The Immortal Heights

by Sherry Thomas

  His humanity extended only to himself.

  The timbre of the footsteps changed. Titus’s boots had been clacking against hard, smooth stone. But now he was walking across a different material, one that felt and sounded almost like . . . wood.

  They came to a stop. Titus’s gag and blindfold were removed. He was in another containment cell, a transparent one that allowed him to see that the floor of the chamber in which he found himself was indeed a fine, golden-hued wood, the rain ebony of the Ponives. And on the walls, instead of paintings, murals, or tapestry, hung enormous carved wooden panels. The coffered ceiling too had been fitted with a latticework of fine wood.

  What had Mrs. Hancock said? We never had a great deal of woods on Atlantis, most of the original forest had already been cut down, and importing timber for pyres was beyond the means of all but a few. For the Bane, it was not marble that symbolized luxury, but wood, a costly rarity in his youth.

  Titus forgot all about wood when he saw that not far from him, Fairfax lay crumpled in another containment cell.

  That is not—

  He pushed away the reminder from his conscious mind—instincts would take over. He rushed to the side of the containment cell that was a few feet closer to her. “Fairfax. Fairfax! Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  “And what is the matter with Fairfax, if I may ask?”

  For a fraction of a second, Titus thought it was West, the Eton cricketer who had been abducted by the Bane, standing before him. But though the man bore a close resemblance to West, he was at least twice West’s age.

  The Bane’s current body, then.

  “It isn’t like you to be speechless, Your Highness,” said the Bane. “Be so kind as to answer my question.”

  Titus looked at the unconscious girl in the other containment cell. The main thrust of the lie would be the same, but he had a split-second decision to make. Did he play the cold-blooded opportunist or the distraught lover?

  “She begged me to kill her so she would not fall into your hands. But I—” His voice shook at the sight of her, at the mercy of their enemy. “But I botched it.”

  “The arrogance of the young. To think you could thwart me and get away with it.” The Bane shook his head, his expression almost sympathetic. “And where are your other friends, by the way?”

  “They never left Lucidias—they all three together powered the last-mage-standing spell.”

  “They value their lives too cheaply.”

  “Better that than cleaving to life by any foul means.”

  “You, prince, are filled with the sanctimony of the young,” replied the Bane.

  “I hope that as the very ancient Lord High Commander lies asleep at night, he dreams of nothing but his own agonizing death—again and again and again.”

  Titus had wanted to hit a nerve. But the flicker of anger in the Bane’s eyes hinted that he might have gone too far—and been too accurate. Titus could have kicked himself. The longer he kept the Bane talking to him, the longer the Bane’s attention would stay away from Fairfax.

  But now the Bane approached Fairfax’s containment cell, which protected those on the outside against those on the inside, but not vice versa.

  “Revivisce forte,” said the Bane.

  She showed no sign of recovering consciousness.

  “Revivisce omnino.”

  The reviving spell should have been strong enough to counter the stunning spell Titus had used, but Fairfax remained motionless, not a twitch, not even a fluttering of the eyelashes.

  “Highly inconsiderate of you, Your Highness,” said the Bane. “For what I’ve planned for her, it would be much better with her awake and alert.”

  Titus felt as if he had been enclosed in a coffin lined with spikes inside. “I thought all you needed was for her heart to remain beating.”

  “True, but it makes for a far more powerful sacrifice when she is completely aware of the goings-on—up to the moment the contents of her cranium are extracted, that is. I have a very good spell for keeping the heart beating throughout it all, until that too is required in the last step.”

  At the horrors the Bane so casually described, Titus’s throat closed. His still-bound hands clenched into fists, shaking.

  “You love her, I see. Then you must be there to witness her final moments on this earth. It’s the least you could do for her. The least I could do for such a pair of devoted young lovers.”

  “No!” He banged his shoulder against the wall of the containment cell. It was soft enough to absorb the impact of his weight but firm enough not to move an inch. “No! You will not touch her.”

