The Outstretched Shadow

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I begged her to take me with her, but she said that Father would never let me go, because I was his daughter, and that this was the only way. Then she kissed me and left. I tried to follow her, but she’d locked the door again. There was nothing I could do but cry myself back to sleep.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kellen said again, wishing he could make some of that pain go away.

  But Idalia shrugged, and a kind of veil dropped over her expression. “In the morning, as soon as I could get away from the nurse, I sneaked into Mother’s rooms, but they’d all been tidied away, and every trace of her was gone, as if no one had ever lived in those rooms at all. I waited sennights for someone to even mention that she was gone, but no one ever did. Ever.

  “I was so frightened by their silence that I did exactly as Mother said, and never said a single word about her, so perhaps that was why Father didn’t think he needed to bother with erasing her from my mind. Or perhaps there was a spell after all. Or perhaps a little of both—you already know how mysteriously the Wild Magic works.”

  “Oh, yes,” Kellen agreed bitterly. “And things are always, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for Lycaelon. As long as there’s no reason for him to act, he’s far more concerned with all that business of being important than with anything in his household.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Idalia replied. “Well, after that, I devoted myself to making life hell for a succession of governesses and to protecting and taking care of you; Father devoted his to becoming Arch-Mage; and you grew up into an adorable little boy. And the one thing I wanted most in the entire world was to become a Mage myself.

  “Of course it was unthinkable. I’d been told that, loudly and repeatedly. Nevertheless, it was the one thing I wanted most in the entire world.”

  Kellen eyed her with speculation. “Why is it that I just know you wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer?”

  She smiled thinly, but continued without a comment. “Of course it was as unthinkable when I was in my teens as it had been when I was a child. I’d heard all the arguments—women were too emotional, too frivolous, not smart enough, but they all boiled down to one: there’d never been a female Mage in Armethalieh before, and so of course there could never be one now. So I sneaked into the Records Room of the Council Hall to search through their archives, since unlike the Library at the Mage College, which I knew I’d never be able to get into, the Council Hall isn’t surrounded with wards to keep any mere mortal from setting foot in it. All I had to do was make sure I went on a day when the place was full of foreign Traders. That was easy enough; some of them always get lost, and if they were triggering wards all over the place there’d be no peace for the high-and-mighty overlords of the City!

  “Besides, it was the records of the Council itself I was after. I figured if I could find a record of a female Mage in the Council Histories, that would be enough precedent for my own training, and if I could find no record that any woman had ever been apprenticed and failed, I could always argue that if there had never been any female Mage-candidates, how could the Council possibly know that women didn’t make good Mages and couldn’t control their emotions?

  “That was when my Books came to me. I found them there on the shelves, crammed in among a bunch of bound copies of minutes from some ancient meeting.”

  “Your Books?” Kellen gaped at her. “There? In the Council Records Room? What did you think they were?”

  She gave him a sidelong look. “I knew exactly what I had of course—I’d read all the way through Father’s library by the age of twelve and I knew the Ars Perfidorum practically by heart. I knew they were supposedly Anathema, but I didn’t care. If the Council and Father were so wrong about females, why should they be right about this? And unlike High Magick, I wouldn’t need tutors, or textbooks, or special equipment, or years of practice before I could become a Wildmage. I started practicing Wildmagery before I even finished reading The Book of Stars.”

  “You did?” Kellen felt his estimation of his sister rising again. Brave and fearless Idalia!

  Idalia finished her tea, and put the empty cup down on the table. “Yes. Stupid of me, I know. Of course the Council caught me, and pretty quickly, too. I was lucky not to be executed out of hand, but the Council does love its pretense of fairness and mercy. Just as you did, I found myself tried and Banished, standing outside the City walls, waiting for sunrise and the release of the Hunt. Since I was a female, and not terribly important to them or to Father, I wasn’t given the option to recant, either, just a half-chime trial, a couple of bells in the cell, and out the gate like the trash I was.”

  Kellen winced, imagining the scene very clearly. Idalia didn’t see it; she was looking down at her empty cup.

  After a moment, she went on. “Unlike you, I’d done a little more digging in the Council archives before I’d found my Books. I knew exactly what was going to be coming after me when the Outlaw Hunt was released, and I had no intention of being anywhere that the Hounds could go. So I did a more specific spell. I asked for the power of flight, so that no matter what happened, the Hounds couldn’t possibly reach me.

  “Of course, since I’d made such a specific request of the Powers, things didn’t work out quite the way I expected them to.”

  He saw a tiny change in her at that moment, a subtle relaxation. Well, the painful part of the narrative was probably past, now.

  “It never does, you know. You’ll find that out soon enough if you haven’t already. I found myself transformed into a Silver Eagle, and the price of the spell was that I must remain in that form until I could find a mate and raise a brood of chicks before I could transform back again. What made that difficult—other than having to wait for mating season—was having to find a Silver Eagle mate. Silver Eagles live in Elven lands, and even there, they are very, very rare. It took me three years to accomplish the task. But—oh!—being able to fly …”

  Idalia stared off into space, her expression dreamy as she remembered. Then her eyes focused on Kellen’s face again, and she smiled teasingly, reaching out to pat his hand.

