The Scrolls of the Ancients

CHAPTER

Thirty-one

T he darkness was impenetrable; there was absolutely no sound. For all the lead wizard knew, this place could be either very small, or endless. Uncertain what might lie beneath them, he dared not release the spell that kept him hovering in the air. Floating weightless, all of his senses deprived, Wigg wondered if this was what it was like to be dead.

He could not see his own hand before his face. Only the familiar squeak of Faegan's chair, caused by the crippled wizard's turning it in an attempt to look around, told Wigg that he was not alone.

As Faegan raised his hand to produce some light, the Paragon hanging around his neck began to glow, just as it had done earlier. It flooded the room with its vibrant, red illumination.

The stone chamber in which they found themselves was quite unremarkable. One might even have called it disappointing. It seemed to be little more than a small, square room cut out of the rock, with a matching stone floor and a rather low ceiling. Looking at each other in silent agreement, they gratefully lowered themselves.

When they touched ground, an azure beam shone from the ceiling, illuminating a hole in the floor. They went to it and looked down. It was the opening to a circular stairwell that was barely large enough for Faegan's chair to pass through. It wound its way down into utter darkness.

Taking a deep breath, Wigg looked over at Faegan. "After you?" he said dryly.

Pursing his lips, Faegan looked tentatively down the hole, then seemed to make up his mind. Levitating his chair, he lowered himself into the depths, the wheels narrowly scraping their way by on either side. With a sigh and a concerned shake of his head, Wigg began following Faegan down.

The winding staircase was very small and cramped, lined by walls of solid stone that added greatly to the sense of confinement. It was exactly like being trapped in a cramped, stone tube. Like Tristan, the lead wizard hated being closed in. The farther down he went, the greater his sense of foreboding became. The air grew cold and smelled increasingly damp and musty.

After a while Wigg looked up, trying to gauge how far they had come. He paused, taken aback.

The opening to the stairwell was gone, replaced by another ceiling of solid rock, just inches above the top of his head. In fact, the length of circular stairway they had just descended was gone, too. A solid stone wall had silently materialized only inches behind him, blocking their way back. Between the cramped ceiling, rear wall, and sidewalls, he could extend his hand no more than half a meter in any direction other than downward. The red light from the Paragon around Faegan's neck cast eerie, sharp shadows against the unforgiving barriers and added greatly to the suffocating sense of helplessness.

Wigg felt like a trapped rat. Despite the coolness of the air, he broke out in a sweat, his sense of dread growing by the moment. Looking forward, he saw Faegan continue down the staircase, apparently quite unaware of their predicament.

Wigg took another tentative step down the stairs. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the wall just behind him silently, quickly advance by the exact length of the step, while the ceiling closed in by the same margin. And the step he had last stood on had disappeared, leaving only the one he was now occupying and those that lay below him. Someone or something had taken great pains to make sure the two wizards could continue their trek in only one direction: downward.

"I think you had best see this," Wigg said to Faegan as calmly as he could.

The elder wizard turned in his chair and immediately understood the dilemma. His face darkened with worry. But for once he said nothing, and simply turned back around. With no other course of action possible, the two wizards continued downward, into the bowels of the earth.

After what seemed an eternity, they exited at last into another simple, square room of stone. This one was even smaller than the first, and barely large enough to accommodate the two of them. There were no other doorways, or holes in the floor such as there had been in the other room now so far above them.

Suddenly a frightening thought occurred to the lead wizard, and he turned around to find his suspicions confirmed. The stairway they had just come down had vanished, filled in by the wall that had so ominously followed them in their descent. There remained no exit whatsoever, and their only source of light was the Paragon, which seemed to glow even more brightly as they waited.

The silence in the room was oppressive and the air was thin. Wigg tried not to think about the prospect of dying in this unforgiving fortress of stone.

Then a narrow line of azure appeared in the air before them. It snaked toward the wall they faced and pressed itself against the stone in the shape of a rectangle large enough for a person to pass through. The area within its borders began to glow. Then the glow faded, and the section of wall simply dissolved.

Where the stone wall had been stood a tall figure, unmoving, silent. A dark cloak covered the body, its hood pulled up over the head and face. In one of the hands was a long, gnarled wooden staff. Looking closer, Wigg noticed that the hand holding the staff was only a collection of bones.

Wigg finally found his voice. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I am the watchwoman of the floating gardens," the answer came back. It was a woman's voice. But its timbre was ancient, and her words seemed to fight and scratch their way across the distance between them. "But you come at a bad time, for the gardens are not what they once were."

Faegan wheeled his chair a bit closer. She remained motionless.

"And why is that?" he asked anxiously.

"First tell me," she said, "has there been a recent disturbance in the life of the stone?"

"Yes," Faegan answered. "The dead son of the Chosen One was returned from the heavens as a servant of the Heretics of the Guild. He tried to take all of the power of the Paragon into himself, so as to allow the Heretics to return here, to the land of the living. Only at the last moment were we able to stop him and return the power to the jewel of the craft, where it rightly belongs."

"So the Chosen Ones have finally come?" For several moments she did not speak, the silence in the chamber engulfing them all like a shroud. "Tell me," she went on at last, "are the Chosen Ones now the Jin'Sai, and the Jin'Saiou?"

"What are you talking about?" Faegan asked.

"So you do not know," the watchwoman said softly. "But one day you will. Finally, after eons of waiting, the progression toward joining the two sides of the craft can begin." Her voice was a mere whisper. "Perhaps the Vigors may triumph, after all." Silence reigned again for a time as the two stunned wizards tried to grasp the enormity of her words.

