2 To Light A Candle.13 (97 page)

"Well, boy?" she said tartly. "Would you rather I was dead?"

"No!" Kellen said instantly—and honestly. "But—"

"—you'd rather I could see," Gesade finished for him. "Well, so would I, of course. We'd all rather a great many things that we don't get. But this is not the end of the world, or my life, so kindly don't carry on as if it is, if you please."

"But… what are you going to do now?" Kellen asked.

Gesade leaned into his hand, stepping back a pace so he could rub the particularly soft spot just behind her ear.

"I'm going to stay in the heart-forest until spring, then I'm going to go home to the Great Herd and run with them," Gesade said. "Someone will come to be my eyes for that. And I'll live my life—which I could not have done without your help. And that is that, boy. It's charming of you to wallow in self-pity over me… when I know very well that you'd happily have strangled me more than once!"

"Yes, but—" Kellen sputtered.

"That was before I was a helpless cripple?" Gesade said sweetly.

Shalkan snickered.

"I pity the person who thinks you're a helpless cripple," Kellen said feelingly.

"Good," Gesade said, giving him an encouraging nudge. "Thank you for healing me. I am very pleased to be alive, and I intend to extract every moment of pleasure from life that I can. Now drink your tea, and then go find out what that other silly human child wants here—and then be sure to come back and tell us all about it."

"First," Kellen said, accepting a mug of tea from Menerchel gratefully, "tell me what you know."

"Not much," Shalkan said, flicking his ears back and forth. "Andoreniel sent Hyandur to Armethalieh to warn the City about Them, as you know. The City wouldn't let him in to give his warning—as you knew. As he was leaving, the gates opened and they threw Cilarnen out, wrapped in a Felon's Cloak. Hyandur had already seen the remains of another body, torn to pieces by a Scouring Hunt, so he knew what was coming. He took Cilarnen with him over the Border—fortunately, it wasn't very far, and they reached it before dawn.

"He went on to Stonehearth to warn them, and left Cilarnen there. And that would have been the end of the matter, except for the fact that some moon-turns later, a Centaur Wildmage named Kardus received a Task—"

"A Centaur Wildmage?" Kellen asked. "But Centaurs can't do magic."

"Who's telling this story?" Shalkan demanded. "Kardus's Task—a Mageprice to anyone else—was to go to Stonehearth and help the human boy he found there. He arrived at the same time that a part of the Centaur levy was mustering there, preparing to head over the Border. Well, one of Them showed up, mistook Cilarnen for you—so Cilarnen says—and tried to destroy the village to cover up Its mistake. Kardus, Cilarnen, and Wirance—a High Reaches Wildmage—working together, managed to kill It, but the levy took heavy losses and so did the village. Cilarnen decided he had to come and talk to you, and since Kardus's Task was to help Cilarnen, along they came with what was left of the Centaur levy. Which is all anybody knows. Except that he's definitely not a Wildmage, and he does have magic."

Once again Kellen was impressed at how much Shalkan managed to find out—though the unicorn certainly couldn't be sneaking around the main camp picking up gossip. He couldn't imagine how Shalkan did it. Or did everyone come to him to tell him the news?

All it did was add to the mystery.

"Why me?" Kellen asked.

"Do come back and tell us," Shalkan said archly. "And now, I suspect everyone—including Redhelwar—would like an answer to that question."

Reminded of his other responsibilities, Kellen quickly finished his tea and bid farewell to the Unicorn Knights, mounted Firareth again, and rode down into the main camp.

Seeing Gesade again had made him feel better. He hadn't thought it would—he'd thought being reminded of his failure would make him feel terrible—but somehow it didn't. Her refusal to wallow in self-pity, even after her maiming, reminded him that no matter how terrible the loss, there was always something left with which to begin anew.

WHEN he reached the horse-lines there was a message waiting for him to report to Redhelwar "at his convenience." Kellen grinned to himself and turned Fi-rareth over to one of the ostlers for untacking, brushing down, and turning out. He'd dawdled long enough.

He presented himself at Redhelwar's pavilion, relieved to see only familiar faces there: Redhelwar, Adaerion, and Idalia. He bowed.

