When Darkness Falls

by Mercedes Lackey

  You know, I never thought of it before, and I would certainly never have dared to question Father about it, but… we despise them as a mockery of the Light and bar them from even setting foot within the City, yet the Elves make some of our most eagerly-desired trade-goods. There’s not a Mageborn family in the City that doesn’t have at least one piece of Elvenware on display.

  Well, he shouldn’t be surprised. Kellen had told him that Armethalieh was built upon a firm foundation of hypocrisy.

  But now it was time to clear his mind for the spell he wished to cast.

  He picked up a homely wooden jug and poured the bowl full of melted snow. He could only tell it was filling by the glints of light on the surface of the water, sliding and breaking apart as the water rocked and jounced off the walls of the bowl. Once it was full, the surface slowly stilled, the waves slowing and disappearing, the bubbles in the water rising to the top. When the water was completely still, the bowl looked in fact as if it truly was filled with the finest crystal.

  Cilarnen took his wand into his right hand, and sketched the first of the glyphs of the spell.

  When the spell was complete, the glyph doubled itself, one copy of it rushing through the wall of the ice-pavilion, speeding in the direction of Armethalieh, while the other half continued to hang above the Elvenware bowl. In a few moments more the absent copy reached its destination, and the glyph blurred into images. The images did not appear in the bowl, as Cilarnen had vaguely expected, but above it, like mist hanging above a lake.

  As he had planned, Cilarnen was looking upon the Council Chamber. The High Mages had no notion they were being watched: The copy of the glyph that was there was heavily Warded, wrapped in every spell Cilarnen could devise.

  And if someone did happen to notice it … well! It certainly wasn’t a Wildmage spell. It was nothing more—or less—than their own High Magick. He thought they’d be so busy accusing one another of treachery that he’d have plenty of time to cover his tracks.

  And after looking through Idalia’s eyes at what Armethalieh had become, he wanted to see for himself how the City was being run these days.

  As he had hoped, the Council was in session, but only seven of the thirteen seats were filled. Cilarnen recognized every face from the old days but one; the slender blond young man who sat in Cilarnen’s father’s own seat. That one he only knew from Idalia’s spell. Anigrel the secret Darkmage: the Mage with a Commons-born father who had been Lycaelon’s secretary and Kellen’s tutor. Lycaelon thought his own son a traitor, but his adopted son had betrayed the Tavadons more terribly than the Arch-Mage could possibly imagine.

  He tried to remember what he could about the political alliances among the Council. His father had certainly spoken to him of them often enough, preparing him for the day when he might join them, and would certainly serve them.

  Arch-Mage Lycaelon Tavadon. He looked far older than he had the last time Cilanen had seen him, on the night of his Banishing, as if all the cares of the City weighed deeply on his shoulders these days. Cilarnen felt a pang of pity for him. It must be hard beyond words to have lost both his children to what he must believe was something worse than Demon magic, and now be facing the worst threat to face his beloved City since the days the first stones of her walls were laid. And he did not even suspect that the worst threat of all sat beside him in his own Council chambers, sat at his table in his own home… .

  Cilarnen turned his attentions to the others.

  High Mage Harith had always been Lycaelon’s political crony; he would support any decision the Arch-Mage made without bothering to think for himself. Harith had no hope of ascending to the ultimate power himself; he was an old man, and had already climbed as high as he would ever reach. He would die where he was, in service to the City and the Arch-Mage.

  High Mage Ganaret was ambitious, but not for himself precisely; Ganaret was always willing to endorse any project that involved exalting the power and prestige of the Mageborn, even at the expense of the other classes who shared the City with them—and so, Cilarnen’s father had said, Ganaret was easily swayed in some matters.

  High Mage Lorins he knew very little of, save that his father had always said that he was ambitious, and sought to become Arch-Mage himself.

  High Mage Nagid; an excellent Mage, but interested most of all in his own comfort. That made him one of the most conservative voices on the Council, unwilling to consider change unless it was forced upon him. That, too, Lord Volpiril had said, could be useful when properly manipulated.

