The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Read online

  Kellen was seventeen, and had been a Student for three years now, and although that was probably the acme of ambition for most young men in this City, he would rather have forgone the “honor” entirely. It would have been a great deal easier, all things considered, if he had never been born among the Gifted. On the whole, he would much rather have been completely and utterly ordinary. His father would have been disgusted.

  And I could have gotten out of this place. I could have gone to be a sailor … It would have gotten him as far as the Out Islands, at least. And from there, who knew?

  Mages weren’t always born to Mage fathers, and certainly not only to Mages, but in Kellen’s case, if he hadn’t been among the Gifted, Lycaelon would probably have had apoplexy—or gone looking for his wife’s extramarital interest. Or both. The blood in Kellen’s veins contained—as he was reminded only too often—the distillation of a hundred Arch-Mages past, half of whom had held the seat of a Lord of the High Council at some point during their lifetimes.

  That was difficult enough to live up to, but he was also the son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon Tavadon, ruler of the City and the current Arch-Mage of the High Council.

  That made his life so unbearably stultifying that Kellen would gladly have traded places with an apprentice pig-keeper, if there were such a thing to be found within the walls of Armethalieh.

  Wherever Kellen went in his father’s world, there were critical eyes on him, weighing his lightest deed, his least word. Only here, in the “common” quarters of the artisans, the shopkeepers, and the folk for whom magick was a rare and expensive commodity, here where no one knew who he was, did Kellen feel as if he could be himself.

  And yet, even here, the heavy hand of Arch-Magisterial regulation intruded.

  For these were the markets of Armethalieh, and Armethalieh was the greatest city in the world, after all. This should have been a place where wonders and novelties abounded. The harbor welcomed ships from every place, race, and culture, and caravans arrived at the Delfier Gate daily laden with goods from every conceivable place. There should be a hundred, a thousand new things in the market whenever it opened. And yet—

  And yet the High Council intruded, even here.

  They, and not the merchants, determined what could be sold in the marketplace. And only products that had been approved by the High Council could make an appearance here. Inspectors roamed the streets, casting their critical eyes over the stalls and stores, and anything that looked new or different was challenged.

  In fact, there was one such Inspector in his black-and-yellow doublet and parti-colored hose just ahead of Kellen now. The Inspector was turning to look at the contents of a ribbon-seller’s stall with a frown.

  “What’s this?” he growled, poking with his striped baton of office at something Kellen couldn’t see.

  The stall-holder didn’t even bother to answer or argue; he just slapped his permit down atop the offending object. Evidently, this Inspector was a fellow well known to the merchant.

  “Council’s allowed it, Greeley, so take your baton off my property afore you spoil it,” the man growled back. From his look of offended belligerence, Kellen guessed that the merchant had been targeted by this particular Inspector in the past.

  The Inspector removed his baton, but also picked up the permit and examined it minutely—and managed to block all traffic down this narrow street as he did so. Kellen wasn’t the only one to wait impatiently while the surly, mustachioed official took his time in assuring himself that the permit was entirely in order. Granted, some merchants had tried—and probably would continue to try—to use an old permit for a new offering, bypassing the inspection process, but that didn’t mean the old goat had call to block the street!

  “It’s in order,” Greeley grunted at last, and finally moved away from the stall so that people could get by again.

  “Interfering bastard,” the merchant muttered just as Kellen went past. “Even if it wasn’t, what difference would a new pattern of woven ribbons make, for the Eternal Light’s sake?”

  Kellen glanced down curiously to see the disputed objects that had so raised the Inspector’s ire. The merchant was smoothing out his wares, and Kellen could easily see why the Inspector’s interest had been aroused. The ribbons in question were of the usual pastel colors that custom decreed for female garb, but the patterns woven into them were angular, geometric, and intricate, like the mosaics made from square ceramic tiles by the Shan-thin farmers of the north. There wasn’t a hint of the flowers and leaves usually woven into such ribbons, and although he wasn’t exactly the most expert in matters of lady’s dresses, Kellen didn’t think he’d ever seen ribbons like this before. Well! Something new!

  And the merchant was right—what difference could this make to anyone?

  Despite the Council’s eternal restrictions, the Market Quarter was still a lush, rich place to wander through, from the heady scents of the Spice Market to the feast for the eyes of the fabrics in the Clothworkers’ and Trimmers’ Market.

  But though there was a great deal of abundance, and it was all wonderfully extravagant (at least, in the markets that Kellen’s class frequented), creating an impression of wealth and plenty, it was all the same as it ever had been, or ever would be, except in the minutest of details. It was the same way throughout the entire City—throughout Kellen’s entire life—tiny meaningless changes that made no difference. A pattern here, a dance step there, a scarf added or subtracted from one’s attire—someone who had lived in Armethalieh five hundred years ago could come back and be perfectly at home and comfortable now.

  And if the High Council continued to govern as it had, someone who would live here five hundred years hence could return and find nothing of note changed.

  Is that any way to live?

  Somehow, that chance encounter with the Inspector had given form to Kellen’s vague discontent. That was what was wrong with this place! That was why he felt as if he was being smothered all the time, why he was so restless and yearned to be anywhere but here!

