Gravity's Revenge

by A. E. Marling

  Perhaps Sheamab judged the last thing the rector would wish to do with her precious weapons is tarnish them in combat. The rector’s smile was broad, almost as much so as the curving blades on her chest and arms.

  “The coat is immaterial,” Hiresha said. “Assist me in gathering everyone. We have little time to escape.”

  “You took your time coming,” the princess novice said. She curled herself up from her blanket with a yawn. “Do you know what a perfect hardship it’s been to stay six to a room? Six!”

  “I couldn’t imagine such an ordeal,” Hiresha said.

  The enchantresses stumbled out of their confines, looking about the hall with suspicion. When the rector saw the Bright Palms pinned to the ground, she clenched her hands over the moon-shaped dagger on her chest.

  “By the spheres! Did you kill them? Is there blood?”

  “Not as such,” Hiresha said. “Don’t touch them or the enchantment will trap you, too.”

  In one room, Hiresha found both Alyla and Minna, though they crouched against opposite walls, turned away from each other. Alyla’s novice wrappings had unwound to the elbow, and she shivered with arms pressed between legs.

  Hiresha helped Alyla to her feet. “Are you well?”

  Rather than answering, the young woman asked, “Did you come with the spellswords? Is Fosapam here?”

  “I regret that it’s exclusively me,” Hiresha said. “Come, help Minna along.”

  Alyla recoiled from the younger girl. “Shouldn’t you tell the Bright Palms about her? She’s…she’s—”

  “She is Janny’s daughter. Attend to yourself, then, and go with the rector.”

  Hiresha’s stomach clenched at the thought of Alyla betraying the girl to the Bright Palms. Hiresha clasped Minna’s hand, her skin sticky and feverish.

  The girl tucked her veil tighter behind her ears. “I—I can’t face them.”

  “The Bright Palms are in no position to be facing anyone.” Hiresha coaxed the girl to her feet and out into the hall.

  An enchantress lifted her rumpled pink skirt as she ran toward Hiresha. “May the Opal Mind color your dreams with wonder! You’ve saved us.”

  Hiresha was about to wave away the gratitude, when the enchantress ran past her to hug the dean. The frizzy-haired elder was holding a chest full of Academy amulets. She seemed to have taken them from the room guarded by the Bright Palm who had leaped without apology to kick Hiresha minutes ago. The Bright Palms must have forced the enchantresses to remove their own amulets, to render them helpless.

  “Dean Wysteras, you saved us!” The enchantresses gathered around the dean, who smiled as she handed out the amulets with her mismatched gloves.

  “Everyone put on your amulets and your confidence hats,” the dean said, touching her dreadlocks as if donning an invisible hat, “because we’re going skyward and we’re not stopping until we’re safe in the Somnarium.”

  Hiresha allowed the dean to pass out the amulets. In sight of the immobilized Bright Palms, she would pretend escaping to the Somnarium was a reasonable plan and not at all a slathering of ridiculous rot. The Somnarium is the opposite of safe. Sheamab may already be making her way into that Pink Monster of a building. Hiresha did not even care that not one enchantress had thanked her. She even located some rope that the enchantresses might use while on the wallways for added security. Once the women had advanced out of earshot of the prone Bright Palms, Hiresha cleared her throat.

  “We are, in fact, not going to the Somnarium. Instead, I’ll disenchant the jewels holding the tower door shut, and we’ll run to the safety of the Crystal Ballroom.”

  “No, no, no.” The flap of skin hanging below the dean’s chin swayed from side to side. “There are bound to be more Bright Palms outside than snowflakes in the blizzard.”

  “I can fend them off with my impact enchantments. If a few of you merely snip off the jewels from your gowns….”

  “We will do no such thing,” the dean said. “What would the chancellor have said about using good jewels for your perversions?”

  Her words struck Hiresha like a hornet’s bite. “If not for my innovations, you’d still be trapped in those rooms. And retreating to the Crystal Ballroom will be less expected.”

  Dean Wysteras adjusted her imaginary hat. “I had a dream last night that everyone would be safe in the Somnarium.”

