The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained

by James Mallory

  And the fact that they appeared in a town where all the inhabitants had vanished was too gruesome a coincidence to be a coincidence.

  “Let’s go,” Simera said. “Slowly. Maybe they won’t follow.”

  They moved their horses down the center of the Main Street at a slow walk.

  Harrier looked back.

  There were five of the creatures now.

  FOR a few moments Harrier dared to hope that they’d actually be able to just walk away. Simera had told them both various stories of her encounters with wild animals, everything from unexpected meetings with bears—the small black kind—to facing down lynxes and rutting bucks and even angry foxes. Sometimes you could avoid a disastrous—or violent—encounter simply by walking slowly away, as they were doing now. Both Harrier and Simera were watching over their shoulders. Tiercel was leading Thunder, and looking in the direction of the road. They would have to follow the road now; it was getting much too dark to strike off over the Plains.

  The pony was restless, shaking his head and pulling at the lead rope, obviously unhappy to be where he was. They made it as far as the end of the street, and the road was in sight, when suddenly the creatures began moving down the street after them, swinging themselves slowly along on their elongated forearms. They weren’t simply going to let them leave.

  Simera stopped, turned, and shot.

  Her arrow flew true, straight into the eye-socket of the lead creature. It fell back among its fellows with a shriek of pain, and in an instant the other four fell on it like a pack of starving dogs, devouring its body before it had stopped twitching—possibly even before it died.

  That was the final straw for the horses. Whether it was the smell of blood, or the sounds, or some combination of both, they laid their ears flat back and bolted.

  Thunder’s lead-rope was jerked from Tiercel’s hand immediately when Cloud stretched his neck out and began to run. The pony had been built for endurance, not for speed, and Thunder was left behind as soon as Cloud jumped the ditch at the edge of the main road and began running through the long yellow grass of the Plains.

  Tiercel flailed as he tried to get both hands on the reins without either dropping his wand or simply falling from the saddle. He tried to remember everything Halyon had told him back in Sentarshadeen about what to do if Cloud ever ran away with him, but he couldn’t think of any of it. He finally got both hands on the reins and was pulling back as hard as he could, but it was useless. All he could do was try to stay in the saddle as Cloud galloped, in a line as straight as the flight of an arrow, away from the town of Windy Meadows. He didn’t even know where Harrier or Simera were.

  Behind him, he suddenly heard an unearthly shrieking.

  “TIERCEL!” Harrier shouted.

  “The road!” Simera shouted back.

  Harrier had been slightly more fortunate than Tiercel had. When Lightning gathered himself to bolt, Harrier had given the reins a savage jerk and kept the gelding from getting the bit between his teeth. He couldn’t stop his mount from running—and considering what was after them, he didn’t want to try—but he could control the direction the two of them went.

  He couldn’t see Tiercel anywhere.

  He and Simera galloped up the road. Thunder followed them, running free, but the pony was dropping farther behind with every passing moment.

  And the things were following.

  He hoped they could outrun them.

  Then Harrier heard a scream behind him, and realized he was alone on the road. He sawed frantically at the reins, forcing Lightning around in a tight circle. The gelding danced and bucked, but at the end of a long day’s travel even so short a run had tired him, and Harrier was able to force him back the way they’d come.

  The scream he’d heard was Thunder.

  The pony lay in the middle of the road in a spreading pool of blood. The creatures—more than five, now, many more—swarmed over his corpse, devouring every scrap of flesh and bone. Simera stood in the road a few yards distant, loosing arrows into the seething swarm of creatures, but it was almost fully dark now, and often her arrows didn’t find their mark. The creatures seemed willing to turn on dead and wounded alike, however, devouring them just as they had the one Simera had killed in the town. But no matter how many of their own kind they devoured, their appetite seemed endless.

  “Go!” Simera shouted when she saw Harrier. Her voice was ragged as she gasped for air after her long run, and her flanks were foamy with sweat. “Find Tiercel!”

