Fox's Bride

by Marling, A. E.

  A squealing shriek popped her eyes open. The fennec flopped against the pillar. Two of his legs bent in the wrong places. The singing stuttered to a stop, leaving all quiet except for the fennec's whimpering as he tried to drag himself away from Chandur's lifting boot.

  “What're you doing?” Hiresha cried out and crumpled in front of Chandur.

  He hesitated, boot shadowing the crawling fennec. “You said you wanted the fiend dead.”

  “I did not!” She reached toward the fennec with her free hand but stopped short. She did not want her touch to cause him any more agony.

  “You did, in the Water Palace.” He seized her chin and yanked her to her feet. “Remember.”

  “That—that was days ago.”

  “You'll stay true to your word by killing him now.”

  Hiresha felt her knee sliding out of her dress slit. Her heel rose over the fennec. He made a mewing growl, ears flattened, broken legs dragging.

  I don't want to hurt him. Not anymore. Her leg trembled, and she felt as if molten gold flowed over her thigh, scorching, forcing her heel downward to crush the fox's fragile bones.

  In the flash of pain, she remembered.

  Hiresha remembered she had told the Royal Embalmer in the Water Palace she wanted the fennec dead, not Chandur. She remembered the spellsword had always handled the small animal with gentleness. Chandur would never have kicked the fennec.

  Hiresha felt the hardness of the topaz in her hand. She remembered that the garnets in her fingers would have readied its enchantment, a spell she had crafted with her skill and expertise. She remembered that she was far from helpless.

  Chandur was not the one who bruised me. He wasn't the one who insulted me in front of the guards.

  She remembered what they had come to this tomb to do, and it had certainly not been to kill a fluffy-eared animal. Her slipper retreated from above the crawling fennec, and her foot lowered back to the sandstone.

  This is not Chandur standing in front of me. Her tired lashes lifted, and Hiresha locked eyes with the Soultrapper.

  The Soultrapper's lip curled in a snarl of blue-tinted teeth. His hands closed into fists, one knuckle clicking after another.

  She braced her legs. “If you can hear me, Chandur, forgive me.”

  The Soultrapper started to swing a fist. Her slap came faster. The topaz of Lightening in her palm smacked against the center of his scale vest.

  His legs snapped upward as he flew back toward the wall, though the Soultrapper stopped short of hitting it. He floundered in the air, light as a feather. The force of his shouting pushed him backward.

  “This is no way to treat your husband.”

  “You are quite correct.” Hiresha grasped her twined necklace and yanked. The gold links bit into her skin, then broke. She flung the strands at the man who looked like Chandur.

  The Soultrapper bumped into the wall. Setting his feet against the stone, he heaved himself at her.

  He slid to a stop midair, the incense smoke pooling around him, and he drifted upward. He wriggled and kicked and pawed at the topaz glinting on his chest. The scales of his vest scraped against each other. The jewel held fast.

  Hiresha felt such a bursting airiness of freedom that she might have laughed, if not for the hurt fennec at her feet. She glanced down but knew she could not help him yet. “If you'll excuse me,” she said, “I have one last glyph to remove.”

  “May your soul rot!”

  Whirling, Hiresha faced one guard who had been singing. He hesitated, tried to grab her. She bolted past him and out of the room. Hieroglyphs blurred by her on the sandstone walls. She tripped over a guard sleeping on the floor, stumbled, then caught herself and kept running.

  The guard snorted awake. The echoes of the Soultrapper's screaming reached her ears. “Stop her!”

  She peered into rooms cluttered with jugs, embalming equipment, and one ancient couch she recognized. A guard sat up on it, blinking into her light. She breezed down the corridor.

  I have to find my jewel sash. She did not believe she could open the Soultrapper's sarcophagus without it, and she counted on his being the one next to the mummy queen’s. And what if it isn't?

  A lamp flickered in the hand of a guard. He passed through the stone door of the crypt, the painting behind him of the headless man blessing a mummy. The guard’s face lifted in surprise at the enchantress then bent in furrows.

