Page 8 of Strange Familiar (Warriors of Magic #2)

~8~

A lise held her infant niece in her arms and could think of nothing but the miraculous appearance of this whole new life. An hour before, there had been no Bria in the world; now Alise loved this baby, this child of her sister, this daughter of a dark wizard, with every fiber of her being.

“I am your Auntie Alise,” she whispered to the red-faced baby, nuzzling the so-soft skin, the silky skein of black hair over the perfect roundness of her head. “And I will be there for you always. No matter if you are wizard or familiar. No matter what house you choose or what path you take. No matter who threatens you or even looks at you sideways. You call on Auntie Alise and I’ll take care of everything.”

“Big promises,” Quinn teased, practically sitting on her hands. The Byssan familiar who lived at House Phel with her bonded wizard and sister looked on enviously as Alise held Bria. Nic was sleeping in the next room, Gabriel sitting in with her and glaring thunderously at anyone tending to her, including Asa, the Refoel healer. That meant the visitors got to play with the baby, Wizard Qaya overseeing them with far more benevolence.

“If anyone can fulfill promises like that, Alise can,” Iliana said staunchly. The redhead wasn’t being nearly so patient, her hands partly extended, fingers wiggling. “Han and I would be in Sammael chains if Alise hadn’t saved us. She’s the best fairy, I mean, wizardly, godmother a baby could have. Is it my turn to hold Bria yet?”

“Don’t you try to take my baby,” Alise warned, not entirely teasing. Holding Bria, feeling this amazing love that seemed to be born out of nowhere, soothed her strained heart like nothing she’d have imagined could.

“I’m pretty sure that’s my baby,” a new voice announced. Jadren El-Adrel—now Lord El-Adrel, Alise reminded herself, no matter how unlikely that sounded—deftly snagged Bria from Alise’s cradling arms.

“Hey,” Alise protested. Behind Jadren, Seliah rolled her eyes, tossing back her waist-length, shining black hair.

“You don’t even like babies,” Seliah informed Jadren, who indeed held Bria awkwardly. Wizard Qaya had already intervened to adjust his hold.

“I like babies,” Jadren countered. “I like you, don’t I?”

“Ha ha.” Seliah glared at him, though she looked too pleased to make it convincing, and she tickled Bria’s cheek before glancing at the closed door, then Alise. “How is Nic? And has my brother lost his mind in an overprotective frenzy yet?”

Quinn and Illiana tried to restrain their giggles and Alise shook her head. “Just about, though both Nic and Bria are strong and healthy, so he’s backing down from full wizard meltdown.” Thunder boomed above and Alise winced. It had been pouring rain nonstop since Nic went into labor.

“Everything is flooding,” Jadren commented. “Slowed us down, which is why we’re so late getting here. Someone needs to slap His Phelness upside the head and get him to control his feelings.”

“Good idea,” Seliah said, slipping Bria from Jadren’s hold, using a very similar technique to steal the baby that he had. “You go do that.”

“Really, Lady El-Adrel,” Illiana said meekly, but with a pronounced whine, “it was my turn next.

“I’m not bearding the lion in his den,” Jadren replied to Seliah, both of them ignoring the pouting Iliana. “I vote for Baby Elal here. She’s not doing anything anyway.”

The two of them exchanged a brief glance, then turned on Alise. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Convocation Academy?” Seliah asked, frowning a little.

“She probably got kicked out again,” Jadren observed, stroking his short, auburn beard, wizard-black eyes full of teasing glee. “Getting to be a bad habit. Baby Elal here is apparently going for the Convocation record on expulsions.”

“Only because you never went,” Alise retorted. “If you had, Lord El-Adrel, no one could have hope to beat your record of transgressions.”

“Fair enough,” he admitted.

“And,” she continued before he could, “I’ve never once been expelled, only placed on probation. I’m absent from the academy at the moment with full knowledge and permission from the provost.” That was mostly true, even if Provost Uriel thought she was at House Harahel with Cillian and the Phel archives. “I’m here for the same reason you are, visiting family and a new baby. Lastly, it’s Phel now. Though I’m officially not the youngest Phel anymore, so you can’t call me Baby Phel.”

