Pages From My Notebook: The Phoenix Transformed: Omitted Scenes

[merlinscribe]

When I delivered The Enduring Flame: Book Three: The Phoenix Transformed to my publisher, it was over 250,000 words long -- appreciably longer than the previous two books in the trilogy. I was aware I would need to make significant cuts in the manuscript in order to prepare it for publication. Most of them were a matter of a few sentences here, a few paragraphs there ... but there were also three chapters in the first half of the book -- roughly 30,000 words -- that were almost entirely omitted.

As you will see, certain key scenes in these chapters -- such as Ahiran's meeting with the Firecrown -- were included almost unchanged in the final draft. Others were either cut substantially -- such as the stop at Kannatha Well -- or only summarized.

I present them here, for those of you who might find them of interest.

CHAPTER TEN: SHIELD OF DREAMS

The first thing they did at sunset was decide that they weren't going any farther tonight. The Lanzanur and the Kareggi were behind them, travelling together; if they hadn't had problems of their own, they'd arrive here a few hours before dawn. There were six more groups of Isvaieni behind them, each party containing anything from three to six different tribes.

"At least I hope there are," Harrier said, sitting down with a sigh.

Ummara Omuta had graciously offered them the comforts of his own tent for their use while they worked out what they intended to do next. Tiercel had always understood that -- in theory -- the Isvaieni tents were like houses, only mobile and made out of fabric. In Abi'Abadshar, the Nalzindar had essentially been refugees, despite the extensive collection of bits and pieces he'd looted from Zanattar's abandoned camp at Tarnatha'Iteru, and even now, though Harrier had said that Liapha was willing to give Shaiara anything she asked for, the Nalzindar tent was furnished nearly as sparsely as it had been during their journey to Telinchechitl. The main room of Omuta's tent looked very much like the Telchi's common room in Tarnatha'Iteru had; carpets on the floor, and several tables set near the walls in addition to the one in the middle that held the shamat set; large cushions on the floor to sit on; and several higher seats as well. Chairs in Isvaieni tents, Tiercel had found, were shotor-saddles with extra padding on top, but they were still fairly comfortable.

Although this was Omuta's tent, Omuta wasn't here. Omuta was off refereeing a shouting match between Anipha -- who insisted that the goats that Bisochim had summoned out of the desert the night before belonged to the Kamazan -- and Sathan -- who said that they undoubtedly belonged to the Barantar but that he, at least, was willing to see the goats apportioned according to tribal size. This would be more reasonable if the Barantar weren't the largest tribe in this party, and thus would get far more of the goats than the Kamazan would. The Kadyastar was almost as large as the Barantar, but Liapha's only contribution to the discussion was to suggest that they feed all of the goats to the Wildmage's dragon, and settle the matter decisively.

"I'm sure there are," Tiercel said, not really paying attention to what Harrier was saying. If he listened, he could hear shouting in the distance, along with what sounded like cheering. It sounded like a sporting match. "Are they still arguing?"

Harrier sighed. "Probably. And betting on the outcome. At least they aren't fighting."

"That isn't fighting?"

"Not until somebody draws their geschak and calls somebody else a Demon."

"I'm sorry," Tiercel said impulsively.

"For what?" Harrier asked. There was a shamat board on the table beside him; Harrier slid open the drawer and began setting the pieces into place on the board, obviously fiddling with them just for something to do.

"This. Bringing you along. Making you leave Armethalieh. If I hadn't done that, you could still be safe there."

"Or dead," Harrier said. "Da'd probably have rowed me halfway to the Out Islands and thrown me overboard by now."

Shaiara stepped into the tent and looked around, wrinkling her nose at what (Tiercel supposed) she considered ostentatious luxury. "Ciniran has gone to carry word to Harbatta and Fannas that we remain here, and she rides with Latti of the Kadyastar and Randap of the Fadaryama. And Bisochim has made a great lake of water appear in the desert, so that when they have come they may water their flocks -- should any survive -- but now he merely stands and gazes upon it. I have told him there is much to discuss, but he will not come."

From her tone of voice, Tiercel couldn't quite tell whether she was irritated or worried.

"We can start without him," Harrier said. "It's not as if--"

"And who else do you want to start without?" Tiercel interrupted irritably. "I could leave. Because Liapha isn't here, or Omuta, or even Zanattar -- and Ciniran's gone. And it doesn't look as if Bisochim's coming."

"And … what? You think the three of us are going to plot some kind of conspiracy, overthrow several thousand Isvaieni and a Dragonbond Wildmage -- who, in case you haven't been paying attention, can't be bothered to come in out of the rain -- and do … what, exactly?"

"You don't like him, do you?" Tiercel came over and sat down on another of the stools. "Bisochim, I mean. You don't even know him. I'm the one who's been with him for the past fortnight. He saved my life more times than I can count."

"I can't see why I wouldn't like him, just because he was stupid enough to fall for all the lies the Dark had to tell and then too stupid to see what telling the Isvaieni they had a "Great Enemy" would lead to," Harrier said derisively. "That's not the point."

"It is the point," Tiercel said stubbornly.

"It isn't," Harrier said. "It doesn't matter if I don't like him and you do. It wouldn't matter if it was the other way around. We need him. Now -- like it or not -- the three of us can make the best plan, so we have something to bring to the others. You know about Demons. Shaiara knows the desert."

"What about you?" Tiercel said.

Harrier shrugged. "I could leave."

Tiercel shook his head. "No."

"Then let us begin," Shaiara said briskly, ignoring both of their ill-tempers. "And it is in my mind that if we may not easily take Bisochim into our councils, then perhaps it would serve us equally to seek the wisdom of Saravasse, for if she is not the Star-Crowned, then she is still one of the Great Ones born of the bones of the earth."

"Will he let us talk to her?" Harrier asked Tiercel.

"Uh… sure." Tiercel was so busy trying to ignore the pain that the reference to Ancaladar gave him -- Ancaladar was dead, and he was just going to have to accept that his survival was a miracle he didn't want -- that Harrier's question took him by surprise. But Harrier hadn't spent the last fortnight doing nothing but talking to Saravasse. "She's nice."

Harrier nodded absently, still fiddling with the pieces of the shamat set.

"It would ease my mind to know why Ahairan does not simply slay us all and take Bisochim and Saravasse prisoner -- if that is her desire," Shaiara said. She regarded both of them musingly. "Or all three of you, since Saravasse says any of you may serve Ahairan's need."

Harrier made an exasperated noise.

"A prisoner won't do her any good, Shaiara," Tiercel said earnestly. "She needs an ally. She thought she could trick Bisochim into becoming her ally, but she was wrong. Now… I'm not sure what. Now that we're here, it would make more sense for her just to -- I'm sorry -- kill all of you. To increase her power, and to -- well -- frighten us."

"Still won't get her what she wants," Harrier said.

Tiercel glanced over to him. Harrier was looking down at the board, rolling the City back and forth between his fingers. It was the most important piece -- and the most vulnerable. Capture the City and the game ended. "Have you ever played shamat?" Harrier asked.

Tiercel was about to ask Harrier if he'd lost his mind -- of course he played, everyone in his family did; but Harrier had always sworn that the game was too complicated and took too long to play.

"Killing the Isvaieni won't get Ahairan what she wants. If she killed them, they'd be dead -- and she might be a Demon, but I don't think there's a lot she can do to hurt dead people. She isn't going to hurt one of us to make us do what she wants -- not directly. She can't risk killing us. So she has to hurt us indirectly." He started setting the pieces out on the board, as if he was in mid-game, but the pattern he laid out made no sense to Tiercel.

"By hurting what we care about, you mean," he said.

"Yes," Harrier said. He took the green City off the board, but left the white one, and started surrounding it with pieces from both sides: Counselors and Mages and Unicorns and Clerks. "She wants us to surrender -- any of us. Even all of us. To go to her willingly. To pledge fealty to her, as if she were the First Magistrate of the Nine Cities. You think she doesn't have -- or can't get -- anything we would possibly do that for. You're wrong," Harrier said.

"Harrier," Tiercel said slowly. "You can't possibly…"

"How many people in Akazidas'Iteru, Tyr? In Armethalieh, Sentarshadeen, Ysterialpoerin, Ondoladeshiron -- all the Nine Cities combined? If you knew -- for sure -- she could destroy all of them, wouldn't you take the chance of bargaining with her and hoping she'd keep her word? Are you sure you wouldn't?"

"I wouldn't," Tiercel said. But he remembered how Tarnatha'Iteru had looked when he'd taken down the walls. He knew he hadn't seen as much of its destruction as Harrier had, and he didn't sound certain even to himself.

Harrier smiled. It looked more like a wince. "You'd tell yourself that it might take time -- maybe decades -- for her to do whatever it is she's going to do about making more Demons. Anything could happen. More High Mages could be born. Another Knight-Mage. The Elves might notice what she's doing and do something about it."

"She would not keep her promise," Shaiara said forcefully. "You know this, Harrier." She walked over to the board and began moving the pieces again, setting them back in their starting positions once more.

"I know," Harrier answered. "I figure that we have three choices right now. One's impossible, two's fairly useless, and three, well, three's impossible too but it'll at least take longer."

Shaiara made an exasperated noise and Tiercel was startled into laughter. "Yeah, I can see now why you didn't want to start with a full council meeting. Okay, what's Number one?"

"We trap Ahairan here in the Madiran and kill her," Harrier said blandly.

Tiercel shook his head wordlessly and gestured for Harrier to continue.

"Two, we kill Bisochim and ourselves. Ahairan will probably leave the Isvai -- though she still might kill everyone else here -- but it doesn't do much about warning anybody about her."

"Do you not have any sensible plans?" Shaiara demanded.

"No," Harrier said simply. "My third idea is to head north and see how many of us get to Armethalieh alive."

Tiercel stared at Harrier for a very long time, willing him to say something else, to say it had all been a joke. He didn't. "This -- this is your plan?" Tiercel finally sputtered. "It took the three of us a fortnight to get across the Isvai -- and I don't even know where we were! And she's fast! Its-- It's-- It's-- It's big! And it's dry! And it's full of sand! And once you get across it, you have a moonturn on the Trade Road before you reach Armethalieh!"

"Well, I thought of going to Karahelanderialigor, but it's even farther away. Come on, Tyr. I know it's a really stupid plan. I don't have a better one. Your turn."

Tiercel got to his feet and began to pace. "Well I -- look. What if -- what if someone other than Bisochim Heals Saravasse so she can fly to Karahelanderialigor -- and we -- and we kill them afterward before they do something Tainted?"

Shaiara made a sound of utter annoyance.

"Good plan," Harrier said, after almost a minute. "Of course, you don't know any Healing spells and you couldn't use them if you did, so … that would be me."

Tiercel was turning toward him, horrified -- he hadn't thought that far; he hadn't thought at all past wanting all of them not to do something so doomed to failure -- but Shaiara was already moving. She slapped Harrier -- hard -- across the back of the head.

"Foolish plan!" Shaiara snapped. "Who among us can slay a Knight-Mage? And what of those who lend energy to the healing of such a great creature? Are they to live in thrall to the Demon as well?"

"Yeah, all right -- ow -- we'll think of something else," Harrier said, rubbing the back of his head.

"We cannot live as Ahairan's slaves," Bisochim said.

The Isvaieni Wildmage stood just inside the entrance to the tent, looking as if he could barely remember why he was here. Tiercel hurried over to him. "That's what we're discussing. How not to, I mean. Come and sit down. I… There's… I think there's cold tea. And there's water."

"Where is Omuta, whose tent this is?" Bisochim asked, walking over to the shamat table.

"Helping Anipha argue about goats," Harrier answered, without looking up. He'd begun rearranging the playing pieces again.

"Saravasse must eat, and there is no game to be Called in the Barahileth," Bisochim said.

"When we're done here, why don't you go tell Sathan that Saravasse needs the goats? That should settle the question of who gets them," Tiercel said before Harrier could say anything.

"I will go now," Bisochim said, turning away.

"Yeah, it would be really nice if you could devote a few minutes to helping us figure out how to clean up your mess first," Harrier said.

"Har!" Tiercel said.

Harrier got to his feet. "Look. I understand he didn't mean what happened to happen. I know that he's sorry. But it still happened. So now he has to fix it." He looked at Bisochim. "You have to fix it. Even if you can't … do that … you have to look like you can. All those people out there followed you here. The only person in the world who could see the True Balance and fix it! Don't let them see that you're nobody special and you're scared. Or we're all going to die."

"Our cause is hopeless," Bisochim said in a low voice. Harrier flung his hands in the air in exasperation, but Bisochim continued speaking. "For so very long, I would summon the future, seeking to see the day of my success. And always and eternally, no matter what I did to alter it, that vision never wavered: in my vision I stood upon the cliffs beside the Lake of Fire looking out over the plains of Telinchechitl below. Upon that plain two armies clashed, while in the sky above, two dragons fought. And so I say to you: we are doomed."

Harrier stared at him for so long without saying anything that Tiercel wondered if he needed to throw himself between them to keep a fight from starting. He felt a mixture of shock and betrayal and disbelief, because Bisochim had told the four of them about Ahairan when they'd arrived and on the long journey back to the Barahileth he'd filled Tiercel in on so many of the small details of what had begun just as Tiercel's own journey had begun -- as a quest for knowledge; an attempt to solve a riddle. And Bisochim had never mentioned this vision when he'd told Tiercel the details of so many of the other visions he'd had -- of the paths to the Ancient World he'd walked in order to learn their secrets. And beneath all the rest there was hope, because Bisochim had spoken of two dragons, so maybe, maybe…

"Well, considering that we're short of the things in your vision by one army, one dragon, one Lake of Fire, and -- oh, yeah, some cliffs -- don't you think it's at least possible that this vision was, oh, I don't know, maybe a false vision sent to you by the Dark? As a trick?" Harrier said cuttingly. "I don't care what you believe-- No, actually, I do. I care that you believe that we aren't Demons. And I care that you believe that whatever else might happen -- or show up -- you destroyed the Cliffs and the Lake and they aren't there now. So if you want us all to be doomed, you need to find another reason."

He'd been sarcastic when he'd started talking. He simply sounded furious when he finished.

"Anger accomplishes nothing and wastes strength," Shaiara said evenly. "Together we will plan, so that we may offer our counsel to the other Ummarai -- and yes, to Zanattar as well -- so that we at least may be agreed before Fannas and Harbatta arrive. Zanattar's word will carry much weight in the tents of the Lanzanur, and that is good, for Fannas will be minded to reject even the best counsel out of a bruised heart, especially if Harrier stands its champion."

"I understand his feelings," Tiercel muttered under his breath.

"His livestock, his problem," Harrier said unfeelingly, obviously still angry. "All I said was that I couldn't get them across the Barahileth alive. And I couldn't have. Horses and cows need a lot more water than shotors. And they can't handle the heat as well."

"All right," Tiercel said. He walked over to one of the tables by the wall of the tent -- Omuta had said to treat it as their own, and had offered them refreshments before he'd left, summoned by Rinurta at Liapha's request -- and poured himself a beaker of mint tea. "What are we planning to do -- and how?"

#
On the sands of the Isvai, Ahairan played her games of flesh and form. He-Who-Is was the wellspring of all Darkness, and He-Who-Is would never return to the World of Form again, but the creatures his creation had fashioned had not all passed away when their masters and makers had been destroyed. Some slept, waiting to be awakened. Some had lost their physical reality, but the potential for that reality remained, and so they could be created anew. And those creatures of her need that she could not awaken or re-create in their time-worn patterns could be made new, for the Isvai was filled with life waiting to be rendered atish'ban at her touch. That it was so fecund was good, for Life was a fragile thing, and to craft atish'ban that were able to survive more than a night was painstaking and time-consuming work. Yet it was a labor that must be performed, for the children of He-Who-Is had left her few servants capable of helping her to claim her dominion. She had summoned all those cast-off works of the ancient Shadow back into the world nevertheless, so that they could serve her in their season, but they were creatures of northern darkness and northern cold, and she must have others to serve her here. Her power was great enough to compel the will of everything that walked or crawled or slithered upon the sand, or burrowed beneath it, or flew above it, but mere force would not gain her what she desired.

"Come to me!" Ahairan shouted. "The day of my victory is at hand, and I claim your fealty!"

She stood upon the roof of a tower that rose hundreds of feet above the desert floor. It was made of glass, but not by magic: she had taken the tiehaan, a tiny creature of the desert verge that built towers to its own purpose -- though not as grand as this -- and rendered uncounted hordes of them atish'ban. So changed, at her command they built towers not of mud, but of glass, and died by the incalculable thousands. The sand around the foot of the crystal tower was heaped with their glittering ebony corpses. They made a faint clicking sound as the wind stirred them.

"You are not yet victorious," the Firecrown answered. Suddenly it was there upon the top of the tower with her; the glass beneath its feet crackled with heat and the wind that blew at this great height struck flames from its pale red hair.

"I shall be!" Ahairan said defiantly. "Their hearts are filled with despair. I scour the Wildmage's people from the face of the desert at the Sandwind scours lichen from the rock. Mothers weep for their children, wives for their husbands -- each night they set forth knowing that when the sun rises they will be fewer. I wring their lives from his grasp as a dying man wrings the last drop of water from a waterskin, and all the Wildmage's spells fail him. Who can he turn to for their salvation but me?"

"You are not yet victorious," the Firecrown repeated.

"I do not need him!" Ahairan cried. She tossed her head, and the wind blew the long strands of her cherry-black hair across her shoulder. She brushed them back impatiently. "I do not need any of them! You said to me that I could not journey northward to find Wildmages garbed in robes of blue -- but you lied to me, for I have gone to Akazidas'Iteru and passed within its gates, and there I found a Wildmage in a robe of blue, and I have brought him here!"

"And will he serve you?" the Firecrown asked.

"If he does not, I will slay his family," Ahairan said confidently. "He will not refuse me. Come forth, Blue Robe!" She stretched out her hand.

There was a sound of struggle and muffled groans, then a young man in the blue robes of a Madiran Wildmage came staggering up the steps to the tower roof, moving as if his limbs were not under his own control, and as if he struggled against their compulsion. His robes were torn and filthy, and his face was bloody and battered. He strained to hurl himself over the edge of the tower, and when he could not, glared defiantly at Ahairan.

"Darkspawn! You threaten my kin, and your words are as the clamor of a barking dog. My mother is of the Binrazan; my father a trader of Sedullu'Iteru. More than a wheel of seasons ago the Wild Magic said to me that I must seek them out and go with them to Armethalieh to see them settled there, and so I did. And did they all stand here with me down to my sister's youngest child, you could kill them all before my eyes and I would still not serve a Demon of the Dark."

