Fox's Bride

by Marling, A. E.

  As a further insult, she had removed his glyph from her chest. Chandur could sense its absence. He glanced down at the mummy, pleased his pattern stained over the ridges of Ellakht's rib cage. Her soul is still safe. Over the ages, her screams had faded into the background of his thoughts like the sound of sand sifting over dunes.

  Hiresha made a gagging noise.

  She had begun to choke. Her lips darkened to match the color of her gown. He wanted so much to kill her. She is not worthy to be the scarab rolling Ellakht's shit.

  He loosened his hold. Need her alive. To convince the Lord of the Feast and the vizier. Or they'll find me. Us. For Ellakht's sake, he pretended to smile.

  “A bad jest,” he said.

  When he kissed her, the dampness of her mouth made him want to wretch. For Ellakht's sake, I'll pretend to love her.

  A laughing guard spilled wine on Chandur’s coat. He pressed Chandur and the enchantress together. His skin tried to wriggle away at her touch, but he forced himself not to retch.

  “Kiss,” the guard said, “drink, kiss, then kiss some more. You have the fortune of the Golden Scoundrel to—”

  Chandur clapped a hand on the guard's arm, flexing the bones to the breaking point. “Never speak his name within these walls.”

  He wanted to clout the man to death for staining this sacred place with that name. Chandur settled for reaching deeper within the guard, touching his mind, and making certain he would never speak it again. The new skill pleased Chandur, and he wished he could have so easily convinced his guard captain to stop forcing him to practice archery.

  Thinking how Hiresha had freed the spirit of the Golden Scoundrel made him want to rip out her throat. He deserved his prison, not godhood. A fear ran through Chandur that even now the fennec god bent his divine powers to destroy him.

  “A praise ring.” Guards kicked bones aside to huddle closer. “A praise ring for the bride.”

  “Her dress glitters like a trove.”

  A guard chewed the edge of his cup, and bits of glaze flaked off. His face brightened. “May her love burn hotter than a stove. And, let me see....”

  Chandur felt his gorge swell, and he allowed his discontent for the enchantress to dribble into their minds.

  The guard lifted a finger. “Her face only has a few more wrinkles than the beauty in the coffin.”

  With skin stretched over bone, the mummy indeed had fewer creases in her lovely face than the enchantress. The next guard said, “Her voice isn't too grating, for one of the livin'.”

  Chandur approved of the change in tone in the compliments. At least, most of Chandur did. The sliver of his consciousness that had hated choking her—that disliked the tears dotting her eyes—no longer had a voice.

  Hiresha had wracked her mind to believe Chandur had not meant to choke her, that he had squeezed her throat shut out of overeager thoughtlessness or as a misjudged jest. As the ring of guards insulted her, Chandur did nothing to stop them, and she struggled to think of an excuse for his behavior.

  A guard said, “Most would not call her fingers as ugly as snakes.”

  “She may have the look of biting sour grapes, but at least she has better skin than a leper.”

  “I'd only have to be half-drunk to bed her.”

  The guards clinked glasses and opened another jug of vinegar. Each verse felt like the hammering of one of her jewels to dust in front of her face. She looked up to Chandur. He only grinned wider and wider.

  “Not every mummy speaks with more grace.”

  Chandur's turn in the ring had come, and she hoped he would now shame the guards for speaking so of her. His speech would prove his commitment and respect. She realized he must have been grinning thinking of the lovely thing he would say of her. Perhaps he had not paid attention to what the other guards had said, nor heard them.

  He gripped her arms below the shoulders. “Marrying you wasn't a complete disgrace.”

  His words rent her in two. She would have fallen if not for his hold. The only thing that kept her from weeping was the chance that he would follow that line with a true compliment, then beg her forgiveness for the cruel game they had played on her wedding day.

  Chandur waved from to the shriveled woman in the sarcophagus to her. “For a man who can't have Ellakht, you're the next best choice.”

