The Phoenix Endangered (57 page)

“A very old kind of—good—magic that was used to fight the Endarkened during the Last War,” the one called Tiercel said. “Oh, and Harrier wants me to tell you that I’ve put up MageShield at the other end of the tunnel, too, so the people you sent around the other way can’t get at us either. So don’t bother.”

Shaiara turned back to the other Nalzindar. She could not see if the strangers’ words were truth, but if they were, she would not leave her people out in the afternoon sun if they did not need to be. All had heard the one called Tiercel’s words; she flicked her fingers at Natha, and he began running, light-footed as an
ikulas
on the hunt, toward the nearest exit to the surface. He would find Ciniran and the others, and tell them that if they saw purple fire at the entrance to the passageway, they should choose one among them to remain on watch and the rest should return to the safety of their secret underground lair.

“It’s okay, though,” the one called Tiercel continued. “I know you don’t want to trust us. I guess you’re probably hiding here. Maybe you’re hiding from the other Isvaieni? The ones who burned the
Iteru
-cities? We, um, really aren’t sure exactly why they did that….”

“Because the Shadow-Touched has corrupted them,” Shaiara said brusquely. Burned the
Iteru
-cities? She hoped with all her heart that it wasn’t true, but it made a terrible sense. Bisochim had said that all the peoples of the world save the Isvaieni rejected the True Balance and would seek to kill all those who walked in the true ways only Bisochim and his followers now saw. If that were true, then the logical thing to do was to carry the war to the enemy. First.

“Oh, good,” Harrier said. “I was hoping there was a reasonable explanation, after hearing Zanattar go on about False Balances and True Balances and how we were all evil before he and his friends came and
killed several thousand people.”

“Zanattar?” Shaiara asked sharply. “Zanattar of the Lanzanur Isvaieni?”

“Um … we really aren’t—” Tiercel began.

“Yes,” Harrier said, and his voice was hard. “That’s who he said he was.”

“But”—and in all the years since she had come to lead the Nalzindar, Shaiara had never felt so lost and bewildered—”how could the Lanzanur destroy one of the
Iteru?
They are not a numerous tribe.”

“All the tribes banded together,” the one called Harrier said, and now his voice was no longer that of a boy, but that of a warrior, filled with the darkness and quiet of one who held the lives of men in his hands to do with as he chose. “All of them. Except yours. If you’re Isvaieni. Which I guess you’ve got to be, if you’re out here in the middle of the Isvai. It would be kind of nice to know how you escaped getting ‘; Shadow-Touched.’”

“We fled,” Shaiara answered, and her voice was as hard as his. “The Shadow-Touched came to Sapthiruk preaching his new doctrine of a False Balance and a True. At first I could not believe what my eyes told me: that the greatest of the Wildmages should have fallen to the Shadow, or that he would use the Wild Magic to bend the minds of others so. But I saw the light of reason leached from the eyes of the leaders of a dozen tribes that day as Bisochim spoke of war. And before I or my people could fall under his spell as well, we came here.”

“It’s a great story,” the one called Harrier answered. “And I’d be more likely to believe it if the road to his fortress didn’t go right past your front door.”

“Nor do I believe whatever story you will eventually choose to tell,” Shaiara answered steadily.

“Now, see? That’s the great thing about being a High Mage,” the one called Tiercel said. “We don’t actually have to wait around here for anybody to believe anybody.”

Suddenly Shaiara heard shouts of dismay—audible even through the barrier of purple fire—from the surface outside.

“It’s all right! It’s all right!” she heard the one called Tiercel shout. “It’s just Ancaladar!”

L
ESS THAN AN
hour later, the Nalzindars’ tent had been brought up and pitched on the sand in front of the
Iteru
-courtyard. Their new mats of woven grass had been brought up and laid upon the sand—for Shaiara was determined to do all honor to their guests—and a
kaffeyah
service had
been brought. They did not have much
kaffeyah
left—and no way to get more—but Shaiara was grateful that they had husbanded their meager supplies in order to be able to offer it now.

