City of Air (Lost Cities Saga 1)

"Spirits help me with these young women," said Lord Aries, rolling his eyes to the sky. Then he turned to the djinniyeh and said, "Noor."

The djinniyeh bowed even as her dress burst into black flames. Leona stepped closer to Lord Aries, wary of the fire. Noor floated into the air and charged the nearest group of Valkyrie.

"Bad move," said Mr Diamond, lifting his gun to Lavender's temple. Rose screamed, though Lavender lifted her chin higher and turned to face him directly just as he began gasping for air. Lavender's expression became triumphant. In a city of air magicians, of course she had the advantage. The sylph wrapped around his head was nearly transparent.

"Come along, Miss Ruby. I have waited long enough," said Lord Aries, already pulling her behind him as he started for the stairs again.

"Where do you think you're going?" demanded one of the magicians and then Leona was thrown to the ground as Lord Aries was yanked into the air.

"Run, Leona!" screamed a familiar voice—Kara—and Leona did as she was told, scrambling to her feet and running as fast as she could. And against her better judgement, for surely this was a terrible idea—weren't the magicians trying to stop the others?—Leona decided to go up.

The sounds of the duelling magicians continued unabated behind her. Bursts of flame and rushing wind, sporadic gunfire, the frightened shrieking of Rose and Lavender yelling at her to be silent, and, most curious, the swell of aether each time one of the magicians moved. No one appeared to have noticed yet that Leona was missing, perhaps except for Lord Aries but he was busy and as long as he remained that way, that was fine by Leona. If the story was right, maybe the White Tiger or that book had some way of helping Sebastian. Leona was no healer. The authorities had tried in vain to guide her along that path but Leona had no stomach for it, and Master Opal did not care to encourage her.

Leona cleared the second flight of stairs, her sides aching from the exertion, to find another, smaller courtyard leading to the third, and walkways extending out on either side of her. When she turned to look back, she realised that they were actually in a great square that served as the base of the step pyramid-shaped city. Then Kara materialised before her and practically screamed, "What art thou doing here? Thou was to go the bridge!"

Leona side-stepped her and started running for the third flight, calling over her shoulder as she went, "I have to save Sebastian, and my brother and the others. I need something to help me do that. Sebastian…Sebastian is dying."

"Does thou not recall that I am here?" demanded the Valkyrie.

"You cannot fight off his army. You could not get us away from him in New Amsterdam," said Leona. She did not have time for this argument, not when Sebastian was bleeding to death in the cold like Master Opal did in the street. She was not going to let him die too.

The Valkyrie said nothing to this and Leona started to climb the stairs in silence. Then the ground started to shake. Kara grabbed Leona before she could fall, then sat with her on the steps and said, "The city is helping thee. Thine enemy hath started to give chase. It seems that the Great Spirit White Tiger does want thou to come to him."

Leona felt dizzy as the city moved, rotating the tiers, rearranging the levels and shifting walls like a maze. Kara explained, "Every part of the city moves. Thy pursuers will be led astray. Now come, I must get thee to the Great Spirit."

She barely waited for Leona to gather her bearings before dragging her further up the stairs. Leona swallowed a few times to fight back the nausea, but could not shake off her rising terror. It was one thing to seek out the White Tiger to make her appeal for Sebastian's life, it was another thing entirely to find out that he was waiting for her.

When they got to the top of the third flight, Kara took them to the left. She answered Leona's silent question as they went, "A shortcut."

Then Leona realised that the pull of power was much stronger in the direction they were heading. So the building at the top of the stairs was a decoy, with some kind of power source to mimic what one would expect for the hiding place of a great treasure…if one were not an aether magician.

The city rearranged itself more than once as they made their way through it, an automaton maze, clearing their path but blocking off their pursuers. The sounds of the duel was but a distant memory, and yet, now that they were further in, Leona could see that the city was much larger than it looked. The buildings reached for the sky in tiers but there were also holes in the ground near the base of some with staircases leading to spaces beneath their feet. Leona could also feel the air magicians and their elementals moving all around them, most of them in the highest point of the tower. Clearly they were gathering for a counterattack.

