The fifth sorceress, p.51
The Fifth Sorceress, page 51
At this Faegan raised his hands and closed his eyes. Immediately one of the glass sections of the ceiling began to hinge up and away, opening the garden to the sky. The cool night breeze began to waft into the great room, carrying the scents of the plants ever farther up to the three of them on the balcony.
Faegan turned to Wigg, his countenance more serious than before.
‘Observe, Lead Wizard,’ he said calmly. ‘Behold our friends once again.’
Almost immediately the giant butterflies called the Fliers of the Fields began to pour in through the opening in the roof, so many in fact that at first Tristan thought they would collide with each other, even though previous experience told him that they never would.
There were hundreds of them. They swooped and darted, careened and wheeled through the air of the atrium, some of them occasionally landing on the plants. A small squadron of the most colorful and vibrant of them came to rest on another brass rail that was attached to a nearby glass wall, not too far from where the three men were observing them.
They were magnificent.
‘Ask them a question,’ Faegan said to Wigg, as if such an incredible demand were an everyday occurrence.
Wigg’s mouth fell partly open with shock, a look that Tristan had seen only a few times in his life on the face of the Lead Wizard.
‘Wha-what?’ Wigg whispered, his voice suddenly seeming ragged and small.
‘As I said,’ Faegan ordered imperiously, looking up at Wigg. ‘Ask them a question.’
‘Are you mad?’ Wigg retorted. ‘I will not talk to butterflies! Such a thing is not possible, even for you!’ In defiance, he placed each of his hands into the opposite sleeve of his robe and hardened his jaw.
‘Simply because you have been Lead Wizard for the last three centuries does not preclude you from learning something, especially from me,’ Faegan said, his eyes narrowing at Wigg. Tristan was awestruck. He had never heard anyone speak to Wigg that way, not even his father, the king. ‘Now, as I said, ask them a question,’ Faegan continued. ‘And kindly address those fliers that sit on the brass rail beside us.’
Wigg was obviously furious – so much so that Tristan thought he might soon see steam rising from the top of the Lead Wizard’s head. Finally, and with apparently great effort upon his part, Wigg seemed to gain greater control over himself. He turned to face the fliers sitting quietly on the rail.
‘What is the name of your master?’ Wigg asked them sarcastically, still apparently not believing that he was actually doing such a childish thing.
What Tristan saw next would remain lodged in his memories forever.
Immediately one of the fliers took off in the direction of the floor, gracefully soaring down toward the marble area until it had neatly landed upon the letter F. Holding his breath, the prince watched in awe as the remaining fliers took off from their perches, each of them landing upon a letter engraved in the circular floor until they had, in turn, landed upon one of the letters, two of them now side by side upon one of them. Tristan followed the order in which they landed.
F-A-E-G-A-N.
Such a thing is not possible! Tristan stared in disbelief. It simply cannot be.
But the fliers continued to sit quietly upon the marble floor, their diaphanous, colorful wings slowly opening and closing as if in anticipation of the next question.
Faegan wasted no time in pouring salt into Wigg’s fresh wounds. ‘Still don’t believe me, Lead Wizard?’ he asked gloatingly. ‘You certainly haven’t changed much in the last three centuries, have you? Still as stubborn as a Eutracian mule. Would you like to try another question, just to make sure? Or can’t you get your mouth to work?’
They’re behaving like two novices competing at the Wizards’ Conservatory, Tristan thought. So this is what it was like between them 300 years ago. And this is why Wigg is so angry. It’s jealousy! An emotion I doubt he has had to deal with for over 300 years, since there was no other wizard superior to him in his use of the craft. Tristan smiled to himself.
Until now.
Wigg just stood there, seemingly frozen in time, as if the scene below him was simply not registering in his brain. Quickly he turned back to Faegan.
‘Is it true?’ he demanded. Tristan thought he could see an angry vein beginning to throb in the Lead Wizard’s forehead. ‘Did you truly find the key to communicating with the animal world?’
