The Outstretched Shadow ou(tom-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Kellen!" she managed, around her own choked laughter. "Think! Why can't I get near Shalkan? What happened when I was an eagle?"

  For a moment he just stared at her, unable to see what being an eagle had anything to do with not touching unicorns. Then it hit him. She'd had to find a mate—raise a clutch—

  "But—you were an eagle!" he spluttered. "That couldn't count—you were a bird!"

  "Oh, believe me, it counted," she choked. "It surely counted!"

  Of course she couldn't get near Shalkan, or the other unicorns. She wasn't a virgin. Idiot that he was, she'd told him that was the reason—well, almost told him—that first time he'd been awake, and he'd been too dense to take the hint.

  And all this time, he'd been afraid it was because the Wild Magic had somehow tainted her…

  He felt his face grow hot with embarrassment, as much over that unfair assumption as for his stupidity.

  "Mind—" she said, between stifled snorts of laughter, "virginity is as much a state of mind as it is of the body. Someone who is physically still virginal but is thoroughly nasty-minded could no more touch a unicorn than I—and someone who was still utterly innocent mentally could, no matter what had happened to their body. It's a matter of knowledge, too, I suppose—" She took one look at his face—which was probably an accurate reflection of the shock he was feeling—and convulsed into peals of giggles again.

  Kellen wasn't sure whether to be furious, embarrassed, or just to go into the cabin and stay there for the rest of his life. How could he possibly have been so thick-witted? How?

  "Ah—" he said, trying desperately to change the subject—his turn to want to do that now, because he really did not want to find out anything more about his sister's sexual adventures—"if it's not violating some promise or something—what was the price of the healing this time?"

  Idalia—eyes streaming with mirth—took a deep breath, obviously deciding to take pity on him. Shalkan was still snickering and shaking his head in wonderment, though the unicorn had managed to regain his feet again.

  "Ah. The price. My part is to clear a fouled pond of the dead deer that has fallen into it; the unicorns can't purify it until the carcass is gone, and they won't be staying in this area for very much longer," she said, quickly getting herself under control. "Most unicorn families like to travel, you see; they were lucky they were close-by—relatively speaking—when the colt was injured. I can't tell you what the price was for the colt's friends and relatives, but it was trivial compared to the healing." She looked fairly satisfied, actually; surprisingly so for someone who had just agreed to a task probably easily as nasty as cleaning that cistern had been…

  "I'd like to help. If I'm allowed that is," he added hastily.

  Idalia looked a little surprised but quite pleased. "Why, Kellen, that's very kind of you! I accept, but I want to go find the pond first and see what kind of tools we'll need. Meanwhile, there's something else you can do, right now—"

  She got up off the ground and went back to the cabin with her basket of herbs and whatnot, scooping up the bloody bandages and splints as well. Kellen had already learned that here in the wilderness you didn't throw things away lightly. Anything that could possibly be reclaimed and reused would be, as it was almost always easier to reuse than to make new.

  She returned with a couple of empty baskets and a leather bucket and handed them to him. "If you'd be so kind, go off with Shalkan and see what you can find in the woods. It's summer—there might be berries, and if you can find enough we'll have pancakes and berries for dinner. I always find that I'm as hungry as a wolf after a healing, and especially hungry for sweet things."

  "Of course," he said, wondering if she was trying to get him out of the way for some reason…

  But no, probably not.

  "Anything else you'd like me to look for?" he added.

  She looked wistful "Oh—mushrooms—if you're lucky enough to find mushrooms… I haven't had a good mess of stuffed mushrooms in so long…"

  It was his turn to laugh, and he did. "I'll look. And I'll see what else I can find to eat, too."

  "You won't need to worry about picking anything poisonous, not with me with you," Shalkan said, a little smugly, coming a few steps closer. "And I daresay I'm as good as one of those truffle-hunting dogs at sniffing out nice bits to eat."

  "Truffles?" Idalia asked, the longing so naked in her voice that both of them laughed. "Now, I won't hold you to that, and I won't get my mouth set for anything in particular. Whatever you bring back will be more than we have already. And the walk will do you good, strengthen that ankle some more, and give you more woodscraft practice."

  "Then, we'll be off," Kellen said instantly. Having just embarrassed himself so thoroughly in front of Idalia—and found out things he'd just as soon not know, come to that—he'd just as soon be somewhere else for the next little while. "We'll be back when we've got something to show you."

  And without waiting for her answer, he strode off into the woods, making Shalkan trot to catch up.

  Chapter Twelve

  Apples and Apparitions

  THIS WAS THE first time Kellen had been very far from the cabin since his recovery, and even with Shalkan by his side, he felt rather alone. It was a different kind of aloneness than the kind he had faced in the City, where he'd been surrounded by people every waking moment, and his constant quest had been for privacy. But there, at least, irritating as it had been, he'd been protected— by the City Watch, by the fact of being the Arch-Mage's son. He couldn't have gotten into trouble—not real, point-of-death trouble—in Armethalieh, not really. The Watch was always keeping an eye on things, and if he'd really gotten in badly over his head, all he would have needed to do was reveal who he was, and everybody within sight would have been crawling all over themselves to do whatever he wanted and see him safely home. Oh, he might have gotten his pocket picked—that had happened to him a number of times in his early days—but that was just about the worst thing that had ever happened.

