Authors: A.E. Marling
2
Battle of Wits and Gems
The duelists arrived at Jibade’s pavilion, a glittering monument of rarities. He rested the uncut diamond on a pedestal then excused himself to gather the jewels for the challenge. A ring of onlookers formed, and Chesa pushed her way to the front row.
Two men carried a palanquin chair into the circle. A plump woman wearing a grey turban bounded alongside. The woman lifted a winter-bear coat from the palanquin, which surprised Hiresha because the enchantress had assumed she was already wearing the garment.
She had forgotten her coat. Her dress was open-backed, and a gust from the snowcapped mountains sliced down her bare skin. Her flesh puckered around her spine. The clicking noise she had been hearing was the chatter of her own teeth.
Maid Janny wrapped Hiresha in the warmth of the winter-bear coat. The maid asked, “What’re you doing? You daft purple flamingo!”
“Winning back a paragon diamond,” Hiresha said.
Jibade the Magnificent strode from his pavilion carrying an ornate box and an expression of victory. “This holds thirteen jewels. Twelve are zircons.”
Opening the box, he turned his back to Hiresha. Men and women leaned in to see. One pushed back her embroidered cap of yak fur and said, “They all look like diamonds.”
Hiresha motioned for her carriers to lower the palanquin to the ground. She sat to wait.
Jibade snapped the box closed and presented it to Hiresha. “Your challenge, Lady of Gems. Tell me which of the thirteen is diamond.”
She set the jewel case on her knees, wondering what deception Jibade intended.
This is too simple.
He held the lid shut while flourishing a band of silk. “Blindfolded. Allowing you to see the jewels in this trial would insult your expertise.”
“Childish, but acceptable.” Hiresha’s eyes already drooped to the point a blindfold would matter little. Sitting down put her at the mercy of her sleeping disorder.
Jibade leaned in to wrap the blindfold. Spellsword Fos held him back, and the guard tied the silk around Hiresha’s eyes himself. The knot nestled against the back of her head.
The box squeaked open. Hiresha tugged off her left glove and reached in. The pointed sides of thirteen stones pricked her, and she heard a tinkle of jostling jewels. She lifted each gem in turn, rolling it between her fingers, feeling its weight. A diamond, she knew, would be lighter than a zircon of the same size.
Hiresha delighted in her yawns, knowing Jibade would take each as an insult to his intelligence. Inside, her weariness clashed with her heart-hammering excitement.
I am moments away from trouncing this greedy buffoon.
The seventh jewel seemed lighter. The change was subtle, no more than a tickling of the senses. Hiresha’s trained hand felt a boulder of difference.
As obvious as the choice was, Hiresha hesitated. More than one fortune teetered on this outcome, and she wanted certainty. For an enchantress, that meant dreaming.
In the blackness of her blindfold, a stairwell descended toward sleep. Hiresha focused on walking down the marble steps. As much as she hated her sleeping disorder, it did shorten the distance she needed to travel to unconsciousness. She might have slumped in her chair, but she counted on Fos to hold her from tipping over. No one else would know she slept.
Jewels floated and mirrors glided within Hiresha’s lucid dream. Clarity gushed through her.
“This is neither zircon nor diamond.”
The seventh jewel twirled in the air above her fingers. Hiresha could sense its impurities and predict its color, transparent with a haunting of green. The depth of knowingness that came with the dream also revealed the stone’s precise weight.
“So close to diamond, but too light, and the crystalline structure is entirely different. I must concede I’m impressed. Jibade did present a satisfying puzzle.”
The mysterious jewel flared with an inflow of lattices of power. Hiresha enchanted it with an antidote. She suspected that Jibade would soon have need of it.
Hiresha left her lucid dream and squeezed herself back to reality. Gasping to try to draw in more alertness, she spoke in a wispy voice.
“You asked…you demanded I find which of these jewels is a diamond. None are.”
She tore off her blindfold in time to see Jibade’s face quiver like jostled pudding. “W-what did you say?”
“None of these thirteen are diamonds. I have won your challenge.”
When Jibade did not deny it, the crowd cheered. Someone threw a three-tailed whip twirling into the air.
Hiresha stood with the help of Fos’s steadying hand. She jerked at her right glove, yanking her fingers free one by one.
“My patience has expired,” she said, “so my gem challenge will be brief.”