‘If you’re asking me whether I can talk to the animals, the answer is decidedly no.’ Faegan sniffed. ‘At least not yet. But with the fliers I have achieved a rudimentary level of correspondence.’ He smiled again. ‘Go ahead, skeptic. Ask another question of them. Ask as many as you like. Prove it to yourself.’
This time Wigg needed no coaxing, his curiosity having at least temporarily won out over his contest of wills with Faegan. He leaned over the rail slightly and shouted, ‘Please, fliers, tell me the name of the stone that controls the power of magic!’
Immediately the giant butterflies that were perched upon the letters took to the air, fluttered their colorful, diaphanous wings, then began to descend once again – this time upon some different letters. Tristan watched, carefully noting the order in which they landed. And then he stared in awe at the circular floor, his mouth open in amazement.
P-A-R-A-G-O-N.
‘How?’ Wigg demanded. ‘How did you do it? The entire Directorate tried for over three hundred years to accomplish such a thing, and even then we were unsuccessful. You could never have accomplished this on your own! It has to be a trick!’
‘No trick, Lead Wizard,’ Faegan gloated. ‘That is why I made you ask your own questions, so that you could be sure.’ He put a finger to his lips and seemed to ponder a thought, with a new twinkle now in his eyes and the playful smile returning. ‘If, however, you still require proof, I’m sure something can be arranged.’ Looking up directly at Tristan, he added, ‘Perhaps we should take some of the starch out of his attitude.’
The wizard in the chair closed his eyes, and several of the fliers that had been circling the room quickly soared up to hover in a riotous pattern of color over the top of Wigg’s head. Using their slender legs to grasp the wizard’s braided tail of gray hair, several of the fliers suddenly began to bounce it up and down in the air, while one of the others perched atop Wigg’s head and began prancing about in the general area of his widow’s peak as if doing some kind of dance. Others began to hover around Wigg’s feet and beat their wings harder, causing the hem of his robe to billow and rise, showing the wizard’s bony legs and leaving little else to the imagination. Tristan tried hard not to laugh, but it was quite impossible. He soon found himself roaring at the spectacle and doubled over with tears in his eyes, despite the castigating look on the Lead Wizard’s scarlet face. The butterflies around Wigg’s feet were beating their wings so quickly that the prince could feel the breeze. He thought Wigg was literally about to come apart with rage, while Faegan simply sat in his chair and continued his maddening smile.
Another schoolboy prank, Tristan realized. These two must have been incredibly difficult for their teachers, despite all of their arrogant posturing in their old age. They reminded him of the endowed children he had seen in the nursery of the Redoubt of the Directorate. Except those children had been better behaved.
‘Enough!’ Wigg finally shouted. ‘I believe you!’
‘Are you sure?’ Faegan asked, delighting in the scene being created by his obedient butterflies. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to argue with me some more? The fliers can keep this up all day, you know.’ A quick glance to Tristan was followed by a conspiratorial wink.
‘No, no, you fool!’ Wigg shouted. ‘Just get them off me!’
‘Very well,’ Faegan answered reluctantly. He lowered his head, and the fliers that were torturing Wigg dutifully rejoined the others circling the atrium.
‘But what do the fliers have to do with the garden?’ Tristan asked, finally managing to overcome his laughter as Wigg angrily began smoothing out the hem of his robe.
‘Ah,’ Faegan replied. ‘Leave it to the Chosen One to bring us finally to the heart of the question. I needed the fliers to be my legs, to travel away from this mansion and bring back the pollen, seeds, and spores I required to produce the plants and trees that you see here. It took them over a hundred years to gather it all. Without the fliers, none of what you see here in this room would exist.’
The prince could clearly remember his own time in the Caves, and how the fliers had been there with him, drinking the water from the stone pool. But then a different question began tugging at the back of his mind. ‘Why not just use the gnomes to collect what you needed?’ he asked. ‘Surely they would have been easier to communicate with than the butterflies.’ Communicate with the butterflies. He shook his head at the seeming absurdity of the thought.
‘For the simple reason that the fliers cannot speak. You see, I feared that if the Coven ever returned, the information could be easily tortured from the gnomes.’ He smiled. ‘But not from the butterflies.’
