AIRONAE'S GIFT

A creature of utter darkness winged its way through the wind-torn night. It flew haltingly, buffeted and battling against the wind, desperately seeking escape, fleeing pain, fleeing a binding of uncounted years. Lonely beyond measure, it cried out its pain, its soft mournful wail lost in the wind as it flew out over the rippling, uncaring wheat fields and deserted small town crossings. Deeply, profoundly alone it was, belonging to nothing of this world, the only one of its kind that ever was, would ever be.

Blacker than the empty spaces between the stars, it had been spawned of nightmares, was suckled on night terrors and dark horrors, fed on shadow's fears, ever empty, always hungry, wanting more – always more. It wept now as the hunger grew and burned within it, as it fled through the villages of men, clinging for brief weary moments to cold stone walls, whimpering at darkened windowpanes, rattling locks. Sleepers heard, or rather felt, only a passing shadow cast across their dreams, and others, not sleeping, cursed the wind and shivered in their beds.

* * * * *

At the mage school, Bluestone Tower, in the silent, early hours of the morning, quiet but frantic knocking woke the High Mage Marlyne from deep sleep. She fumbled for her robe in the darkness and at last opened the door to find the healer, Trystian, his usually serene face oddly pale in the torch-lit corridor. Marlyne brushed back her silvered hair and frowned in concern. “What is it, Trys?” she asked. “Are the children all right? Is someone sick?”

Trystian shook his head, then glanced up and down the corridor. Students slept only a few doors away. “You'd better come,” he said quietly. “The Hall of Archives has been destroyed.”

“Destroyed? But how?” Without waiting for an answer, Marlyne pushed past Trystian and ran down the corridor, her bare footsteps hushed on the cold stone floor, her robe billowing out behind her. Trystian followed close behind.

The massive oak door to the Hall of Archives stood ajar as Trystian had left it. Marlyne gasped at what she saw, then stood rigid with shock as she and Trystian surveyed the wreckage in the Tower's most sacred room. Heavy oak tables and ornately carved bookshelves had been overturned, priceless volumes swept onto the floor. Delicate porcelain urns and glass vials were smashed, their jagged pieces littering the floor among spilled powders and bubbling potions. The remains of an ancient tapestry hung in shreds on the back wall.

One of the arched stained glass windows was shattered. Gusts of wind swept through the room, scattering papers, and flapping the velvet drapes. Even with the wind, a strong burnt smell lingered on the air.

Trystian rubbed his eyes as if the sight caused him physical pain. “I was studying late,” he said, “and came here to look up a certain bit of herbal lore. When I unlocked the door and came in, it was like this. Whoever did it probably came in through that window.”

“But who would have done this?” said Marlyne. Her eyes blazed as anger replaced her initial shock. “And why? Some of these things are irreplaceable!” She trembled with the effort to keep her voice down.

Suddenly Trystian grasped Marlyne's arm and pointed toward the back of the room. His eyes grew round with dread. The dark wooden coffin that had been stored on a high shelf for longer than living memory now lay on its side on the floor, its inner edges singed and blackened with smoke, its lid cleft in two. “The Terror of Nisman,” he whispered. “Harth's Bane . . . it's gone!”

* * * * *

Crippled by the pain of fighting the savage hunger that burned to control it, and weakened from its long captivity, the creature known in legend as the Terror of Nisman, struggled in the air as the fierce wind became an invisible wall that threatened to push it back, back to its captors and the torment of the box. At last, its strength failed, its wings crumpled and it fell, a darkness tumbling out of a dark sky, to lie desolate in a wind ravaged empty field.

Unable to go further, deeply alone and burned raw with a hunger that it desperately longed to deny, it lifted voice and howled. Cried out against the driving wind that had battered and knocked it down, cried because it was hurt, because it was abandoned, cried out with a voice that snuffed out dreams, shattered sleep and stilled the hearts of those who heard.

