It would be her pleasure.
Eventually she reached the top of the staircase and stood before the great double mahogany doors. The Pentangle had been inlaid into each of the doors in brass, and magic was required to enter. These were the doors to the Coven’s Chamber, the highest and most private area of the Recluse.
As First Mistress of the Coven she had purposely decided to be late, to keep the other mistresses waiting. She uncurled one of her long fingers toward the doors and commanded them to open. To further illustrate the point of her leadership, she levitated herself and slowly glided into the room, finally coming to a stop in front of her throne and gently hovering there in dominance of the others already seated.
She was relieved to see that the other mistresses of the Coven were dutifully in attendance, each one in her prescribed throne. One throne was placed at each point of the oddly shaped five-cornered table. Two thrones remained blatantly empty. One was Failee’s, into which she gracefully lowered herself. The other throne had been empty for centuries. No one had sat in it since the first day it had been brought to this room, over three hundred years ago.
Ironically, the darkness of the meeting’s agenda was completely offset by the light and airy beauty of the room. The walls and floor were of the finest blanched white marble. Paintings and sculptures in a variety of styles and colors were strategically placed about. One entire wall of the great room had been given over to leaded stained-glass windows that were now shut, and highly patterned rugs lay here and there upon the marble floor. Several gold oil lamp chandeliers hung from the ceiling, giving the room a soft, golden touch as twilight slowly advanced with the coming of night.
Without speaking, she looked in turn into each of the faces of her Sisters, the other mistresses who had been with her so long and had gone through so much. To her immediate right in a stunning red gown sat Succiu, second mistress of the Coven. On Succiu’s right was Vona. Her straight, red hair did little to detract from the intensity of her blue eyes. An emerald representation of the Pentangle hung around her neck on a gold chain. The last was Zabarra, the youngest of them but one of the most powerful. She was also one of the most sarcastic. Her green eyes smiled at Failee as she played with the end of one of her blond ringlets.
Failee continued to gaze at the three other women. They appeared to be younger than she, since the time enchantments had come to her later in life. She smiled herself knowingly. The wizards, too, had been older at the time they had discovered the time enchantments. Like me, they appear mature, she thought. And always will.
But the three before her she had chosen as her most trusted followers not only because of their power but also because of their relative youth and vitality—vitality that would be forever preserved by the time enchantments. The fact that they were younger and less experienced did not concern her, since she knew she would have all of eternity to train them. And she did not envy their eternal youth and beauty. After all, she thought, they shall never possess the power that I do.
“You’re late,” Vona said almost casually, her face a curious mixture of courtesy and impertinence. “Has it now to become the custom to keep other Sisters waiting for the beginning of such an important meeting?”
“Your tone tells me that perhaps you need a visit to the Stables, Vona,” Failee said easily, but her hazel eyes stared commandingly into Vona’s deep-blue ones. She tossed back heavy, dark hair that was shot through with streaks of premature gray. “After all, they are there for your unlimited enjoyment, are they not?”
Failee could see the anger begin to rise in Vona’s face, but before the redhead could answer she was interrupted by a different voice. A male voice.
“Good evening, Mistress,” Geldon gurgled as he trudged out from behind Succiu’s throne.
Succiu slapped the dwarf across the face with the back of her hand. He went down hard upon the marble floor, his cheek bleeding from the cut put there by the ornate gemstone ring that Succiu always wore on the third finger of her left hand. Failee saw Geldon’s eyes blaze red for a moment before slowly returning to their usual look of controlled servitude.
“How dare you speak to the First Mistress without being spoken to first!” Succiu hissed, her eyes narrowed into slits. “Perhaps I should simply take you back to that awful place where I found you.” She threw one side of her long black hair over her shoulder as if in contempt of his very presence. Geldon slowly rose back up to his feet.
“Even though you insist upon being around that gruesome creature, at least you are keeping it on a leash,” Zabarra said, shaking her head, her eyes to the ceiling. The tip of her right index finger remained lost inside the end of one of her ringlets as she spoke. “We are fully aware that he does all of the scouting for us, but must you always bring him here, as well?”
“Take care, Sister,” Vona cautioned. “One day he will turn on you.” Succiu laughed impulsively. “Really, Vona?” she retorted. “And just how would he accomplish that? After all, he’s only a man. And a little, mortal, emasculated one at that.”
“Enough of this,” Failee snapped, once more in command of the meeting. “Our guest should by now be waiting outside the door. Zabarra, please bring in Commander Kluge.”
Zabarra went to the double doors and opened them, letting a tall man into the room. He walked slowly to the front of the table and stood quietly. His name was Kluge, and he was the commander of the Minions of Day and Night, the personal army of the Coven.
Unkempt but clean black hair streaked with gray fell past his shoulders. The dark, neatly trimmed mustache and goatee surrounded a firm mouth, and intelligent eyes, piercingly dark to the point of almost being black, seemed never to miss a thing. He was a tall, muscular man, almost handsome, except for the whitish scar that ran from the outside corner of his left eye, down his cheek, and into the small forest of his goatee. The energy and strength apparent in him were always kept under tight control, yet it always seemed as if simply looking at him could somehow cause one harm.
Upon his promotion to commander, Failee had given him permission to wear black. The sleeveless, black leather tunic revealed strong, scarred chest and arm muscles. Silver-trimmed forearm gauntlets, also black, ended at the first knuckle of each hand. Just above the first knuckle of each finger were spiked, silver finger rings, designed for stabbing and slashing at close quarters. Black leather boots trimmed in silver and a shiny winged helmet with horizontal eye slits held under the left arm completed the picture.
The curved, sheathed sword at his side was the mainstay of the Minion warrior. The sword, called a dreggan, looked like an ordinary sword, but at the touch of a lever built into the hilt, the blade would extend with great force up to another foot. During running swordplay, in which proper distancing was crucial, a Minion could surprise his opponent with the sudden appearance of an extra foot of swinging, flashing steel that had not been there before; or he could place the dreggan against the opponent’s body and suddenly impale him with no apparent effort. A blood groove always ran down the blade’s shiny, silver edge. It was fabled to be so sharp that when a silk scarf had once been thrown into the air in jest, it had been neatly halved by a well-turned dreggan before it hit the ground.
But the last of Kluge’s weapons was the one that Failee found the most intriguing.
The returning wheel.
Hanging from Kluge’s right hip was a silver hub, from which protruded flat, curved blades, equally distanced apart. When properly thrown, the returning wheel could slice through a victim cleanly and then return in a large circle to its owner. To be in the midst of a battle amid a flurry of returning wheels brought obvious danger not only to the enemy, but also to the Minions themselves. The proper use of a returning wheel took years to perfect, and Kluge was an expert. Failee glanced at the glove that Kluge wore over his right hand. The palm of the black leather glove was padded with lead, which allowed the returning wheel to be safely plucked back out of the air upon its return. The pad of Kluge’s glove had long since been permanently stained with blood.