He was flanked by Geldon and Celeste. Loyal, intelligent, and kind, Geldon had contributed mightily to their survival over the recent past. A slave of the sorceresses for nearly three centuries, he had been instrumental in defeating the Coven and helping to destroy Nicholas' Gates of Dawn.
For the thousandth time, Tristan turned his dark eyes toward Celeste.
Over three hundred years old, protected by time enchantments that kept her forever youthful, she was the long-lost daughter of Wigg and the first mistress of the recently defeated Coven of sorceresses, Failee. Celeste had finally discovered her true identity by bravely escaping Ragnar, the mutated blood stalker who had endowed her with time enchantments and kept her as his slave in the Caves of the Paragon for more than three centuries. She was originally to have been Failee's fifth sorceress; her blood quality was supposedly second only to that of Tristan and Shailiha, the Chosen Ones of prophecy.
Dark red hair parted on one side fell down to Celeste's shoulders. Her sapphire eyes showed both intelligence and compassion. The hint of a cleft in her chin gave her the appearance of personal strength, even though her talents and confidence in her new world above ground were still developing. Whenever Tristan was near her he could smell a hint of myrrh, and it had been her scented, embroidered handkerchief that he had carried into battle to defeat his son Nicholas.
"I still say you're cheating!" Wigg said to Faegan, distracting Tristan.
"No, I'm not." Faegan sniffed. "I don't need to, especially considering the amateurish way you're laying down your cards."
With a smile, he winked at Tristan, then levitated his cards in a straight line, just above the surface of the table.
Wigg shook his head angrily, laying down another card. "Must you show off that way?" he huffed. The knight card he had just played would trump Faegan's page, and the lead wizard knew it. Thinking he finally had Faegan's team on the run, he smiled wickedly.
Played with two-sided cards, dreng was a notoriously difficult game to learn, and an even more difficult game to play with any degree of expertise. Played in teams, it could easily develop many unexpected twists and turns-something that Wigg was being increasingly reminded of.
"I'm sorry, Lead Wizard, but that simply will not do," Shailiha said with mock compassion, placing a card down on top of Wigg's. "Dreng!" she said happily, easing herself back into her chair. Faegan's team had easily taken the hand.
Wigg's first reaction was to turn angrily around and search for Caprice, Shailiha's giant butterfly. The violet-and-yellow flier of the fields was never far from her mistress; sure enough she was perched quietly on a bookcase behind Shailiha, calmly opening and closing her wings. It was obvious that the flier could not have been reading Wigg's cards, silently informing the princess via the mental bond they possessed. Still unable to find evidence of Faegan's cheating, the frustrated lead wizard scowled menacingly.
Tristan was an excellent dreng player, but his interest was quickly waning. Hopefully Shawna the Short would arrive soon, announcing in that no-nonsense way of hers that dinner was served.
"Admit it!" Wigg insisted.
One corner of his mouth coming up, Tristan looked over at the lead wizard's craggy profile. At the back of Wigg's neck, the gray hair was pulled into a short braid. His "wizard's tail" had been sadistically cut away by the first mistress of the Coven during her vicious torture of him, the first time he and Tristan had visited Parthalon. Tristan had long suspected that Wigg would grow it back out of respect for the members of the Directorate, all of whom had perished at the sorceresses' hands, and he had been right.
"How do you know Faegan is cheating, Father?" Celeste asked, interrupting the prince's thoughts. He caught her giving a secret wink across the table to Shailiha. "Just what is it you think he is doing?"
"He is no doubt employing the craft to deal invisibly from the bottom of the deck." Wigg sniffed, narrowing his eyes as Faegan again took up the cards.
Faegan dealt the cards out once more. He then looked briefly at both sides of his cards, arranged them to his liking, and cast his sharp eyes over at Wigg's hand. Then he smiled impishly.
"If I wanted to change the nature of your cards, I wouldn't choose such a banal, pedestrian method of doing it," he said. "Instead, I would probably do something more inventive. Something like this…"
He closed his eyes, and a soft, azure glow began to surround Wigg's cards. In a matter of mere moments, all of the courtly characters displayed upon them, dressed in their customary finery, had been drastically altered.
