To Light a Candle Page 2

  But he would have to consent. No Wildmage could give up that which belonged to another—not without turning to the Dark.

  She had known the price of the magic, but she could only have hoped he would pay it. Well, he wasn’t going to let her. down. He would be everything she had hoped And if he had been an uncouth barbarian to the Elves of Sentarshadeen, at least he would be an uncouth barbarian whose name would live on in their legends forever.

  If that’s the price, he shouted silently to the Powers, then I will pay it! I wish I didn’t have to, but I swear I pay it willingly and without reservation!

  But more than ever, having surrendered his life, he yearned to keep it. To see the sun again, to feel the gentle summer wind, to walk through the forest or drink a cup of morning tea. But all those things had their price, and so did keeping them. And some prices were too high to pay. The price of his life would be the destruction of all those things, soon or late. The price of keeping his life would be victory for the Endarkened

  No. Never!

  My life for the destruction of the Barrier. A fair bargain. Done. Done!

  Then the pain was too great for thought.

  Abruptly the obelisk began to swell, its stark lines distorting as if the malign power it contained was backing up inside it, filling it beyond its capacity. Its swelling carried him upward; he. collapsed against its surface, clinging to the keystone, and still it swelled. Now the stone was a baneful pus-yellow color, nearly spherical. Kellen lay upon its surface, unable to preserve the thought of anything beyond the need to maintain the link

  The whole cairn shook like a tree in a windstorm.

  The toxic light flared lightning-bright.

  And for Kellen, there was sudden darkness and a release from all pain.

  THEN, of course, there was a return to life, and pain. And since the latter meant that he still had the former, it was less unwelcome than it might have been. And through the pain, the faces of Vestakia and Jermayan—so they had survived!

  It had all been worth it then. Only afterward did it occur to him that the compounded trouble he had fallen back into might make him begin to regret that return to life …

  IT had taken them only a sennight to travel from Sentarshadeen—easternmost of the Nine Cities—into the heart of the Lost Lands to face the power of Shadow Mountain.

  The return trip took longer, though at least nobody was trying to kill them this time. That did not mean, however, that the journey was less trying. If anything, it was physically harder.

  To begin with, it was raining—although rain, Kellen reflected grimly, wearily, was a mild word to apply to the water that had been falling from the sky nonstop for the last moontum.

  It was just a good thing that Elven armor didn’t—couldn’t—rust.

  Jermayan, of course, didn’t mind the rain at all. But the Elven lands had been suffering under the effects of a deadly spell-inflicted drought for almost a year. Kellen had only spent a few days in Sentarshadeen before heading north toward the Barrier, and even what little he’d seen of the Elves’ desperate attempts to save their city and the forest surrounding it had been enough to daunt him. How much more terrifying must it have been for an Elven Knight, one of the land’s protectors, to watch everything he loved wither and die for sennight upon sennight, knowing there was nothing he could do about it?

  No wonder Jermayan welcomed the rain.

  Vestakia didn’t seem to mind the weather all that much either. But then, Vestakia had spent her entire life living nearly alone in a little shepherd’s hut in the wildest part of the Lost Lands, with only a few goats for company. A little rain—or even a lot of rain—probably didn’t bother her too much.

  But it felt increasingly like torture to Kellen. For one thing, he still wasn’t all that used to uncontrolled weather. He’d grown up in the Mage-City of Armethalieh, where everything—including the weather—was governed by the rule of the High Mages. He’d never actually seen rain until he’d been Banished by the High Council for his possession of the three Books of Wildmagery—and his Banishment hadn’t been that long ago. He’d never had to stand out in the rain in his life.

  But now … well, there wasn’t anything like a roof for leagues and leagues, probably. Even when they stopped to rest, they never really got out of the rain. The most they could manage was to drape some canvas over themselves, or, if they were lucky, find a half-cave, or shelter under a tree.

