Fox's Bride (33 page)

Chandur told himself that was the reason, that he hated the thought of wasting her power.
I am not losing control.

He lugged the sword after her and Lightened it. A blast of nausea forced him to groan, and he felt as if something inside were trying to split him apart. He staggered, his legs refusing to chase the enchantress.

Breath heaving, he pushed himself after her one footfall at a time. Each step grew easier as he neared his crypt.

Hiresha did not pause to look back to see if her second Lightening jewel had hit. She whipped around a corner. Two guards aimed bows at her. Behind them, the stone door to the crypt was grinding closed.

Her nerves screamed at her to duck, to scramble back, to hide from the bowmen. Instead she leaned forward in full sprint.
Can't let them close that door,
she thought. She could Lighten it and still never force a way through if whoever was pushing it on the other side continued to shove.

The bows twanged. Redness pulsed from the diamond in her chest.

Arrows were Burdened and arched toward the ground. She leaned into the wall to avoid them, half spun and half stumbled, then launched herself between the guards.

Stone scraped against stone as the door's edge neared the wall. Her head slid between, and she twisted sideways to get her chest through. The slab closed on her ankle, and she felt the bones of her foot flex with shocks of pain.

Gripping her knee, she yanked her foot free. Her slipper came off along with strips of skin.

Two guards had been pushing on the door. They removed their shoulders from the stone, and their mouths stretched around their yelling. They drew knives and stalked toward Hiresha.

She flipped a jewel of Attraction into the air and scrambled away. It landed between the guards with a sparkle, and they smacked together. Bones and bodies of dead brides imploded into them.

Hiresha caught hold of the queen's sarcophagus and pulled herself out of the jewel's influence. She knew all too well which sarcophagus was which. Unmarked marble covered the Soultrapper's remains.

The crypt door scraped.
The other guards are opening it. Have to keep it closed.
She rolled a black sapphire of Burdening between her fingers, but she changed her mind and threw another Attraction jewel. It hit the wall near the door, and the slab pulled shut. More bones flew.

A crystalline feeling of conquest accompanied her first step toward the Soultrapper's sarcophagus.
There is nothing between us now.
On the second step, the air thickened with malice and rot.

She had assumed the tomb's stink had come from the decaying brides. The waves of stench that crashed over her now felt like grease soaking into her skin and spoiling her insides. A dark glob trickled from under the lid of the sarcophagus.

No mummy would reek like that.
Maybe he couldn't embalm himself? Maybe I really don’t want to open that sarcophagus and find out what a thousand-years of Soultrapping magic does to a corpse.
She slowed, wading amid her doubts.

I could Burden the lid and crush him under marble.
She pinched another Burdening jewel from her sash, this one a black diamond.
If he has an inner sarcophagus, it’ll likely protect him.

She wondered about the probability of a Royal Embalmer having more than one sarcophagus.
He was wealthy but not revered.
She questioned if the Soultrapper was making her think these thoughts.

I should Lighten the lid off. Unless that's what he desires me to do.

Hiresha stood paralyzed before the sarcophagus, a black sapphire balanced in one hand, a black diamond in the other.

Rock exploded behind her, and Chandur swept in.

One side of his sword flickered red as Chandur swung it over his head for a killing blow.

The enchantress looked over her shoulder. A black mane of hair tangled around her face, and a constellation of blue diamonds shone beside her eye.
Sorrow,
he saw it in her,
and fright, and the unbending force of purpose that got her to be the youngest elder enchantress ever.

He expected her to run, to try to dodge.
I'll cut her in two.
He imagined her purple dress severing down the middle, and he missed a step.

She looked away from him as if fearing nothing.
Why would she do that?
For a moment, he forgot the reason he wanted to kill her. Chandur remembered her kindnesses to his sister, and an urge swept over him to carry the enchantress away from this foul tomb.

She's trying to kill me,
he reminded himself.
She'll pry open my sarcophagus and kill me.

Her palms lifted upward as if in offering, and two specks fell toward his sarcophagus.

She's too late,
he thought. She might flip up the lid like she had those before, but then the sword would rend her.

