24
The Somnarium
Hiresha had made herself an enemy of more than one novice over the years, particularly of the spoiled daughters of lords, but the enchantress never had expected to see a novice charging her with a club serrated with obsidian razors.
The novice’s gold eyes blazed with determination. She was Emesea, the woman with the blockish stature who had withstood the heckling for her high collar. Now the teal wrappings were unwound from her neck, and her formerly long hair was hacked off at a slant. A tattoo of a serpent bore its fangs on her neck, glimpsed by Hiresha as she scrounged for a jewel to defend herself.
Her garnet-studded fingers lifted a ruby heart stopper. She had intended to use the jewel on the thief, but Emesea neither glowed like a Bright Palm nor had as friendly a demeanor. Hiresha had never seen such an obsidian weapon used before but knew it was popular in the bloodthirsty Dominion of the Sun.
The ruby flew toward Emesea. She batted it aside with her club, pointed a finger to the canvas floor, and screamed. “Plant your faces in the ground!”
Enchantresses threw themselves to the floor, which wobbled beneath them. The Somnarium’s walls were made of canvas dyed orange, blue, or green, with no flat surfaces anywhere. The rooms had a rounded appearance reminiscent of caverns, except with fewer pillars of stone and more pillows. Hiresha had often thought the building nightmarish, a labyrinth of brightly colored rooms, but even she had not thought of so desperate a scenario as this, with a maniac novice and three Bright Palms bearing down on her.
Alyla tugged at the hem of Hiresha’s coat. The young woman was lying down, fennec cupped in one arm. She said, “They’ll hurt you. Get down. Hurry!”
Hiresha knew that Sheamab had condemned her and could not delude herself into thinking she could surrender and live. Bending down toward Alyla, Hiresha said, “I of all people know there’s a time for lying down. This is not one of them.”
She plucked the fennec from Alyla then straightened, the last standing amid a refuse of women sprawled over the bowl-shaped floor. A check of her jewel sash revealed that she had but five precious missiles left, and she regretted the heart-stop jewel now stuck harmlessly to the obsidian club. Should’ve tossed an Attraction.
The renegade novice leaped over prone figures, closing the distance. She held the club in front of her like a sword. A grin twisted her face with glee.
“Knew you wouldn’t bow,” she said. “I’m not begging anything if you best me, but if I sprawl you, I’m not killing you. The Sun Dragon wants your skill more than your blood.”
“The particulars may matter little now,” Hiresha said to buy time while scanning the room for some corridor of escape from the surrounding fleet-legged Bright Palms, “but you must’ve assisted the jewel thief in desecrating the MindvaultAcademy. I won’t permit you to leave alive.”
She bellowed a laugh. “You have warrior’s blood in you.”
“I assure you, my blood is unadulterated enchantress.” Hiresha spotted the Rector of Rarified Armament, on her belly but creeping behind two Bright Palms. She thrashed an arm beckoning Hiresha to follow her into a side room.
Hiresha lifted a rose-quartz gem with a particular kind of Attraction enchantment. It would only pull on herself. She cocked an arm, making as if to throw it at the renegade novice. The traitor sprang to the side, changing direction with a whirl of obsidian razors. Hiresha lobbed the quartz over the heads of the Bright Palms. It shone pink against the bulging ceiling.
Hiresha was yanked upward, feet flying, fox squeaking. The enchantment whipped her into the ceiling, which bent inward with her impact. Hiresha felt as if she had hit a rope net. The gemstone released her, and she dropped beside the rector.
Even with a stoop, the rector stood taller than Hiresha. The rector was massive in her gowns, and, old as she was, she took the lead in pulling Hiresha down a round corridor.
“Such barbarians,” the rector said, “waving weapons about as if they intended to hurt people with them.”
“I doubt they’ll wait for you to explain a sword’s aesthetic qualities.” Hiresha glanced back to see the novice and two Bright Palms bolting after them with club, spear, and scimitar.
The rector wheezed. “I can’t—I’m not as young as I need to be. You’ll have to free the Academy, but I’ll delay them.”
“They may kill you.” Hiresha had no wish to see such a master of her craft come to harm.
