Excerpt From "The Phoenix Transformed", TOR Books, September 2009

[merlinscribe]

PROLOGUE: SHADOWS AND FIRE

A little more than a year ago Tiercel Rolfort and Harrier Gillain had been ordinary boys looking toward an ordinary future. Harrier had been ready to embark upon the Apprenticeship that would eventually lead to him succeeding his father as Harbormaster of Armethalieh Port, and Tiercel, like most of his age-mates, would be attending Armethalieh University before taking his place in the thriving bureaucracy of the Nine Cities.

But that was Before.

Tiercel's innocent interest in ancient history had led him to a series of increasingly-terrifying discoveries. First, that he was able to wield the power of the High Magick, something that had been forgotten in the Nine Cities for nearly a thousand years. Second, that having done so led him to experience visions that he came to believe were a warning of a return of the Endarkened, the creatures defeated and banished by the Blessed Saint Idalia and Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy over a millennium before.

And third, that nobody believed him, even his best friend.

Desperate to find someone who would believe his warning — or at least to put an end to his visions, which Tiercel was convinced were meant for someone else — Tiercel went in search of a Wildmage. And even though Harrier found it hard to accept the reality of what Tiercel was telling him, he had no intention of allowing his best friend to go off on a quest like that all by himself.

Their search took them to the Elven Lands, where they were told that not only had the visions indeed been meant for Tiercel, but that the Elves believed that the Light had chosen Tiercel to destroy this new manifestation of the Dark, and felt that he must choose his own path to doing so — without their assistance.

But neither the Elves — nor the Light — meant to leave Tiercel entirely helpless. Not only was Jermayan able to transfer Ancaladar's Bond to Tiercel, giving him the power to cast the spells of the High Magic, but Harrier discovered, once they had left the Elven City, that he was to become the first Knight-Mage since Kellen Tavadon himself.

Their search for the mysterious Lake of Fire that Tiercel had seen in his visions led them out of the Elven Lands to the deserts of the south. There, having sent Ancaladar into hiding in order to avoid panic, Tiercel searched the archives of Tarnatha'Iteru for clues to the Lake of Fire's location as Harrier began his training in warfare with Macendor Telchi, a Selken Warrior whom they had rescued on their journey.

Tiercel had nearly given up hope of finding the Lake of Fire when refugees from one of the other desert cities arrived, bringing word that an army of Isvaieni were sacking the cities of the border. Knowing that he and Harrier might be the only ones capable of defending Tarnatha'Iteru, they chose to stay.

When the Isvaieni army arrived, Tiercel attempted to reason with its commander, only to discover that Zanattar believed he was fighting a holy war to cleanse the desert of those who were tainted by belief in the False Balance. With no other way to protect the city, Tiercel cast MageShield around all of Tarnatha'Iteru, but he could only hold the impenetrable spell-wall in place for as long as he remained awake. Harrier and the people of the city hoped that by the time Tiercel's MageShield fell, it might be an equal fight. But when the shield fell at last, and Tarnatha'Iteru's army opened its gates, the Isvaieni army proved to be a strong and relentless enemy. It attacked and sacked the city. Tiercel and Harrier were taken alive, as Zanattar believed them to be Demons, whom only the Wildmage Bisochim could kill safely. As they were held, drugged and bound, in the Isvaieni camp, Tiercel managed to rouse himself enough to summon Ancaladar. Now, at last, with the trail left by the fleeing Isvaieni army to follow, Tiercel was certain they could reach the Lake of Fire.

But Ancaladar was unable to locate it from the sky, and the only possible conclusion for him to draw was that it was concealed by powerful magical wards. Since those wards wouldn't prevent Harrier and Tiercel from following the visible trail that hundreds of shotors had made in the desert regh, Ancaladar left the two of them in some ruins he'd spotted from the air, and flew off to steal them the equipment and mounts they'd require to make the journey.

The ruins were the ruins of Abi'Abadshar, the ancient Elven city to which Shaiara of the Nalzindar had led her people for sanctuary. Shaiara was able to tell them all she knew of Bisochim the Wildmage, while Tiercel told Shaiara all he knew and suspected of Bisochim's plans. Discovering from Shaiara's account of the Ingathering of the Tribes that Bisochim would have searched for the Nalzindar, and having had his own experience of the power of Bisochim's magic, Tiercel realized that Abi'Abadshar must have been protecting the Nalzindar from discovery with magic of its own, and he, Harrier, and Ancaladar searched the underground city for something that might serve as a weapon in the battle they must fight.

They found nothing at all, until they reached the tenth and lowest level of the city.

And there, Ancaladar vanished.
#


CHAPTER ONE: A TERRIBLE BEAUTY

The Binrazan were one of the largest and wealthiest tribes to make their home between Sand and Star. Fully ten double-hands of tents could Phulda their Ummara number when he counted that which the Binrazan held — and swift shotors, and flocks of fat sheep, and goats as well — for Binrazan wealth lay not in its hunting skills, as did the Khulbana's, nor yet in its ability to wrest gold and gems from the secret places of the desert, as did the Kadyastar's, nor in its trade in rare spices, like the Hinturi, nor in its harvest of salt, as the Kareggi did. The Binrazan were master rug makers and weavers, whose carpets graced the floor of every tent of every tribe, and the homes of the soft city-dwellers as well, who paid in cloth and glass and kaffeyah and glittering sugar from distant lands, in cakes of xocalatl and in medicines and in good steel knives and even in gold. Gold bought little among the Isvaieni, but it bought much in the Iteru-cities, and so the Binrazan accepted it in trade, for it could be held for a season or full turn of seasons and then exchanged for as much value as on the day it had been given.

For these reasons, and for the need of their flocks, the Binrazan had always kept to the edge of the Isvai, travelling between the Border Cities known even in the Cold North as the String of Pearls for their fabled wealth.

The first time Narbuc of the Binrazan had gone to Elparus'Iteru to say that the Binrazan had come to Rulbasi Well, he had seen eight Gatherings and had just begun his apprenticeship to Curam, master rug maker of the tribe. Then, he had not believed that any people could live as he saw these living, and his elder cousin had laughed, and had told him there were many strange sights to be seen between Sand and Star. Years passed. Master-weaver Curam went to lay his bones upon the sand, and Lacin became the new master, and still Narbuc practiced and learned. His life — as his father's and his father's before him — seemed as unchanging as the Isvai itself.

Then, in the depths of one summer's heat, all changed. At first it was no more than unrest and rumor, and then it became something that Phulda must go and see for himself, and so the Binrazan came to Sapthiruk Oasis when the next Gathering of the Tribes was more than six moonturns away, and there Phulda heard the words of the Wildmage Bisochim, who told them all of the terrible danger they faced.

And when Phulda returned to the tents of the Binrazan to speak of the warning that the Wildmage Bisochim had come to give, Narbuc discovered he had walked all unawares of peril all his days, as the foraging sheshu browses unawares of the towering falcon, for Bisochim had come to warn all the Isvaieni that the people of the cities had long ago given up their hearts to false truths, and, as a fool will envy a man who possesses riches that the fool cannot use, the city-dwellers now hated the Isvaieni for having kept faith with the Balance and meant to enslave them.

And so all the tribes — thousands of men and women, and all that belonged to them, down to the last herd-dog and hunting-hound and fat sheep and weanling kid — followed Bisochim into the depths of the Barahileth, upon a journey that was hard, but not as hard as the yoke of enslavement that their enemies prepared for them.

From Sapthiruk to the place called Telinchechitl, that journey was the work of three moonturns to accomplish, and without Bisochim to guide and sustain them, many would have died. But at last he brought them to the place where — so Phulda had told the Binrazan — they would wait and prepare for the day they might fall upon those who held to the False Balance. And if Sapthiruk had been a garden of impossible splendor, Narbuc did not know how he should name the Plains of Telinchechitl, with its tall date palms, its orchards of figs and naranjes and limuns, its fields of green barley and sweet green grass and devices which cast water upon the very wind to slake its fierce heat, just as if water were something as infinite as the sands of the desert itself.

