The Phoenix Unchained (7 page)

“FIRE!”
Henmon’s shout jarred Tiercel out of the dream-not-dream. The footman was pounding desperately on his locked door. He took a deep breath and began to cough wildly. Everything in his room was on fire and the room was rapidly filling with smoke. His bed—the curtains—even the rug that he’d pushed to one side—all were sheets of flame. With a yelp of dismay he snatched up his workbook and ran to unbolt his door. Fortunately, the area between the glyph and the door didn’t contain anything that could readily burn.

Henmon took one step over the threshold, stared, and yanked Tiercel out of the room, shouting for servants and water buckets.

FORTUNATELY, though everything in Tiercel’s bedroom that could possibly burn had caught fire, the fire hadn’t had time to take
a really good hold before it had been discovered. By the time the Fire Watch arrived at the Rolfort townhouse, the flames had already been extinguished.

“Do you have any idea what caused the fire, Lord Rolfort?” the Fire Warden asked.

The family and most of the servants were gathered in the main parlor. It was after Midnight Bells. The room was chill, since the fires had been banked for night two bells ago and now every window in the place was open to air the house of the lingering scent of smoke.

“Candles,” Lord Rolfort answered, with a look at Tiercel that was both irritated and disappointed. “My eldest decided to try reading in bed by candlelight, Light knows why. He fell asleep. It won’t happen again.”

“Beds are for sleeping, chairs are for reading,” the Fire Warden said firmly, as if reciting a watchword. “If more people would remember that, there’d be fewer home accidents.” He glanced at Tiercel, and frowned. “Your boy doesn’t look at all well, if you don’t mind my saying so, Lord Rolfort.”

In fact, Tiercel didn’t
feel
at all well, either. Once the initial terror and excitement of the fire had worn off, he realized that he felt feverish and exhausted. The clothes he’d been wearing when he did the spell were as soaked in sweat as if Henmon had been pouring water on him, not the flames, and despite that, he couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering.

In fact, he could barely keep his eyes open.

It was that—and not any lie he’d told—that had led his father to say what he had to the Fire Warden. Henmon had seen the candles in his room as he’d dragged him out, but the old footman had been too rattled to say quite where they’d been. And they were gone now, in any event, consumed by the flames.

Tiercel felt guilty—as much as he felt anything other than
weary—but he thought it would be just as well to let the misunderstanding stand. He really didn’t want to explain to his parents that he’d been doing magic up in his room tonight. Especially since the spell hadn’t worked.

Only it had. He just hadn’t cast the spell he’d been meaning to.
“Fire is the first and simplest spell of the High Magick . . .”
It said that over and over again in all of the books on the High Magick that he’d read. He’d cast Fire. And maybe the woman and the Lake of Fire were just a hallucination and wouldn’t happen again.

TO Tiercel’s great relief, the rest of the night—what there was of it—was unencumbered by dreams of any kind. But when he finally awoke it was nearly First Afternoon Bells, and he’d slept long past the time the Ship’s Bondsman would meet with the Captain of the
Marukate
. He felt far too giddy and light-headed to even get out of bed anyway.

Not that it would have done me any good if I’d been there
, he thought ruefully. He’d wanted to help, but all he’d done last night was nearly set the entire townhouse on fire. He hadn’t learned a single thing that would account—one way or the other—for the injuries to the
Marukate
’s hull, and now it was too late for it to matter. He was truly sorry for that, because it was very likely that the captain
would
lose his ship, and, as Harrier had said, it was pretty unlikely he’d run it onto some rocks if it had been wrecked where he said it had.

Still, there was nothing Tiercel could do.

But someday there will be. It isn’t fair for it to be one man’s word against another in a situation like this, with both of them having something to gain from being right. Someone should investigate who has nothing to gain. If I am ever a Magistrate, I promise I will make sure that that is always what happens. Someone should care about the truth, and only the truth
.

