It can be a curious thing, the way a boy sees his father. The projection of all he wants to be, some combination of love and admiration and fear. And for myself, the father has been a phantom growing in my mind in absence. It's difficult now to admit, living in the shadow of that phantom giant, he was just a man.

It was winter. Frost covered the ground in a brittle carpet that crunched with every step of our climb. My legs were tired, cold breaths wheezed, and sweat ran under the knit cap pulled down too far over my head.

"Just a little farther!" He called, knowing without looking that I was slowing down. "Just on this crest, that's where we'll do it."

One foot trailed the other. I collapsed next to him onto a snow covered rock, my head tilting back, letting snowflakes cool my face. "Father?"

"Hmm?"

"What are we..." My voice trailed off as he stood from the rock, unslinging the pack worn over one shoulder, kneeling and ruffling through it.

He stood, unwrapping from its leather sheath a small circle of glass. He held it delicately, tilting it to catch the light. And he looked over his shoulder at me, an eyebrow raised and a wide, excited grin on his face.

I knew this strange little piece of glass then to be a odd little telescope, one you could look through and see tiny glimpses of strange and curious things. My father had introduced it to me as an ariglass. And through it, other worlds could be seen. Observed, studied, obsessed on. As a child I did not understand every variable involved. The ariglass could show you other worlds, yes, but what you saw and how well you saw it depended on where you were, the temperature, and a thousand million other things I didn't know. But my father did.

"Tonight is the night," he murmured to himself as he made hand gestures over the ariglass, magic streaming from his fingers in small threads of blue and red.

I got up from my rock, knees still weak from the climb. "What are we going to see tonight, father?" Voices sounded strange in the blanketed quiet of the forest.

"Hmm? What would you like to see, my dear boy?" He continued, working intricate patterns with his magic over the glass. "Legions of angels, hmm? Or the world of bleak rock and spirits? Or dark towers and men in robes who speak foreign tongues with clicks and pops in every word?"

He always joked when he was in such a mood. As day and night are to the sun, my father's disposition was to his study. I smiled too. "Or perhaps the world with nothing but strange owls who perch on spires and whose heads spin like tops."

"Ahhh hahaha. I remember that one. And I recall a certain little boy was very scared of such owls."

I shook my head no, though it was a lie. I remember to this day those owls had been the size of a man, and their heads seemed to swivel to see us, watching them.

"Costin," he said, and I hurried to his side. The glass disc was clutched in his hands, holding the magic inside. "I need your sharp eyes, boy."

"What are we going to see?" I asked him excitedly.

He stared into my eyes, hands held between us. "Are you ready, boy?"

I nodded.

Slowly, he removed his top hand, leaving us staring into complete black. Darkness within darkness. It was absence we stared at. Then, with great impatience, we watched light begin to come through. It was small at first, hair-thin, little strands of red and white. And then I could see movement. When I realized what we were looking at, I nearly looked away, hot blush stinging my cheeks in the cold. "I need your sharp eyes," my father had said. So I stared at the pale, nude dancing bodies and wrapped my arms around myself for comfort. I was thankful the glass could provide only a dim semblance of a scene, like seeing in twilight, and there was only so much I could tell. But there was something wrong in the way they danced, all sharp movements and jutting limbs. The floor on which they danced was a dark red, as were the walls of the chamber. My father uttered a soft curse under his breath. I looked to him, hoping he would call this vision another fluke, cover the ariglass with his hands and tell me I shouldn’t see such things at my age. But his eyes never left the glass.

It was a while before I noticed there was a man in the middle. Surrounded by a hundred pale, gyrating forms, he stood idle, with his hands by his sides and his head inclined upwards. In one hand, something dark was held though I couldn’t see what.

Then people stilled in a single moment, as though a bell rang. His lips moved and I realized lately that he spoke, though of course we heard no sound. We skip ahead in the story, but I can now tell you with some accuracy what he said.

"Amavakara leijorar, amalindar esuka nemi. Amavakara keljunar jorares, amalindar noriya nemi. Esuka delharar malrakin, nemi emaras. Esuka delharar kilkin, nemi arakas. Noriya delharar taradu, nemi jaarin. Ilel kuvasin delharar fejras." "I am a humble rat, let the grand one tread me under heel. I am a humble and meek slave, let the grand one take my toil. The grand one has taken my pain, and I feel none. The grand one has taken my blood and my veins run empty. The grand one takes my wife and grows my children. This life is worship." It is a common prayer in their world, for rituals such as this.

The man reached up and cut his throat. He cut deeply, for I remember very well my horror as the blood pooled on the red marble floor before he fell to his knees. And the people rushed forward, faces eager and hands extended for his body and his blood.

My father spoke a word and the image vanished, the glass returning to transparency and filling my vision with the bright white of fresh snow. He stepped back, sitting against the large rock, staring off at the distance. And I squatted still, hugging myself. A moment passed. A long moment. After far too long, my father spoke.

“I’m sorry, boy. That’s not what I expected to see.” I just looked at him. His eyes didn’t meet mine. “Did you watch it all?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Hmm.”

