Gravity's Revenge

by A. E. Marling

  “I challenge you to a game of….” Hiresha could not finish the thought, scrambling backward under the gateway arch. Sheamab was ignoring her words anyway, though she jumped around Hiresha’s first three jewels. Tethiel was dashing away, Mister Jewel Pox pursuing him with nails. When Hiresha stepped back again, she crunched into the goddess’s statue.

  Retreating around it, she allowed her hand to reach up to the Opal Mind’s face with a vague idea of throwing the snow into Sheamab’s eyes. No, that’s not what I want to do. She felt as if her intuition was speaking to her. Remember the novice who was expelled for dragging an opal from the statue? When she let the gem go it flew into another girl’s head so fast that she lay bedridden for a month. Hiresha believed a cracked skull was exactly what Sheamab needed.

  Hiresha’s fingers touched the hardness of the gems in the goddess’s skull. As she pulled out an opal and fistful of snow, uncertainty stabbed her. Is this blasphemy? She had to hope the Opal Mind would respect the innovative tactic. Maybe the goddess inspired me to think of this trick, to defend her Academy.

  The enchantress hurled the snow at Sheamab. It did not come close to hitting her in the eyes, but Hiresha hoped it distracted the Bright Palm from seeing the opal. The enchantress hid it behind her. When she let go, the gem stayed pressed against the small of her back. To divert Sheamab’s attention further, Hiresha forced herself to say something.

  “You kidnap and convert girls when they’re most vulnerable. You heal jewel-duping poisoners. Have you considered renaming yourselves the Order of the Hypocrites?”

  “Those who lie and steal are never innocent. Eighteenth tenet, stanza nine, which I interpret to mean men who do one but not both may still be healed.” Sheamab dashed around the statue and the discarded pile of hair, then to the right when Hiresha tossed a jewel. “Inannis never lies, and he discovered when the Lord of the Feast would arrive here. This thief will have saved the Lands of Loam.”

  The opal punched against Hiresha’s back harder for each footstep she retreated. Within the enchantress, an energy of purpose crackled and warmed her. She had listened to her intuition, and in a few seconds she would step aside and allow a gem to launch from behind her at a speed not even the agile Bright Palm could dodge. She aligned the Bright Palm in front of the statue. Keep her talking.

  Hiresha asked, “The poisoner was waiting and watching for Lord Tethiel in the town? He saw him take the Skyway?”

  Sheamab shifted a pace to the right, her staff loose in her hand and swaying back and forth like a snake-charmer’s flute. “Inannis knew when the Lord of the Feast would arrive months in advance.”

  How could the jewel duper have known? The enchantress had no time to think of an answer, but she felt as if someone had hammered a spike through the bottom of her stomach, a sweltering line of pain.

  Another pressure on her back made her worry the opal would rip through her coat. The gem was sliding her forward, against the wind. It’s time. Hiresha stepped to the right and in front of the Bright Palm again then reached back for the gem. It yanked at her fingers as she tried to aim it, the piece of a goddess’s mind blasting out of her grip and whizzing forward.

  Sheamab had started moving before the enchantress had even reached for the jewel. The Bright Palm sprang out of the path of the gem’s streak of red and white. Her staff thrummed around in a circle of black to slam against Hiresha’s leg.

  The enchantress was flattened into the snow. Disbelief raked her with its claws of nothingness.

  “A clumsy ploy,” Sheamab said. “Your intent was obvious when you mirrored my steps.”

  The blunt end of the staff stabbed downward at Hiresha’s eye.

  Hiresha tossed a jewel at the arch that selectively Attracted her out of harm’s way. The gem released her from the curve of stone the next moment, and she hurled a spray of pink and yellow jewels. Sheamab was forced to retreat. Hiresha was required to groan from the bone-creaking pain in her leg and a deeper, more crushing hurt in her chest.

  She predicted everything, Hiresha thought. Even my intuition wasn’t enough to outthink her.

  As Hiresha took a limping step, a new thought ambushed her. I know how the thief learned of Tethiel’s visit. He hired Inannis to forge our signature on the writ of admittance. Tethiel’s crooked fingers couldn’t have done it themselves.

  Hiresha would have screamed at the Lord of the Feast, if she but had the time. Tethiel was foolish to trust Inannis. Or he was wrong to think threats would keep the jewel-duper silent.

