Fox's Bride (29 page)

“Hiresha, we see you've been busy.” The Lord of the Feast gazed at the pyramid. Chains clanked as they lifted after the monument into the air. “Have you discovered where the Soultrapper hides himself?”

“No.” She half-saw lights in the corner of her eye and half-felt the approach of a new power. She turned to see the vizier on his ostrich. Three glowing men sprinted beside him.
Bright Palms
. Their veins shone white through their skin. She said, “The vizier might know.”

The Lord of the Feast stared at the Bright Palms, and the basilisk rippled its back in anger, legs smashing against the street one after another. “Vizier Ankhset, we thought you above such company.”

“The association comes at great cost,” the vizier said. His eyes bulged when the Bright Palms left him to run toward the guards. “Wait! The city hired you to protect me.”

“Bright Palms are not bought.” The man spoke in a monotone as he drew a scimitar and charged toward the Feasters and the dying guards. “You donated. We shield the Innocent.”

The basilisk leaped away onto the side of the pyramid. The Bright Palms chanted in emotionless voices, and the Feasters shrank back from them. Some of the guards picked themselves and their weapons up and fought for their lives.

A woman slithered across the street on her belly. She reared behind one Bright Palm to plunge a dagger into his spine. The brutality of the strike alarmed Hiresha, and she could not help but think the same could happen to Chandur if she failed to whisk him away soon.

The Bright Palm toppled, but his fellows tore out the weapon and helped him back to his feet. Magic flowed from the closing wound, and Hiresha felt both sickening amazement and professional jealousy at the speed of the healing. Guards rallied around them while shadows slashed with jeweled swords. Feasters struck with scything blades then folded themselves back into the blackness.

With a thump, the basilisk landed between the vizier and Hiresha. The enchantress stood in front of Chandur. The vizier jerked back on his ostrich, and his wig tumbled off. Grey stubble shone on his pate.

The Lord of the Feast said, “You insult us with those Bright Palms. Such distrust.”

“You were killing the city guards.” The vizier's false beard had fallen off during his ride and now dangled about his neck on its leather strap.

“They trespassed into our realm.” The Lord of the Feast lifted his eyes to the stars. “But we will overlook these slights”

The lump in the vizier's throat bounced downward as he swallowed. He hugged the neck of the ostrich.

“We scent your thoughts, and you search for the Soultrapper,” the Lord of the Feast said. “In exchange for our assistance in the hunt, we ask only that you banish the Bright Palms from the cities of Oasis Empire. They may live outside the walls, as they do here.”

The tail of the basilisk rolled upward, and spikes clattered against each other. The vizier winced and said, “The Bright Palms do impede commerce.”

“More to the point, they impede our good humor,” the Lord of the Feast said.

“It….” The vizier wiped sweat from his eye. “The city will issue the edict.”

“Which edict, precisely?”

“Yours,” the vizier said.

“Most sensible of you,” the Lord of the Feast said. “Now, you know where to find the Soultrapper?”

“His tomb, yes.” The vizier's ostrich paddled its wings in the air, though it seemed curiously less frightened by the nearby basilisk than by the battle farther off.

One Bright Palm still stood, along with five guards. The Feasters had retreated under the spiky and twisting shadows of the date palms.

Hiresha said, “The Soultrapper still has the spirit of the Plumed God. We must go to his pyramid first.”

“The Soultrapper might escape,” the Lord of the Feast said, “once he sees which way the vultures are circling.” He lifted one appendage from the basilisk's side to gesture to the pyramid with a mouth full of triangular teeth. “Hiresha will go with us to break the glyph. Her stooge and a few of my less-loved children will watch the Soultrapper's tomb. See if he tries to carry out his own mummy.”

“I am not leaving my spellsword with your degenerates.” Hiresha clasped Chandur's clammy hand. “We'll attend to the pyramid. You take your Feasters and guard the tomb.”

The Lord of the Feast said, “The Soultrapper will have considerably more power close to his remains. We'll do the brave thing and stay far away.”

Hiresha asked, “How can you call that bravery?”

“Any coward afraid of the scorn of his fellows can charge headlong into battle,” he said. “It requires a man of rare courage to stay back for the good of the world.”

Hiresha rolled her eyes.

“Our children would become far less disciplined without us, you see.” A black serpentine appendage ending in a crocodile's head curled around the trembling vizier. The Lord of the Feast spoke through its fangs. “If Hiresha will not leave her guard, they both and the vizier will have to go the Soultrapper's tomb alone. We are cursed to the company of our children, but we will send word once the glyph is off the mummy.”

The basilisk's back rolled up and down as it galloped away toward the Pyramid of the Plumed God. The shadows dwindled, and the stars returned to the night sky. One Bright Palm crawled to his feet. Another stooped to lay a glowing hand on a fallen guard.

