Fox's Bride (27 page)

The enchantress walked onto another false door then tipped sideways. Her hair draped upward as she began to fall. She did not cry out.

Chandur was so shocked that he swallowed the jewel.

Hiresha was irritated at herself for reading the papyrus wrong.

As she started to plummet, only one thought scorched through her mind. She had to either drop the fennec or the paper, to reach another Lightening jewel in her sash. The fox pawed her side and mewed a squeak.

She decided. The note slid out of her fingers.

A hand seized her ankle, and she lurched backward. The papyrus fluttered past her face, and she grabbed it again with the hand holding the jewel.

Chandur had leaned far over the false door to catch her, and he was balancing himself with the weight of his sword. The stone blade was black in the blue light of her earrings. Janny also clutched his shoulder. Hiresha saw all that as well as the shadow of the abomination sweeping down to ram his back.

Maid Janny said, “Oh, ho! Chandur's looking down your dress. Or is it up?”

“I—I....” His face flushed as he tugged her toward him.

Hiresha had the presence of mind to stuff the note between her teeth before throwing the Lightening sapphire upward at the onrushing eagle. She feared she could not hope to have aimed right, downside-up as she was. The clear gem missed the bird's breast and tucked-back talons. It stuck against a tail feather.

The horns of the bird touched Chandur. The abomination brushed off without budging him. Maid Janny shut her eyes while swatting the weightless abomination away with her palm fan.

Chandur pulled Hiresha and the fennec back to the safe wall section. “I call that teamwork.”

“I call it negligence and lack of sleep.” Hiresha choked down her acid shame. “However, I thank you, Chandur.”

Janny asked, “What about me? The Vanquisher.”

Hiresha felt a deep bond of gratitude toward Janny, but she would never give her the satisfaction of hearing it. The enchantress lifted her notes between herself and the maid.

After some scrutiny, she found their location again in the sequence of numbers. The uneven surface of the false doors dug into her slippers. With every step, she feared a repetition of her fall. She had slept for fewer than four hours during the day. Her fatigue bowed her over.

No excuses,
she told herself. If she were honest, she would admit she felt this tired no matter how much she slept.

A tricky point came when the list required they double back. Hiresha checked those numbers ten times before trusting her weight to the next false door.

Their path wound its way to the top of the pyramid. The blur of the sky lake had shrunk as water flowed down through the city streets at dusk. The three of them descended back down the side, to the halfway point in the pit.

Hiresha lowered the papyrus. “This is the end. None of the surrounding numbers are correct.”

Chandur glanced at the hatch marks below them. “This one is a 'four.'“

“Fourth sphere,” Hiresha said, “Repulsion.”

She knelt and rested one hand on the center part of the false door. She knew this ability to be beyond Chandur, so she would have to access the magic in her sleep. If the wall opened at all, and opened outward like the first, it might crush her.

“Best stand a few sections back.” She passed the fennec to Chandur. “This may not proceed well.”

As soon as the enchantress closed her eyes, Chandur crept closer. He was not about to let Hiresha come to harm while he might help her.

Stone ground against stone. The slab of wall she sat on scraped inward, Hiresha with it.

Chandur stepped after her into the opening, and onto a marble floor. A hall stretched into shadows. Light from the enchantress' earrings revealed walls and ceiling covered with diagrams, interlocking circles, cross-sections of jewels, and everywhere, numbers. When the blue gleam reached the far side of the chamber, Chandur gasped.

A woman of alabaster brooded against the wall. Hieroglyphs inlaid with opal glittered down the joined legs of the sarcophagus.

Dread and reverence clamped over Chandur. He wanted to tell Hiresha how amazed he was that she had brought them before this dead goddess, but he could not find his voice.

Hiresha staggered to her feet. She gazed at the tomb beside Chandur, her face somber yet her eyes glistening with emotion. Even the fennec stayed hushed, his ears folded down.

She bent to brush her fingers over gilded inscriptions in several languages. The words circled around them, separating them from the rest of the marble floor. Chandur found his language, though he did not read it aloud.

