Fox's Bride

by Marling, A. E.

  Grumbling sounds came from the guards.

  Hiresha said, “I'm not leaving you.”

  “I'll take care of myself.”

  The enchantress started to say something, but a guard shouted over her. “Enough of that. Time the bride went home.”

  More guards spoke. “Big day tomorrow.”

  “Should be ashamed of yourself. All that talk of leaving. Not sure what the Golden Scoundrel sees in you.”

  “I do.” A guard whistled.

  The bars shone. The enchantress' shadow had left, or had been forced away. Chandur was alone.

  He crouched in the darkness, gripping his temples. The band of his circlet dug into his palms, and the gold snake was cold comfort. Within him, he felt a tearing, a lashing across his midsection. Should've let her go, he thought. Shouldn't have said anything. If she listened to him and left, they would execute him.

  The pain within him made him worry he had somehow severed himself from his fate. Can that happen? He was not certain.

  Chandur knew only one thing. He would take care of himself and break free of this prison—Get out of this city—or he would die trying.

  Hiresha carried the fennec from the waking world into the dream laboratory.

  “I may have to share my last hours with you in a sarcophagus,” she said, “yet I refuse to entertain your fleas.”

  The fennec appeared on a basalt table. His eyes matched the blackness of the stone. He tilted his nose up to follow her hand as she Attracted all the fleas from his coat. The parasitic specks hovered in the air between her hands, their jumps availing them not.

  Fleas could not be easily crushed with Burdening forces. Hiresha had to rip them in two by Attracting them to either hand at the same time.

  Her mind strayed to her recent conversation with Chandur, and she saw herself in a mirror, stooped over the oubliette grate. She heard herself call him a “fine specimen,” and she grimaced, wishing she had found better words. At least I refrained from crying.

  “Hooray! We brought the fox.” In another mirror, Hiresha's reflection clapped her yellow-gloved hands together. “You can't blame him, the innocent creature.”

  “Innocent? He has shed seven fleas on me.”

  A shoal of green garnets floated above the fennec. He settled himself down on his haunches, his fur tinted to a shade of bronze by the glowing jewels. The fennec leaped into the cluster of gems, snatching one in his mouth.

  Hiresha Attracted the jewel out from between his teeth. Not wishing the fennec to cause further mischief, the enchantress Lightened him to the weight of a single hair. He began drifting through the room like the jewels, his furry paws running but carrying him nowhere. The reflection in the yellow gown giggled.

  Ignoring her, Hiresha listened to the memory of Chandur in the other mirror. He had been kind-hearted to say he would escape by his own means. After examining Bleak Wells Prison, she found that unlikely. Neither did she have any belief in her own ability to free herself from the city guards, who had taken to standing watch over her sleeping form at night. She would have to beseech the Lord of the Feast for help. She saw no other choice.

  “If you can make a sword like that,” Chandur had said, “you can make your own way.”

  The jasper sword revolved in an adjacent mirror. A pity he was wrong, she thought. Even if she had the enchanted weapon, she lacked a spellsword's training to activate its magic when awake. True, she had power, but only when dreaming.

  “I can't sleep my way past every guard.”

  A spellsword and enchantress together made an effective pairing, each a complement to the other's skills. Hiresha had always planned for Spellsword Chandur to remove physical difficulties. His imprisonment crippled her like an amputation of her arms, and, if she would admit it, pained her almost as much.

  She destroyed the last flea. Her hand rotated, and the dead dots vanished from her dream.

  Laughter pealed and tinkled from a mirror. “He's swimming.”

  Hiresha followed her reflection's tearing gaze to the fennec. The furry ears bobbed up and down as the fox wriggled through the air using his golden tail as a paddle. He reached a black wall and sprang off it to snatch a sphene jewel between his paws.

  “Quite adaptive,” Hiresha said.

  “And he picked a lovely one.”

  The gem glowed a mossy yellow, and it also bloomed with a fire of blue and red points of light that danced over the fennec's white belly and chin. He rolled the sphene between his fangs. Hiresha reassured herself that teeth would not scratch the enchanted jewel. She watched to see if the animal would swallow it. He contented himself with spitting it out and swatting the sphene across the laboratory. The fox squeaked with delight.

