When Darkness Falls

by Mercedes Lackey

  Cilarnen knew that both Idalia and Kellen thought that the High Magick contained no spells for seeing things at a distance. He smiled. As if no High Mage had ever wanted to see something on the other side of the City without leaving the comfort and privacy of his own chambers! The City might not be as vast as the Elvenlands, but it was the whole world to its inhabitants, and contained the world in miniature. Of course, the spells of Far-Seeing were not made available to every Apprentice or Journeyman who might be tempted to misuse them. It would be as unfortunate to look in the wrong window as to look beyond the bounds of Armethalieh, and it was much better for all if the Lower Grades were not tempted. But that didn’t mean such spells didn’t exist, and they were in the books that Kindolhinadetil had provided him with. It would be simple enough to adjust the parameters of the spell to compensate for the increased distance from the place he wanted to view, and he could visualize where he wanted to see very clearly.

  The Council Chamber of Armethalieh.

  But not now. Now he needed rest, and sleep, and food. The sun was rising, the traditional signal to the end of the labors of a High Mage.

  Cilarnen doused the braziers, wrapped his cloak tightly around himself against the morning chill, and headed for his own tent.

  Seven

  The Sword of the city

  IF ARMETHALIEH WERE known anywhere outside her own walls—a matter of supreme indifference to both her inhabitants and her rulers—she was known as the City of Mages. Wildly inaccurate tales were told about Armethalieh in the lands beyond the sea, but one thing known about her was the simple truth: Mages had built her and Mages ruled her, for Armethalieh was a city of magick.

  The ultimate authority in Armethalieh was the High Council: twelve High Mages ruled over by the Arch-Mage, the ultimate authority in the City.

  At least, that had been true once.

  Three High Mages—Lords Breulin, Isas, and Volpiril—had left the Council under mysterious circumstances to retire into private life.

  One had died during a ritual that he had been far too old and frail to participate in—Lord Vilmos.

  Two—Lords Arance and Perizel—had been murdered by evil Wildmage magic, that much everyone in the City knew.

  Only one of the six empty seats had been refilled, and that by the Arch-Mage’s own adopted son, Anigrel Tavadon.

  The High Council had once debated strongly and at endless length over every facet of the numerous laws that governed every facet of life in the Golden City, for as well as being a city of Mages, Armethalieh was a city of Law, and the High Council was the ultimate expression of that law. Now the only voice heard within the Council Chamber was Anigrel Tavadon’s.

  Had it not been Anigrel’s idea to set a group of Wardens over the Commons to report all suspicious activity, so that never again would treason be attempted against the Mageborn? And because the Wildmages were so viciously clever, extending their taint to the Mageborn themselves, there were Wardens to watch over the Mageborn themselves. For their own protection, of course.

  But Anigrel’s reforms had not stopped there. Since the ranks of the High Council were now so sadly depleted—by treason and murder within their very ranks, proof of the growing Wildmage menace—had not Anigrel drawn from the ranks of the Magewardens a group of loyal young acolytes to take over some of the most important spellwork involved in running the City itself, so that the Council could expend its own resources on only the most vital matters?

  Indeed, as the sennights stretched to moonturns, the High Council found—with varying senses of relief and unease among its members—that more and more of its magickal work was turned over to the Magewardens. And there was less of it to do than ever before, for at Anigrel’s urging, the Council had reinstated a series of ancient taxes on the citizens of Armethalieh for the privilege of calling upon the Mages for magick at all.

  The Great Spells of Protection and Preservation were still cast, of course: Food was preserved, fires were quenched, walls were strengthened, the bells that kept time in the Golden City continued to do so. And most of all, the Great Wards that strengthened the high stone walls of Armethalieh against any assault, magickal or physical, remained firm.

  OR so they believe.

  Anigrel Tavadon—he had possessed another name once, but it was quite unimportant to him now—stood in his private robing chamber, preparing to take his place in the Circle. Though his rank—entirely unofficial, to be sure, but influential just the same—would have allowed him to delegate this task to his subordinates without eliciting any comment, Anigrel always attended the Warding Circles.

