Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

  Veiled figures came out of the fog. They lifted pale hands. “We will carry your wedding gifts into the palace. For you, the way is forward.”

  Gong! A second bell resounded from another tower, this one closer, nearer overhead. They were sounding the start of the wedding.

  Crowds in front of the vaulted doors parted before the crimson of the coral key. It fit in the transparent lock. Turning sent a line of orange between the doors as they breathed open. Inside glittered a thicket of thorns.

  Gong!

  Clear spikes bristled from twisting branches of glass. The glitter briar inside blocked the way. This had to be a test. A narrow path curved into the sharp crystals. The spines shivered. Gong!

  A hunched woman wandered lost in the needle maze. The labor of years had roughened her fingers to corn cobs and bent her spine. She had toiled each day to eat and would do so until her last.

  “Won my way,” said she in a mantra. “Found my key in a kettle. Bought it from a merchant. He was a’working for the lord. Walked twenty days, and now I’m here. No pack of thorns will stop me.”

  “You could’ve sold the key for wealth,” said someone in a quiet voice. “Your remaining years could’ve been restful.”

  The old woman peered around to try to spot the speaker in the maze, saw no one, and continued talking to herself. “The gods wanted this for me. Won my way.” She clutched the amethyst key against her hemp dress. “One night, one tale. That’s what lights the nights and passes the days. Memories.”

  Gong!

  The woman followed along the path. She almost made it through the crystal labyrinth unharmed.

  “Ahh!” Her blood colored a thorn. The redness siphoned into the glass then branched out in spirals. A filigree of crystal veins blossomed rouge.

  The woman touched her cheek where she had been cut. Her lips were pale, but her wound had already closed. The spine had bled her but also healed her. What a wonder. If she had pierced her eye, might it too have been saved?

  More than one patch of thorns had turned red. After all the guests passed through, the entire thicket might be crimson.

  Gong!

  The brambles opened into an entrance hall. A slope of glass went upward, too steep to walk, too shear to climb. Lines had been etched to look like stair steps, but there were none. At the base of the impassable stair waited a black man.

  He wore a robe across his chest and scars over his face. His jaw was hard and his eyes soft. His spear leaned behind him. He held necklaces of silver and gold. “You have to wear one to go on,” he said. “Your key invitation latches on here, and this goes around your neck.”

  The chain tightened below the chin. It coiled itself into a choker, pressing in its cold scales. Skin blanched around its silver. The key necklace had gone on with ease, but removing it might take magic.

  The old woman slid a foot up the stairless slope. She teetered forward, gasped, and then started walking up. What had been steep became level ground. A pressure in the chest and stomach pulled forward then down into the crystal. All flipped back upright at the top of the stair. This, then, was enchantment.

  The woman stopped beside a man. He clenched his temples between his hands. He wore a jacket of copper plates, polished into a gleam. The scimitar strapped to his back spanned longer than the old woman was tall, from its curving edge to gemstone pommel. Across the blade were emblazoned step pyramids and serpentine writing of the Oasis Empire.

  His eyes popped open, and he held a warning hand. “Don’t be frightened, but you can’t just go in or you’ll die.”

  The corridor opened into a grand hall. Candlelight swept back and forth within. Entering would mean going under an archway, and atop the threshold of glass lounged a sphinx.

  Her mouth yawned open with fangs. “You cannot pass,” the sphinx said, “before answering a riddle.”

  Peacock feathers fanned from the sphinx’s shoulders. Her coat was the black of a panther’s, her finger pads red between licks of her spear tongue. Her eye pupils slitted upward like a barn cat’s.

  “You are guests,” the sphinx said, “and I will give you three chances to guess right. Then you’re mine to devour.”

  “I’ve already missed twice,” the empire man said. “Can’t take another swing until I know I’m right. What was my riddle again?”

  “Never nearing, always fleeing,

  I am hill, sky, and sea.

  Waste your whole life walking, flying, swimming,

  You’ll never catch me.

  What am I?”

