“Wouldn’t it be easier to use the craft?” Tristan asked, helping the old one loosen the stones.
“Of course,” Wigg said in that all-knowing way of his. “But it might also help alert someone of endowed blood to our presence—something I do not feel would be wise just now. In addition, I have begun to cloak our blood from anyone who might be able to sense the fact that we are endowed—just as I did back in Parthalon, to screen our presence from the Coven. That will make it difficult for me to use the craft for anything else.”
When the hole was large enough, Wigg led the way through.
“Mind your feet this time,” he said snidely, reminding Tristan of how he had fallen down the rough-hewn steps the last time he had been here. “We will secure some illumination at the bottom.”
They descended slowly, the rushing sound of the water from the falls in their ears. The prince began to experience the now-familiar, exhilarating feeling of being close to the waters of the Caves. The farther down he went, the more his blood rose in his veins, making him slightly dizzy. Soon they were at the bottom, standing next to each other in the gloom. Wigg took a few careful paces to the side and reached up to take one of the torches from its holder on the nearby wall.
“Take out your flint and strike this torch alight,” Wigg ordered. “I dare not use the craft to do so.”
Tristan did as he was asked, and the torch came alight quickly. As the prince looked around, Wigg lifted the flame higher.
They were standing on the floor of a spectacular subterranean cavern, the high, cascading falls tumbling ever downward into a stone pool to their right. The sound was almost overpowering in its majesty, and the water was calling Tristan to again dive into its depths, to immerse himself just as he had so obsessively done on his first visit here. Giant, multicolored stalactites and stalagmites reached to join floor and ceiling. Some of them had already found their mates, creating majestic columns of slick, gorgeous stone.
From the rent in the wall above several of the fliers reentered, their wings adding to the riot of color and movement that surrounded the wizard and the prince. Some of them perched next to the pool.
From all around him Tristan could sense the serene, yet overpowering presence of the craft infiltrating his mind and his heart. Growing increasingly dizzy and short of breath, he found himself forced to go down on one knee. He looked up weakly at the wizard.
“Wigg,” he breathed, “you must get me away from the water! It is calling to me again!” He gasped for breath as he turned his head toward the enticing pool.
“I know,” the old one said. He helped Tristan up, putting one of the prince’s arms over his shoulder for support. “Come with me.”
Wigg hurried the prince across the stone chamber, to the entrance to the square-cut tunnel in the wall at the opposite side. But as they approached the tunnel, the breath left his lungs in a rush.
Sensing Wigg’s apprehension, Tristan looked tentatively to the tunnel entrance.
“What’s wrong?” he asked weakly. “Why aren’t we going inside?”
“The warp guarding the entrance to the tunnel is gone,” Wigg said hesitantly.
“How can you tell?” the prince asked. “It looks the same to me.”
“That’s because it was invisible. You would not have been able to see it during your first trip here. Nor could you see it now, because you are still untrained. The Directorate designed it so that it could not be seen by anyone except by us. We had hoped that this would make it less subject to tampering by unknown forces. That strategy has apparently failed. But what I do not understand is how it could have been dismantled without my sensing it.”
“Wigg,” Tristan whispered, “you must either take us down the tunnel, or carry me back outside. I will not be able to last much longer, this close to the falls . . . I have begun to hear my own heartbeat in my ears, despite how loud the falls are, and I . . .” His voice trailed off as he collapsed into unconsciousness. His face was bright red, reflecting the exertion being placed upon his heart by being so close to the waters. Wigg picked him up and carried him quickly, desperately through the entrance to the tunnel.
Holding both the torch and the prince, he ran down the length of the passageway, continuing until he estimated Tristan would be a safe distance from the falls. He put the prince down against the tunnel wall and checked his condition.
The redness in the prince’s face was starting to dissipate, and his breathing was coming back to normal. Wigg looked up at the torch in his hand, not happy with what he saw. The flame was fading.
Tristan finally opened his eyes to see the wizard looking concernedly down at him. Beyond the circle of the sputtering torch, the silent, impenetrable darkness of the tunnel completely surrounded them.
“How do you feel?” Wigg asked cautiously.
“Better,” Tristan answered slowly. “But I have never been so intensely affected by the waters of the Caves.” He shook his head back and forth, trying to regain his focus. “Will I be all right?”
“Yes,” Wigg answered, smiling for the first time since they came underground. “But right now we have a bigger worry.”
“And that is?” Tristan asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
“The torch,” Wigg said simply.
Tristan looked up to see that the ancient, oil-soaked torch was beginning to fade. Soon they would be engulfed in total darkness, a prospect that was less than reassuring.
“We planned poorly,” he said.
“I had no idea that the warp would be dismantled,” Wigg replied. “The ceiling of this tunnel is lined with radiance stones, which were to have been our means of illumination. But now, with this failing torch, we have only two alternatives.”
“To either go back the way we came and leave the Caves, or throw caution to the wind and permit you to use the craft,” Tristan said glumly.
“Precisely. The radiance stones that light the tunnels in and out of the Redoubt have been enchanted so that even the unendowed can activate them with a touch. But these stones have not. Only one of endowed blood may employ them, and to do so I must first stop cloaking our blood.”
