"Well, if I tell it chronologically, it won't make a bloody lick of sense," Khaat sighed. "So, I'll see if I can't put the pieces together in the right order. There is someone quite sinister in the ministry who has apparently been working at this for awhile. I believe they've been calculating for quite awhile how to get this law set in place and to arrange it so that only my father can overturn it. And then they arranged for him to not be able to do so. There is someone making a bid for power in a most unusual way.
"While Thaor was still working as Deputy Minister, someone ambushed him in the Department of Mysteries. Cast a curse on him. That's when all his madness began. Near as we can figure, it was a year or two ago. That was when he stopped being loyal to my father and started all the criminal activity. We knew there was something wrong but Thaor went on the run, and we weren't able to help him.
"It was that curse that made him strike out to try to kill my father, and it nearly worked. We didn't understand it until the night Thaor died. But, Thaor had intended to simply use a killing curse. Instead, he misfired. Passed on his curse, in a way, to my father.
"The curse is totally unlike anything either he or I have ever seen. It is contagious--transferrable--to 'energy' workers---seers, healers, those who use their own body's magical energies. Thaor didn't know that either, but when he passed it onto my father, he buggered it up. So, not only is it a curse that we haven't been able to identify or understand, but its buggered. It doesn't work like it should. And that makes it almost impossible to research or get rid of.
"Its made him mute. He cannot speak. It amplifies every one of his emotions and makes him violent at times and completely unpredictable. He isn't able to stop himself from the violence--no matter who he might be acting out against."
"Almost," Michael corrected. "We do know his mind is as sharp as it ever was. He understands that just as the curse was passed to him, he could pass it on to any fellow healer or seer just by touching them. What makes him the most violent is if any energy worker attempts to touch him or even go near him for any reason.
"I've always thought there was some level of constant physical pain that he feels he's not admitting it. He would far rather take the curse to his grave than to pass it on to anyone else."
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