He lurched forward, sapphires and zircons bursting from his tunic. They had punctured his entire torso. The Bright Palm would have collided with the enchantress, likely stabbed her with his knife, but a shield of Lightening protected her and left him floating. Hiresha kicked him, bare foot on his ruined shirt. He arched upward then was slammed to the side by a tangle of gold and silver embroidery wire.
A Bright Palm to her left grabbed at her. His face showed no surprise or horror at what had happened to his comrade. The enchantress tossed a garnet at him, and he rolled away to dodge it.
The last man still upright reached for her with an arm of lean strength. The underside of his stretching hand shone bright and pink next to the ebony of the rest of his skin. Within a second, he would seize her.
A squeak, and the fennec was dragged by his collar onto her lap. She wrapped an arm around him, and with her left hand she fumbled with his collar. Her right clutched the red diamond and was slick from her blood. The fox’s ears folded forward as she slipped off his necklace.
The Bright Palm grabbed for her arm. The fennec nipped him, fangs biting into shining flesh. She squirmed in the chair, away from the tribesman, and she pitched herself forward. His long arms swung down to snatch her. Each instant crawled by with the heart-thudding finality of last chances. She swung her arm up to ward him away. He gripped her blood-slick wrist. She jerked it free.
Stumbling, wheeling about him, she slapped the collar over his hand the next time he reached for her. He ignored the circle of amethysts that slid to his elbow and lowered his massive frame to sprint after her.
She was dashing toward the window. A second’s delay in opening it would be the death of her. She would need a Lightening spell to make it blow open at her touch. As she readied the jewel, the fennec yipped, slipping out of her grasp. She ducked, caught him with her other arm. Her left hand threw a garnet—Attraction or Lightening?—and she realized with a shock of horror that she had forgotten to see which. Not that she would have had the time with two Bright Palms thumping across the room.
The jewel struck a crystal pane, white flakes spinning in an eddy on the other side. As the gem flared and tinted the sill with purple light, Hiresha had a moment to imagine if she had thrown the Attraction jewel by accident. She would be trapped against the window and held there for half an hour or until the Bright Palms could pry her loose.
Hiresha charged over the silken remains of her gowns and slammed into the window. Her hand slapped at the latch.
The Lightened window burst open, and Hiresha was flung into the winter storm.
Coldness slammed into her. It pierced her, from bleeding chest to spine. It constricted her, pressuring her from all sides and forcing out her breath. Air-born crystals of ice lashed her skin.
Her stomach flipped as the Academy enchantments wore off and gravity reasserted itself. The direction of her fall changed, reversed, and she tumbled backward, landing beside the window. A break in the clouds revealed blue sky directly above her. She had known the Lark’s Hall floor to be tilted, with that window not facing sideways but up to the sky.
Her banged knee rang with pain as she stood. Before she had even turned to run, a man’s head with short-cropped curly hair stuck out of the window. Except he looked down while she ran up the RecurveTower.
Though coldness of the snow-swept stone felt like walking on knives, exhilaration coursed through her in a growing heat. I’m going to escape—
The fennec in her arms gave a cooing series of chirps. She tried to press his mouth closed.
The tribesman swung his head around to see her running up the side of the tower. He sprang through the window after her, his knee-length robes whipping about in the wind.
“Fennec! How could you?”
Hiresha knew she could not outpace a Bright Palm. Not when the cold was already squeezing the life from her muscles, forcing her to hobble more than run. The Bright Palm’s sandals slapped closer, though every few steps she heard a squeal of leather sliding over the slick surface of the tower. The outside of its stone was enchanted with minor Repulsion, to stop snow from piling up, and Hiresha now understood all too well why no novices attempted pranks by climbing outside on bad-weather days.
When her own foot scooted out ahead of her and she landed on her side, she knew the Bright Palm would catch her. Slipping back onto one knee, she looked up to see the purple-jeweled collar flash on his arm. He had traveled far enough from the room with her bracelet to activate its enchantments.
