Son of the Cat.

Where to begin? I feel a need to set the events of the past year down on paper, as if somehow it will lay all these memories to rest, but I confess I’m not sure how to go about it. I suppose I’ll just have to do the best I can. So where shall I start? I could begin with my long ago ancestor who managed to fall in love with one of the cat folk, win a war, and get raised to the nobility all in a few months, which events founded the Kestral family. But then I might as well start with the creation of the world, if I want to begin at the beginning.

I suppose, then, that I should start with that summer day. It’s strange to think that it was little more than a year ago. It seems like a lifetime ago. I remember getting up that morning and going to the study. The room had the unmistakable stamp of my father’s presence. It was spotless and tidy. One wall was lined with bookshelves, and the books were arranged precisely by size and topic. The top of the big desk was almost bare, holding only a neat stack of blank parchment and a quill and inkwell for writing. But it wasn’t the desk that interested me. Rather I turned my gaze to the eastern wall. The wall was covered with framed diplomas. I had wondered if my father would actually hang mine there with the others. I peered at the wall. Generations of Kestral children had studied at the finest schools in the kingdom, and each and every one had returned with a diploma, all reading pretty much the same.

I too had gone off to school, and I had graduated with high honors, but still I didn’t know if my father would deem my diploma worthy to hang with the others. I read over the familiar words, “Master of Applied Thaumaturgy” on a dozen different certificates, putting off the moment when I would look at the bottom of the wall where mine should be and find it empty. At last my eyes reached the spot. I didn’t want to look, but I did. And it was there! A small smile crossed my face. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps I’m not a complete disgrace to my family. Perhaps Father is beginning to see that I have something to contribute too. Then I shook my head. No. More likely it was Mother who had hung it there. I read the damming words inscribed in flowing calligraphy for all to see; “Master of Theoretical Thaumaturgy.” It was just one word, “theoretical.” Just eleven letters that meant the difference between honor and disgrace. Father would never accept the cold verdict pronounced by that one word. A word that spelled out clearly that, unlike my father, I could never be a real mage.

It was the last nail in my coffin, as far as I was concerned. Up until the moment I left the school I could always hope that something would change, that somehow being around all the more talented students would bring my latent powers to the fore. But now I couldn’t see any chance of that. The last nail had been pounded in firmly and my fate was sealed.

The first nail had been set in place on the day my little brother’s claws had come out, but to know about that you’d have to know about our family. Perhaps I should have begun this with that long ago ancestor. It was his marriage to one of the Ritah cat folk that brought the cat blood into the family. The occasional child would be born totally normal, but most of the Kestral children had some sign of their feline heritage. I had been blessed, or perhaps cursed, with all of the signs. My eyes are intensely green with slit pupils. My ears are slightly pointed. My eyeteeth are just a little longer and a little sharper than the human norm. And my fingers are slightly wider at the tips and have no fingernails, indicating the retractable claws. Unfortunately the indication was all I had. I’d never been able to extend my claws. Somehow all of the abilities and powers of the feline side of our family are linked to the claws. Since mine had never come out, I had no use of any of the abilities that my father and brother had.

At first everyone had thought I was just a late bloomer. Most Kestral children have their claws by the time they are three or four, but some have taken longer. But by the time I was twelve there was still no sign of them. That same year my brother, just two years old, extended his claws for the first time in some minor tantrum. He scratched his nurse rather badly, and I think he was startled to be fussed over rather than punished.

That was when I started to feel my father’s disappointment. I suppose he did love me, I was his son, but I was also a constant reminder of failure. And as if that first failure wasn’t enough, a second soon followed. Along with the cat blood, magic runs strong in my family. Usually magical powers manifest around puberty, and so not long after I gave up on gaining my cat powers I was sent off to boarding school in search of other abilities. At first it was easy, and fun. I was the center of much juvenile admiration for my fangs and cat eyes, and I was a quick study at the basic theories that all mages have to learn before trying real magic.

My first practical class, however, was a dismal disaster. I could not cast any spell, I could, in fact, summon no power at all. Father was consulted, specialists brought in, and a verdict pronounced. I was latent. That meant that I had plenty of power, I just couldn’t get at it. Something was blocking it. They tried everything known to modern magic to bring my talent out, to no avail. I was questioned for traumatic incidents, repressed memories, and anything else that might cause latency, but there was nothing. No reason at all why I shouldn’t be a mage at least as powerful as my father. The puzzled specialists decided it was best I stay in school. There were plenty of theoretical classes I could take. They even offered a complete master’s program in theory! Plus--and this is what convinced my father--being around active mages might spark my own talent.

Well, that chance was now gone. I had my degree, much good it would do me, and I was home again.

I sighed and left the room. Sunlight was pouring through the wide-open windows of the hall. It was going to be a beautiful summer day. In the courtyard below a team of horses was being harnessed to a carriage. Kestral tradition called for a formal ball to celebrate the graduation of the family’s eldest son, but Father couldn’t bear to have his disgrace paraded in public, and so there would be no party. Mother, however, had insisted that since my graduation (with full honors) represented a significant achievement it should be celebrated in some way. So we were having an outing. We would breakfast on the beach and spend a day in the town. I did look forward a bit to going to town. I hadn’t been there often during the years of my schooling. I was home only for holidays and there was always too much going on at home.

I descended to the courtyard. Mother was already there, supervising the loading of the carriage with our picnic. I took a moment to look at her. Mother was an excellent mage in her own right, and in formal circumstances she would wear a mage’s robe, carry her staff, and look quite formidable. But today she was wearing a simple summer dress in light blue, which set off her deep blue eyes. There were a few strands of silver in the pure gold of her hair, and a few wrinkles around her eyes, but the wrinkles were mostly laugh lines. I could still see the beautiful young woman that had captivated my father long ago.

And there came Father, striding into the courtyard. He never simply walked, he always paced, strode, marched. His expression was habitually stern, but he smiled to see my mother standing in the sunlight. He came up and put his arm around her. She smiled up at him and they kissed briefly. Whatever my quarrels with my father, I couldn’t fault him in the way he treated Mother. They were still as much in love today as they had been on the day of their wedding, perhaps more. Father was a tall man, and dark. The perfect picture of a mage with his black hair streaked with a touch of silver, which made him look wise and dignified. His lean features and his stern expression strengthened that impression, and his cat-slit eyes added just enough of the strange and magical to awe all who saw him. He was, as always, dressed in mage’s robes, and he carried his staff. Never mind that we were just going on a picnic, he was never without it.

Bouncing after him came my brother, Chris. Just ten years old this month, he still had some of his baby fat, but from the look of him he’d be as tall as Father when he was grown. His hair was dark, but his skin was fair, like Mother’s. He too had the green cat-slit eyes. He had the rest of the Ritah abilities as well. I remembered three or four years ago when I’d decided to perform an experiment and had dropped him head first off of a balcony. He’d yelled all the way down, but sure enough he’d landed on his feet. When I had fallen off of that same balcony years earlier I’d landed sideways and had broken my arm. Chris, of course, had emerged without a scratch. At the time I’d wished I could have dropped him from twice as high, but the odds are he would have been fine anyway. I kept it stifled most of the time, but I couldn’t help but be jealous of the brother who had everything I didn’t.

Seeing that they were ready to go, I emerged from the doorway where I had been lurking. I suppose I should describe myself as well. I don’t have my father’s height, or his lean looks. I take after Mother mostly. My hair is sandy blond and my skin fair. I’m pretty short too, almost a head shorter than Father. The only obvious clue that I’m his son is my eyes, which are just as green and have the same slit pupils. That day I wore a plain outfit in muted browns. Father disapproved of my dressing habits as well, saying I looked like a peasant in simple tunic and trews. Just one more thing in a long list of things he disapproved of. As a concession to the occasion, however, I’d worn a tunic of fine cloth with green embroidery around the collar and hem and a belt with the cat’s head emblem of our family on the buckle.

I climbed up into the carriage behind my father. When we were all settled in he signaled the driver and we set off. There wasn’t much conversation as we rattled down the road. Mother made a few remarks, and Chris chattered on for a while about his latest school project but otherwise a somewhat uncomfortable silence reigned. Fortunately we arrived at the beach before things got too awkward.

Mother busied herself directing the servants. They laid out a picnic cloth and all of the food, then went off by the carriage to do whatever it is servants do while waiting for their masters. I walked down the sandy slope until I could see the waves breaking smoothly on the shore. As much as I appreciated Mother’s attempts to include me, I wasn’t looking forward to this picnic. Father was sure to make some comment about my failure, and then there would be an argument. I hated arguments. Hated conflict of any kind, really.

“Ashen! Come on, we’re ready to start!” Mother’s voice came over the sound of the waves. I turned away from the peaceful ocean to the much less peaceful prospect of breakfast with my family.

We sat on the blanket and passed around fruit, scones, and sausages. Mother smiled and made conversation. I could see her leading up to my graduation, and I wished she would let the subject well enough alone. “So, Ashen, what was your last semester like? I understand you did very well in all your courses.”

With a mental sigh I responded. “I did well enough, I suppose.”

“Well, graduating with high honors suggests you did better then well enough. I’m quite proud,” She turned to Father and I winced inwardly, anticipating her remark, “Aren’t you Devon?”

Father looked at me. I could tell he was trying to bite back his automatic disparaging remark. “I wouldn’t say proud,” he said. “But you’ve done well, for a theorist.”

Mother gave him a disapproving look, but Father didn’t relent. “I’m not going to lie to the boy and say I’m proud of his degree. Generations of Kestrals have become great mages. Some have specialized in one area, some in another, but none of them have been theoreticians!”

I got to my feet, anger beginning to well up in me. My hands were clenched into fists, and my teeth gritted. I opened my mouth to make an angry retort. Then the fear followed close on the anger’s heels. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I didn’t know why, and sometimes I hated it, but I was terrified of my own anger. Every time I started to loose my temper, fear drowned the anger out. Somewhere inside me I simply knew that anger was terrifying, dangerous, and I had to control it. So now, as always, I calmed my anger and sat back down.

My father exploded. “And look at that! If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were no son of mine! You never stand up for yourself! No abilities, no magic and no spine! Come on, I know you have something to say, say it!”

I was on my feet again in a red-hot haze. I felt my hands, for some reason, begin to ache. I wanted to yell, to hit something, to let all the anger out, but then the fear was back, paralyzingly strong. I was terrified. If I let my anger go something horrible would happen. I could feel the dreaded whatever it was coming closer. With a snarl I turned and stalked away wordlessly. I needed to cool down.

The wind blew in my face, coming off of the ocean. It whipped away the sound of Mother trying to calm down Father’s temper. This was why I hated arguments. I had just as much temper as my father, truth be told, but my irrational fear of my own anger always smothered my fits of temper before they could get going. I’d never understood why I was so afraid of myself. Nobody else seemed to have such a fear. I’d talked to several of my teachers as well as many fellow students, and none of them had any similar experience or any explanation for it. It was just one more thing to add to the long list of things wrong with me.

I wandered along the sand, imagining my tension blowing away on the sea breeze. I turned my path toward the cliffs that rose to the north. There was a spot there where I had played as a child. I’d found a sheltered cove that could only be reached at low tide. I imagined it as a hiding place for pirates and brave oceanic adventurers. I soon reached the spot where a narrow strip of sand ran between the foaming waves and the sheer cliff. The tide was coming in, but I didn’t care. What did it matter if I had to wade back?

As I rounded the last point of rock to the sheltered cove I stopped and stared. There, anchored not far from the shore, was the embodiment of my childhood fancies. A ship, three-masted and made for the open sea. Her flag, bearing an emblem I didn’t recognize, snapped in the breeze. Her lines were sleek, built for speed, and a bank of oars only added to that impression. My eye went to the shore where a longboat was drawn up on the sand. A line of footprints lead from the boat along the beach in my direction, but there was no sign of whoever had rowed it ashore. Rather, the prints ended near the cliff base at a spot where climbing it might be possible.

I had just enough time to wonder who would have put ashore in such an out of the way place before I heard a solid thud behind me. I spun around to see a burly seaman with a snaggle-toothed grin. He had a thick club in one hand and didn’t look at all friendly. I spun around again to run the other way, only to see a second man drop from the rocks above, cutting me off.

“Eh Tim, looks like our lad ‘ere has saved us the trouble of looking for ‘im by comin’ ‘ere ‘imself.” This was the first man speaking. He roughly grabbed me by the arm. I tried to jerk my arm free, but a scholarly life had left my strength woefully inadequate for the task.

“Sure Johnny, he’s a bit scrawny, he is, but he’ll do ‘til we reach port.” The second man advanced on me and gave me a head-to-toe inspection. Then he whistled. “Look here, Johnny, he’s got cat eyes!”

Johnny turned me around to get a look. “So ‘e ‘as! Well now, ‘e’ll fetch a pretty price at the market, ‘e will. An’ look ‘ere! ‘Is ears is pointy too! Like a bloomin’ cat ‘e is!”

Tim put one dirty hand to my mouth and peeled back my upper lip. I glared impotently at this invasion of my person. “He’s a cat alright. He’s even got the teeth for it. Cap’n will be glad to see him, I’ll wager. He’ll go for more than a few pence once we reach market.”

And so this pair of ruffians unceremoniously dragged me off. Their talk of market and price had hinted at a fate in store that I dreaded. I suspected that I had been caught by slavers.

I soon learned the truth of my suspicion. The ship, whose name and origin I never learned, was indeed a slaving ship. They were carrying a cargo of exotic slaves, mostly young women destined for high priced brothels. They also had a group of more ordinary slaves whose work it was to man the oars when speed was needed. One of these had died, and it was to kidnap a replacement that they had come to shore. There was some debate after catching me whether I should be chained with the exotics to preserve my good looks for market, or made to work. But as none of the slavers wanted to venture to shore a second time and catch a more suitable rower, it was decided that I should row.

