Then began a pursuit that would have been comical if Kellen hadn’t been so petrified of falling. Several times he was almost within reach of the kitten. Each time it regarded Kellen’s outstretched hand in pop-eyed horror and retreated out of reach, either around the trunk or out along a limb. Several times it fell, slipping to a lower branch to glare at him in affronted indignation before bouncing off—just out of reach—to resume its piteous cries for rescue.
You stupid lint-brained furball! Can’t you see I’m trying to rescue you? Kellen thought with something more than irritation.
Finally, he’d gone as high as he could go without falling himself. The tree trunk itself swayed slowly with his weight, a slow sickening motion that would surely give away his presence here if anyone bothered to look. The kitten was just above him, on an even narrower branch.
And for one brief moment, all its featherbrained feline attention was devoted to keeping its balance. Kellen lunged, grabbed it around its middle, tore it loose from its perch, and stuffed it down into his tunic as deep as he could, wrapping one arm around himself to keep it from struggling free.
Kittens, Kellen discovered at that very moment, might be small and helpless-looking, but they had a very large number of very sharp claws. The claws weren’t big, but they made up for their lack of size in degree of sharpness. He was being lacerated by needles. He clamped his mouth shut on a yell, which would only have attracted unwanted attention.
Gritting his teeth and trying to concentrate, he turned toward the trunk, feeling with his foot for the branch below.
And slipped.
His descent from the tree was much faster and far less comfortable than his ascent. Kellen grabbed one-handed at everything he could to slow his fall, but his weight and the speed of his fall tore the branches from his fingers almost as soon as he grasped them.
At last he stopped.
Abruptly. On his back.
He struggled to breathe for a moment, and his vision greyed out, then returned as he managed to gasp in a breath.
Kellen lay on the ground, panting, taking in huge gulps of air, looking up at the tree. He was dimly aware of something struggling free of his tunic and worming its way out through the neck-hole.
I’ve broken my back. Father will have a fit.
A healing-Mage could mend a broken back of course, and it wasn’t as if Lycaelon couldn’t afford the best there was—but oh, what he’d have to say about it!
He twitched feet and hands experimentally, then moved arms and legs. They all worked, and no movements produced any stabbing pains …
Oh, good. I haven’t broken my back. Or anything else, I guess.
Groggily he sat up, shaking his head. Leaves, flower petals, and bits of twig rained down on him from his hair and from the hole he’d left through the branches as he fell.
He looked up at the little kitchen maid. She was clutching the kitten beneath her chin and beaming at him, her tears forgotten. The kitten was purring loudly and looking smug. Wretched little monster. For a brief moment Kellen could see why someone would be tempted to drown it.
Maybe I should have left it up there …
But—no. The tear streaks remaining on the child’s face reminded Kellen of why he really didn’t mean that last thought.
“Are you all right?” the girl asked anxiously.
“I think so,” Kellen said, though he really didn’t think anything of the sort. He shifted, and heard something crackle beneath him as he moved. For a moment, he was afraid it was his spine after all.
But if his spine had made a noise like that, he wouldn’t have been able to move. Kellen got to his knees, pulling the object out from beneath him.
A bird’s nest. A big one, the size of a soup plate, woven of sticks, and full of … junk?
“A jackdaw’s nest,” Kellen said aloud, identifying the item. “I must have knocked it free when I fell.”
Jackdaws were notorious thieves, attracted to anything that was colorful or shiny. Curious, he began to pick through the jackdaw’s trove.
Bits of tinsel and glass. Faded hair ribbons. Pieces of painted tin, relics of the last Festival day. Among the junk, a real treasure—a gold and emerald chain.
“That belongs to Mistress!” the little girl gasped, staring at it. “She was looking everywhere for it!”
“Here,” Kellen said, tucking it into a pocket in the girl’s smock. “Tell her you found it somewhere. Um—tell her that you saw the jackdaw carrying it off and you threw stones at the nest until it came down. That will explain this mess, and it should save you and Milady from a few whippings in the future.”