“I understand,” Tristan said. “But you must activate the stones.” He stood up, testing his legs. “We have come this far, and we must have the Tome. You said so yourself. If there are problems ahead, we shall simply have to deal with them.”
“Very well,” the wizard said reluctantly.
Tristan watched the old one’s face relax, indicating that he had stopped cloaking the quality of their blood. Wigg held the torch high, examining the ceiling of the tunnel, where the dormant radiance stones lay. Closing his eyes, Wigg activated the stones. The familiar pale green glow appeared, brightly illuminating the tunnel for as far as the prince could see. Almost immediately the slightly pinched, strained look returned to the wizard’s face, telling the prince that their blood was again being cloaked.
The wizard sighed. “There. At least we now have light.” He extinguished the torch and dropped it on the tunnel floor. “It think it best that we make our way to—”
He never finished his sentence, for that was when the sound started.
It was a strange, grating sound in the hollowness of the tunnel. Almost immediately Tristan recognized it for what it was—stone against stone. He watched in horror as black marble walls shot down from the ceiling to the floor on either side of them. They descended with great thuds, creating a stone cubicle of no more than two meters in any direction, trapping the wizard and the prince inside.
Tristan glanced at Wigg, hoping against hope that this had for some reason been an action of the wizard’s. But the expression on Wigg’s face told him that was not the case. They looked around desperately.
“What happened?” Tristan exclaimed. “Is this another safeguard? Some type of device to trap intruders?”
“It is definitely the use of the craft, but I had no hand in it,” Wigg answered. “Someone or something obviously does not want us to move from
this spot.”
Tristan was finding it difficult to breathe. “Do the radiance stones have any bearing?”
“Very possible,” Wigg said. “Illuminating the stones may have been the trigger that brought down these walls. But there is yet another problem.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “We shall run out of breathable air in short order. Device of entrapment, indeed . . .”
“Can you destroy the wall, or raise it back up with the craft?” Tristan asked hopefully.
Wigg raised his arms, sending a bolt against the farthest of the walls. The glow of the craft slowly snaked over the entire surface of the slick marble wall, remaining there. Wigg then lifted his arms in an attempt to raise the wall. Nothing happened. He sent another bolt at the wall, much faster this time, the magic crashing against it with great intensity. Noise and smoke followed, the calamitous sound and acrid smell made even worse by the small confines of the chamber. But when the harsh, bitter smoke partially cleared, the deadly wall was still intact.
“Whoever is responsible for this is of great power,” Wigg said sadly. “I fear that there is little I can do.”
The smoke in the room had dissipated slightly, but it was making the air more difficult to breathe. They both began to cough.
We are going to die in here, Tristan thought. And no one will ever find us. Then he noticed the glow.
The familiar radiance of the craft in the shape of a circle had begun to appear on one of the walls. As it grew in size and intensity, its illumination flooded the chamber with an azure light that combined with the sage glow from the stones in the ceiling. Then the circle began to change shape, parts of it fading away to reveal an emerging pattern. Tristan’s jaw dropped. The pattern that the glow had taken on was the lion and the broadsword, the heraldry of the House of Galland.
Tristan stood there weakly, his breath coming with increasing difficulty. The glowing pattern was beautiful. He looked down at his gold medallion and took it into his hands. Then he looked back up again. The pattern in the stone wall was an exact duplicate of the jewelry he held. The brilliant, azure veins that made up the image of his heraldry pulsated and undulated as if they were trying to free themselves from the rock wall.
Before Wigg could protest Tristan extended his hand, touching the glowing heraldry. Immediately the glow intensified, becoming almost blinding. Wigg moved to take the prince’s hand away from the wall, but he was too late. At that moment, another sound came to their ears: a hauntingly beautiful voice.
“Tristan,” the voice said softly from both nowhere and everywhere. “If you wish to live, you must do as I tell you.”
Tristan staggered backward, almost falling to his knees in shock.
The voice that had just spoken to them belonged to his deceased mother: Morganna, the last queen of Eutracia.
Speechless, Tristan turned to Wigg to see shock on the wizard’s face, as well. Nonplussed but also knowing they were quickly running out of air, the wizard nodded, indicating to the prince that he should answer.
It took Tristan several long moments to gather himself, finally finding the breath with which to whisper an answer. The pain in his chest was unbearable; it was becoming more difficult to breathe by the moment.
“Mother,” he whispered tentatively. “Is that you?”
“Yes, my son,” came the lovely, familiar voice again, filling their stone prison. Its timbre was both caring and reassuring, just as he had always remembered it to be. It was in stark contrast to his own weak, rasping whispers. “You must do as I now tell you, or you and the wizard will perish here. There is little time left.”
Gasping, Tristan asked, “What must we do, Mother?”
“When the wall rises, you must go quickly through the exit it creates. Always take the path that is marked by the lion and the broadsword. To do other will only lead you on an endless quest, going nowhere, resulting in your death.” Morganna’s voice paused for a moment as if it were finally retreating with the vanishing, breathable air. But then it came again.
