Forgotten Mage (26 page)

“Might be a little torment going on,
but it’s of a friendlier kind,” Cass said winking. “A few of the
ladies around here have come to visit, to thank me for being such a
heroic sort.”

Bren took a seat in one of the chairs
in the small room. “Would you care for a sip?” Cass asked, offering
him the bottle.

Bren took the ale from his friend and
took a whiff the fumes, making his eyes water. “Dear gods, that
could take the rust off of armor that’s been sitting in the ocean,”
Bren said, handing it back to his friend.

“That’s how you know it’s worth
drinking,” Cass said laughing. “So, what brings you down here? If
it’s to see me, I give you my thanks, but next time you could bring
a nice lass with you, so I would have something to look at beside
your ugly mug.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were
not wallowing in self-pity,” Bren said with a thin smile. “Next
time though, I will make sure that I bring along a female for you
to look at. Maybe one of the local farmers will spare a sheep,
though I hear it will be hard to find one that you don’t already
know.”

“Ah, a low blow my friend, but you know
what they say. It’s all good, if it’s not baaaad,” Cass replied,
before breaking out in a fit of laughter.

Bren and Cass talked until he was
forced to leave by an older looking mage. Sighing and wishing that
Cass would hurry up and return to his post as his guard, Bren made
his way back to his room. When he reached the long hallway that
lead to his quarters, a loud scream filled the air, causing Flynn
and the rest of the guards to grab for their weapons.

A few moments later, a young girl, only
a year or two older than Bren, ran into the hallway and to where
the guards stood around Bren. “She’s dead! She’s dead,” The girl
said over and over, as tears ran down her face. One of the tower
guards went to check the room. Bren quickly followed, before Flynn
had a chance to hold him back.

Inside the small room, an older girl,
near the age of eighteen, laid on the ground. Her throat cut so
deep, it looked as if only a few flaps of skin held her head to the
rest of her body. Before Flynn hauled Bren away, he was able to
notice a piece of cloth laying on the girl’s chest with an emblem
of a fox on it.

“There is a limit to how much of a fool
you can be,” Flynn berated Bren, as he pulled him to his room.
“Next time you pull a stunt like that, I will get permission from
the Weapons Master to have you locked in the Tower prison so that
you can’t do so again…Am I understood?”

“Understood,” Bren replied, pulling his
arm from Flynn’s grasp.

It was less than an hour later when the
number of guards on his room was reduced from four to one. It
wasn’t as if the guards were completely gone, they were just
patrolling the rest of the living areas and anywhere else the
assassins might find easy to strike.

Bren wasn’t overly worried though. He
might not like Flynn, but he felt safe with the man around. He was
skilled, far more so than any two of the normal tower guards put
together. Bren should had known that before having to spar with him
by the small red badge on the man’s collar, but for some reason it
had never occurred to him.

Skill with a sword is
useless against magic. If you could use it as you wished, then no
number of fighters could stand against you in combat.

“What about the Brotherhood fighters?
Their swords absorb magic, so it’s not as if I could beat them with
magic alone,” Bren replied quickly and curtly.

Your father beat many of
them before without the use of a sword. In truth, if he had used
his magic more, and his sword less, he most likely would have taken
far less damage on the battlefield. It was his lack of composure
and the fact that he made the same mistakes over and over again
that was his downfall.
At least you seem to
learn from your mistakes, but whether you will act on that
knowledge or simply react will be determined when you don’t have
the time to think.

“Would you please stop compering
everything about me to my father?” Bren asked angrily. “I am not
Thaddeus Torin, I am Bren Farlane and happy to be so.”

Why should you care who you
are compared to. It is a fact of life that everyone will compare
you to others, whether you wish them to or not. If you don’t like
it, strive to be better so that others are compared to you and not
the other way around.

“I shouldn’t have to be the best. I
should only have to be me,” Bren mumbled to himself, though he was
sure that Thuraman still heard.

As Bren readied for the night, a knock
came at his door that was quickly answered by Flynn, his sword at
the ready. As the portal swung open, it revealed Jacob, as well as
more than a dozen other older soldiers who Bren had not remembered
seeing before.

“Bren, I need to have a word with
you…alone,” the Weapons Master said loudly, his eyes pointedly
lingering on Flynn. “Now,” Jacob said, and both guards rushed from
the room, shutting the door firmly behind them.

“Is there a problem Weapons Master?”
Bren asked, slightly shake from Jacob’s abrupt entry into his
quarters.

“Not so much a problem, but a solution
that you could help me with. It seems as if Sae-Thae has left. I
just returned from his quarters to find that he has left on an
urgent errand. Worst possible timing if you ask me. I don’t think
there is anything so important that it couldn’t wait until things
settle down first, but that is beside the point. Sae-Thae requested
that I bring in extra guards and soldiers to patrol the Tower and
city until everything is deemed safe, but without him here it to
sign the papers, agreeing to the temporary increase of men will
look bad to the council members.”

“I can see that, but how am I supposed
to help?” Bren asked confused.

“Boy, you aren’t the sort to catch on
quickly are you?” Jacob said, rubbing his hand across the top of
his head. “By legal rights, you are of age and also the king or
title holder of this land. Just because you haven’t exercised that
right before, doesn’t mean it does not exist. I need you to sign
the documents, otherwise I will be fighting with master Carnear
until Sae-Thae returns.”

Bren took the stack of papers and sat
down at the small desk in the corner of his room. Pulling out a
nearly empty ink bottle and an iron quill that was once his
fathers, he picked up the first of the papers. He had spent enough
time around his mother to know, you never sign your name to
anything unless you have read it thoroughly.

