The Fifth Sorceress

6

Tristan awoke to find her still lying beside him, her back to him and the warm curve of her buttocks pressed into his groin. When he opened his eyes, he found that his face was only inches from her long blond hair. It had the delicate texture of corn tassels, and as he moved his face even closer he could smell the lingering jasmine in her hair, just one of the many things about her that had attracted him last night. Slowly taking back possession of his right arm, he gently slid it from beneath her. As expected, she only stirred slightly and murmured something in her sleep, once again lost to her dreams. Sweet ones, he hoped. He reached behind him to gather up more of the silk-covered pillow beneath his head and sat up a little, only to remember that he had consumed too much wine at last night’s inspection ceremony. Thankfully the room was not spinning nor was he ill, but there was something more than a faint pounding in his head from the fine red wine that had flowed like water last night. The wine had come from the vineyards of Florian’s Glade, the finest grape-producing area of the realm, southwest of Tammerland. Only the best for the heir apparent, he thought. But if not having to become king would mean drinking only cheap wine for the rest of his life, it would have been a price he would gladly have paid.

He turned his face back to the beautiful young woman next to him, remembering the events of last evening. Her name was Evelyn of the House of Norcross, and he faintly remembered something about her father being a wealthy landowner in the area of Farplain, in the center of the kingdom. She had come to the inspection ceremony with her parents out of a sense of curiosity, as so many of the guests had. They were staying at one of the many inns in the city, and her parents had left her behind at the ceremony last night, apparently pleased that she was so lost in conversation with the prince. He rubbed his hand over his face, wondering what their mood was like this morning after discovering that their daughter’s bed had not been slept in. He found himself sincerely hoping that her father was not more than a casual acquaintance to the king.

She had come to his quarters very willingly, as women always did, and they had laughingly fallen into each other’s arms almost immediately. Twice more in the night she had reached out for him, and he had obeyed. But as usual, for him it had not been love.

She stirred and turned his way. He put his fingers through her hair and lifted it from her forehead, kissing her lips gently. Her blue eyes opened, slowly at first, and then quickly the rest of the way as the realization of her surroundings came to her and the memories of last night began to transform themselves into something more than a small measure of embarrassment. She immediately pulled the dark-blue silk sheet up over her breasts, as though he had never seen them before. He smiled, running a hand back through his hair.

“It isn’t as though I’m not familiar with them, you know,” he said gently, a smile upon his lips. “Besides, I don’t remember anything about them for which you should be ashamed.” He kissed the end of her nose and watched the apprehension in her face begin to melt away.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” she said tentatively. She looked around in amazement at the sumptuous decorations of his private bedroom, still holding the sheet up to her chin like a shield in battle. “Apparently we fell asleep last night,” she said, a hint of mischief crowding into the corners of her mouth.

“Yes,” Tristan said smiling, his hand once again in her hair. “And we did a good deal more, as well.”

He got out of bed and stood slowly, stretching his muscles as he walked naked to the balcony of his bedroom. Despite his unusual experiences of the previous day and the events surrounding the celebration last night, he had awakened early, just as the sun was starting to find its way over the horizon in the east. Stretching and waking the rest of his body, he remembered that the great sense of physical strength and mental well-being that he had garnered from his time in the Caves had gradually diminished and had been replaced by wine as the evening went on, and this morning he was sore and lame from all of the bumps and jolts he had taken during his adventures. He made a mental note to himself to check on Pilgrim, as well.

Now standing upon his balcony and looking down at the golden glow of the morning as it slowly blossomed into a new day, all his experiences in the Hartwick Woods seemed to be a dream. But one thing remained as strong and as real as ever: His intense hunger to learn the craft was still with him, coursing through his veins of endowed blood more strongly than he had ever known.

He turned around and walked back to stand beside the bed, looking down into her face. “Is there anything you would like before you leave?” he asked with the best of intentions.

She smiled up to him lazily and reached for his groin. “All I have the right to ask for is that you once again serve one of your humble subjects,” she said softly.

He bent over, reached under the silk sheet for her, and put his lips on hers.

The sound made by two swords in combat is like no other in the world, Tristan thought as he parried yet another and even stronger of Frederick’s thrusts. An ironic thing, a sword, being both the taker and the protector of life. But there was no more time to occupy his mind with such luxuries, for Frederick had set upon him yet again, and the swords they were practicing with were real.

They had been at it for almost an hour now in the training yard of the Royal Guard, and given the relative importance of their positions in the realm, a crowd of spectators, mostly other members of the Guard, had formed around the outer edges of their area of contest and had begun to cheer on their respective favorites. It occurred to Tristan between ragged breaths that the two of them had managed to turn a simple training exercise into a blatant contest, complete with spectators. Where Frederick was stronger, Tristan was quicker. Where Frederick was tougher, Tristan was smarter. Each of them was determined to make the other yield without bloodshed, but so far neither had been able to gain a clear advantage. This particular training area was one of both Tristan’s and Frederick’s favorites because it was also full of training obstacles that an opponent could hide behind, jump over, and use or throw to his advantage, just as might occur in real combat.

Frederick’s broadsword whistled through the air at him again, this time from overhead. Tristan stepped quickly, not back but directly forward, and turned on his heel 180 degrees to end up standing virtually neck-to-neck with Frederick, and facing the same way. He quickly extended his arms and cut his sword around his body in a plane level with the ground as if to cut Frederick in two, but again the larger, older man was not to be denied. Frederick stepped back with almost unheard-of speed for a man his size, missing Tristan’s sweep altogether, and stabbed his sword directly at the prince’s midsection. Another sharp parry from Tristan, and they once again found themselves on equal footing, swords raised, their dirty faces smiling at each other as they slowly circled.

After doing his gentlemanly duty by watching Evelyn depart this morning in one of the palace carriages, Tristan had decided to shake off the cobwebs of the previous evening by joining the Guard in some training, and Frederick had been the willing recipient of the prince’s need for exercise. Tristan had hoped that it would help take his mind off the upcoming abdication ceremony. Evelyn, although lovely, had not proven to be an important enough occurrence in his life to change his outlook about the future, and he doubted he would see her again.

And so he had taken to the Royal Guard training grounds to sweat his depression out of himself.

The two friends circled each other slowly, each trying to decide the right time to strike again. “You’re getting too old for this,” Tristan taunted. “But I suppose it’s good that I give you the benefit of my great expertise while I still can, since you will soon be spending all of your time attending the changing of the diapers instead of the changing of the Guard.” He smiled nastily and waggled the point of his sword in front of Frederick’s face. “But don’t worry, Brother-in-law,” he continued. “I’m sure in my position as king I can persuade my sister to let you out of the palace once in a while—say, once every other month or so.”

With unexpected speed, Frederick launched himself at Tristan. But the prince gave no ground, and they found themselves locked against each other, their swords crossed between their bodies, their grimacing faces only inches apart.

“At least I showed up dressed for the occasion last night.” Frederick grunted, straining against Tristan’s surprising strength. “I couldn’t tell whether you were part of the royal family or just a particularly grubby servant. I almost ordered you to fetch me a glass of wine, but then again, I heard you had plenty of that yourself.”

Then, suddenly, Frederick did something odd. Instead of carrying on the fight he looked directly over Tristan’s shoulder. The prince saw his friend’s face fall, as if Frederick had just seen something horrible. Tristan started to turn his own eyes to the right, but that was exactly what Frederick had been hoping for. In the split second that Tristan’s attention was diverted, Frederick stopped straining against the prince and reached down to Tristan’s right ankle, quickly pulling it up and over, launching the prince to the hard ground on his back in the dust of the training yard. Frederick’s blade was at Tristan’s throat in an instant. “Do you yield?” It wasn’t as much a question as a command. It was over, the prince knew. There could be no escape from this position, and truth be known, had Frederick really wanted him dead Tristan would have been so several moments ago, a bloody hole where his larynx used to be. “I yield,” he said begrudgingly. Then Tristan looked up in momentary horror as the point of Frederick’s broadsword came hurtling straight down at his face, only to bury itself finally in the ground about three inches away from his right temple.

Despite the fact that it was the prince who had lost, the crowd erupted in hoots, applause, and catcalls. Tristan smiled. These men were his friends, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Frederick’s great bear’s paw of a hand came to pull Tristan back up to his feet. The two of them began to brush the dust off themselves. Frederick smiled broadly and put an affectionate arm around the prince’s shoulders, and the two walked side by side to the well on one edge of the courtyard.

“That was quite a trick,” Tristan said, first pouring a carafe of water over his head and then shaking some of the water out of his hair. He raised the carafe high and took several long swallows from it before looking again at Frederick. “When did you learn that?”

“That wasn’t a trick, it was a technique,” Frederick said rather impatiently. “And when I learned it isn’t as important as how I learned it.” He took the offered carafe from Tristan. “You’re missing the point again. Although you did very well today, probably better than anyone else in the Guard could have, you still spend too much time looking at my face during battle. As I have told you repeatedly, keep your eyes on my abdomen, so that you can more quickly tell where both of my arms and legs are, and when they are about to move against you.” He paused, looking into the dark-blue eyes of the brother-in-law he had come to love so much. “After all, it isn’t my face that can harm you, it’s my sword.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Tristan said with an expression of mock seriousness. “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

Frederick flat-handed the prince so hard on his left shoulder that Tristan almost fell off the bench. After the two of them had stopped laughing, Frederick’s face became more serious. “Truthfully, Tristan, are you all right? A lot of people are worried about you, and not just those of us in the family. I have heard from several places this morning that the wizards of the Directorate are virtually beside themselves with you. And I have it on good authority that they’re in yet another of their famous closed-door sessions with your father right now. What in the name of the Afterlife did you do yesterday up in those woods to get everyone into such an uproar? I haven’t seen them all this upset since that time you were found in your bedchambers pursuing your ‘studies’ with one of your nannies.” After a brief and knowing smile between men, Frederick’s face grew grave again. “Seriously, is there anything you would like to talk about? You know I am always here to help.” He looked down in obvious distaste at the prince’s clothes. “And are you ever going to get out of those?”

Although he had of course bathed, Tristan was wearing pretty much the same clothes he’d had on the day before, complete with quiver and dirks. He had replaced the red-stained trousers with another clean pair just like them this morning and tucked them into his knee boots, as was his habit. But now, of course, he was covered from his boots to his shoulders in dirt again.

Tristan moved a pebble back and forth across the ground with the toe of one of his boots, groaning inwardly. He had come here to forget his responsibilities for a while, not to be reminded of them. And he knew that Frederick was only trying to help, no doubt partly at the urging of Shailiha. But he was in no mood to discuss his experiences, let alone at liberty to. His heart was aching at the thought of not being able to return to the Caves. And how could he ever make anyone else understand what he had been through yesterday, when he didn’t even understand it himself? It depressed him to know that few answers would be quick in coming from the wizards, given the tone and substance of his meeting with them yesterday. He turned his gaze upon the one hundred or so men of the Royal Guard who were training in various weapons in the large expanse of the courtyard, and once again his heart yearned for the simple life of a soldier. He looked back up at Frederick. “I can’t tell you about yesterday,” he said bluntly, shaking his head in frustration. “I don’t even understand what happened myself. I just have to try to accept the fact that I am to become king whether I like it or not. But I have decided to spend the last few days of my so-called freedom here with you, on the training fields. I’ve had enough of wizards and schooling to last me for the rest of my life, and if they don’t like it, I don’t particularly care.” He knew full well that what he meant was only his formal schooling, rather than any training in the craft that they might give him. The desire for that burned fiercely in his being, but it was not something he could explain to Frederick, a person of unendowed blood. And once again it depressed him to know that, given the wizards’ tone of yesterday, no doubt his training in the craft was probably even farther away than ever.

He looked down at himself. There wasn’t much right now about his life that he felt he could truly control, except perhaps for the way he looked. These clothes not only reminded him of the falls, but more accurately reflected his real personality than any of the pompous robes they could bestow upon him. He turned back to Frederick.

“As far as my clothing is concerned, I may just stay in these for a while, maybe even after I’m king.” He paused as a small smile finally started to come back to his lips. Leaning in conspiratorially to Frederick, he said, “After I’m king, I expect they would have a very hard time getting me out of them, anyway.”

The rumble of thunder interrupted him. But it wasn’t thunder—rather, something like it but not quite exactly the same. As Tristan and Frederick began to look around, the noise became louder, and the closer it came the more it seemed to turn into a kind of great rushing roar of moving air. They could feel the wind against their faces now as they turned to look. But before either one of them could discern the source of the noise, something else happened.

The sun disappeared, and the courtyard was bathed in darkness.

Stunned, they both turned to try to find the cause of the great shadow. Tristan automatically put a hand over his eyes in anticipation of looking into the sun, but the sun wasn’t there.

Something was blocking it.

It was then that the awful creature flew out of the direct line of the sun and came to rest noisily upon the wall of the courtyard, directly before them and approximately thirty feet above the ground. A deafening, semi-human scream came from it, as if it wished to announce its presence.

Tristan grabbed Frederick by the shoulders and dragged him back to the center of the training grounds, away from the hideous beast. “Get Wigg!” he screamed into Frederick’s ear. “Now! Run!”

Frederick looked into Tristan’s eyes in seeming incomprehension and then suddenly was gone, running as fast as he could toward the archway in the wall on the opposite side of the yard.

Tristan turned back to the thing that had perched on the wall and stared dumbly at it in disbelief. Wigg, you must hurry, he heard his brain scream back at him.

It was like a giant bird of prey, but there ended any similarity to anything Tristan had ever seen. Perched upon the wall, it had to be at least thirty feet high from its claws to the top of its head. Its claws were the talons of eagles, but each individual talon was at least a meter long, and each foot had four instead of the three a Eutracian eagle would have. The black feathers were huge, each of them at least two to three meters long, and were ruffled and unpreened, seeming to lie upon the great bird in disarray. The thing screamed again, the sound so deafening that for a moment afterward he could hear nothing else, not even the hurried shouting of orders by the officers of the Guard who were standing behind him. It was the unnerving call of a hawk in flight coupled with the insane screams of a terrified woman, and it reverberated throughout the entire courtyard. Several of the Guard came to stand between him and the awful thing, ready to protect him with their lives, if necessary.

It screamed yet again as it extended its horrible wings and jumped to the left a little, trying to find a more advantageous position upon the wall. The wings stretched to each side at least twice as far as its body was tall; dark and grotesque, they were covered with black scales instead of feathers. The sickening stench that came to Tristan’s nostrils every time it spread its wings was overpowering. But the most terrifying part of the beast was the head itself: It had the face of a woman.

And it appeared to be insane.

The face was ancient, gray, and wrinkled in a thousand places. Dark, sunken eyes not unlike those of a bird peered out from deep pockets, and the gray hair was brittle, long, and coarse, flying this way and that with the wind.

Again it stretched its wings and let forth a scream. Tristan could now clearly make out what he thought he had seen at first, but had not wanted to believe. Two rows of yellow pointed teeth lined the inside of the creature’s mouth, each tooth at least six inches long. They showed ominously each time the thing screamed. And below the chin was an equally disturbing feature: a gullet. Dark, wrinkled skin loosely hung down, swaying sloppily with each movement of the creature’s head. Occasionally the beast would duck down and sideways just like a bird, its movements jerky and hesitant, but incredibly fast. The thing moved its head again, and Tristan saw the leathery sides of its throat come together and then once again separate.

Its gullet was empty.

Then, without warning, it jumped down into the courtyard with lightning speed and grabbed one of the Guard in the four sharp talons of its right foot. It brought the screaming and bloody soldier up before its beady eyes and looked at the man curiously, turning its horrible head this way and that before half jumping, half flying back to the top of the wall.

Tristan had already begun to run to the rack of longbows and arrows, but by the time he turned back, it was too late.

Holding the screaming soldier in its talons, the monster pushed him into the giant maw of its mouth and hungrily bit him in two. It screamed again as if in pain, then tore off the breastplate that covered the man’s chest and threw it angrily into the courtyard. Greedily it began to devour the lower half of the body.

Several feet of the still-screaming soldier’s intestines fell to the courtyard floor, awash in blood.

Trying to fight back a wave of nausea, Tristan notched an arrow on the string of the longbow and aimed it at the thing’s breast. Others of the Guard followed suit. Immediately he let the arrow fly, and it coursed in a true line, striking the monster exactly where the prince had estimated its heart to be. But the arrow did not penetrate very deeply, and the creature simply looked down at the shaft in its breast as if it were a mere nuisance. It extended its wings and screamed, dropping the lower torso of the soldier upon the wall next to it. Bending down its awful woman’s face, it gripped the arrow with its teeth, pulled it out, and spat it away. More arrows lodged in the seemingly impenetrable feathers, but none seemed to be having any effect.

It began to eat the soldier’s head now, drooling bits of bone and brain out of its awful mouth and down its chin.

A lieutenant of the Guard suddenly appeared before Tristan. The prince recognized him as Lucius, one of Frederick’s best. “Your Highness, what are your orders?” he pleaded. “Nothing we do seems to harm it.”

But Tristan was given no time to answer. The creature jumped into the midst of the soldiers to capture another one, but this time it missed, tearing the man’s arm off at the shoulder. It quickly reached down, took the bloody stump in its claws, and then, screaming in defiance, launched itself back to its gory perch on the stone wall.

As if in a dream, Tristan watched Lucius and some of the other officers pull the poor mangled soldier back to the relative safety of the crowd. And then, purposely, he began to walk across the bloody ground, moving closer to the wall.

Several of the soldiers shouted to him to return, but he held up one of his hands, indicating silence. Oddly, even the creature grew rather still as it watched Tristan walk so deliberately toward it. The monster stretched its wings in defiance, screaming even louder, its awful woman’s face contorting and its stench now becoming even more unbearable.

Just three more paces should do it, Tristan thought. There are only two vulnerable targets. I beg the Afterlife, let my aim be true.

His right foot touched the ground twice more, and the moment he stopped, his right arm became a curved blur of speed, reaching up and over for the first of his dirks. It came into his hand like second nature, and then almost before he knew he had thrown it, he saw the knife twirling toward the creature. For a bare second he held his breath. Then, as he watched, the blade sickeningly buried itself to the hilt in the left eye of the horrible woman-face.

It was said for decades afterward that the scream the men heard in the courtyard that day was unlike any sound that had ever been experienced in all of Eutracia. In a shrieking combination of insane pain and anger, the thing reached up and used its dark talons to pull the dirk from where its left eye used to be, blood and vitreous matter snaking crazily down its face.

Then it jumped from the wall to the courtyard, almost unfazed, and faced the prince.

Just as Tristan was about to throw another dirk he felt strong hands on both of his arms, pulling him back to the crowd. He tried to turn and face whoever it was, but he had never felt such strength before, not even from Frederick, and he was being literally hauled back to safety on the backs of his heels. When he was released at last, he found himself looking into the stern face of Wigg.

Wasting neither time nor words, Wigg bullied past the prince and began to walk toward the wounded beast with slow, measured steps. A deadly silence began to overtake the courtyard—even the monster made no sound. It’s almost as if the two of them recognize each other, Tristan thought.

Suddenly Wigg stopped and raised his arms.

“Once again we meet,” he said to it in a quiet voice. “You and your kind have avoided death far too many times. But not today. Today you are mine.”

As the creature began again to scream, bolts of azure light shot from Wigg’s hands. The light coalesced upon reaching the monster and began to surround it, trapping it within a brilliant blue cube. Wigg then lowered his hands and the cube began to change, bands of empty space alternating with the bands of glowing blue light, creating a cage of iridescent azure bars.

Tristan realized that for the first time in his life he was witnessing the creation of a wizard’s warp.

The desperate creature began to smash its body violently against the sides of the warp in panic, apparently realizing what was happening. But no matter how furiously it fought, the warp never moved.

Wigg slowly began to join his hands together, and Tristan’s mouth dropped open as he saw the warp, with the awful thing still inside it, begin to collapse. The creature screamed out in agony as the walls of the warp began to crush it. Its head was forced over to one side as the left hand wall closed in on it and first broke its neck, then crushed its skull. The screaming stopped. When the walls of the warp were a little more than a yard apart, Wigg stopped joining his hands. Tristan saw the life finally go out of the thing’s remaining eye, its blood and crushed organs pushed out between the slender bars of glowing light in a sickening mixture of red and pink.

And then came another horrible sound. An incredible din far more overwhelming than the awful screaming of the bird.

The sky darkened momentarily and then lightning shot across the sky in that Tristan had never dreamed possible. The thunder boomed until he thought his eardrums might burst, forcing him to place his hands over his ears. And then, as quickly as it had come, the sky lightened, and all was quiet.

Stunned, Tristan slowly walked up to where Wigg was standing and stood next to him, looking at the mangled remains inside the amazing, glowing azure box.

“A screaming harpy,” Wigg said simply, without looking at the prince. “That was going to be your first question, wasn’t it?”

In fact, that was not what Tristan had intended to ask first. He was much more interested in the glowing azure box than the monster. He turned to Wigg.

“The magic that you used to kill it—that was a wizard’s warp, wasn’t it?” he asked the old one.

“Yes,” Wigg replied as he began to walk closer to the carnage. Reaching between the glowing azure rods, he carefully pulled Tristan’s dirk out of the harpy’s eye. The old wizard turned the throwing knife this way and that as he examined it in the afternoon sun. When he finally looked back at the prince there was a modicum of respect in his eyes. The old one also noticed that the glow that had surrounded the prince since his visit to the caves had blessedly disappeared.

“Warps are very useful, Tristan,” he said, turning his attention back to the knife. “They are, simply put, powerful fields of protection and containment that can be modified at will.” He looked at the dead thing inside the glowing box before turning his infamous eyes once again upon the prince. “After your reign, I will teach them to you.”

After your reign, Tristan groaned to himself. That day seemed hundreds of years away to him. He decided to ask the second and perhaps more obvious question. “Why is it I have never heard of a screaming harpy before?”

Wigg let out a long sigh. First a blood stalker, and now a screaming harpy, he thought, his face unable to hide his concern. And both of them appearing so close to the day of the abdication.

“Harpies are indigenous to Eutracia,” he told the prince as the men behind Tristan began to crowd closer to get a look at the awful thing that they had been unable to kill. “They have been in this land since long before the Sorceresses’ War, and originally made their nesting places in the southern reaches of the Hartwick Woods, where the forest borders the plains of Heart Square.”

Tristan knew the Hartwick Woods well enough but had spent little time in the larger, grass plain that was shaped in a square, thus earning its name.

“But harpies did not always have the faces of women,” the old one continued, “nor were they always this vicious. During the war they were caught and trained by the sorceresses to plague and frighten the population into submission before the Coven tried to occupy a particular region. If they could kill or frighten away some of the people beforehand, then the sorceresses’ task was just that much easier. Frankly, I am not particularly surprised that one or two of them still exist, despite the fact that one has not been sighted for over a century and a half.” He winced inwardly at the lie, but with so many standing before him and hanging on his every word, he had no choice. He decided to change the subject.

Wigg walked back to Tristan and handed him his dirk, which the prince placed back into the quiver. “I have never seen you use one of those before,” the wizard said with a short nod of approval. “You seem to be quite proficient with them. But let me give you a word of advice about taking a life, even a life as disgusting as the thing that is now trapped in my warp. Every time you use your dirks, or sword, or bow to take a life, try to think not of whom or what you are killing, but rather whom or what you are allowing to live. It will help with the eventual guilt that all those of our blood must deal with afterward. Endowed blood isn’t just a gift; it’s a responsibility. And sometimes it weighs heavily, indeed.”

Instinctively, Tristan knew the old one was right. He always was. But more than that, the prince also had begun to feel that taking any life, even in self-defense and when apparently absolutely necessary, was not always the correct way to resolve conflict. Perhaps that was one of the reasons for his hunger to learn the craft. A short part of the wizard’s vows now came back to him: take no life except in urgent defense of self and others, or without fair warning. He thought that he was perhaps beginning to understand.

Tristan watched as the wizard raised his hands before the warp. Immediately it began to dissolve, fading away into nothingness as the mangled creature inside dropped to the dust of the courtyard floor. Wigg motioned for Frederick to step forward.

“The orders I am about to give you are very specific, and must be followed to the letter,” he said sternly. “Order your men to cut the carcass into at least a dozen pieces, and then bury each piece in its own hole, each at least thirty feet apart from the others and no less than fifteen feet deep. Cart the pieces of the carcass at least one full league away from the city before digging the holes. And the entire process must be completed before nightfall. Do you understand?” His eyes were unflinching.

“Yes, Lead Wizard,” Frederick said dutifully. Inching closer to the wizard and lowering his voice, he asked, “But why must we take such precautions? Isn’t it already dead?”

“Screaming harpies have been known to regain life, even if dismembered, and especially if the various body parts were few and were laid to rest near each other.” The infamous eyebrow came up like a weapon. “You don’t want to have to relive this little episode, do you, Commander?”

“No, of course not, Lead Wizard,” Frederick blurted, more than a little surprised. “All shall be done as you order.” He turned on his heel and began to give a few of his troops the orders, as others of them began to lay sheets over the bodies of the dead soldiers.

“A good man,” Wigg said to himself after the prince’s brother-in-law had walked away. “But he limits his imagination to only what he sees before him on a daily basis, instead of allowing for the possibility of whatever his mind can conceive.”

As Tristan turned to start back to the palace, he was surprised to see his father and the five remaining wizards of the Directorate standing before him.

“I have never seen you throw one of those before, Tristan,” Nicholas said with no small amount of pride in his voice. “You are very good at it.” He turned his attention to the Lead Wizard. “Perhaps if we returned to the palace, you and the other wizards could explain to me just what it is that has happened here,” he said rather sternly. “I think we need to talk.”

He once again addressed the prince. “And as for you, Tristan,” he said, “as soon as you’ve had a chance to clean up and change your clothes, your attendance is required before the queen.” He leaned closer, smiling. “Don’t worry; you’re not in trouble, for once. She simply has not had an opportunity to see you much in the last few days, and would like to take tea with you and your sister this afternoon.”

Tristan hated taking tea, and his father knew it. When he started to open his mouth in protest, the king immediately cut him off with a wave of his hand. “You’re going,” he said, smiling with mock ferociousness.

Tristan, his father, and the Directorate all turned away from the grisly job that the soldiers were now performing upon the screaming harpy and began to walk back to the palace.

She reached up and moved an errant gray thread of wool a bit more to the right. It had been placed in the wrong spot, she could now see, and needed to be farther away from the shadowed area she was trying to create. This one would do well in the king’s private bedchamber, she thought as one of her five handmaidens handed her more of the thick yarn. The equestrian theme suits him, and since he has never seen this particular tapestry it will come as a surprise.

Queen Morganna of the House of Galland stood up from her velvet upholstered sitting chair and walked away from the large, rectangular loom that was before her. She needed to gain the perspective that sitting before the loom and doing the actual act of creating the tapestry always denied her.

She turned to the plump, elderly woman on her right who had faithfully served as her senior handmaiden for the last thirty years. “What do you think, Marlene?” she asked. “Is it too dark?”

Standing beside her queen, Marlene could see the faults in the work. “Perhaps a bit too much so around the area of the horse’s head, Your Highness,” she replied earnestly. “Other than that I think it is a fine piece, as usual.”

“And you, Shailiha, do you also agree?” the queen asked. Shailiha stood next to her, observing the tapestry and gently gliding her hand across her swollen abdomen in what had become an automatic gesture of maternal love. I shall soon be a grandmother, Morganna thought with pride. And perhaps someday Tristan will put aside his capricious ways and add to our family some children of his own. But then a darker thought began to invade her mind, and she tried her best not to let it show through. Provided the fears of the wizards do not come to pass, as they have warned my husband, she thought.

“Yes.” Shailiha smiled back. “Too dark. But I think you already knew that, didn’t you, Mother?” she answered playfully.

“Yes,” the queen answered softly. “I suppose so.”

Queen Morganna had spent the greater part of this afternoon doing two of the things that gave her the most joy: creating tapestries and spending time with her daughter.

Morganna had learned the secrets of the great weaving looms long ago from her now-departed mother and aunts, before she had met Nicholas and was still a peasant. Some at court thought it a waste of such an important person’s time, but no one could deny that she had talent. The various tapestries she had created over the years hung in many of the rooms of the palace and were also sometimes auctioned off at great balls, the money used to support the several orphanages in Eutracia. But this one was special. It was to be a gift to her husband. And then the screaming harpy had come.

After hearing about the death of the harpy and the part Tristan had played in it she had felt a sudden, compelling urge to see him, and to know he was well. She had therefore requested that the king summon him to her earlier than she had first planned, to take tea with her and Shailiha. She smiled. It was just the kind of thing that Tristan so hated.

