Grasping the handle of her whip, she placed the end of it beneath the slave’s chin and raised his face up to hers. She was pleased to see the hatred and fire burning there as hot as ever.
“Sorceress bitch!” he shrieked as loud as he could. But his voice came out only as a whimper of ragged breath. “I shall never service you.” He spat blood from his mouth onto her face and chest.
Completely unperturbed, she looked down at his groin. “With performance such as this, I daresay you are right.” She laughed. Suddenly her expression hardened as she put less than an inch between their faces, this time speaking between clenched teeth. “You have no doubt seen the scars upon the backs of the others in the Stables who have displeased me in this way?” She touched a finger to one of his blood spots that had splattered upon her left breast, and again touched the finger to the tip of her waiting tongue. “Soon you will look just the same as they do, Stefan,” she said coyly, crisscrossing the handle of the whip on his right cheek in a miniature version of the design that she had begun to imprint forever on his back. “I do my best work upon your back instead of your face so that I will not have to look at your ugly scars the next time you lay atop of me.” The handle of the whip continued its maddening course across his cheek. “Consider yourself lucky.”
From somewhere deep within him, the slave managed a smile. “I already do, you repulsive whore. Better to be scarred for life for not having serviced you than to have lain with one of the bitches who have enslaved us.” Somehow he actually found the strength and courage to laugh at her again. “Someday we shall kill you all,” he sneered. His breath had become even more ragged as he turned and twisted helplessly in the manacles.
“If you are talking about your comrades beyond the confines of these walls, you would do better to turn your mind to other things,” she said, apparently quite sure of herself. “Like pleasing me.” The handle of the whip began to undulate back and forth suggestively around his genitals.
Stefan collected as much blood and saliva in his mouth as he possibly could and sprayed it into the sorceress’s face.
“Very well, then,” Succiu said happily.
The second mistress of the Coven once again walked around to the back of the slave, and for a moment admired her handiwork. Then she viciously executed the last five strokes of the whip as hard as she could, finally on the last stroke using her powers to treble the strength in her arm. As she placed the whip so unerringly upon his back she could feel the distant, overpowering ecstasy of the Vagaries begin to rise in her veins, just as the First Mistress had told her it would over three centuries ago when her training in the darker arts had begun. And now she was a true sorceress, almost as powerful as her mistress, and the rapture she felt in her blood and her loins as she punished the slave drove her on even harder. Once again the slave groaned and slipped into unconsciousness.
The man’s blood was now running freely down to his buttocks from the five perfect triangles that she had cut into his back with the whip. The triangles that together made up the beloved five-pointed star, the Pentangle.
The symbol of the Coven.
“I am done with this one,” she said casually to the seated dwarf. Without looking, she pointed a lazy finger to the ring in the floor, and once again it opened. “Take him back to the Stables with the others. But first, draw my bath. This one has made rather a mess of me.” She walked over to the great canopied four-poster bed and slipped a silk robe over her tall form, apparently not caring that the various spots of blood on her naked body were blotting through here and there.
“Yes, Mistress,” the dwarf gurgled, as he trudged into the huge bathroom. She returned to stand before the hanging body of the unconscious slave and carefully scrutinized him the way a butterfly collector might examine a new specimen. This one was strong, she thought. As strong as one of common blood could be. Because of being trapped here in this miserable land it has been more than three hundred years since I have lain with a man of endowed blood. But that is about to change.
“Your bath is ready, Mistress,” Geldon pronounced as he reentered the room.
“Good,” Succiu said quietly, as she continued to examine the slave. “Time to wake him up.”
Geldon winced, knowing what was expected of him. Walking back into his mistress’s bath, he collected a handful of sea salt, then returned to stand once again upon the stool, this time directly behind the slave. This was the part he hated the most. Looking up to Succiu, he waited for her curt nod. Then he dutifully opened his hands and quickly rubbed the white grains into the many gaping slashes that had been carved into the man’s back by Succiu’s whip.
The effect was almost instantaneous.
The slave named Stefan was immediately brought back to consciousness, and he twisted and turned in his manacles, his eyes bulging from his head as he screamed insanely at the top of his lungs. When the screaming finally stopped, the whimpering began. And then the whimpering finally stopped, and the crying began. Succiu shook her head disparagingly and once again stepped before the slave, placing a sickeningly affectionate hand to one of his cheeks as she looked into his eyes. The slave named Stefan recoiled spasmodically at her touch.
“There now, isn’t that better?” she cooed, smiling crookedly into his eyes. “We want those scars to heal just right so that you will remember your little lesson here today, don’t we?” She turned her attention to the dwarf. “We wouldn’t want him to develop a nasty infection, now would we, Geldon? If that were to happen, he might never be able to come back.”
“No, we wouldn’t want an infection, Mistress,” the dwarf repeated obediently.
She looked hard into the slave’s eyes. “I think you should thank Geldon for the kindness he has just shown you, don’t you agree?”
With a final effort, he raised his face to hers. “No, bitch,” he breathed. The final, almost quiet statement of defiance had taken everything the man had. He fainted again, going limp in the manacles.
Succiu’s eyes once again hardened as she began to walk toward her bath. “Take him away from here. Back to the Stables with the other weaklings of his kind who also have no endowed blood. And then come back here quickly and clean all of this up. My bedroom is a disgrace.” Stopping at her bed, she narrowed her eyes and caused a pink silk sheet to float into the air and land on the floor beneath the dangling, bloody toes of the inert slave.
“Wrap him up in that,” she said sarcastically. “It wouldn’t do to have a mess down the hallways, now would it?” She tilted her head slightly, and the manacles sprang open, sending the slave crashing to the marble floor. “And after you have cleaned this room, wait outside the door for me. You are to accompany me to a meeting this afternoon.” She turned her back on him. “Just don’t be loitering about in here when I come out of my bath.”
“Yes, Mistress, I mean no, Mistress,” the short one murmured. “I shan’t be here when you come out.”
She rather disinterestedly watched him drag the bloody body out of the room and close the huge doors behind him. Smiling to herself, she then luxuriously turned and, stretching her lithe body like an alley cat, walked to her bath.
After inserting one toe into the water, she knew that the dwarf had gotten the temperature just right. Very hot. She slowly lowered herself the rest of the way in before realizing she was still wearing the bloody silk robe. Smiling, she closed her eyes and made it vanish. No matter. She could conjure a hundred more just like it if she chose to.
Looking to her left, she gestured with a long fingernail to open the stained-glass windows to her bathroom. She had to admit that the Parthalonian countryside was every bit as beautiful as Eutracia had been 327 years ago, before their forced exile. But Parthalon was different. The people the sorceresses had found here had been little more than ignorant peasants, and the Coven had taken great pains to ensure that it stayed that way. There had been neither a tradition of royalty nor a standing army here, such as had been inflicted upon Eutracia by the so-called Directorate of Wizards. Her eyes narrowed. The mere thought of those wizards made her heart beat faster with hate.