  “Of course you’d dream of the Somnarium. You go there every day,” Hiresha said. “In my dream I calculated the relative probability of—”

  “Your confidence hat is very droopy,” Dean Wysteras said. “If you only allow yourself to believe we’ll reach the Somnarium, your knowing will transform into becoming.”

  Hiresha thought the dean fortunate that reality was not so easily sculpted by wishes, as otherwise her skull would have exploded from Hiresha’s scowling resentment. “We don’t have time to argue. You must give me your jewels and follow me to the Ballroom. It has but one entrance and one key. We’ll be safe there.”

  “There’s no food and no beds in the Ballroom,” the dean said.

  “Irrelevant.” Hiresha’s brows rose as she heard her own shout echoing down the hall. She lowered her voice. “Once we’re secure, the spellswords can advance on the plateau. The Bright Palms could be apprehended and the Academy secured before sunrise.”

  The women looked between Hiresha and Dean Wysteras. One novice’s eyes flashed the golden color of aragonite gemstones before she turned away and fidgeted by laying one hand over another in rapid succession.

  The dean glanced to the white and black pathway up the wall behind her. “As you said, we haven’t the time for bickering. We must reach a compromise.”

  “You want a compromise?” Hiresha could not believe the dean would jeopardize the safety of the women with her foolishness. Hiresha worried the heat of wearing her fur coat would now smother her. The fennec was snarling. “The compromise is that you follow me to the Ballroom, and I won’t call you a jelly-brained buffoon.”

  The dean pressed her blue and orange gloves together then turned on her heel. “If that is how the provost will have it, then those who want the safety of the Somnarium will go with me. The rest can risk themselves following her.”

  “We mustn’t separate,” Hiresha said. “When you’re captured, the Bright Palms will threaten your lives. The spellswords won’t be able to intervene.”

  “I’m surprised our welfare would concern you, Provost Hiresha,” the dean said. “You seemed so ready to cast the elder warden off the cliff but yesterday.”

  Hiresha’s hands shook with her anger as she was forced to watch most of the enchantresses and novices follow the dean up the wallway. Only the better students of applied enchantment stayed beside Hiresha, along with Minna.

  Hiresha had an urge to strike the dean, to threaten her with a heart-stopping jewel unless she agreed to the superior plan. I knew I should’ve chosen her to walk down the Skyway. Hiresha believed in calm thinking over rash action, though, and she forced down her feelings of ill will.

  “Minna,” she said, “if you aren’t afraid of a dash to the Ballroom, the plan couldn’t have sounded too frightening.”

  “The Father trusts you, and so do I.” Minna lifted both hands against her veiled chin and leaned closer. “I’m—I am sorry I showed you my mirror. I didn’t mean to.”

  Hiresha sighed, and her head bowed forward to rest in her hands. She felt as if she carried three Burdening enchantments. “We gain nothing by going alone. We must follow the dean. Perhaps it will not end in utter calamity.”

  23

  TentacleBridge

  The woman’s scream came after Hiresha had already ascended to the Owl’s Hall. Hiresha cringed as she peered down the arch to the lower level, expecting to see that one of the enchantresses had let go of the ropes and fallen. There had not been enough amulets for all.

  Below, an enchantress in a jade and chartreuse dress was standing stock still, held in the grip of Inannis. The thief had a needle of a
dagger against her throat. Nearby, the golden-eyed novice ran away down the hall.

  Inannis’s voice made a wet cracking noise as he shouted. “Encha—Enchantress Hiresha, I’ll forgive you for not introducing me to your friend here….”

  The enchantress in his grasp shuddered and made a kittenish sound. Hiresha recognized her as Enchantress Laygan, a woman with particular ideas about how the empire should be run. She seemed to delight in taking the side of the ferocious Dominion of the Sun in debates, and Hiresha had even considered her a possible accomplice to the Bright Palms, though at that moment the bulging eyes of her fright looked genuine. In short, Hiresha would not have called her a friend.

  “…But I must insist you stop your procession. Everyone must return to the comforts of the ground floor.”

  Enchantress Laygan’s snootiness had often annoyed Hiresha, but she discovered she had no wish to see the woman poisoned by the thief’s dagger and die with foam-speckled mouth and back snapped by her own contorting muscles. That seems rather much even for someone with a contrarian attitude and a poor taste in clothing.