* * * * *

Eleven year old Lissa bolted up in the bed she shared with her mother, her heart pounding. Surely she had heard something . . . something that had cried out in terrible pain. Her mother stirred and moaned. Lissa turned and gently stroked her mother's damp tousled hair, small warm pulses of soothing energy slid from her fingertips. Her mother sighed and slept again.

The wind was howling around their hut, but the girl knew that what she had heard was not the wind. Something was out in the storm – something that was badly hurt. Often she was awakened this way, aroused by the pain of some sick or injured farm or forest animal, but she had never heard anything scream like that. Quickly, she eased from the bed, got dressed and slipped out of the bedroom, her movements silent and sure in the dark house.

As soon as she stepped outside the hut, she was stunned by the force of the other's pain. Shaken, she clung for a moment to the door frame. The wind thundered in her ears and whipped her cloak away from her body. With effort, she centered her thoughts, then gathered her cloak tightly around herself and got her bearings. She knew, from long practice, all of the surrounding land, how to find each landmark, and how to count each step. She would not get lost.

* * * * *

Marlyne shivered and clutched the throat of her robe as Trystian pronounced the dreaded names – The Terror of Nisman, Harth's Bane. She felt her face turn cold. “Impossible!” she hissed. “That box has been sealed for decades . . . longer!” Heedless of her bare feet on the littered floor, Marlyne ran to the box. It was indeed empty, the legendary nightmare it had bound, escaped. She knelt to examine the handwritten runes that circled the outer surface. Many were now obscured by the dust and grime of years of neglect. Carelessness had broken the spell that had kept the box sealed for so long.

Marlyne looked up suddenly and stared at the broken window. She drew in a sharp breath. No one had broken in. The Terror had broken out. It could be anywhere by now. The most horrible and dreaded creature ever made by magic was loose. Even now, it might be ripping sanity and life from innocent folk as they slept. She stood and met Trystian’s eyes, and knew they shared the same nightmare thoughts.

The hellish deeds of Harth's Bane were the stuff of legend and song, well studied by all students of the magic arts. In the beginning, the creature had been created by the evil magician Nisman as a trap to help him destroy his greatest enemy, the Arch-Mage Harth. Legend told of how the creature drew strength and power, perhaps its very existence, from all the dark thoughts of humankind.

It was created to devour minds, to hunt thoughts, to follow fear and hate and greed like a hound on the blood-spore of the hind. Physically, it was a nightmare of itself, no one could look on it and not be overcome with terror. Fear became an open door that allowed it to enter the minds of those it encountered. Once in contact, it sucked the life-force away, stripping sanity and life from its victims.

Nisman, in his lust for power and violence, loosed the Terror upon the world, knowing that Harth would try to stop the creature. Indeed, Harth lost his life struggling with the creature, trying to turn it from Nisman's evil purposes. Death and panic spread in its wake, until, like water seeking the lowest ground, the creature at last turned and attacked its creator. Nisman himself was unable to stop it, unable to save his own life. In the end, it had taken all eleven of the White Mages of the High Council to generate the power to imprison the thing, for no spell could be found to destroy it.

Marlyne closed her eyes for a moment and forced herself to think calmly. “Whatever chance we have with this thing,” she said, regaining her composure by sheer willpower, “lies in acting swiftly. I'll wake Safina and have her send an alert to all the other towers, to all the members of the Mage High Council and the Master Healer's Guild.” She laid her hand on Trystian's shoulder, her eyes creased with worry. “Get your healer’s bag and be ready to travel. We'll have to track it from here, then summon the others to join us when we find it.” How many would lose their lives this night? Marlyne trembled with the thought. This time they would have to find a way to destroy the horror forever.

* * * * *

Lissa struggled as the wind pushed and shoved her and wrapped her skirts around her ankles. Her progress across the fields was slow; for there were ditches full of water, wooden fences and high stone walls she must climb over and around. She had to take each step deliberately to be sure she did not miscalculate distances because of the wind. But the pain that called her became a glowing red light in her mind, easy to follow. Once, she thought she heard whimpering, but the wind whipped and wailed across the fields, so she could not be sure. She pulled her cloak even tighter and concentrated on her footing.

