Her petite mouth opened, and her voice sounded of wind flowing between mountaintops. “The Father asked me to protect you.”
Chandur was peering at her, his lips pressed, one brow cocked. “Pretty sure nice girls don't wear clouds.”
Hiresha looked again and saw her first impressions had been all too true. Clouds parted within the dress to reveal a drop of thousands of feet through empty air. A man could fall into this woman's arms and never come out again. Hiresha pulled Chandur away.
The enchantress said, “Even if your dress is objectionable—”
“It keeps me safe.” The Feaster's blue eyes peered at the enchantress' garnet dress. “Does yours?”
“You may follow and inform us when the Lord of the Feast has disposed of the glyph.”
The woman in the sky dress floated after them. The enchantress and the spellsword outpaced the Feaster, and Hiresha was not sorry to see her diminish to a blue splotch two blocks behind.
“There's the second tower.” Chandur gazed up at a long shadow above the buildings. He turned down a boulevard. “And I think this leads to the Salt Treasury. Wait, look!”
Past a fruit tree with branches drooping under the burden of swollen shadows, the entrance of a mausoleum flickered. A candle smoked at the base of an open sandstone archway.
Chandur drew his weapon, and Hiresha pinched a jewel of Attraction from her sash. It rolled between her twitchy fingers, and for a heart-wrenching moment, she thought she had dropped it. Her fatigue burned through her. She felt hollow and fit to crumble. She had slept too little and overcome too much over the last day. The fennec rotated his ears toward the open tomb.
“Think he's already left?” Chandur edged toward the mausoleum.
The tomb loomed above a garden of plants with flowers folded shut. Hieroglyphs on the mausoleum had faded, and cracks ran through its pillars. The painting above the doorway had flaked apart, leaving only the legs of a man.
“He could be getting away.” Chandur tried to peer into the tomb. “Do you think we should look? Just to see if it's empty.”
“I'm not certain we should.” She did not fancy herself as cowardly as the vizier and the Lord of the Feast, but waiting for the others to wipe out the glyph on the Plumed God would increase her confidence. Is holding back wise or reckless? The time they delayed might allow the Soultrapper to flee to another city.
Hiresha glanced back, saw the sky-dress Feaster drifting a block away. We could wait for her. The enchantress wondered how much the girl’s illusions would help against mindless abominations in any event. Hiresha also feared the Feaster might lose focus and attack Chandur.
Dirt speckled the sandstone steps as if boots had trod between garden and tomb. Hiresha began to worry the Soultrapper had possessed someone to carry out his own ancient corpse. No sound escaped the tomb. Tethiel was right again.
Over the past day she had grown leery of clinging to old plans, and she decided this was a time for boldness and improvisation. She nodded her assent to enter the mausoleum, though was not sure Chandur saw the motion.
Hiresha stood side by side with him. She said, “We may be too late.”
Chandur shared a cringe with her. He adjusted the grip on the jasper sword then started down the steps. The candle stank of burning fat and gristle. The sandstone curved under Hiresha's slippers, worn from ages of use. Not typical, for a tomb.
They descended to a room of red pillars reaching up to shadows. Lamps burned on either side of them. Her skin prickled as if unwanted gazes crossed over her. She felt like someone's salty breath flowed hot through her locks of hair as he observed her every motion and thought.
Hiresha looked for an empty sarcophagus. Instead she saw wooden poles with planks bound between them. It looked like the means of carrying a sarcophagus, if a score of men were to lift it. She could only guess the Soultrapper had intended to leave but not gone through with it.
Oh, no. He must still be here. The back of her neck itched, and worms of fright crawled through her insides, biting, squirming.
She hooked a hand around Chandur's arm. “We have to leave. Now.”
A boom shook the entranceway behind them. It sounded like falling rock, and the stairs out darkened.
The fennec squeaked in fright and wriggled from her grasp. She tried to catch him, but he sprang away, the tuft of his tail disappearing into the shadows. Hiresha wished she and Chandur could vanish with the same ease.
