Mercedes Lackey - The Obsidian Trilogy 01 - The Outstretched Shadow

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The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes

Lackey and James Mallory

Chapter One

In the City of Golden Bells

THE GARDEN MARKET positively thronged with people, clustered around the wagons just in from

the countryside. What a fuss over strawberries—you'd think they were made of solid ruby.

Perhaps—to some—they were. Certainly the number of superior kitchen servants that filled the streets of

the Garden Market, their household livery enveloped in spotless aprons, pristine market baskets slung

over their arms, suggested that the gourmets of the City treasured them as much as if they were, indeed,

precious gems.

Kellen Tavadon supposed it was all a matter of taste. The strawberries were said to be particularly good

this year, and there must have been a hundred people waiting impatiently for the three ox-carts in from

the country to unload the second picking of the day, great crates full of the tender fruit, layered in fresh

straw to keep from bruising the delicate flesh. The air was full of the scent of them, a perfume that made

even Kellen's mouth water.

"Out of the way, young layabout!"

A rude shove in Kellen's back sent him staggering across the cobbles into the arms of a marketplace

stall-holder, who caught him with a garlic-redolent oath just in time to keep him from landing face first in

the cart full of the man's neatly heaped-up vegetables. Behind Kellen, the burly armsman dressed in

purple-and-maroon livery and bearing nothing more lethal than an ornamental halberd dripping

purple-and-maroon ribbons shoved another man whose only crime was in being a little too tardy at

clearing the path. This victim, a shabby farmer, went stumbling in the opposite direction, and looked far

more cowed than Kellen had. A third, a boy picked up by the collar and tossed aside, saved himself

from taking down another stall's awning by going into the stone wall behind it instead.

All this rudeness was for no greater purpose than so the armsman's master need not be jostled by the

proximity of mere common working' folk who had been occupying the space that their superior wished to

cross.

Kellen felt his lip curling in an angry sneer as he mumbled a hurried apology to the fellow who'd caught

him. Damn the idiot that has to make a display of himself here! He picked a fine time to come

parading through, whoever he is! The Garden Market couldn't be more crowded if you stood on a

barrel and yelled, "Free beer!"

Then again—maybe that was the point. Some people couldn't see an opportunity to flaunt their

importance without grabbing it and wringing every last bit of juice out of it.

Father, for instance…

Kellen turned just in time to see that the Terribly Important Person in question this time was High Mage

Corellius, resplendent in his velvet robes and the distinctive hat that marked him as a High Mage and thus

a creature of wealth, rank, and power. Quite a hat it was, and Corellius held his scrawny neck very

upright and stiff supporting it—a construction with a square brim as wide as his arm was long that curled

up on the right and the left. It had three gold cords that knotted around the crown and trailed down his

back, cords ending in bright golden tassels as long as Kellen's hand. Corellius's colors were purple and

maroon, and they suited him vilely. Not only did the shades clash, they made him look as if he had a

permanent case of yellow jaundice, which condition was not at all improved by the wattles of his throat

and the mottled jowls hanging down from his narrow vulpine jaw. His beady little eyes fastened on Kellen

just long enough for Kellen to be certain the smirk on the thin lips was meant for him, then moved on,

recognizing Kellen and dismissing him as a thing of no importance.

Kellen flushed involuntarily. Which I am, of course. Father's position and glory hardly reflect on his

so-disappointing son. And if I were as properly ambitious as I'm supposed to be, I wouldn't be

wandering about in the market in the first place. I'd be at my studies.

The official ranks of Magecraft progressed from the Student at the very beginning of the discipline,

through Apprentice, to Journeyman, to Mage, to High Mage. Kellen, as a student, was beneath

Corellius's notice under the usual circumstances. But Kellen was no ordinary Student. Not with the

Arch-Mage Lycaelon—head of the High Council, and therefore Lord of all the Mages in the City—as his

father.

Kellen glowered at the High Mage's back. There was no doubt in his mind Corellius had recognized him,

even dressed as he was. How could he not, considering who Kellen's father was?

"That'd be a High Mage, then?" asked the stall-holder, conversationally. "Don't suppose ye know which

one?"

Kellen shrugged, not at all inclined to identify himself as someone who would know High Mages on sight.

He'd worn his oldest clothes into the City for just this reason.

"Maroon and purple, that's all I know," he replied untruthfully. "Don't know why a High Mage would be

barging through the Garden Market, though."

