The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  “The air smells funny,” Kave said.

  Tiercel sniffed, trying to decide what Kave might be smelling. There was a faint harsh tang to the air—unlike the rank-but-familiar scent of shotor-dung cookfires. He walked toward the wall.

  “Saravasse?” he said.

  He didn’t bother to raise his voice. Draconic hearing was extremely sharp. A few moments later Saravasse came trotting along the wall toward him. Tiercel suspected that she liked having her own private high road where she could look down on all the people and sleep undisturbed on smooth warm stone. She never came down inside the wall: tonight had been an exception. Even when she fed (which had been frequently, since they’d arrived), Bisochim led the shotors out into the desert for her. Tiercel knew that normally dragons didn’t need to eat every day. He also knew that Saravasse’s still-unhealed injury not only made her hungry and irritable, but that she’d been eating far less than she’d wanted to on their journey here. Nobody begrudged her the chance to make up for lost time.

  “Yes?” she answered. As she swung her head around and down to look at him, Kave made a strangled noise and stepped back. While he was a lot better around Saravasse than either Eugens or Magistrate Perizel was—Eugens tended to behave as if she was an inanimate object, ignoring her even when she moved and talked; and Magistrate Perizel was frankly terrified of her—he still tended to cringe every time she moved, and so of course Saravasse took advantage of that unmercifully.

  “What’s that smell?” Tiercel asked.

  “If you mean the new smell that wasn’t in the air two days ago and is strong enough even for something with a nose as small and weak as yours to smell now, it’s smoke from Telinchechitl. It’s going to get worse, I’m afraid. Years ago—long before I Bonded—I saw something like it. Among the Elves, it is called tehukohiakhazarishtial. A hollow mountain where the blood of the Deep Earth—from deeper in the stone than any dragon has ever laired—spurts into the sky like water from a fountain. The rock is so hot it runs like water. It can take days, even sennights, to cool to hardness. There is smoke also—there is smoke now, a great pillar of it. Soon you will see.”

  “Terrific,” Tiercel muttered. “How long is this—this—tehuko going to keep spraying liquid rock into the sky?”

  Saravasse snorted. “How should I know? I’m no Wildmage to see the future. But it does have some pretty side effects. Come and see. The sun is rising.”

  Tiercel shrugged and walked toward the eastern gate. There weren’t any tents pitched near the gateway itself—there was barley planted near it, but the path leading to it was clear. When he and Kave had walked through the tunnel to the outside, Tiercel saw that despite the darkness in the sky above, the sun was indeed rising.

  There weren’t clouds, of course (there were never any clouds in the Isvai unless there was a Sandwind or somebody was casting a spell), and so Tiercel had gotten used to sunrises here being pretty, but pretty interchangeable: the horizon turned pale, the sky turned white, and the sun came up.

  Not today. There still wasn’t much in the way of clouds, but today the sun was a misshapen deep-orange oval in a brilliant red sky. The Isvaieni who were guarding the gate at the outside of the tunnel were looking at it nervously.

  “It’s not an omen or anything,” Tiercel said, feeling helpless. “There’s just a lot of smoke in the air.”

  “It comes from the south,” Kave said, pointing. “That place you came here from. The Firecrown is getting ready to cage Ahairan, and it’s making a burning mountain there. When the sun is a little higher, you’ll be able to look south and see the smoke. And it’s filling the air, too. That’s why the dawn looks red. I’ve seen your lanterns. They smoke sometimes, don’t they?”

  The nearer of the two sentries made a face. “When we had oil for them.”

  “And the smoke coated the glass on the inside, and when it did, the flame looked yellower than it was, right?” Kave continued.

  “True enough, Ribuk,” the farther sentry said peaceably.

  “But the sky isn’t yellow, northerner. It’s red,” Ribuk said.

  “Yes,” Kave answered, sounding pleased, as if he’d gotten the answer he wanted. “But this isn’t just a lantern-flame that you’re looking at through a pane of smoky glass. This is the sun. And the air is filled with smoke. When the sun is low on the horizon and it shines through things in the air—smoke or fine dust or even clouds such as we have in the north—its light changes color this way. When it’s higher, you’ll see that it looks much as it always does. And when the sun sets, it’s going to look about like it does now again.”

