To Light A Candle

But finally, almost two moonturns later, they were ready to begin.

It had not been an easy time for Cilarnen. He had the disturbing feeling that his father was watching him more closely than he had for a long time, and the gossip he overheard in his work as an Entered Apprentice was not encouraging. Though the City was protected from inclement weather, the Delfier Valley was not. And outside the City, the autumn storms had been ferociously hard; Cilarnen did not precisely understand the details or the logic, but apparently because of the bad weather, the farmers were withholding the rest of their food, just as Margon had warned would happen.

And what was the Council doing? Engaging in screaming debates (so it was rumored) as to whether—and if so, how—to continue its trade with the High Hills, now that it no longer had a Trading Outpost available in Nerendale. Would the caravans even be willing to come into Armethalieh as they had a generation ago? And if they were, would the Council be willing to allow them in?

Well, they won’t have to. By spring, this will all be settled. I hope, Cilarnen told himself uneasily. He still wasn’t sure what they were going to do once they had the umbrastone. The making of the stuff had turned out to be so complicated that none of them had even begun to discuss the next phase. Deep down in his heart, he just hoped that the Council would see how serious things were, and understand that they had to take the Home Farms back.

Perhaps he was going about this all wrong. Maybe he should just petition for a private audience with the Arch-Mage Lycaelon. It was every Mageborn’s right—a right rarely invoked, but still the law of the City. He could ask the Arch-Mage what to do.

Tonight he’d been the first to arrive at their secret meeting place, and his train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of the others.

“I’ve brought wine,” Geont said. “I think we’ll need it.”

Kermis shuddered faintly. “Well, I’ve brought tea—and decent water.” He flourished a packet and a large flask. “Phastan Silvertip. I hope the pot’s clean.”

“And I’ve brought the mixing bowl,” Jorade said, lifting a huge shallow container of pure gold from beneath his cloak and setting it on the shabby wooden table with a grunt. The rickety table creaked and shifted beneath the weight. “I borrowed it from the family chapel. Nobody will miss it—so long as it’s back before Morning Devotions, of course.”

“It will be,” Kermis said. “And Tiedor?”

“One dozen hen’s eggs, fresh from the hen and this morning’s market,” the young Entered Apprentice said. “The ways of Mages are mysterious,” he added with a grin. “The silly woman had no idea why I’d want to be down in the Fowl Market buying my own eggs. She fluttered as much as one of her own geese!”

“Women!” Cilarnen agreed, dropping his own contribution into the bowl— eight ounces of white roses (heads only). The recipe had specified that they had to be cut precisely at sunrise without the use of metal, so Cilarnen had been unable to simply buy them in the Flower Market. Rather, he’d had to slip out of bed at an unspeakably early hour, make his way across the City to the Park, charm his way into one of the greenhouses with a tale of a youthful dare, and bribe one of the gardeners heavily to allow him to cut them with an ivory letter opener he’d sharpened for the purpose. And hope that nobody—like his father, or his tutors—checked up on his story, because it would be a little awkward to explain.

Though not nearly as awkward as the truth.

The eggs and the roses were the only fresh ingredients. The others they had been able to gather and store here over the last several sennights. As Tiedor carefully broke the eggs into the bowl—they weren’t sure from the recipe whether to break them or not, but as Kermis pointed out, if they didn’t break them, what they would have would be chickens—the others added the rest of the ingredients. Last of all, Kermis added several ounces of fluid—and rather poisonous— quicksilver, and then dropped in the original piece of umbrastone. It would form the raw materials in its own image, making the creation of new umbrastone more certain. It instantly sank to the bottom.

All of them stared down at the golden bowl full of peculiar and unappetizing varicolored slime. The quicksilver floated on the top, eddying around the broken eggshells and the rose-heads. It smelled… odd.

“Well it isn’t going to do anything yet!” Kermis said, sounding irritable and nervous. “Help me pour it into the containment vessel. Then we’ll light the athanor. Then we wait.”

It took four of them to pick up the bowl now that it was full, and it hadn’t been light to start with. The room was dark, lit only by entirely mundane lanterns, for Kermis was worried that any use of the Art Magickal would interfere with the delicate operation of the Art Khemitic. They would be using ordinary wood and coal to heat the oven, which meant that one of them would have to be here every day to make sure it stayed at the proper temperature.

Cilarnen locked eyes with Master Raellan across the lip of the bowl as the four of them lifted it in unison. Master Raellan gave him a small smile of triumph.

“Halt in the name of the High Council!”

Suddenly the cellar blazed bright with Mage-light. Cilarnen heard the clatter of Stone Golem feet on the steps