The Enduring Flame Trilogy 001 - The Phoenix Unchained Read online

  THE two boys stood in the courtyard of the Rolfort townhouse. But despite a pocket jingling with silver unicorns and copper demisuns—more money than most boys his age saw in a moonturn—Tiercel’s mood was somber.

  “I don’t see why Mama is so convinced I will somehow figure out what it is I want to study at Armethalieh University between now and Harvest moonturn,” Tiercel said, sounding uncharacteristically glum.

  “Well, it hardly matters what you study, does it?” Harrier answered bluntly. “It’s not as if they teach anything practical at University.”

  “Why does everything have to be practical with you?” his friend retorted.

  “See how far you get when things aren’t. I like things I can see, hear, feel, and touch,” Harrier said firmly.

  “You always have,” Tiercel responded with a smile. “So, we have time and money. Where shall we go?”

  “The harbor?” Harrier suggested, as the two friends walked off down the street.

  If the City was grandly decorated for Festival, then the Port was even more grandly decorated, for it was there, according to legend, that the unicorns had run across the water to save the City. Every ship in Port flew a unicorn pennant at Festival time, and competed to see which ship could produce the most elaborate unicorn decoration upon its bow.

  “We always go to the harbor,” Tiercel said dismissively. “We could go to Temple Square.”

  “The Great Library? Bor-ring,” Harrier sing-songed. “And you always go to the Library.”

  “The University? The grounds are decorated for the Festival,” Tiercel suggested.

  Harrier took a deep breath and huffed it out in a snort of exasperation. “You’ll see enough of it come autumn, won’t you?”

  “I suppose,” Tiercel agreed.

  It had been three years since the two boys had attended the same school. Those bound for University transferred to the Preparatory School at thirteen, to spend three years there before entering University at sixteen. Those who were going into Apprenticeships stayed at the Normal School until the end of the school year in their seventeenth year, and then signed Articles with a Master in their field.

  As they argued amiably over all the places they could go, their steps took them from the streets of the Noble Quarter and into the Tradesman’s District, which bordered it. Here the streets were busier, even on the first day of Festival.

  Suddenly a shower of snow rained down on them from above. Harrier—who had gotten most of it down his collar, hopped and swore, looking around for his attacker. Tiercel danced out of reach of his frantic thrashings, laughing and pointing upward. Harrier looked in the indicated direction. On a second floor ledge, an industrious Brownie housewife was sweeping away at the snow with a tiny broom. Tiercel waved up at her, and the little creature paused in her labors to wave back before continuing to sweep the ledge free of snow.

  Brownies were one of the few Otherfolk races who had elected to remain among humans when most of the Otherfolk—at least the ones that people could see—had gone Eastward with the Elves. Their lives and ways were a mirror of the humans they so closely resembled, and it was said that to have a Brownie family living in the walls of one’s house brought luck. Both the Rolforts and the Gillains had had Brownie families—perhaps even the same set of Brownies—living with them for as far back as their family records stretched.

  “She could have picked a better time,” Harrier grumbled, still shaking himself free of snow, and skipping back to dodge a fresh shower of it. “It’s Festival. Nobody works on Festival.”

  “Brownies do,” Tiercel said inarguably. He stepped out into the street, motioning for Harrier to follow. “Did you know that there didn’t used to be Brownies in Armethalieh?”

  Harrier snorted. “I suppose that next you’ll be telling me that there didn’t used to be Centaurs in Armethalieh,” he said, grabbing the collar of Tiercel’s cloak and hauling him back onto the walkway, out of the path of a troop of Centaurs who were trotting up the street in the other direction. This particular troop had undoubtedly come for Festival Fair; by the end of the sennight the City would be jammed with visitors from all the Nine Cities, and there wouldn’t be a bed to be had in a hostel from here to Neren-dale. While every city had its own Festival, the one in Armethalieh was the oldest and best.

