AS TRISTAN, SHAILIHA, AND JESSAMAY RUSHED TOWARD the Archives entryway, the intense white light coming through the open doors nearly blinded them. Groping about with his free arm, Tristan found one of Shailiha’s hands and gripped it.
Just then the wondrous light began to dim. His vision clearing, Tristan saw the crippled wizard Faegan sitting in his wooden chair on wheels, his arms upraised. His face showed intense concentration; sweat had broken out on his brow. His arms shook from the great effort he was expending as he summoned the craft.
Aeolus, Wigg, and Abbey stood by Faegan’s chair, their arms also raised.
“What’s happening?” Tristan whispered to Jessamay. He let go of Shailiha’s hand and quietly sheathed his dreggan.
“I don’t know,” Jessamay whispered back.
After tense moments, the azure glow vanished at last, and Tristan gazed in amazement at the scene before him.
Books, scrolls, and parchments had been ripped from their shelves and covered the first floor in massive piles. Tristan couldn’t begin to imagine how long it might take to set things right.
Tristan beckoned Jessamay and Shailiha to follow him. Trying as best they could not to trample any documents, they slowly walked over to where Wigg, Aeolus, and Abbey stood beside Faegan’s chair.
“What happened here?” Tristan asked.
Faegan twisted around and looked sadly into Tristan’s face. The ancient wizard wore his familiar black robe. His unruly gray hair lay parted down the middle and reached nearly to his shoulders. Much of his face was covered by a shaggy gray beard, and his lustrous green eyes seemed to bore straight into Tristan’s soul. The prince could see that the normally mischievous wizard had been deeply sobered.
“I don’t know exactlywhat, ” Faegan answered. “But I believe I knowwhy. ”
Faegan swiveled his chair around and pointed to the wall on the far side of the room. Everyone turned to look.
Tristan knew that Faegan had brought the Tome-the primary treatise outlining the study of the craft-and the Scroll of the Vigors and the Scroll of the Vagaries here to the Archives for safekeeping. The wizard had used the craft to magically secure them within a five-sided transparent wizard’s box high against the marble wall. Only the Conclave mystics had been entrusted with the complex formula that could dismantle the dimly glowing box.
Tristan had approved of Faegan’s elegant solution. To the best of Faegan’s knowledge, the azure box was impervious to everything except the spell that allowed for its dismantling. Butsomething had gotten through. More than the box was illuminated. The Tome and both scrolls were glowing with the same bright white light that had only moments earlier engulfed the chamber. As Tristan gazed at the unprecedented glow, trepidation grew in his heart.
Fascinated, Shailiha stepped nearer. “What is that light?” she breathed.
Wigg shook his head. He was dressed in his customary gray robe. His iron-gray hair was pulled back from his widow’s peak into a braid that fell down his back. Despite his advanced age, his tall form remained lean and muscular. His strong hands were gnarled and elegantly expressive, and his craggy face and aquamarine eyes showed deep concern. Sighing, he placed his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe, then turned to the princess.
“As Faegan said, we don’t know,” he answered. “Logic dictates that the glow coming from the Tome and the Scrolls has something to do with whatever made such a mess of this room. It took a mighty force to do this. But only the Afterlife knows how or why.”
Wigg turned his gaze back toward the glowing box that held the three precious documents. “We can only hope that the box protected them,” he added. “Luckily, it seems to be intact. And except for the glow, they appear unharmed. But I suppose that there is only one way to know for sure.”
He turned back to look at his old friend. “What say you, Faegan?” he asked. “Do you think it prudent that we dismantle your invention and take a look?”
Faegan, lost in concentration, didn’t reply. His eyes were closed and his head was bowed slightly as he pressed his fingertips against his temples.
Tristan understood what Faegan was doing. The wizard was one of the rare few who commanded the gift of Consummate Recollection, allowing him to perfectly recall everything he had ever seen, heard, or read from his birth more than three centuries ago right up to the present. Faegan was almost certainly mentally reviewing the Tome, to learn whether it might shed light on this evening’s strange turn of events.
