The Phoenix Unchained (32 page)

“BREAKFAST?” Tiercel said with a sigh.

Simera was angry at not having found a single trace of Roneida’s tracks. She’d said the Wildmage had just
appeared
the day before, and apparently she’d vanished the same way today.

Harrier was just as irritated, but Harrier didn’t particularly like surprises, good or bad.

“I suppose,” he agreed, sitting down beside Tiercel with a sigh. “I thought she was going to go with us to the Elves.”

“I guess she had something else to do,” Tiercel offered.

“What?” Simera demanded. “What could have been more important?”

“Than nursemaiding us?” Tiercel asked with a wry grin. “Well, think of it this way. We can’t be in very much danger if she just went off and left us, can we?”

“That’s not what she said last night,” Harrier grumbled, reaching for the teapot.

“She said we might run into trouble,” Tiercel said, thinking back. “I guess she thinks we can handle it. And at least she won’t keep hitting you.”

Harrier rubbed the back of his head reflexively. “I bet she teaches school back in Vardirvoshanon,” he said.

“So what do we do now?” Simera asked.

Tiercel shrugged. “Find the Elves. And I guess we stop at that town she suggested and buy a cart for Thunder, first.”

WINDY Meadows was—so Simera told them—a typical plains town: little more than a long street and some holding pens for cattle. There were a few settlements nearby—“near” being a relative term—for Windy Meadows was one of the towns along the road
that led through the Northern Pass through the Mystrals. Though most of the traffic went by way of the more southerly route that led close to Ondoladeshiron, the traffic along the northern road kept towns like Windy Meadows well-supplied, and this early in the year, the mountain passes would be clear.

The sun was setting as they reached the town, and despite Tiercel’s uneasy protests, Simera and Harrier were both looking forward to spending the night at whatever local accommodation the town might provide.

“I’m sure Roneida’s magic will protect us,” Simera said hopefully.

“And . . . have you noticed that the whatever-they-are’s have been getting, well, less harmful?” Harrier said, frowning. “That cold-snap
killed
a lot of things. And the bear could have killed us. But that guy only tried to talk you to death.”

“He was . . .” Tiercel stopped, sighing. There was no way to explain to the other two—especially Harrier—that the stranger had been as dangerous—and maybe more dangerous—than the cold-snap. Not because of what he’d done. But because of what Tiercel had sensed that he
could
do.

He shrugged. “I guess one night won’t hurt.”

“ARE you sure it’s supposed to be
this
deserted?” Tiercel asked, a short time later.

He was standing in the center of the High Street of Windy Meadows. It was also the only street, so far as any of them could tell: a wide dirt track with a line of stone-and-brick buildings on either side. At the far end of the High Street were barns, cattle pens, and a wind-driven pump. The pump’s sails spun strongly in the brisk wind of evening, making a faint steady clacking sound. It was
the only sound there was, other than the wind and the sound of their own voices.

“No,” Harrier said.

“Roneida said she’d been here,” Simelda began uncertainly.

“Did she?” Harrier said. “Or did she just say
we
should come here? I’ve been thinking about what she said, and it wasn’t much.”

“But . . . she
was
a Wildmage,” Simera said. “She knew so much. About all of us.”

Harrier just looked at her.

“Whatever—I mean
whoever
she was, I don’t think she was one of the Bad Things,” Tiercel said.

“ ‘Bad Things’?” Harrier said mockingly. “Tyr,
how
old are you?”

Tiercel flushed. “Well, what would
you
call them?”

Harrier’s smile faded. “You’re right. Bad Things it is. So. She was a Wildmage. And she sent us here, and, if she’d come from Vardirvoshanon, she must have stopped here on the way, right?”

“So it must have been perfectly safe then,” Simera said. She didn’t sound completely certain. “But . . . there don’t seem to be any people here,” she added.

“Hello?” Tiercel shouted. His voice echoed through the dusk.

“Don’t
do
that!” Harrier said, sounding as if he’d very much like to swear. He was good at it, Tiercel knew, though he didn’t do it often. Either the situation wasn’t bad enough for bad language, he said—quoting his father, who was mild-spoken for all his loudness—or it was much too bad for it. Tiercel suspected they were heading for the second category. Fast.

“Didn’t you say the stranger kept warning you about plague?” Simera asked.