  High Mage Dagan. Dagan was old and fearful, and Cilarnen saw marks of strain and sleeplessness etched into the old man’s face. It was odd to think of any of the High Council as being old men, though no one ascended to that post except after attaining the rank of High Mage and devoting years of service to the City in addition before being proposed for membership when a vacancy arose. And in normal times, vacancies on the Mage Council were rare things.

  Anigrel Tavadon.

  In the presence of so many elderly High Mages, his youth stood out like a beacon; he was less than twice Cilarnen’s own age. He had used the High Mages’ fear, their love for the City and their desire to protect Armethalieh, to set himself on the High Council. To destroy it from within.

  Just as—in the disguise of “Master Raellan”—he had used Cilarnen’s own love for the City to lead him into the pretend conspiracy that had begun it all.

  Cilarnen listened as the High Council debated a measure to send the Militia to Nerendale to evacuate the village’s survivors and settle them among the inhabitants of the nearby villages such as Greenmile, Overlook, and Long Walk. The reason, Cilarnen inferred from the Council’s long-winded speeches, was that the village’s inhabitants were too fearful of the continuing murderous raids of the Wildmages on Nerendale to remain where they were.

  That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard! Certainly a Wildmage would kill someone—Kellen has killed lots of people, and he’s a Wildmage—but not innocent helpless farmers! Someone else is doing this, and I’m sure Anigrel knows who.

  Cilarnen made certain to note the time that the Council said that the Militia would arrive at Nerendale. He was almost certain he knew who was truly behind the attacks, but it wouldn’t hurt to see if he could get proof.

  The Council then began a long debate on the structuring of a new series of taxes on magick. Cilarnen doubted he could learn much more here—and besides, there were other places he wanted to see in the City. And he didn’t want to press his luck by remaining in the Council Chamber too long. He was fairly certain they’d know someone had been spying on them. What he was counting on was that they wouldn’t know who it had been.

  HOUSE Volpiril still looked the same. The green-and-copper banners—their house colors—still hung on either side of the front door; the forbidding statues of snarling winged lions that flanked the walkway out by the street—all were as familiar to Cilarnen as the fingers of his own hand. As he regarded the front door, Vedhin, their formidably-correct butler, opened it, ushering his mother, two sisters, several maids, and a phalanx of menservants through the portal. Since it was his mother and his sisters, Cilarnen had literally no notion whatsoever where they might be going, as well as the feeling that it might be impertinent to try to find out.

  He sent the Glyph of Far-Seeing on into the house.

  Here, too, nothing had changed—but then, each piece of furniture had been in precisely these positions in his grandfather’s day, and if he had inherited, Cilarnen would never have thought of changing a single thing.

  He had to force himself to follow the stairs to his father’s study.

  Setarion Volpiril sat behind his desk, writing a letter. Cilarnen felt a clutch of joy at the sight of his father, and firmly suppressed it; strong emotion of any kind would break the spell.

  His father seemed to have aged decades since the last time Cilarnen had seen him; the auburn hair of the Volpiril line had paled and was thickly streaked with gray,
and new lines etched his cheeks. Even more shocking than this, Lord Volpiril’s gray Mage-robes were flung carelessly over a chair—ready to be donned at need, it was true, but Cilarnen beheld his father in ordinary clothing such as any wealthy fashionable noble might own. He couldn’t remember seeing his father in anything but his gray Mage-robes and rank-tabard before, at any time in his entire life.

  It gave Cilarnen an odd feeling, as if his father’s life must have changed as profoundly as Cilarnen’s own.

  But Lord Volpiril was alive. Alive! Idalia had sworn to Cilarnen that he was, that Anigrel had lied to Cilarnen in the punishment cells, but all along Cilarnen had never quite dared to believe it. In this moment it didn’t matter to him that he’d been condemned as a traitor and that his father surely believed in his guilt. They were both alive, and while that was true, there was a chance for him to let his father know the truth.

