"My greatest regret is having banished the Coven of sorceresses to the Sea of Whispers, rather than killing them outright," he said softly. "Had I followed my heart that night and drowned all four of them in the ocean as I was tempted to do, I would have undoubtedly been forced from the Directorate for violating their mandate. But that would have been a very small price to pay. For the Coven eventually returned and laid waste to the land, killing as they went. Thousands of innocents died, including most of the royal family and all of the remaining wizards of the Directorate. It was entirely my fault, for I alone could have prevented it, but did not. It was a mistake for which I shall never forgive myself." For a long moment, Wigg lowered his head and closed his eyes.
"Very well," she replied.
He opened his eyes to see that the gleaming cube was still revolving in the air.
"What I say to you now is for your ears alone, and never to be repeated, do you understand?" she asked. Wigg nodded.
"The greatest tragedy of regret is not what one did or did not do to cause it," she said. "Nor is it what we did or did not experience at the time. It is therefore neither the doing nor the omission of some act that causes the greatest pain and suffering, but rather its aftermath that burns longest in our hearts, and eventually in the hearts of others. The aftermath of your regret spirals down through the years like a plague, infecting everyone and everything it touches. It has always been this way, just as it always shall be. It is therefore this part of that aftermath that you shall now see, for that night in the Sea of Whispers was only the catalyst, not the result. You just said so yourself, did you not? That is truly what the Chamber of Penitence is about, wizard. We are here to observe a small part of the results of what you caused, not simply the lone act that caused them. And may your endowed blood and your wizard's soul possess enough inherent goodness to survive what you shall witness, for it is only that same goodness, as it struggles within you against the aftermath of your error, that can keep you alive."
Then the watchwoman turned toward the gleaming, spinning cube and raised her staff. As she did, shapes began to form within it. Then the shapes came into greater focus, forming an all-too-familiar scene.
As the drama unfolded, Wigg was stricken with an intense, excruciating pain that shot through not only his entire nervous system, but cleaved into his very soul, as well. Though transfixed by the view, his pain took him to his knees. Sobbing, he found himself screaming at the watchwoman, begging her to make it stop. But it didn't.
In truth, it had only just begun.
The scene was of Tristan's coronation night-the night that everything in the wizard's world so irrevocably changed. Through his tears, Wigg could see the royal family standing proudly on the dais. Nicholas… Morganna… Frederick… the Chosen Ones… And the other members of the Directorate were also there, waiting for him to place the Paragon around Tristan's neck, sealing the prince's reign for the next thirty years.
Then came the smashing of the glass dome high above, its sharp, glass shards raining down as the first of the Minions dropped into the great hall and began slaughtering the defenseless guests.
Blood, screaming, severed body parts, and yet more blood… always, endlessly. The blood flowed until it seemed there was an entire sea of it, sweeping across the once-beautiful white-and-black checkerboard floor.
And then, suddenly, he was watching the struggle that had gone on outside of the palace-the one that until now he had never witnessed. The Minions descended on the gathered citizens like madmen, cutting them down as they went. Men, women, and children fell easy prey to the winged monsters wielding the strangely curved swords. By now some of the Royal Guard had begun to fight back, but the Minion army was too strong, and too large.
Some of the monsters picked up severed human body parts and began using their bloody, ragged ends as paintbrushes with which to scrawl obscenities and warnings across the walls. Raising one hand, Wigg tried to summon his gift and stop the vision, but nothing happened. He found himself forced to watch as it went on and on.
Just as had happened the first time, he found himself experiencing the cruel helplessness of not being able to stop any of it.
Then, quite unexpectedly, his mental and physical pain multiplied, searing through his system even more viciously than before. As each Minion sword came flashing down to cut through sinew and bone, as each woman was thrown to the ground and brutally abused, as each husband, wife, sister, and brother bent over slaughtered loved ones and screamed into the night, Wigg was forced to feel their physical and mental agony. His body convulsed with it, his mind was seared by it, and his heart pounded with it.
Crying madly, the exquisite agony wracking every iota of his being, Wigg fell facedown onto the cold stone floor. Nonetheless, some unseen force lifted his face back up so that he had no choice but to continue taking in the horrifying carnival of blood, gore, rape, and death.
And then he heard the beating of his own heart.
As the agony of the victims continued to flood into his being, the beating grew more insistent. Ever louder, ever faster, it became so overpowering that he thought it might burst his eardrums. Blood, pain, the frantic screaming of the innocents, and the pounding of his heart all combined into a massive, unrelenting crescendo that he knew would soon kill him unless it stopped.
But it didn't. It just kept on going and going, seemingly without end.
Then suddenly it was too much for even the endowed blood and the inherent goodness of the lead wizard to bear.
With the watchwoman standing over him, Wigg's face hit the unforgiving stone floor, and the light went out of his eyes.
CHAPTER
Thirty-nine
A s Krassus walked into the weapons forge, he could feel the intense heat from the hearths blast him in the face. He could hear the constant hissing of the steam as the slaves lowered the red-hot, partially constructed weapons into the vats of brackish water to temper them. The sound of their hammers banging down on the hot metal rang out endlessly. Smoke and soot hung darkly in the air, infusing the entire place with a hot, charred odor.
