The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained

by James Mallory

  “There’s always something to keep watch for in the forest,” Simera said firmly.

  THE next morning, while mist still hung over the pool, Simera roused the two of them out of their bedrolls. Though Harrier was used to keeping early hours, apparently the Centauress was an even earlier riser. She showed them, first, how to prepare the fire to brew their morning tea, and then, to break camp.

  “There’s a game trail that runs fairly straight a few miles from here,” Simera said, as she helped them pack. “Once I’ve set you on it, I’ll cut through the forest to the nearest inn. They should be able to sell me a fletch of bacon and a few pounds of meal, and maybe some raisins and some grain for the mules. With that and the game available in the forest, we should reach Sentarshadeen without difficulty. Or any need to tighten our belts overmuch,” she added, grinning, for Harrier had complained all through breakfast about their lack of provisions. Except for some tea, salt, and sugar candy, breakfast had finished off their supplies.

  “Oh, sure,” Tiercel said. Before Harrier could stop him, he’d taken the coin purse from his belt and handed it to her.

  “Why didn’t you just give her the mules, too, while you were at it?” Harrier demanded later. It was the middle of Morning Bells—or, as they counted time outside the City, the fourth hour of day. Simera, having set them on the game trail, had departed for the inn.

  The trail, as she had warned them, was nothing more than a wide spot in the trees; a trail made and used by animals, not people. The wandering bare-earth path was only a few handspans wide; more of a guide than an actual road. But they could follow it if they paid close attention, and Simera had said it was going in the right direction.

  “What?” Tiercel asked blankly.

  “You gave her all your money. What makes you think she’s coming back?”

  “Oh, by the Light, Harrier! Are you just looking for things to complain about? Since when does the Forest Watch go around robbing people?”

  “Apprentice Forest Watch. And we’ve only her word for that.”

  “She’s wearing the livery. She saved us from those brigands. Although I still think I could have talked my way out of things.”

  “You always think that. All right. Say she’s everything you think she is. What if she’s attacked on her way to—or from—the inn? Even you have to admit the woods are dangerous—after the brigands, after last night. She still has all your money. What if she’s hurt, or killed, and the money’s lost?”

  “Money isn’t everything.”

  Harrier sighed. “It is when you need it to travel on.”

  “I thought you trusted her,” Tiercel said, hurt.

  Now it was Harrier’s turn to look surprised. “What does that have to do with whether she’s hurt or killed? And no, I don’t. Why should I?”

  “Well, she saved us from the brigands, and she’s traveling with us to Sentarshadeen, and—”

  “And none of that has cost her much. She needed someone to travel with, as she said. She thinks you’re cute. She’s going to Sentarshadeen anyway. I don’t trust her and I don’t not trust her . . . not if there are evil things out here that wouldn’t find it that hard to pretend to be Forest Watch. Tiercel . . . if you want me to believe that you’re in some kind of danger, well, one of us ought to act like it.”

  “I just don’t think you should always assume that everybody you meet is out to get you.”

  “And that’s why I’m always the one dragging you out of sewers,” Harrier finished triumphantly.

  SIMERA did not return until several hours later. By then both boys were hungry and thirsty, and the mules were doing more browsing than moving, despite their best efforts to urge them forward.

  She trotted onto the trail a few yards ahead. She was moving carefully, because strapped across her flanks were two large wicker panniers that creaked with every step she took.

  “I thought you’d have gotten farther than this,” she said, sounding slightly cross.

  “I thought you’d be back sooner,” Harrier answered equally grumpily.

  “Well, she’s here now,” Tiercel said hastily. He pulled his mule to a halt—not a difficult task—and swung down from the saddle. “It looks like you were successful. Let me help you unpack that. We wanted to look for water—we could hear it—but we didn’t want to leave the trail.”

  Simera smiled. “That was well done of you. There’s a little stream not far from here, but it’s easy to lose your way in the forest. We’ll put the hampers on the pack mule, then go to the stream and eat. I bought buckets and waterskins as well—I’m afraid your purse is much lighter than it was this morning, Tiercel.”