“As if their weapons could scratch the Rector of Rarified Armament.” She smiled with a mouthful of teeth capped with enchanted gold. “Take this.”
A dagger with gold scrollwork and one side a grisly saw of spikes was pressed hilt-first into Hiresha’s hand.
“You can’t expect me to fight a Bright Palm with this,” Hiresha said.
“What? Of course not. It’s a key.” The rector tapped its sequence of notches and spines of bronze. “It’ll open my armory in the tower. Bound to find something useful there. Now start your young legs running.”
The elder turned and stood her ground. Even though Hiresha knew she should flee, her heart wrenched, and she had to look back.
The Bright Palm with the scimitar reached the rector first. He struck her. His weapon splintered to bronze shards as if the rector wore undergarments of metal strengthened by magic. Which I suppose she must, Hiresha thought.
The rector spread her arms, and the walls and ceiling all curved toward her. Hiresha felt herself slipping back, and she had to lean forward to escape the tow of the rector’s Attraction enchantments. The Bright Palms and renegade novice all slid into the rector and were pinned against her.
The only Bright Palm left standing was the young man. He patrolled between the prone enchantresses, his weapon a blade at the end of a pole. Hiresha thought of doubling back to try to incapacitate him and free the enchantresses, but she could not pass by the rector. By the time she found another route through the confusing corridors of the Somnarium, the rector’s Attraction enchantment might have expired, with all her attackers loose to resume the chase.
Feeling sick with her lack of options, Hiresha dashed on. The floor swayed and bounced. Not one to run with objects of the slicing variety, she pocketed the dagger. She scooted down chutes of canvas leading to lower levels, and hopped from giant cushion to giant cushion to descend other vertical passages. Each window reflected only the light from her earrings, the storm a blackness outside.
Her legs ached, and she wished to sit down in a secluded alcove to sleep for a week. Hiresha forced herself to keep running, thinking that now might be her best chance of freeing Tethiel from the Grindstone. Four Bright Palms up in the Somnarium, five in the Recurve Tower, only the blind archer left to guard him.
Hiresha knew she had to reach the Grindstone before Sheamab wound her way down the tower. This worried Hiresha, a dull ache in the back of her head that beat in time with her speeding heart. Sheamab could outpace me. I have to hope something in the tower delays her.
The double doors to the Somnarium stood open. A slush of snow had turned the floor soggy, though the wind outside no longer howled. The blizzard had slackened. Snow lazed its way down to the plateau.
Hiresha peered around the doors, which were padded in pink and embroidered with the chaos of every name of the women who had studied there. Not seeing anyone outside, she jogged from the Somnarium.
A cough behind her made her whirl about.
The thief stood between the double doors. He spoke through chattering teeth. “Ench-chantress Hiresha, did you hurt Emesea?”
“The novice? Not as much as that traitor deserves.”
He nodded, slipping what looked like a blow gun back into a fold of his jacket. “Sheamab is expecting you. M-meet her at Mind’s Gate.”
“And why ever would I agree to meet a fanatic and her staff at the edge of a cliff?”
“Because if you d-don’t, I’m afraid Sheamab will throw your maid into the abyss.”
25
Cliff Edge
Hiresha had hoped the thief had been lying. She had told herself to ignore his words, to run to the Grindstone, to forget all the care Maid Janny had given her, how Janny had helped Hiresha navigate the halls when she first came to the Academy when she had been a friendless prodigy among rich girls.
On Hiresha’s earning of her twenty-first honorary gown, Maid Janny had baked her as many celebratory cakes, pies, and pastries, each colored to resemble one dress. Hiresha would never forget that either.
The enchantress’s feet dragged her under the arch, beside the statue of the Opal Mind. To her horror, Hiresha saw someone had driven a nail into the goddess’s frozen chest. She stepped closer to pull it out when her eye was drawn to the figures at the plateau’s abrupt end.
Maid Janny was in a chokehold, the staff embedded across her neck. Her hands clamped on either side of the shaft of wood, and she stood on her tiptoes, in front of the taller Bright Palm.
“Hiresha!” Janny’s voice shrilled between gasps. “You’re alive. And—and Minna?”
