Klobus

Klobus, addressed as Master Klobus, is the house mage of House Porvis in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. A courteous man in fine gloves who looked to be in his sixties, he did not know Katherine at first when she arrived with Kemp Corvus, but embraced her once she reminded him of the child who loved to wander in the woods. He was the one who had found her when she was lost, in the Almond Grove (Badem Korusu) to the north, and taken her to Archon; since then he had followed her progress through a few letters, and she told him she had chosen the school of evocation.¹²

Those born with magical talent must go to the Archon Academy while young, and may not leave it until they have learned to use their power without harming those around them.³

At the forest house

Klobus kept a room at the top of the family's old forest house, furnished with astronomical spheres and a telescope. There he asked Katherine how reckless Kemp was and whether Ephorus could be trusted, remarking that a man who carried such weapons and no shield was no ordinary soldier-bodyguard. He wondered aloud whether he had done right to take her from her family: he had not seen his own father in sixty-five years and had missed his funeral, yet he still held that gifted children might come to worse ends outside the school. The house, he said, had lost its savour of late; it had been better the summer before.⁴⁵

Baroness Ramona warned Ephorus that Klobus's warding spells could tell him when someone left a room at night. Katherine found a ward of abjuration covering the doors of the two guest rooms and older protective spells throughout the house, and Klobus himself later said that spells of watching and warding ran through the house and grounds.⁶⁷⁸

Over tea in his balcony room, with Ephorus waiting within earshot outside, Katherine offered to help put right whatever had gone wrong. Klobus answered in figures of speech: everyone wanted a slice of the cake, and sometimes one had to reduce the guests and sometimes spoil their appetite. He did not know exactly where Adeline was, though he thought he could find her, and he knew she was not at the town house. He trusted Katherine but not yet her companions, and wanted to see their courage and loyalty first; Archon, he said, did not teach the mages it sent to noble houses the means of hearing news for nothing. He judged that Hermann's loyalty went with money.⁹⁸¹⁰

The escape

When Kemp's company resolved to get the baron's family away, Klobus sent a message into Katherine's mind: he, Baron Vermont and the baroness had been testing their trust, and the three of them could come unseen. They reached the great tent invisibly and passed to the wagons, known only by footsteps and a touch on the shoulder; he could keep them hidden for three hours more, and said he would guard the baron first and help as he could.¹¹¹²¹³

When the mercenaries attacked, the enemies who forced their way into the wagon died at his hands. Kemp found two legionaries and six attackers dead around it and Klobus stained with other men's blood; he and the baron were lightly wounded. A man who tried to reach the tent of the prisoner Kleber was also stopped by him and found dead with three magical burns on his back.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

On the road he said he knew Ezor and passed on by magic the company's request to reach their superiors; Frederich answered that he would be in touch on returning to the fortress. Klobus explained that in the earlier fighting he had held back his power to protect the baron's family.¹⁷¹⁸

At Sarpyar he and the baron praised the difference Katherine had made in battle, and the mage Sylvia Linz went to speak with him. At the war council he suspected some magic behind the unusual confidence of the rebel commander Rainer Karga. Because he must sleep, the baron asked that Katherine stay beside his wife during those hours.^19202122

In Tal'gard

In Tal'gard Klobus introduced the arriving lords to Katherine and taught her how to pass what she learned to Kemp unnoticed, saying that in the small affairs of the countryside the mages whom nobles trusted held real influence. He told her that Lord Belligard was a distant kinsman of the baron and would watch his stance, and might become the most important man in the city if anything befell Vermont; that Lord Vembord came to the city about twice a year and ran a very rich house whose grain, vegetables and beer fed the city and its surroundings; that Palberd Junior, about nineteen or twenty, would take the place of his sick father after the deaths of his two elder brothers, his house being strong in forestry and timber, so that hunting in the nearby woods needed its leave; and that Lord Dornball, well kept and in his late thirties, owned stone and marble quarries and many craftsmen.^2324252627

He showed her a flower akin to chamomile, used in making calming draughts, told her to calm herself and put it in her hair. Later he brought her to the other house mages, among them Beatrice and Thomas, who traded gossip about the houses and exchanged books; their friendship suggested that the families were not at one another's throats.²⁸²⁹

When Katherine brought him gifts and asked how to conduct herself among nobles, he told her that there were more than ten mages in the city, most doing small work such as examining or mending objects and telling fortunes, and advised her not to trust people. He described Mr Lorenz as officially a family guardian and unofficially a chief of intelligence, with a bloody career: after the death of the previous ruler, nobles who had risen in revolt were found dead in accidents in their own homes. He said that the emperor ruled through advisers behind the curtain, that a churchman now dead and Lorenz had been friends of opposed views who both did mages good, and that those who did what Lorenz disliked might meet with accidents.^3031323334

Before Katherine left the city, he took her to a garden tea of the Extraordinary Talents Club, a closed circle that nonetheless openly ran as a club, with some fourteen guests.³⁵