  The man raked a hand through his close-shaven hair. His eyes didn’t match, one brown iris, the other black. “I guessed ‘the Lands of Loam,’ and ‘clouds.’ Both got me swatted back.”

  “They would have,” someone said in a quiet voice. “The answer is clearly Horizon.”

  The sphinx hissed through her lush lips. She glanced over the old woman, even though it hadn’t been her who had spoken. “You shouldn’t have helped him. He would’ve been a handsome meal.”

  “That’s it then? ‘The horizon’? Yes, but it has to be. Should’ve seen it.” The empire man walked under the arch. He gripped his scimitar hilt.

  The sphinx growled but let him pass.

  He could’ve gone on into the candlelit depths of the room. He waited instead in the threshold.

  The sphinx scowled down at the old woman. “You’re a meager lump of gristle. Answer this riddle, or I’ll not be kind.

  “Always felt, rarely seen,

  Below a dog, above a lion,

  I steal from paupers and kings.

  What am I?”

  The old woman ran her hands over her whiskered cheeks. Her fingernails were worn into yellow scabs. “Don’t know. How could I know? Begged the road long. Won my way. Shouldn’t be stopped with the end in sight.”

  She didn’t know the answer, even with it hopping up her neck and laying eggs on her sweaty scalp. Someone whispered it into her ear.

  “A flea?” The old woman scratched behind her neck. “Is it fleas?”

  The sphinx scowled with a mouth full of fangs. Her emerald eyes squinted with poison, looking up and down the corridor. She saw no one else. “It is fleas. Away with you to the wedding.”

  The old woman hobbled under the arch. The empire man held out an arm for her. Brave, after hearing the answer to her riddle. He guided her between faceted columns and across the glassy blackness to the center of the grand hall.

  “You’re a strong one.” She patted his hand. “My son would’ve been about your age.”

  The empire man didn’t understand her language, not judging by the way his forehead furrowed and his fingers plucked at his ear. She wouldn’t know the words he spoke either. He replied all the same.

  “I’m Fos Chandur. I know the bride. I did, when she was an elder enchantress.” He cringed up at the candles swinging overhead. “Not sure I know who’d make all this.”

  The center column didn’t reach the floor. It hung in a stalactite, its spindle point almost touching a crystal stalagmite.

  Around the central nothingness swung two axe-shaped chandeliers. Thousands of red candles pointed their flames downward in upside-down candelabras. Plates of glass protected the lights from snuffing out while they chopped through the air like the flaming weapons of a titan. A chandelier blazed closer then veered onward, leaving gloom.

  The empire man swallowed, and the gulp was loud in the silence. “The bride wrote, saying my sister will be here. Not sure I’ll know her anymore either.”

  The old woman nodded, still not understanding a word. She held onto his arm, and after he helped her down onto a seat cushion, she said, “Sun warm you.”

  He lowered himself to sit beside her at a knee-high table. He sprang back up and pivoted to face a newcomer, one of the veiled servants.

  The server’s finger beckoned. He spoke in a smooth voice, “Your way is upward.”

  “What?” The empire man frowned up at one flaming pendulum.

  T
he chandelier passed away, darkening the servant into a floating ghost. His eyes were but hollows. “Her key is silver. Yours is gold. Ascend.”

  “How?”

  “Your key.”

  By the time the light returned, the servant had gone.

  “Ah, I see.” The empire man walked toward one of the outer columns. “Just like in the Academy.”

  Another veiled servant waited at the column. His figure might’ve been confused with the first. They were nearly the same height, but this one had finer hands. The servant motioned to his palm.

  “Cut yourself with your key. Press your hand against the pillar, and your blood will unlock the way.”

  “Not at all like the Academy then. No, I don’t think I can cut myself. You’ll have to help.” With the scimitar holstered on his back he couldn’t be a stranger to violence. Some men could not stand the sight of their own blood.

  The servant took the key and was all too eager to comply.

