The Scrolls of the Ancients

CHAPTER

Fifty

W alking gingerly down the hall with his daughter at his side, Wigg cursed both his weakness and the fact that he had been unable to sleep the previous night. Horrific dreams had disturbed him over and over again, causing him to cry out and awaken to find his body covered with sweat, his mind overcome with guilt and terror.

Celeste had stayed by his side the entire night, to calm and reassure him whenever he awakened. He was still weak this morning, but he had insisted on getting out of bed and going to visit his friends. He very much wanted to see Abbey, Faegan, and Shailiha with his own eyes, for only then would he be able to breathe easier about what had happened to them in the courtyard yesterday.

After the unexpected blast had shaken the palace, the Minions had come to his quarters to inform him and Celeste of what had just happened. It had been a massive explosion, but the warriors had finally been able to extinguish the numerous grass fires that had sprung up. Luckily, the palace remained unharmed.

Abbey, Faegan, and Shailiha had survived, but they had been badly shaken. After being carefully examined by the gnome wives, they had been ordered straight to bed. As expected, Faegan had argued, but Shawna the Short had finally prevailed by scowling and shaking one of her pudgy fingers at him. In the end, he had simply been too tired to fight her.

Once he had felt well enough to rise, Wigg had asked that the three others also be awakened, so that he might immediately speak to them. He had not wished to disturb their rest, but he was concerned that what had just transpired could seriously impact their search for both the prince and the Scrolls of the Ancients. Time was precious, and the sooner they met, the better.

After hearing about what had happened in the courtyard, he now suspected that what he had just gone through in the Chambers of Penitence may have been some form of immensely elaborate ruse-one designed to supply him and Faegan with exactly the wrong kinds of herbs-those meant to kill them the moment they were employed. Was the watchwoman of the floating gardens somehow in league with Krassus? he asked himself as he shuffled along the polished marble hallways. And if she was, how could they have possibly known that he and Faegan would visit her? There were surely easier, far more certain ways to kill them than that.

None of it made any sense, but he was determined to get his answers. Finally finding himself before the proper door, Wigg knocked once, then let himself and Celeste into the vast library known as the Archives of the Redoubt.

Faegan, Abbey, and Shailiha were already at the mahogany meeting table around a large pot of tea and a silver plate of pastries. The master wizard and the herbmistress were talking in urgent, worried tones. Shailiha was listening to them intently, Morganna held close in her arms. Upon seeing Wigg and Celeste, the baby made a soft gurgling sound.

After Wigg and Celeste took their seats, the lead wizard cleared his throat. Abbey and Faegan finally stopped talking. Looking from them to Shailiha, Wigg realized that they were indeed lucky to be alive. Their faces and hands were decidedly reddened, and parts of their hair and eyebrows had been singed. Abbey looked the worst of the three. Reaching out, Wigg took her hand. She smiled and grasped it gingerly. Her skin felt good in his palm, and he smiled back at her.

"Is everyone all right?" Wigg asked softly.

Abbey looked over at Faegan, then back at the lead wizard. "I think so," she answered. "But it was very close. We have some burns, but Faegan has already enacted a spell of accelerated healing over them. He has also aided our hearing, which was temporarily impaired by the blast. In another day or so, we should be far better. But what about you?"

Placing his gnarled hands flat upon the tabletop, Wigg took a deep breath. "Let's just say that what I went through in the Chambers of Penitence is not something I would ever care to repeat," he said, employing his usual sense of wry understatement. "I should soon be better, as well. But tell me, how did this happen? Was it because of the goods we brought back?" As he looked at Faegan, his face darkened. "Did the watchwoman try to kill us by intentionally supplying us with the wrong items? Was everything I went through for naught?"

"No, I don't think so," Faegan answered almost perfunctorily. "It will, of course, be impossible to know for sure until we again try to use the oils and herbs. But I believe what happened was a result of something we did ourselves, rather than our having been betrayed by the watchwoman."

"How so?" Celeste asked.

"We were actively seeking Tristan," Faegan answered. "And it was the blood of his twin sister that we were employing to do so. Something physical of the subject to be viewed is always required-or at least something as close to the subject as the practitioner can find." Sitting back in his chair, he thought to himself for a moment.

