But obviously neither Shalkan nor Vestakia were able to do even that much. It was simplest to say that the place reeked of evil, and to be honest, Kellen couldn't imagine how the unicorn could bear it. Now that he could feel the wrongness of the structure just as Vestakia did, the presence of the obelisk was agony to him and to Shalkan as well as to her. He didn't think either of the others would be able to get much closer to the Shadow keystone.
Fortunately Jermayan…
Then he took a good look at Jermayan.
The Elven Knight was leaning on his sword for support, using it as if it were a cane. His hand was pressed to his side where he'd taken the blow from the Centaur's mace, as if it were still fresh and unhealed. His face was pale and set—with pain now, instead of hatred. But Kellen had healed him…
Then Kellen realized what must be happening. The Demon-magic was very powerful here, powerful enough to undo Kellen's magic, or at least to suppress its effects. At this moment, Jermayan's wound was suddenly as fresh as if Kellen had never worked his Wildmagery and it had only had a few days to heal on its own. At least it was partly healed: it meant that Jermayan wouldn't bleed to death on the spot.
'I'm sorry,' he said aloud. I'm sorry I got the three of you into this. I should have come alone. I'm sorry…
'Do what you came to do,' Jermayan said, his voice harsh with pain.
Kellen looked back at the sky. In an hour—no more—it would be dark.
He took off his armored gauntlets and the gloves beneath and set them down on the ground. The chill wind —real or illusion, it hardly mattered— bit into his flesh, numbing his fingers. He flexed his hands, willing warmth and suppleness into his fingers, then reached into the pouch that held Idalia's keystone. He drew it out and unwrapped it.
This was the first time he'd actually had a chance to take a good look at Idalia's keystone.
It didn't look like a standard keystone at all. All of them were round or oval, and small enough to fit into the palm of the hand. Even Armethalieh's golden Talismans were flat rune-scribed disks, nothing like this. The last time he'd seen it—by torchlight, at the unicorn meadow in Sentarshadeen—he'd thought it was black. Now it looked as if it were made of the same opaque white crystal Idalia had always used for her keystones.
It was the size of a small melon. On the outside, it was shaped just like a section of natural mineral crystal, a squat six-sided tube that tapered to a six-sided cone at the end. But inside, the keystone had a different shape. Inside, there was a four-sided cup that tapered to a point inside. It would obviously fit right over the top of the black obelisk he'd already seen. The Wild Magic had known what exactly he'd be facing, even if Idalia hadn't.
As he held it in his bare hands for the first time, it began to glow softly.
At that moment, knowledge filled him—the same utter certainty that he felt when he worked a spell of the Wild Magic and gained his knowledge of the Mageprice. Idalia was right; he did know what to do! He felt as if Idalia was standing behind him now, her hand on his shoulder, lending him her strength as she murmured her final instructions into his ear. He knew precisely what he had to do to use this keystone.
The only problem was that it would require a little preparation.
He set it back gently into the spell-caul for the moment, and set the silk on the ground, and slowly began to remove his armor.
'What are you doing?' Jermayan demanded, his voice tight with pain.
'I can't wear my armor for this,' Kellen said. No armor, no weapons, nothing of metal. Anything metallic would attract that power crawling all over the obelisk. He wasn't sure what would happen then, only that it wouldn't be good.
Not that marching up there without armor and weapons was good, either, but he didn't have much of a choice.
He was far from being as calm as he felt, or as certain. Releasing Idalia's spell was no longer something he was going to do sometime in the future, it was now, in the next few minutes, after which nobody, least of all him, would ever again be able to say that he wasn't a full-fledged Wildmage.
If he could do it.
Doubts flooded his mind as he peeled off pieces of armor and laid them aside. After all, who was he to be attempting this thing? Even without an army, or even a guard of Demons watching the obelisk in the open, he was certain there were things lying in wait around here. Or at the least, there must be some species of alarm that he would set off when he entered the enclosure. Then what?
A lot of bad things, almost certainly.
