Harrier was definitely going to ask Roneida about all that in the morning. From a safe distance. Although actually he wouldn’t even mind getting hit, so long as he got answers as well. She really hadn’t told them all that much, though she’d made Tiercel feel better. And the stew had been good.
Eventually he exhausted himself with unanswered questions, and slept.
TIERCEL awoke feeling better than he had in a very long time. The nagging almost-a-headache he’d had for moonturns was gone and he felt alert and wide-awake, even before his first cup of morning tea. He even felt cheerful, which was pretty weird, considering that they’d finally met the Wildmage he’d been looking for ever since he and Harrier had left Armethalieh, and she’d basically told him that she couldn’t help.
But at least she had told him who could, and that was more than he’d known before. And since she’d done so much for them already, maybe he could persuade her to tell them something more today. Like how she’d known where to find them. And why she’d brought them the things she had. She must have brought those particular things for a reason, after all.
He sat up in his blankets, yawning and stretching, and looked around. Harrier was still an unconscious lump in his blankets, and Tiercel smiled. It was nice to be awake first for a change. Even Simera was asleep. He wondered—not for the first time—if it was uncomfortable to sleep standing up. He supposed it was natural, if you were a Centaur. After all, they had four legs, and wouldn’t fall over. He looked further.
Roneida and her donkey were gone.
“Hey!” he yelped, throwing his bedclothes back. His good mood of a moment before had vanished utterly. He felt betrayed. He’d expected Ronieda to be here in the morning. He’d expected her to stay with them.
Simera jerked upright with a huff and a gurgle, and Harrier came thrashing out of his blankets as if an entire army of Endarkened were about to come rushing across the Plains.
“What? What is it?” he demanded, grabbing for the sword Roneida had left them. And that was the single scariest thing Tier-cel had seen in the last moonturn. Harrier with a sword. Harrier was the Portmaster’s son, for the Light’s sake!
“Roneida’s gone. She’s left us,” Tiercel said tightly.
“She did what?” At least Harrier’s eyes were all the way open now, and he’d put the sword down. He hadn’t even managed to get it all the way out of its sheath.
“She isn’t here,” Tiercel repeated. He stood up and looked around, half-hoping she might be hiding somewhere, but he already knew what he’d find. She wasn’t here, and he couldn’t see her anywhere on the horizon.
“She left?” Harrier sputtered.
She had. And—obviously—she was not only using Wildmage magic to conceal herself—because otherwise they should still be able to see her in the distance—but, as they soon found, had apparently used Wildmage magic to conceal her tracks as well, because Simera could find no trace of either her or the donkey.
VOICES carried a great distance over the High Plains. It took no great enchantment—though Roneida carried many with her—to hear the sounds of dismay at the awakening camp less than half a mile behind her.
She stopped for a moment, savoring the cool of the morning. Even through the thin fabric of the tarnkappa that concealed her, she could feel the morning breeze.
This was definitely the best part of the day.
Behind her, Mouse waited patiently. She could not see him—he was veiled, just as she was, in an all-concealing shroud of magic—but he was well-trained, and would follow the pull of the lead-rope even though he could not see his mistress.
A hard Price, and a complicated one, but as soon as she had gotten safely away from the children, it would be paid in full. She thought she would go to Sentarshadeen. She hadn’t seen Maelgwn in years. He would certainly want to know that the Fire-Crowned had reached her safely.
With as much safety as there was left in the world.
Praise the Gods of the Wild Magic that the Fire-Crowned was as ignorant as he was! It had been hard indeed not to tell him all she knew—little as that was—but she could not help him gain his Mastery, and without it, ignorance of his peril—true innocence—was his only shield.
Tiercel and his friends were worried, and that was good. But they obviously had no inkling of precisely how serious a matter it was when the Wild Magic called back into the world the ancient War Magic that had been created in the Light’s hour of darkest peril to save all that lived from the Endarkened.
Should they realize it—truly and properly understand it—they would do what any sensible well-brought-up youngsters would do.
They would go to their elders for help.
They would spend time trying to convince others of the danger they were all in.
They would stay somewhere they thought was safe.
And—since there was nowhere safe, and, even if they could convince someone in Armethalieh that Tiercel had the powers of a High Mage, nobody there would have the least idea of what to do about that—it was far better for him to be doing precisely what he was doing now.
A slim hope was better than no hope at all.
Roneida tugged on Mouse’s lead-rope and continued walking in the direction of Sentarshadeen.
“BREAKFAST?” Tiercel said with a sigh.
Simera was angry at not having found a single trace of Roneida’s tracks. She’d said the Wildmage had just appeared the day before, and apparently she’d vanished the same way today.
Harrier was just as irritated, but Harrier didn’t particularly like surprises, good or bad.
“I suppose,” he agreed, sitting down beside Tiercel with a sigh. “I thought she was going to go with us to the Elves.”
“I guess she had something else to do,” Tiercel offered.
“What?” Simera demanded. “What could have been more important?”
“Than nursemaiding us?” Tiercel asked with a wry grin. “Well, think of it this way. We can’t be in very much danger if she just went off and left us, can we?”