Jadren shook his head, making a sad face at Seliah. “They grow up and get mouthy so fast.”

“You bring it on yourself,” Seliah retorted.

“True enough. Always have.”

Seliah handed the baby to Iliana who accepted the sleeping bundle with a quiet squeal of happiness. “Let’s go in and see my brother and heart-sister.” She glanced at Alise, not Wizard Qaya, which came as a surprise. “If it’s all right to go in?”

Though not the highest-ranked person in the room, by any stretch, Alise realized Seliah was according her the respect of being the highest ranked of the Phel household, an acknowledgement of her place in the family and in House Phel that Alise sorely needed after the debacle with Lady Harahel.

“Of course,” she answered Seliah, who she suspected knew exactly what she was doing. “Go ahead. And tell Lord Phel we’re begging him to stop the rain.”

“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.”

Alise gazed back at him, beyond surprised—and realizing that this confession had been the aim of this conversation all along. Perhaps of him joining her in the dark arts ritual to begin with, establishing trust and all. He regarded her steadily, seeming to acknowledge her thoughts.

“Even after all Laryn did?” She asked. “Betraying Nic so profoundly…”

“I’m not saying she didn’t deserve consequences for her reprehensible actions, and Lord and Lady Phel were absolutely justified in meting out any justice they found appropriate.”

“But with Laryn being pregnant with Cornelis?”

“Even so.” Asa stared off into the distance. “I wouldn’t have blamed them and I was resigned to losing them both—the familiar I’d tried to love and the unborn child I already loved without reservation. So you see…” His gaze returned to hers. “When you offered to sever the bond between us, I leapt at the opportunity. And, as a healing wizard, I could forecast the potential risks. I was up front with Laryn about those risks, and she agreed to it, too, remember.”

“And died anyway,” Alise pointed out bitterly. Along with Maman. Alise might as well paint her hands with their blood.

“That’s my point, Wizard Alise,” Asa said with quiet authority. “Laryn lived to deliver Cornelis, for which we were both grateful beyond measure. Laryn said as much to me before she passed, that at least she’d brought him into the world. I think she regretted, in the end, how she’d let bitterness and misery consume her.”

Alise nodded, too choked up to speak.

“You gave us all three a great gift,” Asa continued soberly. “Your ability to sever the wizard–familiar bond can change the face of the Convocation.”

“And kill a lot of familiars in the process.”

“It’s a new technique. Do you have any idea how many new healing techniques employed through desperation end in killing the patient rather than saving them? You’ll work it out. Don’t reject this revolutionary ability because you’re afraid of the damage it could do in its unpolished state.”

She nodded, slowly, turning that thought over. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good. That’s all I ask.” Asa stood, slapping his hands on thighs muscular from his long hikes. “Ready to head back to the manse? The naming ceremony will begin soon.”

“Yes.” She stood, chucking her apple core into the water. “Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary. I have Cornelis because of you. Which is good, as I’ll never bond a familiar again,” he added darkly, “even if I forgive myself for the role I played in Laryn’s self-destruction, in my pride, arrogance, and self-involvement.”

“Thy name is wizard,” she offered ruefully and he grimaced in agreement.

Once off the narrow bog trail and on the wider path through the orchard, they strolled side by side. “You know,” she told him, coming to a decision, “wizards can share magic with each other.”

Asa slid her a curious glance. “Of course. They just rarely do.”

“Competition, pride, self-involvement, arrogance,” she listed on her fingers.

He laughed. “Thy name is wizard. Yes, I get you.”

“I practiced magic sharing a fair amount with Wizard Cillian Harahel at Convocation Archives. I can’t tell you too much about the particulars,” she added hastily, to fend off the inevitable questions.

Asa laid a finger alongside his nose. “I can guess, but enough said. Did you find it worked as well as receiving magic from a familiar?”

