The Phoenix Endangered (27 page)

The Telchi smiled faintly. “The tale begins long before that. Before—I think—either you or your friend first saw the light of day, when I was young and rash and thoughtless. Had I been less of any of these things, I would not have accepted an oathbond from Inzileth to sail across Great Ocean. But in those days I was certain I knew better than my elders, and those who would offer guidance and advice. And I was curious to see the land which lay beyond Great Ocean.

“By the time we had reached Armethalieh, I knew Inzileth for a dishonorable man, fit to hold no Telchi’s oathbond. I weighed—so I thought—the matter carefully in my mind, and chose to break my sworn contract with him rather than stay one more hour upon the deck of his ship. Of course, no other Selken captain would bond a Telchi who had broken his oathbound contract.” The Telchi shrugged. “I was young and foolish, as I have said.”

None of this made real sense to Harrier—he didn’t know much about the Selkens, only about their ships and their cargoes. But he knew that a broken contract was a serious matter—and might even be a
deadly
serious matter in some places—and by now he’d traveled widely enough to know that there were a lot of different ways of doing things besides the way that they were done in Armethalieh.

“What did you do?” Harrier asked.

“I sought work. But your Nine Cities are a peaceful place, with little occupation for a swordsman from a far-off land. If the Sword-Giver and the Lady of Battles meant me to learn humility, They taught me well indeed. After some years of wandering, I came to the Madiran, and there I found suitable employment at last, for caravans travel frequently between the
Iteru
-cities, and there is always work for one of my talents.
I settled in Tarnatha’Iteru, and my fortune was as good as it had once been ill.”

“Until you ended up under a dead horse,” Harrier pointed out.

“She was a fine animal. I shall miss her,” the Telchi said with a deep sigh. “Yet it is some consolation to know that the task we set out upon was accomplished.”

Harrier leaned forward, frowning a bit in concentration. The rest of the story of the Telchi’s life was interesting of course—and Tiercel would probably have found it all fascinating—but it was all ancient history, and Harrier wanted to know about the here-and-now. That was the important thing, after all.

“The trade-caravans have always been plagued by banditry. I do not know if you are familiar with the cities of the Madiran …?” the Telchi asked.

“Not really,” Harrier said, shrugging. “But my Da is Portmaster at Armethalieh, so I know about Madiran trade-goods.”

“Then you know their value,” the Telchi answered, satisfied. “Some loss was always expected: petty thievery; the dishonesty of the caravan masters; merchants figured such losses into their price, and if it did not rise above a certain level, all was well. But in the past year, the losses the trade-caravans have suffered have become far worse than ever before. Now it is not a matter of mere raids and midnight thefts and a few rugs or caskets of spices vanishing between one
Iteru
and the next—bloodlessly—but of entire caravans vanishing, and no man able to say where the bones of the guards and the drovers lie. For this reason, the Consul of Tarnatha’Iteru engaged me to stop it.”

“Those dead guys Ancaladar saw on the road,” Harrier guessed.

“Perhaps,” the Telchi replied. “Once the task was placed in my hand, I collected a troop of fine fighters—sound experienced swordsmen and archers—and we disguised ourselves as a rich caravan. We were attacked by the raiders just as I hoped. When they saw we were not fat merchants,
they fled, just as we had expected, and we gave chase.” His expression turned grim. “We slew many, and pursued those we did not kill at once, thinking to finish the task and end the matter there and then.”

Harrier already knew how this story ended. Even knowing that the Telchi had survived, he almost didn’t want to hear the rest. Almost.

“We tracked them for sennights, as they headed north into the uninhabited wilderness. We would have overtaken them sooner, but they had the foresight to conceal fresh horses along their way, and we fell behind. But they were unable to escape us—so we thought. In truth, the bandits’ numbers were far greater than anyone had imagined, and the survivors of the attack meant to lure us into a trap. We followed them into a narrow passage in the hills, riding hard on their heels as the sun rode low upon the horizon, thinking to finish them before nightfall. We outnumbered them, and they were—many of them—injured. Easy prey. And then, as we spurred our mounts to close with them, their brethren swept down from the slopes above, where they had lain in wait. They were many.”

