The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained

by James Mallory

  The bear’s first tracks were easy to follow. The large clawed paws had dug deep gouges into the earth as it ran from the luminous globe of blue fire that inexorably followed it wherever it went. It ran in a straight line, and Simera had no trouble tracking it.

  Then the tracks . . . stopped.

  At the place where the tracks stopped, they were about five miles away from the oak grove where Tiercel had cast his spell, at the far side of a low hill. And though Simera circled the area for almost an hour before giving up, she found no further trace of tracks.

  And Tiercel’s MageLight was nowhere to be seen.

  “That’s good, right?” Harrier asked, as they turned their horses’s heads north once more.

  It was midafternoon by now. Between finding and catching the horses, and tracing the bear, they’d lost most of the day. But it was hard to see that it mattered; Tiercel was the only one who felt as if they were running out of time. And even he couldn’t say exactly how. Or why. He had to stop someone he’d never met from doing something he wasn’t quite sure of. And he wasn’t actually certain whether that event lay in the past or the future, and he really didn’t know why he knew about it at all.

  “The bear just vanished?” Simera answered irritably. “Bears don’t just vanish, Harrier. They wander off. If it had stopped running, it would still have left tracks. And if you dare suggest that it did leave tracks, and I just couldn’t find them—”

  “Nobody’s suggesting that, Simera,” Tiercel said quickly, although he suspected that those would have been the next words out of Harrier’s mouth. “But . . . maybe the bear did just vanish.”

  Simera rounded on him, looking very much as if she’d like to hit him.

  “Think about it,” he said quickly. “I mean . . . you said it didn’t look like a normal bear. And . . . wasn’t there only one set of tracks?” He hadn’t realized what he was going to say until he said it, but it seemed so right.

  “The ones leading away,” Simera said, looking stunned as the meaning of his words sank in. “Herdsman’s Path—how could I have been such a fool! Not a single print leading down to the trees. Only the ones leading away.”

  “Another thing like the inn,” Harrier said. His voice was flat.

  “I guess,” Tiercel said. But he wasn’t quite sure. Somehow, this attack hadn’t seemed quite the same.

  “Magic ice-storms, vanishing bears . . . I hope we find this Wildmage of yours soon, Tiercel,” Simera said. “I’m not sure I can take any more strangeness.”

  “Oh, well, about that. I sort of have an idea,” Tiercel said.

  “DO you really think that would be such a good idea . . . ?” Simera said doubtfully, once Tiercel had explained his plan.

  “No,” Harrier said flatly. “It wouldn’t. He almost burned down his family’s house in Armethalieh the last time he tried anything like that,” he explained.

  “That was completely different,” Tiercel said.

  “You started a fire!” Harrier said. “Will you look around? We’re in the middle of grazing lands. Do you want to start a fire here? We’d never put it out. Not to mention that a grass fire would cause a stampede that would probably kill us all,” Harrier added. His expansive gesture took in the herd of cattle on the horizon.

  “I wouldn’t start a fire,” Tiercel protested.

  “You think. You hope. You have no real idea what would actually happen if you did another . . . spell,” Harrier said forcefully. His voice was loud enough to make Lightning flick his ears nervously.

  “Okay. You’re right about that. But I don’t see any Wildmages around here. Do you? So we go north, cross the Mystrals, reach Ysterialpoerin—in another couple of moonturns—don’t find a Wildmage there, either—keep going—cross the Bazrahil Range, go through the Gatekeeper Pass—if we’re lucky enough to manage to get there before winter sets in—cross the mountains of Pelashia’s Veil, and reach the Elven Lands. Then what? It will certainly be winter by then, and you know that we won’t be able to make it back through the Bazrahils in winter. And the Elves won’t want us in the Elven Lands, and do you know what? I bet we still won’t have found a single Wildmage!”

  The other two were staring at him in astonishment. Harrier, because Tiercel simply never lost his temper. And Simera, well, she was just staring.

