"Kellen!" Anigrel said sharply. "Your line is drifting to the right—I've told you over and over: you must keep your sigil centered directly in front of you! Now, again—retrace that Methra—"
Kellen sighed; he didn't think he was off-center. He began retracing the sigil.
Well, while it was true that you could start doing the Wild Magic immediately, there also seemed to be—ramifications. The spells in the three Books didn't seem all that different from the basic High Magick spells he'd been learning (if not actually using), but now that he'd finished the first Book he was starting to get an idea of why the Books were anathema to the High Mages. Wild Magic seemed to be utterly unpredictable.
And oh, how the High Mages hated the unpredictable! Absolutely hated it! As far as they were concerned, everything ought to be regulated, measured, moderated, and controlled, and Wild Magic just… wasn't. You could cast your spell, set the process in motion, and as far as Kellen could figure out, there was no telling just how your end would be accomplished, or even if it would be attained at all. That point was made over and over again in The Book of Moon. Spontaneity, variety, unpredictability, all linked into that most powerful of things, magick—the High Mages couldn't possibly do anything other than hate the Wild Magic, now, could they?
And despite the fact that you might not get what you wanted, that was part of what Kellen found so attractive about Wild Magic, just when he was the most unhappy with his life and the future his father had all planned out for him.
It was very strange, finding the Books in the Low Market like that, though perhaps it would be better to say that they found him. Perhaps that was just one more demonstration of how unpredictable Wild Magic was.
Perhaps he had been practicing Wild Magic even before he'd found the Books, even without knowing it, and because of that he had sensed the Books and been drawn to them just when he had been longing for the new and different, for excitement and change. Maybe his longing had become the instrument of Wild Magic…
Or Wild Magic had used him…
And that sudden thought made him just a bit uncomfortable.
"Xota. )ald. Eron. Batun," Anigrel chanted, as Kellen traced sigil after sigil, each one more complicated than the last. The first set had only glowed with a single color; now that he was into the more advanced of the sigils, the lines that he drew in the air boasted three different—though always harmonious—colors, or three shades of the same color. And now the sigils themselves pointed out where he went wrong, for the colors would not be quite right if his tracing was off even a little. And if they were wrong altogether, well, he'd often get vile shades that set his teeth on edge.
I wonder what would happen to a color-blind Mage? Kellen thought suddenly. That would hardly be a problem for a Wildmage, now, would it?
Of course, there were other difficulties with Wild Magic…
His mind wandered again; there was something else that had occurred to him that made him more than a little uneasy about his three Books.
The Books, if they had not actively sought him out, had surely picked him—or something connected with them had. Probably they had sat in that merchant's stock for years, and before that, perhaps in some other merchant's stock or some forgotten library. So. What was it about him that had made them pick him? Whoever had copied out the three Books had set a spell on them to enable them to stay together as a set, and must have set a second to ensure that only someone who was "right" for them would find them. The question in Kellen's mind was—just what was it about him that was "right"?
Obviously the Books knew they had to go to someone who wouldn't automatically turn them over to the High Mages, which probably ought to bother him more than it did. And they had to go to someone who had the personal energy to be a Wildmage. But what else was involved? Was it only that the person had to be willing, even eager, to accept something that was different, someone who was tired of the endless sameness enforced by the Council? Or was there something more to it than that?
Was it a weakness in him? Something, as the Ars Perfidorum suggested, corruptible?
And of course, he had another worry altogether. Whether or not the Ars Perfidorum was correct about the Wild Magic being bad, there was still the law. The three Books were anathema; there was no arguing with that. At the very least, if they were discovered in his possession, they'd be taken from him and burned. At worst… well, he wasn't sure what the worst would be. He had to hope that the Books would continue to hide themselves—but what if he was found out?
He tried to picture his father coming across them. Asking where he'd gotten them. Asking if he'd read them. Just how much trouble would he be in?
