The warrioress Duvessa was standing by Jessamay’s side and barking out orders with equal verve. As Minion Premier Healer and the leader of the cadres of female combat warriors, she commanded great respect. Traax’s wife was an attractive Minion with green eyes. As it was today, her black hair was often tied into twisted braids. A pair of crossed feathers was embroidered into the breastplate of her leather armor. The white feather showed her rank as Premier Healer, and the red one signified her command of the female warriors who participated in combat.
A crude worktable stood before the two women, its top strewn with parchments and diagrams. A stout canvas lay stretched atop wooden poles, shielding the women and the ancient documents from the sun. As Tristan and Ox gratefully took advantage of the shade, the women looked up.
“How is it coming?” Tristan asked.
“We’re nearly done,” Jessamay answered. “There’s just one more brace to shape and install.” She raised her arm and pointed toward the construction site.
Tristan looked out from the shade to see several dozen horses being led their way by Minion warriors. Taken from the palace stables, the thirty-six steeds were harnessed in pairs to a huge, flat cart that had been built solely for moving the massive uprights. Despite the powerful horses, the cart and its odd-looking load neared with agonizing slowness. Realizing that this last brace measured a good fifty meters long and another ten meters around, Tristan couldn’t begin to imagine how much the thing weighed.
As the sweating horses finally pulled the cart to a stop, Jessamay scooped up one of the parchments from the table and went to inspect this last brace. Tristan, Ox, and Duvessa followed.
Like its brothers, the brace was a wondrous example of Minion craftsmanship. The warriors had selected Eutracian oak because of its great strength and high resistance to inclement weather. The massive brace was actually a series of smaller and thinner oak slats that had been carefully cut to size, then glued together. Just now the brace was as straight as an arrow, but that would soon change.
Jessamay spent much time looking at the brace, then consulting her diagram, then looking back at the brace again. She then produced a long measuring string from her trousers and used it to confirm her findings. Finally satisfied, she nodded and returned the string to her pocket.
“It’ll do,” she said simply.
Tristan smiled as he anticipated the next part of the process. He had seen Jessamay do this several times before, and each time it had amazed him. Because of the great length and thickness of the laminated braces, even Jessamay could only bend them a little at a time. This brace would be no exception.
The Vigors sorceress ordered the Minions to unharness the horses and lead them away; then she asked that Ox, Tristan, and Duvessa come and stand behind her. As the three spectators moved into place, Jessamay raised her arms.
At once the far end of the massive brace started to glow. As the azure hue intensified, Jessamay concentrated harder. Soon the near end of the beam began to curve, and hissing steam rose from it to disappear high into the air. When the sorceress was satisfied, she dropped her arms and the azure hue vanished. Taking up her parchment and her string again, she went to check on the first stage of what would be a long and arduous process.
For the next two hours she fussed, measured, and employed the craft to repeatedly force the length of the beam into the proper shape. The curve had to be just right, lest the last cradle become misaligned and cause its Black Ship to sit crookedly. Worse yet, if one beam was misshapen, the others might not be able to withstand the added strain, causing the entire cradle to collapse.
Once the beam cooled, she would order the Minions to ferry it to the last cradle. The warriors would then use great cranes and pulleys to lift it into place and immediately buttress it with side shores. They would then pound spikes into it to join it to the spine, just as Tristan and Ox had been doing. Finally the hundreds of needed crossbraces would be added to strengthen the cradle and to hold the entire framework together.
Glad to be done with her work, Jessamay walked tiredly back to the makeshift shelter. Taking a bottle of claret and several wooden cups from a nearby picnic basket, she placed them on the worktable. By the time the others joined her, all four cups were filled.
Raising her cup, Jessamay watched the others follow suit. She then looked out at the four massive cradles sitting side by side on their stone foundations. Lined up that way, they took up a huge area. Once the Black Ships lay in them, the sight would be even more impressive. Proud to have been a part of this effort, she returned her attention to the others.
“To the Black Ships!” she toasted. “May they take us far and always bring us home again!”
Everyone smiled at that. After draining his cup, Tristan refilled it. But just as he was about to take another drink, he noticed an odd tingling in his blood. He looked up to see that everyone was staring strangely at him. He soon realized that they weren’t looking at his face, but at the gold medallion lying around his neck. He looked down to see that the medallion was glowing.
Tristan was delighted. This was the first time that Shailiha had called on her matching medallion to communicate with him. Placing his cup on the worktable, he grasped his medallion and turned it over.
As he expected, the medallion’s opposite side showed an image of his sister. She was seated in her chair at the great mahogany table in the Conclave meeting chamber, deep in the bowels of the Redoubt. Tristan could see Traax seated on one side of her; the empty chair on the princess’s other side belonged to Jessamay. Caprice the field flier sat perched at the top of Shai’s chair and was gently opening and closing her great wings. Given the limited confines of the medallion, Tristan could not tell whether anyone else was in the room.
As he looked closer, he saw that his sister’s face bore a worried expression. She held up a parchment, and he saw that its words were written in her handwriting. As Tristan read them, a sudden chill went down his spine.