Leona looked up at the tower again, just as an airship lifted away from it, flanked by two groups of flying constructs in v-formations like migrating birds, heading for the lower tiers. That seemed a lot for a small band of intruders, even if some were magicians.

"Here, I will let you in," said Kara.

Leona stopped and turned back to the Valkyrie who now stood before a pair of metal doors set into the alley between two larger buildings. The doors must have been at least twenty-feet high, with great tigers depicted on them in wrought iron, climbing to the sky on a staircase of cloud, but turning back to snarl at the viewer, their tails intertwined. The Valkyrie pulled a lever beside the door, and with a great clank and much whirring, the tigers' snarl settled into an aloof look, they withdrew their linked tails and the doors opened outwards.

Leona blinked, but Kara said, "I cannot accompany you further, he does not want to see me."

Leona stared at the Valkyrie. Kara glared at her and said, "I know you not to be in league with that man but you do not care for our cause either."

"I want to save Sebastian," Leona admitted. "And he wants this book too, but I don't need it. I just need a way to help him."

Kara's glare relaxed a little, and she said, "We are not healers here."

Leona looked around her at the city and said, "I know, I am not a healer either. But this city, if you have all of this, surely you have a way to stop him from dying."

The Valkyrie nodded at her and stood back. Leona took a deep breath and walked through the doors.

Nothing pounced on her. Leona stopped just inside the room and looked around. It was a long, cavernous room, bare save for the ironwork art along the walls and columns, more tigers, though these were earthbound, and a long, narrow walkway made of metal tiles that started at her feet and ended on the other side at another set of great metal doors. The power source was so strong here, Leona could not tell if there were others lying in wait. Then the doors behind her began to roll shut and Leona swung round. Kara still stood outside, staring at her. Then the door shut with a clanking of metal that told Leona that she was sealed in. The shiver that crawled her spine then, raising the pores on her arms and making her fingers shake did not come from the ever-present chill that filled the room. She squeezed her hands into fists to calm down.

Still, this was what she had come here for, was it not? Leona had been through a lot in the past few weeks, most of it unpleasant, especially the journey to the Confederacy that she would never forget for as long as she lived. She had seen her teacher murdered, then recalled his soul from the aether. She had been kidnapped by a powerful magician, seen that magician betrayed and then watched him wreak his revenge on the unsuspecting inhabitants of the capital city of a slave-holding confederation. She had been insulted, hit, starved, dehydrated and very nearly killed. But she had survived these things, had she not? So what was this one more thing, in the grand scheme of them all? Leona had only lived for nearly sixteen years, but she liked to think that it was time well spent, preparing her for something that she had yet to figure out, or even glimpse in distance. (But not what Lord Aries had planned, because that was his plan and nothing to do with her.) She would survive this meeting with the White Tiger because she was meant for more than this. Her life would not end here…and nor would Sebastian's out there in the freezing courtyard.

She turned around and stepped onto the walkway. With a jolt that almost her threw her off her feet and more metal clanking somewhere below, it started moving. Leona put her hands out a little to steady herself, then looked around for any sign of how the thing worked. But she was still alone in the room, and though she suspected she could probably run faster than this thing moved, she did not get off. Instead, she dropped her hands and started running to the door.

Twice something swept past her heels, spurring her faster and filled the air with peals of laughter. Leona refused to stop or look back. The door opened before she could get to it, into the room beyond where the walkway became stairs ascending to the ceiling. This room was three stories high, with a vaulted steel and glass ceiling and tall windows that let in the light of the eternal sunset and revealed that each floor was lined with silent brass constructs. There were too many of them for this to be chance, all staring down at her, the eyes of the air elementals within tracking her every movement. The White Tiger wanted her to see them and know that if she tried anything she would not leave this place alive.

Leona lifted her chin and looked away to where the walkway was leading. As if her greeting in the other room had not been warning enough. But she had already decided to live, she was not afraid of this.