  BY unspoken consent, the boys were heading toward the main Garden Park at the center of the City. The Festival Fair would already be underway there—singers and dancers and storytellers, games of skill and chance, and—later in the day—a dozen different retellings of the events that Festival celebrated, enacted by live actors, carved puppets, and even trained dogs. Festival Fair had something for every taste.

  “Do you suppose it all happened the way they say it did in the wondertales?” Tiercel asked idly as they walked. “With the dragons and the unicorns and the Elves?”

  It was the same question Tiercel had asked—in one form or another—every Festival Fair for as long as Harrier had known him, and every year Harrier gave him pretty much the same answer. “Well,” Harrier said, “the Wildmages say that it did. The Elves came and rescued us and helped us destroy the Endarkened forever. And then they all went away to live far, far away—oh, not the Wildmages, of course. Just the rest of them.” He was never quite sure whether Tiercel forgot the answer from year to year or it just didn’t satisfy him.

  “Well, yes. I saw a Wildmage once. At least, Mama did. She took me to Sentarshadeen when I was a baby, and so sick that the Healers couldn’t do anything for me, and there was a Wildmage there, and he did actual magic and healed me—”

  “Tyr, you never get tired of telling that story.”

  “Well, it happened.”

  “And your point?”

  “Just that I’m wondering if all the rest of it is just as true? About Jermayan Dragon-rider and Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy who became a Knight-Mage, and the Silver Eagle that got turned into a woman and became the Blessed Saint Idalia and killed the Queen of the Endarkened. That stuff.”

  “How should I know? You’re the one who’s always got his head stuck in a musty old book. Anyway, it happened about a million years ago.”

  “Well, if the priests in the Temple are right, it happened one thousand and eight years ago this sennight.”

  “Too much information, Tyr.”

  Maybe Tiercel ought to become the next Harbormaster, Harrier mused. Because anybody who could remember all the things that Tyr was always telling him about could certainly remember the catalogue of Ships In Port and all the Customs regulations, too.

  Of course, that didn’t mean that Harrier wanted to spend the rest of his life doing what Tiercel was going to be doing when he graduated University in four years, even if he’d been smart enough to get into University in the first place. No, he liked his life just the way it was.

  More or less.

  TIERCEL Rolfort regarded his friend with an indulgent expression, doing his best not to grin.

  He loved teasing Harrier.

  He just wished, sometimes, that Harrier would stop pretending he was dumb. Because Tiercel knew perfectly well that Harrier wasn’t. He was going to be Harbormaster some day, and the Harbormaster was the second most important person in Armethalieh. Tiercel’s father had said, over and over, “stupid men might gain power, but they never hold it.” Harrier’s family had been Harbormasters in Armethalieh for centuries—and not only had the post passed down in the family in an unbroken line, but the City had prospered.

  In a way—though he’d never say something like that to Harrier of course—Tiercel envied his friend. Harrier had always known exactly what his future would hold, and he’d always seemed happy with it. He loved the Port and the Docks. He was prepared for his future.

  Tiercel had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He knew what he was going to do with his life, of course. He was going to University.

  Harrier was right about one thing. It really didn’t matter what Tiercel studied there. It wasn’t like an
Apprenticeship, preparing him for his future trade. It was to lend him polish and sophistication and culture, so that when he joined the ranks of the other minor nobles and high-ranking Tradeborn who served in the secretaryships and clerkships and consular posts that did the work that kept the City running, he would be among friends.

  Friends who shared his interests.

  Only he didn’t think that was going to happen.

  It wasn’t that Tiercel Rolfort was a shunned outcast. People liked him. He made friends quickly and easily. Only . . . not close friends. He liked helping people, and he liked solving problems, and over the years, those around him had naturally developed the habit of coming to him with their problems. But once the problem was solved, they sort of . . . drifted away again.

  All but Harrier. Tiercel shrugged inwardly.

