The ordinary human, man or Mage, lives every moment in terror of the death that is rushing toward him in less than a century of years— such a creature could not possibly be expected to see things with the same perspective that we Elves can. And so, in the human City, they have turned away from the vast and eternal beauty of the Wild Magic to a simpler, more immediate, more selfish magic better suited to the briefness of their lives. You wonder why they have rejected the Wild Magic in favor of this self-indulgent magic of their own creation, but the explanation is obvious to any of the Elven-born: no short-lived creature could be expected to love something that confronts it with its terrible impermanence.'
Iletel was clearly quite sympathetic to the terrible fate of humans. It showed in his tone, and in the grave way he regarded Kellen. 'And so the Mages of the Golden City hate the Wild Magic and its wielders for showing them what is no more than the truth of the world. But you must not blame them for it, as we do not. It is simply their flawed human nature. They are no more to blame for their fears than the wasp for its sting.'
Kellen sipped his tea, his mind too full of new ideas to be able to frame a coherent question in the fashion Elven good manners dictated. He was dazzled by the notion of the High Magick being something that had 'lately' appeared in Armethalieh—lately by whose standards? Iletel's? Did that mean they used to practice the Wild Magic in Armethalieh… and stopped? Lycaelon said the High Mages had once studied the Wild Magic, before banning it as being too dangerous… was that what he'd really meant? That they'd used to practice it? That there used to be Wild-mages in Armethalieh? Kellen felt as if he were swimming—and not very well—in a sea of new ideas.
'But not all humans are like the ones in the City,' Kellen protested weakly. 'Idalia and I both came from there.'
'And both of you left, neither in your own time and season,' Iletel pointed out reasonably. 'There is as much variation among humankind as among the flowers of the field, perhaps, yet when the gatherer brings them into her garden, she will choose those whose traits please her and grow only those, casting out those who hark back to their wild cousins. So it is with humans, who cultivate themselves like flowers. Do not yearn to be what you are not, Kellen, rather rejoice that you are more than they.'
It all made very pretty hearing, since who wouldn't want to hear that they were special and gifted, far better than the people they'd grown up with, especially if those same people were the ones that had thrown you out of Armethalieh and then tried to kill you, not once but twice? And it all seemed so reasonable, especially while Iletel was talking.
BUT later, after a little more polite conversation and a promise to come again bringing Sandalon, Kellen wasn't quite as sure. He wandered onward through Sentarshadeen, trying to sort out all the things he'd just learned in his mind. It was a very comforting explanation. A very soothing explanation. But Kellen had been offered a very great number of comforting, soothing explanations for things in his life, and had rejected them all.
Iletel seemed so satisfied with his explanation of how things were… just as satisfied as the Light-Priests and the Mages had been with their explanations, back in the City.
Wasn't Iletel's thinking that most humans couldn't handle the Wild Magic because they just weren't good enough the same thing as the Mages thinking that all women couldn't handle the High Magick because they weren't good enough?
Or was it?
The more he learned, the less he knew, Kellen realized. He wasn't sure of anything anymore—except one thing.
Once, the Wild Magic had been practiced in Armethalieh. Then they'd stopped, and invented the High Magick, and declared that nobody could be allowed to practice the Wild Magic anymore. If he put Iletel's explanation and Lycaelon's explanation together, that much seemed to shake out of it as unvarnished truth. But all that knowing that much for sure did was leave him with more questions.
He walked out past the House of Leaf and Star (the Elves might call it that, but Kellen still thought of it as a palace) turning over the conversations with the two Elves in his mind.
Both Iletel and Morusil had been very kind, and filled with Elven politeness, and Kellen certainly had a wider perspective on things than he had before, but he wasn't entirely certain it was a better or more accurate one. Iletel might say that humans had abandoned the Wild Magic because they were essentially self-centered, but that didn't quite make sense if the only Wildmages left in the world were human. Maybe that wasn't true either, but the Elves weren't Wildmages (at least not anymore), the Centaurs couldn't do magic at all, and Kellen hadn't met any representatives of any more of the Other Races yet, so he wasn't sure whether any of them might be Mages or not, or even if any of them still existed. The unicorns were certainly magical creatures, but if the unicorns could get the Elves out of the fix they were in, well, there was a whole herd of them living in Sentarshadeen as from what Idalia said, and there still wasn't any rain, so Kellen guessed they couldn't help. Maybe unicorns could just do specific unicorn-magic things, the way an apple tree could make apples, which was fine if you wanted apples (or unicorn- magic), but he guessed bringing rain didn't fall into that category.
Kellen frowned, looking down at the path. There wasn't even a stray stone to kick to relieve his feelings. How had everything gotten all tangled up and separated this way?
Something must have happened to make things the way they were now, with the Mages of Armethalieh practicing the High Magick—and having invented it in the first place because they didn't think the Wild Magic was good enough, or something. But if the Wild Magic was a force for good—and Kellen no longer had any reason to doubt that—why couldn't the two magics exist side by side in the same place? He didn't think the High Magick was a bad thing, necessarily—or it wouldn't be if the Mages didn't insist it had to be the only kind of magic that was allowed to exist. And if the High Mages were willing to pay their own price in their own power for their spells, instead of always making someone else pay for the spells they did. There was that. Kellen frowned.
So why had the High Mages thrown the Wildmages out of Armethalieh, really? Why couldn't the two kinds of
