11.9

Inside the lord's chamber's in the hunting lodge, Zyrdicia listened to Dirk's breathing as he slept. It would have been such an easy thing to slit his throat. She wondered suddenly what his blood would taste like.

She could not understand why he needed to rest after they played. The effect continued to perplex her. She was wide awake. It was still dark out. She could stand the boredom no more and wriggled free of his grasp. She wrapped herself in a soft blanket from the foot of the bed and moved to the fireplace. The fire had died some time ago. The pale glow of its dimming embers supplied the room's only heat now. She moved several logs into it with her mind, then ignited them with an explosive burst of diabolic energy.

Her purple eyes traveled to a nearby window. The bright moonlight reflecting on the snow outside made the world look altogether ghostly. The night's quiet beauty intrigued her. She walked to the door leading to a balcony and lifted the bar across it. An iron key rested in the lock. She turned it and opened the door. A thrilling blast of cold air met her face, then nipped at the rest of her flesh. She heard Dirk stir in bed.

Outside, thick snow blanketed the balcony. Crystalline icicles hung from the roof, glittering in the light of the fire spilling out from the open door. She could not recall ever seeing icicles before. She stepped outside, feeling the snow on her bare feet. The biting cold made it feel like walking on razor blades. She looked down and weighed going back inside. She had really had more of the snow than she had cared for earlier in the evening. The glittering icicles fascinated her, though.

She steeled herself for the cold and walked out into it. She climbed up on the slippery railing to better view the icicles, oblivious to the danger. His balcony was several stories above the ground.

"I'll be terribly offended if you leap to your death right now. Come back inside!" Dirk commanded from the doorway, where he stood wearing a thick woolen robe embroidered with his family's crest.

"There are icicles on the roof."

"Of course there are icicles! Winter comes early here."

"They look like sharp, diamond spires. They're beautiful," she observed taking her hand off the adjacent wall to reach up toward them. She stretched her hand up toward the glittering spears of ice, which hovered just out of reach. He walked out and wrapped his arms around her hips, lifting her a few inches off the railing so that she could reach them. A clicking sound accompanied the breaking of the ice.

He then took a step forward, holding her over the dark abyss below. She laughed inexplicably. "Why aren't you afraid that I'll drop you?" he asked curiously.

"Because if you do, I'll fly away."

"And how does one clip a dark angel's wings?"

"I'll never tell."

He opened his arms around her hips just enough to let her body slide down in his arms so that she was at eye level. "I could have dropped you."

"You wouldn't dare. I trust you."

"That's a dangerous thing to do. No one trusts me."

"No one else should. I do because I can."

"And what makes you so certain of that?"

"I know that you are motivated by possession, not merely acquisition. You aren't about to let me go. You are addicted to my power."

"Then I think I shall retrieve that which is mine and covet my possession in front of a warm fire." He lifted her back toward him over the railing then gathered her up in his arms. He carried her to the fire and set her upon a rug of soft, white fur that had once been worn by an ice bear.

He straightened and returned to the balcony door, locking it. He pulled the iron key from the lock and dropped it into the pocket of his robe. She unwrapped the blanket from her body and tossed it aside, enjoying the simple, sensuous feeling of the flames' warmth on her bare skin and the fur beneath her. She turned to face the fire and watched the icicle spire vanish in her fingers. The sound of glass tinkled somewhere in the room.

When Dirk returned to her, he carried two snifters of brandy. He set them on the stone in front of the fire and knelt beside her. She felt his eyes travel fondly along every curve of her naked body.

"Do I have to chain you to the bed to keep you from escaping while I sleep?"

"I have yet to meet chains from which I couldn't escape, " she answered absently, still facing the fire.

He took a sip of brandy, thinking. "I recall once reading a story the ancients told of a fierce wolf named Fenrir. Like you, the rampaging beast managed to break every chain used to bind him. So the gods then secretly forged a magic fetter. In his arrogance, the wolf allowed one of them to place it upon him, certain it couldn't hold him. That was the creature's downfall. Supposedly he's still bound out in the Land of Fog somewhere."

