“And why would you need my permission to submit willingly to the Agonies when you could always force them upon me?” Tristan asked her blatantly.
Failee closed her eyes, thinking. “Because the Vagaries are not clear on this point. It is possible that, because of the strength of your blood, should you resist any application of the Vagaries the result could be cataclysmic. Despite the fact that you are as yet untrained, you remain a very dangerous man, and we still must be very careful with you. Simply put, the forced use of any aspect of the Vagaries against your blood could result in the destruction of us all. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, if you will forgive the rather poor analogy.”
She tilted her head to one side in surprise. “Didn’t Faegan tell you?” she asked. “Ah, of course not. Faegan, the eternal riddle master. You truly do not know how much power you would command once trained in the craft, do you?”
Tristan ignored the question. The insanity never stops. Never. “Why would you want another sorceress of my loins?” he asked. “You have the five you need for the Blood Communion and the Reckoning that follows. There is now nothing standing in the way of your enslaving the entire world, so why bother?”
“Because it isn’t your firstborn daughter they now want, Tristan.” The familiar male voice had come from the prince’s left side, from inside one of the hovering gibbets. “What they want now is your firstborn son”
Tristan looked over to see that Wigg was alert, despite the obvious trembling of his legs from exhaustion. But something was still wrong. Tristan slowly looked Wigg up and down, trying to get a sense of what it was, when it finally hit him. It’s his eyes, he realized. His eyes no longer have the sparkle of the gift. He truly has lost his powers.
Casting a glance at Wigg’s gibbet, the First Mistress glided over to hover before the cruel, suspended cage that housed the old wizard. “So,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “You still live, Old One. But not for long, to be sure. Tell me, after over three centuries of power in the craft, how does it feel to be a simple, unendowed mortal?”
Wigg began to cough. His lungs wheezed sickeningly for a few moments, and a final hack expelled a small amount of blood that began to run down his chin and onto the gray robe. Failee smiled.
“The last time we were together it was I who was coughing up blood,” she said almost happily. “Do you remember? It was upon the Sea of Whispers, the day you banished us to our lives here in Parthalon. You and your precious Directorate had restricted our nourishment so as to keep us weak and prevent us from using the craft. Your use of the azure bowl from the Caves to push us even farther away was really quite brilliant. I commend you on your ingenuity.” She tilted her head maddeningly enjoying every word. “You should have killed us when you had the chance, Wizard. I told you that day your ridiculous vows would be the end of you all, and with the exception of finally killing you, everything I predicted has come to pass.”
“Tell him why you want a male child of his blood,” Wigg snarled breathlessly, each of his words an effort. “As for myself, I can already guess.”
Failee unexpectedly reached through the bars of Wigg’s gibbet and caressed his dazed face, her fingers lingering in the wizard’s blood. The blood that used to be so endowed, the prince thought. He recoiled at the sight. Failee’s touch was clearly not a gesture of affection, or of love. Rather, it was like watching a cat play with a mouse it was about to tear in half with its teeth.
“Ah, Wigg,” she said. “So much has passed between us. I will grant you your request for old times’ sake. The Chosen One deserves to know, since he is to play such a major part in it all.”
She turned to the prince, her hazel eyes gleaming. “It is really quite simple,” she said. “From your seed mingled with that from one of us, I mean to acquire your first and only son. Raised by us, he will be much more easily controlled than his father. He will worship us, in fact, and be a male of the Chosen One’s blood who, unlike yourself, will do our bidding gladly, without the use of the Agonies. And in turn I shall mate your son with Vona, Zabarra, Succiu, and myself for as long as we choose, allowing only the females to live. The result will be blood and seed that will be of an even higher quality than your own, because it came forth from your son willingly. Then we will be free to kill both you and your boy child at our leisure. Imagine it. An entire race of female Chosen Ones, trained in the Vagaries and under our complete control.” She looked almost delirious with the thought of it.
“For over three hundred years I thought that the Communion and the Reckoning would be our finest achievement,” she continued. “The most we could ever hope to accomplish. But now, Chosen One, you have delivered yourself to me, and it has given me the opportunity to surpass even those victories.” She seemed caught in the grip of a fever as she stood there before him. Wigg and Faegan were right, Tristan realized. She is clearly beyond madness.
“But there is more, Chosen One,” she whispered, keeping her words too soft for anyone else to hear. “Listen carefully. I will also use your firstborn son to mate with Shailiha. Think of it. The purest of male endowed blood, and the purest of female endowed blood, coming together in conception.” Her mouth was open and her breathing erratic. Sweat beaded on her forehead as her next words came out in the barely audible whisper. “Their product shall be unlike anything the world has ever witnessed. A super being. Trained in the Vagaries, protected by time enchantments, and loyal only to me. The super being and I, ruling over a population of endowed female beings of consummate perfection, for all eternity. There would be no limit to the reach of our experimentation.”
At first Tristan couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. She actually means to do this, his mind shrieked at him. Enslaving the world is no longer enough for her. Now she means to populate it only with beings that she deems worthy of life. And I am the one who shall, willingly or not, provide her with the means. His chin fell to his chest in pain, his mind too overwhelmed to think, his voice too overcome to speak.
“You have miscalculated, First Mistress.” It was Wigg’s voice again, seemingly somewhat stronger this time. “Despite the plan you have described, nature will still take her own course. You must realize the result of a union between Shailiha and Tristan’s son would be a hideous product of inbreeding! Only the Afterlife knows what the end result of such an abomination would be. Surely even you must see that you will not succeed in creating the super being you cherish, but rather an abhorrent freak of nature, possibly with uncontrollable power. The sick, twisted result of such a union would be horrible beyond description!”
Failee smiled at the wizard and then turned around in midair to face the rest of the Coven and Commander Kluge. “I told you he would not see it,” she said proudly. She returned her gaze to Wigg. “Do you think I had not contemplated such a thing? Let me explain something that will enlighten you greatly.” She paused. “I will give the former Lead Wizard a lesson in the craft.”
Failee gestured to the commander of the Minions. “Where do you suppose the Minions came from?” she asked Wigg simply.