Fox's Bride (20 page)

“Might help,” Maid Janny said, “if you keep your eyes open when you throw.”

Hiresha covered a yawn with a jeweled hand then propped her chin as she brooded.
I can't afford to miss a charging guard.
She had hoped to steal away out the back door at this point, but she decided she would nap, to consolidate the muscle memory of throwing.
Perhaps I should practice more in the laboratory.

She slumped in the same chair that had so offended her, proving herself the forgiving sort. Her head dipped forward.

Something hulked over her.

Her eyes snapped open to see the Royal Embalmer, vulture mask in hand. Before she could gather herself to ask what he was doing here, he spoke in a hushed voice and beckoned her.

“Come, you must know something.”

The enchantress roused herself, not at all comfortable with this interruption. Neither did she care for how his ember stare lingered on her chest.

Hiresha left the fennec on a pillow. The maid watched her go with a worried expression, and the enchantress and embalmer walked around a courtyard in the dormitory. Green-glazed pillars surrounded a grove of fruit trees and blooms with stifling aromas. The embalmer swung his gaze on any priest or guard who approached, forcing them to scramble out of sight.

“They believe,” he said, “that I speak of provisions after the ceremony, how tomorrow I'll begin preparing your body for eternity. Tell me, Hiresha, do you mean to submit yourself to this?”

Hiresha realized that she had the option to confide in him. With her strength in enchantment combined with whatever plan the embalmer had engineered, they might escape together. She peered at the embalmer, into the deepness of his eyes, and asked herself if she could think of a reason she should trust this stranger. She wished for the clarity of her dream laboratory.

The embalmer resumed speaking before she could decide. “I'll not rescue you against your will, but you should know of the god you'd marry.” He bowed his head, and braids of a wig beaded with malachite draped over his eyes. “He was a man once,
Kemtefshupabi
. He clothed himself in pride and scorned men of lesser fortune. As Pharaoh, he executed anyone who trod on his shadow.”

His knuckles whitened as he gripped the mask.

“One day,” he said, “the Golden Scoundrel spied a beautiful woman. Her name was Ellakht, the fiancée of a simple artisan. The would-be god had already married seven times, but he wooed the artisan's betrothed all the same. He sent her first an ostrich feather. Then a whole ostrich. Next a flower garden. After that, ten servants. And a palace.”

Heat rolled over Hiresha. She expected to see a servant carrying a boiling cauldron past, but no one stood close to her except the embalmer. His skin had reddened.

“After she married the Golden Scoundrel, he lost interest in her. She had to petition to see him. She died bearing his stillborn child.”

“You have an exceptional knowledge of history.” Hiresha seemed to recall the Golden Scoundrel's pyramid had stood for over a thousand years.

He did not appear to hear the enchantress. “The embalmer wept as he prepared the queen for burial. He treated her body in death with all the tenderness and dedication he'd wished to give her in life.”

“An embalmer knew her?” A splinter of apprehension dug through Hiresha. “Who're you talking about?”

“Queen Ellakht had been engaged to an embalmer.” The Royal Embalmer's lips trembled, and his sweat smelled bitter. “The artisan. I thought I mentioned that. But it's of no consequence.”

The Royal Embalmer clapped a hand over the enchantress' arm and locked her in his gaze. Strands of molten gold crossed within dark pupils. His bloodshot eyes smothered her and burned away the world around them until nothing else remained.

“Hiresha, the Golden Scoundrel would neglect you in the afterlife.” His grip scorched her skin. “I would treasure you. Leave your betrothed and escape the city with me.”

“Remove your hand from me.” Hiresha found herself gasping. She feared she knew what this man was. “I'll not go anywhere with you.”

He let go, and she stumbled backward into the arms of two guards. She had not seen them, and her perceptions returned in pieces. The brightness of the day as they pulled her outside and led her to another building. The chill of stone as they held her onto a dais. The dampness of henna paste on her chest.

“This tincture contains traces of human liver.” The Royal Embalmer chafed her skin with a brush. “It will join your spirit with the Golden Scoundrel.”

Hiresha propped her head up and noticed she was naked. They must have torn off her dress. More distressing still, a glyph of brown paste scrawled its tortured lines above her breasts. She had seen a similar design on a man killed by the touch of a Soultrapper.

She jerked her arm up, to reach for the back of her throat and cough up a diamond to defend herself. Or, she would have, but he snatched her wrist and slammed her arm down.

“Do not move.” He dabbed away a smudged section of the glyph and began reapplying the henna.

