Gravity's Revenge (20 page)

“We mustn’t separate,” Hiresha said. “When you’re captured, the Bright Palms will threaten your lives. The spellswords won’t be able to intervene.”

“I’m surprised our welfare would concern you, Provost Hiresha,” the dean said. “You seemed so ready to cast the elder warden off the cliff but yesterday.”

Hiresha’s hands shook with her anger as she was forced to watch most of the enchantresses and novices follow the dean up the wallway. Only the better students of applied enchantment stayed beside Hiresha, along with Minna.

Hiresha had an urge to strike the dean, to threaten her with a heart-stopping jewel unless she agreed to the superior plan.
I knew I should’ve chosen her to walk down the Skyway.
Hiresha believed in calm thinking over rash action, though, and she forced down her feelings of ill will.

“Minna,” she said, “if you aren’t afraid of a dash to the Ballroom, the plan couldn’t have sounded too frightening.”

“The Father trusts you, and so do I.” Minna lifted both hands against her veiled chin and leaned closer. “I’m—I am sorry I showed you my mirror. I didn’t mean to.”

Hiresha sighed, and her head bowed forward to rest in her hands. She felt as if she carried three Burdening enchantments. “We gain nothing by going alone. We must follow the dean. Perhaps it will not end in utter calamity.”

23

Tentacle
Bridge

The woman’s scream came after Hiresha had already ascended to the Owl’s Hall. Hiresha cringed as she peered down the arch to the lower level, expecting to see that one of the enchantresses had let go of the ropes and fallen. There had not been enough amulets for all.

Below, an enchantress in a jade and chartreuse dress was standing stock still, held in the grip of Inannis. The thief had a needle of a dagger against her throat. Nearby, the golden-eyed novice ran away down the hall.

Inannis’s voice made a wet cracking noise as he shouted. “Encha—Enchantress Hiresha, I’ll forgive you for not introducing me to your friend here….”

The enchantress in his grasp shuddered and made a kittenish sound. Hiresha recognized her as Enchantress Laygan, a woman with particular ideas about how the empire should be run. She seemed to delight in taking the side of the ferocious Dominion of the Sun in debates, and Hiresha had even considered her a possible accomplice to the Bright Palms, though at that moment the bulging eyes of her fright looked genuine. In short, Hiresha would not have called her a friend.

“…But I must insist you stop your procession. Everyone must return to the comforts of the ground floor.”

Enchantress Laygan’s snootiness had often annoyed Hiresha, but she discovered she had no wish to see the woman poisoned by the thief’s dagger and die with foam-speckled mouth and back snapped by her own contorting muscles.
That seems rather much even for someone with a contrarian attitude and a poor taste in clothing.

The Rector of Rarified Armament clutched her own daggers and turned away. “I can’t witness this. There’s nothing more hideous than using a perfectly good weapon.”

“Please,” Dean Wysteras said, fluttering her hands in Inannis’s direction, “there’s no need for violence.”

“There is every need.” Hiresha held a jewel directly above the thief and his captive. “This beryl will crush their bones together into powder.”

The red stone dropped. The thief let go of his hostage and sprang away, retreating down the hall. The beryl clicked against the stone at Enchantress Laygan’s feet but did nothing.

The dean swatted Hiresha’s shoulder. “Your enchantment almost killed Laygan.”

“It was only a Lightening, after all.” Hiresha felt doubly smug for outsmarting the thief again.

“So you condone lying to get your way.” The dean lifted an armful of her skirts and slung them around to leave Hiresha.

“Perhaps you should ask Enchantress Laygan if she thought it right,” Hiresha said.

The dean did not ask, even after Laygan climbed the rope. The novice who had run never reappeared, but they had to go on without her.

“My enchantments must have worn off by now. The Bright Palms could be pursuing us up the tower.” Hiresha forced her drooping eyes to glance behind them and below. Her fatigue had increased with each floor they climbed, along with her worry. The pit of her stomach seemed to smolder with a grease fire.

Hiresha regretted being right when she saw five figures, their limbs glowing through their clothes, vaulting over a railing to run below the enchantresses. The dean was leading the group over a bridge within the Hall of Refreshment. At the crest of the
Recurve
Tower
, this hall was sideways, or lengthwise, with a bridge running down its middle. Rugs and pillows for sitting during dining wrapped around the entire tower’s wall, in a complete circle so none would be lower in status than another. Clear quartz also circumscribed the hall in a band of windows, now dark with blustery night, and the Bright Palms leapt over them with Sheamab in the lead.

