Page 15 of Strange Familiar

“I’ll tell him it’s an order from you,” Jadren replied with a wink. “You’re scarier than I am.”

The next few days were a bustle of visitors from near and far, their arrival assisted immensely by Gabriel banishing the rain and the myriad of House Phel water wizard minions bending their magic to the task of drying the roads again. With the re-emergence of the sun and warming spring in these milder climes, the orchards burst into bloom, echoed below by meadows of wildflowers. Alise took to long walks, partly to remove herself from notice, so no one would remember that she was supposed to be elsewhere, and also to practice her newly acquired skills.

Professor Seraphiel had been kind enough to teach Alise the basics of the dark arts, as a defense against Hanneil mind-control attempts. Though everyone in the Convocation seemed to swear by the dark arts, very few wizards at the academy actually studied them. Alise, in fact, had never even been to the dark arts wing until Cillian took her there to meet Professor Morghana Seraphiel. Whatever Alise had expected, the experience had been polar opposite of that. She’d learned a whole new way of seeing the world and the realm of wizardry during those few long hours with Professor Seraphiel.

Those lessons had stood her in good stead during that final confrontation with Gordon Hanneil—although she’d had to face the sobering realization that those skills that worked so well in self-defense could do nothing to protect Cillian. She bitterly regretted not being able to prevent Gordon from taking over Cillian’s mind.

Also, those abilities had backfired somewhat with Lady Harahel, but Alise suspected Cillian’s grandmother would have been suspicious of her regardless. More important, had Alise been more practiced at her defenses—especially the elusiveness Professor Seraphiel had emphasized—Lady Harahel wouldn’t have been able to read what thoughts she had. Which meant that Alise needed to concentrate on practicing those skills. She was only partly motivated by the anticipation of Morghana Seraphiel’s intense displeasure if she found Alise slacking.

Fortuitously, both the wild and the cultivated landscapes surrounding House Phel leant themselves perfectly to that practice, rooted as the dark arts were in the elements of earth, air, water, and fire. The first three could be found in abundance wherever she went in the area, and for the fourth, she summoned a little fire elemental and fed it whatever dry tinder she could find—which was frankly the greatest challenge.

She’d followed a path through the gloriously and sweetly blooming orchards and into a swampier area, cleaving to the much narrower, but at least consistently dry trail. Flowers burgeoned there also, but more subtly. Periwinkles peeped out between low rushes and exotic orchids dangled from spires amid the draping moss that hung in almost sinister curtains from the trees. Finding a relatively dry hummock, she took off her shoes—the better to dig her toes into the soil—and lit her small fire in a bowl she’d brought for the purpose.

Then she began the ritual Professor Seraphiel had taught her, calling in turn on the essence of the natural elements to cleanse and fill her mind. The dark arts operated in a totally different fashion from the more commonly used forms of wizardry, which was in part what made them so effective as a defense. It felt like using an entirely new muscle, but she was gaining facility with it. Practicing the novel, not yet familiar, and still unwieldy magics required all her concentration, which also served to keep her from thinking about Cillian.

Cillian, who hadn’t messaged her.

The silence from his direction eroded the edges of her attention, making her wonder what he was doing, how he felt about her, what he was thinking. She’d considered sending a message to him, but felt divided. First of all, she wasn’t sure a message would get through, which would leave her in the same position as now, except that she’d be even more on tenterhooks wondering if he’d not received her missive or if he’d elected not to respond. The possibility of the latter was truly what stopped her from taking action. She had her pride. She didn’t want to be tugging at his sleeve to pay attention to her. Cillian was a smart wizard. He’d easily guess where she’d gone—it wasn’t as if she had many options—and he knew where to find her.

If he wanted to.

Thinking that he didn’t want to hurt like a grinding ache, a constant abrasion against her pride and her heart. She couldn’t help remembering, how he’d rejected her in the carriage on the way to House Harahel. It could be that he couldn’t forgive her for leaving him vulnerable to Gordon Hanneil. Or for dragging him into this whole cursed business to begin with.

So, she did her best not to think. Practicing the deliberately mindless rituals of the dark arts—mindless in the sense that the practitioner strove to relax conscious control—helped to dismiss those haunting worries. Not to mention the practice served to focus her attention on what truly mattered: the many enemies seeking to once-again remove House Phel from the Convocation. She and Nic hadn’t talked again about all she’d confessed upon her arrival. Nic had been consumed with recovering from labor and learning to care for Baby Bria, but that day would inevitably arrive.

If Cillian, or House Harahel, hadn’t contacted them by then with the results of their audit of the Phel archives, Alise didn’t know what they’d do. But that was a question for another hour on another day. In the meanwhile, she immersed herself in the ritual practice of the dark arts.

