After that, all that was left to do was to light the lanterns, build a fire, and feed the animals while the tea was brewing—allheal, he thought, since both of them could use it. Once the animals were fed, Kellen unwrapped a couple of trail-bars for Shalkan and began cutting up another couple to make soup.
By the time that task was done, the tea was ready. Kellen added a large disk of crystallized honey to each cup—they could both use the sugar—and poured the two cups full. Maybe Idalia and the Elves were right about the restorative powers of tea after all, Kellen thought. Certainly nothing had ever seemed so welcome as the thought of a hot cup of sweet tea just now.
He carried the other cup over to Jermayan.
"Drink this. You'll feel better."
"My thanks." Jermayan took the cup from Kellen's hand. His fingers were icy where they brushed Kellen's own, and his hand trembled.
"You should come over by the fire where it's warmer," Kellen said. "You've lost a lot of blood, and you'll be cold."
"Soon," Jermayan promised. He drank, eyes closing.
"We ought to have died back there," he said after a moment.
"I nearly got us killed," Kellen said bitterly.
"No." Jermayan reached out his hand with an effort and placed it on Kellen's arm. "It was I who nearly got us killed, riding bareheaded and unshielded as if I went to bring in the spring-tide, though knowing that I rode through unfriendly lands with an unblooded Knight-batchelor who had not yet won shield or spurs. Against six men and two Centaurs… it is only because you are what you are that we are here now, Kellen Tavadon. And beyond that: you have put yourself under obligation to the Powers to ransom my life from Death's cold halls. That is a gift of which I am unworthy."
Kellen wasn't really sure what to say to that. "Well, it's not like I could just go back and tell Idalia I'd misplaced you," he said awkwardly. "She wouldn't like that."
"There is much of your sister in you," Jermayan said mournfully. "Her grace, her nobility of spirit. From the moment I first saw her in Ondola-deshiron I knew it was she for whom my heart had waited through all the long decades of my life. Love among the Children of Leaf and Star is no light thing. It is for ever and always. I would not have troubled her with the burden of my heart, did I not know that hers inclined to me as well. Yet she denies what we both know to be the truth." He lowered his head and sighed deeply.
I don't want to hear this, Kellen thought uncomfortably. And yet—
I want them to be happy, and I know damned good and well that neither of them is ever going to be happy without the other.
"I understand that she does not wish to leave me alone and forsaken when the brief span of her mortal years is run, but cannot one so wise understand that I am already alone who has once gazed into violet eyes the color of evening mists? I shall be forever alone without her, my Idalia—would she deny me even the memories of the brief summer's afternoon of our love to warm me through the long cold winter I must spend without her?"
Uric. This was getting more uncomfortable by the moment.
"Every moment we spend apart is filled with thoughts of her," Jermayan continued, with a curiously restrained passion. "It is she who completes me, Kellen—would she be so unfeeling as to refuse me the transfiguration for which her own soul must cry as well? Without love, all the treasures of the world are ashes, and the Children of Leaf and Star know that true love comes only once into every life. How is it that she cannot see that, who can see so much else so clearly? We are meant to be together. It matters not how brief the time, only that it is filled with joy."
"I think the soup is ready," Kellen said hurriedly, scuttling backward toward the fire.
He didn't know if Jermayan had ever said anything like that to Idalia—if he had, it would be just one more good reason for her to not want to have anything more to do with him, by Kellen's reckoning—but he was completely sure he didn't want Jermayan saying anything more of it to him. It was bad enough having to read things like that in wondertales— and Kellen didn't; he skipped over those parts—but it was a thousand times worse having to hear someone saying them about your sister.
Grace —nobility of spirit—soul must cry—filled with joy — I didn't think anybody really talked like that! Kellen thought in disgust. He must be running a fever from that healing I did.
He glanced up and saw Shalkan watching him. From the expression on the unicorn's face, Shalkan thought something was pretty funny, and Kellen didn't want to inquire too closely about what it might be, Kellen thought in acute discomfort. He'd have been disgusted if it had been another human who was blathering on like that, but, well—Elves just seemed to talk like that naturally.
Like that kind of thing can be spouted off casually.
As he filled the bowls, Kellen cast about in his mind for a subject that would distract Jermayan from the topic of Idalia.
When he had Jermayan comfortably seated in front of the small fire, Kellen deftly took control of the conversation before Jermayan could start talking again.
"Those people we fought today—who do you think they were?" he asked.
Jermayan frowned. "I'm not certain. Perhaps simple brigands, for all that they managed to take us so completely by surprise. This far from human and Elven lands there are all manner of unchancy things prowling. It is a hard land, one that cannot be farmed or husbanded. Though there are a few who are sturdy enough to eke out a precarious living as shepherds, even they are surly, unfriendly, and half-beast themselves. Those who fell upon us today might be no more than the lawless wolfsheads whose meat is hapless travelers—but the fact that they were able to hide so nearly in plain sight and approach us so closely argues that they may have had magical help to do so."
