The Burning Sky

by Shelly Thomas

  “Now, Your Highness,” said Titus, “I would like to ask you some questions about Atlantis.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  CHAPTER 20

  IN THE DISTANCE, SWORDS, MACES, and clubs bewitched by the Enchantress of Skytower continued to hurtle toward Risgar’s Redoubt. Titus went through a cascade of spells to lock, steady, amplify, and focus his aim. The missiles must be struck down when they were more than three miles out, beyond the outer defensive walls of the redoubt. The moment they crossed over the walls, they would dive to the ground to wreak havoc on lives and property.

  It was enjoyable, the repetition of the spells. It would have been meditative had his aim been perfect. But his success with moving objects hovered stubbornly at 50 percent. He would hit a few targets in a row, then miss the next few.

  “That’s it for this flock,” shouted the captain. “Eat something quick if you need to. Visit the privy. The next flock will be here in no time.”

  Fairfax appeared next to him on the rampart, paying little attention to the soldiers rushing about. “Sorry it took so long. Rogers’ verses were in terrible shape.”

  He had heard an Eton education described as something that taught boys to write bad verses in Latin and just as awful prose in English.

  “You ought to charge a fee for your help.”

  “Next Half I will. You wanted to see me?”

  He always wanted to see her. Even when they were both in the Crucible together, the sad truth was that they saw far too little of each other, with most of her time spent in the practice cantos, and most of his in the teaching cantos.

  He took her elbow and exited the Crucible. “Remember what I told you about the rupture view?”

  She nodded. “The image of wyverns and armored chariots you saw in your head when I interrupted the Inquisitor.”

  “I cannot be completely sure, but after speaking to my grandfather, I think it is the outer defenses of the Commander’s Palace in Atlantis.”

  “The one in Lucidias?”

  Lucidias was the capital city of Atlantis. He shook his head. “That compound is called Royalis—it used to be the king’s palace, when Atlantis still had kings. The Commander’s Palace is in the uplands. My grandfather had a spy who managed to send back a message in a bottle that traveled a thousand miles in open ocean. He indicated the rough location of the palace and noted that it had several rings of defense, one of wyverns, one of lean, swift, armored chariots, and another of huge chariots that carried dragons.”

  “You didn’t mention dragons being carried.”

  “No, my view was too brief to notice all the details. I knew fire was coming out from some of the chariots, but I did not know what was producing the fire. It makes sense—several of the dragon species with the hottest fires either cannot fly or cannot fly well. By putting them on aerial vehicles, Atlantis can better exploit their fire.”

  She rose from her chair, went to his tea cabinet, and pulled out the small bag of chocolate macaroons he had recently purchased on High Street. Slowly, she ate three macaroons, one after another.

  “It sounds as if you mean to tell me we will have to go to the Commander’s Palace. Would it not be to our advantage to lure the Bane out to a less hostile location?”

  He extended his hand toward her—he needed something to fortify him too. “What do you think of our chances at this less hostile location?”

  She placed a few macaroons on his palm. “Next to nil.”

  He took a bite of a macaroon. “And you think so because?”

  “He is invincible. He cannot be killed—or so mages say.”

  “And they are right—for once. Twice the Bane has been killed before eyewitnesses. Once in the Caucasus, where mages are experts at distance spell-casting. The second time when he was on the subcontinent to quell an uprising.

  “In both cases, he was said to have been destroyed—brains and guts all over the place. In both cases, by the next day he was walking around, right as rain. And in both cases, the Domain sent spies to verify the accounts; they returned baffled because the witnesses were telling the truth.”

  She fell back into her seat. “He resurrected?”

  “Or so it seems. That was the reason my grandfather was interested in the defenses at the Commander’s Palace. If the Bane was truly invincible, he could sleep in the open and not fear for his life. But the Bane does fear something. And so does the Inquisitor—or she would not have been thinking about the defenses of the palace, which are vulnerable to great elemental powers.”

  She bowed her head.

  Sometimes, as he lay in bed at night, he imagined a future for her beyond her eventual confrontation with the Bane. A popular, well-respected professor at the Conservatory of Magical Arts and Sciences—she had mentioned the goal several times in the school records Dalbert had unearthed for Titus—she would try to live a quiet, modest life.

  But wherever she went, thunderous applause would greet her, the great heroine of her people, the most admired mage in her lifetime.

  It was a future that did not include him, but it gave him courage to think that by doing his utmost, perhaps he could still make it come true for her.

  Tonight, however, that future was dimmer and more distant than ever.

  She lifted her face. “Is it over the Commander’s Palace that you would fall?”

  To his death, she meant.

  He swallowed. “It is possible. My mother saw a night scene. There was smoke and fire—a staggering amount of fire, according to her—and dragons.”

  “Which stories in the Crucible have dragons?”

  “Half of them, probably. ‘Lilia, the Clever Thief,’ ‘Battle for Black Bastion,’ ‘The Dragon Princess,’ ‘Lord of the—’”

  “What about ‘Sleeping Beauty’? My first time in the Crucible you said you’d take me to her castle someday to fight the dragons.”

