The Gates of Dawn

13

Geldon and Joshua stood in the cool morning sunshine of the country called Parthalon, looking down at the city that for over three centuries had imprisoned all of those deemed undesirable by the Coven.

The Ghetto of the Shunned.

The Ghetto’s walls had been repaired, the dwarf noticed, and the drawbridge over the filthy, dank moat had been reconstructed. The drawbridge was raised and locked, seeming to haughtily reject all visitors to this once-desperate place. The flags of the Coven had all been removed, and from their perch high up on the hill, Joshua and Geldon could see movement upon the catwalks that lined the top of the wall. But the area surrounding the Ghetto was strangely abandoned, an eerie sense of quiet pervading it.

The figures standing guard atop the walls of the Ghetto were easily discernible to the dwarf. They were some of the winged warriors and former taskmasters of the Coven—the Minions of Day and Night.

Joshua and Geldon had not been able to come to Parthalon immediately, as Tristan had wished. After discussing their journey with Faegan, the three of them had decided it would be best for the consul and the dwarf to be delivered outside of the city walls, rather than inside. This would hopefully allow them to take stock of the situation before trying to enter. And since the wizard’s only calculations for the portal would exit them at Geldon’s destroyed aviary in the heart of the city, he was forced to restructure the spell slightly. Despite the proximity to the original destination, it took him three days of working day and night to produce the desired effect.

The trip through Faegan’s azure portal was dizzying, but worse for Joshua since it was his first experience. Faegan had instructed them that when they wished to return home they should go to the exact spot of their arrival at high noon, just as Geldon and the others had done the previous time, that day not so long ago when Tristan had become the new lord of the Minions. The wizard would re-create the portal and hold it open for an hour each successive day, until such time as they returned.

The dwarf and consul had then walked into the swirling maelstrom . . . and landed in the grass at the top of the hill. It had taken them both several moments to regain their bearings and for the dizziness to stop. But they were now themselves again as they looked at the city below, trying to decide what to do.

“It is amazing!” the consul exclaimed softly. “Just as you said it would be. Did the Coven truly banish anyone here who was not to their liking?”

“Oh, indeed,” Geldon answered, his eyes still locked upon the drawbridge as he wondered what to do.

“Why did the Coven send you here, if I may ask?”

Geldon closed his eyes for a moment. “I stole a loaf of bread,” he answered sadly. “A simple loaf of bread. My family was starving, and I was sent here to languish. I never learned what became of them, or whether I have any descendants still living. I suppose I shall never know. It was shortly after my internment that Succiu, second mistress of the Coven, found me here and made me her personal slave.”

His hand automatically went to his neck, where he had worn the jeweled collar for three centuries, until its removal by Wigg. “She made me wear a collar. At night she would chain me to the floor of the Recluse, the Coven’s palace.”

“I’m sorry, Geldon,” Joshua said.

“We have other things to worry about,” the dwarf said quickly. “As much as I hate to say it, our only option seems to be to walk right up to the drawbridge and demand that the Minions lower it for us.” He gave the consul a hard look. “You have no experience with these beings, so let me do all the talking. I can only hope that there are some of those still present who will recognize me as a friend of the prince. Under no circumstances are you are to display your powers unless I order it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, then,” the dwarf said with finality. “Let’s go.” With that the two of them began to approach the drawbridge.

As they neared the moat, about one hundred paces from the city walls, Geldon looked up to see two silver whirling disks flying toward them: returning wheels, the throwing weapon of the Minions.

He immediately grabbed the unsuspecting consul by the robes, stopping him short. The wheels, purposely underthrown, landed in the dirt at their feet. Geldon looked up to see the silhouettes of several dark, winged figures standing on the city walls, and he raised his hands high in a gesture of surrender.

The Minions would wish to speak first, to establish their control over the situation. Geldon gave the consul a tacit glance that spoke volumes. Joshua nodded.

“Come no closer!” a strong, masculine voice cried out from atop the walls. “We have express orders to allow no one near. If you persist in advancing, you will be killed! You have been warned.”

“I am Geldon, the emissary of the Chosen One, your new lord,” the dwarf shouted back. “I have come from across the Sea of Whispers to confer with you. This man next to me is Prince Tristan’s representative of the craft of magic. Are you going to lower the drawbridge, or must I return to Eutracia and tell your lord that you will not let the servants of the Chosen One enter?”

A long silence followed. Then, from atop the wall, came the next words.

“If you are who you say you are, you may enter. But first you must prove that what you say is true.”

Momentarily stymied, Geldon thought for a moment.

“Joshua, can you damage the drawbridge?” he asked the consul quietly. “For many of these warriors, violence is all they respect.”

“Yes,” Joshua answered. “I do not have enough power to destroy it completely, as Wigg or Faegan could. But I can surely cause it damage.”

“Good. When I tell you to, do so,” Geldon answered. He turned back to the figures on the wall. “Remove your troops from the area of the drawbridge,” he shouted. “For it is now you who have been warned!”

Complete silence followed for several moments as Geldon and Joshua waited. Then the dwarf nodded to the consul.

Joshua raised his hands. Slowly the familiar glow began building around them, and finally a small, azure bolt of energy flew from his hands toward the center of the drawbridge, making a great crashing noise as it hit. Splinters of wood careened and whirled into the air, some falling into the water of the moat.

As the smoke cleared, a neat hole could be seen directly through the drawbridge. The figures once atop the walls were gone. The drawbridge began to come slowly rattling down.

“You may enter,” a voice called out.

Geldon turned to look at Joshua. There was no going back now. Awkwardly they made their way across the sound sections of the shattered drawbridge. The scene that greeted them inside the city wall stunned Geldon.

Hundreds of Minion warriors were down on bended knee, just as they had been that day when they recognized Tristan as their new lord. And then, in a single, earthshaking chorus came the familiar oath.

“We live to serve!”

Hundreds of Minion warriors, kneeling before me—the onetime slave of the second mistress! Geldon thought in disbelief. But calmly, he said, “You may rise.”

Standing, the Minions were even more impressive. They were all large and muscular, most over six feet tall, some approaching seven. They were uniformly armed with both the dreggan and the returning wheel. They all seemed to have dark hair worn long; some of them had braided it down the center of their backs. Their uniforms varied slightly, but for the most part consisted of black leather body armor, with long leather boots and gloves. And over the top of each of their shoulders could be seen the tips of dark, leathery wings.

One of the larger ones stood before all of the rest, and Geldon took him to be the leader. He was tall, with brown hair down the back of his neck and a matching, dark brown beard.

“Are you in command here?” Geldon asked bravely.

“Yes,” the warrior answered. “I am Rufus. There are approximately fifty thousand of us here.” The warrior stood before the dwarf with a defiant gaze.

Geldon realized he must be supremely careful in how he handled this. A revolt by the Minions was not something they needed to deal with just now. “Is there somewhere in the shade we could talk in private?” he asked.

“Of course,” Rufus replied. After dismissing his warriors to their duties, he directed Joshua and Geldon to a nearby building, where they sat together on the porch.

“We come under the protection of the Chosen One’s wizards,” Geldon said calmly. He indicated the consul seated next to him. “This is my friend, Joshua. He is the Chosen One’s representative of the craft while I visit here.”

Rufus looked with curiosity at the young consul. “You say little,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Do you have no tongue?”

Joshua looked to Geldon, and the dwarf nodded. “Uh, er, yes, of course,” the consul answered politely.

Rufus snorted a short, almost insulting laugh, then turned back to Geldon. “At least it is good to know that you received our messages, asking for your help. That is why you are here, is it not?”

Geldon paused for a moment, his heart pounding. He took a deep breath. “Your messages?” he asked politely.

“Yes,” Rufus answered quizzically, furrowing his brow. “We considered sailing to Eutracia to express our concerns directly, as the armada we used to invade your land still rests intact at anchor just off Eyrie Point, waiting to be used. But it would have proven too problematic.”

Their armada is still intact, Geldon thought. But of course it would be! That could prove very useful.

“Many times we sent you requests for help by way of the enchanted pigeons.” He stopped for a moment, obviously perplexed. “Did the birds not arrive in Shadowood, as they should have? We stopped sending them out when the first ones did not return, since we began to fear for their safety and they are known to be very rare.”

Geldon’s heart sang. He had thought his beloved pigeons lost. How he had mourned them!

He had repeatedly risked his life to release them with messages to Faegan. When Kluge and his Minions had ransacked the Ghetto looking for any of the prince’s conspirators, the Minion commander had destroyed the aviary. To now discover that some of the birds had survived was news that the dwarf had never expected. The ones that had been sent to Shadowood must still be there, as the gnomes would not have known what to do with them or how to contact Faegan in the Redoubt. He could only hope they were being well cared for.

“The ones that remained here—where are they now?” he asked, trying to contain his glee.

“In the aviary, of course,” Rufus responded, still confused. “It was one of the first buildings we reconstructed upon the orders of our new lord.”

But before the dwarf could express his desire to see the new aviary, a cloud seemed to gather above, blotting out the sun. Geldon and Joshua heard a great rustling of wings and looked up to see several hundred Minion warriors flying overhead in pairs, each pair carrying between them some kind of litter. Geldon turned to the consul with questioning eyes, and then looked back up to the hundreds of flying Minions.

“What do they carry?” Joshua asked.

“These warriors are bringing us provisions,” Rufus answered. “Traax, the acting Minion commander, has regular shipments sent in from his base at the Recluse, just north of here.”

The consul and the dwarf watched in awe as the Minions wheeled and careened above them, then finally soared down. Flying very low to the ground they dropped their precious cargoes, then climbed back to the sky. When they were done, a giant mound of food and other supplies lay in the middle of the square.

The aviary would have to wait. It was Traax they most needed to see, and Geldon thought he had just found the fastest way to get there.

“Rufus,” he said, turning to the Minion officer, “can you command them to take us to our next destination?”

The Minion smiled. “Of course.” He immediately walked into the square beneath the circling warriors and motioned them down. Selecting two pairs of them and ordering them to stay, he sent the others back into the sky to wait.

“I wish them to take us to the Recluse,” Geldon said. He turned to the consul, seeing distinct horror on the younger man’s face. It was obvious that Joshua did not like this idea at all.

“Uh, er, isn’t there any other way to do this?” the consul stammered. “Can’t we just ride horses to the Recluse?”

“Look around you,” Geldon said impatiently, “and tell me how many horses you see here. Given the fact that they can fly, the Minions have very little use for them. Besides, it is a hard two-hour ride with horses. The other choice is a long four-day walk. So which do you prefer, eh? The walk of several days, or a free ride of only several moments?” Confident that his logic was inescapable, he stood defiantly before the apprehensive consul.

“There is another reason one should not travel across this land on foot,” Rufus said, a serious look darkening his face.

“And that would be?” Geldon asked.

“I think it better that you ask Commander Traax that question,” Rufus answered cryptically.

Geldon wondered what the Minion officer wasn’t telling him, but decided not to make an issue of it. Climbing aboard one of the empty litters, he beckoned the fearful consul to enter the other.

“Is there anything you would like me to tell Traax?” Geldon asked as he grasped the sides of the litter.

He heard Rufus let out a great belly laugh. Turning, Geldon saw that Joshua was only holding onto the litter with one hand, desperately covering both his eyes with the other.

“Just that it has been a most interesting morning,” Rufus shouted back.

That is something I can certainly agree with, Geldon thought as the litters began to ascend.

In mere moments, they were aloft.

14

The rose-colored light from the three Eutracian moons shone down brightly on the riders as they made their way along the narrow, familiar trail. They were heading up into the hills of the Hartwick Woods. The night was cold. The dew upon the fallen leaves and grasses of the forest floor had crystallized; the horses’ hooves crunched quietly down into the twinkling, silver prisms of water and light. The pine-scent somehow cleansed everything in that strange, yet familiar way only it could. These woods seemed to be the catalyst for so much that had happened in his life, Tristan mused. There was magic here. He could always feel its presence in this place as he could in no other—except, perhaps, the Caves. He drew a breath, reminding himself that the peaceful scene before him clearly belied the sad state of his beleaguered nation.

The prince, Shannon, and the wizard had taken consuls’ robes with them to fend off the cold and to disguise themselves should they encounter anyone upon the same path. But the likelihood of such a thing was not great. Tristan had therefore, to the intense but blessedly silent scowling of Wigg, removed his robe and tied it to the back of his saddle. He had no intention of not being able to reach for either his dreggan or his dirks—especially in light of the terrible news he had received regarding his status as a wanted man.

The three of them had spoken little since their departure from the Redoubt. Except for Shannon, of course, who seemed even more talkative than usual. Tristan knew that this was because the little man was frightened, and he really couldn’t blame him. But he would have preferred that the gnome be quieter. Shannon occasionally drank from his ever-present ale jug, raising objections from Wigg, who had never approved of the gnomes.

Perhaps Wigg could be distracted. Tristan spurred Pilgrim a little to come up alongside the wizard’s mare, just out of earshot of the gnome.

Turning to look at the lead wizard’s craggy profile, Tristan asked, “Wigg, may I ask you a personal question?”

Wigg did not look at him, instead keeping his attention directed into the darkness that lay before them. Tristan knew that the wizard would be trying to stay alert for the presence of endowed blood, such as that of a stalker.

“Given your impulsive nature, the asking is guaranteed,” Wigg replied calmly. “The answering, however, is not. Especially when the question is of a personal nature.”

Tristan thought to himself for a moment.

“How was it that you first met Failee?” he asked courteously, half holding his breath as he wondered whether the old one would answer him. He had been shocked to his very core to learn that Failee, first mistress of the Coven, had at one time been Wigg’s wife. There had never been any inkling of this fact until finally reaching Parthalon and bringing back Shailiha and the Paragon. And Wigg had never spoken of it since.

Wigg took a very long stream of evening air in through his nostrils, finally letting it out slowly. Tristan could virtually feel the wizard’s consciousness flowing back through three hundred years of time as the old one sorted through the kaleidoscope of his memories.

“That was a long time ago,” Wigg began, “and things were much different then. Eutracia was not as she is now—or should I say, the way she was before the reappearance of the Coven. Magic was still in its infancy, for we had not yet found the Caves, the Paragon, or the Tome. Women were allowed to learn the craft. For the most part an equal, if not always harmonious relationship between the genders had been struck regarding the use of magic. Unfortunately, however, it did not last. The balance of power went briefly to the women, just as Failee started her revolution.”

“What do you mean?” Tristan asked.

“What I mean is there was no monarchy, no Royal Guard, and very few formal laws. Birth records were not kept. Marriages were often prearranged. As you can imagine, this often added to the resentment some of the people felt—especially the young endowed. I can’t say I blame them. Arranged marriages are a barbaric custom, one that was outlawed after the war.” He paused for a moment, shifting slightly in his saddle and gathering his thoughts.

“Anyway,” he continued, “as I said, the Paragon had yet to be discovered. Still, what magic there was ruled the land, not law. It was vitally important that no faction of endowed blood gain a stranglehold over any other. That is why the monarchy was created, and why the wizards eventually imposed the death enchantments upon themselves, to keep them from practicing the Vagaries. In this manner the sovereign would not need to concern himself that the hunger for total power would again erupt among the endowed. We could no longer take that chance after the sorceresses’ failed civil war.” Wigg pursed his lips in thought for a moment.

“However,” he added, “the newly formed Directorate, no matter how brilliant its members eventually proved to be, was not without its mistakes. I now believe that our prohibition against women being trained in the craft was an unnecessary, gender-driven overreaction to the agonies of the war. But, for right or wrong, the custom was ultimately accepted.”

Tristan thought for a moment. “That’s how you and Failee met, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. “Your marriage was arranged.”

“Yes.” The wizard sighed, smiling slightly. “Failee’s blood was very highly endowed, as is mine, of course. She was beautiful and brilliant. But then her madness set in, and she began to turn. She left me and founded the group of sorceresses who ultimately chose the Vagaries as their weapon, and would later lay such waste to the land.”

Tristan vividly remembered Failee. She truly had been a beauty, just as Wigg said, with an hourglass figure and deeply lustrous, hazel eyes. He could easily understand the attraction the young wizard of the time would have felt for her, arranged marriage or not.

“And there were no children,” Tristan said softly.

“No, there were not,” Wigg replied rather sadly. “We were not together very long. After the war, I often wondered if she had been purposely keeping herself barren. Perhaps it was the madness, or perhaps she had come to hate me so much that she couldn’t bear the thought of ever having my child. I suppose I will never truly know. Like so many things of those days, the dust now lies so deep upon my memories that it is difficult to see things for what they really were.”

Saying no more, Wigg altered their path a bit, and the prince realized that the wizard intended to make a detour to the grave sites. Tristan was pleased. Wigg had never visited the place since that fateful day he and Tristan had first buried the bodies, and the prince hoped that by going there, the wizard’s heart would be comforted as his had been. Perhaps it had been this talk of the past that had prompted his decision. Or perhaps Wigg had wanted to go there since the determination had been made to visit the Caves. But as far as the prince was concerned, Wigg’s personal reasons were just that.

Tristan turned around to check on the gnome and found him falling behind. Shannon’s robe was several sizes too large and his face peeked out from its depths as though he were hiding in a cave. The gnome was clearly quite tipsy. He slid around drunkenly in his saddle, which was far too big for his little bottom, trying to maintain his balance. He waved one hand at the prince, then almost fell off, grabbing the pommel and righting himself at the last moment. He hadn’t spilled a drop of the precious ale. Beaming proudly, he raised the jug in triumph.

“That’s enough!” Tristan hissed. “I can’t have you unable to find your way back! I want you to put the jug down now!”

Glowering at the prince from the depths of the hood, the irascible little man did as Tristan asked. He rather defiantly corked the jug, then awkwardly tied it to the back of his saddle. Wigg turned to smirk at the prince in obvious agreement. Then they approached the clearing that marked the area of the graves.

Wigg’s expression took on a sad darkness as he stopped his mare and dismounted. He took a deep breath, looking out into the clearing. Finally he walked slowly to stand by the graves, the rose-colored moonlight casting his larger-than-life shadow across the deep grass.

Tristan brought Pilgrim to a quiet stop at the clearing’s edge. I have already had my own quiet reflections in this place, he thought. He touched the medallion that lay round his neck. It is now time to let the wizard have his.

Shannon finally caught up and saw the robed figure of Wigg in the clearing. The wizard’s head was bent down, and his silent presence was surrounded by the silver prisms of frost that lay upon the forest floor like scattered, rose-colored diamonds. Shannon for once remained blessedly silent.

As Wigg stood there in the moonlight, Tristan could not help but again be reminded of the woman he had met here. The memory of the myrrh in her hair came back to him.

Who in the name of the Afterlife was she? he wondered. I cannot remember ever seeing a woman as beautiful. Not even Narissa, the Gallipolai of Parthalon.

He knew in his heart that he would never see the mysterious stranger again. She would no doubt find some other way to take her life before that could ever happen. Perhaps she was dead already. She had seemed so determined to end it all, her demeanor suggesting she had experienced a great deal of pain in her life. He shook his head a bit, thinking of what a waste her death would be.

Finally walking out of the clearing, Wigg remounted his mare. Without saying anything to each other the three of them again set upon their path for the Caves.

They had not gone much farther when the lead wizard suddenly stopped his mount and held up his arm, indicating that the others should stop and remain silent. Tristan watched him bow his head and close his eyes. After a brief moment, Wigg looked seriously at the prince.

“There is endowed blood ahead,” he said quietly. “It is a type I have never before encountered. We could go around it, but I feel we should investigate. It may have a great deal to do with our problems.”

“Can you tell who it is?” Tristan whispered.

“No,” said the wizard. “But the presence is strong. Follow me closely, and do not speak.” They started to move.

They had gone perhaps another half league when Wigg stopped again and dismounted, silently motioning for the other two to do the same.

At the top of a small rise, Wigg beckoned them to lie down on their stomachs. Crawling forward on the forest floor, they slowly approached the crest. The depression in the ground that lay below them was rather large, and what they saw within its borders staggered them all. The clearing was full of Joshua’s birds of prey.

Tristan’s jaw dropped at the sight. He had never before seen anything quite like this, and doubted he ever would again.

He quickly counted the birds, finding fifteen. Each was at least the size of a man, and their bodies and long wings were covered with leathery, reptilian skin instead of feathers. They had exceptionally long, dark claws. They stood upright upon what appeared to be very strong legs.

What fascinated him the most were their eyes. Each of the birds’ bright red orbs was located far to the side of its head and could rotate in virtually any direction, even opposite directions at once, probably giving them incredible eyesight. The overall effect was horrifying. Their movements both birdlike and incredibly fast, the things often tilted their heads quickly this way and that to enhance their view. Then Tristan took in the entire scene, and his breath caught in his lungs.

The birds were standing guard over about a dozen captive consuls of the Redoubt.

The men, each still in his blue robe, were in varying states of injury. Most of them simply lay upon the ground, terrorized by the great birds glowering over them. Occasionally one of the things would find a consul trying to edge his way out of the clearing, and with a great shriek would rush to him and strike him hard with the bony protuberance that ran down the center of its long, angular head, herding the hapless consul back to the center.

The chilling scene made Tristan’s blood churn, summoning him to kill them all. He silently drew his dreggan, laying it in the grass by his side. He then looked over to Shannon, to see the gnome shaking uncontrollably with fear.

Wigg looked into Tristan’s darkened expression. “Under no circumstances do we interfere in this!” he hissed, as if reading the prince’s mind.

Tristan couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you mad?” he whispered back angrily. “In case you haven’t noticed, those are consuls down there! Do you really expect us to simply watch and do nothing?”

“That’s exactly what I expect us to do!” Wigg growled softly. He clearly meant to have the upper hand. “Don’t you think I would like to try to save them from whatever fate these creatures have in store? Of course I would! But there are fifteen of those beasts down there, and we don’t know their power. In addition, our mission to the Caves must take precedence! Nothing can jeopardize that! The very fate of both our nation and the craft hang upon us successfully retrieving the Tome. If we stop to interfere in this, all might be lost for the sake of a precious few. Besides, I believe if these creatures truly wanted our people dead, they already would be.” He paused for a moment, the pain of his difficult decision clearly registering on his craggy face. “No,” he whispered finally, his tone a bit softer. “We wait, and we watch.”

“And just what will that accomplish?” Tristan asked angrily.

“We will learn all we can, for I have no doubt we will encounter these things again. All that we can glean here will eventually prove useful, I assure you.” Wigg glanced down to Tristan’s dreggan as it glittered sharply in the light of the moons. “You will yet have your chance,” he added softly. “But not today.”

Tristan’s jaw tightened, and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the hilt of his sword in frustration.

It was just then that Shannon, still shaking with fear, accidentally brought his hand down upon a dry branch. As it broke beneath his weight, the snapping sound it made reached out through the night air and into the clearing. The awful birds suddenly came to attention, their grotesque heads turning this way and that.

Tristan froze, holding his breath.

Several of the awful things stretched their long wings and half flew, half jumped into the trees at the farthest edge of the clearing. Their speed was astounding. Perching almost gracefully upon the bending branches, they closed their wings, becoming quite still. The silence surrounding this place was suddenly overwhelming, for now even the captive consuls did not move. And then the creatures’ eyes began to glow even more brightly.

The red within their orbs became brighter and brighter, until it was actually painful to look at. The beams of red light shot from them, tearing across the clearing and into the night. The intensely focused tunnels of scarlet illumination were so vivid that Tristan and the two others were forced to turn their heads.

They’re looking for us, the prince realized.

The three of them slid back down behind the crest of the knoll just as the scarlet beacons shot out in their direction. Once behind the lip, the prince looked up to see the red lights shooting crazily to and fro, crisscrossing almost constantly as they searched out any sign of movement. It seemed to go on for an eternity, imprisoning the three of them there. Finally the crimson beacons vanished. At an approving nod from Wigg the three of them slowly made their way back up to the crest and peered over it cautiously. The hideous birds were all back on the ground, again tending to their containment of the consuls.

Why are they doing this? Tristan wondered. Joshua said that they have the power to fly the consuls away. So why do they stay here, in this one place? Almost as soon as he thought the words, the prince got his answer.

Many of the birds turned their heads to one side of the clearing. Looking toward the edge of the glade, Tristan squinted into the darkness, trying to see whatever it was the creatures were looking at. A figure upon a horse appeared from out of the woods and rode slowly into the midst of the stricken consuls.

The birds were not alarmed, Tristan realized. They knew the rider.

The fellow jumped down from his horse, the spurs at the heels of his boots jangling lightly. Walking in between the various consuls, he began examining them closely. He was tall and lean, and looked to be dressed in brown leather. A dagger hung low at his left side, tied down to his thigh. He carried no sword. The cruel face that showed up in the rose-colored moonlight was sharp and angular, revealing sallow eyes and gaunt, sunken cheeks. His unkempt hair was long and dark. Then he turned just right in the moonlight, allowing the prince to see the miniature crossbow that was laced along the top of his right forearm. Tristan’s endowed blood immediately began to swirl hotly in his veins.

Scrounge.

Wigg turned to the prince, his raised eyebrow telling Tristan without the need for words that he was not to move, no matter what happened. His lips in a snarl, the prince could hardly contain his anger. Nonetheless, he nodded a curt agreement back to the old wizard and turned to lock his dark eyes upon the assassin in the glade—the man who had become the object of his unyielding hatred.

Scrounge stood before one of the larger birds. “They are in good condition this time?” he asked. “None of them are damaged severely?” The bird he was addressing tilted its grotesque head and made a harsh call into the night, apparently answering.

They understand, Tristan realized, amazed. These birds are not simple, mindless beasts. They can actually think!

Scrounge smiled at the awful thing. “Very well, then. Let’s begin.”

The bird began extending and retracting its deadly-looking claws, as if in apparent anticipation of what was to come, and then jumped upon one of the consuls lying on the ground. Straddling him, it pinned his arms to the earth with its long, dark claws. Another of them did the same to the consul’s feet as the remaining birds began to contain other men. One bird kept watch over those consults who were not yet restrained.

Scrounge smirked. He removed a dagger from inside his shirt, rather than reaching for the one at his side. In the bright moonlight the prince strained his eyes to look at the blade. It did not appear to be stained yellow. And then, with the methodical, painstaking precision of an expert butcher, the assassin began his grisly work.

Bending down, Scrounge reached for a pinioned consul’s right arm and pulled back the sleeve of his robe, exposing the tattoo of the Paragon. The consul tried frantically to get away, but he proved to be no match against the strength of the two horrific birds. With four quick, surgical strokes Scrounge excised the tattoo completely as the consul’s screams reverberated through forest. Then Scrounge lifted the tattoo, impaled on the end of his dagger, into the moonlight. He smiled as if it were some bloody, sick prize he had long coveted, then walked back to his horse and retrieved a leather satchel from the back of his saddle. He deposited the tattoo into the satchel and brought it back to the center of the clearing with him.

