Dinner was a more elaborate meal than the lunches Kellen had enjoyed at Perulan's house, with a large hot meat pie brought from the local cookshop, roast fowl and potatoes prepared by Perulan's all-but-invisible maidservant, baked apples roasted on the hearth, and candied fruits and wine to follow.
The parlor was mellow in the golden light cast by the fat white candles in the fixture hanging over the table, and warmth radiated from the tiled hearth tucked into one corner.
'You asked me once what I knew of the world outside the City,' Perulan said when the servant had cleared away the dishes and retired to the kitchen. 'Would it surprise you to know that when I was a young man, I had a correspondence with, well, let us call them Folk From Away?'
Kellen stared at him, a piece of candied ginger halfway to his lips. 'But how? That's not possible!' he stammered.
'Not quite impossible, merely difficult, my young Student. The Selken-folk smuggled my letters out, and smuggled my correspondents' replies back in. It can be done, with trust, and for a price—the Selken-folk have no love for the Mage Council, and are happy to trick them if they can.
And I was young and adventurous—just as you are now—and wanted to know everything about the world and all it contains.
'But—alas!—then I grew famous, and well regarded, and had more to lose than when I was a hungry young struggling writer. I thought of that and became cowardly. I stopped writing to my friends across the sea because I feared the risk of discovery.'
Perulan stopped, and took a long drink from his wine cup, staring down into it broodingly. 'But now… I no longer have anything to lose. Now, I think, I will pay my Selken friends to smuggle me away. It will hurt to leave Armethalieh, but if I cannot write the books I want to write, I might as well be dead, and in the face of death, exile holds no terrors.'
'But— But— Why can't you just go live in the country if you don't like the City anymore?' Kellen asked, floundering to accept this torrent of new ideas. It was one thing to see someone leave, to dream of leaving himself, but to actually talk to someone about leaving…
Perulan smiled sadly, shaking his head.
'My dear young Kellen, have you ever heard of anyone who did? The villages exist to serve the City with their crops and their taxes and their labor, as much our beasts of burden as the horses who pull our carts. Citizens and villagers don't mix and never have, despite the foolish fables I have written. If I were to go out into the villages, the villagers would know me for a citizen and hate me for it—and for the hope of reward, cheerfully turn me over to the Council's soldiery to be returned to the City. No. If I am to leave, I must leave Armethalieh entirely: leave the City and all its lands.'
'But couldn't you just go openly?' Kellen asked. It was true that he'd never heard of anyone doing that, but surely some people…
He realized that, deep down inside, even though he had imagined leaving, buried in that daydream had been the surety of coming back someday. As much as he hated the restrictions Armethalieh placed upon its citizens, hated the thought of living the life his father had planned out for him, the City was the only home he had ever known.
Perulan laughed bitterly and patted his hand. 'Dear boy! I forget how young you are! I assure you: the Council would never let someone go forth to bear tales to 'unknown enemies.' No, Armethalieh the Golden hoards her treasures—and her people—for always. But I hope, if the Light is kind, that there may be a way for one of her Golden Children to escape her…'
Kellen turned his head, distracted by a flicker of movement at the kitchen door. But when he looked, there was no one there.
'But how?' he asked, turning back and forgetting the momentary distraction. 'If the Council won't let you go —?'
'It is best that I tell you nothing more. What you do not know, you cannot reveal, even under Truthspell, and more lives than mine are at risk upon this venture. But though we may see one another again, I think it best if we say our true good-byes now. I have enjoyed our friendship, Kellen, and allow me to offer you one last piece of advice: if you ever think to leave Armethalieh the Golden, go quickly, go far, and trust none of her citizens with your intentions.'
'I won't,' Kellen said, getting to his feet. 'Good-bye, sir. May the Light go with you.'
'And with you,' Perulan said gravely.
IT was nearly midnight when Kellen reached home, for he had gone slowly, his thoughts full of his conversation with Perulan. To leave the City! It was one thing to stow away on a ship as a young man of Kellen's age, like the fellow he'd seen down at the docks. But for someone as important, as well connected, as Perulan to be contemplating it…
Where did they go, the ones who successfully escaped Armethalieh's golden chains of privilege? What other
