Phoenix in Shadow Read online

  Having completed this description, Patina returned to sweeping up the dust of the street.

  Kyri noticed Poplock’s tense posture, the pose that generally showed that he was bursting with the desire to ask questions but knew he couldn’t. Still, she’d studied enough basic magical theory to guess what he wanted to ask. “Hundreds of automata, all running for hundreds of years? How? Building such things is extremely difficult, as I understand it. Where we come from, people still do most such work.”

  Miri shrugged. “How is a question for Master Wieran, for he was the one who designed them and produces the Servants for us, a few every year, but over the years he has dwelt with us that has added up to considerable numbers indeed; I think there are about one hundred and eighty in each of the seven cities, and somewhat more than that in Valatar itself.”

  She looked up. “Ah, here we are.”

  Sunlight Rest was an imposing building, stone-fronted with support beams of deep reddish-brown wood and a large double door in front made of a lighter, amber wood, carven with a complex pattern of twining vines across a setting sun; currently both doors stood open, splitting the carved sun down the center, half on each. Miri led them inside, ignoring the curious stares of the various patrons within and walking straight up to a white-haired older woman who was just finishing giving instructions to two youths and one of the Servants.

  The woman glanced up as the small group approached her, and rose from her desk smoothly. “Light Miri, a pleasure as always.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to be so formal.”

  “Miri, then,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “Something simple enough, Dania,” Miri said. Gesturing to Kyri and Tobimar, she continued, “These two are to be guests of the Lady of the Lights herself.”

  “And does the Lady know this yet?”

  Miri laughed, a cheerful ringing sound that brightened the shaded interior of the inn. “You know me awfully well, I see. She will know. But true, for now, they are my guests.”

  “Well enough,” Dania said. “Two rooms, then?”

  “Adjoining, if you can,” Tobimar said quickly.

  “Of course,” the older woman said. “You can leave it to me, Miri.”

  “I knew I could,” Miri said with another bow that caused the ribbon in her hair to bounce. “Phoenix, Tobimar, I have other duties now, but you’ll be as comfortable here as anywhere in the city, and I’ll send word later when the meeting is all arranged.”

  “Just a moment, Miri,” Kyri said. “We’re still trying to understand exactly where we are. Do you have anything about these seven cities, your Unity, and so on?”

  Ignoring Dania’s sharp, startled glance, Miri nodded and dug into a tiny pouch at her side—a pouch that allowed her to insert at least half her arm inside. Neverfull pouch, at least. “Umm . . . here! This is a simple map we make . . . oh, there are a few notations on the back. . . . Ah yes, I don’t need those, so it’s fine, you can have it.” She handed the folded paper to Kyri.

  “What about tomorrow?” Tobimar asked. “Do we stay in our rooms until—”

  “Oh, no, no, you don’t have to do that!” Miri said, an apologetic look on her face. “I didn’t want us all bothered on the way here, but you don’t have to be some kind of a secret! If you want to, by all means, look around, see whatever you wish. Just check back here every so often so you will get my message.”

  “All right, then,” Kyri said. “Please don’t let us detain you any longer; sorry for the trouble.”

  “Oh, it was no trouble at all,” Miri said, and then with a rather girlish squeal said “Oh, this is going to be so exciting!”

  She recovered her poise instantly, looking slightly embarrassed, and bowed with the uplifted arm again. They returned the bow as best they could, and Miri left with a wave and a spring in her step.

  Dania, studying them more intensely than before, led them upstairs, where two doors at the end of the hall opened into a pair of high, clean, fresh-smelling rooms.

  Now . . . we need to talk!

  CHAPTER 15

  “I have absolutely no idea what is going on now,” Tobimar said bluntly. He rubbed his temples, in the vain hope that the pressure might force the ridiculous situation to align into something he could understand.

  Poplock, who had finished checking the rooms to make sure there were neither magical nor mundane spies, bounced his agreement. “This makes no sense.”

