Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

  Hiresha Attracted the god’s essence out of Elbe.

  She shuddered. Her hug softened from desperate to encouraging. “Don’t fight the Winged Flame. Forgive.”

  “Impossible.”

  Elbe never flinched even as her face reddened from the nearing god. “Be stronger than mere strength.”

  The Winged Flame could never be forgiven. Hiresha had observed him break her dragon to purple smithereens. He had gobbled half of Fos. Hiresha mustn’t think of her friend, her Fos, lest she return to a rage, yet she couldn’t stop seeing his disembodied legs fall in final indignity. A thousand memories bombarded her between heartbeats.

  Fosapam Chandur, son of Harend Chandur, last of a proud family of gem carvers, now lost. Someone would need to survive tonight to sprinkle diamond dust over his grave. His remains would have to be found. He was being digested in whatever searing concoctions lurked within the god’s stomach, and Fos likely was already beyond her powers to recover through magic.

  This was desecration.

  She had to admit to more. In the throws of battle, Hiresha had forgotten about him. She hadn’t striven to free him from agony but only to wound the Winged Flame and repay the insults done to her. The god’s essence had polluted her.

  “I may be able forgive,” she said, “once the god is dead, rotted, and forgotten.”

  The gold tines of Hiresha’s marriage necklace opened. The red paragon revolved out, and Hiresha hurled the diamond at the Winged Flame.

  Jerani stepped in front of Celaise and lowered his spear at the Bright Palm.

  “Didn’t come for her,” the glowing man said. He sounded so much like Jerani’s father it hurt. He lifted his open arms. “Came for you, my boy.”

  Celaise stepped in front of Jerani. She made a sound close to a snarl. “You’re not getting close to either of us.”

  Gio’s empty hands flashed white. “Just listen. Don’t know how long this—this’ll last.”

  Had that been a hitch in his voice? Hearing it pulled at memories deep in Jerani, how his father had taught him to flick pebbles from a cow’s foot with a thumb, how they had made a game of hunting for breezes on the hottest days.

  “Had to tell you.” Gio wasn’t sounding much like a Bright Palm at all. Almost like a person. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back in time to save your mother.”

  All the toughness inside Jerani softened. His spear rolled out of his hand. “It’s you. You’re you.”

  Celaise snatched up the spear. “The Winged Flame does something to them.”

  That must be it. Jerani took a step to his father. Gio closed the rest of the distance with a hug. His shining arms were still cold.

  His voice was warm. “Jerani, you’re an honor to the Great Hearts tribe.”

  Jerani had never thought his father would speak to him again, not in this way. It was better than feeling the Angry Mother shake the ground in her full rock-fire glory.

  “You do what I could not.” Father nodded to Celaise. “Protect your woman.”

  “I’m the one with the spear right now.” Celaise pointed from the blood-flame skies toward the horizon. “And we have to go.”

  “Stay,” father said. “Running from Feaster magic only makes it stronger.”

  Celaise glanced up through the sunset rain. “But for dragon gods and crazy ladies, running works fine. Let’s go.”

  Jerani was tugged after her. He looked to father. “We’re going back to the grasslands.”

  “I have to return to the tower. To stop the Feasting.” Father peered up. “But I don’t want to. I’m coming with you.”

  “Then hurry.” Celaise sprang to a nearby roof. She had a gazelle’s fleetness.

  Jerani ran after her, and father came too. How many years since they had run together? It had been before Jerani got his warrior marks, before father’s had washed off his face from the steady beat of his magic.

  The red waters flooded higher in the streets. The tide broke open doors and carried splinters into homes. Most people had climbed to their roofs. “The Winged Flame will save us.”

  “No,” an older woman said, “harmony will.”

  “That’s a long way off.” The woman gazed up at the Winged Flame.

  The further Jerani went, the fiercer the currents. Red roared down the street. They had a long jump to the next home. Falling in would sweep Celaise away, or Jerani, or even father. The river smashed against bricks and sprayed up in a stinging rush.

  Jerani would go first. He swung his arms forward and leaped. The redness churned beneath him in hooks of foam. He wasn’t going to make it over. The current would swallow him. Then father would see him drown, and Jerani couldn’t let that happen.