  Devastated, Hiresha shriveled within herself. Chandur, her husband, who should appreciate her more than anyone, had taunted her, seemed to hate the sight of her. Shame crushed her on one side, and on the other, weariness smothered her. Her drowsiness returned in a fog of blackness, turning her from a person to a statue with a pulse. She could not even muster the will to cry.

  The guards roared their approval of Chandur's phrases. A few more spoke against Hiresha, but her fatigue had the mercy to muffle their words. Several men picked up handfuls of the smaller bones and threw them over Chandur and Hiresha in a festive manner. The round bones plinked off her dress and forehead.

  “Dancing! Wash' a wedding without dancing?” The guard sloshed his drink and swayed a few steps. He cringed when his heel landed on the round end of a femur.

  “If we must dance,” Chandur said, “I know the place for it.”

  Hiresha had to watch him replace the sarcophagus lid, stroke its side, and whisper a few words to the mummy within. Then she was pulled out of the crypt, his grasp pinching her arm. She stumbled after him through the underground passages, clutching her marriage necklace in one hand. Its chain dug into her neck.

  Her light leaked through a room's doorway and into its blackness. A guard stood up from where he had been lighting incense. Two heads of pottery frowned upside-down smiles at her from the center of the floor. The decapitated clay heads chilled Hiresha. Their pharaoh crowns balanced on the sandstone while their clay necks pointed upward and spouted crooked trails of blue smoke.

  The incense reeked of myrrh, musky with a choking sweetness.

  Chandur gripped her by her elbows and yanked her into the air and back to her feet. “You weigh too little,” he said. “Hey, Dejal and Amret, you have good voices. Sing for this bride of mine, so we can dance.”

  A guard tapped a cracked fingernail on his chin. “Not sure I can think of any marriage songs.”

  “I don't much care what you sing,” Chandur said.

  The men droned the low notes of a dirge. They lamented the tale of a prodigal son who had wasted his father's wealth and indebted himself for pleasure. In the end, without friends or means, he begged the Silver Crocodile to collect on his bad debts by eating him.

  As the sorrow of their song washed over them, Chandur hoisted Hiresha and dragged her through the air in spirals. His fingers bit into the flesh of her arm and shoulder. A slime of regret filled her. Her marriage had not brought her happiness, and she saw now she had been wrong to expect any measure of joy. I am not worthy of it.

  Around and around the clay heads they spun. Hiresha was hoisted and doused in the haze of incense. Her tongue curled at the stench. When Chandur allowed her slippers to touch the ground, she did not try to move them. Soggy with fatigue, she could not trust herself to dance. No wonder I disgust them, she thought. Chandur has to do everything for me.

  The guards bowed their heads as they sang the melody of grief, their eyes shadowed and barbed with painted scorpion tales. Chandur hauled her in a circle, her ankles smacking into a pillar. He did not even apologize. Hiresha thought that perhaps she was the one at fault.

  “I am so sorry. I....” A sob cut off her words.

  She realized how she had ruined her life. By marrying before curing herself of her sleepiness, she had defied her plan. Now no one could respect her, and her future had fallen to shambles.

  Chandur did not look at her. He held her at arm's length as they danced.

  Hiresha wished she could escape from the coldness of her husband, from the stink of the tomb. She thought she remembered brighter places. They are too far. She knew she had no power to stagger past the guards by herself, and
the person she relied on to help her was the same one bruising her arms with his hold.

  Enchantresses have no power in this world, Hiresha thought. And that will never change.

  Her limp body continued to be waved about in the dance. The clay heads bled their smoke over her.

  Chandur lifted Hiresha as far up into the shadows as he could, wishing to hide her face. But her earrings and their light thwarted him, denying him of even a moment's freedom. Trails of weakness leaked down from her eyes.

  He wished to throw her, dash her against the pillars. Then he could clean out her insides, though he could not delude himself into thinking her mummy would be half as magnificent as Ellakht's. He wondered if he could hide her death from the vizier, prop her dried corpse beside him as they went about the city. No. Too much of a risk for Ellakht.

