Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

  He peeked into the grove. All was dark except for the greyness at the center from the break in the leaf cover. Rain fell on the wooden roof of the shack. The door was shut. The lady hadn’t woken and come out.

  A figure slipped into the light. Not Naroh but a robed man. Had he climbed his way in? He unsheathed a sword of gold. It might’ve been bronze, but it glittered with deadliness. The man set himself before the door, blade raised.

  “Lady of Gems!” Jerani shouted. He had to wake her and warn her and save her. “They have swords.”

  Two of those blades sliced out of the dimness toward him. Naroh’s face was all bitter focus.

  Jerani leaped away over the lotus pond. He didn’t even know this sword woman, and now he had to kill her.

  A splintering sound came from the shack. The door was caved in, and the man pulled back his plated boot. He had kicked it down. He lunged inside, weapon first.

  “No!” Jerani stabbed at the woman’s leg.

  She caught his spear between her swords and cut off the tip.

  He couldn’t die. Celaise would never forgive him.

  Jerani threw the spear shaft at the sword woman and rolled out of the way over a pile of amethyst slabs. They didn’t clatter down around him but stayed upright as a barrier between him and her blades. His war club had found its way into his hand.

  “She’s not here.” The voice was a man’s, hard with outrage. Wood cracked and toppled. Next came fox sounds, a chatter of squeaks. “Just her fennec.”

  Jerani snuck a look over the gemstones. The man stood in front of the broken shack. Now it was a pile of planks. He gripped the fox. Somehow he had caught it in his gauntlet. The small creature thrashed, its ears whipping this way and that. Nothing could hold that fox, but that man did. The whipping fox tail parted his robe. He didn’t have armor over his chest. His pale skin was covered with dark lines. A tattoo of flower petals.

  His plated fingers closed around the fox’s neck.

  “Don’t!” The woman shouted it, or maybe Jerani had. He was on top of the crystal pile. One plate shifted under his feet as he swung his club overhand. His throw would have to break the man’s skull.

  The woman leaped at Jerani, bashing his elbow with her sword hilt. The club flew off track, down into the pond. This was going from bad to worst. The woman was on him, and she was fast. He pushed her off. She swung around his arm. Her sword sliced behind him. She had cut through his spear, and his bones wouldn’t be any harder.

  The cold of her short blade pressed against his throat. “Where is she?” Naroh asked. “The enchantress.”

  He swallowed, and her razor edge nicked him. If the lady hadn’t been in the shack, maybe she slept in a banyan hollow, or underground somehow. “Don’t know.”

  The tattooed man hadn’t strangled the fox or crushed his tiny head. The jewels of the animal’s collar flashed then faded. A red gem in the gauntlet flickered to a glow. Something strange had happened, but it wasn’t all bad . The fennec sprang away, alive. Maybe the man had let him go.

  “You were born in the Empire,” the tattooed man said. Bamboo designs covered his neck. He sprang up and caught a dragonfly, one of the lady’s. His gauntlet glowed, and the insect fell apart into a sprinkle of crystal wings and metal legs. “You must tell us where to find Hiresha. She’s a traitor and could give the Dominion all they need to invade.”

  “She wouldn’t.” Even if Jerani did know where to find her, he couldn’t tell. It would come back to hurt Celaise. Had she stayed away or snuck after them into the grove? She could hide wearing shadows.

  The banyan trunks flickered purple then darkened. The amethysts dimmed at the same time the gemstones in the man’s gauntlets glinted. The shine jumped into his sword. His blade had to be magic. He was one of the Empire’s most powerful warriors, trained to use enchanted weapons and armor. Men like him had a name, but no use trying to remember it. Jerani couldn’t think past the sword pressed to his throat.

  The pile of amethyst wedge-plates slid apart. They splashed and clattered. The man hopped over them, and for a breath he seemed to float. Like her.

  “She was here.” He landed in front of Jerani. “When will she return?”

  “At night,” Jerani said.

  “Is there a woman with her?” The man massaged his arm and frowned. “Stocky and with a tattoo of a blue serpent.”