As if preordained for this very moment, the soft knock at the door came once, then twice.

“Enter,” she said simply, her eyes still grazing across the field of the cloth mural.

A uniformed member of the Guard, one of two who were always stationed just outside her door wherever she might be, entered the room and bowed. “Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but the prince is outside the door, and says that you called for him.”

“Thank you, Jeffrey. Show him in,” she said. Turning to her five handmaidens, she said, “You are all dismissed for the afternoon.” Smiling at Marlene in particular, she added, “I shan’t put you through any more of my artistic ramblings today.”

“As you wish, Your Highness,” Marlene said as she began to shoo the reluctant ladies from the room. Joining the queen in her quiet time was always one of the best ways to catch up on the palace gossip, and the very subject of that gossip was about to enter the room. None of them, including Marlene, really wanted to leave.

The senior handmaiden leaned in toward the queen, a knowing smile on her face. “You realize, of course, the position you now put me in,” she said teasingly. “For the next two days they will all hound me mercilessly for any news of the prince that might come my way.”

Morganna smiled back at her friend and confidante of so many years. “He has been so busy getting into trouble lately, I wouldn’t know where to begin even if I chose to tell you.”

Marlene winked knowingly and curtsied, then turned to hustle the remaining handmaidens out of the room like a mother hen trying to retain control of her wandering brood of chicks. They all curtsied as they passed the prince, and the queen watched her son bow to them and smile courteously. The younger of the handmaidens twittered and blushed. Morganna shook her head and raised a knowing eyebrow at Shailiha. It was always the same.

Despite his choice in clothing and the fact that he was again dirty from head to toe, the queen smiled with pride. Regardless of his recent misbehavior, she loved this one more than her life. Shailiha had always been the stable one, the obedient one, the respectful one, but Tristan had always been her favorite, right or wrong. Over the last two days he seemed to have developed a more mature and commanding demeanor, and after hearing about his adventures, she knew why.

She walked up and embraced him, kissing him upon his right cheek.

“Sit down, Tristan,” she said, “and I will have some tea sent in.” She motioned him to a small but elegant sitting area that faced two very large, open, stained-glass windows, from which could be seen the Eutracian countryside.

Before sitting down, Tristan reached up to her cheek and used the underside of his thumb to wipe away a small smudge that he had left there. He had rushed to change and wash—he must have missed some dirt on his cheek. “The queen mustn’t be seen like this,” he said, smiling into the eyes he loved so much. “The palace wags will talk. And given the fact that I have already supplied them with so much lately to talk about, let’s not give them any more.”

He turned to Shailiha with a look that he hoped would garner him some sympathy, but his sister simply smiled back cattily, enjoying his discomfort. He playfully narrowed his eyes. “I suppose you’re here because you want to be,” he whispered. “As for me, I’d rather face one of Wigg’s interminable lectures in the Wizards’ Conservatory than take tea, even if it is with the two of you.”

Morganna, her attention once again upon the tapestry, said, “Why don’t the two of you go out on the balcony? I shall join you when the tea arrives. Besides, I want to get this dark area repaired, before I lose the light.”

Tristan, with his sister in tow, begrudgingly walked to the stained-glass balcony doors and opened them wide. After watching his sister gently lower herself into one of the high-backed upholstered chairs, he sat in one next to her, crossed his long legs, and looked out to the tranquil scene below.

Still looking out over the balcony, he whispered, “Are you going to tell me, or shall I have to command one of the wizards to torture it out of you?”

Shailiha looked over to his sharp profile to find a look of playful nastiness on his face.

“Tell you what?” she asked. She bit her upper lip to keep from smiling, obviously having trouble controlling either the urge to reveal a secret or her enjoyment of his discomfort, or both. The prince thought it was both.

Behind him, he heard his mother call for Jeffrey.

“Yes, Your Highness?” the guard asked.

“Please send for tea and scones for three,” she said simply.

“Yes, Your Highness,” the short reply came.

“I really don’t want any tea, Mother,” the prince said over his shoulder in his most apologetic manner. Tristan hated the idea of taking tea, of sitting around holding dainty china in the air while eating with the points of his teeth and pretending to be polite to the kinds of people who generally attended such things—even if those people were, in this case, only his sister and mother.

“Then don’t drink any,” the queen called with a laugh. “Besides, the reason I asked for the two of you to meet me in private wasn’t really about having tea.”

Tristan felt something inside of him slip a little. I’m probably due for another of their talks regarding the last couple of days, he reflected glumly. What could my mother say to me that all of the others already have not? He sat patiently next to his teasing sister for as long as he could without saying anything more, but eventually he simply had to ask.

“You know why we’re here, don’t you?” He looked conspiratorially into Shailiha’s eyes, begging for a clue.

Shailiha’s expression changed slightly, from one of mischief to one of affection. “Yes,” she whispered back. “I never could keep a secret from you, and you know it. I do indeed know why we are here, but that is for Mother to say, not me.” She cast her eyes down and rubbed her hand across her unborn. Suddenly, her hazel eyes flew open.

“What’s wrong?” Tristan asked quickly.

“Nothing, really.” Shailiha smiled. “She just kicked. She has been doing rather a lot of that lately.”

“She?” Tristan asked.

“Oh, yes,” Shailiha said softly. “My baby is a girl. I just know it. Don’t ask me how, but for some time I have sensed that it will be a girl, with blond hair like mother and me. And green eyes like Frederick’s, of course.”

“Tristan,” she then softly asked, looking a bit more seriously into his face. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Anything—you know that. I always have, and I always will.”

She reached out to take his hand, and before he could comment or pull it back she placed it lightly upon her abdomen, where hers had been only a moment before. As if Shailiha could command it, the baby kicked, and Tristan jumped back a little in surprise. I have never before felt life within another, he realized. Somehow it makes the fact that she is pregnant just that much more real.

“I placed your hand there for a reason, Brother,” she said softly.

“And that is?”

“To show you that the consequences of one’s action have very real effects upon the lives of others, as Father tried in his own way to tell you in the room below the palace. I do not say these things simply to drive home the painful points that Father made before, but to tell you that I believe I am the only person in the world who truly understands you. I hope and pray with all of my heart that you will heed that which your family has told you.” She smiled softly into his eyes as she searched her mind for the proper analogy. “This kingdom is about to become yours, and you must grasp it firmly, yet tenderly, the way a man would hold the woman he loves most, never letting her go.”

She has a special way about her, especially when it comes to loving and understanding me, he thought. She always has. He slowly removed his hand from her and smiled into the lovely face before him. My sister. My twin, and my best friend.

“I will do my best, Shailiha,” he said, fearing that his voice was about to crack. “For you, anything. Wherever you may go, whatever may happen. For you, anything.”

A knock came on the door, and after a greeting from the queen two liveried servants entered with a silver tray holding two pots of tea and a plate filled with scones. The queen thanked them, and they bowed and left the room. Morganna beckoned for her children to leave the balcony and rejoin her in her private quarters.

The queen poured herself a cup and tentatively tasted it, making sure it wasn’t too hot. “I understand you have been very busy lately,” she said to Tristan as they each took a seat around the small table now loaded with tea and scones.

Tristan turned rather uncomfortably in his chair as he watched Shailiha bite her lip, trying to control an impending smile. He turned back to the queen. “If you are referring to the Caves, Mother, that wasn’t really my fault.”

“The Caves?” Morganna asked innocently. “No, your father has already told me all about that, and I leave the handling of such things to him and the Directorate.” She smiled knowingly into his dark-blue eyes. “I was referring to Evelyn of the House of Norcross.”

Tristan swallowed. Hard. He was certain that he must be blushing, but surely this couldn’t be the only reason she asked him here. Evelyn wasn’t the first of those his mother had known about. And he would rather face a thousand screaming harpies than have to discuss his private matters of the heart with either of his parents or his sister.

“Don’t worry, Tristan. Your secret is safe with us,” his mother said lightly, pressing one of her hands against his crimson cheek. She and

Shailiha had always been more forgiving of the prince’s dalliances than had been Nicholas or the Directorate—after all, they were women and could better understand the effects he had on so many of the young ladies of the realm. And she could tell that his heart was breaking at the thought of becoming king, and then a wizard of the Directorate. There was so little about any of it she could do.

“I also heard about the harpy. Are you sure you are all right?” She glanced over at his shoulder, thinking of the knives he so often carried there. “Your father says you are very good with those knives of yours,” she said encouragingly. “I think he now better understands why you carry them.”

Tristan shrugged. “It was really Wigg who killed it,” he said, almost apologetically. “I just did what I could.” He watched while she took another sip of tea. “Mother, is there a special reason you asked me here today?” he asked.

Morganna smiled to herself, once again reminded that the man sitting before her was not only her son, but also a very special person, indeed. She rose and walked a short way over to a mahogany writing desk that sat against the opposite wall. Opening the top drawer, she took out a velvet-covered box. She returned to her chair and held the small box in her lap with both hands.

“This was to be a gift to you from your father, your sister, and me after your coronation as king,” she began quietly, “but we have decided to give it to you now, instead. Your father wanted to be here, but many important affairs have commanded so much of his attention of late that Shailiha and I decided we would present it to you ourselves.” She handed him the box and, smiling, sat back in her chair.

Tristan took the box from his mother and slowly opened the lid.

What he saw took his breath away, and he could feel his eyes begin to tear.

Inside the box was a piece of gold jewelry on a gold rope chain. But not just any jewelry. Hanging from the chain was a small medallion, and engraved upon it was a broadsword with a fancy hilt, superimposed with a roaring lion. The heraldry of the House of Galland, the same as appeared upon breastplates of the Royal Guard. He took it from the box and held it before him as he watched it turn in the light. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

Morganna could tell instantly that he was pleased. “We had it made for you last month, as we knew the time of your father’s abdication was coming near. Please wear this with the Paragon, which will be placed around your neck that day, as a token of the love of your family.” She blinked back the tears that threatened when she thought about what she could not tell him. How do I tell my son that I must give this to him now, because of what the wizards have told us? That if we do not show our love for our children now, we may soon never be able to again?

Tristan placed the chain and medallion around his neck, and he looked down at the jewelry as it twinkled against the black leather of his vest.

“Thank you, Mother,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “I shall wear it always, no matter where my life leads me.” Turning to his sister, he could see tears in her eyes. “And thank you, Shailiha,” he said softly. “For everything.”

Shailiha cast him a knowing smile through her tears.

Even though he does not realize the full impact of what he just said, I could never have asked for more, Morganna thought. Wear it well, my son, with or without us.

She stood and beckoned him toward her. Tristan immediately rose and embraced his mother, but as he did so she made sure that neither of her children could see the lone tear that had begun to wend its way down her cheek.

The many oil sconces and chandeliers burned brightly in the ornate meeting room, and the hour was late. The heavy, self-imposed burden of complete silence reigned over everything as the many men sat there in their dark-blue robes, waiting for their revered teachers. It was rare for the Directorate to call such an impromptu meeting, especially at this hour of the night, and every one of the men in the rather stuffy, ornate room knew it. Something was afoot.

Before being allowed entry to the room each of them had been made to stand before the Lead Wizard himself and raise the sleeve of his robe, showing Wigg the tattoo of the Paragon upon his upper right arm. They had also been asked to perform some small use of the craft, in order to prove that they were in fact endowed and truly belonged here. Therefore the process of admittance to the meeting had taken hours to perform. Such precautions were a rarity, indeed.

There were several hundred of them in attendance, and although they were only a fraction of their total numbers they nonetheless represented the best of their kind. These hand-chosen men were the finest, the most highly trained of their brotherhood, other than the wizards of the Directorate.

The meeting room they had been summoned to was sumptuous, and the delicate, light-blue Ephyran marble of the walls, ceiling, and floor belied the serious, questioning attitude of those who had been ordered to attend. This room was in the farthest reaches of the Redoubt and was used only very rarely, when absolute security was required. The scent of anticipation swirled heavily upon the air.

Finally and without fanfare, the Directorate of Wizards entered the room from a door at the end of the hall and, all except for Wigg, walked to a row of high-backed chairs upon the raised dais at one end of the room. Wigg, Tretiak, Killius, Maaddar, Egloff, and Slike—the ancient heroes of the Sorceresses’ War. Each of them wearing his gray robe of office and his braided wizard’s tail falling down the center of his back, they stared politely out at the crowd. One by one they took their chairs, except for Wigg. The Lead Wizard remained standing and turned to address the group. The room somehow became even more still as Wigg looked out upon their numbers, rather unsure of how to begin. We have never asked such a thing of them before, the Lead Wizard thought. We have never asked them to kill. And I am not sure myself how to ask them to perform the tasks that only they are now capable of accomplishing.

“Consuls of the Redoubt,” Wigg began, raising his voice so that all could hear. “Time is short; therefore I shall be brief. It is my unfortunate task to inform you all that our nation is being plagued by creatures the likes of which we have not seen for hundreds of years. They have already killed several of the Royal Guard, and are no doubt responsible for the mysterious disappearances of several of your brothers over the course of the last few months. Since those of you here are without the aid of time enchantments, you have probably never seen the beings of which I now speak. But rest assured they do once again exist, apparently roaming the countryside at will, and the Directorate is asking your help to protect the citizenry from them.”

The consuls turned to one another with puzzled looks upon their faces, but none of them spoke as they waited respectfully for the Lead Wizard to resume his address.

“The creatures of which I speak are the blood stalker, which seeks out and destroys males of endowed blood, and the screaming harpy, the giant bird of prey with the head of a woman. We believe that an unknown disturbance in the natural flow of the craft has reactivated some of these beings, and we now ask your help in destroying them.” It pained the old wizard to lie to these brothers of endowed blood who sat so respectfully before him. But he had no choice.

“As you know, the coronation of the prince is almost upon us. It is for this reason that we are unable to use the Royal Guard in this endeavor, since their attendance at the palace shall be needed for matters of security, including controlling the crowd. Due to the unsurpassed popularity of both the prince and the king, the attendance is expected to exceed all known records. Under normal circumstances the Directorate itself would have helped guide you in this charge, but we, too, must remain at the palace, for the same reasons as the Guard.”

“Those of you who were selected to be here this night were chosen because of your long years of service and your relatively higher abilities in the craft,” he continued. “I charge each of you to select eleven others, taken from members not present, and to form small companies of a dozen each. Each of these squads is to go out across the nation in search of these monsters, to destroy them wherever they are found.”

Wigg turned around slightly and gestured to the other wizards seated behind him. “The Directorate will give you detailed training in how best to kill these nightmares, but let me say this first: The blood stalker can only be killed by crushing its skull. And the yellow brain matter that flows from it is fatal. Under no circumstances are you to allow it to touch your skin. The harpy, on the other hand, has no such danger in its bodily fluids but is infinitely stronger, larger, and therefore more difficult to kill. The best methods for its destruction are fire or the use of a wizard’s warp, crushing it to death.” He paused, thinking of the warp he had used to kill the harpy.

“And lastly,” he said more slowly, “know that many of you in this room may not be coming back, that you may quite possibly perish in these attempts. We have no idea how many of these beings are loose in the nation, but we are reasonably sure that there are far more than the two we have already dispatched.” He paused, lowering his head slightly. “May the Afterlife grant you the wisdom to prevail.”

And may all of us, each and every one, survive the events of the next few days.

7

Kluge shuddered, partly out of sexual need and partly out of emotional longing as she slowly licked the unusually tender area high up on one of his wings, the small spot at the top that she knew from experience was a Minion area of sexual pleasure. They had been at sea for fourteen days now, and she had said little about their mission, other than occasionally making sure they were on course for the proper area of the Eutracian coast and verifying that all the other warships were dutifully following. Even today, when she had casually ordered him to her stateroom, and she had alluded to no more than a discussion of their mission.

Naked, Succiu slid up closer behind him as he sat on the edge of the large bed. She rather painfully bit the side of his neck as she hungrily watched his sexual excitement come to fruition.

“I assume, Mistress, that my presence here involves more than simply receiving my orders for tomorrow,” he said, trying to contain both his sarcasm and his intense longing for the second mistress. He had heard stories of those who had not pleased her, and despite how much he enjoyed these times with her, he had no desire to join the ranks of lesser men who had not risen to the challenge. He would do as he was told.

She threw a shock of her long, silken hair back over one shoulder and reached languidly around him, her long, painted nails teasing his groin.

“You assume correctly, Commander,” she said coyly. “It has been too long since we have joined, and despite our closeness during the last fourteen days, until now I had never been able to find the right moment. As you are aware, the First Mistress does not know of the times that we share together in this way, and would indeed not be pleased to learn of it. But, then again, she does not need to know, does she?”

Kluge shook his head slightly. Both he and the second mistress were well aware of the fact that when Failee had first perfected the Minions, the First Mistress had forbidden any such contact between her creations and the Coven, or the Minions and the native women of Parthalon, for that matter. All mating must be strictly for the purposes of siring more warriors, she had said. And it is exactly like Succiu to rebel against her, Kluge thought to himself. Especially when it come to her needs of the flesh. The first few times she had ordered him to lie with her he had feared for his life and had been barely able to perform. But, with the passage of time, not only was he at least partially able to satisfy her amazing hungers but he had come to want her heart, as well.

“You continue to dare to defy Failee in this way, even now, at this most important of times?” Kluge asked. He knew that Succiu was deadly, and that he must obey her orders to the letter, whatever they may be. But he also had no desire to have the First Mistress learn of their trysts and punish him with death, simply for submitting to the beauty before him.

“Failee is my problem, not yours,” she said dismissively.

Slowly uncoiling her long legs from beneath her, she moved away from him and sat up on the bed, holding her knees in front of her. For a brief moment something in her countenance had changed—become even more conspiratorial. It was almost as if Succiu regarded Failee as something of a challenge, and a welcome one at that.

“The First Mistress long ago abandoned her earthly pleasures and turned her talents solely toward the mastery of a certain aspect of the craft,” she continued coyly. She began to circle the inside of his ear maddeningly with her tongue. “But I, the second mistress, refuse to be bound by her constraints in this regard,” Succiu continued. “Besides, aren’t you pleased?”

“Of course, Mistress,” he answered automatically.

“But business before pleasure. Turn around and face me,” she ordered.

He turned around on the black silk sheets and found himself gazing directly into the dark, almond eyes. She was looking at him with dead seriousness, the playfulness now completely gone.

“Tomorrow is a very special day,” she said. “We shall have been at sea for fifteen days with favorable winds at our backs, and so we must prepare. Listen carefully, for my orders are very explicit, and must be followed to the letter. If tomorrow does not proceed exactly as planned, you will have no need to worry about your attack, for we will all be dead and no trace of us, not even of our armada, will be found.”

Kluge immediately understood the reference: the Sea of Whispers. The ocean that could never be crossed. His knowledge of it was limited only to what he had heard from the Parthalonian nationals, and the brief mention of it by Failee during his meeting with the Coven.

“What I am about to tell you is for your ears only, and even then it will not be complete,” Succiu began seriously. “Much of what will happen tomorrow to ensure our crossing will become apparent to you then. In addition, should any of your officers learn the nature of tomorrow’s events beforehand it might prove unsettling to them, and there is no need of that.” She paused, looking into his eyes, obviously expecting him to agree.

“I understand, Mistress,” he said purposefully.

“Good,” she said without emotion. “Besides, a full explanation of tomorrow could take hours, and I have other plans for the use of our evening together.” Her tongue licked her upper lip while her eyes grazed over his body. It was not love for him that she was displaying, he knew, but simply a need that she would order him to fulfill. As a master would command a slave, he thought. And despite the fact she knows how much I love her, she will let me occasionally possess her body but never her heart, for the blood that runs through my veins is not endowed.

She returned to her more businesslike demeanor. “Tomorrow at dawn, forty dead Parthalonian slaves will be brought to our vessel. One each from forty of our warships. They will be brought to us in skiffs by the captains of these vessels, and are to be laid naked in four rows upon the deck of this command ship.” She spoke as casually as if she were discussing what the weather might be like tomorrow.

Kluge stared at her, speechless. Forty dead slaves to be brought here? His mind reeled. He couldn’t possibly imagine the purpose of such a thing.

“Just before dawn, each one of the dead slaves will have been murdered in their sleep personally by the captain of each of the forty vessels, then stripped naked. The slaves were handpicked and put on board each of the ships by Failee herself before we sailed, and each of the warship captains were informed of their individual orders long ago. One of your tasks tomorrow will be to retain order among your troops and officers when the bodies are brought aboard. Our survival depends upon it.”

The killing of captive slaves that were purposely brought upon a Minion mission? His brain fairly screamed the bizarre nature of it at him. Why bring them at all, if only to kill them now, halfway across this mysterious sea? And Minion warriors had certainly seen their share of dead slaves. Succiu knew that. So why would there be difficulty in maintaining order? Too stupefied to respond, he just sat there in abject disbelief of what he was hearing.

Regardless of the fact that she could sense the incomprehension and confusion in his eyes, her gaze became no more compassionate as she went on with her instructions.

“After the events of tomorrow, the reasons for these actions shall be clear,” she said. “Actually, I am more than certain that you will agree with me when I say that there was absolutely no other choice. At dawn I want you standing next to me on deck, and I will do my best to explain as events unfold. The only thing I shall tell you now is that tomorrow you will become one of the very few who understand why it is called the Sea of Whispers.”

For the first time in his life, he thought he could sense fear in her voice.

She got out of bed, walked naked to the ornate sideboard beneath the stained-glass windows of her cabin, and poured herself a glass of wine. She turned to him and raised the bottle questioningly, but he shook his head. Shrugging her shoulders, she came back up behind him in the great bed and took a sip.

“Assuming we survive tomorrow and we have crossed this horrible sea, I shall order that we drop our sails and congregate approximately one and a half day’s sail from the Eutracian coast,” she continued, apparently now lost in her thoughts. “That will be the day of the abdication ceremony. The closest Eutracian soil will then be a peninsula called Far Point. It is an area that is surrounded by dangerous reefs and therefore typically not used by Eutracian fishermen. Thus, it is highly unlikely that our fleet will be seen, especially under the coming cover of darkness. There are to be absolutely no lanterns lit. During the course of that day, you are to arm your warriors and give each of your officers their attack orders. Leave nothing out, especially the importance of taking Shailiha alive, and the capture of the Paragon. It will then be their individual responsibilities to return to their ships and inform their respective troops of their orders. That same afternoon, the Minions will fly for the coast, which should take no more than five or six hours. Six of your strongest are to carry a specially designed litter in which you and I will be transported.”

“We shall fly under my direction directly to the woodlands surrounding the palace at Tammerland, just out of sight of the Royal Guard that shall be stationed in and around the palace for security during the abdication ceremony,” she continued. “By the time we reach the palace, night will already have fallen, but the abdication ceremony will not yet have begun. At my order, you will then begin your attack. As you know, the precise timing of the attack is crucial—that is, the moment the Paragon has been immersed in the water of the chalice. Our ally at the Eutracian court shall already be inside attending the ceremony, and will inform me mentally of the precise moment.”

Kluge thought of the mind-link he had witnessed between Failee and their ally at the Eutracian court. Apparently more than one of the Coven was trained in this particular talent.

“After the battle,” she continued, “we will light a series of signal fires in a nearby coastal area called the Cavalon Delta, and our captains will approach the coast and moor there.” She took another sip of the wine, and then set the glass upon her bed stand. She raised her dark eyes up to him again. “But first, we must survive tomorrow.”

Her eyes seemed to glaze over briefly, and Kluge could see raw hunger once again begin to build there. But it was not sexual desire. It was the intense need to return to her homeland, bringing as much death as possible with her. He very much doubted the wisdom of asking her any questions just now, despite the fact that he had so many.

Kluge then watched as her expression began to evolve into a different, more erotic, and even more commanding hunger. She picked up the wineglass and walked around the edge of the huge bed, kneeling down before him.

“Poor Kluge,” she whispered teasingly, as she smiled up at his dark face. “I know how you feel about me, and how you would like to possess me in a way other than simply the physical, but it’s quite hopeless, don’t you see?” She took another sip of the wine, clearly enjoying the opportunity not only to use his body, but also to insult his mind. “Your blood simply does not entice me the way endowed blood does. But that is not to say you are without your uses.”

Endowed blood, Kluge thought. That which I do not have. His mind went back in time to the unique, hungry look in Succiu’s eyes when she had so carefully observed the prince of Eutracia during the Coven’s meeting in the palace. He and his endowed blood shall die slowly, Kluge promised himself. Much more slowly than the others.

He closed his eyes as Succiu poured the warm, red wine onto his abdomen and hungrily began to lick it from his groin.

Kluge looked out across the calm sea as he stood alone in the bow of the command warship. The sky was clear, the wind at their backs strong and steady, and the sea itself the very picture of good sailing. He rubbed one gloved hand down the length of his tired face, drinking in the refreshing sea air. She had used him for hours last night, and he had willingly obeyed. Afterward he had found it impossible to sleep; instead he had wandered the decks for the rest of the night, wondering what possible threat she could have been referring to.

He turned to look down the length of the warship. Forty dead bodies lay on the main deck in four neat rows of ten each. Just as she had said, the forty captains of the preselected ships had all arrived at dawn with their respective cargoes of death, each in a small skiff that the captain had piloted himself. The dead men had been hearty and strong; the women had been tall, young, and beautiful; the children were perfect miniatures of the adults. There seemed to be an approximately even number of men, women, and children. Handpicked, indeed, he thought.

The captains had sailed their individual skiffs back to their ships, and the entire armada had now taken the shape of a V, like a flock of geese, with the command warship in the lead. Whatever Succiu planned on encountering, it was plain that she wanted her ship to arrive first.

Kluge had already instructed each of his officers according to Succiu’s orders, telling them not to be surprised at whatever they witnessed this day, that all would happen as the Coven expected. He had felt more than a little foolish before his troops when he had not been able to tell them what was expected, however. Now, as he watched his men go about their morning tasks, Traax, his second in command, appeared before him. An unusually large and efficient officer, Traax had been appointed to the position immediately after Kluges promotion to commander by the Coven.

“Permission to speak, my lord,” he said simply, looking with clear, green eyes into the much darker eyes of his leader. Kluge nodded.

“A status report, my lord,” Traax began, standing stiffly at attention. “We make way unimpeded at approximately ten knots, the wind stays steady, and we are on the proper course. We make good progress. The warriors are interested in but not afraid of your warning of this morning. Minion warriors fear nothing, even the unknown.”

Kluge began to respond, but before he could speak the first word, he was interrupted by a voice from behind him.

“Thank you, Traax. That will be all,” Succiu said without emotion. She walked to the bow to stand with Kluge facing the west, the rising sun upon their backs.

“Yes, Mistress,” Traax said obediently. He bowed briefly and returned to his duties on the main deck.

This was the first time Kluge had seen her this morning, and as expected, there was no hint in her face whatsoever of what had passed between them last night. Such beauty, he thought. Beauty I am occasionally allowed to take, but never to possess.

She stood there next to him for some time without speaking, simply watching the waves as they splashed and divided against the prow of the ship. He could feel the sun beginning to warm the back of his neck… and then things began to change.

The balmy morning air turned chilly; it seemed to grow distinctly colder with each second that passed. Kluge turned around to look toward the stern of the boat, wondering if they were being engulfed by a sudden storm front, but the weather behind them remained as perfect as that which lay before them.

And then the wind stopped.

It didn’t just slow down, or start to give out in little gusts as would often be the case—it simply stopped. There was absolutely no breeze; the sea became as smooth as glass. The great warship slowly came to a stop. A deadly silence reigned over everything as Kluge looked down to see his warriors looking about in amazement, their breath streaming out in long, vaporous clouds because of the intense cold.

The second mistress of the Coven stepped before Kluge and looked into his dark eyes with a determination that he had never before seen there, despite his many dealings with her. “We have arrived,” she said to him, her voice almost a murmur. “Belay the sails, tie off the ship’s wheel, and be quick about it.” She inched her face even closer to his. “And remind those flying monkeys of yours that they are to take absolutely no action unless it is specifically ordered by me.” She turned away from him and began to cast her eyes slowly across the smooth, un-moving waters that surrounded the warship.

Kluge motioned to Traax, who was at his side in an instant. After giving his second in command the orders, Kluge watched as the sails came down and the wheel was tied off, making the ship entirely subject to the mercy of the waves. Except there were no waves, and the great ship now sat virtually motionless in the dark-blue water.

And then came the fog.

Unlike any he had ever seen, it rolled over them with great speed, seemingly from nowhere, engulfing them in its presence. Thick and gray, it seemed to have a life of its own and clung, cold and wet, to their clothes and skin. Reaching out into the air, he extended his fingers and rubbed them together. The fog seemed to have body to it, a silky texture that he could actually feel between his fingers. Turning toward Succiu, he could barely see her, even though they were less than three feet apart. How is fog able to have substance? his soldier’s mind shouted at him. Such a thing is not possible. And then the fog began to take shape.