The consul he had just cut fainted. Scrounge and the birds ignored him as if he did not exist. Instead, Scrounge selected another of the captives and began the same process, the screams commencing anew into the cold night air.

And so it went, one victim after the other, the great, obscene birds holding down the consuls while the sadist employed his dagger. The screams and the begging ripped into the hearts of the wizard, the prince, and the gnome as they watched silently, helplessly, from the knoll.

Wigg lowered his head in the midst of all the madness, tears coming from his eyes. He looked over at Shannon and the prince and again shook his head, silently telling them both that they must also do nothing, despite how much it hurt. Tristan’s eyes were not full of tears. Instead they held the same kind of darkness Wigg had seen in them whenever the Chosen One had thought of Kluge, the previous commander of the Minions of Day and Night.

Despite how much Wigg wanted to reach out a hand to try to stop what was happening, he was still unsure of the birds’ powers. He looked over again into Tristan’s face, knowing how hard it was for him to remain still.

He will face Scrounge before this is all over, Wigg thought. And when the time is right, I will not try to stop him.

And then, blessedly, the assassin’s work was finished.

Scrounge picked up all of the tattoos from the ground, carefully placing them into his satchel. Turning to the birds, he said, “Take these consuls to the master. And be careful with them. They are no longer to be harmed. Should any of you drop one, you will pay for your mistake with your life. Go now.”

With that each of the great, awful things grasped one of the consuls firmly in its claws. Tristan noticed that the birds now seemed to be concerned for the men, rather than simply trying to contain them in the glade. They took the greatest of care when gripping them with their long, black talons. Then they flew up and away. For a moment their silhouettes, bizarre-looking with the consul’s bodies dangling below their wings, flashed across the rose-tinted light of the moons. As a group they wheeled into the dark sky and were gone.

Scrounge remained alone on the blood-stained grass in the middle of the clearing. For a moment he simply stood there, looking at the moons, a wicked smile creeping across his angular face.

Placing one of his hands into the satchel, the assassin ran his fingers luxuriously through the twelve bloody pieces of human flesh he had obtained. He then walked back to his horse, tied the satchel to the back of his saddle, and galloped away. The sound of his mount’s hooves eventually retreated into nothingness.

Someday, Tristan swore to himself as he gripped the hilt of his dreggan.

With another nod from the wizard, the three of them carefully walked down into the clearing. Blood could be seen everywhere—far more than they had noticed from their hiding place. The redness lay like a specter of defeat, adding to the sadness each of them sensed as they stood in the spot where the consuls had suffered.

“Why?” Tristan asked the wizard angrily. “Why would anyone do such a thing? And where did these awful birds come from? I can now completely understand Joshua’s fear.”

“Indeed,” Wigg said simply. He squatted down, taking some of the consuls’ blood between his fingertips. He examined it closely in the moonlight.

“But the other question is ‘how?’ ” he continued. “How was it that the consuls did not try to use their gifts and fight back? Did you notice how powerless they seemed to be in the face of those things?”

The wizard stood up, turning his bloody fingertips to the light of the moons. A sudden flash of recognition came over his face. “Tristan,” he called softly. “Come here.” The prince walked around Shannon to where the wizard was standing.

“Tell me,” Wigg said, holding his bloody fingertips before the prince’s eyes. “What do you see?”

“All I see is the blood of the consuls upon your hand,” he answered. “What more would there be to see?”

“Perhaps nothing more to see, but much more to be known from the seeing,” Wigg answered cryptically. “Look at the blood again. Think.”

Another test, Tristan thought to himself.

He could not fathom the wizard’s reasoning. Layers of thought and deed, he reminded himself.

He stood there, perplexed. Then something tugged at the back of his mind, and he realized he had the answer.

“The blood is not moving,” he breathed, unashamedly fascinated at his own discovery.

“Exactly.” Wigg nodded. “And why is this significant?”

Tristan’s mind went back to that day in the Redoubt, when Wigg had told him so much about himself, his blood, and his destiny.

“If the blood of the endowed does not move, it can only be for three reasons,” he said slowly. “First, its owner could be dead. Second, the endowed was never trained, as is the case with Shailiha and me. Or third, he has for some reason lost his powers—the blood returning to an inert state. Since we know the first two reasons are not possible, it must therefore be the third.” The importance of his statement hit him all at once. “The consuls have somehow been stripped of their powers,” he whispered, not even believing it himself.

“Well done,” Wigg replied. “But the question remains ‘how?’ How could someone or something strip all of the consuls of their power? And if the cause is a blanket incantation, covering all of them at once, then why has Joshua not lost his powers, as well?” he asked. The wizard paused, rubbing his chin with his clean hand.

“I believe Joshua has not lost his gift because he has been in seclusion with us at the Redoubt,” he continued. “At first, when I saw that the consuls were not using their gifts to try to fight off the birds, I concluded that it was due to the weakening of the Paragon. Because their blood is less endowed than ours, any variance in the quality of the stone would affect the consuls’ powers much more quickly—far more drastically than it would mine or Faegan’s. Compared to us, the rate at which the consuls would lose their powers would be virtually exponential. But now I’m not so sure that the decay of the Paragon is the only reason.” Wigg paused, lost in his thoughts.

“In addition,” he added, “Joshua told us that the squad he was with tried to use the craft to fight off the birds. The means that whatever took their powers did so after that incident. This must be yet another reason why Joshua retains his gift. For that we should feel thankful, for we shall need all of the endowed blood on our side that we can muster.”

“And all of this means?” Tristan asked.

Wigg’s face darkened. “What all of this means is that whatever we are up against is growing in its power,” he said softly. “And probably continues to do so with each passing moment.”

Tristan looked around at Shannon, finding that the gnome was still speechless. Curious about something Wigg had said, he turned back to the wizard. “What is a blanket incantation?” he asked.

Pursing his lips, Wigg took a long breath in through his nose. “A blanket incantation is one designed to influence more than one person at a time, in exactly the same manner. If, for example, I wished to have everyone at a dinner party believe that the common gruel being served to them was Eutracian pheasant under glass, the incantation used would affect them all at once, in the exact same way. A ‘blanket’ incantation, if you will, ‘covering’ them all. Such spells can be very useful, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“You also used your powers to mask our blood from them, didn’t you?” Tristan asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” Wigg answered. “At first I could not be sure whether the birds had the power to detect endowed blood. I masked our blood anyway, just to be on the safe side, but I now believe that they do have this ability. How else would they be able to find and hunt down the consuls? In any event, I’m glad they did not find us with those very interesting eyes of theirs. Yet another curious topic . . .”

“But why take the consuls at all?” Tristan asked. Suddenly realizing he had been wielding his dreggan all of this time, he quietly replaced it into its scabbard. “And what would Scrounge want with all of the tattoos? Are they simply some form of sick, twisted proof of his conquests?”

Wigg looked up at the moons. “I don’t know why the consuls are being taken,” he answered simply. “I only wish that I did. But as for the tattoos, perhaps that is not really what they seek. Perhaps it is the consuls, without their tattoos, who are for some reason the true prize.”

Above, the inky black of night was beginning its daily retreat into the softer, more fluid shades of pink and orange that would soon accompany a beautiful sunrise. Tristan knew that the wizard would want to get under way again before they lost their cover of darkness.

Remembering Scrounge’s final words to the flying creatures, though, he found he had one more question.

“Wigg,” he asked, as the wizard began to wipe the blood from his hands, “who is the ‘master’?”

His face darkening again, the wizard stopped what he was doing and looked the prince in the eyes. “There have been many masters, Tristan,” he said softly. “Faegan and I are but two of them. Some of them I have known, and many of them I have not. Only time will tell. But what I can tell you is that we are up against someone or something of inordinate power—the likes of which I have never seen. And our odds of surviving this entire situation do not appear to be particularly good.”

With that the wizard began to walk out of the clearing to retrieve their horses. The prince and gnome followed, their footsteps sadly trailing the blood of the consuls as they went.

15

As Faegan wheeled his chair down the labyrinthine halls on his way to the princess’ quarters, his mind turned over endlessly. So many problems had so quickly presented themselves to the small group of people living here in the Redoubt. The price on the Chosen One’s head, the disappearance of the consuls, and the sudden emergence of Joshua’s birds of prey all weighed heavily on his mind. But no problem concerned him as much as the decay of the Paragon.

He and Wigg had properly prepared the stone so that it might take a new host, and Faegan had put it on, hiding it beneath his robes. He had dutifully checked the Paragon several times since Wigg and Tristan had left for the Caves. Any subsequent change in the color of the jewel was still undetectable to the untrained eye. Nonetheless, he could sense the minute decay of the stone. The several months he and Wigg had estimated would rid the stone of its color would pass quickly, indeed, unless the process of decay could somehow be reversed. His sense of dread increased with every moment of every day.

He turned his gray-green eyes to look at Shawna the Short, Shannon’s wife, who was patiently walking alongside his chair. He had asked her to accompany him to the princess’ room so that she might stay with the baby while he and Shailiha went about their business. Business that the wizard felt was long overdue.

Shawna the Short was an incredibly hard worker. Her hair was gray and tied at the back of her head in a bun, so that it would never interfere with her tasks. The simple dress she wore was covered in the front by a white apron that she washed out every night. Her no-nonsense shoes were flat and sturdy. Her blue eyes and strong chin showed a fierce independence, and Faegan had learned to rely on her very much over the last three hundred years. He had also come to love her as he would a daughter.

At last they arrived at the princess’ door, and the wizard knocked softly. At the sound of Shailiha’s voice he narrowed his eyes, opening the door with the craft, and wheeled himself in.

Shailiha was at her loom, and both the wizard and the gnome wife could begin to recognize the pattern that had begun to take shape in the woven lengths of thread. It was clearly a representation of a king and queen—her parents, he assumed. They were standing side by side in one of the great rooms of the once-sumptuous palace above.

Faegan suddenly realized that this was Shailiha’s way of dealing with her grief in this massive, lonely place. The young woman had been so used to light, gaiety, and love in her previous existence. It was apparent to him that her work at the loom was, at least in some small way, an attempt to relive those days. Smiling at his sudden insight, he found himself wholeheartedly agreeing with her methods.

She deals with her pain through the process of creation, Faegan thought. And Tristan dealt with his personal tragedies through the process of destruction—the killing of the sorceresses and the commander of the Minions of Day and Night. He paused in his thoughts for a moment, still regarding the lovely young woman at the loom. The Chosen Ones. So alike, so different.

Shailiha turned from her work and smiled at the two visitors. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully, rising and walking to them. She wore an off-white gown, with ivory satin shoes. A matching string of pearls lay around her neck, accompanied by the gold medallion she always wore.

She gave the elderly wizard a quick kiss on the cheek, then did the same for Shawna. “I am glad you have come,” she said. “I was just about to take the baby for a walk. Would you like to join me?” Faegan smiled, hoping that the blush on his cheeks wasn’t noticeable.

Shawna pulled a chair up before the princess and stood upon it. Without asking for permission, she rather grumpily began rearranging the way Shailiha’s dress lay upon the princess’ shoulders. Muttering under her breath, she tugged at the material until it was more to her liking—as if the princess were somehow her own personal charge. Getting down off the chair, she then looked into the crib to check on the child. Apparently satisfied, she started on the room itself, carefully fussing with things that were already in perfect order, like an old, contrary mother hen in need of something useful to do for her brood of chicks.

Shailiha shook her head and laughed. “You really needn’t do all of that,” she exclaimed. “The room is just fine as it is. So is Morganna. How you fuss over us!”

Shawna turned around to face the young woman. “You know how much I care about you,” she snapped. A short, knowing smile came to her lips, quickly vanishing behind the deceit of her supposed sternness. “Besides, you wouldn’t take these duties away from a poor, broken-down, three-hundred-year-old gnome, would you?”

Shailiha winked at Faegan. “There’s nothing broken down or old about you,” she replied. “You can do the work of a hundred. I’ve seen you.” With that she let the little woman alone, smiling as Shawna happily went about her loving but quite unnecessary labors.

Faegan cleared his throat. “Actually, I was hoping you would take a walk with me,” he said simply. “There is something I would like to show you. But I think it best you leave Morganna here. That is why I brought Shawna with me. So that she could look after the baby while we are gone.”

“I would be honored,” Shailiha answered. “But what is it you wish to show me? Will I be impressed?” She lowered her voice and raised one eyebrow high into the air in an obviously satiric imitation of Wigg. Faegan couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

“Yes,” he said. “You will be impressed!”

“Very well then, go along now,” Shawna said from a corner of the room as she began furiously dusting a shelf near the loom. “Go and do whatever it is you have to do. Just leave me and the baby in peace.”

Smiling at each other, the princess and the wizard left the room to negotiate the endless halls of the Redoubt. They talked of Morganna and of Joshua as they went, and of the trials that Wigg and Tristan had gone through to bring both the Paragon and the princess back to Eutracia. Her face darkening slightly, Shailiha also mentioned the loss of her husband and her parents. But she quickly regained her composure as they finally arrived at the door Faegan wanted.

He smiled at the princess. “Brace yourself. What you are about to see will, I’m sure, bring a smile to your face.” And with that he again narrowed his eyes, commanding the doors to open. As the wizard wheeled his chair through, the princess followed him into the massive atrium containing the fliers of the fields.

Faegan wheeled his chair into its usual place on the balcony. The princess came to stand next to him, on the side nearest the brass rail that was attached to the wall. Her smile expanded as she watched the giant, multicolored butterflies swoop and dart, careening endlessly but somehow never colliding. She stood transfixed, radiating a sense of happiness that the wizard had never before felt from her except in her moments with Tristan and Morganna. Grinning at her expression, Faegan cackled and slapped the arm of his chair.

Shailiha looked all about in amazement. The atrium was several stories high and constructed of the palest light blue, Ephyran marble. Plants, trees, and flowers of every color and description lined the floor. The light from the oil sconces helped to make the room seem full of magic and the promise of discovery.

Looking down, she saw the two curious wheels of marble upon the floor. One contained the letters of the Eutracian alphabet, the other the numbers, both in sequential order. But it was the butterflies that entranced her the most. She just gazed at them, wide-eyed, as they flashed by in the pale light of the great room.

Faegan was reminded of the fact that this was the first time the princess had truly seen the giant butterflies. Shailiha had not been aware of their existence before her abduction by the Coven, and during her trip home from Shadowood she had still been under the influence of the Coven’s incantation, and thus had no memories of the butterflies that had accompanied them here.

As he watched her, she slowly, silently extended her right arm out over the railing of the balcony. Almost immediately one of the larger fliers, violet and yellow one, came fluttering up to land on her arm. The flier rested there patiently, its only movement the slow opening and closing of its large, diaphanous wings.

There were few things left in the world that amazed the wizard Faegan. But now his jaw literally dropped. How can this be happening? he wondered. A bond between a flier and one of untrained blood!

Shailiha seemed mesmerized. It was as if she had entered another world, oblivious to everything around her except for the flier perched on her arm. Even the butterfly was unusually calm. It did not dance about, as was so often the case whenever Faegan called one to himself. Shailiha with the flier was one of the most beautiful, unexpected scenes the wizard had ever witnessed. For a long moment he simply watched. Finally his wizardly curiosity overcame the moment.

“Shailiha,” he said carefully, “will you please turn and look at me?”

Mechanically, slowly, the princess turned toward the wizard. As she did so the flier remained perched upon her arm. Shailiha had a faraway expression in her eyes that seemed to look straight through Faegan, rather than at him. She did not blink. Her only movement was her deep breathing, matched by the equally exaggerated rising and falling of her chest.

Faegan was now worried for her, since she had been so recently cured of the Coven’s spell.

“Please release the flier,” he told her calmly. “Just lift your hand into the air a little, and the butterfly will leave your arm.”

But Shailiha did not seem to hear him.

“Release the flier, Shailiha,” he said again, a bit more sternly.

“No,” she finally said in a monotone voice. “The flier does not yet wish to leave me.”

“And how do you know this?” Faegan asked, wheeling his chair a bit closer.

“It told me,” she said.

Faegan felt something inside of him slip. The blood drained from his face.

Beads of sweat had begun to break out across the princess’ brow. Her breathing had become quite irregular. The strain of whatever was happening to her was clearly beginning to show, and the wizard knew that he must somehow end this.

Reaching up, he gently grasped her arm. She made no attempt to shake him off. Faegan shook her arm slightly, and the butterfly flew off to rejoin the others.

Almost immediately the princess’ eyes began to regain their focus, and her breathing returned to normal. The wizard gratefully noticed that not only did the princess seem to be quite well, she had actually been refreshed by the experience. Her eyes were brighter; her demeanor was more serene.

“Your Highness,” he asked gently, “are you all right?”

For a moment Shailiha stood without speaking. She looked out at the fliers as they playfully soared and careened in the pale light of the atrium. Finally turning to Faegan, she said, “Yes, I believe I am fine.” She took a deep breath and stretched a bit, smiling as she did so. “In fact, in some ways I am not sure I have ever felt better. But what just occurred was an experience far beyond anything else in my life.”

“Tell me about it,” Faegan said, wheeling his chair closer to her, as if that might bring him deeper into the riddle he was trying to solve.

She pursed her lips as she thought for a moment, trying to find a way to put her feelings into words. “For some reason, when I saw the butterflies I was compelled to raise my arm. To this moment I do not know why. Something just told me to. And when one of the fliers came to me, something happened. I felt something change within me—in a way I have never before experienced.”

“And that was?”

“I began to hear voices,” she said softly, as though she did not believe it herself. “Many of them at once. Then the cacophony of voices died down, and there remained only one. Strong and clear.” She shook her head a little. “Somehow I knew that the single voice remaining was coming to me from the flier on my arm.”

“It spoke to you?” he asked.

“No, not exactly. Rather, it revealed itself to my mind.”

“What did it say to you?” Faegan asked, his intense curiosity growing by the moment.

“It told me that I was the one for whom they had been waiting so long,” Shailiha answered. “What does it mean? Am I going mad? Am I truly not healed of the Coven’s spell?”

Faegan took her hand in his. He did not completely understand what had just happened, but he felt that this phenomenon was a gift, rather than something to be feared.

“I believe you may have just discovered the beginnings of your personal destiny,” he said to her. “This is something to be treasured and refined, rather than an evil to be avoided. We must explore this further. But before we do I need time to consider it all. I also need to consult with Wigg. Promise me you will not come here without at least one of us in attendance.”

“I promise,” she said earnestly. “But I will find that promise difficult to keep. I now feel drawn here—as surely as I am drawn to both my brother and my child. I won’t rest until I have the answers to what has happened to me.” She turned from him again to watch the butterflies.

So much like her brother, Faegan thought at the sight of the determination in her hazel eyes. Had their parents lived to see these days, they would have been proud.

He suddenly felt the tug of Consummate Recollection upon his mind, telling him that there was something in the Tome that spoke of what she had just witnessed. Slowly, as was his custom, he closed his eyes and relaxed his intellect, letting the passage come to him rather than sending his consciousness to chase after it. And then the quote appeared to him, as though he could see it written upon the page of the great book.

“ ‘And each of the Chosen Ones shall be allowed certain gifts before their training in the craft,’ ” he said aloud. “ ‘These gifts shall be different, yet in some ways the same, and shall remain forever with them, even unto death.’ ” He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“What was that?” she asked innocently.

“I am able to recall with accuracy anything I have heard, seen, or read since the very day of my birth. The quote you just heard is from the Tome of the Paragon. I am the only living person, as far as we know, to have read the entire first two volumes.”

“Is it really true?” she asked, wide-eyed. “Can you really remember all of your experiences if you choose to?”

“Oh, yes,” Faegan said, smiling. “And I can assure you that it is as much a curse as it is a blessing.”

“And the section you just quoted—what does it mean?” she asked.

“Ah,” the wizard said, shaking his head. “That is always the difficult part. The speaking of a quote from the Tome is always far less difficult than the deciphering of it. The Ones Who Came Before certainly did not make it easy for us. Presumably they had some motive for being so cryptic. But I suppose we shall never be sure.” He paused for a moment, looking out at the butterflies. Their whirling, colorful wings continued to dart through the scented air of the atrium.

“As for the quote, it probably means just what it says—that you and the prince each have as-yet-unrealized gifts,” he resumed. “Some powers of which neither he nor you have ever been aware.”

“How is it that Tristan and I could have such powers without being trained?” she asked. “I thought our blood was still dormant. And what is Tristan’s gift?”

“How things are possible, I cannot say at this time,” he answered. “I am sure, however, that it must have something to do with the fact that your blood, and the blood of the prince, are both of such unsurpassed quality. And as for Tristan’s gift, we may have already witnessed it.”

“What do you mean?”

“When he destroyed the Coven, he did so by causing the Paragon to move. He did this strictly through the use of his mind. Such a feat had never before been accomplished by an untrained person of endowed blood. Even with the proper guidance, such a breakthrough usually takes years. This may be Tristan’s gift. That is, the ability to move objects. But then again, it could be something else entirely, something that has yet to reveal itself.”

Faegan could see that the princess was tired. “It is time for us to go,” he said, turning his chair away from the fliers and wheeling back through the door. “We will return tomorrow, and every day thereafter, if it pleases you. We must explore the mysteries of your bond with the fliers.” He paused, looking up at her beautiful face. “And what we find should be very interesting, indeed.”

Taking a final look at the butterflies, Shailiha reluctantly followed the wizard out of the room. Faegan closed the great doors of the atrium behind them.

And then, from seemingly nowhere, a mesmerizing idea overtook Faegan’s mind.

It was possible that Shailiha’s bond with the butterflies was not one of her natural gifts! He was filled with a strange mix of excitement and foreboding as he pondered his new idea. Impossibly, it seemed, the bond might be a sign of something else, something always thought to be mere myth: an Incantation of Forestallment. Not wishing to alarm the princess with either his actions or his words, he wheeled his chair forward.

If what he had just witnessed was truly a sign of a Forestallment, then there was a great deal more going on than he had ever imagined.

His mind whirling, he continued to roll down the magnificent hall. The unsuspecting princess followed obediently behind.

16

The cold wind tearing through the lengths of his dark hair, Geldon held on tightly to either side of the litter that was carrying him through the sky. He found the feeling of flying totally exhilarating. Looking down, he delighted in seeing familiar landmarks of the Parthalonian countryside passing by as he soared along, the Minions upon each side expertly holding his litter between them.

At first the sensation of being carried up and away by the winged warriors had been frightening. Not only was this something he had never done before, but the Minions, his onetime enemies, very much had his life in their hands. But after the first few moments he had settled down, coming to trust the fact that if the warriors had wanted to drop him they probably already would have. He then embraced the flying with a kind of glee he had not felt since was a child.

Joshua, however, was having an altogether different experience. The consul’s litter was close enough that Geldon could see the blatant terror on his face. Joshua’s eyes were clamped shut, and he was holding onto his litter with both hands. Even as Geldon soared bouncingly along, he could see that the younger man’s knuckles were white.

Geldon smirked to himself. For a disciple of the craft he seems unusually frightened. But then again, even consuls cannot fly.

Occasionally they would swoop straight through a bank of clouds. The dwarf had at first tightened his grip, holding on for dear life as if they were about to smash headlong into a solid object. From his inexperienced perspective, that was exactly how it seemed. But he had quickly learned to love tearing into the clouds and feeling the cool, fine mist striking his face before bursting out the opposite side over a charged panorama.

Geldon looked in awe at the Minion warriors flying all around him. Their powerful, leathery wings reached through the air in great, broad strokes, propelling them through the sky. Flying seemed as natural for them as walking across the ground. He soon found himself admiring—even envying—this marvelous advantage.

But Geldon had not come to trust the Minions yet, despite the fact that they were helping him. As they continued to soar through the air he focused his mind on the upcoming meeting. Traax, the Minion second in command, was no fool. Geldon needed to be as prepared as possible when he finally landed. He would have to put into his own words whatever the Chosen One would say if he were here, to impress upon the Minion leader the importance of what must be done.

For over three hundred years Geldon had been the butt of the Minions’ cruel jokes. But now things were different. Now he was the emissary of the Chosen One himself. His job was to see to it that Tristan’s wishes were being carried out, and see to it he would. Assuming, of course, that Traax recognized his authority. But deep down he was starting to worry that such a thing might be a very large assumption, indeed.

It was then that he first noticed the anomalies in the Parthalonian landscape, as its familiar beauty flashed by below him.

Something was different—he was sure of it. They had already flown over several landmarks he knew quite well, so he was sure they were on the correct course to the Minion fortification closest to the Recluse, north of where Faegan’s portal had exited them. He had seen both the Black River and the Vale of Torment, the valley where Tristan and Wigg had first learned of the Gallipolai. He looked down steadily now, his mind awash with curiosity. And then he realized what had changed.

The ground below him was covered with lakes and ponds. Some had huge waterfalls spilling into them. Others emptied more serenely into babbling brooks that stretched into the distance. Still others were calm, their placid surfaces reflecting the sky and clouds back to him as if some great force had placed a series of huge mirrors upon the earth. In all of them, the water was a strikingly beautiful blue.

But these waters were not here when I left Parthalon! he thought, confused.

Just then, a group of Minion warriors detached themselves from the flying mass and dived down toward one of the largest lakes. They winged their way around the edge of the lakeshore and then soared back upward, seeking out their leader.

Almost immediately the entire flight of warriors plunged down toward the lake at an alarming speed—faster than Geldon had known the Minions could fly. The warriors seemed to have absolutely no regard for their own personal safety; the way they were falling through the sky bordered on suicidal. So rapid and violent was their descent that at one point Geldon feared his litter might come apart.

The Minions landed close to the lake and roughly dropped the hundreds of litters they were carrying—Geldon’s and Joshua’s included. And then the warriors did something very strange.

From pouches located in each of the litters they began producing what appeared to be fishing nets of unusually strong, thick rope. Each of the warriors seemed to have one. The warriors quickly tied the nets together, ending up with one of very great size. Completely ignoring the consul and the dwarf, they all flew above the lake—the huge, circular net before them—and hovered only meters above the calm waters.

After regaining their composure, Geldon and Joshua ran closer to the lake, straining to see what invited such urgency. When they reached the shore, Geldon felt sure he was going to be ill.

Human skeletons—small and large, child and adult—lay scattered all around. The skeleton’s bizarre postures were completely random, as if some powerful force had dumped them there from a great height, yet not a one was broken.

Surrounding everything was an acrid, almost toxic stench, unlike anything he had ever smelled. As his eyes began to water, he placed his hand over his mouth. And then he realized the source of the sickening, overpowering odor.

An oozing, slimy substance covered some of the bones. In places, it actually seemed to hiss, a small amount of steam coming off hauntingly to waft back and forth upon the breeze. Gray-green and quite thick in places, it was eating into and actually melting whatever flesh was left clinging to the bones.