We stayed up there a while longer. Neither of us spoke again. When it was getting dark, he stood, packing away the Ariglass and hiking down from the crest. I followed, wordlessly. The snow was to an inch on the way back, and trees would take their opportunities offloading some onto us so it would not weigh down their branches. When a deer stopped in its tracks 30 yards away, eyeing us with trepidation, I wanted to stop and stare, but my father only continued down, stomping with every step.

It was well and truly dark when we neared the shiel. Nanou was outside, feeding the goats their supper. He called to us, “Ah, Toros. Gone a long time. There’s a spot of stew inside if you and the boy-” My father’s long strides took him directly to the door and he shut it behind him with a bang. Nanou looked at me, thick grey eyebrows pressing up, against the wrinkles on his forehead. “Did he see a bad vision?”

I nodded.

Nanou shook his head, rubbing his knuckles along the outside of a goat’s belly. “Told him it was dark, boy. Told him it was dark stuff, yes. Always looking in that bauble of his. Well, Belda made a spot of stew for you, boy, best get in and eat.” He paused a moment, looking in my eyes. I think he might have seen briefly how scared I was, what I saw still echoing loudly through my mind. He frowned. “Say, I may need a spot of help tomorrow digging out the crops. Will you help me, lad?”

I looked around, glancing at the mule in the lean-to. It was difficult to meet his gaze. “Sure,” I said. And my voice sounded weak.

He stepped over, putting an arm around my shoulders to walk us inside. “Best get in then, out of the cold. Be waking up early tomorrow.” He pointed a finger at me. “And I need you to eat a good meal, understand boy? Can’t have you hungry on the job tomorrow.”

Belda sat watching the fire, half knit sock laying in her lap. She looked up and smiled at me as we entered. “We were worried about you two.” She stood, setting down the sock, bending to fill me a bowl from the stir-pot on the hearth. I looked to the door of the room I shared with my father, finding it shut. Belda sighed. “He said not a word when he came in. Another of those moods of his?”

With a mumbled thank you, I took the bowl, sitting before the fire to eat.

Nanou grunted as he took off his boots. “Told him it was dark stuff. How many times I say it, Belda? But every damn fancy wizard and magian in the whole capitol comes north, thinking they know better. Well. If he doesn’t see now, he will. The old ways, boy. They’re what’ll see you through. Not this…” He waved his hand in the air in parody of casting a spell. “-magic.”

“Oh let the boy eat, Nan, he’s had a day of it, you can tell.” The stew was warm and I was ravenous, not having eaten since the morning, before we set out. I’d barely lifted my head since I sat down. I stretched my feet out, feeling the warmth of the fire through the boots, on my cold toes.

Nannou looked out a dark window. “Quite the coldfront coming in, I say. Hope it won’t be snowing all too much, though. Damn cold is one thing but the crops won’t take too much snow all at once. Well, I’ll be hopin’.” He hobbled over to sit beside me before the fire, chair creaking as his weight settled into it.

“Father says the capitol has mages that can tell you the weather, even weeks before it happens.” I hadn’t been offended by his words, but I still felt the need to defend my father’s profession. And though I had told no one, not even my father, I thought of it as my future profession as well.

“Weather wizards, eh?” Nannou nodded to himself. “Have you ever been to the capitol, boy?”

I shook my head, mouth full.

“Ah, your father’ll take you some day. Strange folk, you’ll find. The south tends to breed strange folk.” He went quiet for a moment, staring into the fire. “When your father and you first got here and asked for lodgings, I thought he meant to take the whole house! Wizards can be like that, you know. But Toros, he’s a good enough man. And he raised a good boy.” Nannou trailed off, staring into the dancing flames. Belda smiled softly at me from behind her knitting, the needles clack-clacking in her lap.

#

Over the next two days my father scarcely ate or drank. Perhaps every one-in-the-eighth hour he would nap, waking with a jolt at the slightest noise and sitting up drearily to get back to work. Our cramped little room was littered with his notebooks, papers and old rolled up sheets of long parchment, yellowed and brittle. He wrote obsessively, leaning over notebook, pen held vicelike in fingers red from overuse. At night, in the dark, I woke to see him reading by the blue light of a magelamp held to parchment several inches from his chin, eyes narrowed in frustrated scrutiny. I recall the way it cast the sharp lines of his face, making him look weary and gaunt with thick wrinkles and harsh, angry eyes. I struggled getting back to sleep.

On the first day I opened the door to our little room, fresh from helping Nannou clear off the crops, and now with my own blanket of snow covering my jacket (which Belda would later scold me for letting in the house). But I was grateful, for it had stopped snowing, and the sun now shone brightly in the east. “Father!” I said, “It’s a warm day, and the snow melts with the sun. It’s good conditions to see that world we once happened on, the one with all the rainbows in the sky, and the glowing fish that you can all see in the water.” At first it seemed he hadn’t heard me. He faced away from me, hunched over, pen scratching quickly away. I stood awkwardly in the doorway, considering saying it again.

His voice was dark and hard. “Go away, boy.” And I did.