I won’t go into all the horrible details of that journey, suffice it to say the conditions were dreadful. Even though the overseer was instructed to be light on his whip with me, since they didn’t want me badly scarred, I was still horribly mistreated. The other slaves had it worse than I, for my fellow oarsmen were whipped unmercifully for the least imagined fault. We never left our benches, but were expected to eat, sleep, and perform our bodily functions where we were. The crew occasionally sluiced us down, and that combined with the sea breeze was the only thing that kept the stink from being strong enough to suffocate us. But I sometimes think the other slaves, chained in the dark holds and never getting so much as a breath of fresh air, were even worse off.

I spent the first weeks of the journey in agony. I had never performed any kind of physical labor. My arms and back ached, my hands blistered and bled, and my skin burned in the sun. Finally I began to adjust at least a little bit to the harsh life, but just when I finally had at least a few moments without pain, I did something stupid. The slavers had been too lazy to bother getting shackles fitted to me. They simply locked me into the chains my deceased predecessor had left behind. He must have been a large man, because they were huge. During the first weeks I was too exhausted to even think about escape, and I was watched constantly, but as I adjusted and the crew grew used to my presence I began to make plans. I noted the loose ankle chain and I began to work it off during the brief moments when I was unobserved. I ended up taking a bit of skin off with it, but I was desperate. At last my feet were free. Without taking any thought, I got up and ran. Or rather tried to run. I’d been chained in a sitting position at my bench so long that my legs cramped. We were within sight of land that day, and perhaps if I had been able to run I might have made it over the side and swum to shore. But as it was I had no hope. One of the slavers saw my abortive dash and raised his crossbow. I was hobbling along, trying to reach the railing and jump over. The slaver took careful aim and shot me. When I heard the whirr of the crossbow bolt I thought I was dead. Instead the bolt slammed into my calf. The slaver, knowing my value, had wanted to keep me alive.

The bolt was roughly pulled from my leg and a crude bandage applied. Then I was returned to my spot and new chains were brought. As they locked me in I felt my last chance at freedom melting away, but I was in so much pain I hardly cared. The wound itself was bad enough and the rough treatment had aggravated it, so it was hardly surprising that it became infected. I spent the remainder of the trip in a pain-filled haze, hardly aware of the world around me. I rowed with little strength and with no thought. My mind was wandering, almost totally unaware of my surroundings.

At last we reached port. I was tied to the end of a line of slaves, mostly the female exotics who had spent the whole of the trip in the miserable hole of the hold. I stumbled and limped as we made our way from the docks to the market square.

I knew what was coming, and I just wanted it to be over with.

We were lined up along with a crowd of other slaves. Potential buyers wandered along the lines inspecting their future purchases. The slavers pointed out the good points of their wares, the buyers pointed out the flaws, trying to drive the price down. There was a great deal of exclamation over me. The slavers that had brought me enthusiastically billed me as an exotic cat-boy from some far land. I was poked and prodded. My eyes, teeth, and ears were much exclaimed over. My bandaged leg was also often pointed out, but the slaver always retorted that any two-bit healer could fix that for a few pence.

At last the buyers had seen their fill and the auction began. The lines of slaves shrunk as one by one the waiting crowd of buyers bid on what they wanted. The more common sorts of slaves went first. Laborers, untrained slaves, and children all went, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in lots. Then came the rare and exotic slaves. One by one the female slaves that had come with me were sold off. I tried not to look at the people buying them. I didn’t want to know what happened to them. It was easy enough to block the world out, as I was still feeling feverish. My leg ached horribly and I was light-headed. The whole world seemed out of focus. Then it was my turn. Abruptly everything seemed all too clear, though at the same time I felt as if everything was happening at a great distance. I could see each person in the thinning crowd of buyers. At first there were quite a few bidding on me. Gradually as the price rose the bidders dwindled until only three were left. Realizing that one of these people would soon have absolute control over my fate, I assessed the possibilities.

There was a large balding man. He had bid on quite a few of the female slaves as well as some of the prettier males. I didn’t like the look of him at all. I took a moment to wish fervently that he would not win this particular auction. A middle-aged lady too was bidding. I thought she was a better prospect than that horrible man, but not much better. From the look on her face I figured her intentions weren’t any more wholesome than his. Inwardly I cursed my feline features as I had so often before, but now for an entirely different reason. I didn’t want to be some old lady’s, or worse, some old man’s exotic pleasure slave! I turned my attention to the third bidder. He too was a middle-aged man, but there was nothing of the oily effeminate quality that the other man had. In fact he reminded me of my father. He was tall, black-haired, and distinguished-looking, and to make the resemblance even stronger, he was dressed in mage's robes and carried a staff of dark wood. I knew, intellectually, that he would be nothing like my father. And as far as that goes, since Dad and I never really got along, I wouldn't have wanted him to be. But considering my other options, I decided I'd rather he won this auction.

And then all in an instant it was over. My mind had wandered and I hadn't seen the last bid. One of the slavers took the end of the rope that had tied me to the other slaves and led me down off of the platform. In a fog of pain and trepidation I limped after the slaver to meet my new master. When the slaver handed me over, I sighed inwardly with relief. It was the lean man who looked like my father. Life as a slave was sure to be hard no matter what, but at least it looked like I wouldn't be somebody's pleasure-slave.

The man looked me over and then smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was more like the kind of smile a hunting cat might give his prey. "My name is Lucius Morren, but you will address me as Lord Morren, or Master Morren. You now belong to me. Serve me well and your life will be relatively comfortable. If you try any foolishness you will find that your life can be most unpleasant. What is your name?"

"Ashen," I responded. I almost gave him my full name, but something held me back. I abruptly realized that I did not like this man, and that, looks aside, he was nothing like my father. He turned to a heavily muscled man standing next to him and said, "Bring him along." The man, who had a collar around his neck and a house mark on his forehead, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me after Lord Morren. Before long we reached a carriage. A footman handed Lord Morren inside. The other slave boosted me up to ride on top. I nearly fainted as the rough motion jostled my infected leg. I could only hope that Master Morren valued me enough to have it seen to soon!

The rest of the trip was a blur, but at last we arrived. Lord Morren's house consisted of a single huge tower built not from stone, but from roughly hewn beams, with several low wings clustered around it. I was dragged inside, hardly able to walk. I was first taken to a room on the ground floor where I was unceremoniously stripped of my filthy clothes and scrubbed down by an impersonal slave under the direction of the big slave, who seemed to be in charge of things. Then I was taken to the main tower. I felt a little bit better for the bath, though not the way it was administered, but I was still in a blur of fatigue and pain.

The tower had a huge spiral staircase that wound up the center of it, with rooms off of landings along the way. Lord Morren was standing at the bottom of the steps, and when the other slave and I came into sight he set off up the stairs. The other slave followed, still dragging me along. By the time we were half a flight up I was completely unable to walk. Lord Morren looked back, and with an expression of irritation commanded, "Just carry him, Jascin, I don't have all day."

The big slave picked me up as easily as I might have lifted my little brother and carried me the rest of the way to the uppermost floor. We went inside what was obviously a mage's workroom. The room was cluttered with all kinds of magical paraphernalia, odds and ends that were very familiar to me both from my father’s workroom and from my years of study. Jascin set me down on a clear spot on the floor. Lord Morren bent over me and examined my leg. "Just a simple infection, good. Now Ashen, you are going to learn two lessons. Firstly, you will learn that I can be a good master." He placed his hands on my leg and began a healing spell. I recalled my days at the university. The words, the feel of power, it was all so familiar. But if I had ever had a chance to use such power myself, it was certainly gone now. After a few moments the spell was done. For the first time in weeks I felt free of pain.

"Now, let me get a better look at you." He looked me over, carefully inspecting me from head to toe. I had a feeling he was looking with mage sight as well as with ordinary eyes. "As I thought. You're part Ritah, aren't you?" I nodded mutely. "And you've some mage blood in there too. Interesting. You'll do even better than I'd hoped. Now, I said I had two lessons. I have healed your wound, showing that I can show kindness when I am so inclined. Now I will show that I can be cruel when it is necessary." He smiled again, that predator's smile, and I revised my opinion of him. He was anything but warm-blooded. No hunting cat he, no, he was a snake. He raised his hands in a second spell. The words and gestures were again familiar, but I'd never seen them strung together like he strung them. I tried to see what the spell would do, what its purpose was. I began to have an idea as it neared completion, and I didn't like it. There was pain woven into it, and bondage. Then the spell hit me and all thoughts left my head.

I've never had a particularly high pain tolerance. When I broke my arm and a child I'd blacked out when it was set. Now I felt a pain at least that bad. It was centered in my forehead, but it spread like lightening throughout my whole being. I writhed on the floor, screaming, for what seemed like eternity, but was actually only a few seconds, before the pain overcame me and the world went away.

I must have been out for only a few minutes, for when I came to I was still lying on the floor with Lord Morren and Jascin standing over me. The mage smiled his predator's smile, then reached down and pulled me to my feet. "Now I have marked you as my own. Look." With a gesture he conjured a mage mirror. I saw in it my own face, roughened and sunburned from long weeks on the slaver's ship and with a new weariness in my eyes, but the greatest difference was the mark on my forehead. It was a house mark, presumably the Morren house. It consisted of a golden serpent coiled in an elaborate pattern. I knew enough about such things to know that setting a house mark in place didn't usually hurt. But I knew that this was the result of the painful spell I'd felt, Master Morren's "lesson" for me.

"And here is the final seal of my ownership," said the mage. He motioned to Jascin who stepped forward and clasped a golden collar around my neck. It too was in the form of a serpent, this one devouring its own tail. "And lest you ever think of escape, or of harm to me, know that there is a spell on that collar. Unless I reset it periodically it will gradually shrink until it chokes you to death. Now," he turned to Jascin again, "convey my new servant to his room."

Jascin took me by the arm again and propelled me out of the room. There was a second door on the highest landing where Master Morren's workroom was located. Jascin opened it, revealing a room little larger than a closet. He casually tossed me inside and shut the door. I heard a key turn in the lock.

It was very dark inside; the only light was the vague glimmer that leaked in around the door. I'd seen enough, however, before Jascin shut me in to know I wasn't alone. There was a girl in the room of about the same age as myself. I hadn't gotten a close look, but I'd caught a glimpse of reddish brown hair. I'd also seen that she wore the serpent mark and collar as I did. I picked myself up and felt my way to one wall. My hand brushed against the girl and she let out a yelp.

"Who are you?" Her voice held mistrust and fear.

"My name's Ashen," I responded. "What's yours?"

"Amelia." Her answer was curt and her voice still suspicious. "Why are you here? What does Lucius want with you?"

"I don't know. He..." I choked suddenly over the thought of what had become of me, but continued. "He bought me today, and he didn't tell me anything."

Suddenly her tone was sharp, accusatory. "You're a latent, aren't you?"

I didn't understand what that had to do with anything, but I answered, "Yes."

Then she flung herself at me and started hitting me. "I hate you! I hate you!" She was screaming now, and I raised my hands to try and stop her blows, though I couldn't see them coming in the dark. Then as suddenly as her anger had come, it went and she collapsed and started to cry on my shoulder. I awkwardly put an arm around her and held her as she sobbed.

When she had cried herself out I cautiously asked, “What’s wrong? I don’t understand. What does my latency have to do with anything?” I didn’t want to set her off again, but I wanted to know what was going on. Knowledge was power, and the more I knew the more hope I had of finding some way out of this mess.

I couldn’t see her face in the dark, but her tone clearly conveyed abject misery. “Master Lucius has found a way to draw power from latent mages. He’d been drawing power from me, but now that you’re here, he’ll use you instead.”

I was still puzzled. “I don’t understand.” I repeated. “You want him to take power from you?”

“Yes! No! I… I don’t know. I don’t like it. It’s horrible, but it means he needs me. Now that he has you, I’m expendable. Master Lucius doesn’t care about slaves. We’re just things to be used. But as long as he needed me I knew that at least he wouldn’t kill me. And now…” she started sobbing again, and all I could do was hold her and think.

Too much had happened. It seemed like my whole life had been turned upside down all at once. I sat in the dark and thought, trying to figure out what I could do. My mind raced through a thousand unlikely options and came up with nothing. For one moment I entertained the fantasy that if I told Lucius who I was, that I was the son of a colleague, he would take off the slave mark and send me home. But no, I knew better. I had no proof of who I was, and if what Amelia said was true he needed me. He wasn’t going to let me go. All the other ideas I came up with were even less likely to succeed. I was a slave now. My life wasn’t my own. There was nothing I could do but wait and see what tomorrow brought me.

What tomorrow brought was an early breakfast delivered by a silent slave. It was plain fare, but much better than I’d been getting on the slaver’s ship. I welcomed the glimpse of light offered by the open door. The continual darkness in the little room was beginning to get to me. I wished for the night vision to go with my cat eyes, but knew it was futile. My sight would never be any better then the human norm. How did Amelia stand it? She’d obviously been here for along time. I could only hope that the door would be left open frequently or else I might go mad. The door was open now, having been left open after delivery of our breakfast, and I began to consider the possibility of going out, but Amelia stopped me.

“You keep looking at the door. Don’t. If you go out you’ll be in trouble, and you don’t want to get Master Lucius mad at you.”

That stopped me. I already knew that I definitely didn’t want to earn Lord Morren’s ire. Still, the open door was itching at me. I didn’t like just sitting here. But when the door to Lord Morren’s workroom opened and he ordered me up and inside I wondered if I wouldn’t have been better off just sitting. With no small amount of trepidation I got to my feet and went into the workroom.

