Wizard's Tower - Arc 2 - Chapter 32

As I walked up the stairs, I had several concerns regarding Lilly. House Shielding had sent me a missive several weeks ago detailing her use of my name inappropriately to garner a position in the guard for another orphan. While I still hadn’t responded to them, mostly because it was beneath my concern, I had put aside that knowledge to address with Lilly in our next correspondence.

The correspondence I received from the Arcanum master regarding her also indicated that while she did well in her studies, she was socially ostracized in many instances.  Her time at the Arcanum should be one of the most memorable of her life, where she should be making lifelong connections and friendships. This wasn’t acceptable in my eyes, especially for one of my pupils. A modicum of pride, certainly, but she should be leading those groups not standing outside them.

I found my brows furrowed as I reached the top of the stairs, only from them to raise in surprise at what I saw. Lilly stood several feet inside the doorway holding tightly to a tome and an urn. Her yellow eyes were bloodshot, and she stared vacantly at the ground before her. Her normally brushed hair was frazzled and I could see her face was puffy from crying. Behind her, a man her age dressed as a guard from Sena looked at her with a helpless concern.

“Lilly?” I asked, my own concern coloring my voice.

She slowly looked up from where she had been staring and her despondent expression turned to that of pain. Without concern for tact or propriety, she ran towards me to wrapped her arms around me. I had adjusted my defensive spells in that instance, barely in time to allow her to hug, as she collapsed against me. My illusion spell, normally strong enough for many things, faded in and out until it disappeared entirely, leaving my real visage apparent for all to see.

Though I paid it, and the others in the room no attention as Lilly began bawling. Her face buried in my robes and the hard tome and urn pressed stiffly into my back. I held her like that for an undeterminable amount of time and rubbed her back as I shushed her. She was thinner than when she had departed, but I knew how grief could hurt an appetite. When we finally broke apart, she looked at my real face in confusion for only an instant before holding the tome and urn before her.

“Dad, this. This is all that’s left of him,” she said, anger and sadness both strong in her tone.

I looked at the urn and the tome, knowing that a single word could push her back into tears. The urn was the type the army issued when returning the remains of departed soldiers, or at least those soldiers of a rank to warrant it. The tome was the parting gift I had given Walker not that long ago.

The quickness of his death was startling, and even without Lilly’s presence my heart felt wrenched in two. This was the very reason I tried not to get close to others. The very reason I held myself separated so far from those around me. I knew it was only a matter of time before I added them to my book of the dead. That Walker would have an entry so soon made it feel even worse.

The man never had an opportunity to start a family. No children or grandchildren. I wouldn’t get the opportunity to see what greatness he would achieve in his life. I thought I had separated myself enough from him and Lilly and Kine not to feel this pain, but it was another task I had failed at. It was one of the reasons I wanted them to go, one of the reasons I limited my assistants to only work for two years’ time.

With a meaningful look at Lilly, I took the urn and tome from her hands, and said a single word, “Come.”

I walked down the stairs, the two items I held feeling heavier in my hands than they were. Behind me, Lilly’s sniffling nose and shuffling feet created an eerie chorus on the stairwell.  Together, we entered my Hall of Valor, the place where I kept my Book of the Dead. The entrance overhead where I had once pridefully sculpted the words ‘For the Glory of Sena’ now felt a sarcastic quip.

I cleared a space on one of the pedestals for Walker’s tome and urn. There, I quietly removed the remaining enchantments I had placed as his introduction into ‘wizard tricks’ and instead bounded it with protection wards to keep to tome strong and the ink from fading.

Lilly watched in silence, and I barely noticed that Rolf, Chelsea, Eni, and Tond had joined us, though they kept their distance from us and stood at the entrance to the hall. I didn’t know if they were afraid to step in, or if they were purposely giving us our space, but I ignored them just the same. As soon as I was satisfied with the placement of Walker’s effects, I moved to the reason I truly came. The Book of the Dead.

Opening the massive tome to the next blank page, I began to draw a sketch of Walker as I remembered him, and Lilly came to my side to watch. When I was done, I began to write. I wrote everything I knew and remembered of the young man, from the day we met to the day we departed. I wrote of his magical strengths and weaknesses, his friendship with Kine, his romance with Mena. I wrote of his eagerness to achieve greatness in battle and his pride in service to me. When I had done my part, I moved to the side and offered Lilly the quill to add her own remarks.

She spoke aloud as she did, “My brother had always been there for me. He protected me from the ridicule of other orphans over our hair and eyes and skin. He helped me when I was having trouble with my letters and numbers. He showed me how to tie a knot.”

She spoke faster than she wrote, so she paused here to allow her writing to catch up. Tears fells on the book, but they wouldn’t be the first or the last, so I said nothing. Soon, she wrote and spoke more, “There was one time when the other kids were really mean, I found myself crying in a corner. The nun, Matron Adila, found me and told me that they were just jealous. That I was likely a princess from the quad islands that had gotten lost. I knew the lie for what it was, just an attempt to make me feel better.”

“Walker knew that too, but he went along with it anyway. Called me princess with a smile. Stupid. If I were a princess, then he would be a prince, but he never brought that up. I knew it was childish to call myself a princess. A mask to keep from getting hurt or showing my feelings. Yet he never said anything.  I loved him for that.”

We went on like that, the day turning into evening. The others had their own stories about Walker, and some even made it into the Book of the Dead. By the time night was in full, Lilly could barely keep her eyes open, and I had Eni carry her to one of my new longchairs with a pillow and a blanket.

The young guard that had accompanied her took watch outside the room. Despite looking tired and weary, he also looked resolute in his desire to do so. I didn’t know the man, so I set Tond to stand with him.

It was only after the others had been situated and gone to sleep that I returned to the Hall of Valor. There, I read through Walker’s tome. It detailed the training and spells he learned with the Army. How well he did there. His advancement in rank almost immediately. The handful of mages he led and what he thought of them and his leadership.

Buried within his words, I also found what I was truly looking for. The orders that sent him to the front lines to do battler, despite him being a geomancer. A geomancer, to all of my knowledge, would normally be held to fortify defensive positions. Sending one to do battle was either desperate or intentional. Not that it would always mean death, but it was unusual. It was when I checked the date of that entry, I realized that they had done so after my meeting with the king.

Despite my pain in his loss, or maybe because of it, I found myself sneering at his tome imagining the smug face of the king. Sending an assassin after me wasn’t enough? They had also moved against Walker for my slight? I carefully closed Walker’s tome and moved through my tower in quiet but angry steps. I had thought that all my plans for vengeance were sufficient. The two plots I had enacted to counter the tea would be sufficient.

I no longer thought that. Instead, I let my anger roll through me, as I paced the top of my tower. No, I wouldn’t move now, or do anything immediately. I had more self-control than that. I would, however, avenge this injustice. The king had made this an entirely personal matter, and I would not be letting it go.