That stung. And Kellen, goaded, replied just as angrily. 'Inferior by your standards, maybe! Just because they don't want to waste their lives learning to lick your boots for a taste of what you've got! I don't think so! And I don't think that the mere fact that Wild Magic isn't predictable was ever a good reason to outlaw it then, or to ban it now! This place could do with a little less predictability! Maybe it would stop being a stagnant suck-hole that chokes the life out of anything that's new and good!'
The startled and offended glares he got from every live creature in the room would have been funny if the situation hadn't been so serious. This was not what the Mages in general and his father in particular wanted to hear from him—they had expected him to be terrified and penitent.
Well, I'm not! And they can damn well deal with it! He felt energized and alive in a way he hadn't been for longer than he could remember. He felt ready to take them all on, singly or together! Stupid, hidebound old fools, it was their fault Perulan was, dead, not his, and how many other people did they kill or ruin every day, refusing to change, refusing to see what was right in front of them? A fire built in his gut, and he matched them glare for glare, prepared to say and do anything to wipe those looks of smug superiority off their faces.
'Maybe I haven't done much of any kind of magick,' he snarled, 'but I've read all three Wild Magic Books from cover to cover. Have any of you? Do you really know what it is that you've outlawed, or are you just flapping and squawking like a lot of mocker-birds, repeating the decisions of a bunch of people afraid of their own shadows, people dead so long that you don't even remember their names?' He snorted derisively. 'Mocker-birds! You aren't even that! You're a bunch of old hens, cackling and shrieking about nothing because every other old hen is cackling 'Danger! Danger!' at the top of her lungs!'
Mage Isas was sitting there with such a stunned look on his face that Kellen wondered if he was about to fall out of his chair. Harith worked his mouth, but no sound came out.
The rest were various shades of interesting colors, from white to purple, his own father included.
'And just what is wrong with being unpredictable, with change, with innovation?' he flung at them. 'Just why is it that everybody has to be protected all the time? Last time I looked, the rest of the world didn't need all of that protection, and they were getting along just fine!'
Finally Mage Breulin managed to get to his feet, his stiff silver beard waggling with the force of his indignation. 'You don't see any reason, do you, you mutinous young puppy? And of course, you are so very learned, you who cannot even produce an adequate understanding of the history of the City, much less that of the world!'
How am I supposed to have an understanding of the history of the world when you don't let me see it? Kellen thought angrily. 'You—' he began.
'I have an answer for you, insolent brat—Wild Magic is the magick of chaos and anarchy; using it brings down the darkness of confusion, and there is no room for anarchy and confusion in a civilized world!' Mage Breulin had the wind in his sails now, and was prepared to run down anything in his path. 'Where there is chaos, evil finds a way in, as it did before. No one who dares to practice Wild Magic can remain untainted by evil!'
And you've got every incentive to lie to me, and none to tell me the truth. 'You don't know that!' Kellen shouted back. 'There's a whole world out' side the City, and I bet some of them know Wild Magic! And most of them don't give a toss about High Magick—look at the Selken-folk! They do without you just fine, and they can't all be evil, or you'd never even allow the little trickle of trade with them that you've got! You're just afraid that if you let people see there's a different way possible, they'll decide they can do very nicely without you, and you'll all be left to have to make an honest living for a change!'
'Enough!' Lycaelon bellowed, the acoustics of the place giving his voice far more strength than Kellen's. 'We aren't here to listen to the ignorant nonsense of children. Kellen! You will either make a public apology, personally burn the books, and renounce your wayward behavior, or—you will face Banishment! Not mere disinheritance, you miserable, ignorant brat—though, by the Light, I swear I should disinherit you no matter how sincere your apology —but Outlawry, you puling whelp! To be cast out through the Delfier Gate into the forest with nothing but the clothes on your back and provisions for a single day!'
Lycaelon's face was so suffused with anger it had become a mask indistinguishable from the golems' carved faces. 'Light save me, would that I had never had a child at all, would that you had died with your mother, would that she had died in infancy, rather than spawn youl'
Kellen could hardly recognize his own father in this rigid, unyielding, intolerant demagogue, thundering down judgment as if he thought he was a god—
Right, then, Kellen thought furiously. You wish I'd never been bom, well so do I! I'd rather starve to death in the forest than eat another bite of food at your table!
'Kiss my foot,' Kellen sneered, in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. 'You don't want me? Well, I don't want you, old man. I'd rather have a wolf for a father.' He thrust out his chin, and crossed his arms over his chest. 'Go ahead. Banish me.'
Lycaelon barked a single word in the tongue of the High Magick, and before Kellen could wonder what it meant, his arms were seized from behind. And in the next moment, he was pulled off his feet and dragged out of the Council chamber by two of the stone golems.
And behind him, as the doors closed, he could hear the chamber erupt into a tumult of noise as all the members of the Council began to shout at once.
