Magic Banquet (20 page)

The swordsman sped past her. He had stripped
to his loincloth. His paddling feet cut through the water, and his
arms churned tiny cyclones of bubbles. The dark depths of the lake
closed around him.

Not breathing was a torment. She knew she
needed to escape. The lake’s silver surface waited above. Had to
reach it. She could only drift and feel the magic of the dragon
steak wash through her. A slamming, sluicing, pummeling. Ow!
Ow!

Her fingers blurred. The ends leaked. No,
she told herself she was seeing things. She was mistaken in the
drowning gloom. Her skin was not really softening into liquid.

An icy destiny filled her. She would become
the lake. The peace of the water would be hers, and parts of her
would flow down crannies in the mountain. She would be hidden in
dark places and shine on the leaves of growing corn. All was as it
should be.

No, no, no it wasn’t. She had to stay as
herself, to be Aja.

A pink beacon shone from the lake’s
darkness. A hand clutched the decanter, and lines of light flared
from it with each stroke. The swordsman swam to her. He had it, the
unicorn water. That bottle held all Aja’s hope. She thawed herself
enough to grasp his shoulder.

He popped off the container’s lid
underwater. The unicorn drink drifted out like a sparkling perfume.
He gulped one waft of pink. Tendrils of color twined toward Aja,
and she licked one. The lake water was cold and hard on her tongue.
The unicorn piss tasted of peach juice, sunrise, and dried flower
petals.

The swordsman made a muffled “Mmmmm!” sound,
and so did she.

Aja felt herself solidify. She could move
freely, and she snatched the decanter’s lid to stopper it. The
swordsman wrapped her arms around his chest. She held on, and they
swam upward. He threw the container of unicorn water ahead of him
like a spear, then paddled his way to reach it again.

The swordsman thrust the decanter out of the
lake and onto the floating carpet. He and Aja surfaced to cheers.
He hauled himself out and up. She crawled after him to sprawl
shivering on the carpet. Her robes weighed her down like chains.
Each inch stung with cold.

“So that’s w-what swimming through snow
f-feels like,” Aja said.

She had lost all sensation in her fingers.
She had to hold her knife between both stiff hands. The blade
clattered on the plate, but she cut a slice of fire dragon. She
tipped her chin against the rim of the plate and slurped it into
her mouth. It was either that or beg someone else to feed her.

After a few bites, heat roared back. The
lake steamed off her. The corners of her drying robe fluttered and
curled. Her words puffed out with water vapor.

“Pass the djinn bottle.”

The cycle of drinking and eating passed in a
frenzy, between fire and water, from steak to steak. Once when
three guests needed the djinn liquor, Janny’s hair caught fire. Aja
helped splash lake water on it. The river dragon tended to make the
guests weep, for the flavor if nothing else. Tears dried in streaks
of salt down their cheeks. No one took the time to rub them off.
Only the lord’s face stayed pristine.

Aja lost track of how many times she gulped
unicorn water or chewed dragon. She only knew that the extremes
troubled her less and less. She could savor the river dragon’s
pizzazz without fear of drowning. She could bask in the spicy blaze
of the other steak without breaking a sweat.

She had cleared her plate. They had eaten
all the dragon. Looking up, she saw Janny turn the vial and bottle
upside down.

“Not a drop left,” Janny said with a grin of
triumph.

“We did it.” Aja leapt to the center of the
carpet. Her every muscle hummed with a desire to be used, to be
tested. She wanted to celebrate how strong she felt. “We’re all
alive.”

Aja pulled the empress to her feet. The two
women spun about each other, hands bridging between them. They
broke off to dance. The empress’s former awkwardness had vanished,
and she moved with a liquid flow. She beckoned Solin.

“You promised to dance with me.”

He laughed, his face flush. His hand already
danced across his plate using the chopsticks like small crutches.
Even when he smiled, a scowl remained as a downturned barb at the
edges of his lips. Swinging himself upright on his bronze-shod
supports, he glided around the empress. His crutches never landed
on a toe or a platter. He balanced on one crutch, flipped, and
twirled around the other guests. Aja thought of them all he had the
most grace.