He looked quickly to Joshua, but the consul seemed to be as confused as he. The Minions seemed to know, though. They hovered over the dark blue waters, holding the massive net, their eyes trained upon the surface of the lake, as if waiting for something.

An insidious sense of dread began to coil up inside Geldon like an angry, frightened snake.

Suddenly, one of the Minion warriors swooped down toward the surface of the lake, coming to hover barely a single meter from the surface. Slowly, silently, he drew his dreggan. All the warriors not holding the net drew their dreggans at once and extended the hidden tips of their swords with a great clanging sound that bounced off the surface of the dark blue water and back into the air. Then everything went silent again.

The water beneath the lone Minion warrior began to role and swirl. Geldon and Joshua stood transfixed, holding their breath in anticipation.

With an unimaginable burst of energy, something huge and black vaulted from the depths. It leapt straight upward, its speed amazing. Teeth flashed as it tried to reach the lone warrior hovering above it.

The warrior reacted, trying to gain altitude. But the thing was too fast for him. It took the Minion’s foot off at the ankle and plunged back into the lake. The warrior flew to the lakeshore as fast as he could, his face a picture of agony, his blood pouring from his torn stump.

Geldon and Joshua ran to the spot where the wounded Minion came to land.

“Can you help him with the craft?” Geldon asked Joshua breathlessly.

The consul closed his eyes, and the familiar, azure aura of the craft began to surround the mangled end of the warrior’s leg. Blessedly, the Minion fainted. Joshua took a deep, sad breath and let it out slowly.

Geldon studied the warrior. Even for a Minion he was large, and he had long, dark hair and a black beard.

“I have sanitized the wound and accelerated the healing process,” Joshua said. “In addition I have used an incantation that will render him unconscious. He will live, but he will never be the same again.”

And then the dwarf realized at least part of what was happening. This lone warrior had been bait! his mind exclaimed. Living bait, intended to lure out whatever was down there in the lake! Geldon turned his eyes back to the Minions, expecting to find them still hovering over the surface of the lake with their swords and their nets. But they were gone.

The dwarf raised his eyes to the sky. At first he saw nothing. But then, very high up, he saw what at first appeared to be a giant flock of geese hovering so high that they were no more than specks in the sky. He had never before seen the Minions fly so high.

Then the pinpricks in the sky began to grow larger, at an alarming rate. On and on they came, approaching the lake. Within only moments Geldon and Joshua could see that the Minions were soaring downward in a giant circle, wings closed behind their backs, their formation perfect, clearly in free fall. The huge, circular net was stretched in front of them. A few held their dreggans pointed before them.

Geldon’s mouth fell open with wonder.

With a great noise and a massive, explosive splash, the perfect circle of several hundred hurtling Minion warriors plunged headfirst into the body of water. A giant gush of water leapt upward in the form of a perfect sphere from the lake, like several hundred connected geysers bursting into the air at once. Then the Minions were gone into the depths, and the water fell back noisily. The surface of the lake became still again, as if nothing had happened.

The moments came and went agonizingly. Geldon wondered how long the warriors could hold their breath under water. He was holding his own breath, as if that would somehow help those below. Both the dwarf and the consul began to wonder whether all of the warriors had by now met their end.

At last the water near the center of the lake began to churn and swirl, this time more violently. Several Minions broke the surface, gasping for breath. Finally the entire circle of warriors that had plunged into the water was again visible, and the net was rising in their midst, a great, dark, humped shape trapped within it.

The hump began to writhe and scream.

Shouting to their fellows in unison, the Minion warriors began to fight the thing in the net. Their screams combined hauntingly with the urgent, insane shrieking and struggling of the creature they had captured as it desperately tried to free itself and return to the depths. But slowly and surely the Minions managed to bring it closer to shore, finally dragging the convulsing, snarling beast to the water’s edge.

The thing was covered with smooth, black, velvety hair, much like a Eutracian otter and stood on four legs. Its back was at least as high as any of the Minion warriors were tall. Its body was easily five meters long, and quite large around. Its four feet were scaly and reptilian, quite unlike the torso, and each ended in five sharp, webbed claws that looked especially suited for tearing.

It seemed to be a strange and grotesque amalgam of creatures. The head ended in a pointed nose, much like a rat. Its large but still somehow beady black eyes looked out from within the net with intense, almost intelligent hatred. An unusually wide, thin mouth sat just below the nose, and large, ratlike ears sat on either side of its head. Its tail—reptilian, like the feet—was barbed all along its length and ended in a point much like the head of an arrow. It switched back and forth violently, occasionally slicing through the net. The creature’s amazing strength was more than obvious.

Then Geldon took a quick breath of surprise as he noticed the beast’s most unusual characteristic: It had both gills and lungs. The double, vertical, pink-colored slits in the skin and hair behind its jaw were clearly gills, but they were not moving, as would those of a fish out of water. Yet the creature’s chest heaved with its labors. Geldon was amazed. Possessing both lungs and gills, the beast could live both beneath the water and upon the land.

The beast was truly remarkable. But where had it come from?

In defiance of its captors, the awful thing opened its mouth farther. Geldon took a step backward, as its jaw hinged open as far as a Parthalonian serpent’s. Two great incisors stood out in each corner of the upper row of teeth, glistening wickedly in the afternoon sun. It hissed in anger at the warriors as they struggled to contain it, snapping its jaw shut with a force that could easily bite a man in half.

The Minion leader was a man of rather short stature for his kind, and looked familiar to Geldon. The dwarf thought for a moment and dredged up the Minion’s name: Baktar. From what Geldon has seen he was particularly capable.

Baktar walked up to the dwarf and the consul. “Ugly bastard, is it not?” He laughed, obviously proud of its capture.

“What in the name of the Afterlife is that thing?” Geldon whispered incredulously.

“It is called a swamp shrew,” Baktar answered. “At least that is the name we have given it. Appropriate, don’t you think?”

Baktar motioned for several of his troops to come to his side. They drew their dreggans and stabbed the swamp shrew, their swords plunging deep into its chest. When its struggles and burbling screams ceased, they slashed through the net. Quickly lifting it from the dead body, they beheaded the creature and scrambled to begin another, even more grisly task.

Lining up alongside the slick, black, beheaded body, with a great heave they turned the shrew over on its back. One of the Minions quickly jumped up on its underbelly, and with his dagger began to open its abdomen from head to tail. Placing his hand within the shrew’s abdominal cavity, he reached in up to his elbow and pulled out several bloody organs. He quickly and expertly cut their connecting tissue away from the creature’s body, letting them slide sloppily over the side and to the ground. Another of the warriors descended on one of the organs—a grayish sack of some size. He sliced it open quickly and cleanly, then pulled out the contents.

The dwarf and consul stared in unbelieving horror. Geldon covered his mouth.

Lying before them was the foot just taken from the Minion warrior. And next to the foot lay the clothed, partially digested body of a human being.

Baktar sighed sadly, then wiped his dreggan in the grass at his feet and slid it back into its scabbard. “We were too late.”

The body that lay before them appeared to be male. But the only way such a determination could be made was from the style of dress. In all other respects the identity was impossible to discern. The face and extremities had been eroded; the skin was sallow and gray; the facial features were virtually gone. A large quantity of the same gray-green, slimy fluid that had covered the bones lining the lake had spilled out along with the foot and the semidigested body. Its stench was overpowering.

“Shrews feed both during the night and the day,” Baktar continued. “And only upon either humans or Minions. In the short time since they appeared, they have taken thousands of victims—civilians and Minions alike. We estimate their numbers to be in the hundreds, perhaps even the thousands. They always return to the water after they hunt, remaining out of sight to rest. They can run as fast across the land as they can swim in the water.”

Joshua, whose eyes had remained on the foot, went over to it and picked it up. He closed his eyes, and the glow of the craft engulfed the severed appendage, remaining there. He gently placed the foot down next to the wounded warrior.

Baktar bent to examine the strangely glowing, severed foot, then turned back to the consul. “Can you use the craft to reattach this?” he asked earnestly. “Tempting the shrew to come to the surface requires indomitable courage, and volunteering for this task has become a great honor among us. The warrior who was brave enough to tempt this shrew is a particularly excellent fighter, and I would not like to lose his services.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot reattach the foot,” Joshua answered. “Such an incantation is beyond my ability in the craft. I have seen to it that the wound will heal quickly, with no infection and with less pain than normal. But there are some others who might be able to do as you ask. That is why I have enchanted the foot—to preserve it. Tell me, what is the wounded man’s name?”

Baktar smiled slightly. “Ox,” he replied. “What he lacks in wit he more than makes up for in courage.” He paused for a moment, looking down at the stricken warrior.

“Why is it that you were so eager to cut open the shrew’s stomach?” Joshua asked.

“It is a matter of Minion honor that we cremate our dead,” Baktar replied. “When we take a shrew, the stomach is opened to see what it contains. If it is a warrior, we burn the dead body in honor. If it is a civilian, a selected group from the participating squad of shrew slayers buries the corpse.”

“Shrew slayers?” Joshua asked.

“Yes,” Baktar explained. “Commander Traax formed the slayers soon after the shrews first made their appearance, since our last orders from the Chosen One were to protect the populace. Hunting the shrews has partially kept us from doing all else that the Chosen One ordered. Still, we felt this work was important. There are now many groups of shrew slayers who do nothing else, day and night. They are all volunteers. In my opinion they are to be commended.”

Geldon looked back at the dead body of the swamp shrew. Commended indeed.

“That’s why all of the bones are here, isn’t it?” Joshua asked. “The shrew swallows its prey whole. It then slowly digests the organs and flesh, regurgitating the bones and clothing back up on the shore.”

“Yes,” Baktar answered. “Sadly, one of the best ways to find a shrew, just as we found this one, is to look for the bone trail of its victims. But there is yet another reason for opening the stomach of a captured shrew as quickly as possible.”

“And that is?” the consul asked.

“Their stomachs have sometimes been known to contain victims that were still alive,” the Minion warrior said simply.

Geldon felt his stomach turn over. “You must be joking!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, it is quite true,” Baktar said, then snorted as if he did not quite believe it himself. “There is in fact one warrior here among us today who has survived that very ordeal.”

“Who is he?” Geldon whispered in awe.

“He is Ox, the one who lies at your feet.”

Now Geldon understood why the warrior would volunteer for such a thing. This had become personal for him.

But there was something else that puzzled Geldon. “Where did all of these bodies of water come from?” he asked Baktar. “They were not here when I left Parthalon, and I have only been gone a matter of weeks.”

“We were hoping you, the Chosen One, or his wizards could tell us that,” Baktar answered discouragingly.

“What do you mean?”

“Several days after the death of the sorceresses, certain areas across our land began to take on the glow of the craft, both day and night. This lasted for several days. We were not at first concerned, assuming it to be the work of the Chosen One and his wizards. But when the glow finally faded, in every place where it had come and gone there was a body of water, each one somehow more beautiful than the last. This is when the shrews first appeared.”

Geldon turned questioningly to the consul. Joshua merely shook his head.

“Only Wigg and Faegan would possess the knowledge to unravel such a thing,” the consul said quietly.

Geldon let out a long breath, but before he could say anything else, a young Minion officer stepped forward from the ranks. He clicked his heels together. “Forgive me, sir, but our work here is done. Is it your order that we continue north, as previously planned? Or are we to camp here for the night?”

Baktar looked to Geldon. “What are your wishes?” he asked.

“My business with Traax is important,” Geldon said. “Provided your troops are not too tired, I would like to carry on.”

Baktar smiled. “Minion troops are never too tired,” he said.

Baktar gave the order to regroup and watched his forces as they picked up the hundreds of litters. As only one of the craft could, Joshua reached through the azure glow that surrounded the severed foot and placed the appendage carefully within his robes.

Geldon and Joshua returned to their litters. The wounded, still-unconscious warrior named Ox was carefully placed into another. Geldon looked over to see that Joshua again had one hand firmly clamped over his eyes.

Without further fanfare they rose into the sky, their great numbers briefly darkening the land below them as they went. As the sun set gracefully into the retreating horizon of the lake, Geldon pondered that there was much more to learn about what had happened here.

But first he would have to deal with Traax.

17

Closing his eyes, Ragnar placed his thick index finger into the gaping wound along his right temple. He found no fluid there today. But he soon would. The three rose-colored moons of the Eutracian night sky would again soon be full, and his gash would produce anew the yellow fluid. Just as it had been doing for the last three hundred years.

He dipped his finger into the vial of brain fluid that Scrounge had drawn from him not so long ago, then inserted it into his mouth. Immediately he felt searing heat run through his tortured body.

Wigg and the Chosen One will soon be here, he thought, again dipping his finger into the vial. And at last Wigg will stand before me and receive his just reward for the three centuries of pain and disgrace he has caused me.

He stood from the ornate, velvet-upholstered chair and paced slowly around the room like a caged animal. Ever since the child had told him of the impending arrival of his enemies, his memories had come to haunt him even more than usual. His eagerness to face Wigg grew with each passing day.

His personal chambers were both his prison and his home. The furniture and draperies were of the highest quality. Magenta streaks darted across the black marble walls like shooting stars in the sky. The candlelight flickered softly, barely piercing the darkness that he preferred for his personal reveries.

Soon, Wigg, we will make a new history together. He smiled to himself. This time it shall be you, not I, who will carry the burden of suffering for all eternity.

He reached to the marble table that stood nearby and took up a sheathed dagger that lay there. He fondled it gently, almost lovingly, then placed the coolness of its scabbard along the length of his heated, maddened brow. This dagger had once belonged to Wigg. It would serve in the plans Ragnar had for the lead wizard. The child had already granted him permission.

Slowly he pulled the dagger from its highly patterned, gold scabbard to read the flourished, centuries-old engraving on the blade. The words lay just above the patterned blood groove: In Brotherhood We Serve the Vigors. The symbol of the Paragon, the square-cut jewel of the craft of magic, was also fashioned in solid gold and adorned the top of the hilt.

Such daggers had at one time been carried by all of the more powerful wizards, prized as the weapon of choice before they eschewed such crude devices in favor of their quickly increasing knowledge of the craft. Over the last three centuries, this particular dagger had been the focus of Ragnar’s intense, compelling hatred. For this was the very tool with which Wigg had not only given him his wound, but had caused his addiction to his own brain fluid, making Ragnar unique in all the world. As this dagger is now. The stalker smiled.

He closed his eyes, and memories came flooding back as if they had happened only yesterday. His knuckles turned white upon the dagger’s golden handle.

It had been during the Sorceresses’ War, when the fighting had still been somewhat crude and had as much to do with physical confrontation on the battlefield as it did with the manipulation of the craft. The sorceresses, led by Failee, Wigg’s onetime wife, had employed blood stalkers and screaming harpies to overcome much of the civilian population. They had conquered vast amounts of land with their largely conscripted army and were closing on the fortress city of Tammerland. The end had seemed very near for the wizards who continued to resist them.

And then the tide of the conflict had started to turn in favor of the wizards, for they had unraveled the secrets of the Caves, the Tome, and the Paragon. They used their increasing knowledge of the craft to push the sorceresses’ forces westward, into retreat. And Ragnar, once one of the most powerful of the wizards, had been there to witness it all.

Looking back on it now, the very thought of having served against the sorceresses, swearing to pursue only the weak, altruistic Vigors, made him angry almost to the point of self-destruction. Wigg, Tretiak, Killius, Maaddar, Egloff, and Slike. How easily he remembered their faces and their names, and what hatred these same names always conjured within him! These were the so-called “brilliant” wizards who would not only win the war, but also drive the sorceresses into exile. They would then go on to selfishly grant themselves time enchantments, form the Directorate itself, and oversee the rule of Eutracia for the next three hundred years.

But not Ragnar. Instead, he was to be given the great privilege of knowing the combined joys and power of being simultaneously a blood stalker and a wizard. Failee herself had carefully converted him to the superior creature he was now, at the same time showing him the ecstasy of the fundamental practices of the Vagaries.

He had been on patrol under Wigg’s orders, in charge of one of the companies of civilian troops loyal to the wizards. They were chasing what they had believed to be the Coven itself. Night had fallen, and they had been forced to make camp. It was then, deep in the night while they slept, that the Coven had quietly fallen upon them, massacring all of his troops. Failee had then told the lone, terrified wizard that he had been saved for a specific reason, which would only be revealed to him later, when she knew the time was right.

And then Failee had relentlessly worked her magic upon him, employing the incantation that would convert him to a blood stalker. Surprisingly, she stopped before the process was complete, leaving him half human and half stalker, the only such mutant ever created. She spent the next several days teaching him some of the arts of the Vagaries, and revealing to him that the exclusive practice of the Vigors was a waste of time and knowledge for one with his immensely high quality of blood.

Finally, the first mistress opened his mind, showing him that the cause of the Coven was both just and true, forcing his sensibilities away from the greedy pestilence that were the wizards. And then she left him to explore his newfound talents on his own.

It was during this time that Wigg and Tretiak came upon him. Wigg was much younger then, not more than thirty-five Seasons of New Life. The Directorate was not yet formed, so he wore no wizard’s tail of braided hair down the center of his back, nor had he yet donned the gray robes of office. But he was among the strongest wizards of his day, and the appointed commander in chief of all of the forces warring against the sorceresses. The golden dagger, the chosen weapon of the wizards, lay in its sheath at his side.

As they rode up over the rise to find the horrible, ghastly scene that lay before them, the wizards could not know that Ragnar was now a mutated stalker. Ragnar watched cautiously as Wigg pulled his stallion up short.

The battlefield Ragnar lay upon was staggering. At least one hundred civilian troops were dead, their bodies strewn carelessly across the lush, contrasting grass of the field like so many fallen leaves. Smoke from the recent struggle rose faintly up into the sky. Carrion birds had already begun to circle, so that they might start to pick apart their next easily stolen meal. The stench of death was all around him, and nothing moved, nor was there any sound.

Ragnar watched hatefully as the wizards rode down into the midst of the carnage. Wigg stopped his horse and jumped down, as did Tretiak. Ragnar’s body and extremities twitched back and forth as if he were in the midst of some form of horrible seizure.

Then Ragnar did something no stalker should have been able to do. He spoke to them. “Pestilence of the craft!” he growled, turning his horrible features up to his onetime allies. “I shall kill you both! You will become my first two trophies in my war against the wizards!”

With that he raised his hands, sending twin bolts of energy toward Wigg. They struck the wizard in the center of his chest, lifting him into the air and throwing him violently to the ground more than a dozen feet away, nearly rendering him unconscious.

Tretiak responded immediately, and the glowing, azure bars of a wizard’s warp rapidly surrounded Ragnar. Ragnar struck out at the sides of the barrier like a cornered animal, snarling with hate as he continued to glare at the two wizards who had once been his friends. Tretiak ran to Wigg and helped him stand.

“Forgive me, but how is it that you are not dead?” Tretiak asked Wigg. His eyes were the size of saucers. “When I saw his twin bolts go to you, I was sure it would be the end of first you, and then of me, as well!”

Despite his weakened condition, Ragnar could easily hear what Tretiak had said. I will still eliminate you both, he thought.

Before responding, Wigg looked quickly at the gleaming cube. He smiled briefly as he collected himself, brushing the dirt from his clothes.

“A little gift from Faegan,” he said. “There is an incantation, something that Faegan has just come across in the Tome, that creates a sort of shield around one of the endowed. He taught it to me before we left, thinking that it might be useful.” Wigg rubbed his chin for a moment.

“And thank the Afterlife for your quick use of the wizard’s warp,” he added. “It was exactly the right thing to do. Now we may be able to find out exactly what it was that happened here, and help him if we can. But be very careful as we come closer to him. The warp you created should keep him from harming us further, but the fact that he is a stalker, yet is still able to speak and use the craft, is something we have not seen before, and is more than a little disturbing.” Wigg paused for a moment, lost in thought. “This is no doubt something new that Failee has developed,” he added sadly.

The two wizards approached the gleaming cage slowly and stopped before it.

“It seems my former wife has finally learned how to perform her stalker incantation without bringing it to its logical conclusion, leaving Ragnar both a stalker and a wizard at the same time,” Wigg mused sadly. “What you see before you has been one of the greatest fears: a still-effective wizard who has also become a stalker, complete with the unyielding desire to kill males of trained, endowed blood. I need not tell you what this would mean, should the number of halflings grow. If we now have two separate sects of the endowed to struggle against, it could mean the end of us.”

Ragnar remained silent as he listened to the two wizards, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

“There is something else that I find interesting,” Wigg went on, his eyebrow launching upward. “Ragnar is still convulsing. That makes me think that even though Failee’s part of it is done, and the incantation is advancing rapidly, the transformation still incomplete. If that is true,” he added slowly, “we may be able to reverse it, and save him.”

Tretiak’s jaw dropped. “In the name of the Afterlife, how?”

“We already know that the stalker’s brain fluid is what makes each one unique, and perpetuates the horror he has become. If we can drain the fluid from his head while the process is still taking place, thereby taking away what it is that makes him so, we may be able to reverse its otherwise inexorable progress. The odds are slim, but I feel we at least owe it to him to try.”

“And just how do we accomplish such a thing?”

“I want you to control his limbs,” Wigg answered, “but keep him conscious. Then remove the cage. I will make an incision in his skull and try to use the craft to drain off the fluid. But we must act quickly. Are you with me?”

“Of course.”

“Then we are wasting time,” Wigg said with finality. “Begin the incantation.”

Come and try, pestilence of the craft, Ragnar seethed. I will fight you with everything I have.

Tretiak closed his eyes. Almost immediately Ragnar began to strain against the onset of Tretiak’s incantation. The two fought each other’s minds for what seemed to be an eternity. Sweat broke out upon Tretiak’s brow as he struggled against the mutated powers of the stalker. Finally Ragnar slipped to his knees and fell to the grass. He was still alert, but unable to move. The azure bars of the wizard’s warp began to fade away, finally retreating into nothingness.

“Can you hold him in that state?” Wigg asked nervously.

“I am not sure,” Tretiak responded, strain in his voice. “His ability with the gift is strong, perhaps even more so now that he is a stalker. We must hurry.”

Wigg ran to seat himself the grass next to Ragnar and carefully lifted the stalker’s head into his lap. Removing his wizard’s dagger from its scabbard, he gave Tretiak a meaningful look.

“Above all, we cannot come into contact with the fluid,” he said sternly. “To do so would mean a horrible and instantaneous death. I will make an incision in his temple, and when the fluid begins to drain I will accelerate the process with the aid of the craft, causing it to pour out upon the ground. When I am done I want you to reactivate the cage at once. Are you ready?”

Tretiak nodded.

“Very well,” Wigg said. “May the Afterlife grant us strength.”

No sooner had Wigg made the incision than the stalker started to move again, the combination of Ragnar’s innate desire to kill the wizards and the sharp, sudden pain from Wigg’s knife apparently overcoming Tretiak’s incantation. Tretiak tried to keep him under, but Ragnar finally broke partially free of Wigg’s grasp. The quickly flowing, stinking brain fluid splattered in all directions, narrowly missing the two wizards. A few drops landed on Wigg’s boots, causing them to sizzle and smoke.

Wigg still had hold of his dagger, its blade covered with the yellow fluid. He desperately tried to control the stalker and activate his incantation at the same time. “Hold him with the craft!” he screamed at Tretiak.

Wigg closed his eyes. Ragnar continued to struggle. With a surge of unexpected strength, Ragnar broke farther free, then turned his face up toward Wigg, screaming in triumph. Still trying desperately to perform his incantation, Wigg had inadvertently turned his dagger point down toward Ragnar’s face, and some of the awful substance dripped down the blade.

The fluid fell directly into Ragnar’s open mouth. The mutant would hold that pain in his memories forever.

His eyes bulging, screams of torment tearing from his lungs, Ragnar yanked himself away from Wigg and sent a bolt into Tretiak’s chest, knocking the wizard to the ground. He then instinctively reached for what he perceived to be the instrument of his torture—Wigg’s dagger. He first tore the dagger from Wigg’s grasp, and then the scabbard from the wizard’s side. Running from his former friends and jumping on Wigg’s stallion, he was gone in an instant. Perhaps knowing that they could never catch Ragnar with the two of them atop the only remaining horse, the wizards had not given chase. As soon as he dared, he had stopped to bandage the wound in his temple, but it was too late for the horse. Continuing on foot, he reflected that he had gotten away, but he would never be the same again.

His mind finally returning from his reveries, Ragnar opened his eyes.

Failee’s mistake was not realizing you were near, Wigg, he thought. Your mistake was not killing me the moment you saw me lying there on the bloody grass of that field. And the Chosen One’s mistake was to leave his seed behind in Parthalon. So many mistakes are about to intersect upon the tightly woven tapestry of time.

He smiled into the gloom.

It was you who caused my addiction, Wigg. And it is now you who shall pay. Both you and the Chosen One shall very soon know your fates, by my hand and the hand of the child. Each of us is now your enemy—the living, breathing results of your mistakes.

The blood stalker gently replaced the dagger into its golden scabbard. With a brief glance he extinguished the candles in the room, then sat alone with his hatred, his madness, and his thoughts.

18

Tristan, Shannon, and Wigg stood at the top of the small rise in the depths of the Hartwick Woods. The sun was at its zenith, and the promise of a beautiful day had been fulfilled. Shannon held the reins to all three of their horses as they watched the giant butterflies soaring colorfully in the afternoon sun.

Tristan was reminded of the day he had first encountered the fliers of the fields and the Caves of the Paragon. That single afternoon had seemed to set so much in motion, almost as if he had never been truly alive before that point in time.

Soon we shall have the Tome, and my training can begin. He could feel his endowed blood sing with the promise of it.

But his heart held no joy. His mind was filled with unanswered questions about Scrounge’s abuse of the consuls, and he found himself worrying about Geldon and Joshua. He had no real assurances that the Minions would obey his orders, much less be respectful to the two rather odd emissaries he had sent to do his bidding.

Looking down into the glade, Wigg said, “We may not be alone here. There remains a lingering presence of endowed blood. Someone was here . . .” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And they may still be present.”

To their surprise the wall of gray fieldstone in the center of the grassy bank across the clearing was missing several of its pieces. The hole that had been created did not seem sufficient for a person to pass through, but it was sizable enough to allow for the entrance and exit of the fliers. Tristan watched as they occasionally alit near the opening, then folded their wings and went through, just as he had seen them do the first time he was here.

“I thought you reactivated the warp that guarded this wall,” Tristan whispered to Wigg.

“I did,” Wigg replied. “Apparently someone powerful enough in the craft dismantled it again.” One eyebrow came up. “How convenient for us.”

He turned to Shannon. “This is as far as you go,” he ordered quietly. “And I insist that you pour out the rest of your ale here. Considering everything we have witnessed on this little journey, you’ll need your wits about you.”

