“Everyone turn around, and get ready to fight!” he hollered at the top of his lungs. “There is no time for explanations!”
But just as Tristan’s forces started to fan out, their other brothers, carrying the shrew nets before them, gnomes still clinging perilously to their backs, plummeted down above the unsuspecting hatchlings. Approaching with incredible speed, the Minions drove the heavy, whistling nets lower, finally muscling them over the top of the awful birds. Realizing what was happening, Minions from Tristan’s group soared downward, helping their brothers to secure the great rope webs over the hatchlings in clumps as far down the length of the canyon as the prince’s eyes could see. The Minion warriors then began forcing the trapped birds closer to the canyon floor.
Tristan watched, dumbfounded. Amidst the confusion, the gnomes leapt from the backs of the Minions and began using stakes and mallets with a vengeance, securing the outer edges of the nets to the canyon floor and trapping the screaming hatchlings securely inside.
Realizing at last that what had just happened had largely been the work of Wigg, Faegan, and Shailiha, the prince drew his sword, ready to search for Scrounge somewhere beneath the nets. But just as he did so, his bird lurched upward again, carrying him up and out of the chasm.
Tristan fully expected the hatchling to drop him off next to where he could now see Wigg, Shailiha, and Faegan waiting for him. But it didn’t.
He finally realized where he was being taken. Exhausted, he had no choice but to lean forward on the neck of the bird, closing his eyes, and trust his life to the fates.
As she watched the tiny speck in the sky disappear, Shailiha wiped an errant tear from her cheek. “Will he live?” she asked Wigg.
“We have been fortunate this day, Princess,” he answered softly. In his unseeing way, he placed an affectionate arm around her shoulders. “But what you ask is not in our power to grant. I must tell you from my heart that there is no way for him to survive. What we do now is simply give him additional closure to his life, nothing more. For that is all we can do. His fourth and final convulsion will soon be upon him, and there is nothing that either Faegan or I can change about that. Nor is there any action we can take to stop the Confluence. As we said before, we didn’t think Nicholas would send his hatchlings after us until the construction of the Gates had been completed. My guess is that they are now finished. The Confluence thus cannot be far behind—perhaps as soon as tomorrow.”
“We should be going with him,” she said, her eyes still locked on the empty sky. “I simply cannot say good-bye to him like this . . .”
“We have already said our good-byes, Shailiha,” Faegan replied softly. “What he does now he must do alone.”
Looking up, the princess saw Caprice and the other fliers finally returning. She raised her arm, and the magnificent yellow-and-violet butterfly obediently came to rest there; the others swirled gently in graceful circles over their mistress’ head.
Her tears coming fully now, she grasped the gold medallion that hung around her neck.
Good-bye, my brother. I shall always love you.
53
Tristan kept nodding off atop the hatchling, but despite his exhaustion, the pain in his right arm kept him from truly resting. He had been traveling northwest for many hours, and the sun had long since set, bathing the world in darkness. The heavy, gray clouds he had so relied upon in the recent battle had finally departed, revealing a clear, frigid sky. Amidst uncountable stars, Eutracia’s three rose-colored moons hung against the inky, impenetrable night. Sunrise—when Nicholas, his only son, would begin the Confluence—could only be about two hours away.
Tristan coughed deeply and pulled his coat closer trying to keep out the cold. But the wind had become even more icy with the advent of night, and he could no longer feel his hands or his feet. Still, the hatchling beneath him soared unerringly to the place he was now sure his sister and the wizards were sending him, the only destination that made any sense: the site protecting the Gates of Dawn.
For that was where Nicholas would be.
He harbored no illusions about surviving. He was growing weaker by the moment, and he knew his fourth convulsion would come soon. His body shook, the fever that had overtaken him about an hour ago still rising.
He thought of the brain hook still hidden in his right boot, and again vowed that when his time came he would do his utmost to use it upon himself, rather than suffer the indignities of a final, mortal convulsion.
As the moonlit, rose-colored ground raced by below him, he couldn’t help but recall all the horrific things that had so recently occurred in his life. He thought of the death of his father, and of the rape and slaughter of his mother at the hands of the very troops he had just led into battle. He thought of the murders of the Directorate of Wizards, and of the travails he and Wigg had suffered to return his sister and the Paragon to Eutracia. In that, at least, they had been successful.
But this time there would be no happy ending. Everyone and everything he had ever held dear would soon perish. The Vagaries, the dark side of the craft that it was to have been his destiny as the Chosen One to combine with the Vigors for the dawning of a new age of enlightenment, would rule. Not only alone, but also forever, guided by the Guild of the Heretics, who would ensure that a new age of darkness reigned.
He had few illusions as to why the wizards and Shailiha were ordering his hatchling to fly him to the Gates. It wasn’t because they thought he could somehow stop the Confluence, or that by going there he would magically survive the agonies of his fourth convulsion. Nothing could stop those things now. Rather, it was because they knew he would want to confront his son for the final time.
He had already said his good-byes to those he left behind. Dying in a bed in the royal palace or in Faegan’s mansion in the trees while his body was being wracked by the fourth convulsion would only heighten the pain and grief of everyone involved. He was glad they would not be there to see his death. He wanted their memories of him to be of the strong man that he had once been.
This way, he would at least behold Nicholas one final time. It would be his last chance to look into the face of the son who, unbelievably, had survived that tragic day in Parthalon. No matter what kind of monster he had become.
He closed his eyes. His mind was becoming increasingly feverish, and his pain-wracked body was covered with sweat, despite the unrelenting cold.
He had sworn an oath to destroy his only progeny, and he understood that going to Nicholas would afford him some small, strange measure of peace. And Faegan and Wigg, he realized, knew that too. One corner of his mouth came up in irony. That was assuming, of course, that his final convulsion did not occur before he got there, leaving the hatchling flying far across Eutracia only to deliver a white, frozen corpse.
Scrounge would have no doubt been amused, he thought.
Coughing again, Tristan wrapped the reins tightly around his numb left wrist. Painfully reaching down with his right hand, he located the brain hook in his boot. With his hand still on it, he leaned all his weight onto the hatchling’s neck as it raced through the clear, cold night.
Somehow, he slept.
The combination of the hatchling’s great, descending turn and the first rays of the sunrise awakened him. He groaned and tried to sit up, but found he was frozen to the hatchling. Another coughing fit wracked his body, but when it finally ended he pushed hard against the bird’s neck. The fur on the front of his coat tore away, leaving bare suede. He didn’t care—he knew he wouldn’t need it much longer.
Frost stiffened his hair, and his eyelashes were frozen together in places, making it difficult to see. He couldn’t feel his face. Numbly rubbing his cheeks and eyes with what had once felt like his right hand, he looked down.