The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  If Idalia noticed his unusual silence, she did not break it with any comments of her own. The day was bright and clear—good weather for the ripening crops of the Merryvale farmers.

  He wished he could feel as cheerful as the weather warranted. He couldn’t help thinking about Demons. Idalia still hadn’t talked to him about them, and now he was hesitant to bring up the subject again. If she was falling prey to the influence of Demons, that might explain why she didn’t want to live in the village, even for the winter. As long as she stayed away, she could keep her associations with Demons secret, but if she moved there and was around them, especially the old Healer, she would certainly be found out.

  Maybe the reason the old faun wouldn’t let her near was that he knew she wasn’t to be trusted. Idalia might not know what had happened to the aged creature, but so far as Kellen was concerned, it was as plain as a road-post. Demons—or if not Demons, certainly Demonic creatures—had gotten hold of him and his terrible injuries were the result.

  If the faun suspected Idalia of being Demon-tainted, he wouldn’t let her get near him. But he might try and warn Kellen.

  Maybe his appearance at the pond had been an attempt to deliver that warning.

  Maybe Kellen’s dreams of Demon Hounds were another warning.

  IDALIA made much of her payment for the supplies that would see the two of them through the winter in the form of spells to keep damaging weather away from the fields for these last crucial sennights. So long as there was not too much tampering, or too often, or over too large an area, a little weather magic did no harm to the greater balance of field and forest. It was when someone got greedy, wanting everything their own way with no thought to the harm that did to others, that balance was endangered. The spells were very specific; preventing rain (or worse, hail) from falling on those specific fields but permitting it to fall anywhere else in the area it cared to. This might mean that the forests surrounding Merryvale itself got all the rain that would have fallen on the village plus what would have fallen on the fields, but the point was it was all ending up in the same general area and percolating down into the waters underground. The spell was set to dissipate as soon as the harvest was gathered in, thus further limiting its effects.

  Though she’d been aware of Kellen’s unsettled mood from the moment he’d awakened that morning, Idalia respected his attempt to keep it to himself. From the vantage point of her ten years’ seniority, she well remembered the wild emotional storms of adolescence, and coming into the power of a Wildmage while at the same time being cast out of the only home you’d ever known hardly made coping with growing up any easier. Poor Kellen! He had a triple burden to labor under! That he managed to be cooperative and cheerful most of the time said a great deal for the essential goodness of his nature.

  Curse Lycaelon for a brute and a fool! She had loved her brother dearly as a child, and found the young man even more endearing as he bumbled his way toward maturity, but sometimes it was hard to believe he was Lycaelon’s son. Subtlety simply was not in his nature. Even Idalia had to admit that Kellen was as easy to read as a page of print, and easier to manipulate.

  But Lycaelon had never bothered.

  The Arch-Mage simply had not been interested in anything outside of his own desires. If he had troubled to take the little time it would have taken to get to know Kellen personally, rather than relying on the reports of servants and underlings, if he had considered spending some part of the time he squandered in his endless power-games on his son instead of on City politics, Lycaelon could have had exactly the son he’d wanted. Kellen was so starved for affection he would have done anything for his father if Lycaelon had only bothered to love the boy. Kellen would have grown up to become a model son, a credit to his family name, a promising young High Mage.

  And the Books would never have come to him.

  Or would they?

  What if they had?

  Sooner or later Kellen would have started to see that what he was told and what really went on in the City didn’t match. Especially for anyone who wasn’t Mageborn.

  But if the Books had still come to him, Kellen would certainly never have studied them.

  Or would he?

  Idalia frowned, wondering.

  Kellen was curious. He was intelligent. Sooner or later, he would still have started wondering about the lands outside the City, and when his questions went unanswered, or were answered unsatisfactorily, would he have looked elsewhere?