  The temptation to begin the work on the enchantress anyway drove him to swing her in jerks, to fling her and catch her at the last moment. In her ungratefulness, she did not even thank him for his restraint. She only whimpered.

  She already has as little life in her as a mummy.

  The men chanted now in mourning for the guards who had died defending the city from the slavers of the Dominion of the Sun. They spoke of brave men, captured, then dragged up the stone steps of a temple to have their hearts cut out to satisfy the blood thirst of the enemy god, the Winged Fire.

  Chandur revolved with Hiresha. Half the room fell into darkness in time to their turning.

  His footsteps faltered, and he felt a soul being torn away. Deep within himself, the wailing voice of the Plumed God cried a peal of relief then was gone. Chandur shivered, his palms slippery with cold sweat against the enchantress.

  She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “What did I do wrong?”

  His glyph had been broken, and for the third time that day, he felt his consciousness shrink. No longer could he sense the souls sleeping in the homes around his tomb. He would no longer be able to savor Oasis City through their eyes, or guide them in their actions.

  “Your Feaster friends,” he said, “have invaded another pyramid. The sacrilegious monsters.”

  “I know, I shouldn't have taken up with Tethiel.” Her hair shrouded half her face. “I am so helpless alone.”

  Listening within, Chandur heard only the chorus of moaning souls from the dozen other pharaohs and queens he had stooped to set his mark upon. Their meager spirits could not even honor him with enough power to mentor all the guards in his tomb. Before the strain grew too great, he fed the men thoughts of sleep. They could have pushed away his advice, but they had already exhausted themselves during the rigors of their duties for Gods Week and were all too eager to lie down, even on stone.

  Guards stumbled out of the room to find places to sleep. Only the singers remained awake, their voices haunting the halls.

  Chandur bent all his focus on the enchantress. She, at least, had to stay under his guidance, and he had no intention of ever letting her go.

  “When we leave this sacred place,” he said, “you probably should let me do the explaining.”

  She nodded.

  “Then I'll buy us a home with your coin. With your enchantments, I will become the most respected member of the city's royal guard.”

  She nodded.

  “I will return to your bed every night, where you will honor me.”

  Her eyelids had drooped. To make sure she was still listening, he roused her with a touch to her cheek. The slapping sound interrupted the singing.

  He said, “I have never seen reason to leave Oasis City. You'll rejoice to hear that we will be staying here to the end of your days.”

  To this, she said nothing. Her head sagged against his arm. He set his fingers against her neck but restrained himself yet again. Ellakht never would’ve fallen asleep while I talked. He imagined dancing with the mummy, who moved with an ageless grace. So much better in every way than this baboon-footed tomb-breaker.

  While his bride struggled to stay awake, he found his stomach rumbling out of hunger. It was a ball of pain at his core, but all the food in the tomb had turned to dust centuries ago.

  When their circling took them behind one pillar, he stepped on something that dug into his heel in an arc of pain. He cursed Hiresha for making him dance. The harmful object was lifted between his fingers, and dark stones glinted on a collar.

  The sight of the emeralds wounded him. He flung the collar into the shadows.

  The enchantress asked, “Was that the fennec's?”

  Chandur grunted. The little fiend must have worried his collar off. Chandur had been attending to other problems and had not considered the full insult of the effigy of his greatest abuser stalking around this tomb. His blood burned at the thought of the fanged pest creeping into the crypt and walking over the bones of his stolen brides.

  Spotting a bracelet of emeralds on Hiresha's arm, he scraped it off. He hurled it into a corner.

  Once again, he forced himself to lug Hiresha around the incense pots. The pharaoh's heads smoldered as he wished the Golden Scoundrel's head had smoked. Chandur smirked, thinking of what he might do to the mummy of his rival, now that he no longer had to worry about the soul escaping.

  Another turn, and he soothed himself with thoughts of how he would bind the enchantress' soul. Perhaps after a few years I could say she rolled over in her sleep and smothered herself. She would not provide him with as much power as he deserved, but over the ages, he would rebuild. More great pharaohs would come, and he would be there as their throats rattled their last breaths, to house their souls.