  “Ah, no? Don’t think so.”

  “Where is Hiresha now?”

  “Tell us,” the sword woman said in her quiet voice. “Or I’ll string out your guts as bait for sea monsters.”

  Would that little woman really do that? Even the tattooed man cringed. He said, “Help us, and we’ll all three return to the Empire as heroes.”

  Jerani could go back to the grassland. They would welcome him, and he could see how the calves’ horns had grown out. How his brother and sister had grown up. He could start his own family, but it couldn’t be with Celaise. Or anyone because the lord would kill him with nightmares.

  The tattooed man held out the offer of his hand. Rain dripped from the gauntlet’s metal and everywhere else. His sword he held behind his back.

  Jerani should take that hand, the hand of his Empire, better than the blade, but he couldn’t. Celaise needed him. If he left her behind for even a day she would never trust him again. He could be a hero, but he would rather stay with Celaise.

  “Run, Jerani!” The voice was hers.

  He was already running. Somehow he had broken free of the sword woman’s metal chokehold and was dashing into the shadows. He saw himself doing it. He was outside himself, or he had just seen some of Celaise’s magic. She could trick the eye. Two of him ran through the grove.

  The man and woman lunged and leaped after the other him. Jerani scrambled the opposite way. Folds of shade stretched out of the banyans to shield him as he climbed. No one could see him.

  “There’s a Feaster here,” the tattooed man said.

  “Must’ve been her outside,” the woman said.

  Jerani squatted on the shoulder of a branch. He could feel his way over the rest of the banyan and get away. The lady had warned him against fighting the tattooed man, and it wasn’t just him. The woman’s swords glittered silver. Maybe they were enchanted too.

  “It’s day. Or close to it.” The tattooed man glanced up and blinked in the drizzle. “The Feaster will be the one who has to run.”

  He and the woman stalked through the grove, their blades glinting. How strange to see them shoving over the gemstone piles without the lady to stop them. This was her place. How could they dare? Maybe they didn’t really know her. Or the spell swords—that’s what these warriors were called—could stop her magic.

  No, that couldn’t happen. Jerani wouldn’t believe it. But where was the lady? Maybe Celaise had hidden her as well.

  The sword woman stopped and stared at a set of three stone heads. They each looked like the lady. “No doubts about her being here.”

  “It’s her,” the blossomed man said, “only more mad.”

  They twitched when the llamas brayed outside. Jerani agreed it was a nasty nose sound. That and the stomping meant one thing, the fox had escaped. He was goading the llamas again.

  Jerani swung himself over a branch then slid down a root. Drumming was coming from the village. A priest with his rain staff was tossing blood from a bowl and letting it fall in the mining pit. They had sacrificed someone.

  Jerani’s stomach turned inside out. His feet faced the priest, to run at him for all the good it would do. No, better to stay away. It would be Jerani they killed next. If the spell swords didn’t hack him apart first. He didn’t even have his weapons.

  The Empire’s enchanted blades could kill him, that or the Dominion’s sacrificial knives. Still, he would rather have both countries against him than make the lady cross. He should look after her fox. That she had asked him to do.

  Jerani raced toward the kicking llamas.

  An inspiration of insects swarmed around Tet
hiel. The jungle was alive with clicking pinchers, wriggling feelers, and scuttling claws. Vile caimans luxuriated in the rivers, and endless anacondas awaited to embrace their prey. The air itself tried to smother him with sticky dew. Toads, monkeys, and birds all screamed in lust. Bloodsucking bats frolicked through the night. The forest was rich in darkness and colorful with poison.

  Tethiel had every right to be happy. Danger abounded. He would meet his betrothed to discuss the wedding particulars. He had every right to be terrified.

  Something smelled wrong. The banyan trees wept their roots, and from within them came Hiresha’s aroma. She was smelling lovely this evening, of perilous dreams and well-seasoned skepticism. But Celaise’s mood had soured. The Mimic had arrived, and his vintage also reeked of anxiety.