  He thrust his feet forward, and they passed the last of the red death and scraped onto the roof. He rolled to safety.

  Celaise soared after him, spear high. Her skirt snapped around her lean legs. Jerani bet she could’ve gone twice as far. The wild magic still was in her. She moved in bursts, in twitches of speed.

  Father threw himself over the gap. He slammed into the side of the building, his legs slipping into the river. It yanked at him, and the bricks he clung to cracked. He dragged himself out. He didn’t need help, but fear ringed his eyes with white.

  “None of this can get you,” Jerani said. “You’re too strong.”

  “This isn’t right.” Father gripped his belly and cringed. “But I think I can still shield you.”

  Father lifted his hand. In his shine the flooding didn’t look so deep or fast. Its grinding crash softened to a dull rumble.

  “That’s the llama pen.” Celaise tore up a section of roof with her bear hands. She hopped down with a splash.

  Father exchanged a nod with Jerani. Yes, she was right. Escaping without a herd would be no escape at all. Jerani understood no one could survive on a long road alone.

  The tall-necked creatures didn’t seem as worried about the flooding. The flesh-eater dragon in the sky frightened them more. Jerani had to coax and tug them outside their stables, but they were happy enough to trot away from the tower and the center of the city. Even if the flood stained their fur up to their fuzzy chins.

  “They see through it.” Celaise guided the llamas between gates into a stretch of city with stone homes without windows. Carvings in the walls of women all had their eyes closed. Celaise spluttered and leaned forward against the wine. “They know it’s illusion.”

  The flow knocked Jerani off his feet. He had to grip a llama around the neck. The waters clawed at Jerani’s face. He couldn’t see, and his grip was slipping. He couldn’t let go, that would mean being dragged back to the tower and the lord. But the llama was kicking. Her bells rang. He was holding too hard. He couldn’t drag her down with him.

  The ground shook. Jerani forced his eyes open. Through the smarting he saw a giant wave. It tore up the stone homes, and bones blasted out of them. Must’ve been tombs. Skulls bobbed over the wall of water. The crest foamed red. The rest had blackened. Red and black as the lord’s coat.

  Jerani was taking Celaise away. The lord didn’t like it, and his anger blasted closer with ruin.

  His fangs were in the wave. Spear shards of broken buildings tumbled closer. They would chew Jerani and leave nothing. He knew he had been wrong to ever try to escape. Wrong to try. Wrong to have ever kissed Celaise and hoped for happiness.

  They wouldn’t even die together. The lord would wash them apart.

  “A-after me.” Father’s voice cracked, but he took the lead. He pulled two llamas forward by their harness.

  Following the Bright Palm wasn’t so hard. The waters didn’t trip Jerani. He could do this. He led a llama with one hand and reached to Celaise with the other.

  “We run straight through.” Father charged toward the flood wall, the crushing death. “It’s the only way.”

  Would’ve been easier to face a stampede. Jerani had to scream something. “The Great Hearts!”

  Father glanced back. His eyes were streaming
. “Jerani—”

  The flood swallowed him.

  The waters smashed into Jerani. They tore his hand from Celaise.

  Now his bones would break. The lord wouldn’t wait to tear him apart. Jerani knew he couldn’t live, but maybe he could catch hold of Celaise one last time. It wouldn’t happen. He spun head over foot in this black madness. But he reached …

  And he touched her.

  Her hand slid into his.

  His fingers closed on hers.

  They stood on the quiet bank of the Gargantuan River. The waters only sighed against the shore. There was no flood. There never had been. A llama brayed ahead of them, impatient for them to catch up.

  Celaise laughed. Jerani did too.

  Then he noticed. “Where’s father?”

  Celaise looked about her. “Maybe the flood carried him upriver?”

  “There wasn’t a flood.” Behind them was only the city, lit by the dragon god.

  “Maybe he was far enough away, his glow-blood kept him safe.”

  No bodies floated downriver, not that Jerani could see. He couldn’t search. They needed to go further to be safe.

