Dark Lord's Wedding Read Online Free PDF Page A

jade frog; her enchantment held the effigy fast.
    “Could you lift the entire hoard from this pit?” Tethiel asked.
    He wanted her to steal the god’s sacrifices. Hiresha could help many people with the gold alone. She could enchant it with a cure for the blood-borne malady from the leeches that plagued this continent. Perhaps she should risk divine wrath to do good.
    She sighed through her clenched teeth. “I could but I mustn’t.” The jade frog glowed on her palm as she wove power into it. “I will only take what’s mine, the red paragon.”
    “Will They of Jade Skin see it as yours?”
    “I should hope my offering to the god would ameliorate any offense.” Hiresha nodded to the Bright Palm corpses. The scavengers had already exposed bones.
    A less grisly object floated beside them. Long and knobbed, it was the wooden cudgel carved with the designs of a hippo, a cow, and a long-legged bird, possibly a crane. The weapon had been thrown by the young tribesman.
    “This I will take also, yet not for myself.” Hiresha willed the club to float after her.
    The living Bright Palm had still not surfaced.
    “Alyla, I will not wait any longer for you.” Hiresha could not.
    The Bright Palm paddled up in the blackness. Her slender limbs made her resemble a swimming skeleton. Her head broke the water.
    “Bright Palm Alyla,” Hiresha said, “expect to receive a formal invitation to the wedding of the Lady of Gems and Lord Tethiel. The man you once called brother may also attend.”
    Alyla stared in silence, her irises two glowing rings.
    “In the meantime, this effigy will help you climb out of this sinkhole.” Hiresha threw the jade frog.
    It landed in front of the Bright Palm and skimmed to her. Alyla caught it. She bobbed out of the water, bouncing on its surface. Her weight had halved. A pity Hiresha’s enchantment could only make people less dense in one sense of the word.
    A socialized human should’ve felt some compunction to reply to Hiresha’s assistance or invitation. Alyla did to neither.
    Hiresha nodded. She tightened her arm around Tethiel’s and then Lightened them both. They leaped together, up into the well shaft leading out of the cave. They flew, with one paragon diamond Attracting them up then looping around in time for the other diamond to pull them higher. The circle of daylight above widened.
    Tethiel shouted over the rush of air. “They’ll say on the day of your betrothal you entered a sacred cave and defied a god.”
    “Only if you tell them so, my dear.”
    She and Tethiel rose out of the sinkhole. The sky which had looked bright in the cave turned out to be drizzling clouds. The sun’s location had to be guessed, yet Hiresha was certain. She had two hours and forty-three minutes until noon, and the distance she had to travel would take her all but fifteen of those.
    Hiresha’s toes touched the mossy edge of the sinkhole. She stepped forward with Tethiel, and a heaviness pushed her groundward as her enchantment returned her to normal weight.
    She lifted her hand, and the wooden cudgel flipped over her shoulder to her grasp. “Young man, I believe this is yours.”
    The tribesman in the red robe was on his feet but leaning on his spear. He had lost a significant quantity of blood. His eyes focused on the cudgel. He laughed and clapped a hand over his chest.
    When he smiled, the tribal scars on his face bent upward. The six spokes were reminiscent of a star sapphire’s, with the focal point on his brow. The third ray on his right side was five degrees out of alignment in relation to the others. He might never have noticed, yet Hiresha would’ve been furious.
    “Jerani,” Tethiel said to the young man, “the Lady of Gems has given you the gift of her regard. I trust you and Celaise have a present for her in return.”
    A woman hobbled out from behind the tribesman. She hadn’t ridden with them last night and must have met up with Tethiel’s people in the morning. She would be a