The devastated lonely girl was taken into the care of Demetrius, a friend of her father’s, a gentle man, a man of great intelligence, abilities, prowess and achievement. She lived with him and his wife, Iolanthe, at once the most fearsome and most generous woman she had ever met.
Iolanthe and Demetrius were prime examples to follow for the young girl in her formative years, the best anyone could have wished for, and a catalyst for the development of her personality.
She had few memories of her mother and father and even those few precious memories were vague. There was nothing vivid to satisfyingly grasp for comfort and to cherish. Iolanthe became her surrogate mother and Demetrius her father.
Those two unique individuals influenced and sculpted her view of life and of people and her reactions and interaction with the environment around her. Iolanthe and Demetrius had worked hard to prepare Elli for her future role.
It was they who had initiated her into the secrets and practices of the Pallanians and the Order of Vlachernae and of her family and of the Cypriots and the Greeks, so that she knew her own and her people’s history and had a deep knowledge of where she came from.
They were the ones who helped her reconcile her tragedies with her future responsibilities as head of the Order, the family and the mighty Valchern Corporation. They set her, as best equipped as possible, on her difficult journey, on a collision course with her destiny, with a great enemy, and were instrumental in her becoming the powerhouse and dominant force that she would later become, always using her ruthlessness and fairness for good.
Back to that fateful day, the fog became as thick as soup and stung the eyes and, if you enjoyed doing that almost blind, you could almost swim in it, and you could almost taste it, an earthy buttery sweetness, spiced with bitterness and savour, and spiked with the herbs and coniferous smells and tastes of the forest.
The fog took a life of its own, like a huge beast on an aggressive move on not just her surroundings, but principally her and only her.
Her family was the target and the aggressor was the enemy that did not want her to survive and fulfil her pre-destined and prophesied role. Somehow they knew. What was that fog? What did it represent to her or to anyone else? Did it appear in a unique form to each one that was unlucky enough to cross its path and fall in its lap and become its target and potential victim?
More precisely, who was it? She could sense it was a living breathing being. A human presence, another creature, something else? That she could not say.
Now she finally knew who it was. The Ruinands. Their eternal enemy. Who else could it have been? She knew it deep down, but never really admitted it to herself before now.
She now understood the Marcquesa. But she still could not accept what she had been told. Yet there did not seem to be any doubt. She had to concede that the DNA test put paid to that.
A chill ran down her spine, chilled her to the bone and tickled her sensitive nerve-endings. The sensation was painful. She could not breathe. She was choking, her breathing attempts were almost failing and coming out coarse, troubled and hurried with every laboured breath spiced with pain.
She felt she was choking on the very air entering her larynx and lungs that should have given her relief. Her experience that day, that horrible feeling foretold the future; she knew it now. It was a foretaste of travails, trials and tribulations to come.
Then, this… thing, let go of her but only for a moment. She broke free and ran back to the house with all the strength left to her and closed the door as if that would be a deterrent to that force.
Yet even though she was a child, her mind had in those excruciating moments grown beyond her years and to her the act of barricading herself behind that door, inside her home and sole refuge, was attune to instinctively putting a barrier between her and her pursuer.
She prayed not to have to see this… thing again. But she knew even in her child’s mind that free as she was it was only a respite until their next appointment, at an indeterminate date, for this thing to get bored and come running after her, after amusement, as you would when in the exercise of a favourite hobby.
Only when no-one was watching did she resign herself to the thing’s power and hold over her, isolating herself, so that she did not harm anyone else but herself.
Every time, this thing took out something from her, a part of her. She had no resistance to it, no cure, no medicine to take, no weapon against it, no way to stop it, no choice… To the accidental onlooker it could look as if she was having severe epileptic fits.
But maybe she could use it to her advantage. She would need to think about that. Maybe there would be some knowledge or strength she may be able to glean from it, from the experience, from wrestling with it.
She perhaps could glean some insight into her enemy’s mind and use the connection when it occurred to sabotage her enemy, to feed her enemy wrong information. She had to learn how to control it, how to initiate the connection and how to break it. She did not want to be surprised by it when it decided to pay her a visit and to wait for that moment to use it.
She had to turn that connection into a reliable tool and, perhaps, weapon to serve the cause of the Order of Vlachernae.
And now she had rediscovered her sister. She felt that the two sisters were two sides of the same coin.
CHAPTER 55
Ten thousand metres above the Aegean Sea, Greece
Present day
It was in the plane going back to Cyprus from Le Mirabel that they began to discuss their next steps. They knew they had to move quickly.
The Ruinands and the Marcquesa would not be far behind. They had their own spies. And there was the small matter of the traitor.
Elli thought of Iraklios and she was about to dismiss it when Katerina turned to her.
‘Elli, we know who the traitor is.’ Elli looked at her with blank eyes as if her mind was still somewhere else or was refusing to obey her and open up to hear the truth she feared. ‘In fact my parents can confirm it.’ She turned to her parents who were only now slowly coming out of their nightmare of the last twenty-four hours. ‘Dad?’
‘Elli, it’s Iraklios.’ Andros Markantaskis said, his voice and his face shouting his sadness loud and clear.
‘No.’ A small word full of anguish. Her inscrutability mask slipped, a rare event indeed. But she knew it to be true. She realised she had known for some time, but refused to believe it.
Then, not fully recovered yet, but loath to waste time in self-indulgent grief and soul-searching, determination brightly coloured her voice and she spoke.
‘We need to get back to the organisation of the mission. Tomorrow is the 21 ^st May, the day of Saint Konstantinos and Santa Eleni, and the crucial date for carrying out the ceremony. There may not be another opportunity for who knows how long.’ Her eyes fell on Giorgos. ‘Now, Giorgos, you can access your hard drives from that panel over there. Download all the relevant material. And don’t worry. The encryption and security equipment here is better than that of any secret service or software company in the world. Vasilis will show you how to use it.’ She looked at Vasilis who nodded. ‘Do you have scans of the scroll?’
‘Yes. I’ll get them too.’ Giorgos said and swiftly moved into action.
‘Good. It should not take you more than ten minutes, right?’
‘Yes, that should be enough time to have everything.’
‘Excellent. We’ll start then. I think we could all do with a little time to recover even if we cannot afford any.’
About twenty-five minutes later Giorgos was ready with all the material printed out. He distributed folders.
‘Take a few minutes to familiarise yourselves with the material.’