The Burning Sky (22 page)

He sat next to her. “This one is from almost a decade before the other one.”

He began to read. She stole a glance at him, then did the same.

 

7 May 1012

 

A new vision today.

The vision is of a library—or a bookshop. A woman, who has her back to me, wanders through the shelves and appears to be searching for a specific title.

She stops and reaches for a tome that requires two hands to lift. The title on the spine reads
The Complete Potion
.

(I know this book—a detestable volume full of pretension and remarkably empty on actual scholarship. My tutor used to torment me with it.)

The woman in the vision, with some difficulty, maneuvers the book to a desk and sets it down next to a calendar that shows the date, 25 August.

She opens the book and quickly finds what she is looking for. The subject is light elixirs. There is a stylus on the desk. She picks up the stylus and writes on the very edge of a page,
There is no light elixir, however tainted, that cannot be revived by a thunderbolt.

 

Iolanthe recoiled. These were the fateful words that had changed everything.

“Is this the advice that you received on Tuesday?” asked the prince.

Tuesday. Less than a week and more than a lifetime ago. She nodded.

“I guess we are about to find out who wrote it,” he said.

 

5 August 1013

 

A repeat of last year's vision, with no new information.

 

11 August 1013

 

I have seen this vision three times in the last two days. Yesterday I asked my tutor whether lightning could be used to mend an elixir. He laughed until he choked.

 

12 August 1013

 

Again the same vision. It grows vexing.

 

15 August 1013

 

Finally something new.

As the woman in the vision leans toward the stylus holder, I was able to make out, on the base of the holder, the inscription:
Presented to my dear friend and mentor Eugenides Constantinos.

 

16 August 1013

 

I have found out that Eugenides Constantinos owns a bookshop at the intersection of Hyacinth Street and University Avenue. I will stop and take a look the next time I am in the area.

 

Iolanthe sucked in a breath.

“What is it?”

“I know that place—my guardian used to take me there all the time. It had become a sweets shop by then, but it still had some of the old signs. The one I liked the best said something along the lines of ‘Books on the Dark Arts may be found in the cellar, free of charge. And should you locate the cellar, kindly feed the phantom behemoth inside. Regards, E. Constantinos.'”

“‘The warp and weft of Fortune weave in mysterious ways; only in hindsight does one see the threads of destiny taking shape,'” he quoted.

She exhaled slowly and read on.

 

31 August 1013

 

A most fantastical day.

I slipped out of a command performance of
Titus III
, evaded my ladies-in-waiting, and hurried to the Emporium of Fine Learning and Curiosities, Constantinos's shop. As I walked into the shop, the vision repeated itself an unprecedented seventh time.

This time, I saw clearly the distinctive ring on the hand wielding the stylus.

When the vision had faded, I lifted my own hand in shock. On my right index finger is an identical ring that had been wrought for Hesperia the Magnificent. There is not another like it in all the mage realms.

The woman is me.

 

Iolanthe's hand came up to her throat.

 

I laughed. Well, then.

Once I had a vision of myself telling my father that a particular Atlantean girl was going to be the most powerful person in the Domain. Then, when I saw the girl in truth, I told him what I had seen myself tell him—since one cannot deliberately change what has been seen to happen. He was terribly displeased to be faced with the possibility that he, a direct descendant of Titus the Great, would one day no longer be the absolute master of this realm.

But this time I would offend no one.

I found the book, dragged it to the table, lifted the stylus from its holder, and vandalized the book as I had done in the vision.

Only when I was finished did I remember the desk calendar. In the vision it is always 25 August. But today is 31 August. I looked at the calendar on the desk. 25 August! The device had stopped working a week ago.

I am not often cheered by how right I am: the ability to see glimpses of the future is frustrating and hair-raising. But at that moment, I was ever so thrilled.

On impulse, I opened the book again, turned to the section for clarifying draughts, and tore out the last three pages. The recipes given on those pages are riddled with errors. I was not going to let some other poor pupil suffer from them.

 

They turned the page, but there was nothing else. They kept turning pages. Still nothing. The prince eventually closed the journal and put it back into his satchel.

He glanced at Iolanthe.

She realized she ought to say something, but she did not dare to speak aloud her thoughts—for fear she might truly find the long arm of destiny clasped tightly about her.

For fear she might come to accept the idea that her fate and the prince's had been interwoven since long before their births.

 

“Tell me about the vision in which she saw you dying,” said Fairfax, returning to her supper. “Did you also read it in that diary?”

Titus slowly lay himself back down. Damn the truth serum. And damn the blood oath that prevented him from lying. One might as well blind a painter or chop off the fingers of a sculptor—he was an artist with his lies. “Yes.”

“When will it happen?”

“I am described as in my late adolescence. So . . . any day now.”

She blinked a few times, looked down at her food, then back at him. “Why?”