Redhelwar regarded him with a lifted brow. "Idalia has told me of your sortie into the caverns, and what you found—or, rather, did not find—there, and Adaerion has acquainted me with your suggestion that the Lady Vestakia attempt to communicate with the Crystal Spiders. Perhaps there is something that you will wish to add to that which they have told."

"I am sure they have told you everything that I would have said," Kellen said. "All I have to tell that they do not know is that I have seen Gesade, and that she is well and in good spirits. I ask that you forgive my tardiness, but… I wished to know how she was," he added awkwardly.

It could have been viewed as manipulation of the most blatant sort to offer up that excuse for his lateness, but Redhelwar had once been a Unicorn Knight himself, and Kellen knew he would understand. Besides, it was no more than the truth.

Redhelwar's expression softened. "You did all you could for her, Kellen."

Kellen grinned. "And so she told me—very firmly. And since the unicorns know all the gossip, I think I know as much as anyone does about our… guest."

"Guest." The word tasted sour, tarnishing his good humor.

"And what we know of him certainly doesn't add up to a logical whole," Idalia said. "He's used magic—everyone agrees about that. But when a Mage is Banished, they Burn the Gift from his mind before they cast him out, so he'll have no chance at all against the Scouring Hunt. They must have done that to you, Kellen," she finished, her voice puzzled.

"No," Kellen said. "But then, I wasn't even a Student Apprentice. I was the worst student in the entire history of the Mage-College; I could barely light a fire—or so everyone assumed. I did know a couple of First Level spells—I wasn't supposed to—but as far as anyone knew, I hardly had the Gift at all. I think I've forgotten them now." He thought hard. "I suppose Lycaelon was supposed to do it when he came to see me anyway, just in case—but I made him so furious I guess he just forgot."

Dredging up those old memories required an act of will, and Kellen was surprised at how much they hurt.

"Lycaelon was a great one for forgetting things," Idalia said caustically. "And when you were Banished, the Boundaries were so vast that there shouldn't have been any way for you to get across them before the Hunt caught up to you even if you'd had an intact Gift—in fact, even with Shalkan's help, you didn't manage it. If you hadn't been a Knight-Mage-to-be, you'd be dead."

"But Cilarnen was a good student," Kellen said resentfully. "He'd already been a Student Apprentice forever, and that was last spring. They'd certainly have Burned him."

"But they didn't," Idalia said. "He's cast Fire, Mage-light, and Mageshield, from what the Centaurs say. The first two are also spells of the Wild Magic— don't look so surprised, Kellen; an awful lot of magic comes from the same root, and the High Magick has to have come from the Wild Magic originally—but I can't cast anything like Mageshield."

"Well, neither can I," Kellen said sulkily, well and truly irritated now. It was a simple spell, too, a First Level spell, one that a Student Apprentice had to master for his own safety before moving on to more elaborate and dangerous work. Most of the First Level spells didn't even require wand and sigil work, just visualizations and cantrips…

But he'd never managed to learn them.

He shook his head, disgusted with himself. It was sickening how quickly all that dead-numbing rote memorization came flooding back into his mind. As if he'd never left the City at all. As if he were still trapped within its walls, buried alive.

And he'd had a chance to think about this—an Armethaliehan Mage, arriving here at this time, this place—and he didn't like the conclusions he had come to.

IDALIA watched her brother with carefully-concealed dismay. It was as if the past half-year had suddenly been stripped away. This was the "old" Kellen; the boy she'd first met—unhappy, uncertain, angry.

If Kellen had a weak point, it was Armethalieh. He hated and loved it at the same time—she was positive even he wasn't sure which. The same way he— still—hated and loved Lycaelon, though—and she was quite positive of this— he'd convinced himself he didn't care about his father at all. And since Lycaelon was Arch-Mage of Armethalieh, Father and City were very nearly the same thing. Certainly Lycaelon had always thought so.

She knew nothing about Cilarnen Volpiril, except that his father was Lycaelon's rival on the High Council, but from what Kellen said about him, it was obvious that Kellen saw Cilarnen as everything he had never succeeded in being: excellent student, beloved son.

And now Cilarnen was here, reminding him of every failure, every fault.

And Kellen wasn't thinking clearly at all.

"Well, as a Knight-Mage, you have precious little use for Mageshield, now, do you?" Idalia said, trying to draw him back to the present and make him focus on what he did have.

