Chương 152: Book 3 Chapter 12: Temptation

++I often regret how I handled Agrian. I treated him as a subordinate, as a minion. I should have treated him as a brother. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Agrian hadn't been back in Winzorth for a long time. He'd been in Garamon for months of course, pattering around and walking from town to city to village, soaking in the sights of his own home-country. He hadn't known why at first, but the more he'd wandered, the more he'd realised he was learning.

Strengthening his own knowledge and deepening his understanding of the world. Garamon was his home, and it was the world's greatest Empire. And it was the state that his little sister was betraying at the risk of her own life. Agrian figured he needed to learn more about it, no matter what. So he had. He'd never known how little he'd known before his little trek around the country. One good thing about his time in the army was that, as a distinguished battlemage, he'd been well paid.

Agrian had walked away with two hundred crowns right in his pocket for the time he served, and a promise of one hundred more each year afterwards. That was about as much as a damned captain would have, and he'd even been offered more with the promise that he could enlist again as a casting squadron leader for half again as much. Of course, a mere hundred crowns a year was small compensation to do the things that would be expected of him in that job. Agrian had turned them down and gone his own way. He'd met people.

Actual people, living their actual lives, not servants paid to be polite and accommodating, or other nobles who buried their real thoughts behind fifty layers of double-meaning. Agrian saw the streets and cities his Empire had built and spoke with the people who occupied them. He heard views he'd never considered, found out about problems he'd never imagined, and it seemed that every new fact sinking into him was another hole poked in the illusion of Garamon's divine perfection.

And more than anything else, he learned to keep these realisations to himself. He knew that Garamon didn't take kindly to men with contrary opinions. He also knew, quite certainly now, that Isabel was a total whiner. Sure, life was hard for noble women. Agrian had seen that himself. He'd been partly responsible, all that stupid stuff his father had fed him growing up had made its way into his mind without him even realising it. But that was nothing compared to life as a woman among the actual working classes.

Funny how the more he travelled, the smaller Agrian realised his little world was. The Vornholt family had once impressed him as one of the great institutions of Garamon, the Winzorth Institute had impressed him even more as one of the rare exceptions to Vornholt dominance. Now he knew better than to be overly stricken by either one. He also knew better than to think he'd be getting anywhere in the world alone.

His military pension felt freeing, the first money Agrian had acquired in his life purely through his own hands and labour, not by pleasing Father or convincing him for some pocket change. And it was a very considerable sum. Very considerable. Two hundred crowns was more than most labourers would see in ten years. Getting half that per year as his permanent pension meant that Agrian could actually just retire right now. And he thought about it. All the expectations on him felt like chains now.

Each one, in some way, meant helping Garamon, and making the world that much worse. Part of him wanted nothing more than to find an out from that, accept the damage he'd already done and just sit alone until he died. Sulk, basically. Part of him wanted to sulk. Agrian didn't have time to sulk, he had things to do. So he made his way across Garamon, one place at a time. He walked mostly, having spent too much of his life in carriages already and well used to long hikes from the army.

He met with people and shared stories and learned. Helped out where he could. Did whatever was within his power to make every settlement he passed through a bit better than it had been before he showed up. Agrian helped a bunch of people whose lives he hadn't ruined, in a country that already enjoyed all the wealth pilfered from the one he'd attacked, and for some fucking reason he was shocked when this didn't make him feel better. Eventually he reached Laugrey, and started for Winzorth again.

He didn't quite know why that was until he was almost at the Institute's gates. Answers. Agrian couldn't get a do-over, he couldn't go back and fix his errors, but he could get answers. The Winzorth Institute was many things, but lacking answers had never been one of them. Secrets… that was another matter entirely, magicians liked to make you work for every nugget of information you pried from them. Agrian was fine with that too. He could deal with work.

The Grandmaster was a busy man, with a lot of work and an uncountable number of responsibilities. Not just anyone could show up to Winzorth and demand an audience. Agrian Vornholt, though, was not just anyone. In any generation except his own he'd be the greatest magician in history, and the one recorded freak more freakish than him was his own damned sister. The red carpet would've caught fire with friction if it were rolled out any faster.

The Grandmaster's office was just as Agrian remembered it; cramped, despite its great size, and unpleasant. Like he was sitting inside the digestive tract of something many times his own size, just waiting to dissolve. The Grandmaster himself did nothing to abate this feeling. Old age had taken none of his intensity.

"You gave us quite a scare, you know," the old man smiled.

"Enlisting like that. At your age!" he seemed to be trying for a grandfatherly tone, though wasn't quite able to hide the genuine anger in his voice. Agrian considered playing the game, then decided against it. He sat down without asking, put his feet up on the desk, stared the Grandmaster right in his eye and said what was on his mind. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I know what you and Isabel have been up to," he said at last. The Grandmaster's skin was very dark, as dark as any man Agrian had ever seen, but such was the shock of that accusation that apparently even he was able to pale visibly. His pupils seemed to just vibrate for a few moments as he stared at Agrian.

"I don't know what you're talking about, boy," the Grandmaster said at last.

"You'll need to be more specific." He was handling it well, Agrian had to admit. Most people faced with this situation would already have freaked out and started making mistakes. Maybe old age had just left the Grandmaster incapable of such things, or perhaps he was always this cold. Agrian weighed what to say next very carefully either way. If he was wrong, and he might be wrong, then what he was about to say could get Isabel killed. His sister, killed.

