The Phoenix Unchained (26 page)

WHEN dawn came, they began the difficult process of locating their horses and pack-pony. It took until noon to track them down, but they found them at last, grazing contentedly in the midst of a herd of cattle. Upon seeing Tiercel and Harrier, Cloud and Lightning trotted up to them as if nothing had happened, allowing their halters to be slipped into place. When he saw that the two horses were being led away, Thunder followed.

Simera had told them that she wanted to track the bear and see where it had gone. Tiercel didn’t know how long the globe of MageLight he’d cast would last—he knew it would dissipate, from what Master Cansel back at the Great Library had told him, but he wasn’t sure when. And it wouldn’t be all that visible in strong sunlight, anyway. But tracking a rogue bear was certainly a part of the Forest Watch’s duties. And if it had come after them once, there was a chance it might circle around and come after them again. At least the bear was nowhere nearby now—at least, he hadn’t seen his globe of MageLight anywhere, though he’d kept a wary eye out for it, and he was fairly certain it would last at least a day.

The bear’s first tracks were easy to follow. The large clawed paws had dug deep gouges into the earth as it ran from the luminous globe of blue fire that inexorably followed it wherever it went. It ran in a straight line, and Simera had no trouble tracking it.

Then the tracks . . . stopped.

At the place where the tracks stopped, they were about five miles away from the oak grove where Tiercel had cast his spell, at
the far side of a low hill. And though Simera circled the area for almost an hour before giving up, she found no further trace of tracks.

And Tiercel’s MageLight was nowhere to be seen.

“That’s good, right?” Harrier asked, as they turned their horses’s heads north once more.

It was midafternoon by now. Between finding and catching the horses, and tracing the bear, they’d lost most of the day. But it was hard to see that it mattered; Tiercel was the only one who felt as if they were running out of time. And even he couldn’t say exactly how. Or why. He had to stop someone he’d never met from doing something he wasn’t quite sure of. And he wasn’t actually certain whether that event lay in the past or the future, and he
really
didn’t know why he knew about it at all.

“The bear just vanished?” Simera answered irritably. “Bears don’t just
vanish
, Harrier. They wander off. If it had stopped running, it would still have left tracks. And if you
dare
suggest that it
did
leave tracks, and I just couldn’t find them—”

“Nobody’s suggesting that, Simera,” Tiercel said quickly, although he suspected that those would have been the next words out of Harrier’s mouth. “But . . . maybe the bear
did
just vanish.”

Simera rounded on him, looking very much as if she’d like to hit him.

“Think about it,” he said quickly. “I mean . . . you said it didn’t look like a normal bear. And . . . wasn’t there only one set of tracks?” He hadn’t realized what he was going to say until he said it, but it seemed so
right
.

“The ones leading
away
,” Simera said, looking stunned as the meaning of his words sank in. “Herdsman’s Path—how could I have been such a fool! Not a single print leading down to the trees. Only the ones leading away.”

“Another thing like the inn,” Harrier said. His voice was flat.

“I guess,” Tiercel said. But he wasn’t quite sure. Somehow, this attack hadn’t seemed quite the same.

“Magic ice-storms, vanishing bears . . . I hope we find this Wildmage of yours soon, Tiercel,” Simera said. “I’m not sure I can take any more
strangeness
.”

“Oh, well, about that. I sort of have an idea,” Tiercel said.

“DO you really think that would be such a good idea . . . ?” Simera said doubtfully, once Tiercel had explained his plan.

“No,” Harrier said flatly. “It wouldn’t. He almost burned down his family’s house in Armethalieh the last time he tried anything like that,” he explained.

“That was completely different,” Tiercel said.

“You started a
fire
!” Harrier said. “Will you look around? We’re in the middle of grazing lands. Do you want to start a fire
here
? We’d never put it out. Not to mention that a grass fire would cause a stampede that would probably kill us all,” Harrier added. His expansive gesture took in the herd of cattle on the horizon.

“I wouldn’t start a fire,” Tiercel protested.

“You think. You hope. You have no real idea what would actually happen if you did another . . . spell,” Harrier said forcefully. His voice was loud enough to make Lightning flick his ears nervously.

“Okay. You’re right about that. But I don’t see any Wildmages around here. Do you? So we go north, cross the Mystrals, reach Ysterialpoerin—in another couple of moonturns—
don’t
find a Wildmage there, either—keep going—cross the Bazrahil Range, go through the Gatekeeper Pass—if we’re lucky enough to manage to get there before winter sets in—cross the mountains of Pelashia’s Veil, and reach the Elven Lands. Then what? It will certainly be winter by then, and you know that we won’t be able to make it back
through the Bazrahils in winter. And the Elves won’t want us in the Elven Lands, and do you know what? I bet we still won’t have found a single Wildmage!”

The other two were staring at him in astonishment. Harrier, because Tiercel simply never lost his temper. And Simera, well, she was just staring.