  The Rector of Rarified Armament clutched her own daggers and turned away. “I can’t witness this. There’s nothing more hideous than using a perfectly good weapon.”

  “Please,” Dean Wysteras said, fluttering her hands in Inannis’s direction, “there’s no need for violence.”

  “There is every need.” Hiresha held a jewel directly above the thief and his captive. “This beryl will crush their bones together into powder.”

  The red stone dropped. The thief let go of his hostage and sprang away, retreating down the hall. The beryl clicked against the stone at Enchantress Laygan’s feet but did nothing.

  The dean swatted Hiresha’s shoulder. “Your enchantment almost killed Laygan.”

  “It was only a Lightening, after all.” Hiresha felt doubly smug for outsmarting the thief again.

  “So you condone lying to get your way.” The dean lifted an armful of her skirts and slung them around to leave Hiresha.

  “Perhaps you should ask Enchantress Laygan if she thought it right,” Hiresha said.

  The dean did not ask, even after Laygan climbed the rope. The novice who had run never reappeared, but they had to go on without her.

  “My enchantments must have worn off by now. The Bright Palms could be pursuing us up the tower.” Hiresha forced her drooping eyes to glance behind them and below. Her fatigue had increased with each floor they climbed, along with her worry. The pit of her stomach seemed to smolder with a grease fire.

  Hiresha regretted being right when she saw five figures, their limbs glowing through their clothes, vaulting over a railing to run below the enchantresses. The dean was leading the group over a bridge within the Hall of Refreshment. At the crest of the RecurveTower, this hall was sideways, or lengthwise, with a bridge running down its middle. Rugs and pillows for sitting during dining wrapped around the entire tower’s wall, in a complete circle so none would be lower in status than another. Clear quartz also circumscribed the hall in a band of windows, now dark with blustery night, and the Bright Palms leapt over them with Sheamab in the lead.

  “Out of my way.” Hiresha pushed past other enchantresses, stepping on hems and squeezing between the battlements of fabric around the elders. She was gathering a handful of gems from her sash, having collected and enchanted them while waiting for the others to climb by rope between the tower levels.

  Hiresha descended the far side of the bridge, Bright Palms sweeping closer on the left. She could sense their approaching magic as white blots, like an advancing line of ghosts.

  Her arm swept outward. Citrines, amethysts, and sapphires all sprinkled onto the floor. She created a wall of Attraction, and the Bright Palms skidded to a stop before them, pulling each other back to safety. Sheamab gestured with her staff, and the Bright Palms sprinted to come at Hiresha from a different direction.

  “Enchantress Hiresha, have you considered the wisdom of concession?” Sheamab said.

  The Bright Palm sprinted and vaulted upward, her staff bending as she used it to push herself even higher, crossing above the wall of Attraction. She slid to a stop at the end of the hall, cutting off the enchantresses’ escape.

  The staff whirled in a circle of black as Sheamab spun it between her hands. “I defeated you when you opened the tower to me, on the first throw of sand.”

  “Then consider this a rematch.” Hiresha started to lob a jewel but hesitated. A doubt flitted across her consciousness. In her groggy state of heart-racing fatigue, she was uncertain why she would hold back from pelting a most obstinate Bright Palm, so she threw anyway.

  Sheamab skipped back, but the Attraction jewel landed at the center of the corridor. Wall hangings rippled forward then tore off to land on the jewel. Hiresha then realized why part of her had not wanted to throw. The Attraction jewel will block our way almost as well as a swinging staff. She was certain Sheamab had led her into this blunder.

  Pressing her hands over her temples, Hiresha thought of a solution. She threw a second Attraction jewel to the side of the corridor. It ripped the tapestries and first jewel from the floor, allowing enough room for the women to run past.

  “Now! Now!” Hiresha swung her arm in a circling gesture toward the hall. “To TentacleBridge.”

  A few more jewels to ward away the Bright Palms behind them, then Hiresha sprinted back to the front of the line, lest Sheamab try to capture someone. Hiresha’s lungs burned, and she had dropped the fennec in her near delirium, though the fox bounded beside her.