  “I don’t mind,” Tiercel said, smiling. “You know what we need better than we do. I’m grateful for your help.”

  In addition to necessities that would keep over the fortnight they’d need to reach Sentarshadeen, Simera had bought a game pie to eat now, and a dozen berry tarts. Harrier’s mood lightened appreciably after he’d devoured all of his share of the food and a good portion of Tiercel’s. The remaining supplies were repacked, and the hampers abandoned, a gift to whoever came across them next. They filled the waterskins and went on.

  THAT day set the pattern for the ones to follow. That night, at twilight, they made camp. Tiercel and Harrier arranged the camp and took care of the mules while Simera hunted. She brought back whatever she’d managed to catch—that first night, it was squirrels—and they cooked and ate them before rolling up in their bedrolls—at least in the case of Harrier and Tiercel. Simera, like all Centaurs, slept standing.

  Tiercel slept without dreams.

  “SOMETHING’S coming.”

  It was the middle of the night. It had been eight days—eight blessedly dreamless days—since they’d left the Three Trees.

  Tiercel sat bolt upright in his bedroll, shivering at the shock of the night air on his skin. Above him the summer stars burned brightly.

  He’d been dreaming again. One of the odd dreams, the ones he didn’t remember the moment he awoke, the ones that left his mind feeling jumbled. He looked around. What had it been? He strained to call it back. Nothing. But there was nothing here, either. In the last sennight or so, he’d gotten used to the sounds the forest made at night. Simera had told him that the forest kept its own watch. Nothing seemed out of place. And it was certainly no colder than it ought to be, he noticed with relief.

  “Coming.” Harrier rolled over with a groan. “What?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Harrier sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Tell me you were dreaming.”

  The last time I dreamed, a stableful of people almost froze to death.“I was,” Tiercel admitted.

  Harrier had always been one to wake up quickly; something Tiercel had found out years ago when attempting to play the usual childhood pranks on his friend—or even to sneak out of a shared room in the middle of the night. Harrier said that if you had older brothers, you learned to sleep lightly. He was fully awake now.

  “So?” He sounded irritable. But the irritation didn’t come from interrupted sleep, Tiercel knew. It came from the suspicion that Tiercel was about to tell him—once more—something he wasn’t going to understand.

  This was the part that Tiercel hated most. Not the part where he thought he might be dying. Not even the part where he worried that he might be being stalked by a monster out of a wondertale that might kill his best friend, his new friend, and any strangers they might meet. After all, those things were so unbelievable that he managed to forget them most of the time. The part he hated was that he really believed in the High Magick and Harrier really didn’t. No matter how many fires he saw Tiercel light just by looking at them. It was as if Tiercel had accidentally stepped around a corner and found himself in a completely different world, one from which he could see his old world, but wasn’t a part of it anymore. His world had become . . . different. No matter how much he explained things that seemed logical and ordinary to him now, even reasonable
, Harrier just shook his head, like a bull trying to drive away a fly. It was driving the two of them apart.

  “So . . . I think my visions are changing. Or else I’m having more of them. And different kinds.”

  Harrier sighed. “Well, I guess these are better than the other ones, if you can’t remember them. But you said ‘something’s coming.’ What?”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

  “That’s just great.”

  Simera walked over to them, her hooded sleeping-robe wrapped tightly around her.

  “The forest is quiet,” she offered.

  “It’s the only thing that is,” Harrier said in disgust. He reached for his pants and shook them thoroughly, then began to put them on. “How long until dawn?”

  Simera glanced at the sky, reading the time by the position of the stars. “A couple of hours. You should go back to sleep.”

  Harrier simply shook his head, reaching for his tunic.

  BISOCHIM was so certain that his spell had worked that he did not look to check its results for many days.

  To send the cold into the north had required him to draw greatly upon Saravasse’s power, and though she always yielded to his will—as she must—she had begged him not to do it.

