Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

“Then tell me yours and tell all. What plot would I be marrying into?”

  He lifted one hand off hers to wave to the cavern and its dripping gold. “To rule with more temptation than terror.”

  “But also with terror.”

  “Any half-rate tyrant can take over with an army. The truly talented do so with a party.”

  “Our wedding?”

  “Yes.” The light of the red diamond played off his lips. When he spoke his mouth opened with inhuman depths to an infinity of stars, or perhaps jewels. “Kings will come, as will our foes. By the end of the marriage ritual, they will all ask us to rule.”

  “Ambitious indeed.”

  “Now I am but the Lord of the Feast. As king I would command my Feasters to be better than terrors. Our magic can tantalize. We’d offer forbidden delights and frightful wonders. People would beg to be scared.”

  “Not everyone’s tastes run so … decadent,” she said.

  “I couldn’t rule alone. Your enchantments would inspire.” He cupped her hands, lifting her red paragon between them. Its facets flashed in angular pathways. “Yours would be the light that guides civilizations. Mine would be the darkness that delights them.”

  Hiresha had vowed to use her enchantments to better the world. Her talents lay in innovating, not ruling. She had no wish to marry into more obligations. The wedding Tethiel wanted hardly sounded like the one she had hoped for as a young woman, pined for as a not-so-young one, and then tried not to think about as a well-accomplished spinster.

  “If everything goes as schemed,” she said, “how will you control your own power? Your magic is desire. You may begin as a benign ruler, yet soon you might see it as your right to harvest fear from all.”

  Doing so would grant him power. He and all his protégées consumed human dread to craft waking nightmares. These had proven useful, yet Hiresha believed in moderation in regard to unthinkable horrors. The difficulty being, temperance was the antithesis of Feasters like him.

  “You’re right, my heart,” he said. “Only one thing will keep my judgment clear. You suggested it once yourself.”

  Her jewels pulsed to greater brilliance. Beams of purple shot from her hands. Motes in the unbreathable air flitted in and out of sight. “You would stop Feasting?”

  “Yes, in the way you devised.”

  “And you could still control your Feasters?”

  “Through a surrogate,” he said.

  “With an enchantment,” she said. “The subjugated Feasters would execute our wishes, or I’d implode their hearts.”

  “I’ve always lusted after the idea of retiring to a simple stronghold, just one continent to rule,” he said. “This I swear. Our wedding night will be my last Feast, if you will have me.”

  His princely features stayed composed. His blood-red lips betrayed nothing, or so he had to think. His heart was pounding, that was plain in the subtle pulse in his fingertips. He was terrified she would say no.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Hiresha had promised herself, and promises could be broken. Hers would end as soon as she found Tethiel wanting.

  Her first kiss with her betrothed more than sufficed. He tasted of dark coffee and brazen dreams. He reached behind her neck to clasp on an engagement necklace. Its gold thrilled the skin around her throat. Her fingers traced over its metal tines that would hold her red paragon, though she would not enclose it there yet. Once Tethiel had given her such a necklace in error. Now he did so with purpose.

  Their kiss might’ve led to another, even in that cavern of slime and death, yet she hadn’t the time. She had only a dozen hours in each reflection of reality. In this facet she would fall unconscious at midday and spiral into her other world.

  She leaned back and pressed her fingers to his lips. “The dawn has already come and gone, for you,” she said. “My noon will arrive all too soon.”

  “Of course. Shall we away, my bride to be?”

  In this instance when they leaped over the underground lake, two paragon jewels orbited Hiresha. Beneath them, in the waters, passed the broad back of a gilled behemoth. No fish of any size could threaten Hiresha, and she was free to admire its scales. They reflected first blue then a gleaming red.

  Skitterers dropped from the cavern’s ceiling onto the corpses floating below. The lake held something even more unsettling. The living Bright Palm was swimming in the deep, legs and arms moving in the blackness. A Bright Palm need not come up for air. Magic ran her metabolism. She might’ve even followed Hiresha and Tethiel into the poison passage, yet she hadn’t. She couldn’t have overheard from outside: the oozing walls would’ve muffled their conversation.

