The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  Which doesn’t mean a thing. The High Council was perfectly capable of being closemouthed when it suited them.

  Kellen gave up on trying to concentrate, or even pretend to, shoved away from his desk, and stood up to leave. The whispering stopped, and every eye in the room was riveted on him. Even though the appointed time was bells away—probably calculated that way by Lycaelon, to allow his son to stew and fret until the appointed time—everyone knew that a summons before the High Council had to be answered immediately. In fact, they were probably wondering why he hadn’t gone already.

  Kellen stalked out of the classroom, keeping his back rigid and his head held high with a bravado that was entirely feigned.

  THE other Students and his teacher would probably assume that he would go straight to the Council House to cool his heels in one of the waiting rooms and reflect upon his sins. That, however, was not what Kellen had in mind.

  He stopped at his locker—probably for the last time—to deposit his books and his robes. He spared a moment of thanks that today he was dressed in his best clothes beneath the all-concealing Student blues: to think that only this morning he’d been planning to start afresh, to impress his father and Anigrel with his devotion to the ways of the Mage life, to study and conform and be a good son of House Tavadon!

  He’d been so stupid.

  For the first time ever, he went openly to the harbor, glaring defiance at the Watch as he crossed the street into the harbor district.

  The Constables didn’t try to stop him, but perhaps because he was dressed as ostentatiously as any City noble, they thought he was there on some legitimate business. The more fools they.

  He stalked across the street and plunged in among the offices of the various shipping companies and merchants, giving the Constables about as much attention as he would a piece of statuary. His pencase and coinpouch bounced against his thigh as he strode angrily along—oh, he looked a proper son of House Tavadon today. All he lacked was a cloak and sword, and a pair of ornamental gloves thrust through his belt to be the image of a proper petty lordling. And who cared?

  He did. If there was something Kellen knew he didn’t want to be, it was that.

  When he reached the wharves themselves, Kellen took a moment to simply breathe in the fresh salt air and get his bearings. He wanted to remember this day clearly—every sight, every sound, every smell. After all, this might well be the last time he would be able to come here.

  Might? That’s a virtual certainty. If I’m lucky, I’ll only be confined to my room for the rest of the year. If I’m not, it’ll be the rest of my life …

  There were several ships in today, and more waiting outside the harbor to come in; their sails tacking back and forth just over the horizon. It was a busy day, one that usually meant a lot of work for the High Council … which meant that the High Council considered his situation to be a serious one, worth interrupting their day over.

  Not good.

  Kellen picked a spot out of the way of anyone working around the ships, and watched a new vessel sail in and tie up. He was full of restless energy, discontent, and a sick undercurrent of fear that he tried hard to ignore. Never had he felt so much raw envy for the Selken-folk, or for the few nameless Armethaliehans who managed to escape on their ships. He watched the half-naked sailors bringing a ship skillfully in to its mooring, scrambling up into the rigging and furling the sails, heaving ropes over the side and tying up to the piers. Wood creaked; the wood of the dock, and of the ship. Men called to each other, up in the rigging, and a group of them, hauling on a rope wrapped around a capstan, chanted in unison. Their captain shouted orders at them, punctuated by strange, wild oaths, and waves splashed against the pilings and the sides of the ship. The air smelled of fish, tar, sunbaked wood, and salt, with an undercurrent of strange scents too faint to be identified.

  On another ship, a little farther down the dock, another crew was unloading their ship’s cargo. They traded insults with the crew of the new arrival while Kellen watched and listened, and tried not to think too hard about how much he wished he could just saunter aboard and sail away with them when they left.

  I don’t suppose there’s a chance that Father would disinherit me and let me go with them … Kellen thought wistfully.

  No. Not Lycaelon. The Arch-Mage’s motto should have been, “What I have, I hold.” No matter what Kellen did, Lycaelon would never let him go.

