The Fifth Sorceress, page 66
‘Mistress Shailiha,’ Succiu said commandingly. The second mistress’s voice carried the tone of a mother scolding a greedy child, but Tristan thought he detected a hint of jealousy as well. ‘Instead, why don’t you show him who it is that you really love?’ Succiu stood there, hands on her hips, a look of triumph on her face.
Tristan stood aghast at what he saw next.
Smiling, Shailiha walked to Succiu and took her in her arms. She then kissed the second mistress. Not a kiss upon the cheek or a sisterly kiss of endearment, but a raw, passionate, sexual kiss on the mouth that seemed to the prince to last an eternity. After the embrace, Shailiha lovingly brushed back some of Succiu’s hair, and the two stood there before him, arm in arm. Tristan began to feel the need to vomit, as tears welled up in his eyes. His head slumped down to his chest. The insanity never ends, his heart sobbed.
‘What have you done to her?’ he whispered to Succiu as he trembled with hate.
‘We have simply unleashed her potential,’ Succiu purred, ‘and introduced her to a few of our more sophisticated tastes.’ She reached over to stroke Shailiha’s hair, and the prince’s sister did not shy away. ‘We have finally given her her rightful place in the world.’
‘Your world!’ Tristan shouted.
‘That’s right,’ Succiu agreed nastily. ‘The entire world is soon to be our world. And soon it shall be the only world that matters – or even exists, for that matter. I’m sure that old fool Faegan told you all about that.’
‘What have you done with Wigg?’ Tristan demanded. He was careful to make no mention of Geldon, in the highly unlikely event that the Coven had somehow not detected the dwarf’s part in bringing them here to the Recluse.
Failee levitated herself closer to the prince’s cage. ‘If you wish to see the old one, that can be easily arranged,’ she said. She raised her arm, and another pair of gibbets came floating into view from behind the prince. They came to rest, still floating in the air, between Tristan and his captors. Looking at the first one, he saw the Lead Wizard. It was a sight he would never forget.
Wigg had clearly been tortured. He seemed to be in a half-conscious state, and the prince had no idea whether the wizard could even hear them speaking. His face was ashen and sweaty, his breathing labored. The wizard’s once all-seeing aquamarine eyes were glazed over with a remote, empty, uncaring stare. Drool snaked slowly from one corner of his mouth, and dried blood crusted each side of his face. Tristan painfully surmised that the blood had poured out of the old one’s ears. He stared in horror at the wizard he had loved for so long, his mind racing. I can’t tell if the pewter locket is still around his neck! If only he had told me what it was for…The wizard’s gibbet turned slowly, silently, in the air before them, as if Failee wished to keep her sick, twisted prize on exhibition for all eternity.
Tristan quickly turned to look at the second gibbet, and his heart fell again. Geldon. But how did they know we were already here in the Recluse?
Geldon had fared no better. Although he was much more animated than the wizard, it seemed he could not speak. Due to his smaller size there was more room for him in the gibbet, and he was waving his arms about wildly, his face red and his eyes bulging in their sockets. It was then that Tristan realized what was happening. Succiu is tightening the collar around his throat!
‘Stop it, you bitch!’ he screamed at Succiu as he watched the life being literally squeezed from the dwarf. ‘You’ll kill him!’
Succiu laughed aloud as she examined one of her long, painted nails. ‘I have no plans on killing this little traitor,’ she said casually. ‘That would all too quickly end my amusement with the little freak. I do this to him a great deal, and I know exactly how much he can take before he comes close to dying. He belongs to me, and now that I am aware of his true loyalties I shall do as I wish with him.’ Her dark eyes looked up at Tristan from under seductive, heavily hooded eyelids. ‘I suggest you start worrying about yourself, Chosen One.’
Tristan glared with rage at Failee. ‘What have you done to Wigg?’ he snarled. He looked over to the Lead Wizard to see that the old one had regained a modicum of his mental focus and was looking at the prince, although he still did not speak.
