The Phoenix Endangered (56 page)

Ciniran bounced to a stop on the soft ground when she saw Shaiara appear.

“I am grateful to find you so swiftly.” Though her tone was urgent, her voice was soft, as if someone might overhear.

“For what cause?”

“There are strangers in Abi’Abadshar.”

“Tell me of them. How came they here?” Shaiara willed herself to calm. Neither anger nor fear would help them now.

“There are only two.” Ciniran sounded both puzzled and worried. “And they are not Isvaieni. They speak in loud foolish voices and behave as children, yet they have the shape of men. I know not how they came.”

Ciniran’s tale was simple and troubling. She and Raffa had been searching for new routes to the surface, a constant task of the hunters. They had found one—a slanted opening that would only allow a single body to move through it at a time, but it was possessed of the advantage that it did not require the scaling of walls. They had both climbed up it in order to see where it came out, for distance was a deceptive thing here in the underground world. When they reached the surface, they found themselves nearly a mile from the
Iteru
-chamber.

“And then we heard voices—loud voices—complaining of the heat. We went to see where they came from, and there, in the
Iteru
-chamber, we saw them. But there were no tracks of
shotors
upon the sand—nor any
shotors.
And their own footprints began suddenly, as if they had swept them away, and then grown tired of sweeping. Raffa and I watched them for many minutes, but all they do is sit in the passageway and complain of the heat.”

They could not have come to Abi’Abadshar without
shotors.
And while the Nalzindar did not keep a constant watch upon the desert—for nothing could approach the ancient city without being visible hours, even days, in advance of its arrival—they
did
keep watch. Unless the strangers had simply dropped down out of the sky, they could not have approached the city unseen between one period of scrutiny from the cautious Nalzindar and the next. And it was unheard-of for non-Isvaieni to venture into the deep desert at all, much less into the Barahileth.

If they had been sent by Bisochim, the Nalzindar were already doomed: whether the strangers vanished here and now with no trace to mark their passing, or returned to their master and told him of a vast ruined city in the desert, the result was the same. Abi’Abadshar could no longer serve as a safe haven for the Nalzindar, and there was no other refuge anywhere between Sand and Star that could hide them.

“Gather the people together,” Shaiara said to Ciniran. “If this is a trap, we shall lay a trap of our own.”

T
IERCEL LEANED AGAINST
the wall and watched Harrier jitter. He could think of a lot of consoling things to say. The trouble was, they’d all make Harrier hit him, and if Harrier missed, he’d hit the wall, and then he’d be even more irritated than he was right now. It was funny, Tiercel mused. He’d always used to think that Wildmages were wise and serene all the time. Even meeting Roneida hadn’t
completely convinced him otherwise, because she’d seemed pretty wise and at least moderately serene. But he’d known Harrier all of both of their lives, and there were three things Tiercel knew for sure right now: one, that Harrier was a Wildmage (or a Knight-Mage, to be precise), two, that Harrier was about as wise as a rock, and three, that Harrier was exactly as serene as a windstorm.

So much for the things “everybody knew” about Wildmages, and telling Harrier that at least they hadn’t managed to get to the Lake of Fire so that they were both dead now probably wouldn’t be a really helpful thing to say, either. There were times that Tiercel thought that the Wild Magic had a far greater sense of humor than the Light-Priests had ever spoken of, considering that to help him oppose the forces of Darkness, it had made Harrier Gillain a Wildmage.

Even though Tiercel didn’t want to die—he hadn’t wanted to a year ago and he still didn’t—he’d gotten closer to accepting that there wasn’t any alternative, especially after he’d visited the Veiled Lands. It was daunting to think something like that, especially now that he was linked to Ancaladar, but it was precisely
because
he was Bonded to Ancaladar that Tiercel had slowly come to believe that the part he’d been given to play in all of this wasn’t to win, but merely to
try.
Even Bonded to Ancaladar Star-Crowned, he couldn’t master all the contents of the spellbooks of First Magistrate Cilarnen in a few months. And First Magistrate Cilarnen hadn’t defeated the Endarkened alone.

