Idalia could not imagine it, though she tried very hard. She could barely retain the memory of Summoning them, so ancient and wild was their power. To see them, in the calm and normal light of day, was something so far beyond the realm of normal experience, even for a Wildmage who had once been a Silver Eagle, that even her imagination failed.
It was simply too much.
“And then what happened?” she asked.
“They came. They … went. After a little time, we flew back to Ysterialpoerin. Ancaladar had just enough strength for that. And fortunately for us, it was not far.”
There was another long pause, and Idalia knew that Jermayan was gathering himself to say something he did not wish to say.
“We … live. But we will cast no more spells.”
She had been prepared to hear far worse.
“You idiot! Do you think I care about that?” Idalia demanded. She hugged him fiercely. “I loved you when you were a simple Elven Knight, and I shall love you now that you are a simple Elven Knight once more.”
“With a dragon,” Ancaladar said.
“With a dragon,” Idalia agreed.
Had the Starry Hunt turned Ancaladar from a creature of magic to a creature of flesh-and-blood? Ancaladar himself might not know. It might simply be that his magic had been drained so far by the spell that only enough remained to keep himself and the Bond alive, thanks to the Hunt’s intervention.
In the end, it really didn’t matter.
He was back.
KELLEN had become used to riding out to what he had gotten used to calling “Ancaladar’s Grove” every morning at dawn to see if there was news from Sen-tarshadeen. Without a detachment of Unicorn Knights in the camp, it was simplest for him to check the grove for messages personally, since Unicorn Scouts were the fastest form of communication between the city and the camp.
And besides, it gave him private time with Shalkan.
The Halacira camp was quickly taking on the aspect of a small city. Tents were being replaced by buildings of wood and stone—the surrounding forest would never be the same, but that was a small price to pay, in Kellen’s opinion. They had kitchens and a sawmill, thanks to Artenel’s tireless labors, as well as a bathhouse.
And the news from Sentarshadeen was good.
The plague victims there continued to recover, and no new cases had been reported. Though Andoreniel’s name was not mentioned, Kellen knew that the King’s health must be continuing to improve as well.
He was puzzled at the continuing silence from Idalia and Jermayan. Midwinter had passed. She would have done her spell, if she had been able to, and he had heard nothing.
Obviously, that meant that she had done something, for if she had been able to do nothing at all, she would still have been in Sentarshadeen and would have written to him herself.
He wondered what it was that she had done.
Her continued silence worried him.
But he’d had little time to brood over it, because first the supply wagons had returned from Sentarshadeen—to everyone’s great relief, since with even the Wildmages to Call the sparse game out of the forest into hunting range, supplies were running short, and even the best-trained Elven destrier would not eat meat.
Next had come the matter of providing Cilarnen a place to work.
A tent would not do—the largest they had was too small for his needs, Cilarnen informed Kellen, and the spells of the High Magick used too much fire. Half his energy would be spent in keeping his workplace from burning down around him. And Cilarnen’s work was vital.
Even with the power he had to draw upon, Cilarnen lacked the ability to create an ice-pavilion such has he had used in the north. Besides, here, in the Avribalzar Forest, his surroundings lacked the same dry cold that was to be found west of Yste-rialpoerin. The ice of such a structure would surely have rotted within a sennight.
Cilarnen’s workspace must be wood. Or stone.
And the sooner it was in place, the sooner he could start working the spells they needed.
At least it turned out that they hadn’t had to build it. All that had been required was providing Cilarnen with enough cut lumber deposited at a place Cilarnen selected, a suitable distance from the main camp. Cilarnen’s magick had done the rest, creating a finished building the size of Redhelwar’s pavilion from a pile of lumber between sunset and dawn.
There had not been enough to finish the entire structure, so the roof was made of saplings that Artenel and his sawyers had not provided. They were of an eerily uniform thickness and length, and every single one of them had been stripped of their branches and bark by the same unknown forces that Cilarnen had called up to build his sanctum.
He’d looked very smug when Kellen had come out to see him the following morning, a little worried about Cilarnen having spent the night alone in the cold and the snow. There were certainly no Tainted creatures making their home in the Avribalzar Forest, but if there were Demons raiding in the Delfier Valley, and Ice Trolls and Frost Giants north of the Mystrals, anything at all might show up here without warning.
“Like it?” Cilarnen had called.
Kellen had stared in resigned envy at the snug-looking round structure where none had stood the day before. Resigned, because after such a spectacular success Cilarnen was going to be even more difficult to live with than before—oh, he did his best to be polite and to fit in, but when he became obsessed with working out the details of creating or adapting one of the spells of the High Magick to serve Kellen’s needs, nothing else but his work existed for him.
One of the reasons Cilarnen drove himself so hard and so dangerously, Kellen knew, was guilt. Guilt that he had not been able to save the folk at Neren-dale. Guilt that Anigrel had attempted to use him as a weapon.
Guilt that when every possible warrior was needed to battle on the side of Light, the High Mages had not only refused to fight, but had done everything they could to give aid to an Enemy that nothing living should help.