"Wondered that myself." The stall-holder shrugged, then lost interest in Corellius and Kellen, as a

housewife squeezed out of the press, positioned herself under the man's red-striped awning, and began to

pick over the carrots.

Kellen moved on, taking a path at right angles to Corellius's progress. He didn't want to encounter the

High Mage again, but he also didn't want to fight his way through the wake of disturbance Corellius had

left behind him. The Garden Market, with its permanent awnings that were fastened into the stone of the

warehouse buildings behind them and unfurled every morning, was full every day, but other markets were

open only once every Sennday, once a moonturn, or once a season. The Brewers' and Vintners' Market

was open today, though, over in Barrel Street, for instance. The brewers were in with Spring Beer today,

which, along with the new crop of strawberries, probably accounted for the heavy traffic here in the

Market Quarter.

Probably accounts for Corellius, too. Kellen knew the High Mage's tastes, thanks to overheard

conversations among Lycaelon and his friends. Corellius might pretend to favor wine, a much more

sophisticated beverage than beer, but his pretense was as bogus as—as his apparent height! Just as he

wore platform soles to his shoes, neatly hidden under the skirt of his robe, to hide his true stature, his

carefully cultivated reputation as a gourmet concealed coarser preferences. His drink of choice was the

same beer his carpenter father had consumed, and the stronger, the better. He might have a reputation

for keeping an elegant cellar among his peers and inferiors, but his superiors knew his every secret "vice."

They had to: only a convocation of High Mages could invest a Mage into their exalted ranks, and it

behooved them to know everything about a potential candidate. Little did Corellius know that a frog

would fly before he was invested with the rank he so coveted. The High Mages would have understood

and accepted a man who clung to his culinary roots openly— but a Mage who dissembled and created a

false image of himself might find it easy to move on to more dangerous falsehoods. So Lycaelon said—

loudly, and often.

So Kellen steered clear of the Brewers' and Vintners' Market. Corellius would be in there for bells,

tasting, comparing, pretending he was buying for the table of his servants, while brewers fell over

themselves trying to impress him and gain his patronage. And as long as the Mage dallied in the market,

no one else would be served, which would make for a backlog of a great many impatient and disgruntled

would-be customers.

But they would just have to wait. This was the Mage-City of Armethalieh and only another Mage, senior

in age or higher in rank, could displace Corellius from his position of importance. Mages had built it,

Mages ruled it, and Mages were the only people of any real consequence in it, though it had nobility and

rich men in plenty.

It didn't matter if Armethalieh traded with the entire world and held rich merchants within her walls, or

that she could boast nobles whose bloodlines went back centuries, some with more wealth than any ten

merchants combined. When it came to power and the wielding of it—well— Mages were the only men

who had it, and they guarded their privileges jealously.

Not that they didn't earn those privileges. Magick infused and informed this City, often called

"Armethalieh of the Singing Towers" for all of the bell spires piercing the sky. Magick ensured that the

weather was so controlled that—for instance—rain only fell between midnight and dawn, so that the

inhabitants need not be inconvenienced. Magick kept the harbor clear and unsilted, guided ships past the

dangerous Sea-Hag's Teeth at the mouth of it, and cleansed the ships that entered it of vermin. There was

magick to reinforce any construction, so that (in the wealthiest parts, at least) the City looked like a

fantastic confection, a sugar-cake fit for a high festival. The City stretched toward the sun with stonework

as delicate as lace and hard as diamonds, be-towered and be-domed, gilded and silvered, jeweled with

mosaics, frosted with fretwork. Things were less fanciful in less exalted quarters, but still ornamented with

gargoyle downspouts and carved and glazed friezes of ceramic tiles. Magick reinforced these, too, and

nearly every block boasted its own bell tower, with still more magick ensuring that all of the songs of the

towers harmonized, rather than clashed, with each other.

Magick set the scales in the marketplace and ensured their honesty. Magick at the Mint guaranteed that

the square coins of the City, the Golden Suns of Armethalieh, were the truest in the world, and the most

trusted. Magick kept the City's water supply sweet and uncontaminated, her markets filled with fresh

wholesome food at every season, her buildings unthreatened by fire. There were entire cadres of Mages

on the City payroll, dedicated to magick for the public good. If they were well paid and well respected,

they had earned both the pay and the respect. Even Kellen, no friend of Mages, had to admit to that. Life

in the City was sweet and easy.

