The elders faced each other over a granite surface patterned in four concentric spheres, the centermost green, and the outer a circle of red. On the other side of the design, an enchantress sighed, opening her hands to reveal mismatched gloves of clashing colors.
The chancellor nodded to her. “The Ceiling recognizes the Dean of Somnium Exploration.”
Brooches of jeweled flowers glittered in the dean’s grey dreadlocks as she spoke. “It is always students of hard enchantment who throw away the glorious gift of life. They—”
“The correlation does not equal causation,” Hiresha said. “The Grindstone’s students tend to have more debt than—”
The chancellor held up a hand. “The dean has the Ceiling.”
The dean cast a pitying look toward Hiresha and the weapon-strewn rector. “You must require your students to take more courses in the Somnarium, to reach the radiant oneness within.”
The rector’s column of hair tilted back as she scoffed. “Adding to an already overburdening curriculum would only—”
The chancellor closed a fist then opened her hand to another elder who was waiting with palms outward. “The Ceiling recognizes the Warden of Faceted Knowledge.”
Hiresha had opened her hands as well, but the chancellor had ignored her. I have to tell them now.
Age had bent the warden so far forward that the golden dome that decorated her hump was higher than her head. The warden also wore a mask of onyx, and she spoke in a brittle voice.
“The Ceiling of Elders has thrice rejected measures to construct barriers around the circumference of the plateau. Three, eleven, and twenty-seven decades ago respectively, similar measures were blocked.”
Hiresha flexed her fingers open and closed. The rector rambled on, and the chancellor refused to acknowledge Hiresha.
“It was decided the implementation of walls would give a prison-like atmosphere to a place dedicated to the infinite. Barriers of chain or stone would be anathema to the….Oh, dear. I lost my thoughts. What were we discussing?”
“The prevention of further depreciation of the Academy’s reputation through irreverent suicide,” the chancellor said. “The Ceiling recognizes the Dean of—”
Hiresha spoke first. “I have reason to suspect they were not—”
“Provost, if you please. The dean has the Ceiling.”
Hiresha had no intention of following the conventions, which would have her wait until all those older than herself had spoken. They must understand the danger. She threw a glove in protest into the center of the circles of granite. The purple fabric grazed the stone then flipped into the air. It tumbled down from the Ceiling. An enchantress below caught it before its amethysts could strike the floor. The fennec yipped.
The elders glared, stared, or raised an inquisitive brow. Hiresha’s exposed hand tingled in the tower’s chill. A purple garnet dotted midway on each finger, embedded in the skin. Hiresha felt a flash of uncertainty. I’m the youngest here. Could I be mistaken? Though her heart thumped, her eyes felt heavy and weary.
She said, “The Enchantress Miatha didn’t jump by her own will. Perhaps the lord did not either.”
“Take care how you implicate the MindvaultAcademy with speculation.” The chancellor frowned at Hiresha’s bare hand. “The Ceiling remains to the dean.”
“The dean hasn’t a cohesive thought in her head.” Hiresha pinched her eyes shut then forced herself to speak. “The Academy dropped Enchantress Miatha to her death. The magics of Attraction may be weakening on the plateau.”
A chorus of gasps rose from the floor.
“She didn’t say what I thought, did she?”
“Blasphemy!”
Veins stood out in the chancellor’s neck. “The Ceiling will come to order.”
Despite the dismay, Hiresha felt relieved. She was still not certain if she had seen a true plummet or Tethiel’s illusion, but she now felt confident the following investigation would find the truth and save lives.
The Warden of Faceted Knowledge touched her black mask. “There have been no recorded incidents of—”
“Can you substantiate that, Hiresha?” the rector asked. She leaned toward Hiresha, and the woman’s black eyebrows jutted with stray white spines of hair. The daggers she wore on her sleeves flashed, more gilt scrollwork than blade.
For a moment of panic, Hiresha could think of no proof. Then her fatigue receded enough for her to find an answer. “I am prepared to take anyone into my dream laboratory, to view my memories.”
