Magic Banquet (18 page)

Aja set it down and saw that Janny had
passed the ambrosia to the empress. She rolled the blue root
between her palms, swaying her head as she inhaled.

“So lovely,” the empress said. “It smells of
all the worlds and all the distances between, spinning around one
breathtaking instant of being.”

Janny snorted. “Smells like what again?”

The empress held the ambrosia against her
chest. She twirled around and tipped close to a fall. “It doesn’t
smell ‘like.’ The smell
is
.”

“Well,” Aja said, “I guess that’s why I
didn’t recognize it.”

She cupped her fingers around another
ambrosia in the bowl and lifted. She had to hold her breath. The
root’s light spread from its core to trace over its skin in
patterns of a labyrinth. The ambrosia would probably crunch in her
mouth and tingle. She feared it might also shock her to death.
Biting her lips shut, she inhaled through her nose.

This one smelled different. Like oranges in
the rain? No. Like….Oh my! Aja was free. A hundred doors had been
locked inside her, and she hadn’t even known. Now they all flew
open. She could run through her mind and revel in the flowing
breeze. Pink veils swayed and kissed her skin as she pranced
by.

“Ohhh! Doesn’t this one smell wonderful?”
Aja held out the ambrosia.

The empress leaned in, and their noses
touched. “Oh, yes! It’s poise in the face of a thousand, thousand
pleading souls, each with a conflicting star-bright wish.”

“Poise doesn’t have a smell.” Janny butted
in to steal a sniff. “You’re royally bamboozling us, aren’t
you?”

“No, she isn’t.” Aja inhaled again. The
scent went from her nose to her toes. “That’s what it is. At least
it could be.”

Hills of white flowed past the carpet. The
guests skimmed over a cloud.

Janny set an ambrosia on her plate and
picked up the knife. “Can’t wait much longer for a taste. I’m
peeling this one.”

The blade touched the root, and the wind
changed. Stars blacked out. A storm cloud towered, flickering with
lightning. It loomed as a sky mountain, a cliff top with an
overhang in front of the moon.

Aja’s hairs stood on end. This was bad.
Death and doom and all too soon. Across from Aja, Janny’s locks
curled upward from her head. The empress had lost her shawl, and
her hair lifted and stood straight out in all directions. Thunder
shook the carpet.

“I’ve seen us eating this course,” Aja said.
A memory flitted through her. “In the jewel-frog vision.”

Her eyes shifted to the ice sculptures.
Those had been there, yes. And the jagged bolt in the god’s hand
was lightning. Aja remembered a blinding flash. Someone had fallen
through the clouds.

“What happened, Aja?” The empress hugged her
from behind, arms crossing over Aja’s stomach. Static zapped where
they touched. “How did we eat it?”

“Not the right way, not that I saw.” Aja
tried to push down her own hair, but it sprang back outward. “Stop
peeling, Janny.”

“What?” Janny stuck her tongue out of the
corner of her mouth in her focus. “You have a better idea?”

“The Chef would’ve given us some hint to cut
off the skin. If that was the right way.”

“He told us less than a toothless horse,”
Janny said.

“Maybe that was telling us something.” The
empress rested her chin on Aja’s shoulder.

“I do know this,” Aja said. “If we don’t eat
this right, lightning will strike.”

Tenth Course,
Part II:

Wrath

The swordsman pried out the amphora’s
stopper. Sunlight of a kind beamed from the vessel’s neck. Aja had
to look away, and it left spots over her vision.

Two feet behind her, the carpet ended in a
drop-off. A sea shimmered below like beaten silver. The statues on
the rug had a similar sheen. Crescent moons reflected off the
glassy surfaces, but the glow of the foods did not. Aja found that
curious.

The djinn served the nectar. It did not flow
from the amphora so much as seep. The pour had to be cut off
between cups with a blade. The hue was close to honey, but it
smelled warmer, more powerful. After inhaling, Aja felt light. A
gust might even coax her off the carpet and into the air. The
following plunge through the sky would be a nuisance at most. She
was above such trifles.

She asked, “What do you smell, Empress?”

“No! We’re friends. Call me Ryn. Or sing
Nephrynthian with me. Neph-RYN-thi-annnn!”

Aja lifted her cup to the empress. “Please,
Ryn. Tell me what the smell is.”