As he breathed it in, he was overcome by the urge to cough. Quickly pulling the bloodied rag from his blue-and-gray robe, he placed it over his mouth and involuntarily let go several deep, convulsive hacks. Taking the rag away, he looked down to see his familiar blood signature twisting its way across the fabric.
His disease was advancing; he had been coughing even more of late. It was becoming increasingly evident that he must hurry in his work if he was to successfully complete Nicholas' mission before he died. And to be certain of his victory, he needed to acquire the Scroll of the Vigors, the only piece of the puzzle still missing.
Angrily stuffing the rag back into his robe, he walked purposefully up to the demonslaver in charge. The monster bowed.
"Status report," the wizard ordered simply.
"All goes well," the grotesque servant replied. "The store of new weapons grows daily, and ever more slavers come to take them up. There have been no further suicide attempts by any of the workers."
Satisfied, Krassus cast his dark eyes around the room, trying to find the slave that Janus had told him about. Finally Krassus found him standing on the far side of the room, his hands tied behind his back.
"Bring him to me," he said simply. The head slaver immediately obliged, walking over to where Twenty-Nine stood supervising another slave. Grabbing him by the throat, the slaver manhandled him over to where Krassus stood waiting.
Krassus walked completely around the loin-clad slave as if he were examining some beast of burden he might purchase. Then he grasped the slave's dirty chin and turned his face this way and that in the orange-red glow of the hearths.
Confused as to why he had been singled out, Twenty-Nine wondered who this frightening man with the long white hair and the piercing eyes was. He just as quickly found himself hoping that he would never have to face him again.
"So you're the one who gave us so much trouble b
y trying to take your own life," Krassus said softly. "Did you really think it would be so easy, my friend? I'm glad to see that you have been properly restrained and are giving us no further concern. But as you will soon learn, nothing here in this chamber, including you and the weapon smiths you supervise, will matter very much longer." He turned back to the head demonslaver.
"I was on my way to the Scriptorium on more urgent business, but I decided to stop here to tell you something," he said. "I have ordered that no more slaves be taken from Eutracia, for our requirements have been filled. Therefore, after you have fully armed all of the forthcoming demonslavers, you may shut this place down."
Turning on his heel, Krassus crossed the room and walked out, the door closing behind him with finality.
As he strode down the open halls lining the manicured courtyard, he took in the crisp afternoon air coming in off the sea and listened for the strangely comforting screams. It was not long before he heard them.
The farther he walked, the louder the screaming became, finally reaching its crescendo behind two huge marble doors that he briskly passed by. As he walked on, the insane wailing faded, then disappeared altogether.
There was no need for him to stop and inspect what was occurring behind those doors, because as long as the screaming could be heard, everything in that chamber was going according to plan. Besides, he had other, far more pressing matters to attend to just now, in a different area of the Citadel.
The room he finally entered was in stark contrast to the one he had just left. This was the Scriptorium, the chamber in which so much of his mission had already been accomplished by the consuls in the dark blue robes-those of the craft who had been freed of their death enchantments, turned to the Vagaries by the son of the Chosen One, and left for Krassus to command. This was also the chamber in which so much of his mission was still to take place, and in which long-held, dusty secrets would be revealed.
The Scriptorium was very large, taking up the entire second floor of this section of the Citadel, and its light, airy appearance belied the gruesome nature of the important work that went forward here. Sunlight streamed in through the many wide, open windows lining three of the four long walls, overlooking the restless Sea of Whispers below. The air in the room was odorless, the environment bordering on a cold sterility.
The Scriptorium's size was deceiving. It was in fact a collection of rooms separated by short, curving walls with openings but no doors. In this way, Krassus' consuls could not only move easily from one chamber to the next as they went about their labors, but they could also maintain a high degree of privacy, so that their concentration would not be broken.
The only room that could be sealed off from the others was Krassus' personal study. Large in size but plain in appearance, it held only an ornate desk and bookcases full of texts and scrolls. It was lit by a single window.
Approaching the door to his private chamber, Krassus narrowed his eyes, calling on the craft. The lock turned over once, then twice more, and the door slowly revolved on its hinges. After opening the window behind the desk, Krassus sat down. Almost immediately the consul in charge of the Scriptorium appeared before him, awaiting his master's orders.
The moment he had arrived at the Citadel with the Scroll of the Vagaries, Krassus had turned it over to the consuls so that they might begin the necessary research. Despite the fact that Nicholas had made Krassus fully aware of the purpose of the Scrolls of the Ancients before his death, there was still a great deal of investigation that would need to be done before the Scroll of the Vagaries would give up the particular secret they were searching for. To this end, Krassus had driven the consuls mercilessly. The research had gone on unabated, both day and night.