  But here it was different. Except for Idalia… and Shalkan, of course… there didn't seem to be another person for miles. It seemed very odd never to see any other people, not to hear the sound of voices all around him, the sound of horses, and carts, and the City bells.

  And the problem was that he really was alone, both physically and mentally, more alone than he'd ever been in his life, grappling with a problem no one could solve for him. Not Shalkan, and not Idalia.

  Kellen was pretty sure by now that he could trust Idalia, trust her intelligence and her judgment, even if she didn't always tell him everything. After all, why should she? He was ten years younger than she was, and she had a lot of experiences behind her that maybe she wouldn't want to talk about to someone like him. He liked her a lot—more each day. He was in awe of her—not only her magic and her woodscraft abilities, but her plain common sense.

  The trouble he had was that even though all those tales of Demonkind had seemed like nonsense back in the City, they weren't anything to be laughed at anymore. There'd been those dreams, for one thing. And for another, Idalia herself had said something in passing, but with a wary look over her shoulder, about Demons.

  Now, if Idalia spoke of Demonkind without any irony—and given those awful dreams—Lycaelon must have had something behind his warnings, after all.

  Idalia had been working with the Wild Magic for a long time—at least ten years more than he had, so if it was going to turn her to the Dark, it had certainly had plenty of opportunity to do that already, and if it had, surely he'd have seen some sign of it by now. And Shalkan did like her. It was just that Idalia wasn't, well…

  After the healing this afternoon, Kellen could hardly believe how stupid he'd been. Shalkan didn't avoid Idalia because she was a Wildmage gone bad (and it should have occurred to him that Shalkan wouldn't have brought them both straight here if there had been something wrong with her) it was just that Idalia wasn't, well, a virgin. (Kellen winced. How in the name of the
Light had he managed to miss that? But she'd been a bird. Being a bird didn't count… )

  Resolutely, he turned his thoughts away from the subject. He had his vow to consider. He shouldn't even be thinking about things like that! Anyway, Idalia just wasn't. And that mattered a lot to unicorns, apparently—look at the way she'd been unable to touch the colt, even though it would have made things a whole lot simpler in the healing today if she hadn't needed Kellen's help. And what if he hadn't been there? What would she have done then?

  Really, he should have put two and two together the moment the whole herd appeared, looking for help.

  Sometimes I am so dense…

  But no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn't get his father's parting words out of his head, and the fact that Idalia wasn't any kind of Demonspawn or Darkmage didn't solve Kellen's problem, not really. Lycaelon's words and his own fever-spawned nightmares still haunted him and plagued him with doubts to which there didn't seem to be any easy solution.

  Because out here, outside the City walls, nothing was simple or straightforward anymore. Every answer turned out to be a gateway to more questions, more ambiguities. And instead of being given rules to follow, he was presented with choices. Idalia had said that the Gods used the Wild Magic to give Wildmages the tools to help them become better—if they wanted to become better. But that meant that down deep inside, it was still up to each of them to choose how to use those tools. That meant Lycaelon could still be right—that the Wild Magic might open the path to Demonkind by giving Wildmages the power to choose to be good or evil, and the freedom to make the wrong choice.

  And Kellen wasn't really sure he knew himself well enough to be sure he was safe—that in becoming a Wildmage, he wouldn't end up exactly the way his father had said he would. Surely nobody started out using the Wild Magic intending to get involved with Demons? So how could you know you were going to get into trouble before it was too late to turn back? He already knew he'd made some really stupid decisions in his life. What if choosing to become a Wildmage was another one?

  What if—not now, but in ten years, or even fifty years, if he managed to live that long—he did something really really horrible just because he didn't have the sense to stop using the Books now! How could he know? How could anybody know? Was that why the High Council forbade the study of the Wild Magic? Were they actually (for once in their twisted little lives) right? What if the Wild Magic really was dangerous—not for everyone, but just for a few people—and you couldn't know who those people were going to be until it was too late? If that was true, wasn't it best to just forbid everyone to use it, just in case?

  But what if that wasn't true? Why should the Council be right about this when they were wrong about everything else?

  How would he know before it was too late?

  Maybe it was already too late.

  Kellen sighed glumly, which earned him a sidelong glance from Shalkan, although the unicorn didn't comment. Once they'd left Idalia's cabin behind, there was no sign of civilization at all, and he was startled to find how much he missed the familiar walls and roads and buildings he'd grown up with all his life. Even in the large parks in the City that were designed so that all you saw were trees and flowers—no buildings at all, not even the City towers—everything was carefully planted and manicured and designed. You never forgot that someone had planned it. Out here, everything was just growing with no plan or pattern to it. Trees fell down, and nobody came to tidy them away. Flowers grew wherever they wanted to. No rules, no order, and no sign that any human had ever done anything here. It was all…

  "Messy, isn't it?" Shalkan asked. "No, I can't read your thoughts," he added, regarding Kellen's guilty and startled expression. "Or, let's say, I can't read them in the normal course of things. But you wear your thoughts on your face, City-child."