“That’s not what she said last night,” Harrier grumbled, reaching for the teapot.
“She said we might run into trouble,” Tiercel said, thinking back. “I guess she thinks we can handle it. And at least she won’t keep hitting you.”
Harrier rubbed the back of his head reflexively. “I bet she teaches school back in Vardirvoshanon,” he said.
“So what do we do now?” Simera asked.
Tiercel shrugged. “Find the Elves. And I guess we stop at that town she suggested and buy a cart for Thunder, first.”
WINDY Meadows was—so Simera told them—a typical plains town: little more than a long street and some holding pens for cattle. There were a few settlements nearby—“near” being a relative term—for Windy Meadows was one of the towns along the road that led through the Northern Pass through the Mystrals. Though most of the traffic went by way of the more southerly route that led close to Ondoladeshiron, the traffic along the northern road kept towns like Windy Meadows well-supplied, and this early in the year, the mountain passes would be clear.
The sun was setting as they reached the town, and despite Tiercel’s uneasy protests, Simera and Harrier were both looking forward to spending the night at whatever local accommodation the town might provide.
“I’m sure Roneida’s magic will protect us,” Simera said hopefully.
“And . . . have you noticed that the whatever-they-are’s have been getting, well, less harmful?” Harrier said, frowning. “That cold-snap killed a lot of things. And the bear could have killed us. But that guy only tried to talk you to death.”
“He was . . .” Tiercel stopped, sighing. There was no way to explain to the other two—especially Harrier—that the stranger had been as dangerous—and maybe more dangerous—than the cold-snap. Not because of what he’d done. But because of what Tiercel had sensed that he could do.
He shrugged. “I guess one night won’t hurt.”
“ARE you sure it’
s supposed to be this deserted?” Tiercel asked, a short time later.
He was standing in the center of the High Street of Windy Meadows. It was also the only street, so far as any of them could tell: a wide dirt track with a line of stone-and-brick buildings on either side. At the far end of the High Street were barns, cattle pens, and a wind-driven pump. The pump’s sails spun strongly in the brisk wind of evening, making a faint steady clacking sound. It was the only sound there was, other than the wind and the sound of their own voices.
“No,” Harrier said.
“Roneida said she’d been here,” Simelda began uncertainly.
“Did she?” Harrier said. “Or did she just say we should come here? I’ve been thinking about what she said, and it wasn’t much.”
“But . . . she was a Wildmage,” Simera said. “She knew so much. About all of us.”
Harrier just looked at her.
“Whatever—I mean whoever she was, I don’t think she was one of the Bad Things,” Tiercel said.
“ ‘Bad Things’?” Harrier said mockingly. “Tyr, how old are you?”
Tiercel flushed. “Well, what would you call them?”
Harrier’s smile faded. “You’re right. Bad Things it is. So. She was a Wildmage. And she sent us here, and, if she’d come from Vardirvoshanon, she must have stopped here on the way, right?”
“So it must have been perfectly safe then,” Simera said. She didn’t sound completely certain. “But . . . there don’t seem to be any people here,” she added.
“Hello?” Tiercel shouted. His voice echoed through the dusk.
“Don’t do that!” Harrier said, sounding as if he’d very much like to swear. He was good at it, Tiercel knew, though he didn’t do it often. Either the situation wasn’t bad enough for bad language, he said—quoting his father, who was mild-spoken for all his loudness—or it was much too bad for it. Tiercel suspected they were heading for the second category. Fast.
“Didn’t you say the stranger kept warning you about plague?” Simera asked.
“In Ysterialpoerin,” Tiercel said, sliding down off of Cloud’s back. The big bay gelding stood placidly. Whatever had happened here apparently wasn’t upsetting to horses, though that wasn’t really reassuring. He walked Cloud over to the nearest hitching post and looped his reins through one of the rings.
“What are you doing?” Harrier asked.
“I’m going to take a look around.”
“So—in case it is plague—you can catch it and die. Great idea,” Harrier grumbled.
“I’ll take my wand,” Tiercel said mildly.
“Even better. You can dazzle the plague with colored lights and then pass out. In that case, I’m coming with you. And I’m taking my sword.”
“So you can hit the plague over the head. Great.”
“Whatever’s wrong here,” Simera said firmly, “I’m bound by law to find out what it is and help if I can. So you might as well stop arguing and start looking around.”
IT took Harrier a moment to get the sword and belt down from the back of Lightning’s saddle and buckle them into place. The unfamiliar weight dragged at his hip, but Roneida had been right; if nothing else, he could use it as a club. And this place worried him.
He was almost certain Roneida wouldn’t have knowingly sent them into danger. But it had taken them all of today to reach here, and they’d met her in the middle of yesterday, and she’d been on foot, not on horseback. She would have been traveling more slowly. So even if she had stopped here, it would have been three or four days ago, at least, since she’d been here, and possibly more. A lot could happen in that time.
He tied Lightning beside Cloud and followed Tiercel.
THEY started with the inn. It was the largest building, and the doors stood open.
“We should have brought the lanterns,” Harrier said dubiously. The common room was dark. And empty.
