than any other. Louder, perhaps.”
“Oh, don’t joke,” Tiercel begged. “Not about this.”
“I wasn’t,” Saravasse said, sounding surprised. “He yells a great deal, you know. But tell me why you think he’s mad.”
Tiercel leaned his head back against her side. Her scales were slick and warm. When he leaned his head back, he could look up at the sky and see the thick bright band of Pelashia’s Veil. In the east, the moon was just rising, a smeary haze of gold upon the horizon. Even through the haze of Coldfire, the stars overhead were so bright and large they looked as if he could almost reach up and pluck them down. “He said that Magistrate Perizel doesn’t have any authority here. And that he wouldn’t let her attend the council meetings and pretend she did have. He told her that. And then he told me that the reason the Wildmages work in secret is because they don’t acknowledge any authority except the Wild Magic, and that he’d do whatever it told him to.”
“And which part of that strikes you as evidence of insanity?” Saravasse asked gently.
“It’s Harrier!” Tiercel said helplessly.
“My dear one, your Harrier is a Wildmage. And from all you’ve told me, he has not been one for so very long, yes?”
“Um . . . I’m not sure exactly. A year?”
“I have some experience of Wildmages, though not with Wildmages in the beginning of their time. When I met my Bonded, he had already been a Blue Robe for more than half his life. But this much is true: a Wildmage answers to no one and to nothing save to the Wild Magic. Indeed, centuries ago they were hunted to the point of extinction for that very thing.”
“That can’t be true,” Tiercel protested.
“Can it not? Somehow I believe it is. In the Time of Mages, to be a Wildmage and discovered by the Mages of Armethalieh was a sentence of death. The High Mages hunted them to the borders of the Elven Lands themselves, with every spell they had once used to hunt the Endarkened, year upon year, century upon century, because they feared a magic—and a Mage—that would bow to no law outside itself.”
“But then how did Saint—I mean Idalia—and Kellen—”
“You aren’t interested in ancient history tonight. Not really,” Saravasse said. “You want to know if your friend is mad. This I cannot say. Tactless, perhaps. But telling the truth about Wildmages, certainly.”
“How can he take orders from some books?” Tiercel demanded in frustration.
“Do you not do much the same when you guide your life by The Book of the Light?” Saravasse asked softly.
Tiercel groaned inarticulately and fixed his eyes on the night sky. Yeah, but at least I read books before all this started. After a while he said: “Where do Endarkened come from?”
“Shadow Mountain,” Saravasse said promptly. “Isn’t this rather a sweeping change of subject?”
“Um . . . no. You’re
right, I guess. Either Harrier isn’t any crazier than the rest of us, or if he is, it isn’t in a way I’ll be able to see—and he put up with me when he thought I was crazy, so . . . Anyway, Lord Felocan wants to make a truce with Ahairan, though, and—”
“Now there’s a madman,” Saravasse said dryly, and Tiercel snickered despite himself.
“And that’s stupid, so Harrier has to go convince him—or—or something—that any kind of bargain that leaves Ahairan here to make more Demons is a bad idea, but I’m still wondering how she’s planning to do it.”
“Oh, there’s a question,” Saravasse said. “And even if Ahairan isn’t actually Endarkened, I can’t even help you by telling you what the Elves know about how the Endarkened made more Endarkened—if they ever did—because they don’t know. No one ever knew much about the Endarkened. Even about their creation, all there were, were legends. The legends say that the first Endarkened were made by He-Who-Is out of Elves, since Darkness cannot create, only Taint.”
“And the Great Sacrifice of the Blessed Saint Idalia . . .” Tiercel stopped. The next lines of the Litany went: . . . destroyed the power of the Endarkened forever, cast down the Queen of the Demons, slew the Queen of the Endarkened and Anigrel the Black, the great Deceiver, and barred Darkness from the world forever. And it hadn’t.
