Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
On the screen, Sven remained quiet for a long moment. I could see the rough-cut stone of the Rouen chamber behind him, and the dim light there caught the edges of his blond hair. He seemed to be thinking—not hesitating, but thinking with a deliberate thoroughness, as if searching his memory of the annals of his mind, wanting to give them their due weight before he spoke.
“Yes,” he said at last, and the single syllable carried the formal quality of a pronouncement. “Bring her to the cavern. Put her on the bride saddle and break her there, and let her go to the tree.” He paused. “I will take Mary’s anus on my own saddle here in Rouen at the same time.”
Leo Aetnaeus frowned. “You will…” he began, clearly working to grasp the import of Sven’s words.
“I will have my own vǫlva riding the bride saddle while Henrik’s does, there in Sicily,” Sven said. His voice was measured, but carried an edge of challenge. I thought I could tell he had proposed something that the evidence supported even though it sounded impossible. “To see if they can find each other in the branches of Yggdrasil.”
My master had begun to nod.
“To see if Ilsa’s encounter with the Chinese woman represents a real possibility. To see if vǫlur can somehow be together when they travel the trunk and the boughs, and at the same time to see if we should think of whoever is behind that girl—the man disciplining her and his comrades, if he has them—as a force that can send women to Yggdrasil as we do.”
Sven’s pale eyes moved to me briefly, and then back to Henrik. Then he nodded, and spoke musingly, going back over the facts.
“Ilsa described the Chinese woman as looking up at her from a lower branch, after her master had just taken her anus with his cock.” He let the silence hold for a moment. “So I want to know if she can see Mary, if they both go to the tree at the same time. We don’t know, from a scientific perspective, how it could possibly work. If it does work, though…”
Giovanna nodded, a look of grudging satisfaction in her eyes.
“We want to know about it.”
The silence that followed felt to me as if several people were doing arithmetic simultaneously and arriving at slightly different sums. The leo’s amber eyes moved between the screen and Henrik with the expression of a man being asked to accept a methodology he finds irregular. Giovanna’s dark gaze was on Sven’s face with a focus that was its own form of skepticism, despite her obvious interest.
“Very well,” Leo Aetnaeus said, finally, his voice decisive and his chin descending an inch or two for emphasis. “Bellatrix, you should feed and water your columba, and then perform the rite of deligature in front of your nymphobus, here in the mithraeum. After that, dress her and bring her to the office. We’ll have a car take the three of you to Capo Zafferano.”
“Deligature?” my Herra asked, frowning a little. I swallowed hard as I tried to piece together the etymology. Not from delegate: the leo’s Italian accent left no doubt about that, the i clear in the word’s center.
“Untying,” Giovanna told him. “When a columba goes forth without her leathers, she must be taught to wear them in her heart.”
Taught. I felt my forehead crease.
“Interesting,” Sven said from the monitor. “We have similar ideas about, shall we say, the dialectic of bondage and freedom, and its relationship to civilization. And as you know, my Mary is also a columba of your order. I find the leathers productive of a good deal of helpful reflection in her, whether she’s wearing them or not.”
Mary… the other bed thrall. What was she like? What had she been through? Would I see her, somehow on the tree? They all pronounced the name in its English form—was Mary British? American?
“Henrik, would you join us in the refectory after you shower and dress?” Giovanna asked. “Then you can see that your girl is well taken care of, as well as witness the rite of deligature, so that she knows you will hold her accountable for the lesson the nymphobus and I will deliver.”
“Of course,” my master responded. “I look forward to it.”
I had almost forgotten that unlike the four others present—the three in person and the virtual one on the screen—I alone lay naked and bound and spread open on a bench, listening to them decide how to dispose of my body. It came back in a rush as my master turned his full attention to me.
He came to stand next to the bench, looming over me in his red robe, a smile on his face high above me. My heart raced as he stooped, suddenly. My Herra put his left hand behind my neck, raising my face slightly from the cushion wedged there, while his right hand took gentle hold of my collar in his long fingers, as if to remind me of its presence. I whimpered into his mouth as he kissed me long and roughly, invading my mouth with his tongue, teaching me to acknowledge his ownership.