The Skyway curved onto the lip of the cliff. The sun slid behind them as the enchantress and the girl stepped onto the mountain ledge on which perched the Academy. Hiresha expected to see enchantresses flocked close to the cliff side and murmuring about the woman who had jumped.
She saw the Academy at peace. Enchantresses dressed in medleys of color took their exercise together in last night’s snow. One novice in plainer garb threw a baton straight up, and, thanks to anticipating the wind, the wooden instrument fell into the waiting arms of another girl. Laughter tinkled over the Academy grounds. The lack of rampant distress made Hiresha tend to think she had imagined the falling woman. It was cold comfort.
Minna had stopped, and her intake of breath tugged her veil into the hole of her gaping mouth. Hiresha could relate to what she had to be feeling, the exploding sense of wonder. A dreamland of buildings confronted them, all painted with bright colors. One structure turned on a wheel, a procession of windows. A spire spun in flashes of prismatic glass. One tower twisted about itself. Another building seemed to claw at the sky with pink tentacles, and the girl shrank away from it.
“You are right to be leery of the Somnarium.” Hiresha guided Minna farther from the cliff ledge and toward a stone arch crowned by snow. “The enchantresses who study there waste their time with pointless questions rather than seeking practical applications for their magic. Now, this is the—”
“Mind’s Gate.” Minna finished for her, her voice a whisper.
The blue-marble path led them under a sweeping arch with the word “Imagination” emblazoned with gold in the stone in every conceivable language and a few Hiresha suspected had been made up to fill the last stretches of stone.
“I’ve never seen a fountain like that.” Minna was staring beneath the arch. “Wait, is it the goddess?”
“You are right on both counts. It is a water statue of the Opal Mind.”
The figure of a woman rippled, and with a cloudy hand she beckoned them toward the Academy. Chunks of ice floated within the liquid likeness of the goddess. The water statue’s head contained floating stones that sparkled with orange, pink, and blue.
“Opals, of course.” Admiration rang in Hiresha’s voice. Not only had the Opal Mind’s magic kept her namesake jewels from cracking in the cold or whitening in the sun, but she had also coordinated hundreds of Attraction enchantments within the arch and surrounding flagstone to maintain the water statue. Hiresha hoped Minna would ask so the enchantress could talk about their precision and selectivity.
The girl reached toward the statue’s misty knee but stopped herself. “It looks like a ghost.”
“It looks like genius.”
Hiresha knelt and touched the goddess’ feet. The finger pads of her glove came away wet and dark. Seeing the falling enchantress had touched Hiresha with the hand of mortality. She did not ask her goddess for understanding, or relief from the ache inside her. Rather, the enchantress renewed her promise to use her own life to the fullest in pursuit of knowledge and innovation.
“Uh.” Minna pushed some stray snow with her quilted boot. She glanced around the colorful buildings and enchantresses and licked her lips. “I...that is, thank you for bringing me here, Elder Enchantress.”
“‘Hiresha’ will do. You can call me ‘elder’ in a decade or three.”
As soon as they left the statue, a woman in a grey dress and turban crept out from behind the arch and assaulted the girl with a hug.
“Mother!” Minna pushed at Maid Janny, trying to free herself from the crush of bosom.
“Look at you! The first Barrows apprenticed to a higher trade,” Janny said. “When you’re lousy with jewels, remember your hardworking mother. In her old age she’ll have her needs. Warmth, a warmer drink, and lots of young, strapping men to distract her from her backache.”
Hiresha spotted a tall novice cloaked in teal and with strips of dyed cotton crisscrossing her arms and legs against the temperature. The woman had a broad chin but timid eyes, and she flickered a smile at the sight of Hiresha.
“Minna,” Hiresha said over her shoulder, “I should like you to meet Novice Alyla.”
Janny’s daughter did not seem to hear her, was in fact shouting with her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me the Skyway was so windy?”
The maid said, “Now will you forgive me for not walking home most days after work?”
