The Bright Palm crouched over Hiresha, and in her daze of hurt, the enchantress believed Sheamab lowered herself to whisper her answer. Except Sheamab said nothing.
She jerked off Hiresha’s jewel sashes, one after the other. Losing them rattled her bones and gashed her soul, more so when Sheamab marched under the gateway arch and tossed the clumps of purple fabric off the plateau.
The Bright Palms left Hiresha in the darkness and snow. The enchantress followed their light, sensing them even past her field of vision. By the way they faced each other and moved at a plod, she expected they were carrying Fos to the Crystal Ballroom’s entrance hall.
Hiresha used the time to search for the red diamond. She scrabbled at the snow, gaining nothing more than numb fingers. To crawl on her side, she pushed with one leg and pulled with one arm. Each movement spiked what felt like a nail into her knee, and each jostle to her other leg blanked out her vision with knuckle-biting pain.
Under the snow she found more snow. And stone. Did Sheamab take the red diamond as well? Hiresha had not seen her run her hands through the powder, nor anyone else. She wondered if the Lord of the Feast could have somehow scooped the jewel up with his razor wings. Hiresha could not imagine him balancing the diamond on a blade all the way up to a belt pouch. Perhaps he kicked it away from me, hiding behind shadows as he did so.
The malice of her thoughts caused her to sprawl trembling in the snow.
Mister Jewel Pox returned to heft her over his shoulder. He gave no consideration for her broken leg, and the jolting hurled her into a faint. Darkness churned within her along with a stink of burning grasses that she remembered from her childhood. Upon wading her way back to alertness, she could only think that the smell had leaked into her mind from her dream world.
Everything is fraying.
Hiresha was lying on tile in the entrance hall of the Crystal Ballroom. She felt bare, exposed, with her jewel sashes stripped from her. Her fingers darted to the vial of diamond dust up her sleeve, found it still there. Pushing herself to an elbow, Hiresha saw Fos trussed against the wall. Beyond him, enchantresses crowded the other side of the Ballroom’s door of crystal. Hiresha spotted the dean with her mismatched gloves and the rector with her bandaged ears, all peering at her.
If I fail now, they all will see it. With her other jewels gone, Hiresha knew she would have but one throw.
Alyla entered with a board under her arm crosshatched with white lines. The girl set it on a table and arranged vials on either side containing sands in all the hues of mold.
Sheamab lifted a glass vessel filled with black. “If you are conscious, Enchantress, we will begin.”
“Something appears to have denied me the use of my legs. You can hardly expect me to compete while lying down.”
Mister Jewel Pox hoisted Hiresha up by her armpits. He dangled her at arm’s length as if she were a pot of soured milk. She suspected the treatment of her leg would have been met with approval by the average torturer.
“She’s not a straw doll, you know,” Fos said.
Mister Jewel Pox never glanced at the spellsword.
Sheamab flicked the lid off a vial. “Because you challenged me, I will take the first throw.”
Sand streaked in a sickle shape. Hiresha’s earrings tinted the board to shades of blue. Part of Hiresha thought, I have her, she’s playing, while another part panicked at having to aim while thick hands dug into her sides. Once I attack Sheamab, Mister Jewel Pox could throw me into the wall. And if I miss either one…Sheamab stood with her staff nestled in one arm, her fingers curled around its shaft. Any instant, she could strike.
Hiresha scraped her words out of a dry throat. “You can’t expect me to play while being dangled. I must have a chair.”
“You made no mention of chairs before agreeing to play. The board is set. You will either make a throw or concede.”
“This should be a contest of the mind, not how long I can bear pain.”
“Are you concerned, Enchantress, that I place insufficient value on your bodily comfort?”
“Do I hear a Bright Palm attempting to jest?”
Hiresha let the vial in her sleeve drop into her cupped hand. I have to go through with it, hope I survive long enough and with sufficient diamond dust left to incapacitate Mister Jewel Pox as well. With two fingers cupping the diamond dust, the same hand picked up another vial. Blue-frost sand filled it. In the light of her earrings she hoped both vials would look similar.