  The ache within Hiresha eased at the sight the creature shimmying through the air and appreciating her prized jewels. She detected her lips edging toward a smile, but she straightened them, lifting her chin to her accustomed posture of a regal scholar.

  “He's as much a victim as us,” the reflection said. “They'll kill him, too, and all the fox wants to do is be free and leap over the dunes.”

  “I'm not inclined to forgive he who bit me,” Hiresha said.

  “Disgusting.” The third speaker had the same voice as Hiresha and her reflection, but the Feaster spoke with a chilling poise. She floated into view in a mirror, her folds of sapphire skirt rippling and twisting around her sculpted legs. “Chattering about vermin, hours before your entombment?”

  Hiresha gathered jewels toward her fingertips in preparation for a strike.

  “We may disagree over methods,” the Feaster said, “yet the spellsword is right. You do have the power to escape.”

  The jewels collided with the mirror, dove through its glass, and blacked it out. The fennec made a mousy sound and swam away. The reflection beckoned him to her, but he slid off the glass trying to reach her yellow arms.

  The Feaster had flown out of sight and reappeared in an adjacent mirror. “Forget the thief. Use your own magic. Battle past the guards then free the spellsword yourself.”

  “Enchantment is not fit for battle.” Hiresha Attracted the storm of jewels back to her fist.

  “You sound so certain.”

  Hiresha's gaze slid from the impertinent lady to the gems orbiting her clenched glove. She began to wonder. Historically, enchantress had never lowered themselves to fighting. Perhaps that represented not a deficiency in the magic so much as a lack of innovation.

  The Feaster clicked her sapphire claws together, grinning without restraint. “Now you're seeing it.”

  “I can't cast spells while awake,” Hiresha said. “Neither can I activate enchantments like spellswords.”

  “But....” The reflection added the single word. She danced in front of the fennec, and he rubbed his paws over the mirror.

  Hiresha laid a finger at the center of her chest, where below the silk the red diamond glowed. It had protected her from the thief's attacks. “Yet, I can instill magical scripts in jewels that activate themselves in response to environmental contingencies.”

  “Conditional enchantments,” the reflection said to the fennec.

  The Feaster waved a glittering hand to the side. “Forget Burdening and Repulsion enchantments. Too taxing.”

  “I was about to say that.” Hiresha lifted her chin. “The question remains, can Lightening and Attraction enchantments be used offensively.”

  The Feaster's eyes flared violet. “I can think of ways.”

  “No, I can think of them,” Hiresha said. “You are at best a mental parasite.”

  “A mental evolution, you mean. A perfection of—”

  “Silence. This will not be the most efficient or economical use of my magic.” Hiresha Attracted a silver diamond to float above her finger. She often wished she could carry her laboratory jewels into the waking world, but they were formed of dreamstuff. “However, I understand the merits of this plan. Why rely on a bloodthirsty vizier to release Chandur? Why beg the Lord of the
Feast? When I can immobilize the guards.”

  “Don't forget yourself,” the sapphire lady said. “This way, you live.”

  “If all goes fortuitously,” Hiresha said.

  “No one expects an enchantress to fight.” The Feaster splayed out ten black claws. “You'll use that expectation against them.”

  The phrasing reminded Hiresha of something the thief Inannis had said. She thought of his forged jewels, of his rudeness in knowing she wore garnets. Vile man.

  She leaned over the golden balance. A figurine of the man with daggers and a priest's robe lifted into her grasp. “The plan has changed, and Inannis is no longer my concern. I will free Chandur myself.” Hiresha flicked away the glass figure, and it shattered into nothingness. “Then we'll find a better way to leave the city, together.”

  “We'll need gems.” The reflection flourished the topazes on her skirt, and the fennec followed them with his whiskered gaze. “Lots of gems.”

  Hiresha awoke holding the fennec in the sedan chair. She leaned toward the two guards hefting the poles in front of her. “Young men, carry me to the nearest bazaar. I wish to make another purchase.”