Novice Alyla shuffled forward, her hands crossed and held stiff over her abdomen. She peeked at the new girl then dropped her gaze. Hiresha expected Alyla would approach Minna as soon as the taller novice gathered her courage. Hiresha considered Alyla about as outgoing as a three-legged mouse, but the enchantress cared for her, had brought her to the Academy from their homeland and hoped to see her soon wear an enchantress’s dress of color. Amid the teal of her robes and wrappings, Alyla’s face and hands stood out with a skin tone of dark amber.
A man ran toward Alyla. Even taller than she, he had a greatsword strapped to his back, and wore a purple jacket over a broad chest, with silver greaves covering his legs like ornate ankle-shields. Grinning, he leaped toward Alyla and spread his arms.
“Catch me, Aly!”
He had thrown himself forward with such force that Hiresha had to worry he would injure his sister. Alyla turned in time to see the big man falling toward her wearing no gentle amount of arms and armor.
He slowed in midair, and Hiresha sensed him using his spellsword powers to activate an enchantment in his greaves. He was Lightened. He landed in his sister’s arms with about the weight of a hound, pushing her back but not flooring her.
His full weight returned the next second, and he dropped from Alyla’s hands. His laughter boomed. Alyla stayed silent but beamed, looking up at him with an expression Hiresha most often saw in enchantresses kneeling to the Opal Mind’s statue in devotion.
Hiresha had to wonder if her own face betrayed a hint of the same toward him. What Fos Chandur lacked in experience as a spellsword he made up for with confidence and vigor. She was more than relieved that her own innovations in jewel enchantments had once saved his life. Sometimes she thought of that as her greatest accomplishment.
The smile he cast Hiresha over his sister’s shoulder made the enchantress believe he felt something of the same toward her. Spellswords were tasked with protecting enchantresses, and he had risked his life for her sake.
The mountain air seemed at once warm, a soothing breeze on her cheek.
A voice of command yanked her from the reverie. “Provost Hiresha, do you condone this negligence?”
4
Academy Plateau
“Chancellor?” Hiresha turned to regard the elder enchantress.
With a long neck and a narrow face, the approaching woman resembled a worm wearing a wig. The chancellor’s lavish black braids were decked with gold beads, and kohl paint shaded her eyes after the fashion of the Oasis Empire’s capital.
The chancellor’s gaze slid past Fos. “Provost Hiresha, your spellsword is cavorting with novices while on duty.”
“Alyla is his sister,” Hiresha said.
Fos said, “I was protecting her against frowns, Chancellor. There’s nothing more dangerous up here.”
“A professional distance must always be maintained between spellsword and enchantress.” The chancellor spoke this too at Hiresha.
“Studies show that pupils of good cheer learn faster,” Hiresha said, with a glance to Alyla. She’ll pass her practicals next time, poor girl, and earn her first enchantress gown.
“A mien of humility in students better befits the Academy of the Opal Mind, may the goddess’ wisdom ring through the centuries,” the chancellor said.
She stepped closer with a click of the beads in her wig. Her small eyes flicked over Hiresha’s shoulder to where Janny chatted with her daughter. The chancellor lowered her voice.
“Why do you seek to demean the MindvaultAcademy at every turn? The waifs you submit as novices bring neither wealth nor prestige.”
Hiresha stiffened, and between her fatigue and chill it took a few deep breaths before she could thaw a response. “Perhaps you have forgotten that I too arrived at the Academy without resource.”
“You had talent, your unnatural propensity for the magic of dreams. Have your protégés shown similar aptitude?”
“Spellsword Fos has proven himself remarkably—”
“Novice Alyla has shown no talent, no aptitude, and no potential as an enchantress.”
Hiresha thought the chancellor’s critical remarks concerning Alyla most unfair, considering the chancellor herself had less magical skill than the average snail. She had not enchanted so much as a copper coin in all the time Hiresha had studied at the Academy.
This is what comes of electing a bureaucrat, Hiresha thought. Her hand strayed beneath two of her layers to the hard point of a pocketed jewel. With it, she could crumple the chancellor against the snowy rock. Hiresha never would so assault an enchantress, but knowing that she could granted her the resolve to stand up for Alyla and Minna.
“Princesses of less skill are admitted every season.”