“Alive, too.” The words came from Hiresha’s mouth without her realizing she had spoken. She felt adrift, empty of hope and beyond controlling herself. What can I possibly do here?
Three more Bright Palms flanked Sheamab, and she wore the amethyst collar on her arm. Safe from falling herself. She held Janny at the cliff edge with the same ease in stance and expression as a novice dangling streamers of cloth to watch them twist in the wind.
“Elder Hiresha,” the Bright Palm said, “you will lower all your moveable jewels to the ground and submit. Then you will unlock the door protecting the Lord of the Feast.”
Sheamab pushed Janny forward so she leaned over the edge. The maid gulped and her feet shuffled, trying to find purchase in the snow.
“Do this,” Sheamab said, “and I’ll not kill your maid.”
Every muscle in Hiresha’s body went rigid as she remembered the Bright Palm’s earlier words. ‘Open this door, and I won’t kill him.’ Then Sheamab had bid Fos be thrown off the cliff anyway. In the parlor, she had also gloated in her own toneless, detached way that she knew the Academy was hers once Hiresha had agreed to her demand, had made herself and those who depended on her vulnerable.
I can’t submit again. Hiresha clutched the mewing fox against her chest. But neither can I watch Janny thrown to her death.
The maid’s face streamed with tears. “Why—what’re you waiting for? Just say you will. Say yes and in a few weeks they’ll be gone, it’ll all be over, and everyone can go back to their business, you to your jewels, me to the miller’s ale and maybe a bit of the miller himself.”
“Janny…” Hiresha’s throat felt so tight that words only just squeezed out. “…if I surrender, they may kill me. They may still kill you.”
“No, no, no.” Janny wrung her hands over the staff. “It’s that Lord of the Feast, isn’t it? The mister with three heads. Don’t you choose him. Not over me. Think who pressed the cold towels to your head during your fevers. Just think on it. And what’s he done for you? Not so much as make you a pot of tea. Oh, you can’t. You can’t.”
She is right, Hiresha thought. I can’t, and yet I must.
“Sheamab,” the enchantress said, “release Maid Janny. She’s an innocent.”
“She sought to make her daughter an enchantress. By the eighteenth tenet, stanza one, she cannot be innocent.”
Hiresha’s eyes darted to the Bright Palm with jewel-encrusted skin. He was the one wearing Hiresha’s amethyst bracelet, Sheamab’s anchor. If I Lighten him, he’d float away and pull Sheamab after him, but she would see it and have all the time she needs to take off her amethyst band. I can’t count on her making so obvious a mistake.
“Release Janny,” Hiresha said, “or I will destroy you, and all your followers.”
Hiresha spoke it with deadened words, dry of hope. I can’t frighten one who feels no fear. Neither could Hiresha think of what else she could do or say.
“And,” Hiresha said, “I’ll shatter the Order of the Innocent.”
“In that you will fail.” Sheamab whirled her staff around and kicked Janny off the cliff.
“Janny!”
Hiresha lunged to the edge. She threw three jewels of Lightening toward where she thought she saw the maid, a smudge of grey dress tumbling downward in a dark sky.
The enchantress would have liked to watch and see if one of her jewels had hit. If Lightened, Janny might float safely down into the valley. Hiresha was denied the time to wait, as the sound of cutting air warned of a nearing staff.
Hiresha scrambled away past the gateway’s arch. She felt that she would vomit. A bile of anger and despair corroded her insides. I should have kneeled. Not as if I can outrun all these Bright Palms on this snow field regardless. Oh, I hope Janny was Lightened.
The enchantress dropped an Attraction gem behind her for a bit of headway, but she heard feet stomping through the snow on either side, closing ground. Clawing her fingers over her sash, she found but one jewel left. Attraction.
Her right boot skidded in front of her. Raising the arm that held the fennec, she regained her balance on the slippery ground. From the sheen below her, Hiresha realized she was walking on the frozen WaterflyRiver.
She jogged as fast as she dared over the ice. Maybe they’ll slip. Or one will weigh more than I and break the ice. She hoped her own weight would not cause her to plunge into the frigid waters.