  From the moment they’d met, the two boys had been allies. It didn’t matter what harebrained scheme it was—Harrier’s plan to sail a small boat to the Out Islands; Tiercel’s plan to explore the City sewers to discover evidence of the City’s ancient past—each had willingly fallen in with the other’s plans. There could not have been two boys more un-alike in every way: Tiercel slender and blond, blue-eyed and fair; and Harrier, ruddy and red-headed and stocky, with eyes that went from brown to green depending on his mood. When they were entirely green, Tiercel had long-since learned, it was best to be quiet and careful around his friend, for Harrier was capable of losing his temper completely, and when he did, it was a very bad thing for all concerned.

  But their friendship seemed to be built as much upon their differences as upon any ways in which they were alike—and in fact, the further they had gotten from boyhood, the fewer of those there had been. Harrier was interested in things he could see and touch, and the only problems that held his interest at all were ones he could see a quick solution to.

  Tiercel liked puzzles and problems and mysteries, the more peculiar the better. He liked solving them, of course—the problems his age-mates brought to him could almost always be solved, once you knew all the elements—but the problems he liked best were the ones that didn’t really seem to have any solution.

  Why had the Elves gone away, for example? They didn’t dislike humans. His schoolmasters taught that the Elves had lived among humans for centuries after the defeat of the Endarkened and helped them rebuild everything that the Endarkened had destroyed. In fact, all of the Nine Cities were built in places that the Elves had once had cities.

  So why had the Elves left? No one seemed to really care. It was such a long time ago, after all.

  Maybe somebody at the University knew. He supposed he could ask the professors once he got there, though what he’d do with the information once he had it, he wasn’t exactly sure.

  “Look!” Harrier said excitedly, breaking into his reverie. “I can see the Fair! And look! They’re setting up the Flower Wheel! Oh, Tyr, it’s even taller than last year! We’ve got to ride that!”

  Tiercel gulped and nodded. He hated heights.

  SEVERAL bells later the two overstuffed and nearly exhausted teenagers wended their way homeward, having spent a glorious day sampling all the pleasures that Festival Fair could offer. Harrier had ridden the Flower Wheel three times to Tiercel’s once—once was enough, in Tiercel’s opinion—and both boys had gorged themselves on highly-spiced meat pies and sweet pastries, despite the enormous feast that was to come this evening as part of Harrier’s Naming Day celebration. Harrier had won several fairings at the games of skill—he’d given them to Tiercel to present to his sisters—they’d rented skates and taken a turn around the small ice rink, and had watched several different historical plays, including The Sacrifice of the Blessed Saint Idalia (a favorite of both of theirs, as it had both Endarkened and a dragon) and one showing the day when the Wild-mages and the unicorns came to Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy as he stood shivering in rags in the snow, cast out by his family, and gave him his enchanted sword and told him he was the Knight-Mage destined to unite all the Armies of the Light against the Darkness.

  (“If a bunch of people came to me and said something like that,”Harrier had said,“I’d laugh in their faces. Then I’d run.”

  “No you wouldn’t,”Tiercel had answered. “Not if it was Wildmages. And unicorns.”

  Harrier hadn’t answered. Tiercel was right, of course. But Tiercel had known he wanted to disagree.)

  But now their day of liberty was at an end. As they reached the top of Tiercel’s street, Evensong Bells began to ring out.

  “Oh, Light, I’m late!” Tiercel groaned.

  “Not yet,” his friend assured him cheerfully. “But you’re about to be.”

  Harrier watched for a moment as Tiercel headed for the Rolfort townhouse at a dead run, cloak and tunic flapping, then turned and made for his own door in a no-more-sedate fashion.

  Two

  A Naming Day Gift

  BY THE MIDDLE of First Night Bells, Harrier’s Naming Day party was well underway. As befit a party commemorating the Seventeenth Naming Day of one of the sons of the Harbormaster of Armethalieh, the event was not only well-attended by friends of the family, but visited by those who wished Antarans Gillain to think well of them over the year to come. Fortunately those visitors came early and stayed only briefly, and by the time a few chimes had passed, the party was what it ought to be: a celebration held by family and attended by friends.

