THE GUILD
It took a very long time to repair my relationship with Alkaria and as the days went by, I felt increasingly guilty. In my rush to deal with my own difficulties, I had discounted the fact that Alkaria and her father were very close. She was his favourite and he had always indulged her, even allowing her to refuse marriage offers despite the family's need for an heir. Of course she would see my actions as an attack on her father and her House, and I should have realised it, but the damage was done. There was nothing I could do about it except let time take its course and hope that Alkaria would once again become my friend.
My regular visits to the family also continued and I began to understand the vast holdings of my House and what my role would be when I eventually inherited my responsibilities. The question of my magic and future membership of the Guild remained unmentioned. There were a few occasions when I thought that Grandfather might even be proud of me, but most of the time, he remained cold and distant. Vettin rarely came and Grandmother could always be relied upon to make snide comments. I would have preferred to receive my training from my grandfather's Steward, but when I suggested it, the idea was instantly rejected.
After the success of my visit to the King, I received even more invitations to his Court and I could no longer refuse every one, as I did not want Merin to change his mind and let Grandfather go ahead with arranging my marriage. Although Sonea was still of a mind to keep her distance from the King, she felt that my position as heir meant that I should have some contact with the Court and she ceased to complain every time an invitation arrived. Without Alkaria's constant help with regard to choosing a suitable outfit and jewels, I began to develop my own style. Alkaria was often at Court and I still looked for her approval, but she remained rather distant, only exchanging the barest of greetings with me.
Merin always greeted me warmly and I took every opportunity to continue to lighten his mood. I had to be careful, as he was often accompanied by the High Lord at these functions, and it would be easy for Balkan to discover what I was doing. I looked upon it as a learning exercise too. Among the things I discovered was just how far away from the King I needed to be before my magic had no effect. I also perfected the ability to alter Merin's mood even more quickly. He certainly looked better and the suffocating atmosphere at Court was considerably reduced and I often wondered if Balkan noticed. My success in making Merin a much more relaxed and happier man helped me overcome deep feelings of guilt about my manipulation. I told myself that using magic to obtain what I wanted was fine because I could also use my magic to help the King and congratulated myself for resisting the temptation to read his mind. It was very useful to have such a flexible approach to the ethics of what I was doing.
At this stage in my life, despite living in one of its apartments, surrounded by magicians, I was very detached from the Guild and its operations. Sonea did not talk about her work very often and none of the conversations I had with my father delved into the way the Guild worked, as he was always more interested in exploring my magic and teaching me how to control it. So I was able to ignore it most of the time. I rarely came into contact with magicians outside of Sonea's small circle and did not mix with other children who lived within its walls either, therefore it was easy to put the Guild out of my mind. But all of that was about to change.
Soon after my 13th birthday, Sonea was notified that I would be officially tested to discover my level of ability with magic. She began once again to worry that my magical strength would be discovered and something bad would happen. Over the following days, she rehearsed me constantly so that I could evade the most searching test and keep my secret. I argued with her but she was adamant. My abilities would be recorded as a little more than average, and that was the end of it. It was very disappointing to me that Akkarin agreed with her.
As I grew older and became more aware of what the Guild was capable of in terms of its own interests, I came round to their way of thinking, but at the time, I was very disappointed that I had to hide what I could do. I wanted to show off and impress the testers and be seen as a magician to be reckoned with, but in the end, worn down by argument, I agreed to do what Sonea wanted.
The day of the test arrived and to no-one's surprise, High Lord Balkan himself arrived to conduct proceedings. I was uncharacteristically nervous but my training served me well and to his great disappointment, my magic registered as barely above average.
He glanced up at Sonea and sighed, 'I am sure that Karine will benefit from her training in the Guild, but I am surprised that she will start from a such a low base. Perhaps she is a late developer,' he added hopefully.
Sonea was all smiles and readily agreed with him that the Guild's teaching would develop my magic. After he left, she complimented me on my success, but then said in a very serious voice, 'You do realise that once you are a novice, you must continue to hide your talent no matter how much you want to show what you can do.'
For once, I had not thought that far ahead, so the blow was doubly crushing. I would have to spend the next few years pretending to be something I was not. I knew that would not come easy to me. I think Sonea realised that too because she made me swear by the Eye that I would continue to hide my talent. Such a solemn vow could not be easily broken.