  It was the most important thing he did; the keystone of his secret life. Long before Anigrel had pledged his service to the City, he had sworn his allegiance to an older, darker power. From earliest childhood, Anigrel had served the Queen of the Endarkened, and everything he had done in life looked toward the day when he could lay the Golden City at her feet as her prize.

  The City Wards were centuries old, layer upon layer of protective spells to ensure that nothing that was not human could enter the City of Mages, that no spell of Darkness, that nothing Tainted, that no creature of baneful intent, could pass its gates or soar over its walls to imperil those who lived within. Any who had attained the rank of High Mage could read these wards as easily as one of the unGifted could read a book of wondertales, and would instantly recognize any change in them.

  That was why he had needed to be so very careful.

  Every change he had made had been insignificant in itself. And at the same time he worked upon the wards, he had changed the City, creating such a climate of fear among the Mageborn so that by the time the changes could no longer be hidden—and that time was very near, perhaps even tonight—anyone who could see the changes to the City Wards, and who dared to speak of it, could easily be arrested and condemned as a traitor.

  Anigrel smiled. But the time in which any would see the change to the City Wards would be very brief, for when the changes became visible, it would be the signal that his Dark Lady’s powers could reach within the City at last.

  Oh, she would not yet be able to enter in person. Much more work would still have to be done. It was no light thing to dismantle the spells of centuries: he did not have such power. But when the wards had been transformed, her influence would be able to extend within the City openly and easily—not along the tiny thread he had nurtured all his life, but as a rushing torrent of blessed Darkness. She could protect him from any who opposed him, erase the knowledge of his tamperings from the minds of those who discovered it.

  And help him winnow the High Council still further.

  Once Lycaelon had dreamed of ruling Armethalieh alone and unopposed. Perhaps, before the old man died, Anigrel would grant him his wish. Meron and Harith were annoying old fools, and once Anigrel had the power that compromising the City Wards would grant him—the power to conceal his own dark magic—he could ensure that even more members of the High Council met with unfortunate … accidents.

  He finished robing—only the sheerest of gray linen would do for this most important of the City’s rituals—picked up the Sword of the City, and walked from the chamber.

  THE long and elaborate ritual was completed without a flaw. The Magewardens were all young and ambitious; they saw Anigrel as the very embodiment of Armethalieh, and were personally loyal to him. Through him, they had gained power and rank that would not otherwise have been theirs for years, if not decades, and all of them were ambitious enough to do nothing to risk it. Anigrel had chosen and promoted his Magewardens on the basis of ability alone, advancing them through the ranks far more quickly than tradition would have permitted. The men who stood in the Circle with him, who carried out his orders and spied upon their fellow Mageborn “for the good of the City,” would have been mere Journeymen without his patronage, and every one of them knew it. The black badge and tabard of the Magewardens allowed them equality with the most exalted of the High Mages—equality, and even superiority, for no H
igh Mage was safe from what Anigrel’s Magewardens might report to him under the veil of strict secrecy and anonymity, and every one of the Mageborn knew it.

  When Anigrel left the Circle, Lycaelon was waiting for him.

  As always, the Arch-Mage wore his gray Mage-robes, with their embroidered tabard of rank over them. One who was experienced in Mage-heraldry could read from the symbols upon a Mage’s tabard not only a Mage’s House and lineage—for the tabard was naturally embroidered in the Household Colors of that Mage—but his rank, his position, and the Great Workings to which he had been called. A Mage’s tabard held the entire history of his life in service to the City, and it was a constantly-changing tapestry, for those who had the eyes to see.

  Though Lycaelon had other garments, of course, Anigrel had rarely seen him wear them. Lycaelon’s identification with the City—and his Art—was utterly complete. Long ago, the distinction between the private man and the Arch-Mage of Armethalieh had been utterly forgotten. Lycaelon Tavadon had no private life.