"Sedullu'Iteru is dust and ash," Ahairan said harshly. "Kanash, will you see the Binrazan suffer the same fate?"

Kanash smiled, and spat bloodily at her feet. "If you can, Demon. If you cannot force me to kneel to you, your power is not that great."

Suddenly he screamed in agony, and fell to the floor. He clutched at his thighs, writhing against the sun-hot crystal roof, and where his hands pressed the fabric of his robes against his flesh, blood stained the blue fabric dark.

"Oh, I can force you to kneel, Kanash," Ahairan said. "To crawl, and to grovel, and to pray to me for death. And all I ask is that you serve me. It is a small thing. Do this, and I will grant you great gifts -- the lives of the Binrazan and any others you ask. I promise you this."

"You speak in the tongue of lies," Kanash gasped, though his voice was hoarse and shaking with pain. "Never shall I serve you -- never!"

He howled in anguish as she attempted to force him to stand. Again and again he floundered spastically as his body attempted to obey her commands and the splintered bone of his legs would not support him. As she continued to force his body to make the effort, blood began to pool on the roof beneath him.

"Do what I command!" she screamed. "Do what I command!"

Beyond speech now, Kanash could only shake his head: No. Never.

With a last shriek of frustration, Ahairan swept out her arm and Kanash's body gave a last convulsive shudder. It was her intention to force him to throw himself off the tower, but no compulsion was required -- he dragged himself swiftly to the edge, sliding through his own blood, and he pulled himself quickly over the edge of the tower. There was utter silence as he fell to his death.

"You are not yet victorious," the Firecrown said for the third time. "You have held a wielder of the Wild Magic in your thrall, and you could not corrupt him, either through rich prizes or by duress. Shall I believe, then, that you are powerful enough to claim this world?"

"Yes!" Ahairan hissed. "For I shall enthrall not only the Dragonbond Wildmage, but both of his companions as well! All three will serve me! Look to yourself, Firecrown, lest when that day comes -- as it shall -- I no longer desire our alliance."

"It would be foolish of me indeed not to seek alliance with the power that will hold the future of this land in its grasp," the Firecrown answered. "Nor should I wish to place my power in the service of any purpose that did not hasten its supremacy. Truly, there is no creature who would doubt that your passions burn as ardently as the flame from which you sprang. And my own nature is fire."

"It is true that you can claim no kinship with the race whose battles caused the death of your worshippers," Ahairan pronounced grandly. "When I summon you again, you must be prepared to cede to me all that you have promised."

"Upon the day that our bargain is fulfilled will come an end to many things," the Firecrown agreed. "Yet neither you nor I may die, therefore the ending I speak of can be neither yours nor mine."

Before the last syllable of its words had faded to silence, the Firecrown had vanished -- as a flame of fire will vanish, blown to extinction by the desert wind.

#

They waited at the well where Bisochim had rejoined them for five days while the rest of the Isvaieni caught up to them. Tiercel said that Saravasse told him that Bisochim wasn't actually creating water, but whatever he was doing, he was certainly getting enough of it from somewhere to provide enough for several thousand people and their animals. If he hadn't been able to do that, none of this would have worked -- and in fact, they'd all have died.

As each group of Ummarai arrived, they told them plan the four of them had come up with that first night -- and had gotten each Ummara, each tribe, to agree to in the hours and days that followed. The children -- born and unborn -- would be sent to the safest place left: Abi'Abadshar. Ahairan might be able to find it, but not by magic -- and it held food and water and hiding places enough for all the refugees. Marap, as well as the eight Nalzindar children, would remain at Abi'Abadshar to tell its new inhabitants everything that was safe to eat. All the rest of them -- the remainder of the Nalzindar, the rest of the Isvaieni -- would continue out into the Isvai with one goal: to travel north to bring the warning to Armethalieh that Ahairan was free.

With a certain amount of reluctance, Harrier told them that First Magistrate Vaunnel would probably arrest them for sacking the Iteru'Cities. He told them that if she did there would be a trial, and that he -- or Tiercel, or Saravasse and Bisochim -- would speak for them and tell the First Magistrate the truth. And if none of them could speak for them, they must ask to speak with the Harbormaster of Armethalieh Port.

"Will he grant an audience to outlaws?" Zanattar asked.

Harrier smiled painfully. "If you tell him you bring him a message from his youngest son, yeah, he will. If you have to do that, tell him this: that I really only meant to be gone a moonturn and a half, that Brelt will make a much better Harbormaster than I ever would have, and that I'm very sorry."

Not one tribe refused to share the danger.

It was a nerve-wracking period of waiting as the tribes gathered, made even worse by the fact that when they were finally able to send the children to Abi'Abadshar, Ahairan's creatures were attacking the party nightly and everyone knew that Bisochim was their only true defense. Harrier wasn't sure whether Ahairan was smart enough to see that she needed hostages -- which meant keeping Bisochim and at least some of the Isvaieni alive -- had actually left for the north sennights ago -- which meant all their problems were being caused by leftover creatures of the Dark -- or was holding off attacking them in person because she was somewhere else planning something that was actually going to work. What Harrier was sure of was that not one night passed without some form of attack.

Even so, there was no question of who would go with the children: Bisochim had to go with the children to protect them, and the tribes would have to survive without his magic as best they could. He had even sent the homunculi in the direction of the ancient city as soon as the plan had first been discussed. What better sentry to watch over the entrances to the underground city than unsleeping creatures of stone?

Harrier couldn't manage to decide whether he felt better that Shaiara was going with Bisochim to explain the situation to the Nalzindar, or worried because something might happen to her while he didn't know anything about it.

As soon as the children had gone, those who were left behind continued north. Before he had left them, Bisochim had made something the Barahileth had probably never seen: a river. It was more of an irrigation ditch, really, running alongside the Dove Road, straight and deep. He said it would probably not endure beyond a moonturn before the water was called elsewhere. Harrier had no idea of what he meant by that, but according to Shaiara, they'd be out of the Barahileth in half that time. And at least it meant that if something happened to Bisochim, they wouldn't all die of thirst here in the desert.

In the ten days before Bisochim, Saravasse, and twenty Nalzindar rejoined them the Isvaieni found plenty of other things to die of.

By now Harrier had actually developed a ranking system. Balwarta attacks were the easiest to deal with. They'd burn if you could actually manage to set one on fire, and their undersides were vulnerable; he'd worked with some of the Isvaieni hunters to come up with a design for a spear that could actually be set on fire and still thrown accurately. If they had a proper wood-working shop and tools, he could improve on the design -- fill the whole core of the spear with pitch so that the entire spear would burn once it was set alight (and cold pitch was solid, so the spear-shaft would be stable until the last minute) -- but he might as well wish for a flight of Elven Mages. Harrier asked Zanattar to find volunteers from among the Isvaieni who had ridden with him to go up the road ahead of the army, because you could hear them coming from a distance, once you knew what to listen for. Bisochim could usually manage to kill a number of the things with lightning. When he was here.

The next easiest to deal with was the Goblins, because they were stupid. Once you started killing Goblins, they'd feed on each other until you didn't have any more Goblins to worry about. Their only real worry was about keeping Goblins from coming up in the middle of their convoy. Bisochim could keep the remaining livestock from stampeding and being eaten -- though soon enough the practical desert dwellers, unused to depending upon magic, had come up with purely mechanical methods of accomplishing the same ends -- and Bisochim could set a ward that would keep the Goblins from coming up through the ground, too, but not unless he'd marked the edges of the area in advance and could see it. That worked fine for warding their campsites by day, less well for warding a line of march.

Harrier really hated the plagues of Demonic insects, and so did everybody else. Jarrari in all different sizes -- all of them black, even the ones barely the size of his thumbnail, and -- no matter their size -- all deadly poisonous. There were kintibaz and khazdara and barghusi too -- all of them black -- and the kintibaz and khazdara got into the food supply -- the khazdara to devour as much of it as they could, and the kintibaz simply to swarm all over it -- and at first they'd just picked them out and killed them -- and then they discovered that whatever they'd gotten into was contaminated to some degree (even though normally khazdara were considered a great delicacy by the Isvaieni.) Several people and animals died before they figured that out. The kintibaz bit and stung, too -- and the barghusi bit all the time, and hopped away before you could swat them, and their bites made sores that festered for days (on people) and drove the animals half-mad. The only consolation was that sunlight killed the insects, but nobody was willing to wait that long for relief, and the only other things that worked were a powder made up of salt and ishnain (both of which they had plenty of, but the cure was nearly as bad as the affliction) or magic.

Balwarta or Goblins or jarrari, no matter what attacked them, their attackers left a trail of dead behind them. It would have been unbearable if not for the fact that every Isvaieni below the age of ten, and all of the pregnant women, were at Abi'Abadshar.

#

Tonight it was something new. Saravasse's hearing was far better than anyone else's; she warned him just at sunset that something approached.

Shaiara and Ciniran were collecting their shotors from the area that Harrier couldn't stop himself from thinking of as the 'stables' no matter how hard he tried; Light alone knew what Tiercel was doing. Harrier was trying to decide between beginning to pack everything up for leaving and the luxury of a breakfast that he didn't have to eat in the saddle -- even if it was cold flatbread and water -- when Saravasse arrived and lowered her head until her nose was only a few feet away from his.

"Something's coming," she said.

"What's coming?" he asked Saravasse. Each evening Harrier tried to remember to list the things he was grateful for, and he always included the fact that the livestock had gotten used to the red dragon's presence so quickly, because if they'd had to spend their time chasing goats in addition to everything else, he thought he'd have gone crazy by now.

"I can hear them, Harrier; I cannot see them," Saravasse answered tartly, lowering her head further to huff hot breath in his face. "And do not ask me what they sound like. They sound like trouble."

He groaned. He missed Ancaladar -- and not just because if Ancaladar was here, Tiercel would be happy, they'd have a High Mage's spells to draw on, and they wouldn't need Bisochim at all. He missed Ancaladar because Ancaladar had been nice.

As if she were reading his mind (he'd never managed to break himself of the suspicion that Ancaladar had been able to do that), Saravasse clapped her injured wing against her side. Omuta had sacrificed one of the Fadaryama tents so that a kind of cover could be sewn to hold what was left of her shattered wing together and to keep it clean. She'd even let Tiercel clean the injury and trim away the dangling flaps of skin once they'd gotten to a place where the tools were available: Harrier supposed she wouldn't let Bisochim do it in case the temptation to simply Heal her became too great. Tiercel said the wing would grow back on its own in two or three years, and they really didn't have that long to hang around the Madiran doing nothing until Saravasse could fly to the Veiled Lands with their warning. Meanwhile she ate a lot, and snarled even more.

"All right, fine, they're trouble. At least they aren't more jarrari."

"Huh," Saravasse said in mocking disbelief. "I thought you hated the barghusi most?"

"Go ahead, laugh. barghusi can't bite through your scales." He scratched the side of his neck reflexively. He'd been bitten there, and the salt-ishnain-herb paste Ciniran had smeared on it had actually hurt worse than the bite, but at least it had healed cleanly.

"I'm hungry," Saravasse said decisively. "I'm going to eat before we start. Whatever I hear is still miles away." She lifted her head and walked away. She had plenty of room to move, now that the ice barrier around the camp had (as usual) melted.

Since Bisochim had rejoined them, he surrounded the entire campsite -- an enormous area, holding hundreds of tents, thousands of people, and thousands of shotors, goats, and sheep -- with an enormous wall of ice each night when they stopped. It had been Tiercel's idea. The wall was more than a dozen feet high, and even wider than it was high, and even so, there was never anything more than a faint ring of ice on the ground by sunset. But it kept the livestock from wandering off (or being lured off) during the day, and until it melted, it actually made the temperature inside it cool enough for sleeping. There wasn't any need to worry about waking up and finding themselves underwater because of icemelt, either; what melted simply evaporated.

Staring after her, Harrier wondered if female dragons just ate more than male dragons anyway, or if Saravasse ate more because she was hurt. If he wondered that out loud, though, he'd probably end up on the menu. He might end up on something's menu by the end of the night anyway.

He stepped back into the tent to pick up a long thin rod inside. The Isvaieni used them to leave what they called 'desertsign', either marking the rods themselves with designs, or leaving them in patterns that would leave messages for anyone they might want to leave a message for, since there weren't trees -- and there usually weren't even rocks -- lying around in the desert for them to carve markings in. Now it had a long scrap of red cloth tied to the end. They'd quickly realized that there was no way to pass a message of any kind from one end of the caravan to the other quickly -- or even from one side of the camp to the other. The only message that needed to be passed that quickly was 'danger', and so Shaiara had suggested that they use the desertsign rods -- which nearly everyone had -- as signaling devices. The sticks were nearly six feet long -- in order for them to be able to be seen with much of their length buried in soft sand -- and a piece of bright red cloth tied to the end made the rods highly-visible.

He went outside his tent and held his signal rod directly overhead. He didn't feel as silly as he'd thought he would at first, but it wasn't all that different from using signal flags between ships, after all. It had taken them a few days to work out this crude set of signals: wild flailing of the signal rod meant immediate danger; wild flailing in a specific direction meant (obviously) that the danger was coming from the direction you were pointing in. Just holding the signal rod straight up meant that danger was coming, but it wasn't immediate. He held his signal rod up until he saw a dozen others appear, then lowered his and went to get his breakfast.

#

They'd been on the road for about an hour when they finally saw what it was. In that time, Saravasse was able to tell them that it wasn't Balwarta -- because she knew what they sounded like, Harrier, and she wasn't deaf or senile yet, thank you -- it wasn't Goblins -- because you never heard them coming, and even now there was too much light in the sky for them to be comfortable, let alone two hours before -- and it certainly wasn't swarms of biting, stinging, poisonous, voracious atish'ban'bugs.

It was something like dogs.

Their first sight of the enemy was as a distant clump of swiftly moving black dots against the pale clay of the regh. That much warning gave Bisochim enough time to call down the lightning against an enemy they still couldn't see clearly -- and time enough for Harrier to think: Ahairan won't let us get away with that forever; if she's even halfway smart she's going to come up with some way to keep that trick of his from being any use to us--

And the thunderbolt sizzled down from the cloudless starry sky, striking with a blinding sizzle and crack, and the ebony mass and scattered, fleeing in all directions, but still running forward. Split into its individual pieces, it was possible to see what it was made up of of.

"Dogs," Ciniran said, as if she were solving a riddle. She raised her signal rod, and a ripple of response went backward through the convoy, as all down the line the Isvaieni came to a stop and made certain that the pack animals and the herds were at the center of the train. Harrier knew that as word was passed back down the line of the reason for stopping, archers and spear-throwers would be preparing their weapons.

"Yeah," he said uneasily, watching the black dogs lope across the desert. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Simera had been telling him about the habits of wolves, and only a little later that the Mountain Patrol was warning him and Tiercel that the wolves were unusually bold and savage this year and that most of the passes over the Mystrals were closed.

"There's … a lot of them. Still," Tiercel said.

"More than a hundred," Harrier and Shaiara answered, nearly in chorus. "Two hundred," Harrier finished. "Maybe three."

"But… there's still more of us," Tiercel said doubtfully, and Harrier and Shaiara exchanged glances. That didn't matter, if the atish'ban'dogs could reach the caravan. He'd seen a ratting-dog clear an entire ship of vermin in a matter of hours; as it grabbed its luckless prey by the back of the neck, gave it a swift shake to kill it, and went on to the next victim. He didn't doubt that these dogs could kill as efficiently. And he was tired of watching the Isvaieni lay the dead bodies of their fellow tribesmen out on the Barahileth and ride on.

"How many of them can you kill?" he asked Bisochim. He didn't like being the one who had to do most of the dealing with Bisochim -- if only because he was pretty sure that Saravasse already thought he was expendable, and being mean to Bisochim didn't do anything to change her mind.

But Zanattar and his army -- and there wasn't one of them who hadn't lost a brother, a sister, a friend, a husband, a wife, a partner, or even a child on his stupid crusade -- all thought of Bisochim as the man who'd sent them on it, and it wasn't that they weren't smart enough to see that he'd been tricked as much as they had. It was that they thought that a Wildmage shouldn't have been tricked in the first place, and that was what they blamed him for. And the so-called Young Hunters were three-quarters of the people they had left in the train.

The Ummarai and their chaharums had their own problems in dealing with Bisochim -- they knew that they'd been Overshadowed by Bisochim to force them to lead their tribes into the Barahileth. They knew that because he'd told them so. Harrier wouldn't have. That was the real problem. Harrier didn't know what Bisochim had been like before he'd started trying to summon up Ahairan, but now he seemed to have about as much common sense as a ship's figurehead. And given how much they had to depend on him, that was just terrifying. It didn't make things any better that Tiercel treated him like an old family friend (which was how Tiercel tended to treat everybody anyway, at least he had before they'd headed off for Sentarshadeen a year ago) so anything Bisochim decided to do was fine with Tiercel. Harrier needed somebody whose judgment he could rely on to tell him how reliable Bisochim was. And there wasn't anyone.

"I do not know," Bisochim answered. "I shall do what I can."

Even Harrier had to admit that it wouldn't have mattered who had been trying to hit the dogs with lightning -- Bisochim or Tiercel or even him -- they were small and fast and there were too many of them. Bisochim could -- and did -- kill one, or two, or a dozen, and it didn't make enough of a difference.

"Can't you make them stand still?" Harrier asked, when yet another lightning-strike had failed to hit any target. By now the atish'ban'dogs were close enough that he could see they were about the size of ponies. They looked oddly like hounds -- except for the fact that their long whiplike tails ended in the same sort of triangular barb that Saravasse's did.

"I cannot," Bisochim said briefly. "They are warded."

Trust Ahairan to think of that, at least. "Then you'd better make the caravan stand, or everything in it's going to bolt the moment the wind shifts," Harrier said. His shotor was already starting to fret, and those things were still a good half-mile away.

"No, wa--" Tiercel said, but Bisochim had already set the spell. Harrier felt his shotor relax -- and Tiercel bent forward, leaned sideways over his mount's shoulder, and threw up. "Oh, Light. Down. Down," he groaned, tapping his shotor on the shoulder with his whip. It obediently knelt, and Tiercel staggered away from it and dropped to his knees.

"Not there, dammit. You're nothing but a target." Harrier got his own shotor down on its knees and hurried over to Tiercel, dragging him to his feet and back into the press of livestock. "Stay here. This is going to be bad." It wasn't that he'd forgotten about Tiercel's "allergy" to the Wild Magic -- since Bisochim cast spells several times a day and Tiercel reacted violently every single time -- it was just that there were times that allergy was more convenient than others. This wasn't a good time.

