It was a parlor, dominated by a large table covered with a white cloth upon which had been set a sizable plain luncheon. His host was seated at the head of the table, and gestured for Kellen to sit beside him.
"My boots—" Kellen began, stopping at the edge of the rug.
"It's only a little mud," his host said graciously, "and my girl hasn't enough to do just looking after me. My name is Perulan. And yours?"
"Kellen," Kellen said, sitting as he'd been bid. Perulan poured him a large beaker of cider, and Kellen drained it thirstily, then, at Perulan's urging, poured himself another, of water this time. He'd gotten very thirsty digging outdoors all morning.
The servant-girl Perulan had mentioned a moment before entered, carrying a large china tureen of soup, and for a while there was silence while Kellen satisfied the hunger honed by several bells of hard labor. There was hot thick vegetable soup, hefty slices of cold mutton, large chunks of golden cheese, and thick slices of warm bread with fresh butter. Perulan watched him eat, a faint approving smile on his face, but restricted himself to no more than his soup and a little cider.
"So, Master Kellen," he said when Kellen had slowed down a little, "what do you do when you aren't cleaning out cisterns for… former… writers ?"
"You're that Perulan?" Kellen asked without thinking. He suddenly wished he'd curbed his tongue, for the older man winced, as if Kellen had spoken of something very painful. "I mean, I'm a Student, Gentlesir Perulan," he said hastily, trying to remember if it should be "gentlesir."
"noble-sir," or "lord."
"I study."
"Just 'Perulan' if you please, Master Kellen. My family has disowned me long since, and I have no patience with empty honorifics, nor do they have any place between friends. As for study… it can be a broadening thing, if a bit dangerous," Perulan said. "You must be careful in your studies, Master Kellen. You might learn things you didn't wish to discover."
"I know," Kellen said, sighing. "Look, I was wondering if you could tell me… do you know how deep that cistern is?"
Perulan had obviously been expecting him to ask something else: his face first showed surprise, then relief. "I believe it goes down about ten feet. Certainly not much deeper."
"And… do you know if it feeds into a spring? Or is it solid at the bottom?"
Perulan smiled. "Quite solid, young Kellen. When I was a young man, and first bought this house, that cistern was still empty. I recall making plans to turn it into a fish pond, or something of the like, but those plans, like so many others I made as a young man, came to naught. But I think it best if you fill it in now, or people will simply come and throw more garbage into it."
"That's what I plan to do," Kellen said, relieved to have Perulan fall in so easily with his own plans. "It needs doing."
AFTER lunch, he worked for a few bells more, marking time by the distant echo of the carillons that sounded faintly over the roofs of the City, for the nearest bell tower was several streets away, and had not paid its bell tax in some time. He would have continued working far longer, but Perulan called him back into the house and insisted on giving him tea before sending him home for the day. It occurred to Kellen that the old man must be lonely, and he wondered if Perulan might be the source of information the Wild Magic had sent him to.
He wondered about that all the next day as well, while shoveling smelly black muck out of the cistern. From somewhere, Perulan had provided a bucket and wheelbarrow for his use: Kellen would fill the bucket, use it to fill the barrow, wheel the barrow to the back of the lot, and dump the contents into an ever-growing, stinking pile. Maybe the sun would dry the sludge out into something he could use. Maybe he could dig it into the ground and bury it when he dug up fresh earth to fill in the cistern.
As he worked, he wondered if it would be just too cold-blooded to ask Perulan what he wanted to know about the City and the lands beyond. He liked Perulan, and he didn't want to make trouble for him, and Kellen had already come to realize that there were some questions meant never to be asked—or answered.
But even without asking outright, Kellen found out some things that, just as Perulan had warned, he would have been happier not knowing.
"SO you're from a Mage family, young Kellen?" Perulan asked. "I would not have thought it. You haven't the look, as you are no doubt long tired of hearing."
Kellen choked on his lunchtime cider, managing (with an effort) to swallow decorously. "But how did you know?" he asked when he was able.
"Come come, young sir. A writer must be observant, and I was born .into a Mage-family myself, as you are certainly aware. While you have a talent for hard labor, you're no laborer, and a member of a Trade family would be hard at his apprenticeship at your age. What does that leave?"
"Mages," Kellen said bitterly.
Perulan raised his eyebrows and smiled faintly.
"Ah, speak softly of our beloved rulers—or else they'll find what you love best and cherish most, and turn it to ash before your very eyes."
Kellen stared at him.