  “Come on!” he said urgently. “Why did you stop?”

  Despite the animal’s exhaustion, it was taking everything he had to hold Lightning in place. The poor beast was tossing its head and stepping backward and sideways, desperate to be away from this place.

  “I can’t outrun them,” she said, never stopping her careful mechanical aiming and loosing into the feeding mass of creatures. Despite the additional fodder she was providing them, they would have finished consuming the pony’s carcass in only a few minutes more. “Maybe you can.”

  “No.”

  He slipped from Lightning’s back quickly, before the gelding could shy again and trip him. The moment it realized it was free, the horse turned and galloped away.

  Harrier drew his sword.

  “Damn you, stupid city boy,” Simera panted.

  “Yeah,” Harrier said. “There’s a lantern in my pack.”

  Harrier found the lantern and lit it, setting it behind them on the side of the trail.

  The creatures were starting to advance again. Less than half a dozen remained, but from all that Harrier had seen, half a dozen would be more than enough to kill the two of them. He clutched the sword tightly and tried to imagine what he was doing here. He would have been afraid, except for the fact that this all seemed completely unreal.

  Then Simera was loosing more arrows again, and for a moment he thought—with a pang of relief so sharp it almost made him dizzy—that everything was going to be fine, and they were going to get out of this okay, because the creatures kept stopping to eat their dead, and that made them easy targets. She’d kill the rest of them, and the two of them would go find Lightning. They’d escape. . . .

  Then Simera threw down her bow with a sob and Harrier knew she was out of arrows. She drew her knife. Four left.

  There weren’t even bones where Thunder’s body had been, just a few chewed pieces of the packs’ contents and the saddle.

  “Get away from them!” he heard Tiercel shout.

  But they couldn’t. The creatures sprang forward, moving fast now, and one of them jumped at him and Harrier hit it, the sword twisting in his hands, and there was a sudden sharp terrible smell in the air as the creature came apart with the force of the blow—not blood, but it still made him want to gag—and Simera screamed, because one of them had jumped at her; she’d turned and kicked it but it was holding on, fangs buried deep in her rump.

  There was a rush of heat and light.

  Screaming.

  Harrier pulled the knife Roneida had given him. He rushed toward Simera and stabbed at the one that was biting her, pulling it free and throwing its body down into the road. It wasn’t quite dead, but it was dying.

  Simera staggered away, and that one burst into flames, too.

  Tiercel leaned over the side of his horse and threw up.

  Harrier dropped his sword in the road and ran over to Cloud. He grabbed the horse’s reins; the animal was foam-flecked and exhausted; obviously too exhausted to stir a step, but Harrier still didn’t want the horse bolting again.

  “Simera!” he called over his shoulder. “Are you all—”

  “No,” Tiercel said, his tone one of quiet protest.

  Harrier looked back over his shoulder. Simera was down on her knees. Harrier dropped the reins and ran back to her.

  She’d rolled to her side. Her long legs were twitching, as if she were running, and her flank was dark with blood from the gaping bite-wound.

  “Simera?” />
  He knelt on the road beside her and attempted to drag her torso into his lap. Her skin was ice cold. The fires from the creatures Tiercel had set alight had gone out, leaving small stinking splotches on the road, and the only light came from the one lantern they’d lit earlier.

  “Poison,” she whispered, gasping for air. “If you—Don’t let them bite you.”

  Tiercel skidded to his knees in front of her, a small bottle in his hands. “Simera? I have the brandy. Drink it.”

  He tried to pour it into her mouth, but she couldn’t swallow. She choked and coughed, and then she gasped for air.

  And then she died.

  “Why didn’t you get here sooner?” Harrier said, getting to his feet.

  Tiercel stared up at him, his face blank with shock and the growing horrified realization that Simera was dead.

  “I got here as soon as I could,” he said after a long silence. “I couldn’t find you. Then I saw the lantern. And heard . . . the sounds.”

  He pushed himself slowly to his feet and walked back to Cloud, his back to Harrier.

