It was quite literally dawn. This, Kellen had not expected, though he had been awake and working on the preparations for their own departure the moment there was any light in the sky. Idalia had elected to stay abed a little longer than that, but the first of the visitors arrived with a great deal of noise, despite Kellen’s attempts to hush them. And there was no keeping the surprise secret at that point.
“I—I—what?” Idalia stammered, staggering out the door of the cabin, still in her sleeping-shift, with her hair tumbled over one sleep-fogged eye, to stare befuddled at the first of the arriving visitors.
“Well, don’t stand there gawping, you witless woman! It’s a good-bye party—and we’ve brought good eating, too,” Cormo growled, glaring at her with mock ferocity.
The Centaur was nearly unrecognizable, though for an entirely different reason than on his last visit to the clearing. His hair and beard and tail were neatly combed and trimmed. He wore a new smooth-leather vest, bright with embroidery. His coat had been brushed until it gleamed, and his hooves were oiled, trimmed, and polished. And most amazing of all, he was pulling a two-wheeled cart—he could easily have reduced it to kindling with a few well-placed kicks, had he wished—piled high with provisions for the feast. Haneida sat placidly on the seat, a bright shawl wrapped around her.
“You heard what he said. It’s a going-away party,” Kellen said, coming up behind Idalia and grinning like a fiend.
He was very well pleased with himself over this; planning the party had given his new friends something to look forward to in all of the sadness of the many departures, a bright spot in a very gloomy situation. He was equally pleased with being able to outwit his sister well enough to keep it all secret.
She turned on him, advancing on him and making him back away into the cabin. “You … brat! You knew this was going to happen!” Idalia sputtered. She was crimson—he thought not with rage, but certainly she was as embarrassed as he’d ever seen her. And suddenly there was a wicked look in her eye …
“I knew they wanted to have a party to see you off,” Kellen said, turning to flee.
But there was nowhere to flee to.
“You told them when we were leaving!” she growled, and grabbed for his collar.
He tried to dodge out of reach, but it was a small cabin. “I might have—help!—told someone—yow!—that we were leaving tomorrow! But I didn’t think they’d start so early! Honest, Idalia! Help!”
But it was no good. She’d backed him into the bedroom, tripped him onto the bed, and pummeled him into submission with the pillow.
“Monster! Beast!” she shouted, punctuating each epithet with a whack from a pillow. “Fiend! Serpent! Brother! Letting me walk out into the middle of that in my shift with my hair in rats! Hanging’s too good for you. Much too good for you,” she added meaningfully, tossing the pillow aside and crooking her fingers into claws.
And then she tickled him until he was helpless and breathless with laughter.
“It is, it really is,” Kellen agreed fervently. “Only just don’t tickle me anymore!”
“Well, get up,” Idalia said unfairly, giving him one last swat with the pillow and bouncing off the bed. She scooped up his buckskins (since he’d been stripped to his smallclothes in order to get water wrestled up from the stream for baths) and flung them at him. “Out!”
Kellen dressed in the kitchen, watching the hubbub through the half-opened door. In the few short minutes he’d been gone, the clearing already looked like it belonged to someone else—people were taking down the cookpit and raking the area smooth, taking the logs that were to have gone to become the floor of the addition to Idalia’s cabin and making trestle tables of them instead. He could hear the sound of hammers and saws, and smell the scent of fresh sawdust on the air.
Everything in the cabin but what they were taking with them, from the bed to the walls to the planks of the floor, would be going as well once they left, and already the cabin was far barer than it had been when Kellen came. But Idalia had traded to good purpose in the last fortnight, trading large bulky items for small and valuable ones, until after a number of clever trades and a little payment in magic, she had been able to buy the neat black mare Coalwind, the pride of Badelz’s stables, who was tethered contentedly beside Prettyfoot in a nearby clearing. The fauns adored her and spoiled her outrageously, bringing her bunches of clover and dryad-apples. The mare, for all her breeding and promised turn of speed, seemed to have good manners and a quiet disposition—a good thing, considering the amount of noise Idalia’s farewell party was going to make, if these early preparations were any indication.