  “Ow! A wedding asks a lot from its guests.” The empire man pressed his bleeding hand against the column. Its facets slid across each other, and one side flattened like a wall, or a walkway. The man went up its side.

  Someone followed behind. The key’s teeth sliced skin with a sweet sharpness.

  Setting a foot on the column rotated the world. With a sinking and twisting, down became sideways, up became forward. A misstep wouldn’t cause a fall to the floor below but only back into the pillar.

  The chandelier crossed in front of the path in razor brilliance. It could’ve cut the empire man in two, but he dashed ahead of its sweeping lights. The rows of candles hurtled on.

  The column reached the oval ceiling. The dome shape was not a traditional circle. The narrow ends to the east and west could have significance, other than architectural. It might have been mere defiance.

  Another step, and now everything was upside down. The old woman sat above, stuck to what seemed a roof. The empire man opposed her by sitting at a table on the other side of the chandeliers. At weddings, some guests were seated above others. This time, the high tables were on the ceiling.

  The upper floor crossed the sky. Perspective had flipped. Stars shone below, spreading their constellations westward in the fading twilight.

  This was the center dome of the castle. The floor was yet flat because of another layer of glass with the curved ceiling further below. Between the plane and oval surfaces was emptiness, where the dome bulged downward toward the night sky. Pits in the floor opened to this cavity.

  The building’s layout screamed of mysterious purpose. The arrangement intrigued. It left a whirring openness in the chest. Breaths came late and with gasping urgency. The soles of the feet itched, and lifting them off the ceiling to walk didn’t come as easily as a cautious slide step. If the enchantment ever failed, the long fall to the floor would be over too fast.

  The empire man seemed less than perplexed. A veiled servant guided him to a table, and he hopped down on his pillow seat. His sword didn’t even bounce free of its back holster. He stretched his arms out, rested himself on the heels of his hands, winced at the cut on his palm, and gazed up at the revolving chandeliers that were below him.

  The Lady Hiresha had built a monument to the power of her magic. By all reports she had constructed this new world marvel in mere months, in a city and nation at odds with her.

  A quiet voice asked, “What manner of woman had achieved so much?”

  “A focused one,” the empire man answered. He poked two fingers outward from his face. “She could cut you by looking. Not really, but maybe now. Be on her side and she’ll protect you to the end. Saved my city, you know.”

  “You think she must’ve since changed,” someone said.

  “Don’t want to tell half of what they’re talking about her now,” the empire man said.

  “What would they dare say?”

  “Mostly that she’s an abomination and so is everything she makes. Can’t be true.” He pointed to his brown eye. “She made part of me, and I don’t feel too abominable.”

  “Maybe you haven’t had a chance to do anything abominable yet. The party has barely begun.”

  “Ha!” He grinned at no one in particular. “But Hiresha can’t be all that different from her old self. Not that she’s old. Look, over there, those are Morimound engagement necklaces.”

  Two pedestals were carved with sloping shoulders and graceful necks. On them hung a pair of jeweled amulets. The empire man jumped to his feet to take a closer look. More interesting than the gems themselves were their stands. Neither of the half-figures were gendered or had any marking declaring whom would wear the amulets.

  They were in easy reach. Not even a servant stood nearby to stop the amulets from being slipped off the headless busts.

  “Any of the guests might pick one up and declare undying devotion toward the Lady Hiresha.” The quiet words came from behind the empire man’s shoulder.

  “Stealing one can’t be a good idea.” He glanced back and must’ve seen someone, no one he would remember. “An enchantment might kick you off the ceiling or something. Say, when is the food coming?”

  His nonchalance wasn’t shared by the next guest to arrive on the ceiling. By her songbird dress and exacting bee tattoos, she would be Purest Elbe. Her face stayed too calm and level. She couldn’t seem to bear looking down to the stars below her feet or up to the pendulum candelabras. Her gaze locked straight ahead. She pressed her fingertips against her belly. If not for her gemstone nails, her nail beds would’ve been white from pressure.

