The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “—such a shame about that poor man! And him a writer! Criminal, it was.”

  He wasn’t sure who was speaking; thanks to Lycaelon’s efforts, Kellen had only the vaguest notions of the size and composition of the household staff. He heard the clink of cups and plates, and knew that the upper servants must be having their breakfast during this lull in the day’s activities; he knew that the servants ate before their masters. Kellen pulled back farther into the shadows, out of sight—but not out of earshot—of the gossiping servants.

  “Drowned at midnight. It’s like something out of a play,” a woman said, sounding pleased.

  “Well, what I want to know is, what was Lord Perulan doing down at the docks at midnight? Nothing decent—you may take that from me.” Kellen recognized the voice of the house’s butler.

  Perulan—dead? The servants were unlikely to be misinformed—houseservant gossip was generally a fast and reliable source of information about everything that went on in the City.

  And he knew, he knew, that this was no coincidence.

  It’s my fault.

  Every time he used those three Books of the Wild Magic, every time he cast a spell, something happened that just seemed to make Kellen’s life darker and more uncertain. If he’d never met Perulan, never talked to Perulan, maybe the writer would have gotten over his loss. Maybe he would have decided it was worth writing again, and gone back to his wondertales. He would have stayed safe in his little house, and not gone down to the docks for a reason Kellen could well guess. And he’d still be alive.

  That does it. That’s it. I’m never, ever casting another Wild Magic spell!

  He turned to leave the kitchen, but the thought of running into his father somewhere in the house stopped him. If he saw Lycaelon now, Kellen knew, he’d only say something unforgiveable. His father would never understand what it was about Perulan’s death that upset him so.

  You burned his book—and he killed himself!

  No. He couldn’t say that to his father. His father had only been doing his job.

  I have to get out of here. I have to calm down. I have to think.

  Almost running, Kellen hurried through the kitchen, past the startled servants, out through the garden, and out through the garden gate into the street.

  IN the sunny breakfast parlor, Arch-Mage Lycaelon Tavadon sat over his morning tea, wondering, without any real expectation that it would come to pass, if his errant son would come to join him at the morning meal.

  He should have dealt with the boy firmly last night, but there had been no time. He had been needed at the Council House to oversee the Working, and once it was over, had spent the rest of a long sleepless night brooding over the current problem before the Council. And now Kellen was lying abed as usual. Just as well, Lycaelon supposed, for he had much to occupy his mind this day.

  At dawn, a messenger had come to let him know that the Working in the matter of the writer Perulan had run its course. Just as Volpiril had suggested, a spy had been set in Perulan’s house the very day Perulan had come before the Council. A serving-girl; men of Perulan’s sort never took any notice of what their servants did, and the girl had been able to listen and hear much in the days that followed. She had been able to inform the Council that Perulan meant to flee the City; to escape by ship through the help of contacts cultivated in former years. The Council had been given no choice but to act.

  To give water form and then life was a difficult business, requiring both great skill and great power, but the High Council of Armethalieh possessed both in abundance. They had sent a water golem to follow Perulan once he reached the docks, to make sure he never spoke with any of the Selken captains … or indeed with anyone else, ever again.

  Once it had completed that grisly task, it had left Perulan’s body where it was sure to be found, for if Perulan were simply to vanish, there were sure to be others infected with his sickness who would believe he had managed to successfully escape. And that could not be allowed.

  No one escaped from Armethalieh. Even those few fools who managed to bribe the Selken-folk to smuggle them out—and Lycaelon knew that there were a few such reckless and determined folk, every year—would mysteriously sicken and die within a few moonturns, at the very most, after they had passed beyond the magickal barrier at the edge of the harbor. The spell was a simple one, renewed each moonturn at the same time their power was harvested through the exchange of the City Talisman each citizen wore about his or her neck.

  And should anyone be rash enough to try to flee overland—a far more difficult proposition to keep secret—there was no need for a similar spell upon the Western Gates. The farmers in the surrounding villages well knew the terrible price of doing aught but holding such a fugitive prisoner to face the City’s swift justice. Escape by land was even less possible than escape by sea.

  No, Armethalieh’s greatest treasure—her citizens—were hers and hers alone. Hers to keep. Forever.

  But with all his heart, Lycaelon wished there had been some other way than the unpleasant course of action he had been forced to permit. Why couldn’t Perulan have taken the opportunities the Council had given him to live out his days in peace and happiness here among folk who loved and understood him? Armethalieh was the best place in the world, his home, filled with people who cared for him. Even at the last, his family would have willingly taken him back. The loss of a single book was no great matter—he should have looked upon the experience for what it was, a necessary correction to his thinking, a lesson in responsibility! Then he could have returned to penning the bucolic tales that were the proper exercise of his talent!

  But instead of seeking healing, Perulan had hugged the sickness of his despair to himself like an addiction and let it destroy him. He’d turned away from everything good, becoming a danger to himself and to others—like a mad dog. And like a mad dog, finally Perulan had to be put down for the good of the City.