  Strong emotion, as Cilarnen well knew, was the enemy of magick. The intense joy he could no longer suppress upon seeing his father disrupted the spell at last. The images faded until once more Cilarnen was staring at nothing more than a bowl of water.

  He drew a deep breath. It didn’t matter. He’d learned what he needed to know.

  And in two days, he would see what there was to see at Nerendale.

  TWO days later he cast the spell again.

  This time it was much harder to find what he sought.

  He’d never been to Nerendale, and knew nobody who had. If his life depended on locating it, he only hoped he’d have plenty of time to look.

  But today he had one particular advantage, because he’d heard in the Council Chamber that the Mage Council intended to send High Mages with the Militia.

  One of the things the High Mages were asked to do most often in the City was to find lost objects: a necklace, a key, a favorite pair of gloves. Almost always the object could be found using an Affinity spell, since the object and the person seeking it would have been in close contact very recently. But they were also sometimes asked to find objects for which an Affinity spell would not work: a will, a lost pet, a family heirloom only rumored to exist. For such circumstances, one of the High Magick’s many different Seeking spells must be used.

  What Cilarnen intended to do now was to Seek all High Mages outside of Armethalieh, using himself as an example of what he wanted the spell to find. It should lead him directly to Nerendale.

  If it led him to some other group of High Mages, well, that at least would be interesting. Very interesting indeed …

  THE wondertales that were popular within the City created images of the farming villages that were wholly unlike real life. The “cottages” the wondertales described were as spacious as a merchant’s townhouse; the work of tilling and planting and harvest was neither arduous nor time-consuming.

  Having lived for several moonturns in Stonehearth, Cilarnen knew what a farming village looked like; and though he had not been there in spring to see the planting begin, he had no doubt that the work was even more strenuous than the winter’s work he had been doing in the stables.

  He was surprised at how very much Nerendale resembled Stonehearth, though the one was a human village under the protection of the City of a Thousand Bells, and the other was a city inhabited only by Centaurs in the midst of the Wild Lands. In fact, Stonehearth was by far the more sophisticated of the two, with two-story houses, a village wall, stone-paved streets, and, Cilarnen suspected, other refinements that Nerendale did not have.

  But the village square of Nerendale looked essentially the same as that of Stonehearth, save for the fact that Stonehearth did not have a Temple of the Light. There was even a well in just about the same place, and, standing around the well, two score very bored looking members of Armethalieh’s Militia, mounted on fine chestnut horses.

  Or at least Cilarnen would have thought them fine once, before he had seen Elvenbred animals. Now they seemed to him to be weedy, narrow-chested, second-rate animals, without either style or stamina.

  The two Mages’ animals were no better. Both were riding grays—undoubtedly borrowed from their fathers’ stables, since journeyman Mages such as they both were certainly were not keeping horses of their own. The grays were skittish high-bred young animals who wanted nothing to do with the Militia’s chestnuts, even as tired out as they must be after the long ride here from the City, and so far the Mages had not bothered to set a spell of Control over them.

  He had not thought he would recognize either of the Mages, but he did. One of them was Juvalira, a Senior Journeyman with whom Cilarnen had served during his Apprenticeship. The other was Juvalira’s usual partner, Thekinalo. Both were of middle-level Mage families, without close ties to the Council, as Cilarnen remembered, though Thekinalo had a cousin who was secretary to Lord Harith. Both had older brothers who were Undermages—Juvalira’s brother was an Apprentice Undermage; Thekinalo’s brother had attained Mastership the last Cilarnen had heard—and both of whom served on two of the many Councils that kept the City running smoothly. Juvalira’s brother was Assistant Private Secretary to the Master of the Vermin Control Board for the Seventh District, and Thekinalo’s brother served on the Water Purification Council. Both families were realistic, and neither looked as high for their sons as a seat on the High Council. Undoubtedly Juvalira and Thekinalo expected to follow their brothers into lives of service to the City, marry well when the time came, and bring honor to their respective family names.