  Kyri sank into a chair as her Raiment flowed off, leaving her clad in simple pants and shirt. “I wish I could explain it. Your people were driven out of here, by demons that hounded you all the way across the continent, right?”

  “And whose curse still follows us; Xavier, Poplock and I found that out the hard way, yes. So you’re sensing the same thing I am?”

  Kyri nodded in disbelief. “This . . . place. It practically sings. You don’t think it’s the effect of getting out of that vileness that was in the forest into a place that isn’t vile?”

  “You mean, like stepping out of a cave into sunlight? The way it dazzles you for a bit, seems brighter than normal sunlight?” Poplock said. “No, don’t think so. I think it’d be almost as shocking going just from Evanwyl to here. This place . . . it even tastes different.”

  “I agree,” Tobimar said, and forced his brain to start working on the problem. “There’s a purity here, something way beyond the ordinary.”

  Kyri reached into her pack, sitting next to the chair where she was sitting, and got out a bottle of water. “Let’s test that, anyway. This is perfectly good water, in a preservation bottle I bought in Zarathanton; filled it just before we left Evanwyl, and it should be just as good now as the day I left. They have running water here, yes?”

  Poplock bounced into the bathroom which adjoined both rooms. “Hmmm . . . there’s a spigot with red and blue gems on the sides . . . yep, I touch them and get water at different temperatures.”

  “All right, come back out and I’ll do a little test.”

  Kyri came out a moment later carrying two of their water cups, both filled with water. “Here, Tobimar. Taste them.”

  He reached out and took the cups. “Which is which?”

  “Not telling you. That’s the point. I want to know if you can tell the difference.”

  “Right.” He took a sip of the lefthand cup. Cool, sweet water, very nice, just as he remembered from the Vantage estate. He swallowed that, then took a sip of the righthand cup.

  The cool flow danced through his mouth, invigorating, replenishing, as though he had gone half a week without drinking and now, finally, was given the chance. The water washed away some of the tiredness of the road, the fear and tension of their journey through the savage jungles of Rivendream Pass and the exterior of Moonshade Hollow, and lifted his spirits as though he knew his homeland lay just outside the window. He stood stock-still, astounded, then put both cups down. “It was the one in my right hand.”

  “Yes. So it isn’t an illusion of our perceptions.”

  “Most definitely not,” Tobimar said emphatically, then considered. “I suppose it could be an illusion of a more sinister sort. We have heard of spirits and monsters—and especially demons—which can construct a pleasing illusion, even a seeming paradise, for unwary travelers, and as they think they’re sitting down to a great feast or bedding down in a fine inn for the night, they’re actually approaching their own destruction.”

  The little Toad gave a bounce-shrug. “Well, we weren’t exactly unwary. But a powerful illusion can catch even the wary. Still, I haven’t noticed anything that tells me this is illusion.”

  “How could we tell?” Kyri asked reasonably. “If the illusion’s good enough . . .”

  That’s a scary thought. How can we tell?

  “Creepy,” Poplock said, almost as though reading his mind. “And while I’ve got magic, it’s . . . well, mundane magic, if you know what I mean. It’s not something unique and special.”

  Tobimar caug
ht the hint. “Meaning that the two of us do have something unusual. You’re right. Kyri should see if Myrionar will grant her the Eyes of Truth, and I will see if the High Center will reveal anything to me.”

  “Fooling a god should be pretty hard,” Kyri agreed. She began a quiet prayer.

  Tobimar closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Even if it is illusion, the illusion leaves me my self, and it is the self that gives me the power of my skill, the martial art that Xavier and Khoros call Tor. If I can meditate, it matters not where my body truly is; my mind will find the truth of it.

