Ice Shards - By Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,33

I didn’t like. One I recognized all too often as of late.

“You’ve been in the White Forest, haven’t you? What are you doing there, Vikkommin? You promised you’d curtail how often you go. You know I don’t like it and neither would the Priestess-Mother.”

Vikkommin, strikingly handsome and with a rogue look in his eye, swept me into his arms. “Kiss me before you scold me,” he said, and I did. His lips pressed against mine, warm and like fine wine, and they sucked me in deep, into his love, into his passion, and I wanted nothing more than to strip off my clothes and climb into bed with him.

But there was something—something that struck me as odd . . . off-kilter. I pulled away, and catching my breath, I turned back to him.

“What are you doing, my love? What calls you to the forest? We have everything we could want here. Everything we could ask for.”

A flame shot wild in his gaze and he shook his head. “You truly believe that? You don’t understand, do you? I have to show you. If I show you, you won’t object. You’ll want to be part of this—and I want you to be. You’re my love, my soul mate, my chosen one. Pirkitta, let me show you what I have discovered.”

I sighed. He wouldn’t be content until I said yes, and I decided that maybe this was the best way to keep him out of trouble. If I knew what I was fighting, I’d know how to engage it.

“All right, then. Show me what you’ve learned from the White Forest.”

“Come here, then. Come and let me enter your thoughts. Let me show you what I’ve been learning. What I plan to teach you.”

He held out his arms again and I moved into them, shivering as he wrapped them around me in an embrace so tight I could not break it. He began to turn me, to spin me—or at least it felt like it—and we whirled onto the astral, our souls joined together.

“Look—look what I’ve found how to do . . .”

And then I entered his mind. The brilliant flames were there, flames of ice, so violent they rocked his soul. I screamed, trying to avoid the wash of the burning ice as the spiraling flames took shape into dancers, who spun around us in a circle of madness. Ishonar . . . the most dangerous of elements—somehow Vikkommin had tapped into the elemental power of ishonar.

“No—ishonar is reserved for punishment only. It is the most powerful form of ice, and we are never to touch it unless it be in urgent need with approval of the Elders.” I tried to break away, but the ishonar Elementals rushed at me and I stopped. “My gods, Vikkommin, you have control over them.”

It couldn’t be—no mortal could control this power. No sane mortal tried. It was like controlling dragons—it just wasn’t done. In fact, the ability to tap into the icy fires of ishonar had been passed to the silver dragons, and they were the only creatures alive who could use the magic as they wished without losing themselves to it. For there was a madness in the extreme cold, a fury when unleashed, that could bring the worst of nature’s wars—the ice ages—upon the world.

“You can’t control this! You can’t possibly hope to control this power.”

Vikkommin laughed and held me tighter. “Oh, on the contrary—I can control it. I have learned how to use it, and I will use it. Once we are in control of the temple, we will wage holy wars upon our enemies. We will freeze our enemies in Pohjola to the core. We will eradicate the fire giants. We will raise ourselves to be at the side of Lady Undutar herself. We will become gods with this power.”

And then I felt her—the Lady herself—coming through me.

“This is madness,” she whispered, and I spoke the words for her. “You dare to compare yourself to the gods? You will pay for this, and you will pay mightily.”

Without a second thought, I reached out—or perhaps Undutar did, or the both of us—and we ripped Vikkommin’s soul off the astral and thrust it into the nearest shadow form. To prevent him returning to his body, I leapt off the astral back into the room. And I gazed on my love one last time, before turning his body inside out. Everything faded, and the next thing I knew, I was screaming, and my world turned