After a time, Faegan raised his head and opened his eyes. His face was pinched with worry.
“The Tome mentions this phenomenon,” he said quietly. “Truth be told, until this moment I never gave it much importance. That is because the Tome does not specifically name the three documents that when placed side by side will cause this effect. Now the answer has been revealed. It is only by the greatest chance that we possess all three at the same time. This might be the first moment in history when they have been this close to one another.”
“Do you mean to say that your conjured box caused all this?” Jessamay asked.
“No,” Faegan answered. “The box is only a means of protection. Still, there is no telling what might happen if it is dismantled. Let me recite the proper Tome passage so that you might better understand.”
Closing his eyes again, he leaned back in his chair and spoke:
AND SO IT WILL COME TO PASS THAT IF CERTAIN RELICS ARE PLACED IN
CLOSE PROXIMITY TO ONE ANOTHER AND LEFT TO REST, THE RESULTS WILL BE
OF VAST IMPORTANCE FOR THOSE TRYING TO UNRAVEL THE SECRETS OF MAGIC.
THE AREA SURROUNDING THEM WILL SLOWLY TAKE ON AN AURA THAT WILL
GRADUALLY ENGULF THE DOCUMENTS, CAUSING THEM TO GLOW. PRECEDING THE
GLOW A GREAT WHIRLWIND WILL COME, MARKING THE ADVENT OF THE SPELL.
AFTER THE PASSING OF THE WIND, THE THREE RELICS WILL GIVE UP MUCH WHEN
THEY ARE OPENED.
Faegan sighed and sat back in his chair. He opened his eyes.
“What does it mean?” Abbey asked.
Abbey was nearly as old as Wigg, Faegan, and Aeolus. She too was protected by time enchantments. Like Jessamay, she did not look her age. The herbmistress and partial adept was wearing a simple plaid dress that covered her shapely figure. Her long dark hair was sparsely streaked with gray and her sensual face showed a strong jaw, deep blue eyes, and dark eyebrows. Three hundred years earlier she had been Wigg’s secret lover, before the late Directorate of Wizards banished all partials from Tammerland. During the dangerous hunt for the Scroll of the Vigors, Wigg and Abbey had found each other again, and had been together ever since.
“As you all know, the Tome is often difficult to understand,” Faegan answered. “I have long believed that the Ones fashioned it to be purposely obscure, so that it would confound friend and foe alike. It seems that we have yet another riddle to unravel.”
“What is the code to which the quote refers?” Tristan asked. “Could it be that there is much more to the Tome and the Scrolls than we know?”
Wigg raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever known thatnot to be the case?” he asked. He looked back at Faegan. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Do we dismantle your box, or not?”
Faegan turned toward Aeolus. “What say you, Aeolus?” he asked. “We have yet to hear your opinion.”
Before answering, Aeolus walked toward the glowing box. He stopped about two meters away and looked at it carefully.
Aeolus was the most recent addition to the Conclave. Once a powerful Directorate Wizard, he had grown tired of war, politics, and the craft and had resigned his membership to pursue a private life teaching martial arts. But by necessity he had become involved in the search for the Scroll of the Vagaries and the struggle against Serena. In the end he had accepted Tristan’s and Wigg’s offers of a seat on the Conclave.
Three centuries earlier, Aeolus had been granted a time enchantment at the age of eighty Seasons of New Life. Like Wigg, he remained lean and muscular, despite his physical age. His head was shaved and his dark gray beard closely trimmed, and his dark eyes never missed a thing. Out of respect for his late Directorate brothers, he wore a gray robe.
After regarding the box for a time, Aeolus looked at Faegan. “Does your spell incorporate any dangerous components that might harm the documents if it is reversed?”
Faegan shook his head. “No,” he answered. “But owing to the need to protect the documents, the spell I conjured is tremendously strong.”
Aeolus turned to look at the box again. “My greatest worry is what will happen when the documents are again exposed to the environment of this room,” he mused.
“I concur,” Faegan said.
