The Phoenix Unchained (54 page)

“I know that you will not be familiar with the Elven style, and I will not expect you to have had my years of training in the House of Sword and Shield, any more than you would expect me to know how to go about upon your Armethaliehan docks,” Elunyerin said, removing her helmet. “But it would please me greatly did you give me the opportunity to match blades with you. Though the crafting of a suit of armor is a matter of many moonturns, it is a simple matter to use padded suits and wooden blades, and practice forms only.”

Oh, no thanks
. Harrier thought. He might be carrying a sword he didn’t have any idea how to use, but Harrier didn’t think this was the place to get lessons. Obviously Elves studied swordplay the way High Mages were supposed to study magic—from the cradle. After watching Elunyerin and her brother practice, Harrier didn’t think she could teach him anything. Not because she wasn’t good enough, but because she was
too
good. His idea of fun wasn’t being told he was an idiot over and over again—and after seeing the two of them, the idea that he could ever be a tenth as good as they were even if he studied for even an Elven lifetime was just . . . silly.

“I thank you,” he began, fumbling his way through the sentence. “The Wildmage Roneida gave me the sword, and I’m not sure why. I know nothing of the sword, or fighting. My family are merchants, not warriors. I don’t think it would be of much use to either you or me if you tried to teach me to use it. But I enjoy watching you.”

Elunyerin regarded him for a moment longer, her face unreadable. “Then certainly you must watch, for Rilphanifel and I practice together nearly every day. Those skills which are not honed are lost, even among the Elves.”

AND so Harrier had gotten into the habit of watching the two of them practice. It was like watching an extremely violent sort of dancing (something he was much better at than he was willing to admit, even to Tiercel). Sometimes others joined them, all wearing the colorful enameled armor that looked like jewelry, but which could apparently turn the hardest sword-strike. Sometimes they practiced alone. Just as with watching master dancers over a long period of time, Harrier reached the point where he could begin to predict their preferred moves, and also tell whether or not they were fighting at their best. But the idea that he could ever match either of them in skill was foolish. Only Kellen Knight-Mage had ever equaled the Elves in their mastery of the sword. He was satisfied merely to watch.

He did a number of other things, too, since for the first time in his life, his time was entirely his own. In Armethalieh he’d been learning his eventual trade, spending part of every day at the Docks from the time he could walk. Here, Tiercel was the one undergoing the apprenticeship, and there was literally nothing for Harrier to do. His hosts didn’t expect him to work, even if there were any tasks he was capable of performing in the Lands Beyond The Veil,
and he certainly couldn’t study to be a High Mage. And so he went for long rides around and through Karahelanderialigor, finally finding the rest of the city. He met more Elves. He purchased food in the marketplace, and had fascinating conversations there about subjects he
did
understand—prices and trade-routes and what items were wanted in which markets around the Elven Lands. The merchants in the marketplace were patient with his halting attempts to be polite; he thought they were intrigued, just a little, by his tales of other marketplaces in other lands so far away.

He’d even written long—very long—letters to both his parents and to Tiercel’s, explaining that they were in the Elven Lands, and safe. Elunyerin had promised to get the letters to Ysterialpoerin, but Harrier knew that it would probably be most of a year before the letters reached Armethalieh.

And he met dragons.

Karahelanderialigor was the Mage City; everyone in the Elven Lands who practiced magic lived here, and every Elven Mage was Bonded to a Dragon. (He’d long since found out that no, Jermayan wasn’t King of the Elves, and never had been; a lot of the stories of Ancient Times as they knew them back in the Nine Cities were just flat-out
wrong
.) Among the dragons, the prohibition against asking direct questions did not exist, and—as Harrier discovered immediately—dragons were even more outrageous gossips than sailors.

Fourteen

Ithoriosa’s Tale

T 
HERE YOU ARE,” Ithoriosa said. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

It was the end of Harrier’s first moonturn in the Elven Lands, and the idea that he’d just ridden through a forest full of little winged people on his way to talk to a dragon didn’t even strike him as strange anymore. Harrier dismounted and walked forward. Reilafar would stay pretty much wherever he was left; that was one of the nice things about Elven horses, he’d discovered.

The enormous gold dragon—the same one he’d seen the first day, as a matter of fact—was sunning herself on one of the terraces that had been built for that purpose. It had taken Harrier a while to find them, but someone in the market had mentioned on his second sennight here that if he wanted to see dragons up close (sounding as if she couldn’t imagine why anyone would wish to do such a thing) then he should ride out beyond the edge of the Flower Forest
to where the Sunning Terraces had been built. In the late afternoon, Asima had said, the dragons often gathered there to bask in the warmth gathered by the smooth stones.

It had taken Harrier a little while to work up the courage to go, because he didn’t actually want to run into Ancaladar again—now that he knew that Ancaladar was actually
the
Ancaladar, he felt pretty embarrassed about the way he’d behaved when they’d first met—but when he finally convinced himself to go—the dragons wouldn’t actually eat him, Harrier was pretty sure—Ancaladar wasn’t there.

“Of course I came back,” Harrier said. “I like talking to you.”

“Like listening to me, you mean,” Ithoriosa corrected smugly. “You think I’ll tell you something the Elves won’t. And who knows? I might. I know more than they do.”

“I just bet you do,” Harrier muttered.