The tribesman’s feet circled in the air as he was Lightened then yanked backward. He skidded over the surface of the tower, helpless as the collar’s spell Attracted him back toward the window and into the room with her bracelet. He never cried out, and his face remained a stoic mask.
Another Bright Palm leapt out the window in time to watch his fellow sucked by him into the room. He called after him. “Tell Sheamab.”
Hiresha hurt with pride for thinking of that maneuver. She had a lead, but she knew it could not last as she scrambled up the curving slope of stone. When she reached the crest of the tower, the full force of the wind hit her, and she moved backward in a heart-screaming slip.
The fennec jabbered and wriggled from her grasp.
She regained her balance and called out. “Fennec!”
The fox hopped alongside then zigzagged ahead. His ears and tail were lowered, but otherwise the desert fox seemed at ease in the snow. At least compared to a certain naked enchantress.
She plodded onward, and the tower leveled out. Hiresha passed by windows like trapdoors of glass, then walked over a section of quartz wall. Peering down, she saw the shadowy shape of a bridge going through the center of the Hall of Refreshment.
A yip from the fox alerted her to the nearing Bright Palm. He had shuffled forward in a crouch, now straightening for the last dash. He did not seem to pant, or even breathe, and he had drawn his lips between his teeth to the point where he seemed to have no mouth.
Hiresha spun to release a jewel of Lightening. Excitement blazed through her because she knew that a man Lightened here would be blown miles away, either down into the valley or between the peaks and dropped onto a glacier. Would serve him right, too.
Her fingers had trouble feeling the jewel between them, and she threw it too late in the arc. The wind pushed it further off course, and the Bright Palm did not even have to shift his charge to dodge it.
Last one, Hiresha thought as she tossed her garnet of Attraction at his feet.
The Bright Palm hopped over it. The snow around the gem lit purple, and he fell backward, smacking against the tower. He tried to stand but only ended slapping back down, the jewel crushing him into a fetal position. The enchantment would hold him there for an hour, more than long enough.
Hiresha tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but it ended more in a wheezing choke. Her lips stuck together. She realized she could not feel anything past her wrists or below her ankles. She checked her wounded hand, saw the red diamond still there. Deliberately folding her fingers over it one by one, she descended the far side of the tower.
The building curved downward in a spiral. Though she could not see it through the storm, this half would eventually loop back upward into the Ceiling of Elders.
Something pink grasped the side of the tower, a billowing tendril of canvas that stretched out into the white gales. Hiresha had no desire to try crawling over the rippling TentacleBridge. It would only lead her to the Somnarium, and she was of the belief that nothing good had ever come of venturing to the college of soft enchantment.
Hiresha knew she crossed over the tower’s administrative hall now. Once she reached the Hall of Elders, she would break into her own room. An armory of jewels awaited her there.
“And—and some clothes,” she said to the fennec, her voice a gasp.
The downward slope of tower was shadowed by the coiling bulk of stonework overhead. The building wrapped around itself, and her way was blocked by a coil of stonework. S
he had to slide partway down the side and crouch below the blocks of stone to advance. The overhanging structure protected her from the wind, for which she was thankful. The gusts had felt like they would slice her in half. Glancing up, Hiresha fancied she could see the glowing outline of a Bright Palm. He had to be holding onto a window, peering down in her direction.
I wonder if he can see me.
The white blur wobbled in the air as the figure fell between the tower coils, through a gust of snow. Someone smacked against the slope of stone, slid, and caught hold of a window not too far from Hiresha.
Frozen air lodged in her throat, her eyes popping at the Bright Palm. Is this Sheamab? When the Bright Palm lumbered toward her, Hiresha saw she was wrong, if not less horrified.
Gold wires stuck out of his flesh. His shirt had fallen to shreds, exposing a mess of black chest hair and skin pockmarked with the jewels that had pierced all the way through his body.
