“Nothing like that. I won’t take a hair away from the Academy.”
“And not one gem.”
After a pause, he said, “And not one gem.”
A train of gowns slid over the snow in front of Alyla. Silver and gold thread embroidered them with designs of shields and spears. Alyla made the mistake of glancing up, and she saw the elder rector, a sack over her head. Her hands were tied so close together that their veins bulged like huge blue worms. A Bright Palm led the rector by the shoulder.
Alyla felt as if the rock tilted below her. She had loved the Academy for its routines and whispering silences. She had never imagined that something could come within its marble halls to harm the elders. And if they can be pushed around with a sack over their head, what could happen to me?
I could die. It had almost happened a few nights ago when Hiresha had saved her from that Feaster. Alyla had never felt so helpless, like she had been thrown down a pit so narrow that her arms and legs were trapped and she could do no more but crane her neck up to see a distant square of light above.
Alyla did not turn to look at Minna, though a prickle on Alyla’s skin made her think the veiled girl must be nearby. Alyla had wished to tell the Bright Palms about Minna. They protect people from Feasters, don’t they? But she could not imagine herself approaching a Bright Palm and speaking, and besides, Hiresha and Janny would be sad if Minna was hurt.
Thinking about what she had seen in the Feaster’s mirror made everything fade to white. Alyla tipped, knee smashing into the wet snow. With her hands clamped to the tunic below her chin, she could not bring her arms down in time, and she floundered onto her side. A glowing hand gripped her shoulder.
The lady Bright Palm pulled her upright. “You are Novice Alyla from Morimound?”
She meant to speak, to answer the Bright Palm. Alyla could only think of how the lady had watched as the black-masked elder had walked the Skyway to her death. Alyla darted a look at the Bright Palm. The lady unnerved Alyla with her youthful appearance, her features sharp and unwrinkled. She looked like she could be Alyla’s classmate. Will she make me walk down the cliff?
The Bright Palm said, “These last days must have upset you, Novice Alyla. But know this. You are safe.”
Alyla wished the Bright Palm would let go of her hand. The novice shifted her fingers in a grasp that felt too warm.
“The Order of the Innocent came to the MindvaultAcademy only to protect lives throughout the Lands of Loam, and I have no wish to cause you or your friends any additional distress. Tell me, Novice Alyla, do you have any need that I may provide?”
She thought of Fos, how she had not heard from her brother since that first night. Alyla worried about him, but when she tried to ask the glowing lady if he was in the Blade, the words got trapped in her throat. Alyla only shifted her head from side to side, her hair sliding over her face.
“I see you have a question but are afraid to voice it,” the Bright Palm said. “The enemy is fear. Emotion obstructs thought and paralyzes action. With your permission, I will share the peace of my power with you.”
Alyla said nothing, and a warmth flowed up her arm. Her fingers relaxed. She straightened her shoulders that she had not realized she had cramped together. Tension drained out her chest, and she breathed in the crisp mountain air.
She looked down to see streams of white converging within her body. Her heart beat, and shining branches spread outward and up her neck. Part of Alyla expected to be frightened by the light moving within her, but she felt natural, as carefree and comfortable as when she was a girl in her parents’ house with her brother.
“Shyness is imprisonment of the soul,” the Bright Palm said. Alyla’s hand was pulled to rest on the lady’s own chest, and more light flowed into the novice’s arm. “For now, you are free.”
Alyla looked up, past the line of enchantresses being marched. Ahead, the Crystal Ballroom shone with a glaze of pink from the morning light that slipped between the mountains and the clouds. Each breath filled Alyla with pureness and boundless potential. She could run forever, talk to Emesea or anyone, even sing in public. If she wished.
The lady with the staff asked, “What did you want to ask me before?”
Alyla remembered. “What happened to Enchantress Hiresha?”
“She swam beneath the river’s ice.”
“I had another question.” Alyla could not remember why she had wished to ask them, and she was uncertain how she should feel about news of Hiresha’s maybe-death. “Where is my brother? Spellsword Fosapam. Fos Chandur.”
“He is down in the College of Active Enchantment. Likely injured,” the lady said. “And I have two questions for you, Novice Alyla. You will see that an answer for an answer is a fair exchange.”
“It has to be,” Alyla said.
“First, has an enchantress ever submerged herself in this frozen river for longer than an hour then surfaced alive?”
“No.” Alyla walked hand in hand with the Bright Palm. They passed the Observatory, a tower of brass that tilted toward the top.
“Second, are you skilled in memorization?” The Bright Palm let go of Alyla’s hand.
“Yes. I….”
Her throat contracted around the word. The light was leaving her body, and she felt as if poisonous tar gushed over her head in heavy gouts of black that burned her eyes and skin. She shrank from the pain of knowing that her brother was injured and Hiresha may have died. The bones of her arms dug into her chest as she crossed them, fists clenching, fingernails digging into her palms.
Alyla held her tearful gaze on the ground all the way to the Crystal Ballroom.
26
WaterflyRiver
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 pla
ce 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 WaterflyRiver’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 LoftyBridge. 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 h
ug. 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.”
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