A royal guard slapped Chandur's cheek, gripping his chin. He turned his head from side to side then sniffed. Chandur met their gazes, not wincing despite how they clutched his bruises. Nine guards, he thought. Too many.
“Take him,” the royal guard said.
They pushed him into a room where servants brushed the sand off his purple coat. One took off his circlet. When they forced him to strip his clothes and armor he tried to stop them, railed against them. Then he saw he had greater problems.
Such as that sickle-shaped knife in a servant's hand. The man rang a sharpening stone along its edge then tested the blade against his thumbnail. The room's green-glass window lit the knife, and it reflected a poisonous moon onto the stone floor.
Beyond his nakedness, Chandur felt exposed. Bare of fate. He believed he had left the goddess' path when he had encouraged Hiresha to use her powers to escape. He had stripped himself of his destiny, and he wondered if he would die to a knife here and be forgotten.
The man gestured with the blade. “Bring him into the light.”
The greenness seared into Chandur's eyes after the dark of his last days. He kicked out, trying to hit the man with the knife but catching only air.
A guard thumped his back. “Your heart's not thinking straight. Hold still.”
An ooze that smelled of aloe was spread on Chandur's cheeks and neck. He glared down as the servant lifted the knife to his throat. The edge scraped off his stubble, and the servant wiped it on a towel between passes over his skin. Once Chandur realized he was being shaved, he laughed. Afterward, his face prickled.
The servant dabbed away the blood from a nick. “Good, no more hyena muzzle.”
They doused him with water from jugs. Ladles of oil were dripped over him, scented like a forest. Chandur blinked droplets from his eyes. He tried to think if the prisoners he had seen executed a few years back on Gods Week had been treated to lavish oils. He could not remember.
The guards muttered to each other then allowed him to put on his armor and coat. One latched a block of wood over Chandur's hands. The manacles dug into his wrists, torqued his elbows, and splayed his fingers outward.
A royal guard asked, “What’s your god?”
“The Fate Weaver.”
The bemused looks they gave Chandur made him remember that few in Oasis City knew about his homeland’s goddess. They want to know which pyramid to bury me near. The image of bones sticking from sand dunes stuck in his mind, the poor wishing for their remains to be close to their god.
Chandur forced himself to say, “The Plumed God.”
“Odd choice,” a guard said.
“Must be for his fierceness,” another said.
In truth, Chandur had chosen the god at the past request of a blue-eyed guard, another thing the two of them had shared. Chandur felt a blistering pang at the thought of Dejal learning of the execution. What if he watches? While Chandur mulled it over with clenched teeth, a servant painted the Plumed God’s sign around Chandur’s eyes.
The same servant lifted a wig of shoulder-length black hair, tasseled with blue beads. They fitted it onto Chandur then adjusted his circlet so the ruby showed. Chandur was certain the man he had watched disemboweled and stuffed with live cobras had not worn expensive braids. The spellsword twisted his hands in the wooden shackles. “Where are you taking me?”
One royal guard shook his head and scowled, and Chandur got no more of an answer. They marched him onto the street. With one guard on each side of him, gripping him under his locked arms, they could carry him if he resisted. He kept up with their pace though the daylight dazzled him, and the wash of aromas churned his stomach.
The dry grassy smell of camel. The sting of piss. The spices of sizzling meat.
A camel looked at him while chewing. The animal's head reminded him of a balding man with wisps of blond hair on his neck and on the back of his scalp.
Pilgrims and off-duty guards did not glance up where they huddled around dueling scorpions. Pinchers of black and yellow snapped at each other. One man sprang to his feet, pointing across the ring and howling.
“Salt in your eyes! In your eyes!”
A river flowed downward through the air. It was not a waterfall but a pillar of clear blue, pulsing as it descended into a tunnel leading below the street. One royal guard stuck a cup into the flow then poured a tan powder in the gathered water. He pressed it against Chandur's lips.
He sipped, tasted salt. He drank.