“Is there no tenet against attempting humor?” the enchantress asked. “A pity…”
She pretended to fumble the vial, hoping Sheamab would see it as arising from numb fingers or a pain spasm. Hiresha clasped her hands together to stop the glass vessel from dropping to the floor.
“…you wasted your intelligence by becoming a Bright Palm. I think I should’ve liked to meet you…”
Switching positions of the vials, she brushed the one holding diamond dust against the garnets on her broken fingers.
“…before you became a murderous icicle who twists the tenets for her own use.” Hiresha thumbed off the vial’s cap.
The game board smashed upward as Sheamab lashed out with her staff. It bit into Hiresha’s knuckles, and the vials were flung from her grasp, trailing a sparkle of sand and crushed dreams.
Hiresha slumped in the male Bright Palm’s hands.
Sheamab returned her staff to its position propped against her thigh and inner arm. “Once again, Enchantress, I knew I would defeat you after your first move. Which was to accept my wager using the same words that you refused only last night. At that time you preferred I throw your maid over the edge. Tonight your intent could not have been to defeat me in this game.”
Hiresha glanced down the hall. The diamond dust glittered in a pathway across the floor and up the wall. The carpet had been powdered and turned weightless, and now it lolled upward. Fos eyed the bulging fabric mournfully. Beyond him and on the other side of crystal, enchantresses shook their heads, hands pressed against their own chests, and their lips moved as they spoke to each other in soundless disappointment.
Defeat felt to Hiresha like being wedged at the bottom of a chasm, crushed between two planes of cold rock. No way out now.
Sheamab grabbed Hiresha from the other Bright Palm, pinching the enchantress’s arms between glowing elbow and ribs. “The game was not of Sands. But after your clumsy sleight of hand you are nonetheless beaten. I claim your wager. You will open the Ballroom door.”
Hiresha rolled her chin upward so she met Sheamab’s gaze. Their faces were so close that the enchantress’s nose brushed the Bright Palm’s jaw. Hiresha knew that breaking open the door would put Minna, the elders, and the rest in danger again. At the same time, a voice inside her said, They have no food, no water. They’ll have to surrender soon anyway. Give the marble heart what she wants and open the door, maybe she’ll let you live.
The enchantress pushed away the thought. Perhaps more spellswords would climb to the plateau in the next hours. She would not deny the Academy its last desperate chance. Even if that meant the Lord of the Feast had survived to warn the spellswords, had escaped the bone-shattering fate he deserved.
“Dispose of me how you see fit,” Hiresha said between her teeth. “I’ll not open that door.”
“Wrong again, Enchantress.”
Sheamab slung Hiresha around and seized her from the back. A black line whipped over the enchantress’s vision, and the staff smashed into her throat. By reflex, Hiresha’s hands gripped the shaft on either side of her neck. Two fingers on her left hand stuck upward, useless. The enchantress pushed, and Sheamab only pulled the staff tighter. Hiresha sensed veins pulsing with magic wrapped around her, and she felt she was being choked by light.
The Bright Palm held Hiresha so close that their faces pressed together, cheek to cheek. Sheamab carried her to the crystal door. Enchantresses gawked on the other side, their fingers clawing their way up their gowns to touch their own throats.
>
“Open this door…”
Hiresha’s vision flashed red in time to Sheamab’s shouting.
“…and I won’t snap her neck.”
Don’t do it. Hiresha gagged on the words. It felt like her head was about to be pinched off her shoulders. Don’t trust her.
Through the crystal, the rector’s ebony hand gripped the orange lace on the dean’s shoulder. The big woman made wide sweeping movements with her other arm, while the dean maintained her look of tragic constipation, crystal key in her fist.
I can’t let them open the door, even if I can’t speak. Hiresha’s chin trembled from side to side, bumping into Sheamab’s cheek. The enchantress was trying to shake her head, to warn the others, but the Bright Palm shifted one side of the staff into the crook of her arm to seize Hiresha’s temples, mashing Hiresha’s skull against her own.
