The Phoenix Endangered (47 page)

Crowned in Fire

H
E WASN’T SURE
where they should go. All of his instincts told him to help, to
fight
, but Tiercel was helpless, and Harrier needed to protect him. Once the Isvaieni entered the city, the Consul’s Palace would probably be one of the first places they’d come.

It was just too bad that Tiercel wasn’t conscious right now, too, because since their arrival, Tiercel had gotten to know the city almost as well as they both knew Armethalieh. Tiercel would know where they could hide.

Hiding won’t do us much good when they burn the city down around us
, Harrier thought grimly. But they didn’t have to hide forever. Just until he could wake Tiercel up. Then Tiercel could call Ancaladar, and …

“You should have listened to me,” Harrier muttered. “Next time, you’re going to listen to me if I have to
beat you senseless.”

He started to hoist Tiercel to his shoulder, and stopped. He was still wearing his swords sheathed on his back. They were so much a part of him by now that he’d forgotten they were there. He let Tiercel slump back to the couch while he unbuckled his harness. After a moment’s thought, he unclipped the swords and their sheaths from the leather, rolled the harness and tied it around his waist, and stuffed the swords through it. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but he thought the arrangement would hold. Then he picked Tiercel up and flung him over his shoulder.

The weight made him stagger. He’d done hard physical labor all his life, but Tiercel didn’t weigh all that much less than he did. But he didn’t have any choice. He walked carefully to the door and dragged it open.

The hallways were clear. Harrier wasn’t sure where everyone was—maybe they were all locked in their own rooms. He’d willingly warn anybody that he saw, but whether he warned them or not, soon everybody would know that their army had lost and the city was about to be overrun, and he wasn’t sure what possible help or advice he could offer.
Wildmages are supposed to help when things like this happen
, he thought.
I
don’t know what to do.
And he didn’t know where all the other Wildmages were, either. The ones who should know what to do, because they knew how to be Wildmages. He didn’t want to think that something had happened to all of them. It was too terrifying.

There was no one on the broad staircase leading to the first floor, and no one at all in the enormous outer courts—spice-seller’s court, money-changer’s court, lesser law-court. He carried Tiercel into the outer plaza, every muscle in his back screaming for rest. The deep blue light of false dawn shone through from the plaza outside. The outer plaza was as empty as the palace itself.

His mind was churning over possible destinations. He thought there had to be lower levels of the palace. Storage areas. Servants’ quarters. There had to be some place where the water was coming into the palace and the sewage was going out. If he could find that place, maybe nobody would find them there.

He tried not to think about what he was doing. Saving himself and letting everyone else die. It didn’t help that he knew he couldn’t save them—that all he could possibly do was die along with them. That he had to save Tiercel because Tiercel might be the one who could save so many other people. All he could think of—because that’s what it felt like—was that he was running away and saving himself because he was a coward.

As he stood in the middle of the outer plaza, looking for doors that might lead down, he saw movement outside. A man was walking up the steps into the palace.

He held an
awardan
in one hand, and a bundle in the
. The front of his robes was black, and just as Harrier was realizing that the reason the
awardan
looked so strange was because it was covered in blood, the man flung away the bundle, and it rolled messily across the ornate marble floor, and Harrier realized it wasn’t a bundle, it was a head.

“Fortune favors me,” the man said.

“No. No, it doesn’t,” Harrier answered. He let Tiercel slide down off his shoulder and drew his swords.

He didn’t know what was going to happen now, but he knew that if he didn’t stop this man, this man would kill Tiercel. That was all he was thinking about. He was exhausted, and so terrified he was actually beyond fear. He couldn’t remember a single thing the Telchi had ever told him about fighting, or even a single word he’d read in any of his Three Books.
Please
, he thought.
Please.

The man stepped forward, raising his weapon.

It seemed to Harrier that the man moved slowly. That his body was telling Harrier where to strike, and when. Harrier knew—though he wasn’t thinking in words—that he couldn’t catch the man’s blade with his own, because the swords he carried were light and flexible, and they could be sheared through and broken by the heavier steel.