  To add to his misery, he was still suffering from the injuries he had gotten in his battle to break the Barrier-spell. He’d been so sure that his life would be the price of the spell that awakening afterward had been a shock. After all, every kind of magic required payment, and the first lesson the Wildmage learned was that each spell of the Wild Magic came with a cost, both in the personal energy of the caster, and in the form of a task the Wildmage must perform.

  But in this case, it seemed his willingness to sacrifice his life had been enough. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the cost had been his willingness to live and endure.

  If you can call this living, he thought, as he rode along behind the others in the direction of home. His injuries had been so severe that it had been a sennight before he’d been able to ride at all, and his burned hands were so heavily bandaged that he couldn’t possibly wear his armored gauntlets, much less hold a sword. Any protecting that was going to be done was going to have to be done by Jermayan, and maybe Shalkan, and possibly Vestakia; he was strictly along as baggage.

  He had become so used to pain that now he could hardly remember a time when he had lived without it as a constant presence. And underneath the pain was fear, fear he never openly expressed, but was constantly with him. The fear of what was underneath those bandages.

  He would much rather dwell on the minor misery of the rain.

  His heavy hooded oiled-wool cloak was soaked through. His heavy silk surcoat was wet. The unending rain had managed to make it through both of those layers and even through the tiny joins and chinks in the delicately-jointed Elven armor that he wore, soaking the padding beneath.

  It wasn’t that he was cold—he wasn’t, even with winter coming on. All the layers he wore saw to that. But he’d never felt so soggy in his life.

  He rested the heels of his hands—wrapped in goatskin mittens to keep the bandages dry, and medicated to the point where the pain was only a dull nagging—against the front of his saddle, gazing around himself at the transformed landscape. Everything looked so different now! On the outward trip, they’d been navigating mostly by his Wildmage intuition to find the direction of the Barrier; his sister Idalia, who was a much stronger Wildmage, hadn’t been able to locate it by scrying, and until he and Jermayan had linked up with Vestakia, they’d had no way of sensing it directly. So for the first part of the trip, they’d been traveling mostly by guess … and through a far different countryside than this.

  The rain had changed everything about the landscape that had once been so parched and barren. There were lakes where none had been before, meadows had become impassable swamps, trickling streams had become rivers, and all the landmarks he’d memorized on the outward trip were gone. On their return passage, they’d had to rely on Jermayan’s familiarity with the Elven lands and Valdien’s and Shalkan’s instincts to find them a route that wasn’t underwater or under mud.

  “Are we there yet?” he muttered under his breath.

  “Sooner than you think,” Shalkan answered.

  Kellen sighed. He hadn’t thought Shalkan would be able to hear him over the sound of the rain. But by now, he should know better than to underestimate the keenness of the unicorn’s hearing.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Less than an hour. We’ve already passed the first scouts from Sentarshadeen. They’ve probably gone back to warn the welcoming party to be ready to greet us.” The unicorn’s voice was bland, but Kellen’s stomach clenched in a tight knot of tension. He’d lost all track of how long they’d been traveling, and hadn’t had any idea they we
re so close. Now the aching of his body was joined by the clenching of his gut. They had gone out a party of three. They were returning a party of four. And one of the four was not going to be welcomed with open arms by the Elves.

  “Does he know?” Kellen asked. He nodded to where Jermayan rode on Valdien, with Vestakia—thoroughly bundled up, of course—sitting behind him on the destrier’s saddle. At the end of a long tether, the cream-colored pack mule ambled along behind Valdien, every inch of her covered with the black mud splashed up from the road. At least once they were back in Sentarshadeen it would be someone else’s job to try to get her—and Valdien—clean.

  “He saw them, I imagine,” Shalkan said, without adding the obvious: that naturally Jermayan would recognize exactly where he was, even if Kellen didn’t. And that Elven senses were much keener than Kellen’s. Especially now, when most of Kellen’s awareness was wrapped in pain.

