Dream Storm Sea

by A. E. Marling

  Hiresha’s fingers ran over her wounded hand. She could feel divots through the bandage where her jewels had been cut from her skin. “If you wish to help, bring me a gem.”

  Naroh’s face might as well have turned to stone. She stepped behind Hiresha and jerked the dress laces tight.

  “We might help each other,” Hiresha said. “And it might be any manner of jewel. Except opal. Or clear diamond.”

  “Arbiter Cosima has said you must have no jewels. And I will never disappoint her.”

  Naroh tidied up the dress then pulled Hiresha toward the door. Hiresha thought the girl’s grip was plenty strong enough already.

  They met the arbiter outside the Academy at the cliff’s edge. Wind gusted over a tiled lip of stone, where an enchanted road traveled straight down from the Academy. Hiresha touched her throat. Without her magical amulet, she could not travel down safely. She would plummet.

  Arbiter Cosima gave a half bow to Hiresha. The arbiter wore a dress with green diamonds that shone like droplets of lime. The woman’s face was dark and wrinkled before its time by the sun. Her eyes appeared older still. She lifted an amulet for Hiresha to take.

  Hiresha could not bring herself to hate the arbiter. Even if she played a part in this travesty. Hiresha respected how Cosima used her enchantress powers of lucid dreaming in a practical application. The heightened state of awareness aided the arbiter’s judgments. In the Lands of Loam she was known as a woman of justice.

  Returning the bow, Hiresha said, “Thank you, Cosima.”

  “Do not thank me yet.” The arbiter slipped the amulet over Hiresha’s head. Its emblem depicted a bronze and silver maze. “Spellsword Sagai.”

  The man with the tattoo garden leaned in to Hiresha. At his touch, a magic in the amulet contracted. The links in the necklace tightened into Hiresha’s skin.

  “You may now traverse the Skyway.” The arbiter waved to the road going off the cliff. “That amulet will also permit Sagai to find you.”

  The spellsword pulled a pendulum from a pouch. The silver ball bobbed side to side on its chain then leaned toward Hiresha.

  “Should you try to remove the amulet or tamper with its enchantment, Sagai will know of it. Now, Hiresha, may we proceed?”

  The arbiter offered her hand. Hiresha took hold of the green glove, if only for the added security. She had no great trust for the amulet that now felt too close to a choker. The two enchantresses stepped off the edge.

  Hiresha had no sense of falling. Rather, the world rotated around her, with the cliff now the ground. The Skyway stretched across a plane of rock, a field banded with different layers of sediment.

  “I gather you’re my escort to Nagra,” Hiresha said. “Do you approve of my expulsion?”

  “Hiresha, the other elders consulted me. I designed your sentence.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Hiresha imagined dragging the arbiter by the arm and hurling her off the Skyway. “Tell me, then. A woman dedicates twenty years innovating enchantment only to have her life’s work pried from her skin. Where is the justice in that?”

  “What was done to you was cruel.” The leaf designs of the arbiter’s hem flitted over the blue tiles of the road. “It was also just.”

  Hiresha lifted her bandaged hand. “At least we agree on the cruelty.”

  “Justice is what society needs for stability. Your magical research could imbalance the empire. No enchantress should both create power and wield it by throwing gems. Such a woman might cause untold harm.”

  “Only if she were a nitwit,” Hiresha said.

  “Can you guarantee all your students would use your research responsibly? Or your students’ students? What if one mad woman chose to rain a destruction of gems on a crowd using the Hiresha Method?”

  Hiresha scowled at a flock of cranes flying ahead of them in arrowhead formation. Because of her cliff-road perspective, the birds appeared to be flapping on their sides, one black-feathered wingtip pointed to the ground, the other to the sky.

  I could devise a crushing counterargument if only I weren’t so sleepy. Hiresha could think of but one thing to say just then.

  “What if I agree never to teach impact enchantment?”

  “Having one person unopposed in her power would be worse,” the arbiter said. “Think of the vizier, a genius of organization who has guided the Oasis Empire through years of prosperity. Yet would we be comfortable if the vizier did not have to answer to Pharaoh?”

