Forgotten Mage (23 page)

“Master Sae-Thae, you’re not going to
rob me of my job now are you?” A white haired old man asked,
walking into the room. Bren almost didn’t notice the older man, as
he stood only slightly above four and a half feet, and had been
standing behind one of the massive tower guards.

“Master Rouma, I had almost hoped that
you didn’t get our summons and were still firmly asleep,” Sae-Thae
said, with a look of genuine disappointment on his face. “I had
been hoping to spend some quality time with our new
guest.”

“I understand the feeling my friend,
but we each have our own talents,’ Rouma said, looking up and
smiling at the much taller vathari. “Not to mention that the other
mages might find it more than a little unnerving if the head master
enjoyed such entertainments.”

“Politics,” Sae-Thae said, as if he had
a bad taste in his mouth. “Why must you humans play such games? I
much prefer my peoples way of doing it… it might be a tad more
bloody, but it seems much more civilized in the end…at least you
know who is coming after you.”

“That is the price of power,” the
little man said, taking the small knife from Sae-Thae’s hand. “Now,
if you will excuse me, I have someone to talk to.”

“First off, my we have your name?”
Rouma asked the assassin politely. “Don’t worry, it’s not as if we
can get much from a name, but calling you “It” and “That” does get
a bit old after a while.”

“Shane,” the assassin replied, his
voice filled with hate and contempt.

“Thank you Shane,” Rouma replied with a
short bow “It is good to know that you have a few manners. Now, as
you know, I am about to put you through more pain than you can
possibly imagine. Right now, you think that you will hold out and
tell us nothing, but that is not true. No one holds out forever.
You might for a few days, or even a week, but in the end everyone
talks…everyone.” Rouma stopped and ran his thumb across the blade
of the knife in his hand. “Let us start with the main question. If
you answer it, then I will simply slit your throat and you can die
a quick and mostly painless death. Why are you after young master
Farlane?”

“Go back to hell you abominations,” the
assassin said, spitting onto Rouma.

“Now Shane, we were off to such a good
start. There is no need for such un-pleasantries. I will ask you
one more time, and I expect the answer to be in a polite manner.
Why are you targeting young master Farlane?”

“Because you’re all motherless sons of
a demon!” Shane spat.

“I had hoped for a bit of civility, but
I guess that was too much to ask for,” Rouma said, plunging the
small knife into the bottom of the man’s foot, jerking up and
splitting the heel wide open. “Did you know that the foot and hands
are some of the most sensitive parts of the body? Yet, if you know
what you’re doing, they can be cut and torn without risk of
death.”

Bren was forced to cover his ears as
the man’s screams filled the room, as the old mage rubbed some sort
of white power into the large gash on the man’s foot. Bren felt as
if someone had kicked him in the pit of his stomach, and in less
than a few moments of listening to the man scream, he wished that
it would end quickly, but that was wishful thinking.

After more than a half hour of Rouma
cutting and pulling the small tendons in the man’s foot, the old
mage sat down his knife and placed his hands over the cut. Bren
watched as the flesh formed back together, leaving only a tiny pink
line, where only moments before, there had been nothing but raw
meat.

“Are you willing to answer now, or at
least be polite in your refusal?” Rouma asked as he cleaned off the
blade of the knife.

“I was just told to kill him…Who cares,
he’s just a mage,” Shane said in a near whimper.

“I can’t believe that you don’t have
any idea as to why the order was given,” Rouma said with a
disappointed glare. “Surely, some of your other friends have
talked… Now that I think about it, how many other friends do you
have with you?”

“I can’t tell you that…I won’t betray
my comrades,” Shane said, his face turning to stone again as his
resolution grew.

“We already went over this…Everyone
talks,” Rouma said with a sad smile. “But, if you tell me what you
really know about why Master Farlane was targeted, I will forget
about my need to know how many others there are.”

“All I was told, was that he had to
die,” Shane said, his demeanor slipping a little.

