He turned the page. There was no more text. He turned another page and froze. At the bottom right corner of this page, there was a small skull mark.
He had left the mark, on the page that bore the vision of his death.
Were these two visions but part of the same larger vision? By going to the Citadel this night, was he going to his end?
Think no more on the exact hour of your death, prince. That moment must come to all mortals. When you will have done what you need to do, you will have lived long enough.
He set his hand on the Crucible, bowed his head, and began the password.
CHAPTER 23
IOLANTHE WAS DRAGGED OUT OF Mrs. Dawlish’s by boys who had come back to the house for supper. They could not understand why she wanted to stay in her room, and she, preoccupied, had failed to complain early on of headaches or fatigue.
She made sure she always stood or walked where it was darkest, kept a wary eye for the presence of Atlanteans, and an even warier one for the possibility of Master Haywood and Mrs. Oakbluff being led about like a pair of bloodhounds.
But no one arrested her. She made it back to Mrs. Dawlish’s house and headed directly for the prince’s room.
He was not there. She spent a petrified moment thinking he’d been taken after all, until she noticed his uniform jacket on the back of a chair—and the still warm kettle next to the grate.
So he’d come back, taken off his jacket, boiled water for tea, and then—she felt the kettle again—between a quarter to a half hour ago, gone somewhere else.
But where? He could not vault anywhere. Atlantis monitored the periphery of the no-vaulting zone. And Lady Wintervale had blocked the wardrobe portal on her end.
Birmingham’s voice rang out in the hall, reminding the boys that it was time to prepare for bed. Soon Mrs. Hancock would come around to knock on all the boys’ doors, making sure they were in their rooms at lights-out.
She checked the common room; he was not there. The baths were already locked. Only the lavatory was left.
Wait, she told herself. But half a minute felt like a decade. She swore and made for the lavatory, a facility she used only when it was entirely or mostly unoccupied. It was now shortly before lights-out: the place was not going to be empty.
She took three deep breaths before going inside, and still she almost ran out screaming. The trough was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with boys emptying their bladders—the last thing she wanted to witness, even if it was from the back.
“You want my place, Fairfax?” asked Cooper as he stepped back from the trough, refastening his trousers.
“No, thank you! I’m looking for Sutherland. He has my classical geography book.”
She knocked on the stalls. “You in there, Sutherland?”
“Good Lord, can’t a man visit a privy in peace anymore?” came Birmingham’s grumpy reply from the last stall.
All the boys laughed. Iolanthe contributed her own nervous guffaws and escaped with unholy haste.
On a different night she might not have worried so much—if the prince didn’t have some secret plans brewing, he wouldn’t be Titus VII. But this day they’d faced their nemesis and escaped by the skin of their teeth. He must be dying to find out how she’d pulled off the deed. Not to mention they desperately needed to come up with a coherent strategy, together, to counter the Inquisitor’s next move.
She returned to the prince’s room. There was one place she hadn’t checked, the teaching cantos. The Crucible was on his desk; she placed her hand over it. Once she was in the pink marble palace, she ran to his classroom.
A note on his door said, F, I will be gone for a short while. No need to worry about me. And no need to worry about lights-out. T.
Instead of reassuring her, his vagueness about his destination and purpose made her even more uneasy.
She opened the door—and paused on the threshold. Inside the classroom, illuminated by a dozen torches, woody vines rose wrist-thick from openings on the floor, intertwined in knots and arabesques on the walls, and spread open upon the ceiling. Clusters of small golden flowers hung from this canopy. A bank of French windows opened to a large balcony and a dark, starry sky.
There were no tables or chairs upon the carpet of living grass, but two elegant bench swings set at oblique angles to each other. The prince sat on one of those swings, in his Eton uniform, his arms stretched out along the back of the bench.
“Tell me what I like to read in my leisure time,” he said.
“Who gives a damn! Where are you?”