Come quickly, the parchment said. The wizards need us.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE END, THE CITIZENS OF TANGLEWOOD NEVER stood a chance.
As the once beautiful city burned in the night, the vicious man-serpents raged wildly through the streets. Tanglewood held many more inhabitants than had Birmingham. But that was of no consequence, for even now more snakelike beings continued to rise from the stream in Hartwick Wood to swell the monsters’ ranks. As though there were no end to their numbers, they flowed through Tanglewood like a dark, undulating river. Standing in the town square, their leader watched as his servants went about his bidding. He would kill every human he encountered during his quest to find and serve Failee.
From all around him came the screams and sobs of the innocent, as one by one they were impaled like those killed along the Birmingham shore. Because there were so many more victims here, the process would take far longer. But that didn’t matter, for he had all the time in the world.
The grisly impalements were ingenious, ensuring the immobilization of his captives while leaving his servants free to rummage about in the victims’ innards. Some succumbed straightaway after being impaled; others lingered in agony before dying. The crude impalement poles and their bleeding human adornments already filled the great square, and their numbers had started overtaking the connecting avenues and byways. In many cases the impalements wound far up the cobblestoned streets and out of sight, into the inky blackness of the night.
The master turned to look at the writhing victim impaled directly before him. The man had once been hardy and vigorous. He appeared to be somewhere near fifty Seasons of New Life and he had thick, graying hair. Although he had been one of the first to be impaled, he still lived. Despite how tenaciously he clung to life, his death would soon be at hand.
Like all the Birmingham victims, he had been stripped of his clothing. A sharpened pole had been viciously shoved into his groin, then threaded up through his abdomen to emerge near his collarbone. His hands were raised above him
and impaled through his palms; pieces of wood had been fixed to the pole below his hands and feet to prevent him from sliding down the bloodied staff. Blood dripped slowly from his groin and onto the dirty cobblestones. Like all blood, it looked black in the dark of night.
How curious, the serpent master thought. Sometimes the men die so quickly, while the physically weaker women, children, and the elderly often linger for hours. It no doubt had to do with whatever bits were punctured, he reasoned. Clearly, the impaling process was not a precise one. Nor did it need to be.
Hearing another building cave in, he turned to look. Every structure in the city was ablaze. Carrying torches, the grotesque man-serpents had furtively slithered into the dwellings and set them afire, or simply tossed their blazing torches atop the thatched roofs and left them to do their work. Many screaming victims fled the infernos with their clothing and hair afire, and they were allowed to burn to death before being impaled. Some buildings had already tumbled into ruin, while others still spewed orange-red flames from their destroyed doorways and smashed windows.
The crackling of the fires sometimes drowned out the wailing of the victims, and thick, choking smoke curled into the air, blotting out the stars. Many people tried to run, but they were invariably snatched up by the man-serpents’ strong arms or winding tails. Children toddled about aimlessly, wailing and crying out for parents who would never again hold them. Some people emerged to find friends and loved ones already impaled. Many collapsed in grief, sobbing as they hugged their beloveds’ bloody feet before they too were taken up.
The serpent master smiled. Despite ordering the fires to be set, he cared nothing about destroying the city. Rather, the fires were an easy way to force the humans from their dwellings so that they could be caught and spiked. He enjoyed seeing their hovels burn, even though he too had once been human.
He watched as his grotesque servants dragged ever more struggling citizens toward the square. Stacks of freshly hewn impalement poles lay nearby on the blood-slicked cobblestones. There the captives were stripped naked and impaled and their clothing tossed into the raging fires. If they resisted, their livers were harvested quickly by the monsters’ slashing talons and biting teeth, and their dead bodies were impaled anyway.
To better view the grisly scene, the master reached up and lowered the hood of his robe. As he did, the raging fires highlighted his grotesque face. He was called Khristos, and his tale was a twisted one.
Like the heads of the man-serpents that he commanded, his cranium was also hairless, with long, pointed ears. Although his face could not be called entirely human, it was less snakelike than those of his followers. He bore no sharp, twisted horns, and his skin, nose, and lips were human. But his eyes, his tongue, and his teeth told a far different tale.
His large eyes were human in contour, but they held almond-shaped pupils that lay embedded vertically in bright yellow irises. Like those of his followers, his teeth were long, sharp, and yellow, and he possessed the same two pairs of incisors. Also like his servants, his long tongue was bright red and forked, and continually tested the cool night air. The rest of his muscular body was human.
His simple black robe was tattered, and in one hand he held a gleaming silver staff. As he had hundreds of years before, he again commanded the craft with a power and a mastery that easily rivaled any wizard in Eutracian history. And of perhaps even greater significance, there was a secret about Khristos that only a few surviving mystics knew.
Three centuries ago—long before his transformation into the being that commanded the terrible man-serpents—Khristos had been Failee’s secret lover.
Khristos returned his gaze to the impaled man. Somehow the fellow still lived. But whether the man was alive or dead was of no importance, for he would not survive what Khristos was about to do to him. Khristos raised his staff and pointed it at the bleeding man. At once the entire instrument shone, and the death-dealing began in earnest.
