The Outstretched Shadow ou(tom-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Surely," Idalia said after a moment's pause. "I can always use an extra pair of hands."

  Kellen's eagerness to help shouldn't surprise her, she realized after a moment. He was a good lad, after all. No matter what Lycaelon had tried to turn him into. Yet somehow, every time he demonstrated his basic generosity of spirit, it surprised her. Maybe she'd lived alone for too long at that.

  THE two of them spent the following day at the dryad's grove cutting away the dead wood from the oak-Queen's tree and sealing over the exposed wood. Though an axe and saws were not the sort of implements that would normally be welcome in a dryadic grove, this time they were tolerated (though the dryads could not look at them without shivering), and Idalia and Kellen bent to the work.

  It was quickly obvious what part of the price that the brownies and fauns were paying. The brownies brought tar—they used it in waterproofing, milking rising sap from pines in the spring in the same way that they milked maples, boiling it down into tar. The fauns came back with handfuls of river clay when she'd done sealing the breech with the tar.

  It was hot work—autumn might be on the way, but the late-summer days were still warm—but when Idalia looked at the finished job, her arm draped companionably over Kellen's shoulders, she was rilled with a deep satisfaction. What could be better than helping and healing, setting right what had gone wrong in the world?

  She knew that Kellen felt much the same way that she did—that he could sense, at least a little, when something was out of balance and needed to be fixed. But there was still something deep inside himself that he didn't trust to always make the right choices.

  And until—unless—that last barrier came down, until Kellen really trusted his own instincts, there would always be a barrier between Kellen and his magic.

  IT had been a good day. Kellen had actually enjoyed the work; he had found of late that he really got a great deal of pleasure out of physical labor, especially as his muscles had strengthened to the job.

  Maybe I should have been a stone-breaker or a bricklayer after all, he thought, wondering what Lycaelon would say if he'd seen his son sweating like a common mortal. It had been fascinating to see the reclusive little brownies up close as well, and the oak-dryads were more dignified and less inclined to tease than their sisters of the apple orchard.

  "I think I'll fill up the big cauldron and heat some water," Idalia said as they walked back to the cabin that afternoon. "I think we could both use a hot bath—or at least a good scrub."

  Kellen grinned, and reached out to flick a scrap of drying river clay off her cheek. "Sounds good to me. But I'll carry the water and get the fire started if you'll make some of those dried berry scones to go with the rest of the leftover stew."

  "Deal," Idalia answered promptly. Kellen had learned to do a number of new things well since he'd come to live with her, but cooking wasn't one of them. "Just let me wash this clay off my hands first, or you'll be eating it along with the scones." She turned toward the cabin.

  But the sound of hoofbeats back down the trail alerted Kellen that their plans were about to be changed.

  "Wait. Someone's coming." Kellen slid his heavy pack from his shoulders and turned back the way they'd come.

  Idalia frowned—evidently she hadn't heard anything—but as she was about to question Kellen further, there was an enormous crashing noise from the underbrush, and a big chestnut-colored Centaur burst into the clearing.

  "Idalia!" he roared. "You've got to heal me! Now!"

  Kellen and Idalia both stared in astonishment, for this was possibly the most unlikely creature to come seeking Idalia's help of any in the Wild Lands. It was Cormo, the Centaur bully who had attacked Kellen at the berry patch when he had first arrived in the Wildwood, but it was difficult to recognize him now. Cormo's face and chest were badly swollen with a mass of beestings, and the Centaur was covered in half-dried black mud besides. It looked as if he'd tried to doctor himself—and failed—before coming to Idalia for help.

  "Heal me—now!" the Centaur repeated in a menacing growl, taking a limping step toward her.

  "That's no way to ask for help," Kellen replied angrily, and leaned down to reach for the pruning hook beside him on the ground, but Idalia put a restraining hand on his arm and took a step forward.

  "Hello, Cormo," she said coolly. "What is it that you want?"

