Intensely interested, Faegan leaned nearer and placed his long, bony forearms on the table. "And that is?" he asked quickly.

"What we experienced is supposedly called the Furies," Abbey said, as the legend slowly returned to her. "The woman who taught me spoke very fearfully of it, telling me to pass the warning down to any of those partials I might eventually teach. It tells of 'the Two'-those who shall eventually come among us, possessing powers so great that we partials must never try to use our gifts upon them. If we do, we risk invoking the Furies and our spells being returned to us, thereby killing us in return. Much like what happened to us in the courtyard." She paused for a moment as the sudden realization spread across her face.

"The 'Two' the legend speaks of must be Tristan and Shailiha," she said softly. Then the room went quiet, as each of them tried to absorb the gravity of her news.

Faegan, however, wasted no time. Pointing over at the table that held the Tome of the Paragon, he straightened one finger. The white, leatherbound volume rose into the air and came to rest before him. He turned his gray-green eyes to Abbey.

"The 'Furies,' you say?" he asked her. The herbmistress nodded.

Closing his eyes, the wizard called upon his powers of Consummate Recollection. As he concentrated on the single word, a vision began to form in his mind. This time it was only a page number, rather than an entire quotation. Opening his eyes, he looked back down at the great book.

Faegan caused the Tome to open itself, and its gilt-edged leafs started flurrying by. When he found the page he wanted, he caused them to stop turning. After reading it a curious look crossed his face, and he sat back in his chair.

"What is it?" Wigg asked. Without answering, Faegan looked back to the great book and began to translate the Old Eutracian on its pages.

"And there shall come among you the Two, and they shall possess a blood quality so high that those known as the 'partials'-those sole practitioners of certain of the Organics-shall come to dread them. For should those of partial blood signatures attempt to employ their limited gifts upon the Two, the Two's progeny, or others of the same womb from which the Two came, their power shall be reversed upon them a thousandfold, and destroy them. For the blood signatures known as 'partials' shall not be as strong as those of the fully endowed. The Two and their seed may therefore be the partials' mortal enemies, even though the Two may not choose for such a reaction to be so…"

Trailing off, Faegan again sat back in his chair, lost in thought.

"What does it mean?" Abbey asked. At first Faegan said nothing. He was ensconced within the caverns of his amazing mind, and his eyes almost seemed glazed over.

"Such a wondrous, dangerous maze is the craft," he finally muttered softly, half to himself. "After three hundred years of trying, we have barely scratched the surface of the knowledge collected by the Ones Who Came Before."

"Faegan," Wigg said forcefully, trying to bring the old wizard's attention back to the rest of them. "What does it all mean?"

Taking a breath, Faegan finally refocused on the people at the table. "It confirms something that I have long suspected regarding the craft," he answered cryptically. "But more about that in a moment." Then he looked intently at Abbey.

"Tell me," he asked her. "Exactly how did you know that something terrible was about to happen in the courtyard?"

"My gazing flame began behaving far out of the ordinary," she answered. "After the viewing window started to form, the top of the flame began to swell. I have never seen one do that before. It was almost as if it was somehow collecting energy instead of expelling it, as is the norm. When I saw it, something told me it was about to burst, so I threw myself at you and the princess. Apparently when the flame ruptured, it did so at the top, releasing its energy skyward. Had the rent appeared in its side instead, I have no doubt that the three of us would be quite dead. In all my years I have never experienced a release of such boundless energy."

Faegan smiled at her. "Thank you," he said softly. "And we shall never forget what you did."

"So what does it all mean?" Wigg demanded impatiently. "Aren't you ever going to tell us what's rattling around in that centuries-old, overactive brainpan of yours?"

Faegan only gave them that coy, knowing smile of his again. He enjoyed nothing so much as a mystery of the craft-especially when he was the only one who held its answer.

"Just one more question, I promise," he told the table. "Shailiha, do you remember anything out of the ordinary just before the gazing flame burst? Did you experience any unusual or uncomfortable sensations, for example?"

"Now that you mention it, my heart began beating so fast and so hard that I thought I might pass out," she answered. "But I didn't say anything about it before, because I thought it was just caused by anxiety. Was it significant?"

"Oh, yes, my child!" The wizard smacked his palm down on one arm of his chair in triumph. "Indeed it was!" He looked like the cat that had just swallowed the proverbial canary.

"And so?" Wigg asked, crossing his arms with frustration.

"Abbey is quite correct," Faegan began. "This is further evidenced by the princess' extremely rapid heartbeat. Her blood coursed faster through her body in response to rejecting and further empowering a partial adept's spell. And the energy was returned to Abbey's flame by a factor of one thousand times, so says the Tome. How fascinating!" He paused for a moment to let his words sink in.

"Unfortunately, this dangerous practice was exactly what we were trying to accomplish yesterday, in our benign ignorance out there in the courtyard," he continued. "And we succeeded admirably in making fools of ourselves, didn't we? The fact that Tristan's blood is now azure may have only intensified the effect." He looked around the table. "As we have already said, several of us here are indeed lucky to be alive."

He looked over at the herbmistress. "I strongly suggest that you do not attempt to employ any of your gifts on either of the Chosen Ones again, especially before Wigg and I have had a chance to explore these new revelations further," he added.

Abbey rolled her eyes. "Don't worry!" she said, holding her palms upward in a gesture of surrender. "I have no such intentions; I promise!"

"Tell me," Faegan said. "Do you know of any way to circumvent these Furies, as you call them, so that we might still try to locate the prince?"

"There were always rumors among those in the partial community that such a process existed," Abbey answered. "Legend says that it can be done, provided one possesses the proper calculations for it. But I do not know what the formulas are, or where they might be found. They supposedly involved sending the energy back yet again to the original subject, in its newly constituted strength." She thought to herself for a moment. "The possibility of circumventing the Furies also raises another very interesting question," she added thoughtfully.

"And that is?" Wigg asked.

"Whether such a spell, should it in fact actually exist, would fall within the purview of the wizards, rather than the partials," she answered slowly, as if thinking aloud. "Such uses of the craft would seem to reside well outside the realm of the Organic. It sounds far more like one of the Paragon's facets of the Kinetic, wouldn't you agree?"

Faegan furrowed his brow. It was soon clear to the others that he found this last comment to be even more interesting than what had been discussed previously.

"You're forgetting something, aren't you?" Wigg finally asked from the other side of the table. "Or should I say someone?"

"And just who might that be?" Faegan asked.