Gravity's Revenge

by A. E. Marling

  Stay conscious, she told herself as the Academy Halls sped around her, the black and white designs on the tiles blurring into grey. Stay conscious.

  The spellswords all peered at the right side of Fos’s face, their expressions saying more than he wanted to hear. Disgust pulled one man’s lips apart. Another had covered his mouth with a hand, eyes blinking and tearing up, the fibers in his neck visible and tense. A trainee had paled and stumbled from the room. The salt and pepper beard of Spellsword Trakis jutted outward in a chin-forward pose of determined graveness.

  “I’ll call the skin-stitcher to take out the eye.” Trakis pointed toward the darkness on the right side of Fos’s field of vision.

  “It’ll heal,” Fos said.

  He cupped a hand over his wounded eye. Heat pulsed there, under his fingers, within his skull. He would not call it pain. He did have to admit to being disturbed by the sensation of leaking over his cheek. The fluid was thicker than tears.

  “That is, Enchantress Hiresha will heal it,” Fos said. “I won’t lose the eye.”

  Snow rippled above them across the slanted roof of glass. The day was a hopeless grey, and most of the light came from candles held within crystal cabinets that opened both in this room and the ones adjacent.

  Trakis frowned through his beard. In the well-groomed scruff were braided rings of gold and silver. “You’ll lose the eye, surer than frosted shit on a yak’s backside.”

  Fos wanted to explain how he knew he would keep the eye. He had learned his future from the Priest of the Fate Weaver, and Fos believed his prophecy would have mentioned it if he were to be known as a one-eyed man. He also knew that Spellsword Trakis worshipped different gods. A pendent of devotion was thrust outward with each breath of Trakis’s barrel chest, the gold design of a camel balancing the sun on his back.

  Strong but stooped in his robe of chain armor, gruff but with a haunted look in his eyes, the elder spellsword seemed at once full of fury and despair. At each passing moment Chandur was not certain if he would explode in wrath or shrivel into himself and crawl to his bed.

  “Just bandage the eye,” Fos said. He rested a fist on the older man’s broad chest. “And don’t worry about what’s happening up top. We’ll put everything right.”

  Trakis swatted Fos’s arm aside. “Did more get knocked out of your skull than an eye? We’re not going anywhere, what with the Skyway now mostly a Down-down-fast-way, and with that merry little ultimatum you brought with you.”

  A man in a robe patterned after a vulture wrapped white linen over half Fos’s face. Fos kept expecting his field of vision to diminish with a bandage being wrapped over his eye, but nothing changed. The right side of his world stayed equally dark. It felt strange and off balance. Fos found himself turning his head to the right so he could get more of a forward view.

  Spellsword Trakis pulled at his beard, his fingers circling the metal rings within it. “Unless, unless you think the Bright Palm was not in earnest. Would she not carry through? Bright Palms are bold, but killing the enchantresses? That’s reckless.”

  Fos tapped at the bandage below his sightless eye. “She carried through fast enough with her bo staff.”

  “And just why did you stand there and take it like a blind mule? No offense meant, but I hope we don’t train victims here at the Blade.”

  Shrugging, Fos said, “Never expected a Bright Palm would swing me a stiff one. I’m no Feaster. And this is the one time Hiresha’s enchantment didn’t protect me.”

  He pointed to the ruby circlet that wound as a segmented snake about his brow.

  Trakis glanced at the enchanted jewelry. “Must’ve been a rattan staff. Not woody or metal enough for enchantments to sense it a weapon. Nasty stuff, rattan. Turns bones into elephant snot. Nothing to be done about rattan. Nothing to be done. Nothing at all.”

  The old man gazed outside into the grey. One wall of the room was a sloping barrier of crystal. Through the tides of cloudbank and falling snow, Fos imagined he could see the blue streak of the Skyway. It had been clearer earlier, when they had seen an elder enchantress driven down the cliff road.

  Fos first thought it had been Hiresha. The mess of gowns the elders wore all looked alike to him. The sight had been a burning horror that had sent white lines squirming through the blank half of Fos’s vision. He felt sick with relief and ashamed of his happiness when he had spotted the black mask and cane of a different elder tumbling to her end.