  If Kellen had loved his father and that love had been returned—if Lycaelon had been someone else entirely, or if he had died, and Kellen been raised by another, kinder Mage family—might not the same thing have happened, only to a Kellen devoted to his family, to his studies, to the City? Wouldn’t that have been an even worse disaster for him than what had actually happened? Only imagine a Kellen who had wanted to become a High Mage, who was trying to be the best son he could be, to please his father, or foster father … then coming upon the Books, tempted by them, called to experiment with them, to read them, terribly torn between the two paths, agonizing over his divided loyalties …

  “Even cruelty can be kindness, if we can only see it clearly.” So said The Book of Moon. If Kellen had been fated to become a Wildmage, perhaps Lycaelon was the best of all possible fathers for him to have had.

  But Idalia knew it would be many years before she would ever dare to suggest such a possibility to him.

  AT last they reached the clearing and home. Kellen slid his heavy pack from his shoulders with a grateful sigh and stretched, working the stiffness from cramped muscles. He glanced toward his neatly stacked tools. They were tucked beneath the same weatherproof covering that kept the building logs from warping.

  “I’d better get back to work,” he said curtly. “I’ve lost almost two days, and winter isn’t going to come any later because I’ve had other things to do.”

  Idalia shot him a considering glance, but she didn’t answer him directly.

  “Master Eliron was right about one thing, you know—I should be spending more time teaching you Wildmagery than I have.” She smiled and shrugged. “I hate to admit it, but that’s my fault entirely; I’ve been selfish. Granted, it has been very good for you to do the work you’ve been doing here, both because it is turning you from a soft City-boy to a strong and resourceful fellow with many new skills. And I want you to finish the addition because I want my bedroom back—but what I want is not what you need and certainly not what you deserve. I should be teaching you both the skills of the hands and of the spirit. I apologize for neglecting the latter.”

  He looked at her in surprise; never, in all of his life, had any of his teachers (or his father, for that matter) apologized for anything. He wasn’t entirely certain what to make of this.

  Idalia seemed to take his silence for assent, though. “Come on. Help me get this stuff stowed away. We’ll get some cider, and I’ll show you how to do another one of my party tricks.”

  Kellen hesitated, still staring off in the direction of the unfinished addition to the cabin. Idalia came and draped an arm around his shoulders.

  “Kellen … you don’t think I expected you to build it all by yourself, did you? I know you could. I know you could do most of it, by now, but that’s not the only thing you’re here to do. The villagers helped me put up the original cabin, and once their harvest is in, they’ll come to help us finish the work you’ve started here.” She gave his shoulders a little squeeze. “For one thing, we’ll need the help of the thatcher—I certainly can’t thatch the roof, and I rather doubt that was one of your lessons under your tutor! Meanwhile, you have other things to learn that no one else can help you with.”

  She might have told him. She might have let him know. Here he’d been worrying about it, and all along she’d had plans to get him some help. Or had she expected he would be able to build it, then discovered that he couldn’t, and only then arranged for the help? That was probably it.

  “Like what?” Kellen
asked, not caring just now that he sounded like a sulky child.

  “Come and see,” Idalia urged with a mysterious smile.

  Kellen was really irritated now. Did she enjoy being so maddening? But—he thought back to the young City-men he knew who had sweethearts, and how they tormented and teased their willing captives. Maybe it wasn’t just Idalia. Maybe all women were really like that.

  First they went into the cabin, where they emptied their packs—leaving the heavy kegs of nails outside. Idalia hung the coils of oiled flaxen thatching line on a hook from one of the rafters where they’d be out of the way until needed, then carefully unpacked the rest of their treasures.

  A new whetstone, and a set of small paring knives for cooking (Kellen had managed to break one of the others in his attempts to learn to peel root vegetables, and besides, frequent sharpening wore down the soft steel with time). Hairpins and straight pins and needles for Idalia, the sugar candy for Shalkan, several small paper packets of spices. Real tea for Kellen, who missed the taste, and a thick roll of velum, drawing charcoal, and a sponge. Cleaned carefully, the velum could be reused again and again.