“Out of my way.” Hiresha pushed past other enchantresses, stepping on hems and squeezing between the battlements of fabric around the elders. She was gathering a handful of gems from her sash, having collected and enchanted them while waiting for the others to climb by rope between the tower levels.

Hiresha descended the far side of the bridge, Bright Palms sweeping closer on the left. She could sense their approaching magic as white blots, like an advancing line of ghosts.

Her arm swept outward. Citrines, amethysts, and sapphires all sprinkled onto the floor. She created a wall of Attraction, and the Bright Palms skidded to a stop before them, pulling each other back to safety. Sheamab gestured with her staff, and the Bright Palms sprinted to come at Hiresha from a different direction.

“Enchantress Hiresha, have you considered the wisdom of concession?” Sheamab said.

The Bright Palm sprinted and vaulted upward, her staff bending as she used it to push herself even higher, crossing above the wall of Attraction. She slid to a stop at the end of the hall, cutting off the enchantresses’ escape.

The staff whirled in a circle of black as Sheamab spun it between her hands. “I defeated you when you opened the tower to me, on the first throw of sand.”

“Then consider this a rematch.” Hiresha started to lob a jewel but hesitated. A doubt flitted across her consciousness. In her groggy state of heart-racing fatigue, she was uncertain why she would hold back from pelting a most obstinate Bright Palm, so she threw anyway.

Sheamab skipped back, but the Attraction jewel landed at the center of the corridor. Wall hangings rippled forward then tore off to land on the jewel. Hiresha then realized why part of her had not wanted to throw.
The Attraction jewel will block our way almost as well as a swinging staff.
She was certain Sheamab had led her into this blunder.

Pressing her hands over her temples, Hiresha thought of a solution. She threw a second Attraction jewel to the side of the corridor. It ripped the tapestries and first jewel from the floor, allowing enough room for the women to run past.

“Now! Now!” Hiresha swung her arm in a circling gesture toward the hall. “To
Tentacle
Bridge
.”

A few more jewels to ward away the Bright Palms behind them, then Hiresha sprinted back to the front of the line, lest Sheamab try to capture someone. Hiresha’s lungs burned, and she had dropped the fennec in her near delirium, though the fox bounded beside her.

 
The dean ushered the first enchantresses through a window, where the glass had been removed. It opened on a swaying wooden bridge in a tunnel of pink. Here the Somnarium grasped the
Recurve
Tower
with one of its tentacles, the connection made permanent by binding enchantments.

Hiresha pushed the minister through the window and onto the planks of ebony. The bridge heaved upward and twisted sideways. Magic in the wooden platforms kept the women on their feet and balanced.

With a black diamond in Hiresha’s upraised hand, the Bright Palms stopped short of approaching the bridge. Sheamab adjusted a curiously familiar amethyst bracelet on her own arm.

“You disappointed me,” Hiresha said to Sheamab. “I expected you to approach through the Somnarium.”

“An expectation I anticipated.” Sheamab backed up as if to begin another sprinting leap.

The last enchantresses shoved their way into the swaying passageway. The dean pressed her amulet against the gold bands to the left of the window, and half the
Tentacle
Bridge
tore free. Chill wind whistled inside along with sprays of snow.

Hiresha grabbed a straggler by the arm—Minna—and pushed her to the window. The girl fell to her knees, whimpering at the sight of the gap she would have to step over that was spewing blizzard.

“Alyla.” Hiresha spotted the novice on the bridge, in the press of gowns of fleeing enchantresses. “Help Minna.”

The young woman took a step back toward Minna, trembled, and pinched her eyes closed, touching her face. Hands clamped in front of her chest, Alyla stumbled away, down the bridge with eyes downcast. She did pick up the fennec, who had been dodging between hems.

The dean shoved her amulet toward the ornate band of gold on the other side of the window. In a skull-searing flash of panic, Hiresha saw the dean might fully break the Attraction between the bridge and tower and leave Hiresha and Minna stranded.

Hiresha dropped her black diamond in the snow-storm rift between the buildings in order to grab Minna. She pulled the girl onto the bridge, boards bucking under their feet, the enchantress’s stomach lurching, balance tipping.

Dean Wysteras broke the enchantment. The tentacle bridge reared upward.

A staff struck stone with a resounding clack.

Hiresha turned in time to see Sheamab leaping through swirling darkness. One knee upraised, eyes beams of focus, arms in a rowing motion. She slashed her staff at Hiresha’s neck.

Minna tugged the enchantress away, a step farther onto the bridge. The staff made a ripping sound as it passed an inch from Hiresha. She felt a frigid puff of air across her face. The tentacle moved out of the falling Bright Palm’s reach.

