Dark Lord's Wedding (2 page)

“Ride with us tonight,” the lord said, “and bring your spear.”

Jerani knew he shouldn’t go. No telling where they would bring him, what they would make him do. His breath came too fast, and each one hurt. He needed to look the lord in the eye and say no. But how could he? Jerani couldn’t push his gaze any higher than the lord’s riding boot.

“You’re right to fear, my young delicacy,” the lord said. “Tonight will be perilous. I’m asking a lady for her hand in marriage.”

He wasn’t really asking if she couldn’t say no. That’s how Jerani saw it. The girl wouldn’t dare tell the lord off, no more than Jerani could.

Jerani did as he was told, fetched his spear. His war club already hung from his belt. He would ride out. Jerani couldn’t save himself, but maybe he could find the courage to help another.

The last light of day faded, and the lord’s coat brightened. He seemed to wear the sunset, a flare of red galloping through the night. The coat had to be magic. Its gold thread writhed. The lace dangling from his sleeves splayed out like torn spider webs. One strand brushed Jerani’s arm, and it stung.

Yes, Jerani would rescue any woman the lord kidnapped. He might steal away Celaise, rob her smile of its fire, take her gown of blue sky. Her love for Jerani wouldn’t matter if the lord demanded marriage. And if not her, then another woman with her own life and hopes ruined. Jerani would try to save her.

The lord would kill him for it.

A warrior shouldn’t fear to die. His bowels shouldn’t leak. His throat shouldn’t freeze. Maybe Jerani wouldn’t feel those things if he had been able to dye his hair braids in a boldness of red. He’d had to go without. He would let his tribe down.

Maybe Jerani could’ve been brave, if everything and everyone around him wasn’t smearing and warping and changing. The lord’s hair flowed into a stream of silver moonlight. His horse grew more legs, six, then eight. Hooves became claws. Horse hair became scales. An even gallop, a romp and crash.

The lepers riding beside Jerani changed too. Their missing noses and fingers grew back. The scabs fell off their faces. One became a young man and the other a monster. A giant insect, a mantis armored in bronze plates, his arm unhinged with a third joint that was a sword blade. He leaped from his mount and matched the speed of the horses.

Jerani didn’t change. Not that he could tell. Only, more and more green and black spotted his vision, and his stomach was rotting.

The horse carried him past fields of maize, around a black mirror lake, far from the twinkling lights of villages. He saw no one. Everyone would be safe indoors, away from the night, from Jerani and the rest of the horsemen. Into the jungle they went, down trails into its deeper darkness. The forest breathed its hot, sticky breath on Jerani. Insects screeched, and beasts howled above in the branches.

All the while he clung to his horse. Each stride slammed Jerani’s heart up into his throat, then down into his stomach. The saddle didn’t make riding these scrawny cows any easier. No, they weren’t like the sacred and proud-stepping herds of the grasslands. Would he ever get back to those sun-sweetened fields? He was worlds away from home, lost in the jungle with bad men.

Wherever they were, they had arrived. The lord reigned in his basilisk mount between piles of rubble in front of a grove of banyan trees. The draping roots formed a wall, a fortress of bark. Only one path led between the trunks, and purple light glowed from within.

“Midnight has passed.” The lord gazed up. Almost all the sky had been stolen by the grasping branches, but between them the moon glared. “She will be awake.”

The lord gripped his saddle and leaned to dismount. Except he did not. He sat doing nothing but turning a small box in his hand over and over. Almost looked to Jerani like the lord was hesitating, second guessing. But what could the lord fear? He rode a basilisk that could bite a bull in half.

The lord slid down the scaly flank. Jerani and the others followed him on foot. The light in the banyan grove tinted the undersides of leaves purple. Jerani squinted forward. He wiped cold sweat from his palms on his warrior robes. He squeezed his spear.

A woman waited for them between the banyans. A woman out at night, alone and frowning. She scowled. She didn’t scream, didn’t run, didn’t beg. She must’ve seen the basilisk. She had to have spotted the black triangle tattooed on the lord’s brow. The woman had to know what he was. Still, she met him with a cold stare.

“Tethiel,” she said to him.

“My dearest,” he said to her, “my heart.”

“I would be altogether pleased,” she said, “yet I’m of two minds. One has already lost her patience with you.”

Who was this woman? She spoke so strangely to the lord. So fearlessly. The ground seemed to tilt, leaning Jerani toward her. He was on his tiptoes, too light, too unbalanced, too close to drifting. Jerani steadied himself against his spear. From what could be seen in the glow, she was plain of face, plain of robe, and unforgettable.

This was a woman who could say no to the lord.

He held the small box against his chest. “If this could wait it would, my heart, but later will be too late.”

She watched as he knelt before her. The lord had taken a knee. He was putting himself below another. Never had Jerani thought to see that.

“After our voyage, you told me of a lost gem,” the lord said. “A keepsake kept away.”

“My paragon diamond.” Something about her brightened. Not her face. Her dark hair took on a blue sheen, and points of light shone through her gloves.

“You swore to marry whomever brought you the jewel.”

“I promised nothing half so ridiculous.”

He lifted the box between his hands. His fingers spread like gaping jaws.

She reached toward the box then jerked back her hand. “You don’t have it.”

The lord opened the box. Inside there was nothing.

She had known. Now she looked even more cross, and the air trembled. Perhaps Jerani would be safer running behind the basilisk.

The lord snapped the box closed. “What I propose is a gem hunt.”

“My diamond is close?”

