The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Page 9

  The Dock Patrol—a detachment of the City Guard that regularly worked the dock area—came down the pier, eyed the ship and her crew, then cast a glance over at Kellen. But Kellen was prepared for them. He had a stick and a string he’d picked up from the rubbish waiting for the trash collectors, and the moment he’d taken his seat on the piling, he’d tossed the string into the water. It looked enough like a fishing-rod at a distance to fool the guards, and anyone could come down to the docks to augment his dinner with a little fish, if he chose.

  It was odd, considering how much trouble the regular City Guard went to to keep citizens away from the docks, that the Dock Patrols so rarely chased people away from the wharves, but Kellen had found, to his surprise, that it was true. But perhaps it wasn’t so odd after all. Only the poorest of Armethalieh’s citizens would risk the social stigma of coming here—no one with any money at all would stoop to gleaning “trash” fish from the harbor for their suppers—and there was always the possibility of being “contaminated” by alien ways that would keep any Armethaliehan with a pretense of respectability far from the foreigners. Perhaps the Dock Patrol thought it was easier to keep an eye on the usual visitors to the docks than to simply try to keep them all out. Perhaps they relied on the fact that the regular City Guard, or the Constables of the Watch (who generally patrolled only the residential districts of Armethalieh), would turn back any really suspicious characters before they reached their patrol area. For whatever reason, the Dock Patrol favored Kellen with no more than a single glance before turning away to resume their patrol of the wharf.

  He was just as glad that he’d worn his oldest clothes beneath his Student robes today. He’d found out a long time ago that nobody at the College cared what you wore beneath the stiff, bulky, light blue Student robes that covered the Students—Student-Apprentices, Apprentices, Entered Apprentices, and Student Mages—from neck to ankle, and Kellen took great advantage of that freedom. Once he’d pulled off his robe and stuffed it into his locker, his clothing didn’t mark him out—at least not too much—from anyone else in the City. Anyone who wasn’t a Mage, at least.

  It was only when the Dock Patrol was well out of sight that a newcomer slipped out of the cover of an alley, and hastened over to the captain of the trader. Kellen was careful not to turn, careful not to draw attention to himself. Another “respectable” citizen of the City—here! One who was neither an Inspector nor a merchant, nor—from his dress—a member of the lowest classes. What could he be doing here?

  The newcomer was a young man, perhaps a year or two older than Kellen. His clothing was of good quality; he carried a bag and wore a harried expression.

  He did not seem particularly well-to-do, although he was perhaps a cut or two above a common laborer—perhaps a tradesman. He was a little older than Kellen, but the look of stifled, sullen dissatisfaction on his face was—oh, that was very familiar. It was the one Kellen saw in his own mirror nearly every day.

  The ship’s captain spotted the young man on the dock as he stood looking up at the ship with mingled hope and doubt. Mutual recognition appeared on both their faces, and relief as well on the young man’s as the captain hurried down the gangplank to meet him.

  Kellen remained very still, willing them to ignore him.

  It seemed to work.

  The captain reached out his hand, and clasped the one the newcomer extended to him. “I’m pleased that you haven’t changed your mind,” he said. “I was afraid that you might. Many do. When the time comes to leave the City forever, they find it isn’t worth the sacrifice.”

  “Not me,” the young man said, his chin thrust forward stubbornly. “I can’t go back in any event. I’ve been thrown out by my father, disowned by my mother—”

  “Ah,” the captain said. “Your mother—that’s different, then. Mothers forgive nearly everything, but when your mother disowns you, there’s no going back.”

  “Hmph.” The young man shook his head. “They don’t forgive it when you’ve besmirched their social standing by insulting the most important person they’ve ever managed to lure to the dinner table, I can tell you that.”

  Since Kellen had wanted to do just that, and more than once, his admiration for the young man soared. But the captain was most concerned with the reactions of the man’s parents, it seemed.

  “So what did they say exactly?” the captain persisted.