  “What else am I supposed to do?” Tiercel finished quietly.

  Harrier just shook his head.

  “Do you always set things on fire when you cast your spells?” Simera asked, after a long pause.

  Tiercel just shrugged. Not counting MageLight and Fire—simple “baby spells” according to all the books—he’d cast exactly one spell deliberately in his entire life, and wasn’t really looking forward to trying it again.

  “You did back in Armethalieh. And at the inn,” Harrier said, although Tiercel wasn’t really sure that was true—and anyway, if you were actually casting Fire, you shouldn’t be surprised if things caught on fire, should you? Harrier sighed. “Nobody’s gone as far north as the Bazrahils in . . . I don’t know.”

  “Hundreds of years,” Simera said, sounding troubled. “Maybe . . .”

  “Maybe a Wildmage will just show up ?” Harrier’s voice was thick with frustration and anger. “It’s been three moonturns since Kindling, and that’s when Tyr set fire to his bedroom and all this really started.” He glanced at Tiercel, and Tiercel could see exactly what Harrier was thinking. He had always been able to read his friend’s thoughts as easily as he could read a page of print. Harrier hated to have to think, and was slow to make up his mind, but—possibly for that very reason—when he did come to a decision, his decisions were sound ones. Which was a good thing, because it was nearly impossible to get him to change his mind.

  “I know they’re supposed to come when we need them,” Harrier said slowly, reasoning it out. “That’s what the Light teaches. And I guess the Herdsman, too.”

  Simera nodded.

  “But if Tyr doesn’t need one after practically burning down his house, and getting so sick, and having all those dreams, and then something happening at the inn, and now the bear coming, who does? But we haven’t seen one. Maybe . . .” he took a deep breath. “Maybe one isn’t coming.”

  Harrier looked sick at the very thought, and Simera simply looked disbelieving. But it had been almost five days now since the three of them had arrived in Sentarshadeen to find that there was no Wild-mage waiting for Tiercel there, and Tiercel had had time to get used to the idea. The Light taught that everyone must do their best to keep Balance in the world, not rely upon the Wildmages to do it alone.

  The Light gave no gifts without reason.

  Maybe he’d discovered his High Mage gifts so that he could use them.

  It was a frightening thought to think of using the High Magick again—deliberately—but if he did have to use it, well, better here—out in the middle of nowhere—than in the middle of a city.

  “Maybe a Wildmage isn’t going to come along and solve my problems,” Tiercel said carefully. “Maybe I have everything I need to help myself already. If I do, then this spell will work. If not . . .” He shrugged.

  Simera looked around. She was obviously still trying to come to terms with the idea that a Wildmage wouldn’t arrive to offer aid when aid was so obviously needed, but the practical side of her nature won out.

  “What about the fire that comes when you use your magic?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what will happen. I think it was an accident the other times.”

  Simera made a rude noise. “Best be sure. Before you try this stunt of yours, we’ll find a place where you can’t set anything on fire.”

  Harrier shrugged. “I’d rather be safe than dead.”

  AS they traveled north, looking for a location that Simera would deem suitable for Tiercel to make his first attempt at Conjuration, Tiercel looked for something to make into a wand. There was no detailed information about wands in the books he’d found, so he assumed that any wood would
do. He found a willow tree growing by one of the rivers they passed, and, with Harrier’s help, he cut a nice straight length of wood, one that was not too thick. Simera helped him trim and smooth it. They all agreed now that he should practice, though none of the three of them was really certain what it was he was practicing. But the books Tiercel remembered reading back in Armethalieh seemed to imply that the wand was used to draw the sigils in the air as a component of the spellcasting (so were the sword and the staff, but he wasn’t likely to be able to get his hands on either of those any time soon), so he’d thought he’d give it a try. The sigils weren’t actually spells, so practicing them should be fairly harmless.

