The Outstretched Shadow

by Mercedes Lackey

  And whatever the personal price might be, there was a good chance it wouldn’t be the same thing twice. He’d actually read that part before, but he’d been, well, careless. He’d thought that a Finding Spell was small enough to be exempt from that personal cost, but he’d obviously been wrong about that.

  That led to all kinds of questions, and Kellen had no one he could possibly ask. Was the Wild Magic alive? Did it “want” things—and if so, why did it “want” things—and even more importantly, what did it want them for? How could getting a servant-girl’s kitten out of a tree be a part of anything, well, bigger? The Ars Perfidorum in his father’s library talked about how dangerous and terrible the Wild Magic was, and Kellen hadn’t really liked having his will taken away like that, but once he’d gone over the garden wall, he hadn’t felt the compulsion any longer. He’d just acted naturally, and in the end he’d gotten what he’d asked for, and been able to help someone else, too, almost by accident.

  Except that this was magick, and in magick there were no accidents. So the Wild Magic had meant him to help the girl, while helping himself at the same time.

  Kellen shrugged, staring at the shelves of books that hadn’t answered any of his questions, and shook his head. He didn’t understand it, but nobody had gotten hurt, and so he was willing to risk trying it again. The Library had told him nothing—but somewhere in the City someone had to have the answers he needed! All he had to do was find them.

  With the Wild Magic. Finding answers was a Finding Spell, after all. How much could it cost him?

  He left the Library, stopping to turn in his pass at the Chief Librarian’s office and thank the man for all his help. There’d been no classes—and no tutorial—today, so Kellen had gotten an early start at the Library. He still had most of the day before him. Plenty of time to cast a spell and see where it took him.

  He spent a short time searching for a secluded place where he wouldn’t be disturbed; easy enough to find here in the center of the City on the Light’s Day. As before, the Finding Spell took him only a little time to cast. This time he wasn’t as specific: he wasn’t asking it to find a specific object, only information—about life outside the City, or, failing that, why the information couldn’t be found. The Books said that the less specific you made your goal, the lower the price that would be asked of you, and the more likely you would be to gain what you sought.

  This time, when the compulsion took him, Kellen didn’t fight it, simply following where the pull led him.

  He was surprised to find himself drawn down into the Artists’ Quarter, where the painters, poets, musicians, and writers of Armethalieh tended to gather. It was one of the oldest parts of the City—the streets here were narrow, with taverns, boardinghouses, printing shops, and kaffeyah-parlors all crammed in together. Music floated through the air as musicians practiced their craft or gave lessons in upper rooms, and the sharp smells of drying paint and turpentine were strong in the cool air.

  I could live here, Kellen thought hopefully. He didn’t know what he could do to earn a place for himself here—he had no particular talent for the arts—and he wasn’t sure he’d fit in, but at least these people didn’t look as if they were spending their lives practicing for their own funerals and hoping to attend the funerals of their rivals first.

  Distracted from the spell-geas by the color and gaiety, he slowed down to peer into a shop filled with colorful pottery, but the pull of the spell drew him onward, and Kellen reluctantly obeyed, promising himself to return another time.

  Urged onward, he turned a corner, then another, and found himself on a quiet back street with fewer shops and more houses. This street wasn’t as well kept up as the others he’d gone down, and large grey creatures scurried out of his way as he approached.

  Ugh. Rats.

  At last he felt the compulsion to move on lift as he reached the end of a dead-end street. He looked around. He was on a narrow street of shabby two-story brick houses that had seen better days. The City services that kept the better quarters of the City clean and orderly were less in evidence here—such services cost money beyond the house tax that paid for the City Watch and for the spells that kept house fires from spreading out of control, and those who lived in places like these rarely had the ready coin to pay for them.

  A scent of brackish water and rotting garbage assailed his nostrils, and he traced it to an old cistern in an empty corner lot beside one of the houses. Once it might have been used to catch rainwater, or even have been used as a communal well, but now it was choked with garbage and trash, and was obviously a clubhouse for the local rats.