  Abruptly, Kellen changed his mind. He was not going to the Booksellers’ Market. Instead, he would go to the Low Market. Maybe among the discards of generations past he might find something he hadn’t seen a thousand times. He hadn’t ever been to the Low Market, where (it was said) all the discards of the City eventually ended up. It was in a quarter inhabited by the poorest workers, the street-sweepers, the scullery-help, the collectors of rubbish, the sewer-tenders—people who had a vested interest in allowing those merchants of detritus to camp on their doorsteps twice a sennight.

  Yes, he would go there and hope to find something different. And even if he didn’t, well, at least being in the Low Market would be something akin to novelty, with the added fillip of knowing that if Lycaelon found out about where his son had gone, he would be utterly horrified.

  THERE were no “stalls” as such in the Low Market, and no awnings sheltering goods and merchants, only a series of spaces laid out in chalk on the cobbles of Bending Square. The “square” itself was a lopsided space surrounded by apartment buildings of four and five stories, centered by a public pump. Within each space each would-be merchant was free to display what he or she had for sale in whatever manner he or she chose. No Inspectors ever bothered to come here, and in fact, it wasn’t even “officially” a market.

  Some of the sellers laid out a pitiful assortment of trash directly on the stones; some had dirty, tattered blankets upon which to display their findings; some presided over a series of wooden boxes through which the customers rummaged. The most prosperous had actual tables, usually with more boxes piled beneath. Kellen stopped before one of these, inspecting the seller’s wares curiously.

  He fingered an odd piece of sculpture made of brass with just enough silver in the crevices to tell him it had once been plated. The table was heaped with odd metal bric-a-brac, doorknobs, hinges and latches, old keys, tiny dented dishes meant for salt, pewter spoons.

  “That there�
�s a knife-rest, sor,” said the ugliest cheerful man—or the cheerfullest ugly man—Kellen had ever seen. He picked up the object that Kellen had been examining with puzzlement, a sort of two-headed horse no longer than his finger. “Gentry used to have ’em at dinner, so’s not to soil the cloth when they put their knives down.” He set the object in the middle of a minuscule clear spot, and demonstrated, setting a knife with the blade on the horse’s back and the handle on the table.

  Well—something I never heard of! Kellen thought, pleased.

  “Fell out of fashion, oh, in my great-great-granddam’s time,” the man continued, looking at the object with fondness, and Kellen conceived an irrational desire for the thing. It was absurd, a foolish bit of useless paraphernalia to clutter up an already cluttered dinner table, and he wanted it.

  “How much?” he asked, and the haggling began.

  Irrational desire or not, Kellen wasn’t going to be taken for a gull, if only for the reason that if he paid the asking price, every creature in the market with something to sell would be on him in a heartbeat, determined not to let him go until every coin in his pocket was spent.

  It was only when the knife-rest was his that Kellen gave it a good look, and discovered it wasn’t a two-headed horse at all—but a two-headed unicorn, the horns worn down by much handling to mere nubs. For some reason, the discovery made him feel immensely cheered, and he tucked it in his pocket, determined to have it re-silvered and start using it at dinner.

  And his father wouldn’t be able to say a word. There were no edicts against reviving an old fashion, after all, even a foolish one, only against starting something new. The little sculpture rested heavily, but comfortably, in the bottom of his pocket; it felt like a luck-piece.

  Maybe I won’t use it. Maybe I’ll just have it plated and keep it as a charm against boredom.

  At the farther end of the square, Kellen spotted a bookseller—one of the prosperous individuals who had tables and boxes of books beneath. The errand that had originally sent Kellen to the Booksellers’ Market had been to find a cheap edition of one of the Student Histories—Volume Four, Of Armethalieh and Weather, to be precise. Lycaelon’s personal library had one, of course—how could it not?—but Kellen wanted one of his own that he could mark up with his own notes in the margins. This was a practice that infuriated his tutor, Anigrel, and frustrated his father, but as long as he did it in his own books, rather than in the pristine volumes in Lycaelon’s library, there was nothing either of them could really say about it. He was, after all, studying.

  I might as well see if there’s one here. It’ll be cheaper, and besides, if it’s full of someone else’s notes from lectures, I might not need to take any of my own.

  Besides, it might be amusing to read what some other Student had thought of the Histories.

  He didn’t go straight to the bookstall, however, for that would be advertising his interest. Instead, he worked his way down the aisle between the chalk lines, examining a bit of broken clockwork here, a set of mismatched napkins there. It had the same sort of ghoulish fascination as watching the funeral of a stranger, this pawing over the wreckage, the flotsam and jetsam of other people’s lives. Who had torn the sleeves out of this sheepskin jacket, and why? How had the hand got bitten off this carved wooden doll? What on earth use was a miniature funeral carriage? If it was a play-toy, it was certainly a ghoulish one. If those rusty stains on this shirt were blood—then was that slash a knife wound?