  The anger and discontent swelled in him until he thought he would burst from it. Probably the only thing that did keep him from bursting was the fear he felt inside … for he knew now that there was no place for him in the City unless he conformed to every one of his father’s wishes. He could never escape what Lycaelon wanted, not even if he tried to renounce his own Mageborn talents and turn common laborer. No matter what he did, Lycaelon would have him followed and brought back, and once again, there would be the edict: Obey. If he didn’t do so of his own free will, he’d be forced into it.

  Conform—or—

  Well, he’d butted heads with the “or” many times in his seventeen years, but this time the “or” had more than just his father behind it. This time he was going to face the entire High Council. And although he had no doubt that whatever they decided to do with him would be what Lycaelon had already decided, their edict would be enforced by Constables, Council retainers, and if necessary, other means. And the High Council had a great many options under that last category.

  One of the farther ships pulled away from the dock even as he watched, and began its slow, graceful tack toward the harbor mouth. Its sails filled with a Mage-conjured breeze, belling out like great white wings, carrying its crew away from Armethalieh and out to freedom.

  Freedom that he was never going to taste.

  The ship passed through the shimmering curtain of magick, its own outline shivering a little as if seen through a heat haze. And at that moment, Noontide Bells rang out. Kellen felt a surge of guilty nausea. He just had time to get to the Council House before the appointed hour.

  Glumly, he trudged out to meet his fate.

  THE Council House was at the opposite side of the City from the docks, facing the Delfier Gate in the west, and Kellen realized, as he trudged up the almost-empty avenue that led to the Council House and the gate beyond, that he had never actually seen the Delfier Gate open. Citizens were not encouraged to linger near the gates when the farm carts and trade caravans were moving in and out—not that citizens were encouraged to linger in the Mage Quarter in the first place.

  Not for the first time, Kellen wondered what it would be like to go through those gates and take the road that led into the forest and what lay beyond.

  Perulan had said that no citizen had, that none could. But Perulan had been referring to trying to take shelter with the villagers out there. What if someone decided to live out in the forest itself? Could anyone be found who really wanted to hide out there?

  Don’t be an idiot, he scolded himself. You aren’t exactly a woods-wise forester out of a wondertale. How, exactly, would you live out there? What would you eat? Roots and berries? Have you ever even seen a berry that wasn’t already picked and in a basket?

  Crumbs, he hadn’t even ever cooked for himself. Just how did he think he was going to survive in a forest?

  But, oh, the idea was so tempting …

  Anywhere but here, Kellen thought to himself. Anywhere has GOT to be better than here!

  THE Council House was a tall, round white marble building with a domed and gilded roof, and it was much bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. Magick, of course. A little glamourie to let it look important and imposing, but not too important or imposing, of course. Kellen’s teachers had explained that this was to ensure that every citizen felt free to come before the Council, whether of his own will or if summoned. Now Kellen wondered if there was another reason for the spells entirely.

  To keep the ordinary citizen from knowing just how little freedom he truly has? Or to keep h
im from realizing just how much power over him the Mages have?

  Both, probably.

  It was as if—now, when it was too late to do him any good—fear suddenly made Kellen able to think of the questions he’d never been able to even think of before.

  The gleaming bronze doors, ornamented with the portraits of the greatest Arch-Mages of the past, were guarded by two stone golems, seven feet tall and looking just like the animated polished black granite statues that they were.

  The Mages of the High Council preferred golems as guardians. Any jumped-up merchant could hire a small army of human guards and spear-carriers, but no one but a Mage could have a golem to guard his door. And besides, nothing short of being shattered into a hundred thousand bits would stop a golem in the course of its duty. If that duty was to rend interlopers into component parts, well, too bad for the interlopers if they hadn’t hired a Mage who’d come prepared with counterspells (assuming anyone could find a Mage who would work against his fellow Mages) or brought a big contingent of followers with stone-breaking hammers.

  The golems allowed Kellen to pass unmolested when he held up the Council sigil he was sent with his summons. If passing between the stone mastiffs at Tavadon House made his flesh creep, walking between the two utterly silent human-shaped statues, their eyes glittering malevolently at him as he entered the gilded door, made every hair on his body stand up.