Gradually, he began once again to be able to pick out Succiu in the gloom as the fog started to coalesce and take form around certain areas of the warship. From bow to stern, it gathered on either side of the ship in two distinct columns that seemed to rise up out of the ocean. Occasional glimpses through the fog showed him that the weather beyond was as clear as it had been, and that the fog was isolated only around the ship.

Then, as he turned his attention back to the two growing pillars of fog, his mouth dropped open.

The great columns of fog had taken the shape of human arms rising out of the depths of the ocean. At the end of each arm was a gigantic gray hand, with ancient, gnarled fingers that ended in long, cracked, and broken fingernails. The great gray arms began moving in different directions. One of them went forward to the bow, and the other went astern. Paralyzed by amazement, Kluge could barely move his head to watch them, and his ragged breath came faster, streaming out of his mouth in cloudy bursts as it struck the increasingly frigid air. He could not remember ever being so cold in his life.

It was then that the great gray hands grasped the ship. The forward hand and arm wrapped around the bow, and the arm and hand in the rear covered the stern of the warship in its grasp.

The ship sat in the ocean totally immobilized. The huge, gnarled hands, their grips firm, stopped moving, and all traces of fog except for that which made up the terrible arms and hands now vanished. The surrounding ocean was once again in clear view.

Succiu turned again to Kluge, the expression on her face nervous but not panic-stricken, as he had thought it might be. It was almost as if she had been expecting this.

“Follow me to the gunwale, Commander,” she said, apparently in complete control of her voice. She walked across the bow deck of the ship, Kluge following, and gestured for him to look down into the dark blue water of the ocean.

The water all around the ship had suddenly begun to bubble and roil, as if someone or something were either breathing beneath it or trying to come to the surface, or both. Kluge watched, transfixed, as the beginnings of oval shapes started to become visible just beneath the surface of the ocean. And then the bubbling and churning stopped, and what was left in the momentarily calm waters was the most hideous scene he had ever witnessed

They were faces, dozens of huge faces that were each at least ten feet across, lying flat in the ocean just a couple of feet below the surface, staring blankly up at the sky. Each of the faces was different, yet they were all somehow the same. They floated and bobbed without moving away from the ship, and simply lay there in ghostly silence. They were bodiless.

The flesh of the faces was a horrible mixture of sea green and dark red, streaked with ancient wrinkles and boils. Where eyes and mouths would be were only dark, empty holes that seemed to go on forever as the faces shimmered in the light without actually changing position in the water.

Turning away from his mistress, Kluge thought he might be ill.

Looking down at his warriors, he saw that many of them were gazing over the sides of the ship in amazement, dreggans drawn. Others had gone both fore and aft to examine the great arms and hands that still held the ship prisoner. Succiu came to stand with him.

“Order them to stand fast and put their weapons away immediately,” she commanded. “No dreggan in the world, no matter how sharp, can defeat either fog or myth.”

Kluge gave the order to Traax, then turned his attention back to the ocean. The horrible faces were still there, floating just below the surface.

Succiu read the bewilderment in his face. “They are the Necrophagians,” she said in a low voice. “The Eaters of the Dead. And soon they will make their demands upon us.”

Kluge stood transfixed, beginning to understand. He glanced at the forty corpses in the neat piles upon the main deck of the ship. It was then that he began to hear the whispers.

“Pay us our bounty, or we shall take your bodies and your ships,” the faces said, in the strangest of voices that had ever reached his ears. There were many voices speaking at once, in complete conformity, yet so softly that they could barely be heard. The Sea of Whispers, he realized.

Succiu looked with apparent calm down into several of the faces as she began to speak.

“You do not remember me?” she asked softly. “I am one of the four who were allowed to cross without payment, some three hundred twenty-seven years ago.” She paused as the faces remained silent, moving back and forth beneath the waves. “I demand you honor the bargain made then, the bargain of the tenfold times four.”

A seemingly interminable silence followed, the only sounds the light lapping of the sea against the sides of the ship.

“The bargain of the tenfold times four shall be honored,” the collective voices said at last, the many mouths moving at the same time. “But first we require proof of your personage, that you are indeed who you say you are. If acceptable proof is not forthcoming, we shall take your ships, and then your bodies.”

A look of concern passed over Succiu’s face, but she quickly regained her composure.

“A test of identity was never part of the bargain,” she said boldly. “And if I refuse?”

“Then watch and learn, Sorceress,” the many whispers came at once.

Immediately Kluge heard a snapping noise, and as he turned around he saw that the great hand that was gripping the stern of the ship had begun to tighten its grasp, sending smashed and splintered wood that had once been the upper railing and deck of the stern flying off into the ocean and down upon the lower decks of the ship. He turned in horror to his mistress.

“Very well,” she said finally. Kluge watched the awful hand release its grip slightly as yet more pieces of the ship fell crackingly downward. Succiu walked back to the gunwale and looked down at the repulsive, floating faces. She raised her hands to the sky.

“Then watch and learn, Eaters of the Dead!” she screamed.

Two bolts of blue light shot from her hands, joined, and plunged into the dark blue of the ocean a short distance beyond where the farthest of the grotesque faces lay just beneath the waves. Every man on the warship, and he assumed those behind them in the other ships as well, stood in awe as the second mistress of the Coven commanded the ocean to rise. A great body of the water leapt into the sky, separating itself from the sea to form a tall column of blue liquid that hovered there as she began to move her hands back and forth as if she were creating a work of art. She continued to twist and turn the moving, living, column of water this way and that until she was satisfied, and the gaze of every man aboard locked upon the image that now hung in space before them.

It was the Pentangle, the sign of the Coven, formed of seemingly living, breathing turquoise water, suspended at least one hundred feet above the surface of the ocean. Kluge watched in awe as it dripped, twinkled, and revolved in the bright sunlight of the afternoon.

It was magnificent.

Kluge turned to his troops to see that they were, to a man, suddenly down on bended knee before the image. He, too, went to one knee.

“This is the symbol of my Sisterhood, and you would do well to remember it, for I do not wish to be inconvenienced this way each time I or one of my Sisters chooses to cross this sea,” she said brazenly to the faces in the water. “Not only could no other women produce it, but also none others would dare. It should serve as proof enough of my personage.”

“We accept your proof,” the many soft whispers said at once through the hideous black maws of their mouths. “Pay us your tribute and you may continue to cross.”

Succiu closed her fingers into fists and dropped her hands to her side. Instantly the shimmering blue Pentangle dropped into the ocean. She turned quickly to Kluge.

“Lower the dead bodies over the side of the ship,” she ordered harshly. “Twenty to each side. Then make ready to hoist the sails and untie the ship’s wheel. We have no desire to remain here any longer than we must.”

Kluge quickly ran down to the main deck next to the rows of bodies and gave the orders. The Minion warriors began heaving the corpses over the side of the ship while others started to work on the sails and wheel. He also gave an order that the ships behind them be signaled to do the same. He ran back up to take his place next to his mistress at the edge of the gunwale.

“This, Commander,” she said excitedly, “is what would have happened to us had the Coven not struck that bargain of over three centuries ago. First, the Necrophagians would have pulled our ships under, and then, once we were dead, feasted upon both us and the Parthalonians.”

Kluge looked down into the ocean, fascinated. The many faces beneath the water were moving like a pack of sharks at a feeding frenzy. The bodies were sucked downward when each of the awful mouths opened, and sometimes were cut in half despite the absence of any visible teeth. The ocean water around the ship swirled and churned red with blood, and occasionally a human organ that contained air would rise to the surface, only to be taken again by one of the sickening mouths. At last the red-stained sea calmed, and the faces began to disappear from view. Kluge turned automatically to look at each end of the ship and thankfully saw that the huge gray arms and hands were dissolving.

“Set sail,” she commanded him. “The same heading as before. You will find that the weather and winds will once again become favorable.” No sooner had she spoken than the temperature rose back to normal and the wind was against their backs again, filling the sails, snapping them open against the bright blue cloudless sky. The armada began to move.

“Now you and every man aboard this ship know not only why it is called the Sea of Whispers, but why it has been uncrossable. You are to swear all of your warriors to silence against penalty of death regarding their knowledge of this since we do not want any information regarding how to cross to be given to Eutracia, especially to the wizards,” she told mm. She leaned against the gunwale, lost in thought as she spoke as much to herself as to Kluge.

“The Necrophagians made themselves first known to the Coven as we tried to cross the Sea of Whispers some three hundred twenty-seven years ago, after we had been banished from Eutracia by the bastard wizard named Wigg,” she said venomously. “They tried to take our small craft, and us with it, to be devoured. The Eaters of the Dead usually demand that their victims first choose among themselves who is to be killed, adding to the game, before the dead body or bodies are thrown overboard. But Failee, although unable to defeat them, was able to beguile them into a bargain.”

“The bargain of tenfold times four,” Kluge responded knowingly. “Yes,” she said, the sea wind blowing her long, dark hair. “The bargain of tenfold times four. Failee promised them that in return for our safe passage that day, she would promise to pay a bounty of ten times each one of us, or forty, each time the Coven or one of its members desired to cross. Thus, the need for the forty dead slaves. But there were risks. Because of the ongoing fear of this ocean by Parthalonian fishermen, we had always assumed that the Eaters of the Dead were still here, but we could not know for sure whether they would either remember or even honor our bargain. Luckily, they did.”

“Who are they?” he asked.

“Failee believes that they were at one time wizards. They had to be, to have that much power. It occurred to us that they may have been condemned by some higher power to this permanent fate of living beneath the sea and feasting upon the dead, but none of us knows for sure. The important thing is that we got across.” She glanced up to the destroyed deck and railing at the stern of the ship, and her eyes glazed over as her mind took her back in time to a similar galleon of so long ago. The ship that the then newly formed Directorate of Wizards used to imprison us, and from which they set us adrift in this awful place, she thought.

A concern occurred to Kluge that he felt should be addressed, especially after the events of this afternoon.

“I assume, Mistress, that since we are eventually returning to Parthalon by sail, we will encounter this same obstacle again,” he said carefully, trying not to overstep his bounds.

“Of course,” she replied, looking almost cheerfully into his dark eyes. “But this time our bounty will be different, and will cost nothing of value to us.”

“How so?”

“Because we will be bringing with us forty dead Eutracians, of course,” she said, laughing. A distinctly predatory look came into her eyes. “Perhaps we will include the bodies of the Directorate of Wizards for good measure,” she added, obviously quite pleased with the idea.

“Keep us on this heading all night,” she told him as she looked to the west. The sun was starting to hiss its way slowly into the ocean and pour forth a beautiful orange—and-red inferno into the darkening sky. Soon the stars would be out.

“In addition, assign a work detail of your warriors to begin repairing the stern of the ship. I want it set right as soon as possible.” Then, in an uncustomary display of feelings, she added, “The damage brings me unpleasant memories that I have no desire to revisit.”

“Yes, Mistress,” he replied, bowing slightly.

“We have another fifteen days’ sail to the coast of Eutracia, and after today nothing can stop us between here and there.” She turned on her heel and was gone.

Kluge was left standing alone in the bow of the ship, watching the finishing sunset as he tried to comprehend all that had happened this day.

He was left with the distinct feeling that there would be much more to come.

Nicholas took another deep breath of air from the warm Eutracian afternoon as he galloped his stallion down the little rise and toward the bubbling stream. The horses would need some water by now, and this would be a good place to stop and talk to the lead wizard, whom he had invited to join him on his ride. As the king’s horse bent down to drink from the stream, Wigg finally caught up to him, also walking his mount into the cool water. For a silent moment they watched their horses drink long and deep, as each man wondered how to begin the conversation that they both knew must come.

Nicholas had purposely chosen to be outside and away from the palace so he could be absolutely sure there were no other ears to hear what would be said. As of late he had come to distrust even his personal conference room in the Redoubt of the Directorate, although if someone had asked him, he probably wouldn’t have been able to say exactly why. It was just a feeling, and ever since the appearances of the blood stalker and the screaming harpy, his sixth sense had been growing stronger by the day. It had been almost four weeks since Wigg had dealt with the harpy, and the abdication ceremony was now only two days away.

Nicholas looked down at the Paragon that had been around his neck for so many years. Only two more days in my safekeeping, he thought, and then it will be passed to Tristan.

He tied the reins to the saddle and jumped down into the river. Walking a few feet from the horses, he bent down and, with cupped hands, scooped up water to rub across his face and neck. Then, leaving his horse to drink, he walked out of the stream and sat down on the bank beneath a tree. The Lead Wizard followed him.

Wigg gathered his robes around himself as he sat down next to his king. He selected and picked a long blade of green grass that he began to shred carefully between his ancient fingers, as was his custom.

“I assume, Sire, that since neither of us really need the exercise and since there is still so much to do before the ceremony, there is a good reason why we are sitting on the banks of a stream today?” he asked without looking up.

Nicholas pulled absentmindedly on his gray beard as he looked into his friend’s eyes. “I want to know, once and for all, whether there is anything of importance that you have not told me,” he said simply, still worrying his beard. “The appearances of the stalker and harpy have, as you know, disturbed me greatly. And the abdication ceremony is only two days hence. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Did I not deal with each of them in an effective manner?” Wigg asked, knowing full well that the deaths of the creatures was not what the king was referring to.

“Don’t fence with me, Lead Wizard,” the king said gruffly. “I am trying to ensure the safety of my family, and I am having misgivings about the ceremony.”

“We have discussed all of this before, Your Highness,” Wigg countered gently. “And the report that the Directorate gave you following the death of the harpy was the best of the conclusions that could be drawn. Are we marching down a path of destruction? Only time will tell. But you know as well as I that under no circumstances can we either postpone or cancel the ceremony. Due to the nature of his birth, Tristan is the very future of endowed blood in Eutracia, and nothing can stop that. We have known of his coming since the first translations of the Tome, over three hundred years ago. We just didn’t know when.” His heart went out to Nicholas. He could only imagine how powerless the king must feel right now, especially in light of the appearances of the stalker and the harpy, two of the Coven’s most effective tools during the war of so long ago. The Chosen One shall come, but he shall be preceded by another, he thought. Two days left.

“I know all of that,” Nicholas said almost angrily. “And I have read the Directorate’s report a dozen times, telling me that the Coven probably didn’t survive the Sea of Whispers those hundreds of years ago and even if they had that there is no conceivable way back, even if those bitches are still alive.” He ran a hand through his dark gray hair. “But this is my family we’re talking about. Can’t we at least move the location of the ceremony to somewhere more remote and isolated, where it would be more difficult to find us?”

“The entire Directorate is in complete agreement on this point as well, Sire,” Wigg said gently, trying to make him understand. “Moving the ceremony would mean moving the entire Royal Guard for protection, something which does not happen overnight. And besides, there is no safer place in the kingdom than the palace, with its walls, moat, and drawbridge.”

Nicholas looked up to see a flock of Eutracian geese flying north, calling to each other noisily as they went. How I wish it could be that simple, he thought. Just to collect up my family and fly them away to safety.

“Then if it must be in the palace and the date cannot be changed, why not hold the ceremony in the depths of the Redoubt? Wouldn’t we all be safer there?” Nicholas asked. “Since we sent forth the consuls to try to help protect the citizenry from the stalkers and harpies, the Redoubt is now deserted. Would it not be perfect for our use?”

Wigg closed his eyes, remembering that the thought processes of those who had not been trained in the craft could be so scattered. He looked compassionately up at his king. “That idea, too, was considered briefly by the Directorate after the consuls left, and then was also quickly rejected,” he said simply. He reminded himself that this king had never had to fight a battle, much less a war, and he needed to be patient with him.

“Why?”

“For one thing, the Redoubt was constructed to be a place of learning, not a fort from which to defend one’s realm. The Guard would be virtually useless while trying to navigate the many corridors. In addition, none of the populace could be invited, as usual, to the ceremony due to the secret nature of the Redoubt. What would you tell your nation?” He paused, hoping that the king understood. “The Directorate fully understands and appreciates your concern, for while the Paragon is in the chalice we, too, are vulnerable. But despite all that, we can see no way to proceed other than by following tradition.” Nicholas shook his head in frustration.

“Is Tristan still adamant about wearing those same dark clothes of his, instead of the traditional ceremonial robes of his upcoming office?” he asked.

“Yes.” Wigg sighed. “And I see little that we can do at this point to change his mind. Considering all of the decisions about his life that have already been made against his will, I suggest we honor his demand.

I daresay he will wear those things even to the ceremony and well beyond, into his reign.” He paused and picked another blade of grass. “Besides, in the scheme of things, what does it matter?”

I can’t really blame him, the king thought. My own beginnings were humble. Perhaps it is only fitting that my son serve as king in the clothes of the people.

Nicholas’ mind went back to the early days of his youth, when he had been a smith. A simple smith, at the outskirts of Tammerland, living with his parents. He still had the muscular arms and broad chest of his craft. A smith, just like his father before him, and his father before him. And then had come the day when he had looked up from his anvil and hammer to see the Wizards of the Directorate standing before him, impossibly telling him that he had been selected as king. That the king before him had a barren wife, and that there was no prince to succeed him.

And that on the previous night their king had died in his sleep.

And then he had met and married Morganna, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and Tristan and Shailiha had followed. His own parents were gone now, but they had lived to see their son become king, just as he would see his son do the same. Today he is my son, he thought, and two days from now he will be my king.

Seeming to have made up his mind, Nicholas stood, and Wigg stood with him. The king looked into the wizard’s ancient aquamarine eyes in a way that Wigg had never seen before.

“Lead Wizard,” he began, “if the worst befalls us, can you at least save my children? They are the ones of the greatest importance.” The question was painfully simple, and the wizard thought his heart might break merely at hearing it asked. A blatant tear was tracing its way down Nicholas’ cheek, the first of the king’s that Wigg had ever seen.

“In truth, Your Majesty, I can only do my best,” the old wizard said. “But I love them both like the children I was never blessed to have, and will protect them at the cost of my own life, if necessary.”

Nicholas reached out and put his hand on the old one’s shoulder for a moment. Then he turned and headed back to his horse, the Lead Wizard of the Directorate following slowly behind him.

8

Tristan stood rather uncomfortably on the raised dais, facing what he guessed to be at least four thousand finely dressed people standing expectantly on the black—and-white-checkered floor of the Great Hall. And he knew that there were thousands more waiting outside of the palace, with members of the Royal Guard gently but firmly holding them back. The great room smelled pleasantly of potpourri, fresh-cut flowers, and anticipation.

It was late evening. The many lighted chandeliers and candelabras gave the room a golden, surreal presence, and seemed somehow to accentuate the colorful, ornate clothing of the visitors. Tristan, however, was still in his usual outfit, complete with his quiver of dirks, and he smiled slightly to himself at having made good upon his promise of wearing these garments to the abdication ceremony. When he, his family, and the Directorate of Wizards had first entered the room, he had seen the expected surprise at his appearance. But by now the finger-pointing and hushed tones had virtually all subsided.

He had never known any room of the palace to have ever been so beautiful. Frederick had been right when he said that the rehearsal preparations would be nothing compared to the actual ceremony itself. The thousands of visitors commanded almost every square inch of the floor, along with one hundred or so of the Royal Guard. The musicians and entertainers were huddled together near the orchestra pit. All eyes were glued upon the people on the dais as everyone waited for the ceremony to begin.

The time of my coronation is finally here, he thought solemnly. He glanced down at his clothes. If it is a king I must be, then it is a king of the common people that I shall strive to remain.

He looked into the crowd, scanning for faces that he knew, and saw that there were many. There was Natasha, the duchess of Ephyra, and her husband, Duke Baldric. Rather embarrassingly, he came upon the face of Evelyn of the House of Norcross, standing uncomfortably near the dais with her mother and father. She smiled up at him knowingly, and he managed a little smile back. Her father, the prince saw, didn’t quite seem to share her great admiration for Tristan just now, despite the fact that the young man was about to become king. Tristan looked away. There were also a great many of his personal friends from the Royal Guard present in the room, as well as the seemingly countless people from throughout the realm whom his father and the Directorate had made sure he met during the course of his youth.

Inwardly, he sighed. It was going to be a long night.

Before him stood the marble altar with the red velvet runner and the gold Chalice of the Abdication Ceremony. Behind him, his mother and father were seated next to each other on their respective thrones. His father was wearing his official robes, the dark-blue velvet with the white ermine collar. As always, the Paragon could be seen hanging from around his neck. His mother looked as beautiful as ever in a white gown with matching elbow gloves. To Tristan’s right sat the wizards of the Directorate in their row of thrones, and to his left stood Frederick and Shailiha, arms linked, both beaming with pride.

And just in front of him, between himself and the altar, stood Wigg, Lead Wizard of the Directorate and, therefore, the conductor of the ceremony.

Wigg turned to address the throng, and his voice cut through the air of the Great Hall.

“Ladies and their gentlemen, citizens of Eutracia, members of the Royal Guard, friends,” he began earnestly. “It is my great privilege to welcome you to the most prestigious and solemn of all the ceremonies in our realm, the abdication of the reigning monarch and the subsequent coronation of the heir apparent in his place. Tonight history shall be made, just as it has been made in much the same way in each generation since our victory in the Sorceresses’ War centuries ago. Part of what we do here tonight is in remembrance of those dark days, and of the many beloved ancestors who were lost in that great struggle. May what we do here this night not only immortalize their contributions, but also contribute to another period of peace and prosperity for our nation.”

At this the crowd broke out into a long period of applause, punctuated by encouraging shouts and friendly waves of admiration. Tristan caught Evelyn’s admiring gaze, and turned his attention back to the Lead Wizard.

“This marks the end of the reign of King Nicholas the First, and the beginning of the reign of his son, the heir apparent, King Tristan the First of Eutracia.”

The crowd erupted into wild cheering, waving and calling out the prince’s name, as Tristan moved up to stand beside Wigg. He could also hear shouts of “Long live the king!” The noise was deafening.

They’re talking about me, he thought. ,’ have never heard anyone call me “king” before. I can’t believe this is happening, even though I know it is. It’s like a dream.

Wigg lifted one of two beautiful golden amphorae that were sitting on the altar next to the Chalice of the Abdication Ceremony. He raised the amphora high.

“In this vessel I hold the sacred water,” he said simply, and the crowd hushed. The fascination in their eyes reminded Tristan that no one outside of the Directorate and the royal family had any knowledge whatsoever of the water, or of the Caves from which it had come. As Wigg slowly poured it into the chalice, the strange and wonderful fluid tumbled and undulated with a life of its own, just the way it had surrounded Tristan’s body in the Caves that day thirty days ago. At the sight of the water, his blood surged with desire for the craft, and he stood beside Wigg even more transfixed than the spectators.

Wigg solemnly turned to King Nicholas.

“Your Highness,” he said gently, in an almost fatherly tone, “it is time for the Paragon.”

Nicholas looked down at the shimmering, bloodred stone that had been around his neck continuously for more than thirty years. He then looked to his wife Morganna, the love of his life. With a long sigh that was part sadness and part determination, he lifted the stone and the gold chain from around his neck. Tristan noticed that just as soon as the stone had left his father’s person it began to lose some of its luster; it no longer caught and refracted the light as he was so used to seeing it do. Wigg took the stone gently in his hands and held it before the crowd.

The Lead Wizard lifted the chain and the stone high into the air, and immediately the room went completely silent.

“The Paragon, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “That which gave us the courage and the hope to prevail in the Sorceresses’ War, and which to this day grants the Directorate its power to help our sovereign rule with wisdom and compassion for all of our people.”

Tristan watched, mesmerized, as the wizard poured approximately half the water from the first amphora into the second one. Wigg placed the stone into the vessel he was still holding aloft, then set the amphora back on the table beside its mate. Almost immediately the prince thought he could see the water around the stone begin to lose its color as the stone took on an even deeper red and began once again to collect the light of the room. As the seconds passed, a shaft of light slowly rose from the stone, moving higher and higher into the room until it touched and perfectly encircled the stained-glass domed ceiling and bathed it in a beautiful bloodred glow. It was astounding.

Tristan knew what was coming next. Wigg would turn to him and begin reciting, line by line, the succession oath. Then would follow a period of approximately two hours while the Paragon remained in the water and readied itself for its new host. It was during this time that the royal family and the Directorate usually mingled with the crowd and made their personal greetings. And then, when the Lead Wizard had ascertained that the stone was ready, the royal entourage would reclaim the dais, and Wigg would place the Paragon around Tristan’s neck and proclaim him king, the process complete. Afterward, the dancing and feasting would begin, and run on unfettered until dawn.

Tristan looked down briefly at the gold medallion that already hung around his neck—the medallion that his mother had given him, the one with the broadsword and lion engraved upon it. Soon the Paragon would be lying next to it, both of them close to his heart.

Wigg turned directly to face him, and Tristan decided to look out once again at the crowd of people for the last time as their prince. He again saw Evelyn, beaming proudly, and also several of his friends from the Guard who were looking up at him in a way that he had never seen before. They were no longer seeing him as the prince with whom they had enjoyed training in the yards, he realized. They were looking at him as their king.

Wigg, his back still to the crowd, suddenly but deliberately cleared his throat. Tristan dutifully turned to the old wizard, and he thought he could see the beginnings of tears forming in the famous aquamarine eyes. But then the hint of moisture was gone, and the wizard began Tristan’s vows.

“True peace of mind comes only when my heart and actions are aligned with true principles and values,” Wigg said, waiting for Tristan’s identical reply. In the space between lines, the Great Hall was as silent as a tomb.

“True peace of mind comes only when my heart and actions are aligned with true principles and values,” Tristan repeated.

“I shall forsake not, to the loss of all material things, my honor and integrity,” Wigg said.

“I shall forsake not, to the loss of all material things, my honor and integrity.”

“I shall protect the Paragon above all else… I shall protect the Paragon above all else… I shall protect the Paragon above all else…” Just as the executioner’s ax falls, just as the horse trips and the rider knows he is going down, just as the archer’s fingers loose the arrow—whenever the portent of disaster arrives and the entire world begins to spin in a terrifying kind of slow motion, the words that one hears at that precise moment can go on almost forever in one’s head, a sickening, unforgettable prelude to disaster.

Tristan did not know it, but his world was about to be changed forever.

He would remember later that the first signs of trouble had been the sounds of breaking glass, but as he looked about the great room, he could find no disturbance. And then the multicolored shards began to rain down upon the crowd, slicing into faces and scalps as they fell. Some of the women began to scream, and Tristan saw Wigg turn around toward the crowd as if in a dream.

It was then that the prince lifted his eyes to the shattered domed ceiling of stained glass, and his mouth dropped open. What he was seeing was unimaginable.

He watched the first one drop—no, fly—to the floor of the Great Hall, its dark, leathery wings snapping shut as it drew a great, curved sword from its scabbard and looked about the room with hate brimming in its eyes.

The creature stood motionless for a moment and then, jumping up onto the dais in one great leap, swung its sword with a speed Tristan had never seen before, cutting Frederick’s head from his shoulders in one swipe. Frederick’s severed head rolled across the dais and fell off the end, landing on the marble floor of the hall as his body crumpled into death. Shailiha screamed, the blood from her husband’s wounds splattered down over her maternity gown. Already the thing had jumped to the floor of the Great Hall and begun wildly butchering the populace at random.

Tristan shoved Wigg aside, his hand automatically reaching for one of his knives, the blade spinning through the air even before he realized he had thrown it. The knife drove deeply into the back of the thing’s head right below the shiny, winged helmet just as the creature was about to try to cut down one of the Guard. The creature fell forward, dead. Tristan’s first response was to run to his sister. He held her tightly in his arms as she shuddered and screamed in terror. By the time he turned back to the Great Hall the sight that greeted his eyes turned his insides to ice water.

Hundreds of the awful things were descending into the room and attacking at will. Several leapt up on the dais and ran toward the wizards. Tristan threw another dirk just as one of the monsters was about to swing at Slike with his awful, curved sword, and the knife plunged headlong into the thing’s left eye. It screamed in pain and fell off the dais. But there were just too many of them—they seemed to outnumber the Royal Guard by at least ten to one. For every one of the winged attackers that went down, five or six of the Guard died with it and even more of the monsters were still pouring in through the gaping rent in the ceiling.

Tristan suddenly felt hands upon him from the rear. He turned quickly to kill another of the awful creatures, but found himself facing Wigg. The old one shouted at the top of his lungs into Tristan’s face, his aquamarine eyes almost insane with the need to try to make the prince understand.