  “Maybe—” Celaise’s onyx teeth clacked together. She lurched off her feet, dropping the spear to grip her mouth. The weapon fell into the river, and Jerani had to grab it or her.

  He wrapped his arms around Celaise. Something was pulling her by the head, but it let up. They tumbled together onto some tree roots.

  Celaise squeezed him then popped to her feet. She shoved a hand into her mouth, gripping her teeth.

  “What’re you doing?” Jerani asked.

  “Ripping them out.”

  “Your teeth?”

  She punched herself in the jaw then stomped. “Burn that enchantress! They won’t come out, and she has me by the reins.”

  “Wait, where are you going?” Jerani asked.

  “Back. Have to kill the lady.” Celaise gritted her teeth. They glimmered with the light of the Winged Flame.

  “No you don’t.” Jerani grabbed her before she could jump. “It’s the god making you angry.”

  She tensed, and she dug her fingernails into his side. How strong was she? Jerani could see her ripping through his skin and pulling out something important.

  It didn’t happen. Celaise slumped into his arms. “You’re right. It’s not me. Maybe the wild magic.”

  “Let’s go.” He tugged her toward the llamas.

  Celaise glanced at the city. The god had circled a tower with his green-feather flames. “But if the lady lives, I’m hers.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t.”

  “Ha! I’m going to pray to the Winged Flame.”

  What a thought. The dragon god would have to eat the lord and the lady. Or Jerani and Celaise could walk to the other end of the lands and it wouldn’t be far enough.

  They called him a god. Ants might think the same of a monkey, and Hiresha considered the average person hardly more intelligent. The Winged Flame likely wasn’t anything more than a two-headed savage, a dragon parasitizing humanity. This false god could die. He should die. He must.

  Hiresha would execute him, for Fos, for her broken construct, and for the interruption of the perfect wedding.

  The dragon spiraled around the tower in a whirlpool of green iridescence. The past aligned with the present. Time ebbed and flowed through Hiresha in bursts of scintillation. She had been in a situation like this before in the Dream Storm Sea. There had been dragons, yes, and a kraken mastermind.

  Now a kraken adorned her in jewel piercings under her armor. Her blood would have to run as cold and as blue as the cephalopod’s to exterminate this dragon. Even if the vortex of his flight titillated the senses with its mathematical perfection and potential engineering applications, Hiresha would have to destroy him.

  Her red paragon reeled her over the dragon to align her for a perfect shot. The blue paragon remained waiting and spinning on the tower. Beside it, Ix spat venom on the assassins’ amethyst blades.

  “Jump,” Hiresha said to Sagai and Naroh.

  When they did, she Lightened them. They sailed twenty-three feet toward the dragon. The jaguar knight leapt further from a tower window. His gold tooth glinted as he bit and broke a wing at the joint. The assassins’ gem shards pierced through feathers into the dragon’s flank. The blue paragon whirred into his head.

  Hiresha Attracted the diamond with the force of infinite dream reflections. It drilled through a frill of feathers and into the dragon’s eye. She slid around the gnashing jaws for the best angle to pull the jewel deeper to pulverize his brain, as small as it might be.

  The blue paragon stuck. She couldn’t rip it through bone. Worse, the diamond had been disenchanted. Whether by contact with the dragon’s skelature or through force of his will, the blue paragon was no longer hers to move. She would have to touch it and rip it out of his larcenous skull herself.

  “Tethiel.” Hiresha flung her red paragon in front of the dragon’s path of flight. “Hide me.”

  “My heart, I can do so much more.”

  The Lord of the Feast flickered into being. He overshadowed the tower as a three-headed titan. In a night overbright with clashing colors, he stood in stark shades of obsidian and moonstone. The jaws of his right hand clamped onto the dragon’s neck, smashing the head down to impact into the street.

  Hiresha whisked in, sealed her hand against her blue paragon, and tore it free. His vaporous blood she Attracted away from her face to her red diamond. She leapt back to the tower crest.

  The second head descended in a burning blueness.

  She backflipped away. The dragon’s jaws split the air where she would’ve been. He snaked onward, toward the guests on the roof. His brightness shadowed two pairs of guests, the kings and the Green Bloods. Hiresha couldn’t save them all.