“Much has changed here since Wigg last trod these paths,” she continued softly. “There will be many obstacles in your way, some of them deadly. But you must persevere. The object you seek, the treatise of the craft, shall be elusive. But follow your heritage, my son, and you will reach your prize.”
Tristan finally went down on one knee, his breath rattling a final, deadly song in his starving lungs. Wigg, too, was losing the fight.
“Follow the entrance,” Morganna said. “Go forth and live.”
“But how is it that you can speak to me?” the prince gasped from the floor. He still saw nothing but the four dark walls of the suffocating prison and the glowing heraldry of the House of Galland. “Do you live?” he whispered. He would have died to know how it was that he could hear the voice of his mother—the beautiful, compassionate woman who had been so horribly raped and murdered at the hands of the Minions.
“There is no time, my son,” Morganna said, her voice fading away.
Teetering on the cusp of unconsciousness, Tristan was unable to form his next words. His eyes closing in defeat, his head finally sank to surrender upon the almost welcoming coolness of the stone floor.
“Behold,” the voice of Morganna said.
With that the slick, marble wall barring their entrance to the tunnel began to rise, disappearing into the ceiling from which it had come.
The prince suddenly felt two arms beneath his own, dragging him from the room. Wigg managed to pull Tristan a short way down the tunnel before collapsing to the floor next to the prostrate prince.
It was Tristan who finally opened his eyes first, coughing and hacking. He propped himself up weakly against the wall of the tunnel, helping the wizard do the same. “Wigg,” he asked, half coughing, half speaking, “was I dreaming, or did I hear my mother’s voice?”
Wigg took a deep breath, gratefully refilling his starved lungs with the sweet, humid air of the tunnel. “I heard it, too,” he said slowly, trying to marshal his thoughts. “But I still do not know what it means.”
“Is she still alive?” Tristan asked. He dared not believe it, but he felt compelled to ask the question, nonetheless. “Or perhaps somehow able to communicate with me from the Afterlife?”
“I simply do not know,” Wigg answered honestly, rising slowly on trembling legs. “But I also believe that there is no time for such a discussion right now. We must keep going.”
“Did you hear what she said about always taking the path marked with the heraldry?” Tristan asked, standing up. He checked his weapons, and was relieved to find they were still intact.
“Yes,” Wigg answered.
“And is that what we should do?”
“I can only answer that when we come to such a place,” Wigg said cautiously. “If we come to such a place. There were no such intersections here before—at least as far as we had previously explored. Forgive me, Tristan, but I find it hard to believe such an unlikely possibility now exists, simply because a voice from the past says so. But I suggest we get moving. Too much has already happened that I am uncomfortable with, to say the least. And there is no telling what may lie before us.”
Tristan looked down the tunnel to see that the radiance stones were continuing to illuminate its depths. “How far must we go?” he asked as they began walking down its length.
“That depends,” Wigg answered, “on whether what the voice said is true.”
They walked in silence for a long time. Apparently lost in his thoughts, the wizard took the lead. Following behind, Tristan was still consumed by the memory of the voice he had heard. Could it have possibly been my mother? he wondered over and over.
After what seemed to have been at least half a league, Wigg stopped short. From his position in the rear the prince could not easily see what was up ahead. He walked around to get a better look.
Directly in front of them, literally daring them to enter its tempting puzzle, lay a gigantic intersection. At least a dozen tunnels split off f
rom it, each leading in a different direction, each lit with radiance stones, beckoning them to enter.
But the glowing, azure sign of the heraldry of the House of Galland was embedded into the rock of only one of them. Tristan could see that the marked tunnel led to a flight of stone steps going downward, curving around and out of sight.
“This intersection never existed before,” Wigg breathed.
“Nonetheless, here it is,” Tristan countered. “I say we take the tunnel that is marked. The voice told us to.”
“That does not necessarily mean it is a good idea,” Wigg responded.
“Her voice saved us, did it not, by raising the wall?” Tristan asked adamantly. “If the voice of my mother had wanted us dead, we would be already. To me, there seems no other choice but to follow her instructions.”
“Very well,” Wigg said slowly. “But keep your wits about you, and do as I say. Be ready to act on a moment’s notice. We cannot be sure of what awaits us, especially if the voice is correct.”
With that, the wizard and the prince tentatively entered the tunnel marked with the heraldry and cautiously began navigating the cold stone steps leading downward into the earth.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Faegan sat in his wooden chair on wheels, finding the silence of the room almost oppressive. His gray-green eyes bore down intensely into the ancient book that lay on the table before him, its pages so dry and fragile that he had decided to turn them using the craft, instead of his fingers. Nicodemus lay in Faegan’s lap, purring softly.
Faegan sighed, sitting back in his chair. After two days of searching through volume after volume, he still had not found what he was looking for. But he knew he would.
The master wizard looked up from his work to gaze around the room. He was in the Archives of the Redoubt, the greatest collection of books and scrolls ever assembled in one place, second only to the Tome in its importance to the craft.
The Gates of Dawn Page 18