THAT evening Tiercel received a stern lecture from his father about his carelessness with candles. He apologized sincerely—he truly hadn’t meant to set anything on fire, no matter how he’d done it—and promised truthfully never to light another candle in his rooms. He’d certainly learned his lesson. High Magick belonged in books, and in the past. He never intended to try to cast another spell.

He hated to deceive his parents—even by accident and omission—but he simply felt too embarrassed and ashamed to admit what he’d
really
been doing when the room caught on fire. Besides, he
had
been reading. Sort of. Just not in bed. And if he said that the room caught on fire because he’d cast a spell—not
trying
to cast a spell, but
actually
casting a spell—and not because one of the candles fell over and rolled, they wouldn’t believe him anyway.
He
didn’t quite believe him, and he’d been there. Better to leave matters the way they were.

So he apologized sincerely, and promised to do better, and Mama dosed him with strengthening cordials and kept him home from Preparatory School the next day too, and on the whole, Tiercel was grateful to get off as lightly as he had.

Only he hadn’t.

IT was almost a sennight later, and Tiercel had done his best to forget the whole frightening and humiliating incident. It was the first night since the fire that he wasn’t sleeping on a trundle bed in his
study, because the repairs to his bedroom were finally complete. The fire-damaged room had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life and completely repainted, but even with new curtains, new rug, and new bedding, it still smelled faintly of smoke and scorch. It looked very bare—all the odds and ends that used to clutter it up were gone, lost in the fire, and most of his clothes were still at the fuller’s and tailors being cleaned and repaired. And now Harrier would never have to make his report on his Naming Day gift, though he would have to confess to loaning it to a friend (hardly a major transgression, really), because the
Compendium
was one of the many things that had been lost in the blaze. Tiercel promised himself that he’d buy Harrier a “replacement” gift, and something that Harrier would probably like better.

He lay on his back in the center of the bed—it was a new mattress, and felt strange—and was certain he’d never manage to fall asleep in this room turned strange and new.

But he did. And suddenly he was back on the shore of the Lake of Fire again. Only this time it was far more real than it had been in his last vision. This time he could feel the heat of the wind on his skin, could feel the breeze blowing through his hair, smell the scents of burnt rock and sulfur, hear the pop and hiss of the burning lake, feel the itch in his eyes as the hot wind dried them.

And most of all, he wasn’t
him
.

“Welcome,” he heard. “I had nearly given up hope that you would come. Are you ready at last to accept the gifts I have for you?”

It was as if when she spoke he could suddenly see her, although Tiercel knew she’d been there all along. The Fire Woman from his vision—and now, dream. The one who was horrifying and terrifying, though she only looked beautiful. The one that he wanted to go to, even though the thought revolted him. She was calling to him, just as she had in the vision. But it wasn’t him.

And he knew, if whoever she
was
calling went to her, or if she noticed that Tiercel was there too, and could see her, something really terrible was going to happen.

Suddenly her gaze sharpened, and Tiercel realized she
had
noticed he was there—or at least that something was. In another moment she might see him.

HE awoke with a strangled yell, shaking with utter panic. For a moment he was convinced that the Fire Woman was right here in his room with him, and was half out of the bed before he was able to stop himself. But no. He was alone in his bedroom.

She might not be here, but she’s real
. He had no idea why he was so convinced of that.
A dream. It was only a dream
.

He tried to convince himself of that, but he couldn’t. Tiercel had never been very good at lying to himself. This was something unlike anything he’d ever imagined to be possible—at least possible now, in the modern world—but he believed in it, and that frightened him even more. Things like the Fire Woman belonged to the Time of Mages. He knew she wasn’t human, but he didn’t even know what kind of Otherfolk she might be. All he knew was that if she got what she wanted, something terrible was going to happen. Unfortunately he didn’t know what it was. It was like starting a book in the middle.

What he
did
know was that all of a sudden, magic wasn’t something safely locked away in the history books—or safely in the hands of the Temples and the Wildmages. It was right here. Stalking him. And he didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do about it.