Yet here, in this place where there was nothing but soft cool breezes and sweet grass and sweet fruits and endless water, there came anger and bloodshed between tribe and tribe before two moonturns had passed. It seemed, despite Bisochim's wise words, that there would be no end to the strife, for how could any man avoid a quarrel if there was nowhere he might go that he could not look upon the face of his enemy? And it was true that Telinchechitl was the strangest and most beautiful place any of the Isvaieni had ever seen, but beyond its boundaries there was nothing but the stark waterless desolation of the Barahileth. Paradise penned them in as closely as the walls of the Iteru-cities closed up their inhabitants, and such confinement chafed.

And so it was that when Bisochim spoke to them of a thing they all knew well — that of all the tribes numbered among the Isvaieni, one was absent from the Great Ingathering — all the young hunters were eager to turn their skills to seeking out the Nalzindar wherever they might be.

All, perhaps, save Narbuc.

He was not alone among his age-mates in staying behind when the men and women of the Isvaieni rode forth, but nearly all of the others were women with infants too young to leave. Of all the rest — youths who had barely seen a dozen Gatherings, grizzled elders of two score years who might have chosen to remain within their tents — all rode forth. They went in bands of fifteen or twenty — no more — nor did it matter that this one might be Adanate and that one might be Fadaryama, for before they had gone, each who rode had sworn a blood-oath of fellowship, to hold all the others as dear as the kin of their own tents.

Had he been needed to defend the people, Narbuc would have gone with the others without question. But Narbuc had no proficiency with geschak or awardan — or even spear or bow. All his life, Narbuc had honed his skills in the direction that would most benefit his tribe — to gain skill with the loom so that perhaps one day he might win Master-weaver Lacin's place as Master-weaver for the Binrazan. And one more pair of eyes would make far less difference upon the sands of the Isvai than one more pair of hands in Lacin's weaving tent. With the other young men of the Binrazan tents gone, only Narbuc and the elders remained to work the looms and knot the rugs. And there were many rugs that must be made.

It was nearly half a year before those who had gone forth from Telinchechitl returned ... those who did. Eight thousand had ventured forth. Half that number came back.

To discover that the true wealth of the Isvaieni had been wiped from the face of the future as the Sandwind scoured the tracks of the hunter from the desert itself was catastrophe enough. To hear the news that the young hunters returned with made that disaster as small and meaningless as a pot of spoiled dye when one's tent was ablaze. Those who had ridden forth now called themselves warriors — not mere hunters — and claimed they had struck the first blow against the False Balance. They spoke of Demons with the faces of children, of discovering proof that the False Balance had slain the Blue Robes upon whom the Isvaieni depended for protection, of riding in vengeance to pull down the walls of the String of Pearls and burn the Iteru-cities to the ground.

It was this last boast which caused words to sit beneath Narbuc's tongue like a burning coal, for many of those who had ridden with Zanattar — who named himself chief-of-warriors without being master of any tent — had never walked the streets of an Iteru-city before the day upon which they had entered it to bring fire and death. And the proudest boast of all the new warriors was that they had left none alive behind them — but could all, all, down to the unweaned child rocked in its mother's arms, be guilty of fealty to the False Balance?

It was a question for which Narbuc had no answer, and as day followed day another question took its place beside the first: how could Bisochim, the most powerful Wildmage ever seen between Sand and Star, able to call upon the power of a dragon as other men whistled hawks to their hand and ikulas-hounds to heel, have let such events come to pass? If this was truly the will of the Wild Magic, there must be some deep truth that Bisochim might reveal to ease Narbuc's mind.

It was with this hope in his heart that Narbuc set out toward Bisochim's fortress at the top of the cliffs of Telinchechitl. Narbuc had never been inside Bisochim's great fortress. He did not know anyone who had. He did not know why it should be that a Wildmage — servant of the Wild Magic, an individual who belonged to all tribes and none of them, one of those who by custom called no tent their own — should possess a vast stone house larger than the largest house of the greatest city-dweller. Narbuc did not like to presume to enter such a place. But Bisochim had not been seen upon the Plains of Telinchechitl for many days, and if Narbuc wished to have words of him, Narbuc must ascend to Bisochim's dwelling.

The tents of the Isvaieni were as far from the cliff upon which Bisochim's dwelling perched as a man might walk in the time it took for the sun to turn from gleam of light upon the horizon to a full disk, and Narbuc was grateful for the grass beneath his feet and the decadent waste of water that vanished so quickly into the air, for his journey was made beneath the brutal heat of the noonday sun. He had waited to slip away upon his errand until the people rested quietly in their tents. Only madmen and fools ventured forth at the peak of the desert day. Madmen — or those who were desperate.

In his desire to speak privately with Bisochim, Narbuc's many visits to the Iteru-cities served him well. Had he been born to the tents of the Tunag or the Zarungad, he would not have recognized that which led to Bisochim's fortress, or their purpose. But in the Iteru-cities he had seen stairs many times, and sometimes even walked up and down them, though in all his visits to the Iteru-cities, never had Narbuc seen stairs that climbed so high. After the first few minutes, his legs began to ache at the unfamiliar exercise, and there was still a very great distance to traverse.

His discomfort was only increased by the intense and unfamiliar heat. The Isvaieni were a desert people, used to the desert's merciless heat, but here there was nothing but stone and sun. The air around him shimmered with heat, and the stone beneath his feet was hot enough for him to feel through the soles of his desert boots. The sun of the Barahileth beat down upon his chadar as if he wore nothing upon his head at all.

And still he climbed.

At last Narbuc began to feel faint bursts of coolness upon his face — a sensation he was now familiar with — and knew them for welcome droplets of cool water, borne on the wind from fountains in the fortress above. His dry mouth ached with the desire to quench his thirst at such a fountain, and not so many more stairs would bring him to his goal.

But when he reached the top of the pale sandstone stairs, instead of turning left to refresh himself at the fountain he could see beyond the low wall, Narbuc found his steps turning right, and leading him forward across the wide flat area at the top of the stair, toward a second staircase cut into the wall of the black cliff itself. His mind screamed with terror, but he could not give voice to his fear, any more than he could command his body to turn back. He was as helpless as the sheshu in the fenec's jaws, and his limbs did not obey his will. Within his thoughts Narbuc wept and begged for whatever power that had taken possession of him to release him, but all he could do was climb higher along the face of the cliff. The heat he had felt before was nothing to this. That had been the heat of the sun. This was the heat of fire.

When Narbuc had unwillingly reached the top of the second stair, he understood. This was no solid cliff as he had thought, but an open bowl filled with molten rock. Never had he thought to see such, nor did he wish to see it now, for the wind of it blew toward his face, causing his skin to tighten and ache with heat. Far below — perhaps nearly level with the desert floor — rock glowed orange and yellow with heat, and flames of fire danced over it as if it were burning charcoal. To touch it would be a death more horrible than death by burning.

But even as his mind framed that thought, Narbuc found his hands clutching at the rock which lay before him, and clambering up and over. To touch the rock was as if he laid his hands upon a cooking stone prepared for flat cakes, yet he could neither cry out nor draw back. The terror that he felt at having his body move without — against — his will nearly overwhelmed the pain of his injuries. First one leg swung itself over the lip of the caldera, then the other, and for one hideous moment Narbuc thought his traitorous body meant to leap into the lake of fire. But then it turned itself and began to lower itself carefully down the sloping inner wall.

It was such a cliff as a man might indeed climb, were he careful and lucky. Narbuc had done such things himself many wheels of the seasons before, near the southernmost of the String of Pearls, Orinaisal'Iteru, where the desert was edged by tall cliffs. But those cliffs were smooth stone warmed only by the sun, not a crumbling slope of sparkling jagged shards that tore at his robes and at his seared and burning flesh. Narbuc's hands were work-hardened, calloused from years working with loom and awl, yet they were cut and torn now by his descent as if they had been the soft hands of a child. He was bleeding from a hundred cuts when his hands and feet finally lost their purchase upon the wall and he tumbled the rest of the way to the bottom.

Had he possessed voice, Narbuc would have screamed then, for the stone he fell upon was as hot as fire, searing him even through his robes, and the stone beneath him was ... yielding. Though his volition had been plucked from him as easily as he might take a toy from a child, he retained all his ability to feel. Every breath he took seared his lungs with its heat and caused him to choke and gag, for the air was foul with the scent of strange burning. Then, as suddenly as the terrible compulsion had come upon him, it was lifted. His shriek of anguish burst from his throat even as Narbuc lunged to his feet to batter at his smoldering clothing with burned and bleeding hands. He scrambled backward to the narrow ledge at the very bottom of the cliff, where the stone was burning hot but at least it was solid.