The enchantress felt the shining magic leaking into her, soaking her with a deadly sense of peace. She would be calm, yes, she would accept her fate with dignity.
No! No! Pushing away the tranquility, Hiresha fought and struggled.
Sheamab gripped her with cold inevitability.
Fos’s howling was a buzz in Hiresha’s ears.
In front of them, the dean lowered her arm, and three colors of sleeves flowed down over her hand with the key and hid it. She said something and started to turn away. The rector spun her back, pointed at Hiresha then gestured with her thumb to the interior of the Ballroom. A cutting motion from the dean seemed to silence the bigger woman.
At last, Hiresha thought, that pillow-brained nitwit’s disregard has come to some good.
The rector’s shoulders sagged, and her tower of white hair bowed forward. She stole a glance at Hiresha then looked away.
She relaxed in the Bright Palm’s chokehold and reflected that there were worse ways to die than suffocation. Slower, lingering ways. Hiresha waited for blackness to bleed up over her consciousness.
Perhaps my soul will outlive my sleepiness.
As her eyelids rolled open for what she hoped was the last time, Hiresha saw a girl on the other side of the glass running toward her. A girl with a fox. And the crystal key in her other hand.
Minna! What’re you doing?
The dean waddled after the girl, her lips bending in ugly words that Hiresha could not hear. The elder fell to the side, cushioned by her mass of gowns. A few other enchantresses reached for Minna, but she dodged around them. The fennec’s ears flapped as they ducked under a pair of grasping gloves. The fox’s yipping penetrated the door.
Minna, stop! Hiresha tried to kick at the crystal door. It was a mistake, and her punishment was pain.
The girl swung the key toward its hole.
Can’t she see the Bright Palm on the other side? She’s a Feaster. She’ll never open the door.
The crystal key fit in and turned.
Sheamab dropped Hiresha and heaved her way into the Ballroom. The high-pitched yells of enchantresses flowed into the hall. Hiresha felt blood rushing back into her head like hammer blows.
The touch of whiskers on her cheek made Hiresha look up. She saw the fennec as well as Minna trembling on her knees. Her veil shrouded her face, her eyes blinking away sweat and terror.
Hiresha spoke in a rasp. “Foolish girl. Why let them in?”
“Father says you have to live.” Her words were quiet but close, puffs against her veil. “You have to live.”
“Your father?” Did the Lord of the Feast cheat death with his wings? “When did he tell you this?”
The Feaster girl stiffened, saw something past Hiresha that must have terrified her even more than Sheamab. Hiresha followed her gaze, the illogical thought flitting through her mind that she would see the Lord of the Feast. Why would he return when the Bright Palms would only exterminate him? We could not defeat Sheamab all together and when I had my jewels. To return alone, the Lord of the Feast would only be suicidal.
The girl Feaster had seen Alyla. Alyla, who knows Minna’s secret. The newly minted Bright Palm was preventing Fos from struggling in his bonds with but a touch of her fingers.
Hiresha considered if it would be for the best for the Bright Palms to find Minna, to remove one threat to the other women, but a glance at the fennec in the girl’s arms decided her against it. The enchantress reached to stroke the fennec’s whiskered cheek, and he licked her finger.
“Run,” Hiresha told Minna. “Out into the night.”
“Alyla—she’ll see me,” Minna said. “She’ll outrun me.”
“Then hide in the Ballroom.”
“But she’ll remember me. There’s nowhere to run in there. It’s a glass prison.”
“Die however you please then, but let the fennec go.”
The girl tensed then bolted as only a twelve-year-old with a taste of mortality can. The fennec hopped out of her arms to make cautious chirping noises by Hiresha’s ear. He seemed to be trying to tell her a secret. The enchantress glanced up to see if Sheamab had noticed Minna’s sprint.
The Bright Palm was removing the crystal key from the door. Two enchantresses stepped forward, and Hiresha recognized them as her students.
“We’ll take the provost,” one said.
“Provost Hiresha, can you stand?”
Hiresha knew she would not be allowed to live. “Never mind me, take the fennec.”
