The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “A message has come from Andoreniel in Sentarshadeen,” Grander said. “Marlen, Sarlin, Erlock, Jarel, you must go to the other households today, and tell them there will be a Council at the Meeting House tonight.”

  “A message?” Cilarnen asked. “How could a message come now?” Not only had it been snowing for some time—and Centaurs, as he already knew, did not think winter a suitable time for traveling—but a messenger would have come first to Grander’s house, and Grander would have insisted on feeding him, and Cilarnen saw no stranger faces gathered around the table for the noonday meal.

  “What bird flies in winter?” Sarlin answered gaily, and the others laughed.

  If Elves never asked questions—and Cilarnen realized, thinking back, that Hyandur had never asked him a single question on the entire journey to Stonehearth—the beastfolk seemed to more than make up for it, and worse, think a question was as good as an answer.

  It was only one of their many annoying qualities.

  Cilarnen knew he’d been very lucky to be taken in at Stonehearth. Winter without weather-spells to tame it was a terrifying thing. Without Grander’s kindness—yes, kindness, and charity, too—he would be dead by now.

  But while he could manage to be polite, he could not manage to feel gratitude.

  What made it worse was that he knew that the beastfolk were treating him far better than the Armethaliehans would have treated one of them if the situation were reversed. He was honest enough to admit that, even if he refused to say it aloud. Grander had even helped him barter his few personal possessions—his signet ring, his gold-and-sapphire chain, his pencase and penknife, and the handful of silver and copper coins in his pockets—to buy himself suitable garments in the days after his arrival, so that he would not start his time in Stonehearth too deeply in debt to Grander’s house. He’d had to pay a harness-maker—who had used his City boots as a template—to make him suitable footwear, but Sarlin had made his new clothes without charging him for her labor.

  “AND enough gold left over to buy cloth for summer clothes,” she’d said proudly, when she presented his new outfit to him a sennight after his arrival. “Unless you’ll be wanting to buy something else?”

  “Keep it,” Cilarnen had said ungraciously, staring at the bizarre garments. “What is there here that anyone could want to buy?”

  She’d looked hurt, and his conscience had pricked him.

  “I’m sure you know what I need better than I do,” he’d said. He’d struggled to find something to praise, grateful in that moment that no one he’d ever known would see him wearing them. “The workmanship is very fine.”

  “Ah,” Sarlin had said, perking up. “Spun and wove it myself, from our own sheep. You won’t find better. And I only charged you what I’d charge family—not what I could get for it at Spring Fair, either!”

  “That’s … very kind,” he’d said, as it seemed to be expected.

  “Do you need help with them? You not being used to our wild ways, and all? Or—Is your head paining you again?”

  “No. I—I will manage. Excuse me.”

  With the bundle of cloth in his arms, Cilarnen had fled to his room and quickly closed the door.

  His new quarters were much smaller than the chamber he had shared with Hyandur. There were hooks on the walls to hold his few garments, and a pallet on the floor for sleeping. There was a chair—a welcome-gift from Marlen—and a small chest, which held a washbasin and a chamberstick. There was no stove, as the room backed on the great hearth’s chimney, and so was usually warm enough.

  Cilarnen had flung the armful of clothing down on his pallet and pulled out one of the drawers of the chest. Inside was a small glass phial, half-full of a brown liquid so dark it was almost black. He’d regarded it longingly for a moment, then put it back in the drawer and closed it again.

  The first day, when Sarlin had taken him to the Centaur Healer, only the hope that the concoction would poison him on the spot had induced Cilarnen to try her remedy. The syrup she compounded was bitter, dark, and thick as honey.

  But it had stopped the headaches. Completely.

  “A spoonful—no more—night and morning—will stop the pain. Do not take more, young human, for it has dream-honey in it, and it will make you thick-witted and scatterbrained.”

  He’d ignored her prohibition. Once. He’d never been tempted to repeat the experiment, no matter how much he craved oblivion, for whatever “dream-honey” might be, the dreams it brought with it when he took too much weren’t nice ones.

