The Outstretched Shadow ou(tom-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  "You don't, really," Idalia said. "Unless you're doing a specific search— and remember that the more specific you get, the higher the price," Idalia reminded him. "Oh, you can have something in mind, and then, if you're lucky you might get that, but with the Wild Magic, you see what you need to see, not what you want to see. Even if you don't understand what you see—and often you won't—it's more important to see those things than to just get caught up in serving your own desires. Lately I've been trying to keep an eye on the City—endless Council meetings, mostly about how everyone outside of the walls is a covert or overt enemy of the City— trying to find out if they know you escaped the Hunt. I haven't heard anything about you, though."

  She'd been watching the Council? Why hadn't she told him? So he wouldn't worry? And why hadn't she had him scrying? Because she knew he'd fail? Or because she knew he'd see… something else? Something she didn't want him to see?

  "But here," she continued. "There's a nice patch of fern growing over there. Let's see what you get."

  Now he didn't know what to think! First she hadn't coached him through the spell, and now she was telling him to cast it!

  Feeling apprehensive and confused, Kellen trudged sulkily over to the stand of fern. He just knew this wasn't going to work. He'd just end up staring down at an empty pool of white rocks, and Idalia would be… kind, and suggest they try again, or say he was just tired and they should do this again another day—or worse, he'd look down and see a Demon staring up at him, and Idalia wouldn't see it.

  Or she would, and she'd know he knew she was in league with them and—

  No, she wouldn't be doing this if she was in league with Demons, if she didn't know he was going to fail! So she was setting him up to fail, just like Anigrel used to. That was it.

  Kellen glared down at the patch of fern, feeling his unsettled bad mood return full force. This was going to be just like all the times he'd tried to be what Lycaelon wanted, and failed, only then he hadn't cared so much. Now he was going to fail Idalia, and that made him angry. She ought to know he couldn't do this. Why was she making him prove it? This stuff came to her as effortlessly as breathing, while every spell he cast ended in disaster, and she just couldn't understand how it could be hard for someone. He'd had enough Wildmagery to get him kicked out of Armethalieh, but aside from that? He couldn't talk to the Otherfolk like Idalia could, or really see them half the time, he didn't have her woodscraft skills, he wasn't one-tenth the Wildmage and never would be, he already knew he didn't have what it took to be a farmer or crafter like they were in Merryvale…

  Wasn't there ever going to be something he was the best at? Ever?

  No. He was always going to be Kellen the Second-Best, Kellen the Embarrassment. People had put up with him in the City because he was Lycaelon's son, and now they were putting up with him here in the Wildwood because he was Idalia's brother, and nothing, nothing, was ever going to change. Look at all Idalia was going through here in the Wildwood— building an addition to the cabin, trading magic for extra food—just because he couldn't pull his weight. And he knew that somehow, somewhere, deep at the bottom of things where he couldn't get to it, there was something wrong about the way things were going now, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

  He hated it. He hated having questions he was afraid to ask. But somehow the time was never right.

  Kellen came back with the fern-leaf and, jaw set, knelt beside the pool. With angry efficiency, he flicked cider onto the water, dropped the leaf onto the eddying surface, and quickly muttered the proper words, half expecting them to leave colorful trails of Magefire in the air, though of course they didn't. The Wild Magic just didn't work that way.

  Then he leaned forward, glaring down at the bottom of the pool as if it were a personal enemy.

  Nothing's going to happen. Nothings going to happen. Noth—

  THE vision came, so quickly that it seemed to sweep the clearing and the pool away.

  The sky was greenish-black, lit by flashes of reddish lightning. He soared above it as if he had wings. Though it was dark, somehow Kellen could see clearly, across a barren plain strewn with jagged boulders that looked as if they had been tossed there by a monster child grown tired of playing with them. He could hear the wind, wailing thinly as it forced its way between the stones. The sound made him shudder. He knew dimly that he should have been cold, but he felt nothing at all.

  As in dreams, he knew more than he saw. There was something there. Something important. Something evil. The malignity of it seemed to seep upward. The iciness of it seemed to seep upward, out of the vision, filling his bones with poison.

  And ringing the plain was a horde—an ARMY—of creatures more horrible than even those that haunted Kellen's most terrible nightmares, all converging on its center. He could hear them baying, the sound the stone Hounds of the Outlaw Hunt would have made if they'd been given voices. To look closely at them was to risk madness. And somehow, Kellen knew also that he was there, in the middle of them —

  Idalia reached out and plunged her fist into the spring, shattering the vision.

  "No!" Kellen screamed, flinging himself into his sister's arms as if he were seven, not seventeen. Idalia held him tightly, and he could feel that she was trembling as hard as he was, and knew that she had seen the same thing that he had. The horror of seeing his greatest secret fears brought into the light, given form and weight and reality, ripped the words from his throat: "Idalia, I don't want to be a monster! Please, please—take my Books! Please!"

  "Kellen, listen to me." There was a note of fierceness in his sister's voice that Kellen had rarely heard. "You are not a monster. And you are not going to become a monster."