“There is no why. Everybody dies.”

“You said that the diary only shows what you need to know. Why is it necessary for you to learn that you'll die young?”

“So I will prepare accordingly. It concentrates the mind, knowing that time is limited.”

“It could have had the opposite effect. Another boy might have abandoned the whole venture altogether.”

“That boy must not worry about meeting his mother in the afterlife with nothing accomplished in this one. Besides, you cannot escape your destiny. Look at how much effort has been expended in helping you elude the ineluctable—and look where you are now.”

A pot of tea had come with the supper tray. Her gaze dropped to the teapot. Tea jetted out of the spout by itself, arcing a graceful parabola in the air before filling a cup without a drop spilled. She wrapped her hands around the cup, as if she felt cold and needed a source of warmth. “So I might be alone at the end, facing the Bane.”

The thought haunted him almost more than his impending death. “As long as I live and breathe, I will be with you. And I will shield you.”

Her fingers flexed, then tightened around the teacup. “I never thought I'd say this, but I want you to live forever.”

He did not need to live forever, but he would like to live long enough to forget the taste of fear. “You can live forever for me.”

Their gazes met—and held.

She rose, went into the bedroom, and came back with a blanket. As she tucked the blanket in around him, forever became a distant thought—he would gladly exchange it for a few more moments like this.

“Sleep,” she said. “The great elemental mage of our time will stand guard over you.”

 

A few sparks of fire floated below the ceiling, providing just enough illumination to see. Iolanthe gazed at the prince's sleeping form, one arm slung over his head, the other kept close to his person, his wand in hand.

Gathering the sparks nearer herself, she took out his mother's diary and flipped through the pages again. Nothing, except for one particular page which bore a small skull mark that she hadn't noticed before at the bottom right-hand corner.

When she reached the end of the diary, she turned the pages backward. Still nothing. She sighed and returned the diary to his satchel.

In her heart she was beginning to understand that it was truly written in the stars, her destiny. Yet it still seemed utterly impossible that she would ever find the audacity to face the Bane, she who had lived such a small life, so tightly focused only on the well-being of her own family.

Especially if the prince was right about his death.

Upon his passing, the blood oath would cease to be binding. She would be free to walk away from this mad venture, snatch Master Haywood, if she could, and disappear into hiding.

There was nothing to stop her.

Except the knowledge that he had given his life to the cause, and she would have abandoned the entire foundation he had built.

Not to mention the question that was beginning to tug at the edge of her mind: if she had the power to overthrow the Bane, could she live with never trying, just keeping herself and Master Haywood safe in some pocket of the Labyrinthine Mountains, while Mrs. Needles and countless others like her rotted in Atlantean prisons?

Could she live with herself, cowering, while the world burned?

CHAPTER 18

IOLANTHE WOKE UP HISSING WITH
pain. Her fingers felt as if they had swollen to three times their normal size, her skin about to burst from the pressure.

But they
appeared
no different. She stared at her hands in puzzlement. When she closed her hands, her knuckles protested. She opened and closed her hands a few more times. The discomfort went away rather rapidly, leaving her bewildered.

“What is the matter?” asked the prince from where he lay, his voice rough with sleep.

“You're awake. How is your head? Want me to find you some breakfast?”

“No breakfast, thank you. And my head is terrible, but that is par for the course. What is the matter with you?”

“I'm not sure. My hands hurt a minute ago, but not anymore. Is it a side effect of transmogrification?”

“No, but it might be a side effect of your breaking the otherwise spell, though.”

“What otherwise spell?”

“The one that was laid on you earlier, to make you believe you could not manipulate air.”

“Maybe I was just late developing it.”

He shook his head. “I read your guardian's letter to you and—”

She cocked a brow. She had never offered him the letter to read.

“Well, you already know I am unscrupulous.”

She sighed. “Go on.”

“These are his exact words. ‘I can't help but wonder how your power would have manifested itself. By causing the Delamer River to flow in reverse? Or shearing the air of a sunny day into a cyclone?' Which tells me that you did have power over air as a toddler.”

“But I thought you couldn't apply an otherwise spell when the subject already knows about something.”

“Power over air is the easiest to disguise. You cannot explain away the sudden appearance of fire or water, or stones flying off a wall. But movement of air can always be blamed on a breeze from the window. And this way he could pass you off as an Elemental Mage III—much less noticeable.”

“I still don't see why my hands should hurt now, after I broke through the otherwise spell, if that's what it was.”

“Do something with air. Make the curtain flutter.”

She tried, but the curtain moved only the tiniest bit. “I don't understand. I swung the entire chandelier last night.”

“Now you are no longer in the midst of extraordinary circumstances.
²⁰
An otherwise spell is not easy to cast off completely, when it has controlled you for so long. But you are already much further along than you used to be—the pain is likely a physical manifestation of the potential you have unlocked struggling against what is left of the otherwise spell.”