  What Khoros—and his friend Xavier—called “High Center” was the key. It was challenging to reach in combat, but here—surrounded by friends and, at least as far as he could tell, safety—there was no threat to distract him, nothing to interrupt his inner peace. He rose through the Centers and Visions until he stood above himself, feeling the web of probability, the possibility and certainty of the universe’s connection to him, his connection to it.

  Tobimar opened his eyes, and he could see. The room fairly blazed in his sight, a solidity of essence that was almost as tangible as steel, as warm as sunlight, as certain as his mother’s love—and almost, almost familiar in a way. He couldn’t be certain, but there was indeed something about this feeling that tugged faintly but insistently on threads of memory.

  But more; the song of the world stretched beyond. He could sense the possibility of danger away to the south, beyond the wall, but nothing here. There might—possibly—be a hint of danger to the north or east, but he could not be sure.

  Most important was the absolute conviction of solidity. This was no trick or illusion. He was as certain of this as he could be of anything. If this was an illusion, it would be something so powerful that he could do nothing at all against it, so he would assume it was, in fact, real. He released High Center and leaned back. “Real. Exactly as we perceive. As far as I could sense, everything is as it seems to be. If there is anything dark here, it is hiding itself behind a very real cloak of light.”

  Kyri opened her eyes and nodded. “I feel the same thing, Tobimar. This is Truth. Enemies could be here—must be here, I think—but they are well-hidden.”

  “Hm,” Poplock grunted. “Maybe even using the light of this place almost literally, like shining a light in someone’s eyes so they can’t see what’s behind it.”

  Tobimar didn’t like that thought, but it fit all too well with the situation. “You’re probably right, Poplock. We’ll have to be even more on our guard. On the positive side, at least we don’t need to worry about the local environment killing us.”

  “I suppose—to be just,” Kyri said, with a smile, “I should look at the other side. Aside from what we assumed coming here, do we have any reason to believe there is something . . . wrong here?”

  Tobimar was taken somewhat aback by the question, but he thought about it. Instead of assuming, based on what they knew coming through the pass, that there had to be something wrong, did he have any actual evidence for that?

  “Yep, we do,” Poplock said after a few minutes.

  Tobimar felt there was something, but he couldn’t quite figure this out, either, so he shrugged. “All right, Poplock, what have you got for us?”

  “They can talk to us.”

  Kyri looked askance at the little Toad. “And? I can and have talked to people from Evanwyl all the way along the Great Road and off it, and so have you.”

  “Ahh,” Poplock said, lifting a finger in such a scholarly way that Tobimar couldn’t repress a small snort of laughter, “but those places are all connected. Remember that Miri said that as far as they knew, nowhere outside of this ‘Kaizatenzei’ was habitable. The Chaoswar was about twelve thousand years ago.”

  Now the Prince of Skysand understood, and he could see that Kyri was starting to grasp it. “Language changes,” Tobimar said slowly. “It’s said that after the Chaoswar, when the peoples emerged from the catastrophe and started to find their neighbors, the farther they went, the harder it was to understand them. It took centuries for language to re-stabilize. There’s enough contact all through the Empire of the Mountain and the State of the Dragon King so that we all keep roughly the same language . . . but there’s no way these people just happened to keep the same language. All I hear from Miri is an accent, no worse than Kyri’s or yours.”

  “Or yours,” Kyri pointed out, “from our point of view.” She nodded. “So they should have developed their own language—”

  “They did,” Poplock said. “Let’s look at that map, shall we?”

  Kyri spread the map out on the table and Poplock hopped up to get a better look.

  “Sure, look at this. Name of this country is ‘Kaizatenzei,’ and they asked what Sha we were from. These things are all labeled Sha, so I’m guessing that means ‘city,’ or something like that. And the city names . . . Murnitenzei, Vomatenzei, Alatenzei, Ruratenzei . . . all with a theme. Not sure what ‘tenzei’ means, though . . . she said Kaizatenzei meant, um, Unity of the Seven Lights, so Tenzei could be Unity or Light, or even Seven I guess.”