The unexpected mention of the Coven brought Tristan’s mind back to the true problem at hand, and he suddenly felt guilty for having spent so much time watching the fliers and listening to the two ancient wizards trying to insult each other. He looked hard at the wizard in the chair.
‘Faegan, as I told you before, I need answers about my sister, and I need them now.’ He glowered, his face grown cold and hard.
The answer surprised him.
‘Have you eaten?’
Tristan stared incredulously at the old wizard. ‘What possible difference could that make?’
‘I took the liberty of having a dinner prepared when I knew the two of you were getting close to me. It is about to be served in the dining room, and I am hungry. The two of you shall join me.’
Tristan scowled. ‘And if we don’t?’
‘Then the two of you shall remain both hungry and unenlightened, I’m afraid,’ Faegan said simply. ‘Besides, you really don’t have a choice. You can either dine with me, or I will instruct Shannon to show you the way out.’ He smiled up impishly at the pair of them. ‘I am reasonably sure that since you took such pains to come all this way, you will not leave, your questions unanswered, simply because I have offered you a meal.’ Without further comment, he wheeled around and headed back into the room, laughing softly as he went.
Tristan looked incredulously at Wigg, who merely raised a frustrated eyebrow. Then the Lead Wizard sighed, some of his anger apparently having dissipated. ‘I know he can be infuriating, but he’s also right,’ he whispered. ‘And just now we really don’t have a choice.’
Tristan looked out at the exotic garden spread out below him, and at the giant butterflies that had begun silently, effortlessly, to sail back out the opening in the glass ceiling. Finally he turned and joined Wigg as they followed the rough-hewn wooden wheelchair and the snickering rogue wizard.
Faegan’s large dining room was paneled in rich, dark mahogany with wainscoting on the walls. Patterned rugs adorned the floor, and a huge oil chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling. Directly below it sat a highly polished table large enough to seat ten. The table was set for three with excellent crystal and flatware, and the air was full of several wonderful but different scents that drifted in through a door that the prince assumed led to an adjoining kitchen. The ceiling was glass, and Tristan looked up to see that the stars were now fully visible, the night having completely overtaken Shadowood.
Looking again at the wizard in the wheelchair, Tristan felt a strange mixture of sadness and compassion trying to wash over his distrust. The luxury and size of the room belied the emptiness of the wizard’s life, and spoke little of the many sad and lonely nights that the solitary Faegan would have sat here and eaten in silence, left to his thoughts of his personal betrayal of the Directorate and the loss of his daughter.
The kitchen door opened suddenly, and three gnome women wearing little white chef’s aprons blew in, chatting noisily to one another. They carried a tureen of soup, a large silver platter of vegetables and potatoes, and another, much larger platter on which were piled three roasted Eutracian pheasants, complete with stuffing.
As the women laid the trays down and began to serve, Tristan was able to get his first good look at them. The female gnomes looked very much like the males both in their faces and in their broad and stout, rather than curved and sensual bodies. They seemed to be very hard workers, and were clearly devoutly loyal to their master. Tristan realized that he was coming to like and respect the gnomes very much. One could have worse friends, he reflected. He removed the dreggan and its baldric, hanging it over the high-backed chair so that the handle of the sword could be reached in an instant, and sat down. From his place at the head of the table, Faegan gave the dreggan a sidelong glance and pursed his lips in a gesture of curiosity.
‘The sword that killed your father, I have been told,’ he said with a measure of sympathy in his raspy voice. ‘I can understand why you carry it, and I have also heard that you have already had occasion to use it. But understand me well, young man, when I tell you that one day soon you will find such weapons as crude and unnecessary as they now seem to you to be important and useful.’ He reached for his goblet of red wine and took a sip.
‘…I have also heard that you have already had occasion to use it.’ His words echoed in Tristan’s mind. How could Faegan know? Was he referring to Natasha, or to the wiktor that had attacked Tristan in the palace entranceway?
‘I want to know about Shailiha,’ Tristan suddenly demanded, ignoring his food. ‘You seem to have a great many answers about a great many things, and I demand to be told.’
‘No.’ Wigg had surprisingly but simply said the single word from the other side of the table. ‘First he and I have some unfinished business.’ The Lead Wizard looked at Faegan.
