The vision returned. This time I was able to see, at the very end of Palace Avenue, the arrival of the state chariot. But I could not make out its occupant, except to see the sun dancing upon his or her crown.
For the rest of the day I could not concentrate on anything else. Poor Titus brought me a glass of pompear juice. After holding it for some time, I handed it back without taking a sip.
I need to know. I must know. The day after this vision occurred for the first time, Father requested that I exchange my life for Titus’s future on the throne. I asked for time to consider it. He gave me three weeks.
If I am the person in the state chariot, then I will take Titus and go into hiding. The Labyrinthine Mountains are full of impenetrable folds and valleys. The nonmage world likewise offers plenty of means to disappear.
But what if I am not the person in the chariot?
12 April, YD 1021
I am not the person in the chariot.
Titus is. And he is tiny, barely bigger than he is now.
This time the vision lasted and lasted. I saw the entirety of his coronation, as well as the ceremony that invested Alectus with the powers of regency.
Either I have gone into exile by myself, or I am dead.
Because Titus is so young, many festivities that would otherwise take place are postponed until he comes of age. Still, for hours on end he receives well-wishers. My son, small, solemn, and all alone in the world.
Finally he is by himself. He takes out a letter from inside his tunic, tears it open, and reads. I could not see the writing on the letter, but the discarded envelope bears my personal seal.
The letter has a dramatic effect on Titus. He looks as if he has been kicked in the chest. He reads it again, then runs to take something out of his drawer.
My diary. This diary, which has never left my side.
He opens the diary. The first page reads My dearest son, I will be here when you truly need me. Mama. The date beneath the inscription is two weeks from today.
He turns the pages.
Shock. My diary is empty—pages upon pages of nothing.
When something finally appears on the page, I am shocked again. It was the vision about a young man on a balcony, seen from the back, witnessing something that stuns him. I had experienced the vision several times but never sensed any significance to it.
Apparently I shall feel quite different about it in the near future. The description of the vision, less than half a page long when I last added to it, now stretches the full four pages I allot any one vision. Even the margins are packed with words.
The vision itself began to fade at this point, but I was able to read bits and pieces of my writing, which concern elemental magic, of all things. In the crammed paragraphs I reference other visions, which appear to have nothing at all to do with this one, even recounting a conversation with Callista, during which she told me in strict confidence what she had learned about Atlantis’s interest in elemental mages, from the then-Inquisitor herself, no less, who had been quite enamored of her beauty and charm.
The vision has faded completely. It is now past five in the morning. The sky outside my window shows the faintest trace of orange. I realize with a wrenching pain in my heart that my days are numbered.
But there is no time to wallow in self-pity. In the next two weeks I will write passionately about elemental magic, but I barely know anything about it.
I must quickly find out not only a great deal more about elemental magic, but why I should care.
But first I weep—because I will not see my son grow up. I will not even see him reach his next birthday. And he will only remember me as the dotty woman who did not drink the juice he had specially brought for me.
The Inquisitor was the liar, not his mother.
A hot shame gripped Titus, that he’d doubted his mother so harshly. That he’d hated her as often and as much as he did.
He excused himself and hurried to the water closet, where he lost his battle with tears. He was still wiping them away when Fairfax called out, “Come here. I found another vision!”
“Are you sure? I have never seen more than one at a time,” said the prince.
His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying. She immediately looked back at the diary. “I was randomly flipping pages. I’m almost sure these pages were blank earlier when you looked at them, but they are not anymore.”
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 s hows 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 cured by a thunderbolt.
Iolanthe’s 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 destiny weave in mysterious ways; only in hindsight does one see the threads of Fortune 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 that of 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 your 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?
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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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 couldn’t 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 th
e 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. 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. Baslan’s spectral image—a piece of Atlantean magic that the Domain’s archmages had yet to duplicate—paced in Mrs. Hancock’s parlor, heedless of walls and furniture.
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