Dark Lord's Wedding (65 page)

The amethyst dragon towed Hiresha’s corsair between the city towers. The sail wings brushed against the buildings. Cloth dyed black swept around the stone contours and jostled window plants. Mist billowed up from the city’s fog.

The night stars gleamed brighter relative to the moon. Its face had darkened to the shade of a spessartine gem, except for the lower left edge which glared a lighter red, almost rubellite in hue.

The moments plinked by Hiresha, each precious and unforgettable. No greater joy could be experienced than the fruition of a plan, and this happiness she shared with Tethiel.

Between them, Guile lifted her arms to the guests. Her long sleeves draped open, and metal glimmered from within their depths. “Seven seals are all that now bar this marriage. Seven, for seven guests.”

Servers bowed and lifted up circular tiles. The clay tablets were painted half white and half black. They were given to the greatest guests, though Alyla needed the other Bright Palm to hold hers. The jaguar knight gripped his between fangs.

“Break your seal, and by your hand these two will marry,” Guile said. “Break it and swear to protect their union. Give your oath to keep their counsel, to support them in war and peace, to share in their victories. Break it and gain the Lady Hiresha’s blessing to wear her armor of invulnerability, to be shielded by the Lord Tethiel’s shadows.”

This was the final test. If the guests agreed to this then the wedding would be a success. She knew it would be. Hiresha couldn’t allow it to fail now. Should anyone refuse the oath, she would have to slay and replace her or him as expeditiously as she had the king brute. The guests would suspect this.

Ix’s orb eyes swiveled toward the king then up at dragon. Hiresha willed the construct to perch on the prow. Let its faceted chest be her wedding altar. Behind it loomed an unlit tower.

Both Green Bloods exchanged a look. Saul nodded, a dip of their chin. Ix returned the slight gesture. They had decided.

Ix threw down the seal, and it shattered against the deck into seventeen parts. “By all the venom in my heart, I swear.”

The next cracking sound came from the seal between the jaguar’s jaws. Then Fos snapped his between his hands. All the guests were breaking seals and kneeling. The fennec sprang around them, spraying out trills of perfect pitches. Hiresha’s time had come. Everything had aligned. The stars gleamed above like an infinity of diamonds.

More precious to Hiresha was the light of the single jewel before her, the red paragon. The gnarled hands of Guile beckoned Tethiel to take it. He snaked the chain off its pedestal. The moon’s crimson glow enhanced the color.

The jewel swung between his hands; the necklace was perpendicular to Hiresha’s throat. Tethiel could wrap it around her with such ease. Soon she would feel the weight of the diamond against her chest. They only had to wait for Guile to speak the vow.

“Under the eyes of the gods and witnessed by these assembled powers of the Lands of Loam, Hiresha, will you take Tethiel as your wedded ally? To share your confidences in times of rule and rout, to make war and law together, to heal him in sickness and treasure him in health, to never betray, to forsake all other partners until your demise?”

As the red diamond swayed, all two-hundred and forty-five of its facets flashed from red to white. Tethiel’s hands lit with flecks of the gem’s fire. Hiresha knew this moment would be the end of independence and the beginning of something greater.

“Will you swear in blood?” Guile asked.

“I will.”

Hiresha lifted the malachite dagger. She flicked it across her tongue, and out blossomed heat.

The coldness of the chain seared around her neck. The links pierced her to the core without cutting her skin. The red diamond rested against her, swaying in time to her heartbeat and the throb of blood flowing into her mouth.

With a rustle of fabrics, servants held a purple cape to her back. Tethiel pressed the necklace against it with his gauntleted hands, and the men clasped it in place. His vow would come next, yet first Hiresha would tell him the truth.

She wrapped her gauntlet around his head to hold him close. “You did not ask how I killed the other you.”

“I never ask a lady to give up all her secrets.”

“With an amulet.” Hiresha tapped his breastplate where his marriage jewel would lie. “You wore it out of trust.”

She lifted his pendant from its stand. Traditionally, the women of Morimound wore both chains, and only the wife swore to be loyal. This ritual would form a better partnership, if Tethiel consented. She offered him everything. The dawnstone she held before him shimmered sunrise orange with an enchantment of everlasting life and sudden death.

Possibly she shouldn’t have told him. A lord of fear he was, but not fear’s master. She had seen before how his caution could make him balk. Then all would splinter into ruin.

Guile pronounced Tethiel’s vow. It was identical, except his included the phrase, “To care for her by night or by day.”

Her heart crashed louder than the storm’s distant thunder. More lightning of anticipation surged through her merely thinking about him refusing. He could vanish back into the shadows and be gone with the dawn. She might never see him again.

Yet, he wouldn’t. Tethiel would swear himself to her. She knew it with the resounding deepness of a dreamer seeing the future. In the other facet, she had killed him. In this, she would wed him. The jewels of her two lives spun against each other. Each facet fitted together. Memories reflected into prophecies.

Hiresha could never be wrong. She could never know what was real.

“Will you swear in blood?” Guile asked him.

An orange mote from the sapphire zipped across his face then was gone. He would swear now; she was certain of it, and yet he waited. Seven heartbeats thrummed by, then eight. He was dragging it out, the rapscallion, making the guests lean in to hear.

“I will.” Tethiel gashed his tongue.

A laugh burst out of Hiresha’s throat. She pressed the chain against him, and servants pinned it to a cape of red. A red diamond rested on her chest. The red moon rose from behind his shoulder and above a shadowed tower.

“A kiss completes the ritual,” Guile said.

