Kellen nibbled on his lower lip, wondering if he should be feeling slightly insulted. Of course, Iletel didn’t mean to be insulting, but—that attitude seemed, in its way, a bit condescending …
Iletel continued on, earnestly. “Yet you must understand, as we Elves do, that one could not expect it to be otherwise, Wildmage. One cannot expect a creature to glimpse the Eternal when its whole brief span of years is spent in being born and dying almost before it has a chance to live.” Iletel looked very somber.
I don’t know … Idalia seems to have figured it out all right. And Master Eliron. And whoever wrote the Books in the first place, and all the Wildmages who’ve learned from them.
Iletel sighed. “It breaks my heart to imagine it. There is no time to dream, to plan, no time for Art … all of their lives are spent in one blind hurrying rush into death, without one moment to think or reflect on any of the things that give Life meaning or beauty.”
He shook his head, regarding Kellen with grave pity. “I think you are very brave, Kellen Tavadon, to reach beyond your brief span of years through your magic—but then, as a Wildmage yourself, you are far from ordinary. The ordinary human, man or Mage, lives every moment in terror of the death that is rushing toward him in less than a century of years—such a creature could not possibly be expected to see things with the same perspective that we Elves can. And so, in the human City, they have turned away from the vast and eternal beauty of the Wild Magic to a simpler, more immediate, more selfish magic better suited to the briefness of their lives. You wonder why they have rejected the Wild Magic in favor of this self-indulgent magic of their own creation, but the explanation is obvious to any of the Elven-born: no short-lived creature could be expected to love something that confronts it with its terrible impermanence.”
Iletel was clearly quite sympathetic to the terrible fate of humans. It showed in his tone, and in the grave way he regarded Kellen. “And so the Mages of the Golden City hate the Wild Magic and its wielders for showing them what is no more than the truth of the world. But you must not blame them for it, as we do not. It is simply their flawed human nature. They are no more to blame for their fears than the wasp for its sting.”
Kellen sipped his tea, his mind too full of new ideas to be able to frame a coherent question in the fashion Elven good manners dictated. He was dazzled by the notion of the High Magick being something that had “lately” appeared in Armethalieh—lately by whose standards? Iletel’s? Did that mean they used to practice the Wild Magic in Armethalieh … and stopped? Lycaelon said the High Mages had once studied the Wild Magic, before banning it as being too dangerous … was that what he’d really meant? That they’d used to practice it? That there used to be Wildmages in Armethalieh? Kellen felt as if he were swimming—and not very well—in a sea of new ideas.
“But not all humans are like the ones in the City,” Kellen protested weakly. “Idalia and I both came from there.”
“And both of you left, neither in your own time and season,” Iletel pointed out reasonably. “There is as much variation among humankind as among the flowers of the field, perhaps, yet when the gatherer brings them into her garden, she will choose those whose traits please her and grow only those, casting out those who hark back to their wild cousins. So it is with humans, who cultivate themselves like flowers. Do not yearn to be what you are not, Kellen, rather rejoice that you are more than they.”
It all made very pretty hearing, since who wouldn’t want to hear that they were special and gifted, far better than the people they’d grown up with, especially if those same people were the ones that had thrown you out of Armethalieh and then tried to kill you, not once but twice? And it all seemed so reasonable, especially while Iletel was talking.
BUT later, after a little more polite conversation and a promise to come again bringing Sandalon, Kellen wasn’t quite as sure. He wandered onward through Sentarshadeen, trying to sort out all the things he’d just learned in his mind. It was a very comforting explanation. A very soothing explanation. But Kellen had been offered a very great number of comforting, soothing explanations for things in his life, and had rejected them all.
Iletel seemed so satisfied with his explanation of how things were … just as satisfied as the Light-Priests and the Mages had been with their explanations, back in the City.
Wasn’t Iletel’s thinking that most humans couldn’t handle the Wild Magic because they just weren’t good enough the same thing as the Mages thinking that all women couldn’t handle the High Magick because they weren’t good enough?
