The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  Neither of them had given up—not then—not now—not once, in the thousands of battles that had brought them to this day.

  And so it worked.

  The makeshift ban dage on the stub of Saravasse’s mutilated wing ripped free as the wing grew back in a heartbeat. Harrier heard Shaiara gasp in surprise and horror—she knew that by casting a spell on Saravasse Harrier had just opened his mind to Ahairan’s—but Harrier couldn’t spare any of his concentration to explain what was going on. He might have been dead in the next moment, and at Shaiara’s hand, but Shaiara was forced to throw herself flat on the staircase as Saravasse screamed her displeasure and beat her wings furiously like an angry chicken (a very large angry chicken). Before Saravasse could either take to the air or bite him, Harrier straddled her neck and held on. He hissed with pain as Ahairan seized the opportunity he’d given her to thrust her way into his mind.

  But it wasn’t his mind alone any longer. It was his, and Tiercel’s, and Ancaladar’s.

  And a Wildmage and a High Mage together could kill a Demon.

  Light and Darkness. Life and Death. Pain and Pleasure. Sickness and Health. Knowledge and Ignorance. Famine and Bounty. Fire and Ice. Ocean and Desert. Summer and Winter. All opposites, but all contained within the Wild Magic, because the Wild Magic was a magic of Balance.

  It was the Balance. The Great Balance.

  The Endarkened, the Demons—what they were, what they wanted, what they served—were the opposite of all these things at once. The Peoples of the Light called them “Darkness” and “Shadow,” but those were names bestowed out of fear, from their own child-times, when they had been small soft helpless creatures who feared the night.

  The Demons’ true name was Void.

  Absence.

  Lack.

  That was why the presence of Ahairan and its kind—it was no more female than a rock was female—caused all those Sealed to the Three Books utter and absolute agony. The Wild Magic was the sum of All That Was: its Wildmages were charged by it with the great work of being its living eyes and minds and hands. The absence-and-opposite of all they knew and served was an assault on every sense at once.

  In the depths of a desperate war, Void had driven too many of them mad, and so they’d embraced it. Those who’d seen that happen without true knowledge of the enemy they fought spoke of the Wildmages Falling to the Dark.

  And so, out of that desperation, the War Magick was born.

  It was a magic that sealed itself off from the world: from the Wild Magic, from the ancient music of trees and stars, from the Great Balance itself. The War Magick was a thing of rules and procedures and carefully-calculated formulas, for its Mages were insensible to the instincts that would let them hear MagePrice and reckon SpellCost.

  But neither could they sense the Void.

  The Magic of Balance and the Magick of Laws diverged quickly, for the War Mages crafted spells that no Wildmage could. And in the blending of the two, Void found, not death, but unmaking . . .

  WHEN he remembered the brief terrible battle later, Harrier was able to put the events into their proper order: this, then this, then this. Even with Ancaladar’s help, though, he was never sure which parts he did, and which were Tiercel’s.

  Lightning crackled out of a cloudless sky, the bolts searing down with absolute precision, slamming a dozen Balwarta to the desert floor.

  The wall of MageShield Tiercel had cast around the Black Dogs blinked out and reformed in an instant to encircle Ahairan and her entire atish’ban army, trapping them inside. It was only to protect the Isvaieni while the actual fight was going on. Ahairan was already out. The battleground was their minds, his and Tiercel’s.

  And oh—Light and Darkness—he’d managed to go fifteen entire years thinking Tiercel didn’t have a temper. He couldn’t imagine being that angry and still thinking in that cold, calculated way. Because Tiercel was. Harrier could feel it.

  You can let her through, now, Har. I’m ready for her.

  It was only then that Harrier realized he’d been holding out against Ahairan with all his strength while she pried and picked and battered at his mind, taunting him and drowning him in foulness. He let go—like a drowning man slipping below the water—and Ancaladar’s mind gathered him to safety.

  He felt Ahairan’s mind brush past his—thinking she was claiming him, thinking she’d won—to run right into Tiercel’s.