There was one more thing at the bottom of the nest: a key.
Kellen’s key.
When he held it in his hand, all his unease at the Wild Magic and the geas its spell had cast upon him came rushing back. “All magic has a price,” it had said in The Book of Sun. Kellen had thought his blood was the price of the magick, but he’d been wrong. That was only the price of the spell. Rescuing the kitten had been the price for finding the key, because if he hadn’t rescued the kitten, he’d never have found the key.
But I chose to rescue the kitten, didn’t I? Kellen wondered uneasily. Magick didn’t make me do it.
He’d thought the Wild Magic was just like the High Magick, just with fewer rules: you did the spell and you got the result. But it wasn’t. The spell had only brought him here. If he hadn’t cared about the girl and her kitten, he’d never have found the key. It was what was in him, what he was, that made the magick work the way it did—as if, when he looked into the Books of the Wild Magic, somehow the Wild Magic was also looking into him, and judging him.
I don’t like this, Kellen thought apprehensively. What if I weren’t me? How would the magick work then?
He got to his feet, putting the key into his pocket.
“I’ve got to go now,” he said, feeling uncomfortable. “Could you show me where the garden door is?”
He hated to involve the girl in any more trouble, but the way he was feeling right now, another climb over the wall was the last thing he could manage.
“It’s right over here. No one will see you. And … thank you, goodsir.”
“Thank you, gentle miss. I learned a lot here today,” Kellen said honestly. More than I wanted to learn, if the truth be told.
She led him across the garden—Kellen limping along behind her—and when the door had closed behind him, he wasn’t really surprised to see he was in an alley he recognized, only a few turnings from home.
IT was full dark—first Night Bells had rung—by the time Kellen reached his own garden door once more, for he had been moving rather slowly as he’d left that garden gate. He was lucky not to have any broken bones or bad sprains from his fall, but by tomorrow morning he’d have a rainbow of bruises, and he felt stiff all over. He was thinking longingly of sneaking down to the laundry for a long soak in one of the spell-heated washtubs as he crossed the garden—there’d be nobody there at this time of night, and the water in the washing vats was always hot—and he wished he could soak out the memory of the Wild Magic as easily as he could soak out the stiffness of his bruises.
Why did it work the way it did? How could it work the way it did? If it worked like this for a simple Finding Spell, what would happen if he dared to cast one of the greater spells described in the Books? What sort of price might the Wild Magic ask then?
Kellen was so engrossed in his own thoughts on his way to his room to pick up fresh clothes for after his bath that he failed to see his father on the stairs leading to his suite. And unfortunately, Lycaelon saw him. Apparently Lycaelon had gotten home early for once—and had been looking for him.
“Kellen!”
Kellen froze where he was, stunned. It had never occurred to him that he’d run into his father now—Lycaelon was rarely home before midnight, and sometimes not before dawn, if he was participating in a Greater Working, not just a Council session. Kellen wished suddenly that he was a Mage out of the wonde
rtales—one who could stop time, turn himself invisible, or simply teleport himself away with no more than a thought. But Mages like that only existed in stories, not real life.
Lycaelon reached the top of the stairs, a ball of blue Magelight hovering behind his left shoulder. As its cerulean radiance reached Kellen, the boy saw his father’s expression change from one of irritation to actual anger.
“I see. What have you to say for yourself?” Lycaelon said.
He always starts arguments in the middle and expects me to play catch-up! Kellen thought, becoming angry in turn. He sees what, exactly? He felt his mouth settle into a sullen line, and said nothing. What was there to say, when he didn’t even know what he was being accused of. Except it’s always the same thing, isn’t it—not being him, not being the kind of son that would be happy to be a mindless little copy of him? A model of exemplary behavior to be held up to every other Mage who has a son?