The moving stairs stopped at the third floor and then became a flat walkway again leading to another set of high double doors. Leona started running again, as before the doors opened to admit her and she fell.

It happened so quickly she did not have the time to scream. One moment she was on the walkway and the next she was falling through the air past floating clumps of earth that looked like the fractured remains of a garden. There was a gazebo. There was a bridge that led to nowhere. There was a bench. There were trees, leaves dying brown, red and yellow, and statuary. Leona landed, hard, on a grassy patch that cushioned the blow a little but not enough. That was when she screamed.

"You are impatient. That is good to know."

Leona stopped screaming and started looking around her, turning left and right, trying not to fall from her perch. There was no sign of anything to account for the voice that had boomed through the chamber. Leona sat alone in a room of flying earth, white mist and faint daylight.

"We do not have much time, the other magician is coming for you."

Leona looked again at the mist and then followed the voice upwards where the mist was thickest, floating so close to the ceiling she could not see beyond it, and asked, "Are you the White Tiger?"

The mist swirled a bit, then a tiger's face formed and it said, "And you are Leona Alice Ruby, the aether magician…come to steal from me."

"I did not come here to steal," Leona said. The dirt beneath her crumbled to nothing. She scrabbled desperately at the pieces, trying to hold them together, and then fell through them, this time screaming for she could see no bottom, just darkness. But she did not fall far. She crashed into and rolled across another patch, nearly going over the edge until a sudden blast of air pushed her back up.

"Oh?" asked the mist tiger. "Then tell me, aether magician, what business do you have in the City of Air?"

Leona dug her fingers into the soil, her vision blurred with tears, her heart still racing. She only just managed to reply, panting for breath, "I…I have…I have a friend I need to help. He was shot. I cannot help…help him, I don't know how, but you can." She looked up at the mist again. "You must know a way to save him…and get us out of here and away from Lord Aries."

The mist tiger reared back, then dispersed. Leona kept her eyes on the mist cloud, her breathing slowing again. The mist flowed down from the ceiling to the floating piece of bridge and reformed there into a white-haired boy no older than ten, who scoffed, "Another thief. And all the worse for being so naïve. He is not worthy of your sacrifice, how about I let just you leave?"

Leona's heart skipped a beat at the word "sacrifice" but she took a breath and said, "My brother is out there too. And Cedric Miller. He is an idiot but he does not deserve to die like this. Please."

The boy started pacing along the bridge, looking entirely too much like his tiger form stalking through jungle, and asked, "And what would I get in return? If you, as you say, are not a thief, and you have come seeking my aid for the sake of others, what shall I expect to receive?"

Here Leona stopped. She supposed that she should have been expecting it. Half-remembered childhood stories all told of humans and spirits making deals that involved sometimes very steep prices in exchange for their services. Those stories were warnings, all of them, against just this type of situation. And Leona, like all those hapless people in those stories, was desperate. Lord Aries would let Sebastian bleed to death and Sebastian's crew would not be allowed to help him. If anyone was going to save Sebastian, it had to be Leona. She looked over at the boy and asked, "What do you want?"

The boy instantly disappeared into mist again and a moment later, a great white tiger in a suit of armour was pouncing onto Leona's perch. She soundlessly fell back, the tiger crawled over her and she turned her head away, squeezing her eyes shut. It snarled, she fought back a whimper, and then it chuckled and said, "A dangerous question but…your affinity is water, an element I have no quarrel with. You do not possess a fragment of the philosopher's stone though I can just smell it on you. You have no talent for a Tinker. You are only a child, not yet grown into her body to say nothing of her power. You do not have much to bargain with."

Leona, face still turned away, took a breath and willed herself calm. She was going to survive this, she had decided. She opened her eyes, keeping her gaze trained on a far wall and the glint of brass on a construct there, and said, "I do not have anything you want, I know. But maybe I can do something for you. My teacher was an air elemental magician, I do know some air elemental magic."