“You have earned the right to look upon me and my designs. Approach further and I will annihilate you.”

Chandur's eyes snapped from the inscription to the sarcophagus. The Opal Mind stared back with unblinking white eyes. On the pillars flanking her, niches held glazed statuettes of her. The dark idols of the goddess also cluttered stone shelves on the walls. Closer to him, the miniatures were of blue glaze, and they clutched tiny swords of silver. Hundreds of them maintained the same pose as the sarcophagus, all staring at Chandur.
Watching and waiting.

He tried to tell himself the idols could not harm him or anyone.
They're so small. Those swords could skewer a scarab, at most.
Nonetheless, chills rippled through him.

He held his breath as Hiresha flicked coins toward the goddess and observed them roll. He tried to look at all the idols at once, but they stayed motionless at their posts. Shadows veiled the goddess, and she seemed to frown. None of the coins made it past halfway, as if an unseen wall stopped them.

The desire to run from the pyramid itched and chafed inside Chandur. He also knew the Soultrapper's glyph had to be broken.
This is my chance,
he thought,
to bring my fate to the center of the Weaver's pattern.

“I will cross,” he said.

Hiresha grasped his arm, looking up into his eyes. “Chandur, I wouldn't ask you to do this, if I thought the Soultrapper would allow us to leave the city.”

“You didn't have to ask. I'm doing.”

“Then let me make a plan.”

Hiresha reached up to touch his circlet. He adjusted his wig and handed it to her. She knelt, facing the goddess. Her gown's amethysts lit purple, and the ruby shone on the golden snake in her hands. Both colors faded as she woke and stood to whisper to him.

“This enchantment should protect you, and I'll maintain it in my laboratory.”

He fitted the circlet back over his head. “What's the safe way across?”

“I do not think there is one.” Hiresha pointed to where the coins had rolled to a stop. “There is a mirror. The goddess is actually above us in a vault. Its near wall may have an Attraction spell. Try to leap to it.”

“Don't die. Jump up the walls. That all?”

“Try to cleave through the enchantress' coffin respectfully.”

“Right.” Chandur straightened his coat, set his feet, and Lightened his sword on his shoulder. He guessed he had fifty paces to cross to the sarcophagus.
Half of them forward,
he thought,
half upward.

He waited for the enchantress to fall back asleep. When she did, purple jewels reflected off the polished marble floor. With the changing color of light, the closer idols darkened. The ones nearer to the sarcophagus lit red. The Opal Mind was shaded with twilight.

Chandur sprinted toward the dead goddess.

He felt the crackle of Attraction spells. Idols sprang from their alcoves. Flocks of the dark miniatures pounced him with their needle weapons.

His circlet streaked with ruby light, and Hiresha's enchantment Burdened the idols. They hit behind him in explosions of clay. Cracking, scraping, and clinking. It sounded as if they were full of metal.

Forty paces left,
he thought.

Two dark idols flew toward him. He batted one away with jasper. The other burst at his feet in a shrapnel of glaze and silver shards. He sprang over it, but the blade splinters hunted him through the air. They impacted in his back, and Chandur could not tell if his armor rebounded them or they stuck into his ribs. He felt nothing but the burning purpose of fate storming through his veins.

Thirty paces.

Coins were scattered in front of him, and only then did he see the mirror leaning from floor to wall. The room continued above in a vertical vault, the sarcophagus glaring down from the ceiling.

The reflection of a man in a purple coat and red sword lifted his foot to meet Chandur's. The two boots touched, and Chandur ran up the mirror to the wall. He braced his feet then sprang backward, turning in the air around the weight of his blade.

A red idol spun from the corner of his vision to break against his chest. He expected a blast of metal shards. Instead, the idol was empty. Chandur thanked the Golden Scoundrel for the fortune, and he sucked in breath to prepare for his next sprint. He tasted bitterness.

His feet swung toward what had looked like floor tiles through the mirror but was another wall of the tomb vault. He hoped it would contain an Attraction enchantment that he could run up.
If I can only reach it.

