To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  “To take the King’s son. And you did, Mama. It was beautifully done.” But there was uncertainty in Zyperis’s voice, as if he was not certain that was the whole truth. Savilla glowed with pride—it had been a subtle plot, and it was not his fault that he did not grasp it at once. That he realized he did not see all of her plan was to his credit, and indicated what a formidable adversary he would be in the years to come.

  “If that was what I meant to do, do you not think that the puling brat would be weeping in my dungeons even now?” Savilla said gently.

  Zyperis frowned, hesitating. “I … yes, dearest Mama. But if that was not what you wanted, why go after the caravan at all? Now the Elves know about their cousins. They will not rest until they have hunted them down, every one.”

  “Yes …” Savilla purred, and watched Zyperis’s face light with understanding and delight.

  “Now come, my son,” she said, going to him and putting a hand on his arm. “There is much we can do to amuse ourselves until our guest is brought to us. And with such tender care, he will be a savory morsel at the banquet later.”

  Eleven

  The Road Through the Border Lands

  Cilarnen wasn’t quite sure why the Elf was helping him. For a long time—bells—he was simply too numb to care. The creature gave him its pack mule to ride, doused its peculiar brazier and repacked its gear, and within two chimes, they were on their way.

  Several times the Elf tried making conversation with him, even going so far as to offer its name—Hyandur—but Cilarnen only gave one- or two-word replies, and eventually the Elf stopped talking.

  Cilarnen couldn’t think of what to say, anyway. He’d been Banished. He was leaving the only home he’d ever known. His Gift had been destroyed. He was nothing at all.

  Eventually it occurred to him he ought to say something. He needed to know what the Elf knew, if nothing else.

  “One of my friends was Banished too. Did you—”

  “I came upon the remains of a body in the woods today. It wore a Felon’s Cloak, and around it were the footprints of dogs—heavy marks, as if made by creatures of stone. Perhaps it was he. If so, I am sorry for your loss.”

  The Elf’s words were barely more than noise to Cilarnen. He knew that Undermage Anigrel had said that Tiedor was to be Banished. He knew that the Outlaw Hunt was comprised of enchanted stone mastiffs, like the Stone Golems that—in other shapes—served so many functions in the City. But somehow, in his shocked and benumbed state, he could not bring any sense out of Hyandur’s words.

  “I don’t understand,” Cilarnen said at last.

  “The body had been savaged by the Outlaw Hunt,” Hyandur said patiently. “The Stone Hounds kill all who are declared Outlaw by the High Council, if they are still within the City’s lands at dawn.”

  But no matter how hard Cilarnen thought about Hyandur’s words, they still didn’t make any sense. Why would the Outlaw Hunt kill anyone? They were just supposed to escort the Outlaw to the borders. Of course they were.

  The Elf had to be lying. That’s what Elves did.

  “Show me where he is,” Cilarnen demanded.

  “If we return to that place, we will not reach the edge of the valley by dawn. If we do not leave Armethaliehan lands by the time your Hunt is released, we will both meet the same fate as your friend,” Hyandur said calmly.

  Cilarnen wanted to pull away, to ride off in search of the body. Elves were dangerous—everyone said so—and he was only now beginning to awaken to the fact that he might be in more danger from his companion than from the cold and the wilderness. But the mule’s lead-rein was tied fast to the horse’s saddle, and there was nothing Cilarnen could do but ride on, blindly, into the dark.

  He was being kidnapped.

  He vowed to escape at the earliest opportunity.

  AS the sky began to lighten, Hyandur urged the tired animals to a faster pace. They were moving now through a gently rising landscape wholly unfamiliar to Cilarnen—a narrow path bordered by bare earth on both sides, as if someone had re-created the flower beds of the City gardens on a gigantic scale. Each enormous tract of earth was edged by a row of trees, and they seemed to go on forever.

  Cilarnen hoped for the sight of a village where he could get help, but he did not see so much as the smoke from a distant hearth-fire.

  Behind them, the sun began to rise. Cilarnen imagined it striking the gilded roof of the Council House with fire, heard in memory the sweet high carillon of Dawn Bells, its soft notes ringing out over the City. He swallowed hard with homesickness and loss.

