by
Copyright © 2013 A.E. Marling
Cover illustration by Valentina Remenar
Internal illustration by Bartosz Milewski
Graphic design by Raymond Chun
Editor: Kelcy Perry
First electronic publication: December, 2013
Second Edition
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On Twitter: @AEMarling
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Contents:
World Maps
Chapter 1: The Diamond Insult
Chapter 2: Battle of Wits and Gems
Chapter 3: Three Heads, One Mind
Chapter 4: Forced Excision
Chapter 5: Stone of the Sleepless
Chapter 6: Escaping the Night
Chapter 7: Descending
Chapter 8: The Leper
Chapter 9: Spirit of the Sea
Chapter 10: Jaraah
Illustration of Dream Laboratory
Chapter 11: Escape on the Wind
Chapter 12: The Bells
Chapter 13: The Hard Way
Chapter 14: Harsh Partings
Chapter 15: Terror Croc
Chapter 16: Entrances
Chapter 17: Desperate Magic
Chapter 18: Between Storms
Chapter 19: The Paragon
Chapter 20: Walls of Wind and Storm
Chapter 21: Ill Company
Chapter 22: Essence of the Wild
Chapter 23: Dragon Song
Chapter 24: The Rogue
Chapter 25: Harpoon Swarm
Chapter 26: Storm Gambit
Chapter 27: Floating Forest
Chapter 28: Dream Warp
Chapter 29: Blue Dress
Chapter 30: Skin Speech
Chapter 31: Skyheart
Chapter 32: Red Dress
Chapter 33: Bane’s Den
Chapter 34: Blue Dress
Chapter 35: Storm Twins
Chapter 36: Red Dress
Chapter 37: Blue Dress
Chapter 38: Red Dress
Chapter 39: Blue Dress
Chapter 40: Blue Dress
Chapter 41: Blue Dress
Chapter 42: Dream’s Ending
For my
Reading Vanguard:
M.J. Scott
Christina K.
Stephanie N.
Robin Lythgoe
Jack & Nancy M.
1
The Diamond Insult
The crystal could have choked a cobra, and the absence of so large a gemstone left a bald patch amid the trinkets. Enchantress Hiresha whirled her focus around the rest of the merchant’s carpet, over a sculpture of keys melted together, past a necklace decorated with a rodent’s backbone, desperate to believe her prize had only been shifted to another spot.
The gemstone miracle was gone.
Hiresha had abandoned her palanquin to duck through alleyways, to squeeze between stalls selling melons and papyrus paper, and she still had arrived too late. She felt poisoned.
“You sold it.” She swayed with a nausea of disappointment and sleepiness. Her finger listed as she pointed to the emptiness on the threadbare rug. “Did you know that gem’s value?”
The young merchant pursed her lips into a pink smudge. “It was just sky quartz. Too big to be worth anything.”
A paragon blue diamond, Hiresha thought, a once-in-a-lifetime find.
“My art brings beauty to the overlooked.” The merchant fidgeted with a finger scrawling along her neck, then pointed to her other wares. “Madam Enchantress, perhaps you—”
“My dear girl, you weren’t paid anything for the gem, were you?” Hiresha took the young woman’s hand between her own purple gloves. “What is your name?”
“Chesa. And I was paid.”
“Not a fair price, unless your calmness is a state of shock. The crystal possessed octahedron substructure and refracted light in a manner no quartz could.”
Hiresha’s words made no impression on the merchant. A reply came not from her but a man who must have overheard. His voice burst over their shoulders.
“Enchantress Hiresha, how could you tell the degree light bent through this gem? You never even held it for study. If you had, you never would’ve let it go.”
Hiresha dragged one foot around at a time to look. The market was a celebration of color. Baskets burst with orange, purple, and green. Carpets hung in mazes of reds, browns, and teals. Hiresha’s eyes narrowed at a heart-sized chunk of blue ice. Or so the diamond appeared, uncut and raw.
