The Phoenix Unchained (31 page)

The next item was three large knives in their sheaths. All three were larger and heavier than their own knives—even Simera’s sturdy practical hunting knife—and obviously weapons rather than tools.

“And if there is something that my Talismans cannot turn aside, nor Simera’s arrows discourage, then you shall be forced to fight, and a strong edge is a compelling argument.”

They regarded the blades in their hands doubtfully. Of the three of them, Simera had the most experience with keeping the peace, and even she looked as if she’d rather be somewhere else. No matter how many times they told themselves—or Tiercel told them—that there was danger involved in all of this, no matter how many bandits, bears, ice-storms, and bizarre vanishing travelers they encountered, none of that was the same thing as holding a knife in your hands that had been forged for one purpose: to draw someone’s blood.

And thinking you might have to use it.

“But if these will not serve . . .”

Last of all she pulled the largest of her packs toward her and pulled out a long bundle wrapped in coarse cloth.

“Then Harrier shall at last have what he so ardently desires. The chance to hit something.” She placed the bundle in Harrier’s lap.

It was a sword. He felt its shape through the cloth, and unwrapped it quickly, swallowing hard. The sword was sheathed, and there was a swordbelt. He pulled the blade partway from its sheath and stared at it.

The silvery blade was slick with grease and gleamed like bright glass in the deep twilight. He knew better than to touch the blade itself—if he knew nothing of swords, at least he knew something of knives, and the grease was there to protect the metal of the blade. Besides, it looked sharp.

Very sharp.

There was no particular ornamentation to either sword or sheath, just good plain leather for the one, and plain metal for the other. The hilt was wrapped in plaited horsehair; the rough wiry surface would give him a good strong grip, no matter how much his hands sweated as he held it. He ran a finger over the hilt experimentally, feeling the roughness.

“I don’t know how to use a sword,” he said aloud.

“You’ll learn,” Roneida said unsympathetically. “And until you do, simply think of it as a long sharp club.”

Tiercel snickered nervously. Harrier turned and glared at him.
Tiercel
was the High Mage!
Tiercel
was the one talking about needing a sword for his stupid magic spells! Why hadn’t Roneida given
Tiercel
the sword?

“I, ah, um. Thank you,” he said awkwardly. It was a present, after all. And you thanked people for presents, even when they gave you things you’d rather not have.

It occurred to him that this had all started when he’d been given a present he hadn’t wanted—The
Compendium of Ancient Myth and Legend
. He hoped that this present didn’t mean the start of even more trouble. And he
really
hoped he wasn’t going to have to hit anything.

“And now we’ll have a nice cup of tea, and go to bed,” Roneida said briskly. “We all have a long way to go in the morning, and you’ve all had a very busy day.”

BUT even after the evening tea—something from Roneida’s pack; spicy, fragrant, and unfamiliar—Harrier couldn’t sleep, though Tiercel dozed off immediately and even Simera seemed perfectly able to sleep just as if this were any other night. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Roneida had told them.

Go find the Elves.

It would take them two moonturns at least to cross the Mystrals and reach Ysterialpoerin, and he had no idea how far beyond that the Bazrahil Range was. A long way, he thought. The edge of the world. And Pelashia’s Veil was farther still.

Their parents were going to think they were dead.

They might actually
be
dead before they got that far, it occurred to him. Roneida hadn’t said her rocks could protect them—he fingered the white stone around his neck—she just said they might help. Whatever was chasing Tiercel would keep coming. None of them really knew much about fighting. Simera could defend herself against bandits—if there weren’t too many of them—but what if something worse came along? Since they all seemed to be falling into a Kindling Day play, why not expect icedrakes and dwerro and bearwards and minotaurs to come charging over the next hill? And unicorns and Frost Giants too? If they were going to visit the Elves, and see dragons, maybe they’d get to see
all
the creatures of ancient legend, wonderful and monstrous.

He really hoped not. It was one thing to imagine them safely in a wondertale—that was fine—and quite another to imagine actually meeting any of them. The bad ones would kill them outright, and Harrier couldn’t really imagine that even the good ones would have much interest in them.

And why wouldn’t Roneida just
do
something about Tiercel’s visions, if they were so dangerous, instead of sending them off to the Elves? What were the Elves going to do? Train Tyr as a High Mage? From everything Tiercel had said, that took years. If what he was seeing was an actual problem, wouldn’t it be over by then, one way or the other?

