Magic
I have been surrounded by magic since before I was born. It has penetrated every aspect of my life until sometimes I feel there is no distinction between me and magic, there is no place where one ends and the other begins. There was no choice about whether or not I would accept it in my life – it was simply there and I had to learn to use it from a very early age or risk discovery.
My very first memories are of being cocooned in a warm place, floating freely, safe and protected. It was only as time passed that I became aware of faint sounds. Initially, these meant nothing but gradually I began to understand the differences between them. There was one sound, soft and musical, that pleased me greatly and I began to listen for it. Sometimes it was joined by another, lower and less musical but together they made a pleasant symphony and listening to them made me feel safe and happy. Later I would come to know that I was then as yet unborn, listening to the sounds of my mother and father, but at the time, I was simply glad to have the comfort of these sounds surrounding me.
I have vague memories of my birth, mainly of the indignation I felt of the unwanted pressures squeezing ever tighter until I was expelled into a vast cold world. I remember loudly wailing my anger at being taken from my cocoon, before being wrapped in something soft and placed in my mother's arms. Immediately, I felt safe and protected once more, stopped my wailing and settled down to focus on my mother's face.
My magic, although powerful, did not always perform as people might have expected. One of the curious things was that as a young child, I could not use mental communication with my mother. I tried. I would lie in her arms and stare at her, sending all the time, but she did not hear. The only person who could hear me was my aunt, 'karia.
I could see magic inside a person. With my mother, it was a large, bright, sparkling mass. Other magicians had it too, but not so bright and many were not so large. With 'karia, her magic was small and instead of being bright, it merely flickered, but she could hear me quite clearly. 'karia was thrilled but my mother was rather annoyed and tried everything she could to overcome the problem, but nothing she did changed the fact that 'karia could hear me and she could not.
One way, of course, would have been to speak to a Healer, but Sonea had a difficult relationship with her personal Healer, Lady Vinara. She was the leader of all the Healers throughout the Guild and only took on the personal care of the Higher magicians. She and my mother had a largely cool relationship with neither particularly fond of the other. Vinara did not really approve of my mother and this was often apparent, despite her attempts to hide it. Sonea, on the other hand, saw Vinara as acting purely in the interests of the High Lord and the Guild, rather than the best interests of her patients.
It soon became apparent that Sonea was desperate to hide my magic potential from Vinara. I think this sprang from her conviction that once my true power was known, the High Lord, Balkan. would take me away from her to raise me himself. My mother had been the previous High Lord's Novice, and she feared that I too, would be taken into the Residence and put under the personal Guardianship of the High Lord. Looking back, now, I think her fears were groundless. My mother was a wealthy woman, not only a powerful magician, but also the adopted daughter of a great noble House and mother of its heir. She had been tasked by the King himself to be my guardian, so Balkan would not have been able to simply take me away from her. That's not to say, though, he would not have tried to interfere in my magic training if he had been fully aware of my abilities.
So, from a very early age, I was cautioned about letting any hint of the extent of my magic power become known. Both my parents were strong magicians, so it was expected that I would have some ability with magic, but my mother intended that I should be viewed only as a reasonably able magician but not one anywhere near the level of my parents' magical abilities. She did this for my protection, but growing up I was extremely frustrated at having to hide things from everyone. I wanted to shine, to be the centre of attention. I wanted people to stare, open-mouthed at what I could do. Instead, I had to pretend to find my magic tasks hard work and I had to learn to make mistakes, indeed, I had to be seen to fail sometimes. None of that came easily to me.
My parents were quite different from each other. Sonea was impulsive, passionate and a woman who liked action. She would jump into a situation almost without thought in order to carry out a task or win an encounter. Rank or status meant little to her, so she would defy anyone if she thought it right to do so. Akkarin, on the other hand, was cool-headed and thoughtful. He planned ahead and rarely did events spin out of his control. Both these character traits were constantly at war inside me. There were times when I, too, would leap into action quickly and almost without rational thought. At others, I would hold back, working things through, looking at alternatives, weighing the odds, before committing to a course of action. When I was younger, it was often Sonea's hot headed approach which came naturally to me, but as I became more experienced, with more complicated issues to deal with, Akkarin's cool headed approach became more my style, although there were still many times when I acted purely on instinct, without thought.
