A wizard’s training takes years; the best and brightest can learn to master the basics of the practice in as little as four, but that’s a rarity. Petre would be done with my tutelage in no sooner than seven or eight years—a respectable amount of time, mind you. In his fifth year—I think it was the year that Alphetta saw her fifteenth birthday—the war began. Petre, I know, has already told you about my military career. I won’t reveal anything more specific about the time period, as it’s nothing I’m particularly proud of, and it has little to do with our topic of conversation today. I bring it up only to explain that my military service compelled me to take two young people out into dangerous territory. I could not leave Alphetta here alone; the city was dangerous then. It is now, but that was before the Guard had been officially organized. Law and order are vapor and images, something to be chased after and eventually caught, but back then they were impossible. I also could not leave behind my promising young apprentice, whose father had passed during his training. He wanted to continue his education, and his father had paid well before his passing for the opportunity for his son to learn the highest of Arts.
So, in command of scores of men and women, and with a bitter young daughter and a promising young pupil in tow, I began to aid the conquest. I did not know it for what it was at the time, but the nature of the conflict would come up again and again over the following months, with it becoming more and more apparent that this was not a war I was fighting on behalf of the unduly attacked, but a war of pain and death—a cold-hearted push by the nobility to squeeze money out of our neighbors during negotiations.
The disgust I felt when I fully realized what the war was being fought for stuck with me, and I carry it to this day. One must always be skeptical of the powerful, Skate. Kings, merchant lords, even high priests—it doesn’t matter the stripe of their power. The allure of strength, money, and influence is irresistible, and those who have a measure of such things only ever want more. I found that to be true of myself. When I did finally realize that I’d been fighting—killing and ordering killing, shedding blood and making widows and orphans of soldiers wrapped up in a conflict that wasn’t even theirs—in order to line the nobility’s pockets, it almost broke me. Because I had known, Skate. Or at least, if I hadn’t known, I hadn’t questioned it too much. I had not bothered to investigate the causes of the conflict, had not thought to even ask if it had been worth fighting over.
The worst events of the war were the executions of our own. Some men fled out of fear or desire for glory elsewhere. If caught, they were to be punished by edict of the king, and his edicts were cruel. The method of execution for the crime of desertion was death by exposure. I did this only once, though I knew in my heart it was wrong. He was a very young man. I still remember his name: Hugo. I did what I was ordered to do, though I knew it was needlessly cruel. I was happy to be of service, happy to be a war hero, happy to serve my king and country in battle. I had power, and I rushed to use it. I brushed aside my conscience, and the boy paid with his life.
I’m drifting off course; I said I wouldn’t talk much of the war, and I’ve made a liar of myself. During precious breaks in the fighting, when I could, I continued Petre’s education. I spent time with Alphetta, though she had grown somewhat cold to me in the intervening years, never forgiving me for my refusal. She didn’t hate me. I know that, and she told me as much, but the wound never healed.
They were never in danger; I made sure of that. Miles behind the battlefield were they, always. I made sure neither saw the horror of combat, nor made themselves targets for it. It was during this time that I made Rattle in an ill-advised foray into experimental research.
A few months after Rattle’s creation, the war was over. The king had gotten what he’d wanted, so it was time to come home. The awards and honors were doled out. I accepted mine, a fine set of crimson robes woven through with protective magic, though I cared nothing for it. The war and everything to do with it was abhorrent to me. I still have those robes, as a sort of insurance policy should I ever need a vast sum of money all at once. My daughter, my apprentice, and I returned home.
I should have been paying closer attention during those years, but I had been so preoccupied with the war effort that the relationship burgeoning right under my nose might as well have been happening on a different world for all the notice I took of it. You see, my daughter and my apprentice had fallen in love. I’m sure they were doing their best to hide it from me, and I’m equally sure that their efforts would have appeared comical to me had I not been so distracted.
As it turned out, though, I was distracted, and I only came to know of the true nature of their relationship by degrees. At first, I took note of their much-improved level of conversation. More than merely trying to be polite around one another, they conversed as friends might, and my old heart rejoiced at the idea of the pair of them becoming better acquainted. I found out later, from Petre, that they had already fallen in love by the time I noticed their warming dispositions.
Another fault of mine; after the war, I spent most of my time alone, reading, studying, mixing in the basement. I did not want the troubles of the world to bother me again, and I was ready to live the rest of my days in retired obscurity surrounded by stories and histories and theories. Had I been more active, had I been more tuned in to the lives of those nearest me, I may have prevented the folly that happened thereafter.
You see, I would not have minded had Alphetta and Petre decided to marry; he was a fine young man, and she a healthy young woman by that time, and both driven toward greatness and ever-greater heights that their union on its own terms would have been a fine development in its own right. But what they worked even harder to conceal from me was that my apprentice had done something incredibly foolish: taken an apprentice.
He was not ready to teach; he was barely ready to perform any magic of his own. In reality, all he was doing was regurgitating our lessons to Alphetta in private, so that in actuality I was serving as a master of two, though I’d no knowledge of that fact. I did begin to get suspicious, though. Snippets of overheard conversation. Lingering sidelong glances after seemingly innocent remarks. I think they must have sensed my growing unease, because a little over a year after returning home, both of them disappeared on me. Rather than talk to me and explain themselves, they eloped.
I was devastated. They’d left no note, no written explanation for their absence; I feared the worst, that some political rival during the war had come after my family for petty revenge or that some enemy made in the same period had come to attack me, but had found my child and apprentice an easier place to start for destruction. So, I did everything in my power to find them.
It was at this time that I bought my enhancer (I’d had the crystal ball itself for years, a relic of my time as a military commander, when I’d sought information on the enemy’s movements), the better to find one or both of them. I did, at last, find them, and it broke my heart further. They were in the midst of a lesson. I saw my daughter performing magic, and I saw my apprentice teaching her how. He had been continuing his studies without me, you see, and learned spells and tricks I’d never taught him. So there they were, the self-taught master with his promising student—with his wife.
I knew they’d abandoned me. I was hurt, of course, but not nearly as hurt as I’d have expected to be. They were alive, after all, and seemingly happy. If their desire was to be away from me, what right did I have to make them return? It was clear they did not want me in their lives anymore, so I stayed away. I maintained intermittent clairvoyant contact but never made any overtures to let them know I’d found them. I had some idea of their physical location but didn’t have anything specific to go on. I found out later that they had not even left the city, but were actively avoiding my part of it.