A merchant lord clutched it, the same man who had spoken. She recognized him by his cape of gilt beads, which clattered as he stepped closer. Above his face-splitting smile his nostrils gaped as hairless pits.
“Jibade.” She said his name like a grunt of pain. “And what will you do with your swindled gem? Throw it to a butcher to cut?”
“This stone deserves the best jewel carver in the Lands of Loam. Yourself.” Jibade pried loose a copper-wire setting from the gemstone. The eight strands had been wrapped to resemble a long-legged orb weaver. Jibade tossed the metalwork to the plaza tiles. “The golden-eared god of fortune has given you the opportunity to make this gemstone your own.”
All Hiresha’s life she had desired to carve such a paragon, to unlock its inner beauty, to transform it from a glassy rock to a faceted beacon of mathematical triumph. Generations would marvel at it. And what wonders might I enchant in such a jewel?
I must rescue it.
Her dry throat pained her. “Your price?”
Jibade named a sum in gold. It was everything she hoped it wouldn’t be.
Hiresha could not countenance paying Jibade more coin than Chesa, the trinket merchant, would earn in twenty lifetimes. The young woman stared at the tangle of copper discarded on the street, the remains of the spider setting she had crafted for the gemstone. Her throat clenched, and she looked like she had swallowed a thorn.
“Why should you profit so?” Hiresha asked him. “You’ve done no more than elevate the gem above the ground for a few minutes.”
“Ah, but you’d have the satisfaction of buying this jewel from Jibade the Magnificent.”
Hiresha suspected he coveted more than coin. He wants to boast of this windfall. To be called the greatest merchant in the empire, the pet of the gods, he who plundered a king’s ransom in minutes.
“I’ll never pay that price,” Hiresha said. “Nor any other you name.”
“The legendary Enchantress Hiresha will give up her stake in the gem find of the century?”
“I didn’t say that.” Hiresha rested her brow against her palm, trying to herd her sleepy thoughts into order.
Jibade’s smile crystallized across his face. He looked behind Hiresha, toward her bodyguard, Fos. The hilt of Fos’s greatsword angled forward over his shoulder as he peered at the gemstone.
“The way I see it,” Fos said, “Hiresha doesn’t need your name on that stone. Not when hers is the Lady of Gems.”
Jibade clamped the diamond against his chest. “An enchantress once seized my property. ‘For the good of the empire,’ she claimed. I petitioned Pharaoh, and your Academy was forced to return the jewels plus grievance fees.”
“As I am not a brigand, the point is moot,” Hiresha said. She grinned, having thought of a better way than brutishness to acquire the diamond. “Jibade, you have insulted Chesa, slighted me, and belittled the diamond by purchasing it with a pittance. For redress, I challenge you to a contest of jewels.”
Jibade’s splinter-thin eyebrows curved upward. “A duel?”
“Of gem craft. If I master you, you must sell the diamond back to Chesa. For no profit.”
He winced
.
“And then I’ll buy it from her for a fair price,” Hiresha said.
Chesa did a triple blink.
Jibade balanced the diamond in front of his face. “My stake would be this gem rough. What could you wager that approaches its value?”
Hiresha considered the sash draped over her shoulder. Folds of tiny pockets along its length each held a gem. Without her jewels, she could not practice enchantment. Would they be enough to tempt Jibade?
If he were wise, he would walk away from the duel. The lords of the empire respected profits over posturing. Hiresha needed to risk a treasure so monumental that Jibade’s peers would ridicule him for leaving it on the balance.
Her earrings would tempt him. Diamond constellations dangled on either side of her face, and they shone with the dreaming soul of an elder enchantress. The rest of the Academy’s administrators would castigate Hiresha if she lost such legendary jewelry to a civilian.
Not that I would. She did not believe his greed for jewels could outmatch her love and lore.
“You have no gem to match mine?” Jibade’s grin flashed with gold-capped teeth. “So disappointing. I’d have been delighted to entertain you with a jewel puzzle.”
“I’ve no single jewel that’ll suffice,” she said, “so I’ll wager my collection entire.”
