The Outstretched Shadow Read online

  Though of course the door was warded against intruders, as a son of the house, Kellen could pass through those wards without triggering them. And although it was kept locked from the inside, Kellen simply took the key with him when he went and left the door unlocked behind him. The servants rarely had business in the garden, and the gardener never bothered about anything that close to the house itself. So far his tampering had gone undiscovered, and Kellen had been able to come and go as he pleased.

  He reached his destination—a nondescript (though, of course, costly and well-made) wooden door set into the tall, plaster-covered brick wall—and confidently gave it a shove, expecting it to swing inward, revealing the sere Tavadon garden.

  The door didn’t move.

  Kellen tried again, pushing more slowly and with greater force. Still nothing. The door was locked. Sometime in the last several bells, some overzealous servant must have come down into the garden and locked it.

  Well, that was all of a piece with the way his day had been going until now. Kellen sighed, reaching into his belt-pouch for his key, only to discover that his bad luck was still in full flower, and likely to get worse.

  His key wasn’t there.

  Oh, no—

  Now what was he to do? Never mind that Anigrel had virtually ordered him to go hare off on his own. Anigrel would be certain to deny it, and say he’d meant Kellen to go home and study, and certainly that was what an obedient son of House Tavadon would have done. If anyone found out he’d actually been wandering around the City until Evensong, he’d really be in for it!

  Not yet in a panic, but not far from that state, Kellen spun around, gazing around the empty alley wildly, as though by some miracle the key to the garden door might suddenly materialize.

  Think, you cloudwit!

  He was sure—he was almost sure—he’d had it with him when he’d left for his lesson with Anigrel this morning. Could he have dropped it somewhere? It was a big heavy brass key; he was certain he would have noticed the sudden absence of its weight from his pouch, or heard the noise it would have made when it fell to the street.

  Unsurprisingly, the key was nowhere to be seen; after all, he hadn’t left by this door. And retracing his steps—well, that was an exercise in futility; a key that big would have been found and picked up, for the value of the scrap metal if nothing else …

  Kellen sighed gustily, running his hand through his disorderly mop of long brown curls distractedly. Where was the Light-forgotten thing?

  All right. No need to get in a state. Nothing’s going to happen just yet. If the garden door was locked, there was still the front door … but that meant going in past the mastiffs, and that would rouse the servants—there’d be no chance of sneaking in. And if his father or Anigrel had left instructions that he hadn’t been here to receive … well, it would mean an unpleasant scene at the least. If his father found out he hadn’t gone straight home from his morning’s lesson, Lycaelon would want to know where he’d been, and if he couldn’t think of something innocuous and impossible to disprove, he’d be in deeper trouble yet.

  Why is it that everything I do ends up with me in trouble?

  No. He’d find another way.

  He looked up at the wall, gauging his chances of simply scaling the wall. But the wall had been plastered smooth to discourage just such a possibility, and the errant coil of bramble-rose vine that trailed down just above his head was far too slender—and prickly—to serve as a climbing rope. He couldn’t use a cantrip to unlock the door from outside, either, even if he knew the right spell, because the locks were counterspelled against just that.

  But there was another way. He had his new magick. And if he couldn’t use it to unlock a door (and so far there didn’t seem to be an Unlocking Spell anywhere in the three Books, or at least not one that he’d discovered), he could use it in some other way to get in. And the simplest was—to find that blasted key.

  With the Wild Magic, he could cast a Finding Spell, get his key back, open the door, and slip inside. He’d be safe in his rooms before Lycaelon arrived, and no one would be the wiser about just how long it had taken Kellen to come home from lessons. And a Finding Spell was such a small magick—harmless. All it involved was getting back what was his in the first place. What could that hurt? No one would see, and no one would know. And he had everything he needed to cast it right here: his desire—and a drop of his own blood was easily come by, with the bramble-roses to help.

  Pleased at his own cleverness at finding so simple a solution to a potentially embarrassing problem, Kellen reached up and pulled the bramble-vine down toward him. He selected a particularly large and sharp-looking thorn and drove it into the ball of his thumb, wincing at the sudden pain, and as the bright drop of blood welled out, he focused all his will on the key to the garden gate and his need to have it in his hands.

  There was a faint tingle, as if someone had thrown a handful of snow-flakes at him, and he held his breath in anticipation. What would happen? Would the key just appear? Would someone bring it, looking for the owner?

  But—nothing. The tingle faded, and nothing whatsoever happened. Nothing changed, not even the faint stink of produce past its prime that came up from the sunbaked stone of the alley. Obscurely disappointed, Kellen let go of the vine—it snapped back into place with a dry shaking of leaves—and sucked at his injured thumb, walking absently up the alleyway.

  I might as well give up, and use the front door, and take my chances …

  Wait. Where am I going?

  As he’d started walking he’d told himself he’d given up and was going around to his front door, but then he found himself turning away from the house, in a direction he’d never gone before, unable to stop or turn back. The more he tried to fight against this compulsion, the faster he went, until he found himself running, losing track of the turns he made, until he was entirely lost in the warren of Mage Quarter back alleys.