“Undermage Anigrel told me you’d shirked your lessons today to go off and wander around the City again like an out-of-work laborer—and from the look of you, you’ve spent that day rolling around under hedges. Mend your ways, or you will be dead weight, Kellen, dead weight—and the City has no place for dead weight!” Lycaelon thundered.
Thundered? Maybe he thought he sounded impressive, but to Kellen’s ears, Lycaelon’s voice was pompous, not awe-inspiring. He sounded more like the outraged patriarch in a bad play, the one that the lovers were going to outwit, no matter what he did.
“It isn’t—” Kellen tried to interrupt. I didn’t SHIRK them! He sent me away! But I don’t suppose he bothered to tell you that part, did he? Oh, no, whatever happens, it’s always MY fault, isn’t it? Light blast it, I can say the truth, that I was rescuing a little girl’s kitten, without giving away what happened! He’s always telling me to be more responsible, and isn’t that the sort of thing he means?
It wasn’t though, and Kellen knew it. Now, if he’d rescued the kitten of a wealthy, noble, or Mageborn child, oh, that would be entirely different …
Lycaelon raised a hand. “No! I have coddled you long enough. I spend my days in long and thankless labor to keep the City running smoothly, and you spend yours attempting to destroy everything I’m trying to build for your future! You cannot just step into a position such as mine by simple right of birth—it takes a lifetime of preparation and study—preparation which you do not seem willing to make! A person in our position in society has duties as well as privileges—he must behave suitably as an example to those below him, for the good of the City, and this is a responsibility you have so far ignored. How are you ever going to take your proper place in society if you keep shirking your obligations this way?”
Duties—obligations—suitable behavior—meaning suitably arrogant, suitably deceptive, suitably oh-so-superior to any poor fool who doesn’t happen to be Mageborn! Kellen thought mutinously. And somehow he just couldn’t hold his feelings in any longer.
“You’re always bleating at me as if I want people bowing and scraping to me all day and looking for new ways to humiliate themselves! Well, maybe I don’t! Maybe I don’t want a place in your precious society, if to get it I have to stick my nose in the air, act like a prig, and turn into a slavish copy of you!” Kellen burst out. He turned away and stormed into his room, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Five
The Courts of Nightmare
THE WORLD WITHOUT Sun was a wonderful place, just as vast and far more beautiful than the Bright World. For centuries Queen Savilla had ruled over its lightless halls and shadow caverns, its vast subterranean seas and darkling plains.
But like all rulers, she loved her palace best, for here all the good things in her world were distilled to their ultimate perfection. Here, in the Heart of Darkness, she tended the strands of her web of knowledge and power, patiently awaiting the day when the Tree of Night would bear that fruit whose harvest would prove so bitter to the Brightworlders.
Once—twice—the Endarkened had not been so patient, and He Who Is, their master, had chosen to teach them patience, allowing them to be defeated in their battles for mastery in the World Above. In the last battle—called in the Bright World the Great War—their defeat had been so profound and all-encompassing that they had been swept from their every stronghold in the World Above, forced back into their most secret strongholds, there to lie hidden, recovering their strength—and their numbers—for centuries.
But they had not been defeated. No. Let the haughty Elves, the foolish Centaurs, the arrogant humans think that. Let them revel in their false victory and turn in their false peacetime upon each other, dissolving their ancient Alliance and retreating each to his own place. That suited Savilla’s plans very well. From the very moment of the Endarkened’s last retreat, while the wings of dragons still blackened the sky and the music of the victory horns still sounded among the armies in the World Above, Savilla had begun to plan for the day that now, at last, seemed so near. Centuries had passed before she had first dared to send forth her agents into the Bright World once more, but she had waited patiently, and now her plans began their final, ever-accelerating plunge to fruition at last.
Did not the humans isolate themselves in their Golden City, certain that they were the masters of the world and that all lesser races must bow before them?