The Bright Palm lived? The thought slimed its way through her. The sight of him, stomping toward her with chin thrust forward, stunned her. She had heard of the toughness of Bright Palms, but her jewels had to have cut through every organ in his torso. A more decent man would have done the proper thing and died.
Opening her left hand, she saw the garnets imbedded in her blanched fingers, and none of those could be thrown to defend her. In her right, her diamond was dark in the dim light, and she needed it to open doors.
And windows. She scrambled to the nearest glassy surface, and pressing the diamond against it caused one half to slide open.
Rolling inside, she flopped upward to land against the floor. The fennec yelped as he too was flipped in mid air by the Academy’s enchantment. Hiresha reached out to pull the window closed. Have to lock it before the Bright Palm—
An arm riddled with jewels slammed the window open. The Bright Palm swung himself into the room with her.
18
Hall of Crystalline Records
Shelves glittered blue in the light of Hiresha’s earrings. If not for the plaques enumerating each hexagonal crystal formation, she could believe herself in a quartz cavern. Each crystal cluster contained enchanted records of transactions of the Academy, monies received from donors and tuitions, notations of gold and other precious materials dispensed for magical research.
Hiresha cared little for any of that and was only too happy to shove a shelf onto the Bright Palm.
Hundreds of crystals tipped, tinkling onto the tiles and exploding in shards that flared pink as their enchanted records died. Hiresha might have cackled, if not for the frozen muscles of her chest.
The Bright Palm stood in the wreckage of the shelf. He tugged two bronze nails from his belt, the spikes jutting downward from his fists. Silver wires embedded in his flesh shifted direction as his muscles flexed, and he lunged at her.
Hiresha scrambled away, weaving between the shelves. He means to kill me. Hot fear thumped out from her heart only to burn against the numbness in her limbs. Her knees wobbled, and she realized that she could barely move, that he would catch her in moments.
A sense of doom hit her a second before the Academy’s enchantment gave out. Her feet lifted from the floor. She fell toward the ceiling along with a rain of crystals.
Tumbling upward, she flung her arms above her head. She wondered if the ceiling’s stone would be any gentler than the Bright Palm’s spikes. Her eyes pinched closed.
Her shoulder smashed into tile, and she felt herself scooting across a slope. She slid to the center of a dome then halfway up the far side of the ceiling. She came to rest at the middle of concentric sphere designs, amid the crunching remains of crystals.
Glancing up, she saw the fennec barking at her on the floor. The Bright Palm was unwinding a rope from his belt and wrapping it around a spike.
Transparent pieces of crystal were levitating around her, and with a shock she realized the Academy was reasserting itself to counter gravity once again. Soon she would tumble back to the floor, and it lacked any sort of slope to break her fall.
If the enchantress could have spoken with the Academy then, her words would have been stern. Make up your mind, would you? Fail or don’t.
A darker piece of crystal caught her eye as it floated past her face. It was triangular and faceted. My diamond! She caught it as her hair drifted upward. Placing the gem in her mouth, beneath her tongue, seemed safer than trying to hold it in her numb fingers.
She pushed herself off the ceiling, drifting toward the nearest column. Wrapping her arms around it, she started sliding head-first toward the ground.
The yips of alarm from the fennec made her all too certain the Bright Palm waited for her at the base of the pillar. She pushed off the marble, rolled on top of the nearest shelf.
“Where is Bright Palm Choen?” The man below shoved at the shelf, tipping her.
Arms flailing, she caught hold of the next shelf and scrambled on top.
Amid the crashing of crystal, the Bright Palm said, “What have you done with Choen?”
“Choen? Was he—He was the one who chased me up the tower?” She hopped to the next shelf, almost fell, leaned backward for balance.
“Yes.”
She dashed across two more shelves, toward a window. “I stuck him to the top of the RecurveTower. Maybe he’ll freeze into an ice sculpture. It w-won’t be the first time an oddity was left up there as a jest.”
