Текст книги "The Burning Sky"

Автор книги: Sherry Thomas

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

CHAPTER 17

THE TRAIN HAPPENED TO TAKE them to Charing Cross rail station. Titus decided that one of the big, new hotels near Trafalgar Square frequently patronized by American tourists would serve his purpose very well.

He briefly bewitched a middle-aged lady and her maid. As the two followed dazed and obedient in his wake, he presented himself to the hotel clerk as Mr. John Mason of Atlanta, Georgia, traveling with his mother. Once he had his key in hand, he walked the lady and her maid out a different door, released them from the bewitchment, and bade them a cordial good night.

In his rooms, he applied layer upon layer of anti-intrusion spells, feeling no compunction in using the deadlier ones known to magekind. Deeming it secure enough for Fairfax to resume human form, he left her in the bedroom with a tunic from his satchel and a pair of his English trousers.

She padded out of the bedroom just as the dumbwaiter dinged.

“Your supper,” he mumbled from where he lay slumped on the settee, his arm over his eyes.

She found the door of the dumbwaiter. The aroma of chicken broth and beef pie wafted into the parlor. She set down the tray of food on the low table next to him. “Are you all right?”

He grunted.

“You don’t want to eat anything?”

“No.” He did not want to tax his stomach for the next twelve hours.

“So what now? Are we going on the run?”

He removed his arm from his face and opened his eyes. She was sitting on the carpet before the low table, wearing his gray, hooded tunic, but nothis trousers. Her legs were bare below mid-thigh.

The sight jolted him out of his lethargy. “Where are your trousers?”

“They had no braces and won’t stay up. Besides, it’s warm enough in here.”

He was feeling quite hot. It was not unusual to see girls in short robes come summertime in Delamer. But in England skirts always skimmed the ground and men went mad for a glimpse of feminine ankles. So much skin—boys at school would faint from overexcitement.

He might have been a bit unsteady too, if he were not already lying down.

“You never answered my question,” she said, as if the view of long, shapely legs should not scramble his thoughts at all. “Are we going on the run?”

“No, we go back to school tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Had they managed to take you before we left the Domain, you would have been doomed. But now that danger is past, we must do everything in our power to preserve your current identity. As long as it remains intact, Atlantis can suspect me as much as it wants, but cannot prove anything.”

“But you said you hadn’t managed to convince the Inquisitor of anything. She will come after you again.”

“She will, but not immediately. That interruption of yours was a blow to her. She will need some time to recover. Besides, I cannot disappear just like that. It is the law of the land that the throne cannot be left unoccupied. Alectus would be named the ruling prince.”

And thatwould be the end of the House of Elberon.

She ladled herself a bowl of soup and dug into the beef pie. “So we have no choice but to carry on at school?”

“For as long as we can.”

“And when we can’t anymore?”

“Then we will be put to the test.”

This earned him a look that was almost pure stoicism—except for a flash of sorrow. She had such beautiful eyes, this girl, and . . .

His thoughts slowed as he realized her eyes might be the last thing he saw before he died.

“You wouldn’t have been involved in this at all if it weren’t for your mother,” she said, yanking him back to the present. “What if the Inquisitor is right?”

What if the Inquisitor had been? Much of his mother’s brief life was a mystery to him, as were many of her visions. “Bear in mind the Inquisitor wanted to destabilize my mind as much as possible.”

“Did your grandfather kill your mother?”

His face burned. “Yes.”

Her gaze was steady. “Why?”

“To preserve the House of Elberon—he refused to go down as the last prince of the dynasty.”

When given the choice by Atlantis between abolishing the crown altogether or offering his daughter, an active participant in the January Uprising, as a sacrifice, Prince Gaius had chosen the latter. It was not the most shameful secret of the House of Elberon’s long history, but it came close enough.

“Did your mother really foresee her own death when she was a child?”

“I do not know.”

“Did she tell you anything before she died?”

“Only that if I ever wanted to see my father, I had to bring down the Bane.”

He would never have brought his father into the discussion, but the blood oath obliged him to tell the truth.

She chewed contemplatively. “If you don’t mind my asking, who is your father?”

His cheeks scalded hotter, if possible. “I do not know that either.”

“Your mother never mentioned him?”

“She mentioned him a great deal.” His love of books, his beautiful singing voice, his smiles that could raise the sun at midnight. “But nothing that can be used to identify him.”

How excited he had been at the possibility his mother’s question implied. Do you want to see your father?He had thought it a question like Do you want a slice of cake?—with the cake to be produced within the minute.

Fairfax swirled a spoon in her soup bowl. “What did you say when you heard that you had to bring down the Bane?”

He had not been able to say much for the fear and disappointment that jostled within him. And the anger—that his own mother would trick him so.

“I said I was not going to fight the Bane because I did not want to die.”

His mother had broken down and sobbed, tears streaming down her face to splatter upon her lovely sky-blue shawl. He had never seen her cry before.

“But you agreed eventually,” said Fairfax quietly, her eyes almost tender.

He could still see his mother’s tearstained face. Still hear her muffled voice as she answered his bewildered question.

Why are you crying, Mama?

Because I hate myself for what I ask of you, sweetheart. Because I will never forgive myself, in this life or the next.

Something in him had broken apart at those words.

“I was six,” he said. “I would have done anything for her.”

There existed something in this world that bound a mage tighter than a blood oath: love. Love was the ultimate chain, the ultimate whip, and the ultimate slave driver.

He reached into the satchel, which he had placed on the floor next to the chaise, and pulled out a thick book.

“I’ve seen that book. You brought it all the way from school?” asked Fairfax.

“In priorem muta,”he said. The book undisguised itself and became a plain, leather-bound journal. “My mother’s diary. She recorded all her visions in here.”

“It’s empty,” Fairfax said, after he had turned some thirty, forty pages.

“It will only show what I must see.”

The diary had been left to him when his mother died, with the inscription My dearest son, I will be here when you truly need me. Mama.

He had opened it daily and come across absolutely nothing. Only after he had learned the truth of her death—that it had been murder, not suicide—had the first entry appeared. The one about him, on the balcony, witnessing the phenomenon that would and did change everything.

He kept turning the pages, but they remained stubbornly blank. Something cold and terrible gnawed at his guts.

I need you now. Do not abandon me. Do not.

A few pages from the very end of the diary, writing at last appeared in her familiar, slanted hand. His hand tightened on the binding so his fingers would not shake from relief.

“You might as well read along with me,” he said to Fairfax. “Many of her visions have to do with our task.”

Fairfax left the low table and crouched down next to him.

4 April, YD 1021

While Titus and I played in the upper gardens this morning, I had a vision of a coronation—one could not mistake those particular banners of the Angelic Host, flown only at coronations and state funerals. And judging by the colorful attire of the spectators thronging the street, I was witnessing no funeral.

But whose coronation is this? I caught three minutes of a long parade, that was all.

I came back to Titus tugging at my sleeve. He had found a ladybug he wanted me to admire. The poor child. I do not know why he loves me. Whenever he wants my attention, I always seem to be caught in another vision.

“The date—it’s just after the end of the January Uprising, isn’t it?” asked Fairfax.

Titus nodded. Baroness Sorren had been executed the day before.

They read on.

10 April, YD 1021

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?