  People came and went from the apartment buildings surrounding the vendors; tired and dirty and coming home from their work, or clean and ready for it. One thing living here did guarantee—that you had a job, a roof over your head, and enough money to feed you. If the roof was a single room and you crammed yourself, your spouse, and half a dozen children into it, well, that was your business and your problem. At least the building was going to be kept in good repair by your City taxes, your spouse and your children could find work to bring in enough to feed all the mouths in the family, and just perhaps one of your kids would turn out to be Gifted and become a Mage—and support the whole family.

  Eventually he got to his goal, and feigning complete disinterest, began digging through the books. The bookseller himself looked genuinely disinterested in the possibility of a sale; from his expression, Kellen guessed that he was suffering either from a headache or a hangover, and would really rather have been in bed.

  Luck was with him, or perhaps his new little mascot had brought it—Kellen found not only the Volume Four he was looking for—in a satisfyingly battered and annotated condition—but Volumes Five, Six, and Seven, completing the set. They had stiff, pasteboard bindings of the cheapest sort, with the edges of the covers bent and going soft with use and abuse. They looked as if they’d been used for everything but study, which made them all the more valuable in Kellen’s eyes, for the worse they looked, the less objection Anigrel could have to his marking them up further. And the more Lycaelon would wince when he saw his son with them.

  I can hear him now—“We’re one of the First Families of the City, not some clan of rubbish-collectors! If you must have your own copies to scribble in, for the One’s sake, why couldn’t you at least have bought a proper set in proper leather bindings!” And I’ll just look at him and say, “Are the words inside any different?” And of course he’ll throw up his hands and look disgusted.

  Baiting his father was one of Kellen’s few pleasures, although it had to be done carefully. Pushed too far, Lycaelon could restrict him to the house and grounds, allowing him to leave only to go to his lessons. And an Arch-Mage found enforcing his will a trivial matter—and one unpleasant for his victim.

  He was about to get the bookseller’s attention, when a faint hint of gilding caught his eye. It was at the bottom of a pile he’d dismissed as holding nothing but old ledgers. There were three books there, in dark bindings, and yes, a bit of gilding. Rather out-of-keeping with the rest of these shabby wares.

  Huh. I wonder what that is—

  Whatever it was, the very slender volumes bound in some fine-grained, dark leather, with just a touch of gilt on the spine, seemed worth the effort of investigating. At the worst, they’d turn out to be some silly girl’s private journals of decades past, and he might find some amusement in the gossip of a previous generation.

  If he’d been in a regular bookseller’s stall, Kellen might not have bothered. But …

  It might be something interesting. And it’s bound to be cheap.

  If it wasn’t a set of journals, the books might even do as a present for his father if the books were in halfway decent shape. An obsessive bibliophile, Lycaelon was always looking for things for his library. Literally anything would do so long as it wasn’t a book he already had, and his Naming Day Anniversary would be in two moonturns.

  It would be a bit better than the usual pair of gloves I’ve gotten him for the past three years.

  It took Kellen some work to get down to the three volumes on the bottom of the pile, but when he did, he found himself turning them over in his hands with some puzzlement. There was nothing on the spine of each but a single image—a sun, a crescent moon, and a star. Nothing on the cover, not even a bit of tooling, and the covers themselves were in pristine condition—

  Odd. Definitely out of keeping with the rest of the wares here.

  He opened the front covers to the title pages.

  Handwritten, not printed, title pages …

  The Book of Sun. That was the first, and the other two were The Book of Moon and The Book of Stars. Journals after all? He leafed through the pages, trying to puzzle out the tiny writing. The contents were handwritten as well, and so far from being journal entries, seemingly dealt with magick.

  They shouldn’t be here at all! Kellen thought with a sudden surge of glee. They looked like workbooks of some sort, but books on magick were very closely kept, with Students returning their workbooks to their tutors as they outgrew them, and no book on magick that wasn’t a part
of a Mage’s personal library was supposed to leave the grounds of the Mage College at all.

  Perhaps some Student had made his own copies for his own use, and they’d gotten lost, to end up here?

  But they weren’t any of the recognized Student books, or anything like them, as far as Kellen could tell. The handwriting was neat but so small that the letters danced in front of his eyes, and the way that the letters were formed was unfamiliar to him, slightly slanted with curved finials. But it seemed to him that he recognized those three titles from somewhere.

  Father be hanged. I want these. Without bothering to look through them any further, he put them on the top of his pile and caught the stall-holder’s eye. The poor fellow, sweating furiously, heaved himself up out of his chair, and got a little more lively when Kellen made only a token gesture at bargaining. Profit, evidently, was the sovereign remedy for what ailed him.

  He got out a bit of old, scraped paper and even began writing up a bill of sale with the merest stub of a graphite-rod, noting down titles and prices in a surprisingly neat hand.

  “Ah, got younger sibs at home, do you?” the man asked when he got to the last three special volumes.

  “No—” Kellen said, startled by the non sequitur. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, children’s stories—” The man gestured at Kellen’s three prizes. “I just thought—” Then he shrugged, wrote down three titles and prices, and handed the receipt to Kellen, who looked down at it in confusion.

  There were his Student’s Histories, Volumes Four, Five, Six, and Seven—but what was this? Tales of the Weald, Fables of Farm and Field, and Hearth-side Stories?