The second day I woke to see him again bent over his work. He made no reaction as I stood, pulling on shirt, trousers and jacket. With little to do I spent the day in the woods, trudging through half melted snow and watching for wildlife. I remember spotting a white hare far away, perched on the icy crust of the snow with its nose in the air searching for scents. I stood watching it for a time, but eventually it did detect my scent, its head dashing in my direction and the hare darted away behind covered foliage. I trudged on.

Though I was a young boy, traveling with my father had given me a mind full of experiences, far more so than some old men. From the Auspiran sands to the east, the tall Darulean peaks to the north, the rich Austeran sea and the long, sloping, graceful ships that sailed it (though my father told me they were manned by smugglers and built such a way that they could outrun the marshals). I had seen cultures and religions, lived next to merchants, priests and beggars. Different dialects: some with pinched vowels and loose Rs, others which turned every O into an A, and became very confusing to converse with. And some which barely sounded like the same language entirely, but all in the Austeran empire held the same tongue.

In the sands, I played games with the children, running up the dunes so we could slide or roll down, yelling and whooping and sometimes fighting, and always returning home with sand in the trunks of our trousers. In the Darulean mountains, I had made friends with the son of a porter. A shy boy, somewhat similar to myself. We would sit and talk for hours when my father had his moods, or play hide and seek, though this became a rare thing as my winning streak continued. But in the desolate north of Brosia, I explored by myself. And I found I didn’t mind at all.

On the third day I woke to find my father sleeping. He was a quiet sleeper, and were his eyes open, one would not know he slept at all. I closed the door behind me with quiet consideration, lifting it by the handle as the door had a tendency to drag somewhat noisily on the wood boards of the floor.

Belda greeted me cheerily for breakfast, promptly sitting me down with thick slices of fresh, buttered bread and a full link of sausage. She hummed softly as she sat back down herself. “Nannou has gone to town today, hun, don’t have to worry about him roping you into any more chores. Just to get some essentials, he said. But I think he and his friend Harry’ll be catching up for a good while. Sharing stories of the hardships of the frost, no doubt. Some parts of their stories might even be real.” She smiled good humoredly.

The floorboards creaked and we both looked up to see my father standing some few feet behind us. His eyes were red and there was several days of light blonde stubble on his cheeks. “Costin,” he said, “When you’re done eating, grab your boots. We’ll go fishing.”

#

It was a half hour later that we walked up the ravine, a strange silence between us but filled by the gurgling of the stream underneath. Another bright day had so far melted almost all the snow, though patches still clung to the ground under long grasses and the roots of well foliaged trees. My father bent down, picking up a long straight stick below an oak tree, with strips of bark hanging off the length of a man’s arm. He stripped it with quick, deft motions, winding the bark back and forth and dim spots of light emanating from the tips of his fingers. He wound the bundle around his forearm, doubling it over and over till it stretched to the full height of a tree and thick around as a strand of horse hair. Raw shaping magic. I know now of the control and precision such a feat requires, but to a boy’s eyes it was simply the work of a mage.

With nimble fingers he tied it off at three different points on the branch, using progressively looser knots for adjustment on the fly. With a “Hmm,” he examined the newly formed fishing rod. One hand ripped a button from his jacket, enveloping it in a fist. When his hand opened, what lay in his palm was not a brass button but a small, four pronged hook. He glanced to me. “On such a snow melt day as this, the worms should no doubt be out, yes?”

And the next several minutes I spent scampering around, looking and sometimes digging in the wet dirt for such a worm. The one I found was small but adorned such a hook nicely, wiggling lively in protest. My father proffered me the pole. “The honor is yours if you’d take it.”

My cast was poor. Line met water with a harsh splash, likely unsettling the poor worm immediately, but my father said nothing and I said nothing so he watched me vainly swish the line back and forth in the hole and we waited for a bite. We waited a long time.

“I’m… I’m sorry, son.”

I looked at him.

“You shouldn’t have seen what you saw. Such things aren’t fit for the eyes of boys. Or the eyes of men.” I didn’t want to tell him how I still saw it. When I closed my eyes or when I saw the bright red cover of his most abused notebook, that the color seemed to grow and grow until I would look away, afraid to see dancing white. “I thought I knew of what we would see on that crest, a vision I’ve been working toward for a long time. But that world has more than I thought, is darker than I thought. But I know now what caused it. And tomorrow, conditions willing, I will try again.” He sighed. “I know you don’t understand my studies now, Costin. Someday… you will. Perhaps not for a long time…” He faltered for a moment, glancing at me with an uncommon lack of surety. “When I started studying these… eh, you’ve asked me much about my time at the university, boy, and I’ve held off on telling you-”

“My birthday is in fourteen days!” I exclaimed, not willing to let this chance slip away. I’d been counting the calendar in my head.

He smiled, nodding. “And you’ll be a man grown, will you?”

“Ten is nearly a man,” I told him. He laughed. “Nearly a young man,” I amended. He laughed more, blonde curls shaking with mirth, his arm over my shoulders to draw me closer to him.

When he sobered, wiping tears from his eyes, he sighed. And it was some time again before he spoke. “Every father… every father attempts to amend the wrongs of the father before him. And mine…” He bit the words off bitterly. “Pushed and pushed so hard to follow the same path as he. But perhaps you’re right, boy, perhaps it is time. And you’d like to hear about the university, you say?” My eyebrows shot up. He laughed again.

