Tristan nodded. After giving Shailiha a reassuring pat on the hand, he swung open the door and quickly hoisted himself up onto the driver’s bench.
Surprised, the grizzled driver glared at him. “What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped. “You shouldn’t be up here—especially not now. For the life of me I can’t understand why you and the girl would want to do this. Hasn’t the old cripple told you what’s going on here? Is he insane, or just stupid?” He spat down loudly into the passing gutter.
Tristan grinned. “The old one doesn’t tell us a lot,” he answered. “The sick old fool only hired me for my sword. The woman is his nurse. Truth be told, I don’t know why we’re here, either.”
He let several precious seconds go by. Then he put on his most innocent expression and asked, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”
As if finally willing to answer Tristan’s question, the driver turned to him. But just then, something seemed to catch his eye. Drawing a quick breath, he pulled the team of horses up short. The carriage came to an abrupt stop. Raising a finger, the driver pointed to a corner down the street.
“Do you see them?” he whispered. His hands shook; his face was blanched with fear.
Snapping his head around to look, Tristan caught sight of several strange-looking figures walking hurriedly away. They were tall, with white, almost translucent skin—but that was all he could make of them before they rounded the corner and vanished from sight.
“Demonslavers,” the driver whispered, so quietly that Tristan barely heard him.
“What?” Tristan asked. The man’s obvious terror was unnerving.
“This is as far as I go!” the driver shouted, jumping down from his seat. “Everybody out!”
Running around to the side of the carriage, he violently jerked the door open, grabbed Shailiha’s arm, and literally pulled her out. By the time Tristan got there, the man was screaming at Faegan, ordering him to get out.
“Very well, very well!” Faegan shouted back. He looked at Tristan. “If you would,” he said.
Understanding, Tristan reached in, retrieving the old one and his chair the same way he had placed them inside. But this time the driver didn’t care about Tristan’s supposedly amazing feat of strength. All he wanted was to leave, and quickly.
“If you value your lives, go back to wherever you came from and forget this place!” he shouted frantically. “No power in the world can help this accursed town! If you remain foolish enough to carry on with this madness, the place you are searching for is the docks! But you would be insane to go there!” He climbed back into the carriage seat as fast as he could.
With a crack of his whip, he wheeled his team around. “And if you know what’s good for them, you’ll get those two off the street before it’s too late!” he hollered at Faegan, while pointing to Tristan and his sister. With another lash from his whip he charged his team back down the way they had come, the horses’ hooves colliding noisily with the cobblestones. In mere moments, he was gone.
“What do we do now?” Tristan asked the wizard.
A crowd had started to form. Some of the onlookers were staring oddly at the prince and Shailiha, as if they weren’t human. Some started pointing. Many of them seemed to be angry.
“The last thing we need is attention,” Faegan whispered urgently. “For the time being, we’ll get off the street. Any of these shops will do. I suggest we hurry!”
Tristan saw a storefront with a sign in the shape of a mortar and pestle. The sign said “Apothecary—Drugs and Compounds.” Swiftly he wheeled Faegan’s chair around and, with Shailiha, made for the door.
The double doors closed behind them with finality, a little bell at their top happily announcing the fact that the shop’s proprietor had customers.
Tristan looked around. They seemed to be the only people in here. The shop was quite large, lined with shelves and littered with tables all filled with multicolored bottles and jars. Everything was covered with a layer of dust, as if the merchandise hadn’t been touched for years. A long counter stretched from wall to wall at the far end, with yet more wall cabinets behind it.
A massive, circular oak chandelier hung by a rope over the center of the floor. The rope ran through a pulley in the ceiling and on to a hook attached to the far wall, a system that allowed for the raising and lowering of the fixture for the filling of its oil sconces. The chandelier was not lit.
There was no sign of the proprietor. The place smelled of dust, lack of use, and countless exotic compounds.