‘You and I have known each other for a very long time. I need to know. Now, before anything else is said.’ Wigg glared hard at the wizard in the black robe. ‘Did you betray us?’ The question hung heavily in the air like a sword over all three of their heads.
Faegan put down his wineglass and stared sadly into Wigg’s eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘But not for the reasons that you think, nor to the extent you certainly believe.’ He closed his eyes in pain. ‘They had Emily.’
Emily, Tristan mused. Natasha, the duchess of Ephyra. Lillith. Her real name was Emily.
‘We assumed as much,’ Wigg snarled. ‘But the threatened loss of one family member does not justify helping the Coven, no matter how much you loved her! I swear to the Afterlife, if I could, I would kill you right now with my bare hands!’ Tristan had never in his life seen the Lead Wizard so angry. The vein in Wigg’s right temple had begun to beat furiously again, his endowed blood racing.
‘You don’t understand,’ Faegan said. ‘It wasn’t because of Emily that they received my help.’
‘Explain.’
‘Shortly after Emily learned how to read the Tome by putting the stone around her neck, the Coven recognized her potential value to them and abducted her. To this day I do not know how. They knew that I had the gift of Consummate Recollection. I received a parchment with a lock of her hair three days later, telling me to read the complete Tome and then come to them, or they would send parts of my daughter back to me, one day at a time.’ Faegan looked down at his dinner plate. ‘It was signed by Failee.’
Wigg looked as though he had just been slapped across the face. ‘And what then did you do?’
‘Nothing. I sent the parchment back, telling her that they could kill my daughter if they chose to, but that I would never help them.’
Wigg sat back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? We could have helped.’
Faegan raised his head back up, the once-haughty eyes on the verge of tears. ‘And do what, Wigg? I know that Tretiak, Slike, Killius, and the others would have given me their very lives if necessary, but to what end? The Coven was winning the war, our only chance was the immediate use of the Tome and the stone, and time was running out. Despite my personal feelings, it would have been an egregious waste of time and energy. My Emily died, but in the end the sorceresses lost the struggle. All I have left of her is that single lock of hair.’
Wigg sat quietly for a moment, digesting what he had just heard. ‘But you disappeared,’ he said finally. ‘No one ever knew where or why. You were just suddenly gone. And immediately after you vanished, the Coven became inexplicably more powerful. We very nearly did not prevail, and many of us in the newly formed Directorate quietly assumed that it was because of your defection.’ He looked away for a moment, lost in time. ‘The sorceresses were banished to the Sea of Whispers. I know. I did it myself.’
Faegan reached out and placed his hand on Wigg’s arm. ‘We both made terrible mistakes,’ he said. ‘Banishing the sorceresses, instead of killing them, was yours.’ He paused for a moment, and a look of remorse shadowed his face. ‘Shannon told me of your experience with the berserkers. You have your regrets; I have mine. And now, it seems, we have mutual decisions about our creation of Shadowood to be sorry for.’
Wigg looked as if he was about to become ill. He stood and walked to one of the open leaded-glass windows. He stood there for some time, looking out at the trees, then turned back to face Faegan.
‘How was it, then, that you betrayed us?’
‘I did not go to them, as you all have suspected for so long. I was taken.’
‘How could they just take you?’ Tristan interjected skeptically. ‘I thought you were the most powerful of all of the wizards.’
‘I was,’ Faegan replied. ‘But did Wigg not tell you? By that time, the sorceresses had learned to join their powers. Even I could not withstand the joint strength of their collected abilities.’
‘How did it happen?’ Wigg asked.
‘It was foolish of me, I know, but I was making a solitary visit back to the Caves to search for any more clues or artifacts that might help us accelerate our understanding of the Tome. I thought if I went alone I could go there and back much more quickly and quietly. Four of the lesser sorceresses came upon me and captured me. Because I was wearing a wizard’s robe, they took me straight to Failee.’ He hung his head in shame. ‘She cackled aloud at seeing me, and said that I would recite to them everything I had read in the Tome, or they would kill Emily before my eyes.’
