The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Read online

  Kellen laughed. “All I’m good for is finding lost cats, and getting myself kicked out of Armethalieh.”

  “We’ll see,” Shalkan said. “You’re young yet. And now there’s been quite enough excitement for one day. We’ve got plenty of foodstuffs, and I think it’s about time to be getting back.”

  It took less time to gather up the spilled berries than it had to pick them, and now Kellen was very glad the other basket had been hidden in the brambles, as he suspected Cormo would certainly have been happy to steal it.

  So even though there’s magic here, that doesn’t mean everyone is good and perfect. Still … unicorns and sylphs and undines and dryads and Centaurs … what next? Dragons?

  KELLEN and Idalia spent the next day—starting out well before dawn—clearing out the fouled pond, a nasty task that reminded him more than a little of clearing Perulan’s cistern. Kellen could smell the pond long before they reached it—it smelled like food gone bad. Worse than food gone bad, actually.

  “I can see we’re going to find someplace else to have our picnic,” Idalia said, wrinkling her nose at the stench. “But once we clear the muck out, the pond will bring itself back fairly quickly.”

  “What do we need to do?” Kellen asked, looking at it with disgust. The bloated, rotting carcass of the deer floated, half-submerged, in the center of the pond, surrounded by green scum and the half-eaten decaying bodies of dead fish. More dead fish were washed up against the edges of the pond, and the reeds and grass were brown and withered. They’d both come wearing heavy packs containing the tools they’d need—seines and buckets and rope and shovels—but Kellen wasn’t sure anything short of a miracle could revive this place.

  “First, let’s get our tools in order. Then, you get to move the deer. Drag it a good way from here. Trust me, someone or something will want it, even if we don’t! If nothing else, the vultures will. I’ll leave the fish closer by—they’ll stink, but most of the folk and the furred and feathered around here won’t mind that, actually. And they’ll be gone back to the earth in a day or two—or into somebody’s belly.”

  Kellen grimaced, looking at the floating corpse. He hated the thought of actually touching it, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to. One of the things Idalia had brought in her pack was a coil of light rope. After a few tosses, she managed to get it around one of the hind legs, and then handed the coil to him.

  Then she took a keystone out of her pocket, and held it between her palms for a moment.

  A thread of light—scarcely brighter than the sunlight, and just barely visible—wound rapidly around the carcass, until it had spun into a sort of cocoon.

  “There. Now it won’t fall apart while it’s being dragged away,” Idalia said. “Remember what I said about keystones? This is the sort of thing they’re good for; making something to take the place of something we could do with a physical object like, say, a net. Except that we don’t want to touch that thing, and the spell is very temporary, so it won’t need much power.”

  He nodded; that made perfect sense.

  Idalia motioned to him to start pulling. “You’re stronger than I am. Drag it off someplace—away from water. Just keep the rope taut, and shake it free when you’re done.”

  To Kellen’s relief, Idalia’s plan worked. He was afraid that the carcass was going to be too heavy to move, but once it was out of the water, he was able to keep going in what was more or less a straight line. He dragged the gruesome corpse several hundred yards into the forest, wondering where an appropriate location to deposit it would be. Mindful of Shalkan’s lessons, he didn’t want to be a bad neighbor and leave garbage in front of somebody’s house. But it was very hard to tell just what was a house and what wasn’t, here in the Wildwood.

  Finally he came to a place that looked reasonably deserted to him. “Is this okay?” he asked aloud, feeling just a little foolish. “Does anyone mind me leaving this here?”

  There was no response. He took that as assent—or else there wasn’t anything living here but ordinary wildlife. He dragged the body to within a few feet of him and then shook the rope vigorously. As Idalia had promised, the loop widened again, and after a few tries, he was able to flip the rope free and coil it up again.

  When he returned to the spring, Idalia had unpacked and laid out the rest of their gear, and was busy pinning her long braids up on top of her head. Except for a tight band of linen around her breasts and a hip wrap, she was naked. He gulped, and tried not to stare. She seemed oblivious to his embarrassment.

