Book 3, Chapter 20

In a way, figuring out the first step of brakvaw spell casting when I did was perfect timing, since it marked a good point to take a break and return to Sanctuary. I could have gone home, resupplied, and returned to Eyrie Peak all in the same day, but I gave myself a few days because we were coming up on the anniversary of my time in Derro four years ago.

To be more specific, in two days, the orphan group I’d gotten involved with would be observing the anniversary of the day most of them had been murdered. I wasn’t the one who’d killed them, but my presence had directly resulted in it happening. Enemies I’d made had done some social tracking and learned of my association with the orphan crew, then killed most of them trying to find out more about me.

Of all the children who’d fled Derro to live here at my invitation, only five remained. Others had settled in various villages are trading company had contact with for various reasons, whether they wanted to live around more people, or away from the magic that was commonplace in Sanctuary, or, in some cases, just didn’t want to be near me. Those kids weren’t exactly wrong to see my presence as the cause of that nightmare day.

Every year, I joined the remaining orphans, led by Juby, in a small ceremony. I hadn’t missed one yet, but I expected it to happen sooner or later. This might have been the year, but through a lucky coincidence, I was home just in time for it.

It was easy to find Juby that morning, just a few simple scrying spells that swept across the public areas of our growing village. I caught up to him in the fields, just starting his work day and casting a few spells to increase his strength.

“Hi,” he said softly when I approached.

“Hello. Same place as usual this year?”

Juby nodded soberly. Though he was normally upbeat and outgoing, all the orphan kids got morose this time of year. Nobody held it against them, and nobody would have said a word if he’d taken the day off, but Juby never did. I’d asked him why once, and he’d just told me that it helped him to keep busy.

“Yes,” he said after a pause. “Toro isn’t coming this year, says he needs to move on. I think he’s going to join Ryla’s trade runs as soon as he’s old enough that she’ll let him come. He might not come back.”

“That happens as people get older,” I said. “Goals change. They have new experiences, discover more of the world. It’s no one’s fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know. I do, really. Just feels like no matter what I do, I can’t hold things together.”

“You can’t,” I agreed. “And it’s not your job to try. You can help people, maybe protect them or show them how to fend for themselves, but eventually, they’re going to go their own way to do their own thing. You’ll do it too, someday. Probably the day the last one of the orphans grows up and doesn’t need you anymore.”

“Won’t matter then,” Juby said.

“I suppose not from your perspective.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re busy trying to keep your friends safe and happy, same as you did back in Derro. I would hope that you’re finding the job a lot easier here. But from my perspective, I’m doing the same thing for you and a lot of other people, most of whom appreciate the hot water enchantments far more than they appreciate the guy who made them. And eventually, they’ll leave. It’s already happened for a few people, for various reasons. There’s nothing wrong with that, no reason to feel guilty.”

Juby snorted. “I guess that makes sense, but it still feels like I’m letting them down.”

“We go through this every year,” I told him. “What happened wasn’t your fault. You didn’t decide to kill those people. Yes, you made some choices that resulted in someone else killing them, but so did I. If I’d never come to Derro, there’d be a lot of people alive right now who aren’t. And maybe some other people would be dead in their place.”

“You know that doesn’t make me feel any better,” Juby said.

“That’s all I’ve got for you.”

The boy sighed. We looked about the same age now, but mentally, we were very different. I could scarcely remember wrestling with the kind of issues he had, and I was sure that I’d taken a much easier way out. When I’d been his age for real, I’d been an awful person, a murderer and a neophyte necromancer. I’d lied to my friends and hidden my clandestine activities, and then when I’d been discovered, I’d murdered them to keep myself safe.

Juby just felt guilty about not being able to do a better job protecting the people he cared about and had a bit of an abandonment complex, as if it was his fault that everyone was growing apart as they got older. If this guy ever had kids, they were going to break his heart just by growing up.

I probably wasn’t the best person to try to cheer him up. I’d always been a good deal more coldly practical about relationships, and even in my new life, my immediate family were the only people I truly cared about. For everyone else, assistance given was more transactional, or when it cost me little enough.

“I’ve got to get started,” Juby said. “I’ll see you tonight, Keiran.”

  *

Their ceremony was a simple thing. The orphans who still lived here gathered at dusk on a bluff just east of the village. Carried with them were nineteen candles, one for each person who’d died when a sadistic Wolf Pack mage who’d gone by the name of Monolith had attacked them.

