Gravity's Revenge (22 page)

26

Waterfly
River

Hiresha punched a numb hand through the cracked ice. When she dragged her head above the water, she did not gasp. She lacked the strength for it. After slush dripped from her mouth, a sip of air squeezed into her lungs.

Inch by inch, Hiresha pulled herself out of the river. Her coat weighed her down, and her fingernails had to gouge into the ice.

Below the transparent surface, two garnets tinted the ice purple. Hiresha felt the enchanted gems pulling her toward them, though not to an immobilizing extent. She peered through the white crystals covering her eyelashes and noticed the river was on the side of the cliff.

Shouldn’t this be a waterfall? And me falling, too?
Her mind was as frozen as her body.
Ah, enchantments. This is the Waterfly. And, there, the Stonton rooftops. Strange, this ice feels warm.

Falling asleep while drenched and freezing on the side of a cliff proved ever so easy.

Hiresha floated above a dais sparkling with diamonds in her dream laboratory.

“We have to dry ourselves. Hurry!” In a mirror, the reflection rubbed her yellow gloves over her arms. “Brrrr!”

“Yes, I remember the plan now.” Hiresha was already dry in the dream. She was even wearing a gown of amethysts.

One mirror showed reality, an enchantress in a drenched coat, stuck to the ice. Hiresha drifted over to it and slid her hand through the glass. It felt as if she reached into cold sand. Her dream arms pushed through the layer of ice with the same ease to touch the garnet she had left under the surface.

The jewel Attracted all the water from the winter-bear coat. The hair of the woman sleeping atop the ice shifted and splayed out as moisture was pulled from her locks. Hiresha had dried herself, but that was only the first step.

“Now to keep myself alive for a while longer.”

A fire opal flew across the laboratory into her fingers. The orange stone shimmered with green and blue as she pressed it against the mirror. The bauble contained an intricate series of spells that Hiresha had designed after falling asleep in the ice water, in the frantic moments before death blackened her laboratory forever. The enchantment used Hiresha’s knowledge of human finite workings along with the power of Attraction to make several processes within her bodily units more likely to occur. Her magic catalyzed the reactions, permitting them to take place in the frigid temperatures beneath ice.

Enchantment could not create heat, but her magic could make warmth unneeded. Hiresha might have felt proud at the innovation had she not been so busy keeping herself alive.

“With this new enchantment, we won’t need to wear clothes ever again.” The reflection pulled down her topaz gown from one shoulder and started wriggling out of it.

“I do not care to lose so many dream jewels,” Hiresha said. A gem procession of all varieties was descending into the mirror and vanishing to power the enchantment. “I’ll need months to replace all these.”

“And you won’t have a day,” the Feaster said, “unless you climb up the ice before a Bright Palm spies you.”

The Feaster lounged against her mirror, also wearing the fur of the winter-bear. She wore it unbuttoned and with nothing underneath, the red diamond bright at the center of her chest. Black sapphires also were embedded in her skin and branching from the diamond in triangular patterns.

Hiresha resented it when the Feaster was right. Manipulating enchantments through the ice allowed Hiresha an upward crawl. She lifted one arm at a time, Attracting a garnet to tumble within the river to rest opposite her palm. An enchantment inside the purple gem was renewed, Attracting Hiresha upward. The second garnet followed her, and she raised it higher with her other arm, reversing the enchantments to continue her climb. Spell by spell, she slid over the frozen surface and closer to the top of the cliff.

Her sleeping body had swam itself this far downriver.
Far less pleasant than sleepwalking.
If anyone had seen her lethargic swimming beneath the snow and frozen surface, they might have thought the restrained motions merely the drifting of a corpse.

“Hey, we think ice could hold enchantments, too,” the reflection said, only her head visible leaning into the mirror’s view, yellow dress dangling from one hand.

Hiresha gazed at the violet shine of her magic seeping through the
Waterfly
River
’s crust. “I’m surprised no one has tried to earn a gown with a thesis on ice enchantments.”

The Feaster asked, “You think another enchantress would be eager to sleep on a block of ice every night?”