If he was wrong, it would ruin the Vornholt family and quite possibly have Agrian executed as well. What was about to exit his lips was the most dangerous sentence a person had ever uttered. But he didn't think he was. No, he was almost completely sure he was right. Isabel's knowledge of necromancy was impossible to explain with just genius talent and a few months of intense study.

It wasn't about how freakish Isabel's talent was, or how dedicated she was, or how good her teachers were—there were just rules about magic. You didn't gain a master's technical skill in any field that quickly. It was a mathematical impossibility. Agrian had thought and reaffirmed that a hundred times over the last few months, checked his working out and thought about it from all possible angles, and each time he'd gotten the same conclusion.

Isabel had started learning necromancy long before she came to Estalia, probably years before. And here was the man she'd, much to the delight of gossipers the city over, always been in the confidence of, always been taken away with in private for long sessions talking or learning or whatever else it was they did that she'd never told Agrian. Here was one of the most powerful magicians in Garamon, affiliated with someone Agrian now knew was a necromancer.

What was it Aryqatan had said before they'd set out for their mission? They were investigating the Cult of Sakhent and its influence in Garamon. Well, the pieces were all there. Agrian wasn't dumb enough to miss the full picture now.

"I know that you and Isabel are in the Cult of Sakhent, and that you're the one who recruited her into it," he said at last. The words felt so heavy, released from his lips, that it felt like there should be sensation akin to a rifle's recoil as he spoke them. There wasn't. Just a long, cold silence. The Grandmaster broke it.

"You've not gone to the authorities about this?" he ventured.

"I've made sure plenty of people know Agrian Vornholt is coming to see you," Agrian replied. He wasn't an idiot. His odds of being silenced and never leaving this room after such an accusation had always been high. The Grandmaster wasn't an idiot either, because he leaned back and nodded.

"You have a reason for sharing this suspicion with me instead of the authorities," he noted.

"What is it?"

"Admit to it first," Agrian told him.

"Even if your baseless speculation was true, I wouldn't do that," the Grandmaster rolled his eyes.

"You can either have a conversation with me, and learn things, or you can keep insisting on that account and end any dialogue we might have before it's started. Your choice." Agrian felt his face burning. Truth be told, he wasn't cut out for politics. Not magician politics at least. He liked to think he had good instinct, or at least enough natural brains to see the obvious traps and pitfalls, but the Grandmaster had been doing this so long that all his instincts were the right moves.

It felt rather like playing chess with an expert at the sport, while Agrian was still sitting here like a fucking arsehole floundering around with the rulebook.

"I don't want to ruin my sister, obviously," Agrian said at last. Maybe if he gave some answers, small and obvious ones, he might get answers in turn.

"Noble of you," the Grandmaster smiled. It was mocking, not admiring.

"Okay, how about this," Agrian smiled back.

"Stay the fuck away from my sister and stop corrupting her." The Grandmaster snorted, actually snorted with laughter. Agrian actually thought the old man might fucking die on the spot, so hard was he chortling. It took long seconds for him to finally regain control of his lungs, and even then the odd spurt of amusement escaped him.

"That's rich," he chuckled.

"I'm serious," Agrian growled.

"I know," the Grandmaster wheezed.

"I…I know, bloody hell, my lungs. Shouldn't make me laugh that much boy, not at my age." A few moments later, he was back in control.

"What do you know of necromancy?" he asked at last. The question surprised Agrian and left him wrong-footed. A year ago he'd have said 'everything', then promptly demonstrated that he knew nothing. Now he knew enough to know he knew nothing. Was that something?

"Not as much as I should," he admitted at last. No need to profess total ignorance, there was every chance the Grandmaster was planning a lie and wanted to see if he could get away with it beforehand.

"As I'd have thought," the old magician nodded solemnly.

"Very few do. And of the stories about mutation and degeneration?"

"I know those are…exaggerated," Agrian admitted. He didn't like this part of the conversation, with the other side having all the answers. It felt like being punched in the dark.

"Do you? Or have you just heard that from someone else, too?" the Grandmaster challenged him.

"What are you getting at?" Agrian snapped.

"I'm pointing out that you don't seem to have much idea of what it is you're discussing in this conversation," the Grandmaster explained.

"Which is a problem if you intend to decide what you're going to do about it. Am I wrong?" Agrian wanted to tell him he was. He couldn't.

"Right," the old man continued.

"So, accepting that you are, in fact, quite ignorant about this…would you like to fix that?"

"Fuck off," Agrian was on his feet before he even realised it, looming over the desk. Was he about to punch the Grandmaster? Shit, one haymaker and the old man might actually die on the spot, assuming he wasn't wearing some automatic shielding enchantment.

"Calm down," the Grandmaster told him. He seemed to be regarding Agrian's rage as might a normal man the growling of a kitten. Call that another point for the shielding enchantment theory, or just a very good bluff.

"You just suggested I learn necromancy," Agrian hissed.

"Am I wrong?"

"No, you're right." Agrian didn't think he'd ever wanted to strangle someone more than he did right now. Bagran maybe, except he was a war hero now. Such was fucking life.

"And what makes you think I'd say yes to that?" he asked, just barely managing to keep from screaming it at the top of his lungs.

"Because if you really care about saving your sister, you'll need to know what she's in danger from."