He wanted to think that it couldn't be that bad; after all, they were only Books. It wasn't as if he'd done anything, even if he had read them. Right?
Nevertheless, he had the horrible feeling that it would be a lot worse than anything he had ever gotten into before.
UNDERMAGE Anigrel felt a headache coming on.
Being appointed as the tutor to the only son of Arch-Mage Lycaelon was a great honor, one he had fought tooth-and-nail for.
Life had not been easy for him, although it also had not been particularly difficult, either. He'd been just wealthy enough to see true wealth and long for it; just exalted enough in status to know what real status was and crave it. Perhaps, in a way, that had been worse than being born impoverished and ignorant.
Chired Anigrel was the grandson of a tradesman. His father had shown Magegift and been taken away by the Mages to be trained. Anigrel knew nothing of his father's family, and little more of his Mageborn mother's, who had cut her off completely when she had married the son of a tradesman, even though he was a promising young Mage. She had died bringing Anigrel into the world, despite all that High Magick could do, and after that, Torbet Anigrel's fate had been sealed. He had been a wealthy man by the standards of the City, but in comparison to the fees the High Mages could command for their work, he'd been a pauper, and his dead wife's family had made it crystal clear that Torbet Anigrel would never rise above the ranks of the plain, common Mages who labored at the thankless jobs of the City.
If Anigrel had learned one lesson from his father's life, it was not to let family stand in his way. His father had died untimely early, while his son was still at his own magickal studies, and once his father was dead, Anigrel had sold the house and everything in it and set about erasing every link that bound him to the tradesman's son, the upstart Mage who had f killed a Mageborn daughter. Everyone would still know, but they would admire the effort he used to try to make them forget.
The money after the estate was settled hadn't gone far, but it had bought him a new set of friends, ones with more important fathers, important enough to counteract everything that his mother's family could muster to pull him down. At length, Anigrel was on his way up in the world—the only world that counted, the one ruled by Mages, and if his mother's family was no help to him, they did not go out of their way to hinder him, either. With time, the path of friendships and carefully tended connections had led to the House of Tavadon, to the Arch-Mage himself. The Arch-Mage had a young son, and young sons grew, and needed tutors…
Anigrel knew Kellen's bloodline, knew his potential, and had cherished daydreams of great reward from his father when he turned over to him a polished and accomplished young Apprentice to follow in the Arch-Mage's footsteps.
The trouble was, Kellen wasn't cooperating. Light knew he'd done his best to make things easy for the boy—he gained nothing from producing a failure, after all!
But no matter what he did, Kellen would not apply himself to his studies. Would not memorize the basic groundwork, the framework upon which the architecture of High Magick must be built. And without that, Anigrel could do nothing. In fact, as the years passed, Kellen actually seemed to manage to unlearn some of his lessons, if that was possible!
As time passed, he felt the unspoken pressure from Lycaelon and the increasing resistance from Kellen and felt very much as if he was being squeezed between the two.
Well, of the two, Kellen was the one he could break the easiest. Much depended on it.
"Kellen," he said, tinging his voice with heavy disappointment layered with an artful coloring of scorn, "I am not certain what your difficulty is today—if I didn't know how intelligent you are supposed to be, I'd consign you to the ranks of the useless dullards. And I fear that your father would not be at all surprised."
The boy flushed, and his mouth took on that pouting downturn that made him look even more sullen than usual. Anigrel scowled. Kellen was a singularly unpromising specimen, all things considered. He had nothing of the look of the Mageborn—there was some scandal there, something to do with the Arch-Mage's late and unknown wife, but Anigrel was far too clever a social-climber to ever touch on such a sensitive issue. In his private hours, however, Anigrel sometimes wondered what the nameless female might have had to recommend her to the Arch-Mage's attention.