  And Kellen had been with Perulan in the last sennight of his life. Only Lycaelon’s influence had kept Kellen from being brought immediately before the Council to be questioned about his knowledge of Perulan’s intentions, and that only because Lycaelon promised to handle the matter himself. But influence—even the influence of the Arch-Mage of Armethalieh—could only extend so far. It would be a grave transgression of the oaths he had sworn in defense of the City for Lycaelon to blind himself to evil beneath his own roof out of misplaced familial loyalty.

  That, as much as anything else, had kept him from acting last night, dearly though he had wished to strike the boy down for his unthinking insolence. He owed House Tavadon better than that. He must be strong. He must be clear-sighted and calm. It was his duty—both as a father, and as Arch-Mage—to consider the matter carefully before he acted.

  Was Kellen going down the same dark road of anarchy and chaos that Perulan had? The boy was young yet, but it was also true that Kellen’s behavior had become increasingly erratic and disrespectful of late—not only to his father, but to his tutor, and to others, highly placed and deserving of his respect and deference, as well.

  I have given him every advantage—every warning—and it has done no good! Lycaelon thought; his sense of anguish tempered by his sense that justice needed to be dispensed, regardless of whom it fell upon.

  In fact, rather than seeing the error of his ways and moderating his wild, improper behavior, Kellen only grew worse—actively seeking out Perulan only a few days after the writer had been censured by the Council, constantly wandering the streets of Low Town (to meet with who-knewwhat other disreputable elements of society?), neglecting his studies in a fashion that showed his utter contempt for the Armethaliehan way of life. The boy seemed intent on rejecting everything about his upbringing—for surely, if Kellen felt he could not confide in his father or his magickal tutor, he would at least seek counseling from a Priest of the Light?

  But Lycaelon had made inquiries among the Priesthood, and none of them reported speaking with his son.

 
There must be a reason!

  All of Lycaelon’s life was built on a foundation of reason, and truth, and Law. If Kellen was behaving in this heretical fashion, there must be a reason for it. Lycaelon would make one last attempt to discover what it was before resorting to stronger measures.

  Kellen would certainly still be in his bed at this bell. He would go, rouse the boy out of bed, and get to the bottom of this once and for all, for both their sakes.

  And for the good of the City.

  BUT when Lycaelon reached Kellen’s room, Kellen was already gone. Lycaelon stood for a moment in the middle of the teenaged disorder—Kellen having forbidden the servants access to his rooms a year and more before—and stared at the empty bed, pondering what to do.

  Surely, if there was a clue to the soul-sickness that had befallen his son, it would be here.

  Hesitantly, and then with increasing fervor, Lycaelon searched his son’s room. Though he was thorough, opening every drawer, shuffling through every paper and book, he found nothing inappropriate, and after a tenth-chime of searching Lycaelon realized that this was only a sign that things were worse than he thought. No rude, high-spirited young man slowly turning bad—like Kellen Tavadon—left no signs of the cause of his dissipation! Where was the stash of brandy bottles; the hidden box of dream-smoke herb so beloved of the laboring classes; the stash of gambling winnings or record of debts; the bundle of perfumed love letters from some cozening lowborn female looking to snare a Mageborn son? Something was at the root of Kellen’s increasingly antisocial behavior, and if the boy was taking such pains to hide it, that something must be very bad indeed—worse than anything Lycaelon had thought of so far. Kellen’s room had been his own as a boy, and Lycaelon was familiar with its “secret hiding places,” but so far, every hiding place he’d found was empty, or obviously hadn’t been used for years, containing such outgrown boyish treasures as dried frogs and old birds’ nests crumbling away to dust.

  At last Lycaelon did as he knew he ought to have done from the first. He called upon the power stored in his Arch-Mage’s Talisman and cast the strongest Illusion-Dispelling Spell he knew, one that would counter every form of magic designed to conceal or misdirect, one that would bring all hidden things to light.

  He spoke the Word that held the whole of the spell in concentrated form, and for a moment Time itself seemed to slow, as the ripples of the spell spread outward from Lycaelon, washing over every object within its radius, making the outlines of every object appear momentarily sharper and more real. When the spell settled, Lycaelon looked around.

  The old bookshelf, filled with ancient tattered picture books from Kellen’s nursery days, drew his attention strongly. With a sinking heart, he went to it and riffled through the volumes there one more time. Tucked casually in among the outworn relics of childhood were three small books.

  Filled with dread—knowing already what he would find—Lycaelon reached out and picked them up. He knew them by reputation, knew of their unclean glamouries that kept all but their intended victim from seeing their true nature, and kept even that victim from seeing his danger until far too late.

  The Book of Moon.

  The Book of Sun.

  The Book of Stars.

  Lycaelon felt his heart swell with grief and fury. This was far beyond anything a father, no matter how indulgent, could overlook or ignore. He must bring these Books before the Council at once, and tell his brother Mages all.

  For the good of the City.

  THIS was, bar none, the most soothing and engrossing class of Kellen’s studies. Maths … he thought with a feeling of comfort as he settled into his seat.

  He was on time; the rest were late, and took their places with an air of resignation. Most of Kellen’s fellow Students hated Maths. At one point, Kellen had, too. It had seemed only one more set of things to learn by rote for no reason. But that was before the lessons progressed beyond simple Maths to the elegance of geometry.