  The priest rode on an adjacent sedan chair, and the four guards who lifted him sweated and huffed under his weight. She avoided looking at the priest, instead focusing on how her bare hand rested on the sleeping fennec. He would no longer dream of black-rock laboratories and spinning jewels. She still found something endearing in an animal so willing to sleep during the day. The fennec was a warmth on her legs, and his fur soothed her fingertips, softer than velvet.

  Shaking her head, she held her arms out to her maid. Janny scuttled beside the chair and pushed on the enchantress' gloves.

  “Maid Janny,” Hiresha said in a low voice as not to wake the fox, “in the bazaar, buy enough silk for two sashes.”

  “What color? No, never mind.”

  “Purple,” Hiresha said.

  “Why change? It's only your last day alive on Loam.”

  “I might surprise you yet, Maid Janny.” The enchantress' lips lifted in a smug expression.

  The maid's face exploded with a smile. “I knew it. You have a plan.”

  “Less than ideal, perhaps, yet serviceable. Now, not another word.”

  Woven palm leaves and fabrics of bright colors shaded the merchant stalls of the bazaar. Wares had splattered across the street from some past havoc, and a few merchants glared at the fennec with blame in their eyes.

  The guards lowered the chair, and Hiresha stepped out. The fennec woke and scuffled against her dress. She recognized the motion as a digging reflex, and she tucked the animal's head between her sleeve and her chest. Shading his eyes seemed to comfort him. He sighed a squeak, with a hint of a purr.

  The priest lumbered beside her. “The bride holds her god with the greatest of care.”

  Without regarding the priest, Hiresha walked into a crossway of jewel merchants. Their wares glittered in rows on dark rugs. One man wore the open vest and sheet pants common to her homeland. He pushed a sword from his lap and bowed to Hiresha, reaching to touch her slippers.

  “Paragon Hiresha,” he said, “for you, my diamonds are free.”

  “I have coin enough to pay and more.” Her glove drifted above faceted jewels that sparkled prismatic light over their settings of silver rings and necklaces. The merchant had yellow diamonds, too, as well as the rarer blue, green, and silver. Not the rarest, she thought and touched between her breasts.

  “Enchantress,” a merchant said, a fox sigil around his eyes to match her own. “My topazes are the finest in the Lands of Loam.” His rug held faceted gems the colors of sky, fire, honey, and pink sunrise.

  “Diamonds and topazes are for commoners. Sapphires and rubies are the only jewels fit for a god's bride.” A merchant shoved out with two arms, each bearing scores of bracelets, studded with jewels from black to white to clear and spanning all the colors of the spectrum.

  “Corundum is indeed the royal family of jewels.” Hiresha tapped a finger on her lips, striding to the next stall. “Yet, I have always admired the hues of garnets.”

  A merchant wearing earrings the shade of pomegranate presented a tiara. Its stones shone so green they shamed emeralds. “My lady has a refined eye.” He glanced at the garnets on her gown with a questioning brow.

  “Garnets will only scratch.” Another man lifted a tray of jewels arranged in the shape and colors of a rainbow. “Zircons! All the way from the Cloudcrusher Mountains.”

  Other merchants heckled. “Dull!”

  “Might as well buy glass.”

  Hiresha strode to a man who had not yet looked up from his rug of wares. Amid crystal and rounded stones of rose quartz lay angular amethysts. She picked up one of the purple gems. “Sometimes the common jewel can surpass the rare in elegance.”

  A grin crept onto the quartz-merchant's face. His smile slid away when the enchantress strode away from his stall.

  The priest glanced to the horizon where the sky was turning red. “We won't stay long.”

  Hiresha nodded, gazing from one hopeful merchant to the next. “Hmmm. There is only one thing for me to do. I must buy all of them.”

  The merchant wearing the jangling bracelets thrust himself forward. “All the sapphires?”

  “And the topazes, and the zircons, quartz, garnets, and colored diamonds.” With one arm still tucking the fennec against her, she unrolled the scroll with the scribe's hieroglyphs and her signature pattern. “Take your accounts to the Silver Crocodile.”

