The first king showed up, and went to the center. Later another, and a third. Then the first of the circle to reach all four cards appeared: the 3 pile. Then, after only a few more moves, the fourth king.
“Hot lava!” she swore. “I be lost ere I have more than one hour on the clock! That be a bad omen.”
“I hope not!” Flach said. Omens were serious things.
She shrugged, and again the mountains moved. “Mayhap not. They say lucky cards, unlucky in love, and I have e’er been luckiest at cards. An my luck turn, my father may find a good demon for me.”
“He can find not a demon for one as fair as thou?” Flach asked, surprised. “Be appearance not the first thing men seek?”
“Aye.” Her hands resumed their motion, as she lifted the top card on the 12 stack and continued the placements. That card was an 8, and the next a 10. “Many be eager enough, but it seems I have a curse.” The 8 pile was completed, then the 2’s, and the 4’s.
“A curse? It be not apparent to me.”
Her quick hands brought up the fourth queen for the 12 pile. “Fire! Lost again.” For the 9’s and 11’s remained incomplete. She took one from the 11’s, and in a moment all the piles were done. Then she picked them up: the four aces, four 2’s, and so on. The deck was in numerical order. “An thou needst suit order, I can play a game for that,” she said.
“Nay, this be good enough,” he said, taking the cards. “But what be this curse on thee?”
“Let me see those,” she said suddenly, taking them back and turning the pack over. “I ne’er looked at the backs! This be one o’ the fairy folk!” For the picture was of a winged girl in gauzy green, flying up to pick foliage.
“Aye. I met her when I was a wolf, so put her on my cards. It were when I was in hiding.”
“Thou wast hiding?”
“From the Adverse Adepts, four years.”
“And they found thee not?”
“They found me after those years. Then it were difficult, till Stile merged the frames.”
“But were thy sire and dam not on our side? My father taught the Rovot Adept to play chess.”
“Aye. I hid from him, till he searched me out.”
“Thou didst have a difficult life,” she said sympathetically.
“Nay, it were a good life, only not with my parents. But why dost thou turn aside the subject when I ask about thy curse?”
“ ‘Cause it be my shame,” she said. “An thou beat me at cards, thou canst make me tell thee for consequence.”
That seemed fair enough. He picked out the 10 of hearts and laid it down. “When thou dost think o’ the rule, make thy guess,” he said. “It must be apparent within four cards, ‘less thou preferest other. An thou guess wrong, my point. An thou not guess it in eight cards, my point.”
“Aye. Lay thy four.”
He put down the 4 of clubs, the jack of diamonds, and the 5 of spades.
“That be not enough to define the rule,” she said. “An I guess a rule that fits, but it be not thine, what then?”
“I tell thee nay, but no penalty. Otherwise it became cumbersome for two. An several play, bad guesses help others to win, so players be cautious. But with two, there be no urgency to guess, so it can be the whole deck before a guess.” He was getting this from Nepe. “So I put limits, but thou canst protest them.”
“Nay, no protest. Thy rule be change color and diminish by six, in circular fashion. Mayhap also repeat not suit till all be used, but that were not certain.”
She had nailed it with alarming accuracy. Flach handed the deck to her.
“My deal be same’s thine,” she said, not taking up the four cards. “But my rule other.”
Flach studied the cards with new interest. “Two-digit number alternating with one-digit number,” he said.
“Nay. No penalty.”
“Lay more cards.”
She put down the 9 of spades, the 3 of spades, the 6 of clubs, and the 8 of clubs.
Flach stared at the cards. The colors no longer alternated, and the numbers no longer descended. There was no consistent pattern of odd and even. He had to admit he was stumped.
“Third card be odd,” she said.
“But the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth cards are odd!” he protested.
“Not odd in total, odd in being different from the first three,” she explained. “See: each has two symbols in top row, till the third, with one. Then two, two, and one.”
He looked, and it was so. She had looked at the cards in a different way, and been more original than he. “Thy point,” he conceded.