“Well… the grand university of Lightmark. What was I going to… ah, my field of study. It was a professor who introduced me to geomancy, though not in a class, for such a thing is not taught in the university. It was a teacher named Elhart, a woman who… ah, you would like her. Of all my classes, of which I took a great many, hers was perhaps the most interesting. But it was not the ariglass I started with, it was with a simple bowl of water. Though through incantation and concentration and a great deal of frustration and even trepidation… and deliberation… that water slowly began to show me the past.” He paused and I listened with rapt attention, fishing pole hanging limply from my fingers and all but forgotten. “And most of what I saw was a great disappointment to my impatient mind. Farmers and tanners, coopers, millers, weavers, carpenters. And a great deal of people quietly sitting still, talking, playing dice. And people sleeping, so much sleeping.” He laughed. “And other things I wouldn’t mention. But I got better. And I learned how to attune my mind and concentrate to see what I wanted to see. And some of the things I saw…” He shook his head slowly. “Are again not things boys should hear…”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“No, but I-” he cut me off with another laugh.

“Foundations, boy. Strong foundations are what make a strong mage, such was the point of my tangent. And when I graduated from menthoscopes to stereascopes and finally to the ariglass, Elhart confirmed to my disappointment she had nothing left to teach me.” He stopped and looked down at his hands, clasped before his knees. “...It was your mother, in fact. She was the one who held a passion for other-worldly adventures. My proficiency improved and we catalogued three dozen worlds together,” he said slowly.

“And she was a mage, too, wasn’t she?” My voice was loud, high, excited.

“She is. And a very good one.”

“Where is she? Why isn’t she with us?”

He continued staring at his hands. “Your mother… loves you very much. And I know she would be with us if she could. I know she would be. And I don’t want to hear another word about her.”

I sat there, making halfhearted movements of the fishing pole. My voice was bitter. “If she loved me she would be here.”

His blow hit solidly and I fell back, my world darkening, feet kicking at the grass on the ravine in some instinct to get away.

I came awake to my father’s face, rich blue eyes wide with concern and regret. “Costin? Costin, I’m sorry, boy, are you all right?” I stared dimly up at him. My mouth felt gummy. Taste of iron. “I’m sorry, boy. I’m sorry.” He bowed his head, eyes shutting. It was not the first time he had hit me. My father had a fast temper, quick to anger, and later, rushing to apologize, make amends.

Tears welled in my eyes. I turned my head silently, not wanting him to see me cry. Beads of blood dripped from a badly split lip.

“Some day, boy, I swear. Someday you’ll meet your mother,” he said softly.

The tears finally leaked from my eyes, running in a hot line down my face. His fingers brushed gently against my lip and I felt a strange warmth as the cut knit itself back together. I raised a hand, pulling at it, seeing if it was really healed. Insatiable curiosity mixed with stubbornness and it was a long, long time before I asked in a voice that quavered, “Father? Will you teach me that?”

“Hmm.” He sighed. “Stand up with me, boy, stand up with me.” He dragged me to my feet. I held a hand to my face, though it no longer hurt, fixing him with a stare of resentment, and part of me (the conniving, greedy part) thought I could use his guilt against him. Gain some small piece of the magic I so desired. And he knew it, too.

“Where’s your fishing stick, Costin?” I had dropped it when I fell back. No sooner had my eyes alighted on it, stuck in a bush immediately above the water, that it began to move - quickly - flying through the air before coming to rest in my father’s outstretched hand. He raised his eyebrows at me. Mine frowned at him.

He sighed again. “Healing magic is a harsh discipline. And difficult to practice. But if you would like to learn a spell…”

“You’ll teach me how to levitate objects?” My voice came out excited despite the expression I still directed at him.

“Ah, no. Not in so many words. Levitation is a far more difficult skill to-”

“But you just did!”

He closed his eyes for a moment and I could see his chest expand as he took a very deep breath. “It is not levitation, it is displacement. You’ve seen magnets, yes? To perform this spell, you will first imagine your hand becoming a magnet. The words-”

“That’s levitation,” I said obstinately.

“If you threw this stick and it flew through the air, would that be levitation as well?” He snapped. “Do you want to learn this spell?”

I nodded meekly.

He ripped the hook from the end of the fishing line, tossing it to me, and I caught it as a little brass button, pinching it between two fingers and examining it for flaws. “Smaller objects are far easier. I know I taught you the channeling techniques years ago, but actual spells are very much different, so please pay close attention to what I tell you.” He had indeed taught me such techniques, simple exercises to focus the mind and sharpen concentration. He’d instructed me extensively at the time that the magic inside all living things - the mana running through the circuits of my body - were influenced by all I did, how I would eat, sleep, breathe. My emotions, thoughts and temperament. And this exciting revelation had been proceeded with hours of drilling on dull mental exercises for the attunement of the mental state. Even so, I’d continued with the exercises every day for the two years since.

