The Phoenix Endangered (43 page)

And here they were, and the stakes were much higher, but he had the same fear: that if he said that Tiercel was right, Tiercel would use it as a justification to do something that had nothing at all to do with common sense. Because he thought it needed to be done, or it was the right thing to do.

And Harrier was afraid of what it might be.

So he turned to the Three Books, hoping there were answers there. Too late now to wish he’d practiced the spell-casting part of being a Wildmage just a little harder, and he still wasn’t sure that the Wild Magic was something you
practiced.
But if he’d done a Scrying Spell moonturns ago—the first time Tiercel had asked, long before they’d even heard there was an army—what would it have showed him?
The Book of Moon
said the Scrying Spell showed you what you needed to see, but he didn’t understand how he could possibly have needed to see what it had shown him when he’d actually done it. Despite what he’d experienced when he’d Healed the Telchi, incurring
Magedebt and having to become the eyes and hands of the Wild Magic still disturbed him, and at last he realized why. The Wild Magic was good. But what was good wasn’t always kind—you could be kind without being good, and good without being kind, and Harrier was honest enough to admit that he was afraid to take that final step. He still wanted to be both.

He didn’t find anything that he thought of as useful, but somehow, the more he read, the better he felt about things. When he didn’t find anything he could use in
The Book of Moon
, he found himself reading
The Book of Stars
—it was the one he’d only skimmed before, as it had no spells in it at all, just what seemed like advice. How to think. How to act. How to—pretty much—relax and wait for the Wild Magic to show you what to do, and even if Harrier doubted that the Wild Magic was going to fix things in any way he really liked, it was comforting to hope it would. At least, after he’d been reading for a while, he no longer wanted to hit anybody.

After a while he was roused by the sound of a knock on the door. He quickly stuffed the Books under the nearest cushion and got to his feet. But when he opened the door, it was only Tiercel.

“We have a bookcase,” Tiercel announced.

“That’s … nice?” Harrier said. “There’s nothing I like better when my city is besieged by crazy people than a nice bookcase.”

Tiercel frowned. “Are you drunk? Because—”

“No. I’ve been reading.”

“That explains it then. Daspuc and Rial have gone back to the Temple for evening Liturgy. They’ll be back tomorrow. And I had a chance to check a couple of my spellbooks. You won’t like what I found. Or maybe you will. I don’t know.”

“You sound funny,” Harrier said.

“So do you. Are you
sure
you haven’t been drinking?”

“There isn’t any wine in here, just to begin with. So what won’t I like?”

“I’d forgotten some things about MageShield. It’s … it’s a shield, you know?”

“Probably why they call it ‘MageShield,’ Tyr.”

“No,” Tiercel said seriously. “If it was just that, they’d call it, I don’t know, ‘Shield,’ or something. It’s a
MageShield
specifically. I mean, it keeps out spears and arrows and people—and that’s good. But it won’t let magic through either.” He looked at Harrier as if Harrier should understand what that meant, and Harrier didn’t, and he knew it was obvious from his expression. “Spells won’t pass through it, Harrier,” Tiercel said quietly. “Not in, and not out.”

“Oh,” Harrier said, when he’d thought about it for a moment. “So …?”

“It doesn’t matter what spell I find in the spellbooks, really. I’d have to dispel MageShield to cast it.”

“The walls will stop them,” Harrier said.

Tiercel shrugged. “For a little while.”

But when the Telchi returned to share their evening meal, he brought a ray of hope.

“The enemy army is in poor condition,” he announced, seating himself at the low dining table and dipping a piece of flatbread into the bowl of stew. The new bookcase towered behind him. It was an enormous item of lacquered and gilded wood, large enough to hold all of Tiercel’s books in one place, but it really didn’t seem to quite belong in the room.

“That’s good?” Tiercel said, puzzled.

“How poor?” Harrier asked.

“I have observed them for most of the day. They have not encircled the city, as any commander would who wished to lay a siege. They have pitched their tents in the orchards and most of them remain within. It is obvious that they seek water and food.”

“The orchards are watered by canals,” Harrier said.

“Fed from the city’s
Iteru,”
the Telchi said, nodding. “The water to the canals was shut off the moment the army drew near, and they have already drunk them dry. Now, the
only water to be found outside the walls is a spring five miles to the east. It is barely sufficient for a flock of thirsty goats; it will not meet the needs of so vast an army. Radnatucca Oasis is a day’s journey into the desert—but it, too, has insufficient water for so many people and
shotors.”

“How long can they survive without water?” Tiercel asked, when no one said anything else.

“The Isvaieni are hardy folk, used to privation,” the Telchi said. “Perhaps even a sennight. If they slaughter their beasts and drink their blood to survive, even longer, but if they do, they know they doom themselves, for they cannot cross the desert again on foot, so they will delay doing so as long as possible.”

“No,” Tiercel said, shaking his head. “Why would they wait—try to hold out—if they don’t think the shield is going to come down? And why would they think it will?”

“They don’t have anywhere else to go,” Harrier said after a moment’s thought. “Laganda’Iteru is a moonturn and a half back up the road. Akazidas’Iteru is at least that far to the west. There’s not enough water for them along the road either way. There’s not enough water out in the desert. They
have
to take the city.”

“Can they be convinced that this is possible?” the Telchi asked quietly. “Convinced that the shield Tiercel has cast will fall swiftly?”

“What good does that do us?” Tiercel asked. Harrier stared toward the bookcase. He didn’t want to see the hope on Tiercel’s face. He didn’t want to hope himself.

“If they think the city will fall to them, they will wait. They will give what water there is to their beasts and stint themselves. Each day, each hour, they will weaken. If you can manage to hold them off for a sennight—even for five days, or four—they will be too weak to raise their
awardans
against their attackers. We can ride out from the city—all of us, every man who can hold a weapon—and slay them.”

