The Fifth Sorceress

1

The succession oath played over and over again in his head like a bad nursery rhyme. He couldn’t get it out of his mind no matter what else he thought about. No matter how hard he tried. That was why he had come this morning to his favorite place.

To be alone in the Hartwick Woods.

He reached behind his right shoulder for another throwing knife, gripping its handle automatically and smoothly bringing his right arm up and over in a swift circle, releasing the blade in yet another trajectory. It twirled unerringly toward the target he had carved in the huge old oak tree. And as he now stood looking at the blade that lay buried next to the others he had thrown, he knew that the fact it would accurately find its mark had been a foregone conclusion.

He had been doing this all morning. His right arm was sore, his body and face were covered in a light sheen of sweat, and he was dirty from head to toe.

He didn’t care.

He pushed the comma of longish black hair back from his forehead and ran his hand through it to where it grew long down the back of his neck. Looking down at his clothes, he suddenly realized just how filthy he really was. He was wearing what he always wore when he came up here: the black leather knee boots and trousers, with the simple black vest that laced in the front across his bare chest. The vest that always allowed plenty of free arm movement for his practice with the knives.

True peace of mind comes only when your heart and actions are aligned with true principles and values. I shall forsake not, to the loss of all material things…

He watched the next knife wheel toward the target, swiftly burying itself alongside the ones already there.

Prince Tristan the First of the House of Galland, heir apparent to his father, King Nicholas the First of the kingdom of Eutracia, stood alone in the woods, practicing with his knives and thinking over what his future was about to bring. In thirty days he was to become king of Eutracia, succeeding his father to the throne at the occasion of his father’s abdication ceremony. It always occurred on the thirtieth birthday of the king’s firstborn son, and had been a joyous custom of Eutracia for over the last three hundred years, ever since the end of the Sorceresses’ War. But there were no more sorceresses in Eutracia to fight, and peace and prosperity had reigned ever since—in no small part due to the continual guidance given to the reigning king by the Directorate of Wizards. But there was just one problem.

He wasn’t looking forward to his thirtieth birthday.

And he didn’t want to be king.

He also did not wish to be counseled by wizards for the remainder of his life. No matter how he tried, he just couldn’t get the truth of his feelings out of his head. Nor could he forget the oath that the old ones would make him take at the ceremony when he succeeded to the throne. He would then be forced to follow in the footsteps of his father until his firstborn son turned thirty years old. He sighed. He didn’t have any sons yet.

He didn’t even have a wife.

Another throwing knife whistled through the air, clanking into place alongside its brothers in the battered and gnarled old tree.

Panting lightly, he reached over his shoulder for one more from the specially designed quiver that lay across his right shoulder blade, but found it empty. His face sullen, he walked slowly to the oak to recover his knives. He had chosen this tree because it was the one closest to the sheer rock face of the cliff, its branches reaching out into space over the valley. That meant that whenever he missed, his knives would fly over the steep precipice and be lost forever. Proper punishment for a bad throw, he thought. And he had been throwing for over three hours now.

None of them had gone over the side.

Now standing at the very edge of the cliff, he took the time to wipe the sweat from around his eyes and slowly leaned one arm against the nearest branch of the tree. He looked down toward Tammer land, the city of his birth, and to the Sippora River, which snaked through the city on its way to the Cavalon Delta at the east coast, where the great river lazily released itself into the Sea of Whispers. Tammerland, the capital city of Eutracia, lay peacefully along either side of the Sippora’s banks. He could see the royal palace easily from here because of its strategic placement upon higher ground and because of the brightly colored flags that flew from its towers and ramparts. And he could also pick out the markets and squares of the city that surrounded it. They would be teeming with life this time of day. He smiled, imagining the mothers and daughters at market, haggling with the vendors for the ingredients of their families’ evening meals. But his smile faded. His evening meal would be taken as usual with his parents, twin sister, and brother-in-law in the great dining hall of the palace. He loved them all very much, but they would be angry with him tonight—and their criticisms were something he would rather avoid. Perhaps he would take a simple evening’s meal tonight in the kitchen with the staff, as he was so fond of doing these days. Somehow those people always seemed so much more real to him.

He had defiantly ignored his requisite daily classes with the wizards to come here today, and to be alone. They were all probably out looking for him right now, but they would be wasting their time. This place was almost impossible to find. He sighed in resignation as he pulled the knives from the tree. Unstrapping the quiver from around his chest, he draped it over his left shoulder, replacing the dirks one by one until they were arranged to his liking.

This art of the knives, at least, was his and his alone. He had designed the quiver himself, along with the throwing knives. The palace leathersmith and blacksmith had only been too happy to help the prince with their construction. The black leather baldric went comfortably around and under each of his armpits, and the quiver joined to his vest in the back with a silver buckle, securely holding up to a dozen of the special throwing knives just behind his right shoulder.

Then had come the hours and hours of practice, which at first had been very defeating. He had foolishly begun in the military training yards, in full view of the Royal Guard. He had realized immediately that this was a mistake, as he had watched so many of his early throws bounce harmlessly off their target. So, to avoid embarrassment, he had taken his practice to the woods. That had been seven years ago, and he had come to the forest virtually every afternoon since, after his daily classes with the wizards were over. No one had seen him throw a dirk since that day he left the courtyard, and know one knew the expert that he had become.

Sometimes instead of just practicing, he walked through the woods quietly in search of game. Bringing down larger animals was difficult, and meant a well-thrown head shot was usually needed. It was something that required even greater skill if the animal was moving, but now even moving targets had become little challenge for him. The largest game he had ever killed had been a hugely antlered stag. After killing it with a single throw to the head, he had neatly quartered the animal in the woods and given the meat to the townspeople living at the edge of the forest—the forest that had become his second home.

But his most dangerous quarry had been a large, charging wild boar. They were prevalent in the Hartwick Woods, and it was not uncommon to hear of the occasional hunting party that had lost a member to the awful cloven hooves and sharp, curved tusks before it could be killed. He had come upon the creature unknowingly, and the kill had become necessary rather than voluntary. Tristan’s boar had stood across an open field from him, snorting and glaring with enraged eyes. The prince had remained motionless until the awful thing had begun its charge. His right arm had then become a curved blur of speed as the whirling dirk cleaved the boar’s skull directly between the eyes, stopping it dead in its tracks only ten feet from where Tristan held his ground. He had left the carcass to rot in the field, thankful that he had made a good throw. He probably wouldn’t have gotten another.

Still gazing down at Tammerland, once again leaning against the outstretched tree branch and lost in his memories, he didn’t hear the thing that came up behind him before it was too late. Without warning, he was violently pushed forward from behind.

Out into the air and over the cliff.

Instinctively, his right arm wrapped around the tree limb while his left arm held the quiver to his shoulder. He frantically hung by one arm, swinging crazily in the air, at least a thousand feet above the valley floor. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut down the fear, trying not to look down.

Someone had just tried to kill him, and looking down would be the completion of a death sentence.

Using his left hand, he placed the quiver strap around his neck. He was then able to bring both hands to the limb. His strength was beginning to ebb, but the old limb, at least for the time being, was holding his weight.

I thank the Afterlife, his terrified mind shouted.

Carefully, one hand after the other, he began to reverse direction on the limb to face his attacker. As he came around, he wondered if he would be able to hold on with only his left hand and secure and throw a dirk with his right at the same time. He would without question kill the person who was standing there before he swung himself back to the cliff.

If he could swing himself to the cliff.

As his body came around, he managed to hang on with his left hand and take a dirk with his right, praying he would be able to throw it without losing his grip. The limb bending and straining under his weight, he quickly finished the turn, bringing both his weapon and his eyes up to kill whoever it was that had tried to murder him.

It was his horse.

Pilgrim, his dappled gray stallion with the white mane and tail, stood at the edge of the cliff, looking at him with spirited, huge black eyes. The horse pawed the ground twice with his left front hoof and snorted softly at him, as if he had already put up with quite enough of Tristan’s foolishness and was more than ready to go back to the stables. Nudging Tristan from the back had been one of his favorite habits ever since he was a colt. But this spot had definitely not been the place for it.

Tristan hung in stark terror a thousand feet above the surface of the valley from a lone tree branch, slowly losing his strength. Carefully managing to replace the dirk in his quiver and his right hand upon the branch, he looked tentatively to the left where the limb joined the trunk, trying to see if it was dried or decayed. He groaned inwardly when he saw the dry crack, and there was no way to tell if it was strong enough for what he had planned. He couldn’t simply stretch his legs to the cliff. It was too far away. He would have to swing his body back and forth to gain the momentum to reach the ledge. It was the only way. Slowly, his eye on the crack, he began to swing from his arms the same way he had seen the court acrobats do so many times before, the bark starting to painfully twist off in his hands. Each time he swung his outstretched legs a little harder. Each time a little more bark came off in his now-raw palms. Each time a little more sweat began to flow into his eyes. And each time he had a little less strength.

The crack split open another inch.

Just two more swings should do it, he prayed. ,’ beg the Afterlife, just two more.

His release from the branch on the second swing came at the precise moment the crack split all the way open, the shards of the joint becoming a twisted, tortured rope of exposed wood. He flew through the air toward the cliff, his face finally striking the end of Pilgrim’s muzzle as the horse bolted backward in surprise. Tristan went down hard on one knee, the momentum carrying him over on his back, finally hitting the back of his head hard upon the ground.

Moments later, dazed, his eyes out of focus and his face strangely wet, he raised his hand to check his face for blood. There was none. The twisted and torn tree limb lay innocently upon his lap, and he tossed it to one side.

He wanted to kiss the ground.

Pilgrim’s lips once more nuzzled his master’s face. The stallion had definitely had enough of this and wanted to go home. Tristan sat up, looking at the impatient Pilgrim, and began to laugh softly, then harder, finally bursting with the sheer joy of being alive. He laughed at himself harder still, imagining the looks on the faces of all six wizards of the Directorate when they realized they had no king to fill the throne at the abdication ceremony. He still didn’t want to be king, but there had to be an easier way out of it all than this. And in truth he loved to tease them, but he didn’t want to die doing it. At least he had temporarily forgotten their ridiculous oath.

He slowly stood, wondering if anything was broken, and collected the scattered dirks. He was all right, but he would be sore for a week. When he placed his hands to either side of Pilgrim’s muzzle, the horse flinched his head to one side in pain. The stallion’s nose would be sore for a while, also. Served him right. Putting his arms around the horse’s neck and his mouth against the animal’s ear, he smiled.

“Next time we come up here, if you don’t behave yourself I shall have to tie you to a tree,” he said gently.

Pilgrim whinnied softly and brushed the longish center of his dappled head against the prince’s shoulder.

Tristan glanced to the left across the open glade to where he had hung the saddle and bridle over a convenient tree limb. Upon arriving he always took the saddle and bridle off, allowing the horse to roam freely. Pilgrim never went far, and had been trained from a colt to always return at Tristan’s first whistle. The prince hobbled stiffly across the clearing, removing the saddle and saddlebag from the tree, placing them on the soft grass in the shade. Looking up at the sun, he saw it was now early afternoon.

He removed his quiver and lay down in the grass with his saddle as a pillow. Reaching into one of the saddlebags, he pulled out a pair of carrots.

Upon hearing Tristan’s whistle, the stallion trotted over immediately. He carefully took the outstretched carrot from his master’s hand with his long, uniform teeth and munched contentedly, watching the prince eat his. This was another of one of their little rituals, and sometimes there was some carrot left over. Deciding he wasn’t really hungry anyway, Tristan offered the last half to the stallion. Pilgrim bent his head down and nuzzled Tristan’s face again, this time unceremoniously leaving little bits of wet carrot all over it. Tristan laughed a little, wiping off his face. He would have laughed harder, but his ribs were beginning to hurt.

“Go away,” he said. “I know I need a bath, but I don’t want it coming from you.”

Retrieving yet another carrot from the bag, Tristan slowly drew it before Pilgrim’s nostrils and then promptly threw it to the other side of the clearing. He smiled as the stallion ran off after it anxiously, his head and tail held high. Tristan’s previous mount, a mare, had died giving birth to Pilgrim after having been bred by one of the finest studs in the kingdom. From that moment on, the young prince and colt had been inseparable. Sometimes the horse seemed to be the best friend he’d ever had. Next, of course, to his twin sister Shailiha, and Wigg, Lead Wizard of the Directorate. He lay back down on the grass and watched the clouds go by. An odd one came into view, rather crookedly reminiscent of the old wizard’s profile, and he smiled.

Wigg, his mentor and friend. Lead Wizard, and therefore assumed by many to be the most learned and powerful of the Directorate. And the one he most enjoyed poking fun at. Wigg would be angry with him beyond all reason. But the thought of the six wizards of the Directorate seeing him hanging over a cliff so close to the abdication ceremony started him laughing all over again. King Tristan the First, Lord of the Swinging Tree Branches, he thought to himself. He laughed aloud until the recurring fire in his ribs forced him to stop.

Still looking at the sky, his mind drifted to the Directorate as a whole. The Directorate of Wizards, endowed advisors to the reigning king of Eutracia. He envisioned each of their faces in turn. Wigg, Egloff, Tretiak, Slike, Killius, and Maaddar. The ancient heroes who had been responsible for bringing victory in the Sorceresses’ War of so long ago. They were all over three hundred years old, two of them now over four hundred, each protected from the ravages of old age by the esoteric enchantments they themselves had conjured near the end of the insurrection. The enchantments were effective only upon those with endowed blood, and had been instrumental in the final victory. Their use was reserved exclusively for the Directorate of Wizards and the reigning king if he so chose; not even the lesser rural wizards could avail themselves of the health-sustaining incantations known as time enchantments. That was as much as Tristan knew.

But what he did know as a certainty was that on his thirtieth birthday, Tristan’s father would abdicate and join the Directorate, making seven. Then Nicholas’ life, also, would be protected by the time enchantments, as well as by the powerful jewel called the Paragon that so augmented the exceptional power of the wizards of the Directorate. Tristan’s mother Morganna would therefore sadly but gracefully die before her husband, leaving him to a life of perpetuity with the Directorate.

And Tristan would rule.

He sighed. He had to admit that he loved them all, despite how much fun he made of it. But it did little to increase his desire to be king.

The Directorate’s first order of business after Tristan became king would be to try to influence him to take a queen, hoping for the birth of a son to succeed him in thirty years, whereupon Tristan would join the Directorate with his father. At the end of the Sorceresses’ War, the Directorate had selected a well-respected citizen of endowed blood to become the first Eutracian king, a new government had been formed, and the process had led on from there. By tradition, if the reigning king had no sons, another endowed citizen was selected, and the process began anew. And so it had gone for over three hundred years of peace and prosperity. It had always been the choice of the abdicating monarch to decide whether or not to join the Directorate, and thereby receive training in the craft and be protected by the time enchantments. Until Tristan’s father, none had chosen to do so, preferring to die of old age with their queens.

In addition to this precedent-setting decision, Nicholas had been the first and only king to preannounce the fact that his son would also join the Directorate when his time came. And although the young prince had questioned and protested the decision many times, he was told by the Directorate and his father only that this was the way it must be. He had heard a rumor once that the decision had been made at the exact moment of his birth, but anytime he had asked his parents or the wizards about it, they had given him no reply. Finally, he had stopped arguing and glumly accepted his fate.

As Tristan continued to watch the sky, his mind turned from affairs of state to affairs of the heart. Even though he didn’t have a wife—he should soon say “queen,” he reminded himself—there had nonetheless been many women in his life. He sighed. Far too many, according to his parents. Even his twin sister Shailiha, his most staunch defender of what some would call his recent disregard for his royal duties and responsibilities, had begun to criticize him about his romantic dalliances.

But the prince had always been kind to those women who hoped to capture his heart. Because of his good looks and royal position, the realm was positively overflowing with women who were more than willing to try. Sometimes, during his public appearances at court, he couldn’t decide which flapped faster, their batting eyelashes or the unfolded fans that each of them always seemed obligated to flutter while trying to cool the quick blush of their cheeks. Many, to the increasingly obvious chagrin of both his family and the Directorate, had ended up in his bed.

But he had never fallen in love.

None of the women he had encountered so far had moved him to the point of wanting more than a brief dalliance. It wasn’t that he was cold or uncaring toward them. He treated them kindly, and always ended his affairs like a gentleman. That was simply his nature. He laced his fingers behind his sore head, cushioning it from the saddle, and watched as a particularly interesting cumulus floated over. Reminding himself that at least there had been no scandalous pregnancies, he sighed.

Sadly, it was just that no woman had ever really made him ache in her absence to the point of distraction, or hunger in her presence to the point of pain. Deeper, in his heart of hearts, he truly hoped that one day it would be different. Secretly, he wished that he could be as happy as his sister. Shailiha was his elder, something that she was overly fond of teasing him about. He was equally fond of teasing her back, claiming that even though she had preceded him into this world by only eight minutes, one day he would be king and have dominion over her. But truthfully he wished his life were more like hers. She was very happily married to Frederick, commander of the Royal Guard, one of Tristan’s best friends. And she was now five and a half months pregnant, the entire royal family and court excitedly awaiting the blessed event. But most of all he envied the fact that she would never have to rule. He smirked upward at the afternoon sky. At least his parents, King Nicholas and Queen Morganna, had raised one heir that pleased them.

Then, sadly, there was also the matter of his studies and royal duties as prince.

He had been educated in all matter of things his entire life by the wizards in preparation for his succession of his father as king. And although the realm had been at peace for over three centuries and had acquired no foes since, he had also been scrupulously trained in the art of war by the Royal Guard. After the Sorceresses’ War, the Directorate had wisely vowed never to allow the nation’s guard down again. Operating under the assumption that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, they had decreed that the history of the war be taught to each and every Eutracian schoolchild, and a term of service in the Royal Guard be mandatory for each able-bodied man in the kingdom, with the option of choosing it as a life’s career. Plaques and monuments, almost always of the finest marble, dotted the countryside at the sites of many of the most important battles of the war. They were at the same time both sad and greatly respected places, as most of them marked the scenes of the massacres of long-since dead wizards and their slaughtered troops. Therefore, by tradition, the Royal Guard stood vigilantly at the ready to defend the realm against any potential threat, training relentlessly toward that end. But Tristan was sure that during his reign, as had been true for so long now, he would never have to call upon them for any reason.

Especially the defense of the realm.

He yawned, running his fingers again back through the longish black hair and over the painful bump that had resulted from his leap back to the cliff. Once he was king, the wizards would probably make him cut his hair in a more appropriate style. And then, when he eventually joined the Directorate, they would have him grow the customary wizard’s tail of braided hair down the back of his neck. Depressed, he realized that all he had ever wanted was to have a normal life, but it had never been allowed him. Nor would it ever be.

The classroom training that had come to him from the wizards had been presented in many forms. Eutracian history and civics, basic laws of the realm, reading and writing the language, and so on. Following that had come studies in the kingdom’s culture: her music, literature, and the arts. Then had come the requisite training in the negotiation and arbitration of the endless requests and bickering between the dukes who represented the seven different duchies that made up the kingdom and contributed to her welfare with their taxes. Politics was not his strong suit, and he still had much to learn, with very little time remaining in which to learn it. He reflected glumly upon the wisdom of taking an entire day away from his studies to come up here, only to lie in the luxurious grass of a high mountain glade. The back of his head was now throbbing badly. Perhaps overall he had done himself more harm than good today.

But his smile returned when he thought about the other side of his training—the physical side. His education with the Royal Guard had been his one true love, and he had, at the great pride of his drill officers, excelled at almost everything. Swordsmanship, archery, dagger use, horsemanship, hand-to-hand combat, and survival skills, among many other things. These had made up the basic war education in which he had found the most joy.

He could still remember his father’s thunderous voice castigating him when, at eighteen years of age, he had asked to be relieved of his duties as prince and be given a commission in the Royal Guard, instead. And despite his father’s rebuke, Tristan had foolishly continued to press him to honor his request. It was only when his father had finally taken him aside into the ornate anteroom of the royal quarters and spoken to him in private that he had finally understood. That was the day he had learned that his mother, Queen Morganna, had almost died while giving life first to his twin sister, and then to him. As a result, she could bear no more children. Therefore, because of Nicholas’ unprecedented desire to join the Directorate and to be followed by his only son Tristan, the young man’s fate was sealed first as prince, then king, and finally as a wizard of the Directorate itself.

It was the only time in his life that he had seen his father cry.

Crying, trying to make his son understand.

And so he had cooperated, abjectly resigning himself to the fate that was to be his, taking as much joy as possible in the physical side of his training and unhappily but stoically enduring his academic studies and position at court as best he could. But over the last few years, something had changed. Sometimes he could now feel the power of the endowed blood coursing through his veins. He shook his head in consternation. Endowed blood, he thought to himself. That which allows the learning of the craft.

At times it seemed that his blood had a life of its own, streaming anxiously through his body and brain as if begging him to hurry through his reign so as to finally begin his wizard’s training with the Directorate and bring the power forth. And when this feeling came upon him, as it seemed to do so often of late, nothing else in the world made him feel so alive. But no matter how much he begged them, the wizards of the Directorate had adamantly refused his requests to train him in his power at this stage in his life. You must become king first, they had always said. They had openly admitted that none of them could remember any other royal heirs with endowed blood who had behaved quite like this at such an early age. And yet they had never explained either his unusually premature requests or their adamant refusals.

Tristan glanced back down from the sky, across the clearing and at the beauty that surrounded him. The Season of New Life was in full bloom, and was his favorite. It seemed to have come early to Eutracia this year, thankfully freeing the cities and countryside from the grip of the snow and the cold. Then followed the Season of the Sun, when all of the plants and crops started to mature, followed by the Season of Harvest, when the crops were picked before the cold winds and snow set in again. And finally came the Season of Crystal that blew snow and cold down upon the land from the high surrounding mountain ranges, finally giving way to allow the cycle to repeat.

He looked at the violet and blue leaves of the bugaylea trees that framed the clearing at the edge of the woods, as did the pink trillium blossoms that grew so thickly here, virtually covering the first few paces into the forest floor. A covey of rare, three-winged triad larks suddenly took flight from their nests high in the trees, each one’s trio of blue—and-white wings beating gracefully up and away against the sky as they called out to one another. It all reminded him of how much he wished his life at the royal residence could have this type of symmetry and simplicity. Each living being here in the Hartwick Woods seemed to know and, more importantly, accept its place in the Afterlife’s great plan. And then his eyes went wide, and the breath caught in his lungs. He couldn’t believe what was suddenly before him. It was a very rare occurrence to see them; most Eutracians went their entire lives enviously only hearing others describe their great beauty. Some claimed that they were only a myth. Still others declared that they had been created by the wizards and, as such, only those trained in the craft were able to see them. He held his breath and lay as still as death, so as not to frighten them away. For the first time in his life, he had the privilege of watching them dart to and fro in the warm afternoon sunshine.