She tried again to flutter the curtain; the result was not much more impressive. It was disheartening. She'd thought her control over air would be easy and absolute from this point onward. “So what do I do now?”

“Train harder. All of elemental magic is mind over matter. You must keep pushing yourself.” He sat up and winced in pain. “We all must keep pushing ourselves.”

 

Mrs. Hancock's smile was as pleasant as ever, her day dress as brown and sacklike. “Your Highness, if you would follow me to my parlor.”

Titus braced a hand on the banister—she had caught him as he was going up the stairs. “What is it with you Atlanteans? Can you not see I have a pounding headache?”

He was not lying: the inside of his skull felt like a nonmage demolition, all crowbars and sledgehammers. He was also feeble from hunger, having had nothing more than a cup of tea since his Inquisition.

“I wouldn't dream of disturbing Your Highness unless it was of vital importance,” said Mrs. Hancock serenely.

“Who wants to see me?”

“The Acting Inquisitor, sir.”

“Who the hell is the Acting Inquisitor?”

“His name is Baslan.”

Baslan was not usually referred to as Acting Inquisitor, but as vice-proconsul or something of the sort. Titus rubbed his temples. “Is the Master of the Domain not important enough for the Bane's lackey now? I have to see the lackey's lackey?”

“You are ever so gracious, Your Highness,” murmured Mrs. Hancock, as she reached out and straightened a frame of embroidered iris that had been knocked askew by a careless boy.

She led the way to an austere parlor of bare floor and unpadded chairs, and not a petal or stem of the printed flowers beloved by Mrs. Dawlish. Her drawer pulls, however, were carved with the stylized whirlpool symbol. Baslan's spectral image—a piece of Atlantean magic that the Domain's archmages had yet to duplicate—paced in the parlor, heedless of walls and furniture.

He snapped to at Titus's entrance. Titus plopped himself into the nearest seat and shaded his eyes with his hand—the sunlight streaming in from Mrs. Hancock's window burned like acid on his retinas. “What do you want?”

“I need an account of Your Highness's actions last night inside the Inquisition chamber.”

A question that did not involve Miss Buttercup in any conceivable manner was not one Titus had expected. “
My
actions? Bleeding from all major orifices and suffering horrific damage to my vision, my hearing, and my cognitive abilities.”

“You seem remarkably healthy for all the inflictions you listed,” said Baslan.

Titus coughed. He turned his face to the side and spat blood all over Mrs. Hancock's skirts—a good trick if he did say so himself. Mrs. Hancock squealed—at last a genuine reaction—and waved her wand madly to get rid of the stains.

He glared at Baslan. “What did you say?”

Baslan looked baffled. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“The Acting Inquisitor need not hesitate,” said Mrs. Hancock. “If His Highness doesn't already know what happened, he will very soon.”

Baslan still wavered.

Titus made as if to rise. “You have wasted enough of my time.”

“The Inquisitor has been unconscious since last night.” Baslan's voice was shrill. “I demand to know what you did to her.”

Titus knew that mind mages abhorred disruptions during a probe, but he had had no idea a disruption could be
that
catastrophic. Or was it because what Fairfax had thought of as dainty light spheres had not been so dainty? What if one such light sphere falling from a great height would have given the Inquisitor a concussion even under normal circumstances?

“Her mind is gone?” he asked, knowing that was too good to be true.

“Her mind is not gone,” Baslan snarled. “She is only temporarily incapacitated.”

“That is too bad. It would have been justice from the Angels for all the minds she has destroyed.”

Baslan clenched his hand, restraining himself with difficulty. “You will tell me what you did to Madam Inquisitor.”

Titus looked at him aslant. “So
that
was the reason you sent Lady Callista to the castle last night. And here I thought she was at last beginning to care about my health.”

And
that
was why they had tried to prevent him from leaving. Not because they wanted to strip him of his canary, but because the physicians needed to know what had caused the Inquisitor's unconsciousness before they could formulate a treatment.

He smirked and pulled out his wand, adorned with seven diamond-inlaid crowns along its length. “This is Validus, the wand that once belonged to Titus the Great. I know Atlanteans are culturally isolated and largely unaware of histories beyond their own, but I trust that you, Acting Inquisitor, must have heard of Titus the Great.”

Baslan's lips thinned. “I am aware of who he was.”

“Titus the Great left behind a unified Domain. But to his family, he also left behind the Titus Benediction, a tremendous protection allied to the power of Validus, which would let no harm come to the heir of the House of Elberon.”

He tapped the wand twice against his palm. Mrs. Hancock rose to her feet, Baslan took a step backward, both staring at the light now emanating from the seven crowns.