“Tristan! You and Shailiha must stay near me here at the altar! For the sake of everything you value and love, you both must stay by my side!”

Tristan tore his gaze away from the wizard long enough to see several of the winged barbarians starting to hack savagely into the row of the wizards of the Directorate, cutting them to pieces. First he saw Killius go down, his head severed from his body; then Egloff—the timid, likable scholar of the Tome—stood to resist the monster that had him by the robes, the point of its sword up against his throat. But before the prince could free himself from Wigg’s powerful grip, the invader moved the handle of the sword somehow, and suddenly the point of the blade shot up and through the wizard’s head and exited violently through the top of his skull, spraying bone and brain matter across the wall.

Tristan turned, his own eyes now bordering on insanity, and looked pleadingly at Wigg. The old one still stood where he was, screaming, beseeching the prince and his sister to come and stand near him once again at the altar. The wizards, Tristan raged silently. Why aren’t they using their powers to defend us? And then the answer came to him as clearly as if Wigg had just spoken it. The Paragon. The stone is in the water, and their powers have been taken away.

Without thinking, Tristan started to reach into the chalice and remove the stone, assuming that if he did, the remaining wizards’ powers would return and help them. But as soon as he reached for it he felt Wigg’s stronger hands pulling him away, screaming something at him about how he must leave the stone where it was, and bring his sister to stand with him near the altar. Tristan looked into the old one’s eyes with a mixture of frustration and horror. Is he mad? Can’t he see we’re being butchered? Why isn’t he at least trying to help us?

Violently tearing himself away from Wigg for the second time, he turned to see the sickening fates of three more of the wizards. Slike was already dead, lying in a pool of his own blood at the foot of his throne. A horrible-looking type of silver wheel with teeth all along its edge was embedded in the side of his skull. Tretiak, the second most powerful of the Directorate, lay in a gaunt posture of death, half of his robed body off the edge of the dais, a dagger deep in his chest. Maaddar was a few feet from his throne, bravely trying to stand before the royal family as several more of the hideous killers began to move quickly toward them. Tristan’s arm again took to his knives, three fast times in a row, and several of the monstrous things died in their tracks. But before the prince could do anything else, a shiny, silver disk careened through the air, narrowly missing his head. It slammed into the side of Maaddar’s neck, cutting the carotid artery, and blood began to pump violently from the wound. Tristan watched in shock as the wheel kept on impossibly flying as if it had never struck the poor wizard, unbelievably arcing around to return to one of the attackers standing on the hall floor. The winged butcher in the shiny silver helmet plucked the bloody wheel out of the air as if it were second nature and turned to look directly at the prince.

And then the monster laughed at him.

Something in Tristan snapped. A combination of hate, determination, and fear flooded through him, and he screamed in rage at the grotesque thing that stood laughing before him.

The creature drew his sword and, with his free hand, beckoned Tristan to come to him.

Tristan went for his knives, not sure how many he had left, but knowing in his heart that he would keep throwing until they were either gone or he was dead. His arm moved like lightning as, one after the other, the silver dirks flew through the air toward the killer.

But the winged monster was too fast, and Tristan watched in abject horror as the winged, musclebound freak easily used his curved sword to deflect each of the knives as they came at him.

Again he laughed at the prince, and Tristan flew toward the edge of the dais in a rage.

Everything else had been blotted from his mind, even his family’s safety and the presence of Wigg still standing at the altar, as he jumped from the dais and picked up a discarded Royal Guard broadsword, its handle covered in the blood of its owner. All he could see before him was the thing that had killed his friends, and even if he died trying, he would taste yet more blood this day.

Screaming insanely, he charged with his bloody sword held high and slashed with all of his strength at the taller, heavier monstrosity. But his opponent easily parried his blow, sending the prince flying. Tristan again attacked, this time swiping at both feet to cut the invader’s legs from beneath him. But with surprising agility the thing jumped into the air, escaping Tristan’s swing completely, and laughed yet again.

The prince backed off, watching the winged monster as the two of them circled each other in a centuries-old dance of death. Suddenly the sickening image of Frederick’s head rolling off the dais and the dirk he had thrown at his brother-in-law’s attacker tore through his mind. Even if I die at this moment, at least I avenged Frederick.

With every last ounce of his strength, Tristan lunged, sword slashing. But the creature simply stepped to the side and scooped him up in a chokehold from behind, and then applied a torturous elbow lock to the prince’s sword arm.

He whispered directly into the prince’s ear, with a voice that was both terrifying and taunting at the same time.

“You’re no match for me, boy,” the low, commanding voice said. “I am not supposed to kill you yet, as the mistress has changed my orders slightly. But she didn’t say anything about not abusing you, and I have personal reasons for wanting to do so. Drop the weapon, or I shall see to it that your sword arm is broken slowly, and in more than one place.”

Tristan was on his toes in indescribable pain, held in a vise lock from behind, the arm around his throat so tight that he could scarcely breathe. He knew that in a moment either his arm would break or his elbow would dislocate. He turned his head slightly and summoned his remaining breath.

“No!” he snarled through the unrelenting pain. “Not before I see your guts on the palace floor!”

Instead of the sound of his arm breaking, the sickening, diseased laugh once more drifted to his ears.

“Your supposedly endowed blood will not help you now, you worthless whelp. Besides, that’s no way for a king to talk, do you think?” it said, mocking him.

Then, suddenly, he was spun around to face the thing and was struck in the face with such force that he almost went unconscious. He skidded to the floor a few feet away, landing in one of the many puddles of blood that had collected almost everywhere upon the marble floor. The blood of my people, he heard his mind whisper. Don’t black out. If you black out now you will never wake up again. He staggered to one knee to face the monster as best he could, but before he knew it his attacker was upon him, this time striking him in the windpipe, bending him over in exquisite pain. Both his hands immediately went to his throat as he desperately tried to refill his lungs with air. He was choking to death, and he knew it.

The faceless beast in the shiny winged helmet reached down and took a handful of the prince’s dark hair, wrenching Tristan’s head violently up and back. Air rushed into Tristan’s lungs.

“Don’t worry, Prince Galland,” the thing said menacingly, virtually spitting the words out into Tristan’s face. “I won’t allow you to choke to death. That would be far too easy. No, you will not die just now, but before this night is over you will beg me for death, and I will oblige you.”

With unbelievable strength the attacker lifted Tristan by his throat with one arm, dragged him back to the dais on his toes, and literally threw him upon it as if he were a rag doll. Tristan landed hard on one side of his face, colliding into the uneven row of wizards’ chairs as he fought to regain his breath and take stock of his surroundings.

Coughing and gasping, he managed to get up on all fours and look up to where his family had been standing before he had jumped down onto the floor of the hall.

They were alive. Thank the Afterlife, they’re still alive.

King Nicholas was holding Morganna in his arms and speaking softly to her, apparently trying to give her hope. Wigg was standing next to them, a look of total loss upon his face such as Tristan had never before seen on any human being in his life.

And then he saw his sister.

Shailiha sat at her parents’ feet in her now blood-soaked gown, pathetically holding the headless corpse of her husband, crying and talking to the dead body as if it could talk back. She’s lost her mind, he thought.

Upon seeing Tristan back on the dais Nicholas quickly reached out to him, but one of the invaders backhanded him across the face almost immediately. The king fell backward, crashing down into his throne. Morganna, crying, reached down to help him up.

As his vision cleared and his senses slowly returned, Tristan could see that the royal family was no longer being attacked. Instead, a ring of the winged soldiers had formed around them, holding them in place and watching their every move. Suddenly, strong hands gripped him from behind, wrenched him to his feet, and roughly threw him back to the floor, inside the circle with his family.

Hearing screaming again, he turned his head to look out over the Great Hall.

The scene before his eyes made him start to vomit, and he put his head to the floor, forced just to let it happen.

Even with his head down, he could tell that the battle inside the hall itself was over, but he could hear fierce fighting going on through the open windows. Apparently there were more of the awful things outside the palace, and they were attacking the Royal Guard. Still on all fours, he looked down to the floor of the dais in shame. If the members of the Guard outside of the palace did no better than their comrades in this room, then all was lost. Indeed, even as he thought the words, it seemed that the sounds from around the windows were lessening already.

But he knew it was the scene in the hall itself that would be the most horrifying. He slowly stood and raised his face to look at it—to look at what they had done to his countrymen.

Men, women, and children had been slaughtered with no quarter. They lay everywhere in giant, spreading, dark-red pools of their own blood. Severed arms and legs were scattered crazily at random, as were the heads of many. He could see some of the strange silver wheels still protruding grotesquely from a number of them.

The methodical, winged killers were walking quietly among the wounded, kicking them and poking them harshly with their daggers. If any of the supposed dead moved or cried out, they were killed on the spot with the strange, curved swords.

But many of the visitors were still alive and unhurt, crying and screaming as the monsters walked in their midst, finishing off the wounded. Tristan estimated that about half of the civilians had been killed, along with every single member of the Royal Guard. The many shiny breastplates carrying the broadsword and lion were covered in blood.

They died well, he thought.

The citizens who remained alive had been forced to their knees, and now that the killing of the wounded was beginning to subside, some of the creatures had begun striking and abusing the survivors in order to make them quiet.

Finally, after at least an hour, the Great Hall once again became still, the many surviving citizens who had had the bad fortune to attend the ceremony still quietly on their knees in a small sea of Eutracian blood.

Instinctively, he thought to look for Evelyn and her parents, but finding any one person or persons in the bloody throng seemed impossible. After a few minutes of looking in the general area in which he had last seen them, he finally spotted Evelyn’s blond hair.

She was lying in a pool of blood on the floor, her throat cut, her eyes frozen open and staring outward as if she were still gazing at him, even in death. Her parents lay nearby. Her father had been butchered with a sword, and her mother’s head was all but off her shoulders and hanging down over her back, one of the horrible silver wheels embedded in the side of her neck.

Tristan looked away, back to the winged monstrosity that he had fought with—and lost.

Tristan’s attacker seemed to be in charge, he noticed. The creature walked throughout the hall with the others, giving orders and occasionally killing one of the wounded himself. Then, as Tristan watched, the monster jumped on the dais with ease and pushed its way through the circle to stand before Tristan, Wigg, and the rest of the royal family.

Slowly reaching up, it removed the winged helmet and looked directly into Tristan’s eyes.

It was a face the prince knew he would never forget: unkempt, shoulder-length black—and-gray hair; dark goatee; long, white scar; and impossibly dark, piercing eyes. The creatures seemed to be human, despite their wings and their overall advantage in size. The one who stood looking down into the prince’s eyes with contempt was easily seven feet tall.

I will kill this creature one day, Tristan swore silently. In the name of everything that I am, and all that I hold dear, I will kill him.

The monster’s gaze pulled back to take in the rest of the family and the wizard, and finally he spoke. “Sit down,” he ordered, pointing to the row of bloody wizards’ chairs that sadly were now empty. “First the wizard, then the prince, the king, the queen, and the princess, in that order,” he said simply.

Looking around briefly at each other, they did as they were told. Tristan found himself seated between Wigg on his left, and his father on his right.

“My name is Kluge,” the creature said, “and I am the commander of the Minions of Day and Night, the troops who have smashed your overrated Royal Guard. From now on your nation, and everything in it, belongs to someone else.” The one called Kluge turned and walked a couple of paces to Nicholas’ throne, which had been tipped over on its side in the melee. Putting one of his boots atop the nearest of the throne legs, he pushed down on it with his foot and disrespectfully righted the throne in one sudden, single movement. He confidently dropped himself down into it at an angle, his back against one of the arms and one of his long legs up and over the other.

He turned to address the troops that were still encircling the family. “You may remove your helmets,” he said to them, “and rejoin your comrades on the floor of the hall. They may remove their helmets, as well. Please have patience. You will be able to begin taking your pleasures soon enough. Have someone send for Traax. And someone bring me something to eat.” He smiled wickedly into the prince’s face. “All of this killing has made me hungry.”

As a group they all smartly knocked the heels of their boots together and left the dais. Tristan saw one of them go outside, presumably to fetch the warrior named Traax, as another of them walked to the great banquet table and began to tear the leg off one of the roasted turkeys. He returned to his commander with it quickly, like a dog that had been sent off to play fetch.

Kluge looked curiously at the food, smelled it discerningly, and then took a huge bite, chewing with his mouth open. He looked at Nicholas. “We do not have this where I come from,” he said. Some juices ran down into his goatee. “I do believe I am going to enjoy myself here in your little kingdom.” He gave a leering look up and down Queen Morganna’s face and body as he continued to assault the turkey leg. “Yes, I shall enjoy all of the pleasures of your land,” he added, leaving little to the imagination.

Tristan’s reaction was immediate. He lunged out of his chair and went for Kluge’s throat with both hands, but with a single swipe of his free arm the commander sent him sprawling backward to the floor, the prince’s left cheek cut badly from the sharp points mounted on the back of the black leather gauntlets. Kluge threw the food to the floor and again picked Tristan up by the throat, this time tossing him back to the throne that he had occupied.

Nicholas stood up to face the enemy. “Why are you here?” he demanded in frustration. “What do you want?”

But the voice that answered did not come from Kluge. It was a woman’s voice, smooth and silky, and it came from somewhere above them.

“The answer to that is really quite simple,” the satiny voice said. “We want everything.”

Tristan regained his composure long enough to look up to the broken stained-glass ceiling. What he saw would stay in his memories for the rest of his life.

Cradled in the outstretched arms of yet another of the winged warriors, her arms about his muscular neck, she was perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Together they continued to descend through the huge break in the stained-glass ceiling. The flying creature then changed course, flying her twice about the boundaries of the Great Hall, allowing her to survey the ghastly scene below. Finally, at her command, the Minion warrior flew her to the dais, where he set her down as lightly as a feather. The silk of her black gown gently billowed up and around her, exposing first one milky-white thigh and then the other.

As she came even closer, Tristan could see that there was a symbol embroidered upon her gown. It appeared to be a five-pointed star, located over her left breast, and had been expertly worked in the palest of gold thread. The monster called Kluge went down on bended knee before her.

“Mistress, I live to serve,” he said quietly.

“You may rise,” the woman said.

Tristan now had the opportunity to look directly into her face, and despite the severity of the circumstances, what he saw almost took his breath away. Her dark, exotic, almond-shaped eyes seemed to give silent commands all of their own, and whenever the full, inviting red lips parted they revealed perfect, white teeth. He had never seen a woman’s hair this long, or with such a luminous texture. It hung down her back like strands of the best black silk, ending just above her waist.

Tristan looked briefly to his left, at Wigg. The old one had yet to speak since their capture, and the prince was hoping for a word of reassurance. But Wigg was staring at the woman, his eyes hard and full of hate, his lips pulled back slightly in a kind of silent, vicious snarl.

He knows her, Tristan thought.

Wasting no time, she walked straight to the altar. As she picked up the chalice containing the Paragon and looked inside, her face radiated pure joy. Tristan could see Wigg stiffen. She reached slowly, almost lovingly into the chalice and withdrew the Paragon. For several moments she examined it as the water of the Caves dripped onto the floor of the dais, twinkling impressively in the light of the room. And then, carefully placing the gold chain over her head, she lowered the stone into place around her neck.

For some inexplicable reason, wearing the stone was like a tonic to her. She smiled joyously, stretching her long, slender arms to the ceiling, arching her back like a cat. Taking a long, deep, single breath, she let it out in an almost sexual expression of relief.

She then immediately walked to where Wigg was sitting. Without speaking, she backhanded the old one with impossible speed. Wigg’s head recoiled from the blow, and the wizard almost fell out of the throne. She reached down with one hand to grip his face and stretch his neck upward, forcing his eyes to meet hers.

“Wigg,” she said almost gently, “Lead Wizard of the so-called Directorate of Wizards. Yes, it is I, Succiu. I’m sure you recognize me. After all, like you, I have not aged a single day in over three hundred years.” She smiled. “We have returned, Old One. And now we have the stone—and even the unused Cave water in the other amphora. Everything that you once had is now ours. And this time we will not fail.” She cocked her head and looked pityingly at him. “Your powers have, of course, returned, just as mine have. That is to be expected. But I know you will not try anything foolish. Even you cannot believe you could defeat both me and the entire army I command. I suggest you simply cooperate for the time being, and listen to what I have to say. If you do not, it will only go worse for you and the prince.”

Wigg strained to pull back, but still did not speak.

“You have no doubt noticed that all of the other wizards are dead.” She smiled with great self-satisfaction as she continued to hold his face clamped in her hand, her eyes locked upon his. “But I left you and the royal family alive for a little bit longer, so that you might bear witness to what will be done here tonight.”

She pushed his face back with what appeared to Tristan to be terrific force, and the wizard’s head and neck smashed against the high-backed throne. Arms akimbo, head tilted slightly to one side, she stood as if she were trying to make up her mind about something.

“Yes, why not,” she said finally. “You are wondering how it was that you could not detect my endowed blood before this, are you not?” she asked coyly. Tristan could see that this was a woman who enjoyed playing a deadly game of cat and mouse. “Just think,” she continued nastily, “if you had been more observant, you might have been able to prevent all of this.” She gloated as she waved her hands toward all of the dead bodies, terrified citizens, and thousands of winged warriors that filled the room before them. She pursed her lips in mock concern. “I know that I certainly wouldn’t want any such personal shortcomings to prey upon my conscience for all of eternity. But then again, I wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you, because you really aren’t going to live very much longer.”

She took a step backward, running the index finger of one hand slowly across her lower lip. “So many questions, aren’t there, Lead Wizard?” she said. “How did we get across the Sea of Whispers? How have we survived all of these years, and how is it that we have made the trip back? But the riddle you must be most curious about is no doubt the one concerning your own inferior abilities, and how it was that you could not detect my presence. Yes, that must be the question that most haunts you now. Very well, then. I shall show you.”

She turned to Kluge. “Tell her that she may join us,” she ordered.

Kluge walked across the length of the dais and disappeared briefly into the anteroom that was just off to one side. Momentarily he returned, with someone following behind him. Tristan looked up to see Natasha, the duchess of Ephyra, following him. As she walked over and stood shoulder to shoulder with the one who called herself Succiu, he detected in her a more commanding presence than he had ever seen before.

Then, suddenly, he understood. Natasha is one of them, he realized, the importance of it pounding through his brain. She always has been.

“That’s right,” Succiu said to Wigg. “She has been one of us since she was five, and she is now more than three centuries old, almost as old as you are. I believe you know her personally. She looks good for her age, don’t you think? But there is more. She is a Visage Caster, which has allowed her to do her work here in secret while also disguising female endowed blood.” She smiled again, exposing the beautiful teeth to the hushed room. “While you and the other wizards of the Directorate so pompously supposed that you could forever rule Eutracia, my Sister who now stands next to me after all of this time was making sure that this day of days would succeed, and succeed it has.” She let out a calculated, demeaning laugh before continuing.

“But there is more, Old One,” she said, gloating, as she continued to show her centuries-old prize off to him. “Natasha has even more secrets than that.” She placed her face less than an inch away from the wizard’s. “She is also that same little girl who was the first to decipher and read the Tome of the Paragon,” she whispered triumphantly to him. Tristan couldn’t hear her words, but he saw that Wigg’s eyes had gone wide, and tears had began to run down the old cheeks.

“You now more fully understand the implications of all of this, do you not?” she asked him smugly. “This means that the daughter of your beloved Faegan, probably the most powerful of all of you, was the one who helped the Coven in their cause.” She once again reached down and gripped his face. “Yes, you ignorant old man—Faegan, the one you all revered so much, the one who was originally to have become Lead Wizard. I’m sure you must remember him,” she said sarcastically. “You all assumed he died in the wars somehow, and you and the Directorate spent a great deal of time memorializing him, I believe. I am told that there is even one of your ridiculous marble monuments to him somewhere in the countryside, presumably where you thought he had met his untimely death.”

She let go of his face, and Wigg’s chin slumped down onto his chest. Not from pain, Tristan knew, but rather from defeat. It was the first time in his life he had ever seen the old one in such a state.

“There is just one more thing I will permit you to know before you die today, Lead Wizard,” she said in a hushed tone. Tristan could barely hear her. “You wasted our time and energy in erecting a memorial to Faegan. Because he lives—in Shadowood, with his precious gnomes.” She smiled wickedly. “And we’ve seen to it that he isn’t quite the man he used to be.”

Tristan saw a look of pure shock spread across Wigg’s face, followed immediately by a calmer aspect of understanding. Tristan had no idea what it was, but he could see the old one nod slightly, as if some long-standing question had been resolved in his mind. Wigg lifted his face back to Succiu and then to Natasha before he finally spoke.

“You black-hearted whores,” he said quietly. “You used him, didn’t you? He was the finest and the strongest of all of us, and besides his friendship with us there was only one thing in the world he cared about above all else: his daughter. So you took her and bent her to your will, and used his grief to keep a wizard of important power under your control.” He gazed at Natasha. “The daughter of Faegan,” he said sadly. “You have no idea what you have done.”

“Very astute of you, Lead Wizard,” Succiu said sarcastically, “but it is really much more complicated than that. However, I shall not bore you with all of the details, since you have so little time left and there is still so much to do this night.”

She bent down one more time and looked deeply into his eyes. “Is this day tragic irony, or poetic justice?” she asked coyly. “You tell me.”

Succiu turned with Natasha in tow and moved to face Tristan where he sat in the wizard’s throne that had once belonged to Slike.

“Beautiful, isn’t he?” Natasha commented. “And apparently so strong in spirit. Given the quality of his blood, I’m sure he could easily please my mistress if she is so disposed this evening. I had hoped that we could keep him alive for a little while, in order to indulge ourselves.”

Had Succiu been looking at Kluge’s face, she would have seen the jealousy starting to build there at the mention of Natasha’s suggestion. The second mistress bent down slightly, touched one of her fingers to the blood on the side of Tristan’s face, closed her eyes, and put the tip of that finger to her tongue.

“Such exquisite blood, my sweet prince,” she said, her eyes still closed as if she were in the midst of some unknown rapture. “I have never known any like it. But then again, you wouldn’t know about that, would you? There is still so much about you that remains unsaid, that now you shall never know.”

She turned to Natasha. “Would I normally be predisposed to his services? Oh, yes, my dear, more than you know. But the quality of his blood makes him a mortal threat to us, and business before pleasure. Or, in this case, the lack of pleasure.” She once again looked into the prince’s eyes, and despite the situation he found it difficult not to be captivated by her.

Her right hand came down and began to trace circles on his groin. “A pity you must die this day before I could have experienced some of your many purported talents,” she said almost sadly. Finally she turned to Kluge. “Leave the wizard and the prince for last, so that they may witness what is to become of their beloved but so fatally flawed realm this night,” she said casually.

“Yes, Mistress,” Kluge responded.

They will die, too, Tristan told himself, trying to hold back his rage. No matter what becomes of me or what I must go through to do it, these two women shall die at my hands.

The two sorceresses now stepped before the king and queen. “Pathetic-looking specimens, aren’t they?” Succiu said sarcastically, looking more intensely at the queen than at the king. “Hard to believe, isn’t it, that these two common peasants, mere pretenders to the throne and the craft, could have collectively sired twins of such magnificent blood? But there you are.” She bent down and looked into Nicholas’ eyes. “I suppose I should thank you for siring them for our use.” She smiled her wicked smile. “But I won’t.” She slapped Nicholas hard in the face, and Morganna’s hand moved to cover his in comfort. Succiu looked at the queen. “Don’t worry about what happens to any of them, my dear,” she said almost kindly. She looked out to the waiting troops in the Great Hall. “By the time they are done with you, you will be past the point of caring about anything, anyway.” She turned to her commander. “Do what you like with them. They are of no importance to us. Just make sure that in the end they are both dead.”

She moved to stand in front of Shailiha, and Tristan saw a strange look come over both of the sorceresses’ faces. They approached his sobbing sister quietly, almost reverently. And then they did the unimaginable. They both bowed to her.

Succiu took one of Shailiha’s hands in hers and caressed it gently. Shailiha pulled back, not out of revulsion or fear but rather in a kind of stark, unknowing confusion.

She’s delusional, Tristan thought. One more reason to kill them all. Succiu looked at Kluge and, without speaking, gestured to him to remove Frederick’s body from the princess’ feet and place it out of sight. When he obeyed, Shailiha howled painfully, reaching in vain for the departing headless corpse and then hugging her abdomen, swollen with child. Succiu looked down into her eyes, and Shailiha stilled. The second mistress then asked, “Are you all right, my Sister?”

The words hit Tristan like a thunderbolt. Her Sister? What in the name of the Afterlife is she talking about?

“Are you injured in any way?” Succiu asked gently. Shailiha, hazel eyes wide open but unseeing, managed to shake her head no. “Strange as it may seem to you now, we three have a great deal in common,” the sorceress told her. “You, my Sister, are one of the reasons we have come.”

Succiu gave an almost imperceptible nod to Kluge, who summoned troops, who mounted the dais and put their helmets on. Succiu turned to address them directly.

“Escort her to the prearranged area as quickly as possible,” she ordered sternly. “Take as many additional of you as you feel necessary to protect her safety. There still may be stragglers of the Royal Guard in the countryside.” Her eyes lowered dangerously. “If any harm or abuse comes to this one in any way, I shall personally kill the warriors responsible.”

Tristan reacted immediately, jumping up from his chair and trying desperately to reach his sister. But Kluge was suddenly in front of him, one hand reaching behind to grip the long hair at the back of Tristan’s neck, the other holding a dagger at the prince’s throat.

“You continue to try my patience, boy,” he said venomously. “You have just guaranteed yourself and your wizard friend very slow deaths.” With only the hand that gripped the prince’s hair, he picked Tristan up and threw him the length of the dais, sending him crashing into the throne he had just left and knocking it sideways to the ground.

Tristan immediately felt strong hands on him, holding him down, and found himself looking into Wigg’s face. “Stay close to me,” the old one whispered. “It is the only possible way.”

Tristan quickly looked back to Shailiha. Several of the troops were already escorting her into the anteroom, and then she was gone. He hung his head and let out a soft, animal-like moan.

Another of the Minion warriors jumped up on the dais and faced Kluge with a click of his heels. “You called for me, Lord?” he asked. “Yes, Traax,” Kluge said. “How goes the struggle on the outside?” The one called Traax smiled broadly, obviously enjoying himself. “What struggle?” he replied sarcastically. “They were simply no match for us. Virtually all of the Guard has been killed, and I hope by dawn to have the heads of any of those who have managed to remain alive thus far. You may consider the situation completely under control.” He clicked his heels once again and stepped back.

“You may now order the signal fires to be lighted,” Succiu said to Kluge. “Our captains will surely want to join in the spoils of war. Remember your orders, Commander. As the First Mistress has said, if it moves, kill it. You have only two days in which to indulge yourselves. After that, anyone not with us I will gladly leave behind in this miserable place.” She turned with curiosity to Natasha. “By the way,” she asked coyly, “what has become of your useless husband of unendowed blood? I don’t happen to see him about anywhere.” Her tone made clear that she already knew his fate.

“Poor old Baldric?” Natasha gave a look of smug, false concern.

“Oh, he somehow was pushed up against a dreggan just as its point was released,” she replied, looking at one of her nails.

Kluge removed his dreggan from its scabbard and pointed it at Tristan’s face. “Do you mean like this?” he asked. He touched the hilt of the sword with his thumb, and the point of the blade shot viciously forward at least a foot, stopping less than an inch from the prince’s right eye.

Tristan didn’t flinch. Part of him was past caring. If they want to kill me, they can, he thought. But somehow I will find a way to take this bastard with me.

Kluge looked to King Nicholas. “Your Highness,” he said, “I believe you shall be first.” He motioned with his sword to two of the Minion warriors, who immediately went to the king and wrenched him from his throne. They hauled him to the altar of the Paragon and pinned his shoulders and head down upon it, forcing him to bend over at the waist. With an arm held painfully down on either side of the altar, Nicholas could barely turn his head to face Tristan and Wigg, but somehow he managed. He looked helplessly into the eyes of the Lead Wizard.

Then Kluge did an amazing thing. He handed Tristan his dreggan. As he did so, several of the other Minion warriors drew their swords and moved closer to the prince.

“Feel what a real sword is like, my prince,” the commander said. “This is not one of your Eutracian broadsword toys.”

Tristan took the sword from him, speechless. It was the heaviest, yet most finely balanced weapon he had ever held. Is he insane? Tristan thought. He must know I will try to kill him with it, no matter what happens to me. The sword seemed massive in his hands, its power overwhelming. But then he realized that whatever he tried, Succiu could certainly put an end to it almost before it had begun.