That was when he saw Her. A woman stood upon the surface of the boiling rock. She wore no clothing, and her skin was as pale as if it had never been touched by the sun. It shone with the reflections — orange and gold and white — of the fires she walked through untouched. Her hair was long enough that it might have fallen to her knees, unbound and uncovered as a young girl might go in her mother's tent. It was of a color Narbuc had never seen, and in its golds and pale reds it made him think of metal and fire, though it lofted on the wind like a veil of softest finest linen upon the desert breeze.

And though the rock beneath his feet seared him, though the agony of standing so close to the scorching cliff wall was only exceeded by the agony of moving away from it, still Narbuc must stop and see.

The woman held her arms out to him, beckoning: Come.

And Narbuc would not. For nearly a moonturn his ears had been fed upon tales of Demons who sought the lives of the Isvaieni, and he was no boy, too young to have heard every tale from The Book of the Light told over by the storysinger of the tribe. Narbuc was a man grown, and more than grown, and had heard every word of The Book of the Light spoken out not once, but three times: the great tales and the small ones. And he knew well what creature it was that could steal a man's will with a spell, that could take the shape of a woman yet stand upon the surface of burning stone as though she tarried in a garden of fountains and flowers.

And despite the knowing that he looked upon that which his grandsires uncounted generations removed had fought to send from the world forever, Narbuc still felt within himself the yearning to do that which the Demon desired: to walk out into that lake of death to gain the touch of her hand. He pressed himself against the wall behind him until the pain of burning threatened to overwhelm his senses, but at least that pain was enough to scour the other compulsion from his heart.

Seeing that he would not come to her, the Demon-woman lowered her arms and began to walk slowly toward him. Small puffs of flame flashed up from the burning stone each time she set her foot upon it, and as she walked, she smiled upon Narbuc — fondly, as a mother might smile upon an errant child.

His tears dried in his eyes just as the sweat had dried upon his skin, leaving behind only a stinging pain. Narbuc could not flee: the walls of the caldera were too steep to climb quickly — if they could be climbed at all — and the heat and the foul air leached more strength from him with each heartbeat. In a hundred heartbeats — no more — she would be able to reach out and lay her fingers upon his skin, and Narbuc knew not what would happen then. There was only one thing he might do to save himself.

With shaking fingers from which thick drying blood oozed, Narbuc scrabbled at his waist-sash. There, tied and knotted and folded into its wrappings, was his geschak in its sheath of leather and bone. Its brass-and-bone hilt seared his hand as he drew it, as if he clutched a bar of forging iron, but Narbuc did not care.

She was barely a dozen paces away when he pressed the sharpness of the blade against his neck and jerked the knife sharply across his own throat.

#

In the years that had passed since he first came here to the Lake of Fire, Bisochim had cast many spells. Spells to bring an inexhaustible supply of sweet water up from the deep rock, spells to transform the ungiving clay of Telinchechitl into fertile earth upon which he could set thousands of hectares of garden and orchard, spells to gather grains of sand from the wind and transform it to stone, and turn that stone into the vast fortress of his home. Within his fortress there were workrooms for his study and chambers for his meditation, places in which he had formed his stone servants and then enchanted them into life. To live the life of perfect ease his hours of arduous study demanded required spell upon spell to wrest paradise from the hostile furnace of the Barahileth. Many of those spells Bisochim had cast wherever he had happened to be standing, for — possessed of Saravasse's inexhaustible store of magic to draw upon — Bisochim's spellcraft was limited only by the focus of his will.

Yet even with all the power of a dragon at his command, there were some operations so delicate that even in the midst of such isolation, they required a place of extraordinary seclusion and quiet. For such workings as these, Bisochim retreated to the black glass chamber.

Even Bisochim did not know how deep beneath the desert sands it lay. It was not a place he had crafted, but a place he had found — a perfect dome of black glass trapped within long-cooled rock. It had, he thought, been ancient when all the Barahileth was as molten as the Lake of Fire was now. He had made only three changes to fit it for his work. He had opened the passage that led, by a long narrow stair, to the lowest chamber of his fortress. He had smoothed the floor of the chamber into evenness. And he had called up a spring of water from the deep earth. The water of the spring was still and black and colder than the wind of the high skies at desert midnight, and it served no purpose but his magic. When he came here, the chamber was lit by a ball of Coldfire, its burning blue radiance making the deep cracks within the glass walls glint and shine. It was as cold as the sands above were hot. Its temperature never changed.

It was in this place that Bisochim listened for the voices in the fire, those faint whispering intimations of intelligence that had goaded him and guided him for so many long years. It was here that Bisochim sought, in dream-visions and scrying-spells, a way to avert the future he saw so clearly, the future that ended in death for the Isvaieni upon the blades of an invading army. It was his desire to protect his people that had led him to go among them to propose the Great Ingathering, but knowing that his brethren were a people both strong and proud, Bisochim had known that speaking to them of safety and retreat would not gain him their cooperation. Thus it was that he had spun them his tale of an invasion of the Isvai that was scant moonturns away, and of his desire, not to protect them, but to forge them into an army to destroy those who believed the lies told for so many years, that the Balance of all things was the Balance in truth, and need not be corrected.

In his heart Bisochim had always hoped it would not come to war. If he could only complete the work of his life, and set the Balance to rights, no one could undo what he had done. But he had found that a people who had roamed the trackless desert sands in utter freedom could not be peacefully gathered into one place to loiter in idleness, and so Bisochim set the young hunters of all the tribes to search for the Nalzindar, the only tribe which had not joined in the Great Ingathering. He had hoped by this means to accustom them by degrees to a quiet life living close beside one another. It would not have to endure for long. His work was nearly done.

But when the young hunters whom he had sent forth returned half a year later, having left thousands of their number dead behind them upon the sand, Bisochim knew two things, and the knowledge bound his heart like iron bands. The first thing he knew was that he had woven his tale too well: he had made Zanattar and the other young hunters greedy for war. They had seized upon a chance pretext to craft themselves into an army which fell upon the Iteru-cities like a starving pack of fenerec upon a fat flock of sheep.

And the second thing Bisochim knew was that what he had thought and hoped was merely a tale to serve his ends was not. He had long known that the Light would seek to stop him from turning the Balance from False to True, for he meant to return Darkness to the world. What was Light without Darkness, or a Balance without that which it balanced? It was nothing more than an empty mockery of that which it once had been. Yet any creature — any force — would seek to defend itself when it was threatened, and so Bisochim had known that the closer he came to the day of his victory, the closer would come the day that the Light would set huntsmen upon his tracks.

But six sennights ago the first of his Isvaieni returned, and the tales that came with them were terrible enough. Nine cities did Zanattar and his army shatter with their might as a thrown stone might shatter a clay pot. Upon the tenth they were nearly broken themselves before they rose up to seize their bloody victory. Those who returned to Telinchechitl spoke of a city defended by magic and of a child who fought as a Demon in a fashion no man had ever seen before a hail of slingstones brought him down. A moonturn later Zanattar returned, to tell of the spoils of war snatched from their grasp, and the rear guard of the army routed, when a dragon came to the rescue of his Mage.

Where there was one Dragonbond Mage, there would be more. Bisochim's power was great, but it could not stand against the power of all the Armies of the Light. Bisochim knew his only hope now to complete his work was to do so before those armies discovered Telinchechitl. For many years he had known what that work must be. To call Darkness back into the world into a form of flesh that he would craft to house it — and then to trap that fleshly form in spells of stasis and stone. Thus Darkness would be returned to the world — but safely. Powerless.

There might be a moonturn at best to accomplish a work for which he had hoped to have another full wheel of the seasons.

The spells that he must cast if his plan were to succeed were complex and delicate. First the flesh-form must be created — a body identical in every way to one birthed by any woman and raised to adulthood through many wheels of seasons. Next he must summon the Elemental Spirit of Darkness to inhabit it and bind the spirit to its fleshy form. Either spell alone would be the masterwork of an Elven Mage, the capstone of a lifetime of study. Bisochim must not only prepare and cast both, but he must cast them as closely together as two heartbeats, for he could only leave the flesh-form untenanted for the space of half a hundred heartbeats before it would be unfit for habitation. And having cast those two spells, he must cast a third, and a fourth, or else he would have done nothing more than released Darkness into the world again, unchained.

