The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  He hadn’t seen her since Cilarnen’s arrival in camp, and was alarmed at how tired she looked.

  “You work too hard,” he blurted out before he could stop himself. “Are you sure you can do this?”

  “I suppose you’d rather do it yourself,” Vestakia shot back. “Keirasti told me how much you both enjoyed the caverns.”

  Kellen forced himself to look away. No. He mustn’t tell Vestakia not to do something because he was worried about her—any more than he’d tell Keirasti, or Isinwen. Or Idalia.

  Kellen grinned to himself, imagining how much luck he’d have telling Idalia not to do something “for her own good.”

  “They’re cold and damp and very uncomfortable,” he said, forcing a light tone into his voice. “But Redhelwar tells me you won’t have to sleep down there. He’s established a secondary camp at the cavernmouth, so you’ll have all the possible comforts of, ah, camp.”

  Without waiting for her reply, he swung into Firareth’s saddle. Isinwen assisted Vestakia into her palfrey’s saddle—a courtesy only, as by now Vestakia had gotten enough practice to become quite a good rider.

  Kellen’s troop rode toward the farther caverns, along the well-marked track made by the supply-wagons that had gone on ahead of them to set up the camp. A light snow was falling, but by now hardly a day passed without some snow, and Kellen barely noticed it.

  When they reached the caverns, Kellen dismounted and chose six of his troop to accompany them into the cavern. Such caution was automatic by now—even though the caverns had been thoroughly cleared of Tainted creatures, there was always the possibility that something might have crept back in.

  Supplying themselves with lanterns—Kellen didn’t want to count on his ability to cast Coldfire just yet—they entered the caverns.

  It was a long walk, and one that brought back unpleasant memories for all of them.

  “Not much farther now,” Kellen said, when they’d passed through the cavern where the Shadowed Elf village had once stood. Little remained to show what it had once been; the Elves had scoured the place thoroughly in the aftermath of the battle, and even taken down most of the crude stone huts that the Shadowed Elves had constructed.

  Kellen reached the place where he’d last encountered the Crystal Spiders. The cave was so vast that their lanterns gave very little light, and even with their superior night-sight, Kellen doubted that the Elves could see much more than he could.

  “I’m sure they know we’re here,” he told Vestakia. “But it may take them a little while to show up. We should move away from the others a bit—I think they’re sort of shy.”

  Vestakia made a stifled sound that might have been a giggle. “I suppose they have every right to be—with odd-looking strangers barging into their home at all hours! Come on, then.”

  The two of them walked a few yards away from the others and stood, waiting. Kellen set his lantern down on the cave floor and rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.

  He didn’t feel nervous, precisely. He felt some of the same keyed-up energy that he did when he was about to go into battle, but it was an energy without an outlet. There was no battle to fight—not an immediate one, at any rate. And there were far too many problems that had to be solved.

  He’d learned enough since the day he’d ridden out from Sentarshadeen to join the army at Ondoladeshiron to know what most of them were, unfortunately for his peace of mind.

  They had to keep their Allies in the field and with the army. The Herdsfolk and the Mountainfolk were their Wildmages and their mountaineers and light infantry; the Centaurkin were their heavy infantry. Right now humans and Centaurs made up about a third of the army; in the spring, when the full levies arrived, they would make up two-thirds of it. According to the Teaching Songs he’d learned at the House of Sword and Shield, maintaining the Alliance had always been the main difficulty for the Allies, and one the Demons always exploited. If they left to protect their own lands, the Demons could destroy all of them piecemeal.

  If they stayed, it would be to watch their loved ones die while they did nothing, for even if he wanted to, there was no way Andoreniel could protect all the Wild Lands, the High Reaches, and the Elvenlands at once.

  Even though everyone knew the stakes if the Demons should win, it was a hard thing to ask someone to let his family, his village, everyone he knew fall prey to Demons and their creations—especially when it was clear that the Elves were not suffering the same losses.