  He had deliberately not mentioned Sleeping Beauty. “The dragons there are brutal. I put in the toughest ones as part of my own training. And I still get injured, even though I have been doing this for years.”

  “I want to go after supper,” she said.

  “You already did two sessions in the Crucible today; you will not be in top form for the dragons.”

  Her voice brooked no dissent. “I imagine by the time I get to the Commander’s Palace, I’d be quite tired too. I might as well get used to deploying my powers under less than optimum conditions.”

  He wavered. He had no good reason to refuse her, but if she succeeded . . .

  He was being irrational. Her first time she would not even get inside the castle’s gates, let alone climb all the way to the garret. He had nothing to fear.

  “All right,” he said, “if you insist, we will go after supper.”

  A thick ring of tangled briar girded Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The prince pointed his wand and blasted a fifty-yard-long tunnel through the bramble.

  The white marble of the castle’s walls, lit by lamps and cressets, gleamed at the end of the tunnel. Inside the tunnel, however, only fantastically shaped shadows flickered. Iolanthe called forth globes of fire to float before her, shining their light on the path.

  Her heartbeat was at an almost painful velocity—naturally brave she was not. She took a couple of deep breaths and tried to distract herself. “Why do you put the most brutal dragons here, rather than in a different story?” she asked him.

  He blinked, as if the question had startled him. “It is convenient.”

  As far as she knew, every story was equally convenient to access in the Crucible. “Is it because you get to kiss Sleeping Beauty afterward?”

  She was only joking. Or at least half joking. But he opened his mouth—and said nothing.

  She stopped, flabbergasted by his implicit admission. “So . . . you want me to fall in love with you, while you play kissing ga
mes with another girl?”

  It was the first time she had ever mentioned this particular scheme of his in the open.

  He swallowed. “I have never done anything of the sort.”

  Since he hadn’t doubled over in pain, she had to accept his answer as truthful. All the same, what wasn’t he telling her?

  An unearthly shriek split the night, nearly tearing her eardrums.

  “They have smelled us,” said the prince, his voice tight.

  Overhead, flame roared, a comet of fire that shed pinpricks of orange through the thick tangle of thorns above. The heat of the flame had her turn her face away and shield it with her arms.

  “What are they, exactly?” she asked, forgetting Sleeping Beauty for the moment.

  “A pair of colossus cockatrices.”

  She’d seen dragons at the Delamer Zoo quite a few times. She’d seen dragons at the circus. And once she’d gone on a safari with Master Haywood to the Melusine Archipelago, to see wild dragons in their native habitats. Still her jaw slackened as she emerged from the tunnel. Standing before the castle’s gates were two dragons with roosterlike heads, whose dimension dwarfed those of the castle’s walls. “Are they a mated pair?”

  Colossus cockatrices, wingless, were ground nesters. To protect their eggs, the combined fire of a mated pair, thanks to a process that was still not clearly understood, became one of the hottest substances known to magekind.

  The prince didn’t need to answer. The cockatrices before the castle entwined their long necks—exactly what a mated pair did—and screeched again.

  An explosion of fire sped at them, its mass greater and hotter than anything she’d ever known. Instinctively she pushed back.

  Her shriek nearly rivaled that of the cockatrices. The agony in her palms, as if she’d plunged her hands into boiling oil.

  “Esto praesidium maximum!” the prince shouted. “Are you hurt?”

  The fire stopped abruptly, barricaded a hundred feet away. She looked down at her hands, expecting to see blisters the size of saucers. But her palms were not even reddened from the heat. “I’m fine!”

  “This shield can take two more hits. Should I set up another shield?”

  “No, I want to see what I can do.”

  The dragons took a fifteen-second rest, then attacked again. She tried to stop the fire from reaching the shield, but failed miserably. The shield cracked, distorting her view of everything behind it.

  Fifteen seconds. Attack. The shield blocked the fire, but dissipated in the wake of it.

  She reminded herself that she was dealing with illusions. But the stink of the cockatrices, the crackle of the brambles burning behind her, the torch flames that leaped back from the dragon fire, as if in fear—they were all too real.

  She threw up a wall of water as the cockatrices screamed again. The water evaporated before the fire had even touched it.

  Ice. She needed ice. She was not adept at ice, but to her surprise, a substantial iceberg materialized at her command.

  The ice melted immediately.

  Changing tactics, she used air to try to divert the fire. But all she did was split the fire mass in two, both halves hurtling straight toward them.

  Now she had no choice but to pit herself directly against the dragons.

  Ordinary fire was as pliant as clay. But this fire was made of knives and nails. She shrieked again with pain. But was she doing anything to the fire? Was she slowing it? Or did it merely seem to arrive at a more leisurely pace because the agony in her hands distorted her perception of time?

  Slow or swift, it swooped down toward them.

  “Run!” she yelled at the prince.

  For the first time in her life, she fled before fire.

  She opened her eyes to find herself back in the prince’s room, seated before his desk, her hand on the Crucible. The odor of charred flesh lingered in her nostrils. The skin on her back and her neck felt uncomfortably hot, as if she’d been out in the sun too long.