Harrier was definitely going to ask Roneida about all that in the morning. From a safe distance. Although actually he wouldn’t even mind getting hit, so long as he got answers as well. She really hadn’t
told them all that much, though she’d made Tiercel feel better. And the stew had been good.

Eventually he exhausted himself with unanswered questions, and slept.

TIERCEL awoke feeling better than he had in a very long time. The nagging almost-a-headache he’d had for moonturns was gone and he felt alert and wide-awake, even before his first cup of morning tea. He even felt cheerful, which was pretty weird, considering that they’d finally met the Wildmage he’d been looking for ever since he and Harrier had left Armethalieh, and she’d basically told him that she couldn’t help.

But at least she
had
told him who could, and that was more than he’d known before. And since she’d done so much for them already, maybe he could persuade her to tell them something more today. Like how she’d known where to find them. And why she’d brought them the things she had. She must have brought those particular things for a reason, after all.

He sat up in his blankets, yawning and stretching, and looked around. Harrier was still an unconscious lump in his blankets, and Tiercel smiled. It was nice to be awake first for a change. Even Simera was asleep. He wondered—not for the first time—if it was uncomfortable to sleep standing up. He supposed it was natural, if you were a Centaur. After all, they had four legs, and wouldn’t fall over. He looked further.

Roneida and her donkey were gone.

“Hey!” he yelped, throwing his bedclothes back. His good mood of a moment before had vanished utterly. He felt betrayed. He’d expected Ronieda to be here in the morning. He’d expected her to stay with them.

Simera jerked upright with a huff and a gurgle, and Harrier came thrashing out of his blankets as if an entire army of Endarkened were about to come rushing across the Plains.

“What? What is it?” he demanded, grabbing for the sword Roneida had left them. And that was the single scariest thing Tier-cel had seen in the last moonturn. Harrier with a sword. Harrier was the
Portmaster’s son
, for the Light’s sake!

“Roneida’s gone. She’s left us,” Tiercel said tightly.

“She did
what
?” At least Harrier’s eyes were all the way open now, and he’d put the sword down. He hadn’t even managed to get it all the way out of its sheath.

“She isn’t here,” Tiercel repeated. He stood up and looked around, half-hoping she might be hiding somewhere, but he already knew what he’d find. She wasn’t here, and he couldn’t see her anywhere on the horizon.

“She
left
?” Harrier sputtered.

She had. And—obviously—she was not only using Wildmage magic to conceal herself—because otherwise they should still be able to see her in the distance—but, as they soon found, had apparently used Wildmage magic to conceal her tracks as well, because Simera could find no trace of either her or the donkey.

VOICES carried a great distance over the High Plains. It took no great enchantment—though Roneida carried many with her—to hear the sounds of dismay at the awakening camp less than half a mile behind her.

She stopped for a moment, savoring the cool of the morning. Even through the thin fabric of the
tarnkappa
that concealed her, she could feel the morning breeze.

This was definitely the best part of the day.

Behind her, Mouse waited patiently. She could not see him—he
was veiled, just as she was, in an all-concealing shroud of magic—but he was well-trained, and would follow the pull of the lead-rope even though he could not see his mistress.

A hard Price, and a complicated one, but as soon as she had gotten safely away from the children, it would be paid in full. She thought she would go to Sentarshadeen. She hadn’t seen Maelgwn in years. He would certainly want to know that the Fire-Crowned had reached her safely.

With as much safety as there was left in the world.

Praise the Gods of the Wild Magic that the Fire-Crowned was as ignorant as he was! It had been hard indeed not to tell him all she knew—little as that was—but she could not help him gain his Mastery, and without it, ignorance of his peril—true innocence—was his only shield.

Tiercel and his friends were worried, and that was good. But they obviously had no inkling of precisely how serious a matter it was when the Wild Magic called back into the world the ancient War Magic that had been created in the Light’s hour of darkest peril to save all that lived from the Endarkened.

Should they realize it—truly and properly understand it—they would do what any sensible well-brought-up youngsters would do.

They would go to their elders for help.

They would spend time trying to convince others of the danger they were all in.

They would stay somewhere they thought was
safe
.

And—since there was nowhere safe, and, even if they could convince someone in Armethalieh that Tiercel had the powers of a High Mage, nobody there would have the least idea of what to do about that—it was far better for him to be doing precisely what he was doing now.

A slim hope was better than no hope at all.

Roneida tugged on Mouse’s lead-rope and continued walking in the direction of Sentarshadeen.