Did not the Elves retreat to their Forest of Flowers, too content with their own ways to look outside themselves and see how the world had changed?
Had not the dragons vanished altogether, seen never by humans, seldom by others, and only at a distance?
Were not the other races so fragmented and harassed by the humans of the Golden City that it was far more likely that they would abandon the City to any enemy that should appear than to ever ally themselves with it?
So it was.
And ancient allies became present enemies—with the help of the Endarkened and their agents—insulated, isolated, each in his own petty world, each nursing exasperations and minor grievances to the exclusion of intelligence and common sense, each combating problems he was certain were his and his alone and were the most important and terrible difficulties in the universe.
Each with misfortunes that could be solved by the other, did he only know it. And that was the beauty, the artistry of her plan—that salvation should be within the grasp of each, and that they would turn a blind eye to it, choked by their own baseness and pride, until they died of it.
Savilla smiled, exposing long gleaming white fangs, as she reclined on her royal couch, prodding the quivering mass at her feet with one taloned foot, still preoccupied with her thoughts of the Endarkened victory to come.
It was wonderful to contemplate the suffering of her enemies, and still more delightful to know that none of them even suspected that the Endarkened were the architects of their quiet misery and diminution, moving against them even now. Nor would they suspect it, until it was far too late. This was the way to win a war. Not on the battlefield, with banners, bright swords, and brave words, but by weakening a foe until he destroyed himself. That was where the former ruler of the Endarkened, her predecessor, King Virulan, had made his fundamental errors; he had counted on brute force to ensure his conquest.
That was why he was the former ruler.
Perhaps she would even set her ancient enemies to warring with one another. It would not matter who won that war … the victor would be weak, exhausted by his battles, easy prey for her Endarkened legions and their subject-allies. Whoever triumphed would fall to her, and after the great city-states had gone down into defeat and shadows, then would fall their shattered exiles and former enemies. She would pick them off, one by one.
And then the world—both worlds—the World Without Sun and the Bright World—would belong to the Endarkened and to He Who Is.
Savilla regarded her surroundings with complacent approval before turning her attention to the treat before her. Work was done for now, and it was time for pleasure. To the Endarkened—those whom the Br
ightworlders in their bigoted ignorance called Demons—torture was the highest art, one requiring the most luxurious setting. Where a mortal or even an Elven ruler would have ornamented his throne room, libraries, or law courts with fine paintings and sculptures, the Endarkened lavished all such skills and embellishments on their torture chambers. The devices that could cause hideous pain and damage were crafted of precious metals, rare woods, and ivories, inlaid with a jeweler’s skill, and the walls of such chambers were lined with comfortable couches and divans, so that favored friends and confederates could come to spend a pleasant afternoon listening to screams of pain and whimpers for mercy and release as masters plied their most refined arts upon their victims.
Every Endarkened noble had a private torture chamber, but Queen Savilla’s was the most beautiful of all, its painted and jeweled walls covered with detailed and elaborate depictions of agony, its vaulted dome crafted of black crystal mirror, and its lovely mosaic floor an intricate inlay of gold and polished skull-ivory, so that Savilla could walk upon the bones of vanished victims and cherish the memory of their deaths.
She reclined upon her satin couch—black, to enhance the deep warm scarlet of her skin—and stroked the arm lovingly. It was inlaid with a pure spiral of unicorn horn, harmless to her now with the death of its owner. How well she remembered the wonderful months she had spent torturing the magnificent creature slowly to death, for the Endarkened did not rush their pleasures, and even the death of a magicless mortal could take a very long time. The Endarkened were master magicians, and all magic must be paid for. They gained their power through the pain and suffering of others, and there were so very many sorts of pain that could be inflicted, even before the first welt had been raised upon the skin.
Savilla looked around herself, regarding her courtiers complacently. Only a favored few had been invited to witness this very special day—those who stood high in her esteem … or those who needed a very special lesson in what it meant to lose her favor.
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