‘What I have longed to do for over three hundred years,’ Failee said, almost to herself. ‘What I longed to do even during the Sorceresses’ War. I have taken away his power. The last of the wizards of the Directorate has finally fallen. Your precious Lead Wizard, as you knew him, is no more.’
She glided over to Wigg’s gibbet and hovered there gently, looking at him. ‘I took it away from him little by little, over the course of the last day while you were still unconscious. It is said that taking a wizard’s power in such a manner, rather than all at once, is much more likely to cause madness or death, just as it did when we transformed some of the other endowed male vermin like him into the blood stalkers of so long ago.’ She tilted her head a little this way and that as she luxuriated in her memories, some of her madness showing through in her rather languid, almost gentle, gestures. ‘It took all of us, joining our powers, to accomplish it,’ she gloated. ‘The blood that ran from his ears carried his power out of his body and dried in the air, rendering him useless. Near the end, when I was sure he was about to die, he proved to be almost as strong as Faegan, and survived.’ She smiled. ‘No matter either way,’ she said happily.
The lead mistress was clearly enjoying herself. She has waited over 300 years for this, Tristan thought, tears running down his face. He glanced at the dwarf and was relieved to see that Geldon, although unconscious, was breathing normally, his head slumped against the side of his gibbet.
‘But enough about Wigg,’ Failee said suddenly. ‘He is no longer an issue. I would think you might prefer to learn how it was that we knew you were coming. I have been told by more than one of those present in this room that you have a quick, curious mind.’
Tristan said nothing, deciding not to give her the satisfaction of an answer. He stood silently before her, his unforgiving gibbet hovering gently in the incongruous beauty of the room.
‘It began when Wigg used his powers to aid your journey here,’ she began, smiling beneficently at him. ‘That really was quite foolish of him, although he did a particularly good job of hiding your endowed blood once you were on the move. Sending the Minions out into the countryside to find you could have taken weeks. We knew that you would have to make your way to the Recluse, but it also served our purpose to know when you would arrive, and by what method.’ The hazel eyes narrowed with pride. ‘So we arranged a little scheme.’ She paused, wanting to see his next reaction. ‘It had to do with the Gallipolai.’
Tristan froze. His first thoughts were of Narrissa, his mind careening in several different directions over what part she could have played in this. His heart began to tear with the fear of her possible betrayal of him. Did she aid the Coven? Wigg warned me that taking her along would lead to no good. Could I have misjudged her so badly? he asked himself. He felt a strange kind of haunting emptiness begin to build within him.
‘I can see by the look in your eyes that you think she betrayed you,’ Failee said, almost kindly. ‘No, that was not the case. She had no idea. In fact, I am now told that she genuinely believes herself to be in love with you, poor thing. It’s sad, isn’t it, that you will never see each other again? But I digress. When I recognized the presence of your blood here in Parthalon I arranged to have six Gallipolai taken to the Vale of Torment, knowing that it would call the birds of prey into the sky overhead, drawing you there. I ordered one of the chosen Gallipolai to be a woman of particular beauty. I felt sure you would spot the birds overhead. Skirting the Vale is the shortest and least traveled way to the Recluse, so naturally the dwarf would take you that way. And, unlike the males, the female was purposefully kept alive. Just as I planned, your curiosity drew you in, and your notorious affinity to help stray urchins didn’t fail us.’ She smiled, her hazel eyes gleaming.
‘We had other Minion warriors there, in the hills, watching the whole time, who followed you as you left for the Recluse,’ she continued. ‘They sent riders ahead to warn us. But even more illuminating was the unexpected realization that your foolishness in helping the one called Narrissa also alerted us to the fact that the dwarf was a traitor. We simply let the three of you walk into the Recluse, on into the Stables, and then took you at our leisure.’ She smiled again, her hazel eyes shining with victory. ‘All that remains is to find whatever person or persons who may have aided you in getting here. And find them we shall.’
Tristan was aghast at the sheer simplicity of it, the cold, calculated way in which they had so easily manipulated him. At the same time, he worried about Ian’s safety. The gentle young man who is also the keeper of the birds, he thought. He should not have to die simply because he helped us.