  “And how will you stop me, without the aid of your magic book? You are in my domain now, Titus of Elberon. There are no surprises that you can wield against me.”

  “She will defeat you.”

  “I built these containment cells to be mighty enough for me. You can say many things about her, but you cannot say she is a greater elemental mage than I.”

  The Bane turned to Fairfax and pointed his wand. “Fulmen doloris.”

  Titus flinched. The spell was powerful enough to make the dead sit up and scream in pain.

  She did not move or make a single sound. He could not believe it. Had he inadvertently rendered her permanently comatose?

  “When you bungle an execution curse, you bungle it royally, young man,” murmured the Bane.

  He pivoted, his wand pointed at Titus, and such a conflagration of pain engulfed him, as if every square inch of his skin had been set on fire. He screamed.

  “Hmm,” said the Bane. “She really is insensate. In a few minutes, if she still doesn’t come to, I’ll put some actual flame to her person and see if that doesn’t help.”

  Titus trembled. The pain that had overwhelmed him was gone, but its memory still burned.

  “Now, since dear Fairfax refuses to cooperate, we shall have a chat, you and I, Your Highness.”

  There was something extraordinarily smug about the Bane’s tone. Dread crawled over Titus with feet like those of a hundred millipedes.

  “Let me ask you something. Why did Gaia Archimedes betray me?”

  It took Titus a moment to recognize Mrs. Hancock’s real name. “Because you murdered her sister to prolong your own life.”

  “And how would she have known it?”

  Titus hesitated. “She and your old oracle met and fell in love. And they exchanged enough information for that to come up.”

  The more truth he told, the greater the chance he would not be interrogated under truth serum.

  “You mean Icarus Khalkedon? But he never remembered anything from his oracular sessions.”

  “That is what he wanted you to believe.”

  The Bane’s eyes narrowed. After a moment he said, “I see. What else didn’t I know about him?”

  “That he was not in a true trance when he told you that I should be sent to a nonmage school and that Mrs. Hancock should be placed on site to keep an eye on me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because my mother was pregnant with me at the time, and you always saw the Domain as a potential threat.”

  “Was that the only instance in which Icarus lied to me during an oracular session?”

  “It is the only one I know of. Mrs. Hancock said he planned to give several more correct answers and then kill himself.”

  “Such treachery. Which makes it even more heartwarming, I assure you, when it is one of his final answers that led me to this body.” The Bane gestured at himself. “A fine specimen, is it not?

  “I obtained this body almost eighteen years ago at the Sheikha Manāt Interrealm Hub in the United Bedouin Realms. It was exactly where Icarus said it would be, waiting for a connecting translocator.”

  Premonition sank its cold claws into Titus. Almost eighteen years ago. A young traveler. A disappearance no one could explain.

  The Bane smiled. “I do not enjoy the process of taking over another body. It is necessary, but never pleasant. In Wint
ervale’s case I had to allow myself to be surrounded by his memories for some time, so that I would be able to recognize the people around him and imitate him to a creditable extent. I did the bare minimum, which proved to be a mistake—it was just like that stupid, shallow boy to never think about his one fatal weakness. No, it was all cricket, his mother, Mrs. Dawlish’s boys, and his old home in the Domain.”

  Titus wished his fist could connect with the Bane’s nose and shove it straight to the back of his skull. “Wintervale was worth a hundred of you. A thousand.”

  The Bane shook his head. “You are a young, foolish boy, full of maudlin sentiments. You should have had some of your grandfather’s pragmatism. He killed his own daughter to keep his throne. All you had to do was hand me the elemental mage and you could have reigned in peace for the remainder of your natural life.”

  “My grandfather was but an instrument you wielded. You were the one who killed my mother. I will set fire to the Citadel myself before I become your willing collaborator. And I will gladly be the last heir of the House of Elberon if it hastens the hour of your demise.”

