To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  “So we don’t have anything to do for the rest of the day?” Cilarnen asked.

  “You may not,” Kellen said. “When we get back, I’m going to see if the practice field is free. If it is, I’ll take my troop out for a couple of hours of drill. You should see Artenel about getting some armor fitted—you may not be able to use a sword, but you’ll still need armor.”

  “I can use a sword!” Cilarnen protested. “Master Kalos said I would have made a fine swordsman—I studied with him thrice a sennight.”

  “Reed-blade,” Kellen said, struggling to keep his voice neutral. Cilarnen was right to be proud of his skill, but it was useless in war. “It is not the sort of sword we carry in the field.”

  “You think it’s useless,” Cilarnen said, stung.

  “Pay attention to your mount. I did not say that. I have never studied reed-blade. The quickness and coordination: those skills will probably transfer to another weapon if you wish to learn one. But the swords we use take a great deal of strength, and learning any weapon takes time, and you are a Mage, not a Knight.”

  “You’re both,” Cilarnen pointed out. “And I’m not much of a Mage.”

  Leaf and Star, send me a Selken Trader! Kellen kept his voice patient. “I’m a particular kind of Wildmage, called a Knight-Mage. I’m very good at fighting, not as good at Wildmagery.”

  “It’s nice to know there’s something you’re not good at,” Cilarnen muttered.

  Kellen wondered if Cilarnen had meant him to hear the remark. It was odd to think that Cilarnen must be just as off-balance and resentful as he was, now that their situations were reversed. Here, Kellen must seem to have all the advantages Cilarnen had once possessed, plus a higher rank than Cilarnen had ever held.

  Well, the truth wouldn’t hurt. “At the moment, you’re the best High Mage in a thousand leagues. You are our only expert in High Magery. And as for Magecraft, who knows what the future may hold?”

  “You can’t believe the City would ever take me back?” Cilarnen said in disbelief.

  “I believe I do not know—and neither do you,” Kellen said firmly. “If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you should be very careful how you use the words ‘never’ and ‘forever,’ because you might have to eat them one day.”

  They reached the Unicorn Camp. In the distance, beyond the camp, Kellen could see plumes of snow arcing from the ground, as the remaining Unicorn Knights engaged in elaborate war games.

  “They’re practicing,” Kellen said. “Let’s go watch.”

  BEFORE he’d gotten his own command, he’d participated in a few of these games, but even a Knight-Mage’s skill couldn’t quite make up for years of practice, and he still hadn’t entirely mastered the long Elven lance.

  Both teams were armed with the lance. The object of the game was a small leather ring, to be picked up on the lance point, carried off, and defended.

  There were, as far as Kellen could tell, no other rules.

  He and Cilarnen stood well back from the edge of the field as the unicorns darted in and out among each other, springing like deer, as their riders vied strenuously for possession of the mostly-invisible object. Occasionally one unicorn would leap right over another, and woe to the rider who didn’t duck in time.

  “They ride them?” Cilarnen asked, sounding surprised.

  “By mutual consent,” Kellen said.

  “Why are they all the way out here?” Cilarnen asked.

  Kellen suspected the direction this conversation was going to go, but he really had no choice. There were things Cilarnen needed to know, and if he found out things Kellen would rather he didn’t know in addition, well, that was a part of paying his price.

  “Unicorns are creatures of magic. Magic has limitations as well as advantages. What did they teach you about unicorns in Armethalieh?”

  Cilarnen frowned. “Their horn is proof against poison. That they share the nature of both the goat and the lion. And only virgins can tame them.”

  “Their horns purify just about anything. Their ‘nature’ is their own, and no one can actually ‘tame’ a unicorn. But only virgins can be around them,” Kellen corrected. “Virgin meaning someone who is both chaste and celibate—and they can definitely tell.”

  “So that’s why they’re all this way from the rest of the camp?” Cilarnen said, accepting Kellen’s explanation without a blink.

  “That’s right.”

  “Come to tell us what’s going on?” Shalkan asked before Cilarnen could come up with any more questions. “Or is the game more interesting?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ve come for a quiet chat,” Gesade said.