* * * * *

The creature crouched in one corner of a newly plowed field. Blacker than anything could possibly be, its body seemed to suck light from the air. It arched up, spreading out the torn leathery webbing between the long bones of its wings and snapped at the wind with dark dagger-sharp teeth. Stones and the sharp plowed-under ends of wheat stalks cut into its tender underside, but these pains were nothing compared to the pain of its hunger.

A feast lay all around it, teasing, tormenting it, pulling it one direction, then another. In the stone house over the hill a man planned a petty crime. In the valley, a child shivered in her crib, afraid of the dark. Many minds dreamt dark dreams, woke with nightmares, many dwelt on small injustices, plotted revenge, stoked small fires of anger and hate. Many were the nightmares the creature felt in this place where it had fallen, many were the fears that called to it, promising dark nourishment.

With the last of its strength, the creature fought against these dark thoughts, fought to hold on to the one small spark of light that glimmered in the darkness of its mind, the one faint star that glittered in the black sky of its memory. The Arch-Mage Harth had set it there, compelling and lovely, as he had tried to destroy not the creature itself, but its evil purpose. It would stay and grow, if only the creature would not feed again. But the hunger that drove the Terror was part of its created purpose, and it could not hold out much longer against the pain of its denial.

Suddenly, it felt the presence of another. The other was human, coming steadily closer. The creature reared up in agony and beat the air with its wings as the hunger surged within it. Faint rays of sunlight from the dawn-washed sky, glinted from red eyes and black teeth.

Helpless, the creature curled in upon itself, wings over head, quivering with the effort to hide itself, to somehow contain the horror it knew it would inspire. It whimpered, desolate beyond measure, for it knew it would lose the only thing of beauty it had ever known, that one tiny spark of light from the mind of Harth. But, the hunger grew in waves, overshadowing the light in the creature's mind, overpowering the creature's frail control, reaching out with ravenous greed to tear the mind from the other.

* * * * *

The High Mage Marlyne and the healer Trystian stood together again in the Hall of Archives. Trystian had packed his medicine bag with as much as he could carry. Goddess knew what they would find when they had tracked the creature down. Marlyne, dressed now in warm traveling clothes, closed her eyes and sent her vision out into the windy night.

Beginning at the broken window, she looked out upon the natural energies that swirled and eddied across the land, and found a trace of darkness and hunger that lingered like a bad taste upon the air. She followed the trail cautiously, afraid at any moment what she might find. She dared not see the thing – it was said to steal the mind with a glance.

At last, she sensed a place where a great darkness gathered beneath the pale sky of the coming morning. She studied the land to fix the location in her memory, and breathed a prayer of gratitude that she had seen no sign that the creature had killed. If the Council acted quickly, they might succeed in recapturing it and returning it to the Hall without anyone getting hurt. They could decide how to destroy it later.

Then she saw something that made her feel cold and sick with alarm. A young girl was walking slowly and deliberately toward the darkness. Helplessly, Marlyne watched as the girl stretched out her hands to the thing. Appalled and powerless, she saw the darkness rising up to consume that young life.

Panicked, Marlyne threw her consciousness back to Bluestone Tower too fast. Trystian grabbed her arms as she almost collapsed. She put her hands over her face, then looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I thought we were going to be in time.” She took a deep breath, then struggled to her feet. “I found it, but we must get there at once. It is almost dawn and there's a girl there with it. If she's still alive, she'll need you, Trys.”

Marlyne's face was pale and grim as she raised her arms in the spell of traveling. “Shield yourself,” she warned Trystian. “Don't let the Terror touch your thoughts.” Then she took them both to that newly plowed field and the horror that waited there.