He came back to the edge of the caravan and reached back to touch the hilts of his swords. The atish'ban'dogs were within bow-shot, and now, beneath the pale blue glow of Coldfire, the first flights of arrows were being loosed. Nearly every shaft found its mark. It didn't stop them.

Saravasse lunged out across the regh, her scarlet body tinted as dark as a bruise by Coldfire and shadows. Against her massive size, the atish'ban'dogs were barely larger than barghusi, and every one she could get her claws or her teeth around, she killed -- but there were dozens more. Saravasse was keeping the pack from attacking the front of the caravan, but more of the dogs had simply gone around her, running down the line to attack the caravan. In the distance Harrier heard shouts and screams. He swung into the saddle and coaxed his shotor to rise. He couldn't fight from its back, but he'd need it to get him to where he was needed.

"Bisochim! You must free the ikulas!" Ciniran cried desperately.

Bisochim had looked as if he were asleep as he'd watched Saravasse struggle against the atish'ban'dogs. They weren't trying to attack her -- they were trying to get away from her so they could attack the more vulnerable caravan. That meant they were too smart for Harrier's peace of mind.

"Yes," Bisochim said, as if he were waking from a dream. "I am sorry," he said softly.

Harrier didn't understand what he meant until afterward.

Bisochim stretched out his hand -- it was almost as if Harrier could feel the ripple of magic pass back through the caravan. And suddenly -- from every point along the line -- streaks of silver and cream and white and dun flashed across the desert, red tongues lolling, as they ran toward their enemy.

The ikulas hounds were tool and companion and even brother to the Isvaieni. Without them, no hunter could survive in the desert, for the falcon could find prey and take birds and small game, but it was the ikulas that coursed desert antelope and wild goat and even pig and held them for the hunter's spear, or slew them with one swift bite.

Now they danced a dance of death with an enemy such as none of them had ever seen, dodging in to snap at throats and hamstrings, whirling out of reach of slavering jaws. Not one ikulas held back, or turned and ran. But for all their courage, it was a battle they were doomed to lose. The atish'ban'dogs could sever a spine -- or a head from a neck -- in one snap of its enormous jaws. And the ikulas wearied, while their deadly enemy seemed tireless.

Harrier was halfway down the column -- if you could call it that by now -- when the first ikulas died. Four atish'ban'dogs had gotten as far as the line and Isvaieni were trying to keep them from getting any further. If they penetrated the column of shotors and livestock, they would be able to slaughter hundreds of people and animals while using the densely-packed press of bodies as their shield. There were atish'ban'dogs on both sides of the column already; it had nowhere to retreat to.

He saw the ikulas strike the atish'ban'dogs like thrown spears -- six, eight, more ikulas attacking each snarling black monster, jaws wide, scrabbling at the enemy trying to bite and hold. Around each surging knot of bloody fur -- pale and black -- Isvaieni hovered, clutching spears and knives and swords, waiting for a chance to strike. He saw the pools of blood on the ground -- and a dozen different fights going on out on the regh as well.

And he Saw what was going to happen the moment before it did, and there was no power in all the world that could stop it. One of the atish'ban'dogs attacking the caravan tore its throat loose from the jaws of the ikulas that was mauling it, engulfed its head in its enormous jaws, and killed it.

A man rushed forward from the press of watching Isvaieni with a geschak in his hand. He threw himself on the atish'ban'dog, hacking at it and wailing. It killed him -- it ate him alive -- but he never stopped cutting at it the entire time, and he died with its heart in his hands.

"No, don't," Harrier whispered, but it was too late. Before that man was dead, hundreds of people had run out into the desert, carrying awardans, or just geschaks and spears. They were running toward the ikulas and the atish'ban'dogs, and as they ran they made a sound like nothing Harrier had ever heard. He'd been on the walls of Tarnatha'Iteru when Zanattar's army had charged straight-on into a wall of Tiercel's MageShield. Hundreds had died there. Hundreds had been injured. Not then -- not even on the night the city had finally fallen and they had been able to claim their victory -- had they made a sound like this. They sounded like Demons themselves.

They died. Outmatched, against a cunning, vicious, tireless enemy, they couldn't do anything else. But they killed as well -- killed as if they were Shadow-Touched, killed as if there were nothing more important in the world than seeing these creatures dead, no matter the cost.

This is what she's done to us already, Harrier thought. But there was no more time for thinking now. Swords drawn, he ran across the desert to join the fight, even while he was telling himself it was stupid. He saw six ikulas swarming over one of the atish'ban'dogs. It killed three of them before one of them managed to hamstring it and the other two tore out its throat. They were panting and bloody when they were done, but they didn't retreat. They simply searched for the next target.

So did he.

Come on, Ahairan, if you really want to make Bisochim give up, killing me or Tiercel would be a good start. Honest.

He heard a stuttering growl from behind him. He didn't turn. He knew what it was. It rushed toward him and he spun aside, slicing its throat as it passed. It staggered onward a few steps before collapsing.

Suddenly the desert was very bright.

It was not the radiance of Coldfire, or even the bright flashes of lightning that Bisochim was using to attack what stragglers he could. This was different; the kind of brightness that seemed to come from a place entirely outside the world and was for Harrier's eyes alone. He could see the entire desert -- the entire caravan -- the dark wrongnesses of the atish'ban'dogs, the bright sparks of Saravasse and the Isvaieni and the ikulas -- not only where they were, but where they would be. Attack, defense, success, failure. It was as if he wasn't just seeing the world in an impossible way -- as if it had all been painted on a map and held up for him to see -- but seeing through Time as well. What was. What would be. What might be.

And that impossible map showed him that the atish'ban'dogs would always avoid the chance to attack a single person -- just as they had tried to avoid attacking Saravasse -- in favor of attacking the caravan.

If they could.

He turned and ran back toward the caravan, shaking his head to rid himself of the unnerving Mage-Sight. More than half the pack was dead already, but that wouldn't matter if the survivors -- ten dogs, even one dog -- reached the caravan. All the ikulas were scattered across the regh -- and so were several hundred of the Young Hunters. Harrier grabbed a woman as she ran past him to join them -- it was Kisrah, someone he knew. "No!" he said urgently. "Stay here! They'll be coming to attack the caravan -- you need to be here!"

"I will be avenged!" Kisrah snarled.

"If you aren't here to kill them you'll have plenty to want vengeance for!" Harrier snarled back. He shoved her so hard she fell, and ran on toward the caravan. Some of the Isvaieni he stopped listened to his warning and returned to the line. Some didn't. When he reached the caravan itself, he passed the message up and down the column as best he could -- in many places, there were no people left along the line at all for hundreds of yards, just placidly-kneeling shotors.

The regh was covered in bodies -- the bodies of the ikulas, small in death, the large bodies of the atish'ban'dogs, bodies of dead Isvaieni. Too far away to do anything but watch, Harrier saw a figure in bloody robes staggering as fast as it could toward the caravan. Two of the dogs loped up toward it -- one from each side -- and each took an arm in its massive jaws and pulled. The sound of a scream -- mercifully brief -- cut through all the other sounds of fighting, then the two dogs dashed away, and the mutilated figure fell face-down upon the clay. Harrier gulped down a wave of nausea. He'd survived the fall of a city. He'd killed men with his own swords. This was somehow -- horribly -- different.

Retreat. They have to retreat, he thought desperately.

But the most of the Young Hunters out on the regh weren't even aware of how much danger they were in. Some of them were still trying to save their ikulas, some were engaged in hopeless battles against the Shadow-Touched dogs. Some -- a few -- were even winning those battles, for those of the Isvaieni who had been flock-guards were used to defending their charges from predators nearly as savage as these, and had gone into battle armed with heavy clubs and long knives.

They would have died by the hundreds if not for Saravasse.

Harrier Knew she had been on the far side of the caravan-line; fewer dogs had gone in that direction and she had been able to catch them all by the brutal expedient of chasing them directly onto the waiting spears of the Isvaieni and then killing them before they had time to work their way into the caravan itself.

Now, her work done there, she returned to this side.

At the point she arrived, the Young Hunters on the regh were starting to retreat toward the caravan. To do so, they were naturally -- instinctively -- seeking each other out, thinking that numbers would lend them safety. Instead, it awakened the atish'ban'dogs' instinct to attack them. Harrier knew as plainly as if he'd been told. One Isvaieni was not worth their effort. Twenty or fifty were.

Suddenly Saravasse appeared, attacking the dogs who harried the men and woman stranded on the regh. It was almost like watching a cat after mice -- or a ratting-dog after rats. She chased, pounced, bit -- and killed. But her enemy was small, and fast, and though she killed many, there were still scores of them remaining.

It wasn't fair. He'd seen Telinchechitl. He'd seen Tarnatha'Iteru. Harrier knew what kind of sheer power a Dragonbonded Mage had to draw on. It wasn't fair that Ahairan could nearly destroy them with nothing more than a bunch of Demon Wolves just because Bisochim couldn't come up with any spells to use against them that wouldn't kill every single person in the caravan too. But the Dragonbond didn't make you a different kind of Mage. It just gave you all the power you could possibly need to cast your spells.

He tried not to think about the fact that this was what Ancaladar had trained Tiercel for. Tiercel knew the spells of a High Mage, not a Wildmage. He possessed the right sort of magick for attack and defense, he'd been trained in all the proper methods…

And Ancaladar wasn't here. And wherever he was, Tiercel couldn't draw upon his magic. Ancaladar wasn't here, and Tiercel was powerless, and every night more Isvaieni died.

Saravasse continued to chase and harry her foes. Her arrival meant that the surviving Isvaieni could manage to get back to the caravan alive. But then there was no more time for thought. The first of the atish'ban'dogs that had escaped her were here.

You could cut the throat of something the size of a pony with a sharp sword. You could stun it -- for an instant -- with a heavy club and stab it through the heart with a sharp knife -- if you were strong and fast and lucky.

You couldn't wrestle it to the ground. You couldn't hold its jaws shut. You couldn't hold them open. Try any of those things, and you'd lose your hand, your arm … your life.

The atish'ban'dogs had long floppy ears. It gave them a falsely-lovable appearance, as if they were nothing more than big friendly pets. Their ears also made very good handles, if you needed to grab onto them and drag yourself onto one's back to save your life.

The archers had shot a dozen arrows into the dog as it moved toward them, loping with deceptive slowness. All had struck deep, and none had killed it. It reached the row of Isvaieni in front of the caravan, and one of the flock-guards had stepped forward with his club and his knife, but the atish'ban'dog had flung its head aside at the last moment, so the blow broke its shoulder and not its skull. It whipped its head around again and took the man's arm off at the shoulder and then sprang forward through the gap in the line, one leg dangling uselessly.

Harrier blocked out the sound of the man's screams and stepped into the gap -- time later to hear them, to feel all the horror he should feel, if he lived -- and struck at it with an awardan. He was using the heavy curved southern blade instead of his own twin swords because of its greater weight and the fact that it could be (at need) pressed into service as a club. The throat would have been a killing strike, but the collar of half-buried arrows there would foul his blade. Instead, he struck at its broken shoulder. The awardan bit deep, and bright blood spurted. The pain should have stunned it, giving him the time to strike at its throat from the side, but the blow barely slowed it down at all. Its head slewed toward him -- he was conscious of being the focus of those small yellow eyes -- and it opened its jaws wide, belching breath that stank of rotting meat in his face. Then it rushed directly at him, and he could tell its intention as clearly as if it had spoken aloud -- knock him down, hold him down, tear out his throat…

Not tonight.

He couldn't run, and there was little room this close to the caravan itself to maneuver. He dropped the awardan to the ground -- he'd need both hands -- and stood his ground until the last possible second, as if he were paralyzed with fear. It lowered its head. . .

And he grabbed its head, its ear -- anything behind those killing jaws -- its neck -- and climbed onto its back.

He'd hoped its skin would be loose, like a hound's skin, giving him something to grab, but it wasn't. It was tight and slick, like a horse's hide, and he scrabbled for something to hold onto, wrapping an arm around its throat and pounding his fist against its bleeding shattered shoulder. No matter the cost, he had to keep its attention on him and not on the caravan full of things to kill only a few yards away. It spun madly in circles, trying to snap at his hand, his feet, any part of him it could reach.

"Harrier! Harrier! Let go of it!" someone shouted.

"I can't!" he shouted back. There'd be an instant between the time he jumped free and the moment he regained his balance, and that would be long enough for the dog to kill him.

He stopped pounding on its shoulder -- it wasn't doing any good, or not enough good, anyway, and all he'd done was flay his hand open on some shattered bone -- and dragged his fingers through his sash, fumbling for his geschak and wiping them dry at the same time. As he did, he felt himself starting to slip free. He clutched at the shafts of the arrows stuck in its throat -- they were something to hang onto at least -- and tried to shove them deeper.

"Here! Over here!" He knew the voice, but he couldn't take time to think about that just now. All his energy was focused on dragging the knife free of his sash. If he dropped it, he wouldn't get another chance.

He clutched it tightly and raked it across the atish'ban'dog's skull, trying to put out an eye. He couldn't see what he was doing, and it was shaking its head so violently -- trying to throw him off -- that there was the very real chance he'd just stick his hand into its mouth and it would be all over. He must have done some damage, because he felt it shudder all over. He clutched his handful of arrows tighter with the arm still clasped around its throat and began hacking at the side of its neck -- quickly, desperately -- with the geschak.

And either it was luck, or brute force, or a lack of resistance because of its other injuries, but its struggles began to slow even before he felt the edge of the blade rasp across the cartilage of its windpipe, and then he managed to hook the curved blade of his knife through something in its neck and rip it free. Blood spurted everywhere, and the monster collapsed in a pool of its own blood.

Harrier had never felt more like collapsing himself as he slipped from its back. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his arm, looked up -- and there was Tiercel.

"What are you doing here?" The sentence came out flat and angry, more of an accusation than a question.

"Trying to help." Tiercel tried to take him by the arm, but Harrier shrugged him off. Still, when Tiercel turned back to the relative safety of the center of the caravan, Harrier followed. The crowded space stank of sheep and goats; their bodies steamed faintly in the cold night air.

"By getting killed?" Harrier snapped.

"Not my plan," Tiercel answered. "It seems to be yours, though." He handed Harrier a waterskin, and Harrier drank greedily. The irrigation ditch was probably stacked with bodies all the way to the Isvai, Light alone knew when it would run clean again. "I have to go," Tiercel added.

"Where?" Harrier wanted to tell him not to, to stay here in the middle of the sheep, to stay safe. Tiercel had been supposed to be a Dragonbonded High Mage -- it was true that Harrier had expected both of them to die on Tiercel's quest, but not here, not like this.

"I'm taking arrows to the archers, and water to anyone who needs it," Tiercel answered quietly. "I can't fight -- not any more -- but I can still help."

Harrier wanted to argue with him, to tell him that they needed him to stay alive so that he could destroy Ahairan. But Tiercel couldn't. And the grim truth was that the world might be a lot safer if Tiercel was dead. Tiercel dead was one less Mage to be a target for Ahairan.

But Harrier couldn't wish that. "Stay safe," he said, and Tiercel smiled.

"You too," he answered.

#










CHAPTER ELEVEN: BITTER HARVEST

It was three more hours before Saravasse, patrolling the whole length of the convoy, pronounced all the atish'ban'dogs dead. They spent most of the rest of the night rebalancing the loads on the pack-shotors -- since several animals had been killed -- and moving the bodies of the dead out onto the desert away from the road and the water supply. They made separate places for the Isvaieni and the ikulas; for the animals the atish'ban'dogs had managed to kill, and the bodies of the black dogs that they didn't just leave where they'd fallen. It was a lot of work, but Harrier didn't begrudge doing it. He concentrated on the part of the task nobody else wanted, moving the heavy corpses of the black dogs, work which involved shotors, and ropes, and patience.

It gave him time to think. To be away from everyone else. Solitude was a precious commodity in the desert. The desert was big, and vast, and empty -- and Shaiara could never understand why he wanted to be alone. The Nalzindar was the smallest tribe of all of them -- at its largest, two Ummarai before Shaiara, it had numbered less than fifty -- and unless she'd been out on the desert hunting, Shaiara was never by herself. She had grown up in a tent with her father and her uncle and her uncle's partner and half-a-dozen other people -- just to begin with. Harrier knew that in the desert, just as on the sea, solitude meant danger and death. All he was looking for was three chimes of peace and quiet and privacy.

He didn't know how to deal with the things he'd seen tonight. They were things he didn't want to ever have seen, and there was no way to wipe the sights -- the sounds -- the smells -- from his mind. In his head, they gave vivid life to things that had happened but that he could only imagine -- what the Isvaieni had done in Tarnatha'Iteru. And they helped him imagine things he didn't want to think about at all -- what Ahairan would do to Armethalieh.

When he thought of the children they'd sent to Abi'Abadshar, he wondered if Brelt and Meroine's first had been a boy or a girl. Carault didn't intend to marry until he finished his Apprenticeship, but he'd been courting Pegorin Karedana for about as long as Harrier could remember, and Ma always said that if Car didn't offer for the girl she'd throw him out of the house and just adopt her. And Eugens had three, and Banon was about the same age as one of the Nalzindar kids and Bellari and Branyar must be five now, and he wondered what Ma and Da and everyone had told them about him when they asked where he'd gone...

And he thought about Tiercel's four cloudwitted sisters, and his baby brother, and he realized that he wouldn't ever see any of them again, and he told himself that he didn't mind that, but he couldn't keep from imagining them dying the way so many Isvaieni had died tonight.

And the worst of that was that he was trying to protect them -- had nearly died trying to protect them -- and now all he could think of was the thousands of people they'd killed in ways just as horrible as the ways the dogs had killed them tonight. Abruptly he found himself crying -- and he didn't even know for what, or for who.

He leaned his head against the shotor's side and closed his eyes tightly. He didn't have anything to cry about. He wasn't hurt. He wasn't dead. He'd probably never even get to Armethalieh to see what had happened there, and if he did, there'd be plenty of time to cry then.

I shouldn't have to do this, he told himself, and even to him it sounded as if he was asking to get out of doing it. As if it were his chores at home, or his shift on the Docks. And it wasn't. And there wasn't anybody else to do it. He didn't pretend to himself for one minute that Kareta telling him he was a Knight-Mage made him anything like Kellen The Poor Orphan Boy. He had no idea what he was doing. He didn't have a magic unicorn to guide him, and he didn't have an army of Elven Knights to lead. He didn't even have an enemy who was interested in standing up and fighting.