  The Bane smiled again, but this time with a harder edge. “We digress. Now where was I? Yes, my failure to learn enough about Wintervale. After Wintervale died, when my consciousness traveled back, what should I find but that the body I’d been using since June, after Fairfax electrocuted its predecessor, had died during my absence, of an aneurysm of the brain, of all things.

  “So it was on to the next body, this one. And with the dire example of Wintervale before him, I deemed it prudent to dig a little deeper into this one’s mind. He seemed to be of a simple enough background. Before he was brought here, he’d been a student in the capital city of your great realm, a nice boy who enjoyed helping customers at his father’s bookshop. He hiked in the Serpentine Hills and sailed off the coast—a cliché, almost, if one didn’t account for his Sihar ancestry.”

  Titus fell back against the far wall of the containment cell—and slid to the floor.

  “Does that sound familiar to you? It was so ordinary and colorless I was convinced there was no need to pay further attention. And then, about forty-eight hours ago, I thought to myself that perhaps I’d made a mistake in the execution of Princess Ariadne. Perhaps if I hadn’t asked for her life, I would not have made such an implacable enemy of her son.

  “Such violent emotions erupted in this one. Not that violent emotions aren’t always running through the little peons. You cannot conceive of the tedium of always having to ignore their alternate tantrums and fits of despair. But in this instance the upheaval was cataclysmic. I had to find out the reason—it was hindering my mastery of the body.

  “It was not easy. This one had actually gone through some effort to compartmentalize his memories. It was only hours ago that I finally broke through. And what a secret: a passionate love affair with none other than the late Princess Ariadne herself. Who’d have thought? Even I had mildly wondered about the identity of your father, Your Highness, and what had happened to him. To think I believed it had been some shenanigans of your grandfather’s, when I’d had him here all along. It really is too bad that I didn’t find out sooner. You would have traded Fairfax for your father, wouldn’t you?”

  Would he? Titus thought wildly.

  “But it’s too late now. You will have neither. Fairfax will give me another century of life. And you, it will give me great pleasure to watch you leave the shores of Atlantis a broken man. It won’t just be Fairfax I will sacrifice for my health and longevity; I will use a good few parts of you too. Let’s see, I shall require an eye, definitely an eye. Your wand arm, it goes without saying. Beyond that, it will depend on my mood. How would you like to be known as the Eunuch Prince?”

  Titus could barely stop himself from wrapping his arms around his knees and rocking back and forth. Where were Kashkari and the real Fairfax? When would this nightmare end?

  “In fact, before I apply fire to our dear Fairfax, I shall apply a blade to you. You won’t miss a finger or two, will you?”

  The Bane sauntered forward, a knife in his hand. Titus wanted to scream, but he could only whimper. Then, all of a sudden, he leaped to his feet and words rushed out of him like water from a collapsing dam.

  “Can you hear me, Father? My mother named me after you. And she never gave up on finding you. I always wondered why she took part in the uprising against Atlantis. Now I know it was for you. That failed, but before she died, she asked me to promise her I would do my utmost to defeat the Bane, because it was the only way for me to ever see you.”

  The smile on the Bane’s face became ever more smug, almost radiant. He seized Titus’s still-bound hands. An ice-cold blade settled against Titus’s thumb.

  “She loved the vine that you gave her!” Titus shouted. “It climbs over a pergola on the upper balcony of the castle. I could always find her underneath it—it was her favorite spot!”

  The knife lifted. “Son?” came a tentative whisper, without a shred of the Bane’s arrogance.

  Titus’s heart almost burst out of his chest. “Father! Please help me! Please help all of us!”

  The Bane laughed. He hooted and guffawed. “You believed that? Oh dear, oh dear. You actually believed that poor sod could overpower me?”

  Tears ran down Titus’s face. He was a child of six again, watching the flames go up around his mother, nothing but despair in his heart. “Please, Father. Do not let him do this.”

  The knife dug into his flesh.

