Destiny (4 page)

“Because pride is stronger than reason, my Lady. The pride of kings, their ego, doesn’t allow intelligent men, even brilliant ones, to see what is so obvious that a mere beggar would understand it. Dasleo and Caron, their royal families, had hated each other for generations. Peace, an understanding in the face of a common enemy, was something inconceivable to their proud, foolish minds. And pride always leads to man’s ruin.”

“You’re a wise man. Have you managed to save your precious Library, with all that knowledge accumulated in it? Will you be able to enjoy it?”

“Yes, my Lady. The high part of the city is still burning, the cathedral was destroyed by uncontrolled fire, but the Great Library of Bintantium, in the lower part of the city, has been spared from the burning and I’ve ordered its protection.”

The Dark Lady signaled to her guards, who took away the remains of both monarchs.

“I am pleased, Isuzeni. Now prepare my army, is time to conquer Tremia”.

Deeply worried, Aliana stared at the patient lying in the bed. This man was on the brink of death. His wounds were too serious… He would not recover; even all her power and that of her Sister Healers could not keep him from the implacable death which was already hovering above the body. An almost funereal silence pervaded the lordly chamber, a silence which was far from bearing any hint of good news. The healers of the Order of Tirsar had spent days caring for the feverish patient, struggling tirelessly to maintain the fragile thread of life. It was a task which required a great deal of healing power and extreme care. The most experienced Sisters were taking turns; otherwise the white bearded old man with would die.

Gerart had left her in the company of her Sisters several hours before, and she was noting the care with which they tended the patient. Seeing the Prince again had unleashed a whirlwind of feelings within her. Her pulse was galloping, her cheeks were hot, and as she had looked into the blue eyes beneath his blond hair all she had been able to do was take her leave of him with a nervous smile.

One of her Sisters went by carrying a wash basin and ointments. She said with a smile: “I’m so happy to see you, Aliana, happy you’re safe and sound. You had us so worried!”

Aliana smiled and stroked her arm. Another of the Healers, one Aliana knew very well as she had tutored her, came to her and hugged her impulsively. “How wonderful! I still can’t believe it!”

Aliana smiled at Gena, her dear pupil. “I feel the Gift is strong in you, Gena. More so than I remembered. You’ve been working on it in my absence, haven’t you?”

“Just like you taught me to, teacher,” Gena replied with a wide smile. “I’m so happy to see you! It’s a miracle!”

“How happy we all are,” Mother Healer Sorundi added, walking into the room and kissing Aliana on both cheeks like a mother. “By Helaun, Founding Mother of our Order, how worried you had us all, and how pleased we are to have you among us once again. Worry was gnawing away at us and sadness was weighing down our spirits. How wonderful to have you back safe and sound!”

“Thank you, Mother Healer. I’m very happy too to be among my Sisters after so long.” Aliana looked at her dear Sisters, so out of place in that sumptuous room of the Royal Palace, so devoted and generous, as always.

“I never lost hope, my daughter, I always kept it alive. I clung to the thought that somehow you would survive, that you’d find your way back home. When Prince Gerart brought us Haradin and told me all about that tragic expedition to those distant lands I could hardly believe him. My Protectress daughters… all dead… my child Aliana lost… What a terrible thing to happen! It broke my heart. And then to see you come in through the door, together with Gerart: it was as if the heavens had opened and a wonderful sun dazzled me and healed my wounded heart. I was left speechless, my little one. I couldn’t believe it, you were coming back to us when we’d practically given you up for dead. I’m overwhelmed with happiness, my heart is overjoyed.”

Sorundi hugged Aliana, and teacher and pupil joined in a warm and tender embrace.

“I’m overjoyed too, to be back among my Sisters once again.”

“A moment of great happiness amid this sea of sorrow around us has brought you back, my dear child, and we must enjoy it no matter how brief it may be.”

“Gerart told me the incredible work my Sisters have been doing, helping to save the injured. The Royal Family is very grateful to the Order. He has also told me that the invading armies are closing in…” said Aliana, saddened.

“This war we find ourselves in the middle of is a well of endless suffering. Pain and tragedy rain down over this Kingdom like bleeding darts, and soon the situation will get even worse. That’s why we’ve taken refuge in the Capital. We weren’t safe any longer in the Temple. The coast is being raided by the vanguard of the Nocean army.”

