The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Read online

  As he worked, he wondered if it would be just too cold-blooded to ask Perulan what he wanted to know about the City and the lands beyond. He liked Perulan, and he didn’t want to make trouble for him, and Kellen had already come to realize that there were some questions meant never to be asked—or answered.

  But even without asking outright, Kellen found out some things that, just as Perulan had warned, he would have been happier not knowing.

  “SO you’re from a Mage family, young Kellen?” Perulan asked. “I would not have thought it. You haven’t the look, as you are no doubt long tired of hearing.”

  Kellen choked on his lunchtime cider, managing (with an effort) to swallow decorously. “But how did you know?” he asked when he was able.

  “Come come, young sir. A writer must be observant, and I was born into a Mage-family myself, as you are certainly aware. While you have a talent for hard labor, you’re no laborer, and a member of a Trade family would be hard at his apprenticeship at your age. What does that leave?”

  “Mages,” Kellen said bitterly.

  Perulan raised his eyebrows and smiled faintly.

  “Ah, speak softly of our beloved rulers—or else they’ll find what you love best and cherish most, and turn it to ash before your very eyes.”

  Kellen stared at him.

  “I’m Perulan the Writer, as you know—only Perulan the Writer’s last and greatest work was denied a publication license, and so it was destroyed by the High Council before his very eyes. For the good of the City, of course. It is always for the good of the City.” The smile faded, and Perulan stared bleakly off into space, contemplating something Kellen couldn’t see.

  “Do you think it really is?” Kellen asked before he could stop himself. “How can they know? Aren’t they just trying to—well—make all of us quiet and fat and not think, just so we’ll want to keep things as they are, like them? So we won’t want to even think about leaving the City? But the City isn’t the only place in the world!”

  “No,” Perulan agreed. “There are other places—across the sea, across the forest—and they do things very differently there. To be different is not to be wrong, or even inferior. Only … different.”

  “Can you—” Kellen said, and stopped himself.

  “Can I tell you about them?” Perulan asked. “Yes, and perhaps I will, if you are certain that is what you wish. But not now. Think about whether you really want to know, Kellen-of-a-Mage family, and ask me again. Perhaps you will come to dinner, and we will talk, once you have finished with my cistern.”

  IT was the backbreaking work of several more days, but at last Kellen had dug down to bare stone, and then filled in the cistern again. From somewhere a load of old brick appeared to greet him one morning, and on another day, an iron-bound cistern cover cut to size—Perulan’s doing, Kellen supposed. Kellen tumbled the bricks into the hole, layering them in with fresh-dug clean dirt from the lot and stamping on each layer to pack it tight as he put it in. He buried the muck and trash he’d dug out of the cistern in the hole he’d dug to get the fill dirt, and stacked the bigger pieces of trash to be hauled away.

  Last of all, he used the back of the shovel to bang the heavy wooden stakes that would hold the cover in place into the dirt around the edges of the cistern, then stepped back to admire his work.

  No more rats, no more garbage, no more stink.

  He was done.

  “Excellent work, young Kellen,” Perulan said. The older man came to stand beside him, gazing down at the cistern cover. It was the first time Kellen had seen Perulan leave his house. “I suppose now that your task is done, our fair neighborhood will no longer be graced with your presence?”

  “I …” In truth, Kellen hadn’t thought much past getting the cistern filled in.

  “No matter,” Perulan said graciously. “I think I shall not be here much longer myself. And now, the time grows late. Would you care to join me in my evening meal?”

  Looking around, only now did Kellen realize that he had grown so engrossed in his task that he had not even heard the sound of Evensong Bells. In fact, he had stayed later at Perulan’s house than ever before. The sun was westering, and it was already almost too dark to see. But his father wouldn’t be home yet—and even if he was, what would it matter? Whether Kellen tried to do what Lycaelon wanted or not, the end result was the same: these days, it seemed, they always ended up arguing.

  “Sure. I mean, I’d like that, gentlesir.”

