She was the love of his life-a sentiment she returned with an equal if not greater ardor. They had been overjoyed when her father, Wigg, had given the prince his blessing to pursue his daughter's heart.
But soon after the physical consummation of their love, the wizards had come to them bearing devastating news. Information only then gleaned from the newly acquired Scroll of the Vigors dictated that the two of them must never be intimate again-at least until the riddle of Tristan's azure blood could be unraveled and his blood returned to red. If Celeste-or any other woman, for that matter-were to become pregnant with Tristan's seed, the resulting child would be deformed beyond description, and would also constitute a grave threat to the well-being of the craft of magic.
They had only been together once, but Tristan feared that Celeste might already be pregnant with his child. He had seen the familiar glow of the craft build around her and then vanish just after their wondrous interlude that morning beneath the great oak tree.
Since that fateful day, Tristan and Celeste's love had grown, but now they courted each other chastely, much the same way the Orb of the Vigors and the Orb of the Vagaries constantly whirled about each other but could never touch. As it was with Tristan and Celeste, so it was with the Orbs: union would be devastating. While he considered the painful irony, Tristan looked sadly down at his hands.
"And because of these facets of the craft, partial adepts can also sometimes be herbmistresses or herbmasters." Wigg's voice broke in upon Tristan's thoughts. The prince looked back up at the First Wizard of the Conclave.
"Among their other varied skills, partial adepts may also practice the fine art of blaze-gazing, but this expertise is rare," Wigg went on, his words continuing to materialize on the black panel behind him. Soon he would wave his hand once more, and the writing would disappear. "Given these proclivities for such talents," he continued, "it should also become abundantly clear that-"
The classroom's double doors blew open with a deafening crash, and Faegan soared through as though his life depended on it.
It was rare to see the ancient levitate his wheeled chair, much less use it to go flying about. Something lay across his lap-something dark and charred-looking. As Faegan lowered his chair to the ground, the prince felt his stomach turn over. Lying across the old man's useless legs was the horribly burned body of a child.
"Wigg!" Faegan shouted, as he levitated the badly injured child onto a clear section of tabletop. "Come here! I need you!"
Wigg dashed from the dais. In a flash Tristan was by their sides as the two wizards called on the craft in a desperate attempt to heal the child.
The young boy looked dead, yet his chest stubbornly rose and fell in staggered, wheezing lurches. The entire top half of his torso was charred; most of his hair had been burned away. Much of his face was unrecognizable. The sickening stench of burnt flesh began to fill the room.
Sobbing openly, Faegan looked up at the prince and struggled to get the words out.
"So many…" he said, his body shaking. "There are so many more…"
Reaching up, the old wizard took hold of Tristan's hand. His grip was cold and clammy, as if some of the life had gone out of him.
"The courtyard…" he whispered. His hand tightened urgently around Tristan's. "You must get to the palace courtyard…"
His mind awash with worry for Shailiha and Celeste, Tristan ran to gather up his weapons and tore from the room.
CHAPTER II
Standing near the babbling brook, reznik heard the familiar cry of his hungry cat. Turning, he walked over to where the beast crouched menacingly. Long ago Reznik had dug a deep circle in the ground, marking the cat's farthest range of travel. When his feet came to the edge of the ditch, Reznik stopped. Human bones, both old and new, littered the area within the circle.
A wide iron collar encircled the cat's spotted neck. A chain secured the collar to the trunk of a hinteroot tree. Reznik would never violate the confines of the cat's reach, but if she did attack him, he was confident that he could heal himself, provided the wound was not too serious. For Reznik was not only a partial adept and an accomplished herbmaster, but also an expert cutter-healer and potion-master.
Looking at the cat, he smiled. She had been with him for more than a dozen years now. She had been continually chained to the same tree ever since she was a kitten. The generous length of chain allowed her to drink from the nearby brook whenever she chose and the weather never seemed to bother her.
The cat was large-at least four or five times the size of an average house cat-with spotted tan fur and elongated, yellowish eyes with dark irises. The whiskers and eyelashes were dark and exceptionally long, as were the claws.
Reznik's thoughts soon turned from his pet to Satine. She was due to visit soon. By now she would surely need more of that which only he could offer, and he needed to have it ready. She was his highest-paying customer. He would sorely miss those gold kisa of hers should he ever lose her business.
Shaking her head and rattling the iron chain, the impatient cat snarled at him again. She was telling her master that she could smell the blood. Reznik smiled.
"Very soon now, my pretty," he cooed to her.
Turning, he walked back over to the butcher's table that sat beneath the shade of another tree. He wiped his meaty palms down the front of his bloodstained apron, then took up his favorite boning knife. In his other hand he grasped a long, cone-shaped whetstone. He carefully stroked one against the other. When he was satisfied, he bent over and set about his work. Slowly, meticulously, Reznik began boning a human corpse.
He would not need much of what lay before him. But what he did require had to be taken soon and with the greatest of care, lest it lose its potency. Placing the boning knife against the corpse's right quadriceps, he was reminded that corpses never bled when they were cut into, at least not the way a live person did.
As he removed part of the quadriceps and placed it on the table, his crooked smile came again.
And they don't complain, either, he thought.
Soon the exposed thighbone glistened wetly before him. At first glance the bone appeared to have never been broken. That was good.
Placing his knife down, he picked up a short butcher's axe. With two sure, quick strokes he severed the femur from the hip socket and then from the knee joint. He lifted the long bone from the table and placed it to one side.
Putting down the butcher's axe, he put on a pair of magnifying spectacles. Then he took up the bone again and examined it closely.
As he had expected, it was strong, and it had never seen any significant trauma. Over the course of his grisly career, he had cheated some of his other customers by using inferior ingredients. To this day, he had always gotten away with it.
He knew better than to try this with Satine. There was no more accomplished killer in all of Eutracia. Should any one of his potions not prove as promised, she wouldn't hesitate to come back and kill him. Even he would never know she was there. It would be a simple matter of being alive one moment, and dead the next. That wasn't a chance he was willing to take.
Hearing his cat growl with hunger, he grasped the bloody muscle he had just liberated from the corpse and tossed it into the dusty circle.
The cat pounced. Turning back to the table, Reznik resumed his labors.
With the small saw, he cut the thighbone in two, exposing its marrow: soft, pulpy, and yellow-exactly what he needed. As every cutter-healer knew, it was the red bone marrow of a child that was initially responsible for the manufacture of the body's blood. The marrow inevitably turned yellow with maturity. Above all, it was blood that determined so much of one's destiny here in Eutracia-and in Reznik's capable hands, sometimes the nature of one's death, as well.