1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (55 page)

 "And it will never fail?" Kearn asked, holding himself back from reaching for it with a great effort.

 "If it is not torn or burned. If it is used wisely—not to kill only for the sake of killing, or to kill what you don't intend to eat or use, or to injure instead of kill. If you use it to do murder, Kearn, then I cannot say what will happen to the spell." She gave him a penetrating look. "Remember; it was made with Wild Magic, and if you use it to do something the Wild Magic disapproves of—there's going to be a price. I made it to hunt with."

 "I will do none of those things," Kearn promised fervently, abandoning any further attempt to bargain. "I swear by the Wild Magic and the Hunt Law that I will never use this shamefully. Do we have a fair bargain, then?"

 "A fair bargain," Idalia agreed, placing the cloak in his hands. "Now let's go look at the mules."

 WHEN Kellen returned from Merryvale, the first thing he saw was a friendly dun-colored mule tied out at the edge of the clearing, cropping away meditatively at the bushes.

 "Do we have company?" he asked, sticking his head in the door of the cabin. Idalia was sorting through their belongings, picking the things they would take with them in their flight. The rest would be traded away, including the cabin itself.

 Though Kellen could ride Shalkan Idalia would need a horse to ride, and good horses were expensive. Even more expensive now, with so many people fleeing; he feared it would take everything they owned, or near it, to acquire one. But then again, what were they to do with all the things they could not take with them?

 Idalia shook out a blanket, and folded it into a tight packet. "No, she's ours. I believe her name is Prettyfoot. A trader friend of mine came by while you were gone, and I was able to talk him out of one of his pack animals, for a price. He's on his way back to the High Reaches now with the news from the City." She added the blanket to a growing pile. "How did things go in the village?"

 Kellen grimaced. He didn't want to tell her what was only more bad news, but perhaps if she went to the village, they might believe her.

 Or perhaps not. How much more could be said to convince them?

 "I'm not sure if the humans really believed me about how bad it's going to get, but the Centaurs did," he said, finally. "They're already packing up to leave. I think the Mayor's planning to write a letter of protest to the High Council. Fat lot of good that's going to do." Kellen threw himself into a chair dejectedly.

 Idalia sat down on a stool that Kellen had just finished before—

 Before we found out we weren't going to have a home to put it in anymore.

 It wasn't fair. I was just getting used to this place. I might even have gotten to like it in winter. It was a good stool, too…

 Idalia shook her head. "When are the Centaurs leaving?" she asked.

 "As soon as they can pack—they're even tearing down their houses to make carts, some of them," Kellen told her. He'd been amazed to see them hard at work, dismantling buildings, swiftly turning what had been walls and roofs into covered carts, which the Centaurs would pull themselves.

 "So." Idalia smiled, and he thought she wore an air of grim satisfaction. "When the City tax collectors arrive, they'll find a village full of half-dismantled houses. I wish them joy of that."

 "Huh." Oddly enough, that gave Kellen a little satisfaction himself. "And just wait until they find out that half the farming around here was done by the Centaurs. So much for those taxes." He wondered just how much farming was going to get done by human farmers, used to having burly Centaurs helping with the plowing. "I hope Master Badelz says something about that…"

 "Well, it won't change the plans for annexation, but maybe it will convince the Council that they'd better keep their greedy fingers off the villages until they can sort out just how much revenue they've managed to drive away," Idalia said, though without much hope. "Perhaps that will confuse things long enough for the rest of the humanfolk to make some real plans about what to do now that the City's decided to become so greedy."

 "A lot of them think they can make the City see reason," Kellen answered unhappily. "They think if they just send enough petitions, the Council will realize that they've trampled all over the laws of the villages, apologize, and go away."

 "And do they also expect that the winter snows will vanish if they create a law to banish them as well?" Idalia asked acidly, then sighed. "Never mind. Who knows? A miracle might happen. And in any event, if the two of us are gone when the Militia arrives and the Scouring Hunt is set loose, maybe the City won't be in such a hurry to enforce its decrees."