Aja jumped, swinging her hands and turning
in the air. Her leap carried her further than ever before. She flew
over the swordsman’s head. Ha!What joy! What an expression on his
face.

“You’re some cricket,” he said.

She landed on the far side of the carpet,
where Janny and the lord were speaking.

He bowed partway to Janny. “…she may not
need you anymore, but she’ll want to see you. My caravan can take
you to her in the Dominion.”

“Would be grand to see that jewel-studded
girl again,” Janny said. “You know, you aren’t so bad, as
soul-slurping tyrants go.”

Part of Aja wanted to wait and hear what
they were saying. The rest of her couldn’t slow down long enough to
find out. She twirled ankles over wrists and sprang over the
cookware, above the guests. “Fly, Aja,” the empress said. “Fly!”
Further than fancy, past what any normal human could hope to jump,
Aja outdistanced the end of the carpet. She went over the lake. She
had done it. She’d gone too far.

“Help!”

She twisted in the air. Stars shone as
points on the lake’s surface. Not the lake again. A bed of needles,
anything but the lake.

“No!”

Her body curled itself into a ball. She
braced for the shock of impact.

The water caught her. A fountain flow
cradled her above the lake’s surface. Liquid tentacles propped her
up, and where they touched her she felt no cold, only coolness.

The empress called out from the carpet. “Now
you’re a dragon, Aja!”

Aja checked, but she wasn’t. She had no
scales, no horns, no fangs. If anything, she must have become
lighter because she stood on the water. The surface around her feet
didn’t break but only dimpled like around a fly’s legs.

“How’re you doing that?” The swordsman waved
to the water, and it spiraled up in clear ribbons to flow between
his fingers. “How am I doing it?”

Aja didn’t question. She willed herself
toward the mountaintops, and the lake surged with her magic. A
throne of water carried her into the sky, thousands of droplets
blasting after her and drizzling back down in a rain. She hurled
skyward. Speed that once would have crushed her insides now did not
so much as turn over her stomach.

She splashed down at the lake’s edge. The
carpet was now distant. She waved to reassure the other guests.
Then she raced up a peak. Moving was joy. Her bare feet chopped
through the snowdrifts. The fluff could not chill her. It burst
around her in powder, moonlight, and steam.

The mountain climbed higher than snow. Aja
dashed up a cliff. Her fingers latched into rock, fracturing off
boulders in her ascent to the top. The peak ended in a spike. She
leaped skyward, above lake, snow, and stone, higher than the world.
All was beneath her, even clouds.

Aja soared and whooped. “Hahaiiiaaiia!”

She let herself fall. The mountains careened
around her. She sailed downward toward their rocky slopes, angling
herself in the air. Sharp turns, faster, diving. She would land at
speed. What need had she to fear? She was too strong to die
now.

A woman of fire zipped around her.
“Respectable, for a human.”

“Starlight on Dunes!” Aja flared out a hand
to the djinn, but she had already seared away.

Aja touched down and started sledding. She
plowed snow to either side of her in white geysers. She had to
weave around boulders. Or maybe she didn’t. She thwacked through
the rocks. The stone had no power to harm her, and she slid all the
way to the lake.

The swordsman hefted a rock from the shore,
then tossed it clear over the lake. Beside him, the empress sang,
and the waters rose in waves that broke in rhythm with her
voice.

Behind them on a melting patch of snowbank,
Janny called out to him. “Look. I’m steaming.”

Aja skated over the lake with Solin. Sheets
of water sprayed out from their turns. Even with her newfound
power, she couldn’t match the one-legged man in purity of movement.
Poised on a crutch, he swung his legs from one side to the other.
He made waves, and Aja delighted in jumping over them. She sent a
few of her own his way, and she clapped when he pinwheeled.

Only one guest remained on the carpet. The
stillness of the lord drew Aja’s eye.

She whisked to him. “Don’t you want to
stretch your new self? But then, you could already breathe
fire.”

“Right now I’m doing something even more
impressive,” the lord said. “I’m restraining myself.”

“Oh?” Aja wove the water around her into
rings, bracelets, and a necklace that shone with the silver of the
night’s lights.