  Tethiel’s gaze went from Hiresha to the Bright Palm. “You knew her before, did you not?”

  “Yes. She was Alyla Chandur.”

  A year ago she had been an anxious girl, a promising pupil, the sister to Hiresha’s bodyguard, and almost like a daughter. Now, she was none of those.

  “I thought it a mercy to knock her out of the battle and into this cave,” Hiresha said.

  “But it’s no mercy to leave her here alive.”

  “Not for ages of darkness. Even if Alyla can’t feel despair, or anything anymore, I owe more to her brother and her memory.”

  A skitterer let go of a stalagmite above them. It flipped, claws on all eight of its legs reaching for Hiresha’s head.

  The blue paragon swung in and smashed the skitterer. Not a drop of its gore fell on Hiresha or Tethiel. The red paragon Attracted the mess away.

  The diamonds would crush Alyla as quickly when next she attacked. Hiresha would give her a quick end. And it would have to come soon. Hiresha’s time in this facet was running out.

  The Bright Palm stayed underwater. She had stopped swimming. She may have seen the light of Hiresha’s jewels. The Bright Palm waited near the bottom.

  “Bright Palms aren’t the type to sift through treasure,” Hiresha said. “She must’ve at last learned better than to attack us. Directly.”

  “You should invite her.”

  “Back to the surface?”

  “To our wedding.” The red paragon whisked past Tethiel’s shoulder. He looked as smugly serious as he always did. “The Bright Palms would crash it regardless with swords and axes. Better to know whom to expect. Better to welcome our opposition.”

  “She would take no joy in the wedding and likely bring strife.”

  “A party can’t be taken seriously unless there’s a little bloodshed.”

  The Bright Palm was a ghostly smear at the bottom of the lake, like a spirit of the sacrificed. She had witnessed Hiresha’s magic. As a survivor she would warn the other Bright Palms. She likely wouldn’t have a reason to inform the Dominion of the Sun, not even under torture. The depths of Hiresha’s power would remain secret from those who would exploit it.

  The Bright Palm’s light pulsed every eleven and three-quarters seconds, in synchronicity with her heart. Hiresha didn’t have time to idle away many more beats. She had to decide. It might be better to leave this automaton of flesh and light in the cave, or else kill her. Bringing her back to the sun would only remind Hiresha of the girl Alyla once had been. Yet if it made sense to invite any Bright Palm, it would be she.

  Hiresha raised her voice. The force of her shout would carry through the water. “Alyla. Come up, Alyla.”

  The Bright Palm shifted her head as if she had heard. She stayed where she was.

  Hiresha could send her blue paragon down and fish the woman out, though that seemed a less than decorous way to treat a future wedding guest. Instead, Hiresha Burdened her red paragon, sending it down into the lake toward the sunken treasure. It brushed against the whiskers of a snapping cavefish but dropped too fast to be gobbled down.

  The red diamond darted back to Hiresha’s hand trailing droplets. Her diamond had caught a jade frog; her enchantment held the effigy fast.

  “Could you lift the entire hoard from this pit?” Tethiel asked.

  He wanted her t
o steal the god’s sacrifices. Hiresha could help many people with the gold alone. She could enchant it with a cure for the blood-borne malady from the leeches that plagued this continent. Perhaps she should risk divine wrath to do good.

  She sighed through her clenched teeth. “I could but I mustn’t.” The jade frog glowed on her palm as she wove power into it. “I will only take what’s mine, the red paragon.”

  “Will They of Jade Skin see it as yours?”

  “I should hope my offering to the god would ameliorate any offense.” Hiresha nodded to the Bright Palm corpses. The scavengers had already exposed bones.

  A less grisly object floated beside them. Long and knobbed, it was the wooden cudgel carved with the designs of a hippo, a cow, and a long-legged bird, possibly a crane. The weapon had been thrown by the young tribesman.

  “This I will take also, yet not for myself.” Hiresha willed the club to float after her.

  The living Bright Palm had still not surfaced.

  “Alyla, I will not wait any longer for you.” Hiresha could not.

  The Bright Palm paddled up in the blackness. Her slender limbs made her resemble a swimming skeleton. Her head broke the water.