“Kneel down over there,” said Master Lucius, pointing to a circle drawn on the workroom floor. I hesitated for a moment, but what could I do? I went over to the circle and knelt. Amelia had said that the mage would use me for a power source, so I had some small idea of what might be coming. I’d never heard of a spell that could transfer any significant amount of power from one person to another without the willing consent and active participation of both. Memories of my school days came back to me, and I found I had a certain academic curiosity about how he would pull it off.

The spell he began to cast was almost totally unfamiliar, but I recognized the basic formula it was built on. It was based in sympathetic magic, the sort of magic where concrete objects figure largely. I couldn’t see how a transfer of power could be affected through such a spell. It would seem to require a literal and physical analogue, but how would Master Morren take something that was a part of me and make it part of him? I listened closely to the spell, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was doing. I was listening so intently I almost didn’t notice his motion as he picked up a tiny dagger. It was hardly an inch long, but it was quite sharp. He spoke the words that would finish the main portion of the spell. Now would come whatever physical action would activate it. With a sudden suspicion I knew what that action would be, I watched the knife with horrified fascination. Still moving with the precision of ritual, the mage reached down and grabbed my wrist. His eyes locked on mine and I felt like a field mouse caught in the gaze of a snake. I was frozen, unable to move. He drew the razor-sharp blade lightly across my wrist. The blade was so sharp I hardly felt it. Lord Morren picked up a small bowl in his other hand and held it below my wrist. I felt a strange kind of tugging sensation as the blood flowed into the bowl. It was is if something inside of me was being pulled out through the wound. The flow of blood soon slowed. The wound hadn’t been large, only a spoonful or so of blood was in the little bowl.

Lord Morren at last released me from his serpent’s gaze. I clutched at my wrist. I was starting to feel the pain now. And that tugging sensation was still there. It was as if a thread had been pulled out of me through the wound. If my soul were a sweater, and a thread had frayed off and was being pulled out to unravel a little bit of it, it might have felt like that. I thought to myself, is that all? Was the spell finished? The tugging sensation showed that the spell had done something, but I could sense the magic still in the air. No, it wasn’t finished. No power had left me as yet; there was only a connection of some sort between myself and the blood that had been drawn from me. Lord Morren raised the bowl to his lips. It didn’t take a master’s in magic to guess that he would complete the spell by drinking the blood, thus taking my magic into him. But as I watched his slow motion, my mind suddenly raced ahead. This spell wasn’t intended to simply take magical energy; the way it felt told me that it went deeper.

The sweater metaphor was closer to the truth than I liked. As an unraveled thread actually diminished the sweater, and might eventually destroy it, so what he was doing would actually lessen my own life force. It hadn’t started yet, but as soon as that bowl touched his lips… and then it did and I was rendered incapable of thought.

My whole being, body and soul, was full of fire. I was being burned from the inside out. I wanted to scream and couldn’t, wanted to faint and didn’t. I was completely paralyzed. In that moment if I could have moved I might have grabbed for the dagger to kill myself with. A piece of my soul was being torn loose and I had never felt such pain in my life. I had thought that having the house mark set on me had hurt, but that had been nothing, a pinprick compared to the sword that was being driven into my soul. There was no merciful release into darkness; it just went on and on. I was going to go mad if the pain lasted one second longer.

And then it was over. I collapsed on the floor, gasping. A lingering residue of pain sparked through my body. I ached all over as though every inch of me, down to the very bones, was bruised. I was dimly aware of Lord Morren’s voice saying, “Most gratifying. Your gift is even stronger than the girl’s. You will do quite well for my future projects.”

I groaned. I didn’t even want to think about this happening again. Lord Morren ignored it, indeed ignored me entirely, and went about whatever magical project he was working on. I just lay there. I didn’t have the energy to even think about moving. It was well over an hour later when I finally recovered enough to lever myself slowly upright. The temptation to simply lie there until Lord Morren moved me or ordered me to move was great, but I had so little control over my situation, I wanted to hang onto what I could. Somehow getting up was a minor act of independence.

I managed to get to my hands and knees, but getting to my feet was out of the question for the moment, so I crawled the few feet to the nearest wall. I slumped against it and closed my eyes. I was tired, so very tired, but I didn’t want to sleep. Knowledge was power. I repeated that to myself like some kind of mantra. I had no control over the situation, but somehow, someday, I might be able to do something, if I only knew enough.

I pried my eyes open and looked around the room. It was just as cluttered as it had been the last time I’d seen it. Lord Morren was sitting at a desk in one corner, writing something in a notebook. A staff leaned against the desk next to him. It was made of ebon-black wood, elaborately carved and topped with a crystal. It was surrounded with a dull glow of power. I couldn’t use magic, but I could see and sense it perfectly well. I sometimes felt like a man with perfect eyesight and no hands. As I scanned the room, dozens of objects showed that magic glow. But as my eyes passed over one dim corner something tugged at my gaze and kept it. Another staff leaned there. It too was of black wood, but it was very plain. No carvings decorated it, no crystal topped it, and to a first glance, no aura of power surrounded it. And yet there was something… I blinked, trying to see what pulled at my vision so. If I looked at it just right there was a kind of glow. It was almost familiar. The patterns of power that hung around the other objects in the room were unfamiliar, though I could guess they were the auras of Lord Morren and Amelia. The staff though… it was more like the aura that surrounded my father’s spells. It took me a while to figure it out, but finally my tired brain put two and two together and I realized that this must be what Lord Morren had done with the power he’d drawn from me. He’d stored it in his staff. So that was why the staff drew my gaze, my own power was calling to me. Being latent, I’d never seen my own magical aura. But why was the magic hidden, disguised? I glanced back at the other staff, obviously glowing with power, and decided it must be a trap. Some thief, thinking to steal a powerful mage’s staff and either sell it or use it himself, would ignore the plain and apparently powerless stick of wood in favor of the crystal-topped staff and doubtless set off some lethal spell. It seemed to be the sort of thing Lord Morren would go for.

Lord Morren finished whatever he was writing and looked up. His eyes fell on me and he got to his feet and came over. I almost expected some further revelation, but all he did was order me to get to my feet and go back to my room. I slowly picked myself up. The short walk to the end of the room, across the landing, and into the open door of my tiny cell seemed to take forever. I collapsed weakly onto the straw pallet that served as my mattress.

“Are you all right?”

I opened my eyes to find Amelia looking at me with an expression of concern. “I think I might live,” I said.

A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I’m sorry I exploded like that last night. I know it’s not your fault, and you certainly didn’t ask to be here. I was just kind of upset.”

I looked at her, really noticing her for the first time. She wasn’t beautiful in any conventional sense, but she was pretty enough, with brown hair touched with auburn highlights and warm hazel eyes. She was sitting cross-legged on her own thin pallet with her hands folded in her lap. I noticed that her wrists were crossed by dozens of thin scars. I could guess where those had come from. “How long has he been doing that to you? How do you stand it?”

A sad darkness of memory entered her eyes. “It’s hard to track time here, but I think it’s been almost two years. And I stand it because I must. I’ve come up with a thousand escape plans, but none of them are any good. Humans are adaptable creatures. We can learn to live with almost anything.”

I shook my head, just hoping that I’d be able to gain such calm. From the looks of things, I’d have plenty of time to develop it.

I would have been gratified had I been proved wrong on that count, but it turned out to be all too true. The next day was much like the first. We were shut up in the dark for the night, and the morning brought breakfast and an open door. That afternoon Lord Morren called for me and I was again forced to endure the pain of the power transfer spell. The only variation was that later that evening he called Amelia into the workroom. She stumbled back into our cell an hour or so later. Her wrist was bloodied and her eyes were full of pain. My own wrist was still a mess, and the bone-deep ache of pain that came from Lord Morren’s spell had never quite faded, but somehow it was worse seeing her like that. She collapsed onto her pallet. All at once I felt protective towards her. I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn’t think of anything to do or say. Jascin came up a few minutes later and shut the door for the night. I lay awake in the darkness for a long time before finally falling asleep.

That was the general pattern of our days. Sometimes Lord Morren didn’t need either of us, and we would sit in our little cell and talk. Some days the door was left open, others it remained shut. The pain of the power transfer spell was bad, but those long hours in the darkness were the worst. If I’d been alone I might have started beating my head against the walls, just to have something to do, but having Amelia there to talk to helped. She continually amazed me with her ability to deal with any hardship. She didn’t seem fazed by anything. That one breakdown on the very first night was the only sign of weakness she ever showed.

“I don’t know how you do it,” I said one day as we spoke in the darkness. I had no idea of the time, it could still be early in the morning, or afternoon might be coming on. With the door firmly shut there was no way to tell. “You stay so calm, no matter what.”

She laughed a short, bitter laugh. At first I’d done most of the talking, but lately she’d opened up and spoken more. “I’m just better at hiding it. The only thing in all this horrible mess that I can control is my own reaction to events. Inside I’m just as upset as you, I think, but if I don’t show it, it gives me a little power, or at least the illusion that I have a little power.”

I could understand that. My own way of gaining control was through knowledge. I watched Lord Morren every chance I got. I noted what spells he used and how he used them. Every scrap of knowledge was that much more chance I’d have to someday use it against him in some way. Though most days I despaired of ever having any kind of chance. What hope did I have of doing anything against Lord Morren? He was everything I wasn’t. There were days when the despair was so thick I felt I’d hit rock bottom.

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. It was late afternoon when Lord Morren summoned me to his workroom. Amelia had been there earlier that morning, and she was sleeping on her pallet, recovering. I got to my feet and walked into the workroom with a sinking sensation in my stomach. I hated the transfer spell, and I was growing to hate my own latency even more passionately than I ever had before. But where previously I’d wanted full use of my powers, to be a mage like my father, now I wished that I had no power at all. Without a word I knelt in the circle. Lord Morren stood behind me and began the spell. I tuned it out. I’d heard it so many times by now I could have cast the cursed thing myself, if I’d only had the talent to do so. When the spoken part of the spell was completed, I braced myself for the knife strike, but Lord Morren didn’t pick up the little dagger. Instead he knelt down beside me. I looked over, finding his dark eyes level with my own.

“I’ve discovered a new twist to this spell, my young servant, and I have you to thank for it.” He smiled that predatory smile, and I jerked in surprise. Some time between yesterday and today he’d acquired a set of fangs not unlike my own. “Your own interesting dentition inspired me. I realized that there was a simpler and rather more enjoyable way to complete my spell. A simple physiological change, easy enough to initiate. And now I shall try it out.”

He moved behind me and I shut my eyes. I felt a sick, sinking sensation in my stomach. I knew what was coming, I just knew it, and I didn’t like it at all. The knife had been bad enough, but this! I flinched away as his lips touched my neck. Then his teeth broke though my skin and the real pain began. The prick of his fangs as they broke through wasn’t what hurt, the spell itself, as always, was what caused my agony. And really the pain wasn’t any worse than it had always been, but having Lord Morren’s mouth on my neck, drinking my power directly from my veins, brought the whole experience to a new level of degradation and horror.

At last it was over and he released me. I fell limply to the ground inside the circle. Lord Morren got to his feet. I looked up and saw him wiping my blood off of his lips with a laugh. I shuddered. He was cold and power-hungry, and I’d always known that he didn’t care what pain he caused to others, but I’d long suspected it went deeper than that. And now I was sure. He wasn’t simply cruel from necessity; he was cruel because he enjoyed it.

It was with a feeling of weariness and hopelessness deeper than any I’d ever felt that I staggered back to my cell. What chance would I ever have of escaping?

Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom and there’s no way to fall any further, life drops the floor out from under you and you find there’s worse to come. The event that was to send me plummeting to the lowest possible depths of despair began with an ordinary day. The previous day we’d been left in the dark, so I was almost enjoying myself as I basked in the light that morning. I knew that when the door was left open, Lord Morren would more than likely call one of us to his workroom, but as Amelia had said, it’s amazing what humans can adjust to and treat as normal. I had almost become accustomed to my life as a slave and power-source.

My heart sank when the door to Lord Morren’s workroom opened and he beckoned to me, but I got to my feet and went. To my surprise he didn’t direct me into the room, but instead ordered me to follow him and headed down the stairs. I obediently tagged along behind him, wondering what was going on. I hadn’t been to the lower floors of the house since my first day here. We descended all the way to the ground floor. From there we went down a narrow hallway and through a plain door. Inside there was a scene of controlled chaos. A dozen or so slaves crowded the room, darting this way and that. I eventually managed to sort out what was going on. A number of older slaves, directed by a thin, wrinkled woman, were measuring several younger ones, apparently for uniforms. A group in the corner was sewing, and a few partially finished uniforms were being tried on for size. Lord Morren took me over to the woman in charge. She had the collar and house mark, but she was anything but subservient. She looked me up and down, assessing me.

“Think he’ll do?” asked Lord Morren.

“He’s a little bit scrawny, but he’ll have to,” she replied. “With him we’ll have nine fit to be seen in public, and that’s barely enough.”

Lord Morren nodded, and without a further word, turned and left. “Let’s get you measured, youngster,” said the old lady. She must of read the confusion on my face, for she added with a smile, “You don’t know what the fuss is all about, do you?”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

“Well, it’s a wonder, and that’s for sure. Lord Morren is throwing a party. There’s not been a proper social event here in years!” She shook her head at the thought. “We’ve no formal uniforms, nor any real waiters, so all the younger ones are being pressed into service. We’ll get you a uniform and give you a bit of training in how its done and you’ll serve drinks and such.”