  And still he ran on, as if there was something pulling him—or chasing him. The Wild Magic had him, he had no doubt whatsoever of that, and it wasn’t going to let go!

  He was finally allowed to stop in front of another wall elsewhere in the Mage Quarter, but whatever force had taken possession of him when he cast his Wild Magic spell of Finding wasn’t through with him yet. The walls here were green with ivy, providing easy access to the garden beyond to anyone who cared to climb the wall, and to his horror and amazement, Kellen found his arms and legs acting as if they belonged to another person, sending him up the ladder of vines as if he were a squirrel.

  Over the top he went on his belly. He slid down through the thick mass of ivy on the interior side and froze, holding his breath. If anyone caught him here, if he couldn’t talk his way out of this … they’d turn him over to the City Constables, or at the very least, they’d summon his father out of his Council meeting, and what could Kellen possibly say to explain what he was doing trespassing in some other Mage’s garden? He didn’t even know whose garden this was! And if it belonged to one of his father’s many political enemies … Oh, Light defend him! What could Kellen possibly say to explain? He was trapped by his own decisions to cast a Wild Magic spell. What had he done to himself?

  As he stood frozen, trying to figure out what had just happened to him, Kellen became aware that somewhere nearby someone was crying—the choked, grief-stricken sounds of someone terrified and in complete despair, but equally afraid of being overheard.

  A very young someone; from the high voice, it must be a child.

  And at that moment, Kellen stopped worrying about himself; his own predicament could wait. Whoever was making that sort of weeping sound was in more trouble than he could ever possibly get into. He knew the difference between the way a child sounded when it was crying angrily over a hurt, real or imagined, when it was crying out of self-pity, and when it was crying because it was truly, deeply, in despair. And this was the latter.

  As silently as he could, Kellen moved away from the wall and toward th
e source of the crying.

  Coming out from behind a screen of bushes, Kellen saw a little girl—no more than seven or eight—wearing the simple clothing of an under house servant. She wasn’t old enough to have much responsibility; she was probably a kitchen maid—children usually apprenticed in the kitchens of a Great House, where there were fewer things to break, and much fetching and carrying to be done—which meant she certainly had no right to be in the master’s garden at all.

  Her shoulders drooped with fatigue, and her little body trembled with each suppressed whimper. She was kneeling at the base of an enormous magnolia tree that was the focal point of the garden, looking up into its branches. He stepped on a bit of gravel that crunched under his boot, and she swiveled around, her round, tear-streaked face white with fear. The moment she saw him, she got to her feet with a strangled sob. In a moment she would run, and he knew, without knowing how or why, that she was the reason he was here.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Kellen said quickly. “I’m not supposed to be here either. I climbed over the wall. In fact, if anybody sees me, they’ll probably run for the nearest Constable. I heard you crying—will you tell me what’s the matter?” He bestowed his most winning smile on her, the one that had usually gotten him out of trouble with every one of his “Nursies.”

  The girl hesitated, then stood where she was, shifting her weight from foot to foot, regarding him doubtfully. She had certainly been told to be wary of housebreakers and thieves, but even dressed in his oldest clothes, Kellen figured he didn’t look very much like either one.

  “I live nearby,” he said coaxingly. “Won’t you tell me why you’re so unhappy?”

  That seemed to decide her, and her face regained a little color. “Can—can you help me, goodsir?” she asked hopefully. She gestured up at the branches over her head with a slim little hand. “Milady is in the tree—she got out of the kitchen and climbed up, and if Mistress finds us here, she’ll have me whipped—and she’ll drown Milady!” Fresh tears began to roll down the girl’s face.

  “I know she will, I know she will, and Milady—”

  —Is probably the only friend this little one has, Kellen supplied for himself, feeling a surge of anger at a woman he didn’t even know, who would be so heartless as to snuff out the life of a child’s pet because it did what any cat would do. When she’d first started to speak, he’d wondered if Milady might be a child of the house that the girl was supposed to be watching, but if the girl was afraid that Mistress would drown her …

  It had to be a cat—though the Light help him if it turned out to be a white squirrel, or a monkey, or a ferret, or some other form of outlandish pet. A cat he could probably coax down; with an exotic, he’d probably wind up with a handful of sharp teeth.

  “Hush now, don’t cry.” Kellen rummaged inside his tunic for a clean handkerchief—reasonably clean, anyway—and handed it to the girl. “Blow your nose and dry your eyes. I’m sure we can do something about your problem.”

  He approached her; she wasn’t going to run now. “Can you show me where she is?”

  The girl stood beside him and pointed up into the tree. Kellen looked in the direction she indicated, squinting against the last rays of the setting sun. High in the tree, perched on one of the topmost branches, he could barely make out a small grey fuzzy kitten, its fur nearly the same color as the slippery bark of the tree. It edged back and forth on its branch, which shifted dangerously with every move it made.

  Kellen sighed, just a little. Still, he couldn’t leave the little thing up there to get all three of them in trouble. And he couldn’t just leave the poor little girl here to try to coax it down. Kittens had the bad habit of climbing into inaccessible places, then being too frightened to get down by themselves.