“We’ll be safe here,” Aliana said hopefully.

“Don’t be so sure… The city will soon be under siege. It will be a bloody siege by any standards, and unless there’s a miracle I very much fear we’ll perish… That’s why it’s crucial to save this man. We can’t afford to lose him, his power is too great, too important for the cause of Rogdon. He must live to defend Rilentor. We must ensure that he survives.”

“Rilentor will resist, I’m sure of that,” Aliana said, more driven by hope than reason.

“Not without him…” said Gerart, who had come back into the room at that moment. “If we can’t manage to save him, we’re doomed…”

Aliana turned and looked at the Prince, so handsome and gallant in his silver armor trimmed with gold. Those deeply buried feelings were surfacing anew in the Healer, taking her back a lifetime to their first meeting, when those feelings had first taken hold of her. They had not had time to talk. Mother Healer Sorundi had requested Aliana’s presence at once. Gerart had offered to go with her. Along the Palace halls, escorted by the Royal Swords, the Prince had not mentioned anything personal beyond expressing his immense happiness at finding her alive. All the same, Aliana could see in Gerart’s blue eyes a yearning, a wish to express something he could barely keep under control. Aliana knew it was not the time for anything of the sort, and that the Prince was maintaining a silence it was obvious he wished to break.

“We’ll do everything we can, your Highness, I guarantee,” Sorundi assured him.

“Thank you, Mother Healer,” the Prince said, and came up to the bed.

He sat down beside the old man and whispered in his ear:

“Hold fast, Mirkos, fight for your life. Don’t let death take you. Rogdon needs you. The King needs you. I need you. You are Mirkos the Erudite, the King’s Battle Mage. Fight, you must survive this and get better again so that you can confront the Nocean Sorcerers. They’re on their way… we need you…”

The old man twisted in his bed. As if Gerart’s words had moved his spirit.

Mother Healer Sorundi came to stand beside Gerart and stared at the great Mage with deep worry.

“My dear child,” she said, looking at Aliana, “perhaps Mother Helaun has sent you at this exact moment which is so difficult for us. Your powerful Gift might succeed in accomplishing what we still haven’t been able to.”

“I’ll try, Mother Healer. I’ll do everything in my power to save him.”

“I know, my child. I can’t ask any more of you.”

Sorundi smiled at Aliana gently, and the girl went to the bed where the Mage was fighting a losing battle for his life. He was sweating profusely. When she bent over Mirkos a stench hit her nostrils, as if there were sewage under the bed. Aliana turned her head away, overcame her disgust and laid her hand on the old man’s forehead. It was burning hot. Something strange was happening here. That stench was not normal, nor was the high fever which the mage still had after such intensive care. A feeling of unease came over Aliana.

“Gena, please help me,” Aliana asked her pupil. “Keep his thread of life stable with your power while I examine him.”

Gena nodded. Both Healers laid their hands on Mirkos’ chest, and the blue energy began to flow from the two young women into the Mage’s body. Aliana watched Gena’s energy sustaining the old man’s life, and wondered at the skill and power of her pupil’s Gift. This reassured her. Gena would make sure Mirkos’ remaining thread of life did not break. Aliana examined the serious wounds; they were near-fatal, yet the Sisters had managed to work a miracle and stabilize them. Then why was he not improving? Why did he seem unable to come out of this feverish state?
She went on pouring forth her energy, seeking to find the cause. She knew that some organ must still contain a latent point of infection, contaminating the blood with its poison. For a long time she searched for it but was unable to identify any putrid part. Aliana was at a loss to explain this. If the organs were clean, what was causing the fever? What was infected?

Mirkos thrashed his arms and body in the midst of his delirium, and two Sisters came to hold him down. With difficulty, Gena was managing to keep him alive.

Aliana realized they had no time left. She concentrated harder and focused her power. She had been drawing on her own inner energy for some time, and was afraid she would not have enough of it. Luckily this was no ordinary patient but a mage of great power, with an immense well of energy. Aliana decided to use this instead of drawing on her own. Her optimism turned into stupefaction in an instant. There she discovered what was killing Mirkos. The Mage’s well of energy was completely contaminated, so that the natural whitish color of the immense source of power was now greenish brown and resembled a putrid pool of pestilent water. An unbearable stench invaded her nose and throat. The impression was so strong that she was overcome by gagging. Aliana’s concentration broke, and she was forced to move back to be able to breathe.

