The Fifth Sorceress Read online

  Tristan approached Pilgrim slowly, placing the bridle over his head and the bit into the horse’s mouth. He led the stallion to the other side of the clearing and tied the reins securely around the branch of a tree. Pilgrim whinnied softly and once again pushed his head against his master as if apologizing for all the trouble that he had caused. The prince smiled and rubbed the horse’s ears.

  Walking back to the embankment, Tristan gently approached the butterflies. He had never heard of anyone having the opportunity to see them motionless at such a close distance. As he came even closer, they remained quiet and clinging to the vines, their closeness to each other composing a riotous pattern of color. Strangely, they almost seemed to welcome his presence.

  And then he watched one disappear.

  Not fly away, but truly disappear, as if it had just melted into and become one with the embankment. He watched, fascinated, as the next one crept carefully upward to the exact same spot and disappeared as well. Stepping closer still, he realized that they were, in turn, folding their wings together and slowly slipping through a vertical gap in the gray expanse beneath the vines. He now also saw that the grayness was a man-made wall of fieldstone. It looked to be hundreds of years old. He watched in awe, as one by one the Fliers of the Fields disappeared through the gap in the stone wall.

  And then they were gone.

  Tristan pushed aside some of the vines. The stone wall seemed to have been built without mortar. One narrow but rather tall stone had apparently loosened and fallen inward, allowing enough space for the Fliers of the Fields to enter.

  Curious, he put one eye to the space but could see nothing beyond it. Inside, it was as dark as night. He selected a dirk from his quiver and tried to pry loose the stone to the right of the hole to get a better look. Even without mortar, it remained solidly in place. He removed the dirk and replaced it in the joint just below the same stone, and this time he thought he noticed it move a little bit. Bracing his legs and leaning forward at the waist, he put all his weight against the knife.

  The result was completely without warning.

  An entire section of the wall collapsed inward, and Tristan fell forward into the dark emptiness with it. Except this time, there was no tree branch on the other side to save him.

  Nor was there any floor.

  Down he fell, end over end, some of the loose stones following behind him into the pitch-black nothingness.

  Chapter Two

  ‘I told you not to come.’ The old wizard’s tone was not particularly polite. He did not mean it to be. ‘A woman in your condition should not be away from the palace midwives, much less sitting on top of a horse.’

  He watched ruefully as she turned awkwardly in her sidesaddle, trying to become more comfortable as their horses, side by side, took them deeper into the woods. He had been present at her birth, and had watched her grow into the beautiful, strong-willed woman he now saw before him. The long blond hair framed an intelligent face, strong but still feminine; her hazel eyes always seemed to dance with curiosity and love of life. And as uncomfortable as he knew she may be, he also knew she would never admit it.

  He characteristically raised an eyebrow. ‘I needn’t remind you that you are in the fifth moon of your pregnancy.’

  Shailiha, Tristan’s twin sister, knew that the old one was right but couldn’t bring herself to admit it. She needed to be here, and there was very little in this world that would have succeeded in stopping her.

  When Tristan had not reported to the Wizards’ Conservatory this morning as usual, the Directorate had immediately sent a runner to the stables. When they learned that Tristan’s favorite mount was missing, as well as his saddle, they had decided to begin a search. For the headstrong prince to go off alone after his daily classes was not usually a cause for alarm, but his behavior of late had put everyone on edge, and his attendance was required that night at an important function at the palace. Shailiha would not have known of his disappearance but for the fact that she was already in the stables, tending to her favorite brood-mare’s newborn foal.

  After overhearing the wizards’ runner question the stable boy, she had followed the fellow back to the Directorate’s chambers and demanded answers from the old ones. When she had learned her brother was missing she had announced to them all in no uncertain terms that she would go find him, alone if need be, and an argument had ensued. But after the wizards had gone so far as to threaten to throw a containment warp around her if necessary to prevent her from leaving on her own, she finally agreed to a compromise. She could go, but Wigg would accompany her. At least he had given her time to fetch a basket of food and drink.