“Dragons’ hearing is incredibly sharp,” Ithoriosa said. “So, for that matter, is Elves’. If you’ve been saying nasty things about those pretty little children Elunyerin and Rilphanifel—who, by the way, are older than your grandmother—behind their backs, I assure you, they’ve heard every word.”

“I haven’t. Much,” Harrier muttered.

“Don’t worry, then. They’re sure to be polite to you at least until Jermayan dies, and Idalia can certainly keep them in line until
she
dies, and she’s no Kindling snowblossom, but I’m sure she has a decade or two of years left to her after Jermayan is hung in the trees.”

“I—hey. Wait. What?” Harrier sputtered. Ithoriosa always delivered her gossip in this indirect fashion, but this was the first time it had been about people he actually
knew
.

The great gold dragon sighed gustily. “Jermayan is dying, little human boy. Very fast. If you and Tiercel had come next year, you might not have seen him. If you had come in ten years, you certainly would not. He taught Kellen Knight-Mage to hold a sword, and he was no child then—even
you
must realize how old he is.
And now he is dying, for Elves are not immortal, only Dragons can lay claim to that. And not even we, once we are Bonded. So when Jermayan dies, Ancaladar will die with him, the oldest of the Bonded. I shall miss him.”

Harrier regarded her for a long moment, though it was completely impossible to judge a dragon’s expression. The long flat scales of her enormous head gleamed like bright metal. Hesitantly, he reached out and touched her face.

“Higher, behind the ridge, where the skin is soft.”

He walked back and found the place. The skin there was soft and silky-rough, like the finest quality of suede.

“You’ve told me this much, you demon bat. Tell me the rest. This is what you meant me to know, isn’t it? Not a bunch of stories about people I don’t know and probably won’t ever meet. And I really don’t think you care that much about what goes on in Armethalieh.”

“Not even my Bonded calls me such terrible names. Is it a human thing, I wonder? Ancaladar has told me tales of humans, and of the Endarkened. He survived two of Their wars, you know. He helped to win the second one, and without him, all dragonkind would have perished.”

“Really? You’re not going to distract me, you know. Tell me more about Jermayan.”

“I will. But I wish to tell you this, first. Only a Bonded dragon can create more of its kind, since the time of the Great Bargain. In the Great War—the one before the world you know began—many races of the Light perished entirely, and dragonkind was thought to be among them. We were never a numerous race, and there was great need of us in that time. Bonded and Unbonded, dragonkind died on the battlefields of that war, but Ancaladar survived. And though he had hidden himself to escape the Bonding which brings us mortality and death, in the end he could not find it in himself to
refuse the greatest joy our kind can know. He accepted the Bond with Jermayan, and the first Elven Mage since the time of Vieliessar Farcarinon was created from that Bonding.

“Then came the Great Flowering, and peace. And Jermayan and Ancaladar searched the land for many years before finding any females of our kind, and it was longer still before they could persuade them to Bond, and then to find them Bondmates. From Ancaladar, Cortiana, and Mebadaene our race was reborn. And now he will die.”

“Why?” Harrier asked bluntly. “I thought you said dragons were immortal.”

“You must frustrate your teachers terribly. Unbonded dragons are immortal. Bonded dragons are not. Ancaladar has Bonded to Jermayan, and so he must die when Jermayan does. If Ancaladar had found some reason to die first—we are more durable than you soft creatures, but we can be killed—Jermayan would have died instantly as well. But Elves and humans age, and we do not.”

It was hard for Harrier to imagine why any dragon would want to Bond, in that case. “So you, um, Bond to, er, breed?”

“Huh. Why bother?” Ithoriosa sounded both amused and uninterested. “If it were only that, we could conduct a lottery; an immortal race does not need that many children. No. The Elven Mages need us for their spells. Some say it is our reason to
be
. And I would never give up my Bonded. She is everything to me. Gladly did I cast off eternity to gaze into her eyes.”

“You, er, um,
like
being, um, Bonded?”

Ithoriosa snorted gustily and rolled her head sideways to gaze up at him with one enormous golden eye. “Harrier, have you ever been in love?”

“Light, no!” Harrier said fervently.

“Then you would have no basis for comparison.”

“But Jermayan and Ancaladar are going to die—together—because
they’re Bonded,” he said, wanting to be sure he had what she was saying right.

“Yes. It certainly takes a long time to make you understand things.”

“They don’t exactly teach Dragonology in Armethalieh Normal School,” Harrier answered grumpily. “And Jermayan is going to die soon.”
Because he’s over a thousand years old
.

“Yes. You seem to have grasped the basics of what I’m telling you. I’m relieved to know that,” Ithoriosa said.

“But . . . Can’t somebody . . . fix that?”

Ithoriosa lifted her head and looked down at him. The shadow that she cast blotted out the sun.

“Harrier,” she said quietly, “ ‘fixing that’ is what—among, perhaps, many other things—caused human Wildmages to take their dragons to fight for the Endarkened during the Great War. The Demons promised them immortality, so that their Bonded would not die at the end of their short human span of years. The Bond is for one, and forever. Nor would I wish to love another were I alive and my Bonded was gone.”

Harrier sighed. If it was awful thinking of a dragon dying at the end of an Elf’s long lifespan, it was even worse thinking of one dying at the end of a human’s short one. “I wish you hadn’t told me.”

“You would find out eventually,” Ithoriosa pointed out reasonably. “And the Elves will not think to tell you until it is too late. They are always certain that ‘tomorrow’ is soon enough.”