Chương 18: Chapter 17: A Reluctant Parting

++It was at Winzorth where I first understood just how much knowledge had been created about the arcane since my original life, and just how little I now understood. I was starting to get a hang of the new techniques of evocation, but enchantment and conjuration were all but unknown to me. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E I had made myself scarce long before my father emerged from his study, and he did not call on me for some time after that.

I was pleased with the fact, for I was certain that in his rage he may well have struck me as he did my mother were he to speak with me too soon. Now I knew that his short temper was not limited to only lashing out at those outside our family. Now I knew that being in my own home did not, by any means, make me safe from violence. It was half a day before my father's rage subsided enough to call on me, though even then I answered his summons hesitantly and while keeping myself braced.

He did not look anything like as angry as I had heard him earlier, upon my entering the study, but his fury could return at a moment's notice. I kept on edge.

"Your mother and I have talked, Isabel," he began, not looking at me. His desk was different, I noticed. Replaced. Of course it was, he had laid a fist upon it earlier in anger, and the wood had stood no chance against his strength. No more chance than my bones would. My father's voice snapped me back to focus like he had yanked my thoughts on the end of a rope.

"You will be going to Winzorth," he told me.

"Just as you wished." I knew it would be expected for me to grin and giggle, as children inevitably do when their desires are satisfied, but now I feared that doing so might enrage my father.

"Thank you father," I smiled instead. My expression was carefully muted, but I let him see some glimmer of the joy he would have expected to shine through. To my pleasant surprise, it seemed to make my father relax, and I watched as he melted back into his chair with a sigh.

"Both of my eldest are leaving this mansion at the same time, because I can't protect them." He looked at me with sad, longing eyes that left me rather certain I was about to be subjected to some extremely tedious emotional discussion.

"What does that say about me? What does it say about me as a man?" I suspected that there was a wrong answer here, though now that I was becoming increasingly certain I was not about to be hit, the mental effort of trying to dance around all the pitfalls in this conversation seemed terribly tedious.

"I do not know," I said instead. My father looked suddenly self-conscious, apparently realising the absurdity of asking such a question to an eight year-old.

"Forgive me, I'm rambling," he smiled. I nodded politely, hiding my irritation and resisting the urge to just directly ask if I could leave. Fortunately, it did not take much longer before I was granted permission and made my way out of the study. All things considered, I deemed the meeting to have gone relatively well. It certainly could have been more tedious. By the time I returned to my own room, I was utterly exhausted.

Blakely surprised me by speaking as I was about to step inside, his voice cutting starkly over the silent corridor. I was not used to hearing him talk, and what he actually said made it all the more jarring.

"You're weird," he told me. I paused, turned and looked back at him.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked him.

"You're weird," he repeated. I waited for some elaboration, but it never came. He seemed to think he had said enough.

"In what regard?" I asked, burying my irritation.

"In the regard that you say shit like 'in what regard' as an eight year-old." He apparently was not heeding my father's instructions to keep from swearing around me any more than he was heeding social protocol. I felt my new body's little heart begin to race as I realised how close this topic was to a devastating truth.

"I read a lot, and have always been good with language," I replied, defensively.

"Leave me alone and shut up." Throwing in a bit of childish petulance would, I hoped, defuse this, perhaps make the man think this conversation was beneath him or, at best, make him doubt whatever conclusions he was already drawing. Instead it just had his eyes narrow.

"For the record, I don't give a crap what your deal is," he told me.

"Just so long as we're on the same page and not treating each other like idiots." Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. My mouth suddenly dry, I just nodded and headed into my room. The days flitted by until I was ready to depart for Winzorth. As the date drew nearer, I found myself oddly sentimental about it.

There was a fondness for the aged walls of the Vornholt estate that I had not noticed myself feeling, and the thought of leaving my mother, at least, left a tugging in my gut. Feelings towards my apparently randomly-violent father were significantly more complicated, but even with him I felt a certain fondness. He had defended me while I lived as a helpless child, and was now securing me a place where I could expand my powers better than ever.

He and my mother, for that alone if not for anything else, deserved respect. Respect… an interesting feeling. I had respected many humans over my life, though none quite like my new parents. It was a different, more intimate sort of arrangement I had with them. To be a child in someone's home is to see them in a way that no adult— no adult—will ever be permitted to. I cannot say that I entirely liked being privy to so much, but it was, if nothing else, a fascinating new experience.