  "Are you deaf, woman?" the Centaur bellowed, this time so loudly that it made Kellen wince, though Idalia gave no indication that she'd even noticed. "I'm hurt! You have to heal me with your Wildmagery!"

  "Do I?" Idalia actually managed to sound amused; Kellen was impressed. "And do you expect me to do it for free?"

  "You have to," Cormo growled, taking another step toward her. "If you're afraid of the cost, make the brat share it—I don't care! But I know your kind—you heal anyone who comes to you for help—and you don't want word to get around that you refused to help me, now, do you?" He took another step toward her, and now Cormo was standing so close to Idalia that he could reach out and shake her like a rag doll if he chose to.

  Idalia simply smiled, refusing to give in to the veiled threat or even take a step backward. Kellen was amazed. And impressed. He'd have gone for a weapon by now; he wouldn't trust that bully any further than he could throw him!

  "I have some herbal salves, and I'll gladly doctor you with them free of charge, Cormo. But if you want me to use my Wildmagery to heal you, you must agree to accept half the price, and I will take the other half."

  Cormo shook his head and changed tactics. He tried to smile conciliatingly, difficult as it was with his face so swollen it resembled a ripe gourd. He pawed the ground, and his voice took on a pleading, whining tone.

  "Aw, come on, Idalia, be a friend! It's just a little healing, and it really hurts—a lot! You can't honestly expect me to pay half the price on top of all this pain, can you? I could go blind if you don't heal me right now!" By now the whining was annoying enough that it put Kellen's teeth on edge. "You wouldn't want that to happen to your old buddy Cormo, would you?" he wheedled.

  "Half the price, or no magic," Idalia said implacably.

  "Damn you!" Cormo snarled, lifting one heavy hoof. "Something bad could happen to that precious brother of yours when he's out in the woods alone, you know!"

  "Not if you go blind," Idalia said with a small cold smile. "You know, I've heard that if enough bee venom reaches the brain, a person can go deaf and blind… that is, if they don't just die outright. You really should let me go get my salves, if you don't want to take half the price and let me use my magic." She took a step toward him, and amazingly, the Centaur backed up a pace.

  Of course, he's a coward, Kellen realized. Most bullies are.

  "I wouldn't count on anything happening to me in the woods, either, Cormo," Kellen added, trying to put menace in his own voice. "I never go anywhere without my axe these days."

  Cormo whimpered pathetically, backing up even farther. "Aw, I didn't mean anything! I'm out of my head with pain, can't you see that? I need healing!" He looked hopefully at Kellen.

  Kellen just shook his head. Even if he knew how to heal someone using Wild Magic—and he didn't—he had no intention of interfering between Idalia and Cormo.

  "All right—all right!" The last of the Centaur's bluster collapsed. "But I'll tell everyone at the village how cold and cruel you were to a dying Centaur, Idalia, and see how many people come to you for aid then!"

  "Go ahead," Idalia said amiably. "I can use the rest. So you agree to take half the cost of the healing?"

  "Yes," Cormo muttered, defeated.

  "All right, then. Lie down. I can't do anything for you up there. Kellen, go get me a bucket of water and a rag. I'd like to get this mud off him and see what I'm working with."

  Kellen didn't like the thought of turning his back on the Centaur, though he doubted Cormo had any fight left in him, but he reluctantly did as he was asked. By the time he returned, Cormo was lying awkwardly on his side, and Idalia was
kneeling beside him.

  Gently—ignoring Cormo's whimpers, grumblings, and moans that she was killing him—Idalia gently wiped away the caked mud from the Centaur's chest and face as Kellen watched. It looked to Kellen as if the Centaur had been up to his old thievish tricks again, and this time he'd had the poor judgment to try robbing a bee-tree when the bees were all at home. Cormo's face and chest were a mass of red welts, and one hand was so swollen it looked like a water-filled glove. Mud was supposed to be a sovereign remedy for a beesting, but all the mud in the riverbed wouldn't have been enough to draw the poison from Cormo's stings when there were this many of them.