  Leather creaked as she turned once again in her saddle. She loved her brother more than anything on earth, except perhaps for the unborn child she was carrying. Despite all that, if he was unhurt when they found him, she would be tempted to ask the old wizard to punish him rigidly. Today of all days, her troubled mind thought. She shook her head. If they didn’t find him soon, this time he’d be in real trouble, future king or not.

  She frowned. As the date of her father’s abdication ceremony drew near, Tristan somehow seemed to get into more and more trouble, and she was determined to keep today’s incident from their parents. Fortunately, her husband was on maneuvers all day with the Royal Guard and wouldn’t miss her. The only other inhabitants of the palace who knew of her brother’s disappearance were his teachers, the Directorate of Wizards, and she had sworn them to secrecy with a look that could have frozen water. Now Wigg, the most powerful of them, rode beside her, and she had to admit, if only to herself, that his company was a relief. She always felt safer around Wigg.

  She looked to her right, at the old wizard’s craggy profile. Over 300 years old, he was still one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. The tan, creased face held a thin mouth, and under arched brows were bright aquamarine eyes that never missed a thing. His gray hair, pulled back from a widow’s peak, ended in the traditional Directorate wizard’s tail of braided hair that fell down his back. Simple gray robes draped loosely over his still-muscular body, and the hands that held his horse’s reins were large and strong. It suddenly occurred to her that when he was young – before the application of the time enchantments – he probably would have been one of the most handsome men she had ever seen, almost as handsome as Tristan. She smiled to herself, knowing that the old wizard’s gruff exterior belied how much he cared for her welfare. She loved him dearly and had all of her life.

  Shailiha grinned to herself, remembering how Wigg, when they had gone to fetch their horses, had sworn the terrified stable boy to secrecy. Flicking his finger, the Lead Wizard had turned the poor fellow upside down in midair, ankles together, suspending him headfirst above that morning’s freshly steaming pile of horse manure. Before setting him right, Wigg had promised to lower him in slowly, headfirst, should they return to learn the poor boy’s lips had slipped. Once again, she smiled. By this time, his fellow stable hands probably thought the poor fellow had somehow gone mute. No one, she was sure, wanted to have to explain to the king and queen yet another of Tristan’s indiscretions. She shifted gently in her sidesaddle as her mare stepped around a fallen log.

  Beside her, Wigg reached into the small leather pouch that he wore around his waist. She had seen him put it on just before they left the palace. After crossing the plain that surrounded the city and entering the mountainous woods beyond, he had begun to reach into this pouch now and then and remove a couple of fingers full of an oddly colored powder she’d never seen before. He had then casually sprinkled the powder on the ground alongside his horse. Although very curious, she knew better than to ask the wizard about his craft. And so, without comment, she had simply watched the little ritual occasionally unfold as he rode along with her.

  ‘Tell me, Wigg, why does he do it?’ she asked now. Her brother’s rebellious behavior of late truly disturbed her, and although she thought she understood him, for some reason she had a feeling Wigg understood him better. She watched her mare gently shake a fly from her head as they rode on.

  Wigg changed the reins from his left hand to his right and spoke without turning to her. ‘Do you mean, why does he ignore his duties, prefer the war college over his academics, choose to associate with commoners instead of the court, unnecessarily harass the Directorate, and disappear into the woods with those odd knives of his all the time?’ His voice was deep and resonant. ‘And why does he continue to bed women from all over the realm and yet take no wife?’

  He paused and shook his head, letting his criticisms settle into her mind. ‘And why,’ he said finally, ‘and most importantly, does he purposely continue to defy his parents, the king and queen, and the very Directorate itself every time he disregards his duties?’

  He rose up slightly in his saddle, stretching and arching his back like a cat and taking his time about it, as if to tease her by withholding the answer. But when he turned toward her, she saw that the infamous aquamarine eyes were sad rather than mischievous. ‘The answer is more simple than you may think, my dear,’ he said, carefully measuring his words. ‘He doesn’t want to be king.’ He once again faced forward.

