“Think!” Cilarnen cried. “What good is thinking going to do? You’ve got to stop them!”
“Really?” Kellen replied, his tone dry. “One would be interested, of course, to hear how this was to be accomplished at all, much less this instant. I can’t go back to Armethalieh and neither can you. And even if we could fight our way in, do you think the High Council would listen to us? Would the Arch-Mage listen to me?” And Lycaelon rules the Council now. He must, now that Volpiril’s dead. I have to talk to Idalia about this. She kept watch on the High Council for years. She’ll have a better idea of how the power would have shifted with Volpiril gone. And… Lycaelon has adopted someone, and given him Volpiril’s Council seat. Who?
“So you’re going to leave them to die,” Cilarnen said bitterly. “I knew you would.” He started to get to his feet.
“Sit down,” Kellen said firmly. “Drink your tea. And think, Cilarnen. By Leaf and Star, you were the best student at the Mage-College—you must have some brain in that pretty head of yours. I wouldn’t give my worst enemy over to Them—I’m certainly not giving Them a whole city of innocent people to play with. Their sorcery is fueled by torture and death—and the more powerful the Gift in their victim, the more power They gain from destroying him. If they take Armethalieh… if they can take Armethalieh…”
Then They win. They’ll be unstoppable.
“It’s cold,” Cilarnen muttered sulkily, sitting back down.
Kellen lifted the pot. Cilarnen held out his cup. Kellen refilled it. Cilarnen sipped. “Now it’s bitter,” he said, a faint whining note in his voice.
Kellen sighed inwardly. He wondered if he’d ever been anything like Cilarnen. Probably. He refilled his own cup. “I don’t make very good tea. Ask anyone,” he said mildly. He passed Cilarnen the jar of honey-disks and sipped his own tea. It tasted fine to him—strong, but that was just as well. He hadn’t gotten much sleep.
“You say you’re going to help. But you don’t say what you’re going to do. And the only reason you’re going to help is because if those Things destroy Armethalieh, it’ll be bad for the Elves, who are the only ones you really care about,” Cilarnen retorted,belligerently a few moments later.
If Kellen hadn’t had something really important to worry about now, if he hadn’t had the paying of his Mageprice fixed firmly in his mind, he might actually have gotten angry. As it was, he simply stared at Cilarnen in bemusement. Why in the name of anything you cared to call upon was the boy trying to pick a fight with him?
Because Cilarnen was afraid.
The intuition came to him suddenly. He glanced up at Kardus, and saw acknowledgment in the Centaur Wildmage’s dark-eyed gaze. Cilarnen was terrified.
For Armethalieh.
Kellen had been afraid when he’d been Banished, but only of the unknown. From the moment Armethalieh’s gates closed behind him, he’d been looking forward, not back.
But Cilarnen…
Cilarnen missed Armethalieh. The way Idalia would miss Jermayan, he imagined vaguely, or he would miss Shalkan. Cilarnen felt about Armethalieh the way Jermayan and Ancaladar felt about each other.
But a city is wood and stone. It can’t love you back.
He supposed that didn’t matter. The Elves loved Ysterialpoerin, and had fought desperately to save it. He had fought desperately to save it.
Compassion warmed his next words.
“Yes, many of the Elves are my friends. But I’d help anyway, even if Armethalieh’s destruction weren’t a danger to them. If They destroy Armethalieh, Their victory will be bad for more than just the Elves. It will give Them the power to destroy every creature of the Light, every tree, every blade of grass, until there’s nothing left in the world but Them and Their slaves. They tried twice before. The first time was before there were humans, and the Elves fought them alone. The last time was around the time Armethalieh was built. Everyone—Elves, humans, Centaurs, unicorns, dragons, and Otherfolk who don’t exist anymore—all joined together to defeat Them. They thought they’d won forever.
“They were wrong.”
Cilarnen just shook his head. Plainly it was more information than he could handle.
“Kellen will aid Armethalieh, Cilarnen, and so will the Elves, for all the races of the Light depend on one another, like a spider’s web. Cut one strand, then another, and soon there is no web at all. Do you see?” Kardus said, as simply as if he were talking to a small child.
“But the Elves went to ask the City for help,” Cilarnen said, shaking his head. “And we wouldn’t give it. Why should they help now?”
Kardus glanced at Kellen questioningly.
“Well, the Elves weren’t actually asking for help. Andoreniel already knew that the High Mages wouldn’t fight for the Elves—or for anyone outside the City,” Kellen said, trying to keep his explanation simple. “He was only trying to warn the City so they could protect themselves.”
