The fabric of clothes made whipping sounds behind him. The sword woman was turning, would be facing him now with her blades. One could skewer him through the shoulder. The other would be a shaft of blazing coldness when it punched through his back.
A wall of blackbirds dove behind him, protected him. Thank you, Celaise. Close enough to a divine blessing.
Jerani’s leg with the gem hadn’t come apart yet, but it wouldn’t move like he wanted. He hobbled toward the blossomed man and threw the war club.
It flipped toward the back of his head then stopped. The weapon hung trapped in the air before drifting to the ground. Hyena shit! The blossomed man had too many enchantments about him.
He slammed a gauntlet against a chest plate on the dragon. The crystal flickered then was pried loose. The blossomed man flung it over his shoulder.
Jerani ducked and came in with his spear. No good. It stuck in the air too.
The blossomed man ripped away another crystal. He uncovered the lady. She floated in the emptiness where the dragon’s heart would be. A blue-pyramid jewel cast a chilly light over her face. Her closed eyelids bulged from her looking around in her dream.
She cradled the sleeping fox. His jeweled ears twitched, and his paws made digging motions. But he didn’t wake. Maybe he couldn’t.
The blossomed man slid his sword out from over his shoulder. He couldn’t be eager to stab a sleeping woman, could he? He swung down and around toward Jerani.
He collapsed to the side, out of reach of the sword. His spear went further, but it wedged in the air again. Hoof-licking flies! Jerani couldn’t stop the blossomed man, and the lady was fit to be stabbed.
When the man tried it, his sword was slammed away. The blade was dragged down, towing him after it into the dragon. Ha! She had her enchantments too. Above the lady, the pyramid jewel flashed.
Her eyes stayed closed, but she flew out of the dragon and upward. The big blue jewel was pulling her into the sky. Soon she would be out of reach.
Jerani’s leg wouldn’t bend. The gem was squeezing all the life out. He pushed himself up on his spear.
The blossomed man called out, “Catch her, Naroh!”
The sword woman kicked off a tree trunk and reached. She would grab the sleeping lady’s ankle. In the woman’s other hand, she waved an obsidian knife. Jerani knew it would be the death of the lady. It would cut her open and rain death down on all of them.
Jerani leaped off his good leg and his spear. He caught the sword woman around the waist. She cut him. He tackled her to the ground.
The lady’s body soared into the moonlight, too high for any jump. Except the blossomed man’s. He arced further than anyone could go without magic. He had abandoned his sword to reach for the lady’s pyramid jewel with his gauntlets. He would clap it between them and crush out its light. Then she would fall.
Jerani rolled, caught up his war club. It hadn’t done any good the last times. It was too dark. He couldn’t stand for a good angle. His mark was too far. But what else did Jerani have? He threw.
He hit. Somehow, this time the club smacked into the man’s leg. He tilted into a tree branch, folding around it with an, “Oof!”
Jerani had done it. He must’ve run the blossomed man out of enchantments. Jerani had saved the lady. And now his leg would fall off. The crushing numbness had reached the bone. He scraped at the gem on his ankle, couldn’t claw it off. His chest shuddered, and he was laughing, or sobbing. Maybe both. This was his reward for the rescue. A boulder might as well have fallen on his knee.
The weight lifted. He gasped as warmth tingled its way down his leg. The gem slid off. Above him came a trilling squeak. That sound could only come from the trickster fox. He was awake. And not only him.
The lady sliced down behind the shooting star of her blue jewel. Her eyes were open and full of murder.
38
“It seems wrong to insist on gifts of precious gemstone and metals. Our guests might have something else in mind that’d be unique and apt, if less enchantable.”
“My bride, this will be your night. You must be comfortable ruling it.”
“I’m unused to the mindset of a despot.”
“You’ll learn.”
Outrage boiled through Hiresha in molten rivulets hot enough to sear through skin, vaporize tendons, and melt bones. Those ingrates, Sagai and Naroh had cabochons for brains! They had disenchanted her dragon and pulled off its head. From perfection to ruin, from order to chaos, she had dreamed of death and woken to assassination.
