Blagoy
Sobriquet:
Appearance:
Behavior: The barber-surgeon is by turns taciturn or given to a dark humor. He seems equally happy reading the works of ancient surgeons in silence or carving the flesh of the wounded amid a battle. In both cases he is a cold, hard man who never gives in to doubt or fear, for he knows there is nothing he cannot accomplish if he turns his mind to the task. He tends to have little need of company or conversation, for he can often be found talking or laughing to himself. When he does have need of other people he can be so direct as to be curt and his laconic manner makes him few friends, but he finds no lack of employment for his keen eye and steady hands.
History: Blagoy was born in the Bulgarian city of Philippopolis (Plovdiv) in the later years of the reign of the King Peter I. He was born the son of a low ranking soldier and a peasant woman. His father Zhivko took pains to have his son educated by priests and to indenture Blagoy to a barber-surgeon attached to the castle at Philippopolis. The boy had an excellent mind, but a bad temper and his education with the priests was cut short in the hopes that the local surgeon could teach the boy with less difficulty.
Master Boris was not only a barber-surgeon, he was also a sorcerer of the darker variety, a necromancer. Had Blagoy's father known or guessed, he would never have turned the boy over to a death-witch, but the matter was settled when the Kievan Prince Sviatoslav invaded the Bulgarian Empire. In early 970, the Rus army crossed the Balkan Mountains and stormed the city, of those who failed to flee, twenty-thousand were impaled.
Master Boris remained as the castle's barber-surgeon and young Blagoy was greatly affected when his master took him to see the forest of corpses. Boris had remained because he understood that something of this sort would occur, that while common people, merchants and nobles might be massacred, a barber-surgeon and his apprentice were too valuable to the Kievan army. In return for small favors, the Kievan forces provided the necromancer all the bodies he needed for his experiments and studies. Master Boris took Blagoy to see the forest of corpses as a lesson to the boy on the importance of remaining useful, thereafter the boy's temper cooled considerably and he became an ideal apprentice to the necromancer.
Blagoy never saw his father or mother again, perhaps they were part of the forest of dead or perhaps they fled the city in advance of the Kievan Rus. Master Boris was not a cruel master and in time Blagoy came to love the older man and his necromancy. Master Boris taught Blagoy everything he knew about both barber-surgery and necromancy.
When Master Boris' health began to fail, he carried out, one more experiment, he tried to bind his spirit into his dying body according to an ancient Greek ritual he had purchased from a Byzantine book seller. The idea was that the ritual would allow Master Boris’ spirit to animate his dead body and thus allow him to pass through death to continue his studies. Blagoy as his apprentice was honor-bound to aid him in this difficult ritual and like the forest of corpses, it would haunt him the rest of his life.
The ritual was begun with the fall of dark on the winter solstice in the year of the lord 985. Boris had Blagoy tie his naked old body to a large grave-stone and instructed the young man in the necessity of torturing him to death. In the beginning, Boris made not a sound as Blagoy made the necessary cuts, but sometime after midnight the old man broke and began screaming with each stroke of the blade. After each outburst he seemed to feel shame at his own human weakness and begged Blagoy to continue the ritual. Blagoy summoned every bit of his discipline and nerve to finish the ritual before the rising of the sun, when the ritual would automatically fail. Despite all his efforts, Master Boris wasn't strong enough to survive the ritual and died shortly before dawn.
That morning, Blagoy walked out into the dawn light and dry vomited. He had just brutally murdered his friend and mentor in the worst imaginable way. Then he went to his bed and wept himself to sleep. He was awakened hours later by the soft, dry rasping of his former master's voice. The room was empty, he searched it and the rest of the tower-sanctum, but found no one. Later, with the fall of night, the voice returned to tell Blagoy that he wasn't mad, that the ritual had succeeded, just not the way Boris had imagined. The master spoke of having become a disembodied spirit, a ghost that could walk among men and through walls with equal ease. The voice was kind, it soothed Blagoy's burning guilt over an imagined wrong. Quite the opposite, his dead master thanked him for all his efforts and revealed that they could continue to study together for many more years.
Despite this, the master warned that Blagoy must dispose of his corpse and all evidence of the ‘ritual', lest Blagoy be punished for a perceived murder. Understanding penetrated Blagoy’s exhausted mind and with the help of his master’s voice, he sorted all the important texts and necessary ingredients out, packing them for a long journey. But before he could leave, his master made of him one last request, that he destroy the old man’s body and the tower-sanctum with fire, and take the bones with him where ever he might go. Blagoy agreed and burned everything as asked; when the fire finally died down, he retrieved his dead master’s bones and placed them in an ornate brass box that he packed on his master’s old horse and rode away into the night.
Fifteen years has passed since that long ago night and Blagoy Zhivkov is now both, a master barber-surgeon and a master necromancer. His skills have far surpassed his old master and despite the urgings of Boris' spirit he has yet to select an apprentice of his own. He is now a resident of the city of Alba Iulia and serves the Hungarian army as his master did the Bulgarians.
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