To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Here I am,” Kellen said, looking up at Ancaladar. “Idalia made this so she could sneak around in the caverns.”

  “I could see you quite clearly,” the dragon said.

  Now that was interesting. Ancaladar could see through the tarnkappa’s spells?

  “I’ll need it to see underground,” Kellen said, wrapping it around himself again.

  “Then it is good that you should wear it,” Ancaladar said. “Humans find these caverns very dark.”

  The dragon turned his attention to the cliff face. Several yards up the icy rock wall, Kellen could see a wide slit in the stone. Ancaladar stuck his head into the gap and squirmed in, furling his enormous ribbed wings tightly against his sides. And that was possibly the strangest thing that Kellen had seen in—well, a long time. The dragon shouldn’t have been able to fit in there. What could it do, disjoint all its bones?

  My turn. Kellen flexed his gauntleted hands, and began to climb.

  Elven armor, it was said by its makers, was flexible enough that its wearer could dance in it, and certainly the combat form practiced by the Elven Knights was very much like dance. Kellen also knew, from previous experience, that you could climb in Elven armor, but he’d never tried climbing a vertical ice-covered wall in it.

  He managed to get halfway up, though, before a long black-scaled arm tipped in golden talons appeared out of the darkness and plucked him into the cave.

  “You take too long,” Ancaladar said.

  Oh.

  “Um. Sorry. I’m a lot smaller than you are. It takes me longer to get places.” Kellen squirmed past the dragon��s body—fortunately this entrance to the cave system was fairly wide—and moved forward until he was in front of Ancaladar’s head. Even though he was technically in front, the dragon was so enormous that it was still in the lead—it had only to stretch out its long sinuous neck to put its head several yards in front of Kellen.

  The passage here was fairly straight, without any side passages, and the tarnkappa’s darksight spell ensured that it was as bright as day, even though Ancaladar’s body blocked all the light from the outside. Kellen started forward confidently.

  Soon the passage opened out into a cavern. It was so large that he could not see the far side of it, even with the aid of the tarnkappa’s magical sight He could feel a faint steady breeze blowing over him—from deep in the earth toward the outside air.

  The path ended in a drop-off, but fortunately it wasn’t a sheer drop. There was a slope—steep, but manageable. Kellen gritted his teeth and started down it.

  It was steeper than he’d thought, and he ended up making most of the journey to the bottom on his rump. Behind him, he saw Ancaladar step neatly to the cave floor—the dragon’s size made the drop-off no more than a single step for him.

  Kellen was about to ask which way they went now, when Ancaladar’s head suddenly shot up. He saw the dragon’s nostrils flare—just like Shalkan’s when he smells something bad—and then, without a word or a sound, Ancaladar gave a great bound and launched himself at the nearest cave wall, climbing quickly and silently until he’d vanished into the shadows.

  That was good enough for Kellen, even though he heard nothing. He scrambled quickly to his feet and looked around for a place to get out of the way. He saw a niche between the edge of the cliff and the cave wall—not much, but it would have to do. He quickly moved toward it and pressed himself back into the corner.

  Just in time, it turned out. He’d barely settled himself when he began to hear faint noises, as of a large group of people moving quietly, but not entirely silently. A few moments later they came into view.

  There were eight of them. Six were male, the two bringing up the rear were female. It was easy to tell, because none of them was wearing much more than a hip wrap. All were barefoot as well.

  The two females were both carrying large bundles of netting. The nets were made of some substance Kellen had never seen before—a shiny, silvery-grey substance that looked something like silk.

  All of the males were armed, both with long spears balanced for throwing—Kellen’s Knight-Mage gifts told him that—but also with a variety of looted weapons. Kellen recognized swords and daggers that had belonged to his friends from the House of Sword and Shield, and felt a dull surge of anger.

  These must be the Shadowed Elves Idalia mentioned—what Ancaladar calls “Tainted mock-Elves.”