Kellen looked at her, startled. "I… suppose not," he said, slowly.

"It would be good to know just why he was Banished from the City," Idalia continued ruthlessly.

"That is something he has told no one," Adaerion said. "And we do not know enough of the ways of the human city to know for what cause it casts out its folk."

Kellen looked at Idalia. She was relieved to see that he seemed to have come back to himself a bit.

"You and I were Banished for studying the Wild Magic," he said hesitantly. "But… they would have let me stay if I'd apologized and given it up."

"Well, we can rule out studying the Wild Magic," Idalia said. "Because we know he hasn't done that." She frowned. "There's hardly anything else the Mages Banish someone for. For any other crime, you either do penance, pay a fine, get your memories excised, or all three."

"Idalia," Kellen said after a moment's silence, an odd note in his voice, "what is studying the Wild Magic? If you're a High Mage? If someone has studied the Wild Magic, what actual crime—the name of the crime, I mean—are they committing against the City?"

Idalia thought hard. It had been almost half her lifetime since she'd discovered her three Books in the Records Room of the Council Hall, and from the moment they'd come into her hands, she'd known she was committing…

"Treason," she said. "To study the Wild Magic is to commit treason and heresy against the Light."

"Ah," said Redhelwar with satisfaction. "We progress."

"No," said Kellen. "We don't. We could talk until the sun came up and get nowhere," he added harshly. "What we need to do is ask Cilarnen questions, not each other. So I'll see him. I'll question him. And if I don't like his answers, I'll kill him."

"Kellen!" Idalia gasped, stunned.

"That's what I'm here for, isn't it?" Kellen said bleakly, and now Idalia could see the pain in his eyes—the pain of a man carrying a burden far too heavy for him to bear. "To kill things? We can discuss why he's here and how he got here for as long as we like. But in the end, it comes down to one thing: a Wildmage brought Cilarnen to me, because that's his Mageprice. I don't think there was anything in that price about me letting him live."

Idalia would have liked to deny the truth in that—but in all honesty, she couldn't.

"I don't know why an Armethaliehan Mage—whatever his rank, Banished for treason or not—is here. It doesn't seem really likely that they'd let him go with his Gift intact, or when they knew an Elf was lurking around outside the City ready to help him escape the Scouring Hunt. It sounds like a trap to me. I'll see," Kellen finished simply.

"And certainly there will be time enough for that on the morrow," Redhel-war said, as smoothly as if Kellen had not just proposed to murder a guest under Elven protection. "Tonight, I believe he still recovers from his ordeal in the blizzard—I know not where. For yourself, Kellen, I am certain a warm bath, a hot meal, and a good night's sleep will be welcome before you are called upon to try this stranger's motives. The tea that can be brewed in the caverns, so I am assured by Adaerion, is foul, and you will wish for better. Belepheriel has made you a gift of some of the Armethaliehan Black that you favor; I shall send Dionan to your pavilion to brew it for you after you have bathed, and see you to your rest."

For a moment Idalia thought Kellen would object, but he caught himself in time. He bowed, deeply.

"You do me too much honor, Redhelwar. It is cold in the caverns, and colder without. It will be good to spend the night in reflection, and I will welcome the tea."

He bowed again—to Redhelwar, to Adaerion, to Idalia, and left quietly.

There was silence in Redhelwar's pavilion for a time.

Someone please tell me that Kellen didn't just suggest killing Cilarnen, Idalia thought.

"If the Mageborn boy is indeed a threat…" Adaerion began.

"Then Kellen will deal appropriately with him in the morning," Redhelwar said. "I trust him to do as the Wild Magic wills."

But not, I notice, enough that you were willing to let him know where Cilamen is now, Idalia thought.

Bowing, she took her own leave.

HE was sure Redhelwar was right. He thought he was sure.

Actually, he wasn't sure of anything other than that he was cold, hungry, and tired.

But a hot bath and fresh clothes—he'd spent the last sennight living in his armor, and it was certainly time for a change—did much to make Kellen feel better, as did a hot fresh meal that hadn't started life as blocks of journey-food. Af-ter that he returned to his tent—where Dionan was waiting to brew the promised tea—and drank the entire pot, while giving his armor and sword a thorough cleaning.

It made him feel better—as long as he didn't think about Cilarnen.