The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained

by James Mallory

  “SOMEONE’S coming,” Tiercel said.

  He only saw it first because on horseback he was taller than Simera, and because he happened to be looking ahead while Harrier was looking off to the side, marveling once again at the sheer amount of space all around them.

  At Tiercel’s words, Harrier looked to where Tiercel was looking. There was a faint speck on the horizon. Someone on horseback.

  THE lone rider reached them by midday. Because the Plains were so very flat, they had, literally, been watching his approach for hours, seeing him grow from a speck on the horizon to a rider on a roan horse leading a pack mule, with two large red dogs loping lazily along beside the horse’s legs. When the rider got even closer, they could see that the long hair curling from beneath his broad-brimmed hat was as red as the coats of his dogs.

  “Greetings,” he said, reining in and tipping his hat to Tiercel. “It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered a traveler.”

  “Hello,” Tiercel answered. “I’m Tiercel and this is Harrier and Simera. We’re heading north—”

  “To Ysterialpoerin,” Harrier added, since it would seem odd if they didn’t have a destination, and very odd if Tiercel told him the truth.

  But: “Where to?” the stranger asked, just as if Harrier hadn’t spoken.

  The easy pleasant expression on his face didn’t change, and it was plain to Harrier—and, he hoped, to Tiercel—that the stranger wasn’t ignoring the two of them.

  He simply didn’t see them.

  “I thought I’d go to Ysterialpoerin. Have you heard of it?” Tiercel said.

  “Of course. The city has been there for a very long time,” the stranger said. “It might not be the best place for you to go, though.”

  “Really,” Tiercel said noncommittally.

  “Sickness tends to strike there in the summers.”

  “Um, Tyr?” Harrier said.

  Tiercel and the stranger both ignored him.

  Harrier looked at Simera.

  “Does it strike anybody but me as a little odd that this guy doesn’t seem to know that anybody but Tiercel is here?” Harrier said, very loudly.

  “Do you think he’s like the bear?” Simera asked, taking a nervous step backward and switching her tail.

  Tiercel gave them both a determined glare of warning, but Harrier was tired of just sitting there and watching. He kneed Lightning forward, determined to make the stranger notice him, or ride off, or . . . something.

  TIERCEL did his best to block out the sound of Harrier’s voice. There were times when he really admired Harrier’s determination and courage, and there were other times—like now—when all Tier-cel wanted to do was dig a really deep pit and drop Harrier at the bottom of it.

  He kept his eyes fixed on the stranger’s face.

  He was pretty sure the stranger was exactly like the bear, which meant they were all in deep trouble. But for some reason, this time their trouble hadn’t shown up trying to kill them or rip them to pieces, but trying to trick them in a way that was so pathetically obvious a child could see through it. At least, he was pretty sure that was what was going on.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said to the stranger.

  “You can never be too careful,” the stranger said. “I have some medicines in my pack. They’ve been very useful to me in the past. I’d be happy to share them with you.”

  “That isn’t necessary,” Tiercel said firmly. “You might need them yourself later. I’ll be fine.” He was careful not to mention his friends again.

  The stranger was persistent—far more persistent than a chance-met stranger making a casual offer of aid ought to be. He even opened his pack and brought out the medicine that he was offering to Tiercel. The vials glittered in the sunlight like the rarest of jewels. They were so beautiful that Tiercel was tempted to take them for the sake of their beauty alone; their contents glowed in all the colors of the rainbow, and the bottles themselves were tiny works of art. He was actually reaching for them when a thread of suspicion stopped him.

  Why would someone keep medicine in bottles like these?

  For that matter, why would medicine look like this? Tiercel had been taking medicines all his life for various ailments. It was usually some shade of brown. Not green and blue and purple and red. He withdrew his hand and refused again.

  “YOU’RE quite certain?” the stranger asked at last. “You don’t want the medicines? You might get sick in Ysterialpoerin. And the bottles are very pretty.”

  “I’m sure,” Tiercel said evenly.