  “They will be coming soon,” Hyandur said grimly. “We must hurry now.”

  He leaned forward, speaking softly to his mare. Her ears flickered back and forth, as if she understood what he was saying to her. He untied one of the knots in the lead-rope affixed to his saddle, lengthening it by several feet.

  And the mare went from a trot, to a canter, to a floating run.

  The mule lagged behind for a moment, pulling the lead-rein bowstring tight, and for a moment Cilarnen hoped it would snap. No mule was as fast as a horse anyway.

  But this mule was apparently an exception, for after a moment, the rein went slack again as the mule followed after the mare at a pounding, jarring pace. Reflexively, Cilarnen crouched low over the mule’s neck, urging it on. If he had been a lesser rider, he would have fallen off in the first few moments of their mad flight—and deep within, a tiny part of him was suddenly convinced of the seriousness of their peril. Surely no one, even an Elf, would misuse a horse this way without great need.

  They passed the last of the open land and were back among the winter-bare trees, where patches of ice still covered the ground. Cilarnen expected them to slow down over such treacherous footing, but they didn’t, and his heart hammered in fear—not for himself, but for the splendid chestnut Hyandur rode. If she slipped, if she fell, lameness would be the most fortunate outcome she could hope for. A broken neck—a broken leg—

  But she danced over the ice as if she had wings, with the mule thundering after. The sun was higher now, flickering through the branches, the light making Cilarnen’s head pound with feverish pain. His hands and face were numb with cold—it was as if he couldn’t remember ever having been warm.

  In the distance, the trees thinned out again. The road rose in a gentle curve, and he could see a gateway of sorts—or at least a place where someone had placed a large post at either side of the road. What could it possibly mark? There was nothing around it, and the land looked very much the same on one side as on the other.

  But it must mean something, because Hyandur was already slowing the mare as they approached it. The mule was only too glad to slacken its pace without any urging on Cilarnen’s part, and both animals passed between the posts at a dead slow walk.

  It was snowing on the other side.

  Or rather, it had snowed, recently and heavily. And the air was sharp with the promise of more, far colder than the air on the near side of the posts.

  “This is the boundary of the City lands,” Cilarnen said in sudden realization. Or at least, the boundary of the Home Farms.

  “Yes.” Hyandur dismounted from the mare and began to walk back and forth with her through the fresh snow, speaking gently to her.

  Cilarnen dismounted from the mule, wincing and staggering with stiffness. He rubbed its nose apologetically. He wasn’t sure what to do with mules. But he supposed it couldn’t hurt to treat it like a horse, and so he coiled up the lead-rein that Hyandur had released and began to lead it back and forth, as he had seen the grooms do with horses in his father’s stables.

  As he did, he looked back toward the boundary. The snow made it easy to see. The snow just … stopped, as though it had run into an invisible wall.

  As it had, of course. A wall of Magecraft. Just as Undermage Anigrel had said, the High Council must have extended the boundaries of the City to cover the entire valley once more.

  He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cr
y. The High Council had reversed its decision. The Home Farms were part of the City Lands once more, just as he and the others had wanted.

  He’d ruined his life, caused his father’s death, his family’s disgrace, for nothing.

  “You may stop now,” Hyandur told him, breaking into Cilarnen’s chaotic thoughts. “Unsaddle the mule, and build a fire in the brazier. We will rest here before going on.”

  Cilarnen stared at him, too shocked to react. The Elf was giving him orders?

  Hyandur regarded him for a long moment.

  “If you cannot do that, then go to the well and draw water for the animals. They are rested enough to be ready to drink. The well lies over there.” He pointed in the direction of a snowy cylinder of rock.

  Cilarnen hesitated, but the mule nudged at his shoulder, then lowered its head to mouth at the snow, obviously wanting water. There was no reason for the animals to suffer just because they belonged to an Elf. Reluctantly, Cilarnen trudged off in that direction, tucking his hands into his armpits to warm them.