But no matter what the Young Hunters had done under Zanattar when they'd attacked the String of Pearls, they wouldn't follow him now. Not with their Ummarai around. The Ummarai wouldn't follow Zanattar, or any one Ummara. They might follow Bisochim -- even now -- but Bisochim spent so much time telling them about all the ways he'd tricked them and lied to them when he wasn't just wandering off with Saravasse that his leadership would be as bad as no leadership. Tiercel...

Tiercel wasn't a Wildmage. And Harrier was. So they'd listen to him, and they'd take his advice, and he could keep Zanattar and the Ummarai all pointed in the same direction, and that was as close to leading the Isvaieni as they'd stand for.

And that's why you have to do this. Because there isn't anybody else. So quit sniveling while there's work to do.

He dragged the corpse to where he wanted it, went back to the body to slip the knot free, and led the shotor back to where the next body was.

#

When they were finished with their work, there was still an hour or two of darkness left, so the caravan moved on. They wouldn't be able to make much distance before they had to stop for the day, but at least they could get a few miles away. They were close enough now to the edge of the Isvai that predators might be attracted to the site of the battle, and protecting the herds was still a high priority. It would be the worst of bad jokes if they'd managed to defend them from Ahairan's creatures only to see them fall victim to the desert's own natural predators. He knew that the Madiran was a harsh land where everything either ate or was eaten -- it was why the Isvaieni neither burned nor buried their dead, after all, so that they could give back to the desert a little of what they had taken from it in their lives -- but Harrier still found the custom and the life it represented disturbing.

At least there were no wounded to care for. While many of them had been clearing the battlefield, Bisochim had gone through the procession, Healing all of the wounded who were still alive. He could not restore missing limbs, and in their ordinary lives, an Isvaieni who was maimed so badly that he or she could not perform useful work would go to lay his -- or her -- bones upon the sand, since no one could afford to support useless mouths. But this was not their ordinary world, and tasks could be found for everyone, whether they were missing an arm, or a leg, or both hands. And when the caravan prepared to move on, all of the enemy were dead, and most of the Isvaieni had survived.

"Wash out your eyes," Shaiara said to him when Harrier settled into his saddle and his shotor had lurched to its feet. "They are red -- ishnain burns will fester if they are left." She handed him a waterskin.

It wasn't why his eyes were red. He wondered if she knew. He wondered if Shaiara had ever cried about anything. He took the waterskin and twisted the bone spout open, and squirted himself in the face with the ease of long practice. He might as well assume he'd gotten ishnain-dust all over him; better safe than sorry. Water dripped down his face and into his beard. He squirted some water into his mouth for good measure and handed the waterskin back.

At last, Bisochim released his spell upon all the animals of the convoy, and suddenly -- for the first time in hours -- there was the sound of sheep and goats making their displeasure with the world noisily known. As the caravan began to move forward, there was the sound of saddle bells, and bridle bells; the creak of leather, the grunting and protesting of shotors. There were only two times the beasts didn't want to work: day and night.

"This is an accursed place," Ciniran said quietly, glancing out at the desert. Isvaieni bodies lay upon the regh -- far too many of them. And every single ikulas the tribes possessed -- with the exception of a few litters of puppies and the few animals back in Abi'Abadshar -- was dead.

"Ulanya," Tiercel said suddenly. The other three looked at him. He looked embarrassed. "It's, um, it's a word I read in an old book in -- in Karahelanderialigor. It's an Elven word. I think it means "Forest of Sorrow." I'm not sure how to change it to mean "Desert of Sorrow," but ... I think it fits."

"The Barahileth is the Forge of the Sun," Shaiara said, and Harrier couldn't tell from the tone of her voice whether she was agreeing with Tiercel or disagreeing with him. "It is said among the Isvaieni that the sun burns away all sorrow."

"You also say that you're only safe when you're dead," Harrier said. "I don't actually want to be that safe, Shaiara."

He hadn't actually meant it to be a joke, but to his surprise, Shaiara laughed out loud.

#

Two days later -- twenty-two days after that first Council of War -- the Isvaieni reached the edge of the Barahileth. There wasn't anything as useful as a marker post to indicate that the Barahileth stopped here and the Isvai began -- they'd been travelling over barren regh for more than five sennights, and all Harrier could see ahead was more of the same, but every Isvaieni he'd spoken to that evening as they'd broken camp was in agreement that they were at the very edge of the Barahileth, and would cross its edge an hour into their night's travel.

#

"Here," Ciniran said, gesturing. "It is here."

Harrier looked around and still didn't see anything. On the one hand, that was good -- since that also meant he wasn't seeing any giant black dogs, giant flying jarrari, Goblins, or hordes of Darkspawn vermin -- but one patch of baked clay desert looked a lot like another.

"Are you sure?" he said, and Ciniran merely snorted.

Harrier looked at Tiercel. Tiercel shrugged.

Harrier supposed that if you spent your whole life wandering back and forth through a place, you'd get to know it pretty well, but it still seemed far-fetched to him to say that this was the Isvai and that was the Barahileth. If this was the Isvai, it didn't seem either colder or less cold than the Barahileth had, and come sunrise, he bet it would be just as hot as the Barahileth had been, so he didn't see how the Isvaieni were so sure. It wasn't even that Bisochim's magic river had stopped at the edge of the Barahileth, since it had actually stopped at their last campsite. Kannatha Well -- the first "natural" water they would reach -- was nearly another day's travel away. Shaiara said it was really small -- which was why it was called a 'well' and not an 'oasis' -- but that didn't matter, because they had Bisochim travelling with them. If he could make lakes in the middle of the Barahileth, he could certainly turn a well into enough water for their entire horde of people and animals.

It was fewer animals each day than the day before, though. Not because they were being killed by Ahairan -- although they were -- but because they were being eaten. The Balwarta attacks and the swarms of bugs had spoiled a lot of their food supplies -- people-food as well as animal-fodder -- and crossing the Barahileth had taken the Isvaieni almost a fortnight longer than his original (and he now knew, wildly-optimistic) estimate. They'd had to start killing their livestock for food. At least they could go back to hunting and foraging how that they'd reached the Isvai.

#

If the situation had not been so dire, Shaiara would surely have found cause for amusement in the looks which Tiercel and Harrier exchanged as they crossed from the Barahileth into the Isvai, for their expressions said plainly that they could not imagine how anyone could distinguish one stretch of desert from another. Every member of every tribe who had begun with the patience for the task of attempting to render the two of them desertwise had long since given up attempting to explain it to either of them -- it was as much mercy as any soul was granted between Sand and Star that the two of them could remember enough of the basic rules of desert survival to keep from dying.

In truth, as the days of her second -- no, third -- journey across the Barahileth stretched first to sennights and then beyond a moonturn, Shaiara found the burden of continued existence a heavier one than she had ever thought it could be. When she had set out from Abi'Abadshar to bring Tiercel and Harrier before Bisochim's face less than two moonturns ago, she had never expected to see any of her people again. Now Kamar rode beside her, and the siblings Narkil and Natha, and Raffa -- even Tanjel, child of Malib and Ramac, who had seen just twelve turns of the seasons. It would have been a joyful reunion, save for the hard iron truth she held beneath her tongue: that she was leading all her people into a death as certain as the one she had thought to embrace alone in order to buy them life.

That it was the same death that the Shadow-Touched and all those who had followed him so ardently would meet did not reconcile her to the certain fate of the Nalzindar. Further, there had been enough words spoken into Shaiara's ears of the madness Bisochim had kindled in the hearts of the Young Hunters to make her aware of just how their feet had been set upon the road that had led to all the evils they had done, and though she had heard much of the Demon who had dripped words of poison into Bisochim's ear until his heart and soul and mind were so sickened with it that he could do naught but speak poison in his turn, Shaiara did not believe such a flame as he had kindled could die out in a season, or in a wheel of seasons. Harrier thought that the only evil they now had to face lay without. Shaiara knew better. Harrier saw some of the truth that she had seen, but he did not see enough of it. He did not see that while many of the Young Hunters had set their feet back upon the path of law and custom, as many more rode where he led as eagerly as if they were a starving pakh that had scented a strayed lamb, and all for the hope that there might be the chance to shed blood at the end of their journey.

No Isvaieni -- before this passage of seasons -- had understood war. And the Nalzindar did not even raid the flocks and herds of other tribes, though such banditry in aid of tribal feuds was common. But every Nalzindar knew one truth bone-deep: to lust for anything, be it victory or comfort or sleep or a full belly, caused one to think of that thing and not of the purpose at hand. And the desert had two prizes always ready to award to those whose minds were not upon their proper purpose: failure and death.

It was for that reason most of all that she had insisted on accompanying Tiercel and Harrier in the first place, for she could certainly have convinced Harrier to delay their journey by a sennight -- or even two -- and taught him enough to survive the journey. If she had made the need plain enough to him, she was certain he would have used the Wild Magic to discover such plants within Abi'Abadshar as could be used to grant him the Blue Robes. The Blue Robes would have protected him -- and Tiercel too, if he claimed Tiercel was under his protection at the will of the Wild Magic -- even if they both were seen to be interlopers from the Cold North.

But Tiercel's purpose was a thing not of this world at all, and Harrier's purpose was a tangled thing. Even Shaiara -- no Wildmage, nor did she wish ever to carry that burden -- could see that he struggled, caught between serving the Wild Magic and protecting his friend, and that not merely for the cause of their long friendship, but to guard the fulfillment of the charge laid upon Tiercel by the Elder Brethren.

Neither of them -- then nor now -- could give his whole mind to the moment. And so Shaiara had entwined her fate with theirs, and in doing so had wound the fate of the Nalzindar as close as bone and sinew with that of all the tribes. The knowledge that she was to be the last Ummara of the Nalzindar was a stone upon her heart -- it was not for such purpose that Darak had given the people into her keeping. Yet what choice was there? If the Spirit of Darkness prevailed, there would be no Nalzindar, no Isvaieni, no Northerners ... only darkness and death.

Even now, the Kamazan had been entered upon the tally of the Lost Tribes. Ummara Anipha was dead, along with all who might have succeeded her as Ummara. The remaining Kamazan numbered less than a hundred. They might join with the Khulbana, or with the Zarungad, tribes whose ways were similar to their own, but the Kamazan would be no more, save in the story-songs of the talesingers. It was a bitter loss. And beyond the loss of lives in the crossing there was the great loss of livestock to reckon -- not only wealth, but clothing, shelter, food -- and in the entirety of the adult ikulas hounds, who were not only tools, but friends and companions.

But the Kamazan were not the only tribe that had suffered greatly on the journey from Telinchechitl to the borders of the Isvai. There was no tribe which had not lost at least one man or woman of its number. Six Nalzindar had died -- it might not seem like so many in comparison to the losses of others, but it was a full third of the people that Shaiara had led out of Abi'Abadshar. The Adanate, in whose tents Bisochim had been born, had suffered the gravest hurt a tribe could sustain short of being entered upon the tally of the Lost Tribes. Kanarab, Ummara of the Adanate, had laid his bones upon the sand in the Barahileth. Luthurm, whom all had known would succeed him as Ummara, had expected many more seasons to hear Kanarab's wisdom before he must guide the Adanate, but the people liked no one else better now than they had last year, or the year before, and so it was Luthurm who led his people now.

Each tribe kept a reckoning of its own dead, but Harrier could say precisely how many Isvaieni had died crossing the Barahileth. And because this was so, Shaiara knew the number as well: nine hundred and eighty four. She knew that he felt each death as if the man or woman who had died had been born within his own tent -- as if he stood as their Ummara, charged by the Great Law that ruled between Sand and Star with holding their lives as dearly as his own. She did not understand how at one dark of the moon he could vow that he would not rest until he had seen them all laid upon the sand and before it waned again could fight to the edge of his own death to keep them alive.

It seemed like madness.

#
In Abi'Abadshar, Tiercel had once described to Shaiara what a well looked like in the Cold North. There, northerners built tubes of stones high above the surface of the ground where the well was. Tiercel had not been able to explain why this should be, but Harrier had started to explain about the mechanism of a cranked windlass, and how the stone wall around the wellshaft was necessary to anchor the machinery. And Ciniran had started to laugh, and Shaiara had pointed out that when the first Sandwind came, his machinery would be unusable, and when the third Sandwind came, his wall would be gone and the well itself would be useless. In the Isvai, wells were flat to the ground, covered with sheets of hammered metal layered between thick pieces of felt and boiled leather, the whole weighted down with heavy stones. The maintenance of these covers was the task of all who used the wells, for water was life, and no one jeopardized a source of water.

They traveled through the night and into the following morning, for when they had left their last encampment in the Barahileth, Kannatha Well lay close enough that only a few additional hours of travel would allow them to reach it, and the Isvai was not nearly as hot as the Barahileth. But as they came near to Kannatha Well, Bisochim goaded his shotor out ahead of the front-riders of the caravan. He stretched out his hand...

And Shaiara plainly saw the well-cover sink into the ground as the very earth began to collapse all around the place where Kannatha Well once had been.

The well was gone. Destroyed.

It did not matter that as the desert floor continued to subside, water from the ruined well began to bubble up and outward, spreading itself first into a small pool, then a larger one, then a lake nearly as large as the one Bisochim had once made at Sapthiruk Oasis. In fact, that made it worse. This nightspring of Bisochim's casual devising could never be capped or covered. It would waste infinite amounts of water to the insatiable desert air, and when the Isvai had drained it as dry as a greedy drunkard drained a waterskin, an irreplaceable resource would be gone, never to be reborn.

Scenting water, the goats began forcing their way between the legs of the shotors which surrounded them. The shotors disliked having the smaller animals crowding around their legs and either stopped or moved aside, opening enough of a gap in the protective cordon in which the herds moved that the sheep could follow them. A trickle of bodies became a torrent, and in moments the herds ran free, and both sheep and goats were splashing into the water that -- even now -- continued to expand.

Large as it was, it was not large enough to slake the thirst of all the beasts of the flocks at once -- yet none of the creatures, even did they wish, could leave the waterhole, for their greedy foolish fellows surrounded the pool, each of them determined to reach the now-invisible water. They shoved and jostled and pushed, and began to climb upon each other's bodies in their zeal to reach the water they could smell but could not see. At last the Isvaieni began to realize the danger, and the herdsmen and flockguards -- hampered by the absence of their khalbes -- ran forward, starting at the back of the packed animals and simply dragging them away from the pond so that they could begin to clear a path for the animals in the water to escape it. Soon an exit path was lined by Isvaieni holding back the jostling animals with their own bodies, while other Isvaieni forced their way down into the water to drag protesting sheep and goats out of the new-made oasis and thrust them out onto dry land. As quickly as someone grabbed a sheep or a goat and hauled it from the water so that it would not be drowned by the thirsty beasts crowding forward to drink, another took its place, and what had been a serene desert morning only a few minutes before was now a chaos of noise and stink and crowding ... and mud.

"This is true madness!" Shaiara said angrily, tapping her shotor upon the shoulder to force it to kneel. She strode past the swirling press of people and animals. "Are we to save our lives only to destroy them? You!" she turned toward Bisochim. "The Isvai gave you life -- do you mean to destroy it? Or can your spells rebuild Kannatha Well as you found it anew, after -- this?"

Bisochim had dismounted from his shotor and begun walking away from the water to where Saravasse waited for him. He stopped and turned back at the sound of her voice. His face held nothing but bewilderment, like a child that had been struck when it thought it deserved praise. She hurried toward him, thrusting her way through the press of bodies that stood between them.

"Will you turn the Isvai into a wasteland?" she demanded again. "Are you Shadow-Touched in truth, that you can set aside every law that runs between Sand and Star because it pleases you to do so? Shall the Isvaieni say to their children, and to their children's children: Once a well lay at Kannatha, but no longer, and all for one man's arrogance and pride?"

"But the flocks need water," Bisochim said uncomprehendingly.

"And what well, what oasis, will fall next to your clever purpose? Oh, you who led the tribes to the path of murder in the name of the Balance -- so that no pair of hands in a thousand is now clean -- have you forgotten what it is to keep it? Do you mean to destroy us all?"

"No. Ahairan will do that." Harrier had come up beside her without her awareness, so heartsick was she at this wanton destruction of a precious desert well. "You might have forgotten, but the whole point of any of us being here at all is to get out of here. To get to Armethalieh. To be able to tell somebody that there's a Demon loose. So they can do something about it."

He put a hand on her arm. Shaiara angrily shrugged it off. "There would have been no need -- and no Demon -- had Bisochim truly understood what the Balance was and how best to serve it!" she spat. "Nor would Zanattar and those who followed him have been so quick to feed upon the bread of lies from the Tainted One's hands had they such knowledge as well! If all that he -- and they -- and you -- care for is to preserve your lives at any cost, perhaps you have all already surrendered yourselves to the Demons!"

"The Veiled Lands are that way," Harrier answered, pointing, each word as hard and as sharp as a stone of flint. "If you want to go and get us help so we can stop tearing up your precious desert trying to stay alive, you ought to be able to reach Pelashia's Veil in about six moonturns. Too bad you won't be able to get through it to get the Elder Brothers' attention, since Ahairan kicked the stuffing out of Saravasse."

Harrier of Armethalieh was a Wildmage, and Shaiara had known she was to become Ummara of the Nalzindar since the day Katuil had put a bow into her hands for the first time and taught her to nock an arrow. It was only these two things that kept her from striking him to the ground, for the Ummarai must rule themselves before they could guide their people, and respect was tendered to the Blue Robes not for anything they were or did, but for the Wild Magic of which they were the visible face.

As she struggled to summon these truths to mind, from the corner of her eye she saw the flash of a running figure. It could only be Tiercel, who had never learned -- or rather, eternally forgot -- that one must never run when the sun was in the sky. He skidded to a halt a few feet away. He was gasping for breath, and his skin was as wet with sweat as if he suffered from illness. "Harrier? Shaiara? Bisochim? You're ... yelling," Tiercel finished slightly more quietly.

"What makes you think so?" Harrier asked.

"Because I could..." Tiercel began, and stopped. "Why are you yelling?" he asked.

"I have done wrong," Bisochim said.

"No he hasn't," Harrier said.

"Indeed, he has not," Saravasse said quietly. The red dragon did not need to move from where she lay to join the conversation; all she needed to do was get to her feet and stretch out her neck.

"I say that he has," Shaiara said stubbornly.

"But what did he do?" Tiercel asked. "All that happened was that we got here and he turned the well into a lake -- and that's a good thing, because--"

"No," Harrier said, cutting off the flow of words. "Just stop. Apparently being able to water the livestock so it doesn't all die of thirst leaving everybody to starve to death means we're all in league with Ahairan."