“This one’s easy. You could tell me.”

“I’ve never smelled it before.”

“You know, Aja. Just say it.”

What would a god drink? Aja had a guess, but
it might sound foolish.

“Go on.” The empress squeezed her around the
middle.

Aja tilted her cup. Light stuck to the
sides. “Devotion?”

“Yes! The devotion of thousands who’ll never
more than glimpse you.”

The lord set down his cup. “Then it can’t be
wise to drink. Devotion can never be long endured.”

Once the djinn had finished serving the
nectar, Aja examined the amphora. The painting on one side showed a
strong man accepting ambrosia and nectar from the gods. He stood
among them in the next frame. Aja turned over the vessel, and on
the backside, another man crept off with the same food. The
following panel had him in a cave with an expression of anguish.
Grapes dangled above his head.

“These paintings must mean something.” Aja
ran her fingers over the glaze. “Maybe we have to ask the gods’
permission. Can you tell us, Starlight on Dunes?”

The djinn said, “I’m forbidden from
answering, for now.”

“‘For now’?” Aja asked.

“Until one guest dies.” The djinn flowed
away into a ravine between two clouds.

“Perhaps,” the lord said, “only the empress
can eat the ambrosia and nectar. She’s the closest among us to
godhood.”

“I’m not a goddess yet,” the empress said.
“The vizier tells me so every day, sometimes twice. I don’t want to
try a bite and die again. Dying wastes so much time! What do you
think, Aja?”

Not tasting food tormented Aja when it
smelled so divine. “The Chef wouldn’t serve something that only one
of us could eat.”

While thinking, Aja reached for a lock of
her hair to suck. The strands still stood on end, and she let them
go. She was too mature to chew on her hair now anyway.

She remembered the empress’s hair. Aja
plucked it from her bracelet. She had carried the black strand long
enough. It glistened with the luster of daily brushing and oils
stroked into it by loving hands. Aja held it over the brink of the
carpet, above the miles of empty air.

A burning sensation on her neck made her
turn and see Solin. He gazed at her, and she hesitated. He had
saved her more than once. She didn’t want to disappoint him, but
she couldn’t let him hurt the empress.

Ryn danced over the carpet with her
graceless strides, sniffing each ambrosia held out to her. She told
what they smelled like in her irresistible voice.

“That’s the meaning of life!

“Yay! This is reflecting on the limitless
depths of the future.

“Oooh! That’s a naughty one. A god’s love
for a mortal. A flash of scorching pureness that snuffs out in an
instant.”

The city priests had told Aja something
about the empress ascending to godhood. Was that why she could name
the smells? Or maybe she only had a knack. The empress had eaten
the Blueberries of Muse. Whichever way, Aja wouldn’t let the
empress come to harm.

Aja unclenched her fingers, and the hair
flew behind them to be lost in the night.

She hazarded a look at Solin. She braced
herself for his anger.

He gazed into the starry darkness behind
them. “You did right.”

“I—I what? But you wanted that.”

“With it I could’ve returned to my city.”
Solin sighed. “Sometimes the price of redemption comes too
high.”

“I didn’t want you to hex Ryn.”

His cheek tensed as he adjusted his bad leg
on a pillow. “Me too.”

They hadn’t spoken above a whisper, but the
empress frolicked their way as if she had heard. She held out an
ambrosia that lit up her hands and her smile.

“Taste it with your eyes,” she said. “Isn’t
it delicious?”

Aja winced. There was their answer, one no
one wanted. “That’s it. The Chef told us little, but he did say
this is food for gods. None of us can eat it.”

Her words drew a cry from Janny. “This is
the Banquet. We have to be able to eat.”

“We can see it. We can smell it.” Aja wafted
the aroma of ambrosia to her nose and shivered. Wow! “That has to
be enough.”

Janny crawled to the edge of the carpet.
“Tell me how I can eat it. Or I’ll throw myself off.”

Solin sprang off one crutch and caught her
around the arms. He pinned her in front of the statue of the god
with the hoard of gold. There Solin held her until she stopped
weeping.

Aja turned to see the empress’s reaching
hand. Those smooth fingers with their glistening nails slid through
Aja’s lank hair.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Ryn said. “Your hair
died.”

“What?”