  Kellen felt a sensation inside himself as if a key had turned in a lock, and realized exactly what he had to do. He didn’t understand how cleaning the cistern out and filling it in with clean dirt would lead him to the information he sought, but he had no doubt that this was the price the Wild Magic wanted him to pay.

  And me in my good clothes, he thought with a sigh.

  He stripped off his tunic and undertunic, folding them carefully and setting them to one side, and got to work. He couldn’t finish this task in a day, and he’d be sure to bring tools and wear more suitable clothes when he returned tomorrow. But the Wild Magic had brought him here, so he’d better start now.

  Hesitantly, Kellen approached the cistern.

  “YOU! Boy! What are you doing there!”

  Kellen had become so involved in his task—he’d started by dragging away the heavy boards that were balanced precariously at the top of the trash heap that covered the cistern, and when he’d pulled the first of them loose, several rats had bolted out of the cistern, squeaking angrily as they ran—that the shout took him entirely by surprise. He dropped the board he was holding (narrowly missing his own foot) and turned in the direction of the voice.

  A man in a yellow tunic—he had the look, but hardly the manner, of one of the Mageborn—was leaning out the side window of the house, staring at him in surprise. Kellen stared back for a long moment before realizing he really needed to come up with an explanation. A good explanation. One that didn’t involve the Wild Magic.

  “I’m, uh, cleaning out your cistern, goodsir. It’s full of garbage, you see, and, well, there are rats …”

  “I know there are rats! Their squeaking keeps me up half the night—but will the Council do anything about it? No! They say it isn’t on public property, so it isn’t their responsibility! You’re not from the Council, are you?”

  “Me? No, I’m just … me,” Kellen said. “But I really want to clean it out,” he added hastily.

  The man in the window stared at him for a long moment, as if attempting to judge just exactly how crazy Kellen was. “You ought to have work gloves,” he said after a moment. “Wait there.”

  He withdrew from the window, leaving Kellen staring after him, wondering what he ought to do. After less than a tenth-chime, the man returned with a pair of heavy leather work gloves in his hand.

  “I knew I still had these somewhere. Mind you put them back on the front step when you’re finished for the day.”

  He tossed them out the window. They landed at Kellen’s feet.

  “Yes, goodsir,” Kellen said meekly. “Ah, goodsir? I’m going to have to come back tomorrow. And maybe for a few days. To finish.”

  “Well, see that you don’t come too early,” the man said, and closed the window firmly.

  Well, he’s an odd one, Kellen thought to himself, going to pick up the gloves. They were a little small, but he was able to force his hands into them. They made the work go a lot easier, and he was careful to leave them just where the man had said when he’d done all he could for the day.

  I wonder who he is? Kellen thought as he left.

  THE next day Kellen came back just after Second Morning Bells wearing his oldest clothes, with a pick and shovel and some burlap bags he’d taken from the gardener’s hut at the bottom of his garden. Even a garden that was home to nothing but gravel required constant tending, Kell
en had discovered, and the tools were going to come in handy.

  The gloves were where he’d left them the night before, and he put them on and set to work.

  As Kellen dug, he sorted his “finds” as best he could—rotting garbage (which went into the bags), clean garbage (broken pottery, small bits of wood or bone), which he could use when he filled in the cistern again, and large unidentifiable things, which would have to be hauled away somehow, unless he could manage to break them up into small pieces with the pick or shovel. It was hot, dirty work that kept him stooped over, and he didn’t dare step down into the cistern to work from there. Not yet, anyway. He had no idea how deep it went, and even though he was now wearing heavy work boots, he had no desire to slice his foot open on a piece of rusty metal or glass that had been steeped in rotting garbage.

  It certainly explained why the cistern hadn’t been cleaned out before now. If the Council wouldn’t pay to have it done because it lay on private land, the land’s owner would have to pay someone privately to do it, and Kellen could hardly begin to imagine how much someone would charge to do this work. A lot, probably. More than someone down here had, almost certainly.

  At least most of the big stuff seemed to be near the top, where he could hook it with the pick and drag it up.

  “You! Boy!”

