The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  A human Mage would probably have made a simple square building and let it go at that, but Jermayan was an Elven Mage. He had created a replica of Redhelwar’s pavilion—the available interior space, of course, would be much smaller, because the ice walls needed to be thicker for the pavilion to stand—but the exterior was exact in every detail, down to the fringe and tassels along the upper edges of the walls, the folds in the “fabric” of the tent, the stakes and peg-ropes, even the pennons hanging from the centerpole and from each of the four corners. Even the door-flaps that stood pinned back from the entrance—they would not close, of course, being made of ice, but they were so detailed that they looked as if they could.

  “Oh, my,” Idalia said, mirth bubbling in her voice.

  “Do you like it?” Ancaladar asked, appearing out of the Flower Forest to their right and moving quickly through the winter orchard toward them. He cocked his head, inspecting the ice-pavilion. “The boy shows promise.”

  “It’s … not something you see every day,” Kellen said weakly.

  Here, as in the Shadowed Elf village, being confronted with the sheer scope of the magical power his friend could command gave him a moment’s pang. It was not that he coveted it for himself—Gods of the Wild Magic forbid. it!—or that he did not trust Jermayan utterly. It was just that there seemed something almost unnatural about it.

  It was true that to a non-Mage, there would seem to be very little difference between what he and Idalia could do, and what Jermayan could do. But Kellen saw a very great difference. What he did, at least, was just—almost—an intensification of what an ordinary man might do, or what the natural world did on its own. He could make the healing process go faster, but he could not call back the dead. He could see things invisible to others, but that was because his Gift gave him the power to understand tiny clues that they could not see, and showed him the results in visions. He could call fire, but he could not burn things that a natural flame would not burn. He could not reshape stone with a thought.

  But he had seen Jermayan burn stone as if it were oil-soaked kindling, and shape granite as if it were clay on the potter’s wheel. And now this—calling ice out of thin air to make a place for them to work in.

  Was the only difference between what Kellen could do and what Jermayan could do that Jermayan had Ancaladar’s power to draw upon? Was it that Jermayan was an Elven Mage and Kellen was human?

  “Is this what your Wildmages do in the south?” Atroist asked, sounding stunned.

  “I’d have to say that Jermayan isn’t exactly a typical Wildmage,” Idalia said comfortingly.

  “Come,” Jermayan said, stepping out of the ice-tent’s entrance. “Be welcome.”

  The three of them crunched through the heavy snow and in through the entrance of the “tent.”

  It was warm inside, even though the structure was made of ice. The walls were smooth and featureless, save for brackets of bronze in the shapes of wyverns that were set into the walls. The lanterns illuminating the space hung from their jaws. The floor of the tent was hard-packed snow, providing cold—if certain—footing. Jermayan’s pack was tucked into a corner, and the inevitable brazier was already brewing water for tea.

  “It looks very much as if you’ve done this before,” Idalia commented, looking around as she shed her pack. Kellen and Atroist quickly followed suit.

  “As Ancaladar does not wish to be treated as a pack animal—yes, I had to find a way of making shelter on my journeys, since I could not carry it,” Jermayan agreed.

  “Pack animals walk,” Ancaladar said simply, poking his nose into the doorway of the tent. “I fly.”

  “That you do,” Idalia agreed, squatting down in front of the dragon and reaching out to rub his nose, gradually working her way up to gently scratch the brow-ridges above his eyes. The huge black dragon closed his eyes with pleasure.

  Atroist was busily working through the three packs—all of which contained his supplies—and laying them out in the center of the tent. He made a circle of what Kellen recognized as keystones, though very large ones—so that was why the pack he’d carried had been so heavy!—two rings of them, with a third set balanced upon the first two, and, at the center of the ring, a carefully woven pyre of sticks and small logs, all black and tarry with resin.

  “So long as the fire burns, I. can Speak with Drothi,” Atroist said. “This is the wood of the ghostwood tree. I will call the fire away when we are finished, in case I need to speak again—I have not seen ghostwood here in the south.”