He simply wasn’t there each time the man struck.

Cut to disable.
And a line of blood appeared high on the man’s sword-arm. Harrier felt the drag as his blade pulled through the rough fabric of the robe. The man roared in pain and anger, dropping his sword and scrabbling in his belt for a knife. His sword-arm dangled lifelessly, and spreading blood darkened his sleeve.

Cut to disarm.
And Harrier’s blade flashed down, slicing the knife-hand away at the wrist. He would have stopped in shock, but his body was already moving forward for the final blow.

Cut to kill.
And his blade slipped across his attacker’s throat as he spun—around, away, back—and the man dropped to his knees, head lolling forward as blood first
gushed, then flowed slowly from the terrible wound in his throat. The body slipped sideways to the floor, and Harrier stared down at it in horror.

“Oh, Light, I …” He stared down at the swords in his hands. Both the blades were bloody, and he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten that way. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. He took a step back; the blood was spreading fast.

He wanted to throw his swords away. He didn’t know what to
do.
He’d just killed somebody, and all he could think of was that he’d never dare tell Da about this. Never.

He wanted to cry.

Isn’t this what you trained to do? Isn’t this what a Knight-Mage does?

I don’t want to be a Knight-Mage any more. Please.

But the blood was still spreading, and it was going to reach Tiercel in a minute, so Harrier set his swords down carefully on the floor and staggered away from them and dragged Tiercel to a place where the blood wouldn’t reach him. He could smell the blood now: hot, and metallic, and a little like spoiled meat, and the smell would have made him want to gag, even if what he’d just done hadn’t made him sick already.

He dragged Tiercel all the way over to the pillar by the door—because it was easier to drag him than it was to carry him—then he came back and used his short sword to cut a piece from his tunic so he could wipe both the blades and sheathe them and tuck them back into his belt, because they’d been a gift from the Telchi, and it occurred to Harrier now that the Telchi was probably dead.

He’d gone back to the pillar to where Tiercel was when he heard voices in the plaza outside. People. Laughter. And he knew if their own people had won, there might have been cheers, but not laughter. He flattened himself against the pillar.
Too late
, he thought.

He heard a dog bark in the distance, and abruptly stop. There were screams and shouts, but they seemed so far away. Nobody had expected this. They’d expected victory.
They’d sent out an army. If they’d heard the sounds of the battle, they hadn’t understood what they were hearing. They thought they were winning.

He knelt down beside Tiercel. The pillars were huge—they’d hide both of them from anyone in the plaza so long as they didn’t come up the stairs, but he didn’t dare cross the open space—now—to look for better shelter. He put a hand over Tiercel’s mouth and shook him, pinched his ear-lobes, tried every nasty painful trick on Tiercel his brothers had ever tried on him. None of them worked. Tiercel didn’t wake.

Suddenly a hand fell hard on Harrier’s shoulder. He thrust himself to his feet and spun around, heart hammering, grabbing for his swords.

“It isn’t time for that yet, you know,” a voice said kindly.

Harrier was staring into the eyes of the Red Man.

Tiercel had said he was some kind of Otherfolk, and Harrier tried to see it, but he couldn’t. Not really. The man had pale red hair, and brown eyes that were almost red, but that wasn’t enough. Was it?

“You can see me,” he said slowly, because if this was the same creature as before, he hadn’t been able to see Harrier the last time.

“You have become real,” the man said.

Harrier didn’t know what he meant, unless it was that he could see Harrier now that he was a Wildmage; Harrier didn’t really want to ask. “Look,” he said. “I need to hide my friend. They’re going to kill everyone in the city.”

“Yes,” the Red Man said calmly.

“They’re going to kill
Tiercel,”
Harrier said, trying to make the creature understand. “If you wanted him dead, you had plenty of chances. If he dies—” Harrier swallowed hard. “He’s supposed to save everyone.”

“The world is a dance of light and fire,” the Red Man said. “We are the heirs and the children of stars.”

“Look,” Harrier said again. “Just… you need to leave now. I don’t know why you’re here, or what you want, but you need to go away.”