"So they might have been related to these people who set the Barrier? Shadow Mountain?" Kellen said.
Jermayan reluctantly nodded.
Aha! "So who—what—is Shadow Mountain, and why are they—it— doing this?" Kellen demanded urgently.
There it was, the question he'd been wanting to ask ever since the name had been mentioned back in Sentarshadeen and the Elves had practically turned themselves inside-out. What was Shadow Mountain? If the enemy was going to be hunting them directly—and now that Kellen had used the Wild Magic outright, he'd been thinking more about that possibility—it was time to stop avoiding the question and find out exactly who and what he might be facing.
Though—now that he came to think about it—everyone, including Jermayan, had been doing a very good job of distracting him from that very question from the moment of the Council meeting back in Sentarshadeen.
There was a long pause. Kellen could tell that Jermayan really wished Kellen hadn't asked the question, and for a moment Kellen almost withdrew it. But he wanted to know. More than that, he thought he needed to know. If he was going to be fighting Shadow Mountain—if they were going to be sending enemies after him and Jermayan—he needed to know what he was up against.
"Shadow Mountain is what the Children of Leaf and Star call the stronghold of our oldest enemy—indeed, the oldest enemy of every race in this world, if only the rest of you knew it. Shadow Mountain is the home of the Endarkened," Jermayan answered at last, very reluctantly.
Kellen looked puzzled. The Endarkened. The name meant nothing to him.
"Demons," Jermayan elaborated. "The Endarkened are what you humans call Demons."
"Demons?"
All Kellen's old fears—fears he'd thought long-settled and put to rest—returned in a sudden rush. Idalia had said the Demons were real. The old faun back in the Wildwood had been terrified of them. But even though he'd been hearing about them since he'd left the City—and even before—Demons still seemed so unlikely, a concept Kellen recoiled from believing in even while it terrified him. They belonged to nightmares, not to conversations like this.
Jermayan seemed to sense his hesitation, and misunderstood its source.
" 'Demon' is the name that Men gave to them in the War, and it is a truly fit
ting one—or so we Elves decided, once we understood the human concept of Demons. The Endarkened are evil, without exception. They are at least as long-lived as Elves, if not truly immortal."
"They are?" Kellen asked in a whisper. The creatures of his nightmares had certainly seemed unstoppable…
"What—what do they look like?" He didn't want to know. Except that he did. He had to know if his nightmares reflected the truth, or only his own twisted imagination.
"Unless they are disguising themselves by magic," Jermayan replied, "they are easy to recognize: they have the horns of goats, the slitted eyes of snakes, scarlet or ebony skin, barbed tails, talons, and often wings or cloven hooves as well."
Kellen shuddered, suppressing a chill of horror. Jermayan's description exactly matched the images in his nightmares. But how had he known?
But despite his reluctance to begin, Jermayan was by no means finished with the subject of Shadow Mountain and Demons.
"And unlike other races, all the Endarkened are powerful Mages, able to wield a kind of magic that is neither the High Magick of the City, nor the Wild Magic you have learned, Kellen, but magic of a third kind, wholly abominable, and wholly inimical to Life. The least of the Endarkened is an inherent Mage far more powerful than most human Mages, and the most powerful of the Endarkened Mages can cast spells of incalculable power and devastation. Their power comes from the pain and feat of their victims and from the anguish and despair of their vjctims' deaths. The price of Endarkened magic is paid in the blood and suffering of others, as we learned to our cost in the War.
"So if they are not truly Demons as you humans use the term, you will find, should you learn more of them, that they are close enough," Jermayan said with a bitter sigh.
Kellen knew that Jermayan's unwontedly expansive mood would probably not last long, and that he should learn all he could while the Elven Knight was willing to answer his questions. Suddenly he remembered something Idalia had said to him a long time ago: "… duergar and goblins and trolls ... pushed out of the settled lands by the Great War, and even after all this time, I don't think they'd be foolish enough to come back …"
"You mentioned a war. There was a war, wasn't there? Between the humans… and the Demons?" And Armethalieh had made sure that no mention of it had survived in the City Histories. Lycaelon had said as much—something about the Black Days, when Demons had prowled the City itself.
He'd blamed that on the Wild Magic—and though Kellen now knew that the Wild Magic couldn't have been at fault—not in the way that Lycaelon had tried to get him to believe, anyway—his instincts still told him that there was some sort of connection between the Wild Magic and the Demons.
Jermayan smiled just a little, like a teacher pleased with his pupil's quickness, even though the subject itself was a terrible one.