  He’d sighed and looked at the clothes. There was no point in putting it off. He might as well look as if he belonged here.

  THAT had been a moonturn ago. One morning he had awakened at dawn in a full-blown panic, and only after several minutes of thought had he realized that this must be his day to go to the Temple of the Light and change out his City Talisman. Only he didn’t have his Talisman, and they weren’t likely to let him back into the City, now, were they?

  After that, things got easier. His days settled into a routine of chores—once Marlen saw that Cilarnen was steady and trustworthy, he left more and more of the work of the stables to him. A stables built to accommodate the needs of Centaurs was an odd-looking thing, and of course the horses were draft horses, not riding horses—what would Centaurs need with riding horses?—but the animals were of good quality, and Cilarnen got on with them well enough.

  “But what does King Andoreniel say, Father?” Sarlin demanded, bringing Cilarnen back to the present.

  “You will find out soon enough,” Grander said firmly.

  ON Sarlin’s way out the door, Cilarnen stopped her. Grander had been very mysterious about this message, and Cilarnen no longer had any taste for mystery. “Is Andoreniel your King?” he asked.

  Sarlin stared at him for a moment, her broad face blank with surprise. “Oh,” she said at last. “But how could you know? You are from the human city, after all. No. Andoreniel is the King of the Elves.”

  And before Cilarnen could think of another question to ask, she was gone on her errand.

  HE was not permitted to attend the Council, of course. He found out soon enough what it was about, as Centaurs weren’t a terribly secretive lot—the Elven King was calling for the Centaurs to honor an ancient treaty, and send troops to his aid—but what no one would ever quite explain was why. They all said things like “Andoreniel wouldn’t ask without good reason,” or “we must honor our treaty,” or “he would come if we asked,” until Cilarnen wasn’t sure whether the Centaurs knew why they were going or not.

  Or whether they just didn’t trust him enough to tell him.

  What he did know was that it was some kind of emergency that couldn’t wait until spring and better weather for traveling, and that one of the units would be mustering here at Stonehearth before traveling on. The whole village threw itself into preparations—packs must be sewn, storm cloaks reoiled, armor looked to, ice-boots fitted, provisions sorted out.

  And Marlen seemed determined to spend every moment he wasn’t training to go with them, cramming every possible detail of what to do for the horses in any conceivable emergency into Cilarnen’s head.

  Because Cilarnen wasn’t going.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to go. It was just that he hated being dismissed as if he were useless. And … not that a bunch of talking animals were his friends of course, but he’d gotten used to Marlen and Grander. And to all of the others who were leaving. After they were gone, things would be different And all of the changes Cilarnen had experienced recently had not been good ones.

  There was almost enough work to keep him from thinking of things like that, though, until the day when Stonehearth’s gates were thrown open to the visitors.

  A messenger—a Centaur this time—had arrived the day before to bring word of their arrival, and so by the time the troop cantered up, the great feast was nearly ready. Every house had been cooking and baking since the night before, and the entire village smelled li
ke a cookshop. This afternoon there would be a great feast in the village square—he’d heard the hammering all morning as the trestle tables were knocked together—and tonight every home would hold visitors, for Stonehearth would be hosting fifty guests.

  And tomorrow they would all be gone.

  Maybe I’ll just stay here until it’s all over, Cilarnen thought, leaning his head against the flank of a grey mare. She’d been out in the paddock all morning, and her thick winter coat was clotted with ice. It needed careful brushing—but he had been at Stonehearth nearly two moonturns now, and in that time he had become an excellent ostler.

  He still wondered why the Centaurs didn’t just hitch themselves to the plows. Maybe they did. Maybe they used the horses for something else. He’d undoubtedly get the chance to find out, if this Light-blasted snow ever melted.

  He hadn’t thought it was possible to be so cold. And even if his Gift hadn’t been excised, there wouldn’t be much he could do about the weather. He’d been an Entered Apprentice. You had to be a Master Undermage to do something about the weather.

  He finished with the mare and looked about for something else to do, shaking his head at the Centaurs’ foolishness. An outdoor banquet, in winter, without Mages to work the weather.