Blowing a puff of smoke from his corncob pipe, Shannon glared back at the wizard with a look that spoke volumes. But he finally relented, pouring his precious swill out over the grass.

“What a waste!” Shannon moaned, as if he had just lost his best friend. “That was one of my finest concoctions yet.”

Tristan couldn’t help but break into a grin.

“Now I want you to tie the horses,” Wigg ordered, “and find a good place to hide—one where you can not only watch our mounts but that also affords you a clear view of the entrance to the Caves. Stay long enough to make sure no one follows us in—if no one has appeared by dusk, then return to the Redoubt. If someone does appear to be following us, be sure to get a good look at them, then leave for the Redoubt immediately, to report to Faegan. Leave our horses when you go. If no one has come after us by then, they should be all right on their own.”

“Why would you want me to leave if someone does follow you into the Caves?” Shannon asked. “You might need my help.”

Wigg smiled slightly. “Your offer is brave, but you would be serving us better to be able to give Faegan a description of whoever may be after us, in case we don’t survive this. At the very least, it will give him a place to start looking.”

Grumbling, Shannon tied up the three horses and headed toward a stand of thick brush that looked to be a likely hiding place. But at the last moment he turned back toward Wigg and Tristan, and they could see that his expression had softened a bit. “Good luck,” he said. “And may the Afterlife watch over you.”

“And you,” Tristan said. Shannon ducked into the brush and was gone from view.

Wigg turned to look at the prince. “Are you ready?” he asked.

Staring at the breach in the wall, Tristan reached behind his right shoulder and tugged on the hilt of his dreggan and then the first of his throwing knives, making sure neither would stick should he need to call upon them. One corner of his mouth turned up in anticipation.

“I have been ready to return ever since I first came here,” he said.

“Very well then,” Wigg answered. “Let’s go.”

They walked cautiously across the glade, the giant butterflies scattering as they went. Wigg stood before the wall, carefully examining the breach. Then, using his hands, he began to remove more stones, widening the gap so that they would be able to enter.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to use the craft?” Tristan asked, helping the old one loosen the stones.

“Of course,” Wigg said in that all-knowing way of his. “But it might also help alert someone of endowed blood to our presence—something I do not feel would be wise just now. In addition, I have begun to cloak our blood from anyone who might be able to sense the fact that we are endowed—just as I did back in Parthalon, to screen our presence from the Coven. That will make it difficult for me to use the craft for anything else.”

When the hole was large enough, Wigg led the way through.

“Mind your feet this time,” he said snidely, reminding Tristan of how he had fallen down the rough-hewn steps the last time he had been here. “We will secure some illumination at the bottom.”

They descended slowly, the rushing sound of the water from the falls in their ears. The prince began to experience the now-familiar, exhilarating feeling of being close to the waters of the Caves. The farther down he went, the more his blood rose in his veins, making him slightly dizzy. Soon they were at the bottom, standing next to each other in the gloom. Wigg took a few careful paces to the side and reached up to take one of the torches from its holder on the nearby wall.

“Take out your flint and strike this torch alight,” Wigg ordered. “I dare not use the craft to do so.”

Tristan did as he was asked, and the torch came alight quickly. As the prince looked around, Wigg lifted the flame higher.

They were standing on the floor of a spectacular subterranean cavern, the high, cascading falls tumbling ever downward into a stone pool to their right. The sound was almost overpowering in its majesty, and the water was calling Tristan to again dive into its depths, to immerse himself just as he had so obsessively done on his first visit here. Giant, multicolored stalactites and stalagmites reached to join floor and ceiling. Some of them had already found their mates, creating majestic columns of slick, gorgeous stone.

From the rent in the wall above several of the fliers reentered, their wings adding to the riot of color and movement that surrounded the wizard and the prince. Some of them perched next to the pool.

From all around him Tristan could sense the serene, yet overpowering presence of the craft infiltrating his mind and his heart. Growing increasingly dizzy and short of breath, he found himself forced to go down on one knee. He looked up weakly at the wizard.

“Wigg,” he breathed, “you must get me away from the water! It is calling to me again!” He gasped for breath as he turned his head toward the enticing pool.

“I know,” the old one said. He helped Tristan up, putting one of the prince’s arms over his shoulder for support. “Come with me.”

Wigg hurried the prince across the stone chamber, to the entrance to the square-cut tunnel in the wall at the opposite side. But as they approached the tunnel, the breath left his lungs in a rush.

Sensing Wigg’s apprehension, Tristan looked tentatively to the tunnel entrance.

“What’s wrong?” he asked weakly. “Why aren’t we going inside?”

“The warp guarding the entrance to the tunnel is gone,” Wigg said hesitantly.

“How can you tell?” the prince asked. “It looks the same to me.”

“That’s because it was invisible. You would not have been able to see it during your first trip here. Nor could you see it now, because you are still untrained. The Directorate designed it so that it could not be seen by anyone except by us. We had hoped that this would make it less subject to tampering by unknown forces. That strategy has apparently failed. But what I do not understand is how it could have been dismantled without my sensing it.”

“Wigg,” Tristan whispered, “you must either take us down the tunnel, or carry me back outside. I will not be able to last much longer, this close to the falls . . . I have begun to hear my own heartbeat in my ears, despite how loud the falls are, and I . . .” His voice trailed off as he collapsed into unconsciousness. His face was bright red, reflecting the exertion being placed upon his heart by being so close to the waters. Wigg picked him up and carried him quickly, desperately through the entrance to the tunnel.

Holding both the torch and the prince, he ran down the length of the passageway, continuing until he estimated Tristan would be a safe distance from the falls. He put the prince down against the tunnel wall and checked his condition.

The redness in the prince’s face was starting to dissipate, and his breathing was coming back to normal. Wigg looked up at the torch in his hand, not happy with what he saw. The flame was fading.

Tristan finally opened his eyes to see the wizard looking concernedly down at him. Beyond the circle of the sputtering torch, the silent, impenetrable darkness of the tunnel completely surrounded them.

“How do you feel?” Wigg asked cautiously.

“Better,” Tristan answered slowly. “But I have never been so intensely affected by the waters of the Caves.” He shook his head back and forth, trying to regain his focus. “Will I be all right?”

“Yes,” Wigg answered, smiling for the first time since they came underground. “But right now we have a bigger worry.”

“And that is?” Tristan asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

“The torch,” Wigg said simply.

Tristan looked up to see that the ancient, oil-soaked torch was beginning to fade. Soon they would be engulfed in total darkness, a prospect that was less than reassuring.

“We planned poorly,” he said.

“I had no idea that the warp would be dismantled,” Wigg replied. “The ceiling of this tunnel is lined with radiance stones, which were to have been our means of illumination. But now, with this failing torch, we have only two alternatives.”

“To either go back the way we came and leave the Caves, or throw caution to the wind and permit you to use the craft,” Tristan said glumly.

“Precisely. The radiance stones that light the tunnels in and out of the Redoubt have been enchanted so that even the unendowed can activate them with a touch. But these stones have not. Only one of endowed blood may employ them, and to do so I must first stop cloaking our blood.”

“I understand,” Tristan said. “But you must activate the stones.” He stood up, testing his legs. “We have come this far, and we must have the Tome. You said so yourself. If there are problems ahead, we shall simply have to deal with them.”

“Very well,” the wizard said reluctantly.

Tristan watched the old one’s face relax, indicating that he had stopped cloaking the quality of their blood. Wigg held the torch high, examining the ceiling of the tunnel, where the dormant radiance stones lay. Closing his eyes, Wigg activated the stones. The familiar pale green glow appeared, brightly illuminating the tunnel for as far as the prince could see. Almost immediately the slightly pinched, strained look returned to the wizard’s face, telling the prince that their blood was again being cloaked.

The wizard sighed. “There. At least we now have light.” He extinguished the torch and dropped it on the tunnel floor. “It think it best that we make our way to—”

He never finished his sentence, for that was when the sound started.

It was a strange, grating sound in the hollowness of the tunnel. Almost immediately Tristan recognized it for what it was—stone against stone. He watched in horror as black marble walls shot down from the ceiling to the floor on either side of them. They descended with great thuds, creating a stone cubicle of no more than two meters in any direction, trapping the wizard and the prince inside.

Tristan glanced at Wigg, hoping against hope that this had for some reason been an action of the wizard’s. But the expression on Wigg’s face told him that was not the case. They looked around desperately.

“What happened?” Tristan exclaimed. “Is this another safeguard? Some type of device to trap intruders?”

“It is definitely the use of the craft, but I had no hand in it,” Wigg answered. “Someone or something obviously does not want us to move from this spot.”

Tristan was finding it difficult to breathe. “Do the radiance stones have any bearing?”

“Very possible,” Wigg said. “Illuminating the stones may have been the trigger that brought down these walls. But there is yet another problem.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “We shall run out of breathable air in short order. Device of entrapment, indeed . . .”

“Can you destroy the wall, or raise it back up with the craft?” Tristan asked hopefully.

Wigg raised his arms, sending a bolt against the farthest of the walls. The glow of the craft slowly snaked over the entire surface of the slick marble wall, remaining there. Wigg then lifted his arms in an attempt to raise the wall. Nothing happened. He sent another bolt at the wall, much faster this time, the magic crashing against it with great intensity. Noise and smoke followed, the calamitous sound and acrid smell made even worse by the small confines of the chamber. But when the harsh, bitter smoke partially cleared, the deadly wall was still intact.

“Whoever is responsible for this is of great power,” Wigg said sadly. “I fear that there is little I can do.”

The smoke in the room had dissipated slightly, but it was making the air more difficult to breathe. They both began to cough.

We are going to die in here, Tristan thought. And no one will ever find us. Then he noticed the glow.

The familiar radiance of the craft in the shape of a circle had begun to appear on one of the walls. As it grew in size and intensity, its illumination flooded the chamber with an azure light that combined with the sage glow from the stones in the ceiling. Then the circle began to change shape, parts of it fading away to reveal an emerging pattern. Tristan’s jaw dropped. The pattern that the glow had taken on was the lion and the broadsword, the heraldry of the House of Galland.

Tristan stood there weakly, his breath coming with increasing difficulty. The glowing pattern was beautiful. He looked down at his gold medallion and took it into his hands. Then he looked back up again. The pattern in the stone wall was an exact duplicate of the jewelry he held. The brilliant, azure veins that made up the image of his heraldry pulsated and undulated as if they were trying to free themselves from the rock wall.

Before Wigg could protest Tristan extended his hand, touching the glowing heraldry. Immediately the glow intensified, becoming almost blinding. Wigg moved to take the prince’s hand away from the wall, but he was too late. At that moment, another sound came to their ears: a hauntingly beautiful voice.

“Tristan,” the voice said softly from both nowhere and everywhere. “If you wish to live, you must do as I tell you.”

Tristan staggered backward, almost falling to his knees in shock.

The voice that had just spoken to them belonged to his deceased mother: Morganna, the last queen of Eutracia.

Speechless, Tristan turned to Wigg to see shock on the wizard’s face, as well. Nonplussed but also knowing they were quickly running out of air, the wizard nodded, indicating to the prince that he should answer.

It took Tristan several long moments to gather himself, finally finding the breath with which to whisper an answer. The pain in his chest was unbearable; it was becoming more difficult to breathe by the moment.

“Mother,” he whispered tentatively. “Is that you?”

“Yes, my son,” came the lovely, familiar voice again, filling their stone prison. Its timbre was both caring and reassuring, just as he had always remembered it to be. It was in stark contrast to his own weak, rasping whispers. “You must do as I now tell you, or you and the wizard will perish here. There is little time left.”

Gasping, Tristan asked, “What must we do, Mother?”

“When the wall rises, you must go quickly through the exit it creates. Always take the path that is marked by the lion and the broadsword. To do other will only lead you on an endless quest, going nowhere, resulting in your death.” Morganna’s voice paused for a moment as if it were finally retreating with the vanishing, breathable air. But then it came again.

“Much has changed here since Wigg last trod these paths,” she continued softly. “There will be many obstacles in your way, some of them deadly. But you must persevere. The object you seek, the treatise of the craft, shall be elusive. But follow your heritage, my son, and you will reach your prize.”

Tristan finally went down on one knee, his breath rattling a final, deadly song in his starving lungs. Wigg, too, was losing the fight.

“Follow the entrance,” Morganna said. “Go forth and live.”

“But how is it that you can speak to me?” the prince gasped from the floor. He still saw nothing but the four dark walls of the suffocating prison and the glowing heraldry of the House of Galland. “Do you live?” he whispered. He would have died to know how it was that he could hear the voice of his mother—the beautiful, compassionate woman who had been so horribly raped and murdered at the hands of the Minions.

“There is no time, my son,” Morganna said, her voice fading away.

Teetering on the cusp of unconsciousness, Tristan was unable to form his next words. His eyes closing in defeat, his head finally sank to surrender upon the almost welcoming coolness of the stone floor.

“Behold,” the voice of Morganna said.

With that the slick, marble wall barring their entrance to the tunnel began to rise, disappearing into the ceiling from which it had come.

The prince suddenly felt two arms beneath his own, dragging him from the room. Wigg managed to pull Tristan a short way down the tunnel before collapsing to the floor next to the prostrate prince.

It was Tristan who finally opened his eyes first, coughing and hacking. He propped himself up weakly against the wall of the tunnel, helping the wizard do the same. “Wigg,” he asked, half coughing, half speaking, “was I dreaming, or did I hear my mother’s voice?”

Wigg took a deep breath, gratefully refilling his starved lungs with the sweet, humid air of the tunnel. “I heard it, too,” he said slowly, trying to marshal his thoughts. “But I still do not know what it means.”

“Is she still alive?” Tristan asked. He dared not believe it, but he felt compelled to ask the question, nonetheless. “Or perhaps somehow able to communicate with me from the Afterlife?”

“I simply do not know,” Wigg answered honestly, rising slowly on trembling legs. “But I also believe that there is no time for such a discussion right now. We must keep going.”

“Did you hear what she said about always taking the path marked with the heraldry?” Tristan asked, standing up. He checked his weapons, and was relieved to find they were still intact.

“Yes,” Wigg answered.

“And is that what we should do?”

“I can only answer that when we come to such a place,” Wigg said cautiously. “If we come to such a place. There were no such intersections here before—at least as far as we had previously explored. Forgive me, Tristan, but I find it hard to believe such an unlikely possibility now exists, simply because a voice from the past says so. But I suggest we get moving. Too much has already happened that I am uncomfortable with, to say the least. And there is no telling what may lie before us.”

Tristan looked down the tunnel to see that the radiance stones were continuing to illuminate its depths. “How far must we go?” he asked as they began walking down its length.

“That depends,” Wigg answered, “on whether what the voice said is true.”

They walked in silence for a long time. Apparently lost in his thoughts, the wizard took the lead. Following behind, Tristan was still consumed by the memory of the voice he had heard. Could it have possibly been my mother? he wondered over and over.

After what seemed to have been at least half a league, Wigg stopped short. From his position in the rear the prince could not easily see what was up ahead. He walked around to get a better look.

Directly in front of them, literally daring them to enter its tempting puzzle, lay a gigantic intersection. At least a dozen tunnels split off from it, each leading in a different direction, each lit with radiance stones, beckoning them to enter.

But the glowing, azure sign of the heraldry of the House of Galland was embedded into the rock of only one of them. Tristan could see that the marked tunnel led to a flight of stone steps going downward, curving around and out of sight.

“This intersection never existed before,” Wigg breathed.

“Nonetheless, here it is,” Tristan countered. “I say we take the tunnel that is marked. The voice told us to.”

“That does not necessarily mean it is a good idea,” Wigg responded.

“Her voice saved us, did it not, by raising the wall?” Tristan asked adamantly. “If the voice of my mother had wanted us dead, we would be already. To me, there seems no other choice but to follow her instructions.”

“Very well,” Wigg said slowly. “But keep your wits about you, and do as I say. Be ready to act on a moment’s notice. We cannot be sure of what awaits us, especially if the voice is correct.”

With that, the wizard and the prince tentatively entered the tunnel marked with the heraldry and cautiously began navigating the cold stone steps leading downward into the earth.

19

Faegan sat in his wooden chair on wheels, finding the silence of the room almost oppressive. His gray-green eyes bore down intensely into the ancient book that lay on the table before him, its pages so dry and fragile that he had decided to turn them using the craft, instead of his fingers. Nicodemus lay in Faegan’s lap, purring softly.

Faegan sighed, sitting back in his chair. After two days of searching through volume after volume, he still had not found what he was looking for. But he knew he would.

The master wizard looked up from his work to gaze around the room. He was in the Archives of the Redoubt, the greatest collection of books and scrolls ever assembled in one place, second only to the Tome in its importance to the craft.

The Archives occupied a vast room of Ephyran marble, one of the most beautiful of the entire Redoubt. His mouth turned up in a knowing smile. It was only fitting that the late wizards of the Directorate would have made this sanctuary one of the most sumptuous and secure of all the chambers in this amazing complex.

The square room measured at least two hundred meters on each of its four sides, and was seven stories high. Each story had a railing that overlooked the central area. Each level was lined with books from top to bottom, and a magnificent set of curved, mahogany stairs with a brass railing ran up and around to each of the floors, giving access to the thousands of works.

The floor and ceiling of the Archives were of the most delicate, dark green marble, shot through with swirling traces of gray and magenta. Several hundred finely carved desks, reading tables, and beautifully upholstered chairs were tastefully arranged on the bottom floor, and the delicate, golden light was supplied by a combination of oil chandeliers, sconces, and desklamps, all enchanted to burn eternally. The entire chamber smelled pleasantly of must, knowledge, and the thrill of discovery.

“I’m afraid this one won’t do either, Nicodemus,” Faegan said affectionately, rubbing the cat beneath the nape of his neck. “But we will keep trying, won’t we? The stakes are too high to give up.”

He narrowed his eyes at the book, and it rose into the air and floated to the fifth floor, to glide gently back into place between two equally imposing volumes.

Ever since he had witnessed the amazing connection between Shailiha and the fliers of the fields, Faegan had known that there would be only two ways to explore the incredible, unexplained phenomenon. One would be to continue to go to the aviary with the princess and see what happened through a process of trial and error with the fliers. The other was to come here, to the Archives, to discover all he could about such connections—especially with those untrained in the craft. It had consumed his mind even to the point of having stopped trying to research Joshua’s birds of prey. Something in his heart told him that the fantastic bond between Shailiha and the fliers was going to become even more important.

“Time to go searching again.” He sighed softly and wheeled his chair over to the rather odd-looking desk in the center of the floor. Wigg had shown him how to use it before leaving for the Caves with Tristan, and Faegan had found it to be a marvel of the craft. It was called the Index of the Ages, and it was the key to negotiating the complexity of the Archives. Once activated, it provided the location and document number of any book or scroll, depending on the subject matter or author.

Faegan closed his eyes, relaxing his mind. “Open,” he commanded softly.

As the familiar glow built around the desk, its marble surface slowly separated from top to bottom into equal halves, which slid to opposite sides. He opened his eyes and looked down into the seemingly limitless, azure depths that had been left behind.

“Forestallments,” he said. “Both event- and time-activated. Of and relating to endowed blood only, and the possibility of bonds that may be created with nonhuman creatures.” He waited.

From the depths rose the glow of the craft. Swirling as it came, it finally stopped spinning at the level of his eyes and coalesced into gleaming, azure letters of the Eutracian alphabet. They hung there silently, like long-forgotten, dead ghosts of language. It was a list.

He slowly ran down the titles of the hundreds of related documents, seeing that he had already examined many of them. Most had not been helpful. And then, at the bottom of the shimmering list, was an entry that had not appeared with his previous queries:

Faegan closed his eyes and recalled all he could of Egloff. The highly precise wizard had always worn spectacles. He had been slight in stature but great in intellect, with a rather diminutive head and an incongruously long nose. He had also been highly respected among the wizards as a master of the Tome.

Faegan opened his eyes again and reread the words that hung there, motionless in the silence of the room. And then it hit him.

The blood stalkers and screaming harpies, the horrific tools of the Coven that had been revisited upon Eutracia just before the sorceresses returned, might have been brought forth from their hibernation by Forestallment, the same aspect of the craft Faegan suspected the princess’s bond with the fliers to be!

The wizard’s blood raced as the possibilities whirled through his mind like pinwheels. He placed his cat on the floor, turned his chair toward the only section of wall that was not lined with books, and raised his hands. “Open,” he ordered.

The marble wall separated down the center, becoming twin doors opening to either side. Wasting no time, the master wizard wheeled his chair through—into the Vault of the Scrolls.

The Vault of the Scrolls was constructed of black marble, and held countless racks of ancient, dusty rolled-up parchment.

Searching his mind, he retrieved the section number: 1999156. The level upon which the scroll was to be found was represented by the last number of the series. He therefore needed to be on the sixth floor. Since the winding staircase was useless to him, he levitated his wheelchair up to the appropriate floor and over the railing, coming to a gentle landing in the appropriate alleyway between racks.

The first three digits of the section number indicated the number of the alley: 199. The fourth, fifth, and sixth digits were indicative of the particular section of racks in which the document could be found: rack 915.

Finally stopping in front of the correct section, he reached into his memory and retrieved the number of the individual scroll he wished: document 2037.

Once he spotted its resting place, above his reach, Faegan used the craft to call the scroll to him. Slowly, one of the parchment tubes began to slide itself out from among its brothers and gently floated down into the wizard’s lap.

Faegan looked at it for some time, feeling overcome by emotion. Having been isolated in Shadowood for so long, he had not read a true scroll of the craft for over three hundred years. And this particular scroll had been written by Egloff, one of his old friends who was now buried in a nameless grave.

The golden tag that traditionally hung from the leather strap surrounding the scroll was still there. Glistening as if new, it was engraved with Egloff’s signature. He always did prefer scrolls to books. As he unrolled it, he felt old, dusty memories tugging at his heart. His friend had had a beautiful script, and preferred to write in red ink. The treatise was very long and detailed—just as he would have expected it to be.

It is truly a window to Egloff’s intellect, Faegan told himself. Then his heart skipped a beat. What he had been searching for was the method by which one could empirically prove the existence of a Forestallment in another. And he had just found it.

The existence of a Forestallment residing in another can be proven by the subject’s blood signature! His gray-green eyes continued down the parchment, searching for more clues. Finally, near the end of Egloff’s treatise, came the answer. That’s it! he realized.

At the bottom he saw Egloff’s signature, the accompanying signature of one of the many consuls of the Redoubt needed to authenticate it, and the document’s date of completion. The air went out of his lungs in a rush as he reread the date, the importance of which had eluded him until now.

The Seventy-third day of the Season of New Life, 327 s.t.

The treatise had been written the same day as the attack by the Coven. The very day Egloff and all of the other wizards of the Directorate, except Wigg, had been murdered.

That would explain why the other wizards of the Directorate had never learned of Egloff’s findings, Faegan realized. There would have been no time to tell them. They would all have been preparing for that evening’s coronation of the prince, and Egloff no doubt had planned to tell them afterward. Faegan sadly looked away from the parchment, trying not to think of all Wigg had told him of that fateful day. But Egloff never got the chance, he thought.

It was forbidden to remove any document from the Archives or the Vault of the Scrolls, so he decided to make a copy in the event that Wigg would want to study the scroll as well.

Opening the drawer of a desk he found sheets of extra parchment. Carefully he laid a clean sheet directly over the original, then closed his eyes.

Almost immediately the glow of the craft appeared and the words from the original began to bleed upward into the developing copy, creating an exact duplicate. When the process was complete, he rolled the fresh copy up and placed it in his robes. The original rolled itself up and, with a thought from Faegan, floated gently upward to replace itself in the spot from which it had come.

Faegan levitated his chair over the railing and wheeled himself out of the Vault of Scrolls and into the Archives proper, where he retrieved Nicodemus. He gave the cat an affectionate scratch under the chin, and Nicodemus stretched to ask for more.

“We have found it, my friend,” Faegan whispered. “This could change everything.”

In his excitement he allowed himself to use the craft again to levitate his chair. Cackling with glee, he went sailing down the halls of the Redoubt in search of the princess.

20

Tristan carefully followed Wigg down the narrow, curving steps and into the bowels of the Caves. The radiance stones glowed more softly here, and the deeper they went, the colder it became. Moisture seeped visibly from the walls, and the air grew increasingly musty. There was no sound save that of their boots on the unforgiving rock. Tristan thought the journey would never end, his sense of apprehension growing with each pace downward.

After what seemed leagues Wigg stopped short and held up his hand. He turned around in the stairwell to look at Tristan with a silent expression of complete disbelief, then beckoned the prince to follow him into the room at the bottom of the stairs. What Tristan saw staggered him.

Embedded in the walls of the large stone chamber was a continuously circling vein of azure. Glowing brightly, it pulsated and throbbed as if it had a life of its own—as if wishing to free itself from this place in which it was imprisoned. At the opposite end of the room was another door.

The vein’s amazing glow bathed the entire room; it was perhaps the most beautiful thing Tristan had ever seen. But the look on Wigg’s face told him that it was also something terrible.

In horror, he watched the wizard fall to his knees before the vein, a tear rolling down one of his cheeks. “So this is where it is being taken to!” he exclaimed. “And as the vein grows, our world above collapses around us!” His hands were balled up into fists, his knuckles white with tension.

“What are you talking about?” Tristan asked gently. He walked to the wizard and placed a hand on the old one’s quivering shoulder.

“It has to do with the stone,” Wigg whispered. Tristan was not sure when he had ever seen Wigg so distraught.

“The vein you see here, this abomination of the craft, is in some bastardized way the true physical embodiment of the power locked within the Paragon,” Wigg said sadly. “I’m sure of it! The power of the stone is somehow being drained off, attracted to the Caves, and captured within these walls. And as the vein grows, the stone weakens.” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Do you see how the vein undulates, its power clearly evident?” he asked the prince. “When the process is complete and the stone is colorless, this vein will imprison all of the power that the Paragon once held. The power gleaned from the stone will then be at the disposal of the one who drew it here, and completely unavailable to us.”

“I still don’t understand,” Tristan answered. “How do you know all this?”

“There’s no way you could understand,” Wigg responded, slowly coming to his feet. He wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Faegan and I barely understand it ourselves. There is a passage in the Tome that mentions a method of drawing the power from the stone without removing it from its human host. It says that someone will eventually come who will be capable of such a feat. That person, however, would have to be of such immense power that we had always thought it could only be you, or your sister Shailiha. Therefore our concern regarding this issue was not great. But we were obviously very wrong.” He paused, lost in his thoughts.

“There is now one who walks the earth who has far more power than any of us,” the wizard continued slowly, half to himself. “The superiority of this being is without precedent, and his or her strength grows every day, just as the stone weakens. I need not tell you how dangerous this—”

He was interrupted by the eerie, grating scratchiness of stone on stone. As the prince spun around to see where the sound came from, another marble wall came shooting down, blocking the entrance to the stairway from which they had just come. Tristan instinctively turned to the door at the opposite side of the room. It remained unblocked, and on it glowed the sign of the lion and the broadsword.

