A/N: For new readers-welcome! For returning readers-welcome back! This is Volume 2 of the Caldevwin Chronicles, aka the Magical Misadventures of Myfanwy Caldevwin, Tamriel's least magical mage. I'm so pleased to see you here-thank you for giving this story a click. If you are a new reader, this fic can be read without first reading the first volume, A Fistful of Stars-I've taken pains to make sure any relevant information is in the text (also because I don't expect returning readers to remember everything from chapters published what's now nearly a year ago)-but as this fic is a direct sequel to and continuation of the story begun in the first volume, if you like what you see here you'll probably get more from it if you start there.
"What is knowledge?"
Myfanwy looked up from her book. Her father looked back from across his lion-footed desk, a pair of little round spectacles held loosely in one hand.
"What kind of question is that?"
"The important kind, I'd think," he said mildly.
Myfanwy sighed. "Dad," she said. "I'm up to the best bit. Asliel is about to trick the Locvar into drinking the fake invisibility potion."
His piercing blue gaze didn't waver. It never did.
She sniffed and settled more comfortably onto her cushion by the softly crackling fire. Beside her, her calico cat Sophie's purr was a comforting ever-present rumble. "I am on holidays, you know."
"You intend to be a scholar, don't you? A magical theoretician? The pursuit of scholarship never rests, sweetheart."
"As you and Mum keep reminding me, I'm a long way from that yet. Which means the pursuit of scholarship can rest just fine between the end of Midyear and the start of Hearthfire. Or at the very least while I'm reading." She pointedly licked her finger and turned a page. When her father continued to stare at her with an all too familiar expectant air, Myfanwy sighed again and closed the book, using an index finger to mark her place. "Fine. What is knowledge? It's complicated."
He smiled. "Complicated?"
"The entire foreword of Jolivet's Rhetoric and Logic is devoted to that question, which as you know very well hasn't got a proper answer, at least according to philosophers." She scowled. "Ugh, Dad. I hate philosophy."
"Well, what do you think? What's the answer according to Myfanwy Caldevwin?" The latch on the door to the den jiggled a little. "We won't be long, dear, go ahead and lay the table without us," he called in a slightly louder voice.
"I suppose…knowledge is…well, information. The thing you get after you put together evidence, or experience something, or read something. It's the stuff inside your brain. Or on the pages of a book, I guess. I dunno, it just is. Does it matter?"
Her father stood from his chair, and something about the way the oil reading-lamp on the desk lit his face from below and cast the wrong bits into shadow made him look suddenly like a different person: taller, more angular, more threatening. Where before he smiled, now he leered.
Matthias Caldevwin was a small, pleasant, mild-mannered man who never raised his voice and was kind even to spiders. Not once in her life had Myfanwy ever been frightened of him—but in that moment she came close.
He took a step towards her. The door rattled again.
"That's not all it is though, is it?" he said softly. "What is knowledge, really? You know this. You've lived this."
Myfanwy swallowed. She hugged her book to herself, trying not to think about cold, dark corridors, and a sneering voice which bypassed her ears, and a giant ball of pulsating, living blue reeling in minds like fish.
"What is knowledge, sweetheart?"
The door rattled harder. Myfanwy ignored it, hypnotised by her father's ice-blue eyes. He was right; she did know.
She whispered, "Knowledge is—"
