Gravity's Revenge (33 page)

42

The Brink

Blurred figures were climbing the cliff. Shadows clung to the rock and gazed up at Hiresha with smears for faces. They each wore one long spike on their backs. After she blinked her eyes into focus, Hiresha saw the glint of their eyes and of metal. They were men with greatswords.

Past them, a few flecks of light were visible through the windows of the
College
of
Active Enchantment
. Along the rest of the Blade, panes of glass glistened black like facets of obsidian.

“Tell them, Enchantress,” Sheamab said at her ear. “Tell the spellswords that I still control the Academy and will execute you and every other enchantress unless they descend back to their college.”

Hiresha muddled through the concepts of the spellswords climbing the cliff through snowy gales, of Sheamab threatening them and demanding they turn back, of her needing proof to dissuade them.

They’re too late.
The enchantress bowed her head into the precipice. Her hands were bound in front of her, constricted by rope, pinched and purpling at the fingertips. Hiresha’s voice broke as she shouted.

“It—it’s as the Bright Palm says. She’s more than capable of disposing of everyone if you don’t turn back, Spellsword Trakis.”

Hiresha had spotted the elder spellsword by the glint of rings woven into his imposing beard. Gold jewelry was braided into the scruff of white below his chin, and silver into the rest of the dark and wavy hedge.

He squinted up at her. One hand shivered as he gripped a wrinkle in the cliff. His other clung to a rope attached to a nail he must have driven into the rock. “With all honors due, Enchantress, I must know who speaks. What is your name and—gods whip me for having to ask—what’re your gowns of merit?”

“Why, it’s I. Elder Hiresha. The earrings should make that obvious.”

“Well throw me into the
Sea
of
Fangs
and I’d still beg your pardon, Enchantress, but you can’t be the elder. The Provost of Applied Enchantment is resting in the Blade. She’s the one good enough to fly down and told me it was safe to climb.”

“As in, I flew down to the
College
of
Active Enchantment
wearing copper wings?”

“And with wrath in your eye. Er, her eye,” Spellsword Trakis said. “Well stab my tongue! Does this mean you flew back up and into misfortune?”

Tethiel stole my image, my face, my voice.
Frigid anger swept over her at the illusionist’s presumption. She knew she had told the Lord of the Feast to descend to the Blade.
In a way, I did ask for him to speak for me.
The thought still chilled her that she might live longer through his illusions than in her true body.

“You encountered a Feaster,” Sheamab said from over Hiresha’s shoulder. “Trust that the enchantress before a Bright Palm is no falsehood.”

“A Feaster? Spitted dogs and crow flops!—beginning your pardon, Enchantress.” Spellsword Trakis peered into the darkness below him on the cliff. “A long way to climb for only frozen fingers to show for it. There’ll be one headless Feaster before the night’s out if I have my way, the enchantress-impersonating mongrel!”

Hiresha said, “You shouldn’t—”

Sheamab spoke over her. “Do not engage this Feaster, for he is beyond your measure. We will attempt to lower a Bright Palm to your college tonight.”

The spellswords descended their ropes. The enchantress was dragged alongside the cliff by hers.
So far by living I’ve averted one tragedy. But the night is far from over.

With the pain in her leg and hand gone she could better appreciate the ache in her chest from the Lord of the Feast’s betrayals.
Attempting to rally the spellswords hardly balances his luring the Bright Palms here in the first place. He cares only for destroying his enemies. He is obsessed.

As Hiresha was pulled closer to the Mind’s Gate, she decided that Tethiel had likely already flown from the Blade.
He’s not so foolish as to stay and be caught. He’s said his farewells, caused his travesties.

She hated to think of him free. She would have felt the same about his death. Not for his own sake, but for the chaos in the Lands of Loam that would have followed. She did not care to imagine the next lord of nightmare. And Hiresha was more than certain that whoever succeeded him would not be half so interesting.

The rope that had pulled Hiresha slackened. A second cord remained binding her hands as Mister Jewel Pox searched the enchantress, pawing into her pockets. He missed the opal stuck to her thigh.

“No keys, no gems,” he said.

Sheamab nodded and stomped on Hiresha’s face. The blow surprised Hiresha more than it hurt, though the continued pressure locked her head in place and mouth shut. The sandal’s scarred leather dug grit and coldness into Hiresha’s lips. She could see Sheamab’s toes glowing through her sandals, and they were long enough to look like stunted fingers.

“Spellsword Fosapam,” Sheamab called out, “I understand this enchantress imprisoned members of the Order of the Innocent in the tower, beyond a door of stone.”

Hiresha’s eyes found Fos at the crest of the Skyway, where the path curved over the edge and onto the cliff. He lay beside a candle lantern, ropes covering his hands and ankles. It appeared the spellsword might slip over the frosted slope and fall at any moment. The half of his face she could see in the light in the wind-tortured flame peered back at her with guilt and firming resolve.

“If you provide me with the whereabouts of the key,” Sheamab said to Fos, “then I’ll not push the enchantress off the cliff.”

Hiresha would have liked to urge him to defy the Bright Palm.
Far better I go over the edge than Inannis and Emesea go free.
She could not tell him so, had to struggle to do so much as breathe through her running nose. She clawed at the Bright Palm’s ankle but could not budge her.

“You already promised you wouldn’t harm her,” Fos said.

“That, I never promised,” Sheamab, “but I am willing to give those words to you.”

The sandal pressed Hiresha’s face downward, leaning her over the edge. She felt she was balanced at the end of the world. Snow careened upward along the cliff in waves of wind.

