The Phoenix Unchained (59 page)

Since Jermayan wasn’t there, Sandalon was the oldest person in
the room—older even than Idalia, though by only a few years. He teased her as if they were family, and watching the two of them talk quietly together, Tiercel discovered after a moment that they were.

“If this is indeed what is required to cause you to come and visit us, brother, then perhaps I should have sent Ancaladar to steal Tiercel out of his cradle, so you would come to us sooner,” Idalia said.

“I am pained to discover that Githilnamanaranath has become such a distant journey for your aged bones, sister, when once you roamed not only the Nine Cities That Were, but all the Wild Lands as well, in not one lifetime, but two.”

“Those days are gone, Sandalon, both the good and the bad of them. There are few moments in all my years that I would see undone, for the Wild Magic goes as it wills, and none among us can truly understand its weaving,” Idalia answered.

“As always you speak no more or less than the truth, Idalia. I have seen the rebirth of the Flower Forests, and desert turn to meadow. I am content.”

Tiercel wasn’t sure whether he should be listening to any of this, even though he was seated at Idalia’s right hand and the two of them weren’t doing anything to keep their voices down. He wasn’t quite sure how Idalia could be Sandalon’s sister and Kellen’s sister both, and he didn’t think that was a story she was ever going to tell him even if he could figure out how to ask.

“But I am lacking in courtesy to a guest beneath your roof,” Sandalon said, turning his attention to Tiercel. “And you have come from a farther place than any I have ever seen. It would please me greatly to hear of Armethalieh, for many of the friends of my childhood once called it home. I fear, though, that it will have changed much since the days when Kellen and Cilarnen knew it.”

Beside Tiercel, Harrier choked on his cup of cider, and Tiercel frantically searched his mind for changes to Armethalieh in the last thousand years that might interest the King of the Elven Lands. For
a moment he couldn’t think of what to say.
Don’t you know you’re going to die tonight?
his mind cried.

But of course Sandalon knew that. Rilphanifel had told Tiercel that he’d been alive during the last war, and might even have seen the Endarkened in the flesh. If Tiercel had been willing to leave home and come here to keep something like the Fire Woman from gaining power—and Tiercel had been born after centuries of peace—how much more likely was it that Sandalon was willing to die to destroy her?

First Simera. Now Sandalon. How many more people are going to have to die hoping I can do something I don’t know how to do?

Tiercel took a deep breath. “Well,” he began, “they’ve taken down the City walls. And they’ve rebuilt the Great Library. It’s bigger now. . . .”

AFTER the meal, everyone gathered outside in the garden. The Elves, the boys had already noticed, decorated nearly everything outdoors with tiny colored lanterns that were lit at dusk, so the garden was as brightly-colored by night as by day.

In Armethalieh, important ceremonies, such as the investiture of a new Magistrate or Light-Priest, or the Parading of the Guard, or the ritual Opening of the City Gates in the moonturn of Seed-time, were conducted with great formality and stateliness. This was obviously the most important thing the Elves could think of to do, but there was an odd casualness about it. People gathered in Jermayan and Idalia’s garden, and more and more of them showed up, and after a while Jermayan was carried out of the house on a litter, and then they all started to walk down through the garden. All around him Tiercel could hear the Elves talking to each other about the same things people might talk about back home—their gardens,
and the weather; horses, and clothes, and people he didn’t know. Nobody talked about the Endarkened or magic.

They didn’t walk all the way to the Sunning Terraces, as he’d halfway expected, but they walked a good distance past the little house where he had spent so many long and useless hours attempting to learn the High Magick. He suspected now that Jermayan and Idalia had known all along that he’d never be able to master it without Bonding to a dragon, but if they’d suggested a Bonding the moment he and Harrier had shown up, he’d simply have refused. He’d needed to learn for himself that there was no other way.

Now, when he’d thought he’d be most upset, Tiercel felt strangely calm about what was to come. None of the Elves seemed at all upset, and that soothed him a little. He hadn’t thought that would be possible, but somehow he couldn’t be distressed in the face of Sandalon’s cheerful acceptance of his fate. The ancient Elven King might have been going to a dance instead of to his death. He’d sought out the Elves because he trusted their judgment and hoped for their counsel. Now that he’d gotten both, he’d just have to go along with things a little further.

The dragons were already assembled in an enormous circle when they arrived. In the darkness their colors were muted, and they looked almost like enormous gleaming metal statues, until one shifted a wing, or twitched a tail, or blinked. The space that the dragons made with their bodies was large enough to contain two more dragons, and Ancaladar was already waiting in the center, curled up like an enormous unhappy cat.

Jermayan was carried on his litter into the center of the space and set down at Ancaladar’s head. He reached up one thin hand to touch the dragon’s gleaming nose, and Tiercel angrily blinked away sudden tears. No matter how hard he tried to accept this, he still couldn’t feel that separating the two of them was fair!

Idalia followed Jermayan into the circle. She bent low over the litter for a moment, her long pale hair hiding Jermayan’s face from
sight. When she straightened up, she stroked Ancaladar’s brow-ridge gently. When she stepped away from the two of them, all the rest of the Elves began to move into the circle, walking through one of the gaps between the dragons. Rilphanifel was standing directly behind Tiercel, and urged him gently forward into the ring.

Idalia joined the waiting Elves as they arranged themselves in a semicircle around Jermayan. For a moment Tiercel wondered why—since the dragons were in a circle—but then another dragon—a blue one—came forward to crouch beside Ancaladar, furling his wings in tightly.