  “Seven? That wouldn’t make sense.”

  Tobimar snorted again. “Wouldn’t it? It would make sense for us, you know. That is, Skysand. Now if—”

  Suddenly he broke off, staring, thinking. Can’t be . . . but it fits. It fits so well.

  He became aware that Kyri was poking him. “Tobimar? Tobimar, what is it?”

  Tobimar Silverun felt dizzy, lightheaded at the thoughts chasing through his mind, but the thoughts didn’t just make sense, they felt right. “Seven, Kyri, Poplock. Seven Stars and a Single Sun.”

  “What . . . Oh. You mean there’s seven cities plus the big one—”

  “More! More than that! By Terian Himself, it’s right here! The Stars were lost! But look on this map! Seven Stars and a Single Sun hold the Starlight that I do own. What if the Stars are here, somewhere? What would a place be like, where the artifacts of the Light in the Darkness were left to themselves? Like this place, maybe?” He reached out and touched the cities marked on the map. “And look. Four cities here. Three here. The capital, Sha Kaizatenzei Valatar, here, between the groups.” His finger traced a slow curve, going around the four, passing through the capital, then around the other three, back through the capital. “These Eight combine and form the One . . . form the Sign by which I’m known . . .”

  Kyri gasped. “It is. It’s Terian’s symbol!”

  “The symbol of the Infinite. They’re here, Kyri! The lost treasures of the Silverun, of the Lords of the Sky! The Seven Stars, and the Sun itself, are here!”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Come in,” Tobimar’s voice said cheerfully in response to her knock.

  Entering, she saw her friend’s hair completely unbound, a flowing waterfall of smooth ebony startling in its length and black-shining perfection. “Balance, I know a lot of women—and a few men—who’d kill for hair like yours.”

  “Why, thank you!” Tobimar bowed, the hair following in a smooth flow that he cast back from his face with a practiced gesture as he rose again. By Myrionar, he is handsome. And now I can let myself recognize it.

  He raised an eyebrow as she didn’t say anything, then grinned happily. “Are you staring at me?”

  She didn’t try to conceal the blush. “I am. You’re worth staring at, Tobimar Silverun of Skysand.”

  “As are you, Kyri Vantage, Phoenix Justiciar!” He stepped forward swiftly and kissed her; it turned into something longer than the quick peck it had started as; the world faded away for the several seconds his lips lingered on hers.

  Finally they separated, and both laughed, just a bit, and she knew he laughed for the same reason—for the joy of seeing their own joy reflected in another.

  “Keep that up, and I’m going to have to go to that party by myself,” Poplock commented from the nearby table, where he was packing away an astonishing assortment of crystals, springs, gears, gadgets of various types, and other supplies. “And
they’re not even supposed to know about me.”

  “I’m tempted,” Kyri admitted candidly.

  Tobimar’s dark cheeks darkened further. “I . . . well, we’ve only just started . . . and . . .”

  She laughed. “Your people really do have rituals around this kind of thing, don’t you?”

  He shrugged, but smiled in response to her laugh. “Yes. I suppose much of it came out of the desperate years where we were trying to survive, and as the Silverun family we’re much more subject to etiquette than the average person. Aren’t there any . . . traditions around dating in Evanwyl?”

  “A few, yes, but not that would apply to adventurers. It’s not like we’re children without any awareness of responsibility.”

  She could see he was thinking that over as he got that magnificent mane under control and tied it back. Knowing how much simple magic she used on hers, she was impressed that he was apparently doing it all by hand.

  Finally he finished tightening the silvery ribbon with a fancy flourish. “Done!” He looked up to her. “I’ll . . . think about how I want to approach this, Kyri. The . . . Way of Sacred Waters, as we call it, is something very unique and precious to us. I lived in Zarathanton long enough to come to understand that for some it’s . . . no more important than any other form of pleasure that involves other people, but it’s very special to me and I don’t think—”