The Fliers of the Fields.

Dozens of the giant butterflies soared and careened effortlessly on the afternoon breeze, each of their diaphanous wings as far across as a man’s forearm, the body and head delicately posed between them. They darted and swayed with such speed he couldn’t understand what kept them from colliding, but they never did. Red, green, blue, black, white, yellow, and violet, some a single hue and others multicolored, they flashed by unerringly over the fresh, green grasses of the clearing. To catch a quick glimpse of them once in a lifetime was miracle enough. But to see them now, for this long a time, was unheard of.

It was then that he saw Pilgrim at the other edge of the clearing, shaking his head and mane as he whinnied and pawed the ground. Without notice, Pilgrim abruptly charged into the center of the glade, clearly intrigued. The giant butterflies, instead of flying away in fear as had al ways been reported to be their nature, were now unmistakably teasing the horse. And Pilgrim was responding in kind, jumping, running, and bucking all over the field as the game progressed. The butterflies’ beauty was so great and the game so fascinating, Tristan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but laughter won as Pilgrim fruitlessly tried to catch them.

And then the giant butterflies were gone.

They careened away, leaving the clearing in a great, curving turn, flying single file into the woods with astonishing speed. It happened so quickly that it was almost as if they were of one mind. Then, to Tristan’s initial amusement, Pilgrim turned frantically after them, knocking down tree branches and making a noisy entrance into the woods. Tristan smiled, knowing the stallion would chase them for only a short distance into the forest and then finally turn back to his master.

But he didn’t.

He kept on going, finally out of sight.

Tristan stood up, ignoring his pain, the smile on his lips beginning to fade. He gave the customary whistle, but Pilgrim still did not appear. Concerned, he put two fingers into his mouth and whistled harder, but the horse was gone.

His mood now turning to genuine concern, Tristan pulled the bridle and reins from the tree branch and slung them across his shoulder. Then, clutching his quiver full of dirks, he began running across the field, toward the same spot where the Fliers of the Fields and the stallion had entered the forest.

He had to find the horse. Tristan’s trot broke into a full run as his worry increased. At least it was easy to follow the trail. The heavyset horse left shoe prints in the soft earth, not to mention the wide trail of crushed trillium blossoms.

A sudden, terrible thought seized him. Suppose he came upon Pilgrim and the stallion was injured? There were many burrowing creatures in these woods, and their entrance holes into the forest floor were numerous. If the unknowing stallion stepped into one, he would go over and down, breaking his leg like a dry twig. Worse yet, Tristan would have to put the horse to death, with no humane means to do it. Back in Tammerland if a horse went down, a wizard would be called upon to dissipate the animal’s mind into a painless, sudden death. But here, in these strange woods, he would somehow have to kill the horse himself, and all he had with him was his dirks—too small to do the job properly. It also frightened him to know that the edge of the cliff” ran parallel to the horse’s headlong run. In these dense woods, if the Fliers of the Fields changed course and suddenly flew out into the air over the cliff, the horse would not see the edge in time and run straight off. His mind sheered away from the images. They were too awful to contemplate.

Keep running, his frightened mind shouted to him. The trail exists and has not changed course. Pilgrim is all right.

He ran on, harder. At least another half league, he thought.

Tristan, his body now completely bathed in sweat, began to lose his bearings. Despite the shade from the dense trees, the forest seemed unusually hot. Fetid, heavily scented air made it difficult to breathe, and the undergrowth had become much thicker, branches and vines pulling at his hair and clothing like outstretched fingers, threatening to take him down. He realized suddenly that he had never entered this area of the forest before. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but the whole forest seemed unfamiliar and full of strange sensations. The bridle and reins were bouncing irritatingly across the back of his shoulder as he ran, and the pain in his legs was increasing, throbbing in unison with the quick beating of his heart.

He also had the chilling sensation that the harder he ran, the less progress he was making. He stopped and bent over, panting, trying to ease the fire in his lungs.

Standing still, he stole a precious moment to examine the forest more closely. Discouragingly, Pilgrim’s trail still led away, up a small rise a short distance away. As his breathing slowed, he looked about slowly.

He thought he must be hallucinating.

Everything in this part of the forest was giant in size. Unfamiliar-looking trees reached endlessly toward the sky, with branches so thick that the ground below was occasionally lost in virtual darkness. Shimmering slivers of prismed sunlight randomly found their way to earth as the breeze shifted the great branches overhead. It would have taken at least five men holding hands to surround even the smallest of these enormous, ancient trees, and each of their partially exposed and snaking roots were at least three times the width of his thigh. The pink trillium blossoms, normally about the size of his palm, were now the size of dinner plates, and vines as thick around as ale kegs hung from the great heights all the way to the ground.

The forest floor was like the deepest, most luxurious carpet of the royal palace, and everywhere the colors were indescribable. The reds, greens, and violets of the foliage somehow seemed to become even more luminous as random silver pillars of sunlight occasionally stabbed down at them. He took a deep breath through his nostrils; even the texture of the air had suddenly changed and now seemed perfumed, a wonderfully aromatic combination of scents. It was like walking into a dream.

Exhausted and dripping with sweat, he was amazed to see a nearby mushroom that was the size of a dinner table. He walked over and gently started to sit down. Unbelievably, it held his weight. He dropped the bridle on the soft forest floor and, still holding his quiver, tried to regain his breath.

Tristan once again looked up toward the path of widely spread foliage that marked the horse’s trail. It went about fifty paces forward in a basically straight line, leading up to a small rise and disappearing upon what appeared to be a plateaued clearing. He sighed, strapped the quiver in its usual place around and across his back, picked up the reins and bridle, and resignedly started up the trail. Too tired to run, he walked quickly to the top of the rise.

When he finally stood at the top, what he saw made his jaw drop. He was standing at the edge of a small circular clearing, bordered on all sides by tall trees with colorful foliage. Directly across from him on the other side of the glade was Pilgrim, standing dead still, intensely watching something. The horse looked calm and apparently unhurt, aside from some scrapes and scratches obtained during his frantic chase through the woods. His chest was heaving and dripping with sweat, and his muzzle was lathered with foam from the exertion of his run. And although Tristan was relieved to see him, it wasn’t the stallion that now so fascinated the prince. It was the butterflies.

Immediately next to where Pilgrim was standing at the edge of the clearing was a huge embankment. It stood strangely all upon its own, its right and left sides gently sloping down over some distance back to the level of the ground. Its edges were matted with the same pink trillium blossoms and soft, deep grasses that had covered the forest floor. Embedded in its center was a strange, square, gray shape that Tristan could not identify because it had long since been encroached upon and almost completely covered by odd, variegated vines. Had the butterflies not drawn the prince’s attention to it, he would surely never have noticed it at all.

Perched upon the vines, resting entirely at peace, were the Fliers of the Fields, their only movement the occasional gentle opening and closing of their wings.

Tristan approached Pilgrim slowly, placing the bridle over his head and the bit into the horse’s mouth. He led the stallion to the other side of the clearing and tied the reins securely around the branch of a tree. Pilgrim whinnied softly and once again pushed his head against his master as if apologizing for all the trouble that he had caused. The prince smiled and rubbed the horse’s ears.

Walking back to the embankment, Tristan gently approached the butterflies. He had never heard of anyone having the opportunity to see them motionless at such a close distance. As he came even closer, they remained quiet and clinging to the vines, their closeness to each other composing a riotous pattern of color. Strangely, they almost seemed to welcome his presence.

And then he watched one disappear.

Not fly away, but truly disappear, as if it had just melted into and become one with the embankment. He watched, fascinated, as the next one crept carefully upward to the exact same spot and disappeared as well. Stepping closer still, he realized that they were, in turn, folding their wings together and slowly slipping through a vertical gap in the gray expanse beneath the vines. He now also saw that the grayness was a man-made wall of fieldstone. It looked to be hundreds of years old. He watched in awe, as one by one the Fliers of the Fields disappeared through the gap in the stone wall. And then they were gone.

Tristan pushed aside some of the vines. The stone wall seemed to have been built without mortar. One narrow but rather tall stone had apparently loosened and fallen inward, allowing enough space for the Fliers of the Fields to enter.

Curious, he put one eye to the space but could see nothing beyond it. Inside, it was as dark as night. He selected a dirk from his quiver and tried to pry loose the stone to the right of the hole to get a better look. Even without mortar, it remained solidly in place. He removed the dirk and replaced it in the joint just below the same stone, and this time he thought he noticed it move a little bit. Bracing his legs and leaning forward at the waist, he put all his weight against the knife. The result was completely without warning.

An entire section of the wall collapsed inward, and Tristan fell forward into the dark emptiness with it. Except this time, there was no tree branch on the other side to save him. Nor was there any floor.

Down he fell, end over end, some of the loose stones following behind him into the pitch-black nothingness.

2

“I told you not to come.” The old wizard’s tone was not particularly polite. He did not mean it to be. “A woman in your condition should not be away from the palace midwives, much less sitting on top of a horse.”

He watched ruefully as she turned awkwardly in her sidesaddle, trying to become more comfortable as their horses, side by side, took them deeper into the woods. He had been present at her birth, and had watched her grow into the beautiful, strong-willed woman he now saw before him. The long blond hair framed an intelligent face, strong but still feminine; her hazel eyes always seemed to dance with curiosity and love of life. And as uncomfortable as he knew she may be, he also knew she would never admit it.

He characteristically raised an eyebrow. “I needn’t remind you that you are in the fifth moon of your pregnancy.”

Shailiha, Tristan’s twin sister, knew that the old one was right but couldn’t bring herself to admit it. She needed to be here, and there was very little in this world that would have succeeded in stopping her.

When Tristan had not reported to the Wizards’ Conservatory this morning as usual, the Directorate had immediately sent a runner to the stables. When they learned that Tristan’s favorite mount was missing, as well as his saddle, they had decided to begin a search. For the headstrong prince to go off alone after his daily classes was not usually a cause for alarm, but his behavior of late had put everyone on edge, and his attendance was required that night at an important function at the palace. Shailiha would not have known of his disappearance but for the fact that she was already in the stables, tending to her favorite broodmare’s newborn foal.

After overhearing the wizards’ runner question the stable boy, she had followed the fellow back to the Directorate’s chambers and demanded answers from the old ones. When she had learned her brother was missing she had announced to them all in no uncertain terms that she would go find him, alone if need be, and an argument had ensued. But after the wizards had gone so far as to threaten to throw a containment warp around her if necessary to prevent her from leaving on her own, she finally agreed to a compromise. She could go, but Wigg would accompany her. At least he had given her time to fetch a basket of food and drink.

Leather creaked as she turned once again in her saddle. She loved her brother more than anything on earth, except perhaps for the unborn child she was carrying. Despite all that, if he was unhurt when they found him, she would be tempted to ask the old wizard to punish him rigidly. Today of all days, her troubled mind thought. She shook her head. If they didn’t find him soon, this time he’d be in real trouble, future king or not.

She frowned. As the date of her father’s abdication ceremony drew near, Tristan somehow seemed to get into more and more trouble, and she was determined to keep today’s incident from their parents. Fortunately, her husband was on maneuvers all day with the Royal Guard and wouldn’t miss her. The only other inhabitants of the palace who knew of her brother’s disappearance were his teachers, the Directorate of Wizards, and she had sworn them to secrecy with a look that could have frozen water. Now Wigg, the most powerful of them, rode beside her, and she had to admit, if only to herself, that his company was a relief. She always felt safer around Wigg.

She looked to her right, at the old wizard’s craggy profile. Over three hundred years old, he was still one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. The tan, creased face held a thin mouth, and under arched brows were bright aquamarine eyes that never missed a thing. His gray hair, pulled back from a widow’s peak, ended in the traditional Directorate wizards tail of braided hair that fell down his back. Simple gray robes draped loosely over his still-muscular body, and the hands that held his horse’s reins were large and strong. It suddenly occurred to her that when he was young—before the application of the time enchantments—he probably would have been one of the most handsome men she had ever seen, almost as handsome as Tristan. She smiled to herself, knowing that the old wizard’s gruff exterior belied how much he cared for her welfare. She loved him dearly and had all of her life.

Shailiha grinned to herself, remembering how Wigg, when they had gone to fetch their horses, had sworn the terrified stable boy to secrecy. Flicking his finger, the Lead Wizard had turned the poor fellow upside down in midair, ankles together, suspending him headfirst above that morning’s freshly steaming pile of horse manure. Before setting him right, Wigg had promised to lower him in slowly, headfirst, should they return to learn the poor boy’s lips had slipped. Once again, she smiled. By this time, his fellow stable hands probably thought the poor fellow had somehow gone mute. No one, she was sure, wanted to have to explain to the king and queen yet another of Tristan’s indiscretions. She shifted gently in her sidesaddle as her mare stepped around a fallen log.

Beside her, Wigg reached into the small leather pouch that he wore around his waist. She had seen him put it on just before they left the palace. After crossing the plain that surrounded the city and entering the mountainous woods beyond, he had begun to reach into this pouch now and then and remove a couple of fingers full of an oddly colored powder she’d never seen before. He had then casually sprinkled the powder on the ground alongside his horse. Although very curious, she knew better than to ask the wizard about his craft. And so, without comment, she had simply watched the little ritual occasionally unfold as he rode along with her.

“Tell me, Wigg, why does he do it?” she asked now. Her brother’s rebellious behavior of late truly disturbed her, and although she thought she understood him, for some reason she had a feeling Wigg understood him better. She watched her mare gently shake a fly from her head as they rode on.

Wigg changed the reins from his left hand to his right and spoke without turning to her. “Do you mean, why does he ignore his duties, prefer the war college over his academics, choose to associate with commoners instead of the court, unnecessarily harass the Directorate, and disappear into the woods with those odd knives of his all the time?” His voice was deep and resonant. “And why does he continue to bed women from all over the realm and yet take no wife?”

He paused and shook his head, letting his criticisms settle into her mind. “And why,” he said finally, “and most importantly, does he purposely continue to defy his parents, the king and queen, and the very Directorate itself every time he disregards his duties?” He rose up slightly in his saddle, stretching and arching his back like a cat and taking his time about it, as if to tease her by withholding the answer. But when he turned toward her, she saw that the infamous aquamarine eyes were sad rather than mischievous. “The answer is more simple than you may think, my dear,” he said, carefully measuring his words. “He doesn’t want to be king.” He once again faced forward.

“The second reason you did not want to bring me. What was it?”

Wigg scowled. “If you must know, there are things in these woods. Unpleasant things. Or at least there used to be. I haven’t come to this forest for at least a hundred years, so don’t expect any detailed descriptions from my memory.” He turned his face back to the ever-thickening forest.

Shailiha dismissed his gruffness, turning her mind once again to her brother. She felt perfectly safe with Wigg. She realized that perhaps she was being naive, but she couldn’t imagine anything the old one couldn’t do, including protecting her with his life. She looked down to her riding habit, placing an affectionate hand on her protruding abdomen. That also meant protecting her unborn child. Soon Tristan would take the throne, and she would be a mother. Her husband, Frederick, was already bursting with pride.

Looking around at the passing woodlands, she suddenly realized that while she had been so lost in conversation with the wizard, the forest had changed strikingly in appearance. The woods were much thicker, and she began to see foliage here and there that was unfamiliar to her, and more brilliantly colored. The terrain was sloping ever upward, and long, thin, variegated vines now hung from the tops of the trees almost to the forest floor. The ground was soft and lush. Oddly, the air was much warmer here, despite the fact that the thickening trees permitted less and less sunlight, and the pleasantly sweet aroma she had noticed earlier continued to permeate the air. Still, Wigg kept them on a basically straight line.

Shailiha’s mind turned back to the palace they had left only a few hours ago, to her mother and father, the king and queen, and to all of the other people who lived there. She never ceased to be amazed at how many it took to oversee everything and to help the king to rule. From the royal family, the Directorate, and the Royal Guard, all the way down to the lowliest stable boy now sworn to secrecy by Wigg and including the hundreds of people in-between, each had their place and their responsibility in the scheme of things. And all of them were diligently working now toward one common goal; the abdication ceremony of her father, King Nicholas, and Tristan’s concurrent coronation as the new king. It was a grand and joyous event that was always anxiously awaited by the populace. The preparations had been going on for months.

This evening there was to be a royal inspection of the ceremony preparations in the Great Hall. Literally hundreds of people would be milling about waiting for them, each hoping to please the royal entourage with his or her work. There would be decorators, advisors, entertainers, chefs and pastry makers, maidservants and cleaners, not to mention the entertainers, musicians, and curious dukes, duchesses, and diplomats from the various provinces of Eutracia. She sighed slowly, letting her breath out in a long stream. There would also be the usual covey of available women who hoped to catch the prince’s eye.

Was it possible that Tristan had run away permanently instead of just for the day? Did he hate the prospect of being king to such an extent that he would go into hiding? Would he do such a thing to all of us?

Totally nonplussed, her head began to reel with the unsettling, new set of complications and repercussions. Who would break the news to her parents, if Tristan was truly gone? And who would succeed her father, King Nicholas, without Tristan to fill the void? The terrifying prospect of becoming the queen of Eutracia suddenly loomed before her. The realm had never had a queen. But if Tristan had indeed disappeared, she remained the only heir of endowed blood from the union of her parents, and her mother had long since been unable to give birth. Would the Directorate simply choose another of the Eutracian citizens to become king, as they had done in the past? Or would they force her to take the throne in light of the fact that she was pregnant and might give birth to a son of their family’s endowed blood? Then, in another thirty years, Eutracia would once again have a king. Upon his succession, would she be forced to join the Directorate by her father’s decision regarding Tristan’s fate? And as what? A sorceress? Wasn’t that what they used to call women who were trained in the craft? But there had been no sorceresses in Eutracia since the training of women of endowed blood had been banned at the end of the Sorceresses’ War, over three hundred years earlier. What, then, would become of her?

A tear began to trace a shiny path down one cheek. Tristan, where are you?

As if reading her mind, Wigg gently extended one of his hands to her face, wiping away the tear, his previously harsh demeanor temporarily faded.

“Don’t worry, little one,” he said comfortingly. “We shall find him. He doesn’t know I can sense his location, and it is only a matter of time, especially if he is not on the move. Most probably he has simply forgotten tonight’s festivities.”

A small clearing had appeared in the midst of the ever-thickening forest. It looked like a good place to stop. He hated the idea of taking time to rest, but feared the princess may need it. Neither did he mention to her that Tristan could probably survive alone in these woods indefinitely if he chose to, perhaps avoiding even the old wizard himself. No one knew these woods like Tristan.

Wigg lowered his eyes slightly before speaking his next carefully measured words. “If he refuses to return of his own free will to fulfill his duties, the situation will become difficult, and even though I love him as I would my own child, I may have to take action to ensure his return. I have a great responsibility to your father.”

Just as Shailiha began to wonder what type of action Wigg was referring to, her bay mare abruptly stopped walking, then began to paw the ground nervously, snorting and shaking her head back and forth, rattling her bridle. Wigg’s black gelding reared up and whinnied loudly. Despite any prodding from their riders, the two horses refused to advance into the clearing.

With a quick gesture from Wigg, Shailiha stopped trying to spur her horse onward. He put an index finger vertically across his lips to indicate silence, and she nodded. Wigg quickly dismounted, holding his reins firmly in one hand as he walked forward and turned to face the gelding. Closing his eyes, he placed his right hand flat upon the horse’s forehead for a moment. Immediately, the gelding began to calm down, while Shailiha’s mare still continued to dance about. Fearing for her unborn child, she started to dismount. But, as if seeing her through his closed eyes, Wigg immediately stretched his other arm forward, gesturing to her to stay in her saddle.

She watched Wigg as he abruptly turned away to look into the clearing. Then, completely amazed, she watched the color immediately drain from his face. Automatically, the princess lifted her eyes to follow his gaze… and began to shake uncontrollably, bile rising in her throat and making her feel as if she might vomit.

It was something out of a nightmare, and its eyes were focused directly on Wigg.

It was too large and misshapen to be a man. Yet it stood on two legs and had arms like a man. The huge, elongated head held insane, bloodshot eyes, but there was no nose, only slits in the skin where a man’s nostrils would be. On each side of the bald head were flat, elongated ears, the earlobes ending in long, ragged points of skin. Hanging from each corner of the mouthful of dark and decaying teeth was a perfect white incisor fang as long as her index finger. Lathered drool ran from the mouth to the chin, and down to its hairy chest in long white strings. Its only clothing was a leather-fringed warrior’s skirt, which did little to hide the grotesque, misshapen male genitals beneath it. Its own dried excrement clung darkly to its legs, and each of the highly elongated fingers and toes ended in long, tearing talons. Around its neck hung an odd chain of small round orbs. Gasping, Shailiha realized they were a collection of desiccated eyeballs. It held in its hands a terrible battle ax such as she had never seen. The long, black helve was randomly patterned with dried blood, and its top was crowned with a cracked human skull. From each of the skull’s temples a shiny silver ax blade extended outward at right angles. The sun streaming through the treeless clearing glinted menacingly off their highly polished edges.

She looked again at the nightmare’s eyes. They weren’t just insane. They held something else—something she could only describe as an insatiable, uncontrollable need.

From the center of the clearing it stared unflinchingly at Wigg for what seemed an eternity, its chest heaving. Another string of white drool snaked wetly from its chin to the ground.

Then, without warning, the thing raised the battle ax high above its head and charged headlong at the old wizard. Its speed was amazing. Crossing the clearing in an instant, it let forth a deranged battle scream. Terrified, Shailiha watched as Wigg stood frozen before his horse, almost as if he were willingly embracing his own death. Finally, at the last possible instant, the wizard seemed to regain his senses and rolled nimbly to the right across the field, the silver, wheeling blur of the battle ax barely missing his head. The ax blades continued their deadly swath downward, cleaving point-blank into the black gelding, slicing horsehide, bone, and muscle. The horse screamed. Blood erupted everywhere as the head and neck finally tore away from the shoulders. Its legs helplessly kicking, the gelding lost his brief struggle with death in midair and crashed sideways upon the ground.

