The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  Harrier scanned the sand for the other downed rider—because one shotor had been running free—and didn’t see them. Then he saw that the last of the five shotors was still much too close to the Sandwalker. And he saw why.

  It was carrying double.

  “No,” he said under his breath. Waste and stupidity and idiocy and it was going to kill them and there was nothing he could do about it. He was doing everything he could to force his shotor forward as fast as possible when every instinct in its tiny brain said “flee” and he was still too far away to help.

  All he could do was watch.

  The Sandwalker turned away from the remains of its feast—he could see the blood on the sand—and scuttled toward the last fleeing shotor, its barbed tail curled high over its back. The shotor knew it was being chased, but it was exhausted. It had probably been carrying double from the beginning. It wasn’t fast enough. Harrier saw it sprawl sideways, falling, as the Sandwalker grabbed it by a hind leg. There was another fountain of sand. When the sand fell to the ground again, the Sandwalker, the shotor, and the shotor’s two riders were simply . . . gone.

  His heart was hammering and the wind was rushing past his face. Harrier didn’t know if there was a spell to make a shotor run flat out into danger, but if there was, he must have figured out how to cast it, because it ran onward as fast as he could possibly hope. When he reached the body lying on the sand—Mistress Pallocons—the compulsion to Find left him so abruptly that he nearly fell from the saddle before he could get his shotor to kneel. If he’d only been faster—if the Armethaliehans had only been smarter—if they hadn’t run at all . . .

  “He left me!” Mistress Pallocons said, struggling to her knees and gasping for breath. “He left me to die!”

  “You aren’t dead,” Harrier snapped. “Stay here.” He turned and ran on toward the body lying in the center of the patch of blood-soaked sand.

  “Don’t leave me! Don’t you dare leave me!” Mistress Pallocons shrieked after him.

  The man who lay there was Master Froilax. Harrier knelt beside him. Ciniran and the others were just riding up; they passed Mistress Pallocons to join him. Harrier saw that Ciniran had dropped the lead-rope on the remounts—no sense in bringing the other shotors with them if they’d just be bait to draw the Sandwalker’s attention. Harrier held up his hand. Ciniran tossed him a waterskin.

  “Follow Lord Felocan,” he said. “He can’t keep his shotor running for long.”

  “He will leave tracks a blind dog could follow,” Ciniran answered. “Is—?”

  “The Sandwalker’s gone. I suppose it wasn’t very hungry.” Harrier lifted Master Froilax’s head onto his knee. “Here. I brought water.”

  He’d seen Bisochim successfully Heal men who’d had both legs severed only a few inches below the hips. Even now he would have been willing to try to Heal Master Froilax. He thought the others would probably agree to share spell-price and spell-cost—if he asked, for him and for no other reason—but it would simply be too dangerous for all of them to be left drained and weak. But there was no point in even trying. The Sandwalker’s claws had done worse than simply shear Master Froilax’s legs from his body. He dribbled as much as water he dared into the man’s open mouth, but it only made him cough.

  “Didn’t . . . tell us,” Master Froilax gasped.

  “I was going to,” Harrier said quietly “You were gone when I got there.”

  “Doesn’t . . . hurt . . . at all,” Master Froilax panted, laboring for air. His legs were crushed into a red ruin, and one of the Sandwalker’s claws had sheared open his belly. He didn’t seem to have noticed. “Must not be . . . Arhos . . . Leiled . . . are they . . .”

  “Fine,” Harrier said steadily. “They’re both fine.”

  Master Froilax coughed wetly and dragged in a deep lungful of air. “Tell Handene,” he said full-voiced, and died.

  Harrier laid Master Froilax’s head down on the sand again and got to his feet. “I need to—” he said.

  “We shall make sure there is nothing here for Ahairan to use, Harrier,” Thadnat said. He looked at Harrier curiously. “Those names he spoke . . .?”