  “Next you will tell us that you know how long this will go on,” Ribuk growled.

  “He does not, I do not, Tiercel does not,” Saravasse said from the wall above their heads. “But if that sunrise were as red as Ahairan’s robes—which it is not—I tell you, silly man, that it would still be neither a danger nor a threat. It’s just pretty.”

  “HOW did you know all that stuff—about light changing color and all that?” Tiercel asked, when they were back inside. If the sun was rising, it was the Twelfth Hour of Night, which meant full light in an hour, which meant the start of a long day of work.

  “Oh,” Kave said, sounding embarrassed. “I wanted to be a natural philosopher when I was a boy—I even studied it for a while when I was at University. But my family wanted me to go into Law, because House Breulin has always had someone in the Magisterium and my older brother had the title.” He shrugged.

  “I’d been going to study Pre-Flowering History,” Tiercel offered.

  “Now you’re living it,” Kave said.

  It was meant for a joke, but when they looked at each other both of them realized it was too true to be funny.

  BY the time he and Kave got back to Shaiara’s tent, Tiercel realized that “smoke in the air” was an understatement. It ought to have been full light, but the day was as dim as if the sky was overcast, and the globes of Coldfire and MageLight still shone brightly. “If there’s enough smoke to make it this dark, why don’t we smell more of it?” he asked Kave.

  “Probably because it’s high in the sky,” Kave said. “Like clouds. I’ve never heard of a tehuko-mountain before. I’m not sure what they do.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t do all the things Saravasse was talking about,” Tiercel said.

  Harrier and Magistrate Perizel were already there when they arrived. Magistrate Perizel looked thoughtful. Harrier looked as if he’d spoken to all six thousand, eight hundred, eighty-nine people at Sapthiruk personally. Pangan and Sormiede were lolling at his feet looking wistfully at the pot of dates and boiled grain. Over breakfast, Tiercel and Kave explained what they’d learned from Saravasse, and what they’d seen. Harrier glowered up at the sky as if the gloom were a personal enemy.

  “So in addition to anything Ahairan might want to do to us on the way, we need to march south through as much smoke as a grass fire and cross a few rivers of molten rock on the way?” Harrier asked.

  Tiercel shrugged. “Probably not the rock. It was a Lake of Fire last time. It should be a Lake of Fire this time.”

  “Why does that not reassure me?” Harrier asked.

  Tiercel just shrugged.

  ALL through the first uncertain day, the Isvaieni wandered out through the gates of Sapthiruk Oasis to gaze southward with a mixture of curiosity and dread. Some of them went to look several times, and Tiercel thought they might be hoping to see something different, but the sight was always the same: an enormous black cloud of smoke stretching skyward. That night—and all the nights thereafter—the smoke-column was lit with a dull red glow from the fires that burned at its base.

  Once the tehuko began to burn—no one could manage the jaw-breaking mouthful of “tehukohiakhazarishtial,” so everyone used the abbreviated form that Tiercel had coined—the light had a brassy yellow look to it, as if the desert was always on the verge of a Sandwind. At night the moon, yellow as a gold coin, was alone in the sky, and the
smell of smoke was ever-present.

  On the third day after the appearance of the tehuko, flecks of ash began to rain down over Sapthiruk and the surrounding desert like warm gray snow. On every day that followed, everyone spent as much time sweeping ash off of every possible surface with hastily-fashioned straw brooms as they did preparing to leave. Bisochim’s wards would not keep it out, and the ash was fine and soft and swirled in choking eddies like ishnain-dust. It only added more work to days already overfull, for there were a thousand things that had to be done before they could head southward.

  Harrier made no secret of his worries when he spoke to the Ummarai and their chaharums about what they could be facing on the journey back into the Barahileth. It wasn’t the Firecrown that concerned him now, but what Ahairan might do to keep them from making their rendezvous with it. Tiercel found it hard to imagine that Ahairan could do worse to them than Telinchechitl itself was. But grim as that was, it hardly mattered. Everyone knew that anyone who stayed behind at Sapthiruk would die.

