The Phoenix Unchained (14 page)

His people had been expecting the day to come for a long time, for the Wildmages did not belong to any one tribe alone. They went where they were called, across the whole of the Madiran—and even beyond, if that were their fate. Some were called out of the Isvai to live in the cities at the edge of the Madiran. These things went as Sand and Stars willed.

When he went, Bisochim took a proper share of the tribe’s wealth, enough to keep him alive in the desert, for that was only proper, and he had earned it by his magic. Waterskins, bedroll, the weapons of a Master Huntsman—for Bisochim had achieved this childhood ambition over the years—he would take all these things away with him when he left the tent of his mother for the last time, but these things had been his for many years, as had been his falcon and his
ikulas
hounds. His share of the tribe’s wealth lay in the animal he would ride away upon: a fine riding
shotor
, the hardy, swift, long-necked beast, more enduring than a horse, that could go days without water and traverse the burning sands of the Isvai in speed and comfort.

The second thing he had earned by his magic, Bisochim donned for the first time upon the day he left; the blue robes of a
Wildmage of the Madiran, so that every desert-dweller would see him and know him for what he was at once. Their blue was as bright as the desert sky at morning, before the sun had bleached it to whiteness, and they were woven of the finest, whitest wool of the young kid and dyed with the costly flaxflower blue usually reserved for the weavings sent to the cities as trade goods. The robes ensured that Bisochim would be seen, and known, and welcomed at every oasis and cookfire. To host a Wildmage was never charity. It was service to the Balance.

Gazing down at himself in his mother’s tent as he stood there, dressed, for the first time in his life, as a Wildmage, Bisochim felt very odd and uncomfortable. There had never been any need to wear the blue among his own people, for every one of them had known what he was. And though he had not hidden his Wildmage gifts when his tribe had encountered other tribes in their travels, that was a different matter than meeting another tribe as a lone wanderer. In the desert, lone travelers were viewed with suspicion, and the Wild Magic could not protect him from an arrow in the dark. So now he would wear the blue robe. The color of water. Of life.

When Bisochim stepped from his family’s tent for the last time, garbed in his new finery, all the tribe was gathered to see him depart. There was cheering when he appeared, but it quickly fell silent. The people he had known all his life, who had known him as a Wildmage for ten cycles of seasons, suddenly saw him as something entirely apart from them now that he wore the blue robes. He had been
set
apart. This, Bisochim realized, was how it would be for the rest of his life.

The people before him cleared a space, and he walked quickly through them to his kneeling
shotor
. Placing a booted foot upon its knee, he swung himself up into its saddle and clucked to it, giving it the command to rise. It lurched to its feet and he gathered the reins, tapping it on the shoulder with his goad to command it to move forward.

Soon Bisochim left the only home he had ever known far behind.

FOR sennights he traveled through the Isvai, seeing no one. The Wild Magic made it a simple matter to arrive at wells and be gone from them before others came, to seek out solitary grazing for Sharab, to call such game as he needed for himself and his
ikulas
to his snare. If he chose, he could live out the rest of his life in this fashion—but if he were the sort who would make such a choice, it was very unlikely that the Three Books would have come to him in the first place.

It was not impossible, of course. The Wild Magic was as mysterious as the desert. Who could say that Bisochim did not serve the Balance by spending the rest of his life wandering as a lonely hermit pondering the intricacies of the Balance? Perhaps the whole purpose of his life was to die in a certain place so that his Books could be found by another? There was truly no way to know, and life in the Isvai did not encourage idle speculation on things one truly could not affect. Bisochim did not spend a great deal of time worrying about it. What he did worry about—alone, between Sand and Star—was his growing belief that there was something flawed in the Balance of the World. For if the Balance was flawed, didn’t that mean the
world
was flawed?

It was true that the world had gone out of true before. Many times. But when that happened, so the old tales said, the Wild Magic itself defended the Balance, calling up extraordinary creations out of itself: Knight-Mages and War Mages. They were the essence of Light itself—not of Balance as the Wildmages were—and were just as out-of-tune with true Balance as any creature of Darkness. This was why they appeared only rarely, in moments of great peril, and vanished again once the danger was past, for in
their own way, they were just as dangerous to the Keeping of the Balance as the unchecked Darkness. The Balance’s tools of Pure Light burned brightly and briefly against the threat to the Balance, giving up their lives so that harmony could be restored; they were not meant to last longer and draw the Balance out of alignment in the opposite direction. Thus the storytellers taught, for had not the War Magic once lingered beyond its time and become a yoke about the neck of its own people, ultimately forged by the Darkness as a blade against their throat?

But none of this was useful
now
. The War Magic had been gone since the Great Flowering, and Bisochim knew that he wasn’t a Knight-Mage. All aspects of the Wild Magic flowed strongly through him, and he lacked the Knight-Mage’s special gifts—and limitations. So he did not understand why it was he should have received such a warning.

Perhaps
, he decided at last,
it is so that you can convey it to one who needs it but cannot sense it
.