* * * * *

Lissa was nearly at the boundaries of the areas she knew well. The red light she followed was very intense now, it could not be much further. Her feet sank slightly as she stepped out into the plowed field. She could smell the damp newly-turned earth, and something else – a burnt, corrupt smell. She turned toward the far side of the field. The red waves of pain flared up, becoming concentrated; they pulsed and ebbed, like a heartbeat.

They were stronger than anything she had ever experienced before, so strong they seemed to suck at her, grip her, pull her relentlessly closer. Slightly dizzy, she took another step toward . . . what? What could be in such pain, have such power? The configuration of energies was also strange, this was not a cow calving or even a horse with a broken leg, certainly not a person.

Lissa hesitated a moment. The wind was dying down; she could hear birds stirring in the underbrush, the slight warmth of the first sunlight on her face. It was dawn. Maybe she should wait, get help. But the healer's instinct was strong in her, hesitation could cost a life.

She went forward slowly, every sense alert. Pulsing red energies swirled and spiraled around her, clawing and battering at her as she got closer, but she held her mind clear of emotion and turned her focus inward to the healing centers within her mind and heart. Energies filled and flowed from her, surrounding her with a pale blue-green light, building within her into a powerful force for healing. Emerald and turquoise sparks leaped and flashed from her fingertips.

Lissa reached out and laid her hands upon the source of the red pain and found she touched a great emptiness, as if a great dark chasm had opened before her mind, threatening to swallow her into itself. Waves of loneliness, emptiness and hunger assaulted her, sucking all her power into the void with a great flare of light, scarring her hands with the force of its passage. Yet, still it was empty, still the hunger burned. She should have pulled away, but the healing instinct within her stayed her hands upon the face of the darkness.

With a calm and focused mind, willingly she opened her very soul to that hunger, pouring all the love and compassion she had in her into that emptiness. And when it had drained her, Lissa, with an innate knowledge as old as time, threw her mind and heart open to heaven itself. She lifted one hand skyward in mute appeal to the Goddess Aironae, the Giver of Life, the Goddess of Love, the Healer of All.

And the Goddess came. Gliding down the streaming rays of dawnlight, shimmering like a thousand sunlit stars, Aironae came and took the hand of the little girl. A fountain of light spilled forth at that divine touch, surrounding Lissa with a halo of radiance as overwhelming love and forgiveness flowed from the Goddess, surged through Lissa and poured into the creature.

* * * * *

Moments later, Marlyne and Trystian appeared at the edge of the field. The girl lay crumpled at the far side, there was no sign of the creature. Marlyne's heart pounded as she ran with the healer to the girl’s side. Too late, she thought, too late. The Terror is lost, loose somewhere, a young girl dead . . . .

Marlyne grimly cast her senses out again to track the creature. Within moments, she returned and stared at Trystian in amazement. “There's no trace of the Terror. It's as if it vanished from this spot.”

The girl stirred as Trystian knelt and gently felt her throat for a pulse. He put his arm around her and helped her sit up. She lifted her scarred hands, her fingers slowly opened to reveal a small white winged creature. It was delicate and beautiful to look at. She smiled with joy as it took wing. “It doesn't hurt now,” she said.

With trembling hands, Marlyne pushed some unruly hair away from Lissa's face. Sweet unfocused brown eyes looked up at her. “What is your name, child?” she asked gently.

“Lissa . . . Lisandra, Lady.”

“You could have been killed, Lisandra. Why were you out here?”

“That animal,” said Lissa softly. “Did you feel it, too? I didn't know what it was, but it was suffering so, I had to go to it. It needed help.” Lissa closed her eyes as if studying something she alone could see. “It had so much pain and emptiness inside it, so much sorrow for the things it had done. When I touched it, I saw a star that was swallowed by darkness, and I felt it weep because it loved that star. It hated what it was, Lady, but it couldn't help it.”

Lissa took a deep breath and bowed her head. “I gave it all the love I could, but it wasn't enough. It took the love of the Lady of Light to make it well.”