  The merchants bowed and praised her. One wished her happiness in the afterlife.

  “Less supplication,” she said, “and more packing of gems.”

  The priest edged closer to her. “There is no purpose. The Golden Scoundrel will shower his bride with treasures in the next world.”

  Hiresha said, “Cannot I indulge in one last worldly splurge?”

  “The enchantress,” the priest said, “will not carry jewels with her into the sarcophagus. She shall go as she was born into the god's arms.”

  “So you want me to place jewels on your bare body?” Maid Janny asked. “Wouldn't you rather try sleeping with something else? Last night as an unmarried woman, and all.”

  The maid winked at the two guards positioned in the hall. They peered into Hiresha's room in the temple compound, but they stood too far away to overhear.

  Hiresha undressed in front of them without blushing. She lay on a sagging rope bed, propping her head up with a wooden stand that served as a pillow. “Up and down my limbs,” she said to Janny. “And across my torso, then remove the jewels in the same order and place them into a sash. Will that be too difficult for your diminutive mind?”

  Janny jerked a needle and thread in and out of a sash, stitching creases in them for scores of gem-sized pockets. Her arm lolled outward, pricking Hiresha in the arm. “Oh! I'm so sorry. Had an uncontrollable urge to stab an ice-crotch enchantress. Must be common among us small-minded folks.”

  Despite the sting in her arm, Hiresha was yawning. She muttered something she hoped was biting while sleep dragged her downward to unconsciousness.

  In the round laboratory, all the weight of fatigue and body left her. Pivoting on one toe, she Repulsed each dream jewel onto wall shelves. Baubles whizzed past the jewels to her, carrying the scripts of complex spellcraft. A veined bloodstone hovered above her as did the golden chisel, a lavish honey jar, and silver clamps.

  Gems from the waking world winked into view on the basalt table. The maid must have begun setting them on the enchantress’ skin. Hiresha nudged herself through the air to stand over the operations table, where gems seemed to bud from the black stone.

  “A set of triggering garnets will prime the magic in other jewels and serve as the first condition in enchantment activation.”

  Ten purple garnets levitated from the table. Hiresha fanned her hands. Magic pinched closed the arteries in her fingers, and her nail beds whitened. She turned her palms to fa
ce her and decided she would not puncture her fingertips with gems. Pain aside, the gems would impede her sense of touch.

  Hiresha held her face steady as she Repulsed apart the skin below her finger pads, between two knuckles on each finger. Pain thrummed up her wrists as she fitted the gems into the wounds. An Attraction closed the flesh around the garnets.

  Her blood resumed flow. At the center of a red lump on each finger, a purple facet flashed. Any enchanted jewel she held would detect the nearby garnets, and half its activating contingencies would be met.

  “Second condition.” The crystal menace of this voice came from a mirror. The Feaster admired her own hands, studded with enough sapphires to resemble the colorful scales of a reptile. “Within three seconds of being near a triggering garnet, the enchanted jewel collides with an object.”

  “My ideas, not yours.”

  Jewels paraded through the air between Hiresha's hands. The silver and gold tongs of their settings peeled from the gems, freeing them. They blazed with color as she enchanted them. Hiresha considered intricate spells that would cut off blood flow or put someone to sleep. Those complex magics could fail, and jewels so enchanted would have to contact the skin of her targets. A tunic would armor men against her.

  She decided to employ the primary strengths of her magic. Though she tried Burdening spells, they required she melt dream jewels for power. Gems that carried Lightening magic she could make four times faster, and each had twice the strength of Burdening jewels. She poured magic of Attraction into the rest, and they glowed with the most power.

  “Third condition.” This playful voice came from the reflection who twirled in her topaz gown. “We adore the fennec.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Hiresha said.

  The Feaster sneered at the other mirror. “You're almost as foolish as Pharaoh.”

  “Say, we were thinking of what Pharaoh said.” The reflection balanced a jewel on a finger.

  Hiresha said, “Not I.”

  “And Pharaoh told us the fennec was only possessed sometimes. It's true.” Her yellow glove pointed to another mirror.