With the refreshment, a sense of hope grew within Chandur. The muscles around his stomach began to relax, but he forced them clenched again. If they meant to free me, he thought, they'd have given back my sword. When he had trusted in fate to do right by him, he would have contented himself with seeing where they planned to bring him. Now he told himself to watch for an opportunity to break free.
A cacophony of cheering surrounded the fox's bride.
Hiresha sauntered down the colonnade. The fennec was draped over one arm, his feet dangling, and she supported his furry head with two fingers. His heart pattered against her palm. When she lofted him higher, the pilgrims and merchants crowding between the pillars roared with approval.
“Eternity and happiness!”
“A year of fortune for all.”
They lobbed bouquets of white flowers with spindly petals. Clusters of pink blooms were flung at her feet. Merchants dared to break through the lines of guards to lay wreaths of yellow and blue flowers over her shoulders. One crowned her with a headdress of red orchids.
Beneath the flower necklaces and the veil of her dress, a glyph stained Hiresha's chest. The henna had left a design of a disk walled in by intricate claws the shade of a blood orange. The glyph stank of rotten lemons, and her flesh twitched as it seeped deeper.
Hiresha yet smiled. She was where she wanted to be, and she felt the same excitement as if poised to strike the first facet in a paragon gemstone. She was not a helpless enchantress. In moments she could begin throwing diamonds armed with magic the likes of which the Lands of Loam had never seen. When her gaze found the Royal Embalmer standing with the priests behind the sarcophagus, she matched his stare.
The sarcophagus lid faced the crowd. A nude woman was painted on the stone, exposed and unabashed, with a gold-leaf fennec flashing over her heart. The sun beamed down between the block towers of the temple pylon. The gathered people began to chant as Hiresha mounted the first of the steps.
“Scoun-drel!”
Maid Janny edged her way between the priests. Redness splotched her cheeks as if she had been crying, but the sight of the enchantress seemed to hearten her. She asked, “You been drugged?”
Hiresha grinned wider and took the next step. Two more until the sarcophagus.
“Scoun-drel!”
The maid reached down her dress, no doubt for a sash full of enchantments. Hiresha twitched her chin from side to side. Not yet. Her bare foot touched the next level of sandstone.
“Scoun-drel!”
In her turn toward the sarcophagus, the enchantress leaned close to the maid. “Wait for me outside the pyramid.”
Hiresha tried to reassure Janny with a wink, but her other eyelid also lowered in a blink. For the first time ever, she felt deficient in the realm of winking. She mounted the last step and lifted her leg into the sarcophagus. The dusky metal that plated its insides had heated in the sun. It burned her toes.
“Scoun-drel! Scoun-drel! Scoun-drel!”
A priest set his meaty hand on the blue-robed shoulder of his fellow. “Observe the bride's earrings. She will not wear jewels into her lord husband's pyramid.”
Hiresha lifted the fennec toward the crowd. She listened to the priests behind her, apprehension sparking through her. If the priests tried to remove the triggering garnets, she would have to defend herself, and with the Soultrapper's vessel beside her and at full strength.
“Why weren't her earrings removed?”
A third priest. “The sarcophagus was plated with lead
, per your request. She can't escape.”
Hiresha beamed, realizing the priests had made a mistake. She could not enchant lead and expect the magic to persist after she awoke. Neither would she have the need. She would escape in her sleep.
The first priest. “The jewels will be cut from her.”
Her shoulders tensed forward. Her fingers brushed aside the flower wreathes to touch the red diamond below the orange of the glyph. She began to gag, the diamonds rising in her throat.
“I will vouch for her commitment.” The embalmer's voice bristled with malice and resentment. “Her future is locked.”
The priests seemed willing to give the Royal Embalmer the final word. As Hiresha swallowed the diamonds back down, she wondered how far the Soultrapper's influence spread over the rulers of the city. However deep, she thought, I will uproot him.
She lay in the coffin. The heat of the metal seeped through her linen dress and singed the back of her legs. She held the fennec over her chest, and his black nose explored the flower headdress.
Ten arms lifted the lid overhead and slammed darkness on top of her. At the last moment, the fennec's ears folded down.
