Handmaiden's Fury Read online

  I sank to my knees. The pain ground like glass shards in my joints and churned like snakes of agony in my stomach. My nose began to bleed.

  Breathe.

  “Why are we doing this Handmaiden”

  “They will suffer as well. They and their families. Gryn’s wife will beg while she watches me defile their children. She will offer me everything a man could want.”

  “Stop? You know better, Handmaiden.”

  Orin leaned forward. “Emlie is more difficult, of course. Her brother is one of the Sires. I will have to tend to her over months. I will return Emlie to her family only after she is a desolation. She will be your shadow, Keiri. Her passion and depravity will blot out the sun, and her family and your temple will despair.”

  “This is Her Crucible.”

  Sharp, white burning agony sliced into my mind.

  I stood. I cried out, but I stood.

  I took single, perfect step.

  “Do you think this is all the Once Ways have to offer, whore?” Tight fury laced his voice. He spoke darkness again, and the pain doubled, tripled.

  It was ten thousand tiny cuts. It was iron nails in my flesh. It was the loss of everything I loved.

  Trembling, I still stood.

  “Creating the bond will place a tiny shadow of him within you. I worry for you, Handmaiden.”

  With all the will I could spare, my mind reached for Ouigiin, the sigil that bound me to Orin, the sigil that revealed his secrets. I grasped it and released its awakened power.

  The passion bond tethering Orin to me burst into life.

  For the moment, we were one. In that brief, shining moment, we became the same entity.

  The world darkened, cold. The townsfolk held me in disregard. If they couldn’t use me to their ends, they wanted nothing to do with me. Considering me unworthy of their time, they left me friendless. They thought their disdain didn’t show, but I knew! I would show them! I would reveal my glory, my power! If they would not bow, they would be destroyed, their corpses piled before my fe—!

  Orin’s feet.

  Corpses would be piled before Orin’s feet. Not mine.

  His strong mind fought to submerge me in him.

  Yet he knew nothing of true strength. He had not been tempered in the Lady’s Crucible.

  He did not know pain.

  Not like I did. As a friend, a lover.

  I would show him Rydia’s cleansing flame.

  My pain for my Lady raged across our bond. Mirrored between our two linked souls, it quadrupled in my mind.

  My legs nearly buckled.

  Orin began to scream.

  Sinking to his knees, his screams echoed off the walls. He possessed no understanding of what he was feeling, even though we had shared this link before.

  “Keiri!” Sire Mattias now held back all five of the masked monstrosities. Backed against the wall, their success was inevitable. “End him, Keiri! Quickly!”

  My Sire knew nothing of my current agony. Each breath echoed a silent scream. Orin writhed on the ground, but our pain showed no signs of slowing. As if its master had lost the reins, the pain he called ran free.

  I took another step, grimacing. Blood flowed from my nose, but I couldn’t care.

  Another step.

  Then another.

  I knelt next to Orin Devariis, the most dangerous man in Stormhaven. Every joint in my body stabbed and cut and burned.

  “Orin.” My voice fell in a hoarse whisper.

  He turned his head toward me.

  I reached for the grinning silver mask and pulled it from his face.

  “Keiri.” Pure hate. His breath came quickly in ragged bursts. His eyes lolled wildly in his head.

  “Release me, Orin.” I could taste blood in my mouth.

  “I—!” Cold fury burned in his eyes. He tried reaching for me but could not overcome the pain of his own magic.

  “Handmaiden!” My Sire’s voice held the faintest touch of panic. If I didn’t dispatch Orin, the masked abominations would slaughter my Sire.

  But I knew better than to kill someone while bonded. Orin might drag me into the darkness with him. My Sire would be safe, but I would be dead as certainly as Orin would.

  Stalemate.

  I reached in my mind for the Ouigiin sigil on my back. Before, I had only kissed Orin with its power.

  Now I had something more permanent in mind.

  Exactly as I had with Rand, I drank the power from Ouigiin, feeling it fade from my body as if it had never been.

  Then I kissed Orin.

  Rydia’s flame leapt to life inside of me. I felt Her lust turn to passion turn to bonds of love and duty. His emotion became tinder for the fires of my Goddess. His enmity, his desire for victory, everything of his will burned to ashes. All that remained was service and servitude, tempered in love that could not be bent.

  I took him. I took him and destroyed everything he had been.

  Orin Devariis was mine.

  “Handmaiden.” His breathy whisper pleaded when I broke the kiss. His eyes, though clouded with pain, grew wide in worship and wonder.

  “End the pain, Devariis.” I trembled from it, wracked with knives and cold.

  “Yes, Handmaiden.” He whispered a word of darkness and bile that my mind refused to hear.

  I gasped. The cessation of the agony brought rapture. For an eternal instant, my body shuddered in ecstasy.

  I fell back to my knees. Orin—what used to be Orin—became my newest Devoted. Through our original bond, I sensed the roil of emotions draining from him. As if flinching away from filth, I severed passion’s bond between us.