His anger returned, his blood surging in his veins, crying out for action. He glared into the eyes of the First Mistress. ‘I killed two of your Minion warriors out there. It was easy, and I enjoyed it,’ he said, the words dripping from his lips like venom. ‘Do you mean to say that there were other warriors nearby watching, who did nothing to help them? That you let the two of them die simply because you wanted me and the wizard?’
‘Of course, you fool!’ a deep male voice shouted from somewhere behind him. ‘Dying is what they were bred for!’
Tristan instantly recognized the voice he so hated. It was so easily identifiable in his mind that it seemed like only yesterday since he had last heard it. He tried frantically to turn in his gibbet, to see the man who had spoken, but he couldn’t move. He didn’t have to wait long, though, as the monster walked out before him to stand with the sorceresses.
Kluge.
Tristan’s heart beat faster with hate as he looked down upon the man he most wanted to kill in the entire world. The same man who had ordered him to kill his own father, and strung the heads of the wizards of the Directorate upon a rope like prizes. The monster who had raped and ordered the multiple rape and ultimate death of his mother. The same man the prince had sworn by his own blood oath to kill. Tristan’s endowed blood tore through his veins like never before as he trembled with the sheer, pure hatred of wanting to see another man die by his own hand. Horribly. Slowly.
Kluge had changed little since that day in Tammerland. Tristan took in the long, black-and-gray hair that fell loosely down around the warrior’s neck; the dark, leathery wingtips that protruded just above his shoulders; and the blatantly white battle scar that ran from the left eye down into the salt-and-pepper whiskers of the monster’s goatee. The piercing black eyes were as careful as ever. The commander of the Minions of Day and Night wore a glittering new dreggan at his side, obviously a replacement for the one that Tristan now wore in the scabbard behind his back. The prince also quickly noticed the shiny glimmer of the returning wheel hung low on Kluge’s hip, ready to be thrown at a moment’s notice. The winged monstrosity’s black leather vest, breeches, taloned gloves, and boots completed the picture. Silently standing there, saying nothing, he was death incarnate.
I will kill you, you bastard, Tristan swore silently. Even if I do nothing else in this awful place, I will kill you.
‘I see that in the brief time that has passed since our last meeting, you seem to have developed an affinity for Minion weapons,’ Kluge said nastily, eyeing both the dreggan across the prince’s back and the returning wheel at his hip. ‘You don’t mean to tell us that you actually claim to have a working knowledge of either of them, do you?’ The monster laughed aloud at the thought.
Tristan glared down at the winged freak before him. In a low, animal-like tone, he said, ‘Let me free of this cage, and I will be happy to give you a lesson in each of them.’ Gathering as much saliva as he could, he spat it all into the monster’s face.
Completely unperturbed, Kluge smiled, wiped his face, and then slowly drew his dreggan, pressing the button at the hilt and loosing the tip of the blade, listening to its clear, familiar ring slowly fade away in the great expanses of the Sanctuary. He turned to Failee as if to ask permission, and the First Mistress nodded.
Stepping closer yet to the gibbet, Kluge slowly, ever so slowly, pressed the tip of the dreggan against the wound in the prince’s side, and then directly into it, down to the bone of one of the prince’s ribs. Tristan’s breath started to come out in a rush, but he immediately caught himself, silently swearing he would show no pain before this man. Kluge smiled as he withdrew the bloody tip of the sword and held it high in the soft, golden light of the room, the sticky crimson blood of the Chosen One running down the length of its razor-sharp blade.
‘They tell me this is the highest, the most sought-after, the most endowed blood in the world,’ he said casually, looking at the blade as if it were any other recently bloodied weapon. His lips twisted sarcastically. ‘Strange, it doesn’t look any different to me.’
Kluge leaned his head closer to the gibbet to whisper to the prince. ‘I was there, you know,’ he said. ‘There, at Vulture’s Row, when you killed the two warriors. I watched you work. You are good, it is true, but not as good as you think you are. And certainly not good enough to kill me.’ He turned his head slightly, obviously looking forward to the reaction he anticipated from the prince at what were to be his next words. ‘Tell me, did the Gallipolai ask you about the color of your heart?’ He smiled wickedly as he watched the look of extreme anger and hatred wash across the prince’s face. ‘I’m not sure about the color of Narrissa’s heart,’ he said, touching his tongue to one corner of his mouth, ‘but I have just come from yet another visit with her, and I can safely tell you what color all of the rest of her body is.’
