3 When Darkness Falls.8 (30 page)

And in fact he
had
seen a Knight-Mage first, but to add rarity to improbability, a High Mage had left the City of Mages and traveled across the Wild Lands and into the Elven Lands, so now Menerchel had seen a High Mage as well.

I must stop wishing to see things — unless it is our victory, and all of
Them
vanished. I am certain Hindulo would agree. And yet… it seems very odd to me that such brief and hasty people as the High Mages should have such power as Kellen and Cilarnen have both spoken of. Perhaps they have such powers precisely because there are creatures such as
Them
in the world. In which case, if all of
Them
were destroyed, would the High Mages lose their powers as well?

It was a riddle that could not be solved tonight.

Healer's Row was near the middle of the camp, where the most vulnerable of the camp's inhabitants — the sick, the wounded, and the Healers, who rarely wore armor, at least while treating patients — could be sheltered in the event the camp was directly attacked. Because it was early in the evening, Menerchel looked for Idalia first in the sick-tents, and not at her own pavilion.

* * * * *

CILARNEN sat on the long bench in the outer room with Menerchel while another Elf — Yatimumil, he thought his name was — went off to get Idalia. The set-ting bore an odd resemblance to the day he'd met Kellen, and Kellen had dragged him off to the Healer's tent.

His head had hurt then, too. Thank the Light it wasn't summer; he felt as if the cold was the only thing keeping the pain at bay. He lowered his head into his hands and squeezed his temples. It didn't help.

There were Healing Spells in the High Magick, of course, but nowhere in all the Art Magickal had a time been foreseen when a Mage might have to heal himself. Wildmages might wander the earth like solitary lunatics, so Wirance had told him, never seeing another of their own kind from the moment they embraced their magical destiny till the day of their death, but High Mage worked in Circles, in Colleges, in Councils… Cilarnen could
be
a solitary High Mage much easier than he could imagine one. "I See you, Menerchel."

When he heard Idalia's voice, Cilarnen raised his head.

Menerchel bowed. "I See you, Idalia. The blessings of Leaf and Star be upon you this night. I bring you Cilarnen High Mage, whom Hindulo found asleep in a snowbank, though not for long enough to take much hurt from it, I think. He brings grave news of a place called Nerendale, and he would have you know of it. I regret such rudeness and brevity, but the Unicorn Scouts ride picket tonight, and I am needed elsewhere."

"Then you must go at once, Menerchel, and give my thanks to Hindulo. The blessings of Leaf and Star go with you also."

She waited until Menerchel had left, and then turned to Cilarnen.

"Of all the stupid, half-witted, inconsiderate — " she began furiously.

Cilarnen laughed, though it turned into a groan of pain halfway through. "'Stupid' and 'half-witted' I will grant you, Lady — Idalia — though by the Light, I could not beat to be alone tonight — but how 'inconsiderate'?"

Idalia stared at him for a moment, then took a deep breath. "To begin, once we noticed you missing, we'd have to go looking for you. And then, once we found you dead, some of us would be sorry. And even those who did not mourn your loss would worry that your death meant that some enemy had managed to get close to the camp to kill you."

"I see," Cilarnen said distantly. "I apologize for troubling you, Wildmage. Nevertheless, my news is urgent. Perhaps you will hear it and give your opinion as to whether Redhelwar should hear this at once."

* * * * *

IDALIA sighed inwardly. She'd managed to forget what Kellen had been like at the very first — in feverish high spirits one moment and brooding in corners the next, wearing his feelings on the outside of his skin and as volatile as only a teenage boy could be.

Though he did his best, Cilarnen was a thousand times worse, adding to Kellen's mix the sensibilities of a pampered aristocrat and the arrogance of a High Mage. That they all hadn't been tempted to murder him a thousand times over was a tribute to the fact that somehow Armethalieh hadn't managed to ruin him.

But tonight he was tired, and he
knew
he'd pulled a stupid stunt trying to walk down from the ice-pavilion in the dark. It was a long walk even in the daylight. Too long, unless the air was absolutely still and the sun was out.

And he looked ill. Feverish.

Let the plague not come here. Gods of the Wild Magic, is that too much to ask? So many people gathered in one place, it would go through the camp like fire through a standing grain field at harvest.

"Cilarnen?" she asked quietly. "Are you ill? Is that why you came?"

"No." He sounded very positive, but she had never seen him look less well in all the time she had known him. "My head hurts again, but that is not why I came.
They
have killed everyone in Nerendale, and the Militia, too. Anigrel sent them to Nerendale — I think he sent them so that they would be there to be killed. Perhaps it was a sort of sacrifice. Or perhaps he does it willingly.
They
have two High Mages now as well — they were not friends of mine, but they were men I knew. Middle Houses, of course. Not well-connected. Or else they would not have been sent, you see." His tone was reasonable, but his pupils were widely dilated, and his words made no sense at all.

"Cilarnen," Idalia said carefully, "you can't know what's going on in Nerendale. That's inside the Bounds, and none of us can scry inside the Bounds."

"The difference between your magic and mine," Cilarnen said dismissively, "is that mine does what I tell it to, and yours does what it thinks you should do. Today I saw Nerendale. I wish I hadn't," he added, as if to himself.

"You made your magic work," Idalia said, realizing what Cilarnen was not saying.

Cilarnen nodded, and then winced. "I can cast any of the spells of a High Mage. I haven't practiced most of them, and I don't understand them, and I still don't have a lot of the equipment and materials I need, and some of the spells just require more than one person, but as long as I'm within the Elven Lands, I have the power." He took a deep breath, and seemed to consider the matter carefully. "I think I'd rather have a dragon."

