Kellen grabbed for it and missed. Shalkan stamped down with one cloven hoof, pinning it to the snow.
Kellen picked it up as Cilarnen barefoot, in a long gray robe came running over the snow toward him.
The thing Kellen had in his hands resembled a ferret Kellen had seen pictures of the creatures by now except for the fact that it was made of stone, its body a uniform gray color. It writhed and twisted in his grasp, striking and biting at his hands, but though its small stone teeth could penetrate his heavy gloves, they had no chance against the armored gauntlets beneath.
Cilarnen slipped a noose woven of thin strands of red silk around the creature's neck and it instantly became what it had been in the beginning: a lifeless marble carving.
He took it back, and only then seemed to notice that he was standing barefoot on snow.
"Yah!" he announced inelegantly, and ran back the way he'd come, holding the stone ferret in one hand and holding up his robes with the other, hissing to himself at the cold.
Despite the sadness of the news he'd received this morning, Kellen did have to smile to himself. This was hardly the image of serene and perfect all-knowingness that the High Mages of Armethalieh would like to project, but it was a much more human one. When he thought of the High Magick, which had managed to free itself from Balances and Mageprices to become a weapon with nothing to hold it in check, Kellen would much rather think of Cilarnen hopping barefoot over the snow because he'd forgotten his boots in the excitement of working out a spell than of his last sight of the High Council on the day they had Banished him bloated with smug arrogance, drunk with power, and certain that killing a seventeen-year-old boy would have absolutely no consequences.
There were always consequences.
A few moments later, Cilarnen came back, having added boots and a cloak to his robe.
"Thanks for catching that," he said to Shalkan and Kellen. "I think I need to put the spells on in a different order, really, and that one got out of the box. I really think it's better if they know who they're supposed to serve, and how, before I wake them up."
"Why are you having a problem?" Kellen asked. "You've made dozens of golems before."
Cilarnen shrugged. "According to theory, the Enlivening Spell makes the statue take on the essential nature of its form. So hounds act like hounds; birds, birds; and so on. I was making servants. Maybe that made a difference. But a ferret's essential nature is to… ferret. Which means I had better put any compulsions on its nature in place first, I think."
"That sounds like a good idea," Kellen agreed.
"But you didn't come to talk to me about the ferrets. I told Artenel he couldn't have any of them or the snakes either until the end of the sennight."
"No," said Kellen. "I need something else. And I have bad news."
"It's about that thing that came a few days ago, isn't it?" Cilarnen said. "Tea," he said next, regarding Kellen's blank expression.
* * * * *
"YOU were raised in the City. You know we work at night," Cilarnen said, handing Kellen a mug. He knew Shalkan's tastes by now, and tipped several honey-disks onto a plate and held them out to the unicorn. Shalkan took them delicately, one by one.
"In fact, I was just finishing up with the latest batch of stone ferrets before going to bed now, as it's simple work and doesn't require much concentration, really. But Midwinter was a time of oh, say it was as if everything was very clear and quiet, so that I could see a long way. So I wasn't going to waste it on stone ferrets. I wanted to check as much of the Borders as I could, then see what was going on in Armethalieh.
"Well, as I've told you before, those big cities the Elves have up there are pretty well gone. I've only been as far north as Ysterialpoerin, and I've only been there once, but I tried looking for other things in the north that looked like that big house I was in and felt like it, too and I found two that were empty, and one looked like it had been burned. Since it had been looted, I could follow objects that had been taken from it, and a lot of them kept leading me back to Ysterialpoerin, but enough of them didn't that I could start to trace the Frost Giants; figure out where they are, and where they're going. I was in the middle of doing that it's very boring, so I don't bother you with it unless there's actually something interesting going on when all of a sudden there was this… it was as if there were a fire, and somebody had thrown an enormous load of coals and oil onto it."
"I don't get it," Kellen said, shaking his head.
"You really weren't paying attention at College, were you?" Cilarnen said. "Well, they didn't really want to teach us this stuff. We might have learned to think. Okay. Think of the world everything you know as a pond of fish. All the fish in the pond are Powers what the College teaches us are Illusory Creatures and Imaginary Constructs, but are actually real, just like Shalkan."
"Okay," Kellen said. Shalkan snorted in amusement.
Cilarnen seemed so surprised by things that Kellen took for granted that the Shining Folk were real, for example but then, Kellen and Cilarnen had learned about magic and the world in two entirely different ways.
He supposed that meant that they saw the world in two entirely different ways, too.
"Now imagine I'm looking into that pond on Midwinter night, talking to some of the Powers fish and doing my best not to be seen by others, when suddenly, from nowhere I can see, a giant fish, bigger than all the other fish, appears in the pond."
"Is it a good fish?" Kellen asked dubiously.
Cilarnen snorted. "A very good fish, I think, as it immediately started eating some of the fish I'd been trying to hide from. But still a very scary fish."
Midwinter would have been when Idalia had done her spell.
"So where did this, er, 'fish' come from?" Kellen asked.
"I don't know!" Cilarnen said in exasperation. "Somewhere that isn't here. Where that is, and why it's showed up just now, the Light only knows."
"What else can you tell me about it?" Kellen asked.
"Is that what you came to ask me?" Cilarnen asked, sounding incredulous. "Do you want me to summon it up and ask it? Kellen, I'd rather summon up one of Them, believe me! It's destroying our enemies, but that doesn't mean… look. A candle is a good thing to have inside your house, right? A forest fire isn't. But they're both flame."
"I guess," Kellen said doubtfully. Any time Cilarnen tried to explain something to him about magic or magick he only confused Kellen further.
"You're saying it's one of the Old Powers," Shalkan said helpfully.
"I have no idea," Cilarnen answered fervently. "I don't even know what an 'Old Power' is."
"You know I went to Sentarshadeen a few days ago," Kellen said. "Jermayan, well, needed help with a spell. We needed to figure out a way to keep He Who Is out of the world."
"Oh, is that all?" Cilarnen said sarcastically.
"Well, Idalia and Jermayan, and Ancaladar figured out among them that Great Queen Vielassar Farcarinon had done it once before, so it ought to be possible to do it again. And apparently it involved something called a Greater Summoning."
Cilarnen went very still.
"And she… did this… Greater Summoning. At Midwinter." It was not a question.
"She was supposed to. If she could gain the consent of all the land. I haven't heard from her since I left Sentarshadeen, but since you say this 'Big Fish' has appeared, I suppose she managed to gain what she needed and did the spell. Redhelwar says it was something that threw Them into confusion."
Cilarnen laughed shakily. "A Greater Power of the Light! Kellen, there are times when it's a good thing that you have no idea of what you're talking about! And to think I worried about calling up a mere Elemental! Yes, I would say that Idalia"s Summoning worked. But as for telling you precisely what it was she called… that I cannot do, save that it is old, and powerful, and on our side. But how could you have heard from Redhelwar so quickly?" Cilarnen asked. "Some new spell?"
Cilarnen's innocent question reminded Kellen that despite their cause for rejoicing, there was also new cause for grief.
"Riasen was at Ancaladar's Grove this morning. The army is at Ondoladeshiron. Jermayan… brought them south through some kind of portal. He and Ancaladar died doing it."
"Dear Light," Cilarnen said quietly. "Kellen, I am so sorry. I know he was your friend. And Idalia's."
"We needed the army here," Kellen said simply.
They sat in silence for a moment.
"Kellen," Cilarnen said. "Your Wild Magic it's all about balancing things, isn't it? So everything has an opposite?"