Arcing his body, he slapped his feet against the wall.
Made it!

A Repulsion spell pushed his boots away. Chandur fell. Another idol hit and sprayed red porcelain over him. Frustration and disappointment dragged out his fall so he seemed to ooze downward. The air stung his mouth with a taste he almost recognized.

He clunked against the mirror, and it would have broken if it were not enchanted. Staggering upright, he tested the wall above the glass again, but it too Repulsed him. He tried to jump off and upward.

A third idol smashed against him, wafting him with an odor of burnt almonds.

His legs buckled, and he flopped onto his back. A sense of foreboding ripped through him. He tried to lift himself, but he shuddered and toppled. Even his Lightened sword forced down his arm, and it would have rolled out of his fingers if not for the Attraction enchantment. The veins in his hands flushed red as if he bled within himself.

His head lolled back, and he saw the Opal Mind. Her disapproval slammed him in three hammer blows that resounded in his mind.

Doom.

His fate and future shattered.

Doom.

He could not even find the strength to breathe. His will to live deserted him.

Doom.

Darkness bubbled over his eyes.

Hiresha dug her fingers into her face at the sight of Chandur's circlet and sword lying motionless in her mirror. She could sense her enchantments within her dream laboratory.

Her reflection shrieked. “He's not moving! He's—”

“He cannot be dying,” Hiresha said. “I stopped all the metal.”

“Not all,” the Feaster said.

“I slowed it. I—”

“Stone could've crushed him. Or jewels punctured him.” She clicked her sapphire fingertips against each other.

“What'll we do? We can't go to him.”

“I must,” Hiresha said.

 
“We'll be cut to—”

“I have a new plan.”

Hiresha tore herself from the dream with a blink. She awoke, saw Chandur sprawled over the mirror. Relief flickered through her.
He is barely bleeding, yet why doesn't he move?

She shouted at Maid Janny. “Hold the fennec.”

The maid said, “I won't—”

Hiresha thrust the fennec into the maid's arms.

The enchantress lobbed topazes of Attraction at the nearest pillars. Idols crushed together, bristling with silver shards. She ran. Lightened as she was, she breezed over the floor. Idols flung themselves at her, but she outpaced them. They tumbled after her through the air, glazed statuettes full of piercing death.

Running up the side of the mirror, she dropped another topaz. It Attracted her procession of idols. They smashed behind her one by one. Metal screeched over glass.

Glaze crunched under her slippers as she bent over Chandur. In her blue aura of light his veins were black leeches under his skin, and she choked on a reek of cyanide. Respect for the Opal Mind's defenses clashed with anger at her goddess for poisoning Chandur.

Hiresha forced herself not to breathe, closed her eyes. Spasms ran over her chest as she dragged herself down the marble steps within herself toward sleep.

The blackness inside her folded and expanded into the laboratory. As soon as she saw the lights of floating jewels, she Attracted her antidote bauble. The vials of gemstone snapped into her hand. Two sapphires sprang from her sash.

Voices spoke from the mirrors, one urgent, one harsh. Hiresha ignored them. The torrent of her focus poured into replicating the antidote enchantment from the bauble into the sapphires. One blue, the other a nectar orange, the gems revolved above her fingers. The last lines of magic crossed and ordered themselves within, and the jewel facets shone triangles over the enchantress' face.

She flicked the blue sapphire into her mouth and swallowed. The other she seized. She woke.

Chandur appeared before her. She slapped the orange jewel into his palm and pressed his fingers closed over it. The enchantment within the sapphire Attracted the sides of his heart together, forcing it to beat. The poison within him was also Attracted to itself to form harmless clumps.

Veins in his hands brightened to blue. His first gasp rang in her ears with its beauty.

He wobbled to his feet. She held him, pressing the orange sapphire between his lips.

Chandur straightened, and she could feel his muscles tighten to firmness under her hands. She wanted to Lighten him, to help him in his ascent to the sarcophagus, but that enchantment would sap the force from his sword arm.