The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained

by James Mallory

  IT was hard to concentrate on his schoolwork that day—both because of having missed most of a night’s sleep, and because every time he closed his eyes, Tiercel saw the face of the Fire Woman. Even in broad daylight in the middle of his familiar classroom, with the scents of a cool spring day coming in through the open windows, the images from his dream were still vivid in his mind.

  She was as bright as fire. She ought to have been exotic and beautiful. Even—he shifted uncomfortably—arousing. Instead, she made him think of all the frightening and ugly things in his life.

  There hadn’t really been a lot. But once he and Harrier had snuck down to the Docks to see the fishermen bring in one of their own who had drowned. The man had been laid out on the wharf beside the boat that had brought him in, bloated and tattered and white. And as the two of them had stood, gawping, at the edge of the crowd, the dead man’s slack lips had begun to twitch and work, and several small black sea-crabs had crawled out of his mouth. Tiercel had thrown up most of the way home. The Fire Woman made him feel worse.

  Part of him wondered if he was going to dream about her every night for the rest of his life. If he was, what was he going to do about it? He couldn’t sleep if he did, and he couldn’t go without sleep.

  And there was worse. Last night he’d been convinced that his dream was real. In daylight, he wasn’t quite as sure, but what if it was? If it was real, and happening now, shouldn’t he do something about it? Tell someone?

  After his classes were over for the day, he went down to the Port. He found Harrier there with a sheaf of papers in his hand, going over something with a Ship’s Master. This was one of Harrier’s jobs, and Harrier was working, so Tiercel waited patiently until he was through. At last Harrier handed over the papers to the Ship’s Master, received a scroll in return, and turned to go.

  “Tiercel,” Harrier said in surprise.

  Tiercel got to his feet—he’d been sitting on a large coil of rope waiting for Harrier to finish. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Now? I’m here for two more bells, and I have half a dozen ships to check in.”

  “It’s important.”

  “Then it will have to be quick. Come over here to the storage shed. It’s out of the wind.”

  When they were safely inside the shed, Harrier leaned against the door and folded his arms. “Now. What’s so urgent?”

  “You know that day you showed me the Marukate?”

  Harrier frowned, then his brow cleared. “Oh, aye. Da took a skiff to the Out Islands with the captain so he could show him where she’d been hulled. Nothing there—at least not rocks. Bondsman didn’t pay the full damage, but he did pay a bit, and Seaman’s Assurance will loan the rest. He’ll have some lean years while he pays back the loan, but he won’t lose his ship. Hit some floating wreckage, more than likely. Was that what you wanted to know?”

  At least the captain wouldn’t lose his ship. Tiercel felt better for hearing that.

  “No. That night, I—Well, I wanted to help. So I did a spell of the High Magick. I’d found it in a book, you see, and it should have told me how the ship was damaged. I thought it would help.”

  Harrier was staring at him as if he’d completely lost his mind. “This is what you came to tell me?”

  Tiercel took a deep breath.

  “Yes. Because the spell went wrong. It didn’t show me that. It showed me a vision of a Lake of Fire, and a—a woman. It was horrible. And I can’t stop seeing them. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Your mother said you’d been sick after you set your room on fire,” Harrier finally said.

  “Yes, because, well, you see, I think I cast a Fire Spell, because the books on the High Magick say that—”

  “Stop. Tyr. Come on. Good joke, but I’m busy. You didn’t cast a spell. You’re not a Wildmage.”

  “You aren’t listening. I said I used the High Magick, and—”

  “And you also told me that the High Magick was over and done with about a million years ago. So why would it work now? And even if it did, how could you use it? No. You fell asleep, you had a bad dream. End of story.”

  “But I’m still seeing her!”

  “So you’re still having bad dreams,” Harrier said patiently. He shrugged, the gesture saying more clearly than words that while he was sorry about the problem, he was certain it was going to go away and he really didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

  “Har, you know that doesn’t make sense. If the High Magick used to work, then it still works. And I did something. I know I did!”

