"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 02 - The White Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

bindings here were those of his will over hers. The regular training that made her one more of his items
held her as firmly in place as any set of iron shackles or knotted scarves. She was one of his carvings,
inside, though she didn't presently show so much as a scratch on her alabaster-smooth skin.
Every time Telica came to him for one of her appointments she knew she would be trained and
tested in a dozen ways. All of his girls knew this. They could be trapped or tricked, hurt or caressed,
abused or set up for humiliation, and after a while, they came to love him for itтАФor at least obey him.
Obedience was close enough for him; he'd take that over love any day.
So it was with no worry at all that he took three steps to stand before her steadily breathing, still
form, and put a hand to her jaw. "Open," he said in his rich voice, and her lips parted in instant
compliance to receive the wooden bit he'd been trimming. As he pressed it deeper into her mouth, he
noted that it scraped the gums, and probably pressed the palate about there. Good, good. It would
serve as another test of her training in itself, then, and the soreness that lingered after Telica's visit would
simply be another reminder of his attentions, and who she served now.
Who she served? That was another delicious irony. Hadanelith was, as far as anyone else knew,
serving her, but behind these doors, she was his as surely as any other of his whittled treasures. His
treasures were six now; Dianelle, Suriya, Gaerazena, Bethtia, and Yonisse, and Telica here, each one a
good but still slightly flawed carving.
There was always something wrong with them by the time he'd made them his artworks. Why was
that? Why was the wood always unseasoned, or knotty, or split down the middle, when he'd finally
carved away enough of the bark to make something beautiful? It was as if the wood that looked so
promising on the outside failed to live up to the promise; that by the time he'd gotten enough of the
useless wood shaved away to refine the details, the flaws in the material showed themselves.
Telica here, for instance, was too quiet. It was nearly impossible to get as much as a whimper out of
her. He was no more lusty than any other man, he felt, and there were times, just as when one craved a
certain dish or fruit, when he simply had to hear a muffled cry of anguish or a sob. Telica was mute as a
stick unless he lacerated her with a blade or pierced her flesh with a needle. She was just as flawed in her
silence as Gaerazena was in her garrulous, hysterical chattering and Yonisse was in her shuddering
anxieties.
It couldn't be his skill; it had to be the material itself. If only he could get his hands on a woman of
real substance, breeding, true quality. A woman like Winterhart....
That one he had yet to touch, although he had watched her hungrily for ten years. Now there was a
creature fit for an artist! Not wood at all, she was the finest marble, a real challenge to carve and mold.
But he could do it. He was more than a match for her, just as he was more than a match for any of them.
What sculptor was ever afraid of his stone? What genius was ever afraid of his toys? The challenge
would be to unmake and then remake her, but to do it so cleverly that she asked for every change he
made to her.
What a dream....
But a dream was all it ever would be. She would never come to him, not while she was mated to the
oh-so-perfect Amberdrake. And not when the whole city knew how disgustingly contented she was with
her mate. It was all too honey-sweet for words, just as sickeningly, cloyingly sweet as that sugar-white
gryphon, Skandranon, and his mate.
It was just a good thing for him that not everyone in this little Utopia was as contented with life as
those four were.
He would certainly enjoy giving all of them a bitter taste of reality when the time was right. Especially
Winterhart. Get under that cool surface and see what seethed beneath it. Find out what she feared.
Not the ordinary fears of his six creations, he was certain of that. No, Winterhart must surely fear
something fascinating, something he would have to work hard to discover. What could he cut free from
inside her? Now there was an interesting image; a hollow woman, emptied out slice by slice, with only a
walking shell left for everyone else to see. How could it be done? And how thin could he carve those
walls before the sculpture collapsed in on itself? Well. If the wood was good enough, he could scoop out