20.5

Dirk sniffed the air in the secret passageway leading to Zyrdicia's chamber carefully. It smelled strangely sulfurous. He had never smelled that particular unpleasant odor in the castle.

He had left her on her own for a very short time while he crept away to speak with a messenger from Kastania about the Blackpool claim to the Camerandian arch-duchy. The negotiations were becoming tedious, if only because of the need to keep them from Zyrdicia.

He wondered now what she mischief his wicked pet had gotten into during her few hours away from his watchful gaze.

He had locked her door from the outside. Though the mechanical lock would do nothing to keep her in, it would certainly prevent her meddling servants from reaching her. He had impressed upon her the need to avoid everyone until the problem with the blood hunger was resolved. The risk of some idiotic servant accidentally unleashing her lethal fury upon his own castle genuinely unnerved him.

She had obeyed him perfectly thus far. She ordered Portia to stay in Lyr; she ignored Anthony and Charles entirely. Even Philip was now consigned to some useless task in the library. Dirk had skillfully maneuvered her into a position of voluntary isolation. He was the only person she had spoken to since the episode in the dungeon.

He opened the door to her quarters quietly. An enormous, smokeless brazier burned in the middle of the room. A small iron cauldron bubbled on top of it, emanating blue, noxious fumes. The smell was truly malignant. It burned the back of the throat like some sort of poison.

Zyrdicia sat on a couch with her shiny, black boots propped up on an ottoman, an enormous leather-bound tome spread across her lap.

"Hi," Dirk scowled. He glanced only briefly at the cauldron. "We are to go see your arcanium smith in Lyr tonight. What, pray tell, are you doing?"

"Cooking," she answered matter-of-factly, standing up. She thrust a ladle into the brew and stirred it.

"How fortunate that you have other talents," Dirk grimaced, covering his nose.

"Very funny," she sneered playfully. She looked from the brew to the book. "I'm almost done. We can go to Lyr in a few minutes."

"Get rid of it this repugnant mess! We will leave now!"

"Does this look like the teal color of an ice dragon's egg?" she wondered, ignoring his impatient tone. "I'm not supposed to add the final ingredient until it has the right color -but I've never seen an ice dragon's egg. Have you?"

"Of course not! They've been extinct here for centuries," he growled.

Zyrdicia pursed her lips indecisively. "Then how will I know if it's the right color?"

"I couldn't care less what color it is. It's vile!"

"What the hell," she shrugged. One teal was as good as another, as far as she could tell. She pulled a single black feather from a pocket. Dirk recognized the strange, silver-quilled variety. She dropped it into the cauldron.

A great blue flash of light exploded from the brew. An instant later, the smell vanished.

"All done."

Dirk glanced furtively in the cauldron, fearful the smell would return. "What is it?"

"Poison."

"Ah. I should have guessed. For what purpose?"

"Killing," she answered, glaring at him as though it were a silly question.

Dirk rolled his eyes in irritation. He certainly did not need her to tell him that poison was for killing. "Killing whom?" he prodded, sneering slightly.

Zyrdicia shrugged apathetically. "Who cares?"

Dirk pulled the ladle up out of the cauldron curiously. The stuff had turned an inky black.

"Don't let it splash on your skin!"

"Contact poison?" he smiled with hint of condescension. "How quaint."

"It's extract of Sephiroth Claw. The recipe is several thousand years old. It's normally rather difficult to come by the main ingredient," she explained, taking the ladle from his hand. "A single drop will kill any living thing. Except me."

"Why not you?"

"Because I'm immortal now. I keep telling you that, and you keep forgetting."

"You're sure the poison works?" he asked skeptically, avoiding any conversation about her delusions of immortality.

"Probably. I've never done this before," she frowned.

"Well, then. There is but one way to be certain," Dirk smirked.

20.6.1

Within the hour, a half dozen prisoners in the dungeon confirmed the potion's efficacy. The liquid burned slowly through skin. Once it hit the bloodstream, the victim died a painful death within minutes. Ingesting it worked just as effectively, if somewhat more slowly.

"We could dip your forces' weapons in it," Zyrdicia mused.

Dirk pursed his lips, thinking. "I'm thinking something more . . . far-reaching. Can you rain it upon Baaldorf?"

"No," she replied flatly. "This is all there is. More would require another claw."

Dirk waived his hand dismissively. They both knew that would require confronting another Sephiroth, and that was out of the question. At least for now.

He suggested, "What about loading it into some sort of fire-con and exploding it inside Castle Baaldorf?"

"I don't know how. Do you?"

"No," he frowned. Vector had made him a magical cannon once. He hadn't the slightest idea how the Wizard had accomplished it. And Greystone had destroyed the mines that produced the magic powder necessary for the artillery.

She tapped her fingers impatiently on a table in the dungeon, pondering it. There had to be some fun they could have with the new poison. Her eyes widened suddenly.

She demanded eagerly, "Is it December yet?"

"Of course," Dirk scoffed. For all her charms, she never seemed to run out of stupid questions even a Karteian peasant child could have answered.

"The solstice! Do you people celebrate the winter solstice?"