So I was measured from head to toe, given a flurry of instructions, and sent back upstairs with my head in a whirl. I shared the news with Amelia and we talked over what it might mean.

“Somehow Lord Morren doesn’t strike me as much of a partygoer,” she said. “Why would he be throwing a big social event?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” I replied. “My father wasn’t a frivolous sort, but he threw parties all the time, for the status of it. It’s a chance to show off you power. That’s something I think Lord Morren and may father have in common, they both want to be seen as powerful.”

“You don’t talk about your family much,” said Amelia.

I sighed. “No, I don’t. There’s too much history, too much pain, and too much missing them too. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never go home again anyway.” I sighed. “What about you? You never talk about your family either.”

The sadness on her face deepened. “I miss them too much. If I think about them, I’ll fall apart. But I… I still somehow hope that someday I can go home again.”

Home… I didn’t think I’d ever see it, and there were days when I wondered if my family even missed me. Surely Mother would, and Chris, but what about Father? I was such a disappointment, maybe he was glad to be rid of me. I didn’t like the thought, but it kept creeping back into my mind. If I could somehow go home, would I be welcomed, or would Dad be disappointed at the return of his worthless son?

During the next week I buried myself in activity. I’d had too much time to sit and think, but now frequent trips downstairs to get my uniform adjusted and be trained in how to be a proper waiter kept me busy and I could put my uncomfortable thoughts out of my mind. I learned how to hold a tray steady when walking, and how to watch people so I could see anyone signal me without looking up and staring. “You in particular need to keep your eyes down, boy,” said Margaret, the old lady I’d met earlier. She pretty much ran the household and was the one responsible for our training. “You don’t want to give any of the guests a scare with those cat eyes of yours.”

There were days when I felt like laughing at the whole situation. Half the time I was in Lord Morren’s workroom having the blood and the life force drained out of me by a vampiric mage, and half the time I was getting lessons in etiquette for waiters.

Then the big night arrived. All of Lord Morren’s slaves were in place well before the guests arrived. The huge drafty hall attached to the foot of Lord Morren’s tower was lit up with candles, lamps and glowing mage lights. Music, produced by magic rather than real musicians in a show of power, filled the room. Margaret gave us our last round of instructions and then the time had arrived. I held my tray of drinks ready as the first guests filed in. It wasn’t long before the room was filled with people. The majority were mages, but there were plenty of local politicians and powerful merchants as well. It was the same kind of crowd my father’s parties attracted. I vaguely recognized one or two faces, though this far from my father’s estates, few of the same individuals would attend.

I was kept busy, going back and forth from the bar to bring back empty glasses and get fresh drinks. I managed to avoid spilling anything the whole night long, but I had one near miss. I’d just gotten a fresh tray when I saw Lord Morren’s beckoning gesture. I hurried over to him, struggling to keep my tray level and my gaze down and still move at a fast pace. I reached his side and, as instructed, I offered the tray while keeping my eyes on the patterned marble floor. He picked up a drink and gestured with it. “As I was saying, you do agree that in such cases it’s better to have nothing at all than unusable potential.”

I almost jumped when I heard the man he was talking to reply. My tray quivered, and I had to direct my attention to preventing the drinks from going all over. “Yes, yes, that’s obvious. But I have to say, that’s not really what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve got more important things on my mind these days.” I peered under my lashes at the man, disbelieving my ears. My eyes confirmed what I’d heard. It was my father! He looked somehow older, more tired, than when I’d last seen him, but there was no mistaking those patrician features.

“Of course!” said Lord Morren. “I can certainly understand your concern. Here, have a drink.” He picked up a glass from the tray and offered it to my father. “You look as though you could use one, I must say.” I didn’t dare look at him directly, my mind was in a roil of confusion and I was frozen to the spot, unable to think of what I should do. Speak, or remain silent? To keep quiet was to give up any chance I had of ever escaping Lord Morren’s grasp, and yet… if I spoke and was rejected… I couldn’t bear it. The scrap of conversation I’d overheard seemed to confirm my worst fears. “Better to have nothing at all than unusable potential,” Lord Morren had said, and my father had agreed. He’d said it with an air of distraction even, as if it wasn’t important. As if I wasn’t important.

“You,” Lord Morren’s voice jolted me out of my shock, “don’t just stand there, you’re supposed to be serving drinks, not daydreaming.”

“Yes Lord Morren,” I muttered and moved off through the crowd. I was in a daze the rest of the night. I performed my duties automatically, my mind playing that fragmentary conversation over and over. “Better to have nothing at all… better to have nothing at all… I’ve got more important things on my mind… more important things… more important things…” At last the night was over and we started cleaning up. I pushed a broom across the floor wearily. As I passed by Lord Morren, he motioned for me to stop.

“I had long suspected you might be the son of Lord Kestral, and now I am sure. Strange that such an excellent mage should have such a worthless son.” I simply stood there. What could I say? It was true. “You heard some of our conversation yes?” I nodded. “When I knew you were his eldest son, I had a thought of returning you to him, but as we spoke it became clear that he is better off without you. After all, ‘it’s better to have nothing at all than unusable potential,’ isn’t it?” He smiled, a sadistic light in his eyes. I knew he was enjoying my despair, but that didn’t make his words any less true. “Far better for you to stay here when you can be of some use in my own work than to go back to your father and be totally useless,” he said as he turned and left, leaving me to finish sweeping the floor. I swept up the last pile of dirt in a state of complete despair and depression. Then I made my way dazedly up to my cell of a room. The door was still open and a dim light burning on the landing. Amelia was sitting on her pallet.

“So how was the party?” she asked, trying to be cheerful.

I just shook my head. I went in and sat down on my own pallet. I put my head in my hands, overcome with a low feeling of depression and a physical feeling of complete exhaustion. I’d thought I’d hit rock bottom before, but now I was truly there. Nothing in the world could deal me a worse blow than I’d been dealt tonight. When Jascin came up and shut us in for the night I welcomed the oblivion of darkness, but my sleep was full of restless dreams in which I heard my father say again and again, “Better to have nothing at all… better to have nothing at all… better to have nothing at all than to have a worthless son like you.”

After that nothing else really mattered. Days went by, and I withdrew further into myself. Lord Morren still summoned me on a regular basis to drain my power, but I no longer dreaded those times. What other purpose did I have in my life? I no longer thought of escape. After all, I was useful here. This was where I belonged. Amelia tried from time to time to cheer me up, but I just couldn’t lift myself out of my depression. I couldn’t even say how long it had been since I’d smiled, let alone laughed or felt any kind of real happiness.

When Lord Morren began to make obvious preparations for some kind of journey, I didn’t pay any attention. Perhaps before I would have noticed every detail, looking for any piece of information that would help me get free, but now I just didn’t care. Where he was going or why I never found out. But the day came when he locked the door of the workroom and left. I’d wondered dully if Amelia and I might not be shut up in the dark for the whole duration of his journey, but she told me that he actually left the door open when he was gone, so that he wouldn’t have to leave the door key with a lesser slave.

“Jascin is the only one he trusts to unlock things, and he goes with Lord Morren everywhere. So when he’s on a trip, he leaves the door open. He’ll probably chain us to the wall though, so that we can’t get out. But I don’t mind. I like not having to worry about being shut in the dark.”

I no longer cared about the dark one way or the other. I didn’t care about anything. Amelia’s prediction proved correct, however, for a few minutes after Lord Morren had descended, Jascin came up with two sets of manacles in hand and chained us both to the wall. There was plenty of slack in the chains, we could both move freely about the room and even out onto the landing, but no further. Along with the purely physical restraint of cold iron, I felt some kind of spell settle in with the turning of the key. No doubt Lord Morren wanted to be sure we couldn’t escape in his absence. It didn’t make any difference to me. I wasn’t going anywhere.

The slave who brought us our meals came as usual, and after delivering our dinner he put out the light on the landing, so we were left in the darkness. It wasn’t quite as pitch black as it would have been with the door shut, but it was dark enough. I curled up on my pallet, trying to get comfortable. Having heavy shackles around your ankles can make it hard to sleep. I had a restless night, full of strange and disturbing dreams. So when I came half awake and saw the figure standing on the landing, at first I thought I was still dreaming. It was a woman. In the darkness I couldn’t make out her face, but I was sure I’d never seen her before. She crept silently across the landing. A tiny slit of light appeared, and I realized she was carrying a shuttered lantern. I also realized about then that I was awake and she was real.

Amelia turned over in her sleep with a soft mutter and the woman froze. Her attention had been fixed on the door to Lord Morren’s workroom, but now she looked in our direction. By the dim light of her lantern, I could make out her features better. She was of indeterminate age. Not old, but not young either. Her face was weathered and creased, and her eyes had deep crow’s feet at the corners, but her hair had no gray in it, and the lines had the look of laugh lines mostly. She was dressed all in black, and her hair seemed to be red, though in the dim light I might have been mistaken. At the moment her face had an almost comical expression of surprise on it. She took a step in our direction, raising the lantern. I gave up on sleep and sat up.

The thief, for so I assumed the woman must be, jumped, her eyes widening. Most likely she thought she’d been caught. Well, maybe most of the other slaves would have turned her in, but not me. “It’s all right,” I said in a soft whisper. “I’m not going to sound the alarm on you.”

Her expression was wary, but she crossed the space between us in a couple of quick steps, coming to stand in the doorway of my little cell. “Who are you?” she asked in a whisper.

“My name’s Ashen, I’m just another slave here.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I was told not to trust the slaves in this place, that they are all loyal to their master.”

I laughed softly, a harsh sound with little mirth in it. “Forced loyalty, but yes, most of Lord Morren’s slaves are very loyal. They have to be. These,” and I touched my serpent collar, “ensure it. If Lord Morren doesn’t reset the spell every couple of months the collar will gradually tighten until I choke to death. It’s a wonderful motivation.” My own collar was uncomfortably tight at the moment, though it wasn’t interfering with my breathing just yet. Lord Morren had last reset the spell almost five months ago.

“Then why won’t you turn me in? Why should I not simply put you out of your misery now?”

“Go ahead. I have nothing left to live for. And that’s why I don’t care about the collar. It doesn’t matter if I live or die.”

Her expression softened. “What does he do to you, that you don’t care about life?”

“It wasn’t Lord Morren.” I left it at that, though I could see a sudden curiosity kindle on her face. Then she opened her lantern a little bit more and shone the light on me directly. I squinted against the brightness. What was she doing?

“Wait a moment, you said your name was Ashen?” I nodded. “It wouldn’t happen to be Ashen Kestral, would it?” I nodded again, wondering how she knew. “What in the world are you doing here? How… no, I haven’t time for that. Did you know that your father is tearing the whole kingdom apart in search of you?”

The world suddenly stood still. “He… he what?”

“He’s put word out to ever mage, mercenary, politician, and thief,” she smiled wryly at that last, “that he’ll pay a small fortune for reliable news of you, and a large fortune for your safe return.”

“I…” I was speechless. A lump of emotion rose in my throat. He was looking for me? He wanted me back? “I didn’t know. I thought…. I thought he didn’t want me back.”

“Not want you?” The thief shook her head. “I don’t know where you got that idea, lad, but it’s dead wrong. I came here looking for certain books and Lucius’ staff, if he left it, but I’d get far better pay if I brought you away.”

“We’re both chained up,” I said, “and there’s a spell on the locks. Can you undo mage locks?”

The lady thief furrowed her brow. “Possibly. I came equipped for mage locks, but of the sort you put on doors, not prisoners. Let me have a look.” Our whispered conversation must have woken Amelia, for as the thief stepped into the little room Amelia sat up on her pallet and watched her with wary eyes. I stretched out my legs so the thief could get a good look at the chains. She closely examined the locks, waving a tiny rod she took from one pocket over them. Then she shook her head. “My detector isn’t showing much. I can’t tell what kind of spell it is. I have no idea if any of the things I brought will have any effect.”

“It’s etheric, and probably linked to my own energy,” I said. Maybe I couldn’t do magic, but I could certainly identify a spell cast on my own person.

“Etheric?” She frowned. “I didn’t come equipped for etheric magics. The fellow who hired me didn’t mention anything like that.”

My heart sank. Right then I’d had such hope of getting free. But… my father wanted me back! With that knowledge I could come up with some way out, I just knew it.

“What about the door,” said the thief, “What kind of spell lock does he have on that?”

“Pretty standard sympathetic magic. That’s Lord Morren’s specialty. There’s a nasty little trap if you just pick the lock, and an alarm. You’ll probably want to deal with the trap spell first, then the alarm, and then the lock itself.”

The thief gave Amelia and myself a long look. “I can deal with those. I’m sorry I can’t let you go right now, but I can so something for you. I’ll let your father know where you’re at lad, and I’m sure he’ll come running. He’ll have you out of here within the month. It’d be sooner, but it’s a long way from here to the Kestral house. Is there anything else I ought to know about that room before I go in?”

I remembered the staff. “Lord Morren took his real staff with him. He’s got a decoy leaning on his desk, black wood with a crystal on top. Don’t touch it. A couple of his spell books are trapped, other than that, you know as much as I do.”

She nodded and turned to the door. It was only a few minutes later when it opened without a sound. She was very good. Left in the darkness again I had time to think over the incredible news I’d just received. My father wanted me! More than that, he was looking for me, had offered a reward for news of me. How could I have been so mistaken? I thought back to the party, to that conversation. I’d played it over in my mind so often I knew it by heart. I replayed it again, and everything looked different. A dull anger kindled somewhere inside me as I pieced together what had happened. Lord Morren had arranged it all very neatly, I realized. He’d wanted an easily manageable slave, and what better way to get one than to completely destroy my hope? He’d begun some conversation on magic, and called me over at just the right moment to hear that seemingly damning statement, and my father’s agreement. But I recalled my father’s preoccupation. He’d said, “I’ve got more important things on my mind these days.” And then Lord Morren had dismissed me before I could hear what exactly it was that mattered so much. Could it have been that his more important thing was his search for me? That he’d perhaps even come to the party so that he’d be able to enlist the help of all those powerful people?