And envious, because the wooden building looked as if it would be much warmer and drier than Kellen’s own tent. And Cilarnen wasn’t even going to use it for sleeping. His tent—where he would sleep and take his meals—was pitched a few feet away from his new sanctum.
Last of all, in the middle of everything else, there was Vestakia to worry about, at least as much as Kellen dared. Her understanding of the images she received from her father’s mind seemed to grow clearer by the day, but such clarity did not come without a price. She looked as unwell as Cilarnen did, as if she, too, were yoked to energies nothing mortal should be allowed to bear.
And then, six days ago, when Kellen had gone to Ancaladar’s Grove to see what dispatches—or messengers—might be awaiting him from Sentarshadeen, and to drink his morning tea in peace, he saw something that had stunned him completely.
Riasen, Captain of the Unicorn Knights, and Elariagor were standing in the clearing. The pale golden unicorn stood regarding Kellen with faint amusement sparkling from her turquoise eyes.
“Did you miss us?” she asked, switching her long tufted tail.
“I—What—Who—” Kellen sputtered.
He neither spilled a drop of his tea, nor was in any way incapable of dealing with an enemy attack—should one happen to appear in that moment—but for just an instant, his mind was incapable of understanding what he saw. Riasen could not be here. Riasen was with the army, on the other side of the Mystrals, marching toward Ondoladeshiron, and Kellen would see him and the others sometime in late spring. Not now, three days after Midwinter.
“The army rests at Ondoladeshiron, Kellen,” Riasen said. “All of it. Now. Redhelwar directs me to inform you that we shall be with you as soon as we can—there is the small matter of the herds to gather back together and a few other insignificant trifles to take care of before we march. Yet it grieves me to tell you that our passage was bought with a life. Two lives. Jermayan and Ancaladar have given their lives for the spell that brought us here so quickly.”
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The army was at Ondoladeshiron. If Riasen said it, Kellen had no doubt that it was true. And that Jermayan and Ancaladar were dead … that must be true also.
“What spell?” Kellen asked bluntly.
“Two days ago, Ancaladar joined us upon the march. It was a surprise to us, as last we had seen of him, Jermayan, or Idalia, they had gone to bear Cilarnen and Vestakia to you at Halacira. Idalia brought us the joyous news that Andoreniel gains in strength, and that They had been struck a grievous blow by a spell she had but lately done, and would now be cast down in disorder and confusion.”
So the Greater Summoning had worked. But…
“Redhelwar said that the time to strike was now, in Their hour of greatest weakness, but that by the time he had reached Ondoladeshiron, it would be too late, for They would have regained Their equilibrium. And Jermayan said that it was possible to make a door through which Redhelwar’s whole army could pass, stepping from the outskirts of Ysterialpoerin to the Gathering Plain in but an instant, but that the spell would require all of the magic that he and Ancaladar possessed.”
And that, Kellen knew, meant their deaths.
“And so they cast it, but passing through the veils was a great shock, and the animals did not like it overmuch. The herdsmen say we shall be collecting them for some days yet.”
“It is not a door that I want to go through twice,” Elariagor said feelingly. “Blackness and falling and cold—no wonder the oxen and the horses ran as if They Themselves were chasing them. If Ardir had not been there to cast his spell of Animal Speaking, the ox-teams would have done just the same thing, and they were hitched together in teams of twelve and had sledges attached to them besides. It would have been a great mess, with three thousand Elven Knights who could not see what they were riding into set to come just behind. Do imagine it, Kellen.”
Kellen could: the oxen crashing into each other in panic, creating a huge barrier of tangled traces and wounded animals to block this mysterious door. And then, crashing into it, the Elven Knights, who would be coming through at a dead run, because Jermayan could surely not have held the door open forever.
“It will be good to hear what you may say to me of my sister, Idalia,” Kellen said carefully.
“She is well,” Riasen said, sounding a little surprised that Kellen had asked. “She shared in the spellprice for Ardir’s spell, and of course, since it came so soon after the previous work she had done, she was greatly weakened. But she rests now in the Healers’ care. You will see her, once the army comes.”
“That makes good hearing,” Kellen answered automatically.
He doubted Idalia was doing much resting, knowing that Jermayan was dead.
BUT he did not have much time to dwell on this new loss. With the army south of the Mystrals, Andoreniel on the road to recovery, and He Who Is having been blocked from aiding the Endarkened—somehow—first thing Kellen wanted was more information about exactly what it was that Idalia had done.
For that there was only one place to go.
He provided Riasen and Elariagor with the camp’s hospitality—fortunately, tea had come with the supply wagons, and there was someone else to brew it—before they continued on to Sentarshadeen, to give a report to Morusil as well. Kellen had added his own reports—brief, as there was nothing to report—and sent them on their way.
“Well, that was entertaining in a quiet way,” Shalkan said, as they headed along a well-cleared snow path toward Cilarnen’s clearing. The path was well-cleared because Cilarnen had several ice-golems whose sole job, day and night, was to clear and maintain paths through the forest, which they did until they melted or fell to pieces. When he lost enough of them, Cilarnen simply made more and set the new ones to work.
Kellen found it more than a little unsettling, though it was nice to have the nice wide paths through the forest shoveled and swept down to scraped and textured ice.