  “I didn’t know you’d bought that!” Kellen exclaimed, startled out of his blue funk by the discovery of the drawing material.

  “Winter is going to be long,” Idalia warned once again, tucking everything carefully away into the cabinets and chests scattered around the room. “You need things to occupy yourself when the snow is halfway up the shutters. I do fancy beadwork and embroidery on shirts and ribbons and take it to trade in the village in the spring, but I don’t think that method of passing the winter would suit you, little brother. I find that the hours can grow very long without something to keep you busy. It gets very quiet and lonely here once the snows close us in.”

  Then why don’t you go live in the village? Kellen wondered again, biting down hard on the thought for fear she might be able to hear what echoed in his thoughts so loudly.

  But Idalia was occupied with retrieving two tankards from the mantel and the cider-jug from the cold-cellar beneath the floor.

  “Now. Come and learn,” she said, handing one to him once they were full.

  There was a tiny spring-fed pond behind the cabin that they used for their drinking and washing water. Kellen knew that Idalia also used it as a scrying pool—the bottom was littered with keystones, and for a while after he’d found out about that, he’d been a little nervous about drinking water charged with magic—but since nothing bad ever happened, and both Idalia and Shalkan drank the water too, he’d gotten over his case of nerves.

  Scrying was something he’d heard discussed before, though the City Mages never did it around Apprentices. Idalia had only done the spell a couple of times since he’d come to the Wildwood, and each time she’d invited him to watch and learn. At first, Kellen had thought it would be pretty much a waste of time—from what little Anigrel had been willing to tell him about the workings of the High Magick, watching another Mage do magick was about as interesting as watching someone else solve a Maths problem—but he’d been surprised to discover that he could see and hear everything Idalia did when she scryed. He wasn’t sure if that was because he was in some sense her apprentice, or because the Wild Magic was simply more generous in its nature than the High Magick he’d previously studied.

  But where the High Mages used scrying to keep an eye on the lands beyond the City, there didn’t seem to be a good reason for Idalia to use the spell, for all they’d looked at were places they had already been and could easily walk to. When he’d asked why she was showing him the spell, Idalia told him that scrying wasn’t the sort of thing a Wildmage tended to use very often, unless he or she wanted to keep an eye on a friend or loved one from afar, or unless he or she had the feeling that the Wild Magic itself wanted it done, though it was a skill that every Wildmage learned.

  Since at the moment, she didn’t have anyone or anything she needed to watch over, it was more something that Idalia did now and then whenever she felt it was a good idea to do it, letting the Wild Magic itself dictate what the scrying showed her. That still struck Kellen as a rather slipshod way to run a magical system. Doing something whenever you felt like it, rather than by a regular schedule of times and observances—where was the discipline, the craft, in that?

  But Wild Magic and High Magick were as un-alike as the Wildwood and the formal gardens of Armethalieh. Both had flowers in them … and there the resemblance ended. Applying the standards of the one to the other was a good way to get a headache, as far as Kellen could figure out. He wondered if one of the reasons Idalia was so good at Wild Magic—and he was so bad at it—was because he’d gotten High Mage training and she hadn’t. Maybe she had fewer preconceptions to unlearn. Maybe women were just better suited to becoming Wildmages in general, because of their generally more flighty and chaotic natures.

  Oh, better not even let Idalia catch you thinking of thinking that! You know it isn’t true, not even a little bit! But there has to be some reason she’s so much better at this stuff than I am …

  Other than the reason he didn’t even want to consider. Not even for a moment. Not even in jest. That he was Tainted. Or she was.

  Idalia reached the edge of the spring and knelt down, motioning Kellen to kneel beside her. She rolled up her sleeve and fished around in the spring among the keystones, for all the world like a housewife testing the freshness of hen’s eggs.

  “Ah. Plenty of power for a few more spells here. And I think it’s time you actually learned this one, rather than just watching me do it.” She rocked back on her heels and took a deep drink of her cider.