  I never wanted to feel the inside of Orin’s head again.

  “Keiri!” The sound of my Sire’s voice seemed so far away.

  “Stop your creations, Orin. They are unnatural.” My voice seemed distant as well. Tired. So tired. “Destroy them if you can. Give them rest.”

  “Yes, Handmaiden.” Orin sounded ashamed, horrified that he could have ever created something I found distasteful. He pushed himself up, making a quick gesture with his left hand. He muttered quietly as he did, words that seemed made of darkness and spite.

  The creatures halted in place, immobile. My Sire stood for a moment, his rod still held high in defense. For a long moment, he stared at them, uncertain if the leering creatures would continue their attack.

  Then, slowly, they began to crumble into a fine, white dust. Their masks slipped and fell to the floor.

  The room went dark beyond my Sire’s rod.

  Orin’s darkness was quenched.

  It was over.

  21

  Still, we had no time to waste. Orin might have acolytes still about.

  “Is there another key to the inner gardens?” I asked.

  Orin gazed up at me, fawning. “Around my neck.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Happily, eagerly, he pulled the chain from his neck and handed it to me. I turned and gave it to my Sire. Then I knelt back down to Orin. I whispered, thin and deadly, “Orin, you know I can’t let you go unpunished. Not after what you’ve done.”

  Tears filled his eyes. “Yes, Handmaiden. I know.”

  I thought back to the human-kin woman, hung to die in the gardens. “The Thae woman. How many of your blasphemous signs did you burn into her skin?”

  Like a naughty child, his eyes fell from mine. “Over three thousand, Handmaiden. Three thousand and six.”

  “Did she die from the cuts?”

  He winced. “Mostly. A combination of the blood loss and slow starvation. The vessel cannot take food, or the rites are ruined.”

  I differed to my Sire, but his gaze remained impassive. He knew I couldn’t take Orin back to the House of Pleasure and wanted to see what I would do.

  “Your life will have to be the price, Orin.”

  He nodded his head in agreement, tears running down his face. “Will that please you, Handmaiden? Will it atone for my sins?”

  I looked a
t him for a long moment. “I have no idea how much blood is on your hands, Orin. I have no way of saying what it would take for you to atone.” I placed my hand under his chin and made him meet my gaze. “But it will please me. Yes. Your death will please me.”

  “Thank you.” He nuzzled himself at my leg, leaning on me as sobs wracked him. “Thank you for letting me die for you, Handmaiden. Thank you.” His words were a rush, merely babble.

  “We will leave you here.” I made him meet my gaze. “To please me, you will stay in this very spot.” I pulled his knife from his belt. “When you are hungry, you may cut a piece of your own flesh to eat. You shall die in darkness, and be darkness consuming darkness.”

  He nodded, still crying. “Yes, Handmaiden. Thank you.”

  “When you have cut three-thousand and six pieces of your own flesh from your body, you will take no more. You will sit here in your own filth, in the black. You will die alone from the cuts and starvation.”

  “Yes. Please, Handmaiden. Let me serve.”

  “This pleases me, Orin. Show me.”

  Trembling, he took his knife from my hands. He continually glanced to me, making certain he did as I wished.

  At my nod, he began to pare away a small piece of his chest no larger than a copper gnot but enough. He winced and trembled as he did it, his face blanching.

  Sire Mattias and I watched, unmoved.

  Orin’s eyes met mine. At my slightest nod, he put the flesh in his mouth and began to chew.

  “Three-thousand-five more times, Orin. Once done, sit and wait for death. When I think of you, I will be pleased.”

  His words came out in a gush. “Yes, Handmaiden. For you. Anything.”

  Sire Mattias placed his hand on the small of my back. I took a breath and one last look at Orin Devariis.

  Then, we turned and looked no more.

  As we left that place, we took our light with us. The last thing I knew of Orin Devariis, he whispered in that dark and lost place. The last thing I heard from him chilled me.

  “For you, Handmaiden. Anything for you.”

  Eventually we returned to the door, behind which Orin’s sigils glowed no more. The body of the Thae woman, once hanging there as a testament to blasphemy, was simply gone. I knew that whatever spirit the human-kin had possessed was now free from the cold darkness.

  I buried my face in my Sire’s shoulder and wept.

  22

  We took Emlie with us when we left as we did not know who in Orin’s house might have known of her investigations. She was more than pleased to be quit of that place, and I knew that my Sire would reward her well. We made our way to the outer gates and passed the guards there unmolested. I did not know or care what they thought. Probably, they simply believed we were some of Orin’s guests.

  I wondered then who they had been. Socialites and merchant princes? Probably. People who had become enamored of Orin’s power and had sought to share it by whatever means he required. What had Orin said?

  “I did not slay these. They gave themselves to me. They asked, begged.”

  That was the nature of sorcery, of course. It reduced people to less than slaves, merely cattle to be consumed.

  I thought of him then, alone in the dark, feasting on his own corruption. He would spend his last days yearning for me, slicing away pieces of himself and swallowing his own darkness.