Guards leaned out from behind the columns with bows nocked and drawn. Arrows pointed at the enchantress and spellsword from all sides.
Chandur counted nine pillars, with two guards behind each. Eighteen, he thought, too many. Too spread out, too well protected by columns. We're in it deep.
A few of them had blowguns. Arrowheads glinted orange in front of the rest, curving talons with barbs waiting to embed their bronze in flesh, to tear and rend. His armor would stop some. Their enchantments would Burden a few more to the ground. But the guards could fire two volleys before Chandur and Hiresha could hope to escape or fight to better ground.
Sweat chilled his brow and stung his eyes. His nostrils surged, sucking in air that smelled of salt and rotting meat. He could think of nothing but Hiresha falling to the ground, an arrow piercing her eye. Her jewels would never light again.
He expected the first arrows to lunge at them with their bronze teeth, and he balanced himself to the balls of his feet, to ready himself, though he was not certain for what. By weaving around a pillar, he might kill a few guards before an arrow cracked his skull. How'd that help? He had no wish to kill these men. He recognized a few, Djom by his pudgy cheeks, Asp-Eye Iaset by his milky eye, Dejal the once-nomad by the delicate features half visible from behind a pillar.
A single step took him in front of Hiresha. He owed it to her to die first since he had been to one to lead her down here. He could do that much.
The thought that his mistake would cost the enchantress her life cut him deeper than any blade. She had been brilliant enough to guide them through the pyramid of the Opal Mind, and he had believed she might rival the goddess one day. Now she'll die and be forgotten, he thought, because of me. My choice killed her.
He saw that he had been wrong to try to guess his fate, to think he could decide his own future. Making choices had only led him outside at night and down into this tomb. His arrogance in trying to bring himself to his own bright fate would only sever the strands of his life and Hiresha's.
The enchantress' breath puffed against the braids of his wig in halting bursts. “Do you—that is—can you catch an arrow?”
The seasoned spellswords could knock arrows out of the air with their weapons. He had not been trained that far and doubted even the best could catch more than one at a time.
He said, “If it's thrown underhand.”
Why haven't they fired yet? He guessed the Soultrapper had brought the guards here, and Chandur remembered the man's hatred toward Hiresha and himself. Chandur did not understand why their foe would delay, why he would stretch out this moment beyond all endurance. Does the skin-stitcher mean to torture us? Chandur wondered if it would fall on him to kill Hiresha out of mercy.
“There is another way,” a guard said. Chandur recognize the whistling of Djom's voice, from air passing through missing front teeth.
A calmness and sense of peace flowed into Chandur, cooling his hot dread, washing away the tension from the muscles crossing over his stomach and bunching between his shoulder blades. Part of him understood that these feelings could not come from him, that he had no right to them in the flickering lamplight with arrows bristling in his direction. He still welcomed the relief from the turmoil ravaging his mind. If he could die feeling like this, he believed he could be content.
His jaw flexed, and it felt as if an invisible hand pressed fingers into his cheeks, moving his mouth. His tongue curled, and his throat worked. He found himself saying, “There is another way.”
He turned toward Hiresha without kno
wing why. His mouth opened, and he could only guess what he would say.
“We don't have to die here.” The words came to his lips without thought. “No one has to die.”
“Chandur?”
The doubt in her voice did not trouble him, not with serenity trickling through his mind. The jasper sword was rested against his shoulder, and Chandur was glad to be rid of its weight. He realized he was speaking.
“Hiresha, we don't have to fight anymore. The Soultrapper will content himself with staying in his tomb, beside Ellakht in eternal death. Ellakht.” The name that he might have stumbled over now rolled of his tongue and charmed his ears. “Ellakht. The woman who should have loved him in life.”
“This is not you.” Hiresha gripped the sleeves of his coat. “Chandur, listen to me. You have to—”
“Have we all not labored enough? Struggled and sweated and striven. And why? When all we truly need is here.” Chandur's hand swept in a circle, perhaps gesturing at the tomb and its pillars, at the guards, or at himself and Hiresha. He did not know which but did not mind.
