og settled into his new life at Nolani by bringing some of the rites he had learned at the temple with him. He awakened before dawn to meditate, then took a long walk around the immense grounds as the sky flushed pink and gold with the rising sun. While he was fortunate to be attending one of the world’s finest magical schools, it did not change the fact that he missed the music and structure of the temple and he would always consider it home.

He read Nuine’s weekly letter at breakfast as he did at the beginning of each week in the echoing dining hall. Being an early riser, he was often alone at one of the immense tables and was nearly finished with his porridge by the time others had joined him. Nuine’s missives were always sweet and comforting. She wrote of her work and how much she missed their time together each day. Of course she asked how he was doing, but he did not have the heart to tell her that he was lonely and homesick.

“Where are you from?”

Mog gazed up from his reading into a pair of alluring hazel eyes. They belonged to a pretty young brunette with whom he had shared his first lesson. Master Whelen did not permit talking during his lectures so Mog had been granted little opportunity to chat with anyone and his hours were apparently not the norm for his night owl peers.

“South of Rin,” he replied, puzzled why she had come to sit with him when there were ample tables in the large hall, most of them empty.

“I’m Dorothea Ermengarde but everyone just calls me Dotty. Is that a letter from home?”

“Yes,” he said, realizing she was trying to make conversation.

She made him uncomfortable and the back of his head felt like someone was poking him with a pin.

“I hope you’re not trying to read me,” he muttered, “because if you are, you’re being very clumsy and obvious.”

She blushed and looked away.

“Not like the other initiates,” she giggled, trying to hide her embarrassment, “I suppose that’s why you want to be alone.”

He shrugged.

“I just don’t see a need for idle chatter. And that was rude, by the way.”

“Sorry, I won’t do it again.”

“Only because you can’t,” said another voice. Mog looked up to see another young woman settle down beside Dorothea.

“Tabetha Leyoness,” she said, “I think that makes us cousins. This is Lord Simagh’s eldest son, Dot. You might want to stay away.”

Tabetha had his mother’s pale blue eyes and auburn hair, but her jaw was harder and her narrow brows had a cruel turn to them. Their families were not close. The marriage between his father and his mother had occurred under strange circumstances to which he had never been made privy. Asking either one of his parents to elaborate was out of the question.

“Don’t be such a kill joy, Tab. Besides, I need a partner for tonight’s dance and all the others are taken. So, me or Tab?”

“I don’t want him,” Tabetha snorted, “Too tall, for a start and we’re most likely related.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a dance,” he sputtered, taken off guard.

“At the end of the month there is always a dance. And you had better not make some lame excuse about having too much studying to do. I might believe it at the end of the term, but not now.”

Mog realized he must look idiotic gawping at the two women. He had barely been at the academy for a month and had no clue about its social dimension. Mesmers were fewer and their lessons were often held in a small room in the northern tower away from the noise and bustle of the others. He also had his own room since non-mesmers preferred not to live with one and he was currently the only male initiate. As a result he knew no one well.

“I’ll see you here at eight this evening,” Dorothea announced when he failed to respond, “Wear that nice green outfit you arrived in. It will go well with my favorite gown.”

That dance was just the first of many, and over the course of the long lonely winter he began to look forward to them. They were orderly and polite affairs chaperoned by the staff. Mog enjoyed the music but the sedate pace of the dances kept everyone a polite distance from one another. He soon forgot about the nameless young woman in the temple whose kisses made his heart do pirouettes.

While Dorothea seemed more attainable, it was an illusion. There were too many nobles attending the school to ever allow indiscretions to occur. Nolani’s staff had the unenviable task of keeping a largely adolescent population of students out of trouble and out of each other’s bedrooms. What few intimate moments he shared with Dotty were brief and amounted to chaste kisses and embraces stolen behind doorways or library shelves. Bridging those moments were the embarrassing little love poems that he crafted for her when he was supposed to be taking notes during lectures. He fond it strangely gratifying when he saw her cooing and giggling over them with the other girls. She fed his fantasies and helped him endure the long lonely grind that perfecting his art required of him.

Despite Dotty’s distraction and allure, Mog blossomed as a magician, impressing his instructors and fellow initiates. Nuine’s letters congratulated him for embracing his true nature but he withheld the reason for his desire to remain away from the temple. He burned with desire for Dorothea and believed this to be love. It was foolish, in retrospect.

