against the marble floor, and he could see the chessboard reflection of the floor against its highly polished grey skin. In its hands were three small shabby books. Kellen felt himself grow sick with dread; he had no difficulty in recognizing the Books that the golem carried. The Book of Sun, The Book of Moon, and The Book of Stars, his three finds, that had hidden their nature from all eyes but his.
Or at least, they had until now.
Father searched my room. And he used magick to do it.
Just as Kellen had feared.
'I see by the guilt and shame on your face that these are yours,' Lycaelon said with disgust and utter contempt. 'Where did you get them?'
Kellen clamped his mouth shut. There wasn't much he could do right now, but at least he wasn't going to get that poor old fellow in the Low Market in trouble—not when he knew very well that Lycaelon would make some sort of scapegoat out of him.
Instead, he just stared at the marble at his feet. He would have liked to have stared defiantly into his father's eyes, but he knew that if he did that, his father would know just how to get every bit of information he wanted out of him.
'Speak!' Lycaelon roared, his voice echoing in the chill room. 'Be aware, we will find the criminal that supplied them to you! Was it Perulan?'
Kellen stared at his own boots. That was a thought that hadn't occurred to him. And they couldn't hurt Perulan any more than they already had. He was Mageborn too. That'll stick in their throats. He recognized most of the faces behind the dais from his father's infrequent entertainments: Volpiril, Lycaelon's particular enemy; Isas and Harith, who his father considered spineless allies; and the other nine, any of whom would be glad to step into the Arch-Mage's seat and probably saw today as a stepping-stone to that end.
'What if it was?' he replied sullenly, still staring at the floor. 'What are you going to do? Dig him up and use necromancy on him?'
A gasp from his left told him that he'd struck a nerve. Necromancy was as forbidden as Wild Magic, if not more so. He wondered if they would have tried it, maybe one or two of them, in secret… if he hadn't said something about it. Now they wouldn't dare. Not with the other ears in the room, their aides, and servants, and the ears that were probably outside, pressed to the door.
'If you hurry,' he added nastily, 'he probably won't smell too much or lose too many body parts while you question him. Of course, in this heat, you never know—'
'Enough!' Lycaelon roared, going red and white by turns. 'Wretched boy! Do not presume on our patience, and confine your speech to answering our questions! Have you been practicing this foul perversion called Wild Magic?'
He could claim that he hadn't, and unless they had someone using a Truthspell on him, they'd never know any differently. He could claim that Perulan had given him the Books at their last meeting, and that he hadn't had time to look at them yet.
But if he did that, they'd just take the Books and destroy them, punish him anyway, and aside from being punished, nothing else about his life would change. Aside from being punished? What was he thinking? From this moment on, he'd probably have a watcher with him every moment, waking and sleeping! But if he didn't—
You wanted something that would make your father disinherit you, didn't you? Well, this is probably it. Your one chance to get on a ship and escape.
And besides, they probably had someone casting a Truthspell on him anyway.
Better to remain silent about it, though—not confess, but not deny it either.
He raised his eyes to his father's face and summoned as much defiance as he could. 'What do you think?' he asked, keeping his voice even with a great effort.
Lycaelon began to turn a striking shade of cerise.
'Boy,' interrupted Lord-Mage Vilmos, 'Wild Magic is anathema for a good reason. It is totally unpredictable. It offers you your desires, but grants them in its own twisted fashion—affecting not only you, not only those you know, but innocent parties who have never met you and certainly do not deserve to be caught up in your spells and have their lives ruined by your foul meddling.'
Perulan, Kellen thought, and suppressed a wince. Was it his fault that Perulan was dead?
'It is a perverted form of true magick,' Vilmos continued, managing to sound both angry and pompous at the same time. 'It requires no study, no discipline, no thought at all, thus appealing to inferior persons of inferior intellect and no sense of proper responsibility.'