“I think I can—” Tiercel said.
Before either of them could stop him, he sketched a shape in the air with the wand. A ball of blue light appeared, about the size of a loaf of bread, and floated up over his head. He sighed with relief.
“I’m all right.” He looked at them. “I could make one for each of you, I think.”
“Oh, no,” Harrier said hastily. “Why don’t we just stay together?”
They went inside.
“Hello?” Tiercel called again.
The inn stood empty, and this should have been its busiest time.
The light over Tiercel’s head—Harrier tried not to think about that, with some success—was brighter indoors. The inn’s common room was completely dark; there were windows, but they had shutters, not glass, and the shutters were closed and latched. Simera crossed to them—moving carefully; this place had not been designed for Centaurs—opening them.
Tables, benches. No people.
The benches were pushed back, as if people had gotten to their feet suddenly. There were mugs and plates on the tables and all of them contained half-eaten meals. Harrier dipped his finger into a bowl of stew. Cold and congealed, but not dried up. Not like something that had been sitting here, say, four days or more. So it hadn’t happened before Roneida had been here. And the Wild Magic hadn’t warned her not to send them here.
He didn’t like this.
The floor—wooden planks laid on a frame above the bare earth—was wet.
Harrier squatted down and touched his fingers to the wetness and sniffed them.
“Cider,” he said, frowning. They would have smelled it when they’d walked in if the door hadn’t been open. Most of the cider had trickled between the gaps in the planks, but from the marks on the floor, a lot had spilled.
He followed the traces back across the floor, past the serving board, to the row of wooden kegs racked along the back wall. The names of the contents were chalked on the sides of the barrels: several kinds of beer and ale, several kinds of cider, even water.
There was a pewter mug lying on the floor, and the tap to one of the kegs was open and dripping. Harrier rapped the side of the keg. It was empty.
The landlord had been filling a mug when . . . something . . . happened.
“Guys?” he said.
The room had suddenly gone dark.
“There’s nobody in the storeroom, either,” Tiercel said, walking back into the main room again, bringing the light back with him.
“This isn’t right,” Simera said, frowning as she gazed around the room.
She wasn’t frightened. Harrier had noticed that about her; Simera didn’t get afraid of things when something went wrong, she simply got angry that everything wasn’t going the way it was supposed to go. She sounded irritated now.
“If there were a plague, this is where the people would gather,” she said, working it out. “They’d come in from the steadings to the town, because it’s nearest the road. And they’d turn the inn into a hospital—or if there were too many sick, and they used the barn instead, they’d be using the inn to cook for them. They’d be here.”
“Whatever happened, they left so fast the landlord let one of his kegs run dry instead of shutting down the tap. Let’s get out of here,” Harrier said. And whatever happened, it happened so recently that the floor’s still wet.
Nine
A Town Filled with Shadows
THEY’D ONLY BEEN inside the inn for a few minutes, but by the time they came out into the street again, it was already enough darker that Tiercel’s MageLight crown was bright enough to cast shadows. Both of the horses raised their heads and looked at it inquiringly. Thunder paid no attention.
“Everybody just vanished,” Tiercel said. He sounded as if he were saying it to see if he liked the sound of the words any better aloud. From his expression, he didn’t.
“In the middle of eating their stew and pulling a pint of cider,” Harrier agreed.
“We should check the other buildings,” Tiercel said next.
“For what?” Harrier demanded in exasperation. “
To see if—”
“I saw something,” Simera said abruptly.
Both of the boys turned to look at her.
“I don’t know,” she said, having no trouble at all interpreting their looks. She pointed up the street. “Maybe an animal.”
“We should look,” Harrier said reluctantly. “But let’s take the horses with us.”
Tiercel had just settled into Cloud’s saddle, and Harrier had one foot in his own mount’s stirrup, when Simera let out a sharp yelp of surprise. There was a creature in the middle of the street where none had been before. It was about the size of a two-year-old child, but it was obviously not human, or a member of any race that Harrier recognized. It was completely naked and its body was as featureless as a child’s doll. Its purple-grey skin was slick and hairless—reminding Harrier of a frog—and it looked a little more like an ape than it looked like anything else. Its head was round and nearly featureless; it had a lipless mouth so wide it seemed to be smiling; no nose that he could see; and large round silver eyes that it kept squinting and blinking, as if even the dusk was too bright for it. Harrier swung up into his saddle, trying to do it silently.
As he did, two more of the things appeared. They didn’t come from behind the buildings, or up the street. They came up out of the street itself, sliding through the hard-packed surface as if the street were water.
“Get rid of that light,” Harrier said quietly.
Tiercel gestured, and the globe of MageLight went to hover over the roof of the inn. The creatures turned their heads to watch it move. Their mouths hung open, and now Harrier could see that their mouths were filled with long, needle-sharp fangs.
Simera was stringing her bow. She knew even better than Harrier did that no creature had teeth like that if it weren’t a predator. From the expression on her face, the creatures were as strange to her as they were to Harrier, but she recognized them as dangerous none the less.
The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained Page 19