  Kellen looked over his shoulder. The two unicorns were standing behind them.

  “Let’s go back to the Unicorn Camp,” he said to Cilarnen.

  When they reached the edge, he swung down off Firareth and patted his shoulder.

  “Drop Anganil’s reins to the ground and tell him to stand,” Kellen said to Cilarnen. “He won’t wander.”

  Cilarnen looked dubious, but followed Kellen’s suggestion.

  They made their way to the center of camp. Kellen added more charcoal to the communal brazier.

  The two unicorns waited expectantly. Gesade’s ears flicked back and forth as she followed the sound of his movements. If Cilarnen noticed her blindness, he had the sense not to mention it.

  Kellen told his part of the story, and encouraged Cilarnen to add his own, just as he had told it to Kellen early this morning.

  “I hardly think that was fair,” Gesade said when Cilarnen had finished. “You were trying to do the right thing.”

  “I didn’t think,” Cilarnen said, still sounding confused by his own actions. “My—my father would not have listened. The whole City knew that. But any of the Mageborn has the right of personal appeal to the Arch-Mage. It would have been a hideous scandal. I would certainly have been disowned. But … it would have been better.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” Kellen said flatly. “I don’t say this because …” Because he’s a hidebound monster who tried to kill me twice.

  “Kellen, we all knew,” Cilarnen said tactfully. “You and Lycaelon … didn’t get on.”

  “Yes,” Kellen said. “But … don’t you see, Cilarnen? It’s like war. Lycaelon was on one side. The other twelve members of the High Council were on the other. Those odds are not good for … winning. And we now know that They are involved somehow.” A thought struck him. “I think that all of this might have been arranged to empty a Council seat. Your friends—did any of them have connections to the High Council?”

  Cilarnen, didn’t even have to think. Unlike Kellen, he must have had the ranks and lineage of every one of the Mageborn committed to memory. “Jorade was the great-great-grandnephew of Lord Isas—and his heir. Geont was a Pentres, but the Pentreses are allied to the Breulins, and Lord Breulin sits upon the Council.”

  “So of the six of you, three had Council connections. What of Master Raellan?”

  “He helped us a great deal—without him, we would never have found each other. But I’m sure he had no connection to the High Council. He was a Journeyman—of a minor house at best, perhaps even the son of a commoner like poor Tiedor. He never did give a family name, and we thought it would be tactless to ask.”

  But you trusted him with all your lives, because he was Mageborn. Kellen didn’t ask what had happened to Master Raellen. It would be too cruel. Cilarnen didn’t know what had happened to any of them. By now they were either dead, living somewhere in the City stripped of their Magegift and their memories, or—if they’d been incredibly lucky—simply didn’t remember anything about the whole “conspiracy” at all.

  “Kellen … you don’t think … it all happened just so someone else could take a Council seat?” Cilarnen sounded horrified.

  Kellen didn’t answer. It seemed likely to him. In the normal course of things, there wouldn’t have been a vacancy for years—even decades.

  “
If one of the Tainted is on the Council, They have more of a ‘stranglehold’ than a ‘foothold,’” Gesade said, “assuming I understand how your High Council works.”

  “What does Redhelwar plan?” Shalkan asked.

  “To see what Idalia and the others can come up with to see into the City,” Kellen said. “And to make his plans depending on what they do see.”

  SCRYING was not the answer. Idalia and the others ruled that out quickly enough—even Jermayan, with Ancaladar’s power to draw on, could not force the scrying bowl to show him Armethalieh.

  “Flowers,” Idalia said in rueful exasperation, looking at the image in the bowl. “Very nice, I don’t think. I’m happy to know that spring will come, of course, but it isn’t very helpful.”

  To send a spy into the City was impossible. To send anything but magic across the City-wards was impossible.

  But they had to find the right spell.

  It was Atroist who provided the first clue to the answer. The Lostlands Wildmages were accustomed to speaking to one another over far distances—Idalia and Jermayan had seen such a spell at work when Atroist spoke with Drothi.