As if he hadn’t heard her at all, he repeated his demand.
With a pinch in her heart she remembered it wasn’t really him, only a record and a likeness. “Ladies’ magazines, English.”
“Where did you last kiss me?”
The memory still burned. “Inside Sleeping Beauty’s castle.”
He nodded. “What can I do for you, my love?”
He’d never before called her that. Her chest constricted. Was he saving all such endearment for after his death? “Tell me where you’ve gone.”
“You are, presumably, speaking of a time in my future. I have no knowledge of the specifics of the future.”
“Where is your spare wand?” She hoped she wouldn’t have to take matters into her own hands. But she planned to, as he’d taught her, assume the worst and prepare accordingly.
“In a box in my tea cabinet, the same box I asked you to pass to me before our first session in the Crucible. It will open only at your touch—or mine. Password: Sleeping Beauty. Countersign: Nil desperandum.”
“In an emergency, what should I take from your room other than the Crucible and the spare wand?”
“My mother’s diary, currently disguised as Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde. Password: Better by innocence than by eloquence. Countersign: Consequitur quodcunque petit.
She asked him to repeat all the passwords and countersigns and committed them to memory.
Back in his room, she’d just found his spare wand when Mrs. Hancock called, “Lights off, gentlemen, lights off.”
He’d told her not to worry about lights-out, but she needed a plan, in case his went awry. She could imitate the prince’s voice and then, hoping Mrs. Hancock bought her imitation, turn off the lights, step out, and enter her own room before Mrs. Hancock’s eyes.
Except she wasn’t much of a mimic.
The knock came at the prince’s door. Before Iolanthe could make a sound from her suddenly parched throat, the prince’s voice rang out. “Good night.”
Her heart almost leaped out of her mouth. She spun around. He had not come back. She couldn’t be entirely sure, but the stone bust he kept on his shelf appeared to have answered for him.
“Won’t you turn off your lights, Your Highness?” asked Mrs. Hancock as Iolanthe shoved the wand up her sleeve and grabbed the Crucible and Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde from his desk.
The gas lamp went out by itself. Iolanthe opened the door just enough to let herself out.
“I will be turning my lights off right away also, ma’am,” she said to Mrs. Hancock, smiling.
“See that you do, Fairfax. Good night.”
“Good night, ma’am.”
Her heart still pounding, she turned off the lights in her room, drew the curtain, summoned a smidgeon of fire, and set it in the depression of a candleholder. Sitting down on her bed, she opened the diary first: she’d quickly know whether it had anything to tell her.
What she found terrified—and enraged—her. His mother specifically mentioned Atlantean soldiers and the presence of Lady Callista, known agent of Atlantis. And he’d taken off without so much as a word to her. It was almost as if he wanted to march to his doom.
She stormed into his classroom in the teaching cantos and tersely repeated the answers to the questions meant to ascertain her identity.
“If I need to go to the Citadel, right now, and I have no other means of transportation, what should I do?”
> His record-and-likeness frowned. “No other means of mobility at all?”
“None. I am in a no-vaulting zone. And I have no vehicles, flying carpets, beasts of burden, or portals.”
“And you absolutely must go?”
“Absolutely.”
“You may use the Crucible as a portal, but only if it is a matter of life and death, and only after you have exhausted all other options.”
“You told me the Crucible is not a portal.”
“I said it is not used as one. And with good reason. To use the Crucible as a portal requires that a mage physically inhabit the geography of the Crucible. When you get hurt, you get hurt. When you are killed, you die. It is doable, but I advise strenuously against it.”
She wanted to yank him off his swing and shake him. “If you advise strenuously against it, why have you done it yourself, you nitwit?”
He was perfectly unruffled. “I do not believe I have prepared for that question. Rephrase or ask a different one.”
She forced herself to calm down. “Tell me how the Crucible works as a portal.”