  The first time he tried using his new wand to draw the sigils in the air, Tiercel dropped it with a shriek.

  “WHAT! What happened?”

  It was evening. Simera and Harrier were gathering firewood a little distance away. Tiercel had balanced his notebook on a convenient flat rock, open to the pages where he’d written down the sigils, and started to draw the first of the sigils.

  “Aleph—”

  And there it was, hanging in the air in pale-colored fire. He’d shrieked in surprise, and his friends had come running. By the time they’d gotten there, it was gone.

  “I—I—I—Look!”

  With shaking hands, Tiercel retrieved his dropped stick—wand—and did it again.

  “Aleph” appeared again, hanging in the air.

  “Well, that’s impressive,” Harrier said in a deceptively-calm voice, watching as the glyph slowly faded away again. “What does it do?”

  “It makes Fire, if I tell it to,” Tiercel said. He drew a shaky breath. “But I didn’t know it would actually appear. Maybe it’s because of the wand.”

  Harrier took the wand from Tiercel’s hand and stared at it suspiciously, then waved it around experimentally before handing it back. “No,” he said, in the tones of one thinking the matter over. “I think it’s you.”

  TIERCEL shooed the two of them back to their wood-gathering and resumed his practice, drawing as many of the sigils in the air as he could: some of them were too complicated for him to manage without more practice. Each one appeared as a different color. They all faded quickly.

  He would have practiced longer, but after a short time he started to feel dizzy and weak again, the same way he had when he’d cast MageLight on the bear. Just as he had back at the inn, and back in his room in Armethalieh.

  In fact—Tiercel was coming to realize—every single time he used the High Magick in any big important way, he got sick. And that didn’t seem right. Magic was supposed to be normal and natural, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t have the Magegift if he wasn’t supposed to use it.

  Unless he really was dying.

  He shook his head. He’d better not let Harrier find out, or the one thing he’d be hoping for was to die sooner. He grinned in spite of himself. And when Old Mother Death showed up, Harrier would be certain to want to fight with her, too.

  Then he sobered. He didn’t want to be sick, and he didn’t want to die, and more than he wanted both of those things, he wanted to know the meaning—and the purpose—of his visions. He hoped they’d find a suitable place to try the Summoning soon.

  That night he dreamed again.

  IN his dream, once more Tiercel was back on the shore of the Lake of Fire. The Fire Woman was there, and as always she seemed familiar and desirable and terrible all at once. The other presence was there as well—the one he could never see—the one who was the true subject of her attention.

  She wanted something from him—the other one. Tiercel only wished he knew what it was. But he didn’t even know what she was. And in the middle of the dream, he never wondered. He only watched in terror as she coaxed the other unseen watcher to come to her, over and over.

  But this time, when he woke up, he realized, for the first time, that he had sensed something of the unseen watcher’s thoughts as well as of the Fire Woman.

  And that he had reason to fear the unseen watcher’s plans as well.

  A sennight’s journey due north brought them onto the Great Plains. The Mystrals were visible in the distance, their highest peaks still covered with snow. Simera would be able to take them through the mountains; it would take them a moonturn, two at most, to reach them.

  Assuming they had to go that far.

  By now their letters would have reached Armethalieh, and their parents knew that they weren’t coming home. Tiercel tried very hard not to think about that. His constant practice with his wand helped distract his thoughts, though he was careful to practice out of sight of the others at all times. The bouts of weakness that came from using his Magegift didn’t fade, and he didn’t want the others to worry. He didn’t know what the problem was, but it didn’t get better, and it didn’t go away. It was as if—each time he used the High Magick—he hit some sort of invisible wall, and afterward, he couldn’t even see the shapes of the glyphs inside his mind. As if whatever fuelled his power to do magic had vanished for a while.

  It was always back by the next evening, though.

  EVER since they’d met up with the bear-that-wasn’t-a-bear, Harrier had done his best to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. Letting the others know what he thought wouldn’t do anybody any good anyway.

