want him to see?
'But here,' she continued. 'There's a nice patch of fern growing over there. Let's see what you get.'
Now he didn't know what to think! First she hadn't coached him through the spell, and now she was telling him to cast it!
Feeling apprehensive and confused, Kellen trudged sulkily over to the stand of fern. He just knew this wasn't going to work. He'd just end up staring down at an empty pool of white rocks, and Idalia would be… kind, and suggest they try again, or say he was just tired and they should do this again another day—or worse, he'd look down and see a Demon staring up at him, and Idalia wouldn't see it.
Or she would, and she'd know he knew she was in league with them and—
No, she wouldn't be doing this if she was in league with Demons, if she didn't know he was going to fail! So she was setting him up to fail, just like Anigrel used to. That was it.
Kellen glared down at the patch of fern, feeling his unsettled bad mood return full force. This was going to be just like all the times he'd tried to be what Lycaelon wanted, and failed, only then he hadn't cared so much. Now he was going to fail Idalia, and that made him angry. She ought to know he couldn't do this. Why was she making him prove it? This stuff came to her as effortlessly as breathing, while every spell he cast ended in disaster, and she just couldn't understand how it could be hard for someone. He'd had enough Wildmagery to get him kicked out of Armethalieh, but aside from that? He couldn't talk to the Otherfolk like Idalia could, or really see them half the time, he didn't have her woodscraft skills, he wasn't one-tenth the Wildmage and never would be, he already knew he didn't have what it took to be a farmer or crafter like they were in Merryvale…
Wasn't there ever going to be something he was the best at? Ever?
No. He was always going to be Kellen the Second-Best, Kellen the Embarrassment. People had put up with him in the City because he was Lycaelon's son, and now they were putting up with him here in the Wildwood because he was Idalia's brother, and nothing, nothing, was ever going to change. Look at all Idalia was going through here in the Wildwood— building an addition to the cabin, trading magic for extra food—just because he couldn't pull his weight. And he knew that somehow, somewhere, deep at the bottom of things where he couldn't get to it, there was something wrong about the way things were going now, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.
He hated it. He hated having questions he was afraid to ask. But somehow the time was never right.
Kellen came back with the fern-leaf and, jaw set, knelt beside the pool. With angry efficiency, he flicked cider onto the water, dropped the leaf onto the eddying surface, and quickly muttered the proper words, half expecting them to leave colorful trails of Magefire in the air, though of course they didn't. The Wild Magic just didn't work that way.
Then he leaned forward, glaring down at the bottom of the pool as if it were a personal enemy.
Nothing's going to happen. Nothings going to happen. Noth—
THE vision came, so quickly that it seemed to sweep the clearing and the pool away.
The sky was greenish-black, lit by flashes of reddish lightning. He soared above it as if he had wings. Though it was dark, somehow Kellen could see clearly, across a barren plain strewn with jagged boulders that looked as if they had been tossed there by a monster child grown tired of playing with them. He could hear the wind, wailing thinly as it forced its way between the stones. The sound made him shudder. He knew dimly that he should have been cold, but he felt nothing at all.
As in dreams, he knew more than he saw. There was something there. Something important. Something evil. The malignity of it seemed to seep upward. The iciness of it seemed to seep upward, out of the vision, filling his bones with poison.
And ringing the plain was a horde—an ARMY—of creatures more horrible than even those that haunted Kellen's most terrible nightmares, all converging on its center. He could hear them baying, the sound the stone Hounds of the Outlaw Hunt would have made if they'd been given voices. To look closely at them was to risk madness. And somehow, Kellen knew also that he was there, in the middle of them —
Idalia reached out and plunged her fist into the spring, shattering the vision.
'No!' Kellen screamed, flinging himself into his sister's arms as if he were seven, not seventeen. Idalia held him tightly, and he could feel that she was trembling as hard as he was, and knew that she had seen the same thing that he had. The horror of seeing his greatest secret fears brought into the light, given form and weight and reality, ripped the words from his throat: 'Idalia, I don't want to be a monster! Please, please—take my Books! Please!'
'Kellen, listen to me.' There was a note of fierceness in his sister's voice that Kellen had rarely heard. 'You are not a monster. And you are not going to become a monster.'
He shook his head, holding her tighter. 'The vision. You saw it too.'
'Yes.' Idalia drew a deep breath. 'And I saw that you were there. But on the same side as those… things? I