“Spells are spoken in the ancient tongue.” He put his hand on my shoulder, raising his hand above mine. “You will put your hand over the button, you will focus your mind, and you will say… ‘Venit ad manum!’” The button flew out of my grasp, audibly smacking into his palm. He didn’t close his fingers, and after a moment it fell back into mine.

“But you never say the spells,” I protested.

“The magic is not in the words you say, my boy.” I frowned. He sighed. “Would you like me to lecture for an hour on methods of silent casting or would you prefer to first learn the spell?”

My hand hovered over the little brass button. “Think of your hand as a magnet,” my father repeated.

“Venit ad manum!” Nothing happened. I looked to my father.

He slowly shook his head. “Your mind is not attuned, I can feel it. You must concentrate on the words and their meaning, you must sense the magic far within you to be able to access it.”

“Venit ad manum.” Light reflected dimly off the brass. I tossed the button, catching it, bouncing it in my palm. My right hand hovered over the left. “Venit ad manum. Venit ad manum.”

“You are not listening to me,” my father said calmly. I looked up at him sharply. He smirked. “Sit down. Focus on your breathing, do you remember the channeling exercises? And before you attempt the spell, focus on clearing your mind,” he said in the process of sitting back down with me, his legs criss-crossing and hands resting idly on his knees. “Too much junk in the way will impede the flow of your mana. ‘A good mage is a calm mage’, as my dear professor Woodsley drilled into our skulls. Close your eyes. And we breathe in… and we breathe out… and think that somewhere, located deeply in your mind, there is a hearth and a fire burning brightly. And you can feel the heat from this fire. It warms you. And then imagine letting the warmth of that fire pass through your mind, pass through, yes, the warmth is passing through your mind and into the spell as you speak it.”

And I did feel it. Something deeply in the recesses of my mind, some warmth. Like a shutter opening for a summer breeze. A tingling somewhere, deep, deep down. “Venit ad manum.” The button lay still in my palm. I opened my eyes, staring at it frustratedly. Summer breeze. Your hand is a magnet. “Venit ad manum!”

I flinched as the button jumped an inch off my hand, dropping it in shock, and I stared at where it lay in the grass.

My father laughed. He had a hearty, rich laugh. “And the boy had such talent, he intimidated even himself.” I remember I tried to glare, but the corners of my mouth pulled and pulled until I was grinning.

#

“And Engrey the black, he didn’t go to Lightmark, he went to Dengrave, didn’t he?” I could make the button jump six inches now, perhaps eight if I really concentrated. I held my hand above the ground as I talked, catching a twig as it traveled its brief journey, spearing into my palm. We sat shoulder to shoulder, fishing forgotten and simply watching the stream as it passed.

“Hmm. True. And though Dengrave is a respected school, and I have met great mages produced by their school, they have also produced more dark mages than any other university. There was Engrey, there was Varis Morestone, Garron Arrat, Ronan Blackwood, who they called the Soul Torturer. Necromancy is an especially foul thing.”

“Are there lots of different kinds of magic?”

“More than I know.”

“Even more than they teach at Lightmark?”

“They teach at Lightmark more than one could learn in ten lifetimes. And, yes, there is far more to learn besides. There is Illusionism, Elementalism, Restoration, Divination, Telepathy, Telekinesis… Warlockry, Hemomancy, Audiomancy, Astromancy, Omnimancy, and I’m leaving a great many out. Then the odd ones. Alchemy, Enchantry, Runing and Warding, Spiritry, Herbology, Sigilry… though it’s so similar to Warding most people forget about it. Once I encountered a mage who possessed the strange ability to travel through mirrors. Now what category should that go under? There are spells, charms, incantations, rituals. And as your abilities progress, you’ll be able to do more and more with simply raw magic alone. If… well, if you are set on becoming a mage.”

His description had kindled in me an intense longing. To see for myself all he had talked about, and to see also everything he’d left out. I knew my eyes must look very wide indeed, for he smiled down at me quite strangely. Sorrowfully, almost. “There are other paths, you know,” he said softly. “Some mages forget, but there is far more than magic in this world. And the life of a mage can be very… very complicated.”

“What did you study at Lightmark?” I asked him. “Venit ad manum,” I said to myself, making the button jump to my hand over a foot off the ground.

He watched my magic with an eyebrow raised. “What did I study, hmm? I studied Divination with Elhart, Enchantry with Woodsley, Unshaped Magic with Heraldin, Curses with Memora, Rituals with Betar, Telepathy under Dutton, the mystique with Perald… I was hungry for knowledge. And I studied as many different things as I could. And then I found the worlds. Where fish walk on land, where there can be three suns sharing the sky, and-”

“-and each blue and vast as the great ocean,” I finished for him. He raised eyebrows at me.

#

The sun had grown overhead. We walked back with no fish to show, but my mind full of ideas, brimming with possibilities. The button had scarcely stopped moving, my enthusiasm sending it from hand to hand and back again as we walked. I think my father grew tired eventually of hearing the words, as he did confiscate it from me, the little bronze button returning to line his coat with a simple twitch of his hand and an apologetic look.

“How many kinds of dark magic are there?”

He glanced sideways at me. “Hmm, none.”