  "As bad as that?" Kellen said despondently.

  "You'll learn," Shalkan said kindly. "And there's no reason for you to expect to like something you've never seen before, just because you think you ought to like it. Give yourself time."

  "But what if I don't like it?" Kellen burst out. "What if I never like it? What if I always hate it? What if I should have stayed in the City after all?" He looked around at the forest, at the untidy ramble of trees and vines and flowers. Everything was in full leaf, the season racing forward toward high summer. Maybe it was pretty, maybe it was even beautiful, but his eyes longed for patterns.

  "Do you think that's likely? There's beauty and wonder here beyond the stunted dreams of City-folk. And things you never knew existed. You only think that you know all that's to be found out here. Look."

  Shalkan was pointing with his horn. Kellen looked sharply in the direction that he pointed.

  At first all he saw was a patch of blue sky framed by the branches of two large oaks, but then, as he stared, it seemed to shimmer and glisten, becoming half-solid, shining like glass or water, with the merest hint of rainbow. For a moment he thought he glimpsed a spectral shape, winged and vaguely human, but then it vanished again, and there was only air.

  "That— What—" Kellen gasped inelegantly. "I saw something… didn't I?"

  "A sylph," Shalkan confirmed. "A creature of the winds. They ride the currents of the air, and with their help, you can influence the weather. She's not the only creature out here that you've never seen before—and that wouldn't ever go near the City walls. But come along—I know where there are some nice juicy apples."

  "It's too early for apples," Kellen protested automatically.

  "Come and see," the unicorn said with a wise and amused glance. "You just saw a sylph, are you going to disbelieve in my apples?"

  Well, when Shalkan put it that way…

  To Kellen's surprise, Shalkan led him to a wild apple orchard, where the trees were indeed heavy with ripe red fruit. Kellen started forward, hefting his basket, but Shalkan immediately stepped across his path, blocking his way to the trees.

  "You might want to ask the owners if they're willing to part with some first," Shalkan said gently.

  Kellen looked around, wondering if he'd missed seeing a hut or cabin concealed in the undergrowth.

  "Look harder. Look at the trees. Remember the sylph," Shalkan said, giving Kellen a warning nudge with his shoulder.

  Kellen did as he was bid, and suddenly he could see them—women, sitting in the trees, looking down at him with amusement. Their skin was pale green, like new leaves, their long hair the emerald of the leaves of high summer. They were crowned with apple blossoms, and every single one of them was quite naked. They appeared to be perfectly comfortable in that state, and for a moment, Kellen had the disoriented feeling it was he that was the one who was foolish for being clothed.

  "Oh… no," Kellen whispered, appalled.

  "Apple-dryads," Shalkan said matter-of-factly. "Tree-spirits, tree-guardians. Not all trees have them, of course, or we'd be up to our hocks in dryads; no, only a few select trees are inhabited by dryads, though they do a certain amount of tending of all the trees in their domain. This is their grove. And their apples, of course."

  The dryads came down from their trees; not so much climbing as gliding, and began pacing deliberately toward him. Their long hair swirled around them with a life of its own, now concealing their bodies, now revealing them, a breast here, a thigh there. Kellen would have turned to run, but now Shalkan backed around him, blocking his retreat. They clustered around Kellen, plucking at his clothes as if in perplexity, and giggling at his horrified embarrassment.

  "I—I—I didn't know," Kellen stammered, blushing hotly. To his horror, he was surrounded by naked grove-maidens and not quite sure where to look. "I'm sorry." The head of the tallest of them barely came up to his shoulder, and their pale green skin had the hard glossy sheen of a polished, unripened apple. Unlike the sylph, which he hadn't been quite certain he was seeing, the apple-dryads seemed as solid and real as Idalia.

  "Ladies, this is Kellen," Shalkan said, and Kellen would have been willin
g to swear the unicorn was smiling. "He's new here; he's Wildmage Idalia's brother—and he's under a vow of chastity, so have pity on him."

  The apple-dryads drew back a little, regarding Kellen and Shalkan gravely out of dark eyes the color of apple-tree bark. Kellen had recovered his composure enough to realize that they weren't quite naked—or rather that they were, but that they weren't quite human; their slender nakedness, while giving the strong impression of femininity, was the featureless androgyny of a sculpture, or a doll. Vaguely, he supposed that only made sense. After all, they only looked human. He cleared his throat, awkwardly.

  "I'm sorry I was going to steal your apples," he said. "I mean, I wasn't going to steal them. I was just going to take some, and I didn't realize that they were yours. I mean, Shalkan brought me here, and I figured he wanted some, and I knew my sister would like them…"

  One of the dryads—she seemed to be the leader, though Kellen couldn't quite say how he got that impression—spoke. Her voice was like rustling leaves, and contained no human words, though Kellen felt that his apology was accepted.