"You still have not told us about the state of the gardens," Wigg pressed. "Our need for your help is very great. Yet another threat to the Vigors walks the land, and has the potential to become the most potent danger we have ever faced."

The figure in the robe glided over to Faegan's chair. Reaching down to his chest with a skeletal hand, she picked up the Paragon and examined it closely. Even at this proximity, Faegan could see nothing within the dark confines of her hood. Finally she let go of the stone, allowing it to fall back into place.

"The gardens are not as they once were because all things of the craft take their sustenance from the power granted by the stone," she answered. "As the stone neared its death, so too did the gardens that I tend. They have only just begun to rejuvenate. Because of this, what you have traveled so far to find may no longer exist, but we shall try. What exactly is the nature of your request?"

"Agents of the Vagaries have mixed our stores of herbs and precious oils," Faegan explained. "They must be separated again, reclassified, and their potency revalued so that they might be employed by our herbmistress to use her gazing flame. The Chosen One is missing, and we must find him. We also seek the Scroll of the Vigors. Can you help us?"

Her answer was both frightening and immediate. "Do you mean to say that the Scrolls of the Ancients have been loosed upon the world?"

"Yes," Wigg answered. "Can you tell us why they are so important?"

"No," she told them, "for I have not been blessed with such knowledge. But I do know that the importance of the scrolls is on a par at least equal to that of both the Tome and the Paragon. For the Vigors to survive you must recover the scrolls at once, or all that we have worked for so long to preserve will perish."

"The Tome mentioned a psychic price to be paid for the knowledge that we seek," Faegan said cautiously. "What does that mean?"

"How long have each of you been alive?" she asked.

Confused, the two wizards looked at each other. "We are each more than three centuries old," Faegan answered honestly. "But why do you need to know?"

"Only three centuries," she mused. "Still so young. Mere children in the intricate tapestry that is the craft. Due to your youth, you may not possess the depth of experiences required to pay the price, and trying to do so might well cost you your lives."

"I don't understand," Wigg interjected. "What do our ages have to do with the psychic price that you demand?"

"To acquire what you seek, the price to be paid is not money nor other physical goods of any kind. The payment demanded is that one of you must leave behind a piece of your very soul. To do so, you must be forced to relive your greatest regret, as if you were experiencing it for the very first time. Therefore, the longer you have lived, the greater the chances that you possess regrets that will satisfy the price. As you make payment, the psychic pain you experience in your soul shall be accompanied by an equally severe, physical pain in your heart-the very seat of such regret. And should your endowed blood not be strong enough to persist, your heart will burst, and you will die. If that occurs, you will never leave this place. I realize your need is great. Therefore the price demanded shall be, also."

"How could you possibly know what each of our greatest regrets might be?" Faegan asked. "We might try to trick you."

"I do not need to know. Only you do."

"But why must we pay such an awful price?" Wigg asked. "Why can't you simply give us what we need? Are our goals not the same-the preservation of the Vigors?"

"That is not my place to say," she answered. "The Ones Who Came Before built these chambers and others like them before they perished, hoping they would be found by those who value only the Vigors, just as you obviously found both the Tome and the Paragon. But in their wisdom they also dictated the price to be paid, so that what might be given to you will not be taken lightly, or squandered. The nature of the price therefore demands that only those of exceptionally strong blood will prevail, and be able to use that which they have been given. As you will soon see, many of your kind have tried over the ages, and failed."

"Do those of the Vagaries know of these chambers?" Faegan asked, practically bursting with curiosity.

"That does not matter just now."

"Why not?"

"Because possession of the Paragon is required to enter, and you are its current wearer," she answered simply. "The others of your race who have come here seeking answers over the eons were, like you, in possession of the stone. It is hoped that finally, after all this time, the Chosen Ones will accomplish what so many others have failed to do, and at the same time will learn all that there is to know of what has gone before. And with that shall dawn a new age."

His eyes alive with questions, Faegan looked into the dark recesses of her hood. "Are you one of the Ones Who Came Before?" he breathed.

"I am, and I am not," she said cryptically. "I have been here in this place for eons, doing their bidding. As you can see, my flesh has fallen away, but my mind remains. But I will tell you that eons ago, I was a woman of the craft. Tell me, do women still practice the arts in the world above?"

"For a long time it was forbidden, but now there are again such women," Wigg answered. "They are known as the Acolytes of Fledgling House. But they are only newly trained, and remain scattered across the land. We would like to call them all home, but we do not know how."

The watchwoman remained still for a time as she considered his words. "If the threat to the Vigors is as great as you say, you will need these women in your service," she said. "I suggest you call them back immediately."

"But as I said," Wigg protested, "we don't know how."

"If you are able to find the Scroll of the Vigors, examine it carefully, looking for the formula that invokes the River of Thought," she told him.

"The River of Thought?" Faegan repeated. "What do you mean?"

"No more talk," she said flatly. "Your questions are legion, and I have accommodated you long enough. It is time for you to make your decision. Do you wish to pay the psychic price for what you seek? Understand that if you agree, and pass this portal into my world, you are bound by your blood to keep your end of the bargain. There can be no turning back."

Faegan looked up to Wigg with questioning eyes. After a long pause, the lead wizard nodded.

"We agree," Faegan said.

"Then follow me," the watchwoman ordered. Turning, she walked into the darkness.

Wigg and Faegan followed tentatively behind, wondering what lay waiting for them on the other side.