  “You have not been to the Flower Forest,” Jermayan said. “We call these trees namanarii. We use the sap in medicine; it sends healing dreams. I did not know that they grew any longer in the lands of Men. If you need more of it for your spells, send to Andoreniel for permission to take what you need, and you may have it from any of the Flower Forests in the Elven Lands.”

  As he had been speaking, Jermayan had been brewing tea. He paused now to pour it out and to hand the filled cups to each of them.

  This was a set of cups Kellen had never seen before. They were tiny, holding no more than a sip or two—the sort of cups the Elves used for “polite” occasions. They were Elvenware, delicate as moonlight, and of a color Kellen had never seen before: black.

  But their surface shone with a red fire, like flames, and somehow it seemed as if he could see a black dragon dancing through those flames. Kellen thought he’d gotten used to the beauty the Elves could create, but this was truly the most exquisite piece he had ever handled.

  “They are for drinking out of, not looking at,” Jermayan reminded him gently.

  Kellen grinned, and sipped the tea.

  It was bitingly hot. He tasted woodsmoke and fruit—the tea was some kind he’d never had before, and a stronger flavor than most of the Elven blends. It was odd, but he liked it.

  “Oh, Jermayan, I didn’t think you had any of this left,” Idalia said, her eyes going wide as she tasted it.

  “Very little,” Jermayan admitted. “But it is a good tea for this time and place.”

  “Take pity on a poor round-ear who can’t be trusted to boil water,” Kellen pleaded.

  “The tea is called Auspicious Venture,” Idalia said. “It’s made with the fruit of the vilya, among other things. It’s very rare, because the vilya is always in flower, but it fruits only once a century. So you see.”

  “Maybe,” Kellen said cautiously. He sipped the tea slowly, trying to make it last, but trying to finish it before it cooled. The flavor seemed to change with every sip. He guessed he’d better not get to like it too much, if it was as rare as Idalia said.

  Jermayan finished first, and to Kellen’s horror, dropped his exquisite teacup to the snow and ground it to shards underfoot.

  “Things of beauty are not meant to be guarded at the expense of more important things,” he said. “We cling to them at our peril. Only when we release them are they truly ours—and are we truly free.”

  Idalia finished her tea, dropped her cup, and did as Jermayan had done.

  Kellen looked down at the empty cup in his hands. Destroy such a beautiful thing? When would he ever see something like it again?

  “We cling to them at our peril …”

  He dropped the cup to the snow and crushed it beneath his boot. The sound it made as he broke it seemed to resonate through his entire body.

  Atroist broke his cup in turn, grinding the fragments into the snow.

  “Come,” he said, seating himself close to the ring of keystones.

  The other three seated themselves around the ring of stones as well.

  “Who will share the cost of this Working with me?” Atroist asked formally.

  “I,” said Jermayan.

  “And I,” Ancaladar said from the doorway.

  “I will,” Idalia said.

  “Me, too,” Kellen finished.

  “Then let it begin,” Atroist said, stretching his hand out toward the wood. “Walk with me.”

  The wood burst
into flame, and Kellen felt the familiar sense of Presence as the shield that marked the beginning of a spell of the Wild Magic appeared.

  But nothing else was the same.

  Suddenly he was not in the ice-pavilion at all.

  He got to his feet—moving without his own volition—and as he moved, he saw he was in a small cottage. The light was dim—the illumination coming mostly from a fire that smoldered on the hearth—but his body moved with certainty, as if it knew this place.

  “Drothi.”

  It was Atroist who spoke, not Kellen, and when he did, Kellen realized that he was not truly present at all, merely hearing and seeing all that Atroist did. The illusion of presence was so real that it was strange not to be able to move at his own will, and only now did Kellen realize that although he could see the fire that smoldered on the hearth, he could smell nothing at all, not even the smoke of the burning ghostwood.