 TO Idalia's surprise—though not to Kellen's, who had been in on some of the early plans—visitors began arriving at dawn of the day before the two of them were to leave: not only villagers from Merryvale, but others from villages and steadings even farther away. All arrived bearing the makings of a celebration: kegs of beer and wine and mead and cider, wheels of cheese, smoked hams, loaves of honey-glazed bread.

 It was quite literally dawn. This, Kellen had not expected, though he had been awake and working on the preparations for their own departure the moment there was any light in the sky. Idalia had elected to stay abed a little longer than that, but the first of the visitors arrived with a great deal of noise, despite Kellen's attempts to hush them. And there was no keeping the surprise secret at that point.

 "I—I—what?" Idalia stammered, staggering out the door of the cabin, still in her sleeping-shift, with her hair tumbled over one sleep-fogged eye, to stare befuddled at the first of the arriving visitors.

 "Well, don't stand there gawping, you witless woman! It's a good-bye party—and we've brought good eating, too," Cormo growled, glaring at her with mock ferocity.

 The Centaur was nearly unrecognizable, though for an entirely different reason than on his last visit to the clearing. His hair and beard and tail were neatly combed and trimmed. He wore a new smooth-leather vest, bright with embroidery. His coat had been brushed until it gleamed, and his hooves were oiled, trimmed, and polished. And most amazing of all, he was pulling a two-wheeled cart—he could easily have reduced it to kindling with a few well-placed kicks, had he wished—piled high with provisions for the feast. Haneida sat placidly on the seat, a bright shawl wrapped around her.

 "You heard what he said. It's a going-away party," Kellen said, coming up behind Idalia and grinning like a fiend.

 He was very well pleased with himself over this; planning the party had given his new friends something to look forward to in all of the sadness of the many departures, a bright spot in a very gloomy situation. He was equally pleased with being able to outwit his sister well enough to keep it all secret.

 She turned on him, advancing on him and making him back away into the cabin. "You… brat! You knew this was going to happen!" Idalia sputtered. She was crimson—he thought not with rage, but certainly she was as embarrassed as he'd ever seen her. And suddenly there was a wicked look in her eye…

 "I knew they wanted to have a party to see you off," Kellen said, turning to flee.

 But there was nowhere to flee to.

 "You told them when we were leaving!" she growled, and grabbed for his collar.

 He tried to dodge out of reach, but it was a small cabin. "I might have—help!—told someone—yow!—that we were leaving tomorrow! But I didn't think they'd start so early! Honest, Idalia! Help!"

 But it was no good. She'd backed him into the bedroom, tripped him onto the bed, and pummeled him into submission with the pillow.

 "Monster! Beast!" she shouted, punctuating each epithet with a whack from a pillow. "Fiend! Serpent! Brother! Letting me walk out into the middle of that in my shift with my hair in rats! Hanging's too good for you. Much too good for you," she added meaningfully, tossing the pillow aside and crooking her fingers into claws.

 And then she tickled him until he was helpless and breathless with laughter.

 "It is, it really is," Kellen agreed fervently. "Only just don't tickle me anymore!"

 "Well, get up," Idalia said unfairly, giving him one last swat with the pillow and bouncing off the bed. She scooped up his buckskins (since he'd been stripped to his smallclothes in order to get water wrestled up from the stream for baths) and flung them at him. "Out!"

 Kellen dressed in the kitchen, watching the hubbub through the half-opened door. In the few short minutes he'd been gone, the clearing already looked like it belonged to someone else—people were taking down the cookpit and raking the area smooth, taking the logs that were to have gone to become the floor of the addition to Idalia's cabin and making trestle tables of them instead. He could hear the sound of hammers and saws, and smell the scent of fresh sawdust on the air.

