Gravity's Revenge (9 page)

Hiresha felt the unbalancing combination of thankfulness for the minister’s collaboration as well as the terror of perhaps being right. She hoped she might yet be proven wrong, anything other than that the enchantments were disintegrating under their feet.
What is happening to my Academy?

The elders looked no less shocked, the rector clutching the side of her head, fingers covering the gilt ornament surrounding an ear. The warden pressed a palm to the smooth blackness of her masked brow. The dean squeezed her eyes shut and chanted something under her breath.

“You do not understand what you say.” The chancellor stepped back from the ropes around the center of the Ceiling. Her sleeves fell about her boney elbows as she thrust outward with her hands as if to push away their words. “None of you do. The enchantments of the
Mindvault
Academy
cannot be failing because….”

The chancellor’s wig floated off her head. She tried to catch hold of it but only succeeded in slapping her crown of lank and thinning white hair. By then her skirts had curled upward, and she had started to fall.

She screamed. She flailed her arms. In a wash of lace, the chancellor dropped in front of a window burning with afternoon sun and snowcloaked mountains.

Later, when Hiresha had time to view her memories in the calm of the laboratory, she would see that the chancellor flipped midair in an arc of blue and orange skirts and a kicking of slippers. Far from trying to catch her, the enchantresses standing below stood shocked or stumbled and flung themselves away. The back of the chancellor’s neck collided with the granite floor tiles. It sounded like two bamboo training swords cracking together.

In the chaos of the moment, Hiresha knew only panic, bright and hot as the blood flowing between the backstepping enchantresses. Alyla shrieked and dropped the fennec. The fox pattered forward to sniff the spreading red.

Next to Hiresha, the rector stiffened then tipped backward in a faint. The minister caught the larger woman but toppled with her to the Ceiling. Hiresha dashed down the wall but found the chancellor already beyond help.

10

Spire of Magical History

Hiresha worried that Fos would soon be making his way along the Skyway for his night watch.
I must warn the spellswords in the Blade and spare him that danger.

With the rector in a state of shock, the dean stayed to supervise the evacuation of all the women to the ground floor of the
Recurve
Tower
. Hiresha swept out from the entrance onto the Academy Plateau. The minister and warden flowed after her over the snow in two tides of bright fabrics.

The warden’s breath whistled through her black mask as she hustled to keep pace. “There are no jewel records of the Academy’s enchantments fading, yet our search must begin in the Spire.”

Hiresha felt a golden rush of relief at the sight of Fos’s purple jacket. He strode upright onto the plateau. As she went to him, he greeted her with a glacier-melting smile.

“One of your gloves snuck off?” He looked up from her bare hand to her face. “Say, is something wrong?”

“To put it simply, yes. Did you have any difficulties walking the Skyway?”

His face lifted then slumped in the expression of a boy caught. “How did you know? I must’ve stepped off the path. Late to bed last night and all, but I Lightened myself and got my feet back on the cliff.”

“I see I worry overmuch for you. Your spellsword magic protects you.”

“Thanks to your enchantments.” He lifted one leg. Though greave plates turned his feet into pillars of metal, he still managed a few lumbering dance steps. The greatsword hilt above his shoulder bobbed side to side. He stopped when the minister and the warden approached, and he went to one knee. “Elders.”

Hiresha said to him, “See that no one else attempts the Skyway. And direct everyone into the
Recurve
Tower
, but not by the
Lofty
Bridge
.”

“Where are we headed?” The Warden of Faceted Knowledge paused to lean on her ebony cane.

The Minister of Orbiting Bodies spoke with patience. “You said you could show us some manner of records.”

“Concerning the academy’s enchantments,” Hiresha said. “And their degeneration.”

“That would explain why I’m holding the chancellor’s amulet.” The warden hobbled down a path between the Grindstone and the
Recurve
Tower
. “Why isn’t Chancellor Ringwold with us? This must be important.”

Hiresha exchanged a glance with the minister, who wore rose-tinted glasses against the glare. Hiresha said, “The chancellor would wish us to correct this issue without delay.”

The minister adjusted her star-patterned scarves. “Ringwold was the finest administrator the Academy has ever seen. She must be given the wind burial.”

