“When we have to rest on our own table, it’s never good.” The fingers of her yellow glove had darkened from the cuts beneath, the same spots on Hiresha’s hand where Sheamab had pried out the gems. After the Mistress of Distraction fitted herself into the depression of the table, she lifted her gown to reveal the injuries to her legs.
In the dream, Hiresha bore no wounds herself. That was as expected. Less so were her tangled hair, chipped nails, and stained fur coat. My control is crumbling.
The baubles had arrived to orbit around Hiresha. The magic scripts in the bloodstone stopped the bleeding in the replica’s fingers and beneath the skin around her splintered bones.
The Mistress of Distraction hid the sight of her legs from herself with her skirt. “It’s frightening to have lost all our jewels, isn’t it?”
“It feels most unnatural. This is the first time in twelve years, two hundred and eleven days.”
Hiresha did not count her earrings, as she could not enchant them. Those jewels belonged to the deceased Enchantress Planterra more than Hiresha, and she knew herself to be in no fit state to contest their magic. Neither did she feel worthy to disturb the elder enchantress’s soul on account of her own blunders.
Hiresha used another set of blue diamonds to peer inside the Mistress of Distraction’s leg, to the puzzle of her broken bones. Hiresha had her platinum clamp to rearrange the chalky pieces to their preferred accommodations. First, she touched the woman in yellow with the onyx choker to numb her.
“Whether or not you deserve pain, I can’t have you squirming and wasting time.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong. Oh! That tingles.”
“Your idea concerning the goddess’s opal was abysmal.”
“We never said we could be right all the time.” She peeled off her glove to reveal two fingers still broken though no longer bleeding “And we didn’t say you were stupid for believing in that diamond-sands trick.”
“Actually, you just did.” Hiresha took her replica’s twisted fingers, pressing them straight and rearranging the bones.
“We need to be faster.” The Mistress of Distraction flexed her hand. “Sheamab can think her way through everything if she has time, but we’ll come up with something.”
“As if I would listen to you. Had I another life, I would spend all of it ignoring your blathering.”
“‘Blather’ sounds like washing yourself in bubbles. We never do that.”
“The only suitable punishment would be to force you to listen to yourself.”
The smoke had converged above them to choke out the jeweled stars. The heat of the flashfires pressed in around Hiresha as if she were trapped in a kiln.
She said, “In the fight on the plateau I was distracted when you blurted out the Lord of the Feast’s guilt. Your blathering led me straight into a bludgeoning.”
“That’s unfair. We knew not to go after Mister Jewel Pox, not to turn from Sheamab. Knew she’d catch us, but then we over-thought it.”
Hiresha passed a hand underneath the replica’s leg to Attract a few shards of bone together. “I do believe I’m healing out of habit. No possible use remains for this intact body.”
The Mistress of Distraction burst into opalescent tears, her face turning slick with colliding colors of blue, red, and green. “We’re so sorry. We couldn’t help thinking about Tethiel. It was like seeing one facet of a new gem, bright as sunshine. How could we just look at the first part? It—it wasn’t even our idea.”
“Not yours?”
The woman in yellow nodded toward a nearing wall of flames. The smoke parted around a leaping woman, and the Feaster landed on a boulder in a crouch. Her black claws splayed over her knees, though her gown was burnt, her hair curled and melted in places. Her wild-violet eyes darted between the fire and Hiresha.
“You should snuff out the flames,” the Feaster said.
“Even if I could at present, I see little point. I suspect Sheamab intends to drag my body to the cliff, but not back again.”
She had channeled her awareness down to a narrow point of magical focus on the operations table. The blue diamonds made part of the Mistress of Distraction transparent, like quartz, and Hiresha could peer into the woman’s knee. The white tendons had all but been torn off the pebble-shaped bone. Hiresha Attracted the split pieces together and waved to the onyx choker.
“With the pain deadened, no new fires will start. That is the best I should expect.”
“You should expect to live,” the Feaster said.
The Mistress of Distraction wiped pinkish green tears from her eyes. “We don’t want to die.”
