When Darkness Falls

by Mercedes Lackey

  “That’s comforting, I don’t think,” Idalia said.

  “Well it is,” Cilarnen insisted. “If they aren’t attacking, it means my spell took down not only the City Wards, but every piece of defensive magick Armethalieh has, at least in the Mage Quarter, where most of the spells would be. Not so good when you consider that there’s a whole Enemy army outside right now trying to get in, but since we’re trying to get in, too—without being killed—it’s a good thing for us.”

  “Lead on, then,” Idalia said.

  Cilarnen mounted the steps and pushed at one of the great bronze doors. Since the doors normally opened and closed by magick, it took the three of them to move it, but at last they got it open.

  “NO—no—no!” A gray-robed Council Page stood in the center of the hallway, eyes wide with terror at the sight of the three strangely-garbed intruders. “Get back!”

  The boy was a few years younger than Cilarnen was, and obviously half-mad with fear. Cilarnen had never served as a Council House Page because of his rank, but he knew the duties that the Pages performed. This young man would have been supposed to wait in the hall and watch over the doors, but—especially today—he would never have expected them to open.

  And Cilarnen well knew what a horrifying sight he and his two companions presented in their furs and armor.

  “I am Lord Cilarnen of House Volpiril, and I must see the High Council at once,” Cilarnen said. “You must conduct us to them immediately.”

  “I—I—I—Wait here.” The Page turned and fled, his soft boots scuffling across the black and white marble floor.

  “Do we wait?” Idalia asked.

  “No,” Cilarnen said. “I think I know the way.”

  BUT they had not gone more than a few steps toward the Council Chamber before their path was blocked by six Magewardens.

  “I am here to see the High Council,” Cilarnen repeated.

  There was a sudden flare as the Magewardens’ Spells raged and died against the violet glow of Cilarnen’s Mage-Shield. One moment Cilarnen had been standing, apparently defenseless. The next, the air between him and the Magewardens was filled with the shimmering light of his spell.

  “Do you think I am an idiot?” Cilarnen demanded angrily. “The Arch-Mage has been kidnapped by Demons—Demons whom you serve, because Lord Anigrel is your master! You all saw Them today, if you aren’t blind. Now get out of my way, before I do to you what my friends are going to do to Them.”

  “Cilarnen?” one of the Magewardens said, stepping forward. “Cilarnen Volpiril?”

  “Geont?”

  Geont Pentres had been one of his fellow conspirators—in a conspiracy, Cilarnen knew now, that had been created entirely by Anigrel to gain himself a Council seat and remove those members of the High Council—like Lord Volpiril—who could interfere in his plans to hand Armethalieh over to the Demons.

  “You were Banished. Stripped of your Gift. What are you doing here? How do you know me?” The young Magewarden stared at Cilarnen, frowning in confusion.

  “Once we were close friends, Geont. Anigrel lied to us both. I was Banished—but not stripped of my Magegift. Your memories were changed, if you do not know me. I am sorry to see you have become Anigrel’s hound. Once you would have given anything to save Armethalieh from the same enemy you now serve.”

  “I still will. Do you swear by the Light that you come here in peace?”

  “I swear it, Geont. And these who are with me come in peace as well. They’re my friends.”

  Geont Pentres stared past Cilarnen, now looking not only confused, but appalled.

  “An Elf. And … a woman.”

  Cilarnen smiled. “She’s Lord Lycaelon’s daughter, Geont, so I’d take that look off my face if I were you. Don’t bother saying that you don’t remember her, either. You don’t remember me, after all. Yes, they are my friends and comrades. And there is a Demon Army outside the City. And we need to see whatever is left of the High Council. Right now.”

  “Dyvel, go and tell the High Council that Lord Cilarnen Volpiril… Lady Idalia of House Tavadon, and …”

  “Jermayan of Sentarshadeen,” Idalia supplied helpfully.

  “—Jermayan of Sentarshadeen, Elf, wish to see the High Council,” Geont said.

  “You can’t do that!” Dyvel gasped in shock.

