Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

  “Hope so.” Wane looked ahead to the lord. “The lord father will ask her to. He promised, and he will.”

  The other leper said something that sounded like, “Put you through fire, but won’t spit on you after.”

  The lepers rode off. Jerani looked after the horsemen. The lord might be cruel, but if he kept his word then Celaise would never have to see him again. As long as he let her use his magic she could be happy. Jerani could go somewhere with her, far away and safe. Maybe back to the freedom of the grasslands. Anywhere but this place.

  The jungle was a woody cavern. Jerani was small here. Living was hard. He would have to climb for a true face-full of light. Nothing good grew in the leaf shadows, only mushrooms and leeches. The llamas had only fallen branches to eat. At least the gloom helped Celaise. She wasn’t her night self, but she wouldn’t weep while walking.

  She held his arm through the day’s travels. The llamas followed, harness bells clinking. They crossed a road leading to Gangral city, but Celaise could move faster off it, through the deep woods.

  “Celaise.” He loved saying her name. If he forgot all other words but that one he could still be happy. “Celaise, what will you choose? As the lord’s gift.”

  She didn’t speak. Her eyes were full of strain. The daylight stole all a Feaster’s strength, all her magic.

  “You could ask to be well. I mean, you’re well already, but the Lady of Gems, she could make you weller.” Jerani flushed, and his warrior marks itched across his face.

  Celaise shook her head. Her neck made a clicking noise.

  “The lepers think the lady might help them.”

  “She can’t,” Celaise said. She squinted up into the branches, toward the glittering hints of the sun. “The Winged Flame makes us this way. During the day.”

  “Don’t you want to even ask her?”

  “No.” Celaise clutched Jerani closer. Now she was weeping.

  Oh, no, Jerani had hurt her. He had thought Celaise would be happy at the chance of straightening her legs and back. They were bent like stalks of grass.

  Hard to know what to say to help. Maybe he should kiss her. Her eyebrows each ended in an upward tuft, a dark thorn. No other women had that. Nothing was so lovely. He kissed her there.

  She shuddered and turned away.

  It was like a whip-tail slap across the face. His eyes stung, and heat burned across his cheeks, down his neck and chest to his clamping stomach. What had he done wrong? He liked Celaise. She liked him, so why was it so hard? He could just about break his spear against a tree trunk.

  Celaise tapped her chest with her claw hand. “I don’t want you to kiss this.”

  She wasn’t at her best during the daytime. Jerani still liked her. She was herself under all her pains. How could he tell her? What to say?

  “Night or day …” He drummed his fingers over his war club. She might not like this. “Night or day, you’re the same person.”

  “No I’m not. There’s nothing the same.”

  “To me you are.”

  “Then you’re blind.”

  She pushed away from him. Leaning over her cane, she teetered down the road and between huts in a village.

  A village! They had arrived, and he hadn’t even noticed. He should’ve been paying attention. Jerani backed into the llamas. One nibbled at his hair. If they turned around now maybe they could circle the huts without anyone seeing him. The banyan grove couldn’t be far off now.

  A woman cried out. Too late. They had seen.

  The woman dropped her grinding stone. Cornmeal tipped into the dirt. She ran through the village. Leaning against a mud wall once for breath, she glanced back at Jerani with bewildered eyes. She dashed on, over piles of mud and rocks. Untidy llamas without bells were carrying baskets of rubble.

  The woman would be getting the warriors. No good trying to hide now. They would only hunt him down.

  Jerani gripped his llama’s halter in one hand and his spear in the other. He walked after Celaise through the center of town. Another woman’s face peered out at him then vanished back into her hut.

  This was awful. Jerani had to get back home. In this land the best he could hope for was a shocked stare.

  Three warriors charged over the dirt pile. One of them stopped at the sight of Jerani and stumbled. Another came all the faster, his bronze battle axe bright. So bright.

  “I’m not here to battle.” Jerani set down his spear. He crouched, so he wouldn’t seem so tall. His hands ached to pick up his spear again. “I won’t fight.”

  “Then you surrender?” The axe warrior was still jogging forward.