They were now quite naked, leaving very little to the imagination.
Everyone around the table broke into raucous laughter-except for Wigg.
"This is the last straw!" the lead wizard shouted, tossing his useless cards to the table. "I think it's high time I-"
Then, quite suddenly, Wigg stopped talking. At first Tristan thought it was out of pure frustration. But then the lead wizard stiffened and rose up a bit in his chair. Raising one hand to silence the table, he tilted his head.
The prince glanced over at Faegan, to see a concerned look darkening his face, as well. Faegan looked at Wigg and nodded. Tristan had seen this signal pass between the two wizards before, and it usually meant only one thing: They had sensed the presence of endowed blood-unfamiliar endowed blood.
Reaching down to the floor for his dreggan, Tristan slid the blade from its scabbard.
A glow was forming.
In one of the far corners of the room, where the ceiling formed a joint with two connecting walls, the familiar azure glow of the craft was coalescing. When it took up the entire corner, its outline started to sharpen.
Standing slowly, Tristan raised his sword. Faegan, his back to the glow, turned his chair to see whatever it was. Finally everyone in the room was gazing on the anomaly.
The image continued to form hauntingly. Finally, the azure glow faded away and the shape became clear.
A man hung there like a spider, face to the card players, the fingertips and balls of his feet touching the ceiling and walls behind him.
Suddenly he spread his arms wide and launched himself from the wall, landing upright in the exact center of the table. Playing cards went flying high into the air. Shailiha and Celeste recoiled back into their chairs.
Tristan didn't hesitate. He swung the dreggan for all he was worth, sending its razor-sharp edge whistling through the air in an attempt to cut the intruder's legs off at the knees.
The figure before them only laughed and jumped into the air, easily avoiding Tristan's blade.
Both Wigg and Faegan had raised their arms to employ the craft, but the man standing before them was too fast. Another glow had already begun to form, engulfing the entire table and everyone around it. Tristan tried to lunge at the intruder-only to discover that he was frozen in place. All he could move was his head. He could hear, and he somehow felt sure that he still commanded the power of speech. But he could not move a muscle from his neck down. A glance at the others told him that they, too, were caught in the paralyzing warp. Tristan wondered frantically. He could not fathom how the man had so silently, invisibly breached the security of the palace, evading the hundreds of Minion warriors who were camped outside.
The intruder was tall and gaunt, with a face to match. Straight, stringy locks of pure white hair fell down from the crown of the man's skull. It was somewhat longer than shoulder length, except for the ragged bangs that covered most of his forehead. But despite the white hair, his age did not seem advanced. Studying the face, Tristan guessed the man to be no more than forty-five Seasons of New Life.
His skin was pale, almost gray. Dark brows arched over piercing eyes; the cheekbones were high and elegant. The nose was large, and aquiline. Thin lips formed the straight slash that was his mouth. The cheeks were deeply creased and hollow; the jaw was strong. Taken as a whole the face conveyed tightly controlled intelligence and power.
The man was dressed in a full-length robe of two colors, divided down
the center. The left-hand side was gray, the color once worn by the Directorate of Wizards and still worn by Wigg. The right-hand side was the dark blue worn by the Brotherhood of Consuls.
Unexpectedly, the man began to cough.
His hacking began softly, but quickly built in intensity. He finally produced a rag from his robes and covered his mouth briefly. It came away bloody. The sudden sign of illness in the same man who had just executed such clever acrobatics and the lightning-swift construction of a powerful wizard's warp seemed contradictory indeed.
"Forgive me, Wigg," the man said sarcastically once his coughing had subsided. Looking down at the lead wizard, he placed his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe. "My entrance was unexpected, I know. But given the numbers of Minion warriors camped outside, it seemed the only sensible way. I may be ill, but I have no desire to die sooner than necessary. And what I have come to say will not take long." His voice was controlled and deep.
Wigg gazed at him in amazement. Working his jaw, he found he was being allowed to speak.