“But they wouldn’t let Hyandur in!” Cilarnen said angrily. “They wouldn’t let him warn them—and he still saved my life! Roiry and Pearl could have been killed outrunning the Scouring Hunt, but he still helped me.”
Kellen wasn’t sure, but from the context, “Roiry” and “Pearl” seemed to be Hyandur’s riding animals. Odd that one of the Mageborn should care about anything like that; young Mages-in-training didn’t have pets or favorite mounts any more than they had girlfriends. They were supposed to focus their entire being on the High Magick to the exclusion of everything else.
“If what the creature you met at Stonehearth told you is true,” Kellen said, still thinking his way slowly through everything Cilarnen had told him, “Hyandur’s being barred from the City may have saved not only your life, but his. He probably wouldn’t have been left alive to deliver his message—depending on the nature of this ‘foothold.’”
Cilarnen looked surprised, as if the thought had never occurred to him.
“So… it worked out for the best?” he said tentatively.
“It went as the Wild Magic wills,” Kellen said automatically.
Cilarnen recoiled in disgust, wincing faintly.
Kellen sighed ruefully. Cilarnen was more difficult to talk to than the Elves of Ysterialpoerin! “You can’t have that much objection to the Wild Magic. You came here with a Wildmage,” he said, with just a touch of chiding in his voice.
It was an hour before dawn now; he wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight. He might as well get dressed and take Cilarnen to be fed. At a slightly more civilized hour he could present him to Redhelwar—hoping Cilarnen did not insult the Army’s General too thoroughly—and they could begin to plan what to do.
“Kardus is different. He doesn’t make my skin crawl,” Cilarnen said with a shattering lack of tact. “And anyway—I’m already Banished. What difference can it make who I associate with? But Wild Magic… it doesn’t make any sense.”
Kellen looked at Kardus, puzzled.
“As you know, I have no magic. Yet when the Books came to me, I did my best to live by their teachings, and to follow the Great Herdsman’s Path. There are times when I Know what others do not, and in payment for these Knowings, I am always set a Task. I Knew in Merryvale that I must go to Stonehearth, and help the human child I would find there. When I reached Stonehearth, my Knowing unfolded further, and I realized, after the attack, that my Task was to bring him to you, in order to give him the help he truly needed.
“Both Wirance and I found that his magic was of a kind neither of us knew. We tested him with the Wild Magic, and found that Wirance’s Books caused him true distress where mine did not, though he could read neither Wirance’s set nor mine. Yet their spells worked together well enough at Stonehearth.”
“Huh,” Kellen said. One more mystery. Well, given time and enough information, this one could probably be unraveled too.
He pulled off the tunic he’d grabbed at random and opened his clothes chest.
“What are you doing?” Cilarnen asked nervously.
“Getting dressed.” For some reason Kellen was starting to feel like Cilarnen’s much older brother. “It’s almost dawn. Then the three of us—by your courtesy, Kardus Wildmage—are going to go and eat, because I didn’t get much sleep and I’m hungry, and as the Mountainfolk say, ‘Sleep is food, and food is sleep.’ By then the day-watch of the camp should be on duty, so I’ll go to Dionan or Ninolion and see when we can see Redhelwar—the General of the Elven Army, Cilarnen, and he’s the most important person here, so try to be extremely polite. The Elves set a great store by politeness. Then, when we do see him, you can tell him what you’ve told me, and we’ll figure out what to do about it.”
As he spoke, he finished dressing, and buckled on sword, dagger, and spurs. It was a little cramped with Kardus in the tent, but he managed. Quickly running a comb through his hair, he braided it into a tight club at the base of his neck, tied it with a ribbon, swung his cloak around himself, and picked up his gloves.
Cilarnen was staring at him, jaw hanging.
“You look like an Elf,” he blurted, scrambling to his feet.
Kellen bit his lip. Hard. “Cilarnen, have you actually seen any Elves? I look about as much like one of them as a draft horse looks like a unicorn. Come on.” He doused the lanterns and worked his way around Kardus to the door of the pavilion.
—«♦»—
CILARNEN followed the other two out of the now-dark green tent, gasping a little as the sharp bite of the cold air. It was still black as night, for all Kellen Tavadon’s talk of it being nearly dawn, and snowing—of course. At least Tavadon had listened, though Cilarnen wasn’t really sure how much he understood. He had kept talking about things that had happened a thousand years ago, not about what had happened back in the village. And about Elves.