So far the going had been difficult. Although Nicholas had known what he needed gleaned from the scroll, even the son of the Chosen One had been unaware of where it had been placed among the seemingly countless other calculations and inscriptions so elegantly written on the very long, uniform piece of vellum. Each calculation the scroll relinquished had to be tested on a person of untrained, endowed blood-an R'talis slave-to determine whether it was the one they were looking for. The one magnificent calculation that-in its unparalleled, awesome power-would finally and irrevocably smash everything the wizards of the Redoubt stood for had so far eluded them.
Krassus looked up at the consul standing obediently before him. "Your report?" he demanded.
"For purposes of security," the consul answered, "it seems the writers of the scroll chose to bury this most powerful of calculations somewhere deep within the body of the text and leave it untitled. Although hundreds of useful Forestallments have now been mapped and recorded, the one we search for, the one shown to you by Nicholas, still eludes us. To narrow our examination, we are now putting into use only the untitled calculations." He paused. "It seems that the Heretics of the Guild did not make our task a simple one."
Growing ever more impatient, the wizard scowled. Saying nothing, he rose from his desk and left the room, followed by the obedient consul. Striding across the length of the Scriptorium, he stopped before a particular entryway, through which doorway the azure glow of the craft seeped out. Anxious to view the process, he walked in.
The room was large. Along one wall lay a long, rectangular table covered with reams of parchment. More than a dozen consuls were seated there, recording their observations with ink-laden quills.
Hovering before them in the stillness of the room was the glowing, partially unrolled Scroll of the Vagaries.
The engraved golden band that had once been secured around its center had been removed, and the scroll was unrolled to reveal the beautiful, elegant script spread across its ancient surface. One by one the consuls selected portions of the script. The passages began to glow as they were chosen, lifting themselves from the parchment and hovering in the air before the consuls.
The consuls read the Old Eutracian script floating before them, first deciphering and then recording what they read onto sheets of individual parchment. When each was satisfied that his translation was correct, he ordered the glowing words back to the scroll. Then the name and use of the spell, if given, was recorded on the parchment and passed to a waiting demonslaver, who took it from the room. The consul would then begin anew, selecting the next available passage from the scroll.
And so it went, the faithful scribes deciphering and recording the contents of the scroll while their watchful master looked on. Krassus finally walked to the next room.
Constructed of pure white marble, this chamber was much larger than the one he had just left, and the work here had a more intense, deadly feel to it. Demonslaver guards wandered warily about, their white eyes missing nothing. Bookcases covered every inch of the walls, their shelves lined with ledgers that were arranged in perfect sequential order. From time to time the consuls would come to the shelves either to take fresh volumes, or to replace those they had just finished with.
These volumes contained the information gleaned from the endowed slaves as they had departed the ships at the underground pier. The blood signatures and assay ratings had been dutifully recorded, along with the names, ages, dates and locations of capture, and sex.
Krassus turned his attention to the center of the bright, sterile-looking room. One hundred white marble tables, each a very precise two meters long by one meter wide, stood arranged in neat rows. Upon each lay a live human body-a conscious, endowed slave, bound to its surface at arms, legs, and throat, and covered by a curved dome of transparent azure. Over each of the tables stood a lone consul, carefully going about his meticulous work. Krassus chose one to observe.
After finding the page in the ledger that held the information about the slave lying before him, the consul caused a perfect duplicate of the slave's previously recorded blood signature to rise from its pages. It came to rest next to the deciphered script on the parchment brought to him from the room housing the scroll.
The consul then reached one hand through the
azure dome and placed his palm on the slave's forehead. Terrified almost beyond insanity, the helpless slave struggled, but to no avail.
Closing his eyes, the consul recalled the calculations of the still-unidentified Forestallment just gleaned from the scroll. Then he carefully began infusing it directly into the endowed blood of the slave.
The slave on the table began to convulse. Foam ran from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes rolled back up into his head as his body jerked violently: a marionette dancing on someone else's strings. Although he screamed wildly, no sound could be heard through the azure dome.
Such an interesting phenomenon, Krassus reflected emotionlessly. To see one convulse and scream so violently, yet hear no sounds of torment.
And then, finally, it was over. The slave collapsed, eyes closing.
As the consul removed his hand from the slave's head, the azure dome faded away.
"Is he dead?" Krassus asked casually.
"No," the consul answered. "Some of them live, though most die. Interestingly, it seems that those with a blood assay value of four or better often survive, and can be subjected to the process again. Such information may prove useful one day."
Narrowing his eyes, the loyal consul again called on the craft. He caused a small incision to form in the slave's right arm and ordered a single drop of the slave's blood to land on the parchment next to the blood signature.
Reaching into his robes, the consul produced a vial. Opening it, he released a single drop of red water taken from the Caves of the Paragon. Almost immediately the two drops began to move across the page toward one another, quickly becoming one.
As the slave's blood signature formed, the consul removed another piece of parchment from his robe. It held an exact copy of the Forestallment branch they all searched for-the one given to Krassus by Nicholas just before his death. After closely comparing the two, he shook his head. They were not of the same length, nor did the various branches match as they trailed away from the blood signatures.
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