The tiger snorted, then disappeared. Leona exhaled heavily and forced herself upright. The boy stood at her feet, eyes the colour of the dying leaves staring back at her, and said, "You 'know some air elemental magic'? I am the White Tiger of the West, I am Zephyrus, God of the West Wind, I am Master of the Air and Metal, and I have no need for you to perform further air elemental magic for me. No, aether magician. I have decided. I want your teacher. Bring him to me."

Leona's eyes went wide. Then she sputtered, "But he's dead. And the last time I summoned him nearly killed me. And I don't have a philosopher's stone." She stopped and looked at the boy. His expression had not changed. Leona dropped her gaze and said, "I don't have anything of his…I…I cheated the last time and used my power but, his name might not be enough this time."

When she looked back up at the boy again he was smiling, and he said, "Of course, you would need some strength to leave this place. I will lend it to you. Bring me your teacher."

Leona was very sure that she did not want to summon Master Opal again. But she also had nothing else to offer this Great Spirit. If it wanted to, it could kill her right here. Compared to him she was a candle flame held up against the sun. She took another breath, got up onto her knees and then sat back on the grass.

The boy remained where he was. Leona closed her eyes and tried to picture her teacher and was surprised when it took her a moment. She had known this man for ten years. He had been tall and broad, bigger than her father, with a hawk nose and stern manner but his eyes were kind. He had renamed himself "John Opal" but that was not his name. Leona had discovered this at eight years old while playing with Vincent in the master's study. Since he died, Leona had learned many more things that changed a little the way she thought of the man. But she had not realised that it would change her memory too.

She had always known there to be an ulterior motive to Master Opal's taking her from the Miller estate and her parents as a child, he had said as much many times. But he had had no reason to treat her as well as he had. When he had failed to encourage Leona in her healing studies, was it just because he thought it beneath her or that he had not wanted her to be distracted? Was it kindness that Leona had seen in those eyes whenever she met his gaze, or calculation? And dear Vincent, her only friend since childhood, a friendship formed as much by their proximity and his gentle nature as their mutual loneliness, had it been allowed as a subtle means of restraint?

The image of the man that formed in her head then was less stern, fatherly benefactor, but arrogant mastermind just one step down in skill from Lord Aries. Leona took another breath and recited the incantation.

After a moment and with a pull on her very soul, a familiar voice said in a near whisper, "Miss Ruby…what are you doing? Where are we?"

Leona kept her eyes closed, squeezing the lids down, feeling the tears welling in them again. By the end of this she would have no more tears, she was sure of it. "Miss Ruby?" asked that voice again and Leona's throat closed up, she tried to swallow and a sob escaped.

The boy said, "Well done, aether magician. Now give him to me."

At this Leona opened her eyes, glancing at Master Opal for the barest of moments before her gaze went to the boy. Master Opal turned as well, or rather, his already nebulous form shifted and then he gasped, "Bai…my…"

But Leona was still trying to wrap her head around what the boy had said. "What?" she asked.

The boy had never looked away from her. He said, "I want him, your teacher. Give his spirit to me. He will remain with me in the West City, this place he desired to reach all his life, among the descendants of my scattered children."

Leona did not think about it. She remembered the Construct-General Grant and his soldiers. Had they been released or were they still down there fighting a forever war against the living descendants and veterans of their past? She said, "No."

The boy tilted his head, and asked, a trace of amusement in his voice though no sign of it was on his pale face, "You would refuse? But was this not his dream? And have you forgotten your friend, the boy magician? Do you no longer want to save him?"

Master Opal turned back to her. Leona kept her gaze on the boy as she replied, "I…I want…I have to save him…but I cannot do this. I cannot give Master Opal's spirit to you to do it. No, do not ask me that. What would you even—"

"He is already one of mine. Give him to me, girl!" the boy commanded, stamping his foot.

Leona reared back, stunned, then scrambled to her feet. Master Opal also shifted higher, towering over them both. Leona only came up to chest height, the boy stood no taller than his waist, but his incorporeal form and the boy's immense presence made it negligible. Leona straightened her spine and said, "I will not. Ask for something else. I cannot give Master Opal to you, his spirit is not mine to give."