  “That I was to leave and never return, never use their name, never intimate that I even know them, much less am related to them. It was more than just saying it,” he continued bitterly. “They made quite a production of it, gathered all the servants and my brother and sister, and threw me out with what I’m carrying.”

  All this only made the captain more cheerful. “Ah, good!” he exclaimed. “Then there won’t be any problem!”

  “Problem?” The young man seemed confused.

  So was Kellen. The captain, apparently, was in a mood to explain.

  “Here, take a seat.” The captain took his own invitation, and perched himself on a nearby piling. “It’s like this—the way things are, here in this City of yours, your Council wants everybody happy with the way things are, so that everything runs smooth as fine sailing. So they go out of their way to keep everybody happy. Now, a lot of times, young fellows like you get itchy feet, get the idea of traveling outside the City walls, maybe even have a bit of a to-do with their parents and decide they’d be better off somewhere else. Well, that may be so, but their parents aren’t any too pleased if they find ’em gone, and it could be they’ve got skills or they’re doing a job that needs doing here. So”—the captain shrugged—“when someone like me takes ’em aboard, sometimes there’s trouble. Sometimes there’s a search before we leave the dock, sometimes before we leave the harbor, and sometimes, if the lad’s got an important enough family, those magick barriers that keep the storms out keep us in until we’ve handed the lad over.”

  I knew it! I knew it! Kellen thought. I knew the Mages were keeping people from leaving, somehow—

  But there went any hope he had of escaping. Not with Lycaelon as a father. If he went missing, well—Lycaelon would probably keep anything larger than an ant from getting out of the City until Kellen was found and brought back.

  “But for you,” the captain continued, looking positively gleeful, “well, your parents have done it, haven’t they? And the Council knows that tryin’ to keep their paws on a restless lad like you, cast out of his own family and liable to cause trouble, even if he doesn’t mean it, well, that’s not going to make for a peaceful City. Bet you’ve been doin’ a bit of tavern brawling, hmm? Been in trouble with the Watch, just a bit?”

  The young man flushed. “And if I have?” he demanded.

  “Now, don’t come all over toplofty on me!” the captain remonstrated. “Really, it’s all to your good! Council knows they’re better off lettin’ you go! And you aren’t the only one, not by a stretch! There’s a steady leak of young fellows like you, and a few older ones too, all heading for the Out Isles like you, or the Selken Holds, or maybe through the gates for the farms, I don’t know. Not a lot of you, maybe, but it lets the steam out, so to speak. Council knows they’ve got to do that, or face trouble, later.”

  The young man took a deep breath, then let it out, his anger going with it. “All right for me, then, I suppose. I shouldn’t take it amiss. And I won’t.” His expression cleared. “No, I won’t! It’s a gift, and I’ll take it.” He stood up, and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Mind if I come aboard, then?”

  “Be my guest,” the captain replied genially. “We sail in an hour—that’s half a bell to you—our cargo has already gotten its inspection, and there won’t be anyone by to look at it before we leave,” the captain said. “We’ll be under way as soon as we get this lot loaded.”

  The two of them went up the gangplank, still oblivious to Kellen. He might not have even been there.

  Or had it been the Wild Magic helping him? It could have been, easily
enough, even though he hadn’t actually done anything with it. The Book of Sun said that it might act on its own, through him or on him, when it wanted something done. It might have wanted him to know that escape was possible. It might also have wanted him to know that he would not be able to get out as easily as the young man he’d just seen.

  Suddenly Kellen lost his taste for the docks, and for gazing out at a freedom he could not have.

  There was money in his pocket, and a tavern nearby. Not that he was going to get drunk … No, but if he bought a round of drinks, he’d soon find someone willing to tell him tales of their travels in return for more drinks. Perhaps he could steer the conversation in the direction of magick, if he was very careful. He might even learn something more about the Wild Magic that way.