  The potato king dropped his axe. He stumbled backward and fell down the stairs. The choice became even easier.

  Ix and Saul lifted toward her, and she whisked them both away from the crush of black teeth. The dragon snapped up the Mimic, yet not fast enough to stop the Feaster from shouting one last line, “Die for beauty and live forever.”

  The Winged Flame slammed through part of the tower, collapsing the stair and probably killing the potato king. Hiresha couldn’t make a habit of this. Only so many wedding guests could die before one would have to question the quality of the host.

  Half the tower top fell away. Alyla’s limp arm dangled off the brink. Thankfully, Elbe was there to drag her to relative safety. A familiar scream discharged from lower in the tower. Miss Barrows must’ve hidden herself inside, and given the duration and volume her cry, she had taken a healthy breath first. She hadn’t yet been crushed. Cracks ran down the tower, and a few more stones fell away.

  The dragon looped up into a sky turned grey from nearing morning. Only seven minutes remained until Tethiel’s Feasting magic weakened. Hiresha needed to do more than prod at another eye.

  The jaguar knight ravaged across the Winged Flame. The dragon couldn’t seem to shake him, yet it wasn’t enough. Even the blackened wounds left by the assassins’ gem shards hadn’t slowed him appreciably.

  Hiresha needed to pierce the dragon’s heart. She levitated her blue paragon in front of Ix. “Make it lethal.”

  “Then you chose the right Green Blood.” Ix sniffed at Saul.

  “I choose you both.” Hiresha hoisted Saul closer. “Craft complementary venoms.”

  Ix harrumphed. Saul puckered his green lips in thought. They both started tracing sticky fingers over the pyramidal jewel. “Make anything but a bleeder,” Saul said.

  “I’m no dabbler,” Ix said. “Keep to your half.”

  Both Green Bloods had only coated a fraction of the facets before the dragon whorled toward the tower. The jaguar knight clung to his side by tooth and claw. Hiresha knew she must delay the dragon.

  The Lord of the Feast anticipated her need. His arms stretched and opened into sets of fangs, one serrated
, one needling. They would clamp on either side of the Winged Flame to fetter him.

  Or they should have. The dragon dove around and knocked out the base of the tower. He brushed through the foundations. Powdered, pulverized, the bottom half was swept away.

  Hiresha slapped a hand against the tower. She could only Lighten the remaining rooftop. The mortar between the blocks attenuated her magic. The Empire never would’ve countenanced such shoddy masonry. These builders hadn’t even considered dragon attack.

  The tower leaned in its collapse. Stones popped out, and Elbe was flung among them trailing songbird feathers. She lifted a hand toward Hiresha but did not scream.

  Miss Barrows did, and this time she sounded less operatic and more distressed. The peel died out and returned with even more scraping urgency.

  Hiresha either had to fly out to save Elbe or rescue Miss Barrows. The choice was impossible, between a necessary ally and a lifetime friend. Hiresha could only hope the Green Blood venoms lavished on her diamond would inflict as much pain on the dragon.

  Hiresha could impress more allies. She careened into the side of the tower for her friend. Kicking through warping passageways, Hiresha collided with Miss Barrows with an embrace. Stones fell. They thudded off Hiresha’s armor.

  “My daughter.” Miss Barrows tried to break free. “My Minnow.”

  Her daughter had jumped out of a window, not unreasonable given the scenario, except that she had chosen the wrong direction for her exit. Even if she survived the landing, Hiresha expected the tower would fall on top of her.

  There was only so little Hiresha could do. She Attracted the daughter by her necklace. Crumbling masonry pushed her the other way. The gold chain sliced through her throat, and stones buried her.

  Hiresha called it unfortunate. She couldn’t feel any deeper remorse, not yet. First she had to fight for the chance to grieve.

  Miss Barrows wailed, as was natural, even if her daughter hadn’t been half as exceptional as Fos. Hiresha set down the weeping woman in time to see the fate of Elbe. Grisly as it might be, Hiresha believed she owed it to the Purest to bear witness.