  Almost home—at least, as much home as Sentarshadeen was. Dry, out of the rain, and a chance to sleep in a proper bed again. And most of all, a proper Healer to deal with his hands and anything else that was wrong with him. Kellen tried to look forward to those things.

  Unfortunately, there were a lot of things about their welcome home that he wasn’t looking forward to. And unfortunately, he was not really certain that a Healer would be able to set his hands right again.

  EVEN at the beginning of winter, the Elven valley bloomed. The silver sheen of the unicorn meadow had turned to deep emerald when the rains came, and the parched city had come back to life.

  Released from their desperate hopeless task of attempting to irrigate the forest lands surrounding their canyon home, the Elves had resumed their patrols of the deep woods and the extended borders of their homeland, for now, more than ever, it was vitally necessary, with their ancient Enemy roused to life once more. And only a short time ago, one of those scout-pairs—a unicorn and his rider—had brought word to Queen Ashaniel that Kellen and Jermayan had been sighted upon the road.

  Idalia had been about to scry for news of them when the Queen’s message was brought to her. She had immediately gone to the House of Leaf and Star, both to thank the Queen for the news and to hear more of it than the scouts had brought to her.

  Though the House of Leaf and Star was—in every sense that humans understood the word—the palace of the King and Queen of the Elves, it was not even as grand as the house Idalia had grown up in. Elven buildings were not meant to be imposing, but to be suitable, and although the House of Leaf and Star was one of the largest structures in all the Elven Lands, it still managed to look welcoming and homelike. It was a low, deep-eaved house built of silvery wood and pale stone, and age and strength radiated from it as from an ancient living tree.

  By the time she had crossed the long roofed portico, her cloak and wide-brimmed Mountain Trader hat had shed most of their burden of water, and her boots had dried themselves upon the intricate design of slatted wood with which the portico floor was inlaid—crafted for just that purpose, as all the works of the Elves managed to combine beauty and practicality with flawless ease.

  She was not surprised to see the door open before she reached it.

  “I See you, Idalia Wildmage,” the Elven doorkeeper said politely.

  “I See you, Sakathirin,” Idalia answered with equal politeness. Elvenkind was both an ancient and a long-lived race, and except under extraordinary circumstances, its members were unfailingly courteous and unhurried. Part of the courtesy was the assumption that a person might not wish to be noticed; the greeting I See you was meant to convey acknowledgment of one’s presence, with the implicit right being that one did not have to respond if one wished to be left alone. “I have come to share news with the Lady Ashaniel, if she would See me as well.”

  “The Lady Ashaniel awaits you with joy,” Sakathirin said gravely. “Be welcome at our hearth.” He stepped back to allow Idalia to enter.

  The rain pattering down on the skylight echoed through the tall entry-hall, its music a counterpoint to the splashing of the fountain that once more bubbled and sang beneath it. Idalia smiled, seeing that reflecting pool was once again filled with fish, their living forms mirroring the mosaic they swam above, that of fish swimming in a river. The Elves delighted in this form of shadowplay, combining living things with their copies so expertly that it was often hard for mere humans to tell where Nature ended and Elven artistry began.

  By the time Sakathirin had disposed of her cloak and hat, one of Ashaniel’s ladies-in-waiting had appeared to conduct Idalia to the Queen’s day-room.

  In Armethalieh, such a room would have been called a “solar,” but that was hardly an appropriate word for this room today. The walls were made of glass—hundreds of tiny panes, all held together in a bronze latticework—and the room seemed to hang in space, surrounded by a lacework made of light and air.

  And water.

  Raindrops starred the palm-sized windows, and streaks of rain ran down the outside of the glass like a thousand miniature rivers. The effect might have been chilly, despite the warmth of the lamps and braziers that filled the room, save for the fact that the room’s colors were so warm. The ceiling had been canopied in heavy velvet—not pink, which would only have been garish—but a deep warm taupe, rich as fur. The pillows and carpets picked up those colors and added more: deep violets, ember-orange, a dark clear blue shot through with threads of silver … autumn colors, and those of winter, concentrated and intensified until they kindled the room.