  The prince knelt before her, one hand clamped on her shoulder, the other on her chin, his eyes dark and anxious. “Are you all right?”

  “I—think so.”

  He set two fingers against the pulse at the side of her throat. “Are you sure?”

  Not at all. “I’m going back in.”

  She might not have been born with natural courage, but she did loathe failure.

  There was no fire burning in the bramble tangle and no tunnel going through: the Crucible always returned to its original state. The moons had risen, twin crescents, one pale, one paler.

  “Does your shield spell have a countersign?” she asked the prince.

  He hesitated, as if he wanted to tell her again to save the dragons for another day. I he gave her the countersign. She practiced the spell. When she thought her shield sturdy enough, she blasted a path through the brambles.

  Walking through the tunnel, they discussed tactics and agreed that in order to eventually counter dragon fire, she must first achieve safety.

  “Let’s both put up shields, mine on the outside of yours,” she said. That way, if her shield proved less than stalwart, they’d still have his for protection.

  “Good idea.”

  “But if my shield is good enough, then I’ll keep going.”

  He nodded. “I will stay on this side and distract the cockatrices—if they alternate their fire between the two of us, it will give you more time to figure out what to do. But for this time, do not go beyond the front steps of the castle.”

  “Why?” But then she remembered. “Is it because you don’t want me to see Sleeping Beauty?”

  “That is not—”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “She does not exist.”

  “In here she does. Is she pretty?” She disliked herself for the pestering questions, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Pretty enough.” He sounded strained.

  “Do you enjoy kissing her?”

  Better than you enjoy kissing me?

  “I have not kissed her since I met you.” Suddenly it was the Master of the Domain speaking, his tone hard, his eyes harder.

  Misery and thrill collided in her. Had he declared that he’d given up other girls for her? Or was she being a complete fool?

  “Now will you concentrate on the task at hand?” he went on impatiently.

  She took a deep breath and counted to five. “Let’s fight some dragons.”

  The colossus cockatrices, maddened by the scent of intruders, streamed their fire.

  Iolanthe and the prince each called for a shield. Hers held. She summoned more shields, marching toward the cockatrices. They were chained to the castle gate and could neither come at her nor give chase. As soon as she moved past their fire range, she’d be safe.

  The castle gate beckoned. She started running. Cockatrices had poor eyesight. With their fire blocked, they’d try to assault her with claws and tails, but not being predators, they’d be clumsy at it.

  The ground shook as the colossus cockatrices thrashed and stomped, but she dashed past them. From somewhere behind, the prince shouted at her to be careful. She sprinted across the wide courtyard and up the steps. But she did not stop there, as he’d requested. Instead, she pushed open the huge, thickly reinforced doors of the castle and stepped into the great hall.

  The interior of the castle was gloomy. A few guttering torches threw out faint circles of light, leaving large swaths of the great hall darkened and forbidding.

  Could shadows move against shadows? She squinted, her fingers tightening on the prince’s spare wand. Behind her came a soft sound like drapes fluttering before an open window.

  Before she could spin around, something heavy and spiked slammed into the side of her skull, one particularly sharp spur burying itself deep into her temple. Her face contorted. Her muscles convulsed. Her scream lodged in her throat.

  She fell with a resounding thud. A black, reptilian creature landed beside her, folding its wings with barely a
swish. A sharp claw reached out and slashed her throat.

  But she was already dead.

  Titus shouted the first three words of the exit password before he realized that she had been the one to take them into the Crucible. For him to take her out now, he must be in physical contact.

  He threw a battery of spells at the wyvern, driving it off her body. A second wyvern swooped down. He dove toward her, grabbing her hand just as the creature’s spiked tail crashed toward him.

  They were back in his room. Her eyes flew open, but they were the eyes of the possessed. She shook, the kind of frenetic convulsion that would cause her to stop breathing before he could get to the laboratory and find a proper remedy.

  He slapped their hands on the Crucible and prayed frantically.

  Iolanthe stared dumbly at the dark, star-sprinkled sky with its two moons. Who was she? Where was she?

  Of their own accord, her hands clutched her throat. She was—she’d been—

  Terror rose in her, a dark, drowning tide. She screamed.

  And was instantly thrown into the coldest water she’d ever known, the shock of it like knives upon her skin. She gasped, her erstwhile horror forgotten. So cold, the burn of ice frozen to her body.

  Someone yanked her out of the water and held her tight. She began to shiver. Her teeth chattered. She would never be warm again.

  He rubbed his hand along her back, the friction needle points of heat. “Sorry, I had to do that. You were going into convulsions.”

  “What—what happened?”

  His kneaded her arm. “You died in the Crucible. There are two wyverns in the great hall—I tried to warn you, but you did not hear me. I am sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

  The fault was not his; she’d been an idiot who’d turned the topic to Sleeping Beauty and wouldn’t let go. “Where am I now?” she asked, still trembling.

  “Next to Ice Lake.”

  “Isn’t that where the kraken lives?”

  “Yes. We have to go soon. It would already have felt the—”

  The lake sloshed behind her.

  “And they lived happily ever after!” they shouted together.

  The last thing she saw was an enormous, mottled tentacle, splashing toward her.