Library of Absolution

by Jennifer Derrick

  "We became friends, but nothing more. I wanted more, hoped for it as we grew up, but knowing my limitations, never pressed for it. Instead, I helped her with her schoolwork and she frequently came to the library to read. We'd spend hours reading, saying nothing, and then suddenly she'd read something to me and we'd laugh or talk about it for hours more. I'd take her up to the tower at night and teach her about the stars. She was the only person with whom I'd ever felt so completely comfortable."

  He paused, remembering the girl he'd worshipped from afar.

  "Well," he began again, clearing his throat. "Suffice it to say that as we got older, she began to value other traits in boys. Traits I did not possess. Reading and stargazing were no longer enough to keep her interest. She began taking an interest in the more attractive, athletic boys. The same boys who tormented me."

  "Stupid girl," Elissa muttered.

  "No, stupid me," Alarick said. "When I was seventeen and the bullying was at its worst, I gave her an ultimatum. I told her she must choose: Them or Me. She couldn't be friends with my tormentors and me. Of course, she chose them."

  "Speaking as a girl, I can tell you that girls of sixteen are rarely capable of intelligent decisions when it comes to love," Elissa said. "She made a choice to protect herself. If I had to guess, I'd say her heart wanted to choose you, but her brain knew that if she did, she would become the bullies' target.

  "That doesn't make it right," she hastened to add. "I suspect if you'd both been older and wiser, she'd have chosen differently."

  "Thank you, but that doesn't make it better. If I'd been older and wiser, I'd never have issued such a stupid ultimatum in the first place. And that hindsight makes what came next so much worse."

  "You can stop here," Elissa said. "I know what happened next and if it's too horrible to talk about, you don't have to."

  "Oh, no," Alarick said. "You asked for this story, so you must hear it to the end. Then you can decide whether to continue damning me or offer me absolution."

  Elissa took a deep breath. "Go on, then."

  "Abigail began spending time with Andrew, the worst of my tormentors. I'd go up to the tower to work on my astronomy lessons, alone, like some freakish creature of the night, and see them down in the courtyard or by the waterfall in the moonlight, holding hands and kissing. It broke my heart. Instead of gracefully accepting defeat, however, I decided to get revenge on Andrew."

  Elissa, knowing what came next, turned her face away, but Alarick gripped her chin again and turned her to face him.

  "You don't get off that easily," he said. "The details don't matter at this point, but I turned to my grimoire. I only wanted to damage Andrew, to make him less attractive to Abigail and to wipe that ever-present, arrogant smirk from his face. But the spell went wrong and he died. I killed him. Abigail knew I’d done it. The whole castle knew. I believed Master Hale would throw me out, and my entire life would be forfeit because of my jealousy."

  "But he didn't," Elissa said.

  "No, he didn't. If he had it would have been easier than everything that came after. I suspect he knew that, though, and that's why he let me stay. Staying was my punishment. Leaving would have been too easy.

  "Abigail left the Keep shortly after Andrew died. She left me a note, telling me she could never forgive me. I was her best friend, and I destroyed her world. She made it clear that she no longer wanted to live under the same roof as me. I don't know where she thought she was going, or what she was going to do, but the Ministry caught her within a day."

  "You didn't go after her?" Elissa asked.

  He shook his head. "I found the note too late. She'd left it in the tower by my telescope. I didn't find it until the night after she left. By the time I knew she was gone, she was already dead. The Ministry beheaded her in another magical village, just before they sacked it. Master Hale informed me of her death. It wasn't lost on me that I was just as responsible for her death as I'd been for Andrew's. My actions killed her."

  "No," Elissa said sharply, "She left the Keep. What happened after wasn't your fault."

  "But would she have left if not for me?" he asked Elissa. "No. She would still be alive if not for my actions. I was responsible for two deaths, and one was the girl I loved. That's the burden I live under every day of my life. I have killed, Elissa."