  The dean ushered the first enchantresses through a window, where the glass had been removed. It opened on a swaying wooden bridge in a tunnel of pink. Here the Somnarium grasped the RecurveTower with one of its tentacles, the connection made permanent by binding enchantments.

  Hiresha pushed the minister through the window and onto the planks of ebony. The bridge heaved upward and twisted sideways. Magic in the wooden platforms kept the women on their feet and balanced.

  With a black diamond in Hiresha’s upraised hand, the Bright Palms stopped short of approaching the bridge. Sheamab adjusted a curiously familiar amethyst bracelet on her own arm.

  “You disappointed me,” Hiresha said to Sheamab. “I expected you to approach through the Somnarium.”

  “An expectation I anticipated.” Sheamab backed up as if to begin another sprinting leap.

  The last enchantresses shoved their way into the swaying passageway. The dean pressed her amulet against the gold bands to the left of the window, and half the TentacleBridge tore free. Chill wind whistled inside along with sprays of snow.

  Hiresha grabbed a straggler by the arm—Minna—and pushed her to the window. The girl fell to her knees, whimpering at the sight of the gap she would have to step over that was spewing blizzard.

  “Alyla.” Hiresha spotted the novice on the bridge, in the press of gowns of fleeing enchantresses. “Help Minna.”

  The young woman took a step back toward Minna, trembled, and pinched her eyes closed, touching her face. Hands clamped in front of her chest, Alyla stumbled away, down the bridge with eyes downcast. She did pick up the fennec, who had been dodging between hems.

  The dean shoved her amulet toward the ornate band of gold on the other side of the window. In a skull-searing flash of panic, Hiresha saw the dean might fully break the Attraction between the bridge and tower and leave Hiresha and Minna stranded.

  Hiresha dropped her black diamond in the snow-storm rift between the buildings in order to grab Minna. She pulled the girl onto the bridge, boards bucking under their feet, the enchantress’s stomach lurching, balance tipping.

  Dean Wysteras broke the enchantment. The tentacle bridge reared upward.

  A staff struck stone with a resounding clack.

  Hiresha turned in time to see Sheamab leaping through swirling darkness. One knee upraised, eyes beams of focus, arms in a rowing motion. She slashed her staff at Hiresha’s neck.

  Minna
tugged the enchantress away, a step farther onto the bridge. The staff made a ripping sound as it passed an inch from Hiresha. She felt a frigid puff of air across her face. The tentacle moved out of the falling Bright Palm’s reach.

  A rush of weightlessness bubbled through Hiresha at the thought that not only had Minna saved her from the Bright Palm’s spring attack, but now Sheamab would plummet to her death. Only too deserved after forcing Warden Maova off the cliff.

  Sheamab’s legs and waist disappeared, slipping farther down into the blizzard. With the Bright Palm leader dropping, Hiresha’s hopes rose. Sheamab maintained her calm, her face like a wax sculpture. She lifted her arm, with a bracelet on it. Hiresha could barely see the jewelry as darkness closed around the Bright Palm, but she had glimpsed it before. Now she had time to realize what it was and be baffled. The Bright Palm wore the fennec’s collar around her arm.

  Her downward course reversed, Sheamab flew upward. The winds buffeted her, but she landed on the window ledge, beside a Bright Palm that Hiresha had no doubt wore a matching amethyst bracelet. The same jewelry that had pulled the fennec to safety only days before. She must have learned how I used the collar to yank the tribesman back into that room to escape. Hiresha felt the wrenching disappointment of seeing her own enchantments betray her.

  “Hiresha,” Sheamab shouted, her voice clear and steady in the bellow of the wind, “you should not have listened to the dean.”

  The window and tower were lost from sight. The dean touched her amulet to a silver design of birds on a bridge plank, and a glass sphere swung down to cover the end of the tentacle, sealing out the storm.

  Hiresha rubbed her brow, wondering what Sheamab had meant. Could she know of my argument with the dean? Hiresha wondered if the thief could have been close enough in the hall to overhear. Someone must have, and if Sheamab knows....

  “The Bright Palms weren’t pursuing us. They were herding us.” Hiresha swung a withering eye toward the dean. “You would’ve done better falling off the cliff. There have to be Bright Palms already waiting in the Somnarium.”