She had seen Succiu’s eyes roam over Kluge’s body, and she knew why. Smiling, the memories of so long ago began to fill the corners of her mind.
As she continued to stare out at the Parthalonian countryside, one memory in particular came back to her, one that she had taken the luxury of revisiting often during these last, important days. Her mind began to drift happily back to over three hundred years ago, during the war in Eutracia when she had first taken the knowledge of the Vagaries from the wizards.
It had been in Florian’s Glade, a city recently taken by the Coven. The captured wizard had been brought to her as a delightful surprise, and she had ordered him to be bound to a chair in the center of the town square in preparation of her interrogation of him.
But this one was strong, she knew, and she therefore decided first to try another way to convince him to give up his secrets rather than simply trying to force the knowledge from him. She smiled to herself, luxuriating in the irony of the moment and the solution that had so conveniently offered itself up.
For the Coven already had his daughter.
As Vona dragged the young girl forward to face her father in his simple but unforgiving prison in the sun, Failee gave him one brief, awful chance to save his only child. She stared down into his amazingly potent eyes and issued her stark, excruciating demand.
“Give all of your knowledge to me,” she said quite simply, “or you shall witness your only child, your beautiful daughter of endowed blood, perish before your eyes.”
At first the wizard was dumbstruck to see before him the daughter he had thought dead for so long, and the tears that began to form in the corners of his eyes ran down his cheeks and into the thirsty dirt of the courtyard. But strangely, he did not speak. He lowered his head in defeat.
But then his countenance hardened, as he became certain of the path he must take regardless of his personal feelings. He looked the First Mistress in the eyes, trying at the same time to avoid the eyes of his only child.
“No,” he said simply. He spat as hard as he could into Failee’s face, his heart tearing in two, knowing that he had just condemned his daughter to death.
Upon a short nod from Failee, Vona immediately grabbed the now-screaming girl by the hair and dragged her into a nearby house. The begging and shrieking were horrifying, and seemed to go on and on forever as if the sorceress was taking her time with her grisly task, enjoying her work. The wizard, powerless against the combined talents of the Coven, struggled pitifully in his chair, trying to escape while the unthinkable happened. And then all went quiet as Vona walked back out into the center of the square with a bloody dagger in one hand and a lock of his daughter’s blond hair in the other.
She threw it into his face, laughing.
At that point the torture had started. And the Vigors and Vagaries that were so painfully ripped from the wizard’s mind became an essential part of the powers of the Coven. As Failee’s torture of the wizard progressed, her powers and understanding of the craft grew, and she willingly passed on the basic tenets of the darker side of the craft to her Sisters, the three females of endowed blood whom she had chosen to be her closest allies and to help her rule Eutracia after they had taken the kingdom.
She could still remember the moment when she finally broke through his mind and found what it was she had been searching for.
You have done it, her heart cried out. You have broken the most powerful of them all! And then she had smiled at him yet again, and had spoken the words intended to pierce his heart like daggers.
“You are now completely mine,” she said softly, almost reverently, to the wizard as he sat there in his chair of torture, unable to move.
And for the next several months she had walked unfettered through his mind, his power, his very soul, learning and taking, committing psychic rape and delving into what she was sure was every part of his subliminal being, and his talents.
In addition she had also found the incantation that she had now so long held to her breast. The one that would, very soon, prove to be so invaluable to their mission.
And then, surprisingly, the acute, unfulfilled desires had come. One day, while struggling to understand one of the more arcane passages of the Vagaries, she and the others had all felt the unexpected stirring of their loins. The hugely sexual, needful longings had been intensified by an insanely irresistible desire to inflict those same sexual needs upon others.
Of both genders.
And with the resultant acts of depravity had come to Failee the shocking, absolute certainty that it was, indeed, these blissful feelings of ecstasy that truly helped augment their power. That the quality of their blood and, therefore, their ability to employ the Vagaries became stronger each time they indulged themselves in yet greater forms of sexual wickedness. And that to fulfill completely her potential as a true mistress of the Vagaries she must gladly obey that dark side of the craft, and willingly surrender to the depravities it was calling upon her and her sisters to perform. Failee had therefore encouraged such predilections, this sickness of the soul and of the body. Encouraged them, in fact, to such an extent that the construction of the Stables had been a necessity, rather than an indulgence.
Strangely, perhaps because the First Mistress was the most powerful of the Coven, the greater her understanding of the Vagaries became, the more her own sexual longings had begun to lessen and finally to dissipate, leaving her with only a pure, unadulterated need for the perfection of the craft. Her sexual needs had been replaced by a calmness, an inner peace, that she now knew only a true adept of the Vagaries could attain. But she continued to encourage the carnal activities of the others, hoping that one day they, too, would ascend to her level of superiority.
But in the end the sorceresses had lost. Lost the war that they had tried so hard to fight and win. And only because it had been the bastard wizards who had first found the stone and the Tome.
Reluctantly she turned from the window, glided back to her throne, and sat down. No one else in the room had spoken or moved. Failee’s personal reveries were legendary, and her silence could be deafening. Kluge, the commander of the Minions, stood patiently waiting for her to speak, as did the others. Her mind finally came out of the past and began to concentrate upon the present.
“Of most importance, Commander, is the condition and state of the warships. Tell us, what is their battle status?”
“The vessels of which you speak have come under the highest scrutiny of all, Mistress,” he assured her. His eyes flicked briefly to the others at the table. “They have been checked, sailed, and checked again. One thousand strong. Each captain has been handpicked and rigorously trained. As per your orders, the captains have been given the best of Minion quarters, food, wine, and females for recreation. The holds of each vessel are filled to capacity with the appropriate weapons, and each of the captains has spent time familiarizing himself with the capricious nature of the maritime winds. Water and provisions for the journey have been set aside, and will be loaded when I am given a sailing date. We have also taken the liberty of fashioning a death’s head to the prow of each ship, which has heightened morale even further. Each man is anxious for the campaign to begin.”
“What are your casualty estimates?” she asked. She knew that it was an unfair question, given the fact that Kluge had not been fully informed of the nature of the mission. Nonetheless she wanted him to answer first, to see if his numbers came close to those of her own.