  “Damned right you did, you set your house on fire. Tyr, if you were a Wildmage, you’d have the Three Books. Everyone knows that.”

  “And I keep telling you, it’s not the Wild Magic, it’s the High Magick. Something anyone can learn if they want to.” He knew he was dangerously close to arguing with Harrier, and from the look on Harrier’s face, Harrier would be happy to make this into an argument. Harrier didn’t want to hear what he was saying. It was just too unbelievable. And when you tried to push Harrier in a direction he didn’t want to go, he got angry. That wouldn’t solve anything at all.

  “Okay,” Tiercel said, raising his hands. “I’m sorry I bothered you here. I guess I really was still worried about the Marukate. And maybe the dreams will stop.”

  “Sure they will,” Harrier said, relaxing. “You’ve just spent too much time on Uncle Alfrin’s book—and I have to say, I’m not all that sorry to see it go. And everyone comes down with odd fevers when the seasons change. Look, I’ve got to run. I’ll see you soon, though, right?”

  “Right,” Tiercel said.

  But he didn’t see Harrier soon.

  He knew that if he did, all that would happen would be that they’d just have that argument they’d barely managed to avoid, and the very last thing he wanted to do was argue with Harrier. Harrier couldn’t see things his way and he, well, he couldn’t manage to see them any other way. He’d have to solve this problem himself.

  But by a moonturn later, Tiercel was at his wits’ end.

  The dream hadn’t gone away, and he’d done everything he could think of to make it stop.

  First he spoke to his tutor at school about his strange dreams—leaving out the part about casting a spell of the High Magick, of course, but including every other detail. His tutor simply thought he was working too hard preparing to enter University this fall, and assured him confidentially that there was absolutely no doubt at all that he would get in, even if he didn’t attend another class from here until the end of term. His marks were excellent and always had been. He had nothing to worry about, and now that he’d chosen Ancient History as his field of study, all he really had to do was show up at University at the beginning of term and start his classes.

  No help there. Tiercel knew perfectly well that he wasn’t having these dreams because he was worried about University.

  Next, he went to his spiritual Preceptor at the Temple of the Light and told him everything, absolutely everything—including that he’d cast a spell of the High Magick and that all of his troubles had started after that. He’d been sure everything would be fixed then, but to his horror, his Preceptor also dismissed his dreams as “the sort of dreams a boy your age often has.” No matter how long and how hard Tiercel argued with him, he could not convince the man otherwise. In Preceptor Maver’s mind, Tiercel’s problems could not have anything to do with the High Magick because . . . the High Magick simply didn’t work. Hadn’t worked for hundreds of years. And if it hadn’t worked for hundreds of years, it couldn’t be a problem now; could it?

  Tiercel would have liked to have lit a candle with magic to prove to Preceptor Maver that it did work, but Tiercel actually had no idea how he’d done it the first time. And he had absolutely no intention of fooling around with magic ever again.

  By then his lack of sleep—because he slept as little as possible—was visibly taking its toll, and his m
other had taken him back to the Healers again. He’d told the Healer, perfectly honestly, that his problem was that he was having nightmares so bad that he was afraid to sleep, and the Healer gave him a strong sweet cordial that—she said—would allow him to sleep without dreams.

  She was right. But he could only take it for a sennight, and after that the nightmare was back, more frequent and vivid than ever. It was always the same one, and he took what comfort he could from the fact that while it was undoubtedly real—whatever that meant when you were dealing with magic—it was also symbolic. He’d learned a lot more about symbolic dreams in the past few sennights, too, since he spent every free moment he had in the Closed Archives of the Great Library, reading through everything they had on the High Magick. He was hoping to find out what his dreams meant, and how to cure them, but instead all he found out was what an idiot he’d been.