  “He didn’t fight,” Celaise said. “He doesn’t have to surrender.”

  They didn’t even look at her. The axe warrior was held back by the third man. He carried a spear painted with a band of green. That meant poison. He also had a feather tied around his neck long enough to reach his waist. It must’ve been from a terror bird. Frayed and dirty, it wasn’t much to look at.

  This head warrior pointed his green spear at Jerani. “What are you?”

  “A man,” Jerani said.

  “Then why’re you made of obsidian?”

  “I’m not.” They were caught up on his skin, and it was only a little more black than their own.

  “He’s covered himself in mud,” the axe warrior said.

  “We’ll see.” The headman spat on his hand then reached out to touch Jerani.

  Celaise knocked his arm away with her crutch. She was so brave. “Jerani is with me.”

  The headman flicked his hand then glared at Celaise. “I, Macco, only fought in seven battles. Only given twelve captives to the priests. I’m one of the King’s Spears, but he has many. Is that why you think you can strike Macco, old woman?”

  She wasn’t old. The warrior hadn’t looked closely. She only walked bent over, claw hand hidden in her poncho.

  “Kill her,” the headman said to the axe warrior. “And tonight we’ll eat her llama.”

  Jerani snapped his spear up and rested its tip against the axe warrior’s throat.

  The man stiffened, axe overhead. This was bad. Jerani could stab him, but the headman still had his poisoned weapon. The first warrior was scuttling closer. Dirt covered his knees from when he had thrown himself down at first sight of Jerani.

  “We’re here to see the Lady of Gems,” Celaise said.

  “Who?” The headman still didn’t look at her. His spear pointed at Jerani’s chest.

  “The woman you’re mining for.” Celaise swung her good hand toward to the piles of rubble. “She’s expecting us.”

  “She lives in a banyan grove,” Jerani said.

  “You mean Resha?” The headman lifted his spear. He squinted at Jerani. “She’s a strange one, but not stranger than you. Why do you look like night?”

  They didn’t know he had ridden with the lord. They couldn’t know. They only hadn’t met someone from the grasslands before, that’s all.

  “There are black jaguars,” Celaise said. “There can be black men.”

  The headman stared into the jungle. He nodded. “You carve stones for Resha, do you? Then you go on to the stone woman, if she’ll see you. But that llama, it’s mine.”

  He waved the axe warrior to the llama. Her name was Big Toes. She spat at him, and he cut off her head.

  The slaughter ended the talk. There wasn’t anything more to say, and Jerani couldn’t have made words. Too much anger stampeded through him, too much relief. They had killed a llama but not Celaise. She was alive. Celaise and Jerani could be together another day.

  The bull llama was kicking. Jerani had to pull him back. They couldn’t fight this King Spear. Even if he had killed and stolen. It wasn’t right. Nothing was. Everything was, with Celaise.

  All the dust the llamas sent into the air put her into a wheezing fit. Jerani waited until she had her breath back. He needed to take the llamas away from all the blood. They walked through the village together. No one else sto
pped them.

  One doorway looked like it went straight into the ground. People trudged out with packs of dirt. Jerani bet it was a mine. Women and children sorted out rocks. One girl ran up to Jerani and Celaise. “Where are you going? Where are you going?”

  “To the banyan grove,” Jerani said. “It’s near, isn’t it?”

  The girl pointed twice then dashed ahead. Soon, they saw the trees’ dripping branch roots.

  “Oh! Don’t try to steal anything.” The girl clasped Jerani’s hand with both her dirty ones. She wasn’t scared of him at all. “She always finds out.”

  “You didn’t steal from her, did you?” Jerani asked.

  “Yes I did!” The girl laughed, coughed, then ran back to her rock basket.

  Jerani and Celaise walked around the banyans. There were many crannies in the trunks, but no telling which would lead inside.

  “Last night there was a glow,” Jerani said. “You could see the way in.”

  “We should wait.” Celaise slid against a trunk and slumped between two hanging roots. She pulled her head into her poncho.