“No man values restraint higher than he who
has just indulged.” The lord gazed at the empty platters, strewn
with flower petals. “I ate the dragon. I fear that when the time
comes to hold back, my appetites will wrest control.”

“There are more courses. Can you imagine how
they’ll be more exciting than this?”

“Two more courses. Thirteen in total. You
still think you can keep everyone alive to the end of the
Banquet?”

“I know I can.”

“She who feels immortal is closest to
death,” the lord said. “This I tell you, the Chef will not allow
six guests to leave alive.”

“But if we’re careful to the—”

“Perfect etiquette won’t be enough. The Chef
will extract his price.”

“How do you know?”

Instead of answering, the lord lifted one
red petal to his nose. He inhaled, and the petal quivered. “Aja, I
have a warning for you.”

She would like to know why he hadn’t
answered her question.

“I overheard the djinn speaking to you about
breaking her lamp. You must not do this.”

“It’s not right,” Aja said. “The djinn
shouldn’t be a slave.”

“Perhaps not, but her first act of freedom
will be to incinerate you. Her vengeance will burn the Chef to ash
along with us guests. She may even set fire to a city.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“Certainty is man’s greatest
self-indulgence.” The lord flicked the crumpled petal into the
lake. “Why, have you noticed a deep font of tenderness in the djinn
for humans?”

Aja thought the djinn would fly away without
looking back. She would find her son in the desert and bother no
one. Maybe she would. Possibly. Aja had seen the hatred in the
djinn. Could Aja dare free her friend?

If she was a friend at all.

Aja watched the djinn, how her flames
simmered while escorting the guests back onto the carpet. She flew
them out of the mountains. Down cliffs, down valleys, the lands
opened out before them and dried to desert. The city of Jaraah
swept into view. Aja knew those onion-domes of bronze. Until this
night, she had known nothing else.

The towers had always been above her. She, a
street bug. Now Aja was above everything. Magic carried her, and
she was magic. She had eaten dragon. And to think, she had almost
shied away from the Banquet. None of this would’ve happened if she
hadn’t gone into that open warehouse door. That block building was
somewhere below her now.

Jaraah was her home. Here was where the
Banquet had begun.

Twelfth Course:

CHEESES OF LIFE AND DEATH

SERVED WITH OCEAN OF MILK

The Chef’s platter carried two wedges that
gleamed. They reminded Aja of cheeses, except shinier. They were
solid treasure or wrapped in gold leaf. Shooting stars reflected
off their surfaces.

“Skimmed from the milk of gorgons.” The Chef
bowed the cheese plate to the carpet. “Curdled with righteous
resentment toward the divine. Smoked beneath dryad wood for extra
potency. Ripened separately as newborn cheeses in the isolation of
sea caves. Reunited for the first time tonight.”

Stylized snakes were painted on the platter.
Their fangs ringed the food.

Aja knotted her fingers together, then
pulled them apart. Too many snakes tonight. At least the cheese
hadn’t come from snake milk. Wait, did snakes even give milk?

Janny padded down her wind-frazzled hair.
“Did you say, ‘gorgons’?”

“As all scholars know,” the Chef said, “milk
from a gorgon’s left breast brings death. That which is suckled
from the right instead restores life.”

“Knew it.” Janny slapped her thigh.
“Scholars are nasty old rutabagas.”

Aja turned the platter to look at a cheese
from multiple sides. The gold leaf had etchings showing a woman in
a ring of giant figures. Aja thought they might be gods. On the
next cheese, the woman had transformed into a terror of contorted
limbs and fangs.

“Which cheese is which?” Aja asked.

“I already told you. Right is life, left is
death.” The Chef set a pronged knife between them with a
flourish.

“Who’d want to eat death cheese?” Janny
swiveled her chin from side to side, looking across the plate.

“I used bottled cat’s purr to mollify the
flavor,” the Chef said. “Not every cheese matches every man’s
palate. These are for those adventurous souls who would taste death
before the end. The right cheese will return them to life.”

The Chef stepped back onto the balcony. He
disappeared into a moon-shaped doorway. The djinn floated out of
the same palace tower, carrying a cauldron full of a shimmering
whiteness. She followed the carpet as it lifted away. The city
streets looked different to Aja from so high. Much cleaner.