Tethiel’s lips had already met hers. Gasps and shouts crashed over them, the Talon’s the loudest. Cheers from the guests rang in her ears. Her lips tingled; her face buzzed; her body throbbed. Dreams ignited with her.

She opened her mouth to finish the pact. Their blood mingled in the kiss. His tasted of sharpened iron and burnt coffee. The warmth of it surprised her. Excellent! She could anticipate most anything but still be astounded. Their tongues brushed, and a jolt surged down Hiresha’s neck, all the way through her spinal vertebrae to her tailbone. She shifted in a manner some might call squirming, yet none would see it beneath her armor.

“I now pronounce you partners.” Guile spoke the words then disappeared.

Tethiel broke away. They had kissed too long, and the time had been too short. He tapped the dawnstone on his breastplate. “Why should I fear this? To wed is always to risk dying of happiness.”

“Not until I say so, Tethiel. I will include you in my every plan.”

He grasped her hand, and their gauntlets fit together, claw fingers jutting to either side. “Hiresha, you’ve fulfilled my greatest nightmares.”

Bits of the broken seals pattered around them. The guests were throwing the clay crumbs and whooping. They stomped and leaped over the corsair as it drifted around the tower. The blood moon slid away, and now above the spire glowed a new redness. It shimmered from the north, brighter than any star.

Hiresha’s body thudded with heat. The smallest blood vessels in her hands were bursting with the power rushing inside her. She couldn’t waste a second. She needed to channel the momentum of the marriage.

“Bring me my lotus seeds,” she said.

Hiresha willed the dragon to fly the ship over the river, further from the new light in the north. The fog hid all sight of the Gargantuan, yet it would be due southwest of this tower.

Servants presented a chest emblazoned with lotus seeds pods. It opened at her touch. Inside glittered amethyst dust she had added for effect along with dark seeds. They pooled into her cupped hands.

“We celebrate our marriage by spreading new life.” Hiresha hurled the seeds off the corsair. They dropped into the opacity of the mists. “The purple lotus will bloom across all the lands.”

Tethiel threw fistfuls after hers.

“It will spread until all the world knows of our union. As the purple lotus flourishes in waterways, it will kill off leeches. The pests’ sleeping sickness will go extinct, and people will rejoice.”

How remarkable to consider the degree of change which would come from one chest of seeds, along with months of design, and a lifetime of expertise. A new heat spread over the back of her neck. She threw the last handful of seeds. When Tethiel reached in, he pulled out a brooch of an amethyst lotus.

Hiresha plucked the jewelry from his hands and turned to the guests. “The purple lotus will benefit your people, and this commemorative jewelry will aid one of you in particular. Its enchantment will grant eternal life.”

The Mimic bowed his head against the deck before her. “It’d be an honor to serve you to the end of time.”

Hiresha tsked and waved him back. “All of you, stand together. I’ll throw and give everyone a fair chance at the catch.”

The guests eyed each other’s sharpened blades, venomous claws, and crushing fangs. They edged closer.

“Ha ha! As if I’d leave any decision to chance.” Hiresha wagged the brooch at them. “No, of course I’ll choose who most deserves to wear the First Lotus.”

The amethyst petals hid a green sapphire, in which was locked the richness of the enchantment’s complexity. It pulsed within, while the exterior of the jewelry reflected two spots of light, one from the moon, one from the north. Above the horizon arched something that resembled a red comet, only it wriggled closer.

This could bode ill.

Hiresha anticipated she had little time. She strode past the razor feathers of Celaise and lifted the jewel to the Green Blood philosopher. “I present the First Lotus to Saul, for their assistance in developing poisons to inhibit the common leech.”

The purple jewelry was most becoming clasped in their emerald-hued fingers. Saul said, “The true reward is a content soul.”

“And your soul will live longer in this body because of your worthy actions.” Hiresha glanced at the new light and had to squint. It outshone the moon.

“Pah!” Ix spat a glob of fluorescence onto the deck. “Saul still can’t outlive me.”

“Then you must earn the First Lotus next year,” Hiresha said. Sweat streamed underneath her armor. “Every anniversary, I’ll award it to whoever pleases me best. Endeavors made for me will never age you.”

“The Lotus should’ve gone to me,” Elbe said. She clapped her hand over her mouth, and she blinked off one of her butterfly lashes. The Purest had astonished herself as well as Hiresha. Elbe had spoken in haste. Half of her face was tinted red from the incoming brightness.

Elbe began turning toward the light. She slid one foot, and then she leaped around, all poise deserting her. Gone was her composure. She even panted.

Hiresha did too. Her chest heaved in and out in time with the pulse of the northern light. It came with a growing rumble, a nearing growl of wings, and a rolling thunder.
Thrum! Thrum!

The sky blazed to the north. This was not the sun Hiresha knew.

Thrum! Thrum!

“He comes.” The Talon stumbled forward, stabbing himself with every step. Blood trailed from his knife as he spread his arms wide in welcome. “He’s scented our sacrifices, heard our screams. The dawn of dawns, the Winged Flame.”

PART

IV

“He is Abandon.” The Talon jumped onto the railing. He teetered as the corsair banked from the Winged Flame.

Thrum! Thrum!

The dragon god burned away the mists. The whiteness parted over the city. Shouts rang out. Trapdoors banged open, and people carried firefly lanterns up to their roofs. Hiresha couldn’t imagine anyone needed the light. The red luster of the blue dragon reflected to an impossible degree. Even squinting at it started a sparkstorm in Hiresha’s head. Her heart pounded at headache speed.