Path Of The Broken

4. Healers’ Records

4

Healers’ Records

Aaron sighed, pushing the reports he’d been studying to one side. If someone had told him as a junior healer that if he reached the giddy heights of Master he’d spend a great deal of time buried in reports, he would have laughed. Yet the life that many in the Guild would fight over, Master Healer in the king’s court, saw him spend the bulk of his time in paperwork and meetings. Hearing murmuring coming from the outer office, he wasn’t surprised to hear his door open.

“Sorry to disturb you, Aaron, the dispatch from the Guild that you asked for has arrived.” Cameron walked across the room and handed the sealed dispatch case to him.

Aaron took the case, seeing the unbroken seal of the Grand Guild Master of the Healers’ Guild and knowing what the content would be.

“Thank you, Cameron. If this is what I suspect it is, it’s the records I’ve been waiting for since Lord Kyle was drugged.”

Aaron waited as Cameron left his office and closed the door quietly behind him before using a small knife to break the seal. He untied the bindings on the satchel and flipped the bag open. He removed the leather-bound records with care from the bag and placed them on his desk. Each volume bore the old seal of the Grand Guild Master. The records they contained were old, from a time before the Sundered War. They had been locked under the Grand Guild Master’s seal and stored in the restricted archives. Given Aaron’s rank and position, he’d known of their existence, although he’d never had cause to study them—until he’d tested the drug used on Lord Kyle. The results came back showing him the toxin used was not the same as the old folk remedy used in villages near the Great Forest.

As he stared down at the volumes, he felt dread settle in his stomach. Delaying the inevitable for a few moments, he cleared the reports he’d been working on from his desk, placing them back in their file.

Not able to delay any more, he took his knife and broke the ancient Guild seal on the first volume. The existence of the scrolls was known to all the Master Healers on the Healers’ Guild’s Council. The contents of the sealed accounts had been subject to speculation among the Master Healers but none had felt the need to break the seals. If rumours were correct, the records detailed a failed medical trial by Healer Katrina Lawrence in the era leading up to the Sundered War. The Healers’ Guild at the time believed they had cause to conceal the accounts, however didn’t wish to destroy them in case the research, failed or otherwise, was needed in the future.

Pushing back the old metal latch, Aaron opened the leather cover, settled back and proceeded to read the reports and details of that lost time it contained.