Текст книги "The Burning Sky"

Автор книги: Sherry Thomas

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

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.

Hehad 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.

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 shoulder-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 Altertumskundefrom 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 wantedto 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 usedas 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 notput 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.

The wyvern beneath him sensed his growing panic and decided to take advantage. It rolled and plunged, attempting to shake him loose. Practically joyous for the distraction, he jabbed his wand into the beast’s neck. It screeched in pain.

“Fly properly or I will do it again.”

Last time his approach had been blatant, at the forefront of a mob of attackers. He would not repeat that mistake. Helgira’s saga began with one of her lieutenants arriving at Black Bastion on a wyvern. Titus had wrangled a wyvern from Sleeping Beauty’s castle and would try to pass himself off as a soldier coming to warn Helgira of an impending attack.

The torch-lit silhouette of Black Bastion was beginning to be visible, a solid, foursquare fortress that crowned a foothill of Purple Mountain. He murmured a prayer of gratitude for the darkness—he could not see Helgira yet. The last thing he remembered from his previous foray was her slim, white-clad person, standing atop the fort, her arm raised to call down the bolt of lightning that would strike him dead.

In the aftermath, his convulsions had nearly snapped his spine. Even the thought of it made him shake again.

Black Bastion drew ever nearer.

This time, if he were killed, he would remain dead.

The landing platform was five hundred feet away. The wyvern was not trained to carry riders and had no reins. He wrapped his arms around its neck and pulled. It brayed, but slowed to a speed better suited for dismounts.

Soldiers surrounded him the moment his feet touched the platform. “We’ve been attacked!” he cried. “The Mad Wizard of Hollowcombe promised the peasants land and riches in exchange for our lives.”

Dozens of weapons were unsheathed. The captain of the guard held a long spear—one that could follow a fleeing opponent for a mile—at Titus’s throat. “You are not Boab.”

“Boab is dead. They killed just about all of us.”

“How could they kill Boab? Boab is—was a great soldier and an even better mage.”

Titus’s mouth was dry, but he doggedly repeated the plot of the story. “Treachery. They gave us drugged wine.”

“Why were younot drugged?”

“I wasn’t at the celebration. A peasant girl, you see. I thought she liked me, but she turned on me. I heard her talk to the people coming to kill me, so I stole her brother’s clothes and this wyvern to come warn m’lady.”

He had put on the gray, hooded tunic his mother had specified, which he sometimes wore to bed, before he’d entered the Crucible. He hoped it would pass for peasant attire.

The captain did not trust him, but he also did not dare not bring Titus to Helgira. With eight spears trained on him, Titus marched down the ramp to the bailey and into the great hall of Black Bastion.

The hall was crowded. There was singing and dancing. Helgira, in her white gown, sat at the center of a long table upon a great dais, drinking from a chalice of gold.

He stopped dead. Four spears pressed hard into his back. Still he could not move a single step.

Instead of turning angry, the captain chuckled. “Gets ’em bumpkins every time, she does.”

But Titus was neither bowled over by Helgira’s beauty nor petrified anew by fear. He was transfixed because Helgira was Fairfax.

She was twenty years older, but in her features she was identical to Fairfax. Her lips were the same shade of deep pink, her hair the same jet-black cascade he remembered so well.

Thiswas the reason Fairfax had looked eerily familiar when they had first met.

Helgira perceived the arrival of the soldiers and signaled the musicians to halt. The dancers melted to either side of the hall, clearing a path.

Titus sleepwalked, staring at Helgira. Only after the captain smacked him on the side of the head and yelled at him for disrespect did he lower his head.

Before the dais, he sank to his knees, kept his eyes on the ground, and repeated his tale. The toes of Helgira’s dainty white slippers—with lightning bolts embroidered in silver thread—came into his view.

“I am well pleased with you, warrior,” she murmured. “You will be given a bag of gold and a woman who will not turn on you.”