He could not imagine who such a person could be. The only ones who would need such a warning would be those with the power to act upon it. And any with such power would be other Wildmages, who would certainly be able to sense for themselves that the Balance was out of true. At any rate, with little more than a sense of
wrongness
to go on, there was little he could do. It wasn’t even possible to seek out the source of the wrongness, for it was far too subtle. All he could do was watch, and wait. And so, after many moonturns of solitude, Bisochim re-entered the life of the Isvaieni, wandering among the tribes, and doing what he could to serve the Balance and grow stronger in the ways of the Wild Magic. The spells he was called upon to cast were as humble as a Finding Spell that uncovered the location of a wandering goat, and as sophisticated as a Shield spell that protected an entire encampment from the Sandwind’s destruction. His Mageprices were always light ones,
for his solutions to the problems he faced were always simple and elegant. He became—though it was the last thing he would ever have wished to be—a legend among the tribes. They gave him a veneration he did not want, as if the power was his, and did not come from the Gods of the Wild Magic. Soon they began to speak of him as if he were more important than other Wildmages. As if he were more important than the magic itself. To be set apart in that fashion angered him, and such anger was against all he had been taught of the Balance, and so, less than a score of moonturns after he had left the tents of his own people, Bisochim withdrew once again, this time to the deepest part of the Isvai, a place where the Isvaieni did not go, for there was no grazing to be had there, and no water.

But once, long ago, the land had been otherwise, and there had been cities here, though not cities of Men. The Wild Magic led him to a city carved into the walls of a deep canyon, and there Bisochim coaxed long-dry wells back to life, and with water and labor caused ancient gardens to bloom once more. In silence and solitude he found peace, and only the greatest need called him back out among the Isvaieni. When he went, he no longer wore the blue robes. Like his cousins to the north and east, he worked in secret whenever he could. And then one day something happened which changed his world forever.

Her name was Saravasse.

IT was a fine cool spring morning, and Bisochim was hunting. By now his little canyon held a small herd of goats as well as a few chickens—for the valley had bloomed under his care—and he did not truly need to hunt for meat. But pig and antelope made a nice change from chicken and goat, and stretched the time he could go
without looking for a caravan to trade for supplies. Besides, he liked to hunt. He was good at it. A skill unused was wasted, and the desert abhorred waste.

His falcon circled above him in the high sky, wings outspread. His
ikulas
paced along beside him, jaws open and tongues lolling. His
shotor’s
pads made soft drumbeats in the sand.

The water he had summoned to the canyon’s wells had brought life back to the Deep Isvai, for that was the way of the desert. The plants that had flowered in the brief winter rains did not die, but sunk their taproots deep, so now there was thornbush and dagger-grass to keep game here that once would have migrated elsewhere. Over the years it had grown tall. That the desert creatures came down into the valley as well did not bother him particularly, since Bisochim hunted them for food in turn. That was the Balance.

Suddenly his falcon ceased its lazy hunting circles. For a moment it almost seemed to flounder in the air, then it banked and turned, fleeing as if from an enemy. But falcons fled only from eagles, and there were no eagles here. Bisochim whistled, and swung his lure, but in the end it took magic to bring the falcon to his glove. Only when she was safely hooded and on the block was he willing to investigate what might have frightened her. Whatever it was, it was something in the rocks ahead.

He whistled his
ikulas
to heel and rode cautiously forward. He had only gone a little way into the rocks before the hounds’ hackles began to rise and they began to whine uneasily. He silenced them with a gesture. He could smell what they could not. The scent of magic.

At his touch, Sharab knelt, and he swung down from his saddle. She settled herself in the soft dust with a grunt, too lazy to get to her feet since he would obviously be returning soon. He scratched her absently behind one large hairy ear—receiving an echoing groan for his troubles—and walked cautiously forward.

“Man. Come no closer.”

The source of the deep soft voice was still hidden by the rocks ahead. All that Bisochim could tell from the sound was that the speaker was female—and not human.

“Are you in trouble?” he asked, stopping where he was. “I am a Wildmage. I can help you.”

There was a faint scraping noise from the rocks ahead. “In trouble, yes. But beyond your power to aid,” the voice said.

Bisochim scrambled forward through a narrow cleft between two rocks. And saw . . .

A dragon.

Dragons were known in the story-songs of the tribes of the Isvai. They were among the Otherfolk who had been reborn in the War Against the Endarkened, and who had gone into the East when the Elves had withdrawn across the mountains in the aftermath of the Great Flowering, when the Great Desolation had become fertile once again. He had never expected to see one.

She was larger than the largest tent he had ever seen. Her head alone was larger—far larger—than Sharab. She was scaled like an adder, and her scales glinted as brightly as polished metal, in the deep fiery golden red of garnets. Her wings were like the wings of bats—enormous sails of skin and rib—and at the moment they were swept out behind her at an awkward angle, their membrane pierced and shredded by the stand of thornwood trees she’d tumbled into.

“I told you to stay back!” she cried, rearing up. The movement pulled sharply at her wings, causing her to hiss in pain.

“I can help you,” Bisochim repeated quietly.

The red-gold dragon chuckled painfully. “You might be the greatest Wildmage born in a thousand years. But the Mageprice to make my wings whole would be more than even you could take upon yourself.” She hesitated, as if she would say something more, but she did not.