  The llamas quick stepped and shat. They were too frightened to eat. King Spear or not, that warrior hadn’t had the right. But Jerani hadn’t stopped him. Maybe it had been his fault.

  Roots draped down from every branch. Jerani had time. Time to regret. Time to think about what he could say to Celaise. Time to walk around the tree wall and guess what wonders waited inside.

  Celaise drank the colors of twilight. Pinks, reds, purples, each more soothing than the last. She crouched between the trees, in their sunset shadow. Before her, the black chalice of night tipped higher and higher from the horizon until it upended as a sky full of stars.

  Magic flowed within Celaise, rich and potent. The black wine washed away the sun god’s curse. Her bones reknit with a shock of bliss. Her back straightened with a gasp. Her head cleared with a purring moan.

  At last she could savor the banyans. The Lady of Gems must’ve made them grow together in a cascade of roots. Or maybe they were naturally so amazing. The branches reached too far, like the grasping tentacles of some monster. Roots dripped down from the underside of each branch, supporting its greed.

  Celaise decided this night she would weave her dress out of roots. The lady would’ve never seen such a thing made beautiful. She might be impressed, and that’s what Celaise needed.

  She spun her magic into woody vines and coiled them together into a marvel of a skirt. Root hairs brocaded into a bodice. Creepers curved around her back and jutted out in her collar. Roots flared from her chest. The True Dress was a reassuring coolness against her skin.

  The root tendrils of her skirt dug into the ground and pulled her forward. She went to Jerani. He started awake then grinned. Her creepers twined around his wrists and pinned him to a banyan. She smothered him with kisses.

  He fondled her. Her dress absorbed his awkward touches and turned them into practiced caresses, down her sides, over her breasts. Everything was more intense, more powerful, more real.

  The delicate root hairs of her gloves stroked his face, the starburst lines of his scars, the tautness and smoothness. Her fingers unfolded into hundreds of fibers that enwrapped his long arms. He was so quick and loving and loyal. She scratched down his chest and tickled his manhood until he cried out.

  “Wait!” Gasping, he pressed a hand against her chest. “Wait, can’t we share ourselves the other way?”

  “What?” She pinched his ear between her teeth, biting to the point of blood.

  “You know, how other men and women do.” He gripped the roots of her skirt and tugged. “Only, I can’t lift this.”

  Her roots dug deeper into the ground. Her creepers pulled back from him. “You want me to take off my dress.”

  “No, just enough to …”

  Her True Dress was the perfect fit. It cradled her. It massaged her. It protected her better than any man could, even Jerani. She turned from him.

  She had to wonder. Maybe he wasn’t so loyal. He had tried to kiss that cripple on the road today. If he could love something so ugly and weak, then what was his affection worth? He might betray Celaise for any toothless beggar. Coldness swelled out from her stomach.

  No, she wasn’t being fair. Her magic was poisoning her against him. Black wine beat through her as a stronger heartbeat. Still, that thing Jerani asked, it could never be. It would only make her remember. It would only bring pain.

  She needed to be away from him for a while. Descending to the village, she found the axe man slipping between huts. He was wrong to be out at night. He shouldn’t have killed their llama. She trod over him, constricting him with her roots. Only one of his ribs snapped. She Feasted on his screams, and they fermented within her into more black wine.

  Celaise let him live. Jerani didn’t like her to kill.

  She found something for Jerani. It fell from the axe man in his mad scramble. It was a bracer of brass emblazoned with three jaguars. One on the prowl, one with the body of a man and the face of a cat, and a third the other way around with a man’s head looking out from between fangs.

  How fitting that she should give Jerani this. A man had given her a bracer so many years ago. Now she would give one to a man, but this one was better. In every way.

  “You should wear this,” she said to Jerani. “Tell people you serve the Obsidian Jaguar and they won’t bother you.”

  He turned the bracer over. “But I don’t.”

  “In a way you do. Some people think of the lord father as the Obsidian Jaguar.”

  “Is he?”

  “Part of him, maybe. The god is many things together, like the gold and black of a jaguar’s coat. Strength, weakness, craftiness, courage. You could be his warrior.”

