The Phoenix Unchained (53 page)

“This place contains all those items which Jermayan has gathered touching upon the High Magick. It will be yours, do you wish it, for refuge and study, for as long as you remain among us,” Rilphanifel said, opening the door.

“Um, I hate to ask, but how long is that going to be? Because aren’t we kind of in a hurry?” Harrier asked.

“I do not know,” Rilphanifel said simply. “Only Tiercel can say.”

“I . . .” Tiercel said. “There was something chasing me. Back in Ysterialpoerin. I don’t know what it was.”

Rilphanifel actually smiled at Tiercel’s words. “Fear it not. The armies of the Shadow at the height of their power did not overset the ancient protections of the Elven Lands, and the land-wards are stronger now than they were in that time.”

“OH, that’s good,” Tiercel said as he followed Rilphanifel into the little bungalow. He sounded vaguely harassed, and Harrier couldn’t blame him. They’d both figured that once they got to the Elven Lands the Elves would hear out Tiercel’s story and fix things—not tell him he was supposed to be the one solving the problem himself because they were afraid to meddle.

When Harrier got inside, he saw that the room he’d entered
was the same size as the building itself, and looked reassuringly . . . normal. Harrier wasn’t sure what it was about the Elven house that struck him as so odd; maybe it was the idea that if he even moved one chair, he’d be messing up somebody’s grand design. This looked more like what he thought of as a real building. There was a fireplace along one wall, of the same stone as the exterior of the building, and it was simple and plain and not made up to look like anything else. A stone-topped table at standing height dominated the center of the room, and there was a reading desk in one corner. The walls were lined with bookshelves and closed cabinets.

“Use what is here just as you wish,” Rilphanifel said, gesturing around the room. “Jermayan Greatfather gathered them together knowing that someday they would be needed.”

“By me?” Tiercel asked.

“He has been gathering them since long before you were born,” Rilphanifel answered chidingly. “Some of these items belonged to the High Mage Cilarnen himself, so you will know that Greatfather has been gathering them for a very long time.”

“High Mage . . .
High Magistrate
Cilarnen? The first Magistrate of the City? A thousand years ago?” Harrier said, gulping.

“Indeed. And should Tiercel wish to know which items they are, he must say to Jermayan that it pleases him greatly to see the items gathered here, and it would be good to know their history.”

“Uh . . . that’s it? And he’ll tell me?” Tiercel stammered.

“Should he choose to. If he does not, you will not know. To ask a question is to demand that it be answered, which is why civilized people consider it rude,” Rilphanifel said blightingly.

“Oh,” Tiercel said, “I see. It is good to know that, though I would be very unhappy if I did not find out what I wished to know.”

“You are learning,” Rilphanifel said, with a small approving smile.

“So now I just stay here and study,” Tiercel said, “and hope I can turn myself into a High Mage before the Endarkened come back. Not that one High Mage will be much use, from what I know.”

“Indeed, you must do whatever you think you must do,” Rilphanifel said.

“But that’s just it!” Tiercel burst out. “I don’t
know
! The only thing I know is that the Endarkened are coming back—are maybe already here! Somewhere! I might know where, if—if somebody will interpret my visions for me! But what do I do about it?”

Rilphanifel simply looked at him.

“It’s not against the rules for you to tell Tyr if the place he’s seeing in his head is some place that you recognize, I mean, oh, Light blast it, I can’t figure out how to say it except as a question!” Harrier burst out.

“ ‘If Tiercel may tell you what he recollects of his visions, it would be good to hear, of your courtesy, if perhaps the terrain he has seen in those visions is familiar to you,’ ” Rilphanifel prompted patiently.

“Yeah,” Harrier said. “That.”

“And this he may certainly do, but I tell you now that the place he dreams of does not lie within the Elven Lands, for we would certainly know of so great a disturbance herein. And all things need not be accomplished today. You have come far, and the weariness of a long journey cannot be erased with a single sleep.”

“Could you stop talking about me as if I weren’t here?” Tiercel demanded irritably.

He turned his back on both of them and opened one of the cabinets at random. One side was filled with boxes and jars. The other side contained several pieces of wood—from one that looked like the wand that Tiercel had made, and which was probably still back in Ysterialpoerin along with their spare clothes, to something that looked like a quarterstaff. Next to the quarterstaff was a sword that was nearly as big as Tiercel was.

“Very well,” Riphanifel said.

“It would be good to know—of your courtesy—if you have any notion of how long it takes to learn the spells of the High Magick,” Tiercel said. Though his back was to them, he sounded to Harrier as if he was gritting his teeth.

“Of that I am not certain, but Greatfather has spoken somewhat of Cilarnen High Mage, who faced his own difficulties in mastering his Art. He said to me that upon many occasions Cilarnen said to him that High Mages began their studies in infancy, and labored into old age to master the intricacies of the High Magick.”