  Where will we all be this time next year? Tiercel wondered. He was standing in a corner, attempting—so far successfully—to avoid the dancing. Harrier was not so lucky; at the moment he was out in the middle of the Gillains’ main parlor—converted for the evening to a dancing floor—getting ready to dance with Tiercel’s sister Hevnade while Goodlady Divigana, Harrier’s mother, looked on indulgently. Tiercel knew that there’d once been some talk of a match between the two, but the days when families did anything but advise their children on whom they should marry were long gone. This was hardly the Time of Mages. And Hevnade was barely fourteen.

  Next year . . .

  The glum mood he’d been fighting—mostly successfully—since he’d awoken this morning to the ring of the Festival Day carillon returned full-force. This was the last year he’d see much of Harrier at all. Next year Harrier would be far too busy with his duties as Apprentice Harbormaster to have any time for his old friend.

  And he? Well, he’d be at University. Papa said you had to study hard there.

  And after that?

  Oh, maybe someday he’d win one of the coveted City Magistrateships. Magistrates spent their whole day solving other people’s problems. That would be nice. Tiercel tried to work up an interest in his future.

  “There you are, Tiercel! This is no night to be hiding in corners! Come and dance!”

  “Oh, Mama, I don’t—”

  “Come and dance,” his mother said firmly, taking him by the elbow and leading him out from behind the ornamental garland behind which he’d been—fairly successfully until now—hiding. Ignoring his half-voiced protests, she conducted him out toward the dancing floor. “They’re making up a set, and we don’t want to delay them.”

  But just as the dancers were about to begin—he was paired up with Brelt’s wife, Meroine, to his relief: she was a good dancer, and would get him through the elaborate figures without disaster—there was a sudden disturbance in the doorway.

  “What? Starting without me? Now, I call that rude!”

  “Alfrin!” Divigana cried in delighted surprise.

  “Now, little sister, how could you possibly think I’d miss my little nephew’s Naming Day? After all he’s—what? Eight? Nine?” the eccentrically-dressed stranger roared cheerfully, swooping Divigana off her feet and swinging her around as if she weighed nothing at all.

  “Seventeen, Uncle Alfrin,” Harrier said resignedly, stepping forward.

  His uncle regarded him in disbelief. “Surely I haven’t been gone that long,” he muttered.

  “Surely you have,” his sister said fir
mly. “It was supposed to be only a short trip to the Selken Isles.”

  “Ah, but Divvy, once I was there, the stories I heard! There is a land—far to the west of the Isles—where, so they say, there are people with skin the color of the night sky. And others with the wings of birds! They say there’s a country where dogs and horses can talk, and the people go about without any clothes at all, and do exactly what the beasts tell them. They say—”

  “And did you see any of that, Alfrin?” Divigana interrupted, sounding indulgent.

  “Well, no,” her brother admitted. “But I saw wonders enough. “Why, let me tell you about the time our ship was attacked by pirates—sunk, too—and if not for a great warm-blooded fish that swam up out of the depths and carried me to safe haven, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it.”

  Divigana wrinkled her nose doubtfully.

  “I swear by the Wild Magic, it’s all true,” her brother said virtuously. “It carried me to an island where the people use the creatures to herd their livestock, just as we do with dogs.”

  “Their sheep must get very wet,” Antarans commented disbelievingly. “But come, let me get you something to drink. And then you can tell us all why you aren’t still there.”

  “As to that, there were no books, of course,” Alfrin said virtuously. “And speaking of books, it’s a poor guest I’d be if I came all this way and forgot young Harrier’s Naming Day present. I have it right here.”

  He delved deep into one of the enormous pockets of his gaudy traveling cloak and pulled out a gaily-wrapped parcel, thrusting it at Harrier and regarding him expectantly.

  Watching his friend’s face, Tiercel’s heart sank in sympathy. It was obviously a book, and Harrier had little use for books. Tiercel’s own present to Harrier had been a detailed and elaborate model of a full-rigged Selken sailing carrel, one that he knew Harrier had been admiring in the modelmaker’s window for moonturns.

  But Harrier opened it and exclaimed politely over the book just as if it were something he’d been hoping to receive all year. Tiercel craned closer, trying to get a glimpse of the title.