Whoever is controlling these events does not want us to go back the way we came, Tristan thought.

Then the voice of Morganna filled the stone room. “Tristan, you must hurry. There may already be too little time.”

The prince looked to the wizard, who was also listening intently.

“Why must we hurry, Mother?” Tristan asked. “What is it we are to do?”

“There is not time to tell you why, my son,” the voice said, already starting to fade. “But take the wizard and go quickly through the other door, before it is too late.”

Wigg nodded, and they began to run.

As they approached the portal Tristan heard scratching, scrabbling sounds. He drew his dreggan with a swift pull, the ring of its blade bouncing off the stone walls. Tossing the heavy sword into his left hand, he reached back to his knives, loosening the first of them. Then he threw the dreggan back into his right palm again and looked down to where the sounds seemed to be coming from.

A pair of dark gray hands were beginning to dig their way out of the ground. First only the fingertips were visible. Then came the fingers themselves, and finally the entire hands and upper arms. They agonizingly twisted and turned their way up and out, loosened particles of dirt sprinkling eerily back down as they came. Their skin was gray and bleak, the folds of the knuckle joints black, the nails broken and torn. And then from the dirt came another pair, and then another and another.

Wigg came to stand cautiously next to Tristan as the things continued their inexorable climb from the earth. The wizard and the prince watched in horror as the ground before each of the pairs of hands seemed to obligingly open even wider, the rents created in the earth becoming deep, dark crevices.

Then bodies rose from the earth, heads and shoulders first, until they were standing directly before the wizard and the prince. Tristan stood aghast, not wanting to breathe, as if that simple act would somehow bring the awful things closer. They were consuls of the Redoubt.

It had taken the prince several moments to recognize them for what they were. It was only their dark blue robes, torn and covered with dirt, that gave a clue to their identity.

Their faces and hands appeared to be quite bloodless. Loose, sallow skin hung down from their bones in horrible, sagging folds. Their eye sockets were sunken and dark; the whites of their eyes were a sickly, bloodshot yellow, and the irises were inky spheres that seemed to be vacant, looking at nothing. Their gaping mouths were red and drooling, their teeth black, their expressions utterly empty.

Now other pairs of hands were beginning to claw their way to the surface. It was painfully clear to the prince that they would soon be surrounded. Then one of them spoke.

“You are to come with us,” it said. The lifeless consul’s voice seemed to crack with the strain of simply trying to speak. “Our master wishes it,” he rasped, his blank, doll-like eyes still looking at nothing.

Tristan turned to look at the wizard, and then back to the consuls. “I don’t think so,” he hissed. He raised his dreggan slightly.

“Who is your master?” Wigg asked, taking a step forward. “Why does your master wish to see us? Does he wish us harm?”

“You will not be killed,” the consul said emotionlessly. “Of that you may rest assured. But before you will be allowed to stand before him, you must first be prepared.”

“I do not understand,” Wigg said cautiously. “How is it that we must be prepared?”

Tristan looked around the room to see that several dozen more of the gruesome pairs of hands had broken through the dirt floor.

If we are to fight our way out of here we must start now, before we are completely overcome, he told himself urgently. Why is Wigg hesitating?

“Your preparation is to be completed by others,” the consul said. His arms outstretched, he began to walk slowly toward Tristan and Wigg. “You must come. It has been ordered.”

The lifeless thing opened its grotesque hands, attempting to grasp the wizard. Tristan had now withstood all that he was able.

Raising his dreggan, he slashed straight across the center of the thing’s body, cutting it in half. With a great scream it tumbled to the floor in two separate parts, gray matter spurting from the cleaved portions of its torso. Suddenly, the rest of the consuls were upon them.

Sensing several behind him, Tristan turned on his heel and swung the heavy sword in a great arc. The razor-sharp blade sang shoulder-high through the air, slicing cleanly through the necks two of the horrible things at the same time. Their heads rolled off their shoulders and onto the floor, and putrid gray matter shot into the air from their headless bodies, its stench coming to his nostrils for the first time. Some of it landed sickeningly upon his whirling arms as he completed the cut. For a brief moment the headless torsos staggered aimlessly about the chamber, walking crazily into the rock walls before finally falling to the earth.

Tristan turned frantically to Wigg to see that the wizard was finally employing the craft. Bolts of energy shot from his hands to strike many of the advancing consuls in the chest, burning them in agony, but another was approaching Wigg from the rear. Tristan tossed his sword over into his left hand and gripped one of his dirks with his right. The silver-bladed knife wheeled through the air almost before he was aware of throwing it, burying itself in the eye of one of the consuls and killing him instantly. More gray matter leapt from the gaping, destroyed eye socket. But there were too many of them, and Tristan knew it.

As he swung the great sword endlessly, striking down one after the next, it seemed that for every one he and the wizard cut down several more rose to take their place. The door at the other side of the room with the glowing, beckoning heraldry of his family seemed a hundred leagues away.

Sweat ran maddeningly into his eyes, and the stench of the dead consuls smothered him. He had lost track of Wigg. He began to sense the desperation in his tired arms, the heavy dreggan almost becoming too much to lift.

It was then that the blow came to the back of his head. Blindingly white light shot through his brain, and then his entire world went suddenly, completely black.

The softly crashing sounds came quietly to him at first, as if from a dream. He found them very reassuring. Gently caressing his ears and his mind, the harmonious ebb and flow of their timbre made him feel welcome and safe.

What beautiful sounds. His eyes still closed, he had only partially risen to the surface of awareness. It sounds like the sea. The roar of the ocean, like waves crashing. But that would be impossible . . .

And then came another, more familiar sound.

Women’s voices, laughing . . . speaking my name . . .

His mind suddenly rebelled, his body twisting in futility and fear. His frightened subconscious recalled the time he had been in the depths of the Coven’s Recluse—when he had heard the voices of the four mistresses while teetering on the cusp of death.

For a moment he thought he heard Wigg call out to him in pain, and he felt discomfort in his arms and shoulders. Then all went silent again. He lost his fight to rejoin the world around him, falling back down into a long, dark tunnel of sleep.

When he finally opened his eyes, Tristan took an astonished breath and immediately closed them again. He must be hallucinating. He shook his head, trying to understand. He hoped that when he opened his eyes, the scene would be different.

But pain barreled through him, forcing him to face reality. He opened his eyes, and his jaw fell in wonder.

A great ocean lay before him, its blue waves stretching away from the rocky shore.

He was still in the depths of the Caves. A ceiling of rock lay above him where the blue of the sky should have been. The radiance stones ensconced within it lit this place brightly, stretching as far as his eyes could see. Even the ocean itself, wide and foam crested, seemed endless.

The smell of the cool, almost comforting breeze blowing in off the water reminded him of the coast of Eutracia. Unbelievably, the froth-tipped waves were the exact hue produced by the craft. They tumbled toward him over and over again, crashing noisily upon the sandy shore only meters away from his feet.

The scene mesmerized him so much that it took him several moments to fully realize his plight.

His hands were in iron manacles, his back against a very high stone wall. He was hanging by his wrists, and his shoulders suddenly reminded him of how much pain he was in. Looking down, he saw that his boots were dangling at least a meter off the ground. He still had his weapons, but there was no way to reach them. His shoulders and wrists on fire, he looked to his left and finally saw Wigg. The wizard’s condition was even worse.

Also hanging from manacled wrists, Wigg was clearly unconscious. His eyes were closed, and his head was slumped forward on his chest. His right foot was clearly injured. An incision had been made along the inside of his boot, running halfway from the toe to the heel. Dried, endowed blood was caked all around the leather of the opening and had created an odd-looking red trail that ran crazily up and over the top of his foot.

Straining his neck, Tristan tilted his head to look down at the sand below the wizard’s feet. It was red. Wigg had been purposely drained of his blood.

For a moment the prince was perplexed. Then he understood.

The consuls we fought with said that we must first be prepared, he realized. They have drained blood from Wigg, so as to render him powerless in his use of the craft.

Tristan’s memories took him back to the fateful day when Succiu, second mistress of the Coven, had taken her own life and the life of their unborn child. Before doing so she told the prince that when an endowed loses a significant amount of blood, his powers of the craft are drastically reduced. He knew that this was what had been done to Wigg. But by whom? he wondered.

He looked around at the sandy beach, trying to find a clue. But now the puzzle grew even more complex. There were no footprints. Just the undisturbed beauty of the sand as the ocean continued to rush up against it.

“Wigg!” he called out loudly. “Wigg! Wake up! Talk to me!”

But it was to no avail. In a sudden panic Tristan narrowed his eyes to peer at the wizard’s chest. With great relief he saw that it continued to rise and fall with the old one’s labored breathing. At least Wigg was still alive.

The prince looked sadly at the impossible ocean that lay so beautifully, so incongruously before him. His shoulders and wrists seemed about to dislocate. The only sound coming to his ears was the crashing of the waves.

The shore that should not be here, he thought. And then a new worry crowded into his mind. Is this to be my fate? Perhaps the consul I killed was only speaking to Wigg when he said he must be prepared. Perhaps Wigg, because he is trained in the craft and I am not, is the only one they wish to see. That might explain why nothing has been done to “prepare” me. Will I simply remain here, pinned to this wall of stone, until I die? He suddenly felt very alone.

Then he saw the glow of the craft forming in the air before him. Wondering if he was seeing things, he closed his eyes once more. When he opened them again, a door frame had formed. Slowly, hauntingly, it began to move closer.

“Wigg, you must wake up!” Tristan shouted. “I need you!” But the wizard did not move.

The portal now floated directly before him. For a brief moment Tristan thought he saw some movement within it. Then the azure fog began to dissipate, and three beautiful women flew directly out of the mist on large, diaphanous wings. Rather small, they would not have quite reached to his shoulders had they all been standing on equal ground. Their entire presence glowed with the craft as they whirled about his face and body as if examining him. At first Tristan recoiled. But then, after a time, he relaxed as he realized that they did not seem to be harming him.

They were all exquisitely beautiful. They wore elaborate, low-cut gowns of the palest white. They all had very long, curly hair, and their eyes were the deepest blue he had ever seen.

At last one of them spoke. “We are here to prepare you.” Her voice was earthy, welcoming, and smooth.

“Who are you?” Tristan whispered back in awe.

“We are the master’s wraiths,” she answered, looking deeply into his eyes. She shook her head gracefully, as if wondering how it was that the prince did not already know that. Her long azure hair flowed out behind her on the breeze from her wings.

“And who is your master?” Tristan asked. He instinctively recoiled a bit as the two other wraiths moved to either side of him.

The first one smiled. “He is the one who has waited so long to see both of you. But we had no idea that the Chosen One would prove to be so compelling.”

Before Tristan could ask what she meant, the two wraiths hovering on either side of him began to caress his body. Their hands softly teased his groin; their tongues and lips circled his own. The sweat of his nervousness ran down into his eyes, and he twisted as best he could to avoid them. But he could only hang there, receiving whatever it was they chose to do.

“Please let them pleasure you,” the one before him said softly. “It will help you deal with what I must do.”

Tristan looked directly into her face, and in horror watched her beautiful eyes begin to change. Her deep blue irises slowly narrowed, running vertically, and turned yellow. The deep, black pupils were now mere slits. Snakelike eyes looked calmly at him, and she opened her mouth. A forked tongue appeared.

“You do not like me this way?” she asked coyly. The long, pink tongue slithered in and out between her full lips, flicking back and forth as it tested the air.

“No!” Tristan snarled angrily. Trying hard to keep his concentration while the other two wraiths continued to caress him, he glared into her yellow, reptilian eyes. “Whatever it is you intend to do, get it over with!”

She smiled. “Very well.” Whipping her pink tongue back and forth, she wetly ran the flat of it up and down his right cheek. Moving lower, she slithered her tongue in and out between the laces of his leather vest, toying with the hair on his chest, then finally ran it down the length of his torso.

Not knowing what would happen next, Tristan closed his eyes and tried to steel himself.

The serpentlike wraith shot her tongue out, cleanly slicing through the leather of his left boot. She then probed it into the cut in the boot to carefully slice a wound in his foot. Tristan cried out, trying to shake her off. But he was too late. Blood was already running out of his boot and into the sand. As the blood came more quickly, a silver bowl appeared on the ground below him.

Once his azure blood began to drip into the bowl, the two wraiths on either side of him stopped their molestations and hovered quietly before him.

“Why?” he snarled. “I know why you would want to bleed the wizard, but why me? I am untrained, and represent no threat to you while still in these chains!”

“We have bled you and the wizard for the same reason,” the first wraith said, smiling. Her eyes and tongue had returned to normal; her incredible beauty was restored. “We wish you to become weak, and therefore controllable. An appropriate amount of blood loss will accomplish that in the Chosen One, just as it would in any human. Trained or untrained. But in your case there is yet another reason. The Chosen One’s blood has uses all of its own.”

Looking into Tristan’s puzzled face, she smiled again. “Ah, I see you do not understand,” she purred. “So much that you still do not know, Chosen One. But the days of your ignorance are finally coming to an end.”

Tristan did not know what she meant by that, and part of him was past caring. He struggled against the manacles as his foot throbbed. His shoulders and wrists felt as if they were being burned away from his body, and additional rivulets of azure blood began to run crazily down the length of his arms from where he had been struggling against the iron. He looked back up into the eyes of the wraith with hatred.

“So what happens now?” he spat at her.

“We wait,” she answered pleasantly.

“For what?”

“For enough of your blood to have been collected. We have no need for the wizard’s blood, only yours. Then the master’s other servants will come.”

Tristan wanted to ask them what other servants were meant, but they flitted away along the beach. He sought desperately for a means of escape as he listened to the dribble and plop of his life’s fluid hitting first the metal and then later its own pool, but no answer presented itself.

Just as the blood in the bowl began to splatter over the edge with the continuing flow from his foot, the wraiths reappeared.

The one who had cut him looked down into the bowl and smiled. “There now,” she cooed. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now we can heal you and the wizard.”

Tristan had been greatly weakened from the loss of blood, and he knew it. He hung limply in his chains, doubting that he would have the strength to raise his dreggan even if he were free.

They have us exactly where they want us, he thought. Weakened and humbled. And there is nothing either the wizard or I can do about it.

He immediately began to feel the itching in his foot that signified the incantation of accelerated healing. Turning, he saw that Wigg’s wound was closing, as well. The wraiths were hovering over Tristan’s bowl. The one who was their apparent leader picked it up, then smiled at him.

“Good-bye, my sweet prince,” she whispered. “We may never meet again. But if we do, by then there will be far more for us to discuss.” She looked him up and down, then gazed reverently into the bowl containing his blood. “So many questions, aren’t there?” she teased. “And so few remaining of the craft who can answer them for you.”

The chains holding the wizard and the prince snapped open, dropping them to the sand. Tristan tried to stand and somehow slowly came to his feet. But when he attempted to reach for his dreggan he fell back down, unable to rise again.

Noticing the wraiths had directed their attention to the ocean, his tired eyes searched the sea, trying to find what it was they were waiting for. Finally, he saw three small black dots against the sage horizon. As they drew closer, he could tell what they were. The horrific birds of prey.

Tristan crawled across the sand as best he could, coming nearer to Wigg. Shaking the wizard did no good, nor did several sharp slaps across the face.

The birds of prey came nearer. Stretching their pointed wings to buffet the air, they landed softly on the beach. Tristan narrowed his eyes in disbelief. These were not the same kind he and Wigg had observed in the Hartwick Woods. These birds were more advanced. As he looked closer, the grotesque, obvious differences in them made his breath come quickly to his lungs. These birds had human-looking arms and hands in addition to their wings.

Their arms extended from just beneath the top of the middle wing joint, and ended in hands of five perfectly formed fingers each. The arms were sculpted and muscular. Black leather gauntlets adorned their wrists. Around the chest of each bird was a black leather baldric holding a long, sheathed sword. In addition, their mannerisms told the prince that they were far more intelligent than the ones he had seen the previous night. The birds before him did not possess the jerking, uncertain movements of the others. Rather, they seemed calm and in control.

Everything else about them seemed to be the same as the others, however. The long, pointed heads, the leathery wings, and the great black claws at the ends of the feet were identical. Their scarlet, grotesque eyes rotated constantly, taking in the wizard, the prince, and the wraiths all at once. And then, unbelievably, one of them spoke.

“They have been bled?” it asked, turning its awful head toward the wraiths. Its voice was high and eloquent.

“Yes,” the wraith who had cut Tristan said. “We now have a sufficient quantity of the blood of the Chosen One. I am pleased to present the bowl to my master’s hatchlings.” Hovering nearer, she placed the bowl of azure blood into the waiting arms of one of the other birds.

Without speaking further, the hatchling who seemed to be their leader walked closer to the prince, drawing his sword. Tristan’s breath came harder. He wished with all of his being that he could find the strength to take his dreggan into his hands.

The hatchling placed the tip of his sword beneath the prince’s jaw, raising Tristan’s face painfully upward. After regarding him for a time, the great bird lowered his sword.

Another time, I promise you, the prince swore silently.

The hatchling turned to address the wraiths. “You are free to go.”

Without further discussion, the wraiths flew through the waiting door frame, disappearing, leaving the wizard and prince alone with the three awful birds.

“What do you want?” Tristan shouted weakly, trying to stand and take his sword into his hand. But standing was impossible, as was pulling the heavy dreggan from its scabbard.

Somehow, impossibly, the thing with the long, pointed beak full of teeth smiled. “We want you,” it said softly.

With that, the other hatchling that was not holding the bowl walked over to take the inert body of the wizard into its claws. Using one of its powerful feet, the leader roughly pushed the prince down into the sand and curled its long, black claws around Tristan’s body. Struggling against the bird’s unyielding talons, Tristan used up the remainder of his strength.

Stretching their leathery wings, the hatchlings flew toward the horizon of the magnificent, azure sea.

As they did so, Tristan finally lost his battle to stay conscious.

21

Geldon looked down from his litter to see the lush Parthalonian countryside flying by. Joshua, in the litter next to him, still had his eyes closed. It made the dwarf wonder whether the younger man would ever get used to this form of travel.

Peering out into the distance, Geldon could pick out the island upon which the Recluse had stood before its destruction by the aftershocks accompanying the sorceresses’ deaths.

Tristan had given the Minions many orders that day, not the least of which had been for them to rebuild that terrible, imposing fortress. They had also been ordered to strip away any reminders of the Coven, such as the five-pointed star.

Not an easy task, Geldon thought. He squinted, trying to see the remains of the once-great structure. It will be interesting to see what they have done.

As they approached the Recluse, Geldon could not help but be reminded of his life of servitude there. He also thought of the coming of Tristan and Wigg to find Shailiha, who had been kidnapped and subverted by the Coven. Tristan had regained his sister, but he had lost his son. Geldon looked down at the moat surrounding the island and took a deep breath, making a decision.

The prince did not ask me to do this, he thought. But I could see the need in his eyes, and I will honor it.

Geldon waved to Baktar. The leader of the Minions nodded back, coming to fly alongside the dwarf’s litter.

“Drop us at the outside of the Recluse, near the moat!” Geldon shouted to him. “And then go on ahead without us! Please tell Traax that we will join him shortly!”

Baktar nodded. “As you wish!” he shouted back. With that he indicated to the warriors flying the litters of the consul and the dwarf that they should descend.

After a gentle landing, the dwarf and consul climbed out of their litters and, on rather shaky legs, watched the four warriors fly back up to join their brothers. The entire group wheeled around to fly over the broken walls and down into the midst of the Recluse.

“Why are we here, outside of the palace walls?” Joshua asked as he rearranged his robes. “I thought you wanted to meet with Traax.”

“I do. That’s what we ultimately came here for. But there is something I feel should be done first.” Geldon’s dark eyes searched the ground around the moat. “Walk with me,” he said to the consul.

The walk around the perimeter of the island took some time. Finally the dwarf saw what he was looking for. He began walking toward it, the flood of memories from that day coming back to him in a strangely reassuring torrent of both grief and joy.

The little grave lay undisturbed. The many stones still lay peacefully atop it, and a crudely carved marker of wood overlooked the spot. It was the grave of Nicholas, the unborn son of Tristan and Succiu.

Geldon looked down to the rough-hewn wooden marker, reading the words Tristan had carved there.

Not far from here, according to Tristan, Succiu had jumped from the castle walls, killing herself and the unborn child she carried. Tristan had excised the corpse from her womb to bury it, and Wigg had burned the second mistress’ body, to ash. Geldon’s hands went automatically to his neck, where he had worn the second mistress’s collar for over three centuries. Nothing whatsoever of her was left now, and the thought did not sadden him in the least. Finally, he turned to the consul.

“I have a thought,” he said tentatively. “It might be rather extreme, but—”

“To unearth the child and return his body with us to Eutracia for a proper burial with the royals and the Directorate,” Joshua said softly, finishing his sentence for him. “That is what you were thinking, is it not?”

“Yes,” Geldon answered, returning his gaze sadly back to the little grave. “How did you know?”

“Because it has been in my mind also, ever since the Chosen One asked us to come here,” Joshua answered. “Wigg told me the story, and he also believes it to be Tristan’s wish to eventually bury his son in Eutracia.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “But I have my misgivings,” he finally added.

“And they are?” Geldon asked.

“This child was Tristan’s, not yours or mine. The decision to do such a thing, and also the timing of it, should therefore be his and his alone.” Joshua looked into the dwarf’s eyes with a candor and simplicity of purpose that Geldon found hard to contradict.

“I suppose you’re right,” the dwarf finally said. He took a deep, resigned breath. “We should be getting to the Recluse. Traax will be waiting.”

Joshua peered around, as if looking for something. “Just a moment,” he said cryptically. He spied some orange and yellow flowers on a nearby bank and pointed his right hand at them. The stems obediently pulled their roots from the ground. Narrowing his eyes, Joshua caused the roots to be cut away. The colorful blossoms floated over to the grave, hovered there for a moment, and finally dropped gently down on the cairn.

“Thank you,” Geldon said, finding it difficult to speak.

Placing his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe, Joshua nodded. “Tristan is now my friend too,” he said quietly.

Turning away from the grave, the dwarf and the consul began walking toward the massive wood and iron drawbridge that would carry them over the moat and onto the island, into the scarred, broken castle known as the Recluse.

They have done well here, Geldon thought. They had traversed the great drawbridge, passed through the first portcullis, and were approaching the second. The partial rebuild of the castle could be seen rising within the center of the spacious courtyard.

Every sign of the Pentangle, the five-pointed star of the Coven, had been dutifully eradicated. The Minions had completely cleared away much of the original structure, though light blue marble had again been chosen as the Recluse’s color. The first floor was almost completed, and the circular towers at each of the corners were starting to take shape. The arched windows that would eventually hold heavy, leaded glass could be seen here and there in the walls.

Walking up the marble steps and into the open, still roofless expanses of the first floor, Geldon and Joshua were amazed at the level of activity here. The Minions were swarming over the place like a giant gathering of committed worker bees.

Seemingly thousands of them came and went, many of them shouting orders. The officers, Geldon presumed. Some of them gathered to huddle over drawings laid on crude wooden tables. Others carefully cut and fashioned marble, the dust from their labors flying into the air and occasionally choking off their breath. Still others had the tedious job of using pulleys and ropes to lift and place the magnificent stones into position. Light blue marble dust, noise, sweat, and the groans of physical labor filled the evening air. Some of the workers were lighting torches, to allow the work to continue throughout the night.

The warriors took little notice of Geldon and Joshua. The dwarf was unbothered by this. He realized that of the hundreds of thousands of their total population, many of them here would not know him. Then, he finally saw the Minion women.

He was greatly surprised to see Minion women among the workers. He had never seen one before. Until Tristan had commanded that the brothels be opened, and the women be allowed to take an equal place in Minion society, the females had been strictly relegated to the services of the males. Now they worked alongside the men, seeming quite sure of themselves in their new tasks. Only their awkward gaits—due to the deformities caused by foot binding—remained as a legacy of their previous cruel treatment. Geldon was pleased to see that, according to the prince’s orders, none of their feet were bound.

Continuing up another flight of steps to what would eventually become the great foyer, the dwarf and the consul finally saw Baktar and Traax in huddled conversation, bent over a series of drawings.

Baktar saw them first and immediately went down on one knee. “I live to serve,” he said solemnly. Quickly turning, Traax looked hard at the dwarf and the consul, wariness in his expression. For a torturous moment the dwarf felt an acidic sense of panic rise in his chest, as he wondered whether the younger, more aggressive second in command would honor the representatives of the Chosen One. Finally Traax also went to his knee. “I live to serve,” his deep voice said with authority.

Trying to regain his composure, Geldon silently let out a long breath. So far so good, he thought. “You may rise,” he commanded. As Traax stood, Geldon examined him. After Tristan had beheaded the previous commander of the Minions, Traax had been first to fly to the prince and lay down his sword, thereby retaining his position as second in command.

Unlike most of the warriors here, Traax was clean-shaven. He was approximately thirty Seasons of New Life—the same age as Tristan—and was tall and strong, even for a Minion warrior, with serious green eyes and an intensely commanding presence. Geldon knew him to be of very high intelligence. The dwarf would only get one chance to do this right; he must choose his words carefully.

“The Chosen One has sent me and this other emissary to secure your report.” He indicated the consul. “This is Joshua, Prince Tristan’s representative of the craft. Is there somewhere we might sit?”

“Of course,” Traax answered perfunctorily. He led them to a tent with chairs and a table beneath it. “Would you like food and drink?” he asked, removing his dreggan from his side and laying it on the table. Baktar, Geldon, and Joshua all sat down.

“Yes,” Geldon answered, the mention of food making him realize his hunger.

Traax waved one of his hands, and a Minion woman came over to the table and stood, waiting for Traax to speak. Neither her posture nor her attitude seemed subservient.

“Bring us food and wine,” Traax said abruptly. He glanced at Geldon and then turned his face up more courteously to the woman. “Please,” he added quietly. Despite the importance of this meeting, Geldon found it difficult to contain a smile.

The changes must be so hard for them, he realized. A Minion warrior would never have been required to say please to anyone other than the Coven, and now the sorceresses were all dead. The Minions’ entire world had been turned upside down, and he would do well to remember that.

He had a job to do, though. “Your report?” he asked Traax.

“As you can see, the rebuilding of the Recluse goes well,” Traax began. “I estimate that the entire structure should be finished in approximately one year’s time. In addition the brothels have been closed and the Minion women freed. As the Chosen One gave us permission to marry, there have already been many unions. Birth records are now being kept. The Gallipolai have also been freed. Neither the Minion females nor the Gallipolai will ever have their wings clipped again. Foot binding also no longer occurs.” He stopped for a moment, smiling. “It will be interesting trying to teach them to fly when their wings recover from the clipping,” he added drily. Then his face became more serious. “There are, however, other concerns in the land that do not fare as well.”

