The Phoenix Endangered by James Mallory Read Free Book Online

not make it beautiful?
    After a short time they came to the first break in the smooth walls: an archway, much like the one through which they had come—though smaller—but this one was blocked.
    Shaiara handed the lantern to Kamar and stepped forward to run her hands over the barrier curiously. It fitted into the archway exactly, as if it had been made for it.
    “It is wood,” she said, startled into speech. She ran her hands over its surface again, more carefully, this time marking the places where the pieces had been joined together to make the whole. So few! She tried to imaginesuch a tree as this might have come from, and failed. But what was its purpose? Metal bands crossed its surface, and there was a large ring, larger than the largest bracelet, in the center of one side. She closed her hands around the metal ring, and tugged at it gingerly, but nothing happened.
    There would be time enough later to solve this mystery. She took back the lantern, and the three walked on. They passed more of the blocked archways, but Shaiara did not bother to test them. Time for that later.
    They walked until the lamp began to gutter, then returned. Shaiara had learned what she wished to know, and so, when she returned to the Iteru -courtyard, she ordered her people to lead the shotors down into the dark made-cave, and there to make their cookfire, and take shelter against the heat of the day. Tomorrow they would begin the task of turning Abi’Abadshar into their home.
    I T WAS UPON the third day of their residence in Abi’Abadshar that Shaiara realized that the Gods of the Wild Magic had truly taken the Nalzindar into their care. At evening on the first day, everyone but the children went forth to hunt, and after several hours, they returned with a startling bounty. Not only adders and scorpions and mice, but sheshu in abundance—all the more puzzling when Natha said that for every sheshu he brought to the cookpot, he let one escape, just as the Balance asked of them. But that night, all the Nalzindar ate well; the shotors grazing upon the rich forage that grew among the ruins, and the ikulas and falcons and every person of the tribe feasting upon the bounty of the day’s hunt.
    On the second day, Shaiara and her people went forth as soon as the sun had passed its greatest heat, for they must have light to see by if they were to properly explore their new home. The ikulas accompanied them; Shaiara hoped both that the hounds’ keen senses might discern what the Nalzindar could not, and also, that they might flush more game, for keeping so many people fed was a constantstruggle even in the Isvai, and here in the Barahileth, the task would be far more difficult.
    Though no Isvaieni was a stranger to the heat of the desert, the furnace heat of the Barahileth in daylight was nearly too much even for the Nalzindar. If not for the fact that they possessed a copious supply of water, Shaiara would have turned back immediately. Even the shotors seemed uncomfortable in the heat; the Nalzindar brought them under cover, into the tunnels, during the heat of the day, of course, but now Shaiara was setting them loose to browse. She did not fear to lose them. No shotor would willingly travel far from water.
    The people avoided the exposed stone road; as all of them knew from the experience of having to cross the Iteru -courtyard to reach the surface that it was far too hot to walk upon, and the sand was very little cooler. In the Isvai, Shaiara would have chosen to investigate by night, but in the Isvai, she would have been able to carry a lantern burning the liquid of the oilbark bush or a lamp whose wick was soaked in thrice-purified animal fat. They had not yet found any oilbark bush, and to gather and purify the amount of fat needed was a long and laborious process when they had cast away so many of their possessions. It would be long before they were once more able to light the few lamps they had retained.
    Everyone chose a different path