The Phoenix Unchained (34 page)

THE gelding was standing where Tiercel had left him. Cloud had run himself nearly to exhaustion when he’d bolted, which was the only reason Tiercel had been able to bring him around. If Harrier and Simera hadn’t lit that lantern, he never would have found them as quickly as he had. Sound carried weirdly on the Plains at night, and by the time he’d gotten Cloud to stop running, he hadn’t really been certain of where he was.

Harrier was right.

He should have managed to get there sooner.

He should have set those things on fire when they’d first seen them back in the town.

But he still recoiled from the horror of what he’d done. They were alive, and he’d burned them to death.

But if he’d done it sooner, Simera would be alive now.

He led Cloud back to the road. The gelding’s nostrils flared as it approached the road, and even Tiercel could smell the stench—burning, and something worse—but the animal was too tired to make much of a fuss.

Harrier was still standing over Simera’s body. He rubbed at his face with the back of his hand when Tiercel approached.

“Come on,” Tiercel said quietly. “We can’t stay here.”

“We have to—” Harrier said thickly. “We can’t just—”

He gestured to Simera’s body.

“Centaurs don’t,” Tiercel said. “They just . . . out in the fields. They say it’s the Herdsman’s Way.”

“Can’t just leave her in the road,” Harrier said thickly, drawing a shaking breath.

“No.”

IT wasn’t a pretty business. They needed Cloud to move her. They tied a rope from the gelding’s pack around Simera’s body and used it to drag her out into the tall grass. They wrapped as much of her as they could in a blanket from her pack first, but it still seemed a terrible way to treat the body of their friend. Both of them were crying openly by the time the brutal work was done.

“I don’t know any words for Centaurs,” Tiercel said, staring down at her body.

“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” Harrier said harshly. “My Da says prayers are for the living.” He picked up the lantern and began to walk back to the road. Tiercel took Cloud’s reins and followed.

THEY walked up the road in silence with Tiercel leading Cloud. Both of them were too grief-stricken and exhausted to talk. While they’d been setting Simera to rest, the moon had risen; it was full, and gave plenty of light to see by.

Harrier was stunned, still aching with the suddenness of the loss of Simera, but despite his cruel words earlier, he didn’t blame Tier-cel for her death. Cloud had bolted. Tiercel had regained control of his horse and ridden back to them as fast as he could.

As for the rest . . .

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Tiercel being able to cast spells, even though Tiercel didn’t really seem to be that good at it.
And the idea of having Tiercel use magic against the monsters disturbed him almost more than the idea of being killed by them.

He wished Simera were alive; there was no question of that. If it had been a clear-cut choice, if
he
were the one with the magic, he would have used it unhesitatingly. But it wasn’t the first thing that you thought of doing. It wasn’t like having a sword in your hand.

And in the end, magic or not, it was still burning something alive to death. Thinking of it that way made it harder to decide what was the right thing to do.

At first they were both nervous and on-edge as they walked, wondering if every flickering shadow held more of those monsters, but at last they’d given up worrying. There was nothing they could do about them if they
did
come. Not really. Tiercel might be able to force himself to burn some of them, but if there were a lot of them, and if they surrounded them . . .

Harrier didn’t know how much control Tiercel had over his magic-called fire. Maybe he could set fire to all of them if a whole pack of the creatures surrounded them—without setting fire to himself and Harrier in the process. Maybe not.

Harrier preferred to hope that all of the creatures were dead.

“What’s that?”

Harrier stopped and raised his sword. He’d brought it with him, of course—it was still covered with the monsters’ blood—and hadn’t put it back into its scabbard.

There was a large dark shape ahead in the road.

At the sound of his voice, it raised its head and started forward. The metal on its bridle jingled.

“Lightning!” Harrier said, his voice ragged with relief. “I really ought to beat you senseless.”

“According to Halyon, that wouldn’t take much,” Tiercel said. “Did he throw you?”

“Ran off,” Harrier said shortly. “But not far enough.”