  “Yes, I would. Pharaoh is—to phrase it generously—a divine idiot.”

  The arbiter turned her head to glance behind. The dyed ostrich feathers in her headdress swayed in the cross breeze. Hiresha followed her gaze.

  Spellsword Sagai and Maid Naroh walked abreast. She leaned forward, carrying a chest of drawers on her back. A strap wrapped around her brow.

  Neither she nor the spellsword appeared shocked, so the wind must have carried the blasphemy against Pharaoh out of hearing. Hiresha did not see the two speaking, but she had to think it significant that a prince of Nagra—even the third son—would walk apace with a maid.

  The arbiter faced forward again. “Pharaoh has a child’s heart.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder if someday she decrees all the empire’s pack animals be replaced by hummingbirds.”

  “An edict the vizier would neither implement nor enforce. Thus power is divided,” the arbiter said. “Thus do we avoid tyrants.”

  “Some tyrant I would have been. I only wished to cure myself and study in peace.”

  “I am sorry for you, Hiresha.”

  “But not enough to do anything about it?” Hiresha found it increasingly difficult to hold the arbiter’s hand. “I hope you don’t expect me to forgive you.”

  “No, not that. Yet understanding may help you accept your new role in life. Because we will never permit you to be free.”

  Hiresha yanked her hand away from the arbiter. Hiresha did not fall, but the force of her motion woke the fennec fox.

  He tried to squirm from her arms. She held him because only her amulet protected him from a fall. She cooed to him, her lips brushing against the sand-colored fur on the top of his head.

  “No committee of innovation-fearing ninnies will ever tell you how big your ears can or cannot be,” Hiresha said. “I promise you that. We’ll be free of them soon enough.”

  The fox chirped. The softness of his ears extended past her cheeks, all the way to touch her ear lobes. She fingered the holes from her missing earrings. Without them, her ears felt naked.

  The arbiter is wrong, Hiresha thought, and I can prove it. She would escape. She would advance her studies of jewel enchantments, and in doing so she would harm no one. Making the world a better place through her gems and magic would be Hiresha’s irrefutable argument.

  She walked as far from the arbiter as she dared, on the edge of the Skyway. The sides of the road converged into a point in the distance, the ground. The town below inched closer. People in the market became visible as dots of mixing color.

  “I will find my own place,” Hiresha said to the fox, to the wind, to herself. “Even if it is dangerous, even if the way is strange. Even if the destination is not one I would’ve ever thought to choose, I’d prefer it over a comfortable prison.”

  Her horizon was the Lands of Loam. Swaths of snowy fields glittered, speckled in places with the most presuming of spring grass. Roads wound forward and back around switchbacks like brown ribbons. Higher in Hiresha’s perspective, a savannah stretched in a golden vastness. Rivers spread veins of green.

  Beyond it all, something flashed like a sapphire held to the sun. Hiresha supposed it had to be the sea.

  8

  The Leper

  Hiresha distrusted something about the woman at once. Her brown skirt flapped as she dodged past the twenty guards that waited for Hiresha at the base of the cliff. The woman’s blue lump of a hat bobbed closer, from the town road and up a bridge that led to the Skyway.

  “Enchantre
ss! Enchantress!” Even the woman’s voice grated. “You gave me your promise. I own it, and I shan’t give it back ‘til you do as you said.”

  Only then did Hiresha notice the woman had but three fingers on her left hand. The skin of her face folded in on itself in warty clumps. She was a leper. And worse, though Hiresha could not yet say how.

  Spellsword Sagai raised a hand with a jasmine tattoo to stop the leper from nearing. The diseased woman dropped to her knees to slide past. She clapped all eight of her fingers over Hiresha’s foot and began kissing her slipper.

  “You promised freedom.” A strand of bloody drool fell from the woman’s bloated lip. “You promised a cure.”

  Sagai pulled the woman up by her shoulder, fast-stepped around her, and used the momentum to push her back down the arch of the bridge. He wiped his hand over his vest before speaking.

  “You will not ask an enchantress to uproot a disease planted in you by the gods.”