  And if it had been her, what could I have done? Trapped in here and fussing over a scratched eye. His chest tensed at a new thought, scale armor sighing as it shifted under his jacket. What if it had been Alyla?

  He reached down to one ring on his right hand. After the fashion of the men of his country, he wore a ring for each obligation. The band of metal pulled at the skin of his finger as he worried at it. He touched next the ring with purple stones that was his debt to Hiresha. Beside that, a diamond ring for the unborn sons that he would need to pass on the family name of Chandur. Fos completed the circuit of duties on his other hand, where rings with black gems were remembrances for his parents.

  None left but me to take care of Alyla. Fos had no intention of letting anyone push his sister down a cliff. He would not sulk in the Blade and watch, wondering which step down the Skyway would be her last.

  “Send me up after them,” Fos said. “Me and the other spellswords. The Bright Palm with the staff won’t catch me again with my sword behind by back.”

  “You crocodile-kicking fool! Don’t you know the meaning of an ultimatum?” Trakis slammed a fist against the crystal wall then slumped forward, rings in his beard clicking against the glassy surface. “We can’t do anything while the Bright Palms have the enchantresses.”

  “Isn’t that usually the way of things before a rescue?”

  “We’re charged with protecting the enchantresses. I don’t want to be recorded in history as the first Elder Spellsword to be single-handedly responsible for the massacre of everything wearing a gown above an elevation of ten-thousand feet.”

  Fos’s head jerked as the skin-stitcher tending his wound tightened the bandage behind his ear. Fos said, “If you’re worried about what’ll happen if you send all the spellswords, just send me.”

  “Lost half your sight but none of your courage, eh?” Trakis gazed at him with a sickened smile. “I’d sooner grease you up with fat from a camel’s hump and toss you into a pack of wolfbears.”

  Fos snorted. “With a sword in hand I’d take those odds.”

  “But what you won’t do is walk up the Skyway. Not now. And you’re not climbing. You’ll be blown off, or freeze into an overlarge icicle, or worse, live and be seen by a Bright Palm. Then the merry slaughter could begin.”

  Fos’s gaze climbed up as much of the cliff as he could see. The top was veiled by snowfall. In summer, he could have scaled past the overhangs and chimney-clefts in under an hour. They will have someone watching the cliff’s main face. He wondered if his odds might improve if he edged along a narrow path leading to the far side of the cliff, away from the Blade. Do they have enough to guard each approach to the Academy?

  Something slithered beneath his armor shirt and jacket sleeve. A stubby black head, a flick of a forked tongue. Fos reached down to cup the kingsnake’s chin with a finger. His pet had lost an eye, too, from a tussle with a lizard that wished not to not end up as a decorative bulge in a snake’s side. A pink line crossed downward from the snake’s whitened eye.

  “You and now me, eh, Chains?” Fos watched as the ribbon of scales flowed between his fingers. The black and white banded coils wrapped around his wrist then went up his other sleeve. “I know, I know. This is no fine weather for you. You’ll have your basket by the oven soon enough.”

  Fos would not risk taking Chains out with him when he climbed into the wintry sky. And I am going. Fos had been given a bright fate by the priest. Once Fos would have been content to wait in the Blade for opportunity to come to him. Now he understood t
hat to seize his fate he would have to do what no other man dared, he would have to be more bold and more careful. If the rest of the spellswords stayed in the Blade, he would be the one to make the climb.

  Just thinking about it made him shiver and his hands ache. He wished he could leap to the top of the cliff using the enchantment in his greaves, but it was too far, with no good place to brace his feet inbetween. And that timing! He knew he needed more training with activating the Lightening enchantment then releasing it at the right moment. It was like jumping twice in the same instant—once with the legs, twice with the mind—then breathing out before his feet left the ground.

  He scratched around his bandage as he stared at the cliff. Might have to wait for the wind to die down. The spellsword knew he would have to be quick, that he could not give anyone the chance to see him climbing. If a Bright Palm guarded the top against him, Fos could be forced back with as little as a soup ladle. Won’t bother with ropes and stakes then. They’d only slow me.