  “I think Handene’s his wife. Arhos and Leiled Oriadan . . . they were the ones the Sandwalker took down into its burrow. I should go see if—”

  “Harrier, they are dead!” Ciniran said fiercely. “A sandspill will kill even without atish’ban creatures to aid it! We must go—now—to trace the last of these sun-touched city-dwellers and bring him back before we must instead make his body another offering to Ahairan.”

  Harrier winced, hearing the phrase, but he knew most of the Isvaieni used it. Grim as it was, it was better to talk about making “an offering to Ahairan” than to say flat out that when your husband or your sister or your child died, the most important duty you could perform was to cut his or her body into the smallest pieces possible so that it didn’t come back as a Shambler to kill you and everyone you knew. He turned to walk back to where he’d left Mistress Pallocons and his shotor, but when he saw his shotor getting to its knees with her in the saddle he ran instead. Mistress Pallocons was beating at the shotor’s shoulders with the waterskin he’d left her, and it was on its feet and moving before he could reach it. She turned it away from him, goading it to a trot, but he ran to intercept it and lunged up to grab its bridle. Once he did that, it stopped in confusion, giving him the chance to reach out and twist his hand into a handful of Mistress Pallocons’s robes and yank her out of the saddle. He knew that she hit the ground with a thump, but he really didn’t care at the moment: his shotor was skittish at its mistreatment and their remounts were gone and he was going to have to ride double on their search for Lord Felocan and all the way back to camp and there were a lot of things he wasn’t happy about right now.

  He’d barely gotten his shotor to kneel again when Mistress Pallocons leaped onto his back, clawing at his eyes and screaming phrases that Da would have whaled him for knowing. A moment later he felt her torn free.

  “Thanks,” he said to Ciniran.

  It took both Ciniran and Larasan to hold Mistress Pallocons as she snarled and struggled. Harrier bent over and picked up the waterskin from the sand. Empty. He tucked it into his sash. “What did you think you were doing?” he demanded.

  “You were going to leave me! I know you were!” Mistress Pallocons said defiantly. Liapha—or someone—had actually managed to comb her hair out. It was a color somewhere between gold and copper. He was sure whoever’d managed that had told her to braid it, too, but she hadn’t. It tumbled free and shining all the way to her waist, obviously freshly washed. Harrier actually found himself wondering when and how she’d managed that.

  “I chased you all the way across the desert. I wasn’t going to leave you after I’d done that.” He caught Ciniran’s eye and shrugged. Ciniran let go of one of Mistress Pallcons’s arms, and Mistress Pallocons yanked her arm free of Larasan’s grip with a little huff of exasperation.

  “You’re angry with me,” she said, in a small plaintive voice. “I know you are.”

  If Harrier was angry with anyone, it was with Lord Felocan, who’d almost certainly been the one responsible for dragging all of them out here and getting three of them killed. “Go find your chadar—your headscarf—and bring it back here,” he said briefly. “Then we’ll go.”

  “Give me yours,” she wheedled, coiling a lock of her hair around her finger and gazing up at him through her lashes.

  “No,” Harrier said simply. “Go on. It’s over there.” He pointed.

  “I’m afraid. Go with me?” she begged, her eyes wide and terrified.

  “No,” he said again. “Go and get it. And if you take too long, I won’t leave without you—but I’ll make you walk.”

  Her pretended fear vanished like the flame of a torch thrust into water. She glared at him furiously. Somehow she’d managed to get a geschak, and now her hand twitched toward it. Ciniran slapped her hand away—hard—and plucked the little knife f
rom her sash.

  “I shall get the chadar, Harrier,” Ciniran said, walking off.

  “That’s my knife,” Mistress Pallocons said sullenly. “She’s stealing it.”

  “It isn’t yours. You stole it first,” Harrier said, feeling wearily as if he was talking to a very small child. He was pretty sure that whatever position Mistress Pallocons occupied in Lord Felocan’s household, it wasn’t as either his private secretary or chief steward. All things considered, he was just as glad that she wasn’t going to be sitting behind him carrying a knife.