For a moment the thing stood looking at the carnage of the horse, the blood running from the helve down its forearms and finally dripping from its elbows into a puddle upon the ground. A sickening grin began to walk the length of its grotesque mouth as yet more drool, pink with splattered blood, fell to its chest.

It turned once more toward Wigg and raised the ax over its head for another charge.

But this time, as the battle ax reached the zenith of its swing, the wizard raised his arms and the ax was pulled out of the creature’s hands and flew sideways across the clearing like a pinwheel, landing squarely at Wigg’s feet. Shailiha watched, panic-stricken, as the old one calmly made no attempt to pick it up when the thing charged at him again, this time extending its bare hands and sharp talons.

The princess shook with the realization that the wizard was about to die before her eyes.

Instead, though, Wigg pointed to the ax and it rose hauntingly into the air. He quickly extended his fingers, and the ax flew across the clearing, end over end, in a black—and-silver blur.

With a sickening crack, one of the ax’s blades buried itself into the thing’s forehead. The creature fell over onto its back, dead. Yellowish brain matter began to ooze from the shattered skull.

Then immediately came the thunder and lightning. She thought at first she must be hallucinating, to see lightning on such a calm day. It streaked its way across the expanse of the otherwise clear sky in convoluted patterns she had never imagined possible, followed by thunder that pounded through the air, shaking everything in the forest. Then she heard a strange noise, and once again looked out at the thing that lay in the middle of the clearing—the thing that Wigg had killed.

From around its great, shattered skull came a hissing sound as the yellow fluid from its head bled out into the grass. An inexplicable shroud of fog began to rise up from the turf around the head, bringing up into the air a stench so malodorous that she was forced to lower her face, covering her nose and mouth.

Shailiha found herself dumbly looking down to find wet, sticky blood and pink pieces of horseflesh all over her clothes. Blankly rubbing her protruding abdomen, she lifted her hand to see her palm and fingers covered with the horrible mixture. She began to vomit.

The last thing she remembered was Wigg’s hands reaching up to catch her as she fell from her saddle.

The sounds of his weeping awakened her. It came from somewhere off in the distance, yet it was very distinct. How odd. Opening her eyes, she saw fluffy clouds upon the bright blue canvas of an afternoon sky, floating behind the orange and green leaves of a hypernia tree. How beautiful. But she was going to be sick again. She rolled onto her side and just let it happen. As her mind began to clear, she realized she was lying on the soft grass under a tree on one side of the clearing.

Suddenly she remembered. The clearing. The… thing. She sat bolt upright and looked around. The creature that had tried to kill Wigg still lay dead where it had fallen, the handle of the battle ax rising into the air from the thing’s smashed, grotesque forehead. The odd shroud of fog that had inexplicably gathered around it was still there. To her left, the remains of Wigg’s beheaded horse lay at pitifully impossible angles in a huge pool of its own dark-red blood. She looked down over her riding habit and gently rubbed her abdomen, praying to the Afterlife that her unborn child had not been injured. Somehow her clothes and hands had been wiped clean, or as close to clean as someone could have done under the circumstances.

She heard the sound of sobbing. Slowly rising to her feet, she was amazed to see Wigg sitting back upon his heels in the grass next to the dead creature, crying over it almost uncontrollably. With his hands covering his face and his head bent over, tears dripped from between his fingers and onto his robes, creating dark-gray blotches. His shoulders were shaking.

Shailiha walked up to the old one, trying not to look at the mangled corpse that lay between them both. Without speaking, she laid one hand upon his shoulder and bent down to look at him. Uncovering his face, the wizard finally took her hands in his, stood, and led her out of the clearing.

He took her to where he had placed the saddle and tack after removing it from the murdered horse. The saddle blanket was spread upon the ground, and Shailiha rather awkwardly sat down upon it, relieved to be off her feet, for she thought she might soon fall down, anyway. It occurred to her that she had never in her life seen a wizard cry, nor had she ever heard of one doing so.

Wigg slowly sat down next to her. Reaching out, he gently spread open the upper and lower lids of her right eye, and examined it. Satisfied, he reached into the sleeve of his robe and produced a clean, recently picked plant root.

“Suck on this from time to time, little one,” he said compassionately.

As she obediently took the root from him and placed it in her mouth, a pleasantly sweet flavor emerged.

At her questioning look he said, “It will help with the vomiting.”

His tears apparently suspended for the moment, he placed the palm of his left hand on her abdomen and closed his eyes. After several seconds, he opened them again. “Your child is well,” he said. He rubbed his hands together as he looked back out to the clearing. “We have been fortunate.”

She reached out to wipe a tear from his cheek. He had saved her life, but she understood none of what had happened.

“Wigg, what was that thing?” she asked urgently. “Why did it try to kill you?” She lowered her eyes. “And why do you cry so?” She looked out into the clearing. “It’s dead. You should be happy.”

Without speaking, Wigg rose to his feet and walked the short distance to where he had tied the princess’ mare to a tree. Reaching into the food basket tied to the saddle, he brought forth a dark green bottle of ale and returned to the blanket to sit cross-legged before Shailiha.

He removed the cork and took a long draft of the ale. His eyes went back to the corpse in the field, and he suddenly seemed to be far away. He was still looking out at the body when he finally said, “He was my friend.”

A look of shock spread over Shailiha’s face. If she had not been with child, she would have taken a drink of the ale herself. She quickly removed the root from her mouth.

“Your friend?” she exclaimed. “That hideous thing just tried to kill us!”

Wigg turned back to her, his face beginning to regain its usual strength and composure. She was relieved to see that Wigg was becoming Wigg again.

“Phillius,” he said softly. “That hideous thing, as you call it, that lies dead in the clearing at my own hand was my friend, and his name was Phillius.”

He took another draft of ale. She was glad to see him finally smiling gently into her eyes. Perhaps the ale was helping. He sighed. “It requires some explanation.” His voice had become barely audible.

Shailiha arranged her legs into a more comfortable posture, raised her eyes to the old one, and tilted her head slightly. She was willing to invest the time to hear his explanation, whatever it was, and it was clear by her demeanor that she was not to be denied.

The wizard pressed his lips together in a tight half smile and let out a deep breath as if he had been holding it in for years.

“The creature that lies dead in the field is called a blood stalker,” he began. “It is a mutant product of the Sorceresses’ War, protected from then until now by what are called time enchantments. We had thought him and all of his kind long since dead. There hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of a blood stalker in over three centuries.” He rubbed his lower lip back and forth slowly. How could one of their time enchantments have lasted this long? his racing mind asked. This should not be possible.

“I thought you said his name was Phillius?”

“It was. In truth, Princess, he was my friend and my mentor.” He looked down at his hands as he laced his fingers before speaking again. “He was a wizard.”

“A wizard?” she exclaimed. “That ghastly thing? No wizard ever looked like that. It’s impossible.” She was quite surprised that he was being so forthcoming with his answers. She knew he would not even have considered speaking to her of this if she had not been of endowed blood. The wizards of the Directorate, those six who had the greatest responsibility for victory in the Sorceresses’ War, preferred never to speak of their wartime experiences. Coming to the conclusion that she was about to hear a rare wizard’s story of the war, she schooled herself to look more respectful.

He took another draft of the ale, cognizant of the subtle change in her demeanor.

“During the war, many wizards died,” he began. “At that time we actually were fearful that male endowed blood would become extinct. We never knew how many of us there were because then, unlike now, no birth records were ever kept. A child was simply known as either ‘endowed’ or ‘common.’ He or she could either be trained in the craft, or not. There was as yet no Directorate, and as far as we knew, the jewel called the Paragon did not exist. Wizards helped to train each other in the craft, but we were widely dispersed across the countryside, with no real sense of organization except for those of us living in the palace at Tammerland. Training was haphazard at best, and the craft itself was in only a rudimentary form of development. This is one of the reasons why the sorceresses almost won. They were better organized and had succeeded in pushing the boundaries of magic farther than we had, and were thus more powerful than we were. But because of the discovery of the Paragon, their advantage was not to last.” He paused once again to take another swallow of ale.

He frowned at his next thoughts. “It is not widely known today, but the sorceresses tried, whenever possible, not to kill wizards—they preferred to take them alive.”

Before he continued he once again looked at his hands, the same hands that had just killed his one-time friend. “Captives of unendowed, or ‘common’ blood, often were pressed into service in the sorceresses’ armies. But the various fates that the endowed ones suffered were far beyond description. Some were killed outright, some tortured for the sorceresses’ pleasure, and some turned into blood stalkers like poor Phillius. Others were left alive for yet different purposes.” He turned his attention toward the crushed skull of the corpse in the field, and to the strange fog that had surrounded it. It had been over three hundred years since he had seen such a haze, and it brought him no pleasure to have seen one again today.

“What other purposes?” she asked gently.

He looked back at her with tired aquamarine eyes.

“Breeding. Because the union of two endowed people is the most likely to produce an endowed child, they raped the wizards repeatedly, hoping for a pregnancy that would yield a special girl child to raise as a sorceress. The male babies were simply killed outright. We never understood the importance of such a child to them. Had they not spent so much of their power and their time trying to achieve this birth, we may never have prevailed. Inadvertently, they gave us the one thing we needed most: time.” Again he paused, as though not wishing to relive the painful memories.

The princess looked at the corpse lying in the hot afternoon sun. The fog around the body had dissipated, and hungry flies had begun to gather around the exposed brain to settle in dark clumps upon the yellow fluid. Feeling sick again, she returned her gaze to the old one, still feeling full of questions. This time it was she who wished to change the subject.

“Surely Phillius, if he was a wizard, did not always look like that?” she asked. She put the root back into her mouth.

Wigg shook his head. “No. At one time he was a strong, handsome man. The change in his appearance was part of the mutation process forced upon him by the sorceresses. During the war, it was said that the process was so painful and happened so quickly that many of the wizards simply went insane. In that case, they had no use and they were killed. Only the strongest of them could withstand the transformation. Phillius was one of those, and his capture was a sad day for all of us.”

Wigg closed his eyes. He knew that had Phillius survived he would have been an invaluable member of the Directorate, and his wisdom was sorely missed.

“Then how did you know it was him?” she queried. She was becoming more interested with every word.

Wigg took another swallow of the ale, replacing the cork. He stood without speaking and walked to the dead blood stalker. Carefully avoiding the yellow fluid in the grass, he lifted up the inside of the thing’s left forearm so Shailiha could see it from where she was. He pointed with his other hand to an odd, bright red birthmark, then gently laid the forearm back upon the ground before returning to the princess.

“I had known Phillius since I was a child,” he explained as he sat down again. “That birthmark had always been a part of him. I saw it when he first raised his ax.”

She carefully considered her next words.

“Is that why you hesitated?” She regretted the question the moment it left her lips, but she had to know.

He drew himself up and looked into her questioning face. “Do you doubt me because you yourself might have been killed? I am fully aware of my responsibilities, Princess, and I have successfully protected many others who came into this world long before you.”

She looked down at the blanket. He smiled and put a finger beneath her chin, raising her eyes up to his. As long as he had known this one, he had admired her spirit. Clearly, she and her brother were twins in more ways than one.

“The truth is, you were never in any danger. To answer your question, yes, that is why I hesitated. But he was only after me. Once I was dead, he would have totally ignored you. Blood stalkers pursued only males of endowed blood, and of them only those who had already been trained in the craft. Their entire existence was to serve solely as the sorceresses’ assassins, with only wizards as their prey. Clever, when you think about it.”

“If I was not in danger, then what would it have done after it had killed you?”

Wigg looked briefly over Shailiha’s shoulder as he pursed his lips. “Eaten the dead horse. Raw.”

She thought she was going to be sick again. She sucked once more at the root.

“Is that why you named them blood stalkers?” she asked.

“We did not name them—their creators did. The sorceresses stripped them of all their powers except sensing us, and then gave them inordinate strength, supplying each one with the rather creative battle ax that you saw him carry. It is said that the skull atop each of the battle axes is the skull of the blood stalker’s first victim. That is why it had such a discernible crack in its top.”

“There was a smell.” She wrinkled up her nose. “When you killed him, there was an awful smell, and steam came up from around him. I saw it. It was terrible.”

Wigg looked out again at the remains of what had once been his friend, noticing that the grass all around the smashed skull’s perimeter had turned black. He looked away. The only way to remember this, he knew, was to hold tight to the knowledge that had Phillius been able to choose, he would have chosen death. Ultimately, Wigg had been able to give him at least that much. He knew it was this realization that would help both him and the Directorate deal with some of the pain.

“During the transformation, the brain matter always turned yellow and became acidic,” he said. “When his skull parted, the odor was released. Early on, we tried to retrieve them from their transformations to return them back to human form. But we always failed. Before the discovery of the Paragon, the sorceresses were just too strong for us. Many wizards, some more capable than myself, died in the attempts to reverse the process. It took us time, but sadly all we really learned was that the fastest way to kill one was to crush the skull. But the sorceresses knew that, too, and were able to use even that technique against us.” He picked a blade of grass and idly began to shred it between his fingers.

“What do you mean?”

“As I said, the yellow brain matter is acidic. That’s why you saw the foggy steam. It was burning into the grass as he lay there. If it touches human skin, even the smallest amount, it is instantaneously fatal.” He paused. “Another gift from the sorceresses.”

She had more questions, and she could have asked them all day. If nothing else, Princess Shailiha was known for being inquisitive.

“What about the thunder and lightning? The sky remained clear. What I saw was impossible.”

Wigg smiled and placed the tip of a long, ancient index finger squarely on the end of the princess’ nose.

“Too many questions, Shailiha,” he lectured. His left eyebrow came up again. “Have you forgotten why we came out here in the first place?” Her cheeks flushed. Of course she had not forgotten about her brother! She tossed her long blond hair over one shoulder. “Please, just tell me about the thunder and lightning,” she begged. She was too curious to stop now. “And, oh, why did you put your hands on your poor horse’s face? Last questions, I promise.”

For several moments he simply looked at her without speaking. She had been through a great deal already today, and Tristan was still missing. There was much yet to do. He noticed there were still bits of blood in her hair, and reminded himself that they must do something about that before they returned to the palace.

“It’s a bargain,” he said finally. He looked slowly up at the sky as he thought about his reply.

“Every time a blood stalker is killed, there is the same strange atmospheric event. Massive thunder and lightning of a highly unusual type, without dark clouds or rain. During the war, we could only surmise that it served to inform the sorceresses of the death of one of their own. Sadly, I have seen it myself too many times.” But there is another, darker reason, he thought. One I cannot yet share with you.

He couldn’t blame the princess for her curiosity. Those of endowed blood always had an insatiable desire to learn the craft, and she was no different. But since the Sorceresses’ War, the teaching of the craft to females had been strictly forbidden.

“As for the horse, I was trying to sense from the poor animal the reason, the danger, that was preventing them both from going any farther.” He frowned. “I got my answer.”

He promptly stood up. Without explanation he walked to the center of the field and stood near the corpse. He examined the handle of the battle ax and finally found a spot clear of the awful acid, by which he could hold it. He methodically wiped the weapon in the grass and laid it to one side of the clearing. Then he pulled the hood of his simple gray robe down over his head, partially hiding his face. Walking back to stand before the remains of his one-time friend, he clasped his hands before him and bowed his head. Immediately, the corpse burst into bright azure flames that rose high into the air, and the stench became much worse. He then went to the remains of the murdered gelding and repeated the process. On his way back to Shailiha, he beckoned her to stand, then picked up the blanket, basket, and tack, and began to saddle the mare. Leaving her horse tied to the tree, he helped the young woman into her sidesaddle. Then, to her surprise, he turned and walked away without saying a word, passing the burning, stinking corpse and disappearing into the smoke.

If I am not upwind of the dead, I shall never sense the blood of the living, he thought to himself.

Stepping out of the smoke on the other side, Wigg stopped, holding his hands out before him, his eyes closed. He could sense Tristan’s presence. But it was much weaker than before, as if being blocked by something. Worry began to crowd into the corners of his mind.

Returning to Shailiha, he untied the mare and began to lead it across the field in the direction of Tristan’s presence. There was much more that he could have told her, but he chose to remain silent. He would have to swear both her and her brother to secrecy about the blood stalker before they returned to Tammerland. But the presence of the gruesome thing had unnerved him. Despite the Directorate’s hopes that all of the blood stalkers had perished, Phillius had somehow prevailed for over three centuries.

He suddenly stopped short, wondering. It could be even worse. He had recently heard of the unexplained disappearances of several of the lesser rural wizards. Phillius might not have simply survived in hiding all of those years. A cold shudder shot through him, as the unwanted thoughts surprised his mind.

Phillius might actually have been dead, and suddenly recalled, he thought.

Turning back for one last glimpse of the burning corpse, he raised his free hand, palm open. Shailiha watched, her mouth agape, as the bloody battle ax rose into the air, flying in a straight line this time, its long black handle slapping directly into Wigg’s palm. They turned and walked on through the smoke.

When Tristan awoke, the first sensations that came to him were those of pain and noise. Pain throughout his entire body—and a noise he could not identify. Both crashed in upon his still-groggy mind like dual awakening explosions. He opened his eyes to find only blackness. The combination was at once both intolerable and terrifying.

I pray to the Afterlife, please do not let me be blind, Tristan prayed.

His face felt wet, and some kind of liquid was running down into his eyes. Realizing he was on his back, he began to raise himself up. It took three tries before his swimming head finally allowed him to sit upright. There was pain in every part of his body, and still he could not see. Dazed and disoriented, he had no memory of how he got here. Wherever here is, he wondered.

Running his hand across his forehead, he felt the fluid between his fingertips. It was thick enough to be blood, and it was warm to the touch like blood—but he could feel no wound. He hurt everywhere. Blindly, he used his hands to wipe his face off as best he could.

The ever-present noise was overwhelming. A great and terrible rushing noise, he finally decided. But in the pitch-black void, he could not quite place the sound. It was at this point that his eyes began to adjust to the small amount of light. Joyously, he began to pick out odd shapes in the gloom.

I can see. Thank the Afterlife, I can see.

Turning his head, he was now able to begin to make out the weak shaft of light as it cast dimly downward from the hole in the wall above. It gave off only enough light for him to determine that there was a set of broken stone steps beneath it, leading down toward the blackness near where he sat. They looked to be about forty feet high. And then it came back to him. The chase for Pilgrim. The butterflies on the wall. And falling through into the black nothingness.

Standing slowly, he was able to determine that nothing was broken. But the pain in his joints and muscles was almost debilitating. Looking up at the dimly lit hole high in the wall he could see that he had fallen a long way, probably hitting the steps several times on the way down.

He seemed to be in an underground cavern. A deep one. At the bottom. For safety’s sake, he got down on his hands and knees and began crawling toward the spot where he estimated the stone steps would touch the ground. Upon reaching them there was enough light to see that the steps were indeed at least a hundred feet tall, and stopped at the top where he had fallen in. He didn’t know whether he trusted them to hold his weight, but any fool could see he had little choice.

Cautiously, he began crawling up the steps like a toddler. Slowly and painfully he made it to the top, all the while his eyes adjusting to the strengthening light, the strange indescribable loudness of the rushing noise fading away behind him. Eventually he stood on the last step, facing the jagged hole he had broken in the wall when he had fallen through. Lifting his foot over the crumbling stones, he stepped back into the clearing, glad for the second time that day to be alive. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but squinting at the sun, he estimated at least two hours to have gone by. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Pilgrim, still tied to the tree where he had left him.

When the prince reached his horse, Pilgrim immediately rubbed the length of his face against his master’s shoulder and whinnied softly, as if impatient to be untied.

Tristan smiled. But even smiling hurt.

“No, I won’t let you run free again,” he said softly into the stallion’s ear. “Not keeping you tied up is the cause of all my troubles today. You’re staying here.”

Ignoring his aching body, he returned to the hole in the wall and began to loosen more stones, allowing additional light to enter the depths below. After a good half hour, he very gingerly stepped back through the hole and onto the first of the stone steps. He couldn’t see much, but thought he could make out a shape near the bottom.

He loosened a few more stones and peered down again, trying to make out the shape. It looked as if it was mounted on the wall near the bottom of the steps.

A torch!

Carefully, slowly, he made his way back down, not knowing whether he was doing the right thing. His mind and body had certainly had enough punishment for one day, but his curiosity was overpowering him. The great rushing noise filled his ears again, hammering his senses with all its fury. It seemed always to go onward, unabated and unrelenting. And yet the sound was frustratingly familiar.

When he reached the bottom step, he could see that his discovery was indeed a wall torch. Tristan never traveled into the woods without flint, which he now produced from his pants pocket. Reaching up, he was barely able to take down the torch from the wall. He could tell it had not been lit in a long time, but it still smelled of oil. Leaning it up against the stone steps by its wooden handle, he struck his flint, and the torch erupted into flame. He turned the torchlight toward the darkness.

What he saw made the breath leave his lungs in disbelief.

He was standing on the floor of a huge, oddly shaped underground cavern, at least several hundred feet long in each direction, as well as high. Stalactites of every color and description hung from the ceiling, some so long they almost reached the floor. Some of their older brothers had in fact already found the floor some time long ago, creating here and there the impression of marvelously beautiful stone columns connecting the floor and ceiling. But it was still too dark to see very far. And the noise went on and on, roaring in his ears.

Looking to the wall at his left he saw another torch, and then another and yet another, their shadows extending like fingers along the murky lengths of the cavern walls. He lit many of them in a row, the noise growing louder all the time as he walked farther into the depths of the cave, until finally he extinguished and dropped the torch in his hand, and turned from the now-illuminated wall to face the interior of the chamber.

It was the most arresting example of nature he had ever seen. The waterfall was about the same height as the steps he had fallen down—about forty feet. It was at least an equal distance wide. Springing from a tunnel in the opposite wall of the cavern, the water traveled about twenty feet across a smooth horizontal stone precipice before finally falling gracefully into a large stone pool at the bottom. Tristan immediately realized that the waterfall was the source of the noise, and that he had been prevented from identifying the sound because of the way it bounced randomly from wall to wall across the cavern. He shook his head. Had the falls been outdoors, he would have recognized the sound instantly.

At the opposite end of the pool, the water ran out through a low tunnel in the rock. It occurred to him that the water’s exit tunnel would ensure that the pool would never overflow, leading him to wonder whether the waterfall was man-made. But who could have made this? he wondered. He stood transfixed.