  His fate was horrifying but fitting.

  Brys was, as ever, exactly where we had bid him to await us. He helped me into the carriage, seeing my trembling hand. As always, he was there, ready to catch me before I even suspected I might fall.

  My Sire and I did not speak on the way back to the House of Pleasure. He held me, and I all but fell asleep on his shoulder. For once, I felt at peace. The Lady’s Fire was little more than glowing coals inside me, and all I wanted was sleep.

  I felt as if I could sleep for days.

  In the end, Brys helped me to my room. He stripped me of my dirty, tattered clothing and tended to the gashes and cuts on my body with lavender unguent. He washed my body and soothed my heart, his every action full of reverence and worship. I smiled at him as he put me to bed.

  “Thank you, Brys.”

  He smiled in return.

  I slept then. For the first night since I had forged the bond with Orin, I truly slept well.

  When Sire Mattias slipped into the bed beside me, I cannot say. I awoke in the wee hours wrapped in his arms. I turned to face him and found him awake.

  I slipped one hand up to cup his firm jaw and pulled his face down to mine.

  “I love you,” I whispered, my lips brushing his.

  He smiled. I felt it against my mouth and was amazed at the rush of happiness it gave me.

  “And I love you.” Mattias’ voice made little more than a rumble that I felt more than heard.

  He pressed his lips to mine, slowly, gently, letting our fire build. Gradually our chaste kiss became something more, something hot and passionate.

  I relished that kiss, like thunder at dawn, but soon I pulled away. “What happens now?” I asked in a whisper.

  He grinned wickedly in response.

  I laughed. “Yes.” I pressed my lips to his, hard, a quick burst of passion. “But what then? How can we…?” I gestured all around us, encompassing the temple and everything it held. “Be what we are, here?”

  “We will figure it out. Together.” He kissed me then, long and hard.

  When he pulled away, my breathing came in ragged pants.

  “You and me, together, with Rydia’s blessing are unstoppable,” he said. Joy danced in his silver eyes.

  “You know Rydia approves?” I was startled.

  He smiled at me and cupped my head in both hands. “I prayed for you,” he said. “I prayed so hard for you. And She answered.”

  I pressed my forehead to his.

  “I prayed for you, too.” My voice dropped to a harsh whisper, all I could manage.

  “I would have given everything up for you,” he continued, “but now I know She approves. And She has a plan for us.”

  That must have been true. Otherwise, surely Her gifts would have failed us.

  I nodded, my forehead sliding against his. “She does. And we’ll find out what it is and go forth in Her Name, together.”

  His tender smile kindled a fire in my heart.

  “Together,” he said.

  I slid my arms around my Sire’s neck and kissed him.

  As he wrapped his arms around me, I could feel residual heat on my back, flaring with Rydia’s approval.

  I slept, knowing I would awaken in a different world.

  ###

  Also by JM Guillen

  One woman’s madness may be the world's only hope.

  It is the end of all things.

  * * *

  Grace believed she was going to be a computer programmer someday and perhaps create programs that educate children or save lives. She never thought she would have to flee for her life from her roommate. She also never thought that her roommate would be a ragged, undead monstrosity that had clawed out her own eyes.

  Sometimes, life takes odd turns.

  The turn in Grace’s life came the night of the Wormwood Star, when the dead awoke and twisted aberrations began to walk the land. As technology and sanity began to corrode, all of civilization collapsed.

  Meanwhile Grace and her new comrades struggle to survive and understand what has happened. But Grace has an advantage, one she doesn't truly comprehend.

  At the end of the Rational world, she holds the only key to the future, written in madness and blood.

  Grace was sent a curious gathering of old papers- a work convoluted with equations, constellation alignments, and dire dates in history. The more she reads, the more the nature of the work shreds the remnants her mind, until eventually Grace cannot tell what is true and what is false. She has horrific waking dreams and begins to doubt all she knows.

  Which is unfortunate, as the papers imply th
at she may, in fact, be the only person on the planet who can change what has happened.

  When the Rational world falls, Irrationality may be the last hope humanity has.

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  The Wormwood Event

  A Myriad of Worlds...

  This story is only one of the myriad paths into our bent and Irrational worlds, one which has others forthcoming. This bizarre tale follows the cataclysmic experience of Grace Juarez, a college student caught up in the midst of the apocalypse. It is a story of a modern world, a world of familiar technology, intellect, and indulgence on the brink of catastrophe.

  This series is itself part of The Paean of Sundered Dreams, a multi-genre, universe-spanning array of tales with Lovecraftian themes. Some of the strands of this work are science fiction, some fantasy, and some steampunk, but they share the same horrific universe. They weft and weave together, leaving breadcrumbs of clues for the next story.

  Each tale echoes a beating heart of darkness, cackling quietly in the shadows of existence.

  If you are the kind of reader who cannot rest until every secret is found, for whom genre is unimportant, and who will travel a wide and vast multiverse to learn things man was not meant to know…

  Welcome, wayward wanderer.

  This was written for you.

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