Hiresha's heart thudded. Her palms sweated and pulsed with heat. She did not believe what he had said about the glyph linking her to the Golden Scoundrel. If she died, she knew all too well what would happen. The glyph would lock her spirit in her corpse, turning her into a source of power for the Soultrapper.

She vowed it would not come to that.
Not after enchanting all those jewels, not with Chandur wasting away in prison.
With the Soultrapper staining her skin with his glyph and fear crackling up her nerves, Hiresha did what she did best and dozed off.

No normal or even prodigious sleeper could have managed the feat under those conditions, but Hiresha was a savant. She did not attempt to draw the embalmer with her into her dream since she lacked enough of a grasp on him. The chill of her laboratory calmed her and awarded her the presence of mind to think.

The Feaster paced in her mirror. “He's the Soultrapper.”

“He's the Soultrapper.” The reflection fainted against the glass.

“Not precisely,” Hiresha said. “The Soultrapper has given us reason to believe he was the Royal Embalmer during the reign of Pharaoh Kemtefshupabi, who died one thousand two hundred and forty-two years ago. Soultrapping magic corrupts mind and flesh. It could slow decay but not stop death.”

“Why are you waiting?” The Feaster screamed at her. “Attract the diamonds out of your mouth, wake, and lob them at him.”

“As I was saying, the true Soultrapper would've died ages ago and encased his own spirit within his mummy. He controls the mind of the Royal Embalmer of today, lives through him, yet killing his vessel won't stop him.”

“It wouldn't hurt,” the Feaster said.

The reflection pushed herself upright, fanning her face with a hand. “So what do we do?”

Hiresha glared at another mirror that showed the Royal Embalmer. She commanded his image to age, his skin shriveling and collapsing. White strips of cloth wrapped him as mummy, and the bandages yellowed as dynasties came and went. He lay in darkness except for the red fluorescence of a glyph burned into his parchment skin.

“This is the Soultrapper. The man who bound his own soul to hold himself in the mortal realm. Who forced the fennec to circle me three times. Because of him, I'm held hostage in this city.” Hiresha also suspected he had played a role in Chandur's imprisonment. Anger flared within her, bright and pure like the spray of light from a diamond held to the sun.

“Why'd he say he wanted to help us?” The reflection lifted her gloves to her lips. “Oh! Was he lying?”

The Feaster snarled through her perfect teeth. “He wanted you alone, to kill and glyph you at his leisure.”

“Likely.” Hiresha examined a mirror showing the Royal Embalmer speaking. “His hatred for the Golden Scoundrel seems genuine. Maybe he wanted us married as a mutual punishment. Yet, why then would he be so incessant about me leaving with him when he could bind my soul under a glyph either way? It is most illogical.”

“It's revenge,” the Feaster said. “The Golden Scoundrel stole the embalmer's bride. Now he wants to steal you from the fennec god.”

“A fox and a Soultrapper,” Hiresha said, “not the rival suitors for which I had hoped.”

The lady in the sapphire dress asked, “So you'll find the Trapper's tomb? Tear off his glyph?”

Hiresha floated in a circle, putting her back to the mirrors of the Royal Embalmer and the mummy. “First, we proceed with the marriage ritual.”

The Feaster hissed. The reflection gasped.

“They'll carry my sarcophagus into the pyramid, close to the mummy of the Golden Scoundrel. As the Royal Embalmer of ages past, the Soultrapper all but certainly bound his soul, too, and is drawing power from it. I'll free myself and remove the glyph binding the soul of the god.”

Hiresha blinked, hurling herself back to the waking world.

The Royal Embalmer added a few last spines to the glyph then set down his brush. He ran a fingernail down Hiresha's arm and lifted her hand, tapping a garnet sealed in her skin.

“Whatever power you have,” he said, “it will not be enough. Do not think anyone can free you from the sarcophagus once you start down that path.”

He knelt beside her, his chin an inch from her neck.

“Hiresha, some choices cannot be unmade. No matter how much we may regret them.”

His hot breath caressed her ear.

“I ask you one last time. Will you accept my devotion?”

Hiresha tried to see the dead man within the depths of the embalmer's eyes. Her breath rasped through her dry throat, but her voice was calm.

“I would rather asphyxiate.”

Chandur jerked awake at the metal squeal of the grate.

“Up with you!”

He rolled to the side, and something thumped into the sand next to him. He felt it out, a large basket attached to a rope. It lifted upward. He stepped in, and it creaked under his weight.