Looking around at the walls, he noticed a great variety of plants and flowers that he had never seen before; the floor itself was covered with thick, green foliage. Every plant was huge, and the colors were incredibly vibrant. He began to walk closer to the falls, but suddenly stopped himself in midstride.

How have these things grown here without sunlight? he asked himself. So much of this is impossible. Yet here they are.

Looking further, he saw that high upon the walls near the ceiling there were words carved into the rock in a language that was completely foreign to him. The strangely oblique writing completely encircled the rim of cavern.

Making his way back to the stone steps, he saw that they ended not far from the edge of the pool. His foot struck against something hard. Hard and sharp. He jumped back instinctively, only to realize that he had found his dirks and quiver, which he’d lost when he fell. Relieved, he began to collect the dirks, eventually finding all of them and returning them to the quiver, which he buckled on in its usual place across his right shoulder.

Suddenly, he felt dizzy. Slowly, he sat down upon the bottom step to try to clear his mind. Mesmerized, he watched as the water seemed to dance and play in the flickering light of the torches, turning and undulating strangely as if it were alive. A sudden, intense curiosity about the water came to him. He looked to the top of the falls where the water fairly jumped off the precipice, falling downward, ever downward, separating itself on the way to the pool into drops that looked more like sparkling crystals than liquid. And, oddly, each drop seemed to have a pink cast. He reasoned it must be because of the torchlight and the many reflected colors of the plants. The longer he sat looking, the more intrigued he became, almost as if the pool of water was calling to him, beckoning him to join it as it cascaded into the pool. And the longer he watched, the more inviting the water became.

Its allure was becoming irresistible.

Without thinking, he rose and began to remove his clothes. His leather knee boots, trousers, black vest, quiver, and undergarments soon all lay in a dirty pile at his feet. Serenely detached, he watched himself walk forward. It was as if in a dream that he saw his feet go to the edge of the dark, rolling water. He was at the far end, near the steps, where the water seemed the calmest, and he stood there naked for a moment, calmly looking down at his reflection as if he were looking at someone else. He saw his longish black hair, the high cheekbones, what some would describe as the cruel mouth, and the slim, muscular body all dancing in the reflected light of the torches. Then he tilted his face toward the ceiling, closed his eyes, and calmly jumped feetfirst into the pool.

This part of the pool was deep. When he surfaced, he swam a little distance over to shallower water. He laid his head back against the cool, slick side of the stone pool and closed his eyes.

The effect was unexpected, but far from unpleasant. Despite the fact that the stone wall surrounding the pool was quite cool, the water itself was warm, much warmer in fact than he would have guessed water from an underground spring to be. It seemed to surround and caress his naked body of its own will. As inexplicably as it had arrived, his dizziness began to fade, along with all of the other aches and pains he had garnered this day. The longer he lay in the warm pool, the better he felt. In time not only did his pains completely vanish, but he also began to feel a resurgence of energy and strength, and with it a lightening of his mood and an increase in his confidence. Mixed with the wonderful sensations of warmth and strength was the ever-present sound of the falls tumbling into the pool. He was becoming used to the sound—in fact, he was starting to find it reassuring and actually quite beautiful.

He smiled. It was really quite extraordinary. And suddenly, he became aware of a new, unmet need: a sudden powerful thirst, such as he had never known. Thinking back, he realized that it had been hours since he had drunk anything. He joined his hands together to gather up a cup of pool water, and slowly opened his eyes as he brought the liquid to his lips.

It was then that he saw the Fliers of the Field. He barely noticed the water trickling out of his hands as he gazed at them gathered on the far side of the pool. There had to be at least a dozen of them perched in a quiet line at the water’s edge, their wings a riot of colors that reflected into the pool from the torches. They had either not noticed his presence or, for some reason, were not fearful of him in these surroundings. Occasionally each would slowly lower and raise its huge, expressive wings while the others remained quiet at the edge of the pool. Then he realized the reason for their presence.

They’re drinking from the pool!

As if in response to his thoughts, all the giant butterflies rose into the air at once, heading straight for him. They circled his head, swerving and dipping to and fro as if teasing him to join them, just as they had done to Pilgrim. And then, as fast as they had come, they swirled single file up the stone steps to the light, taking turns squeezing through the broken wall, and were gone. He smiled to himself. Unlike his impetuous horse he would not chase after them.

The prince of Eutracia remained alone in the warm pool. He felt wonderful, except for his raging thirst. He had never felt anything like it. It was almost as if the water were begging to be consumed by him. No other need—no hunger, no pain, no pleasure—had in his entire life ever been this compelling. His breath became ragged and uneven as his body and mind joined in the almost sexual need for the fluid that swirled around him. He looked longingly again at the water.

The butterflies. Was their amazing size due to drinking the water? He dared not drink.

With more willpower than he had ever before summoned forth, he turned and pulled himself out of the water to stand naked and dripping at the pool’s edge. His chest was heaving with exhaustion. Once out of the water his body and mind began to calm, and the awful thirst abated. But his earlier ache and pains remained gone, and he continued to feel unusually strong. More than a little confused, he began to dress.

Clothed once again, he thought to at least wash the mud from his knee boots before going back to the palace. He slowly bent over and cupped some of the water in his hands, then turned toward the wall of flickering torches.

What he saw made him jump back in fright, the liquid tumbling from his hands to splash on the ground at his feet.

The water was a deep red. He had not been able to see his own cupped hands through it. It was like holding a handful of blood, he realized. He quickly wiped his hands down the length of his dirty pants. Suddenly he realized that this must have been the fluid that he had wiped from his face when he had fallen down the stairs. Apparently he had landed close enough to the pool to be splashed by some of the spray from the falls.

He had seen all he wanted to of this place for one day.

Nervously, he walked past the wall torches, planning to extinguish the first one deepest in the cave, then each of the others in turn on his way back to the stone steps. But when he reached the farthest torch, his eyes fell upon something that he had not noticed there the first time.

He was standing before a large, squarely cut entrance to a tunnel. It was obviously man-made, at least ten feet high and fifteen feet across. A rectangular panel had been carved into the stone above it and contained the same type of writing that he had seen on the other walls of the caves. He took the torch from the wall and moved closer. Standing directly in front of the tunnel’s entrance, he raised the torch higher to try to look down the passage, but he could not see anything except an endless black void. The inside of the tunnel was silent and unyielding, and seemed to go forever. He stood there for a moment, unmoving, wondering what he should do. Glancing back to the hole at the top of the stone steps, he saw that the afternoon sunlight was still coming through, meaning that he had some daylight left before he had to return. Extending the torch, he walked forward into the tunnel, his mind full of questions.

Abruptly, he found his answer.

As soon as he crossed the plane of the passageway there was a sharp noise, a flash of light, and his body was hurled backward through the air at least a dozen feet. At the same time an indescribable pain shot through his entire body. He was turned over in midair and landed hard, facedown on the floor of the cavern. The flaming torch was still in his hand, close to his face. Too close. Moving the torch away, he rolled over onto his back and slowly sat up. There was a dirty, copperlike taste in his mouth, and as he spat, he saw that his saliva was mixed with blood. He wiped his mouth as clean as he could and spat again as he stood up. Strangely, neither the fall nor the cut had hurt at all.

His mouth twisted ironically as he once again pushed the comma of dark hair off his forehead. Staring back toward the tunnel, he saw that everything was as it had been. Everything except him. Then an idea struck him.

Looking around, he found a hand-sized rock and picked it up. Moving near the wall of torches, he stood at an angle to the tunnel entranceway, instead of directly before it. With an underhand toss, he sent the rock flying toward the portal.

The reaction was immediate. As soon as the rock crossed the plane of the portal there was another loud crack, a split-second flash of white light, and the rock was repelled backward almost the entire length of the cavern to fall on the cavern floor in pieces.

Why, then, am I not in pieces, too? he asked himself.

He shook his head in resigned disbelief. He had no idea what he had just seen or what had just happened, and he found himself laughing aloud at the realization that the same was true about a great many things this strange day. But one thing he knew without question.

He had more than enough desire to leave this place.

Extinguishing the torches one by one, he made his way back to the stone steps. In the dim light of the retreating sunshine that came feebly in through the broken wall at the top, he climbed the stairs and finally exited into the warm and welcoming afternoon air. The natural light felt good on his face.

He was to find that replacing each of the stones in the wall was more laborious than taking them down, and it took more time than he had expected. At last, lightly covered in perspiration and his clothes dirtier than ever, he had retreated a few steps to admire his handiwork when something tugged at him from the back of his memory. Something was missing, but he couldn’t remember what. As had been his habit since he was a child, he closed his eyes and relaxed completely, emptying his mind so the thought would come to him, rather than him chasing it. Finally, it surfaced.

Pulling out one of his dirks, he set to work on the wall until the slit for the giant butterflies was open again. Then he walked back across the field. Untying the stallion from the tree, he rubbed the horse’s ears affectionately as Pilgrim pawed the ground with one of his front hooves. “Yes, I know I’ve been gone a long time,” Tristan said affectionately. “And yes, I know you are very thirsty.” He pursed his lips and ran one hand back through his thick, dark hair as he looked back one last time at the stone wall. “So am I. But we’re not going to drink anything here.”

He easily jumped up on the horse’s bare back and they crossed the clearing, entering the woods at the same spot from which they had come out. He would have to go back down to the lower glade to gather his saddle and gear. Looking down at himself, he realized that his trousers were stained red where he had wiped the strange water from his hands. He wondered if the stains would ever come out. Glumly, he reminded himself that everyone would be furious with him back at the palace. He had not planned to be gone this long. But he decided to tell no one what he had found, not even Wigg.

He would come back here before his coronation. Something in his heart and mind told him that he must—and soon. There was so much he wished to know about this place. And until he learned more, he would tell no one what he had seen.

A bastard quotation from somewhere in his past suddenly came to mind: Leave only footprints. Take only memories.

Pilgrim began to carry him back down the mountain.

Wigg sat thinking, cross-legged on the soft grass of the upper forest glade, his eyes closed and the basket of food next to him. He was not pleased with the conclusions that flowed through his mind. Far too much had already happened, including the appearance of the blood stalker. Certain circumstances already seemed out of his control, and therefore out of the control of King Nicholas and even of the entire Directorate.

When he searched his mind for Tristan’s presence—and the prince was clearly closer now—the texture of what he was sensing had been altered. Irrevocably. Which meant that something major had happened to Tristan that had changed him in a profound way.

Given the wizard’s knowledge of the Hartwick Woods, there was one particularly unsettling answer. But the old one’s mind sheered away from that possibility. Partly because it was so complicated and would produce so many problems. And partly because, for Tristan’s sake, he simply did not want to believe it.

We’re so close now, Wigg reflected. Only thirty days to the coronation. I beg the Afterlife, please let me find him unchanged.

When Wigg and the princess had entered the glade in search of Tristan, they had immediately seen the prince’s saddle and blanket on the ground. Sensing Tristan’s presence coming steadily closer, Wigg had decided to wait here for him. Shailiha, still shaken and exhausted, had immediately gone to sleep under a tree with Tristan’s saddle as her pillow. Wigg had gone to the opposite edge of the cliff to think, and to wait.

His very old but sharp eyes had missed nothing. He had discovered the damaged oak that had served as Tristan’s throwing target, the twisted branch that had obviously been torn from the same tree, and the matted and disturbed grass just a few feet from the precipice of the cliff. They all gave him pause. It was the cliff’s edge upon which he had chosen to sit and think.

He turned to check on Shailiha as she lay sleeping. Her impending pregnancy did little to disturb her great beauty. Her long, golden blond hair and her tall, exquisite form had come directly from her mother, Queen Morganna. But her hazel eyes, sensuous mouth, and happy, compassionate nature were all her own. He shook his head sadly, thinking of how little Shailiha and her twin brother Tristan knew of their ultimate potential. How much had been kept from them both, and how it had broken his heart every day to have to keep such secrets from them. He cast his eyes to the valley far below, and farther out to the capital city of Tammerland, which had been his home for over three hundred years. The view was spectacular. If this was where Tristan always came to be alone, the old one could understand why.

An odd analogy came to his mind and he smiled, shaking his head slowly. He and the country that he loved so much were in many ways so alike. Both so old. Both so full of secrets. And both so isolated. Eutracia was bordered on the east by the Sea of Whispers—the sea that had never been crossed. Hundreds had tried to traverse it, but no one had ever sailed farther than fifteen days and returned, not one. All were assumed lost. The same fate had befallen all of the sea voyages that had attempted to head too far north and south. And although the Sea of Whispers was bountiful in her goodness to Eutracian fisherman living in the ports that dotted the coastline, no one ever tried anymore to sail completely across it. No one even knew why it was called the Sea of Whispers. It just was. Wigg, haunted by memories of his own fateful time upon that mysterious sea, turned his thoughts inland.

The northern, western, and the southern borders provided equally frustrating obstacles. The ominous Tolenka Mountains formed a continuous, semicircular boundary from the north coast to the west down to the south coast and once again back to the sea that had never been crossed. Iron gray and snowcapped, their jagged outline scratched the sky in every direction save east to the sea. They were so high, in fact, that every expedition had been forced to turn back when the air became too thin to breathe, even for wizards. And no pass had ever been found. The Tolenkas, like the Sea of Whispers, had also proven to be uncrossable. And so Eutracia had always existed on her own.

Sadly, he reminded himself, there was no written history before their victory in the Sorceresses’ War. So little was known about those times. It was only upon the wizards’ triumph in that awful conflict that scribes had been ordered to begin to record public events. The Eutracian citizens believed that the members of the Directorate, protected by time enchantments, were the only remaining link to the prewar past. This was untrue. And there were still more secrets that must be kept, adding to his burden. Slowly, as was his habit, he picked a blade of grass and began to shred it between his long fingers.

Hundreds of thousands of people had lived peacefully in Eutracia for over three centuries. The kingdom contained seven duchies, each overseen by its own duly elected duke, and each with its own capital city. The king in Tammerland reigned over all of them, and over the years, each king, with the aid of the Directorate, had ruled with compassion and grace. In only a matter of weeks, Tristan would take the throne. And in only a matter of seconds now, the old wizard sensed, Tristan would enter the glade, and his questions would be answered.

As if the prince’s arrival had been prearranged, Wigg turned around calmly to watch Tristan ride bareback into the clearing, and the old one’s heart felt as if someone had suddenly shattered it to pieces, his worst possible fears realized.

He has discovered the Caves of the Paragon, the old wizard thought, horrified.

There could be no question. The azure aura that could be seen only by a wizard as highly trained as Wigg was radiating outward from all around the prince’s body. Wigg shuddered and went cold inside. The prince’s trousers showed long, red stains down each side. A very distinctive red. And the stains could have only come from one place: the water of the Caves.

I have not seen this aura surround anyone or anything since the twin births of Tristan and his sister, Wigg ruminated. And then an ancient quote from the past slipped gently into his mind. “The azure light that accompanies the births of the Chosen Ones shall be the proof of the quality of their blood …”

Upon seeing Wigg, Tristan stopped short. Looking around, he saw Shailiha sleeping peacefully. He walked Pilgrim to edge of the clearing and tied him, and then sat down next to the wizard. They sat for what seemed to be a long time, each of them staring out over Tammerland while the sun slowly set, neither one knowing what to say. It was Tristan who finally broke the silence. He pointed to the basket.

“Have you eaten?” he asked simply. Wigg shook his head. Tristan produced a large wedge of cheese from the basket and began to eat. He was starving. Tentatively he added, “I’m sure everyone is angry with me.” He turned and studied the wizard’s profile for a moment. “I truly had expected to be back at the palace by now.”

“But?” Wigg turned and raised the infamous eyebrow, staring at the prince through the glow that the young man was obviously unaware of. Good, the wizard thought. At least for now he cannot see it.

Tristan gave Wigg his best look of nonchalance. “I was detained.”

“I see. Would you care to talk about it?”

“No, Lead Wizard, I would not.”

Tristan desperately wanted to change the subject but didn’t know how. The old wizard decided not to press the issue. It would be difficult enough to explain both the blood stalker and Tristan’s discovery of the Caves to the king and to the Directorate tonight, as he knew he must do.

Wigg reached into his robes and produced part of the twisted oak branch that had been torn from the tree. “Your clothes are filthy,” he said with distaste. He held the limb before Tristan’s face. “Perhaps this had something to do with it?” He turned the branch over in his hand a few times, still looking at the prince.

As foolish as he felt about it, Tristan breathed an inward sigh of relief, sensing that this topic was much safer than a conversation about the falls. He explained the incident of being pushed out over the cliff in graphic detail, the words tumbling from his mouth between bites of cheese. He reached for the bottle of ale. It had been a long day.

When Tristan finished, Wigg remained silent, shredding yet another piece of grass between his ancient fingers.

“Next time I’ll tie up my horse,” the prince offered.

Wigg shook his head and cast his eyes to the horizon past Tammerland.

“There shall be no need,” he said. “The king of Eutracia does not have to come here.”

Before Tristan could respond, they both heard Shailiha begin to stir. Wigg quickly pointed his left hand toward her, and she peacefully drifted back into a deep sleep. He had no desire for her to overhear their conversation. They both turned back toward the view of the valley.

“Why is she here?” Tristan finally asked. “She shouldn’t be out of the palace in her condition, and everybody knows that. I can’t believe my parents would let her come out here with you.”

“For better or worse, your parents do not know,” Wigg said simply. “Only she, myself, and the Directorate know. And the stable boy who saddled your horse.” His eyebrow launched upward into its familiar display of sarcasm. “But I don’t think he will be saying anything.”

Tristan bit his lip. He was beginning to feel pangs of guilt about coming up here today. But despite that, he knew he had made a wonderful discovery, and he had never felt so strong and vibrant in his life. That part of it all he refused to feel guilty about.

The old wizard sighed. “And as for why she came with me… well, it is because she loves you so much. They all do. Your entire family and Directorate of Wizards itself would go to the ends of the world for you.” He paused. “Although sometimes I don’t know why. Not with the way you’ve been behaving lately.” He looked directly into the prince’s dark-blue eyes. “We were almost killed this afternoon while trying to find you.” Wigg turned his gaze back out to the valley.

Tristan drew a sharp breath, but before he could speak, Wigg had begun to tell him about the encounter with the blood stalker, being careful to reveal only what he had told Shailiha. Any more was for the ears of his Directorate only, and his king. Wigg pointed to a tree at the side of the clearing, up against which he laid the stalker’s battle ax. “I kept his calling card.”

Seeing the ax, Tristan felt truly ashamed. But working against that emotion were other emotions of equal, if not greater, energy. Ever since he had left the stone pool of the falls, two desires had struck his heart as surely as he knew the sun would rise the next morning. First was the need to return there as soon as possible. Second was the overpowering hunger to learn, a thirst to drink in all the knowledge of the craft he could find. And the feeling had been steadily increasing ever since he had left the cavern.

He needed the knowledge of magic.

He turned toward Wigg, waiting for the old one to face him.

Unafraid, he wanted to look directly into the wizard’s eyes when he asked him.

As if he knew what Tristan’s sudden desires were, yet also chose not to fulfill them, the old one continued to gaze out at the distance. But in his heart the wizard knew what was coming.

Tristan drew a breath. Somehow, inside of him, he knew that once he asked, there would be no retreat. No going back.

“Wigg, tell me, please. I need to know about your craft.” The old wizard’s mind was racing. And so it begins. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Wigg turned to look at the prince. The azure aura that emanated from Tristan’s head and body had, impossibly, become even more luminescent. Silently, Wigg gave thanks to the fact that he would be the only one in the kingdom to see it. Only those of endowed blood—and then only one who was as highly trained as himself—could recognize the aura. Even the other wizards of the Directorate would not see it. Wigg looked at Tristan with suddenly sad and tired eyes. The young prince had no idea what he had done, and the old one knew he must choose his words with care. He looked imperiously down his nose at the young man, determined to remain in control of the conversation.

“Until this moment, my prince, you’ve never expressed anything but disdain for the throne, and rather rude requests for the teaching of the magic that may follow the king’s reign. Even your previous questions about the craft have, upon occasion, seemed ingenuine to us.” He knew the second part was not true, but he kept his eyes on Tristan and schooled his face to show no emotion. “What is the reason for this apparent change of heart?”

Tristan drew both knees up under his chin and joined his hands in front of him, not knowing how to answer the question without revealing his discovery of the falls. Finally, in a less commanding voice he said, “I suppose it is the story of the blood stalker that has aroused my interest. I have never heard of one before.”

Wigg sniffed. “I see.”

The wizard was sure now that Tristan would not reveal his secret visit to the falls unless it was literally dragged out of him. And deep down the old one knew why. But he considered Tristan’s request and decided to give the prince some rudimentary explanations—no more.

He changed his position so that he was sitting facing Tristan, and beckoned the prince to do the same. As they sat face-to-face, Wigg felt almost blinded by the azure aura around Tristan, and also by the need, the hunger, that was in the younger man’s eyes. From this day on, the wizard knew, the man before him would never be the same.

“Magic begins with blood, Tristan,” he began slowly. “It has always been this way, even before the Sorceresses’ War, and before the commencement of written history and the organized recording of births.” He gathered his robes closer around him to ward off the chill of the coming night.

“Children are born either ‘endowed,’ or ‘common,’” the wizard continued. “As you know, both you and your sister are of endowed blood, as are both of your parents. The union of two parents of endowed blood always produces progeny of endowed blood. Only one in a thousand births from a mixed union—common and endowed—results in an endowed offspring.” He raised both eyebrows. “Endowed blood is necessary to the mastery of magic. Trying to teach it to one of common blood is like trying to teach your stallion to play the harp.”

Tristan smiled at the image, but he was becoming impatient. This talk of Wigg’s was something that he already knew, that everyone in Eutracia knew.

Sensing the prince’s impatience, Wigg continued. “The craft is divided into two parts, or schools of thought, if you will. The first is called the Vigors. This is the beneficent side of the craft, and requires great selflessness and sacrifice. It is the school of magic to which each of the wizards of the Directorate have taken their vows. Simply put, the Vigors teach those facets of the craft that produce charity, kindness, and deeds for others. It is the only type of magic practiced by wizards.” He paused, gathering his thoughts, watching the setting sun slowly drop into the horizon before he finally spoke again.