A blue light roused itself in her earrings. The fennec's eyes shone back at her, his padded paws turning teal. She let go of him, and he pattered over her body. He stepped onto the hot metal, too, but his chirping noises sounded of nothing but happiness.
“I'm not certain you appreciate the gravity of our situation.” She tried to stroke the fox, but he frolicked past her hands. “Does this remind you of a desert burrow?”
She smelled clay and guessed the priests were sealing the edges of the sarcophagus. The space already felt airless, and she was panting. The crowd hummed outside. Inside, the confines stifled her.
The sarcophagus shifted beneath her, the front wobbling. Men had to be pulling it into the temple with rope on a series of wooden rollers. The motion was subtle, much like sailing on a land ship. She felt herself slipping downward into sleep.
Everything tipped. Her head bumped against metal, and irritation pulsed through her at the thought of her orchid headdress crushed. She consoled herself with knowing that men must be dragging her up the side of the pyramid to reach its stone door.
She wanted to stay awake until she leveled out and could reasonably expect to be in the god's burial chamber. As it grew obvious that she would fail at that, she began to see the advantages of sleeping to pace her breaths.
Paws brushed across her belly. The fennec rested himself across her chest and made a new sound. A birdlike warbling rose from him into a trill of delight.
Her hand found his head. Without any reason for the action that she could justify to herself, she rubbed his furry ears. Not without purpose, she told herself. Calming the fennec would slow his breathing, and she felt more at peace with the tiny animal. Plans can change. Hers, she began to think, might benefit from the addition of one fennec.
Brass towers loomed overhead with their hundreds of painted stone faces. Chandur's expectations muddled into bewilderment as he was led toward a temple of red stone. It bloomed larger over the tops of buildings, curving petals of masonry shaped after a giant lotus.
Women lounged in shaded doorways, flower petals stenciled over their cheeks, and their eyes followed Chandur and the guards. The ladies were dressed in oil and henna, brown designs of leaves and vines lacing their arms and legs. Amulets dangled between their breasts.
Pilgrims walked the streets with giddiness plastered to their faces. A scribe stumbled, wine and blue petals spilling from his cup. “The second year of Pharaoh's reign begins tomorrow!”
One woman beckoned to the guard to Chandur's left and called out. “Djet.”
The guard began to smile. His face hardened instead, and he did no more than nod to the courtesan.
Within Chandur, swirling heat battled with a chilling unease. He had never heard of an execution in the Red Lotus District, but the closer they walked to a temple dedicated to passion and love, the more his guards scowled. One of them had taken to looking over his shoulder, eyes darting, hand pressed to his sword.
The spellsword saw his chance when three chortling nobles raced ostriches through the street, beaks bobbing overhead. The two guards in front of him dashed forward to make room. Chandur stuck his legs behind the other two who held him and heaved backward. They tripped, grunting when they hit the white tiles. The guards pulled down on Chandur’s arms, but he lunged free.
One lead guard had his hooked blade half pulled from its back holster by the time Chandur reached him with a jump. The block of wood attached to the spellsword’s arms bludgeoned the guard. Chandur trod over him, his wrists stinging. A woman screamed.
His heart drummed in his chest. Chandur focused his attention on sprinting shoulders-forward with the speed and pureness of intent of a flying arrow. Pilgrims shouted and dove out of his way, and the braids of his wig slapped against his cheeks. He slammed his shackles against the edge of a building, wood splintering against stone. Pain lanced over his arms as his skin was scraped, but his hands were free.
A glance behind showed three royal guards lumbering after him. Their nostrils flared as they sucked in breath. Eyes shone white and fierce.
Chandur hopped over two scarabs rolling dung balls and ducked toward a leafy paradise below the Red Lotus Temple. Another guard wearing gold jewelry strolled out from between oleander bushes. Chandur knocked him down, seizing his sickle sword.
A grin overcame his face. Were he not panting, his joy would have bubbled up as belly laughs. Let them try to catch me now.
Sword flashing, he charged through the garden's willow trees and vaulted over a lily pond.