  They’d all freeze.

  “Cilarnen!” Sarlin came trotting into the stable, her cheeks flushed pink with the cold. “Come and see! The troop has arrived—and it’s nearly noon! You’ll want to have a wash before the banquet. And I made you a new tunic. A gift.”

  He was unreasonably touched. He knew that Sarlin saved much of the money she earned from the sale of her cloth and finished clothing—she owned, Cilarnen had been surprised to discover, her own flock of sheep—to go toward her bridemoney, which she would use to help set up her own household when she married.

  “Well, I’d better not wear it then,” he said gruffly, to hide his feelings. “It will only be ruined by the snow that will undoubtedly fall today. Whoever heard of eating outdoors in winter?”

  But Sarlin only laughed merrily. “Oh, don’t be foolish, City-man! They have brought a Wildmages with them, and he has done magic so that the weather will be fine!”

  “A … Wildmage?” She might have said, “A Demon of the Dark” and Cilarnen would not have been less stunned. Except he didn’t believe in Demons, and he did believe in Wildmages. He’d heard rumors that Farmer Kellen’s disappearance had had something to do with Wildmagery. He hadn’t believed them at the time, but … what if they were true? And what if Kellen had escaped the City, just as he had?

  If Kellen was here, he was definitely the last person Cilarnen wanted to see. And he certainly didn’t want to see a Wildmage, whether it was Kellen or not.

  But Sarlin had him by the arm, and was tugging him determinedly toward the house, so it was follow gracefully or be stepped on by great lumping Centaur hooves. And they had to pass through the village square on the way to Grander’s house.

  Despite himself, he looked for the Wildmage. And saw him, too. He was easy to spot—the only human in the great jostling press of Centaurs. To Cilarnen’s relief, it wasn’t Kellen, but a muscular fellow with a great black beard, wearing a large broad-brimmed hat and a fur cloak, looking more barbaric than the talking beasts surrounding him.

  “Do you want to meet him?” Sarlin asked eagerly, slowing down. “His name is Wirance. He comes from High Reaches, in the mountains. We trade with the High Reaches at Midsummer Fair—they’re all humans there. Do you think you’d like to live in the High Hills? I hear it snows all the time there—”

  “Come on!” Cilarnen demanded, and this time it was he who dragged Sarlin away.

  THE new tunic was very fine. Cilarnen regarded it with a dull anger that he had not felt since he had first come to Stonehearth. It was of the softest, thickest lambswool, tightly woven and dyed a deep russet red, a cloth that would have fetched a premium price even in Armethalieh.

  Sarlin had said that the Centaurs traded with the Mountain Folk. Armethalieh traded with the Mountain Folk as well. He wondered how many times before in his life he’d worn cloth woven by Centaurs and not known it.

  The front and sleeves were covered with delicate, painstaking embroidery: Sarlin’s finest work. This, he knew, would never have been permitted in the City—the colors were too exotic, the pattern of fruits and flowers and birds like nothing he’d ever seen before.

  It was beautiful.

  He hated …

  He didn’t know what he hated, but right now Cilarnen desperately wanted to hate something. There just didn’t seem to be any suitable candidates. He thought he could manage to hate the Elves, if he worked at it for a while, since Hyandur was an Elf, and it was Hyandur’s fault he was here. And now King Andoreniel—another Elf—was taking away most of the male Centaurs from the village, and it was Andoreniel’s fault a Wildmage was here as well.

  But Hyandur had saved Cilarnen’s life, risking not only his, but Roiry’s and Pearl’s lives as well. And you couldn’t expect Elves to know that the Wild Magic was, well, wrong.

  Or is it just wrong in the City? a small voice inside him asked. Cilarnen shook his head. Wasn’t wrong in one place wrong everywhere?

  He wished there was someone he could ask.

  He stripped down and washed quickly, then put on his new tunic. Sarlin would want to know how he liked it.

  It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever owned.

  Why did the truth seem like a betrayal of something to which he no longer felt any loyalty?