  He inhaled deeply, burying his emotions. Time and distance made this story easier to tell, but the memories were still painful. It wouldn't do, though, to cry in front of Miss Stone.

  "Master Hale died shortly after, leaving me in charge of the Keep. Everything nearly fell apart in that first year. No one respected my authority, and why should they? I was a murderer in their eyes, hardly fit to lead. Many left and were killed by the Ministry. Those were more deaths for which I was responsible. More weight on my conscience. Families no longer came here. No one wanted their children under my care. And who could blame them?"

  "Why would Master Hale do that, though?" Elissa asked. "He seemed like a highly intelligent man. Why leave you in charge when he had to know it would cause chaos?"

  "I think it was precisely because he was so brilliant," Alarick began. "He knew that putting me in charge would be both punishment and a chance to atone for my mistakes. He knew the residents of this place would punish me for my wrongs, but if I could somehow survive I could make things right. Or at least as right as they could be. Every person who left and died would remind me of what I'd done, and every person I took in and cared for to the best of my ability would go some distance toward removing the stain of murder from my soul."

  "And has it?" Elissa asked.

  "You tell me. You fled from my care because of what you read. Am I guilty or innocent? Monster or man?"

  She was silent for a moment. Alarick shifted uncomfortably on the stool, feeling as though he were on trial and awaiting a long-overdue verdict. Would it be mercy or the hangman's noose?

  "You're human," she said finally. "Like all of us, you're a pile of messy emotions, try as you might to deny it. You love and anger with equal ferocity. Strong emotions often lead to regrettable actions, especially in the young."

  "Regrettable," he whispered. "That's a very kind way of glossing over murder."

  "I didn't say your actions aren't blame-worthy. They absolutely are. But to be human is to love, sometimes to the point where your vision becomes too cloudy to see where you're going wrong until it's too late. When you overlay that with the rage and sorrow you must carry every day because of your father and the bullying, mistakes are inevitable."

  Alarick let out the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. Her words didn't constitute absolution, but he was relieved she hadn't condemned him outright.

  "Then if I'm merely human and not a monster, why did you run from me?" he asked.

  "Having read your books, I now know why you are so guarded and, as you say, unpleasant. Having been rejected and lost love once, you refuse to put yourself in that position ever again. You don't even want friends because everything you know ends in grief. You know too well that attachment of any sort leads to pain and, like any sensible organism, you seek to avoid pain."

  Alarick took a deep breath. He knew this, of course. He wasn't an idiot and had long since come to terms with the fact that shutting himself off from people was the only way to avoid being hurt. Or hurting them. But it stung to hear Elissa put it so plainly.

  She continued, breaking into his thoughts.

  "I left because I knew you would never be my friend, and I very much thought of you as a friend. A difficult friend, to be sure, but someone with whom I enjoyed spending time. And I was beginning to think you felt that friendship, as well. Knowing you would eventually find a way to cast me out, however, I left. I hoped it might make it easier on you if I left, rather than forcing you to find some excuse to get rid of me, or relegate me to just another resident, unworthy of your time and attention. I don't stay where I'm not wanted," she concluded.

  All the breath left Alarick's lungs in
a whoosh. Whatever he'd expected from her, it wasn't this. He'd expected her to say that she refused to live with a murderer, or that she thought him too unstable to trust. Never once did it cross his mind that she would leave because she feared he would discard her. And the idea that her leaving would make it easier on him, well, that was laughable, even though the thought behind it was deeply touching. Discarding her would have been the hardest thing he'd ever done.

  A tiny voice in the back of his head whispered, "Wouldn't you, though? If things had continued on their way, wouldn't you have found some way to alienate her? Wouldn't you have shut her out of your life and forced her to choose to either leave the Keep or live here, shunned by you? Of course you would have," the voice answered itself.

  That she'd seen it long before he had surprised him. He usually excelled at managing his emotions and keeping others at such remove that potential attachment never became a problem. But something about her slipped past his defenses. She saw him, not the facade he wanted her to see. And that terrified him.

