Birthright (The Technomage Archive, Book 1)

  Chapter Ten

  Gramps looked at the sky and sighed. Storms were on their way, and from the look of the sky, he would need to secure anything he didn’t want blown away. He loved living in Ternia more than he’d ever loved anywhere else, but the storms could get bad enough that he considered moving. Almost.

  Still, such thoughts did him little good at the moment, and he figured that he had maybe half an hour before the worst of the storm came. He spent that time moving whatever he could carry into his storage buildings behind the house.

  By the time the storm hit, he was back inside, safe, dry, and sitting in his favorite chair—the one next to the window where he told his grandson stories. He lit a candle and wondered just what was going on with Ceril these days. Nearly five years had passed since he had been allowed to speak with the boy. So much can change in five years, he thought.

  He missed Ceril terribly. The boy wouldn’t have had family if it weren’t for him, and then Nephil and those other damned technomages at Ennd's took him and tried to make him one of them. The old man’s stomach clenched at the thought. He had wanted more than that life for Ceril. He just hoped that wherever Ceril was, he was safe and happy.

  It didn’t do well for him to dwell on Ceril, on the Charons. That’s why he had his book. The old, leather-bound book that he cradled on his lap was a point of contention for most of the people in the village. While they were not illiterate, most of their reading was done on tablets or PDAs and dealt with whatever hot topic had taken over the ‘Nets that day. Gramps harrumphed to himself at the thought of it; he would bet good money that half of the people in the village had never owned a real book, and that even fewer had read one cover to cover. At least he couldn’t say that about Ceril.

  He had done what he could to shield the boy from technology, and even though he knew that Ceril loved him, Gramps was sure that decision had frustrated Ceril. Especially with the other boys from the town ranting and raving about their new gadgets every few weeks. But Gramps put his foot down; he would have none of it in his house. He had seen firsthand what an obsession with technology could do to someone, and he would do his very best to shield his family from it.

  But now…now, the damned Charons had him. Once they got their hands on someone, it was tech or bust. There was no other way for them, and he knew that better than anyone. He hoped that Ceril was a smart enough boy that he didn’t buy into their rhetoric and propaganda without thinking about it. After six years of immersion, anyone would pick up a few habits, become comfortable. A new device here and there may not seem like much at first—in fact, Gramps remembered it being pretty all right indeed—but it became an addiction all too quickly. It stopped being about progress and became complacency, laziness. And the Rites? The nanites? And worst of all, when they started in on your blood…

  Gramps shuddered. He couldn’t think about that. Ceril was okay. He knew it. His wrinkled hands stroked the cover of the book in his lap and found the purple ribbon he used to mark his place. He opened the book to a blank page about three quarters of the way through and grabbed a pen off the bookshelf. The storm would give him the perfect opportunity to get some writing done since he obviously could not tend his garden, no matter how much he wanted to.

  The book was his love, his legacy really. Gramps knew that he wasn’t going to live forever, even if it sometimes felt like he would. When his time finally came, there was a lot of information and history about the Charons that would be lost—at least to the Erlonian public—if he never completed this book. Gramps knew a great deal more about the Charons than he had told Ceril the summer he had found the Flameblade.

  He also knew that there was no public record of the Charons that wasn’t more legend than fact. At least, not in Ternia.

  So, since the day that Gilbert Squalt had called to inform him that Ceril had been recruited for training as a Charon, Gramps had spent the last six years writing the history the world was missing. He honestly had no delusions that anyone would ever read it. He had no desire to publish it or push it onto the ‘Nets. It just eased his mind to know that it was there, would be there when he was dead and gone (Whenever that may be, he thought). Maybe someone would stumble across the book in a few centuries, dust it off, crack the spine, and know the truth about how the world became so messed up.

  After all, who better to tell the story of the Charons and of their rise and fall, than the one man who had been there through it all?