For a moment the Telchi paused in his narrative, looking grim. “Despite their advantage, we overcame them, but the cost was high. All of my men were slain that day, and when the leader of the bandits saw that he was not to claim the easy victory he had expected, he gathered a few of his followers about him and ran from the battlefield. They headed north, into the Tereymils, and I followed. To leave him alive would mean that in time he would gather another such force of malignants about himself, and the deaths of all my men would have been for nothing. One by one I stalked them and slew them, taking them under cover of darkness, until only the chieftain remained. And you say that he is dead?”

“Very,” Harrier answered. He thought—from the way the Telchi had been injured when they’d found him—that he must have been wounded in that second battle, and had
tracked the remnants of the bandits while slowly bleeding to death.

“Then my final blow struck true,” the Telchi said, satisfied. “And yet—had you not found me—such a victory would have been a great defeat.”

“Okay,” Harrier said dubiously.

“I think that you know little of the Telchi caste,” the Telchi said.

Harrier did his best to repress a groan. It seemed as if every time he turned around, somebody was telling him he didn’t know something about something, whether it was Elves, or unicorns, or dragons, or Wildmages. And now apparently he didn’t know anything about Telchis either.

“There is no shame in that,” the Telchi said. “Were a Wildmage to visit the Selken Isles, your ways and customs would be as strange to us as ours are to you. But there is this that I would have you know: even though I may never see my home again, I still have obligations that I may not set aside. Upon the day that each Telchi takes up his swords, he also takes up an oath that he will train up at least one student, so that all that he has been taught, and all that he has learned in the course of his life, can be passed on to another. Always, I thought there would be time. That I could travel north to Armethalieh, purchase passage across Great Ocean, return home, do penance for my youthful crime, and then—
then
—seek a student.” The Telchi smiled ruefully. “Now I know there is no more time.”

“But—you can still do that,” Harrier said. “I mean, you didn’t do anything really wrong. And it was a long time ago—I’m sure they’d understand….”

“I broke my oathbond,” the Telchi said softly. “I swore myself to the service of one who was unworthy to be served, and then I yoked myself to my own pride rather than seeking the counsel of the Sword-Giver and the Lady of Battles. Here in the east you have a saying:
The Wild Magic goes as it wills.
In the west, we would say that all roads lead to the Hall of Battle, for all men die in the end.
And I would not die without discharging this obligation. So I shall train a student here. In the east. And it will both fulfill my oath, and discharge my debt—should the student agree.”

Harrier regarded the Telchi with sudden deep suspicion. Not only did he have an inkling of the direction in which this conversation was going, he was also starting to feel oddly prickly all over, as if a storm was rolling in. He glanced up at the sky, but the clouds were high and thin—and anyway, Ancaladar would never have taken Tiercel off for a practice if a storm was brewing.

“You have given me my life, Wildmage, when I should otherwise have died. I am in your debt for the worth of my life, and I do not know how I can discharge that debt save by giving you the most valuable thing I possess.”

There was a long moment of silence as they both looked at each other—the Telchi expectantly, Harrier with slowly growing suspicion.

“You want to train me as a Telchi Warrior,” Harrier said in disbelief.

“If it can be done,” the Telchi said, sounding just as doubtful as Harrier felt. “In all the years I have lived here in the east, I have never taken an apprentice. And I did not think that a Wildmage would be my first.”

Apprentice.
In the moment the Telchi spoke the word, it was as if Harrier heard the first note of First Dawn Bells ring out. The sound-that-wasn’t-really-a-sound made him shiver. He knew what it was—how could he ever have imagined not knowing? This was how you felt when it came time to pay your Mageprice. “
You must become an Apprentice.”

He felt a combination of relief—because at least he knew what his Mageprice was to be, now, and it didn’t involve him having to go off to the other end of the world, because the Telchi was
right here
and going back to the same place they were going themselves—and irritation—because he’d been worried about what paying his Mageprice would involve, and he realized (now) that that was the last thing in
the world he’d needed to worry about. If the Wild Magic had given Tiercel the High Magick and his visions so that he could, well, at least
try
to do something about the Darkness, and for some incomprehensible reason of its own had made Harrier a Knight-Mage for the same reason, it certainly (probably) wasn’t going to set him a Mageprice that would drag him off to the other side of the world to plant petunias in somebody’s garden while Tiercel got himself killed. He hoped.

