The Scrolls of the Ancients

by Robert Newcomb

  Bending over, Tristan reached down and stuck his hand into the surprised sailmaker’s right boot. He pulled out several playing cards, examined them closely, and casually tossed them down onto the table.

  “What do you think will happen to you if I drag you back over to those men by your hair and show them what you keep in your boots? Whose friends do you think those drunken morons with the daggers will be then, eh? Not to mention that you have been cheating your partner’s patrons, right under his very nose. And I seriously doubt you’ve been giving Rolf a cut—that’s something he won’t take kindly to.” Tristan’s face turned as hard as granite. “Now sit down, before I cause you some real trouble.”

  Still unimpressed, Ichabod gave Tristan a confident, arrogant glare. “Go ahead and try,” he dared. “I’ll tell them the cards belong to you. Who do you think they’ll believe?”

  Tristan only smiled. “Actually, I think they’ll believe me,” he said softly.

  “And just why is that?”

  “Because there is wax on the edges of these cards,” Tristan answered casually, as he grabbed one up from the table and held it before the sailmaker’s eyes. “The same as that on your mustache. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m clean-shaven. So tell me, sailmaker, now which of us is the insolent bastard?”

  Ichabod’s face went white. On trembling legs he searched absently behind himself, finally finding his chair. He sat down carefully.

  “Four hundred, you say?” he asked, his voice breaking. His tone had suddenly become far more agreeable.

  “Four hundred,” Tristan nodded. “Far be it from me to swindle a card cheat. And no deposit. Rather, payment in full on delivery to my ships tomorrow at dawn. You’d best not cross me. I wouldn’t take it well.”

  “Where are you anchored?” the sailmaker asked.

  “On the eastern shore. In the rocky cove, just off the wooden docks. Do you know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will see you there at dawn,” Tristan replied. “With the sails.”

  Ichabod’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Once you leave the Wing and Claw, how do you know I’ll keep my end of the bargain?”

  Reaching back, Tristan casually produced one of his throwing knives and held it to the chandelier. The soft light glinted off the dirk’s razor-sharp edges.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll come to you tomorrow night,” the prince said quietly. “Sanctuary is a small island, and I’ll find you no matter where you try to hide. I’ll find you, and I’ll cut you.” Looking back down into Ichabod’s eyes, he smiled. “From groin to gizzard.”

  Ichabod swallowed hard. “Very well,” he said in a much smaller voice. “It shall be as you say.”

  Remembering what Tyranny had taught him, Tristan spat into his right palm and held it out. After a moment, Ichabod followed suit, and they shook hands. The prince had been inordinately lucky. He also knew that he should leave quickly, before anything went awry.

  But as he stood to go, someone else entered the Wing and Claw. Someone he knew. It was Scars.

  As might be expected, the giant’s frame filled the doorway, blocking out much of the afternoon sun. But as Tristan looked more carefully, he saw that something was very wrong. Scars’ hands were tied behind his back, and his face was bruised. He was being prodded into the room by two leering pirates, their sabers held to his back. Tristan froze, trying to act as though he had never seen the colossus before. His mind began to race.

  Scars and the pirates finally entered the tavern and slowly walked over to one side. Then, from the sunlight beyond the doors Tristan detected something standing there, its silhouette dark against the afternoon sun. It looked like a man. But it had too many arms and legs to be a man, and some of them weren’t where they were supposed to be.

  Then he saw the thing start to spin around, and Tyranny came flying through the air to crash into one of the nearby empty tables. It collapsed beneath her, and she went down hard. Dazed and hurt, at first she seemed unable to get up.

  Tristan started to go to her, but somehow her eyes found him in the crowd. She gave him a short, decisive shake of her head, telling him to stay put. Understanding, he fought down the impulse to help her and forced himself back down into his chair.

  He heard boot heels on the clapboard sidewalk, and a man walked arrogantly into the tavern. Striding over to Tyranny, he reached down and, viciously grabbing a handful of her short hair, wrenched her face up for everyone to see.

  “I’m looking for the other man who came into town with this!” he shouted. “It has come to my attention that there is another rooster in my henhouse! Reveal yourself, whoever you are, and I’ll let her live!”

