The Reluctant Mage by Karen Miller

Author:Karen Miller [Miller, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780316088466
Google: qTxHAQAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 8604802
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2010-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

You wish to serve me, little Doranen? Little Lord Garrick? Very well. You can serve me. But first we must see to your sadly inadequate education.”

So Morg had told Arlin, grandly, upon his servant’s return with more gathered pieces of himself. After he had consumed and then carelessly discarded them.

He was growing very strong.

Taken into the mansion’s locked library, a place forbidden him ’til then upon pain of gruesome death, Arlin had watched in silence as Morg first extinguished a powerful general warding, then perused the chamber’s serried ranks of shelves. Continued to watch as he trailed his fingers along the books’ old and mottled spines. Tapping one. Tapping another one. Leaving the next untouched. Leaving half a shelf. A whole shelf. There seemed to be no pattern or reason behind his choices. The spine of every book he touched glowed with a crimson sigil. When he was finished perhaps three-quarters of the books were marked.

“And those books you may not touch, Arlin,” Morg told him. “The rest are made safe.”

He didn’t ask what would happen if he touched a protected book. The answer was in the gleam lurking deep in Morg’s eyes.

Without asking permission, assuming permission was granted by the fact that he stood in the library, he plucked a safe book from the nearest shelf and let it fall open in his hands. Could Morg see them trembling? Most likely. But that didn’t matter. Let the sorcerer mock him. Let him laugh. Let him sneer. These were books of magic the likes of which his father had dreamed his whole life.

And me. I dreamed them. I wanted this too.

“It’s not the complete sum of our knowledge,” said Morg. “Barl and her cowardly dupes managed to steal some volumes away with them when they ran.”

He looked up. “Durm’s secret library?”

“Yes,” said Morg, smiling thinly. “Are the books still there?”

“No,” he said, and felt the touch of bitter rage. “The collection was ordered destroyed, after—”

“After Asher killed me. And Lur’s Doranen destroyed it?”

“Yes.”

“So.” Morg sneered. “The cowardly blood breeds true.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. Not a single Doranen voice had been raised against that infamous act. Not even his father had dared to protest it, at least not in public. Of course in private he’d condemned it every day of his life.

“And would you have spoken up, Arlin?” Morg asked, idly curious. “Had you not been a puling infant in your cradle? Would you have decried such wanton destruction?”

The trick, he’d learned, was not in lying to the sorcerer. That was fruitless. The trick was in telling him a truth that would serve as a lie. Or else the plain truth, if no harm could come of it.

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling the weight of the precious book of magic in his hands, his wrists, his forearms. “I like to think I would have. I like to think I’m not a coward. But those days were confused. Feelings ran dangerously high. There were Olken who thought all Doranen should be put to death.

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