Fifty pounds of rock dropped toward her back. He Burdened the jasper further, drawing on his full strength as a spellsword.

His arms betrayed him, swinging past Hiresha, missing her. He screamed in anger and dread.

The jasper blade smashed into the sarcophagus at the same moment the black jewels landed.

Marble lid crumpled. Stone bashed downward. He felt himself crushed and cleaved.

Blackness geysered from the sarcophagus, and he could see nothing except a red glyph. It flared and smoldered, a circle surrounded by four claws. One of the crimson dashes cracked, flying away. Black lines split another of the claws, and it crumpled. The last two red streaks of the glyph exploded, and the disk at their center spun away and faded to nothing.

Hiresha dragged Chandur by his heels. She envied his unconscious state. The sludge had rolled off her enchantress dress, but she worried it might stain her skin and scar her sense of smell. Her scraped heel stung, and she would have to check it later for infection.

Grime trailed behind the spellsword as she pulled him between the columns at the tomb entrance. A pink jewel of Lightening at the center of his chest allowed her to move him. She stopped at the stairs and turned toward the cringing guards.

“A hand, if you please.”

They backed away from her and the reek. “Where—where are you taking him?”

“Could still be n-night out,” another guard blubbered. “Wouldn't want to meet a Feaster.”

“Feasters don't concern me as much as this filth.” Hiresha set down Chandur's legs.

While the guards retreated into the tomb, Hiresha Lightened the stone that blocked the stair leading out. She threw the impediment away.

A woman shone before her in a dress of emptiness and daylight. Hiresha did not consider asking the Feaster for help.

Tucking a hand under Chandur's head and shoulder, the enchantress pulled him up the stairs and out to a lotus pond. The water mirrored stars fading in the nearing light of dawn.

Chandur skipped off the surface of the water. When she splashed in after him and pushed him down, he bobbed back up. Hiresha too felt herself flip upward as the water repelled her Lightened body. She realized she should have anticipated this.

Not my finest moment, I will grant.

Hiresha lay beside the Spellsword on top of the rippling surface, a lily pad drifting at her elbow. She gripped his wrist, found his pulse still strong.

Her own heart rate surged as a toothy jaw of a basilisk reared over the pond. The Lord of the Feast spoke from the monster's back.

“Is it done?”

“I'm lounging on top of a lily pond.” She forced a hand below the surface, and grime leaked from her fingers. “Care to make a deduction?”

“The tomb is open.” The Lord of Feast's basilisk tromped around the pond. Despite his beastly mount, he had regained his own arms and face. He appeared as the man she knew from the daytime. “His shirt is off. You both are doused in pudding. The possibilities are nothing short of tantalizing.”

“'Pudding?' You can't smell us, can you?”

“I smell you're concerned for your henchman but not afraid, so I fear he'll live.”

She propped herself on her elbows, which sank a bit into the water. “His name is Chandur.”

“And he must've helped bring down the Soultrapper.” The basilisk licked the side of Chandur's face with a giant slug of a tongue, in almost an affectionate manner. “I was wrong about him, deliberately. I try to be wrong at all times. It's the only way I can be consistent.”

Hiresha smirked. “You were right to warn me about the Soultrapper in the first place. I dare say the city will be better without him.”

“And you're better for having one person you can trust.” The Lord of the Feast nodded to Chandur.

Hiresha thought that sounded close to a compliment. “I’d like to trust you as well, Tethiel.”

“What a coincidence,” he said. “I wish I could trust me, too.”

She gazed past the basilisk to the greyness spreading above the buildings to the east. She asked, “Should you not be going soon? It is almost dawn.”

Only silence answered her. She glanced around the garden but saw no trace of basilisk or Feasters.

Chandur gasped. He tried to sit up on the pond but flopped backward with a splash.

She elbowed her way across the water to him. “How do you feel?”

“I feel....”

Chandur spat black droplets and wiped his mouth. A lotus flower next to him was jostled and bounced up and down. He opened and shut his eyes then focused on Hiresha. His lips began to turn upward, and his face was taken by a grin.