  She passed Fos, who was still on his knees. His fists were clenched near the bare feet of his once-sister. Hiresha considered Lightening the girl off the plateau but knew that would hardly endear Fos to their cause.

  Beyond the spellsword, Tethiel was swerving out of the reach of the Bright Palm’s spikes. The Lord of the Feast’s wings had lost their fire. Snow sprayed in a sweep of razor feathers. When the Bright Palm lunged, Tethiel fanned his wings into copper sails, and the wind hoisted him twenty feet away.

  I have to dispose of Mister Jewel Pox, so Tethiel can help me trick Sheamab. At the same time, she thought, I hope Tethiel dies.

  Hiresha was shocked at herself. The staff whistled closer, and the enchantress threw herself to the side and scattered a few topazes behind. Her own intuition had distracted her to the edge of peril. As she shoved herself up from the snow, she resolved to focus, to push away all extraneous thoughts. Except that the knowingness that crept upon her was faster than thought, and now that she had begun to listen she could no longer ignore.

  Tethiel knew about Inannis and Emesea. He knew she worked with the Bright Palms, a hound to track his children. Tethiel should’ve guessed he’d be betrayed.

  Hiresha tried to push thoughts of Tethiel’s blunder out of her mind. She hobbled closer to Mister Jewel Pox. The man’s back was turned, his attention on chasing the Lord of the Feast. In seconds, Hiresha would be close enough to hit him with a gemstone volley. In a few steps, she could strip the plateau of the eleventh Bright Palm and leave Sheamab all but alone.

  Tethiel hadn’t even had a good reason for hiring Inannis. I would’ve invited him to the Academy. Hiresha bit her tongue, willing herself to focus.

  The sound of sandaled feet beating against the snow grew louder behind her. Apprehension sluiced into Hiresha’s veins like a venom. Doom beat in her heart. If I don’t turn now, Sheamab will catch me. She’ll hit me again.

  Hiresha pushed her fears away. The clearest route to victory lay before her, and she would not quail from taking a bruise with the fate of Tethiel and the Academy in the balance.

  The Provost of Applied Enchantment hobbled two more steps. She lifted her deadly azurite from her sash, the jewel shining blue between her fingers like a bead of day’s sky.

  The staff hissed behind her, and the enchantress felt an explosion in her leg. Pain sliced above her ankle and below her knee, splitting the limb in two. She collapsed. When the staff cracked in again, the bones in her hand splintered with an agony of searing needles. The azurite flew away and was lost.

  Sheamab stepped over her, and Hiresha was left lying in the snow. She pulled at the length of her coat, saw her leg bent at a hideous angle, sole pointing to her left.

  Amid the throb of her hand and the screaming numbness pulsing up her waist—even amidst the realization she had been struck down and immobilized—Hiresha was haunted by a more terrible truth.

  Tethiel knew the Bright Palms would follow him to the Academy. He brought them here on purpose.

  The Lord of the Feast was no fool. Hiresha knew that he would never have commissioned Inannis for an unnecessary forgery without reason.

  To lure them into the Academy. To further alienate the Bright Palms from the empire, to trick us into siding against them, into killing Bright Palms when he could not do so alone.

  The Lord of the Feast had betrayed her in the worst way. He had invited discord and death into her sanctuary. Then she had shared his nightmare to cure him, when by al
l rights she should have listened to Fos and let the Feaster die for his crimes.

  He caused all the suffering and loss. All because of him.

  Worst of all, she knew she had allowed him to do it. I could’ve refused his help in Morimound, in OasisCity. A word of warning from me would’ve made the spellswords turn anyone of his description away from the Skyway. I should’ve tracked him down years ago with the Bright Palms.

  The enchantress channeled all the pain of her broken body into envisioning him dying to nails through the heart and being bludgeoned by Fos’s jasper sword. She even thought of herself choking him by shoving jewels into his mouth, though that image tore at her with fiery nausea. Trapped by hurt and anger at the Lord of the Feast, she did not see the man himself bending over her. It took his voice to startle her to the present.

  “They’ll find where I’ve gone soon.” His wings smoked, shrouding them both. “My heart, can you stand?”