  “I don’t know.” His fear smelled minty.

  “The greatest warriors in this land are jaguar knights.” She wrapped an arm around his chest, and her gloved fingers stretched to hold all of him. “Not that I’d want you to change. Even if you would make a most handsome cat.”

  “The Angry Mother might not like it.”

  That was right. His people worshipped a volcano on the savanna. “You are a long way away. Guess it’s my fault for taking you so far.”

  “I’m still beneath the Sky Bull.” He looked to the stars. “No, I shouldn’t pretend to follow another god. Wouldn’t be right.”

  “It would. By pretending, by tricking people you’d be honoring the Obsidian Jaguar. He’s the god of lies,” she said, “and truth.”

  “You have some strange gods.”

  “So do you.” She pecked him on the cheek. “Will you wear the bracer?”

  He gazed from it to her. His fears had mellowed to the scent of vegetable broth. “Maybe.”

  They waited around the banyan tree. More than once Jerani started smelling as if he would ask her something awkward, but he didn’t. The lord father had told her not to expect the Lady of Gems until midnight. A strange time to meet someone who wasn’t a Feaster. Stranger to think the lord father would want to marry outside the family.

  Celaise glanced to Jerani. Well, maybe not so strange.

  When the time came, Jerani picked up the urn. It shook with fox frenzy. They walked between the snoozing llamas, around the banyans. “Maybe it’s not a grove,” she said. “Maybe it’s one monstrous tree.”

  “You think? Ah!” Jerani set down the fox’s urn to point. “There.”

  Purple ribbons of light shone between the roots. A path of brightness led into the banyans. She could see it now, a way in.

  Celaise smelled coconut oil frying, the same scent from last morning when the Lady of Gems had left behind her fox.

  “She’s here,” Celaise said, “and worried about her pet.”

  Jerani hoisted the urn. He held out his other hand to Celaise.

  She took it, and the fine roots of her gloves pierced his skin. They dug through the meat of his palm, between his bones, and out the other side. He sweated a fine mist of c
innamon, but he didn’t cry out. He wouldn’t have even when his family had scarred his face. He was a warrior.

  And he trusted her, too much. Just enough.

  They went together into the glowing grove.

  Celaise’s True Dress carried her between the last two pillars of roots and into a clearing. The place throbbed with purple.

  Violet lotuses choked off a pond. There were no ponds in the jungle. All the water was in the air, or sinking out of sight toward the tree roots. But here was a pond. Between the water flowers, fish sparkled like jewels. Real gemstones piled around a shack, as high as its roof. They looked like amethysts, some as wide as bowls, most much smaller. The ones that shone brightest were closest to the Lady of Gems.

  She wasn’t wearing the sack from that morning but a gown of jewel spirals. On her bare back sparkled diamond dust in the pattern of an octopus. It might’ve been a kraken. The lord father had mentioned something about a kraken. Maybe the lord and lady had more in common than Celaise had guessed.

  “You and I first met in Oasis City,” the Lady of Gems said without glancing up. “Where you were of no use whatsoever.”

  “Don’t think I’ve seen you before,” Celaise said.

  “I was with an industrious young man with a sword. He’ll likely be at the wedding.” With a cracking sound, flecks of rock drifted up above the lady’s head into a floating ball. “The next time we crossed paths in Jaraah city. You were together then but still did nothing for my predicament. I was a prisoner.”

  Jerani cocked a brow at Celaise. She shrugged.

  “All is forgiven, however. You have brought my fennec.” The Lady of Gems spun about. Between her hands glistened a slab of amethyst. It flew to the top of a pile of crystals each with the same pointed shape. Like big spearheads.

  The lady leapt and glided to the fox. She took it into her arms, and it started a singsong ruckus. She fussed over the worthless creature. The fox had tormented Celaise and Jerani for weeks, but it was adorable in the lady’s arms with its puff tail and bitty black claws. Each fuzzy ear was bigger than its head.

  A dragonfly darted by, catching a mosquito out of the air. Another streaked past in a line of purple.