  Once inside, the door swung shut behind him with a thunderous boom. It had been dark and shadowy when the door opened, but now the place was flooded with light, and he blinked in surprise.

  He was standing inside the Council chamber.

  How had he gotten into the Council chamber from the main door? When he’d been here before, at the age of twelve, when he was first made a full citizen, he’d come with a gaggle of his Mageborn year-mates. Then they’d passed by the door of the Council chamber, and the Council chamber had been at the end of a long corridor, not right inside the main door. This time, magick had brought him straight to this room, without passing through any of the intervening spaces. Why? Did his father not want anyone to see him but the High Council? Then why go to the trouble of tracking him down at his lesson and presenting the summons in public in front of all his classmates?

  To overawe me, Kellen thought sourly, unimpressed. To make sure I know what they’re capable of—as if I didn’t know that already.

  He looked around. White marble walls, a black and white marble floor; facing him at the far end of the room was the High Council sitting at a high horseshoe-shaped black marble table, their aides standing behind their chairs.

  High up so they can look down upon their victims, he thought. And he shuddered, frightened in spite of all of his attempts at bravado. Was this what poor Perulan had faced, in defense of his book? He was braver than I thought … .

  Arch-Mage Lycaelon, tall, saturnine, and imposing in his robes of state, stared down at his son, his face as expressionless as those of the stone golems outside, but his eyes glittering just as dangerously.

  “Kellen Tavadon!” he said, his voice echoing hollowly in the vast chamber. “You have been summoned here by the High Council on a matter of gravest concern to all good citizens of the City. Step forward!”

  Much as he would have liked to disobey, Kellen knew better than to try. Reluctantly, he walked across that vast expanse of black and white marble until he stood just below the dais.

  Lycaelon glared down at his son for a moment, looking as if he’d never seen him before, then pointed a monitory finger at him. “Kellen Tavadon! Three forbidden Books were found in your quarters. Do you deny that they are your possessions?”

  Lycaelon’s voice boomed and echoed in a most imposing fashion; even though Kellen knew it was all a trick of acoustics and clever architecture, it still made him want to grovel.

  But he was too overcome with the nightmare feeling that his worst fears were about to be realized to even make the attempt.

  For the offending Books were brought forth by another golem, a smaller one this time. It was scarcely six feet tall—about his own height—but it was no less intimidating for all that; its feet clattered like steel-shod hooves against the marble floor, and he could see the chessboard reflection of the floor against its highly polished grey skin. In its hands were three small shabby books. Kellen felt himself grow sick with dread; he had no difficulty in recognizing the Books that the golem carried. The Book of Sun, The Book of Moon, and The Book of Stars, his three finds, that had hidden their nature from all eyes but his.

  Or at least, they had until now.

  Father searched my room. And he used magick to do it.

  Just as Kellen had feared.

  “I see by the guilt and shame on your face that these are yours,” Lycaelon said with disgust and utter contempt. “Where did you get them?”

  Kellen clamped his mouth shut. There wasn’t much he could do right now, but at least he wasn’t going to get that poor old fellow in the Low Market in trouble—not when he knew very well that Lycaelon would make some sort of scapegoat out of him.

  Instead, he just stared at the marble at his feet. He would have liked to have stared defiantly into his father’s eyes, but he knew that if he did that, his father would know just how to get every bit of information he wanted out of him.

  “Speak!” Lycaelon roared, his voice echoing in the chill room. “Be aware, we will find the criminal that supplied them to you! Was it Perulan?”

  Kellen stared at his own boots. That was a thought that hadn’t occurred to him. And they couldn’t hurt Perulan any more than they already had. He was Mageborn too. That’ll stick in their throats. He recognized most of the faces behind the dais from his father’s infrequent entertainments: Volpiril, Lycaelon’s particular enemy; Isas and Harith, who his father considered spineless allies; and the other nine, any of whom would be glad to step into the Arch-Mage’s seat and probably saw today as a stepping-stone to that end.