Dropping in front of the window, she slapped it open. Looking back, she saw she had a moment before the Bright Palm could see her between the shelves. As she had hoped.
She swung herself outside, clinging to the window frame. The error in her plan occurred to her as her numb fingers began to tremble, sliding down the edge of the frosted sill, trailing wetness. I might as well try to cling to an icicle.
Hiding against the side of the tower, she heard his clomping strides coming closer. Hurry, she thought. What a time for a Bright Palm to be slow.
He leaped out the window after her, no doubt thinking gravity would pull him back to the side of the tower as it had before. But this stretch of tower was close to vertical, and he would track a straight course the hundreds of feet to the plateau below.
A laugh of cold phlegm crackled in Hiresha’s throat.
Her teeth clicked closed when the Bright Palm twisted about mid-air and lobbed the spike. A rope uncoiled behind the bronze missile. She thought he might have aimed at her, but the metal nail fell through the window, serving as a grapnel that pulled the Bright Palm against the wall.
Hiresha scrambled back inside. Putting both her hands beneath the spike, she flipped it upward and back out the window. With a certain satisfaction she watched the rope and bronze head snake downward, away from the tower. She craned her neck, hoping the storm would ease enough to see the Bright Palm crushed against the plateau, at last reasonable in death.
A clattering sound made her push herself even farther over the sill to see the Bright Palm, not in a state of glowing pulp and bones but against the side of the tower. He had used the time on the rope to swing to a lower window. Now he was smashing a spike through the glass. Worse than the vandalism, she believed he would enter the Elder’s Hall, where she wished to go.
The fennec fox was batting a bit of crystal about the floor. She hoisted him up, held his small warmth against her chest. She stroked the fuzz between his ears, wishing she could feel his fur.
“In the face of all p-propriety, he refuses to die. How—how will I expel t-ten of them from the Academy, f-fennec?”
His whiskers twitched as he smelled the blood caked to her abdomen. My own blood. Her finger moved over the divot in her chest above her lingerie, where the red diamond belonged. Her tongue shifted the jewel against her cheek.
With her next step, she swayed against a shelf. Glancing down, she saw crystal shards stuck in her feet, and she could not even feel them. Lifting a hand to her neck, she felt her pulse was slow and weak.
“I’m n-not well,” she told the fennec.
At the center of this level of tower, two quartz tubes twined about each other. Each transparent channel was wide enough to fit an elder enchantress and her gowns. Hiresha had hesitated to use the Expediency Vessels, as anyone would see her descending in them. Also, one tended to build alarming speed while circling downward in the glass slides, and if an enchantment failed along her descent, she could shoot past the Hall of Elders and be launched straight into the Ceiling.
The quartz tubes connected at one point, in front of an ebony door. She leaned against it, ten panels of the dark wood stacked lengthwise on top of each other. A depiction of the Opal Mind was carved into it as a woman with a circle of power around each hand, a third sphere as a halo, and a fourth around her torso.
Hiresha slid to the right side of the door, and in her befuddled state of mind she even pushed the red diamond to the right side of her mouth. The wood panels were drawn into separate sides of the tubes, the door opening like a sideways mouth full of square teeth. The view inside was little more inviting. The right-hand Expediency Vessel looked like nothing more than a crystal gullet, the faraway movement of air sounding as one long breath.
“H-hold on,” she said to the fennec.
By habit, she slid down the tube head-first, the more dignified position when wearing skirts that could flip upward. It felt as if she spun about in a river of air because Repulsion enchantments in the crystal reduced the friction of her skin on the tube.
Faster and faster she sped, her arms wrapped as a cage around the fennec to protect him. Her tongue pressed her diamond against the roof of her mouth. She knew if she lost hold of that, the enchantments in the Vessels would never identify her or slow her. Her end would be an embarrassing mess against a marble wall.
Gravity's Revenge Page 13