He approached the gelding cautiously, but Lightning seemed
delighted to see him, butting and nuzzling at his chest in obvious hope of reward. Harrier didn’t have anything to give him, but as soon as the reins were safely in his hands, he gave the gelding a good scratch behind the ears before leading it back to Tiercel.

“We might as well ride,” he said. “I’m tired of walking, anyway.”

THEY rode at the slowest possible walking pace through the rest of the night, only stopping at dawn when they came to one of the Light-shrines that were set near the road at regular intervals. It was easily seen from a distance by the wind-pump that marked it, an indication that it would also have a well.

They were truly grateful for that. By now the horses were thirsty, and so were they; nearly all of their provisions had been in Thunder’s packs. They each carried a water bottle, but those had been empty when they’d reached Windy Meadows.

Fortunately they knew enough about thirsty horses not to let the animals drink their fill at once. Harrier held the animals back while Tiercel pumped the trough full of water, then Harrier let them have a short drink—less than they wanted—before tying them to the tether-rings at the front of the temple. In a few minutes, he’d let them drink more.

“We might as well stop here for a few hours,” Tiercel said. “The horses could use the rest, and so could we.”

He pulled Cloud’s saddlebags off and began unbuckling the saddle girths.

ONCE the horses had been watered and turned out to graze (their hobbles, fortunately, were one of the things packed in their saddlebags), the boys went into the shrine.

It was a typical roadside Light-shrine, of the sort they’d seen many of along the way; a three-sided structure, barely large enough for two or three people to enter at once. The back wall was carved in a relief of the Eternal Light, painted in gold, and below it was an altar-shelf set with a heavy stone bowl where offerings could be burned. There were flowers beside the bowl on the altar, but they were withered and brown. Nobody had been here in a while.

Tiercel scooped them up and set them into the bowl. They blazed into sudden life and burned brightly for a moment before crumbling away into ash.

“Are you sure you ought to be doing that?” Harrier asked.

“It all comes from the same place,” Tiercel answered. He set his hands flat against the back wall of the shrine and closed his eyes. Blue light began to spread from his hands, out across the stone, until in moments the entire interior of the shrine—walls, ceiling, floor, the altar itself—was glowing a bright radiant azure. There was so much light that it was like standing in sunlight, except that it came from below as well.

“For Simera,” Tiercel said.

“The next person who shows up here isn’t going to want to come in,” Harrier said, stepping back and shaking his head.

“I think it fades eventually,” Tiercel answered. But he didn’t sound as if he really cared.

They went back outside.

THEY rinsed and filled their water bottles, and did their best to wash away some of the dust and grime of the long night in the water trough. Then they went to see what supplies they had left.

Not much.

They had their heavy traveling cloaks. Some food—enough for a couple of days, though of course no grain for the horses. Tea, but no way to brew it. Money—but no place to buy anything. Tiercel’s books. An extra shirt of Harrier’s. Medicines for themselves and the horses. A coil of rope. A lantern. Tiercel’s guidebook with its maps.

That was about it.

Harrier squinted out at the rising sun, munching on a bar of trail rations as he leaned against the side of the shrine. Most of the ones they had were compressed bars of seeds, nuts, and dried fruit, held together with honey; useful for bribing the horses as well as making a meal on when they didn’t want to stop to cook. There was a little jerky as well; you could make soup out of it if you were patient. And if you had a pot and some water, of course.

“So what do we do?” he asked Tiercel.

Not that he hadn’t made up his own mind already. It was pretty obvious. Mostly he wanted to be sure that Tiercel agreed with him.

Tiercel was down on his hands and knees, squinting at the folded-out map in his guidebook. He’d bought the guidebook in Sentarshadeen, and while he constantly complained that it wasn’t as detailed as he wanted, it
did
cover all of the Nine Cities and the principal roads between them.

“There should be another town near the road a day or two north of here; a place called Thunder Grass. It’s hard to tell. The trouble is, we don’t have any way to carry enough water for the horses. And I’m not sure where the next well is. Or which of the rivers are still running in summer.”