  “Well come on,” she said, “get your clothes off. You don’t want to get your leathers all mucky. Cleaning them of this stuff would be almost impossible—and they’d smell like dead fish forever!”

  He was just glad he had something on under the leathers!

  The pond was dead, unfortunately. He wasn’t sure how long the deer had been in it; long enough to kill everything that couldn’t escape, anyway. Once they’d used the green willow sieves to seine the dead fish and most of the scum and dead water plants out of the water, it was time to switch to shovels to dig up the dead plants surrounding the pond—muddy work, but easy. Fortunately, the pond hadn’t been a very large one to begin with.

  “Now what?” Kellen asked, when that was done. By now the day was well advanced, and he was glad enough to be wearing as little as he was.

  “Now,” said Idalia gaily, “we bail!” Picking up one of the buckets, she waded carefully out into the middle of the pond.

  Kellen watched as she scooped up a bucket of murky brownish water and flung it toward the trees, then shook his head and followed suit. If there was anything more useless than trying to bail out a spring-fed pond, he couldn’t imagine what it was, but if that was what Idalia wanted, then that was what he was going to do. Cautiously, he followed her into the water.

  At least it was cool, after what they had been doing, and kind of fun, as the two of them competed to see who could throw the contents of his bucket highest and farthest onto the dry earth beyond. And after a few minutes, Kellen could see that the level of the water in the pond was actually starting to drop.

  “When it fills again from the spring beneath, the water will be fresh,” he said, finally realizing what Idalia was doing.

  “That’s right. And when it’s fresh enough, we’ll restock it. Now keep moving, lazybones!”

  Idalia wasn’t satisfied until the soft silt was showing in places at the bottom of the pond, then she finally called a halt, wiping her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Okay, that’s enough for now. Let’s go for a swim and have lunch while it fills. There’s nothing more we can do here till then.”

  “Swim? Where?” Kellen was intrigued.

  “Come on. I’ll show you. You bring the food. I’ll bring our clothes. I’m not getting dressed until I’m clean again.”

  As both of them were mud- and silt-covered over most of their bodies, and hot and sweaty as well, Kellen could only agree with that plan. He followed Idalia, and received another surprise.

  She led him through the woods, and soon he heard the sound of rushing water. They came to a place where a small waterfall spilled down into a deep rocky catch-basin, which in turn overflowed to make the stream where he had seen the undine the day before. The whole basin was in full sunlight. Idalia sighed happily.

  “It’s a good place to swim—and it’s warm!” She dropped their clothes in a careless bundle and ran forward, arcing into a graceful dive that made almost no splash as she entered the water.

  Kellen eased the pack off his back and set it beside the clothes. Though Armethalieh was a coastal city, no one swam in the ocean, but Kellen had learned to swim in the huge public swimming baths that were kept full of spell-purified seawater, and he’d enjoyed it. This was an entirely different matter, however. He’d gotten used to drinking wild water—but swimming in it?

  You were just wading in much worse—and you couldn’t even see the bottom there! he told himself sternly.
Here the water was crystal pure all the way to the bottom, where sunlight played over a bed of tumbled white river stones. Kellen suspected he’d discovered the source of Idalia’s keystones. He shrugged, and jumped in, far less gracefully than his sister had.

  She’d said it was warm. It wasn’t. It was cold—Kellen sank all the way to the bottom, where the water was cold as winter rain—and the force of his inelegant plunge forced cold river water up his nose, adding insult to indignity. He flailed to the surface, coughing and sputtering.

  “I forgot to ask if you could swim!” Idalia called from the other side of the basin, laughing at the expression on his face.

  Kellen shook his head, snorted, and struck out experimentally for the far side of the basin. The fresh water wasn’t as buoyant as the salt water he was used to, but his swimming skills served him just as well, and he had to admit, the water wasn’t that cold.

  “It’s nice,” he said when he reached her. “And I can swim.”

  “Good,” Idalia said. “Then you won’t mind if I do—this!”

