1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (40 page)

 Kellen was pretty sure by now that he could trust Idalia, trust her intelligence and her judgment, even if she didn't always tell him everything. After all, why should she? He was ten years younger than she was, and she had a lot of experiences behind her that maybe she wouldn't want to talk about to someone like him. He liked her a lot—more each day. He was in awe of her—not only her magic and her woodscraft abilities, but her plain common sense.

 The trouble he had was that even though all those tales of Demonkind had seemed like nonsense back in the City, they weren't anything to be laughed at anymore. There'd been those dreams, for one thing. And for another, Idalia herself had said something in passing, but with a wary look over her shoulder, about Demons.

 Now, if Idalia spoke of Demonkind without any irony—and given those awful dreams—Lycaelon must have had something behind his warnings, after all.

 Idalia had been working with the Wild Magic for a long time—at least ten years more than he had, so if it was going to turn her to the Dark, it had certainly had plenty of opportunity to do that already, and if it had, surely he'd have seen some sign of it by now. And Shalkan did like her. It was just that Idalia wasn't, well…

 After the healing this afternoon, Kellen could hardly believe how stupid he'd been. Shalkan didn't avoid Idalia because she was a Wildmage gone bad (and it should have occurred to him that Shalkan wouldn't have brought them both straight here if there had been something wrong with her) it was just that Idalia wasn't, well, a virgin. (Kellen winced. How in the name of the Light had he managed to miss that? But she'd been a bird. Being a bird didn't count… )

 Resolutely, he turned his thoughts away from the subject. He had his vow to consider. He shouldn't even be thinking about things like that! Anyway, Idalia just wasn't. And that mattered a lot to unicorns, apparently—look at the way she'd been unable to touch the colt, even though it would have made things a whole lot simpler in the healing today if she hadn't needed Kellen's help. And what if he hadn't been there? What would she have done then?

 Really, he should have put two and two together the moment the whole herd appeared, looking for help.

 Sometimes I am so dense…

 But no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn't get his father's parting words out of his head, and the fact that Idalia wasn't any kind of Demonspawn or Darkmage didn't solve Kellen's problem, not really. Lycaelon's words and his own fever-spawned nightmares still haunted him and plagued him with doubts to which there didn't seem to be any easy solution.

 Because out here, outside the City walls, nothing was simple or straightforward anymore. Every answer turned out to be a gateway to more questions, more ambiguities. And instead of being given rules to follow, he was presented with choices. Idalia had said that the Gods used the Wild Magic to give Wildmages the tools to help them become better—if they wanted to become better. But that meant that down deep inside, it was still up to each of them to choose how to use those tools. That meant Lycaelon could still be right—that the Wild Magic might open the path to Demonkind by giving Wildmages the power to choose to be good or evil, and the freedom to make the wrong choice.

 And Kellen wasn't really sure he knew himself well enough to be sure he was safe—that in becoming a Wildmage, he wouldn't end up exactly the way his father had said he would. Surely nobody started out using the Wild Magic intending to get involved with Demons? So how could you know you were going to get into trouble before it was too late to turn back? He already knew he'd made some really stupid decisions in his life. What if choosing to become a Wildmage was another one?

 What if—not now, but in ten years, or even fifty years, if he managed to live that long—he did something really really horrible just because he didn't have the sense to stop using the Books now! How could he know? How could anybody know? Was that why the High Council forbade the study of the Wild Magic? Were they actually (for once in their twisted little lives) right? What if the Wild Magic really was dangerous—not for everyone, but just for a few people—and you couldn't know who those people were going to be until it was too late? If that was true, wasn't it best to just forbid everyone to use it, just in case?

 But what if that wasn't true? Why should the Council be right about this when they were wrong about everything else?

 How would he know before it was too late?

 Maybe it was already too late.

