“WHAT?” Oh, good going, Kellen, you’ve really put your foot in it this time. What was it about Cilarnen that sent him back three seasons in his manners? As if the Elves hadn’t taught him better by now. Leaf and Star—if he’d thought about it, the most annoying thing he could have done was to have been completely polite, and if he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t have put himself in the wrong. “Cilarnen, I—”
“You don’t care.” Cilarnen’s voice was flat. “Why should you? Your father and mine were enemies.”
“My father condemned me to death, actually,” Kellen replied slowly. “He wanted me dead so badly he sent three packs of the Scouring Hunt after me. When he found out I was still alive, living outside City Lands, he expanded the Boundaries so he could try to hunt me down again. Whatever our fathers are— were—to each other, we are not enemies. Or at least, we shouldn’t be.”
As he said it, he felt a sense of Presence.
A price to pay.
Forgive an enemy.
Yes, Cilarnen had been his enemy. Perhaps not for what he had done— though Kellen had certainly suffered enough from his youthful tormenting—but simply for what he was—the symbol of what Kellen could have been, as much so as the Other Kellen he had confronted at the Black Cairn.
Cilarnen had been—and still was—his enemy.
Forgive an enemy.
Forgive—forget—it was time to pay the price of Gesade’s healing.
Kellen swallowed hard. He’d thought then it was a small price, a light price.
I forgive you, Cilarnen. I think it will be the hardest price I have ever paid, but… I forgive you. I think you were as much a victim of the City as I was.
He got up to reach out to Cilarnen.
“No,” Kardus said quietly. “The touch of a Wildmage is… uncomfortable to him.”
Kellen settled back and concentrated on preparing tea, saying nothing. This was no simple price, over and done with in hours or days. He would be paying this price for moonturns to come. Perhaps for the rest of his life.
I can try, he thought desperately. I can only try my best.
“Was that why Lycaelon wanted to expand the City Bounds?” Cilarnen asked in horrified wonder.
Kellen took a deep breath, and forced himself to sound calm. He could act as if Cilarnen weren’t his enemy. That was a beginning.
The sense of Presence—of listening—withdrew.
So he nodded, and made his expression serious, but open and pleasant. “Yes. We’re fairly sure, anyway. When we found out, my sister and I escaped into the Elven Lands, because we knew that no matter what, the Council wouldn’t dare push the Bounds past the Elven border.”
“And then everything went wrong, and the Council drew back the Bounds to the walls,” Cilarnen said, taking up the story as if it were his to tell as well. Well, maybe it was—he knew what Kellen did not, what had gone on inside the City. “The farmers stopped sending food—they said with so much rain in the fall they would need all their food for themselves. There were no weather spells to protect them anymore, you see. I was an Entered Apprentice then. I saw all the storehouses.” There was a hint of desperation in his voice. “They were half-empty, and every day it was worse. The price of grain kept rising. The Council agreed to buy grain from the Selkens, but of course nobody knew if they would send it. And it made us look so weak!”
The tea was ready. Kellen poured, and held out a cup to Cilarnen, dropping several honey-disks into it for good measure. In the cold, honey was energy. The boy—Kellen couldn’t help thinking of Cilarnen as a boy, though he knew Cilarnen was a year older than he was—took it automatically.
Heavy rains. When the Black Cairn had burst, it had affected the weather everywhere. Normally that wouldn’t have included the Delfier Valley, granary of Armethalieh, but when the Mages had restricted the Bounds, they had removed the weather-spells from the valley, exposing it to the full force of the freak storms. Anything still in the fields would have been beaten down and drowned; rotted. He hadn’t known. Of course, if he had, it still wouldn’t have changed anything, but—
“You couldn’t let that go on,” Kellen said quietly.
“We had to stop them!” Cilarnen said passionately. “The High Council wouldn’t listen—my father wouldn’t listen. It was his plan to reduce the Bounds to the walls, to shame Arch-Mage Lycaelon, and he would not reverse his position. The Arch-Mage would have listened. I know that now. I know it! But I thought he wouldn’t because of who my father was, and I couldn’t see the City starving before my eyes!”
Odd as it was to imagine, Kellen thought Lycaelon would have listened. Leaving the City without any way to feed itself was suicidal. But if the rest of the Council had backed Volpiril, and not Lycaelon…
“And I couldn’t see the City starving before my eyes” At that moment, Kellen felt something he hadn’t expected for Cilarnen: respect. As Mageborn, Cilarnen would have been one of the last to suffer; in fact, the hardships of the City would scarcely have touched his life at all. Yet he had taken on the responsibility his elders were too enwrapped in political wrangling to claim.
“What did you do?” he asked gently.