  “Bright Palm Alyla,” Hiresha said, “expect to receive a formal invitation to the wedding of the Lady of Gems and Lord Tethiel. The man you once called brother may also attend.”

  Alyla stared in silence, her irises two glowing rings.

  “In the meantime, this effigy will help you climb out of this sinkhole.” Hiresha threw the jade frog.

  It landed in front of the Bright Palm and skimmed to her. Alyla caught it. She bobbed out of the water, bouncing on its surface. Her weight had halved. A pity Hiresha’s enchantment could only make people less dense in one sense of the word.

  A socialized human should’ve felt some compunction to reply to Hiresha’s assistance or invitation. Alyla did to neither.

  Hiresha nodded. She tightened her arm around Tethiel’s and then Lightened them both. They leaped together, up into the well shaft leading out of the cave. They flew, with one paragon diamond Attracting them up then looping around in time for the other diamond to pull them higher. The circle of daylight above widened.

  Tethiel shouted over the rush of air. “They’ll say on the day of your betrothal you entered a sacred cave and defied a god.”

  “Only if you tell them so, my dear.”

  She and Tethiel rose out of the sinkhole. The sky which had looked bright in the cave turned out to be drizzling clouds. The sun’s location had to be guessed, yet Hiresha was certain. She had two hours and forty-three minutes until noon, and the distance she had to travel would take her all but fifteen of those.

  Hiresha’s toes touched the mossy edge of the sinkhole. She stepped forward with Tethiel, and a heaviness pushed her groundward as her enchantment returned her to normal weight.

  She lifted her hand, and the wooden cudgel flipped over her shoulder to her grasp. “Young man, I believe this is yours.”

  The tribesman in the red robe was on his feet but leaning on his spear. He had lost a significant quantity of blood. His eyes focused on the cudgel. He laughed and clapped a hand over his chest.

  When he smiled, the tribal scars on his face bent upward. The six spokes were reminiscent of a star sapphire’s, with the focal point on his brow. The third ray on his right side was five degrees out of alignment in relation to the others. He might never have noticed, yet Hiresha would’ve been furious.

  “Jerani,” Tethiel said to the young man, “the Lady of Gems has given you the gift of her regard. I trust you and Celaise have a present for her in return.”

  A woman hobbled out from behind the tribesman. She hadn’t ridden with them last night and must have met up with Tethiel’s people in the morning. She would be a Feaster as well and looked a pitiful thing in the daylight. She teetered as she carried an urn. The flawed woman’s right foot was so misshapen that its sole pointed to the side. She landed on her ankle with each step, and the cartilage would have worn away to an agony of bone scraping bone.

  A chirping bark came from inside the urn. Then nothing else mattered.

  Hiresha breezed forward. The netting lid parted at her touch. She reached in and pulled out a pair of fuzzy ears followed by an afterthought of a fox.

  “Fennec!” Hiresha spun into the air, her pet held overhead. His gaze was like the darkest of tiger-eye gems. They closed as he coughed, a squeaking gurgle. “Oh, but you’re languishing.”

  “The fox hasn’t tried to escape for a few nights,” the flawed woman said, “so it must be dead sick.”

  Hiresha closed her jeweled hands around the fox’s chest. “He’s drowning in this humidity.”

  The ears of the fox fluttered and rotated toward her voice. He could do no more than droop across her arm. The former luster of his golden fur had dulled to bronze. Curing him would take too much time and put her at risk. Yet she must. She couldn’t leave her fox wheezing another moment.

  “Here, my desert prince.” Hiresha Attracted the mucus from his lungs and tossed away the vileness. “That was the opposite of pleasant. I know. I know. Now breathe.”

  The fox panted, whiskers moving forward and back. An infected fox, an infected god, and an infected world, all converged on the day of her betrothal. The fennec tried to stand on her arm but ended up defecating instead. That hardly mattered. The enchantments in her jeweled dress whisked the excrement away.

  He wasn’t well. She would save him. She had her fennec. In this facet, he lived. To hold him, to see him, it was almost as if he had come back from the dead.

  Her tears gleamed in the corners of her eyes. “Thank you, Tethiel, for this early wedding present.”

