Fox's Bride (28 page)

His chin jutted upward, and a thrill ran through her when he matched gazes with the goddess' stone face. He sprang against the mirror and higher. She thought he would never make it to the opposite wall.

The sword whooshed black around him. He Lightened it on the downswing—She sensed him activate the enchantment—and on the upward crest of the arch the weight was released, its momentum pulling him upward.

His boots connected against the wall. With a jump, a twist, and a sweep of his sword, he flipped to the other side. Again and again. Higher and higher. Hiresha stared in awe at the spellsword's skill.
They never taught him this at the College of Active Enchantment.

Idols battered him, but the cyanide gas inside could no longer harm Chandur. He vaulted from one wall to the other, ever closer to the sarcophagus.

Hiresha cupped her hands over her mouth as the spellsword reached the ceiling. He set his feet against it, perhaps hoping the same Attraction spell holding up the coffin would support him as well. Instead, he fell, tumbling to stand on a nearby sideways pillar.

He leaped, and his sword blurred in a sweep of black rock toward the side of the sarcophagus. Hiresha clutched her throat, hoping her enchantment in the jasper would overcome the three-hundred-year-old magic in the sarcophagus. She feared to see a blast of dark shards that would prove the Opal Mind the strongest enchantress, even after centuries.

The jasper cracked against the alabaster. Hiresha's eyes rebounded between the sword and sarcophagus, but neither looked broken. The impact flung Chandur back to the pillar between the walls.

Again he jumped. The sword collided with a crunch. Opals fragments rained on Hiresha, and her heart wrung at the blasphemy. She consoled herself that the spirit of the legendary enchantress was trapped, and Chandur was only freeing her.

On the third attempt, the jasper sundered the sarcophagus. The sword hacked through the coffin's side and sheared through the folded arms of alabaster. Stone snowed over Hiresha, and she had to close her eyes against the grit.

The pyramid trembled under Hiresha's slippers. Stone groaned against stone.

Elation thrummed through Hiresha, and she imagined herself in a waterfall of sapphires. When Chandur dropped down beside her, an urge cajoled her to embrace him. She started the motion then checked herself, only brushing the opal fragments from his coat. He stank of rotten almonds.

He asked, “If I broke a few mummy ribs along with the glyph, think the goddess will forgive me?”

“The important point is that the glyph was removed,” she said. “Did you feel it?”

“I feel a lot of things. Mainly in my back, legs, and arms and wrists.”

“The Opal Mind entered the pyramid. Enchantresses do not have to go to the afterlife. They can dream within stone and empower a potent enchantment.” She tapped her blue-diamond earrings. “These contain Elder Enchantress Planterra.”

“Does that mean you're wearing a dead woman?”

“The issue is—what I'm trying to say is—the Opal Mind will now in all probability fulfill her promise to make this pyramid float into the sky. Remember the chains around its perimeter?”

“So the pyramid is lifting into the air,” Chandur said, “and we can't fly. Shouldn't we be leaving?”

Chandur ran. Hiresha bounded with the fennec, and Janny hustled after them down the corridor to the circular portal leading out of the pyramid.

The spellsword skidded to a stop at the opening and peered down. Relief gushed through him at the sight of the ground only a dozen feet below. Chains slid out of the soil link by link. Dirt drizzled from the coils of metal.

When he looked up, concerns returned to him with a chill. Stars cascaded over the night sky, intimidating him with their brightness. Chandur had star gazed often enough, through windows, but he had only ventured out at night twice in his life. The first time he had been seven, and his mother had thrashed him afterward with a rope. The second time had been in the guard barracks on a drunken dare. Both times, he had been fortunate enough not to meet a Feaster.

Hiresha rested a hand on his shoulder. She said, “See, chains lead down from the entrance. They are large enough to approximate a ladder. You and Maid Janny will have no difficulty descending tomorrow, after dawn.”

He nodded, sure it would be for the best. Though he had no wish for them all to spend the night in the tomb with nothing to eat, he feared his hunger was not as great as a Feaster's.

The enchantress shocked him by leaping to the ground. She stumbled forward then regained her balance, and the fennec sang in bird noises at the stars.

“Enchantress Hiresha.” Chandur leaned out of the pyramid. “W-what are you doing?”