  THE gelding was standing where Tiercel had left him. Cloud had run himself nearly to exhaustion when he’d bolted, which was the only reason Tiercel had been able to bring him around. If Harrier and Simera hadn’t lit that lantern, he never would have found them as quickly as he had. Sound carried weirdly on the Plains at night, and by the time he’d gotten Cloud to stop running, he hadn’t really been certain of where he was.

  Harrier was right.

  He should have managed to get there sooner.

  He should have set those things on fire when they’d first seen them back in the town.

  But he still recoiled from the horror of what he’d done. They were alive, and he’d burned them to death.

  But if he’d done it sooner, Simera would be alive now.

  He led Cloud back to the road. The gelding’s nostrils flared as it approached the road, and even Tiercel could smell the stench—burning, and something worse—but the animal was too tired to make much of a fuss.

  Harrier was still standing over Simera’s body. He rubbed at his face with the back of his hand when Tiercel approached.

  “Come on,” Tiercel said quietly. “We can’t stay here.”

  “We have to—” Harrier said thickly. “We can’t just—”

  He gestured to Simera’s body.

  “Centaurs don’t,” Tiercel said. “They just . . . out in the fields. They say it’s the Herdsman’s Way.”

  “Can’t just leave her in the road,” Harrier said thickly, drawing a shaking breath.

  “No.”

  IT wasn’t a pretty business. They needed Cloud to move her. They tied a rope from the gelding’s pack around Simera’s body and used it to drag her out into the tall grass. They wrapped as much of her as they could in a blanket from her pack first, but it still seemed a terrible way to treat the body of their friend. Both of them were crying openly by the time the brutal work was done.

  “I don’t know any words for Centaurs,” Tiercel said, staring down at her body.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” Harrier said harshly. “My Da says prayers are for the living.” He picked up the lantern and began to walk back to the road. Tiercel took Cloud’s reins and followed.

  THEY walked up the road in silence with Tiercel leading Cloud. Both of them were too grief-stricken and exhausted to talk. While they’d been setting Simera to rest, the moon had risen; it was full, and gave plenty of light to see by.

  Harrier was stunned, still aching with the suddenness of the loss of Simera, but despite his cruel words earlier, he didn’t blame Tier-cel for her death. Cloud had bolted. Tiercel had regained control of his horse and ridden back to them as fast as he could.

  As for the rest . . .

  He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Tiercel being able to cast spells, even though Tiercel didn’t really seem to be that good at it. And the idea of having Tiercel use magic against the monsters disturbed him almost more than the idea of being killed by them.

  He wished Simera were alive; there was no question of that. If it had been a clear-cut choice, if he were the one with the magic, he would have used it unhesitatingly. But it wasn’t the first thing that you thought of doing. It wasn’t like having a sword in your hand.

  And in the end, magic or not, it was still burning something alive to death. Thinking of it that way made it harder to decide what was the right thing to do.

  At first they were both nervous and on-edge as they walked, wondering if every flickering shadow held more of those monsters, but at last they’d given up worrying. There was nothing they could do about them if they did come. Not really. Tiercel might be able to force himself to burn some of them, but if there were a lot of them, and if they surrounded them . . .

  Harrier didn’t know how much control Tiercel had over his magic-called fire. Maybe he could set fire to all of them if a whole pack of the creatures surrounded them—without setting fire to himself and Harrier in the process. Maybe not.

  Harrier preferred to hope that all of the creatures were dead.

  “What’s that?”

  Harrier stopped and raised his sword. He’d brought it with him, of course—it was still covered with the monsters’ blood—and hadn’t put it back into its scabbard.

  There was a large dark shape ahead in the road.

  At the sound of his voice, it raised its head and started forward. The metal on its bridle jingled.

  “Lightning!” Harrier said, his voice ragged with relief. “I really ought to beat you senseless.”

  “According to Halyon, that wouldn’t take much,” Tiercel said. “Did he throw you?”