"Krassus," he whispered. "So you live." He narrowed his eyes, taking in the man's strange, two-colored robe. "And you still wear the robe of first alternate. Can we therefore assume it is you we now have to thank for so many of our problems?"
Tristan could move his eyes just enough to look over at Faegan. It was clear that the ancient crippled wizard did not know this man.
"That is correct," Krassus said. "But our relationship does not have to be adversarial. I have, in fact, come to offer you a truce. That part of it will depend entirely on you, Lead Wizard. I have come for information, and I intend to have it."
"Who are you?" Faegan broke in. "What do you want?"
Krassus looked toward the voice, and a brief smile of recognition crawled across his face.
"Faegan," he said softly, almost reverently, as if he could not believe his eyes. "It must be! The recently departed Nicholas told me you had returned to Tammerland. Until then, I had thought you had passed from flesh and blood into myth. Your power and knowledge are legendary. But forgive me, for you and I have never been properly introduced. I am the consul Krassus. I was at one time both first alternate to the dearly departed Directorate of Wizards and the servant of Nicholas, son of the Chosen One. It is indeed an honor to finally meet you."
Krassus looked down at Tristan and smiled. "And the Chosen One himself is also in attendance." He then admired the sword Tristan still held. "He truly is as impulsive as they say, isn't he?"
Looking to Shailiha, he added, "We are honored by the presence of the princess, as well. How nice." His gaze flicked briefly over Geldon, then settled on Celeste.
"And who is it we have here?" he asked. "Had I ever met a woman as beautiful as this, I would surely have remembered."
Celeste did not respond, but her expression hardened almost imperceptibly.
"What do you want?" Wigg demanded again, purposely interrupting Krassus' disturbing examination of his daughter. "From what you say, I take it you are the new leader of the supposedly rebellious brotherhood?"
"Indeed I am," Krassus answered. "But as I said earlier, I am willing to put the recent hostilities behind us and start over. I will allow everyone in this room to live, and I have already ordered the consuls to remove the bounty on Tristan. I will even bring the remaining consuls back into the fold, so to speak. All I ask in return is unencumbered leadership of the consuls-and some information. If you refuse, you will make me your enemy for life. The Chosen One's son may be dead, but certain aspects of his cause are not. True, the number of consuls had been radically reduced, but it should be enough."
"Enough for what?" Faegan asked.
Krassus smiled. "You see," he went on, "I'm afraid the death of Nicholas and the destruction of the Gates are only the beginning of your problems. Unknown to you, the son of the Chosen One had already placed other plans into motion-plans designed to pave the way for the Heretics to ensure that the Vagaries will rule as the sole arm of the craft. With Nicholas gone, this sacred duty falls to me. I do not intend to release the Heretics from the heavens, as Nicholas tried to do. As you have no doubt discerned, I am fatally ill. Thus, I do not have the time for such endeavors, much less the training or quality of blood required. No-the Forestallments imbued into my blood by my late master are not all-powerful, as his were, but they provide me with ample skills to finish the more earthly aspects of his plan. All I need is the proper information. If you resist me, before you perish you shall learn there remain other methods of making sure the Vagaries solely rule the craft."
Krassus lowered his eyes and focused them menacingly on the lead wizard. "You can either be a willing partner in what I do, or you and your little group here will die. It is no more complicated than that."
"Surely you must realize that if your goal is to promulgate the Vagaries, I will never help you," Wigg answered adamantly. "Nor will Faegan. Every person in this room would gladly give his or her life to make sure the Vagaries never rule the land."
"I have no need to ask Faegan the first of my questions," Krassus responded calmly. "Only the second. Faegan may be the greatest keeper of knowledge, but you, Lead Wizard, are the greatest keeper of secrets, and always have been. I know you have the information I seek, because I now travel with a partial adept who is a blaze-gazer as well as an herbmistress. And she is never wrong."
Wigg suddenly appeared as if his entire world had just collapsed. But his look of defeat quickly turned to one of anger.
"If you have harmed her, I will kill you," he snarled. "Slowly."
