the very least, if they were discovered in his possession, they'd be taken from him and burned. At worst… well, he wasn't sure what the worst would be. He had to hope that the Books would continue to hide themselves—but what if he was found out?
He tried to picture his father coming across them. Asking where he'd gotten them. Asking if he'd read them. Just how much trouble would he be in?
He wanted to think that it couldn't be that bad; after all, they were only Books. It wasn't as if he'd done anything, even if he had read them. Right?
Nevertheless, he had the horrible feeling that it would be a lot worse than anything he had ever gotten into before.
UNDERMAGE Anigrel felt a headache coming on.
Being appointed as the tutor to the only son of Arch-Mage Lycaelon was a great honor, one he had fought tooth-and-nail for.
Life had not been easy for him, although it also had not been particularly difficult, either. He'd been just wealthy enough to see true wealth and long for it; just exalted enough in status to know what real status was and crave it. Perhaps, in a way, that had been worse than being born impoverished and ignorant.
Chired Anigrel was the grandson of a tradesman. His father had shown Magegift and been taken away by the Mages to be trained. Anigrel knew nothing of his father's family, and little more of his Mageborn mother's, who had cut her off completely when she had married the son of a tradesman, even though he was a promising young Mage. She had died bringing Anigrel into the world, despite all that High Magick could do, and after that, Torbet Anigrel's fate had been sealed. He had been a wealthy man by the standards of the City, but in comparison to the fees the High Mages could command for their work, he'd been a pauper, and his dead wife's family had made it crystal clear that Torbet Anigrel would never rise above the ranks of the plain, common Mages who labored at the thankless jobs of the City.
If Anigrel had learned one lesson from his father's life, it was not to let family stand in his way. His father had died untimely early, while his son was still at his own magickal studies, and once his father was dead, Anigrel had sold the house and everything in it and set about erasing every link that bound him to the tradesman's son, the upstart Mage who had f killed a Mageborn daughter. Everyone would still know, but they would admire the effort he used to try to make them forget.
The money after the estate was settled hadn't gone far, but it had bought him a new set of friends, ones with more important fathers, important enough to counteract everything that his mother's family could muster to pull him down. At length, Anigrel was on his way up in the world—the only world that counted, the one ruled by Mages, and if his mother's family was no help to him, they did not go out of their way to hinder him, either. With time, the path of friendships and carefully tended connections had led to the House of Tavadon, to the Arch-Mage himself. The Arch-Mage had a young son, and young sons grew, and needed tutors…
Anigrel knew Kellen's bloodline, knew his potential, and had cherished daydreams of great reward from his father when he turned over to him a polished and accomplished young Apprentice to follow in the Arch-Mage's footsteps.
The trouble was, Kellen wasn't cooperating. Light knew he'd done his best to make things easy for the boy— he gained nothing from producing a failure, after all!
But no matter what he did, Kellen would not apply himself to his studies. Would not memorize the basic groundwork, the framework upon which the architecture of High Magick must be built. And without that, Anigrel could do nothing. In fact, as the years passed, Kellen actually seemed to manage to unlearn some of his lessons, if that was possible!
As time passed, he felt the unspoken pressure from Lycaelon and the increasing resistance from Kellen and felt very much as if he was being squeezed between the two.
Well, of the two, Kellen was the one he could break the easiest. Much depended on it.
'Kellen,' he said, tinging his voice with heavy disappointment layered with an artful coloring of scorn, 'I am not certain what your difficulty is today—if I didn't know how intelligent you are supposed to be, I'd consign you to the ranks of the useless dullards. And I fear that your father would not be at all surprised.'
The boy flushed, and his mouth took on that pouting downturn that made him look even more sullen than usual. Anigrel scowled. Kellen was a singularly unpromising specimen, all things considered. He had nothing of the look of the Mageborn—there was some scandal there, something to do with the Arch-Mage's late and unknown wife, but Anigrel was far too clever a social-climber to ever touch on such a sensitive issue. In his private hours, however, Anigrel sometimes wondered what the nameless female might have had to recommend her to the Arch- Mage's attention.
Undoubtedly she had been a beauty, but surely a Mage would seek for more than that in a marriage alliance that would produce sons? The features that commended themselves to masculine attention upon a female face could be unfortunate when passed on to male offspring, after all. That girlish face and pouting mouth might be quite beguiling on a young maiden, but Kellen was far too heavy-featured to make them into assets. In fact, Kellen seemed to take no pains with his appearance at all. Above heavy eyebrows was a thatch of curling brown hair that always looked a little too long no matter how often or expertly it was cut, and never looked neat. Kellen loomed above his peers, with hands and feet too big for the rest of him, and even the most expertly tailored robes and tunics never seemed to quite fit. He was nothing like his elegant father—no ambition, no drive—and Anigrel was more than tired of Kellen's constant sulking.