  “Is Lord Anigrel here to stop me? Is the Arch-Mage?” Geont demanded. “No. They were both carried off this morning by monsters. And even if House Volpiril is a forcing-house of treason, I for one would like to know what Lord Cilarnen is doing here with his Magegift intact, and strong enough to hold off the six of us. He was only an Entered Apprentice when he was Banished.”

  Dyvel bowed and retreated.

  “And the rest of you,” Geont said. “I am certain you have somewhere else to be. Go there. Lord Cilarnen has given me his word that he comes in peace.”

  The other four Magewardens didn’t look very much as if they liked being dismissed, but they went.

  “Now, Lord Cilarnen, if you would dismiss your Mage-Shield, it would ease my mind very much,” Geont said. “I swear by the Light I will attempt no spells against you. I do not think I could prevail, in any event.”

  The purple glow of Mage-Shield shimmered and died.

  “And now?” Idalia asked.

  Geont ignored her. Cilarnen sighed. “Do, please, Geont, answer the Lady Idalia’s question, in the name of the Light and the peace between us.”

  “We must await Dyvel’s return. The High Council is in sealed conference. There is much to do. If you wish a fair hearing, you must wait to be summoned.”

  “There certainly is much to do, since the City Wards have been brought down,” Idalia said tartly.

  Geont opened his mouth to deliver a stinging rebuke.

  “Geont,” Cilarnen said quickly. “Our other friends—what happened to them? Jorade Isas? Kermis Lalkmair? Margon Ogregance? Tiedor Rolfort? Do you know?”

  Geont looked at him. “They are not my friends. I do not know them. One hears gossip, of course. Rolfort is a Commons name. Of him I know nothing. But there was some scandal with the Lalkmair heir some moonturns ago. His father stripped him of his Gift, and he killed himself soon after. Young Ogregance is apprenticed to his father; he was supposed to test for advancement in the fall, but did not. I see Jorade Isas at the Golden Bells now and then, but I swear to you, we do not know each other.”

  Cilarnen bowed his head. “Thank you, Geont. You have told me what I wished to know. If not what I wished to hear.”

  Dyvel returned a moment later, almost running. “They will see them!”

  “Come with me,” Geont said.

  THE three of them stood in the center of the black and white marble floor of the Council Chamber, staring up at the black marble bench at the High Council.

  Only five seats were filled now: Lorins, Ganaret, Nagid, Dagan, and Harith.

  The High Mages had suffered a series of nasty shocks today, starting with the kidnapping of their Arch-Mage, and continuing with the “attack” on their city by a large black dragon and Cilarnen’s unicorn-cast spell. Yet they merely looked cross and bored.

  “Well?” Ganaret demanded.

  “We have come to tell you how to save yourselves,” Cilarnen said. “And to save Lord Lycaelon, too. And to tell you of a plot that has been brewing here in the City for many moonturns, though it is not the one you believe.”

  “Will you speak of this under Truthspell, boy?” Nagid demanded.

  “You will address me properly, by my rank and House,” Cilarnen said evenly. “I was Banished unjustly, for crimes I did not commit, and so I claim all that was taken from me.”

  “You committed treason, as I recall,” Harith said.

  “At Anigrel’s instigation,” Cilarnen said. “Yet—I believe—the charge for which I was Banished was Wildmagery, and I am no Wildmage. Now and always, my devotion is to the High Magick, and my loyalty is to the Golden City.”

  IDALIA ground her teeth i
n frustration, listening to Cilarnen’s calm demand for an empty title. Yet she knew it was necessary. If he could not get the High Council to treat him—all of them—with respect, they would not listen. And if they would not listen to them …

  None of this would work.

  She needed their help.

  The time was drawing near to pay her final Price.

  All the time they had been riding toward Armethalieh, she had felt it, without understanding quite what it was she was feeling. And then—when the Demons had taken Lycaelon—everything had become completely clear in her mind, just as it always did for a Wildmage at the moment when Mageprice came due.

  Paying this one was just going to be a little more complicated than most. And require a lot more outside help.

  “IT is true,” Ganaret said. “Lord Cilarnen is no Wildmage. Nor, apparently, is he without the Magegift that should have been Burned from his mind at his Banishing. How can this be?”