After a while, she became aware of someone else present, practicing with her. A wizard who’d moved so seamlessly into the ritual chants and gestures, his magic effortlessly blending in with hers and that of their environment, that his arrival had felt no different to her from that of the birds in the trees, or the fish swimming below, or the small rodents busily harvesting tender shoots in the rushes. In her startlement, she bobbled the next phrase of the ritual, but he smoothly carried it through, his bass voice like the sustaining earth itself.

As she recovered, she focused on the dark-skinned, genial face of Wizard Asa, the Refoel healer who’d taken up permanent residence at House Phel. His wizard-black eyes sparkled with warm amusement at her surprise, and he continued the ritual with the ease of long practice. His healing wizardry suffused the magic of the dark arts with a green freshness that buoyed what she’d managed to draw, giving the defenses she wove a new and effervescent resilience. She found herself smiling and he grinned back, making her realize how rarely she’d seen him smile since he lost his familiar, Laryn. He was raising their baby, Cornelis, alone and seemed more or less content on the occasions she’d glimpsed him. But seeing this genuine smile reminded her of how fully happy he’d once seemed—and how that had changed.

They finished together, allowing the last note to hum in the soft spring air, the buoyant magic they’d raised together to settle again, filling the empty spaces in their magic reservoirs. As the magic and the moment of perfect communion quieted, then dissipated, Asa cocked his head. “I didn’t think you were studying the dark arts at Convocation Academy.”

“Professor Seraphiel took me on as a special case,” Alise answered judiciously. Asa was firmly on the side of House Phel, but she didn’t know how much Nic and Gabriel took him into their confidence.

“Ah, I see.” Asa nodded knowingly, perhaps seeing too much, then squatted and opened a pack, extracting an apple and tossing it to her.

She caught it automatically, bemused, and suddenly hungry. “Thank you.”

“I have several.” He bit into one. “From last autumn’s harvest, but all the sweeter for that. Water?”

Accepting the water bottle—one of House Phel’s special brand of flasks that never ran out of clean, cool water—she drank, handed it back, then bit into the apple appreciatively, hmming in pleasure at the sweet flavor. “Is it standard in the training for healing wizards to study the dark arts?” she asked, probing as she normally wouldn’t, but figuring he’d given her license.

“Not in the least,” he answered with a chuckle, then tipped his head back to look at the overarching limbs, trailing moss and orchids, perhaps to the sky beyond. “But I was always drawn to the dark arts. I received permission from my house to take courses as electives, so long as I maintained my standing in the healing tracks.” He glanced at her. “I studied quite a bit with Morghana Seraphiel and remember her fondly, if with a wince for those grueling sessions.”

Alise laughed with him. “Oh yes.”

“That’s part of why I wanted to come to House Phel, you know,” Asa said, stretching out his long legs, “when Lord and Lady Phel issued the invitation to fill out their staff. I knew Meresin would give me ample opportunity to be out in nature, to practice my hobby.” His half-grin let her know the practice meant far more to him than that. It faded, and he shook his head. “I knew Laryn didn’t want to come here. She loved Convocation Center and everything to do with society there. We bonded as wizard and familiar because of the Betrothal Trials, did you know?”

Alise nodded, though she wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling her all of this. Asa sighed heavily. “It’s a cursed system, those trials. I don’t know why I went along with it except that I wanted to be able to choose my placement at a high house, largely so I could practice the dark arts untroubled. To have that freedom of choice, I needed a powerful familiar. I was an arrogant, self-involved fool in many ways, but the greatest one was this implicit belief that Laryn and I matched because it was meant to be. That we’d find our way into being harmonious partners and parents. Looking back, I can see now that I mostly didn’t want to be bothered with courting a familiar. I liked the idea of the trials deciding for us, so I could then go on to focus on what I wanted from life.”

“You wouldn’t be alone among wizards, feeling that way,” Alise suggested. How much of her own resistance to even the concept of bonding a familiar came from not wanting to deal with a similar courtship?

“No, but that’s hardly flattering, given the attitudes of our cohort toward familiars,” he replied wryly. “Laryn was, predictably, miserable here. She was miserable before that, frankly. We turned out to be compatible fertility-wise, but in no other way. From the beginning, we made each other unhappy.”

“From what I recall of Laryn,” Alise offered, “though I was younger, she ran in the same circles as Nic and visited House Elal a few times, she was never a happy person. At least, not after she manifested as a familiar.”

“Many familiars are not and who can blame them? It’s a raw deal, the life of a familiar in the Convocation.” He gazed at her steadily. “I want you to know, Wizard Alise, that part of why I agreed to having you sever the bond between Laryn and me was in the hope that she might be able to move on and find happiness with another wizard, or in living unbonded. It wasn’t all vengeance.”

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