The 13th Mage

T
HE
13
th
M
AGE

Second
E
dition

By
Inelia Benz

ISBN:
978-1-329-02767-1

©
Inelia Benz
20
1
5

First published as an eBook by www.inelia.com

I dedicate this book to my daughter Daniela.

Inelia Benz

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

A slight tremor shook the small Spanish village of Santorcaz
,
making the swallows in the old tower fly out
in fright. O
ne or two people stopped walking,
and
a few put down their glasses in the bar across the plaza.

Owen put down his quill and looked out of the window.
He
listened to
the swallows and the clouds, the breeze was whispering too.
Was it time already?
He went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, he’d have to shave, his beard was much too long.
How old was he now? Sixty? Forty?
He’d have a better idea when he was shaved.

Time seemed to fly in Santorcaz. I
t was a pity he had to leave the village
.
C
oming out into the world meant a huge amount of paperwork and adaptation.
If only he hadn’t made that promise to Aeoife he would be able to stay invisible for a few more decades and get some real work done.

“What was that tremor Owen?” Said a rasping voice coming from the dreaded face that looked at him from behind the mirror’s reflection.

“Great Rossini, it’s a great honor to have you in my humble abode.
If I may be of assistance, I believe it is a Keeper moving through the dimensions.”

Great Rossini was the
Staff
Holder, the Great Elder, The One To Be Obeyed. And although Owen didn’t particularly want The Great Rossini to know that a Keeper was moving through the dimensions he had no way of lying.
He knew that the best way to avoid having to tell Rossini about his personal work was to keep it so hidden, so quiet, that he would never ask about it at all.

“Do you know what it is the Keeper wants Owen?”

“Yes, Great Rossini, it is a matter of the witches.”

“How come you by this information?”

“My stepmother, she informed me of the Keepers arrival today.”

“Witches… well, can’t be anything important then.
Be well Owen, it is not healthy to be mixing with those types, but seeing as it is your stepmother I shall let it pass,” said the spectral image before vanishing.

Owen sighed
in
relief, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a visit from the Great Rossini, but it was not something he looked forward to, not now.

Getting the
Staff
wasn’t a matter of education or birthright, it was simple ability, The Great Rossini had that ability and had been Holder for as long as Owen could remember.

Owen wanted the
Staff
.

Most other Council members were content to have been allowed to join the ranks of the Council; it was a great honor in and of itself.
Owen however wasn’t.
He had known, from the day he found out about his nature as an Elder and the existence of the Council, that the
Staff
would one day belong to him.

He had traveled all worlds known to immortals, he had studied and practiced every possible craft but it was to no avail. The Great Rossini had a few hundred years advantage on him, and would forever be in front if Owen didn’t do something drastic about it.

He could do something about it, if only he was left alone to do his work, but Aeoife wouldn’t see the importance of his quest. No witch would.
They were small minded creatures.

Now he would have to work on a promise made when he was no more than a child, it was humiliating.

To pass the Keeper’s test.
That is what h
e had promised
to do as a child. P
ass the Keeper’s test.
No two tests were the same of course; each person had a unique test
especially
designed for their own particular needs.

If he had chosen the Way of the Witch, he would have had to do the test hundreds of years earlier; it was something witchlings did in their teens.

If only the Way of the Witch wasn’t such a simple craft he might have a chance of failing the test, he thought
, and then his stepmother would leave him alone
. But even if that was the case, there was also the matter of mage pride to think of, if word got out that he had failed a witch’s test he would be the laughing stock.

He looked over at his ordinary staff; he didn’t even bother to carry it around with him anymore, not unless other mages were around.

Not to worry, he would continue his work on the
Staff
in his spare time, there was really no way he would let The Great Rossini increase his advantage.

Now that he thought of it, he
realiz
ed Rossini must be completely insane, no one in their right mind would insist on being called Great anymore, even though it was the right title for that post.

He put down the shaving blade and stared in horror at
his new face in the mirror
.
He had clearly lost track of time and now didn’t look older than twenty!
His hair was jet black, not a spot of white anywhere, and his eyes looked larger than he remembered them, bright too, shinning.
He couldn’t believe it. This
explained his thoughts abo
ut the Great Rossini. After all
he
himself
had always wanted to be called The Great Owen when the
Staff
came to him.

The Great Owen.

He laughed out loud, laughed so hard his belly ached.
He was hungry, he was starving! Dammed be youth! Next it would be spots and uncontrollable erections!

He opened the window and smelled the air, freshly baked bread and cakes, local magdalenas probably.
He hadn’t had magdalenas for years.
It was the Spanish version of
muffins
, he loved them.

As he walked toward the bakery he could feel the mid-morning sun hitting his pale skin, he couldn’t remember the sun burning so much before.

“Pedro, Maria’s teenage son, likeable young man,”
he projected before walking into the bakery.

Mrs. Martinez was serving Carlos, the garage attendant; Owen remembered watching them play in the plaza when they were no more than toddlers.

“Hola Pedro, how is your mother today?”

“She’s fine Mrs. Martinez.
I’ll have two breads and a bag of
Magdalena
’s.”

