I told my wife there was nothing to worry about. I should have listened to her. I should have hid the children.
But it wouldn’t have helped. The Adepts have a treaty with our domn. Every seven years, they have the right to enter the domnia and test the children, to look for those who have what they call “the talent” but everyone else calls “the curse”. I remember it happened once, when I was a boy. A cloth merchant’s son was found to have the talent. The Adepts dragged him screaming from his mother while the merchant shouted curses, but no one lifted a hand against them.
No one dared.
The merchant went out of business after that. Everyone assumed that he was cursed, or worshiped demons, to have born a son with “the talent”. We all shunned him. No one would buy his goods. I don’t know what happened to him. I think he drank himself to death, probably. That was twenty-one years ago.
But this time, when the Adepts came, my wife panicked. She said that our youngest, our Julia, was special, that the Adepts would take her. I called her fears absurd. Julia was clever and quick with sums, especially for a girl, but magical talent? My wife wanted to hide the children, and I refused, since I did not want trouble with the domn. At the last minute she panicked and locked and barred the door.
The door shattered in a flash of blue fire, and the Adept came in anyway.
He wore a red robe with a close-fitting black collar, and guards came with him. My wife screamed at him, but he gestured, and she fell silent, struck dumb by his power. If she dared to lift her hand against a Adept of the Conclave, he said, she would die in agony. And he would force the children to watch, so that they might learn from her folly.
I said nothing. I didn’t dare. My door had been four inches of steel-banded oak, barred and locked, and the Adept had shattered it like glass.
A nod to his guards, and they rounded up my children, my three sons and two daughters, and lined them up before the Adept. One by one the Adept examined them, put his hands upon their temples, and whispered an incantation. They shivered beneath the spell, and one of my sons wept in terror. At last the Adept came to Julia, laid his hands upon her head, and spoke the spell. She went rigid, eyes going wide with sudden wonder, and around us the room shivered, a wind rustling through the curtains and tugging at the blood-colored folds of the Adept’s robe.
She had the talent, the Adept announced, and she would come to the Conclave in Araspan.
At once.
It all happened so fast after that. The guards taking Julia as she screamed and called for her mother. My sons all shouting at once. I grabbed the Adept’s sleeve, trying to negotiate, trying to haggle. He only sneered and pointed a finger at me. Blue fire erupted from his hand, slammed into me, burned away most of my clothes and hair and flung me into the far wall.
And then he left, and took Julia with him.
I see that over and over, in my nightmares.
My wife blames me. She said that if I had been a stronger man I could have stopped them, could have fought back, could have done something. There is nothing in her eyes except poisonous loathing when she looks at me.
No one will do business with me now. The money is almost gone. My debts are piling up. I can’t provide for my wife, or my children.
None of that matters.
I will go to Araspan and get Julia back. I don’t care what I must do. I will find a way, no matter what it takes.
###
Excepts from a journal found on a badly-burned corpse.
-JM
Posted by JM 
