magic exist side by side?
Sighing heavily—he didn't have an answer for that, and he suspected he wouldn't get one from the Elves, either—Kellen passed the Palace and found himself in an orchard.
Apple trees, he thought, though the fruit was long off the trees. He looked for dryads, but didn't see any, and felt oddly disappointed.
He was more than rewarded for that lack, though, when he got past the orchard to the meadow beyond. Scattered across the grassland was an entire herd of unicorns, more than he could easily count.
He hadn't known they came in colors.
The one closest to him was a stallion. The stallion's coat was as red as a woman's hair, but his ears, mane, horn, socks, and the tuft at the end of his tail were jet-black—yet somehow luminous, like black opal, with a fire somewhere deep within. He'd been grazing, but when Kellen stepped through the trees his head came up. He stared directly at Kellen for a moment—his eyes were the same deep violet as Idalia's—then turned his back and went trotting back to the main herd.
The unicorns were all the different colors Kellen associated with horses, only more so: brighter, more intense, more vivid. There was a grey that looked like polished silver, one with a golden coat the exact shade of meadow-honey in sunlight; a unicorn mare with a coat so black the sunlight struck blue highlights from it. Though he saw several pure white ones, none of them was Shalkan.
They all were more intensely alive than any other creature he had met so far. And they all had that luminosity that made Shalkan so heart-stoppingly gorgeous, as if they carried their own little lights around inside of them. It was pure joy just to watch them move, and while he watched, he was able to put everything that was troubling him to the back of his mind for a while.
'Looking for me?' a familiar voice said from behind him.
Kellen jumped (though he knew better; sneaking up behind him was one of Shalkan's favorite games). 'Not exactly. Just… looking.' He turned around, though he was reluctant to abandon the sight of the herd. Though how many people had seen even one unicorn, let alone a herd of them?
'And how are you enjoying your visit to Sentarshadeen?' Shalkan asked, in tones of impersonal politeness.
'I'd like it better if it were raining,' Kellen said honestly.
'So would the Elves,' Shalkan agreed somberly, shaking his short roached mane. 'And aside from that?'
'It's amazing. Everything's so beautiful, so clean. And even if they don't have any magic… or not much… they've accomplished such great things. It's so much better here than in the City!' Kellen said enthusiastically.
'Of course, it all depends on what you like,' Shalkan said agreeably.
'Well, since nobody's trying to kill me here, I'd say that Sentarshadeen is better than Armethalieh,' Kellen said, feeling slightly cross. He wasn't sure why it bothered him so much when Shalkan agreed with him, but it always did. 'And at least they're willing to talk about the Wild Magic here, instead of just saying it's an abomination.'
'Then you're learning a lot,' Shalkan said, still in that same maddeningly neutral tone. He began to walk out into the meadow, and Kellen followed, somehow feeling he was in the middle of an argument that he was losing.
'I guess so. But if I'm right about what I'm learning… if they used to practice the Wild Magic in Armethalieh, and stopped, then why did they stop?'
Shalkan swung his head around and regarded Kellen steadily. 'Maybe you should ask the Elves.'
Kellen snorted rudely. 'Have you ever tried asking the Elves anything? By the time you figure out how to be polite about it, they're discussing the weather or something!'
'Weather's important, when you're having the wrong kind.' Shalkan stopped at the edge of a spring, and drank.
Kellen admired the decoration around the edge: river stones and field-stone and tiles, all arranged in a harmonious whole, just the way everything else he'd seen here was.
'And maybe it's something they don't want to talk about,' Shalkan continued when he'd finished. 'Or maybe they have other things on their minds. Or maybe you just have to figure out how to ask the right questions. It shouldn't be long now, at any rate.'
'What… ? Hey.' Kellen shouted indignantly. But Shalkan seemed to feel there wasn't any point in continuing the cryptic conversation. He trotted away, head high, moving faster as he went until when he reached the herd he
