The enchantress split through the currents and cast forth a scythe of diamonds.
Emesea had already seen her, sensed her, and the being of wild magic jumped over the gemstone volley. Fury vented out her mouth in whitewater.
She spun in a vortex to grab Hiresha. The enchantress knew those arms had ripped a dragon’s head off and held no illusions that she could withstand them. Emesea moved with such force that her updraft alone could have crushed the enchantress in half, or so Hiresha feared. She wrenched herself away from death, upward to the paragon diamond. She had left it coasting on the wave.
Hiresha broke the surface. Emesea erupted after her, batting aside the next gems with shields of gushing sea.
The enchantress needed to draw the wild magic from Emesea. The diamonds had collected the essence from the tempest, and they could strip this being of her power if they could touch her. That seemed unlikely. Emesea snapped off of the sea’s surface with insect reflexes. A wave towed after her in a cape of water.
Emesea’s voice was thunder echoing from mountain crags. “You owe me, enchantress.”
The sea itself reached to kill Hiresha. The water formed cutting edges, serrated by whipping spume. Hiresha skirted around these only to face fists of rippling blue, knife storms of liquid, and a hammer of tide. This last clipped her foot, spinning her through the air and breaking her leg.
Even as her bones fitted back together, a larger pain pulsed through her in head-throbbing flashes of chartreuse. Fleeing from Emesea was the natural response, and not doing so brought agony.
Hiresha knew she did not have to win this contest. Withstanding would be enough. Each moment of Emesea’s pursuit, the tsunami lost momentum. Its waves drooped by degrees. Emesea would run out of wild magic in time. Long after I’m dead, Hiresha thought.
Emesea pawed at her with an air-tearing sweep of the arm. Hiresha flipped out of reach. Her next glittering attack was blown aside by a puff of Emesea’s breath.
The wind changed, disrupting the orbits of her gems. Hiresha glanced up to see waterspouts descending from the cloud like wobbling spears. The cyclones pulled the enchantress in while Emesea leaped straight through them. The gusts buffeted Hiresha closer to the slicing swords of water.
I am only outmatched in speed, muscle, and magic. Hiresha thrashed about for a plan, anything that could save her and Oasis City.
The answer flared in her mind. The warrior had provided the tactic herself, in the other facet. ‘When your foe is strong, make yourself appear weak.’
If the red facet predicted the blue, then that must mean…Hiresha set that thought aside. She accepted the insight as another power of her dream inversion.
Veering around a waterspout, she escaped Emesea’s view for an instant. Hiresha slipped a diamond beneath her tongue.
The enchantress flung herself toward Emesea with a hailstorm of jewels.
She swept them away. “You’ll pay your debt.”
“Can you even remember what you wanted?” Hiresha skirted around a war-club made of sea and jellyfish, calculating the exact amount the nearest waterspouts would deflect her flight. Her precision carried her within the reach of Emesea’s fingertips. Close enough to grab, not so close that the enchantress looked to be hurling herself at the being.
Emesea’s grip felt as movable as a mountain. Her eyes were moss-filled caverns. For the first time, she blinked. In a human, it would have looked like a moment of uncertainty.
“Do you even know who you are?” Hiresha asked.
“I am Emesea,” she said.
“Can you remember the land of your birth? Your gods? Your desires?”
“What do you know of them?” Emesea slammed herself and Hiresha into a waterspout. The world blurred. The wind roared, and vapor choked the enchantress.
Perfect! Hiresha leaned closer, as if to be heard above the cyclone.
She spat a jewel into Emesea’s ear.
A bubble of wild magic bulged from the side of her head. Emesea clawed at the leeching jewel. Her hand stuck. Then the diamond shattered in a wave of magic, and Emesea latched onto both sides of the enchantress to tear her in half.
Those hands of stone lost their hold. The paragon diamond had plunged through the wall of the funnel to smash into Emesea’s neck. The enchantress knew she should have felt pity for the woman instead of this ascension of happiness.