Or was it?
The more he learned, the less he knew, Kellen realized. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore—except one thing.
Once, the Wild Magic had been practiced in Armethalieh. Then they’d stopped, and invented the High Magick, and declared that nobody could be allowed to practice the Wild Magic anymore. If he put Iletel’s explanation and Lycaelon’s explanation together, that much seemed to shake out of it as unvarnished truth. But all that knowing that much for sure did was leave him with more questions.
He walked out past the House of Leaf and Star (the Elves might call it that, but Kellen still thought of it as a palace) turning over the conversations with the two Elves in his mind.
Both Iletel and Morusil had been very kind, and filled with Elven politeness, and Kellen certainly had a wider perspective on things than he had before, but he wasn’t entirely certain it was a better or more accurate one. Iletel might say that humans had abandoned the Wild Magic because they were essentially self-centered, but that didn’t quite make sense if the only Wildmages left in the world were human. Maybe that wasn’t true either, but the Elves weren’t Wildmages (at least not anymore), the Centaurs couldn’t do magic at all, and Kellen hadn’t met any representatives of any more of the Other Races yet, so he wasn’t sure whether any of them might be Mages or not, or even if any of them still existed. The unicorns were certainly magical creatures, but if the unicorns could get the Elves out of the fix they were in, well, there was a whole herd of them living in Sentarshadeen as from what Idalia said, and there still wasn’t any rain, so Kellen guessed they couldn’t help. Maybe unicorns could just do specific unicorn-magic things, the way an apple tree could make apples, which was fine if you wanted apples (or unicorn-magic), but he guessed bringing rain didn’t fall into that category.
Kellen frowned, looking down at the path. There wasn’t even a stray stone to kick to relieve his feelings. How had everything gotten all tangled up and separated this way?
Something must have happened to make things the way they were now, with the Mages of Armethalieh practicing the High Magick—and having invented it in the first place because they didn’t think the Wild Magic was good enough, or something. But if the Wild Magic was a force for good—and Kellen no longer had any reason to doubt that—why couldn’t the two magics exist side by side in the same place? He didn’t think the High Magick was a bad thing, necessarily—or it wouldn’t be if the Mages didn’t insist it had to be the only kind of magic that was allowed to exist. And if the High Mages were willing to pay their own price in their own power for their spells, instead of always making someone else pay for the spells they did. There was that. Kellen frowned.
So why had the High Mages thrown the Wildmages out of Armethalieh, really? Why couldn’t the two kinds of magic exist side by side?
Sighing heavily—he didn’t have an answer for that, and he suspected he wouldn’t get one from the Elves, either—Kellen passed the Palace and found himself in an orchard.
Apple trees, he thought, though the fruit was long off the trees. He looked for dryads, but didn’t see any, and felt oddly disappointed.
He was more than rewarded for that lack, though, when he got past the orchard to the meadow beyond. Scattered across the grassland was an entire herd of unicorns, more than he could easily count.
He hadn’t known they came in colors.
The one closest to him was a stallion. The stallion’s coat wa
s as red as a woman’s hair, but his ears, mane, horn, socks, and the tuft at the end of his tail were jet-black—yet somehow luminous, like black opal, with a fire somewhere deep within. He’d been grazing, but when Kellen stepped through the trees his head came up. He stared directly at Kellen for a moment—his eyes were the same deep violet as Idalia’s—then turned his back and went trotting back to the main herd.
The unicorns were all the different colors Kellen associated with horses, only more so: brighter, more intense, more vivid. There was a grey that looked like polished silver, one with a golden coat the exact shade of meadow-honey in sunlight; a unicorn mare with a coat so black the sunlight struck blue highlights from it. Though he saw several pure white ones, none of them was Shalkan.
