CHAPTER XXIV
“IS THERE ANY SIGN OF THE CONCLAVE?” KHRISTOS asked. He gave his lead Blood Viper a stern look. “I must be notified the moment theJin’Sai ’s party is detected.”
The creature hissed and shook his head. “No, my lord,” he answered. “Rest assured that when they arrive, we will be ready to strike. As you have ordered, some of us wait in hiding near the cave entrance. When they approach, we will enter the Caves ahead of them and inform you.”
“Very well,” Khristos answered. “Be sure to report to me the moment they are seen. But do not engage them or otherwise alert them to your presence. Let them enter the Caves peacefully. Only then will we take our revenge.”
“Understood, my lord,” the Blood Viper answered. The creature bowed respectfully, then slithered away with several others of his kind to go about its duties.
As he watched his servants go, Khristos smiled. Before committing the viper embryos to the peaceful river in Hartwick Wood, Failee had enchanted a handful of them with the power of speech. These specially gifted ten would one day serve as Khristos’ captains, she had told him. Because of the Blood Vipers’ extremely violent and nearly uncontrollable natures, Failee feared that allowing all of them to converse with one another might lead to discord, perhaps even rebellion.
Some of these specially gifted ones served as Khristos’ eyes and ears above ground, while the others helped to convey his orders to the multitudes. Those that could talk did so in a hesitant, guttural fashion, reflecting the violent nature of their dark personalities. Despite the vipers’ rather inhuman way of speaking, Khristos smiled as he remembered the late First Mistress’s brilliance. The Blood Vipers were among her precursors to the Minions of Day and Night, Gracchus had said.
How ironic, he thought. The first of Failee’s many attempts to develop the Minions are about to battle the final products. The results should prove interesting.
On entering the caves, Khristos unerringly followed Gracchus’ directions and led his servants to the chamber where they could feast on Nicholas’ glowing eggs. With each egg that they consumed he watched them grow stronger and more willing to kill and die, if need be, in the late First Mistress’s name.
Then Gracchus had again communed with Khristos, ordering him to travel deeper yet into the Caves. Again following the lead cleric’s directions, the Viper Lord led his monsters to the shores of the Azure Sea. From there, supply lines had been established so that more eggs could be delivered to the waiting vipers to feed on and build their strength.
Before communing with Gracchus, Khristos considered ambushing theJin’Sai above ground near the entrance to the Caves. But Gracchus had commanded Khristos to let Tristan enter unharmed, bringing his Black Ships and all of his warriors with him. The process would be time-consuming but worth the wait, thePon Q’tar cleric said.
Only after making sure that the enemy had traveled too far into the bowels of the earth to order an effective retreat would Khristos finally spring his trap and slaughter them all. His superior numbers would savagely overwhelm the Vigors worshippers and the winged beasts they commanded. Then he would enjoy watching Tristan’s precious Black Ships burn.
When theJin’Sai and all of his followers were dead, Khristos would take the fight aboveground again and redirect his rage against theJin’Saiou and those remaining Conclave members and Minion warriors who followed her. With Tristan, his Minions, and half of the Conclave killed, Khristos’ victory in this last struggle would be far more assured.
He would then go on to ransack Tammerland, destroy the royal palace, and tear the Redoubt of the Directorate apart from stem to stern. Moreover, he would burn the Tome and the Vigors Scroll to ashes, ensuring that no endowed person could use them against him. Then his next mission could begin as he and his vipers went on to murder every endowed man, woman, and child of right-leaning blood he could find. Vigors blood in Eutracia would exist no more.
After completing his scorched-earth campaign, he would then take his servants to Parthalon in theJin’Saiou ’s two Black Ships. He did not know how to sail them through the air, but that did not distress him. He could easily round up any number of Eutracian sailors living along the coastline, just as he had done with the citizens of Birmingham and Tanglewood. He would use the craft to bend the sailors to his will and force them to take him across the ocean in the traditional way. Once he reached Parthalon, the entire country would fall prey to him and his Blood Vipers. He would then stand astride both nations like a colossus and enjoy the just rewards of dictatorship that Gracchus had promised to him.
Hearing the sounds of the ocean, Khristos turned. While he and his grisly servants eagerly awaited news of theJin’Sai ’s arrival, Khristos took in the amazing sight.
The cavern in which he stood was huge-so mammoth, in fact that he could not see its limits. A great subterranean ocean lay before him, its blue waves stretching away from the rocky shore. Hundred of meters above him, a ceiling of rock lay where the sky would normally have been. The millions of radiance stones ensconced within it lit this place brightly with a sage-green hue, stretching as far as his eyes could see. Even the ocean itself, wide and foam-crested, seemed endless.
The smell of the cool breeze blowing in off the waves reminded him of the coast of Eutracia. The froth-tipped waves were the exact hue produced by the craft. They rushed toward him over and over again, crashing noisily upon the sandy shore some fifty meters from his feet. Behind him lay a long, jagged stone wall, reaching from the sand to the top of the cavern. Hundreds of cave openings pierced the wall, their dark holes often lying many meters above the sand. With Gracchus’ help, Khristos knew that each one stretched for leagues into the living rock. Within those caves his thousands of servants lay coiled and ready to strike at a moment’s notice.
This is where theJin’Saiwill finally meet his death, Khristos thought as he watched the waves constantly assault the sandy beach. Before that can happen, he and his mystics must again find this place, but even that has been skillfully arranged.
Leaving the beach, he trod the sand back to where one of the dark cave entrances stood. From just within its depths he would be able to clearly see theJin’Sai and his forces arrive, for there would be but one entrance available to them-the one that Gracchus and Khristos wanted them to use. Only then would he order the attack.
As he waited among his eager servants, his mind slowly drifted back to the violent era known as the Sorceresses’ War. Failee was losing her struggle for dominance over the craft, but much more blood would be spilled and far more combatants killed before she would finally be defeated. The three Mistresses of the Coven and their forces had gathered deep in Hartwick Wood, hoping to entice the Vigors forces into a trap and annihilate them. It had also been the time of Khristos’ great love for Failee and of her secret plan to commend him and the viper embryos to the peaceful-looking river…
“What troubles you, my love?” Khristos asked.
Turning over, he looked deeply into Failee’s eyes. Sorceress’s eyes, he thought as he became lost in their luster for the thousandth time. Her hazel orbs sometimes seemed to glow, and they were but one of the mysterious qualities that drew him to her. She had coupled with him even more frantically this night, like a desperate woman who feared she was lying with her mate for the last time. For him it had been glorious, overpowering, mesmerizing. But as he waited for a response and got none, he worried.
When he had first approached her and offered his services as an accomplished Vagaries wizard, the First Mistress had reacted with aloofness. It seemed that she regarded him as little more than yet another among the many hundreds of wizards who wished to follow her cause and to see the Directorate destroyed. Later, as his wartime exploits and notoriety blossomed, she took an increasing interest in him. A mutual attraction soon developed, finally enticing them to share a bed.
But as his love for her grew, other than their frenzied physical couplings he could sense no emotional need in her for him. All that he ever saw within those wondrous eyes was her obsession to win this terrible struggle that she had started. Like her prosecution of the war, she approached her frantic lovemaking as if it too were some battle that must be won. She controlled every aspect of her terrible war with methodical savagery, and her carnal need for Khristos was no different.