“In Ysterialpoerin,” Tiercel said, sliding down off of Cloud’s back. The big bay gelding stood placidly. Whatever had happened
here apparently wasn’t upsetting to horses, though that wasn’t really reassuring. He walked Cloud over to the nearest hitching post and looped his reins through one of the rings.

“What are you doing?” Harrier asked.

“I’m going to take a look around.”

“So—in case it
is
plague—you can catch it and die. Great idea,” Harrier grumbled.

“I’ll take my wand,” Tiercel said mildly.

“Even better. You can dazzle the plague with colored lights and then pass out. In that case, I’m coming with you. And I’m taking my sword.”

“So you can hit the plague over the head. Great.”

“Whatever’s wrong here,” Simera said firmly, “I’m bound by law to find out what it is and help if I can. So you might as well stop arguing and start looking around.”

IT took Harrier a moment to get the sword and belt down from the back of Lightning’s saddle and buckle them into place. The unfamiliar weight dragged at his hip, but Roneida had been right; if nothing else, he could use it as a club. And this place worried him.

He was
almost certain
Roneida wouldn’t have knowingly sent them into danger. But it had taken them all of today to reach here, and they’d met her in the middle of yesterday, and she’d been on foot, not on horseback. She would have been traveling more slowly. So even if she
had
stopped here, it would have been three or four days ago, at least, since she’d been here, and possibly more. A lot could happen in that time.

He tied Lightning beside Cloud and followed Tiercel.

THEY started with the inn. It was the largest building, and the doors stood open.

“We should have brought the lanterns,” Harrier said dubiously. The common room was dark. And empty.

“I think I can—” Tiercel said.

Before either of them could stop him, he sketched a shape in the air with the wand. A ball of blue light appeared, about the size of a loaf of bread, and floated up over his head. He sighed with relief.

“I’m all right.” He looked at them. “I could make one for each of you, I think.”

“Oh, no,” Harrier said hastily. “Why don’t we just stay together?”

They went inside.

“Hello?” Tiercel called again.

The inn stood empty, and this should have been its busiest time.

The light over Tiercel’s head—Harrier tried not to think about that, with some success—was brighter indoors. The inn’s common room was completely dark; there were windows, but they had shutters, not glass, and the shutters were closed and latched. Simera crossed to them—moving carefully; this place had not been designed for Centaurs—opening them.

Tables, benches. No people.

The benches were pushed back, as if people had gotten to their feet suddenly. There were mugs and plates on the tables and all of them contained half-eaten meals. Harrier dipped his finger into a bowl of stew. Cold and congealed, but not dried up. Not like something that had been sitting here, say, four days or more. So it hadn’t happened before Roneida had been here. And the Wild Magic hadn’t warned her not to send them here.

He didn’t like this.

The floor—wooden planks laid on a frame above the bare earth—was wet.

Harrier squatted down and touched his fingers to the wetness and sniffed them.

“Cider,” he said, frowning. They would have smelled it when they’d walked in if the door hadn’t been open. Most of the cider had trickled between the gaps in the planks, but from the marks on the floor, a lot had spilled.

He followed the traces back across the floor, past the serving board, to the row of wooden kegs racked along the back wall. The names of the contents were chalked on the sides of the barrels: several kinds of beer and ale, several kinds of cider, even water.

There was a pewter mug lying on the floor, and the tap to one of the kegs was open and dripping. Harrier rapped the side of the keg. It was empty.

The landlord had been filling a mug when . . . something . . . happened.

“Guys?” he said.

The room had suddenly gone dark.

“There’s nobody in the storeroom, either,” Tiercel said, walking back into the main room again, bringing the light back with him.

“This isn’t right,” Simera said, frowning as she gazed around the room.

She wasn’t frightened. Harrier had noticed that about her; Simera didn’t get afraid of things when something went wrong, she simply got angry that everything wasn’t going the way it was supposed to go. She sounded irritated now.

“If there
were
a plague, this is where the people would gather,” she said, working it out. “They’d come in from the steadings to the town, because it’s nearest the road. And they’d turn the inn into a hospital—or if there were too many sick, and they used the barn instead, they’d be using the inn to cook for them. They’d be here.”

“Whatever happened, they left so fast the landlord let one of his kegs run dry instead of shutting down the tap. Let’s get out of here,” Harrier said.
And whatever happened, it happened so recently that the floor’s still wet
.

Nine