  Staring at the man with hatred, Tristan’s endowed blood began to rise hotly in his veins.

  His hand closed automatically around the handle of his knife.

  CHAPTER

  Forty-three

  Tell me, Wulfgar,” Krassus asked. “Are you comfortable?”

  The hard, white marble table pressing against his back, Wulfgar looked around the Scriptorium as best he could. He and the wizard were alone. He had been forced here by several of Krassus’ demonslavers, and they had tied down his hands and feet, making it impossible for him to move.

  He was naked save for a pair of emerald-green silk trousers. His long, sandy hair fell down over one edge of the table and stretched toward the floor. As he lay there, looking up into the smiling face of the wizard with the long white hair and the strange, two-colored robe, his heart beat wildly. Sweat born of fear poured maddeningly off his face and body.

  Craning his neck to one side, he saw a partially unrolled scroll hovering in the air nearby. It was magnificent, and it glowed with the same strange blue color that he had seen come and go so often since being imprisoned here in the Citadel.

  “What are you going to do to me?” he demanded, straining against his bindings for what seemed the hundredth time.

  Krassus wiped the perspiration from his subject’s brow. It was almost as if he were a healer, compassionately tending to a patient.

  “I am nothing if not a man of my word,” he said calmly. “I’m going to do exactly what I promised you that day in your quarters. I shall introduce you to something wonderful—something that will change your life forever. In the end you will thank me. And before we are finished, you will find yourself begging for more.”

  Summoning all of the saliva he could, Wulfgar arched his back and spat it directly into the wizard’s face. Unperturbed, Krassus calmly wiped it away.

  “I will fight you; you must know that,” Wulfgar swore. “One day I will find Tristan and Shailiha, and join them. Together we will kill you—you and all of these monsters that serve you.” Exhausted, he lay back down against the hard, almost welcoming coolness of the stone.

  “Of course you will fight me,” Krassus said. “Given the nature of your blood, I would be very disappointed if you did not. So will Serena, when her time comes. But by then you won’t want to kill the demonslavers, Wulfgar. You will want to command them. I am simply an intermediary, doing my late master’s bidding.” Krassus turned to view the scroll.

  “I believe prudence dictates that we begin with one of the simpler Forestallments,” he said casually. “Although the process will not be pleasant, it will have nowhere near the impact of some of the more powerful ones that will eventually follow. But by then your unique blood will have adjusted. When I finally deem you ready, I will gift you with the one Forestallment that will change the world forever—the one my loyal consuls worked so hard to uncover in the scroll.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Krassus called on the craft, and a section of the beautifully elegant, glowing text lifted itself from the scroll and came to hover before his dark eyes. But just as it did, Krassus began to cough again.

  Taking his rag from his robes, he covered his mouth. His hacking went on unabated for some time. It was becoming progressively worse, he realized. Finally the convulsions subsided, and he put the rag aw
ay. Now it was Wulfgar’s turn to smile.

  “Perhaps you will die before you can turn me, wizard,” he said. “Did your supreme master consider that before he departed?”

  “Of course,” Krassus answered hoarsely. “But have no fear: I shall easily live long enough to turn you, perhaps even long enough to see you fulfill my master’s plans. What a glorious day that shall be! Now then, shall we begin?”

  Pointing an index finger at one of Wulfgar’s arms, Krassus caused a small incision to form. It immediately started to bleed. Reaching over to a nearby table, the wizard retrieved a small glass vial, with which he collected some of the blood. Then he closed the vial and caused it to glide back over to the table. Narrowing his eyes, he watched the wound close, the skin knit back together, and the angry red scar disappear completely.

  The wizard committed the glowing words and calculations hovering before him to memory. With a smile, he then placed one of his palms on Wulfgar’s head.

  Wulfgar began to scream.

  His body arched with exquisite pain; drool ran from his mouth. His body jangled mercilessly, relentlessly, against the cold, white marble table. Sweat poured from him, and at first Krassus worried that Wulfgar’s violent thrashing might break the bones of all his limbs. But the wizard continued with the process of imbuing the first of many Forestallments into Wulfgar’s blood.