"I couldn't care less about it," Dirk sneered.

"Not you. The imbeciles in the South!"

"The peasants celebrate it," he conceded suspiciously. "And the southern royal families have always emulated peasants."

"Everywhere else I've visited, they come up with one inane reason or an another to give gifts this time of year. Do they here?"

"Yule," Dirk nodded, his eyes narrowing as he realized where this was going. "It's still a few weeks away."

"Then we'll send food to Castle Baaldorf in honor of the holiday - an early Yule gift."

Dirk arched a brow thoughtfully as he imagined it. The wicked simplicity of it appealed him. His mind instantly began to plot the details of the poisoning.

"They would mistrust any gift from me," he murmured, pulling his diabolically clever wife nearer.

She nuzzled against him and coaxed seductively, "They are starving. They won't be able to reject it. Besides, they already think you lost interest in the war."

"The border between Baaldorf and Tronin is now a dead zone, my dear. Several hundred peasants have attested to my undaunted interest in the South's demise."

"So send them a contrite note claiming your troops ran amok."

"What?" Dirk scoffed in disbelief. "I want them to fear me not forgive me."

"Send the food as an apology. And propose a truce - maybe even suggest a peace talks to discuss an end to the war."

"They are foolish and short-sighted but they surely aren't so stupid as to believe that."

"But they were willing to believe 'falling in love' distracted you from your lust to kill them," she argued, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the perceived absurdity of the supposition.

"It is undeniably true that you have done my reputation harm..." he mused. He was silent a long moment, his mind turning over the possibilities. His eyes lit up suddenly as a scheme took flight in his mind.

"What?" she prodded.

"Everyone in the entire realm knows you have not been seen outside Castle Blackpool since October."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. I'll tell them you are with child."

"Why would that matter?" she demanded, frowning.

"My most potent weapon against them would be neutralized. They would assume I was adopting a conciliatory posture to consolidate my holdings rather than risk losing territory to them." He smiled and winked, "And they are unforgivably sentimental about such family matters."

Zyrdicia's lips twisted in amusement at the irony of his plan. They could not even consummate their betrothal, and yet he was going to convince the world she was pregnant. She could not care less what he told them. She only wanted to see the Sephiroth venom kill as many people as possible. She needed desperately to confirm that even despite the blood hunger, she could still enjoy killing on a massive scale the way she always had - elegantly, creatively and deliberately. This deaths would be born of her freedom to choose how, when and whom to destroy -- rather than some blind, demonic rage.

"A poisoned Yule feast," Dirk purred approvingly, pushing her hair aside to trace the perfect line of her jugular vein. "I shall dispatch the food as soon as we return from our errand in Lyr."

20.6

Dirk dropped the new magical shackles in a heavy, iron box. He pulled the lid shut, then fastened the box's large lock. He slid it carefully into a secret compartment in the wall near his bed. Only one other person in the castle knew of the hiding place - and that person now had a vested interest in maintaining its secrecy. A second lock deep within the wall clicked loudly as he slid the stone block into place.

He glanced at Zyrdicia, who lay on her stomach upon his bed, watching him. Her expression was distant, dream-like and suffused with the surreal innocence no one else could imitate.

"You pleased me tonight," he offered pleasantly, looking down at where she lay atop the coverlet.

She stared back silently, her head resting on her arms. She said nothing.

He knew she was unhappy with the place he had chosen to hide the shackles. She would have preferred to hide them in some distant dimension or a nether world. She was in no frame of mind to argue about it right now, though. In fact, she was so weary that she could hardly string words together. Now that he could bind her securely, having his hands free to work opened up so many fresh possibilities.

The new magical shackles themselves were odd creations. They looked like ornate, rune-covered bracelets. But for a single, telltale loop under each wrist, it would be easy to imagine the pretty objects were jewelry rather than restraints. Constructed purely of Karteian arcanium, they weighed almost nothing at all. When the loops under the wrist fastened together, the device's hold was strong enough that Zyrdicia could not pull them apart - even with Hell's strength behind her. Most importantly, the shackles' enchantment interrupted displacement magic, preventing her from vanishing so long as she wore them. For the first time, tonight she had truly been unable to flee him.

Dirk was positively elated. At first, he had been amazed how easily she had acceded to his wish. He had come to believe, though, that she needed to feel someone else in control of her almost more than he himself needed to be in control of her. They complimented one another perfectly in that respect.

When they had gone to Lyr to acquire the restraints, she agreed to key the new shackles to the monocle. Dirk alone could open them. She had been most nervous of all about that part of the arrangement - the device was devoid of secret escape mechanisms. He had been entirely successful in convincing her that, at least as far as his efforts to curb her blood hunger were concerned, she had to trust him totally. His efforts could not work if she remained free to thwart him in the dungeon. The shackles' psychological effect was far more important to him than the physical one.

His new game with her was not without risk. She had already warned him that she would never forgive him if he allowed the shackles to fall into anyone else's hands. The thought of it left him ill at ease. No one else could ever even know the device existed. They both had far too many enemies who could exploit it.