“Yes, you behold one of the last of the blade wands. An unsheathed blade wand is one of the most powerful objects around. And Validus unsheathed invokes the Titus Benediction—which I did before I fell unconscious. After that, all the might the Inquisitor aimed at breaking me would have deflected onto herself.”

Baslan was still staring at Validus as Titus sheathed it. Titus pulled himself to his feet. With all the hauteur he could muster—not a great deal as he could scarcely remain upright—he sneered at the Atlanteans.

“And that is why you do not trifle with the Master of the Domain.”

 

Iolanthe put her arm around him as he was about to start up the stairs.

His reaction was a low growl. “I told you not to come back until I gave you the all clear.”

He was pale, and there were drops of blood on his sleeve. Even knowing the blood for the trick it was, her heart still flinched. “You might have needed help.”

“Did I not also tell you never to worry about me?”

Stupid, stubborn boy. “If I hadn't interfered earlier, you'd be a drooling imbecile by now. So shut up and let me make my own decisions.”

He almost smiled. “That does not sound right. I am the brains of the operation. You are only supposed to provide the muscle.”

She wanted to touch his cheek, but did no such thing. “When there is enough muscle, it develops a mind of its own.”

Birmingham, the house captain, bounded down the stairs. “What's the matter, Titus? You look like you are about to give up the ghost.”

It still jarred Iolanthe to hear the prince called by his name. She almost snarled at Birmingham to not be so familiar. “Bad oysters at the diplomatic reception,” she said instead.

Birmingham sucked in a breath. “Those can be deadly. You'd better hope the danger is past.”

“I think I am going to puke again,” the prince mumbled.

“Hurry. I'll secure you a chamber pot.” She'd found one in the hotel. The prince had to explain to her what the object was for. The very idea of it. “Toodles, Birmingham.”

Once they were in his room, she borrowed his wand and flicked it. There came the unmistakable sound of someone dry-heaving.

The prince winced, though he looked impressed at the same time. “What was
that
?”

“Learned it from a pupil in Little Grind. This was how she convinced her mother not to give her turnips at supper anymore.” She set a sound circle and gave the wand back to him. “Now you lie down.”

“I need to see what intelligence Dalbert might have sent.”

“Lie down. I'll do it for you.”

“I—”

“If Dalbert sends intelligence, I need to know how to receive it. Remember, you won't always be here.”

You can live forever for me.
The wistfulness in those words, the calm acceptance of what could not be changed. There was no glory for him in chasing after the impossible, no reward beyond a promise kept.

“Must you remind me?” He stretched himself out on his bed. “Put a piece of paper under the machine in that cabinet by my desk.”

She had no trouble finding the somewhat porcupinelike device and successfully placed the paper on the domed tray beneath on her second try. The device clacked. When it stopped, she removed the paper and brought it to him.

“What news might Dalbert have? And what did Mrs. Hancock do with you? Did she ask that you produce Miss Buttercup?”

“No one asked about Miss Buttercup.” He took the report from her hand and scanned it. A little color returned to his face. “So it
is
true: the Inquisitor remains unconscious.”

“She is?”

“Has been since last night.”

“From what I did?”

“From what you did, except they thought I was responsible for it, so I gave them a fairy tale about the powers of my wand.”

He was still looking at the report, oblivious to what he'd just said. She suppressed an urge to giggle. “Did they believe you? All boys tell such tales about their wands.”

He glanced up, his eyes first blank, then lit with mischief. “Maybe they do, but
I
actually possess a superior wand—the finest of its kind, no less. The sort of fireworks my wand can produce will leave any girl breathless.”

They both burst out laughing. His entire aspect was transformed, like a desert come to life after a rainstorm. She had to turn away, her eyes filling with abrupt tears.

You can live forever for me.

She looked out the window, her back to him. It was a sunny afternoon. The small meadow behind the house hopped with junior boys at their various games—balls, sticks, and a kite three of the boys were trying to set aloft.

A life simple, peaceful, and bucolic all around him—and he would have only ever gazed upon it as if through a looking glass.

“Won't the regent contradict your account?” she heard herself carrying on the discussion, as if their present danger were the only thing that mattered. “Your wand is a family heirloom. If it has special powers, he'd know about it too, wouldn't he?”

“All Alectus can say is that he does not know. He will be the first to admit there is a store of knowledge that is only passed down the direct line of inheritance.”

“So we're safe as long as the Inquisitor remains unconscious?”

“It would seem.”

“What happens when she wakes up?”

“Something will give.”

She turned around. “What will give?”

“Time will tell,” he said, with a calm that was not resignation, but a fierce will. “We assume the worst and prepare accordingly.”

 

The room was hung with crimson curtains and deep-blue tapestries. Vases of gilded ice roses bloomed almost to the painted ceiling. At the center of the far wall, under a triple archivolt, Princess Aglaia occupied her bejeweled throne.