1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (24 page)

 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 Magic 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. "Mocker-birds! 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!"

 Mage Isas was sitting there with such a stunned look on his face that Kellen wondered if he was about to fall out of his chair. Harith worked his mouth, but no sound came out.

 The rest were various shades of interesting colors, from white to purple, his own father included.

 "And just what is wrong with being unpredictable, with change, with innovation?" he flung at them. "Just why is it that everybody has to be protected all the time? Last time I looked, the rest of the world didn't need all of that protection, and they were getting along just fine!"

 Finally Mage Breulin managed to get to his feet, his stiff silver beard waggling with the force of his indignation. "You don't see any reason, do you, you mutinous young puppy? And of course, you are so very learned, you who cannot even produce an adequate understanding of the history of the City, much less that of the world!"

 How am I supposed to have an understanding of the history of the world when you don't let me see it? Kellen thought angrily. "You—" he began.

 "I have an answer for you, insolent brat—Wild Magic is the magick of chaos and anarchy; using it brings down the darkness of confusion, and there is no room for anarchy and confusion in a civilized world!" Mage Breulin had the wind in his sails now, and was prepared to run down anything in his path. "Where there is chaos, evil finds a way in, as it did before. No one who dares to practice Wild Magic can remain untainted by evil!"

 And you've got every incentive to lie to me, and none to tell me the truth. "You don't know that!" Kellen shouted back. "There's a whole world out' side the City, and I bet some of them know Wild Magic! And most of them don't give a toss about High Magick—look at the Selken-folk! They do without you just fine, and they can't all be evil, or you'd never even allow the little trickle of trade with them that you've got! You're just afraid that if you let people see there's a different way possible, they'll decide they can do very nicely without you, and you'll all be left to have to make an honest living for a change!"

 "Enough!" Lycaelon bellowed, the acoustics of the place giving his voice far more strength than Kellen's. "We aren't here to listen to the ignorant nonsense of children. Kellen! You will either make a public apology, personally burn the books, and renounce your wayward behavior, or—you will face Banishment! Not mere disinheritance, you miserable, ignorant brat—though, by the Light, I swear I should disinherit you no matter how sincere your apology—but Outlawry, you puling whelp! To be cast out through the Delfier Gate into the forest with nothing but the clothes on your back and provisions for a single day!"

 Lycaelon's face was so suffused with anger it had become a mask indistinguishable from the golems' carved faces. "Light save me, would that I had never had a child at all, would that you had died with your mother, would that she had died in infancy, rather than spawn youl"

 Kellen could hardly recognize his own father in this rigid, unyielding, intolerant demagogue, thundering down judgment as if he thought he was a god—

 Right, then, Kellen thought furiously. You wish I'd never been bom, well so do I! I'd rather starve to death in the forest than eat another bite of food at your table!

 "Kiss my foot," Kellen sneered, in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. "You don't want me? Well, I don't want you, old man. I'd rather have a wolf for a father." He thrust out his chin, and crossed his arms over his chest. "Go ahead. Banish me."

 Lycaelon barked a single word in the tongue of the High Magick, and before Kellen could wonder what it meant, his arms were seized from behind. And in the next moment, he was pulled off his feet and dragged out of the Council chamber by two of the stone golems.

 And behind him, as the doors closed, he could hear the chamber erupt into a tumult of noise as all the members of the Council began to shout at once.

 KELLEN staggered forward, thrown off-balance as the golems thrust him through the open doorway. He'd thought the room beyond would be larger, for some reason, and as he fumbled against the far wall of the cell, too stunned to quite understand where he was, he heard the door of the cell close behind him with an awful finality, cutting off most of the light.