Dark Lord's Wedding (40 page)

“No, our accommodations were only to make your complaints seem all the more ungrateful.” Tethiel turned back to his table.

She swung around and sprang at him. Her hands spread in two blazing five-pointed traps. The corpse calm in her face never changed. Those spindly arms of hers would have strength beyond their width, and once in her grasp, he knew his power would wither. She had given him no warning, but her scramble to turn gave him time.

He vanished and reappeared in front of the thrones. From death to life, from nothingness to joy, the rush of black wine lofted him and bruised him with happy pain. The first assassination attempt had come before the fifth course. Splendid! This would be an evening of consequence.

The crunch and clatter of dining quieted, but half the guests didn’t even notice. The rest saw the Bright Palm kneeling back down on her pillow. Her long block of a face showed no sign that she had tried to seize her host, to rend him apart and ruin his coat. She couldn’t be disappointed. Her narrow shoulders stayed straight. She couldn’t be angry. She could only try again later, if she wished.

She had surprised her brother. He didn’t even notice the leech dangling from the corner of his lips. His scent changed from caramel fudge to moist cutlet as he began to fear she would be killed for the assault.

Tethiel wouldn’t draw any more attention to it. The attempt had been brazen but not elegant. “For the next course,” he said, “we’ll have the chicks of songbirds broiled the instant they break free of their eggs.”

“Baby birds?” Fos blinked away his daze.

“Their young bones have a satisfying crunch.”

“You’ll never get me to eat that.”

“Oh, but you will, and shame makes the best sauce.” Tethiel sipped his honey. It tasted of sand. The chalice twinkled a dreadful silver.

The dining room brightened with doom. Moonlight speared through the dome. The moon’s skull neared its zenith.

The matriarch stopped pecking at her salad to gaze outside. “Is it midnight?”

“It will be,” Tethiel said, “when the lady arrives.”

He had to trust in her, in Celaise. He could not doubt. Tethiel couldn’t fear, or the Bleeding Maiden would devour him.

“She’s not often more’n an hour late,” Fos said. “Unless she sleeps longer.”

Or was dead. Smothered and forever gone. No, Tethiel mustn’t think of all her inspiration bleeding out her cut throat.

“Hiresha is the paragon of punctuality,” Tethiel said, “but it’s not for us mortals to know exactly when she intends to arrive.”

The fog lit with ghostfire. The full moon clawed its way higher between the stars.

Baby birds started singing their scrumptious death songs.

Jerani saw the dragon head laying in pieces. Scales had scattered. Jerani jumped over a fallen horn. One glass eyeball had rolled into the tree roots. Atop the smashed head crouched the blossomed man. Too dark to see his tattoos, but his gauntlets pulsed and fizzed with light. He had beaten a dragon to stillness. What chance did Jerani have?

Maybe, just maybe the man wouldn’t hear Jerani racing in with his spear.

“Behind!” The sword woman cried out.

Gah! Jerani wasn’t getting any divine favors.

The blossomed man leaped clear and landed on the body of the toppled dragon. “She must be—”

Birds screeched through the air. The forest gloom curdled with feathers, glinted with eyes, and bristled with beaks. They felt like Celaise, sleek and burning cold. They wouldn’t hurt Jerani.

“Ignore them,” the blossomed man said.

“Just nightmare spume,” the sword woman said at the same time.

Her voice was close. Was that the glimmer of her blade? Jerani spun away and
thunked
into a tree and scrambled around it.

The whites of her eyes and teeth met him on the other side. Her swords whistled in.

She must’ve missed in the dark. Or the cuts didn’t stop him. He caught her head in his hand and pushed. She fell back, and he yanked away his arm before an upsweep of sword could cut it off.

He had to get to the blossomed man. Jerani’s next step buckled at the knee. He stumbled. A blade must’ve pierced his leg.

A gem gleamed on his thigh. Nothing looked slashed. Oh, that was right. The lady had promised his leg would fall off if he bothered her and her dragon. And here he was, on one knee.

The fabric of clothes made whipping sounds behind him. The sword woman was turning, would be facing him now with her blades. One could skewer him through the shoulder. The other would be a shaft of blazing coldness when it punched through his back.

A wall of blackbirds dove behind him, protected him. Thank you, Celaise. Close enough to a divine blessing.

Jerani’s leg with the gem hadn’t come apart yet, but it wouldn’t move like he wanted. He hobbled toward the blossomed man and threw the war club.

It flipped toward the back of his head then stopped. The weapon hung trapped in the air before drifting to the ground. Hyena shit! The blossomed man had too many enchantments about him.

He slammed a gauntlet against a chest plate on the dragon. The crystal flickered then was pried loose. The blossomed man flung it over his shoulder.

Jerani ducked and came in with his spear. No good. It stuck in the air too.

The blossomed man ripped away another crystal. He uncovered the lady. She floated in the emptiness where the dragon’s heart would be. A blue-pyramid jewel cast a chilly light over her face. Her closed eyelids bulged from her looking around in her dream.

She cradled the sleeping fox. His jeweled ears twitched, and his paws made digging motions. But he didn’t wake. Maybe he couldn’t.