“You abuse my generosity?” Hiresha wouldn’t have been more disgusted by a jewel marred by an inclusion of human pus. “My mercy?”
Sagai reached for her with his Dreambreak Gauntlets. The star ruby lit the right hand, and in the left glared the sapphire. Two jewels, red and blue, to oppose her own. All reflected as if in a dream. The soul of the elder enchantress dwelling in those gems reached out, pricked Hiresha with ghost fingers. Sagai was using the deceased to try to steal Hiresha’s power.
Hiresha took his instead. Her finger jewels closed on his gauntlet. He was strong, yet he could not bend her. He couldn’t stop her. She gripped the ruby, uprooted its enchantments, wrenched it free.
Be gone, Elder Scintar. Your time is spent.
The remaining sapphire pulsed and flickered until Hiresha extracted it as well. The gauntlets screeched as Hiresha twisted apart their metal plates.
She flung them at Sagai, Attracting them together and pinning him into a fetal position. “I told you to live your lives. You return to demand I take them?”
Naroh rushed in from behind. The idiot had to think Hiresha had a blind side. The diamonds implanted in her back sensed Naroh coming as a woman-shaped blur.
Hiresha slapped away the onrushing sword with a handful of Repulsion. She broke Naroh’s grasp, pinned her against a tree with the edge of her own blade. Shattering death upon them all!
“Don’t kill her.” Sagai croaked, unable to draw much breath with his knees rammed into his chest. “She only came for me. I shouldn’t have let her.”
“You couldn’t have stopped me,” Naroh said to him.
“Witless figments!” Hiresha clapped her hands together. Sagai and Naroh smashed against each other. “If you’re an invention of my dream, I’m ashamed.”
They thrashed but could not free themselves. A few scattered amethysts away, Jerani stood up on a shaky leg. Celaise flapped beside him with a wingspan of twenty feet in her black cape.
“How did these two find me?” Hiresha pointed at the human ball of Sagai and Naroh. “Did they follow you?”
Celaise cast her gaze down. “A Feaster saw where, through me.”
“Then I would’ve been safe, if not for you two.” Hiresha should’ve left the constriction enchantment on Jerani. Having his leg turn purple would’ve served him right, except she presumed he had been under a greater threat. He would’ve been forced to come here.
Tethiel had sworn he and Hiresha must not undermine each other’s wishes, yet he had done exactly that. She had been right to kill him in the other facet, even at the price of dead friends, even if it had bordered on catastrophic.
Her skin tightened her face into a grimace, and clenching spasms bent her forward. No matter if these youths saw her in agony. They might not even be real. If they were, they would likely all be dead soon anyway. All withered and perished. Even enchantments faded, and priceless jewels broke.
“Let us leave,” Naroh said, her cheek smashed against Sagai’s elbow. “We’ll go far from you and never come back.”
“That was my offer after the first time you tried to murder me. I shouldn’t have given it then. The only question remaining is how you must die.”
Hiresha could tear the couple apart with the suddenness of cracked necks. She could bring them to the wedding and execute them as an example. Their partnership would end for Hiresha’s to begin. Perhaps there was only so little happiness in the world. To extract joy from the equilibrium, Hi
resha would have to inflict pain.
“You grew up afraid of the sea, Naroh, did you not? My guests might enjoy seeing you thrown overboard and fed to some manner of monster.”
“Hook you!” Tears spurted out of Naroh’s eyes as she shouted. “You salty assed miser! You could’ve stayed in the Empire and had all your servants, all your rich food, but you wanted more.”
“Proud words, from a maid who seduced a prince. Or was it the other way around?”
“They disinherited me,” Spellsword Sagai said, “and we’re still together.”
“Now my dragon will rip you apart piece by piece. I should think it only fair.” Hiresha waved a hand, and the crystal ball of the dragon’s eye rolled back into its ocular orbit. Scales slid together again.
“Enchantress Hiresha,” Sagai said, “free us, and we’ll serve you as spellswords. We’ll swear on our blades.”
