A healing-Mage could mend a broken back of course, and it wasn't as if Lycaelon couldn't afford the best there was—but oh, what he'd have to say about it!
He twitched feet and hands experimentally, then moved arms and legs. They all worked, and no movements produced any stabbing pains…
Oh, good. I haven't broken my back. Or anything else, I guess.
Groggily he sat up, shaking his head. Leaves, flower petals, and bits of twig rained down on him from his hair and from the hole he'd left through the branches as he fell.
He looked up at the little kitchen maid. She was clutching the kitten beneath her chin and beaming at him, her tears forgotten. The kitten was purring loudly and looking smug. Wretched little monster. For a brief moment Kellen could see why someone would be tempted to drown it.
Maybe I should have left it up there…
But—no. The tear streaks remaining on the child's face reminded Kellen of why he really didn't mean that last thought.
"Are you all right?" the girl asked anxiously.
"I think so," Kellen said, though he really didn't think anything of the sort. He shifted, and heard something crackle beneath him as he moved. For a moment, he was afraid it was his spine after all.
But if his spine had made a noise like that, he wouldn't have been able to move. Kellen got to his knees, pulling the object out from beneath him.
A bird's nest. A big one, the size of a soup plate, woven of sticks, and full of… junk?
"A jackdaw's nest," Kellen said aloud, identifying the item. "I must have knocked it free when I fell."
Jackdaws were notorious thieves, attracted to anything that was colorful or shiny. Curious, he began to pick through the jackdaw's trove.
Bits of tinsel and glass. Faded hair ribbons. Pieces of painted tin, relics of the last Festival day. Among the junk, a real treasure—a gold and emerald chain.
"That belongs to Mistress!" the little girl gasped, staring at it. "She was looking everywhere for it!"
"Here," Kellen said, tucking it into a pocket in the girl's smock. "Tell her you found it somewhere. Urn—tell her that you saw the jackdaw carrying it off and you threw stones at the nest until it came down. That will explain this mess, and it should save you and Milady from a few whippings in the future."
There was one more thing at the bottom of the nest: a key.
Kellen's key.
When he held it in his hand, .all his unease at the Wild Magic and the geas its spell had cast upon him came rushing back. "All magic has a price," it had said in The Book of Sun. Kellen had thought his blood was the price of the magick, but he'd been wrong. That was only the price of the spell. Rescuing the kitten had been the price for finding the key, because if he hadn't rescued the kitten, he'd never have found the key.
But I chose to rescue the kitten, didn't I? Kellen wondered uneasily. Magick didn't make me do it.
He'd thought the Wild Magic was just like the High Magick, just with fewer rules: you did the spell and you got the result. But it wasn't. The spell had only brought him here. If he hadn't cared about the girl and her kitten, he'd never have found the key. It was what was in him, what he was, that made the magick work the way it did—as if, when he looked into the Books of the Wild Magic, somehow the Wild Magic was also looking into him, and judging him.
I Don't like this, Kellen thought apprehensively. What if I weren't me? How would the magick work then?
He got to his feet, putting the key into his pocket.
"I've got to go now," he said, feeling uncomfortable. "Could you show me where the garden door is?"
He hated to involve the girl in any more trouble, but the way he was feeling right now, another climb over the wall was the last thing he could manage.
"It's right over here. No one will see you. And… thank you, goodsir."
"Thank you, gentle miss. I learned a lot here today," Kellen said honestly. More than I wanted to learn, if the truth be told.
She led him across the garden—Kellen limping along behind her— and when the door had closed behind him, he wasn't really surprised to see he was in an alley he recognized, only a few turnings from home.
IT was full dark—first Night Bells had rung—by the time Kellen reached his own garden door once more, for he had been moving rather slowly as he'd left that garden gate. He was lucky not to have any broken bones or bad sprains from his fall, but by tomorrow morning he'd have a rainbow of bruises, and he felt stiff all over. He was thinking longingly of sneaking down to the laundry for a long soak in one of the spell-heated washtubs as he crossed the garden—there'd be nobody there at this time of night, and the water in the washing vats was always hot—and he wished he could soak out the memory of the Wild Magic as easily as he could soak out the stiffness of his bruises.
Why did it work the way it did? How could it work the way it did? If it worked like this for a simple Finding Spell, what would happen if he dared to cast one of the greater spells described in the Books? What sort of price might the Wild Magic ask then?
Kellen was so engrossed in his own thoughts on his way to his room to pick up fresh clothes for after his bath that he failed to see his father on the stairs leading to his suite. And unfortunately, Lycaelon saw him. Apparently Lycaelon had gotten home early for once—and had been looking for him.
"Kellen!"