It was not possible to argue with the reality of what her own eyes showed her—to dispute truth was not something the Nalzindar did. And what her eyes showed her was the presence of Ancaladar Star-Crowned, who had ridden the winds before the Isvaieni had come to the sands of the south, and who had helped to cast Darkness into oblivion so very long ago.

Tiercel and Harrier were not well-versed in the proper way of telling a tale. They came from far away in the Great Cold, and Tiercel said that there everything was written down in
books
, which must be (Shaiara supposed) why they spoke so badly—and perhaps why they spoke so loudly as well. But she was patient, and soon enough she had the whole of the tale. It meshed with hers like the fingers of two hands. To know with certainty that Bisochim’s intention was to call back the Endarkened filled Shaiara with despair.

“Why?” she said.

“Because they’re evil?” Harrier said.

It had taken him far longer to trust her and her people than it had taken the Nalzindar to extend their own trust. The tale they brought explained much of that. But Tiercel simply insisted that they
must
be allies, for no better reason than because Shaiara’s people had not attempted to kill them yet.

“No,” Tiercel said. “Why would this Bisochim do what the Endarkened want, if he’s a Wildmage?
You
wouldn’t.”

Shaiara looked at Harrier in surprise. He shrugged, but did not deny what Tiercel implied. She would require him to state it plainly later, however—she was not entirely certain she trusted the peculiar speech of the North. “Maybe they—I don’t know—
lied
to him,” Harrier said.

Tiercel frowned. “Somebody told him he needed to fix the Balance.”

Shaiara saw him glance at Harrier, and saw Harrier shrug. “There’s nothing wrong with it that
I
know of,” he said slowly. He hesitated. “It’s a good story, though.”

“An excellent one,” Shaiara said bitterly, “since it has called my brethren to war.”

Harrier sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “So he’s going to fix the Balance—which isn’t broken, by the way—by
killing
everybody?”

“No,” Tiercel said, and he sounded certain of this. “He’s going to do it by bringing back the Endarkened.
Think
, Har. What did Zanattar
say?”

Shaiara saw Harrier’s brow furrow in concentration. Were he one of her own people, she could be certain Zanattar’s words would be rendered exactly. Now, she could not be sure. But when he spoke, she heard the echo of the Isvaieni in his words.

“‘Since the time of the Great Flowering, the Balance of the World has been out of true, for the Light destroyed the great evil that beset the world in that time—as was only right—but those who kept the Light in those days did not stop where they should have, and so ever since that day, the Great Balance has been tipping more and more away from what the Wild Magic means it to be. Generation after generation has followed this False Balance, upholding it for their own purposes—’”

He went on to the end of the words Zanattar had spoken to him. They were not Zanattar’s words, though, Shaiara knew. They were Bisochim’s.

“So he must think—or have been convinced—that because the Endarkened have been destroyed, there’s something wrong with the Wild Magic now, and the only way to fix it is to … bring the Endarkened back,” Tiercel said. His voice wavered with a disbelief Shaiara understood all-too-well.

“I’m not even going to mention how stupid it is to decide to fix the Wild Magic, considering he’s been corrupted by Endarkened,” Harrier said in disgust. “The only question now is, what do we do about it?”

“You?” Shaiara asked, and though she did her best to school her voice, she knew her tone conveyed her disbelief.

Tiercel smiled shyly at her. “The, um, the Elves …”

“Wanted
Tiercel
to come up with an idea to solve this whole problem,” Harrier said bitterly.

“Could you do better?” Shaiara asked sharply.

“No!” Harrier blurted. “That isn’t the point! This is the
Endarkened
we’re talking about, Noble’dy. Yes, Tyr is the first High Mage born since the Great Flowering—okay,
almost
, Tyr. That doesn’t mean he has a better idea of how to destroy the Endarkened than the Elves do. And they aren’t doing anything.”