With a snap of silk sleeves, the chancellor passed the Ceiling over to the rector.
The dome-haired woman asked, “You saw the enchantress fall?”
“Not precisely, but given her facial expression—”
When the rector frowned, faint wrinkles crossed the liver spots on her ebony face. “Interpreting motive through expression is imprecise.”
Hiresha knew it was, but she had hoped that the Rector of Rarified Armament—a colleague of equally rare skill—would have supported her.
The dean flashed her mismatched gloves and spoke next. “Hiresha has an exquisite dream, even if it is monotonous and overly constrained. I trust she has reasons to think the way she does.”
Hiresha felt sick with resentment toward the condescension. Yet, she met the gazes of the elders. “If you won’t believe me, think back over these last days. Have you noticed any peculiarities in the enchantments? A slip? A misstep on the wallways?”
“You have been deceived,” the chancellor said. “The novices have tricked you with a prank. Had I known you would be deluded enough to cause this outburst, I would have forbidden it.”
“A prank?” The Rector of Rarified Armament wore frames of gold over her ears that extended in wing designs, and the metal was blinding in the sunlight. “This is hardly leaving her favorite chair on top of the Ballroom. Or tying her smallclothes to the side of the Grindstone.”
The frizzy-haired dean spoke next. “If a prank, does this mean Enchantress Miatha still lives?”
“Twice, a member of the convocation has feigned death by jumping. Both incidents led to expulsion.” The warden’s eyes widened within the holes of her mask. “Or were we discussing murders?”
“We most definitely were not,” the chancellor said, “because nothing so sordid occurs in the MindvaultAcademy.”
The warden opened her knobby-fingered hands for permission to speak again. Hiresha did not wait for approval. She said to the chancellor. “I didn’t mistake a dress stuffed with straw as a falling enchantress. Why would you call this a prank? What do you know of it?”
The chancellor’s eyes darted over the circle of elders then up to the floor below them where enchantresses clutched their gowns in distress. The chancellor pawed through the clutter of amulets emblazoned with baboons and scarabs on her chest. Her twitching fingers rested on her access amulet, painted nails tracing around its circle designs.
When she at last spoke, her voice was measured and calm. “I know nothing of this incident. Except that anyone would judge it more likely that Provost Hiresha has committed a misjudgment than that a goddess’s enchantments have gone awry. If it was a prank, those novices involved will be expelled without tuition remittance.”
A suspicion itched Hiresha that the chancellor knew more. Hiresha wondered how the novices could be involved. Unless the chancellor knows Minna is a Feaster, who played a part in an illusion. Hiresha tried again to speak. “This was no common deception that—”
“The Ceiling goes to the Minister of Orbiting Bodies. I trust her voice of reason will dispose of this nonsense.”
The minister adjusted the several scarves strewn over her throat. Her silk was embroidered with constellations.
Hiresha held her breath, knowing the minister’s assessment would be respected. She had never failed to predict an eclipse or a star storm. Renowned for her precision and level-headedness, she had been named Minister of Orbiting Bodies despite her suspiciously masculine features, her hei
ght, and whispers that she was, in truth, a man wearing a dress.
“This morning,” the minister said, “I surveyed the valley floor by farglass. One rooftop of Stonton was cratered, likely by a fallen individual. Nearby at HalfBridge, the debris of the sleigh scheduled to arrive yesterday carrying Academy supplies was littering the streets. Children were sweeping the wreckage, and women wore the white of mourning.”
“The sleigh driver must have drunk overmuch wine,” the chancellor said. “He steered off the Skyway. Or the horse team panicked.”
The minister continued in her thready voice. “The fallen sleigh might be supporting evidence for Provost Hiresha’s theory, as unprecedented as the hypothesis may be.”
Hiresha felt the unbalancing combination of thankfulness for the minister’s collaboration as well as the terror of perhaps being right. She hoped she might yet be proven wrong, anything other than that the enchantments were disintegrating under their feet. What is happening to my Academy?