A rush of weightlessness bubbled through Hiresha at the thought that not only had Minna saved her from the Bright Palm’s spring attack, but now Sheamab would plummet to her death.
Only too deserved after forcing Warden Maova off the cliff.

Sheamab’s legs and waist disappeared, slipping farther down into the blizzard. With the Bright Palm leader dropping, Hiresha’s hopes rose. Sheamab maintained her calm, her face like a wax sculpture. She lifted her arm, with a bracelet on it. Hiresha could barely see the jewelry as darkness closed around the Bright Palm, but she had glimpsed it before. Now she had time to realize what it was and be baffled. The Bright Palm wore the fennec’s collar around her arm.

Her downward course reversed, Sheamab flew upward. The winds buffeted her, but she landed on the window ledge, beside a Bright Palm that Hiresha had no doubt wore a matching amethyst bracelet. The same jewelry that had pulled the fennec to safety only days before.
She must have learned how I used the collar to yank the tribesman back into that room to escape.
Hiresha felt the wrenching disappointment of seeing her own enchantments betray her.

“Hiresha,” Sheamab shouted, her voice clear and steady in the bellow of the wind, “you should not have listened to the dean.”

The window and tower were lost from sight. The dean touched her amulet to a silver design of birds on a bridge plank, and a glass sphere swung down to cover the end of the tentacle, sealing out the storm.

Hiresha rubbed her brow, wondering what Sheamab had meant.
Could she know of my argument with the dean?
Hiresha wondered if the thief could have been close enough in the hall to overhear.
Someone must have, and if Sheamab knows....

“The Bright Palms weren’t pursuing us. They were herding us.” Hiresha swung a withering eye toward the dean. “You would’ve done better falling off the cliff. There have to be Bright Palms already waiting in the Somnarium.”

24

The Somnarium

Hiresha had made herself an enemy of more than one novice over the years, particularly of the spoiled daughters of lords, but the enchantress never had expected to see a novice charging her with a club serrated with obsidian razors.

The novice’s gold eyes blazed with determination. She was Emesea, the woman with the blockish stature who had withstood the heckling for her high collar. Now the teal wrappings were unwound from her neck, and her formerly long hair was hacked off at a slant. A tattoo of a serpent bore its fangs on her neck, glimpsed by Hiresha as she scrounged for a jewel to defend herself.

Her garnet-studded fingers lifted a ruby heart stopper. She had intended to use the jewel on the thief, but Emesea neither glowed like a Bright Palm nor had as friendly a demeanor. Hiresha had never seen such an obsidian weapon used before but knew it was popular in the bloodthirsty Dominion of the Sun.

The ruby flew toward Emesea. She batted it aside with her club, pointed a finger to the canvas floor, and screamed. “Plant your faces in the ground!”

Enchantresses threw themselves to the floor, which wobbled beneath them. The Somnarium’s walls were made of canvas dyed orange, blue, or green, with no flat surfaces anywhere. The rooms had a rounded appearance reminiscent of caverns, except with fewer pillars of stone and more pillows. Hiresha had often thought the building nightmarish, a labyrinth of brightly colored rooms, but even she had not thought of so desperate a scenario as this, with a maniac novice and three Bright Palms bearing down on her.

Alyla tugged at the hem of Hiresha’s coat. The young woman was lying down, fennec cupped in one arm. She said, “They’ll hurt you. Get down. Hurry!”

Hiresha knew that Sheamab had condemned her and could not delude herself into thinking she could surrender and live. Bending down toward Alyla, Hiresha said, “I of all people know there’s a time for lying down. This is not one of them.”

She plucked the fennec from Alyla then straightened, the last standing amid a refuse of women sprawled over the bowl-shaped floor. A check of her jewel sash revealed that she had but five precious missiles left, and she regretted the heart-stop jewel now stuck harmlessly to the obsidian club.
Should’ve tossed an Attraction.

The renegade novice leaped over prone figures, closing the distance. She held the club in front of her like a sword. A grin twisted her face with glee.

“Knew you wouldn’t bow,” she said. “I’m not begging anything if you best me, but if I sprawl you, I’m not killing you. The Sun Dragon wants your skill more than your blood.”

“The particulars may matter little now,” Hiresha said to buy time while scanning the room for some corridor of escape from the surrounding fleet-legged Bright Palms, “but you must’ve assisted the jewel thief in desecrating the
Mindvault
Academy
. I won’t permit you to leave alive.”

She bellowed a laugh. “You have warrior’s blood in you.”