“They just don’t want to tell me what to do because—”

“—they think they’re going to make the same mistakes they made with Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy, and frankly, I don’t think that—”

“Enough!” Shaiara said. Both of them regarded her in surprise. “It does not matter
why
the Elder Brethren will not help, if they will not,” she finished, more mildly.

“Yes it does,” Tiercel said. “You see—”

“Shut
up
, Tyr,” Harrier said. “Okay, there’s a long really boring explanation that doesn’t make any sense, Noble’dy. But it’s pretty much that they’re afraid to make things worse. And … I guess
we’re
afraid to ask anybody else for help, too. In case they believe in this ‘; False Balance’ thing.”

Shaiara nodded. That much made sense to her, who had seen her fellow Isvaieni throw aside all that she had once thought they knew of truth and sense between Sand and Star to do that which she would have believed they would have died rather than do. “It does not explain how it is that you will accomplish the task which the Elder Brethren have set you.”

“Perhaps the answer is here,” Ancaladar said. “This place is far older than I. Yet I recognize its like.”

“A city of Demons?” Shaiara asked in disbelief, using the oldest name for the Endarkened.

The Star-Crowned blinked slowly. “Not Demons, Shaiara. They do not build cities, nor do their creatures build
cities in the light. This was once a place of Elves. And—if I am correct—of my kind as well.”

“It must have been a really long time ago,” Tiercel said, looking around.

“Elves and dragons together, and Ancaladar doesn’t remember it?” Harrier frowned. “That would be, um …”

“From the time of Great Queen Vieliessar Farcarinon,” the Star-Crowned answered. “And thus, from a time long before there were truly Men at all.”

“Elven Mages,” Harrier said, as if he’d solved the answer to a riddle.

“Yes,” the Star-Crowned said, sounding pleased. “In that age, the Elves held all the world. Then He Who Is came, intending to make it his, and his children’s, and Vieliessar Farcarinon made the Great Bargain, to win our aid for her battle.”

“But, um,” Tiercel said, looking puzzled.

“And then, yes, the Endarkened were cast down, and Vieliessar Farcarinon paid the second half of her Price. She renounced magic on behalf of the Elves forever.”

“It can’t have been forever, though,” Harrier said logically. “Because there have been Elven Mages ever since the Great Flowering, right?”

The Star-Crowned seemed to sigh. “Yes, Harrier. But that is how the legend goes. I do not know why it is that it isn’t true.”

“The point is that the Demons were cast down,” Shaiara said firmly. In even so short an acquaintance with these travelers she had already learned that if she did not steer conversations with them firmly, they would degenerate into long and meaningless arguments. “And that what was done once may be done again. And perhaps—somewhere here within Abi’Abadshar—there is some record of that time? Many things from those days remain.”

“Here?” Harrier asked in disbelief, looking around.

Shaiara smiled. “There is more to Abi’Abadshar than sand and weathered stones. Do you think the Nalzindar could survive here if there were not?”

Tiercel and Harrier looked at each other and shrugged.

“There is a city beneath the surface,” Shaiara said. “I will show it to you. But I warn you, it is dark.”

Harrier grinned. “It won’t be for long. Tiercel can fix that.” Tiercel kicked him. “Um, yeah. So can I.”

Shaiara rose to her feet. The thought that the Wild Magic had chosen these boys to destroy the Shadow-Touched, and meant the Nalzindar to aid them, was a disturbing one, but what else could she believe? All that they had said was both true and logical: there was no one else for any of them to trust.

“What about Ancaladar?” Harrier asked.

“If this place was once meant for my kind, as I believe, then it will be possible for me to enter it,” Ancaladar said. “All that will be necessary is some … excavation.”

“We must leave no trace on the surface for the Shadow-Touched to see, should his gaze fall upon Abi’Abadshar,” Shaiara warned.

“Tiercel has a spell,” Harrier said.

Twenty

The World Beneath the World