| Chapter 22: Anundivian Yajña |
|
"You tease me," she replied. "I am not so poor a crafter." There was a peculiar hunger in her smile. "Beloved, I have sculpted you."
Slowly, his ire faded. After all, she was his daughter, not his wife. She was entitled to any reproach that seemed fit to her. He could not remain angry with her. Carefully, he placed the bust on the grass, then reached out toward her and took her into his arms as the sun set. She entered his embrace eagerly, and for a time she clung to him as if she were simply glad to put their anger behind them. But gradually he felt the tension of her body change. Her affection seemed to become grim, almost urgent. Something taut made her limbs hard, made her fingers grip him like claws. In a voice that shook with passion, she said, "This also Fangthane would destroy." He lifted his cheek from her hair, moved her so that he could see her face. That sight chilled him. Despite the dimness of the light, her gaze shocked him like an immersion in polar seas. The otherness of her sight, the elsewhere dimension of its power, had focused, concentrated until it became the crux of something savage and illimitable. A terrible might raved out of her orbs. Though her gaze was not directed at him, it bored through him like an auger. When it was gone, it left a bloody weal across him. It was a look of apocalypse. |