Read Online The Phoenix Endangered by James Mallory - Free Book Online

words against her heart, then taken them to the tribal elders, speaking against them with a combination of fatalism and practicality. Upon the surface, sentries could be seen as well as see. In day, they would be punished by the fierce heat of the sun; in true night, there would be little to see.
    But no hunter would go upon the hunt with only one bowstring for his bow, and the Nalzindar were master hunters. Shaiara was unhappy with the thought that there was only one entrance and exit from their underground home, and set her hunters to the task of finding others. Though her hunters found that there were many openings to the light and air on this level, most of them could only be enteredand departed by birds, and the rest would only permit one person to climb out at a time, and that after scaling several feet of wall. If disaster struck, it was possible that all of the tribe could win its way to freedom through the many escape routes of this sort they had discovered in the time they had been living here, but they would have to abandon all of the shotors and all their supplies—and to do that would be to condemn themselves to a lingering death instead of courting a quick one. For that reason, each day Shaiara set a few of the hunters to searching out ways to the surface that the whole tribe at once might be able to use, ways that would allow them to take the shotors as well. Once such were found—and better more than one—then supplies could be stockpiled at each exit, and the exits carefully hidden again, and Shaiara would simply hope it was never necessary to use them.
    But so far, their searches had been inconclusive. Though they had found what seemed as if they must be many upward-leading openings with terraces, all were choked with sand. Even if they could dig them out, there was no place to put the sand, and to shift it at all was to risk burying themselves.
    And there was the hard truth that must be grasped in the hand as well: if this refuge were discovered by their enemies, there was simply no place for the Nalzindar to flee. While it was good to seek ways to escape, it was better still to follow the way of the sheshu as it evaded pahk and fenec , and trust that the Wild Magic that had brought them here would spread its cloak over them. Sentries at the mouth of the tunnel, yes, and at any other entrance they might find, for one did not grow to adulthood in the Isvai by having sand for wits. But for the rest, they would play the sheshu in its burrow.
    And it was a more luxurious burrow than any of the Nalzindar had ever dreamed might exist. Here beneath the ground, the ground was soft and the air was warm, and there was arrow-cast upon arrow-cast of space. The first day’s explorations had led them to the Iteru at which thecreatures of this place slaked their thirsts, and there was not even any need to return to the Iteru -courtyard that was exposed to the heat and the sun in order to fill their waterskins. Only a few of the people hunted now, always careful, always watching to be sure that their presence did not upset the Balance of this strange and wonderful place, for it would bring sadness to all the Nalzindar were they to destroy the world beneath Abi’Abadshar, even if they did it to ensure their own survival.
    Surrounded by so much bounty, there was more freedom for the Nalzindar than ever before, and in their newfound freedom, many Nalzindar followed terraced paths ever deeper beneath the earth, and there the explorers discovered the first traces of those who had been in this place before.
    T HEY HAD ERECTED their single remaining tent within an open space upon the flatness beneath the trees. The ground, so they had discovered in the few sennights of their occupancy, was unpleasantly damp, and it was Natha who had come up with the idea of bringing dry sand from one of the other chambers to lay beneath the skins and the sleeping-mats. Between the new woven mats and the sand, a growing carpet of well-tanned