A decisive rattle escaped his lungs, and his head slumped to the side. Satine saw that his throat had been slit from ear to ear. She looked at Aeolus, but all her master could do was shake his head.
Satine lowered her sword. She started to kneel down. Then she heard the sound of rapid footfalls on the rooftop above.
Turning quickly, she pushed her way past the others and tore down the hall. A trail of blood led her to another room. Raising her sword, she rushed in.
There was no one there. Looking up, she saw that the skylight in the ceiling was open. Its handle dripped fresh blood.
Then she heard the footfalls again-faster, louder, closer. She ran across the room and leaped atop the same table the assassin had used in his escape. She jumped up and hoisted herself through the open skylight. As she stood on the roof, the magenta-colored moonlight glinted off her blade. The night wind snaked coldly between her skin and the folds of her robe. Looking around warily, she could detect no movement or sound in the inky night.
Suddenly, there he was.
A figure swathed in dark cloth ran furtively ahead of her. Carrying a sword, he leaped from the roof she stood on and landed nimbly upon the next. Knowing she hadn't a second to lose, Satine ran to the edge of the roof and launched herself into the night.
As she flew through the air, the distance between the two rooftops somehow grew longer. It was as if the buildings were moving away from each other. Terror gripped her as she realized that she wasn't going to make it.
Tumbling helplessly toward the ground, she looked up and saw the assassin looking down over the edge of the far building. He smiled wickedly at her, his teeth glinting in the moonlight.
With a scream Satine tore off her covers and launched her naked body from the bed. She was shaking and bathed in sweat. Looking to the window, she saw that it was nearly dawn.
She got to her knees, then sat back on her heels and wrapped her arms around herself. She fought back the urge to vomit. She looked to the other side of the room. The small set of carriage bells she had tied to the door handle had not rung. It was a crude device, but effective: No one had tried to violate the sanctity of her chamber. For that much, at least, she could be thankful.
The recurring nightmare of her father's death always rattled her to the very core. Tonight had been no exception. When they had first begun, she had wondered how long they would persist, and what it would finally take to make them go away. Only as the years went on did she come to understand.
The only way she would ever be free of them would be to find her father's killer, and to see him die slowly, painfully. Only that would erase her shame at failing to catch him that horrible night on the roof of the Serpent and the Sword.
She rose and stood on shaky legs and lit a pair of candles. She carried one of them to the washstand on the other side of the room. In the mirror, the face that stared back at her was stark white, her hair matted to her sweaty skin.
She splashed some water on her face, dried herself with a cloth, then ran a hairbrush through her hair.
In the candlelight her reflection showed the tattoos on each of her upper arms. They were the twin marks of mastery from Aeolus' school: the image of a coiled serpent on her right arm, a sword on the left.
She touched the sword tattoo gently. She was proud of these markings, for few had ever attained them both. They would be with her until the day she died.
Uncoiling a little, she walked over to the window of her room in the Rooster and Finch and looked out. She had returned from Valrenkium yesterday after a hard two-day ride. Tammerland would be waking up soon, and she needed to be on her way again.
She now had everything she required to begin her sanctions, and it was time to get to work. She went to the weather-beaten wardrobe, opened its doors, and removed her clothes and weapons.
As the light of the morning sun crept over the lone windowsill, she began to dress.
"This is all the information we have for you regarding the whereabouts of your first target," Bratach said. He handed Satine the parchment. "It should be enough for someone of your talents."
Satine took the parchment and read it, quickly committing it to memory. She handed it back to him, then watched as he placed one of its corners into the flame of the candle on the table between them.
Bratach, Ivan, and Satine sat in the subterranean sanctuary of the archery shop. After leaving the Rooster and Finch, she had walked her horse past the shop to see whether a message might be waiting for her. When she saw the "open" sign hanging by the parted doors, she pulled her gelding up short. The words were red.
Once she had gone in, Ivan had closed the shop and led the way down the back stairs, where Bratach had been waiting.
Flicking the last cinders from his fingertips, Bratach leaned back in his chair. "So you choose to be known as the Gray Fox," he mused. "Appropriate, I must say."
He picked up a half-full wine bottle and poured himself a glass. After pouring one for Ivan, he held the bottle out to Satine and raised one eyebrow.
Satine shook her head. "I never drink once a sanction has begun."
Bratach nodded. "So much the better." He looked at Ivan and then back at Satine.
"You dropped out of sight for a while," he said, his tone a bit darker.
"We were beginning to worry. One hundred fifty thousand kisa is a great deal of money. We wouldn't like to think that you might cheat us by running away. Our master and his forces will be here soon. We shall need to know that your tasks have been completed."
"I told you that I had things to do before I could begin," she shot back. "I told your master that once I accept a sanction, I always see it through. That is exactly what I shall do."
"Good," Bratach answered.
Casting her gaze down at the ashes on the table, she decided to take a risk. "Who is your confederate inside the palace?" she asked. "How did you slip him by the wizards without detection? And how does he communicate with you?"
"Don't worry," Bratach said mockingly. "The information you receive is genuine. Finding your first target should be simple. Just follow the trail, so to speak." He leaned back again. "We shall require proof. When the job is done, bring us the head."
