Idol of Glass by Jane Kindred

them cocooned within her dark tresses and his light.
    She gave a cool shrug of one shoulder. “Perhaps I should simply have let them eat me and had done with it.”
    Hraethe laughed as he looked down at her. “I will eat you. Your vetma will burst into my mouth.” He held himself aloft a moment longer, tormenting himself with anticipation, his next words a sensuous murmur of appreciation as he drank her visually. “Such tales they tell of us.”
    Without warning, Shiva’s cat-green eyes flashed like fire, and she grabbed the hair at the sides of his head with a sharp and painful jerk and held him at her mercy. “They are not tales,” she hissed. “I have seen a thousand Meer picked off one by one and carelessly devoured for an insidious trinket! That is our destiny, Meer Hraethe .” She spat the name. “To be the fodder for their insignificant greed. To line their bellies and pass through them as shit.”
    He was stunned, frightened of her and horrified by her words, and wounded by the cruelty of her pun. “Hraethe” meant “swift” but could also imply “premature”. His skin had begun to crawl with a feral dread he’d never felt before, a black worm that traveled through his veins and would grow there as his heart cycled blood.
    Shiva softened her grip and stroked his cheek with one hand. “Don’t be afraid, young god.” Just as suddenly, her voice had shifted to a gentle whisper. “It robs you of your power. You are Meer, but the time is coming.” Her lips curved up in fondness and longing. “You are but an infant, Hraethe.” She shook her head in wonder at him. “Let me have you again so that I may drink your youth.”
    The sudden tenderness of her touch persuaded him, though despite the interruption of fear, he needed little persuasion. They came together once more, and the sounds of Shiva’s delight again filled the quiet temple. Shiva returned the vetma he’d conferred on her, devouring and conquering with his cock between her teeth. With a sharp, delightful pain, Hraethe discovered that her words had been more than metaphorical. She’d pierced him at the base of his scrotum and drank indeed from him, a surge of blood rising up the length of his erection more powerfully than any ejaculation of semen. He wondered fleetingly if he would bleed to death, but the indescribable sensation was worth death. Even a touch from Shiva was worth death, and he surrendered.
    Surprised to find he’d slept—an unforgivable waste of time with this goddess beside him—Hraethe roused and turned to gather her to him and serve her once more. The bed was empty.
    Hraethe sat up in distress. The room had changed, and at first he couldn’t understand what had happened, thinking he’d been transported somewhere else in sleep, but it was only the opening of a covered window that had transformed their bower into a more ordinary room. It was day—which one, he didn’t know—and his clothes were laid out beside him.
    He dressed and wandered into the corridor, strolling beneath the arches as they crossed and vaulted one another. Ludtaht Shiva was a brilliant maze that fascinated so that one might wander without concern for destination, attentive to the vast and awe-inspiring details. It was like being inside Shiva, exploring her, enchanted, and Hraethe was content to follow the course of her conduit.
    The waiting-maid who’d conducted him to Shiva on his arrival appeared before him from an unlit room. Hraethe smiled quizzically.
    She bowed before him. “You will leave. The MeerShiva has spoken.”
    Hraethe’s gut lunged as though he’d been kicked, and his mouth opened on a pointless stammer. “Is she—what has—where—?” He moved toward the dark room, and the child bowed down before him once more in his path. “Where is your mistress?” he