  He swept out an arm to catch her. She ducked and sped past. As she skidded around a corner, she heard his bow fire. An arrow chipped into the sandstone behind her.

  The ceiling retreated into the shadows of the entrance hall. Guards pulled each other to their feet, yawning and peering about them.

  “What temple is this? Ack! Did I drink camel piss?”

  “Think I did, too.” A guard startled as Hiresha sprinted past. “Wait, she was in my dream.”

  Pillars whisked by her with each footfall. She skipped over the fallen jasper sword. Pushing back the shadows, she searched for her sash.

  A guard walked down the steps. “The way out's shut. How'd we—woah!”

  Hiresha spun in a flash of blue light. Her sash glistened in a patch of dark fabric in a corner. She leaned down and snapped it up with a hand. It fluttered over her back as she slid it on.

  A thumping drew her eyes. A guard was shoved aside, and the Soultrapper pounded his way past pillars. He had stripped off his coat and scale vest to shed the Lightening enchantment. His muscled chest shone with sweat, and he ripped the jasper sword up from the ground. In her light, the dark sword was veined in blue.

  Hiresha's pulse boomed in her ears, but her hands did not shake as she pulled out two jewels of Attraction. She glanced from them to the man hefting the spellsword's weapon. Part of Chandur still had to be inside him, and she did not want to hurt him.

  The Soultrapper showed no such hesitation toward her and charged. Hiresha learned then that nothing terrified her more than the sight of Chandur rushing her with Hiresha’s own enchanted sword held high.

  Jewels were flung from the enchantress' hands.

  Chandur swung his sword to the side, and its weight pulled him out of harm's way. Still, he had to grip a pillar when a well of Attraction tugged him backward.

  She's robbed me of so much, he thought as he clung on. And insulted me in my own tomb. He decided he would kill the enchantress and tell the vizier that she had sacrificed herself for his sake.

  He shouted, “Kill that defiler!”

  She shouted over her shoulder as she ran. “By order of the vizier, restrain that man.”

  The guards looked with confusion between them. He realized he would have to kill them, too. For now, he only shouldered them aside, thudding after the enchantress.

  Only her toes touched the ground as she raced ahead of him. The low back of her dress revealed her shoulder blades sliding forward and back under her glistening skin. He had to focus on his spellsword training to carry the Lightened sword, and he felt a measure of respect for her and her enchantments. Chandur wished he did not have to crush her under his blade. She could be ever so useful.

  He feared he would never catch her before she reached the crypt, but she took a wrong turn ahead of him. When her blue light doubled back, he burst around the corner and chopped.

  Their eyes met. The dark intensity in her gaze was so familiar. Uncertainty and self-loathing spiked through Chandur, and he let go of the Lightening enchantment too soon. His arms smashed the jasper sword in front of her. Sandstone sprayed them both.

  She sprang over the blade and tossed a jewel.

  He rolled away from it, still shocked that he had missed her. Why didn't I kill her? Because she doesn't have my glyph? If she died now, her soul would be lost.

  Chandur told himself that was the reason, that he hated the thought of wasting her power. I am not losing control.

  He lugged the sword after her and Lightened it. A blast of nausea forced him to groan, and he felt as if something inside were trying to s
plit him apart. He staggered, his legs refusing to chase the enchantress.

  Breath heaving, he pushed himself after her one footfall at a time. Each step grew easier as he neared his crypt.

  Hiresha did not pause to look back to see if her second Lightening jewel had hit. She whipped around a corner. Two guards aimed bows at her. Behind them, the stone door to the crypt was grinding closed.

  Her nerves screamed at her to duck, to scramble back, to hide from the bowmen. Instead she leaned forward in full sprint. Can't let them close that door, she thought. She could Lighten it and still never force a way through if whoever was pushing it on the other side continued to shove.

  The bows twanged. Redness pulsed from the diamond in her chest.

  Arrows were Burdened and arched toward the ground. She leaned into the wall to avoid them, half spun and half stumbled, then launched herself between the guards.