"The Endarkened have tried twice before to conquer all the living things of the earth—once, when only we Elves were there to stop them, and the second time when Elves and Men joined in the Great Alliance with several other races to drive them back to their caves beneath the earth once more. The Great Alliance left scars in the fabric of the world that are healing still: Men only entered the conflict because there were other humans, their enemies, who had been seduced by the promises of the Demons and had allied themselves with the powers of Darkness. There were dragons in the world then, who fought on both sides of the conflict— dragons betrayed by the humans who had bonded with them into slavery at the hands of the Demons, and dragons who faithfully served the Great Alliance. The unicorns played a vital part in that war, because the Demons, being creatures of Dark Magic, cannot survive the touch of their living horns."
Dragons'. This was the first time Kellen had ever heard that dragons existed outside of a wondertale! The thought distracted him for a moment—
—but not for long, because Jermayan was still talking.
"The Great War took a terrible toll from all the Creatures of Light. Some races were lost forever, some changed beyond recognition. Some withdrew forever from the sight of Elves and Men. Ancient partnerships that had been forged in the morning of the world were sundered forever… It would make you weep, Kellen, did I tell you the story of those days in full, of all that was true and good and fair that passed out of the world then, never to be seen again. Yet in the end we rejoiced, though the land itself was in ruins and the work of rebuilding would be a thing of centuries, for we had broken the power of Shadow Mountain for all time… or so we thought then."
Jermayan shivered, and Kellen wondered, had he been there? Had he seen the Great War? Surely not; he was far too young—
"But you won—" he ventured. "Surely you could have gotten rid of them forever!"
Jermayan shook his head. "What victory we won came at a great price, one that your race is paying down to this day. When the Great War was over, the few human Mages who were left—and there were not many, for the War had taken a terrible toll of any who had the least magical Gift— banded together to found the City of Armethalieh, where they thought they could be safe. They outlawed the Wild Magic, swearing death to any who should practice its arts and driving the few surviving Wildmages who would not renounce their practice far from human lands. There began the creation of the High Magick, and the history of Armethalieh the Golden, City of a Thousand Bells—a city for humans alone, ruled only by the High Magick that the surviving Mages created to take the place of the Wild Magic they had spurned."
"But… why?" Kellen whispered, horrified.
"The new High Mages thought that it had been the practice of the Wild Magic that had led to the seduction of their human enemies by the Demons," Jermayan said mournfully, as if he could not believe that the Mages had been so blind. "And so they outlawed the Wild Magic, lest new Wildmages should become the prey of Demons as well. But it was not the Wild Magic that caused those Mages to fall."
There it was, the thing Kellen had been dreading. That Wild Magic was dangerous, that Wildmages could be drawn to the Dark—both he knew to be true, though Idalia said it was not true that a Wildmage could serve the Demons with Wildmagery. But she had not told him why Wildmages could be drawn to the Demons…
"But—if it was the Wildmages who were corrupted—" he ventured.
"Oh, no, Kellen," Jermayan said, and not in the tone people used when they were trying to reassure him (which of course had the opposite effect) but as if this was such accepted truth that Jermayan could no more have doubted it than he could doubt that the earth would uphold him. "It was not the Wild Magic that caused those Mages to fall, rather their attempts to escape or subvert the price of Wild Magic that led them down the dark paths. They were Wildmages who did not wish to pay the cost of their power, and so in the end, they paid a far higher price."
He looked narrowly at Kellen. "Do you understand me? They wished power without a cost, at least to them. And so, they lost the Wild Magic, and found—that only the Demons would promise what they wanted. And they believed that promise, only to find that there was a price, after all. It cost them their souls, all that made them truly happy, and in the end— their lives."
Kellen blinked. Power without cost to them — but isn't that what the High Mages have now?
But was it? The High Magick still cost somebody something, and sometimes the High Mages used their own power…
He thought.
"When we realized what they believed in Armethalieh, we sent them envoys and tried to reason with them, for we knew that the Wild Magic was the only defense against Shadow Mountain, and we could not learn its arts, having given up our part in the Greater Magics long ago. But the humans were afraid. They would not heed us. Fear can make people— anyone—think very strange things. Even Elves," Jermayan finished softly. "And now it may be too late."
"Sleep now," Shalkan said firmly, stepping into the lantern light. "Both of you. I'll keep watch. I've had a much easier day than either of you. Sleep."
It was hard to argue with such good advice. Exhausted by the events of
the day—the battle and all that went with it, the spell he had cast, Kellen knew he couldn't possibly stay awake much longer, and Jermayan needed to sleep to finish the work of the Healing Spell. Getting to his feet, Kellen quickly washed their cups and bowls and snuffed the lanterns as Jermayan wrapped himself in his bedroll. A few moments later Kellen did the same.
As he looked up at the stars, he thought about what Jermayan had said. He had his answer at last, at least most of it. He thought about his own moment of weakness just this afternoon, how he'd hated the thought of incurring another Mageprice. But he'd accepted it anyway, because that was the cost of the Wild Magic. You paid for what you got, because in paying your Mageprice you were actually helping to tend the garden of the world, as Morusil said.
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