  “But it needs a focus at the other end,” Atroist said. “And I do not think you will find one in your Golden City of Mages.”

  “Then combine it with a scrying spell—or parts of one, anyway,” Tarik said. “That doesn’t need a focus.”

  “But scrying is unfocused,” Idalia pointed out. “It shows you what you need, not what you want—and this time, we need to see exactly what we want.”

  “Then blend in some Hunt Magic,” Tarik suggested. “When you go hunting for deer, it’s no use at all Calling hares.”

  “To see is well and good,” Jermayan said, “but you do not need merely to See. You need also to Know. So this must be not just a spell of Seeing, but a spell of Knowing, such as Kellen uses. It does you no good to see if you do not understand what you see.”

  “There is a spell the Forest Wife teaches us,” a Wildmage named Kavaaeri said slowly. She was one of the few female Wildmages to have come with the High Reaches folk. “We use it for herbs and mushrooms, so that we are sure of them before we use them. It is not a Knight-Mage spell … but it is a spell of Knowing.”

  The discussion went on.

  AT dusk Kellen collected Cilarnen from the Centaur encampment and went to join the Wildmages.

  He’d worried about whether Cilarnen would be able to stand the proximity of so many Wildmages—he suspected, from what Kardus had told him, that being around Wildmages for Cilarnen was like being around non-virgins for Shalkan.

  “It’s not too bad,” Cilarnen said. “It’s just … it feels as if something terrible is going to happen. But nothing ever does. I can stand it. As long as nobody casts a spell on me,” he added darkly.

  “We’d almost always ask your permission,” Kellen assured him. “Unless you were unconscious, and it was for a healing—or to keep you from harming someone else.”

  “Well, I don’t ever want a spell cast on me,” Cilarnen said fervently. “To heal me or for anything else. If I’m going to hurt somebody, stop me some other way.”

  Kellen didn’t answer. He wasn’t about to make a promise he might not be able to keep.

  THE Wildmages were gathered together in one of the great lodge-tents of the Mountainfolk, a structure large enough to accommodate several dozen people at once, and tall enough at its domed center for Kellen to stand comfortably upright.

  Even Kardus was there, kneeling among the others and looking perfectly at ease, though Kellen wasn’t sure how the Centaur had managed to negotiate the narrow doorway.

  Both Kellen and Cilarnen were carrying rucksacks. Though wine was difficult to find in an Elven camp, with Vestakia’s and Isinwen’s help, Kellen had managed to assemble a number of bottles of things that more-or-less fit the definition, from mead to hard cider to Elven fruit cordials to some actual bottles of wine. He hoped Idalia appreciated the effort.

  The lodge was filled with the good smells of roast meat and fresh bread—and the residue of enough magic to make him want to sneeze, though Cilarnen didn’t seem to react to it. Looking around, Kellen saw a seat by Idalia and moved toward it. Cilarnen went to sit by Kardus.

  “You look tired,” Kellen said, folding himself easily into a cross-legged position beside his sister.

  “A long day of battering my head against the merely difficult,” Idalia said gloomily.

  “We are to call hares and become mushrooms,” Jermayan explained kindly. “Presuming Kindolhinadetil will grant us the loan of a mirror.”

  “Yes of course,” Kellen said, with only a touch of irony. “That makes perfect sense.” He opened the rucksack and passed Idalia one of the wine bottles.

  “Spoiled fruit,” Jermayan pronounced, regarding it.

  Kellen grinned and offered him one of the cordials.

  The food had been cooked elsewhere. Now the platters of meat—roast mutton—and baskets of bread began to pass around. The meal was conducted in the style of the High Reaches, with several people sharing a communal platter.

  As they ate, Idalia filled him in on what they’d accomplished that day.

  “—so while we think we may have a spell that will allow us to see what’s going on in the City, we aren’t sure we have enough power to cast it,” she finished.

  There were three components to each spell of the Wild Magic: the power to cast the spell—always paid personally by the Wildmage—the power of the spell’s work—which could be shared among many—and the Mageprice, which the Wildmage alone paid.