  Stone scraped against stone as the door's edge neared the wall. Her head slid between, and she twisted sideways to get her chest through. The slab closed on her ankle, and she felt the bones of her foot flex with shocks of pain.

  Gripping her knee, she yanked her foot free. Her slipper came off along with strips of skin.

  Two guards had been pushing on the door. They removed their shoulders from the stone, and their mouths stretched around their yelling. They drew knives and stalked toward Hiresha.

  She flipped a jewel of Attraction into the air and scrambled away. It landed between the guards with a sparkle, and they smacked together. Bones and bodies of dead brides imploded into them.

  Hiresha caught hold of the queen's sarcophagus and pulled herself out of the jewel's influence. She knew all too well which sarcophagus was which. Unmarked marble covered the Soultrapper's remains.

  The crypt door scraped. The other guards are opening it. Have to keep it closed. She rolled a black sapphire of Burdening between her fingers, but she changed her mind and threw another Attraction jewel. It hit the wall near the door, and the slab pulled shut. More bones flew.

  A crystalline feeling of conquest accompanied her first step toward the Soultrapper's sarcophagus. There is nothing between us now. On the second step, the air thickened with malice and rot.

  She had assumed the tomb's stink had come from the decaying brides. The waves of stench that crashed over her now felt like grease soaking into her skin and spoiling her insides. A dark glob trickled from under the lid of the sarcophagus.

  No mummy would reek like that. Maybe he couldn't embalm himself? Maybe I really don’t want to open that sarcophagus and find out what a thousand-years of Soultrapping magic does to a corpse. She slowed, wading amid her doubts.

  I could Burden the lid and crush him under marble. She pinched another Burdening jewel from her sash, this one a black diamond. If he has an inner sarcophagus, it’ll likely protect him.

  She wondered about the probability of a Royal Embalmer having more than one sarcophagus. He was wealthy but not revered. She questioned if the Soultrapper was making her think these thoughts.

  I should Lighten the lid off. Unless that's what he desires me to do.

  Hiresha stood paralyzed before the sarcophagus, a black sapphire balanced in one hand, a black diamond in the other.

  Rock exploded behind her, and Chandur swept in.

  One side of his sword flickered red as Chandur swung it over his head for a killing blow.

  The enchantress looked over her shoulder. A black mane of hair tangled around her face, and a constellation of blue diamonds shone beside her eye. Sorrow, he saw it in her, and fright, and the unbending force of purpose that got her to be the youngest elder enchantress ever.

  He expected her to run, to try to dodge. I'll cut her in two. He imagined her purple dress severing down the middle, and he missed a step.

  She looked away from him as if fearing nothing. Why would she do that? For a moment, he forgot the reason he wanted to kill her. Chandur remembered her kindnesses to his sister, and an urge swept over him to carry the enchantress away from this foul tomb.

  She's trying to kill me, he reminded himself. She'll pry open my sarcophagus and kill me.

  Her palms lifted upward as if in offering, and two specks fell toward his sarcophagus.

  She's too late, he thought. She might flip up the lid like she had those before, but then the sword would rend her.

  Fifty pounds of rock dropped toward her back. He Burdened the jasper further, drawing on his full strength as a spellsword.

  His arms betrayed him, swinging past Hiresha, missing her. He screamed in anger and dread.

  The jasper blade smashed into the sarcophagus at the same moment the black jewels landed.

  Marble lid crumpled. Stone bashed downward. He felt himself crushed and cleaved.

  Blackness geysered from the sarcophagus, and he could see nothing except a red glyph. It flared and smoldered, a circle surrounded by four claws. One of the crimson dashes cracked, flying away. Black lines split another of the claws, and it crumpled. The last two red streaks of the glyph exploded, and the disk at their center spun away and faded to nothing.

  Hiresha dragged Chandur by his heels. She envied his unconscious state. The sludge had rolled off her enchantress dress, but she worried it might stain her skin and scar her sense of smell. Her scraped heel stung, and she would have to check it later for infection.

  Grime trailed behind the spellsword as she pulled him between the columns at the tomb entrance. A pink jewel of Lightening at the center of his chest allowed her to move him. She stopped at the stairs and turned toward the cringing guards.