"The Veiled Lands lie in that direction, say you, Harrier? Very well. I and my people will go there," Shaiara said brusquely. She turned away.

"And do what?" Harrier demanded. "Camp outside the veil and freeze? Look, we're back in the Isvai, you're right, we shouldn't be screwing up the water supply. Saravasse could probably gallop all the way to Karahelanderialigor in a few sennights. She could probably even carry all three of us -- Tiercel and Bisochim and me -- so that Ahairan doesn't have anybody left in the Madiran to Taint."

"Oh thank you for that, Harrier," Saravasse said. Harrier waved a hand irritably to silence her.

"Shaiara, don't you think I've thought of that? Saravasse is Tainted now. I don't know if she could even get through the Veil with a spell on her like the one she's described: something that will link a Mage to Ahairan through her. And ... the Isvaieni are Ahairan's hostages. If he leaves -- or if you and the Nalzindar try to leave -- you're no longer of any use to her. And she'll kill you."

Shaiara stopped and turned back. "We are all trying to leave, Harrier," she pointed out quietly, giving him his own words back to him.

"Yeah, I know," he said unhappily. "But as long as we all stay together, we stay alive. We buy time. To think of something. Or for someone else to think of something."

"As long as it isn't Ahairan," Tiercel said, and Harrier hit him. But it was not hard, Shaiara noted, nor did Tiercel seem to take much notice of it beyond offering a token yelp of protest.

"When this is all over," Tiercel told her earnestly, "no matter what's happened to the Isvai, I'll ask the Elves to come and fix it. They really can, you know."

Shaiara said nothing, nor would she look upon Harrier's face, lest she draw Tiercel's gaze there. It was now nearly three moonturns since Tiercel and Harrier had first come to Abi'Abadshar, and never before had she heard Tiercel speak of living beyond the moment of his victory over the Dark.

"I need- The Isvaieni need you here, Noble'dy Shaiara," Harrier said quietly. "I don't know half the things I need to know. And nobody's going to listen to me."

Shaiara inclined her head fractionally. The people would listen to Harrier's words, but three moonturns -- or even thirty moonturns -- were not enough to turn a child of the Cold North into an Isvaieni. If Harrier had known even half of what he needed to, she would have been easy in her mind about his safety in the Isvai. But he did not know one in a hundred of the things that any child of ten born to the tents knew -- not only about the desert itself, but about the Isvaieni. And for that reason, ideas which seemed good in his mind were often useless and sometimes dangerous.

"Do you really think we can get to Armethalieh?" Tiercel asked. "Because I'm not quite sure where Bisochim and I were, but ... it took us a fortnight just to get, well ... here."

Shaiara looked at Bisochim. The place in the Isvai from which he and Tiercel and Saravasse had begun their journey back to the Barahileth had never mattered enough to Harrier to even ask its location. Bisochim shrugged, puzzled at a question that even now seemed meaningless to him.

"The Empty Desert. Somewhere between Hamazar Oasis and Radnatucca Oasis," Saravasse answered.

"Radnatucca Oasis is -- was -- near Tarnatha'Iteru," Harrier said. He did his best to keep his voice even and level, but it still resounded with grief and loss.

"Between them," Saravasse repeated, an edge to her voice. "If you could stretch a string between the two to make a straight line, and place us in the middle of that string, you would have the place from which we began our journey. Only you would never do so. It is called the Empty Desert because the Isvaieni do not travel through that area. There are no oases there."

"So if I had any idea at all of where Hamazar Oasis is, I'd have some idea of where you were," Harrier said, his voice edged with frustration.

"I know where both these places are, Harrier." Zanattar was not alone in approaching them -- for certainly many people wished to know the cause of this unwary dispute -- but he was the only one bold enough to speak. "Though I know not why the Great One should choose two such points to steer by. Hamazar Oasis is many moonturns south of Radnatucca Oasis."

Shaiara saw Harrier shake his head in frustration, though she did not understand why. "So we still have no real idea of where you were," he said to Tiercel. "But it doesn't make any real difference. We either keep trying to get to Armethalieh, or we might as well all lie down and die right here."

"Yet what if we should win through?" Zanattar asked. "The ancient story-songs say that Armethalieh the Golden fell to the treachery of Black Anigrel, and he was merely the son of a Demon, not a Demon himself. Akazidas'Iteru overlooks the Trade Road which we will need to take to journey north: how shall we know, should attackers ride out from her gates, if we face Ahairan's Shadowspawn, or innocent men who have -- as you have told us -- cause to fear all Isvaieni?"

Tiercel made a sound of distress more real than he had when Harrier had struck him, and put out his hand. Harrier struck it away, and turned so that he could look Zanattar full in the face.

"You know," he said, and though his voice was mild, Shaiara saw Zanattar step back a pace, "if you guys had just started at the top and worked your way down, not only would we not have this problem, you and I probably wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Now don't you have some wet sheep to go drag out of a nice muddy oasis?"

#

It was almost midday by the time the camp was set up. This time Harrier suspected that the ice wall was as much to keep the sheep and goats from wandering out and drowning themselves as it was to just keep them from wandering off. He was doing his best to shake his foul temper, but he hadn't had much luck. He usual remedies were hard work and solitude, but one was suicidal under the desert sun, and the other was impossible to get. He concentrated on keeping his mouth shut. Fortunately Shaiara didn't want to chatter -- she never did -- and Ciniran had taken pity on him and found something for Tiercel to do somewhere far out of sight until the moment when they all crawled into their hot filthy tents for a few hours sleep before the sun went down and they had to deal with whatever Ahairan was going to throw at them tonight.

#

He was awakened several hours later by rising wind and darkness. He sat up -- disoriented -- it was dark, but not night-dark. Because they were out in the Isvai, the tents were no longer kept battened down as if a Sandwind was expected at any moment; he hadn't been sure, when he'd gone to sleep, whether it was actually cooler or not, but it was definitely cooler now.

"A storm?" he asked. But everyone else in the tent was awake -- Shaiara, Ciniran, Shaiara's uncle Kamar, Tanjel (who was twelve, and when Harrier had protested his being with the main group of Isvaieni -- not that they could have sent him back to Abi'Abadshar at that point -- Shaiara had coolly informed him that there were men and women in the tents only a year -- two at most -- older), and Narkil and Natha. Six Nalzindar. Half the surviving members of Shaiara's tribe -- and no one else seemed to be concerned.

He looked around. Bisochim wasn't here.

"Saravasse said that she saw a swarm of khazdara on the wing," Shaiara said. "Bisochim has summoned the Sandwind against them. It will not touch us here."

"That's great. But, um, we had khazdara all across the Barahileth," Harrier pointed out cautiously.

He saw Shaiara purse her lips, as if she was trying not to laugh. "It is difficult to summon a Sandwind without sand, Harrier. And to merely raise a wind would but delay them an hour or two -- and in the Barahileth, do us as much harm as good."

"Yeah, nobody wants to breathe ishnain," Harrier agreed.

Tanjel gave him a dark look, but Harrier was used to that. Wildmage or not, apparently he couldn't do anything right by Tanjel's reckoning. The boy got to his feet, his garments bundled in his arms, and stepped outside. Kamar, already dressed, followed him.

"Ahairan," Tiercel said, and at first Harrier thought Tiercel was making one of his idiotic comments -- Ahairan probably would want to breathe ishnain -- until he realized that Tiercel was still asleep.

Ciniran moved to shake him awake, and Harrier held up a hand, warning her away. At the edges of his awareness, he noted that the others were dressing, gathering their things, preparing to begin the evening's tasks, but all of his attention was on Tiercel. He'd thought -- it was reasonable -- that Tiercel's visions would stop once Ahairan got out. Weren't they supposed to have been warn him to keep Bisochim from bringing her out of wherever Bisochim had brought her out of? And they hadn't worked, and she was out, so they should stop.

What if they hadn't?

What if Tiercel was still having visions?

Tiercel was tossing and muttering now. Harrier's eyes flicked back and forth from Tiercel to the view of the encampment he could see now that the tent-flaps were pegged back. The sky was storm-dark, and there was a strong hot wind blowing -- south to north -- but it wasn't carrying much in the way of dust with it. Since nothing outside the tent required his immediate attention, he turned his thoughts to what was inside it.

Tiercel had been having visions almost the whole way to Telinchechitl. He'd left there -- with Bisochim and Saravasse -- almost immediately. Harrier was pretty sure that Tiercel wouldn't have mentioned his visions to Bisochim -- if they'd continued -- and that Bisochim wouldn't have noticed them on his own, because the man barely noticed when the kaffeyah was brewed.

And after the three of them had rejoined them, Harrier hadn't thought to look for anything like that, because he'd had so many other things to look out for. And if Tiercel had still been having visions, he wouldn't have mentioned them anyway. A reasonable person would assume he'd keep them to himself because there wasn't any privacy in the Isvaieni caravan, they were being attacked pretty much nightly, and mentioning you were having visions sent to you by the Demon Queen herself wouldn't win you any friends. Harrier had known Tiercel long enough to know Tiercel wouldn't even have thought of that as a reason. It would be something unimaginably bizarre, and Harrier made himself a firm promise that if Tiercel was having visions of Ahairan (and not just bad dreams), he would not smack him when Tiercel told him his supposedly good reason why he hadn't mentioned it sooner.

"Footstool," Tiercel said suddenly, sitting bolt upright. "Fealty." He blinked, looking around. "It's dark."

"Bisochim's conjured up a Sandwind to chase the bugs away," Harrier said. "Were you dreaming?"

Tiercel frowned. "No, I was--" He stopped. "I can't remember."

"You spoke Ahairan's name as you slept," Ciniran said, sounding troubled. Only she and Shaiara were still here; it was odd that a tent with only four people in it actually managed to seem spacious to Harrier now. "Do you not recall?"

"No," Tiercel said. He frowned. "It's hot."

"We're in the desert, Tyr. Still," Harrier answered with elaborate patience.

Tiercel ran a hand through his hair, shoving it out of his eyes, then scrubbed it over his chin, wincing at the feel of his beard. "Yeah, I..." He looked up at Harrier. "I was... I mean... I almost remember dreaming something. Only not quite. And not quite a dream."

"Yeah, that's helpful," Harrier said. "Try to remember it, okay? Or ... not."

"That's helpful," Tiercel echoed, with the ghost of a smile.

Ciniran picked up her chadar and wrapped it around her head and throat with neat economical motions. Harrier knew that every tribe wrapped and tucked the chadar in a different style, and he was incapable of seeing any particular difference between them, something that amused Ciniran and annoyed Shaiara. Shaiara was already fully-dressed. She and Ciniran gathered up the last of the empty waterskins from where they hung on the central tent-pole.

"We will hope that this great lake that has been made here has settled enough now that the waterskins and the cooking pots may be filled," Shaiara said darkly. Harrier opened his mouth to answer, but she lifted a hand, forbidding him to comment. She turned away, following Ciniran from the tent.

"She's still mad, isn't she?" Tiercel asked, once he and Harrier were alone.

Harrier sighed. "Yeah. I think so. I guess so. At least she's here. She hasn't gone off with the rest of the Nalzindar -- all, oh, twelve of them -- to try to reach the Veiled Lands by herself. And I'm not sure what she's mad about exactly -- I mean, okay, destroying wells is a bad idea, but how can she possibly think..." He stopped.

"That any of us is going to survive?" Tiercel finished softly. "She has to believe it, Har. Because of everyone at Abi'Abadshar."

Harrier thought about that, doing his best to think the way Shaiara did. He knew he wasn't doing any better at it this time than he had the last hundred times he'd tried -- an average of once a day -- since he'd met her. He sighed again, shaking his head. "If we lose, they'll be dead. If we win ... they can go live somewhere else. The Isvaieni didn't always live here. Before the Great Flowering, nobody lived here."

Tiercel snickered. "Oh, listen to Harrier the Great, who knows more history than the learned professors of Pre-Flowering History at Armethalieh University! As it happens, you're pretty much right: before the Great Flowering, the desert extended all the way north to the Armen Plains, and according to The History of Reconciliation written by High Magistrate Cilarnen, there weren't a lot of people much of anywhere. Just in the High Reaches -- which is what they used to call those hills between Armethalieh and Sentarshadeen -- and somewhere that High Magistrate Cilarnen called the Lost Lands, and nobody's really sure of quite where it is now."

"Probably because it's still lost," Harrier sniped back absently. He wasn't distracted by the lecture; he'd been ignoring Tiercel's lectures since Tiercel had learned to walk. "Which is exactly my point. They didn't used to live here. They don't have to keep living here."

"Har, they've lived here for almost a thousand years," Tiercel protested long-sufferingly.

Harrier pushed himself to his feet, abruptly out of patience. "And I am not going to worry about whether or not they still can. They -- one of them anyway -- made this problem. They can live with the consequences. I'm going to--"

"Shouldn't that be 'one of you'?" Tiercel asked quietly.

Harrier had been in the middle of reaching for his outer clothing in order to dress. He froze, straightened, turned around again. "What?"

"'One of you,'" Tiercel repeated. "Bisochim's Isvaieni, sure, but Shaiara couldn't have summoned up Ahairan and released her. Bisochim could do it because he was a Wildmage. So are you."

Harrier shoved his feet quickly into his boots and pulled his outer tunic over his head. "He could do it because he was Dragon-bonded," he said flatly. "So this isn't my problem. It's yours." He picked up his swords and the rest of his clothing and walked out of the tent before Tiercel could say anything else.

#

Aside from the strange dark brassy color of the sky -- not clouds, just something wrong with the light, and Harrier filed it away in the back of his mind, because if he saw something like this and Bisochim hadn't caused it, he'd better be prepared to run, or...

He uttered a low heartfelt groan, realizing something so irritating that it actually managed to destroy his anger at Tiercel.

...To run, or he'd have to cast a really large spell of the Wild Magic to divert the Sandwind. One that would require the Isvaieni to lend power to the spell. He had no particular idea of how to do that, and a vague memory of Kareta telling him once that Knight-Mages weren't very good with spells. He'd try to do it if he had to, but learning on the fly didn't strike him as the smartest possible thing to do.

Especially since there was someone here who could teach him.

Bisochim.

Harrier ground his teeth in silent frustration. He'd been looking for reasons to avoid Bisochim, not spend time with him. But by now he'd read every word in all three of his Books at least once, and nearly all of it didn't make a lot of sense to him. There was a lot of good advice and philosophy. There wasn't much in the way of clear instructions. He didn't need philosophy. He needed to know how to do useful spells if he absolutely had to.

Which -- unfortunately -- left Bisochim. The trouble was -- from Harrier's point of view -- that although Bisochim wasn't Tainted, Harrier suspected that if he wasn't crazy now, he was heading there (and he might be taking Saravasse with him when he went, and the idea of a crazy dragon was just one more thing that Harrier didn't want to worry about), and aside from that, Harrier just didn't like him.

Couldn't be helped.

With his decision made, Harrier finished dressing and then turned to helping with the routine of the camp. Since the Nalzindar had joined them, he hadn't needed to spend so much of his time setting up and taking down their tent, and on Shaiara's advice, he'd spent more time offering his help everywhere else, doing things as simple as lighting a stubborn cookfire or as homely as soothing a stubborn shotor during loading. What he'd really been doing -- as he and Shaiara had both known perfectly well -- was showing that he was there and calm, no matter what the night might hold.

Tonight, though, was different.

It wasn't that the camp was more unsettled than it had been over the last moonturn. It was actually less so, even with a black wall of sand hanging in the north. It was just that no less than five different people asked him where they were going. And he'd thought they'd all agreed to go to Armethalieh, so he needed to understand why the question was being asked before he either panicked or lost his temper.

Suddenly he remembered what Da had always said -- usually just after Harrier had yelled, or broken something, or just gone storming off and then come stomping back. "Losing your temper is a luxury, boy; comes the day you'll see that." And he'd been sure at the time it was just one more way for Da to tell him to settle down, but now he knew that Da had been speaking the Light's bare truth. He yearned to be able to just lose his temper without looking over his shoulder at the consequences, to not have to be thinking about how to fix what he'd broken even while he couldn't keep from yelling for one moment longer. And it was as much a luxury as a clean soft beds, and baths, and familiar food, and a life free of Demons, the Wild Magic, and thousands of Isvaieni everywhere he looked.

He wasn't going to see any of those things any time soon, and right now he needed information. His first thought was Shaiara, but he wasn't sure where she was. She was probably still in a bad temper anyway, and he didn't want to go back to his own tent to see, since that would mean running into Tiercel. That left him one other person he could safely ask to see whether everybody here had gone crazy in the last few hours.

#

"Come, sit," Liapha said cheerfully. "There is kaffeyah. And by the great fortune of Sand and Star, the rekhattan remains unspoiled! I will have Rinurta prepare you a pipe!" She puffed vigorously on her own.

"'Yes' to the kaffeyah, 'no' to the pipe," Harrier said, settling himself on a cushion at her right side and waving his hand to dispel the cloud of smoke. There were a number of people sitting with her, and he remembered again how little the Isvaieni valued privacy, but that seat -- the seat of honor -- had remained empty, and she had indicated he should take it. "The reason the rekhattan hasn't been touched is because it would poison even atish'ban bugs. If we had enough of it, we could probably kill Ahairan with it."

"A terrible waste of thing that is not only comfort to the old, but medicine to all creatures," Liapha said, unperturbed. "If there were no rekhattan, you could not do half the spells in your books, could you now?"

"I use a lot of things in my spells. I don't put them in a pipe and breathe them," Harrier answered. He had no idea whether any of his spells required rekhattan or not; if they did, it was probably only here.

He waited until Rinurta had poured him a cup of kaffeyah -- a generous cup, not the tiny cup given as a guest-mouthful for politeness' sake -- to do more than tease Liapha. It had taken him a while to learn how to act in response to her behavior, and he'd finally decided to deal with her as if she were a cross between Morcia Tamaricans, the Cargomaster at the Armethalieh Docks, and one of his more-eccentric aunts. It seemed to work well enough.

"Well?" Liapha said, as soon as he'd taken his first sip. "I doubt you've come here to flirt. Or are you indeed looking for a wife?"

"I do not dare to hope, Noble'dy Liapha, knowing that I can never afford your bride-price," Harrier answered promptly. Everyone laughed, and Liapha pounded him soundly upon the thigh in appreciation.

"Clever -- and a Wildmage -- ah, child, were things other than what they are, I would offer you the freedom of my tent and hope for the blessing of the Wild Magic! But ask what you would have of me, and we will see if I will give it."