“It awaits us.”

She breezed past him. Jerani scrambled aside. The mantis man leaped twenty feet away on his four legs to clear her path. She asked, “Where?”

“In a trap. I regret that a buffoonery of Bright Palms learned of our interest. They’ll dare to throw your gem into a watery cavern.”

“To the southwest resides a sinkhole, where treasure and people are drowned in sacrifice.”

“There we’ll find your gem.” The lord climbed atop his basilisk.

“Before it’s sacrificed, I should hope.” She raised her hand for him to take.

“Indeed.” He lifted her with a flick of his wrist. “I adore surprise parties, especially when I know they’re coming. Can you imagine? They expect to ambush us.”

“They won’t be prepared.” She sat ahead of him in the saddle.

The basilisk reared and snake-lunged into the jungle. Jerani rode after them with the once-lepers.

He asked, “Did the lord say something about Bright Palms?”

Jerani had lost his father to the Bright Palms. His father had become one. He had gotten magic but stopped being himself, and Jerani hoped to never see what was left of the man again.

“The Bright Asses will be there.” The young not-leper drew his sword.

Beside him ran the mantis man. The razor blades of his arms clacked together.

“And we’re to fight them?” Jerani asked. He couldn’t battle them. Not again. He was only a man, and the hearts of Bright Palms beat with magic. They couldn’t die.

“We’re only expected to fight.” The swordsman’s grin was all teeth. “Not to live.”

The pit went on forever. Trees teetered at the edge, dangling creeper roots. Jerani had seen cave holes in the grasslands, but the deepness of this one pulled at him. A chilling breeze of night breath sucked him toward the plummet. The stone throat was slimy white in the moonlight. This was the mouth of a god.

Jerani stepped back. The woman strode forward. The tips of her boots curled over the brink. A slip would send her screaming. Jerani should go closer, to catch her if it came to it.

But the lord was there.

She raised a hand. “Hold.”

She wasn’t speaking to the lord. A man stood on the far side of the pit. He showed little fear for the emptiness ready to swallow him. He was a Bright Palm. Light pulsed within his chest then branched out through his body, to his eyes and fingertips. His hand cradled something small. It glinted over the drop.

“Give me my jewel,” the woman said. “To you it is a rock. To me, a miracle.”

The Bright Palm spoke with a voice too flat and calm for any sane man so close to that pit. “Then you did escape into exile, enchantress. How could you have survived crossing the Dream Storm Sea?”

“It had to let her pass,” the lord answered. “The sea held nothing so wonderful or ferocious.”

She squinted at the gem in the glowing hand. Never did she glance at the other Bright Palms stalking around the pit. They climbed over the stone blocks of a temple half crumbled into the god’s throat. Timbers had been lashed together and pushed out over the pit. The structure had a canopy and an altar. One shining man on the planks held a blowpipe.

Father wasn’t among the many. Jerani wouldn’t have to die in front of him.

The Bright Palms already had a strong position, and they were closing in. The lord and the woman had to see that. But they did nothing.

The lead Bright Palm cupped his fingers around the gem. “We cannot allow you to stay here, enchantress. When the Dominion captures you, their blood war will begin.”

“I cannot go back,” she said. “I will never be captured. I’m not an enchantress, not anymore. I am greater.”

“She is the Lady of Gems,” the lord said, “and if you had any human instinct left, you’d give her what’s hers and run.”

“They pried the jewel from my chest,” she said. “They bled me for it. It is mine.”

Jerani clung to the handle of his war club. If his arms stopped shaking, he could throw it. He would have to hit the Bright Palm, the one with the blowpipe. Those darts would be poisoned.

The Bright Palm lifted the dark jewel. “Those who hoard wealth beyond their need cannot be Innocent. Eighteenth tenet, stanza eight.”

“I know you to be capable of good works,” she said. “Accosting me at night isn’t one of them.”

“Enchantress, you have murdered Bright Palms—”

“Give me my jewel, and I won’t have to again.”

“—An Innocent will not intend to harm others. Stanza seven. To those less than Innocent, our hand shall be closed.” He made a fist.

The Bright Palms charged with weapons raised. The blowpipe swung up to point at the woman.

Jerani knew he had to move. Now.

With war club over his shoulder, he dashed to the lip of the pit. He couldn’t look down, no matter how the deep emptiness called to him. He couldn’t miss. If the weapon tumbled into the pit he would never get it back, and the carvings on it of his tribe and family would be gone. He would lose the last of his home.

No. He mustn’t throw the war club. His fingers clamped on the end. But he had to.

He let go at the perfect moment. The war club arched out of his hand, spun end over end. Its polished head whirred through the night and lunged down at the Bright Palm on the planks. Wood cracked. Or bones. The Bright Palm fell against the railing, held on. The blowpipe and war club tumbled off and began their long fall.

Goodbye, forever.

The woman must not have glanced at the man with the blowpipe more than once. She was still staring at the other Bright Palm. He swung his arm up.

He tossed her gem into the air.

“Dimwits!” She leaped. She jumped after the jewel.

Jerani reached, but he was too far. She was too fast. The lord let her go.

Her gloves flew off. Her robe tore in two. Underneath she was wearing a skirt, but her back was bare. Her skin sparkled in a chilling blue. Not like the white glow of the Bright Palms but more breathtaking. More piercing. She was made of stars.

No, that couldn’t be right. But Jerani didn’t have time for another look, no chance to watch her fall. He passed his spear to his right hand and scrambled to face the onrush of Bright Palms.