He stood there, not knowing what to do, the breath coming out of his lungs in fast, ragged anticipation of whatever was to happen next. His answer was quick in coming.

“I shall grant you a choice,” Kluge said. “You may either behead the king right now, with one, swift, merciful swing, or you may stand aside and watch me take him apart slowly, piece by piece.” The monster was clearly enjoying every word. “The choice is yours.”

Tristan looked at Kluge dumbly, unthinking, unknowing. Surely even he can’t mean it! But the reality of the situation came over him as he turned to look at the old wizard. Wigg lowered his eyes and then slowly brought them back to his king. Tristan also looked at his father, helpless upon the altar. He would have me kill my own father. His thoughts rushed through his mind like a torrent of grief. Upon the altar of the Paragon.

He looked at the awful killer that stood before him, the leader of the monsters that had butchered his people.

“No,” he said simply. He had no other words.

Kluge reached out and grabbed him violently by the front of his leather vest, raising him up off the floor and to his face like some kind of dangling children’s toy. Tristan, overcome with the horror of the moment, simply let it happen, the dreggan hanging loosely at his side.

“I don’t think you understand, Your Highness,” the murderer said, smiling. Tristan could both feel and smell the awful breath. Even the monster’s breath smelled like death.

“Either you kill him now, or I shall do it myself, one inch at a time. While you, the wizard, and the queen all watch.” He pulled Tristan even closer. “And it will go on for a very, very long time. Choose!” He let go, and Tristan fell hard to the floor on his knees. Getting awkwardly to his feet, the prince turned his face to his mother, silently pleading with her for a sign. But Morganna looked back at him helplessly, her eyes lost in abject fear.

While the prince was looking to his mother, Nicholas focused his gaze on Wigg. For a moment the old wizard made no expression, as if he were lost in time. But then, slowly, he closed his eyes and nodded to his king, fresh tears running down his weathered cheeks.

He wasn’t simply answering the king’s question. He was also saying good-bye.

Nicholas understood. “My son,” he said gently.

Tristan faced his father, the dreggan still in his shaking hand.

“You must do it, Tristan,” Nicholas said slowly. “It is the only way. You must trust in what I tell you now, and do it, no matter how impossible it seems.”

Tristan stared at him, wild-eyed, without moving. Nothing was registering.

“You must spare your mother and myself the torture and humiliation of my dying slowly at his hands. And more than that, you must think of your subjects. There is so much we could not tell you, so much that we now never shall, but hear me when I say that you and your sister are the very future of endowed blood in Eutracia. And you must not force your subjects to see their king tortured.”

Tristan looked blankly over the altar to the hundreds of citizens who were watching the horrible scene being played out. He turned his head and then looked down unseeingly at the sword in his hand as if it were some hideous yet beautiful creature from another world.

“My son,” he heard his father’s voice say from somewhere far away, “your mother and I brought you into this world with an act of love.

You must now take me from that same world with another different, but just as important, act of love.”

Finally, no matter how inconceivable the concept, Tristan understood that he must obey his father, and his king.

As if in a dream, he saw himself move slowly to the altar as Kluge and the sorceresses grinned wickedly. He looked for the last time into his father’s eyes, and bent over to kiss him on the lips.

“Good-bye, Father,” he heard himself say, impossibly.

Tristan gripped the heavy sword in both hands and raised it high over his head.

I beg the Afterlife, let my aim be true, he heard a voice say. A voice that was distant, yet at the same time deep within himself.

Tristan brought the full weight of his strength down with the dreggan, cleanly cutting the king’s head from his shoulders. Blood erupted everywhere as the head rolled off the altar and onto the floor. Morganna screamed and collapsed.

In a flash he was upon Kluge with everything he had left, the blade of the dreggan swinging through the air directly at the monster’s head. But again the larger man was too fast for him, neatly avoiding the swing while at the same time slamming his fist hard into the prince’s stomach. Tristan went down hard, retching, and then simply lay there, crying, until the vomit came once again. The dreggan skidded violently across the blood-soaked dais, landing beneath one of the thrones.

“Well done!” Kluge shouted. He kicked Tristan viciously in the ribs as the prince struggled to get up on all fours, rolling him a little way back down the dais, closer to Wigg. Kluge then looked to Traax.

“Bring me some chain, and a stout rod,” he ordered. Walking over to the prince, he grabbed some of Tristan’s hair and bent his head backward to face his own. “You just don’t know how to give up, do you?”

The chain and steel rod arrived, and Kluge immediately busied himself with tying the prince’s feet together, then pulling his hands behind his back and running the chain tightly around his wrists. With the heel of his boot, he viciously pushed the prince to the floor on his stomach. The commander of the Minions then ran the remaining length of chain from the prince’s hands up to his neck and secured it around Tristan’s throat tightly, bending him backward in a semicircle on his stomach, with his feet, head, and shoulders up off the floor. He then rather curiously put the rod partway through one of the links of the chain, about halfway between the prince’s hands and head.

Kluge looked to his mistress for the order. Succiu smiled briefly, and then nodded.

Kluge turned the rod one full revolution clockwise, and the length of chain between the prince’s feet and head tightened torturously. Tristan thought at first that he would suffocate, but realized that if he kept his feet and head high off the floor and therefore as close together as possible, he could manage very small breaths. The position was excruciatingly difficult to support, and whenever he relaxed, the air to his windpipe was immediately cut off. He felt warm fluid between his stomach and the floor, and if he could have, he would have vomited again. He was lying in the spreading pool of his father’s blood. The father that I just murdered, he heard his inner voice accuse. Tristan summoned up all of the breath he could muster and hoarsely whispered, “Kluge.”

Curious, the Minion commander lowered his head to Tristan’s face and smiled. “Yes, my prince?” he asked sarcastically.

Tristan strained his eyes up to the face of the man who had ordered the murder of his father.

“I will kill you one day,” he whispered, and then he spat a mixture of blood and saliva directly into Kluge’s face.

Kluge immediately stood up, enraged, and kicked him again in the ribs, so hard that Tristan rolled completely over his chains and ended up at Wigg’s feet. This time he had heard one of his ribs break, and the fire in his side was excruciating. He felt one of Wigg’s hands touch his shoulder in reassurance.

Wiping the blood and spittle from his face, Kluge placed the toe of one boot directly under Tristan’s chin and violently raised up his face.

“Kill me one day? I don’t think so,” he said. “You don’t have any days left, you worthless royal bastard.”

Without looking up, he called to his second in command. “Traax! Bring me a spare Minion dagger and a line of stout rope. We’re going to have a little fun.”

When Traax returned with the rope and the dagger, Kluge stepped to the altar. Laying them down on its marble surface, he picked up the headless body of Nicholas and threw it into the crowd of kneeling, weeping Eutracians.

“If they want their king so badly, then they can have him.” He laughed as some of the startled citizens tried to get out of the way.

“Now bring me the heads of each of the dead wizards, of the so-called commander of the Guard, and of the dog who was their king,” he told Traax simply as he picked up the dagger and the rope.

“Yes, my lord,” Traax responded, and began to locate and bring to the altar each of the dead wizards’ heads, and finally the heads of Nicholas and Frederick.

Lying on his side and looking through bloody, dazed eyes, Tristan watched in horror as Kluge placed one end of the rope through a ring at the handle end of the Minion dagger and knotted it there. He then placed the heads in a neat row on the altar; some had their eyes still open, staring into space as if watching from a distance.

“I think this room could use a bit of decoration, don’t you?” he asked Traax, who was obviously puzzled at what his master had in mind. “Er, yes, I mean of course, sir,” the younger man replied, curiously stepping around the altar for a better view.

Tristan would never forget what the monster called Kluge did next. Holding the dagger with the rope attached in his right hand, Kluge picked up the head of Slike and pushed the knife directly into the skull’s right ear. Then, with a grunt, he turned the head over and banged the end of the dagger’s handle on the altar until the blade had been pushed through the brain and out the other ear. He pulled the dagger through that ear as casually as if he were working on a needlepoint, the bloody rope still attached, until the rope was completely through the wizard’s head.

Tristan turned his head away in tears. The bastard is actually going to thread their heads on a rope! Had his throat not been bound, he would surely have screamed with the pain of what he was seeing. I beg the Afterlife, bring this madness to a stop!

But it didn’t stop. Kluge kept on happily working at it until all seven of the heads had been threaded onto the rope, including those of Nicholas and Frederick. He handed one end of the rope to Traax, and the two of them held it high, the heads swinging back and forth between them as they admired their prizes the way a fisherman might show off his string of freshly caught trout.

Kluge turned to Succiu for her approval.

“Where would you like it hung, Mistress?” he asked proudly. “Personally, I think it should go up somewhere in a position of prominence.”

“Imaginative, isn’t he?” Natasha said to Succiu, her arms folded across her breasts.

“Oh, more than you know, Sister,” Succiu replied, without bothering to try to restrain the hunger in her voice. She touched the tip of her tongue to one corner of her mouth. “He has proven useful for an entire variety of needs.”

Natasha smiled knowingly back at her.

“Have your warriors pound twin posts into the ground at opposite ends of the entranceway to the palace,” Succiu said gleefully. “Then tie the rope between them and let it swing in the breeze as a message to all regarding what has happened here this night. Before we depart, take them down and mount one each to the prow of the first seven of our warships for the return visit home. Strip each of the bodies naked and hang them upside down for the vultures.” Succio turned away, and the second in command walked out with the string of heads, followed by several of the warriors who began to collect the matching headless corpses.

Tristan once again felt the wizard’s hand on his shoulder and tried to look up at the old one, but he could not. If Wigg was trying to tell him something, Tristan couldn’t imagine what it was. Straining to stay in a position so as not to faint from lack of breath, he tried to remember what it was that Wigg had said to him at the height of the battle. Then the wizard’s words slowly came back to him out of the gloom of those frantic moments.

“Tristan!” Wigg had shouted. “You and Shailiha must stay with me here at the altar! For the sake of everything you value and love, you must both stay by my side!” And Wigg had mysteriously stayed next to the altar the whole time, unmoving, until the battle was over and their captors had forced him into one of the thrones. But Tristan had not listened. He had joined the fight, ignoring the wizard’s pleadings. A strange feeling began to creep into his mind as he struggled for every breath. Had I done as the old one said, would things have been different? Why didn’t he join us in the fight? And what is it he is trying to tell me now?

But before he could think of any answers, Kluge’s face was back, leering over him.

“My mistress has commanded that I leave you and the wizard for last,” he said gloatingly as he looked into the prince’s eyes. “And leave you two for last I shall. That leaves only one person on the dais left to deal with before I turn my undivided attention upon you.” He turned his gaze to Morganna, who lay sobbing on the floor of the dais, and then looked out at the thousands of sweating, anxious warriors waiting in the Great Hall. “I’m sure my troops will enjoy her company very much,” he said, his tongue protruding slightly between his teeth in anticipation. “There are certainly enough of them to keep her occupied for the full two days until we leave.”

Kluge walked across the dais to Morganna, pulled her roughly to her feet, and slapped her hard across the mouth. Then he reached to the bodice of her gown and ripped it all the way to her waist, baring her chest.

Tristan went wild with hate, the disgust and aversion so deep within him that if Wigg had not been nearby to control him, he would surely have suffocated himself in the attempt to reach his defenseless mother. But Wigg had tightened the grip upon his shoulder with an iron hand, and no matter how hard the prince thrashed and strained against his bonds, between the chains and the old one’s strength, he couldn’t move.

Kluge picked Morganna up in both arms and buried his face be her breasts while she screamed and tried to beat him with her fists. He simply laughed at her as though her blows were nonexistent and carried her to the edge of the dais.

The crowd of soldiers hungrily moved nearer. As Kluge stood there with the queen in his arms, a hush fell over the room.

“Warriors of the Minions of Day and Night!” he shouted. “You have fought well, and many of you have fallen this day. To my survivors, I say that the time has come to reap the rewards of your victory. Though you have never before been allowed to take women without wings, I know you are as anxious to taste them as I. Therefore, you may do so now. Take any of them you wish, including the high-born ones in this very room. I order you to make their mates stand in lines and watch what real men can do to a woman. Should any of them resist you, cut them down on the spot.” He looked into the hysterical blue eyes of the queen and then ran his tongue down her chest. “You may begin with this one.” He laughed. “She still smells as sweet as a Minion virgin on a perfumed brothel bed. But do not kill her. Make sure when you are done with her that she is returned to me, so that I may show her why it is I who command the rest of you”

Tristan tried again with all of his strength to move, but Wigg still held him down.

Is the wizard mad? Does he expect me just to let it happen?

And then, without warning, Kluge lifted Morganna high over his head with both arms and threw her into the mob.

Tristan wanted to scream, but could not. He fought to move away from the old one’s grip, but Wigg held him in place. He closed his eyes as he heard the cries of the women begin, and tried to tell himself that he could not distinguish the screams of his mother from those of the other women.

But he could.

Tristan closed his eyes to block out the sickening, screaming scene and began sobbing incoherently, not caring whether he lived or died. In his pain he did not notice when Wigg placed his feet beneath the prince’s body, and his hands upon him, as well. Oddly, it seemed to the prince that the wizard was no longer trying to control his movements.

He was trying, for some reason, to stay as close to him as possible.

And then Kluge’s hand was again in Tristan’s hair, wrenching his eyes up to his.

“And now, you sniveling royal bastard,” he said angrily, “it is time for you to die, as well.”

Good, Tristan thought. I have nothing to live for now. At least I will not have to see Wigg die, too.

Tristan looked to the sorceresses to see if they were still there. Succiu and Natasha stood nearby, Succiu still wearing the Paragon, both of them grinning wickedly down at him.

Of course they will watch. It’s what they do.

Kluge had another shiny dagger in his hand, and moved it to Tristan’s right eye.

“I am going to cut you into pieces,” Kluge said seriously, as a healer might describe a treatment to one of his patients. “I have been looking forward to this ever since I learned that you possessed endowed blood. And I know exactly which pieces you can live without for a long time, so I can afford to enjoy myself. For example, even though I want you to see what is happening to you, you don’t need both eyes to do it.” The shiny point of the dagger started to move to Tristan’s right eye. Resigned to his fate, all he could do was try to close it.

And then things started to change.

Wherever Wigg was touching him, either with hands or feet, Tristan began to feel a strange kind of pain, a tingling sensation that started to overcome his entire body. He opened his eyes to see, and instead of finding the knife in his face he found himself looking into the hysterical eyes of Succiu as she frantically tried to push Kluge aside. And then his entire universe became bathed in a swirling vortex of brilliant azure, blotting out everything in his vision.

He felt as if he were about to begin turning over and over with the vortex as it encircled him. Perhaps this is what death is like, his mind said from somewhere far away. On and on the vortex came, the swirling circles ever growing in his eyes.

The last thing he remembered were Succiu’s long red nails trying to dig at the skin of his face while her manic screams went on and on in the Great Hall.

9

He woke with a convulsive start, his entire body jumping all at once as if he were suddenly waking from an awful dream. He was in a small, stone-lined room, lying upon the covers of a large bed, and he was still fully clothed. There was a small fire burning in the fireplace, and a table with food in one corner. Tristan raised himself up upon his elbows and shook his head, trying to understand where he was. Then he remembered. What an awful dream, his subconscious tried to tell him. The winged creatures, my family, the wizards. All of the death and blood. What would make me imagine such a thing?

It was then that he saw the chain and rod lying on the floor a little way from the bed. The chain and rod, his own dried blood still upon them, that the awful winged thing had used to bind him. The thing that had killed his family in his dream. And then, as he continued to look dumbly at the chain, the hideous reality of it all shot through him and he screamed in agony.

It was real! he thought, the torment of it tearing through his head and heart.

My family is dead.

And the killer’s name is Kluge.

Wigg, standing a little distance away, calmly took two steps away from the wall, closer to the prince.

Tristan could see that Wigg’s eyes were full of tears, but he didn’t care. He looked with hatred upon the one who had done nothing to help his family in their time of need. He started to get up, determined to strike out at the old one. But then those sharp, aquamarine eyes narrowed, and Tristan felt something begin to close in around him. It wasn’t painful, but he found that he couldn’t move his hands or his feet: He was forced simply to lie still upon the bed. He looked up at the wizard.

“You’ve put a wizard’s warp around me, haven’t you?” he asked. “Your powers are back. What are you going to do now, you traitor? Watch as they kill me, too?”

“No, Tristan,” Wigg said in a tired, sad voice. “The warp is for your own protection, and I will keep it in force as long as necessary in order that you may hear what it is that I have to say.” Tristan’s words had pierced Wigg’s heart, but the wizard understood. Put in the prince’s position, he would probably feel the same way.

Tristan lowered his face, and the tears came once again. “My family is dead, aren’t they?” he asked, his voice a barely audible whisper.

“Yes, Tristan,” Wigg said gently, walking to the bed and sitting down next to him. “Your father, mother, and Frederick are all dead. And all of the other wizards of the Directorate. But I believe Shailiha still lives.”

Shailiha. He turned his face to the wizard in sudden realization. They had addressed her as their Sister, and had taken her away before they killed his parents.

“Why did they take only her and kill everyone else?”

“I’m not sure, Tristan,” the old one said truthfully, “but I think they mean to keep her alive.”

“Where are we?”

“In one of the farthest reaches of the Redoubt of the Directorate, below the palace. They will not find us here. I doubt they know the Redoubt exists. If we do not move we should be safe here for the two remaining days that the sorceresses and their army are in Eutracia. The Redoubt is deserted. Two weeks ago I ordered all of the consuls, their sons, and the entire Redoubt support staff into the countryside.”

“Why?” Tristan’s voice was still full of fury at the old one.

“Because the Directorate and your father feared that something might happen during the ceremony, and we wanted not only the consuls of endowed blood away from the palace, but the Redoubt itself empty,” Wigg said calmly.

Tristan strained against the warp that held him, his eyes blazing with blind, unthinking hate.

“You knew?” he screamed incredulously. “You knew that something was going to happen and you let us walk right into it while you sent the others to safety?” He shook his head wildly back and forth with the sheer incomprehensibility of it all. “In the name of the Afterlife, why?”

“It was the appearances of the blood stalker and the screaming harpy that alerted us to the possibility of danger, especially when they both arrived so close to the ceremony. It had been centuries since we had seen either of their kind. At that time, those creatures had only one purpose, and that was to serve as tools of the Coven. We therefore had to admit the possibility that the Coven had survived, despite our banishment of them into the Sea of Whispers over three hundred years ago. And although we would be at our most vulnerable while the Paragon was in the water and the wizards were temporarily without their powers, it was still agreed by the Directorate that your coronation should take place at the appointed time. What your father said is true. For reasons you do not yet understand, you and your sister are the very future of endowed blood in Eutracia.

“The palace was still the safest place to hold the ceremony, considering its fortifications and the presence of the entire Royal Guard. And even given the possibility the Coven had somehow survived, we still couldn’t fathom any way that they could do us harm.” The Lead Wizard looked down at his hands again. “We knew we could be mistaken. The truly maddening part about it was that, even if we were wrong, there was nothing about it that we could change.”

As only a wizard could, Wigg reached gently through the warp that surrounded the prince and lifted the medallion that hung around his neck, the one that Morganna had given him only a few days before. “This was to have been a gift to you from your parents after your coronation. It was their intent that it lay upon your chest, next to the Paragon, for as long as you were king. And then still hang around your neck long after your son took the throne.”

Tristan looked sadly down at the medallion. He would wear it always—including the day he avenged his parents and Frederick, killing the ones called Succiu, Natasha, and Kluge. His rage at the old wizard was beginning to dissipate, but he still had many questions, and until he finally got the answers that he had been longing for all of his life, he decided he could trust no one, not even Wigg. Suddenly a realization dawned upon him.

“Natasha and Succiu are members of the Coven,” he said slowly. “Who are the other two?”

“You mean, who are the other three” Wigg corrected.

“Three?”

“Yes,” Wigg replied. “Three. Succiu is the second mistress of the Coven. I am not sure why Failee sent her here instead of coming herself. Perhaps Failee is dead. But Succiu was not the most powerful of them. Failee was.”

“Failee?” Tristan asked.

“Yes. She is the one I was referring to that day in the woods when I told you there had been one who had mastered the Vagaries. That person is Failee. In addition to Failee and Succiu, there are two others of lesser, but still great power. One is named Vona, the other Zabarra. Together the four of them made up the Coven that was responsible for the Sorceresses’ War. There were many other sorceresses, women who had rudimentary training in the craft, who joined their demented cause, but without Failee’s knowledge of the Vagaries, most of these were cut down almost immediately. Even those brave enough to take up arms against her had little chance. And, conversely, there were endowed men who turned to Failee’s cause. But as her use of the darker side deepened, so did her madness. She eventually came to see all men as a threat. And so these four sorceresses were the only ones who survived. Or so we thought. Obviously Natasha is also a sorceress, able to disguise her endowed blood. Until last night, even I had no knowledge of her existence.”

“If your powers returned when theirs did, why didn’t you try to fight them?” Tristan asked angrily. “I would have helped you all that I could have.”

“That would have been quite useless,” Wigg told him gently. “For I am only one. And not only were there two sorceresses present, but the Minions, as well. Saving you, your sister, and the stone were the goals, rather than dying, trying to seek revenge.”

Wigg wiped a tear away from one cheek. “I don’t know what we will find when we finally surface two days from now, but we have to wait until they are gone. No one single wizard can match their combined power as long as she wears the stone.”

Tristan had begun to calm down, but his heart was still breaking desperately over the loss of his family. He closed his eyes and opened them again before he spoke to Wigg.

“Would you please remove the warp now?” he asked, almost apologetically. “I was wrong to doubt you, and I’m sorry. I promise I will not try to hurt you again.”

“Very well.” Wigg narrowed his eyes, and Tristan felt the pressure that had been holding him lessen, and then dissipate completely. He stood up and slowly walked to where the bloody chain and rod lay on the floor.

He held the chain up before Wigg. “Who are the winged ones?” he asked, his hand trembling with hate for the winged monstrosity who had done this to him, and the two sorceresses who had watched with pleasure. “I have never seen such creatures in my life.”

“Nor have I,” Wigg said. He pursed his lips as he thought. “I can only surmise that they are part of the population of wherever the sorceresses came from. Either way they are formidable opponents, and the Royal Guard is gone.” He again looked down at his hands. “So many good men, and all of them destroyed in a single night.”

“How did we get here?” Tristan asked suddenly as he looked around the room, the knuckles of his hands still white as he gripped the chain. “The last thing I remember was everything going strangely blue in the Great Hall just as Kluge was about to blind me, and then I saw Succiu coming for me in some kind of mad, screaming rage.” He looked down at his clothes for a moment. “I know Kluge kicked in at least one of my ribs. And although I do hurt badly, there isn’t as much pain from it as I would have expected, nor from any of the other things that were done to me.” He shook his head slightly in puzzlement.

“Do you remember when I was pleading with you to bring Shailiha and stand next to me at the altar?” the old wizard asked. “It wasn’t out of fear that I stood there, Tristan. It was out of duty. Duty to your father, the Directorate, and the nation as a whole.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As I have told you, we knew that the potential for danger existed, but we didn’t know exactly when or where, or if it was to come at all. But the most probable timing for any kind of trouble was obviously when the Paragon was in the water, and that meant during the abdication ceremony. After days of talking and planning beforehand, we finally agreed on a plan. Although risky and admittedly perhaps impossible to accomplish, it would hopefully save the life of yourself, your sister, and one of the wizards, so that eventually your training in the craft could take place as required. The plan also provided for retaining possession of the Paragon. The Coven now has Shailiha and the stone, so we were only partly successful, but at least you and I are alive.”

“Why only Shailiha and me? Why not everyone?”

“We didn’t know how many we could save, because such a thing had never been done before. It took the entire Directorate weeks to prepare the Achievement. Everyone agreed that you and your sister were the most important, and all of the others were willing to die for the two of you to live, including Frederick. But before the Achievement could be enacted, everyone except you and I had already been dealt with in one way or another.”

“Frederick knew?” Tristan exclaimed.

“Everyone on the dais knew, Tristan, except for you and your sister. We considered telling you, but given your impulsive nature of late, especially your unnerving habit of disappearing into the woods, we felt you might simply vanish, perhaps this time for good. And for you to leave your sister alone would have been unfair. She is your twin, and is more connected to your existence than you yet know.” The Chosen One shall come, but he will be preceded by another, Wigg thought. He still has no idea. How could he?

“What of the consuls of the Redoubt?” Tristan asked. “Could you not have asked them to help us if necessary? Surely their combined powers might have been of some use.”

There is still so much he does not yet understand, Wigg thought sadly. “We could not ask them to help us,” he replied. “They were already gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father and the Directorate both agreed that the best use of the consuls was to send them out into the countryside, trying to kill as many of the blood stalkers and screaming harpies as possible, for we feared those creatures might be preying upon the citizenry, as well.”

Tristan thought for a moment, and another, stark realization came to him. “Why didn’t you enact the Achievement sooner, so that we all could have lived?” he suddenly cried out in pain. He was starting to come apart again, and the old one could see it. Wigg gently put an arm around the prince and held him close, as a father would a son.

“We couldn’t, Tristan,” Wigg said gently. “Such an Achievement had never been accomplished before, and we had no control over the timing. The best the entire Directorate as a whole could do was to tie the process to the life of the Paragon and ensure that the incantation would occur at some point during the evening of the coronation. And the reason I was begging you to bring your sister to me was because the Achievement was arranged in such a way that only those persons or objects that I was physically touching would be affected. Sadly, had everyone been able to touch me at the time of the Achievement’s commencement, they would all be alive today.”

Tristan buried his face in his hands, beginning to understand. But there was still so much he could not comprehend.

“What happened when the Achievement began?” he asked. “Luckily, the last time Kluge kicked you, it sent you once again back near me,” the old one said. “Do you remember feeling my feet beneath you and my hands upon your back? That was to make sure that there was a connection between us.”

Tristan was still baffled. “But what really happened?” he asked.

Wigg allowed himself the beginnings of a small smile, the first that the prince had seen since waking up in this place. “We became invisible,” the wizard said calmly.

Tristan’s mouth fell open. “I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, it’s true enough, all right,” Wigg said, finally breaking out into a full-blown smile. “It was the only thing that the Directorate could think of that had any conceivable chance of working, and even then we had our doubts. Invisibility had never been accomplished before. But we knew the stakes were great, and we all gave it our best efforts. Putting this Achievement together was the reason that so little was seen of the wizards and your father those last few days before the ceremony.”

“But I went unconscious,” Tristan protested. “How did I get here? It couldn’t have been so simple as you merely walking away with me. And how is it that you were not rendered unconscious, too?”

“I stayed conscious because of my training in the craft,” the old one said simply. “And as for getting you here, what you haven’t yet realized is, since the floor of the dais was also being touched by me—”

“It also became invisible!” Tristan exclaimed.

“That’s correct,” the old wizard said, reminding Tristan of his many days spent before the old one in class at the Wizards’ Conservatory. “And because the floor was now invisible, I could slide us through it unseen. We discovered during the construction of this Achievement a very interesting phenomenon of the craft—namely that two invisible objects, unlike two normal objects, are able to share the same space at the same time. So we just went through it. When we were below the dais and I was no longer touching the floor that was now above us, it became solid again. The whole thing happened in the twinkle of an eye. So fast, in fact, that the outward appearance of the floor did not change to anyone standing upon it. To them, we simply vanished, while all the time we were just below their feet.”

Tristan sat there stunned, the old one’s arm still around him. “How did you get us here?” he asked.

“That is the most simple part of all,” the wizard said. He got up from the bed and went to the table to pick up an apple. “I simply waited. You should have heard them, Tristan. They went berserk. As we had suspected, Succiu’s first instinct was to think that we had somehow magically transported ourselves as far away from the palace as possible, and she sent her Minions immediately out into the city and countryside to turn it upside down looking for us. But all the while we were just below her feet. She wasn’t able to detect my endowed blood because of the invisibility cloak. It seems to evade all forms of detection, somehow. Succiu ordered everyone out of the Great Hall, and several hours later, both of us still under the effects of the Achievement, I was able to carry you to the library where the gravitating chamber is, and bring you here. I induced a deep sleep upon you, and I worked on some of your wounds and injuries while you slept.” He smiled slightly once again.

“In addition, as long as we remain in the Redoubt, neither Succiu nor Natasha will be able to detect our blood. That is the second part of the riddle of our disappearance. An accomplishment, indeed for the Directorate. We owe those five dead wizards very much, indeed.”

Tristan felt ashamed at being alive. He thought back to some of his father’s last words to him: “There is so much we could not tell you, so much that we never shall, but hear me when I say that you and your sister are the very future of endowed blood in Eutracia.”