They all were more intensely alive than any other creature he had met so far. And they all had that luminosity that made Shalkan so heartstoppingly gorgeous, as if they carried their own little lights around inside of them. It was pure joy just to watch them move, and while he watched, he was able to put everything that was troubling him to the back of his mind for a while.
“Looking for me?” a familiar voice said from behind him.
Kellen jumped (though he knew better; sneaking up behind him was one of Shalkan’s favorite games). “Not exactly. Just … looking.” He turned around, though he was reluctant to abandon the sight of the herd. Though how many people had seen even one unicorn, let alone a herd of them?
“And how are you enjoying your visit to Sentarshadeen?” Shalkan asked, in tones of impersonal politeness.
“I’d like it better if it were raining,” Kellen said honestly.
“So would the Elves,” Shalkan agreed somberly, shaking his short roached mane. “And aside from that?”
“It’s amazing. Everything’s so beautiful, so clean. And even if they don’t have any magic … or not much … they’ve accomplished such great things. It’s so much better here than in the City!” Kellen said enthusiastically.
“Of course, it all depends on what you like,” Shalkan said agreeably.
“Well, since nobody’s trying to kill me here, I’d say that Sentarshadeen is better than Armethalieh,” Kellen said, feeling slightly cross. He wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much when Shalkan agreed with him, but it always did. “And at least they’re willing to talk about the Wild Magic here, instead of just saying it’s an abomination.”
“Then you’re learning a lot,” Shalkan said, still in that same maddeningly neutral tone. He began to walk out into the meadow, and Kellen followed, somehow feeling he was in the middle of an argument that he was losing.
“I guess so. But if I’m right about what I’m learning … if they used to practice the Wild Magic in Armethalieh, and stopped, then why did they stop?”
Shalkan swung his head around and regarded Kellen steadily. “Maybe you should ask the Elves.”
Kellen snorted rudely. “Have you ever tried asking the Elves anything? By the time you figure out how to be polite about it, they’re discussing the weather or something!”
“Weather’s important, when you’re having the wrong kind.” Shalkan stopped at the edge of a spring, and drank.
Kellen admired the decoration around the edge: river stones and fieldstone and tiles, all arranged in a harmonious whole, just the way everything else he’d seen here was.
“And maybe it’s something they don’t want to talk about,” Shalkan continued when he’d finished. “Or maybe they have other things on their minds. Or maybe you just have to figure out how to ask the right questions. It shouldn’t be long now, at any rate.”
“What …? Hey!” Kellen shouted indignantly. But Shalkan seemed to feel there wasn’t any point in continuing the cryptic conversation. He trotted away, head high, moving faster as he went until when he reached the herd he was covering ground in the bounding deerlike leaps that were the unicorn’s fastest gait. The rest of the herd seemed to take inspiration from Shalkan, for in an instant, every single unicorn, from the flame-red stallion to a pair of leggy hornless foals, was bounding along after Shalkan, as smooth and flowing as a flight of birds. In moments the herd had vanished among the trees.
Kellen stared after them, feeling disgruntled. Every time he thought he was about to get an answer, he ended up being sent off down another blind alley, it seemed to him.
“Kellen! Kellen!”
He turned back in the direction he’d come just in time to grab Sandalon out of the air and spin him around as the boy leaped toward him.
“Where did you come from?” Kellen asked, too late to keep himself from asking the question.
But Sandalon didn’t seem to notice—or mind. “I came with the water cart—see? They’re coming to Songmairie where the unicorns drink to fill it so they can water the trees and the flowers. I get to help,” the boy finished importantly. “Everyone gets to help. Lairamo says that if we don’t give them drinks, the trees and flowers will wither and die.”
He pointed behind him, and Kellen saw the water cart coming slowly toward them along the stone path. It looked like an enormous wine-vat on wheels, much wider than it was high, drawn by four patient horses, nearly as ordinary as any Kellen might see on the streets of Armethalieh, though beautifully groomed and matched. Walking along with it were six Elves, all carrying buckets. Two walked at the horses’ heads, while the others followed behind.