“But,” Rouma said, leading the man to
continue his statement.

“But, I heard a few of the senior
assassins talking. They said they had to stop him before he broke
the veil…I don’t know what they were talking about, but they seemed
concerned about the mage, more than they normally were about a
contract.”

“Thank you,” Rouma said, placing the
knife on the table and picking up a small hammer. “Now, why don’t
we talk about how many others came with you?”

“You said…” Shane said, his face
turning white.

“Did I?” Rouma replied, before slamming
the hammer down onto the man’s pinky finger. “It must be my old
age…I forget things so quickly nowadays.”

After Rouma had smashed all five
fingers, he grabbed a small knife and made a long slit down each
finger. Replacing the knife, he took up a pair of pliers and
started yanking the bones from the man’s hand.

Unable to take the scene anymore, Bren
rushed out of the room and emptied the contents of his stomach in
the hallway. Flynn was right behind him and Bren expected the older
boy to make some pun to his weakness, but when Bren turned around,
he noticed that Flynn was as white as a new sheet.

“I told you that you would not enjoy
the questioning,” Sae-Thae said, coming out of the room.

“I wanted to know,” Bren said, his
stomach turning again, threating to empty its contents again. “What
is the veil he was talking about?”

“It is part of the Brotherhoods core
beliefs. They believe that magic comes from another land and that
the more we use it, the weaker the wall between those two worlds
become. Your father was very intrigued by the thought, and was
investigating it before he disappeared.”

“Do you think it’s true?” Bren asked
intrigued.

“I don’t know…Honestly, I never gave it
much thought myself. If you would like, we could look through some
of your father’s journals and see if he found anything. Your mother
had them sent here after his disappearance, so they should still be
in my office somewhere.”

“I think I should,” Bren said
resolutely. “If the Brotherhood is after me, I would at least like
to understand why.”

“There is usually little understanding
when it comes to beliefs. There is nothing that will turn a person
into a madman quicker than what he holds in his heart to be true,
whether it is or not.”

“Do you think we can wait until
tomorrow to start? I think it would be best that I get some sleep,”
Bren said, as his stomach turned again.

“Yes, I think that would be a good
idea,” Sae-Thae responded with a smile. “I doubt that your Weapons
Master will take any excuse, even if it is that you were attacked
in the middle of the night, as a reason to get out of your
training.”

“You’re probably right,” Bren replied,
almost laughing.

Bren didn’t go back to his room alone
though. Sae-Thae ordered four tower guards to escort him and Flynn.
They were then to stay outside of his room for the rest of the
night. As Bren walked back to his quarters, he cursed the
Brotherhood again. “It’s one thing to try and kill me, but couldn’t
they have done it in a way that didn’t mean I would have to be
followed around by a horde of hulking guardsmen all the time,” Bren
mumbled to himself. “So inconsiderate.”

As he lay down, Bren was haunted by the
images of the man being tortured. Every time he closed his eyes, he
could see Shane’s face, contorted in pain, as his screams echoed
through his mind. When Bren finally did fall asleep, the assassin
was waiting for him there as well.

Bren found Shane strapped in the same
chair, though it was hard to recognize the man anymore. The skin on
his face had been peeled back, and the bones in his hands and feet
were gone, leaving them look like some morbid type of glove and
boots. The most disturbing thing to Bren, was the fact that all but
five of the man’s teeth had been removed.

“You did this to me,” Shane blamed
Bren.

“I didn’t…” Bren said in denial as he
back away from the chair, though no matter how much he moved, the
distance between the two gradually became closer.

“Why didn’t you just die?” Shane asked
in an imploring voice. “You need to die…You will destroy the world
and everyone in it!”

“How?” Bren asked as he dropped to his
knees, hiding his face from the man. When no answer came, Bren
opened his eyes to find that he was now in the chair. “Master
Rouma, stop it’s me!” Bren said, as the older mage approached him
with a wicked looking curved blade.