  She ducked under the water, swift as an otter, and an instant later, Kellen felt a tug on his ankle as she yanked him sharply beneath the surface.

  A spirited game of tag ensued, one that didn’t end until both of them were breathless and clean. Finally, panting happily, Idalia flung herself out on the bank to dry.

  Kellen joined her, prudently unrolling one of the blankets they’d brought and spreading it to sit on, but there was no need of a towel in the warm summer sunlight. He sat cross-legged on the coarse wool, savoring the peaceful moment.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Idalia said without moving. Her eyes were closed, and her skin, tanned a deep bronze, undoubtedly by many days like these, made her as much a part of her surroundings as the trees of the forest.

  “You weren’t happy in the City,” Kellen said without thinking.

  “Not for a moment,” Idalia answered, without hesitation. “I hated it. Everybody always telling me what to do, and say—and think. I suppose it’s different if you happen to be born male. But not much different, I imagine, if you’re a thinking person at all.”

  Kellen wondered. Maybe he just wasn’t a thinking sort of person. He’d been happy enough for most of his life—he’d still be happy there, if he’d been lucky enough not to have been born into a Mage family, he imagined.

  He frowned. Or would he? The restrictions might be subtler and less obvious for the non-Mage families, but they were still there. There were rules and restrictions for everyone, when it came right down to it. And the basic idea of the City was wrong—lying to people for some fraudulent notion of “their own good.” Taking away their ability to choose for themselves, so deviously that they didn’t even know it was being done.

  “The Mage Council is evil,” Kellen said.

  Idalia sat up and opened her eyes.

  “Well, there’s a merry thought! Where did you come up with that one on a day like this?”

  But Kellen was not going to be distracted now that he had things figured out in his own mind. “The Council is evil. The way they run the City is evil. They don’t let the people choose for themselves. They just herd them, like—like sheep!”

  “And you think they ought to be free—like we are?” The question sounded casual, but was it?

  “Well … yes,” Kellen said stubbornly.

  “Do you think that’s what they want?” Idalia asked.

  I don’t care what they want—I want what’s best for them! Kellen was about to say, when it occurred to him that the Mage Council probably would use the very same argument in its own defense. He grimaced.

  “I don’t know what they want. But I do know that they haven’t got any idea of what the Council does, or how, and if they did know, a lot of them probably wouldn’t like it very much. I think they ought to be able to choose. I think they ought to be able to buy anything they like in the markets, or read any books they like. And I think that if they want to leave the City, they ought to be able to.”

  “All you want is to change the whole world, eh, younger brother?” Idalia smiled, and reached out to tug at his damp curls. “Mind you, I’m not saying that you’re wrong. I’m just reminding you that things need to be thought through before you do them. And if you’re going to change something that has been going on for as long as the way they do things in Armethalieh has, you’d better have something ready to put in its place that is something everyone can agree is an improvement. Remember what it says in The Book of Stars: ‘If you would change a thing, first understand why it exists.’ ”

  She rolled onto her knees and pulled the pack over to her, lifting the flap and beginning to remove their lunch. “Come on, let’s eat. I’m starved.”

  AFTER they’d eaten, they were both dry enough to dress, though neither of them bothered with their shirts. They went back to check on the progress of the pond, which Idalia judged to be refilling nicely. The last of the muck had settled on the bottom, and the water was a little murky, but not so much that Kellen didn’t think it would clear.

  Some of the fish they’d tossed out on the ground were already gone, and a lot of the stink had blown away. Idalia sniffed the air experimentally, and then suggested a walk through the woods.

  “I want to introduce you to some of the neighbors, and see where I can find some water plants to transplant to the pond,” she told him.

  “I’ve never planted a pond,” he offered. “What are we looking for?”

  “Sedges, reeds, catkins, marginal plants—and water lilies. If we put in just a few clumps, the marginals will spread by themselves, but the lilies all died, and since the pond’s in direct sunlight, the fish will need something for shade, and to give them protection from predators. We’ll have to get some help to find and plant lily bulbs. In the meantime, maybe we can find some floating plants to shade the fish. The frogs and turtles can find their own way back,” she added darkly. “I’m not catching frogs, even with selkie help. You can spend days chasing frogs,” she said, in a voice that seemed to come out of hard-won experience.