The guards had eased their bows to a nock position. Their arrows pointed toward his feet.
“He's controlling you.” The enchantress backed away from him. She clutched at a yellow diamond, rolling it between three fingers. “You have to fight him, Chandur.”
He did not understand her. Why fight fate? He wondered why he or anyone else would want to agonize over choices only to decide wrong. Nothing we decide matters anyway. If another man made choices for him, then Chandur could think of nothing to do but thank him.
His arm swung the tip of the jasper blade to the floor. His fingers eased, and he let go of the Attraction spell that noosed the hilt to him. The weapon rolled out of his hand and smashed into the shadows.
Fate had marked him for greatness. He did not have to worry. Chandur could ease back into a corner of his mind and watch it all happen.
Seeing Chandur drop the jasper sword horrified Hiresha. She considered throwing the diamond at the sandstone behind him, to trap him against the wall. Then she might scramble up the stairs, Lighten whatever stone had fallen on the candle, and push her way out.
And leave him?
She glanced at the guards. They stepped from behind the pillars, easing the tension on their bowstrings. They could still draw and shoot faster than she could hope to escape.
Chandur enfolded her hands in his. Her fingers had numbed, and she shivered. His touch pained her with warmth. “When we leave this tomb, together,” he said, “we'll tell the Lord of the Feast that it is done. The Soultrapper is gone. He will believe us. The vizier will, too.”
“Why would you say that? After all we have done to stop him. Think, Chandur.”
“You should think.” He coaxed the diamond from her grasp and flicked it into the shadows. “Think of what you have always wanted. What you've wished for above all else.”
“You are Spellsword Fosapam Chandur.” She torqued her wrists trying to get away, but his fingers locked over hers. “Remember yourself. Please.”
“I think you told me what you wanted. Don't you remember? At the First Trader's Inn.”
Her breath caught. She wondered if the Soultrapper could plunder Chandur's memories. Or does Chandur still have some control? She wished so much to be comforted by the smooth, deep timbre of his voice. She had desired to free him from Bleak Wells Prison, to see him again, and here he was.
Red and orange light from a burning lamp basked over half of his face. On the other side, facets of blue from her earring played over his chin and brow. When one wisp of crystalline brightness crossed over the lush darkness of his eye, his pupil constricted then bloomed wide again.
“Hiresha.” He closed his eyes as if to savor her name. When he opened them, he stared at her like nothing else existed in the world. Lips parted, brows high with wonder, breaths aflutter, he said, “Never believe anything more important than love.”
Two of his fingers slid up her shoulder. Skin toughened by sword practice now brushed her neck. The small hairs across her body stood on end as he cradled her chin, lowered his face toward hers, and closed his eyes.
She could have pushed him away. She would not have known what to do after that, surrounded as she was and sealed in the tomb, but part of her still thought she should. Hiresha could not be certain Chandur wanted to say those words though they rang with the sound of truth. She could not be certain he wished to kiss her though his lips caressed hers, and his tongue ignited trills of sensation that skimmed down her body and back up again. She could never know how much of the eagerness of his hands across her back, pressing her closer, was his own.
Maybe he always felt this way, she thought. The Soultrapper merely helped him find his courage.
Kisses bloomed warm across her face and neck, and his lips brushed against one of her closed eyelids after the other. She cupped her hands over the garnets of her dress and realized her sash of jewels was gone. She saw a guard taking it into a corner of the room. Chandur pulled her chin back to face him.
Another joining of their lips, and he lifted her in his arms. The guards cheered, their eyes moist with happiness. She slid her hands over his coat’s purple velvet, her color, and she found that if she nuzzled close enough to him, she could lose herself in his cedar smell. Warm, rich, and tangy.
A thought skimmed across her mind. Am I being possessed? She did not want to believe it. Not I, an elder enchantress. The emotions coursing through her were too delicious and vivid for her to shun.