  “She loved you,” he whispered. “She loved you until the day she died.”

  The knife moved away. He raised his head in incredulity. Had he succeeded at last, or was the Bane about to make another cruel play?

  It was neither.

  Across from him Fairfax whimpered. Slowly she pushed herself to a sitting position, one hand clutching at her head. Then she looked about at the unfamiliar surroundings.

  Her gaze settled on the Bane.

  She shuddered.

  CHAPTER 22

  IOLANTHE AND KASHKARI EMERGED FROM the Crucible ready for assault. But the cave, its air still dusty, was silent—and dark.

  They stood in place for several minutes, listening. Then Iolanthe set a sound circle. “I don’t think anyone is here.”

  The ruse had worked as intended. The Bane believed he now had both the Master of the Domain and the elemental mage whom he had been desperately seeking for so long.

  “But we still have the same problem,” answered Kashkari, his voice hoarse but steady. “We still can’t get up that cliff face.”

  Iolanthe grimaced. Did they fly around? They had no idea how far the escarpment stretched in either direction. Certainly beyond the range of their far-seeing spells.

  Into their impotent silence came agitated clicks.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” said Kashkari. The noise stopped. “The last time we all left the Crucible together, Titus told me to take a small stone from the meadow, to keep the book ‘open.’”

  Kashkari had become their keeper of the last resort, as he had seemed destined to outlive them all. Since the Coastal Range, he had been the one to carry the Crucible on his person. Titus had taught him all the passwords and countersigns for the Crucible, and Iolanthe had given him the words to unseal the connection between their copy of the Crucible and the one they’d left behind in the Domain—in the unlikely event he left the Commander’s Palace alive and needed to get out of Atlantis in a hurry.

  “I was jangling the contents of my pocket,” he went on, “and the stone was knocking against Durga Devi’s prayer beads.”

  Kashkari, like the prince, almost never fidgeted. For him to be reduced to such nervous motions told her everything she needed to know about his frame of mind. She sighed.

  The next moment she grabbed him by the front of his tunic. “I know how we can get our hands on a pair of wyverns—or at least I know where we can try.”

  Iolanthe murmured the words t
o undisguise the Crucible and felt about on the rubble-strewn floor of the cave until she had the book in hand. Next she had Kashkari “close” the book. Then she took him to visit the Oracle of Still Waters.

  The oracle’s pool captured the image of those who last looked into it. This was how Titus had circumvented the Irreproducible Charm, captured her image, and given Sleeping Beauty her face. She hadn’t known whether to give him a swift kick or to kiss him silly—she would worry about that later, if there was to be a later. Now she busied herself pitching her tent in the middle of the cave—once the tent had been sealed, light on the inside could not be seen from the outside.

  With Kashkari standing guard at the mouth of the cave, she huddled in the tent, under a smidgen of mage light, and made changes to several stories in the Crucible. When she was satisfied with her modifications, she extinguished the light, packed away the tent, and entered the Crucible once again, Kashkari at her side.

  Since the Crucible had just been “reopened,” the meadow was quiet and peaceful, no treasure hunters trampling across the long grass yet. They flew toward Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

  “I’m carrying a two-way notebook that lets me communicate with Dalbert,” she told Kashkari. “If something happens to me, you take it. The password is ‘conservatory.’”

  “Wouldn’t be much use, would it?”

  “You might think differently if you were to survive—let’s not only prepare to die.”

  She didn’t cling to any hope, but as long as she breathed, she would act.

  They shot past the ring of impenetrable briar that surrounded Sleeping Beauty’s castle and came to a stop. Below, by the gate of the castle, lay two wyverns, sleeping, their hind limbs in chains.

  It was possible to bring out objects from the Crucible. In fact, it was necessary to keep the book “open” and instantly accessible. But until now, they had brought out only small, inanimate items: a jewel belonging to Helgira or a rock from the meadow before Sleeping Beauty’s castle.