  “A hand, if you please.”

  They backed away from her and the reek. “Where—where are you taking him?”

  “Could still be n-night out,” another guard blubbered. “Wouldn't want to meet a Feaster.”

  “Feasters don't concern me as much as this filth.” Hiresha set down Chandur's legs.

  While the guards retreated into the tomb, Hiresha Lightened the stone that blocked the stair leading out. She threw the impediment away.

  A woman shone before her in a dress of emptiness and daylight. Hiresha did not consider asking the Feaster for help.

  Tucking a hand under Chandur's head and shoulder, the enchantress pulled him up the stairs and out to a lotus pond. The water mirrored stars fading in the nearing light of dawn.

  Chandur skipped off the surface of the water. When she splashed in after him and pushed him down, he bobbed back up. Hiresha too felt herself flip upward as the water repelled her Lightened body. She realized she should have anticipated this.

  Not my finest moment, I will grant.

  Hiresha lay beside the Spellsword on top of the rippling surface, a lily pad drifting at her elbow. She gripped his wrist, found his pulse still strong.

  Her own heart rate surged as a toothy jaw of a basilisk reared over the pond. The Lord of the Feast spoke from the monster's back.

  “Is it done?”

  “I'm lounging on top of a lily pond.” She forced a hand below the surface, and grime leaked from her fingers. “Care to make a deduction?”

  “The tomb is open.” The Lord of Feast's basilisk tromped around the pond. Despite his beastly mount, he had regained his own arms and face. He appeared as the man she knew from the daytime. “His shirt is off. You both are doused in pudding. The possibilities are nothing short of tantalizing.”

  “'Pudding?' You can't smell us, can you?”

  “I smell you're concerned for your henchman but not afraid, so I fear he'll live.”

  She propped herself on her elbows, which sank a bit into the water. “His name is Chandur.”

  “And he must've helped bring down the Soultrapper.” The basilisk licked the side of Chandur's face with a giant slug of a tongue, in almost an affectionate manner. “I was wrong about him, deliberately. I try to be wrong at all times. It's the only way I can be consistent.”

  Hiresha smirked. “You were right to warn me about the Soultrapper in the first place. I da
re say the city will be better without him.”

  “And you're better for having one person you can trust.” The Lord of the Feast nodded to Chandur.

  Hiresha thought that sounded close to a compliment. “I’d like to trust you as well, Tethiel.”

  “What a coincidence,” he said. “I wish I could trust me, too.”

  She gazed past the basilisk to the greyness spreading above the buildings to the east. She asked, “Should you not be going soon? It is almost dawn.”

  Only silence answered her. She glanced around the garden but saw no trace of basilisk or Feasters.

  Chandur gasped. He tried to sit up on the pond but flopped backward with a splash.

  She elbowed her way across the water to him. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel....”

  Chandur spat black droplets and wiped his mouth. A lotus flower next to him was jostled and bounced up and down. He opened and shut his eyes then focused on Hiresha. His lips began to turn upward, and his face was taken by a grin.

  “I guess I feel like me.”

  She shared the smile with him, feeling both the warmth of contentment rushing through her as well as the refreshing peace of knowing she had nothing left to do.

  Except for one thing, she realized.

  She wanted to sleep for a week, but she crawled out of the pond.

  Chandur followed her toward the tomb. “Where're you going?”

  “Someone down there has a few broken legs,” she said. “I intend to mend them. You can rest.”

  “Once I have my sword. I mean, your sword.”

  “You've earned it.” She cracked a yawn.

  Enchantress and spellsword stepped over a scarab. The beetle scuttled to the side of a pear tree. It slid the plates of its back apart, revealing wings like red petals. They hummed as the scarab flew toward the dawn.

  Stars on the following night twinkled through the glass ceiling of the palace. The crystal walls glistened with velvet darkness that reflected lamp flames and lavish furnishings.

  Hiresha rested her head in her hands. Her eyes drifted open and closed. Fatigue clouded her vision, even after sleeping through the day.