The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Read online

  “I shall be in my chambers for the rest of the afternoon,” Savilla announced, leading Zyperis toward the door that led to her rooms. “My … private chambers.”

  Chapter Six

  A College of Magicks

  KELLEN WAS SURE there would be further repercussions from the quarrel in the morning. He’d rarely dared to contest his father’s will openly in the past—certainly he’d never before gone so far as to raise his voice to his father—and the punishment for not falling immediately into line with whatever Lycaelon had planned for him had always been swift, unpleasant, and crushing.

  But to his faint surprise and great relief, Lycaelon seemed disinclined to pursue the matter this time. Maybe having his offspring talk back to him had taken him by surprise. Or maybe he just hadn’t yet managed to think of a punishment commensurate with the “crime.”

  Whatever the reason, Lycaelon was already gone by the time Kellen came downstairs in the morning. Second Morning Bells were ringing throughout the City, and the breakfast table was cleared. The servants didn’t seem to have any “special orders” regarding Kellen, so he resorted to his usual morning habit of sneaking into the kitchen and filching leftovers from the sideboard, then hurried off to class.

  Fortunately this wasn’t one of the mornings that he had to face his tutor. Having seen Anigrel yesterday, he wouldn’t see him again until tomorrow. All he had to suffer through was the regular round of classes and lectures that were the lot of every Student Apprentice in Magecraft.

  PASSING through the main gate of the College, Kellen entered the Quadrangle. At this time of day it was filled with bodies—Students in their plain blue robes, Entered Apprentices in grey robe and soft cap, Journeymen in grey robe and tabard, Mages in their colors, all hurrying (in the case of Student, Apprentice, and Journeyman) or going leisurely (in the case of Mages) about their business.

  The principal buildings of the Mage College were grouped around the Quadrangle. Just as the wondertales told, there was a fountain in the center of the Quad, but it was of the most mundane sort, a statue of a triton with water spewing from the tips of his trident. The Library and the Chapel of the Light were on the left, the imposing building that held the classrooms and lecture halls on his right. Straight ahead was the building that held the offices of the College, and the tutors’ workrooms that had been Kellen’s destination yesterday. Beyond that—and most carefully and thoroughly warded—was a building containing another series of workrooms, where senior Apprentices and Journeyman Mages practiced and tested their work in spellcraft. They certainly didn’t do so in public on the lawn—another thing the wondertales always got wrong. Though Kellen supposed it would make a very pretty picture—if the Mages had actually been the sort of people the wondertales presented them as being …

  Elsewhere on the grounds—though not near the Quadrangle, which tended to be noisy—were the residence halls of those Mages who, for whatever reason, did not wish to either live with their families or put themselves to the trouble and expense of keeping a house. For the few children from non-Mage families who were discovered to be worth training, other arrangements were made.

  As Kellen crossed the Quadrangle, the bells in the carillon of the Temple of the Light began to chime Third Morning Bells. The sound was picked up by towers throughout the City—though of course the Temple of the Light began every ring, as was only proper—and Kellen realized that if he did not hurry, he’d be late for his first class. And that was the last thing he wanted to be today. He hurried, and was in his appointed seat before the last echoes of Third Bells had sounded.

  THE course was “History of the City,” and here at the College, that meant it was the history of the High Mages as well, for as Mage Hendassar, the Master Undermage who taught them, had told them over and over, the Mages were the City, and the City was the Mages. Kellen generally found the lectures not only pointless, but painful, for Mage Hendassar delighted in humiliating those of his Students whom he could catch unprepared, and Kellen was usually among them.

  But today, it seemed, Mage Hendassar had chosen another victim.

  “Come now, young Master Cilarnen. Surely you can recite for me the names of the Arch-Mages who have led the High Council since the founding of the City. Or perhaps thoughts of romance have distracted you from your studies … ?”