  Other spells—to turn the Sandwind, to bring water to the wells, to cause the desert plants to bear or bring game to his nets—those she gave her power to gladly. She had even helped him build this fortress without complaint. But she was unwilling to do the things that he knew would keep her safe. It was frustrating. For that reason alone Bisochim had delayed, and delayed again, in seeking out the proof of the success of his spell. Yet at last prudence had required it, even though Bisochim was certain of his success. The desert taught its children not to assume.

  On the seventh day after he had sent the cold into the north, in the innermost chamber of his fortress, Bisochim set out to see what would be.

  It was not a simple Scrying Spell, such as he had cast all his life, using date wine and desert lily and a pool of still water. This spell was far more powerful, calling for blood and powdered bone. Nor did it show him, as the Scrying Spell did, what he might need to see in the world as it was. It showed him the shape of the world to come.

  THERE were many wellsprings within his fortress, for when he had first built it, the desert Wildmage had delighted in his newfound power to summon water from beneath the living rock at will. Fountains filled the courtyards, wasting water into the desert air, for by his magic Bisochim had procured an inexhaustible supply of the desert’s most precious element. But here, in the deepest room of his fortress, was a special pool.

  The room itself was one he had found, not made. Its walls and ceiling were a domed bubble of smoky glass, cast up from the Lake of Fire at some time in the unimaginable past. He had smoothed the floor, though he had made no other changes, and in the center of the chamber he had called up a small, perfectly circular, pool of water from the deep earth. The pool was still and black, and he used it for no purpose but his magic.

  Despite being surrounded by fire, the glass-walled chamber was cool, for it was deep beneath the surface of the earth. Bisochim entered, crowned in Coldfire, and the pale blue-white light reflected off the myriad cracks and bubbles in the walls, making the whole chamber glitter until it appeared as if he were not beneath the earth, but beneath the stars. He knelt before the pool, arranging what he would need. If he had been successful—as he was certain he had—the vision he would see would change.

  But when he sifted the bonemeal across the surface of the unmoving black water, and starred the now-pale surface with drops of his blood, the vision that rose up before him was unchanged. His enemy still lived.

  Bisochim paced the chamber in angry confusion.

  How could this be?

  His enemy, he knew, was weak, while he was powerful.

  His spell had been strong.

  It should have worked.

  But it hadn’t, and wondering why it hadn’t would not save Saravasse or avert the terrible future he saw: fire and pain and marching armies and her death. He closed his eyes. He would waste no more time in wondering why what was, was. That was as useless as weeping over the dead. One could not change the truth. One could only change the future. He had been trying to change the future for years.

  For years the vision had been the same.

  He stood upon the ramparts of the Lake of Fire, looking out over the sand. Below him, two vast armies galloped toward each other, their weapons glittering in the sun. One was his. One belonged to the Enemy. He raised his hands, summoning up the Sandwind. It was their only hope: it would destroy the Enemy’s army.

  But it would also destroy his own.

  He heard Saravasse scream, and knew, in that terrible moment, that an army of merely human warriors was not the Enemy’s only weapon. . . .

  No. That day must not come to pass. The Enemy must be destroyed now, while he was still foolish and weak. Before he had gathered his army. Before he had found Bisochim’s fortress. Before he attempted to keep Bisochim from restoring the Balance.

  “Do not be either too quick or too slow. Too much thought is as great a flaw as too little.”

  Suddenly the words of The Book of Sun came to him, making him pause. The future had not changed.

  But what if he’d succeeded? What if his spell had worked, and the future still had not changed? What if he had more than one Enemy?

  Bisochim groaned in exasperation, running his hands through his long black hair. The work to bring the Balance back into alignment once again—without allowing it to slide over toward the Dark, of course—was painstaking, and took all his concentration. He could not spend his time seeking out the Enemies of the Balance and destroying them one by one.

  He needed an ally.

  TO create an artificial being that would do his bidding was not beyond the skill and power of a Dragon-bonded Wildmage. But such creatures lacked the imagination that Bisochim suspected would be needed to track down and destroy all the Enemies of the Balance as they presented themselves.