  Dinner was a more elaborate meal than the lunches Kellen had enjoyed at Perulan’s house, with a large hot meat pie brought from the local cookshop, roast fowl and potatoes prepared by Perulan’s all-but-invisible maidservant, baked apples roasted on the hearth, and candied fruits and wine to follow.

  The parlor was mellow in the golden light cast by the fat white candles in the fixture hanging over the table, and warmth radiated from the tiled hearth tucked into one corner.

  “You asked me once what I knew of the world outside the City,” Perulan said when the servant had cleared away the dishes and retired to the kitchen. “Would it surprise you to know that when I was a young man, I had a correspondence with, well, let us call them Folk From Away?”

  Kellen stared at him, a piece of candied ginger halfway to his lips. “But how? That’s not possible!” he stammered.

  “Not quite impossible, merely difficult, my young Student. The Selken-folk smuggled my letters out, and smuggled my correspondents’ replies back in. It can be done, with trust, and for a price—the Selken-folk have no love for the Mage Council, and are happy to trick them if they can. And I was young and adventurous—just as you are now—and wanted to know everything about the world and all it contains.

  “But—alas!—then I grew famous, and well regarded, and had more to lose than when I was a hungry young struggling writer. I thought of that and became cowardly. I stopped writing to my friends across the sea because I feared the risk of discovery.”

  Perulan stopped, and took a long drink from his wine cup, staring down into it broodingly. “But now … I no longer have anything to lose. Now, I think, I will pay my Selken friends to smuggle me away. It will hurt to leave Armethalieh, but if I cannot write the books I want to write, I might as well be dead, and in the face of death, exile holds no terrors.”

  “But—But—Why can’t you just go live in the country if you don’t like the City anymore?” Kellen asked, floundering to accept this torrent of new ideas. It was one thing to see someone leave, to dream of leaving himself, but to actually talk to someone about leaving …

  Perulan smiled sadly, shaking his head.

  “My dear young Kellen, have you ever heard of anyone who did? The villages exist to serve the City with their crops and their taxes and their labor, as much our beasts of burden as the horses who pull our carts. Citizens and villagers don’t mix and never have, despite the foolish fables I have written. If I were to go out into the villages, the villagers would know me for a citizen and hate me for it—and for the hope of reward, cheerfully turn me over to the Council’s soldiery to be returned to the City. No. If I am to leave, I must leave Armethalieh entirely: leave the City and all its lands.”

  “But couldn’t you just go openly?” Kellen asked. It was true that he’d never heard of anyone doing that, but surely some people …

  He realized that, deep down inside, even though he had imagined leaving, buried in that daydream had been the surety of coming back someday. As much as he hated the restrictions Armethalieh placed upon its citizens, hated the thought of living the life his father had planned out for him, the City was the only home he had ever known.

  Perulan laughed bitterly and patted his hand. “Dear boy! I forget how young you are! I assure you: the Council would never let someone go forth to bear tales to ‘unknown enemies.’ No, Armethalieh the Golden hoards her treasures—and her people—for always. But I hope, if the Light is kind, that there may be a way for one of her Golden Children to escape her …”

  Ke
llen turned his head, distracted by a flicker of movement at the kitchen door. But when he looked, there was no one there.

  “But how?” he asked, turning back and forgetting the momentary distraction. “If the Council won’t let you go—?”

  “It is best that I tell you nothing more. What you do not know, you cannot reveal, even under Truthspell, and more lives than mine are at risk upon this venture. But though we may see one another again, I think it best if we say our true good-byes now. I have enjoyed our friendship, Kellen, and allow me to offer you one last piece of advice: if you ever think to leave Armethalieh the Golden, go quickly, go far, and trust none of her citizens with your intentions.”

  “I won’t,” Kellen said, getting to his feet. “Good-bye, sir. May the Light go with you.”

  “And with you,” Perulan said gravely.