“Tell her I asked after her won’t you,” said Mrs. Martinez handing him his bread and cakes in a bag.
He noticed her breasts as she leaned over the counter and was unable to move his arm to take the bag.
He blushed uncontrollably finding himself incapable of taking his eyes off the little bit of black laced brassier
e
showing just where Mrs. Martinez’s breasts met.

The older woman smiled and leaned a little more, “come back at two,” she said, “I always have a few partitas left over
, no charge
.”

As he took the bag he felt her soft warm hand touch his, making the blood in his body explode. T
here was nothing wrong with sex.
Owen practiced it every now and then, a great way to concentrate power for any given target.
But it had been centuries since he had his body
invaded by uncontrollable hormones.
Mrs. Martinez looked down at his crutch, a giggle escaping her lips and he
realiz
ed he had to get out, fast.

“
Two o’clock
then,” he found himself answering and ran out of the shop.

“Fo
rget me until
two O’clock
today. T
hen come to me at the Fortress Tower
,” he projected while making his way back to the tower.

Inside the shop Mrs. Martinez felt this would be a hot summer.
Maria’s boy had grown up to be a strapping fellow. She put the coins away, Carlos looked rather old these days, she thought, his mind must be going too, he had paid her too much for the bread.
She went back inside to tell her husband to make half a dozen extra tartitas but couldn’t quite remember who had asked for them, one of the local boys had come to buy bread and asked for them, or maybe she had simply imagined it.
The heat must be getting to her head, she thought as she walked back to the front of the shop.

To ordinary mortals the old tower was an abandoned attic occasionally visited by the fortress caretaker
who tuned the clock, cleared the bird nests and generally kept the place clean
.
The caretaker hadn’t needed to go up there for years, but no one had noticed because the clock had run smoothly for decades.

It was dark up in the tower, Owen had left the window open before he left but it didn’t get rid of the smell of darkness and stale dust.
No place to bring a lady, he thought and started cleaning up.

Three hours later Mrs. Martinez felt her blood begin to boil, told her husband she was going to drop off the tartitas
at
Maria’s house and ran out to meet her lover.
Pedro was young enough to be her son, she had watched him play in the plaza as a young boy, but it didn’t matter much, no one would ever find out.

Two hours later Owen was on a bus to
Madrid
, a large smile plastered all over his face.

It was the year 2000, he had a teenage body built like an Adonis, had more money in the bank than most people alive and more power than anyone on earth.
He thought about the fifty years he had spent in the
village
of
Santorcaz
without anyone noticing him getting younger, or wondering how he made a living, or having any thoughts about him at all as soon as he walked out of their sight and wished life was that easy in the rest of the world.

As he stepped out of the bus he noticed the air was cleaner than
the last time he’d visited
Madrid
and the buildings were looking much better than he remembered them as well.
Around him people spoke into small portable phones, women wore hardly any clothes and kids his body’s age spoke a language which was completely alien to him, it made him nervous.

He had some catching up to do.

By that very evening he had acquired a portable computer, a
notepad
, mobile phone, new clothes, shoes and some designer sunglasses, he loved mortal technology.
He loved mortals, always had and always would.
He started getting an erection and thought of quills and cauldrons to make it go away.
He would have to start aging pretty quickly or his youthful body would take him over completely, shopping like that was unnatural.

Women stared at him as he sat at a strange café that had replaced the quiet one he used to frequent all those years back.
Young women, old women, beautiful women, half naked women, old women who were a fraction of his age.
Women showing their shoulders and thighs.
He put the laptop on his lap, and blushed against his will.
Men stared at him too, this was getting worrying. The plan had been to get to around
the age of
fifty-five, that was a good biological age for a man, emotionally stable, mentally mature, and physically controllable.

A slight tremor shook the city, people carried on chatting into their mobiles and hurrying this way and that.
The Keeper, as mages called them, had arrived
. T
he feeling was powerful enough for him to notice, yet intangible. More like a fleeting aroma in the breeze.

“My God, what on earth have you done to yourself!” said an old woman who sat beside him and who was now laughing so hard her wrinkled face had gone completely red.

He looked around to see whom she was talking to.

“You,” she said poking him in the chest.

Startled at her impunity he scanned her aura, some skilled mages could pass themselves as mortals for a short while, but this one was just a mortal old woman, judging by the way she was behaving he concluded she was insane.

“Who are you who takes our Lord’s name in vain?”

The old woman stared at him and laughed louder than before, people were looking at them.

He gave her an invisible little push that would have thrown any mortal to the ground.

The old woman carried on laughing at him, not budging from her seat, he shuddered, he had been expecting the Keeper yet was unable to feel its presence next to him, it looked, well, so ordinary.

After calming down and sighing deeply, the old woman looked deep inside him, “don’t be surprised,” she said, “not many people can identify me the first time around, I guess you were expecting a man, hmm? Get me a cold lemonade and some of those nice Spanish tartitas.”

He blushed again and called the waiter, he knew he was in mortal danger but unexplainably he was more worried about the Keeper
watching him all the time, he found the thought disturbing, he wondered if she had been observing him a few hours earlier, the feeling was unprecedented.
Still, insulting a Keeper was not something any sane person would do, unless they were tired of living forever.