“There is that.” Hiresha lifted her left hand. Her little and ring fingers now had holes in their skin, where she had removed the garnets that she now was using to climb the ice river. Three purple jewels remained in her left hand. “Once I reach the summit, I’ll Attract these garnets through the ice and re-enchant them for defense.”

“You’ll need them,” the Feaster said, “and a third jewel plucked from your finger, to be safe.”

“If I remove another, I won’t have enough garnets to prime a handful of jewels. Some won’t activate on impact.”

“If you have a handful of jewels,” the Feaster said, “then most of your real problems will be gone.”

“And it means we’ll have gotten them from the Grindstone and rescued Tethiel.” The reflection waddled into view. She had put her dress back on upside down, and she had to hold her skirt up over her chest.

“Tethiel?” The Feaster grimaced. “You should hope that particular problem has bled to death.”

Baubles orbited Hiresha, the platinum clamp and a bloodstone. She held her face still through the pain of stretching her skin enough to slip the garnet out. Removing its priming enchantment was like prying out a seam of stitching in a gown she had sewn herself. She replaced the magic with a standard Attraction spell.

Hiresha was left with only two jewels in her thumb and pointer finger. She gazed over the pockmarked wounds on her hands. “I am much reduced.”

“But we’ve survived much longer than we thought.”

“It has become something of a habit,” Hiresha said.

“Speaking of survival, you’ve reached the top.” The Feaster crouched in her mirror, looking much like a winter bear herself with her black claws.

“We mustn’t wake yet,” the reflection said. “Look at that mirror. Look who we spotted climbing the cliff.”

“No time,” the Feaster said. “A Bright Palm might be leaning over you now. Rip your gems out of the ice. Wake! Wake!”

27

Cliff Edge

 
Hiresha held herself motionless in the snow, hoping the Bright Palm would walk by. She had been crawling around the edges of the plateau and had seen the patrolling Bright Palm’s approach.

The young man, conscripted by the order before he could know the costs.
Every several paces he would prop his polearm against the edge of the cliff and peer over. When Hiresha heard him scuffle to a stop nearby, she wanted to think he had done just that again.
But did the quick movements of his shoes sound different?

Hiresha peeked out from under her coat, saw him with the bladed staff upraised. His eyes flashed white as they met hers. His mouth opened to speak.
To call for help.

The enchantress lunged at him, throwing a jewel toward his head.

It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, but as the purple stone trailed toward him through the air, her heart slammed, clots of worry scraping through her veins.
Fool! You should’ve aimed at his feet. You’ll miss him and the jewel will tumble off the cliff and be wasted.

The jewel fell in his open mouth. His teeth clicked shut, head jerked, eyes rolled upward as his body folded, knees striking his chin.

“Thank you Fate Weaver for that twist,” Hiresha said under her breath. She was achingly relieved but still frustrated at herself for allowing an impulse to guide her.
Nineteen times out of a score, that wouldn’t have worked. Next time, think it through and take the reasonable approach,
she told herself.

Snow had clumped around the Bright Palm’s head like a white beard. She wished more than anything to shove him over the cliff, to begin fulfilling her promise of freeing the Academy and making true her threats against Sheamab. Clenching her teeth, Hiresha crawled onward. She knew that touching the Bright Palm would make her hands stick to him, and she would have to follow him over the edge.

Need my workshop trove. Then I’ll have plenty enough Lightening jewels to blow each Bright Palm into oblivion. Now if only the wind would pick up again…

The snow brightened as a cloud passed by overhead. Higher in the sky, colors streaked across a cloud’s wisps, the shades of red, yellow, green, and blue tinting the white shreds of vapor. Hiresha remembered the Minister of Orbiting Bodies explaining the phenomenon but could not now recall the proper name of the rainbow cloud.

Hiresha squinted down at the Grindstone. The building turned at about half its usual speed. A spiral pattern on its side widened as it slid from underneath the stonework that connected the circular structure to the plateau.

The enchantress pushed herself to her elbows, buttoning the top button on her coat. The roughness of the interior fur rubbed over her skin. Crawling forward, she peered about. Of her fennec, she saw no sign. Past the Grindstone, the blind archer waited beneath the
Lofty
Bridge
.
Has he moved in days?
She crept closer from the other side, bracing herself to dash to the Grindstone entrance if he heard her.