“The other side of the craft is called the Vagaries. It is practiced only for power and greed, and the depravities of its execution know no bounds. It is said that complete mastery of the Vagaries always results in madness. During the war, the sorceresses practiced only the Vagaries, the wizards only the Vigors.” He picked at the hem of his robe. “The Vagaries are the most dangerous of all aspects of the craft—not more powerful than the Vigors, but far more destructive. And destruction was the tool needed most by the sorceresses to accomplish their goals.” A brief look of sorrow passed across the wizard’s face, and he sighed. “For you see, Tristan, it is always far more harmful to achieve one’s ends by taking, rather than by giving.” His voice sounded sad and far away.

“Did you ever know such a person, Wigg?” Tristan asked. “A true master of the Vagaries?”

The old one raised himself up a little and looked straight into the prince’s eyes. “Unfortunately, Tristan, I have,” he answered. “And it was clear that the beginnings of the Vagaries’ madness had begun to manifest themselves in its lead practitioner. She was the most purely evil person I have ever known—but she was also the most brilliant.”

Tristan found himself stymied for a moment. For as long as he could remember, he had been under the impression that endowed males were more naturally powerful than their female counterparts. Finally, he asked, “Can women therefore become as powerful as men in their use of the craft?”

“Oh, yes,” Wigg answered. “An endowed female who studied with equal intent could be just as dangerously powerful as any male, provided her blood was the quality of his. Before the war, both men and women of endowed blood were allowed to learn and practice the craft. The women called themselves sorceresses, and a collection of such sorceresses was called a coven. Males of endowed blood who practiced the craft called themselves wizards. The two names imply exactly the same thing, the only difference being gender. Most people do not realize that, because the training of women in the craft was outlawed, for better or for worse, at the end of the Sorceresses’ War.”

The wizard looked out at Tammerland. It was that wonderful time of twilight when the orange of the sun’s rays could still be seen, melting upward into the ever-darkening black of the night. The three red moons would soon be up, and the night creatures of the Hartwick Woods would begin to stir.

“What makes one wizard or sorceress more powerful than another?” Tristan asked.

“In that, it is much like anything else. First, of course, ability is determined by the quality of one’s blood. Added to this is the pupil’s intelligence, and the quality and duration of training. But the overriding variable is blood purity. The stronger the blood, the better the pupil. The better the pupil, the more powerful the resulting wizard or sorceress.”

Tristan continued to press. “And how is it, Wigg, that you and the other members of the Directorate have never died? I know of people in Tammerland who say you and the other members have not aged one bit in their entire lifetime.”

“We are protected by what are called time enchantments. But the public perception of this is misleading, Tristan. It is true that the enchantments keep us impervious to disease and old age, but time enchantments do not necessarily equate to immortality. If you and I both jumped off this cliff, at the bottom of it I would be just as dead as you. The time enchantments were developed to protect our land from those who practiced the Vagaries, who were also close to perfecting the same enchantments. Not for selfish reasons. The war seemed to be interminable, and we were losing so many wizards. If by chance we could win the war, we wanted to ensure that this sort of thing could never happen again. True, we granted ourselves seeming immortality, but in return we pledged the remainder of our lives to the Vigors only, and to ensuring Eutracian peace.”

Tristan was beginning to see the wizard in a new light, despite the fact that he had known him for almost thirty years. The old one had lived over ten times that long, and almost all of it in the service of his country.

“The various aspects of the craft are infinite, Tristan. For both the Vigors and the Vagaries. Spells, enchantments, incantations, transformations, potions, divinations, symbols—the list goes on and on. And each thing in nature has its own place in the craft. Thus, the study of the craft is infinite and, for those of us with endowed blood, irresistibly compelling.”

“Are the Vagaries still practiced?” Tristan asked, looking genuinely concerned.

“No. Its practitioners were all either killed or banished, and the volumes and scrolls containing their teachings were burned.” The need to lie to the prince sent a stabbing pain through Wigg’s heart, but in this, too, the old one had no choice. There was so much he would have liked to tell him. The prince’s situation was so unique—the first ever such case in the recorded history of Eutracia, and, as such, to be handled with the greatest of care, lest they risk the destruction of the entire kingdom. Tristan had been carefully, very carefully, watched from the moment of his birth, as had his sister. In truth Wigg knew that Tristan had good reason to feel like a specimen in some bottle, despite the fact that he was a fully grown man.

Tristan dropped his knees to the ground to sit cross-legged. For a moment he hesitated, unsure. Finally, he asked, “Wigg, may I ask you a personal question?”

The wizards eyes narrowed. “Nothing precludes you from asking, just as nothing precludes me from remaining silent.”

“Are you the most powerful of all the wizards?” The words seemed to hang in the air between them like a sudden, cold breeze.

Wigg sighed. “To answer your question, I don’t really know. I am considered to be the most powerful and learned of the Directorate, but there are other wizards, including rural wizards, within the population of Eutracia. We do not follow the progress of such wizards—the task would be too great. Besides, it is not our job. There was, however, during the war, a wizard who was as powerful as me…” His voice trailed off, and his eyes seemed far away again. He lowered his voice farther still. “As I said before, it was also believed that the mastery of the Vagaries would eventually lead the practitioner to madness. And although the Vagaries are no longer being practiced, they still exist, nonetheless.”

“I’m still not sure that I understand,” Tristan said, mulling over the wizard’s words.

Indeed, Wigg thought, looking compassionately into the prince’s dark eyes. How could you be expected even to begin to understand that which has taken the finest wizards of the realm over three centuries to unravel? Perhaps a demonstration would be the best way in which to instruct you now.

“Magic is everywhere, Tristan,” the wizard continued. “Even though it cannot be seen. In this aspect it is much like the air we breathe, constantly surrounding us yet invisible, making us blissfully unaware of its presence and usually quite unable to see it. Magic indeed has substance and shape, as does the air. But do not be misled. I’m not talking about the effects of the craft, or the result of its use. I’m speaking of the craft itself, of what it really is. There is a true, interwoven consistency to its energy and its existence, and it can be literally seen, each of the two sides, both the Vigors and the Vagaries.” He pursed his lips for a moment, finally making up his mind. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

Wigg once again turned toward the valley. The three red moons had finally risen, and the lights from the city and the palace could be seen. Darkness was falling quickly. To the prince’s great curiosity, the wizard suddenly stood and apparently began collecting his thoughts, the hem of the gray robe of his office slowly waving back and forth gently in the evening breeze. He closed his eyes and raised his arms to the sky as if in supplication, bowing his head.

The effect was mesmerizing.

To Tristan’s disbelief the sky began to lighten. A gigantic glow began to coalesce. As he watched, it gently started to spin and to turn on its axis. It was becoming a brilliant golden orb, with offshoots here and there of the palest white radiating outward from its center, bathing everything in radiance. From time to time golden droplets of energy would trickle from the slowly spinning orb and fall into the valley, dissipating into nothingness. The Vigors, Tristan’s mind exclaimed. It is too beautiful to be anything but the beneficent side of the craft.

Wigg turned back to face the prince and, as if reading his mind, said, “Yes, Tristan, the Vigors, gathering and materializing in their physical form. Magnificent, isn’t it?”

“But how is such a thing possible?” the prince whispered reverently.

Without answering, the wizard once more raised his arms, and a darker, more menacing form began to take form in the night sky. As the effect grew in size to match the Vigors, it too began to coalesce and spin, but the effect this time was far different—frightening, horrifying, in fact.

Now the same size and shape as the Vigors, the dark shape seemed to push the other orb aside, as if attempting to make room for itself in the night sky. Black and foreboding, it was as grotesque as the Vigors were beautiful. Droplets of dark, menacing energy dripped casually from its pitch-black, shining sides, and bright scratches of lightning shot through the ebony orb’s center, occasionally lighting up the interior of the sphere, showing the complexity of its macabre form. Instinctively the prince knew what it was, and also knew that it was to be feared.

The Vagaries, he thought, mesmerized, as it turned there ominously before him. The dark side of the craft. It has to be.

Completely entranced, Tristan watched as the two great orbs began to move about the night sky. They would slowly, repeatedly begin to attract one another, as if somehow needful of each other. But then, suddenly, just as they were about to touch, they would unexpectedly, violently, repel one another, and the process would continue. In some ways it was almost a pitiful thing to watch, the never-ending attempts to join and the always-failing struggles to stay together, only to be thrust apart, over and over again.

He stood there speechless, his blood calling out to him as never before.

He was finally able to find his voice and ask the question. “How is it that they seem to attract, only to eventually repel one another?”

“Each thing in nature has its opposite,” the wizard said calmly as he stood before the orbs. “Male and female, light and dark. And so it goes throughout the entire scheme of the world as we know it. The two sides of the craft are no different. But, unlike the other examples I just mentioned, the Vigors and the Vagaries cannot join. Indeed, if any aspect of either one is used in combination with the other, the result would be calamitous—a rent, or tear, if you will, in the fabric of each. For as long as we have known of their existence they have been in this perpetual state of similar, yet separate, permanence.” He paused, the weight of his words seemingly heavy upon his heart. “If each, at the same time, had a tear large enough, it is said that it could release the powers of one to join with those of the other, and that such an uncontrolled occurrence would be the end of all we know. This is yet another reason why we wizards took the vows. To prevent any one of us from trying to combine the two schools.”

He turned to look at Tristan, and the prince could feel that the wizard was about to tell him something of great importance. “It is also said that there are invisible corridors that connect the two sides of the craft, that virtually join the orbs,” Wigg continued. “And that until those corridors are traveled through by one of the endowed, neither side of the craft, no matter how powerful it seems to be individually, has even a smattering of the dynamism it would display if the two were joined. This, then, is the ultimate goal of the craft of magic, Tristan. That is, the harmonious joining of the Vigors and the Vagaries, and their control and proper use thereafter.” And the Chosen One shall come, and through the use of his sanguine, perfect blood he shall one day traverse the corridors of the craft, and bring the two sides together without the breaching of their fabrics, he thought.

“And therefore, when you think of the craft, it is proper to imagine it as these two opposites. Turning forever in time, waiting to be properly joined,” Wigg said softly. “And, in addition, when you think of the Vigors, know that this is the craft of the wizards; and when you think of the Vagaries, know that this was the craft of the sorceresses, when they lived.”

“But surely there were women who chose to practice the craft of the sake of good?” Tristan asked.

“Oh, indeed,” Wigg answered. “Especially before the war. And just as there were women practicing the craft for the sake of the good, there were endowed men using it for evil. But once the battle had been won, it was forbidden by the Directorate for women to be trained in the craft. I now believe this policy is wrong, as do others of the Directorate, and we have decided that this issue should be formally addressed after your coronation. We feel it is a decision that the king should help us make. You are to be that king.” He raised the infamous eyebrow at the prince. “As is the case with many such issues, you will have some tall thinking to do.”

Tristan thought to himself quietly for a moment. “Perhaps if women were to be trained, and I think they should, then as a prerequisite we could ask them also to submit to the death enchantments. That would be fair, would it not?”

“Yes, Tristan.” Wigg smiled, pleased that the prince had come to the same conclusion the Directorate had already arrived at. “It would.”

Wigg raised his hands, and the gigantic, glowing orbs began to dissipate, finally fading away until only the ordinary night sky remained. The prince continued to sit in the grass in awe of what had just transpired.

“But once again do not be misled, Tristan,” the wizard added, still gazing across the valley. “Magic is not without its limits, and neither am I. Just like you, I need food to eat, water to drink, and air to breathe. And, just like you, I can be killed. The power of the magic employed is limited by the power of the practitioner and the strength of the practitioner’s ethics, or, in the case of the Vagaries, the practitioner’s lack of ethics. Wizards of the Directorate have taken vows of poverty, service to king and country only, and are sworn to limit their studies solely to the practice of the Vigors. So you see, we do have limits, even though they are self-imposed. I cannot always do a thing simply because I would like to.”

Still stunned from what he had just witnessed, Tristan nonetheless found himself overtaken by a different concern. “Has a prospective wizard of the Directorate ever not taken the vows?” he asked softly. Wigg thought for a moment before answering. “Yes, there was one who did not take the vows. After the rest of us had submitted to the vows he disappeared, and we always assumed he had found the call of the Vagaries too strong to resist, and had abandoned our cause to satisfy his own greed, voluntarily falling into league with the sorceresses. Because of his actions, we unanimously decided then and there to make the vows irreversible. You see, each of the two branches of the craft are also subdivided into two other subdoctrines, namely Achievement and Reversal. This makes a total of four very separate and distinct disciplines. As I said, the study of magic is infinite. One could spend an entire lifetime learning just one of the subdoctrines of just one of the two schools. Those were very dark days, and the stakes were very high. The fate of the known world hung upon we few remaining wizards making the right decision, and then doing the right thing.” He paused. “That is why, in addition to the time enchantments, we also invoked, as a group, voluntary enchantments of death.” With that, he sat back down on the grass next to the prince.

Tristan was stunned, his mind full of questions. Death enchantments? “But surely, after all these years, there have been more than that one male who refused to take the vows!” he exclaimed.

“Some did. Some even practiced the dark side of the craft,” the wizard said. “Thus the death enchantments.”

“Does this mean you know when you are to die?” he asked. Like his twin sister, he couldn’t imagine a world without Wigg in it.

The wizard bothered a loose thread at the hem of his robe. He replied softly. “In a manner of speaking, yes. But not in the way you think. An enchantment is an Achievement for which there is no known school of Reversal. In other words, it lasts indefinitely. The death enchantments were fashioned in such a way that if any wizard who has accepted them breaks any part of his vows or practices any form of the Vagaries, either known or unknown to the others, he immediately dies. We of the Directorate never showed other wizards anything of the Vagaries, of course. But against the chance of one learning of them from the sorceresses, the vows and the death enchantments were placed upon them before any serious training in the craft could commence.”

Wigg sighed. “We instituted the death enchantments among ourselves because we would brook no more betrayals,” he added sadly. “We could not—not and see Eutracia survive.” He paused for a moment, considering his next words. “True, we perhaps could have delayed the taking of the vows long enough to use some of the Vagaries ourselves to help influence the outcome of the war. But we decided we would actually prefer to lose the war by following what we believed to be right, rather than see the Vagaries flourish. In addition, we had no idea what the aftereffects of such a decision would be. And we certainly did not need a group of wizards addicted, as it were, to the use of the Vagaries, even if that meant victory. A true case of the ends not justifying the means.”

“Then how is it that you are able to show me the Vagaries without perishing from the death enchantments?” Tristan asked.

His mind is so quick, Wigg thought to himself. But we always knew that it would be.

The wizard smiled. “Because calling forth the Vagaries to show themselves is not the same thing as attempting to use them,” he said simply. “Had I called upon their powers to produce an act of the craft, now or at any other time, I would be as dead as the blood stalker I killed this afternoon.”

Wigg’s various references to death suddenly prompted a different source of curiosity within the prince as he sat there in the grass. For his entire life, virtually everyone he had known, himself included, had made mention from time to time of the Afterlife, the nebulous place to which people’s souls were supposedly carried after death. But he had never heard anyone actually explain its meaning, and he seriously doubted whether anyone could—anyone but one of the wizards, perhaps. He had long felt that the Directorate knew more of it than they chose to reveal, just as he had always been so sure of their same recalcitrance regarding the craft. But something also told him that just now, sitting here in the grass next to the Lead Wizard, was not the time to ask about this particular subject.

Tristan sat back on his heels in the grass, which was now wet with the evening dew, examining his emotions. Coupled with his thoughts of the Afterlife ran a feeling of sadness mixed with one of great debt to the wizard seated next to him, and to all of the Eutracians who had come and gone before him. As he returned his gaze to the valley, he saw that some of the torch lights had begun to twinkle more brightly within the city limits of Tammerland. There was so much more he wished to know. Somehow, in his heart of hearts, he knew now there always would be.

So it was Tristan who broke the silence. “And what of the Paragon itself, Wigg?” he asked. “I do not understand the importance of it in all this.” He could picture it in his mind as he spoke, the mysterious, square-cut blood-red stone that had hung from around his father’s neck on a gold chain for as long as the prince had been able to remember. And as unyielding as the wizards of the Directorate were in giving up information about the craft, it was commonly known that the subject of the Paragon was the topic about which they had always been the most taciturn. Even Tristan knew only what was common knowledge about the stone—which was very little, to say the least. He knew that it had been discovered near the end of the Sorceresses’ War and had not only been essential in the victory, but somehow was also tied to the ongoing powers of the wizards of the Directorate themselves. Even as father to son the king had never spoken to him of it, despite the young man’s many questions. Now his newfound need to know told him that these small scraps of information were not enough.

Wigg kept his gaze focused steadily upon the lights of the city. It is in this that I must be the most careful of all, he heard his mind say. Finally, he spoke.

“It is not appropriate for me to say a great deal more about the Paragon at this time, Tristan,” he said slowly. “I will not add greatly to the knowledge that I know you already have about the stone, except to explain why it always hangs about the neck of the king for safekeeping, rather than being worn by one of the wizards. It was decided early on that none of the wizards of the Directorate should be personally entrusted with it, because at that time we had no idea what effect it could have upon an individual wizard’s powers. Because the recent trauma of the war was still fresh in our minds, we agreed that no one already trained in the craft should be allowed to wear the stone, lest it consolidate too much power into the hands of one person. Therefore, an untrained person of endowed blood was always chosen. Remember, we were still very unsure what might develop within an endowed who was very proficient in the craft and who also wore the Paragon.” And we still are, my prince, he thought to himself. For you shall be the first to do so. Wigg paused, considering his next words. Then, taking a long breath of the cool night air, he continued with his discourse.

“It has therefore long been Eutracian custom that this person, the wearer of the Paragon, shall be the king and thereby always kept close to the wizards. And due to the necessity of keeping the stone alive, the king must always be one of endowed blood. It is for reasons of safety that the king’s training in the craft begins only after he leaves office, has removed the Paragon from his person, and has taken the vows of the Directorate, including the acceptance of the death enchantments. The only person who can remove the stone from around the king’s neck is the king himself, and that happens only when the monarch’s son turns thirty and succeeds him.” He turned to look at the prince and pursed his lips. “If there is no son to succeed him, then, as you already know the Directorate chooses a worthy candidate of endowed blood from the populace to become the new king. This, as I am also sure you know, was the case with your father.”

Once again the words seemed to hang in the air between them for a long time as they looked out into the encroaching darkness of the valley. Wigg could easily remember the look on the face of the startled young Nicholas when the entire Directorate of Wizards had arrived at his door, offering him the crown.

“But there is something else you should know,” the wizard said, almost reluctantly. “There is a mate to the stone. Not another stone, but a great book, called the Tome of the Paragon.” Wigg’s brow furrowed. Perhaps I am telling him too much in one day. And this has been a very unusual day already. But soon the Paragon will be around his neck instead of his father’s, and these things will be revealed to him anyway.

“The Tome and the Paragon were discovered at the same time, Tristan,” he continued, “and either one is useless without the other.” Time to test him again, the Lead Wizard thought. He tilted his head slightly as he looked into the prince’s eyes. “Can you imagine where they were discovered?”

Tristan looked down at the toes of his dirty knee boots, considering his options. He couldn’t remember a single time that he had ever lied to Wigg, and he still felt that he had not technically lied to the old one so far today—but he had come close. Lying was not in his nature and never had been. Heretofore, his mind had made no connection between the Paragon and the caves he had discovered. After all, what could the Paragon have to do with an underground waterfall? Just the same, when he searched his heart, he felt that he could not reveal what he had discovered today, whether it had anything to do with the Paragon or not.

“No,” he said quietly.

Wigg again pursed his lips, nodding his head. “I understand,” he said. More than you could ever know, he thought. Sitting again in silence, the wizard realized that the daytime sounds of the Hartwick Woods had at some point given themselves over to the nighttime singing of tree frogs.

Wigg spoke at last. “No more questions. It is late. We must leave now in order to be back in time for the inspection ceremony.” He moved closer to the prince, his aquamarine eyes steadily boring into Tristan’s darker blue ones. “You will speak to no one of the things that have been discussed here this night.” Slowly, he pointed a finger at the sleeping princess. “She will awaken now. Go to her while I saddle the horses.”

He watched Tristan walk to her, the azure aura still about the prince’s body. It looked even brighter now in the quickly gathering darkness.

Shailiha began to sit up, blinking. Immediately she jumped to her feet, her eyes full of tears, and hugged Tristan fiercely.

Wigg turned back to take a last look out over the now-dark valley and the distant, twinkling lights of Tammerland. We have long feared this day, and now it has come. May the Afterlife grant us the wisdom to prevail.

He stood to collect the battle ax and to saddle the two horses. Tristan helped Shailiha up onto Pilgrim as the old one mounted the princess’ bay mare. They walked, three abreast, with Tristan on foot, to the place at the woods’ edge from which they had emerged. Tristan again decided to ask the wizard a question and have some fun with him at the same time.

“Tell me, all-knowing, all-seeing Lead Wizard, how do we know where to go? As many times as I have been to this spot, I have never done so in the dark. It could take us all night to get back, even if we can see the path back down at all. Wizard or no wizard.”

Despite the prince’s jab, Wigg smiled and reached into the leather pouch that hung from around his waist. In the dark, Tristan thought he could see the wizard remove a small handful of a powdery substance. Holding the powder in the flat of his hand, Wigg took a deep breath and blew upon it, sending it toward the woods in front of them.

Upon touching the forest floor, the powder became luminescent in the night. A sparkling, twinkling iridescent blue streak was igniting itself and snaking all the way down the mountain, marking a clear path through the woods.

Tristan was stunned. Looking into the old one’s eyes, he whispered, “Wigg, how is such a thing possible?”

Wigg gazed calmly at Tristan and Shailiha.

“I thought by now you both knew,” he said, raising the familiar eyebrow. “It’s magic.”

3

She had been traveling over winding and dusty Eutracian roads for more than six days now. She always hated traveling this way, without her chef or her maidservants. It was so common.

As the ornate carriage pulled by the six matching black stallions bumped and tossed along the dusty road to Tammerland in the gathering twilight, the lone occupant once again swore a silent oath to herself.

Soon I will never again travel to kneel before anyone. They will travel to kneel before me.

Natasha of the House of Minaar, duchess of the province of Ephyra, looked down at the blue silk gown she was wearing and carefully smoothed out two of the unruly white ruffles she found at the hem. There was no Pentangle upon her dress, nor had any of her clothes carried that beloved sign for the last three hundred years, but that would soon change. It was imperative that she look the part tonight. She was on her way to an audience with Queen Morganna, and to attend the inspection of the preparations for the upcoming royal abdication ceremony.