 Kellen sighed glumly, which earned him a sidelong glance from Shalkan, although the unicorn didn't comment. Once they'd left Idalia's cabin behind, there was no sign of civilization at all, and he was startled to find how much he missed the familiar walls and roads and buildings he'd grown up with all his life. Even in the large parks in the City that were designed so that all you saw were trees and flowers—no buildings at all, not even the City towers—everything was carefully planted and manicured and designed. You never forgot that someone had planned it. Out here, everything was just growing with no plan or pattern to it. Trees fell down, and nobody came to tidy them away. Flowers grew wherever they wanted to. No rules, no order, and no sign that any human had ever done anything here. It was all…

 "Messy, isn't it?" Shalkan asked. "No, I can't read your thoughts," he added, regarding Kellen's guilty and startled expression. "Or, let's say, I can't read them in the normal course of things. But you wear your thoughts on your face, City-child."

 "As bad as that?" Kellen said despondently.

 "You'll learn," Shalkan said kindly. "And there's no reason for you to expect to like something you've never seen before, just because you think you ought to like it. Give yourself time."

 "But what if I don't like it?" Kellen burst out. "What if I never like it? What if I always hate it? What if I should have stayed in the City after all?" He looked around at the forest, at the untidy ramble of trees and vines and flowers. Everything was in full leaf, the season racing forward toward high summer. Maybe it was pretty, maybe it was even beautiful, but his eyes longed for patterns.

 "Do you think that's likely? There's beauty and wonder here beyond the stunted dreams of City-folk. And things you never knew existed. You only think that you know all that's to be found out here. Look."

 Shalkan was pointing with his horn. Kellen looked sharply in the direction that he pointed.

 At first all he saw was a patch of blue sky framed by the branches of two large oaks, but then, as he stared, it seemed to shimmer and glisten, becoming half-solid, shining like glass or water, with the merest hint of rainbow. For a moment he thought he glimpsed a spectral shape, winged and vaguely human, but then it vanished again, and there was only air.

 "That— What—" Kellen gasped inelegantly. "I saw something… didn't I?"

 "A sylph," Shalkan confirmed. "A creature of the winds. They ride the currents of the air, and with their help, you can influence the weather. She's not the only creature out here that you've never seen before—and that wouldn't ever go near the City walls. But come along—I know where there are some nice juicy apples."

 "It's too early for apples," Kellen protested automatically.

 "Come and see," the unicorn said with a wise and amused glance. "You just saw a sylph, are you going to disbelieve in my apples?"

 Well, when Shalkan put it that way…

 To Kellen's surprise, Shalkan led him to a wild apple orchard, where the trees were indeed heavy with ripe red fruit. Kellen started forward, hefting his basket, but Shalkan immediately stepped across his path, blocking his way to the trees.

 "You might want to ask the owners if they're willing to part with some first," Shalkan said gently.

 Kellen looked around, wondering if he'd missed seeing a hut or cabin concealed in the undergrowth.

 "Look harder. Look at the trees. Remember the sylph," Shalkan said, giving Kellen a warning nudge with his shoulder.

 Kellen did as he was bid, and suddenly he could see them—women, sitting in the trees, looking down at him with amusement. Their skin was pale green, like new leaves, their long hair the emerald of the leaves of high summer. They were crowned with apple blossoms, and every single one of them was quite naked. They appeared to be perfectly comfortable in that state, and for a moment, Kellen had the disoriented feeling it was he that was the one who was foolish for being clothed.

 "Oh… no," Kellen whispered, appalled.

 "Apple-dryads," Shalkan said matter-of-factly. "Tree-spirits, tree-guardians. Not all trees have them, of course, or we'd be up to our hocks in dryads; no, only a few select trees are inhabited by dryads, though they do a certain amount of tending of all the trees in their domain. This is their grove. And their apples, of course."

 The dryads came down from their trees; not so much climbing as gliding, and began pacing deliberately toward him. Their long hair swirled around them with a life of its own, now concealing their bodies, now revealing them, a breast here, a thigh there. Kellen would have turned to run, but now Shalkan backed around him, blocking his retreat. They clustered around Kellen, plucking at his clothes as if in perplexity, and giggling at his horrified embarrassment.