The boy stared back at her for a time after that. Leona held firm, hoping he could not sense her fear, and tried to meet his gaze. Finally, he opened his mouth to reply. Leona held her breath, already searching for some place to run to in case she had to, laughable though the idea of escape was. But before the words could form, they heard, "I have a better idea."

The three of them snapped their gazes upward, to the entrance of the chamber, to find Lord Aries there with Lavender hanging limp from his arm. And as their eyes met, he released her with a shove. She fell soundlessly into the chamber, past many of the little floating clumps before slamming into the roof of the gazebo and rolling down onto the grassy lawn beside it. Leona could feel almost no aether coming from her.

She looked back up at Lord Aries as he said to the White Tiger, "Give us what we came for, and I will not destroy your city."

There was a moment more of stillness then where Lord Aries stared down at Leona and the boy, and the boy stared at Lavender's body, and then all hell broke loose.

The boy defused into mist and surged up through the chamber towards Lord Aries. The force of it threw Leona from her patch of grass but she fell only a few feet before she landed on another, the other half of the broken bridge, Master Opal's wispy arms around her. Something exploded overhead, sending the floating pieces plummeting to the ground below, chased by a blast of scorching heat. Leona grasped hold of the bridge, squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.

"Keep your head down, Miss Ruby!" commanded Master Opal, a moment before he disappeared. Leona could no longer concentrate to hold his form. She stopped screaming when her mouth dried and she started having trouble breathing. Lord Aries was burning away the air, bad for her, certainly, but even worse for the White Tiger given the time it would take to be replaced.

At long last the heat disappeared and the chamber grew silent. Leona kept her eyes shut until she felt her dirt lifeboat rising again. Her dress was so dry it was stiff, as if it had been left out in the sun too long after washing. Her lips were cracked and the breath in her nostrils was hot. She blinked at the dryness in her eyes and welcomed the tears that formed, then looked around.

All of the grass had dried brown and some of it, including the trees were burning. Lavender still lay where she had fallen, her exposed skin an angry red colour. Then Leona felt the first droplets and looked up to see that the White Tiger had set up a wall of air between himself and Lord Aries, for surely it was that holding the golden flames out of the chamber. Leona closed her eyes and welcomed the rain, formed of the cooler air meeting the heat of the flame. But of course the White Tiger, a Great Spirit, the strongest of its class of beings would be able to fend off the attack by a mere magician. What was worrying was that Lord Aries was capable of giving it a fight.

Leona looked away from the battle, she could not help anyway, and turned her attention to Lavender. The girl was defenceless where she lay and clearly, badly hurt. She was also lying some ways up from Leona on the other side of the chamber. Leona looked around for a means of getting to her, then remembered that she was an elemental magician and began,

"The Azure Dragon burrows into the Eastern Hills,

Master of Earth, Keeper of Stories, Hoarder of Truth…"

Her gnomes were tiny but numerous—formed of the sheer amount of panicked energy she poured into the summoning—leaping out of the dirt and forming links to bridge the gaps between her and Lavender and then pull them together. Leona shakily got to her feet, taking care to keep her head bowed to avoid falling debris. The drizzle was fast becoming a torrential downpour, which worked to keep the chamber cool but made the dirt patches slippery. When her chain-link gnomes slipped for the third time, she summoned a nymph which gathered the falling water into a river that flowed among the floating earth like a river. The gnomes had no trouble linking the land then and in minutes, Lavender was footsteps away.

That was when the constructs struck, launching themselves from the walls, bounding over the floating earth like stepping stones. Leona froze, shocked, but then Master Opal's disembodied voice yelled at her, "Use the water!"

She snapped her attention to the river. The nymph nodded at her and the river swirled first into a circle around Leona and Lavender's perches, then surged outwards, forcing back the constructs. Nothing got through. Lord Aries and the White Tiger's battle above replenished the water as quickly as it was spent. The constructs were slammed back into the walls and any that jumped too high were quickly caught up in the battle overhead.