  Kellen glanced up, and saw Cilarnen slide down in his seat as far as he dared, looking uncomfortable. He wondered what was going on. Cilarnen was the son of a high-ranking Mage family—his father was the High Mage Lord Setarion Volpiril—and until now he’d been one of Hendassar’s pets.

  Hendassar turned away from Cilarnen and strode to the front of the room.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Behold before you a young man of flawless birth and impeccable breeding—and heretofore undeniable gifts—who believes that there is something more important than serving the City! Now, can any of you imagine what that is?”

  Kellen shrank down in his own seat in sympathy. Whatever Cilarnen had done, it must be awful.

  All twenty blue-robed Students regarded Mage Hendassar with silent fascination.

  “Women—!” Mage Hendassar said in hushed disgusted tones.

  Several of the bolder members of the class burst into stifled snickers.

  “Now, of course, women are important. Most of you will—eventually—marry, in order to breed strong Mage-sons to serve the City. And of course, your wives will produce daughters as well, since Mages must marry Mageborn daughters in order to keep the bloodline pure. However, we must never forget that women are essentially unimportant to the life of a Mage, unable to participate in or even understand the actual concerns of his life: the practice and study of the Art Magickal.”

  Hendassar broke off to glare at Cilarnen again.

  “There is a time and a place for everything. And certainly when one should be devoting all of one’s energies to the mastery of those concerns which will occupy one’s entire future, one should not be occupying one’s energy in writing love poetry to Lady Amintia. Such as this example.”

  Mage Hendassar reached into his sleeve and withdrew a slender scroll.

  Oh, no. Kellen groaned inwardly. He didn’t like Cilarnen particularly—he didn’t even know him. Lord Volpiril was one of Lycaelon’s rivals on the Council just to begin with, and Lycaelon had disliked his son fraternizing with lesser beings—and in Lycaelon’s mind, even his fellow Mages were lesser beings—but Kellen didn’t like to see anyone publicly humiliated.

  Mage Hendassar began to read out the poem, playing it for laughs—which he got. Kellen didn’t know a lot about poetry; he guessed it was pretty bad, but still, nobody deserved to be treated this way. If Lord Volpiril didn’t want Cilarnen to see Amintia, why hadn’t he just told him so, rather than doing something like this to him?

  At least Kellen’s father had never made him into a public spectacle. He supposed he ought to be grateful for that much. But he knew it wasn’t because Lycaelon cared about him in any way. It was because Lycaelon couldn’t bear the thought of seeming less than perfect: the perfect Arch-Mage with the perfect—and perfectly obedient—son.

  By the time Mage Hendassar had finished reading out the poem, the rest of the class was roaring with laughter, and Kellen was filled with an odd cold anger.

  Why were Mages supposed to be so different from ordinary folk? Kellen had spent a lot of time—much more than either Lycaelon or Anigrel suspected—in the poorer quarters of Armethalieh. He’d had to learn to be handy with his fists, to earn his place among the children there, but once he’d won a few street-fights—his size and strength had served him well, there—they’d accepted him as more than a nasty interloping Mageborn brat, and he’d learned a lot about how the “other folk” lived.

  For instance, he knew that at among tradesmen and laborers—and even among a lot of the non-Mage nobles—people were courting and marrying. Yet the Mageborn weren’t even supposed to think about such a thing until they had reached Journeyman Undermage ran
k at least, if not Master Undermage—and that could take another decade of studying.

  And where did they find the women they were supposed to marry? If Kellen had stayed where he was supposed to stay and only gone where he was told to go, he knew, he doubted he’d ever even see a woman. As a child, he’d played with children in the parks and made friends with them when he’d been under the care of his “Nursies,” but all that had changed as soon as he was deemed old enough and Gifted enough to someday become a Student-Apprentice. Then, Lycaelon had done his best to cut Kellen off from all human contact. If Kellen had not continued to sneak out onto the streets—and carefully concealed the fact—and managed to make friends of his own, however fleeting, he’d have grown up completely alone, for he had no friends among what his father would have called “his own kind.”