The vizier slid from his ostrich to pick up his dropped wig. “Yafmut son of Nebus was the Royal Embalmer during the reign of the Golden Scoundrel.”

He glanced at the fennec, which had hid his furry face under the crook of Hiresha's arm. The vizier set a hand behind the ostrich's neck then looked to Chandur.

“Spellsword, will you give me a knee?” He hoisted himself from Chandur onto the ostrich's back. “Yafmut's tomb is west of the Royal Salt Treasury and north of the second brass tower. You will have no trouble finding it.”

Hiresha said, “I presumed you would be coming with us.”

“There's something to what the Lord of the Feast said. The city would be best served by my staying here, with the wounded. Close to the Bright Palms.”

Disgust at his cowardice forced Hiresha's eyes away. She left with the spellsword, clasping hands with him protectively. His boots thudded against the street tiles. Her slippers flowed beside him.

A woman waited for them at a crossroad. Her dress shone with the blue of sky and the brightness of clouds. The lurch in Hiresha's stomach warned her that this was a Feaster. The woman appeared less like a shadow illusionist and more like a girl of brittle beauty, who might lure a foolish man from his home at night.

Her petite mouth opened, and her voice sounded of wind flowing between mountaintops. “The Father asked me to protect you.”

Chandur was peering at her, his lips pressed, one brow cocked. “Pretty sure nice girls don't wear clouds.”

Hiresha looked again and saw her first impressions had been all too true. Clouds parted within the dress to reveal a drop of thousands of feet through empty air. A man could fall into this woman's arms and never come out again. Hiresha pulled Chandur away.

The enchantress said, “Even if your dress is objectionable—”

“It keeps me safe.” The Feaster's blue eyes peered at the enchantress' garnet dress. “Does yours?”

“You may follow and inform us when the Lord of the Feast has disposed of the glyph.”

The woman in the sky dress floated after them. The enchantress and the spellsword outpaced the Feaster, and Hiresha was not sorry to see her diminish to a blue splotch two blocks behind.

“There's the second tower.” Chandur gazed up at a long shadow above the buildings. He turned down a boulevard. “And I think this leads to the Salt Treasury. Wait, look!”

Past a fruit tree with branches drooping under the burden of swollen shadows, the entrance of a mausoleum flickered. A candle smoked at the base of an open sandstone archway.

Chandur drew his weapon, and Hiresha pinched a jewel of Attraction from her sash. It rolled between her twitchy fingers, and for a heart-wrenching moment, she thought she had dropped it. Her fatigue burned through her. She felt hollow and fit to crumble. She had slept too little and overcome too much over the last day. The fennec rotated his ears toward the open tomb.

“Think he's already left?” Chandur edged toward the mausoleum.

The tomb loomed above a garden of plants with flowers folded shut. Hieroglyphs on the mausoleum had faded, and cracks ran through its pillars. The painting above the doorway had flaked apart, leaving only the legs of a man.

“He could be getting away.” Chandur tried to peer into the tomb. “Do you think we should look? Just to see if it's empty.”

“I'm not certain we should.” She did not fancy herself as cowardly as the vizier and the Lord of the Feast, but waiting for the others to wipe out the glyph on the Plumed God would increase her confidence.
Is holding back wise or reckless?
The time they delayed might allow the Soultrapper to flee to another city.

Hiresha glanced back, saw the sky-dress Feaster drifting a block away.
We could wait for her.
The enchantress wondered how much the girl’s illusions would help against mindless abominations in any event. Hiresha also feared the Feaster might lose focus and attack Chandur.

Dirt speckled the sandstone steps as if boots had trod between garden and tomb. Hiresha began to worry the Soultrapper had possessed someone to carry out his own ancient corpse. No sound escaped the tomb.
Tethiel was right again.

Over the past day she had grown leery of clinging to old plans, and she decided this was a time for boldness and improvisation. She nodded her assent to enter the mausoleum, though was not sure Chandur saw the motion.

Hiresha stood side by side with him. She said, “We may be too late.”

Chandur shared a cringe with her. He adjusted the grip on the jasper sword then started down the steps. The candle stank of burning fat and gristle. The sandstone curved under Hiresha's slippers, worn from ages of use.
Not typical, for a tomb.

They descended to a room of red pillars reaching up to shadows. Lamps burned on either side of them. Her skin prickled as if unwanted gazes crossed over her. She felt like someone's salty breath flowed hot through her locks of hair as he observed her every motion and thought.

Hiresha looked for an empty sarcophagus. Instead she saw wooden poles with planks bound between them. It looked like the means of carrying a sarcophagus, if a score of men were to lift it. She could only guess the Soultrapper had intended to leave but not gone through with it.