In her nerve-trembling state of attentiveness, a scraping sound behind her caused her fingers to dig into the snow. Her nails scraped against the stone below. The noise had sounded as if a Bright Palm had swung himself up from the side of the cliff, where he had been waiting hidden to surprise her.
Sheamab has outwitted me at every turn.

Hiresha scrambled to her feet, swinging around to throw her last jewels. A cold hand caught her arm first. The knuckles were mottled yellow and white, fingers swollen beyond rings adorned with black diamonds, and the fingertips were purple from blood blisters.

Even as Hiresha torqued her arm to try to free herself, a thought tickled her mind.
That hand isn’t glowing. And I know those diamonds.

“Hiresha?” The man’s voice was hoarse but familiar.

The enchantress turned to see Spellsword Fos. The bandage that covered half his face had darkened over his right eye, and a crust had frozen below it on that cheek. He threw his arms around her in a shivering hug. Her fingers brushed frost from the sword strapped to his back. Where the stubble of his cheek pressed against her brow, his skin felt hot and feverish.

As she held him, Hiresha’s knees shook from the relief. The joy of meeting an unlooked-for friend pained her. Even the purple velvet of his coat stung her with happiness, a jacket she had designed for him with a surety of scale armor underneath. She spoke in a hush, her lips close to his ear. She was nervous the blind archer might hear them.

“You can’t be here, Fos. If Sheamab finds you—if the Bright Palms learn spellswords are climbing onto the plateau….”

“It’s just me. Spellsword Trakis didn’t send me. Even said he’d strip me of my title if I climbed, so the Bright Palms can’t get angry if I’m not really a spellsword anymore.”

Hiresha worried that Sheamab would not respect such nuance.
But she can’t kill all the enchantresses. Not for a single spellsword. Her treaty plans would crumble, and the rest of the spellswords would have every reason to avenge.
Despite Hiresha’s fears, she felt a smoldering joy that he would risk his place in the Academy to come up and help her.

Fos’s remaining eye was bloodshot, dark, and intent on her hand wounds, the holes from the missing jewels. Muscles in his jaw tensed and shifted before he spoke. “Did the Bright Palms like your purple gems that much?”

She could not stop herself from rubbing his hands, his palm and fingers feeling more hard and leathery than skin. “Oh, Fos, this is frostbite. Could you not have worn gloves?”

“Nah, can’t feel the stone that way. ‘Course, I guess I wasn’t feeling much of anything toward the—Careful!”

He shoved her to the side as she heard the thrum of a bowstring. A dark line streaked by them. The blind archer fitted another arrow. His hood shrouded his face, the cloth pushed back by the brown and white feathers of the fletching as he drew to fire.

Hiresha flung herself upright in a mess of snow. She dashed in front of Fos and shouted. “Behind me.”

The enchantress pulled him after her. She ran straight toward the arrow’s white-stone point.

28

The Grindstone

The arrow sprang at Hiresha. Up over the snow it raced, angling to her in its flight, fletchings spinning, and then its alabaster point tipped downward and smashed into the plateau. Hiresha’s red diamond had Burdened it, and the fur around the buttons of her coat lit with the color of flames.

The Bright Palm shouted in a high, harsh call. Then he loosed again.

This arrow too splintered into the ground in front of Hiresha. She leaned forward in her sprint, needing to reach at least the partial cover of the stairs leading up to the Grindstone. Pillars decorated with etched numbers of common equations rose to various heights around the steps. Hiresha feared she would not cross between the columns before a third arrow pierced her. The enchantress knew all too well that her diamond would only protect her twice between dreams.

Fos must have remembered that, too, as he charged past her, hollering. “Your fate is coming at you.”

The tongs on his back clicked as he pulled a scimitar over his shoulder. Silver tracings of Morimound ziggurats flashed across the bronze blade.

The archer shifted to face him, bow straining to full draw. He fired.

Hiresha sensed Fos activate an enchantment in his greaves, reducing his weight to that of a cricket. He pushed off the ground, no doubt intending to leap over the arrow and land on the Bright Palm. Except that Fos must have released the spell before his second foot cleared the snow because instead of flying forward he careened to the side. The arrow sped past into the sheer-blue sky.