  He tossed string and stick into the water, and left his perch, weaving his way carefully among the dock laborers until he came to the door of what passed for a respectable drinking establishment out here. It was dark, reeked of fish, and the furnishings were crude benches and tables. The only food available was battered, fried, and highly salted to encourage thirst. As he entered, the half-dozen sailors perched at the tables eyed him with suspicion. Kellen ordered a fish-roll, and after a careful look around at the clientele, a round of beer for the house.

  His generosity was greeted with an upwelling of warmth, and Kellen took a seat across from a fellow who looked as if he was a bit more intelligent and observant than the rest, and might have a tale or two to tell.

  “Workingmen got to stick together, eh?” he said as he sat down and clinked mugs with the weather-beaten sailor. “Came down here to get a bit of sun and fresh air on my day off, and what do you think happens?”

  The sailor spat off to the side. “Guard gives you trouble?” he asked, though they both knew it wasn’t a question.

  Kellen grimaced. “Too true, mate. Dunno what they thought I was gonna get up to—I told ’em I had a fancy for fried fish, and was there a law against that now?”

  The sailor guffawed. “Good answer. What’s your trade?”

  “Scribe-in-training. Got a letter you need written? Don’t mind doing a favor for a tale or two,” Kellen said quickly, knowing he would never pass for an ordinary laborer. But a scribe was a workingman, no higher in rank than the laborers he served, since no one of any means at all needed them. “I’d leave if I could—but my mother—” He shrugged helplessly. “If I can’t leave, I’d as lief hear a tale.”

  “Aye, that’s a fair trade,” the sailor said cheerfully, and called for pen and paper, which the bartender brought, and which the sailor paid for himself. He dictated his letter, a common enough epistle. Kellen read it back, and the sailor took possession of it with great satisfaction. “I’ll hand it off to someone on the Sea Sprite,” the man said, looking pleased. “They’re on the inbound leg, and my Evike will be right glad to get a word of me so soon. Now, young friend, you were after a tale. Well, I mind me of something that happened two voyages back, on a dark night with no moon, when we were near dead in the water …”

  Kellen settled back to listen with an intensity that his tutor Anigrel would have been surprised to see.

  Chapter Four

  Music in Chains

  THE CHAMBER IN which the High Council of Armethalieh met was a vast space devoted by day to meetings of the Council. By night, it was used as a secure chamber for the workings of the High Magick that guaranteed the smooth functioning of the City of a Thousand Bells. The enormous circular chamber occupied most of the center wing of the Council House, and was easily the largest single enclosed space in the entire City. Save for a star-shaped ring of windows at the apex of its vast domed golden ceiling, it was windowless, its enormous interior space lit by the sourceless blue-white glow of shadowless, unchanging Magelight. The soft directionless light made day and night as one: the only hint of time’s passage was the movement of the sunlight or moonlight that spilled through the windows at the apex of the dome, and the muffled chiming of the City bells.

  Few of Armethalieh’s ordinary citizens ever saw this place, for a hearing before the assembled High Council was reserved for those occasions when every other means of resolving a situation in accordance with the City’s ancient Laws had been exhausted—for that, and for the few necessary dealings of Armethalieh with foreigners. And for these reasons, and others not known to most of the inhabitants of the Golden City, the chamber’s designers, in the long-ago time of the City’s first founding, had taken great care to make the High Council chamber as stark and intimidating as possible.

  The walls of the Council chamber were of featureless white marble, polished so perfectly that their smooth curve gleamed like a dull mirror, broken only by two golden doors set into their surface at opposite sides of the circular chamber. Each door was wrought with the symbol of the Eternal Light in gleaming high relief, so that the planes and angles of their exquisite surfaces glittered, even in this diffuse light, as if they were aflame. The floor was inlaid in a complex pattern of polished black and white marble—to the uninitiated eye, no more than a slightly disorienting decorative pattern, but in fact a series of keys that allowed Adepts to keep their proper places during the nighttime Workings. It was a singularly cold room, designed to chill the spirit and numb the ability to think. It took some time for even a Mage to become accustomed to these surroundings and work unaffected by them.

