Chapter 176
## THE FORGOTTEN FIELDS (NOVEL) – CHAPTER 176
The healer uttered those words with her eyes fixed on the ground, speaking haltingly.
He remained watching her in silence with one hand resting on his temple, and then dictated his orders in a dry voice:
“Sit down for a moment. In truth, there was something I wished to ask you.”
The woman looked at him with eyes full of surprise.
“Are you addressing me, Your Excellency?”
“Yes.”
Varkas leaned his back against the seat and indicated the armchair opposite the desk with his chin.
The woman tensed in an uncomfortable posture for an instant, before cautiously sitting on the edge of the chair.
“It seems that you have become very close to the Grand Duchess during this recent time. Was there perhaps any special reason for it?”
The question seemed to catch her off guard, as she threw him a flabbergasted look.
“There was no particular motive. It is just that I helped her a lot in taking care of Khan… and it seems she began to feel more comfortable with me compared to the past.”
“I heard that she spends long hours at your cabin. What do they usually do there normally?”
“She takes naps next to Khan in my quarters, or brings books to read. Sometimes she watches me while I craft medicines. And occasionally…”
The woman, who had been speaking fluidly, suddenly fell silent.
Varkas arched an eyebrow.
“And occasionally, what?”
“Occasionally, she helps me with my chores,” the woman said timidly, as if she were revealing a secret.
He repeated the phrase as if he could not believe what he was hearing:
“She performs domestic tasks in your cabin?”
“It seems… it seems she felt curious about what I did… so sometimes she helps me clean the medicinal herbs or prepare the reagents.”
Varkas let out a subtle, sarcastic laugh.
That woman who had treated him, the heir of the Duke’s house, as if he were her servant, now turned out to be helping a simple servant with her chores; that produced a profound astonishment in him.
During all this time, he had received periodic reports about her, but he had given instructions to focus solely on her personal safety, since he did not want her to feel watched. The reports were limited to indicating whether she experienced difficulties in her life, or if she faced uncomfortable or annoying situations, so he knew almost nothing about the details of her daily schedule.
Repressing the strange annoyance that welled up inside him, he continued with his questions in a severe tone:
“How was her relationship with the deceased healer?”
At that precise moment, a trace of intense tension crossed the woman’s face. She seemed to have finally realized that she was in the middle of an interrogation.
Varkas leaned his body toward the desk and added coldly:
“She did not look very grief-stricken by that woman’s death. Was the relationship between the two of them perhaps not good?”
The healer swallowed hard with difficulty, trying to buy time, and then opened her mouth prudently:
“Until last year, her relationship with Madam Maryseen was good. But… after Her Highness the Grand Duchess promoted me from assistant healer to personal healer, some friction arose.”
“Friction?”
Hesitation was reflected on the woman’s face, as if she feared giving a testimony that could harm the Grand Duchess. After a prolonged silence, the healer continued speaking in a cautious tone:
“Every time my medical prescription differed from Madam Maryseen’s prescription, Her Highness leaned toward following my criteria. Madam Maryseen manifested her discontent over it… which unleashed Her Highness’s fury, leading them to drift apart naturally. In the midst of that situation, Madam Maryseen suffered the accident…”
“And for that reason, rumors spread that she was murdered by the wolf my wife raises,” Varkas concluded coldly.
The woman hurried to come to his wife’s defense immediately:
“Even if she did not show it openly, Her Highness the Grand Duchess suffered a lot over Madam Maryseen’s matter. The simple fact that someone close dies is already a great impact, even more so when everyone looks at her with suspicion…”
“Are you completely sure that wolf is innocent?”
The woman’s face contorted slightly upon hearing the question thrown out with indifference. She looked at the ground for a moment, then raised her head and uttered firmly:
“Yes, Khan bears no blame at all.”
Varkas fixed his gaze on the healer’s dark brown eyes in silence. The woman added with a voice overflowing with conviction:
“Khan is an extremely intelligent beast. He knows perfectly well that if he hurts someone, he will not be able to remain by Her Highness’s side. Therefore, he will never attack humans at random.”
Varkas rubbed his chin with an expression immersed in his thoughts, and then nodded his head slowly.
“That answer is sufficient. You may withdraw.”
The healer rose from her place with a face full of relief.
As soon as the woman left the room, he returned his gaze to the desk. The reagent that the healer had left behind resplended under the lamp’s light.
He took the vial and stayed contemplating it for a long while; then he opened the cap and inspected the contents. When the aroma of the bitter herbs brushed his nose, the memories he had buried overflowed.
He closed his eyes tightly as if trying to shake them off, and then drank the medicine in a single gulp.
