Gravity's Revenge

by A. E. Marling

  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 OasisCity, 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 stu
ck 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.

  29

  Provost’s Workshop

  The Bright Palm’s head rolled onto a floor strewn with crystal shards, spills of potent-smelling fluids, papyrus scrolls, and glittering knickknacks. The windows were the white of snow, a view of the plateau below the Grindstone.

  Fos heaved one of the double doors, and Tethiel shoved his back into the other half. Before they could close it, a spear stuck between, and the slabs bucked inward. Hiresha could sense the Bright Palms on the other side of the stone, a paleness in the shapes of men. Their light is more felt than seen.

  The spellsword strained to shut the door, shoulder pressed against stone, sword maneuvering to hack at the spear shaft. Across from him, Tethiel was losing ground, his boots squeaking over the tile. Blood trickled down his arm from the arrow wound.

  Fos glanced to the other man and said, “Tell me you just happen to have the same brand as the Lord of the Feast.”

  “If you’ve breath for questions…” Tethiel gasped. “…brace my side of the door.”

  Hiresha picked her way through the scattered debris. So much edge-of-life excitement thrummed through her veins that she was numb to the wreckage of her workshop. She stepped over gold dragonflies designed to Attract and crush rice weevils, enchanted nose rings to keep bulls in place, a staff studded with diamonds that would detect other gemstones in the nearby soil, wax tablets with smudged craft designs, and boards of pins with colored string in a crude representation of magic scripts.

  While searching for an enchanted rug she would need to reach her jewels, Hiresha felt a surge of spine-curling foreboding. Gravity is about to return. She thought of shouting a warning to the men, but instead she questioned how she could be certain. It is only a feeling. It felt like a swarm of mosquitoes landing on her arms and neck.

  Hiresha grabbed the corner of an operations table. Like the one in her dream, the basalt rock had an indentation of the average human figure. She wrapped a hand around a golden shackle embedded in the stone, and there she hung as every object on the floor fell toward the wall.

  Fos and Tethiel tumbled from the doors. Shutters patterned with jewel-carving diagrams all slid sideways over windows. The views of the SkiarriMountains were shut out, and gloom seeped from the dark walls.

  Tethiel stood, his feet in shelves on the wall. “You do get used to the tumbling after a few short, short days.”

  One door had fallen open, and a Bright Palm crawled in. Fos wobbled to his feet and lifted his sword. It shone blue in the light from Hiresha’s earrings.

  “My heart,” Tethiel said to Hiresha as she dangled from the side of the operations table, “how did you know that Down was about to change?”

  “This is no time for speculation. Attend to the Bright Palm.”

  “I already have.” Shadows clawed their way up Tethiel, but before the darkness could shred him into nothing, a second image of him appeared behind the Bright Palm, ramming the blade of another skating shoe into his glowing neck.

  The master illusionist faded again from view before the Bright Palm had time to topple. Fos had to guard his blind side as a second Bright Palm charged in with wooden cudgel swinging. With a skin tone similar in shade to the darkness of the room, the tribesman seemed a branching collection of shining veins, a leaping vine of white thorns.

  Trinkets and shards tinkled their way down the wall. Hiresha felt herself shifting, her legs now angled toward the door which slammed shut. Not wishing to be as useless as clothes hanging from a windowsill, Hiresha dropped down onto a couch, intended for enchantresses hard at sleep. From there she reached a wall and climbed its shelves.

  “My heart.” Tethiel’s voice whispered in her ear, though she could not see him. “Warn us when you sense gravity changing direction.”

  “I can’t tell. I can’t be sure.”

  Hiresha pulled a metal construct of an anaconda from a shelf. She had designed it to test a principal of replacing guardsmen with enchantments, and she realized she would never have a better opportunity for a trial.

  Assuming Tethiel could hear her low voice, she went on, “It is only a feeling, as unreliable as any increase of adrenaline in the blood.”

  “Trust your fears,” Tethiel said.

  “In that case, you might wish to hold onto something.”

  Hiresha was feeling a surge of dizzy anxiousness. She thought it might have been from handling a snake of silver and bronze scales that was longer than she, though Hiresha took care to only touch its underside, not the circular designs on its back.

  “Fos,” she said, “mind the gravity.”

  The Bright Palm must have heard her, too, and when the debris clattered back to the floor, he hit the stone tiles running. He swerved around a table and into an antechamber, toward Hiresha.

  Fos lowered himself to one knee then sprang at the Bright Palm. Hiresha could tell Fos had missed the timing on his Lightening enchantment when he traveled only a foot into the air. He threw Hiresha a look of agonized apology.

  Hiresha pressed a button on the anaconda’s head then laid the snake lengthwise in front of her. Standing up, she was surprised to see a second image of herself cowering against the shelf, on the other side of the ankle-high barrier of the snake.

  “Tethiel,” she whispered, “that sniveling portrayal of me is an insult.”

  “It is a wor
k of art, as is any illusion of you.” Tethiel stepped out of a doorway of shadows beside her. “The Bright Palm cannot see the real us, or the snake.”

  The tribesman raced over the metal anaconda, but the construct moved faster. Enchantment Attracted its coils to his flesh. It slithered around him with the sound of clattering coins. Binding spells constricted the Bright Palm’s limbs. He clawed his way forward with his only free arm, dragging himself and the snake, to the illusion of the enchantress. When he grasped at her ankle, the image melted into a sludge of darkness.

  Tethiel tsked. “A man of flesh and red blood might have known you are not a woman to cower. He might’ve been wary of the trap. Bright Palms have no such human instincts. That is their weakness. Good reflexes, but no fears, no intuitions.”

  “Their leader shows no such deficiency. She has out-thought me at every turn.”

  “Then she is a quick thinker,” Tethiel said, “but instincts are the quickest of thoughts. A Bright Palm’s mind may run at a fast pace, but with premonitions, my heart, you have the power to teleport.”

  In a blink, Tethiel vanished. He reappeared—Or at least another illusion of himself—at Fos’s side. The Lord of the Feast waved to the Bright Palm entangled in the anaconda.

  “We have some shoulders in there that need beheading. Oh, look, you’ve let those lie too long.”

  The other Bright Palm ripped the blade from the back of his neck and stood. He raised his fists and began to circle the spellsword, darting back and forth.

  Hiresha took the opportunity to search for a certain carpet. She was not comfortable with what Tethiel had said. I am hardly a quick thinker. Not half-drunk as I am on fatigue. She must have stumbled past the carpet more than once before spotting it scrunched between a globe made of gemstones and an enclosed bed of velvet for the fennec. She hoped he, at least, was safe.

  Gilt thread wove through the carpet in the pattern of the empire’s crest, an oasis with palm trees. She pulled it into a side room with a diamond design on the ceiling in white marble.

  Unclasping her pocket, Hiresha lifted her red diamond to chest level and stepped onto the enchanted carpet. It Lightened her, and she leaped eight feet into the air. She thanked the Fate Weaver when the magic in the ceiling detected the red diamond, and a secret alcove opened. She caught herself on the ledge.