"As I understand it from Abbey, under normal conditions this would never result in the catastrophic results we experienced in the courtyard," he went on. "Since we had nothing personal of the prince's body, we thought a drop of Shailiha's blood might do the trick. But remember, Tristan's blood is now azure-changed in ways that we have yet to fathom. It could simply be that his blood is not compatible with Abbey's gifts, and the process of trying to find him resulted in the flame's destruction. We may never know for sure. In any event, I certainly don't recommend that we use the exact same method to view him again."

Abbey narrowed her eyes with thought. "Actually, there is some mention of such a phenomenon in the ancient teachings of the partials," she said. "I had forgotten about it until hearing what you just said. It makes no mention of Tristan, exactly. But what happened is starting to sound more and more like what my teacher once warned me to be on the lookout for, so many years ago." She paused, and it was clear to everyone that she was trying hard to retrieve the details from her dusty, three-hundred-year-old memories.

Intensely interested, Faegan leaned nearer and placed his long, bony forearms on the table. "And that is?" he asked quickly.

"What we experienced is supposedly called the Furies," Abbey said, as the legend slowly returned to her. "The woman who taught me spoke very fearfully of it, telling me to pass the warning down to any of those partials I might eventually teach. It tells of 'the Two'-those who shall eventually come among us, possessing powers so great that we partials must never try to use our gifts upon them. If we do, we risk invoking the Furies and our spells being returned to us, thereby killing us in return. Much like what happened to us in the courtyard." She paused for a moment as the sudden realization spread across her face.

"The 'Two' the legend speaks of must be Tristan and Shailiha," she said softly. Then the room went quiet, as each of them tried to absorb the gravity of her news.

Faegan, however, wasted no time. Pointing over at the table that held the Tome of the Paragon, he straightened one finger. The white, leatherbound volume rose into the air and came to rest before him. He turned his gray-green eyes to Abbey.

"The 'Furies,' you say?" he asked her. The herbmistress nodded.

Closing his eyes, the wizard called upon his powers of Consummate Recollection. As he concentrated on the single word, a vision began to form in his mind. This time it was only a page number, rather than an entire quotation. Opening his eyes, he looked back down at the great book.

Faegan caused the Tome to open itself, and its gilt-edged leafs started flurrying by. When he found the page he wanted, he caused them to stop turning. After reading it a curious look crossed his face, and he sat back in his chair.

"What is it?" Wigg asked. Without answering, Faegan looked back to the great book and began to translate the Old Eutracian on its pages.

"And there shall come among you the Two, and they shall possess a blood quality so high that those known as the 'partials'-those sole practitioners of certain of the Organics-shall come to dread them. For should those of partial blood signatures attempt to employ their limited gifts upon the Two, the Two's progeny, or others of the same womb from which the Two came, their power shall be reversed upon them a thousandfold, and destroy them. For the blood signatures known as 'partials' shall not be as strong as those of the fully endowed. The Two and their seed may therefore be the partials' mortal enemies, even though the Two may not choose for such a reaction to be so…"

Trailing off, Faegan again sat back in his chair, lost in thought.

"What does it mean?" Abbey asked. At first Faegan said nothing. He was ensconced within the caverns of his amazing mind, and his eyes almost seemed glazed over.

"Such a wondrous, dangerous maze is the craft," he finally muttered softly, half to himself. "After three hundred years of trying, we have barely scratched the surface of the knowledge collected by the Ones Who Came Before."

"Faegan," Wigg said forcefully, trying to bring the old wizard's attention back to the rest of them. "What does it all mean?"

Taking a breath, Faegan finally refocused on the people at the table. "It confirms something that I have long suspected regarding the craft," he answered cryptically. "But more about that in a moment." Then he looked intently at Abbey.

"Tell me," he asked her. "Exactly how did you know that something terrible was about to happen in the courtyard?"

"My gazing flame began behaving far out of the ordinary," she answered. "After the viewing window started to form, the top of the flame began to swell. I have never seen one do that before. It was almost as if it was somehow collecting energy instead of expelling it, as is the norm. When I saw it, something told me it was about to burst, so I threw myself at you and the princess. Apparently when the flame ruptured, it did so at the top, releasing its energy skyward. Had the rent appeared in its side instead, I have no doubt that the three of us would be quite dead. In all my years I have never experienced a release of such boundless energy."

Faegan smiled at her. "Thank you," he said softly. "And we shall never forget what you did."

"So what does it all mean?" Wigg demanded impatiently. "Aren't you ever going to tell us what's rattling around in that centuries-old, overactive brainpan of yours?"

Faegan only gave them that coy, knowing smile of his again. He enjoyed nothing so much as a mystery of the craft-especially when he was the only one who held its answer.