  But as Idalia gently washed the mud from the angry red welts on the Centaur's body, Kellen could see the redness and the swelling fade away as well. When she was finished, not a trace of the injuries remained.

  And she didn't cast a circle. Kellen saw the familiar glow of the sphere of protection about them, but he knew now that it was only meant to keep out evil things, and anything of good will could pass it; it was, in that way, quite unlike the sort of circle the High Mages cast, which nothing and no one could pass. When she was finished, not a trace of the injuries remained, and the sphere of light faded and was gone.

  And she didn't uncast the circle, either, or say any words, or anything. She just… did it, Kellen marveled silently. He'd watched Idalia do healings before, but now it was as if for the first time he actually realized what he was seeing: that Idalia could do magic—at least healing magic—without any visible preparation whatever. It was as if she were always inside a magic circle, always in the presence of whatever Gods oversaw the Working of the Wild Magic.

  It didn't frighten him—by now he knew his sister too well for that— but it did give him a lot to think about. If this was what becoming a true Wildmage was, it was something Kellen didn't think he was ever going to be: someone who cast spells as easily as they breathed. He knew in that moment that he would never have Idalia's power—he might as well wish to be Arch-Mage of Armethalieh! For him, the magic came slowly, and with great effort, once he'd gotten past the simplest of spells and cantrips. But by the same token, he knew the Wild Magic was still drawing him to itself for some purpose of its own.

  I just wish I knew what it was. If I'm not supposed to become like Idalia, then… what?

  "There," she said with a sigh, dropping the rag into the bucket and getting to her feet. "All done."

  "That?" Cormo said suspiciously, rolling onto his stomach and pulling his feet under him. "That's it? Doesn't seem like so very much. Certainly not worth all the fuss you made about having to pay for it, Idalia."

  Idalia laughed, stepping back to give Cormo room to get to his feet. "Oh, but a bargain's a bargain, Cormo, and we'll each keep our side of it. Your part of the price for this healing is to help Mistress Haneida haul her cart to and from the market for a year and a day. Mine is to inform the elders of Merryvale of that price—personally—to see that they enforce the conditions."

  Cormo lunged to his feet and shook himself all over, switching his tail vigorously. "Oh, no, Idalia, don't trouble yourself—I'll be happy to take care of that for you!" he said quickly. "It would save you the trip— and it would be such a small thing to do to repay you for all your kindness, that—"

  "Oh, no, friend Cormo," Idalia interrupted, smiling wolfishly. "I'm quite willing to pay my part of the price. My part is to inform the elders of your village personally, and believe me, I'm more than happy to pay it."

  "In fact," Kellen added virtuously, "I'll help you, Idalia. I've never seen the Centaur village. I'd like to."

  "You'll love it," Idalia said, turning to him with a smile. "We can get a good hot meal and a proper bath there. I'll get some things I'd been saving to trade and then we can be on our way."

  THEY reached the gates of Merryvale about an hour before sunset, but for almost an hour before that they'd been walking through the groves and fields that belonged to it.

  Harvest was still a few sennights away, and the orchards and fields were filled with ripening crops and the villagers who were tending to them. Young children, both Centaur and human, stood out among the trees and in the fields armed with tall straw-brooms to scare away birds. They waved excitedly when they saw Idalia, and Idalia waved back. Some of them, released from their duties by their elders, ran on ahead to inform the village of the approach of the visitors.

  Kellen stared at the neat orderly fields in wonder as they passed. Each field was edged in low stone fences topped with split rails. It seemed like a lot of extra work to him, but Idalia told him that the stones came out of the plowed field itself—a new crop each spring—and were stacked along the boundaries to save the farmers the work of carrying them farther away. The rail fences helped to keep the sheep and cattle out of the crops as well.

  As they came closer to the village, he saw other buildings, which Idalia also identified in answer to his incessant questions—sheepfolds and cow-byres, dairies, communal barns for hay and grain, a shearing-barn. Most were, like Idalia's cottage, made of logs or rough-hewn planks, and thatched with straw. Old roofs were a silvery grey, new ones the color of pale gold. Gold patches marked the spots where roofs had been mended, and he actually saw a thatching crew at work on one of the dairies, packing in the straw bundles and cutting them with their curved thatching knives.