I recalled too how my father had looked, tired and worn, old even. Could it be that those extra lines of care were over me? I hardly dared to hope for such a thing, and yet I did hope for it, indeed the more I thought the more I believed that it was true. My father had not always been cold toward me, he had often shown caring, even love. The bitter disappointment of having all his dreams for me shattered had simply been too much. I had been such a fool to believe he would abandon me utterly.

My mind whirled with a thousand thoughts, but whatever the details, the central fact was, my father wanted me back! I had a reason to live again.

I hardly noticed the lady thief emerging from the room with a couple of heavy books under her arm. She gave me a grin and a wink and then vanished silently down the stairs. Amelia, who had remained silent all this time, spoke softly. “I heard everything you said. I had almost given up hope of ever getting out of here, but if your father comes for us… will he really stand a chance against Lord Morren?”

That question snapped me back to reality. “I… I think so. He’s a very good mage. But it would be really close. Lord Morren is very skilled.”

“Then we have to think of things we can do to help him when he comes,” said Amelia. “I’ve been here for almost three years now, and I don’t want my best, maybe my only chance of escape getting away from me.” There was a fierce light in her eyes as she said it. I heartily agreed. After a seeming eternity we had some real hope. We were up most of the night thinking of possibilities and making plans.

Two weeks later Lord Morren returned. It was mid-afternoon when he came up the stairs and opened the door to his workroom. The thief had shut it, but she’d had no way of restoring the spells she’d disarmed. He must have immediately noticed that something was wrong. He surveyed the room from the doorway. His eyes narrowed and he stepped into the room. A minute or so later there was a tremendous crash and a stream of swearing. The door flew open and Lord Morren stormed out. His face was twisted into a mask of fury, sharply emphasized by his recently acquired fangs. He fixed his raging stare on me. “Who was it? Someone has stolen three of my most valuable books. You must have seen him, who was it?”

I was frozen in his gaze. I could actually feel the force of his anger, his magic leaking through as an almost physical pressure. I managed to answer, “I don’t know!”

The feeling of pressure intensified, then suddenly I was hit with a blow of raw power that flung me against the wall. I slid down to lie in a heap on the floor, stunned. “You must know! Your door was open, you must have seen something! Tell me!”

I shook my head dazedly. “I didn’t see anything, I was asleep. How could I have seen anything?”

Lord Morren turned his attention to Amelia. “What about you? You must have seen something!” Her eyes were wide and her voice was small and terrified.

“No, Master Morren. As Ashen said, we were asleep.”

He glared at her for a long moment, then swung around and stalked back into his workroom. Anger was evident in every line of his body, and I heard him mutter, “I’ll find him. No one steals from me and gets away with it!”

I shivered. If Lord Morren tracked down the lady thief, she wouldn’t be able to tell my father about me, and there would be no rescue. I was left with that uncomfortable thought for the next few hours as Lord Morren did whatever he was doing in there. He couldn’t be doing very much, as I knew his personal reserves of power had to be low. He’d been away for a long time and he hadn’t had a chance to restock his power from Amelia or myself.

So I wasn’t surprised when Lord Morren opened the door to his workroom and summoned me inside. I went to my usual place in the circle on the floor. As I knelt in place, my mind was whirling. If this spell was going to do something to that thief, I had to stop it, but I didn’t know how. Sure, I was familiar with the theory behind most any spell, and I knew of a dozen ways I could disrupt things if only I had some magical power of my own, but I had none whatsoever. For the thousandth time I cursed my latency. Then I saw something that distracted me quite thoroughly. A sparkling lattice of power hung over a second circle drawn in the center of the room. It was the barest thread of power, a kind of framework, or skeleton. I’d never seen anything like it. There were certainly spells that created such patterns, but they were all immensely powerful. This was the barest wisp of power in comparison.

Lord Morren went through the familiar ritual of the power transfer spell. I braced myself for the pain as he knelt behind me and his head bent down, his lips finding my neck. I was engulfed again in that blaze of agony. No matter how may times I experienced it I was always startled by the intensity of it. Human beings don’t remember pain very well. We don’t need to recall the exact degree of agony caused by putting a hand on a hot coal to know not to do it again. The amazing thing was that after a moment I could actually put it at a small distance from myself and think. I couldn’t ignore it, or put it out of my mind entirely, but I had become accustomed to pain to the point of being capable of thought while experiencing that white-hot agony.

What I was thinking right then was that this seemed to be going on a lot longer than usual. Ordinarily Lord Morren would only take a small amount of blood, and the transfer lasted less than a minute, though the pain made it seem longer. But surely the first minute was long past? I had a bizarre wish to see a clock, so I could know exactly how long this was lasting. Five minutes? Ten? It felt like an hour to my abused nerves, but I knew it couldn’t be nearly that long. I tried to move, to struggle, to break the mage’s hold on me, but it was no use. As always, I was caught in a complete paralysis and couldn’t so much as twitch. When at last Lord Morren released me, I collapsed completely. I thought I’d felt drained after all those other times, but now I was empty to the bottom. I wanted to just lie there, and indeed, I lacked the energy to crawl even an inch, but I did manage to open my eyes.

Lord Morren was standing above me, his back turned to me, his face to the glittering spell construction. To my eyes he glowed with power so brilliantly I was surprised it wasn’t actually illuminating the room, though I knew to normal sight nothing would have been visible. A thread of power spun itself out from Lord Morren to the spell construct, and it began to flesh itself out. Soon the thread had broadened into a rushing cable of energy. It poured into the spell until it was a massive, pulsing scintillation of light to my eyes. And I recognized it now. It was a very high-level, complex spell. I hadn’t known it was possible to build the framework first and then empower it, but for a mage like Lord Morren, with almost no personal energy, there wasn’t any other way to do it.

It was a very sophisticated “hunter” spell, one meant to find a person that met certain criteria that were woven into the spell itself. Simpler hunter spells existed, but they were fallible. This one would leave no stone unturned. It would find the one it sought if they were on the other side of the world, or dead, or even on another plane. Lord Morren laughed darkly as the last of the power he’d taken from me drained out into the spell, completing it. “No thief has even lived to enjoy the rewards of stealing from me,” he said, and I shivered at the vindictiveness in his voice.

The spell had already begun to work. It might take minutes, it might take days, but eventually it would find the lady thief. And what would happen next I didn’t want to think about. I still could see no way of halting what was to come. My hopes all seemed to be swirling down the drain, but what could I do? To physically attack Lord Morren would accomplish nothing. He was larger than I, and stronger, and with a wave of his hand he could immobilize me. I lacked the ability for a magical attack, and the thought of trying to talk him out of this was ludicrous. What other options remained?

Lord Morren paced back and forth across the workroom, his eyes always fixed on the glowing spell matrix. He didn’t bother to dismiss me, and after that tremendous drain of energy I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to my feet anyway. Hours ticked by and I slipped in and out of consciousness. I was so desperately weary I could have slept for a month, despite my uncomfortable position on the floor, but at the same time I was so anxious that true rest eluded me. Sometime in the early hours of the morning my exhaustion finally overcame my worry and I slipped into a deep sleep. I was awakened by Lord Morren’s shout of triumph. I opened my eyes. I ached all over, both from the lingering pain of the power transfer and from a night spent on the hard floor. Surveying the room I saw that the sun was well up, for light streamed in through the narrow windows. Lord Morren was standing in front of his spell, and I could see that the pattern of the construct had changed. It was duller, as if the search had used up some of the power Lord Morren had poured into it. And in the center of the crystalline framework there was a window. I couldn’t make out what it showed from my angle, but it was clear that Lord Morren could.

“So! A woman, is it? Well, she’ll come to regret her boldness in daring to steal from me.” He rubbed his hands together in malicious glee. This was a side of him I’d never seen before. He’d always struck me as rational, though cold, but now he looked anything but sane. I shivered again. Not only was I in the hands of a sadist, but a madman as well, and my one chance of escape was slipping away.

I sat up. My head spun from the motion, but gradually things stopped whirling. Lord Morren had gone to the door, and moment later he returned with Amelia in tow. He’d found the thief, and now he needed more power for whatever spell of vengeance he was planning to enact. To my surprise I wasn’t ejected from my spot in the circle. Instead Lord Morren led Amelia to one dim corner of the room. A low block of stone stood there. I’d never paid it any particular attention. It was just an unremarkable chunk of granite, and I hadn’t really noticed it before. Lord Morren directed Amelia to kneel before the stone, which she did. He set a simple binding spell in place on her, preventing her from moving. I wondered why, since the power transfer spell rendered one completely immobile anyway. In the back of my mind a little suspicion was creeping in, but I refused to look at it closely. It wasn’t very nice, and I didn’t want it to be true.

Lord Morren began to speak, and though I’d never heard those words spoken, still I recognized them and my suspicion came back as a full-blown certainty. One of my very last classes at the university had dealt with such spells. We were not taught how to cast them, for they were more than illegal, but we learned a few of the basic principles behind them. I almost wished I didn’t know what was coming. It would have been easier if I didn’t know, didn’t have time to dread, before that final moment when Lord Morren would, as I knew now he must, pick up a longer knife than the one he’d so often used on us both and plunge it into Amelia’s heart.

The spell wasn’t a difficult one, but it was lengthy, and as it progressed word by word I suddenly found that my horror and disgust were crystallizing into rage. I got to my feet, finding energy in my anger. The long ago fear of my own rage had vanished somewhere during the past months of imprisonment. Pure white-hot anger flowed through me without any fear to dampen it. My hands began to ache oddly, a feeling that settled into my fingertips. My lips peeled back in a snarl, and without a thought I stepped out of the circle I’d lain in all night and started across the room. The ache in my fingers deepened, my vision was clouded with rage, and I could see nothing but Lord Morren standing over Amelia. Tough, determined Amelia who had stayed strong through more than I could imagine, who had even lifted my sagging spirits, who had endured so much and now was going to die for the sake of petty revenge. Well, not if I could do anything about it! My pace increased and I crossed the last few feet in a single leap. Lord Morren must have heard me coming at the very last, for he managed to turn halfway around.

In the moment of my attack, the dull ache in my hands flared into a sharp, cutting pain. I hardly registered it. Compared to what I’d been through it was nothing. Instinctively as I slammed into Lord Morren’s side, I brought one hand around with fingered crooked and clawed at his face. We both went down in a tangle, and for a moment we struggled on the floor until Lord Morren rolled free. He picked himself up, and I got to my feet as well. He had one hand pressed to his cheek, and blood welled between his fingers. When he dropped his hand I was surprised to see four deep parallel scratches. I looked down at my own hands and found my fingers were bloody and standing out half and inch or so beyond the end of each finger was a slightly curved claw. I had no time to think about this surprising development, for even as I looked up I saw Lord Morren advancing on me, hands raised and madness in his eyes. He flung his hands out in a violent pushing gesture, and I felt a blast of raw power hit me. It flung me the length of the room and I slammed into the workroom’s closed door. The door disintegrated into kindling at the force of the blow. I tumbled through the doorway in a shower of wood and my momentum carried me right off the landing, through the banister in a second explosion of splinters, and into the open center of the stairs. Great, I finally get my claws just in time to die, I thought as I plunged down the three stories to the ground floor. I landed with a shock that knocked the breath out of me… on my feet. I stood there half-crouched for a long moment, stunned both mentally and physically. I’d landed on my feet, just like Chris had all those years ago.

I quickly gathered my mind together. I’d suddenly been granted the feline powers I’d wanted all my life, and now maybe, just maybe, I might stand a chance of beating Lord Morren and winning my freedom, and Amelia’s too. But any second he’d be coming down those stairs, and when he did I needed to be ready. I ran a quick mental inventory of the new abilities at my command. Landing on my feet, obviously, but in addition I should have a better sense of smell now, better hearing, be able to see in the dark, have slightly faster reflexes, and the ability to slip into a kind of hibernation when needed. That last one gave me an idea. It would be risky, but it just might work. A straight-out fight was still out of the question. I might have a physical advantage now, but Lord Morren still had his magic, and the rest of his slaves as well. But if he thought he didn’t need them… I dropped to the floor on my back, trying to simulate the natural sprawl I might have landed in had I not landed on my feet. Then I turned my mind back to the long hours I’d spent as a child trying to master any of my feline powers. Father had taken me through the exercise meant to drop me into a suspended animation trance dozens of times, always hoping that this time it would happen, this time I’d show him that I really was his son… I dismissed the bitter thoughts that usually accompanied the memory. Father hadn’t meant to hurt me with his disappointment, and right now it was the process that was important. I relaxed, gradually slowing my breath. At first my body insisted it wanted to continue to breathe normally, but soon the trance state began to take hold. Now my breathing was becoming shallower and my pulse slowed. I kept my eyes open, wanting to see what was going on. Once in the trance state I would cease to blink or respond to any physical stimulus. At last my breathing became so shallow it was almost stilled, and my heartbeat slowed to the point where I effectively had no pulse.

Just in time, for Lord Morren’s face appeared at the top of the stairs and peered down at me. A sound to my left told me that some other servant had come into the tower on the ground floor. When he came into my field of vision I saw that it was Jascin. His fingers touched my neck on the scarred spot where Lord Morren had taken my blood so many times. I could feel his touch, but it was curiously distant and detached.