  As he’d grown older, Kellen’s own attitude to the hypocrisy he saw in the Mages that were his father’s cronies, as much as the growing rivalry for future place among their sons, had done much to keep him isolated by his own wish, even from those who would have sought to curry favor with the Arch-Mage by cultivating a friendship with his son.

  Kellen did not want friendship on those terms, even if Lycaelon would have permitted it. But it did make him wonder where Lycaelon thought his future daughter-in-law was going to come from. He knew that some of his fellow Students had sisters—they must have, from what Mage Hendassar had said, but …

  There was no point in thinking about it. It wasn’t, after all, a subject that actually interested Kellen very much. And he didn’t need another thing to get himself into trouble about.

  Eventually Mage Hendassar relented, and restored the class to order, assigning Cilarnen a long punishment essay—due at the beginning of the next class—on the History of the Great Arch-Mages. With a few more blighting remarks on the irrelevancy of females to a Mage’s life, he returned to his scheduled lecture.

  After that, it was hard for Kellen to keep his mind on the assigned subject, but he was safe at the back of the room, and Mage Hendassar didn’t seem to be looking for any more victims today. Kellen let his mind drift back to more familiar questions.

  The map of the City, ancient and yellowed, hanging on the wall behind Mage Hendassar caught his eye. Though he’d seen it a thousand times before, today an errant beam of light fell on the legend “Delfier Gate.”

  What was beyond the Delfier Gate? What lands did the Selken Traders sail to? Where were the Out Islands, exactly? Somewhere beyond the mouth of the harbor, but where?

  Like every other inhabitant of the City, Kellen knew—vaguely—about the Home Farms, the villages that grew the food the City consumed. He knew the Mountain Traders brought things down from the High Hills that made their way into the City in the trading caravans—furs and spices and medicinals—but the High Hills were no more than a name to him. He knew there must be lands beyond the sea that produced the goods that came in the Traders’ ships and appeared in the City markets. But those places weren’t even names.

  Why not?

  He’d never thought about it before.

  He’d been carefully encouraged not to, Kellen realized, just as he’d been encouraged not to think about marriage and family and Mageborn girls—about anything outside of his studies, in fact. The only histories he’d learned were the history of the City and its inhabitants and the history of the High Magick. As for geography … he could draw a map of the better quarters of the City from memory, but set him one foot outside its walls, and he’d be lost.

  That wasn’t right.

  Was it?

  Surely the information existed somewhere, even if it wasn’t being taught.

  After History came Geography—another boring useless class—and then Natural Philosophy. And then the day’s lessons were done. Kellen headed for his locker to put away his books and then headed quickly out through the gates, his robe bundled beneath his arm, intent on finding the answers to at least some of his questions.

  Though the information he sought might very well be archived within the walls of the Library of the Mage College, there was no possibility of Kellen’s getting at it there. No one below the rank of Entered Apprentice was allowed beyond the small first-floor Student Reference Library, and Entered Apprentice was a rank Kellen had yet to reach—he was still a lowly Student-Apprentice, not yet allowed to exchange his humble blue robe for one of magickal grey.

  But there was more than one library in the Golden City …

  Without anyone noticing, he made his way to the Great Library that stood at the center of the City, across from the Main Temple of the Light. The two buildings had been designed to complement each other: Wisdom and Knowledge marching hand in hand.

  Uneasily, Kellen touched the Talisman he wore around his neck on a heavy gold chain, the golden symbol of his citizenship. Though they might wear it on a leather cord or a cotton string or a silver chain or one of gold and jewels, every citizen of Armethalieh wore the same gold rectangle, marking them as a citizen of Armethalieh. Each month you brought it to the Temple of the Light and exchanged it for a new one. You came to the Temple of the Light for your new Talisman on the moonday on which you had been born, so that everyone didn’t end up coming on the same day. Kellen had been born on the eighth day of the moon, and so, ever since his Naming, when he had received his first Talisman, he had been brought—or later, came alone—to the appropriate Temple of the Light (the main one in the City Square, of course; Lycaelon’s social consequence would admit of no less) to receive a fresh Talisman.