“It’s lost its zing of expectation.”

Aja’s hair no longer stood on end. The
tension had left the air. The gods must’ve calmed their storm. So
she had guessed right. They could only enjoy the ambrosia and
nectar as long as none passed their lips.

The empress tipped and swayed her way over
the flowing carpet. The swordsman caught her from falling onto the
bowl, and the two shared a laugh.

Aja smiled herself, and a warmth spread over
her back. The heat increased, and Aja glanced over her shoulder.
The djinn was hovering.

“Hello, Starlight on Dunes. Are you taking
us to the next course now?”

“Soon,” the djinn said.

Three shooting stars passed behind the
djinn. She lingered as if she had more to say.

“Aja…” The djinn folded her hands together,
and her flame fingernails licked against each other. “…there’s
never been a Banquet where all the guests have lived through the
tenth course. Until tonight.”

“I’m keeping us safe through all the
courses.”

Sparks flared in the djinn’s pupils. Then
they went dark. “Cling to what intelligence you have over the final
courses. I think I’d be upset if you’re the one to die?”

Her last words had an uncertain tone. Aja
wondered if the djinn cared for them after all. What a sweet,
flaming heart she had.

And had she called Aja by name? Yes, she
had.

Aja said, “Thank you. I’ll be careful as a
human can.”

The djinn swiveled around in the air, but
only her lower half changed position. Her bright toes pointed
toward a nearby cloudbank, while the rest of her still faced
Aja.

“You said you wished I didn’t have to serve
you, Aja. I could be free, if that disgusting lamp is broken.”

Aja blinked. “The oil lamp?”

“It’s in the kitchen now,” the djinn said.
“If you try to go there tonight, I’d be compelled to stop you.”

“Then how can I reach it?”

The djinn’s chest and head snapped to the
side to align with her feet. She darted away without answering, a
streak of fire painted over the night.

Eleventh Course:

DRAGON STEAKS

SERVED WITH UNICORN WATER

The magic carpet skimmed over a lake in the
Skiarri Mountains. Peaks of black rock and gleaming snow reared
their craggy backbones. Drifts of white sifted into slopes of
darkness around the water’s edge. The reflection of the mountains
shimmered in the lake like ghost lights, breathtaking, with a touch
of blue.

Aja had only seen ice before on sale in the
bazaar. Its coldness was precious. The mountains might as well be
covered in silver rings.

“I’m going to run to their tops,” she said,
“and roll down in all that expensive snow stuff.”

“Better not.” The swordsman gazed up into
the mountains with a forlorn look. “In that thin robe you’d turn
into the next ice statue.”

The carvings of gods were melting, and the
carpet channeled their rivulets into the lake. The divine figures
shrank to emaciated beggars, then transparent skeletons, then
nothing. Burned away by an orb of heat left by the djinn. While the
carpet glided over the lake, the djinn had gusted away downslope.
Holding her ornate key, she had headed toward a strange building.
It looked like a tower twisted around itself in a knot.

“That’s the Mindvault Academy,” the empress
said. “I’m going there to study, and I heard that gravity there
loops around like a kitten chasing her own tail. Oh, no! Would that
mean I have to say songs backward?”

The swordsman chuckled with a wince. His
eyes glistened at the strange tower. Then he pressed them closed
with his fingers like he was trying to put them out.

“What is it?” Aja asked him.

“Only that I used to live there.” He tried
to smile but failed at it. “With Janny. With my sister. She was
training in all the enchantments.”

Aja could tell something horrible had
happened to his sister even before he said it.

“She fell into the sky.” The swordsman
turned away from the tower’s color to the endless white of the
mountain range. “I know I shouldn’t look for her. I know she’s gone
too far, but I can’t help thinking about her.”

Just like Aja’s parents had lost her,
whoever they were. Or maybe it was worse. They could be gone
forever, her father, her mother, and the swordsman’s sister. They
might all be too far.

Aja clasped the swordsman’s hand, as much of
it as she could hold.

“Don’t you worry. My fate is bright,” he
said with a weak grin. He sniffed, then patted her arm. “I lost my
sister, but I won’t lose everyone. I’ll find Hiresha. I’ll protect
the empress.”

Aja wondered if Hiresha was the name of his
sister. Before Aja could ask, the djinn returned.