He broke down again and began sobbing before the wizard, his face buried in his hands. “I killed him, Wigg,” he said, his eyes turning into tortured, wet slits of pain. “I killed my own father!” He shook his head dumbly. “And because of that, I should be dead, too.”

He has been changed forever in a way that I can only imagine, Wigg thought as he put a hand on the prince’s shoulder.

“Tristan,” he began softly, “have you ever heard of the wizard’s parable that says no man can wade into the same river twice?”

The prince looked up into the wizard’s face with wet, bloodshot eyes. “No,” he said simply. “What are you talking about?”

“A man can only wade into any river once,” the old one said, “because the river is always moving, and therefore each time he approaches it, the river is different, as is the man. Thus, a man can never wade into the same river twice, because change is a constancy of nature. To embrace change is effortless. But to resist it is impossible, and goes against the natural order of the universe.”

“How does all of that affect me?” Tristan asked.

“You have been changed today, just as were the river and the man who tried to cross it twice. You will never be the same, nor shall I. But that does not make any of it your fault.”

“I will kill them, Wigg. On the name of everything I hold dear, I will kill them all.”

“Your father looked to me for guidance, just before you brought down the sword,” Wigg said, looking at his hands.

“What?”

“Your father looked to me for the answer, and I gave it to him. He nodded to me, and I knew he not only understood, but that he was also saying good-bye. Then he told you that you had to do it, no matter how impossible it seemed at the moment. I loved him, Tristan, just as I love you and your sister. And, as infeasible as it may seem to you now, what you did was right. Your only other choice was to watch him die. Horribly.”

Tristan walked to the table and looked down at the food. He didn’t think he would ever eat anything again.

“What about Shailiha?” he asked the old one. “What is it they want of her?”

“Although I am not entirely sure, I feel it must have something to do with the quality of her blood, and the fact that she is female. But you must obey me when I tell you that there is nothing that can be done for her right now. No power in the world that I know of is strong enough to wrest her away from a sorceress of the Coven who is wearing the stone. Remember, Natasha is now with Succiu, and the two of them can join their powers. No, Tristan, the best thing we can do to help Shailiha is to wait.”

Wigg could see Tristan gnashing his teeth at the thought of Shailiha with the sorceresses. But in his heart the prince knew the old one was probably right. He turned and faced the wizard with deadly seriousness. He had waited for the answers long enough.

“You just alluded to the quality of her blood, just as so many people have also alluded to mine. Over the course of my entire life I have endured hushed whispers in the hallways of the palace, the fact that I was supposed to join the Directorate after my reign, and being constantly told that the many questions I have always had could only be answered after my coronation.”

Tristan walked to the wizard and looked at him with the suddenly aged eyes of a man who had killed, a man who was ready to kill again for what he thought was right, and a man whose mind had been tortured in the extreme by forces that were out of his control. A deeply scarred man, to be sure, and now also a different man. Tristan would no longer be denied the answers to his questions, and Wigg knew it.

“I want some answers to all of this, Lead Wizard, and I want them now.”

I can see the power in his eyes already, Wigg thought as he looked at the prince. I will answer his questions this time. He deserves some answers, especially since we will probably soon die.

“Sit down, Tristan,” the old one said, “and I will explain to you the history of Eutracia, the one we did not teach you at school, and the secrets of the nature of your birth.”

In the meaningful silence that hung between them, the wood in the fireplace snapped and popped, and then one of the logs fell farther down into the grate, signaling the beginning of its blazing demise. Without speaking, Wigg walked to the hearth to place several more logs upon the flames. It would be a long night.

Suddenly Tristan had a thought. “How is it that the smoke going up the chimney does not give us away?” he asked. “Won’t it be seen?” Wigg finally let go a small smile. “There are no chimneys in the Redoubt,” he answered. “The smoke immediately burns away into nothingness. Only the heat and scent remain. Slike worked for weeks on the incantation, getting it just right.”

The old one then turned and walked to the table. He picked up a bottle of red wine and poured himself a glass. Turning to the prince, he raised his glass questioningly, but Tristan shook his head.

“I thought that the wizards of the Directorate didn’t drink spirits,” the prince commented. “I have never seen you with a glass of wine or ale before.”

Wigg looked at the prince for a rather long time before he responded. “There is no Directorate, Tristan,” he said wistfully. “Unless you want to call it a Directorate of One. And if it is to be a Directorate of One, then I suppose I am bound to create my own rules from here on.” He took a slow, thoughtful sip of the wine.

The prince looked down at his boots, suddenly ashamed. “I’m sorry for your loss, Wigg,” he said. “I have been thinking only of myself, and I apologize. I know how much you loved them all, and you have lost as many dear ones this day as I have. I am also sorry for having doubted you during the attack. If I had listened to you then, Shailiha might be sitting here with us right now.”

“Come and sit with me at the table,” the old one said simply, “and I will answer some of the questions that have been troubling your mind for so long.”

Tristan pulled up a chair at the table. Without further introduction, the wizard began his tale.

“Near the end of the war, the wizards were losing badly,” Wigg began. “Many had been captured, killed, or turned into blood stalkers. The sorceresses were growing in number, and their ability to join their powers made them almost invulnerable. The wizards were the last hope for Eutracia, but were themselves slowly becoming extinct. The savagery of the sorceresses knew no limits. They also controlled most of the towns, and therefore most of the population west of Tammerland.”

“How could they control such large areas?” Tristan asked.

“Up to two sorceresses were left in each town, sometimes accompanied by blood stalkers. Healthy human males of unendowed blood were forced into the ranks of their armies under the penalty of death or the threatened murder of their families. The four leaders were the most powerful and learned—they came to be called the mistresses of the Coven. They directed the war from migrating headquarters, usually just behind their ever-advancing eastern front, and took as their symbol the Pentangle, or five-pointed star. We never knew why they chose it, but it was said that it had to do with some arcane incantation of the Vagaries.

As town after town was swallowed up, their ranks increased, as did the collective abilities of their powers. Toward the end, most of the wizards had retreated and taken refuge in Tammerland. They knew in their hearts that the end had begun.”

Tristan finally relented and poured himself a glass of wine. It felt warm and comforting as it went down, reminding him of how long it had been since he had last eaten.

“As the war dragged on,” Wigg continued, “and the sorceresses and their troops came ever closer to Tammerland, food, especially fresh meat and fish, was becoming scarce. Eventually, out of desperation, small hunting parties were sent out into the Hartwick Woods. They were usually accompanied by a wizard for protection.”

Wigg stood and walked over to stand before the fire, seemingly lost in thought. After a few moments, he turned back to the prince.

“It was one of those hunting parties that first discovered the Caves of the Paragon, and the falls that constantly tumble there into that dark, stone pool. The area was explored, and a chained jewel, a chalice, and a large book, among several other lesser objects, were found. Each of them, save the Paragon, was inscribed with a strange language never before seen in our land.”

He walked back to the table and refilled his wineglass. “The Paragon was found accidentally, and could have been easily missed,” Wigg continued. “It was discovered hanging from its gold chain, suspended under the waterfall. As you know, if the stone is not worn by a suitable host it must be immersed in a sufficient quantity of the waters of the falls to retain its properties. Later on, we realized that the stone was hung in the waterfall to ensure a constant, fresh covering of water at all times, and therefore, its continued existence. Blessedly, when the wizard removed the stone from the Caves he had the presence of mind to fill the chalice with water and place the jewel inside it. Both the stone and the chalice were taken to Tammerland that same day. The wizard also removed all the other objects that were found nearby, knowing that the sorceresses’ forces were near.” He paused for a moment, his eyes far away. “That wizard was me.

“Once the items had been received by the wizards at the palace, it was generally agreed that the book, or the Tome, as we came to call it, was meant to explain the purposes and uses of the other items that were found,” he continued. “Immediately the greatest of the wizard scholars, myself included, attempted to translate the book, but this proved almost impossible, since absolutely nothing of the language was known. As the sorceresses began to close in on Tammerland, time was running out, and despite the wizards’ best efforts, little had been learned about the jewel or its secrets. Many wizards lost their lives making additional trips to the Caves to continually supply fresh water for the stone, but still we managed.”

Wigg shook his head sadly. “Meanwhile, the citizenry inside the walls of Tammerland had begun to riot. Shortages of fresh food and water were beginning to cause crime and disease. Many of the citizens wanted to surrender to the sorceresses. The wizards rejected the idea and did the best they could to calm and control the population by peaceful means. But it was all starting to come apart.”

“Were they still working on the book?” Tristan asked.

“Oh, yes,” Wigg said, running his hand down the length of his face. “The jewel and the other items that had been recovered from the Caves were locked away in one of the library suites in the wizards’ quarters of the palace. One day, one of the master wizards went there to examine some of the other items found in the Caves. Accompanying him was his precocious five-year-old daughter of endowed blood. The little girl was all the wizard had left, and she meant everything to him.”

Wigg took another apple and began slicing it into pieces. “During his investigations, he began to hear his daughter chatting on endlessly to herself. When, at long last, he went to collect her and return to his quarters, what he saw there changed history.”

“What did he see?” Tristan asked anxiously.

“His daughter was sitting in a very large chair, much too big for her, her feet dangling off the edge, not touching the floor. The huge Tome was in front of her, open to approximately the twentieth page. Her face was a mask. With glassy eyes and a monotonous tone, she continued to speak, completely ignoring his presence. Walking up to her and finally looking over the edge of the book, what he saw made his jaw drop.”

“And that was?”

“She was reading the Tome, translating it into Eutracian. Around her neck hung the Paragon, still wet and dripping from the chalice water. The jewel had seemed to come even more alive. In the ensuing weeks, many things were learned from the child. She had seen the jewel submerged in the water, and her curiosity had enticed her to put it around her neck. After retrieving the stone from the funny red water and putting it around her neck, she was sure that she was as pretty as a princess. Looking around the room, she had spied the very large chair. Every princess should have a throne, she reasoned, so she hoisted herself up into it. The only object to play with on the facing table was a big old book, so she began to read to her pretend subjects from it. But upon seeing the first page, she had simply, uncontrollably, begun to read aloud, and the words that were written there came to her voice as if she had been reading them all of her life.”

“A little girl?” Tristan asked incredulously.

“A little girl,” the Lead Wizard replied. “A little, untrained girl saved our nation from the sorceresses.”

“What became of her?” Tristan asked. “She must be some kind of national hero, yet I have never heard of her.”

A very strange kind of half smile came to the old wizard’s lips, and then he continued without directly responding to the prince’s question. “Amazed, her father ran from the room for help. In the ensuing days it was learned that whoever of endowed blood wore the jewel around his or her neck became imbued with powers and abilities that even we wizards never thought possible. Included among these gifts was the immediate ability to read the ancient text and translate it into our native tongue. Eventually, the jewel was placed around the neck of her father, the most learned and talented of our wizards, and he began to recite the Tome from the first page as the Directorate’s scribes recorded the first two of its three volumes. In the weeks that followed, the girl was allowed to continue to wear the stone, since it seemed that no one, not even the most powerful among us, was able to take it from around her neck. And because she liked it so much, she refused to do so for us. In the end we had no other choice than to let her recite the entire text, word for word, as her father wrote it down. Finally, among the many things we learned was that only the wearer of the stone could remove it from around his or her neck. And if the stone was not allowed to regenerate in between human hosts, it would kill the next wearer instantly.” He paused for a moment, as if lost in time. “In the end, it was the knowledge gleaned from the Tome, combined with the use of the Paragon, that enabled us to win the war and banish the sorceresses. And then we decided, for reasons of security, that no one of endowed blood who had already been trained in the craft should ever again wear the stone.”

Another question occurred to Tristan. “And why is it that the wizards lose their power when the stone is immersed in the water from the Caves?” he asked.

One corner of the old wizard’s mouth came up. “Before I answer that, it is important that you first understand how the stone empowers endowed blood, for the answers to both questions are interlocked.”

Wigg took the prince’s right hand and held it palm up. “Don’t worry,” he said, seeing Tristan’s questioning look. “This won’t hurt.” Wigg narrowed his eyes and looked at Tristan’s hand.

Almost immediately Tristan felt a tickling sensation in the tip of his right index finger, and an azure glow began to surround his hand. He watched, spellbound, as a small cut began to open up and a single drop of dark-red blood plopped unceremoniously upon the tabletop. Then the aura began to dissipate.

“The truth of the matter is that the blood of an endowed person, any endowed person, is alive,” Wigg continued. “Just as is the Paragon—each in its own way. True, our blood flows through our hearts and veins like that of any other creature or unendowed human, but in our case our blood literally has a life of its own. In this I mean that our blood is at least partially sentient, and definitely far different from that of other humans.”

Tristan stared at the drop of his blood on the table, stunned at the wizard’s words. Finally he found his voice. “But ours doesn’t appear any different to me than anyone else’s,” he said skeptically.

“That’s true.” Wigg smiled. “However, this is not about how our blood looks but rather about how it behaves” Staring at one of his own fingertips, he opened up a small wound. A drop of his blood fell obediently onto the table next to Tristan’s, identical in color and shape. But then something extraordinary happened.

The blood drop from Wigg’s hand began to move. Speechless, Tristan watched as the wizard’s blood began to undulate, swimming to and fro across the tabletop as if looking for something. His mouth open, the prince could barely form the words. “Are you causing this?” he whispered, never taking his eyes from the blood drop as it continued to move hauntingly back and forth.

“No,” Wigg told him with a broad smile. “As I said, our blood—that is, the blood of the endowed—has a life of its own.”

“But why, then, is mine not moving also?” Tristan asked. The drop of his blood had lain motionless the entire time; it looked like it was starting to congeal. In contrast, the wizard’s blood remained a vibrant red as it moved about.

“Oh, make no mistake,” Wigg added. “Your blood is just as alive as mine. It does not show the same characteristics because it is still in its dormant phase.”

“What do you mean?”

“That is to say, you have not yet been trained in the craft,” the Lead Wizard said simply. “The day you were conceived you were blessed with such blood, but it has remained relatively quiet for all this time, as is always the case. Only when your training begins shall your blood come out of its dormant phase and start to become more active, much like a Eutracian butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Then and only then is it able to accept the power of the Paragon and become empowered. The more highly trained the wizard, the more alive and receptive is his blood. During training, the stone recognizes the infusion of the knowledge, seeking out and metaphysically joining with sentient blood, beginning to empower it. This relationship grows and strengthens as one’s expertise and knowledge of the craft increases. The stone empowers both sides of the craft, Tristan. And contrary to what one might think, a practitioner needs neither to be touching the stone nor be in close proximity to it.” Wigg paused and unceremoniously wiped the blood spots from the table with the sleeve of his robe.

“In essence, then, the stone is able to empower endowed blood because they are both alive, need one another, and are able to seek one another out on a metaphysical level,” Wigg continued. “The Tome barely mentions this bond, but we believe that they are actually able, on some level, to communicate with each other. It is this, then, that makes us different from other human beings, and that enables us to perform the craft and execute things that other humans find to be so miraculous.”

The old wizard stood and walked slowly to the far wall near the fireplace. Placing his hands on the marble, he found several dark spots in the smooth stone, closed his eyes, and then backed away. The entire fireplace began to pivot, rotating around to reveal light from another room beyond. Tristan heard a somehow familiar but not quite recognizable sound. “Follow me,” Wigg said simply. In a moment, he was gone.

Tristan stood and rather gingerly approached the wide gap to the left side of the fireplace, then stepped through and into the room beyond.

Stunned, he simply remained standing in place, staring in wonder.

The room was large, larger than it needed to be, and the walls, floors, and ceiling were made of the finest black marble the prince had ever seen. Numerous chandeliers of oil lamps hung from the ceiling, their flames reflected in the shiny surfaces of the room. As was the case with each of the rooms Tristan had so far visited in the Redoubt, there were no windows. Several colorful, complexly patterned rugs adorned the floor, and the air had a wonderfully sweet, relaxing scent. No furniture filled the room. The far wall was its only focal point, and had but one use.

Tristan walked to it, coming to stand next to the wizard.

From an ebony spout in that wall, the thick, red waters of the Caves of the Paragon were spilling out into a deep trough that curved out from either side in a great semicircle. At each end of the trough, the water seemed to flow back into the wall, as if returning to the spout to repeat the cycle. The trough, too, was made of the finest black marble, and upon its ledges sat several gold and silver chalices of various sizes. Once again in the proximity of the water, Tristan began to feel its overpowering, intoxicating effects on his blood.

Wigg immediately noticed. “We will not stay here long,” he said drily. He raised the infamous eyebrow. “We wouldn’t want a reoccurrence of what happened in the Caves, now would we?”

The wizard picked up a very small chalice, about the size of his thumb, and carefully filled it with water from the trough.

“This room is known as the Well of the Redoubt,” he said, “and it holds some of the water of the Caves of the Paragon. This water is pushed through the wall via the same type of hydraulic mechanism that powers the gravitating chamber, but that is not important. What is important is that during the war the wizards smuggled the water to this secret room little by little, as a safeguard against the day that the sorceresses might discover the Caves and bar us from them. We knew that if such an occurrence ever took place we would need sufficient water to continue our study of the craft, sustain the Paragon in between hosts, and hopefully achieve victory in the war.”

The Lead Wizard could see that Tristan was growing dizzy. “It is time for us to leave,” he ordered. Carrying the small chalice, he guided the prince back through the gap in the wall and rotated the fireplace to its original position. He helped Tristan sit down at the table and watched carefully as the younger man’s eyes and demeanor began to return to normal.

“Why does the water affect me so?” Tristan asked thickly, running a hand back through his dark hair.

“A big question,” Wigg replied, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a hint of a smile. “In fact, a vast section of the Tome is dedicated solely to the subject of the waters of the Caves.” He placed the small chalice down on the tabletop. “One of the first things we learned was that the waters have many, many uses. Also, the water is never to be ingested, for the Tome makes specific reference to this fact. It is drinking the water that turns butterflies into the Fliers of the Field.”

Tristan recalled how dangerously close he had come to drinking some of the water. He silently thanked the Afterlife, shuddering to think of what it might have done to him.

The look on the prince’s face had not escaped the elderly wizard. He cleared his throat. “And third,” he said finally, pointing an index finger up into the air, “is the fact that the water’s power appears to have an indefinite life span. In addition, it will not evaporate, as will other liquids. Unless the Paragon is placed into it, causing it to become clear, it will retain its properties and powers forever. The water you saw in the Well of the Redoubt has not been replaced, except for what has been taken and used, for over three centuries. And the waters are very, very powerful indeed. For example, accelerating the healing process is usually a very slow, very difficult incantation to perform. However, allow me to demonstrate.”

Wigg took Tristan’s hand and poured a single drop of the water from the chalice over the wounded fingertip. Immediately an azure glow began to surround the finger. The effect was completely painless, and when the glow had dissipated the cut had been completely healed.

“A very small example of its abilities”—Wigg sniffed—“but impressive nonetheless. Even if I, as Lead Wizard, had myself accelerated the healing process in your finger it would have taken at least one full day to complete. This took only moments.

“But to answer your question about the wizards losing their power when the stone is immersed in the water,” he went on. “The beings who left us the Paragon and the Tome needed a way to prepare the stone for its next host. This is necessary because, although the stone empowers all of those with endowed blood, the relationship it garners with its wearer is quite special, and unlike any other.” Once again his bony right finger went into the air for emphasis, reminding the prince of all of Wigg’s lectures he had attended at the conservatory. Just now he was beginning to wish he had paid closer attention.

“You see,” Wigg added, “the waters have yet another intriguing property. They insulate the stone from the blood of the endowed. This form of insulation, or protection, if you will, forces the stone to lose its color, since its connection with the wearer—in fact, with anyone of endowed blood—is blocked. This allows the stone to return to a virgin state, which is necessary because the proximity of the stone to the blood of its wearers is so close that, in a metaphysical sense, they become virtually one. Therefore, to place the stone around the neck of another without removing the influence of the first wearer always results in the instantaneous death of the second person to take the stone. It is simply a case of it being too much for the new wearer’s blood to bear, so to speak. For the lack of a better explanation, the stone must be ‘weaned away’ from its wearer, and subsequently prepared for its next host.” Wigg paused and took another sip of wine as he collected his next thoughts.

“But this process,” he continued, “although potentially dangerous to wizards because of the loss of their powers, is absolutely crucial to passing the Paragon from one person to the next. Presumably, the individuals from whom we inherited the stone and the Tome could not be sure we would eventually discover and make use of the time enchantments. They needed to ensure that we could pass the stone from one person of endowed blood to another.” And to help us wait three long centuries for the coming of the Chosen Ones, he thought. “All of this knowledge and instruction that we have gleaned over the last three hundred years comes from the Tome, the great book of the Paragon.” Wigg sat back in his chair and placed his hands into the opposite sleeves of his gray robe.

“There is still something I do not understand,” Tristan said slowly, shaking his head. “You have often alluded to the fact that the wizards and sorceresses both had a modicum of power before finding the Paragon and the Tome. And when the stone is removed from its human host and being prepared for another, all those of endowed blood lose the use of their gifts. But when this happens, how is it that each of you cannot revert to your previous, albeit lower powers? Are they gone for some reason?”

Wigg sighed as the question dredged up painful memories. “Those were truly dark days, when we discovered the Paragon and the Tome, and made the decision forced upon us because of that event,” Wigg said sadly. “It has long been the belief of some of us that the ones who left us the Tome and the stone were our ancestors—that we inherited our endowed blood from them, and that this, in turn, allowed us certain instinctual yet unsophisticated uses of the craft. Personally, I still cling to this hypothesis.” He paused once again, thinking.

“But when Faegan first began translating the Tome, he was shocked at what he saw there,” he finally continued. “It told us that if the finders of the Stone and the Tome decided to employ these items to augment their knowledge, then all those of endowed blood would immediately lose their previous, lower powers. Those lesser powers would vanish forever, never to return—to be forever replaced with the supposedly greater power of the stone and the higher knowledge gained by the reading of the text. This, they said in the Tome, was the reason they would not allow us to go back to our previous use of the craft. They wished us to reach far greater heights in our powers for the benefit of all mankind.” Wigg paused for a moment, taking another sip of wine. “It wasn’t that they simply wanted us to have the knowledge,” he added. “They wanted us to use it for the purposes of good, fully aware of the differences between the Vigors and the Vagaries, never to risk perpetuating the evil of the Vagaries.

“You can easily imagine our dilemma,” he went on to say. “If we chose this path, not only would we empower ourselves, but the sorceresses, as well. The seemingly endless debate that raged while the sorceress closed in on fortress Tammerland nearly caused us to lose the war. But in some ways our fear and hesitancy were indeed justified. In place of our previous, instinctual gifts would come an unknown to be embraced. The Tome described it as a unified whole, or ‘group consciousness’ as the blood of all the endowed, wizard and sorceress alike, simultaneously gained the power of the stone. It is this group consciousness, for example, that allows one of endowed blood to detect that of another. But when the stone is being prepared for a new host, temporarily losing its power, the group consciousness is broken, allowing none of us to connect with the gift in any way. Neither to our newfound knowledge, nor to our powers of the past. We took this demand of the writers of the Tome to be a leap of faith, if you will, and a test of our commitment. A cleansing of the old, in favor of the promise of the new. It was to be, in effect, their legacy to us. They also wrote that they hoped it would more tightly bind their descendants of endowed blood together as a whole, creating greater harmony and forestalling the strife that they themselves were experiencing. Had we wizards found the Paragon and the Tome before Failee began her revolt, the war might never have occurred, and our nation might have been able to exist in peace. But, as we now know, that was not to be.”

“But didn’t the ones who wrote the Tome take a terrible chance in hiding the stone and the Tome that way?” Tristan countered. “What if you had never found them, or they had been found by the sorceresses first?”

“Some mention is made in the Tome that they believed their way of life was coming to an end due to their enemies, just as we thought ours soon might. They took a great risk, but probably less so than if they had not hidden them at all, and allowed the stone and Tome to be taken by their enemies. Because the good derived from the Vigors is the equal to the evil that can be gleaned from the Vagaries, they hoped the items would be found by those who would perform the craft properly, for the betterment of all.”

“But if the Tome teaches of the Vigors and the Vagaries, what is the third section about?” Tristan asked.

“The Prophecies,” Wigg said, reaching out for another piece of apple. “The Vigors, the Vagaries, and the Prophecies. Each section is distinct from the other two in context and purpose, but all of them relate to the stone itself.”

Tristan’s eyes narrowed as he sat there before the wizard, trying to absorb everything he was hearing. “Wigg,” he asked, “if the stone had been placed around my neck yesterday, would I have been able to read the Tome?”

The old wizard looked directly into the questioning, dark-blue eyes. “Yes, Tristan,” he said softly. “Especially you.”

But before the prince could pursue how all of this impacted him, the wizard purposely cut him off. “I still haven’t answered the very first question you asked me.”

“Yes,” Tristan said. “The little girl, the one who saved our country, what happened to her?”

Wigg took a deep breath and stiffened a little, not even himself believing what he was about to say. “Succiu told us herself, just yesterday. The father of the little girl was the wizard Faegan, once my best friend. And his daughter, the one who saved Eutracia, is now Natasha, duchess of Ephyra.”

Tristan sat staring at the wizard, speechless. He now remembered Succiu’s words from yesterday, but at the time he hadn’t understood what she was talking about, especially in his heated rage to kill her.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“He disappeared. He was the most talented of us all, and also commanded the power of Consummate Recollection. That is, from the time of his birth he had been able to recall instantly with perfect accuracy anything that he had seen, read, or heard. Anything at all, no matter how trivial. His disappearance was a huge loss to us, but the war was coming to its final climax, and no one could be spared to mount a search party at that time. Some of us thought that his daughter had run away, while others felt that the little girl had somehow died and Faegan had gone off and taken his own life in grief. There was also a rumor that he died in the fighting as it neared the city, but his body was never recovered. Either way, we could not worry about it. We simply didn’t have the time. But Faegan was the finest and the most brilliant of us all, and I believe that had he remained with us, he would have been made Lead Wizard instead of myself.”

“And now?” Tristan asked.

“Now, thanks to Succiu, we know that both Faegan and his daughter live. And, as I told her yesterday, I believe I know what happened. I am convinced that the Coven took his daughter from him just before the end of the war, and then threatened to kill her if he didn’t help them.”

“But if Faegan and Natasha both still live, then why wouldn’t he use his powers to try to convince her to end her association with the sorceresses?” Tristan realized he knew little about the ways of wizards, especially one he had never met.

“He must believe her to be dead,” Wigg said in a painful whisper. “Telling him such a thing would be typical of their cruelty. If they had told him she died, and then they had taught her to become a Visage Caster, he wouldn’t be able to recognize her even if they were in the same carriage together.”

Tristan’s brow knitted together in curiosity. “What’s a Visage Caster?”

“One of endowed blood who can change his or her appearance at will,” Wigg said in a quiet voice, obviously lost in a different insight.

Something didn’t make sense to the prince. “If the Tome of the Paragon was known only to the wizards and not to the Coven, then how did the mistresses learn of the existence of the Paragon, and teach themselves the Vagaries?” And then yet another question came to him. “Why didn’t they win the war?”

“What do you mean?” the wizard asked, knowing full well what Tristan was going to say next.

“You say that this Failee is a master of the Vagaries, yet she had no access to the Tome. Therefore, since she was banished and she herself has never returned to Eutracia, she must have somehow learned the Vagaries while she was still here. So two questions remain. First, how did she acquire the knowledge, and second, since you say that the wizards only practiced the Vigors, then how did you overcome them in the war?”

“Very good,” Wigg said, and he meant it. He took another sip of wine, then cut himself a piece of cheese.

“How can you eat at a time like this?” Tristan asked. Wigg gave him another little smile. “A simple matter of survival,” he said. He took a large bite.

“Anyway,” he said, once again raising his imperious index finger to the prince, “the solution to your first question—namely, how did they learn the Vagaries—can have only one answer. Only the wizards had access to the Vagaries, and only one wizard was unaccounted for, and may have had a strong motive to help them.”

“Faegan,” Tristan said with finality.

“Yes,” Wigg said. “The Directorate had always suspected him of it, but we were as equally sure that he was dead.” He narrowed his eyes as he thought for a moment. “Succiu did herself no favors by telling me of his continued existence, but then again she was sure I was about to die, and couldn’t resist the temptation to gloat. And as for your second question—that is, how is it that they did not win the war? The answer to that is really quite simple. They didn’t have the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“The war was finally turning in our favor, since we had gathered so much power from our discoveries in the Caves. Even if we assume Faegan supplied them with all of the knowledge of the Vigors and the Vagaries, they still didn’t have the time to learn their use and defeat us, since we had acquired the information so much sooner than they. The craft is just like anything else in one respect, Tristan: I can tell you for days how to shoot a bow or slash with a sword, but until you have practiced it enough for yourself, you have no proficiency. And the longer you practice, the better you become.”