  Kellen heaved his latest “find”—a tangled mass of bailing wire—to the edge of the cistern, and looked toward the house. The man who had given him the gloves the day before was looking out the window at him again. This time the tunic was red, its sleeves spotted with old ink stains.

  “Yes, goodsir?” Kellen said politely. He assumed the man was a “goodsir,” and not a “gentlesir,” for all his aristocratic looks. It was not unknown for Mageblood to appear elsewhere in the City—that was where lowborn Mages came from, according to Mage Hendassar. Perhaps this man’s sire or grandsire had been a Mage on the wrong side of the blanket. It did happen, though hardly as often as the wondertales claimed.

  “I suppose you’re going to dig all day?” the man said.

  “Yes, goodsir, I think I am,” Kellen said, glancing down at the cistern. With the largest of the objects removed, he could now see that the cistern—a stone circle about six feet across—was full of an inky black sludge starting about three feet below its lip. Kellen had no idea how far down it went.

  “And I suppose you didn’t bring any lunch with you?” the man asked waspishly.

  “No, goodsir,” Kellen admitted sheepishly. He’d forgotten about that until just now.

  “Well, come around to the back of the house, then.” The man withdrew and the window was shut once more.

  Kellen gazed at the closed window for a moment, then meekly did as the man said, picking up his discarded tunic—one of his most disreputable—on the way. The man was waiting at the door with a tin bucket and a towel.

  “Rinse yourself off and come in. You’ve done a good day’s work so far; I won’t have you fainting dead away from hunger before you finish.”

  Kellen took the bucket and stepped back to pour its contents over his head and shoulders. The icy shock made him gasp, and he shook his head, toweling his head and chest quickly dry before slipping into his tunic. He followed the man inside, setting the bucket and the damp towel down just inside the door.

  “Come—come!” his host urged, more cordially now, and Kellen passed through the kitchen into the room beyond.

  It was a parlor, dominated by a large table covered with a white cloth upon which had been set a sizable plain luncheon. His host was seated at the head of the table, and gestured for Kellen to sit beside him.

  “My boots—” Kellen began, stopping at the edge of the rug.

  “It’s only a little mud,” his host said graciously, “and my girl hasn’t enough to do just looking after me. My name is Perulan. And yours?”

  “Kellen,” Kellen said, sitting as he’d been bid. Perulan poured him a large beaker of cider, and Kellen drained it thirstily, then, at Perulan’s urging, poured himself another, of water this time. He’d gotten very thirsty digging outdoors all morning.

  The servant-girl Perulan had mentioned a moment before entered, carrying a large china tureen of soup, and for a while there was silence while Kellen satisfied the hunger honed by several bells of hard labor. There was hot thick vegetable soup, hefty slices of cold mutton, large chunks of golden cheese, and thick slices of warm bread with fresh butter. Perulan watched him eat, a faint approving smile on his face, but restricted himself to no more than his soup and a little cider.

  “So, Master Kellen,” he said when Kellen had slowed down a little, “what do you do when you aren’t cleaning out cisterns for … former … writers?”

  “You’re that Perulan?” Kellen asked without thinking. He suddenly wished he’d curbed his tongue, for the older man winced, as if Kellen had spoken of something very painful. “I mean, I’m a Student, Gentlesir Perulan,” he said hastily, trying to remember if it should be “gentlesir,” “noblesir,” or “lord.” “I study.”

  “Just ‘Perulan’ if you please, Master Kellen. My family has disowned me long since, and I have no patience with empty honorifics, nor do they have any place between friends. As for study … it can be a broadening thing, if a bit dangerous,” Perulan said. “You must be careful in your studies, Master Kellen. You might learn things you didn’t wish to discover.”

  “I know,” Kellen said, sighing. “Look, I was wondering if you could tell me … do you know how deep that cistern is?”

  Perulan had obviously been expecting him to ask something else: his face first showed surprise, then relief. “I believe it goes down about ten feet. Certainly not much deeper.”

  “And … do you know if it feeds into a spring? Or is it solid at the bottom?”