“I don’t understand,” Tristan interjected. “Why would the room harm them? The white light has done its work and it is gone. Aside from the usual oil lamps, the only light comes from the documents themselves.”
Faegan gave Tristan a grave look. “That’s not true,” he said. “The white light is still with us.”
Perplexed, Tristan looked around. “I can’t see it,” he protested.
Wigg shook his head. “Just because you cannot see it doesn’t mean that it isn’t here,” he replied. “We tried, but even our collective gifts could only dim the light to a point that it cannot be seen by those untrained in the craft.”
“It’s true, Tristan,” Jessamay added. “I can still see it.”
“So what does all this mean?” Shailiha asked.
“My wizard’s box, transparent though it is, might have blocked some of the light from the documents. By conjuring the box, I might have inadvertently hampered the spell. It seems clear to me that the spell was intended to bathe the documents in the light at its brightest. We have no way of knowing what might happen if the Tome and the Scrolls were first partially exposed and then are fully exposed to the light.”
As Tristan considered the mystics’ concerns, he was again reminded of what a tangled web the craft was. Clearly, the decision whether to continue was a huge one.
Should the documents already be damaged beyond use, the Conclave’s struggle to ensure the safety of the Vigors and bring peace to the lands west of the Tolenkas would suffer an unimaginable setback. It was true that Faegan had read the first two volumes of the Tome and could probably recite them verbatim to a consul scribe, but that might take years. And because Faegan had not yet fully read the Scrolls, most of the precious forestallment formulas they held would be lost forever. Perhaps worst of all, the Prophecies-the third and final volume of the Tome that only Tristan was destined to read-would also be destroyed.
He looked back at Wigg. “Although I am the nation’s sovereign and the leader of the Conclave, I must leave this matter to those who command the craft,” he said. “Only you four have the knowledge needed to decide.”
Wigg nodded. “I agree,” he answered. He looked at the others. “What say you all?” he asked.
Faegan took a deep breath. “We can’t leave the Tome and the Scrolls up there indefinitely,” he said. “We need them too badly. We could wait for the spell to subside, but that might never happen. I say we liberate the documents and take our chances. I understand that the risk is huge, but what other choice is there?”
“I agree,” Jessamay said.
“As do I,” Aeolus replied.
“Very well,” Wigg said. “Faegan will dismantle the box. And may the Afterlife grant us luck.”
Faegan swiveled his chair to face his invention, then closed his eyes and raised his arms and began his spell of reversal.
For several long moments the box glowed brighter. To Tristan’s relief, the three sacred documents inside did not. Slowly, the sides of the box came apart and vanished. Tristan held his breath as Faegan reversed the last fragments of the spell, freeing the three relics from their places high against the wall.
As Faegan opened his eyes and lowered his arms, the Tome and Scrolls suddenly flew toward the center of the room. Tristan looked worriedly at the wizard.
“Was that your doing?” he whispered.
“No,” Faegan replied. “What happens now must be the purview of the Ones.”
To everyone’s amazement, the documents began to spin. Faster and faster they went, until their forms became little more than glowing blurs. Then there was a great explosion, and an intense wind sprang from nowhere.
All the fallen Archives documents went flying into the air. As the precious books and the papers whirled about, three explosions followed in quick succession. Their immense force took the visitors off their feet. Tristan landed hard beside Faegan’s overturned chair. He turned his head to see the wizard lying beside him.
Tristan groggily did his best to look through the whirling paper blizzard. He could barely see that the Tome and the Scrolls had stopped spinning. But something else was happening. The three relics were emitting some type of azure dust. The quickly growing cloud grew and grew until it engulfed the room.
As the azure cloud drifted over him, Tristan sensed his consciousness slipping away. He tried to look around; it seemed that everyone except him and Faegan had been overcome.
Tristan managed a last look at Faegan. The old wizard’s face showed great delight.
“The legend is true…” Tristan heard Faegan faintly whisper, as if the wizard’s voice was drifting to him from some faraway place. “Subtle matter exists…subtle matter exists…”
Unable to stay conscious, the prince finally surrendered.