"Are you prepared to do all I shall command of you?" he asked his companion.

Until he had brought the Isvaieni across the Barahileth's desolation, no mortal eyes but Bisochim's had gazed upon Telinchechitl in uncounted millennia. And it was no man who stood beside him now. Though the creature bore mortal seeming, its form was as changeable as fire, for the Cliffs of Telinchechitl sheltered one of the ancient Places of Power, one of the last that had not been lost or Tainted through the centuries. Once it had been one of the Nine Shrines sacred to the Firesprites, and because of that, Bisochim had conjured up the Firecrown from the ancient echo of the Great Power which had held the Firesprites in its keeping. Though this creature was merely a shadow of the true Firecrown, even the shadow of a god could wield power sufficient to destroy nearly every enemy who walked beneath the sun. That it had failed to destroy his enemies when Bisochim had set it against them was explained now, for the power of a Dragonbond Mage would allow him to avoid the battle he might well lose.

"You summoned me up from the darkness and sent me forth into the world. Now you have summoned me home as attendant and witness to that which is your great purpose. Be certain that I stand ready to do all that is needed," the Firecrown replied.

"Then that is sufficient," Bisochim said, nodding.

The creature he meant to summon was no Dragonbond Mage, and he was confident of the Firecrown's ability to withstand it, should there be need. But in the first moments after its enchantment into its prison of flesh, it should be pliable, amenable to his commands. It would grant him the boon for which he had toiled. And should it prove recalcitrant, the Firecrown's power would bring it quickly to heel. But Bisochim was certain there would be no difficulty. The voices in the fire to which he had listened for so long had promised him both that this was the way to restore the true rightness of the Balance, and to gain life for Saravasse, for a dragon's years were bound to those of its Mage, and it was cruelly unfair that his dearest beloved should end her life in a brief span of decades merely because Isvaieni years were brief. The Darkness he would summon and bind would grant him immortality to match its own, and then he would chain it forever.

He began, as he had for so many years, by attuning himself to the voices in the fire. Once Bisochim had needed to strain to hear them, wondering all the while if his mind deceived him. Later he had needed to guard himself against their subtle trickery. At last he had won mastery over them, and they had become his guides.

He was not certain whether it was his own fear that the time he had to complete his work had grown impossibly short, or that the voices wished to communicate some warning of their own, but today he sensed an urgency in them which had never been present before. The chorus of ethereal voices filled his mind until he could no longer hear his own breath, his own heartbeat, saying in a thousand different ways: hurry, hurry, hurry...

The danger was great. If he called the Spirit of Darkness to a form into which he could not bind it — one that was too weak to hold it, or that had ceased to live before the spirit came to tenant it — he would merely have loosed the creature upon the world in its Elemental form, and he would be unable to Bind it. It would go free to wander the land like some terrible plague, unable to truly claim a body for its own, but destroying hundreds — thousands — in its attempts to try. Yet if his work remained undone when his enemies reached Telinchechitl, the long labor of years would all be for nothing, and centuries of destruction and error might pass before another was called, as he had been, to this holy purpose.

Bisochim did not let himself think of that possibility further. To imagine a thing was to call it into being: this was a lesson he had learned long before the Three Books had come into his hands.

One more test.

He spread his hands wide, palms down, above the black glass floor. He concentrated, summoning the intricate pattern of the spell within his mind, drawing upon Saravasse's power as he did so. Any Wildmage could Call Fire out of nothingness, Coldfire out of darkness, water from the desert sands, winds from the sky. With the power of a dragon to call upon, Bisochim could do far more. A pale fog began to shimmer over the black stone, as if he merely summoned a ball of Coldfire. But it did not begin to glow, or to rise from the stone. Instead it became thicker and more opaque, and as it did, it coalesced from an amorphous blob of mist into something vaguely man-shaped.

Perhaps a hundred heartbeats passed as Bisochim poured power into his spell of Making, his brow furrowed with fierce concentration. The mist darkened, took on the warm hues of living flesh. At last the spell was complete. Lying upon the stone, looking as if she merely slept, was a woman who might have drunk kaffeyah unnoticed in any of the tents on the plains above. Her skin was the pale amber of wild honey, and her hair was as black and shining as the stone upon which she lay. She was perfect in every detail. All she lacked was the spark of life...

As he stood regarding his creation, the moments ticked past. Too late, too late, too late, whispered the voices in his mind. Begin the Spell of Calling now, and by the time it was cast, the conjured body would not hold the spirit. But all was well. This had only been a test. The last one. With a wave of his hand he unmade the unmoving and imperceptibly-rotting form at his feet, unbinding it into the essential elements of its creation. A puff of air, a flare of heat, and a pool of water that lay glistening upon the rock — to unmake a thing was far easier than to make it.

He drew a deep breath, suddenly as nervous as a boy about to embark upon his first hunt. No more practice. No more tests. The chain of spells must be cast now. When his work was complete, the Isvaieni could scatter. Bisochim would go in search of his enemy to announce his victory. Then — when they understood that further battle was useless — his task would at last be complete.

Once more he stretched out his hands above the stone. Once more the beautiful lifeless form of an Isvaieni woman appeared out of mist. And then, in the very instant its flesh coalesced, he began the spell he had never been able to practice in its entirety — the delicate dangerous conjuration that would embody the Darkness Itself in a living — all-but-mortal — form. The voices in the fire wailed in his ears as never before, as if they wished to give voice to the triumph he should feel at his long-deferred success. Bisochim did not acknowledge them, for he could not spare anything from his concentration upon the spell. Celebration would come later.

As much as he wished to hurry, he dared not. Each unvoiced word, each mental image, each imagined gesture, must be absolutely precise, or the spell itself would fail — or complete itself in some unimaginably disastrous fashion. He dared not even take a portion of his attention away from his conjuration to consider how much time had passed since he had begun, or to pray that his original calculations had been correct. All he could do was continue.

Bisochim had spent years of his life journeying as a spirit through the realms of What Once Was, seeking the answers to his questions. The mortal senses of men were not equipped to sense all he found there, and so it was as if one thing became another, until it had become something he might understand. So it was now, as Bisochim sensed the Planes of Manifestation turn upon one another like the rings of a puzzle-box, until a gap between one and the next was formed through the power of his Calling...

...and the Elemental Spirit of Darkness slipped free.

But to free it was not enough: he must bind it, not once, but three times: once into flesh, next into an eternal spell of unchanging sleep, last of all into a prison forged from the living rock, so that it could neither escape its prison of flesh, nor be freed by any other. He had kept the knowledge of the spells of stone and sleep from the voices in the fire, and they had sworn to him that he would have their assistance for the spell of flesh. And so it was, for not even a heartbeat passed between the moment when the Spirit of Darkness crossed the last of the Planes of Manifestation across which Bisochim had summoned it and the moment that the woman on the stones drew her first breath. It was the work of an instant to cast the single spell of all the spells he must cast this day that he had been able to prepare in advance, and Bind Elemental Spirit fast to now-living flesh.

She rose gracefully to her feet and shook out her long flowing hair.

"I have given you form, as I promised your masters I would do, and it is for you to grant the payment that I will name for the service I have rendered," Bisochim said harshly. Immortality would be his: the voices in the fire had told him that gift would be within the spirit's power to grant. His immortality would gain immortality for Saravasse as well.

The woman laughed.

Her laughter, wild and cold, rang from the walls of the black glass chamber, and when she met his eyes, Bisochim saw with a thrill of disquiet that they were not black, as he had expected them to be, but bright hawk-gold. Her lips curved in a mocking smile.

"It is I who will choose the coin of your payment, Wildmage, not you. Foolish creature of clay — did you truly think that you could presume to call Ahairan to you as if she were your hound and then chain her up once she had done your bidding? You are fortunate that I do not strike the life from your body in this instant."

The fire-voices sang a mocking song of triumph, and Bisochim suddenly knew that he had been betrayed.

