Birthright (The Technomage Archive, Book 1) - Complete Novel

Chapter Fourteen

Damien Vennar walked around the house he had once shared with his grandson. After the intrusion—the attack—earlier that evening, he had to check to see if anything had been stolen besides his book. It was the middle of the night, and even though his old bones were tired and his joints ached, he could not settle in for sleep. There was too much to do; his mind raced with plans.

From what he could see picking through the clutter, his belongings all remained intact except for the book containing the history he had been recording. Of course, he thought, they take the one thing in the house I can't bear to part with. His mind moved to Ceril, and he thought, They have a tendency to do that.

Just because the intruders did not take anything besides the book, it did not mean that the house was okay. It was in shambles. In just the short time they were there, furniture had been overturned, shelves had been swiped clean, even his refrigerator had been ransacked—two shelves with perfectly good food had been thrown aside and were now lying directly on the floor.

Angry as he was, the old man marveled at the intruders' efficiency. Even in his prime, he doubted he would have been able to do better work. What was worse, though, is that he let this happen. He ran. He got scared. He Conjured himself a veil and sat idly while those pretenders took whatever they wanted.

He didn't fight, and that wasn't like him. It had never been like him until recently.

It had been too long, and he was taken completely by surprise. And on top of that, he hadn't Conjured in about four hundred years. That is, until just a few hours ago. When he had vowed to never Conjure again, he had meant it. He had put the nanites that made up his bloodstream on what amounted to a standby setting, and he had begun to age. He had expected to die within fifty to seventy years from that moment, like a normal person.

Obviously, he had miscalculated. In the give-or-take four centuries since he had distanced himself from the Charonic Archive, Damien Vennar had aged at an extremely decelerated rate. There was no way to shut off the nanites in his body completely, and apparently, even their peripheral energy had been enough to preserve him six or seven times longer than he had wished.

Four hundred years ago, he had wanted to die. But when the opportunity presented itself, he had run like a scared child. When he reactivated the tiny machines that comprised his bloodstream, he felt them go to work within his body immediately, repairing damaged tissue and giving him back the youth he had so willingly and fervently left behind.

The next time he saw Ceril, he doubted that the boy would recognize him, and he was disgusted at the thought. Raising Ceril was the one good thing that Damien had ever done in his life. Ceril was a good boy, a good person. Then the Charons got their hands on him, and there wasn't a damned thing Damien could do about it.

Now, looking at his scattered and violated home, he knew that he would not be able to stay here any longer. Someone had known how to find him. The only people who should have had access to that information were either at Ennd's or aboard the Inkwell Sigil. He doubted, as much as he despised them, that the Charons there would have gone to this much trouble over him, over the book. If they had wanted him to stop writing, they would have destroyed the volume. They would not have stolen it.

Besides, the Charons had what they wanted. They had his grandson, and they had been indoctrinating him for six years.

No, this was someone else, someone different. Someone with a new and different agenda. A cold knot developed in Damien's stomach, and he knew that he was going to have to start fighting again. There was no doubt that if he hadn't Conjured when he did, he would have been killed.

To fight, though, he would need a weapon, and Ceril had his sword, a fact that should not have been a surprise to him, but was. The Flameblade had bonded to Damien millennia ago. It had been the first of the weapons to bond with a person. After years of study, Damien and his researchers had discovered how it had happened. The nanites that formed the swords bonded at a quantum level to the unique physical signals his body put out when he was in a heightened emotional state. By learning to control those states, Damien had been able to wield the sword in ways the weaponsmiths had never intended. It was no longer just a well-made sword, a balanced blade that didn't dull or nick; it became an extension of his body.