Her glove slid off to reveal a hand glittering with purple jewels. Embedded in her skin, they formed the pattern of a crescent moon. She strode toward Jibade with her hand upraised.
He pitched his voice into a showman’s gallop. “You may have seen lovely ladies with lovely jewels, but never have you witnessed one with so many
in
her hand. Ha! What breed of jewels, you ask? How rare, you wonder? Jibade the Magnificent will learn their secrets. Sapphires or quartz, garnets or—”
“They are spinels.”
Hiresha slapped him. The spinels flared through her hand, revealing a dark cluster of bones surrounded by violet light.
“This isn’t a challenge of identification,” she said. “Rather, you must resist the enchantment in the gems or concede.”
Jibade stumbled against a table stacked with jewelry. Amulets rained over him. He staggered to his feet again, tried to right the display, failed. His face contorted; his eyelids fluttered with spasms. He spoke as if drunken.
“By the b-blistering sands! Whatsh you done to me?”
“Poisoned your brain with sleep.” Hiresha tugged her gloves back on. “Sleep is something of a specialty, and I know just what you’re feeling. Miserable, is it not? This helplessness in your own body. Like a drowning of consciousness.”
Jibade’s metallic cape slithered over his shoulder as his legs gave out. Hiresha knelt beside him. She reached to his face with both hands to pry his eyes open.
“Your case is slightly more severe than my own,” she said. “Within a minute, you’ll fall into an endless slumber.”
He gurgled. His arms flailed then flopped down.
“I’ll take that as a concession,” Hiresha said.
A few in the crowd hissed. “Didn’t bet on a thwacking match.”
“The contest,” Hiresha said, “was of jewel craft. I touched him with my hand. My jewels and their craft in enchantment defeated him. If any here disagrees, step forward.”
She beckoned to the grumbling men. None met her eye. One shook his coin purse at her. “Heard this was a battle of wits.”
“That battle Jibade lost when he accepted such an unspecific contest.”
A woman’s voice in the crowd. “You tricked him.”
“That is the point, is it not?” Hiresha waited to see if anyone would step forward to object.
None did.
The enchantress nodded to the trinket merchant, Chesa. “Go on, pay Jibade for his gemstone.”
Chesa flicked a few coins at the prone Jibade. She hesitated before the pedestal then lifted the blue paragon.
At the same time, Hiresha raised to her eye the seventh jewel, the mystery. She noted it reflected double, its largest facet shining in two places on her glove.
Most unlike a diamond.
“You were right not to let me see this.” Hiresha folded the jewel with its antidote enchantment into Jibade’s fist. “The stone is exceptional. Wherever did you find it?”
Jibade shook his head blinking back toward alertness. “From—from a meteor.”
“Delightful! You’ll need it for now, but do send me a bidding price.” Hiresha motioned to her guard. “Fos, would you help this man to his feet?”
The enchantress stood up herself in time to have the paragon diamond forced into her hands by Chesa. Hiresha had no time to object. The sun pierced the gemstone’s dusky surface, and blue light flowed from its depths in waves of warmth.
The enchantress needed six gasping breaths before she could speak. “Now, Chesa, for the matter of fair payment.”
“I saw you knock out Jibade with one slap. That’s payment enough.”
“Nonsense, I—”
Chesa touched her heart. “You’re the one who won it back. It’s yours.”
A bloom of heat ran through Hiresha, a joy for having gained such a treasure.
I’ll never receive another twist of fate so generous.
And neither will Chesa.
Hiresha cleared the wonderful ache from her throat. “Chesa, politeness has its limits. Refuse payment a third time, and I’ll have no choice but to trap you in the air, weightless as a dust mote.”
Chesa’s eyes darted to Spellsword Fos then to the maid. “Is she serious?”
The maid grumbled. “Never known her another way.”
“You must accept a fortune,” Hiresha said, “half to be paid to you, half to him who unearthed the gem.”
Chesa gulped as if swallowing a mouthful of scalding tea. “What do you mean by ‘a fortune?’”
The enchantress whispered the amount to her maid. The bundle of grey dress and turban jiggled as she chortled. She scurried to Chesa, laid a hand over her shoulder, and spoke in confidential tones.
Enchantress Hiresha would have grinned, but a yawn overcame her. A blink of unconsciousness—a moment of lost time—made her fear for her grip on the diamond. She nestled it between her sash and chest.
