The Phoenix Endangered (20 page)

“I woke everybody up,” Tiercel said tentatively.

Harrier made a rude sound that might have been laughter, and Kareta simply shuddered all over—possibly in sympathy to what Tiercel had seen in his dream; he couldn’t quite tell.

“I have been expecting this, Bonded,” Ancaladar said.

“You might have said something,” Harrier snarled, and went to build up the fire.

A few minutes later Tiercel was sitting with a cup of warmed cordial in his hands. He could tell by the way that the air felt that it was an hour or so before dawn; under the trees it was too dark to see. Slowly, haltingly, he told the details of what he had dreamed, but he knew that telling it couldn’t convey how it had
felt.

But there was one person here that he didn’t have to explain anything to. He and Ancaladar were Bonded, and Tiercel knew that meant Ancaladar had a certain amount of access, not only to everything he saw, but to his thoughts as well.

“You have a difficult task ahead of you, Bonded,” Ancaladar said quietly.

“Did you …?” Tiercel asked hopefully, but Ancaladar blinked slowly in denial.

“I did not recognize the place you see.”

“Wait—wait—wait—” Harrier sputtered. “You—He—Ancaladar could
see
what you were dreaming?”

He sounded outraged, Tiercel thought, as if Ancaladar
had been spying on him while he slept. Tiercel knew that Harrier had accepted his Bond with Ancaladar, and called Ancaladar a friend—something Harrier didn’t do either easily or lightly—but Tiercel didn’t think that Harrier really understood what the Dragonbond
was.

“Yes,” Ancaladar said simply.

“Fat lot of good it did,” Harrier said. He got up to get the tea-things.

“It did some good,” Ancaladar said. “I have seen, through my Bonded’s mind, the nature of the enemy which you face.”

“Dark magic,” Harrier said dismissively. “We knew that already.”

“Worse,” Ancaladar said, and Harrier stopped.

“Tell me how it can be worse than the Dark coming back,” he said tightly.

Ancaladar seemed to sigh. He stretched out his neck, so his chin rested on the ground beside Tiercel’s knee, and Tiercel shifted around until he could reach the place behind Ancaladar’s eye to stroke it gently.

“It is the way in which the Dark returns, Harrier. I will explain, if you like.”

“Oh, no,” Harrier said. “I’d much rather not know a thing about what we’re facing. Let me get dressed first.”

A few minutes later Harrier came back, dressed for the day. He made another cup of hot cordial for Tiercel, refilled the kettle and started the water brewing for tea, and set some dried fruit to soak for griddle-cakes. “Okay. Now. Ruin my day,” he invited.

“You have known for some time—as did the Elves since before Tiercel was born—that Darkness is returning to the world.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re actually going to
tell
us something?” Harrier said mockingly.

“Shut up, Har,” Tiercel answered affectionately.

“I just—” Harrier began, but Tiercel found a pebble on the ground and threw it at him, and Harrier broke off to dodge.

“Anybody would think you didn’t
want
to know what’s going on, you know,” Kareta said.

“Not if it’s bad,” Harrier said untruthfully.

“No one knew what form it would take,” Ancaladar continued imperturbably. “Or what form it
had
taken, for it was clear to the Elven Mages that the Darkness had begun its return to the world before Tiercel’s parents, even, had met.”

“Someday I’d like to know how they knew
that,”
Harrier interjected irrepressibly. Kareta shoved him with her shoulder.

“But there are many expressions of Darkness. Unfortunately, I now know which one you face.”

“Get to the point,” Harrier muttered, but quietly now.

“This magic, and its manifestation, is Demonic in nature,” Ancaladar finished. “I have seen the works of the Endarkened twice before, for though I would not Bond in the Great War, and spent most of its decades asleep and in hiding, still I knew much of what they did in that time. And I saw far more of their evil in the war that came after, the one which ended in the Great Flowering.”

Harrier sighed. “Yeah. About that. Ancaladar, it
can’t
be the Endarkened. The Blessed Saint Idalia destroyed all of them forever. That’s why the Great Flowering happened at all. I mean, I’m no Preceptor of the Light or anything, but… everyone’s always said so. The Endarkened are all dead. And even, I mean, the
real
Idalia … when we met her. She said she killed the Queen of the Endarkened, so … it
has
to be true.”

Tiercel looked down at his enormous friend, continuing to rub gently at the soft skin behind the eye socket. What Harrier said was nothing more nor less than what Tiercel had heard every Kindling when the story of the Great Flowering was retold: the Blessed Saint Idalia had destroyed all the Endarkened.

Ancaladar blinked again, slowly. “There’s destroyed, and then there’s destroyed. Yes, all the offspring of Shadow Mountain that were placed into the world thousands
of years ago by He Who Is were destroyed. If not at once, then soon thereafter. And no matter what the Endarkened themselves might have chosen to believe, they were never anything more than perversions of the Elves, as the Darkness cannot create, merely distort that which has been created. And yes, He Who Is was locked out of the world forever by Idalia’s willing sacrifice at the Place of Power and would never choose to meddle in the World of Form again even if he could: to have been defeated by time-bound creatures grates too heavily upon him. But so long as there is Life, it can be touched and twisted by the Elemental Quality of Darkness, because Darkness Itself is impossible to remove from the world. And that is what is happening here: the Darkness that is the essential nature of He Who Is and his creations touching Life once more to create a new race of Endarkened, identical to the original Endarkened only in intent.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Harrier complained, after thinking for a moment.

“No,” Tiercel said. “It does. The original Endarkened were made from Elves by He Who Is. And he’s locked out of the world, but he still exists, right?”

“Correct,” Ancaladar said.

“And the Endarkened are all gone, but the way they were made … it can be done again, right?”

