just acted naturally, and in the end he'd gotten what he'd asked for, and been able to help someone else, too, almost by accident.
Except that this was magick, and in magick there were no accidents. So the Wild Magic had meant him to help the girl, while helping himself at the same time.
Kellen shrugged, staring at the shelves of books that hadn't answered any of his questions, and shook his head. He didn't understand it, but nobody had gotten hurt, and so he was willing to risk trying it again. The Library had told him nothing—but somewhere in the City someone had to have the answers he needed! All he had to do was find them.
With the Wild Magic. Finding answers was a Finding Spell, after all. How much could it cost him?
He left the Library, stopping to turn in his pass at the Chief Librarian's office and thank the man for all his help. There'd been no classes—and no tutorial—today, so Kellen had gotten an early start at the Library. He still had most of the day before him. Plenty of time to cast a spell and see where it took him.
He spent a short time searching for a secluded place where he wouldn't be disturbed; easy enough to find here in the center of the City on the Light's Day. As before, the Finding Spell took him only a little time to cast. This time he wasn't as specific: he wasn't asking it to find a specific object, only information—about life outside the City, or, failing that, why the information couldn't be found. The Books said that the less specific you made your goal, the lower the price that would be asked of you, and the more likely you would be to gain what you sought.
This time, when the compulsion took him, Kellen didn't fight it, simply following where the pull led him.
He was surprised to find himself drawn down into the Artists' Quarter, where the painters, poets, musicians, and writers of Armethalieh tended to gather. It was one of the oldest parts of the City—the streets here were narrow, with taverns, boardinghouses, printing shops, and kajfeliah-parlors all crammed in together. Music floated through the air as musicians practiced their craft or gave lessons in upper rooms, and the sharp smells of drying paint and turpentine were strong in the cool air.
I could live here, Kellen thought hopefully. He didn't know what he could do to earn a place for himself here —he had no particular talent for the arts—and he wasn't sure he'd fit in, but at least these people didn't look as if they were spending their lives practicing for their own funerals and hoping to attend the funerals of their rivals first.
Distracted from the spell-geas by the color and gaiety, he slowed down to peer into a shop filled with colorful pottery, but the pull of the spell drew him onward, and Kellen reluctantly obeyed, promising himself to return another time.
Urged onward, he turned a corner, then another, and found himself on a quiet back street with fewer shops and more houses. This street wasn't as well kept up as the others he'd gone down, and large grey creatures scurried out of his way as he approached.
Ugh. Rats.
At last he felt the compulsion to move on lift as he reached the end of a dead-end street. He looked around. He was on a narrow street of shabby two-story brick houses that had seen better days. The City services that kept the better quarters of the City clean and orderly were less in evidence here—such services cost money beyond the house tax that paid for the City Watch and for the spells that kept house fires from spreading out of control, and those who lived in places like these rarely had the ready coin to pay for them.
A scent of brackish water and rotting garbage assailed his nostrils, and he traced it to an old cistern in an empty corner lot beside one of the houses. Once it might have been used to catch rainwater, or even have been used as a communal well, but now it was choked with garbage and trash, and was obviously a clubhouse for the local rats.
Kellen felt a sensation inside himself as if a key had turned in a lock, and realized exactly what he had to do. He didn't understand how cleaning the cistern out and rilling it in with clean dirt would lead him to the information he sought, but he had no doubt that this was the price the Wild Magic wanted him to pay.
And me in my good clothes, he thought with a sigh.
He stripped off his tunic and undertunic, folding them carefully and setting them to one side, and got to work. He couldn't finish this task in a day, and he'd be sure to bring tools and wear more suitable clothes when he returned tomorrow. But the Wild Magic had brought him here, so he'd better start now.
Hesitantly, Kellen approached the cistern.
'YOU! Boy! What are you doing there!'
Kellen had become so involved in his task—he'd started by dragging away the heavy boards that were balanced precariously at the top of the trash heap that covered the cistern, and when he'd pulled the first of them loose, several rats had bolted out of the cistern, squeaking angrily as they ran—that the shout took him entirely by surprise. He dropped the board he was holding (narrowly missing his own foot) and turned in the direction of the voice.
A man in a yellow tunic—he had the look, but hardly the manner, of one of the Mageborn—was leaning out the side window of the house, staring at him in surprise. Kellen stared back for a long moment before realizing he