Tristan’s teeth drew back in an animal-like snarl, and he spoke in such a low tone that Kluge could barely hear. ‘You disgusting winged freak!’ he whispered hatefully, alive with rage as he twisted and turned against the unyielding bars of the gibbet. ‘What did you do to her?’
Kluge smiled and closed his eyes, as if relishing some recent memory. ‘What did I do to her? Why, everything I could think of,’ he whispered. ‘Slowly. Over and over again.’ Opening his eyes, he replaced the dreggan in its scabbard. ‘You do a very poor job of protecting your women, you know,’ he sneered. He reduced his voice to a whisper. ‘I was struck by the Gallipolai’s beauty as she lay bound upon the wheel, and decided then and there that she would be mine. As the commander of the Minions I alone am granted the right to take a mate for life, and may even choose from the Gallipolai if I am so inclined.’ He paused, narrowing his eyes. ‘First your mother, then your sister, and now Narrissa. You failed to protect them all. Instead of the Chosen One, you should be known as the Worthless One! I watched you and the now-useless wizard hide her in the cave, and then went back to take my prize. The sweet, oh, so sweet prize you gave me. Just as you gave me your mother.’
Tristan tried to subdue the vicious images in his mind. The twin visions of Kluge first atop his hysterical, screaming mother, and then the gentle, virgin Gallipolai. I swear by all that I am, I will kill this man. He glared with hatred at the demon responsible, wishing, willing him to die on the spot as if he could somehow force the fates to comply. I will show no emotion, he suddenly thought to himself. It’s what he wants most. To hurt me in any way he can. And until I am free of this cage, all I have to fight him with are my words.
Tristan forced a false, conspiratorial smile to his lips. ‘Was the Gallipolai good?’ he asked slyly. ‘You may take her as much as you like. She means nothing to me.’ The words stung his heart as surely as the dreggan had stung the wound in his side, but he was determined to continue the pretense. He smiled again at Kluge and motioned with his head for the monster to come even closer to his cage.
‘You were whelped somewhere near the area of the Recluse, I assume?’ Tristan asked, hiding the insult with a look of sincerity.
‘Yes,’ Kluge responded, narrowing his eyes. ‘What does it matter?’
‘You should return there as soon as possible,’ the prince said, almost politely. ‘They must need you.’
Kluge angled his head with curiosity. ‘Why?’ he finally asked.
Tristan smiled. ‘Because you’re depriving a village somewhere of its idiot.’
Kluge snarled viciously at having been so easily drawn into the insult and immediately drew his dreggan. For an instant Tristan thought he was about to die, but Failee’s voice cut through the room like the snap of a bullwhip, halting Kluge’s sword in midair.
‘Enough!’ she shouted at Kluge. ‘You fool! Can’t you see what he is doing to you?’
At his mistress’s command, Kluge reluctantly lowered his sword. He peered menacingly into the cage, into the deep blue eyes of the Chosen One, with an almost new, even more intense hatred.
‘Soon,’ he said simply from between gritted teeth.
‘I welcome it,’ Tristan whispered back.
Failee, still hovering in the air, glided over to where Kluge was standing. She peered at the prince with an almost newfound respect.
‘Neither the blood stalker, the screaming harpy, the wiktor, or even a sorceress herself could kill this one,’ she said over her shoulder to her commander. ‘Are you so sure you can do the job they could not?’
Tristan looked to the other sorceresses briefly and saw a smirk pass across Succiu’s face.
Ignoring Kluge, Failee kept her full attention upon the prince.
‘Tell me,’ she asked rather quietly, ‘how was it that you were supposedly able to kill Emily? Surely she must be dead, since you continue to live. She was one of us, and would never have given up unless she had been somehow vanquished once and for all.’