Kellen was just lacing up his boots when Idalia came out of the bedroom. She glanced out the door, and smiled weakly. “It looks like it’s going to be a very large party.”
Kellen nodded. “But most of the folk won’t be here until afternoon, Master Badelz and Master Eliron said,” he added helpfully.
For once, Idalia looked to be at a total loss for words. “Well. I just didn’t expect … Kellen, these people are losing their homes, their farms, everything they’ve grown up with and worked for because of me … and they’re throwing me a party?”
“And because of me, too, don’t forget,” Kellen pointed out reasonably. “Lycaelon left you alone for years. He didn’t even let a summer pass before he started hunting me again. But still … a party’s a party. It’s done them a lot of good to have something happy to plan. And it’s probably the last good time these folks are going to see for a while. We ought to let them enjoy it—when Master Badelz suggested it, I figured it was as much for them as for us. Probably more.”
“Yes,” Idalia said with a sigh, giving in to the inevitable. “I guess it is. Anyway, I want you to take these out to Coalwind and Prettyfoot and braid them into their manes. I know a mule doesn’t have much mane, but do what you can. They’re just a couple of simple charms that should keep them from being worried by anything they see or hear. I don’t want them getting spooked and trying to run off.”
She handed him two small clear round lumps of yellow amber, each strung on a short length of red ribbon. Kellen could feel warmth and serenity radiate from them—a simple spell of comfort and protection.
“Got one for me?” he asked with a smile.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re on your own, brother mine. Try the mead.”
KELLEN was relieved to find Coalwind and Prettyfoot right where he’d left them. He was glad to see they hadn’t been upset enough to try to run off when all the noise started. Then again—since half of the people making the noise were Centaurs, maybe it had sounded like a normal gathering of their own kind to the horse and mule.
He’d paused on his way out to pick up a small bucket of grain—one of the things Idalia had traded for was grain for the animals, since they couldn’t afford to let them wander far enough now to keep themselves in natural forage, and once they were on the road they certainly wouldn’t be able to go slowly enough to let them feed themselves. Since he was carrying the bucket, both animals looked up alertly when he arrived. Their ears pricked forward when they spotted the grain bucket, and Coalwind whickered flirtatiously.
He set the bucket down and retrieved their halters from a nearby branch, then haltered both animals before removing their hobbles, remembering to hold firmly to their lead-ropes as he did. Kellen wasn’t an expert horsemaster, he wasn’t even close, but fortunately he’d spent a little time around his father’s stables when he’d been younger—before that activity had been added to Lycaelon’s “forbidden list”—and Idalia had refreshed his memory on the important points. Always put the halter on before taking off the hobbles. Always feed the two animals far apart (Coalwind was a hog and a thief, and would steal Prettyfoot’s grain if she could). Don’t walk up behind them. Never expect them to be able to see him, even if he thought he was in plain sight; make quiet noise from a distance. Stay out from under their feet unless absolutely necessary. And get used to slobber, because h
orses don’t have table manners.
Though the rules applied more to horses than to mules (and none of them applied to unicorns!), it didn’t do any harm to treat the two animals equally. Coalwind was trying to pull toward the bucket, but he led her firmly over to a tree and tied her there with close attention to the knots, then led Prettyfoot to another tree several yards away. Only then did he get the grain and pour it out on the ground where the animals could get at it.
While they were eating, Kellen braided the charms into their manes. Coalwind was easy; the only difficulty was getting her to hold still while he did it, for she seemed to have the idea firmly fixed in her head that if she could just investigate every bit of his clothing, she’d find a treat (which was often the case on other occasions). But he got the charm securely braided into her mane at last. And the warm glint of the amber against her dark coat was a very pretty sight.