  “What if it was?” he replied sullenly, still staring at the floor. “What are you going to do? Dig him up and use necromancy on him?”

  A gasp from his left told him that he’d struck a nerve. Necromancy was as forbidden as Wild Magic, if not more so. He wondered if they would have tried it, maybe one or two of them, in secret … if he hadn’t said something about it. Now they wouldn’t dare. Not with the other ears in the room, their aides, and servants, and the ears that were probably outside, pressed to the door.

  “If you hurry,” he added nastily, “he probably won’t smell too much or lose too many body parts while you question him. Of course, in this heat, you never know—”

  “Enough!” Lycaelon roared, going red and white by turns. “Wretched boy! Do not presume on our patience, and confine your speech to answering our questions! Have you been practicing this foul perversion called Wild Magic?”

  He could claim that he hadn’t, and unless they had someone using a Truthspell on him, they’d never know any differently. He could claim that Perulan had given him the Books at their last meeting, and that he hadn’t had time to look at them yet.

  But if he did that, they’d just take the Books and destroy them, punish him anyway, and aside from being punished, nothing else about his life would change. Aside from being punished? What was he thinking? From this moment on, he’d probably have a watcher with him every moment, waking and sleeping! But if he didn’t—

  You wanted something that would make your father disinherit you, didn’t you? Well, this is probably it. Your one chance to get on a ship and escape.

  And besides, they probably had someone casting a Truthspell on him anyway.

  Better to remain silent about it, though—not confess, but not deny it either.

  He raised his eyes to his father’s face and summoned as much defiance as he could. “What do you think?” he asked, keeping his voice even with a great effort.

  Lycaelon began to turn a striking shade of cerise.

  “Boy,” interrupted Lord-Mage Vilmos, “Wild Magi
c is anathema for a good reason. It is totally unpredictable. It offers you your desires, but grants them in its own twisted fashion—affecting not only you, not only those you know, but innocent parties who have never met you and certainly do not deserve to be caught up in your spells and have their lives ruined by your foul meddling.”

  Perulan, Kellen thought, and suppressed a wince. Was it his fault that Perulan was dead?

  “It is a perverted form of true magick,” Vilmos continued, managing to sound both angry and pompous at the same time. “It requires no study, no discipline, no thought at all, thus appealing to inferior persons of inferior intellect and no sense of proper responsibility.”

  That stung. And Kellen, goaded, replied just as angrily. “Inferior by your standards, maybe! Just because they don’t want to waste their lives learning to lick your boots for a taste of what you’ve got! I don’t think so! And I don’t think that the mere fact that Wild Magic isn’t predictable was ever a good reason to outlaw it then, or to ban it now! This place could do with a little less predictability! Maybe it would stop being a stagnant suck-hole that chokes the life out of anything that’s new and good!”

  The startled and offended glares he got from every live creature in the room would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so serious. This was not what the Mages in general and his father in particular wanted to hear from him—they had expected him to be terrified and penitent.

  Well, I’m not! And they can damn well deal with it! He felt energized and alive in a way he hadn’t been for longer than he could remember. He felt ready to take them all on, singly or together! Stupid, hidebound old fools, it was their fault Perulan was dead, not his, and how many other people did they kill or ruin every day, refusing to change, refusing to see what was right in front of them? A fire built in his gut, and he matched them glare for glare, prepared to say and do anything to wipe those looks of smug superiority off their faces.

  “Maybe I haven’t done much of any kind of magick,” he snarled, “but I’ve read all three Wild Magic Books from cover to cover. Have any of you? Do you really know what it is that you’ve outlawed, or are you just flapping and squawking like a lot of mocker-birds, repeating the decisions of a bunch of people afraid of their own shadows, people dead so long that you don’t even remember their names?” He snorted derisively. “Mockerbirds! You aren’t even that! You’re a bunch of old hens, cackling and shrieking about nothing because every other old hen is cackling ‘Danger! Danger!’ at the top of her lungs!”