Standing, Satine looked hard into Bratach's eyes.
"No," she said adamantly. "That was never part of the agreement. The way I have this planned, that will be quite impossible. Besides, you will no doubt get all the confirmation you require from whomever you have inside. Take it or leave it."
Bratach looked angrily at Satine. He needed her services badly. Plans had already been put into motion that even Lord Wulfgar could not stop. The assassinations had to go forward, no matter the cost.
"Very well," he said. "But if you fail us, I will hunt you down and kill you myself."
One corner of Satine's mouth came up. She leaned over and placed her face close to his.
"That won't be necessary," she said. "If I fail, I will already be dead."
Turning away, she walked toward the stairs. Then, one boot on the first step, she turned and looked at them.
"When this first job is completed I will inform you," she said. Saying nothing more, she walked up the stairs.
CHAPTER XXVI
Memories are strange creatures of the mind. the things that trigger them can be as varied and surprising as the experiences themselves. Like ghosts from the past, certain sights, sounds, and smells can each in their own way summon remembrances both welcome and foreboding. Just now Tristan of the House of Galland's senses told him that he wished he had never come here. He guessed that the First Wizard felt the same.
Tristan and the others followed Wigg down the curved staircase. The echoes of many boot heels striking the paved floor added to the sense of emptiness. If there was one thing in the world that Tristan could not abide, it was being confined.
They had been traveling downward for some time. The air grew colder with every step and it smelled increasingly fetid and damp-like a humid, nighttime forest ov
ergrown with moss. Finally Wigg slowed and raised his hand. Everyone stopped.
"A landing is just beyond," he said. "Be on guard. I cannot tell whether this is an area that Tristan and I have been in before. There is no telling what we might find."
Wigg took the last few steps down. Tristan and the others soon found themselves standing upon the floor of a circular room. The prince felt his heart recoil. They stood in the chamber in which he, Wigg, and Geldon had been tortured-and where Failee had tried to convince Shailiha to become her fifth sorceress.
Letting go of Celeste's hand, Tristan turned slowly around as he took in the imposing space. There was no one else here, and he finally relaxed a little.
The white marble walls were cracked and partially tumbled down, and it looked as though the rest of the room might cave in at any moment. The black pentangle inlaid into the floor was hardly recognizable. The five black thrones that had once sat at each of the pentangle's corners had been overturned and broken, their pieces scattered about. Dust, debris, and marble shards lay everywhere.
Then Tristan saw the torture devices hanging from the ceiling on the far side of the room. Saying nothing, he slid his dreggan back into its scabbard and walked over.
He reached up and touched the black iron gibbet in which he had once been imprisoned. Its door hung open, and the chain creaked as it moved at his touch. Wigg came over and placed a hand on the prince's shoulder.
"Do you remember?" Tristan breathed. The question was unnecessary, but he couldn't help asking.
"Yes," Wigg answered.
"It was all so horrible," Tristan said, so softly that Wigg had to augment his hearing with the craft. Then Tristan walked over to the other gibbets that had held Wigg and Geldon. He touched each of them also. When he turned back, there were tears in his eyes.
"But we won," Wigg said. "Through a supreme effort of will you were able to call upon the craft without having first been trained. No one had ever done that before. You killed the sorceresses, and we brought Shailiha and the Paragon home."
Tristan nodded. Celeste walked up to him and touched him on one arm. He did his best to summon a smile for her.
"What was it that destroyed this place?" Celeste asked.
"When an endowed person possessing Forestallments dies, the Forestallments leave his being," Wigg answered. "Or so goes the theory. When that happens a great atmospheric disturbance occurs, bringing forth thunder, lightning, and wind. When Tristan killed the sorceresses, they all died at once except for Succiu. The resulting storm was so great that it collapsed the palace and ruptured the foundations of these chambers below ground."
Celeste walked over to the damaged pentangle. She thought to herself for a moment. She looked back over at her father.
"Where do they go?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" he responded.
"When the Forestallments depart a dead body, where do they go?" Celeste asked again. Intrigued by her question, Tristan also turned to Wigg.
Placing his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe, the First Wizard scowled a bit. "We still do not know. Faegan and I believe that they don't really go anywhere. We postulate that with no living host to sustain them, they simply cease to be, like a spell that has been terminated."
Turning to check on the Minion warriors, Tristan's gaze fell upon two large, jagged sections of white marble, and he immediately recognized them. He walked over, knelt down, and touched one. It was cool and smooth, just the way it had felt that day when it had pressed so unforgivingly into his naked back.
It was the ruin of the altar upon which Succiu had violated him-causing Nicholas to be conceived-and imbued his blood with the many Forestallments his signature now carried.
As Tristan stood up, Wigg came to join him again. "Are you all right?" the wizard asked.
Tristan let go a deep breath. "No," he said, his eyes still locked upon the smashed altar. "But I will be."
"You must let it all go," Wigg said.
Finally looking away from the altar, Tristan nodded.
"Father, would you please come here?" Celeste asked.
Tristan and Wigg turned to see that she had walked to another area of the room. Several Minion warriors were there with her, and they were all looking down at the floor.