“Exactly. Room must be reserved for the nobility.”
“Alyla is intelligent and imaginative. Testing merely makes her nervous.”
The chancellor might as well not have heard her. “And you insist on bringing a new girl of the same social strata? Who will you enter into the novice registry next to offend the goddess? That animal?”
She sniffed at the fennec scuffling in Hiresha’s arms. The fox buried himself in her layers.
The chancellor asked, “Or perhaps open the Academy to men?”
“In point of fact,” Hiresha said, her breath misting out from between her clenched teeth, “I believe the Academy would benefit if we considered admitting male novices of great potential skill.”
The noise of distaste made by the chancellor reminded Hiresha very much of a fox’s sneeze. “What would one even call male enchantresses? Enchanting men? Enchantmen?”
“Enchanters,” Hiresha said.
“‘En-chan-teers.’” After saying the word, the chancellor’s yellowish tongue curled toward the back of her mouth.
Hiresha glanced to Fos. She said, “And some women might make exceptional spellswords. In some ways, a female guard would be more—”
“Enough. Being Provost of Applied Enchantment in no manner gives you the right to question rules enacted by the Opal Mind.”
“You mean the goddess of imaginative thought? She would want us to honor her by looking for new methods and practices to enrich the Academy.”
The chancellor swiveled in a snap of blue lace to face Alyla and her brother. “Spellsword Fosapam, inform Spellsword Trakis that you will be serving as the Academy’s night watchman. For the entirety of this month.”
To have Fos stand each watch was a punishment that enraged Hiresha. Spellswords alternated shifts so no one man would suffer exposure in the freezing night air. The injustice of it caused heat to smolder under Hiresha’s gown, and she felt hot and sick.
Fos was blinking wide-eyed at the chancellor. Hiresha imagined him thinking of all those nights, so inclement that his lips froze to his teeth. She took some comfort in knowing she could cure any frostbite. Even so, she had to wonder if Fos would yell at the chancellor in outrage, or complain.
The spellsword grinned. “Then I’ll have all the time to practice my long jump. And the stars won’t judge me if I get it wrong. Well, they may smirk a twinkle.”
His brows furled in focus as he lowered himself. A pinging noise sounded in Hiresha’s inner ear as he Lightened his greaves and himself. Weighing no more than a fox but with the muscles of a grown man, he launched himself into the air.
The wind swatted him to his knees.
The chancellor nodded at his failure and stalked off, her train of gowns leaving a path in the snow.
Hiresha winced for Fos. “You’re brave to even attempt the long jump. Most spellswords delay learning the technique years for fear of embarrassment.”
“It’s the timing.” He brushed the white from the scale vest beneath his coat. “Have to Lighten myself then drop the spell before my feet leave the ground. Too soon and I only hop. Too late and I’m an overlarge leaf in the wind.”
Hiresha refolded his right lapel. “It is my fault, about the night duty. The chancellor knows she cannot reprimand me directly. The Ceiling of Elders wouldn’t have it.”
Fos shrugged it off.
Maid Janny sauntered up, her arm around her daughter. The maid’s rather shapeless body jiggled with happiness. Minna gazed at Spellsword Fos then adjusted her veil and squirmed out of her mother’s grasp.
Hiresha pinched the bridge of her nose and glared after the chancellor. “Janny, was I ever so disagreeable as that?”
“You’re only a headache away from being so again.” Janny winked at the enchantress. Next she knuckled Fos’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. I’ll bring you some mulled ale so you won’t freeze outside. Just so long as you promise to keep the place free of Feasters.”
Beside her, Minna winced at the mention of the dangerous illusionists. The girl gazed up at the building above and mouthed, The Recurve Tower. The spire twisted about itself like a knotted serpent. It shadowed them, except for a patch of light between Hiresha and Janny from where the sun fitted between the structure’s coils.
Janny elbowed her daughter and chuckled. “Told you so.”
“Mother! Ew!” Minna turned to Hiresha and asked, “What’s the real reason they built it so wrapped around?”