  Protective shields, for example. He should have had them up around any place he was working, if he actually meant to do magic. He should have drawn Glyphs of Protection before he’d cast his spell, too. And Knowing was a Student Apprentice spell, not an Apprentice spell, as he’d thought. Far beyond his capability, even if he’d had an actual capability. You needed to study for years to become a High Mage. The Mageborn had begun their training at the age of eight.

  Mageborn.

  Another thing he’d apparently been wrong about was the High Magick being a magic that everyone could learn. It was true that a lot more people could learn it than could be Wildmages, but apparently you still had to be born with a mysterious something called the Magegift. And if you didn’t have it, you could study the High Magick forever and not be able to cast a single spell.

  Still . . .

  Apparently many more people had been High Mages in the old days than were Wildmages now. And certainly the training was long and hard—but so was the training to be a Healer, or a Ship’s Pilot, or an Architect, or even a Blacksmith. So why weren’t there any High Mages anymore? Had people stopped being born with this Magegift? Or was there some other reason? Unfortunately, Tiercel knew just enough by now to know how much he didn’t know, because although there were an enormous number of pre-Flowering books in the Closed Archives, and in the past moonturn he had (with his teachers’ approval) cut a lot of his classes to spend most of his time down there reading them, comparatively few of them dealt directly with the High Magick, and a lot of those assumed you already knew about the High Magick to begin with. Many of them referred to books that the Archives didn’t have, and the more he read, the more it seemed to Tiercel that a lot of the High Magick had been taught directly, Mage to Mage.

  And that meant—as far as he could tell—that he was really in trouble now. Because—if he had really cast that Fire Spell—he had the Magegift. And not only were there no High Mages left to teach him, but the one thing the surviving books were all very clear on was that an awakening Magegift had to be taught.

  Or else the new Mageborn died.

  Three

  The Beginning of the Quest

  IT WAS THE noon break from his classes, and Tiercel was heading across the Quadrangle. It was already the middle of Windrack—nearly three moonturns since Harrier’s Naming Day celebration—and the soft winds of early Summer made the day a pleasure to be out in. In a fortnight the term would be over for the year. Tiercel would graduate with his year-mates, and start the Long Vacation. University would loom in the autumn. Assuming he lived that long.

  He didn’t feel as if he were facing imminent death.

  If he had the Magegift, he was. If he didn’t, he wasn’t. He didn’t really feel like experimenting with any more magic spells to find out for sure. He kept dreaming about the Fire Woman almost every night, and despite the fact that it was essentially the same dream over and over, it was still as awful every single time. All he’d been able to find out from reading just about every book on the High Magick that the Great Library held was that he’d done nearly everything wrong to cast his spell—and that the High Mages didn’t have dreams and visions. Or if they did, they didn’t discuss them in the books available to him.

  He was thinking of cutting his afternoon classes—of course it wasn’t really cutting when you went to your teachers and asked to be excused, and he really was working on a special project of his own—when a voice behind him stopped him.

  “Tiercel! Tyr! Wait up!”

  HARRIER hadn’t seen his friend since that day on the docks when Tyr had come to him with some wild story about suddenly having magic powers. He’d been so mad that day that he’d wanted to shake him. Tiercel was moonturns away from even having to go off to University, but Harrier had to be an adult now. His mornings were still spent in Normal School, but every afternoon was spent at the Port, where his Apprenticeship had informally begun. If he played around during work hours, there were plenty of watchers ready to report that fact to his Da, who wouldn’t be at all pleased to hear it.

  So maybe he’d been a little more abrupt than a friend ought to have been. He’d expected to see Tiercel again that night, or at least next evening, because when Tyr got a hold of an idea—or the other way around—he just didn’t give up on it. But Tyr didn’t come, and then it was Light-Day and he still hadn’t come to see Harrier, so Harrier had gone to the Rolfort townhouse when he figured the Rolforts would be back from Temple only to hear that Tiercel had stayed late to talk to his Preceptor. And since Harrier wasn’t going to hang around like a lovesick maiden, he’d left.