Spellsword Fos offered Hiresha an arm. “I like what you did for the girl.”
Fos’s mismatched gaze met hers. His left iris was the dark of a pond in the shade, his right that of cedar heartwood. Hiresha had regenerated his lost eye. She had warned him the color match would not be right, but the contrast between his black and brown eyes distracted her in a most pleasing way.
“Not so sure about what you did to Jibade,” Fos said. “Could’ve just had me knock the daylight out of him.”
“My way can be defended in court. It had a whiff of fairness.”
“You walked the edge to get that gem.”
“Everything worthwhile in life I’ve discovered on the edge of acceptability.” That's what Hiresha wished she'd told him. She had long to think on it later.
At the time, Hiresha opened her mouth to speak but found herself short on thoughts.
It’s happening.
She could feel her disease clamping down on her. She sagged under its weight, and its painful nothingness filled her skull with a headache.
She tucked an arm around Fos’s elbow and leaned on him. He cupped her hand. His heat flowed up her fingers. Her eyes closed as Fos led her to her palanquin. She wanted nothing more than to sit and dream of how she might carve her new gem.
They stopped, and Hiresha reached out to grasp the edge of her chair. Instead, her hand closed on something flimsy. She forced open one eye to see that she now held a scroll, sealed with the four-sphere design of the Mindvault Academy.
Contorting her face, she forced open her second eye. A man was bowing in front of her. She glimpsed boots studded with tiger-eye jewels, greatsword strapped to his back, diagrams of plants tattooed to his neck and clean-shaven head. The marks identified him as a prince of Nagra. He straightened into a leap and twirled his legs over his head in a flip.
Hardly a bow of humility.
Hiresha was not much surprised. She knew this man, this spellsword, and he had a hummingbird’s knack for standing still.
“Provost Hiresha,” Spellsword Sagai said, on his feet again, “you are given a mandatory invitation to attend the other elders in a closed meeting. I’m to escort you to the Academy.”
While Hiresha broke the seal and unrolled the scroll, Fos clasped arms with the other man.
“Sagai! Did you catch Hiresha’s duel?”
“Not as forcefully as Jibade did.” Spellsword Sagai pulled away in a backward dash then spun forward again. “Knocked out by skin jewels, it’s enough to make any other enchantress faint.”
“She’s that amazing, isn’t she?” Fos nodded to Hiresha.
On the scroll, words swam. The ink left shadow smears in Hiresha’s vision.
Not magic. Just me.
She handed the scroll to Fos. “What does it say?”
His brows scrunched upward. His dark iris flicked back and forth in time with his brown one. “Looks like it says what Sagai said.”
Hiresha squeezed her eyes shut. “There’s something ominous about receiving in writing what could’ve been spoken.”
“And what’s a ‘mandatory invitation?’” Fos asked.
“A bureaucratic flick of the nose,” Hiresha said. “Very well. I will accept what can’t be refused.”
The elders willfully waste my time. I’ll protest.
She would sleep through half the meeting, which was twice the alertness it no doubt deserved.
3
Three Heads, One Mind
The double doors whispered to a close behind Hiresha, and she stepped into an upside-down parlor. A window dominated the far wall, round panes glaring with the afternoon sun. The jagged clouds outside were, in truth, snowbound mountains, seen from a perspective flipped by the gravity-defying magic of the Mindvault Academy.
Hiresha was accustomed to private meetings on what the uncivil might call the ceiling. Something other than the sky-hanging peaks seemed out of place. Sweet-smelling smoke from a brazier cloyed. A table beside the fire was shrouded, and whatever the cloth concealed looked too flat to be a tea set.
“Provost Hiresha, please seat yourself.”
The voice came from a three-headed creature of sprawling silks and drifts of taffeta. A mound of ceremonial dresses buried the elder enchantresses up to their necks. The women had ensconced themselves on nearby couches, and the folds of their gowns had slid into each other until they appeared but one monstrosity.
Hiresha stood beside a backless chair of ebony. She would not sit yet, for to sit would be to sleep. Her fingers drummed over her paragon diamond. Her maid had tied the gem to Hiresha’s hand with a ribbon, lest she drop it in her drowsiness.
The center head of the silken abomination said, “Out of consideration to you, we’re holding this meeting privately.”