I stood in the background silently while Juby lit each candle and spoke the name of one of his dead friends. “Byon,” he said on one candle, before taking a step over to the next. “Nevin. Kag. Bliyo.”

Each candle was set in an alcove shaped in a stone memorial I’d raised for this purpose. It was a half-circle twenty feet long, with the cut outs on the inside so we could see all nineteen candles at the same time.

“Tanner,” Juby said as he lit the fifth candle.

Tanner was the orphan I’d been closest too. He’d wanted to learn magic so badly that he’d been willing to lie about what he knew in order to convince me to make a deal with him. The sad thing was that if he’d been honest about how little of his story was actually true and how much of it was speculation, I still would have helped him get started, but he had lied to me about almost everything, and only the fact that I’d had the skills of an archmage and tools beyond anything modern-day mages could replicate had allowed me to find my way to my goal.

Either way, he was just as dead.

The candles were all lit, one at a time, and then the orphans did what they always did. They told stories about the dead, stories they’d all heard a hundred times, stories that they’d lived through. And while they enacted their rituals for the fourth anniversary of their friends’ deaths, I stood a silent vigil, my magic keeping the candles safe from the blowing winds the swirled across the bluff.

I didn’t know if this event made any of them feel better, or if they just thought it was a way to honor the people they’d lost. Maybe some of them just thought they had an obligation to attend, regardless of their personal feelings. I could have found out easily enough. A simple mind reading spell would have satisfied my curiosity, but of all the pointless things to waste my mana on, invading the privacy of a bunch of kids while they mourned their dead friends was at the bottom of the list.

The candles started to burn low, having only been made to last for a few hours anyway, and I made my exit from the vigil. A simple step backward into the darkness and a twist of magic was all it took to walk through the shadows back to the village, where Mother was sitting at our kitchen table. The light enchantment was running, but dimly.

“How was it?” she asked.

“Same as every year,” I said. “I’m honestly not sure if my presence there helps or hurts them.”

“Helps,” Mother said decisively. “The ones who blamed you refused to follow you here in the first place or left as soon as they could. No one left thinks it’s your fault.”

“I suppose that’s sound logic.”

“Here,” she said, motioning to the chair opposite hers. “I made you some tea.”

I glanced down at the table and saw a tea pot with two cups. One was half full, sitting in front of her, but the other was still empty. I poured myself a cup as I slid into my seat. “You don’t have to wait up for me, you know.”

“I know, but I wanted to.”

“Well, thanks for the tea.”

“It was no problem. Honestly, it feels like cheating cooking with all this magic. Making tea barely takes any more effort than to want it these days.”

“The whole world used to be like that,” I said. “Not for the poor people, of course, but anyone with the means had luxuries far greater than what I put together here.”

“I can hardly imagine greater luxuries,” she said.

That was because my parents had spent their entire lives as exploited farmers whose whole village struggled to survive while they tried to pry crops out of an arid wasteland with what little magic they had and their scummy governor stole every drop that was left over. Just having an actual door on their home was more of a luxury than they’d been used to.

I drank the tea slowly while my mother and I talked. It was a nice break from my normal activities. Once or twice a year, I tried to step away from everything and just relax. No alchemy, no projects, no lessons given, no emergencies to handle. It was nice to appreciate everything I’d already accomplished, even if only for a moment.

I had a suspicion that the next decade or so of my life was going to be hectic. I’d been setting the stage for the last few years, and soon, I’d be ready to step out onto it. Unlike my time battling the Wolf Pack, I had no pressing need to rush into things before I was fully prepared. My family was safe and, as far as I knew, nobody was targeting Sanctuary, though the Ghalin party’s success in forcing a teleport via one of the platforms I’d set out around the island remained a security risk.

I’d have to upgrade them with some sort of ward key to restrict access. It would drastically decrease the platforms’ mana efficiency, but it was worth it since soon, I wouldn’t be here to handle any threats that might enter the valley that way – not that there’d been any real threats since we’d moved here.

I shook that thought away. There was plenty of time to work later. For now, I was determined to enjoy the rest of my short vacation. Everything else could wait another day or two.

“Senica has been harassing me to see these giant birds you told us about,” Mother said. “I keep telling her no, but she’s got it in her head and isn’t giving up.”

“I don’t plan on being there much longer. Now that I’ve picked up the basics of their magical system, I should be able to adapt it to my own fairly quickly,” I replied. “After that, it’s just a matter of fulfilling my end of the bargain.”

So much for not talking about work.