Hiresha felt something that she struggled to describe. Power and possibility swirled within her, along with a sense of gasping potential in each moment. When she could find a name for it, tears beaded her eyes. I am awake.
She searched for her fatigue and tiredness, but they had deserted her. The pleasure of that discovery crashed over her in a refreshing tide. She wondered if Chandur had awakened her senses, had charged all the nerves in her skin. How long will it last? She pushed the thought away, deciding instead to enjoy it.
The hieroglyphs circling the sandstone columns no longer baffled her. Her wakefulness allowed her to read them. They described how the Embalmer Yafmut would journey past the setting sun to the caverns of the afterlife. He bowed to receive a blessing from a man in a crown, but the pharaoh's face had been carved out, his name scratched beyond recognition. The embalmer would pass through seven gates, from a boat ride across boiling water, to climbing endless cliffs, to leaving behind wonders he could not carry, at last to join with his god, the Founder of Oasis City. Faded pictures showed the embalmer walking alongside a glowing camel.
He carried Hiresha into the tomb.
Inannis thrashed awake in the darkness of his warehouse hideout. Shivers ran along his burning skin, and his mouth felt as dry as sun-baked clay. He gagged on the desire to cough, his throat clenching, his eyes blinking, seeing nothing. He risked no lights. Underground as he was in a cellar full of wine jugs, no one was likely to hear him and discover him. His hacking would startle Emesea from her sleep, though, and he wanted her to rest. Her ordeal in the Bleak Wells Prison had robbed her of strength.
His hand clenched over his mouth, Inannis listened with concern to the sound of her breathing. Short hisses of air escaped from her lips. When his hand found her shoulder, her skin chilled his fever-hot fingers. The reed mat crinkled under her as she tossed and turned. Her whimper surprised Inannis.
Emesea's courage had always astonished him, and he went through several possibilities in his mind before realizing she had to be in the grip of a nightmare. He lifted a hand from his mouth, thinking to wake her from the bad dream. Before he could, he heard a suspicious sound.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap. It sounded close to the skittering of a scorpion. He would stomp it like he had the others, and he shifted his head to try to locate the origin of the noise.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Inannis thought it came from above, in the warehouse. His heart clenched, and sweat itched its way dow
n his arms at the thought of someone blundering around. He had chosen this building because the owners were too suspicious of guards drinking their wares to allow anyone to stay there overnight. The threat of Feasters on the darkened streets would have kept all robbers out except the reckless. He and Emesea should have been alone, but this sounded human in its consistency.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
He decided against waking Emesea. Her prowess lay more in brawling and force of will than stealth. Inannis slunk between the unseen pillars and stacked jugs by memory, climbed a ladder's steps, and pressed his ear to the trapdoor. The last thing he wanted was some desperate idiot trashing the place and raising the suspicions of the owners.
His hands strayed over his sash, fingers brushing over lock picks and vials of poison. He checked his stilettos in their arm sheaths.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
The noise reached a frenzied tempo. It did not come from someone knocking on the trapdoor. It sounded farther up and sharper, like the drumming of fleshless fingers against metal. Inannis had an eerie sense he heard his name called in the distance.
He took a few ragged breaths then cracked open the trapdoor and peeked. Shadows shifted over the floor that was glazed white with starlight. Something moved in front of the third-story window. Inannis imagined an owl pecking at the glass with its beak. Sounds like a flock of them.
The trapdoor lifted another inch. Inannis craned his neck to glimpse the window without revealing himself. What he saw stunned him with fright, but he held his gasping terror in like his sickness and made not a sound.
A pack of vultures pressed black wings against the glass panes, each with a white beak scraping the window. Or so it seemed. They slid away as one, leaving a slime of drool over the glass. Only then did Inannis realize that it could not have been vultures because they did not swarm about at night. Rather, scores of white fangs had tapped the glass. Something hulked outside. A voice echoed through the wall.
“I smell you, fox thief.”
Fox's Bride Page 24