I would not be having anything like that at the Winzorth Institute, however. I knew that much even before setting off for it, the atmosphere there would be far more formal, and far more distant. Would I trade this comfort, familiarity and closeness for the wonders of this new era's greatest magical academy? Yes, I would. Instantly, and without a moment's doubt. Even with all the feelings washing through me as I waited, I was counting by the seconds until departure.

When, at last, the time came, Agrian and I were able to travel in a style that was new to even myself. I had expected a long and arduous journey by carriage, instead we were formally dressed one day, kissed goodbye by our weeping mother and grimly smiled at by our stoic father, and ushered out with them into the front of the mansion just in time to see a vessel I can only describe as a distant, skybound ship approaching. It was different from an ocean vessel, clearly.

The bottom was far flatter, and it was nowhere near as tall. Longer and with a more rounded front, shaped almost like the solid slugs fired from a rifle. There were, of course, no sails to speak of, because this vehicle propelled itself high in the air with magic instead of wind. Even from miles distant I could see the energies at work around it, watched them flare up at its rear with all the intensity of a blast furnace. I could not have mustered even a hundredth of the power I was watching unleashed now.

Nor could Agrian, nor could Doctor Brown. Nor could all three of us working together. My father himself looked rather daunted by the approaching sight, while my mother, interestingly, was less so.

"A cloudscraper," my father murmured. He shot a look at Doctor Brown, assembled with us and seeming rather miserable. I could sympathise with the man, he had no doubt fought so hard to rescue me only in the hopes of continuing to profit from his studies of me. Still, if nothing else he had been rewarded with an extra six months to write whatever documentation he planned on publishing.

"I've seen a few," the Doctor volunteered. I would wager the Baroness has seen more, however. He looked at my mother expectantly, and she flushed with a smile. All physical signs of my father striking her had vanished, as far as I could tell, though I sensed the incident was not forgotten.

"They're more common around Laugrey," my mother explained. I knew Laugrey was the capital of Garamon, and that her original family hailed from there. It did not surprise me to hear that sights such as this were commonplace at the heart of the Empire, the fact that the government of such a sprawling civilisation rested there would demand a certain quality of transportation for their members. I turned back to this one.

"Are they used for anything other than personal transport? Like trade? Cargo hauling?" She chuckled.

"No, Isabel, they're far too expensive and difficult to make for that. It would be like using a prized racehorse to drive a plow." I saw what she meant as the vessel drew nearer. Though it was more than a horizon away, within the span of that brief conversation it closed in quickly enough that we had just a few seconds to wait before it finished arriving once the last words were exchanged. And that was with it decelerating for much of the remaining distance.

Up close, I could see that it was larger than the ocean vessels I had known before my imprisonment. Dozens of yards long, perhaps ten wide, and when it came down onto the ground it was with an unfathomable weight. I thought I felt the ground shake for a moment as its mass settled. Then the doors opened, and the men emerged.

Three in all, one elder flanked by two larger men in armour, with the lead man looking friendly and warm, and his two followers looking like they were imagining how they would go about killing each and every person present. My father took Agrian and my hands and walked ahead to meet them halfway to the mansion, his face stony as we drew nearer. Just beyond earshot of them, he began muttering.

"Warriors of the third order, I'd bet. Damned magicians can't even walk around without making sure they're guarded by sufficiently powerful babysitters." He did, I would note, have a point there. Back at the peak of my powers, I had rarely gone anywhere without at least several martial-type servitors with sufficient power to protect me. It is the curse of a magician to find his body weaker than his mind. At least until I finally cracked the secret to my father's inhuman strength.

The group stopped a few paces short of us, and we did likewise with them. Moments passed in silence before the lead man broke it.

"Baron Vornholt I presume," he smiled still, though I saw that it did not come even close to touching his eyes.

"My name is Professor Ludvar Bogern, Master of Conjuration and High Adept of the arcane. I am here to pick up your children and escort them to the Winzorth Institute, where they can begin their tutoring in the ways of magic." My father nodded, patted Agrian on the head and knelt down to kiss me on the cheek.

"Both of you do our family proud," he told us.

"Understand? Be good and be brave, you'll be back here again come winter." Agrian was trying not to cry, and I did not wish for him to fail in front of our father. I hugged the Baron by way of distraction, giving my brother ample time to control himself and shuffle on for the cloudscraper. Then I was heading after him. Both of us were in the skies shortly after.