Sheamab and the Bright Palm with the block of a chin ran ahead of her. More boots sounded from either side of the river. Surrounded now, and with only one enchantment left.
The river curved upward in a hump with a crystalline shimmer. The WaterBridge was enchanted to allow people to walk under the river, but now Hiresha scrambled up it for higher ground. She lifted her last jewel overhead.
The Bright Palms circled the WaterBridge. They glanced to Sheamab for orders.
Lifting the fennec, Hiresha kissed him on his forehead. His ears brushed their soft fur against her cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” She ran a shaking finger down the fox’s side. “I don’t know what’s left for us to do.”
The ice creaked under her feet. I’m going to fall in. An idea sparked in her, one that scared her as much as it excited her with new hope. Fall into the frozen river, drop the Attraction jewel, and it’ll stop them from following you.
“I won’t drag you through this.” Hiresha set the fennec down and pushed him away. “Run. Go to someplace warm.”
An upright tail tipped in black fur trotted away over the snow. As she suspected, the Bright Palms ignored the fox.
Hiresha crouched on top of the arch of ice and lay down. She folded her hands over her chest, one still clasping her last jewel. A coldness seeped upward through her spine and into her heart. Enchantment magic can’t warm so much as a cup of tea. How will I survive?
Sheamab called out. “Approach her with caution.”
The enchantress pinched her eyes closed. She was determined to find a way, in her sleep laboratory. Or if there is no way, at least I’ll die from the cold and not in Sheamab’s hands.
When Hiresha pushed herself into sleep, she increased her weight fivefold. The ice splintered under her, and she plunged into blackness.
The Novice Emesea pointed Alyla out to the glowing lady with the staff. Alyla winced and looked away.
The sight of Emesea swinging that paddle ringed with obsidian had terrified Alyla. After a year, Alyla had begun to feel safe around Novice Emesea. The two had even shared a bed and dreams, for the sleeping studies assigned by the enchantresses. Emesea had protected her from all manner of nightmares, cleaving them in half using an axe of obsidian. The onslaught had not been the method recommended by the enchantresses, but it had seemed natural enough in the dream.
After a few weeks of wanting to, Alyla had even asked about Emesea’s tattoo.
“It’s a serpent.” Emesea had smiled wider than Alyla had thought possible. “I rode him through the sea. That’s why t
hey call me ‘Eme of the Sea.’”
Alyla had heard of sea monsters, the terrors stalking the waters that gobbled up any fisherman who braved the waves. She had thought Emesea must have been fooling her with such talk of riding one. Now Alyla would not think of asking her anything, like how she knew the Bright Palms, how she could bear to kiss the sick man in the nobles’ clothes with everyone watching. Alyla doubted she could ever speak to her again, not after seeing that same smile on her face as she chased after Enchantress Hiresha.
Marching behind the enchantresses, Alyla kept her eyes down and on the stomped snow. If you don’t look at them, they might not look at you. A grey coldness hung over the morning. Many boots crunched over the snow. Slippers squished. The lady Bright Palm made less noise with her sandals. Alyla could pick out her voice from ahead. Alyla was good at listening. She did it more than anything else.
“Dean Wysteras,” the Bright Palm said, “I have heard that the Crystal Ballroom is an ideal place to keep enchantresses secure. Or wouldn’t you agree?”
The dean made no reply to this that Alyla could hear.
Alyla wound and unwound the strips of cloth covering arms and hands. She felt so dizzy surrounded by all these strangers that she could not tell if she was too hot or too cold.
Her head turned to the side as she listened to a man’s soft, rasping voice. “I found the hair you sheared off. You left it in the snow.”
“Was about to fight the provost,” Emesea said in her loud, ringing voice, “and couldn’t have myself blinded by a head broom.”
“I’ve decided I like it at a slant,” the man said, stroking the cut locks from her ear to her shoulder. “And that gives me an idea. It should enrage the Opal Mind.”
Alyla heard the man cough then start speaking to someone else.
“I’ll snip hair from each enchantress. Consider it part of my payment.”
The lady Bright Palm answered him. “The enchantresses are far from innocent, but I’ll still not have you selling their hair to a hexer for coin.”
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