  IT was nearly midnight when Kellen reached home, for he had gone slowly, his thoughts full of his conversation with Perulan. To leave the City! It was one thing to stow away on a ship as a young man of Kellen’s age, like the fellow he’d seen down at the docks. But for someone as important, as well connected, as Perulan to be contemplating it …

  Where did they go, the ones who successfully escaped Armethalieh’s golden chains of privilege? What other lands did the Selken ships trade with? What was beyond the Delfier Forest, beyond the City lands whose farms fed the City?

  The Council didn’t want anyone to know.

  Why not? What was so bad about them? And if the places over the Sea and Beyond the Forest were so bad, why did Armethalieh trade with those places? Yet they did: by ship and trading caravan both.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Nothing made sense.

  The house was dark when he eased open the unlocked garden gate, carefully locking it again behind him in case someone should check in the morning. This was no time to rouse the servants. He’d remembered to bring the pick and shovel with him, and groped his way down to the gardener’s cottage to put them away. He didn’t think they’d been missed in the last sennight, and as long as they were back now, there shouldn’t be any trouble about them having been gone in the first place.

  Mission accomplished, Kellen headed up to the house. He’d better find some way to get rid of the clothes he’d been wearing all this time as well—even if he washed them, he didn’t think they’d pass muster as something suitable for a son of the House of Tavadon.

  HE knew something was wrong the moment he came through the servants’ quarters into the main part of the house—knew without having any way to forestall whatever disaster was to come. All he could do was just walk right into it, and hope the consequences weren’t too terrible.

  “Don’t you know that people talk?”

  His father came out of his first-floor study—just like an adder out of its hole, Kellen thought unkindly—just as Kellen entered the reception chamber. Kellen froze, his hand on the panel of white marble that led to his staircase, then turned back to face his father. Lycaelon was standing in the doorway of the study, backlit by the yellow glow of candles.

  “Why is it, do you suppose, that you have plenty of time to spend digging ditches and wallowing in muck but not one moment to attend to your studies?” Lycaelon asked him, in the same voice Kellen’s professors used when they asked him a question they didn’t really want an answer to.

  Kellen stared at his father in dawning horror. He’d been so focused—obsessed, really—with getting the cistern cleared, with paying the price the Wild Magic asked, that it hadn’t occurred to him until this moment that he’d simply disappeared for a sennight—cut his regular lessons at the Mage College, missed his private sessions with Undermage Anigrel, everything! What could he possibly say?

  “I was busy,” he muttered. “I’ll do better, I promise.” He winced inwardly at the sound of his own words, knowing they were a feeble and inadequate defense.

  “You’ll forgive me, Kellen, if I don’t think your promises are worth very much. Promises, excuses—all they are is evasions—evasions of your duties and responsibilities! All you care about is yourself and your own pleasures,” Lycaelon answered scornfully.

  “That’s not true! You think cleaning out a clogged cistern is a pleasure? It wasn’t—but at least it helped someone, and it was more constructive than sitting around repeating sigils that I’ve done a hundred times already and listening to useless lectures! You don’t know me—you don’t know who I am or what I think about!” Kellen burst out angrily.

  “ ‘Think’?”

  He should have known better than to try to justify what he’d done.

  Lycaelon obviously wasn’t listening. He’d probably been planning his little lecture for bells now, and he was going to deliver it intact no matter what Kellen said to him.

  “ ‘Think’? I don’t believe you think at all. You certainly don’t act as if you do. Don’t you know that people see you—and talk? Don’t you know that everything you do reflects on my position? Don’t you know that you have a tradition to live up to?”

  Every time he tried to talk to his father, it always came back to this: duties, responsibilities, behave like a good little Tavadon-golem to make everything easy for the great and powerful Arch-Mage! It was all about Lycaelon Tavadon, and nothing about Kellen!