  This was crazy. But he didn’t have any better ideas.

  Had there been a Wildmage in Sentarshadeen, that would have solved all their problems. They could have done . . . whatever . . . turned around, gone home, and gone on with their lives.

  They wouldn’t have had to do this. Or maybe gotten to do this. Sometimes Harrier wasn’t sure, even in his own mind, which way he thought of it anymore. If everything hadn’t been so just plain weird, this journey would have actually been fun. He’d spent all his life in a big city next to the ocean, growing up around ships, with the sound of the waves in his ears and the smell of the sea in his nostrils.

  This was nothing like that.

  From Armethalieh to Sentarshadeen they’d traveled through woodlands—nice enough, but just as closed-in as a city, really, when you stopped to think about it. And north of Fort Halacira, the land was cut up by little hills and groves of trees and herds of cattle, so you never really got a sense of how big it was, though he’d never lost his sense of strangeness at not being able to smell or hear the ocean.

  He’d liked it.

  This was what he wanted to do with his life, Harrier realized. Go new places and see newthings. Not just hear about them from the captains of the ships that docked in Armathalieh Harbor, but go and see them himself. And not see them from the deck of a ship, either, but on his own two feet—or at least from horseback. It almost felt like treason, to want to give up the sea so completely, but he guessed he was more like Uncle Alfrin than anybody in the family had ever suspected.

  But when they reached the Great Plains, that was when Harrier truly fell in love with the land.

  AS the gentle rise and fall of the Avribalzar grasslands disappeared behind them, the horizon dropped away, receding to infinity. Here the landscape was as flat as a dish, with nothing between them and the distant Mystrals but the wind.

  It was like riding across the ocean itself. Just as empty. Just as trackless. Ondoladeshiron lay somewhere far to the west, but it was nowhere to be seen. Except for the hawks wheeling through the sky—and a distant glimpse, once, of what Simera said was a Silver Eagle—there was nothing to be seen but summer-yellow grass.

  Of course the Plains were not as empty as they looked. They were home to deer, and wild bulls, herds of free-roaming horses, and hundreds of other animals. Simera’s snares were always full. But they never saw any of them. It was strangely peaceful. And everything would have been perfect, if Tiercel weren’t waving a wand and making things glow in the dark and behaving like something out of a Flowering Fair play, because Harrier just didn’t know what to think about that at all. Especially if a Wildmage really wasn’t going to appear to set things right.

  Al
l his life Harrier had been used to pulling Tiercel out of scrapes. And now this was the biggest scrape ever, and all he could really do was watch as things kept getting worse in new and exciting ways. He didn’t like the idea that the only thing Tiercel could think of to do was cast another spell, because Tiercel was compulsively honest, and if they hadn’t known everything that could go wrong with this Summoning thing a sennight ago, they certainly did now.

  But Harrier also knew that the only alternative was to keep going north the way they were until they either ran into the peaks of Pelashia’s Veil or met up with a Wildmage who might not be coming at all.

  One of the things he really hated to admit (and wouldn’t admit unless there was a really good reason for it, which there rarely was) was that Tiercel was often right about things. Well, more than often. Usually. Even most of the time. He didn’t brag about it, or even make a point of it, and he certainly didn’t draw attention to it. And that didn’t mean that his ideas weren’t pretty half-baked most of the time. But when Tiercel said something like “I think it’s going to rain” or “that dog won’t bite” or “Javiard Kalborn is going to try to pick a fight with you during lunch,” Harrier had learned to pay close attention, because Tiercel was almost always right.

  So when Tiercel had said that a Wildmage might not be coming—because he might already have the power to solve his own problems—Harrier had hated the thought. But he’d listened.

  And he’d hated the idea of Tiercel trying another spell. But he had to admit that he couldn’t think of anything better to try. Magic had caused the problem. Magic had to be the solution.