The elders looked no less shocked, the rector clutching the side of her head, fingers covering the gilt ornament surrounding an ear. The warden pressed a palm to the smooth blackness of her masked brow. The dean squeezed her eyes shut and chanted something under her breath.
“You do not understand what you say.” The chancellor stepped back from the ropes around the center of the Ceiling. Her sleeves fell about her boney elbows as she thrust outward with her hands as if to push away their words. “None of you do. The enchantments of the MindvaultAcademy cannot be failing because….”
The chancellor’s wig floated off her head. She tried to catch hold of it but only succeeded in slapping her crown of lank and thinning white hair. By then her skirts had curled upward, and she had started to fall.
She screamed. She flailed her arms. In a wash of lace, the chancellor dropped in front of a window burning with afternoon sun and snowcloaked mountains.
Later, when Hiresha had time to view her memories in the calm of the laboratory, she would see that the chancellor flipped midair in an arc of blue and orange skirts and a kicking of slippers. Far from trying to catch her, the enchantresses standing below stood shocked or stumbled and flung themselves away. The back of the chancellor’s neck collided with the granite floor tiles. It sounded like two bamboo training swords cracking together.
In the chaos of the moment, Hiresha knew only panic, bright and hot as the blood flowing between the backstepping enchantresses. Alyla shrieked and dropped the fennec. The fox pattered forward to sniff the spreading red.
Next to Hiresha, the rector stiffened then tipped backward in a faint. The minister caught the larger woman but toppled with her to the Ceiling. Hiresha dashed down the wall but found the chancellor already beyond help.
10
Spire of Magical History
Hiresha worried that Fos would soon be making his way along the Skyway for his night watch. I must warn the spellswords in the Blade and spare him that danger.
With the rector in a state of shock, the dean stayed to supervise the evacuation of all the women to the ground floor of the RecurveTower. Hiresha swept out from the entrance onto the Academy Plateau. The minister and warden flowed after her over the snow in two tides of bright fabrics.
The warden’s breath whistled through her black mask as she hustled to keep pace. “There are no jewel records of the Academy’s enchantments fading, yet our search must begin in the Spire.”
Hiresha felt a golden rush of relief at the sight of Fos’s purple jacket. He strode upright onto the plateau. As she went to him, he greeted her with a glacier-melting smile.
“One of your gloves snuck off?” He looked up from her bare hand to her face. “Say, is something wrong?”
“To put it simply, yes. Did you have any difficulties walking the Skyway?”
His face lifted then slumped in the expression of a boy caught. “How did you know? I must’ve stepped off the path. Late to bed last night and all, but I Lightened myself and got my feet back on the cliff.”
“I see I worry overmuch for you. Your spellsword magic protects you.”
“Thanks to your enchantments.” He lifted one leg. Though greave plates turned his feet into pillars of metal, he still managed a few lumbering dance steps. The greatsword hilt above his shoulder bobbed side to side. He stopped when the minister and the warden approached, and he went to one knee. “Elders.”
Hiresha said to him, “See that no one else attempts the Skyway. And direct everyone into the RecurveTower, but not by the LoftyBridge.”
“Where are we headed?” The Warden of Faceted Knowledge paused to lean on her ebony cane.
The Minister of Orbiting Bodies spoke with patience. “You said you could show us some manner of records.”
“Concerning the academy’s enchantments,” Hiresha said. “And their degeneration.”
“That would explain why I’m holding the chancellor’s amulet.” The warden hobbled down a path between the Grindstone and the RecurveTower. “Why isn’t Chancellor Ringwold with us? This must be important.”
Hiresha exchanged a glance with the minister, who wore rose-tinted glasses against the glare. Hiresha said, “The chancellor would wish us to correct this issue without delay.”
The minister adjusted her star-patterned scarves. “Ringwold was the finest administrator the Academy has ever seen. She must be given the wind burial.”