2
Battle of Wits and Gems
The duelists arrived at Jibade’s pavilion, a glittering monument of rarities. He rested the uncut diamond on a pedestal then excused himself to gather the jewels for the challenge. A ring of onlookers formed, and Chesa pushed her way to the front row.
Two men carried a palanquin chair into the circle. A plump woman wearing a grey turban bounded alongside. The woman lifted a winter-bear coat from the palanquin, which surprised Hiresha because the enchantress had assumed she was already wearing the garment.
She had forgotten her coat. Her dress was open-backed, and a gust from the snowcapped mountains sliced down her bare skin. Her flesh puckered around her spine. The clicking noise she had been hearing was the chatter of her own teeth.
Maid Janny wrapped Hiresha in the warmth of the winter-bear coat. The maid asked, “What’re you doing? You daft purple flamingo!”
“Winning back a paragon diamond,” Hiresha said.
Jibade the Magnificent strode from his pavilion carrying an ornate box and an expression of victory. “This holds thirteen jewels. Twelve are zircons.”
Opening the box, he turned his back to Hiresha. Men and women leaned in to see. One pushed back her embroidered cap of yak fur and said, “They all look like diamonds.”
Hiresha motioned for her carriers to lower the palanquin to the ground. She sat to wait.
Jibade snapped the box closed and presented it to Hiresha. “Your challenge, Lady of Gems. Tell me which of the thirteen is diamond.”
She set the jewel case on her knees, wondering what deception Jibade intended. This is too simple.
He held the lid shut while flourishing a band of silk. “Blindfolded. Allowing you to see the jewels in this trial would insult your expertise.”
“Childish, but acceptable.” Hiresha’s eyes already drooped to the point a blindfold would matter little. Sitting down put her at the mercy of her sleeping disorder.
Jibade leaned in to wrap the blindfold. Spellsword Fos held him back, and the guard tied the silk around Hiresha’s eyes himself. The knot nestled against the back of her head.
The box squeaked open. Hiresha tugged off her left glove and reached in. The pointed sides of thirteen stones pricked her, and she heard a tinkle of jostling jewels. She lifted each gem in turn, rolling it between her fingers, feeling its weight. A diamond, she knew, would be lighter than a zircon of the same size.
Hiresha delighted in her yawns, knowing Jibade would take each as an insult to his intelligence. Inside, her weariness clashed with her heart-hammering excitement. I am moments away from trouncing this greedy buffoon.
The seventh jewel seemed lighter. The change was subtle, no more than a tickling of the senses. Hiresha’s trained hand felt a boulder of difference.
As obvious as the choice was, Hiresha hesitated. More than one fortune teetered on this outcome, and she wanted certainty. For an enchantress, that meant dreaming.
In the blackness of her blindfold, a stairwell descended toward sleep. Hiresha focused on walking down the marble steps. As much as she hated her sleeping disorder, it did shorten the distance she needed to travel to unconsciousness. She might have slumped in her chair, but she counted on Fos to hold her from tipping over. No one else would know she slept.
Jewels floated and mirrors glided within Hiresha’s lucid dream. Clarity gushed through her.
“This is neither zircon nor diamond.”
The seventh jewel twirled in the air above her fingers. Hiresha could sense its impurities and predict its color, transparent with a haunting of green. The depth of knowingness that came with the dream also revealed the stone’s precise weight.
“So close to diamond, but too light, and the crystalline structure is entirely different. I must concede I’m impressed. Jibade did present a satisfying puzzle.”
The mysterious jewel flared with an inflow of lattices of power. Hiresha enchanted it with an antidote. She suspected that Jibade would soon have need of it.
Hiresha left her lucid dream and squeezed herself back to reality. Gasping to try to draw in more alertness, she spoke in a wispy voice.
“You asked…you demanded I find which of these jewels is a diamond. None are.”
She tore off her blindfold in time to see Jibade’s face quiver like jostled pudding. “W-what did you say?”
“None of these thirteen are diamonds. I have won your challenge.”