  The woman sitting at the hearth looked up. She was dressed much as Vestakia had been when Kellen had first seen her, in a long tunic of coarse homespun with wide calf-length trousers, and heavy boots of rough leather. Over that she wore a large shawl, woven in a complicated pattern of crossed stripes that would probably have been very colorful if there had been more light to see by. She was not a young woman; her face was seamed with the lines of age, and her eyes looked almost white in the firelight. As she gazed in his direction in an unfocused fashion, Kellen realized she could not see Atroist at all.

  “What news do you bring, kinsman?” Drothi asked. Aged she might have been, but her voice was young and vibrant with power.

  “The Firstlings beg our aid, as we knew, yet they would not deny us help as well,” Atroist said. “I have told them how it is with us, and of our struggles with the Dark Folk, and so they bid us travel to find sanctuary in the lands where the Dark Folk do not come. The Firstling King offers us safe passage through his lands for flock and herd, and for every man, woman, and child of the Folk. The Wildmages here speak of a land beyond the Firstling borders where we may settle; an empty land that we may take for our own. And the Firstling King gives his word that all who aid our people beyond the Firstling borders shall dwell in his grace, and here his word is no light thing, even in the lands of Men.”

  “Welladay,” Drothi said coolly, “so the walls of the Great Border fall at last, even for kern and chicken. It will not take so very much to persuade the people to come, I think—aye, and swiftly.”

  “What is the news?” Atroist asked, and now Kellen heard a note of fear in the Wildmage’s voice.

  “The raids, as you expected, have continued,” Drothi said simply. As she spoke, she picked up a spindle from the basket beside her and began pulling carded wool into thread with deft sure motions. “And to make matters worse, the winter has been harder than any we have seen in a long-hand of years. Had Torchen not warned us it would be so when the rains began, there would be starvation now. But that is no matter, since it has not happened. There are things that are worse.

  “The Great Wolves have come again. When the snows began to fall, the folk heard them singing at Icebridge and at Songhythe, which lie nearest to the Stone Wastes, as you know. The folk there had left their cattle to winter in the near fields, and one day they woke to find them slaughtered, every bull and cow, with nothing left behind but blood and polished bones. They knew the marauders for Great Wolves by the tracks, and did the only thing they could: they turned their flocks out as a sacrifice and fled south. This is what the survivors say. There were not many, for the Great Wolves harried them as they went, pulling them down in ones and twos, running them like the deer until the weakest dropped from exhaustion and the strongest must leave them behind or die as well. It was a cruel jest the Dark Folk played upon us that day, to leave any alive when they could have taken all so easily.”

  Atroist sucked in a trembling breath, but Drothi went on with her spinning implacably. This was old news to her, Kellen realized.

  “Yet the Great Wolves can be killed. We have fought their kind before, but now creatures have come into the land that have not been seen since before the Settling, if then. We have seen creatures in the sky like giant bats—they do not come near, but they bring fear to all who see them. In the Haunted Places there are tracks upon the ground as if of giant serpents—you remember the songs I taught you as a child, Atroist, of the icedrake whose body is colder than the coldest ice, and whose breath is poison? I think it must have come again among us, though I was certain it was only a legend from the Oldest Days.

  “Other folk speak of black things that look like bears but are as tall as two men, beasts with glowing red eyes and the power of human speech. Of things like horses, but with cloven hooves, the teeth of wolves, and the tails of serpents.

  “No man dares leave his village to hunt, no woman to draw water from the river. The Lost Lands have become an abode not only of the Dark Folk, but of monsters, and our people suffer terribly.

  “I shall pass the word at once that we are to leave. We will come as swiftly as we may. Pray to the Good Goddess that we survive the journey.”

  “I shall,” Atroist said. “And I will come to you myself and render what aid I can.”

  “Let it be so,” Drothi said. “Now leave me. I have much work to do before I sleep.”

  THERE was a moment of disorientation, and suddenly Kellen was back in the ice-pavilion, blinking in confusion at his fellow Wildmages over the now-cold fire. He breathed in deeply and coughed, suddenly aware of the lingering spicy scent of woodsmoke.

  “This does not sound good,” Idalia said mildly.