Hiresha took his enchanted sword and snapped it in front of his face. She could make a better one, not that she would, for him. She needed to repair her dragon. Without it she could hardly present herself at her wedding.
Naroh had cleaved through the crystals of the dragon’s right fore claw while defending Sagai. He had lopped off the head. Hiresha fitted those amethysts back together, though the guests might see the cracks. Her dragon would never be as it once was.
No, she knew that wasn’t true. She might polish new crystals, though not tonight. The damage could’ve been more extensive. Sagai had only stripped off enchantments from the ventral scales rather than bashing his way to her.
Her vision warped from the pressure of her anger. She had to question if she should judge anyone now. All she could see was death. Her heart had rarely beat with such vicious speed. She took hold of herself, and enchantments began to relax her bodily systems.
Her insides rebelled with cramps. More adrenaline squeezed into her blood. No, she couldn’t be calm, not with all that had happened tonight. There was too much to forget and even more to do.
With her dragon now whole and kneeling before her, she turned to the pair of assassins. Blood covered Sagai’s face and pooled in his eye. A bronze shard from his sword had opened his cheek. He couldn’t move except to blink.
Hiresha touched him, and his wound closed. “I have invited friends to my wedding but more enemies. You’ll both not be so very out of place.”
They gazed up at her with four eyes. Hers squinted with distrust. His were puckered with grief.
“Don’t torture yourselves with hope.” Hiresha unbound the couple and lifted them upright. “You’ll likely die before next I sleep, and in the interim you’ll hold nothing.”
The star sapphire and ruby drifted past Hiresha’s shoulders to slap into the hands of the assassins. The gems Attracted fingers into fists. Sagai’s smacked into Naroh’s. The two were locked together again, if not as contorted.
“I’m so sorry,” he said to her.
She grimaced at him. “And I’m not.”
“Touching.” Hiresha motioned with a finger, and the dragon ate them alive.
Their shouts were muffled by the plated gullet of crystal. The couple tumbled into the cavity in the dragon’s chest, where they had recently disturbed Hiresha’s rest. They could simmer in the irony.
With a symphonic warbling, the fennec leaped down toward her. He must’ve finished chasing frogs in the canopy. An enchantment in his collar Lightened him and he swam the rest of the way into her arms.
“Would you have spared someone who’d attacked you twice?” Hiresha smoothed his whiskers back with two fingers. “But then, how could anyone pierce your armor of adorability?”
The fennec sang an aria of chirps and squeaks to Hiresha and Celaise. The youth left the young warrior’s side to kneel.
“My Lady,” she said, “may we begin your first gown?”
“We may. I imagine Tethiel is already satisfied with how long I’ve kept the guests waiting.” A tremor of pinching unease ran through her. Earlier that evening she had killed Tethiel in the dusk facet. Tonight in this one she would marry him, if she could bear to.
She shifted the fennec to her left arm. The right she extended. She blocked all its nerves before she willed her skin to part. Paired Attraction spells resulted in a precise cut. She folded her skin back to reveal the jointed marvel of the hand. A glove of white connective tissue enclosed her new fingertips. The glistening redness of muscle clothed her arm bones. The graceful ulna and tibia twined about each other and she rotated her hand.
Enchantments would keep her bared self free of contamination units. She wrapped her loose skin in the same protective magic then tucked it out of sight beneath the skirt Celaise was crafting.
The girl’s brows were taut with concentration, hooks tufting up at either end. Her lips puckered as shadows flowed around her. She wove them around moonbeams. The gleaming threads were sculpted, and she hardened them around Hiresha with puffs of breath. The touch of the Feaster’s dress was more invigorating than ice, more exciting than the recent fight.
Hiresha regarded her dress from all sides in the reflective scales of her dragon. Every skeleton inspired her with evolved proportions and grace. Celaise had made only two errors in curvature, which she soon mended.
“You are a meticulous craftswoman, and I respect that,” Hiresha said.
The girl inclined her head. She was not one to bow. One day she might make an excellent lord of the night. Behind her crouched Jerani, massaging his leg.
