During that first year of her marriage to Hirn Sil perfected a personal shield to help the children in the
Orphanage, an item that could be thrown to cause an explosion, to help prevent miners from having to venture
into dangerous areas to dig, a device for talking to another person over long distances and a device for a
hospital that filtered magic absorption, allowing in extreme cases physician mages to transfer their own energy
to that of a patient, with less chance of the patient being injured by the alien force.
Her Study on the third floor had almost become her home. Hirn sometimes joined her there, and she had found it
thrilling to be sitting side by side working together on the items that she was making. It was also a new thing
for her to have someone with the sort of brain that could understand her work, if only a little.
Hirn played the role of apprentice, but within six months he was capable of making the more simple devices himself,
he was soon an expert in the shielding device.
Sil could not explain everything to him, some of it seemed to simply be in her head as knowledge that she had
always had. The world where she found the original devices and plans and texts explaining them were accessible
by Portal, and she and Hirn visited there a few times in that first year to examine the ruins of the
civilisations that had once flourished there. It was inhabited only by insects now, but was a treasure house of
parts and information if you knew where to look. Somehow Sil always did. She called it “the Scrapyard.”
Hirn was often called away on this or that emergency after that first time. Sil was more often alone than not.
She threw herself into her work to avoid pining for him. Time seemed to stretch and simply disappear.
When they had been married for three months, Hirn had returned from his fourth mercy mission for his Order and
grasped her by both hands, his eyes full of devotion.
“I have almost forgotten, you know nothing of our ways, and by midnight tonight the first Rite of our marriage must
be celebrated. You are always working so hard, tonight is for us. We will spend an evening together and
affirm our vow to each other.”
Sil had been overjoyed. So little time spent together since the first few weeks.
Hirn told her that the first Rite was to do with exchange of trust, and that evening they retired to the sacred
area of their home. They both knelt facing each other.
“What must I do ?“ she had asked nervously.
His voice was patience itself. “It is a very deep sharing. I will make a small wardlet, and you will absorb it,
then you will do the same, and I will absorb it.
For the first time since her arrival here Sil had felt slightly uneasy, this was forbidden to every culture she had
visited, and yet gazing into his eyes she could not help but be excited by the idea of a fascinating and erotic sharing
of the deeply personal magical power of themselves.
He clasped both of her hands, A small ward, but fashioned to look like a red rose appeared between them.
“Absorb it into yourself, and with it my love, my essence and my all” he said tenderly.
She did, and felt her body tingle throughout, a sexual and emotional experience, exciting and new. She desired him
at that moment above anything else in the world. Her body longed for more of the sensation. “Ahhhh”,
she allowed her pleasure to escape as a physical out breath. Without prompting she fashioned a similar wardlet,
and shaped it into in the form of a pure white lily, “my love, my essence, my all” she repeated his words back to
him, and watched as he slowly accepted her offering. As he absorbed it she was surprised to feel within herself
a hungry and demanding yearning for him,as the energy that had been her own became his.
His eyes spoke his pleasure to her, and then she and he fell upon each
other, tearing from each other the ceremonial robes that they had donned for the occaission, and coupling in
frenzied and lustful abandon.
They were oblivious to everything except the yearning for eachother.
She was lost in a maze of sensual pleasure, each corner turned a new sensation.
Then in front of her she sensed a second ward, “my all” he whispered in her ear, his voice hypnotic and undeniable.
Sil absorbed the second scarlet rose hungrily and could hardly bear the pleasure.
It was as if every cell in her body knew its own passion. she followed suit, hoping to provide similar pleasure for him.
Again, she felt him take her essence and the hunger that it caused provoke more of the longing within her.
Then impossibly, a third rose appeared and she knew there was no limit to the climbing,
that they could travel this road of increasing pleasure forever,
and that it was all that she wanted.
She fashioned her own ward and both rose and lily hung above them for a second, and when he was sure that she had understood,
when it was shining from her eyes, her complete surrender, he absorbed it, and she quickly likewise.
“You are truly mine?” he asked, breathless, sated and spent, “always” she whispered lost in ecstatic wonder, “always.”
The next day had brought another summoning, and Hirn had been almost distraught. “I can’t leave you, I can’t leave
you now.” he had moaned, lying in her arms as they both read the note that he had brought from the hallway into
their bedroom. Sil was also shaken at the thought of losing him again, especially now. It was as if
whatever had passed for sex between them before last night had been merely an embrace, pleasant and satisfying,
but not quite the real thing.
“When will you return?” she asked, forcing some optimism into her voice.