  Tiercel hadn’t been there when the Isvaieni had left Telinchechitl, but from the way everyone was talking, this departure was much the same. Only this time they had a better idea of what they were facing, so Harrier had Bisochim spell-ward the food supplies while the Isvaieni stripped Sapthiruk of everything remotely edible. Every goat and sheep was slaughtered and eaten. All the surplus shotors were butchered and their meat dried. Surplus tents were turned into carrying bags, clothing, weapons. Basket upon basket was filled with rootstocks and wet earth so that the Isvaieni could plant food for the shotors to browse upon at need—but since the animals had gorged themselves nonstop since their arrival it would be at least a fortnight before they’d need to be fed. As they neared the day marked for their departure, they chopped down the trees they’d planted barely a fortnight ago. They turned some of the wood into clubs, some into arrow-shafts, and the rest into charcoal that would fuel fires upon the journey.

  And at last—ten days after Telinchechitl had begun to burn in the south once more—they were ready to leave Sapthiruk Oasis.

  IT should have been like any other morning (any other morning that was too dark and raining a tehuko’s ash), or . . . almost like any other morning, Tiercel thought. It was true they were leaving Sapthiruk Oasis and heading back into the Barahileth, but it would be two moonturns and probably a fortnight more to Kannatha Well, then at least another fortnight from there to Abi’Abadshar. Abi’Abadshar was six days away from the Dove Road, but once they’d gotten to the Dove Road from Abi’Abadshar, it had only taken the four of them (Ciniran had been alive then) about ten days to get within sight of Telinchechitl. So it would be another three and a half moonturns, more or less, before Tiercel got the chance to fulfill the promise he’d made to the Firecrown and sacrifice his life as either proof of his dedication or to add the magic of his death to the Firecrown’s trap, depending on which version of its story was closer to being the real truth. He was as jumpy and on-edge as if it was going to happen in three and a half hours.

  The last thing the Isvaieni did before they left Sapthiruk was catch the ikulas puppies—who only wanted to romp through the pre-dawn twilight—and load them into their travel baskets. The oldest of the ikulas would be a year old when they arrived at Abi’Abadshar, if they all got there alive. It was hard to believe.

  Then they began.

  THESE days they held what had used to be their evening council meetings at midday. It was safer. It was too dangerous to spend a moment of darkness in inattention—a terrible paradox, since they had to sleep at night. To travel at night would leave the caravan far too vulnerable to attack, and they needed every possible hour of light for travel. When they stopped at midday now, it was as briefly as possible, and they only stopped at all because it was stupid to push the shotors to the point of collapse this early in the journey.

  “This isn’t working,” Harrier said wearily, leaning over to rest his forehead on his knees.

  His robes—bright blue even when they’d left Sapthiruk—were gray now with rubbed-in ash. Everyone’s were. Everything was covered in ash—the air was filled with it any time the wind blew—and the wind blew constantly now. It was almost impossible not to breathe it. They were using up insane amounts of water because everyone kept the fronts of their chadars damp in a hopeless effort to keep the ash out of their noses and mouths, and they used up even more water washing the nostrils of the shotors and the ikulas two or three times a day.

  And I thought I could go south by myself, Tiercel thought. I must have been crazy. Of course, he hadn’t known what the tehuko would be like. No one could have predicted that. He wasn’t sure that even if Saravasse had been able to fly she would have been able to fly south into the smoke and ash and wind.

  They’d been heading south for a moonturn. In that time, they’d lost over a thousand people. A few to lung-sickness from breathing the fine ash, whether because they did not realize the seriousness of their affliction before it was too late for Bisochim to Heal them, or from the traditional belief among the tribes—widespread even now—that grave illness was a sign that it was time to lay one’s bones upon the sand in order to make way for the young and the strong. But most of those lost had been lost to Darkspawn attacks—to Goblins, primarily, though there’d been a few attacks by Balwarta. The Goblins wouldn’t come up out of the ground except when it was dark, but each defense they used against them only worked once, if that. When the ground was warded—and the camp was walled off by a warded ice-wall—the Goblins had climbed the ice wall. Bisochim hadn’t warded the space above the wall—he was just as exhausted as everyone else, and had counted on Saravasse’s ability to spot Balwarta before they were close enough to pose a danger. No one had thought any Darkspawn creature would be willing to endure the pain of climbing not just wards, but wards cast on walls of melting ice, so that they constantly slipped and fell back.