Zyrdicia turned and looked up at him curiously. "I know that story. My mother told it to me. The god who successfully fettered the wolf had to sacrifice his swordhand to the creature's jaws to accomplish the task." She smiled, "Your swordhand is of more use to me on you, however."

"Unlike most swordsmen, I fight equally well with either hand," he remarked, touching both hands to her taut stomach then moving them slowly up her torso. They kissed slowly, with their eyes open in the manner she preferred.

"Dirk?" she asked pulling away.

"What now?"

"The snake rune. Does it represent you or your family?"

He looked confused at the odd conversational turn. Her attention span was often maddening. "Both. As ruler it represents me. Why ever are you thinking about that right now?"

She lowered her chin and looked at him oddly. She wanted to push their games much farther. She also had an unexpected, sudden desire to rip his heart out and devour it. She looked into the fire. "Because I want you to..." her words trailed off.

"Cut my sigil into you?" he asked smugly, finishing her thought.

She nodded, smiling at the excitement she saw glitter in the depths of his eyes. He looked as though he could not quite believe she was really asking him to do this. She lied, "My scars are permanent reminders of very happy memories. It's a way for me to keep a fragment of a moment forever."

He pulled her chin toward him to see her eyes. "And you want something to remember this by forever?"

She nodded again, her eyes twinkling like exotic jewels in the firelight. "Please?"

He smiled, flattered, as she had known he would be. He caressed her cheek. "Few things would give me greater pleasure than seeing my personal sigil emblazoned in your flesh for all time." He started to stand up and said, "Let me get a blade."

She held him back, her expression playful. "Wait. Were you serious about having chains here?"

"Of course not. Why?"

She arched an eyebrow suggestively.

His eyes filled with mirth. He nuzzled against her neck, biting it softly. "You should have told me of this before we left Castle Blackpool, I'm afraid. Although..." He thought a moment and looked across the room at the window, his mind working quickly. "Wait here."

She let him go this time and turned back toward the flames. She took a sip of brandy. Somewhere in the lodge she heard a clock strike three o'clock. Behind her, he closed the drapes on several windows in anticipation of the inevitable dawn.

He returned and sat down behind her. He moved her hair to the side, then his hands moved over the flawless skin of her back, admiring the image already there. "Do you know where you want it?"

She shook her head, "It doesn't matter. You decide."

"With pleasure." He straightened her shoulders so that she faced away from him again. In the next instant, darkness descended over her as he wrapped a strip of silken fabric around her eyes. She smiled, thoroughly delighted by the surprise. He secured the blindfold, then leaned her back into his arms.

She searched for his face with her hands and found it hovering very close. Her fingers lingered on his lips so that she could find him to kiss him. As their tongues met, he pulled her fingers away from his face and gathered both her wrists firmly in one of his hands.

She felt him bind her wrists tightly together with a second strip of the same silken cloth. She ran her fingers along the ends of the thick fabric after he tied it and realized it was a window sash. "Are you certain cloth with hold me?"

"I'm positive it will."

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"Because, my little Fenrir, if you so much as pull at the knots, I will stop," he whispered very near her ear. "That is a promise."

She nodded. The cloth holding her wrists was nothing more than a theatrical prop. She could shift her matter and free herself at any moment. His words were the true fetter. The thought of him ending the game was unbearable. She wanted something very specific from him tonight. The pain and bloodflow would take her there.

She turned her face toward him, searching for his lips. When he kissed her this time, there was nothing teasing about it. The kiss' firmness had an inexplicable selfishness to it.

He attached another piece of fabric to the one restraining her wrists. He turned her body and stretched her out along the length of the soft fur of the white bear skin before pulling her bound wrists above her head. The blindfold's darkness amplified her sensory perception powerfully. Tactile sensation became her only reality. She sighed in anticipation of the blade's bite.

"Be very still," he whispered, caressing her left inner thigh.

The skin there would be exquisitely sensitive. So many nerve endings, she thought greedily. Outward pretense aside, she believed that she was very much in control of the situation. She had created it for herself, not for him. "Make the cut wide and deep or it will vanish in a few days," she demanded.

