The Phoenix Endangered (52 page)

“All are gone,” Ancaladar said sadly. “All destroyed, their inhabitants slaughtered, their wells poisoned.”

“All of them?” Tiercel asked, sounding dumbfounded.

“They must have been wrong,” Harrier said. “About the last time they saw anyone from any of the tribes. There are—what?”

“Eleven cities,” Tiercel said.

“And if all but Akazidas’Iteru is gone, that’s ten of them gone. I don’t know exactly where they are, but I’m pretty sure you couldn’t even
get
an army from Orinaisal’Iteru to Tarnatha’Iteru in six moonturns.”

“You could,” Ancaladar said. “If they moved quickly. The two southernmost cities are very close together.”

“And obviously they did,” Tiercel said.

“And maybe everybody didn’t disappear at the same
time,” Harrier said, sighing in frustration. “Any idea where they’re going, Ancaladar?”

“They do not travel in a straight line through the desert,” the dragon said reprovingly. “They move from water source to water source. We shall not know their ultimate destination for some time.”

“Too bad we don’t have a map of all the water in the desert,” Harrier said unwarily.

“I can’t draw a complete map,” Tiercel said, sounding surprised. “But I can draw a fairly good one—of the Isvai, at least.”

By the time Tiercel was done, Harrier had a confused picture of a large hostile desert with oases just close enough together that a determined traveler with a
shotor
could manage to get from one to the next without dying. To get anywhere in the Isvai involved taking a route that wove like the path of a drunken sailor from one dockside tavern to the next—only not quite as straight.

“It is hotter there than it is here,” Ancaladar said helpfully.

“And nobody knows their way around it—or where all the water is—but the Isvaieni,” Tiercel said. He didn’t say this as if it was something he knew. More as if it was something he was just now figuring out. They’d been supposed to hire Isvaieni guides, Harrier remembered, if they’d thought they were going to need to go into the Isvai on their search. He guessed, in a manner of speaking, they had them now.

“When we
do
follow them,” Harrier said, “how are we going to do it? Because we’re going to have to ride Ancaladar, and as far as I know, he doesn’t have a saddle any more. Unless it’s out there somewhere, and you can find it,” he added, pointing toward where the city had been.

“I’ll think of something,” Tiercel said.

“You do that,” Harrier answered.

F
OR THE NEXT
fortnight, the two of them lived a strange quiet existence on the outskirts of a city that was no longer there. They combed through the Isvaieni camp for things they might be able to use, and so Harrier found not only the swords that had been his gift from the Telchi, but the sword that Roneida had given him. He wasn’t really sure what to do with Roneida’s sword, but it had been the gift of a Wildmage, so he was determined to find some way to take it with them when they went.

Ancaladar spent his nights hunting, and each morning he would report on the progress of the Isvaieni. The bands of raiders were all moving southward, though none of them was moving in a direct line and few of them were taking the same path.

After the first few days, Tiercel started trying to make a new wand from a branch of one of the
naranje
trees. The first four exploded when he tried to use them, but the fifth one survived. After that, he spent his days wandering through the ruins of the city, picking through the debris. He didn’t find Ancaladar’s saddle—possibly it was one of the many items that had been smashed and then burned—in fact, after a while, Tiercel and Harrier simply started making piles of furniture and setting fire to them. It was practice on Harrier’s part, and, he guessed, boredom on Tiercel’s.

But Tiercel did find—in the area where the stables had been—a long roll of leather strap, a small barrel of brass buckles, some rivets, and even a couple of hammers. Everything necessary to mend harness.

“You can’t make a saddle out of that,” Harrier said, looking at what Tiercel had found.

“No,” Tiercel said. “But I can make a—a kind of belt to go around Ancaladar’s neck. And I can hold onto that when he flies. And you can hold onto me.”

Harrier stared at him in disbelief. “That’s
it?
That’s your plan? He’s going to fly all the way up there and you’re going to hold onto a string around his neck and just
hope you don’t fall off?”
He stared up at the sky. It looked … high.

“He’ll catch me if I do,” Tiercel said confidently. “He’ll catch you, too. It’s all I can think of, Har.”

Harrier looked at Tiercel, then up at the sky again. “This had better work,” he muttered.

“I
DO NOT
like it, Bonded,” Ancaladar said when Tiercel explained. Harrier had made Tiercel do all the explaining—not only was it his plan, it was a stupid plan, and Tiercel was better at making stupid plans sound reasonable. Harrier wasn’t sure whether it made things better or not to know that Ancaladar was as unhappy with the idea as he was—but as Tiercel pointed out, if they were going to ride him, they needed some way to hold on, and the saddle was gone.

“I don’t like it either,” Harrier said helpfully.

“If either of you has a better idea, I’m open to suggestions,” Tiercel said stubbornly.

Harrier was the one who made the leather strap. At least that way—so he said—he could be sure that the rivets wouldn’t pop free at a critical moment. He made a belt for Tiercel, too. At least that way he’d have something to hold on to. After some consideration, he made one for himself, as well. It would help hold his sword-harness in place as they flew, and give him some place to put Roneida’s sword.

A few days later, Ancaladar came and told them that the first group of Isvaieni were now heading directly south.

“And I think they follow a trail, for the land they now pass through is so barren as to make the Isvai look like a garden—and the starkness of the Isvai makes the place where you now stand look verdant. Further, they follow a track beaten into the earth by the passage of many feet. I do not think that this is a place that they would ordinarily go.”

“Is it time to go, then?” Tiercel said.

He actually managed to sound hopeful, Harrier thought. All the time they’d been waiting here, they hadn’t talked about what they were waiting for, or what was going to
happen when the waiting was over. He’d almost managed to forget about it.

“Another day,” Ancaladar said. “So I may be sure.”