  “Don’t thank me. The gifts I give for free are neither,” he said. “Luckily, this one is from Jerani and Celaise.”

  “You masterminded the rescue, I am certain.” Hiresha turned from Tethiel to the other two. “You both returned my furry treasure. My gratitude will come in due time in the form of enchantments. I know just what to prepare for each of you.”

  The flawed woman smiled with onyx. Her teeth had been replaced with black gemstone. The real ones must have fallen out as a side effect of her magic.

  The young man pointed to the amethyst bound to his chest. “You already gave me one.”

  She tsked and cradled the fennec. “You even reacquired his jewelry. How thorough.”

  The purple garnets in his collar matched the one in his ear stub. Hiresha shouldn’t take the time to enchant them now. She still would, and she would have to do more than keep the dampness from his chest. Mold had spread so far through him that his nose had whitened.

  “Had it on him,” the young man said. He had meant the jewelry, not the infection of rot.

  “That is unexpected.” Apprehension condensed over Hiresha in a second layer of oily morning mist. She ran her finger over the fennec’s gemstones. Indeed, they were enchanted already and not with anything beneficial. It was a gravitational focal point. A corresponding pendulum would be able to track her pet and thus find Hiresha. The person trained to use it would be a spellsword. He would serve as an assassin.

  She was a continent away from her past. It might not be far enough.

  Dispelling the magic would proclaim she still was alive. Instead she unlatched the collar. “These are only garnets. The fennec deserves purple sapphires.”

  She tossed the jewelry into the sinkhole. Let her assassin think what he will. If he found her, he would be the prey.

  He would only pose a danger if he found her asleep: all the more reason for her to return to the safety of her reliquary before noon. She had but one furry reason to stay.

  She would not be unhappy with the flawed woman and young man who had brought the fennec. They couldn’t have sensed the tracker enchantment. It hadn’t been in his earring stud. This gem she started to enchant to bring the fox back to health.

  She lifted the fennec so his mildewed nose was level with hers. “
Your nose will soon be black again. Look at my hair. It’ll be silver forever.” Hiresha tilted her head. The fox batted at one of her grey locks. He started chewing on the strands.

  Tethiel clamped a possessive hand on the shoulders of the flawed woman and the young man. “Celaise and Jerani told me the fox lived up to his name. The Golden Scoundrel.”

  The young man, Jerani said, “Took three days to find him again after one escape.”

  “He’s most intelligent,” Hiresha said.

  “More than that, he’s sacred,” Tethiel said to Jerani. “An incarnation of a god.”

  “There’s no evidence to support his divinity,” Hiresha said. “Other than his perfection.”

  Tethiel nodded back to the sinkhole. “She need not fear stealing from one god when she carries around another.”

  The fox yawned wide enough to inspire worship. Her enchantment had suppressed his fever. He would be able to rest.

  “A tragedy we can no longer share dreams,” Hiresha said. She squeezed the fox once more, kissed him between the ears, and then handed the fox back to Jerani. “Guard him with your life.”

  He held the fox at arms’ length. “We thought you—”

  “Bring him to my banyan stronghold at midnight.” Hiresha hopped into the air and Attracted her boots on. Her robe swirled around her, concealing the brilliance of her dress. Her paragon diamonds whirled around her upraised hand. She glanced back to the tribesman and the Feaster woman. “A man may come asking for me.”

  Jerani stopped cringing at the fox to look up. “What?”

  “He likely will have an overgrowth of tattoos.” Hiresha had to leave this instant. “He’ll be dangerous. Neither of you should try to fight him.”

  The young man exchanged a look of unease with the Feaster woman.

  Hiresha dipped down to Attract a cave-slime stain from Tethiel’s coat and then launched herself into the sky. The rain parted from her. The forest canopy beneath her was a swaying sea of rushing green.

  She kicked off a tree trunk for greater speed. Parrots squawked in an outrage of blue and orange.

  One feathered creature was less innocent. It had the shrunken face of a human. She had chanced upon one of the Dominion’s hexed abominations. A man they had transformed into a monster. The winged warrior turned to her the moment she darted around a swaying branch.