  Vizier Ankhset would no doubt record the pattern of his glyph for posterity. Little good it'll do them. Chandur had persisted long enough to know that few gave serious thought to history. He could resume his work soon enough.

  People never learn. Their future is the past.

  While pulling Hiresha after him, Chandur thought again of the fennec. The fiend could be walking over his sarcophagus. He might even shit on it. Chandur tried to push his consciousness through the tomb, to search for the fennec, but he found himself blind.

  The enchantress had taken so much from him. He mashed his fingers into Hiresha's arm. The sound she made reminded him too much of the fox's squeak.

  What if the fox sleeps beside Ellakht?

  The idea of such defilement goaded him to a frenzy. Though he wished to run to the crypt and check himself, he feared to let the enchantress out of his sight. Who knows what ideas might squirm into that sleepy head of hers.

  When he pushed Hiresha back, she slumped against a pillar. Shaking his head, he stepped to one of the singing guards.

  “Check the crypt,” Chandur whispered. “Look for the fennec.”

  “Oh, right. The little master might be romping over all the bones.”

  “If you see it. Beat the pest to death.”

  “I do what to what?”

  Chandur matched the guard’s stare and willed him toward understanding. Diminished as Chandur was, the spell felt like leeching his own blood and forcing the guard to drink it swallow by painful swallow.

  The guard's round-lipped expression cracked into a scowl. “If I catch the false god, I'll snap his neck.”

  Chandur clasped the man's arm then turned back toward the enchantress' blue glow. She had knelt and was handling something close to the ground. When he walked close enough to see, he started.

  The enchantress—my bride—was petting the fennec. The very same fiend that should have died with her in the sarcophagus.

  Chandur stomped toward fennec and bride. He would teach them both a lesson.

  Hiresha stared at nothing. The desert of her life blinded her, and it stretched in drifts to the dry horizon of her future. Only the muffled sound of a mew coaxed her from her thoughts.

  The fennec shone in her light. His head tilted as he peered into her eyes, one ear pointing upward and the other angled toward a pillar. He pranced around the column then stood to face her again. His paws ghosted o
ver the stone, making not a sound.

  She wanted to touch his fur, to prove to herself he was more than a figment. An apparition from times of hope. The fennec's playfulness seemed so out of place in the tomb that she had trouble believing in him. She did not think any real creature could look at her without wincing away.

  Resting her head against the grit of the pillar, she waited for the delusion of the fennec to pass out of mind.

  The fox snuffled toward her ankle and grazed her skin with his whiskers. His black nose was a touch of warmth.

  Hiresha slid down the side of the pillar. The fennec had felt real, but she expected him to dash away from her before she could touch him. Her hand floated toward the ripples of fur between his ears. His softness surprised her.

  A purr rose from his throat. She could tell he had something in his mouth. Must be a finger bone. Not wanting to see the grim reminder, she began to pull herself away from him.

  The fennec rose to his hind feet, setting his forepaws on her hand. He cocked his head sideways and opened his mouth. Something tumbled from between his fangs.

  A topaz reflected dots of blue light across her palm. Two points of brightness shone in its square facet.

  “Did you find this for me?” Her voice was softer than a breath.

  The fennec lifted his nose and chirped. His tail puffed up in triumph.

  Heat pained her as it trickled through her chest. Her fingertips twitched around the topaz, and she struggled to stop the agony of the thaw inside her. Better to feel nothing.

  The jewel in her hand was enchanted with Lightening, but it would do her no good. Not even a chest full of gems would help me. Even if she could escape the tomb, the guards, and Chandur, she had no idea what she would do with herself. Her chin wavered from side to side, and her fingers closed over the jewel, hiding it from her sight.

  Boots thumped toward her.

  Her eyes shut themselves, and she wished they would never open again. I might as well live in bed. She expected to miscarry any child she might try to have. The most she could do was empower Chandur's jasper sword.