"I'm Perulan the Writer, as you know—only Perulan the Writer's last and greatest work was denied a publication license, and so it was destroyed by the High Council before his very eyes. For the good of the City, of course. It is always for the good of the City." The smile faded, and Perulan stared bleakly off into space, contemplating something Kellen couldn't see.
"Do you think it really is?" Kellen asked before he could stop himself. "How can they know! Aren't they just trying to—well—make all of us quiet and fat and not think, just so we'll want to keep things as they are, like them? So we won't want to even think about leaving the City? But the City isn't the only place in the world!"
"No," Perulan agreed. "There are other places—across the sea, across the forest—and they do things very differently there. To be different is not to be wrong, or even inferior. Only… different."
"Can you—" Kellen said, and stopped himself.
"Can I tell you about them?" Perulan asked. "Yes, and perhaps I will, if you are certain that is what you wish. But not now. Think about whether you really want to know, Kellen-of-a-Mage family, and ask me again. Perhaps you will come to dinner, and we will talk, once you have finished with my cistern."
IT was the backbreaking work of several more days, but at last Kellen had dug down to bare stone, and then filled in the cistern again. From somewhere a load of old brick appeared to greet him one morning, and on another day, an iron-bound cistern cover cut to size—Perulan's doing, Kellen supposed. Kellen tumbled the bricks into the hole, layering them in with fresh-dug clean dirt from the lot and stamping on each layer to pack it tight as he put it in. He buried the muck and trash he'd dug out of the cistern in the hole he'd dug to get the fill dirt, and stacked the bigger pieces of trash to be hauled away.
Last of all, he used the back of the shovel to bang the heavy wooden stakes that would hold the cover in place into the dirt around the edges of the cistern, then stepped back to admire his work.
No more rats, no more garbage, no more stink.
He was done.
"Excellent work, young Kellen," Perulan said. The older man came to stand beside him, gazing down at the cistern cover. It was the first time Kellen had seen Perulan leave his house. "I suppose now that your task is done, our fair neighborhood will no longer be graced with your presence?"
"I…" In truth, Kellen hadn't thought much past getting the cistern filled in.
"No matter," Perulan said graciously. "I think I shall not be here much longer myself. And now, the time grows late. Would you care to join me in my evening meal?"
Looking around, only now did Kellen realize that he had grown so engrossed in his task that he had not even heard the sound of Evensong Bells. In fact, he had stayed later at Perulan's house than ever before. The sun was westering, and it was already almost too dark to see. But his father wouldn't be home yet—and even if he was, what would it matter? Whether Kellen tried to do what Lycaelon wanted or not, the end result was the same: these days, it seemed, they always ended up arguing.
"Sure. I mean, I'd like that, gentlesir."
Dinner was a more elaborate meal than the lunches Kellen had enjoyed at Perulan's house, with a large hot meat pie brought from the local cookshop, roast fowl and potatoes prepared by Perulan's all-but-invisible maidservant, baked apples roasted on the hearth, and candied fruits and wine to follow.
The parlor was mellow in the golden light cast by the fat white candles in the fixture hanging over the table, and warmth radiated from the tiled hearth tucked into one corner.
"You asked me once what I knew of the world outside the City," Perulan said when the servant had cleared away the dishes and retired to the kitchen. "Would it surprise you to know that when I was a young man, I had a correspondence with, well, let us call them Folk From Away?"
Kellen stared at him, a piece of candied ginger halfway to his lips. "But how? That's not possible!" he stammered.
"Not quite impossible, merely difficult, my young Student. The Selken-folk smuggled my letters out, and smuggled my correspondents' replies back in. It can be done, with trust, and for a price—the Selken-folk have no love for the Mage Council, and are happy to trick them if they can.
And I was young and adventurous—just as you are now—and wanted to know everything about the world and all it contains.
"But—alas!—then I grew famous, and well regarded, and had more to lose than when I was a hungry young struggling writer. I thought of that and became cowardly. I stopped writing to my friends across the sea because I feared the risk of discovery."
Perulan stopped, and took a long drink from his wine cup, staring down into it broodingly. "But now… I no longer have anything to lose. Now, I think, I will pay my Selken friends to smuggle me away. It will hurt to leave Armethalieh, but if I cannot write the books I want to write, I might as well be dead, and in the face of death, exile holds no terrors."
"But— But— Why can't you just go live in the country if you don't like the City anymore?" Kellen asked, floundering to accept this torrent of new ideas. It was one thing to see someone leave, to dream of leaving himself, but to actually talk to someone about leaving…