Ilendium, her home and the capital city of the province of Ephyra, was located at the foot of the Tolenka Mountains to the north. Ilendium was also known for its amazing deposits of marble, the finest in the kingdom. It was altogether true that, in terms of size, Ephyra was one of the lesser of the Eutracian duchies. But because of its marble quarries it was nonetheless one of the richest, and the abundance of its subsequent tax contributions to the realm always insured the small province an unusually lofty place in the hierarchy of Eutracian court politics.

That part of it all had been instrumental to Natasha’s plan from the beginning.

Her seduction of and subsequent marriage to the doddering and ancient Duke Baldric of the House of Minaar had been almost embarrassingly easy to devise, giving her the one thing that she needed most to fulfill her destiny, and the destiny of her Sisters.

The married title of duchess of Ephyra, and the acceptance and access to the royal court at Tammerland.

From her traveling vanity case she produced a folding mirror with which to check her appearance, but the occasionally bumping carriage made it too difficult to hold the mirror still. Lowering and tying off the carriage window shades, she casually laid the mirror upon the red velvet seat next to her.

She tilted her head slightly, and the mirror rose steadily into the air to hang before her face. There, that was better.

She smiled at the thought that soon she would be able to give up this particular face, just as she had given up so many others over the last three hundred years. Just the same, she had been particularly happy with this appearance. The floating mirror showed a countenance framed by shiny brown ringlets that reached down past her shoulders, finally curving inward at their ends upon the swell of her ample breasts. Raising a finger, she vainly touched the beauty mark that she had so carefully placed near the left corner of her mouth. She was particularly fond of this birthmark, it having been the final touch to this particular creation of self. The lips were sensuous and full, and the dark, hooded eyes staring back at her from the mirror were of a deep and lustrous brown, with almost overly long and seductive lashes. She smiled.

As planned, poor old Duke Baldric had been immediately smitten, and they had married within a year of their introduction. Owner of the largest and most profitable of all the marble quarries in the province, he had been elected duke of Ephyra over thirty years ago, winning every reelection for the position since. He was greatly loved by the citizens of Ephyra, a fact that had no importance for Natasha at all except that she was able to keep her title of duchess, and the freedom and power that went with it. Their wedding day had been six years ago, and she longed for the day when she would soon be free of him, and free of so much else here that she had hated since her childhood. For the last six years she had simply smiled back at him innocently each time he had told her that she hadn’t aged a single day since their wedding. And although the poor fool had unsuspectingly done his best to give them children, she only tolerated his inadequate and unexciting lovemaking because it served to strengthen the disguise of her marriage.

Keeping herself barren had also been a simple thing. Producing progeny with one of unendowed blood was not part of her plans, nor would it ever be. No matter, she thought. There had been many younger and more vital men in her bed to amuse her since her wedding day. It always made her laugh to imagine the looks that would have come upon their faces had she told any of them how old she truly was. But that was unimportant. There would always be more, especially since her husband’s existence would soon be coming to an end.

Satisfied with her appearance, she narrowed her eyes, and the hovering mirror obediently folded in midair and slipped itself back into the vanity case. Pointing to the window shades, she watched them roll themselves back up into place.

She laid her head back against the velvet upholstery, closed her eyes, and silently blessed the beloved endowed blood streaming through her veins, at the same time cursing the wizard bastard who had been her father. She then smiled to herself, proud of the part she was about to play, and proud of who she had become. A sorceress.

The fact that she was the only living sorceress in Eutracia was itself unparalleled. But it was her special talent of changing her appearance upon which she prided herself the most. This chameleonlike ability, as well as the time enchantments that protected her, had been essential in helping her to keep both herself and her secrets alive, time after time, for more than three centuries.

For Natasha of the House of Minaar was a Visage Caster, able to change her appearance to suit any need, or for that matter, any mood.

As the duchess of Ephyra, it was commonplace for her to visit Tammerland as an emissary of her husband. During her frequent visits to the palace she had always taken special care to be as charming as possible, cultivating the friendship of the queen and arranging useful political alliances at court. She was in constant need of any and all information regarding the royals and the Directorate that she could gather, and there were many in and around the court at Tammerland who were only too happy to provide it, assuming that the price was right. And Natasha always paid, and paid handsomely, with either the coin of the realm or with her body, whichever was most useful at the given moment. She had even managed to arrange the occasional audience with the unwitting wizards of the Directorate. It had taken her a long time to master the sorceress’ warp that she had so carefully constructed about herself, the warp that allowed her to hide the quality of her blood from detection by the wizards. That warp had always been an essential part of the masquerade, just as her Sisters had taught her it would be. Despite how much she hated all wizards, she knew it was paramount that they feel comfortable in her presence, and that her secret remain intact.

She thought first of the royal family, and of what would happen to them. It brought a smile to her lips to think that she might save the prince for some pleasure of her own before it all ended. It had been so long since she had lain with a man whose blood quality was the equal of hers. And then her mind turned to each of the six wizards in turn, and to what the future would soon to bring them, as well. To the wizards who had defeated her teachers, who had banished her Sisters from their birthrights. To the infestation that now controlled Eutracia. And especially to Wigg, Lead Wizard, the greatest of the parasites.

It had been especially important to arrange this particular trip to Tammerland correctly, and to make sure that her otherwise useless husband remained at home on their estate in Ephyra. The intestinal bout that poor Duke Baldric had suddenly acquired had been childishly easy for her to conjure, and she had actually enjoyed inflicting it upon him. Not only would the doddering old fool be physically incapacitated, but he would be unable to bear the long carriage ride to the royal inspection ceremony. Indeed, he himself had insisted that traveling to Tammerland in a bumpy carriage to view a simple inspection of the abdication preparations was now completely out of the question. Which, of course, had suited her purposes perfectly. Natasha needed to be quite alone this evening if she was to accomplish all that was expected of her by her Sisters. Failing was not an option. She needed to be able to move amongst the other guests at the ceremony unescorted and of her own free will, so that she could be in the most advantageous position to observe the members of the royal family and the Directorate of Wizards. Indeed, at some point in the evening it was critically important that she become physically close to each of them. The timing must be perfect. There would be no second chance to try again before the die was finally cast.

As she laid her head lazily against the luxurious upholstery, her mind began to drift back in time to the sequence of events that had led her to this day, and to the even more important days that lay soon enough ahead. The fact that her name was not really Natasha was of no importance. After all, she had acquired and lost so many names over the last three hundred years that she wouldn’t be able to remember half of them if she tried. Besides, she wanted nothing from the man who had been her father, including his name. No, names were not important. But what was important was that at the very young age of only five years she alone had been the first one to be able to read the Tome.

The Tome. The great book of all books that had accompanied the discovery of the Paragon. She had simply picked it up and begun reading it even after all of the greatest wizard minds of the realm had tried so hard to do the same thing. Tried and failed.

She would never forget the look upon the face of her bastard wizard father as he had come into that secret room, only to see his little girl perched in a huge chair with the very Paragon itself around her neck, reading calmly from the great Tome as though she had been speaking and writing its strange language all her life. Nor would she ever forget the rejected feeling of being pushed aside by all of the other wizards in their great haste to try again to read the book—to read the book and therefore help themselves to victory in their struggle against the ones they had called the sorceresses. She had read the book first. The book that before that day had always been gibberish, even to the most brilliant of wizards, including Wigg.

She had also been only five years old when the pretty ladies had first come to her. The pretty ladies who never aged. They had taken her with them to live, and she was happy about it because she had already been angry with her father and the other wizards. She sneaked away with them gladly, and had never returned. And then had come her training.

She was special because of her blood, the four of them had said. Special and very pretty. And one day, if she worked very hard, she could grow up to be just like them. Just like them. How those words had so wonderfully swollen her heart, and how hard she had worked at everything the pretty ladies had taught her to do. And she had learned, beyond even the expectations of the four women whom she had taken to her heart as her Sisters. As her family.

But then, twenty years later, the dark days of the war had come. Because of the wizards’ discovery of Paragon, her Sisters were losing their struggle. And it was decided that, instead of joining them in the conflict and revealing her identity, she would be left behind, in case all was lost. The cruel wizards had forgotten about her existence, her Sisters had said, and it was best that it remain that way. Even her father, they had told her, had forgotten about her. And thus her additional training as a Visage Caster had begun: so that she could be safely left behind, alone if need be, to keep their version of the craft alive and to serve her teachers should the need ever arise. Behind the veil of a thousand faces.

From the safety of her newly altered first change of appearance, she had watched in horror as her Sisters were first tried and then banished from their birthrights, convicted as common criminals to be set adrift upon the Sea of Whispers. For many weeks afterward she had remained hidden from the population of Eutracia, beside herself with grief, mourning her Sisters’ deaths. After that, she constantly moved from place to place as they had instructed her, changing her appearance as necessary to keep the secret of her identity, unsure of what to do. And then, at last, the first message had come to her mind, the first of many such mental joinings that would follow. She could still remember the joy she felt the first time the voice of her eldest Sister had suddenly rung in her ears from somewhere far away. We live, the voice said. Wait and become stronger. There shall be need of you, and you must watch for the Chosen Ones to come. Watch so that we may know, also.

And the Chosen Ones had come, almost thirty years ago, just as the Tome had predicted.

And now her sisters knew also.

Smiling, Natasha of the House of Minaar slipped on her white silk elbow gloves and listened casually as her driver presented her papers of transit to the Royal Guard manning the gate just outside the moat of the royal palace at Tammerland. Her smile widened as she heard the driver finally urge the stallions ahead, over the bridge to the palace.

A sorceress of the Coven had just passed through the palace gates.

The castle was coming alive with visitors and workers, he thought. There must have been two hundred people in this room alone. And here I sit in my dirty clothes, for all of them to see.

Tristan sat glumly in one of the ornate chairs that stood in several rows just outside the anteroom to the royal chambers. Physically, he still felt marvelous after his visit to the falls, but he was very worried about the discussions that he guessed were now taking place on the other side of the huge double mahogany doors. Without being told, he knew that the Directorate of Wizards were in closed chambers with his father, no doubt discussing his behavior of today. Upon reaching the palace Wigg had immediately stomped away, gray robes flying as he went down the palace halls, the look on his face granting him a wide berth in all of the hubbub. And Shailiha, after giving Tristan a stern but thoughtful look, had also left, presumably to retire to her own chambers to prepare for the ceremony and report the events of her equally amazing day to her husband, Frederick.

Tristan had great admiration for Frederick, not only as his brother-in-law, but also as the commander of the Royal Guard. In truth, they owed each other much. It had been Tristan who had first introduced him to his sister. And it had been Frederick who had personally given the young prince much of his training at the war college. Sadly, Tristan supposed that even Frederick would be angry with him this time, since Shailiha had been involved. Frederick loved her more than life.

Bored, the prince slowly looked around at the plush decorations that adorned this area of the royal residence. It was customary for a new king, upon taking the throne, to redecorate the palace to suit his taste. King Nicholas had given this responsibility to Morganna, and it was the unanimous opinion of Tammerland’s citizens that the queen had done an exquisite job. The palace contained over six hundred rooms, some of which Tristan had never even visited. Amazingly, the queen had personally overseen the decoration of each of them. Marble of every possible color from the quarries at Ilendium could be seen everywhere, and ornate and colorful stained-glass windows and skylights had been used extensively to give the previously foreboding structure a lighter and more welcoming air. Oversized tapestries and paintings hung in virtually every room, and it had also been Morganna’s idea to add a great library to one wing of the palace and to make its use available to everyone in the city. Even though he had lived here his entire life, Tristan never ceased to be amazed at the castle’s sheer size. In addition to the spacious living quarters of the royal family, there were also various rooms of government administration and the headquarters and war rooms of the Royal Guard. Looking again at the double doors, he reminded himself that the living quarters, libraries, and other private rooms of the wizards of the Directorate were also contained within these walls, off-limits to everyone except the king.

The great room in which Tristan now sat anxiously waiting was called the Chamber of Supplication, usually reserved for the dozens of assorted citizens who arrived almost daily at the palace, asking for this favor or that from the king or, occasionally, even from the Directorate of Wizards. Sometimes the supplicants received audiences, and sometimes they did not. Either way, this room was a place of waiting and therefore, to Tristan, a place of boredom, despite its magnificent decor. The prince knew he was in trouble, but he couldn’t imagine what the wizards and his father had been discussing for so long. Wigg had told him curtly to sit here until he was called, and despite the fact that the inspection ceremony was to begin shortly, he had as yet seen no sign that might indicate he would be summoned before the king and Directorate anytime soon.

His return to the city with Wigg and Shailiha had been uneventful, despite the embarrassment at being seen in this dirty and disheveled state when they should have been inside the palace preparing for the ceremony. When they had reached the palace, the Royal Guard had immediately come to attention and ushered them across the moat, motioning aside the many carriages and pedestrians that were trying to cross. Tristan enviously took notice, as he always did, of the soldiers’ numerous weapons and various uniforms. Regardless of his rank, each wore a shiny silver breastplate etched with the image of a Eutracian broadsword, its blade running from the upper left corner of the chest armor down to the lower opposite right corner and ending there at the sword’s highly decorated gold hilt. Above the beautiful broadsword lay the image of a roaring lion, painted in black. These two images comprised the heraldry that was of the House of Galland. A long, pleated black cape was attached to either shoulder of the breastplate and hung down each soldier’s back. Each time Tristan saw the armor he wished he could spend more time in it instead of tending to his royal duties. Duties that would only increase soon, when he was king.

The palace was already teeming with the guests who were to join in the inspection ceremony and the countless palace workers who were responsible for making sure the ceremony came off smoothly. Everyone hustled by as if in a desperate hurry, off to this task or that, with some if not all of them taking notice that the prince was sitting there alone, in very dirty and, to say the least, unusual clothes. He reflected glumly that he was still even wearing his quiver, with its dirks plain for all to see. To make matters worse, each of the people passing by in the noisy hall apparently felt a civil responsibility to stop and chat. So far he had made polite conversation with visiting dukes and duchesses, noblemen and their ladies, officers of the Royal Guard, and maidservants and cooks, to name a few. He shook his head. There would be hundreds of people at the ceremony tonight, many of whom he would not know and would have to be introduced to. And despite the fact that he did not want to be king, he regretted meeting them for the first time dressed like this. For if the Directorate and the king did not summon him soon, he would have no time to change his clothes for the inspection ceremony.

He looked down in resignation at the strange red stains on his black breeches, and then at the swirling patterns in the rose-colored marble floor. Lost in his memories of the underground falls and his worries about his predicament, he didn’t see or hear the woman approach until the almost obscenely high-heeled and equally polished sapphire shoes were only inches away from his own filthy leather boots.

“Good evening, Your Highness.” The soft, velvety voice came from above.

Tristan stood, as he had so often done already this evening, to address yet another of his subjects, and found himself looking into the deep brown eyes of Natasha of the House of Minaar, duchess of Ephyra. She curtsied perfectly and extended her left hand for the customary kiss.

“How wonderful it is to see you again,” she said demurely. “Tell me, how are your mother and father?” she asked, her eyes never wavering from his. She seemed to take absolutely no notice of Tristan’s embarrassing appearance. Either she was being polite to one of the royal family, or she actually liked the way he looked tonight. Tristan thought it was the latter.

He had never liked this woman, despite the fact that since her marriage to Duke Baldric she had somehow become a good friend of his mother’s. He reminded himself of the fact that she was obviously much closer to his own age than to that of her husband, and also of the reputation she had slowly garnered since her marriage. It had been whispered in political circles for years that she had taken many lovers, but she was nonetheless received courteously at court due to the importance of the province of Ephyra to the nation as a whole. His mother apparently either did not know of the woman’s indiscretions, or chose to be gracious enough to ignore them. He groaned inwardly. Time to be prince again.

Bowing slightly, Tristan took her left hand in his right but held it there for a time, purposely forcing her to remain uncomfortably bent at the knees just a little longer than was customary. Finally, after taking his time in gently brushing his lips against the smooth white silk of her gloved hand, he smiled into her eyes.

“Please rise, Duchess,” he said without pretense. As she rose slowly to her full height, he was reminded of how tall and striking she was. Ignoring the inquiry about his parents, he asked, “You are here for the inspection ceremony, no doubt? Tell me, is your husband the duke attending the ceremony with you this evening?” At the mention of her husband, the prince thought he saw a brief look of tension pass across her eyes, but if it had, it was gone in an instant.

“No, Your Highness,” she answered, a somehow unconvincing expression of concern temporarily taking over her countenance and then vanishing as fast as it came. An opened fan had appeared in her right hand, and it began to move the air gracefully across the cleavage that rose above the low neckline of her magnificent blue gown. “And if it pleases Your Highness, please call me Natasha. Unfortunately, the duke was suddenly taken ill with some sort of nasty intestinal bout, just before we were to leave Ilendium for the trip to Tammerland.” She smiled with her eyes over the fan as it continued its seductive path back and forth. Had this woman been anyone else the prince might have been intrigued and only too glad to join her in the beginnings of a flirtation, despite the fact that she was married. But not with her. And not tonight.

“Perhaps I could have one of the court physicians sent to your estate to tend to him,” Tristan offered casually, deciding to keep the subject of her husband foremost in the conversation. He folded his arms across the laces of the dirty vest that he suddenly realized did little to conceal the fact that he had nothing on underneath it. “It would seem the least we could do for such a close friend of my mother’s.”

Her smile showed perfect teeth in the flickering candlelight of the chandeliers. “Thank you, Your Highness, but I have a feeling that as soon as I return home, the malady will leave him as quickly as it came.” She tilted her head slightly to one side. A hidden meaning, perhaps? If it was, he didn’t understand it. She once again curtsied.

“And now if you will excuse me, Your Highness, I am late for a visit with the queen. It has been months since I have visited the palace, and she has granted me the rare honor of a private audience. But I do so look forward to continuing our conversation later, after the ceremony. Could you be so kind as to point the way to the royal chambers?” The ever-present fan sent some of her perfume his way.

“Of course, Duchess,” he said. “The royal quarters are in the west wing of the palace, where you will no doubt find her.” Looking around, he summoned a lieutenant of the Royal Guard forward, resplendent in his dress uniform for the evening. Tristan felt shabby by comparison, but still the duchess’ intent eyes never left his.

The lieutenant approached the prince and saluted crisply. “Your Highness,” he said simply.

“Please escort the duchess to my mother’s quarters,” Tristan ordered him. Turning back to Natasha, he noticed her outstretched hand. Sighing inwardly, he again brushed his lips against the back of the gloved hand and bowed.

The look in Natasha’s dark eyes now seemed even more bold, possibly due to the fact that she was about to take her leave of him. Her head still tilted slightly, she slowly looked him up and down. When her eyes at last returned to his, her tongue darted out playfully to touch the beauty mark at the left corner of her mouth. Then, turning away with the lieutenant, she was suddenly gone.

Tristan was standing there alone, smiling and quietly shaking his head, when a different voice—a deep, rich male voice—came up from behind him.

“A wink from a pretty girl at a party doesn’t always result in climax,” he heard it say, “but only a fool won’t take the opportunity to find out.”

He turned around to the familiar voice and smiled to find Frederick of the House of Steinarr, his brother-in-law and one of his best friends, smiling broadly at him. He stood before a small contingent of the Royal Guard, each of them already in dress uniform. “I’ve heard about that one,” Frederick said slyly, watching her walk away. From the first day they had met, Frederick had inexplicably refused to address the prince formally, instead treating Tristan as an equal. And it was precisely that endearing measure of disrespect that had made him one of the prince’s closest friends. A great, hulking bear of a man, Frederick always seemed too large for his uniform. But underneath that uniform was pure warrior, perhaps the best fighter of the realm, and now the commander of the Royal Guard. Tristan had never had a brother, but if he could have, he would have chosen this man. He smiled again into the face that was framed by the short brown hair and the great forest of brown beard.

“So how long have you been standing there?” the prince asked. He felt even more out of place in his dirty clothes as he stood next to the company of colorful soldiers.

“Long enough to know that you’re obviously slipping,” Frederick retorted. He stepped closer to Tristan, out of earshot of his troops. “I had heard you had a bad day, but I never thought I would live to see you this tired. When I finally saw her open her mouth that last time, I thought she was going to undress you with her teeth.”

“No, thanks,” Tristan said, wryly shaking his head. “I already have enough trouble.”

“So I have heard.” Frederick’s smile evaporated, and he seemed genuinely concerned. “And by now most of the palace has heard, as well. Not the details, mind you, but enough to know that the seven rather powerful men behind those portals are not particularly happy with you just now.” He tilted his head in the direction of the double mahogany doors. “I have spoken to your sister, and I know how worried she is about you. Apparently the two of you, each in your own way, have had quite a day.”

Frederick’s appearance suddenly had Tristan feeling rebellious again. “Walk with me,” he said to Frederick, despite Wigg’s imperious command to stay put until he was called for. “I want to stretch my legs.”

Tristan’s brother-in-law narrowed his eyes in disapproval. “Won’t Wigg be angry?” he asked. “From what I’ve heard, that old wizard is already upset with you enough.”

“He’s the supreme, all-knowing Lead Wizard of the Directorate isn’t he?” Tristan asked sarcastically. “If he can find me in all of the Hart-wick Woods, then he can certainly find me in this drafty old palace.” He turned on his heel and purloined two crystal wineglasses from a serving tray that one of the waiters held as he bustled by, offering one to Frederick. Next, Tristan stopped another of them and promptly commandeered an entire bottle. “Reinforcements,” he said proudly. “Let’s go.” As the prince sauntered along the ornate marble halls with Frederick, it felt good to be away from the hubbub and out on his own again. He quickly drank a full glass of wine, and then another, Frederick doing the same. Eventually they stopped before a large staircase, walked down it, and found themselves standing in the midst of one of the queen’s many magnificent gardens. The stars were out, as were the three red moons, and the night sound of the tree frogs could be heard all around them. The prince found the peacefulness reassuring.

Tristan poured himself some more wine and turned to Frederick. “They’re all pretty concerned, aren’t they?” he asked.

“Not just them,” Frederick said, “but your sister and I, as well. And we have a right to be. Sometimes it seems you care more about your horse than you do your family. Do you want to go into more detail about what really happened up there today?”

Normally, Tristan would gladly have told Frederick about his bizarre experiences. But today something stopped him. He wasn’t even sure himself what exactly had transpired in those caves.

