Mariko tried to dodge them, but there were too many, and they seemed to follow her wherever she moved. As soon as the first spark touched her skin, she could feel her throat constrict.
She opened her mouth, a scathing retort ready for the arch magus, but nothing came out. She tried again. Still nothing. Mariko tried to scream, rattling her vocal cords and raising her voice. She spat insults and tried to invoke her spells, but it was no use. She had been silenced.
Xeries pointed at Evelyne, looking at her as if he had just realized she was there. 'I did not ask for you.' He waved his hand. 'Take her from here.'
A dozen of the arch magus's servants descended on Evelyne, lifting her from her feet and carrying her away. She struggled, her mouth open and moving, likely trying to spit obscenities at her captors. But like Matiko, she too had been silenced, and she disappeared from the room without a sound.
'That's much better,' said the arch magus. Ambling over to his throne, Xeries retrieved a large pouch with something heavy inside. 'I hope that as we get better acquainted this sort of thing won't be necessary.'
Returning to the princess, he reached inside the sack and pulled out a small, furry animal. It looked like a cross between a hedgehog and a feline-small, round, chubby, covered in fur, and curious. The little creature didn't move much, but it sniffed the air, pointing its beady little eyes first at Xeries then at Maliko.
'This is one of my own personal creations-the mimmio,' said Xeries. 'It'll allow you to converse with me until I remove your magical gag. You need do nothing more than hold it in your hands. The mimmio can hear your thoughts, and it will repeat them for me to hear.' He stroked its fur with his deformed fingers. 'Watch.'
There was a short pause while the creature listened, then it opened its mouth and began to translate. The words it spoke were oddly deep for such a small creature, a contrast to Xeries high-pitched echoing.
'The mimmio will be your voice until I am suet you will behave yourself,' said Xeries through the creature. He handed the rodent to Matiko. 'You try.'
The princess accepted it, cradling the squirming ball of fur in her open palms.
'I want to kill you,' the mimmio said. Mafiko shrunk back, not prepared for the creature to be so blunt.
Xeries laughed, sounding like a young couple giggling together. 'You must be careful what you think. There is no filter. The creature will say whatever it reads from your mind.'
'I hate you. What do you want from me?'
Xeries smiled, steepling his fingers under his chin. 'I want you to be my bride.'
'Your bride?' The mimmio repeated her thoughts as soon as she had them.
The arch magus nodded.
'Why me? You know nothing about me.' Mariko tried to calm her mind, control her thoughts, but it was difficult.
'Ah, but I do.' Xeries poured himself a goblet full of wine. 'I know that you are from a very good bloodline. I know that you were born in Eleint, what you now call Erlkazar, and that you are a descendant of my first wife's charming sister.'
'You want me because I'm a relative of your wife? That's sick.'
'Not exactly.' Xeries took a sip of his wine, rolling it back and forth in his mouth before swallowing, then he continued. 'You see, I have lived for more than twenty of your lifetimes-'
'Twenty?' interrupted the princess through the mimmio. 'Ate you some kind of immortal?'
Xeries nodded, seemingly unfazed by the abruptness of the unfiltered conversation. 'In a sense, yes. My first wife and I created a spell-one that would prolong our lives and allow us to live together forever.'
'Then why do you want me? Get bored with your wife?' Mariko smirked. There was a certain amount of freedom in not having to choose her words carefully-or indeed, be able to choose them at all.
The topic did not please Xeries, and he scowled at the princess. 'She died during the spell.'
'Died?'
Xeries's scowl deepened. 'Yes. And now I need to have a new bride every hundred years, or else I will lose the benefits of the spell.'
'You killed her?'
Xeries grit his teeth. 'My wife died during the spell,' he repeated, 'but I have found a way to get the immortality that we both so desired. In her memory, I live on, the way she would have wanted. But the spell requires that I always have a bride. One from the same bloodline. That is all you need to know.'
The doors to the small chamber leading off of Xeries throne room ground open, and a woman in long flowing robes, a veil over her face, came into the chamber. She hobbled toward them, clearly having a hard time moving.
'Is this her?' said a cracked and raspy voice.
'Yes, my dear,' replied Xeries, putting down his goblet and going to the woman's side.
'Do you think she is as pretty as I was, all those years ago?
Xeries looked at Matiko, then back to the woman. 'She is very pretty,' he said. 'But so were you.'
The woman grabbed hold of the arch magus with both hands, holding herself up by clinging to his robes. 'You have killed me, Xeries. I blame you.'
Her grip went limp, and she slowly slipped to the floor. Xeries held her weight in his grotesque hands, gently lowering her to the ground. He carefully arranged her dress around her body and lifted her veil. The face beneath was nothing but wrinkled gray-brown flesh, clinging tightly to her narrow skull.
Xeries bent down and kissed her lips. 'Rest well, my dear. I will put you in your place in short order.'
'Is this what happens to your brides?' asked Mariko. 'You use them up?'
'It is a fair trade,' replied Xeries, his echoed voice sounding somehow saddened. 'I give them wealth and power, and they give me their life-force.' 'You take their souls.'
The arch magus shook his head slowly, still fussing with the fringes of his wife's dress. 'I don't like to look at it that way. I prefer to think they die for my love.'
'That's sick.'
'Love always is.' Xeries returned the veil over his wife's face. 'Always is.'
The long, dark hallway wound deep into the Obsidian Ridge. Along the floor, four sentries patrolled. Long, lithe, dangerous killing machines, like all of Xeries's other creations, they were on a mission. In their heads, they could hear their orders repeated, then repeated again, Find-find the-the intruder-intruder.
From above, a figure watched their movements. It paced them, waiting for the right moment.
The sentries reached the end of a hallway. They sniffed the air. They pawed at the walls. They examined everything.
The figure dropped to the passage floor behind them, silent-a cat, smaller than its prey, yet no less dangerous.
The sentries turned to head back down the hallway just as the figure pounced. It had claws on one hand, just as they did. Its body was covered in black, just as was theirs.
But the figure was not one of them.
It was smarter. It was faster. It was more ferocious. And it came for them now, tearing into their flesh like a ravenous dragon.
Xeries had bred his minions personally, experimenting with them for hundreds of years. He had tortured and mangled their bodies and souls until he had developed the perfect killing machine-strong, obedient, and afraid of nothing.
That is, afraid of nothing until now. The figure climbed back into the ceiling, the sentries dead on the floor.
Xeries raised his hands, and his wife's body lifted from the floor. Gently, carefully, he levitated her onto the stone table, just below her final resting spot. She was not quite ready to pass from this world to the next. She would never fully die. Not at least until Xeries did, and if all went as he had planned, that would never happen.
Eventually, though, she would reach a state of limited consciousness, just like all the rest of his wives. For now though, she would hang on. They all had clung to that last ray of hope, that last bit of life. There was not enough of her life-force left for Xeries to claim. His immortality required more than she could give. But he remained bound to her, as his wife, until she gave up on her survival instinct, until she no longer wished to live.
It was then that he could put her to rest in her place up high on The wall. When that happened, he could wed