“Well?” Lord Morren’s voice, sounding irritable and angry, floated down from above.

“He’s dead, master,” said Jascin.

A colorful array of curses better suited to one of the slaver pirates than a supposedly cultured lord like Lord Morren descended from the top of the stair. Lord Morren’s physical presence soon followed his voice and a moment later he was bending over my still body. He felt for a pulse as well, as if he didn’t believe his henchman’s report. “Now what am I going to do? Where am I going to get another power source?” His irritated words sent a momentary chill through me, though I didn’t move. Had he killed Amelia already then? But his next words reassured me. “I can’t finish my spell without killing the girl, but without him I need her power.”

Jascin didn’t reply. Lord Morren shot me one last irritated look and said, “Better take him out to the courtyard for now. We’ll worry about burying him tomorrow. I have too may other things to do.”

His face vanished from my field of vision and I heard his footsteps ascending the stairs. Jascin’s face disappeared as well. I wasn’t alone for long though, for Jascin soon returned with another slave. They picked me up between them and carried me out of the tower. I was dumped on the ground in the courtyard that lay behind the tower. If I hadn’t been in a trance I would have winced at their rough treatment, but as it was everything still seemed distant. I heard their footsteps recede and I was completely alone.

When I was certain they were gone I focused my attention. Slowly my heartbeat strengthened and my breathing increased. I blinked once, then again, and I was fully awake. I didn’t want to wait, I wanted to catch Lord Morren now, while his reserves were still low and while the shock value of my being alive would be greater, since he’d just barely seen me “die.” I surveyed the tower that rose above me. It was built of wood rather than stone, though very solidly constructed. For all the time I’d been here I still didn’t know exactly what occupied the lower levels, but I knew that the windows on the third and highest floor led into Lord Morren’s workroom. I approached the base of the tower and extended my claws in preparation for climbing. I took a brief moment to look at them. They were bloodied, both from clawing Lord Morren and from breaking through the skin to emerge. A full-blooded Ritah would have channels that the claws retracted into. A part-blood like myself did too, but the ends were sealed with a thin layer of flesh and skin. The claws had to cut their way out through it the first time they emerged. So long as I kept them extended for the next week or so my fingers would heal properly and I’d be able to extend and sheath them without any difficulty.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that. I had bigger things on my mind. I kicked off my shoes, wishing I had claws on my feet as well, but though my toes lacked toenails, I’d never heard of any Kestral having foot claws, and I doubted I’d be the first. Still, bare feet would give me better purchase than shoes. I dug my claws into the wood and began to haul myself upward. It was hard work, and tiring, but I kept at it. Little by little I mounted higher. It seemed to take forever before I reached the narrow ledge that lay between the first floor and the second. I pulled myself up onto it and stopped there for a moment to rest. I had effectively reached the halfway point. One more story and I would be on the ledge just below the third floor windows. I resumed my climb. My arms burned with fatigue. This was like doing an endless series of partial chin-ups, and I’d never been big on chin-ups. Still I finally made it to the next ledge. I rested there for a moment, then got to my feet and crept up to the nearest window. I stood just to one side of it and held very still, listening. My hearing now was keener than it had ever been, and I could make out what was going on in the room quite well.

The first sound that registered was the sound of Amelia crying. I almost didn’t recognize it for what it was at first, I hadn’t heard her cry since that first night almost a year ago, but there wasn’t anything else the soft sobbing noise could be. Then next thing I heard was Lord Morren’s voice.

“Cease that noise, girl! No amount of wailing is going to change your fate, and that nuisance Ashen wasn’t worth crying over. If he hadn’t forced me to waste my own power blasting him out of this life, I wouldn’t need to drain my staff in order to finish this cursed revenge spell.”

He’d decided to go ahead with his spell then. He probably thought he could find another latent slave to drain of power. Well, not if I have anything to say about it, I thought with a fierceness that startled me. I called up the floor plan of his workroom in my mind. The door would be over there, the window I was at here, and the stone altar where he would be standing would be right about… there. I leaned over cautiously and dug my claws into the window frame. I raised it slowly, trying to remain silent. Lord Morren was turned slightly away from me as I’d thought he would be, and his attention was all on Amelia. I’d gotten the window open and was inside the room when she caught sight of me. Her eyes widened. Heaven knows what she thought of my appearance, since I was supposed to be dead. Lord Morren must have seen her expression, for even as I flung myself at him he was turning around and raising his staff. The expression of complete and utter shock that crossed his face as he caught sight of me was almost comical. Still, he managed to get the staff between us, and I was forced to grab onto it or risk having it slammed into me. All magic aside, it was a solid piece of wood and could do quite a bit of damage.

Then magic couldn’t be set aside, for Lord Morren was trying to use the power of the staff against me. He didn’t take the time to string together an actual spell; he just pulled power out and threw it at me, as he had done before. But this time there was one big difference; the power he was using wasn’t his, it was mine. For months he’d been charging his staff on a regular basis with my energy. So when that power was flung back at me, it didn’t hit me with a physical impact as Lord Morren’s pervious power bolts had. It was simply absorbed. I could feel it rushing back into me. It was an intoxicating feeling, and I wanted more. I could sense the reservoir of power pulsing in the staff, and without really thinking I reached for it. And I got it. It flowed up freely through my hands, which still gripped the polished wood.

Lord Morren’s expression turned from shock to terror. He still had a hold of the staff as well, and now he pulled power out of it and formed it into a spell. He flung it at me with a snarl of hatred. In my head it was as if everything suddenly clicked together. All the theory I’d absorbed meshed with the power coursing through me and I knew exactly what to do. With a mere thought I deflected Lord Morren’s spell. So this was how it felt to do magic! It was so easy, so natural! Lord Morren tried a second spell that I batted aside as easily as the first. Then I strung together a simple construct of my own, charged it with power, and threw it at him. He barely managed to deflect it, and the force of it put a scorched hole in a nearby bench. I laughed. “Now who has the power, Master Lucius?” I said.

The terror in his eyes deepened into desperation. He let go of the staff and lunged for the altar. I realized what he was doing too late. His hand closed over the sacrificial knife and held it at Amelia’s throat. She was still held in place by the spell Lord Morren had set earlier. The feeling of triumphant exhilaration I’d been feeling vanished instantly. It was replaced by a combination of sick dread and cold rage. We stood for a long moment in a frozen tableau. Amelia knelt on the floor, Lord Morren crouched beside her, and I stood with the staff in my hands a few yards away.

I could have tried a spell. A whole world of magic had now opened up to me. With my training and my newfound power I could have cast any number of spells, but the chilly fury that washed over me demanded something else. All those years of pent-up anger poured out at once. The staff clattered to the floor as I took one step forward. “Come any closer and I’ll kill her!” Lord Morren snarled. I stopped, but the thing that I’d begun as I moved didn’t. I don’t know how I did it, or even really what it was I was doing, but some deep instinct told me that this was what my anger demanded. A feeling of pulling, pushing, shifting swept over me. I saw Lord Morren’s eyes widen in shock, amazement and horror, the dagger dropping with a clatter from suddenly nerveless fingers, and then I was moving forward again, but this time I covered the distance between the mage and myself in a single tremendous leap.

I was vaguely aware of the changes that had come over me, but all my thoughts were focused on the source of my rage. Lord Morren, who had tormented me, who had drunk my blood and drained my very life. Who had deceived me into believing that my own father didn’t love me. Who had placed the scars on Amelia’s wrists and at her throat, and who now was trying to kill her. The sight of him filled me with a killing fury that was hot and cold all at once. My paws hit him, knocking him backward, and my teeth tore at his throat. There was blood everywhere. Lord Morren gave a choked gurgling cry and just like that the light went out of his eyes and he was gone.

My rage left as suddenly as it had come. All my fury had poured out of me and suddenly I was left with nothing but an empty numbness. I turned toward Amelia, licking blood off my muzzle without really thinking about it. I wasn’t really thinking of anything just then. It wasn’t until I met her shocked gaze and noticed that her kneeling face was at my eye level that I became consciously aware of the change that had come over me.

I’d heard stories of full-blooded cat folk who were shapeshifters. They could, according to legend, take the forms of the great cats, lions, tigers, panthers and such. Apparently the legends were true, and I’d somehow managed to inherit the ability, though I’d never heard of anybody in my family having it. But there was no doubt I did have it, because at the moment I was wearing the shape of a large leopard.

Amelia’s wide eyes stared into my own feline gaze. Her voice trembled as she said, “Ashen? Is that you?”

I couldn’t speak in this form, but I nodded. An expression of wonder crossed her face. “How? I… I thought you were dead!”

I wanted to reply, so I tried to change back. It was as easy as thought. I flowed upright into my own form. “I think we had better wait for explanations,” I said. My shock was beginning to wear off and I could sense a tingle of magic in the air that I didn’t like. Something was happening, and it didn’t have anything to do with my magic. This had the feel of Lord Morren’s magic through and through. I picked up the staff again. It felt warm in my hand. I drew on the power stored there to release Amelia from the spell that held her.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Lord Morren is dead, but his magic is still hanging around. Knowing him, that’s not a good sign. He’s the kind of person who would have a nasty revenge in store for whoever killed him. There, can you feel that?” A faint vibration was rumbling through the tower. I could see wisps of power gathering in the walls. “I have a feeling this place is going to come down around our ears any moment now.”

I reached out a hand and pulled Amelia to her feet. I avoided looking at the spot where Lord Morren lay, blood spattered all around, as we hurried through the splintered door and down the stairs. The rumbling had deepened and the air was full of dust. The walls were starting to fall, and the stairs crumbled under our feet. I built a shield of pure force over our heads, and tried as best I could to keep the stairs from falling apart before we reached the bottom. We made it down safely, though more falling beams crashed down around us every moment. The big front doors now blocked our way. I raised the staff and blasted them apart. No time to waste worrying if they were locked or not. We dashed out and ran down the drive until we were a good distance away. Suddenly Amelia stopped and said, “What a minute, what about all the other slaves?”

“Look,” I said, “The only thing falling down is the main tower. We were the only ones kept there, right? The rest of the house is still standing.” And it was true. A cloud of dust and debris surrounded the house, but you could see that the lower wings were still standing. The main tower, however, was nothing more than a pile of rubble. It had collapsed completely in the brief moments it had taken us to get this far.

A group of other slaves ran out of the lower wings. I recognized the burly form of Jascin among them. He no doubt recognized us as well, for he headed right for us. “What happened?” he shouted as he hurried over.

“Lord Morren is dead,” I said. I wasn’t sure how the big slave would take it. He’d been Lord Morren’s loyal henchman after all. I braced myself for a fight, and it looked like I might get it.

“What! Then we’re all dead. You killed him, didn’t you? You fool! You’ve killed every slave in this house. Without Lord Morren to reset the collar spell we’ll all die.”

“No, you won’t,” Amelia broke in. We both looked at her. She’d drawn herself up and addressed us both with an air of authority. “Lord Morren didn’t tell you the whole truth about that spell. He’s not the only one who can reset it. And not only that, but a good enough mage could remove the collar entirely.”

“And I suppose you have a mage handy who will help free slaves?” Jascin laughed nastily. “I don’t think so, girl.”

“My name is Amelia, and yes, I do. My grandmother is a grand master mage, one of the greatest in the world.”

I looked at her, surprised. She’d never mentioned having a grand master for a grandmother. There were only a handful of grand master mages in the world. My father wasn’t anywhere near grand master level. She smiled at me wryly, noting my surprise. “I didn’t inherit her talent, but I know she’d help me.” Then she turned her attention to Jascin. “I don’t like you. I don’t think you’re a good man, but I’ll do that much for you and for all the other slaves.”

Jascin’s eyes narrowed. He was apparently thinking through her offer. He was obviously a pragmatic man, and no doubt concerned with his own survival before all else. It seemed his loyalty to Lord Morren had been as unwilling as the other slaves,’ since his only concern about Lord Morren’s death was over the collars. Sure enough after a moment he nodded. “I don’t want to die any more than the next man. All right.”

“You might want to let them know the news,” said Amelia, pointing to the huddled group of the other slaves. Jascin nodded and headed off.

I looked at Amelia, surprised by this new authoritative side to her. “You sure took charge there.”

She smiled faintly. “What else could I do? I didn’t want you to have to fight. You’ve done enough today.” Her words raised the memory of Lord Morren’s gore-drenched body on the floor. I quickly pushed it aside. I didn’t want to think about it. Amelia looked into my eyes, perhaps seeing my inner struggle. Her own gaze seemed warm and reassuring, and I felt my heart jump. Then she said, “I need to herd this bunch to Grandma’s and get them taken care of. But I think you should go to your father. He’s going to get that thief’s message and come here after you, and if he finds this mess, he’s sure to think the worst.”

“Amelia, I…” I paused. I didn’t know what to say. I’d been with her for so long and I hadn’t really paid her much attention. Now all of the sudden she wanted me to go, and I realized I wanted to be with her. Was I falling in love? I didn’t know. But I did know I cared about her a great deal. I finally said, “I know I need to go home, but I… I would like to see you again someday.”

The faint smile spread into a full-blown grin. “I think that’s more than likely.” Then she stepped close and put her arms around me. Her face tilted up to me and to my surprise she kissed me. It wasn’t quite a lover’s kiss, but it was no quick peck either. I let the staff fall to the ground, put my own arms around her and kissed her back. We stood there for a long moment before she finally broke away. “I’ve got things to do, and you need to go home,” she said. She gave me one last smile, said, “I’ll see you again one of these days,” and walked off toward the other slaves. I stared after her for a while before I picked up the staff and turned my gaze to the road. I had at least a rough idea of where I was in relation to home. The sooner I began, the sooner I would be there.

