The Phoenix Unchained Read Online Free PDF Page B

to find a few books to read. Come, let’s see if we can find that History for you.”

    A moonturn and a half later, Kindling had given way to true Spring. As Tiercel exited the Great Temple of the Light one Light-Day morning, he was surprised to see Harrier waiting for him at the foot of the steps.
    There were many Temples to the Light in Armethalieh; the Gillains attended Light-Day at the one near the Port, where the main Light-Day service was held much earlier in the morning than at the Great Temple in the center of the City. Harrier had obviously already been and gone to Light-Day Litany; he’d changed from his Light-Day best back into his everyday clothes.
    “Tyr!” he cried as he spotted Tiercel standing with his family in the press of the crowd. Harrier shouldered his way through the press of Light-Day worshipers clustered in front of the Temple steps, and—obviously too excited to make his polite greetings to Tiercel’s parents and sisters, began talking at once. “A ship came in—late last night—and they swear it was attacked by a kraken . Come and see!”
    Lord Rolfort cleared his throat meaningfully and Harrier flushed at his own rudeness, hastily greeting Lord and Lady Rolfort and Tiercel’s four younger sisters, who giggled at his discomfiture until Lady Rolfort regarded them sternly in turn.
    “I’ll come,” Tiercel said hastily. “In a bell. Or two.”

    A chime less than two bells later, Tiercel arrived at the Port. It didn’t matter that this was Light-Day; the business of the Port must go on. Ships could not be asked to stand out in the Harbor and wait until the next day to dock, after all, so he was not in the least surprised to find Harrier waiting for him at the Portmaster’s office.
    “So,” he said, sticking his head in the doorway. “About this ship?”
    Harrier looked up from a table in the doorway. He pushed his russet hair out of his eyes and grinned. “The Marukate limped into the harbor just after Watch Bells this morning. Swearing absolutely that she’d been attacked by a kraken. And everybody knows that there aren’t any kraken, but something tore up her hull; Da had to send them over to drydock before they sank in the slip. Come see.”
    Harrier came to join him, and the two of them began to walk down the dock.
    “No kraken?” Tiercel said lightly. “You might as well say there are no unicorns—though I grant neither of us is ever going to see one. But there certainly are kraken—at least there used to be before the Great Flowering, although since they were creatures of the Endarkened, I admit there probably aren’t any now.”
    “Been reading Uncle Alfrin’s book have you?” Harrier asked with a relieved grin.
    “Ask me anything. Or . . . did you know that there used to beanother kind of magic besides the Wild Magic? A kind you don’t have to be born with, or Called to by the Gods of the Wild Magic? A kind almost anybody can learn? They called it the High Magick. There are books about it in the Library. They used to call Armethalieh the Mage City.”
    Harrier regarded him with a combination of exasperation and disbelief. “Is that why you’ve been spending so much time down at the Great Library these days? I thought you were just studying for your entrance exams for the University.”
    “Oh, I’m doing that too. But the books I want to read are delicate, and Master Cansel let me borrow some of them, but he won’t let me borrow the ones I want to read now. Still, I have to pick a subject to study at school, and I might as well pick ancient history.”
    “Because it doesn’t really matter?” Harrier asked.
    Unfortunately, that was a little too close to the truth. “One subject’s as good as another,” Tiercel answered lightly.
    By now they’d reached the area of the docks where the ships that needed more extensive work than could be done on them while they stood at anchor were brought. When a hull needed to be scraped clean of growths—or otherwise