  When Ciniran returned with the chadar, Mistress Pallocons didn’t want to put it on. Normally Harrier wouldn’t have wasted time or energy in arguing with her, but the last thing they needed just now was to have her sun-touched. It had taken him and the Isvaieni two hours to find the missing Armethaliehans and it would take them twice that long to get back to the camp once they’d caught up with Lord Felocan. If they even found him alive.

  “If.” If only I’d gone back to their tent as soon as the Black Dog attack was over. Maybe I wouldn’t have been in time to keep them from leaving, but I would only have been an hour or so behind them, not three or four or five. I could have caught up to them long before they reached the dunes and the Sandwalker. The others would still be alive.

  Mistress Pallocons didn’t want to ride behind him either, but at that point Harrier was finished arguing. He simply swung into the saddle and prepared to give his shotor the command to rise. Vianse Pallocons scrambled up behind him without further complaint.

  HARRIER and Ciniran rode side by side at the head of their tiny party. Now that the Finding Spell had run its course, Ciniran was the one who had to follow Lord Felocan’s trail, while Harrier kept watch for Sandwalkers. He wasn’t reassured by Tiercel’s theory—because it was only a theory—that each of the creatures had a large hunting area so they weren’t likely to run into a second one. It might not be true. And there were plenty of other things out here that could come after them.

  If they hadn’t been in the erg, they would have been able to see Lord Felocan even if he was miles away, but the dunes blocked the sight-lines. They couldn’t split up and have one person ride up to the top of one of the dunes to look for him because that would be too dangerous. And they couldn’t all ride up to the top of one of the dunes together and look for fear that the amount of sand they shifted would bury the trail to the point where Ciniran couldn’t find it again.

  It had been just before dawn when he’d set out—about halfway through the Tenth Hour of Night—and a little more than four hours later—what they called in the south the Third Hour of Day—when he and the Isvaieni had first reached the people they were following. None of them wished to push the shotors in the steadily-increasing heat, and Harrier needed them to go slowly so he could search the sand ahead and on all sides for danger. For all these reasons it was nearly another hour and a half before they finally caught sight of Lord Felocan.

  “What is he doing?” Thadnat asked in bewilderment, bringing his shotor to a stop.

  “He does not seem to be doing anything,” Hingi answered reasonably.

  It was true. They’d followed his trail around the bottom of the last dune and found themselves at the edge of a broad flat area bordered on all sides by sloping dune hills. The ripple-pattern the wind left on the sand ahead was almost identical to the pattern the ocean waves left on the fine sand of the shallows; it was broken only by the faint indentations of a shotor’s plodding tracks crossing the flat expanse of sand in a straight line. At the end of the line of tracks the shotor itself stood, its back to them, head down, apparently exhausted. Lord Felocan sat slumped in its saddle.

  “Lord Felocan!” Harrier shouted. “We’ve come to bring you back to the camp! We’ve brought water!”

  There was no reaction to his hail from either man or shotor.

  “Sun-touched,” Ciniran said after a moment. “I will lead his poor beast back here, Harrier. Then we may go.”

  Before Harrier could argue the point Ciniran had goaded her shotor across the sand. It was probably just as fast for her to do it as for Harrier to convince Mistress Pallocons to dismount while he went and did it. He didn’t want to ride out to Lord Felocan with her riding pillion because he’d started to form the theory that she’d been acting so strangely because she hated Lord Felocan and had been forced to come with him, and had been hoping that Lord Felocan would die before he could be rescued. Harrier decided that when they got back he’d have to ask either Shaiara or Ciniran to tell Mistress Pallocons that she didn’t have to stay with Lord Felocan if she didn’t want to.

  Then Ciniran reached the other shotor. Harrier saw her reach for its bridle-rope—

  And Lord Felocan jerked upright in his saddle, reaching for her as quickly as an adder struck and grabbing her by the throat. He pulled her across her saddle and her shotor bolted from beneath her. She scrabbled helplessly at the wrists that held her, and for one sickening moment Ciniran hung suspended by the hands around her throat until Lord Felocan’s shotor slumped to its knees and fell to its side, dead. Lord Felocan and Ciniran tumbled to the ground.