Tristan had no idea who they were talking about, but Wigg was clearly incensed.
"Oh no, my friend," Krassus responded almost kindly. "It is not she with whom I travel, but another. I did, however, visit the home of the one you refer to, to collect a few things my partial adept shall eventually need. You might want to go and see your old friend after I depart. I left her in a rather bad way."
Krassus bent over slightly, placing his face closer to the lead wizard's. "Now then," he said softly. "For the first of my two questions: Where is Wulfgar?"
Wigg's face went completely white. His eyes widened briefly with amazement, then narrowed again in a poor attempt to disguise his shock. He then glanced at the questioning faces of Tristan and Shailiha, and his heart was heavy with the realization that he might be forced now to break yet another of his promises to their parents.
"I don't know who you're talking about," he answered adamantly.
"That's not good enough," Krassus whispered. His fist came around like lightning, smashing into the side of Wigg's face. Tristan had never seen such superhuman speed. The lead wizard reeled drunkenly for a moment, a trail of blood snaking its way down his chin, curlicuing into his blood signature as it went. Celeste cried out for her father, and tears welled in her eyes.
Slowly collecting himself, Wigg looked through half-closed eyes at the consul. Somehow, he smiled.
"Is that the best you can do?" he asked drunkenly. "Even the first mistress of the Coven struck me harder."
"As I told you, I'm ill," Krassus answered sarcastically. His fist came around again, smashing into the point of Wigg's chin and driving the wizard's head into the back of his chair.
"Stop it, you bastard!" Tristan screamed. He tried again to move his sword arm, but it was no good. Looking for a glimmer of hope, he turned his eyes to Faegan. But all the great wizard could do was shake his head back and forth angrily.
"And the two Scrolls of the Ancients," Krassus went on blithely. "I suppose you know nothing of them, either? Actually I need only find one. The other, the Scroll of the Vagaries, is already in my possession." A nasty grin spead slowly across his face.
"I have no idea what you're babbling about," Wigg answered thickly. "Perhaps all of your time with Nicholas has… addled your brain… So you now apparently detest the Vigors." Exhausted from his beating, he ran out of breath, and his chin slumped forward to his chest.
Krassus bent over F
aegan. "And you, cripple," he said insultingly. "I suppose you also know nothing of either Wulfgar or the scrolls?"
Summoning up all of the saliva he could muster, Faegan spat it at the hem of Krassus' robe. "That is the only answer I shall ever have for you," he whispered venomously. "Go find whatever it is you're looking for by yourself! Assuming, of course, you're intelligent enough to do so."
Straightening, Krassus smiled. "The famous wizards, recalcitrant to the end!" His laugh turned into a single, short, diseased cough. "Very well, then. It seems I shall have to find out for myself whether the two of you are lying."
He closed his eyes, and a soft glow began to surround the wizards' chairs, slowly increasing in intensity. Suddenly Wigg's and Faegan's heads simultaneously snapped back. Their eyes were wide open, but seemed to observe nothing. Watching, Tristan realized that Krassus had succeeded in entering at least a portion of their minds-testing them just as they had once tested Geldon, before allowing Tristan to go to Parthalon to rescue Shailiha from the Coven. They desperately fought the intrusion by the consul. Sweat broke out on each of the three struggling faces as Wigg and Faegan fought to keep from having their minds violated, and Krassus tried desperately to enter. After several long, agonizing moments, the glow faded away, and the consul opened his eyes. Wigg and Faegan were breathing heavily in total exhaustion.
"So," Krassus said softly, half to himself. "It seems Wigg still does not know the location of Wulfgar, after all. Such a pity. Now I must find him the hard way. But that's why I travel with a partial adept, isn't it?"
He turned to Faegan. "Such a strong mind," he said in a conversational tone. "I have never experienced its like. You were partially successful in blocking my intrusion, weren't you? No matter. Although you are aware of scant references to the scrolls, I can tell you have no real knowledge of either where they may be, or of their vast importance. And you, unlike the lead wizard, have absolutely no idea who Wulfgar is."
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