  Shailiha’s breath caught momentarily in her throat, but upon considering it, she had to admit that the wizard might be right. Although Tristan had never told her, all the signs had long been there. She wondered if, despite the strength of the prince’s feelings, her brother had kept them to himself to spare everyone else. That would be like him. She began to feel her sisterly anger at him melt into sympathy. She tried to imagine spending almost a lifetime as king and then a potential eternity as a wizard of the Directorate, never wanting to be either. He must regard his future as life imprisonment, she thought, and in thirty days his sentence was to begin.

  Once again, she decided to dare question the wizard. ‘How can you be so sure he doesn’t want to be king?’ she asked. In truth, she knew the old one was right. She had known him too long and knew better. In reality, she just wanted to know how it was he had found out the truth before she had.

  ‘Often the most complex of puzzles can be unlocked with the key of simplicity,’ he mused, running his free hand down the length of his face. He dropped some powder along the path. ‘It’s simple. He told me.’

  She briefly felt her cheeks flush. At first she felt hurt that Tristan could confide such a thing to Wigg but not to her, but her concern for Tristan quickly outweighed the pain of her exclusion. As was her habit when perplexed, she tentatively bit her lower lip.

  Wigg could see the coming questions in her eyes. He could also see that the woods were thickening and changing – and he became more and more concerned the farther in they went. He could sense they were coming closer to Tristan, but not yet close enough.

  ‘He simply confided in me,’ the old one said. ‘It was upon the occasion of his twenty-ninth birthday, and he came to my chambers in anger. We talked for a long time, and I learned that, for him, it was as if some year-long hourglass had suddenly been turned over in his head. In just one year he would be king, and nothing could stop it. The reality of it all had finally sunk in. With so little time left before his coronation, I suppose his recent actions have been a form of denial for him. A last stab at freedom, if you will.’ He paused, considering his next words. ‘Sometimes it seems that Tristan’s problems lie more in what he won’t do rather than what he will, and like it or not, he will become the king of Eutracia.’ He reached up to rub the neck of his black gelding. ‘But the real problem is that if he truly does not want to become king, when he does finally take the throne he will rule poorly, despite the Directorate, and Eutracia cannot afford that.’

  Shailiha considered the old one’s words as she looked toward the sun, putting the time at mid-afternoon. With the woods gradually growing denser, brightness was becoming more difficult to find, and the air was thicker and sweeter. She decided to change the subject.

  ‘Wigg, how do you know where to go?’ she asked hesitantly.

  As far as she could tell, since they had entered the woods he had taken them in a basically straight line. But at one point, he had brought his horse to a stop and closed his eyes for a time, and then made a distinct turn to the left. He had not turned since then.

  The wizard pulled back on his reins, halting his gelding. He looked as if he had had quite enough of her intrusive questions. Shailiha, stopping beside him, wondered if she had angered him. The wizard looked into her eyes. He had the deepest eyes she had ever seen. He was Lead Wizard of the Directorate; she couldn’t begin to understand how much knowledge and power he had accumulated after more than 300 years of practice at the craft.

  ‘With training, endowed blood can sense other endowed blood,’ he replied simply. ‘I can tell we’re getting closer to him. For some time now he has remained still. I only hope that he does not move again. The reason I fought the idea of you accompanying me was twofold. First, the close presence of your endowed blood makes it more difficult for me to sense him.’ He raised his eyebrow. ‘Your being his twin makes it doubly hard, because your blood is so similar.’

  For the first time the princess felt a twinge of guilt about forcing her presence upon the old wizard today. Twins. There had always been so much about her hereditary connection to Tristan that she didn’t understand, that had never been explained to her, that had solicited no answers no matter how many questions she had asked over the years. She had been wondering lately whether the abdication ceremony would bring forth any solutions, but where the Directorate was concerned, one never knew. And it was this curiosity mixed with her love of life that usually managed to overcome her less-tenacious sense of royal decorum. She was famous for it, as was Tristan.

  ‘Do you mean that you can smell him?’ she asked, unconsciously wrinkling her nose.

  He smiled benevolently at her incomprehension.

