1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (52 page)

 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.

 He hated it. He hated having questions he was afraid to ask. But somehow the time was never right.

 Kellen came back with the fern-leaf and, jaw set, knelt beside the pool. With angry efficiency, he flicked cider onto the water, dropped the leaf onto the eddying surface, and quickly muttered the proper words, half expecting them to leave colorful trails of Magefire in the air, though of course they didn't. The Wild Magic just didn't work that way.

 Then he leaned forward, glaring down at the bottom of the pool as if it were a personal enemy.

 Nothing's going to happen. Nothings going to happen. Noth—

 THE vision came, so quickly that it seemed to sweep the clearing and the pool away.

 The sky was greenish-black, lit by flashes of reddish lightning. He soared above it as if he had wings. Though it was dark, somehow Kellen could see clearly, across a barren plain strewn with jagged boulders that looked as if they had been tossed there by a monster child grown tired of playing with them. He could hear the wind, wailing thinly as it forced its way between the stones. The sound made him shudder. He knew dimly that he should have been cold, but he felt nothing at all.

 As in dreams, he knew more than he saw. There was something there. Something important. Something evil. The malignity of it seemed to seep upward. The iciness of it seemed to seep upward, out of the vision, filling his bones with poison.

 And ringing the plain was a horde—an ARMY—of creatures more horrible than even those that haunted Kellen's most terrible nightmares, all converging on its center. He could hear them baying, the sound the stone Hounds of the Outlaw Hunt would have made if they'd been given voices. To look closely at them was to risk madness. And somehow, Kellen knew also that he was there, in the middle of them —

 Idalia reached out and plunged her fist into the spring, shattering the vision.

 "No!" Kellen screamed, flinging himself into his sister's arms as if he were seven, not seventeen. Idalia held him tightly, and he could feel that she was trembling as hard as he was, and knew that she had seen the same thing that he had. The horror of seeing his greatest secret fears brought into the light, given form and weight and reality, ripped the words from his throat: "Idalia, I don't want to be a monster! Please, please—take my Books! Please!"

 "Kellen, listen to me." There was a note of fierceness in his sister's voice that Kellen had rarely heard. "You are not a monster. And you are not going to become a monster."

 He shook his head, holding her tighter. "The vision. You saw it too."

 "Yes." Idalia drew a deep breath. "And I saw that you were there. But on the same side as those… things? I will never believe that. Never!"

 He had to speak. He had to warn her.

 "But Father said—"

 To Kellen's astonishment, Idalia smacked him on the back of the head—hard enough to sting. She pushed him away, so that she could look into his eyes.

 " 'Father said'—'Father said'—" Idalia mocked angrily. "Father, in case you haven't figured it out for yourself by now, is a narrow-minded, utterly selfish brute without an ounce of human compassion who would say anything to anyone to get his own way. He told you the Wild Magic would turn you into a Demon, I suppose. Well, I'm telling you now that it is utterly impossible. Kellen. Look at me. I'll tell you the truth."

 Kellen looked up at her, his eyes filled with hope—and fear.

 "This has gone on long enough. There's a tiny grain of truth in Father's words, and I'm going to tell you what it is. The Wild Magic teaches you to think for yourself. I've told you that, and you know it's true. Well, people who think for themselves can get into all kinds of trouble— including going over to the Demon side, because yes, there is a Demon side, and they're always looking for human tools. But to do that, a Wildmage has to give up the Wild Magic and everything that has to do with it. Do you understand, Kellen? No Wildmage can serve the Demons—not without ceasing to be a true Wildmage first. His Books will leave him. Yes, because Wildmages think and act for themselves, they can make bad choices and end up becoming evil. But the Wild Magic won't tolerate evil; when they make that choice, the Wild Magic itself stops serving them and stops answering them. The Wild Magic will leave, and something else will take its place. That's all the truth Lycaelon has on his side. All of it. But even a tiny thorn can fester," she added, almost to herself.

 "But…" Kellen said, gesturing toward the pool. It was clear and empty now, a spring-fed pool, nothing more.

 "Did you ever consider you might be there because you were good!" Idalia said, more gently now. "That you might be fighting the Demons? Or that your vision might be only, oh, a kind of truth, like a riddle, to make you think about things more clearly? Or that it might not happen for many, many years?"

 "No," said Kellen simply. "But, Idalia, what if I decide to renounce the Wild Magic and become evil?"

 "Then I'll knock you over the head, sew you into a sack, and sell you to the Selken Traders," Idalia said promptly. "I'm sure you won't be able to get into any trouble across the Sea." She poked him in the ribs with a finger. "You're beefy enough now, I should even get a good price for you. Deal?"

 "Deal," Kellen said with a shaky smile.

 He felt as if a fever he hadn't known he'd been running had broken, or as if an actual thorn had been pulled from his flesh. It was strange, but it was far more reassuring to know that there were actually Demons out there who wanted Wildmages to corrupt than just thinking it might all be his own imagination. Idalia spoke of them as if they were just another danger to be faced, and down deep inside, Kellen had no doubts about his own courage—or hers.

 "And at least we know you can work the scrying spell," Idalia said, taking another deep steadying breath. "And very thoroughly, too. Now it's my turn."

 "But— Now?" Kellen said in dismay. He'd been sure that after something like that, they were going to call it quits for the day.

 "No time like the present," she said briskly. "Though if we end up back there again, I'm breaking out that bottle of mead I've been saving for a special emergency," Idalia added, and she didn't sound at all humorous. "And if that wasn't some kind of Teaching Vision, then… then we'd better figure out what to do about it, hadn't we?"