An azure beam, so narrow that it could hardly be seen, leapt from the staff and struck the man squarely in the chest. As his skin burned and smoked, he struggled against his impaling pole and cried out in agony. But he soon realized that it was no use, for the more he struggled, the greater the searing pain became.
Khristos used his glowing beam to carve an incision down the man’s body from his throat to his groin. Then he ordered the beam to crack apart the victim’s sternum and separate his rib cage, exposing the man’s working organs. As the sickly-sweet smell of burning flesh rose into the air, it took only a few more moments for Khristos to find and free the man’s liver. By this time the man had died, his chin slumping forward onto his chest. Like wriggling serpents suddenly liberated from a snake charmer’s basket, the man’s glistening intestines slipped free from his gaping body cavity and dangled toward the ground.
His job done, Khristos recalled the azure beam, and his staff reclaimed its gleaming silver color. Using his free hand, he calmly pointed toward the prize he sought and ordered it to float into his grasp. Smiling as blood ran down his hand, Khristos admired the liver in the moonlight. It was a fine specimen, but many more like it would be needed. He turned and handed it to one of the man-serpents standing by his side. Hissing with satisfaction, the monster greedily accepted the bloody prize and devoured it on the spot.
Turning, Khristos walked to the next victim. This one was an elderly woman who was already dead, but neither of those distinctions mattered. Amid the constant screaming and begging of those still being impaled, he once more raised his silver staff. The azure glow again began building within the shining instrument of death.
Just as he was about to incise her body, Khristos heard an unknown voice call out from everywhere, nowhere. Its sudden and unexpected presence startled him.
“Khristos…” it said. Then it was gone.
Turning this way and that, he saw no one except the many terrified victims and his servants who were still hard at work committing the grisly atrocities. With no answer at hand, he again raised his staff. Just as he did, the strange, otherworldly voice visited his mind again.
“Khristos,” the voice repeated. “Stop your work and hear me.”
At first he was overjoyed, hoping that the voice might be that of Failee. But no, he realized sadly, for it had been male. Suddenly gripped by an overpowering yet unexplained need to supplicate himself, he went down on his knees. He placed his staff on the ground beside him and bowed his head. Amid all the gore and mayhem, he waited.
Despite his great prowess in the craft, Khristos did not know what to do. Three centuries ago Failee believed that she might one day have the power to reach out and touch his mind. Now, three centuries later, he somehow understood that he needn’t speak to answer the voice’s mysterious owner.
“I am here,” Khristos thought. “Who are you? What do you wish of me?”
“First, know this,” the voice said. “Your beloved mistress is dead.”
Like a raging river, an intense, overpowering sorrow flowed through Khristos’ being. He wanted to weep and wail, but he steadfastly held his posture of supplication. He dared not move, for a being that could reach out and touch his mind this way must surely be more powerful than he. Summoning up his courage, he decided to ask the question that burned so hotly in his heart.
“How did Failee die?” he asked. “Was she killed in the Sorceresses’ War?”
“No,” the voice answered. “Nor did the Coven win that war. The Directorate of Wizards prevailed.”
“Which of them killed her?” he demanded. “Was it Wigg? Does he live still? Tell me and I will force that Vigors worshipper to rue the day that he was born.”
“It was not Wigg.”
“Who, then?”
“Failee was killed by the reigning Jin’Sai. He murdered her less than three years ago. The Jin’Saiou also walks the earth.”
As Khristos’ sorrow turned to rage, his anger became so great that he could barely respond. His body trembled; he cried aloud; he beat his fist
s upon the bloody cobblestones. Finally he relented and he returned his attention to the mysterious voice.
“Who are you who knows so much and commands such wonders of the craft?” he asked.
“My name is Gracchus,” the voice answered. “Listen carefully and I will tell you many things. Much has happened since Failee committed you to the river. With the First Mistress gone you must abandon your search for her. In her stead, you must now serve me.”
“Why should I do so?” Khristos asked. “With my beloved dead, I am a free entity.”
“True,” Gracchus answered. “But your new, overriding concern is to kill the Jin’Sai and his followers, is it not? Like you, I serve the Vagaries. Unlike you, I command powers that you could only dream of. But even with all your newly born servants you cannot touch the Jin’Sai, for he hides behind the palace walls with his Conclave and his grotesque winged army. If you join forces with me, together we can destroy him. Should you succeed, I will grant to you a reward beyond your wildest dreams.”
“What reward?” Khristos asked.
“You will have complete rule over Eutracia and Parthalon,” Gracchus answered. “Destroy the Conclave and all this will become yours.”
“But how am I to destroy the Jin’Sai,” Khristos asked, “given how well protected he is?”
“He will soon depart the safety of the palace,” Gracchus answered. “But only I know his destination. So tell me—do we have an arrangement?”
Khristos raised his head for a moment and looked out over the atrocity-laden square with nearly unseeing eyes. The events of the last few moments had been stunning, life-altering. He and his servants had been released from the river for but a few hours, yet already had come another great crossroads to navigate. Is following this unseen mystic what Failee would want him to do? he wondered. Could the sacred trust she instilled into him still be honored if he accepted this strange voice from the beyond as his new master? After thinking for a time, he again lowered his head.
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