  It hasn’t started yet, Kellen told himself. I know it will—if I can think of it, They certainly can. But we still have time to come up with a countermove. I’ll ask Jermayan’s advice. He’s older than I am—a lot older. And he’s trained for this all his life, even if he never expected it to happen… .

  Just then he became aware of a faint scuffling sound.

  “They’re here,” he said quietly.

  A vast living carpet of spiders was moving across the floor of the cave toward Kellen and Vestakia. Each of them was the size of a large cat, and their bodies were covered with thick transparent bristles, giving them something of the look of puffballs. Both Kellen and Vestakia could see them clearly, because the Crystal Spiders radiated their own light in a rainbow of pastel colors: green, pink, violet, yellow, blue …

  “They’re beautiful,” Vestakia said in surprise.

  “I guess they are—for spiders,” Kellen said, trying not to grin. He knelt down and pulled off one of his armored gauntlets. Contact with bare skin made it much easier to communicate telepathically with the creatures.

  The Spiders clambered up over his body. Their legs made a faint scritching sound as they passed over his armor. One of them settled into his hand, and its bristles tickled his skin. As always when he was in contact with them, a sense of peace and warmth filled him like phantom sunlight.

  :Welcome,: the Spiders sent. :You have brought the one who will help to fight the Black Minds?:

  “Yes,” Kellen answered. He spoke aloud—it was easier that way to focus his thoughts for the Crystal Spiders to hear. “This is Vestakia. She helps us fight the Black Minds.”

  Vestakia had already knelt down and removed both her gauntlets. More Spiders appeared out of the darkness, and clambered up her body.

  “Hello,” Vestakia said, more calmly than Kellen would have under the circumstances.

  Something happened then that he hadn’t expected—though he should have expected it. He knew the Crystal Spiders were telepathic, and seemed to function as a group mind. The whole basis of his and Vestakia’s plan relied on the hope that the Crystal Spiders here were in touch with their brethren elsewhere—in all the caves everywhere across the Elven Lands—and would be able to tell Vestakia the location of other Enclaves of the Shadowed Elves.

  It simply hadn’t occurred to Kellen that the Crystal Spiders would put them in touch with each other.

  For a moment the cold dampness of the cave fell away. Instinctively Kellen reached out toward the warmth—human warmth—and love embedded in the web of the Crystal Spiders’ linked minds—

  No!

  He lunged to his feet, hastily dislodging several Crystal Spiders. They scuttled backward, and Kellen strode quickly away into the darkness, gripping the haft of his sword until his fingers ached.

  Gods of the Wild Magic, what had he almost done? He had a Price to pay! Break his vow, and Shalkan would have no choice but to exact the penalty.

  “Kellen?” Vestakia said uncertainly.

  Kellen’s face burned hot with shame. She’d been able to sense, to feel, the same things he had—

  He cut off the direction of those thoughts with painfully-acquired discipline.

  “Just ask them what you need to know,” he said harshly, willing himself to pretend that the last few minutes hadn’t happened. “They know what Black Minds are, and they know we need to find the others.”

  After a moment, he heard Vestakia speaking in a low voice to the Spiders, but the eternal background noise of the deep caves
blurred her words, and he couldn’t make them out. He didn’t try very hard, either. For the first time, Kellen blessed the fact that his hearing wasn’t as sharp as the Elves’. He didn’t want to know what she might be saying right now.

  Her voice stopped, and when the silence stretched, Kellen risked a glance over his shoulder.

  She was covered in the Spiders, the outlines of her slender body completely obscured beneath the round furry forms. In the faint luminescence from their bodies, he could see that her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed, as if she basked in sunlight.

  At least, Kellen thought ruefully, he didn’t seem to have offended the Crystal Spiders too badly.

  Making a careful detour around the Spiders and Vestakia—though he doubted that just now she’d have noticed him if he’d jumped up and down and shouted—he walked back to where Isinwen and the others stood, waiting patiently.

  “It would be good to know how long the Lady Vestakia will remain,” Isinwen said when Kellen had joined him.