“Then I’ll help too,” Kellen said, “if your friends don’t mind.”
“They won’t mind,” Sandalon said positively.
And in fact, the Elves seemed to welcome Kellen’s help, for filling the water wagon from the spring was backbreaking work, and all had to be done by hand. The drovers backed the wagon into position—it would be much harder to turn and move once the barrel was full—and then unhitched the horses, turning them free to graze while the work was done.
Then all that remained was the simple but far from easy work of dipping each bucket into the spring, carrying it to the cart, lifting it to whoever sat on the edge of the barrel top to pour its contents within (all took turns at that, even Kellen), taking the empty bucket back, and doing it again.
Over and over and over.
Sandalon carried a bucket as well, though his was a much smaller one than the others, suitable for a child’s strength. Every once in a while, instead of pouring their water into the barrel, one of the Elves would take a bucketful a little distance from the spring and pour it onto the grass instead of into the vat. Kellen supposed that made sense: the meadow wasn’t getting any more water than any other place in Sentarshadeen, and there was no way to water all of it.
As they worked, the Elves talked quietly among themselves. Kellen caught scraps of the conversation: the pulley system that hauled water up the south wall had broken, and it would be several days before it could be fixed. Another spring in the outer forest had gone dry, so water would have to be brought from within Sentarshadeen instead. The forest creatures had suffered badly over the long dry summer, and had been driven to raid the Elves’ crops in ever-increasing numbers to feed themselves. This was bad enough, but with winter coming on, the predators were following their food supply closer to Sentarshadeen than ever before. Where mice and rabbits and deer had come, wolves and lynx and bear would follow—perhaps even ice-tiger.
Kellen wondered how much the Elves’ problems had been added to by the Scouring Hunt, but he didn’t want to say anything before talking to Idalia. Beneath its fine clothes and fancy manners, Sentarshadeen was a city under siege, and everyone shared the same fears.
Everyone in the water party was dressed similarly, in the form-fitting leggings, low boots, and close-cut tunics that Kellen was coming to consider to be Elven working clothes—though there was hardly anything about them, from their color to their exquisite decoration, that was the least workaday—and Kellen had been surprised, on first glance, to find that two of the group were women. Aside from their clothing, it was very difficult for Kellen to tell any of the Elvenkind apart, and impossib
le to guess their ages, though one of the two women had a sort of aura about her that made Kellen think she must be, well, mature by Elven standards. All the time they were working he kept finding her regarding him critically, as though something about him displeased her.
Sandalon had tired of the labor a while before, though he’d kept at it far longer than Kellen had expected before going off to play near the horses, returning every so often to fill his bucket again. Kellen thought the young Prince must be very lonely; he’d seen no other children at all, let alone any near Sandalon’s age.
When the Elves stopped to rest and refresh themselves, Sandalon came eagerly back to Kellen’s side—and to Kellen’s unease, the woman who’d been watching him ever since she’d arrived took the opportunity to draw near as well. She smiled at Sandalon, but studied Kellen in expressionless silence for a long moment before she spoke to him.
“Those colors do not suit you at all, Kellen Tavadon. Come to my shop, and I will make you more suitable clothing.”
Kellen blinked. He’d been expecting something else—maybe a veiled insult about how a short-lived round-ear was no fit company for an Elven Prince.
“Those greys, that shade of brown … with your coloring; unsuitable. You should wear warm clear colors: blues and ambers to waken the color of your hair and eyes. Perhaps red, though I think that would be too daring—though you have good skin, if you will only take care of it, and not allow the sun to age and damage it. Violet, perhaps, though it would have to be the proper shade of violet. I will see what I have in my stores. Green, if you must have it, though every fool of a human forester will insist that only green may marry with brown, as if folk were trees. I would not dress you in green, myself.” She shook her head firmly.
Where had all this come from? And why all this business about colors and skin now? “I’m sorry?” Kellen said. “I don’t quite understand …”
The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Page 52