“We made umbrastone,” Cilarnen said miserably. “Light deliver me, I don’t even know why, now! There were six of us, and Master Raellan: Jorade Isas, Geont Pentres, Kermis Lalkmair, Tiedor Rolfort, Margon Ogregance, and me. Margon’s father was on the Merchant’s and Provender’s Council, so he knew exactly how bad things were. Kermis was the one who had the recipe for umbra-stone. It eats magic—I think we thought that if we made enough of it, we could get into the High Council chambers and make them listen to us.”
“Leaf and Star,” Kellen said softly. Treason, they’d guessed back in Redhelwar’s tent, and here it was: conspiracy to overthrow the High Council and meddling with forbidden magic. He’d read about umbrastone in the Ars Perfidorum, the Book of Forbidden Acts. It was one of the products of the Art Khemitic, and as such, as much anathema to the High Mages as the Wild Magic was.
“We were arrested before we even made the first batch,” Cilarnen said, sounding baffled and grief-stricken. “I don’t know how they found out. But we had all the ingredients, so that was good enough for the High Council. I don’t know what happened to any of my friends—I think at least one of them was Banished before me, and died. Hyandur said there was someone in a Felon’s Cloak, and the Hunt… I didn’t believe him then. Or maybe… Undermage Anigrel said my father was dead, when he came to Burn away my Gift. He said the conspiracy was Lord Volpiril’s idea.”
“He lied,” Kellen said instantly, though the mention of Anigrel’s name made him want to twitch. It wasn’t only kindness that motivated his words, but common sense. Why would Lord Volpiril instigate a conspiracy whose sole purpose was to overthrow him and support Lycaelon’s position? Anigrel must have been lying.
Cilarnen held up a hand. “That doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rough with grief. “This does: Undermage Anigrel came to Burn away my Gift. I still have it.”
Kellen started, but didn’t interrupt.
“For a long time I didn’t.” Maybe Cilarnen interpreted Kellen’s expression of startlement as skepticism, because he nodded vigorously. “Truly. Even you have to believe I’d know whether it was there or not. I spent two moonturns at Stonehearth, and I didn’t have it—just the worst headaches you can imagine. Then— the day that Thing came—it came back.”
“And it’s all there?” Kellen wasn’t sure quite what he was asking, or what good the information would do him. He knew how the High Mages fueled their spells—by power stolen from the citizens of Armethalieh through their City Talismans. Even if Cilarnen hadn’t had his Gift Burned out of him, he had nothing now beyond his personal power to draw on to fuel his spells.
“Yes,” Cilarnen said, smiling bitterly for a moment. “For what good it does me. I was nearly ready to test for Journeyman when I was Banished—but here, without tools, without spellbooks, what good am I? Unless, of course, you need someone to take care of horses. I can light fires and boil water. But just touching those cursed books you Wildmages are so proud of makes me feel sick. And there’s something missing when I try to cast a spell. But I don’t know what it is.”
I do, Kellen thought. And bless Leaf and Star that Anigrel was so willing to parade his superior knowledge before me that day. I can explain to you how the High Magick REALLY works, and why your spells don’t.
But whether that was something he should do would require more thought. And he wasn’t sure that even if he did explain, it would help. Cilarnen would still need a power source—quite a lot of them, in fact—and they would have to donate their power freely and willingly.
“I’m glad that you told me all this,” Kellen said, “and I really am sorry about your father—not because I liked him, or any of the High Mages, but because I think he was unjustly killed. And I know that you and your friends were unjustly punished. It should have been the first thought of every High Mage on the Council to take care of the City, not to spend their time in wrangling over who was to blame. But this isn’t why you came, is it?”
“No,” Cilarnen said. “I came because of what the De—Thing told me at Stonehearth.” He closed his eyes, obviously concentrating, and when he spoke again, eyes still closed, Kellen sensed he was reciting something he had carefully committed to memory.
“‘So, Arch-Mage’s son Kellen, what a surprise to see you here. Have you tired of the Children of Leaf and Star and think to make your way back to the Golden City? You have nothing to return to now. Your father claims another as his son. He has given him the seat on the High Council that was to have been yours. And daily our foothold in the City grows stronger…’”
Kellen rocked back on his heels, the words striking him like separate blows.
The Demons were in Armethalieh.
Or… wait. He was fairly sure the Demons couldn’t enter Armethalieh, any more than they could enter the Elven Lands. If he could trust a single word Lycaelon had said to him that night in his cell, the High Mages did remember the Demons, and were still terrified of them. So they’d have spells to keep them out of the City.
But… a foothold. That was bad enough.
It would have to be a foothold of a different sort than they had here in the Elven Lands with the Shadowed Elves. Something that could pass the City-wards and flourish unnoticed.
But what?
“Well?” Cilarnen demanded. “Aren’t you going to do something?”