The Phoenix Endangered (64 page)

It was true that Saravasse could pass back and forth through his wards without disturbing them—but of what use was a scout who would not speak to tell of what she had seen? Three times Bisochim summoned her to him and sent her forth, and three times she mocked him with silence upon her return.

But the bitterest blow of all came a fortnight later, when
Zanattar himself returned at last. He did not bring prisoners. He brought a nearly unbelievable tale.

I
N HIS EAGERNESS
to see the agents of his great Enemy in the flesh at last, Bisochim rode out to meet them, when sentries came dashing into the camp just past dusk announcing that the light of a cookfire had been seen out upon the Barahileth. Bisochim met the returning war-party just inside the white stone markers that denoted the edge of Telinchechitl’s spell-wards. The grief and shame upon Zanattar’s face the moment he saw Bisochim told Bisochim all that he needed to know.

“Your captives have escaped you, Zanattar of the Lanzanur Isvaieni.”

But to his surprise, Zanattar shook his head. “No, Wildmage. They did not escape. They were rescued.”

T
HE BEGINNING OF
Zanattar’s story was much like thousands of others that Bisochim had heard, differing only in that it had been Zanattar’s decision to make this war in the first place, and his planning that had given the Isvaieni’s campaign against the String of Pearls much of its success. It had been his decision to keep the prisoners with him at Tarnatha’Iteru and to depart from there last of all the people so that if the captives should have the ability to summon allies after all, he would not have unwittingly led the enemy back to the hiding place of his people. Zanattar reasoned that any prisoner would naturally summon rescue as soon as possible, and hoped that by dallying at Tarnatha’Iteru for sennight after sennight he might goad them into rash action.

In the end, it had not taken so long. Less than a handful of days after the fall of the city, Zanattar and his comrades had been driven in terror from their campsite outside the walls of Tarnatha’Iteru by the assault of a monstrous black
dragon. It had spoken to them in a human voice, threatening them with death if they did not flee at once.

Their
shotors
had fled, maddened with fear, and they had fled on foot, without pausing to take up so much as a waterskin in their flight. If not for the fact that another group of Isvaieni had left Tarnatha’Iteru only hours before and been made curious at the dust raised by the herd of fleeing
shotors
, if not for the fact that they had paused to capture them, recognizing them as Isvaieni beasts, and then followed along their backtrail to discover Zanattar and his people, if not for the oath of brotherhood they had all taken that made any aid extended to them not charity, but the help that kin might extend to kin—Zanattar and his comrades would never have been able to return to the Barahileth at all. Zanattar and his band of warriors did not lack courage. Neither the sort that every Isvaieni must have merely to accept life between Sand and Star, nor the bright sharp sort forged in blood and fire, for every man and woman of them had fought their way up the String of Pearls, taking each city by force, and surviving the privations of the long marches between. Yet not one of them had been willing to risk turning back to face the black dragon again, or even to see if it was still there.

“We have failed you, Bisochim,” Zanattar said, when he had finished his tale.

“You have not failed me, Zanattar,” Bisochim answered, for the length of the tale had given him time to settle in his mind the words he wished to say. “You have done far more than I could ever have imagined possible. Let our enemies recover two of their pawns. It means far more to me that you have come back safely.”

Zanattar smiled with relief. “You will need every
awardan
by your side when the People of the North come, Wildmage. I promise you, my warriors will not fail you a second time.”

The tale had brought them from the edge of the Barahileth, through the fields and orchards, through the numberless tents of the Isvaieni, to the tent of Zanattar’s
mother Kataduk, and to the carpet spread before it, where they had sat as dusk became night, eating dates and drinking small cups of bitter
kaffeyah.
Now that the tale was ended, Zanattar rose to his feet to go within, and Bisochim stood as well, turning away to begin the long climb up the steps to his solitary palace. His steps were as heavy as his heart.

Zanattar had spoken of a war to come as if it were not only inevitable, but a joyous thing. The visions Bisochim had seen of such a war had shown him only death. Death for his Isvaieni. Death for Saravasse, as the enemy Bisochim feared knew well that to slay the dragon was to slay the dragon’s Bonded as well.

His Isvaieni had destroyed the
Iteru
-cities thinking to deny their resources to an invader. Bisochim had leeched the water from the wells and oases of the Isvai for the same reason. But Zanattar had spoken of a dragon coming to the aid of his captives, and if the enemy army marched with a dragon-Bonded Mage at its head, none of that would matter. The power such a Mage could call upon—twin to Bisochim’s own—would allow him to call up water from rock and sand anywhere he chose. Enough to provision an army large enough to destroy all who sheltered here at the Lake of Fire. To destroy everything Bisochim had worked so long and so hard to achieve.

There was only one thing he could do.

He must work faster.