Sheamab prodded the women back with her staff and pulled the door closed, locking all the other enchantresses inside and leaving herself in the hall with Hiresha and the fennec. The Bright Palm gestured to Hiresha with the crystal key but looked up when Alyla shouted.
“A Feaster.” Alyla pointed at Minna, who was slipping out of the hall into the stormy night. “She made me see a falsehood of myself.”
“Then you must track her.” Sheamab flipped the crystal key to Mister Jewel Pox. “We must stay. These two are too dangerous to leave.”
The Bright Palm with the crag for a jaw caught the key then tossed a bronze spike to Alyla. He said, “Don’t you let the Feaster run you off the cliff.”
Alyla sprinted barefoot into the snowing night.
“Careful, Alyla,” Fos called after her.
Hiresha shook her head. She felt something as hard as metal clamp her left hand, and she looked up to see Sheamab holding her. The Bright Palm angled a knife over the enchantress’s broken fingers. It was over before she realized it had begun.
Garnets fell to the floor, purple stones on a carpet stained black. Sheamab had cut them out. The last of my jewels, gone. The sting in her fingertips was paltry next to that scalding thought.
By reflex, Hiresha reached for the garnets. She knew it was a mistake. Sheamab proved her right by stomping her hand with a crunch. The Bright Palm spooled rope around the enchantress’s arms then tightened it into knotted shackles.
The enchantress was dragged by rope past display cases bearing elaborate dresses and plaques commemorating past dancers. The gowns spun about in her eyes in a dance of ghosts. The torment in her leg and mind goaded her heart into irregular beats.
Her bound hands banged on the floor when Sheamab dropped them to help move Fos. His wrists were tied to his ankles, trapping him in something close to the fetal position. Mister Jewel Pox gripped him under his arms, Sheamab his legs. While being hefted between them, the spellsword asked if they thought Alyla would be safe hunting the Feaster by herself. They did not answer.
Hiresha declined to waste her breath questioning the Bright Palms when they returned for her. She was pulled outside and over snow, and she said nothing when iciness dug its way under her collar and chilled her back. She did not struggle, spit, or curse. She did nothing because she could not believe anything she did would ever matter again.
I should sleep, try to piece myself back together. Hiresha ignored the voice inside her. A dozen reasons popped into her mind why trying was hopeless, and they all involved a black staff. I’m like Minna, with no good choices left to her. How do I wish to die?
The f
ennec padded beside her with ears down. She wanted to reach out to him again but could not gather the will.
“Go back,” she told him. “Go where it’s warm. With ears the size of yours, you ought to listen to me.”
He sneezed with a twitch of whiskers.
Gazing upward, she saw only a world of darkness with flecks of blue floating downward. The wind tugged the snow this way and that. Each snowflake is an exemplar of mathematical beauty. And they have no power, no choice, not even as to whether they end up crushed or melted.
She had decided. I’ll spend my last hours in dream. I can do nothing now but ease my own pain. I’ll not go weeping to meet the Fate Weaver in the grand tapestry of souls.
41
Desolation
The rubble of her laboratory littered her dream. Only the operations table remained recognizable, split in half and embedded in the savannah. As I left it in the nightmare. Grasses squirmed around the rest of the black rocks. Scarcely more broken than I.
She still had the power to Attract her spell baubles, though she had to wait for them to come to her from wherever they had fallen. Above, the gemstones that littered the night sky of her dream seemed gaudy in their coloring. She had not populated this land with animals, not so much as cicadas, and at that moment her isolation surrounded her in a stifling silence.
Smokey redness on the horizons promised fire. New flames erupted closer in a spark-spitting, hissing, gout of heat. Near and far, on every side, Hiresha’s dream burned.
“Our pain is scattering the sparks,” Intuition said. She had appeared sitting on one half of the operations table. She bounced her legs once then winced and stopped.
“I refuse to think of you as my intuition so much as the Mistress of Distraction.” Hiresha gestured, and the two halves of the table were Attracted together. She could mend herself by operating on her look-alike. “Lie down.”
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