  Here, as nowhere else, he found something that made absolute sense, followed clear rules, where A plus B always equaled C and the equation could be applied to the ordinary world; a science that described the visible world and could be used to do things. Useful things.

  It was the one class he seldom skipped. And, as was all too often the case in his life, it was the one class that was held only once a fortnight. The instructor was the least-regarded Mage in the entire Mage College; an old, old man, an Undermage all of his life, an Undermage still, who would die an Undermage. His robes were plain and uncared for, and though clean, were threadbare about the hem; his eyes were distant and a little sad beneath his heavy white brows. There was a dispirited air about him, a sense that he had given up long ago, and was merely marking time here, teaching the one thing he knew well to Students and Apprentices who did not value it, until the Council would permit him to retire to a little set of rooms somewhere.

  And die.

  Not that anyone would ever notice. Possibly the old Mage himself might not notice.

  But he was very good at teaching Maths. It probably was the only thing he was good at. And even if Lycaelon wasn’t impressed by Kellen’s high marks in the subject, the old man seemed to revive just a little whenever his eyes fell on his prize pupil.

  Kellen had thrown himself into work on the hardest problem they’d ever been set the moment he had arrived in class—because while he was working on the pure rightness of the puzzle, he didn’t have to think about anything that had been happening to him. He could forget his father, forget the Wild Magic and the three Books, forget what had happened to poor Perulan. Everything between the covers of his workbook was a matter of figures, line, and angle, and there was only ever one right answer.

  But his concentration was interrupted when he was only halfway through the complex calculation by a heavy hand falling on his shoulder.

  Startled, he looked up, for the old Mage had never gripped his shoulder like that before.

  It wasn’t his instructor.

  The burly, sallow-faced fellow in the uniform tabard of a servant of the Council looked down at him with an unreadable face.

  Kellen clamped down on his jolt of fear.

  It wasn’t just the lack of expression in the man’s face that made him unreadable, it was the feeling that this man had only a trifle more life and thought in him than one of the Council’s stone golems …

  “Kellen Tavadon?” the man asked, completely without inflection except for the slight rise at the end of the two words that made it a question instead of a statement.

  Kellen wondered what the man would do if he denied being himself; considered doing just that for one fleeting moment, then nodded, reluctantly.

  “You are summoned to attend the High Council at the third bell of afternoon.”

  By now the rest of his class was staring at him—and at the stony-faced apparition that had delivered the Council’s message. It was the most attention he’d gotten from his fellow Students in moonturns. Some of them were whispering to each other. The poor old Mage just looked confused.

  “The third bell,” the man repeated.

  “I—understand,” Kellen managed to say.

  A cold hand closed around his heart, and a cold finger traced its way down his spine. The Council! This could only be Lycaelon’s work. So he was to be punished for last night’s rebellion after all.

  “The third bell.” With a thud, the messenger let fall something on Kellen’s workbook. Kellen picked it up; it was a heavy brass plate engraved with the Council sigil, the sign that he had been called before them. Having said his piece and delivered his burden, the Council’s retainer turned on his heel and left. Kellen picked up the little brass plate and shoved it into his pocket, then tried to go back to his Maths problem, but he had completely lost the ability to concentrate.

  What do they want? Surely my having an argument with Father is no matter for the Council?

  Unless Father makes it one …

  The rest of the members of the c
lass murmured to each other as he bent his head over his paper.

  The sound of the voices, though—there was nothing in their tone to warn him that they had any notion why he was being summoned.

  But he did. Oh, yes, he did. He just didn’t want to even consider it.

  But he had to; even if you were the Arch-Mage of Armethalieh, you didn’t hail your son in front of the High Council just to deliver a lecture on filial duty. Besides, for Lycaelon that would be tantamount to admitting that he was a failure at bringing his offspring to heel, and Lycaelon could not bear admit he was a failure at anything.

  No, there was only one thing that Kellen could think of that would cause the High Council to haul him in for a confrontation.

  Wild Magic.

  The Books.

  Father found the Books.

  After all, Lycaelon had known he’d been talking to Perulan, and that meant the Arch-Mage was keeping a watch on Kellen somehow. If he’d learned that, he surely would have learned other things.

  Or he decided to search my room.

  He knew he shouldn’t have left early this morning! If he’d been there, surely Lycaelon wouldn’t even have thought of searching the room—or if he had, he’d have left it to the servants, who would, as usual, have found nothing.

  And though the three Books could disguise their nature from ordinary servants, they probably couldn’t hold up their glamourie against the magic of the Arch-Mage of Armethalieh.

  So Lycaelon knew about the Books, and if he knew, the whole High Council knew. Lycaelon would never keep something so illegal, so potentially scandalous, secret.

  But if anyone here at the Mage College had any idea why Kellen was being called up before the High Council, they wouldn’t be whispering, they’d be getting out of their seats and trying to get out of the room before the dangerous criminal noticed them.

  So no one here knows, and the High Council has decided not to say anything yet, Kellen thought with a faint pang of relief. Rumors usually spread through the Mage College like wildfire, so there wasn’t a rumor. Yet.