Hiresha might have been too critical of the young couple. “Celaise, you killed the Feaster accompanying the spellsword assassins?”
She licked her lips. “Yes, My Lady.”
“And had you not been there, this Feaster would’ve been able to detect me within my dragon?”
Celaise seemed to consider before answering. “You smelled strongly tonight.”
“My dreams were fraught.”
Jagged shadows of fanged terrors seethed across Hiresha’s other facet. Death flashed, and betrayal seared. Screams reverberated within, threatening to fracture her. Hiresha wouldn’t waste time deliberating whether she had slain the Tethiel of truth or dreams. In any event he had not died easily. He had scrabbled at her world, tried to sever her fate.
As powerful as she was, she could die. Whatever wonders she built could be broken. She understood now; all her knowledge could be lost. Her blood may spill in waste and chaos, rather than in an artful arrangement.
Her jewels didn’t match the starkness of this dress. She plucked them from her left hand and let the cavities fill with a luster of blood. Had anyone else done this to her, it would’ve been mutilation. This was control. This was freedom. She would’ve had neither, if not for Celaise and Jerani.
“Celaise, Jerani, I’m sure you performed admirably for your parts.” Hiresha waved to them with her bare arm. A lacework of veins that had looked blue when hidden under skin now had their true crimson revealed. “I was wrong to raise my voice to you. If there’s any fault, it is with your lord.”
“And the Bleeding Maiden,” Celaise said. “Her and Angler were close.”
“‘She,’ not ‘her,’” Hiresha said.
“Well, she’s going to be jealous of this dress.”
“Only if she has the least aesthetic sensibilities.” Hiresha opened the principal veins in her wrist. “Let us finish the skirt.”
A warmth greater than black wine’s poured through Celaise. Just looking at the dress sent whirling gusts over her like she had leaped off the mountain heights. She could stand as tall as those cliffs, and she breathed in deep enough to take in a world of crisp air.
Not even the Bleeding Maiden could’ve imagined such a gown. All the guests would be spellbound. Celaise may have just made the most dazzling dress in all the Lands of Loam.
It shone in the darkness and glared in the light. Pale as fear, it was whiter than true bone. Droplets of blood stood out on it like rubies.
Below the skeletal bodice, streamers of blood flowed around
the lady in a skirt. They branched in vein patterns, connecting to her wrist, and the red drapery lifted with her hand.
This dress exposed much. The lady had flayed her right arm to the shoulder, and her left leg to the hip. Her skin peeled back in flaps like butterfly wings to show the sides of her ribcage, bands of red and off-white.
Celaise asked, “You don’t want me to darken the dress to match your bones? Or the other way around?”
“Let us not change plans now,” Hiresha said. “We haven’t the time. And I prefer the natural color of my skeleton.”
She glanced to the left. Jerani dragged in the dead Angler. Celaise wouldn’t stare at the Feaster’s corpse. That shriveled body wasn’t who he had been. The sun dragon’s curse had stolen away the Feaster’s true self. The Winged Flame had power even in the dark of night, but somehow the lady had outdone him. Celaise was more her true self during the day than most Feasters.
The lord father had been right to choose the lady. She understood the beauty of Celaise’s dress. And the lady had power over the sun.
“You’re very brave,” Jerani told the lady. “No warrior asks for so many marks. And so deep.”
“No, you were brave, to test your pain thresholds against scarification.” The lady peeled off a circle of skin from her brow. It filled in red. “I am very calculating. I’ve prevented myself from feeling the pain, from being infected, and from drawing too much blood.”
Jerani huddled closer to the lady and frowned down at her legs. Celaise began to wonder what he was thinking, that the lady had shapely muscles in her thigh? The tendons running tight over her knee and around her shin were smoother than silk. He would see every contour of her flesh.
“I also tested that I can autograft the skin in its original positions and regenerate its connective tissue.”
She had even stripped her foot, and chords of white stretched from her ankle to toe bones like the most intricate shoe. Celaise would never be able to look like that.
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