  And they were both going to die today.

  Cilarnen listened as the Captain of the Militia troop argued with the village elders. The Captain wanted to leave immediately. The headman, who had petitioned for help but had received no advance word of their arrival, wanted time for everyone to gather their possessions for the journey. And everyone was gathered around the Captain, shouting about how vital those possessions were—everything from skeps of dormant bees, to foraging pigs, to scattered flocks of sheep and goats, to lost chickens.

  A year ago, Cilarnen would have just thought it was funny.

  Now he wished Kellen were there with them.

  Cilarnen wasn’t really sure how he felt about Kellen Tavadon—whether he liked him and wanted to be friends; or was so jealous of what Kellen could do and the way everybody seemed to adore him for it that he just wanted to strangle him (as if he could); or still felt the simple soothing contempt for Kellen that he had had when the two of them were boys in Armethalieh, and Cilarnen was the envied success, and Kellen was just… pitiable.

  But what he did know for sure was that if you dropped Kellen in the middle of the situation in Nerendale, he’d somehow manage to get everyone to stop shouting, and also get everybody organized and moving almost immediately. Because Cilarnen didn’t think they had the time to waste arguing about what to bring, and neither Juvalira nor Thekinalo were doing anything to help.

  Cilarnen could have wept.

  He was far from knowing all the spells that made up a High Mage’s repertoire, but by now he knew about them. The two Journeymen could have been searching for danger—they knew there was danger around, even if only from whatever was killing the villagers. They could have been calling in the livestock with cantrips of persuasion. And even if they chose to do none of those things, they could have used the inbred reverence of the villages for the Mages of Armethalieh to quell this squabbling and make everyone understand that the village must be evacuated at once.

  But they did none of those things.

  I remember back in the City, they found it easier to laugh at the disaster my father caused than try to do anything to fix it. By the Light, can all the High Mages be so self-obsessed?

  It was earlier in Nerendale than where Cilarnen was; he could tell by the way the shadows lay on the walls of the huts that in Nerendale the sun had not yet reached midheaven, while here near Ysterialpoerin it was already a bell past midday.

  He watched, helplessly and in growing despair, as the soldiers shouted and the farmers argued and the blurry winter shado
ws grew shorter.

  This time They came in the light.

  Because this time it wouldn’t matter who saw Them, because They meant to leave no one alive.

  CILARNEN was the only one who saw Them come. He had drawn the Glyph of Far-Seeing back to high above the village, where he didn’t have to listen to the tragic circular arguments between the villagers and the Captain. From there he could see the whole of the village: the roads, fields, and woods beyond, and the sky above. Because of the Mages’ newly-restored weather-spells, the sky was a pale glassy blue; a color he remembered seeing often enough in winter growing up in the City. Until he had left, he’d thought it was normal for the sky to be that color throughout the winter, but since he’d left, he’d barely seen blue sky at all.

  They came from the east. At first he thought the dark shadows upon the horizon were a flock of birds, but only for a few seconds. No flock of birds would fly so fast, nor be so misshapen.

  Demons.

  Four … six … a dozen. And even one would be enough to kill everyone there.

  “Run, you fools! There are Demons attacking!”

  He dropped the wards that hid his glyph from detection for long enough to shout that warning, knowing even as he did that it would be useless. Thekinalo and Juvalira heard him—he wondered if they recognized his voice—and began looking wildly around for the source of the outcry.

  In doing so, they saw the advancing Demons.

  They flung Mage-Shield over the square, shouting orders for the villagers to take shelter, to bar their doors against the mysterious attack. Their voices came to Cilarnen with faint yet unmistakable clarity through the lens of his spell.

  The first of the Demons landed atop the shimmering violet Mage-Shield as if it were a dome of glass. As if it were ice, not glass, Cilarnen saw the protective barrier melt away to nothing, absorbed by the Demon’s own magic. The Demon It sprang to the ground, crouching for a moment on bare hands and feet, and gazed up at Juvalira with glowing yellow eyes.