“Why, I have to see to the Tomb of the Plumed God. It should be trivial in comparison. I'll meet you here in the morning.”

Chandur held in a breath. The enchantress' fearlessness astounded him, and he considered. He had been mistaken to venture out at night before, but now he was a spellsword.
Maybe it's Feasters who should be afraid of me.

“Don't you go, too.” The maid washed her hands over each other. “Be a cruelty to leave me here with hundreds of strangely drawn men on the walls for company.”

He swung a leg out of the circular opening. Over the last day he had trusted to his own instincts and not worried too much about where his fate wanted him led. And it had gotten him as far as the inner tomb of the Opal Mind. He knew also that he would never feel right seeing Hiresha walk into the night alone.

The enchantress called up to him. “Chandur, I order you to remain here.”

“Then you'll have to stay.” He hopped down beside her. “Because we go together.”

Her chin bowed, and light from her earrings pooled over her cheeks but shadowed her eyes. She looked to be thinking, though he supposed she could be tired enough to have simply shut her eyes.
Another reason to stay with her,
he thought.

She reached out and laced her warm fingers between his. “Maybe if we hurry,” she said, “we won't be accosted.”

They jogged side by side up the sandstone ramp leading from the pyramid entrance to the street. Blue light revealed men—
no, abominations
—sprawled in front of them. Their arms stretched twice as long as a person's and ended in the black talons, and on second glance he saw that ostrich legs had been sewn to their shoulders. More stitch marks crossed their shrunken bellies. Revulsion tossed back and forth within Chandur, and he reached above his shoulder for his sword hilt.

The abominations lay still. They did not move as Hiresha and Chandur tiptoed over them and past. The enchantress whispered, “The Soultrapper is losing his power.”

At street level, a procession of lights flickered toward them. Chandur tore his sword from his back, his nerves jangling. Feet thumped closer.

Guards clutched oil lamps so close to their faces that Chandur wondered if they could even see past the flames. Their swords cast crooked shadows over the street. Though their bronze was bared, Chandur thought it a welcome sight. He had feared a pack of Feasters charged him.

Wait,
he thought,
never any night patrols in the guard.
He wondered what had drawn the men outside, or if his eyes were being tricked. The guards looked as nervous as he.

“What's that!” A guard gawked toward Hiresha and her blue earrings.

“A F-feaster?” The man's voice cracked.

“The tomb robbers.” The Royal Embalmer strode out from among the guards. He pointed at Chandur and Hiresha with a curving razor, a claw of metal that reflected orange and blue light. “Plunderers and defilers, kill them!”

“Don't see them carrying anything,” a guard said.

“That's the enchantress, that is, and with the Golden Scoundrel.”

“It is not.” The embalmer cut the air with his tool. “The bride made her choice and died by it today. This is a falsehood.”

The guards hesitated, but their faces began to twitch and scowl. Chandur had seen it before. The Soultrapper's anger spread over them. Chandur wondered if cutting the embalmer in two would help matters, or turn the guards faster against them.

Hiresha stepped forward and faced the embalmer with a raised chin. “I am acting under authority of Vizier Ankhset. This man is a puppet of a Soultrapper and an enemy of the empire.”

“
Then he dies.
”

The words boomed in Chandur's mind though he was not certain what force had bellowed them. A chill swept over the street, and shadows bulged from the side of the pyramid. The blackness heaved forward, and out charged eyes weeping with silver light, claws smashing into the ground from eight loping legs, scales of black, and a tail spiked red.

Chandur had heard of an eight-legged basilisk and the Feaster who rode it.
Their lord.
Every muscle in his body cramped in fright, and he sickened with guilt for letting Hiresha leave the safety of the pyramid.

The guards froze in place, and the eight-legged monster trampled over them to head-butt the embalmer into the air. Its claws gouged the street tiles as it swerved to turn. The man riding the beast wore garments of brighter dyes than Chandur had ever seen, the colors of agony and ecstasy.

The next moment offered a glimpse of the rider. His face was one of firm angles and glowing with life, his eyes were both bright and dark, silver hair glistening with starlight, smile twisting with reckless pleasure, and the triangle branded between his brows seemed a beauty mark. The face so astounded Chandur that he drew three deep breaths before noticing the arms gripping the sides of the basilisk were distorted into jaws. The finger teeth dug into the beast's scales, drawing black blood.