  He shook his head, holding her tighter. "The vision. You saw it too."

  "Yes." Idalia drew a deep breath. "And I saw that you were there. But on the same side as those… things? I will never believe that. Never!"

  He had to speak. He had to warn her.

  "But Father said—"

  To Kellen's astonishment, Idalia smacked him on the back of the head—hard enough to sting. She pushed him away, so that she could look into his eyes.

  " 'Father said'—'Father said'—" Idalia mocked angrily. "Father, in case you haven't figured it out for yourself by now, is a narrow-minded, utterly selfish brute without an ounce of human compassion who would say anything to anyone to get his own way. He told you the Wild Magic would turn you into a Demon, I suppose. Well, I'm telling you now that it is utterly impossible. Kellen. Look at me. I'll tell you the truth."

  Kellen looked up at her, his eyes filled with hope—and fear.

  "This has gone on long enough. There's a tiny grain of truth in Father's words, and I'm going to tell you what it is. The Wild Magic teaches you to think for yourself. I've told you that, and you know it's true. Well, people who think for themselves can get into all kinds of trouble— including going over to the Demon side, because yes, there is a Demon side, and they're always looking for human tools. But to do that, a Wildmage has to give up the Wild Magic and everything that has to do with it. Do you understand, Kellen? No Wildmage can serve the Demons—not without ceasing to be a true Wildmage first. His Books will leave him. Yes, because Wildmages think and act for themselves, they can make bad choices and end up becoming evil. But the Wild Magic won't tolerate evil; when they make that choice, the Wild Magic itself stops serving them and stops answering them. The Wild Magic will leave, and something else will take its place. That's all the truth Lycaelon has on his side. All of it. But even a tiny thorn can fester," she added, almost to herself.

  "But…" Kellen said, gesturing toward the pool. It was clear and empty now, a spring-fed pool, nothing more.

  "Did you ever consider you might be there because you were good!" Idalia said, more gently now. "That you might be fighting the Demons? Or that your vision might be only, oh, a kind of truth, like a riddle, to make you think about things more clearly? Or that it might not happen for many, many years?"r />
  "No," said Kellen simply. "But, Idalia, what if I decide to renounce the Wild Magic and become evil?"

  "Then I'll knock you over the head, sew you into a sack, and sell you to the Selken Traders," Idalia said promptly. "I'm sure you won't be able to get into any trouble across the Sea." She poked him in the ribs with a finger. "You're beefy enough now, I should even get a good price for you. Deal?"

  "Deal," Kellen said with a shaky smile.

  He felt as if a fever he hadn't known he'd been running had broken, or as if an actual thorn had been pulled from his flesh. It was strange, but it was far more reassuring to know that there were actually Demons out there who wanted Wildmages to corrupt than just thinking it might all be his own imagination. Idalia spoke of them as if they were just another danger to be faced, and down deep inside, Kellen had no doubts about his own courage—or hers.

  "And at least we know you can work the scrying spell," Idalia said, taking another deep steadying breath. "And very thoroughly, too. Now it's my turn."

  "But— Now?" Kellen said in dismay. He'd been sure that after something like that, they were going to call it quits for the day.

  "No time like the present," she said briskly. "Though if we end up back there again, I'm breaking out that bottle of mead I've been saving for a special emergency," Idalia added, and she didn't sound at all humorous. "And if that wasn't some kind of Teaching Vision, then… then we'd better figure out what to do about it, hadn't we?"

  "But— But, Idalia?" Kellen asked. He knew this still wasn't a good time to ask, but he knew he had to. With that terrible vision still in the forefront of his mind, he knew that the time for doubts and secrets was over.

  "Yes, Kellen?"

  "If— If it's true— What you say— Then, why do you live here? You could live with the Elves—or, or, if you didn't want to do that, you could live in the Centaur village, and not—not out here in the middle of nowhere where you can't even take a bath? I was just…" Kellen stumbled to a halt, knowing he'd asked the question all wrong.

  Idalia stared at him for a long moment, her face blank with surprise, then hugged him very hard. "Oh, my poor mixed-up baby brother! You've been tying yourself into knots over that?. I live out here in the woods because I like to; I know you probably find this hard to believe, but when I'm around too many people, I start to feel uncomfortable and crowded. When you live even in a little village like Merryvale, you have to change what you do and how you act; maybe not by much, but it's a restriction. And I'll tell you another truth, if I lived in Merryvale, people would be coming to me to use Wild Magic for stupid little things all the time. I would either annoy them by refusing, or see my time and energy frittered away on nonsense. Living out here—well, they have to think very hard before they come to me." She sighed, but smiled. "It's as simple as that. People do like different things, you know. I like living alone, with no one to please but myself, and no one nagging me for love spells." She kissed him gently on the forehead. "Now finish your cider."

  She handed Kellen his tankard and went over to the stand of ferns to pluck her own leaf. Kellen drank, and regarded the spring warily, but the water remained still and clear, with no trace of the fire and turmoil of his vision.