I frowned. “But you said necromancy… what about blood magic-”

“Some magics are more objectionable than others, true, but magic is but a tool. The mage decides what to be.”

“Has there ever been a good necromancer?”

“I don’t know, Costin.” He laughed when he saw my victorious expression. “I don’t know if there has been, boy, but perhaps there could be. If necromancy happens to be where a good man’s talents lie, perhaps it could be practiced well. But to desecrate the dead requires a certain type of commitment, I think, and good men - truly good men - tend not to have that.”

The shiel, we could see in the distance now. I felt in a way peculiar, feeling that this conversation wouldn’t last as we walked through the door, that he would eat his lunch and chat with Belda and be unwilling to answer my questions, as he always had before. Rushing, I asked another. “Will you come with me, when I go - when I go to the university?”

He glanced at me, smiling slightly. “You think you’re ready, do you? They’ll only take you after the age of fifteen.”

“No, I mean… will you come with me when I do go…” ‘So I don’t have to be alone,’ I thought, but I wouldn’t say it out loud.

His tone sobered. It was a moment before he answered. The shiel drew very close. “Costin, I have… there are things I must accomplish. I can’t tell you of them, but some day… some day I’ll have to leave. There are things I must do which you aren’t ready for.”

“I am ready,” I insisted childishly, instantly regretting how it made me sound. “Or… if I’m not I know that I will be.”

He stopped me next to the goat pen, several steps from the door. And he hesitated a moment before meeting my eyes. “Costin. There will come a time when our paths will separate. There will come a time, perhaps soon, when the danger of my life will become far greater, and there will be things I must do, that… I can’t bring you along for. I’ve been… selfish, so far. Taking you with me as far as I have.” He cleared his throat. “And… there will come a time after when I may ask you to join me. For I could use your help. And if the answer is no, if… you get out into the real world and realize what a poor father I’ve been and want nothing to do with me… you’ll still be my son. And I’ll love you. Even if you become a foul necromancer and live in catacombs.” He smirked, then hesitated before pulling me into an awkward embrace, wrapping his arms around me tightly, my face pressing somewhat uncomfortably into the buttons of his coat, but I didn’t mind. It was brief - over before I had the chance to reciprocate, and then he was pulling away and turning to open the door, running a hand through his hair as he did so. Voices sounded from inside. I stood there strangely, staring at the door my father had disappeared through. Wait, voices? I followed him.

There was a man sitting at the table, staring at us, at my father. He was absolutely fixated.

“Ah!” Belda straightened from where she’d been pouring tea. “It’s nice to meet your friend, Toros, he got here not a few minutes ago. I’m sorry… I’m not quite sure I caught your name,” she said to the stranger.

He sat perfectly upright in flowing black robes and a tight- fitting bodypiece of completely unfamiliar origin. His long hair was flattened and smoothed back behind the ears, decorated at the ends with strands of apparent silver, and with individual locks separated by uncomfortably thick bundles of wire. It was evident, even seated, that he was very tall. Heavy eyebrows frowned on skin like bleached paper. And his lips were thin, pursed. “Fedor,” he said in a heavy, strange accent.

My father stood paused in the doorway.

“Is something wrong, Toros? You look a bit… peaked.” She’d been about to sit down, but now she stood, appraising my father. “Are you two… do you two not know each other?”

Fedor smiled. A wide, gummy smile with small teeth. “We have met before. Do you remember? Toros?”

“Get out of this house,” my father said calmly.

“Such few manners in this swine coop of a world.” The stranger sipped his tea. “Sour mudwater. Introduce me to your son.”

“Belda,” my father said calmly, “I must ask you to slowly back away. Come and stand behind me. Now.”

She looked aghast. “But-” Her protest died when he turned to look at her, and she meeked, eyes becoming very wide. Her feet began to creep backwards, but the stranger reached out with one long arm, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her roughly back to the table. “Oh!” she exclaimed. The woman’s eyes grew and grew.

“Let us behave, yes? You should teach your son some decency.”

“Who is he, father?” I whispered.

“Stay behind me, boy.”

“You’ve been peeking into places you don’t belong, Toros. There are things you don’t understand, things your kind… won’t understand.” Fedor inclined his head, peering behind Toros and meeting my curious eyes. “Your father has grown very bold, boy. Very bold. And very foolish.” My father said nothing, rooted and unmoving between us. Fedor stood.

I remember what a giant of a man he seemed to me, towering over us and with shoulders broad like a bull. He smiled again. One arm wrapped around Belda, gripping the whole of her throat in one hand… Her lips moved but no sound came. Her cheeks became red, eyes bulging, and then very quickly she was paling again, going limp until he held her up with his hand. As she faded in his grip, the stranger seemed to grow before my eyes. I could feel his presence pressing down on me, crushing me. What devilry magic was this?

“Run, Costin! Run!” I hesitated, afraid. And he pushed me, sending me tumbling, just as a silvery blue spear of light blew great holes in the doorway. My father’s raised hands were his only protection, and as the spear had reached him, it seemed simply to evaporate. He threw his own attack, with a crack like thunder, but I was turned away, running. Like a coward.