  The Queen herself was dressed in shades of amber, every hue from clear pale candle-flame yellow to the deep ruddy glow of sunset’s heart. Her hair was caught back in a net of gold and fire opals, and she wore a collar of the same stones about her throat.

  “Idalia,” she said, smiling and setting aside her writing desk as she indicated a place beside her on the low couch upon which she sat. “Come and sit beside me, and we will talk. Your brother and Jermayan will not reach the edge of the city for some time yet, and there is much to do in preparation. They seem well enough, so Imriban said,” she added, answering the question Idalia could not, in politeness, ask. “Though Imriban said that the Wildmage rides as one lately injured.”

  Idalia came and seated herself, taking care that her damp buckskins didn’t touch Ashaniel’s elaborate velvet gown.

  “It would be good to hear all of what Imriban had to say,” she offered carefully.

  Learning to speak in accordance with the dictates of Elven politeness was one of the hardest lessons for the humans who came to live among them to learn. The closest it was possible to get to asking a question was to announce your desire to know something, and hope your hearer took pity on you.

  “Imriban said …” Ashaniel paused, and for the first time seemed to be choosing her words with great care. “Imriban said that they do not travel alone.”

  “Not alone—” It was a struggle to keep from turning her words into a question, but Idalia managed. “It puzzles me to hear that,” she finally said.

  “It puzzles me as well,” Ashaniel admitted. “The one who rides with them rides cloaked and hooded beyond all seeing. And it occurs to me to wish that perhaps Imriban had been less … impetuous.”

  And maybe stopped and spoken to them, instead of just tearing back to Sentarshadeen to bring the news that they were on the way. Idalia finished the Queen’s unspoken thought silently. It was hard to imagine who Kellen and Jermayan could have run into on their quest, and why they’d bring whoever it was back to Sentarshadeen.

  “I suppose we’ll know soon enough,” she offered reluctantly.

  “Indeed,” Ashaniel said with a sigh. “And yet … it will be well should we meet them as close upon the road as we may, so Andoreniel has said. Even now, a place is being prepared at the edge of the Flower Forest, where we may receive them in all honor.”

  “LOOKS like they couldn’t wait to meet us,” Shalkan said dryly, dipping his head to indicate the flash of yellow in the distance with his horn.

&
nbsp; “What’s that?” Kellen said superfluously.

  Jermayan cleared his throat warningly before answering. “A pavilion.”

  Kellen took the hint. On the road, their manners had been free and easy—War Manners, Jermayan had called it. The Elven Knight had set aside the elaborate code of Elven formality; he’d asked Kellen direct questions, and Kellen had been allowed, even encouraged, to question Jermayan directly in return.

  But they were back in Civilization now, and he guessed he’d have to get used to it all over again. It hardly seemed fair. He’d gone through so much—and why must he be burdened with this stifling formality now, when it was all he could do to pretend that he was certain he would be all right?

  Well, he’d better warn Vestakia.

  He was trying to figure out the best way to phrase it when Jermayan beat him to it.

  “In Elven lands, except in time of war, or dire need, to question another directly is considered to be unmannerly. I do not say that this is good or bad, merely that this is our custom, and perhaps we are fonder of our customs than we ought to be,” Jermayan observed, as if speaking to Valdien. “Perhaps it is a failing in us. Perhaps it is merely that when one lives as long as an Elf, custom becomes habit, and habit is often so difficult to break that one gives over the attempt”

  Kellen heard Vestakia’s muffled snort of nervous laughter. “I don’t think I’m going to be asking anyone any questions anytime soon, Jermayan. I’ll count myself lucky if they don’t fill me full of arrows on sight.”

  “That they will not,” Jermayan said, his voice filled with grim promise now.

  As they rode closer, Kellen could see the yellow pavilion more clearly.