  The empire man sprang up to greet the Purest. He had to be ignorant of her position. “Never seen a tattoo like that on the face,” he said. “That must’ve hurt. About how many bee stings, do you think? For measuring the pain, I mean.”

  The Purest did not acknowledge him. The empire man kept talking. He had to be immune to discouragement, or gleefully unobservant.

  “Did you see where that other woman went? I was just talking to her. Or him? Strange, but someone helped me past the sphinx. No, must’ve been that lady down below. I’m not thinking straight.”

  The Purest walked by him and pretended to study the jewel amulets. She didn’t look up at the harsh sounds of men shouting below. The sphinx spat back. They had to be arguing over riddles.

  The empire man plopped down onto his pillow again and started whistling, all the louder over the yelling below. He was nervous as well. His broken tune echoed back from the dark corners of the grand hall as whispers.

  The next guest slid out of the shadows. She wore white, with a bloodstain at the center of her chest. A Feaster, and the Bleeding Maiden, no less. She looked as ill used as ever, her dress frayed just so and in exacting disarray.

  “Oh, but are you sure you should sit there?” She nodded to the engraving of the Empire’s golden camel. The place belonged to him, without a doubt, but the trembling fineness of her finger coaxed him to look at another table. “Your sister will be here, your Alyla. Family should sit together, don’t you think?”

  “Alyla? Are you sure?” The empire man scratched the angle of his jaw.

  The Bleeding Maiden lured him away, next to a setting design of a white heart and a wreath of pale veins. “You can be with her. The tables are all just as close to center, so it won’t matter.”

  “If you think that’s best. Seems like Hiresha would’ve planned it out.”

  The Lady Hiresha no doubt had. He knew he had been led into something wrong, even if he couldn’t say what yet. Few enough had been born across the Lands of Loam who could resist the Bleeding Maiden, and the empire man wasn’t one of them. His whistling redoubled.

  The place-setting design of a blue bee had to be for the Purest. The Bleeding Maiden stole her away to their own table. The two women weren’t meant to sit together, and the servants murmured as much. The Bleeding Maiden silenced them with a pout.

  At the center table, two thrones stood side by side and unopposed. The bride and groom would sit alone
. The other three tables were squat and low. They had been arranged at the points of a triangle, each table equally near the center but lengthy. The more powerful guests would sit closer to the thrones.

  Far from the focus of power, at a corner seat and a position of least importance, the table setting was paneled half white and half black, half pearl and half ebony. The emblem of a mask would’ve been too obvious. This place would be perfect for someone. The Lord Tethiel had chosen well.

  The Lady Hiresha had built, and he had masterminded. This wedding was his kind of ploy. A castle of glass could mesmerize people for a century, if it wasn’t torn down in a night.

  The empire man’s strained melody bled into a woman’s scream. Her cry was not entirely human, more than high-pitched wail, less than a beast’s defiant roar, too close to the warbling agony of a bird shot through.

  The leaders of the Dominion entered the grand hall. Behind them, the sphinx had fallen from her arch.

  Her peacock wings blackened into shadows, and she shriveled into the Feaster she had truly been. The emaciated woman clawed at her throat, choking out foam. She had been stricken by venom. Her riddles would be forever lost.

  The empire man had stopped whistling.

  The once-sphinx slammed her head into the floor, twice, and thrice. Her skull cracked before the glass. Her pain ended.

  Now the party would begin.

  35

  “I anticipate a difficulty.”

  “Only the one, my heart?”

  “Who has the authority to marry us? Not Purest Elbe or the Talon. I shouldn’t want a priest of any breed presiding over my ritual.”

  “Even if it were a jaguar knight? No one could question such a marriage.”

  “I’d prefer we marry ourselves.”

  “There’s a someone I can invite who’d not diminish us.”

  “And this is?”

  “A delicious secret.”

  Jerani was missing a chain. He counted them between his fingers, pinching at the bands, but none would pry apart into two. He had lost one. The night had only begun, and he had already maimed his chances.