The Education of Brother Thaddius and other tales of DemonWars (The DemonWars Saga) Read Online Free PDF Page B

wielder into focus.”
    Sadye looked down at the lute with even more admiration, her eyes glowing, her fingers trembling. “How can the Abellicans not know of this?”
    “Preparing the items is no small task, my young protégé.”
    “You will teach me how to do it?”
    This brought the greatest laugh of all from Orrin. “I will teach you how to smuggle, and if you are clever, how to keep your mouth shut,” he explained. “There are two, perhaps three, in all the world who understand how to craft such an item as the one you hold in your hands. The man who made that very lute, centuries ago, spent a decade and more on that single piece! Fortunately, the process in creating such items also helps them survive the ages, and so there are quite a few secretly floating about Honce-the-Bear and even Behren in the south.
    “Secretly,” Orrin emphasized. “The Abellicans would hunt us down and slaughter us….”
    “Us?” Sadye pressed.
    “The Brotherhood of Wise Men,” Orrin said. “We have existed for hundreds of years, each of us finding a single protégé to carry on our work. We keep our numbers steady and we keep them small. My last student met with an unfortunate end, and so I have been searching for his replacement.”
    “Sadye.”
    “Sadye.”
    “And if I do not want this?”
    “You already agreed. There can be no change of heart.”
    He spoke the words casually, matter-of-factly, and without any overt malice. But Sadye felt the weight within the simple statement, the clear and uncompromising warning.
    She looked down at the lute again as Orrin exited the cellar. She felt its balance and its workmanship, and for the first time, she felt its power. Yes, she had agreed.
    Why would she not?
    The young woman began to softly play the strings, feeling their vibrations deep within her heart, focusing her thoughts on the magical gemstones.
    *****
    “It will split the Brotherhood!”
    Orrin’s shout wakened Sadye late one night a few weeks later. She sat up and heard voices in the adjacent main room of Orrin’s small house, but she couldn’t make out any words. Always curious, Sadye slid her legs over the side of the bed and let her bare feet touch down softly on the floor, then eased to her feet and moved slowly to the curtain that served as a door.
    She mustered her courage and peeked out.
    Orrin sat at the small table, hands crossed before him, staring into the three candles that burned in the table’s center. Across from him, another man, smallish and hunched, with curly red hair and a patchy, scraggly beard, paced back and forth.
    “Bah, the Brotherhood,” he chortled and Sadye half-expected him to spit right on the floor. “Half the brothers are dead of the plague anyway! We can make more gold — and without drawing Church notice! — by selling the stones apart from the enchanted items.”
    “Items centuries in making,” Orrin quietly protested.
    The other man snorted again and stopped his pacing even with the table. He turned to face Orrin directly and leaned forward, planting his hands firmly on the wood and making the candles shiver. “Hiding in shadows. Fearing that some Abellican will discover us — like that damned Bishop who ruled in Palmaris some years back. You want a fight with the Church, do you now? You want some Brother Justice monk knocking at your door, Orrin, and kicking it down when you don’t answer quickly enough?”
    “Men gave their lives to craft these pieces of….of art, by St. Abelle!”
    “Oh, but there’s a rightly proclamation if ever I heard one,” the red-haired man remarked. “By St. Abelle. Aye, that one would approve of our work.”
    “We carry on a tradition,” Orrin argued.
    “What’s tradition against the likes of the rosy plague? In plague’s wake come opportunities that wise men seize, Orrin. Surely you can see that! The gold will come easily, if we’re smart.”
    Sadye could see Orrin’s fists tightening into balls, and the old man slammed them on