But Prettyfoot, as Idalia had predicted, was much harder to attach the charm to. The mule’s mane was more like Shalkan’s—a short stiff brush running the length of her neck—and there was no possible way he could braid anything into it.
At last he settled for tying it onto the halter to dangle down her forehead. He’d thought about tying it into her tail, but she’d probably eat it, and even if amber wasn’t going to do the insides of a mule any harm, Idalia would be annoyed to lose a nice big piece of amber as a mule-treat. He thought that would hold, at least for tonight.
And tomorrow they’d be gone.
A peculiar sadness filled Kellen at the thought. Not homesickness precisely, because he hadn’t really been here long enough for this place to become home. But it might have become home, given a little more time, and he felt an unsettled grief at the lost opportunity.
Kellen pushed the thought aside. There were others whose suffering and loss were far greater—both now, and in the moonturns to come.
Had the High Council lost its tiny collective mind? He knew the regular citizens of Armethalieh didn’t question the Mages’ decisions—hell, they didn’t even know about half of them—but surely they’d notice that the City had suddenly decided to claim hundreds—no, thousands—of miles of new territory for no particular good reason? The Mages would have to tell them. It wasn’t something that could be done out-of-sight, like so many of the Mages’ dealings. The City might claim there would be an increase in wealth for the City, but there would also be an increase in cost to the City—both magickal cost, which maybe the common folk wouldn’t notice, but also the cost in people to send to hold those new lands, which was why the people would have to know: those Militia troops he’d seen in Idalia’s vision were going to have to come from somewhere, after all.
And troops had to be paid and provisioned—fed and clothed and given horses and armor and weapons—and the money for all of that had to come from somewhere. New taxes, which maybe the common folk wouldn’t notice, but also the cost in people—drawn from the Home Farms, of course—sent to hold the new territory; those Militia troops he’d seen spoken of in Idalia’s vision.
And if the villages fought back …? More troops would surely be sent.
Then the cost goes up. And they’ll notice that, that’s for sure, Kellen thought bleakly. Everywhere he’d ever gone in the City—outside of the Mage Quarter, of course—taxes had always been a major topic of discussion. But what would the people do about it?
He had no idea.
But—probably nothing. So long as nothing changes for each of them personally, they probably won’t care. The Council has kept other things secret, why not this?
It wouldn’t be that hard, so long as the Mages were able to keep the fact that there was actual fighting going on a secret. If they actually sent non-Mages outside the walls—Kellen supposed it was possible; he wouldn’t put anything past the Council at this point—all they had to do was just remove those inconvenient memories from the soldiers once the men returned, and, oh, tell them they’d been to the Out Islands, or something. Even if people from Armethalieh actually died, it could be covered up. Tell grieving relatives that their sons died of a snakebite, or sudden fever, or an accidental fall. All those things could happen in the City. Just make sure that relatives of the dead didn’t get together and discover how many “accidents” there were. The bodies would be given back to the Light, and the Mages would be able to keep their dirty little secrets.
With careful management, no one would ever find out what was really happening, at least, not in Armethalieh.
Not that anyone ever did know what was really happening.
“Not in Armethalieh,” Kellen said aloud, watching the mule’s ears swivel around to catch the words.
When the animals had finished their breakfast, Kellen took them down to the stream for a drink.
HE was standing beside them, not thinking about anything in particular, when there was a splash at his feet. He looked down.
There was a selkie in the water. Kellen had seen them only rarely; the sleek, dark-furred, big-eyed creatures were shy of humans, preferring deep woods and twilight, although once they got over their shyness, they were as playful as otters and twice as amusing, because of their keen senses of humor. Many of them lived in or near the ocean, where they were usually mistaken for seals by those humans who managed to glimpse them. This one blinked up at him, its large silver eyes a startling paleness in its dark-furred face.
“Kellen isss leaving?” the selkie asked, its long whiskers bristling as it spoke. “Idalia isss leaving?”
