Trapped

Uh-oh. Even more powerful than I thought.

Dreamsinger continued a few more steps: TIP, TIP, TIP. She wasn't actually walking on her toes, but each time she placed a foot, she did so with gingerly caution, as if fearful of making too much noise. Not the spit-in-your-eye brashness one expects from a Spark Lord. In fact, she stopped in the middle of the room and looked around as if she had no idea what to do next. Lost and dismayed. At last her gaze settled on the Caryatid; her face brightened.

"Sister!" she cooed. The Sorcery-Lord tip-tapped to the Caryatid and air-kissed her cheek. This wasn't just an empty gesture, the way unctuous people pretend to kiss while avoiding actual contact-Dreamsinger's lips pushed as close as possible to the Caryatid's face, but a hand's breadth of solidified atmosphere blocked the way. The Spark Lord kissed the invisible barrier fervently, once, twice, three times. "Sister! Dear comrade on the Burdensome Path. Please tell me what's happening here."

The Caryatid remained motionless. Dreamsinger waited a moment… then a moment longer… then raised her hand to her mouth in the embarrassed horror of a little girl realizing she's done something rude. "You mean you can't just… but it's such a simple spell!" Dreamsinger leaned in close, her forehead pressed against the imprisoning air as she stared into the Caryatid's face. "All you have to do is shrug it off. A tiny trivial shrug. Not the physical sort, but you know when you focus your mind, then flip the magic away?"

No response. The Caryatid looked as if she was straining to shrug/focus/flip, but the only result was a flush of effort turning her cheeks pink. Dreamsinger watched a moment more, then dropped her gaze. "Well, ah, it can sometimes be difficult…"

Eyes still averted, the Spark Lord made a twiddly gesture with the last three fingers of her left hand. The Caryatid lurched forward, as if she'd suddenly regained her momentum from a minute before and was continuing her run toward Impervia. Dreamsinger waited politely (keeping her gaze elsewhere, pretending she didn't notice anything ungainly) until the Caryatid staggered to a halt. Then the Sorcery-Lord lifted her head and said, "So, dear sister, you were going to explain…?"

The Caryatid curtsied low. My grandma Khadija (who'd been governor of Sheba for twenty-three years) had told me the Sparks hated people bowing or scraping-"They don't want deference, they want obedience." But Dreamsinger waited placidly as the Caryatid held the curtsy for a full five seconds. Then the Caryatid rose and said, "Milady, we… we're on a quest."

Dreamsinger's eyes grew wide. "Really? My brother says the only people who believe in quests are professors of literature. But he must have been teasing. My family likes to invent stories to see what I'll believe. They call me 'delightfully gullible.' "

She repeated the phrase in the singsong voice of a little girl who's heard the words frequently but doesn't quite understand them. Perhaps beneath her luscious exterior, Dreamsinger was far more child than woman. As I said, girls from affluent families often received Kaylan's Chameleon as a "Welcome to puberty" gift; take away the sorcerous glamour, and the real Dreamsinger might only be eleven, with scrapes on her knees and a first-figure bra. One might ask why her family let her leave Spark Royal without an adult chaperon… but her freeze-the-room spell showed she could take care of herself. Perhaps it was standard practice for the High Lord to send his children on the prowl: GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD, AND INSTILL THE FEAR OF THE LORDS.

"I regret," Dreamsinger said, "I don't know much about Life. I have paid a great price to follow the Burdensome Path. A grave and awful price." She looked to the Caryatid for sympathy. "Studying day and night, learning to reprogram the world. This is the first time I've been outside Spark Royal since… dear me, I don't remember. Sorcery has jumbled my brain."

She laughed: the artificial type of laugh one gives when feeling awkward, but not half so forced as the laugh the Caryatid gave in response. It's hard to sound jolly when a Spark has just confessed to being mentally unstable.

Dreamsinger let her laugh fade to an encouraging smile. "But you were talking about your quest. It must be lovely to see the world… meet people… make a difference instead of constantly performing horrid rituals. What is your quest about?"

"We don't know, milady. There was just this, uhh, sort of a prophecy kind of thing. It said we'd go on a quest. No hint of what we should do."

"Who gave you this sort of a prophecy kind of thing?"

The Caryatid cleared her throat. "A detached dog tongue, milady."

Dreamsinger didn't even blink. "And it didn't give instructions?"

"No, milady. But we're, uhh, we've run into things that demand attention. Earlier tonight, there was a haunting. At Feliss Academy. And a girl was killed with what my friend believes was an OldTech bioweapon."