The words “thimble-minded, gold-sucking bureaucrat” came to mind, but Hiresha felt petty for thinking them now. Even if the chancellor had seen fit to deny most of Hiresha’s funding applications, Hiresha admitted the bureaucrat had seemed to have a knack for encouraging donors’ generosity for the Academy.

“Wind burial?” the warden said. “Whoever the enchantress is, she will be the thousand and twenty-first to receive that honor.”

The
Waterfly
River
crossed over the plateau, frosted and frozen. An enchantment caused the course of the river to lift into the air, forming a bridge of ice, which the elder enchantresses walked under. The bottom of the river overhead glistened with distorted reflections.

A few novices were talking. One held up a blade of polished ivory bound to the bottom of a shoe. “Will the ice be thick enough for skating tomorrow, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t try it for a week. That water is deathly frigid.” The second novice nodded up to a lake suspended as a globe around an enchanted pillar. She glanced back to the approaching women. “Oh, inspiration to you, Elders.”

“Off to the Recurve tower with you,” Hiresha said. “No dawdling. The dusk is threatening, and the Academy is not safe at present.”

The warden asked, “Why ever not?”

“The Academy’s Attraction enchantments are decaying.” Hiresha was well used to repeating herself for the forgetful elder.

“That I doubt,” the warden said, “although they may be depleted. Hurry, we must check the keystones in the Spire.”

The three enchantresses approached a spinning tower of crystal. Made weightless by enchantment, the Spire of Magical History rotated from the force of wind pushing against the iridescent sheets of glass that fanned out from its sides like fish fins.

Once inside, the minister fanned herself with affected vigor. “A hot flash. I must breathe a moment, but you two will go on.”

Hiresha doubted the minister had ever experienced a hot flash.
Regardless, she must be close to hyperventilating from the stress of it all.
Hiresha felt dizzy herself and could not draw full breaths. An achy sense of unease was growing within her that everyone in the Academy was in danger.

Pushing the worry away, Hiresha focused on the task at hand. Tinted light of green and purple passed over her from the revolving glass above. The warden had set a foot on a pillar leading upward when Hiresha reached to pull her back.

“You can’t go vertical. It is not safe.”

The smoothness of the mask that hid the warden’s face gave her an impression of youthfulness. Every time she spoke with the gravelly voice of an elder, Hiresha felt a touch of surprise. “The Academy keystones are at the most superior and secure reaches of the Spire.”

Hiresha pinched two green tourmalines from the pockets of her sash. “These gems will Lighten us, and if the Academy’s enchantments fail, we won’t fall far.”

“Why would they fail?” Eyes within the warden’s mask blinked when the provost tossed the jewel at her. The warden’s thick-jointed fingers tried to pull the gem from her gown, but it stuck. “The chancellor won’t care to hear of you flicking your jewels at senior faculty. Wait, where did I acquire the chancellor’s amulet?”

Hiresha clasped hands with the warden on their way up the column. The stone curved under their feet, and hues of dark blue and purple slid by as the spire turned around them. Shelves of crystal extended from the walls, holding outdated skyscopes, crudely carved effigies, papyrus scrolls, jaguar teeth capped in gold, a sea serpent’s vertebrae, and a piece of the prow of the first land-sailing ship. The antiquities revolved overhead, within reach.

“Novices steadfastly refuse to put the artifacts back on their proper shelves,” the warden said. “I should never sleep if I had to worry about them meddling with the jewel archives, too. Now, which gems did you wish to reference, Provost?”

The limestone of the column they walked on changed to a pink granite. Hiresha knew that novices could go no further. The new level of rock would only Attract those wearing amulets given to enchantresses. If someone had tampered with jewels critical to the Academy’s enchantments, it could not have been a novice.

“The Academy’s keystones, if you please,” Hiresha said. “Ah, mind yourself, Warden.”

The elder enchantress dropped her cane as she drifted off the side of the column. Hiresha held onto the floating woman’s hand, coaxing her upward through the air. Only the tips of her feet were visible within her puff of skirts, and they paddled until they settled back onto the column.

“Well, shatter my toes! Never happened before. Oh no, that’s my support.”

The cane had slid down the side of the column. Without any amulet attached to it, the ebony stick had dropped all the way to the base of the Spire. Hiresha shuddered to think that without her Lightening tourmaline, the warden may have made as sharp a sound colliding with the stone floor below.