  Unable to bear her unflinching view of his character flaws any longer, Alarick stood to leave.

  She heard his movement and said, "Will you return tomorrow? Or have I driven you away for good?"

  Alarick found he couldn't answer. Her question wasn't a simple one. To return would be to cast himself adrift in the swirling sea of messy emotions once again. And he'd vowed never to do that. But not returning was unthinkable. Abandoning her would make him into the monster she believed he wasn't. He couldn't bear the thought of proving her wrong.

  Instead of answering, he reached down for her hand where it rested on the blanket, squeezed it gently, and then fled the infirmary, cloak billowing behind him in his haste.

  9

  Alarick didn't return to the infirmary for several days. He told himself he had important things to do. And he did, to a point. The Ministry sacked three villages in a week, but they made an error in one of them. When his men returned from the village of Fensworth, they informed Alarick that nearly thirty people survived by hiding inside a cottage protected in a way similar to the Keep. The cottage was simply not visible to non-magical eyes and had gone unnoticed by the Ministry.

  Alarick knew that such a spell required a very strong witch or wizard to cast and maintain it. However, the fact that this person had limited their protection to a single cottage indicated that he or she was not quite a match for his own skill.

  Not for the first time Alarick wished for other living witches or wizards powerful enough to protect entire villages, but that simply was no longer the case. There were some who could protect small enclaves in their entirety, or cast a partial protection on a larger building, but none who could hide an entire castle or village.

  * * *

  If any could be found, it would change the complexion of the war against the Ministry. It wouldn't help the magicals fight the Ministry, but perhaps they would have more success eluding them. If they could just hide long enough to avoid total extermination, the Ministry would eventually fall and the magicals could return to the world unhindered. Alarick sighed. Pure fantasy. It was no use wishing for things he could not have.

  Still, a person who could protect even one cottage would be a valuable ally. Alarick traveled to Fensworth and met with the witch named Margaret Easton. She was much older than he, although far from the stereotypical crone. He estimated her to be in her early sixties, but her face was unlined except for a few wrinkles around her eyes that gave her a merry, amused look. Her hair was white, but faint streaks of black spoke to the beauty that once was.

  Margaret did not want to come to the Keep; neither did she want her survivors there.

  "I can protect them here," she told Alarick. "Your services are not needed."

  "Perhaps not needed," he said as they strolled her garden. "But offered nonetheless. It won't be comfortable with all of you crammed into one cottage. I can offer you plenty of rooms."

  "Thank you, Master Brandon, but no."

  "You do understand that the Ministry will come back. They always revisit sacked villages to check for strays or signs of rebuilding. You can't hide forever," he told her.

  "Neither can you," she said. "Eventually the Keep will be breached and the last of our kind wiped off the face of this earth. There is no long-term survival for any of us. I'd much rather live my last days here, in familiar surroundings, than locked up in a castle. If the Ministry comes, so be it."

  Alarick shook his head. "But if you and I combined our skills, we would stand a much better chance. I need all the strong witches and wizards I can find to help me protect the Keep and the people who live there. There are so few of us left."

  She turned shrewd eyes upon him. "It's always about power, isn't it?"

  He met her gaze and replied, "It used to be. It used to be about who was strongest or best. Now it's about the power to survive and that requires cooperation."

  "Ah, lad, Master Hale would have loved to see you grow up. He believed you'd become a fine man and wizard, all evidence to the contrary during your youth."

  "You knew Master Hale?" Alarick asked. He'd never met anyone outside of the Keep who'd known him, or at least no one willing to discuss it.

  "Of course I did. Everyone around here knew him. He made certain of that. But he and I went further back than that. Before the Ministry took control of everything and the magical schools were forced to close, he and I were at school together. We became friends because we were both terrible at opposite subjects. He taught me potions and alchemy. I taught him divination and peregrination. Although he never did get the hang of peregrination," she mused. "But divination he did right well with."