  “One eye or two, I know that look,” Trakis said. His armor clinked when he squared himself with Fos. “You’re not going to climb.”

  “I wouldn’t fall.”

  “Think losing an eye has improved you? No one’s stepping outside until I know the women will be safe. And an injured man will be the last to leave.”

  “Maybe that’s for the goddess to decide.” And the Fate Weaver has decided, has spun my future before I drew first breath.

  “It’s for me to decide and to order.”

  Spellsword Trakis gripped Fos’s shoulders. The elder’s hands said so much about him. Some fingers were stiff, many scarred, a few fingernails torn off but the rest glossy from the attention of servants. Handsome hands, Fos thought, with a life of trial and strength behind them.

  This day, those hands shook.

  “Spellsword Fosapam Chandur, I’m going to say this to you again because I know you have more roar and less reason in you than a lion with a wasp-stung rump. Sorry to say it but it’s true. You’re as moveable as a mountain of dung and about as smart. Now, if you leave the building you’ll be endangering the lives of enchantresses and defying a direct order. Try it, and you’ll lose your sword. You won’t be a spellsword anymore. Your future in the College of Active Enchantment will be gone. You’ll be a traitor and a castaway. Do you understand me?”

  “I think I do.” The bandage pinched his ear as Fos shifted his jaw forward. “You can’t order a spellsword to climb. If you did, the Bright Palms would have to push off the enchantresses.”

  “So an idea can thaw its way through that head of yours.” Trakis slapped Fos’s back then limped his way from the room. “And don’t wait to have that eye out. Rot wouldn’t have far to spread to your brain. If it’s not there already.”

  The other spellswords petered their way after the elder. Fos was left standing, facing the frozen cliff. He gripped the sword over his shoulder, drew it from the metal tongs that held it to his back. It was a broad scimitar, patterned on one side in the step pyramids of his homeland. On the other glittered the designs of the block houses of Morimound with ladders leading up to doorways on the second floors. Fos could almost smell the rich tang of bricks baking in the city’s kilns.

  Hiresha had made him this blade. Fos knew that most fighters would call it awkward and over heavy, but the more weight of a blade, the more advantage a spellsword could gain by activating Lightening enchantments then releasing them at the right moment. Timing, it’s all in the timing. And me without an hour-glass for a brain.

  The blade was not heavy enough, Fos decided. For a conflict with Bright Palms he wanted a fifty-pound wedge of jasper. More stone battering ram than sword, the weapon was far above him though, locked away for safekeeping in the Academy’s Grindstone. Must be for the best, he thought, not like I’d want to carry it up the side of the cliff. Fos intended to climb as soon as he could.

  Trakis wants me to go, Fos thought. He just can’t give the order. He can’t send a spellsword and put the enchantresses at risk. The Bright Palms had only vowed to execute the women if a spellsword interfered.

  He pitied men who did not know of their fates. Had he not been certain of his own bright future, he expected he would have been terrified. He understood it was not fear causing the thudding of his heart, the itching of the bandage, the dampness of sweat on his back, the searing pressure of blood beating through him.

  No, not fear but the stinging thrill of standing at the edge of the chasm that separated his fate from that of other men. He would take that leap. He would climb.

  After he slammed his scimitar behind his back, Fos noticed Chains. The snake was wobbling his scaled head back and forth up from Fos’s collar. Fos gave the snake a firm nod.

  “Know you like it here, at least in the summer’s sun. But it’ll be new horizons for the both of us.”

  Chains whisked a dash of red in and out of his mouth.

  Yes, I’ll climb. Not as a spellsword. Just a man with a blade and a fate burning hot as sunfire.

  19

  Hiresha’s Chambers

  With a stiff hand pressed over the fox’s eyes, Hiresha sped toward a spiraling knot of crystal tubes. The Expediency Vessels branched in the Hall of Elders to separate apartments, and Hiresha had grown confident in the enchantment that would sort her into the correct circular passage.

  Today, that confidence was gone.

