Savage Messiah

CHAPTER XXVI

Memories are strange creatures of the mind. the things that trigger them can be as varied and surprising as the experiences themselves. Like ghosts from the past, certain sights, sounds, and smells can each in their own way summon remembrances both welcome and foreboding. Just now Tristan of the House of Galland's senses told him that he wished he had never come here. He guessed that the First Wizard felt the same.

Tristan and the others followed Wigg down the curved staircase. The echoes of many boot heels striking the paved floor added to the sense of emptiness. If there was one thing in the world that Tristan could not abide, it was being confined.

They had been traveling downward for some time. The air grew colder with every step and it smelled increasingly fetid and damp-like a humid, nighttime forest overgrown with moss. Finally Wigg slowed and raised his hand. Everyone stopped.

"A landing is just beyond," he said. "Be on guard. I cannot tell whether this is an area that Tristan and I have been in before. There is no telling what we might find."

Wigg took the last few steps down. Tristan and the others soon found themselves standing upon the floor of a circular room. The prince felt his heart recoil. They stood in the chamber in which he, Wigg, and Geldon had been tortured-and where Failee had tried to convince Shailiha to become her fifth sorceress.

Letting go of Celeste's hand, Tristan turned slowly around as he took in the imposing space. There was no one else here, and he finally relaxed a little.

The white marble walls were cracked and partially tumbled down, and it looked as though the rest of the room might cave in at any moment. The black pentangle inlaid into the floor was hardly recognizable. The five black thrones that had once sat at each of the pentangle's corners had been overturned and broken, their pieces scattered about. Dust, debris, and marble shards lay everywhere.

Then Tristan saw the torture devices hanging from the ceiling on the far side of the room. Saying nothing, he slid his dreggan back into its scabbard and walked over.

He reached up and touched the black iron gibbet in which he had once been imprisoned. Its door hung open, and the chain creaked as it moved at his touch. Wigg came over and placed a hand on the prince's shoulder.

"Do you remember?" Tristan breathed. The question was unnecessary, but he couldn't help asking.

"Yes," Wigg answered.

"It was all so horrible," Tristan said, so softly that Wigg had to augment his hearing with the craft. Then Tristan walked over to the other gibbets that had held Wigg and Geldon. He touched each of them also. When he turned back, there were tears in his eyes.

"But we won," Wigg said. "Through a supreme effort of will you were able to call upon the craft without having first been trained. No one had ever done that before. You killed the sorceresses, and we brought Shailiha and the Paragon home."

Tristan nodded. Celeste walked up to him and touched him on one arm. He did his best to summon a smile for her.

"What was it that destroyed this place?" Celeste asked.

"When an endowed person possessing Forestallments dies, the Forestallments leave his being," Wigg answered. "Or so goes the theory. When that happens a great atmospheric disturbance occurs, bringing forth thunder, lightning, and wind. When Tristan killed the sorceresses, they all died at once except for Succiu. The resulting storm was so great that it collapsed the palace and ruptured the foundations of these chambers below ground."

Celeste walked over to the damaged pentangle. She thought to herself for a moment. She looked back over at her father.

"Where do they go?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" he responded.

"When the Forestallments depart a dead body, where do they go?" Celeste asked again. Intrigued by her question, Tristan also turned to Wigg.

Placing his hands into the opposite sleeves of his robe, the First Wizard scowled a bit. "We still do not know. Faegan and I believe that they don't really go anywhere. We postulate that with no living host to sustain them, they simply cease to be, like a spell that has been terminated."

Turning to check on the Minion warriors, Tristan's gaze fell upon two large, jagged sections of white marble, and he immediately recognized them. He walked over, knelt down, and touched one. It was cool and smooth, just the way it had felt that day when it had pressed so unforgivingly into his naked back.

It was the ruin of the altar upon which Succiu had violated him-causing Nicholas to be conceived-and imbued his blood with the many Forestallments his signature now carried.

As Tristan stood up, Wigg came to join him again. "Are you all right?" the wizard asked.