Catching a pillar with one arm, Fos swung himself down to the stairs. Hiresha pulled him after her and said, “Up to my workshop.”

His plated boots clanged on the stone steps.

“Spellsword.” The Bright Palm’s voice was loud but eerily toneless.

A glance back showed the archer picking his way up the steps. Two more Bright Palms had heard his call and come running. At the top of the stair, a fourth glowing man barred their way. He cracked his flail, metal spheres knocking against each other at the ends of leather straps. This Bright Palm appeared older, his brow a tangle of brownish-grey hair that draped over his eyes like moss.

Four Bright Palms,
Hiresha thought,
against my pair of garnets and Fos’s one eye.

She had faced worse odds.

Fos hacked at the Bright Palm, who spun away inside the arch entrance. The spellsword ducked under the flail that had been swung toward his head. The brushy-browed man retreated down a circular corridor from the sweeps of the scimitar.

Inside the Grindstone, Hiresha gritted her mind to think of where to throw her last jewels.
At the one with the flail? The spell may block off the way ahead of us. What about at the archer? He should be at the entrance any second. Yes, the archway, and seal it off with magic.
Thankful to Fos for providing her the time to think it through, she turned to the engraved archway. The blind archer’s shadow rose up the marble.

Her garnet struck the stone. The Bright Palm flattened against the jewel, arm still gripping his bow but immobilized. His cheek squashed into the column, contorting his lips.

“Help me.” The even tone came from outside. The tip of a spear wobbled into view, and Hiresha hoped to see another Bright Palm pulled forward and trapped against her gem. Yet he must have braced himself against a pillar, or his fellow caught his legs.

Hiresha still felt satisfied to have taken the time to think of the correct throw.
Even if the Attraction spell will contract in thirty seconds.
Then the two outside might figure out they could step past the trapped archer.
She had half a minute to reach the safety of her workshop.

The Bright Palm with the scraggly brow dashed up and around the circular entranceway to Fos’s blind side. The bronze weights lashed in. The spellsword lifted his arm to protect his head, but Hiresha still winced at the sight of the flail thudding into his purple coat. Fos smacked against the wall, and his sword tumbled out of his ice-bruised fingers. The flail lifted over his head for a second blow.

Will I have to watch Fos’s skull crushed?
Hiresha screamed out her terror, casting her last gem at the Bright Palm. He hopped to the side and swung his weapon around to strike her instead. The metal balls trailed after his arm, and she thought of him swinging as many venomous snakes by their tails.

The enchantress ran on, past him, and the flail struck the wall behind her. It made a sound like twenty hammers clanging against one ringing anvil.

 
The corridor ended in a swirl of gravity. Hiresha rejoiced to feel herself flipped sideways, set back on her feet on a ledge. Now twelve sets of doors circled her. The Grindstone made more noise turning than usual. At the center of the room, a pit she had come from appeared to revolve, with the Bright Palm running up its side to reach her.

Hiresha rushed around the pit, toward a marble door. The portal to the provost’s workshop was carved with representations of pyramids with grids of city streets and curving waterways between them. The stonework depicted
Oasis
City
, as planned by the Opal Mind. To open the portal, Hiresha only had to step onto a circle of blue marble on the floor. Her red diamond would unlock it.

I’m there! At last I’ll—

The Bright Palm skidded into her path, flail cracking toward her.

She stumbled back, found herself pressed against another door. To open a way for escape she needed to step over the red marble between her and the Bright Palm. Next time he swung, she scooted around the attack and onto the activating circle.

Too late she realized that it could never work. The flail whirled around too fast, too close. She jerked an arm upward to try to shield her head.
If my arm breaks, I’ll still live.
The onrush of the flail sounded like whooshing ruin.

The dreadful noise stopped, and metal balls rolled over the floor beside her. The leather cords and shaft of the flail flopped to the ground, along with a dismembered hand.

Fos stood behind the Bright Palm, lifting his scimitar for another swing. The man who had until recently carried the flail looked down at the stump of his arm. A gout of light spurted from the wound. His forehead stayed smooth above his brushy brow, uncreased and calm.