  That Lycaelon should be up and about at this hour was in and of itself not unusual, for the High Mages were as much creatures of nighttime as daylight. Spells might be cast at any bell, but the Great Workings were best accomplished during the bells of night, when the City was at its quietest, and the intrusive clamor of waking minds was stilled by sleep.

  But the peculiar look of worry upon the Arch-Mage’s face was something Anigrel was not used to seeing. It was no part of Anigrel’s plans that his adoptive father should find things to worry about. Anigrel spent precious bells of his time ensuring that Lycaelon believed that the City was running more smoothly than it ever had before. What had the old man found to worry him now?

  “My son,” Lycaelon said, “I know you are weary, but I felt you should know of this at once—before the Council session tomorrow.”

  “Later today, surely?” Anigrel said, with a gentle smile, for the Council House rang all the bells of the night, and he had heard First Dawn Bells just as the ritual ended.

  “The Council will know you have been in the Circle tonight, and so will wait until Noontide Bells to convene, but I had thought it best to prepare you now. There has been another attack upon Nerendale. The farmers there petition to leave their village, and move closer to the City.”

  “The Wildmages grow bolder, Father,” Anigrel murmured, putting a soothing hand upon Lycaelon’s arm.

  Of course he’d already known about this. His spies were better than Lycaelon’s—or anyone else in the City’s. The trouble was, Lycaelon should not have known about it at all.

  “Tell me everything, Father,” Anigrel said soothingly.

  NERENDALE was at the far edge of the Delfier Valley. Before Lord Volpiril’s disastrous decision to reduce the bounds of the City lands, it had been a large and prosperous farming community, one which had also contained a trading outpost since the decision to bar the Mountain Traders from the City over a decade before. Since that time, the trading caravans from the High Reaches came only as far as Nerendale to exchange their freight of furs and cloth and medicinals—and sometimes even precious Elvenware—for grain, cloth, produce, and Golden Suns.

  But hard times had come to Nerendale, as to all the villages that had once prospered under Armethalieh’s care, and now, for the first time in centuries, the farmers suffered disaster after disaster, barely understanding why.

  When the Bounds had been restricted, at first they had rejoiced at the cessation of tithe and tax. But then torrential autumn rains had fallen heavily upon all the villages of the valley, destroying the crops in the field and bringing famine to the land. The Bounds had lately been restored—and with them, the taxes and tithes—but too late to save this year’s crops.

  And now a new scourge had come to trouble the farmers of the Delfier Valley: Not only their herdbeasts, but their people were vanishing mysteriously in ones and twos, always without a trace. It was always the outlying villages—such as Nerendale.

  So far.

  As a Trading Post, Nerendale naturally had a High Mage in residence, for there was no other way to determine the suitability of the trade goods offered by the Mountainfolk. This year, Lycaelon had taken the unprecedented step of sending High Mages to many of the other villages as well, for without doing so, it might have been impossible to bring the villagers to heel in the spring, and without the fruits of their labors, Armethalieh would begin to starve in earnest.

  The High Mages, naturally, had been the first to vanish when the raids on the villages began, for as Anigrel knew—though Lycaelon certainly did not—it was the servants of Anigrel’s Dark Lady, not Wildmage terrorists, who raided the villages of the Delfier Valley.

  The time was near when the Endarkened would be able to walk openly through the streets of Armethalieh, but so that time could come, the High Mages must be utterly convinced that the Wildmages and the Other Races were a great threat, and one that drew ever closer with each passing day.

  Anigrel listened intently as Lycaelon told him the news from Nerendale—of the inhabitants of an outlying house taken in the night; the terror of the village headman—and nodded, as if he were weighing the matter carefully.

  “Truly, Father, I believe you are right. The farmers must leave Nerendale. It would be cruel to ask them to remain when they are so frightened. We will show the people we can be merciful as well as just. Perhaps the Council will agree to send the Militia to escort them to the nearest suitable village, so that they can feel perfectly safe. I will go myself.”