"Your wisdom, to one who comes, as all know, from the Cold North," Harrier answered. The Isvaieni way of talking didn't come naturally to him -- it was frustrating, because it never seemed to get to the point -- but there were times that it had its advantages, because while you were talking around in circles it gave you time to think of what you wanted to say. The forms weren't that hard -- he'd managed to master enough polite Elven speech to keep from getting hit, hadn't he? -- and a lot of it just involved particular stock phrases and whole sentences that you used in place of simple words. He could do it if he had to. "Today I have heard a thing that puzzles me: I have been asked where it is that we go, and I had thought this a matter settled long since."

"Such a pity that the Blue Robes are of no tribe," Liapha said pensively, patting his knee. "We go to Armethalieh, as we have sworn ourselves to do. But by what way shall we go? The Isvai holds many roads -- and none -- and best, so I think, if we know where we mean to go before we begin."

A little more careful questioning got him the information that apparently they couldn't go anywhere at all, since there were only two or three oases in the Isvai capable of providing water for the number of people and animals currently gathered here -- at least at the same time -- and all of them were too far away for them to reach them before the goats and sheep died of thirst.

"It doesn't matter a bit, though," Liapha said cheerfully. "The herds will starve long before that -- unless we travel a route where they can forage, and what path can feed all of them? And that does not matter, since we -- and that great red termagant -- will devour all of them ourselves, soon, and then the shotors, and then we will all die."

"Great," Harrier muttered under his breath. "Well, in that case, we won't have to worry about finding water, will we?" he said more loudly. He set down his empty cup and got to his feet. "I thank you once again for the kaffeyah, and for your wise counsel, Noble'dy Liapha. I learn so much every time I talk to you."

Liapha laughed up at him. "You are the joy of my old age, Blue Robe. Only think -- once I feared I would die in the comfort of my tent, or be forced to decide what day was most auspicious for the laying of my bones upon the sand. You have lifted a great burden from my mind, and I am grateful."

He only wished he could be sure of whether she was joking or not.

Convincing Bisochim to teach him everything Bisochim knew about the Wild Magic -- and leave out the parts about going insane and deciding to conjure up Demons -- now took a distant second place in Harrier's list of things to worry about to where -- exactly -- they were going.

He knew precisely where Armethalieh was. There was not a chance he could get lost, or lead the Isvaieni astray. And Zanattar had been right, too -- once they reached Akazidas'Iteru, they'd be at the head of the Trade Road, and they could just follow that all the way north to the Trade Gate, and apparently enough of them could find Akazidas'Iteru that he, Harrier, wasn't irreplaceable.

The problem was getting as far north as Akazidas'Iteru.

We need food, water, Ahairan not to keep attacking us...

He walked through the encampment, turning these problems over in his mind -- Bisochim could summon water, and Tiercel had talked about him Calling game, but Bisochim couldn't exactly Call grass for the animals -- when he found himself standing at the edge of Kannatha-No-Longer-A-Well. The sky had gone from green-bronze to twilight blue while he'd been sitting with Liapha, so he supposed the threat from atish'ban-khazdara was over, at least for now. He wondered if Ahairan was going to bother with anything else tonight.

The ... lake ... was larger than he remembered it being, or maybe it had grown since the last time he'd seen it. The water was clear now, though the lake was far from deserted: there were people here cleaning and filling pots and waterskins, shotors drinking, even some sheep and goats drinking, though the frantic thirsty rush of the morning was over. At the far side of the pool, Saravasse lay, an enormous scarlet hill, her one good wing spread as a shelter against the last rays of the sun.

Bisochim sat against her shoulder, just behind her foreleg, and Harrier felt a dull weight of anger and grief in his chest at the sight. How many times had he seen Tiercel and Ancaladar sitting in just the same way together? Not enough, his mind answered promptly. The two of them should have had the rest of their lives together, no matter how short they'd probably have been.

He wondered if -- wherever Ancaladar was now -- he was even conscious. If he was, did he miss Tiercel as much as Tiercel missed him? Harrier knew how much that was. The only thing he could do for Tiercel was pretend that he didn't, and try not to ask, even inside his own thoughts, why it couldn't be Saravasse who had mysteriously vanished instead of Ancaladar. Bisochim deserved to be miserable -- and Tiercel's spells would be a lot more use right now.

And Bisochim would probably agree with you, and Tyr would be twice as miserable, and it wouldn't change anything, Harrier told himself. So stop thinking about things you can't change. You'll just go crazy. Crazier.

He walked around the edge of the lake. He ignored the twinge of unease that he felt when Saravasse raised her head to regard him, because even though that head was large enough that she could kill him with one bite and swallow him in two, she never would.

Unless, of course, she's gone crazy, his mind helpfully supplied.

There was no point to trying to find a place to stand that was out of reach of Saravasse, if something he said made her angry. He'd never seen Ancaladar use his tail as a weapon, but he knew it could be -- and a dragon's tail was longer than the rest of its body put together. He'd never seen either Ancaladar or Saravasse stretched out completely, neck fully extended and tail straight -- since while a dragon flew in that position, on the ground they tended to coil up -- but even Saravasse, nose-tip to tail-tip, was almost twice as long as a Deep Ocean Trader, bowsprit to stern.

"Thank you for, um, summoning the Sandwind this evening," he said politely, coming to a stop in front of them. "Shaiara said you couldn't do it before there was any sand. But we really couldn't afford to lose any more of our supplies."

"You didn't come all this way to tell us that, did you?" Saravasse asked tartly. "Or was there more?"

"Of course there's more," Harrier said, abandoning his attempt to be conciliating. "Everyone wants to know the route we're taking north. Liapha says it doesn't matter since all the animals will starve before we reach any of the oases that are big enough for us to use. And even if we wanted to stay here, we can't, because there's no forage here either. So I was wondering if either of you had some ideas about that, because in about an hour we're going to be going ... somewhere."

He would have been a lot happier with the conversation if Bisochim had been looking at him too, but Bisochim hadn't even given any indication he'd heard him speak. Only Saravasse was paying attention, and if he hadn't had moonturns of practice in holding a conversation with somebody whose head was the size of a freight wagon it would probably have been a little more disturbing.

"North, perhaps," Saravasse suggested. A dragon's face wasn't made for expressiveness, but her tone of voice certainly conveyed a sneer. "You know perfectly well that the path does not matter. There will be water wherever we stop."

"I cannot do this for much longer," Bisochim said, and it almost seemed as if he was replying to Saravasse's comment, or Harrier's, but he was still looking down at the ground.

"I... You... You can't what? Call water?" For a horrified moment Harrier thought that Bisochim was saying that his magic was failing -- that whatever Ahairan had done to Saravasse was getting worse, like a sickness -- but Bisochim was shaking his head.

"I can still Call water, Harrier. But the day will come -- soon perhaps -- when water will not answer. Shaiara was right: I have already destroyed the Balance of the Isvai by Calling all the water of the middle rock into the Barahileth: many of the springs and wells of the Isvai will have gone dry through my actions, for I have stolen what was rightfully theirs. Even now, water does not come as quickly and abundantly to my Call as once it did, and should I dare to Call the water from the deep rock, the sun and the air will waste a thousand measures to every one that we drink, and lands hundreds of miles from where we now stand will in time become as arid as the Barahileth itself."

If there had ever been a really good time -- any time in the last three -- or four -- or six -- moonturns for him to lose his self-control and yell at somebody, Harrier thought dizzily, it was now. But this was just too ... big ... for yelling.

"If we all die here before we can warn anybody about Ahairan, nobody is going to care if the entire world returns to its barren pre-Flowering state, because nobody is going to be around to notice," he said quietly. "Call up all the water you want. Ma always complains it rains too much at home anyway. And meanwhile, we need a route that's direct to Akazidas'Iteru and will take us somewhere there's grazing."

"Both at once?" Saravasse asked mockingly.

"As much as possible," Harrier said wearily. "There isn't much grain left, and the goats can't eat each other."

#










CHAPTER TWELVE: THE SLOW WAR

Apparently, now that they were back in what Shaiara and Ciniran and everyone else (except him and Harrier) thought of as "home", they would be traveling for a few hours now, stopping and sleeping for most of the night, moving on a few hours before dawn, travelling until the hottest part of the day, resting through that and dealing with any tasks that came to hand, and then traveling on again until it was time to stop for the night. It was the way the Isvaieni normally travelled when they were on the move: time for hunting, time for grazing, time for mending and repairing tents and saddles and clothing. And Harrier didn't like it -- Tiercel could tell -- but there wasn't much he could do about it. There hadn't been a lot of privacy crossing the Barahileth, so it wasn't as if he and Harrier had gotten to discuss it, but Tiercel had been there for enough of Harrier's endless chivvyings of the various Ummarai to know that no one person (least of all Harrier) led the Isvaieni. Zanattar might have turned a bunch of them into an army once, but the more losses they sustained, the more they returned to what was safe and familiar, and that was their tribes. What were left of them, anyway.

Besides. The point was as much to get to Armethalieh at all as it was to get there fast. They couldn't do that without food, or water, or if they dropped dead of exhaustion. The sheep and goats were skin and bones now -- a chance to get back some of what they'd all lost crossing the Barahileth would be a good thing.

If Ahairan would let them.

#

The moon was high, and because of what Shaiara had said when they'd started out this evening, Tiercel had been expecting someone to announce that they were stopping to make camp for the last hour at least, if not longer. But they just kept on going. He was used to riding all night by now, but it was puzzling.

He could hear quiet talk behind and in front of him, so probably other people were just as bewildered as he was, but the conversations were too low-pitched for him to make them out, and he didn't want to move out of his place in the line to join another group. He'd moved to the back of the group of Nalzindar to get as far away from Harrier without being obvious about it, and he knew if he moved a second time there'd be gossip.

"Natha," he said, taking care to keep his voice low and quiet, "why aren't we stopping? I thought--"

Natha, riding beside him, wrinkled her nose at the question, and interrupted him before he could say more. "Do you not smell it, Tiercel?"

He looked around, sniffing. All he could smell was night air and shotors. The wind was coming from the north, so he couldn't even smell goats. "I don't smell anything," he said after a few moments.

"It is as you say," Natha said meaningfully.

A few minutes later, there was a ripple of movement, as the Khulbana who were riding at the head of the line tonight brought their shotors to a stop. Moments later, an organized column of march had become something between a mob and a disciplined organization where every member knew exactly what to do. shotors were being led aside and unburdened. Other beasts -- which had merely carried people -- were being led off in a different direction. Tiercel tapped his mount on the shoulder to make her kneel just as a wave of dizziness struck him -- Bisochim must be making the nightspring.

He waited for the dizziness to pass -- he was far enough away from Bisochim that it didn't take long -- then led his shotor to where the animals were being collected. It was one idea of Harrier's that he'd managed to get everyone to agree to and keep up with: if all the shotors were in one place, they could do less damage if they were spooked and bolted.

At the shotor-stables -- Harrier had always called the area that, even though it wasn't a stable, and now Tiercel couldn't think of it any other way -- he encountered Harrier and Shaiara. He expected Shaiara to be angry, because of course Tiercel had heard about Bisochim saying that he was on the verge of turning everything south of the Armen Plains and west of Sentarshadeen into a desert, since the news had been all over the encampment before the kaffeyah had boiled. And Harrier had been the first one to hear it, and he'd been in a foul mood since they'd made camp the previous day, so Tiercel had been trying to avoid both of them all evening. But right now they just looked worried.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"There's supposed to be grass here, and there isn't," Harrier said bluntly.

"Not just 'here', Harrier," Shaiara corrected sharply. "We are a day north and west of Kannatha Well -- or where it once lay. The western desert is verdant -- grass and thornbush and spicebush and oilbush -- those last not this far south, but in the west, yes. Here: grass. And rock-naranje. It flowers by night. It can be smelled for miles."

"That's what Natha meant," Tiercel said.

"If she said she couldn't smell naranjes when she should have been able to, yeah," Harrier said. "And we were supposed to start seeing growing things a bell and a half ago, and we didn't."

"Why not?" Tiercel asked. Both Harrier and Shaiara gave him looks of identical irritation. "No, I mean, I know you don't know. But there has to be a reason, right?"

"Yes, Tiercel," Shaiara said patiently. "And we do not know what it is."

#

"Map," Harrier said briefly, tossing a roll of leather into Tiercel's lap an hour later.

There were two things they had plenty of: water and light. Oddly enough, though, they were starting to run out of heat, since what the Isvaieni burned was dried animal dung, and animals that didn't eat, didn't produce dung. What fuel there was, was being conserved for cooking. It seemed unfair that you spent your time here being either too hot or too cold but never actually comfortable.

"Map?" Tiercel asked, looking up. Harrier was standing over him, looking annoyed.

"Of the desert," Harrier amplified. "You studied enough of them."

"And they were all completely inaccurate," Tiercel pointed out. "And I don't have anything to draw with."

"Here," Harrier said, flipping an object down on top of the roll of leather. Tiercel picked it up. It was a wax stylus -- a slim cylinder of beeswax with pigment kneaded into it. They used them on the docks to mark crates. "Don't stare. I made it in Abi'Abadshar. I thought I'd need it."

"I'm surprised you haven't eaten it," Tiercel muttered.

"Don't tempt me. Now draw."

"Yeah, okay, just to show you how useless this is." He unrolled the cured sheepskin and began to sketch lightly. "Here's the coast. Here's the Mystrals. Here's Armethalieh. Armen Plains -- Trade Road -- Akazidas'Iteru -- Tereymil Hills -- road we took to get here from the Elven Lands--"

"Fine, fine, fine, not useful--"

Tiercel had stretched out full-length on his stomach on the carpet in front of the tent to draw. It had been easy enough to cure hides even while crossing the Barahileth, since all it took was ishnain and salt and urine, and they'd had all three. Now he rolled up on one elbow to glare at Harrier. "Yeah, well that's too bad, because this is what I know. Everything between that road--" he pointed "--and that coast--" another stab at the makeshift map "--is stuff that only the Isvaieni know about. And they don't use maps."

Harrier growled in frustration and squatted down beside Tiercel. "The maps you saw. Was Radnatucca Oasis on them?"

"The, uh, the--" Tiercel said, floundering.

"The oasis a couple of days outside Tarnatha'Iteru," Harrier finished for him. "Yes. Was it?"

"Well ... yes," Tiercel said hesitantly.

"Good. Put it on. And ... put all the Border Cities on, if you can."

"Then... Harrier, what are you going to do?"

"Me? I'm going to teach the Isvaieni how to make maps, Tyr."

#

Tiercel worried about the consequences when Harrier lost control of his temper, but he really worried when Harrier was in a darkly-cheerful mood like this, since it usually meant trouble for somebody. But what it meant tonight was that Harrier wandered all over the camp for hours with Tiercel's roll of sheepskin under his arm, questioning everybody who would hold still for it, and by the time he wandered back again, just as most of the camp was preparing to sleep, he actually had the start of a map of the Isvai.

"The distances aren't accurate," he said to Tiercel, showing him what looked like a cryptic mess of circles, crosses, and dotted lines scribbled over Tiercel's original map, "but I have a better idea now of what's out here. Saravasse was actually helpful."

"Imagine that," Tiercel muttered. He'd like to have a pillow to wrap around his head to block out the sound of Harrier's voice, but in the Isvai, pillows were an invitation for jarraris to come and nest -- when they weren't making themselves at home in your boots.

"Yes," Harrier said with ruthless cheer. "And considering that we're all starving to death, the grass has gone mysteriously missing, our water sources could dry up at any moment and -- oh yes -- the only person who can provide us with water now that not one of the oases in the entire Isvai can be considered reliable might die at any moment, I have a plan."

That made Tiercel sit up. "You have another plan?"

"Yeah," Harrier said, grinning at him crookedly. "Bisochim can't fix all of this -- and we don't have time for that anyway -- but he can at least make sure we've got one oasis that won't go dry no matter what. It's big enough that all the tribes gather there once a year anyway, so there's forage. And if it's all gone -- Light knows why it should be, but there was supposed to be grass here -- we hold back enough seed so we can plant some when we get there. Bisochim can make it sprout overnight. And it's on our way. At least it's north of here."

"Everything is," Tiercel muttered. "Where?" he asked suspiciously. He really didn't trust Harrier's sudden exuberance. As far as Tiercel could remember, Harrier hadn't been in a perky mood like this since Karahelanderialigor. There'd been too many reasons not to be.

"Sapthiruk Oasis," Harrier said promptly. "Which is somewhere between a moonturn and half a year's journey from Kannatha Well; nobody I talked to was sure. Shaiara said that Rutharanda Oasis is about a sennight from Sapthiruk, and Rutharanda is about three sennights from here, so call it a moonturn. For the Nalzindar."

"Who don't have sheep or goats," Tiercel said. "And neither will the Isvaieni a moonturn from now."

"Problem for another day," Harrier said happily. He snapped his fingers, dousing the globe of Coldfire that had illuminated the tent, and just before he fell asleep, Tiercel realized why Harrier was so happy.

He'd finally found a problem he could fix.

#

The Isvaieni were used to staying awake by night, and -- among some of the tribes at least -- posting night guards over the herds. And they had Saravasse, whose senses were keener than those of the keenest flock-guard, and who didn't sleep at all. She prowled around outside Bisochim's wall of ice all night long -- a lower and thinner wall now than he had conjured while they were within the Barahileth, but it served to contain the animals at least as much by its novelty as by whatever barrier it provided: each night when the wall went up the sheep and goats rushed to press themselves against it, licking the smooth coolness eagerly, and each morning they could be found in a ring around the outer edge of the camp, nuzzling up the last cool wetness.

No matter how high or how thick a wall Bisochim had built tonight, it would not have mattered.

#

Tiercel was shocked from sleep to consciousness so abruptly he felt ill. Somebody stepped on him, and somebody else kicked him, and then his ears caught up with his brain and he realized that he was hearing screams, bellows -- Saravasse roaring -- a crashing grinding sound he couldn't identify. Within moments those sounds were drowned out by the sounds of hundreds of voices shouting. In terror, in anger, or just trying to find out what was going on.

He grabbed his boots, only remembering at the last minute to upend and tap them to dislodge any possible lurking jarrari before stuffing his feet into them. The interior of the tent was utterly dark -- no light from outside -- and he realized it was still night. That made whatever was happening seem somehow more unfair: Ahairan had already attacked them once tonight.

Oh, for Light's sake -- do you expect her to play by the rules? he demanded of himself angrily. He grabbed his cloak -- finding it by touch -- and ran outside.