T
HE LAST DAY
—and night—of waiting was the hardest. Harrier couldn’t think of anything to say. If they actually found the Lake of Fire after they’d searched for it for so long, what then? They’d be facing the Endarkened, in whatever form they were appearing now, and he wasn’t sure what Tiercel was supposed to be able to do about it. He didn’t know if Tiercel
could
set them on fire, although he guessed he probably
would
if he could. Harrier only hoped he could be of some help, but now that he was actually studying the spells of the Wild Magic as hard as he could, he wasn’t sure how. One person couldn’t defeat an army, and from what Ancaladar had said, anybody they could possibly have looked to as allies was dead.

He didn’t say any of this to Tiercel. There wasn’t any point. They couldn’t go back. They had to go on. If Tiercel hadn’t thought of these things, he didn’t need to be told them now. And all Harrier could do was what he’d done from the very beginning: follow Tiercel. Whether he was trusting the Wild Magic to help him make everything right, or just trying to be there to do whatever he could the way he always had, it didn’t matter. The result was the same.

They managed to sleep that night, though not very well.

I
N THE MORNING
when Ancaladar landed he said that the Isvaieni were continuing directly south along the well-marked path.

“There are wells at the side of the road they follow. They are unnatural—for they are spaced exactly a day’s journey apart—and new, for they exactly parallel the path that has been beaten into the desert, and I think, from the markings on the ground, that they were made after it, not before.”

“We can follow them right to where we need to go,” Tiercel said excitedly.

“Yes,” Ancaladar said. “It is time to leave, Bonded.”

“Get water,” Harrier said. “And pack up a bag of food. And don’t tell me we aren’t going to need it. Something always happens.”

Tiercel smiled at him—the same expression he always wore when he was indulging one of Harrier’s stupid ideas—and went off to the provision tent.

“You fear to die,” Ancaladar said when Tiercel was out of earshot. There wasn’t any judgment in his voice. Not even, really, a question.

Harrier laughed, a little startled, because Ancaladar had it so wrong. He’d already been afraid to die, and he hadn’t died, and he didn’t think he could ever have been that afraid again. He shook his head. “I’m afraid to fail,” he said. “You were there. You saw.”

Ancaladar had been there when the Endarkened had nearly won. That was more terrifying than anything else could ever possibly be.

“Yes,” the black dragon said, and now there was something like approval in its voice.

W
HEN THEY WERE
both settled on Ancaladar’s back, Harrier had a bag of food slung across one shoulder and a waterskin slung across the other, and Roneida’s sword carefully tucked through his belt in front. Tiercel complained that it dug into his back, and Harrier pointed out that he had no intention of falling off just to make Tiercel more comfortable.

Then Ancaladar took off.

In the last several moonturns, Harrier had seen Ancaladar take off and land so many times he’d lost count. In the last fortnight, he’d seen him take off and land from the plain outside the orchard twice a day.

It was different when you were sitting on his back.
In the first place, he ran. Fast. And there were no stirrups, and no real way to hold on. They were both straddling Ancaladar’s neck, and his scales were slippery, and Tiercel was clutching at the neck-strap, and Harrier was holding on to Tiercel as hard as he could as the landscape blurred past.

Then suddenly Ancaladar snapped his wings open, and
lunged
upward, like a cat after a butterfly, and then he was beating his wings frantically and Harrier had his eyes tightly shut and Tiercel was complaining that he
couldn’t breathe
and Harrier had a terrifying sense of gliding and falling and he could feel the hot wind rushing against his face.

Then after a long time—minutes—nothing happened. Harrier opened his eyes warily.

For long moments he couldn’t tell what he was seeing at all. Ahead of him was Ancaladar’s neck, stretched out as straight as the neck of a swan in flight and gleaming iridescently in the sunlight. Below there was nothing but a vast expanse of dun. He couldn’t actually tell how far away the ground was; there were no landmarks to set anything into perspective. It was like every story he’d ever heard the mariners tell about being out in the middle of Great Ocean, with nothing in any direction but water. Except they, at least, had a ship under them and knew where “up” and “down” were.

Then he looked westward, and he could see a sparkle of light; the sun on the sea.

When he saw that, Harrier suddenly realized exactly how high up they had to be, and he clutched Tiercel tightly again.

“Stop that,” Tiercel complained. He shifted around, turning sideways, and Harrier gripped Ancaladar’s neck with his thighs until the muscles ached. “Isn’t this great?” he said.

“Terrific,” Harrier said. He remembered the days when Tiercel hadn’t even been willing to climb a tree that was barely twenty feet high—let alone up into the rigging of a
ship to look out over the docks and the harbor—and suddenly longed for those days passionately. “Will you hold still?”

“Relax,” Tiercel said. “We aren’t going to fall off.”

Harrier wasn’t at all sure about that. He also thought, given Tiercel’s apparent newfound idiotic and suicidal recklessness, that
he
should have been the one sitting in front and holding on to the neck-strap.

But after a few minutes of level flight he settled down and stopped worrying, because they weren’t falling off. And there was a lot to see.

He wasn’t quite brave enough to turn around and look behind them, but what he could see ahead and to the sides was fascinating enough. They were so high in the sky that he could see for hundreds of miles, he thought. There was little to see on the ground—Ancaladar’s shadow provided most of the definition to what he was seeing, flickering over piled up hills of sand, stretching out flat and long and dark across hard plains of baked clay. Sometimes there’d be a red or gray outcropping of rock, or a little vegetation—darker patches against the gold—but mostly it was just… sand.

When they passed over the first group of Isvaieni, it was a shock. They were something he knew the size of. And the men and
shotors
were barely a trail of specks on the land below, there and gone in a matter of heartbeats as Ancaladar swept past overhead.