“Well, I’ve obviously never had a bonded familiar, but… yes.” The experience of giving and receiving magic had been transporting, intimate, even sexual. “It’s something for you to consider, since you don’t want another familiar, for which I don’t blame you.”

“Hmm. I’ve received magic from wizards from time to time, but it wasn’t as… effortless as drawing from Laryn. Tell me, do you think it’s necessary to be emotionally and physically involved with the other wizard?”

Alise tripped on a root, glancing quickly at Asa, who watched her with a canny sparkle in his black eyes. “Oh, ah, no. You see, Archivist Harahel and I… We did not have that kind of relationship.” Her face grew hot at the lie. “It was a matter of exigency.”

Asa nodded, dark lips curved in a knowing smile. “If that’s the position you wish to claim, I won’t gainsay you.”

There was nothing to say to that, Alise decided, so she simply inclined her head in acknowledgement, keeping her mouth firmly shut, as she should have done in the first place.

The naming ceremony wasn’t as grand as some of those Alise had attended at House Elal. Pretty much everyone who lived at House Phel wanted to attend the naming of the first of the new generation of Phels, however, so they held the ceremony in the grand ballroom, lavishly decorated with spring flowers. The weather had turned chilly as evening came on, with a soaking, naturally formed drizzle falling, so the windows had been closed and fires lit in the grand fireplaces.

Gabriel’s parents held young Bria, up on the dais, while Gabriel performed the ritual according to Nic’s whispered prompts. “I name thee Gabriella Phel, treasured child of House Phel. I also name the magic of your rightful heritage. Water.” He anointed the infant’s forehead with water he’d purified.

“Moon.” He laid moonlight in a shimmering band across her brow. “And the spirit world.” Drawing on Nic’s Elal magic, he summoned elementals to represent that part of her heritage, too. He nodded to Alise, who had changed into the one formal gown she’d brought. At least on this frenzied escape to House Phel she’d packed outfits suitable for a variety of occasions, if only because she’d thought she’d need them at House Harahel.

She stepped up to Gabriel’s beaming parents, exchanged a smile with them, and set a gentle hand on Bria’s forehead. “I bestow upon thee a guardian spirit to watch over and protect you.” She’d summoned and tamed the spirit for Bria, tasking it to interfere as it was able, should the child stumble into danger, and also to alert Nic and Gabriel if anything unusual happened. Alise, Nic, and their brother, Nander, had all had such protectors when they were little. The efficacy of the guardians tended to fade over time, especially as the child grew more mobile and unpredictable, exhibiting more complex behaviors and motivations. Certainly Alise and her siblings—especially all being sensitive to spirit magic—had learned how to duck their protectors at a fairly young age.

Children possessing spirit magic quickly figure out who is tattling on them and spirits as a rule aren’t that bright. No one could say yet whether Bria would end up with magical potential scores in spirit magic, or any magic at all, but the guardian would serve to look out for the child in her most vulnerable years. Knowing that, Gabriel and Nic gave her grateful smiles, and Alise felt the warm embrace of truly belonging to a family. Bria’s unfocused gaze followed the spirit and she blew bubbles at it as it flew around her head and nestled by her cheek. The affinity boded well for Bria’s potential in spirit magic.

Seliah and Jadren were next, presenting Bria with a clockwork doll made with El-Adrel magic that looked lifelike and was so stunningly lovely, with shiny, soft copper skin, that the child immediately reached for it with wide eyes and grabby hands.

Wizard Asa stepped forward, adding a gift of healing magic to keep Bria strong and vital through her early years. One by one, other wizards, familiars, and mundane family, stepped up with gifts tangible and magical, tears and laughter intertwining at the celebration of Bria’s fresh new life and limitless possibilities.

It was an event of pure joy and celebration. Until it wasn’t.

Alise sensed the breach in the spirit-patrolled boundaries around House Phel at the same moment the voice rang out.

“Did someone forget to invite me?” Piers Elal inquired.