  He’d never been so afraid in his life. It was the way the stranger talked. He spoke so reasonably, but the things he said bordered on nonsense. He couldn’t really expect to trick someone, talking that way. It was as if the stranger were crazy, or didn’t care whether he fooled Tiercel or not. Or—despite what he looked like—as if he were something farther from being human than Cloud was, or even the hawk circling lazily above them in the sky, and though he was doing his best to impersonate one of Tiercel’s kind, it wasn’t much of a best.

  “All right then,” the stranger said.

  And just like that it was over. The stranger dug his heels into his horse’s sides. It trotted past Tiercel, with the mule following along behind, lugging at the end of its tether. The dogs loped eagerly afterward, making wide circles around horse and mule.

  When they had passed, Tiercel felt as if he’d been sitting on Cloud’s back without moving for hours. He stretched and sighed.

  “I’m glad we—” he began, turning to the others.

  He stopped.

  His friends were gone.

  HE barely had time to begin to panic when he located them. Simera was only a few yards away, slightly behind and to the right of him, standing as if she’d fallen asleep. She’d dropped Thunder’s lead-rope, and the sturdy black pony had drifted away from her and was grazing as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  It took him a little longer to find Harrier, but he finally managed. Harrier was several miles ahead, still mounted, but slumped forward in Lightning’s saddle in a way that suggested that he, too, might be asleep. Tiercel swallowed hard and rode toward Simera. She woke as soon as he approached, straightening with a grunt of surprise and staring at him with wide blue eyes.

  “Harrier tried to attack the red-haired man,” she said, looking around in confusion.

  “I don’t think he was a man,” Tiercel said. “But I managed to get him to go away.” He pointed into the distance, where Harrier sat on his unmoving mount. “Let’s go get Harrier.”

  HARRIER was much harder to wake than Simera had been. Tier-cel thought it might be because he’d actually touched the stranger (Simera said she thought he had, though Tiercel hadn’t even seen him ride forward), but for whatever reason, it took dumping him from Lightning’s back to return him to consciousness.

  HARRIER stared up at both of them indignantly. Lightning nosed at him optimistically, obviously hoping for food.

  The last thing he remembered was riding toward the redheaded stranger who could see neither him nor Simera. And now he was staring up at the sky, lying flat on his back in the grass, and from the position of the sun it was a couple of hours later than it had been the last time he’d looked, and he had no idea how he’d gotten here.

  He didn’t like the explanation at all when he got it. No one who worked around ships—and Harrier had done that, in one way or another, ever since he’d been old enough to be of use down at the Port—was a stranger to the tales ships crews told themselves and each other. Some were lighthearted, some were heartbreakingly grim, all filled with inexplicable events and all sworn—by their tellers—to be absolutely true. He’d never expected something out of a True Sea Story to happen to him. And on dry land, besides.

  “So he’s the bear—or he’s like the bear—and he wanted to show up and offer you a lot of medicine in fancy bottles because he wanted to kill you. And he couldn’t see me or Simera because he’s magic?”

  He gl
ared at Tiercel.

  “If I actually knew the answer to that, Har, or what I was doing, or why we’re here, I’d tell you,” Tiercel said with irritated patience.

  What Harrier knew was that he was getting very tired of running into things that made no sense at all but were apparently dangerous that he couldn’t hit.

  Of course the stranger was gone when they looked for him, though he couldn’t have ridden out of sight in the short time they’d been distracted.

  “THIS looks like the best place we’re likely to find for what Tiercel wants to do,” Simera said a few hours later.

  Harrier looked around.

  They’d come to a break in the endless sea of grass. It was a wide flat expanse of gravel and bare earth. Down the center of it trickled a narrow stream. At its edges, the grass was cropped short, heavily grazed, though of course there were no animals in sight. After what she’d told them about the possible consequences, neither of the boys wanted to set a grassfire, and Tiercel couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t, when he cast his spell.