“I am Petrivoch,” the blue dragon said to Tiercel. “I thank you for making it possible for my Bondmate and I to serve the Land beyond our deaths.”

Tiercel swallowed hard. Though Rilphanifel had insisted it was true, and he’d been trying to make himself believe it for days, somehow hearing the words from Petrivoch convinced him far more than even Sandalon’s calm demeanor had. This was the right thing to do. The price was terribly high—for all of them—even for him and Ancaladar if they survived—but it was right. “I just hope I can,” he said shakily.

“Have faith in the goodness of Leaf and Star,” Petrivoch said gently.

Now Sandalon entered the circle, leaning heavily on his long carved walking staff. Vairindiel walked beside him. Sandalon reached Tiercel’s side and stopped. He set his walking staff carefully down upon the grass and lifted both hands to his head, carefully removing the coronet of green stones and white pearls he wore and placing it on Vairindiel’s head. Next he removed a large ring from his finger that was set with a stone of the same pale luminous green, and placed it upon her hand. He kissed her gently upon both cheeks, his hands upon her shoulders.

“Rule wisely and well, child of my House. My father left me a land at peace, but I fear I do not make you the same gift.”

“All goes as the Wild Magic wills, Greatfather. So it was in Great Queen Vieliessar Farcarinon’s time, and so it shall be in mine,” Vairindiel answered steadily.

“Then Petrivoch and I are content,” Sandalon said, and Vairindiel stepped back to take her place among the circle of watchers.

Tiercel had thought that Sandalon would speak to him next, that Jermayan would say something, that there’d be a chance to
brace himself
, but the next thing that happened was that Sandalon raised his hands, and suddenly Tiercel couldn’t look anywhere but at Ancaladar.

He tried to look away, to find Harrier in the crowd, and he couldn’t.

It’s happening
, he thought in panic.

He’d thought there’d be bright lights, colors—there always were when
he
did a spell—but there weren’t. He could still feel the wind ruffling through his hair, smell the night-blooming flowers, hear the crickets chirping. . . .

He just couldn’t see anything but Ancaladar.

Ancaladar was looking at him, too.

And Tiercel realized that it didn’t matter if he’d agreed and Ancaladar had agreed—that this was important—he didn’t want to be here and neither did Ancaladar. If this was even remotely the right sort of thing to be doing, people would have been doing it for centuries. This was wrong. This was a huge mistake.

Even more than that, he should have stayed home.

Yes, the Darkness was coming back—but slowly. The parts of it that were showing up now were things that people could deal with, and when
those
got bad enough—and maybe they already had—everyone would see that there was a real problem and figure out how to deal with it. There were books in Ysterialpoerin, in Armethalieh. There were Wildmages. Other High Mages were probably being born right this minute: it wasn’t a rare Gift, really, it was just that nobody ever did anything with it, and he could go home, he could tell people they needed to start training High Mages again. In fact, he could take all the books Jermayan had
gathered, go back to Armethalieh, find those High Mages, and train them himself. That would work out so much better.

I know
.

Suddenly Tiercel felt as if he was thinking someone else’s thoughts, and realized Ancaladar knew exactly how he felt, and understood. Nobody could understand it better. It would be so
comfortable
to run, and hide, and let somebody else deal with all the nasty heroism. It would certainly be better than shouldering the guilt of seeing people die, and knowing that you might have been—probably were—responsible. That you could have stopped it. Or at least not have seen it.

But if we don’t do something, who will?

Tiercel wasn’t sure which of the two of them thought it. All he could see was Ancaladar’s eyes, golden and glowing.

You can still refuse
, the dragon said.
Even now
.

But Ancaladar sounded as if he would be unhappy if Tiercel did, and Tiercel knew, without knowing how he knew, that he would be very lonely. He reached out for Ancaladar in the same way that he reached out to the power behind his spells.

And suddenly Tiercel
felt
the Great Spell complete itself as the new Bond was forced into place. Something they had both consented to, something that had never been meant to be. Yet something neither of them could—now—ever regret.

There was a huff of air, as if the world had turned itself inside out. Tiercel could look away from Ancaladar now, and as he did, he saw that Sandalon and Petrivoch simply . . . weren’t there anymore.

And Jermayan . . .

“My Beloved is dead.” Ancaladar’s voice was soft with grief. “Will you love me now, Tiercel?”

“Forever,” Tiercel said. He knew it was true, just as he knew that he now had the power to work any of the spells in any of the books he’d read. He didn’t have to think about it. The knowledge was just
there
, something he’d gained as simply as if he’d picked up
a book from a table. The Bond between dragon and Mage. But with it came more.

All of Ancaladar’s grief and loss abruptly poured through Tier-cel as if they were his own, and he flung himself upon Ancaladar’s neck, sobbing, as the great black dragon wailed his own grief.

Sixteen

A Quest Renewed

H 
ARRIER LEANED AGAINST the wheel of the traveling wagon, trying not to feel angry, jealous, and completely left out.

It was a few hours before sunset, but Elunyerin and Rilphanifel had insisted that they stop early enough to make camp while there was still plenty of light. Their horses were picketed with the two draft horses that pulled the wagon; faintly, in the distance, Harrier could hear the clash of swords as they practiced. The two of them would be turning back to Karahelanderialigor tomorrow morning. This was their last night on the road together; they’d ridden almost a sennight south out of the city with him and Tiercel just to be sure that they were on the right road and that Harrier could handle the team and the wagon.