  “My specialty is in tenacious diseases,” Hiresha said. Though something told her she should not try to help this particular leper, Hiresha would defy anyone to tell her what she could do. “I will cure you. The goddess of fate has given me that power. I need only a jewel.”

  “Hiresha,” the arbiter asked, “is this woman an acquaintance?”

  The enchantress felt that they must have met before the disease warped her face. Hiresha asked, “Forgive me, but would you remind me of your name?”

  The woman tried to step closer, but two spear shafts crossed to block her. The guards did not look eager to touch her.

  “Duper,” she said, “Jessel Duper is what you called me. Though my husband had to leave me and take his name with him, so by rights it’s just ‘Jessel’ now.”

  Hiresha had stopped listening after the first word. The jewel duper, Inannis. He must have spread some manner of paste on his face, bound two fingers out of sight, and slipped on a dress. Hiresha recognized the feverish intelligence in his eyes.

  Revulsion greased its way up her throat at the same time that hope warmed her chest. They did escape the Stone of the Sleepless.

  The arbiter’s voice rang with practiced command. “Hiresha, did you promise a cure to this woman?”

  “I did.” Though she was slightly less of a leper and a woman at the time.

  “Then the obligation falls to other enchantresses in your department,” the arbiter said. “Hiresha has retired.”

  “Should be Hiresha,” Inannis said. “Her friend is staying with us, and he’ll be sick with worry ‘til I’m cured.”

  Hiresha had to wonder, Is that a threat to Fos?

  She shifted her fox to her hand further from the leper. Hiresha said, “My students lack the skill to cure his—her disease. You’ll need to bring me a jewel.”

  “That will not be possible.” The arbiter motioned to the guards to move the leper.

  Hiresha said, “Two of my jewels were locked in the Spire of Magical History. A red, triangular diamond, and a blue crystal I found—”

  “We must depart now.” Spellsword Sagai led Hiresha down from the bridge toward a palanquin. “If we’re to reach the next town before nightfall.”

  Hiresha looked over her shoulder to keep speaking to Inannis. The guards were prodding him away with their spear butts. The thought of Inannis’s hands touching her jewels wracked her sense of decency. But if anyone can steal them back to their rightful owner, it’s him.

  “Bring one gem for me. The other will cure you.”

  The spellsword lifted Hiresha into the palanquin seat. He then turned to Inannis in his leper disguise. “You must put your trust in the gods. The enchantress won’t be returning to this town.”

  The arbiter sat in another chair mounted on poles. “Hiresha is no longer an enchantress. Now let us depart.”

  Four guards lifted Hiresha’s palanquin, two in front, two behind. One on each side hefted the pole to waist level. The second in the pair squatted beneath it then pressed upward with his shoulders.

  “You promised,” Inannis said, his voice weak but harsh enough to carry. “How can any be free if disease enslaves one?”

  Then you had best bring me those jewels. The thief would acquire them from the Academy, of that Hiresha had no doubt. Smuggling the diamonds into her hands might be another matter.

  The contingent of tromping guards worried her. Silver scrollwork inlaid their bronze spears, a paler metal lacing the yellow. The same glinting embroidery ran through their cowl hats and red jackets. All the silver was enchanted, marking them as elite guards.

  They passed through a corner of the bazaar where the air took on a salty tang. A merchant called out to the guardsmen.

  “Sea fish! Sea fish! Revitalize your maleness with a taste of the briny deep. The sea powers will turn grey hairs black.”

  The guards walked by. The next fishmonger never glanced at them. He argued with a customer, who made chopping gestures in front of stacked jars. A pickled octopus floated, its tentacles wound in spirals.

  The customer asked, “That is your price? How can you claim to worship an honorable god?”

  “You don’t pay for the fish,” the merchant said. “You pay for the lives of the fishermen.”

  The arbiter’s procession moved out of town. The guards reached out to the wall to spin prayer wheels. The words of blessing rotated in and out of view within stone. The guards smiled into the daylight as they started down the first curve in the switchback road. One prodded another, whispering something about “kissing that leper.” The two men laughed and tried to push each other out of formation. Behind the marching guards, five rode white horses.