  “Cast your Truthspell and ask me,” Cilarnen said, smiling calmly.

  A Journeyman Mage was summoned to the Council Chamber, and the spell was cast.

  Cilarnen spoke then, carefully, persuasively. Of the days of famine in Armethalieh. Of the cabal he had formed. Of “Master Raellan”—Anigrel in disguise—who had brought them all together and set their feet on the path to treason, carefully shaping their plans and causing them to do things they would not otherwise have done.

  Anigrel, who had been supposed to Burn the Magegift from his mind on the eve of his Banishment, and who had not.

  He spoke at length of Anigrel, whom the Allies knew to be a pawn of the Demons. How Anigrel had lied to the High Council, telling them that the Elves and the Wildmages were attempting to destroy them, when it had been Anigrel and the Demons all along. Of how the Demons had raided the villages in the Delfier Valley, slaughtering both the farmers and the Militia and Mages sent to save them. He had seen Their attack on Nerendale himself: As a witness, under Truthspell, his testimony constituted proof under the Law of the City.

  He spoke of how the Elves and their ancient Allies had been fighting against Them to save them all.

  “And now—tonight—the Demon Queen will sacrifice the Arch-Mage to bring He Who Is back into the world, if we cannot stop him,” Cilarnen said, finishing his explanation at last. “To do this, you must help them—the Elves, the Wildmages—just as your ancestors did a thousand years ago. You must do this in the name of the Eternal Light.”

  “This cannot be true,” Harith said in a shaking voice.

  “My son does not lie.”

  “Father!”

  Setarion Volpiril stood in the doorway of the Council Chamber, wearing the gray robes and rank tabard of a High Mage of the Golden City.

  “Lord Volpiril, you should not be here,” Lord Ganaret said quietly. “You have given your oath.”

  “‘I shall work no treason—against the High Council, against the City … or against the Arch-Mage,’” Volpiril agreed, quoting the oath he had been forced to swear, his deep voice resonant and steady. “Yet tell me, Lord Ganaret, how is it treason to come here and tell you what you all know: that my son speaks the truth?”

  He stepped further into the chamber.

  “We have all seen our friends and colleagues … vanish. In the past moon-turns we have been told that they conspire with Wildmages, or Commons, or Selken Traders, or we have been told nothing at all. This day we have seen with our own eyes the creatures from the Black Days seize Lord Lycaelon. Lord Cilarnen tells you that they mean to use him to end our world. Do you wish to do their work for them? Today I have seen unicorns, and dragons, and creatures my masters in the Art Magickal have told me were only illusion, as real as my own flesh. If we do not believe this truth, we will not live to see another sunrise. And by the spells that bind me still, if this were treason I would be dead before you now.”

  “We must vote,” Lorins said, a whimper in his voice.

  “Vote?” Idalia demanded. “What in the name of Leaf and Star can you possibly have to vote on?”

  “Nevertheless,” Lord Ganaret said, “everything must be done in the proper form. If you wish our help, madame, all must be done by the will of the Council as a whole. Now, I pray you, withdraw and leave us to our deliberations.”

  Ganaret waved a hand dismissively, indicating that the three of them should step back to the center of the room.

  RELUCTANTLY, Idalia and Jermayan did as they were bid. Rather than join them, Cilarnen crossed the room to where his father stood.

  “My Lord Father,” he said, bowing his head.

  “You dress the part of a mountebank,” Volpiril said, smiling faintly.

  “It is cold outside the City walls,” Cilarnen said.

  “I have misjudged you,” Volpiril said.

  “No, Father, I think you judged me well enough. Let me remove the spells that bind you. We will need all your gifts.”

  “You will need me, you think, to bring the Council to heel,” Lord Volpiril said.

  “If you can,” Cilarnen answered steadily.

  He knew, from the brief viewings he had done of the Council and the City—and what Idalia had told him of her own scrying while it had still been possible for Wildmages to see into City lands and the City itself—that things had been very strange and difficult here since he had left. His father had always been an ambitious man, placing his ambition before everything, even his own son. But among the High Mages, ambition and the good of the City were one, at least among the best of them.

