Enslaving Parthalon had actually been very easy, she remembered, especially in light of the fact that there had been no presence of endowed blood here. Their defenses had been feeble at best. Thousands had died all manner of hideous and imaginative deaths, but before too long the people had bowed to the four mistresses as their rulers. It had actually been rather amusing. Most of the people had been terrified of the thing called magic, having never seen it before, and they had stayed that way to this day, cloaked in a blind fear that the Coven had no intention of removing.
But the absence of endowed blood had proven to be a sword that could cut both ways. Although the entire country had easily come under the Coven’s control, there were no men of endowed blood here with whom to procreate. None of mistresses would ever dream of conceiving a child with one of these churlish cretins. And so the quest for the birth of a special female child of endowed blood from someone among the four of them had been lain aside as impossible, and the Coven had tried a different approach. It would take centuries, they knew, but it was the only way. And now, over three hundred years later, they were so close to completing their goal—as long as everything happened exactly as planned, and at the appropriate time.
Suddenly an interesting thought came to her. Time. Such an invincible enemy, such an indispensable ally. Even time itself we can now manipulate, just as it also manipulates us. She laid her head back against the cool marble of the huge tub and closed her eyes, lost in her thoughts.
Their slaves had been taken at random from the population as needed—for forced labor, or for other… uses. Indeed, the name “the Stables” had been her idea for the area of the Recluse where they kept those particular male and female slaves. And only beautiful ones. They did not serve in the traditional roles that one would expect of a palace. No, the ones like Stefan all served the Coven as sexual entertainment. Except for the First Mistress, she thought. Again the corners of her mouth turned up into a smile. This had been her idea, and there must be hundreds of them of both sexes in the Stables by now, with three of the four mistresses making great use of the privilege. As a precaution they were tended to by deaf mutes only, and thus there could be no knowledge among the populace of the Stable slaves’ existence or purpose.
But what the populace knew or didn’t know really was of no importance. All of the more traditional servants and workers in the Recluse were slaves who had been taken from the countryside. The huge Recluse itself, the fortress home of the Coven, had been built with slave labor from Parthalon. When it was completed, all the workers had been put to death so that the inner layout of the castle remained a secret. With the exception of her personal slave, Geldon, once a native of Parthalon was taken into the Recluse there was only one way for him or her to leave. Dead.
As she carefully washed the blood from beneath her nails, her thoughts turned to those days and nights over three centuries ago that she and her sisters had endured trying to cross the Sea of Whispers. She smiled at the brilliant bargain the first sorceress of the Coven had made to ensure their safe passage when the four of them had at last discovered the hideous reason the sea had never been crossed. At the same time she blessed the First Mistress’ mastery of the Vagaries, without the knowledge of which that same bargain could never have been struck. And soon, very soon, they were to cross the Sea of Whispers again for the first time in over three hundred years. They had to return to Eutracia at last because the one they had left behind, although useful, did not possess the blood quality necessary to become the fifth mistress—the one that they had needed so badly and for so long in order to complete their plans.
And then the wizards who had banished them would pay. She reveled in the thought.
After leaving her bath and brushing her long, dark hair, she walked naked through her quarters to the huge closets that held her wardrobe. Opening the doors, she quickly decided upon red for today. This afternoon’s upcoming meeting was of the greatest importance, and this magnificent gown had long been her favorite. As she dressed, she turned her attention toward the room. Geldon had returned and cleaned it as she had ordered, and was no doubt waiting at the other side of the doors for her to appear. He was the perfect servant, and not for the first time she smiled at her luck in finding him.
It had been during one of her earliest visits to the Ghetto of the Shunned.
From the first the Coven had needed a place to confine certain unwanted members of the population, even after the country had been successfully overwhelmed. The problem had been solved very simply by selecting a rather large city just south of the Recluse, conjuring a very high and inescapable wall around it, and then killing all of the citizens inside, whether they had been useful or not. There simply had been no need to sort them all out, and so the Coven exterminated them by means of a plague. This conveniently left the mistresses with vacant living quarters large enough to hold approximately two hundred thousand souls.
Then the crippled, the sick, the retarded, the criminal, and everyone else that the Coven deemed simply undesirable were forced into the Ghetto and left to fend for themselves. The results were inevitable: crime, filth, disease, and inbreeding. From the very beginning, relegation to the Ghetto had been an irreversible death sentence. And it had indeed proven itself to be a powerful tool for controlling the actions of the population, especially until provisions for a standing army had been conceived. The simple threat of life in the Ghetto usually made grown men tremble in their boots.
Although the other Sisters strictly avoided the Ghetto as not worth their time, Succiu visited there often, actually enjoying the change from her wonderful gowns into rags and walking the Ghetto at night in the light of the three same red moons that had illuminated her homeland. She enjoyed seeing the poverty and the desperation, enjoyed anonymously witnessing the occasional rape or murder. Guarded by her powers, she walked among the Ghetto’s inhabitants without fear, occasionally killing at random simply to sharpen her skills.
She probably would have missed Geldon altogether had it not been for the sound of shattering glass. All of the storefronts in the Ghetto had long since been looted, and Succiu couldn’t imagine that there was any glass left to break.
Curious, she turned a corner into yet another dark street. Looking up and down it, she finally noticed a bit of movement. The feet of a child in rather odd boots were all that could be seen sticking out of a smashed storefront window, toes down and wriggling, as though the child were scrambling after something. Curious, she reached out and grabbed the child’s collar, launching him backward into the mud and glass that covered the street. What she had mistaken for a child she now saw was a dwarf, wincing in pain at having fallen on the hump between his shoulders. She casually placed one of her boots at the base of his throat.
“What were you doing?” she demanded.
He spat upon her leg, defiant. She increased the pressure of the boot on his throat, not really caring whether he lived or died. She could have used her powers to kill him a hundred different ways, but for the moment she was enjoying herself.
“Just one more chance,” she said calmly.