From: prauda@dol-guldur.hut.fi (Kristiina Prauda)
Subject: Castle: KATHREA'S STORY (PART 8)
Organization: Helsinki University, Finland
Date: 16 Oct 92 13:44:10



>And so began the Three, with nothing, absolutely nothing to start 
>with except the words of a prophecy. 

For those first years - yes, years even then - we labored among the
remnants of our people, seeing all possible forms of human tragedy
and suffering. None of that had been familiar to us before, since we 
all came from highborn families: illness, poverty, starvation, death, 
agony so great it melted into apathy... Those years were the hardest 
of all. We had no time to worry about ourselves. All our time was 
taken up helping the people, for the earthquake had not been the only 
ill fate. It was followed by the plague. 

Nearly all the medicines had gone to the sea with the Academy or been 
destroyed with the capital. Nearly all healers were dead. We came to
feel despair and futility to its bitter end, since healing is very 
difficult with ordinary magical powers; healers have a specific 
affinity to it. We were able to help a little - individuals, one at a
time - but every healing was slow, painful and exhausting. 

Neither did we have time to concentrate on the perfecting of our
skills: there was only the toil, and then the sleep of exhaustion. 
Yet those years and the pain we shared brought us close to each other
again. There was no time for arguments; no time to set personal 
feelings first. And as we watched our people die, one after another, 
until only a few scattered families were left, who else could we have 
turned to for security than each other? No people we had known even
remotely had survived the earthquake, and the only "home" we had was
the small mountain nunnery. It offered us shelter for as long as this
first task lasted, but after the old Mother Superior died, we did not
wish to stay there for longer than occasional visits. 

After the first years, when finally there was nothing more we could
do, there came other tasks in other lands. But forever we carried in 
our hearts the burning memory of a great people whose destruction we 
had caused and whom we had watched perishing altogether. Truly, there
was no homeland for us any longer: the loneliness and rootlessness
had settled in our hearts as we saw our land become a thing of legend 
in the memories of other peoples. A lost legend, nothing more... And
us, wanderers of the world, doomed forever to have no family or home 
or safety except in each other. Thus at least one aspect of the 
prophecy came to be fulfilled in its entirety. 

We left the ravaged, deserted country and moved to the central lands
of the continent. We applied for a place of learning in the Hall of
the mighty wizards of Tardeschia: this Hall was a huge mansion and 
library outside the confinements of the world, in the Nowhere Between 
Places, though still bound to Time. Later, the informal gatherings
held there from time to time became the Gathering of all wizards of 
the world, and even later, the Council of Wizards. There we lived and 
studied and learned, coming to understand the special fusion of our 
powers and its enormous implications. There was yet a lot of actual 
knowledge for us to learn before we would be worthy to be called 
Archmages, but our magical power levels were already far greater than 
those of the most powerful archmages that had ever lived. 

There were many reasons for this. First of all, it had so happened
that we three, born in the same country not long after one another, 
were, even each one alone, the three strongest wizards in the whole 
world. For Soron and Ywarin, this was as much an achievement of hard 
study as raw power: especially for Soron. But then, he was in every 
way the stronger of the two, the more innovative, the more analytical. 
Ywarin was more conventional in his skills, but he had an ability to 
learn fast and learn a lot. He had a huge memory, a true library of 
knowledge inside his mind, and he was always willing to store more 
into it for us to use in some suitable time. I myself - well, that 
was another matter. I had the most raw power anyone had ever seen: I 
was able to tap directly into the streams of magic flowing through 
the whole Creation and to put that magic into use. There was very 
little limit to how much I was able to channel. But that was not my 
special part in the unique formation of the Three: it was the emotion-
bound nature of my actual usage of that magic. 

I have to explain this now: magical ability is twofold. First of all,
there is the ability of how much a person can absorb of the flow of
magic all around us - and even store it. Then there is the skill with
which he can put it into use, and this makes it possible for everyone
to learn some simple spells, for spells are the most effective way to
harness magic and use it. Only very strong magicians are able to use 
power directly, without spells - and even for them, spells are the
best, the safest and the most useful way. 

My ability and skills were very much intuitive, emotional, bound to the 
states and feelings I was experiencing - and also to that of others. 
For I was both a projecting and a receiving empath: influenced by the 
emotions around me, influencing them by my own. This was what made my 
magic unstable, unpredictable, but it also allowed others to bind their 
mind and magic to me and through me, to each other. It was a peculiar 
union where our skills complemented each other and where our magical 
powers multiplied each other more than just added to each other. 

This was the deepest being of the Three. It was a gift, for together
we were able to perform feats that would have been unthinkable for
anyone else. Yet it was a dangerous gift, for as we had bitterly 
learned in the catastrophe, emotion-bound magic in all its unstable
fluctuation was hard to control and contain, far more so when it was
used in connection with other forms of magic. And even more, this 
kind of a union was a curse, for it required unheard-of levels of 
openness - there were no secrets in that sharing, and very little 
individuality. And yet we were three conflicting personalities, driven 
by our feelings for each other, striving for some kind of balance, 
sanity, resemblance of self to survive in the storm of our love and 
fear and hate and need. We loved each other, yes, with a fierce love 
and friendship, but we also rebelled against this necessity where we 
were given no choice. Only that love could keep us sane. Only that 
love made it possible for us to trust each other enough to share the 
magic and serve in our task.

Walking on the sword's edge. Always and without end... 

And yet that was what made it possible for the Three to be what it
had to be: an entity so strong that even its appearance somewhere 
was enough to calm down conflicts and interrupt wars. An entity 
strong enough to protect a world where magic is rampant from all
the multitudes of evils that that magic created or attracted...

All this we learned, much of it already during those first decades
in the Hall of Gathering, the rest during the centuries we spent in 
our task. We had been in the Hall for a decade or so when we had to 
go and fight our first battle with a Demon Lord. We won. After that, 
there came other battles of the same nature, or different. When we
became to be known in the world, we also had to settle wars and 
disputes - but we chose with the best of our judgement which of
those could be interfered with, and which were only part of the
inevitable nature of human culture and development. We could not 
interfere with that. In fact, we learned we were supposed to 
interfere with the free will of people as little as possible. Those
decisions were very difficult... sometimes downright impossible. 
Luckily, I had two of the sharpest minds of the world to counter
my overflowing compassion and impulsiveness. 

And thus it was was impossible not to avoid the mark of legend 
attached upon us. Not only were we the strongest beings in our 
world, we also lived unaging from century to century - not as other
wizards, who generally did live about twice as long as ordinary
human beings. It seemed we were immortal, not just slow to age.
That alone was enough to keep us apart from other people except in 
the most superficial sense. That, in turn, enhanced the mystery that 
we seemed to create, because we did not wish people to learn too 
much of us, or see inside the carefully constructed walls between us 
and others, walls that hid anything of our true natures or emotions 
from anyone except each other. No-one knew where we came from, or who 
we had been, except that we were from the northern part of the 
continent. Our lost country was forgotten very soon, and there was 
not a single person in the world who would have known of our part in 
its destruction. We were a legend; THE legend. The Three. 
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