The Phoenix Unchained (29 page)

“THIS looks like the best place we’re likely to find for what Tiercel wants to do,” Simera said a few hours later.

Harrier looked around.

They’d come to a break in the endless sea of grass. It was a wide flat expanse of gravel and bare earth. Down the center of it trickled a narrow stream. At its edges, the grass was cropped short, heavily grazed, though of course there were no animals in sight. After what she’d told them about the possible consequences, neither of the boys wanted to set a grassfire, and Tiercel couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t, when he cast his spell.

By now, with the benefit of Simera’s constant patient teaching, Harrier could recognize the tracks of the animals that had visited the water’s edge. Hares and deer, and even birds. As they approached the stream, the horses pulled forward, eager to get to the water.

“A streambed,” Tiercel said.

“It runs full during the Spring Melt, and during the autumn rains, but at this time of year it dries down to a trickle,” Simera confirmed. “There’s nothing to burn in the riverbed, and at this time of year you won’t need to worry about being flooded out, either.”

“But there’s water if we need it,” Harrier said, swinging down
from Lightning’s saddle and leading the horse forward. The bay gelding plunged his nose into the water, blowing and slobbering as he drank. The stream was shallow, but it ran strongly.

Cloud and Thunder quickly joined him.

“Here, then,” Tiercel said, nodding.

“WHAT do you want us to do?” Harrier asked.

By now it was late afternoon; they would have been stopping to make camp for the evening in a few hours anyway. They’d set up camp with the ease of long practice: the horses unsaddled and hobbled and set to graze, their gear set out where they could get at it easily, and the fire started for tea and soup. On the Plains, there was no firewood to be had, and Simera had advised saving their charcoal for occasions when there was nothing else to burn. Dried dung made an adequate—if far too fragrant—fuel, and they’d been gathering it whenever they came across it.

“Well, nothing, pretty much,” Tiercel answered, shrugging. He looked down at the wand in his hands—just a stick, really, though by now it had been worn smooth by constant handling. “I’m going to walk up the streambed a little ways so the horses don’t spook. I figure . . . there was a spell in the Library called MageShield. I think I can cast it. It’s supposed to protect the High Mage, though I’m not really sure from what, but after what happened earlier, I think it would be a good idea to use it. So I’ll cast that first, then do the rest. I’ll need the lanterns. It’s supposed to be candles, but the lanterns will have to do.” He shrugged again.

Harrier nodded.

He didn’t like this at all—especially after what had happened earlier. But their encounter with the traveler—whatever he’d
been—only underscored the fact that there were
things
coming after them—or at least after Tiercel—and if they didn’t figure out some way to deal with those things soon, well, Tyr might as well have stayed home in Armethalieh and kept getting sicker.

He and Simera watched as Tiercel put the six lanterns into one of their bags, picked up the bag, and began to walk along the creekbed away from them.

It all seemed very quiet and ordinary.

“I guess we wait,” Harrier said unhappily.

THEY could still see Tiercel clearly when he stopped. There was no reason not to watch. He set the lanterns down in a circle, looked up at the sun—gauging direction, Harrier realized—and then there was a flicker as all the lanterns came alight at once. Even in the bright sunlight of midafternoon, Harrier could see the pale spark of flame inside the lanterns’ glass cases.

“I wonder why he needs the lanterns?” he said quietly.

Simera shook her head. “He keeps saying that his High Magick has rules. Maybe the lanterns are a part of that. It sounds very complicated.”

“I suppose that’s why nobody does it any more,” Harrier answered. Why use magic to light a lantern when flint and steel were so much easier? And anybody could use those, not just somebody who was born with this Magegift of Tiercel’s.

He wondered if he should stop staring, and at least pretend that he thought everything was going to be fine, but he couldn’t. And neither, he saw, could Simera.

He saw Tiercel look around again. Tiercel was holding his workbook in his other hand. He tucked his wand under his arm and paged through the book for a moment, then closed it and set it at
his feet. Then he took his wand into his hand and began to draw in the air.

Since that first night, Tiercel had never let the two of them watch him practice when he drew the magic letters, so Harrier and Simera had no idea what to expect. They saw the air fill with colored lines, layer after layer of them, color building on color, simply hanging in the air. Simera gave a soft gasp of wonder at the sight.