  “I’m not sure,” Kellen admitted. “I know—from my own experience—that the Crystal Spiders don’t think the way we do. And they don’t have anything like the same sense of time. I do know that they won’t hurt her.”

  “Then we must wait,” Isinwen said inarguably.

  It was something Kellen had become fairly good at over the last several moonturns—the life of an army seemed to involve a great deal of waiting, far more than it did actual fighting, and eventually Vestakia heaved a deep sigh and lowered her head. A few seconds later, the Crystal Spiders began to move, picking their way delicately down along her shoulders and arms. Kellen was always impressed by how gracefully they moved. Next they began flowing in a tidal motion across the floor of the cavern, until their glow was lost in the shadows. Vestakia stretched—much as if she were rousing from a deep sleep—and began to get stiffly to her feet.

  Ambanire—one of the new recruits who had been added to Kellen’s troop after the Battle of the Further Cavern—moved forward (quickly, yet seemingly without haste, in the fashion of the Elves) to assist her. This time, the aid was more than simple courtesy. Kellen knew from his own experience how sitting motionless for an extended period in the frigid damp of the deep caves made one stiff and sore. Vestakia actually tottered a bit, clutching at Ambanire’s arm for support.

  “I had hoped it was going to be easier than this,” she said when she rejoined the others. Reyezeyt passed her a flask of cordial—it wasn’t warm, but it was sweet, and certainly better than nothing. Vestakia took it and drank gratefully.

  “There is another Enclave of the Shadowed Elves—as we already knew,” she said when she’d finished drinking. “The Crystal Spiders are eager to tell me all about it.” She uttered a stifled giggle. “If I could just figure out what they were saying! A realm of ice and jewels—what does that mean?”

  “Understanding will surely come with time,” Isinwen answered when Kellen said nothing. “And from all you have said, the caves, damp and cold as they are, are far better than flying about in the heavens at this time of year.”

  “Oh, yes!” Vestakia agreed fervently. “I like flying—but I am very tired of snow!”

  KELLEN saw Vestakia to her tent at the new camp—she’d be staying here, well-guarded, for the immediate future. Until matters changed—or until she managed to figure out what the cryptic pictures the Crystal Spiders were putting into her mind meant.

  He sent the rest of his troop on ahead, saying he’d follow shortly. He suspected that Shalkan was out here somewhere, and if the unicorn wanted to scold him for his near-miss, he’d prefer it was done with as much privacy as possible.

  There were only a couple of hours of light left by the time Kellen left the camp, having spoken at length to Ercanirnei, the Elven Knight who commanded Vestakia’s camp. Ercanirnei was from Lerkalpoldara, one of the two northernmost of the Nine Cities—where, he assured Kellen, the winters were nearly as long and as harsh as they were in the High Reaches, so there was little he did not know of the ways of snow and ice. Kellen need have no fear that Ercanirnei would fail in any attention to the safety and well-being of the Army’s Treasure.

  Kellen supposed he would have to take as much comfort from that as he could. Because he was going to have to make very sure that his path and Vestakia’s didn’t cross for a very long time.

  At last he turned Firareth’s head in the direction of what, for lack of a better word, had to be called home. The only sounds were the crunch of the war-stallion’s hooves through the icy crust of the fresh snow, the creak and jingle of Firareth’s harness and Kellen’s armor, and the sound of the wind. The winter twilight seemed to reverse the natural colors of the world: The sky and the clouds were dun with flashes of gold where the slanting winter sun managed to peek through; the trees, the ground, and the shadows were all in shades of blue; even the snow looked blue, even if a very pale blue.

  If it had been a picture, Kellen would have thought it was very pretty. While he was riding through it, all he could think about was how cold it was. His breath froze in his nostrils as he inhaled, and each exhalation made a cloud of steam, quickly whipped away by the wind. That had picked up, so even if it wasn’t snowing any harder, there was a lot more snow in the air. It was going to be a long cold ride back.

