The Phoenix Transformed Read online

  The

  Phoenix

  Transformed

  BY MERCEDES LACKEY AND JAMES MALLORY

  THE ENDURING FLAME

  The Phoenix Unchained

  The Phoenix Endangered

  The Phoenix Transformed

  THE OBSIDIAN TRILOGY

  The Outstretched Shadow

  To Light a Candle

  When Darkness Falls

  ALSO BY JAMES MALLORY

  Merlin: The Old Magic

  Merlin: The King’s Wizard

  Merlin: The End of Magic

  TOR BOOKS BY MERCEDES LACKEY

  Firebird

  Sacred Ground

  DIANA TREGARDE NOVELS

  Burning Water

  Children of the Night

  Jinx High

  THE HALFBLOOD CHRONICLES

  (written with Andre Norton)

  The Elvenbane

  Elvenblood

  Elvenborn

  The

  Phoenix

  Transformed

  Book Three of

  The Enduring Flame

  Mercedes Lackey

  and James Mallory

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK New York

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  THE PHOENIX TRANSFORMED: BOOK THREE OF THE ENDURING FLAME

  Copyright © 2009 by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lackey, Mercedes.

  The phoenix transformed / Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory.—1st ed.

  p. cm.—(The enduring flame ; bk. 3)

  “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

  ISBN 978-0-7653-1595-3

  1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Magicians—Fiction. 3. Elves—Fiction.

  I. Mallory, James. II. Title.

  PS3562.A246P496 2009

  813'.54—dc22

  2009016706

  First Edition: September 2009

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is respectfully dedicated to

  the men and women of the United States Military.

  Godspeed and safe home.

  —James P. Mallory

  The

  Phoenix

  Transformed

  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 Magick, 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.

  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, traveling 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.