"Shh! Let me concentrate."

The blade's initial touch was delicate and flirtatious. Dirk traced a thin outline of the intended image with careful precision. When it was complete, he kissed away the few drops of blood trickling from it and examined it for a moment. Satisfied, he proceeded to press the knife's tip into her flesh. He carved the image slowly and deeply into the muscle, enjoying himself thoroughly.

Zyrdicia gasped as pain surged through her. Its dark embrace gripped her psyche. Her breathing slowed as the blade's effect propelled her into depths of her sensory paradise she had forgotten existed. Blood flowed steadily from the wound. She could think of no more perfect expression of affection. She reached out telepathically to caress her partner's mind, entwining her own around it.

When Dirk stopped, he had embedded the Blackpool snake crest deeply the firm, white flesh of her inner thigh. "Your tolerance for pain never ceases to amaze me," he whispered. He touched a towel to the wound to clear the blood so that he could examine it more clearly.

She heard him take a sip of brandy. He touched his lips to the cut, still holding the liquor in his mouth. Fire exploded inside the laceration as the potent alcohol spilled into it.

She moaned as fresh agony flared up in a wondrous conflagration, very nearly unseating her consciousness. Her breath came in slow, rapturous gasps. As the unholy inferno raged, every other sensory perception became an ethereal synesthesia that stood in opposition to the overwhelming reality of the pain. The taste of his tongue in her mouth, the sound of his whispers in her ear, the feel of his hands caressing her body's most sensitive places blended into that single mysterious sensation of Otherness, a unity of perception apart from the pain which defined her being right now. Even when his fingers began the work that would bring her bliss to its natural conclusion, the pleasure merged into that distant unity. She screamed, arching her back and writhing against her bonds as the Otherness finally reared up and swallowed her, subsuming the pain, along with every breath, every remnant of conscious thought into its all-encompassing, synesthetic fold of ecstasy. In that instant, her entire being had coalesced into the core of power that lies at the heart of the universe, the seething energy that spawns magic, creates life and craves destruction. She tried to scream out triumphantly a second time as it absorbed her and then became her. Her voice was lost in its vastness. For the space of a heartbeat, she knew what omnipotence was. It sucked her in, then spit her back out again to reel in weightless rapture through the cosmos.

It had been a century since her soul had visited that sacred space. Azriok had shown her the way, so many years ago. It was the place where all the energy in the cosmos frothed and churned before bubbling out and overflowing into other worlds. Sometimes the most powerful humans saw it the moment they died, glimpsing momentarily the majesty of something they could never comprehend, something forever denied them by their mortality. As she floated and careened through its wake, she reveled in it.

Dirk reached up and removed the blindfold then. She blinked unseeing for a moment as her brain struggled to separate senses fused by euphoria. She felt as though she were returning from a surreal, ecstatic dream. Her breath still came in shallow, ragged gasps. When her sight finally returned, his face hovering over her was the first sight she beheld. As they stared into each others eyes', she released her grip on his psyche very slowly. He sighed. In his mind, she sensed that the mystery of what had happened awed him. Her soul's hold upon on his mind had endowed him with the sensation, the experience of its power, but he stood before it like an ant upon the surface of a beautiful painting, discerning the colors and lines but without the perspective to see the image in its entirety.

She knew that had never in his life been so intensely involved with anyone. She created an inevitable, supernatural closeness born of her ability to conjoin minds and spirits, born of blood flow, pain and power. It was alien to human existence, the province of more metaphysically advanced entities. Its nearest analog in the material world was the momentary psychic intimacy between a killer and his victim at the instant of death. She knew that when she tired of the game with him and destroyed Aparans, if he lived, he would always crave it.

An involuntary shudder ran down her spine. She altered her physical matter to become momentarily immaterial in order to free herself from the bonds still holding her wrists. Her eyes moved reluctantly around the room as she descended back into matter. The brandy snifters next to her were shattered, the spilled amber liquid reflecting the firelight upon the stone. Shards of glass littered the floor throughout the room. Every mirror and window had broken.

He followed her gaze and said, "Your scream. I suspect you woke the dead. You've never done that before."