1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (68 page)

 "I see you, Kellen Tavadon. Be welcome in the house of Iletel."

 "I see you, Iletel," Kellen answered formally. "It is a pleasure and a privilege to see a skilled artist at work."

 Iletel smiled, opened the door for him, and then went to wash off the clay in the sink, take down his hair, and don a loose linen wrap-tunic in pale shades of peach and pink, while Kellen gazed around the studio.

 Everything was arranged with an eye to the order and perfection he had come to expect here, even in so messy an environment as a potter's workplace.

 "These pieces are wonderful. I have never seen such beautiful things as I have seen in Sentarshadeen," Kellen said honestly.

 "It is a great pity we no longer trade with the City as we did when I was younger," Iletel said, "for it was a great pleasure to sell beautiful things to humans, as it is always a joy to instruct the young. I am sad that our two races no longer speak together as we once did."

 "So am I," Kellen said feelingly. "That's one of the reasons I'm here— because I know that the Elves know many things I wish to know." He sighed. "I am very glad that the Elves do find joy in the instruction of the young, for I would rather that my presence was not considered a burden."

 Iletel's smile broadened. "Your presence, Kellen Tavadon, would not be a burden to anyone who is wise. The wise know well that wisdom must be shared, or it grows stale, and that even the wisest can learn new things from the young."

 Well, that was encouraging! "I spoke to Morusil this morning," Kellen ventured, "and he told me that everyone here knows something about the Wild Magic. I'm hoping to find out why they no longer remember it in the City."

 Or, Kellen amended conscientiously, if only to himself, why they didn't remember it properly—or lied about it if they did.

 Iletel smiled. "So direct! I had forgotten that consequence of your brief lives," he said in an amused tone that warned Kellen he had come a little too close to overstepping Elven etiquette. "But come, Morusil's student. Perhaps it would please you to view my latest works, and afterward join me for refreshment. It is nearing my hour to take tea."

 Kellen blushed, and assented, wondering if he'd ever really get the hang of the indirectness of Elven manners. Iletel conducted him around the small studio, showing off the various examples of his work—and to Kellen's surprise, finding fault with most of them.

 Several pieces that Kellen thought were perfect Iletel announced were only waiting to be broken up so that their clay could be reused "—for there is truly no purpose in keeping those things which are less than perfect—do you see this flaw here? Terrible. And here, where the glaze ran and puddled. A child's error; the temperature in the kiln was uneven that day. But they will be reborn again, without flaw."

 As Kellen had suspected, Iletel had made the tiles Kellen had seen outside as well, though when Kellen praised them Iletel dismissed them as journeyman work, too unimportant to speak of. All his work now was in the translucent white shell-clay with which he had been working when Kellen entered. It was harder than earthenware, and translucent when fired. Larger pieces, Iletel told Kellen, were often cast instead of wheel-worked, because the clay's thin shapes were unstable while wet. But Iletel still experimented with larger shell-clay pieces on the wheel, for that, he explained, was how one learned.

 He spoke of glazes and firing times with an artist's love and passion, and showed Kellen a few pieces a friend who worked in cast shell-clay had given him: a tiny perfect unicorn, its tufted tail coiled over its back, with shell-pink horn and hooves; a selkie leaning on a rock, a wriggling trout caught in one splayed hand. Every detail was flawless, so real Kellen could almost imagine they breathed.

 Long before Kellen tired of seeing the wonders of Iletel's art, the Elven potter led Kellen through the studio into an inner room whose windows looked out on a wooded hillside of birch and pine. The birch trees had already gone yellow with autumn, though of course, being in Sentarshadeen itself they were well watered by the Elves, but the pines, Kellen was relieved to see, were also still a healthy green. Pines were fragile trees, fast-growing and (comparatively) short-lived. They had shallow roots, and were often the first to suffer the effects of drought, Idalia had once said.

 "Their roots are strong, by the mercy of the Forest," Iletel said, seeing the direction of Kellen's gaze, "and by the grace of Leaf and Star, our valley has been spared the worst of the fell weather. But should there be another year of drought, even they will begin to suffer."