  "Excuse me, but what is peregrination?" Alarick asked. "I've never heard of that branch of magic."

  Margaret looked shocked. "Never heard of peregrination? Why didn't Master Hale teach you? Just because he couldn't do it didn't mean he shouldn't have tried to teach you. Or at least tell you about it. I wonder what else he neglected in your magical education. Just like him, though. He always was reluctant to deal with anything at which he couldn't excel. It was as though if he couldn't do it, it wasn't worth knowing."

  "Well, what is it?" Alarick asked again, trying to get Margaret back on topic.

  As the last word left his mouth Margaret flicked her wand at her feet and disappeared. He looked around, but she was nowhere in sight. He was growing concerned when, without warning, she appeared about ten feet to his right.

  "Peregrination, my boy, is the process of traveling from one place to another without a broomstick or having to change into a cumbersome animal. The word peregrinate means to travel or wander from place to place. It is not a branch of magic. It's an art. A lost one, now. Not too many of us can do it anymore. And most of those who can are old like me. Far too old for such foolishness." She laughed at that, but Alarick didn't find it amusing.

  "I just went to Paris and back in those few moments," she continued. "I don't recommend traveling so quickly as it does take a lot out of you, especially at my age." She sat down on a nearby stump.

  Alarick walked over and knelt down in the grass before her. "Can you teach me?" he asked. "Please?"

  What he couldn't do with such a skill. He could travel from village to village faster than even the Ministry's fancy horses. He could dodge the Ministry if they caught up to him on his journeys. He could visit his friends in other countries and check on their safety. There was no end to the usefulness of peregrination.

  Margaret rested her hands on her knees and silently appraised him. He felt he was coming up short in her eyes, but he hoped she saw something redemptive in him that would make her want to teach him.

  "Possibly," she finally allowed. "Although I couldn't teach Master Hale, so I'm not sure how much success you'll have. There is a certain amount of magic that is simply innate, and you may not have the ability."

  "I wasn't Master Hale's biological son," Alarick reminded her. "My father was Patrick Brandon. It's possible he
had the ability."

  "Ah, yes, Patrick Brandon. I remember him well," Margaret said. "But I don't recall him ever being a peregrinator. Although we lost touch after he was expelled, so perhaps it was something he picked up later in life."

  "You knew my father? He was at school with you and Master Hale? And he was expelled?" Alarick asked, momentarily diverted from the subject of peregrination. Revelations were coming a little too fast for him today, and he was struggling to keep up.

  Margaret looked off toward the trees. "I didn't know him well. He ran with a different group than Master Hale and me. I simply remember him."

  "What made him memorable? Aside from the expulsion," Alarick asked.

  "Your father was a very gifted wizard. Probably the equal of Master Hale in many respects. But he had none of Hale's kindness or humor. He was cold and cruel to the other children, disrespectful to the teachers. He felt that he knew it all and school was beneath him. And it likely was in many ways. On the day he arrived, he already knew so much more than the rest of us. He was arrogant with it, always pushing his limits, and that made him dangerous. Most of us stayed far away from him."

  "What got him expelled?" Alarick asked.

  "He tried to kill Master Hale," Margaret said.

  Alarick stared at her. "Was it— Was it an accident?" he finally sputtered.

  "No. They feuded constantly. Well, what do you expect from two very gifted people with completely opposite personalities but the same level of ambition? Anyway, Master Hale consistently bested your father on every exam and practical test. Master Hale was a hard worker. Your father relied on talent.

  "You know as well as I that in magic, as in most things, talent isn't enough. You must put in the work to become consistent and strong. Your father wasn't willing to work so hard. Plus, Hale had the adoration of the other students and the faculty. Your father couldn't handle always being second best, even if it was his own fault that he was never first. He believed Hale stole the attention Patrick so richly deserved.