I took off through the amberwheat fields, the shiel quickly hidden from sight by thick stalks taller than grown men. Leaves lashed me as I ducked between rows. A hundred feet in, I waited, staring in the direction of the shiel, listening to the sounds of the magic break like the black powder crackers they launch into the sky during Liel. And I thought I felt the ground shake beneath me, forcing me to sit to catch my breath. A terrible feeling of nausea was coming over me, my head swimming precariously, air trapped down deep in my throat. I sucked in wheezing breaths.

When I think back on this moment, which I have many and many times over so many years, it’s always with dim resolution that I remember the fear I felt during that moment, trapped in the amberwheat field. A boy should not witness such things as I’d seen. However, it is with such remarkable clarity that I remember the hope that gradually took over. The delusional. Childlike. Fantasy. And how powerful could this stranger possibly be, that he could hope to best my father? How confident he had been, and how fearful my father had been, yet now they seemed, so it sounded, to fight as equals. And-and I did not truly know Belda to be dead, and the more I turned the horrible scene over and over in my head, the more I began to think she must not be, and I’d simply been confused in what I’d seen. And what incredible power they displayed! How cruel of my father to keep such a thing from me. And, of course, he must win. The greatest mage I know, after all.

It was some time before the thunder stopped. I waited for a long moment. My eyes were drawn to a thick column of smoke rising above, into the sky, dark and imposing against the clear day. Another long moment. Silence. The smoke continued growing. Standing, brushing dirt from my bottom. I started slowly, following the smoke, footsteps falling loudly in the strange quiet and thoughts of danger protesting in the back of my mind. I reached the end of the field of amberwheat and peered out, between stalks that leveled far above my head. In the distance, the shiel stood ruined. A stack of charcoal, barely recognizable as the home we’d spent a month living in. As I grew closer, and still heard no sound, I grew more cautious. It was eerie, such silence. When I’d become close enough to attract the goats whinnying, I found why they weren’t. Burnt, blackened four-legged bodies stood like statues, and the coop burnt to cinders around them. Even the grass was blackened, all around the house in a semicircle, in some places still warm enough that I could feel it through my shoes.

Voices. Fedor’s voice. Thoughts rushed to my father. Slowly I circled the house, eventually reaching the angle. Away from the warm, charcoal surface of the wood, I slowly edged around the corner, leaning all my weight on one foot to see.

He was bloody, tattered, mangled. His hair was missing in patches on one side, the flesh under it red, leaking, and his cheek on the same side was terribly torn, a piece of flesh, ripped, hanging to his jaw. A shoe was missing. An arm bent at an odd angle. It looked as though great claws had torn through his torso, and I quickly averted my gaze with horror when I realized his insides slightly spilled through. The stranger loomed over him, nearly intact except for one arm hanging slightly limp at his side. He held my father up with a hand on the collar of his shirt, speaking strange words in a foreign tongue. His voice was emotionless. I wondered dimly if it was the language we’d heard that day in the snow, that frightening world he’d showed me for the first time, with the people who danced and all of the horror and the red. That day that seemed so long ago.

I did not know so then, but the words he spoke were a prayer. The giant prayed over my father’s body, prayed for his soul. When he was finished, his head bowed, strands of long hair falling to cover his face.

My father’s head lolled to the side, his eyes finally finding me. The sudden terror in his expression asked “Why didn’t you run?” but he said, with a slight whisper that I read on his lips rather than heard, “I love you, Costin.” In the next second, his head fell back and his body sagged, the color draining from his face. And I knew he was dead.

The stranger released my father’s body with a sigh, letting him drop to the earth. A moment passed. And stretched. I knew it was dangerous, knew I should go and meekly hide, or run, flee until the air had left my lungs and the shoes on my feet had lost the sole. My body would not budge. I stood staring at the broken form of my father, a voice in my mind quietly insisting it could not be him.

The man set his knee on the ground, leaning over, patting down my father’s body with his one good hand. It was in a coat pocket, and he half ripped the pocket out with it. The stranger stood, arm extended, looking through the ariglass at the sun high in the sky. “So primitive,” he muttered. It was barely intelligible in his accent. “The arrogance of your people. And watching us like a stupid mutt through a keyhole.” I could not tell if it simply was the sunlight, but his hand seemed to begin to glow. I watched as his fingers closed on the ariglass, cutting through it with little effort. The glass fell to the ground in five pieces.

Then the giant removed something from a pocket of his robes, playing with it for a moment, before letting it fall to his side. I glimpsed the edge of it. Black, metallic. Small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. His gaze wandered. He stared straight into the sun, apparently unblinking. “Very beautiful, your world. Very beautiful. But stupid people. Like dogs in my world, like mutts. No thoughts, no manners. And it is very RUDE to stare, boy, didn’t anyone teach you that?” the man snapped, turning his head immediately to meet my eyes.

I should have ran. In that moment, if no other. But I stood, paralyzed in place. My eyes refused to separate from his. My legs trembled beneath me. Malevolence stared back. And violence, in his black eyes.

He looked away. Again at the sun.

