Dark Lord's Wedding (75 page)

The ship grew more buoyant than water, than air. Streamlets sluiced down its crystal sides. All the treasure of her wedding gifts filled the hull with reflected sunlight.

“I shan’t be marrying into poverty,” Hiresha said. “My mother would’ve approved of that, if nothing else.”

“Wealth brings only trouble. Which is why we should all strive to be as rich as we can.”

“The ship may be overflowing by the end of our honeymoon.”

“Yes, we must visit all the lands we now rule and accept the burden of their generosity.”

“It’s past time we left,” Hiresha said. She floated with Tethiel toward the ship, her paragon jewels flying around them. The fox chased their lights through the air.

“Indeed, the dawn is far gone.”

“And I must soon dream of other worlds. Will you watch over me as I sleep?”

“Only if I may leer.”

Hiresha replied by constricting the sides of his breastplate together. She stopped well short of squeezing his ribs to the breaking point.

“Oh, Hiresha.” He gasped. “You’re breathtaking.”

They stood together at the crystal prow. Hiresha felt a rolling sensation, not from the movement of the gliding corsair but from the wheeling of realities. In her other facet, she sat in ease on the inclined side of a pyramid with Fos. She took comfort that there he still lived. His pet kingsnake, Lord Bracelets III, slid up his sleeve to flick a tongue beneath his chin. A full tea service spread between them on a carpet. Hiresha and Fos enjoyed minutes of peace in the purpling of the dusk.

In the sunrise facet with Tethiel, all the Lands of Loam stretched before them in a horizon of sea green and gold. One world was false, one real. She preferred to think of each as, on average, half true.

“If this is a dream,” she said, “it’s a grand one.”

Tethiel’s buttonhole stayed perfectly composed in his coat despite the breeze. He leaned close enough that their plated shoulders clanked. “So begins a beautiful alliance.”

They kissed. When their lips parted, the red paragon sped between. A flash of facets, an immortal beauty, it settled in the amulet against Hiresha’s chest. Three claws of gold held the jewel fast.

The lord rode in with the sunset. Three horses followed, two carrying swordsmen. Jerani saw it had happened at last. This time wasn’t a dream. Jerani wouldn’t wake gasping beside Celaise. He wouldn’t be able to wrap an arm around her and fill himself breath by breath with peace. This was the end.

“Set down your weapon, my young delicacy. It’ll not serve this evening.”

Jerani slid his fingers over the acacia wood of his war club. His thumb rubbed over the hippo carved for his brother, the heron for his sister. Jerani wouldn’t see any of his tribe again. He would never know how the herd had grown.

His nail beds whitened from gripping the club harder. He had to fight. Jerani couldn’t let them hurt Celaise. He faced the lord and his men.

Jerani was on his own on the street. Not even a candle shone behind shuttered windows. The town had changed. None of the homes were familiar. Their sides were too sharp. The nearby mountain cliffs leaned too far. Shadows stretched over the town. Darkness wormed between the cobblestones, crawling outward from the lord’s boots. Some had already wriggled up Jerani’s legs.

His knees wobbled. His arms were too shivery cold to even lift his war club. If only he could remember the volcano heat of the Angry Mother, but he couldn’t. It was already over. Jerani dropped his weapon. It clattered against their shop.

“This will be our last meal together,” the lord said. “Don’t worry. I brought us the best cup of bitters.”

One of the swordsmen lifted a chest from his saddlebag. He looked like one of the Feaster knights, a man Jerani had fought beside in the jungle and at the wedding. Except he wasn’t a leper. He had once covered his missing nose with gold plates. Now he had a whole one, with a gold nose ring. He winked.

The second man who had also been a leper now had all his fingers. The third figure flipped off his horse and landed on both legs and two crutches. He scuttled after the other men. Jerani had never imagined this in his dreams. This couldn’t be one. Even if that sick floating feeling in Jerani’s stomach made it feel like a nightmare.

From the street he ducked inside the shop. Celaise crouched in the corner. She clutched a sewing needle. With her free hand she grasped Jerani’s with a death grip.

A swordsman swept a worktable clean. In the back, the stove blazed. A cauldron bubbled. The man on crutches loomed in the doorway. Each of his fists had a six-sided tattoo.

“Hexer,” Celaise said, almost too soft to hear.

He balanced on one crutch and reached into the travel chest. Out came plates and cups, bone white. They shimmered on the table. One swordsman set out pastries. The other poured darkness into the lord’s cup.

“You must join me,” he said. “Life is too short to waste on anything but simple pleasures, and too meaningless.”

Jerani and Celaise had to sit across from him at the table. The porcelain had designs around the edges of bats flying toward jasmine flowers.

“Terribly thoughtful of you,” the lord said, “of not making me ride all the way into the savanna. I’m also surprised. Did you wish for death to find you sooner?”

His silver knife hung above a pastry. He would soon slice it in half.

He asked, “Are you not happy together?”

Jerani looked to Celaise. They would have to answer. He said, “Couldn’t lead you to my tribe.”

“So we came here.” Celaise’s hand shook in his, but she met the lord’s cavern-dark stare. “Where women buy more dresses.”

The lord’s knife rang off the porcelain. “You opened shop in the shadow of the Mindvault Academy. The enchantresses must be selling their souls for your work. And all it cost you was Jerani’s hopes for home.”

“She gave up her magic,” Jerani said. “I gave up the grasslands.”

“Ahhh!” Steam from the lord’s cup coiled around him. “True love is true sacrifice. Too few your age understand that. Beauty is wasted on the young, and wisdom is wasted on the old.”