“A few weeks, perhaps sooner. I have to leave soon” his voice full of disappointment.
On it went, the returns, surprise announcement of rites requiring larger and larger amounts of energy to be
absorbed and exchanged, the passion, the departures, requests for more technology for the unending list of
good causes that Hirn had an interest in. Sil realised in the sixth month of her marriage that she was pregnant.
Hirn was absent, she had begun to not exactly disbelieve the reasons for his absences at this time, but to
resent them certainly. The pregnancy had had a strange effect on her perceptions. She found that with her
attention focused on the baby inside her, she had a lessening in her dependence upon Hirn, an acceptance that
when he was not there, he was just not there.
She started to have thoughts about the time before their insular and secret marriage. Hirn had said that he had
knowledge about two people who could have been her parents. Why had he not taken her to the location as he had
promised, and why had she never asked him to take her there? She felt fiercely protective of the baby that she
was carrying, and wanted very much to see Avin. She had not given him a second thought since leaving him six
months previously when it had still been Winter here, now it was high summer. How could she have simply
forgotten about her own brother?
She would have used the portal to travel to the Keep there and then, but she didn’t know whether it was safe whilst
she was carrying her child. Something made her want to be certain that she was in good health. She began
a meditative process that had once been second nature to her before she had met Hirn. A complete
immersion into her own energies. After some hours of meditation, her attention returned to the room in which
she had been slavishly creating and adapting technology.
“Sil, you complete and pathetic idiot!” she admonished herself cruelly.
Her thoughts now completely clear, she scanned the room. Three static spells in here. One Glamour, one Compliance
and one Ward. The ward would be to alert Hirn should she have a visitor in here, the compliance was easily
dealt with, she created a shield of mental clarity for herself. It would easily counter it. The glamour was
aimed around herself. With the clarity spelling complete she approached a mirror that hung over the desk.
Her face sported a ruddy complexion that she had never owned, and it was more than just the flush of pregnancy.
A few slightly broken veins were evident around her eyes and mouth. This was the result of the exchanges of force
that Hirn had described as Rites. She was certain of this. They were Rites certainly, but not marriage Rites,
these were initiation Rites. He was drawing her into something a little more complicated than marriage with an
exciting sex life.
What to do?
How would he view her pregnancy? If he wasn’t pleased, she feared for the baby.
There was no love, she could feel no love in herself.
She didn’t even love him now, she was just suspicious and a little afraid of him.
With his compliance spelling lifted, she almost hated him.
She had fallen in love with him at first, she knew that, really and without these spellings of his.
When had he thought it necessary to bind her like this?
She estimated that her real feeling had been compromised when she had arrived back on Artez, that last trip from the Keep.
That was the point where he had her at her most vulnerable, besotted with him, and that had been where he had wanted to keep her.
What to do?
She had maybe three days before Hirn came back from the fishing village where a flying monster was terrorising the
inhabitants. She had been working on a proximity scanner so that they could be forewarned in case it
attacked again.
Gods! How she could have been this stupid and gullible was beyond belief!
The bastard was using her as his personal weapons master, his friends at the Order would be laughing into their
exclusive wines at her expense for years!
That’s where the swine is! She realised that he had probably been to none of these places. He was simply residing
at the Order House. He always had been, giving her chance to please him with weapons for a purpose she
didn’t know whether she agreed with or not.
Giving her just enough time to miss him enough to be grateful when he came back.
Grateful enough to believe another concocted story and make another useful tool for him the next time he went away.
Thinking about it, the amount of time that he had spent with her, he probably didn’t like her much at all,
and he certainly couldn’t love her to treat her like this.
Her face was a picture of murderous intent, thoughts of revenge vied with thoughts of flight for position in her mind.
She had no where to run to, rarely having ventured outside of the grounds, she knew no-one except Hirn.
The Portal was a last resort, she wouldn’t risk her baby unless they were both in a “dead anyway” situation.
Not once, she realised had she thought of the child as “our baby”.
So she was faced with matching deception for deception. Could she convince him that nothing had changed between them?
Perhaps the pregnancy would be useful, women usually behaved differently when pregnant.
She had to limit the damage that she had done by letting him have the technology.
He knew the location of the world that she used for tools and parts, but he only knew how to make a shield.
The rest he had not spent enough time mastering. He was lazy, she realised.
It might not matter too much if she could begin to remove the plans and drawings from her Study, gradually.
She would use her pregnancy to explain her slow progress on the new project.
As soon as the baby was born they would flee to the Keep.
Nothing on heaven or all the worlds would help Hirn if he followed them there.