“I assure you, my blood is unadulterated enchantress.” Hiresha spotted the Rector of Rarified Armament, on her belly but creeping behind two Bright Palms. She thrashed an arm beckoning Hiresha to follow her into a side room.

Hiresha lifted a rose-quartz gem with a particular kind of Attraction enchantment. It would only pull on herself. She cocked an arm, making as if to throw it at the renegade novice. The traitor sprang to the side, changing direction with a whirl of obsidian razors. Hiresha lobbed the quartz over the heads of the Bright Palms. It shone pink against the bulging ceiling.

Hiresha was yanked upward, feet flying, fox squeaking. The enchantment whipped her into the ceiling, which bent inward with her impact. Hiresha felt as if she had hit a rope net. The gemstone released her, and she dropped beside the rector.

Even with a stoop, the rector stood taller than Hiresha. The rector was massive in her gowns, and, old as she was, she took the lead in pulling Hiresha down a round corridor.

“Such barbarians,” the rector said, “waving weapons about as if they intended to hurt people with them.”

“I doubt they’ll wait for you to explain a sword’s aesthetic qualities.” Hiresha glanced back to see the novice and two Bright Palms bolting after them with club, spear, and scimitar.

The rector wheezed. “I can’t—I’m not as young as I need to be. You’ll have to free the Academy, but I’ll delay them.”

“They may kill you.” Hiresha had no wish to see such a master of her craft come to harm.

“As if their weapons could scratch the Rector of Rarified Armament.” She smiled with a mouthful of teeth capped with enchanted gold. “Take this.”

A dagger with gold scrollwork and one side a grisly saw of spikes was pressed hilt-first into Hiresha’s hand.

“You can’t expect me to fight a Bright Palm with this,” Hiresha said.

“What? Of course not. It’s a key.” The rector tapped its sequence of notches and spines of bronze. “It’ll open my armory in the tower. Bound to find something useful there. Now start your young legs running.”

The elder turned and stood her ground. Even though Hiresha knew she should flee, her heart wrenched, and she had to look back.

The Bright Palm with the scimitar reached the rector first. He struck her. His weapon splintered to bronze shards as if the rector wore undergarments of metal strengthened by magic.
Which I suppose she must,
Hiresha thought.

The rector spread her arms, and the walls and ceiling all curved toward her. Hiresha felt herself slipping back, and she had to lean forward to escape the tow of the rector’s Attraction enchantments. The Bright Palms and renegade novice all slid into the rector and were pinned against her.

The only Bright Palm left standing was the young man. He patrolled between the prone enchantresses, his weapon a blade at the end of a pole. Hiresha thought of doubling back to try to incapacitate him and free the enchantresses, but she could not pass by the rector. By the time she found another route through the confusing corridors of the Somnarium, the rector’s Attraction enchantment might have expired, with all her attackers loose to resume the chase.

Feeling sick with her lack of options, Hiresha dashed on. The floor swayed and bounced. Not one to run with objects of the slicing variety, she pocketed the dagger. She scooted down chutes of canvas leading to lower levels, and hopped from giant cushion to giant cushion to descend other vertical passages. Each window reflected only the light from her earrings, the storm a blackness outside.

Her legs ached, and she wished to sit down in a secluded alcove to sleep for a week. Hiresha forced herself to keep running, thinking that now might be her best chance of freeing Tethiel from the Grindstone.
Four Bright Palms up in the Somnarium, five in the Recurve Tower, only the blind archer left to guard him.

Hiresha knew she had to reach the Grindstone before Sheamab wound her way down the tower. This worried Hiresha, a dull ache in the back of her head that beat in time with her speeding heart.
Sheamab could outpace me. I have to hope something in the tower delays her.

The double doors to the Somnarium stood open. A slush of snow had turned the floor soggy, though the wind outside no longer howled. The blizzard had slackened. Snow lazed its way down to the plateau.

Hiresha peered around the doors, which were padded in pink and embroidered with the chaos of every name of the women who had studied there. Not seeing anyone outside, she jogged from the Somnarium.

A cough behind her made her whirl about.

The thief stood between the double doors. He spoke through chattering teeth. “Ench-chantress Hiresha, did you hurt Emesea?”

“The novice? Not as much as that traitor deserves.”

He nodded, slipping what looked like a blow gun back into a fold of his jacket. “Sheamab is expecting you. M-meet her at Mind’s Gate.”

“And why ever would I agree to meet a fanatic and her staff at the edge of a cliff?”

“Because if you d-don’t, I’m afraid Sheamab will throw your maid into the abyss.”