  “I rather enjoyed it. Once I got used to it, of course. Eggs are certainly a better way of having children than the way we do it. At any rate, once my price was paid, I was free to change back whenever I wished, so I went to the Elves, made my situation known, and changed back to myself—which is a lot better than ending up stark naked on a cliff in the middle of nowhere, don’t you think?”

  “Better than I did,” Kellen said glumly, staring into the dregs of his now-cold tea. He’d almost gotten himself and Shalkan killed. All Idalia’d had to do was spend three years flying around Elven lands as an eagle, probably having all kinds of interesting adventures.

  “I don’t think so,” Idalia said, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “The essence of proficiency at the Wild Magic is economy of price. Your price was rather minimal compared to mine. It’s hardly your fault or Shalkan’s that the Council lost their minds and sent so many Hounds after you. I’ve read their records, after all. A regular Outlaw Hunt is thirteen Hounds, one for each member of the Council, and from what you’ve said, it sounds like they sent five or six times that number after you, and Shalkan said—and he should know—that they were preparing more. You ought to be flattered.”

  “But I got Shalkan involved, and I almost got him killed!” Kellen burst out.

  Idalia held up her hand. “Wait a moment. Think. These things don’t happen by accident. There are no accidents in the Wild Magic. Now, I don’t know anything about Shalkan, and it’s impolite to ask, but I suspect that helping you was his price, either for something that Wild Magic did for him in the past, or for something that he’s asked for in the future.”

  Once again, Kellen stared at Idalia in surprise. That notion had never even occurred to him.

  She smiled. “In any event, you ought to be flattered that the Council cared enough to try to kill you so thoroughly. Father must be furious, losing both his children to the Wild Magic this wa
y. I guess Wildmagery runs in our blood. I really do wonder if Mother practiced?”

  Kellen said nothing, and Idalia shrugged, dismissing the question. “I suppose we’ll never know.”

  “I suppose,” Kellen said, sounding sulky despite himself. “Not that it matters if Wildmagery runs in my blood or not. I’ll never know any more about the Wild Magic than I do now. My Books are back in the City. The Council’s probably already burned them.”

  “Think so?” Idalia said, grinning now, with the look of someone who knows something. “Your pack’s under the table here. Look in it.”

  Kellen ducked his head under the table. There on the floor, next to the bloodstained remains of his old boots, which Idalia was using as a pattern to make new ones, was the scraped and battered day-pack that Kellen had carried out of the City. Amazingly, considering everything, it was still in one piece. He dragged it toward him and pulled it open.

  There was a compartment in it that he hadn’t noticed before. He pulled it open. Inside were the three Books. His three Books.

  Kellen pulled them out and stared at them in disbelief. They were his; the same ones he’d bought from the vendor at the Low Market in the City. He knew every crease and dent.

  “But—” he said, even though he was getting awfully tired of saying it. They weren’t here. They couldn’t be. The Council would have been insane to send the Books off with him instead of destroying them—and besides, he’d opened that backpack several times since he’d left the City, and before that, in the cell. He was sure he would have noticed the compartment, and the Books.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Idalia smiled as if she’d just given him a present—and in a way, she had. Kellen was amazed and astonished—and comforted in ways he hadn’t expected—to have his Books back. He wasn’t finished learning from them yet—he wasn’t sure if he ever would be.

  “Once the Books find you, they can’t be parted from you for long,” Idalia said. “That’s the way the Wild Magic works. Even if someone tries to burn them, they’ll survive and get back to you somehow. Only you can choose to give them up.”

  Kellen stared down at the three slim handwritten volumes in his hands. He didn’t doubt her, though it was an amazing revelation. The Books would find him no matter what happened. The Books would look after him.

  That being true, in a way they were almost alive—like the power in the Wild Magic that chose the price the Wildmage would pay for each spell, the Books themselves were part of some intention so large and hidden that Kellen had no idea of what it might be.

  The thought made him subtly uneasy, though he wasn’t quite sure why, and suddenly he remembered the terrible creatures in his dreams. Demons.

  Abruptly, in the same way that he knew when he cast a spell of the Wild Magic how to pay the Mageprice for his spell and what it was, Kellen knew that Demons existed. Never mind the fact that he’d never encountered any mention of them in his unauthorized reading through Lycaelon’s library, nor that Anigrel hadn’t mentioned them during any of his tutorials, nor that he’d never encountered any Defense Spells against them, Kellen suddenly knew the creatures from his fever-dreams were real, at least in some way.

  And try as he might, he could not forget what Lycaelon had told him back there in the cell—that practicing the Wild Magic led inevitably to involvement with Demons, to madness and alliance with the Dark. It had been easy to scoff then—but he’d still been safe behind Armethalieh’s walls.

  There’d been truth in his nightmares. He knew that much.

  Had Lycaelon Tavadon lied—or hadn’t he?

  I don’t know, Kellen thought miserably.

  He looked at Idalia.

  If anything in Lycaelon’s words had been true, she was the last person in the world he could turn to for help.

  She said Shalkan won’t come near her. Is that why—the real reason?