He was Lord Simagh’s boy, after all. Nuine had arranged that Mog might attend Nolani without his father’s knowledge but she could do nothing about others recognizing him. Tabetha made no secret that she disapproved of her friend flirting with Mog. As Mog’s second year drew to a close, it was Belenus who cornered Dotty in the common room and called her a whore before everyone in the room. He threatened her and her family and that was the end of their relationship.

Mog finished out the term in shame. Tabetha shielded Dorothea from him as if he were a loathsome animal and gossip sleeted between his peers. Mog was an object of pity and disgust. On his last day, having received his papers and commendations for outstanding scholarship, he turned his back on Nolani and decided the priesthood was his destiny after all. He wadded up the small pile of letters that had arrived from various guild leaders requesting his services and decided he would never use his mesmeric talents again.

With the last of his temple stipend he purchased the services of a cab to return him to the Sacred Twins. He spent the morning dressing down into his old Cantor robes and stowed his clothes and books in his cedar chest despite having doubts that he would need them again. He clutched his fine ebon wood cane that had been bestowed upon him by Master Whelen as a reward for his scholarship, but he put away the matching jeweled chakram. Instead he clutched a red rose from the garden in his left hand. He had selected it for Nuine to salve her disappointment. She would not understand his desire for the priesthood, and he was not sure how he would explain it to her.

A rap at the door told him his coach had arrived. A pair of servants took his chest and he strode down four flights of stairs to the entry hall. At the massive door, he stood under the shadow of the architrave and gazed down the cascade of steps. A small black carriage drawn by a pair of bay horses awaited him.

He could have walked, although it would have taken him many hours and he was eager to be home where he was welcome. The door rattled closed. Mog sat down in the plush velvety dimness and closed his eyes, eager to put Nolani behind him.

“Good morning, Brother.”

Mog nearly jumped out of his skin. Belenus smiled back at him, sitting in the shadows on the opposite seat. His lean figure was clad in a fine black jacket and matching breeches with silver studs. Belenus’ face had lost its youthful softness and had the harsh angles of hard drinking and anger. A dark mustache and beard gave him a rakish aspect and his long black hair was swept back in a tail.

“Bel, what are you doing here?”

“I think you know,” he replied with a smug laugh, “I’m good, aren’t I? Didn’t even detect me. Had some training myself while you were gallivanting about in Nolani.”

“I suppose that’s good,” Mog said, keeping his voice level despite feeling off balance. Belenus was up to something, as always, and Mog had a fair idea what it was.

“Rumor has it you are planning to go back to the Sacred Twins. I wonder how those holy people would feel if someone told them you had been chasing girls instead of knowledge.”

“Stop playing stupid games,” Mog snapped.

“Why? Still bitter I told Dotty to keep her gold-digging hands off of you? I believe you’ll thank me one day.”

“What do you want?”

“I told father I’d be bringing you home. At least he can depend on one of his sons. I find it amusing that the eldest and most talented has turned out to be the bad one. And they all thought it would be me.”

Mog glared at his brother and rapped on the roof of the cab with his cane. Belenus laughed at him as the coach kept rumbling along.

“I paid the driver three times his normal fee. He won’t stop, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“I’m old enough to make my own decisions,” Mog said bitterly.

“You are Simagh,” Belenus scoffed, “What you want is inconsequential.”

He looked away from his brother and stared out of the window at the landscape speeding by. Anger burned inside of him and he said nothing as the hours passed and the coach eventually pulled up outside of the dank sprawl of buildings he remembered from childhood. The kennels resounded with the baying of his father’s hounds while the ivy covered manor house opened its dark maw onto the carriage loop waiting to swallow him up. He had vowed never to set foot inside that house again once he gave himself to the temple. Belenus guided Mog past the servants who obediently lined the path from the coach to the door. A pair of thuggish men fell in step behind him.

Mog ended up in an austere little room on the third floor. The heavy door locked from the outside and there was an ornate iron grille over the single window. There was a bed, a washstand, a chamber pot, and a low table on which rested a plate of fruit and cheese.

“Welcome home,” Belenus mocked. The door boomed closed and keys rattled in the lock. Mog sat alone on the edge of the bed and sighed. He did not need to be told how long he would be staying there.