  “Ran off,” Harrier said shortly. “But not far enough.”

  He approached the gelding cautiously, but Lightning seemed delighted to see him, butting and nuzzling at his chest in obvious hope of reward. Harrier didn’t have anything to give him, but as soon as the reins were safely in his hands, he gave the gelding a good scratch behind the ears before leading it back to Tiercel.

  “We might as well ride,” he said. “I’m tired of walking, anyway.”

  THEY rode at the slowest possible walking pace through the rest of the night, only stopping at dawn when they came to one of the Light-shrines that were set near the road at regular intervals. It was easily seen from a distance by the wind-pump that marked it, an indication that it would also have a well.

  They were truly grateful for that. By now the horses were thirsty, and so were they; nearly all of their provisions had been in Thunder’s packs. They each carried a water bottle, but those had been empty when they’d reached Windy Meadows.

  Fortunately they knew enough about thirsty horses not to let the animals drink their fill at once. Harrier held the animals back while Tiercel pumped the trough full of water, then Harrier let them have a short drink—less than they wanted—before tying them to the tether-rings at the front of the temple. In a few minutes, he’d let them drink more.

  “We might as well stop here for a few hours,” Tiercel said. “The horses could use the rest, and so could we.”

  He pulled Cloud’s saddlebags off and began unbuckling the saddle girths.

  ONCE the horses had been watered and turned out to graze (their hobbles, fortunately, were one of the things packed in their saddlebags), the boys went into the shrine.

  It was a typical roadside Light-shrine, of the sort they’d seen many of along the way; a three-sided structure, barely large enough for two or three people to enter at once. The back wall was carved in a relief of the Eternal Light, painted in gold, and below it was an altar-shelf set with a heavy stone bowl where offerings could be burned. There were flowers beside the bowl on the altar, but they were withered and brown. Nobody had been here in a while.

  Tiercel scooped them up and set them into the bowl. They blazed into sudden life and burned brightly for a moment before crumbling away into ash.

  “Are you sure you ought to be do
ing that?” Harrier asked.

  “It all comes from the same place,” Tiercel answered. He set his hands flat against the back wall of the shrine and closed his eyes. Blue light began to spread from his hands, out across the stone, until in moments the entire interior of the shrine—walls, ceiling, floor, the altar itself—was glowing a bright radiant azure. There was so much light that it was like standing in sunlight, except that it came from below as well.

  “For Simera,” Tiercel said.

  “The next person who shows up here isn’t going to want to come in,” Harrier said, stepping back and shaking his head.

  “I think it fades eventually,” Tiercel answered. But he didn’t sound as if he really cared.

  They went back outside.

  THEY rinsed and filled their water bottles, and did their best to wash away some of the dust and grime of the long night in the water trough. Then they went to see what supplies they had left.

  Not much.

  They had their heavy traveling cloaks. Some food—enough for a couple of days, though of course no grain for the horses. Tea, but no way to brew it. Money—but no place to buy anything. Tiercel’s books. An extra shirt of Harrier’s. Medicines for themselves and the horses. A coil of rope. A lantern. Tiercel’s guidebook with its maps.

  That was about it.

  Harrier squinted out at the rising sun, munching on a bar of trail rations as he leaned against the side of the shrine. Most of the ones they had were compressed bars of seeds, nuts, and dried fruit, held together with honey; useful for bribing the horses as well as making a meal on when they didn’t want to stop to cook. There was a little jerky as well; you could make soup out of it if you were patient. And if you had a pot and some water, of course.

  “So what do we do?” he asked Tiercel.

  Not that he hadn’t made up his own mind already. It was pretty obvious. Mostly he wanted to be sure that Tiercel agreed with him.

  Tiercel was down on his hands and knees, squinting at the folded-out map in his guidebook. He’d bought the guidebook in Sentarshadeen, and while he constantly complained that it wasn’t as detailed as he wanted, it did cover all of the Nine Cities and the principal roads between them.