“You’d have to ask somebody else about that. I hadn’t been hatched yet,” Saravasse said. “And if Ancaladar hadn’t been able to find Cortiana and Mebadaene—and find Bondmates for them—I never would have been. Once, the three of them were the last of the dragons. Now they are the oldest. Or is that “were”? I don’t know.”
“Everyone says Ancaladar isn’t dead,” Tiercel said bitterly.
“I don’t know whether he is or not,” Saravasse answered simply. “But Cortiana’s and Mebadaene’s Bondmates were not young even when I left the Elven Lands. Soon their time will end, if it hasn’t already, and then Cortiana and Mebadaene will die.”
“According to the walls at Abi’Abadshar, the Bond was never supposed to be that way. It wasn’t that way in Great Queen Vieliessar Farcarinon’s time. A Dragonbond was passed on, from Bonded to Bonded, just as Ancaladar’s was passed from Jermayan to me,” Tiercel said miserably.
The body beneath his back heaved as Saravasse huffed a heavy breath: surprise, irritation, Tiercel wasn’t quite sure. He knew that she was still just as flummoxed about his account of the transference of the Dragonbond now as she’d been the first time he’d told it to her—and she’d never stopped being angry with Bisochim, no matter how much she loved him, for all the things that he’d done just to keep her from dying in the few short decades of his life.
“Tiercel, Dragons who Bond have died since before the race of Men walked beneath the light of the sun. It is the bargain Tannetarie the White made for our race, and it’s simply the way things are. It’s why nearly all our race died in the Great War: we Bonded, we fought, and we died. Attempts to change that bring . . . well, as you’ve seen. I only pray that this is the worst that will come of my Bonded’s love for me.” It wasn’t, Saravasse’d told him in an unguarded moment once, that she’d precisely made her peace with mortality—but she would have been a lot more reconciled to it if the two of them had been able to spend Bisochim’s lifespan together in happiness, instead of Saravasse being forced to watch him do what he had done.
“Saravasse?” She sounded more troubled than Tiercel had ever heard her. He reached out to press a hand against her side.
“For now, Ahairan kills us by ones and twos and sometimes by dozens,” Saravasse said slowly. “Her goal is to repopulate the world with a new race of Demons using a Tainted Mage, something I sincerely hope I am not around to witness, whatever method she’s contemplating using. But the crux of the matter is the three of you. I would like to think that Bisochim would allow me to die, or that you and Harrier would each allow the other to die, or that Harrier would allow his brother to die, or that you would both allow those of the Isvaieni whom you have come to hold dear to die. And perhaps you would have. Once. But there are so many hostages here, Tiercel—thousands of them. Just how long can you and Harrier and even my Beloved watch everyone around you die before you will do anything to stop it?”
Tiercel was trying to come up with a good answer to that—or any answer—when he heard the signal whistles of the sentries begin to shrill.
TENGI’S plant was covered with a dense prickly fur—like millions of fine hairs—and Harrier couldn’t see any leaves at all. The vines were a sort of grayish-brownish color, like most of the desert vegetation, except for the tiny tendrils that curled away from the main vine. Those were actually green, and each one had two or three tiny yellow flowers sprouting from it. At least it was easy to find: it was the patch of tangled vine-stuff surrounded by a bunch of Isvaieni who were shooing away a bunch of very interested goats. What worried Harrier was that none of the Isvaieni recognized it, because they were the ones who’d grown up here. “You sure you’ve never seen this thing before?” Harrier asked, straightening up from his inspection.
“Never, Harrier! On my life!” Tengi said. The other eight men and women of the Night Herd Guard all agreed with Tengi. So either all of them were from the Madiran and not the Deep Desert—and Harrier knew perfectly well that Tengi was Fadaryama and the Fadaryama were a Deep Desert herding tribe—or this really was something new and different. He brushed his fingers over the plant. All he discovered for his pains was that the things that looked like fine hairs were actually hair-fine thorns. He got no sense of Taint from it, but he might not, even if Ahairan had created it in her own kitchen. Assuming Ahairan had a kitchen. The only thing he could do now was see if Tengi’s plant killed him—he trusted the Wild Magic to tell him if the plant was poisonous, but to get a decision from the Wild Magic, he’d have to taste it, or at least get close to tasting it.