His chin pointed to the flickering above, Chandur considered this a promising start. True, they likely meant to execute him. That meant Hiresha had not made a deal with the priests, and she might have escaped the city. Chandur wanted to think of her free.

The rope jerked him upward. Men complained above.

He imagined the enchantress riding over the desert on an ostrich, hiding with a band of nomads in tents or secreting herself in the jungle among a tribe of kindhearted hunters. Either way, her enchantments would doubtless heal the sick, and he hoped someday she would create wonders to rival the sky streams of Oasis City. He wished his sister would grow up to be like Hiresha.

If only I can live to see it.

He leaped from the oubliette, reaching past a man's face to grab the nearest sword. His hand closed on the hilt.

Muscle-bound arms wrapped around his elbows and neck, yanking him away. Four brutes slammed him against the wall. Their skin glistened red in the torchlight, and they each wore a fan of gold and gemstone over their chests.

Royal guards,
Chandur thought.

“He's a real eye spitter, that one.” Five prison guards stood nearby, all shorter and in more humble garb. One spoke with a glimmer of pride. “Was a guard once. Got up and out by himself, the first time, and knocked out Nabet and Pili.”

A royal guard slapped Chandur's cheek, gripping his chin. He turned his head from side to side then sniffed. Chandur met their gazes, not wincing despite how they clutched his bruises.
Nine guards,
he thought.
Too many.

“Take him,” the royal guard said.

They pushed him into a room where servants brushed the sand off his purple coat. One took off his circlet. When they forced him to strip his clothes and armor he tried to stop them, railed against them. Then he saw he had greater problems.

Such as that sickle-shaped knife in a servant's hand. The man rang a sharpening stone along its edge then tested the blade against his thumbnail. The room's green-glass window lit the knife, and it reflected a poisonous moon onto the stone floor.

Beyond his nakedness, Chandur felt exposed. Bare of fate. He believed he had left the goddess' path when he had encouraged Hiresha to use her powers to escape. He had stripped himself of his destiny, and he wondered if he would die to a knife here and be forgotten.

The man gestured with the blade. “Bring him into the light.”

The greenness seared into Chandur's eyes after the dark of his last days. He kicked out, trying to hit the man with the knife but catching only air.

A guard thumped his back. “Your heart's not thinking straight. Hold still.”

An ooze that smelled of aloe was spread on Chandur's cheeks and neck. He glared down as the servant lifted the knife to his throat. The edge scraped off his stubble, and the servant wiped it on a towel between passes over his skin. Once Chandur realized he was being shaved, he laughed. Afterward, his face prickled.

The servant dabbed away the blood from a nick. “Good, no more hyena muzzle.”

They doused him with water from jugs. Ladles of oil were dripped over him, scented like a forest. Chandur blinked droplets from his eyes. He tried to think if the prisoners he had seen executed a few years back on Gods Week had been treated to lavish oils. He could not remember.

The guards muttered to each other then allowed him to put on his armor and coat. One latched a block of wood over Chandur's hands.
The manacles dug into his wrists, torqued his elbows, and splayed his fingers outward.

A royal guard asked, “What’s your god?”

“The Fate Weaver.”

The bemused looks they gave Chandur made him remember that few in Oasis City knew about his homeland’s goddess.
They want to know which pyramid to bury me near.
The image of bones sticking from sand dunes stuck in his mind, the poor wishing for their remains to be close to their god.

Chandur forced himself to say, “The Plumed God.”

“Odd choice,” a guard said.

“Must be for his fierceness,” another said.

In truth, Chandur had chosen the god at the past request of a blue-eyed guard, another thing the two of them had shared. Chandur felt a blistering pang at the thought of Dejal learning of the execution.
What if he watches?
While Chandur mulled it over with clenched teeth, a servant painted the Plumed God’s sign around Chandur’s eyes.

The same servant lifted a wig of shoulder-length black hair, tasseled with blue beads. They fitted it onto Chandur then adjusted his circlet so the ruby showed. Chandur was certain the man he had watched disemboweled and stuffed with live cobras had not worn expensive braids. The spellsword twisted his hands in the wooden shackles. “Where are you taking me?”

One royal guard shook his head and scowled, and Chandur got no more of an answer. They marched him onto the street. With one guard on each side of him, gripping him under his locked arms, they could carry him if he resisted. He kept up with their pace though the daylight dazzled him, and the wash of aromas churned his stomach.

The dry grassy smell of camel. The sting of piss. The spices of sizzling meat.