  By now, with the benefit of Simera’s constant patient teaching, Harrier could recognize the tracks of the animals that had visited the water’s edge. Hares and deer, and even birds. As they approached the stream, the horses pulled forward, eager to get to the water.

  “A streambed,” Tiercel said.

  “It runs full during the Spring Melt, and during the autumn rains, but at this time of year it dries down to a trickle,” Simera confirmed. “There’s nothing to burn in the riverbed, and at this time of year you won’t need to worry about being flooded out, either.”

  “But there’s water if we need it,” Harrier said, swinging down from Lightning’s saddle and leading the horse forward. The bay gelding plunged his nose into the water, blowing and slobbering as he drank. The stream was shallow, but it ran strongly.

  Cloud and Thunder quickly joined him.

  “Here, then,” Tiercel said, nodding.

  “WHAT do you want us to do?” Harrier asked.

  By now it was late afternoon; they would have been stopping to make camp for the evening in a few hours anyway. They’d set up camp with the ease of long practice: the horses unsaddled and hobbled and set to graze, their gear set out where they could get at it easily, and the fire started for tea and soup. On the Plains, there was no firewood to be had, and Simera had advised saving their charcoal for occasions when there was nothing else to burn. Dried dung made an adequate—if far too fragrant—fuel, and they’d been gathering it whenever they came across it.

  “Well, nothing, pretty much,” Tiercel answered, shrugging. He looked down at the wand in his hands—just a stick, really, though by now it had been worn smooth by constant handling. “I’m going to walk up the streambed a little ways so the horses don’t spook. I figure . . . there was a spell in the Library called MageShield. I think I can cast it. It’s supposed to protect the High Mage, though I’m not really sure from what, but after what happened earlier, I think it would be a good idea to use it. So I’ll cast that first, then do the rest. I’ll need the lanterns. It’s supposed to be candles, but the lanterns will have to do.” He shrugged again.

  Harrier nodded.

  He didn’t like this at all—especially after what had happened earlier. But their encounter with the traveler—whatever he’d been—only underscored the fact that there were things coming after them—or at least after Tiercel—and if they didn’t figure out some way to deal with those things soon, well, Tyr might as well have stayed home in Armethalieh and kept getting sicker.

  He and Simera watched as Tiercel put the six lanterns into one of their bags, picked up the bag, and began to walk along the creekbed away from them.

  It all seemed very quiet and ordinary.

  “I guess we wait,” Harrier said unhappily.

  THEY could still see Tiercel clearly when he stopped. There was no reason not to watch. He set the lanterns down in a circle, looked up at the sun—gauging direction, Harrier realized—and then there was a flicker as all the lanterns came alight at once. Even in the bright sunlight of midafternoon, Harrier could see the pale spark of flame inside the lanterns’ glass cases.

  “I wonder why he needs the lanterns?” he said quietly.

  Simera shook her head. “He keeps saying that his High Magick has rules. Maybe the lanterns are a part of that. It sounds very complicated.”

  “I suppose that’s why nobody does it any more,” Harrier answered. Why use magic to light a lantern when flint and steel were so much easier? And anybody could use those, not just somebody who was born with this Magegift of Tiercel’s.

  He wondered if he should stop staring, and at least pretend that he thought everything was going to be fine, but he couldn’t. And neither, he saw, could Simera.

  He saw Tiercel look around again. Tiercel was holding his workbook in his other hand. He tucked his wand under his arm and paged through the book for a moment, then closed it and set it at his feet. Then he took his wand into his hand and began to draw in the air.

  Since that first night, Tiercel had never let the two of them watch him practice when he drew the magic letters, so Harrier and Simera had no idea what to expect. They saw the air fill with colored lines, layer after layer of them, color building on color, simply hanging in the air. Simera gave a soft gasp of wonder at the sight.

  Suddenly a pale purple globe began to appear around Tiercel. At first it was so faint they weren’t certain they saw it at all, but in a matter of heartbeats it had grown so bright that Tiercel was invisible.