  TO Cilarnen’s great relief, he was placed far away from Wirance at the banquet, among younger sons and apprentices, where he suffered—in silence—much good-hearted teasing about his new tunic. His head was starting to ache—as it hadn’t in longer than he could remember—and he took great advantage of the pitchers of mulled ale that were kept constantly filled. He still hated the taste, but he’d come to like its effect.

  He had no idea whether Stonehearth was large for a Centaur village or not. It was tiny by the standards of Armethalieh, and maybe even by the standards of the Delfier Valley fanning villages, and so the Square was completely filled with the banquet tables. The village gates had even been left open to make more room—which was just as well, or else the apprentices would have been crammed against the walls. As it was, Cilarnen was in a certain amount of danger of being kicked and jostled by his fellows, but Centaurs were much smaller than the draft horses he tended daily, and he could hardly remember when he’d stopped worrying about it.

  He was intent upon his food—and wondering if he could slip away to the stables without anyone noticing—when a stranger appeared at the gates.

  Even for one of the talking beasts, his appearance was outlandish.

  He wore armor, but not the simple steel that the other Centaurs wore. Over a heavy woolen tunic, he wore a shirt that seemed to be made of disks of metal sewn together. It dangled down almost to his knees in front, and spread across his withers behind. He wore a sword as well, hung parallel along his body, in the way that Cilarnen had seen other Centaurs carry swords. About his hips he wore a wide belt to which was affixed a number of small pouches, as well as a host of other ornaments that flashed and jingled. Around his neck, over the armor, was a necklace containing more such ornaments, and still more were braided into his waist-length hair. His hair was black, with a broad white streak in it, and despite the weather, he wore no cloak against the cold, though Cilarnen could see One—along with a small pack—lashed upon his back. Three of his feet were white, and one was black. He carried a long staff in one hand, although Cilarnen couldn’t imagine why a Centaur would need one.

  Seeing that Cilarnen was staring in the direction of the snow-covered fields, one of the other apprentices looked up.

  “It is Kardus Wildmage!” he said. “Kardus Wildmage has come to join us!”

  There was a great bustle as two of the apprentices—Tolin and Barcis—trotted forward to greet Kardus. Cilarnen hunched down in his seat, ho
ping they would escort the new arrival to the High Table where the esteemed guests were being feted. If he was a Wildmage—impossible as that seemed—undoubtedly they would want to honor him.

  But to Cilarnen’s dismay, Kardus seemed to wish to sit with the apprentices. And worse, next to the only human among them.

  Him.

  In Armethalieh, Mages were treated with dignity and proper respect. Apparently no one here had ever heard of that notion. Before Kardus had even removed his winter gauntlets and had a place laid for him—or gotten a mug of ale—the apprentices were pelting him with questions like the rowdy colts and fillies that they were. Where had he come from? Who had he seen? What was the news? Was he going to the Elven Lands with Captain Kindrius and Master Grander?

  “How can you be a Wildmage? I thought Centaurs couldn’t do magic,” Cilarnen said, goaded out of his silence.

  “And so I cannot, young human,” Kardus said good-naturedly. “But I study the Three Books, and the Great Herdsman has given me the ability to know things unseen, and so I go where I am needed and do what I am given to set my hand to. And just as with my greater brethren, with each Knowing comes a Task.”

  “And do you have an, er, Knowing and a Task now?” Cilarnen asked. The others all stared at him, as if shocked by his presumption. But it was what they all wanted to know, wasn’t it?

  “Perhaps it would be best not to pluck that fruit before it ripens,” Kardus answered calmly, reaching for the platter of roast meat in front of him. “And now. The news from Merryvale. The village flourishes, and Jenna has accepted Alfrin, so you may look for a great festival at Midsummer Fair. A new dozen of skeps have been put up, and Miele has split her swarm, so there will be more honey soon for you greedy ones, if you have sugar to trade—”

  AS he spoke of the news from Menyvale—where he had meant to winter—Kardus saw the City-human slip away from the feast, thinking himself unobserved. He spoke on, though his mind was far from the gossip of the villages.