Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Twelve

Mortanius slept late the following morning. When he awoke, the sun was already up and shining in through the window. The candles he’d left burning when he went to sleep were burned out puddles of melted wax. He rolled over and crawled from bed. His back and legs were sore from riding a horse for so long the last two days. He got up stiffly and went to find breakfast.

“Welcome back, Mortanius” came a soft voice as he walked to the small dining area.

Lora was seated at the table, a cup of tea in her hands. She looked tired, but then she always looked tired. She usually tied her long blonde hair back behind her head, but today it hung down over her shoulders like a protective blanket. She raised her cup and sipped the tea, looking at him intently as he walked past her. A pot of porridge hung above the fireplace, although the fire was out and the porridge had gone cold.

“How was your trip?” she asked.

“Uneventful,” he said. “Up north, there’s snow on the ground already.”

“I grew up on the southern coast. I’ve never seen snow in my life, can you believe that?”

Lora rarely traveled far from the Pillars, and when she did it was always in the company of vampires. Her limitations as a half-breed made travel difficult, and she was acutely aware of how most people viewed half-breeds like her. Mortanius was not surprised at all that she had never been far enough north to see snow.

“You’re not missing anything,” he said as he scooped some porridge into a bowl. The vampires didn’t eat the same food as humans, of course, and so they allowed a human servant to prepare food every day. Mortanius and Lora were often the only ones who ate there.

He sat down at the table and ate his breakfast with her. Lora was easy to talk to, and sometimes it was easy to forget she wasn’t human anymore. She spoke softly and tried not to expose her teeth when she talked, and she did her best to maintain human behaviors, such as eating regular food. Mortanius had never asked her if she really needed to eat, or if she did it out of habit.

Romanen, on the other hand, betrayed his nature as a half-breed in every word and gesture. While Lora attempted to hide her nature, Romanen reveled in his. Thankfully, Romanen didn’t live at the Home of the Guardians, and Mortanius rarely saw him anymore.

“What are your plans for the day?” Lora asked.

Mortanius pushed the empty bowl aside and wiped his mouth. “Nothing, really. I might head to town this evening and go to a tavern. Maybe they’ll have a bard or a singer performing. Maybe find a pretty serving girl and take her to bed.”

“You should,” Lora said with a closed lip smile. “A handsome young man like you could probably have any woman he wanted.”

“I’m not looking for just any woman, though,” he said. “I’d like to find a wife.”

Lora’s smile faltered somewhat. “Well, those are a bit harder to come by.”

He studied her for a moment. “You never had a husband, did you? Before, I mean.”

“No,” she answered. “But perhaps it was best that I didn’t.”

“Perhaps,” Mortanius said. He stood up and set the bowl and spoon on the counter. “Well, I’m going to head back to my room. I’ll talk to you later today.”

“I can join you for dinner if you like,” Lora said.

“That would be fine. I’ll see you then.”

He returned to his room and sat down. He kept some bottles of wine on a cupboard and he poured himself a glass. Usually, his conversations with Lora remained limited to safe topics, but sometimes a stray comment or question would inadvertently create an awkward silence between them. At those times, Mortanius said goodbye and went somewhere else. He picked up one of the scrolls on his desk at random and began to read, in order to distract himself from the thought of half-breeds marrying each other, if such a thing was even done.

The rest of his morning was spent reading several new scrolls and practicing some more simple magic spells. Most of his days were spent that way, studying and practicing his powers. In the afternoon, he took a walk around the Pillars and returned to his room afterward to take a short rest before dinner.

He had only been back for a few minutes when someone tapped on his door. It was open, so Mortanius leaned back in his chair to see who it was.

Moebius stood in the hallway, waiting for permission to enter. His clear blue eyes peered out from under a large brown hood and his narrow hands poked out from the voluminous sleeves of his cloak. He met Mortanius’s eyes and tilted his head questioningly.

“Well?” Mortanius asked. “Are you going to come inside or stand in the hallway?”

Moebius glanced down the hall in each direction, as if he thought someone was following him, and then stepped inside the closed the door behind him. “I thought maybe you were busy and didn’t want to be bothered,” he said. “I came to see you yesterday, but you weren’t here.”

“I went back to see my old home again. I got back late last night.”

“Has it been a year already?”

“Yes, it has. One of these days, I’ll go back and find that some new family has moved onto the land. To be honest, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”

“You could move there yourself,” Moebius suggested. “Build an estate there. Hire locals to farm it for you. That’s what Romanen does.”

“Yes, well, I’m not like Romanen.”

“Well that’s a good thing.”

Mortanius took a seat in one of the other chairs and lowered his hood. Although Moebius was younger than Mortanius, he looked older. He was barely past the age of twenty-two, but all that remained of his hair was a ring of fuzzy light brown hair around the back of his head. He had gone prematurely bald by the time he was out of his teens. The top of his head was completely hairless and as smooth as an eggshell. Most of the time when in public, he concealed it by wearing his large hood. Whether his baldness was some strange side-effect of his powers as the Guardian of Time or just some embarrassing fluke of his family heritage was something Mortanius never figured out.

“So you came by yesterday?” Mortanius asked.

Moebius nodded. “Yes,” he said, leaning forward and setting his elbows on his knees. “I want to talk to you about something. But in private. Not here.”

“This is my private room,” Mortanius said. “I assure you they aren’t listening.”

“You don’t know that,” Moebius replied dismissively. “You know they keep a close eye on us. Even after all this time, they don’t trust us.”

“No, they don’t trust you,” Mortanius corrected. “Because you insist on opposing them at every turn. It would be foolish for them to trust you, when you work so hard at being untrustworthy.”

“That’s because I don’t trust them,” Moebius snapped, and then immediately lowered his voice. “And neither should you. You know that your time is coming soon.”

Mortanius sighed and looked out the window. Every time Moebius came to talk, without fail, he reminded Mortanius of the obvious. Mortanius was twenty-eight years old now, dangerously close to the age when the vampires would attempt to turn him. Lora was turned at about the age of thirty, and Romanen was turned at twenty-nine. Every day, Mortanius woke in the morning wondering if they would come for him. Each day that they did not only increased the odds they would do it the next.

“And there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? Short from running away and hiding from them for the rest of my life. And that wouldn’t work either. You know they could always find me.”

Moebius rubbed his bald head and stood up. He went over to Mortanius and leaned on his desk, speaking very quietly. “There is something you can do about it. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. But we can’t talk here.”

Mortanius remembered a shy, scared little boy named Rat. Even though he was no longer a scrawny unwanted orphan, in many ways, Rat had never grown up at all. He was still scared and distrustful and angry at the world.

Moebius didn’t live at the Home of the Guardians, but that by itself was not unusual. Once he was old enough to travel on his own, he spent most of his time as far away from the vampires as he could get. Moebius never hid his contempt for them, in spite of all they had done for him. He was bitter and harsh and contrary, and so secretive that Mortanius had long ago decided he was hopelessly paranoid on top of everything else. Sometimes it was hard being friends with Moebius, but friends they remained. Mortanius was pretty sure that he was the only friend that Moebius had.

“Fine,” he said tiredly. “Where do you want to talk?”

“Come with me,” Moebius said with a faint smile. “I’ll explain on the way.”

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