Mercedes Lackey - To Light A Candle

The Obsidian Trilogy 02

contents

Chapter One - In the Forest of Flowers

Chapter Two - A Healing and a Homecoming

Chapter Three - The Banquet in the Garden of Leaf and Star

Chapter Four - In Training at the House of Sword and Shield

Chapter Five - Secrets in the City of Golden Bells

Chapter Six - The Room of Fire and Water

Chapter Seven - Discord in the City of a Thousand Bells

Chapter Eight - Prisoners of Darkness

Chapter Nine - The Council of Fear

Chapter Ten - The Return of the Dragons

Chapter Eleven - The Road Through the Border Lands

Chapter Twelve - To the Crowned Horns of the Moon

Chapter Thirteen - Ondoladeshiron at Last

Chapter Fourteen - Blood and Sorrow

Chapter Fifteen - At the Siege of Stonehearth

Chapter Sixteen - Ghosts upon the Wind

Chapter Seventeen - On the Wings of Dragons

Chapter Eighteen - The Price of Power

Chapter Nineteen - The Wisdom of Betrayal

Chapter Twenty - The Order of Battle

Chapter Twenty-One - Blood on the Moon

Chapter Twenty-Two - Smoke and Storm

Chapter Twenty-Three - Journey’s End

Chapter Twenty-Four - Shadows of the Past

Chapter Twenty-Five - Gifts and Promises

Chapter Twenty-Six - Against All Odds

Epilogue

Chapter One In the Forest of Flowers

K ELLEN TAVADON COULD never have imagined fighting a battle so one-sided as this, but he no longer had the energy to spare for despair. Up and around the circumference of the Black Cairn he went, and as he did, the icy wind slowly increased. It seemed to Kellen as if the source of the wind was the obelisk itself, as if it blew from someplace not of this world. As if from a great distance, he could hear inhuman yelping and the sounds of battle. If he looked, he knew he would be able to watch his friends die .

But he refused to look. He could not afford to be distracted from his battle. It took all his concentration to keep his footing on the stairs. Kellen’s teeth chattered uncontrollably in the cold; tears that owed nothing to grief streamed from his eyes and froze along his cheeks and lashes. He gripped Idalia’s keystone hard against his stomach and prayed that it would hold together.

If he had been able to think, he would have been certain that his situation could not be any worse, and then, as a further torment, grit mixed with the frigid wind began to pelt him. Fine sand at first, that left him blinking and half-blind, but soon good-sized pieces of gravel and small rocks that hammered his skin and even drew blood. He could taste grit between his teeth, on his tongue, feel it in his nose, in his lungs, choking him. He pulled his undertunic up over his head. It was hard to breathe through the heavy quilted leather, but as he heard the wind-driven sand hiss over its surface, Kellen was glad he’d buried his head in its folds. Better to be half-stifled than blind. Slowly his tears washed his eyes clean.

Soon it was not just gravel that the wind carried, but rocks the size of a fist. At this rate, he’d be dodging boulders soon. And one direct hit from anything really large and he’d be dead — and the fate of Sentarshadeen, and perhaps of all of the Elves, would be sealed .

He needed to protect the keystone as well as his eyes and lungs. Kellen quickly shoved the keystone up under his shirt, and turned toward the wall so it was protected by his body as well. The keystone was as icy against his skin as it had once been warm against his hands. He turned his face against the wall, and crept even more slowly, up the stairs. The sand made them slippery, and he knew Something was hoping he’d fall and break the fragile keystone.

At least the howling of the wind and the booming of the rocks against the stone shut out all sound of the battle below. If it was still going on. If all his friends weren’t dead already .

I won’t look back, Kellen promised himself . Whatever happens, I won’t look back.

It was so unfair for the enemy he faced to be throwing rocks at him! Unfair — no, it wasn’t so much that it was unfair. It was humiliating. The Enemy wasn’t even going to bother wasting its Demon warriors on stopping him; he wasn’t an Elven Knight, after all. He wasn’t any sort of a real threat. He meant so little to the Enemy that the Enemy thought it was enough to batter him with a few rocks , certain that he was so cowardly, so worthless, that he would turn tail and run .

That, as much as all the pain and despair, nearly broke Kellen’s spirit.

Only his anger saved him.

Anger is a weapon, as much as your sword.

“ I’ll — show — you!” he snarled through clenched teeth. And went on. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, blind, aching, terrified, but now, above all else, furious, he drove onward .

Then came the worst part — when the wind and rocks began hitting him from all sides. Kellen realized that must mean he was near the top of the cairn. Groping blindly, his head still muffled in his tunic, he slid his hand along the wall in front of his face, until he touched emptiness. The wind pushed at his fingertips with the force of a river in flood. If he tried to simply walk up to where the obelisk was, the wind would pluck him off and hurl him to the ground .

Very well. Then he would crawl.

Kellen got down on his hands and knees and crawled up the rest of the stairs, brushing the sand away carefully from each step before him. It caked on his abraded hands, and every time he wiped them clean on his tunic, fresh blood welled up from a thousand tiny scratches. And the wind still blew, cold enough now to steal all sensation from his flesh.

He reached a flat place , and crawled out onto it, pushing against the wind .

Suddenly, without warning, the wind stopped. The silence rang in his ears.

“Well, you make a fine sight,” a man said from somewhere above him, sounding amused.

The voice was elusively familiar.

Kellen dragged his tunic down around his neck and stared, blinking, into the watery green light.

He was facing… himself?

Another Kellen stood on the other side of the obelisk, grinning down at him nastily. The point of the obelisk came just to his heart level. This Kellen was sleek and manicured — no one would ever call his smooth brown curls unruly! — and dressed in the height of Armethaliehan finery, from his shining half-boots of tooled and gilded leather to his fur-lined half-cape and the pair of jeweled and embroidered silk gloves tucked negligently through his gleaming gilded belt. The cape and gloves were in House Tavadon colors, of course. No one would ever forget which Mageborn City House this young man belonged to, not for an instant .

Slowly, Kellen got to his feet, though his cramped and aching muscles protested. Instantly, Other-Kellen clapped his bare hands over the point of the obelisk, blocking Kellen’s access to it.

“ Think about what you’re doing,”Other-Kellen urged him. “Really think about it. Now, before it’s too late. You’ve had a chance to taste freedom, and you’ve found it’s a bitter wine. Only power can make it sweet, but you already know the responsibilities that power brings. Even the powerful aren’t really free. The only real freedom we have is of choosing our master, and most people don’t get even that. But you can choose .”

“ I don’t serve anyone!” Kellen said angrily .