  But not really a lonely one. As Kellen left the cavern-camp, he felt his Knight-Mage senses spread out across the landscape. There behind him was the cavern-camp, all quiet. Ahead, a larger presence, was the main camp outside Ysterialpoerin. Everything was quiet there as well. Around it, like spokes spread out from a wheel, were the pickets and the sentries, and beyond them, the scout parties. Farther ahead, he could sense Ysterialpoerin itself.

  No immediate danger.

  “You managed to stay out of trouble today,” Shalkan said, coming up beside him.

  “Just barely,” Kellen answered. Since he’d been expecting Shalkan, he managed not to jump out of his skin at the abrupt arrival, but it took a bit of effort. No matter how finely-tuned his Knight-Mage senses were, a unicorn was as stealthy as the falling snow itself. “I should have seen it coming, though.”

  The unicorn dipped his head in acknowledgement. While Firareth forged through the drifted snow, Shalkan trotted along daintily atop it, barely leaving a trace of his passage.

  “You can’t foresee everything,” the unicorn said.

  Kellen bit back the immediate—and obvious—reply. The fact that Shalkan was right didn’t make it any easier to hear. If I can’t manage something as fundamental as figuring out how to keep from breaking a simple vow, how am I ever going to manage to figure out something really hard—like what it will take to save Armethalieh and defeat the Demons?

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Shalkan said. “Just because you can manage to drag yourself into the saddle and ride around the landscape doesn’t mean you’re completely recovered. You’re tired. It’s affecting your judgment.”

  “Just what I needed to hear,” Kellen muttered under his breath.

  “I suppose you’d rather go on riding into disaster as if nothing were wrong?” Shalkan asked sweetly, since he could hear Kellen perfectly well.

  Kellen winced at the sarcasm. “I’d rather nothing were wrong,” he answered honestly. “Instead of so many things being wrong I hardly know where to start worrying.”

  “Start in the obvious place, then,” Shalkan advised. “With something you can fix.”

  “And what… ?” Kellen began, then blinked. Where Shalkan had been a moment before was nothing more than a unicorn-sized hole in the air.

  It was obvious that Shalkan had meant him to solve that puzzle on his own, and it occupied Kellen for the rest of the ride back to the main camp. Thinking things over carefully, Kellen had to admit there were very few things he could actually control just now.

  With enormous reluctance, he came to the very conclusion Shalkan had meant him to reach: that the best thing he could do right now was rest.

  HE le
ft Firareth at the horselines. The ostlers would make sure that the destrier’s coat was toweled dry where it had been under the harness and that Firareth got a good warm feed before he was turned out into the near herd. Kellen was hoping for much the same treatment himself, as he headed through the darkness to the main dining tent. There he could be sure of a hot meal—even if it did involve greenneedle leaves—and several mugs of hot cider to wash the taste of the caves out of his mouth. Maybe a night’s rest would give him some fresh ideas, and in the morning he could talk to Jermayan.

  To his surprise, when Kellen walked into the dining tent, Cilarnen was there. Though it would be days, or even sennights yet, before the army’s Wildmages could call upon the Wild Magic again, nearly all of those who had participated in the spell of Kindolhinadetil’s Mirror had left their beds by now, but as of this morning, Cilarnen had not. Though Kellen had tried hard not to think of it, he had worried that the intense exposure to the Wild Magic had been as inimical to the young High Mage as they had originally feared, and that Cilarnen would simply waste away, one of the hidden casualties of the war.

  But now, Cilarnen was sitting at a table in the far corner of the tent with Wirance—the High Reaches Wildmage who had accompanied him from Stone-hearth into the Elven Lands—beside him. Cilarnen looked alert and vigorous—and actually more cheerful than Kellen could remember ever having seen him. The table before him was heaped with books—bound books, not the cased scrolls the Elves preferred.

  And the books looked oddly familiar… .

  “Kellen!” Cilarnen called out excitedly, seeing him. “You missed all the excitement! Come and see what Kindolhinadetil has brought us!”