Hiresha did not even try to grip Sheamab’s foot, to tip her off the edge, to hold onto her.
The fennec’s collar on her arm would only save her.
The fox himself yipped while jogging between the enchantress and the spellsword.

The enchantress’s chin was forced back by the sandal, her face torqued to the side but still in a position to see Fos. A flicker of purple caught her eye, something fluttering below the spellsword on the Skyway.
Was that a jewel sash?
Sheamab had thrown them from the plateau, and Hiresha could imagine one blown against the cliff road.
But I can’t be certain that’s what I saw. Not that it would do me any good regardless, bound and without a single garnet left in my fingers.

Fos’s gaze sliced back and forth between Hiresha and Sheamab. He quivered, straining against the ropes. When he spoke, it was between gasps.

“Not certain your promise is good enough. After you put your light in Alyla.”

Sheamab tilted Hiresha farther over the edge. “The key’s location, or you will watch the elder enchantress fall.”

Before the spellsword could answer, the fennec hopped on Hiresha’s side and sank his teeth into Sheamab’s toe. Whether the fox had sensed the enchantress’s hatred of the Bright Palm or the digits of her foot reminded him of knobby grubs, Hiresha could not know. Worry bolted through Hiresha that Sheamab would crush the fennec under her foot.

The fox leapt aside, and his tail was ruffled by a black slash of staff ripping through the air. The blow would have smashed him over the cliff. It all happened so fast that Hiresha wondered how he could have known to dodge it, how a tiny creature more endowed with cuteness than battle expertise could have outmaneuvered the Bright Palm mastermind.

She didn’t see him as a threat, and he was faster than her.
For all the Bright Palm’s quickness of thought, the fennec had outpaced her with instinct.
He followed his intuition.

A pin of regret lodged in Hiresha’s throat as she realized something else.
If I had done the same, that staff wouldn’t have broken my leg. My jewels would still be on my person rather than stuck against the Skyway.

Hiresha strained her ears, trying to hear the pad of the fox’s feet under the wind. No scuffles alarmed her into thinking he had been caught.
He must’ve escaped, the wonderful dear.
She wanted to craft him a new necklace of golden topaz to congratulate him, and the thought that she would die before she would have the time pained her heart into beating in sharp jerks.

Fos choked out a laugh. “Don’t guess he liked the taste of you, Bright Palm. Can’t say I blame him. Hiresha, I…I think I have to leave you in the Fate Weaver’s arms.”

Is he really standing up to Sheamab?

“Don’t guess you’ll be safe no matter what I do.” Fos turned into a hunched-over silhouette, with the moon rising behind him, the pale disk between horizon and storm clouds. “I’ll always remember you, Hiresha.”

Hiresha was so proud of him that she was grinning when the Bright Palm lifted her foot. Part of Hiresha understood that Sheamab would kick her from the cliff now.

So be it.

A tingling burned over Hiresha’s skin, a breathless nearing of doom and terrible wonder. It reminded her of what she had felt around the Lord of the Feast. In that instant she wondered if Sheamab had stepped away not for a kick but because she too sensed a Feaster’s approach.

But that can’t be. Bright Palms never feel.

Hiresha heard a thump but felt only a nudge. The branching whiteness of Sheamab’s veins tumbled over the enchantress as the Bright Palm flipped feet over head and fell off the cliff.

Upside down, the Bright Palm whirled her staff into a battle pose and glanced to the amethyst bracelet on her arm. She shouted as she dropped farther into darkness.

“Stay back, Rommick.”

A snap of metal drew Hiresha’s gaze up, and she knew whom she would see. Copper feathers flared out as they filled with wind, and moonlight rippled over the dagger wings like flowing mercury. She could only guess Tethiel had swooped down and kicked the Bright Palm in the back.

The Lord of the Feast landed on the plateau beside her. “There’s nothing more powerful than the entrance.”

“I should’ve known your goodbye couldn’t be trusted.” Hiresha lifted her bound hands. “Now cut these off.”

Razor feathers breezed between Hiresha’s arms. The rope fell away. She felt the sting of cuts as well, but nothing too deep, she hoped.

“This way, my heart.” He cupped her with his wing, and a thrilling darkness washed over her. The relief from the respite contained her fury for him to a mere simmer. His magic concealed them, while their mirror images strode along the cliff in the other direction.

They moved away none too soon. Sheamab was a gale of light and spinning staff, on her way back up to the ledge. The amethysts on her arm shone the same hue as those on Mister Jewel Pox, who had kept his distance from the cliff. He had his bronze spikes in hand and eyes on the illusions of Hiresha and Tethiel.

The enchantress felt that she dragged a lead weight of joy. Resentment for her rescuer filled her with simmering guilt and itching relief. A man of treachery had saved her from dying, but Sheamab had beaten them an hour before, when Fos had his sword and Hiresha her jewels.

“Our odds have not much improved,” she said to Tethiel’s ear. “A sash of mine may have blown onto the Skyway. No, I know it did, but I can’t walk there without my red diamond.”

“Reach into my left boot. The other side.”

Hiresha’s fingers moved down a pant leg and under the smoothness of leather and into warmth, to touch something hard with three sides.
So he did take it.
She lifted the diamond in front of the moon, and a pinkish light shone on her face.

Heat welled within her, searing her with pangs of hope.

“The jewel sash still won’t help me, not until I find my garnets.” She spread five fingers, each with a divot from a missing gemstone.