Days passed and no one spoke to him, not even the servants who arrived to clean up after him or deliver plates of food. He had no books to read and his pipes were in his chest, which could have ended up anywhere knowing Belenus. At first he raged against his prison, pounding the door and demanding to be released. Then he turned to the only remaining source of comfort, his love of Lyssa and the temple he called home. He made a little shrine with his lone candle and sat upon the plain wooden floor to meditate until he found the calm place within him.

Over the next few days, an armorer came and took his measurements and a week later a hideous set of dark leathers arrived with a grim face-concealing mask. He resisted wearing them for a day or two, but Mog realized he was only prolonging his captivity. On the morning he donned them he was guided to the dusty practice arena behind the manor house where his father and a handful of his guild members sparred and grunted in the warm autumn sunlight.

“Let’s see if Nolani can turn out a decent fighting mesmer,” said his father’s clipped baritone. He glared at his father’s towering figure through the narrow slits of his mask. No one had bothered to ask him what aspect of magic he preferred and had designed the hideous thing to enhance the cruel face of the goddess rather than the subtle and deceptive one he favored.

Amid the laughter of the gathering crowd he was shoved into the arena to stand awkwardly on the stodgy wood shavings that coated the bare dirt. Mog could feel their disdain for him and their anticipation of an amusing display. To his horror, it was his father who stepped into the enclosure with him. Oh gods, anything but his father. Mog watched miserably as his father drew his sword from its ornate scabbard. At least he had not worn his parade armor, but he had the confident swagger that suggested he was about to teach Mog a well-earned lesson.

Naturally he did not wish to use his magic on his own father. He hated the man, but he also respected him. Instinctively he backed away as the warrior’s immense figure started toward him, his face now concealed behind the grille of a heavy helm.

“Run away, little mesmer,” someone jeered above him.

“Don’t get blood on your pretty clothes!”

“Simagh, your son’s useless, hurry up and beat him down, I want my turn.”

Fury boiled up inside of him and came sizzling from his throat aimed at the mean little knot of harshness that was his father’s mind. The man winced in pain as the hex curled around him, summoning a vile phantasm of loss and humiliation to haunt his mind. His life energies bled away in panic but he hesitated for only a moment and drove toward Mog with a roar of agonized rage. His sword swung back but a second hex snarled from Mog’s lips and he watched in cold amusement as his father’s enormous form tripped clumsily, granting Mog an opportunity to back away.

Gratified that the jeers of the crowd had died down, the two men squared off in silence. Mog waited for his father’s next move as the phantasm faded. He was content to wait, moving lightly backwards as his father took his measure and rushed at him again. Hubris was a weapon in Lyssa’s hands and Mog made him trip over again. This time he followed it by calling upon the ethers to chain his father to the earth. His concentration and energies were flagging, but now the man could scarcely move as Mog dodged past him. His father would never get the satisfaction of striking him again.

His father wisely decided to heal himself now that Mog was temporarily out of reach. Wisely, except his son was a mesmer whose sole focus was the dismemberment of warriors. Lord Simagh raised up his sword arm to activate his healing signet while Mog looked on in cruel amusement. He waited until the last possible moment, allowing his father to believe he was going to get away with it. Mog uttered a single harsh word and his father fell back in an explosion of swearing.

When his father did not get up again, he pulled off the mask and threw it on the ground at the man’s feet. A monk rushed to Lord Simagh’s side. He would be fine, of course, this was merely practice and Mog had no intention of lopping off his head to ensure he would never have to battle him again. He glanced up at the high fence surrounding the arena to see the shocked faces of his father’s guild members. Had they honestly never seen a mesmer defeat a warrior before?

No one said a word to him as he pushed through the gate and nearly crushed a young elementalist who had been standing on the other side of it. Mog was furious that he had been forced to go through with this charade from which neither of them could walk away victorious. No doubt he would pay for humiliating his own father, but he did not care any more. He was tired of being at the man’s mercy, furious that he had spent the last couple weeks locked in a room like a prisoner. His only crime was wanting his own life.

No one followed him as he strode grimly down the long cobbled road that led to the manor’s gate. Perhaps it was the look of murderous rage engrained on his face, but the gateman opened it and he walked free of his father’s house for a final time.