Hiresha flung herself clear of the waterspout. The wind yanked her hair but not hard enough to pull it out. She circled, Attracting her diamonds so they zoomed in from all directions to pepper Emesea.
Spheres of wild magic bloated in the vortex like blisters stretching to the bursting point. At the center of the light, a silhouette flailed and screamed.
Forgive me, Emesea. Hiresha hoped that the warrior would soon return to sanity. Or as close as she can come.
The globes of power stopped growing. Hiresha judged she had extracted all the wild magic. She released her Attraction enchantments on Emesea, and the woman spun downward in the funnel. The power flowed upward, a cyclone of green ribbons that exploded into the cloud.
Hiresha thought of searching for the remaining dragon, but with Skyheart dead, she decided she had to lay their vision of a joined sea to rest as well. She had passed the kraken’s carcass near the seamount. Focus and need for haste had blinded Hiresha to it, but now she allowed herself to see the memory.
Seagulls flocked in droves of white and black wingtips. They shrieked at each other, fighting for a spot on the island of flesh. Sharks worked the waters into a frenzy, while a giant black worm had risen from the deep to devour the carcass. The most dreadful part of all was the kraken’s skin. It was a wrinkled grey. Death had robbed Skyheart of all color.
Hiresha could only hope that the Fate Weaver had accepted Skyheart’s soul into the World Cavern, to view the marvel of the weave of life. The priesthood had mentioned that intelligent creatures like parrots and monkeys had their place in the grand tapestry.
The enchantress still might have wept, but she sensed that the kraken yet lived in her other facet. Hiresha felt as if a needle had lodged into her side, scraping her ribs with each breath, a sharp pain amid a shimmering bliss.
I stopped the tsunami, she told herself. Oasis City is safe. Nothing now prevents my sailing to shore and beginning a new life.
The waterspouts shrank back into the cloud. The wild magic shone through like spreading branches. Or tentacles. A dream storm uncoiled, its light sifting downward in veils that enlivened the waves. Sky skates breezed past Hiresha into the tempest. Dolphins chased each other through the tinted waters, chirping and trilling their delight. Sea life returned in force to frolic and feast beneath the storm.
Fifteen diamonds snaked down and around Hiresha, the paragon at their head. The enchantress ran her fingers over the gem pyramid’s side, feeling the precise roughness of its width of facets. Her hand filled with reflected sparks of purple, crimson, and blue. By the Fate Weaver’s mercy, the paragon had not been cracked by Emesea.
The warrior swam with the dolphins. She kicked her way out of the water, outdistancing the finned creatures. She must have some little magic left in her. More surprising was her laughter, a ringing of delight. She snatched a fish then floated on her back to eat it in a careless fashion.
Has she forgotten our fight already? Could Emesea have regained her mind? Hiresha flew through the dream storm to find out. She willed the wild magic not to touch her, and it flowed away in green rivulets.
The warrior spotted the enchantress. Emesea dove with the speed of a creature that had spent all its life in water. She still clutched her fish, and she hid beneath a whale shark.
She remembers me tearing her magic from her, then, and likely nothing before. Hiresha considered towing the warrior through the water, hauling her back to the boat. The enchantress decided against it. Where better to leave Eme of the Sea? Here she can do little harm and might even be happy. I certainly owe her that much.
As the enchantress flew awa
y, she worried she had convinced herself to abandon Emesea. Am I betraying her? Or would I only torture her by extracting the last of her magic and reminding her of memories lost forever? The enchantress only knew that with every bound she took over the water, her heart felt lighter.
The horizon rolled away to reveal a sail of tattered robes. Tethiel waited for her on the deck of Pharaoh’s Wisdom, his hand upraised. He looked as if he had stood that way for an hour and might have done so to the end of his days. She folded her fingers between his straight and healed ones. The relief she felt frightened her with its potency.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s time we left the sea.”
Two boats sailed toward shore. In one, Hiresha wore a red dress, the sun rising gold behind her. In the other, blue silk wrapped around her, and the day was setting into tones of twilight.
The enchantress felt a deep harmony, the synchronicity of dream aligning with reality. A vision—a vivid memory or foreknowing—unfolded before her, and she imagined she could gaze over the waves and see herself in another facet, another time, another hue.
