He had been caught and he was the least of them, a small youngish man with a starved and perpetually apologetic look about him; hunched shoulders in shabby clothes, eyes kept downwards, hands that continually clasped each other in agitated petition against another future blow of fate.
Still, this starveling rat was not without some small crumbs of knowledge. What his comrades had planned. How they had learned of the treasure. Thus, the wizard set forth to extract every possible bit of information from him, without pity or finesse.
It had been easy for such a skilled magical practitioner to ferret out the prisoner's deepest fear to use against him: Tom's horror of small confined spaces. The wizard had placed the intruder, squeezed tight, in the pages of a book, bound with spells and blood-forged iron.
Thus situated, the wizard had been sure the little rat would tell all he knew and was sorely puzzled when Tom (eyes rolling back in his head, limp with terror) continued to defy him. As for Tom, it was beyond his understanding how he could be in a book (as his captor claimed); all he knew was that it was Death and the End of Everything. When you're already dead or mostly so, it doesn't matter anymore. He was surprised that the wizard, such a smart fellow, didn't seem to understand that. Tom was in his tomb, the walls pushing in on his body, air fleeing, dark, cold, alone. No escape. He knew the wizard would never let him go. Never, never, never.
Even when he was temporarily "freed," falling from his standing tomb to some grainy surface, crashing, bruised, limbs numb and unresponsive from lack of circulation, even then he didn't hope for a reprieve. His entire existence had been leading up to this moment of eradication. He was born a nothing, had lived as nothing, and to nothing he would return. His mind turned inwards to a gray empty place – this retreat, at least, was his.
When the wizard picked Tom up scornfully by his long, unkempt hair and shook him, like a terrier shakes a rat between his teeth, Tom didn't mean for his hand to catch on the hidden knife in the wizard's sash. The jeweled hilt was more like a hand, a friendly hand, than a knife hilt. The kind of friend that would share his food with you, that wouldn't kick you out in the rain when you had no place to sleep, that wouldn't laugh with all the others who called you stupid and ugly and worser things than that.
The knife felt real good in his hand, and there were so few things Tom could remember that felt good. It seemed to move of its own accord but like it was asking Tom's permission too, and Tom just didn't want to let go of it. The touch of it was warm, comforting, like it was telling him everything would be okay. It was the most amazing feeling he had ever had in his life.
And the knife cut out the wizard's heart, surprisingly fast, without as much blood as one might think. That was nice. Tom didn't really much like the sight of blood.
As the wizard dropped to the floor, deader than last Friday's flounder, Tom heard a voice, sweet as a silver bell come from the knife, saying: "You and I are one now, Tom."
He smiled. Good times were finally coming, he just knew it.