The blossomed man slid his sword out from over his shoulder. He couldn’t be eager to stab a sleeping woman, could he? He swung down and around toward Jerani.

He collapsed to the side, out of reach of the sword. His spear went further, but it wedged in the air again. Hoof-licking flies! Jerani couldn’t stop the blossomed man, and the lady was fit to be stabbed.

When the man tried it, his sword was slammed away. The blade was dragged down, towing him after it into the dragon. Ha! She had her enchantments too. Above the lady, the pyramid jewel flashed.

Her eyes stayed closed, but she flew out of the dragon and upward. The big blue jewel was pulling her into the sky. Soon she would be out of reach.

Jerani’s leg wouldn’t bend. The gem was squeezing all the life out. He pushed himself up on his spear.

The blossomed man called out, “Catch her, Naroh!”

The sword woman kicked off a tree trunk and reached. She would grab the sleeping lady’s ankle. In the woman’s other hand, she waved an obsidian knife. Jerani knew it would be the death of the lady. It would cut her open and rain death down on all of them.

Jerani leaped off his good leg and his spear. He caught the sword woman around the waist. She cut him. He tackled her to the ground.

The lady’s body soared into the moonlight, too high for any jump. Except the blossomed man’s. He arced further than anyone could go without magic. He had abandoned his sword to reach for the lady’s pyramid jewel with his gauntlets. He would clap it between them and crush out its light. Then she would fall.

Jerani rolled, caught up his war club. It hadn’t done any good the last times. It was too dark. He couldn’t stand for a good angle. His mark was too far. But what else did Jerani have? He threw.

He hit. Somehow, this time the club smacked into the man’s leg. He tilted into a tree branch, folding around it with an, “Oof!”

Jerani had done it. He must’ve run the blossomed man out of enchantments. Jerani had saved the lady. And now his leg would fall off. The crushing numbness had reached the bone. He scraped at the gem on his ankle, couldn’t claw it off. His chest shuddered, and he was laughing, or sobbing. Maybe both. This was his reward for the rescue. A boulder might as well have fallen on his knee.

The weight lifted. He gasped as warmth tingled its way down his leg. The gem slid off. Above him came a trilling squeak. That sound could only come from the trickster fox. He was awake. And not only him.

The lady sliced down behind the shooting star of her blue jewel. Her eyes were open and full of murder.

“
It seems wrong to insist on gifts of precious gemstone and metals. Our guests might have something else in mind that’d be unique and apt, if less enchantable.”

“
My bride, this will be your night. You must be comfortable ruling it.”

“
I’m unused to the mindset of a despot.”

“
You’ll learn.”

Outrage boiled through Hiresha in molten rivulets hot enough to sear through skin, vaporize tendons, and melt bones. Those ingrates, Sagai and Naroh had cabochons for brains! They had disenchanted her dragon and pulled off its head. From perfection to ruin, from order to chaos, she had dreamed of death and woken to assassination.

“You abuse my generosity?” Hiresha wouldn’t have been more disgusted by a jewel marred by an inclusion of human pus. “My mercy?”

Sagai reached for her with his Dreambreak Gauntlets. The star ruby lit the right hand, and in the left glared the sapphire. Two jewels, red and blue, to oppose her own. All reflected as if in a dream. The soul of the elder enchantress dwelling in those gems reached out, pricked Hiresha with ghost fingers. Sagai was using the deceased to try to steal Hiresha’s power.

Hiresha took his instead. Her finger jewels closed on his gauntlet. He was strong, yet he could not bend her. He couldn’t stop her. She gripped the ruby, uprooted its enchantments, wrenched it free.

Be gone, Elder Scintar. Your time is spent.

The remaining sapphire pulsed and flickered until Hiresha extracted it as well. The gauntlets screeched as Hiresha twisted apart their metal plates.

She flung them at Sagai, Attracting them together and pinning him into a fetal position. “I told you to live your lives. You return to demand I take them?”

Naroh rushed in from behind. The idiot had to think Hiresha had a blind side. The diamonds implanted in her back sensed Naroh coming as a woman-shaped blur.

Hiresha slapped away the onrushing sword with a handful of Repulsion. She broke Naroh’s grasp, pinned her against a tree with the edge of her own blade. Shattering death upon them all!

“Don’t kill her.” Sagai croaked, unable to draw much breath with his knees rammed into his chest. “She only came for me. I shouldn’t have let her.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me,” Naroh said to him.

“Witless figments!” Hiresha clapped her hands together. Sagai and Naroh smashed against each other. “If you’re an invention of my dream, I’m ashamed.”

They thrashed but could not free themselves. A few scattered amethysts away, Jerani stood up on a shaky leg. Celaise flapped beside him with a wingspan of twenty feet in her black cape.

“How did these two find me?” Hiresha pointed at the human ball of Sagai and Naroh. “Did they follow you?”

Celaise cast her gaze down. “A Feaster saw where, through me.”

“Then I would’ve been safe, if not for you two.” Hiresha should’ve left the constriction enchantment on Jerani. Having his leg turn purple would’ve served him right, except she presumed he had been under a greater threat. He would’ve been forced to come here.