“In that case, I think we’re in trouble,” Harrier said.

FOR the next moonturn, Harrier didn’t see much of Tiercel. The two of them had been welcomed completely into Jermayan’s household, and were treated far more like family than like even the most honored of guests. They were fed and clothed—Harrier actually had more clothes here than he had back in Armethalieh—and everyone in House Malkirinath was happy to do anything at all for them, as far as Harrier could tell, except answer questions. And even that wasn’t quite fair, because the Elves were almost always willing to provide information, if Harrier could figure out how to phrase it in a nota-question way—something he was getting better at as the days passed. He was even given a horse of his own to ride, once Elunyerin had found out he wasn’t actually horrible at it. She insisted on giving him riding lessons, too, but he didn’t mind too much.

He was bored.

It was okay for Tiercel. Tiercel got up every morning between First and Second Dawn Bells (assuming they’d kept the Bells in the Elven Lands, which of course they didn’t), got breakfast from the kitchen, packed a lunch, and went off down to the house at
the bottom of the garden to spend the day reading his magic books and probably doing other things as well. He’d come back at dinner time, quiet and irritated, and . . . not talk about what he’d been doing.

Harrier wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. He’d known Tiercel all his life, and every time Tiercel started studying something new, he always wanted to talk about it. Not this time, it seemed. The one time Harrier had tried to get him to talk about what he was doing all day, they’d almost gotten into a fight.

So Harrier had to find other ways to amuse himself.

Elunyerin and Rilphanifel had apparently been appointed his unofficial guardians. This meant that he followed them around, or they followed him around, much of the time, at least until Rilphanifel decided that Harrier probably wouldn’t insult strangers the first time he opened his mouth. He didn’t mind the riding lessons particularly—he could see the point to those—but he drew the line at the fighting lessons.

“COME and watch.”

It was the beginning of his second sennight at House Malkirinath, and Harrier had gotten used to seeing very little of Tiercel.

“Watch—Er, it would be good to know what it is I am to watch,” he amended hastily.

Elunyerin nodded in approval. The brother and sister were dealing with his lapses from polite speech by simply ignoring everything he said until it was phrased to their satisfaction. This was very annoying, but it meant that Harrier was learning quickly. “If you come and see, then you will know.”

Harrier shrugged—a gesture the Elves didn’t use, but which didn’t precisely count as being rude—and followed the two of them to a room of the house he had never been in before. He hadn’t been in every room of House Malkirinath, because despite his immense
curiosity and the Elves’ great politeness, Harrier knew it was rude to go wandering around somebody’s house exploring just for the fun of it, but by now he had a fair idea of the layout of the place. This was a ground-floor room at the far end of the east wing; very private.

And very large. It was larger than the suite of rooms he and Tiercel were staying in, larger than Jermayan’s solar, larger than any of the rooms he’d yet seen here. That surprised him, as he’d gotten the idea that the Elves just didn’t go in for enormous rooms somehow. The room had no furniture, and a floor of plain stone, though there was a ring of stone in a different color inlaid in the center of the floor. All around the edges of the room stood suits of the most beautiful—and impractical-looking—armor Harrier had ever seen, and the walls were hung with weapons.

“It is not the House of Sword and Shield in Githilnamanaranath, but it will suffice for a dance or two,” Rilphanifel said.

Both he and his sister were dressed in extremely simple clothing this morning, nothing more than close-fitting tunics and leggings. Though the Elves often wore what Harrier considered extremely elaborate costumes, fortunately neither he nor Tiercel had been asked to attempt to follow their example.

The room didn’t look much like a place where anyone would dance to Harrier, but he didn’t bother to think of how to find out just what it was they
were
going to do here. As Elunyerin had said, once he saw, he’d know. There was a bench along one wall, beneath a display of swords that reminded him of the one in Tiercel’s cottage. He sat down and waited to see what would happen next.

To his surprise, each of the Elves went to one of the suits of armor along the wall and began removing it from its rack. Elunyerin chose one in a pale peach-gold, while Rilphanifel chose a set of armor that was a deep silvery violet. Once they had armored themselves—there were swords racked beside the suits of armor—they stepped to the edges of the circle.

“Since my sister has seen that you carry a sword, we thought
this might be of interest to you,” Rilphanifel explained. He raised his helmet and placed it upon his head, concealing his features completely. Then Elunyerin raised her sword—it was very large and very sharp—and attacked her brother.

Harrier watched with a mixture of fascination and horror. He was fairly certain that the two Elves weren’t going to kill each other, but the room rang with the sounds of metal on metal, and there didn’t seem to be any rules at all to the fight. They didn’t just use their swords, they kicked and punched each other, hammered at each other with the sword-pommels, even wrestled. It looked nothing like the decorous mock-battles he’d seen onstage at the Flowering Fairs, and certainly nothing like the formal parades of the City Militia. He had no idea how much time passed before they stopped.