“I probably couldn’t explain what happened to me today if I tried,” he replied. “All I really want right now is to relax a little and forget it before Wigg, the grand inquisitor, comes looking for me again. You know, he can be a huge annoyance. I know he means well, as do the others of the Directorate, but sometimes I just want to be Tristan the citizen, not Tristan the prince.” He smiled conspiratorially. “All too often I quite enjoy doing exactly what they tell me not to,” he added, the wine beginning to swim in his head. “And if Wigg can’t find me tonight, then they can all go to thunder, the whole lot of them.”

Tristan and Frederick had met during the prince’s training in the Royal Guard, and the two had become so close that Frederick eventually took over personal responsibility for all of Tristan’s training. As a result they were without doubt the finest two swordsmen in the realm, with Frederick holding only a slight edge due to his size and strength. It had been a logical step for the prince to introduce Frederick to his sister Shailiha, and the romance had blossomed from there. Everyone in the royal family had approved, and the two had been married the following year in one of the largest ceremonies ever seen in Eutracia. A year later Shailiha was pregnant with her first child, and the entire kingdom was in joyous expectation of a new royal family member.

Smiling, Tristan put the wine bottle aside and punched Frederick on the arm, hard, as was his custom.

Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps the fact that the two of them had such a healthy rivalry in all things physical. In any event, the challenge had been made, and Frederick smiled knowingly as he uncoupled the silver breastplate from his chest. He immediately struck the prince in the chest so hard that Tristan dropped his wine glass and fell to the ground.

And so it began. In a second, they were on top of each other like a pair of schoolboys at play. Tristan jumped up and grabbed Frederick from behind, only to find himself back down on the ground again.

Frederick promptly tried to jump on top of him, only to discover that the prince was gone and standing above him, grinning wickedly. Too late, Frederick saw that the bottle had reappeared in Tristan’s hand, and before he could escape the inevitable, his head had been drenched in wine.

“There!” the prince shouted happily. “That serves you right for making my sister pregnant, you scoundrel!” Soon the two of them were laughing so hard that Frederick needed help up, but Tristan was barely able to give it, as they found themselves slipping and sliding in the mud created by the spilled wine and the crushed flowers that lay in ruins around them. Eventually the prince fell down next to Frederick, and the two of them sat there in the mud, laughing. Tristan grabbed a small handful of mud and pushed it into the side of Frederick’s cheek. They were now both completely filthy, Tristan even worse than before, and they each felt as if their laughter would never stop.

Frederick finally found his footing and stood up, still laughing. “You’re in a particularly rebellious mood today.” He snickered. “May the Afterlife help you once the Directorate gets their hands on you tonight! But in case you have forgotten, I have other places to go, and other things to attend to. There is still much to do this evening, and that doesn’t include spending any more time with the likes of a ne’er-do-well such as you!” He looked down at Tristan’s dirty vest and red-stained trousers with a look of mock superiority, quite understanding that he was equally dirty. He started to strap on his breastplate. “You might also consider a change of clothes.” He chuckled. “In case you have forgotten, this evening is all about you.” He waved a great tree trunk of an arm at the edifice of the brightly lit palace. “And despite how grand I’m sure tonight will be, I’m told that it’s nothing compared to the actual coronation itself.” He shook his head slightly as he looked down at the recalcitrant member of the royal house who sat in the mud at his feet, and one corner of his mouth came up. “Take care of yourself,” he said ruefully, thinking of the Directorate. “I believe there may be much more to come for you this night that you may not be pleased with. And now a good evening to you, Prince Filthy.” Frederick then smiled, bowed mockingly to the prince, and slowly walked back into the palace.

Tristan stood and watched as Frederick made his way back into the palace. A good man, the prince thought. And the father of Shailiha’s unborn child.

But Tristan’s good mood slowly began to dissipate as he resignedly made his way back through the crowds, his head slowly clearing from the wine. He tried to ignore the even more bizarre looks he received as he negotiated his way down the halls and back to the Chamber of Supplication. The ornate, congested room seemed even busier than before, but blessedly there was as yet no sign of Wigg.

Once more alone and lonely in a crowd of hundreds, Tristan resignedly sat down in one of the plush supplicant’s chairs and cast his eyes apprehensively to the double mahogany doors at the other side of the room.

4

Tristan had indeed been correct in guessing that Wigg was in a foul mood. In truth the wizard realized he had no right to be angry with Tristan, or Shailiha either, for that matter. Instinctively he knew that the prince must have found the Caves by accident, except how he had found them the old one could not imagine. No one had visited the Caves for centuries. Until today. Of all of the people to have gone there, Tristan was the worst possible choice for so many reasons. And now, this close to the coronation, was the worst possible time. In addition, the appearance of the blood stalker had badly unnerved the old wizard, partly because a stalker had not been seen in over two centuries, and partly because it had been his old friend Phillius. He knew it was not anger at the prince and his sister that drove his emotions. It was worry for the future.

Now he stood before the Directorate of Wizards and King Nicholas in the rather dark but luxurious meeting room deep below the palace. This was one of the secluded places where the seven of them came to discuss matters of importance, and Wigg had specified this room because he knew he could allow no one to overhear, just as he could tolerate no interruptions.

He looked at the six of them seated at the highly polished circular conference table, the other wizards on either side of him and King Nicholas on the throne at the center of the far side. The king’s usually regal bearing was tense with concern for his son as he pulled with worry upon his iron-gray beard. He was already dressed in the ermine-trimmed dark-blue velvet robes of his office in preparation for the inspection ceremony. Wigg was comforted to see the ever-present Paragon hanging around Nicholas’ neck on the usual gold chain. The square-cut bloodred stone sent out shimmering highlights of deep scarlet even in the dim light of the subterranean room.

Wigg looked to the other five wizards, his friends of so long. Tretiak, Egloff, Killius, Maaddar, and Slike. Their traditional plain gray wizard’s robes stood out in stark contrast to the king’s richer clothing.

How do I begin this? the old wizard thought. What I tell them here today will forever change all of our lives. He took a breath to speak, but the king, no longer able to contain his worry, spoke first.

“Wigg,” he began quietly, “I can only assume that this meeting is of great importance, given the fact that the inspection ceremony is less than two hours away.” He looked around the table at the others. “And, since the prince has been missing all day, we can only assume that our presence here concerns him.” He leaned forward intently, the Paragon gently swinging back and forth on the chain around his neck, then looked Wigg dead in the eye. “I have asked the other wizards of the Directorate seated here about my son’s whereabouts today, but all I get in return are concerned, polite stares.” He slowly laced his fingers before continuing. “Tell me, Lead Wizard, is my son safe?”

“Indeed, Sire, he is well, as is your daughter, who was also with me today.” Wigg paused, wondering how to continue. “Yes, both your children are well, and back here at the palace awaiting your orders.” He looked down at his long, gnarled fingers, then raised his eyes back up to those of his king. “But as to whether any of us are to remain safe is a question that I truly cannot answer at this time.”

Before any of the others could ask him what he meant, Wigg turned and left the room. In a moment he returned holding the blood stalker’s battle ax and tossed it unceremoniously upon the conference table. It screeched and scratched its way along the varnished wood for a few feet before stopping in the center, some of its various brain-matter stains still visible. The head of the ax slowly tipped to one side and finally came to rest upon the sharp edge of one of its shiny blades.

Before any of the other six men could speak he dryly added, “For any of you who do not remember, I don’t recommend touching any of the places stained in yellow.” He sat down heavily in his high-backed wizard’s chair and let out a long sigh.

The room had become as silent as a tomb.

Nicholas’ eyes went wide. He seemed to be about to speak, but then apparently found his last remaining measure of patience and drew back, obviously deciding to wait for the explanation to come to him. The five other wizards of the Directorate initially showed surprisingly little outright emotion at the sudden appearance of the ax, but Wigg could see the color draining from their faces.

Tretiak was the most powerful of the Directorate next to Wigg. He was also Wigg’s best friend among the wizards and the man the Lead Wizard had known the longest. He was the first to speak.

“Where?” he asked simply, in his low, commanding voice.

“The Hartwick Woods,” Wigg replied. He had been sure that this would be the first question asked, just as he had been equally sure that Tretiak would be the one to ask it. Tretiak gave Wigg a hard look. There was a meaning to the location, and they both knew it.

“And we can presume that you killed him?” Tretiak calmly continued, turning his gaze from the ax back to Wigg.

“Yes,” Wigg said sadly. “But there is more that you must know. The stalker carried a red birthmark upon the inside of his left forearm.” He paused. “It was Phillius.”

At the mention of the dead stalker’s human name, mouths dropped open and several of the wizards turned to each other in disbelief. Wigg let only a moment slip by before commanding their attention by speaking again.

“As for the identity of the skull atop the ax, although it undoubtedly belonged to a wizard, there is, of course, no telling who he was. I suggest that, out of respect for Phillius’ first victim of endowed blood, the ax be taken apart and the skull be placed to rest in the Graves of the Unknown in the wizards’ crypt. As a precaution, I destroyed the body of Phillius by fire, as has always been the custom.” He looked down. “In addition, I know that all of you, including our king, are aware of the recent disappearances of a number of the lesser rural wizards over the course of the last several months. I do not profess to know whether Phillius acted alone, but I believe it fair to say that we at least have our answer regarding their recent vanishings.”

From the left side of the table next to the king, Slike looked up at Wigg, his green eyes full of questions. “Blood stalkers were maintained by time enchantments,” he said incredulously. A look very close to horror began to creep into his eyes. “Do you suppose it possible that—”

“I don’t know,” Wigg purposely interrupted, sure that he could guess the remainder of Slike’s question, but not ready to enter into the inevitability of that discussion. “Whether he somehow survived in hiding for over three centuries, which I doubt, or whether he was recently recalled no one can say at this time, and further speculation in this regard is pointless.” He folded his hands before him and looked solemnly at the others. As Lead Wizard he meant to have control of this meeting. “Besides,” he continued, “it is my unpleasant duty to inform you of an even more threatening occurrence this day.”

The old wizard began to steel his mind for what he knew must come next. These wizards have been my friends for centuries, he thought sadly. How do I tell them this? I beg the Afterlife, how will the king react to such news of his own son?

Controlling his composure as best he could, he decided there was no other way to say it. Looking at each of them in turn, he simply said, “I am certain beyond a doubt that Prince Tristan has discovered and entered the Caves of the Paragon.”

First came a deathly silence. But soon after it was replaced by the highly uncustomary sound of disorganization as the five wizards urgently began to talk to each other in a loud confusion of various conversations. Wigg was about to raise his voice and silence them when suddenly the flat of Nicholas’ hand pounded so hard and loud upon the table next to the ax that the gruesome weapon bounced several inches into the air, then landed back on the table, silencing them all.

The king was trembling in a combination of rage and fear. His last reserve of patience regarding his son was obviously gone, at least for today. The room was once again awash in a tense silence that seemed to permeate everyone and everything in it.

“Wigg, please tell me, how is it that you know this?” Nicholas asked. His normally strong voice was a barely audible whisper.

“Regrettably, Sire, there can again be no mistake. Even before I encountered the prince this afternoon, I could sense that something in his blood had changed, and the feeling became even stronger as the princess and I came closer to him. Then when he came out of the woods into full view I knew for certain. The azure glow is all about him, make no mistake, and it is a particular glow my eyes have not seen since the day of his birth. And until today I had not seen an azure aura that bright since the night I shattered the bowl to seal the fates of the sorceresses of the Coven.” This is the first time the sorceresses have been openly spoken of among ourselves in over three centuries, he thought. How strange it all seems to have them suddenly thrust into our thoughts once again.

He looked at the other wizards and saw that tears filled the eyes of some. The two who remained the most composed, Maaddar and Tretiak, sat looking down at their hands, presumably to spare their king any further embarrassment. Wigg could always count on Tretiak.

Nicholas sat back heavily into his chair, and it was apparent to all that the weight of the world had just landed upon his shoulders. Inwardly Wigg winced at the thought of the additionally unsettling information that he must now put before them all. Salt into the wounds, he thought. He got up from his chair and stood behind it, placing his hand on top of the chair back where his name had been so intricately carved into the wood.

“I am sorry to have to inform everyone here that there is still more to tell you.” Anyone looking hard enough would have been able to see the muscles in his jaw clenching. “The prince’s clothes are stained in red. The red. Again, I am sad to say that there can be no mistake. I believe he has either bathed in or at the very least washed some parts of himself in the water of the stone pool. I need tell no one in this room that these actions are without precedent. We are truly walking into the unknown, and we have been innocently led there by one of endowed blood whom we all love very much.” He paused and gazed directly at the king, so that Nicholas could not escape his meaning. “We must all try to remember that sentiment in the difficult days ahead.” As he had hoped, he saw the king’s countenance begin to soften.

“Unfortunately, we must also assume that Tristan has seen, if indeed did not also try to enter, the Tunnels of the Ones Who Came Before,” he continued. His brow furrowed. “Have any of the members of the Directorate felt a disturbance in the wizard’s warp that guards the tunnels’ entrance?” None of the wizards spoke. “Good. However, it must be said that this afternoon I myself felt a definite shudder against the warp at the gateway to the tunnel. Perhaps I felt it only due to my closer proximity to the Caves. But I can also tell you with certainty that the tunnel portal has not been breached. The Tome is intact.”

“Wigg,” Nicholas began again, “will the azure glow be about him always?” There was both concern and a bit of uncharacteristic timidity in the usually commanding voice.

“No, Your Highness,” Wigg said with compassion. “I am pleased to say that the aura will be gone from him in a few days. I do not believe that it can remain without repeated visits to the Caves. And I’m sure everyone agrees that under no circumstances can the prince return there.”

Wigg laced his long, ancient fingers together upon the back of the chair. “It is also a good thing that no one other than myself will be able to discern the glow. Even the prince himself cannot see it. We should, therefore, be able to contain the secret among the men in this room. The unenlightened populace and even the rural wizards would never understand its meaning. And any explanation might cause only misunderstanding, perhaps even alarm and riot.”

Egloff had a question. “Does Tristan now illustrate an even greater interest in the craft?” he asked. “For as long as I can remember, we in this room have been of the opinion that touching the water in an uncontrolled manner may unleash a desire to learn such as we have never seen. If I am not mistaken, I believe the Tome itself makes mention of it.” A smallish man who was always concerned with details, Egloff placed the ends of his thumb and middle finger of one hand against either side of his long nose and closed his eyes, his mind already deep into his unparalleled memory of the Tome. After observing his knowledge and eccentricities for over three hundred years, the other wizards knew it best to allow him to think without interruption. Egloff was known among them as the Master of the Tome, and if any one of them knew the answer to a question about the great book, it would be him.

“Yes,” he said, finally breaking the silence and opening his eyes. “I remember now. The Tome does indeed mention it in one of the later chapters of the Vigors. Tell us Wigg, does the hunger burn as bright in his eyes as the Tome foretells?”

“This, my friends, was the last thing that it was my unfortunate duty to tell you,” Wigg said slowly. “Yes, his eyes are alive with it. Just as his mind is alive with forming questions and his tongue is equally alive with asking them. And given the nature of his birth, I fear that this, unlike the aura, will not go away anytime soon. He may become completely unmanageable. Perhaps he has even done irreparable harm to himself. Only time will tell.”

The Lead Wizard took a long, deep breath. Once again he searched the king’s face for a clue as to how Nicholas would deal with all of this. There was only one thing to do, of course, and each wizard in the room knew it.

“Sire,” Wigg said gently, “I feel it is time that we addressed Tristan directly. He is, of course, your son and your blood, but I believe I speak for the Directorate and for the nation as a whole when I say that Tristan must be forbidden to go near the Caves. We must also take the responsibility of watching him very carefully until the coronation.”

The path was obvious, but ultimately the decision had to be Nicholas’. Wigg remained silent, as did the other wizards, waiting for the hopefully inevitable order.

Nicholas drew himself up in his throne once again, his regal posture reinstated, and looked Wigg in the eye.

“Lead Wizard,” he said quietly, “go and bring the prince to us.”

Without speaking Wigg stood, turned on his heel, and began walking to the door.

Still seated in the supplicant’s chair, Tristan wasn’t aware of anyone behind him until he felt the tap on his right shoulder. He turned around to see Wigg standing over him. He had neither heard nor seen Wigg’s approach. Most times, people never did.

“Your father has summoned you to appear before himself and the Directorate,” the wizard said. Tristan looked glumly up into Wigg’s unforgiving gaze, knowing there was no way out.

Tristan’s heart sank. “What about the inspection ceremony?” he countered. “Don’t we all have to appear very soon in the Great Hall?” It wasn’t much of an excuse to get out of the meeting, but it was all he could think of.

“The ceremony can come later,” the old one said. “And will, make no mistake. But this comes first. Besides, how do you think it could be held without you, your father, and the Directorate?”

Tristan glumly accepted his fate and rose to his feet. He had taken only one step toward the double mahogany doors when he heard the old wizard call out to him again.

“We’re not going that way,” Wigg said. He blatantly looked the prince up and down, noticing how much dirtier Tristan had become. Tristan’s appearance would do nothing to improve the king’s mood. “Follow me and be quiet. Try not to live up to any of our expectations.” The wizard turned away from the direction of the double doors and began to walk out of the Chamber of Supplication in the opposite direction, with the glum-looking prince of all Eutracia in tow.

After crossing the rose-colored marble floor of the chamber, they entered the hall outside. People were still scurrying about in preparation for the ceremony, and upon seeing Wigg many of them lowered their heads and gave him a wide berth. But the Lead Wizard seemed to take no notice of anyone at all as he led Tristan farther and farther down the long marble hall, finally turning into an area that was relatively unknown to the prince.

Wigg finally stopped before a heavy wooden door decorated with brass trim. The old wizard narrowed his eyes, and Tristan could hear the insides of the door lock turn over once, then twice more. Wigg opened the door and walked through, beckoning Tristan to follow him into what appeared to be a large oak-paneled library, complete with many book-lined shelves and writing desks. Each of the desks held an oil lamp and was surrounded by comfortable-looking chairs. It occurred to the prince that he had never seen this room before, but then again there were many in the huge palace he had not seen. He shrugged. To him, it was just one more that he could cross off his list of unknowns. The old wizard shut the door and once again narrowed his eyes as the prince heard the lock secure itself. Somehow the knowledge came to Tristan that probably only a wizard could ever open that door.

Wigg crossed the stone floor to one of the many decorative oak panels that lined the right-hand wall. He reached up and placed the first two fingers of each hand upon four knots that Tristan had taken to be part of the decorative woodwork. The old one closed his eyes, then almost immediately opened them again and stepped back from the wall. To Tristan’s amazement the entire paneled section began to revolve slowly and silently on a pivot that apparently ran vertically through its left side, revealing a dimly lit entranceway.

“Don’t just stand there with your mouth open, or you’ll catch dragonflies,” the wizard said in a castigating tone. “Follow me.” Wigg walked into the entranceway to the right of the pivot and was gone.

Tristan crossed the library and looked into the entranceway. There he saw Wigg impatiently waiting for him in yet another oak-paneled room. Lit by a single wall sconce containing an oil lamp, the room was only about the size of a scullery maid’s broom closet. After testily beckoning Tristan forward, Wigg reached to his right and pulled a tasseled velvet cord that hung through a hole in the corner of the ceiling. The revolving door dutifully swung shut.

Almost immediately the prince felt his knees buckle slightly. He had the distinct feeling that he was falling, although looking down he could see that he was still standing firmly upon the floor of the little room. But despite the fact that neither he nor anything else in the room seemed to be moving, he was still sure he somehow detected the presence of motion. He smirked at Wigg. “More magic, Lead Wizard?” he asked.

Wigg could not help but let a small smile escape past his prickly demeanor. “Actually, no,” he said. “Rather, this is a new invention, courtesy of the Directorate. It works on hydraulics. Water power, not magic. One of Wizard Maaddar’s hobbies. He likes to call it the gravitating chamber.” His smile faded as he gave Tristan a more controlled look. “As I might have thought you would have learned today, magic isn’t the answer to everything. True, we are moving. Downward. Several stories below the level of the palace.” He paused. “You are sworn to secrecy about anything and everything you may see or hear from this point forward, including the presence of this moving room.” He turned his attention once again forward to the paneled door before them.

“But there is nothing below the first floor in this section of the palace,” Tristan said. “All of the subterranean floors such as the kitchen, the sculleries, and the servants’ quarters are elsewhere, far from here.” He was sure of it. He had, after all, lived here all of his life.

Just after he finished speaking, the strange sensation of moving without going anywhere suddenly stopped, and the oak-paneled door began to pivot open again.

As it opened wider, the old wizard gestured toward the opening and blandly said, “Nothing below this section of the palace, eh? Really? Why don’t you try telling them that?”

Tristan found himself staring through the open door into a world he had never known existed. He was dumbfounded. He looked back at the wizard in disbelief, but the old one simply walked out through the door ahead of him, motioning for the prince to follow.

They were standing in some sort of circular underground courtyard. It was constructed of the most beautiful light-blue Ilendium marble he had ever seen. It appeared to be some sort of central crossroads for at least a dozen or more seemingly endless hallways that led off it at regular intervals like spokes from the hub of a wagon wheel. It was amazing. And the place was full of wizards. There were young ones, old ones, thin ones, and fat ones, but he noticed that although they were all dressed in the customary plain gray wizard’s robes, none of them had the wizard’s tail of braided hair that usually fell down the back of the neck.

He of course was familiar with all of the wizards of the Directorate, just as everyone in the kingdom was, even if only by name. But other than Wigg he saw none of them in this room. He could only reason that since he had never seen any of these other men before and because they had no wizard’s tails, they therefore must be the lesser rural wizards from around the realm that Wigg had mentioned. But he had no idea that there had ever been so many of them, and had no clue what they were all doing here. Each seemed to be quietly going about his own business, some in hushed conversation, and some simply passing through on the way down to another hall. None took any particular notice of the visitors except for the occasional bow of respect to Wigg.

“Wigg, where are we?” Tristan asked, his voice barely audible. He stood transfixed. Never in his life had he experienced such an amazing day as this. He wasn’t sure that he ever wanted to again.

“We are now standing in the crossroads of the Redoubt of the Directorate. It is a secret place of learning and respect for the craft, and for the past. I suggest you behave accordingly.” Wigg motioned for Tristan to walk with him down one of the great hallways, and continued to speak as they went.

“This place was constructed at the end of the Sorceresses’ War, and its purpose is the furtherance of the craft via the teachings of the Vigors.” He turned his hawklike gaze upon Tristan. “You do remember the Vigors?” he asked unnecessarily.