Hiresha had decided that the elders must have gathered to burden her with more honorary gowns. She had saved the Academy from disaster two months ago, when its gravitational enchantments had failed. More than one elder had plummeted to her death, and some of their prestigious vestments would go to Hiresha, as much as she had no use for them. She preferred to wear only an amethyst-spiral gown of her own design.
“I am ever an enemy of fuss,” Hiresha said. “The greatest reward I could ask for would be a quick return to my workshop. My research awaits, and I’ve discovered an exciting new prospect.”
She had intended to show them the raw paragon stone. Instead she curled it out of view beneath her coat. The time did not seem right. Her glance flicked again to the shrouded table.
I’ll wait until the diamond is carved, when its majesty will be more than theoretical.
“You need not be humble,” the head on the right said. “We have a greater prize for you than any gown. I know you’ve wanted this since you came first to the Academy.”
Hiresha’s drooping eyes opened to a semblance of wakefulness. She had not expected this. Ever since she had come to the Academy, she had searched for a cure to her somnolence. For the first time in decades she had thought herself close to a solution.
If I can create an enchantment to cause a deadly sleep, a magical reversal of the same bodily mechanism should cure it.
Hiresha could not believe another elder had found the answer first.
Backlit and indistinct, the elders were concealed further by headdresses frilled with ribbons, strewn with veils, and caged with gold wires. The bobbing, crested head on the left was speaking.
“In this transformational period, your spirit will spread her wings as you molt parts of your old life for the glorious new. Our gift to you is of freedom.”
Hiresha overlooked the verbal splattering. Happiness glowed inside her with every hue of sapphire, from pink to purple. She had expected tedium. She had found a gift even greater than the paragon diamond.
Freedom from my somnolence and a paragon diamond in one day.
Hiresha had never believed such joy was woven into her fate.
Her eyes prickling with tears, Hiresha asked, “Where did you find it? I searched the entire crystalline records for a cure.”
Hiresha steadied herself on a chair’s armrest. She would kneel, not only in gratefulness to the elders but even more to the Fate Weaver.
“Your gift is freedom from responsibilities,” the left head said.
“From your duties as the Academy’s provost.” The words of the central head chilled Hiresha like icicles piercing her rib cage. “Your obligations to your students and to fellow faculty are terminated.”
Hiresha lost hold of the chair, her knee thudding into the floor. An amethyst in her gown dug into her skin. Her head jerked upright, and she squinted at the elders. In front of the window’s glare, three shadows loomed over her with bulging heads.
“What is this?” The words came from Hiresha’s mouth in one gasp.
“You are retiring early, Hiresha,” the right head said, “with full honors.”
“Retiring?” Hiresha stumbled to her feet. When she tried to grasp her brow, she bumped her temples with the gemstone tied to her hand. “Are you saying I’m to leave my chair as provost to be promoted to chancellor? I’ve no wish for those responsibilities.”
“No, you’re retiring from all offices of enchantment,” the center head said. “You will leave the Academy.”
“We only want what’s best for everyone.” Arms with mismatched gloves reached from the left side of the lavish mass.
“And you always wanted to raise a family.” The pillar-shaped head on the right bobbed. “This is your chance.”
Hiresha teetered backward on the seat. She could not speak. Could not begin to comprehend. She knew only that this could be no jest; the Ceiling of Elders was inoculated against humor. Her skin puckered as the words of the three heads rolled over her like so much cold water.
“The Mindvault Academy will extend its full influence in arranging your marriage. Given your age, it should be done quickly to guarantee the greatest probability of producing offspring. If your daughters manifest with your same condition, they could be assets to the empire as enchantresses.”
“Your husband will need calm and gentle bodily essences to balance your own deficiencies. A scribe in good standing at court would complete you as a person.”
“He’ll have noble heritage, of course. We have already penned inquiries to the city of Nagra.”
“I am not retiring. I am not marrying a stranger.” Hiresha forced the words through her grimace. “Not when my research promises so much.”
The pillar shape of the right head twitched. “Hiresha, you told me you wanted nothing more than to raise children of your own.”
“That was years ago. Now I’m at the cusp of developing new fields of study in impact enchantments. I might even soon cure myself, and, Taren, did you dare say you hoped my daughters have the same condition?”
Hiresha had thrown her words at the middle head. The one on the left answered first.
“Only so their wealth of dreams will bring wonders to the world.”