Chandur swore the Lord of the Feast winked at them.

The basilisk's four sets of legs folded, and it pounced and caught the embalmer in its craggy jaws. The embalmer had dropped his razors, but he flailed until he was slammed into the street.
Boom!
The basilisk ripped open the embalmer with slurps and crunching.

Some guards stood rooted in fright. Some screamed. Some ran. Others collapsed. Swords and lamps dropped to the street.

Chandur tightened his numb fingers over his sword. He tried to imagine himself leaping onto the basilisk's back like he had the hippopotamus abomination, cutting the rider apart. He did not think he could force himself ever to strike such a horrible beauty.

Hiresha tugged on his shoulder. Perhaps she had been for some time and he had not noticed. She motioned him to follow her away, and he stumbled a few steps then stopped.
You can't outrun Feasters.
He had heard that often enough.
You can't outrun your fears.
He turned back to face the guards and the Lord of the Feast.

Shadows flowed over the street, and out of them burst jeweled swords. A bare-chested muscle man held one. A giant mantis made of metal, another. And a fighter with lacy clothing flitted in and out of visibility. Their gold-encrusted blades all cut into the fleeing guards.

Chandur realized he was seeing Feaster after Feaster step from the darkness. A woman with a bloody bandage across her chest ran screaming to the guards. The men who tried to help her began bleeding themselves from their nose, ears, and eyes. Their lives dribbled over the ground and up the woman's skirt until she was soaked with death.

Able to stand it no more, Chandur shuffled forward with his sword. He would die if he must, but he would not cower while other good men were torn apart by night magic. Hiresha yelled something at him, but he was past hearing.

He took three steps toward the Lord of the Feast.
I'll cut off a leg or two from the basilisk.
He thought he could do that much.

The ground shivered as the basilisk tromped around. The bone sheen of its eyes gored him, and he was too numb to defend himself as its plated jaw knocked him down. Four claws fitted around his arms and neck, and a scaled leg pinned him to the street.

Hiresha stomped toward the Lord of the Feast. She reminded herself that the basilisk was an illusion, no more than a crafted shadow. Its dark drool looked all too real as it dribbled over Chandur.

“Tethiel!” Fear and outrage sharpened her voice. Though she tried to focus on the man riding the basilisk, the mount's glare whitened the bottom half of her vision. A violet tongue greased the jagged plates of its jaw. “Tethiel, release him at once.”

“Who?” The Lord of the Feast looked over the slaughter on the street before glancing down at the spellsword. “Oh, someone seems to have deliberately been stepped on. What a nuisance.”

Hiresha struggled to hold her voice calm with her emotions storming. Bolts of worry flashed through her that Tethiel would kill Chandur. “You will release him. Now.”

The Lord of the Feast always struggled to stay master of his magic. She knew that. He lost control.
Or allows himself to lose control.
He had stopped Feasting for her sake in the past, and she dared to hope her voice might reach his human half.

The Lord of the Feast did not appear as he did during the day, even taking into consideration the basilisk and the two monstrous heads attached to his shoulders. His human face was the personification of indomitable youth, his smile life-stealing, his bearing triumphant, royal cape curling behind him like wings, wide-sleeved jacket emblazoned with silver sprays of spangles and loops. Legend told that Bright Palms had branded his brow, but he wore the black-triangle tattoo like a crown. The duel edge of his splendor and terror cut her as sure as any blade.

The Lord of the Feast shuddered, and between blinks, Hiresha thought she saw neither nightmare nor dashing prince but a man bowed under the weight of his magic. In that moment, he saw her, too.

His voice split into three parts between his perfect lips and the toothy maws at the ends of his arms: calm, deep, and ravenous. “We suppose he will be useful, tonight. Up, Eye-Biter. That flunky would be far too tough and stringy regardless.”

The basilisk slunk back in a parade of legs. Hiresha pulled Chandur to his feet. He stumbled after her, dragging his sword and shivering. At that moment, she hated the Lord of the Feast, and she hoped Chandur someday would have the strength of will to stand up to him.