“It serves as an entrance into other copies of the Crucible. There were four copies made. One I keep with me at all times, one is at the monastery in the Labyrinthine Mountains, one in the library at the Citadel, and the fourth has been lost.”
“So you enter this copy of the Crucible, say a password, and you are whisked inside the copy of the Crucible at the Citadel. Then you just say ‘And they lived happily ever after’ and you are standing in the Citadel itself?”
“I wish it were that simple. When Hesperia turned the copies of the Crucible into portals, she tried to make safe passages, but a great deal of the original structure could not be overridden.
“The story locales of the Crucible are normally each instantly accessible, like drawers in a chest. But when the Crucible is used as a portal, the locales join into one continuous terrain. Only one point of entry and exit exists at the center of this terrain, on the meadow not far from Sleeping Beauty’s castle. To reach any other spot, you must travel, on foot, on beasts of burden, or via magical means, as long as those means were known at the time of the Crucible’s creation—which means no vaulting.
“To make matters worse, Hesperia, concerned that pursuers might follow her into the Crucible, located the actual portals in some of the most dangerous places in the Crucible: Briga’s Chasm, Forbidden Island, and Black Bastion.”
Black Bastion, where he’d been killed by Helgira’s lightning.
“Which one goes to the Citadel?”
“Black Bastion.”
Well, of course. “The whole of Black Bastion or a specific place inside?”
“The prayer alcove inside Helgira’s bedchamber.”
She already felt nauseous. “How do I get to Black Bastion?”
“The map at the very front of the Crucible should tell you the layout of the land when it is used as a portal. From Sleeping Beauty’s castle, Black Bastion is about thirty-five miles north-northeast.”
She rubbed her throat. The collar of her shirt was suddenly too restrictive. “All right, give me the password and the countersign to using the Crucible as a portal.”
He gave both, but added, “You must swear to me, on your guardian’s life, that you will not use the Crucible this way unless you yourself are in mortal danger.”
She hesitated.
He rose and took her hands. His own, calloused from countless hours on the river, were warm and strong. “I beg you, do not, do not put your life in danger, particularly not for me. I will never forgive myself. The only thing that makes this entire madness bearable is the hope that you may yet survive, that one day you may live the life you have always wanted.”
Tears stung the back of her eyes. She looked away and said, “And they lived happily ever after.”
Titus shook. He cursed himself, but the shaking would not stop.
He had been twelve, cocky about his prowess in the Crucible after having vanquished the Monster of Belle Terre, the Keeper of Toro Tower, and the Seven-Headed Hydra of Dread Lake. His death at Helgira’s hand had obliterated any further thoughts of invincibility. In fact, it had been two months before he could use the Crucible again, and even then only to partake in the easiest, simplest quests.
In the years since, he had conquered his fear of the Crucible, but never his terror of Black Bastion.
The wyvern beneath him sensed his growing panic and decided to take advantage. It rolled and plunged, attempting to shake him loose. Practically joyous for the distraction, he jabbed his wand into the beast’s neck. It screeched in pain.
“Fly properly or I will do it again.”
Last time his approach had been blatant, at the forefront of a mob of attackers. He would not repeat that mistake. Helgira’s saga began with one of her lieutenants arriving at Black Bastion on a wyvern. Titus had wrangled a wyvern from Sleeping Beauty’s castle and would try to pass himself off as a soldier coming to warn Helgira of an impending attack.
The torch-lit silhouette of Black Bastion was beginning to be visible, a solid, foursquare fortress that crowned a foothill of Purple Mountain. He murmured a prayer of gratitude for the darkness—he could not see Helgira yet. The last thing he remembered from his previous foray was her slim, white-clad person, standing atop the fort, her arm raised to call down the bolt of lightning that would strike him dead.
In the aftermath, his convulsions had nearly snapped his spine. Even the thought of it made him shake again.
Black Bastion drew ever nearer.
This time, if he were killed, he would remain dead.