  The ceremony was simple: the old Talisman went into one bowl, the new Talisman came out of another, was blessed by the Arch-Priest, and placed into the worshiper’s hand. As the bowls filled (or emptied) they were taken away by Deacons of the Light, and new bowls were brought.

  Then you stepped aside, and someone else took your place. There were always a dozen young Deacons of the Light standing around to help make sure you could get your Talisman back onto its keeper-chain again without trouble, and to be sure you were wearing it when you left.

  It had always seemed like a great deal of unnecessary fuss, when keeping the same identification Talisman until it wore out, was damaged, or was lost would surely have served the City’s purposes (so he’d once thought) just as well. He’d never questioned why—like so many things in the City, it was just the way things were, and custom was custom, not to be questioned.

  But now, after what Anigrel had told him, Kellen wondered if he could ever do it again, could ever face the Light-Priest and hand over his Talisman with the same calm acceptance, knowing that when he did so he was giving up a part of himself? How could he, knowing that the Mages fed upon him, upon all the citizens of Armethalieh, as if they were no more than a herd of milk-cattle?

  It was disgusting. No, worse than that. It was sick.

  And worst of all, Kellen didn’t see a single thing he could do about it.

  Gritting his teeth, Kellen turned away from the Temple of the Light and strode up the steps into the Great Library.

  It was City Law that one copy of every book that came into the City had to be kept available here. Most people who used the Library had to go to one of the Reading Rooms, fill out a request, and wait for the books they wanted to be brought to them, but there were some advantages to being the Arch-Mage’s son. Kellen was greeted personally by the Chief Librarian, and after a few vague comments about needing to do some research—Kellen didn’t say for what, and if the Chief Librarian assumed it was for his magickal studies, well, he didn’t say anything to correct the man’s mistake—the Chief Librarian presented him with an “All Access” pass to the stacks.

  Kellen hung the square silver tag around his neck so that it would be plainly visible, thanked the man politely and profusely, assured him he would remember him to his father the Arch-Mage, and made his escape into the stacks.

  THIS was not the first time he’d been here—Anigrel had brought him once or twice before—but it was the first time Kellen had be
en here unescorted. Panels of Magelight illuminated the long shelves of books in the windowless corridors, and the faint hum of Preservation Spells, endlessly renewed, made the air sleepy and thick. Fortunately, the Great Library used the same cataloguing system as the smaller Student Reference Library at the Mage College did, so Kellen knew where to look for what he wanted.

  He began with travelogues. Surely there would be some information there about the lands beyond the City.

  But though he made a promising beginning—all the books in that section were marked “Do Not Circulate,” which meant they must contain something interesting—Kellen discovered to his disgust that every single one of them was fiction. Tales of travel to the moon, beneath the sea, to ridiculous wondertale kingdoms at the center of the earth. None of them had anything to do with the real world.

  By the time he finished his investigations, the closing bell had rung—joined, he could hear faintly, by the echoing bells of Evensong sounding throughout the City. Kellen tucked his pass inside his tunic—he had no intention of giving it up just yet—and hurried out of the Library. He was far from finished.

  BUT his experiences the following day mirrored those of the first. As soon as his lesson with Anigrel was finished, Kellen returned to the Great Library—making sure the key to the garden was safe in his pocket, this time. Now he turned his searches to books of geography, to anything with maps, and was similarly disappointed. Either the books were missing entirely from the Library’s shelves—although you really couldn’t say they were missing, when it was obvious they’d never been there in the first place—or they were obviously fantasies. And even the fantasies were marked “Do Not Circulate,” as if someone didn’t want the citizens of Armethalieh—or at least, the ones who couldn’t afford to buy books of their own—to even think about the possibility of a world beyond the City walls.