They played again. She dealt the 8 of hearts, 11 of spades, 5 of clubs, and 4 of clubs. When he was baffled, she dealt out the 9 of diamonds, the ace of diamonds, 7 of diamonds, and 6 of diamonds.
He was unable to get it. “Alphabetic,” she explained.
“But the ace should be first!”
“That be the one, as in one, two, three et cetera.”
He admitted defeat.
So it went. Icy was immensely more talented than he, in this game. By the time they were ready to camp for the night, he was hopelessly behind on points. Any penalties she had in mind for him were hers to dictate.
“How earnest thou so apt in cards?” he asked ruefully.
“My sire be chess champ o’ demons, and but for thy grandpa, o’ all Phaze,” she said. “From him do I inherit a memory and grasp o’ numbers and positions. None beat me at such.”
“Mayhap that be thy curse!” he exclaimed. “Demons like not to be beaten by demoness.”
She shook her head. “Thinkst I know that not? Were thou a prospective match, thou wouldst ne’er discover so helpless a female, in anything relating to male’s domain.”
It seemed she did know what she was doing. She didn’t need to worry about beating him, as he was in no way a prospect for her. It was foolish, he knew, but he almost regretted that.
They ate supper while riding. Flach conjured cold sandwiches and cold milk for himself, not wishing to upset her by having hot food, and she ate ice cream from her own store. After a while his milk froze, so they traded, and she chewed on it while he had some of her ice cream. If a person was what she ate, he could see why she was sweet.
The demon guards were hunting on the move. They skied down ice rabbits and killed them with ice spears. They fired ice arrows up at ice geese and brought them down. This frozen realm was full of life, when a person knew what to look for. Perhaps the magic that protected him from the cold, and shielded Icy from his heat, also facilitated his perception of the nature of this region. It was far more interesting than he had supposed. Now he saw that there were ice plants, too, ranging from cut-glass blades of grass to snow trees.
“I fear I be losing my touch,” Icy remarked. “Thine eyes be straying across the landscape.” She inhaled. “Dost spy elevations more symmetrical than mine?”
“Thou wouldst not tease me so, an thou knew not mine age,” he accused her.
“Aye,” she agreed, satisfied.
The dogs drew up at a bit of an outcropping of ice, perhaps a glacier that had gotten lost. To the west dark clouds were surging, blotting out the chilly sunset. “There will be nice weather tonight,” Icy observed. “But methinks thou willst prefer to be under co’er.”
“Aye. Snow and ice be not as appealing to me as to thee.”
She smiled obscurely. “Mayhap we shall see.”
The demon guards unpacked a tent made of stitched snow, and stretched it over great long icicles that made fine poles. Icy crawled in, beckoning Flach to follow. She brought out an ice lamp whose central crystal radiated cold blue light, just enough to illuminate the interior.
“There be not enough snow for two beds,” she said, brushing the snow into a central pile. “Thou willst have to share with me.”
“I can make a small spell to make mine own—” he started.
“Nay, that were pointless,” she said, removing her coat. “Thy spell will stop thy heat f
rom melting the snow.”
“Aye, but—”
“And I like thy company,” she continued, pulling off her fine sweater. “I like not sleeping alone, anyway.”
“But—”
“Get thy clothes off,” she said, stepping out of her layered ice skirt. “Dost want to soil clean snow?”
“But I need my clothes to keep warm!”
“Nay, thy spell protects thee,” she said, removing her scant undergarments and hanging them neatly on an ice hook. Her body was now innocent of apparel, and resembled a glass and alabaster statue animated by the Brown Adept as a lovely golem.
“But a man be supposed not to sleep beside a woman not o’ his family,” he protested.
“But thou dost be no man, but a child. Thinkst thou my memory be so brief?”
“E’en so, it be not right to be naked together.”
“So? Were that the way it be with thine o’er self in Proton-frame?”
She had him as handily outflanked as she had on the card game. Nakedness was the norm in the other frame. Of course Nepe was used to it, but he couldn’t turn the body over to her, because she lacked the magic to confine its heat.