The voices in the fire had meant him for their tool, to free the Darkness, not chain it. Yet he had been Isvaieni before he became Wildmage, and Wildmage long before he became the voices' pawn. The spells of Sleep and Stone were knowledge he had kept from them. He raised his hand to send the creature that had named itself Ahairan into the spell-fed sleep from which there would be no awakening.

But before he could cast his spell, he fell to his knees crying out in agony. Every nerve and sinew in his body had kindled into fire, and it was all that he could do to keep from crying out in agony. "Aid... me..." he gasped, looking toward the Firecrown.

"Oh, Wildmage, you are a fool." Ahairan knelt before him, gazing into his eyes, and try as he might, Bisochim could neither look away nor raise his hand against her. "I was born in fire, and fire knows its own. The names of those who once called upon the Firecrown are no longer known. Their songs and dances are not remembered. The Children of Water have taken all of their places, and you have made of Holy Fire a thing you kill a thousand times a day with air and with water. The Dark killed all the Children of Stars even as they begged for the aid of their god — the Firecrown did nothing to save its own children, yet you, you, are the people Great Firecrown will aid?" She laughed softly. Her breath was as hot as the desert wind and smelled of burning stone, and her hair was no longer true black — if it ever had been — but shone with highlights of deep gold and red. "No, Wildmage. Do not look to the Firecrown for help."

She rose to her feet and stepped away and — just as suddenly as it had come — the pain was gone.

"I was willing to allow you to spread Darkness across the land at my side. Not only immortality, Wildmage — for both you and your pet — but power such as even the Kings of Men have never dreamed of. You should have worshipped me for my beauty. Instead, you chose to demand payment — I should strike you dead for such insolence! But I shall give you one more chance to freely yield yourself to me. Beneath my hand, you shall gain such knowledge as you have not yet imagined."

When she had released Bisochim from the fire in his bones, weakness had taken its place, but now horror at her words lent him strength. If he had summoned Darkness back into the world, he could at least deny it a body with which to breed up a new race of monsters. Once more he summoned up the Spell of Unmaking, and swept it toward Ahairan's golden body.

It had no effect.

Ahairan laughed as she ran soft hands over her breasts and down her thighs. "Wildmage, truly you are twice a fool! No spell a Wildmage may cast can slay me now that I have been given form."

"Destroy her!" Bisochim said to the Firecrown. "I command it!"

"How shall you command without understanding?" the Firecrown answered. "And yet I say this to you: that which you first asked of me is not yet complete."

Once more Ahairan's mocking laughter rang out, and then she was gone, running lightly from the chamber toward the narrow doorway — darkness opening into darkness — that led to the narrow spiraling flight of stairs. She was chained in flesh, trapped in a single form, but that was the only curb upon her power — and with time she might find some way to defeat that limitation as well.

Staggering with weakness, Bisochim forced himself to his feet. He leaned heavily against the wall of the chamber, shuddering at the unnatural chill of the stone. The enormity of what he had done was like a terrible wound — one he dared not yet acknowledge. For more than half his life he had been working toward this moment. He had meant to set the Balance right by returning Darkness to the world. Now that he had succeeded, he knew he had committed a crime more terrible than he could begin to imagine. He had not set the Balance right. He had destroyed it.

But if he could not unmake Ahairan, he could at least destroy his unruly servant. To unbind an Elemental Force would be more difficult than to unbind a mere form of flesh, but he would find the strength. He looked toward the Firecrown and raised one trembling hand.

"You must look to your people," the Firecrown said.

And then, without moving a step, the creature simply vanished.

#

The ascent was a long one, and by the time Bisochim had ascended the stairs to the surface, weariness had layered itself upon exhaustion and shock until only desperation drove him onward. He had been betrayed on every side — by those he had been arrogant enough to think he had tamed into becoming his allies, by the servant he had crafted from the magic of the Lake of Fire itself. He knew not what he could do to atone for his terrible offense — against the Wild Magic, against the Light, against all the Peoples of the Light. Death would be too quick and too kind, and he would take with him the one stainless innocent creature whose life he had begun this madness hoping to save.

Saravasse.

She had begged him a thousand times to turn away from this quest for knowledge, and he had refused. She had grown cold and silent and distant, and Bisochim had told himself that when he had secured immortality for her he would have centuries to win back her love. Instead, he had secured nothing but her hatred, and the hatred of every living creature, all through his arrogance and pride. Bisochim, greatest of the Blue Robes! He had drunk so deeply of their praise in the years of his youth that he had poisoned himself with it.

He hardly knew where he walked — only that he climbed up, and up, and up — until he found himself stepping out into the sunlight. He was standing upon one of the terraces of his palace — his spirit cringed, hearing his own thoughts, for what use did an Isvaieni have for a great stone palace? — overlooking the vast gardens he had created on the plains of Telinchechitl. Once he had turned the waste of salt and ishnain into a garden simply because he could. Later, he'd had cause to be grateful that the thousands of hectares of orchards and grasslands were there as a refuge for his Isvaieni.

He groaned aloud. They were not his. They were their own. He had been poisoned by the words of Demons and fed the desertfolk upon the bread of lies. He had made each one of them murderers a hundred times over, and bathed them in innocent blood. How could he go before the Ummarai, the chaharums, and say to them that he had lied? That he had cloaked his arrogance in words of concern for their safety, used the Wild Magic to steal their judgment, made their children into bandits and killers, and destroyed their future?

His mind was still filled with the magnitude of his betrayal when he reached the edge of the terrace. He gazed out over the Plains of Telinchechitl, his thoughts still hazy with the enormity of the treason for which he had been the instrument. He could not imagine what he must do next. But what Bisochim saw when he looked down stopped the breath in his throat.

It was nearly midday, and all the Isvaieni should be within their tents, resting through the time of greatest heat. But from his vantage point, he could see movement beneath the trees. The people were coming forth from every tent. Elders carried small children. Mothers carried babies. All moved toward the cliffs with silent and deliberate purpose. For several moments, Bisochim could only watch in disbelief. At first, the only thought within Bisochim's mind was that they must be coming to exact justice for what he had done. He did not know how they could know of it, but the weight of his guilt was a crushing thing, too overwhelming to permit clear thought.

Then he saw Her.

She was at the very base of the cliff, seated upon a shotor such as had never been foaled, for its coat was as black as a jarrari's carapace. Its saddle and lead-rope were not such as any of the Isvaieni would ever use, for the saddle gleamed with beaten gold, and the lead rope was of silk as red as blood. It was the same color as the billowing desert robes she wore — thin scarlet silk that the hot winds molded against the sinuous curves of her slim body. She looked up toward him, and he saw her white teeth flash in a smile of mocking triumph. 'Oh, Wildmage, you are a fool.' It almost seemed to Bisochim that he could hear her voice whispering within his mind, just as the voices in the fire had whispered for so very long, and in that moment he truly began to understand the full horror of what he had done.

He had brought Darkness back into the world, and clothed it in flesh.

In The Time of Legend, a race called the Endarkened had wielded the powers of Darkness, and the Peoples of the Light had named them "Demons." They had been what Ahairan's descendents might yet become: Elemental Darkness fused perfectly to living flesh, not merely bound within it, as she was. In their time, the Endarkened had taken their sorcerous power from blood and pain and death: in his journeys upon the spirit-roads of What Once Was, Bisochim had seen horrors enough that he had taken great care to render the Spirit of Elemental Darkness that he would summon into the world weak and helpless.

He had failed.

And now Ahairan meant to feed, just as the Endarkened once had fed. The Isvaieni were not coming to seek him out. They were coming — at Ahairan's summoning — to ascend the steps that led to the Lake of Fire and cast themselves into it.

He must stop them.

Since he had first chosen to set aside the Blue Robes of the Wildmage and live a life of solitude and secrets, Bisochim had known the spells that could overshadow the minds of men and women. Until he had compelled the Ummarai to lead the tribes to Telinchechitl, the only purpose he had used them for was to allow himself to pass unquestioned in a land where the presence of any stranger aroused suspicion. And because The Book of Stars said 'that which harms can also heal,' those same spells could restore free will to one from whom it had been stolen. He gathered his strength, he drew upon Saravasse's power, and he cast the spell that would free the Isvaieni from their malign enchantment.