“No,” Kellen said, after a moment’s thought. “Not really. It’s good to have the army here now, and not four months from now, though. I wish I knew what Idalia’s Greater Summoning actually … summoned. And … Jermayan was my first real friend. You’re my friend, too, Shalkan, but in some ways that’s different. We’re bound together by magic. Jermayan didn’t have to be my friend, didn’t have to have anything to do with me. He could have let someone else go with me to the Keystone. He was the first person—well, aside from you—to think that I might be something more than just a really bad Wildmage.”
“I know,” Shalkan said simply, leaning against him for a moment.
As they reached the clearing where Cilarnen now lived, they heard a sudden shout of anguish. The door to the wooden hut burst open, and something small and gray streaked out across the snow.
“Catch it! Catch it! I’m not finished with it yet!”
Kellen grabbed for it and missed. Shalkan stamped down with one cloven hoof, pinning it to the snow.
Kellen picked it up as Cilarnen—barefoot, in a long gray robe—came running over the snow toward him.
The thing Kellen had in his hands resembled a ferret—Kellen had seen pictures of the creatures by now—except for the fact that it was made of stone, its body a uniform gray color. It writhed and twisted in his grasp, striking and biting at his hands, but though its small stone teeth could penetrate his heavy gloves, they had no chance against the armored gauntlets beneath.
Cilarnen slipped a noose woven of thin strands of red silk around the creature’s neck and it instantly became what it had been in the beginning: a lifeless marble carving.
He took it back, and only then seemed to notice that he was standing barefoot on snow.
“Yah!” he announced inelegantly, and ran back the way he’d come, holding the stone ferret in one hand and holding up his robes with the other, hissing to himself at the cold.
Despite the sadness of the news he’d received this morning, Kellen did have to smile to himself. This was hardly the image of serene and perfect all-knowingness that the High Mages of Armethalieh would like to project, but it was a much more human one. When he thought of the High Magick, which had managed to free itself from Balances and Mageprices to become a weapon with nothing to hold it in check, Kellen would much rather think of Cilarnen hopping barefoot over the snow because he’d forgotten his boots in the excitement of working out a spell than of his last sight of the High Council on the day they had Banished him—bloated with smug arrogance, drunk with power, and certain that killing a seventeen-year-old boy would have absolutely no consequences.
There were always consequences.
A few moments later, Cilarnen came back, having added boots and a cloak to his robe.
“Thanks for catching that,” he said to Shalkan and Kellen. “I think I need to put the spells on in a different order, really, and that one got out of the box. I really think it’s better if they know who they’re supposed to serve, and how, before I wake them up.”
“Why are you having a problem?” Kellen asked. “You’ve made dozens of golems before.”
Cilarnen shrugged. “According to theory, the Enlivening Spell makes the statue take on the essential nature of its form. So hounds act like hounds; birds, birds; and so on. I was making servants. Maybe that made a difference. But a ferret’s essential nature is to … ferret. Which means I had better put any compulsions on its nature in place first, I think.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Kellen agreed.
“But you didn’t come to talk to me about the ferrets. I told Artenel he couldn’t have any of them—or the snakes either—until the end of the sennight.”
“No,” said Kellen. “I need something else. And I have bad news.”
“It’s about that thing that came a few days ago, isn’t it?” Cilarnen said.
“Tea,” he said next, regarding Kellen’s blank expression.
“YOU were raised in the City. You know we work at night,” Cilarnen said, handing Kellen a mug. He knew Shalkan’s tastes by now, and tipped several
honey-disks onto a plate and held them out to the unicorn. Shalkan took them delicately, one by one.
“In fact, I was just finishing up with the latest batch of stone ferrets before going to bed now, as it’s simple work and doesn’t require much concentration, really. But Midwinter was a time of—oh, say it was as if everything was very clear and quiet, so that I could see a long way. So I wasn’t going to waste it on stone ferrets. I wanted to check as much of the Borders as I could, then see what was going on in Armethalieh.
“Well, as I’ve told you before, those big cities the Elves have up there are pretty well gone. I’ve only been as far north as Ysterialpoerin, and I’ve only been there once, but I tried looking for other things in the north that looked like that big house I was in—and felt like it, too—and I found two that were empty, and one looked like it had been burned. Since it had been looted, I could follow objects that had been taken from it, and a lot of them kept leading me back to Ysterialpoerin, but enough of them didn’t that I could start to trace the Frost Giants; figure out where they are, and where they’re going. I was in the middle of doing that—it’s very boring, so I don’t bother you with it unless there’s actually something interesting going on—when all of a sudden there was this … it was as if there were a fire, and somebody had thrown an enormous load of coals and oil onto it.”
“I don’t get it,” Kellen said, shaking his head.
“You really weren’t paying attention at College, were you?” Cilarnen said. “Well, they didn’t really want to teach us this stuff. We might have learned to think. Okay. Think of the world—everything you know—as a pond of fish. All the fish in the pond are Powers—what the College teaches us are Illusory Creatures and Imaginary Constructs, but are actually real, just like Shalkan.”
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