As for the private sector, where the real wealth was to be made, there were far more opportunities for a

Mage to enrich himself. There was virtually no aspect of life that could not be enhanced by magick.

Domestic magick, for instance. If you had the money, you could hire a Mage to thief-proof your house or

shop, to keep vermin out of it, to keep disease from your family, and to heal their injuries. If you had the

money, you could even hire a Mage to create a winter-box where you could put perishables to keep

them from spoiling. And there were even greater magicks to be had—magicks that melded

brick-and-mortar into a whole more solid than stone and harder than adamant. Magicks that kept a

ship's sails full of favoring wind no matter what the real conditions were. Money bought magick, and

magick made money, and no matter how lowly born a Mage was—and the Magegift could appear in any

family, regardless of degree of birth (Corellius, for example)—he could count on becoming rich before he

was middle-aged. He might become very rich. He might aspire to far more than mere wealth, if he was

powerful enough: a seat on the High Council, and a voice in ruling the City itself.

Most important of all of the folk of the City were the Mages, and the most important of all the Mages

were those High Mages who formed the elite ruling body of the City, the High Council. They were

considered to be the wisest of the wise; they were certainly the most powerful of the powerful. If there

was a decision to be made about anything inside the walls of the City, it was the High Council that made

it.

And that was what stuck in Kellen's throat and made him wild with pent-up frustration.

If there is a way to fetter a person's life a little further, it is the High Council that puts the pen to

the parchment, Kellen thought sourly as he made his way past the Tailors' Mart and the stalls of those

who sold fabric and trimmings. His goal was the little by-water of booksellers, but he would have to

make his way through most of the markets to get there, since Corellius was blocking the short route.

Kellen was seventeen, and had been a Student for three years now, and although that was probably the

acme of ambition for most young men in this City, he would rather have forgone the "honor" entirely. It

would have been a great deal easier, all things considered, if he had never been born among the Gifted.

On the whole, he would much rather have been completely and utterly ordinary. His father would have

been disgusted.

And I could have gotten out of this place. I could have gone to be a sailor… It would have gotten

him as far as the Out Islands, at least. And from there, who knew?

Mages weren't always born to Mage fathers, and certainly not only to Mages, but in Kellen's case, if he

hadn't been among the Gifted, Lycaelon would probably have had apoplexy—or gone looking for his

wife's extramarital interest. Or both. The blood in Kellen's veins contained—as he was reminded only too

often—the distillation of a hundred Arch-Mages past, half of whom had held the seat of a Lord of the

High Council at some point during their lifetimes.

That was difficult enough to live up to, but he was also the son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon Tavadon,

ruler of the City and the current Arch-Mage of the High Council.

That made his life so unbearably stultifying that Kellen would gladly have traded places with an

apprentice pig-keeper, if there were such a thing to be found within the walls of Armethalieh.

Wherever Kellen went in his father's world, there were critical eyes on him, weighing his lightest deed, his

least word. Only here, in the "common" quarters of the artisans, the shopkeepers, and the folk for whom

magick was a rare and expensive commodity, here where no one knew who he was, did Kellen feel as if

he could be himself.

And yet, even here, the heavy hand of Arch-Magisterial regulation intruded.

For these were the markets of Armethalieh, and Armethalieh was the greatest city in the world, after all.

This should have been a place where wonders and novelties abounded. The harbor welcomed ships from

every place, race, and culture, and caravans arrived at the Delfier Gate daily laden with goods from every

conceivable place. There should be a hundred, a thousand new things in the market whenever it opened.

And yet—

And yet the High Council intruded, even here.

They, and not the merchants, determined what could be sold in the marketplace. And only products that

had been approved by the High Council could make an appearance here. Inspectors roamed the streets,

casting their critical eyes over the stalls and stores, and anything that looked new or different was

challenged.

In fact, there was one such Inspector in his black-and-yellow doublet and parti-colored hose just ahead

of Kellen now. The Inspector was turning to look at the contents of a ribbon-seller's stall with a frown.

"What's this?" he growled, poking with his striped baton of office at something Kellen couldn't see.

The stall-holder didn't even bother to answer or argue; he just slapped his permit down atop the

offending object. Evidently, this Inspector was a fellow well known to the merchant.