Nothing happened.

They did not falter by so much as one footstep in their inexorable progress toward the staircase.

Again Bisochim cast the same spell — to no effect — and then he tried every other spell he could think of that might serve. Spells that would drive illusion from the mind. Spells that would drive fear from the heart. Spells to permit clear-seeing. Spells to steal the strength from the limbs, so that the vast column of advancing Isvaieni would fall down where they stood. Spells to cast them into sleep. Spells to steal their will a second time and force them to his will as Ahairan had forced them to hers. He drove himself to the edge of exhaustion.

And nothing worked.

Soon the first of them would reach the stair and begin to climb, and behind that one, five and ten and twenty and fifty — thousands to climb the hundreds of steps that led to the lip of the caldera, and there, to cast themselves down into the lake of molten rock within. There was only one thing left for him to do.

Grain by grain, sand had become stone had become steps and floors and walls. Magic did not bind it, any more than magic bound any dwelling-place of quarried stone. But magic could unbind it. He reached out with his mind and Set the Spell of Unmaking as he had once set a dozen spells to make and shape and bind. The wall beneath his fingertips softened, shifted, began to dissolve. He stepped back from the edge of the terrace as it crumbled into sand and blew away.

Behind him, around him, all that was stone returned to sand — slowly at first, then faster as the working of the spell gained momentum. The lower half of the staircase cascaded downward with a soft hiss, what had been steps and balustrades pouring outward onto the grass below like spilled grain. The water of a hundred fountains sprayed wildly into the air as their fountains and conduits and channels dissolved around them. The palace that had held a thousand rooms hissed and slid away down the side of the cliff, carrying upon its wave of sand chests, carpets, draperies — everything it held that was not made of stone. In moments, the fortress that had been poised near the top of the black cliff was no more than an inexorable spill of sand sliding down its face.

Yet Bisochim survived. He had been born to the tents of the Adanate Isvaieni, a tribe of the deep desert, and the Adanate well understood the natural hazards in making their way across the soft and shifting face of the great dune sea, where an unwary misstep might bury a man — or a string of shotors — beneath the sand in instants. It had been many years since Bisochim had needed the skills to keep his footing atop an uncertain surface of constantly moving sand, but his body had not forgotten them. Almost without thought, he rode the flowing cascade of sand earthward, walking back up against the rushing tide of sand to keep himself from being buried beneath it. And when the rush of sand slowed, Bisochim stood upon the apex of the great dune and gazed about himself.

The air was thick with dust swirled upon the wind, and the sand sprayed outward in every direction from the central dune as if it were a carelessly-dropped bag of meal. If he had hoped to bury Ahairan beneath the sand-spill, Bisochim was disappointed. She still sat upon her shotor a score of trayas away, still smiling her feral terrible smile. The Isvaieni still advanced. And Ahairan looked from the advancing Isvaieni toward the cliff and nodded, as if in satisfaction, and Bisochim could not help but look behind himself.

In building his fortress, Bisochim had done more than craft a stronghold of stone and seal it to the cliff-face. He had built it into the cliff itself, digging down deep below the surface of the earth. Behind him he could see the flat sheered places on the cliff wall where the fortress had rested ... and the bright-shining cracks in the stone through which fire would soon begin to seep. Worse, only the bottom of the staircase had been dissolved away by his spell. The top half was cut into the cliff itself. Though it would be more difficult for the Isvaieni to reach it now, it would not be impossible — especially if Ahairan chose to aid them by turning sand to steps once more.

She met his eyes in triumph, and Bisochim did not look away. He raised his hand, as if plucking a naranje from its tree, and instead he plucked lightning from the cloudless sky. Three times it struck the outer wall of the caldera, and when the brightness of the last bolt had faded from the air, the upper staircase was gone.

The stone glowed with heat. It creaked and groaned as it cooled, for the force of the lightning bolts Bisochim had unleashed against the stone had cracked and weakened it where it was already fragile, and as he watched, the upper edge of the rim crumbled inward and the stone began to crack. But he had expected that, and he was far from finished. Once more he reached into the sky.

The spells he had cast scant hours ago had required utmost delicacy. This one required nothing but force and power — but those things a Dragonbond Wildmage had to the last beat of his heart. For long moments, as the cliffs of Telinchechitl moaned and keened above him, nothing happened. Then — softly at first, then with increasing force — a wind rose, cold as no wind in the furnace of the Barahileth ever was. The sky began to boil with dark clouds scudding westward, southward, eastward, until in moments the bright day turned dim. There was a dangerous rumble of thunder, a bright flash of light in the sky, and then came something that had never been seen in the Barahileth in all its tens of thousands of years of existence.

Rain.

#



CHAPTER TWO: BETWEEN SAND AND STAR

The southern stars were far brighter than the stars of home, but Harrier missed the familiar constellations: the Steersman, and the Dragon's Tail, and the Three Wildmages. At least Pelashia's Veil was still visible, though it was in the wrong place in the sky and the wrong color: too bright and too white. He remembered years ago, when Tiercel had told him that a long time ago Pelashia's Veil had been called The Unicorn's Road and Harrier had hit him because he'd been nine and Tiercel had been seven and a half and Harrier had known even then that unicorns ran on the ground, not up in the sky.

He'd never thought he'd ever see one. But now he'd not only seen a unicorn, he'd talked to one, yelled at one, and now was preparing to summon her here by magic.

Calling Kareta and demanding answers from her was the only thing Harrier could think of to try. It had been four days since Ancaladar had vanished, and while Harrier was incredibly grateful that Tiercel was still alive — since everything either of them knew about the Dragonbond said that severing it meant instant death for both dragon and Mage — the fact remained that Tiercel's survival made no sense. Either Ancaladar was dead — which meant Tiercel should be dead too — or Ancaladar was alive, which meant Tiercel should know where he was and be able to call on his magic.

Harrier shivered, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. It was freezing out here. Deserts, in his opinion, were one of the stupidest places the Eternal Light had ever created, and the idea of putting a city right in the middle of the most desert-y part of the desert was even stupider. Why would anybody — even ancient Elves — want to build a city in a place that was hot enough to boil water at noon and cold enough to turn it to ice at midnight on the same day? But they had, and according to Tiercel, this part of the Isvai had always been a desert. It had been one before the Great Flowering, after the Great Flowering ... in fact, Abi'Abadshar had been built back when all there'd been was Elves and their dragons.

And the Endarkened, of course. Which were not supposed to be a problem any more, because the Blessed Saint Idalia had killed the Queen of the Endarkened and Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy had killed the Prince of the Endarkened and the Shadow was supposed to be gone for good. Only it wasn't, and now Tiercel was supposed to stop it, only he couldn't do that without being able to cast any spells, could he?

And that was why Harrier was out here freezing his ass off, because at least if they could figure out where Ancaladar was, maybe they could go and get him before Tiercel had to go off to the Lake of Fire and. . .

Even in his mind Harrier refused to finish that sentence, because he knew damned well how it ended. With a sigh, he opened his rucksack, spread a cloth on the ground, and began assembling what he'd need to cast his spell. Summoning and Binding (there was a spell for that in The Book of Sun) because he knew Kareta, and he knew she wasn't going to want to be helpful, so wherever she was, he was going to drag her here by the glowing scruff of her pretty little unicorn neck and make her be useful for once in her empty-headed life.

One of the things in his bag was his Three Books — the Three Books every Wildmage received at the moment the Wild Magic chose them. Kareta was the one who'd brought Harrier his, and she'd never said where she'd gotten them, or how she'd known to bring them to him, or how she'd found him at all. He hesitated over them for a moment, then left them in the bag. He didn't need them to perform the spell. He'd already memorized what he needed to do.

When Harrier was growing up in Armethalieh, Wildmages had been the stuff of Flowering Festival plays. Real Wildmages kept themselves hidden, and you might go your whole life without meeting one, or at least without knowing that you had. Certainly some of his and Tiercel's age-mates had mooned over the possibility of being granted the Three Books, but Harrier had never wanted to be a Wildmage. He hadn't even wanted to be one at the moment he was holding the Three Books in his hands and Kareta was telling him he wasn't just a Wildmage, but a Knight-Mage, that rarest of Wildmages, only called by the Wild Magic in times of great danger and peril.

