He will bring them now, he thought. There is no force that can stop him.
As Tristan watched, the energy and glow of the Paragon imbued into Nicholas’ being increased wondrously, as if it had finally come to the bursting point.
The wailing, beseeching faces of the Heretics crowded forward to the very edges of the gigantic rent in the heavens.
And then Nicholas screamed. As if gripped by some horrific, unexplained agony, he covered his eyes with his hands.
The faces in the heavens did not descend; their wailing grew even louder and more pleading.
Removing his hands from his face, Nicholas looked down at his palms and screamed again. It was a plaintive, helpless, agonizing sound that tore through the heavens, drowning out even the wailing of the Heretics. Tristan looked at his son, aghast.
Nicholas was bleeding from every orifice of his body.
From his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and groin poured shimmering, azure blood. It streamed down the length of his white robes and dripped onto the Gate, where it mixed with the fluid already there.
Screaming madly, his face registering nothing but abject astonishment and pain, Nicholas fell, landing on the apex a short distance away from his father. The adept looked pleadingly into Tristan’s face. And then his eyes, the eyes so reminiscent of Succiu, slowly closed, and the aura that had always surrounded his being slowly faded away into nothingness.
Stunned, Tristan looked back to the hole in the sky. The faces of the Heretics were slowly retreating, their wailing and crying subsiding. With the unexpected collapse of Nicholas had apparently come the cessation of his spell. The great rent in the skies eventually closed; the faces of the Heretics disappeared. But the rolling darkness that had preceded it all remained, and the deafening thunder began anew.
Trying to marshal whatever strength he had left, Tristan found that the pain Nicholas had been torturing him with was gone. But the poison in his veins, and the illness that went with it, were still with him. He forced himself up, knowing what his mission must be.
To reach the antidote.
He put his right foot slowly forward and nearly collapsed with the effort of that single step. As he shook his head in pain, the thunder crashed relentlessly, making it even harder to concentrate. Lightning again tore across the heavens, occasionally illuminating his path to Nicholas in ephemeral, ghostly snatches of light.
He took another agonizing step, determined to cross the distance to his son’s body and remove the life-saving vial from Nicholas’ robes.
Another step came somehow, and then another.
Four more paces, he told himself. Only four more!
But just as he began the next step, the Gates of Dawn shuddered.
Smoke, dark and acrid, rose from the apex of the Gate he was on, and a fissure opened in the surface of the fluid-ridden, marble curve, directly between the place he was standing and the inert body of his son.
With a terrible, wrenching, cracking sound, the crevice widened, its branches threatening to creep toward the sides of the curve and extend down into the legs, sending the entire structure tumbling down. The structure shuddered again, and Tristan lost his already shaky footing, falling facedown on the disintegrating Gate.
Looking up amid the smoke and noise, he could see that the crevice was far too wide for him to cross. Even if he had been healthy, he could never have made the jump required to land safely on the other side. Looking to his right, though, he saw that the jagged sides of the crevice rejoined about ten meters away. With what he was sure would be his last reserves of strength, he somehow pulled himself upright again. Weaving drunkenly, the Gate cracking beneath him, he shakily started to make his way, one agonizing step at a time.
But it was not to be.
In the midst of his second step, excruciating pain enveloped him. Foam erupted from his mouth, and he crashed woodenly to the sticky, disintegrating Gate, his body trembling.
His fourth, final convulsion was upon him.
He knew he would never reach the antidote in time. Twisting in agony, he reached down to his boot with his trembling right hand, finally coming upon the pearl handle of the brain hook he had hidden there. Just as he grasped it and pulled it out, the three Gates of Dawn began to collapse.
The tops of the second and third Gates cracked open entirely, their marble blocks crashing to the earth. With an agonizing, torturous sound, the Gate he and Nicholas were on shook again, and the cracks in its top split open from end to end.
Raising the brain hook to his right ear, he felt his tongue begin to slip down the back of his throat, choking the life from him. He looked to the tattered handkerchief tied around his left arm, and then down at the gold medallion around his neck as blocks nearby tumbled to the ground.
He placed the end of the brain hook into his ear, his final thoughts resonating through his mind.
Die, Chosen One! . . . Die, Chosen One! . . . Die! . . . Die! . . . Die! . . .
54
As she so often did now, Shailiha sat quietly with Celeste, rocking Morganna softly in her arms. A fortnight had passed since they had returned to the Redoubt after learning of the destruction of the Gates and Nicholas’ apparent failure to return the Heretics. But there still had been no word of either Tristan or Nicholas.
Ox and Traax had gone out to search the area of the Gates, but had not found anything. If their bodies were ever to be recovered, they would no doubt eventually be found somewhere beneath the many tons of black-and-azure marble. And the wizards were uncertain about attempting to move the rubble, concerned as they were about what other calamities might transpire if they tried.
That being the case, Wigg and Faegan had ordered that no one be allowed to return to the site until they had inspected it in person. Strangely, though, the wizards had not yet visited there, remaining cloistered in their quarters instead. No doubt they still could not bring themselves to see the place of Tristan’s death, Shailiha reasoned.
After the hatchlings had all been killed and their bodies burned to ash in the depths of the canyon surrounding Shadowood, Traax had requested that the bodies of his slain Minion warriors be brought from Farplain and Shadowood to Tammerland, the home of their departed lord. The wizards had agreed. Additional litters had been constructed, and the corpses were flown back to the royal palace for the traditional burning of the dead.
Hundreds of pyres, stacked high with dead warriors, had eventually dotted the fields outside the castle grounds. Out of respect for those who had defended them, everyone living in the Redoubt had attended the lighting of the pyres. The flames and smoke had risen into the sky over Tammerland for five days and nights. Now their soot littered the whiteness of the snow for as far as one could see, turning it gray with the refuse of death.
Traax’s officers had also constructed an additional pyre, upon which no bodies were placed. It was an empty, silent tribute to Tristan.
Traax had asked Shailiha to light it. With a trembling hand, amid the cries of “We live to serve!” she had tentatively placed a torch to it. The flames roared into the sky, marking the passing of he who had been the lord of the Minions. It had been more than she could bear, and she’d had to turn her face away to hide her tears.
After that, Shailiha had been inconsolable. But Celeste had come to sit with her every day, and it had been those daily visits, more than anything else, that had finally helped to bring the princess partially through her grief. They had also solidified the bond between the two women.
But having no body to bury only made it harder for Shailiha. With no Tristan to hold for the last time, it sometimes felt to her as if the grief would never end. And worse, a great sense of sadness, along with a deafening, overpowering quiet, had captured the Redoubt, as if no one living there would ever be truly happy again.