God Mage (14 page)

Bren opened his eyes, and his head rang out
with an immense pain as the light from the small window assaulted
his eyes. He found himself in a small room with only one bed and
Faye asleep as she lightly held his hand. “How long had she sat
like that?” Bren asked himself as he tried to move. His whole body
ached as soon as he so much as moved a finger. He tried to speak,
but his voice was dry and raspy, and his throat felt as if he had
been drinking sand.

Even though he had barely moved, Faye’s eyes
shot opened. At first she just looked at him but when she noticed
that his eyes were open, she jumped to her feet and ran from the
room like a startled cat. She reappeared a moment later with Cass
and Lillian trailing behind her.

“Nice to have you back,” Cass said in his
normal dreary tone. “The lead we had against the Brotherhood has
vanished, but everyone did get a good rest.”

“How long have I been out?” Bren asked as he
once again futilely tried to sit up.

“A little less than three days,” Lillian said
pushing past Cass. “And what he doesn’t need is to be reminded that
someone is after us. Forcing him to move before he is ready will
only make it worse in the long run.” The look Lillian gave Cass
made the man, who stood more than a foot taller than her, take a
step back and raise his arms in defense.

Lillian looked at his eyes then checked his
head. He could even feel her probing him with magical energy, which
surprised him and hurt at the same time. He had known Lillian for
some time now, but he could only remember a few times when she
actually used magic. “His fever is down, but all his muscles were
ripped and torn from putting too much pressure on them.”

“How did that happen?” Cass asked, his face
contorted slightly at the news.

“I would guess that when his magic began to
fail, Bren tried to force it. It is just like anything else. It can
only take so much of a load before it starts to push back, and this
is the result. I have seen mages with similar problems before,
though never as severe as this. I will make something to speed it a
long a bit. In a day or two he should be able to ride though not
much more than that.”

“Why didn’t you make it the first day?” Cass
asked with a slightly annoyed voice. “Then we would already be back
on the road.”

“I didn’t know what was wrong with him then,”
Lillian said, her ire starting to peak. “I couldn’t risk checking
him with magic. There was too big a possibility that I would do
more harm than good. Now that it has been a few days, there was
little risk in what I did, so before you question me or my methods,
I would suggest you learn more about what I’m doing in the first
place.” As Lillian spoke, she marched toward the young warrior who
continued to step back until the wall blocked his retreat.

Bren let out a long, solid laugh that ended
in a coughing fit. “Would you two take your squabble elsewhere,”
Faye said harshly, making both Cass and Lillian look troubled.

Just as she had promised, Lillian brought
back a tonic for Bren that tasted like old boot leather mixed with
mud from the bottom of a rancid lake, but within a day, he was back
to feeling like himself. It was a good thing as well since local
travelers started speaking of a large band of men encased in iron
coming toward the town.

Once they left the small village, Hayao told
them that there was only one more town between them and the
Deadlands. Nagoya was a small village, and the one that all
travelers from the villages went through on their way to deliver
their cargo to the hidden valley.

It was a four-day ride, and it didn’t seem
that it was going to be an easy one. The Brotherhood was closing in
on them again and even sending in a few parties to attack, though
most of them were lightly armored. Bren was guessing that the
reduced numbers meant that he was not the only mage that had pushed
himself a bit too far.

After two days, Bren picked up the group but
only for a few hours out of fear of falling ill again. The worst of
it was the lack of sleep. Ever since his fevered dream, Bren had
been more than a little hesitant about sleeping. He knew that
somewhere deep inside him, the other him waited, and he was in no
mood to meet with the man again.

At night when they camped, Bren started using
his magic to dig a trench around them and filling it up with spikes
made of hardened earth. It was a basic trap, but one that worked
well on dark nights and helped ensure that no one could easily
sneak up on them. In the morning, he would quickly fill them in
before they continued on.

A
s they entered the
small village of Nagoya, Bren felt more than a small amount of
trepidation run through his mind. It was the last village until
they reached what Hayao had been calling the Deadlands.

Tired from his extended use of magic over the
past few days to keep ahead of the Brotherhood, Bren wanted nothing
more than to enjoy a nice stay at anyplace resembling an inn, but
as Cass pointed out, it would be far too dangerous to stay the
night. Bren wanted to argue, but he knew that anything he said
would sound hollow, even to his own ears. During the past
fortnight, they had less than a handful of restful nights where the
Brotherhood hadn’t tried their luck. To make matters worse, the
Brotherhood never sent a large group just small ones spread
out.

Bren had tried to use his own magic to
increase their pace, giving them a few nights of peace, but he was
not skilled in the art, and it had worn on him greatly. It was not
just the mental stress; his whole body had been affected. To
aggravate the situation, Bren now felt the calling of the magic
even more—and he wanted it; he needed it—to keep himself from going
insane.

Nagoya was like many of the other villages
they had passed through. It was small and had buildings that were
more art than house. He had seen so many of the buildings now that
the small intricate details, which had been painstakingly put into
each one, no longer caught his eye as they had before.

“How far ahead of the Brotherhood do you
think we are?” Lillian asked in a drowsy tone.

“It is hard to say without sending someone
back to check on them,” Cass said as he pushed forward through the
town. “Given how well they were able to keep up with us before, I
doubt that we are more than a day or two ahead of them.”

“We have to have gained more ground than
that,” Brenda said snidely. “Bren has been pushing us forward for
three days straight.”

“And at night I can still see wisps smoke in
the distance,” Cass argued. “There is no telling how strong or
skilled their mage or mages are. We need to keep pushing forward
until we can find a more secure place.”

Bren could tell that none of the ladies liked
his decision, with the exception on Phena who was of the same mind.
The only real rest any of them got from the road was purchasing new
horses and some supplies.