Oh, no. He must still be here.
The back of her neck itched, and worms of fright crawled through her insides, biting, squirming.

She hooked a hand around Chandur's arm. “We have to leave. Now.”

A boom shook the entranceway behind them. It sounded like falling rock, and the stairs out darkened.

The fennec squeaked in fright and wriggled from her grasp. She tried to catch him, but he sprang away, the tuft of his tail disappearing into the shadows. Hiresha wished she and Chandur could vanish with the same ease.

Guards leaned out from behind the columns with bows nocked and drawn. Arrows pointed at the enchantress and spellsword from all sides.

Chandur counted nine pillars, with two guards behind each.
Eighteen,
he thought,
too many. Too spread out, too well protected by columns. We're in it deep.

A few of them had blowguns. Arrowheads glinted orange in front of the rest, curving talons with barbs waiting to embed their bronze in flesh, to tear and rend. His armor would stop some. Their enchantments would Burden a few more to the ground. But the guards could fire two volleys before Chandur and Hiresha could hope to escape or fight to better ground.

Sweat chilled his brow and stung his eyes. His nostrils surged, sucking in air that smelled of salt and rotting meat. He could think of nothing but Hiresha falling to the ground, an arrow piercing her eye. Her jewels would never light again.

He expected the first arrows to lunge at them with their bronze teeth, and he balanced himself to the balls of his feet, to ready himself, though he was not certain for what. By weaving around a pillar, he might kill a few guards before an arrow cracked his skull.
How'd that help?
He had no wish to kill these men. He recognized a few, Djom by his pudgy cheeks, Asp-Eye Iaset by his milky eye, Dejal the once-nomad by the delicate features half visible from behind a pillar.

A single step took him in front of Hiresha. He owed it to her to die first since he had been to one to lead her down here. He could do that much.

The thought that his mistake would cost the enchantress her life cut him deeper than any blade. She had been brilliant enough to guide them through the pyramid of the Opal Mind, and he had believed she might rival the goddess one day.
Now she'll die and be forgotten,
he thought,
because of me. My choice killed her.

He saw that he had been wrong to try to guess his fate, to think he could decide his own future. Making choices had only led him outside at night and down into this tomb. His arrogance in trying to bring himself to his own bright fate would only sever the strands of his life and Hiresha's.

The enchantress' breath puffed against the braids of his wig in halting bursts. “Do you—that is—can you catch an arrow?”

The seasoned spellswords could knock arrows out of the air with their weapons. He had not been trained that far and doubted even the best could catch more than one at a time.

He said, “If it's thrown underhand.”

Why haven't they fired yet?
He guessed the Soultrapper had brought the guards here, and Chandur remembered the man's hatred toward Hiresha and himself. Chandur did not understand why their foe would delay, why he would stretch out this moment beyond all endurance.
Does the skin-stitcher mean to torture us?
Chandur wondered if it would fall on him to kill Hiresha out of mercy.

“There is another way,” a guard said. Chandur recognize the whistling of Djom's voice, from air passing through missing front teeth.

A calmness and sense of peace flowed into Chandur, cooling his hot dread, washing away the tension from the muscles crossing over his stomach and bunching between his shoulder blades. Part of him understood that these feelings could not come from him, that he had no right to them in the flickering lamplight with arrows bristling in his direction. He still welcomed the relief from the turmoil ravaging his mind. If he could die feeling like this, he believed he could be content.

His jaw flexed, and it felt as if an invisible hand pressed fingers into his cheeks, moving his mouth. His tongue curled, and his throat worked. He found himself saying, “There is another way.”

He turned toward Hiresha without knowing why. His mouth opened, and he could only guess what he would say.

“We don't have to die here.” The words came to his lips without thought. “No one has to die.”

“Chandur?”

The doubt in her voice did not trouble him, not with serenity trickling through his mind. The jasper sword was rested against his shoulder, and Chandur was glad to be rid of its weight. He realized he was speaking.

“Hiresha, we don't have to fight anymore. The Soultrapper will content himself with staying in his tomb, beside Ellakht in eternal death. Ellakht.” The name that he might have stumbled over now rolled of his tongue and charmed his ears. “
Ellakht
. The woman who should have loved him in life.”

“This is not you.” Hiresha gripped the sleeves of his coat. “Chandur, listen to me. You have to—”

“Have we all not labored enough? Struggled and sweated and striven. And why? When all we truly need is here.” Chandur's hand swept in a circle, perhaps gesturing at the tomb and its pillars, at the guards, or at himself and Hiresha. He did not know which but did not mind.

The guards had eased their bows to a nock position. Their arrows pointed toward his feet.

“He's controlling you.” The enchantress backed away from him. She clutched at a yellow diamond, rolling it between three fingers. “You have to fight him, Chandur.”