  When Krassus was done, Wulfgar had gone unconscious from the pain, but he was still breathing. Pointing an index finger at Wulfgar’s other arm, the wizard caused another incision to form, then ordered a single drop of blood to rise from the wound and come to rest on the table.

  He picked up another container. This one was filled with red waters taken from the Caves of the Paragon by Nicholas, and entrusted to Krassus just before the son of the Chosen One had died at the Gates of Dawn. Opening its top, he released a single drop and watched it fall to the table, landing next to the spot of Wulfgar’s blood. Almost immediately the two beads of fluid began to move and join.

  Krassus pulled a scope closer and centered it directly over the freshly forming blood signature. He held his breath and looked down.

  The newly created Forestallment in Wulfgar’s blood signature was perfect.

  Looking further, he found the other change he was hoping for: Wulfgar’s already left-leaning blood signature now tilted farther yet. Krassus’ heart leapt in his chest. He had just proven in practice what Nicholas had told him would work in theory: that the Forestallments inscribed so long ago on the scroll could still be correctly deciphered and imbued directly into the blood of the living.

  Looking up from the scope, he gazed out one of the broad windows overlooking the Sea of Whispers. As he did, several realizations came to him.

  Failee, Wigg’s deceased wife and onetime first mistress of the Coven of sorceresses, must have possessed and employed at least one of the Scrolls of the Ancients. There was no other way that Tristan and Shailiha could possibly have obtained the Forestallments in their blood. Even Failee was not brilliant enough to have woven such wondrous aspects of the craft on her own. And the same held true for Celeste’s Forestallments, as well.

  But the Coven had not been in possession of the scrolls when Wigg banished them to the Sea of Whispers. So Failee must have either discovered them in Parthalon or hidden them somewhere in Eutracia before leaving and then ordered her second mistress, upon invasion of Eutracia, to return not only with the Paragon and Princess Shailiha, but with the scrolls, as well.

  But how had the scrolls found their way back to Eutracia from Parthalon? he wondered. How was it that they both eventually came to be in the possession of Nicholas? And perhaps most importantly, how had Failee come upon the scrolls in the first place?

  Then another, even more fascinating realization hit him. If Failee had had only the Scroll of the Vagaries in her possession, and if she gleaned from it the Forestallments that she later placed into the blood of Tristan and Shailiha, then all the still-unrealized gifts of the Chosen Ones would be of the darker side of the craft! If she had had both scrolls, would she even have used anything of the Vigors? If so, why? And what about those gifts in Celeste’s blood? Would Failee ever want her only daughter’s blood infused with anything remotely associated with the side of the craft that she professed to loathe?

  His head spinning with questions and contradictions, Krassus looked down at Wulfgar’s placid, sleeping face. He smiled to himself. It didn’t really matter if he found the answers, he decided. All that mattered was that he complete his master’s mission before his disease took him to the Afterlife.

  Closing his eyes, he caused the glowing, hovering calculations he had just employed to return to their places in the scroll. Then he selected another section of text and beckoned it to him. After committing it to memory, he placed his open palm back on Wulfgar’s forehead. Wulfgar’s eyes snapped open.

  His screaming went on long into the night.

  CHAPTER

  Forty-four

  He will live,” Faegan said with relief as he removed his hand from Wigg’s forehead. “He has been through a great deal, and it was apparently very close. His heart has been deeply strained, as has his mind. But I believe he will make a full recovery,” he said. Then Faegan looked over at Celeste.

  Abbey, Faegan, Celeste, and Shailiha were surrounding the lead wizard’s bed. Shailiha’s daughter Morganna sat in an infant’s carriage newly made for her by Shannon the Short.

  Wigg lay sleeping, the down covers pulled up to his shoulders. His breathing was still labored, and his face remained pale. Reaching out to touch her father’s face, Celeste found that his skin was cold. As she withdrew her hand, her eyes became shiny.