  They were horrible in their own right, but to anyone who counted Elves as friends, they were especially horrible. There was no doubt of their Elven blood, but just as Idalia had said, somehow it had been mixed with Goblins to produce those fanged muzzles, receding jaws, and pale bulging eyes. Their hands and feet had talons, not nails, as well.

  No wonder Vestakia had been able to find this place. And Idalia had said there was a whole colony of these creatures here.

  They were obviously searching for Ancaladar. Every few feet the one in the lead would squat down and sniff the ground, then speak to the others in a strange guttural barking language. He was not the leader, apparently, for the leader urged him onward with blows, causing a dispute to break out among the hunting party. During all of this, the females cowered back, hissing.

  At last they moved on. They passed right by Kellen’s hiding place without stopping to look, and Kellen blessed the Wild Magic that had gone into the tarnkappa’s making. Even when he could no longer see them, he stayed where he was, waiting for Ancaladar to return.

  At last the dragon reappeared, gliding down to the floor of the cavern to land soundlessly. Even now it did not speak, merely swiveled its great head and pointed in the direction they should go.

  Ancaladar had told the truth when he said that the Shadowed Elves were desperate to capture him at any cost. They encountered three more patrols as they went. Each time Ancaladar quickly hid, giving Kellen plenty of advance warning to conceal himself as well.

  They moved through a series of interconnected caverns. All of them weren’t as large as the first one, but Kellen quickly realized that since they were following Ancaladar’s preferred route in and out of the caves there weren’t going to be any small passages. The only real problem that Kellen encountered—other than having to hide from the Shadowed Elves—was that terrain that Ancaladar could cross with ease presented towering obstacles for Kellen to climb over or detour around. Occasionally Ancaladar would grow impatient with the delay and pluck him into the air, setting him down somewhere several hundred yards distant. Kellen hadn’t quite made up his mind yet, but he thought he preferred scrabbling over slabs of basalt to being whisked through the air in the claws of an impatient dragon.

  Not that he was feeling terribly patient himself, with Idalia somewhere ahead, trapped and hurt. He didn’t know, of course, but he had the sense that Ancaladar was being forced to detour by the Shadowed Elf patrols. That wasn’t good.

  Finally Ancaladar stopped. He lowered his head, so it was right beside Kellen’s.

  “This is the last of the ways we can go to reach your sister,” the dragon said, in a whisper so low that Kellen barely heard it. “It could be the safest of the ways we can go, or the most dangerous—it’s very narrow, and there’s nowhere to hide, but they may not have thought to look this way yet.”

  Narrow. Terrific, Kellen thought, following the dragon as he moved forward again.

  But “narrow” was a relative term. The passage was narrow for Ancaladar—the dragon had to fold his wings tightly and crouch down on his belly—but there was enough room for Kellen and the entire rescue party that had started out from Sentarshadeen (if they’d been there) to ride down the tunnel.

  Suddenly the dragon stopped, stretching out his neck, his nostrils flaring.

  “Oh, no—” he said in dismay. “We’re trapped—”

  For the first time, Kellen fell into battle-trance immediately, without having to invoke it; it fell over him as he cast off the tarnkappa, as if it were somehow taking the place of the cloak.

  In a way, it was; the
dual-sight allowed him to see in the dark as the cloak spell did. He saw the Shadowed creatures as they stalked forward out of the darkness just as clearly as if he were still wrapped in its folds. He did not, however, charge.

  Instead, he drew his sword, and waited. Waited for his doubled-sight to show him that they saw him for what he was. The aura of threat that surrounded him was unmistakable—that he knew from his lessons in the House of Sword and Shield. He was armed, and he was waiting for their attack. Now it became their choice to fight or flee.

  They saw him for what he was—and they charged. One of them threw the net it carried. As if it were floating like a puff of down, Kellen watched it drift toward him, and in that odd slowed-time, he cut it in half as it started to fly past his head, aimed at Ancaladar, evidently, and not him.

  The moment that the steel of his sword touched it, the two halves of the net withered and dropped to the ground. Kellen continued the stroke with a sideways twist of his wrist, to take off the head of the unwary creature that was nearest him.

