wonder. Wasn't all magick essentially the same, all governed by the same underlying rules?
He guessed that was why High Mages and Wildmages—if there still were any—couldn't agree about anything, if they couldn't agree about that. From his lessons with Undermage Anigrel, Kellen already knew that the larger the effect of the spell you cast, the higher the price in terms of raw power you had to pay for it, and where High Magick was utterly indifferent to the possibility of a personal price, Wild Magic seemed to say that not only was there always one, but that it had to be paid, and by the person casting the spell.
He bet the High Mages hadn't liked hearing that, if anyone had ever told them.
It had taken him a good part of last night to get his mind wrapped around that concept, but once he'd managed it, it seemed both logical and inevitable, if not precisely something that made him comfortable.
The personal price wasn't directly related to what was being done— that was what had been so hard to understand. So in Wild Magic, the more powerful the spell, the more likely it was that you'd have to do something besides supply your own personal power—like copy out and bespell those three Books, for instance, in exchange for, perhaps, creating a well or healing an injury.
The thing was—yet another concept he'd had trouble with—there was just no way of telling in advance what the price of any given spell would be. And if paying the 'price' for a spell involved casting more spells, you could spend all your time in an endless cycle of 'Magedebt' to the Wild Magic that way, always trying to 'pay off' obligations for magick you'd used to pay off previous obligations! My head hurts, Kellen thought. It all seemed so complicated!
The Book of Moon said that the reason the price was never the same was that the caster of the spell wasn't the same person he was the last time he cast it, which seemed, well, kind of an odd thing to claim. How could you be a different person today from the one who'd cast, oh, say, a Finding Spell yesterday? People didn't change overnight!
Kellen knew that people changed, of course. He wasn't the same person at seventeen that he'd been at seven. But that was normal. Everyone changed while they were growing up.
But then they stopped. His father had been the same person for as long as Kellen had known him, and if Lycaelon lived another fifty years, Kellen was sure that he wouldn't change a single habit or opinion.
Kellen tried to imagine people continuing to change all their lives— and for that matter, changing quickly. It would be like, like…
Like waking up one morning and finding you were living in a strange and unfamiliar house.
He felt a faint thrill of excitement at the thought. Could the Wild Magic make that happen? What if the prices you had to pay somehow changed you? What if the price was to change?
That would be another thing the High Mages wouldn't like. As far as I could tell, the whole point of High Magick was to keep anything from changing. Ever.
Anigrel blatted on about how the citizens of the City owed their energies to the Mages, his face set in an expression of self-satisfied arrogance that just made Kellen sick. He didn't want to listen to it. Didn't the Mages get rewarded enough, being paid for the work they did, and handsomely, too? There wasn't such a thing as a poor Mage in the entire City—once you were a full Mage, you had as good a house, servants, food, and clothing as any well-off merchant in the City, and for a lot less work, too! A nice life… no wonder everyone wanted it.
Everyone but Kellen, maybe.
'Kellen!'
The sharp tone of Anigrel's voice brought Kellen's attention back to his tutor, and the annoyance in Anigrel's face made it very clear that while he'd been thinking, his pen hadn't been moving…
'I do not know what could possibly have gotten into you, boy,' Anigrel said with smoldering irritation, 'but you clearly are not prepared to pay attention—and I am not prepared to waste my valuable time on a pupil who doesn't wish to learn.'
Oh, grand. Father is certainly going to hear about this, Kellen thought with a sinking feeling. And what could he say? That he didn't like the way the City was run? But he had liked it, mostly, up until now.
He guessed…
Anigrel made a shooing motion with his hands, frowning exasperatedly. 'Get out of here, boy. Go play, since that is obviously the only thing you're fit for today. I shall attempt to salvage something out of this morning while you idle your way about the City, child that you are. Be grateful I don't call for a nurse to take you to your room to play with toys.'
Release, but with a sting in it.
Kellen picked up his notes and strode out of the room before Anigrel changed his mind.