  You don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to do this to my friends. You don’t get to do this to my world. I reject you. I deny you. You ARE Not.

  It was like watching something being folded up in every direction at once—although that wasn’t possible, and Harrier wasn’t watching anything at all. Tiercel was putting everything he had into doing whatever he was doing to Ahairan. Harrier was doing everything else that needed to be done.

  If he stopped Healing Saravasse—even for an instant—Saravasse would simply stop. If he let the MageShield drop, the Sandwalkers and the Black Dogs would reach the Dove Road and the Isvaieni there in instants. He’d remember—later, when there was the leisure for things like that—that MageShield wasn’t his spell to cast, and even if it were, he hadn’t cast this one. And—later still—it would occur to him to be grateful that “stubbornness” was the defining quality of a Knight-Mage. But now his eyes were closed and his face was pressed against the hot scales of Saravasse’s neck, and even so he could see that every living creature of Ahairan’s inside the MageShield was going mad.

  The Sandwalkers tried to tunnel their way out of their prison, but the Shield had been cast below the desert as well as around it. They turned on each other, and upon the Black Dogs as well. They cut the Shamblers—the only things that were unaffected by the frenzied need to escape—to pieces.

  At the same time that Harrier was holding MageShield against all attacks, he was pouring torrents of Healing into Saravasse, since the only reason Saravasse still hadn’t gone wherever abruptly unBonded dragons went was because he’d never stopped Healing her. Holding either spell in place by itself—the MageShield around that army of atish’ban monsters, or the torrent of Healing he was pouring into Saravasse—would have taken more concentration and strength than Harrier could ever have imagined having. He was only a channel for Ancaladar’s power, but even doing that made him feel as if he were being battered by an endless storm, and no harbor in sight.

  There were a hundred witnesses to that battle. The moment Tiercel first cast MageShield against the Black Dogs, Zanattar’s Isvaieni had stopped to stare in wonder. None of them said—afterward—that they heard anything in those next moments other than Saravasse’s shrieks of rage and the howls of the Black Dogs as they died.

  But Harrier and Tiercel both heard Ahairan screaming.

  At first it was with fury. When she—it—began casting spells—at Tiercel, Harrier, Saravasse, the Isvaieni—Tiercel simply blocked them. He could have closed the MageShield completely, but if he had, he wouldn’t be able to get in at the Demon, either. And Harrier could feel that Tiercel was doing something to Ahairan—something complex and powerful, requiring as much of his concentration as holding those spells did Harrier’s. He didn’t have enough attention to spare to wonder, and it would be deadly to Tiercel’s concentration if he asked. But Harrier slowly realized that the Dragonbond meant that he didn’t have to ask, and wouldn’t have to ask questions like that ever again: Tiercel was forcing Ahairan back through the door that it had tricked Bisochim into opening. And Tiercel didn’t care that the door was only meant to go one way, and he didn’t care that the door was closed right now. He’d use as much force as he needed to—the magic of a Knight-Mage and a Wildmage combined—to push Ahairan through it.

  When Ahairan realized Tiercel could actually do that, it began to beg and bargain. At first it did it just to cover its attempted escape. When Ahairan discovered the MageShield extended beneath the regh as well, it began to beg in earnest.

  The battle was almost over then.

  The a
ir crackled with magic, with power, with heat. Harrier could feel what Tiercel was doing, and for a moment, he felt a flash of panic that something was going to happen not just to Ahairan, but to everything there was. The spells Tiercel was weaving together were complicated, and alien, and powerful . . .

  And then it was over.

  The shock of it—the spell’s release, the sudden absence of Ahairan—made Harrier lose his grasp on the spells he was holding. Dropping the MageShield didn’t matter—there was nothing alive—or moving—inside it now—but he lost control of the Healing Spell as well. He could feel Saravasse starting to become insubstantial beneath his hands.

  No! Tiercel said.

  Get out of my head! Harrier demanded.

  Let me help. I can fix this, Tiercel insisted.