  Kellen stared at her in horror. Him? Learn to scry? Now? He’d never felt less like doing magic in his life!

  “You remember what’s involved?” Idalia prompted. “The ingredients?”

  “I, uh, I—” For a moment Kellen’s mind went numbingly blank, then he remembered reading the spell in The Book of Moon and from watching Idalia. “Fern leaf. Cider—or wine, if you don’t have any cider. Mead will do, if you don’t have either of those. Fruit of the earth, though. Four drops into the water, then float the leaf on the surface.”

  “Good,” Idalia said encouragingly. “And … ?”

  This was just like Undermage Anigrel’s lessons, Kellen thought resentfully, for just a moment. Recite back what you’ve memorized, but never get a chance to use it …

  But she had said he was going to use it. “ ‘You who travel between Earth and Sky, show me what you see.’ But, Idalia, how do you know what you’ll see?”

  “You don’t, really,” Idalia said. “Unless you’re doing a specific search—and remember that the more specific you get, the higher the price,” Idalia reminded him. “Oh, you can have something in mind, and then, if you’re lucky you might get that, but with the Wild Magic, you see what you need to see, not what you want to see. Even if you don’t understand what you see—and often you won’t—it’s more important to see those things than to just get caught up in serving your own desires. Lately I’ve been trying to keep an eye on the City—endless Council meetings, mostly about how everyone outside of the walls is a covert or overt enemy of the City—trying to find out if they know you escaped the Hunt. I haven’t heard anything about you, though.”

  She’d been watching the Council? Why hadn’t she told him? So he wouldn’t worry? And why hadn’t she had him scrying? Because she knew he’d fail? Or because she knew he’d see … something else? Something she didn’t want him to see?

  “But here,” she continued. “There’s a nice patch of fern growing over there. Let’s see what you get.”

  Now he didn’t know what to think! First she hadn’t coached him through the spell, and now she was telling him to cast it!

  Feeling apprehensive and confused, Kellen trudged sulkily over to the stand of fern. He just knew this wasn’t going to work. He’d just end up staring down at an empty pool of white rocks, and Idalia would be … kind, and suggest they try again, or
say he was just tired and they should do this again another day—or worse, he’d look down and see a Demon staring up at him, and Idalia wouldn’t see it.

  Or she would, and she’d know he knew she was in league with them and—

  No, she wouldn’t be doing this if she was in league with Demons, if she didn’t know he was going to fail! So she was setting him up to fail, just like Anigrel used to. That was it.

  Kellen glared down at the patch of fern, feeling his unsettled bad mood return full force. This was going to be just like all the times he’d tried to be what Lycaelon wanted, and failed, only then he hadn’t cared so much. Now he was going to fail Idalia, and that made him angry. She ought to know he couldn’t do this. Why was she making him prove it? This stuff came to her as effortlessly as breathing, while every spell he cast ended in disaster, and she just couldn’t understand how it could be hard for someone. He’d had enough Wildmagery to get him kicked out of Armethalieh, but aside from that? He couldn’t talk to the Otherfolk like Idalia could, or really see them half the time, he didn’t have her woodscraft skills, he wasn’t one-tenth the Wildmage and never would be, he already knew he didn’t have what it took to be a farmer or crafter like they were in Merryvale …

  Wasn’t there ever going to be something he was the best at? Ever?

  No. He was always going to be Kellen the Second-Best, Kellen the Embarrassment. People had put up with him in the City because he was Lycaelon’s son, and now they were putting up with him here in the Wildwood because he was Idalia’s brother, and nothing, nothing, was ever going to change. Look at all Idalia was going through here in the Wildwood—building an addition to the cabin, trading magic for extra food—just because he couldn’t pull his weight. And he knew that somehow, somewhere, deep at the bottom of things where he couldn’t get to it, there was something wrong about the way things were going now, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.