  “You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden,” Idalia said.

  “I guess I’m just tired,” Kellen answered awkwardly.

  “Well, let’s get you back to bed, then. I should have your boots finished by tomorrow, and then we can try something really strenuous, like a walk outside,” Idalia said cheerfully.

  HE hadn’t actually felt tired—that had only been an excuse to be alone with his thoughts—but the walk back to the bed really did take the last of his strength. Kellen was half-asleep before Idalia helped him out of the leather clothing. He was only barely aware that she had pulled the covers up over his shoulders, and was completely asleep only moments afterward.

  He half woke later, hearing her moving around in the room, and tried to speak, but found he couldn’t make his mouth form coherent words.

  “Go back to sleep,” she told him as he stirred sleepily. “I’ll make up a bedroll here on the floor.”

  Well, if that was what she wanted to do … it was her home, after all. Kellen gave no further thought to it, and let sleep take him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Reborn to Magic

  WHEN HE WOKE again it was morning, and wonderful food smells filled the air. For a moment Kellen was disoriented, unable to remember how he’d gotten here and why the Morning Bells hadn’t woken him, then everything settled into place as memories came flooding back. Banishment, the Hunt, awakening, discovering he had a sister. This was Idalia’s cabin, outside of City lands. And he would never hear the bells of the City of a Thousand Bells again.

  Reflexively, his hand went to the Talisman around his throat.

  It was gone, of course, stripped from him the night of his Banishing, and its absence made Kellen oddly uneasy.

  It’s gone. That means you’re free now, he told himself sternly. But without it he felt more naked than he did without his clothes, despite the fact that now that he knew what it was, he hated the very thought of it.

  He put the thought from his mind, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. Idalia had left his new clothes where he could find them, and he was able to don the unfamiliar garments without too much difficulty. He was much stronger than yesterday, though still a little light-headed, but he was able to walk to the other room unsupported.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Idalia greeted him cheerfully from where she knelt at the hearth. “I thought you were going to sleep the day away!”

  Kellen looked around, puzzled. From the position of the sun, it wasn’t that much later than he usually woke!

  She laughed, seeing his baffled expression. “Country ways, little brother! Up with the sun; no Magelight here, and you can’t do chores by candlelight. But don’t worry; I don’t plan to put you to work right away. Come on, sit down. I baked this morning—in your honor, I might add—and I want to see how these boots fit.”

  When Idalia had mentioned boots, Kellen had been expecting something like the horsemen’s boots he’d seen in the City—knee-high gleaming high-heeled things of brightly polished hard-finished leather—but what she brought him was something more like leggings with feet. They were identical to the ones she was wearing, and Kellen realized he should have expected that, but he still hadn’t fully come to terms with what living outside of the City truly meant.

  No shops. No merchants. No one to buy things from—it was either make it yourself, or do without. Unless you could find someone who would trade with you for what you wanted. Would anyone traffic with an Outlaw?—Two Outlaws?

  The boots were flat-soled, with several thicknesses of leather pierced and sewn to heavy deerskin uppers. A long wide tongue of leather came almost to his knee, and the long outsides of the boot wrapped over that. Flat buttons, made of disks of polished antler, were sewn up the sides of the outer flap; at first Kellen had thought they were for decoration, but Idalia showed him how to take a long narrow piece of heavy buckskin and wrap it around the boot, using the horn buttons to keep it from slipping. At the top, she tied it and tucked the trailing ends under neatly.

  “Now you do the other one,” she said, getting to her feet.

  As his sister bu
sied herself by the fire, Kellen struggled with the other boot. He couldn’t seem to keep the sides in place as he wrapped the garter around it; though the leather was thick, it was soft enough not to stand by itself. It was evident, however, that Idalia intended to let him work it out for himself, and after several frustrating tries, Kellen finally managed to secure his second boot.

  As he straightened up again, Idalia set breakfast on the table in front of him—hot stew and tea. There was a flat loaf and stone crocks of butter and honey already on the table.

  “Go ahead—I ate hours ago.” Idalia sat down opposite him, carrying her own mug.

  It was good food, and Kellen was hungry, but it wasn’t what he was used to seeing at breakfast, and somehow that just seemed to underscore what a big change there’d been in his life. He wasn’t ill-mannered enough to complain, but Idalia seemed to have no trouble sensing his thoughts.

  “It’s a big change from life in Armethalieh, isn’t it, Kellen?” she asked—kindly, but shrewdly.

  He nodded, spooning up stew to save himself from having to articulate a reply. He was alive, and that was a great gift—so great, that it hardly seemed polite to grumble about the terms.

  The food was good—if unfamiliar—and the more he ate, the more he realized just how long it was since he’d had a decent meal. He reached for the bread, breaking the loaf open and loading a piece with butter and honey. The honey was thick and dark, unlike the pale golden stuff he was familiar with.

  “Wild-gathered,” Idalia explained. “I’ll show you how, when the proper season for it comes. The butter comes from goats, not cows—I trade for that. It’s not a bad life, Kellen. Just different from what you’re used to.”

  “And you live out here all alone?” Kellen asked, swallowing a large mouthful of bread and honey.