Wheeling himself up to one of the tables, Faegan picked up a bottle and examined it. Removing the cork, he smelled the contents. His eyes lit up.
“Ground blossom of rapturegrass!” he cackled, triumphantly smacking one hand flat upon the arm of his chair. “I’d stake my life on it!” He appeared to be quite delighted. “I haven’t seen this for decades!” He held the bottle up for Tristan and Shailiha to see. “Good for the libido,” he added with a wink.
With a sigh and a slight shake of his head, Tristan looked over at his sister. She was watching Faegan with an expression of disbelief. As one corner of his mouth came up, Tristan reminded himself that she was not as familiar with the wizard’s eccentricities as he was.
“Faegan,” Tristan asked, “have you ever heard of something called a demonslaver?”
“A what?” Faegan asked, his full attention firmly locked upon the prince. Then Tristan heard someone clear his throat.
“May I be of assistance?” a different voice suddenly said.
Turning, Tristan, Shailiha, and Faegan looked behind the counter to see a thin, ruddy-faced man wearing wire spectacles that seemed far too large for him. Watching him push the spectacles back up the sweaty bridge of his nose, only to see them slide back down again, Tristan guessed that the automatic gesture had become a lifelong habit. The shopkeeper wore an apron covered with multicolored dust, and he appeared unusually nervous.
But when he saw the faces of the prince and princess, he turned absolutely white.
“Get out!” he shouted immediately. “You shouldn’t be here! I don’t want any trouble!”
“Nor do we,” Tristan said courteously, taking a single step toward the counter. “All we want are the answers to a few simple—”
The twin doors to the shop suddenly blew open with such force that they banged into the walls beside them. Their etched-glass windows shattered, cascading to the floor in thousands of shards of prismed light. Moving instinctively, Tristan whirled around, reaching behind his back and drawing his dreggan. The ring of its razor-sharp blade resounded through the musty air of the shop.
There were five of them, and they were something out of a nightmare. The only way they seemed to differ from one another was in the various weapons they carried: in addition to swords, one of them carried a whip, another a trident.
Black leather skirts, slit down the front for walking, fell from their waists to the floor. Their chests and shoulders were bare. Their fingers ended in talons, rather than fingernails. Bright red capes cascaded down their backs. Short swords hung low behind their backs, almost to their knees. Tristan’s experienced eye took quick note of the unique way the baldrics were hung, immediately sensing the ease and speed with which the things would be able to draw their swords. But it was their faces that were most unsettling.
Their skin was pure white—almost translucent—and seemed to shine. Polished metal caps covered their skulls and swept around their eyes and ears. The ears were long, pointed things, with earrings dangling from some of them. Their white, opaque eyes held no irises, but somehow seemed never to miss a thing.
Tristan’s heart pounded in his chest, and his right hand tightened around the hilt of his dreggan. He heard the shopkeeper scream, followed by the sound of running and the slamming of a door. The prince knew better than to turn and watch the man run away.
He sized up the situation, and his heart fell.
He had never before faced five at once
, he thought nervously.
Faegan wheeled his chair slowly toward the counter. Shailiha walked behind Tristan and over toward the far wall.
“What do you want?” Tristan barked. “Go away and leave us in peace!”
Two of the monsters walked closer. “We want you,” one of them said as he approached. “You and the woman. We do not require the old man in the chair.” The monster smiled, showing dark, pointed teeth.
“I don’t think so,” Tristan growled. He raised the tip of his sword a fraction.
In a blindingly fast motion, the other creature drew his sword. It was the quickest use of a blade Tristan had ever seen. Had his dreggan not already been drawn, he would surely have died on the spot.
The two gleaming blades clanged together with a force so powerful they sent sparks flying. As was his habit, Tristan quickly backed off, trying to gain some maneuvering room. But suddenly he stopped, realizing that he did not want to bring his attacker any closer to Shailiha than he must. He began hacking viciously at his foe. But the monster was as skilled as he was, and he could find no opening. Then at last, he saw the chance he had hoped for.