“No fire dies forever. New stars are born. He must be proven,” the Red Man said.

This sounded to Harrier like a combination of crazy talk and a threat. He couldn’t step back to gain the space to draw his swords—Tiercel and the pillar were behind him—but he could step to the side. He only hoped the Red Man’s attention would stay on him. He slid sideways; the smooth marble beneath his feet made it easy. The swords came free of their sheathes with only a slight scraping. “Leave,” he said. His mouth was metallic with fear. He didn’t know
what
he was facing, only that it wasn’t human.

The Red Man turned toward him. It held out its hands to him, palms open, as if it were showing him that it was harmless. But its palms first glittered as if they’d been covered in gold leaf, then glowed as brightly as if they were white-hot metal. The light was too bright for Harrier to be able to look at it directly.

“Will you die so he can live?” the Red Man asked.

“I… Light!
Yes!”

It was why he was here, Harrier realized. It was why he’d come all this way. It was why he’d accepted the Three Books. He’d never expected to become a Kellen and lead vast armies into battle. He’d just hoped to be able to get Tiercel to where he was going.

“Let me touch you.”

“Will you—”

“They will not kill him,” the Red Man said. It took a step forward, and Harrier brought his hands down, and spread his arms wide, and closed his eyes.

Even through his closed eyelids Harrier could see the light of the Red Man’s glowing hand as it approached his face. The heat was enough to make the skin on his face grow tight, and he clamped his jaw hard, hoping he wouldn’t scream.

But at the last minute, all he felt was a breath of cool air against his skin. He opened his eyes in startlement.

He was alone.

But not unseen.

He’d barely begun to understand that the Red Man had vanished as inexplicably as he’d come, that he might have a second chance to get the two of them into hiding, when he heard shouts behind him. The sound of running footsteps.

He suddenly realized that he was standing in full view of the Plaza, and he’d been seen. If the Isvaieni came up the steps into the Palace, they’d see Tiercel. Harrier turned and ran down the steps to meet them.

They were so surprised that he gained precious seconds—time enough to dodge, to run along the broad steps, to lead the band of Isvaieni raiders that had been about to enter the Palace back down into the plaza itself.

The plaza was no longer empty. It was filled with scattered bodies—some dead, some still moving feebly. People ran across the plaza trying to reach the palace, because they thought they’d be safe there, but there wasn’t any safety anywhere in the city now. The Isvaieni ran after them, cutting them down with single blows, sometimes killing them, sometimes leaving them wounded and dying. In the instant Harrier could spare to look, he thought:
we were wrong
—
five days
—
six days
—
wasn’t enough
, because the attacking Isvaieni didn’t look cowed and they didn’t look exhausted. They looked as if they had all the strength to do whatever they needed to.

Harrier reached the ground, skidding a bit on a bloody patch of stone as he turned. He brandished his swords threateningly, but even though the screaming of the dying all around him filled his ears, even though he knew he was about to die himself, even though he knew these people had already killed everyone he knew here in the city, he wasn’t quite sure he could kill anyone else. The image of the man he’d killed filled his mind. The awful finality of it.

The Isvaieni followed him back down the steps, laughing, slapping each other on the shoulders, shouting taunts, encouraging him to do his worst against them, asking him if he was all the city had left to send against them, telling
him that they’d killed his father and his brothers and soon they would kill his mother and his sisters as well.

Harrier didn’t listen. He watched their hands.

The first one came at him only with a knife, his attacks wide and sloppy, thinking he could frighten him, wanting to make Harrier run. Harrier kept backing away, hearing the Telchi’s voice in his head. About how a battle was like love, like an illicit seduction, how first you convinced your enemy that you were one thing and then you became another.

But when the man attacked at last, Harrier was slow to react, thinking of blood on marble. The Isvaieni sprang back, and all Harrier cut was his robe. The Isvaieni snarled, and drew his
awardan
, but when one of his friends moved forward to help him, he shouted that he needed no help to kill a boy who had never drawn blood.