'It's a big change from life in Armethalieh, isn't it, Kellen?' she asked—kindly, but shrewdly.
He nodded, spooning up stew to save himself from having to articulate a reply. He was alive, and that was a great gift—so great, that it hardly seemed polite to grumble about the terms.
The food was good—if unfamiliar—and the more he ate, the more he realized just how long it was since he'd had a decent meal. He reached for the bread, breaking the loaf open and loading a piece with butter and honey. The honey was thick and dark, unlike the pale golden stuff he was familiar with.
'Wild-gathered,' Idalia explained. 'I'll show you how, when the proper season for it comes. The butter comes from goats, not cows—I trade for that. It's not a bad life, Kellen. Just different from what you're used to.'
'And you live out here all alone?' Kellen asked, swallowing a large mouthful of bread and honey.
'Hardly,' Idalia said. 'But you'll have plenty of time to meet the neighbors, so to speak. First we need to knock some of that City polish off you. And there's a lot more you need to know about the Wild Magic before the next time you have to cast a spell.'
Well, he had no doubt of that. In fact, the more he saw of Wild Magic, the less he felt he knew about it.
'Finished?' she asked. He nodded. 'Good. Come on outside. There's a few things I want to show you right now, while you're still fresh and alert.'
Kellen got to his feet, his hands still sticky with honey, and followed Idalia out of the cabin. At the door she picked up a large wicker basket, its contents hidden beneath a length of mottled woolen fabric, and pointed to a wooden bucket where he could wash his hands.
'No indoor plumbing here.' She sighed. 'Of all of the City luxuries, all the things I actually learned to get along without quite nicely, I do miss that, and a lot more in winter, let me tell you. Well. The necessary pit is over there —see that cairn of white stones? That's so you can find it in the dark, if you need to. I'll be over there, by the chopping stump.' Her eyes twinkled. 'That will give you a little privacy, anyway.'
Kellen blushed, then followed her pointing finger and took care of what needed to be taken care of, though the accommodations were hardly what he was accustomed to. And he couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like in the dead of winter…
When Kellen arrived at the stump, Idalia was kneeling beside it, the wicker basket at her side. She motioned for him to sit.
'First lesson: keystones. You know what a keystone is?'
Kellen sat, feeling the warmth of the stump even through two layers of leather. 'No,' he said. Despite the fact that everything around him was different, this bore an odd family resemblance to his lessons with Under-mage Anigrel. He'd hated them. He'd never imagined that he'd miss them. But he did; not that he'd want to go back to them… but it was something he was used to, and it didn't seem right, the middle of the morning, not facing Anigrel.
Idalia smiled. 'The funny thing is, you wore a keystone, or a kind of one, all your life, until the day you were Banished, and so did I. At its simplest, a keystone is a device for harvesting and storing power. The Talismans the citizens of Armethalieh wear are designed to harvest and store the tiny amount of power the average non-Mage possesses—when you take your Talisman to the Temple of the Eternal Light each New Moon and trade it in for a new one, the Mages harvest the stored power and use it for their magick.'
'Anigrel told me that,' Kellen muttered. I didn't like it then, and I still don't. 'They're a damned cheat!'
'Yes,' she agreed heartily. 'They are. But like all the things that the City Mages use to harm people, at root they're just a tool, and tools can be used for good or ill.'
He thought about that statement; he decided she was probably right. Even taking someone's memories could be used for good, if the memory was of something so terrible that it would drive them mad. But you would have to be so careful about that, because pretty soon, if you didn't hold yourself to the strictest of standards, you'd be meddling with people's minds in other ways… 'for their own good'… which was what the Mages were using as a rationale for everything they were doing now.
'Since you know what the Talismans really are, you're halfway there,' Idalia said cheerfully. 'Our keystones are a little different, though. For one thing, we don't steal the power from the unknowing like a swarm of leeches.'
She reached into the basket and took something out. She took Kellen's hand and drew it toward her, palm up, uncurling the fingers so she could place the object in his hand.
'This is a keystone,' Idalia said.
Kellen looked down at it. It looked nothing like the elaborate golden Talisman he'd used to wear around his neck; in fact, it didn't look magical at all. It was a small white quartz river stone, perfectly ordinary. He held it up to the sun, looking for runes and carvings, and found nothing. Only the surface was frosted; through gaps in that, he