  He’d stopped by a couple of times after that—making time out of his workday, knowing he’d have to work extra late to make up for it—only to be told that Tiercel was down at the Great Library, studying. Harrier had known Tiercel all his life, and while Tyr found the Great Library fascinating, he didn’t find it that fascinating. He’d figured his friend was avoiding him, ashamed of having been an idiot, and figured Tiercel would come and see him when he was good and ready. But one morning Harrier had been in the middle of his schoolwork and realized it had been an entire moonturn since he’d seen Tiercel. He hadn’t gotten so much as a note of explanation. And he’d realized he had to go find out why.

  The Preparatory School was in the same district as the Normal School, so his detour wouldn’t make him too late getting home. The more Harrier turned matters over in his head, the more he decided he was worried. Tiercel was exactly like one of the little ratting-dogs they kept down at the docks to go after vermin. Once he got an idea in his head, he just didn’t let go of it. And while he might have gone off on this whole magic thing by himself—there were many interests the two boys didn’t share—the thing he wouldn’t have done was shut Harrier completely out of his life without a single word. Not even if their families were fighting. Which they weren’t. There must be something wrong.

  When Tiercel turned around in response to his shout of greeting Harrier got the biggest shock of his life. He’d suggested, that day in the shed on the docks, that Tiercel was just having one of the usual early spring fevers. If this was a sample of it, maybe his father should consider closing the Port, because Tiercel looked . . . ill. His eyes were sunken, and had deep shadows under them, as if he hadn’t slept well for sennights. If he hadn’t been sick before, he was now. Even Harrier could see that.

  “What is wrong with you?” he blurted out.

  “You didn’t believe me the last time I told you,” Tiercel said.

  Oh. Still thinking about magic, then. If he’d sounded smug, or proud, or anything to indicate that this High Magick he thought he had was a wonderful secret that set him above everyone else, Harrier wouldn’t have believed him now, or even listened. But Tiercel just sounded tired and more than a little confused.

  “Tell me again.”

  The two boys sat on a stone bench in the corner of the Quadrangle, and Tiercel told Harrier everything that had happened to him in the past moonturn.

  “And everybody—my Tutor, my Preceptor, the Healer—says they’re just dreams. And that they’ll go away by themselve
s.”

  “But you don’t think so,” Harrier guessed shrewdly.

  “Oh, Light, Har, I hope they go away! But if you’d had even one of them, you’d know they aren’t just dreams. Somehow they’re true—a kind of truth, anyway. And what if . . . they were supposed to warn somebody of something, and I got the warning instead? Like a message delivered to the wrong house?”

  “It doesn’t seem really efficient,” Harrier said consideringly. “If there’s a problem, wouldn’t it make more sense to have something happen in a Light-shrine? Or send a vision to all the Light Priests at once?”

  “I don’t know,” Tiercel said. He sounded very depressed.

  “Well, okay. So what are we going to do about it? You can’t spend the rest of your life not eating or sleeping. Your parents are going to notice, soon, if they haven’t already.”

  “Oh, they’ve noticed. Mama has a whole row of bottles from the Healer that she doses me with,” Tiercel said dolefully. “Some of them help. Just not very well, or for very long.”

  “Well, you can’t keep taking that stuff. It turns your teeth funny colors. So? We’re going to do something, right?”

  “You want to help?” Tiercel asked doubtfully.

  “Tyr, have I ever let you go off on an adventure by yourself since you learned to walk? Doesn’t matter what it is this time. I’m in. And it seems to me that if you got yourself into all this trouble with magic, you’re going to need a Mage to get you out of it.”

  “You mean a Wildmage?” Tiercel said doubtfully.

  Harrier snorted rudely. “Of course a Wildmage! It’s not like we’re going to turn over a rock and find one of your nonexistent High Mages under it, is it?”

  “But . . . where are we going to find one?” Tiercel asked.

  Harrier shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess we go look until we find one. We could start in Sentarshadeen. There was one there once, wasn’t there?”