Yeah, right, Harrier muttered to himself. That's one honor I could do without. Because the more he found out about magic, the creepier it was.

Take the Three Books. The first time he'd looked into them, the ingredients for the Scrying Spell had been simple: fern leaf and red wine, and a silly little rhyme that reminded him of the fortunes baked into Flowering Festival luck-sweets. But when Tiercel had talked him into doing the Scrying Spell in Tarnatha'Iteru, and he'd checked the spell, the rhyme hadn't changed, but the ingredients had: now the Book called for desert lily and date wine. The thought of the Books rewriting themselves to adapt to wherever he happened to be somehow bothered Harrier more than the fact that he could do spells at all. He wondered — if he'd happened to have fern leaf and red wine with him in Tarnatha'Iteru — if the spell wouldn't have changed, or if the spells changed automatically depending on where you were, the way a compass-needle always pointed north. He probably wasn't ever going to get a chance to find out.

There was really no point in delaying any longer. He set out his makeshift brazier, drew his geschak — it was the knife all the Isvaieni carried — and scratched two circles in the sun-hardened clay: one for himself, one for Kareta. Once he'd set his spell, once she'd come and been forced inside the circle, she wouldn't be able to leave until he'd given her permission.

With a flick of his fingers, he Called Fire and lit the charcoal in the bowl. The bowl was solid gold, worth more than a new Deep Ocean Trader, and older than all the Nine Cities stacked on top of each other. The Nalzindar had no particular use for gold, and Shaiara had told him that something that heavy was useless if you were making up a pack for desert travel. The catacombs beneath Abi'Abadshar were full of things like this, and at least something this heavy wouldn't tip over or be blown away, so Harrier found it useful.

All there was to do now was set the spell. Mandrake and mushroom (the Nalzindar called them stonefruit, and they were poisonous, so Harrier handled them with care), some of the bright red cherrylike berries that neither he nor Marap had a name for (but which were also poisonous), a few other plants, a lock of his hair, a few drops of wine, a few drops of his blood, and his intent, and Kareta would be both Summoned and Bound until she'd done his will.

He picked up the first item, hesitated, and sighed. He couldn't do it. Not even if it was the only way to help Tiercel. Kareta was his friend. She was incredibly annoying, but she'd never done him any actual harm, and she was a unicorn. A creature of the Light. If he did something like this to her...

...well, he guessed he'd be just as bad as that Tainted Wildmage they were trying to kill. Only then they'd have to call him the other Tainted Wildmage, because Harrier guessed it would only be a matter of time before he'd be sending armies of crazy people to go kill cities full of innocent bystanders too.

He dropped the mandrake root back on the cloth he'd spread out and thought for several minutes. He still needed help — Tiercel needed help — and he couldn't think of anyone else he could ask who might have the answers. So he wouldn't force Kareta to come to talk to him. But it wouldn't hurt to ask her if she would.

A Summoning Spell was easy — oilbark, naranje rind, and leaf of desert oak (Harrier thought he remembered that it had used to be three leaves: oak, ash, and thorn, and quickly put the thought out of his mind) — three drops of his blood, and intent. It was actually easy enough to change the spell from an outright summons to more of a request that Kareta could ignore if she wanted to, because so much of the Wild Magic was about intent (and whenever he tried to explain that to Tiercel, Tiercel just kept getting frustrated, because apparently nothing about the High Magick was about intent, any more than who Harrier's Ma intended to serve dinner to made a difference to how hot the oven ran). Of course, High Mages didn't have to spend all their time stabbing themselves either, and Harrier'd lost the good knife he'd had for doing only that and hadn't been able to replace it yet. The geschak was sharp enough, but awkward to use. Still, he managed to make a small nick in his forearm without cutting off his whole hand, blotted the cut with the leaf, rind, and bark, tossed the stuff into the brazier, formed his intent — Kareta, if you can hear me, if you want to come, I'd like to talk to you. It's important to me, but I'm only asking — and released the spell.

Then he scribbled over both circles with his boot — he wasn't sure whether that mattered or not, but it wouldn't hurt to do it — stuffed everything but the brazier back into his bag, wrapped a length of cloth around the cut in his arm, pulled his cloak tightly around him, and went over to sit on a nearby toppled-over ancient stone pillar.

He wasn't sure how long this was going to take.

#

The Preceptors of the Light who'd conducted Harrier's religious education had mentioned the Wild Magic, of course, but they'd never indicated that the it had any kind of a sense of humor, and Harrier thought that was a real lapse on their parts. Obviously, if the Wild Magic had decided to make him a Knight-Mage, it did. And there were a lot of things that really bothered him — a lot — about being a Wildmage, but there were a couple he liked. He'd always had a good sense of time even before he'd become a Knight-Mage, but now it was better than the most accurate clock. He could tell how much time had passed down to the tenth-chime — and exactly what time it was, even when he couldn't see the sun or the stars — just as he could tell exactly where he was, and where he'd been, and which way North was. Right now, sitting here, he could accurately point to the direction where the Mage City of Karahelanderialigor was, where Armethalieh was, and where Tarnatha'Iteru ... used to be.

He could also tell that it had been at least four hours — two bells — since he'd cast his spell. After the first hour, he'd finally gotten cold enough just sitting to go searching around the ruins until he found some mounds of shotor dung. The Nalzindar who lived in the city's underground warrens let their animals come up to the surface at dusk and dawn to forage, and the merciless desert sun baked the droppings to the dry hard consistency of wood. And like wood, they burned, with a low smokeless flame. It was the primary fuel used for cooking in the desert where there were no trees, and (therefore) no charcoal.

He knew Shaiara wouldn't like the thought of him lighting a fire here in the open. She'd been unhappy enough about his plan to spend several hours outside in the first place. Of course Harrier knew as well as she did that even the tiniest flame could be seen for miles in flat open country like this, and no matter how hard she tried to conceal it, he knew she was terrified of her tribe's hiding place being discovered by Bisochim and the rest of the Isvaieni. But unless they were searching by magic, they couldn't travel in the dark, and if they weren't using magic, he'd see their lights sooner than they'd see his.

And it had been more than half a year since what Shaiara called The Great Ingathering, and Harrier was fairly sure that the rest of the Isvaieni had stopped looking for the Nalzindar by now. Still, it didn't hurt to be cautious, so when he built his fire, he made sure to shelter it in a place where two fallen pillars formed a "V", and to block its small light with his body on the third side. There was no wind. The wind in the desert wouldn't rise until dawn, and whether Kareta had come or not, when the sun rose, Harrier would have to seek shelter then — so he was warm enough.

Every half hour he rose and stretched and loosened his muscles, and when he did so at the end of the fourth hour (eight hours after he'd cast his spell), he saw a spark of light in the distance. He hesitated, his hands going automatically to the pair of swords he wore on his back, the swords of a Selken Warrior. He watched for a second or two, then released them, tucking his hands back beneath his cloak again. The light was in the northeast, not the direction from which he was expecting trouble. He didn't look away again, though.

In the space of a chime, the light was close enough to have taken on color and shape — the golden figure of a running unicorn. Kareta. Harrier kicked and scrubbed at his little fire until the embers were quenched and buried in sand, then shrugged his rucksack up onto his shoulder and walked back to where he'd drawn his circles. The golden bowl was cold now, its contents burned to ash. He emptied it into a nearby stand of grass and dropped it into his bag, then walked across the desert to meet Kareta.

Even when she was close enough to make out every detail of her body — the gleaming spiral horn, the delicate cloven hooves, the soft golden fluff that covered her body — a unicorn's coat was more like a cat's fur than a horse's hide — the long lion-like tufted tail streaming out behind — he couldn't hear the sound of a single hoofbeat. She brought herself to a stop a few feet away and tossed her head, sides heaving.

"I hope you're going to offer me a drink?" she said.

Same old Kareta. "Right this way," Harrier answered.