 Everything in the cabin but what they were taking with them, from the bed to the walls to the planks of the floor, would be going as well once they left, and already the cabin was far barer than it had been when Kellen came. But Idalia had traded to good purpose in the last fortnight, trading large bulky items for small and valuable ones, until after a number of clever trades and a little payment in magic, she had been able to buy the neat black mare Coalwind, the pride of Badelz's stables, who was tethered contentedly beside Prettyfoot in a nearby clearing. The fauns adored her and spoiled her outrageously, bringing her bunches of clover and dryad-apples. The mare, for all her breeding and promised turn of speed, seemed to have good manners and a quiet disposition—a good thing, considering the amount of noise Idalia's farewell party was going to make, if these early preparations were any indication.

 Kellen was just lacing up his boots when Idalia came out of the bedroom. She glanced out the door, and smiled weakly. "It looks like it's going to be a very large party."

 Kellen nodded. "But most of the folk won't be here until afternoon, Master Badelz and Master Eliron said," he added helpfully.

 For once, Idalia looked to be at a total loss for words. "Well. I just didn't expect… Kellen, these people are losing their homes, their farms, everything they've grown up with and worked for because of me… and they're throwing me a party?"

 "And because of me, too, don't forget," Kellen pointed out reasonably. "Lycaelon left you alone for years. He didn't even let a summer pass before he started hunting me again. But still… a party's a party. It's done them a lot of good to have something happy to plan. And it's probably the last good time these folks are going to see for a while. We ought to let them enjoy it—when Master Badelz suggested it, I figured it was as much for them as for us. Probably more."

 "Yes," Idalia said with a sigh, giving in to the inevitable. "I guess it is. Anyway, I want you to take these out to Coalwind and Prettyfoot and braid them into their manes. I know a mule doesn't have much mane, but do what you can. They're just a couple of simple charms that should keep them from being worried by anything they see or hear. I don't want them getting spooked and trying to run off."

 She handed him two small clear round lumps of yellow amber, each strung on a short length of red ribbon. Kellen could feel warmth and serenity radiate from them—a simple spell of comfort and protection.

 "Got one for me?" he asked with a smile.

 She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're on your own, brother mine. Try the mead."

 KELLEN was relieved to find Coalwind and Prettyfoot right where he'd left them. He was glad to see they hadn't been upset enough to try to run off when all the noise started. Then again—since half of the people making the noise were Centaurs, maybe it had sounded like a normal gathering of their own kind to the horse and mule.

 He'd paused on his way out to pick up a small bucket of grain—one of the things Idalia had traded for was grain for the animals, since they couldn't afford to let them wander far enough now to keep themselves in natural forage, and once they were on the road they certainly wouldn't be able to go slowly enough to let them feed themselves. Since he was carrying the bucket, both animals looked up alertly when he arrived. Their ears pricked forward when they spotted the grain bucket, and Coalwind whickered flirtatiously.

 He set the bucket down and retrieved their halters from a nearby branch, then haltered both animals before removing their hobbles, remembering to hold firmly to their lead-ropes as he did. Kellen wasn't an expert horsemaster, he wasn't even close, but fortunately he'd spent a little time around his father's stables when he'd been younger—before that activity had been added to Lycaelon's "forbidden list"—and Idalia had refreshed his memory on the important points. Always put the halter on before taking off the hobbles. Always feed the two animals far apart (Coalwind was a hog and a thief, and would steal Prettyfoot's grain if she could). Don't walk up behind them. Never expect them to be able to see him, even if he thought he was in plain sight; make quiet noise from a distance. Stay out from under their feet unless absolutely necessary. And get used to slobber, because horses don't have table manners.

 Though the rules applied more to horses than to mules (and none of them applied to unicorns!), it didn't do any harm to treat the two animals equally. Coalwind was trying to pull toward the bucket, but he led her firmly over to a tree and tied her there with close attention to the knots, then led Prettyfoot to another tree several yards away. Only then did he get the grain and pour it out on the ground where the animals could get at it.