  In the Lands Beyond The Mountains there were many Shining-folk. But he was not certain that any of them had the power for this task. Nor was he entirely certain he could trust them. A Balance was a delicate thing. Something long out of true would not, necessarily, seek to be set true again. Rather, it would seek to remain as it was, even if that was in . . . imbalance.

  Fortunately, there was another way. Difficult, but barely possible.

  In the time before first the Elves, then Men, had taken up the Keeping of the Balance through the service of the Wild Magic, the land had resounded to the interplay of Elemental Forces far greater than any power that might be wielded by the races that had lived between Sand and Stars. The races that had worshiped at the Shrines had observed them, given them names, and called upon them for aid. The Elves had worshiped the Starry Hunt. Men had worshiped the Stag King and the Mare Queen.

  The Firesprites—long vanished—had worshipped the Fire-crown. Here, where Bisochim now made his home, had once been the Firesprite Shrine. And something of the Firecrown must remain.

  To waken a god, even a dead one, was a delicate task, yet it was one Bisochim preferred to attempting to create an artificial creature to seek out and destroy his Enemy. And best of all, though Saravasse would know what he had done, it could be accomplished without drawing upon her power, for even the shadow of a dead god contained all the power he would need.

  PROPERLY, he should call the Firecrown at noon of the Longest Day, but he dared not wait. Cloaked in stored magic, Bisochim walked across the surface of the Lake of Fire until he stood over the spot where once, thousands upon thousands of years before, a race of beings whose shape he could not even imagine had danced and sang in communion with the being he was about to summon. His offering was a carafe of perfume. As soon as it left the protection of his spells, it exploded in a burst of flame.

  The ancient words he had learned in his quest for knowledge left Bi
sochim’s lips in a whisper. Even cloaked in the most powerful spells he knew, the heat was punishing. He could not stay here long.

  One . . . calls . . .

  It was not the Firecrown Itself. It could not be. At best, it was the Shrine’s memory of the Firecrown, wakened into life by Bisochim’s power. But it was the echo of a Greater Power, and he hoped it would be enough. For Saravasse must live, and so her enemies must die. When he felt the Shrine’s power begin to waken, Bisochim poured into that awakening all he knew of the Enemy, and all his will that the Enemy—in all its shifting guises—must be stopped. He felt a flicker of interest from beneath the fire.

  A . . . test? . . .

  “Yes!” he said aloud. “The Enemy is unworthy! Test him and see for yourself!”

  So I shall, Child of Water.

  As Bisochim’s shields began to crumble against the punishing onslaught of the searing heat, he felt a sudden sense of absence. The Firecrown—or its echo—was gone. But he was content. It would seek out his Enemy. If the Enemy had survived Cold, he would not survive Fire.

  Nor would any who followed in his footsteps.

  Six

  The Temple at Sentarshadeen

  AND THIS IS the River Road into Sentarshadeen. We’re two miles outside the gates.” Simera stopped and indicated the milepost with a flourish.

  “No bandits? No tigers? No wolves? No falling trees? No sudden blizzards? No unusually irritable rabbits? No—” Harrier seemed willing to go on listing possible dangers for quite some time. Tiercel reached out and swatted at him.

  “Not even bad dreams,” he said with a sigh. And no Wildmages, either. Which was pretty unfair.

  The Temple of the Light taught that the Wildmages kept the Balance and would always show up if there was a real need. And sometimes they showed up anyway, when there wasn’t a real need, to do things that were just nice, but not really vital. Or so he’d always heard. And certainly saving his life—back when he’d been a baby—had been nice, and certainly his parents had appreciated it and so did he (or he would have if he’d been a little older) but he couldn’t really see how it was vital to the Great Balance. Unless it had been vital to the Great Balance for him to live to grow up so that he could get into trouble now. Which didn’t really make a lot of sense to Tiercel. He’d been thinking about that a lot, on his way to Sentarshadeen, and he couldn’t see how the Great Balance could have any use for an untrained (and untrainable) High Mage.