“Yes,” Kellen said. He was surprised to see it at all. He’d thought all the river-folk, selkies and undines and water-sprites, were already safely gone, warned by Shalkan and the others who carried his message. “And you should leave, too. The City is coming. The Mages don’t like your kind. They’re sending a Scouring Hunt.” And even if stone mastiffs couldn’t swim very well—not at all, in fact—that hardly mattered, since they didn’t need to breathe. Land or water, no place was safe.
“I go,” the selkie agreed, speaking slowly and carefully. Its short sharp-toothed muzzle wasn’t well shaped for forming human speech—the selkies’ own language consisted of guttural barks and high-pitched chittering—but selkies loved all things new and strange, and found the effort of speaking to humans in their own language enormously entertaining. “Take fissshhh, too. Alll fisshhh. We take.” Its round silver eyes crinkled in merriment, inviting Kellen to share the joke.
Kellen blinked, slowly understanding what the selkie was telling him. All the fish? From all the rivers? Gone?
He began to laugh. “You do that, friend. Take the fish. All the fish. And good luck to you.”
The selkie reached up out of the water, extending its paw to Kellen, fingers spread wide. Kellen could see the thick webbing between the digits, the long curved gleaming nails that could shear through the toughest scales. He clasped the hand gently, and felt an answering pressure in return.
“Good-bye,” Kellen said. “Fare you well.”
The selkie released his hand, and slipped beneath the surface of the water, invisible once more.
Shaking his head in amusement, Kellen led Coalwind and Prettyfoot back into the woods to fresh grazing. In a few hours he’d come back and lead them in closer to the cabin, tying them up securely for the night so they couldn’t wander. He had no desire to spend several hours come tomorrow’s dawn trying to find them!
“No fear of that,” Shalkan said, stepping daintily out of the woods, hidden until that moment, though how something the size of a pony and whiter than new velum could hide that easily, Kellen could never figure out. “I’ll keep an eye on them.”
“Will you?” Kellen regarded the unicorn with relief. “Thanks. That’ll be a great help.”
Shalkan dipped his horn, acknowledging the thanks. “I was waiting for you to ask.”
Kellen shrugged. “I didn’t want you to miss the party if you were in the mood for it. It just seems like I’m asking you for so much already.”
“You mean, b
eing your noble conveyance to the Elven lands?” The unicorn snorted. “I’d be going there anyway. If it’s a choice between that and facing another dozen packs, I’d say it’s no choice at all, my friend. And you’ll find the Elves … interesting. Humans do.”
Kellen would have dearly loved to ask Shalkan more about the Elves, but this was no time to get into one of the unicorn’s elliptical conversations. Idalia already blamed him for springing the party on her. If he disappeared for most of the day, she’d probably arrange to have him drowned in a keg of cider. So he abandoned the interesting topic in favor of telling Shalkan what the selkie had told him.
“They’d take the fish from the lakes as well, if they could, as the dryads would take the fruit from their trees,” Shalkan said. “The City will find no welcome in the Western Hills when it comes, nor do I think the farmers who remain will have an easy life. They will not thank the City for that.”
“No,” Kellen agreed glumly. He hobbled the mare and the mule once again, and turned them out to graze, retrieving the bucket from where he’d left it.
“Well, see you later. I’ll save you some honey-cakes.”
“See that you do,” Shalkan said with mock severity, switching his tufted tail. “And if anyone’s brought any of those maple-syrup candies, and I find out you didn’t save me at least two …”
“At least!” Kellen promised, and hurried back toward the cabin.
Shalkan, of course, stayed out of sight with the mule and the horse—he wasn’t at all comfortable, Kellen had noticed, with so many people about, most of them (probably) not virginal—and Kellen was just a little bit curious about how Shalkan and Idalia were going to handle traveling in close proximity together, though both of them agreed it was necessary. Finally he decided there was no sense worrying about it. He’d be finding out. And soon, too.
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