"Council's allowed it, Greeley, so take your baton off my property afore you spoil it," the man growled

back. From his look of offended belligerence, Kellen guessed that the merchant had been targeted by this

particular Inspector in the past.

The Inspector removed his baton, but also picked up the permit and examined it minutely—and managed

to block all traffic down this narrow street as he did so. Kellen wasn't the only one to wait impatiently

while the surly, mustachioed official took his time in assuring himself that the permit was entirely in order.

Granted, some merchants had tried—and probably would continue to try—to use an old permit for a

new offering, bypassing the inspection process, but that didn't mean the old goat had call to block the

street!

"It's in order," Greeley grunted at last, and finally moved away from the stall so that people could get by

again.

"Interfering bastard," the merchant muttered just as Kellen went past. "Even if it wasn't, what difference

would a new pattern of woven ribbons make, for the Eternal Light's sake?"

Kellen glanced down curiously to see the disputed objects that had so raised the Inspector's ire. The

merchant was smoothing out his wares, and Kellen could easily see why the Inspector's interest had been

aroused. The ribbons in question were of the usual pastel colors that custom decreed for female garb, but

the patterns woven into them were angular, geometric, and intricate, like the mosaics made from square

ceramic tiles by the Shan-thin farmers of the north. There wasn't a hint of the flowers and leaves usually

woven into such ribbons, and although he wasn't exactly the most expert in matters of lady's dresses,

Kellen didn't think he'd ever seen ribbons like this before. Well! Something new!

And the merchant was right—what difference could this make to anyone?

Despite the Council's eternal restrictions, the Market Quarter was still a lush, rich place to wander

through, from the heady scents of the Spice Market to the feast for the eyes of the fabrics in the

Clothworkers' and Trimmers' Market.

But though there was a great deal of abundance, and it was all wonderfully extravagant (at least, in the

markets that Kellen's class frequented), creating an impression of wealth and plenty, it was all the same

as it ever had been, or ever would be, except in the minutest of details. It was the same way throughout

the entire City—throughout Kellen's entire life—tiny meaningless changes that made no difference. A

pattern here, a dance step there, a scarf added or subtracted from one's attire— someone who had lived

in Armethalieh five hundred years ago could come back and be perfectly at home and comfortable now.

And if the High Council continued to govern as it had, someone who would live here five hundred years

hence could return and find nothing of note changed.

Is that any way to live?

Somehow, that chance encounter with the Inspector had given form to Kellen's vague discontent. That

was what was wrong with this place! That was why he felt as if he was being smothered all the time, why

he was so restless and yearned to be anywhere but here!

Abruptly, Kellen changed his mind. He was not going to the Booksellers' Market. Instead, he would go

to the Low Market. Maybe among the discards of generations past he might find something he hadn't

seen a thousand times. He hadn't ever been to the Low Market, where (it was said) all the discards of

the City eventually ended up. It was in a quarter inhabited by the poorest workers, the street-sweepers,

the scullery-help, the collectors of rubbish, the sewer-tenders—people who had a vested interest in

allowing those merchants of detritus to camp on their doorsteps twice a sennight.

Yes, he would go there and hope to find something different. And even if he didn't, well, at least being in

the Low Market would be something akin to novelty, with the added fillip of knowing that if Lycaelon

found out about where his son had gone, he would be utterly horrified.

THERE were no "stalls" as such in the Low Market, and no awnings sheltering goods and merchants,

only a series of spaces laid out in chalk on the cobbles of Bending Square. The "square" itself was a

lopsided space surrounded by apartment buildings of four and five stories, centered by a public pump.

Within each space each would-be merchant was free to display what he or she had for sale in whatever

manner he or she chose. No Inspectors ever bothered to come here, and in fact, it wasn't even

"officially" a market.

Some of the sellers laid out a pitiful assortment of trash directly on the stones; some had dirty, tattered

blankets upon which to display their findings; some presided over a series of wooden boxes through

which the customers rummaged. The most prosperous had actual tables, usually with more boxes piled

beneath. Kellen stopped before one of these, inspecting the seller's wares curiously.

He fingered an odd piece of sculpture made of brass with just enough silver in the crevices to tell him it

had once been plated. The table was heaped with odd metal bric-a-brac, doorknobs, hinges and latches,

old keys, tiny dented dishes meant for salt, pewter spoons.