Leona wasted no time then in getting over to the girl, checking for breathing. It was faint, and her heartbeat fluttered wildly in her chest. The blast and the rain had probably not helped either. Leona could not move the girl on her own, but she had gnomes for that, so she turned her attention to getting them out of the chamber. A glance upwards made it plain that that was not an option, so Leona looked down.

The walls of the chamber disappeared down into darkness, but every now and then a falling fireball or leaping construct would illuminate a complex network of pipes, gears and other machinery that led Leona to believe that they were actually in the heart of the flying city. It made sense that the White Tiger would then choose this spot for its home, and by that logic then the Book of Earth was probably here as well. But where?

Another stray fireball presented the answer. Set into one wall one hundred feet or so below her was a hole made all the more noticeable for the fact that it was made of dirt and lined by trees and flowering plants. It was almost as if the book had attempted to recreate its natural habitat in the heart of the city. She blinked, surprised, then looked down at her gnomes. They immediately reformed their chain, this time downwards, to pull her to the entrance.

Halfway there, another sudden blast shook the chamber and then the air filled with fire. The nymph and her river evaporated, but the constructs burned too, their metal bodies becoming misshapen lumps falling like stones into the darkness. Then the gnome chain broke as the heat dried almost all soil to sand and threatened the little elementals ability to keep form. They only just managed to hold on long enough to pull Leona down to the entrance of the cave, then toss her and Lavender into it before disintegrating.

For a moment, Leona just sat there staring around the cave. The floor was a carpet of lush, green grass, soft and dew-wet. The walls were the intertwined trunks of many trees, great ferns and wildflowers peeking through gaps in the twists and high roots. The ceiling was formed of the embracing branches and their leaves, some of which stuck up through the pipes around the entrance to present an incongruous mix of technology and forest. It was the oddest, yet most beautiful thing she had ever seen, lit from somewhere deep within by a warm, soft yellow glow like dawn. This had to be where the book was.

Leona stood up. Lavender did not stir at her feet. Leona took one last look back and upwards. A light precipitation had started again. Lord Aries she could not see, but the White Tiger, armoured and on all fours in mid-air, was snarling at the doorway in which the magician stood. Leona hoped they kept each other busy for as long as necessary, then she turned back and started deeper into the hole.

"We do not have much time, Miss Ruby. If you wish to save that boy, make haste," said Master Opal beside her.

Leona glanced over at him and then nearly jumped out of her skin. He was corporeal again, a little pale, his eyes a little vacant, but her teacher stood with her on the grassy carpet as real as he had been all those weeks ago. She did not think about it, she stopped and threw her arms around him and hugged him.

He stiffened at first, but then relaxed into it, lifting his arms to her back and leaning his head down so that he could rest his chin atop her head. Then he said, in a voice much softer than anything Leona had ever heard from him, "Leona…dear girl, we have to hurry. The boy is dying."

Leona kept her eyes closed, trying to feel him just one last time. He held on too, seemingly as reluctant to let go as she. But this really was not the time, so she counted to three and stepped back. He let her go, though his arms remained on hers, and said, "I have dreamed of finding this place, this treasure for as long as I have known of it, almost as long as I have been alive. I have wanted to rebuild the Order, to restore my fallen family, to make Vincent the first of a new generation. With that book, though it would only be the one thing, I would have been the most powerful magician in the world." He looked away from her to the distant light of dawn, and said, "But I cannot. That is no longer my duty nor will I ask it of you. The Order is long lost and Vincent will make his own path…as you must."

He turned his gaze back to Leona, his eyes focusing just a little, and said, "Whatever you do from this moment on, Miss Ruby, make it your own will. You have always been strong, always been brave, if you had not been you would not be the person you are today. You challenge where others would stay silent. You question where others would obey. I know, I know, it does not feel like it, but the only reason Lord Aries took you was because right now he has the power to overwhelm you. He will not have that power for long. You have always been a quick study and a clever girl. Use that against him…and the boy. Your destiny is your own, not theirs. No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what anyone tries to do to you, you must be mistress of your own fate."

