The Phoenix Endangered (13 page)

By now it was nearly second nature for Harrier to steer an Elven conversation more-or-less in the direction he wanted it to go without asking any direct questions; it took a while, but as long as he kept reminding himself that he wasn’t really in any hurry, he didn’t find it too frustrating.

After their hosts had carried the brunt of the conversation as long as politeness demanded, it was time for Tiercel and Harrier to share their own news. Some of it was information that Tiercel—prompted by Ancaladar—had already passed on: Sandalon Elvenking’s death, and the accession of Vairindiel to the rulership of the Elven Lands. Other things they spoke of were far less spectacular: the farms and villages they had stopped at between Karahelanderialigor and here, the weather, the travelers they’d encountered along the way.

“And we’re going to be heading even farther south,” Harrier said, “and so it would make good hearing to learn all that you may tell of the road ahead.” While it was true that Ancaladar could certainly just fly ahead and
see
what was there, covering in a matter of hours a distance that would take the wagon days to traverse, neither Tiercel nor Harrier really liked that idea. They weren’t quite sure what would happen once they reached the Veil—or whether Ancaladar could get back through it once he’d gone out.

The information he got in response wasn’t as encouraging as Harrier could like. They were about a fortnight’s journey from the Border, close enough that Aratari said that Blackrowan was the last settlement of any size to be found near the road. And worse, since that was the case, the road itself did not extend much farther. There was hardly any point, after all.

Harrier did his best not to look as disappointed as he felt. He’d suspected that the road would run out some time. He just hadn’t expected it to be quite so soon. But the horses were strong and the wagon was sturdy, and if all
else failed, at least Ancaladar could pull them out of a ditch. And Aratari and Aressea both announced themselves more than willing to provide all the provisions Tiercel and Harrier could possibly want. It would mean spending another day here, but it was hard to really feel their quest was urgent, when they didn’t know where they were going or what they were going to do when they got there. And it was at least as urgent not to starve to death along the way.

After supper, Tiercel and Harrier brought their clothing to the room they’d been given to use while they were guests here—it would be washed tomorrow—and then Tiercel went off to find Ancaladar to get in a bit of practicing. At this time of year it was already dusk, and farmers, even Elven farmers, kept country hours. The household would be in bed soon, to rest in preparation for tomorrow’s work. For now, its members occupied themselves with the small chores that filled their evening hours, for there was little leisure time upon a farm. Animals must be fed, clothing must be cared for, preparations made for tomorrow’s breakfast. Harrier was just as happy to announce that he was tired and looking forward to his own rest; it was much less complicated for all concerned if the Elves didn’t have to deal with having a human underfoot, since neither Aressea nor Aratari, nor, for that matter, any of the rest of the Elves Tiercel and Harrier had met along the way, appeared to have ever seen a human in their lives.

But once he was alone in the guestroom, he was alone with the Three Books.

He’d been surprised to find the small red leather satchel there in the pile of clothing he’d brought from the wagon. The last he’d seen of it, he’d wrapped it up thoroughly in his heavy winter stormcloak and stuffed it into a corner of the wagon. But here it was.

Harrier sighed. “
Unpleasant tasks are best done at once.”
His mother had always said that when he’d been dragging his feet about something. And it wasn’t as if this was precisely an
unpleasant
task. In fact, as far as Harrier understood things (which was, admittedly, not very well at all)
reading or not reading the Three Books wouldn’t really make a lot of difference to turning him into a Knight-Mage. It was all about him agreeing to be one.

Aressea had given him a small lamp to light the way to his and Tiercel’s bedroom, a small comfortable room at the back of the farmhouse. The lamp didn’t give much light, but there were a couple of larger lanterns here, one hung on a hook on the wall, the other set on the table between the beds. Harrier took the one off the wall and carried it over to the bed to set beside the other one. The guestroom lacked the sumptuous luxuries of a desk and upholstered furniture that their rooms had boasted in Karahelanderialigor—the only other furniture in the room was a chest built into one wall that could be used for both seating and storage—but Harrier didn’t intend to write anything and he didn’t need to lounge. He was just going to take a look at the Books, and he could do that lying on his bed as well as anywhere else. At least, once he had light to see by.