"That there's a knife-rest, sor," said the ugliest cheerful man—or the cheerfullest ugly man—Kellen had

ever seen. He picked up the object that Kellen had been examining with puzzlement, a sort of

two-headed horse no longer than his finger. "Gentry used to have 'em at dinner, so's not to soil the cloth

when they put their knives down." He set the object in the middle of a minuscule clear spot, and

demonstrated, setting a knife with the blade on the horse's back and the handle on the table.

Well —something I never heard of! Kellen thought, pleased.

"Fell out of fashion, oh, in my great-great-granddam's time," the man continued, looking at the object with

fondness, and Kellen conceived an irrational desire for the thing. It was absurd, a foolish bit of useless

paraphernalia to clutter up an already cluttered dinner table, and he wanted it.

"How much?" he asked, and the haggling began.

Irrational desire or not, Kellen wasn't going to be taken for a gull, if only for the reason that if he paid the

asking price, every creature in the market with something to sell would be on him in a heartbeat,

determined not to let him go until every coin in his pocket was spent.

It was only when the knife-rest was his that Kellen gave it a good look, and discovered it wasn't a

two-headed horse at all—but a two-headed unicorn, the horns worn down by much handling to mere

nubs. For some reason, the discovery made him feel immensely cheered, and he tucked it in his pocket,

determined to have it re-silvered and start using it at dinner.

And his father wouldn't be able to say a word. There were no edicts against reviving an old fashion, after

all, even a foolish one, only against starting something new. The little sculpture rested heavily, but

comfortably, in the bottom of his pocket; it felt like a luck-piece.

Maybe I won't use it. Maybe I'll just have it plated and keep it as a charm against boredom.

At the farther end of the square, Kellen spotted a bookseller—one of the prosperous individuals who

had tables and boxes of books beneath. The errand that had originally sent Kellen to the Booksellers'

Market had been to find a cheap edition of one of the Student Histories—Volume Four, Of Armethalieh

and Weather, to be precise. Lycaelon's personal library had one, of course—how could it not?—but

Kellen wanted one of his own that he could mark up with his own notes in the margins. This was a

practice that infuriated his tutor, Anigrel, and frustrated his father, but as long as he did it in his own

books, rather than in the pristine volumes in Lycaelon's library, there was nothing either of them could

really say about it. He was, after all, studying.

I might as well see if there's one here. It'll be cheaper, and besides, if it's full of someone else's

notes from lectures, I might not need to take any of my own.

Besides, it might be amusing to read what some other Student had thought of the Histories.

He didn't go straight to the bookstall, however, for that would be advertising his interest. Instead, he

worked his way down the aisle between the chalk lines, examining a bit of broken clockwork here, a set

of mismatched napkins there. It had the same sort of ghoulish fascination as watching the funeral of a

stranger, this pawing over the wreckage, the flotsam and jetsam of other people's lives. Who had torn the

sleeves out of this sheepskin jacket, and why? How had the hand got bitten off this carved wooden doll?

What on earth use was a miniature funeral carriage? If it was a play-toy, it was certainly a ghoulish one. If

those rusty stains on this shirt were blood—then was that slash a knife wound?

People came and went from the apartment buildings surrounding the vendors; tired and dirty and coming

home from their work, or clean and ready for it. One thing living here did guarantee—that you had a job,

a roof over your head, and enough money to feed you. If the roof was a single room and you crammed

yourself, your spouse, and half a dozen children into it, well, that was your business and your problem. At

least the building was going to be kept in good repair by your City taxes, your spouse and your children

could find work to bring in enough to feed all the mouths in the family, and just perhaps one of your kids

would turn out to be Gifted and become a Mage—and support the whole family.

Eventually he got to his goal, and feigning complete disinterest, began digging through the books. The

bookseller himself looked genuinely disinterested in the possibility of a sale; from his expression, Kellen

guessed that he was suffering either from a headache or a hangover, and would really rather have been in

bed.

Luck was with him, or perhaps his new little mascot had brought it— Kellen found not only the Volume

Four he was looking for—in a satis-fyingly battered and annotated condition—but Volumes Five, Six,

and Seven, completing the set. They had stiff, pasteboard bindings of the cheapest sort, with the edges of

the covers bent and going soft with use and abuse. They looked as if they'd been used for everything but

study, which made them all the more valuable in Kellen's eyes, for the worse they looked, the less

objection Anigrel could have to his marking them up further. And the more Lycaelon would wince when

he saw his son with them.