Trystian took Lissa's hand and squeezed it. “It was a very brave thing you did, Lissa – more than anyone else was able to do.” He traced the scars on her hand with one finger. “You rest now,” he told her tenderly. He got up and took Marlyne aside. His face was awash with wonder. “I scanned her, Marlyne. She has the healer's gift, far, far stronger than I've ever seen before, and . . . there's something else . . . .”

“I know,” said Marlyne in a hushed voice. “She's blind.”

“Yes . . . no, that’s just it, she’s not really. Her gift is so powerful, that without training, her inner vision has become so overwhelming, it has blocked her normal sight. She sees the world as energy fields and patterns of colored light, but with the proper training, she'll be able to control it and see normally.”

Marlyne felt a gentle tug at her sleeve. “Lady?” interrupted Lissa respectfully. “I must get back home. My mother will be worried. She's all alone, except for me.” She smiled up at Marlyne, suddenly shy. “My mother says you are a great teacher. I've always wanted to meet you.”

“You know who I am, then?” questioned Marlyne.

“Oh, yes. You are the Lady of Bluestone Tower, the High Mage Marlyne. I saw you last year when my mother took me to the Mid-Summer fair. I remembered how beautiful you are. I would know you anywhere.”

Marlyne reached out and cupped Lissa's face in her hand. “I think we will see a lot of each other after this.” Lissa smiled again and curtsied, then with careful grace, turned until she got her bearings and started toward home.

Marlyne watched her go, then turned to Trystian in amazement. “She recognized my energy field. I know fully trained mages who can't do that!”

Trystian nodded with wonder in his eyes.

“Go after her, Trys, and talk to her mother. Our newest healer must come to the Tower for training . . . both of them must come, of course.”

“But what of Harth's Bane?” asked Trystian, suddenly alarmed.

“Gone forever, I think.”

“You mean that girl destroyed it? But how? I felt no other magic in her.”

“No, not destroyed . . . I don't know yet if she herself did anything,” said Marlyne. “She mentioned a Lady of Light – I believe she had the help of the Goddess herself. She also said that the creature was suffering, in terrible pain. And she said it was sorry, Trys, that it couldn't help what it did. In our fear and haste, I never considered what it might be feeling, that it might be hurt, that it might be only another helpless victim of Nisman's evil and need our help.” Her eyes filled up with tears. “Or that we might have added to its suffering.”

Marlyne wiped her wet cheeks and met Trystian's eyes. “What we would have destroyed or imprisoned in fear, Lissa has set free by her own compassion and Aironae's healing power. It is a humbling lesson, my friend.”

Marlyne sent Trystian to catch up with Lissa, then she turned and gazed far across the fields to where a small white creature sparkled as it floated and danced on air in the morning light. Not by chance were you loosed this night, she thought. Not by chance did you find this place. Aironae's hand has done this, used you to reveal to us this gifted girl.

“Give good for evil, love for hatred, and you shall work miracles,” she quoted softly to herself. Harth's words. This is the oldest known truth, thought Marlyne, a truth much too easily forgotten.

She raised her arms to the sky and called out in a clear voice. “The Terror we have called you, and Harth's Bane. But, you have suffered unjustly and won mercy and freedom from the Goddess herself. As a Mage of the High Council, I give you my blessing and vow that you will have our protection and honor from this day forth. Aironae's Gift you shall be called and I swear I will clear your name of the past forever.”

* * * * *

In a glory of sunlight, Aironae's Gift danced upon the air. The wind, now warm and gentle, lifted its wings and cradled its small body like a treasure. Nor did the minds of men touch it, for good or ill, any more. It knew nothing of darkness, nothing of emptiness, of hunger or pain. It was discovering the fragrant scent of the apple blossom, the sweet taste of nectar from the honeysuckle vine, and the warm and loving touch of sunlight, Aironae's kiss, upon its wings. It knew only that now it was free and that its heart was full to the brim with joy, for that small beloved spark of light had grown to fill the world.

The End

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