Since it was new growth, the vine was about as soft and pliant as the desert stuff got. He pulled his geschak and cut off a section, collecting several more stinging thorn pricks in the process. He’d wonder who’d want to eat this stuff, except for the fact that he’d seen the goats and shotors chow down on actual thornbush that had thorns as long as his thumb knuckle.
The end of the vine leaked a clear sticky sap. Harrier sniffed it. It smelled sort of like a cross between nothing and sort of bad, but when he lifted it warily toward his mouth, he didn’t feel that sense of warning he’d had in Abi’Abadshar when Marap had offered him the cherry-like berries. And okay, that still didn’t mean he wanted a mouth full of thorns. He let the sap drip onto his tongue. It tasted a little like . . . yes. That was what the smell reminded him of—the waterproofing compound the fishing fleet used on its sails. And when they were boiling up a batch up the beach and the wind shifted, you could smell it all the way down to the Portmaster’s Office. Tyr refused to come down to the docks at all on days like that. Harrier’s tongue tingled a bit and he could taste it all the way in the back of his throat—a flavor like charcoal and varnish—but he didn’t feel poisoned. For good measure he ate a couple of the yellow flowers. They tasted like . . . flowers.
That should have been the end of it, because the vine wasn’t poisonous, and it wasn’t Tainted, but then Harrier found himself trapped in a debate with Tengi, Runas, Kiraban, Ophiru, Macaba, Zirah, Basi, Suza, and Azirah over where such a previously-unknown plant could possibly have come from. Since Harrier had no idea—and couldn’t even offer a reasonable theory—he was pretty much reduced to playing referee while the nine Isvaieni argued with each other and the goats ate the vines down to nubs. Exasperating as that was, it was still more fun than what Harrier knew he ought to be doing—going and talking to Lord Felocan and trying to make it clear that Lord Felocan knew that trying to make any kind of bargain with Ahairan was the worst idea in the history of really bad ideas—but he was finally about to suggest that he should find Bisochim (because if Bisochim had even less interest in this argument than Harrier did, at least he could make every
thing sprout up again nice and lush a few more times) when he heard the warning whistles.
It had been Ciniran’s suggestion to carve whistles that everyone could hear, and there’d been plenty of boiled bones to use as raw material. While everyone didn’t have one yet, all the sentry-riders did and the sound carried for miles at night. At the first long warning blast, Harrier was already running toward the sound, even before he heard the four quick blasts that signified “south.”
ADUNI and Jekin were at the south at the moment. The sentries rode in pairs about three hundred trayas apart—a hundred yards was far enough apart so that something that attacked one sentry probably wouldn’t get the other, but close enough so that they could keep watch over each other as well. As he ran, Harrier pulled globes of Coldfire from the places he knew could spare them, sending them out across the desert, and in their light the enemy was clearly visible. Harrier wasn’t the first one at the southern edge of the camp—the Isvaieni from those tents were already standing at the edge of the camp with their weapons ready. Harrier grabbed the first two he reached. “Find Bisochim and bring him here,” he said with quiet urgency. They were out of arrows and they had only a handful of spears. Against this enemy, awardans wouldn’t be enough.
By the light of the Coldfire, Harrier could see thirty-one Black Dogs loping toward the encampment with easy confidence, and this time they had no ikulas hounds to fight for them. At the moment he saw them, Harrier’s Mage-Sight showed him how the pack was going to fragment, each Dog following a different path toward the heart of the encampment, attempting to do as much destruction there as it could. The Black Dogs were massively-muscled and impervious to every spell of Command that Bisochim had ever tried. They could be burned to ash by a Wildmage spell or frozen in a block of ice, but that was about it. Throat and belly were vulnerable to a blade—and eyes, if you had a blade small enough, and were fast enough—but you could cut them half to pieces and they’d still keep coming . . .
The Phoenix Transformed Page 48
