Chapter 33: The Shadow Beneath the Saint (1)
Chapter 33: The Shadow Beneath the Saint (1)
In the middle of a vast forest, somewhere in the kingdom of Pangracya, stood the last great tree in the world untouched by the miasma of demons.
A colossus of wood and light, so tall its crown was lost among the clouds, so old it had watched empires rise and fall. Its roots ran beneath the earth for leagues in every direction, and the air around it was purer than in any other place in this world.
At its foot spread the great city of the elves. Ygdracia.
A city born of the tree as much as built by hands. Walkways of living wood climbed along the trunk, dwellings opened directly into the great boughs, and soft lights drifted between the leaves without ever burning a thing. The high elves had governed it since time immemorial — the oldest people, the most learned, the closest to the magic of the world.
It was there, on a hanging terrace bathed in green sunlight, that I had been putting the young human through her paces for nearly two weeks now.
Sylwen Thalorë. That was my name. And this child from another world had become my student.
"Again," I said.
She was on the ground, one hand in the earth, the other clenched around her staff. A white strand clung to her temple, soaked with sweat. Since dawn, I’d put her on the ground a good dozen times. Another would have complained, would have asked for a rest, would have cursed at me. Not her.
She rose. A smile on her lips, her voice soft, but broken up by her breathing.
"Very well."
That smile again.
Then she began anew. The mana started circulating through her body once more, exactly as I’d shown her, rising from her center to her palms to burst forth as spells. Lightning, this time — short, precise, each one different from the last, as if she refused to repeat the same shape twice.
And as she cast, she drew in the mana of the world all around her. Pillar of the World.
That was where my unease lay, I had to admit.
Pillar of the World was one of our most ancient arts. Drawing the mana of the forest, of the air, of the earth itself, so as to no longer depend on one’s own reserves alone. Most of my kind devoted years to it. Many never managed it at all.
She had grasped it in a matter of days.
Far faster than anyone. Faster than I had, in my own time — and I was said to be gifted above all others.
But learning the skill was only the first threshold. The hardest part came after: reaching a state so natural, so deeply rooted within, that one could sustain Pillar of the World without thinking about it, continuously, all while casting one’s own spells. Holding both at once, without one devouring the other’s attention.
That step too, she had crossed. Barely a few days later.
So we had moved on to the third.
"Keep going, but this time I want you to move at the same time. Your body in motion, your spells flying, and Pillar of the World never faltering for an instant — all of it together, without ever loosening your hold on what you draw from outside."
She nodded, and set herself in motion.
I raised my hand and loosed a first dart of wind, light, almost a courtesy.
She dodged it with a step to the side, her lightning never faltering, the flow of mana she drew from the clearing never wavering. Three things at once, held together, in a body that hadn’t slept more than a few hours.
A genius.
There was no other word for it. This human child was a genius of the kind born once a century, perhaps less. And yet, even a genius had limits. Even a genius could not carry everything just yet.
I proved it to her.
My next dart of wind, I doubled — two points instead of one, one on the heels of the other.
She dodged the first. Not the second.
The spell caught her full in the stomach. The breath went out of her all at once, her spells died, the mana she held scattered into the air. Her staff slipped from her hands and rolled across the wood of the terrace, while she crumpled to her knees, folded in two, a thread of drool at her lips. Her chest heaved in great gasps.
"That’s good," I said, letting her get her breath back. "You still fall, but you fall later and later, and that’s all that matters for now. Give yourself a little more time, and you’ll carry all of this without even having to think about it. Only then can we approach the final step."
She stayed on all fours a moment, gathering her strength. Then she rose. With difficulty, one hand pressed to her stomach, where the wind had struck her.
And the smile was already back.
The same one. Always exactly the same.
That was what troubled me, more than her progress. In the two weeks I’d been watching her, I had never once seen that smile change. Not in effort, not in pain, not in failure. It never quite reached her eyes. As though it hadn’t been born of her, but placed upon her. As though it had been rehearsed, over and over, for years, until it became a mask so perfect one could no longer tell it from a true face.
