Hadjar started. His eyes widened and he instinctively straightened. She couldn’t be talking about…
“Didn’t you ask her over and over to tell you about him? Isn’t that the reason why you wore black, torn clothes? Isn’t that why you’re so brave in every one of your fights, even the most desperate ones? Isn’t that why, even as a slave, you remained free? Isn’t his portrait stored in your ring?” Against Hadjar’s will, the old scroll made from silver thread emerged from his artifact. “Isn’t that his sword that you’re carrying in your soul?” In Hadjar’s left hand, for the first time in the real world, the blade made of black fog flashed into existence. “Don’t you have the Black General’s blood in your veins?”
Chapter 396
The words stunned Hadjar. He heard a loud ringing in his ears. His heart was beating so fast that it drowned out his own thoughts. Like frightened mice, they peered out of the burrows of his consciousness, calling to Hadjar’s soul.
Was he really a descendant of the Black General? After all, everything was possible in this world. How many millions of years had passed since... Since when? The Black General was no more than a bedtime story his mother had told him. Just like hundreds of thousands of other mothers had.
“I’ve never heard that part of the story,” Einen’s voice sounded in his memories.
“How did you know what would happen if you ate the fairy’s body?”
No. It couldn’t be. The Black General was just an old fairy tale for children…
“I didn’t know the story had an ending.”
Scenes from the past filled Hadjar’s mind. The moments when his knowledge about some insignificant, simple details had turned out to be much deeper than Einen’s, who had met thousands of travellers and listened to their stories.
The flow of images halted... His eyes blurred, and then, like an explosion, everything was flooded with bright, vivid colors. He saw his mother’s smiling, sad face.
“We won’t tell your father about this, little warrior. We’ll let him think you’ll be a scholar…”
“No, mother… no,” Hadjar whispered in horror. Only now, after all these years, did he see his fate reflected in her eyes. She’d known, she’d always known…
“Your mother’s relatives?” He’d asked Haver about them once. “They died a long time ago, son. I didn’t know them. But when you’re older, I’ll tell you how I met your mother. In those days, she was a Princess of the highlands.”
Hadjar grabbed his head. Scenes from the past danced before his eyes.
Nanny, hanging in the air, suspended by chains like a piece of meat, suffering in Primus’ dungeon. She’d asked him to tell her his story. She’d endured hellish pain, but had still waited for its end, as if she’d been looking for something in him that would let her die peacefully.
The sword left behind in the mountains by his paternal ancestors had awoken only after Hadjar and Elaine had been born.
Everything froze.
He was, once again, a small boy holding a heavy, bloodstained sword. His mother was breathing her last in his arms. There was a terrible hole in her chest, and her torn out heart was still beating in Primus’ hands. She whispered: “Don’t become a cultivator, it’ll only bring you misfortune.”
And then, once more: “Do you want to hear the story of the Black General? The saddest story of all?”
And her eyes. Her beautiful, sad eyes. In them was a bitterness born of a maternal need to protect her son and the realization that she would never be able to save her son from his awful fate. Elizabeth, his mother, had always known whose blood ran in her son’s veins.
Now, more than ever, he understood the absurdities of the past. It had been his mother who had insisted in public that he would become a scholar, but... She’d never locked the door to his nursery, allowing her infant son to leave his chambers and boldly go crawling around the Palace. She’d ensured Hadjar’s road always led to South Wind. She’d paid so much respect to the Scholar, and had certainly paid quite handsomely for her child’s education.
And that day… when he’d found himself on the Master’s parade ground… Elizabeth had supposedly been far away — she’d had to go with her maids and bodyguards to a remote town in the central province. How could she have gotten to the grounds just in time to see the weapons rack falling on her son?
Wasn’t it strange that the strongest swordsman in the region at that time hadn’t been a member of ‘The Black Gates’ sect or hadn’t sought his fortune in the Sea of Sand, but had stayed in the Palace of Lidus instead? A place where he hadn’t been able to get anything… Except for the opportunity to train a descendant of the Black General.
“She meant you no harm, little warrior,” the voice whispered.
Hadjar looked up. A cloudy tear ran down the Shadow’s celestial face. White threads parted from its hair and, forming a palm, touched Hadjar’s cheek.
“She didn’t mean you any harm," the long-dead sorceress repeated. “Like any mother, she wanted you to have a quiet, good life, but she knew that would be impossible... Millions of years before you were born, the moment your soul was formed and set out on a journey through the World Rivers, that very second, your destiny was written. As well as your mother’s destiny. The same as the Black General’s mother…”
Hadjar remembered his mother’s story. How the tree from which the goddess had created the creature that had doomed the world had grown out of the dead ground. It had been scorched by the Heavens and the Earth, forgotten by the gods and spirits, located in a place that even the World River avoided, not allowing a drop of energy to touch the dead sand. The Black General’s mother, the earth itself, had given up all the crumbs of its life in order to let its child see the silent sun.
Elizabeth had known... once she had a child, her fate would be sealed.
A mistake of the Seventh Heaven’s Magistrate…
A few years ago, Hadjar had decided that the gods had made a mistake, creating a situation in which demons had attacked Haver and Primus’ group, but... Only now did he realize that a mistake in the Book of Thousands could’ve hardly affected the lives of just a few mortals and only a single event.
However, that mistake had its roots somewhere far back in time. It was so essential and terrible that it was altering destinies even after many millennia. Like ripples in the water after a stone disturbed the lake’s surface.
“Tell me,” Hadjar whispered. He was still on his knees, clutching his head. The sudden realization weighed on him more than anything that had ever happened in his life before then.
“This story won’t bring you any joy, little warrior.” The Shadow’s voice was like his mother’s. “There are many sorrows inherent with the knowledge. It’s not too late, little warrior. Turn around and leave. I’ll remove this vile spell of slavery from your soul and pave a way that will lead you to any place in this world. Would you like me to send you to a Master who can cut through space and time with their sword? Would you like me to send you to a tree whose fruit will lift you to such unimaginable heights of power that the Immortals will declare you a genius? Would you like me to show you a country so magnificent that one look at it will make you forget about-”