  “Traitor!” Hiresha reached for something ruinous in her jewel sash, moaned when the pain in her broken fingers stopped her.

  His smoldering-black eyes darted up, looking at something approaching. “Can’t hide my footprints from them. My heart, make yourself weightless so we can fly away.”

  Hiresha ripped a button to dig her good hand into her coat pocket, scrounging for the red diamond. “You had such confidence in me. You thought I’d kill Sheamab and everyone she brought with her.”

  The enchantress hurled the red diamond. The priceless gem spun so that its triangle shape seemed a circle. It passed through Tethiel and out the other side. For a sweet moment, Hiresha thought the jewel with its defensive enchantments had somehow pierced his skull. She realized soon enough that he was in truth standing elsewhere, out of sight.

  “Illusion-casting coward!” She scratched at the air around her, trying to grab him. “At least a grain of good will come from all this. Your death.”

  The image of the Lord of the Feast closed his eyes, the corners of his lips spiking downward in sorrow. Hiresha doubted he felt any such emotion. He commands his illusions to look as he pleases. And even if it were true, if he did regret, it would help the fallen enchantresses not at all. It wouldn’t bring Alyla back to being human.

  “He’s here!” Hiresha cried out, hoping the Bright Palms would hear her. “The Lord of the Feast is near me.”

  “Farewell, then, my heart.”

  The man before her dissolved into shadows. Moments later, two Bright Palms sprinted past.

  “The cliff,” the jeweled one said. “He’s making for the cliff.”

  Hiresha pushed herself up to an elbow, and even that small movement loosed firestorms of pain up her leg. She blinked away sweat and watched Sheamab toss something to Mister Jewel Pox. He slipped a bracelet on his arm and lagged behind while Sheamab raced to the edge.

  Her open hand pushed away the gloom, and the night unwound from around the Lord of the Feast. He was leaping over the cliff, feet leaving the ground, wings spreading in bristling razors. Starlight glinted in lines tracing over the daggers.

  He’ll escape. A wash of emotions dug into Hiresha. Anger, regret, relief, bitter joy, and sorrow. Part of her still wanted Tethiel to live. It felt like one more betrayal.

  The Lord of the Feast flew off the plateau. The Bright Palm vaulted after him, over the cliff edge.

  She’s too late, Hiresha thought. He’s too far.

  Sheamab paddled her feet midair and threw her arm forward, the staff sliding through her grasp until she gripped the tip. The other end snapped downward to clip the Lord of the Feast’s wing.

  He was flipped sideways, spinning downward in flashes of metal wings. Hiresha felt a tearing sensation within her, then a burst of elation as Sheamab began to fall. Now I’m rid of one of them at least. Fate has twisted into a ribbon to give me this one boon. The enchantress wanted Sheamab to die more than ever. After what she convinced Alyla to do.

  Sheamab turned about midair and was pulled back onto the cliff.

  “No!” Hiresha cried out and beat the ground with her hands. Pain lashed up her left wrist, and she saw flashes the color of gangrene. She could only guess Sheamab still wore the fennec’s collar, and the bracelet she had tossed Mister Jewel Pox had been Hiresha’s own amethyst jewelry.

  The Bright Palms watched at the cliff edge, and Hiresha could only imagine them peering down at the falling Lord of the Feast. Will he right himself? Is he flying away free after endangering everyone? He had jumped off far to the right of the Blade, and she could not imagine him crashing into it.

  A voice caused her to look up. “Hiresha!”

  Fos bent over her, brushed snow from her hand, the one Sheamab had struck. The enchantress noticed that her fingers twisted in an unnatural way, and she could not help but think, Like Tethiel’s.

  She glanced around her for the red diamond. As much as the thought of touching the jewel disgusted her, it did carry her Academy access enchantments. The snow must have covered the jewel because she saw no sign of it.

  The spellsword’s brow was clammy, and his teeth chattered. “I—I shouldn’t have let her do this to you.”

  “A vicious understatement,” Hiresha said.

  Fos said, “But I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘She’s my sister. My sister. My only sister.’”

  “Now you’ll have fight them alone. Fos, Sheamab tricked Alyla into becoming a Bright Palm.”

  He did not look so certain.

  The enchantress went on, “At least, your sister would never’ve submitted to it if not for Sheamab coming here. Where’s your sword?”