You already know what those are, Geldon reminded himself. But do not make this easy for him. You are now his superior.

“And those are?” Geldon asked, placing a critical expression upon his face, as if suddenly disappointed.

“Since the death of the Coven, strange things have happened,” Traax answered. “We have been plagued by the sudden, unexplained appearance of the swamp shrews. They raid the land constantly, taking refuge in the depths of the many lakes and ponds that have so mysteriously appeared. I have formed groups of shrew slayers to try to kill as many of them as we can.”

Geldon looked up to see that the food had come. Two Minions, a man and a woman, began to put it on the table. It looked to be wild Parthalonian boar served on a great rotating spit, with fresh vegetables and dark brown bread from the Minion hearths. He inhaled the aromas with anticipation.

The Minion woman, a particularly beautiful and statuesque being, was smiled at Joshua. As she placed some of the food on the table, her long, dark hair brushed the young consul’s face. Geldon was sure that it had been no accident. Joshua turned beet red, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. Both Baktar and Traax broke out into raucous laughter.

“Beware!” Traax said. “The fact that they now have their freedom has emboldened them. It has become their custom to—how should I put this?—make sure a man is ‘capable,’ before considering him as a husband. And by the look of you, I’m not sure that you could stand the strain—craft or no craft!” The two Minion warriors guffawed again as the woman walked away. Baktar actually went so far as to heartily slap the hapless consul upon the back, making him cough. Geldon considered rebuking Traax for his comments but finally decided not to push his luck.

Besides, Geldon thought, watching the stately, commanding woman walk away, he’s probably right.

In a moment she was gone. Joshua turned his wide eyes to the dwarf, sighed, and then began to eat. After several bites of the excellent food, Geldon returned his attention to the Minion second in command.

“Tell me about the state of the civilian population,” Geldon said, taking a sip of deep, rich wine. “I have seen few of the locals since I arrived. I assume it is because of the shrews.”

Traax’s face darkened again, and Geldon could see that the news would not be good. “The people are terrified of the shrews, and are afraid to venture far from home. But also, the population has yet to trust us,” he said, “despite the death of the Coven. And I cannot say that I blame them. We have done all we can to try to earn both their trust and respect. But with the task of rebuilding the Recluse and hunting the shrews taking so much of our time, it has been difficult.”

Swamp shrews and an untrusting citizenry, Geldon thought sadly. Tristan and the wizards need to come to Parthalon for themselves.

As if reading the dwarf’s mind, Traax asked, “Is there anything our new lord can do to help? I feel that the presence of the Chosen One and his wizards, no matter how brief, would go far. Especially where the civilians are concerned. The Minions are strong and brave. But we are not accustomed to practicing politics, or solving national concerns. In these matters we need help.”

Geldon found himself actually beginning to like Traax. “We will convey your needs to the prince,” he said compassionately. “But you must understand that there is a great deal in his own nation that needs attention just now. Your legions did much to destroy Eutracia, and his first concern must lie there.”

He decided to change the subject. “I have been told by Rufus, your commander at the Ghetto, that the armada you used to invade Eutracia still lies intact at Eyrie Point. Is this true?”

“Yes,” Baktar replied in between bites of the delicious pig. “The fleet is sound, and its captains have been given other duties. Does the Chosen One have need of it?”

“I do not know,” Geldon replied. “Nor is it for me to say. But I believe both he and the wizards will be glad to hear it.”

“There is an issue of which I would now like to speak,” Joshua said suddenly. Traax and Baktar turned quizzical eyes on him, waiting. “You are familiar with the Minion warrior named Ox?” the consul asked.

Traax smiled. “Yes. Although not quick of wit, he is one of the most loyal of us.”

“I would like to take him back to Eutracia with us,” Joshua said. The sudden, unexpected words hung over the table like a cloud, and everything went silent.

Geldon tried not to show surprise. I hope he knows what he’s doing, he thought nervously.

Traax scowled. “May we be made aware of your reasons for this request?” he asked darkly.

“He was wounded during the capture of the shrew,” Joshua answered.

“That is your reason?” Traax asked with a snort. “Because of a simple wound? The Minions have seen many wounds, and we have always dealt with them ourselves. Fighting, dying, and being wounded are the very reasons for our existence!” Then he glanced over at Geldon, wondering if he had misspoken. “Or at least that used to be our mission,” he added.

“But his is not a simple wound,” Joshua answered. “The entire foot is severed. I enchanted both the foot and the end of the leg immediately after the attack to preserve them. If we return Ox to Eutracia, the Chosen One’s wizards may be able to reattach the foot.”

Traax’s mouth opened slightly in awe. “You can do such a thing?” he asked softly.

“No,” Joshua answered simply. “My powers do not extend to such realms. But there are others of the craft across the sea who may be able to accomplish it.”

Traax waved a hand in the air. A Minion officer promptly appeared, clicking the heels of his boots together. “Send for the one called Ox,” Traax ordered.

“I live to serve,” came the quick reply. The warrior ran off.

Ox appeared several minutes later, limping along on a crudely made crutch. The strange, azure glow of the craft continued to surround the base of his footless leg.

“I live to serve,” he said, trying to go down on the knee of his good leg and causing himself obvious pain.

Geldon winced as he watched the warrior try to assume the traditional Minion position of servitude, and he temporarily considered commanding him to desist. But Traax stepped in at that point.

“That will not be necessary,” he said. Ox straightened to a standing position, leaning heavily on his crutch, and Geldon realized the devoted Minion would have stood there that way all night if ordered to.

“These emissaries of our new lord wish to take you with them back to Eutracia. It is possible they may be able to heal your foot. Would you like to do that?” Traax asked.

Geldon could see Ox struggling with the concept of healing a severed limb, but the Minion finally responded. “If you send, I go,” he said crudely, his deep, resonant voice matching the power so evident in his body.

“Very well.” Traax nodded, turning his attention to the consul. “But I have a request.”

Joshua put down his goblet as if annoyed, then looked Traax squarely in the eyes. “That depends,” he said. “The Chosen One is not used to demands.”

Geldon froze, watching the unexpected test of wills. The consul is perhaps far more brave than I gave him credit for, he realized. He learns quickly, just as Wigg said.

Joshua rather rudely took his eyes from Traax and returned to eating. “What is it?” he asked, fork poised before his mouth.

“That should Ox die in your land he be given the right of any Minion warrior. That his body be burned, his ashes scattered.”

Joshua looked up for a moment, considering the request. “Done,” he said.

“Very well, then,” Geldon interjected, wanting to regain control of the conversation. “It is decided. We will stay here for several more days. I wish to watch the reconstruction of the Recluse unfold further.” Smiling, he turned to look at the young consul. “And perhaps Joshua would like to become better acquainted with the young woman who just served us,” he added coyly. While everyone else at the table laughed, Joshua only scowled, and turned bright red.

Geldon looked at Ox and wondered what the wizards would say when out of the portal came not only a consul and hunchbacked dwarf, but also a wounded Minion warrior. He smiled slightly to himself.

May the Afterlife have a sense of humor, he thought.

32

Ragnar turned over luxuriously in his bed to gaze into the eyes of the woman he had just brutally taken—the one who had for so long been his favorite. He had brought a great many females here over the centuries and continued to do so, usually letting them go after he had taken his pleasure from them. Sometimes he held them for days, sometimes for years, depending upon how much they pleased him. But none of them had been the quality of the one he now regarded.

This one he had selfishly kept, her time enchantments allowing them to lie together in perpetuity, here in this place that was both his prison and his sanctuary.

In truth it had not been his idea to grant the time enchantments to the magnificent creature lying beside him, he knew. He had been ordered to.

Ragnar gloated over how differently things had evolved from the way they had been planned all those years ago. If the one who had ordered the time enchantments placed upon the woman were here now, Ragnar would surely be dead, rather than praised or thanked.

Smiling to himself, he thought of how lucky he had been. How the synchronicity of events had woven itself into an amazing, colorful tapestry of revenge that was finally coming to fruition. The finished product would soon be taken from the loom, as it were, and put to his use.

“You shall leave me now, my sweet,” he said to her, almost gently. “For there are things to which I must attend.” She slowly rose from the bed, not looking at him as she put on her silk robe.

Reaching to the bedside table, Ragnar placed a finger into the vial of yellow brain fluid and licked it hungrily, feeling the familiar, comforting heat go through him. Slowly he turned back to the curvaceous beauty.

“Did I make you happy this time?” he asked, knowing what her answer would be.

She was still standing with her back to him, shivering.

“No,” she said. “You disgust me, and you always shall.” She paused for a moment, lowering her head in shame.

“Even if you take me for yet another three centuries, my answer will remain the same,” she said wearily. “My only blessing is that your madness and addiction have made it impossible for you to leave me with child.” She finally turned to him, her eyes brimming with hate, her hands clenched into tight fists. “I would rather die than carry the abomination of your seed within my womb.”

Had Ragnar been near enough, he would have reached out to strike her. But as it was he simply lay back upon the sheets, lazily tasting another drop of the precious fluid. He leered at her.

“Rest assured, my dear,” he told her, “that we have centuries of this bliss still lying before us.”

“May I take my leave now?” she half begged, half demanded.

“The Chosen One and Wigg will be here within hours. I wish for you to be present when they face us,” Ragnar said unexpectedly, enjoying the sudden look of surprise upon her face. He smiled wickedly. “It is important to me that they both see you.”

“Why?” she asked. “I do not know who they are or why they have come. How could my attendance make any possible difference?” She had never been a part of his plans before, and his suddenly wanting her there now perplexed and frightened her.

Ragnar rose from the bed, walking naked to where she stood. She cringed. Reaching out, he grasped her face with one hand and then quickly backhanded her with the other, forcing her to her knees. She reeled drunkenly for a moment near the floor. She slowly stood again, hate flashing in her eyes.

“My poor sweet,” the blood stalker said softly. “There is still so much you do not know. So much that you most probably will never know. But be there you shall, or I shall give you to Scrounge for his amusement. I don’t wish to share you, and I never have, but if that is what it takes to make you obedient, then so be it.”

Tears running down her cheeks, she lowered her head. She had long seen the way Scrounge looked at her, and she cowered at the thought of being made his plaything, as well.

“Very well,” she whispered. “I will do as you say.”

“Of course you will.” Ragnar smiled, his bloodshot eyes and long teeth twinkling in the soft light of the room. “And you always shall. Go to your chambers and put on your finest dress—the green one, I think. You will be called for.”

Without speaking further she walked to the door, then opened it and went through. Smiling, the blood stalker returned to the vial, tasting the fluid. At last he dressed, also donning the golden wizard’s dagger that been owned by Wigg so long ago.

Soon now, Wigg, Ragnar thought to himself. Soon.

“They are close,” Nicholas said softly, his dark blue, uptilted eyes registering a smile. “Both the lead wizard and the Chosen One. I can already feel the pestilence of their blood. I have seen to it that each of them is unconscious, and that fits our needs perfectly.”

Nicholas was wearing his simple white robe, sitting in one of three highly polished marble thrones of the deepest blue. The azure glow radiating from him flooded the stone chamber, overpowering any light from the large oil chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. The room was sumptuous, the floor and ceiling of palest green marble.

Ragnar gazed at the young man. Nicholas had grown again since Ragnar had last seen him. He now appeared to be at least fifteen Seasons of New Life. His dark, shiny black hair fell to his shoulders, and his high cheekbones, exotic eyes, and firm jaw were becoming more reminiscent of his parents with each passing day.

Beside him, on a white marble altar, sat the Tome, its pages open.

Why would he bring the book here? Ragnar wondered. Surely he cannot want the wizard and the Chosen One to have it.

“Oh, but I do,” Nicholas said softly. “I wish the wizard and the Chosen One to take the Tome with them. It is, after all, what they came for. It seems the least we can do.” He smiled.

“And for reasons beyond your simple understanding, the Tome is now of more use to us in their hands than in ours,” the young man continued. “Besides, I have already read it. I told you not long ago that I would eventually have need for neither the Tome nor the Paragon, that ridiculous bauble of jewelry they all prize so highly. I already no longer need the book. And soon the stone will have no significance for me, either.”

Ragnar and Scrounge were stunned. They looked at each other and then back at the young man in the throne.

“I do not understand,” Ragnar said. “Will the Tome not help them?”

“Nothing can help them now,” Nicholas answered. “The wheels have been set into motion, and there is no return—for any of us.”

Ragnar turned to look at the great book. Covered with shiny, finely tooled white leather, its pages gilt-edged, the Tome of the Paragon was so enormous that it would have taken at least two strong men to carry it. The weakened wizard and prince would never be able to do it—Ragnar was sure of it. More puzzled than ever, he turned his attention back to Nicholas.

“Do not worry about how they are to carry the Tome back with them,” Nicholas said from his throne. “I will employ a secret method of transportation for the book. Do not be alarmed when this happens. Wigg will surely recognize the incantation for what it is, and believe that it was you who accomplished it. They will be skeptical, of course, that you wish them to have it. But in the end they will take the book—of that you can be sure. I will be in hiding, but within earshot. For I do not yet wish to reveal myself to the Chosen One.” Nicholas’ eyes narrowed; his lips turned up in a sneer. “That will come later, at a more opportune time. But I do wish to hear the voice of the one who dares call himself my father.”

Ragnar stood silently, wondering what the young man had planned.

“Both the wizard and the Chosen One have been bled by my wraiths,” Nicholas added. “Although their strength will eventually return, they will be of no immediate danger to you. In addition, a chalice of the prince’s blood is being brought here with them. It is to be taken to your quarters for safekeeping until such time as I shall call for it.” He lowered his head slightly, leaning forward to look into the stalker’s mutated face. “The azure blood of the Chosen One is of the utmost importance. You are to guard it with your life. Should one drop be spilled, your existence is forfeit. Slowly and painfully.”

“Yes, my lord,” Ragnar said nervously.

Nicholas sat back in his throne. “In addition, there are other things you must know before the arrival of the wizard and the prince,” he went on. “First of all, the hatchlings that bring them here are not like the ones you are accustomed to. These are representative of the second generation of my work, and are capable of both thought and speech. In addition, these hatchlings carry weapons. These are but three of the developing birds you witnessed that day in the catacombs, all of which are now fully mature. They number in the tens of thousands and gather in camps to the north, awaiting my command. Do not be alarmed at the appearance of these three hatchlings, for they are both your allies and your servants.” Ragnar and Scrounge shook their heads in wonder.

Why would he need that many hatchlings, the assassin wondered, when the consuls are so close to being completely taken? And why does he need the consuls at all?

“I need the hatchlings because there is to be a great conflict,” Nicholas whispered, startling the assassin. “In the firmament, as well as upon the land. The Tome ordains it, but makes no mention of its outcome. It is this, coupled with my plans for the Chosen One, that give us the opportunity to reshape the Prophecies to our liking.” He paused for a moment, thinking, his eyes glistening with the power of the craft. “But the reasons for my capture of the consuls are mine, to be revealed to you only at the proper time.”

“My lord, may I ask a question?” Ragnar asked.

Nicholas nodded silently. “You are about to ask me of the azure vein that runs so brightly through the walls of this place, are you not?”

“Yes, my lord,” Ragnar answered.

“To this I will deign to respond, for the wizard Wigg will have already witnessed it, and will no doubt have discerned the answer for himself. The power you see within the vein is coming from the Paragon itself. Its entire dynamism is being transferred to this place, to be stored. It is slowly being imparted into me a little at a time—for even I cannot absorb all of its majesty at once. Think of it, if your feeble mind will allow. The stone, which empowers all of those trained in the craft, is now instilling its power into just one being. Myself. As I once told you, I shall eventually have no need for the Paragon. For the Paragon, as it were, will be inside me. Within my blood, and mine alone.” Nicholas paused for a moment, letting the import of his words sink in.

“This draining of the stone is the reason for my rapidly advancing growth and wisdom,” he continued softly. “My reading of the Tome has enhanced this process, and was one of the reasons I took refuge here, below ground. I will eventually have unquestionable authority over the craft, both the Vigors and the Vagaries, at the same time leaving all the other endowed of Eutracia quite powerless. As this occurs, the stone slowly dies. Wigg will believe Ragnar to be the cause. He will have many questions, some of which it will be to our advantage to answer.

“Taking the power of the stone for myself is not the ultimate goal, just one more step in the total endeavor,” Nicholas went on. “There is still so much you do not know. But you eventually shall.”

“Will I therefore not also begin to lose my powers as the stone fades?” Ragnar asked nervously. “For my abilities of the craft are tied to the stone as well. I have already felt a minuscule loss in my powers, but could not imagine the cause.”

“Have no fear in that regard,” Nicholas answered. “For reasons you do not yet understand, I have chosen you as my servant. And as my servant, you shall retain your powers.”

Smiling, Nicholas closed his eyes for a moment. “Your woman,” he asked Ragnar. “She will of course attend?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And she is still completely unaware of my existence?”

“Again, yes.”

“Good,” Nicholas said, his eyes still closed. “I have approved of the revenge you have planned for the wizard. I find it uniquely fitting. And Scrounge knows of my personal instructions regarding the prince. But it is ironic, don’t you agree, that your woman should be included here today? I can think of no better revenge than that which you are already taking. And still they will have no concept of its importance. Nor will they after they have left us, and you continue to take her. A true treat for the body as well as the mind, is it not?”

“Indeed, my lord.” Ragnar smiled wickedly. He again touched the never-healing wound at the side of his head. Soon, Wigg, he thought. Soon you will stand before me. And I will have my revenge.

Turning his head, Nicholas smiled. “I can sense they are near,” he said quietly. “Make ready.”

23

“They’re back!” Shailiha exclaimed happily to Faegan. “They have reached the last portal!”

They were together on the balcony, watching as a veritable cloud of giant butterflies circled the large, black marble door at the bottom of the atrium.

“Well done, my dear,” the wizard said, and he meant it. Closing his eyes, he commanded the massive black door to open, and the twelve handpicked fliers shot into the great room in a stream of rainbow colors. Quickly he caused the door to close again, sealing the atrium from the tunnel that led to the outside world.

“Bring them up,” he said quietly to the princess.

Shailiha looked down to the fliers. Almost immediately the squadron of special butterflies soared to the brass rail at her left and perched there quietly, the twenty-four beautiful, diaphanous wings opening and closing silently.

She has done it! Faegan thought, amazed. She has successfully sent her first group of fliers out of the Redoubt. And they have returned at her command, finding their way back through the tunnels perfectly.

He had not yet explained to Shailiha his suspicions that her power was the result of an Incantation of Forestallment. He needed more time to absorb all the information contained in the long, detailed scroll that had been left by Egloff: Consummate recollection, unfortunately, did not automatically grant consummate understanding. He was quite aware of the fact that Forestallments had heretofore only been the stuff of myth and legend, and to put such a concept before Wigg and the others required that he be absolutely sure.

But he was becoming more convinced by the moment that this was the result of an event-activated Forestallment, rather than a time-activated one. And the more he saw her with them, the more convinced of it he became. He postulated that it had been the princess’ first physical contact with the butterflies that had initiated it. Even she did not know how it was that she had suddenly been able to do such a thing. To the wizard, this provided even more evidence for his theory. And he now also had a very good idea who had created the forestallment.

The second reason that he had not yet discussed his theories with the princess was because he preferred to explain his discovery to everyone at once. He would therefore wait until the prince and wizard returned to the Redoubt with the Tome of the Paragon. If indeed they ever return, he thought worriedly.

Tristan and Wigg had already been gone too long. It should not have taken them so much time to retrieve the Tome and come back to the Redoubt unless they were in trouble, and the likelihood of just such an occurrence increased with every moment. Given the immense power of whoever was draining the Paragon, he shuddered to think of the forces they might be up against.

With a scowl, he reached down and gathered his robe more closely about his feet, as if by doing so he might also be able to cover up his shame at not succeeding in healing his own legs of the damage done to them by the Coven. If he’d had the use of his legs, he’d have gone with Wigg and Tristan, and perhaps they all would have been there and back again by now.

Still, he was determined to move ahead where he could. He had spent the last two days hurriedly trying to explore the inner workings of Shailiha’s amazing talents with the fliers, yet explaining relatively little to her. Much to his delight, her progress had been dramatic. She no longer trembled or perspired when bonding with the butterflies, and her ability to communicate with them seemed to improve with every moment.

To his mind this had become vital, for there was no one else left in the Redoubt to do his reconnoitering for him. Joshua and Geldon had not yet returned from their trip to Parthalon. And although he had not expressed his concerns to the princess, to his mind Tristan and Wigg should now be presumed missing.

Shannon had returned with the horses, and had also told him of their seeing Scrounge, the captured consuls, and the hatchlings. But despite Shannon’s loyalty, the wizard still dared not use the gnome as his other pair of eyes. The appearance of a gnome among the already frightened population could cause more potential harm than good.

The fliers were now the only choice the wizard had to discover what was happening in the world above, and he felt it imperative he teach both the butterflies and the princess how to exit and enter the Redoubt on their own.

As if reading his mind, Shailiha asked, “How is it that the butterflies are able to move the boulder that guards the end of the tunnel, and release themselves into the outside world?” As her talents with the fliers had progressed, so had her thirst for knowledge.

Faegan smiled. “Wigg and I had to change the spells on the boulders and the radiance stones so that they can now be empowered without the aid of endowed blood. We are not altogether happy about it, but it had to be in case one of the unendowed now living here needed quick entrance or exit.” He looked down at the butterflies as they chased happily around the great room. “The fliers need only to touch the roof of the tunnel to enact the radiance stones, and again touch the boulder that hides the entrance to the other end to open the exit. Just as Geldon does when he goes into town. It is only the large black door at the bottom of the aviary that they fliers cannot move by their own powers. I insisted on that for reasons of security when I constructed the aviary. I was in the process of teaching them how to enter and exit the end of the tunnel by themselves when we first became acquainted with your particular abilities.

“Now then,” the wizard said, “let’s try again.”

Shailiha turned to the twelve fliers on the brass rail next to her. Tell me, she thought, concentrating. Outside of this place, is it night or is it day?

And then came the familiar voice to her mind—what she now knew to be the combination of all twelve voices at once.

It is night, Mistress, she heard.

Tell the wizard, also, she silently ordered. For he cannot hear you in his mind as I can.

Immediately five of the fliers fluttered down to the black alphabet wheel, landing gently, one by one upon the letters. N-I-G-H-T.

“And what was your question?” Faegan asked her.

“Whether it was night or day outside.”

“Very good.” Faegan smiled. “Time for a different kind of test.” He crooked the index finger of his right hand, indicating that the princess lower her face to his. Whispering into her ear, he said, “Do not forget that they understand what is communicated to them verbally, at least by you and me; I doubt they would understand anyone of unendowed blood. I will whisper my question to you, so that they may not hear it. Ask them to spell their answer, rather than communicate it to your mind.”

Faegan thought for a moment, then whispered, “Ask them where they came from, before being brought to the Redoubt. It should prove interesting, and their answer might tell us much.” Shailiha turned her intelligent, hazel eyes once more to the fliers and concentrated.

Tell me the name of the place where you lived, before coming here, to the Redoubt, she thought.

For a moment the butterflies upon the wheel hesitated. Their great wings stopped opening and closing, a sight seldom seen. Uncharacteristically, it was as if they were having trouble deciding on the correct answer. Finally they leapt into the air; several others joined them, and they landed again on some of the letters. S-H-A-D-O-W-O-O-D.

Shailiha turned to the wizard and was about to speak when Faegan placed his index finger across his lips, indicating silence. Smiling and bouncing his eyebrows up and down in delight, he pointed back down to the butterflies. They had taken to the air, and they now alit on another group of letters. A-N-D E-U-T-R-A-C-I-A.

“Ah-ha!” Faegan chuckled, obviously pleased. “Well done!”

“They did it!” Shailiha exclaimed. But the look in Faegan’s amazing, prankish eyes told her that she had not yet grasped the entirety of what had just happened.

“There were two reasons for my particular question,” he said slyly. “Can you tell me what they were?”

Shailiha thought for a moment. “You wanted to know whether they could hear you if you whispered,” she said triumphantly. “They apparently could not, for they did not respond until I asked them with my mind.”

“Yes,” Faegan agreed. “What was my other reason?”

Shailiha thought hard. Finally, and without the wizard’s permission, she looked down to the fliers still perched upon the letters and silently commanded one to come to her. The large yellow-and-violet flier, the one that had become her favorite, launched itself from the alphabet wheel and landed on her outstretched arm. The princess stood there, lost within the moment, and then smiled. “They remember,” she said.

She has truly become their master, Faegan realized. Even more so than I.

“Please explain,” he said calmly.

“Not only did they tell us where they lived until being brought here, but they also named Eutracia, their original home of three centuries ago. This means that they not only relate to the present, but also to the past as well.” She turned back to the butterfly, obviously communicating with it. Then she looked at Faegan. “They can recall as far back as the day that they ingested the waters of the Caves, when they first became endowed.” She turned her hazel eyes to him, confident in her newfound knowledge. “This is significant,” she said with understated authority.

Indeed, Faegan thought. “And the Chosen One shall come, but will be preceded by another,” he remembered. The ages-old quote from the Tome rang out just as clearly in his mind now as it had the first time he had read it. The female—the twin to the male. Had the Coven succeeded in keeping her as their fifth sorceress, she would have been unstoppable.

“Faegan,” the princess asked, “I know these creatures belong to you, but would you mind it terribly if I named this one?” The yellow-and-violet flier continued to perch quietly upon her arm, its wings opening and closing gracefully as it kept its balance.

“The fliers belong to no one,” Faegan answered compassionately. “I am only their guardian.”

“Do you know which of them are the males and which are the females?” she asked, pursing her lips coyly. The wizard got the distinct impression that she was toying with him, as if she knew something that he did not.

“I never really thought about it,” he admitted. “For all of these years I have not had a need to know.”

Shailiha turned back to the flier on her arm. “This one is female,” she said. “She just told me.”

The wizard shook his head. “Of course,” he answered. “And your name for her?”

“Caprice,” Shailiha answered softly.

Faegan smiled. “Very well. Caprice it is.” Then he grew serious.

“There is a matter of which we must now speak,” he said. “Would you please release Caprice, so that I may discuss it with you?”

The princess shook her arm slightly, and the giant butterfly took flight. After twice circling the princess’ head, it flew down to the lower area of the atrium, rejoining the others.

Shailiha turned back to Faegan.

“I am very worried about Tristan and Wigg,” he said as compassionately as he knew how. “They should have been back by now.” He paused for a moment, the sudden worry on Shailiha’s face stabbing him in the heart. “I fear they may be in danger.”