  Even if Inannis slips past them and brings me those gems, I may not escape. Hiresha feared Spellsword Sagai as much as the rest of her guards combined into a multi-armed abomination of nuisance. Sagai had the most potent enchantments and the greatest training. He took to walking along the edge of the mountain path, balancing over the fall. Once when rocks crumbled away beneath his feet, he floated midair. A blade as tall as himself whisked out from behind his back, and he used its spinning weight to pull him back to the road. The sword blinked away over his shoulder into its holster.

  And if Inannis succeeds in oiling his way past all this muscle, then I am indebted to a thief. Hiresha had just promised herself she would live her life above reproach. She wondered if she would have to trick Inannis again as a matter of principle. Or is it his turn to betray me?

  With that thought, Hiresha fell asleep to the rocking motion of the palanquin.

  9

  Spirit of the Sea

  Hiresha only appreciated the full wealth of Inannis’s subtlety upon reaching her lucid dream. A sharp stone poked her left foot. A gem was wedged between her slipper and her stocking.

  “The jewel duper has resource. I must say that much for him.”

  In crystal-mirror clarity, Hiresha remembered how Inannis had thrown himself to her feet. As his bloated lips grazed her ankle, his fingers tucked the topaz into her slipper. Inannis was wheeled away by Spellsword Sagai in the next moment.

  The thief may have intended that she enchant the mystic topaz to cure him. She hoped to use the jewel to escape, and then she could help Inannis with another gem. To get away Hiresha only needed an unguarded moment with the jewel in hand. That evening she awoke in time to go to bed. Maid Naroh appeared ready to thwart all plans by mercilessly undressing the enchantress.

  Naroh kneeled to take off Hiresha’s slipper, the one hiding the topaz. Stinging worry pierced Hiresha’s midsection. The enchantress slid that foot back, presenting her other slipper.

  I must distract her and hide the topaz. “Naroh, I’d prefer Spellsword Sagai leave before you undress me.”

  The young woman removed the offered slipper then glanced over her shoulder at Sagai. He was pacing in an adjacent room. The fennec scurried around him, yipping and hopping as high as his chest. The doorway had only a curtain for privacy, and that was folded open. Teal and pink flower designs wrapped arou
nd the inn’s paneling.

  Hiresha said, “He has already seen me naked once against my will, and twice is beginning to sound like a habit.”

  Naroh watched Sagai turn to face the other way. She said, “He tries to eye-bite you and I’ll slap a tooth from his mouth.”

  Hiresha fumbled the topaz out of her slipper. She lifted the gem to swallow it, to conceal it, but Naroh turned around. Hiresha’s fingers clamped over the topaz. Naroh looked at the enchantress’s fist. Hiresha asked her a question.

  “Where were you raised? It wasn’t Nagra.”

  The heart shape of Naroh’s lips folded to a pinched line. Her chin turned to hang over her shoulder. Sagai’s did, too, each of them looking halfway toward the other. Both had the oval eyes of the people of Nagra. Anyone in the Lands of Loam might have assumed they had both come from that city of stilt homes and rice paddies, but Hiresha had realized in the piercing clarity of her dream that it was not so simple.

  “You said there weren’t Feasters where you grew up. I know of no such haven in the Oasis Empire.” Hiresha had decided it would be impolite to also point out that that Naroh’s voice had none of the musical tones common to the Nagra accent.

  “It’s no haven.” The maid spoke with clipped words and coarse sounds. She lifted Hiresha from the couch, and her firm hands began unbuttoning the enchantress’s dress. “In most parts of Jaraah City, people don’t leave their homes at night. Same as anywhere. In my quarter, fishermen would take their boats out before dawn. Guess we had bigger worries.”

  “The sea?” Hiresha asked.

  She lifted the jewel toward her mouth. Again she stopped short when she noticed Sagai’s face reflected in a bronze plate decorating the wall. He’s looking at me. Not with a leer, Hiresha thought, but with something far more chilling. Careful attention to his duty as my jailer.

  “Always less boats would come back.” Naroh’s fingers paused on the buttons. “Or sometimes a boat would wash in late, full of hands.”

  “Full of what?” Sweat beaded around the topaz in Hiresha’s fist. Did Sagai see me take something from my slipper? Does he guess?