  "And on the other side of the town, up along the river a way, is the cider-house and the mill, and the blacksmith's! So many questions, little brother! Don't tell me you've always nourished a secret desire to become a farmer!" she finally said, caught between irritation and amusement.

  "It's not that," Kellen protested sheepishly. "It's just that… I've never seen anyplace like this."

  Though Kellen knew of the lowland farming villages that had supplied Armethalieh with food, he'd never seen anything other than the illustrations in books of wondertales, so Merryvale was as strange and alien a world to him as the Wildwood itself had been. No one possessed thatched roofs in the City, and there were very few wooden buildings. Armethalieh was a city of stone. "And humans and Centaurs live here? Together?"

  Another thing he'd been told—it was one of the central teachings of the Temple of the Light—was that humans and the creatures he'd learned to call Otherfolk (instead of Lesser Races) could not possibly live together in peace because of the utter incompatibility of their natures.

  "Yes, yes, and yes," Idalia said. "And we'll be there soon—look, there's the gate, just ahead. And dozens of people, all of whom will be delighted to answer all your questions."

  She pointed up the road, and Kellen could see the palisades of the village ahead. Idalia had told him that the Centaurs were famed for their wood-carving skills, and the walls of Merryvale were certainly proof of that, for certainly only master craftsmen would waste their skills decorating the walls of a village.

  The walls and gates of Merryvale gleamed as smooth and polished as fine cabinetry. At this distance, they looked as if they had been carved from the trunk of one great tree, weathered by time and the passage of the seasons to a soft mossy grey-green. The entire surface had been made smooth and even, the logs planed smooth and fitted together in just the way Kellen was planning to fit the logs for the addition to the cabin floor, and then a design had been carved into the resulting smooth surface. As they got closer, Kellen could see that it was a depiction of a harvest festival, with flower-garlanded Centaurs and humans carrying baskets of fruit, bushels of wheat, barrels of drink, and the carcasses of deer, pheasants, and rabbits to a communal feast.

  "Oh," Kellen said softly, enchanted. "That's—amazing." He wasn't just talking about the artistic quality of the carving. There it was, depicted for all to see—Centaurs and humans living together, happily and at peace. And while he'd realized that everything the Temple taught was carefully designed to serve the ends of the Council and the City, and so probably wasn't actually true, it was one thing to know that in theory, and another to see the proof right in front of you. Idalia g
rinned and poked him in the ribs with an elbow.

  "Thought that would shut you up."

  The gates—wide enough for two large carts to pass through them side by side—stood open, and Kellen could see no guards or soldiers anywhere.

  "Isn't anybody going to stop us?" he asked when they reached them.

  "Why?" Idalia said blankly. Then her gaze filled with understanding and compassion. "Kellen, this may be a city—well, as close to one as the Wildwood gets—but it is not like the City. Nobody's going to ask for your name and family here, demand your address, or make you show your citizen-token. They don't even have a City Guard. People come and go as they please—except you, Cormo," she added abruptly, reaching out to put a hand on the Centaur's arm. "I think it would be better if you stuck around until we saw Haneida and the Council, don't you?"

  "I… of course, Idalia. Happy to," Cormo said with ill-concealed gracelessness. The three of them walked together through the open gates.

  There they paused for a moment. They were standing in what Kellen guessed must be—from his limited reading of the pastoral romances that had been popular in Armethalieh—the market square. On three sides of the square were rows of neat one- and two-story whitewashed thatched-roof cottages, and here in the center of the square was a well, with a windlass and bucket, surrounded by a curved stone trough with a rim wide enough to sit on. All around them, people were going about their everyday tasks—or so Kellen supposed, as it was all new and unfamiliar to him. Everything he could see was built wide enough and high enough to accommodate Centaurs as well as humans, and Kellen wondered what he'd see if he looked inside some of the cottages. Stalls? Or beds?