I can hear him now — "We're one of the First Families of the City, not some clan of

rubbish-collectors'. If you must have your own copies to scribble in, for the One's sake, why

couldn't you at least have bought a proper set in proper leather bindings!" And I'll just look at him

and say, "Are the words inside any different!" And of course he'll throw up his hands and look

disgusted.

Baiting his father was one of Kellen's few pleasures, although it had to be done carefully. Pushed too far,

Lycaelon could restrict him to the house and grounds, allowing him to leave only to go to his lessons. And

an Arch-Mage found enforcing his will a trivial matter—and one unpleasant for his victim.

He was about to get the bookseller's attention, when a faint hint of gilding caught his eye. It was at the

bottom of a pile he'd dismissed as holding nothing but old ledgers. There were three books there, in dark

bindings, and yes, a bit of gilding. Rather out-of-keeping with the rest of these shabby wares.

Huh. I wonder what that is —

Whatever it was, the very slender volumes bound in some fine-grained, dark leather, with just a touch of

gilt on the spine, seemed worth the effort of investigating. At the worst, they'd turn out to be some silly

girl's private journals of decades past, and he might find some amusement in the gossip of a previous

generation.

If he'd been in a regular bookseller's stall, Kellen might not have bothered. But…

It might be something interesting. And it's bound to be cheap.

If it wasn't a set of journals, the books might even do as a present for his father if the books were in

halfway decent shape. An obsessive bibli-ophile, Lycaelon was always looking for things for his library.

Literally anything would do so long as it wasn't a book he already had, and his Naming Day Anniversary

would be in two moonturns.

It would be a bit better than the usual pair of gloves I've gotten him for the past three years.

It took Kellen some work to get down to the three volumes on the bottom of the pile, but when he did,

he found himself turning them over in his hands with some puzzlement. There was nothing on the spine of

each but a single image—a sun, a crescent moon, and a star. Nothing on the cover, not even a bit of

tooling, and the covers themselves were in pristine condition—

Odd. Definitely out of keeping with the rest of the wares here.

He opened the front covers to the title pages.

Handwritten, not printed, title pages…

The Book of Sun. That was the first, and the other two were The Book of Moon and The Book of

Stars. Journals after all? He leafed through the pages, trying to puzzle out the tiny writing. The contents

were handwritten as well, and so far from being journal entries, seemingly dealt with magick.

They shouldn't be here at all! Kellen thought with a sudden surge of glee. They looked like workbooks

of some sort, but books on magick were very closely kept, with Students returning their workbooks to

their tutors as they outgrew them, and no book on magick that wasn't a part of a Mage's personal library

was supposed to leave the grounds of the Mage College at all.

Perhaps some Student had made his own copies for his own use, and they'd gotten lost, to end up here?

But they weren't any of the recognized Student books, or anything like them, as far as Kellen could tell.

The handwriting was neat but so small that the letters danced in front of his eyes, and the way that the

letters were formed was unfamiliar to him, slightly slanted with curved finials. But it seemed to him that he

recognized those three titles from somewhere.

Father be hanged. I want these. Without bothering to look through them any further, he put them on

the top of his pile and caught the stallholder's eye. The poor fellow, sweating furiously, heaved himself up

out of his chair, and got a little more lively when Kellen made only a token gesture at bargaining. Profit,

evidently, was the sovereign remedy for what ailed him.

He got out a bit of old, scraped paper and even began writing up a bill of sale with the merest stub of a

graphite-rod, noting down titles and prices in a surprisingly neat hand.

"Ah, got younger sibs at home, do you?" the man asked when he got to the last three special volumes.

"No—" Kellen said, startled by the non sequitur. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, children's stories—" The man gestured at Kellen's three prizes. "I just thought—" Then he

shrugged, wrote down three titles and prices, and handed the receipt to Kellen, who looked down at it in

confusion.

There were his Student's Histories, Volumes Four, Five, Six, and Seven—but what was this? Tales of

the Weald, Fables of Farm and Field, and Hearth-side Stories?

There was nothing like that, nothing like that at all, inside the covers of those three books.

He thought quickly. Perhaps he had better go along with this…

"Cousins," he said briefly, with a grimace, as if he was plagued with a horde of small relatives who

needed to be amused.

"Ah," the man said, his curiosity turning to satisfaction, and stuffed the purchases in the carry-bag that

Kellen handed to him without a second look.

