Honor-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book III ]

22

Ealin had been twelve years old the first time it happened. Her father had always been a well-respected mage, still studying his craft under the ancient archmage but with pupils of his own, but that summer, the old archmage had died, and her father, Jaeron, had ascended to his place.

Ealin herself kept busy in the Mage's Keep; she could not begin studying magic until she had grown another year, and so most of her days were filled with chores, from sweeping and dusting and laundering to helping to prepare the plain fare that was served at the keep. By night, her father gave her books to read and quizzed her on arcane subjects, for it was his ambition to have her follow in his footsteps as an apprentice to magecraft and the use of bloodstones.

At least, that was what she had always believed.

"There you are," he said one night, opening his chamber door in response to her knock.

"I am sorry, Father; have you been waiting for me?" She was carrying his evening tea on a tray, and as he held the door open for her, she crept through the chamber on quiet feet. She made a practice of being subtle and quiet and in every way avoiding any disturbance; the archmage and her apprentices were frequently in need of absolute silence for their studies and for their experiments.

"I have been."

"Well, here is your tea, Father. I'll come get the tray before you slee—"

"No, stay a minute, my dear."

Ealin set the tray on her father's tea table and looked up at him curiously. He had never been one for companionship; usually, his affections for her were muted, rendered with courtesies or curt words as she came and went throughout the day. She kept a room in the servants' quarters and seldom saw him, except that she was the one assigned to his wing of the Keep, the only one of the maidservants with kin among the mages.

"Come here."

Ealin followed her father's gesture, approaching his work table, whereupon lay the same huge book she had marveled at in her youth. Now that she was older and better-read, she could make out his steady, even script; moreover, she could make out the drawings he had carefully scribed onto one of the large pages—make them out, but not understand them.

"What are you working on, Father?" she asked, genuinely curious. She reached out, but her fingertips hovered an inch above the page. She was too frightened and too unworthy to touch his work.

"An experiment. A grand experiment, but a secret one. Can you keep a secret, my little bird?"

Ealin looked up at her father under her lashes, her heart skipping a beat. She had often craved his affection, ever since she had been a small child and, motherless, had been tended more by the female servants than by him. She knew that he loved her—on an intellectual level, she knew it, for he was her father and she his daughter. However, of embraces and sweetness and kindness there was little, and she often felt very alone.

When he called her his little bird, a token of affection that was so very rare and so strongly craved, she knew without consciously acknowledging it that she would do absolutely anything for him. "I can keep a secret very well, Father."

The archmage turned toward his book, reaching out to gently trace the edge of the page. "This is my most cherished study, my greatest work. This is the secret, Ealin. The secret to our ascendance to the true heights of our race."

He smiled, his fingertip trailing over a carefully-drawn funnel. Next to it he had sketched a curving metal tube ending in a wicked point. "The one thing the Arcborn have which we lack is magic. At the end of the day, it is such a small thing; we capture it easily with bloodstones. But someday...Someday, we, too, will have magic in our blood."