“Nobody’s that stupid,” Harrier said. He thought for a moment. “And how could it be? Ancaladar said that He Who Is made the first set.”

“Yes …” Tiercel said slowly. “I think that’s why it’s taking so long. I think a
person
is trying to do it. Being tricked, somehow. I don’t know. But the Fire Woman …”

Despite himself he shuddered, and Harrier got up to drape an extra blanket around his shoulders. Even sitting next to Ancaladar’s radiant heat, Tiercel felt cold.

“… she must be the, well, the
piece
of Darkness. The thing that’s going to bring the Endarkened back if she gets what she wants.”

“But you said she wasn’t dark,” Harrier said plaintively.

“It’s lying,” Kareta said, sounding exasperated and stamping her hoof. “Leaf and Star, Harrier Gillain! If the thing looked like Darkness Personified, do you think it could fool even
you
for a moment?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to want to call back the Endarkened,” Harrier snapped, sounding cross. “So … now that we know that, what do we do?”

“I do not know,” Ancaladar said, sounding troubled. “My memory is long, and the histories of the Elves are longer, but this is something not contained in either. It is new, and so I cannot predict what you must do. It is why, you know, no one wished to tell you their thoughts and suspicions. You would have made plans to fight the old, and you do not face the old.”

Harrier sighed, and stared up at the trees. “Fine. Great. So we’ve got a lot of new information that isn’t really useful right now. I’m going to make breakfast.”

After they’d eaten, Harrier tried one last time to convince Kareta to return to the Elven Lands. He had as little success as he’d had the previous night. He gave up. If unicorns could go into battle against the Endarkened a thousand years ago, he supposed one unicorn could take care of herself now.

Eight

On the Shore of the Lake of Fire

E
VEN BEFORE THE
Great War that had turned nearly all the world into a wasteland in which nothing grew, that part of the land which later became known as the Barahileth had been as it was now: hot, arid, and without any form of life that needed water to survive. But in those ancient days not all Life had required water, and millennia ago, the
Barahileth had been home to a flourishing civilization: creatures whose form and nature was Fire.

The Firesprites were only one of many races which had been destroyed utterly by the Endarkened because they had fought for the Light. The Barahileth had been their home, for water had been as destructive to them as fire was to those they named the Children of Water, and though rain might fall elsewhere in the Isvai—scantily, and at rare intervals—there was never rain in the Barahileth. Even the most powerful Wildmage could not coax water to the surface of its sands, and as hot as it was elsewhere in the desert, it was hotter here. This was a place over which hawks did not fly by day, for the heat was too punishing, and owls and bats did not fly through the air by night, for there was nothing in its skies, or upon its sands, to hunt.

When the Isvaieni Wildmage Bisochim had begun his quest to restore the Balance, this was where he had come, for here, in the only Firesprite Shrine to survive the devastation wrought by the Endarkened, lay the knowledge he sought. The Shrine itself lay far beneath the surface of a lake of fire, and standing upon its shore, Bisochim drew upon his dragon’s power and created something the Barahileth had never seen in all its millennia of existence: a great fortress filled with fountains and gardens. With the inexhaustible power of Saravasse to draw upon, he had done what no other before him had ever been able to do, and called water up to the sands of the Barahileth from the deep rock beneath. Water to fill wells, water for irrigation canals to make the desert blossom, water for the fountains that cooled the air of the home he built for himself. Bisochim had first seen the light of day upon a rug in a tent of the Adanate Isvaieni, but with the power of his magic, on the cliff overlooking the Lake of Fire he had built a palace that would have dazzled the ancient Kings of Men.

Its walls and terraces were of pale glistening stone fused together out of the desert sand, for the sand had once been rock and could easily be made to remember its former state. His stronghold was merged indissolubly with the
black cliff, and many years before, though in those days Saravasse had spent more time at the palace than she did now, he had conjured a long curving staircase out of the stone to the land below in order to be able to leave his sanctuary without waiting for Saravasse to come and carry him forth.

Though she was still subservient to his will by the magic that bound them both, were he to be dependent upon her to come and go from his fortress, there would be a long wait between his desire and its fulfillment, for Saravasse wandered far these days. But Bisochim did not leave it often. Long ago, the gold his magic had summoned from beneath the desert sands had allowed Bisochim to purchase everything his magic could not create. The palace was filled with everything he needed to survive: gardens, and animals, and spell-animated servants to tend them both, and as the years had passed, he had extended his gardens until the plain which had once been named Telinchechitl when its masters were creatures of living fire became filled with orchards and meadows brought forth from what had once been lifeless desert sands. The air of these gardens was made sweet and cool by a hundred fountains—it was a profligate waste of water, but the power he commanded allowed Bisochim to summon an inexhaustible supply of water from the deep earth. Without it, nothing that grew could survive the heat of the Barahileth by day. Now he had reason to be grateful for so much foresight.

For many years—since he had first come to the Firesprite Shrine to begin his studies on how to restore the True Balance—one vision had haunted him.

He stands upon the ramparts of his fortress, looking out over the sand. Below him, two vast armies gallop toward each other, their weapons glittering in the sun. One is his. One belongs to the Enemy. He raises his hands, summoning up the Sandwind. It is their only hope: it will destroy the Enemy’s army.

But it will also destroy his own.

He hears Saravasse scream, and knows, in that terrible moment, that an army of merely human warriors is not the Enemy’s only weapon….

No.

While he lived, that day would not come to pass. Bisochim had done all that he could think of to do to prevent it: he had conjured up the shadow of the Great Power that the Firesprites had once worshipped here and sent the shade of the Firecrown forth to destroy his enemy while that enemy was still confused and weak. But just as the prudent hunter had more than one string to his bow, Bisochim knew that the Light had more than one huntsman.