The three Gates of Dawn lay just below him, about one hundred meters apart, in a row running east and west. Rising hundreds of meters from the ground, they resembled gigantic horseshoes, curved at the tops, their ends planted firmly into the earth.
Made of the finest shiny, black, Ephyran marble, they were shot through with brilliant azure. The blood of the Heretics, he realized.
As the hatchling soared closer, he noticed what he could only assume to be Nicholas’ carrion scarabs. Undulating back and forth in a black, riverlike mass, the hundreds of thousands of shiny beetles surrounded the legs of the Gates. Then his heart skipped a beat.
Within the dark ocean of seething scarabs were torn human bodies, their bloody abdomens overflowing with white, glistening eggs. The hundreds of torn, dark blue robes that lay everywhere, flapping hauntingly in the wind, told him the corpses must once have been consuls.
And then he noticed the lone figure standing atop the wide curve of the easternmost Gate.
Nicholas.
The young adept faced the rising sun, his white robes billowing in the wind, his long, dark hair flying out behind him. He seemed oblivious to the cold. Several strange-looking objects rested on the marble at his feet.
Tristan’s hatchling buffeted its leathery wings as it approached the Gate. It landed softly near Nicholas, then bent down so that the prince might dismount. After several tries with his numb fingers, Tristan managed to unfasten the leather straps that had held him in his saddle for so long. Then he weakly raised one leg up and over to slide off the bird and down to the top of the windswept Gate, where he fell to all fours despite his best efforts to remain upright. He remained that way, his head down, until he gathered the strength to make one attempt at standing. He pushed himself up—staggered, and almost fell again but caught himself—and finally managed. The bitter wind swirled around him.
Nicholas had watched, doing nothing to help as Tristan tried desperately to face his son on his own terms.
Tristan looked into Nicholas’ upturned, exotic eyes of hard blue. They gleamed almost as if they were made of polished stone.
Succiu’s eyes, he thought. And mine.
From all around Nicholas’ body radiated a glow such as Tristan had never seen, a power so immense that neither Succiu nor even Failee herself could ever have summoned it.
He has taken yet more of the power of the Paragon since I last saw him, Tristan thought. Is the stone now dead? Does he now hold all of the power it once contained? And if so, are Wigg, Faegan, and Celeste now dead also? He looked briefly to the sad, tattered handkerchief on his arm as it fluttered in the harshness of the wind.
Tristan’s breathing came quickly, in ragged, hard-won gasps, and it was becoming all he could do to remain standing against the gathering wind. Sweat ran from his face and body. His right arm, throbbing madly with pain, was virtually useless. He looked back into the unyielding depths of Nicholas’ eyes. Nothing can stop him now, he thought. The first rays of the sun were just starting to show themselves in the east, illuminating the majesty of the Gates with their glow.
For many long moments Tristan and Nicholas simply stood there, silently looking at each other, the wind howling around them as the thousands of black, angry scarabs swarmed below. The world was about to change forever, and Tristan knew there was absolutely nothing he could do to prevent it. Finally, Nicholas spoke.
“And so you have returned to me, Father,” he began softly, his words almost drowned out by the wind. “You have chosen to become one of us after all. I am very pleased.”
From within his robes Nicholas produced a small vial. Tristan immediately recognized it as the same vessel he had seen in the Caves—the vessel containing the antidote to the poison running through his veins.
“If you will agree to join us, and allow me to confirm your intentions by testing the quality of your heart, I will administer the antidote.” Nicholas smiled.
Tristan stood silently for another long moment, staring hungrily at the vial his bastard son so tantalizingly held before him. Its contents would save not only his life, but also the lives of his sister and her only child. But at what price?
“No,” he said thickly. “I reject your offer. To bargain for my life is not why I have come.”
Nicholas narrowed his eyes, replacing the vial into his robes. “Then why have you come to me, Chosen One?” he asked politely. “Do not tell me that it is simply so that I may see you die? My poor, misguided father! If that is true then you misunderstand, and have therefore traveled all of this way for naught. I have no need to see your death actually occur, simply to know that it soon shall. Just as I have no need to see the sun rise tomorrow, in order to know that such a thing shall also occur.” His face became a bit graver. “Your fourth convulsion is almost upon you. I can tell.”
“I come one final time to ask you to stop this madness,” Tristan said softly. He was swaying back and forth now, too weak to steady himself in the strengthening wind. The normally reassuring weapons he carried across his back seemed to be made of lead, threatening to topple him over at any moment.
“Please come back to Shadowood with me,” Tristan whispered weakly. “Allow my wizards to try to help you . . . to bring you to the Vigors, and the light. I beseech you to release the power of the stone back to the Paragon, so that we might all work together to find a way . . .”
Life ebbed inexorably from Tristan’s body, and he did not know what to say. He weakly raised his palms in supplication. “My son,” he whispered. “I beg of you . . .”
Nicholas’ expression suddenly turned to one of extreme anger. He pointed a long, accusatory finger straight at his father’s heart. “You beg of me!” he thundered. “You of the azure blood, the Chosen One himself, who rejected his only son not just once, but three times? The son you ripped from the comfort of the womb with one of the very knives you still carry, leaving him to rot in a shallow grave of a foreign land? Then only to reject out of hand his compassionate offer of truly everlasting ecstasy in the craft, so graciously made to him that day in the Caves? And finally to reject his own seed yet again, at this exact moment, on the Gates of Dawn themselves? This time to insult that son’s vastly superior power and knowledge of the craft, by suggesting that it could be augmented by his powerless, vastly inferior wizards! And to ask his son to willingly consent to do nothing for all of eternity except to practice the deceitful, flaccid Vigors! He dares ask me to come to him? To therefore spurn the very ones who gave me back my life, returning me to the land of the living?” His eyes grew even harder. “No, Chosen One. What you suggest for me is slavery, nothing more. You would have fared much better had you allowed the lead wizard to burn my tiny body while it still rested, dead, within that of my mother,” he added softly.
Nicholas took a deadly, meaningful step toward Tristan and extended his right arm, palm outward. “Clearly, Father,” he said softly, “you haven’t been listening.”
With that, Nicholas pushed his white, perfect palm closer to the prince. Tristan collapsed, falling hard upon the cold, smooth marble, wracked by a scorching, twisting pain so excruciating he thought he would pass out. He felt as if he were actually being disemboweled with a searing, red-hot knife. But there was no blood. Nor was there any respite.
Wanting desperately to end his torment, he tried to reach down and grasp the brain hook in his boot. But his hands wouldn’t work. All he could do was lie before his son, silently begging that the horrific pain stop.