  He had never seen a well in his life, but it was a simple mechanical design, with a crank and gears to raise and lower a bucket on a rope, and after a few tries, he managed to get the cover off, find the bucket, and fill the trough at the well’s foot with water.

  If he’d had his Magegift and Wand, he could simply have Called the water up out of the well. As it was, it was at least a chime before he managed to fill the watering-trough, and he was sweating and damp—and very irritated with the Elf—at the end of it. If this was servants’ work, then the servants in House Volpiril had not had as soft a life as he’d imagined.

  But as he turned back to collect the horse and the mule, he forgot all his lesser problems.

  Racing toward him, along the last patch of open ground between the woods and the marker-posts, was a pack of Stone Hounds.

  They looked just like the pair outside the Arch-Mage’s house, yet these were horribly animate, their fanged jaws opening and closing with soundless barking. There were almost a dozen of them, perfect in every detail from the spiked collars around their necks to the curved nails upon their feet. Every aspect of their manner spoke of murderous threat.

  There was no Mage with them.

  He ran back toward Hyandur and the animals—thinking he might be able to save the mare, at least—but before he could reach them, the Outlaw Hunt reached the invisible border between the lands claimed by the City and the world beyond.

  They stopped as if they had run into a wall.

  But even then they did not retreat.

  Like any hunting pack frustrated and kept from taking its prey, they milled back and forth on the far side of the invisible wall, their unblinking gaze fixed on Cilarnen. Some crouched on their haunches, barking silently. Some dug at the frozen ground, as if it were possible to dig beneath the magick and reach their intended prey. A few of the Hounds kept trying to cross the boundary, only to be flung back each time they tried, as if by some invisible hand.

  The leader of the pack, a mastiff carved of white granite, simply stood at the far side of the posts and glared fixedly at Cilarnen. If it were possible for unliving stone to radiate murderous rage, the creature did.

  Watching the pack go mad with failure, a slow cold wisdom settled over Cilarnen. The Elf had not lied. Anigrel had not lied. Tiedor was dead—any of his friends who might be Banished after him would die.

  But Banishment was never meant to be a death sentence! It was only meant to cast people out of the City, not to kill them!

  He did not know why this terrible ancient custom had been revived, but now he knew this: the Outlaw Hunt was not meant to conduct Outlaws to the borders of City Lands, but to kill them.

  And if he had not had the great good fortune to run into Hyandur last night—if the Elf had not aided him for mysterious reasons of its own—he too would be dead now, savaged by stone fangs.

  “You may take the animals to drink, now. Take care that they do not drink too much at first,” Hyandur said, coming up to Cilarnen where he stood, still frozen in shock, watching the stone Hounds flail at what was to them an impassable border.

  “Yes. I’m sorry,” Cilarnen said, though he could not at that moment have said what he was apologizing for.

  “They will not break through,” Hyandur said. “It is, however, unsettling to watch.”

  Cilarnen shook his head, unable to stop thinking of himself surrounded by the Outlaw Hunt, pulled down beneath those unyielding stone bodies. He took the animals’ leadropes—Hyandur had unsaddled them while he’d been fighting with the well—and turned away.

  CHILD of the City and Mageborn he might be, but Cilarnen knew something of caring for horses. He was careful to let neither animal drink as much as it wished to, and when they were done, he brought them back to where Hyandur had laid out a ground cloth and the brazier. The Elf was brewing tea, indifferent to the Stone Hounds that waited beyond the Border.

  They had stopped attempting to batter their way through the boundary, and now simply stood in a silent row, gazing hungrily toward Cilarnen. Eleven unmoving granite forms—but Cilarnen had no doubt now that if he took one step back across the Border, they would rouse terrifyingly into life. And the Council’s decree—its true, its secret decree—would be carried out.

  Death for Cilarnen Volpiril.

  But Mages do not kill ���

  “Come, stranger. We will drink tea,” Hyandur said. “Then we will move on.”

  Cilarnen wrapped the stiff felt of the Felon’s Cloak around himself. “I … my name is Cilarnen. Thank you for saving my life.”