“What else am I supposed to do?” Tiercel finished quietly.

Harrier just shook his head.

“Do you always set things on fire when you cast your spells?” Simera asked, after a long pause.

Tiercel just shrugged. Not counting MageLight and Fire—simple “baby spells” according to all the books—he’d cast exactly one spell deliberately in his entire life, and wasn’t really looking forward to trying it again.

“You did back in Armethalieh. And at the inn,” Harrier said, although Tiercel wasn’t really sure that was true—and anyway, if you were actually casting Fire, you shouldn’t be surprised if things caught on fire, should you? Harrier sighed. “Nobody’s gone as far north as the Bazrahils in . . . I don’t know.”

“Hundreds of years,” Simera said, sounding troubled. “Maybe . . .”

“Maybe a Wildmage will
just show up
?” Harrier’s voice was thick with frustration and anger. “It’s been three moonturns since Kindling, and that’s when Tyr set fire to his bedroom and all this really started.” He glanced at Tiercel, and Tiercel could see exactly what Harrier was thinking. He had always been able to read his friend’s thoughts as easily as he could read a page of print. Harrier hated to have to think, and was slow to make up his mind, but—possibly for that very reason—when he did come to a decision, his decisions were sound ones. Which was a good thing, because it was nearly impossible to get him to
change
his mind.

“I know they’re supposed to come when we need them,” Harrier
said slowly, reasoning it out. “That’s what the Light teaches. And I guess the Herdsman, too.”

Simera nodded.

“But if Tyr doesn’t need one after practically burning down his house, and getting so sick, and having all those dreams, and then
something
happening at the inn, and now the bear coming, who does? But we haven’t seen one. Maybe . . .” he took a deep breath. “Maybe one isn’t coming.”

Harrier looked sick at the very thought, and Simera simply looked disbelieving. But it had been almost five days now since the three of them had arrived in Sentarshadeen to find that there was no Wild-mage waiting for Tiercel there, and Tiercel had had time to get used to the idea. The Light taught that everyone must do their best to keep Balance in the world, not rely upon the Wildmages to do it alone.

The Light gave no gifts without reason.

Maybe he’d discovered his High Mage gifts so that he could
use
them.

It was a frightening thought to think of using the High Magick again—deliberately—but if he
did
have to use it, well, better here—out in the middle of nowhere—than in the middle of a city.

“Maybe a Wildmage isn’t going to come along and solve my problems,” Tiercel said carefully. “Maybe I have everything I need to help myself already. If I do, then this spell will work. If not . . .” He shrugged.

Simera looked around. She was obviously still trying to come to terms with the idea that a Wildmage
wouldn’t
arrive to offer aid when aid was so obviously needed, but the practical side of her nature won out.

“What about the fire that comes when you use your magic?” she asked.

“I don’t know what will happen. I think it was an accident the other times.”

Simera made a rude noise. “Best be sure. Before you try this stunt of yours, we’ll find a place where you can’t set anything on fire.”

Harrier shrugged. “I’d rather be safe than dead.”

AS they traveled north, looking for a location that Simera would deem suitable for Tiercel to make his first attempt at Conjuration, Tiercel looked for something to make into a wand. There was no detailed information about wands in the books he’d found, so he assumed that any wood would do. He found a willow tree growing by one of the rivers they passed, and, with Harrier’s help, he cut a nice straight length of wood, one that was not too thick. Simera helped him trim and smooth it. They all agreed now that he should practice, though none of the three of them was really certain what it was he was practicing. But the books Tiercel remembered reading back in Armethalieh seemed to imply that the wand was used to draw the sigils in the air as a component of the spellcasting (so were the sword and the staff, but he wasn’t likely to be able to get his hands on either of those any time soon), so he’d thought he’d give it a try. The sigils weren’t actually spells, so practicing them should be fairly harmless.

The first time he tried using his new wand to draw the sigils in the air, Tiercel dropped it with a shriek.

“WHAT! What happened?”

It was evening. Simera and Harrier were gathering firewood a little distance away. Tiercel had balanced his notebook on a convenient flat rock, open to the pages where he’d written down the sigils, and started to draw the first of the sigils.

“Aleph—”

And there it was, hanging in the air in pale-colored fire. He’d shrieked in surprise, and his friends had come running. By the time they’d gotten there, it was gone.

“I—I—I—
Look!
”

With shaking hands, Tiercel retrieved his dropped stick—wand—and did it again.

“Aleph” appeared again, hanging in the air.

“Well, that’s impressive,” Harrier said in a deceptively-calm voice, watching as the glyph slowly faded away again. “What does it do?”

“It makes Fire, if I tell it to,” Tiercel said. He drew a shaky breath. “But I didn’t know it would actually
appear
. Maybe it’s because of the wand.”

Harrier took the wand from Tiercel’s hand and stared at it suspiciously, then waved it around experimentally before handing it back. “No,” he said, in the tones of one thinking the matter over. “I think it’s you.”