“I had thought to have more time. So many experiments unfinished. But I must be reasonable, in death at least,” Hiresha said. “I have no means, not one jewel for holding enchantments. Waking would only return me to my injuries.”
The Mistress of Distraction hopped from the operations table on her newly healed legs. When she bent over to pick something up from the ground, a line of evenly spaced bumps ran down her spine from the pressure of her vertebrae. Her yellow gown was backless.
“She’s right,” the Feaster said. “You have to repair a mirror. Use it to find one of your dropped jewels. If it’s close enough—”
Hiresha turned away from the Feaster. “Your approval hardly endears me to the scheme.”
“True, I’m never right.” The Feaster sprang an unnaturally long distance away. She landed on another boulder farther from the flames. “Especially about the Lord of the Feast and how you should’ve killed him days ago.”
“The man you would’ve had me kill was the one to free you from the mirror. You’re as traitorous as he and hardly a reputable advisor.”
“Freedom is no prize when you’re about to be murdered by Bright Palms.” The Feaster’s voice shrilled with a brittle edge of desperation. “Recreate the mirror. Find a gem. Now.”
“Perhaps if I locate a suitable jewel I could bind my soul into it.” A crumpled silver frame was Attracted from the wreckage and straightened. With a wave of her hand, shards sprouted from the ground. “The plan would entice me more if I could be sure my deathless dreams would exclude both of you. I’m hardly keen on dooming myself to the insufferable.”
“Hurry!” The Feaster rolled stones into a footwall in the path of a nearing tide of flame. “Look for the red diamond.”
Arranging the shattered glass on the mirror frame was easier than repairing bones and veins. A swarm of shards fitted themselves into a view of the stormy plateau. It appeared empty of life and dark. Hiresha rested a hand against the cracked surface of the mirror, searching with her mind for jewels.
“We should find something near.” The Mistress of Distraction stood beside Hiresha on her tiptoes.
“You wasted enough of them,” the Feaster said. “Scattered them like salt.”
“My greatest connection was with the red diamond.” Hiresha’s hand balled into a fist on the mirror. “And I can’t detect it.”
“Tethiel must’ve taken it.” The Feaster kicked dirt into the flames.
“There!” A yellow glove pointed through the mesh of fracture lines in the mirror to an orange-tinted stone in the snow. “A fire opal! It’s a sign.”
“It is a hardened gel of minerals and water.” Hiresha beckoned, and the gem shot through the powder and into the mirror. Shards parted around it then clicked back into place. The enchantress picked the bead-shaped gem out of the air and lifted the hem of her coat to place the fire opal against her thigh. “Less likely for Sheamab to see it there.”
“We have to hope she wasn’t looking at us just then.”
Hiresha said, “The stone may be a beautiful shade of orange, but it’s not a paragon gem and won’t hold my soul. Neither are there any other jewels close enough to Attract. Given that their locations aren’t changing relative to me, Sheamab must have dragged me to whatever unwholesome place she had in mind.”
“We hear someone calling our name. We should wake. Enchan
t the fire opal and see who it is.”
“It could be Tethiel,” the Feaster said. “He spited you by living.”
“You can tell he escaped?” Hiresha asked.
The fires around the three women roared, spat sparks, and blazed brighter to what looked like flames of gold. The Feaster scanned the converging inferno with wild eyes and arms racking about each other.
“Fos is likely calling to me to free him from his bindings,” Hiresha said. “Or it is Sheamab.”
“We can free him. Or ourselves anyway, and him, too, if he’s alone.”
“If not, Sheamab will tend to notice any ropes torn asunder. Then she will cripple me again and may take away my fire opal.” Hiresha stored the magic of healing in the orange-colored stone, mostly for a sense of spell completion. “I will have accomplished nothing.”
“Ouch!” The Mistress of Distraction flinched, and redness spread over one side of her face then the other. “Someone is slapping us. And—Mmmhmmm!”
“Now clamping my mouth and nose shut, apparently,” Hiresha said. “Sheamab must want me awake for some reason, and I have a mind to thwart her.”