  ‘No, not in the way that you mean. Rather, my mind can respond to his presence. The closer I come to him, the stronger the response. Actually, it is only a small thing.’ He made a throwaway gesture with his hand, as if the whole idea were unimportant and therefore unworthy of discussion, and set his horse moving with a light kick.

  ‘And the second reason?’ she prompted, trotting briefly to catch up.

  ‘What second reason?’ he asked testily. But she had known him long enough to ascertain when his hearing was becoming selective.

  ‘The second reason you did not want to bring me. What was it?’

  Wigg scowled. ‘If you must know, there are things in these woods. Unpleasant things. Or at least there used to be. I haven’t come to this forest for at least a hundred years, so don’t expect any detailed descriptions from my memory.’ He turned his face back to the ever-thickening forest.

  Shailiha dismissed his gruffness, turning her mind once again to her brother. She felt perfectly safe with Wigg. She realized that perhaps she was being naive, but she couldn’t imagine anything the old one couldn’t do, including protecting her with his life. She looked down to her riding habit, placing an affectionate hand on her protruding abdomen. That also meant protecting her unborn child. Soon Tristan would take the throne, and she would be a mother. Her husband, Frederick, was already bursting with pride.

  Looking around at the passing woodlands, she suddenly realized that while she had been so lost in conversation with the wizard, the forest had changed strikingly in appearance. The woods were much thicker, and she began to see foliage here and there that was unfamiliar to her, and more brilliantly colored. The terrain was sloping ever upward, and long, thin, variegated vines now hung from the tops of the trees almost to the forest floor. The ground was soft and lush. Oddly, the air was much warmer here, despite the fact that the thickening trees permitted less and less sunlight, and the pleasantly sweet aroma she had noticed earlier continued to permeate the air. Still, Wigg kept them on a basically straight line.

  Shailiha’s mind turned back to the palace they had left only a few hours ago, to her mother and father, the king and queen, and to all of the other people who lived there. She never ceased to be amazed at how many it took to oversee everything and to help the king to rule. From the royal family, the Directorate, and the Royal Guard, all the way down to the lowliest stable boy now sworn to secrecy by Wigg and including the hundreds of people in between, each had their place and their responsibility in the scheme of things. And all of them were diligently working now toward one common goal; the abdication ceremony of her father, King Nicholas, and Tristan’s concurrent coronation as the new king. It was a grand and joyous event that was always anxiously awaited by the populace. The preparations had been going on for months.

  This evening there was to be a royal inspection of the ceremony preparations in the Great Hall. Literally hundreds of people would be milling about waiting for them, each hoping to please the royal entourage with his or her work. There would be decorators, advisors, entertainers, chefs and pastry makers, maidservants and cleaners, not to mention the entertainers, musicians, and curious dukes, duchesses, and diplomats from the various provinces of Eutracia. She sighed slowly, letting her breath out in a long stream. There would also be the usual covey of available women who hoped to catch the prince’s eye.

  Was it possible that Tristan had run away permanently instead of just for the day? Did he hate the prospect of being king to such an extent that he would go into hiding? Would he do such a thing to all of us?

  Totally nonplussed, her head began to reel with the unsettling, new set of complications and repercussions. Who would break the news to her parents, if Tristan was truly gone? And who would succeed her father, King Nicholas, without Tristan to fill the void? The terrifying prospect of becoming the queen of Eutracia suddenly loomed before her. The realm had never had a queen. But if Tristan had indeed disappeared, she remained the only heir of endowed blood from the union of her parents, and her mother had long since been unable to give birth. Would the Directorate simply choose another of the Eutracian citizens to become king, as they had done in the past? Or would they force her to take the throne in light of the fact that she was pregnant and might give birth to a son of their family’s endowed blood? Then, in another thirty years, Eutracia would once again have a king. Upon his succession, would she be forced to join the Directorate by her father’s decision regarding Tristan’s fate? And as what? A sorceress? Wasn’t that what they used to call women who were trained in the craft? But there had been no sorceresses in Eutracia since the training of women of endowed blood had been banned at the end of the Sorceresses’ War, over 300 years earlier. What, then, would become of her?