The central head said, “You may petition the king of Nagra not to be married. Retiring is less optional.”
Hiresha swayed to her feet. “Retirement isn’t a sentence. You can’t force it on me.”
“Listen to me, Hiresha,” the right head said. “If you don’t retire today, you’ll be expelled. You don’t deserve that. Not with your great mind.”
Hiresha needed a full three seconds to believe what she had heard. “You can’t expel me. I saved the Academy. I saved your lives.”
“Against my wishes.” The center head spoke with barbed consonants and poisoned vowels. “I wanted to die beneath the Gateway Constellation.”
“I assumed you were delirious from blood loss.”
The left head said, “Your imbalance of restraint also shattered a three-hundred-year-old crystal window in your own workshop.”
“I had to escape through that window. A fire had been lit to kill me,” Hiresha said. “Would it have been more decent of me to die in peaceful agony?”
“You broke the window with magic.”
“Enchantresses must only create,” the left head said. “To destroy is anathema to our dreams.”
Hiresha swung a purple-gloved finger to the left head. “What’s anathema to you, Wysteras, is practicality.”
“An enchantress may only exert force through her spellsword guard,” the center head said. “And a spellsword only gains magic through his enchantress. No single person should have both powers.”
“That reminds me,” Hiresha said. “You don’t have the power to expel a provost. Not even the chancellor did. That takes a unanimous vote by the elders, and I’m not about to expel myself.”
“Actually, you already have.” The voice on the right slackened with regret. “You gave me absentee privileges over your vote.”
Hiresha rocked backward, her knees folding. She thumped down again on the chair.
She thought of the Academy as her home, a sanctuary that she had risked her life to save. Hiresha felt as if she had lost an organ, leaving a deadly absence in her core. She could only believe the emptiness would kill her.
When she spoke to the elder on her right, Hiresha’s voice rattled with moisture. “We—we respected each other’s work. Why would you do this to me?”
“Hiresha….” An arm lifted from a fleshy carcass of fabric as if to comfort, but the girth of sashes and skirts prevented the touch. “On the night you saved the Academy, I saw you with a man. He transformed air into veils of opals. I could not believe it at the time, but I admit now that he had to have been a Feaster.”
Hiresha tried to swallow but could not. Necessity had required her to ally herself with certain persons who could not be called respectable. If anything, quite the opposite.
“He wore wings of copper,” the right head said. “I enchanted that masterwork for a spellsword, and you gave it to a Feaster. I saw it. Every enchantress saw it. Hiresha, any city court would find you guilty of consorting. The arbiter would sentence you to be buried alive in sand.”
Hiresha searched for the words to argue.
Maybe I wouldn’t have needed a Feaster’s help if you had been anything but pathetic blobs of uselessness.
She wondered if arguing would do any good.
Hiresha had dreaded this day for years, the discovery that she had an understanding with a certain Feaster.
His magic’s appetites are nothing short of murderous.
Time and time again she had resisted Tethiel’s company. Even thinking about him sent prickles up her back as if a scarab beetle tickled its way along her spine. Only when she had seen no other choice had she reached out to Tethiel.
If I had been stronger, I wouldn’t have needed him.
Her fingers traced between the amethysts embroidered into her gown, to the center of her chest. Hidden beneath the fabric, a red diamond surged outward with Hiresha’s every breath. Tethiel had given it to her. She hated how much she treasured the stone, how much showing it to anyone would incriminate her, how much she owed a Feaster.
So be it,
she thought.
If this is the price I have to pay for saving my friends and my home.
Wiping the corners of her eyes with the back of her glove, Hiresha met the stares of the three heads one at a time. “Very well,” she said. “I will retire to my estate in Morimound.”
Research would progress slower outside the Academy, but Hiresha still held out hope she would find an enchantment to cure her disease.
And when I do I’ll affix the magic in this blue diamond. Yes, it will suit splendidly.
“You can’t be permitted in Morimound,” the center head said. “The people call you their paragon, and your presence would tempt them to slip you a jewel.”
“The chief export of that city is diamond,” the right head said, “and the proximity of jewels would only torment you.”
Hiresha cradled the blue diamond against her chest. “What do you mean? I’d have my own gems.”
“Absolutely not. You could not resist enchanting them.”
“I’m sorry, Hiresha,” the right head said. “The terms of your retirement have to forbid your practicing enchantment.”