With another nod from the wizard, the three of them carefully walked down into the clearing. Blood could be seen everywhere—far more than they had noticed from their hiding place. The redness lay like a specter of defeat, adding to the sadness each of them sensed as they stood in the spot where the consuls had suffered.
“Why?” Tristan asked the wizard angrily. “Why would anyone do such a thing? And where did these awful birds come from? I can now completely understand Joshua’s fear.”
“Indeed,” Wigg said simply. He squatted down, taking some of the consuls’ blood between his fingertips. He examined it closely in the moonlight.
“But the other question is ‘how?’ ” he continued. “How was it that the consuls did not try to use their gifts and fight back? Did you notice how powerless they seemed to be in the face of those things?”
The wizard stood up, turning his bloody fingertips to the light of the moons. A sudden flash of recognition came over his face. “Tristan,” he called softly. “Come here.” The prince walked around Shannon to where the wizard was standing.
“Tell me,” Wigg said, holding his bloody fingertips before the prince’s eyes. “What do you see?”
“All I see is the blood of the consuls upon your hand,” he answered. “What more would there be to see?”
“Perhaps nothing more to see, but much more to be known from the seeing,” Wigg answered cryptically. “Look at the blood again. Think.”
Another test, Tristan thought to himself.
He could not fathom the wizard’s reasoning. Layers of thought and deed, he reminded himself.
He stood there, perplexed. Then something tugged at the back of his mind, and he realized he had the answer.
“The blood is not moving,” he breathed, unashamedly fascinated at his own discovery.
“Exactly.” Wigg nodded. “And why is this significant?”
Tristan’s mind went back to that day in the Redoubt, when Wigg had told him so much about himself, his blood, and his destiny.
“If the blood of the endowed does not move, it can only be for three reasons,” he said slowly. “First, its owner could be dead. Second, the endowed was never trained, as is the case with Shailiha and me. Or third, he has for some reason lost his powers—the blood returning to an inert state. Since we know the first two reasons are not possible, it must therefore be the third.” The importance of his statement hit him all at once. “The consuls have somehow been stripped of their powers,” he whispered, not even believing it himself.
“Well done,” Wigg replied. “But the question remains ‘how?’ How could someone or something strip all of the consuls of their power? And if the cause is a blanket incantation, covering all of them at once, then why has Joshua not lost his powers, as well?” he asked. The wizard paused, rubbing his chin with his clean hand.
“I believe Joshua has not lost his gift because he has been in seclusion with us at the Redoubt,” he continued. “At first, when I saw that the consuls were not using their gifts to try to fight off the birds, I concluded that it was due to the weakening of the Paragon. Because their blood is less endowed than ours, any variance in the quality of the stone would affect the consuls’ powers much more quickly—far more drastically than it would mine or Faegan’s. Compared to us, the rate at which the consuls would lose their powers would be virtually exponential. But now I’m not so sure that the decay of the Paragon is the only reason.” Wigg paused, lost in his thoughts.
“In addition,” he added, “Joshua told us that the squad he was with tried to use the craft to fight off the birds. The means that whatever took their powers did so after that incident. This must be yet another reason why Joshua retains his gift. For that we should feel thankful, for we shall need all of the endowed blood on our side that we can muster.”
“And all of this means?” Tristan asked.
Wigg’s face darkened. “What all of this means is that whatever we are up against is growing in its power,” he said softly. “And probably continues to do so with each passing moment.”
Tristan looked around at Shannon, finding that the gnome was still speechless. Curious about something Wigg had said, he turned back to the wizard. “What is a blanket incantation?” he asked.
Pursing his lips, Wigg took a long breath in through his nose. “A blanket incantation is one designed to influence more than one person at a time, in exactly the same manner. If, for example, I wished to have everyone at a dinner party believe that the common gruel being served to them was Eutracian pheasant under glass, the incantation used would affect them all at once, in the exact same way. A ‘blanket’ incantation, if you will, ‘covering’ them all. Such spells can be very useful, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“You also used your powers to mask our blood from them, didn’t you?” Tristan asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” Wigg answered. “At first I could not be sure whether the birds had the power to detect endowed blood. I masked our blood anyway, just to be on the safe side, but I now believe that they do have this ability. How else would they be able to find and hunt down the consuls? In any event, I’m glad they did not find us with those very interesting eyes of theirs. Yet another curious topic . . .”
“But why take the consuls at all?” Tristan asked. Suddenly realizing he had been wielding his dreggan all of this time, he quietly replaced it into its scabbard. “And what would Scrounge want with all of the tattoos? Are they simply some form of sick, twisted proof of his conquests?”
Wigg looked up at the moons. “I don’t know why the consuls are being taken,” he answered simply. “I only wish that I did. But as for the tattoos, perhaps that is not really what they seek. Perhaps it is the consuls, without their tattoos, who are for some reason the true prize.”
Above, the inky black of night was beginning its daily retreat into the softer, more fluid shades of pink and orange that would soon accompany a beautiful sunrise. Tristan knew that the wizard would want to get under way again before they lost their cover of darkness.
Remembering Scrounge’s final words to the flying creatures, though, he found he had one more question.
“Wigg,” he asked, as the wizard began to wipe the blood from his hands, “who is the ‘master’?”
His face darkening again, the wizard stopped what he was doing and looked the prince in the eyes. “There have been many masters, Tristan,” he said softly. “Faegan and I are but two of them. Some of them I have known, and many of them I have not. Only time will tell. But what I can tell you is that we are up against someone or something of inordinate power—the likes of which I have never seen. And our odds of surviving this entire situation do not appear to be particularly good.”
With that the wizard began to walk out of the clearing to retrieve their horses. The prince and gnome followed, their footsteps sadly trailing the blood of the consuls as they went.
15
As Faegan wheeled his chair down the labyrinthine halls on his way to the princess’ quarters, his mind turned over endlessly. So many problems had so quickly presented themselves to the small group of people living here in the Redoubt. The price on the Chosen One’s head, the disappearance of the consuls, and the sudden emergence of Joshua’s birds of prey all weighed heavily on his mind. But no problem concerned him as much as the decay of the Paragon.
He and Wigg had properly prepared the stone so that it might take a new host, and Faegan had put it on, hiding it beneath his robes. He had dutifully checked the Paragon several times since Wigg and Tristan had left for the Caves. Any subsequent change in the color of the jewel was still undetectable to the untrained eye. Nonetheless, he could sense the minute decay of the stone. The several months he and Wigg had estimated would rid the stone of its color would pass quickly, indeed, unless the process of decay could somehow be reversed. His sense of dread increased with every moment of every day.