Tristan sat trying to absorb all the information, then suddenly looked up at the old one. “Who, then, Lead Wizard, wrote the Tome, and left the Paragon in the Caves?”

So he has finally gotten around to asking that, the wizard thought. The greatest of all the riddles.

Wigg took another sip of wine, then looked down at the glass as he slowly began rolling it back and forth between his palms. He took a deep breath.

“Little is actually known of them, Tristan,” he said. “Although they do identify themselves as the authors of the Tome. The authors say in their writings that the Tome was left for us to study, and to put to the best use possible for mankind. This we thought we had done, by constructing the Directorate, the Redoubt, and the monarchy, and forbidding ourselves any further study of the Vagaries. They left the Tome and the Paragon there for us, we know not how long ago, as if they could no longer use it themselves and wanted it to be found by someone they could trust. And the Tolenka Mountains and the Sea of Whispers have effectively blocked any exploration past the reaches of what we have traditionally recognized as the boundaries of Eutracia, so the whole thing remains a riddle.” He shrugged as he sipped his wine.

“What were they called?” Tristan asked.

“I thought you would never ask. They called themselves the Ones Who Came Before. Simple and to the point, don’t you think?” Putting down his wineglass, Wigg placed his hands into the sleeves of his robes and sighed. “That is all the mention of them that there is, and no further light has been shed upon the subject since.”

“Where is the Tome now located?” Tristan asked. He was surprised at himself for not having asked the question sooner.

“It is hidden in the Caves of the Paragon, in the tunnel you discovered when our warp pushed you back out of the way.” Wigg sat back in his chair.

The Paragon, the Caves, and the Tome, Tristan thought. The Vigors, Vagaries, and Prophecies. The three volumes of the Tome. The sum of the knowledge of the Ones Who Came Before. It was then that the realization hit him like a thunderbolt. For as long as he had known the wizard, Wigg had never uttered a single word about the Prophecies. The Prophecies, he mused. The third volume of the Tome. The volume of which no one ever speaks.

And then a strange thing happened.

As he gave more and more thought to the Prophecies, he began to feel the endowed blood in his veins race even faster. He started to feel flushed and then slightly dizzy, the way he’d felt when he approached the Well of the Redoubt. It was frightening, yet at the same time it gave him a kind of euphoria that he had never experienced before.

The Lead Wizard sat across from the prince, watching the changes in him, his ancient, aquamarine eyes missing nothing. He will ask me now, the old one thought with a smile, and I will tell him some of it. The Chosen One shall come, but he will be preceded by another. And the knowledge that he seeks he shall one day demand of the one who recovers the stone.

“Wigg, tell me of the Prophecies,” Tristan said, almost as if he were in a trance. “When I think of them, my heart and blood race, and the need to know increases tenfold.” He bent over slightly and looked at the wizard in a dominating way that Wigg had never seen before. “I must know of the Prophecies. And somehow, within me, I know that you are the one who was ordained to tell me. And I think you know that, too. Speak.”

It hadn’t been a request. It had been a command. Finally the day is here, the old wizard reflected. He looked at the prince he had known so long, aware that from this moment onward Tristan would be forever changed. “The Prophecies are about you, among other things,” he said softly. “They speak of your birth, of the birth of your twin sister, and of the quality of your blood. They speak to who you are, why you were born, and how and why it is that you are different from others of endowed blood. The Prophecies are your story, Tristan—the story of the meaning of your existence, and the qualities that you possess that make you so special.”

Tristan hadn’t flinched. His face was a mask, a combination of need and hunger that radiated from him, just as it had on the day he discovered the Caves.

“Who am I?” he asked breathlessly.

“You are Prince Tristan, of the kingdom of Eutracia, son of Nicholas and Morganna of the House of Galland.” Make him work for it, the wizard reminded himself. It must not come too easily, or too soon.

“Don’t toy with me, wizard,” Tristan said, with surprisingly little friendship in his voice. “Who do the Prophecies say I am?”

“The Chosen One.” Wigg firmly held his ground in the contest of wills as he looked into the dark-blue eyes. “One of the earliest chapters of the Vigors says the Chosen One will come but he shall be preceded by another.”

“There was another like me?”

“Not was, Tristan, is”

“Who is this man?” the prince asked, a look of danger in his eyes. “Do I have reason to fear him?”

“No, Tristan, you have no reason to fear this one.”

“Then who is it?” he demanded. He inched his face closer to the wizard’s.

Wigg looked compassionately at the man across from him whom he loved so much, wishing that the other one could be here now, as well.

“The other Chosen One is your sister, Shailiha.”

Tristan sat wide-eyed, still staring at the wizard, hardly breathing. Shailiha?

“You must be wrong,” he finally said, hoping with all his heart that the wizard was mistaken. She’s been through so much, he thought, and now she is with them.

“Why must I be wrong?” the old wizard asked patiently.

“Because we’re twins,” he said adamantly, “at least that’s what everyone always told us. And you said the other Chosen One preceded me, and was already here.”

Wigg raised the infamous eyebrow, not really surprised that Tristan had not grasped it. “You and your sister are twins, Tristan,” he said compassionately. “She preceded you into this world by eight minutes. I know. I was there.”

Tristan sat back in his chair, stunned.

“You were there at our births?”

Wigg smiled. “Yes,” he said, “as were all of the other wizards of the Directorate, and your father, as well.”

“Why?”

“Because your coming had been foretold in the Tome, and the volumes were very clear about the fact that we should be there to witness your birth, and to train you and closely follow your progress from that day forward. That is why your father chose to join the Directorate—and ordained that you would one day join the Directorate, too, and be trained in the craft. Despite their great love for each other, Morganna agreed to an eventual death of old age, alone, while she watched you grow and your father continue to live, unchanged, under the influence of time enchantments once his training in the craft had begun. The queen was truly one of the most selfless people I have ever known.”

And the one who recovers the stone, and any others of like power who practice the Vigors, shall witness his coming, so as to know that he is the One, Wigg remembered.

“The volumes were very explicit,” Wigg continued. “They spoke of a blue aura that would surround the mother of the Chosen One at the time of your conception, and follow her until your birth. That is how we identified you, and knew who you were when you finally arrived in this world. After you and your sister were born, the aura around Morganna faded away.” And I never saw it again until I saw it on you, when you bathed in the water of the Caves, the old one reminded himself.

“How is it that we are so special?” Tristan asked, his gaze unwavering.

It was a question that Wigg had been waiting thirty years to answer, but he had never expected to have to answer it in such catastrophic conditions. He removed one hand from the opposite sleeve of his robe, taking another sip of wine.

“It is because of your blood,” he began. “The Tome tells of the One who will come, preceded by another, who will have endowed blood of a purity never before seen. It is also said that the purity of this blood will enable the Chosen One to lead us, and finally show us the way.”

“Is the purity of my blood the reason that the waters have such an effect on me?” Tristan asked.

“We cannot be sure, but I have to believe that is so—even though your blood is still dormant, since you have not yet been trained. Such a thing has never been seen before.”

Tristan’s mind was taken back to Wigg’s explanation of the Ones Who Came Before. “What do you mean, I am ‘to show us the way’?” He looked down at his hands, rubbing them together gently in his confusion. “I as yet have no special talents, and despite the fact that I know my endowed blood runs through me with great power, I have no idea what you are talking about. What does ‘the way’ mean? The way to live? The way to practice the craft? The way to be able finally to travel past the natural boundaries that have always kept us geographically locked within our own country? I don’t understand.”

“We considered all of those possibilities,” Wigg said, gazing back toward the fire. “But we never solved the riddle. The Tome says that it is you who must deliver the answer.”

“How?”

“By reading the Prophecies yourself,” Wigg answered simply. “The third and final volume of the Tome. The only one that to this day remains unread.”

“But if the Prophecies contain the answer, and anyone of endowed blood could read the Tome, why is it that the Prophecies were not explored further for the answers?”

Wigg sighed and pursed his lips as he looked tiredly at the prince. There is so much that I cannot tell him, he thought. So much that he must discover on his own. The entire Directorate and his father were going to help me in his quest, but now they, too, are all gone. “The Prophecies forbade it, Tristan,” he said. “The very last page of the Vagaries strictly prohibited the reading of the Prophecies, the third and final volume of the Tome, by anyone but you. A warning that we heeded. And because of this prohibition, they were not translated and written down by the scribes, as were the Vigors and the Vagaries. The writings of the Prophecies exist only in the Tome, in the Caves of the Paragon, and you were to have read them only after you had accepted both the life and death enchantments.” Wigg paused, carefully selecting his next words. “That was to be the beginning of your training, setting you on the road to fulfilling your destiny as the Tome decrees. Namely, to be the first to eventually master, join, and effectively command the two opposite sides of the craft, namely the Vigors and the Vagaries.”

Death enchantments, Tristan thought to himself. The esoteric use of the craft that instantly produces the death of a wizard who breaks his vows, or attempts the practice of the Vagaries. Suddenly, he made the connection.

“And the Afterlife,” he said softly, almost reverently. “The Afterlife is mentioned in the Tome, isn’t it, Lead Wizard?” He could tell by the look on Wigg’s face that he had hit upon yet another truth. “If that is the case, then why is so little about it truly known?”

Wigg sighed, remembering that the man who sat before him would, if he lived, easily one day dwarf even the Lead Wizard himself in his use of the craft.

“Yes, the Afterlife is mentioned in the Tome,” Wigg said, nodding slightly, “but there is truly very little about the Afterlife that we actually know. The Vigors make brief mention of an Afterlife, a compassionate place where the souls of the dead supposedly go. It also mentions an Underworld, an opposite place, just as the Vigors are the opposite of the Vagaries. There is a quote from the Vigors that states, ‘And the practice of the Vagaries shall lead to the madness of other, lower worlds.’ The wizards of the Directorate always took this to mean that there is an Underworld, just as there is an Afterlife.”

Wigg paused for a painful moment, thinking of Failee and wondering how far her knowledge of the craft had progressed over the last three centuries. Very far indeed, he realized. And now the other three with her apparently also have at least a modicum of understanding of the Vagaries as well. And are no doubt also at least partially mad.

“Over the course of the last three hundred years, the occasional use of the word ‘Afterlife’ by the members of the Directorate came to be overheard by the general population, and was eventually adopted into our language as a natural part of our custom of speech, although no one outside of the Directorate ever had the slightest inkling of what it really meant,” he continued. “We did not discourage its use because it seemed to guide their perceptions about death to a more peaceful, gentle conclusion. It seemed to provide hope both to those who were about to die, and to those who had lost loved ones. But the deeper meaning of both the Afterlife and the Underworld is contained only in the Prophecies, and, as I have said, only the Chosen One is to read them. So you see, it is both the Underworld and the Afterlife, the Vagaries and the Vigors, the dark and the light, that you alone are to come to eventually understand, join, and employ. Part, no doubt, of what the Ones Who Came Before meant when they said ‘show us the way.’”

“And to do that, I must have the stone,” Tristan said in a whisper, almost to himself.

“Yes,” the old one said, his heart breaking. “And the stone is gone.”

For several long moments the two of them sat in abject silence, the only sounds the wood as it crackled in the fireplace.

Tristan reached up to wipe away a solitary tear. He felt overwhelmed and awed by the circumstances of his existence. And there was another emotion sweeping through him.

Shame. The odd, often insurmountable weight that can come with being left alive, when others around you have perished.

From somewhere in the far reaches of his mind came the words that Nicholas had spoken that day when Tristan had been called to the meeting room deep within the Redoubt. “I am truly sorry for all that you have been through,” his father had said, “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.” Tristan hung his head as he sat there before the Lead Wizard. And now they are all dead, he thought. Except Wigg.

Tristan stood, walked around the table to stand before the wizard, and put his hands on the old one’s shoulders. He had to know. She was the only family he had left.

“Why do they want her?” he asked, barely able to hold back his tears.

Wigg shook his head fatalistically. “I wish I knew,” he said, the look of discouragement plain upon his ancient face. “We always knew that during the war they were desperate for a fifth sorceress, but we never knew why. But if Natasha is one of them, then why not just take her back with them as their fifth? Why would they need Shailiha, too? And now that they have someone of Shailiha’s blood quality in their grasp, the future could be dark, indeed.”

“They called her ‘Sister,’” Tristan remembered, “and bowed to her. Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know,” Wigg said, truly perplexed. “And there is something else that bothers me. How is it that they could know all of these things, and time their attack to the precise moment that the stone was in the chalice? For all of these years they have been far away from Eutracia. Even Succiu confirmed that fact.” He drew his hand down his face in thought. “Of course it has to do with Natasha, but how?”

“Can the sorceresses communicate with each other in some way over long distances?” Tristan asked. “I don’t just mean sensing the presence of other endowed blood, but actually sending and receiving thoughts? That would explain much.”

Wigg narrowed his eyes. “Egloff would have been the one to answer that,” he said thoughtfully. “I seem to remember some brief mention of it in the Tome. But we never pursued it as a practice because the true teaching of it was found only in the volume containing the Vagaries. To employ this particular art would go against our vows, and enact the death enchantments.”

Then they truly have mastered the Vagaries, Wigg thought. And now they are also in possession of the stone.

The prince walked to a spot in front of the fireplace, his eyes lost to the dancing orange—and-red flames. He spoke to the wizard without turning around.

“I have to get her back, Wigg,” he said softly, so softly that in order to understand him, the wizard had to use his powers to augment his hearing. “She’s all that I have left of my family, and I can’t let anyone or anything stop me.” He turned back to gaze at the wizard with the same grim look of determination that had been on his face earlier that night. “Including you. If I must defy you this night, I will.”

“We wait,” the old one said firmly. “We can do nothing except harm ourselves or be captured again as long as they are still here. Maddening as it is, we must not surface until tomorrow night, when they are gone. You are untrained in the craft, and I am but one. Coming out to face them is exactly what they hope we shall do.”

“And if, when they leave, they take her with them?” His eyes were glistening with hate and the pain of his frustration.

“Then we follow, and make our plans as we go. Succiu has already unwisely boasted that she and her army had somehow crossed the Sea of Whispers to get here, so we know in which direction to turn: east.”

“And just how do we manage to cross it?” Tristan asked, the rage once again building inside him, leaving no small measure of hatred in his voice.

“We learn how,” the wizard said, walking slowly toward Tristan as he spoke. “From the one person in all of Eutracia who may know.”

“Faegan,” Tristan said simply. “The rogue wizard.”

“Yes,” Wigg said, still carefully approaching him. “Tomorrow night we leave for Shadowood.”

“Shadowood?” Tristan asked, momentarily confused, as he watched the wizard oddly tilt his head. “I have never heard of a place called—“

Wigg immediately reached out to catch Tristan as the prince fell heavily forward, lost in a coma-depth sleep induced by the old wizard.

Wigg carried him to the bed, then stood there looking down at him for a long time. Into the face of the Chosen One. Regardless of the fate of Shailiha, your path will be very difficult, Wigg contemplated.

He extinguished the lamps, leaving the room shadowed in light coming from the flickering orange—and-red embers of the fireplace He sat down heavily at the lonely table, lost in his thoughts.

10

Succiu stood next to Natasha on the deck of her warship, sipping the delicious red Eutracian wine and relishing her victory. It had been over three hundred years since she had tasted either wine or personal success of such quality. She cast her eyes skyward, smiling. The three red moons were up, and they were all full, bathing sea and coastline in their familiar, rose-tinted glow and reflecting beautifully off the Paragon that now hung around her neck.

All their warships were moored close to her own, here in the curve of the Cavalon Delta, as ordered. They were completely deserted, even their Minion captains having gone ashore to take their share of the Eutracian women and participate in the destruction of the beleagured nation. The silent, dark, gently floating hulls were a grim reminder of their deadly purpose amid all the beauty that was Eutracia. That had been Eutracia.

We have done it, Succiu exulted silently. The princess and the stone are ours, and after tonight and tomorrow there will be little left of this nation.

The second mistress of the Coven turned her attention to the prow of her ship, and to the head of King Nicholas, impaled upon it. The seven other severed heads—those of Morganna, Frederick, and the wizards of the Directorate—had been similarly placed upon the prows of seven selected ships that lay at anchor nearby. She turned to Natasha, who was gazing intently at the coastline.

“It makes for quite a spectacular masthead, don’t you think?” Succiu asked.

“Indeed,” the other mistress said. “I sincerely hope that the vultures don’t do it too much harm before we sail. I would like to have it still displayed there when we return home in triumph.”

Succiu diverted her attention from the masthead to the shoreline of her former home. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked. “See how our work lights up the sky, my Sister?” The bright orange—and-yellow glow was reflected in the darkness of the nighttime sea.

It seemed that all of Eutracia was on fire.

Before them, the capital city of Tammerland was engulfed in an uncontrollable blaze. Other fires dotted the coastline, and she knew it would be only a matter of time before the cities had been razed, and the fires would go out. And all that would remain would be the dark gray soot of destruction, and the charred, foul scent of death.

Death by fire.

Some of the other, smaller fires were unique: Smaller and definitely better controlled, they seemed to burn endlessly, with a silent but gruesome intent all their own. Succiu knew that these would be the funeral pyres of the Minions, and the ceremonial burning of their fallen members would easily go on into the next day. It was their custom and their right, and the practice dictated that no dead Minion warrior should ever be left behind to be desecrated by the enemy.

Natasha sighed. “Failee will not be entirely pleased, you know,” she said seriously. “The Lead Wizard and the prince still live. And despite your orders, Kluge has yet to bring us their heads. I assume that we still sail on tomorrow evening’s tide, as per the First Mistress’s orders.” She paused, letting the import of her words sink in. “If we leave, and have not found them, what will you tell her?”

“I will gladly tell the First Mistress that it was her fault, and her fault alone,” Succiu said defiantly, her lip in a sneer and her eyes narrowed. “What you do not know is that we all told her, repeatedly, that the recalling of certain of the stalkers and harpies before the invasion was madness. All it could have done was alert the wizards to our continued existence, and enable them to prepare for us. And that was exactly what happened. Now, despite the fact that we were basically successful in our quest, the two who escaped us were the two worst possible of those who could have survived.”

“Why?”

Succiu took another sip of wine and turned to look into Natasha’s eyes. “ ‘Why?’ my Sister asks? I’ll tell you why. Because Tristan and Shailiha are twins, and the prince’s blood is the equal of, if not superior to, the blood of the princess. There has never been, nor will there probably ever be again, naturally occurring blood of such purity. And although he has not yet been trained in the craft, the prince has within him the power to perform such feats as have never before been seen. And Wigg was one of the most learned and powerful of the now dearly departed Directorate. As such, he was also one of their best teachers.” She leaned against the rail of the ship and returned her gaze to the mesmerizing fires on the coastline. “So you see, my dear, if there was ever a combination that was a danger to the Coven and to what we are ultimately trying to accomplish, those two Eutracian bastards are it.”

For a long moment they stood without speaking, interrupted only by the occasional, gentle slapping of the sea against the hull of their ship. It was finally Succiu who broke the silence.

“Have you had contact with her?” she asked Natasha.

“No, Second Mistress,” Natasha answered. “I was instructed only to attempt to contact the First Mistress if there was a problem of great importance, or if the mission had failed completely. I did not immediately consider the escape of Tristan and Wigg to be a problem of such magnitude. But now that I better understand, if you wish me to try—”

“No,” Succiu snapped. “There is no need to contact the First Mistress. We may yet be successful in capturing them. And even if we are not, they are still isolated here, in Eutracia, and have no way to cross the Sea of Whispers. If we must leave tomorrow night with our business unfinished, then so be it. I will take the responsibility of making the proper explanations to Failee.”

Natasha smirked as she thought of what she would have liked to do with the prince had she been given the chance. “A pity,” she said longingly, “since Tristan is still alive, that his reported talents could not have been put to better use.”

Since she was in a more businesslike than contemplative mood, Succiu dismissed the comment. “Have the forty Eutracians been arranged?” she asked. “We must have them to ensure our safe trip home. Make sure that they are handpicked and brought to the warships without fail before we depart tomorrow night. They will be killed just before we reach the area of the Necrophagians, so that their bodies will still be fresh. I have no desire to displease the Eaters of the Dead on our return home.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Natasha responded dutifully. “All will be done as you order.”

“There is just one more thing,” Succiu said, throwing her long black hair over her left shoulder and away from the night breeze coming off the sea. “You realize, of course, that if the wizard and the prince are not found and killed, you will be staying behind, here in Eutracia, for as long as it takes to do so.”

“I am fully prepared to do whatever is necessary to aid the cause,” Natasha said plainly, although obviously disappointed.

“Feel honored, Sister,” Succiu said. “You are the one who is best acquainted with the country, and you can disguise yourself by changing your appearance at will. We have taught you to cloak your endowed blood from Wigg, and you are protected by time enchantments, so time is of no importance. We will expect you to communicate your progress to us at regular intervals. If we do not hear from you, we shall consider you dead at the hands of the wizard. You must find and destroy both of them, no matter how long it takes. Don’t worry. You will eventually see Parthalon.”

Succiu raised a long, painted nail in front of Natasha’s face as she continued. “But hear me well, Sister. It is imperative, if at all possible, to kill the wizard first. Despite the purity of the prince’s blood he has not yet been trained in the craft, and poses a much smaller threat to your existence than does the Lead Wizard.” She gave Natasha a knowing smile and a brief nod of her head. “Who knows?” she added. “Perhaps if you do indeed kill the wizard first, you may get your chance to taste the pleasures of the prince after all. Before you kill him, of course.”

“Of course, Second Mistress,” Natasha agreed, smiling back.

They both turned their attention back to the coastline, and to the fiery destruction that was their handiwork. For a long time they watched in silence as an entire civilization was systematically raped, burned, and murdered virtually out of existence.

Succiu finally grew tired of the spectacle and decided it was time for more important matters. “Shall we check on our passenger?” she asked with a smile.

“By all means, Sister, lead the way.”

Succiu turned away from the bow of the ship and led Natasha back toward the gangway to the lower decks. Belowdecks the light changed dramatically, the narrow but ornately finished passageways bathed in the golden glow of the many oil sconces. Succiu finally stopped at a heavy mahogany door. “This is Sister Shailiha’s room,” she said, “and mine is just next door, where I can keep an eye on her during the voyage. I also brought several of my personal handmaidens from Parthalon to tend to her needs.” Without further ceremony Succiu tilted her head, watched the door unlock itself, and then purposefully walked into the room.

Upon following her stress into the stateroom, Natasha’s eyes fell upon a scene that was both sumptuous and chilling at the same time.

The room was grand, as beautiful as anything that she had seen on land in Eutracia, albeit smaller. The walls were of intricately carved mahogany, and rugs in a variety of patterns and colors covered much of the pink marble floor. Paintings and tapestries adorned the walls, and a magnificent oil lamp chandelier hung in the center of the room. Sofas, chairs, and tables had been strategically placed about, and in one corner was a very large, overstuffed, canopied bed with white silk sheets and pillows. The scent of freshly cut flowers filled the air. But the windows in the far wall were barred.

Then she heard a whimper.

Soft and low, it was a strange cross between crying and moaning. For a moment, as it wafted out onto the air of the room, Natasha could not detect the origin of the sound, but then Succiu walked over to stand before one of the sofas that had obviously been turned around and pulled before one of the barred windows on the far side of the room. Natasha followed—and found herself looking into the face of Shailiha.

The princess of Eutracia had been bathed, her hair washed and combed, and was now clothed in a magnificent maternity gown of the palest imaginable pink, with ornate white lace at both the neckline and the sleeves. Sewn into the left side of the bodice of the gown, radiating outward in the palest and finest of gold thread, was a Pentangle. The sign of the Coven.

Though Shailiha continued to moan softly, it was obvious that her eyes saw nothing as they stared out past the barred window at the burning coastline of her nation. Periodically she would clutch at her abdomen as if to remind herself of her unborn child, and then begin to cry again, rocking back and forth as she stared unseeing into the night.

Her mind is gone, Natasha thought. She turned to notice that several of Succiu’s handmaidens had entered the room and were standing next to the beleaguered princess, watching her with concern.

Succiu turned to the first of the girls. “Has she eaten?” she asked.

“No, my mistress,” the handmaiden replied. “She will touch neither food nor drink.” She gestured to a table on the other side of the room that was heaped with sumptuous-looking food. “She continues to refuse all sustenance. Sometimes we are of the opinion that she cannot hear us when we speak to her, and other times we think that we can see a hint of comprehension. She has not spoken since her arrival.”

“An unfortunate occurrence,” Natasha said as she looked down on the princess. “Failee will not be pleased to learn that she has been damaged.”

“It is of no concern,” Succiu said easily, surprising Natasha with both her comment and her tone.

“How can that be?” Natasha asked. “Is her cooperation not absolutely necessary once you have returned to Parthalon?”

“Oh, yes, indeed it is.” Succiu bent down to examine the princess’ eyes. Shailiha clutched her abdomen and shrank farther back into the sofa. “But I am not disturbed by her condition. In fact, I welcome it, as I am sure Failee will, also. Consider this fact: If her mind and memory are already partly gone, will it not be even easier to turn her thoughts to ours, thereby making our job simpler?”

“I suppose so, Sister,” Natasha said, rather confused. “But such things are beyond my ken, and should best be left to you and the First Mistress.”

Succiu looked at Natasha and smiled. “Quite so,” she said coldly.

Succiu reached out her hand to the princess, and Shailiha recoiled in terror and began to tremble. “I am not going to hurt you, my dear,” Succiu said in the kindest of voices. “We are your friends, and we want to help you. You are one of us, and you have been through a difficult time. All we want to do is make you better.”

Succiu was finally able to put her hand slowly upon Shailiha’s head, and after a time, the princess began to settle down. Succiu closed her eyes and seemed to be concentrating. At last she opened them again and removed her hand from the princess. “She is able to speak, but refuses to,” she said simply, “and her mind is undamaged except for the shock of the scene in the Great Hall. In addition there is some partial amnesia, but the unborn child that she carries is well.”

“How long will she be like this?” Natasha asked.

Succiu lowered her voice so that only Natasha could hear her. “That is difficult to say,” she whispered. “But the longer she is with us, and sees and hears no more talk or scenes of her previous life, the sooner she will come to accept the idea that she is one of us, and always has been.”

So that is how they will get her to join us, Natasha thought. By making her believe she was one of us all along.

Succiu turned to the head handmaiden. “Light all of the oil lamps in this room, and then cover and lock each of the windows so that she cannot see outside,” she said, her voice barely audible. “The longer she continues to gaze upon her lost homeland, the harder our job becomes. In addition, from this moment forward, there is to be absolutely no mention of why we came here or any reference whatsoever to this country or any of its inhabitants. To disobey this order is to invite a penalty of death.”

She bent down again and looked into Shailiha’s unseeing hazel eyes. “Our need for you is very great,” she said quietly. “And you will soon come to understand that you are one of us, and you will worship the Pentangle as we do. You would never have achieved your ultimate potential without us, and we will see to it that your coming life, and the life of your child, will be one of great luxury and power.”

Natasha watched as Succiu gently kissed the top of Shailiha’s head. The princess simply sat there, lost somewhere inside herself, unmoving.

“Until the morning, my Sister,” Succiu said meaningfully.

Then the Second Mistress led Natasha out of the room, leaving her handmaidens to their care of the newest mistress of the Coven.

11

He has been sitting like that for hours, Wigg thought, and he probably will sit there longer still. And even though time is our enemy, after what he has been through I have no right to hurry him in this.

Wigg stood quietly to one side of the graves, holding a lantern in one hand and the reins of the horses in the other. The lantern cast long and impossibly damp, eerie shadows across the ground around him. It was well past midnight, and it was still raining, just as it had been for the last three hours. He felt tired and dank, and the gray robes of his office stuck cold and clammy to his skin. Even the leaves of the trees drooped wetly down in the darkness as though possessed by their own sense of abject sadness.

Tristan sat on his heels in the wet grass of the royal cemetery, head bowed, before the row of freshly filled graves. His tears had finally stopped, but he had remained in this position for hours, his only movement the occasional fingering of the gold medallion around his neck. The medallion that held the broadsword and lion, of the House of Galland. The last gift given to him by his parents.

Wigg looked to the row of dirks in the quiver that had now been refilled, and to the curved, strangely beautiful sword of the Minions, which also hung across the prince’s back in a tooled black scabbard.