The landing platform was five hundred feet away. The wyvern was not trained to carry riders and had no reins. He wrapped his arms around its neck and pulled. It brayed, but slowed to a speed better suited for dismounts.
Soldiers surrounded him the moment his feet touched the platform. “We’ve been attacked!” he cried. “The Mad Wizard of Hollowcombe promised the peasants land and riches in exchange for our lives.”
Dozens of weapons were unsheathed. The captain of the guard held a long spear—one that could follow a fleeing opponent for a mile—at Titus’s throat. “You are not Boab.”
“Boab is dead. They killed just about all of us.”
“How could they kill Boab? Boab is—was a great soldier and an even better mage.”
Titus’s mouth was dry, but he doggedly repeated the plot of the story. “Treachery. They gave us drugged wine.”
“Why were you not drugged?”
“I wasn’t at the celebration. A peasant girl, you see. I thought she liked me, but she turned on me. I heard her talk to the people coming to kill me, so I stole her brother’s clothes and this wyvern to come warn m’lady.”
He had put on the gray, hooded tunic his mother had specified, which he sometimes wore to bed, before he’d entered the Crucible. He hoped it would pass for peasant attire.
The captain did not trust him, but he also did not dare not bring Titus to Helgira. With eight spears trained on him, Titus marched down the ramp to the bailey and into the great hall of Black Bastion.
The hall was crowded. There was singing and dancing. Helgira, in her white gown, sat at the center of a long table upon a great dais, drinking from a chalice of gold.
He stopped dead. Four spears pressed hard into his back. Still he could not move a single step.
Instead of turning angry, the captain chuckled. “Gets ’em bumpkins every time, she does.”
But Titus was neither bowled over by Helgira’s beauty nor petrified anew by fear. He was transfixed because Helgira was Fairfax.
She was twenty years older, but in her features she was identical to Fairfax. Her lips were the same shade of deep pink, her hair the same jet-black cascade he remembered so well.
This was the reason Fairfax had looked eerily familiar when they had first met.
Helgira perceived the arrival of the soldiers and signaled the musicians to halt. The dancers melted to ei
ther side of the hall, clearing a path.
Titus sleepwalked, staring at Helgira. Only after the captain smacked him on the side of the head and yelled at him for disrespect did he lower his head.
Before the dais, he sank to his knees, kept his eyes on the ground, and repeated his tale. The toes of Helgira’s dainty white slippers—with lightning bolts embroidered in silver thread—came into his view.
“I am well pleased with you, warrior,” she murmured. “You will be given a bag of gold and a woman who will not turn on you.”
“Thank you, m’lady. M’lady is mighty and munificent.”
“But you committed a grave breach of etiquette, young man. Do you not know that no one is allowed to gaze upon me without my permission?”
“Forgive me, my lady. My lady’s beauty stole my sense.”
Helgira laughed. Her voice was high and sharp, completely different from Fairfax’s.
“I like this one—such pretty words. Very well, henceforth I grant you the privilege. But know this: I always exact punishment for any transgression.”
With that, she unsheathed the knife at her belt, and brought it down on him.
Iolanthe, sitting on her cot in the dark, almost screamed. It was as if someone had slashed her arm with a knife. She gripped her arm. There was no blood, but the pain was still there, making her grit her teeth with it.
What was happening? Could she possibly be sensing the prince’s pain again?
A sharp, almost metallic smell wafted to her nostrils. No, it couldn’t be. Her agitation must be playing a trick on her.
Something dripped to the floor.
A strangled bleat tore from her throat. She summoned a flicker of fire. Directly across from her, blood poured from the Crucible, forming a blackish puddle that drizzled steadily from her desk onto the floor.
She whimpered again. A second later, she leaped from her bed. With a wave of the prince’s spare wand, she cleared away the blood—all mage girls above the age of twelve knew how to handle blood of this quantity. At least the book itself hadn’t been stained, its pages dry and clean.
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