Their Wildmage Healer had left as well, of course. The village had petitioned Armethalieh to send them a new Healer, and today they were receiving their reply.
No Healer would be sent to their village. Any who needed help might come freely to the City to receive it—providing, of course, that they were tax-paying humans willing to wear the City token, and who fit City standards of suitability for help.
The villagers' anger came to him only distantly, but it was a heady vintage nevertheless. Prince Zyperis chuckled, and waved his hand across the surface of the bowl, breaking the link. Now that another village had tasted the bitter along with the sweet, they were ready to receive one of his agents—a trader from the High Hills, perhaps, primed with horror stories of the tyranny of the High Mages, to urge the villagers to desert their homes and fields and migrate elsewhere—outside the City-claimed lands—further isolating and impoverishing the City. All the vast acreage of fertile fields in the World Above did the City precious little good if there was no one there to farm it. And after generations of keeping its own citizens pent behind the City walls, there was not one citizen willing or able to take up that task, even if the City was willing to release any of its own precious citizenry to the labor.
The City of a Thousand Bells was the largest single concentration of humans in the land, the stronghold of High Magick, so its destruction was the keystone of the Endarkened's strategy. Since the War, the Mages had completely lost touch with the adaptability and flexibility that was once humanity's greatest strength, utterly rejecting the Wild Magic and imprisoning themselves within a web of inflexible rules and regulations. That had opened them to Endarkened influence, though of course, they had known it not. A subtle influence, that, a careful nourishing of superiority—first of human over not, then of City over foreigner, then at last of Mage over mere citizen. And then, a more subtle influence, one that suggested, oh, so delicately, that since Wild Magic could not be controlled by the High Mages, it must be dangerous… or evil. Now the Mages were utterly certain that there was no situation that could not be dealt with according to their lifeless and unthinking rules. In setting themselves up as the sole authorities within the City, they had cast their rules in stone, and used them to build a wall between themselves and the other races of the land.
And since—thanks to careful coaching by Endarkened agents—the High Mages had determined that all the other creatures in the land were destined to be ruled (if human) or enslaved (if not) by the City, if not exterminated outright, those races' reaction to them now ranged from mere annoyance to utter fury…
"Oh, yes," Prince Zyperis said softly, rubbing his long taloned hands together and spreading his wings wide in contentment. "Everything is going forward precisely as it should."
KELLEN had finally dropped into an uneasy sleep—plagued by dreams of Demonic Hounds near morning—and even the chance to see more of Merryvale had not been enough to rouse him out of the black mood he'd awakened with. He hated inflicting it on everyone around him, but unlike back in the City—which he still thought of as "home" in unguarded moments—there really wasn't anyplace he could go off to be by himself until it passed, at least, not until he and Idalia went back to her cabin.
There, if need be, he could make an excuse to go off alone hunting for foodstuffs or wind-felled timber for building or the fireplace. He'd wondered when he first arrived why Idalia wouldn't cut a tree that wasn't already dead—until he'd met the dryads. Now he was glad of it; searching for more wood made a good excuse to get away when he needed to. But that wasn't possible today. All he could do was try to keep to himself as much as possible, and hope that nobody noticed.
He would have preferred to just curl up on his sleeping pallet and hide until it was time to leave, but Idalia had shopping to do this morning, and since yesterday Kellen had been so eager to see the rest of the village, there was no way he could get out of going with her without attracting attention he really wanted to avoid.
Armed with a borrowed basket—Idalia had one too—Kellen trailed after his sister as she made her way to Merryvale's Market Street.
It was a very different sort of market from the ones in Armethalieh. Of course it was smaller—much smaller. That went without saying. Half the places Idalia dragged him to were actual shops, not proper markets such as he was used to. And everything was jumbled in together in the same place—fruit and honey and meat and bread and cloth, all crowded into the same little part of town. And there wasn't really very much of anything, and what there was, was—he guessed—pretty crude by Armethaliehan standards.
But not one item there had been passed by the Council. Not one item there had received a license to be sold.
He passed by the door of a sweets-seller. The trays of brightly colored sugar caught his eye, and he stopped, thinking of Shalkan. The unicorn had a notorious sweet tooth, and would enjoy the treat.
But how could Kellen pay for it?
He glanced up the street. Idalia was stopped in the doorway of a spice-merchant's, and from the look of things, she was going to be there for some time.
Kellen went into the small shop. It smelled of sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and other spices he couldn't put a name to. As he entered, he dug in his pouch for some coins—Armethaliehan coins, and probably worthless here, but maybe the metal in them would be worth something. Only the Golden Suns were bespelled, after all; the lesser coins of the City were only ordinary silver and copper. He pulled them out and held them toward the seller, a middle-aged Centaur wearing a white apron who smiled as he saw Kellen approach.
"I don't know if these are worth anything here…"
"What were you looking to buy?" the Centaur asked amiably. From his girth, he was his own best customer. "Say, aren't you Kellen—Wild-mage Idalia's brother?"
"That's right," Kellen said. "And I've got a friend with a sweet tooth. I think he'd enjoy some of the rock sugar, or maybe some of the sugar sticks."
"And you wanted to pay in coin?" the Centaur asked, sounding baffled. "Idalia usually pays with weather, and all. Still…" He inspected the coins on Kellen's outstretched palm critically. "Never seen anything like them, but they look like good silver, right enough. I reckon one of those'll be enough to buy your friend a fine tummy-ache, if you think that's fair."