Just as he’d thought, the shallow drawer in the bedside table contained all that was necessary to take care of the lanterns: a clipper to snuff and trim the wicks, a flask of oil to refill the reservoir, and a number of long thin pieces of wood that could be used to light the wick safely. Harrier was interested to note that the drawer was lined in copper, so that even a smoldering wooden spill could be dropped back into the drawer safely with no chance of starting a fire. He’d already learned that strange as the Elves could be sometimes, they were also extremely efficient. He lit the two large lanterns, snuffed the small lamp, and settled himself comfortably on one of the beds.

As he picked up the little satchel again, he hesitated. But he certainly didn’t want to think of himself as having less courage than Tiercel did—and Tiercel had participated in the spell to have Ancaladar’s Bond transferred to him not knowing whether he’d survive it or not. Harrier sighed heavily. At least Tiercel
wanted
to be a High Mage. Or Harrier was pretty sure he did. A lot more than Harrier
wanted to be a Knight-Mage, anyway.
Stop stalling
, he told himself sternly. He opened the satchel and pulled out the contents before he could think about what he was doing.

He hadn’t examined them very closely the last time he’d held them—or if he had, the discovery of what they were had wiped all memory of it from his mind. He inspected them more closely now.

They were, well,
book-shaped
books. But small, really only about the size of his hand. All three were exactly the same size and thickness, bound in red leather, and they looked, not exactly old, but worn. Harrier wondered if someone else had owned these Books before they’d come to him, and who they’d been, and what had happened to them, and how the books had gotten from them to Kareta, and how she’d known to bring them to him. He wondered if the Books just sort of
vanished
when a Wildmage died, or if somebody had to do something with them, and if so, what. He wondered how three books that were so small could possibly contain everything that someone needed to know about the Wild Magic.

He held them up to the light and inspected them closely. There was no title on the covers, and no sign that there ever had been, but there was a small gold symbol stamped into the spine of each: a moon, a star, and a sun.
I
wonder who makes these?
he thought idly, knowing he was doing his best to delay as long as possible the moment when he had to look inside.

Where to start? There were three of them, and it wasn’t as though he’d known in advance that this was going to happen so that he could ask the only Wildmage he’d ever met for some useful advice. But Kareta had kept talking about
The Book of Moon
as if it were the logical starting place, and Harrier supposed it was as good a place to begin as any. He sorted through them, picked it out, and opened it.

The book was hand-written, and the writing, while clear and even, was tiny: Harrier was glad he’d lit both large
lanterns, because he thought he’d need all the light he could get to read it. There wasn’t a title-page or anything, either. The book just started.

He’d looked at some of Tiercel’s High Magick books (mostly out of curiosity, and only after Tiercel had assured him that they couldn’t hurt him) and at least they’d made a certain amount of sense to him. They were full of recipes and complicated directions. Harrier could
do
High Magick—assuming he had the patience for all those fiddling details. It just wouldn’t work, because he didn’t have the Magegift that Tiercel had been born with.

The
Book of Moon?
Wasn’t anything like that. The beginning of it seemed to be more like … well, he wasn’t quite sure. It was talking about how to behave, and why, kind of the way a Light-Priest talked on Light-Day, about how it was important for everyone to respect everyone else, and to believe that they acted from the best intentions even if you didn’t understand why they did something, because just the same way that white light turned into a rainbow when it shone through a crystal, so the Eternal Light contained so many different things within it that you couldn’t expect to know what they all were just offhand.

Except the Book wasn’t talking about people, and it certainly wasn’t mentioning the Eternal Light. It talked about acting in harmony with the Wild Magic, and understanding that you must always be ready to pay the price for anything you asked of it, and knowing that the less selfish you were, the more likely you were to get what you really needed.

It didn’t really sound a lot like magic to Harrier—even though he’d be the first to admit he didn’t know what magic was actually like. What it sounded like was the wondertales he read his young cousins to bed with. “Be good.” “Be kind.” “Be unselfish.” And you’ll get what you want.