  She held her breath, uncertain, her chest hammering with desperation as she plunged into the confusion of crystal. Tubing contorted around her, and she heard the “whoosh” of crystal plating shifting ahead of her. Her body stopped, insides wrinkling as she was crushed into a suspended state of Lightness, then yanked in a new direction. Twice more she changed course, then was whisked down the hall. She glimpsed the Bright Palm with the jewel-studded skin walking beneath her between the line of doors. Then the Vessel shunted her into a wall.

  Within the watery light of her earrings, she was flipped. Pain blazed out from her shoulder as she hit the tubing wrong. Please, she thought, may the enchantment have the power to stop me. Somehow she knew the magic would fail.

  The door to her chambers slatted open then flew by her. Noo! She felt herself being pulled back upward, away from her rooms and along the cold length of the Vessels. An image flashed across her mind of her frozen body traveling for years in the circuit of the tubing, the Academy abandoned, every last enchantress thrown off the cliff.

  Turning herself sideways in the shimmering blue darkness, she arched her back across the side of the Vessel. Her shoulder blade grazed the surface. She continued to slide upward. The crystal was slick as if water flowed over it. Fingers and toes splayed, she jammed her limbs against the glass. She slowed to a stop.

  The fennec had also tumbled from her grasp, and his squeaks rose above her then began falling again. He doesn’t have his collar, she remembered. The Vessel’s enchantments won’t affect him.

  She tried to catch the fennec one-handed as he fell past her in the gloom. Tried and failed. In the light leaking from the open door below, she saw the big-eared creature spring off the side of the Vessel and tumble into her chambers.

  Blinking tears of relief, she crept down the tube, one shaky handhold at a time. She felt like a spider scratching its way down a wall. The fennec yipped encouragement up at her, and she heaved herself at the top of the doorframe, crawled into her chambers, and thudded down onto the carpet. The door slats closed behind her.

  Ceremonial gowns hung on display above overstuffed furniture perfect for sleeping in at all hours of the day. The upholstery and carpet varied in color from purple to purple, the hue even darker in the blue shine of her earrings.

  Part of Hiresha had hoped for the welcome of a crackling hearth, for the scent of jasmine tea simmering in a kettle, and for Maid Janny waiting ready with bandages. But Janny is captive, along with the rest. The hearth contained only ashes. The elder enchantress had no power to light a spark.

  She still knelt before the dark h
earth like an altar, hoping the ashes hid embers with a hint of warmth. When she felt nothing, she pushed her fingers into the soot.

  Still nothing. She withdrew her hands, shaking her head. What woman shoves her fingers into the hearth ashes?

  She saw just who when she crossed in front of a full-length mirror. A tangle-haired creature stared back with eyes fierce as diamond splinters, her fingers black, her lingerie bleeding stray red threads. Dark flakes stuck to her belly and right arm. Snow and crystal shards speckled her toes. Shoulder swollen, knees scraped.

  Hiresha felt the weight of impossibility. How could such a bedraggled waif cast ten Bright Palms out from her Academy? Not to mention one resourceful thief.

  The canopy of her four-post bed waited for her in the next room, and she took a step for it. I could sleep, regenerate, rest for an hour until I have strength enough. Or eight hours. Or a day. Or until my last breath.

  The fennec sprang in front of her, chasing a hopping toy she had enchanted for him, a cricket of silver antennae and cedar legs. A flicker of warmth passed through Hiresha, and she stuck out a defiant tongue at the mirror, the triangle-cut diamond cupped on top.

  To the cliff with the odds! I’m saving the Academy.

  She almost swallowed the jewel when the door thumped. The hall door shuddered as something slammed into it. Did the Bright Palm see me enter from above? Or did he recognize the portrait above my door? Hiresha had known no good would come of wasting all that time sitting for the painter.

  She shuffled past display cases holding gemstones, cut and uncut, along with jewel-carving instruments of historical significance. The sound of the thudding against wood followed her, but the door was reinforced by gold enchantments. Bright Palms may have a bull’s endurance, she told herself, but they’re no stronger than a normal man.

  Her fingers scrabbled against a rice-paper partition showing two step-pyramids rising above a city. When she had the barrier pushed aside, she walked into her closet. First she lifted a purple sash from a post. A hundred pockets lined it, all empty now, but she intended to place jewels in them with her most influential and unforgiving enchantments.