 Iletel indicated that Kellen should seat himself on one of the long benches that seemed to be a standard feature of Elven homes. As Kellen did, Iletel knelt and busied himself at the tile stove, heating water and preparing tea. Kellen cast about for a safe conversational subject.

 "I haven't been studying Wild Magic for very long," he said, as self-deprecating as Iletel, "and my sister Idalia is a much better Wildmage than I am, but both of us are going to do all that we can to help make the rains come."

 "That makes good hearing," Iletel said, his back to Kellen. "Each day, all who can be spared from other tasks go to carry water to the trees of the rim and to the farther fields. Even I shall go in a few hours to do what I can, though it is so little in the face of the forest's need."

 So that's where everyone is! Kellen tried to imagine the amount of work it was to carry water—presumably by hand—to try to keep the forest alive, and couldn't. And the wondertales all make it seem as if all the Elves do all day is play music and games, and sing and dance…

 A few moments later Iletel rose, bringing Kellen a cup of steaming tea that smelled strongly of roses and herbs, and seated himself with his own cup in a chair facing him.

 "But, if I understand your need, you come to us to learn something more of the history of humankind." Iletel frowned, just the tiniest bit. "Now I fear from what you do not say that the Wild Magic is another thing the City has forgotten—or has cast aside. This gives me reasons for why the City of Armethalieh no longer trades with us. Perhaps they fear Wild Magic, as they evidently fear us, as the harbingers of chaos and confusion."

 Kellen shifted uneasily in his seat. Iletel's indirect assessment was uncomfortably close to the mark.

 "But once again it is their brief lives, Wildmage, that lead them into misunderstanding and error," Iletel continued gently, his free hand moving in a graceful gesture of apology. "So far from being the magic of chaos and confusion, the Wild Magic is ultimately the magic of order, as Morusil will have told you already. But it is an order that encompasses the whole world, you see, and so it cannot be a form of order that the ordinary human being can easily grasp," Iletel said, his dark eyes regarding Kellen compassionately.

 Kellen nodded, although he only half grasped what the Elf was talking about.

 "You must understand, Wildmage, that the ordinary human, or even these High Mages who have lately appeared in Armethalieh, is essentially a selfish creature. It is a consequence of having such brief lives, I fear; and not to be wondered at. Humans barely reach maturity before they begin to die: it is not surprising that all they are interested in is the form of 'order' that best suits and benefits each of them alone—or perhaps, if they are the wisest of their kind, an order that benefits their fellows for the duration of their own brief lifetimes. But their lives are so very short that even such magnanimity is barely better than the most insular selfishness."

 Kellen nibbled on his lower lip, wondering if he should be feeling slightly insulted. Of course, Iletel didn't mean to be insulting, but—that attitude seemed, in its way, a bit condescending…

 Iletel continued on, earnestly. "Yet you must understand, as we Elves do, that one could not expect it to be otherwise, Wildmage. One cannot expect a creature to glimpse the Eternal when its whole brief span of years is spent in being born and dying almost before it has a chance to live." Iletel looked very somber.

 I don't know… Idalia seems to have figured it out all right. And Master Eliron. And whoever wrote the Books in the first place, and all the Wildmages who've learned from them.

 Iletel sighed. "It breaks my heart to imagine it. There is no time to dream, to plan, no time for Art… all of their lives are spent in one blind hurrying rush into death, without one moment to think or reflect on any of the things that give Life meaning or beauty."

 He shook his head, regarding Kellen with grave pity. "I think you are very brave, Kellen Tavadon, to reach beyond your brief span of years through your magic—but then, as a Wildmage yourself, you are far from ordinary. The ordinary human, man or Mage, lives every moment in terror of the death that is rushing toward him in less than a century of years— such a creature could not possibly be expected to see things with the same perspective that we Elves can. And so, in the human City, they have turned away from the vast and eternal beauty of the Wild Magic to a simpler, more immediate, more selfish magic better suited to the briefness of their lives. You wonder why they have rejected the Wild Magic in favor of this self-indulgent magic of their own creation, but the explanation is obvious to any of the Elven-born: no short-lived creature could be expected to love something that confronts it with its terrible impermanence."