“Yes,” Harrier said. “All right. Okay. I’ll become your apprentice. And, um, it’s okay, because I’m kind of not exactly a regular Wildmage. I’m sort of, well, a Knight-Mage.” He winced, just a little, because it still sounded unbelievable and arrogant every time he said it. “And, actually, I’ve never held a sword in my life.”

“Good,” the Telchi said. “Very good. There will be less for you to unlearn.”

T
HE FIRST TASK
the Telchi set his new apprentice was to cut two short straight sticks, each a little longer than his arm. This meant Harrier had to go trudging off the side of the road in the direction of the nearest stand of trees, and hope he found something suitable.

Of course Kareta followed him.

“Well?” she demanded, as soon as she caught up to him.

“‘Well’ yourself. Don’t tell me you weren’t eavesdropping.”

“Of course I was! But I want details!”

Harrier sighed, but he wasn’t irritated. For Kareta not to be … Kareta … would be like Ancaladar suddenly becoming small and fluffy and white. Or for Tiercel to suddenly stop asking questions. He explained as much as he remembered about the entire conversation—the Telchi’s story, and about the bandits, and about how his Mageprice was to learn everything the Telchi could teach him about fighting.

“And you will?” Kareta asked.

“I told him I would,” Harrier said. “And, well, I guess I promised the Wild Magic I would, too. Do you know what happens to a Wildmage who doesn’t pay his Mageprice?”

“No,” Kareta said promptly. “What?”

“If I knew,” Harrier demanded, “do you think I’d be asking you? But I’m pretty sure it isn’t anything good. Anyway, he’s going back to the Madiran, and we’re going
to
the Madiran, and he wants to show me what to do with a sword, so … I guess it all works out.”

“I guess it does,” Kareta said. “And you didn’t even need to cast a spell to find him.”

“I had to cast a
spell,”
Harrier pointed out.

“But not to get a teacher,” Kareta argued. “You just wanted to keep him alive. You didn’t know he’d want to give you a reward.”

“It isn’t like that,” Harrier complained. He didn’t really think of learning Selken sword-fighting techniques as much of a reward. And he didn’t want a reward in the first place.

“Well, if it isn’t a reward, what is it then?”

“Almost as much of a pain in the butt as you are,” Harrier said.

Kareta snorted rudely.

It took him nearly two hours to find what he thought would probably be two suitable pieces of wood. He thought longingly of all of the
extremely
suitable pieces of wood he’d passed in the last sennight—before, of course, he’d had any idea he’d need them. The two pieces he selected would need more work—smoothing and polishing—before they looked like much of anything but kindling, but there was a knife and a couple of files and rasps and some beeswax back at the wagon. He ought to be able to make do.

“All right then,” Kareta said briskly, when Harrier turned to head back to the wagon.

“Um … what?”

“Well, I have to admit that you’ve been very entertaining, and really almost nice, but you don’t need me now.”

“Huh,” Harrier said. He was about to say that he’d never needed her at all, but she was still talking, and what she was saying alarmed him too much.

“After all. You cast a pretty big spell. You’ve gotten yourself a
very
good teacher—a Telchi! Just imagine!—and I have no intention of following behind your wagon all the way to the Madiran as if I were a tethered goat. Besides, what is there in the Madiran besides cities full of people?” Kareta shuddered all over. “I don’t think so! No, my Price is paid.”

“I—Wait—What? Your Price?”

“Hmph,” Kareta said. “I suppose you think that Wildmages are the only ones who have Prices set? A lot you know!”

“Buh—But—Are you—”

“Going to tell you about it? No. But maybe—if you’re good—and if it’s convenient—and if I haven’t got anything more interesting to do—I’ll look in on you again someday. Or maybe I won’t.”

“Kareta! “
Harrier bellowed.

But it was too late. She’d already turned away, trotting, then running, then bounding in the effortless deer-like bounds that were a unicorn’s fastest gait. In only moments she was a tiny golden speck in the distance. Harrier stood and watched until she was out of sight.