  A focus returned to Fos’s eye, a desperate purpose. He reached above his shoulder, but his hand clamped on air. He gazed over the plateau, a haze of darkness with stray snowflakes drifting. Unseen clouds above had robbed the night of stars.

  The spellsword stumbled away. At the border of what Hiresha could see in the light of her blue-diamond earrings, he cried out as if he had spotted his sword. Before he could bend over to take it, a lean figure wrapped her glowing hands around his waist.

  “Alyla, let go!”

  “You must not become less innocent,” she said.

  Hiresha squinted, saw him pry loose her hands and take another step. Alyla grabbed his feet and spoke in a voice of perfect disinterest.

  “Stop.”

  The spellsword fell into the snow as if slain by that one word. He seemed unwilling or unable to rise.

  Sheamab found a weapon against him, Hiresha thought with bitterness. She turned Alyla into a tool.

  Hiresha pawed at the snow around her, then dug. She could not find the red diamond. The diamond blessed by gods. I was wrong to throw it. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  Two figures of light ran through the darkness, toward the spellsword. Hiresha shouted a warning.

  “Fos, run!”

  He moved inch by inch, as if Alyla’s hold on him drained him of all of his vigor. By the time he had pushed himself to his knees, the other Bright Palms were upon him. Hiresha could see shining veins in the arms that wrapped around him, and she could hear Sheamab’s voice.

  “Bright Palm Alyla, take the rope on Bright Palm Rommick’s belt and bind the spellsword’s hands.”

  “Yes, Bright Palm Sheamab,” Alyla said.

  40

  Antechamber

  Sister was binding brother, and Alyla’s passionless voice hurt Hiresha more than her broken bones. Beyond even that, the enchantress worried what would happen to Fos. Sheamab put out his eye and had him tossed over the cliff the first time. Also, the women in the crystal ballroom were as good as trapped. Hiresha knew she had to do something.

  She had one knee smashed and swelling, another leg far worse, and her jewel-throwing hand broken. She still had her mind. A mind clamped between fatigue and pain.

  Reaching across her coat, she pried open her left pocket with her right hand. The vial of diamond dust felt tiny. As small as my last chance. Having her jeweled fingers useless would make the gambit even more dubious, and
Hiresha realized she no longer had confidence anything she did could defeat Sheamab. The enchantress could hear the hollowness of her resolve in her shaky voice.

  “Sheamab, would you accept my challenge to a game of Sands?”

  Hiresha worked the vial up her sleeve.

  Sheamab marched into view, staff cradled in her elbow. The Bright Palm gave no sign whether she had just seen the Lord of the Feast fly to safety or break his skull on the cliff, and her voice held to the same mind-grinding calm.

  “Why would you think I might accept? Games no longer hold purpose.”

  True, now you only play with people’s lives, Hiresha thought, but she said, “This game might, if there’s a wager attached. Defeat me at Sands, and I’ll use my skill in enchantment to open the Ballroom door. Right now, it’s locked against you.”

  “I accept,” Sheamab said. “Alyla, bring a Sands board.”

  “Yes, Bright Palm Sheamab.”

  Hiresha felt no relief, only the clenching worry that here again, she would fail. Though she had no intention of completing the game, she knew she had to do everything in her power for a chance at deceiving Sheamab.

  “If I lose I’ll be betraying my colleagues and students,” the enchantress said. “You must hazard something of equal value.”

  Sheamab’s hair took on a blue gloss in Hiresha’s enchanted light, the Bright Palm’s eyes two motes of white. “I promise not to kill you or any others in the MindvaultAcademy, should I lose.”

  The wager chilled Hiresha, and she was thankful she would not have to rely on it. “I must accept.”

  Hiresha pinched her eyes closed, for a moment overwhelmed by the onslaught of pain. She pushed her left hand in the snow to try to numb it. “Sheamab,” she said between gasps, “I don’t expect you often played the cooperative version of the game.”

  The enchantress alluded to the two paths of victory allowed in Sands, to keep the Bright Palm’s focus on the game and away from suspicion. Some Academy students eschewed competition and instead worked together to create new patterns of sand on the board. Given Sheamab’s audacious comments about her skill at the game, Hiresha doubted she had ever been the type to take joy in making art with a friend.