  Tethiel’s children feared to displease him. He had to guess something noisome awaited him in the banyan copse. Something grotesque. He couldn’t wait.

  The dear dainty, Pall, went first between the trees, and Wane stayed behind with Eyebiter and the other horses. The inside of the grove was dripping, secret, and glowing, the perfect place for a wedding cabal.

  Hiresha didn’t turn to greet him. She raised her jewel-scaled hand over a confusion of gemstone slabs, and they arranged themselves into a triangular alter. “I was assaulted by pettiness today,” she said. “Spellsword Sagai is tracking me.”

  “And he’s not alone,” Tethiel said. The scents were faint, but two trails of desperation led away like cake crumbs. “Shall I ride them down, my heart?”

  “I should think not. If we hunted and killed everyone who wished us ill, we’d never have time for our wedding.”

  “Please, send me,” the Mimic said. He threw himself on his knees between Hiresha and Tethiel. The Mimic’s face flickered from a boy’s, to a crone’s, to a bald vulture’s with a black-razor beak. “Even if it takes a year, I’ll bring them helpless before you, my lady, so you may Feast.”

  The Mimic’s fear was a gravy made of the baby fat of unborn lambs. He wanted to be anywhere but here. Hiresha must’ve asked him for something unforgivable.

  “I do not Feast,” she told him.

  “Oh,” the Mimic said. “Then I’ll bring your enemies so you can listen to the symphony of their dying screams.”

  “Neither am I an idler.”

  The Mimic’s bewilderment smelled of an apple orchard after spring rains. He feared the Bleeding Maiden was right, Hiresha could never fit in. Too many in the family thought the same. She and Tethiel would have to woo all the children as a couple. Nothing unsavory about that.

  Hiresha swept a hand over a white roughness of rock and left a polished gloss of gemstone. “More than Spellsword Sagai is at fault. The incompetence of the local King’s Spear is hurting efficiency and miners alike.”

  “Then take charge,” Tethiel said.

  “I struggle to stay discrete as is,” she said. “If they learn of my power, all the Dominion’s warriors will come to bother me.”

  “Dominate them in turn,” he said. “The time you waste hiding could be spent ruling.”

  “It’s not my place or my right.” She gestured, and three disembodied heads floated toward her. They were stone busts.

  “There is no right or wrong in this world. Only brilliance and boredom, only daring and dependence.”

  “Alliteration hardly proves a point.”

  “No, but rhyme has the ring of truth, which is better.”

  “Interesting.” She gestured to the Mimic then the limestone heads. “Now, as we discussed.”

  The busts all resembled Hiresha in an eerie sort of way. They were too lifelike to be artful and too natural to be believed. The Mimic made them worse. And better. He stepped behind the heads, and one by one their stone became flesh. Their eyes opened in gemstone gazes of glittering purple. They all looked to Tethiel.

  “I only ask you to choose,” Hiresha said between the floating heads of her twins, “which face should I wear at our wedding.”

  Dread danced up Tethiel’s spine. An impossible question. Did she wish him to say she should wear her natural face? Or did she expect him to choose another, more beautiful woman? His heart was beating too much black wine into his skull. The disembodied heads looked much like hers, apart from their crystalline irises.

  “I believe every woman should be able to choose her own face,” he said, “and body, and voice. Masks reveal truth.”

  “Yes, appearances must make all the difference for those whose personality is skin deep.”

  “Nothing reveals more about a person than the superficial.” All he had to do was delay until she made her own choice out of impatience. “You can tell the depths of a woman by her clothes. You can tell the nuances of a man by his nakedness.”

  “You’re delaying.”

  Pox rats! She knew him too well. “I cannot choose. I’ve lived too long in your light and am now blind to all but your brilliance.”

  “Have you so little discernment?” Hiresha waved from one head after another. “I could transform my facial structure to have deeper cheek bones, or a more proportionate chin, or eyes two-sevenths of an inch farther apart with a nose of more consistent slope.”

  She didn’t fear any outcome enough for him to sniff out her mind. He could only rely on man’s natural intuition. He was doomed.

  “The first head,” he said.