  Abbey and Shailiha were no less worried. The two wizards had been gone from the palace a long time, and when the Minions had finally landed in the courtyard with the litter the three women had run to meet them, hoping for the best. But what they had found was a stricken lead wizard, and Faegan frantic to have Wigg cared for. That had been several hours ago. At one point Wigg had opened his eyes, looked at them briefly, and then fallen back into a deep, silent sleep.

  Once Wigg had been put to bed, Faegan had told the others all he could of their amazing journey. The bag of herbs and the vial of oil that had been taken from the floating gardens lay safely on a nearby table.

  “Is it really true that you cannot use the herbs the watchwoman gave you until they have dried out?” Shailiha asked as she rocked Morganna’s carriage with one hand. The baby gave a soft coo.

  The princess was very anxious for Abbey to try to find her brother by way of the gazing flame. There still had been no news from the flying Minion patrols that stubbornly refused to give up looking for the prince, or from the Minion fleet that had supposedly left Parthalon several days earlier, under the joint command of Geldon and Traax.

  But at least Faegan’s stores of herbs and oils were now all here in Tammerland rather than remaining in his mansion in Shadowood. Just before leaving for the Chambers of Penitence Faegan had ordered a contingent of Minions to fly Abbey, Celeste, and Shailiha back to Shadowood to oversee the return of the goods.

  Abbey had been speechless at what she had seen there. But she had taken it all in stride, helping make sure that everything was packaged up and transported as ordered. Faegan’s stores now resided safely below ground level, locked in one of the laboratories of the Redoubt.

  As he considered the princess’ question, Faegan turned to look at the bag and the vial. Then an unexpected smile crossed his lips, and he turned his chair toward Abbey.

  “Tell me,” he asked the herbmistress, “can you effectively produce and employ a gazing flame through the exclusive use of oils, rather than dried herbs?”

  Taking a deep breath, Abbey searched her memory. “Herbs work much better for that purpose,” she answered carefully. “That is why oils are rarely used for viewing. There is one that will work, but the results are often unclear. The oil is called unction of scythegrass root, and it is very rare
. Do you know it?”

  Smiling, Faegan nodded. “It awaits us in the Redoubt, mixed with the others.”

  “I don’t understand,” Shailiha interjected. “I thought we had to wait for the herbs to dry.”

  “No,” Faegan answered. “The watchwoman told me that we could use the oil she gave me to separate the other oils right away.” Smiling, he looked around the room. “That being the case, I therefore suggest we descend to the Redoubt.”

  Celeste turned her attention back to Wigg. “I will stay here, in case Father awakens,” she said adamantly.

  “Very well,” Faegan agreed, smiling at her. Thinking, he turned to the princess. “I think the child should stay here with Celeste,” he added. “I am not entirely sure what might happen. Best not to take any unnecessary chances.” He turned back to Celeste. “If you need us, you know where we will be.”

  He gazed down into the craggy face of the wizard who had risked everything for their cause. “Sleep well, my friend,” he said softly.

  Turning his chair away from the bed, he wheeled himself over to the nearby table and placed the vial and the bag into his lap. Shailiha rolled the carriage over to Celeste. Bending over, she gave Morganna a kiss good-bye. The baby grabbed playfully at Shailiha’s blond tresses, causing her mother to cry out in mock consternation. Then the princess and Abbey followed Faegan out of the room.

  They had a long way to go to get to the laboratory. Down numerous corridors they went, the oil sconces on the walls surrendering a soft, even glow, the heels of the women’s shoes ringing out crisply against the shiny marble floor.

  Faegan finally stopped before one of the seemingly innumerable doors of carved mahogany. Narrowing his eyes he called the craft, and Shailiha heard the lock in the door turn over once, then twice more. Abbey opened the door and went through, Faegan and the princess following along behind her. The massive, carved door closed behind them heavily.

  The laboratory looked as if it had not been used in some time. It reminded Shailiha of a teaching chamber, complete with text- and scroll-filled bookcases, a long table near the far wall, and rows of dusty mahogany, desk-topped chairs. Shailiha found herself smiling as she thought of days gone by, when the room would have been filled with dozens of eager consuls listening to Wigg or some other member of the Directorate lecturing on some arcane topic of the craft.