The Mistress of Distraction tossed her head from side to side in a wash of sleek hair. She made opening eye motions with her fingers.
“Your hopefulness reflects poorly on your intelligence.”
“Don’t you dare let yourself die.” The Feaster dug her nails into Hiresha’s arm. “I’ll track you into the afterlife and rip out your heart every day for eternity.”
“As if you could follow me into the Fate Weaver’s cavern.” Hiresha willed the basalt rubble to be Attracted to the Feaster, and rocks clung to her sides and pulled the lady to the ground. “But given that I found this fire opal, perhaps it is a goddess’s will that I wake. To endure some further punishment.”
With her body’s ability to breathe cut off, the vital essence drained from the air of the dream as well. The flashfires withered to smoldering embers. The Feaster gasped and clawed at the ground. The Mistress of Distraction clutched her throat. Hiresha stood unaffected, as of yet.
“I could replace the healing enchantment in the fire opal with one of Lightening. To try to expel whichever Bright Palm is heaping abuse on me. Yet, if it is Sheamab, the fennec’s collar will save her. If it’s Bright Palm Rommick, then I’ll be again in agony and have accomplished little. Sheamab would most likely see the gem and stop me in any event.”
Grey and black smoke curled around her, choking out everything else in the dream. Hiresha knew she stood between death and continued imprisonment. Dying now or later tonight seems of small import.
“In all probability, this is a mistake.” Hiresha blinked awake.
Sheamab loomed over her, the Bright Palm’s hair a rippling blackness around her impassive face. Her hands unclamped from Hiresha’s nose and mouth.
The enchantress gasped in coldness and falling snow. She grunted when the Bright Palm spun her around and shoved her halfway over the edge of the cliff. A sandal dug into the small of Hiresha’s back, holding her suspended. Wind keened upward from the emptiness, and Hiresha’s locks coiled and flailed and stung her eyes.
42
The Brink
Blurred figures were climbing the cliff. Shadows clung to the rock and gazed up at Hiresha with smears for faces. They each wore one long spike on their backs. After she blinked her eyes into focus, Hiresha saw the glint of their eyes and of metal. They were men with greatswords.
Past them, a few flecks of light were visible through the windows of the College of Active Enchantment. Along the rest of the Blade, panes of glass glistened black like facets of obsidian.
“Tell them, Enchantress,” Sheamab said at her ear. “Tell the spellswords that I still control the Academy and will execute you and every other enchantress unless they descend back to their college.”
Hiresha muddled through the concepts of the spellswords climbing the cliff through snowy gales, of Sheamab threatening them and demanding they turn back, of her needing proof to dissuade them.
They’re too late. The enchantress bowed her head into the precipice. Her hands were bound in front of her, constricted by rope, pinched and purpling at the fingertips. Hiresha’s voice broke as she shouted.
“It—it’s as the Bright Palm says. She’s more than capable of disposing of everyone if you don’t turn back, Spellsword Trakis.”
Hiresha had spotted the elder spellsword by the glint of rings woven into his imposing beard. Gold jewelry was braided into the scruff of white below his chin, and silver into the rest of the dark and wavy hedge.
He squinted up at her. One hand shivered as he gripped a wrinkle in the cliff. His other clung to a rope attached to a nail he must have driven into the rock. “With all honors due, Enchantress, I must know who speaks. What is your name and—gods whip me for having to ask—what’re your gowns of merit?”
“Why, it’s I. Elder Hiresha. The earrings should make that obvious.”
“Well throw me into the Sea of Fangs and I’d still beg your pardon, Enchantress, but you can’t be the elder. The Provost of Applied Enchantment is resting in the Blade. She’s the one good enough to fly down and told me it was safe to climb.”
“As in, I flew down to the College of Active Enchantment wearing copper wings?”
“And with wrath in your eye. Er, her eye,” Spellsword Trakis said. “Well stab my tongue! Does this mean you flew back up and into misfortune?”
Tethiel stole my image, my face, my voice. Frigid anger swept over her at the illusionist’s presumption. She knew she had told the Lord of the Feast to descend to the Blade. In a way, I did ask for him to speak for me. The thought still chilled her that she might live longer through his illusions than in her true body.
