Chapter 168
THE FORGOTTEN FIELDS (NOVEL) – CHAPTER 168
At that instant, a fearsome gleam flashed in the woman’s eyes.
And an astonishing, incredible pressure spread through the fingers with which she gripped the back of his hand. It was an oppression similar to having his hand caught in iron pincers.
Immediately after, the ancient oriental tongue burst from between her cracked lips:
“That oath will be a powerful chain that binds you. You will be forced to fulfill what you have said until your last breath. Even so, can you maintain that your oath remains in effect?”
A loud gasp was heard from those present. It seemed they believed the empress was using an ancient sorcery of the “Khan” people. He felt that reality was not far from that; he could clearly perceive a mysterious force binding him.
An intense doubt assailed his mind.
Why did this woman go to such lengths? It was true that he would possess colossal military power in the future, but a long time would pass before reaching that state. In the present, the influence he could exert was utterly insignificant. However, the empress behaved as if the fate of her children depended exclusively on his answer.
Suddenly, the rumors claiming she possessed the gift of prophecy came to his memory. Had she perhaps glimpsed some future that made her feel the need to bind him so firmly?
When he contemplated her closely and with a gaze filled with suspicion, the features of the empress’s face, tightened by solemnity, vanished in the blink of an eye. He understood that she was in the middle of an internal battle. Her pale face was bathed in a cold sweat; she looked as if she were going to consume the last shred of her life at that instant and then vanish into nothingness.
He cautiously held the back of the woman’s hand, where the veins were strongly marked. The empress’s eyes widened. She was a woman incapable of being completely ruthless, even at the instant she decided to be. He knew that this woman had offered him a kind of affection in her own way. However, in the end, he could not reciprocate what he had received. If that was the case, he wished at least to make this woman, who was on the verge of the end of her life, close her eyes with a bit of peace.
After a brief hesitation, he answered in the language engraved in the deepest part of his soul:
“Until the instant this breath comes to an end, my oath will remain in effect.”
Then, a mixture of relief and guilt intertwined in the woman’s eyes. And the tears, driven by her thin eyelids, slid over her pale cheeks.
“I am sorry. I am truly so sorry for you. I will not ask you to forgive me.”
“Do not say that. I…”
“You do not know what you have sacrificed,” she interrupted him. “You are barely thirteen years old. And although I know I should not do this to you, I…”
The empress’s empty eyes returned toward her two children. And her pupils, which had dilated to the maximum until looking as black as ink, began to recover their natural brightness gradually. The woman contemplated her two small children for a long time with an expression in which regret and sadness mixed, then returned her gaze toward him.
“Varkas Laidgo Shierkhan, you believe that life lacks meaning… but the day will come when you discover something that makes you wish to remain alive. When that moment arrives, you will regret this instant.”
Her clouded eyes closed slowly. While gasping dry and intermittent mouthfuls of air, she murmured with a faltering voice:
“At that time, you can blame me all you want.”
At the instant he was preparing to answer that he would not do such a thing, a fit of dry coughing erupted from her mouth. Although the high priest approached in a hurry and poured sacred power over her, the empress’s countenance grew bleaker day after day.
Upon seeing their mother, who seemed about to exhale her last breath at any moment, the twins burst into a loud crying. They clung to the side of the bed and held their mother’s skeletal hand with desperation. While he remained one step behind observing that scene, Marquis Aurestine took him by the shoulder, and they went out into the hallway.
“Do not pay attention to the empress’s last words. It seems she suffers frequent hallucinations since her chronic illness worsened suddenly,” said the man, who had moved to a quiet place, while letting out a heavy sigh. “It seems her mind is no longer sane lately. She probably won’t make it past this month.”
The marquis looked as if he had aged all at once in a few months. While looking through the window, with his distinguished face filled with anger and sadness, he continued speaking in a somber tone:
“I am deeply grateful for what you have done today. Thanks to you, Her Majesty will be able to mitigate her sorrows.”