Undoubtedly she had been a beauty, but surely a Mage would seek for more than that in a marriage alliance that would produce sons? The features that commended themselves to masculine attention upon a female face could be unfortunate when passed on to male offspring, after all. That girlish face and pouting mouth might be quite beguiling on a young maiden, but Kellen was far too heavy-featured to make them into assets. In fact, Kellen seemed to take no pains with his appearance at all. Above heavy eyebrows was a thatch of curling brown hair that always looked a little too long no matter how often or expertly it was cut, and never looked neat. Kellen loomed above his peers, with hands and feet too big for the rest of him, and even the most expertly tailored robes and tunics never seemed to quite fit. He was nothing like his elegant father—no ambition, no drive—and Anigrel was more than tired of Kellen's constant sulking.
Well, it was time to pass some of that irritation back to the appropriate recipient.
"Sit down, and take out your notes," Anigrel continued. "You can take notes, can't you? Your mind hasn't gone so dull that you can't write your letters?"
The boy flushed again, and this time there was a flash of anger in the dark eyes. Good. He'd finally struck a nerve.
Anigrel waited while the boy took his seat at the small table just under the single window in the workroom, and took out the book of blank pages in which he was supposed to take notes while Anigrel lectured. Anigrel regularly inspected this book to be certain that the boy understood the lectures delivered to him—or at least understood enough to note down the salient points of each lecture. And to be certain the boy wasn't just doodling or writing nonsense.
"Power," he began, pacing slowly back and forth while he spoke, "and by that I mean magickal power, does not arise out of nothing. As you know, every Mage has his own personal reserves of power, and this is all very well for small matters, but for greater Workings, power must be pooled. This is part of every Mage's training, how to cooperate and meld the power each one holds into a greater whole. But even this is not enough to supply the needs of our City and its people. Therefore, in the distant past, the Arch-Mages discovered and learned to harvest a still greater source of this power."
He paused in his pacing to glance aside at his pupil, whose head was bent over his book, his pen scratching diligently on the pages.
Well, regardless of how absentminded the boy was today, the information that Anigrel was about to give him should certainly wake him up.
"You know that every Mage has his own personal reserve of power," Anigrel continued. "But you may not have realized it is not only Mages who have stores of this power. All people have it, although of course they can never use it themselves."
The boy looked up sharply at that. Anigrel smiled slightly. It was about time that the boy began to understand how the world really worked! Perhaps some inside knowledge would give him the motivation to succeed! "Yes, you may well stare! Now, do you know why a Mage needs to learn how to share his power with others?"
Kellen shook his head mutely.
"Because, boy, only one born to the power of a Mage can resist someone trying to take his power from him, and he instinctively does so when he feels his power being drained from him. It takes training and will to overcome that instinct. The ordinary person, one who has no notion that he has this power, does not resist when it is harvested. And that is what we do, we Mages in the service of the City. Fully half of us spend all our waking time harvesting the power of our citizens to serve the City itself.
"Not, as you may have thought, in using our own little stores of power in long and involved spells that make the maximum use of tiny amounts of it, in order to do the work that we must. No, we constantly harvest the power of the people of the entire City, storing it, so that we need not deplete ourselves in order to do the work of the City."
Rather elegant, he'd always thought; like an invisible tax. Take from the citizens to do the work that they insisted in having done: purifying water, destroying vermin, creating the Golden Suns that Armethalieh spent so lavishly in trade with the outside world. And if the Mages siphoned off a bit here and there to make their own lives easier, well, that was only fair. Nothing in life was free.
The boy gaped at him, as if he didn't quite understand what he had heard. "You mean, you take it from them? Without asking? Without them even knowing?" he asked incredulously.
"And what would be the point of telling them?" Anigrel demanded sharply "Half of them wouldn't believe it, and the other half would want to be paid for it, somehow—as if living in the City weren't payment enough. Ridiculous—they don't use it, they can't use it, they don't miss it, and if it weren't harvested, it would just drain away, accomplishing nothing. All things have their price, and the good of the City is paid for by the power of its citizens. Why should we deplete ourselves for them, when they can supply the power instead?"