Bonn and Leiffen, their leather-booted feet moving in step with the music, followed the sounds of the wedding band. A high flute added a feminine note to the low pulsing drumbeat. They stopped when they spotted two guards at the arched palace gate. Flattening their backs against a stone wall, they hid from the guards' watchful gaze. Bonn elbowed Leiffen and pointed a calloused finger at the threat. The two guards were laughing and unsteady on their feet, tipping large cups of wine, with their swords resting against the wall.

Bonn cocked his shoulder for Leiffen to follow him. He walked out to the clearing, green Nazeer cape flapping and the hood hiding his bronze Skaard helmet. Beneath the cape, he kept one hand steady on the heavy scrolled hilt of his ancient Illymium-forged ax. He raised the other hand in a sign of greeting. Leiffen, violet eyes peeking out from beneath the green hood, followed closely on Bonn's heels. He clutched a silver orb in each hand.

"You done your watch?" one of the guards slurred.

Saying nothing, Bonn kept a steady pace toward the entrance.

"Eh, he's talking to you," the other guard said, pumping up his chest with authority.

Bonn took two more steps forward. As the guards gazed drunkenly at the Skaard warrior's height and bulk, the hood fell back, revealing his bronze helmet. The guards leaped for their weapons, but the wine they had consumed slowed their reflexes. Bonn was upon them, grabbing each by the throat and clocking their helmeted heads together, making them ring like a bell.

He and Lieffen dragged the unconscious guards from the entrance and tossed their swords over the wall. Then, cautiously, they entered the palace with their weapons drawn.

* * *

The mother and daughter moons, two full silver discs, glowed through the smoke-filled haze above the palace towers, a mishmash of brick on top of brick. When the moons passed the highest spire, it would signal midnight. The bells would chime, and Dizzo Nazeer would claim his bride, and Illym's prophecy that she alone would bear the next great Ardelymian king would be fulfilled.

Starlex stood beside her grinning bridegroom, her pale hand turning to liquid within his hot, calloused paw. Despite puffing himself up in his silk finery and the gold crown sitting on a nest of reddish hair, Dizzo was a head shorter than his bride. Starlex wavered unsteadily on flat sandals and tried to keep her eyes upward toward the open ceiling, looking for another sign of Raki.

A smiling Nargos Nazeer stood before her, the glint in his green eyes fixated on her as if she were a tasty morsel he was saving for later, to devour at his leisure. Those eyes frightened her more than the clumsy boy at her side. They told her this was all an act, that it was Nargos himself who would claim her virginity.

"No!" she shouted suddenly, bending at the waist.

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Nargos darted a hostile look at Jynud Nazeer. She responded by poking a short staff she had hidden within the folds of her skirt into Starlex's ribs. The crowd showed their approval of such brutal treatment with enthusiastic shouts and fists thrust in the air.

Starlex straightened her back and tried not to faint. The stays on her gown were so tight she could hardly breathe. She couldn't believe this was happening, as if she had dreamed all of it, a terrible nightmare vision from which she would wake to see the bright sun shining on the Crimson Sea and the fresh air of Oran greeting her with a promising new day. Silently, she prayed to Illym, asking for forgiveness, for her selfishness, for never being satisfied with her lot. She had longed for love, for marriage and children, but not like this.

Not like this!

The Nazeer crowd below the dais surged with noise and demands for the wedding to commence, their empty stomachs craving the wedding feast that would follow.

Nargos' thin, worm-like lips twisted into a smile as he turned to the crowd, raising his ruddy hands to calm their rowdiness.

"Good Nazeers," he began imperiously, "you are witnessing today not only the marriage of my son to this Illymium princess, one of the last of her kind in Ardelym, but something much more. In Oran, during the Zar celebration, Illym appeared to the queen and issued this prophecy."

The crowd hummed and quieted.

Nargos circled the couple, his ermine-lined cape trailing. "Illym prophesized that the next great king of Ardelym, who will guide us throughout this new Zar and beyond, who will prepare us for whatever passes to our world through the God Gate, will be birthed to this girl," he paused and pointed a short finger at the bride, "Starlex Illymium."

"No!" Starlex cried. "It's a mistake. My sister, Hyperia, is with child, the future king. She—"

A sharp blow to her ribs cut off her words. She bent over again in pain. The crowd pointed and jeered.

"The Illyminum race," Nargos continued, spitting out the words with contempt. "Illym's earliest experiment, with the exception of the Thrades in the north—"

Laughter rose from the crowd like a vile stench.

"—are dying. Their great city, Mynimium, lies a wasted pile of sand in the south. We Nazeers tried to rescue it from obscurity, to give it new life with our great wealth, but Scipio Davadas stopped us. But this time, he will not stop us! He will not stop us nor our new king!"

The crowd roared. Wine cups flew in the air. Men grabbed girls and planted wet kisses on their lips.

Nargos raised his hands in a quieting gesture. "But first things first, now to the wedding ..." he shot a lascivious look at Starlex, "and the bedding."

Dizzo grinned and squeezed Starlex’s hand tightly. He pulled her forward to recite his vows before the bent and blind seer, Kraton Nazeer, a man as ancient and ill-formed as Nazeera itself and a far cry from Oran’s majestic Flenn Illymium.

The old seer barely croaked out a syllable when a loud squawk shattered the hum of the room. All eyes floated upward as the great Lila bird with the enormous purple wingspan, shimmering with iridescent flecks in the torchlight, plunged through the open ceiling and soared above the crowd.

"Kill it, you fools!" Nargos shouted at the guards. The guards aimed at the bird with their crossbows and fired. Raki swooped high up to the ceiling and through the skylight, avoiding the arrows, just as Bonn Skaard leaped from the balcony above the dais with his ax drawn.

He landed in a low crouch before the bride and groom. Then, unfolding to his full height, he pushed Starlex out of the way and, with one smooth arc of his blade, lopped off the head of Dizzo Nazeer. As the body fell with a thud, the golden crowned head rolled across the dais floor, stopping at the feet of a stunned Nargos Nazeer.