Spear of Destiny: Vash's Past

Vash sighed, and closed his eyes to try and gather his words. He was silent for nearly a minute before he began to speak. “I was born in the plateau country about a week’s ride south-east of Doba, the town which is the center of Tuun life in Vlachia. My family was wealthy, with a thousand head of cattle, and my mother was a strong woman who managed everything with kindness and competence. She had four husbands, with three children by two of them: me, my little sister Saaba, and my elder sister… Irina.”

He paused after speaking her name, grimacing like a man with a stomach ache.

"Saaba was a gentle girl. Full of energy and very playful. I loved her fiercely," he continued. "But Irina was never quite right in the head.”

"What was wrong with her?" I asked.

“Early in her life, she was prone to wild fancies and extremes of emotion. If she hurt herself, she howled like a stricken wolf. If something upset her, she would cry and scream until she vomited. If she was happy, she’d become manic, unable to sleep. She was violently angry if you were not as happy as she was," Vash said. His eyes grew distant as he spoke. "She was very violent. She once bit my mother on the face so hard she bled."

"Like... as a toddler?"

"No. As a girl of twelve," Vash replied. "But it gets worse. Around the time she started her moonblood, she began to hear voices and see terrible visions. Horrifying, twisted visions, hallucinations so overwhelming that she would claw at her skin, pull her clothes off, and attack creatures who were not there. She became paranoid of us all, convinced that we would attack her and murder her. Her violence became not only frightening, but dangerous."

“Schizophrenia, maybe?” I glanced at the web of scars that divided Vash's face. He might have been handsome once, in a wolfish kind of way. Someone had smashed an axe into his face six or seven times and left the front of his skull crazed like a broken mirror. I was starting to figure who it might have done it.

"Who knows? Regardless, my parents and grandparents were devastated. Irina was the family heir, and she was unmarriageable. They did not believe it was an illness. We were very rural, our family very traditional, and so my Namaan did not believe that Irina could possibly be sick with an illness. There were two possible answers: either she was possessed by demons, or she was a shaman. A young shaman who desperately required the guidance of a master."