Defeated, he undressed. He was tired, and did need the sleep, and the snow did look very soft and fluffy. Though he was clothed with illusion, his apparel seemed to fit the larger body as well as it fitted him, and when he doffed it his apparent body was as naked as his real one, in a more manly manner.
Icy lay on the bed. “Didst say thou was with a Pack?” she inquired.
“Aye. They were kind to me.”
“Then thou hadst a Promised bitch?”
“Aye. When we come of age, we will mate, and go our ways.”
Icy spread her legs. They were as marvelously rounded and symmetrical as her upper features. “Methinks I will show thee how to do it, so thou dost know, when.”
I knew it! Nepe thought. I saw it coming!
How do I get out o’ it? he thought desperately.
Why bother? It’s good information. I’m learning things from her like mad!
Fat lot o’ help thou dost be! he retorted. Aloud, to Icy, he said: “I thank thee for thy consideration, but methinks I had better sleep.”
“Dost remember our card games?” she inquired, stretching her nicely proportioned arms languorously.
“Aye. But—” Then he caught her drift. “Consequences!”
“Bright lad! Thou dost owe me a mountain o’ them! Come, Flach, I will hurt thee not. I want only to play with thee.”
“But why? I be o’ no interest to thee!”
“Because,” she said seriously, “an I practice with thee, and find what works, mayhap I can surmount my curse and nab a good match of my own kind.”
“Tell me thy curse, and mayhap I can make a spell to abate it,” he offered hopefully.
“Come to my arms, and I will tell thee, though I owe thee not.”
Flach got down on the bed beside her. She turned over, caught his shoulder and rolled him into her. She was amazingly pleasant to be against. His spell served as a barrier against heat leakage, so that neither could hurt the other, but it allowed all other aspects of touch to register. It enabled him to catch a tactile glimpse of what grown folk found in each other, physically.
“Four times have suitors come my father deemed worthy,” she said. She took a breath, and her softness pressed caressingly against him. “Each were eager to be close to me. But each were stricken at the moment he sought to do with me as I would do with thee. Two died, one went lunatic, and one be yet in coma. Now the suitors be nay so eager, and I fear the onset o’ being an old demoness. It be the curse, that strikes down any who would love me.”
“I checked thee for malign influence when I met thee,” Flach said, trying to focus on his words instead of on her breathing. “That be no distrust o’ thee, but ‘cause my mission be dire, and I fear bad magic ‘gainst me. There be no curse on thee I can fathom, Icy.”
“Kind of thee to say so, Adept,” she said. “But then what struck those suitors?”
“Mayhap I can fathom that. I should be proof ‘gainst it, ‘cause o’ my magic, youth, and not being thy kind.” He hoped; that sounded like a dreadful curse, and the qualities he had named were barely protecting him from her wiles. If the curse turned out to be stronger than her blessings, even his magic might not be enough, since he did not want to make a big splash. “Exactly how did it happen?”
“When I get a demon close,” she said, “and I kiss him like this”—she kissed him on the mouth, and if her prior kiss on his cheek had been pleasant, this was so much more so as to resemble Adept magic instead of minor peasant spells to ward off flies. “And I squeeze him like this”—she pressed him in to the length of her body, and the length of his body responded with such a warm surge of feeling that he feared it would break across the protective spell. “And I whisper in his handsome frozen ear an endearment.” She put her lips to his ear, and breathed, “I love thee,” and though he knew it was merely a demonstration, his heart seemed to swell and burst with responding passion. To love such a woman! What could anything else matter, after that?
“Oh!” she squeaked, horrified.
Flach rolled away and scrambled to his feet, afraid of what had happened. Sure enough, there was a melted streak the length of her beautiful body. His burgeoning heat had broken through and touched her, horribly.
“O, Icy, I be sorry!” he said. “I will make magic to mend thee!”
“The pain be awful,” she gasped. “An thou canst—”
“The burn dispel, and make her well,” he singsonged, willing the healing power. This was stronger magic than he liked to use, but he felt guilty for hurting her, and had to make it right.