  “No—no, you must not do that,” Lycaelon said, shaking his head. “You are far too selfless—what if the Wildmages lurking in the forest should manage to bespell you? You must think of the City! Armethalieh needs you more than ever—far more than a few farmers ever could. No, no, my son. Your place is here. I will insist that the Council send the Militia, and I will have them choose suitable Journeymen to accompany our soldiers. It is a fine idea to show how Armethalieh cares for her dependents, providing it is not taken to extremes.”

  Anigrel forced himself not to smile. Lycaelon had responded just as Anigrel had known that he would. And Lycaelon would always remember that Anigrel had offered to go to Nerendale.

  “Of course, Father. Your wisdom is an inspiration to me,” Anigrel said, lowing his eyes modestly.

  And when his friends had feasted upon all of them—villagers, Militia, and Mages all—Lycaelon would be nearly ready to listen to his suggestion of … an alliance.

  HE saw everything.

  He’d had to make do with a bowl of water instead of the sphere of flawless crystal the High Mages normally used for the work of seeing things from afar, but the books were clear. Any transparent substance, they said, could be used as a medium to summon the Visions of Far-Seeing.

  Cilarnen knew, of course, that none of the Wildmages had been able to see into the City, but they always spoke of the Wild Magic as though it were a living thing—like Anganil, or Shalkan, or the Salamander that had come to his call. If that were so, then the Wild Magic could decide whether or not to do what they asked it to do.

  The High Magick was not like that. It was without mind and will. It was a tool, nothing more—an extension of the High Mage’s mind and will. There was not the slightest possibility that a spell of the High Magick could ever control its caster, nor require him to do something against his wishes.

  And therefore—so Cilarnen believed—the wards They had put in place against the Wild Magic would be useless against the spells of a High Mage.

  And he was right.

  Two days after he had linked his power to that of the Elven Lands, Cilarnen was ready to cast the Spell of Far-Seeing.

  He had spent the previous day preparing a number of useful spells so that they could be triggered with nothing more than a single keyword—High Magick was a slow and painstaking process, though it could be made to seem rapid to the uninitiated—and practicing others. The last time he had cast Mageshield he had done so out of desperation and in a blin
d panic; thank the Light—and Shalkan and Ancaladar—it had held, or they would certainly all be dead now, and the Allies would know nothing about Anigrel and his plans to destroy the City.

  Now he practiced it carefully, building it up layer by layer, just as Master Tocsel had taught him, until he was satisfied that his old facility with it had returned. A student first learned the glyphs by studying them in a text, then to draw them upon the air with a wand. Next came the spells of wand and glyph, and the summoning of Fire, which was essentially a matter of visualizing the proper glyph, though that almost always came as a surprise to students when it was explained to them.

  The second Spell of Visualization every Student learned was Mageshield: Those who did not learn it did not live to learn any other spells.

  Once Cilarnen was satisfied that he could once more Shield himself instantly against any attack, he was ready to look into the City.

  He prepared his working area carefully, making it as much like a High Mage’s workspace as he could, given his circumstances; lit the lamps on his newly-erected Altar to the Light and recited the whole of the Litany of the Light, then prepared his Circle. That was easy enough, as the Salamander’s visit had left a geometrically-perfect ring melted deeply into the floor of the ice-pavilion.

  The Elvenware bowl he placed upon his worktable was as white as the snow that covered the ground outside, and so delicate that it was a miracle of a sort that it had survived unbroken through all of its journeys, for Isinwen, who had provided it for him several sennights ago, had said it had come all the way from a city called Sentarshadeen, from the workshop of an Elf named Iletel, who was a master craftsman among their kind.

  Gazing upon its simple beauty, Cilarnen could well believe that. Only the wealthiest High Mage in Armethalieh could afford to purchase such a substantial piece of Elvenware to grace his collection, and he had never seen any as fine.