Father lifted his own dark staff and began. Unlike when we’d removed the house mark, the pain didn’t begin small and build, it just hit at full force all at once. I gasped. My father hesitated the barest second before continuing. I clenched my teeth. The feeling was no worse than the pain I’d felt a hundred times, but now I wasn’t paralyzed. I could scream if I wanted to, but I knew that I must not. Looking at my father, I could see the strain on his face. The spell itself was difficult, but what he was finding more difficult was watching me in pain. If I gave in to the impulse to scream, it would disrupt things irreparably. I closed my eyes, but that didn’t help. A low groan escaped me, and I heard my father’s voice falter again. Resolutely I gritted my teeth tighter. I must not make a sound. I could feel the tugging as the spell gradually separated the collar from its magical grip on my life force. That hurt too, a second pain added to the first, as if little bits of me were being torn off along with the collar. I could almost picture the collar coming away, taking chunks of skin and flesh along with it. I opened my eyes again, wanting to dispel that nasty image. I looked up at my father and saw that he was speaking the words of the spell with tears streaming down his face.

The tearing sensation around my neck grew stronger. I resisted the urge to raise my hands and tear at the collar. It wouldn’t help. I was breathing raggedly now. I had a sudden fear that the collar would tighten further instead of coming off and I’d suffocate. Was it tighter? Was it harder to breathe? I pushed the image out of my mind. There was no way the removal spell could make the collar tighten; it was just in my mind.

Would this ever end? I’d been here for an eternity, it seemed. Any minute now it would be too much and I’d scream! Then the pain actually began to ease. The last threads of the collar’s magic were coming free. All at once my father was speaking the last words. There was a click as he made the final gesture and the collar dropped off into my lap. I slumped in relief as the last of the pain vanished. I felt tired; that bone-deep ache was back, but I didn’t feel as drained as after Lord Morren’s power transfer spell.

My father dropped to his knees next to me and gave me a fierce hug. He was still crying. I found a few tears gathering in my own eyes.

“Thank you Dad,” I said.

Two weeks later Father and I were in the workroom poring over a minor magical puzzle. I was paging through a big theoretical book, researching, while Father worked his way through an experiment. When he’d finished he said wryly, “Looks like I was wrong on that one again. It didn’t work.”

I grinned and retorted, “I told you it wouldn’t.”

“Well, I’m a fool then, for not listening.” He sat down on a stool next to me and said, with a sudden seriousness in his voice, “I really have been a fool you know. I scorned you for being a theorist, and here I’ve already seen you prove a dozen times that you’re a better mage than me. I remember one of my senior course teachers told us that the reason there aren’t very many grand masters isn’t because there aren’t enough powerful mages, it’s because most mages with lot of power are sloppy and don’t learn good theory. They just push all their spells through with sheer power. She said that theorists are actually the best mages there are.” That made sense to me. Even Lord Morren had been a very skilled and meticulous mage, and it was very possible that he’d learned such skill in the days before he developed the power transfer spell when he had to depend on his own weak power.

My father sighed. “I thought she was being foolish. In my eyes theory was for the weak, those who couldn’t do anything better. And so I scorned your achievements. I couldn’t even see how much you’d accomplished. All I wanted was for you to be a little carbon copy of myself.”

“Dad, you…”

“No,” he interrupted before I could say anything. “It’s true. I was a complete fool, and I know it now. I owe you a few hundred apologies. And,” he added with the gleam of a sudden idea coming into his eye, “I think I owe you a graduation party.”

I blinked. “What?”

“We never did celebrate your graduation. It’s not every day someone graduates with such high honors, after all. Yes, a graduation and homecoming party.” He smiled at me, and I smiled back.

“You don’t have to, you know. I’m happy to just be home.”

“Well, you know how much your mother loves social events,” he said, the smile still on his face. He smiled much more often these days, and I liked to see it. It softened his stern features quite a bit. “And I think we’ve got plenty of reasons to celebrate,” he finished.