"Just one more question, I promise," he told the table. "Shailiha, do you remember anything out of the ordinary just before the gazing flame burst? Did you experience any unusual or uncomfortable sensations, for example?"

"Now that you mention it, my heart began beating so fast and so hard that I thought I might pass out," she answered. "But I didn't say anything about it before, because I thought it was just caused by anxiety. Was it significant?"

"Oh, yes, my child!" The wizard smacked his palm down on one arm of his chair in triumph. "Indeed it was!" He looked like the cat that had just swallowed the proverbial canary.

"And so?" Wigg asked, crossing his arms with frustration.

"Abbey is quite correct," Faegan began. "This is further evidenced by the princess' extremely rapid heartbeat. Her blood coursed faster through her body in response to rejecting and further empowering a partial adept's spell. And the energy was returned to Abbey's flame by a factor of one thousand times, so says the Tome. How fascinating!" He paused for a moment to let his words sink in.

"Unfortunately, this dangerous practice was exactly what we were trying to accomplish yesterday, in our benign ignorance out there in the courtyard," he continued. "And we succeeded admirably in making fools of ourselves, didn't we? The fact that Tristan's blood is now azure may have only intensified the effect." He looked around the table. "As we have already said, several of us here are indeed lucky to be alive."

He looked over at the herbmistress. "I strongly suggest that you do not attempt to employ any of your gifts on either of the Chosen Ones again, especially before Wigg and I have had a chance to explore these new revelations further," he added.

Abbey rolled her eyes. "Don't worry!" she said, holding her palms upward in a gesture of surrender. "I have no such intentions; I promise!"

"Tell me," Faegan said. "Do you know of any way to circumvent these Furies, as you call them, so that we might still try to locate the prince?"

"There were always rumors among those in the partial community that such a process existed," Abbey answered. "Legend says that it can be done, provided one possesses the proper calculations for it. But I do not know what the formulas are, or where they might be found. They supposedly involved sending the energy back yet again to the original subject, in its newly constituted strength." She thought to herself for a moment. "The possibility of circumventing the Furies also raises another very interesting question," she added thoughtfully.

"And that is?" Wigg asked.

"Whether such a spell, should it in fact actually exist, would fall within the purview of the wizards, rather than the partials," she answered slowly, as if thinking aloud. "Such uses of the craft would seem to reside well outside the realm of the Organic. It sounds far more like one of the Paragon's facets of the Kinetic, wouldn't you agree?"

Faegan furrowed his brow. It was soon clear to the others that he found this last comment to be even more interesting than what had been discussed previously.

"You're forgetting something, aren't you?" Wigg finally asked from the other side of the table. "Or should I say someone?"

"And just who might that be?" Faegan asked.

"Wulfgar," Wigg answered solemnly. Again the room became silent.

Faegan nodded. "Quite right, Lead Wizard," he agreed. "And well done. The quote I just read from the Tome mentioned not only the Two, but also their progeny, and others from the same womb. That would, of course, include both Wulfgar and Morganna." He looked over at Abbey. "For the time being you are to strictly avoid using your gifts not only on Tristan and Shailiha, but on Wulfgar and Morganna, as well," he ordered her. The herbmistress nodded her agreement.

"But still we have failed, have we not?" Celeste asked. "In addition to not finding Tristan, we have no idea where this Scroll of the Vigors may be. It could be anywhere in the world. And unless we find it soon, Krassus will be able to complete at least one portion of the mission originally begun by Nicholas-a mission that we still know virtually nothing about."

Shailiha angrily shook her head. She had been bitterly disappointed again. Her greatest goal continued to be finding her brother, and now it seemed that they were even farther away from it than ever. "I'm tired of sitting here and doing nothing while Tristan is in danger!" she cried out. "Can't you all see that?" Morganna cried a little with her mother's sudden outburst, and Shailiha kissed her cheek to soothe her. "Isn't there anything that can be done?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calmer.

"The herbs and oils we brought back were to have been our solution to that," Wigg said sadly. "However, with this sudden, unexpected appearance of the Furies, I'm afraid we are now forced to discover another way to find him. But hear me when I tell you that Tristan is a very brave and resourceful man, and if there is anyone in this world who can overcome whatever he is up against, it is he. I know that isn't much for you to hold onto right now, but it seems to be all that any of us have." Wigg looked over at Celeste to see a somewhat different, but equally concerned look cross her face.

A growing sense of defeat crept silently over the room.