“At the end of the war, the nation was in shreds,” he went on. “Famine, pestilence, and crime were rampant. The legions of the Royal Guard had been virtually decimated, as had the population of wizards. At that time there was much more that needed to be done than the newly formed Directorate could accomplish on its own. The Redoubt was established by the Directorate in order to train and dispatch wizards to help bring peace and order once again to the countryside and the cities in a compassionate, rather than martial, manner. And this practice of sending forth wizards has continued ever since.” He pushed the errant braided tail of gray hair back over a shoulder as he walked.

“The wizards you see here have all been trained in the craft and taken the vows of the Vigors in this center of learning. When a male of endowed blood wishes to learn the craft he must always do so here, under our tutelage, so that we may make sure he is taught the Vigors only, and with the proper amount of self-control and respect for the past.” The infamous eyebrow rose again. “Two things that you seem to have a distinct lack of lately.” His gaze shifted back to the long hallway as they walked along.

“Once they have accepted the vows and the death enchantments, they are trained in the craft. Anyone refusing to take the vows is summarily rejected. Those who do go through training are sent back into the countryside dressed as peasants. They are empowered to perform as many good deeds as they deem appropriate for the benefit of the populace at large—all within reason, of course. They must go about the rest of their lives without alerting the citizens to the fact that they are wizards. A benevolent secret society, if you will. They have nowhere near the power of a wizard of the Directorate, and it is purposely planned to be this way.”

“But can’t the Vigors be used for selfish reasons, too?” Tristan asked innocently. “Haven’t any of them ever tried?”

“Oh, yes,” Wigg sighed. “No system is perfect. But the number of Consuls is very large now. When they are out in the field, they see each other often in the scheme of things. The abuse of the Vigors by one world would probably come to the attention of the others. And those, in turn, would inform us—or so we would hope. Such things were known to happen in the early history of the Brotherhood, but are now very rare.”

Wigg clasped his hands behind him and looked down at the rich marble floor as they continued on along the seemingly endless hallway. “They are not protected by time enchantments, Tristan. They live and die just as any normal citizen of the realm would. Such wandering rural wizards are called the Consuls of the Redoubt. By sending them forth in this way everyone, endowed or common, has something to gain from the craft.”

Wigg sighed, for the question was one the Directorate had long struggled with during the formation of the brotherhood of Consuls. “To understand why we did not give them time enchantments, one must have lived through the period of war that we had,” he answered. “A harsh decision—perhaps too harsh. But we were very afraid of the craft being used against us once again. Right or wrong, we of the Directorate felt that, for the safety of Eutracia, both the higher applications of the craft and the gift of the time enchantments should be kept strictly among ourselves—among only those we knew we could trust. As to whether the Consuls desire time enchantments, or resent not having them, well, the only thing I can say is that if that is their motivation for joining, they join for the wrong reasons. Those who do join us, knowing the limitations about to be placed upon them, do so with a purity of heart. In short, they know the rules going in. And the Directorate may expel any who seem unfit.”

He gave Tristan a meaningful look. “This process is the closest thing to an organized religion that Eutracia has, and as such must be monitored carefully.”

Tales of such lesser wizards were not uncommon, but they were always assumed to be mere myth, since in each and every case following their supposed accomplishments they were reported to have vanished without a trace. Now Tristan knew why.

“Do they all know each other upon sight?” he asked. “There are so many of them now that it is probably impossible for any one of them to know all of the others,” Wigg said. “Therefore, before they are sent out into the world they are each given a tattoo. It is a likeness of the Paragon, and it is placed high up on their right arms. This way it can be hidden by their clothes, but if one consul wishes to prove his identity to another of his brothers he may do so, and without the more obvious use of magic.”

As he walked along next to Wigg, Tristan noticed that many of the hallway doors were open, revealing the interiors of some of the rooms. When he was able to catch a quick glimpse into them as he walked by, he was stunned at what he saw. Several of the rooms appeared to be immense libraries and places of quiet study, lined floor to ceiling with huge and dusty books, many of which were titled in the same obscure language he had discovered circling the ceiling of the cave. Other rooms seemed to be storerooms: he saw containers of herbs and fluids, charts, scrolls, and symbols drawn upon parchment that hung randomly upon the walls. Still other rooms seemed to be fairly luxurious living quarters, presumably where the consuls resided during their training and subsequent visits back to the Redoubt.

But when he looked through an open pair of great double doors that had appeared at his right, he stopped dead in his tracks. It was a schoolroom.

The large, bright chamber was filled with young boys of varying ages, from toddler up to what looked to be as old as ten. There had to be at least forty of them in the attractively painted room. They were not being tended to by nurses or maidservants as one might have expected, but rather by yet more wizards, who watched and cared for the children as attentively as if they were their own. Perhaps they indeed are their own, Tristan thought. But the most amazing thing of all was the fact that the children weren’t simply playing. The longer he stood there watching them, the more certain he became that, despite the playful aspect to their behavior, they were learning.

And some of them were executing aspects of the craft. He stood there, mesmerized. He saw a pair of boys happily playing catch with a brightly colored ball, except they weren’t using their hands to throw and catch it as it flew back and forth between them. Instead, it simply stopped in midair when it reached one of the boys, then flew back again to the other. They couldn’t have been more than six years old, effortlessly laughing and playing at magic as if it were second nature to both of them.

At the back of the room, he saw a boy of about ten standing alone with his eyes shut. He appeared to be doing absolutely nothing. Nothing, that is, until Tristan looked down at the boy’s feet and realized that the child had levitated himself at least a foot off the floor. Still more boys were seated on the marble floor in a semicircle, listening intently to an older wizard who was showing them a parchment full of symbols.

Tristan heard Wigg clear his throat. He turned quickly and looked directly into the ageless aquamarine eyes.

“A nursery?” he asked incredulously. “Whose children are these?” He turned once more back to the room, as if to reassure himself that he was not seeing things.

“Nursery, nursery, let me think,” the old wizard said, enjoying the chance to tease the prince. “Yes, I do believe that’s what they call a roomful of tutored children, isn’t it?” He smirked at Tristan. “And to answer your question, yes, you are right in your assumption that these are the children of wizards. Or, to be more precise, the endowed sons of the consuls of the Directorate. Of course not all of the consuls’ children are endowed. Consul wizards are, in many respects, just like everyone else, Tristan. Remember, they are not protected by time enchantments. After leaving the Redoubt, they take on occupations that suit them, blending back into society. Sometimes they fall in love, marry, and have children. Eventually they die, just like ordinary people. As the membership of the consuls grew over the centuries since the war, more and more of them began to bring their sons of endowed blood with them when they came here to visit.” He ran an ancient hand down the length of his hawklike face as he recalled the distant, cherished memories.

“The bond between a wizard and his child is a particularly strong one, and it is not uncommon for the son of a wizard to wish to travel with his father, rather than be left behind at home with his mother. It seemed only the right thing to do when we decided to construct a nursery. With our supervision and permission, the fathers began to use this room to show their sons the ways of the craft. To our knowledge, such a thing had never been done before. It wasn’t until we observed so many male children of endowed blood interacting in one place that we began to understand the true value of the Consuls’ Nursery, as it is now called. Even these young boys before you, happily at play, have taken the Vows of the Consuls and are taught only the Vigors.” He turned a compassionate gaze toward the roomful of peaceful boys.

Tristan’s mouth turned up into a smile when he tried to imagine what Shailiha’s reaction would be if she could ever see this amazing place. A thought came to him. “If Shailiha’s child is a boy, will he come to this place to learn?” He genuinely hoped so.

And just how does one answer such a question as that? the old wizard thought. How does one explain to this young man that the quality of both his and his twin sister’s blood makes these children seem as mere dullards? He shook his head imperceptibly.

“We need to be going now,” he said, rather rudely ignoring the prince’s question. “Are you forgetting that there are others who are waiting for us?”

If only I could, Tristan wished to himself as the wizard’s words snapped him back to reality.

Wigg reached out to shut the huge double doors, and began once again to walk down the interminable hall in silence with Tristan alongside him.

The door that Wigg and Tristan finally stopped before did not look like any of the others they had passed. This door was the largest yet, and the front of it was intricately inscribed with the same odd writing that he had seen in the cave and on the bindings of some of the books here in the Redoubt. Had Tristan not been so apprehensive about his meeting with his father and the Directorate, he would have taken the opportunity to ask the old wizard what the writing meant. As it was, he now found himself much more concerned with who was behind the great door rather than what was engraved upon it.

Wigg gave Tristan a quick but compassionate look before he knocked twice, softly. When the door opened, he walked through, then motioned for Tristan to follow. With a sense of finality, the door shut heavily behind them.

The conference room was not particularly large, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in elegance. From the center of the high ceiling hung a single gold chandelier of oil lamps that gave a subdued beauty to the room. Paintings and tapestries covered much of the four mahogany-paneled walls. It struck him that since no women were allowed here, the decor could not have been suggested by his mother and therefore, presumably, reflected his father’s taste. In the center of the room, his father and the other wizards of the Directorate were seated around a large, circular conference table. He recognized the battle ax of the blood stalker upon it, and noted the scratches in the table’s varnish where it had come to rest. A warm fire danced softly in a light-blue marble fireplace that ran along the length of the right-hand wall, its burning wood occasionally popping and snapping, the only sound in the otherwise palpable silence. The fire gave warmth and familiarity to a room that otherwise, he was sure, would show no friendliness to him.

Wigg walked over to his chair and sat down. There were no more seats in the room, suggesting to Tristan that visitors were few and far between. He walked to the fire and blatantly turned his back to the seven men in the room as he held his hands before the flames. Until now, he had not realized how cool it was this far below the palace.

Nicholas sat in his throne looking at his son’s dirty back and the odd knives arrayed across it, wondering how things could ever have come to this. Never before had he been so disappointed in Tristan. It wasn’t just the prince’s actions of today. Indeed, his son’s discovery of the Caves had probably been an accident. But added to Tristan’s general disregard for the things that mattered so much to the future of the nation, today’s revelations had somehow all become too much for the king to bear. Despite the fact that Tristan had long since grown into manhood, Nicholas was near the breaking point with his son. He loved Tristan more than his own life, and he knew the feeling would never leave his heart. But instinctively he also knew that his relationship with Tristan was about to change, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Long-since dusty hopes are about to float away upon the invisible ink of time, he thought.

“Turn around and face us, Tristan,” the prince heard his father say. It wasn’t the request of a father to a son. It was a command from a king to one of his subjects.

Tristan turned back toward the men. He was acutely angry. He’d had quite enough of being ordered about today. To hide his emotion, he looked down at his trousers and tried to brush away some of the red stains, but they remained persistently in place. Finally giving up on his appearance, he faced his father, ready to accept whatever it was that was about to come his way.

“Don’t bother with the stains,” the king began, his eyes boring into those of his son. “They will never come out.”

Tristan was stunned. How could he possibly know that? his mind asked.

“Thanks to the wizards in this room, you are a very well-educated young man,” his father said. “Therefore, let us pay you the compliment of being blunt. You’ve made a lot of mistakes lately.”

“I know,” the prince said without hesitation. “I’m beginning to enjoy them.”

“We don’t have time for your insolence, Tristan.” The king was shocked. Never before had his son spoken to him this way. Wigg gave Nicholas a hard look.

“We need to ask you some questions, my son,” the king continued in a somewhat softer vein. “And we expect to receive truthful answers.”

“Not until I get some of my own,” Tristan said firmly. He glanced at the Lead Wizard. “Wigg has been kind enough to tell me of some things today, and I thank him for that.” Wigg could tell that the prince’s eyes were burning brightly with a need to learn, the azure glow about him as strong as ever.

“But it isn’t enough,” Tristan went on, achingly. He could literally sense his endowed blood coursing through his veins, and he still felt incredibly strong from his time in the water beneath the falls.

“What is it you would choose to know?” Wigg asked gently, raising an eyebrow.

“What I’ve always wanted to know!” Tristan burst out. He shook his head in frustration. “The things that I have begged you all to tell me since I was old enough to speak! Are you all deaf? Or are you all simply mad?” He felt in the grip of something he didn’t understand. The hunger to learn that had been with him since this afternoon was suddenly exploding in his head. The deep, visceral need to know more about magic, and about himself.

“Why—no, how is it that I am different from everyone else?” the prince shouted. His eyes narrowed, and his hands balled up into tight fists. “Why is my father the first king in all of Eutracian history to decide to join the Directorate and watch his wife die of old age? Why am I the first son of a king to be told that he, too, must join the Directorate at the end of his reign, when every single king before me has had the power to choose for himself?” He frantically searched each pair of eyes in turn, but no one spoke. Surprised to find his cheeks wet with tears, he turned back toward the fireplace.

Wigg noticed that Nicholas was about to speak, but the old wizard quickly placed his index finger across his lips, indicating silence. Nicholas closed his mouth and reluctantly nodded back.

Wigg’s heart was breaking for Tristan, but he realized that they must leave the prince alone just now. They all needed to see whether Tristan could come out of his rage by himself and begin to control the effects of the blood that was racing through him. It was imperative that the prince answer of his own free will. Despite the combined powers of the Directorate, had this one already been trained in the craft he could have killed us all at once with a single thought, the old one ruminated. The Chosen One will come, but he shall be preceded by another—the prophecy is not only true, it is now upon us.

Wigg gratefully saw the prince’s breathing begin to slow, and his sharp eyes noticed one of Tristan’s tears as it sadly fell to scatter like broken crystal upon the marble floor. The old one looked at Nicholas and nodded.

“Tristan,” Nicholas began gently, “I am truly sorry for all that you have been through, and all that you may yet have to endure. But believe me when I say that every man in this room loves you, none more than myself, and that everything that has occurred in your life, indeed even the things that have not occurred, have all been for a reason.” He looked questioningly at Wigg. The Lead Wizard closed his eyes briefly in affirmation.

“Please turn around, my son,” Nicholas said quietly.

Tristan slowly did as he was told, his chest heaving from his tirade and the strength of his emotions. His cheeks were still shiny from his tears, and the anger still seeped through. But Wigg could see that the prince was once again more himself.

“Tristan,” the king asked, gazing into his son’s eyes, “how is it that your trousers are stained in red?”

Tristan groaned inwardly. All I wanted of today was to keep my secret and hope to someday go back to the falls. Now they are about to take that away from me, too.

Beaten and exhausted, the prince of Eutracia stood before them and finally, reluctantly, told them everything. The butterflies, the chase for Pilgrim, and falling into the cave. He went on, telling them of his exploration of the cavern, his swim in the strange water, and of being repelled backward at the portal of the tunnel. He left nothing out. When he was done, he didn’t know whether he felt better or worse. For a long time the room remained bathed in silence, the only sounds once again the occasional snap of the wood as it burned in the fireplace.

Wigg turned his attention back to the men seated before him. “The first imperative is to reestablish the wizard’s warp that once protected the wall that the prince inadvertently fell through. Tretiak, as the second most powerful among us, you are best suited for that job.” How the warp guarding the wall had been breached was a source of great concern to Wigg, but he did not wish to speak of it now. He could only imagine that it had been the quality and strength of the prince’s blood that had enabled him to unknowingly break through the barrier.

He turned his gaze once more to the prince. “I am sorry to have to say this Tristan, but we must forbid you to ever go near the Caves again. The stakes for all of us are much too high.”

Somehow Tristan had expected to hear this, and he thought that his heart would break at the very idea of it. But suddenly a different concern seized him.

“Wigg, if the warp is reconstructed in front of the wall, how will the Fliers of the Fields receive their sustenance? Will they die?”

Wigg let out a sigh and clasped his hands in his lap. “I don’t really know, Tristan,” he said, shaking his head. He stood, walked over to the prince, and put an affectionate hand upon the young man’s shoulder. “They were never supposed to go in there in the first place. Either way, we must recreate the warp.”

Nicholas stood slowly and walked over to the two of them. He looked at Wigg. “It is obviously past the time when the ceremony should have begun. All of our guests and the palace servants have probably long since wondered what has happened to us. Please notify them that the ceremony has been postponed one hour. In addition I should like the queen, Shailiha, and Frederick to join Tristan and myself here, in this room, as soon as possible.” The king turned his dark eyes back to his son. “I’m sorry, Tristan, but it appears that not only will you have to face the immediate concerns of the Directorate, but those of your family, as well.” He looked with disdain at Tristan’s dirty red-stained black breeches and leather vest. “And,” he added sadly, “it also appears that you will have to attend the ceremony dressed as you are.”

As Tristan wearily ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, Nicholas continued to gaze deeply into the deep blue eyes of his son, the man whom he loved more than anyone else in the world. Instinctively, he reached out to pull the prince to him in a long embrace, and was glad to find it being returned.

“I want complete privacy during this meeting with my family,” he told Wigg. “We will all be along shortly.”

Wigg bowed slightly at the waist. “As you wish, Sire.” The king and the prince watched as the elderly, powerful wizards dutifully exited the room. Then Nicholas turned to face the great fireplace, his back to his son, as the flames slowly started to burn themselves out.

I pray to the Afterlife, please let us survive the events of today, he thought sadly.

Tristan and Nicholas did not have to wait very long. In what seemed to the prince to be a very short amount of time there came a knock on the heavy door, and Wigg appeared with Morganna, Frederick, and Shailiha. The Lead Wizard silently ushered the visitors into the room. Then, after giving the prince a rather pinched, concerned look, he left, quietly closing the door behind him.

The looks upon the faces of the rest of his family quickly told the prince that not only had the three of them never visited this part of the palace, but that Wigg had told Morganna and Frederick all that had transpired today. At the behest of Nicholas each of them took a seat at the table, Tristan included. The silence in the room was palpable, and Tristan felt even more alone now than when he had first come into this chamber and confronted the wizards of the Directorate. The wizards are powerful, he heard his heart whisper to him, but it is my family that I hold most dear. Only Shailiha and the recently bathed Frederick managed slightly encouraging smiles in his direction, while everyone waited for the king to speak.

They didn’t have to wait long.

“Tristan,” the king began as if reading his son’s mind, “do you love us?”

The question hit the prince like a thunderbolt. How could his father ask him such a thing? Before he started to speak he knew his voice was about to crack, and it did. “Yes, Father,” he began softly. “My family is the most important thing to me in the world.”

Nicholas then unexpectedly leaned forward in his chair, gripped the chain of the Paragon just above the stone itself, and held the bloodred jewel out toward the prince. It twinkled in the light of the fireplace.

“And this stone?” the king asked, no small measure of regal command in his voice. “How is it that you feel about this?”

“It is the stone that I will soon wear around my neck, just as you have done ever since you turned thirty,” the prince answered, entirely unsure of the meaning behind his father’s question. “Other than that, there is really very little that I know about it.”

Suddenly more frustrated with his son than ever, Nicholas looked down at the jewel that he had worn for so long—the same stone he longed to see around the neck of his only son, where for so many years the wizards had said it rightfully belonged. How do I tell him these things? the king asked himself. How do I this day tell him how concerned his parents are for him, when all that he hungers to know cannot, will not, be told to him until the day of his coronation?

Nicholas let go of the Paragon and leaned back in his chair, sighing slightly. “It is no secret to the people here in this room, or to the directorate of Wizards, that you do not wish to be king. But you shall be the king, and in a very short time. And what I must tell you now is that if you do not change and show your willingness to take on the responsibility that is about to be thrust upon you, you will rule poorly, and neither the nation nor your family can survive that. Trust me when I say that, for reasons I cannot this day explain, your reign will be unique to all of Eutracian history.” Nicholas’ face seemed to soften a bit as he considered his next words. “Too many good people have died trying to protect the Paragon to let it be worn by one who will not fulfill his duties.

“I ordered Shailiha and Frederick here with us today so that they may also hear these things,” he continued. “So that they may know that your mother and I hold their interests in our hearts, as well. It is their futures and the future of their unborn child that you must also bear in mind, that you will one day be responsible for. I know it is not the way you wish things to be. I also know that you believe the world has been unfair to you, and in many ways, perhaps it has. But in time you will understand why.”

Tristan looked over to his sister and her husband, and could see the two sympathetic but concerned faces that stared back at him. Their worry is not only for me, he realized, but now for their child, as well. It was becoming abundantly clear to him that the king meant to have his way in this. The prince looked hesitantly back to the face of his father.

Nicholas once again took the Paragon in his hand, and Tristan could see the deep, red color of the stone between the king’s strong fingers. Nicholas looked to Morganna, his queen, and into her blue eyes that lay just below the tumbling, shoulder-length blond hair. My queen. Tristan and Shailiha’s mother, he thought to himself. The love of my life. You are half of all that he is, and all that he can become. Help me make him understand, in that way in which only you can.

Morganna gazed knowingly into the eyes of her husband. Then her face purposely hardened, and she looked at the prince.

“The simple truth is, my son, that the stone is not meant to be worn by one who is unwilling to shoulder his responsibilities.” She knew that she must go on, no matter how much her words pricked them both. “The stone is meant to be worn by a man. One who is, indeed, man enough to honor it with his courage, and his resolve.”

The strained look on her son’s face told her that she was finally getting through, and she chose her next words with care, knowing that the speaking of them would cause her an equal, if not greater, amount of pain. “I will repeat your father’s question. ‘Do you love us?’ Do you love the people in this room enough to give of yourself and become the king of Eutracia, the king that this nation deserves?” She paused, deciding to risk the gamble. “Or need we ask the wizards to find another man of endowed blood to wear the stone?”

Or need we ask the wizards to find another man of endowed blood to wear the stone… His mother’s seemingly impossible words echoed in his mind for what felt like an eternity, their sheer, startling simplicity rattling him to his core. Finally overcome by the strength of his emotions, the prince suddenly realized how he must have always appeared not only to his family but to his subjects, as well.

Tristan slowly stood and walked over to Morganna. Going down on bended knee, a tear reappearing in the corner of one eye, he lowered his head and kissed the hem of his mother’s gown.

“I still do not know what measure of a monarch I can become, Mother,” he said softly. “But never, never doubt my love for my family or my kingdom, or the willingness to do what I must to protect them. I shall wear the stone.” His head still bowed, the next words came out in a whisper. “But please, Mother, also understand that I know I have much to learn.”

Morganna smiled into the face of her husband and saw that his eyes were once again shiny with tears. She placed an affectionate hand upon her son’s lowered head.

For now, she thought to herself, that is all we can ask.