In The Roost, a boat of feathered sails and woven branches, she helped lift the warrior’s remains. They had shrouded the body in blue, using the spare dress. Hiresha thought it fitting that Emesea wore the abalone armor in her sea burial. The best suit ever crafted in the Lands of Loam, for the best warrior.
“Yes, this is right,” Hiresha said. “She wants to be left at sea.”
Tethiel could not close his fingers in this facet. He held the warrior by bending his wrists. “Emesea is beyond regrets, and for that we must mourn her with envy.”
They lowered the remains overboard. The shroud darkened. It bobbed until Hiresha pressed a palm against it. She Burdened Emesea into the deep. A sensation of cold water slithered up Hiresha’s wrist and around her arm.
Tethiel said, “Living is a tragedy. We can only appreciate life by losing it.”
“And yet existence has its blessings.” Hiresha pulled back her sleeve to reveal what looked like a snake wrapped around her arm. Richer in color than any tattoo, its scales had a rippling texture similar to abalone. Blue crests swept backward from its head and ridged its back. “It appears that Emesea did not lie about being a dragon.”
Tethiel’s eyes flicked from the waters where the body had sunk then back to the serpentine creature on Hiresha’s arm. His voice contained a ghost of laughter. “The most dangerous thing about liars is their capacity for truth.”
Emesea the dragon gazed up at the enchantress with her golden eclipse eyes. Hiresha felt a sense of resounding peace, and she rather liked holding a dragon. The slender creature had a tingling aura, and her arm hairs stood on end.
Hiresha said, “She has rather more poise, would you not—Ow!”
Emesea shocked the enchantress then slithered up into her armpit. Hiresha did not care to guess where the small dragon intended to go next, and Hiresha Attracted the serpent into her hands. Emesea opened her mouth for a smile adorned with stubby fangs.
Tethiel and Hiresha sat side by side, his ragged trousers and her red skirt. He gazed to the west, she to the side. A tentacle rose from the waters, and its tip curled outward toward the dragon as if in a polite invitation. Emesea crawled onto the arm.
Hiresha watched the kraken. It swam beside them, lifting the sea level. In lulls of the wind, a tentacle pushed the boat forward. The kraken spoke with its eyespots, teaching the sign for “dragon.” Hiresha replied with ripple patterns. She had relearned the rudiments of the language.
When the kraken passed near a reef, eels and other fish bolted for cover.
Tethiel said, “Help me. I've been around fish so long that I'm developing a taste for their fear.”
“What is its flavor?”
“Caviar, of course.”
“You are indeed at the fringe of sanity.”
He nodded to the reflective band of dragon scale scrawling over the kraken’s skin. “I do so hope you’re talking with the Murderfish about Emesea. Gossip about a person is most exciting when said to her face.”
“I’m arranging to meet Skyheart at the next new moon. That should provide sufficient time for me to reestablish control of my mental facilities then begin a new dream inversion.”
“You’ve decided to continue being of two minds?”
Hiresha glanced into the other facet, seeing herself facing away from Tethiel and implanting jewels in her back. “It’s better for a woman to live two lives than half of one.”
“I congratulate your duplicity,” he said, “but then why stop your inversion at all? Powerlessness doesn’t suit you, my heart.”
“I promised myself I would, once I reached the shore,” Hiresha said. “A step back from the experiment will grant perspective.”
A tentacle dribbled water onto the boat, and Emesea slithered off it onto Hiresha’s lap. The enchantress dabbed the dragon with her red sleeve.
“I must wake,” Hiresha said. She heard her voice echoed on the other boat. “I must wake.”
In Pharaoh’s Wisdom, a boat of patchwork sail and barnacled planks, Hiresha ran a hand over her shoulder and across her back. Her skin alternated with smooth facets of blue. Her flesh sang with heat and tenderness. The diamond dust she had used to communicate with Skyheart now glittered across her shoulder blades and spine as a tattoo. Her larger, round gems formed a kraken’s eye and eyespots.