“Let me ask you again, Master Farlane.
Why did you destroy the veil?”

“
I didn’t destroy it,” Bren
replied, as tears ran down his face.

“I always thought that you would know
better than to lie, Master Farlane,” Rouma said, before plunging
the knife into Bren’s chest.

Bren woke screaming, startling Flynn
who ran over to his bed as the other four guards burst into the
room. “Are you ok? What happened?” Flynn asked, his hand resting on
his sword and his eyes scanning the room.

“Nothing…I just,” Bren said, his face
turning a deep red in embarrassment.

Flynn gave him a harsh look and turned
to talk with the other guards, who left quickly, but not before
looking in his direction and chuckling a bit. Bren didn’t know what
Flynn had said, but he was sure that it wasn’t anything very
pleasant.

Flipping onto his side, Bren closed
his eyes and tried to return to sleep, even though he feared that
he might find the assassin waiting for him again. Tomorrow would be
coming soon, and neither time nor the Weapons Master would wait on
him to get a good night’s rest.

“You son is more guarded than I
figured,” Humanius said, pacing back and forth. “Thanks to all the
protection you placed on the palace, we never had a chance to get
close to him, and he had arrived at the Tower before we even knew
he had gone from the palace. I thought wrongly that, at the Tower,
we could at least get to him.”

“Did you think that my friends would
just let you kill my son?” Thad asked haughtily. “If you want to
get to him, you will have to bring more than a few killers that
work in the shadows,” Thad added smugly.

“You might be right, but thanks to your
little war, I don’t have a large army at my command anymore. Even
if I did, they would have to make it through Farlan or Rane to
reach your little Tower, and I doubt either of those countries
would be too welcoming.”

“
You should give up on my
son,” Thad said, hoping that the god would do just that.

“I can’t do that Thaddeus…He is too
great a threat, and growing to be more of one every day. I will
just have to change how my men are targeting him. Maybe, if a few
of the other mages start dyeing, then it will force your friends to
start guarding everyone.”

“So you would kill innocents just to
get to my son?” Thad asked, his anger rising.

“Innocents? None of them are completely
innocent. All mages, strong or weak, are a strain on the veil. Your
world would be better off without them in the long run. They have
too much power and influence and as time moves along, some of them
will start to see themselves as self-proclaimed gods,” Humanius
said, with a knowing look.

“Like you did?” Thad asked, his face
flush with anger.

“Yes, just like my people did, and it
did not end well. There were deaths, tens of thousands of them, as
we asserted our position over our fellow beings. That is why I
cannot let that happen again.”

“So you have decided to play god, which
is what you don’t want others to do? What right do you have to
choose our fates for us?” Thad asked, hitting Humanius as hard as
he could.

The god didn’t even flinch at Thad’s
attack. “I might not have any right to choose your fates, as you
said, but I will do so anyway. It is, what is right. If not for me
and my sister, you would not have magic…I am just rectifying our
mistake.”

CHAPTER XIX

The next morning, Bren woke without
assistance. Though, it was more as if he just got out of bed, since
he had not slept very well the night before. Feeling completely
drained, Bren grabbed a towel and headed for the bath house, hoping
that the hot water would sooth some of his sleepless stupor
away.

With his trusty troupe of guards
following behind him, Bren winded his way through the corridors
until he reached the baths. “Wait,” Flynn said, grabbing Bren by
the arm. “Let me check it out before you go in. The bath is a great
place for assassins.”

Thad begrudgingly agreed to wait as
Flynn and one of the tower guards searched the bath house, forcing
anyone, mage or not, to leave before he entered. The harsh looks
the other apprentice mages gave him as they were escorted out of
the bath house, some still with soap covering their bodies, made
Bren duck his head. He had just wanted a bath, not a whole parade
in his honor, where the end result would be a lifetime of hate by
some of his fellow mages.