  They should have remembered the lesson of the atish’ban insects at Sapthiruk Oasis. They didn’t, and it had led to the night of the Isvaieni’s worst losses. If the Goblins hadn’t stopped to feed—if hundreds of Isvaieni, knowing their foe’s weakness, hadn’t thrown themselves into the Goblin horde’s jaws to save the rest—and the precious shotors . . .

  Since then, Bisochim cast his spell-wards wide and high each night, turning them into lethal traps, but it was only a matter of time until the Goblins found a way around those as well. And meanwhile, the exhaustion of constant spellwork was taking its toll on him.

  “What do you suggest?” Tiercel asked Harrier. “We can’t turn back.”

  “I know,” Harrier muttered. “The trouble is—”

  He glanced around the tent. These days all the Ummarai came to the council meetings, though less to make their voices heard than simply, Tiercel thought, to see that the others were still alive. Shaiara was there with Kamar. Bisochim. Zanattar and Kataduk. Kinaraf of the Laghamba and Bakhudun of the Hinturi. Liapha, Ogmazad, Omuta, Karufhad, Fannas—many of whose Kareggi had perished in the worst of the Goblin attacks. There were even places made on the carpet for Magistrate Perizel, Kave, and Eugens. Tiercel thought that had less to do with the possibility that Harrier had finally developed any sense of tact than that he intended to leave all three of them at Abi’Abadshar and he needed to figure out some way to teach them Isvaieni customs in a hurry.

  Fannas waved a languid hand. “Oh, Harrier, I beg you—tell us that matters will get worse.”

  “A lot worse,” Harrier answered with a tight smile. “And no matter how much of an idiot Ahairan is—assuming a Demon can be an idiot—even she has to know there’s only one road across the Barahileth. All she has to do is wait there for us. Whatever we’re facing here, we aren’t facing a tenth of what she’ll have waiting for us when we reach the Dove Road.”

  “We’re going to die before we get anywhere near that tehuko,” Eugens said in a flat stunned voice.

  He wasn’t saying anything everyone hadn’t been thinking since the second or th
ird attack. Tiercel was sure that Harrier could tell him the exact number of the dead, but he didn’t want to know. Every time in the last two sennights that he’d closed his eyes he’d seen Pangan screaming in agony as he died of Goblin poison. It was Simera’s death all over again, and it gave Tiercel nightmares that had nothing to do with visions sent by Ahairan. He pushed the thought away as the others in the tent stirred unhappily. It couldn’t be allowed to matter now. And there had to be a way . . .

  “No!” he said suddenly. “No. We won’t. Why—Har, why do we have to take the Dove Road at all?”

  “Water?” Harrier suggested with acid sweetness.

  Tiercel knew there were still nearly six thousand people in the caravan. They’d talked about what lay ahead, especially once they’d seen what they faced here. In the Isvai, Bisochim could still Call a nightspring into the surface of the desert itself and have the water be drinkable once they’d strained the ash out of it. In the Barahileth, with its salt-flats, ishnain-wastes—and what Kave said would be a much thicker layer of tehuko-ash—any water he might Call would be foul beyond use immediately. They’d need to rely on the stone-lined deep wells along the Dove Road.

  “No, but we—So what if it rains? For the whole time we’re going to Telinchechitl? We wouldn’t need to take the Dove Road, then—we could catch rainwater for drinking. And we wouldn’t have to worry about the heat in the Barahileth—because it would be raining.”

  “That’s really stupid,” Harrier said slowly. “Can you do it?” he asked Bisochim. “Make it rain—here, now—and keep it raining for the next three moonturns, until we reach Telinchechitl?”

  Everyone in the tent looked at each other. Nobody said a word. The only experience the Isvaieni had ever had with rain was the hurricane Bisochim had called down on the day that Ahairan was set free. Tiercel wasn’t sure what making it rain would involve in terms of magic and even though weather-magic was supposedly the business of Wildmages, he didn’t think Harrier knew either.