Mercedes Lackey - The Outstretched Shadow

And the Chapel, oh, the Light forfend I should forget the Chapel! The Chapel had a wing all to itself, and differed from the rest of the house in that it was not done in black and white, but in honey alabaster and gold, as befitted the Eternal Light. Such a tasteful Chapel that it was, so pure and refined in style, with the Everburning Flame on a simple altar, and all the niches for the ancestral ashes set into the walls so that no one could ever forget just how many generations of important men had borne the familial name…

Oh, no, never.

Kellen hardly knew for certain how deeply his father believed in the Eternal Light—but he certainly believed in the name of Tavadon.

He climbed the stairs to the third floor, where his own rooms were. Here things were no longer in stark black and white—in his own suite, he had a certain say in the way things were decorated. The walls were still white, the floors black and white marble again, but there were colorful tapestries on the walls, and fruit in a dish on a plinth beside the top of the stairs, perfuming the air with the scent of apples. He took an apple as he passed it, and got as far as the door to his room, when another servant materialized behind him.

"You'll be having a bath, Kellen?" said the man—Kellen didn't know his name; he wasn't encouraged to learn the servants' names. All women except Cook were "my girl" and all men were "my man." Lycaelon didn't approve of familiarity with the servants.

Kellen had never even known the names of the succession of nursemaids he'd had as a small child; they had only been "Nursie," an endless series of interchangeable middle-aged women with gentle hands and soft voices, the last of which had left when he turned five. Then he'd been on his own in his rooms, his nights filled with loneliness, his days turned over to a succession of tutors who had schooled him according to his father's expectations until he had started attending the Mage College at fourteen.

Servants tended only to impinge on him when they had orders concerning Kellen. Like the bath.

Kellen would have been perfectly happy to do without that bath, but it had not been phrased as a question. This was one of his father's rules, and there was to be no argument about it—when one went out into the streets, among the common folk, one had a bath immediately on return. Lycaelon's abode must not be soiled with the common dust of Armethalieh; the air must be as pure as a breeze passing over an alpine glacier, with no hint of the City outside brought within the walls.

"Of course," he replied with resignation, and left the book-bag just inside the door to his room. At least the fellow wouldn't touch it if he wasn't specifically ordered to—the servants served Lycaelon out of fear and awe rather than loyalty, and seldom did things voluntarily. Lycaelon's standards were exacting enough to make plenty of work, with no need to look for more of it, Kellen supposed.

The bathroom was something he had never figured out how to decorate; as a result, it was entirely white, entirely marble, and as chill and uninviting as being in the center of a cube of snow. The square marble tub sunk into the floor was already full. The water was, as he had expected, cold. It was always cold. Even in the dead of winter, it was cold. He scarcely remembered what a hot bath felt like—he hadn't had one since the last incarnation of "Nursie" had gone, never to return, no matter how much he wept at night for her.

Kellen knew he never got hot water for his bath on purpose, and it wasn't only because the servants were disinclined to stir themselves on his behalf. His father felt that this was an incentive to Kellen's mastering his lessons so that he could heat his own bathwater with magick—as Lycaelon probably did. And Kellen was just stubborn enough that even if he had mastered magick enough to heat the water, he might not have done it, just out of spite.

Well, at least after a long walk followed by the three-story climb, a cold bath wasn't as much of an ordeal as usual. But it certainly didn't make one inclined to linger…

RECLOTHED—in the fresh and considerably more ornate garments the servant had left for him—Kellen was still shivering when he closed the door of his room and unpacked his book-bag. His father wouldn't be home for bells, Kellen knew from long experience. Lycaelon's long bells at the Mage Court kept him away from home most of the time. He usually left after a leisurely breakfast, but often didn't return until well into Night Bells.

And now that the tub had been drained, Kellen wouldn't see a servant in his suite unless he called for one. He was more or less used to being alone most of the time when he wasn't studying, but now and again, it felt eerily as if everyone in the world had forgotten his existence. Sometimes Kellen fantasized that he himself was like a mouse wandering through a giant machine, which would run just the same whether he was there or not. It seemed to him that nothing he ever did made any real mark on the place—that House Tavadon existed for empty display and heartless show, and was less a home than an extension of one of Armethalieh's great public buildings, or Temples of the Light.

Or just a bigger version of Lycaelon's simulacrum-servant.

Although other rooms in this suite had only been opened up for him as he grew older and needed them, this room had been his for as long as he could remember. It had begun as his nursery, with his Nursie sleeping in the same room, or the one adjoining. His cradle had been here, and the box-bed that prevented his falling out as a toddler. The tapestries on the wall covered whitewashed plaster that had been laid over the painted animals of his childhood. The floor was wood, not marble, and brown, not black. The wardrobe, the bed, the chests and bookcases, all were the same pieces he'd had since he was a boy, all were fine pieces, but plain— expensive, but an honest golden brown, not black, not white, and just a little battered by hard use at the hands of an active child. Thick, brightly patterned rugs were on the floor, multicolored cushions were piled in a corner, and there was a single window that looked out on the street. He could see out, but due to the same magic that hid the passages from the reception room into the other parts of the house, no one could see in. His fireplace was of reasonable size, and when it was not in use, it held scented candles that he had selected for himself in the Perfumers' Market. This was the only room in the house that he ever felt warm in.

He never felt entirely undisturbed here, not since the day that he'd found one of the servants clearly rummaging through his wardrobe, but at least he could relax to a certain extent here. Lycaelon might send servants in here to spy, but he never troubled to come himself.

For a moment Kellen paused in his unpacking. He'd forgotten about the servants, and the way they periodically went through his belongings and reported the results to his father. How was he going to hide those books—

Then he laughed. Stupid! They're going to hide themselves, of course. These books clearly didn't show their true nature to just anyone. Probably only a Mage would see them for what they were—and there were only three Mages that ever entered this part of the house, and of the three, two, Lycaelon and Anigrel, never entered this room.

So he put his new acquisitions in with the old, battered storybooks from his nursery days. If they'd disguised themselves as children's stories before, they probably would again. No one would ever notice that there were three more books on that shelf than there had been before.

What he wanted to do was to open the books then and there and try to read them—but there were rules in the house of Arch-Mage Lycaelon, and one of those rules was that of routine and schedule.