Leona felt the tears welling in her eyes. She was still not ready to say goodbye. She said, "They are so much more powerful than me, and not just as magicians. They're in the Zodiac Society. Whatever they say, people will listen to. They already think I killed you. Who is going to listen to me?"

He swept away the tear beading at the corner of one eye with his thumb and said, "Then make them listen. You may not know it, but you have power than you think, than they can fathom. It is not all magic…though perhaps I am not the one suited to teach you that. I can only teach you what I know."

She nodded at this, though she was a little confused. He smiled again and turned to their destination. "Now, Miss Ruby. To the book."

He took her hand and together they walked toward the light. It was only a few hundred metres or so but when Leona looked back the entrance was a spot of light. The book was not what they expected. Instead of a fat, leather-bound grimoire on a pedestal, there was a fruit-laden tree. It could be nothing else. It radiated power and light almost as strongly as the White Tiger had, filling the air with such a pressure that Leona could almost feel it. Master Opal took one look at it, barked out a laugh and said, "How fitting. I dare say we shall have some difficulty retrieving this particular 'book', Miss Ruby."

Leona nodded, still staring at the tree. Its leaves were full and bright green, its branches were bowed under the weight of its many ripe fruit, and its trunk was straight and stout. It reminded her of holidays with her parents on the edge of the plantation, raiding the Millers' fat fruit trees with her siblings, or rather keeping watch for them; of her mother's experimental cakes and jellies; of long nights where they all just sat together playing games until the lamp burned out. She blinked, the memory dissolved and Leona said, "Mr Tyne said that just one page would make him the most powerful magician in the Empire. So, maybe I need only one page. But what are the pages here?"

Master Opal had already drifted closer, examining the tree and said, "The fruit, most likely. Though I suppose the entire thing is a chapter, so one bite may be a page or two. Perhaps we don't have to take the tree but just one fruit. Interesting to say the least. Magic is an amazing thing."

Leona looked for the lowest hanging branch and reached up to pluck the plumpest, rosiest fruit at hand. Master Opal pulled her hand back and said, "I fear taking that may not be so simple. Certainly there would be a trap. But more importantly, Miss Ruby, this may not be so wise. The magicians who tended this particular tree fed into its roots all the knowledge that they had accumulated over the years. Even one bite may overwhelm you."

Leona had not thought of that, not really. But they did not have the time to worry. She shrugged off his hand and wrapped her fingers around the fruit she wanted. Without looking at her former teacher, she said, "And maybe it won't." Then she pulled.

The fruit came easily, a round, reddish-yellow thing that felt sun-warmed and full in her hands. She wondered if she would need to peel it. She wondered if the first bite would send her into a coma like Snow White or mad or cast out of the little garden to her death in the darkness below. Then she bit it.

Nothing happened at first. The juice was mildly sweet and ran down her chin and dripped onto her dress. The flesh within seemed to melt on her tongue before she could swallow it. She looked up at Master Opal. He was staring back at her, waiting. Still nothing. She considered the fruit. It wanted her to bite it again. She had never tasted anything so delicious and she had grown up on mangoes. But the thought of another bite was terrifying. And then someone whimpered behind her and she remembered, "Miss Garnet."

She turned at once and went back to the entrance. Lavender had not moved from where she had been tossed onto the grass. That was not good. If Leona wanted to get out of here she needed Lavender to move on her own. Leona knelt down beside the girl and pressed a hand to her neck feeling for signs of life. Faint, but still there, her skin clammy and badly sun-burned, she had also lost a lot of blood. Things were not better on the inside, Leona could feel. Lavender's ribs were broken, organs damaged and…Leona stopped when she realised that she was reading things she could have no way of knowing with just a touch…and she knew how to fix them. She snapped her gaze up at Master Opal and said, grinning broadly, "I think it worked. I think I know how to save him!"