The study of the High Magick taught you discipline. Tiercel’s love of knowledge had always let study come easily to him; what he’d needed to learn in order to master what little he had of the High Magick had built upon that foundation, teaching him a discipline he’d come to be grateful for later, when he’d realized the sheer
cost
of the course of action he’d committed himself to. He supposed the Elves were right to have told him so little. If he’d known everything before he’d left Armethalieh, he wouldn’t have
come. He wouldn’t have let Harrier come. He wouldn’t have accepted Ancaladar’s Bond. He wouldn’t have come to the Madiran.

He thought of the screams of the dying outside the walls of Tarnatha’Iteru, on one of the last days of the siege he remembered clearly. He thought of Harrier’s blood-covered clothes in the orchard outside the city afterward, how Harrier had stood in the ditch and scrubbed himself until his skin was red, and sworn—at first—that all the blood was his. Had the Isvaieni spared their lives because Harrier had killed so many of them? There was no way to know.

It wasn’t something the two of them were ever going to talk about.

And all the death and the sacrifice and the killing had done—because one of the two of them had to see things clearly, and Tiercel thought it was going to have to be him—was allow them to survive to get here. Closer to where the three of them were going to die. Because Tiercel couldn’t imagine any spell that he possessed that was strong enough to destroy one of the Endarkened.

“What if we went back to Armethalieh?” he said. At least Harrier would be safe there.

“What if we didn’t?” Harrier said, sounding a combination of bored and irritated. “How do you know that there aren’t already people there going on about the False Balance? I’d rather stay here.”

“It’s hot here.”

“It’s summer. It’s hot there, too.”

“It’s not
as
hot,” Tiercel pointed out reasonably—and accurately. They were in shadow, but even so, the rock beneath his hand was warm. And in direct sunlight, the rock was hot enough to burn. It was so hot here that Harrier—for a wonder—hadn’t complained once about being hungry, though they’d both been too nervous to eat breakfast, and it was well into afternoon now.

“It’s still hot,” Harrier said, in the tones of one determined to win the argument. “There. Do you think Ancaladar will be back soon?”

Tiercel looked up at the sun. “Maybe. The desertfolk don’t like to travel by day. So they’ll be in camps right now.
Shotors
should be easy to steal.”

“If
I
was a
shotor
and got grabbed by a dragon, I’d bolt as soon as my feet touched the ground again.”

“Well, that’s why I’ll—”
cast MageShield around Ancaladar as soon as he lands
, Tiercel had been about to say, but in the middle of his sentence Harrier got fluidly to his feet.

He flipped Roneida’s sword out of his belt toward Tiercel—it landed in Tiercel’s lap with a stinging thump—and drew both his swords. “Come out,” Harrier said harshly, his back to the wall. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.”

S
HAIARA WAS PRUDENT
. Even though it was the hottest part of the day, because the quality of the intruders remained unknown, she sent a group of hunters out through one of the escape passages and over the sand to come at the
Iteru
-courtyard from the terraces while she led a second band through the passage. She did not mean for the intruders to escape. Nor, if by any chance there were others with them that Raffa and Ciniran had not seen, would knowledge of their presence escape the Nalzindar. Her people would not be able to escape their fate at Bisochim’s hands if their sanctuary here had been discovered, but they would at least be able to make their peace with Sand and Star before the end.

She knew from her own experience how long it would take the others to cross the miles of sand that lay between the escape route and the courtyard, and timed her own group’s stealthy procession toward the mouth of the passage accordingly, for there was no real cover between the entrance to the garden-chambers and the exit to the outside. The only concealment was distance and darkness.

But even that failed her, for when Shaiara’s band were still so far down the passage that the two intruders were no
more than faint specks against the brightness, one of them sprang to his feet, and Shaiara saw the glitter of steel in his hands.

“Come out,” she heard him say. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.”

His companion scrambled to his feet far less gracefully, and though the weapon the first intruder had thrown to him clattered to the stone, he did not stoop to retrieve it.

“Harrier? What?” she heard the second intruder say. When she heard his voice she realized that neither of them was a man grown, as she had first thought. Both boys, but she would not make the mistake of thinking them less dangerous for their youth.