 "I—I—I didn't know," Kellen stammered, blushing hotly. To his horror, he was surrounded by naked grove-maidens and not quite sure where to look. "I'm sorry." The head of the tallest of them barely came up to his shoulder, and their pale green skin had the hard glossy sheen of a polished, unripened apple. Unlike the sylph, which he hadn't been quite certain he was seeing, the apple-dryads seemed as solid and real as Idalia.

 "Ladies, this is Kellen," Shalkan said, and Kellen would have been willing to swear the unicorn was smiling. "He's new here; he's Wildmage Idalia's brother—and he's under a vow of chastity, so have pity on him."

 The apple-dryads drew back a little, regarding Kellen and Shalkan gravely out of dark eyes the color of apple-tree bark. Kellen had recovered his composure enough to realize that they weren't quite naked—or rather that they were, but that they weren't quite human; their slender nakedness, while giving the strong impression of femininity, was the featureless androgyny of a sculpture, or a doll. Vaguely, he supposed that only made sense. After all, they only looked human. He cleared his throat, awkwardly.

 "I'm sorry I was going to steal your apples," he said. "I mean, I wasn't going to steal them. I was just going to take some, and I didn't realize that they were yours. I mean, Shalkan brought me here, and I figured he wanted some, and I knew my sister would like them…"

 One of the dryads—she seemed to be the leader, though Kellen couldn't quite say how he got that impression—spoke. Her voice was like rustling leaves, and contained no human words, though Kellen felt that his apology was accepted.

 *A gift for you, human child, and for your sister, on whom be honor.* This time he heard the words clearly inside his head, as though she were making an effort to be sure he understood her.

 Suddenly the dryads whirled and went sprinting away, each to her own tree. There was a wild rustling of leaves and a great deal of giggling that sounded more like bubbling water than girlish laughter, and a few moments later several of them returned, carrying apples, which they reached out and placed into his basket amid much jostling and amusement. Before he could even begin to stammer out his thanks, the dryads had dashed away again, leaving him staring down at their gift—not as many apples as he might have gathered for himself, but all of them gleaming and juicy and without flaw.

 He looked around, but now, no matter how hard he stared, once more the orchard was only an orchard, with no dryads to be seen. He looked at Shalkan, doing his best to make sense of what had just happened. Without the apples in his basket, it would have been easy to dismiss the last few minutes as an especially vivid waking dream, an aftermath of his injuries.

 "What can I do in return?" he asked. Gifts required gifts in return— that was the first lesson both of magic and good manners.

 "Bring them water in a dry year," Shalkan answered approvingly, as though Kellen were an especially apt pupil. "Not this year—the rains have been good. But always respect the forest."

 "I will," Kellen answered humbly. Humility seemed in order; and so did a lot more consideration than he had been giving to his surroundings! Things weren't what they seemed here—and he'd certainly never look at an apple the same way again!

 AFTER that, the two of them moved onward, deeper into the forest. Now that he was getting used to looking, Kellen realized that the forest was not the empty unoccupied place it had first seemed to be. In fact, the creatures that were only hinted at in his High Magick lessons seemed to be everywhere, and Kellen was sure that he and Shalkan were constantly being watched. Gathering cress by the bank of a stream at Shalkan's direction, Kellen looked down into the water and found more than his reflection looking back. Something that could only be an undine stared into Kellen's eyes for a long moment before flitting away.

 Undines and sylphs… that's two of the four Elemental Powers that I remember from my lessons in the High Magick. The other two are salamanders — fire —and gnomes— earth. He wondered where dryads fitted into the scheme of things. I'm not sure I'd want to meet a salamander in a forest, but I wonder what gnomes look like? I would have paid more attention to my lessons if Anigrel had ever said the Powers were real live creatures… but the High Magick always taught that they were abstract concepts, symbols of the elemental forces of Creation that Mages work with, not… real. It's like Idalia said. The Mages take everything and squeeze the life out of it, turn it into entries in a ledger. No wonder the High Magick is so bloodless and boring!