  “Do you think I’d intimidate people with the angel of those cheek bones?”

  “I hope so.”

  “No, they’d make the rest of my face too plain.”

  He would reach down the Mimic’s throat and pull out the choicest organs for this betrayal. Tethiel would, if his betrothed hadn’t put the Mimic up to it. The poor sweetmeat was already quivering.

  “The center head, then,” Tethiel said.

  “Are you certain such a well-sculpted chin wouldn’t make me seem too conventional?”

  “The amethyst eyes just might convince people otherwise.”

  “No one would ever see my eyes. They’d be mesmerized by this chin’s mathematical perfection.” The corner of her lips quirked upward.

  Then she had already made up her mind. She was toying with him, torturing him, submerging him ever deeper in the iciness of her disapproval for her own enjoyment. What a relief.

  “The rightmost head is the only choice,” he said. “I should’ve seen it at once.”

  “No, that one will never do. The prominent position of those eyes on an otherwise unassuming face would make me look like a gecko in a gown.”

  The scent of triple-custard pie wafted from her. She was anxious that he would choose her own face next, but he wouldn’t so blunder. Now her scheme was clear.

  He swept an arm over the busts. “You must make all the changes. The only way to balance a life is with every excess.”

  Her eyes sparkled, as if they had already begun their change into gemstone. She lifted the gold chain he had given her with the red diamond. “By the time of our wedding, I will be a new woman. This engagement necklace will carry the transformational enchantment. And I have one for you.”

  She dangled an amulet before him. At the center of a chain shone a little sun. It was an orange jewel, broad like a demon gate leading into inferno.

  “Breath stealing.” He cupped the stone. Vital humors of mystery and uproar spread up his arms into his chest. “How will it change me?”

  “It will regenerate your teeth, your ears. I only want you to be fit for our wedding.”

  His wig chafed against the scars on the sides of his head. The Bright Palms had taken parts of him with their crude games. Hiresha could thwart them in this and all things. He had made the right choice by her.

  “This betrothal gift would humble a king,” he said, “with what you’ve told me so far. But its enchantment is even more potent, isn’t it?”

  Her surprise smelled of lemon meringue pie, flavored with vanilla so exquisite that adventurers would cross oceans to find it. “It may tighten your skin.”

/>   He adjusted his cravat around his neck. “Pardon?”

  “The enchantment will make you appear younger during the day.”

  “Seem younger or become so?” Tethiel asked. “I’ve no wish to live forever. Mortality is the only thing that makes life bearable.”

  The flavors of her fear deepened into a full twelve-course dinner. She doubted their marriage would succeed.

  He had blundered after all. But then, if he always said the right thing, no one would tolerate him.

  “The enchantment won’t make you young,” she said. “My magic does not reverse time.”

  He reached behind his neck to try to latch the amulet. Could his fingers manage the clasp? Yes. They were no longer shattered but nimble thanks to escorting her over the seas. “You bring out the best in me, my heart.”

  She wafted close, pressing the amulet against his heart. She pulled herself level with him. Power flowed through her kiss. It rebounded from his lips, to his throat, down his chest and back, until it faded into a resonant hum.

  His black wine coiled and writhed to strike. Bite her. Make her scream.

  Tethiel had to keep his magic barreled. He needed to push her away.

  He must hold her closer, never free her from their kiss.

  Kissing Tethiel was a joyous drowning. With her lips pressed against his, waves of shimmering tension and release crashed over her. It was only his magic, of course. Nothing so intangible as love could feel like a plunge into ecstasy. Hiresha could believe she never needed to breathe again.

  Their lips parted. Kissing was a curious ritual, an acceptable diversion, and an unspoken promise.

  She lifted her hand from his engagement necklace. “This sapphire contains all the hues of sunrise. You may wish to call it a dawnstone.”

  He hid the jewel in his grasp. “Now I’ll always be gone with the dawn.”

  “I took the gem from the divine empress.”

  “You stole for me? How considerate.”

  “The jewel was a trifle to her and fair payment to me for years of service to the Oasis Empire.”