A small cloud of freezing vapor appeared, and coalesced against her body. The meltline disappeared. Icy relaxed.
“Ah, thy magic be profound!” she said. “The burn be gone as it never were. I thank thee, I thank thee!”
“Nay, it were my fault I hurt thee. Thy kiss, thine embrace, thy words, they heated me so it burst through the spell, and I harmed thee awfully. I beg thy forgiveness, lovely creature!”
“Nay, apologize not to me!” she exclaimed, sitting up. “I led thee to it, with my foolish game. I tried to make thee hot, as I made the others—”
She broke off, staring. Flach came to the same realization. “The heat!” he exclaimed. “I be warm, but I be but a child. An thou couldst do that to me, what couldst thou do to a grown man?”
“Well, they be o’ ice, like me—”
“But an they heated, they could melt!” he said. “That be no curse—that be o’erabundance o’ passion!”
“But such ne’er happ’d before to demonesses!” she protested.
“There was ne’er a snow creature nor as lovely neither passionate as thee before!”
“Aye,” she breathed, appreciating the validity of his observation. “Then love be my curse.”
“But now the cause be known, can we mute it,” he said. “Needs must I merely put a spell on thee to cap the intensity o’ thy effect on others. Then canst thou love freely and safely.”
“Safe love,” she agreed, delighting in the concept. “Canst do it to me now?”
Even in her innocent expressions, she’s sexy! Nepe noted jealously.
“Aye.” Flach pondered briefly, then singsonged: “Let the lady’s love be cool, not hot; his passion be but half she’s got.” As verse it was nothing, but his concept was true: any male approaching her would find his ardor muted to about fifty per cent, which should be survivable. At the very least it would slow things, and give her time to choke down her intensity if she saw the male becoming uncomfortable.
“But I feel not different,” she said.
“The effect be on thy lover, not thee,” he explained.
“Needs must I verify this,” she decided. “Come here, Adept.”
Oops. And you thought you’d gotten out of it! Nepe laughed.
Well,
there were worse fates. Flach lay down beside her again, on the bed of snow. “Mayhap I should increase the power o’ my barrier spell,” he said. “I want not to melt thee again.”
“An thy magic work, no need,” she pointed out. “Thou willst not heat enough to break through. We have found the same passion which melted demons caused thee to melt me; an thou no longer melt me, nor will they melt. That be the test. I want to damp them not down more than be needful.”
He had to concede it was a fair test. Too much damping would be deleterious to her romance.
She took hold of him again and pressed him close. He felt as if he were aging several years: good, manly ones. She kissed him. He felt as if he were floating through a golden radiance of delight. She touched her ice-perfect lips to his ear and whispered, “I love thee, Adept, for the favor thou has done me.” He felt as if he were floating through a golden radiance of delight.
What? That was the last feeling! What about his heart swelling and bursting with responding passion?
It’s the feeling-cap, dummy! Nepe reminded him.
Oh. Of course. “I think thou dost be wonderful,” he told Icy. “But that be the limit.”
“Be that so?” she inquired, feeling challenged. “Mayhap I can show thee a thing or two.” She rolled him over on top of her, spread her legs, and wrapped them around his hips. The legs were evidently the two things she was showing him. She inhaled, causing his body to be lifted by cushions. That made two more things. She kissed him in a way he had not realized was possible. That was two more things, her lips, more amazing than either of the prior sets. “Where be thy limit now?” she whispered.
“I be floating on golden clouds,” he said. “And gazing at a hea’en I long to reach, but can not. I love thee, demoness, but can feel only the part o’ it. I beg thee, tease me not further, lest I find ne’er in the rest o’ my life the like!”
“Then I be proof ‘gainst heating my man!” she exclaimed, delighted. “An this not heat thee, naught will!” She flexed her legs a bit, and took another breath, and squeezed him miraculously tight yet gentle, sending him for a ride on another golden cloud.
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