Teeth bared, his opponent suddenly screamed and rushed forward, his short sword raised high over his head. His intention was clear: to strike straight downward, cleaving Tristan’s skull.
Just as the thing reached the zenith of his swing, Tristan rushed dangerously in and reached up, grabbing his attacker’s sword wrist. And during the split second in which he held the monster’s blade in place, he shoved the point of the dreggan to the thing’s throat, angling it up.
He pressed the hidden button in the dreggan’s hilt, and the blade shot forward the extra foot, entering just beneath the point of the thing’s jaw and exiting the top of the head. The monster died immediately. Pressing the button again, Tristan retracted the blade and pushed the body off him.
Enraged, the second of them drew his sword as surely as had the first and with a scream, he rushed at the prince. But this time Tristan had the distance he needed.
Without hesitation he tossed the heavy dreggan from his right hand over into his left. Reaching back, he gripped the handle of his first throwing knife. With a whirl of his arm, the blade twirled unerringly toward its target and buried itself in the center of the thing’s forehead with a sickening thud, stopping him in midstride. Stunned, the attacker simply stood as a trail of bright red blood snaked its sure, silent way down over his damaged skullcap and onto his white face. As if trapped in some impossible dream, the creature ran his fingers through it, then blankly examined it before staring back up at the prince. His sword slipped from his fingers and clanged noisily to the floor.
The white eyes closed, and he fell over onto his back, dead.
Chest heaving, Tristan glared at the remaining three. He tossed the dreggan back into his right hand, and his fingers tightened around the hilt.
He didn’t have to wait very long.
Suddenly the huge oak chandelier came crashing down in a cacophony of noise, glass, and lamp oil. It smashed directly onto the heads of the three would-be attackers. All three collapsed, as glass shattered and oil spilled as the long rope pooled atop the mess. Blood mixed strangely with the oil and ran across the floor and into the cracks between the floorboards.
Tristan hesitated in shock for an instant, then rushed in and ran each body through. Two were already dead, and the third could not have been far from it—his neck lay at an odd angle, clearly broken, and he was unable to breathe. Tristan’s blade was a blessing.
Once done, Tristan turned, and his eyes went wide.
Shailiha had untied the rope holding up the chandelier.
Letting out a great sigh of relief, Tristan uncoiled. Shailiha, arms akimbo, stared intently at the beings she had just killed.
This was the first time she had ever taken a life, Tristan realized as he went to her.
The moment he put his arms around her, she dropped her defiant stance.
“Are you all right?” he asked gently as he looked into her eyes.
“Yes.” Her voice was strong and calm. She looked past Tristan’s shoulder at the bodies lying beneath the chandelier. Faegan had wheeled his chair over to the tangled mess to examine the creatures.
“And just what were you prepared to do while all of this was going on?” Tristan growled at the wizard, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“After you killed the first two, even I doubted you could have handled the next three all at once,” Faegan said with a smile. “I was of course prepared to use the craft to help you. But then I saw the princess had other plans.”
“What in the name of the Afterlife are these things?” Tristan asked. Walking over, he reached down and wiped the blade of his dreggan clean with one of the victim’s black leather skirts. Satisfied, he slid the sword back into its scabbard. Then he retrieved his throwing knife and repeated the process with it.
Shailiha walked up behind him and took his hand. “I have never seen anything like them,” she said quietly.
“Do you remember your question to me about the demonslavers?” Faegan asked, his eyes alight with curiosity. “Well, I think you have just found your answer.”
“But where do they come from, and why did they want us?” asked Shailiha.
“They are without question some product of the Vagaries,” Faegan answered seriously. “But as to how they were produced or who they may have originally been, I cannot say. They may be mutated wizards, as are the blood stalkers. Or perhaps they are something else entirely. Only time will tell. These beings may have been hunting under Krassus’ orders. He did, after all, literally dare us to come here to see what was taking place.” He paused, rubbing his chin. “I fear, though, that we may have only scratched the surface of our troubles.”