  Idalia was saying that this spell was so powerful she didn’t even have the power to cast it.

  Kellen looked at Jermayan.

  “Not even Ancaladar and I. I have spoken to him. And there is yet another difficulty, were I to be the one who cast this spell.”

  “One, we know they’ll notice. It’s only a matter of time. There’d probably be a little more time if a human were to cast it, instead of an Elf. Two, it’s not just a spell of Seeing, but of Knowing—” Idalia said.

  “Which means it would work best of all if somebody familiar with the City cast it,” Kellen finished. “Because they’d already have some idea of what they were seeing, and wouldn’t have to learn as much. That means you, me, or Cilarnen.”

  “That means me,” Idalia corrected. “Cilarnen’s not a Wildmage, and you’re a Knight-Mage. I’d have the best chance of success—if I had the power to cast it.”

  “What about using a keystone?” Kellen said. “Like before?”

  Idalia shook her head firmly. “We thought of that, and Drelech cast the talking stones to see if that would work. It needs to be a living source.”

  As the platters were cleared away, the discussion returned, once more, to the spell. Kellen could tell that the Wildmages were now covering ground they had covered before, hoping for a solution.

  He could see Cilarnen and Kardus talking quietly between themselves. Jermayan was watching them alertly, probably able to hear what was being said.

  At last Cilarnen—who had obviously needed to be persuaded of something—made his way into the middle of the lodge and got to his feet.

  The discussion stopped.

  “I am unfamiliar with your … magic,” he began hesitantly. “And I do not mean to offend. But Kardus tells me I must ask. Why do you not simply link your magic as the High Mages do?”

  Kellen had rarely had the pleasure—if that was the word—of seeing his sister so completely nonplussed.

  “Sit down over here,” she said. “Explain.”

  Cilarnen darted an agonized glance at Kellen. Kellen did his best to look encouraging.

  Cilarnen came and sat down in front of Idalia, doing his best to keep a respectable distance between them.

  “In Armathalieh,” Cilarnen said, obviously searching for just the right words, “the High Mages work together, sharing their power. It is part of every Mage’s training to learn to meld the power each holds
into a greater whole, for the good of the City. I had thought …” he faltered to a stop.

  But it was something Wildmages never learned—never needed to learn. Because Wildmages were usually solitary creatures, who drew their power from themselves, from willing donors, and from paying their Mageprices.

  “It’s true,” Kellen said, shrugging. “Anigrel told me. They may steal the citizens’ personal power with the Talismans and use that instead of their own, but they still share the power among themselves when they do a Working. Somehow.”

  “Is that—” Cilarnen began, staring at Kellen.

  Idalia interrupted him. “Do you know how this is done, Cilarnen? Can you tell me?”

  “I know how to do it,” Cilarnen said slowly. “I can tell you what the High Mages do—but I cannot do it with you! Not with a Wildmage!” His voice held unfeigned horror.

  “I promise you, Cilarnen, if we figure this out, I will only practice on another Wildmage,” Idalia said gently. “Jermayan, would Ancaladar consent to be a part of such a … sharing?”

  “I do not know,” Jermayan said. His voice was troubled. “First we must see if such a thing can be learned.”

  BUT before even that could be attempted, it had to be explained—and there they nearly came to grief, for Cilarnen was a High Mage of the Golden City … and High Magick and Wildmagery were nothing alike.

  “Prayers to the Light? Fasting? Proper incense? Huntsman strike me if I do any such thing,” a Wildmage named Kerleu growled, a few moments into Cilarnen’s explanation.

  “Nor am I going to wave my hands and babble to empty air like a mad thing,” Cilarnen muttered under his breath.

  “Patience, friends,” Wirance said, his hands out in a placating gesture before things could grow more heated. “We will take what we can use—but we cannot do even that if you do not let the boy finish his explanation.”

  “Proper preparation. Proper intent,” Kellen said, struggling to translate between the magic he only dimly remembered—and hadn’t studied all that closely—and the one he knew. “Shielding?”