“You encountered a Feaster,” Sheamab said from over Hiresha’s shoulder. “Trust that the enchantress before a Bright Palm is no falsehood.”
“A Feaster? Spitted dogs and crow flops!—beginning your pardon, Enchantress.” Spellsword Trakis peered into the darkness below him on the cliff. “A long way to climb for only frozen fingers to show for it. There’ll be one headless Feaster before the night’s out if I have my way, the enchantress-impersonating mongrel!”
Hiresha said, “You shouldn’t—”
Sheamab spoke over her. “Do not engage this Feaster, for he is beyond your measure. We will attempt to lower a Bright Palm to your college tonight.”
The spellswords descended their ropes. The enchantress was dragged alongside the cliff by hers. So far by living I’ve averted one tragedy. But the night is far from over.
With the pain in her leg and hand gone she could better appreciate the ache in her chest from the Lord of the Feast’s betrayals. Attempting to rally the spellswords hardly balances his luring the Bright Palms here in the first place. He cares only for destroying his enemies. He is obsessed.
As Hiresha was pulled closer to the Mind’s Gate, she decided that Tethiel had likely already flown from the Blade. He’s not so foolish as to stay and be caught. He’s said his farewells, caused his travesties.
She hated to think of him free. She would have felt the same about his death. Not for his own sake, but for the chaos in the Lands of Loam that would have followed. She did not care to imagine the next lord of nightmare. And Hiresha was more than certain that whoever succeeded him would not be half so interesting.
The rope that had pulled Hiresha slackened. A second cord remained binding her hands as Mister Jewel Pox searched the enchantress, pawing into her pockets. He missed the opal stuck to her thigh.
“No keys, no gems,” he said.
Sheamab nodded and stomped on Hiresha’s face. The blow surprised Hiresha more than it hurt, though the continued pressure locked her head in place and mouth shut. The sandal’s scarred leather dug grit and coldness into Hiresha’s lips. She could see Sheamab’s toes glowing through her sandals, and they were long enough to look like stunted fingers.
“Spellsword Fosapam,” Sheamab called
out, “I understand this enchantress imprisoned members of the Order of the Innocent in the tower, beyond a door of stone.”
Hiresha’s eyes found Fos at the crest of the Skyway, where the path curved over the edge and onto the cliff. He lay beside a candle lantern, ropes covering his hands and ankles. It appeared the spellsword might slip over the frosted slope and fall at any moment. The half of his face she could see in the light in the wind-tortured flame peered back at her with guilt and firming resolve.
“If you provide me with the whereabouts of the key,” Sheamab said to Fos, “then I’ll not push the enchantress off the cliff.”
Hiresha would have liked to urge him to defy the Bright Palm. Far better I go over the edge than Inannis and Emesea go free. She could not tell him so, had to struggle to do so much as breathe through her running nose. She clawed at the Bright Palm’s ankle but could not budge her.
“You already promised you wouldn’t harm her,” Fos said.
“That, I never promised,” Sheamab, “but I am willing to give those words to you.”
The sandal pressed Hiresha’s face downward, leaning her over the edge. She felt she was balanced at the end of the world. Snow careened upward along the cliff in waves of wind.
Hiresha did not even try to grip Sheamab’s foot, to tip her off the edge, to hold onto her. The fennec’s collar on her arm would only save her. The fox himself yipped while jogging between the enchantress and the spellsword.
The enchantress’s chin was forced back by the sandal, her face torqued to the side but still in a position to see Fos. A flicker of purple caught her eye, something fluttering below the spellsword on the Skyway. Was that a jewel sash? Sheamab had thrown them from the plateau, and Hiresha could imagine one blown against the cliff road. But I can’t be certain that’s what I saw. Not that it would do me any good regardless, bound and without a single garnet left in my fingers.
Fos’s gaze sliced back and forth between Hiresha and Sheamab. He quivered, straining against the ropes. When he spoke, it was between gasps.
“Not certain your promise is good enough. After you put your light in Alyla.”
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