What must a child have lived through, to learn to smile like that?
"Thank you... so much, madam." She caught her breath between the words, her voice still trembling with effort. "I don’t deserve... such praise. I only apply... your knowledge."
"That is kind of you to say, but you’re wrong to belittle what you accomplish. What you just did there, you see, very few of my own kind would even be capable of, and it would have taken them years where it took you a few days. Don’t forget that so quickly."
"I understand." A short breath. "Thank you."
"Good. Rest now — you’ve done enough for today."
She inclined her head, with that slightly over-practiced grace of hers, and off she went — her step still unsteady, her back straight all the same.
I watched her move away along the walkway of living wood, her white silhouette swallowed little by little by the green light of the tree.
Once I was alone on the terrace, my gaze fell upon the staff.
She had left it there, near the spot where she’d collapsed, the amethyst glowing softly in the green light of the tree. I picked it up, and the warm wood held the heat of her hand for a moment. I would return it to her tomorrow, at first light.
And yet, as I closed my fingers around it, Elsa’s words came back to me. The ones she’d spoken at the very beginning, the day she came to find me to entrust the child to my care.
It had been years since I’d last seen her. Time had not softened her — an eye missing, a fresh scar, and still that way of going straight to the point without ever wrapping a thing.
"I need you, Sylwen. I’ve been given charge of the two heroes Pangracya summoned into our world, and I’ve been training them for weeks now, but the trouble is that they’re both far too gifted. Each in their own way, they’re geniuses of the kind you meet once in a lifetime."
"And you say that as though it were a burden."
"Because at times, it is." She’d given a joyless half-smile. "For the boy, it’s fine — Kuro manages very well on his own, his skill makes him independent, he need only look at a thing to learn it. Him, I can let advance at his own pace without worry. But the girl is another matter."
"Alice."
"Her genius is a bottomless pit, Sylwen. She devours everything she touches, every scrap of magic that passes within her reach, and the next day she’s already ready to swallow more. I’ve passed on absolutely everything I know, and I find myself standing before her empty-handed. The truth is that I’m no longer equal to what she’s capable of learning."
It took a great deal for Elsa to admit a limit. In all the time I’d known her, I don’t believe I’d ever heard her do it.
"Then show her the true foundations, the ones your people alone possess. Open for her the path she can’t find on her own, because apart from your kind, no one on this earth is able to."
"I’ll do it." I owed her that much, after all. An old debt, and the memory of what we’d been through side by side, long ago. "As much for what you once did for my people as for the rest."
"Thank you." Then she’d hesitated — and that, too, was unlike her. "But before you take her under your wing, there’s one more thing you need to know."
"I’m listening."
"That little one carries within her a darkness deeper than anything I’ve seen."
"That’s a strange thing, coming from you. What do you mean?"
"The system granted her the class of Saint, and from the outside, she embodies it to perfection. The gentleness, the light, the devotion — it’s all there, down to the smallest detail. Except that from living at her side day after day, I ended up glimpsing what lies beneath. And it isn’t a saint, Sylwen. It’s something far darker, which she conceals so well one comes to doubt one’s own eyes."
She’d let the silence stretch a moment before going on, her voice lower.
"You may have caught wind of that affair, at the palace. The death of a young noblewoman, some time ago now. I haven’t the slightest proof of what I’m claiming, but deep down, I’m convinced it was she who killed her, and that she did it out of jealousy."
"That’s a heavy accusation to lay on a mere intuition."
"I know it perfectly well, and that’s precisely why I’m coming to you. Reading souls has never been my strength — I’m a woman of the sword, not of the conscience, I can recognize an enemy but not what gnaws at one. You see people differently than I do. So watch her in my place, take all the time you need, and when you’ve understood what she truly is, you’ll tell me what you make of it."
Two weeks had passed since that day, and I was only beginning to understand what Elsa had meant. It was time, I think, that the child and I had a real conversation.