  “Coldwarg, and icedrake, and shadewalkers, and serpent-marae, to judge by Drothi’s description,” Jermayan said grimly. “And the Deathwings that we know to be the creatures of the Shadowed Elves as well. The Deathwings we had never seen before, and all but the coldwarg we had thought to be gone—destroyed in the Great War.”

  “I guess they’re back,” Kellen said. He yawned—he couldn’t help it; now that the spell had run its course, the energy he’d lent to its working left him feeling drained.

  “I must go,” Atroist said, getting to his feet and beginning to pack the keystones and the half-burned ghostwood into the packs again. “I will leave at first light. I cannot leave my people to face such a journey alone, when I might be able to protect them on their way.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Idalia agreed. “Return as soon as you can, and make your journey safely.”

  “May the Good Goddess will it so,” Atroist said.

  “What about this?” Kellen said to Jermayan, indicating the ice-pavilion.

  “Oh,” Jermayan said, a faint overelaborate note of casualness in his voice, “I thought I’d just leave it. It won’t melt, you know.”

  “Not until spring,” Ancaladar agreed, from his position in the doorway.

  “And I might have a use for it later,” Jermayan continued, far too innocently.

  “Whatever,” Kellen muttered. He wondered if there was any chance of getting a bowl of hot soup back at the Unicorn Knights’ camp, or whether he’d have to make do with cold trail-rations. At least there’d be tea. In an Elven camp, there was always tea.

  “Don’t tease him, Jermayan,” Idalia said sharply.

  “What?” Kellen said blankly.

  “I do apologize, Kellen,” Jermayan said, sounding truly contrite.

  Kellen was puzzled. Something had just happened, and he had no idea what it was, but Idalia was mad, and Jermayan was upset.

  “Look,” he said with a sigh. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m cold. All I want is to help Atroist get his stuff back to his tent so I can go get some dinner, okay?”

  Idalia smiled, and reached out to ruffle his hair. “I do love you, Kellen,” she said with a smile.

  “Sure,” Kellen said. Sometimes sisters were just as baffling as Elves.

  Since a good portion of the ghostwood had been burned in the Speaking Spell, the remains and the keystones fitted neatly into two
backpacks. Kellen took one, and Atroist took the other, and they headed back in the direction of the Gathering Plain. It was only after they’d passed the edge of the Flower Forest that Kellen realized that Idalia and Jermayan had stayed behind. He shrugged. Probably quoting poetry at each other. He hoped Jermayan had brought more teacups.

  “The Firstlings are … not as I imagined they would be,” Atroist said after a while.

  “The Elves? I guess they take some getting used to,” Kellen agreed. “I didn’t even know they existed—not really—before I left the City, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Good thing too.” Not that he’d had a lot of choice about coming to Sentarshadeen. But he’d have worried—and it would have turned out to be for no good reason.

  “The Golden City of Mages—your City—is a place we only know of in legends,” Atroist said. “Someday, perhaps, we will speak of it further.”

  “Um, well, Armethalieh probably isn’t very much like your legends either,” Kellen said tactfully. He supposed the Lostlanders thought of Armethalieh as a sort of paradise, the way the wondertales wrote about the Mage College.

  “In our legends, it is a place that shines with painful brightness to mask the darkness of its Mages’ hearts; a place where there is no night or day, no winter or summer; a place where the citizens have no souls, for they have been stolen to fuel the magic of the Mages. Music fills the air eternally to mask the cries of despair rising from the captive populace,” Atroist said simply. “I apologize if my words offend you. They are only legends.”

  Oh.

  “They’re close enough to the truth,” Kellen said sadly. “Except that nobody’s in despair. Everybody’s perfectly happy with the life they have—or most of them are, anyway. They’re”—he thought long and hard for a good analogy—“sheep, and the Mages are the shepherds, except that these shepherds not only keep them shorn of every scrap of wool they grow, but would probably throw them to the wolves if wolves showed up. But they don’t know that, and so they’re completely content.”