One

A Terrible Beauty

T
HE
B
INRAZAN WERE
one of the largest and wealthiest tribes to make their home between Sand and Star. Fully ten double-hands of tents could Phulda their
Ummara
number when he counted that which the Binrazan held—and swift
shotors
, and flocks of fat sheep, and goats as well—for Binrazan wealth lay not in its hunting skills, as did the Khulbana’s, nor yet in its ability to wrest gold and gems from the secret places of the desert, as did the Kadyastar’s, nor in its trade in rare spices, like the Hinturi, nor in its harvest of salt, as the Kareggi did. The Binrazan were master rug makers and weavers, whose carpets graced the floor of every tent of every tribe, and the homes of the soft city-dwellers as well, who paid in cloth and glass and
kaffeyah
and glittering sugar from distant lands, in cakes of
xocalatl
and in medicines and in good steel knives and even in gold. Gold bought little among the Isvaieni, but it bought much in the
Iteru
-cities, and so the Binrazan accepted it in trade, for it could be held for a season or full turn of seasons and then exchanged for as much value as on the day it had been given.

For these reasons, and for the need of their flocks, the Binrazan had always kept to the edge of the Isvai, traveling between the Border Cities known even in the Cold North as the String of Pearls for their fabled wealth.

The first time Narbuc of the Binrazan had gone to Elparus’Iteru to say that the Binrazan had come to Rulbasi Well, he had seen eight Gatherings and had just begun his apprenticeship to Curam, master rug maker of the tribe. Then, he had not believed that any people could live as he saw these living, and his elder cousin had laughed, and had told him there were many strange sights to be seen between Sand and Star. Years passed. Master-weaver Curam went to lay his bones upon the sand, and Lacin became the new master, and still Narbuc practiced and learned. His life—as his father’s and his father’s before him—seemed as unchanging as the Isvai itself.

Then, in the depths of one summer’s heat, all changed. At first it was no more than unrest and rumor, and then it became something that Phulda must go and see for himself, and so the Binrazan came to Sapthiruk Oasis when the next Gathering of the Tribes was more than six moonturns away, and there Phulda heard the words of the Wildmage Bisochim, who told them all of the terrible danger they faced.

And when Phulda returned to the tents of the Binrazan to speak of the warning that the Wildmage Bisochim had come to give, Narbuc discovered he had walked all unawares of peril all his days, as the foraging
sheshu
browses unawares of the towering falcon, for Bisochim had come to warn all the Isvaieni that the people of the cities had long ago given up their hearts to false truths, and, as a fool will envy a man who possesses riches that the fool cannot use, the city-dwellers now hated the Isvaieni for having kept faith with the Balance and meant to enslave them.

And so all the tribes—thousands of men and women, and all that belonged to them, down to the last herd-dog and hunting-hound and fat sheep and weanling kid—followed Bisochim into the depths of the Barahileth, upon
a journey that was hard, but not as hard as the yoke of enslavement that their enemies prepared for them.

From Sapthiruk to the place called Telinchechitl, that journey was the work of three moonturns to accomplish, and without Bisochim to guide and sustain them, many would have died. But at last he brought them to the place where—so Phulda had told the Binrazan—they would wait and prepare for the day they might fall upon those who held to the False Balance. And if Sapthiruk had been a garden of impossible splendor, Narbuc did not know how he should name the Plains of Telinchechitl, with its tall date palms, its orchards of figs and
naranjes
and
limuns
, its fields of green barley and sweet green grass and devices which cast water upon the very wind to slake its fierce heat, just as if water were something as infinite as the sands of the desert itself.

Yet here, in this place where there was nothing but soft cool breezes and sweet grass and sweet fruits and endless water, there came anger and bloodshed between tribe and tribe before two moonturns had passed. It seemed, despite Bisochim’s wise words, that there would be no end to the strife, for how could any man avoid a quarrel if there was nowhere he might go that he could not look upon the face of his enemy? And it was true that Telinchechitl was the strangest and most beautiful place any of the Isvaieni had ever seen, but beyond its boundaries there was nothing but the stark waterless desolation of the Barahileth. Paradise penned them in as closely as the walls of the
Iteru
-cities closed up their inhabitants, and such confinement chafed.

And so it was that when Bisochim spoke to them of a thing they all knew well—that of all the tribes numbered among the Isvaieni, one was absent from the Great Ingathering—all the young hunters were eager to turn their skills to seeking out the Nalzindar wherever they might be.

All, perhaps, save Narbuc.

He was not alone among his age-mates in staying behind when the men and women of the Isvaieni rode forth, but nearly all of the others were women with infants too young to leave. Of all the rest—youths who had barely seen a
dozen Gatherings, grizzled elders of two-score years who might have chosen to remain within their tents—all rode forth. They went in bands of fifteen or twenty—no more—nor did it matter that this one might be Adanate and that one might be Fadaryama, for before they had gone, each who rode had sworn a blood-oath of fellowship to hold all the others as dear as the kin of their own tents.

Had he been needed to defend the people, Narbuc would have gone with the others without question. But Narbuc had no proficiency with
geschak
or
awardan
—or even spear or bow. All his life, Narbuc had honed his skills in the direction that would most benefit his tribe—to gain skill with the loom so that perhaps one day he might win Master-weaver Lacin’s place as Master-weaver for the Binrazan. And one more pair of eyes would make far less difference upon the sands of the Isvai than one more pair of hands in Lacin’s weaving tent. With the other young men of the Binrazan tents gone, only Narbuc and the elders remained to work the looms and knot the rugs. And there were many rugs that must be made.