  “Selkies?” Kellen asked, fascinated. That was a new name—he wondered just what kind of creature belonged to it.

  “Selkies,” Idalia confirmed. “Selkies and undines live in the stream—and otters, too, of course, though they’re not Otherfolk. In the woods you’ll find dryads of various species, not just the apple-dryads you found the other day.”

  She gave him a sidelong glance, and he felt his cheeks growing warm.

  “That’s what Shalkan said,” he replied, hoping she hadn’t noticed his blushes.

  “Well, they’re by no means the only thing that lives in the forest. Pixies, fairies, brownies, and fauns—they’re very shy, so I’m hoping they’ll come out when they see I’m with you. It can take a long time to meet everything that lives here—some folk only come out at night, some sleep through the summer. Some you wouldn’t want to meet, like duergar and goblins and trolls, though I don’t think any of them have stayed around here. They were pushed out of the settled lands by the Great War, and even after all this time, I don’t think they’d be foolish enough to come back.”

  “What was the Great War?” Kellen asked, at the same time Idalia said:

  “Oh—look!”

  Kellen looked where she was pointing. A butterfly—no, a hummingbird. But it glowed, with a light softer than a firefly, though still bright enough to be visible even at midday, as it hovered among a bank of wildflowers.

  “A pixie,” Idalia said in a quiet voice. “Some people think they’re fairies, but they’re not.”

  As Kellen watched, the first tiny glowing figure was joined by three more. He blinked. Was that a—a humanlike body attached to those rainbow wings? They hovered among the flowers for a moment, then darted off. Idalia sighed happily. “I’m glad they’re still here. There was a bad storm earlier this year, before you came, and I was afraid their nest had been destroyed. They make a kind of honey that I use in some of my medicines—i
t puts the patient right to sleep. I wouldn’t want to use it in my breakfast tea, though.”

  “Can you talk to them?” Kellen asked, fascinated.

  “With patience and practice,” Idalia said, moving on.

  As they walked, she pointed out other landmarks, including another tiny door like the one he’d seen before. It was, Idalia explained, the door to a brownie’s house. She didn’t know much about them, as they were terribly reclusive, but they seemed to live very much as humans did, in homes that were miniature copies of human dwellings—except for being built into the bases of oak trees. According to Idalia, a long time ago they had lived with humans, doing household tasks in exchange for food, but both of them found that hard to imagine.

  He wanted to ask Idalia about Demons, since she seemed to be in such an expansive mood. In Armethalieh, they’d always been a nursery tale to scare little kids into behaving. But then Lycaelon had spoken of the Demons as if they’d once walked the streets of Armethalieh and might be back at any moment. And then there were the dreams. The Demons in Kellen’s dreams were not very much like the Demons that were whispered about to frighten children into good behavior. The creatures in his nightmares were to those bogeymen as a sparrow was to an eagle. Since having those fever-dreams, Kellen was disinclined to scoff at the notion of Demons.

  If Lycaelon had been lying in a last-ditch attempt to scare Kellen into submission, Idalia would tell him the truth, he knew. But somehow it had never seemed to be the right time to bring the subject up. But Kellen was starting to think there was never going to be a perfect time, and today seemed better than most.

  He’d just opened his mouth to say something when he heard the sound of heavy hooved feet coming toward them. He stopped, but Idalia didn’t seem at all concerned. She continued walking forward.

  A female Centaur appeared on the path before them, a set of panniers slung across her back.

  Like Cormo, she had a broad, heavy-boned, swarthy face and black eyes, but there all resemblance ended. Her chestnut hair was neat and combed, braided and held in place with a set of elaborately carved wooden combs. She wore a pleated linen shirt with bright woolen embroidery along the low-cut bodice and sleeves, and her tail was braided with bright ribbons.