He shoved the remains of his arm into Fos’s face. Light splattered into his good eye, and the Bright Palm’s left hand followed and punched the staggering Fos back into the revolving pit.

Sickened to the point of dry retching, Hiresha scrambled past and onto the circle of blue marble.
Have to reach my jewel stores. Now.
A beam of light crossed in front of her from the opening door.

The Bright Palm gripped her neck with his intact arm. His leg swept her feet out from under her, and he slammed her downward. She felt as if she were falling off a cliff. Her wrists and elbows cracked against the stone tiles, and pain zinged up her arms. Her limbs went numb and slack.

The Bright Palm heaved down on her again. This time her skull would strike the floor first.

A shadow stepped to her side. Something went, “
Thwack!
” and Hiresha wondered if it had been her head. But, no, she was still conscious to see the Bright Palm fallen over her, his eyes staring at nothing. A dagger-sized blade protruded from the back of his neck, and more surprising yet, the implement that had felled him was attached to a shoe.

Fingers stiff and bent hauled Hiresha up from the floor. The Lord of the Feast nodded down to the bladed shoe.

“My heart, I had no idea of your penchant for such cruel footwear. Or does every enchantress have ten pairs of murderous clogs in her closet?”

“It’s a skate. For sliding over ice. A student is designing an improved model.” She clutched her head, feeling bludgeoned by relief, stomach roiling with butterflies, the room spinning with hope. “Thank you, Tethiel.”

“No, it is I who must thank you, my heart.”

The black triangle on his brow stood out like ink spilled on snow, his skin blanched and leaking sweat. As the Lord of the Feast spoke, he swayed on his feet. An arrow stuck out from his arm, its brown feathers worried to stringy tatters. His sleeve had been hacked off at the shoulder, and the amulet she had given him had been twined above the wound as a tourniquet.

“Lives are saved and lost everyday,” he said. “But providing someone with a memorable entrance? That is a rare thing indeed.”

“Your flippancy proves you’re not as close to death as you look.”

“Perhaps,” Tethiel said, “but a dying man has lost all incentive for seriousness.”

Hiresha could not help but grin, though her lips trembled. She turned to the pit.
“Fos?”

The spellsword circled into view as the floor moved underneath. He was crouching, and light pulsed down his arms to pool in the blood blisters on his fingers. His voice sounded detached. “My hands burn,” he said, “but I do not care.”

“The Bright Palm’s magic splashed over you,” Hiresha said. “You’re feeling it healing your hands.”

“Fortunate for you, the magic’s not catching,” Tethiel said. “But about this Bright Palm….”

The arm stump no longer bled light. Clumps of white scar tissue had sealed the wound. The Bright Palm’s remaining hand crept toward the skate imbedded in his neck.

“Is he going to pull it out?” Fos asked. As the light faded within him, his placid face shifted into a grimace.

Tethiel’s red collar was stained brown. “Do you think he’ll be pushing it deeper?”

Hiresha turned to the Lord of the Feast. “How does one slay a Bright Palm?”

“The same way you stop a bore from talking of his last outing.” Tethiel dragged the dropped scimitar to Fos. “Cut off his head.”

Fos gripped the hilt. He glanced at the triangle on Tethiel’s brow, and Fos’s uncovered eye bulged. The spellsword reeled away, lifting his weapon to strike at the Lord of the Feast.

Hiresha stepped between them. “We haven’t the time for all that.”

“But he’s—he’s….” Fos angled his head for a better view.

“The only things more awkward than departures are introductions.” Tethiel sighed. “But we have met.”

“Fosapam Chandur, dispose of this Bright Palm.”

Hiresha motioned to the paralyzed man then peered down the pit, seeing a highly mobile tribesman racing up at them with his spear. Beside him sprinted another Bright Palm, the one with the small mouth and the penchant for flying kicks.

“At once, Fos.” She scrambled into the workshop, onto a green circle that would begin closing the doors and shut out the Bright Palms.

Neither slab of the marble portal budged. The enchantment had failed, and somehow she was not surprised.