  Fix it fast because I need to puke. Now that he wasn’t forcing himself to concentrate, having been wallowing in Void for however long it’d been—a minute or a year—caught up to Harrier all at once. Tiercel pushed the Healing Spell back into place—it felt as if someone had shoved a package into Harrier’s hands and told him to deliver it, damn it—and then there was a . . . something . . . that made his brain tickle. Harrier sneezed, and sneezed again, and gagged.

  We’ll need to come up with new words, Tiercel said. He sounded giddy with joy: Ancaladar’s return, Ahairan’s destruction. But that will hold. Until we find Saravasse a Bondmate.

  “WHAT are you so happy about?” Harrier demanded crossly. Tiercel was too far away to hear him—still up at the edge of the tehuko—but Harrier had the awful feeling that Tiercel could hear him anyway. He sat back on Saravasse’s neck. She snaked her head around so she could look him in the eye, and hissed. “Not you,” he said, closing his eyes again.

  Do not fear, New Bonded. I will protect you from Saravasse, Ancaladar said. From Tiercel as well, if it becomes necessary. He sounded amused.

  Harrier concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply, because apparently they’d just won, and he probably shouldn’t celebrate by vomiting on anybody, including himself. He could still taste Ahairan in the back of his throat, even though he knew the thing was gone. Just thinking about it made his stomach revolt again. He swallowed hard. At least he’d get sympathy from Tiercel. And he was pretty sure that Tiercel ought to get a medal. Not for destroying Ahairan—okay, for that too—but for not going crazy because of having had to listen to Ahairan’s mind for the last year and more.

  “Harrier?” Shaiara said cautiously.

  He opened his eyes again and looked at her. She might have said something else, but her words were drowned out by the roaring in his ears and the sound of cheering from the Isvaieni below.

  Harrier climbed stiffly off of Saravasse’s neck. With one last hiss of displeasure, she flung herself off the staircase, and for a moment Harrier thought that she was leaping to her death. But she spread her wings with a loud snap and spiraled upward, catching the hot wind rising from the top of Telinchechitl and using it to carry her into the sky.

  “We won,” he said.

  Shaiara simply pointed down at the desert in confirmation as the cheers continued. Where Ahairan’s army had been collected there was a long pale oval of regh. It looked as if it had never been touched by either the tehuko’s ash or the black rain, and there was no sign at all of the Balwartas’ bodies or the lightning that had struck them.

  Zanattar and his people were riding toward victims of Ahairan’s last spell. It’s a good thing we brought so many extra shotors with us, Harrier thought (although, since they’d left them behind at the campsite, they were probably down there on the Dove Road now), and: we don’t need to worry about that, and: Gens.

  Discovering whether his brother had survived would have to wait. Harrier didn’t know what he’d do if he found out Eugens hadn’t: he’d spend the rest of his life knowing that if only Eugens had come with him, he’d be alive, and by leaving him behind in Abi’Abadshar, Harrier had condemned him to death . . .

  He felt Ancaladar’s warm sympathy, and behind it—a fainter note, weary and uncertain—Tiercel’s horrified reaction to the thought that Eugens Gillain might be dead.

  Harrier took a deep breath. You don’t know. Until you do know, don’t think about it. He took Shaiara’s hand. “If you think I’m walking up all those damned steps again today, you’re wrong, so you might as well come down,” he told Tiercel. “And do you think Ancaladar would mind stopping in Karahelanderialigor on his way here and asking them if they’ll send us some Elven Mages? We could really use some,” he added with a sigh.

  THEY’D been rousted out of their tents this morning at Watch Bells by a Demon and its army, and by four hours later—not even midmorning—Ahairan was dead and they’d won. Harrier had spent most of the last year thinking Oh Light what now? and he’d never dared to think: What next? It hardly seemed as if it could be the same day. In just a few hours, Harrier had gone from expecting to die, believing Tiercel would die, not knowing how many other people would have to die as well—to knowing they’d won decisively and completely and being Bonded to Ancaladar (and Tiercel as well). He still wasn’t sure how that was going to work out, but he didn’t have to know. The fate of the world no longer depended on whether or not Harrier could make things work out.