  Perulan smiled. “Quite solid, young Kellen. When I was a young man, and first bought this house, that cistern was still empty. I recall making plans to turn it into a fish pond, or something of the like, but those plans, like so many others I made as a young man, came to naught. But I think it best if you fill it in now, or people will simply come and throw more garbage into it.”

  “That’s what I plan to do,” Kellen said, relieved to have Perulan fall in so easily with his own plans. “It needs doing.”

  AFTER lunch, he worked for a few bells more, marking time by the distant echo of the carillons that sounded faintly over the roofs of the City, for the nearest bell tower was several streets away, and had not paid its bell tax in some time. He would have continued working far longer, but Perulan called him back into the house and insisted on giving him tea before sending him home for the day. It occurred to Kellen that the old man must be lonely, and he wondered if Perulan might be the source of information the Wild Magic had sent him to.

  He wondered about that all the next day as well, while shoveling smelly black muck out of the cistern. From somewhere, Perulan had provided a bucket and wheelbarrow for his use: Kellen would fill the bucket, use it to fill the barrow, wheel the barrow to the back of the lot, and dump the contents into an ever-growing, stinking pile. Maybe the sun would dry the sludge out into something he could use. Maybe he could dig it into the ground and bury it when he dug up fresh earth to fill in the cistern.

  As he worked, he wondered if it would be just too cold-blooded to ask Perulan what he wanted to know about the City and the lands beyond. He liked Perulan, and he didn’t want to make trouble for him, and Kellen had already come to realize that there were some questions meant never to be asked—or answered.

  But even without asking outright, Kellen found out some things that, just as Perulan had warned, he would have been happier not knowing.

  “SO you’re from a Mage family, young Kellen?” Perulan asked. “I would not have thought it. You haven’t the look, as you are no doubt long tired of hearing.”

  Kellen choked on his lunchtime cider, managing (with an effort) to swallow decorously. “But how did you know?” he asked when he was able.

 
; “Come come, young sir. A writer must be observant, and I was born into a Mage-family myself, as you are certainly aware. While you have a talent for hard labor, you’re no laborer, and a member of a Trade family would be hard at his apprenticeship at your age. What does that leave?”

  “Mages,” Kellen said bitterly.

  Perulan raised his eyebrows and smiled faintly.

  “Ah, speak softly of our beloved rulers—or else they’ll find what you love best and cherish most, and turn it to ash before your very eyes.”

  Kellen stared at him.

  “I’m Perulan the Writer, as you know—only Perulan the Writer’s last and greatest work was denied a publication license, and so it was destroyed by the High Council before his very eyes. For the good of the City, of course. It is always for the good of the City.” The smile faded, and Perulan stared bleakly off into space, contemplating something Kellen couldn’t see.

  “Do you think it really is?” Kellen asked before he could stop himself. “How can they know? Aren’t they just trying to—well—make all of us quiet and fat and not think, just so we’ll want to keep things as they are, like them? So we won’t want to even think about leaving the City? But the City isn’t the only place in the world!”

  “No,” Perulan agreed. “There are other places—across the sea, across the forest—and they do things very differently there. To be different is not to be wrong, or even inferior. Only … different.”

  “Can you—” Kellen said, and stopped himself.

  “Can I tell you about them?” Perulan asked. “Yes, and perhaps I will, if you are certain that is what you wish. But not now. Think about whether you really want to know, Kellen-of-a-Mage family, and ask me again. Perhaps you will come to dinner, and we will talk, once you have finished with my cistern.”

  IT was the backbreaking work of several more days, but at last Kellen had dug down to bare stone, and then filled in the cistern again. From somewhere a load of old brick appeared to greet him one morning, and on another day, an iron-bound cistern cover cut to size—Perulan’s doing, Kellen supposed. Kellen tumbled the bricks into the hole, layering them in with fresh-dug clean dirt from the lot and stamping on each layer to pack it tight as he put it in. He buried the muck and trash he’d dug out of the cistern in the hole he’d dug to get the fill dirt, and stacked the bigger pieces of trash to be hauled away.