“I don’t mean to rush you, but I do
have other tasks at hand,” Jacob said, tapping his foot.

“Weapons Master, if you were to order
me to run around the entire city, I would do so without a second
thought, but signing a piece of paper, while seemingly easy, must
be taken with great care. One wrong word, and I might accidently
sign over the title of these lands to your king,” Bren said,
turning his attention back to the task at hand.

“That is why I could never be a war
master,” Jacob said, chuckling to himself. “Having to deal with all
those contracts with the lords and ladies. I am much better suited
to swinging my sword than dealing with all this second guessing and
political maneuvering.”

“My mother always said that the most
dangerous battlefields are the ones where no swords are held,” Bren
said, signing his name to the first sheet, allowing the Katanga
forces of no more than ten full entry into the Tower for half a
season.

“I don’t know if that is true, but I
will concede that it is the most confusing of battles,” Jacob said,
his foot still tapping impatiently.

The other three papers had the names of
the new people brought in, and an estimated time that they would be
allowed within the city. Bren was surprised to see that only five
full Katanaga members were previously allowed within the city as
guards before. He had thought that with the academy present, many
more would be available. The papers allowed for twenty-five more to
be brought in, though it gave a specific date as to when it would
revert back to the previous number. Seeing that it was only a
temporary increase, and that it was given an end date, Bren signed
the papers and handed them back to Jacob.

“I don’t know if they will be accepted,
but I will stand by my decision to let them help out in defense of
the Tower,” Bren said confidently.

“Just remember that if anyone questions
your authority, always act like you have more than they do,” Jacob
said with a smile. “It has always worked for me.”

“I will remember that,” Bren said as
Jacob opened the door, leaving along with his group of Katanga
warriors.

As Bren watched them leave, he watched
the warriors closely. They looked like any other soldier he had
seen, except none of them wore a uniform. The only way that one
could tell they were all of the same group was that each wore a red
piece of cloth tied somewhere on their body. “Looks can be
deceiving,” Bren whispered to himself, knowing that in a fight the
Katanaga were one of the fiercest group of warriors that men had,
even the vathari praised their skill in battle.

“What did the Weapons Master wish to
see you about?” Flynn asked, his voice sharp and
unpleasant.

“It was a private matter. I am sure
that if he wished you to know about it, then he would have allowed
you to stay in the room when we discussed it,” Bren said pithily.
He knew that it was uncouth to use something so small as a way to
bother someone, but he was tired of Flynn’s attitude. The boy had a
hard life, many do, but Bren did not see how the fact that he was
born a prince should make it his fault. He was tired of people
blaming him for things outside of his control.

Feeling a little better about himself,
Bren kicked off his boots and jumped on the bed. It felt a lot
better, not to care about every little thing. He didn’t know how
much he had really burdened himself with until he let it go. It was
a very refreshing feeling.

That night, as Bren slept, he felt
himself being pulled again by his mother. He had never truly
understood how she had done it before, but after weeks of working
with Master Carnear, he could see the lines of magic pulling at
him.

It surprised him that his mother could
use the darkness element, though knowing her it shouldn’t have
surprised him. She must have been an internal magic user, though
using it to pull someone else into your dream seemed more like it
was external. Bren guessed that it might have been one of the
special cases that some of the masters had talked about.

Bren didn’t know why they separated
magic into different categories. There were more than a few special
cases outside of them. It was like saying there was only a right
and left unless there is a middle. Bren just found it foolish, but
then again he wasn’t one of the masters.

After thinking for a bit, Bren let his
mother pull at him. As the darkness cleared, he found himself in
his own room back at the palace. His mother sat on the corner of
his bed, holding a small light green blanket that he had used when
he was a small child.

“You were your father’s pride and joy
when you were born. I had always feared that Thad would leave one
day and go on another journey far away, but once you were born,
that fear disappeared. He loved you so much,” Maria said, her voice
trailing off.

Bren walked up behind his mother,
wrapping his arms around her neck as he bent down so his chin
rested on her shoulder. “You never talk much about father,” Bren
said softly.

“What could I say,” Maria replied.
“Ever since I first saw him, I didn’t think of anyone else. Just
thinking about him now, makes my heart race and ache at the same
time.”

Maria lifted up his hand and gave his
palm a kiss. “I know I was never the best mother…I just didn’t want
you to end up like your father. He was always so impulsive, rushing
into danger head first, never thinking that he could get others to
do the same thing.”

“I am not my father,” Bren said,
pulling back from his mother.

“I know that…It’s just, a mother will
always fear the worst. It might not be fair, but I will keep you
safe…even if it must cost me your love,” Maria said
firmly.

“Mother, I will always love you, but I
won’t let you make me a prisoner just because something might
happen,” Bren said firmly, as he started to push at the corners of
the dream.

As the darkness rolled in, pulling him
back to his own dream, he could hear his mother yelling at him. She
never was the kind to wail, no she was commanding even when she was
sad.

The next morning, Bren woke to find
that Avalanche had made her way back to his room and was lying at
the edge of his bed. When he was young, she would often try and get
on the bed. After the first few broke, she learned it was best to
stay on the floor. “How did you get in?” Bren asked as he patted
the top of Avalanche’s head.

“She nearly beat down the door to get
in,” Flynn said, his voice sounding none too pleased. “When we did
let her in, I thought she was going to rip us apart. How you slept
through it, I don’t know. I swear if a war ever happened, let us
hope you are not asleep, you would miss the entire
thing.”