Water glimmered under Chandur's boots. Lily pads passed below him as he leaped. Lotuses gazed up at him with their yellow seed pods, their white petals ending in pink tips.
To his dismay, he landed in front of a pack royal guards. At the sight of his raised blade, they hefted ten of their own.
Chandur staggered to a stop, his heart lurching. Undercurrents chilled him in blasts of frigid mortality. What're all these royals doing here? He knew he could not rely on his fate anymore.
“You came!” The voice resounded with glee.
Pharaoh fluttered her hands beside her face. Her cheeks glittered with silver dust. She skipped toward Chandur and his blade.
He hid the sword behind his back and dropped it. The pond splashed.
She circled him with her arms. Her voice sang forward and back over his name. “Fosapam Chandur! Fossa-mossa-pam. Chandy-candy-Chandur. I love your name. Do you love mine?”
“Umm....” By reflex, he looked around for the vizier.
A petal of red granite towered above, shading a grove of willow trees speckled white with catkins. Beside the guards glaring at Chandur, servants carried wicker cages holding exotic birds. Priestesses wore a gauze of red robes. One man Chandur recognized by his mane of red feathers and expressionless face, though as far as the spellsword could remember the noble's name was Lord Not-The-Vizier.
“Nephrynthian,” Pharaoh said. “It means, 'She Who Sings Beauty for the Goddess.' For her.”
She pointed with three fingers toward a priestess. A ruby-lotus amulet cast red sparks over her cleavage. The priestess' smile kidnapped his gaze.
The Incarnate of the Red Lotus, Chandur thought. His tongue dried and set as mortar, bricking his mouth closed. And Pharaoh. What sort of quicksand is this?
“Aren't you worried?” Pharaoh nuzzled against him, streaking silver dust from her face designs over his coat. “I am. I had to wait thirteen years to marry, and what if the joy of this wedding bursts us into a swarm of yellow crickets!”
Hiresha gasped awake within the sarcophagus. One of the fennec's ears twitched though he still lay dreaming on her chest. Blue light tinted the curving tufts of hair within each ear.
She had enchanted her red diamond to hold them both in a state of hibernation for three hours. Now she listened for any priests who mi
ght have remained with them in the tomb. She heard only the panting of quickening breaths. Her own. The rapidness with which her lungs churned air warned her that little vital essence remained in it.
I must be expedient. She scooted against the metal wall then rested the fennec beside her. He tucked his tail over his eyes.
Shifting her body back and forth, she slipped out of her gown. To push her magic into the sarcophagus, she would need the direct touch of skin on metal.
Plunging back to sleep, she arose in her dream laboratory.
“I was listening.” Her Feaster look-alike crouched in a mirror, sapphire claws splayed on her knees. “Someone large is in the tomb with us.”
“We must hope the last priest removes himself presently.” Hiresha clasped her hands over her chest, and the red diamond pulsed in time with her heart. She reactivated the jewel's defensive enchantment and added more scripts of magic, layering them over each other in precise designs. A dozen dream jewels floated down to dissolve into a whirl of magic. “We have little time left.”
The reflection touched the spot on her chest mirroring where Hiresha had the red diamond. “We've never made a Lightening so potent. Can the diamond hold both enchantments?”
“It is at capacity.” The vibration of power left Hiresha’s fingers, and her chest tingled around the diamond. She could not feel any difference while weightless in her dream, but the Lightening enchantment would halve gravity's force on her in the waking world. “I thought we would benefit from fleetness.”
Hiresha nudged herself through the air, toward a mirror lit blue with the confines of the sarcophagus. Within it, a nude enchantress with a glyph on her chest lay beside the fennec. Hiresha's heart fluttered as she noticed the fennec's ears followed the golden ratio, each being bigger than his head to the degree that most pleased the eye. She decided to keep this mathematical beauty to herself as it was not relevant. She had to break free before the air began to poison her body and mind.
“We want to scrub out the glyph.” The reflection scratched around the topazes on her chest. “It itches terribly.”
Fox's Bride Page 17