  “Don’t you think,” Kellen shot back, angrily mimicking his father’s tone, “that if you care so much about things like that you’d be better off not having a son at all? Or why don’t you just make a son with magick, so you can get one that’s exactly what you want?” He turned away, opened the panel, and ran up the stairs, ignoring his father’s angry shouts to return.

  Kellen slammed the door to his room behind him and leaned against it, half afraid—and half hopeful—that his father would come after him. Why couldn’t they ever just talk? He knew his father only wanted the best for him, just as Lycaelon wanted the best for the City, but for the past few years, ever since Kellen had started studying the High Magick when he turned fourteen, it seemed they couldn’t even say “good morning” without arguing about Kellen’s behavior.

  Not that Kellen had many opportunities to say “good morning” to his father. For as long as he could remember, Lycaelon Tavadon had been Arch-Mage of Armethalieh, spending more bells at the Council House than he did in his own home. Kellen had been raised by a succession of servants, each staying for a few years before moving on. He saw more of Undermage Anigrel than he did of his own father!

  When it became clear that once again Lycaelon was not going to pursue the matter, Kellen sighed and moved away from the door. He stripped off his dirty, sweaty clothing, and gave himself an unsatisfactory sponge bath from the bowl and pitcher that stood on his night table. At least he’d gotten a good dinner at Perulan’s.

  It was while he was pulling his nightshirt on over his head that it occurred to him Lycaelon must have known more or less where he’d been all week—that crack about “digging ditches” had been pretty close to the mark, after all.

  He frowned for a moment, and then his brow cleared. Well, Perulan had known he was from a Mage family, and had probably just been too polite to admit he knew which one. Gossip was gossip, after all, and gossip was the one thing that could run through the streets of the City of a Thousand Bells faster than a Mage-spell. Probably someone had mentioned to someone else that he was down there, and it had gotten back to his father somehow.

  Mystery solved to his satisfaction, Kellen flung himself down on his bed and slept.

  Chapter Seven

  Magic Unmasked

  THE EARLY MORNING sunlight woke him only a few bells later, and the music of First Morning Bells echoing through the City told him just how early it was. For a moment Kellen contemplated just pulling the covers over his head and going back to sleep, but with a deep sigh, he changed his mind. He was going to prove to his father that he wasn’t the self-seeking irresponsible wilding Lycaelon seemed to think he was. He’d get up and go off to the precinct for his morning lesson with Undermage
Anigrel—and get there early for once! He’d even let the Undermage bore him silly with all the dustiest cantrips in all the High Magick repertoire without a single yawn of complaint. He’d apply himself to his studies, he’d pay attention …

  And maybe—just once—his father would admit he was proud of him.

  For once, Kellen paid attention to his clothes, dressing with particular care in his best green velvet day-tunic and cream linen undertunic, a new pair of low kidskin City boots, and a pair of fawn trousers so form-fitting they were almost hose. He added his usual belt, and after a moment’s thought, added two items he’d never worn before, an elaborately ornamented pencase and matching coinpouch—Naming Day gifts from his father, never worn until now. He transferred some personal items from his old pouch and case to the new one—his pens and knife, some small money, the unicorn knife-rest that he carried as a luck-piece—ran a comb through his unruly hair, glanced at the result in the mirror, and sighed. Time for another haircut, he supposed. Well, Father would have nothing to complain of in his clothes, at least.

  Kellen’s hopeful mood lasted until he reached the kitchens. Though breakfast would have been laid out in the sunny morning parlor for his father, Kellen was usually up too late for it, and made a habit of picking over the remains of the dishes after they’d been returned to the kitchen. The servants turned a blind eye to this particular intrusion into their domain, as it made less work for them than setting out a second breakfast service would, something Kellen would be well within his rights to demand. And as such a demand would reflect directly upon Lycaelon’s own consequence as master of Tavadon House, it would have been enforced, unlike so many of Kellen’s other wishes.

  Seeing the butler’s sideboard empty, Kellen realized that for once he was too early for leftovers and was about to retreat when he heard the servants talking around the corner.