Idalia shook her head, exasperated with herself. Shock. He was in shock. She hadn't seen the symptoms because she hadn't been looking for them and they were masked by the magic, but they were there, now that she was looking for them.

Curse every High Mage back to the founding of Armethalieh for the way they raised their sons! Cilarnen was no Elven Knight, but it looked like the Mage College could show the House of Sword and Shield a thing or two about stoic endurance.

And possibly pure stupidity.

"First I'll get you the cordial for your headache. Then I'll get you a mug of hot sweet cider and a little soup. Then you can tell me about Nerendale from the very beginning. If you
can
look into Armethalieh, there are some things I'd like to look at."

* * * * *

SHE sent a runner to the Centaur camp for Kardus, then she had Yatimumil get Cilarnen into dry clothes and wrapped in blankets and settled between a pair of warming braziers. Once she'd dosed him with the cordial and gotten some food and drink into him, his color improved, and he seemed to be tracking better. By that time, Kardus had arrived.

"You have seen
Them
again," the Centaur Wildmage said without preamble.

Cilarnen nodded, looking very much as if he wanted to cry. He nodded. "Like Stonehearth. Worse. Anigrel… he knew
They'd
be there. I know he did. He sent the Militia right to them. And two High Mages.
They
took them away alive.
They
killed all the others."

"Cilarnen," Idalia said gently, "will you be able to tell this twice?"

While nothing that had happened several hours ago in Nerendale could be urgent enough to justify rousing Redelwar for in the middle of the night, he would certainly need to be told, and it would be best if he could be told by the one who had actually witnessed the events.

Cilarnen nodded shortly. He seemed to draw on his resources, pulling the facts together in the proper order. Then he began.

"As you've guessed by now, the spell to gain a power source worked. The Elven Elementals sent help. As soon as I had a source of power for my spells, the first thing I did was to cast the Glyph of Far-Seeing upon the Council Chamber of Armethalieh."

Cilarnen said this as if it were the most logical — and reasonable — thing in the world. Idalia supposed a High Mage might think it was, and silently cursed herself for not sending someone to check on Cilarnen every single day — but the army's resources were still stretched far too thin since the Battle for the Heart Forest and the Spell of Kindolhinadetil's Mirror. He'd been sure he'd be fine, and was so insistent about being left alone — to study, she'd thought — that she'd simply let the matter drop. The ice-pavilion had been within range of the farthest-out of the patrols, after all, so it wasn't as if nobody at all had been keeping an eye on him.

Just not, apparently, a close enough one. She'd been going to ride up there tomorrow, since it would have been four days without word.

She sighed. She should have gone sooner. She knew how single-minded Cilarnen had become once he'd gotten the idea that getting his magic back was possible. It probably hadn't even occurred to him that he should let someone know what he'd done and what he was about to do.

And he'd made fun of the Wildmages for being solitary!

"There are only seven on the High Council now," Cilarnen went on. "Lord Anigrel — Lord Anigrel, oh, that is a mockery! House Anigrel was never particularly high among the Mage Houses; when Ceonece Anigrel married Torbet Dusaynt there was a great scandal, as he was a commoner, like poor Tiedor, but he had a strong Gift, and House Anigrel fostered him… Anyway, Lord Anigrel proposed sending the Militia to evacuate Nerendale. The villagers had petitioned for relief. According to the Council, the Wildmages were raiding in the Valley and killing villagers, and they were afraid to stay."

"Wildmages!" Kardus said in disbelief. "But that's — "

"Part of Anigrel's plan," Idalia said bitterly. "So the Council — which apparently means Anigrel these days — sent a detachment of the Militia to move them."

"Yes," Cilarnen said. He pulled his blankets more tightly around himself, staring down at his empty cider mug. "I knew when they would arrive, and I knew there would be Mages with the Militia, so I sent out my next Far-Seeing Spell two days later to find any Mages outside the walls of Armethalieh, since I didn't know where Nerendale was, or what it looked like. And I found them. Forty soldiers and two Journeymen, Masters Juvalira and Thekinalo. The villagers didn't know they were coming, and they'd made no preparations to leave. They stood around and argued about what they needed to take. Juvalira and Thekinalo could have made them stop, but they didn't.

"Then six of
Them
came." He stopped, staring at something only he could see.

It took little effort for Idalia to imagine what had happened next, however, and then it did take an effort to keep from grabbing him and shaking him until his teeth rattled. They should never have left him to himself for so long without checking on him. He might have listened to her, or maybe not, but he would certainly have listened to Vestakia or Kardus.

What he would not have done was gone looking for Demons while he was all alone, no matter how much the Allies needed to know what he might learn.

"
They
saw you, didn't
They?
" she said quietly.

Cilarnen jerked as if he'd been stung by a wasp, and stared at her in startled surprise. Then understanding grew in his expression as he realized how she must know. She'd faced the Demon Queen through Kindolhinadetil's Mirror.

"I thought I'd been careful enough. I'd shielded the glyph. It went undetected in Armethalieh — if it had not, the Stone Golems in the Council Chamber would have alerted the Mages. But
They
knew I was watching all along.
They wanted
me to watch, as
They
... played with the people there."

"That is
Their
way," Kardus said gravely. "
They
wish to spoil everything
They
touch.
They
are the enemy of all who walk in the Light."

"And now all those people are dead," Cilarnen said, a despairing note in his voice. "And Anigrel will make it seem as if the Wildmages are responsible, and make everyone in the City even more terrified of Wildmages, if that's even possible. Idalia, you'll never get an alliance now. He's seen to that."

She wasn't going to let him talk himself into a complete blue funk.

"Unfortunately,
They've
made one huge mistake. You saw what really happened at Nerendale — and you can testify to that before the High Council under Truthspell," Idalia said.