He turned to face the K'tons.
"Half of your number are to follow my ship by air," he ordered in a craft-enhanced shout. "The rest are to fly to Tammerland to join the other Black Ships. When you find them, follow the orders of Captain Merriwhether. Stragglers will be killed. We will join you there. In the capital there will be plenty of food for all!"
The K'tons in the front ranks snarled and beat their bloody fists upon their chests. Soon all of them followed suit in a massive display of power.
Wulfgar raised one hand. Calling upon the craft, he caused a blank parchment to appear. He pointed at it and writing appeared upon its surface. When he was done, the parchment rolled itself up.
Wulfgar took the scroll from the air and walked it over to one of the K'tons. The drooling monster simply looked at it for a moment. Then it took the scroll from its master.
"Give that to Captain Merriwhether," Wulfgar ordered the K'ton. "Fail to do so and you will pay with your life. Do you understand?"
Raising the parchment high, the K'ton gave a fierce battle cry.
Satisfied, Wulfgar levitated himself to the foredeck of the ship. Cathmore followed. The last of the demonslavers entered the open stern of the ship's hull, and the door slowly rose up. The ship lifted into the air.
As the Black Ship sailed away, the K'ton throngs snapped open their wings and lifted into the night.
CHAPTER LXXIX
Tristan awoke to find he was standing up, the young Scroll Master beside him. As his vision cleared, the Jin'Sai looked around in awe. He had long believed that he would never see a room larger than the Hall of Blood Records, but what he saw here made even that great place seem small by comparison.
Like the others before it, this chamber was also constructed of glowing azure glass. The ceiling had to be at least one hundred meters high. Massive columns rose to meet it.
A seductive cross between the finest of choir voices and the gentle tinkling of glass wind chimes teased his hearing. Saying nothing, the young Scroll Master watched and waited as Tristan took in the scene.
Row upon row of glowing azure bookcases stood in neat ranks, filling the hall from one side to the other. They seemed to stretch into infinity.
"What is this place?" Tristan asked with wonder and respect.
The Scroll Master turned to him. "Your wizards and sorceresses are wrong," he said, "about so many things. They always have been. But even without the direct guidance of the Ones, and with only the Tome and the Scroll of the Vigors to guide them, their advancement has been exemplary."
It was not lost on Tristan that the Scroll Master hadn't actually answered his question. "I don't understand," he said. "What have they been wrong about?"
"A great many things, I'm afraid," the boy answered. "Perhaps their greatest mistake of late has been their misguided theories regarding the art of Forestallments. But that is understandable. Wigg, Faegan, and Jessamay are little more than three centuries old. That length of time is but a single heartbeat in the life of the craft. They remain infants in the ways of magic."
Tristan was becoming impatient. "You haven't answered my first question," he said. "What is this place?"
"We are standing in the presence of one of the greatest achievements of the Ones," the boy said. "The Well of Forestallments. Come with me."
The boy floated toward one line of shelves. As Tristan followed along, his boot heels rang out against the floor, mingling with the comforting sounds that came from everywhere at once. They traveled a long way before stopping. Pointing to one of the bookcases, the boy indicated that Tristan should walk around to face it.
"Do not be threatened by what you see," the boy said. "Although it will be unexpected, it cannot hurt you."
Tristan was devastated by what lay before him. Taking a quick breath, he stepped back. He couldn't believe his eyes.
It was the face of Failee.
Failee-the mad First Mistress of the Coven and onetime wife to Wigg. The woman who had ordered the deaths of his parents and the Directorate of Wizards, absconded with both the Paragon and his twin sister Shailiha, and one of the Coven of Sorceresses he had killed with his first and only use of the craft. Memories flooded his mind as he stood there looking at the face of the woman he had hated for so long.
He finally realized that he was looking at only a death mask. He relaxed a bit. Taking a deep breath, he walked closer.
From the depths of the shelf, Failee's face hovered behind what seemed to be a curved pane of clear glass. Her eyes were closed. Azure light highlighted the contours of her face, and words in Old Eutracian were inscribed into the area just below the mask. He looked down.
The cubicle below the one holding Failee's likeness was also encased in glass, but what it contained fascinated Tristan even more.
Like tributaries snaking away from a river, dozens of azure Forestallments twinkled there. Many more words in Old Eutracian were inscribed below them. The Forestallments hovered vertically in space; amazingly beautiful, they sent out shimmering waves of azure as they rotated side by side.
Looking to the right, Tristan saw the death masks of Vona and Zabarra-two of the other sorceresses he had killed-along with two more cubicles of Forestallments.
Then his eyes fell upon the death mask of Succiu. He stepped over to stand before it.
He had never believed that he would see her face again, and doing so now gave him no joy. Under Failee's orders, she had raped him and imbued still-dormant Forestallments in his blood signature. She had also been the mother of Nicholas, Tristan's only child. As he looked at Succiu's beautiful almond-shaped eyes, a shudder went through him. Like those of the others, her Forestallments were displayed just below her death mask.
Overcome with curiosity, Tristan looked down the limitless length of this case. Death masks and their accompanying Forestallments lined both sides for as far as he could see. Then he realized that it was the slowly revolving forestallments that were the source of the lovely tinkling sounds.
He turned to the Scroll Master. "Why would the Ones build such a place as this, only to record the expired Forestallments of the dead?"
The boy smiled. "Those persons who are represented here are quite dead, that's true," he said. "But the Forestallments that their blood signatures once carried are not."
"That's impossible," Tristan said. "When one of the endowed dies, his or her blood signature and Forestallments die with them. That is why there is always an accompanying atmospheric disturbance-it is the craft's way of reacting to the passing of a collection of Forestallments. Wigg and Faegan are sure of it."
"No," the boy said. "Your wizards are wrong. Forestallments do not die unless they are dismantled by a proper spell of reversal. If their host dies before this is accomplished, they leave the host and travel here, causing the disturbances you describe. They do so because of a process of the craft that the Ones refined just before they disappeared, but it does not always succeed. If they are unsuccessful in their journey, their owners are condemned to the Abyss of Lost Souls.
"The words in Old Eutracian inscribed below the Forestallments identify them and illustrate the spells required for their conjuring and their dismantling," the boy went on. "Your wizards are right about one thing, though. The Scrolls of the Ancients were written by the Ones and the Heretics of the Guild. Collectively, they contain the spells required to both form and dismantle nearly every Forestallment known to man."
Stunned, Tristan looked around the chamber once again. "But that still does not answer my question," he said. "Why did the Ones build this place, and why are the Forestallment branches collected in this way?"