Tristan let go a deep breath. "No," he said, his eyes still locked upon the smashed altar. "But I will be."

"You must let it all go," Wigg said.

Finally looking away from the altar, Tristan nodded.

"Father, would you please come here?" Celeste asked.

Tristan and Wigg turned to see that she had walked to another area of the room. Several Minion warriors were there with her, and they were all looking down at the floor.

Three sets of remains lay there, nothing more than separate collections of ash that loosely resembled human beings.

"These are the remains of the Coven, aren't they?" Celeste asked.

"Yes," her father said.

"Which of them was my mother?"

Wigg pointed to the one in the middle. "There," he said. "That was Failee."

Kneeling down, Celeste looked at the pile of dark, fragile ash, tentatively reached out, and touched it. It collapsed in on itself, losing all semblance of its previous shape. After closing her eyes for a moment, she stood back up.

"I'm sorry," Wigg said.

Celeste shook her head. "You have nothing to be sorry about," she answered. "You are still here with me, and that is what matters now."

Wigg nodded, his eyes suspiciously shiny.

After a moment, he pointed to the far side of the room where the floor ended, opening the room to a lower level. "My instinct tells me that is where we must concentrate our search."

A set of stairs led downward from one side of the floor's edge. The lower level of the chamber had been Failee's area of experimentation. She had kept the Wiktors, her awful pets, down there. Tristan clearly remembered how they had clambered out of their lairs to try to kill him and the wizard after he had destroyed the sorceresses. Only at the last moment had Wigg been able to kill the Wiktors.

The area was covered in ash-evidence of Wigg's incineration of the Wiktors.

Wigg pointed to the stairs and raised an eyebrow. "Shall we?" he asked.

At an order from Tristan, the three of them started down the stairs, followed by Alrik and the warriors. For the first time, Tristan saw the numerous hallways that branched off from this lower room. The piles of dark, smoky ashes gradually trailed off toward each opening.

As Tristan walked forward, some of the ash came up over the tops of his knee boots. Occasionally a fire-bleached bone poked up to glint bleakly in the dim light. Tristan was sickened.

Dirty clouds billowed into the air as the party disturbed the remains, making it hard to see and breathe. Wigg finally ordered everyone to a halt so that the air could clear.

When they could see again, Tristan spotted a door in the far wall of the room. He and Wigg waded to it slowly so as to raise as little dust as possible. The door was made of heavy iron and painted black. Wigg stiffened, and Tristan knew that his reaction could only mean one thing.

There was living, endowed blood somewhere on the other side. Tristan glanced at Wigg, who nodded.

"The endowed blood on the other side is highly unusual," the wizard said, his brow furrowing with concentration.

"How so?" Tristan asked.

Wigg shook his head. "That's impossible to say until I confront it. I say we force the door and go in. Agreed?"

Tristan nodded and called back to Alrik to bring two warriors. The five of them shoveled the ash away from the door by hand. With each handful they removed, more caved back in again. It was filthy work, and the rising ash choked their lungs and stung their eyes.

"This is pointless," Wigg growled. "Everyone stand back!"

The First Wizard narrowed his eyes and called the craft. An azure glow began to surround the area before the door. He raised his arms and the glow formed into several thin, nearly transparent sheets of azure.

Wigg directed the sheets straight down into the knee-high ash to form a square barrier, with the door making up the fourth side. Lifting his arms again, he caused the segregated ash within the quadrant to rise into the air and deposit itself to one side, leaving a clean area before the door. Then he stepped gingerly over one of the azure panels, and motioned to Tristan and Celeste to join him.

"Are you ready?" he asked the prince.

Tristan raised his dreggan. "As ready as we'll ever be," he said grimly.

"Very well," Wigg answered.

At Wigg's gesture, twin azure bolts assaulted the door and covered it like flowing liquid. When the entire door was engulfed, Wigg raised his arms higher.

With a great creaking noise, the massive iron door began to give way.