“I will not hurt you, boy. Not today. Dalara has been sated.” He spat the last word sourly. “And you are a child and I am not a savage.” A long moment passed. Again I commanded my body to run and again it refused me. “Your father. He fought well. I am rarely wounded. Remember that, boy. Your father fought well.” He turned to look at me again. Those terrible black eyes met mine.

The device in his hand clicked, like the hand of a clock striking a significant hour, and the moment after, I was left staring at air. The stranger was gone.

#

Twilight had come. The shiel had collapsed further, falling in on itself, and now little more than a pile of black ash. I crouched by my father. I had chosen an angle of his remains that revealed the least gore, and in a distant corner of my mind I was also very thankful the light had faded so. Old tears crusted the rims of my eyes.

The bray of a mule sounded behind me. Creak of old wheels. I looked back over one shoulder. Nanou in his cart. The strap fell from his hands as I watched, drifting down. And the cart stopped suddenly, with the already frayed end of the strap trapped in the spoke of a wheel. Another bray as they jerked to a halt. Nanou stumbled off the cart, faded brown cap taken in one hand, the other habitually combing his greyed hair back in to place. He walked forward slowly, barely glancing at the body of my father and me crouched beside him. His eyes were fixed on the great pile of ash. After a moment, a long moment, he said in a level voice, “Where… ah, where is she?”

I almost spoke, words coming and tongue poised, but I didn’t. Words couldn’t be sufficient. And I didn’t want my voice to crack. He didn’t look at me.

“Belda!” He yelled at the surrounding forest. “Belda!” He turned in a circle, shouting. There was no response. Not the call of a bird, not the yelling of goats, and not a spoken word. With slow steps, he waded into the ash.

His trousers became black as pitch at the ankle after his first step, and shoes beneath now invisible in the fading light. His cap was clutched in front, as though for protection. Eventually he came to staring at something in the ash. Barely perceptible. A vague outline, next to where the roof had fallen and also turned to char. He stared for a long time. He did not cry, though his grip on the cap became noticeably firmer, and he closed his eyes for a long while before opening them again.

Then he was walking out of the ash, walking up to me, glancing at the body of my father. “We’re leaving, boy. We’re going.” He strode directly to the cart and bent over, attempting to untangle the strap from where it was stuck. The mule looked wide eyed, concerned, confused at the devastation.

“What?” my voice was high pitched, shrill.

“We’re going, boy. And you’re going to do your best to forget that man and all this ruin.”

“That man is my father. And I’m not leaving him!”

He came, shaking a finger at me and biting his words. “You will get in that cart or I will pick you up and drag you all the way there, boy, so help me. And this man, this - this fool should be forgotten by you, boy, forgotten! No more magery, boy. Not while I live.” His eyes began to tear. “I told him, I bloody warned him,” the old man muttered as he went back to the strap.

I stood staring at his back for a moment, head full of half formed replies. A hundred defenses of my father’s memory, a hundred cutting insults, a hundred spiteful retorts to tell him I would stay here and honor the dead, that I wasn’t getting on his stupid cart. But they were left unsaid. And I just stared at his back with hateful little eyes. An idea occurred to me. A terrible idea. But before I knew it I was picking through the coal, searching.

The ariglass had been destroyed. One of them. The spare, my father kept in a thick leather trunk under his bed. I’d found where it should be, but it was the thickest part of the ash, and I was covered head to toe in soot before I found it. The trunk was intact. Now black, but intact. Perfectly preserved. Symbols glowed slightly in the top, obscured by ash. I pulled and I heaved. The trunk came, causing me to fall, causing a puff of dust that set me into a coughing fit. But I righted myself, and I carefully unclasped the button that held it closed.

“NO, boy, no, you’ll leave it there!” I looked over my shoulder at him, but my hands searched eagerly through the clothes in the trunk. “You’ll leave it there, boy!”

My hands found the small leather sheath. “This is my inheritance!” I yelled. “This is mine!” I unclasped the sheath, pulling it out, making sure it was truly unmarked.

When his eyes alighted on it, Nanou’s face became very ugly; creased and dark. He spoke in a whisper. “Not on my life, boy. You’ll leave that here to ruin.”

“He’s my father! This is all I have left of him!”

“And you’ll leave it here. You will leave it here.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. Time passed. It was becoming difficult to see in the failing light. Eventually, I folded the sheath back over it, fixing the clasp back in place. My hand rose, and I slowly released it, dropping back into the trunk for him to clearly see.

“Now to the cart, boy. Best we get away from this accursed place.” His voice broke slightly as he said the last.

My other hand folded behind my back as I watched him for another moment in half defiance. That shutter in my mind opened, and I called on the summer wind. I called more of it than I ever had before, and as it came it seemed to scour all thoughts in my head, making me so dizzy I thought I might lose balance and fall.

“Venit ad manum,” I said under my breath. I could feel the leather sheath rising and rising, and just barely, at the apex of its trajectory, the very tips of my fingers secured around its edge. I tucked it quickly into the band of my trousers.

I tripped down from the great pile of ash, falling, getting it in my eyes. So dizzy the ground didn’t seem stable beneath me and my legs quivered as I regained my footing.

“Get on the cart, boy,” Nanou said coldly.