Earlier that day they had cautiously crept their way through the subterranean levels of the Redoubt, wondering at every turn of the hallways whether they would encounter either the mistresses, or more warriors of the Minions. Blessedly, they had not. Wigg had insisted that the prince wear one of the robes of the consuls, so that he could use the hood to hide his face. Even if the Mistresses and the Minions had sailed on last night’s tide as Succiu had said, Wigg felt it important that no one, not even the prince’s subjects, be able to recognize them. They simply could not be delayed by any reason or person. The stakes were too high. Once on the surface they were sure to discover many disturbing scenes of atrocity, and it would be Wigg, especially, who would be begged to use his powers to ease the suffering of those they encountered. And despite the fact that it broke the old wizard’s heart not to be able to help, he knew that his responsibilities lay elsewhere this day. He had carefully tucked his braided wizard’s tail down into his robe and pulled the hood up over his head.

They had first gone to the kitchens of the Redoubt, where Wigg had selected provisions and Tristan had packed them into stringed leather bags that could be carried on horseback. Then they had gingerly made their way to the gravitating chamber and came back up into the library Wigg had shown Tristan that day when the prince had first learned of the Redoubt. Slowly and carefully they made their way back to the center of the palace, but nothing could have prepared them for what they were about to experience.

The scene that they encountered upon reaching the Great Hall was beyond belief.

Hundreds upon hundreds of their countrymen, civilians and Royal Guardsmen both, lay dead upon the floor. Not a single Minion corpse was among them. Severed limbs and heads lay about everywhere, and the marble floor of the hall was completely awash in the still partly liquid and partly viscid blood of the victims. Whenever the wind came up and blew hauntingly through the torn curtains and smashed stained-glass windows on either side of the room, the blood that had not already dried moved back and forth in sluggish little crimson waves of death.

The men, children, and soldiers had simply been murdered where they stood. But the women, even the elderly ones and the very young girls, lay naked everywhere, the remains of the Minion warriors’ savage carnality evident upon each of their bodies and faces.

The bodies had already begun to stiffen, and their stench permeated the air.

And there was more.

On the walls of the Great Hall the Minions had painted, in blood, the Pentangle, the sign of the Coven. The numerous five-pointed stars stared back at the two guilty survivors with a kind of haughty and sneering victory, dominating the room in silent and enduring triumph as the redness ran down the walls in streaks.

Over the entire room hung the deafening, impenetrable silence of death, the only faint movement and sound coming from the torn, bloodstained curtains as they flapped haphazardly with the incoming breeze.

Wigg had wanted to leave immediately, but the prince shook his head and, instead, jumped up on the dais. The dais, the killing ground of everyone I held dear, he thought. He had walked to the white marble altar, still covered with the partly dried blood of Nicholas. The altar upon which you murdered your own father, he snarled at himself. Tristan touched a fingertip to a small spot of still-liquid blood and gently rubbed it between his fingers, blatantly crying aloud, and finally sank to his knees in pain. It was some time before he lifted his head once again.

It was then that he saw it.

The dreggan, in a black-tooled scabbard that Kluge had somehow left behind in the melee. Tristan recognized it immediately as the same sword he had used to kill his father. It lay innocently beneath one of the wizard’s thrones. He approached it carefully, almost as if the inert sword could do him harm, and then finally reached beneath the seat and took it in his hand. He held it to the light for a time, mesmerized by its dangerous beauty. Despite everything that had happened, he was oddly not repulsed by the sword. He had never seen or held such a magnificent weapon in his life.

Tristan removed his robe. Then, gripping the scabbard with his left hand and the hilt with his right, he drew the blade. It rang loud and clear in the silence of the room, and it seemed a very long time before its mercenary song of death faded away into nothingness. The blood from Kluge’s recent victims that had pooled in the bottom of the scabbard came out with the sword and began to run the length of the blade, dripping to the hilt, his hand, and finally to the floor.

Lowering the blade, he calmly walked to face one of the thrones. He pointed the curved, single-edged sword at the back of the chair, his index finger searching for and finding the little lever that he knew was there. Without hesitation he pushed it. The blade of the dreggan shot forward at least a foot, its point going all the way through the back of the chair and out the other side. He pushed the lever again, and in an instant the blade retracted to its previous position. Lowering the dreggan, Tristan stood looking at the awful, yet wondrous thing as if in thought. Then he placed the blade against his trouser leg and pulled it back, wiping it clean of the blood. He replaced the dreggan in its scabbard, then lifted the baldric over his head and put the sword behind his back, the strap across the front of his chest, the hilt rising behind his right shoulder, the curved and ever-widening blade reaching down his back to his left hip. He then readjusted the baldric so the handle of the sword reached fairly high and close to the side of his neck, so that he could easily grab either the dreggan or his throwing knives. He walked back to the altar and stood there silently for a moment, looking down at the place where his father had died.

I will kill him with this very sword. I swear by everything that I am, and everything that he has taken from me, the winged murderer will die at my hands. He put his robe back on and jumped down from the dais to look into the infamous raised eyebrow of Wigg. But the look of grim determination upon the prince’s face kept the old one silent. They each realized that there was no time to enter into an argument that the wizard would only lose.

Wigg turned and led them from the room.

After a brief stop at Tristan’s living quarters to retrieve all the kasi, the gold coin of the realm, that they could carry, they went out to the palace smithy’s shop, which was in an open area a little distance away from the castle. Wigg would have preferred to go to the stables first, so they could make a quick escape on horseback, if necessary, but Tristan had other ideas, and the wizard had no choice but to follow. Along the way they encountered not a single living soul. The blacksmith’s shop was utterly deserted. While the wondering wizard watched, Tristan went to the wall behind the hearth and removed several stones, exposing a hole in the wall. Reaching in, he withdrew a. black satin bag and laid it upon the ground. Wigg then realized what was in it. Dirks.

More of the prince’s steel throwing knives had obviously been hidden here against the day when the king might either have ordered Tristan to put them down for good, else ordered the smith not to make them anymore. The old one watched Tristan as he removed a dozen dirks from the bag. Quickly the prince placed them in the quiver that now lay against his back just to the right of the dreggan. Then he handed the bag to Wigg, and they continued on.

Tristan held his breath for what seemed the entire way to the royal stables. Besides Wigg and Shailiha, there was only one other living being in the world that he loved whom he hoped had not been killed. Pilgrim.

As they approached the stables, they saw increasing numbers of corpses of livestock. All manner of cattle, pigs, horses, chickens—indeed, almost any living creature that one could imagine to be domesticated—had died in the same grisly fashion as their owners. They came upon more than one horse that could be seen trying to get up without a hoof or a leg, screaming insanely in pain as only a horse can, eyes wild with agony and fear. Wigg always stopped before these pitiful creatures, turning up his hands and closing his eyes, giving them a painless, humane, wizard’s death.

As they walked through the gates and into the stables proper, Tristan started to become frantic. Dozens of dead horses lay all over the yard, including Shailiha’s bay mare, but the longer he looked, the more hopeful he became that Pilgrim was not among them. “Any two horses will do,” Wigg told him compassionately, hoping that the prince would give up the search so that they could be on their way. Time was critical. But Tristan was adamant, and Wigg could see the same look in his eyes that had been there when he had taken up the dreggan. “Pilgrim shall either be under me, or I shall know that he is dead,” Tristan said sternly, and nothing more.

Wigg watched as the prince placed two fingers in his mouth and blew a loud, piercing whistle. The Lead Wizard winced. The last thing they needed to do was to attract attention to themselves, especially if the invaders had not all left. Again Tristan blew the whistle, the one that always brought the stallion running. But there was nothing.

Tristan hung his head, and the tears once more began to come. They have killed my horse, too, he thought, rage boiling up in him again. And then he heard it.

Soft and low, from somewhere in the nearby woods came a single, frightened snort. Tristan looked up, not daring to believe. He placed his fingers in his mouth and again whistled, and this time, after a few moments, he heard a whinny and the sound of a hoof pawing the ground nervously. Finally, several horses stepped from the woods into the clearing of the stable grounds upon frightened, shaking legs. The one who led them out was Pilgrim.

The dappled gray stallion appeared to be uninjured, but there was a wildness in his eyes that the prince had never seen before. Several of the others had the same look in their eyes, as well as wounds that ranged from minor to serious.

Tristan walked slowly to his horse, talking to him gently. When he finally approached and tried to touch the stallion’s face, Pilgrim reacted sharply, drawing his head back almost as if in pain. But as Tristan kept talking, the horse began to quiet down. At last the stallion rubbed the length of his face against Tristan’s shoulder, almost knocking him down, and the prince knew Pilgrim was himself again.

Wigg and Tristan quickly examined the rest of the horses. Two were injured so badly that Wigg had to put them down, but the others looked as though they would be all right. Wigg saddled a black gelding, while the prince did the same to Pilgrim. After loading their mounts with the food and the bag of dirks, they secured the other horses in one of the paddocks, then left the stables.

Despite the urgency, they had agreed to take an unnecessarily long route through the city, veering away from the palace in order to remove suspicion of their association with it in case they happened upon anyone living.

The prince felt like a stranger in his own land as they rode through the city, clothed in a robe he was unaccustomed to, the hood drawn over his head so as to avoid being identified. “Steel your heart, Tristan,” Wigg had said as they started down the streets. “Be surprised at nothing you see. Keep your head down, avoid attention, and whatever you do, don’t stop to help, no matter how much you want to.”

Tristan had always relished the chance to be away from the castle, mingling with the citizens whenever he could, but as they entered the outskirts of Tammerland the people he saw and the city he once knew had been so horribly changed that he could barely recognize either.

Virtually every building was on fire. The men of the city had apparently long since given up trying to quell the flames, and many of them simply stood in the streets before their homes or shops, sobbing. The fires were everywhere, making it difficult to walk the horses down the streets. There were many places where Pilgrim and Wigg’s gelding simply refused to enter because of the flames, and they often had to resort to less-congested side streets or go around the flaming areas altogether.

Bodies were everywhere, both of the citizens and the Royal Guard. People had been dragged out of their homes in the dead of night and either killed on the spot, or raped and then killed. Body parts lay everywhere, and the imaginative nature of the Minions’ carnage had apparently known no bounds. Everywhere they looked, heads and bodies were impaled on hooks and pikes. Internal organs had been torn away from their hosts. Packs of dogs wandered the streets, snarling and fighting amongst themselves, and some had begun to tear into the bloated corpses that had yet to be disemboweled.

At one of the street corners they came upon a pile of human bodies, naked, all women. They had all been abused, killed, and then thrown upon the heap as if the attackers had tried to see how many of them they could take in a single day, and make the pile of rotting bodies as high as possible.

Crippled horses and livestock ran, walked, and hobbled down the city streets in a daze, many of them bleeding to death as they went. Vast volumes of blood, both animal and human, ran down the streets and dripped from the burning buildings. It seemed to have washed almost everything in a drying, red—and-brown stain that Tristan knew would never leave this land, even when it could no longer be seen. The Pentangles appeared, painted in blood, on almost every building. The arm and legs that had been used as fresh, flowing paintbrushes lay beneath the grotesque, red symbols.

But what struck Tristan as most horrible was the plight of the living.

Everywhere there was screaming. Women clutched to themselves the dead and bloody bodies of their loved ones. Men walked through the streets in a kind of trance, eyes wide open but unseeing, ears deaf, voices muted.

Some of the survivors were more rational, and Tristan was aghast when he heard what they were saying. “They’re all dead!” a shopkeeper exclaimed. “And it is being said that the traitorous prince has taken the head of his own father! Now we all shall die!”

“What will become of us?” an old woman begged to the sky. She was sitting in the bloody dirt of the street, holding a dead lieutenant of the Guard in her lap—her son, perhaps. His eyes had been gouged out. “Who will protect us now?” she screamed to no one in particular.

The living may yet envy the dead, Tristan thought sadly. And I am their prince, but am powerless to help.

He lowered his face in shame, trying to neither see nor hear, and simply let Pilgrim follow Wigg’s gelding at his own pace.

But his greatest disappointment of their ride was yet to come. Rounding a street corner, there came to his ears the sounds of broken glass, and more screaming.

The madness isn’t over, he realized in disbelief. Now we are doing it ourselves.

Gangs of thugs, unfettered by law or reason, had begun roaming the darkening streets, taking whatever they wanted, killing those who got in the way. They were looting the shops that had somehow survived the fire. Many of them were drunk, waving stolen broadswords of the Guard as they went. Down the dark alleys that the prince and the wizard passed by, the screams of women could be heard, and more than once Tristan saw dirty, leering men lined up at the alley entrances, waiting their turn.

Tristan spurred Pilgrim to catch up to Wigg. Alongside the wizard, he chanced a sidelong glance at the ancient profile.

“We have to help!” he whispered. “I cannot simply ride by all of this as though it has no importance to me!”

“Look around you, Tristan,” the old one whispered back. “Can’t you see what is happening? Do you think that this is an isolated event? Don’t be so naive. With the Royal Guard also went the last semblance of law and order. Look well, Tristan, and remember, for Eutracia and all that she once was is crumbling down around us.”

“Despite that, I cannot merely stand by!”

“You can, and you will,” Wigg snarled through gritted teeth. “Would you lose your life to save one woman when your sister is in danger, and the very future of your nation depends on what you do right now? Do you think that I would not like to extend my hand and stop the madness that I see before us?” Tristan had never seen such a look of angry frustration upon the old one’s face. “If we are noticed, all could be lost. You must do as I say.” Wigg turned his ancient, aquamarine eyes upon the prince, and Tristan could literally feel the wizard’s power. Then Wigg said something that Tristan would never forget. Something that stabbed him through the heart.

“You are not yet as strong as you will eventually become. Do not doubt me here, again, as you did that day on the dais. This time I cannot save you from yourself.” Tristan did not speak.

I have hurt him, the old one realized. But there is no other choice. The Chosen One must survive, no matter what the cost.

It was then, just as they rounded another corner, that they first encountered the stench.

It was unlike anything that Tristan had ever smelled, and it hung visibly in the air in alternating black—and-beige layers with a kind of sickeningly sweet, yet repugnant flavor. There had been very little wind that day, and both the odor and the drifting particles that comprised it settled slowly, permeating everything it touched with its foulness. Then they entered an open field on the outskirts of the city, and heard the crackling of fire. Wigg instinctively knew what it was. The Minions were burning their dead.

Hundreds of funeral pyres, glowing in the advancing night, lit up the sky for what seemed to be miles, the stench of the flaming corpses covering everything in a slowly settling dust of death.

As the last of the fires began to die in the gentle rain that had begun, the soft, deep rumble of thunder advanced across the ever-darkening sky. It seemed to Tristan that the entire world had begun to weep.

They rode on in the rain.

As their slow but deliberate circle began to take them back to the other side of the palace from which they had emerged, Tristan began to try to steel himself against what he knew he would encounter. He did not understand Succiu’s mind as well as Wigg did, but he had little doubt that her orders would have been followed regarding the bodies of the wizards and the royal family. As they came closer to the palace entrance, Tristan began to look around for a horse-drawn cart. He had no illusions about being lucky enough to find one that was harnessed to a still-living horse, but if he could obtain one large enough he would use Pilgrim to pull it, and walk along beside.

He would need it to move the bodies.

When at last he found one and jumped down from his horse, he could feel the old one’s eyes boring into the back of his head, as if to tell him that there was no time for this, and that they should leave. Tristan simply turned around, looking dead into the wizard’s eyes.

“I know what you are thinking,” he said, “and you’re probably right. But I will not leave here until I have buried them. All of them. You can go on alone, if you want, but this is something I must do.” There was no need for him to fight to maintain his determination. In this he would not be denied.

And so it was that they came full circle and approached the entranceway to the palace, and Tristan had to fight back the tears and the nausea when he was finally confronted with the sight that now lay before him.

It was almost midnight, and the dark, stormy sky gave no light. Other than the wizard and prince, the area was deserted. Torches had been lit to mark the spot of the spectacle, so that all those who passed would see it, day or night. Because they appeared not to consume themselves, Wigg assumed that the torches had been enchanted by either Succiu or Natasha.

Poles had been pounded into the ground, and the eight headless corpses were hung between them upside down by their ankles, naked. During the last two days, vultures and other birds of prey had picked away at their flesh. Some of the offal lay on the ground around them, rotting. The stench of death was very strong, wafting back and forth in the humid night air as they swung, silently, in the night wind, the wet rope above them creaking in between the soft rumblings of the storm.

From his horse Wigg looked up at the dusky edifice of the palace. Once this place had been full of gaiety, light, and love. It sat now, hulking and brooding in the night rain, looming over them like an enemy. The spires had all been relieved of their Eutracian royal flags and replaced, he noticed, with bright red flags that fluttered in the wind and rain. In the dark he could just make out the black Pentangle that appeared upon each one. The drawbridge was up, and the stone gargoyles that served as waterspouts high up on the edges of the roof were spewing rainwater from their mouths and back down to the earth. Dead soldiers of the Royal Guard lay everywhere, and the old one reminded himself that this had been the area of the worst fighting, as the terrible winged things had dropped onto the unsuspecting soldiers from above.

Tristan went to his knees before the bodies, sobbing. He stayed there for what seemed to be a long time before finally standing up.

Reaching over his left shoulder, he drew forth the dreggan with a single swift and determined stroke, and stood there listening to its now almost familiar ring slowly fade away into the night. Despite all of the damage that the awful thing had probably done in its lifetime, he found the sound it made in the air somehow reassuring.

For the first time this sword will be used for a compassionate purpose, and release some of its victims from their bondage, he told himself as he began to walk toward the poles.

From his horse, Wigg watched the prince as he strode toward the torches and the bodies, the dreggan firmly in his right hand. Those torches will burn for weeks if we don’t put them out, the wizard thought. Then, suddenly, the old one sensed something. It wasn’t quite like the feeling he got in the presence of unfamiliar endowed blood, but he could sense something, nonetheless.

He looked around in panic, but could find nothing amiss. There was no movement anywhere, except that of the prince, who continued to walk uncontested toward the lifeless bodies. Lightning tore across the sky. Wigg looked up just as it flashed, and for a split second the face of the castle was illuminated.

And then he knew.

The gargoyles! The large one in the center had never been there before.

“Tristan, come back!” he screamed against the rising noise of the storm. But the prince didn’t hear him. A sickening revelation shot through the wizard’s mind. They knew we were still alive, and that the prince would want to come back to bury the bodies!

Wigg stretched forth his hands to create a warp around Tristan and hold him in place, but it was too late. On his very next step Tristan had gone too far, and a red glow began to surround the area of the poles and the torches with the prince inside it. Tristan screamed, clutching his chest, and collapsed on the ground. Frantic, the old one tried to throw azure bolts of his own against the brightening circle of glowing red, but it was no use.

Their warp is in place, and I cannot penetrate it, he realized. Succiu and Natasha have combined their powers to create it, and I alone cannot destroy it. They knew we would come back.

The wizard tore his eyes from the prince long enough to look to the roof of the castle, and to the center gargoyle that crouched above the palace entryway.

To his horror, it began to move.

Slowly rising from its crouching stance upon both of its clawed feet, it stretched its muscles like a cat, and turning its head this way and that. Wigg watched, amazed, as the stone that encased it broke away from its body to reveal a dark green, scaly, winged creature with slanted yellow eyes, and sharp, equally yellow teeth. Small, useless-looking wings were upon its back. It stood upright on two powerful, bent legs, and its short but powerful arms ended in long, black talons. A curving, barbed tail led from the base of its pointy spine down to the ledge of the roof, and snaked back and forth in anticipation. It was at least the size of the prince, and it jumped off the ledge with ease, landing in the red-glowing circle just as Tristan was getting back to his feet.

And then, unbelievably, it spoke.

“I am a wiktor,” it said venomously, yet somehow also casually. The creature’s speech was perfect, almost eloquent, belying the horrific nature of its appearance. It pointed one of its talons at the prince. “And you shall not find me such easy prey as those ignorant blood stalkers or screaming harpies. I take great pleasure in what I do, and I am an expert craftsman. I am one of those whom the mistresses call upon when the task is to be very specific, and you must have great importance to them for one such as I to have been called forth and brought here to a foreign land.”

Hissing loudly, it slowly began to circle Tristan, its tail twitching. Lightning scratched across the sky, highlighting the thing’s grotesque features. Wigg sat nervously astride his horse, outside of the red-glowing perimeter, powerless to do anything but watch in dread.

Tristan lowered his eyes and pointed the dreggan at the thing’s head, his momentary pain gone. “And just what is it you intend to do?” he asked. “Talk me to death?” He knew that this creature was in league with the Coven, and if he couldn’t kill the sorceresses this night, then this horrible-looking thing would do. He relished the chance.

The thing called the wiktor smiled ominously, and Tristan saw green drool dripping down its face. “Your insolence will do you no good, mortal,” it said calmly. “I intend to eat your heart. Doing so is my passion, and I enjoy human hearts above all else. They have a certain—how would you say?—consistency and sticky sweetness about them all their own. It has been a long time since I have had one, and from the looks of you, I don’t think I shall be disappointed.” It let out another long hiss, and tilted its head as it looked at the prince.

Tristan knew this was no game. In a flash he reached for one of his dirks and sent it hurtling toward the thing, aiming for the center of its chest. But as if in slow motion, the wiktor simply reached out at the last possible instant and plucked it from the air before it could strike him. It held the knife up to the yellow light of the torches that surrounded them and examined it carefully, leisurely, hissing again to itself as it did so, still tilting its head back and forth maddeningly.

“Ah, yes,” it said, smiling, some of the green drool filming down over its yellow teeth. “Your beloved knives. The mistresses told me all about them. They’re rather well made, aren’t they? But, I fear, no use to you against me, dear prince. I shall keep them as a souvenir of your death.” Hissing again, it sneeringly dropped the dirk into the dirt.

And then, without warning, it launched itself at Tristan, covering the ground between them in an instant, teeth and talons extended, the yellow, slanted eyes now mere slits in the thing’s contorted face.

Tristan quickly drew the dreggan and spun completely around on one heel, just as Frederick had taught him, ending up alongside his adversary. But the wiktor was faster than anything the prince had ever seen, and it ducked below the deadly arc that Tristan cut sideways through the air. This was only the second time he had ever swung this blade in anger, and he immediately realized that its unusual length and width were slowing him down. “Make every swing count,” he heard Frederick’s voice tell him from somewhere in the past, “because you will tire, and each time you swing you will be just that much weaker than the time before. When the adversary is faster or stronger, time is nothing but an enemy.”

Again the wiktor rushed him, and again Tristan struck out with the sword, only to find that he had missed. Time after time the result was the same, and while the seeds of exhaustion began to grow in his aching muscles, the thing’s talons were coming ever closer to ripping into Tristan’s bare chest. Then the realization struck him. I’m playing his game, he thought. The wiktor wants to tire me first, to draw me out, so that he can toy with me before he takes my heart.

And then he knew what to do. But it meant that the wiktor’s desire to take his heart must overshadow the thing’s fighting instincts. He must tempt it to attack quickly, out of hunger, without thinking it through.

To Wigg’s terror, Tristan dropped the dreggan into the dirt and stood before the hideous thing in the red glow of the warp. He put his hands over his head in surrender, elbows high, and looked down at his boots in dejection.

“I cannot defeat you,” he panted breathlessly. “I can see that now. If I let you take my heart without a struggle, will you give me your word that you will let the wizard live? He is old, and his powers are failing. It is all I ask.” Dropping to his knees, he unlaced the front of his leather vest and pulled it open, his gold medallion glinting in the ghostly red light of the warp.

The wiktor tilted its head, smiling, and Tristan could see that its hunger was growing. The yellow eyes stared back at him wickedly.

“They told me that you would present more of a challenge,” it hissed, “but apparently even the mistresses can be wrong.” A pink, forked tongue darted out of the thing’s mouth and licked some of the green drool away from its face. “Prepare yourself,” it said. “I accept your offer.”

Tristan nodded resignedly and bowed his head slightly, just enough to give the impression of cowardice, as if he did not want to be able to see the wiktor when it reached inside him and tore out his heart. I beg the Afterlife, he thought, help me wait until the last instant. And then the thing came. Wigg watched in abject horror as the awful creature crossed the ground in a flash, talons extended toward the prince’s heart.

“Wait,” Tristan heard Frederick say, as the thing loomed up. “Wait, wait… now!”

At the last possible second, Tristan raised his right hand behind him and grasped one of the dirks. In a flash he held it forward with both hands as the thing ran at him, talons first, and they rolled over and over in the dirt and the mud. Wigg lost track of them for a moment in the red glow, and then, finally, the aura started to dissipate and he saw Tristan astride the wiktor, pushing the knife farther into the thing’s chest. Sensing that he could now penetrate the fading glow, the wizard ran as fast as he could to stand next to the prince.

Tristan stood, exhausted, looking down as green—and-yellow fluids started to ooze from the thing’s fissured chest. He picked up the dreggan, and this time it felt genuinely good in his hand. And then the Coven’s servant did something unexpected. The dying wiktor smiled.

“I will give the Coven your regards, Prince.” It coughed, sending some of the fluid from its mouth spraying into the air and down on the scaly green body. “We will see each other again, mortal,” it hissed. “And next time I shall win.”

Wigg started to raise his hand, presumably to finish it off, but Tristan gripped the old one’s wrist with a strength that Wigg had never felt in him before.

Tristan placed the tip of the dreggan between the wiktor’s eyes as the beast continued its sick smile. He leaned over the thing, looking directly into the slanted, yellow eyes.

“I don’t think so,” he said in a whisper. He touched the lever on the hilt of the dreggan, and the blade plunged forward, instantly cleaving the monster’s head in two.

Inexplicably, the thunder and lightning started up anew, seeming to scream out of the sky to the very spot the wizard and prince were standing over the dead wiktor. The lightning came in huge, strong, brilliant scratches, tearing endlessly across the sky, the wind whirling around them and picking up debris, flinging it everywhere at once. Finally the storm subsided, and quiet once again reigned.

Tristan stood there for a long moment, gazing at the dead creature, and then he held the dreggan in the air and looked at it, too, for a long time. Finally he ran the blade in the crook of his elbow between his biceps and his forearm to clean it, then slid it back into the scabbard.

They cut the bodies down and loaded them into the cart. Tristan took special care to load and cover his mother’s body first, using capes that had belonged to the dead members of the Royal Guard. Then followed the bodies of the men, also covered in the same fashion. Somehow the black coloring of the capes was more than fitting.

Before they left, Tristan quietly but sternly cut a limb from a nearby tree, cut off the branches, and sharpened each end. He pushed the limb deep into the earth beneath where the bodies had hung, and impaled the wiktor’s smashed head upon it, leaving the thing’s body on the ground nearby. If any of the Coven or their Minions had been left behind, he wanted them to know what had happened to their servant, and who had done it.

He turned and gave the old wizard a long look. Although there would be much to say about what had happened here, Tristan was in no mood to talk about it now.

There was more important work to be done.

They buried the bodies in the royal cemetery, taking the precaution to place them some distance away from the others, without markers, so that there might be less chance of tampering with them. It was these eight graves that the old wizard now stood over in the rain in the middle of the night, watching his prince as he grieved.

He has not moved or spoken for hours, Wigg thought. He has been through so much. If he doesn’t come back to me soon, I fear he may never do so.

And then the prince moved.

Wigg watched, perplexed, as Tristan removed one of the dirks from his quiver, still kneeling before the graves, the medallion dangling from his neck, and began to speak.

“True peace of mind comes only when my heart and mind are aligned with true principles and values,” he said quietly as he cried. “I shall forsake not, to the loss of all material things, my honor and integrity. I shall protect the Paragon above all else, but take no life except in urgent defense of self and others, or without fair warning. I swear to rule always with wisdom and compassion.” He bowed his head.

The oath of succession, the old one thought. The oath that he never wanted to take, he now takes upon himself willingly. Wigg wiped a tear from his eye. He is no longer my prince. He is now my king.

The old wizard watched as Tristan took the razor-sharp dirk and drew a cut across each of his palms. Quickly he replaced the dirk in the quiver, then bent over farther and made a fist with each of his hands, squeezing his blood over each of the eight mounds.

“I swear to you on all that I am, and all that I ever may be, that I will bring my sister and her unborn child back to this land,” he said, trembling, continuing to squeeze his endowed blood out of his palms and onto the soil. “And that when I do, I will accept the role that you had planned for me, and do the best that I know how.”

Tristan finally stood, the tears still coming as he faced the blood-topped graves.

“Good-bye,” Wigg heard him say softly to the fresh, wet mounds of earth.

Tristan turned and looked into the Lead Wizard’s eyes.

“And so it begins,” he said quietly.

They walked their horses out of the cemetery and started toward the northeast, to Shadowood.