  Hyandur bowed his head slightly. “The Outlaw Hunt is a foul thing. I would willingly leave no creature to its mercies. Perhaps someday we will talk of what caused you to leave the City.”

  Cilarnen just shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it, or even think about it. The farther away the events got, the less sense they made to him. All he knew was that people were dead, and it was somehow his fault.

  He didn’t want to ask where the Elf was taking him, either. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he didn’t care, or was afraid of what he might hear.

  THE days after that passed in a numb haze for Cilarnen. They followed what Hyandur said was the caravan road the Mountain Traders used, though Cilarnen couldn’t imagine how the Elf could see where the road was in the snow, much less follow it. He simply assumed it was some vile magic possessed by the Lesser Races.

  He was always cold, though the Elf had gifted him with a heavier cloak and a pair of fur-lined gauntlets from his supplies. Cilarnen would have happily burned the Felon’s Cloak, or at the very least abandoned it, but Hyandur had pointed out that his clothing was not suitable to the weather, and the Cloak was of sturdy fabric. He had taken the Cloak and crafted a pair of heavy leggings to lace over Cilarnen’s trousers. The heavy felt kept Cilarnen dry, and if the leggings were ugly, he no longer cared what he looked like. There was no one around who mattered to see.

  His head hurt all the time—a constant stabbing ache that the glare of sun on snow only worsened. He kept the hood of the new fur cloak pulled down as far over his face as possible, trying to shut out the light, but it didn’t help.

  Just when Cilarnen began to think he would be riding through wilderness for the rest of his life, they came to signs of civilization, at least of a very primitive sort.

  Someone had built a wall out here in the middle of nowhere. It was like a crude tiny imitation of the City, though the wall was made of wood, not stone. As they approached the gates, they swung open, and a horseman rode out to meet them.

  No.

  Not a horseman.

  Cilarnen swallowed hard, recognizing the abominable mingling of man and beast as another of the Lesser Races, one mentioned only in passing in his studies. A Centaur.

  It wore human clothes upon his human half, with a short cloak that came to its waist. Its horse half was shaggy with a heavy winter coat.

  But Hyandur greet
ed it as if it were a sentient being, and even Roiry and Pearl did not shy away from the unnatural creature.

  “Ho, Hyandur—so the humans did not put you into a cage after all!” the Centaur said, switching its tail back and forth.

  “No, Grander. They would not see me at all, nor would they hear my words. Yet my journey was not accomplished without bearing some fruit, as you see.”

  “A human colt—City-born, I’ll wager. Looks half-dead and half-frozen. This is no weather for gallivanting,” Grander said disapprovingly.

  “Nevertheless,” Hyandur said calmly. “I had no choice, nor did Cilarnen.”

  “Well, Stonehearth will see you both warm and fed this night at least,” Grander said. “Come, both of you—I’ll see you housed in my own home, with the best of everything!”

  “That makes good hearing,” Hyandur said. “We thank you for your hospitality.”

  Hyandur dismounted, and regarded Cilarnen steadily until he had no choice but to do the same. The prospect of a hot dinner made his stomach churn. He wondered what Centaurs ate. Hay? Babies?

  When they passed through the gate, he saw that there was an entire village crammed within its walls—almost like one of the poorest quarters of Armethalieh, but with everything much smaller. He expected the streets to be narrower, too, but they were wide, and swept free of snow.

  Everyone Cilarnen saw on the streets was a Centaur, all of them dressed much as Grander was, in tunics and short cloaks, and wearing hoods or soft knitted caps. It did not make them look more human. It made them look as if someone were dressing up an animal for a play, but Cilarnen had no desire at all to see a naked Centaur.

  Their horse parts were stocky and heavy-boned, like no horse he had ever seen. Some of the creatures had elaborately braided tails, with ribbons or jewelry braided into the hair. Cilarnen tried not to look.

  They reached what must be Grander’s house. A younger Centaur appeared, and led Roiry and Pearl away.

  “Hot dinner for them, too, and a warm stable,” Grander said cheerfully. “Marlen can bring your packs to the house once he has them unsaddled. There will be time for a bath before dinner, I think—and we should be able to find you house-robes.”