“Kellen!” Idalia gasped, stunned.
“That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” Kellen said bleakly, and now Idalia could see the pain in his eyes—the pain of a man carrying a burden far too heavy for him to bear. “To kill things? We can discuss why he’s here and how he got here for as long as we like. But in the end, it comes down to one thing: a Wildmage brought Cilarnen to me, because that’s his Mageprice. I don’t think there was anything in that price about me letting him live.”
Idalia would have liked to deny the truth in that—but in all honesty, she couldn’t.
“I don’t know why an Armethaliehan Mage—whatever his rank, Banished for treason or not—is here. It doesn’t seem really likely that they’d let him go with his Gift intact, or when they knew an Elf was lurking around outside the City ready to help him escape the Scouring Hunt. It sounds like a trap to me. I’ll see,” Kellen finished simply.
“And certainly there will be time enough for that on the morrow,” Redhelwar said, as smoothly as if Kellen had not just proposed to murder a guest under Elven protection. “Tonight, I believe he still recovers from his ordeal in the blizzard—I know not where. For yourself, Kellen, I am certain a warm bath, a hot meal, and a good night’s sleep will be welcome before you are called upon to try this stranger’s motives. The tea that can be brewed in the caverns, so I am assured by Adaerion, is foul, and you will wish for better. Belepheriel has made you a gift of some of the Armethaliehan Black that you favor; I shall send Dionan to your pavilion to brew it for you after you have bathed, and see you to your rest.”
For a moment Idalia thought Kellen would object, but he caught himself in time. He bowed, deeply.
“You do me too much honor, Redhelwar. It is cold in the caverns, and colder without. It will be good to spend the night in reflection, and I will welcome the tea.”
He bowed again—to Redhelwar, to Adaerion, to Idalia, and left quietly.
There was silence in Redhelwar’s pavilion for a time.
Someone please tell me that Kellen didn’t just suggest killing Cilarnen, Idalia thought.
“If the Mageborn boy is indeed a threat…” Adaerion began.
“Then Kellen will deal appropriately with him in the morning,” Redhelwar said. “I trust him to do as the Wild Magic wills.”
But not, I notice, enough that you were willing to let him know where Cilarnen is now, Idalia thought.
Bowing, she took her own leave.
—«♦»—
HE was sure Redhelwar was right. He thought he was sure.
Actually, he wasn’t sure of anything other than that he was cold, hungry, and tired.
But a hot bath and fresh clothes—he’d spent the last sennight living in his armor, and it was certainly time for a change—did much to make Kellen feel better, as did a hot fresh meal that hadn’t started life as blocks of journey-food. After that he returned to his tent—where Dionan was waiting to brew the promised tea—and drank the entire pot, while giving his armor and sword a thorough cleaning.
It made him feel better—as long as he didn’t think about Cilarnen.
The uppermost emotion in Kellen’s mind—he was honest enough to admit—was outrage. How dare Cilarnen come here? This was Kellen’s place, Kellen’s life—he’d worked hard to make a place for himself here, and now Cilarnen was coming to—
Take it all away? Is that what you really think?
Kellen snorted, surprised, disgusted, and amused—all at the same time—by the direction of his own thoughts. Even if Cilarnen were a fully invested High Mage with an army at his back—which he wasn’t—he couldn’t do that. But what if he ISN’T Cilarnen at all? What if he’s a Demon who’s figured out some way to pass the bounds of the Elven Lands?
And conceal himself from Vestakia? Unlikely, but possible.
What was slightly more possible was that he was some other kind of enemy. Something Vestakia couldn’t sense, something that could pass the bounds of the Elven Lands, but an enemy nonetheless.
If he’s an enemy, I’ll deal with him.
But you have to deal with yourself first, a small inner voice said.
Kellen sighed, and set his sword and armor aside—both gleamed with oil and polish—and sat down cross-legged on his sleeping mat. He sat quietly, not emptying his mind but letting it fill with whatever it chose.
His losses came first. Ciltesse. Petariel. The dead friends he had not yet had time to mourn in the need to cleanse the caverns of duergar. The lost members of his thirty, replaced already by near-strangers who had not yet had time to become friends. He was afraid to get to know them well, afraid to lose them too.
Elves were supposed to live for centuries. There were Elves in Sentarshadeen as old as Armethalieh! They were supposed to be living in peace in their beautiful cities, studying, crafting, making life itself into an art. They weren’t supposed to die—drowning in their own blood, spilling their guts out on the snow, vomiting and convulsing as they died of Shadowed Elf poison…
Screaming as they were eaten by acid.
They weren’t supposed to die.
But they do die, Kellen told himself. They die so their children will live. They die so the Centaurs will live. They die so the trees will live.
He remembered the barren wasteland he and Jermayan had ridden through on their way to the Black Cairn—the land that, so Jermayan had told him, had been a lush and fruitful forest before the last time Shadow Mountain had gone to war.
Yes, they fight because of that.
If there had to be war, that was a good reason to fight. Because to see the whole world turned into that—and worse—was unthinkable. Anything his friends had to do to stop it was worth it.
Even die.
But Gods of the Wild Magic, he would miss them—!
He let his grief wash over him, and through him, and when its first violence was past, he looked deeper.
Hatred. Anger. Fear. They came racing into his consciousness like coldwarg over the snow, all centered on the image of a young man he remembered only dimly.
Envy. Spite. Malice. He hoped that Cilarnen had suffered every step of his journey here, had loathed falling into the hands of the “Lesser Races,” had been terrified of the Elves.
Grief. Despair. He hoped, when Cilarnen had heard the gate slam shut behind him—he’d realized his high-and-mighty father had betrayed and abandoned him—he’d realized that the High Mages cared for nothing but power, for nothing but themselves. That everything he’d done every day of his life to excel, to please, had come to nothing in the end.
Kellen realized he was crying silently, tears streaming down his face.
Is that it? he thought wonderingly, even as his heart ached with loss and despair. But I don’t care—
Apparently he did.
“I don’t,” he whispered aloud, wiping at his eyes. He had everything here— friends, a life, work that mattered, a gift to cherish and train.
But the thought of Cilarnen coming here… frightened him.
Because Cilarnen was—or had been, at least—everything that Kellen had once desperately wanted to be. And it was as if…
As if I’m afraid that if when I see him again, everything will go back to being that way. I’ll be Kellen-the-failure again, and he’ll still be…perfect.
It was a ridiculous thing to fear. In Armethalieh, Cilarnen had belonged, and Kellen had been out-of-place. Here, Kellen fit in.