She bit her lower lip, and then a stronger, more determined look surfaced on her delicate features. Drawing a deep, resolute breath, she asked, “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble this may be?”

“No,” Faegan responded. “I only know that in my heart I believe they should have been back before now. And I also believe we need to take whatever action on their behalf we can.”

The princess did not speak as she weighed her very limited options. Finally she turned back to the wizard. “You want me to send the fliers out looking for them, don’t you?” she asked. “And you also want me to use my newfound gift to stay in touch with them as they go.”

“Yes,” Faegan answered. “Just a few of them. It is now night, and they should be safe, provided they fly high enough and return before dawn. I do not want them out and about in the Eutracian countryside during the light of day. The simple, unendowed citizens would love nothing better than to capture one of these amazing creatures of myth.” Another thought came to him. “It will also give us valuable information regarding your bond with the fliers,” he said.

“How so?”

“Since this will be the first time they have traveled any appreciable distance outside the Redoubt, we will be able to discern the range of your abilities. It should prove interesting.”

“Yes,” Shailiha said softly. “Unless they are captured, or die in the attempt . . .”

Knowing she was quite right, he let the statement stand. He could tell how much it hurt her to release the precious butterflies from the safety of the Redoubt, but he also knew that her love for her brother and Wigg surpassed that fear.

“Very well,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”

“Thank you,” Faegan said. “And don’t forget: I love them, too. Call Caprice back up.”

Shailiha raised her arm, silently calling the giant butterfly to her. Almost immediately Caprice left the ground, flying happily back to the arm of her mistress.

Faegan remained amazed at her abilities with the fliers. Though still untrained, she possessed a power that even he did not have.

“I am going to give her spoken commands,” Faegan said. “This way we shall both know what is expected of them.” He turned to look at the delicate creature on Shailiha’s arm. “Pick five others of your kind, and exit the Redoubt,” he said gently. “Fly to the west, high in the sky, and try to get as close to the Caves as you can. But do not enter. Be careful to avoid all other forms of life, especially human. I wish you to communicate as best you can with your mistress, informing her at regular intervals if you see what it is I am sending you in search of. However, under no circumstances are you to fly so far that you are unable to return to the tunnels by dawn. This is paramount. You are searching for the prince and the wizard Wigg. If you see them you are to inform your mistress at once, and immediately return to the Redoubt. Open and close your wings twice if you understand.”

Caprice’s diaphanous wings gently folded together once, then twice.

“She understands,” the princess said. Raising her arm, Shailiha released the flier into the air. “Good-bye, Caprice,” she said softly. The giant butterfly circled Shailiha’s head, then fluttered down to the others. Five of them separated from the group and then followed Caprice toward the door of black marble, waiting for the wizard to release them into the tunnels.

As Faegan closed his eyes the great door of black marble swung open, and the fliers soared into the passageway. Just as quickly the wizard caused the door to close again, securing the room.

After a moment Shailiha turned to him, the concern plainly showing upon her face. “Will Tristan and Wigg be all right?” she asked hesitantly.

Faegan smiled, trying to raise her spirits. “Do not underestimate them. They are two particularly capable individuals, especially together. They went through much to find you and bring you back—more than you will probably ever know. If they did that, they can certainly negotiate their way home.” He reached up to give both her hands a comforting squeeze, and she finally let go a little smile. Turning back to the atrium, the wizard looked down to the remaining butterflies as they careened about the room.

Unless they are both already dead, he thought.

24

There was something cold and hard against Tristan’s right cheek. He was lying on one side, and he squirmed a bit, trying to become more comfortable. All he wanted to do was sleep.

Then his tired, blood-deprived brain slowly began to work again, bringing him around, and he gingerly opened his eyes. His vision was crazily skewed, the vertical having traded places with the horizontal. As a result, nothing in the room was where it should have been.

And then he remembered the ghoulish consuls. With that also returned the memories of the wraiths and hatchlings. Then he and Wigg had been carried out over the azure, impossible sea.

Slowly, warily, he sat up, looking around. The room he was in was very large, with three dark blue marble thrones against one wall, the center one higher than the others. Perched on the right-hand arm of the center throne was a glass vial that contained some kind of yellow fluid. Chairs, tables, patterned rugs, and artwork tastefully adorned the room. The pale green marble of the walls, floor, and ceiling was of the finest quality. A huge oil chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, giving off a soft, subdued light. Then, what he saw to the left of the thrones caused his jaw to drop in admiration. The Tome of the Paragon! his hazy mind told him. It has to be!

It lay on a white marble altar, its pages open. A white light shone down upon it from above.

The Tome was huge—far greater in size than Tristan had ever imagined it to be. At least a meter long and an equal distance in width, it was also at least half a meter thick. From his vantage point the prince could not see the tops of the pages, or the writing upon them. But he somehow knew that the words contained there would be tightly packed, with no wasted space. It was absolutely magnificent.

But how did Wigg expect them to remove it from the Caves and carry it all the way back to the Redoubt? he wondered. It looked as if it would take at least two strong men just to lift it.

Testing the weight across his right shoulder, he could tell that he still had all of his weapons. He tried to stand, but clumsily fell back to the marble floor, ending up half kneeling, half sitting. The cut was still there in his left boot, he noticed, and his foot still itched from the incantation of accelerated healing the wraith had placed upon him. He felt a cold sweat break out along the length of his brow.

It wasn’t a dream.

He looked around for Wigg. The wizard lay curled up on the floor a little way from him. He appeared to be unconscious. Tristan crawled to the old one and tried to shake him awake. It did no good. Finally the prince began slapping the wizard across the face. Eventually Wigg slowly opened his eyes, and his breathing quickened. Tristan helped him to sit up.

“Where are we?” Wigg asked weakly. His aquamarine eyes were dim, his speech slurred.

“I don’t know,” Tristan answered. “Do you remember being bled by the wraiths?”

“Yes,” Wigg said thickly.

“Are you in possession of your powers?” the prince asked anxiously.

Wigg closed his eyes for a moment, his face becoming dark. “They are minimal, at best,” he answered sadly. “The loss of blood has been too great.”

With some difficulty Tristan reached behind his right shoulder, taking one of his dirks into his hand. Knowing full well that he would never be able to handle the heavy dreggan, it was the only thing he could think of. He slid the throwing knife into the pocket of his trousers.

“They bled me also,” he said. “They kept a portion of my blood, handing it to three hatchlings for safekeeping. I don’t know why. Nothing makes sense here. And the hatchlings were not the same as the ones we saw before. They had arms and hands, and wore weapons. At least one of them could even speak. They picked us up and flew us across the sea.”

“Can you stand?” Wigg asked.

“Not on my own. But perhaps we can help each other,” Tristan answered.

The two of them struggled to their knees, each using the other for support. They finally stood upright on trembling legs in the center of the strange room.

“Welcome, Wigg and Chosen One,” a deep, male voice suddenly said. “I have been waiting for you a very long time. Three hundred years, in fact.”

Tristan and Wigg looked up to see someone standing on the other side of the room who had not been there before. His back was turned to them, and he wore a shiny, black, hooded robe. It was gathered at the waist by a golden belt, from which hung some kind of weapon. Looking closer, the prince could see that the back of the man’s head was misshapen and bald; the grotesque, dangling earlobes were exceptionally long. The shiny skin of his head glistened eerily beneath the light of the chandelier.

From this angle he almost looks like a blood stalker, Tristan thought. But blood stalkers cannot speak. Reaching slowly into the pocket of his trousers, he ran his thumb along the blade of the dirk.

For the first time Tristan noticed the doorway in the right-hand wall near the thrones. And from that there came a glow—the most magnificent evidence of the craft he had ever seen. A chill ran up his spine.

Like a dense fog, the azure glow crept out of the hallway and across the floor of the chamber. Its power and density were such that he felt certain he could hold it in his hands.

“Wigg, lead wizard of the former Directorate,” the strange-looking man suddenly said. “King maker, and protector of the Paragon. Onetime husband of Failee, the dear, departed first mistress of the Coven of sorceresses. And Prince Tristan, the male of the Chosen Ones. For whom the Directorate waited so long. Brash, impulsive, and said to possess the highest quality of endowed blood the world has ever known. Or ever will. However, despite his magnificent blood he is yet to be trained in the ways of the craft. How frustrating that must be. Nonetheless, welcome to you both. It is indeed an honor to be in the presence of such important guests.” The man had still not turned around.

“Who are you?” Wigg shouted. “I demand to know why we are here!” He took a weak step forward.

Slowly, the man in the black robe turned around. Seeing the thing’s face, Tristan thought he might be ill. He heard the breath leave Wigg’s lungs in a rush, and he whirled to see the blood draining from his friend’s face.

“Ragnar,” Wigg finally breathed. “You’re alive! This cannot be . . .”

The wizard clearly had no more words and just stood there, speechless before the monster in the black robe.

Tristan looked more closely at Ragnar. The shiny, bald head was elongated; the eyes were gray and bloodshot. Two long fangs ran down from the top row of teeth, overlapping the lower lip. An angry, oozing, unhealed wound could be seen in the right temple of his head, and his eyes glistened back at them with a madness that was clearly, sickeningly evident. A beautiful golden dagger hung from the belt at his left hip, contrasting sharply with the shiny black robe. He was an odd combination of both human and blood stalker, and the effect was chilling.

Walking away from them, the one called Ragnar turned and sat in the center throne.

“So many questions, aren’t there, Wigg?” he asked sarcastically, settling himself into the great marble chair. “But before we begin, there are two others here I should like you to meet. First of all, my servant. Someone I believe the prince will be especially eager to see.”

Tristan felt his blood rise as Scrounge sauntered into the room, the silver spurs on his boots ringing out loudly upon the marble floor. Once seated on the throne at Ragnar’s left, he smirked nastily at Tristan. Remembering what Geldon had told them, the prince looked carefully at the tips of the arrows in the crossbow strapped to the man’s right forearm. They were stained in yellow.

Tristan remembered the dead consul he had found outside the palace, and the parchment scroll so violently placed into the empty eye socket, containing the taunting, sick note the assassin had written in the victim’s own blood. Tristan continued to stroke the blade of his hidden knife with his thumb.

I beg the Afterlife, he pleaded silently, just give me one clear chance.

“And now,” Ragnar suddenly said, “for the finest prize of all. Please come in, my sweet, and meet our guests.”

A woman walked into the room wearing an emerald green, floor-length gown.

“I present to you my . . . companion,” Ragnar said slyly. “This is Celeste.” He nodded, and slowly, gracefully, the woman turned.

Tristan froze, his heart racing wildly. The woman standing before him was the mysterious beauty he had rescued from suicide that night on the cliffs.

Her clothing was different, but it was the same woman. Of that there was no doubt. He took in the long, red hair that swooped down over the forehead, the brilliant, sapphire eyes almost hidden beneath it, and the hint of the cleft in her strong chin. His mind raced, searching for answers.

She’s one of them, he realized. She must be. But why was she on the cliffs that night?

After looking first to the wizard, Celeste finally turned her eyes toward the prince. The color drained from her face, and her lovely red mouth opened partially in disbelief. Recomposing herself, though, she narrowed her eyes and very minutely shook her head once, indicating that she did not want him to speak of their previous meeting. Tristan gave a small nod of agreement. What is going on here? He looked away as Celeste seated herself on Ragnar’s right.

A centuries-old hate evident in his eyes, Ragnar looked at Wigg. “So tell me, Lead Wizard,” he asked sarcastically, “how does it feel to see me, your old friend, after all these years? I observe that you no longer have your wizard’s tail. No matter. The Directorate is no more, anyway. It is my understanding that Failee herself took your tail from you. How appropriately disgraceful.”

Wigg at last collected his thoughts.

“How is it that you live?” he demanded weakly of the blood stalker. “You were never granted time enchantments, because your transformation by the Coven happened before the enchantments were ever developed! You should be dead!”

“Oh, but I was granted the enchantments.” Ragnar smiled. “And by someone you knew well. I have been waiting all of that time, here within these caves. Be that as it may, I am anxious to complete my business with you.”

“And what would that business be?” Wigg asked.

“Several things, actually,” Ragnar responded. “Not the least of which is to give you what you came for.”

Wigg again seemed stunned, but recovered quickly. “And that is?” he asked skeptically.

“Why the Tome, of course,” Ragnar said. He dipped his right index finger into the vial of yellow fluid. Placing the fingertip into his mouth he closed his eyes for a moment, smiling again before reopening them. Tristan’s sensibilities recoiled at the brazen vulgarity of it.

The three individuals in their thrones stared down on the prince and the wizard as the amazing radiance continued to flood the marble floor of the room. Tristan looked with hate into the ratlike eyes of Scrounge, and the assassin shot back an unafraid glare that each of them understood well. After a time, Wigg spoke again.

“You’re addicted, aren’t you?” he asked. “Tretiak and I believed that might happen. Especially if you survived long enough.”

Addicted? Tristan asked himself. What in the name of the Afterlife is Wigg talking about?

“Of course I am addicted, you conceited bastard!” Ragnar hissed back. “You had to realize that I would be! And still you did nothing! Not a single search party sent out to come and look for me!” He finally collected himself, settling back into his chair. “But all of that will be paid for in full today,” he said more softly.

“We were unaware at the time you would become addicted. We had no way to know,” Wigg said sadly, taking a step forward. With the wizard’s unexpected movement, Scrounge raised the miniature crossbow slightly. Tristan curled his fingers around the knife in his pocket. This will happen yet today, he thought.

“It was only later, as our knowledge of the craft grew, that we realized what we had done,” Wigg continued. “You must also know that the ingestion of your own brain fluid was an accident! Tretiak and I were only trying to help you!”

His eyes turned to the golden dagger on Ragnar’s belt. “That’s mine, isn’t it?” he asked solemnly.

“Yes,” the blood stalker sneered, slowly sliding the blade from the scabbard. He held it to the light of the chandelier. “ ‘In Brotherhood We Serve the Vigors,’ ” he quoted sarcastically. “A truly ridiculous concept. Had you ever been properly exposed to the Vagaries, you would know that the drivel of the Vigors is not only less powerful, but quite insipid as well.”

Tristan had suddenly endured quite enough of listening and doing nothing. “Why do you want my blood?” he shouted at the stalker. “And who are the wraiths?”

Ragnar smiled. “The wraiths are only several of an entire host of servants. Why I have need for the blood of the Chosen One will be revealed to you at a later time. For now, suffice it to say that you will find it very interesting.”

“The ghoul-like consuls and the hatchlings,” Tristan hissed. “I suppose they are simply more of your followers?”

“Not followers, exactly.” Ragnar smiled, pursing his lips in thought. “More like servants. The consuls you fought with and killed are simply those that were ‘left over,’ so to speak. They are the ones who initially resisted me, so I turned them into what you saw there in the Caves. They are now relatively mindless, but still have their uses. You also might be interested to know that the second generation of hatchlings, those which carry weapons and can speak, now number in the tens of thousands and are already camped here in your beloved Eutracia. To the north, in the fields of Farplain. They will also prove to be extremely useful.”

Tristan looked to Wigg in horror. The wizard seemed as shocked as he. But the blood stalker had not finished taunting them.

“Please forgive me,” he said politely. “For I digress. Living underground for three centuries has a certain effect upon one, if you will. I believe you were asking about ‘followers,’ were you not? Oh, I will indeed have followers, but they are not ready just yet. Only when the time is right shall they be brought forth.” He paused, leering wickedly at the prince. “Tell me, Chosen One, can you guess who they are?”

Tristan shuddered inside. He did not dare utter his suspicion for fear that saying it might make it come true.

“Ah,” the stalker said. “I can tell that you already know. Yes, Chosen One, it is indeed so. My followers will be your very own consuls of the Redoubt.” Again he paused, savoring his statement. “And Wigg! Frankly, you surprise me!” he continued. “It was quite foolish of you and the dearly departed Directorate to send them forth from the Redoubt, searching for stalkers and harpies during such a fragile time in the history of your pompous monarchy! And then you and the Chosen One ran off to Parthalon, leaving them all here to fend for themselves in this shattered, chaotic shell of a nation! What were you thinking? But I thank you, nonetheless.” He grinned at the wizard, relishing every word. “By the way, there is no longer any point in searching for them,” he whispered vehemently. “I have them all.”

Tristan looked up at the woman called Celeste. He thought there was a hint of shininess in her sapphire eyes, as if she was fighting back tears. But then it was gone; he had probably been mistaken. Regaining his focus, he looked over to Wigg.

The wizard was psychologically beaten—both from the loss of his powers and the devastating revelations he had been forced to listen to. He raised his eyes to Ragnar.

“You’re draining the stone, aren’t you?” he asked weakly. “Its powers are somehow being transferred to the vein that runs through the walls of this place. Don’t lie to me. I know it to be true.”

“Quite right, Lead Wizard,” Ragnar said, taking another fingerful of the yellow fluid and placing it into his mouth. “I knew you would recognize the meaning of it immediately. Just think! In less than three months’ time, all that you have ever worked for, including the impending training of the Chosen One, will be of no consequence. A beautiful thing, is it not?”

Ignoring Ragnar for the moment, Tristan turned his attention to Scrounge, who was sipping from a cup of wine that had appeared in his hand.

“Why the reward for me?” Tristan shouted at him. “Don’t you have anything better to do than walk atop tavern bars, handing out illicit posters? If it’s me you want, I will gladly come to you right now!” He fingered the knife in his pocket. “I won’t need another note of invitation,” he whispered viciously.

“As far as your reward goes, you will learn later why it has been offered,” Scrounge replied. “Interestingly enough, despite the hugely handsome sum, we don’t want you to be taken. Curious, isn’t it? And as to your offer of a duel, please know that I would like nothing better than to take you on right now.” He smiled, happily taking another sip of the wine as if none of this mattered.

“Rumor has it that you’re very good,” he continued. “And that you somehow even managed to slay the commander of the Minions. Even so, I doubt you’re good enough to take me. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair. Right now you couldn’t even raise your sword. And what a shameful act it is, you carrying around the same disgusting, foreign-made weapon you used to willingly murder your own father. The same blade those ignorant, winged freaks from Parthalon employ. No, Chosen One, we will not fight, at least not now. But another time, I promise you.” Scrounge mockingly raised his cup in a gesture of false courtesy.

Tristan could contain himself no longer. Despite his relative weakness, he sent his hidden dirk unerringly across the room, straight for Scrounge’s forehead.

Lazily, almost effortlessly it seemed, the assassin lifted his miniature crossbow, and a yellow-tipped arrow seared across the expanse of the room, striking Tristan’s knife in midair. Both fell noisily to the marble floor, disappearing into the ankle-deep glow still rolling in from the hallway.

“You see?” Scrounge said, clucking his tongue in condemnation. “Just as I said. Too slow.”

Tristan stood there weakly, seething at the arrogant assassin, not knowing what to do. His eyes full of hate and frustration, he looked to Wigg for guidance.

“Pick up my arrow, Chosen One,” Scrounge’s voice ordered from the other side of the room.

“What?” Tristan asked, momentarily nonplussed.

“Are you deaf as well as difficult?” Scrounge asked cattily. “Pick up my arrow and bring it to me on bended knee. Now. They’re expensive, and I wish it back. And don’t touch that crudely made piece of iron you call a throwing knife that is lying beside it.” He smiled at the prince. “I don’t have the patience to shoot one of your toys out of the air again.”

Tristan’s endowed blood began to rise in even greater anger from the insulting demand. One day this man will die before me, I swear it, he promised silently.

“I will never kneel to you,” he growled. Lowering his eyes in hate, he took an aggressive step toward the assassin. “If you want your weapon so badly, come and get it yourself. There are several ways in which I would enjoy giving it to you.”

Scrounge laughed. He stood, placing his hands on his hips. “The Chosen One’s reputation indeed proves true! Impetuous to a fault! No matter, though.” He turned to Ragnar. “I believe now is as good a time as any, don’t you agree?”

“Indeed,” Ragnar answered.

Almost immediately Tristan felt his arms being clamped to the sides of his body, his feet no longer able to step forward. Ragnar had enveloped him within a wizard’s warp. The prince could see that Wigg had been similarly affected.

“This is not necessary!” Wigg shouted at the stalker. “Why are you doing this?”

“We simply wish you both to remain quite still for a moment, while Scrounge and I take care of some long overdue business,” Ragnar said almost happily. “It is especially important for the prince to be held, for he has a famous habit of becoming unpleasantly athletic. Scrounge, you may go first.”

The assassin jumped down from the throne, looking into the azure haze that curiously covered the floor. Finally recovering his arrow, he held it in his right hand as he approached the prince.

Sweat ran into Tristan’s eyes, and his breathing came faster. He struggled desperately against the invisible bonds holding him, but it was clearly no use. If there was one thing in the world that he could not abide it was being contained or restricted. He desperately wanted the chance to circle Scrounge and actively engage him on his own terms, his dreggan slashing as he went. But locked within this unforgiving warp he had no choice but to stand frozen to the floor and let the assassin do whatever he chose. Then his eyes fixed on the yellow-tipped arrow, and his heart skipped a beat with the sudden, horrific understanding of what was about to happen. The sickening arrow was now only inches from his face.

“Ragnar!” Wigg screamed. “I beg you, do not do this! He is the one for whom we have waited so long! Kill me if you want, but let him live!”

“He will leave here alive, Wigg, of that you can be sure,” Ragnar said softly. “And, given the purported quality of his blood, he may not even feel the effects of the poison coursing within his system for as long as several days. But to let him live indefinitely is not something that we are prepared to do. The Tome states that he will lead the world forward to a new age. But we have other plans. We wish to do that job ourselves.”

Tears began to run from the wizard’s eyes as he continued to plead for the life of the prince, his words the only weapons he had left. “How could you do such a thing?” he whispered incredulously. “You used to be one of us!”

“But I am one of you no more!” Ragnar snarled back. “You helped see to that yourself.”

Tristan struggled to muster his courage as the assassin brought the arrow close to his face. A slow and horrifying death. That was what Faegan and Wigg had told him happened when someone was scratched by a weapon coated in the brain fluid of a stalker.

“If you want me dead, why don’t you just get it over with!” he shouted.

“Because we do not wish for you to die quickly,” Scrounge answered. “There are many more interesting things we wish you to witness before you finally leave this earth.”

“Before all of this is done, I shall kill you,” Tristan whispered, his voice barely audible. He spat all the saliva he could muster directly into the assassin’s face.

Scrounge smiled and wiped off the spittle. “Still giving orders, even in the face of death!” He laughed. “I commend you! And as for your invitation to a duel, as you already know, I heartily accept.” Scrounge looked to Ragnar for permission to commence.

Smiling, Ragnar nodded. “You may place the blade anywhere within the warp you wish,” he said.

Scrounge walked slowly around the prince, his spurs ringing out coldly against the marble floor. He savored each moment like a cat toying with mouse—a mouse that was trapped in a corner, and could not move.

Tristan strained uselessly against the confines of the warp as Scrounge wandered behind him, out of his sight. Then the assassin came full circle to face him.

Slowly, carefully, Scrounge pushed the tip of the arrow through the warp, touching Tristan’s right shoulder. With a quick, unforgiving stroke he incised a straight line into the prince’s skin. Tristan’s azure blood began to well up and trickle down his arm, dripping through the haze, splattering softly onto the floor.

Then Tristan felt the familiar itch of accelerated healing. He craned his neck to look at his shoulder, and his eyes went wide. He could literally see the wound closing. Before several more moments had gone by it was completely gone, as if Scrounge’s weapon had never touched him. Even Faegan cannot make the incantation perform so well.

“Yes,” Ragnar said to the prince as if reading his mind. “I healed you. We couldn’t have your famous azure blood dripping all over the floors, now could we? It would have created such a mess. But I healed your skin only. Your blood is still polluted by my brain fluid.” The stalker smiled, stabbing another finger into the vial of fluid and placing it into his mouth.

“Now both of you and the Paragon you love so much will die at approximately the same time,” he said softly. “Separate phenomena, to be sure, but with the same timing and ultimate effect. Interesting, don’t you think?”

A thousand emotions swirled through Tristan’s mind, and his chin slumped onto his chest. If Wigg and Faegan are correct, then I am surely a dead man.

He looked at the woman named Celeste. Again he thought he could see a hint of shininess in her eyes, but perhaps it was simply the light. Turning his dark eyes to Wigg, he saw that the lead wizard was crying softly. Then Wigg raised his face and glared at the mutated blood stalker.

“Ragnar,” Wigg breathed through his pain and hate. “He is the Chosen One. You have no idea what you have just done.”

“Oh, but I do,” Ragnar purred back. “Things have now been set in motion, the likes of which your feeble mind could only dream of.”

“I assume you have some type of similar fate in store for me.” Wigg now sounded resigned.

“Similar, but not exactly the same,” Ragnar answered. “Your fate is to be special, and it is to happen now. I have had the luxury of three centuries to perfect it, and you will be impressed.”

“Before you do whatever you intend, I have some questions,” Wigg said. “At least satisfy my curiosity.”

“By all means ask them,” Ragnar answered politely.

“First: the great sea, here within the Caves. Where did it come from? How is its existence possible?”

“I cannot take full credit for the phenomenon,” Ragnar answered. “It was a by-product of the excavation needed to house the hatchlings as they matured. It seems there is an underground river that runs through this area, not unlike the falling, red waters of the first chamber that for so long supported the life of the stone. The first time an attempt was made to acquire room for the second generation of hatchlings, the unusual spring was laid bare, and it flooded the entire space, creating the sea. But rather than being red, the waters of the sea are azure, like the manifestations of the craft. I have not fully researched whether there is any connection between the two, but I shall. After all, the waters must be azure for some reason, mustn’t they? I feel there is much, much more to learn about the Caves than any of us ever expected. In fact, it is now my belief that there are worlds here, below ground, that we never knew existed.”

“And the voice of Morganna that came to us in the Caves?” Wigg asked.

Ragnar laughed. “The good Queen Morganna is as dead as dead can be. I imitated her voice to draw the two of you here, knowing that the prince would be compelled to follow it. The sliding walls blocking your retreat were also of my doing, as were the glowing signs of the heraldry the prince prizes so much.”

“But why go to all that trouble?” Wigg asked.

“For exactly the reasons that the false voice of the queen told you,” the blood stalker responded. “The protection of your well-being. We wished to herd you here to this precise spot, without delay or unnecessary risk. Had we not done so you would have become lost within the Caves’ newfound complexities, most probably starving to death. Besides, without my ‘help,’ how would you have ever crossed the sea?” Ragnar grinned over his long incisors while taking a bit more of the yellow fluid. “It could be said that I saved both of your lives.”

“But why do you want Tristan’s blood?” Wigg asked. “If I am to die, then there is no reason to keep the answer from me.”

Smiling, Ragnar waggled a finger at the wizard. “Some things are better left unsaid. Besides, my good fellow, who said anything about you dying? What I have planned for you is much more refined. But first we must discuss the Tome.”

