To Light A Candle

“Kellen, we all knew,” Cilarnen said tactfully. “You and Lycaelon… didn’t get on.”

“Yes,” Kellen said. “But… don’t you see, Cilarnen? It’s like war. Lycaelon was on one side. The other twelve members of the High Council were on the other. Those odds are not good for… winning. And we now know that They are involved somehow.” A thought struck him. “I think that all of this might have been arranged to empty a Council seat. Your friends—did any of them have connections to the High Council?”

Cilarnen didn’t even have to think. Unlike Kellen, he must have had the ranks and lineage of every one of the Mageborn committed to memory. “Jorade was the great-great-grandnephew of Lord Isas—and his heir. Geont was a Pentres, but the Pentreses are allied to the Breulins, and Lord Breulin sits upon the Council.”

“So of the six of you, three had Council connections. What of Master Raellan?”

“He helped us a great deal—without him, we would never have found each other. But I’m sure he had no connection to the High Council. He was a Journeyman—of a minor house at best, perhaps even the son of a commoner like poor Tiedor. He never did give a family name, and we thought it would be tactless to ask.”

But you trusted him with all your lives, because he was Mageborn. Kellen didn’t ask what had happened to Master Raellen. It would be too cruel. Cilarnen didn’t know what had happened to any of them. By now they were either dead, living somewhere in the City stripped of their Magegift and their memories, or—if they’d been incredibly lucky—simply didn’t remember anything about the whole “conspiracy” at all.

“Kellen… you don’t think… it all happened just so someone else could take a Council seat?” Cilarnen sounded horrified.

Kellen didn’t answer. It seemed likely to him. In the normal course of things, there wouldn’t have been a vacancy for years—even decades.

“If one of the Tainted is on the Council, They have more of a ‘stranglehold’ than a ‘foothold,’” Gesade said, “assuming I understand how your High Council works.”

“What does Redhelwar plan?” Shalkan asked.

“To see what Idalia and the others can come up with to see into the City,” Kellen said. “And to make his plans depending on what they do see.”

—«♦»—

SCRYING was not the answer. Idalia and the others ruled that out quickly enough—even Jermayan, with Ancaladar’s power to draw on, could not force the scrying bowl to show him Armethalieh.

“Flowers,” Idalia said in rueful exasperation, looking at the image in the bowl. “Very nice, I don’t think. I’m happy to know that spring will come, of course, but it isn’t very helpful.”

To send a spy into the City was impossible. To send anything but magic across the City-wards was impossible.

But they had to find the right spell.

It was Atroist who provided the first clue to the answer. The Lostlands Wild-mages were accustomed to speaking to one another over far distances—Idalia and Jermayan had seen such a spell at work when Atroist spoke with Drothi.

“But it needs a focus at the other end,” Atroist said. “And I do not think you will find one in your Golden City of Mages.”

“Then combine it with a scrying spell—or parts of one, anyway,” Tarik said. “That doesn’t need a focus.”

“But scrying is unfocused,” Idalia pointed out. “It shows you what you need, not what you want—and this time, we need to see exactly what we want.”

“Then blend in some Hunt Magic,” Tarik suggested. “When you go hunting for deer, it’s no use at all Calling hares.”

“To see is well and good,” Jermayan said, “but you do not need merely to See. You need also to Know. So this must be not just a spell of Seeing, but a spell of Knowing, such as Kellen uses. It does you no good to see if you do not understand what you see.”

“There is a spell the Forest Wife teaches us,” a Wildmage named Kavaaeri said slowly. She was one of the few female Wildmages to have come with the High Reaches folk. “We use it for herbs and mushrooms, so that we are sure of them before we use them. It is not a Knight-Mage spell… but it is a spell of Knowing.”

The discussion went on.