Katherine

Katherine, also called Katherin or Catherine, is a young human mage of the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. A graduate of Archon whose schooling was paid for by House Corvus, she joined Kemp Corvus and Ephorus near Osterhn, travelled with them in the service of the crown prince, and in the end chose to stay with House Corvus.^{1 2 3}

Background

When she first appeared she was twenty-four, about one metre seventy tall, fair-haired and green-eyed, and travelled with a dark brown owl named Turşu. She said she came from Mavi Koru and knew House Corvus. Her father had died fighting pirates or brigands for the house when she was eight, and Baron Corvus had paid for her schooling at Archon from an early age. After graduating she had hoped to serve the house, but its very old wizard, Master Perval, still held the post, so she took to wandering instead.^{1 4 2 5}

The wizard Klobus of the Porvis household later recognised her as the child he had found lost in the Almond Grove in the north and taken to Archon; he had followed her progress through a few letters. She told him she had chosen to study evocation. Klobus, who had not seen his own father for sixty-five years and had missed his funeral, wondered aloud whether he had done right to part her from her family; she could not give him a clear answer, torn between gratitude and longing.^{6 7 8}

Joining the company

Cassius Varum, who knew her from Archon as a younger fellow student, sent her in his place to lift the magical alarm on a hideout, giving her a scroll of Dispel Magic for the task. She asked to stay on for the dangerous part as well, and the company gave her a blue-stoned ring that strengthened her magic. She studied the traces of magic with a ritual of burning herbs, lit Kemp's sword and her own necklace with the elvish word for the moon, and read the scroll successfully, though it was beyond her own skill; the scroll burned away and the alarm was gone.^{9 10 5 11 12}

Inside, Turşu walked into an old glyph and was destroyed in a burst of fire, and she later called the owl back in a new body. She identified the company's finds, among them Kemp's icy sword Buz Kenar and a scrap of cloth that could show any chosen writing, and passed on the reply that had come from Kemp's family through Cassius. Exalon asked her to post a letter from a great city, under her own name, to a woman teacher at Archon whom she remembered as a young assistant; she agreed.^{13 14 15 16}

Saying she was tired of travelling alone, she asked to join the company. Kemp invited her to come with him and Ephorus at least as far as a great city, and she accepted.^{17 18}

Spoiler: A funeral in OsterhnRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #16; Sürgün Günlükleri #20 · Say what you have read

Before they left she attended the funeral of Sarah, Kemp's cousin, and cooked with Pitt for the gathering afterwards. The blue ring she had been given had been Sarah's.^{19 20 21}

The road west

While the company waited two weeks for a boat she studied books and spells. On the river she kept Exalon's letter unopened, meaning to send it from Mavi Koru. Ephorus showed her the new power that let him change his appearance and apologised for his earlier coldness; she agreed to keep his secret. He taught her cards, and she showed him a dragon scale and her books, among them an old work of geometric glyphs she could not yet follow.^{22 23 24 25}

At the fortress of Riverguard a port officer checked her Archon papers. Questioned by the prince's dragonborn guard, she told of her schooling and of failing to find a place with the house, and she was uneasy at having to leave her spellbook and necklace behind to meet the prince. She told the prince's tutor Frederich Barnas that Archon had been well when she left, and attended the audience as the one House Corvus had schooled. Frederich charged her with passing his messages to Kemp unchanged and promised a good report of her to Archon.^{26 27 28 29 30}

The Porvis house

At the Porvis forest house the baron asked her where the company was going; she said Kemp could answer that better and turned the talk. She took Klobus to a room of astronomical instruments, where he asked how reckless Kemp was and whether Ephorus could be trusted; she said she trusted her friends and kept Ephorus's secret. At night she sensed a warding field across both guest doors and older protections in the house. Over tea Klobus told her that the baron's daughter Adeline was not in the town house, though he did not know exactly where she was, and that the house's watching spells told him when anyone walked at night.^{31 32 33 34}

When the household had to be brought out in secret, she first said she could not make anyone invisible, then corrected herself. She sent Turşu to watch the surroundings and relayed Klobus's silent messages telling the company when he and the baron's family had reached the great tent unseen.^{35 36 37}

When the mercenaries attacked, she made Ephorus invisible and threw three great fireballs into the enemy one after another. Arrows struck her in the leg and the wrist, and the third blast broke the mercenaries' numbers and nerve.^{38 39 40}

Spoiler: The mercenary captainRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #19 · Say what you have read

She sent Turşu to claw at the eyes of the man fighting Kemp, then loosed her magic bolts, two of them at the mercenary leader Hermann Çelikyüz, who fell dead with wounds to his neck and head.⁴¹

Afterwards the baron and his wizard praised the difference she had made, but she said that burning so many people was nothing like what she had read in books. Ephorus told her that killing had darkened his own soul and offered to help her through it.^{42 43}

Sarpyar and Tal'gard

Through Frederich's magical messages she carried Kemp's reports to the prince's side and the answers back. At the castle of Sarpyar, kept close to the baron's family, she explained to the wizard Sylvia, when asked whom to save in a crisis, why the baron's life mattered politically, and Sylvia agreed. Through Turşu's eyes she watched the rebel camp in a burned village, counting hundreds though not exactly, and later the enemy's march away and the approach of relieving cavalry. In council she weighed the political and tactical dangers of the duel the rebel leader demanded.^{44 45 46 47 48}