  They were frail, these Shadowed Elves; he killed it, and the one behind it, then let the momentum of his blade carry him around in a spin to cleave another across the spine. He made a recovery move, blocked the sword of a fourth as he kicked a fifth in the stomach, cut under the blocked blade to eviscerate the fourth one and as the fifth staggered backward, followed, and gutted it as well. The sixth and seventh were no real challenge; he took them out as they stared at him, dumbfounded.

  He whirled. Ancaladar was frozen in place, eyes wide. “Move!” he snapped.

  Ancaladar managed to compress himself against the wall of the tunnel enough to let him squeeze by.

  This time he did charge, catching the much larger party that thought it was sneaking up in the rear entirely by surprise. For all of the weapons that they carried, for all of their superior ability to see in the dark, they might just as well have had no defensive ability at all. They were absolutely no match for the special advantages of a Knight-Mage, not even at fourteen-to-one.

  The battle-trance faded, and the world was utterly black once more. Kellen stood in the darkness, feeling a faint regret.

  But nothing more. When he’d drawn his sword, they could have run. When he’d begun to kill the others, they could have run. They chose not to. If he had not fought, he and Ancaladar would have been killed or taken prisoner, and Idalia would die. Because he had refused to accept that, he had chosen to kill. That was the way of the Knight-Mage, the agent of the active principle of the Wild Magic.

  He forgave them for attacking him, and he forgave himself for killing them, just as Jermayan had taught him.

  Absently he wiped his sword blade dry on his cloak—there’d be time to give the blade a thorough cleaning later—and worked his way back up to Ancaladar’s front.

  “Any more of them?” Kellen asked, stooping to grope for the discarded tarnkappa and don it once more.

  “No. You eliminated all of them … Knight-Mage.” The dragon moved forward, stepping fastidiously over the corpses. They moved faster now. There didn’t seem to be any need to try to conceal their presence any longer. Not only had the Shadowed Elves found them, but Kellen seemed to have killed most of the ones searching for them.

  “They must want you really badly,” Kellen said after a few moments.

  “Has your world wholly forgotten my kind? I’m a dragon,” Ancaladar said, with a note of bitterness in his voice. “And no doubt the Endarkened have a Mage or two in thrall, and an arsenal of spells to try to force a Bonding that they ache to try.”

  “Dragons Bond with Mages,” Kellen said, half-remembered scraps of what Jermayan had told him about the Great War coming back to his mind.

  “Almost correct. Each dragon is fated to Bond with one Mage—his Bondmate. After which that Mage becomes incredibly powerful—having an endless supply of spell-energy to draw on—and the dragon’s life becomes incredibly short, for when his Bondmate dies, he dies as well.”

  “Oh.” It didn’t seem fair. All the advantage seemed to go to the Mage. All the dragon got out of the deal was dead. “What about Mageprices?”

  “Bonded Mages don’t pay them. Not with our power to draw on,” Ancaladar said simply.

  “Why would a dragon … ?”

  “I don’t know,” Ancaladar said curtly, ending the discussion firmly. “We’re nearly there, thank Sky and Fair Wind.”

  Up ahead, the tunnel opened out. Ancaladar stretched his neck out, extending it through the opening. Kellen followed along until he reached the edge of the tunnel.

  He’d moved cautiously, and was glad he had. There was only a narrow ledge at the cave mouth, and it extended for only a few feet in either direction before vanishing entirely. The tunnel had opened out into another of the huge caverns Kellen was growing used to, but this one was different from any of the previous ones. Its floor was criss-crossed with other deep fissures—as though something very hot had cooled here—and littered with enormous boulders, as though there had been an explosion as well. He could hear a distinct sighing sound, as if something even bigger than Ancaladar was breathing, but it seemed to come from the cave itself.

  He moved quickly to one side as Ancaladar flowed past him and down to the floor of the cave, then looked around in frustration. He couldn’t climb down, it was much too far to jump, and as far as he knew, his Knight-Mage abilities didn’t include the power of flight.