“This place is not deserted,” the one called Harrier said in tones of disgust.

Hearing that, Shaiara allowed herself a tiny spark of hope. If they had not come seeking her people, if they, like the Nalzindar, had come in search of a deserted refuge …

What still mattered most at this moment was
how
such innocents had come so far into the Barahileth, as much as
who
they were. She saw no bows or stone-throwers in their hands, merely swords, and her people were armed with many of both, as well as hunting spears such as she herself carried, so she motioned to Kamar to nock an arrow and continued forward.

“Are you sure?” Harrier’s companion said. “Because—”

“Light and Darkness, Tyr! There are people out there, okay! Pick up the damned sword!”

“Um …”

The one Harrier called “Tyr” did not reach for a weapon that Shaiara saw. But he gestured, and suddenly the passage was blocked with purple light.

No one knew what to do. But the purple light did not move, and so Shaiara ran down the passageway toward it until she was within range, and flung the spear in her hand with all the strength she possessed. To her anger and despair, it struck the light and bounced away just as if she had thrown it against stone.

“Hello?” she heard from the other side of the light. “Hello? We don’t want to hurt you. We didn’t know anybody was here. I’m Tiercel and this is my friend Harrier, and—”

“Oh, for the Light’s sake, Tyr, they’re probably more of those people who burned down Tarnatha’Iteru! Do you think they’re going to listen to you?”

“We have burned nothing,” Shaiara called, taking another cautious step toward the glowing wall.

“Shaiara!” Kamar said urgently from behind her. She raised a hand to silence him. The wall was not moving, and they must learn as much as they could about this new enemy. She had little doubt now that they were enemies. Only the Endarkened or their creatures could wield such unnatural power, and all knew that the mouths of the Endarkened were stuffed with lies.

“Well someone did,” the one called Harrier responded. She wondered how he could be a warrior skillful enough to sense the approach of a Nalzindar hunting party and still bawl as loudly as a
shotor
that did not wish to be loaded. Surely his enemies must hear him coming for miles away.

“And you have come here to blame us?” Shaiara demanded scornfully.

“We have come here to—”

“Harrier!”

“Tiercel!”

“All I was going to—”

“Shut up.”

Were the situation not so grim, Shaiara would have been moved either to disbelief or to mirth. She hardly knew what to think. They wielded the weapons of the Endarkened. But they argued like
children.

“Hello?” It was the one Harrier had called both “Tyr” and “Tiercel.”

“I am still here,” Shaiara said stiffly.

“Oh. Good. I can hear you, but I can’t see you. It’s dark in the tunnel, and the MageShield isn’t completely transparent. It won’t hurt you. It’s just a spell of the High Magick.”

“Oh, yeah, great, Tyr, tell them everything.”

“Well, Har, unless they’re Endarkened, there isn’t much they can do with the information. And if they
are
Endarkened, they already know. And—oh, yes. We’d both already be dead.”

“We are not Endarkened,” Shaiara said stiffly, coming closer.

“No, no, no. I wasn’t saying you were. I don’t think you are. I mean, I really hope you aren’t,” the one called Tiercel said. His stumbling copious words were those of a child, and he spoke as if without wisdom, but the more she pondered, the less Shaiara thought it could be true. No foolish child could wield such power as he had already displayed.

“I hope you are not as well,” Shaiara said politely. Unwise as it might seem to be so trusting, she found it unlikely that Endarkened wouldn’t simply have killed them already. Instead of—as these two seemed to wish—attempting to drive them mad.

“Oh, we’re not. We’re not. I mean, we’d say we weren’t, even if we were—”

“Tiercel!”

“—but we really aren’t. Besides, I don’t think MageShield is an Endarkened spell. No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Anyway, we’re here to destroy the Endarkened. Well, not here. But, um,
near
here.”

“Oh, fine, fine.” That was the one called Harrier again. Shaiara was beginning to have some sympathy for him.

There was a silence from the other side of the cold purple fire. Shaiara was close enough to it now that if it had given off heat she would have felt it, and it did not. “What is the High Magick?” she asked cautiously, when she heard the two of them say nothing else.