It was summer again. A full year had turned since the day I’d taken that walk down the beach. And now I was walking again, leaning on a black staff as I trudged down the road. It was hot and dusty and I was very weary. It had been a long day. The sun beat down on my head and I had no hat and no water or food. I almost turned back when I realized my lack of supplies, but somehow now that I had begun, I didn’t want to halt my journey. I was going home.

That first day I encountered no one. I set up a simple camp in a clump of trees by the side of the road. The way I’d chosen led along the coast, and from where I was I could hear the distant boom of the waves. Their crashing accompanied me during most of that long weary journey. I found a stream and quenched my thirst, but could do nothing for my hunger. I could conjure food, but food created by magic has little substance, and would not satisfy. I hoped to meet some fellow traveler willing to share provisions, or find a farmstead along the way that might give me food in exchange for some magical service.

With that thought in mind, I took time the next morning to set a small illusion spell on myself. It would hide the collar and slave mark, for an escaped slave was fair game for any that could catch him, and I didn’t want to dodge slave-takers along with all the other problems I’d have on this trip. Staff in hand I set off down the road.

Lord Morren had built his house in an isolated spot, but it wasn’t long before little farms began to appear here and there along the way. I stopped at the first one that lay near the road. I knocked on the door of a whitewashed farmhouse. The lady who answered it looked friendly enough.

“What can I do for you, young sir?”

“I’m just passing through, and I’m in need of a few supplies. I was hoping I might barter such skill as I have for some food and a skin of water, ma’am.”

“And what skills have you, lad?”

I hoped that she wasn’t one of those people who feared or hated magic. There weren’t many, but there were some, especially among the peasant classes. I said, “I’m a mage of some small ability. I can do little charms for luck and to help out around the farm.”

“I thought as much, from the look of that staff. Though you don’t look near as noble as most mages I’ve seen, and I’ve seen more than a few pass by here. They go up to the Lord’s house over that way. But then, you most likely know all about him, being as you’re a mage yourself.”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to discuss the recent demise of Lord Morren with her, no matter how friendly she was. She realized that I wasn’t going to respond to her remark, so she continued, “I’d be more than happy to trade you a bit of food for a charm or two. We’ve some cows that have been off their milk as often as on these days and a health charm for them would be more than welcome.”

A half hour later I was walking down the road again, a small pack full of food on my back and a water skin hanging from my belt. I’d even gotten a hat to keep my skin from burning. I hadn’t been out in the sun for so long I was quite pale. The relief from the sun was welcome as I trudged down the dusty road. It stretched before me in an endless ribbon or hard-packed earth. I proceeded down it step by weary step. For two days I caught a ride with a trader’s wagon hauling goods, but the rest of the distance I covered on my own two feet. I had a lot of time to think as I put one foot in front of the other. I thought about my father quite a bit. I’d always just reacted to him, to his seeming rejection. I’d never really thought about what it was like from his point of view. Every father has high hopes for his children. He’d wanted me to have everything he’d had and more. How could he have been anything but disappointed when I proved unable to fulfill his dreams? I didn’t think he had realized how much I wanted his good opinion, and how much his rejection had hurt me. He had been as frustrated at my latency as I had, and had unthinkingly taken that frustration out on me.

I wanted to sit down and talk with him, tell him how I’d really felt, and find out how he’d felt. I wanted to see my mother again, and my brother Chris. Knowing now that seeing them was at least possible I allowed myself a bout of self-indulgent homesickness. I missed them terribly!

During the long hours of walking and the sometimes longer hours lying sleepless on the hard ground at night I pondered the reasons for my sudden emergence from latency in both magical and feline abilities. After a lot of thinking I came to a conclusion. I recalled the painful ache in my hands whenever I’d gotten really angry. I recalled too the irrational fear of my own anger I’d always struggled with. And the last piece of the puzzle was my former low tolerance for pain. Sometime in my childhood I’d gotten angry enough that my claws had begun to emerge, but it had hurt too much. Pain can kill anger very effectively. And so I’d become afraid of the pain and, by extension, the anger that caused it. Any time I got angry enough for my claws to come out my fear had stifled it. And since the claws were the key to the rest of the Ritah abilities, I’d never been able to develop any of them. But the long months of pain I’d endured as Lord Morren’s power source had built up my tolerance to pain to the point where I no longer feared my anger and the pain it might cause.

My latency might well be traced to the same source. The fact that I could shapeshift, something rare to the point of being legendary, even among full-blooded Ritah, suggested that my Ritah powers were unusually strong. I knew that one kind of magic could interfere with another when spell-casting, especially when both were very strong. I surmised that the same thing had happened to me. With my feline powers pent up inside, they’d suffocated my magical abilities, preventing them from surfacing. So when I’d finally gained my cat powers it had opened the way for my magic. And then Lord Morren’s attack, using my own life force as it did, had acted as a catalyst to bring my power to life.

There were days when I could hardly believe all that had happened. My life seemed divided into three totally unrelated parts. There was my old life as a latent at home, my miserable existence as a slave, and now this empowered state I found myself in. I thought of my homecoming, imagining what it would be like to return and be welcomed. Father would be so proud of me at last! But as I imagined my triumphant return the images turned sour. I remembered my joy when I’d learned that my father wanted me after all. I had felt then that he loved me despite my lack of ability. But if I returned home now, triumphant and powerful, how could I ever be sure that it was true? How would I know whether my welcome was because Father loved me, or because I’d become what he had wanted of me? The nagging doubt would always remain; would my father have welcomed me without magic, without ability?

I thought about it over and over as I walked, and eventually I came to a conclusion. So when at last I saw the familiar house come into view in the distance, I took a moment and tuned aside into the woods that lined the road at that point. I released the illusion spell that had hidden the house mark and collar. I tore a strip of cloth off of the lower edge of my tunic and tied it around my neck like a scarf, covering the collar. I pulled the brim of my hat low over my forehead to hide the mark. Next I hid my staff. I found a grove of slender saplings and stood the staff in the middle of them. I took the time to carefully construct the spell that made the staff look like just another young tree. Even to mage sight there would be nothing unusual about it. Then I tried a kind of experiment. I conjured a mage mirror in the air in front of me so I could be sure it worked. I knew I could shift all the way in one direction, becoming fully Ritah and going beyond to become the leopard, but I also suspected that I could go the other way as well. I was right. As I concentrated my features subtly changed. My pupils became rounded, my eyes less intensely green, my ears were rounded too, and my fingers had ordinary fingernails. I smiled at the mirror and my reflection smiled back with blunt human teeth. Lastly I worked one more spell. It was similar to the spell I’d used to hide my staff, but more complex. It hid my magical aura, cloaking it utterly. I worked on it until I was sure that nobody, not even my father, would be able to detect the least hint of magic around me. Not even the faint aura that marked latent power would be visible. With a last glance behind to make sure the staff was well hidden I emerged back on the road.

I thought over what I was doing one last time. Should I deceive my parents? Could I pull it off? But I had to know. It all came down to that. I simply had to know.

That last mile seemed to take forever. I was tired, weary to the bone, and anxious too. What would my welcome be? And yet paradoxically it rushed past all too soon. The moment when I would either be fully accepted or fully rejected by my father was only minutes away. And then I was there. I stood at the gate that led to the inner courtyard of the house. Our home was something less than a castle, but something more than just a house. I stood there for several long minutes before finally lifting my hand and knocking. The door creaked open and a familiar face peered out. It was David, a long-time servant of my father. I’d known him since I was a child, and the sight of him raised a lump in my throat. All at once I really believed that I was home.

“Here now, if you’re after charity you need to call at the back door, not the front.”

I looked at him and smiled. “Have I changed so much that you don’t know me David?”

His eyes widened in recognition. “By all the gods! It’s the young master!” He flung the door open wide and I found myself engulfed in a rough embrace. After a moment David stepped back, looking embarrassed. “Pardon me, Master Ashen, but it’s just that we’d near given up on ever seeing you again. But what am I keeping you here for? Your mother will be wanting to see you right away! And your father!” A sudden thought occurred to him, and David said, “But how did you get here? We’d just heard a few days back that you were held prisoner by some mage in far-off parts. Why if you’d come just a day later you’d have missed your father. He’s been putting together a rescue party to go and fetch you back.”

“It’s a long story,” I said, feeling a faint lift in my heart at this confirmation of my father’s desire to have me back.

“Ach, what am I doing, keeping you here again. You can tell me the tale another day.” Then he led the way into the courtyard. I followed, my heart pounding. The courtyard bustled with activity. It was obvious that David had been telling the truth about Father’s planned expedition. In the middle of a knot of people I recognized two faces. One, I noted with surprise, was the lady thief. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her here. All my attention, however, was centered on the second. My father. He looked different, older than I recalled. His face seemed more careworn and his robes weren’t as perfectly pressed as usual. He saw us hurrying toward him out of the corner of his eye and turned. His eyes widened as he saw me. There was no mistaken identity now, even ragged and worn as I looked, he knew me. “Ashen!” Everything else receded into the background as my father caught me up in a hug. He held me tight and said over and over, “You home, you’re home.” I realized with a kind of shock that he was crying. I don’t think I had ever seen my father cry before. I was crying too and it was a long time before either of us let go. He held me at arm’s length for a moment and just looked at me. I saw a question appear in his eyes as they met mine and he noticed my round pupils. Before either of us could say anything, I heard a familiar voice shout joyfully, “Ashen!” and then my mother flung her arms around me.

“Oh Mom!” I didn’t have anything else to say. And then as if to complete the family, Chris came flying across the courtyard. I let go of Mom and grabbed him up in a fierce hug, whirling him around. I set him down and for a minute just stared at the three of them. My family! Standing a ways back I saw the lady thief grinning at me. She gave me a thumbs up. I grinned back. I was home.

“What happened?” asked my mother. “We heard you’d been kidnapped by some mage, made into a slave.” I looked at her, and some of the sadness crept back into me. I took off the hat I’d been wearing so that Lord Morren’s house mark was plainly visible. Mother gasped. Father looked grim, and Chris stared wide-eyed.

“Maybe we could discuss this somewhere more comfortable,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

We made our way inside. Mother led the way to the informal parlor. The formal parlor was where guests were most often entertained, but the informal parlor was where my mother was prone to bring her friends. It was a comfortable room with a big fireplace and large bay windows. I dropped wearily into a deep wingback chair. Mother and Father sat side-by-side on a couch, and Chris plopped down on the rug in front of the fire, his eyes full of curiosity. I wasn’t sure how much to tell them, but there was one thing I knew I needed to say.

“Father…” I paused to gather my thoughts, then continued. “Father, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but, well, I’m not part Ritah anymore. Look.” I held up my hand, palm toward me so that he could see my normal human fingernails. “I’ve lost my latent power too. I can never be a mage.”

Father shook his head saying, “I had noticed. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it doesn’t matter, Ashen. You’re my son. I don’t care if you’re a grand high master or blind, deaf, and dumb. You’re my son!” He said it with such fierce conviction that my eyes welled up with tears again. He really did want me. Me, and not my power, not my potential as an heir to the Kestral house, he loved me just for me. I blinked the tears out of my eyes and looked up again. My father’s expression was a mixture of remorse and longing. “Can you ever forgive me for treating you so badly that you could doubt how much I love you?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

After that there were a lot more tears, and a great many explanations. I told my story, only leaving out the details of how I’d killed Lord Morren. “I saw a chance and I took it,” was all I said, and my parents respected my silence, though Chris piped up asking, “Did you cut his throat?”

“Chris!” said mother.

“No, I didn’t cut his throat,” I said, though at that moment the image of Lord Morren lying on the workroom floor with his throat shredded, the taste of his blood in my mouth in a sickening echo of the blood he’d drunk came back to me. I think something must have shown on my face, for my parent’s expressions both darkened with concern, but neither of them said anything.

After a long silence Mother broke it by saying, “You can tell us everything else later. You look terrible. You should get a bath, have some food, and get some rest.”

I smiled at her. It was amazingly wonderful to hear her ordinary voice saying such ordinary things. “Thanks. That sounds wonderful. Especially the bath part. I haven’t had a real bath in ages.”

We all got up. Mom hugged me one more time. She sniffed and with a grin and a twinkle in her eye said, “You definitely need that bath son.” I laughed, really laughed for the first time in what seemed like years.

“I’m so glad to be back,” I said again and then I went to get that bath.

I slept that night in my own bed, and my sleep was deep and dreamless. I awoke in the morning feeling totally refreshed and relaxed. For one brief instant I wondered if this were all a dream, but then I opened my eyes to the sight of sunlight streaming in through my windows and I knew it was real. I got up and went down to see what was for breakfast. Mother was in the small kitchen that adjoined the informal dining room, humming as she worked. We had servants, of course, but every now and then Mother liked to cook herself. She’d been raised in a family with plenty of nobility and not much money, and they hadn’t had servants, so she had learned how to cook, clean, sew, mend, and do all sorts of things that did not befit a lady of her stature. Generally she sat back and let the servants do things, but every now and then she insisted on doing something herself. She called those moments her “small rebellions,” and scandalized some of the more proper servants with them, but I’d always enjoyed the meals she cooked more, just because she cooked them.

“Good morning,” I said. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Sausage, eggs, and sourdough toast,” she replied with a smile. It was one of my favorite meals. “You know we’re going to be eating all your favorites for the next week or two.”

“I certainly don’t mind,” I said. Father and Chris came in a few minutes later and we all sat down and had breakfast. I kept pausing to take in the sheer ordinariness of the scene. I’d missed these simple moments more than I’d let myself know. I noticed the others, especially Mother, were likewise pausing to stare at me. I had a sudden image of how empty the table must have been with just the three of them around it.