As I would be soon admitted as a novice, both my parents began to tell me more about the Guild and what its purpose was. It was at this point I began to see just how different Sonea's view of the Guild was from Akkarin's. I do not think that Sonea ever really forgot her dwell roots, no matter how good a magician she became. For her, memories of the Purges still coloured her view of the Guild and that, coupled with her view that it had wilfully caused Akkarin's exile and death, meant that she would always question its motives. She still longed to be free of it and I believe one of the things which grieved her about Akkarin's loss to the world was that they could not leave Imardin and settle alone in some remote place to continue their studies, as they had wished. To all intents and purposes, Sonea was a prisoner of the Guild, despite the lack of bars and locks. She was Black Magician Sonea, leader of her own Discipline yet she could not practise her black magic without permission, nor increase the numbers in her Discipline, as others were able to do.
Akkarin, on the other hand, saw the Guild from the view point of a High Lord. While admitting it had made mistakes, he saw it generally as a force for good in the Allied Lands. Some of the policies he had formulated had been put into practice after his apparent death, the most important of which was that the Guild now actively tested people for magic, whether they were members of the Houses or not. Slowly, the novices' quarters were filling up with people from a variety of backgrounds, although the majority still tended to come from the Houses. Despite this change, the Guild still lacked the numbers of novices it had had in the past. On the surface, a magician's life was comfortable. They had reasonable accommodation, good food, materials for study, gold and silver at their disposal, the respect of society and the companionship of their fellows. But they were also subject to restrictions on their way of life, from minor inconveniences such as having to wear robes in public, to being sent to remote areas of the country to serve their discipline on the whim of their leaders. They were subject not only to the law of the land, but to the law of the Guild and its punishments could be life-long and severe.
The day my novice's robes arrived, Sonea could not hide her derision. They were the same muddy brown colour that she had worn, but as the High Lord's Novice, her robes had been softer and of finer material with the High Lord's gold incal on the sleeves. Mine had no incal and no other feature that would distinguish them from those worn by others. Indeed, I strongly suspected that other novices had worn these particular garments before. Although I would have to wear these robes until the end of my noviciate, I was able to wear better clothes beneath them. I had already had pairs of loose trousers and shirts made to wear with them and ensured these would be soft and comfortable, unlike the coarse cloth of the robes which Sonea had already warned me could scratch and rub.
I secretly tried on the robes, just to see how I would look and was surprised at the change in my appearance. No longer dressed in stylish clothes, I looked quite ordinary! The muddy brown shade seemed to cast a shadow over my skin which no longer looked quite so clear as before and the looseness of the robes hid my figure so I looked almost as shapeless as the garments themselves. I wondered what to do with my hair, which was long, thick and, to my mother's great happiness, straight with no hint of a curl. I would not wear the style favoured by my father, and copied by my mother; I wanted to be my own person and seen as more than just Akkarin's daughter. I experimented with various styles and decided to wear my hair in a single braid, tied off with a thin leather strip.
On the day ordained, I went to meet my fellow novices with whom I would spend the next few years. There were about thirty young people standing around, looking uncomfortable. They were mostly about my age, but there were several who looked considerably older and I guessed these were people from the general population who had only recently discovered they had magic.
One by one, our names were called and we were sorted into groups based on our test results, I was in the larger group for novices with average abilities. Only six novices were in the higher group and the rest were obviously those with weaker magic. I noticed that when my name was called, there was a rustling among the others as they turned to stare in my direction. Many of the faces showed mild curiosity, but some barely disguised hostility. I stared right back at them and even though we had just met, I sensed that some sort of battle lines had been established. I guessed that I would not find too many friends among my class mates.
Most of the new novices would live in the Novices' Quarters, but people like me, with a family already living in the Guild would stay at home, something I was very pleased about. I had no wish to leave my mother's comfortable apartment, with its portraits of Akkarin and many of his treasures spread throughout the rooms. The accommodation for novices was serviceable rather than comfortable and they had no choice but to eat in the Food Hall, whereas food was provided in my mother's apartment, a benefit of being a head of a discipline.
I have no wish to dwell on my time as a novice. My memories are full of dull months of study, many dark periods and a few bright spots. My mother had been disliked and persecuted largely due to her status as a dwell. The charges against me were longer. For some of my classmates, not only did I have dwell blood, but I was also a bastard, with only the King's strange decision about my status to say any different, and those with distant claims to the lands and wealth of my family felt cheated out of their inheritance. For others, who came from families with no love for Akkarin, I was the daughter of a disgraced magician who had somehow been turned into a hero by people with devious motives. Perhaps these charges would have been mitigated if I had shown a strong ability with magic, but my self-imposed rule to show no more than an average talent simply added to the list of things to mock me with.