The trouble is, I don’t know what I want. Except for Tiercel and me to be safe back in Armethalieh, and for none of this to have ever happened.
He thought for a minute.
No. For none of this to have ever
needed
to happen. For there to never have been any Fire Woman, or Lake of Fire, or Goblins, or Tiercel to have had to have visions because of them, or … anything. That’s what I really want.

He didn’t think even the Wild Magic had a spell for that, though.

Only about half or maybe two-thirds of the Book was those closely written pages. Harrier didn’t read them all. After the first several, he started skipping through, seeing if there was anything different. That was when he found the spells.

Each one took up a page—or at most, two. There was a name at the top—like in his Ma’s cookbooks, like in Tiercel’s High Magick books—and then a lot of writing underneath. But there the resemblance to both cookbooks and spellbooks ended.

The first one was
Fire.
That one just had a lot of instructions about thinking and concentrating—and on having something you wanted to light on fire close at hand. Harrier turned the page hastily. He didn’t want to set any fires here. Next there was
Finding
—that one required a drop of his blood and the desire to find whatever it was he was looking for—and then there were
Summoning
and
Scrying
—which were a little more complicated, and required him to burn a bunch of leaves and cut himself (again!) or find a pool of water and a jug of wine, and as far as he could tell, Wildmages spent a lot of time poking themselves with sharp knives. Maybe it was so they didn’t just do spells any time they felt like it. There were a couple of other spells, too: one was titled
Weather-Calling
(which was the first one Harrier had seen that looked remotely practical, especially if it could be used to summon a fair wind, since he couldn’t count the number of times ships had stood in Armethalieh Port for sennights because they couldn’t catch a favorable wind) and there was one for
Coldfire
(another one that just needed thinking and concentrating) and one that simply said at the top of the page:
To Know What Needs To Be Done.
That one was vague enough that Harrier vowed then and there that even
if he
did
become a Knight-Mage, he would absolutely never cast it. The stuff he’d already read about Mageprices had been enough to thoroughly worry him. Everyone knew that the Wildmages paid for their magic by performing mysterious tasks set them by the Wild Magic Itself, and while Harrier might otherwise have dismissed such tales as one more thing the legends had gotten wrong, what Roneida had said to them back on the Plains seemed to confirm it. She’d made a journey of hundreds of miles to find them—all the way from Vardirvoshanon—because the Wild Magic had demanded it of her.

Which pretty much meant that any time a Wildmage cast a spell, the Wild Magic would make them
do
something, whether they wanted to or not. And that didn’t sound very comfortable at all to Harrier. What if the Wild Magic wanted him to pick up and go traipsing off somewhere right in the middle of Tiercel’s quest? And what if he said no?

He just wished there was someone he could ask about this stuff. He turned the page.

The last spell that was written in the book was one for Healing, and for that one, apparently he’d need not only as many different kinds of leaves as Ma would use to season a stew (and, apparently, something to burn them on, and he wondered—uneasily—if he ought to see if they had the right sort of thing here) but he’d need to cut a lock of his hair and a lock of the hair of the person he was going to heal,
and
take some hair from anyone else who was “participating in the spell.” That sounded weird, and he had no idea how somebody who wasn’t either casting the spell or having it cast on them “participated” in it. Maybe there was an explanation of that somewhere in the parts he’d skipped. But then again, he didn’t intend to Heal anybody if he could help it. In fact, the more he read, the more he was sure he didn’t intend to do any spells at all.

He closed
The Book of Moon
, grumbling under his breath, and tucked all three of them back into the satchel. He was just in time to get them under his pillow before the
door opened and Tiercel walked in. His hair was damp from a ducking—probably in the watering trough, though there was a washroom down the hall—and he hadn’t bothered to tie his hair back again. Since they’d left Armethalieh, Harrier had gotten his hair cut whenever its length started to annoy him, but Tiercel had simply let his grow. It was down to his shoulders now.