  In this moment of greatest danger, after seeing the City suffer around him for so long, having seen their ancient Enemy in the flesh at last, Volpiril would do what needed to be done so that Armethalieh might live.

  “Lycaelon’s whelp is a Wildmage,” Volpiril pointed out, nodding toward Idalia.

  Cilarnen smiled. “Both of them are, Father. And Kellen is my closest friend.”

  Volpiril raised his eyebrows. “Ah. Well. House Volpiril has always had a talent for advantageous alliances. If you can unbind the spells of the Arch-Mage of Armethalieh, I suppose I must learn to trust your judgment.”

  Cilarnen withdrew his wand from inside his robe. The spells binding his father were not so much complex as powerful. They fed into the very structure of the City itself. But his power was greater, fed by the Land.

  Cilarnen traced a glyph in the air, and whispered a quiet word.

  Green fire raced over Volpiril’s body, and the High Mage gasped.

  “I am free,” he said.

  “I am afraid the Council can come to no determination regarding your petition,” Lord Harith said. “We must, therefore, request that you leave us to deliberate further before we may call the vote. Be certain that we will—”

  Before Harith could finish speaking, Volpiril strode up the steps and seated himself in Lycaelon’s seat.

  “I take, once again, my seat on the Council,” he announced. “As my son is no traitor, I see no reason to forgo my place. Harith, stop making those unpleasant faces. As you know perfectly well, the Lady Idalia is Lord Lycaelon’s daughter, and irregular as it is for a woman to speak in Council, this is a day of many irregularities. Next, I believe that having heard Cilarnen Volpiril’s Truthspelled testimony, no further deliberation is necessary: What he has said beneath the compulsion of the High Magick and the Eternal Light is certainly truth beyond all disputation. Is there any among you that wishes to argue this point?”

  None of the members of the High Council said a single word. A look of satisfaction settled over Lord Volpiril’s features.

  “Excellent. I am pleased to see that none of you would wish to shame your tutors by forgetting your first lessons in the Art Magickal. Having settled to all of our satisfactions that Cilarnen Volpiril has spoken truth, it is equally undeniable that it is a truth that requires immediate action—not further debate. Is there anyone here who feels that the fact that the world will end at Midnight Bells is not an urgent matter?”

  Again, there
was silence.

  “I shall take your continued silence for agreement, my Lord Mages. Therefore, I call the vote now, and not at what future time it would best please you to delay it to, my Lords Ganaret and Harith. The matter upon which we will vote, first, is whether to render all aid to Cilarnen Volpiril and Idalia Tavadon as they ask for it, against our ancient enemy. I remind you all that to vote against this is to doom the world to the rule of He Who Is. I now call the vote.”

  The vote, needless to say, was unanimously in favor.

  “Now,” Volpiril said, looking down at his son. “I presume the … three … of you came here with some plan?”

  KELLEN heard the bronze gates of the City close with a resounding crash, and banished Idalia, Jermayan, and Cilarnen from his mind. He could not afford to think about them.

  He rode among the elements of the army, speaking to the commanders, giving encouragement where it was needed, explaining his plan. They were to hold the plain before the City, keeping the Demons from reaching Armethalieh. They must give the High Mages time to re-cast the City Wards that would keep the Demons out of the City, and discover a way to rescue Lycaelon, if they could. The rest—perhaps even Lycaelon’s rescue—was up to the others.

  He’d thought there might be some uncertainty, even some resentment, at the abrupt change of command. Even though the Elven Army had never actually been in battle before this season, most of the Elven Knights on the field today had served with Redhelwar for centuries, and they and the Centaurs had been under his leadership in all of the battles they’d fought together.

  But Kellen sensed no resentment among them. Only approval and acceptance. He had earned it, he realized. Everything he had done, fighting beside them, leading ever-larger commands into battle, had gone to building their trust in him. Kellen Knight-Mage.

  Nithariel reported movement in the distance, and Kellen sent the unicorns on an extended sortie for detailed information. Their speed—and the fact that most of the Enemy couldn’t approach them closely—would protect them.