In Tal'gard Klobus introduced her to the lords of the council and taught her to carry what she learned quietly to Kemp, telling her that in country matters the wizards whom nobles trust have real influence. He showed her a daisy-like flower used for calming draughts and put it in her hair, and introduced her to other house wizards, Beatrice and Thomas among them, whose gossip and book trading suggested that the families were not at each other's throats. She brought him gifts and asked how to move among the nobility; he told her there were more than ten wizards in the city, most doing small work such as examining and mending things and telling fortunes, and advised her to trust no one.^{49 50 51 52 53}

Frederich sent her word to halt the planned show of force and wait for him. When he came, she sided with his way rather than the harder course pressed by the spy Foltest, and he told her he had heard of her power in battle, warning that violence breeds violence and that the same talk of danger can turn against wizards. Scouting the square with Turşu, she judged that a fireball among the crowd would be a disaster.^{54 55 56 57}

Spoiler: The duelRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #23 · Say what you have read

In the end she made Ephorus invisible so that he could slip into the champion's room and mix Foltest's draught into the oils used on the sword.⁵⁸

Gifts and the club

Before leaving Tal'gard she went with Klobus to a garden tea of some fourteen guests, the Club of Extraordinary Talents. Sylvia told her the club collected rare magical objects and, saying that selling them was forbidden in the Empire, called its exchanges mutual gifts; she gave Katherine a playing card with a woman joker on it, to be shown at shops bearing the same mark.^{59 60 61}

One night Katherine found the sign carved on a carpenter's door. The old carpenter, who said he was no member himself, took her illusion cloth for the club and offered elven boots that soften one's steps for her dragon scale; she chose the boots and gave them to Ephorus, who said they were the first gift he had ever received. Ephorus in turn gave her Birthright, a gossiping history of the imperial dynasty.^{62 63 64 65}

Marching east with Prince Conrad, she fought in the battle against the hobgoblins from a moving war chariot, held upright by a legionary, hurling fireballs. As a parting gift the prince gave her a telescope in pieces from his own collection, remembering how he had learned the stars as a child with his father's chief wizard. Malecris told her she had saved many of his men's lives in the fight with the Bloody Coin.^{66 67 68}

House Corvus

Back in Osterhn before the journey to Kemp's home, she admitted to Exalon that she had still not sent his letter, and he warned her that her power in battle would draw attention from many quarters. She posted it from the Corvus house, leaving a gold coin as a donation.^{69 70 71}

At Mersin Konağı she met the family, the old house wizard Master Aethelwulf and, at dinner, the druid Sivana. She looked for the joker sign on him and found none, so could not tell whether he belonged to the club. He asked her to pick out his familiar among the hundred birds in his room; when she chose rightly he praised her and gave her a scroll of flight. The family gave her a staff raised from the bottom of the lake that reveals hidden doors.^{72 73 74 75 76}

In the haunted town by the lake she prepared a protective spell before going in. She found no magic in a silver mirror but strong necromancy in an inscription, which she read by touch as a devil's contract; in the chamber of seven hollows she sensed an old, unstable transformation magic. The company feared what her power could do if she lost control while carrying a cursed cup, and Kemp took it instead.^{77 78 79 80}

In the fight at dawn she was bitten by a hellhound and struck the devil again and again with magic bolts. When Kemp fell, she gripped her necklace and sent three last bolts that brought the devil down; it vanished cursing into the burning ground and left behind a black amethyst pendant, which proved to hold a power that could bind a devil between the planes.^{81 82 83 84}

She asked Kemp's family by magical message about an earlier drow attack on the house and was told that the inquiry continued and no great danger was seen. She then chose to stay at the Corvus house, learning from Aethelwulf and later serving the family, an arrangement said to settle her debt to Archon. She handed over the blue ring, another magical item and most of the shared money, keeping her own belongings and a share.^{85 3}

Spoiler: Later eventsRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #28 · Say what you have read

It was Sarah and Kemp who set out together when she stayed behind, and Sarah wrote a ballad about Katherine's victory over the devil.^{3 86}

Later

Questioned by the spy Foltest about why she had left, Ephorus guessed that loyalty to the house, its ageing wizard and fear after the fight with the devil had led her to a quieter life. Foltest claimed that her former teacher at Archon, Master Tarvos, had ties to political circles opposed to the confinement of wizards at Archon; Ephorus said he did not see her as an active partisan of everyday politics.^{87 88 89}

A later letter from the Corvus family carried her greetings and told how the young mage had helped the house. When an unsigned letter suggested the company was being watched, they feared she might be in danger because of what had happened in the Porvis country and sent her a warning.^{90 91 92}

Spoiler: The last battleRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #49; Sürgün Günlükleri #50 · Say what you have read

When her old companions prepared the defence of Osterhn against the Puppeteer, she was named among the friends to be called. She stood with the allies in the final struggle, went to the aid of the first to fall outside the gate, and was shown wounded when the Puppeteer held the allies with visions.^{93 94 95 96}