Outside the tent, everything was chaos. There were a few lanterns lit and hanging from the awning-poles of tents, but that only gave enough light to show where the tents were, no more. The open lane between the row of tents -- Harrier's constant nagging and the continuous threat of attack had led the Isvaieni to pitch their tents with clear pathways between them -- was packed with people and animals. Harrier was nowhere in sight, and Tiercel couldn't see Saravasse either. No one he asked could tell him what had happened -- whatever it was had happened on the far side of the encampment, at the shotor stables. He began pushing his way through the crowd, moving in the direction of the nearest part of the ice wall. The sheep and goats gravitated toward it, but the Isvaieni tended to shy away from it, and moving along the wall would give him the fastest pathway to the other side of the camp.

He stopped to take his bearings once he reached it. There was so much noise he couldn't hear himself think; so much noise that he couldn't tell if there might be other noises hidden beneath them. At least he didn't have to stumble through the darkness -- he might have lost the ability to do everything else, but he still possessed the two spells of the High Magick that needed no spell energy beyond his own: Fire and MageLight. Within moments, he had conjured a ball of MageLight large enough to illuminate his path and set it to hover above his head.

Even with the MageLight, without the remains of the ice-wall to guide him -- slick-wet and crumbling when he leaned his weight on it -- he would have been utterly lost and disoriented before he'd gone a couple of hundred yards. The noise around him was stunningly loud, and he was surrounded by sheep and goats. At first they were pushing at him from every direction, but the farther he went, the more they seemed to be moving toward him, and at last he was at the back of the flock.

This isn't right, Tiercel thought. The herd-beasts should have been spread out all along the wall. Tiercel wasn't merely worried now. He was terrified. They'd been attacked. If Saravasse was dead -- if Bisochim was dead--

He was about to start running when he saw the first shotors trotting toward him. If he hadn't had the MageLight to illuminate his path, Tiercel would have been trampled, because they obviously weren't going to stop. But he had enough forewarning to duck down one of the aisles into the center of the camp to let the press of beasts pass him. He didn't know what they'd do when they reached the roadblock of herdbeasts ahead, and he didn't wait to find out.

Tiercel ran.

The first thing he saw as he approached was the haze of Coldfire in the sky, and the second was Saravasse's head rearing up, shining a glittering magenta in the pale blue light. She wasn't attacking anything, merely looking around, and he drew a deep breath, momentarily weak with gratitude that she and Bisochim were both alive, before pausing to think that Harrier was still unaccounted for.

The ice wall was down on this side of the encampment. It hadn't melted away naturally; it had been broken through in so many places that the fragments had already liquefied and evaporated. Globes of Coldfire were scattered across the desert like paper lanterns strung over the garden at one of his mother's summer parties -- home and Armethalieh and the Rolfort garden on a summer evening seemed like things he'd read about in a book now; unreal -- and by their illumination he could see the dots of animals against the desert; visible only because of the shadows they cast against the sand. Seeing them scattered so widely cleared up the last of Tiercel's confusion. It made sense that most of the camp was untouched if the herd had broken down the wall in a panic and fled into the desert. If they'd run through the camp instead, none of the tents would still be standing. But what had they run from? And had anyone been killed?

There was a crowd of people blocking the way to the stable area, too many for him to push through, even if he'd been willing to try. The sound of all the voices, rising and falling as they questioned one another, was like sound the ocean made as the waves curled and crashed against the shore on the coast just north of the Armethalieh docks. I want to go home, Tiercel thought suddenly. The thought seemed as if it ought to belong to someone else.

He pushed forward into the outer edges of the crowd, and asked a few people on the outskirts what had happened, but no one knew. All anyone could tell him was that something had attacked the shotors, and that it was over very quickly. Frustrated, Tiercel glanced skyward. Even after so long living outdoors, he didn't have Harrier's knack of telling time by the position of the stars, but the sky was starting to lighten with the first hints of dawn. He thought it was a little more than three-quarters of an hour by now since he'd been awakened.

He ended up walking along the edge of the crowd -- it seemed like half the camp had gathered here, all of them talking at once -- until he reached the far side of it. Here there were gaps in the gathered onlookers, and he could make his way through them until he reached Saravasse. Just as the onlookers he'd questioned earlier had said, whatever had happened here was over. Everyone was staring intently at a plot of ground about two hectares square, and there was nothing really to see.

"What happened?" he called up to Saravasse. "Are you all right? Is Harrier--"

"I am well." She lowered her enormous head, bringing it more nearly onto a level with his. "Your friend is well. Some dozen shotors -- perhaps more -- are less well."

"What happened?" Tiercel asked again, more quietly. "Did you see? Was anyone killed?"

"No and no." Harrier walked over, looking rumpled and irritable in nothing more than boots and undershift -- although of course he'd grabbed his swords. Tiercel knew there'd been a time -- even recently -- that Harrier hadn't had them, but it was hard to imagine him without them any more. "Nobody was killed. And nobody saw what happened. Something came up out of the ground in the middle of the shotors -- see where the ground is disturbed? Whatever it was killed a bunch of animals -- you can tell from all the blood -- and either ate them here or took them away with it. Or with them."

"Took away," Saravasse said decisively. "I was at the other side of the camp when I heard the screams. I shouted to frighten the attacker and ran back as quickly as I could. It was only a minute or two. Perhaps five."

"Goblins could eat a dozen shotors that fast -- but they don't churn up the ground," Tiercel said, glancing over his shoulder toward the open area.

"It has the look of a jarrari's burrow," Zanattar said. He stepped from a nearby group of onlookers and walked around the disturbed area, fastidiously skirting the blood-soaked sand. "Were there jarrari as large as the Great One here," he added, nodding toward Saravasse.

"Do we know that there aren't?" Harrier said to nobody at all.

#

"What do khazdara eat?" Tiercel asked idly.

"Everything," Shaiara answered simply.

It was several hours later, and heading into the hottest part of the day. It had taken the bespelled animals long enough to return to the encampment that by the time all of them had been gathered up again, it made as much sense to wait out the hot part of the day before breaking camp, as to travel for an hour or two upon already exhausted beasts before having to stop once more.

The hunters had taken advantage of the unexpected rest time to search the immediate area for game, but there had been nothing. Neither birds in the air, nor animals on the ground, nor any sign that either had been near in sennights.

Seeing this, at mid-morning Ummara Luthurm of the Adanate had gone to Bisochim and asked him for a Foretelling. Shaiara had not gone to hear what was said, though others had, but still she knew that Luthurm had gone at the request of many other Ummarai -- of the Khulbana, of the Tunag, of the Zarungad, of the Barantar -- of every tribe that frequented the Deep Desert and fed itself as much by skill with sling and bow and lance as by the wealth of its flocks and herds. Luthurm had asked Bisochim to consult the Wild Magic to Foretell the Isvaieni's success in the hunts-to-come, and say to him where the best hunting grounds might lay.

It was not a spell any Ummara would once have asked of a Blue Robe, even when famine stalked the tents and the bones of infants joined those of their elders upon the sand. The Isvai was a harsh mother; this was a truth all knew. But it was a spell the Blue Robes might offer, at the will of the Wild Magic, and so Bisochim had consented to Luthurm's plea. And when Bisochim had done his Foretelling, the answer had come quick and hard: there would be no success for the Isvaieni in the hunt, upon this day or any other, nor would it matter where in all the Isvai they sought for prey. None would be found.

This was a truth that lay like a hard stone in the belly, for after so much agony and sacrifice, it imposed upon the desertfolk yet another forfeiture. But no Isvaieni turned aside from what was needful merely because it was unpleasant, still less now that all had pledged themselves to carry a truth even harsher than this one to the gates of the Golden City itself.

And so, throughout the encampment, the falcons of a score of tribes flew from the fists of their owners for the last time.

Next to their ikulas hounds, the Isvaieni's most prized possessions were their hunting falcons, and nearly all the birds they had begun the journey with had survived. Now those birds were quietly unhooded and unleashed, a few at a time, and set free into the sky. No falcon was ever truly tame, and the birds would fly until they reached some place where prey was to be found, no matter how far that was. Morning and evening and morning again, the birds would be released until the last one was gone. It was foolishness to keep them when there was nothing for them to hunt and little for anyone to eat. Should any of the people survive, birds could be taken and trained again.

It was still a hard thing to surrender that bright fierce beauty to the sky forever -- though not so aching a loss as to surrender the bones of an ikulas -- or a lover -- or a child -- to the sand. Shaiara thanked Sand and Star that none of her own people had been forced to make such a sacrifice, for the falcons of the Nalzindar, along with their ikulas, remained at Abi'Abadshar. And because all knew that the Nalzindar did not suffer such a loss as they themselves were compelled to undergo, she and all of her people had retired to the shade of their own tents as soon as Luthurm's words were borne through the camp, for all knew that sorrow shared was sorrow halved, but many a time the good fortune of another was a bitter tea in the mouth of the afflicted, and Shaiara would make no one's burden heavier than it was.

"Everything what?" Tiercel asked insistently. "We don't have khazdara in the north. Would a khazdar eat a mouse?"

The two of them sat beneath the awning of one of the Nalzindar tents. Within the tent itself, Ciniran carefully cut pieces of leather from a goatskin to mend her boots and Shaiara's -- who could say if there would ever come another Gathering at which they could trade for new ones? -- while Narkil and Natha played an elaborate counting-bluffing game with pebbles they had scavenged on their journey. In the doorway of the tent, Kamar sat upon a shotor-saddle with a whetstone and a geschak in his lap and several soft-scraped sheepskins at his feet. Each time the geschak was sharp enough, he would carve more long careful strips of leather from the hides until it dulled, then sharpen the blade again. When he had enough strips, he would braid a new rope.

Shaiara snorted. "No need, when the kintibaz and the jarrari will do so, or -- if this barrenness is some evil of the Demon -- the Goblin kind, which will devour all that breathes, or once drew breath. The khazdara merely eat all growing things down to the root, but that is enough. In a wet winter the desert flowers -- not every year, but often enough -- and then, sometimes, the khazdara come."

"So maybe Goblins ate the animals -- or the Balwarta -- or even those horrible black dogs -- but none of them would eat the grass and the plants; it would have to be the khazdara," Tiercel said, as if he was trying to settle an argument with himself. "So if all the grass is gone because of the khazdara -- even atish'ban-khazdara -- the roots will still be there?" he asked.

Shaiara had long thought Harrier much too hot-tempered -- not merely for a Wildmage, but for any man -- since in the Isvai, the heat of sun and sand was all the heat one needed in one's heart and one's life. But the more she dealt with Tiercel and his endless questions -- and not merely questions that might have some purpose, but questions that seemed to have no purpose beyond forcing the hearer to think of things that they had never imagined -- the more she felt stirrings of sympathy for Harrier, who had listened to such questionings all his life. Tiercel's questions were like the endless scraping of the blade on the whetstone, yet they went on far longer, and the disturbance they caused in one's mind was far more vexing, and one did not even have any useful thing to show afterward for having endured them.

"How shall I say what atish'ban-khazdara will or will not eat, Tiercel?" Shaiara answered sharply. "Am I myself the Darkness Reborn to have the ordering of such creatures and their appetites? I know only what khazdara eat, and if they were to devour the root as well as the plant, surely the plant would not grow again."

"You're right," Tiercel said, smiling at her as if she'd given him the answer to a great riddle. He got to his feet. "I need to go see something."

Shaiara waved him away. Let him choose to wander about during the hottest part of the day. Perhaps it would bring him weariness enough to stem his endless flow of questions.

#

Two hours later -- the sun stood directly overhead, and a stick struck into the ground cast no shadow -- Harrier came walking slowly back to the tent. The others had retired within to rest, but Shaiara could find no ease. She closed her ears to the sounds of voices all around her -- the endless babble of talk, of people, was enough to drive one of the silent desert-bred Nalzindar mad. They defended themselves against it as much as they could, pitching their tents at the very edge of the encampment, at the very end of the farthest row of tents. It was not enough, but there was no more that could be done.

It seemed to her that from the moment they had chosen to follow Bisochim to Telinchechitl, all of the Isvaieni had suffered loss after loss. At first the things they had lost had been small and subtle, hidden by luxury and strangeness. Then they had been greater, and hidden by fear and lies. Now the time for luxury and lies was past, and all that was left was strangeness, fear, and loss.

Fannas's foolish horses and cattle. The ikulas. Their children, sent into an exile from which they might never be reclaimed. The Kamazan. Hundreds of men and women -- and the knowledge that they were merely the first to die, not the only ones who would. The wealth of the tribes, slaughtered profligately to feed them, night and day. The Isvai itself. And now their hunting birds, cast upon the wind as many of them might once have cast handfuls of grain upon the rocks to lure greedy doves into their nets. Each thing gone from them severed one more tie that bound them to the Isvai, perhaps forever.

Harrier reached the edge of the carpet and stopped for a moment, as if he did not realize that he had reached his own tent and needed no invitation to set his foot upon its weaving. He held a jug of rough red clay under one arm; its surface was dark with evaporation, ensuring that the liquid inside would remain cool. At last he stepped forward and sat down on the carpet beside Shaiara, setting the jug between them.

"There's a lot to be said for sleeping through the day," he said, sounding sulky.

Shaiara huffed with amusement. "No one told you to run about beneath the sun," she said, picking up the jug and unstoppering it. She sniffed. Mint tea. She raised her eyebrows at him. What had once been so common that it was even found in the tents of the Nalzindar had become a rarity in the last sennights, and few Isvaieni still possessed the leaves.

"Liapha," he said in answer to her unspoken question. "I have to take the jug back, though."

"It is not ours," Shaiara agreed. She reached behind her for two of the wooden tankards resting on the carpet beside the water cask. She poured both of them full of mint tea and handed one to him. "Does Liapha still seek to betroth you into the tents of the Kadyastar with such rich gifting?"

"She keeps telling me that the Blue Robes don't marry down here, so no. This is more in the nature of an, um, in Armethalieh it would be a thank you gift. I don't know what it is here."

"And what is it that you have done, Harrier, that the Kadyastar should be grateful?" Shaiara asked.

"It's for running around in the sun. Which I was doing to keep Tyr from killing himself. Because -- well, I guess you know by now how he is when he gets an idea. This one worked out. We have grass."

It was a moment before Shaiara fully understood the sense of Harrier's words. "How is it that we have grass, Harrier?" she asked calmly, sipping from her mug.

"Tyr had an idea that Ahairan sent atish'ban-khazdara to eat everything in the desert that, well, Goblins or something wouldn't. There were animals and plants here a moonturn ago, because Bisochim could Call enough game to keep the three of them alive, so it would've had to have had something to live on then. Anyway, Tyr figured that even atish'ban-khazdara wouldn't eat the roots -- he said you'd told him that -- so he went to see if Bisochim could make the grass grow up again. And he could. A bunch of other things, too, and Bisochim made them spread. They aren't Tainted. We both checked before he took the spell off the animals and set them free to graze. That's where everyone is, just about. Standing around watching a bunch of goats stuff themselves. You must have wondered why the camp is so quiet."

Shaiara shook her head slightly, not answering. Harrier thought the camp must seem quiet to her ears, while she thought it so filled with sound that a person might die just from hearing it.

He shrugged. "I don't think it'll last -- the grass, I mean -- and he'll have to do it every time we stop... I'm sorry, Shaiara. We're messing up your desert again, aren't we?"

"It is not my desert, Harrier," she answered softly, glancing sideways at him. "It belongs to all the Isvaieni, to us and to generations unborn. And you are right. If we all die here, it will not matter."

"Look, Shaiara," he turned to face her, and in his face was an intensity she had rarely seen from him. "If you survive -- if Kamar survives -- Ciniran -- anyone. Go to the Veiled Lands. I mean it. Even if you can't get through Pelashia's Veil, just wait there -- they'll come to see who it is eventually. Vairindiel Elvenqueen owes us. I promise you: she will send Elven Mages here to fix everything we've ruined. Tell her why you've come and that she owes us."

For a moment Shaiara could not believe the audacity of any man -- Wildmage or no -- who would go to the High Ummara of the Elder Brethern and demand that she grant the repayment of a debt. Then she wanted only to bargain with the future and insist that Harrier would be able to make his own bargain with the High Ummara of the Elder Brethern. But one was only safe when they were dead, or when they were yet unborn, and neither he nor she was unborn.

"This pledge shall be passed among all the people," she said instead, "so that any who yet stands on the day of our victory -- should that day come -- may take it before the High Ummara of the Elder Brethern for its redemption."

"Good," Harrier said with a sharp sigh. "Because that means you won't mind so much what we do to the place now."

Shaiara swatted him lightly upon the knee, and the mood was broken. "I shall mind greatly. But when there are two roads to an oasis, 'bad' and 'worse', take the bad one."

#

Sometimes as he drifted off to sleep Harrier tried to figure out what moonturn it was, but he'd lost track sennights ago. The Isvaieni numbered the moonturns and didn't name them, counting the year as starting on the dark of the moon that fell closest to Midsummer, so Shaiara couldn't help him out. He thought it'd been Windrack when he and Tiercel'd first gotten to Abi'Abadshar. That would be early spring in Armethalieh; summer in the Isvai. That meant it was Sunkindle now, or maybe the beginning of Fruits: he didn't really pay a lot of attention to when Midsummer's Day was, because it didn't matter a lot in the city or on the docks. And it wasn't like the Isvaieni would have stopped to celebrate it this year anyway, even though he was sure they knew when it fell. He didn't think anybody would have much to celebrate this year.

And in two more moonturns -- whether it was Sunkindle or Fruits right now -- the weather would start turning cool up north and there'd be frosts at night. Two moonturns after that, there'd probably be snow. Four moonturns from now, the Isvai would be moving into its brief winter season. Harrier doubted he'd be able to tell much difference.

Being able to give all the animals the first decent meal they'd had since Telinchechitl had done a lot to improve the Isvaieni's spirits. With prodding from Harrier, Tiercel, and even Saravasse -- the only ones actually able to think of it or willing to do it -- Bisochim renewed the grass over and over as the animals ate it down to the roots. It wasn't all grass -- a lot of it was ugly thorn-covered bushes -- and none of it was particularly green, and it didn't really look appetizing, but they were only able to get the caravan moving at dusk because Bisochim stopped renewing it.

As it was, they'd delayed several hours beyond the time they could have moved on, because letting the livestock feed was important. Not for the first time, Harrier spared a wistful thought for sacks of dried beans and lentils and rice and flour, for fletches of bacon and sides of beef and jugs of preserved eggs and canisters of salt and sugar and tins of tea and honey-disks and sacks of charcoal. All the proper provisions for a long journey, the things that meant that you didn't have to match your speed to that of a flock of goats. He couldn't have talked the tribes into slaughtering all their animals back in the Barahileth and preserving the meat, though dried meat would have kept fairly well, and Light knew there'd been enough salt. And even if he had, the truth of the matter was that Ahairan's plagues of vermin would probably have spoiled the dried meat much more easily than they could have killed the live animals.

