The Burning Sky

by Shelly Thomas

  At six o’clock, he rose to join the other rowers for the procession of boats that was to take place at half past. A company of the Inquisitor’s lackeys followed him, jogging along the bank, never letting him leave their sight.

  Upstream, the boats were pulled ashore, and the rowers tucked into a special supper. Titus forced himself to eat, so as to appear unconcerned before his minders. Afterward, the rowers took to the boats again to row back downstream. Upon their return, the fireworks would begin.

  Night had fallen. The trees along both banks of the river had been lit with miniature candles; the water glittered with their reflections. It would have been a pretty sight had he been in the mood to appreciate it.

  Halfway down the river he realized that the mages who had shadowed him were gone. He veered between a bone-melting relief and a stark suspicion that this was the beginning of some new trickery.

  Only when he saw that the white canopy had also disappeared did he allow himself to exhale. If the Inquisitor had planned to take him in tonight, she’d have waited for him.

  Pushing past the throngs of spectators gathered for the fireworks, he headed back to Mrs. Dawlish’s.

  Fairfax was not in her room—the entire floor was empty. But she did leave him a note on her desk. Off to the fireworks. The boys insist.

  He returned to his own room, set the kettle to boil, pulled out a tin of biscuits from his cabinet, and slumped down on his bed.

  For now, he was safe. But the next Inquisition would happen sooner or later. To protect Fairfax, he must go on the run. The only question was whether she would be safer coming with him or staying behind at Eton.

  The kettle boiled. He looked into his cupboard for his favorite leaf, grown in the mist-covered mountains of the West Ponives, a mage realm in the Arabian Sea—and remembered that he had already finished his store. On an ordinary day, he would have settled for a bit of Fairfax’s Earl Grey. But tonight he wanted—needed—the comfort of the familiar before he made decisions that would affect what remained of his life.

  He went to Fairfax’s room to vault to his laboratory—and could not. His shock was almost as great as what she must have felt when he tossed her into Ice Lake. Going into the empty house officers’ lounge, he tried again—and again found himself in the same spot. He ran downstairs into the street—and still could not vault.

  This was Atlantis’s doing. It went without saying that if he managed to find the boundary of this no-vaulting zone, he would find it heavily guarded. And his flying carpet had been packed away as part of Fairfax’s survival kit, now beyond his reach.

  He took a deep breath and told himself he had no need to lose hope. There was always the wardrobe in Wintervale’s room.

  But when he opened the door of the wardrobe, he saw a note pasted on the inside. Dear Lee, I am blocking this portal for now, until I find a more secure means for you to access the house. Love, Mother.

  His last option, ripped from him. He stumbled back into his room, numb with panic.

  Distantly there came the sound of fireworks exploding and enthusiastic cheering. Like a sleepwalker, he drifted to his window, only to see Trumper and Hogg on the grass, each with a brick in hand, getting ready to throw them at his and Fairfax’s window.

  His anger boiling over, he slashed his wand in the air. They promptly fell over. He clenched his hand, willing himself not to do anything else. In his current state of mind, he might maim them permanently.

  He turned around. “Bastards. They need their heads shoved up their—”

  He froze. It was exactly what he had said in his mother’s vision. He hurried to his copy of Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde. In his hands it turned back to Princess Ariadne’s diary. Almost immediately he located the rest of the entry.

  It is evening, or perhaps night, quite dark outside. Titus turns back from the window, clearly incensed. “Bastards,” he swears. “They need their heads shoved up their—”

  He freezes. Then rushes to take a book down from his shelf, a book by the name of Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde.

  Everything blurred.

  When I could make out clear images again, I was no longer looking at the same small room, but at the library of the Citadel. Is it the same evening? I cannot be sure. Titus appears again, this time in a gray, hooded tunic, moving stealthily through the stacks. (Someday he will be the Master of the Domain. Why the furtiveness in his own palace?)

  Again everything dissolves—to coalesce once more into the interior of the Citadel’s library. Many more mages are present, most of them soldiers in Atlantean uniform—how far the fortunes of the House of Elberon will have fallen—surrounding what looks to be a body on the floor. Alectus and Callista are there too.

  “I can’t believe it,” Callista murmurs.

  Alectus looks as if he’d lost his own sister. “The Inquisitor, dead. It is not possible. It is not possible.”

  Did this mean if Titus took himself to the Citadel tonight, it would somehow result in the Inquisitor’s death? The prospect was dizzying.

  What had the Oracle said? You must visit someone you’ve no wish to visit and go somewhere you’ve no wish to go.

  To go to the Citadel, he would have to pass through Black Bastion, Helgira’s fortress.

  My visions are usually not so disjointed. At this point I am not sure whether this is one vision or three separate ones. I will record them as one for now and hope for clarification later.

  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.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  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 s
houlder-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.