Jerani knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just sit here and wait for the lord to kill them. Celaise had hid her hand with the needle beneath the table, but the swordsman beside her was watching.

“Do you love each other,” the lord asked, “too much to marry?”

“Didn’t know how long we’d have,” Celaise said. “Together.”

Every day had been sweet to Jerani as the year’s first rains. He couldn’t give that up. Maybe the lord would change his mind. Celaise had told Jerani not to beg. The lord wouldn’t like it. Jerani had promised not to, but he had to say something.

“I’m sorry we—”

“Never apologize,” the lord said. “Anything can be forgiven but apology.”

His skin shone as white as the porcelain and as lifeless. The spearhead tattoo on his brow pulsed. It leaked little spider-legs of blackness then sucked them back in.

“My fallen plum,” he said to Celaise, “how went your metamorphosis? Do you still crave black wine?”

Her shoulders tensed, then the muscles of her needle arm. Jerani thought she might try to stab the lord. She shouldn’t. It wouldn’t work. Then they would be cut up by the swordsmen. Or much worse.

Jerani squeezed her hand. He shook his head. They could live as long as everyone kept talking.

Celaise slumped. The needle plinked to the floor. “I needed all the magic bottles. Could’ve used another. Now I only dream of my old dresses, and I wake up wanting.”

“Such a tragedy to lose a member of the family, wouldn’t you say, my dainties?”

The swordsmen made sorrowful noises. Only one sipped from his cup at a time. The other always held down Jerani with his eyes. Red crumbs sprayed over the tablecloth. The lord urged Jerani and Celaise to eat.

The pastry stuck in Jerani’s throat. He couldn’t swallow. He had to choke down some of the burning coffee drink. It left his mouth charred. Would the lord poison them? Is that how they would die?

“Indeed not,” the lord said, “and I’m afraid you’ve been most disrespectful. Not once this evening have you tried to kill me. Neither have you thanked me. It should’ve been one of the two.”

Celaise ran her fingernails down her legs, leaving scratch marks. “Thanked you for giving me magic all those years ago?”

“For granting you this last year together. It must’ve been exquisite, living each day like it could be your last.”

“That was the worst part,” Jerani said. Maybe he shouldn’t have.

“No, no, what you both should fear is aging.” The lord smeared gloppy red jam over bread with his knife. “How could I doom you to that? No person who was once young deserves to die old.”

“No,” Jerani said, “I mean, that’s what we wanted. To spend our lives together.”

Celaise smiled the darkness of her gem teeth at him.

“You’ve both made this rather awkward,” the lord said and bore his eyes into Jerani, “but if it’ll lighten the atmosphere, know that I did kill your father.”

“Gio?” Jerani held onto the table’s edge. There went his chance of seeing him again, of hearing his father and not just the dead-calm of a Bright Palm’s voice.

“When?” Celaise asked.

“The wedding night.” The lord dabbed the sharp corner of his lips with his napkin. “Before this is over, I should tell you. The Lady of Gems can never forgive you.”

Celaise raised a tremble-shake hand to her lips.

“She depends now on my bottomless font of mercy. But then, I have my reputation to consider. Even if I wished to forgive my disobedient child, how could I?” The Lord of the Feast stood, and he was a three-headed monster casting his shadow over the world.

Jerani and Celaise backed away. They could never go far enough. All Jerani could do was look at her face one last time, at her black teeth, pink lips, and thorn-tuft brows. He could only hold her. She held him back. The cow-bone necklace he had carved her pressed against his arm. He pulled her in tighter.

The lord’s three voices rumbled down to them, low, lower, and lowest. “I could never allow a child to live who’d defied my deepest wishes. You took the cure meant for me. You forced me to remain the father of nightmares.”

Jerani’s voice was buried in his chest. Not that anything he said would save them. All light had gone. Nothing was left but the gleam of teeth. Rough grinding teeth, sharp stabbing teeth, wedge slicing teeth. They all swooped toward him, to break his bones and strip off his flesh. Jerani wanted to close his eyes, but he mustn’t.

“Did you once imagine, my morsels, I’d let you live, if you had disappointed me?”

“I’m not sorry.” Celaise managed to speak somehow through all the weight of darkness. “I’d do it again.”

“I know, my crafty crumpet. I knew what you two roast ducklings would do with those vials, and I’m not sorry either.”

Blackness clapped around Jerani. But he didn’t think he had been swallowed. Oh no! He had disgraced the Great Hearts. He must’ve shut his eyes. Only, he couldn’t open them. He couldn’t even feel Celaise anymore. This was worse. He had fainted. Jerani would be dead before he woke.

Then he did wake. He popped up to his feet. Celaise lay beside him on her pallet, eyes batting open. She lurched upright, clutching her throat. Morning light sliced in through the open door.

“You dreamed of the lord too?” Jerani asked.

Celaise nodded. “Only, he wasn’t angry.”

“He was in my dream. Started to eat me.”

“Would’ve finished if he was angry,” she said. “Did he want me to drink his potions?”

Jerani couldn’t say. He didn’t know if the lord had come and left, or if he had sent a nightmare ahead. Death might be nearing, or it could’ve already ridden on.

Jerani found his war club outside where he had left it, but there were no horses, no swordsmen, no hexer on crutches, and no lord. Maybe there never had been. But would be soon.

“We could’ve dreamed the same dream,” Jerani said.

“No, look.”

On the table gleamed silver knives and spoons and porcelain cups and plates.