The Phoenix Unchained (28 page)

THE lone rider reached them by midday. Because the Plains were so very flat, they had, literally, been watching his approach for hours, seeing him grow from a speck on the horizon to a rider on a roan horse leading a pack mule, with two large red dogs loping lazily along beside the horse’s legs. When the rider got even closer, they could see that the long hair curling from beneath his broad-brimmed hat was as red as the coats of his dogs.

“Greetings,” he said, reining in and tipping his hat to Tiercel. “It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered a traveler.”

“Hello,” Tiercel answered. “I’m Tiercel and this is Harrier and Simera. We’re heading north—”

“To Ysterialpoerin,” Harrier added, since it would seem odd if they didn’t have a destination, and
very
odd if Tiercel told him the truth.

But: “Where to?” the stranger asked, just as if Harrier hadn’t spoken.

The easy pleasant expression on his face didn’t change, and it was plain to Harrier—and, he hoped, to Tiercel—that the stranger wasn’t ignoring the two of them.

He simply didn’t see them.

“I thought I’d go to Ysterialpoerin. Have you heard of it?” Tiercel said.

“Of course. The city has been there for a very long time,” the stranger said. “It might not be the best place for you to go, though.”

“Really,” Tiercel said noncommittally.

“Sickness tends to strike there in the summers.”

“Um, Tyr?” Harrier said.

Tiercel and the stranger both ignored him.

Harrier looked at Simera.

“Does it strike anybody but me as a little odd that this guy doesn’t seem to know that anybody but Tiercel is here?” Harrier said, very loudly.

“Do you think he’s like the bear?” Simera asked, taking a nervous step backward and switching her tail.

Tiercel gave them both a determined glare of warning, but Harrier was tired of just sitting there and watching. He kneed Lightning forward, determined to make the stranger notice him, or ride off, or . . .
something
.

TIERCEL did his best to block out the sound of Harrier’s voice. There were times when he really admired Harrier’s determination and courage, and there were other times—like now—when all Tier-cel wanted to do was dig a really deep pit and drop Harrier at the bottom of it.

He kept his eyes fixed on the stranger’s face.

He was pretty sure the stranger was
exactly
like the bear, which meant they were all in deep trouble. But for some reason, this time
their trouble hadn’t shown up trying to kill them or rip them to pieces, but trying to trick them in a way that was so pathetically obvious a child could see through it. At least, he was pretty sure that was what was going on.

“I’ll be careful,” he said to the stranger.

“You can never be too careful,” the stranger said. “I have some medicines in my pack. They’ve been very useful to me in the past. I’d be happy to share them with you.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Tiercel said firmly. “You might need them yourself later. I’ll be fine.” He was careful not to mention his friends again.

The stranger was persistent—far more persistent than a chance-met stranger making a casual offer of aid ought to be. He even opened his pack and brought out the medicine that he was offering to Tiercel. The vials glittered in the sunlight like the rarest of jewels. They were so beautiful that Tiercel was tempted to take them for the sake of their beauty alone; their contents glowed in all the colors of the rainbow, and the bottles themselves were tiny works of art. He was actually reaching for them when a thread of suspicion stopped him.

Why would someone keep medicine in bottles like these?

For that matter, why would medicine look like this? Tiercel had been taking medicines all his life for various ailments. It was usually some shade of brown. Not green and blue and purple and red. He withdrew his hand and refused again.

“YOU’RE quite certain?” the stranger asked at last. “You don’t want the medicines? You might get sick in Ysterialpoerin. And the bottles are very pretty.”

“I’m sure,” Tiercel said evenly.

He’d never been so afraid in his life. It was the way the stranger talked. He spoke so reasonably, but the things he said bordered on
nonsense. He couldn’t really expect to trick someone, talking that way. It was as if the stranger were crazy, or didn’t care whether he fooled Tiercel or not. Or—despite what he looked like—as if he were something farther from being human than Cloud was, or even the hawk circling lazily above them in the sky, and though he was doing his best to impersonate one of Tiercel’s kind, it wasn’t much of a best.

“All right then,” the stranger said.

And just like that it was over. The stranger dug his heels into his horse’s sides. It trotted past Tiercel, with the mule following along behind, lugging at the end of its tether. The dogs loped eagerly afterward, making wide circles around horse and mule.

When they had passed, Tiercel felt as if he’d been sitting on Cloud’s back without moving for hours. He stretched and sighed.

“I’m glad we—” he began, turning to the others.

He stopped.

His friends were gone.

HE barely had time to begin to panic when he located them. Simera was only a few yards away, slightly behind and to the right of him, standing as if she’d fallen asleep. She’d dropped Thunder’s lead-rope, and the sturdy black pony had drifted away from her and was grazing as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

It took him a little longer to find Harrier, but he finally managed. Harrier was several miles ahead, still mounted, but slumped forward in Lightning’s saddle in a way that suggested that he, too, might be asleep. Tiercel swallowed hard and rode toward Simera. She woke as soon as he approached, straightening with a grunt of surprise and staring at him with wide blue eyes.

“Harrier tried to attack the red-haired man,” she said, looking around in confusion.

“I don’t think he was a man,” Tiercel said. “But I managed to get him to go away.” He pointed into the distance, where Harrier sat on his unmoving mount. “Let’s go get Harrier.”

HARRIER was much harder to wake than Simera had been. Tier-cel thought it might be because he’d actually
touched
the stranger (Simera said she thought he had, though Tiercel hadn’t even seen him ride forward), but for whatever reason, it took dumping him from Lightning’s back to return him to consciousness.

HARRIER stared up at both of them indignantly. Lightning nosed at him optimistically, obviously hoping for food.

The last thing he remembered was riding toward the redheaded stranger who could see neither him nor Simera. And now he was staring up at the sky, lying flat on his back in the grass, and from the position of the sun it was a couple of hours later than it had been the last time he’d looked, and he had no idea how he’d gotten here.

He didn’t like the explanation at all when he got it. No one who worked around ships—and Harrier had done that, in one way or another, ever since he’d been old enough to be of use down at the Port—was a stranger to the tales ships crews told themselves and each other. Some were lighthearted, some were heartbreakingly grim, all filled with inexplicable events and all sworn—by their tellers—to be absolutely true. He’d never expected something out of a True Sea Story to happen to him. And on dry land, besides.

“So he’s the bear—or he’s like the bear—and he wanted to show up and offer you a lot of medicine in fancy bottles because he wanted to kill you. And he couldn’t see me or Simera because he’s magic?”

He glared at Tiercel.

“If I actually knew the answer to that, Har, or what I was doing, or why we’re here, I’d tell you,” Tiercel said with irritated patience.

What Harrier knew was that he was getting very tired of running into things that made no sense at all but were apparently dangerous that he couldn’t hit.

Of course the stranger was gone when they looked for him, though he couldn’t have ridden out of sight in the short time they’d been distracted.