 Iletel was clearly quite sympathetic to the terrible fate of humans. It showed in his tone, and in the grave way he regarded Kellen. "And so the Mages of the Golden City hate the Wild Magic and its wielders for showing them what is no more than the truth of the world. But you must not blame them for it, as we do not. It is simply their flawed human nature. They are no more to blame for their fears than the wasp for its sting."

 Kellen sipped his tea, his mind too full of new ideas to be able to frame a coherent question in the fashion Elven good manners dictated. He was dazzled by the notion of the High Magick being something that had "lately" appeared in Armethalieh—lately by whose standards? Iletel's? Did that mean they used to practice the Wild Magic in Armethalieh… and stopped? Lycaelon said the High Mages had once studied the Wild Magic, before banning it as being too dangerous… was that what he'd really meant? That they'd used to practice it? That there used to be Wild-mages in Armethalieh? Kellen felt as if he were swimming—and not very well—in a sea of new ideas.

 "But not all humans are like the ones in the City," Kellen protested weakly. "Idalia and I both came from there."

 "And both of you left, neither in your own time and season," Iletel pointed out reasonably. "There is as much variation among humankind as among the flowers of the field, perhaps, yet when the gatherer brings them into her garden, she will choose those whose traits please her and grow only those, casting out those who hark back to their wild cousins. So it is with humans, who cultivate themselves like flowers. Do not yearn to be what you are not, Kellen, rather rejoice that you are more than they."

 It all made very pretty hearing, since who wouldn't want to hear that they were special and gifted, far better than the people they'd grown up with, especially if those same people were the ones that had thrown you out of Armethalieh and then tried to kill you, not once but twice? And it all seemed so reasonable, especially while Iletel was talking.

 BUT later, after a little more polite conversation and a promise to come again bringing Sandalon, Kellen wasn't quite as sure. He wandered onward through Sentarshadeen, trying to sort out all the things he'd just learned in his mind. It was a very comforting explanation. A very soothing explanation. But Kellen had been offered a very great number of comforting, soothing explanations for things in his life, and had rejected them all.

 Iletel seemed so satisfied with his explanation of how things were… just as satisfied as the Light-Priests and the Mages had been with their explanations, back in the City.

 Wasn't Iletel's thinking that most humans couldn't handle the Wild Magic because they just weren't good enough the same thing as the Mages thinking that all women couldn't handle the High Magick because they weren't good enough?

 Or was it?

 The more he learned, the less he knew, Kellen realized. He wasn't sure of anything anymore—except one thing.

 Once, the Wild Magic had been practiced in Armethalieh. Then they'd stopped, and invented the High Magick, and declared that nobody could be allowed to practice the Wild Magic anymore. If he put Iletel's explanation and Lycaelon's explanation together, that much seemed to shake out of it as unvarnished truth. But all that knowing that much for sure did was leave him with more questions.

 He walked out past the House of Leaf and Star (the Elves might call it that, but Kellen still thought of it as a palace) turning over the conversations with the two Elves in his mind.

 Both Iletel and Morusil had been very kind, and filled with Elven politeness, and Kellen certainly had a wider perspective on things than he had before, but he wasn't entirely certain it was a better or more accurate one. Iletel might say that humans had abandoned the Wild Magic because they were essentially self-centered, but that didn't quite make sense if the only Wildmages left in the world were human. Maybe that wasn't true either, but the Elves weren't Wildmages (at least not anymore), the Centaurs couldn't do magic at all, and Kellen hadn't met any representatives of any more of the Other Races yet, so he wasn't sure whether any of them might be Mages or not, or even if any of them still existed. The unicorns were certainly magical creatures, but if the unicorns could get the Elves out of the fix they were in, well, there was a whole herd of them living in Sentarshadeen as from what Idalia said, and there still wasn't any rain, so Kellen guessed they couldn't help. Maybe unicorns could just do specific unicorn-magic things, the way an apple tree could make apples, which was fine if you wanted apples (or unicorn-magic), but he guessed bringing rain didn't fall into that category.