To hold the shield in place meant that Tiercel would have to stay awake. Harrier didn’t want to think about what it would take for Tiercel to manage to stay awake for
that long. He hoped that somewhere in all those High Magick books of his there was a spell for that.

“I can help,” Tiercel said. “When—When it’s time, I’ll set fire to their tents. Their
shotors
will panic.”

“Then this is a good plan,” the Telchi said with approval. “And may the Giver of Swords and the Lady of Battles grant that all goes as we wish it to.”

Soon Harrier began to yawn, and Tiercel demanded that he
go to bed right now
, because if Tiercel had to be awake for the next sennight, he didn’t want Harrier yawning in his face. “And go take a bath first,” Tiercel demanded.

“You just want to see if we get hot water here,” Harrier gibed, and Tiercel grinned.

Fifteen

The Long Watch

I
N THE MORNING
, Harrier awoke at his usual hour. Between the too-soft and unfamiliar bed and the strange violet light coming in through the windows, he was disoriented at first, but he soon remembered where he was. He dressed and went out into the main room. Tiercel was sitting at the low table, books spread out all around him, and a pot of
kaffeyah
at his elbow.

“I’ve decided I really hate this stuff after all,” he said conversationally. “It tastes awful.”

“You won’t have to drink it for too long,” Harrier said.

“When this is over, I’m going to sleep for a week, I think.” Tiercel waved at a high narrow table by the wall. “They brought breakfast earlier, but I put it over there. I was using the table.”
he vaguely remembered that some ornamental vases or bowls or something had been on it earlier, and he wondered where they were. It was high enough, too, that he could eat standing up, and did. Before he was quite finished, one of the footmen came in to tell them that they had been summoned to a private audience with Consul Aldarnas. Tiercel quickly got to his feet and put on his long vest and his boots. Harrier went to get his swords, but when he came back carrying them, the footman frowned and told him that no one carried weapons into the Consul’s presence. So Harrier reluctantly left them behind and the two of them followed the footman to the Consul’s Audience Chamber.

In Armethalieh, they’d both attended the important ceremonial events held on major holidays: the yearly Opening of the Law Courts, the Commemoration of the Sacrifice of Saint Idalia (held in the Main Temple of the Light, but everybody who couldn’t fit inside the Temple crowded the square outside just to be there). They’d both seen important people on thrones wearing elaborate costumes before.

But the Chief Magistrate only sat on her Throne of Justice once a year. The rest of the time she sat at her Magistrate’s Bench just like any other Magistrate. And the figure on the throne in the Light-Temple was a statue, not a person, and only on a throne at all so everyone could see her (and only on display for that one day every year, anyway).

Apparently in the
Iteru
-cities people sat on thrones all the time, because Consul Aldarnas looked very comfortable there. The Audience Chamber was large. There were about twenty ordinary nobles here and the room still looked empty. Six members of the Consul’s personal guard stood around the throne, and Harrier was keenly aware that he wasn’t armed. It would be difficult, he thought, but not impossible, to disarm one of the Palace Guards and take his weapon if they were attacked. And he didn’t see anyone else carrying so much as a belt-knife.

The throne itself didn’t look very comfortable—it seemed to be made of stone. And Harrier wasn’t really sure how much
Consuling
Consul Aldarnas could be doing from up there, because there were eight steps up to the throne and all he could possibly see from there would be the tops of people’s heads. But he looked fairly happy with the arrangement.

It was a long walk across the room, and everybody stared at them. When they got to the foot of the steps, the footman who’d brought them there bowed and backed away, and an important-looking man stepped forward. Harrier had thought until he moved that he was one of the nobles who was just hanging around the Audience Chamber because he could, but then he realized that he’d seen him before, when the Consul had come outside the city, and so he must be one of his servants.

“Lord Tiercel and his attendant,” the man announced.

Tiercel looked at Harrier, surprised, but Harrier didn’t see any reason to correct them. He’d already gotten the idea that here in the Madiran nobles traveled with large retinues at all times. And certainly with guards. It didn’t bother him if they thought that was what he was—and that was
all
he was. At least that way, they probably wouldn’t try to split the two of them up.

“I am told that you have a plan for the defense of the city, Lord Tiercel,” the Consul said. “I wish to hear it.”

At first Harrier was surprised, and then he was angry. It seemed to him that the Telchi had betrayed them by telling Consul Aldarnas that there was a plan at all—and telling him that it was
Tiercel’s
plan, when it was more of an idea they’d talked Tiercel into, seemed even more dishonest. But the longer he stood there, the more he understood why the Telchi had done what he had. Certainly he would have been questioned when he’d left their rooms—anybody who thought he wouldn’t be was an idiot. Daspuc and Rial probably were, too—and so was everyone who went in and out. And it was much better if the plan seemed to come from
Tiercel—who was not only a noble, but a Mage—than from one of the Consul’s own subjects.

Tiercel looked around the room. So did Harrier. Everybody in the room was edging forward, doing their best to do it as inconspicuously as possible.

“Okay,” Tiercel said, raising his voice. “Sure. It’s pretty simple, really. You see—”

The Consul got to his feet. “Come,” he said, interrupting Tiercel. “Walk with me.”

He trotted down the steps of his throne and strode off. Tiercel and Harrier followed. Glancing over his shoulder, Harrier saw the Palace Guards move to intercept the others in the room who tried to accompany them.

T
HE
C
ONSUL LED
them to yet another garden-courtyard. Along the way, they collected a couple of members of the Palace Guard. Harrier wondered if the High Magistrate went everywhere with guards. He had no idea, because he never saw her. He didn’t think so, though. He was sure Tiercel’s father would have mentioned something like that to Tiercel—or Da would have, since both of them saw her often enough.