 
The thin voice of the minister called up. “Warden? Provost?”

“Quite safe,” Hiresha called back. “But do remain below yourself. Now, Warden, you were taking us to the keystones.”

“No need to repeat yourself, Provost. My memory is superb.”

“Of course,” Hiresha said.

Shelves spun overhead with hundreds of jewels in velvet settings, marked with numbers on bronze plaques. Beyond the jewel archives, the column became the black of basalt. The warden glanced around herself and at Hiresha, checking no doubt to see that only another elder enchantress attempted to ascend to the highest level.

Jewel-encrusted scimitars and shields of historical significance were secured to the Spire walls. A glove of gilt chain, a wand with an opal tip, rings mounted with human teeth, and more jewels containing the Academy’s most precious records cluttered the highest shelves.

The warden pointed to an empty display setting. Then lifted a shaky hand toward Hiresha’s face. “Reserved for your earrings, yet I like to think Elder Enchantress Planterra prefers her soul to travel with you.”

“I ever appreciate the brightness of her dreams.” Hiresha touched the blue diamonds decorating her ears, which glowed from the power of the deceased enchantress. Hiresha wondered if Chancellor Ringwold had planned to store her soul in a jewel instead of going to the afterlife. She doubted it, as the chancellor had never been known as a prodigious dreamer.

The warden’s gowns flowed upward over the top of the column. A platform capped it with etchings of platinum. Hiresha followed, swinging in one long step to an upright position. Her weight disappeared. Without the Attraction spell—weakened as it was—binding her to the side of the pillar, she floated to her tiptoes. The tourmaline of Lightening shone where she had slapped it on her shoulder. She kept a firm hand on the drifting warden.

The crystal of the spire had dimmed to tones of dusk, and the mountain range outside was a series of rippling shadows. The metal under their feet glinted blue from the light that leaked from Hiresha’s enchanted earrings. Her chin tilted up to see a cabinet of obsidian at the tip of the spire.

“Warden, did the chancellor visit the Spire during the last few days?”

“Ringwold never comes here. Not without a tour of nobles.”

Hiresha wished she could better trust the warden’s recent memory.

“In a sense, the keystones are the most precious jewels in the Lands of Loam.” The warden lifted the chancellor’s amulet and after three tries fitted it into an indentation of four concentric circles. “This is a crypt for those enchantresses who bound their souls to the Lands of Loam to empower the Academy with their….”

She gasped. Fumbling off her mask, she gazed up into the vault. Hiresha was shocked to see the warden’s true face for the first time. Part of her had expected some disfigurement, but the woman’s features were merely plain, with aged skin dry and peeling.

“The keystones, they’re gone!”

“We did expect as much,” Hiresha said. “And only the chancellor’s amulet opens this crypt?”

“Why would Ringwold remove the keystones? She had to know it’d enervate the Mindvault.”

“I doubt the chancellor knew they were missing. She would never willfully allow anything to damage the Academy’s
reputation
.” Hiresha moved her fingers over the empty niches, and the glassy darkness of the obsidian chilled her hand. “What is this?”

A grey metal sigil of four concentric squares lurked in place of the missing jewels like a warning. It weighed down her hand, a necklace chain attached to it was slinking out of the crypt.
An amulet then, though not one that would open any doors in the Academy,
she thought.
And made of lead
. The metal was poisonous to enchantments.

The lead amulet appeared slimy, and the enchantress took care not to touch it with her bare hand. It left dark spots on her glove.

The warden squinted at the square pendant. “The iconography is not typical of any nationality east or west of the seas. Put your young eyes to use, Provost, and tell me what the inscription reads.”

“‘Dreams are the mind’s midden heaps.’” Between the squares, words had been carved in the lead. Hiresha frowned and rotated the amulet to read another. “‘Nothing not first forgotten.’ I see. This is mocking the Academy’s mottos. We can use this particular outrage to track down the perpetrator. A smith must have forged it, and we’ll begin a survey of….”

Oh, no, we can’t. We can’t even descend to the valley safely.
Hiresha’s hand grew slack, and the amulet and its chain slithered out of her grasp to clang on the platinum plate below her feet.