  He glanced over his shoulder. A high hedge of ornamental shrubbery screened the bottom of the garden from the view of the house, and at this chime, the inhabitants would be dressing for dinner and the staff would be preparing it. For a little while, at least, it wasn’t likely that they’d be found here. He thought hard, coming up with a plan.

  He patted her clumsily; she didn’t seem to mind. “Now look here, I’ll see if I can’t help you out. I’ll climb up and get your kitten down. If anyone comes while I’m up there, you must scream as loud as you can, and point up at me. Don’t say anything, just scream. Do you understand?” Kellen asked.

  The little girl looked puzzled. “But why?”

  Kellen smiled ruefully. “Well as to that, sweeting, I think you’re far too pretty to be whipped for wanting to save your kitten. If you make a lot of noise, they’ll all think you came out in the garden chasing me, and you’ll be a great heroine.”

  “But what about you?” she asked. She might not be very old, but she was evidently wise enough in the ways of her household to know that if she acted as if he were an interloper rather than someone who’d come to help her, he would be in serious trouble.

  Then again, anyone who had spoken so casually of being whipped knew plenty about punishment.

  “Oh, I’ll think of something,” he said airily. And thought: I just hope I don’t have to.

  And keeping that thought in mind, Kellen turned away from her, put foot and hand to the trunk of the tree, and began to climb.

  The lower branches were easy, though the fine-grained bark was as slick as polished wood. The flowers had an overpowering sweet and slightly unpleasant scent as if they were just on the wrong side of decay, even in the cool of the evening, and he dared not get any of their fleshy, greasy petals between his hands and the bark. Once he was higher in the tree he could hear the kitten mewing—hoarsely, as if it had been doing it for some time—but with the leaves in his face Kellen could no longer see it. He did know it was still somewhere above him.

  “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,” Kellen muttered, mostly to himself, for he doubted that the cat could hear him over its own plaintive cries. As a matter of fact, at the moment he felt like making a few plaintive cries of his own …

  The tree was very tall. He looked out once, and found himself on a level with the third-floor windows of whatever Mage-house’s gardens he was trespassing in, and fought down his vertigo with an effort. After that, he kept his eyes firmly focused on the trunk of the tree and the branches in front of his face.

  Then, at last, the cries were near at hand. He moved aside a branch while clinging desperately with his other hand, and there it was.

  And it was not at all happy to see him. Rather than regard him as a rescuer, it apparently thought he was there to eat it. He reached toward it—and it backed away, then scrambled off down a side branch, forcing him to leave the trunk and follow.

  Then began a pursuit that would have been comical if Kellen hadn’t been so petrified of falling. Several times he was almost within reach of the kitten. Each time it regarded Kellen’s outstretched hand in pop-eyed horror and retreated out of reach, either around the trunk or out along a limb. Several times it fell, slipping to a lower branch to glare at him in affronted indignation before bouncing off—just out of reach—to resume its piteous cries for rescue.

  You stupid lint-brained furball! Can’t you see I’m trying to rescue you? Kellen thought with something more than irritation.

  Finally, he’d gone as high as he could go without falling himself. The tree trunk itself swayed slowly with his weight, a slow sickening motion that would surely give away his presence here if anyone bothered to look. The kitten was just above him, on an even narrower branch.

  And for one brief moment, all its featherbrained feline attention was devoted to keeping its balance. Kellen lunged, grabbed it around its middle, tore it loose from its perch, and stuffed it down into his tunic as deep as he could, wrapping one arm around himself to keep it from struggling free.

  Kittens, Kellen discovered at that very moment, might be small and helpless-looking, but they had a very large number of very sharp claws. The claws weren’t big, but they made up for their lack of size in degree of sharpness.
He was being lacerated by needles. He clamped his mouth shut on a yell, which would only have attracted unwanted attention.

  Gritting his teeth and trying to concentrate, he turned toward the trunk, feeling with his foot for the branch below.

  And slipped.

  His descent from the tree was much faster and far less comfortable than his ascent. Kellen grabbed one-handed at everything he could to slow his fall, but his weight and the speed of his fall tore the branches from his fingers almost as soon as he grasped them.

  At last he stopped.

  Abruptly. On his back.

  He struggled to breathe for a moment, and his vision greyed out, then returned as he managed to gasp in a breath.

  Kellen lay on the ground, panting, taking in huge gulps of air, looking up at the tree. He was dimly aware of something struggling free of his tunic and worming its way out through the neck-hole.

  I’ve broken my back. Father will have a fit.

  A healing-Mage could mend a broken back of course, and it wasn’t as if Lycaelon couldn’t afford the best there was—but oh, what he’d have to say about it!

  He twitched feet and hands experimentally, then moved arms and legs. They all worked, and no movements produced any stabbing pains …

  Oh, good. I haven’t broken my back. Or anything else, I guess.

  Groggily he sat up, shaking his head. Leaves, flower petals, and bits of twig rained down on him from his hair and from the hole he’d left through the branches as he fell.