As he mounted, it felt nice to have something
else do his walking for him even if it meant that his back would be
sore for a day or two. His horse was a little thinner and had less
muscle than his last horse, and even as unknowledgeable as Bren
was, he knew that the horse was not meant for long rides. With the
small selection they had to choose from, it was the best he could
hope for.

As soon as they reached the exit to the
village, Bren noticed that Hayao was acting was nervous that
normal. The man always looked as if he was watching for someone to
have a go at his back, but now he looked strung so tight that he
might snap at a whisper.

Carefully, Bren nudged his horse to ride
alongside the wary man. “Everything okay? You look as if a demon is
lurking behind every shadow,” Bren said after the man had
acknowledged his presence.

“The Deadlands are just past those hills,”
Hayao said, nodding his head toward the direction they were
traveling. “As the elders of my village told you, we send a few
children, usually before their tenth birthday to the lost city
every few years. What he didn’t tell you was that those chosen are
from low families or ones that are not…looked well upon. As
children, we are told stories of the Deadlands and the horrors that
live within. Honestly, it is not a place I wish to go nor a place
we should go.”

“Whether we should go or not is not a
question,” Bren replied with a deep sigh. “We have to go…. Or at
least I do. If you do not wish to go, then you may turn back at any
time. This is my quest, and no one else should have to carry a
burden they do not wish to carry.”

Hayao shook his head. “Where you go, I go,”
he said adamantly. “I have sworn to follow you and your family
until my line dies out and returns to the ether. If I go back on
that oath, I might as well end my life and line here; otherwise, my
family shall be forever cursed.”

“I will freely release you from your oath,”
Bren began to offer, but the look on Hayao’s face made him quickly
reconsider.

“An oath cannot be released nor taken back;
otherwise, it would have no real meaning,” Hayao said darkly as he
looked to the massive storm clouds that spread out across the
horizon. “I have found you an interesting and honorable man. I have
always been taught that for those who walk a path, there is always
a reason for that path, and I would like to know the reason and
outcome of yours.”

“I have told everyone that I am just looking
for a way to return my father to me and my family,” Bren said as
his eyes wandered to the dark overcast sky.

“Yes, you have said that, but that is not
what I meant,” Hayao said with a short huff that was as close to a
laugh that the man came to. “I want to know the reason the world
has put you on this path. All things are from the ether, and to the
ether all things return. In our lives the world sets the paths in
front of us, and we chose which to take, but each one has a
meaning—one that most of us never see for what it truly is.”

“I don’t think I can believe that,” Bren
said, shaking his head. “If that was true, wouldn’t that mean that
there was no such thing as free will and personal choices? That
would mean that nothing I did was of my own accord. I think life
would lose a little luster if that was the case.”

“You only hear half of what you listen to my
friend,” Hayao said with a shaded smirk. “There are many paths, and
we chose the ones we wish to take, but that does not mean that the
world does not have its own reason for putting those choices in
your life to begin with.”

“I don’t think I completely understand what
you mean, but I will leave you to your own beliefs,” Bren replied,
hoping to end the discussion. The thought of there being a power
outside of his knowledge and understanding that placed things in
his path just to make him chose a direction in his life didn’t sit
well with him.

Do you really think that there is nothing
larger than yourself out there in the world? You should know
better; you feel its pull every time you use magic. I am surprised
that a savage would understand the truth about the ether, and he
has it pretty close as far as he was describing it. You should
learn more about the ether, it is what makes all things and
controls the destruction and creation of worlds.

“I thought the ether was just where you went
when you died,” Bren replied, slightly shocked that Thuraman
sounded so upset about his lack of knowledge.

Yes, it is where you will go, and everyone
else goes as well, once you die. The energy of all living beings
rejoins the ether upon their death, and when the world itself dies,
it rejoins the ether as well. When things are created or born, they
borrow a small amount of energy from the ether and repay that favor
many times over upon their death. Mages even more so. Because they
use magical energy, their ethereal energy is even stronger than
that of other beings.

“How do you know so much about it?” Bren
asked the staff.

I have little to do other than watch you
blunder around, so I listen, and I have been listening for
years—not just to what you say but to the small whispers of the
magic. Over the years, I have put those small whispers into words,
then sentences, and through that, I have grown to understand much
more about the world than you can possibly imagine.

“Maybe I should simply listen to the words of
the magic,” Bren offered.

If you did that, then you would let yourself
be carried away. As I told you, everything feels its pull, but
because you use such strong magical energies, it is more like a
yell than a whisper. Listen too long, and you will hear nothing
because that is what you will become.

“Is that so,” Bren replied sarcastically. It
had not been the first time Thuraman had warned him about the call
of the magic, and he was sure that it wouldn’t be the last. If
nothing else, the staff loved to bring up the same thing over and
over, much the same way his mother tended to do when he was a
child.

When a large bolt of lightning struck the
ground close to where Bren rode, his horse jumped nearly throwing
him to the ground. “Whoa boy,” Bren hollered as he tried to reign
the creature under control. Once he had the beast settled down,
Bren looked around to make sure everyone else was okay and noticed
that Avalanche was not her usually energetic self.

“Avalanche,” Bren called but she simply gave
him a short look then turned her attention back to the large clouds
that were sending out dark purple sparks overhead as she lightly
whimpered. The storm itself didn’t bother him, but Avalanche’s
reaction did. Lately, she had not come near him and refused to
touch his silver skin directly. He didn’t know why, but he was sure
that the storm wasn’t natural.

Bren reached out his senses and quickly found
himself overwhelmed. It wasn’t just the clouds that were being
affected by magical energy, it was everything around them. Even the
grass, which had grown up to reach past the horses flanks was
saturated with magical energy. As they reached the top of the final
hill, what stretched before them was both awe inspiring and
terrifying at the same time.