A camel looked at him while chewing. The animal's head reminded him of a balding man with wisps of blond hair on his neck and on the back of his scalp.

Pilgrims and off-duty guards did not glance up where they huddled around dueling scorpions. Pinchers of black and yellow snapped at each other. One man sprang to his feet, pointing across the ring and howling.

“Salt in your eyes! In your eyes!”

A river flowed downward through the air. It was not a waterfall but a pillar of clear blue, pulsing as it descended into a tunnel leading below the street. One royal guard stuck a cup into the flow then poured a tan powder in the gathered water. He pressed it against Chandur's lips.

He sipped, tasted salt. He drank.

With the refreshment, a sense of hope grew within Chandur. The muscles around his stomach began to relax, but he forced them clenched again.
If they meant to free me,
he thought,
they'd have given back my sword.
When he had trusted in fate to do right by him, he would have contented himself with seeing where they planned to bring him. Now he told himself to watch for an opportunity to break free.

A cacophony of cheering surrounded the fox's bride.

Hiresha sauntered down the colonnade. The fennec was draped over one arm, his feet dangling, and she supported his furry head with two fingers. His heart pattered against her palm. When she lofted him higher, the pilgrims and merchants crowding between the pillars roared with approval.

“Eternity and happiness!”

“A year of fortune for all.”

They lobbed bouquets of white flowers with spindly petals. Clusters of pink blooms were flung at her feet. Merchants dared to break through the lines of guards to lay wreaths of yellow and blue flowers over her shoulders. One crowned her with a headdress of red orchids.

Beneath the flower necklaces and the veil of her dress, a glyph stained Hiresha's chest. The henna had left a design of a disk walled in by intricate claws the shade of a blood orange. The glyph stank of rotten lemons, and her flesh twitched as it seeped deeper.

Hiresha yet smiled. She was where she wanted to be, and she felt the same excitement as if poised to strike the first facet in a paragon gemstone. She was not a helpless enchantress. In moments she could begin throwing diamonds armed with magic the likes of which the Lands of Loam had never seen. When her gaze found the Royal Embalmer standing with the priests behind the sarcophagus, she matched his stare.

The sarcophagus lid faced the crowd. A nude woman was painted on the stone, exposed and unabashed, with a gold-leaf fennec flashing over her heart. The sun beamed down between the block towers of the temple pylon. The gathered people began to chant as Hiresha mounted the first of the steps.

“Scoun-drel!”

Maid Janny edged her way between the priests. Redness splotched her cheeks as if she had been crying, but the sight of the enchantress seemed to hearten her. She asked, “You been drugged?”

Hiresha grinned wider and took the next step. Two more until the sarcophagus.

“Scoun-drel!”

The maid reached down her dress, no doubt for a sash full of enchantments. Hiresha twitched her chin from side to side.
Not yet.
Her bare foot touched the next level of sandstone.

“Scoun-drel!”

In her turn toward the sarcophagus, the enchantress leaned close to the maid. “Wait for me outside the pyramid.”

Hiresha tried to reassure Janny with a wink, but her other eyelid also lowered in a blink. For the first time ever, she felt deficient in the realm of winking. She mounted the last step and lifted her leg into the sarcophagus. The dusky metal that plated its insides had heated in the sun. It burned her toes.

“Scoun-drel! Scoun-drel! Scoun-drel!”

A priest set his meaty hand on the blue-robed shoulder of his fellow. “Observe the bride's earrings. She will not wear jewels into her lord husband's pyramid.”

Hiresha lifted the fennec toward the crowd. She listened to the priests behind her, apprehension sparking through her. If the priests tried to remove the triggering garnets, she would have to defend herself, and with the Soultrapper's vessel beside her and at full strength.

“Why weren't her earrings removed?”

A third priest. “The sarcophagus was plated with lead, per your request. She can't escape.”

Hiresha beamed, realizing the priests had made a mistake. She could not enchant lead and expect the magic to persist after she awoke. Neither would she have the need. She would escape in her sleep.

The first priest. “The jewels will be cut from her.”

Her shoulders tensed forward. Her fingers brushed aside the flower wreathes to touch the red diamond below the orange of the glyph. She began to gag, the diamonds rising in her throat.

“I will vouch for her commitment.” The embalmer's voice bristled with malice and resentment. “Her future is locked.”

The priests seemed willing to give the Royal Embalmer the final word. As Hiresha swallowed the diamonds back down, she wondered how far the Soultrapper's influence spread over the rulers of the city.
However deep,
she thought,
I will uproot him.