* * *
One could feel sadness in the air. All ministers, advisors, the whole royal escort, even part of the court staff, they all gathered to honor the dead king, brought by his son’s hands to the throne room. Complete silence was disturbed only by the sound of footsteps or by an occasional sob of a subject who immensely loved the monarch.
His son was now looked at the throne chair with the dull and frowning look. Beside it now stood a quickly made catafalque with the old man's body. The chair which caused great respect in him until recently, where the first man in the kingdom was meant to sit, now looked terribly repulsive. Although he himself had controlled much of the kingdom for a long time now and was almost considered the first man, he did not hope to fully and formally take over the duty so soon.
Two Ahlea warrior girls stood next to him, trying to understand at least a little bit the feelings of a young and tall royal heir of the throne. Dlora was for the first time so close to the man who was behind most of the battle failures of her troops in recent years. It was inevitable to feel admiration for him, especially because he still stood there upright and proud, despite the great misfortune and sorrow. Tenen felt the same, although still keeping some contempt for the enemy leader.
None of the Waeryehenian crowd in the room was paying any attention to the presence of two Ahleas. It was really strange, considering that before such a short time and before current circumstances, any one of them would get quite excited or even completely start to panic. But now they did not feel any excitement. After seeing the king standing still with Ahleas, they were able to fully concentrate on their grief and sorrow.
“Although many immediate tasks of great importance await me after my father's death” the prince finally spoke, turning to Dlora and Tenen - you deserve to hear the whole story about Tarlaeth.
“Finally,” they both thought to themselves. Since the beginning of this adventure that separated her from what she knew best, fighting wars, Dlora wanted to know what was so important in this unusual statuette which portrayed a person with wings and why did the repair of relations between two great nations depend on it. After all, they went through recently, she had raised some assumptions, and it was clear that the background of the story was much deeper.
“The story began with a mage called Yarael. He was one of the biggest wizards of his time. But, like all other wizards, he was not too popular.”
“You are talking about your ancestor? First in the Yarael bloodline?” Tenen asked.
“That's right, I'm talking about the founder of our lineage which I will represent as number twenty-eight on the throne. At that time, almost all the wizards were arrogant, they felt untouchable and they fully belittled ordinary people. The more they wanted to know the All and to control it, the meaner and more distant from the people they got. They forced the nations and countries into wars, fueled evil, hatred, and anger. Their desire to rule over the whole Continent grew bigger each day. They plotted assassinations of rulers in all kingdoms and countries, with a plan to divide reign over them among themselves.”
Girls knew the dark stories about the past of the Continent, and part of this was known to them. But Waeryehenian knowledge of the past was always better, and now it became obvious why was it so. The prince was telling a story that he himself heard so many times, in such tone that made him look as if he was there and experienced those events.
“Yarael was different. He kept a lot of friends among the people and always felt comfortable in their company. His motives for knowledge of magic and a stronger connection with the All were noble. His wish had always been to exploit this knowledge for the benefit of mankind. So he decided to confront the other magicians.”
“And he obviously succeeded” added Dlora.
“Yes, he totally surprised them. At the beginning of mage conspiracy he replaced the murdered king of Waeryehen on his throne, he united most of the Continent in the fight against mages. He managed to win the bloody battles with the help of the people, and with his knowledge of magic, to banish the demons off to the large island to the north.”
Tenen tried to imagine the scenes of these ancient battles, assuming that they were much more dramatic and bloodier than those that occurred in her time. Youthful fearless and curious by nature as she was, she immediately wanted to somehow find herself in those days, although she still awaited the first real battle in her time.
“In the end, he created a magical statue, Tarlaeth, which would destroy any mage that would again set foot on the Continent. At the same time, he had renounced his mage status in a magical rite and converted himself to a common man. On his grave, he had carved witchcraft that would restore the magic of Tarlaeth in case it got damaged somehow. All of us who came from his lineage had learned in detail about these ancient events so that we could take the responsibility in the events that something wrong ever happened.”
“Unfortunately, you were the one generation to see it happen.”
“I have a feeling that this was not by accident. Tarlaeth is an object made by powerful magic, which also radiated magic needed to create a shield against magicians. Therefore he possessed a certain strange life essence and some form of its own mind. This awareness was nourished by the energy generated from the All. And in recent years it drew a very strong and very negative energy from all the horrors that this long and terrible war had generated inside the All. This way it created such a strange, vicious circle. It's magic, with the help of negative energy, prevailed and caused an imbalance inside the All, thus provoking even greater evil in the world. We could say that at the end it caused its own breakdown and thus made it possible for the wizards to come back, although that was the exact thing it was created to prevent.”
New king saw on the warrior girls faces that they did not fully understand what he was trying to explain. He tried to simplify.
“This is the case with all the things that we find sacred, even those that do not have a real power. Although believing in them makes us proud, more connected and more powerful and it drives us forward in life, it also tends to make us blind and blunt. It can pull out the worst in us and feed with it, it acts as a recipient of negative energy which it then re-emits back into the world. This way evil grows bigger. So I think that it is never good to be too infatuated in believing anything and that every belief should be questioned.”
While Tenen, as a faithful follower of Ahleans ideals, was skeptical of this advice, Dlora was totally impressed by the words of Yarael Twenty-Eighth. They were fully in line with its thinking.
“Unfortunately, my father was never too interested in our inherited obligation. He never bothered to learn the witchcraft for Tarlaeth recovery by heart. Too bad, just because he shared the greatest virtue of the first Yarael because he most loved to deal with ordinary people and their well-being, he hated to have to deal with war and with tales of magic and this he paid with his life. But I have always been more responsible than the father. I memorized all words, every letter of the witchcraft in my earliest youth, and luckily I had returned from the battlefield at the right time to hear from the priestesses what was happening down there.”
All three were briefly lost in their own thoughts, but the silence was soon broken by Tenen, who felt the need to share her conclusion.
“I do not know if it is more unfortunate that we are capable to battle savage wars for so long, or that we are capable of forgetting the terribleness of evil that can be awoken by it.”
Dlora and young Yarael seemed to be equally impressed with her words.
“Regarding this, I have to take a big part of the blame for this war, and therefore I will be the one who will immediately put an end to it” prince made a promise.
“You will proclaim peace?” Dlora said, feeling a big relief, even before she got an answer.
“Of course. The objectives of the war have long been forgotten, and also the cause can almost nobody remember anymore. Anger and hatred became our sole driver. And we have just learn
ed that those are the feelings that we have to shut down in order to prevent the worst from happening.”
“In addition” Dlora added ”In the future, we will together have to make a big effort to maintain peace, stability, and respect for each other. These are our only guarantee of the security and defense from the Mages and from their threats.