  Harrier had started forward the instant Lord Felocan began to move. Mistress Pallocons shrieked—either in surprise or anger—but her cries were drowned out by the shouts of the other Isvaieni.

  Thadnat and Larasan both passed him as he galloped forward. Neither bothered to wait for their shotors to kneel when they reached the bodies tangled on the sand. Harrier saw the flash of Thadnat’s awardan as he cut at Lord Felocan—no, at Lord Felocan’s body, because no matter what Thadnat did, the grip of its hands on Ciniran’s throat did not relax, and the body did not bleed. Only when Thadnat had chopped through its arms was Larasan able to pull Ciniran away, and by that time, Hingi had joined them, helping her pull the severed limbs loose. Harrier took the time to force his shotor to kneel, because Luru and Suram were behind him, but he didn’t trust Mistress Pallocons not to try to ride off again.

  “Heal her!” Larasan begged, clutching Ciniran’s body across her lap. Her face was twisted with anguish. “Harrier! Heal her!”

  Harrier knelt down in front of Larasan. One look at Ciniran’s face told him everything he needed to know. “I cannot Heal the dead, Larasan,” he said softly. He was cold, shaking, sick with rage and loss and grief. How can I tell Shaiara that I let her die? This was too much. This was—

  “How many more must die before you realize your fight is hopeless?” a voice behind him asked.

  This wasn’t grief. Not just grief. He drew a deep breath and rose fluidly to his feet, drawing both his Selken blades as he turned.

  Mistress Pallocons stood beside his shotor, running her chadar through her hands. Her hair stirred in the hot wind; she gazed at him, head tilted, a small smile on her lips. She reached out—casually—and stroked the shotor’s neck. Harrier could see its eyes, maddened and white-rimmed with terror. How could he have missed what she’d become? How could she have been Overshadowed by Ahairan without him knowing? He could sense the Taint in her now—so awful it was an effort for him just to stand here. And no one could sense it but him. The two Isvaieni behind her—it—took a step forward. “Get away from her,” he said quietly. Luru and Suram looked at his face and hurried to obey, pulling their shotors with them.

  “How many? How many? How many more must die?” Mistress Pallocons—or Ahairan—singsonged, swaying from side to side. Her eyes never left his face.

  Tell the truth? Tell a lie? Somehow Harrier knew instinctively that neither one was a good idea. “If you don’t know the answer to that, you aren’t very powerful after all,” he said.

  And as suddenly as the Demonic presence had descended, it was gone. Mistress Pallocons—wholly herself again—sprawled on her back on the sand. Harrier’s shotor, freed from Ahairan’s spell, scrambled to its feet with a bleat of terror and bolted, squalling in panic as it ran. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and began to laugh hysterically. “Doomed! All of you! All
of us! You will all be her creatures in the end! Just as I—Just as I—”

  A spear flew past Harrier’s shoulder, burying itself in Vianse Pallocons’s throat and pinning her body to the sand. He turned around. Larasan was standing behind him, a second spear in her hand, her eyes murderous.

  “All right,” Harrier said wearily. “Let’s do what we need to do here. And go.”

  THADNAT and Larasan rode double on the return trip so that Harrier could have a shotor to himself. They could hope that the shotors wandering around out here—his, Ciniran’s, the two surviving ones of the five the Armethaliehans had stolen, the ones they’d brought as spare remounts—would seek out the encampment when they smelled water, but it was much more likely that they’d be eaten by something. Harrier forced himself to concentrate on getting the rest of them back to the camp alive. He’d have plenty of time later to think about the high cost of his stupidity.

  It was nearly midday when they reached the encampment. It was still in the same place it had been when he’d left this morning—Shaiara must have given orders for them not to move out until he returned. He left his shotor to be unsaddled by the others—something he wouldn’t normally do, but his business was urgent—and went to find Bisochim. He’d probably be with Saravasse, and Saravasse was easy to spot. She watched him approach, her golden eyes unblinking. He knew she’d seen them ride up, and seen who wasn’t with them. He was grateful that she didn’t ask where Ciniran was.

  Ciniran.