As we were finishing, Father gestured in my direction with his fork and said, “We’re going to have to do something about that mark, and that hideous collar. Maybe you could come down to my workroom after breakfast?”

That reminded me that I still had one thing left to do before I settled back into home life. I’d found out what I’d needed so desperately to know and now I needed to tell my parents the truth about my abilities. It wouldn’t be easy. I knew they’d forgive me my deception, but I just couldn’t think of how to start. The best way, I decided, would be to show, not tell. “Before we do that, there’s something I need to show you,” I said. I’d take the easier out and just show Father. He could tell Mother afterward. “Could we take a walk out to the woods this morning?”

Dad looked puzzled, but he agreed. We strolled in silence for a while, just enjoying the beautiful summer day and each other’s company. After a while my father spoke. “Ashen, I want to apologize to you again. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t gotten so mad that day and chased you away…” I stopped him before he could go any further.

“It’s not your fault, Dad.”

“But…”

“No, you can’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault and it’s not mine. Blame those slavers, blame Lord Morren, but don’t blame yourself.”

“But I was the one that drove you off. And…” he hesitated, a tortured expression on his face, “I was at Lord Morren’s house only a couple months ago. If I’d only known somehow! I even asked him to help search for you. He agreed, the snake, with you locked up there the whole time.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know? Did Lord Morren tell you?”

I shook my head. “No.” I hesitated, not wanting to cause my father any more pain, but he was looking at me with questions burning in his eyes, so I continued, “You probably didn’t notice the servant Lord Morren summoned to get a drink. Nobody ever looks as slaves. I never used to. But that was me.”

My father’s face went pale. I could see he was torturing himself again with might-have-beens. “But why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.

I took a deep breath, remembering again that conversation, those seemingly damning words, that feeling of utter hopelessness. “Lord Morren is very good at manipulating people. Do you remember what you were talking about?”

“I was telling him about you, and then out of the blue he starts talking about thaumaturgic talismans and the danger of malfunctions, something like that. I was annoyed that he wanted to discuss something so trivial, but then afterward he changed the subject back to you. That’s when he agreed to help look for you. And you’d been right there not two minutes earlier! But what does that have to do with why you didn’t say anything?” His unfinished question hung in the air for a long moment before I answered it.

“’Better to have nothing at all than unusable potential,’” I quoted softly.

“Yes, that’s exactly what he said and…” he stopped and I could see the realization hit him. “And I agreed with him and then dismissed the whole thing as unimportant.”

I nodded sadly. “You can see how he convinced me that you thought I was unimportant, that you didn’t want me. Afterward he told me that you’d said you were better off without me. And I believed him. And,” I added, “That’s the reason behind why I’ve brought you here,” While we’d been talking we’d reached the grove of trees where I’d left my staff. “I have to confess I’ve deceived you about one thing. I’m sorry, but I had to be sure. I had to know for certain that you really wanted me, and not my magic.”

Father looked confused. “I do, of course I do,” he said. “But why…?” He let the question trail off, perhaps not knowing what to ask. I turned off of the road and led the way into the grove. I found the sapling, looking just like the others, without any difficulty.

“This should make things clearer,” I said, not above a touch of melodrama. I reached out my hand and took the staff, thus breaking the spell that hid it. At the same time I dissolved the spell that camouflaged my power and began the shift that would return me to my usual part-feline form. I knew to Father’s mage sight I must have suddenly blazed with energy. A moment later the blaze faded away and I stood there, staff held in my clawed hand. My father gaped at me in shock. “Ashen, what… how…?”

I smiled, showing my pointed eyeteeth, and explained. “I told you the truth about what happened to me, but I left out a few crucial details at the end. Lord Morren did something that triggered my latent power and my Ritah ability. But I had to know, I just had to be sure that I was being welcomed for myself, and not for the magic’s sake.”

Father shook his head in amazement. “I am truly sorry for everything I’ve done to make you need such a reassurance. But by all the gods Ashen, you’ve got an aura so powerful I don’t know how you hid it. I’ve never seen any mage with an aura like that except the grand masters!”

I laughed then, delighted by his amazement and approval. “That isn’t the half of it,” I said, seized by a sudden urge to show off. “Take a look at this!” I leaned the staff against a nearby tree and started the shift. A moment later I was looking up at my father through the leopard’s eyes. I spared a moment this time to wonder exactly what happened to my clothes when I shifted like that. I filed the idea away for further research.

“A shapeshifter,” breathed my father. “I’ve head stories, but I never thought I’d see one, let alone that it would be my son.”

I grinned at him with a toothy feline grin. Then I changed back into my own shape. “Can you forgive my deception?”

“Of course! I need forgiveness far more than you do, son.”

I shook my head. “That’s all in the past. There’s nothing to forgive. Now come on, let’s go home,” I said, savoring the sound of that wonderful word. Home.

The next few days were almost entirely wonderful. We told Mother about my powers, and she was quietly pleased. Chris was immensely impressed by my shapeshifting ability and asked if I could show him how. I told him I’d try. After all, if I’d inherited the ability, why couldn’t he have it too? We spent many fun, if fruitless, hours in the garden trying it. We always gave up on the magic before long and ended up playing. I discovered the joys of being scratched behind the ears and rediscovered the joys of tag and hide-and-seek. (Chris informed me that shapeshifting and using my nose was cheating.) The best times though were the long hours I spent with my father in his workroom. Despite the fact that it was a more orderly version of Lord Morren’s, even to being perched in the third story of our home, I wasn’t troubled by bad memories. Working with my father was a pure joy, and nothing could taint it. We delved into magic together eagerly. We thought so much alike in so many ways, understood each other so well, and yet we were different enough to have different angles and different insights into the problems we investigated.

The source of those problems, however, remained the only blight on my otherwise happy existence. The house mark was annoying and I wanted it off, but the collar had continued to tighten over the last few weeks, and now was tight enough that it was beginning to interfere with my breathing. I worked through dozens of possible methods of removal with the meticulous care I’d learned during my university days, but the collar’s spells were interlaced and complex. The house mark was simpler. We found half a dozen possible solutions right off. It wasn’t a terribly complicated spell, but my father wasn’t happy with any of the ideas we came up with.

“What kind of sadist was this Lucius?” growled my father in irritation as we investigated yet another avenue of research. “Every method we find is going to cause you a lot of pain to use.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “I just want the cursed thing off.” I really didn’t mind. The pain of removing the house mark wouldn’t be any greater than the pain of putting it on, and I knew I could stand that without much difficulty. Father, however, kept looking for an option that wouldn’t hurt me. “Dad, you’re not going to find an option that doesn’t involve pain. Lord Morren was exactly that, a sadist. Just pick one and get it over with.” I’d said as much before, but this time he seemed to believe it.

“All right. I don’t like it, but I guess that’s what we’ll have to do.”

“What are we waiting for?” I asked. “Let’s do it today.”

Since the spell was fairly delicate and would be cast on me, my father would do the actual spell casting. Together we ran the theory of it, testing and making sure that all would go as planned. Dad said I was a whiz at theory, to which I wryly replied that I ought to be, since my degree was in theory. He looked rather chagrined. I just smiled. He’d actually forgotten all about my latency and theoretical training for a moment. When we were sure it would go off without a hitch we began.

“I still don’t like this,” said my father as he raised his arms to begin the spell. I was standing inside a spell circle a lot like Lord Morren’s, but with a world of difference. I was here of my own free will, for one thing, and the person standing outside the circle was someone I loved and trusted, for another. My father spoke the first words, and immediately I felt a slight discomfort. He worked quickly but steadily, stringing words and gestures together with smooth professionalism. I focused on what he was doing, trying to ignore the discomfort that was rapidly blossoming into real pain. It built to the point where it was impossible to ignore, but it never came anywhere near the agony of the power transfer spell. A year ago I would probably have screamed or even blacked out. Now I was able to remain still, silent and conscious. It didn’t last every long, but built rapidly to a short crescendo of pain that gathered in my forehead and then vanished.

I let out a long sigh of relief and turned to look at my father. “Well, did it work?”

He smiled wanly at me, “Yes, it did.”

“You all right?” I asked. He looked tired all of the sudden.

“I should be asking you that. I half expected you to collapse screaming.”

I shrugged. “I’ve felt worse.”

Father just shook his head in amazement.

I shrugged again. I hadn’t been worried about the house mark; it was the collar that concerned me. We’d already found one really nasty trap on it. At first glance you could see an easy way to get it off, clear as day, but a closer look showed that the straightforward method would blow up in your face, literally. I figured the explosion would be violent enough to decapitate me, which thought I didn’t particularly like. We would have to be absolutely sure that no other such traps lurked hidden before we tried anything. But the painstaking care needed would take a lot of time, and time was running out. Already the collar felt too tight. I could still breathe, but the constriction around my neck was unnerving, and it got a little bit tighter every day. I estimated I had only a couple of weeks left at the very most.

As the deadline got closer and the collar tighter, Father and I spent most of our time up in his workroom. We pored over spells and options for hours. Gradually the complex net of spell-work wrapped around the collar came clear. Lord Morren may have been sadistic, but there was no doubt he was a skilled mage. The layered spells were expertly made, and unraveling them a time-consuming task. But at last every thread of magic was accounted for and we were ready to try and remove it.

My father was grumbling about Lord Morren’s sadism again. The spell we’d concocted to remove the collar was very elaborate. It would take a long time to cast and, since the spell on the collar tapped into my life force, the same force Lord Morren had been drawing on with his power transfer spell, I’d be feeling the same kind of pain the whole time. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. The prospect of twenty minutes or so of the kind of agony the power transfer spell had caused didn’t exactly thrill me, but I figured I’d survive. And survival was the issue here. The collar was getting very tight. I kept waking up in the night gasping for breath, and it was a little harder to breathe every day. We’d been concentrating on removing rather than resetting the collar, which my father said might have been a mistake.

“If we’d just figured out the reset spell, we’d have a lot more time to work.”

I agreed, hindsight is always clearer, but at that point I just wanted the cursed thing off. We didn’t have the time to research the reset spell by then anyhow. We had no option but to go ahead with the attempt to get the collar off entirely.

So early one bright summer morning we climbed the stairs to my father’s workroom. Together we went over the whole thing one last time, looking for flaws, but we didn’t find any. “Guess it’s time to start then,” I said. Father just nodded. As before, he would be doing the spell casting, though I’d probably had more input on the design of the spell he would use then he had. All that in-depth theoretical training was coming in handy. I went to the center of the circle again. This time I sat down cross-legged with my hands on my knees. I didn’t want to fall over and hit my head or something. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m ready.”

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.

And so, a little over a year after my graduation I got my graduation party. All of Dad’s friends were there, of course, and many of my friends from school, including a number of fellow theorists. Mother was completely in her element, welcoming guests, ordering servants around, and generally making sure all went smoothly. It was a grand occasion, and I was enjoying myself, though every now and then the memory of that other party, at Lord Morren’s would come back hauntingly. When it did, I firmly dismissed it. I was free now, and I was going to have a good time. Though I was very glad that we had only paid servants, and no slaves. The sight of some poor slave serving drinks would probably have been too much for me.

As the night wore on I was standing in a little triangle with my father and Lauren, the lady thief who was still hanging around our house. She claimed she was taking advantage of our hospitality and scouting us out, and one day we’d wake up and find she’d carted off the family fortune while we slept, but she always said it with a grin, and we all knew she was kidding. She was telling, for the fourth or fifth time, the harrowing story of how she’d been delayed on the road from Lord Morren’s, which was the reason why I’d found my father preparing to rush to the rescue rather than already on the road. She was a good storyteller, though I was sure she was exaggerating at least a few of the details of her story. In the middle of her hair-raising escape, my father looked up toward the door and his eyes widened.

I followed his gaze and saw an elderly but elegant lady standing in the doorway. “Who…?” I asked.

“Lady Reginet. She’s a grand master mage. I took a few classes from her back in the days before she retired from active teaching. She’s the one I was telling you about, who told me abut the importance of theory rather than power. I invited her, I always do, but she’s never come before. She hasn’t been to a social event in a decade.”

I looked at the Lady again. She was descending the broad stairs into the ballroom, a picture of old-fashioned grace. Then my eyes fell on a second figure following a few steps behind and a shock of recognition went though me. She looked different now, of course. Her hair was done up and she was wearing a gorgeous gown not a tattered tunic, but there was no mistaking her. I started forward. I wanted to run, to shout her name, but I managed to keep a somewhat dignified pace. My father followed close on my heels. I reached the base of the stair just as the Lady Reginet finished her decent. My father came up beside me. He bowed, saying, “My Lady! What brings you here?” She smiled, and my father caught himself and said, “I’m sorry, I’m forgetting my manners. Lady Reginet, this is my son, Ashen. Ashen, the Lady Reginet.”

Managing to recall the social necessities, I bowed, though my attention was still centered on Amelia, who stood just behind her grandmother. Lady Reginet laughed a little, cheerful laugh. The laugh lines in her worn face showed that such an expression came often to her. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last young man. I have heard a great deal about you.” She gestured to Amelia. “Lord Kestral, my granddaughter, Amelia. I believe she and your son are already acquainted.”

Amelia stepped forward. She curtsied prettily to my father and then turned to me. A warm smile lit up her hazel eyes and she said, simply, “Ashen.”

“Amelia,” I responded, suddenly tongue-tied. I wanted to hug her, to whirl her around in an expression of exuberant happiness, but I was conscious of propriety in this formal setting.

Then she stepped one step closer and said my name again, “Ashen.”

To heck with propriety, I thought, and swept her up in my arms.

Into a Familiar Darkness