KELLEN wandered along the canyon floor, peering in at the half-hidden houses as he passed and hoping he wasn't being too rude as he did so. From all that he'd seen yesterday, Kellen had gotten used to the idea that all the Elves were fabulously wealthy by human standards, but what he saw today confused him. Some of the houses he passed, while obviously lived-in, were nearly empty, and so tiny they consisted of only one room.
Were these Elves poor? Or had they just chosen to live without possessions? Nothing he saw anywhere, even in the smallest houses, looked shabby or of poor quality, and everything he saw had the serene beauty of Nature— nothing cluttered, nothing out of place, everything where it was meant to be. Harmonious. Kellen wasn't quite sure where the word came from, but it certainly fit. The Elven city was the visual counterpart to a piece of music: everything exactly where it ought to be, every portion necessary, nothing wasted, nothing too much.
Some of the houses had tiny gardens planted around them, and as Kellen passed one house, he came upon an Elven man watering his garden with a bucket and dipper. Kellen slowed down, then stopped to watch.
The man was very old, Kellen realized. His long braided hair had lightened with age until it was the blue of storm clouds, and his body had the wiry slenderness of age. He was wearing a simple loose tunic and trousers, and his feet were bare. He looked up as Kellen approached, and regarded him with bright-eyed interest.
'I see you, Kellen Tavadon, friend of Sandalon.'
'I see you, gracious sir,' Kellen responded, trying to copy the little half-bow he'd seen last night at the House of Leaf and Star. He started to ask a question, and stopped himself just in time. Asking questions was the height of rudeness here, he was starting to realize. But maybe he could get his answers without asking questions.
'I'm walking through the city because it's the most beautiful city I've ever seen. I have never seen an Elven city, for I have spent most of my life in the city of Armethalieh. I confess that I'm curious about both your city and your people,' Kellen said, after a long moment's thought. Approach the subject obliquely, that's the key, he thought to himself encouragingly. He was rewarded by a faint smile from the elderly Elf.
'Huh,' the old man said, as if speaking to his plants. 'And they say humans have no manners. Come and sit a moment in my garden, Kellen Tavadon, and listen to an old man talk to his plants, if it would please you.'
'It would please me and honor me very much, goodsir,' Kellen replied, cheered that his first attempt at Elven manners had succeeded so well.
The old man came over to the edge of the path, ushering Kellen into his garden. There was a low wooden bench placed along the wall of the house where it would catch the morning sun, a bench made of wood carved in the sinuous lines of a curving vine and as soft and silken beneath his hand as an Elven cloak. Kellen seated himself carefully as the old man returned to his watering.
'Here is eyebright, which will soothe the weariness brought on by late nights over books, and goldcap, which makes a soothing tea, and purple hand—you will remark the shape—which is an excellent poultice for bruises. And you are a Wildmage.'
The last was stated as matter-of-factly as the names of the herbs, so it took Kellen a few moments to figure out that it might be a question.
'I… yes. No. I don't know, not really,' he managed, feeling, somehow, that nothing less than the absolute truth was needed here. 'I have the three Books, and I read and study them, and I—I do my best. I haven't been studying as long as my sister, though.'
'Yet quite long enough to be filled with questions about where the Wild Magic comes from, for that is the nature of humans, to always be filled with questions.' The elderly Elf appeared to be addressing his herbs, not Kellen. 'It is in the nature of the world that if something is absent from one place, it merely goes to another, and as there are no questions among the Elves, it follows that humans must ask twice as many questions to make up for it,' the old one said, smiling down at a set of rosemary bushes, then looking up at Kellen, still smiling. 'Perhaps.'
'I think you might be right,' Kellen answered, smiling back.
'Then it may be that you would be good enough to satisfy an old man's curiosity, Kellen Tavadon, and tell him where the world comes from,' the old one said, moving slowly along the rows of plants with his dipper, pouring out a small measure of water onto the roots of each.
'The world doesn't come from anywhere,' Kellen said, confused. 'The world just is.'
The ancient Elf nodded, satisfied. 'And so it is with the Wild Magic, young Kellen. The Wild Magic just is. Root and leaf, world and magic, you will never have seen a leaf without a root, or a root without a leaf, in the proper order of things. As I tend my garden, so do the Wildmages tend the world, by their bargains and prices keeping the world as much in balance as I with my hoe and dipper. Anyone in Sentarshadeen will tell you the same, for we are a long-lived people, who have not yet forgotten the Beginning of Days.'
'Then—' Kellen stumbled to a halt, unable to think of any way to phrase what he wanted to know so it wouldn't come out as a question. 'I would like to hear more about the Wild Magic, and the history of the Elves,' he finally said.
'Come another time,' the old man said agreeably, setting the dipper back in the now-empty bucket, 'and I will tell you of the Beginning of Time, long before our race had met your own, and of the Great Queen Vielissiar