After a brief moment, the effect of the tonic began to spread through his body. He felt his limbs, exhausted by the fatigue of the journey, relax softly, so he leaned his body against the back of the chair. In his vision, which was beginning to blur gradually, the full moon appeared, radiating a bluish light.
‘When I spent the night with her and we slept in the same bed for the first time, there was a moon like this.’
That thought came to his mind suddenly, and he felt a pang in his chest as if a sword had wounded him. He pulled at the collar of his robe, which was suffocating him with annoyance, and rose from his seat.
For an instant, the wild idea of going to look for her crossed his mind. He did not want to do anything specific with her; his only desire was to hold her in silence under the moonlight and ask her to sleep, just as he used to do in the past…
Varkas remained absorbed in those reflections, flabbergasted, before letting out a energy-lacking laugh.
She did not need him, and he did not want to disturb his wife, who had finally recovered her stability. He turned around and made his way toward the bedroom adjacent to the office.
The room looked completely free of dust, as if the servants had cleaned it in advance. Varkas let out a bitter sigh and lay down on the bed without even changing his clothes. He was terribly fatigued.
He realized that, once again, he was counting the fragments of the past. For some time now, dreaming meant for him repeating the old, gone memories. Sometimes they mixed with unreal fantasies, but the dreams he had were always based on reliving yesterday.
And this occasion was no exception either.
In the past, he found himself sitting on a rigid chair watching something. Upon the long, simply designed desk, of the type usually used in the dwellings of priests, there were ancient manuscripts deployed regularly.
The priest remained standing behind his back, pressing heavily on the nape of his neck with his large, calloused hand, forcing him to look at the parchments.
“Look clearly. These are the perverse deeds that the ancient people of Khan committed.”
Upon the old parchment document, a gruesome painting painted with sharpness could be appreciated. A corpse hung upside down over an altar built with piled human heads, and beneath it, black-haired priests received in golden vessels the blood falling from the body’s neck.
“The inhabitants of the ancient Orient enslaved other peoples for long years, offering their lives as sacrifices to the spirits. They cut off the victims’ heads and then hung the bodies upside down to drain their blood completely. They believed that the spirit of the earth, ‘Teramil’, would obtain a greater power if it drank the energy of humans. Until their annexation to the Empire, they slaughtered thousands of sacrifices with cruelty. And through those perverse rites, they were granted capabilities that defy the laws of the Creator.”
He tilted his head and looked at the priest with a rebellious gaze. The cleric returned a frigid look and added in a tone so dry it caused chills:
“That impure energy runs through your veins. For that reason, you feel no guilt even after having hurt a human being.”
“I did nothing wrong,” he shouted like a roaring beast. “That man dared to lay his hands on my body. He deserved to die.”
“If your words were true, my brother’s soul would also burn in the fire of hell for all eternity,” the priest replied coldly. “But that does not mean your sin will be erased. The little one crushed Brother Drivan’s head with such brutality that his features can no longer be recognized. A normal child cannot commit such an atrocious act. Just as His Excellency the Duke feared, the ferocity of the people of Khan keeps flowing in your blood just the same.”
He bit his lips. He could not manage to remember that instant with precision.
The moment the priest’s rough hand slid inside his clothes, the area beneath his eyes dyed red with fury. And at the next instant, he found himself contemplating the overturned cleric while holding a blood-stained candelabra with one hand.
Perhaps, as that man said, something dreadful inhabited his interior. His father realized it; but he did not want to admit that reality.
He repeated his words:
“I did nothing wrong. And in the future, if anyone tries to do that to me, I will crush their head.”
“…Then, there is no choice but to wait until the little one changes his mind.”
The man pulled him from the chair roughly. Then he held him by the wrists while he resisted, and dragged him away toward the punishment cell.
He resisted with all his strength, but he could not match the strength of the man who had once been a knight of the temple guard. The man pushed him into the interior of a narrow stone chamber.
“If you repent for your sin of murder now, I will let you out.”
He clenched his mouth and stayed fixing his gaze on the priest’s face with flashing eyes. He remained motionless contemplating the man’s gray eyes with brown undertones for a long while, until subtle cracks began to appear on that face that was as expressionless as a mask.
“What are you looking at that way?”
He chose his words carefully in his interior. And in the end, he gathered the words that man might fear more than anything:
“Your destiny.”
The man’s sunken cheeks trembled slightly.
He drew a smile on his lips for him to see:
“I see you hung upside down, with your head cut off and bleeding out.”
The priest closed the iron door with a roughness that produced a huge crash, and his face bore an expression as if he had confronted a dreadful demon.
As for him, he let out a dry laugh full of triumph in the middle of the darkness.
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