  The next hours veered between joy and triumph, and frustration and worry. Against all expectation, everyone who’d been at Abi’Abadshar—including Eugens Gillain—had arrived at Telinchechitl alive, though far from well. When Harrier found him, Eugens had been bloody, filthy, starving, and parched, but alive. (He’d also—so Liapha said afterward—been carrying a child on his back, a baby in his arms, and a puppy stuffed into the front of his tunic for most of the way.)

  Harrier wasn’t quite sure how he was going to explain to Eugens about Ancaladar, but maybe he wouldn’t have to.

  Harrier might have been right about Ahairan not being able to locate the city by magic—they’d never know now—but it hadn’t needed to: there had been enough other ways for it to discover the city’s location, from pillaging Vianse Pallocons’s mind to being told by any of the Isvaieni it captured. And once it got there . . . a Demon’s spells were more powerful than even a Dragonbond Wildmage’s. Liapha and Marap and Kamar and Helafin Perizel—everyone Harrier asked—all said the same thing: everyone in Abi’Abadshar had felt restless from the moment that the war-party had left. As the hours ticked by, first the young children could not be found, then the children who searched for them did not return, then the ikulas vanished, then the adults who searched for all of them (some of them at least) brought word that all the animals from the garden level—including all the shotors, which were stabled in some of the empty chambers there—had vanished.

  Anyone who went out onto the surface of the desert began walking toward the Dove Road and south, unable to turn back.

  Some of the inhabitants of Abi’Abadshar had been able to hold out against Ahairan’s call until midnight. They’d spent those hours frantically packing all the food and blankets, waterskins and medicines they could—they had no need of water with the constant rain. The shotors were gone, but they’d carried saddles with them, and had managed to catch up to the shotors by morning and saddle most of them, allowing the weakest to ride. While no one on that terrible journey could stop to rest for very long, Ahairan hadn’t forced them to the killing pace that had slaughtered most of the inhabitants of Akazidas’Iteru.

  The first task Harrier’s war-band faced—now that Ahairan and all its creatures were gone—was to help the survivors of Abi’Abadshar. There wasn’t much they could do—they didn’t have enough tents for shelter and the campsite was hours away; there was nowhere near enough food; not enough available water now that the rain had stopped . . .

  Shaiara sent Zanattar and half his people to bring the campsite here, sent Tiercel and the rest of the war-band to locate their fresh shotors in the mass of animals and use them to herd the milling confused jumble of creatures—everything from goats and pigs to chickens, doves,
and monkeys, as well as the shotors that had still been at Abi’Abadshar—off into some sort of organized holding area. Everyone had gone on for so long dismissing Tiercel as having only the most minor spells—most of the Isvaieni weren’t even aware that Tiercel was responsible for most of the globes of light that had illuminated their campsites each night—that they were stunned to see him deal with the problem of keeping the animals from straying by casually causing the surface of the Barahileth to rise up in a series of stone circles—and then casting MageShield over the doorway he left in each. When Tiercel finally realized that water was a pressing problem for everyone—water right here—he provided some. Not the way Bisochim had (or Harrier might have), by calling natural water to the desert’s surface: Tiercel simply turned the desert to water, making a cylinder of water going down into the earth until it struck the water that was already there.

  Harrier only knew about it secondhand, when Ancaladar told him what Tiercel had done. When he did, Harrier realized that the feelings of triumph in the back of his mind must belong to Tiercel. Harrier winced, just a little, knowing that too many of the Isvaieni had called Tiercel “the Northern Mage without magic,” and Tiercel had known it. Now that he could, of course Tiercel was taking the opportunity to show off.

  And most people wouldn’t blame him, but Harrier did. Not blame, exactly, but Harrier thought it was a bad thing. There were few enough checks on the High Magick as it was.

  There is you, Bonded, Ancaladar said. And me.

  “Right,” Harrier muttered out loud (it helped to do that when he was talking to Ancaladar, even though Ancaladar was still about a billion miles away). “Because saying ‘no’ worked out so well for Saravasse.”