  At one end of the windowless room, its curve echoing that of the curving wall behind it, there stood a judicial bench of black marble twice the height of a tall man, behind which the thirteen members of the High Council sat to make their solemn deliberations. The Arch-Mage of Armethalieh, chief of the High Council, Lycaelon Tavadon, sat at the center of them, the back of his unadorned thronelike chair of black marble rising high above the other seats, a stark silhouette against the white wall behind him. Six unbreathing stone golems, seven-foot statues given life and motion by the High Magick, stood guard in the room to protect the Mages from their supplicants, their mirror-polished grey granite skin reflecting the softer stone of their surroundings. The elaborate and distinctive embroidery on the thirteen Mages’ formal grey robes of Judgment—from which those who were versed in such things could discern not only rank and family, but much of that Mage’s personal history and record of achievement and awards as well—was the only spot of color in the entire room—and of course, since Lycaelon’s “colors” were black and white, he looked of a piece with the room, and scarcely more human than the golems.

  Yesterday the Selken trading fleet had docked, and as was traditional, Undermages from the Customs House had gone aboard to inspect the cargoes, releasing those items that had been approved on previous voyages to the traders’ warehouses for inspection and sale. But the traders were always bringing new wares to offer to the City of a Thousand Bells, and so today, as had been set down in custom from time immemorial, each trading captain must bring samples of his new merchandise to the Council House to see if it might also be approved for sale in Armethalieh.

  As the merchant-captains stood in an apprehensive gaggle several yards away in the center of the room, Lycaelon and his fellows conferred over the sample wares. No matter how many times some of them might have stood there, Lycaelon was pleased to see the foreigners never lost their proper awe of the High Mages of Armethalieh. A Spell of Judgment, carefully cast over the chamber before the captains had been allowed to enter, allowed each member of the council to share the feelings at the surface of the others’ minds, projecting them so that each member of the Council could be aware of the opinion of all the others, whether favorable or otherwise.

  The High Council had spent the morning on cloth, ribbons, beads, and dyes—simple enough matters all, but each was new to the City, and each must be carefully weighed and judged for its possible impact on the well-being of the populace before being released into the marketplace. Changes in fashion should be subtle things; it was difficult for most men to imagine what difference something like a change of sleeve
or ornament might make—frankly, most men wouldn’t even notice—but women were profoundly influenced by such things. If one woman snatched up a new ornament to set a radical new fashion, it wouldn’t be long before the desire to replicate or better her effort would spread through the City like a fever, begetting an orgy of spending, a frenzy of stitching and cutting, and then—well, then the rot would set in, the wish for change, just for the sake of change, which would spread at last from the women to their men. All from a new bead, a new color, a new ribbon, something that the ordinary man would think was insignificant.

  So the Council was careful, very careful, even with something as tiny as a bead or a button. Beginning with dyes, they had moved on to perfumes and spices. Most of the perfumes had been rejected out of hand for being simply too foreign, and of all of the senses, the most subtle and most open to unconscious seduction was that of smell—but the spices were a more difficult matter.

  Lycaelon touched his finger to his tongue, and took up a small amount of the brownish powder on the twist of paper before him. He held it beneath his nose for a moment, then touched it to his tongue. It had a sweet, nutlike flavor, elusively familiar, tasting of anise and cinnamon. It was enough like both that its introduction into City marketplaces would cause no disturbances in the even tenor of City life; earlier this morning, before it had even reached the Council, an Undermage had inspected it by magick for narcotic properties and other dangerous side effects, and found none. Had Lycaelon not known this, he might have suspected some tranquilizing property in the stuff, for his reaction to it was to find the taste curiously comforting. Well, a feeling of comfort was something to be cultivated among the populace. Comfort bred contentment, and a disinclination to change.