  After a few seconds Ancaladar noticed his plight. The dragon turned back and plucked him from the ledge, depositing him on the cave floor.

  “Not far now,” Ancaladar said.

  Was it Kellen’s imagination, or was there a note of worry in the dragon’s voice?

  IDALIA was lying at the foot of a cliff at the far side of the cavern.

  Kellen’s heart twisted in his chest when he saw her. He knew the look of broken bones. He could see—and smell—the blood.

  How long had she been lying here? Was she dead?

  Then he saw the faint movement of her chest and knew that she was still alive.

  He ran forward and knelt beside her. His first impulse was to waken her, but he knew that would be no kindness. She must be in agony.

  He had to get her out of here. But even if Ancaladar would consent to carry her, he didn’t dare move her while she was in this condition. Broken legs, broken arm and collarbone … undoubtedly a concussion … probably internal bleeding as well.

  “I’ll have to heal her before we can move her,” Kellen said aloud.

  Healing was not his strongest skill in the Wild Magic, and he’d never tried this major a healing, especially without someone around to share the Mageprice. He looked hopefully at Ancaladar.

  But the dragon cringed away. “You go ahead,” he said, taking a step backward. “I’ll wait over here until you’re done.”

  Kellen sighed. I guess it’s all up to me. I just hope I’m good enough.

  He had to be. For Idalia’s sake.

  These days, he always carried the components for the simplest of the Wild Magic spells with him, and healing was a very simple spell. Here where everything was stone, he didn’t even need a brazier: he simply unwrapped his disk of charcoal and set it directly on the stone floor, and set it alight with a simple word. He pulled out the few herbs he’d need, and set them beside the burning charcoal.

  His stomach twisted as he thought of the only other healing involving broken bones he’d ever witnessed. When Idalia had healed a unicorn colt’s fractured leg, she’d worked all the pieces of the break into alignment first. He should do that here, to give the healing the best chance. But the colt had been dosed with a sleeping potion, and he had nothing to give his sister.

  If you don’t do it, she’ll die. Do you want your squeamishness to kill her?

  Kellen pulled off his armored gauntlets, then drew his dagger and cut a few strands of Idalia’s hair, then a few of his own. He moistened the bundle with Idalia’s blood, then pricked his finger and squeezed out a few drops of bloo
d onto the dried leaves of willow, ash, and yew.

  Then he tossed the bundle of herbs and hair onto the coals.

  Heal Idalia—please! I swear I will pay the price! Kellen thought fervently. He knew he should be centered in a Wildmage’s dispassionate trance, but that was something he couldn’t manage right now. He cared too much—and if that was something really wrong, then he supposed the Gods wouldn’t have let him become a Knight-Mage in the first place.

  The bundle should have smelled horrible while it was burning, but it didn’t. It smelled like spring flowers and fresh-cut hay. Kellen saw the shimmer of the protective shields all around him, and hoped that protection would extend to keeping Idalia from feeling what he was doing.

  First he straightened her legs. Feeling the bones move and shift under his hands made sweat run down his face in greasy droplets, but once he’d begun, he knew he couldn’t stop.

  Everything was glowing green.

  Next, her arm. It seemed to him that it ought to be straightened, so he did that, as gently as he could. That led him to her collarbone—broken, as he suspected. There wasn’t a lot he could do about it, but he prodded at it until he’d shifted the bones about into more-or-less the right places, and left it at that.

  Everything was fire. Green fire.

  He ran his hands over her head. They came away wet with blood, though Kellen knew that might not mean much. Even the smallest scalp wounds could bleed a great deal. Or it might be a concussion. Without being able to see her eyes, he didn’t know.

  Green … all green …

  Her breathing was better now, which reminded him to check for broken ribs and broken pelvis. He ran his hands down over her ribs, pressing gently, but everything felt solid. He found her hip bones, and pressed gently, relieved to find that everything was solid there, too.

  Abruptly Kellen sat back on his haunches and stared down at his hands. They were trailing greenness as if he’d dipped them in a vat of liquid emeralds. Idalia, too, was green, as if she’d been soaked in the stuff.