A large hand bearing the family ring descended upon his shoulder. It seemed the marquis considered the ritual performed a moment ago as a simple staging to calm the heart of a woman whose death was approaching. Varkas did not attempt to correct that thought.
The empress had placed a chain around his neck. He was fully aware of that reality, but he did not care too much. From the instant he was born into the Shierkhan family, he had been chained by the links of duty. What would change by adding another chain? The ducal house would back the legitimate crown prince, and he would follow the family’s will.
He heard the echo of a sob in a corner of the corridor and began to walk along the hallway. A dark and desolate tunnel stretched to infinity. How long did he walk in the midst of that absolute gloom that resembled the entrails of a colossal serpent? Suddenly, he found himself under the rain.
Before his eyes stretched a garden plagued with black roses. In the orchard from which all the plants that Empress Bernadette loved had been torn, flowers of extravagant shapes were beginning to open their huge petals, which resembled the viscera of animals.
He crossed that damp garden in which a languid air circulated and headed toward the back garden. Behind the black sky that poured the rain, the roof of the Great Cathedral began to be glimpsed fuzzily.
After the demise of Empress Bernadette, he abandoned the residence of the empress’s palace that she had provided for him, and entered the priests’ residence in the Great Cathedral. It was a return that occurred seven years after having left the punishment room by the hand of the empress.
Some priests showed confusion about living together with the heir of the grand duke, but the high clerics, headed by the high priest, received him with gentleness. They behaved as if no unfortunate mishap had ever occurred in the past. They led him toward the strict laws like someone receiving a prodigal son who returns to his own. And thus, a life that imposed severe restrictions on all desires began once more.
However, he did not experience the annoyance he felt in his childhood. On the contrary, he perceived a kind of relief in this disciplined existence. Only then did he realize that he carried a shred of guilt for not having been able to meet the expectations of the empress. He felt remorseful for her because she wished for him to recover his emotions; however, he had the slightest desire to feel nothing. Because this state of infinite calm was comforting to him.
He had begun to agree, to a certain extent, with the teachings of the priests: “Emotions are a poison that disturbs the soul.” The emperor, who became intoxicated with beauty, abandoned his honor and took the path of sin. The empress, who sank into a blind love, dragged herself toward misery despite possessing the power of the world. There was no need for such destructive feelings.
While contemplating the ink-colored sky with frozen eyes, he began to walk once more. It was then that it happened. When he found a small girl in the middle of the rain that fell like a mist.
He did not know why he had stopped before that pit. Perhaps until the end of his days he would never know what led him to meet her in that specific place on that day in particular, nor what prompted him to address her first. What was certain is that day, and in that place, he found something he did not desire.
His understanding of that reality, even if fuzzily, did not occur until a long time later. At thirteen years of age, he extended his hand toward the small girl in the middle of the mud without knowing anything:
“Hold onto me.”
The huge eyes, which took on an overwhelming presence in that small face, widened like lamps. The girl hesitated for a long time, then approached him cautiously. Suddenly, she looked at her hands joined against her chest and shook her head.
“I can’t. I am holding something in my hand right now.”
He narrowed his eyes and observed the small, pale hands.
“Is it perhaps something important?”
“It is not important.”
“Then throw it away.”
“Even if it is not important, I cannot throw it away,” the girl answered with a troubled face.
Something in her words passed and scratched his nerves. He had thrown away everything that was not important, and with it, the world had become sharper. Whatever it was that she held in her hand, it could not have a value that deserved to be preserved in the middle of the mud and the rain.
He wanted to tell her, but he held back because he did not wish to argue with a girl whom he surpassed by a whole head in stature. Instead, he bent his knees and lightly carried the small body completely soaked by the rain.
The girl gave a start as if she had been surprised. He controlled her movement and ascended with a jerk up the slope composed of a soft mud that resembled a swamp.
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