When Jibade did not deny it, the crowd cheered. Someone threw a three-tailed whip twirling into the air.
Hiresha stood with the help of Fos’s steadying hand. She jerked at her right glove, yanking her fingers free one by one.
“My patience has expired,” she said, “so my gem challenge will be brief.”
Her glove slid off to reveal a hand glittering with purple jewels. Embedded in her skin, they formed the pattern of a crescent moon. She strode toward Jibade with her hand upraised.
He pitched his voice into a showman’s gallop. “You may have seen lovely ladies with lovely jewels, but never have you witnessed one with so many in her hand. Ha! What breed of jewels, you ask? How rare, you wonder? Jibade the Magnificent will learn their secrets. Sapphires or quartz, garnets or—”
“They are spinels.”
Hiresha slapped him. The spinels flared through her hand, revealing a dark cluster of bones surrounded by violet light.
“This isn’t a challenge of identification,” she said. “Rather, you must resist the enchantment in the gems or concede.”
Jibade stumbled against a table stacked with jewelry. Amulets rained over him. He staggered to his feet again, tried to right the display, failed. His face contorted; his eyelids fluttered with spasms. He spoke as if drunken.
“By the b-blistering sands! Whatsh you done to me?”
“Poisoned your brain with sleep.” Hiresha tugged her gloves back on. “Sleep is something of a specialty, and I know just what you’re feeling. Miserable, is it not? This helplessness in your own body. Like a drowning of consciousness.”
Jibade’s metallic cape slithered over his shoulder as his legs gave out. Hiresha knelt beside him. She reached to his face with both hands to pry his eyes open.
“Your case is slightly more severe than my own,” she said. “Within a minute, you’ll fall into an endless slumber.”
He gurgled. His arms flailed then flopped down.
“I’ll take that as a concession,” Hiresha said.
A few in the crowd hissed. “Didn’t bet on a thwacking match.”
“The contest,” Hiresha said, “was of jewel craft. I touched him with my hand. My jewels and their craft in enchantment defeated him. If any here disagrees, s
tep forward.”
She beckoned to the grumbling men. None met her eye. One shook his coin purse at her. “Heard this was a battle of wits.”
“That battle Jibade lost when he accepted such an unspecific contest.”
A woman’s voice in the crowd. “You tricked him.”
“That is the point, is it not?” Hiresha waited to see if anyone would step forward to object.
None did.
The enchantress nodded to the trinket merchant, Chesa. “Go on, pay Jibade for his gemstone.”
Chesa flicked a few coins at the prone Jibade. She hesitated before the pedestal then lifted the blue paragon.
At the same time, Hiresha raised to her eye the seventh jewel, the mystery. She noted it reflected double, its largest facet shining in two places on her glove. Most unlike a diamond.
“You were right not to let me see this.” Hiresha folded the jewel with its antidote enchantment into Jibade’s fist. “The stone is exceptional. Wherever did you find it?”
Jibade shook his head blinking back toward alertness. “From—from a meteor.”
“Delightful! You’ll need it for now, but do send me a bidding price.” Hiresha motioned to her guard. “Fos, would you help this man to his feet?”
The enchantress stood up herself in time to have the paragon diamond forced into her hands by Chesa. Hiresha had no time to object. The sun pierced the gemstone’s dusky surface, and blue light flowed from its depths in waves of warmth.
The enchantress needed six gasping breaths before she could speak. “Now, Chesa, for the matter of fair payment.”
“I saw you knock out Jibade with one slap. That’s payment enough.”
“Nonsense, I—”
Chesa touched her heart. “You’re the one who won it back. It’s yours.”
A bloom of heat ran through Hiresha, a joy for having gained such a treasure. I’ll never receive another twist of fate so generous.
And neither will Chesa.
Hiresha cleared the wonderful ache from her throat. “Chesa, politeness has its limits. Refuse payment a third time, and I’ll have no choice but to trap you in the air, weightless as a dust mote.”
Chesa’s eyes darted to Spellsword Fos then to the maid. “Is she serious?”
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