  He felt a mixture of exhaustion and relief, as if somehow he'd passed a test he hadn't known he'd been set. He believed Idalia, and Lycaelon had also been telling a kind of truth. Studying the Wild Magic destroyed a kind of defense against the Demons, because once you started to think for yourself, who knew what you might decide to think about? But Lycaelon knew nothing about what the Wild Magic was—rather less than Kellen actually knew about Demons, really. Everything Kellen had read in The Book of Moon, The Book of Stars, and The Book of Sun; everything he'd done with his own mixed-up spells; everything he'd seen Idalia do; all pointed to it only being able to be used for good. Unlike the mechanistic High Magick, as far as he could tell, the Wild Magic was self-aware, and that awareness was benevolent. He wasn't Tainted, and neither was Idalia.

  So as long as you're really doing Wild Magic, you're okay, I guess.

  Until you stop.

  And if there aren't three other Books out there…

  Idalia came back with her own leaf and knelt beside Kellen.

  "Wish me luck, little brother," she said, patting him on the knee.

  The spell was swiftly cast, and to Kellen's intense relief, the image that formed was a familiar one: the Council chamber in Armethalieh. He heard Idalia release a pent-up breath, and guessed she'd been a little worried as well.

  But their relief was short-lived.

  THE full Council was in session: thirteen High Mages seated at the curving judicial bench of black marble twice the height of a tall man, with Lycaelon Tavadon at their center on his black throne.

  "Volpiril—Meron—Perizel—Lorins—Breulin—" Idalia named them all softly, going around the half circle.

  Mage Breulin was speaking.

  "We have had great success in our Northern and Southern Expansions, which, as you know, have been a priority over the past several moonturns. I am now pleased to report that our borders are clean and secure from the High Peaks in the north to the Arid Lands in the south, and we have brought several more of the unaligned villages previously outside our borders under Armethaliehan rule, to a concomitant increase in taxes and revenues. Their integration is proceeding smoothly, and we have been sending City Lawspeakers out to ride a regular circuit to make sure that all Enforcement Proclamations are read out on a timely basis. The Captain of the City Militia has requested permission to recruit and form five new units from the local villages in order to be able to support the Law-speakers."

  The motion was quickly passed, after a short discussion about recruitment policy, and the necessity of sending a Mage with the Militia to take care of any unusual problems right on the spot.

  Then Lycaelon rose to speak.

  "My fellow Mages. Mage Breulin's news is welcome indeed, for how can the City flourish when our enemies are free to gather outside our walls and plot our downfall? Yet I worry that we concern ourselves with the lesser danger and ignore the greater. While we have been occupied with the admittedly necessary purification of our new northern and southern territories, I have sent my agents westward, and discovered that many who do not wish to accept our wise and enlightened rule are massing there. The Western Hills contain a number of flourishing villages, not only of humans, but cesspits where humans and talking beasts congregate together in direct opposition to the wise teachings of the Eternal Light."

  Several of the Council Mages frowned; Breulin stroked his beard, and leaned over to mutter something to the Mage at his right.

  Lycaelon nodded approvingly when he saw the frowns. "As you know, our Hunt failed, which could only have happened if the most evil of forces had intervened. The Outlaw made his escape into the west, armed not only with the abomination of his dark magic, but with the deepest secrets of our City. Even now he may be leading innocent humans into error, as well as sharing our secrets with the cunning Other Races with which the Western Hills abound, who will seek our City's downfall and the destruction of the Light for no more reason than that they exist."

  "Surely not!" one of the others exclaimed, though not as if he objected, but as if he was horrified.

  Lycaelon bowed his head in a fine imitation of sorrow, but from their vantage, Kellen saw he was hiding a smirk. "Our way is hard," the Arch-Mage said, mournfully. "Our resources are few. We are one city, alone, without allies, in the face of the teeming bestial hordes of Darkness and Error. But the Light defends us, and our course is clear: In the name of Humanity, for the sake of our lost and imperiled brethren, we must claim all of the Western Hills for Armethalieh and the Light—extend our borders once again, no matter the cost to ourselves, and send forth a Scouring Hunt to purge those lands of the creatures that would usurp Man's rightful place in the world!"

  There was a moment of silence, then the rest of the Council was on its feet, cheering Lycael
on as the vision slowly faded.

  "BLOODY hell!"

  Idalia threw her tankard into the spring and began to swear in low passionate tones. Some of the words Kellen had heard on the City docks; some of them he could only guess at the meaning of. She pounded her knee with a closed fist as she vilified every member of the Council, particularly Lycaelon.

  Finally she turned from profanity to language that didn't make his ears burn quite so much.

  "That pompous precious prancing ass, that demagogue, that warmonger, that coward—simpering around like a maiden whose feelings are hurt and getting everyone else to do his dirty work for him, that—that— Oh, if Mother were only there, she'd spank him!"

  At last she ran out of words and simply sat there, head down, breathing hard, as Kellen watched her anxiously.

  Extend the borders of Armethalieh … to here? But that's crazy. We're hundreds of miles from the City. Shalkan had to run at top speed for a night and a day to get here, and a unicorn is faster than… How can the City possibly control this much territory!