Wigg glanced toward the great book resting peacefully on the white altar. “What of it?” he asked skeptically.

“Since your powers are temporarily gone, I will perform the spell of compression and pagination for you now. It will be given to you after you’ve departed. When you are finally back in the Redoubt, I suggest you restore the book to its natural form as soon as possible.”

Tristan looked quizzically at Ragnar. What in the name of the Afterlife is he talking about?

Wigg’s expression registered surprise. “Why are you giving us the Tome? You must know that we will only use it against you!”

“I have already read it,” Ragnar answered quietly. “I have no further need for it.”

“That’s impossible!” Wigg exploded. “Even if you could somehow have read it without the Paragon, you couldn’t possibly recite the entire treatise! It’s tens of thousands of pages long! Only Faegan can do that, for he is the only known living being with the Power of Consummate Recollection! And it is difficult, even for him!”

Ragnar smirked at Wigg. “Is that so?” he asked quietly. Tristan saw the color drain from the wizard’s face.

“Enough of this chatter,” Ragnar said suddenly. “Time to get down to business.”

The blood stalker pointed one of his extremely long fingernails in the direction of the Tome. The entire book began to glow. Then it became smaller and smaller, until it was the size of an extraordinarily thick personal journal. Finally Ragnar dropped his arm. “There,” he said almost casually. “That should make things much easier for you on your journey home.”

He rose from his throne and walked to the altar, where he picked up the once-gigantic book. Then he sauntered over to Wigg and reached through the warp surrounding the lead wizard to deposit the Tome within Wigg’s robe. “There is, however, one more piece of unfinished business,” he whispered nastily.

Ragnar snapped his fingers. Scrounge jumped down from his throne, coming like an obedient dog to his master’s side. From a pocket in his dark brown leather trousers he produced a small silver tube, which he handed to Ragnar.

“Tell me, Wigg, how much do you know about stalker brain fluid?” Ragnar asked. “It’s a fascinating subject all of its own, quite full of riddles and complexities. Did you know, for example, that if enough of it is collected at once, it can be condensed and dried into a powder? And that the older the powder is, the less power it contains?” He slowly opened the top of the silver tube.

Removing the golden dagger from its scabbard at his side, he sprinkled some of the fine, light yellow powder along the length of the blade, holding it to the light of the chandelier.

“This powder is almost three hundred years old,” Ragnar continued. “I have been saving it all this time for you, and you alone. It has taken all of those centuries for it to lose just the right amount of its power. You should feel complimented. Unlike the brain fluid that was placed into the bloodstream of the prince, this powder will not kill you. I do not wish you to die. I do, however, wish for you to suffer, just as I have suffered for centuries.”

He held the shiny blade of the dagger before the Wigg’s face. “Fitting, is it not, that the instrument of this act should be the very same blade that you once used to harm me?” And with that, the stalker blew the powder from the blade directly into Wigg’s eyes.

Wigg screamed and snapped his head back and forth as torrents of pain cascaded through his eyes and into his brain. Long minutes passed, until Wigg let out a final, great scream of torture and his head lolled down onto his chest. Tears of pain and sadness ran down upon his robe, creating dark blotches as they went. Then he groaned softly and fainted.

“You bastards!” Tristan screamed, fighting the warp that held him. “What have you done to him?”

“Why don’t we let him tell you?” Ragnar answered pleasantly. He reached through the warp and began slapping Wigg viciously across the face.

Wigg finally opened his eyes, and Tristan stared in horror. The wizard’s eyes were totally white and lifeless.

“Wigg!” Tristan screamed. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Wigg responded thickly. “But I am quite blind.”

Now it was Tristan’s turn to cry. Trembling with hate, he whispered to both the stalker and the assassin at once, “I swear to the Afterlife, I shall kill you both. By all that I am, I will see you die at my feet.”

Ragnar smiled. “Given your condition, that is quite doubtful. You have unknowingly hit upon one fact, however.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “The Afterlife is more responsible for all of this than you know.

“And now it is time for the two of you to leave us, for my work is done,” he said. “When you wake, you will find yourselves back on the trail leading to the Redoubt. You will find your horses there. During your return you will not be harassed by any of our forces. The Tome will still be in the wizard’s robe.”

Tristan felt the wizard’s warp fall away—and then everything went black.

Ragnar turned to Celeste. “You are dismissed, my dear,” he said. Without a glance at him she left the room, closing the heavy door behind her.

As soon as she was gone, Nicholas emerged from the hallway, coming to hover quietly over the inert body of the prince. He bent to run his smooth, white palm across the face of the Chosen One.

“So this is he who dares to call himself my father,” Nicholas said softly. “The Chosen One, his azure blood now polluted with the brain fluid of a stalker. How fitting. And next to him lies his sightless, quite useless wizard.” He closed his eyes, lifting his head toward the ceiling. “The Chosen One shall soon see who the true parents are.”

He turned to Ragnar. “Call for two of the hatchlings to return them to the trail, as promised. Make sure the Tome goes with them.”

“My lord,” Ragnar whispered back.

With that, Nicholas glided from the room, followed by the blue glow that receded down the hallway and out of sight, like a shimmering wave.

Ragnar and Scrounge bent over to pick up the bodies.

25

“Tristan! Wake up! Drink!”

The urgent words came to the prince’s ears as a distant, hazy sound, growing ever clearer as he regained consciousness. The voice was familiar. A flask of water met his lips, and some of it was poured carefully down his parched throat. He swallowed automatically, greedily. Lying in Wigg’s lap in the dark of night, he finally opened his eyes. What he saw was not comforting.

The wizard’s eyes were still that milky white.

It’s true! Tristan realized, his mind finally clearing. It all really did happen! He sat up, looking around.

“We are safe, at least for the time being,” Wigg said weakly. “The basket of food and drink and even the fire were already here when I came to. It appears Ragnar kept at least part of his promise.”

Finding that some of his lost strength had returned, Tristan tentatively stood. For several moments he carefully surveyed the scene. Their horses stood nearby, tied to a tree. He checked his weapons; they were intact.

They were on the trail to the Redoubt; he recognized the bend just ahead, and the fallen tree lying partly across it. A campfire burned brightly before them, its comforting, wood-laden scent reaching for the sky. Alongside the wizard was a basket of food, with two flasks inside. A soft breeze rustled through the night, and the stars in the dark sky competed for attention with the three magenta moons.

Once convinced that they were alone, Tristan sat down next to the blind wizard. He raised one hand, slowly passing it before Wigg’s face. But there was no reaction; the wizard’s dead, white eyes registered absolutely nothing. And then Wigg spoke.

“Yes, it’s true,” he said. “I am blind.” He paused for a moment, as if trying to find the words. “And I may be so forever.”

Tristan put his hand on the old one’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Other than your vision, are you all right? Have your powers returned? I hope so. But Wigg, I understand nothing of this. Who is Ragnar? And why does he hate you so much?”

“Ragnar . . .” Wigg sighed. “What happened between us was over three hundred years ago, during the height of the Sorceresses’ War, Long before you were born, and long before we learned of the eventual arrival of you and your sister.” He paused for a moment. “When I first awakened I discovered the flasks, and smelled wine in one of them,” he said. “Would you give me some? I fear that just now I could use it.”

Tristan placed the wine flask into the wizard’s hands. Wigg took a long pull from the opening. “First things first,” he said finally, the wine seeming to fortify him. “How do you feel?”

“I’m better,” Tristan answered, moving a little nearer to the warmth of the fire. He looked to his shoulder; there was absolutely no evidence of what Scrounge had done to him. As was sometimes his habit, he pulled his knees up to his chin, holding them there. “It is as if nothing ever happened to me.”

Oh, but it has, Wigg thought sadly. And it is my fault.

“Other than my vision, I am also well,” the wizard told him. “My powers have not completely returned. But they will certainly have done so by the time we return home—or at least to some semblance of what they once were, considering the continual draining of the stone.” He turned his lifeless, once-beautiful eyes in the direction of the prince. “But right now we should both eat.”

“I can’t,” Tristan said angrily.

“But you must,” Wigg answered. “It has been a long time since we had any nourishment. Especially you. You must keep your strength up for as long as you can . . .”

The prince knew the answers to his many questions about Ragnar would eventually come, but only in the wizard’s good time. He took a piece of cheese and a hunk of bread for both himself and Wigg, placing the wizard’s portions into the old one’s hands. He did it for no other reason than to get Wigg talking. It worked.

In between bites of cheese and bread, Wigg related the story of Ragnar. Of how he and Tretiak had tried to heal him, only to have their well-meant compassion end in tragic results. Tristan listened in silence.

“How did he become so needful of his own brain fluid?” he asked when Wigg was done. “If it is of his own body, then how can it be addictive?”

“If you better understood the craft, you would have a keener grasp of that,” Wigg answered. “Simply put, since Tretiak and I interrupted the process begun by the Coven, it was never completed. This means that, unlike other, fully developed stalkers, his process of transformation goes on unabated, even to this day, the incantation still trying to turn him. Some incantations, such as those used upon the stalkers by the Coven, had an infinite timeline until purposely discontinued by their creator. But that is another subject, for yet another day.” He paused again, taking another drink of the wine as he continued to collect his thoughts.

“Anyway,” he continued, “what all of this means is that his system continues to produce fluid, driven relentlessly forward by the ongoing incantation. But the wound in the side of his head releases it again, partially negating the process. Ingesting it is one way to get it back into his body, thereby simultaneously slowing down the need to create more, and causing a pleasurable sensation of release upon his nervous system. This process has apparently gone on for centuries, and will continue to do so unless he is killed. He is, in effect, his own prisoner of time. And also a prisoner of the craft. One must always be careful in the application of the craft, Tristan. For each way in which an incantation can proceed successfully, there are a hundred ways for it go awry.”

“And he blames you for his addiction,” Tristan concluded.

“Yes. That is why he blinded me. He wanted to satisfy his desire for revenge by using the same weapon I tried to help him with. In those days we all carried the golden daggers as a symbol of our brotherhood. As difficult to believe as it may now seem, Ragnar was once a part of that. But never forget that as a stalker, even a partial one, he is quite mad.” He shook his head. “There remain, however, many things I do not understand.”

“Such as the amazing azure glow that crept out from the doorway,” Tristan said. “I felt very drawn to it for some reason, as if it were somehow a part of me, a part of my very own blood.”

“Yes,” Wigg agreed. “I could see the effect it was having on you. That glow was the most awe-inspiring manifestation of the craft I have ever witnessed. But Ragnar never had that kind of power, and I very much doubt that he does now. No, someone else was there also, listening to every word. I believe it to have been the same being who is responsible for the draining of the stone. I am convinced that much of what Ragnar told us is lies, designed to throw us off. And much of it, conversely, I also believe to be the truth. A great portion of this riddle remains unexplained, purposely shrouded in a dense fog much like that glow we saw there in the chamber.”

“Such as placing a bounty on my life, when they have no desire of my ever being caught,” Tristan wondered aloud. “That makes no sense. And what is their need for the consuls, especially with all of their tattoos removed? What possible difference could that make? Not to mention the purported thousands of hatchlings camped at Farplain.”

His face darkened, especially at the thought of so many of Ragnar’s second-generation hatchlings loose upon the land. Wigg turned blindly toward the prince. Tristan winced at the memory of the wizard’s once-commanding aquamarine eyes.

“And then there is the greatest threat of all to our safety,” Wigg said solemnly. “The Chosen One has been polluted with the brain fluid of a stalker. I know you feel well at this moment. But soon, very soon, you will begin to feel its effects. We must get back to the Redoubt and inform Faegan. With the aid of the Tome, perhaps there is something we can do.”

“And about your blindness, as well?” Tristan asked.

“Perhaps. But it is you who are most important.” Then a look of concern crossed Wigg’s face. “The Tome! It is here, as Ragnar promised, is it not?” He stretched out an arm and began to pat the ground beside him, searching.

Suddenly anxious, Tristan looked around. At last he saw the thick, white leather book sitting in the grass a few feet away. “Yes! It’s here!” he exclaimed. For the first time that night, he saw Wigg smile.

Slowly, reverently, Tristan took the Tome into his hands. He could not believe that the once-gigantic treatise he had seen in the Caves could in fact be the same book. Very carefully he opened it—the collection of volumes that were to explain the very meaning of his life and the life of his sister. It was a moment he had waited impatiently for.

But what he saw within the Tome made his breath come out in a rush. Quickly, almost in a panic, he thumbed through the rest of the pages in utter disbelief.

Every single page of the Tome was solid black. No words, no letters, no symbols.

He looked at Wigg in horror. “I don’t understand!” he exclaimed. “The pages are all black. The Tome is ruined! This must be some trick of Ragnar’s!”

Despite his affliction, Wigg smiled. “The Tome is not ruined,” he said compassionately. “The great book has been made smaller for the purposes of transporting it from one place to the next.”

“What good is the Tome if it cannot be read?” Tristan asked in frustration.

“There is, in fact, great value in not being able to read the Tome,” Wigg answered. “Think for a moment. Right now the Tome is out in the open, where anyone could conceivably take it from us. When the spell is enacted, the Tome’s cover and pages shrink, but the writing upon its pages does not. As the pages compress, the words written upon them are therefore literally forced into and over the top of one another. So much so that all of the white space is covered over, creating a completely black page. In this way not only can the great book be easily hidden or moved, but if it falls into hands that have also captured the Paragon, it still cannot be read.” Wigg took another sip of the wine.

“As the book shrinks, the pages also become rearranged, or ‘repaginated,’ if you will, in a completely random order. Pages from one volume may even appear within another. So even if a thief were somehow able to restore it to its original size, it would remain impossible to use. Clever, don’t you think?”

Tristan shook his head. “But why would Ragnar let us have the Tome?” he asked. “Is possessing both the Paragon and the Tome not an incredible advantage?”

Wigg’s face darkened. “I do not know,” he said slowly, the wheels turning in his mind. “Unless you take him at his word and believe that he has read the entire treatise, and requires it no longer. But for him to voluntarily relinquish his grasp of the Tome would also mean that he has somehow acquired the gift of Consummate Recollection, and to my knowledge Faegan is the only living wizard who is so gifted. Why Ragnar gave us the Tome remains a puzzle as truly confounding as why he let us live and put us back here, on the trail to safety. But then again, do not forget that he is at least somewhat mad. His words and deeds may have no meaning whatsoever, sending us uselessly chasing our tails. His apparent study of the Vagaries may also have harmed his mind, just as it drove Failee to the edge.” At the mention of his wife of so long ago, Wigg’s face fell slightly.

Tristan thought for a moment, finding something about all of this that was confusing him. “But it was my understanding that I was the only one who was to read the Prophecies, the final volume of the Tome. How then is it that Ragnar may have also read it? And how did he decipher it without the stone?”

The Prophecies indeed, Wigg thought. Perhaps the most complex of all the secrets.

“It is true that the Ones Who Came Before decreed in the Tome that only you should read the Prophecies,” Wigg said, “and we all respected that. Even Faegan has not read them. But there is, in fact, nothing keeping someone else of endowed blood who is wearing the stone from doing so. That is one of the prime reasons we placed the Tome back into the Caves. So that the book and the stone would be separated, keeping someone from doing that very thing. At this point in our history, we have translated and now even teach Old Eutracian—the language of the Tome—to select wizards. Ragnar was transformed too early to have learned it, though. How he could read the Tome without the Paragon is a mystery to me.” He paused. “Also, the Prophecies are not inviolate.” He took another sip of wine.

“But aren’t the Prophecies the true story of what is to happen—of what must happen?” Tristan asked.

“Yes and no. The Prophecies can only come true if you and your sister live to fulfill them. You and Shailiha are the keys to the Prophecies, not the other way around as the Directorate first believed in the early days. Should you or your sister die, they will be altered. That is why Ragnar ordered Scrounge to cut you. They want you dead so that they can reshape the future. He even said so himself. It is this possible reshaping of the future by others that makes your survival and the survival of Shailiha so important. We also believe that this is the reason the two of you came to us as twins. A double safeguard, if you will, in case one of you should die. One day, not so long ago, your father told you that the lives of you and Shailiha were the very future of Eutracia. Now, after all you have been through, you finally know what he meant.”

Tristan was about to ask yet another question when Wigg stiffened. The wizard’s brow drew down, and he tilted his head, as if testing the air.

“What is it?” Tristan whispered. He silently drew his dreggan from its scabbard.

Wigg raised one palm. Finally, he turned to the prince.

“There is someone near,” he whispered urgently. “Someone of very highly endowed blood. I can sense that there is only one, but his blood is of amazing quality. Other than you and your sister, I have never sensed such excellence. Find this person and bring him to us, if you can. I hate to send you alone, but under the circumstances this is how it must be. It is imperative that we know what this is about! But be careful.”

“Which direction?” Tristan whispered back anxiously.

Wigg pointed a long finger toward the area directly behind them. “There,” he answered softly. “Only about ten meters back. But make some excuse about leaving me before you go.”

After loudly telling the wizard he was going to search for more firewood, Tristan entered the brush and began a slow circle in an attempt to come up behind whoever it was. The damp evening grass beneath his feet, he crept forward, his dreggan before him.

The intruder was hunched down behind some brush and facing away from Tristan, watching the wizard’s every movement. But there was little else Tristan could tell about him, since the brush between them was thick, and the stranger’s dark, hooded cloak covered most of him.

For a moment Tristan paused, wondering what to do. The intruder continued to crouch there, watching the wizard before the fire. Wigg went calmly about eating and drinking more of the wine, carefully sustaining his pretext of ignorance.

Finally deciding, Tristan slowly, silently, replaced the dreggan into its scabbard and drew instead one of his dirks. The brush here was too thick to use the sword properly, and a shorter weapon was called for. He crept forward again.

Only two more steps should do it, he guessed. May the Afterlife grant me silence. He put his boot down, taking the first step and closing the distance. One, two, now!

He reached down with his left arm and took the intruder under the neck, wrenching him upward to a standing position as he whipped his dirk to the man’s throat.

“Do not attempt to move or speak!” Tristan snarled, his lips at the man’s ear. He was in no mood for argument. “If you do otherwise I will kill you instantly. Now walk!”

When they reached the campfire, Tristan used all of his strength to throw the intruder down into the dirt next to Wigg. The man finally lifted his face to them, the light of the campfire dancing upon his features.

No! Tristan’s mind called out to him. This cannot be! How . . . ? Why . . . ? He continued to stand there, unable to grasp the meaning of what he saw. For the man on the ground before him was not a man at all.

It was Celeste, Ragnar’s woman.

Even though her features were still partially covered by the cloak, there could be no mistake. The beautiful wave of red hair curved down across her forehead, and the amazing sapphire eyes looked up at him with the wariness of a cornered animal.

She looked around, then back up to the prince as he continued to glower over her, holding his knife. Despite Tristan’s aggressive stance, she seemed to remain defiant.

“Tristan?” Wigg called out urgently.

“It’s all right,” the prince said, keeping his eyes on Celeste. “But first things first. Do you still detect any endowed blood other than what is here by the fire?”

Wigg again tilted his head for a moment. “No,” he said with finality. “But who is here with us?”

“It is Celeste, Ragnar’s companion,” Tristan answered. He addressed the woman. “Why are you here?” he demanded. “Spying for your lover, I suppose? Well, you did a particularly poor job of it. After what was done to us back there in the Caves, I should kill you on the spot! And take off that cloak! Now!” Tristan had no particular interest in the woman’s body, only in discovering whether she was armed.

She removed the cloak to reveal the same emerald dress she had been wearing in the chamber. She appeared to be carrying no weapons.

Tristan replaced the dirk into its quiver. “You haven’t answered my question,” he said angrily. “Why are you here?”

“I need help,” she said without hesitation. “That night I first met you on the cliffs, you helped me. You were kind. So I took a chance, hoping that you might be kind enough to do the same for me now. That is why I indicated for you not to speak to me, when we first saw each other in Ragnar’s chambers. Had he known, there is no telling what might have happened. I had no part in what was done to you and the wizard—you must believe that. My only desire is to escape the stalker and Scrounge. I don’t know where you are going, and to me it doesn’t matter. I only ask that you take me with you.” She lowered her head slightly, her red hair falling a bit farther down over her forehead. “Please take me away with you,” she repeated. “I will do anything . . .”

“Tristan,” Wigg said, his curiosity showing in his voice. “What in the name of the Afterlife is she talking about? Do you mean to say that you know this woman?”

“ ‘Know’ is too strong a word,” Tristan answered, his eyes still locked on Celeste. “We are, however, acquaintances. But that story is best left for later. Right now I want some answers.” His heart had allowed other beautiful women to trick him before—such as Lillith, the member of the Coven who had almost killed him. Trying not to be swayed by her beauty and supposed vulnerability, he glared down at her.

“Who are you?” he asked sternly. “Other than a woman who always seems to need my help.”

“I don’t know who I am,” she answered rather defiantly.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? You know your name, don’t you?”

“I was raised by Ragnar—but he is not my father,” she answered. “Ragnar told me little about myself, other than the fact that a long time ago, I was brought to him for safekeeping. By the end of the Sorceresses’ War, as he calls it, I was fully grown. At that point he began to abuse me.” Slowly, her sapphire eyes became harder. “It has been that way ever since. I hate him. All I want is my freedom.”

Tristan’s thoughts careened through his mind. If what she said is true, then she is over three hundred years old! And if she is, then she must be the subject of time enchantment!

Tristan looked over to Wigg and saw that the old one’s eyebrow was arched over his lifeless right eye.

“Tell me something,” Wigg asked skeptically. “Assuming for the moment that you are telling us the truth, is there anything else about you that Ragnar might have told you?”

“Only that my entire existence had been originally intended for some great purpose,” she answered uncertainly. “One that apparently never came to pass. But he never told me what that was.”

“Anything else?” Tristan asked, almost casually.

“Only the name of my mother,” Celeste said. “She was someone called Failee.”

Tristan froze and looked immediately to Wigg. The wizard’s eyes had gone wide, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Wigg’s lips began to move, but he said nothing. It was as if he was in shock, and Tristan knew why.

Wigg never knew the reason Failee left him, he remembered, except for her apparent madness. But if Celeste is truly Failee’s daughter, then it is possible that . . .

Tristan looked back at the woman sitting across from him. And then he saw it: the thing that had been plaguing him ever since he had first discovered her on the edge of the cliffs. It was her eyes.

For all of his life Tristan had never seen a pair of eyes as beautiful as Wigg’s had once been—until he had come upon Celeste. The lead wizard’s spellbinding eyes had always been his most imposing feature. And it was this way with Celeste’s eyes, also. He also remembered what Wigg had said of this one’s blood just before sending Tristan out to find her.

“Other than you and your sister, I have never sensed such excellence.”

A union of Wigg and the first mistress of the Coven presumably could have produced such blood. Tristan looked again to the beauty before him, feeling the harshness of his attitude starting to slip away. Still, he wasn’t even close to trusting her.

Could it really be true? he wondered. Could the woman seated across from me, the one I saved from suicide that night, be the centuries-old daughter Wigg never knew he had?

Concerned, Tristan looked at Wigg. It seemed that the wizard had partially regained his composure.

“There is something I do not understand,” Wigg asked Celeste. “If you are clearly able to leave the Caves on your own and join us, as you profess to have just done, then how is it that you were never able to escape?”

“I tried many times,” Celeste replied angrily, balling her hands into fists. “There are numerous ways in and out of the Caves, and I used many of them. But Ragnar always found me and brought me back. Then I would be punished in ways you couldn’t imagine. Eventually he laughed about my departures, seeming not to care whether I tried or not. He told me that because my blood was so special he could easily find me wherever I fled to, and it was always true. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t understand the workings of magic, and I never want to. Magic has never given me anything but pain. That night on the cliffs I had finally decided to take the most drastic measure of all.”

Something else tugged at the prince’s memory—something Celeste had said just after he captured her. She was intended for some great purpose that never came to pass . . .

Could it be true? he wondered. Am I looking at the woman who was originally meant by her mother to become the fifth sorceress? But if that is so, then why did they take Shailiha instead of Celeste? His mind a whirling maze of questions, he looked at the wizard.

It was clear that Wigg had come to the same crossroads, his face a mask of concentration as he struggled with his decision. “Celeste, you may be coming with us after all,” he said softly.

“Wigg, are you sure?” Tristan asked quietly. “Where we are going and what you carry are both of the utmost importance. I’m concerned that we don’t know enough about her to trust what she says.”

“In theory I quite agree,” Wigg announced, carefully standing up. “But there are several things we need to determine regarding her, and they cannot all be confirmed or disproved here in these woods. However, one of them can.” He turned his face toward Celeste. “Tell me,” he asked, “have you been trained in the craft?”

“No,” she answered forthrightly. “Ragnar would never allow it. I’ve had little education of any kind.”

“Tristan, take her hand and hold it,” Wigg ordered.

Realizing what Wigg intended to do, Tristan carefully grasped Celeste’s right hand. She quickly started to pull it away.

“Don’t touch me!” she exclaimed.

“This will not hurt, I promise you,” Wigg said compassionately.

Reaching out, the blind wizard felt along her arm until his fingers were touching the ends of hers. A very small incision appeared in Celeste’s index finger.

“Tristan,” Wigg ordered, “catch a single drop of her blood in the palm of your hand, and tell me what you see. If she is truly untrained, she can do us little harm.”

Tristan collected a warm drop of blood as it fell from her finger. It sat completely still in his hand.

“It is dormant,” he said. “She has not been trained.”

“Very well.” Wigg let out a sigh of relief. “Celeste, you are indeed coming with us. I believe there is a great deal that each of us is about to learn from the other.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, wrapping herself in the cloak.

“To another place of magic.” Wigg smiled. “But this time it shall be a place you will like. You will be safe there, and we have much to discuss. But it is imperative that we leave now, for if Ragnar has learned of your disappearance he may well already be after you. The farther away we are from the Caves, the better.”

Celeste tentatively took one of the wizard’s gnarled hands into her own. At her touch, Wigg’s eyes became shiny.

Tristan went to the horses and untied them. Walking them back, he helped the wizard mount, then took the Tome and tied it to the back of Pilgrim’s saddle, checking twice to see that it was secure. Satisfied that it would not fall, he helped Celeste onto Pilgrim and took the reins of both horses in his hands, preparing to lead them down the trail.

But before they took their first step, something came out of the sky, swooping dangerously close to Tristan’s head. He ducked as it went by; he could feel the air from its wings on his face.

It was a yellow-and-violet flier of the fields. Five others were just behind it.

“What is it?” Wigg asked nervously, sensing Tristan’s sudden movement.

Tristan smiled into Celeste’s surprised eyes. “We have a reception committee,” he announced. “Faegan’s butterflies.”

With that, Tristan began to guide them down the trail, the multicolored butterflies leading the way as they careened in and out of the rose-colored moonlight.