  Then it vanished like a popped soap bubble, and Tiercel was lying on the ground, not moving.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen!” Harrier said with frightened certainty.

  He began to run.

  Eight

  Gifts and New Beginnings

  SIMERA GOT THERE first, of course—four legs were faster than two—and was kneeling awkwardly beside Tiercel by the time Harrier reached him.

  “He’s fainted,” she said tersely. “Get some water.”

  Harrier did as he was told, bringing water from the stream in his cupped hands and dashing it into Tiercel’s face. But though that caused Tiercel to groan and stir, it didn’t really revive him.

  Harrier desperately wanted to ask what had happened, but the only one of the three of them who might possibly know the answer to that was lying unconscious on the ground.

  “When he fell out of a tree, he was just like this,” Harrier said, taking a deep breath. Panic wouldn’t help anything. “He’d hit his head. He was okay after a few minutes.”

  Tiercel didn’t look as if he were dying, Harrier told himself firmly. On the docks, you couldn’t avoid seeing death. Accidents happened. He’d seen a man crushed to death when a crane slipped, once, as well as seeing plenty of broken bones and hard knocks—and getting a few himself. Tiercel’s color was good. The two of them had both started to tan pretty dark, but beneath it, his skin hadn’t gone grayish or flushed or turned any other peculiar color. He wasn’t sweating hard. If not for the magic—and the fact that Harrier had seen him standing out in the middle of nothing a moment before, he’d just have figured Tiercel had been hit with something.

  Or fell out of a tree that wasn’t there.

  A few minutes later Tiercel opened his eyes and blinked at them. “Tired,” he said, closing them again.

  “Dammit, Tyr!” Harrier snarled. He kept himself from shaking his friend with an effort.

  “I don’t know what’s happened, but we’d better get him back to the camp,” Simera said.

  AT Simera’s urging, Harrier lifted Tiercel onto her back. She assured him that she was much stronger than she might look, and perfectly capable of carrying Tiercel the short distance to the camp.

  When they reached it, there was someone there.

  The old woman looked up from the brazier as they approached. She was squatting beside it, poking at the contents of a saucepan—not one of theirs—with a wooden spoon.

&nbs
p; “Youth,” she said calmly, “is far too impatient. Another moon-turn—two at the most—and I would have reached Armethalieh. You could have waited there in perfect comfort and safety for me. Or even Sentarshadeen, if you insisted on a bit of an adventure. But Armethalieh, I think, would have been safer. Yes, indeed. But youth never listens. Always in such a hurry. Hmph!”

  Simera made a choking noise.

  “Don’t do anything,” Harrier said warningly. Though what he could do to stop her—if she had the same sort of powers as the last traveler they’d encountered on the Plains—he had no idea at all.

  The old woman made a rude noise and rose from her squatting position. Though she stood tall and straight, she was a tiny thing. The top of her head barely came to Harrier’s shoulder.

  She wore the wide-brimmed hat, long vest, and full split-skirts of the Mountainfolk, and the durable homespun was faded to shades of dun and grey by hard use and long wear. Her hair was white with age, pulled back and braided firmly into a coil at the nape of her neck. The only spot of color about her was a bright red scarf knotted about her throat.

  “Do nothing? When you have been doing nothing but searching for me for sennights? Shall I take Mouse and go home, then?” she demanded mockingly, gesturing toward the small grey donkey that browsed contentedly beside the horses and Thunder.

  “You’re a Wildmage?” Simera asked hopefully.

  “I am. And it’s entirely your own fault that you’ve run into enough misfortune to doubt that fact. As I said, Harrier Gillain, if you and Tiercel had simply waited for me in Armethalieh, you wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

  “But . . . We didn’t know you were coming,” Harrier protested weakly. “And who are you?”

  “Such courtly manners from a son of the Portmaster!” the woman scoffed. “I am Wildmage Roneida. And you might as well put your friend down on the blankets, Simera. I’m sure your back is beginning to ache.”