The words “thimble-minded, gold-sucking bureaucrat” came to mind, but Hiresha felt petty for thinking them now. Even if the chancellor had seen fit to deny most of Hiresha’s funding applications, Hiresha admitted the bureaucrat had seemed to have a knack for encouraging donors’ generosity for the Academy.
“Wind burial?” the warden said. “Whoever the enchantress is, she will be the thousand and twenty-first to receive that honor.”
The WaterflyRiver crossed over the plateau, frosted and frozen. An enchantment caused the course of the river to lift into the air, forming a bridge of ice, which the elder enchantresses walked under. The bottom of the river overhead glistened with distorted reflections.
A few novices were talking. One held up a blade of polished ivory bound to the bottom of a shoe. “Will the ice be thick enough for skating tomorrow, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t try it for a week. That water is deathly frigid.” The second novice nodded up to a lake suspended as a globe around an enchanted pillar. She glanced back to the approaching women. “Oh, inspiration to you, Elders.”
“Off to the Recurve tower with you,” Hiresha said. “No dawdling. The dusk is threatening, and the Academy is not safe at present.”
The warden asked, “Why ever not?”
“The Academy’s Attraction enchantments are decaying.” Hiresha was well used to repeating herself for the forgetful elder.
“That I doubt,” the warden said, “although they may be depleted. Hurry, we must check the keystones in the Spire.”
The three enchantresses approached a spinning tower of crystal. Made weightless by enchantment, the Spire of Magical History rotated from the force of wind pushing against the iridescent sheets of glass that fanned out from its sides like fish fins.
Once inside, the minister fanned herself with affected vigor. “A hot flash. I must breathe a moment, but you two will go on.”
Hiresha doubted the minister had ever experienced a hot flash. Regardless, she must be close to hyperventilating from the stress of it all. Hiresha felt dizzy herself and could not draw full breaths. An achy sense of unease was growing within her that everyone in the Academy was in danger.
Pushing the worry away, Hiresha focused on the task at hand. Tinted light of green and purple passed over her from the revolving glass above. The warden had set a foot on a pillar leading upward when Hiresha reached to pull her back.
“You can’t go vertical. It is not safe.”
The smoothness of the mask that hid the warden’s face gave her an impression of youthfulness. Every time she spoke with the gravelly voice of an elder
, Hiresha felt a touch of surprise. “The Academy keystones are at the most superior and secure reaches of the Spire.”
Hiresha pinched two green tourmalines from the pockets of her sash. “These gems will Lighten us, and if the Academy’s enchantments fail, we won’t fall far.”
“Why would they fail?” Eyes within the warden’s mask blinked when the provost tossed the jewel at her. The warden’s thick-jointed fingers tried to pull the gem from her gown, but it stuck. “The chancellor won’t care to hear of you flicking your jewels at senior faculty. Wait, where did I acquire the chancellor’s amulet?”
Hiresha clasped hands with the warden on their way up the column. The stone curved under their feet, and hues of dark blue and purple slid by as the spire turned around them. Shelves of crystal extended from the walls, holding outdated skyscopes, crudely carved effigies, papyrus scrolls, jaguar teeth capped in gold, a sea serpent’s vertebrae, and a piece of the prow of the first land-sailing ship. The antiquities revolved overhead, within reach.
“Novices steadfastly refuse to put the artifacts back on their proper shelves,” the warden said. “I should never sleep if I had to worry about them meddling with the jewel archives, too. Now, which gems did you wish to reference, Provost?”
The limestone of the column they walked on changed to a pink granite. Hiresha knew that novices could go no further. The new level of rock would only Attract those wearing amulets given to enchantresses. If someone had tampered with jewels critical to the Academy’s enchantments, it could not have been a novice.
“The Academy’s keystones, if you please,” Hiresha said. “Ah, mind yourself, Warden.”
The elder enchantress dropped her cane as she drifted off the side of the column. Hiresha held onto the floating woman’s hand, coaxing her upward through the air. Only the tips of her feet were visible within her puff of skirts, and they paddled until they settled back onto the column.
“Well, shatter my toes! Never happened before. Oh no, that’s my support.”
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