Suddenly a pale purple globe began to appear around Tiercel. At first it was so faint they weren’t certain they saw it at all, but in a matter of heartbeats it had grown so bright that Tiercel was invisible.

Then it vanished like a popped soap bubble, and Tiercel was lying on the ground, not moving.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen!” Harrier said with frightened certainty.

He began to run.

Eight

Gifts and New Beginnings

S 
IMERA GOT THERE first, of course—four legs were faster than two—and was kneeling awkwardly beside Tiercel by the time Harrier reached him.

“He’s fainted,” she said tersely. “Get some water.”

Harrier did as he was told, bringing water from the stream in his cupped hands and dashing it into Tiercel’s face. But though that caused Tiercel to groan and stir, it didn’t really revive him.

Harrier desperately wanted to ask what had happened, but the only one of the three of them who might possibly know the answer to that was lying unconscious on the ground.

“When he fell out of a tree, he was just like this,” Harrier said, taking a deep breath. Panic wouldn’t help anything. “He’d hit his head. He was okay after a few minutes.”

Tiercel didn’t look as if he were dying, Harrier told himself firmly. On the docks, you couldn’t avoid seeing death. Accidents
happened. He’d seen a man crushed to death when a crane slipped, once, as well as seeing plenty of broken bones and hard knocks—and getting a few himself. Tiercel’s color was good. The two of them had both started to tan pretty dark, but beneath it, his skin hadn’t gone grayish or flushed or turned any other peculiar color. He wasn’t sweating hard. If not for the magic—and the fact that Harrier had seen him standing out in the middle of nothing a moment before, he’d just have figured Tiercel had been hit with something.

Or fell out of a tree that wasn’t there.

A few minutes later Tiercel opened his eyes and blinked at them. “Tired,” he said, closing them again.

“Dammit, Tyr!” Harrier snarled. He kept himself from shaking his friend with an effort.

“I don’t know what’s happened, but we’d better get him back to the camp,” Simera said.

AT Simera’s urging, Harrier lifted Tiercel onto her back. She assured him that she was much stronger than she might look, and perfectly capable of carrying Tiercel the short distance to the camp.

When they reached it, there was someone there.

The old woman looked up from the brazier as they approached. She was squatting beside it, poking at the contents of a saucepan—not one of theirs—with a wooden spoon.

“Youth,” she said calmly, “is far too impatient. Another moon-turn—two at the most—and I would have reached Armethalieh. You could have waited there in perfect comfort and safety for me. Or even Sentarshadeen, if you insisted on a bit of an adventure. But Armethalieh, I think, would have been safer. Yes, indeed. But youth never listens. Always in such a hurry. Hmph!”

Simera made a choking noise.

“Don’t do anything,” Harrier said warningly. Though what
he could do to stop her—if she had the same sort of powers as the last traveler they’d encountered on the Plains—he had no idea at all.

The old woman made a rude noise and rose from her squatting position. Though she stood tall and straight, she was a tiny thing. The top of her head barely came to Harrier’s shoulder.

She wore the wide-brimmed hat, long vest, and full split-skirts of the Mountainfolk, and the durable homespun was faded to shades of dun and grey by hard use and long wear. Her hair was white with age, pulled back and braided firmly into a coil at the nape of her neck. The only spot of color about her was a bright red scarf knotted about her throat.

“Do nothing? When you have been doing nothing but searching for me for sennights? Shall I take Mouse and go home, then?” she demanded mockingly, gesturing toward the small grey donkey that browsed contentedly beside the horses and Thunder.

“You’re a Wildmage?” Simera asked hopefully.

“I am. And it’s entirely your own fault that you’ve run into enough misfortune to doubt that fact. As I said, Harrier Gillain, if you and Tiercel had simply waited for me in Armethalieh, you wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

“But . . . We didn’t know you were coming,” Harrier protested weakly. “And who
are
you?”

“Such courtly manners from a son of the Portmaster!” the woman scoffed. “I am Wildmage Roneida. And you might as well put your friend down on the blankets, Simera. I’m sure your back is beginning to ache.”