"More than fair," Kellen agreed. He handed over the coin, and the sweets-seller took out a square of paper and made up a large packet of brightly colored sugar stick and glittering lumps of rock sugar. He tied the packet up with a length of twine and handed it over.
"And this is for you. A treat for luck."
He picked up a small wooden dish and held it out to Kellen. Resting in the middle of it was a round brown doughy object, its surface coated with powdered sugar.
"What is it?" Kellen asked curiously.
"New from Midsummer Fair. The Mountain Traders brought it. They say it came out of the Southern Deserts, a spice-bean called xocalatl. Try it."
"Something new." Kellen hardly needed to hear anything more. He picked up the unprepossessing-looking object and popped it into his mouth.
It began to dissolve immediately, and the rich taste filled his mouth, bitter and sweet and complex. Like kaffeyah, but not quite. He wasn't sure he liked it, but he was glad he'd tried it.
" 'Xocalatl,' " Kellen said, trying the unfamiliar word. "Thank you. I'll remember it."
"Come again," the sweets-seller said genially. "And remember me to your sister."
Kellen nodded and moved on, tucking his package carefully into his basket and hurrying to catch up with his sister.
IDALIA completed her trading in Merryvale by midmorning, and she and Kellen began the long walk back to her cabin.
A lot of what she had traded for would be sent later—bags of flour, meal, and salt, too heavy for them to carry—and some things they would be returning for when they were ready. Kellen had been glad to find that they would be trading a quantity of smoked venison and wood-pigeon pickled in brine for an equal weight of salt-beef, preserved eggs, and dried fish (though Idalia warned him he'd be very tired of all of them by spring).
But what they were carrying home with them was heavy enough, since it principally consisted of two large kegs of nails and some coils of thin thatching rope to be used for the construction of the addition to the cabin. He hoped that Idalia knew how to thatch, since he didn't, and from what he'd seen, it would be a difficult task to learn.
If Idalia noticed his unusual silence, she did not break it with any comments of her own. The day was bright and clear—good weather for the ripening crops of the Merryvale farmers.
He wished he could feel as cheerful as the weather warranted. He couldn't help thinking about Demons. Idalia still hadn't talked to him about them, and now he was hesitant to bring up the subject again. If she was falling prey to the influence of Demons, that might explain why she didn't want to live in the village, even for the winter. As long as she stayed away, she could keep her associations with Demons secret, but if she moved there and was around them, especially the old Healer, she would certainly be found out.
Maybe the reason the old faun wouldn't let her near was that he knew she wasn't to be trusted. Idalia might not know what had happened to the aged creature, but so far as Kellen was concerned, it was as plain as a road-post. Demons—or if not Demons, certainly Demonic creatures—had gotten hold of him and his terrible injuries were the result.
If the faun suspected Idalia of being Demon-tainted, he wouldn't let her get near him. But he might try and warn Kellen.
Maybe his appearance at the pond had been an attempt to deliver that warning.
Maybe Kellen's dreams of Demon Hounds were another warning.
IDALIA made much of her payment for the supplies that would see the two of them through the winter in the form of spells to keep damaging weather away from the fields for these last crucial sennights. So long as there was not too much tampering, or too often, or over too large an area, a little weather magic did no harm to the greater balance of field and forest. It was when someone got greedy, wanting everything their own way with no thought to the harm that did to others, that balance was endangered. The spells were very specific; preventing rain (or worse, hail) from falling on those specific fields but permitting it to fall anywhere else in the area it cared to. This might mean that the forests surrounding Merryvale itself got all the rain that would have fallen on the village plus what would have fallen on the fields, but the point was it was all ending up in the same general area and percolating down into the waters underground. The spell was set to dissipate as soon as the harvest was gathered in, thus further limiting its effects.
Though she'd been aware of Kellen's unsettled mood from the moment he'd awakened that morning, Idalia respected his attempt to keep it to himself. From the vantage point of her ten years' seniority, she well remembered the wild emotional storms of adolescence, and coming into the power of a Wildmage while at the same time being cast out of the only home you'd ever known hardly made coping with growing up any easier. Poor Kellen! He had a triple burden to labor under! That he managed to be cooperative and cheerful most of the time said a great deal for the essential goodness of his nature.
Curse Lycaelon for a brute and a fool! She had loved her brother dearly as a child, and found the young man even more endearing as he bumbled his way toward maturity, but sometimes it was hard to believe he was Lycaelon's son. Subtlety simply was not in his nature. Even Idalia had to admit that Kellen was as easy to read as a page of print, and easier to manipulate.
But Lycaelon had never bothered.
The Arch-Mage simply had not been interested in anything outside of his own desires. If he had troubled to take the little time it would have taken to get to know Kellen personally, rather than relying on the reports of servants and underlings, if he had considered spending some part of the time he squandered in his endless power-games on his son instead of on City politics, Lycaelon could have had exactly the son he'd wanted. Kellen was so starved for affection he would have done anything for his father if Lycaelon had only bothered to love the boy. Kellen would have grown up to become a model son, a credit to his family name, a promising young High Mage.
And the Books would never have come to him.
Or would they?
What if they had?
Sooner or later Kellen would have started to see that what he was told and what really went on in the City didn't match. Especially for anyone who wasn't Mageborn.
But if the Books had still come to him, Kellen would certainly never have studied them.