Three sets of remains lay there, nothing more than separate collections of ash that loosely resembled human beings.
"These are the remains of the Coven, aren't they?" Celeste asked.
"Yes," her father said.
"Which of them was my mother?"
Wigg pointed to the one in the middle. "There," he said. "That was Failee."
Kneeling down, Celeste looked at the pile of dark, fragile ash, tentatively reached out, and touched it. It collapsed in on itself, losing all semblance of its previous shape. After closing her eyes for a moment, she stood back up.
"I'm sorry," Wigg said.
Celeste shook her head. "You have nothing to be sorry about," she answered. "You are still here with me, and that is what matters now."
Wigg nodded, his eyes suspiciously shiny.
After a moment, he pointed to the far side of the room where the floor ended, opening the room to a lower level. "My instinct tells me that is where we must concentrate our search."
A set of stairs led downward from one side of the floor's edge. The lower level of the chamber had been Failee's area of experimentation. She had kept the Wiktors, her awful pets, down there. Tristan clearly remembered how they had clambered out of their lairs to try to kill him and the wizard after he had destroyed the sorceresses. Only at the last moment had Wigg been able to kill the Wiktors.
The area was covered in ash-evidence of Wigg's incineration of the Wiktors.
Wigg pointed to the stairs and raised an eyebrow. "Shall we?" he asked.
At an order from Tristan, the three of them started down the stairs, followed by Alrik and the warriors. For the first time, Tristan saw the numerous hallways that branched off from this lower room. The piles of dark, smoky ashes gradually trailed off toward each opening.
As Tristan walked forward, some of the ash came up over the tops of his knee boots. Occasionally a fire-bleached bone poked up to glint bleakly in the dim light. Tristan was sickened.
Dirty clouds billowed into the air as the party disturbed the remains, making it hard to see and breathe. Wigg finally ordered everyone to a halt so that the air could clear.
When they could see again, Tristan spotted a door in the far wall of the room. He and Wigg waded to it slowly so as to raise as little dust as possible. The door was made of heavy iron and painted black. Wigg stiffened, and Tristan knew that his reaction could only mean one thing.
There was living, endowed blood somewhere on the other side. Tristan glanced at Wigg, who nodded.
"The endowed blood on the other side is highly unusual," the wizard said, his brow furrowing with concentration.
"How so?" Tristan asked.
Wigg shook his head. "That's impossible to say until I confront it. I say we force the door and go in. Agreed?"
Tristan nodded and called back to Alrik to bring two warriors. The five of them shoveled the ash away from the door by hand. With each handful they removed, more caved back in again. It was filthy work, and the rising ash choked their lungs and stung their eyes.
"This is pointless," Wigg growled. "Everyone stand back!"
The First Wizard narrowed his eyes and called the craft. An azure glow began to surround the area before the door. He raised his arms and the glow formed into several thin, nearly transparent sheets of azure.
Wigg directed the sheets straight down into the knee-high ash to form a square barrier, with the door making up the fourth side. Lifting his arms again, he caused the segregated ash within the quadrant to rise into the air and deposit itself to one side, leaving a clean area before the door. Then he stepped gingerly over one of the azure panels, and motioned to Tristan and Celeste to join him.
"Are you ready?" he asked the prin
ce.
Tristan raised his dreggan. "As ready as we'll ever be," he said grimly.
"Very well," Wigg answered.
At Wigg's gesture, twin azure bolts assaulted the door and covered it like flowing liquid. When the entire door was engulfed, Wigg raised his arms higher.
With a great creaking noise, the massive iron door began to give way.
CHAPTER XXVII
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Abbey asked nervously. "I know how useful your portal can be, but tell me truly. Have you ever tried anything like this before?"
Faegan ignored her question for a moment. It was late afternoon in Eutracia and the sun was already low in the sky, the salty sea air rising to greet his senses. As busy as he had been all day and the previous night, the time had seemed to fly by.
Truth be known, he wasn't at all sure about the risk he was about to take. There was no way he could be until it was over. By then, if it had gone wrong it would be too late. But if it was successful, it could change the world.
Faegan, Adrian, Abbey, and Duvessa were in a Minion litter together, hovering in the sky near the Cavalon Delta. Ten strong warriors bore it, their wings working diligently to keep it aloft. They had been here for hours, helping to prepare the Reprise for sea.
After much discussion, Tyranny and Traax had decided that only the Reprise would make this voyage. Faegan had agreed. The rest of the fleet was to stay behind and protect the coast, should Tristan be correct about Wulfgar. This was a mission of intelligence rather than of war. They would stand a much better chance of remaining unseen if only one ship approached the Citadel.
Now the Reprise bobbed calmly at her moorings just off the coast. Faegan, uncertain of how the portal might affect the ship, had recommended that her sails be tightly furled, and her wheel tied off. Under Tyranny's critical gaze, everything else had been lashed down, closed, or otherwise secured.
In addition to Tyranny's regular crew, a Minion phalanx lined the deck. The war frigate lay low in the sea, her lower decks loaded with enough food and water to sustain the added number of people aboard.
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