To Light A Candle

He glanced at the sky. The day was overcast, but it was still possible to mark the position of the sun through the clouds. “We have a few hours yet.”

“And Vestakia and I will have a few things to do among the Healers,” Idalia agreed. “Meet us at the Healers’ tents an hour before sunset. It’s a bit of a walk to the orchard.”

Chapter Sixteen

Ghosts upon the Wind

JUST AT DUSK they arrived at the old orchard. The trees were bare and black with winter, but Kellen barely noticed them. Jermayan had indeed been busy. A pavilion of ice stood at the spot where they would need to do their work. It was all of a piece, as seamless as Mage-crafted stone and as transparent as glass. The light of lanterns gleamed from within, making the whole structure glow softly in the fading twilight.

A human Mage would probably have made a simple square building and let it go at that, but Jermayan was an Elven Mage. He had created a replica of Redhelwar’s pavilion—the available interior space, of course, would be much smaller, because the ice walls needed to be thicker for the pavilion to stand—but the exterior was exact in every detail, down to the fringe and tassels along the upper edges of the walls, the folds in the “fabric” of the tent, the stakes and peg-ropes, even the pennons hanging from the centerpole and from each of the four corners. Even the door-flaps that stood pinned back from the entrance—they would not close, of course, being made of ice, but they were so detailed that they looked as if they could.

“Oh, my,” Idalia said, mirth bubbling in her voice.

“Do you like it?” Ancaladar asked, appearing out of the Flower Forest to their right and moving quickly through the winter orchard toward them. He cocked his head, inspecting the ice-pavilion. “The boy shows promise.”

“It’s… not something you see every day,” Kellen said weakly. Here, as in the Shadowed Elf village, being confronted with the sheer scope of the magical power his friend could command gave him a moment’s pang. It was not that he coveted it for himself—Gods of the Wild Magic forbid it!—or that he did not trust Jermayan utterly. It was just that there seemed something almost unnatural about it.

It was true that to a non-Mage, there would seem to be very little difference between what he and Idalia could do, and what Jermayan could do. But Kellen saw a very great difference. What he did, at least, was just— almost—an intensification of what an ordinary man might do, or what the natural world did on its own. He could make the healing process go faster, but he could not call back the dead. He could see things invisible to others, but that was because his Gift gave him the power to understand tiny clues that they could not see, and showed him the results in visions. He could call fire, but he could not burn things that a natural flame would not burn. He could not reshape stone with a thought.

But he had seen Jermayan burn stone as if it were oil-soaked kindling, and shape granite as if it were clay on the potter’s wheel. And now this—calling ice out of thin air to make a place for them to work in.

Was the only difference between what Kellen could do and what Jermayan could do that Jermayan had Ancaladar’s power to draw upon? Was it that Jermayan was an Elven Mage and Kellen was human?

“Is this what your Wildmages do in the south?” Atroist asked, sounding stunned.

“I’d have to say that Jermayan isn’t exactly a typical Wildmage,” Idalia said comfortingly.

“Come,” Jermayan said, stepping out of the ice-tent’s entrance. “Be welcome.”

The three of them crunched through the heavy snow and in through the entrance of the “tent.”

It was warm inside, even though the structure was made of ice. The walls were smooth and featureless, save for brackets of bronze in the shapes of wyverns that were set into the walls. The lanterns illuminating the space hung from their jaws. The floor of the tent was hard-packed snow, providing cold—if certain— footing. Jermayan’s pack was tucked into a corner, and the inevitable brazier was already brewing water for tea.

“It looks very much as if you’ve done this before,” Idalia commented, looking around as she shed her pack. Kellen and Atroist quickly followed suit.

“As Ancaladar does not wish to be treated as a pack animal—yes, I had to find a way of making shelter on my journeys, since I could not carry it,” Jermayan agreed.

“Pack animals walk,” Ancaladar said simply, poking his nose into the doorway of the tent. “I fly.”

“That you do,” Idalia agreed, squatting down in front of the dragon and reaching out to rub his nose, gradually working her way up to gently scratch the brow-ridges above his eyes. The huge black dragon closed his eyes with pleasure.

Atroist was busily working through the three packs—all of which contained his supplies—and laying them out