The magic which surrounded my parents was both welcoming and terrifying. It was welcoming, because I had always known it, but it was terrifying because there seemed to be no limits to it. I could clearly see Sonea's power and feel the eddies of magic which followed her everywhere. When she hugged me, I would feel her magic play across my skin, almost as if someone were lightly stroking me with feathers. As soon as she entered a room, I could feel her magic seeking me out and when she left again, her magic lingered as if reluctant to leave. I never saw anyone else react to her magic in the same way as I did. Perhaps it was a mother and child thing, but as far as I know, there were no records of other parent/child relationships among the magicians having similar experiences with their magic.
My father's magic was very different. He had a large reservoir of magic and I knew that all the accounts of his life remarked on his power and strength. Much of that came from his ability as a black magician, but even without that, he had been one of the strongest magicians in the Guild. I also experienced his magic, but entirely differently to how I experienced Sonea's. It, too, surrounded me but there was no feeling of it brushing across my skin. It was more as if I were wearing a set of clothes which covered every part of me, almost like an extra layer, but a layer which floated just above my body, never touching me. I could sense Akkarin's immense strength and I knew he was there, but I never saw him - neither as a vision nor as a physical being. My only visual sense of him came from the portraits which were in my mother's apartment.
My parents had a unique relationship. Sonea was part of the living world, but Akkarin existed on a different plane entirely. My mother tried to explain it to me when I was a child, but it was too complicated for me to grasp - even as an adult, I still found it difficult to believe. All I knew was that my father was somewhere but not here. I could hear him and sometimes I could send to him and he to me. At other times it was if he were behind a thick curtain and only a faint trace of him could be detected. Only Sonea could see and touch his physical form. It was a fluke of magic that led to his strange existence. Somehow, in the aftermath of a desperate battle, when my father lay dying, Sonea had captured part of his essence and taken it within herself. That had preserved him, but at the expense of no longer being part of the living world. For Sonea, his continued existence was bitter-sweet. They could meet and share their love, but he could never again walk among people.
As far as everyone else was concerned, Akkarin was dead and buried. There was a grave and a monument and the day of his death was commemorated each year. There were even statues in Imardin and other large towns. Every child learned of the brave High Lord who had sacrificed his life to save Kyralia from invasion by foreign black magicians. Every novice studied his life as High Lord with its successes and failures. There was no-one in the whole of Kyralia who did not know of his name and what he achieved. That was another burden that I carried all my life. I seemed to me that people were constantly examining every detail of my life, comparing it with his and waiting to see if I would be like my father. Guild magicians in particular, were always watching for signs of black magic. What they didn't know was that I was born with full knowledge of black magic, but that was another part of my abilities that Sonea made sure was hidden.
Although Akkarin was officially a hero, there were still many magicians who disliked him and regarded him as a traitor because of his study and use of black magic. These people felt the same way about Sonea too, not only because of her involvement with Akkarin and black magic, but also because she had been born a dwell – a member of the lowest social class. When I started to attend classes in the Guild, I found there were those who allowed their dislike of my parents to influence how they felt about me. Like my mother before me, I faced hostility from my classmates. Many were keen to see me fail and that, coupled with my mother's instruction to hide my abilities, made my life even harder at times.
So, it was magic which shaped my life and I suppose it is true to say that I have a love-hate relationship with it. Part of me loved the feel of magic and what I could do with it, but because of it, I was largely confined to the Guild, which made the other part of my life more difficult. Not only was I a magician, I was also the heir to the great and noble family Delvon, House Velan with a collection of relatives who hated everything about me.