Emesea had tattooed herself as a remembrance for her dragon. Hiresha had chosen to do the same for Skyheart. A tribute to them both.
She looked over her shoulder. “How is Skyheart’s likeness?”
Tethiel made a show of cupping his chin in thought. “The perfect mixture of terror and beauty. A pity that perfection in living can only come through death. Life is such a tragedy.”
A sense of having heard him say that before chimed through her. The sensation was heady and not entirely disagreeable. She looked into his eyes, a dark grey in the dusk.
He gazed at her tattoo. “Any man viewing your blindside will feel at a great disadvantage.”
“As he should.” Her sari wrapped itself around her chest and over her shoulder. The silk felt like fire flowing over her back. “I’m more aware of what happens behind me now than I once was of the events in front of my eyes.”
“But, my heart, will the gems not pain you as you lie to sleep?”
“Do you even know whom you’re talking to?” She turned to face Tethiel.
He bowed in acknowledgement of her sleeping expertise.
Hiresha pondered if she ought to stay consistent by being terse. Or is my affection for him in the red facet an insight that I should reconcile?
Tethiel adjusted a coat the color of amethyst, spun from twilight. He buttoned it triumphantly with his healed fingers. “Dreaming with your eyes open suits you. I say continue your inversion. But I never think better of you than when you ignore my advice.”
“Is that so?”
“I invited you to flee with me. Instead you regained your powers and saved a city.”
“That does sound conclusive.” Hiresha grinned. She knew Tethiel was choosing to ignore the times she had followed his advice to triumph over dangerous Soultrappers.
“You’re a woman who’d jump out of a boat to save those she loves. All the while being a model of elegance. True elegance is rarer than heroism.”
“If less useful.”
“Do stars then have no use?” He swept a hand to the sky, and a constellation identical to Hiresha’s kraken tattoo spread tentacles through the night.
She appreciated the illusion.
“My heart, as long as we continue to disagree, we’ll have a bright future together. I was wrong to suggest you should be a Feaster. What a misery if you were a protégé, a competitor. It must never be so.”
Hiresha’s heart trilled within her chest to hear that apology. She said, “You already have Feaster Celaise as your successor.”
His pupils widened in surprise. “Just so.”
“Have you ever considered stepping down as Lord of the Feast?” Asking the question flushed Hiresha’s chest to match the heat on her back. “You could use wild magic to clear your mind.”
Tethiel closed his eyes as if savoring the thought. “Abandon my title? Escape responsibility for relaxation? What sort of irresponsible villain do you take me for?”
Hiresha smiled to herself. He’s tantalized by the idea. She made a decision then. It terrified her almost as much as it thrilled her.
She stepped beside Tethiel, unfolded a hand. She placed one of her remaining blue diamonds on his palm. Its faces flickered as she enchanted it.
The Feaster looked to her for an explanation.
“It’s for Inannis the Jewel Duper,” she said. She would heal the thief in this facet but not the other. A fitting punishment and reward. “You may be meeting him soon.”
“Will I now, Prophet Hiresha?”
“Inannis has a gem of mine. You may remember it. Once in your ignorance you gave me a red diamond. The mistake was not in the quality of the jewel but its setting. Such necklaces are engagement presents in my land.”
“I remember.” His voice was a whisper.
“Bring me the red diamond mounted on a gold chain, and I may not refuse it again.”
Across the waters, where the sun shone on the sea, the enchantress wearing red was also speaking to Tethiel. “Bring me another necklace with the blue paragon stone, and I may not refuse your betrothal a second time.”
Once, marriage had eclipsed all of Hiresha’s thoughts. She had even gone as far as to pick out gemstone names for her children. Her desire for respectability no longer shone so brightly, which was well, because then she could have never desired to spend her life with Tethiel.
He kissed her, and though Hiresha was at her most lucid, she could not decide if his lips felt more like ice or fire. The enchantress exchanged a secret glance over his shoulder with her identical sister in blue. The woman in the other boat had Tethiel in another embrace.
Dream Storm Sea Page 27