When the Nalzindar had come to Abi'Abadshar, the first thing they'd discovered was an enormous spring-cistern at the entrance to the underground city, but that wasn't the only place in the city ruins where there was surface water. A couple of hundred yards from the steps that led down into the city (there had almost certainly been a building on top of it once, about a zillion kabillion years ago) there was the stump of a stone pillar set in a stone basin. The pillar had a hole in the center, and was always wet, and seeing that, the Nalzindar had dug away the sand at its base to discover and expose the stone bowl. No matter how much they feared discovery, it was deeply-ingrained in Shaiara and all her people that water was more than precious. It was nearly sacred, and when you found a water source, you did all that you could to leave it better than you found it. While the water the small fountain produced evaporated completely over the course of each day, by twilight water was already beginning to gather in the basin again, and by each midnight it was full.

Kareta lowered her head and drank thirstily, then raised her muzzle and shook herself, spraying Harrier with icy droplets. "There!" she said brightly. "That's better!"

"Not for me," Harrier grumbled, scrubbing his face with the back of his arm. He sighed. "Thank you for coming."

"You asked," Kareta pointed out. She stretched out her neck and sniffed eloquently at his rucksack, then recoiled and sneezed violently. Harrier didn't know if unicorns' noses were as sharp as their ears, but if they were, he was certain Kareta could smell the ingredients for the Summoning and Binding Spell. "This is a very disagreeable place — although it is nicely free of the wrong sort of people. You should leave."

"Right. Disagreeable how?" Harrier asked.

"Well, it's flat, and it's hot — during the day — and there's nothing much growing here anywhere, and there aren't any trees. . ." Kareta looked as if she were thinking the matter over carefully as she gazed up at him. Unicorns were much smaller than horses, so Harrier was actually taller than Kareta was. "But it isn't full of Taint, if that's what you're asking."

"I didn't think it was, but it's nice to have it confirmed," Harrier said.

"We unicorns know these things," Kareta said archly.

He glanced up toward the sky. The circle of faint stars that Ciniran had named to him as The Oasis was gone, and the morning star that the Nalzindar called abcha-awardan — Sheathed Sword — was as bright as fire. The sun would rise soon, but right now it was still dark, and he hadn't brought a lantern with him — or, as had become close to second nature for him these days, conjured a ball of Coldfire. He already knew where all the large rocks out here were, and any light would just have interfered with his night-sight. But Kareta had been glowing from the first moment he'd seen her and she still was. It made her look more like she belonged in the sky than like she belonged down here. So maybe those ancient guys who called Pelashia's Veil 'The Unicorn's Road' weren't so stupid after all.

"That's really terrific," Harrier said, "but that's not exactly what I want to know right now."

"You're carrying swords. Did—"

"Yes, I am, and yes, he did." From the moment Kareta had dropped the Three Books in his lap, she'd had exactly one thing on her mind: Harrier should find someone to train him in the warrior arts a Knight-Mage needed to master. Too bad when the Wild Magic had found him a teacher, nobody had specified anything about Harrier finishing his training or his teacher surviving to do it.

"Where is—"

"He's dead." And because Harrier just didn't think he could face having Kareta ask him any more questions (because the answer to so many of them would be: "they're dead") he gave her a quick summary of everything he and Tiercel had been doing since she'd left them. He tried to skip all the ugly-sounding parts, even if the story did end up not making a lot of sense that way.

"You've changed, you know," Kareta said seriously.

"I suppose so," he said, sighing. He really didn't want to think of all the ways in which he and Tiercel had changed since they'd left Armethalieh thinking they were just going to take a quick trip up to Sentarshadeen.

"You'll need to go soon," he said to Kareta. "I know you pretty much just got here, and you came a long way, but ... when the sun rises, it's going to get really hot, really fast. But I need to know—"

"Magic has rules," Kareta interrupted tartly. "Even the Wild Magic. I appreciate not being Summoned and Bound — though not as much as you'd have had cause to regret doing it — so I'll do anything I can, but you have to agree to pay."

"Yes — fine — all right," Harrier snapped. "Tell me what the MagePrice is so we can get on with this."

"I don't know what it is," Kareta said.

Harrier took a deep breath and forced himself to calculate the stowage capacity of an Out Islands hull that had been in service sixty years, regular maintenance, crew of eighteen and five passengers, making a three-legged trip between Bralkmy, Mirnadain, and Asturlin but taking on no new passengers, only cargo. When he was sure he wouldn't just try to strangle Kareta, he said: "Who does?"

"You do," Kareta said quietly.

"I'm sorry?" Harrier wasn't quite sure he'd heard her correctly.

"I'd thought about not coming at all, you know. If I hadn't, you wouldn't have incurred much of a MagePrice at all. But you've done enough studying of the Wild Magic to know there's always a spell-price, and normally the Wild Magic sets it. But since you cast so non-specific a spell, and let me choose whether or not to answer, you get to choose your Price. Either come away with me now, tonight, before sunrise, or later, at a time not of your choosing, you must give up the thing you most value in the world."

"Is there a third choice?" Harrier asked, because the first choice was unthinkable, and he really, really, really hated having something else — even if it was the Wild Magic — take his choices away from him.

"No," Kareta said, almost sadly. "The first choice or the second."

Harrier sighed. It wasn't as if he'd ever really believed he'd be leaving the Madiran again. What else could the Wild Magic mean his MagePrice to be but his life — or maybe Tiercel's life? And they'd already been planning to give them up anyway.

"The second," he said aloud, and felt the shivery sense of presence and listening that meant he'd just entered into a contract as binding as any his Da had ever witnessed at Dockside Armethalieh. He'd promised, and he wasn't sure what would happen if he changed his mind when the time came to pay his MagePrice: there were a lot of stories about Wildmages, and not much real information, and his Three Books contained lots of helpful advice on how to practice the Wild Magic well and exactly no threats about what would happen to you if you screwed up.

"All right," Harrier said levelly. "I've agreed to the MagePrice and so you have to help. Tell me where Ancaladar is and how I can get there. We need him back. Tiercel needs him."

"I know," Kareta answered. Harrier had seen her in a lot of different moods, including angry and embarrassed and actually scared, but he'd never seen her in a mood quite like this one. For the first time, he really believed that Kareta was what everybody had always said that unicorns were — wise and compassionate helpers of those lost and in danger. "I don't know where he is, Harrier. I know that Tiercel is still Bonded to him — I can sense that — but I can't sense Ancaladar anywhere at all. If I knew anything else — even a direction for you to start looking — I'd tell you. I don't. There isn't any point in casting a Seeking Spell. There's nothing to seek. At least you know that if the Bond is intact, Ancaladar is alive. Somewhere. And I'm sorry your MagePrice is so high for so little, but it is."

There was no point in getting angry at Kareta. When he'd accepted the MagePrice; she'd been bound by the Wild Magic just as much as he had. He knew she'd given him all the help she had to give. He'd hoped for more, but at least this was something. If Ancaladar was alive — anywhere — he'd come back to Tiercel if he possibly could. If he couldn't, well, the two of them would just have to figure out a way to start looking for him as soon as they could.

"You'd better go," he said. He could already feel the morning breeze picking up — the air was cold here, but a couple of thousand miles east the sun was already high in the sky, and that hot air was rolling toward them like an ocean wave, and it didn't cool by the time it got here, and ... that made wind. Some winds, anyway.

He put his arms around Kareta's neck to hug her goodbye. He hadn't gotten to say a proper goodbye to her the last time she'd left him, and, well, there wouldn't be a next one. "Take care of yourself. And try not to annoy anybody else as much as you've annoyed me, okay?"

Her horn pressed against his cheek for just a moment. It felt strangely cool. Then he released her and she stepped back.

"This is the last time I'll ever be able to do this," she said. "I can already tell. I—"

"— know these things," Harrier finished. :Yeah. You keep telling me that."

"You are a very stupid and annoying boy. If you think I was ever in the least fond of you — well I wasn't. At all. But do take care of Tiercel, because I've actually gotten quite fond of him," Kareta said, stamping her foot.

Before Harrier could decide what to say about that, Kareta turned away and began to run. Within moments she wasn't running, but bounding, the deerlike leaping gait that was the unicorn's fastest speed. Within less than a quarter-chime she was a tiny fleck of light in the distance again, and Harrier realized it wasn't really dark any longer. Dawn in two chimes, day in four, heat in six, unbearable heat by two hours from this moment. He should go inside.

On the other hand, how often did he get the chance to watch the sun come up these days? He went back, found his place on the chunk of stone that used to be part of a city about ten times older than Armethalieh, and settled down to wait.

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