There was something very odd about those books… and Kellen wanted to get home now, before his

father returned from the Council House to plague him, and give them a very close examination. An

examination that could be made without any danger of interference. Armethalieh held many magical

oddities, but where had he ever heard of a book that could disguise itself? How was a very interesting

question—but more pressing than that was—

Why?

THE house of Lycaelon Tavadon was not set apart from the street by a wall. It didn't need to be. The

two great stone mastiffs on either side of the walkway to the front door were not mere ornaments, but

guardians. Anyone not invited, or not belonging to the household, would be… discouraged from entering.

And as one long-ago thief had discovered, a knife has very little effect on a stone dog. Lycaelon's

guardians were very, very good.

The front garden, a geometric arrangement of walkway, sculptural shrubbery, and guardians, was not

particularly large. The back garden was larger, but no more inviting. The former served to isolate the

house from the common thoroughfare and as an ornament against the white stone walls of the mansion.

The latter—well, Kellen would have thought that a back garden should be a private place to relax; a spot

insulated and surrounded by greenery, to enjoy a bit of sun away from the prying eyes and the noise of

the City. Lycaelon's back garden, home to tall, dark, somber cypresses planted along the wall, kept it

too shaded for that, and far too cold except in the heat of summer when the sun was overhead. No grass

grew there; only careful, somber evergreen plantings in raised beds, separated by gravel, and more

statuary, though at least the statuary in the back garden wasn't animated. There was nothing to sit on, in

any event, except the edges of the beds or the gravel. There was a single water-spike of a fountain that

stabbed up at the sky. Not even birds could find anything to like in this place—though it was possible

that, to spare his statues, Lycaelon had worked a little spell to chase the birds away.

Kellen carried his burden up the walkway between the stone mastiffs. As he passed them, there was, as

ever, the faintest suggestion of movement; the barest tilt of neck in his direction, the tiniest twitching of

stone noses as the household guardians tested him, the hint of the glitter of life in those deeply carved and

polished granite eyes.

As always, the back of his neck crawled when he passed them. But he refused to go around by the back

entrance just because the damned things intimidated him. He hated the sight of them, though—they were

too like the worst aspects of their master, hard and cold, unchangeable and unyielding.

The ebony door, inlaid with silver runes, swung open at his touch, and closed behind him without any

effort on his part. More magick, of course; you could hardly do without ostentatious use of magick at

every possible opportunity in the home of a High Mage. And when that High Mage was the head of the

Council, well, it was actually more surprising that Lycaelon had human servants at all.

He could have done without them, had he chosen to—but it would have meant a great deal of work on

his part. Nothing came for free, after all; magick servants in the form of simulacra or homunculi were

difficult to create and required an endless supply of magick to keep them working. The alternative,

literally making dust vanish, food appear, clothes to clean themselves, was even more time and

effort-consuming. Lycaelon would dispense with servers if he had an important gathering of his fellow

Mages here, animating a single simulacra that he kept on view, serving double-duty the rest of the time as

a chaste statue of a shepherd-boy, but with no one here to impress but his son, human servants were

cheaper, easily replaced if they gave offense, and took very little thought on his part—only orders.

On their part—well, the servants knew who they had to please. Lycaelon was generous with his money,

but not with forgiveness if anything went wrong. Kellen, however, mattered not at all—except as

Lycaelon ordered.

As soon as Kellen set foot in the entryway—black and white marble floor, the pattern being

square-in-square rather than checks, white walls, a few tasteful black plinths with tasteful black urns

standing against the walls at aesthetic intervals—one of the servants materialized, dressed in the

household livery of black and white. An oh-so-refined and elegant livery; hose with one black leg and

one white, black half-boots, black, long-sleeved tunic coming to the knee, crisp, white shirt beneath it.

The careful, rigid correctness of the man's expression relaxed a trifle when he saw who it was.

"Good afternoon, Kellen," the servant said. He did not offer to take Kellen's book-bag from him. There

was nothing about Kellen to command fear or respect from the servants, and no real consequences if

they didn't offer him deference. Politeness, yes, they would be polite to him. If they were cheeky, it was

possible that Lycaelon would come to hear about it, and then they'd find themselves on the street without

references. But they regarded him, Kellen suspected, as a damned nuisance, and did their best to

encourage him to stay out of their way as much as possible.

Mercedes Lackey - The Obsidian Trilogy 01 - The Outstretched Shadow

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