Sorundi hurried to her side. “Are you all right, Aliana?”

Aliana could not speak, the nausea was too strong. She managed to calm herself at last and get her breath back.

“I… I’m… all right… it’s over. It’s his power, his energy that’s corrupt, not his body.”

“What… how is that… even possible?” Sorundi asked, taken aback.

“I think I know the answer,” Gerart said. “He was attacked by a blood demon conjured up by Zecly, the very powerful Nocean Great Sorcerer. Mirkos fought desperately against it and managed to defeat it, but this Demon left him badly hurt, on the verge of death. I rescued him from the wall and carried him on my shoulder along the underground passage to the woods. He was losing blood. I didn’t think he would make it out of there, but he did. He’s a very tough old man.”

“In that case,” said Aliana, “the Demon must have somehow poisoned his pool of energy, his power.”

“We’d never come across anything like it,” Sorundi said, her brows arched and her voice deeply troubled. “Steel, magic, always attack the flesh, the body, sometimes the mind. But we’d never seen it attacking the source of the inner energy of someone with the Gift. This is something new and alarming.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t know any cure for it?” Gerart asked Sorundi. There was great concern in his voice.

“I very much fear not,” Sorundi replied, with a questioning look at Aliana.

The young Healer took a deep breath, then let it out abruptly. She put her hands on Mirkos’ chest again. Concentrating deeply, she searched for the old Mage’s contaminated pool of energy. She reached it and focused all her healing energy, trying to cleanse that malign infection. But her energy could do nothing against the terrible evil which was corrupting the Mage’s power.

“He can’t die,” she heard Gerart say. It was more a prayer than a statement.

Aliana tried everything in her knowledge, everything she had been taught in the Order, but she could not eliminate a single trace of the deadly infection.

I have to find how to act against this evil. If I don’t, Mirkos will die and with him the scant hopes the Rogdonian people still have. But nothing I try works! It’s as if the infection was immune to my healing power. I must find how… somehow…

And in that moment of anguish, of her desperate need to find the cure, the Ilenian medallion began to shape strange symbols in Aliana’s mind.

The medallion has activated itself! It’s casting a spell!

Suddenly the blue energy of her power began to change color, turning into a golden sheen which Aliana immediately identified as Ilenian magic.

Is the medallion really casting a spell to help me cure Mirkos?

The medallion has always generated destructive magic… Will it be capable of invoking positive, healing magic? I’d be very surprised, these objects of power don’t seem created for that.

Aliana watched as the magic of the medallion worked on the inner well, and before her astonished eyes the contaminated pool began to take on its white shade once again: very faintly at first, but then growing steadily in intensity. The magic of the medallion was cleansing the infection.

It was using her own energy, but this was practically exhausted. In reality the medallion was not healing Mirkos. As she had guessed, the medallion lacked that power. But what the Ilenian artifact could do was to enable the benign effects of her healing magic. And that was precisely what it was doing. Little by little Aliana’s Gift, empowered by the medallion, eliminated all trace of the infection in Mirkos’ well of power. The fever began to come down at once, and the old Mage’s delirium ceased.

Aliana opened her eyes. Exhausted but also euphoric, she looked at Sorundi and Gerart, who were watching her expectantly.

“He’ll pull through. Rogdon has a shred of hope left,” Aliana said, and smiled broadly.

It was almost midnight when Aliana arrived at the great terrace over the royal gardens. She smiled at the moon, high and coquettish in the clear night sky. The thousand stars surrounding the pale goddess of the night seemed to escort her in her nocturnal ride. This place brought back pleasant memories. She had spent many evenings there with Gerart on that superb platform of white granite and grey marble, leaning on the elaborately designed rail, looking out at the beauty which stretched before them. A sea of roses, jasmine, poppies and exuberant growth spread as far as the wall, and in the middle was the great lake, with those lyrical white water lilies she enjoyed so much. Everything arranged so exquisitely, tended with infinite care by the royal gardeners.