He was sure Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy had never had any problems even remotely like these. He wished he'd known the right sorts of questions to ask when he'd been in Karahelanderialigor.

Ahairan didn't attack them again and Harrier began to wonder if she wasn't going to bother any more. Maybe she knew she didn't need to. The terrain they rode across was utterly barren; and even though it was bright and open and full of people -- at least around the camp and the caravan itself -- the desert managed to seem haunted and full of shadows. Sand blew across cracked regh, dancing in the lightest breeze, since the plants that should have held the dunes at bay were gone. There were no birds -- no snakes or sheshu or jarrari -- just ... nothingness. And for the first time since Kareta had dumped them on him all those moonturns ago, Harrier felt an actual yearning to pull out his Three Books and do a spell. Something -- anything -- to improve their situation, or change it, or just tell him what was going on. There was the spell that had disturbed him so profoundly when he'd first seen it back at Blackrowan Farm: the one titled "To Know What Must Be Done": maybe -- if he did it -- he'd know what that was. Or he could Scry -- he knew Fannas still had date wine if nobody else did -- and a Scrying Spell was supposed to show you what you needed to see.

But then he remembered doing the Scrying Spell at Tarnatha'Iteru, over and over and over, and never seeing anything but a lake where the city had been. And no matter what, he couldn't believe that seeing that had been anything he'd "needed" to see. How had it helped anything -- either then or later? He hadn't even known the vision was about a real place until Tiercel had turned the city into water, and even then he hadn't understood what it had meant.

Maybe Knight-Mages weren't supposed to Scry.

Bisochim wasn't very much use in helping him make up his mind about whether -- or even how -- to do more Wildmage stuff, either. Before they'd left the encampment that evening, Harrier went to him and asked him to explain how to be a Wildmage, expecting that Bisochim would give him instructions at least on how to cast spells, if not what spells to cast and when. Bisochim had merely shaken his head.

"The magic teaches, or it does not," he said, and started to walk away.

"You know, that might impress someone else," Harrier snarled, grabbing his arm, "but we don't have time for this! If you don't tell me what I need to know, people could die!"

"Then they will die," Bisochim answered somberly. "For I cannot tell you that which cannot be said."

Harrier might have tried again -- or even done something incredibly stupid like trying to get Tiercel to decoy Saravasse off somewhere so he could grab Bisochim and have a nice long talk with him -- but the next day was the day they found out what had killed almost two dozen shotors two nights before.

#

Harrier was doing mental arithmetic as he rode. They'd gotten out of the Barahileth and reached Kannatha Well. That evening they'd been attacked by a swarm of khazdara, which Bisochim had swept away with his Sandwind. They'd broken camp that evening and continued north-and-west, heading toward Sapthiruk Oasis (travel time: anything between four and eight sennights, distance: anyone's guess.) They'd stopped for the night, and an hour before dawn, something had come up in the shotor-stable inside the ice wall and disappeared with twenty-two shotors before Saravasse could get back around the outside of the wall to see what it was. That day Bisochim had made the grass grow, and they'd stayed put through the day, only moving on at twilight. It was also the day that the Isvaieni had begun releasing their hunting falcons, since Luthurm had asked Bisochim to tell him if there was any game at all in the whole Dark-damned desert. They hadn't been attacked again that day, or that evening when they moved on, or the following night when they camped, or yet this morning.

Harrier was starting to get nervous.

If everything outside the City lands before the Great Flowering had been like the Isvai was now, no wonder the High Mages had stayed inside it. It made Demons seem even worse to think that they were things that wanted the world to look this way. He could understand -- even while knowing it was wrong -- someone wanting to hurt somebody, or wanting wealth, or power. Harrier was the son of the Harbormaster of Armethalieh, and the Harbormaster was the second most powerful person in the most powerful of the Nine Cities. He'd never owned -- though he'd touched -- objects costly enough to buy an entire fleet of ships. And Light knew that by now he understood wanting to strike out and cause hurt.

What was beyond his ability to understand was something that thought and spoke and didn't want any of those things. It just wanted to lay waste. The old-fashioned words out of The Book of the Light should have sounded silly when he thought them, but -- looking around himself at the lifeless desert -- they didn't. Why did Ahairan want to come here -- why did the Demons want to be here -- if all they were going to do was destroy the place they'd come to? He thought of all the places he'd seen and been: not just of Armethalieh with her shops and twisting streets and parks and plazas and docks and beaches; Great Ocean and the Out Islands; but the Delfier Road and Sentarshadeen and Kellen's Bridge and the Great Plains and the Mystrals and the Dragon's Tail and Ystarialpoerin and the Caves of Imrathalion and the Veiled Lands and the Tereymil Hills and the Madiran and the Isvai, all turned to nothing but lifeless rock and sterile water. And it was so terrible and so far beyond his understanding that the thought of it just made him hurt, as if someone he loved might die.

"Here is a good place," Sathan said, breaking into Harrier's thoughts. He gestured toward the left, at an area that looked like sandy soil -- neither the hard-packed clay of the Barahileth, nor the vast seas of sand that Tiercel had described. The kind of place that had probably'd had things growing in it once.

The Ummara of the Barantar was riding beside Harrier at what could charitably be described as the front of the caravan, though it really wasn't. Nobody wanted to ride at the back of the caravan, following a long line of other shotors. Tiercel thought it would be fair for the tribes to take their places in the line in strict rotation, but in fact, each tribe's position in the line of march were set by ancient tribal precedence and then gambled and traded among the Ummarai and chaharums so that a large tribe -- like the Kareggi -- might find itself split up into half-a-dozen places along the column, and a lucky one -- like the Kadyastar -- might find itself riding at the head of the column, or near it, for a sennight or more. Today the Barantar had won the coveted lead position.

Harrier could ride with the Nalzindar or not as he chose, since Wildmages were exempt from nearly all the tribal customs, and didn't belong to any specific tribe anyway. Normally he rode with them anyway, dust or no dust -- it was what chadars were made for, after all -- but today he'd been too edgy to take a place where he couldn't see what was going on in as wide an area as possible.

"No," he said, dismissing Sathan's suggestion. He wasn't sure why he said it. He didn't like Sathan -- he actually liked Zanattar better than he liked Sathan -- but that wasn't the reason. There were just a lot of the Ummarai he didn't like, and Sathan was one of them.

"The sun climbs toward midheaven, Harrier," Sathan said. His tone was respectful, but Harrier had been told off by experts, and he knew what it sounded like. Sathan was already flicking his whip at the side of his shotor's neck to bring it to a stop.

"I said we shouldn't stop here," Harrier repeated, more forcefully.

"Does the Wild Magic counsel you to this, Wildmage?" Sathan asked, and there was the faintest touch of scorn in his voice now.

Harrier ignored him completely. Flick-flick-flick went the goad in his hands, and his shotor paced forward quickly, moving out a dozen yards ahead of the caravan. He didn't know exactly when he'd developed the ability to stay constantly aware of everything around him all the time, even when he wasn't looking at it and hadn't looked at it in an hour. But right now he could tell even without turning to see that the caravan was stopping and spreading out, that the signal-wands were going up -- flick-flick-flick -- all the way up the line, and that he had five minutes, maybe eight, before the order to stop would have made its way all the way to the back of the line, another five beyond that -- perhaps -- before the first Isvaieni began to dismount.

He brought his shotor to a stop, and didn't wait for it to kneel, simply swinging himself sideways on the saddle and dropping to the ground. It was a jarring landing, and he crouched for a moment, absorbing the impact. The shotor swung its head around, looking at him, its large brown eyes regarding him with mild surprise.

He straightened and turned, one hand on the lead-rope, the other on his awardan. He'd worn one ever since the night they'd been attacked by the black dogs, since there were some things he wouldn't use his Selken blades on, and an awardan was easily replaced. Sometimes he wondered what had happened to the sword Roneida had given him. They'd brought it with them when they'd started for Telinchechitl, but it had been lost in the storm when Bisochim had driven off Ahairan. He wondered now if he'd ever actually been supposed to use it, or if it had just been a warning.

After a moment he spotted what he was looking for. Bisochim and Saravasse. On the far side of the line of march, halfway back. He'd been sure they were there, but Saravasse moved so fast he'd wanted to confirm it.

He turned back, pointing the shotor's head in the direction he wanted her to go, and made sure that the lead-rope was looped securely up around her neck. He wouldn't think about what he was doing; and not just because Sathan would mock him mercilessly for it later.

Then he drew his geschak and slashed it down over the shotor's flank as hard as he could, shouting as loud as he could.

Her head came up and she bolted in shock and pain, bawling noisily.

Behind him, Harrier heard Sathan laugh.

"Come to my tent once we have set it!" Sathan called to him. "And I will--"

Harrier never did find out how that sentence would end, because in the middle of it, the shotor reached softer sand -- he could see her feet kicking it up as she ran -- and angled back toward the harder-packed stuff that she'd been running over moments before. And suddenly the sand exploded upward and outward, and something that looked like the biggest jarrari that Harrier had ever seen in his life came up out of its burrow.

It was smaller than the Balwarta, but there was no doubt that it was atish'ban -- something Ahairan had made -- because it was just as black. Black like glass, or ink, or something that had been burnt until it glittered. It was about twice the size of the shotor, and it cut her to pieces instantly with its claws. Harrier didn't pay a lot of attention after that. He was too busy running toward it.

He didn't intend to fight it -- he didn't think he could. But if he stayed where he'd been he was certainly going to die, because the moment it had come up out of its burrow, every single animal in the caravan had bolted, and if he didn't want to be trampled, he needed to be somewhere else. Fast.

He nearly didn't make it. Only the fact that the line of animals was curving away from the direction he was running saved him -- a good thing, since he'd really hate to appear before the Eternal Flame and say he'd been sent by the Wild Magic to help slay a Demon but been trampled to death by goats instead -- but then he was standing with the ground trembling beneath his boots as thousands of shotors fled as if for their lives realizing he was about to be an atish'ban jarrari's dessert.

"Harrier! Here!" Saravasse shouted.

The thing had stopped its forward rush at the dragon's arrival. Harrier ran sideways, never taking his eyes off it, until he collided with her side. She dropped her chest to the ground and cocked her elbow outward, giving him all the help she could to mount. "Touch my wing and I will kill you myself," she said.

Harrier didn't bother to answer -- he couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't horribly rude or brutally honest or just stupid -- and he was too busy scrambling up onto her back anyway. Her scales were slick except at the very edges where they were as sharp as broken glass, and they were hot as metal and his hands were hard-calloused from moonturns of hard work and swordwork but they were still bleeding in a hundred places by the time he could grab Bisochim's hand because he didn't have time to be careful. Bisochim yanked him the rest of the way up onto Saravasse's neck, and Harrier's bootheel skidded down her scales. She immediately started to run, and he had a sudden jarring sense-memory that the last time he'd been on a dragon's back it had been Tiercel in front of him, and the dragon had been Ancaladar, and they'd been convinced they were heading off to their last battle, and victory.

"You know that thing's just going to come after you now?" he shouted to Saravasse. Hot wind whipped past his face, and she was fast -- faster than anything he'd ever ridden, faster than anything he ever wanted to ride.

"I can outrun it," she answered confidently.

He glanced behind them. Light glittered off the monster's carapace. It held its barbed tail high as it ran -- skittering along the ground just like a jarrari -- and it didn't drop behind as he counted heartbeats in his head. "No, you can't. You really can't," he said when he'd reached ten. It wasn't farther away, and it was even a little closer, and all she was doing was leading it in the direction of the fleeing Isvaieni.

"She will not have to," Bisochim said, and the grim determination in his voice made something inside Harrier say, for the first time since he'd seen him at Telinchechitl: this man is dangerous.

Bisochim spent most of the time wandering around in a daze, but if there was a direct threat to Saravasse ... Harrier could see -- at least a little -- how he'd gotten the Isvaieni to follow him off into the middle of nowhere.

Bisochim half-turned -- why did everybody who was Bonded to a dragon think that falling off was a suggestion that only applied to other people? -- and stretched out his hand. Harrier dug his heels into Saravasse's sides as hard as he could to keep from falling off and looked too. He was expecting Bisochim to call down a lightning bolt and blast the nightmare thing into nothing, but he didn't. Instead, its shell began to turn milky grey, even under the hot desert sun, and its movements became jerky and uncontrolled. Saravasse slowed to a stop as it started to run in circles, and the three of them stood and watched as it finally stopped and flailed weakly and fell onto its back.

It twitched for a few more moments, then curled inward on itself; this was why, Tiercel said, people thought that jarrari stung themselves to death, although they really didn't. Harrier didn't care, as long as it meant this one was dead. The sand beneath its body was dark with melted moisture, and the air above it shimmered with evaporating water. "You froze it," he said in realization.

"Cold is the most terrible death I know," Bisochim answered quietly, and Harrier thought of a roadside inn on the Delfier Road between Armethalieh and Sentarshadeen, of a summer night more than a year ago.

"Yeah," he said. "It is."

#

Saravasse walked slowly after the caravan. In the distance, Harrier could hear the rhythmic sound of pounding, and see -- several miles off -- the Isvaieni and their animals. Apparently they'd finally gotten them to stop running.

"I hoped Sathan looked around for Giant shotor-eating atish'ban jarrari nests before he decided to make camp," Harrier muttered sulkily. "Did we manage to pitch our camp the other night right on top of them?"

He'd been talking to himself, but Bisochim answered, surprising him. "I think not. For you would have known, so I believe. As you did today."

"I ... didn't," Harrier said. But the protest sounded unconvincing, even to him. He'd known something. He just hadn't known what it was.

"The Wild Magic imparts those teachings which it needs the Wildmage to understand," Bisochim answered. "So it has been with you. So it has been with me." His voice was colorless and even, conveying nothing of what he felt or thought.

Tyr always said you were an idiot. Here's proof, Harrier told himself with sudden -- unwelcome -- insight. He wasn't sure whether he was angry or ashamed, so he settled on anger because it was more comfortable. He'd gone to Bisochim and asked Bisochim to teach him how the Wild Magic worked. And either Bisochim understood the Wild Magic so badly that he'd conjured the Spirit of Darkness back into the world thinking he was doing what the Wild Magic wanted him to do ... or he'd tried to use the Wild Magic for his personal gain and it had gone wrong and now he no longer trusted himself.

The third possibility was one Harrier refused to consider: that Bisochim had done exactly what the Wild Magic had meant him to do all along.

"That's fine for the Wild Magic, but it isn't going to keep our shotors alive if another one of those things shows up because Sathan is an idiot," Harrier answered sharply.

"If they were attracted by idiocy, Harrier, they would have been drawn to you like deer to green corn," Saravasse snapped.

"Fine. Stop here. I'll walk the rest of the way. I don't see why you bothered to come back for me in the first place. If that thing ate me it would've been one less Mage for Ahairan to Taint, and Tyr's better at talking to people than I am, anyway--"

"It's so much more restful being dead, isn't it?" Saravasse said spitefully. "You don't have to hope for anything, then."

"Please," Bisochim said quietly.

Saravasse stopped, turning her head to look at him. "I am sorry, Beloved," she answered.

Harrier couldn't look at Bisochim -- not sitting behind him -- and he didn't feel like apologizing to anybody right now. He took a deep breath. "Thank you for saving my life, Saravasse," he said steadily. It wasn't quite an apology.

"You are welcome, Harrier," the scarlet dragon answered. She walked on.

"You are both needed," Bisochim went on. "I fear that Tiercel might despair should you be lost, Harrier. He has already lost so much."

Ancaladar.

"How can he have lost Ancaladar and still be alive?" Harrier asked. This was the closest thing to actual privacy that they were ever going to get, and if anyone might know the answer to that question, it would be Saravasse -- or Bisochim.

"He asked me that," Saravasse answered. "In the desert, when I first spoke to him. He asked me if I knew where his Bonded was, if I knew how he could live and no longer be a part of his Bond. And I had no answers for him. It cannot be. I know of no such thing. Ancaladar knew of no such thing, and he was ancient beyond knowing. When my Beloved dies, all that I am will be unmade in that instant. Should I be slain, his life will cease."

"That must be comforting," Harrier muttered.

"More so than that either of us should survive, despairing, to become a Demon's pawn," Saravasse said, but though at some other time the words might have been sarcastic, now her tone was kind. It was only the truth. "My Beloved has seen this happen, too many times."

Her tone was so matter-of-fact that it took a few moments for the sense of her words to sink in. "I- Wait. You've seen it? You've seen ... what?" Harrier sputtered.

Bisochim sighed deeply, and his shoulders sagged. "You have seen, in The Book of Moon, that there are spells for seeing ... that which is not. With time, and care, and the power of a dragon to call upon, still greater and more subtle spells can be crafted, to unbind the Wildmage's spirit from That Which Is and send it to walk among the shadows of That Which Was, no matter how distant. I have seen the towers of Abi'Abadshar rise whole and new-built into the sky; I have seen the Madiran when it was a meadow of trackless green, when great trees covered the Tereymil Hills and creatures who are not now even legend lived out their lives and sang their songs of greatness in this ancient land. I have seen war, and death, and betrayal destroy all these things, time and time and time again. I have seen love become hate, friendship become a weapon, loyalty become the sharpest knife--"

"You used the Wild Magic to see the past," Harrier said flatly.

"I have said so," Bisochim said, sounding faintly surprised.

Harrier gripped his knees. It was at least partly to keep from strangling Bisochim. Bisochim would probably have mentioned it if any of them had thought to ask, but just what would make a person think of asking someone: "Oh, by the way, have you happened to use the Wild Magic to have visions of events that happened about a zillion years ago, and while you were at it, did you happen to learn anything that would be useful to us right now?"

His hands stung. He lifted them and stared at them, frowning. He'd forgotten that he'd cut them scrambling up onto Saravasse's back. He'd managed to open the cuts again. "Do you know anything about that creature you just killed?" he asked. Everything else could wait. They needed information.

"No," Bisochim said. "When the Endarkened fought their wars here in the southern lands, they came themselves, or sent Fire Giants, Chimerae, Basilisks, Cockatricen, Mandragonae, all creatures of heat and poison. The Balwarta was theirs, yes. And the Goblin. But these others -- the black dog, and this strange jarrari -- I do not know them."

"Oh. Well. That's something," Harrier said. At least we've got something to look forward to.

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