He did not understand her.
Why fight fate?
He wondered why he or anyone else would want to agonize over choices only to decide wrong.
Nothing we decide matters anyway.
If another man made choices for him, then Chandur could think of nothing to do but thank him.

His arm swung the tip of the jasper blade to the floor. His fingers eased, and he let go of the Attraction spell that noosed the hilt to him. The weapon rolled out of his hand and smashed into the shadows.

Fate had marked him for greatness. He did not have to worry. Chandur could ease back into a corner of his mind and watch it all happen.

Seeing Chandur drop the jasper sword horrified Hiresha. She considered throwing the diamond at the sandstone behind him, to trap him against the wall. Then she might scramble up the stairs, Lighten whatever stone had fallen on the candle, and push her way out.

And leave him?

She glanced at the guards. They stepped from behind the pillars, easing the tension on their bowstrings. They could still draw and shoot faster than she could hope to escape.

Chandur enfolded her hands in his. Her fingers had numbed, and she shivered. His touch pained her with warmth. “When we leave this tomb, together,” he said, “we'll tell the Lord of the Feast that it is done. The Soultrapper is gone. He will believe us. The vizier will, too.”

“Why would you say that? After all we have done to stop him. Think, Chandur.”

“You should think.” He coaxed the diamond from her grasp and flicked it into the shadows. “Think of what you have always wanted. What you've wished for above all else.”

“You are Spellsword Fosapam Chandur.” She torqued her wrists trying to get away, but his fingers locked over hers. “Remember yourself. Please.”

“I think you told me what you wanted. Don't you remember? At the First Trader's Inn.”

Her breath caught. She wondered if the Soultrapper could plunder Chandur's memories.
Or does Chandur still have some control?
She wished so much to be comforted by the smooth, deep timbre of his voice. She had desired to free him from Bleak Wells Prison, to see him again, and here he was.

Red and orange light from a burning lamp basked over half of his face. On the other side, facets of blue from her earring played over his chin and brow. When one wisp of crystalline brightness crossed over the lush darkness of his eye, his pupil constricted then bloomed wide again.

“Hiresha.” He closed his eyes as if to savor her name. When he opened them, he stared at her like nothing else existed in the world. Lips parted, brows high with wonder, breaths aflutter, he said, “Never believe anything more important than love.”

Two of his fingers slid up her shoulder. Skin toughened by sword practice now brushed her neck. The small hairs across her body stood on end as he cradled her chin, lowered his face toward hers, and closed his eyes.

She could have pushed him away. She would not have known what to do after that, surrounded as she was and sealed in the tomb, but part of her still thought she should. Hiresha could not be certain Chandur wanted to say those words though they rang with the sound of truth. She could not be certain he wished to kiss her though his lips caressed hers, and his tongue ignited trills of sensation that skimmed down her body and back up again. She could never know how much of the eagerness of his hands across her back, pressing her closer, was his own.

Maybe he always felt this way,
she thought.
The Soultrapper merely helped him find his courage.

Kisses bloomed warm across her face and neck, and his lips brushed against one of her closed eyelids after the other. She cupped her hands over the garnets of her dress and realized her sash of jewels was gone. She saw a guard taking it into a corner of the room. Chandur pulled her chin back to face him.

Another joining of their lips, and he lifted her in his arms. The guards cheered, their eyes moist with happiness. She slid her hands over his coat’s purple velvet, her color, and she found that if she nuzzled close enough to him, she could lose herself in his cedar smell.
Warm, rich, and tangy.

A thought skimmed across her mind.
Am I being possessed?
She did not want to believe it.
Not I, an elder enchantress.
The emotions coursing through her were too delicious and vivid for her to shun.

Hiresha felt something that she struggled to describe. Power and possibility swirled within her, along with a sense of gasping potential in each moment. When she could find a name for it, tears beaded her eyes.
I am awake.

She searched for her fatigue and tiredness, but they had deserted her. The pleasure of that discovery crashed over her in a refreshing tide. She wondered if Chandur had awakened her senses, had charged all the nerves in her skin.
How long will it last?
She pushed the thought away, deciding instead to enjoy it.

The hieroglyphs circling the sandstone columns no longer baffled her. Her wakefulness allowed her to read them. They described how the Embalmer Yafmut would journey past the setting sun to the caverns of the afterlife. He bowed to receive a blessing from a man in a crown, but the pharaoh's face had been carved out, his name scratched beyond recognition. The embalmer would pass through seven gates, from a boat ride across boiling water, to climbing endless cliffs, to leaving behind wonders he could not carry, at last to join with his god, the Founder of Oasis City. Faded pictures showed the embalmer walking alongside a glowing camel.

He carried Hiresha into the tomb.