“For practical reasons, of course.” The enchantress would have winked then, had she ever learned the knack of it. “The RecurveTower is the longest tower in the Lands of Loam, yet it couldn’t have been taller than the observatory. How then could the Minister of Orbiting Bodies observe the stars?”
Minna asked, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to build the observatory higher up?”
Fos swept a hand up to the RecurveTower. “What? And have a plain old tower? Who’d want that?”
Hiresha tapped her lips and smiled. A clever girl. The enchantress said, “Alyla, would you be so good as to show Minna around the Academy?”
Alyla had hung behind her brother in her novice robes like a teal shadow. She murmured something.
Minna tore her eyes from Fos. “What’d you say?”
In a tiny voice, Alyla said, “I have a class now. I can’t—”
“Minna may join you,” Hiresha said. The enchantress turned to Janny. “Are her quarters prepared?”
“Already stowed her basket of personables on the owl’s floor,” Janny said. “She’s no lark. Never can seem to settle herself to sleep before the throbbing hours of the morning. Aww! Would you look at those two young things together?”
Minna only came up to Alyla’s shoulder, but the taller woman walked stooped forward, arms held over her chest as if shielding herself from unseen aggressors. Hiresha hoped the two would become friends. The Opal Mind knows that Alyla needs one.
Hiresha shivered, feeling a sheen of sweat freezing to her inner gown. Battered by shock and insult, she wanted to recover in her dream laboratory. There she could determine who the falling woman had been. If she truly had been. Fatigue made Hiresha’s face feel tight, and her eyelids twitched.
“Fos, would you escort me to my chambers?”
He extended an elbow. She clasped him under the thickness of his arm. The two strode toward the serpentine tower at the center of the Academy. Hiresha’s sense of unease redoubled. She felt unbalanced and vulnerable, as if the curving tower was tipping toward her in a collapse.
With the next breath, the enchantress reassured herself the spire was stationary. Despite its twisting design, a mortar of magic held it stable. Yet the feeling remained that she must do something, soon.
“Fos,” Hiresha asked, “while on patrol, you didn’t see an enchantress approach the edge did you?”
“The cliff edge?”
“Yes. A youn
ger woman, wearing a green dress perhaps?” Hiresha had not recognized her, but Hiresha only taught advanced courses in Applied Enchantment. If the other enchantress had been more than a figment, she must have been a student of dream exploration.
Fos stopped and faced her. “Should I have seen something?”
I must be ailing. Hiresha prided herself on her logical thinking. She would not rile herself into a frenzy over something she may or may not have seen. And if the unfortunate woman was real, she is beyond my help now.
Before Hiresha could speak further to Fos, the chancellor ambushed them with a cursory curtsey. “Provost Hiresha, you are required to teach Introduction to Magic Theory this afternoon. Enchantress Symera has made herself unavailable.”
Hiresha frowned, and her fatigued mind dredged up Symera’s fine-featured face, not the same as the falling woman’s. Compared to her deadly fall, Hiresha reasoned that encountering the chancellor twice in one hour was not so terrible a trial. Some blissful months, she need not see the Chancellor of Precious Enchantables at all while the bureaucrat was out collecting funds.
“Has Enchantress Symera fallen…” Hiresha caught herself. “…that is, has she fallen ill?”
“She is running about searching for her teaching assistant.”
Hiresha felt as if an icicle had lodged in her throat. “Her assistant, she’s not to be found?”
“Sadly, you are not the only undependable enchantress in the faculty,” the chancellor said.
Fos angled his jaw and head away from the chancellor at this, muscles flexing along his neck.
The chancellor adjusted her sleeves. So many frills of fabric branched from her wrist that the layers resembled an artichoke. “A pity you lack the time to make yourself more presentable. You are wearing, what, only half of your honorary gowns?”
“Eight dresses,” Hiresha said, “plus or minus one depending on Janny’s mood. Now about that assistant—”
“Only eight? At this rate, you will soon be traipsing about the halls wholly denuded.”
Hiresha could not flex her drowsy mind to respond to that ridiculous statement. “The assistant wouldn’t have worn a green gown, would she? With copious ribbons?”
Gravity's Revenge Page 3