Kellen froze where he was, stunned. It had never occurred to him that he'd run into his father now—Lycaelon was rarely home before midnight, and sometimes not before dawn, if he was participating in a Greater Working, not just a Council session. Kellen wished suddenly that he was a Mage out of the wondertales—one who could stop time, turn himself invisible, or simply teleport himself away with no more than a thought. But Mages like that only existed in stories, not real life.
Lycaelon reached the top of the stairs, a ball of blue Magelight hovering behind his left shoulder. As its cerulean radiance reached Kellen, the boy saw his father's expression change from one of irritation to actual anger.
"I see. What have you to say for yourself?" Lycaelon said.
He always starts arguments in the middle and expects me to play catch-up! Kellen thought, becoming angry in turn. He sees what, exactly? He felt his mouth settle into a sullen line, and said nothing. What was there to say, when he didn't even know what he was being accused of. Except it's always the same thing, isn't it —not being him, not being the kind of son that would be happy to be a mindless little copy of him? A model of exemplary behavior to be held up to every other Mage who has a son?
"Undermage Anigrel told me you'd shirked your lessons today to go off and wander around the City again like an out-of-work laborer—and from the look of you, you've spent that day rolling around under hedges. Mend your ways, or you will be dead weight, Kellen, dead weight—and the City has no place for dead weight!" Lycaelon thundered.
Thundered? Maybe he thought he sounded impressive, but to Kellen's ears, Lycaelon's voice was pompous, not awe-inspiring. He sounded more like the outraged patriarch in a bad play, the one that the lovers were going to outwit, no matter what he did.
"It isn't—" Kellen tried to interrupt. I didn't SHIRK them! He sent me away! But I don't suppose he bothered to tell you that part, did he? Oh, no, whatever happens, it's always MY fault, isn't it? Light blast it, I can say the truth, that I was rescuing a little girl's kitten, without giving away what happened! He's always telling me to be more responsible, and isn't that the sort of thing he means?
It wasn't though, and Kellen knew it. Now, if he'd rescued the kitten of a wealthy, noble, or Mageborn child, oh, that would be entirely different…
Lycaelon raised a hand. "No! I have coddled you long enough. I spend my days in long and thankless labor to keep the City running smoothly, and you spend yours attempting to destroy everything I'm trying to build for your future! You cannot just step into a position such as mine by simple right of birth—it takes a lifetime of preparation and study—preparation which you do not seem willing to make! A person in our position in society has duties as well as privileges—he must behave suitably as an example to those below him, for the good of the City, and this is a responsibility you have so far ignored. How are you ever going to take your proper place in society if you keep shirking your obligations this way?"
Duties— obligations— suitable behavior—meaning suitably arrogant, suitably deceptive, suitably oh-so-superior to any poor fool who doesn't happen to be Mageborn! Kellen thought mutinously. And somehow he just couldn't hold his feelings in any longer.
"You're always bleating at me as if I want people bowing and scraping to me all day and looking for new ways to humiliate themselves! Well, maybe I don't! Maybe I don't want a place in your precious society, if to get it I have to stick my nose in the air, act like a prig, and turn into a slavish copy of you!" Kellen burst out. He turned away and stormed into his room, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Five
The Courts of Nightmare
THE WORLD WITHOUT Sun was a wonderful place, just as vast and far more beautiful than the Bright World. For centuries Queen Savilla had ruled over its lightless halls and shadow caverns, its vast subterranean seas and darkling plains. But like all rulers, she loved her palace best, for here all the good things in her world were distilled to their ultimate perfection. Here, in the Heart of Darkness, she tended the strands of her web of knowledge and power, patiently awaiting the day when the Tree of Night would bear that fruit whose harvest would prove so bitter to the Brightworlders.
Once—twice—the Endarkened had not been so patient, and He Who Is, their master, had chosen to teach them patience, allowing them to be defeated in their battles for mastery in the World Above. In the last battle—called in the Bright World the Great War—their defeat had been so profound and all-encompassing that they had been swept from their every stronghold in the World Above, forced back into their most secret strongholds, there to lie hidden, recovering their strength—and their numbers—for centuries.
But they had not been defeated. No. Let the haughty Elves, the foolish Centaurs, the arrogant humans think that. Let them revel in their false victory and turn in their false peacetime upon each other, dissolving their ancient Alliance and retreating each to his own place. That suited Savilla's Plans very well. From the very moment of the Endarkened's last retreat, while the wings of dragons still blackened the sky and the music of the victory horns still sounded among the armies in the World Above, Savilla had begun to plan for the day that now, at last, seemed so near. Centuries had passed before she had first dared to send forth her agents into the Bright World once more, but she had waited patiently, and now her plans began their final, ever-accelerating plunge to fruition at last.
Did not the humans isolate themselves in their Golden City, certain that they were the masters of the world and that all lesser races must bow before them?