“What do we do now?” Shailiha asked.
“First,” Faegan answered, “Tristan needs to drag the bodies out back and hide them behind the shop. We have been fortunate, but I believe we have yet to see whatever it is Krassus taunted us about. We must still make our way to the docks—the roughest part of all Farpoint.
“We’re within walking distance. Tristan, we leave as soon as you have finished.”
CHAPTER
Eight
Are you quite certain you should be doing this, Father?” Celeste asked nervously.
Wigg stepped over another fallen log as he made his way carefully through the forest. “Yes, my dear,” he answered patiently. “I am quite all right.”
Truth be known, he loved the way she looked after him. He smiled as he realized just how long it had been since anyone had taken care of him: more than three centuries.
He stopped for a moment to get his bearings. An equal number of years had passed since he had visited this section of the Hartwick Woods, and he wanted to be sure of his way.
Walking up beside him, Celeste took her father’s hand. “Just the same, let’s rest for a moment,” she suggested softly.
Looking around, Wigg saw a small clearing and headed for it. They sat in the shade of a hibernium tree. As was the old wizard’s custom, he picked a blade of grass and began shredding it with his long, elegant fingers.
The day was still young, the sun just rising above the tops of the trees as they swayed gently back and forth in the wind. The dark green grass was soft and fresh, as were so many of the living things now bursting forth from the Season of New Life. The songs of the birds made a comforting, familiar background refrain.
Wigg turned to look at his daughter—the daughter he had only so recently found. He loved her more than his life, and would do anything to protect her. Although she seemed outwardly normal, Celeste was just beginning to come to grips with all that she had been forced to endure. He had spent hours discussing the matter with Faegan, who had sadly agreed that no matter how intelligent or how high the quality of her endowed blood, Celeste would need a great deal of care and guidance to set things right, if indeed they ever could be.
Both Wigg and Faegan had
a great deal of collective knowledge regarding such psychosexual trauma, for they had witnessed firsthand the various abuses of the Coven during the Sorceresses’ War of three centuries earlier. But this was different. This time the victim had been the lead wizard’s only child, and his stake in her healing was acutely personal.
Lying down in the soft grass, Celeste closed her eyes. Shawna the Short had wisely seen to it that her gown and slippers were replaced with attire more suitable for walking through the forest: a brown leather jerkin over a close-fitting blouse of black silk with sleeves that gathered at the wrists. Trunk hose rose to just above her knees, and she wore soft, brown knee boots. Her dark red hair spread out upon the ground like a luxurious fan. Looking at her, Wigg could easily pick out the fine features she had inherited from her mother, Failee.
No matter what she wore or how distressed she became, her beauty always shone through, the old one thought. In that way, she was much like Shailiha. Yet, in so many ways, she was also very different. Suddenly forced to wipe away a tear, he continued to contemplate the various psychological stages of healing the young woman would be forced to endure.
She was in denial, he knew, and this very uncertain mental stage would presumably be followed by others. Eventually would come her anger, then her eventual acceptance of what had been done to her. And finally, if she was lucky, a form of personal resolution would befall her, truly allowing her to lead a relatively normal life out in the world.
His thoughts floated back to three days earlier, when Krassus had so suddenly appeared. The rogue wizard had said many things that stunned Wigg that day, but none so much as his reference to the partial adept living here in these woods, and his mention of having visited her. Wigg had no doubt that Krassus’ motives for doing so could certainly not have been harmless.
The lead wizard had spent the last three days in bed thinking, and trying to regain his strength, before finally deciding to venture into Hartwick. The Minion litter and armed guard of winged warriors that had transported him and Celeste waited patiently just to the north. Wigg sighed. He had come because he knew in his heart he needed to see this person from his past—if indeed she still lived.
The Scrolls of the Ancients Page 9