“Thank you, m’lady. M’lady is mighty and munificent.”

“But you committed a grave breach of etiquette, young man. Do you not know that no one is allowed to gaze upon me without my permission?”

“Forgive me, my lady. My lady’s beauty stole my sense.”

Helgira laughed. Her voice was high and sharp, completely different from Fairfax’s.

“I like this one—such pretty words. Very well, henceforth I grant you the privilege. But know this: I always exact punishment for any transgression.”

With that, she unsheathed the knife at her belt, and brought it down on him.

Iolanthe, sitting on her cot in the dark, almost screamed. It was as if someone had slashed her arm with a knife. She gripped her arm. There was no blood, but the pain was still there, making her grit her teeth with it.

What was happening? Could she possibly be sensing the prince’s pain again?

A sharp, almost metallic smell wafted to her nostrils. No, it couldn’t be. Her agitation must be playing a trick on her.

Something dripped to the floor.

A strangled bleat tore from her throat. She summoned a flicker of fire. Directly across from her, blood poured from the Crucible, forming a blackish puddle that drizzled steadily from her desk onto the floor.

She whimpered again. A second later, she leaped from her bed. With a wave of the prince’s spare wand, she cleared away the blood—all mage girls above the age of twelve knew how to handle blood of this quantity. At least the book itself hadn’t been stained, its pages dry and clean.

A thunderous crash came from her left. Instinctively she threw up a shield—and saved herself from shards of flying glass and the brick that been thrown into her room.

She stared at the brick a moment before stealing to the side of the window. She could just make out two figures behind the house. Her mind had been so much occupied with things not remotely related to school that she had trouble understanding what she was seeing. The prince was bleeding to his death out there, and here Trumper and Hogg wanted petty vengeance.

The next brick shattered the prince’s window. Soon everyone would come running, including Mrs. Hancock. The last thing Iolanthe wanted, on the night the prince had gone to the Citadel to make mischief, was to have him reported as missing from school at the exact same time.

She stunned Trumper and Hogg, who promptly wilted into the grass. Next she applied a levitation spell. When her elemental magic proved insufficient at moving boulders, she sometimes cheated with the help of levitation spells. As a result, her authority over stone remained debatable, but now she could effortlessly suspend two beefy senior boys three feet aboveground and maneuver them into the coppice at the edge of the small meadow.

With a few kicks, she redistributed the glass shards, which had fallen on the floor in a straight line against her shield, into a more irregular pattern. The Crucible in hand, she ran out of her room just as doors began to open up and down the corridor.

“Did you hear that?” startled boys asked one another. “What happened?” “Anyone else hear breaking glass?”

She turned on the lights in the prince’s room and mussed up his cot. Unfortunately, the Crucible was clean as a whistle, with not another drop of blood to give. She picked up a piece of glass shard, cut the pad of her left index finger, and squeezed a few drops of blood on the prince’s sheets. Then she smeared a streak of blood on her own face, shoved the Crucible into the waistband of her trousers—she had yet to change into her nightshirt—and set a spell to keep it in place.

Next, with the door wide open, she bellowed at the top of her voice, “Faster, Titus. Catch those filthy bastards!”

As she’d hoped, Mrs. Dawlish’s boys came running.

Helgira’s knife sliced through Titus’s left arm. The pain stunned him.

“Where is Mathi? Give this man some medical attention.” Helgira caressed him lightly under his chin. “Notice I spared you your wand arm.”

Titus swallowed. “My lady is magnanimous.”

She was already walking away. “I want to see Kopla, Numsu, and Yeri. The rest of you ready the bastion for battle.”

He stared at the furious reddening of his sleeve. He had not thought this through. What would happen to the blood he shed when he used the Crucible as a portal?

Mathi, a plump, middle-aged woman, came forward and pulled Titus to his feet. His hand clamped over the gash in his arm, he followed her to a small room with bitter-smelling poultices cooking over a slow fire. A cot lay in the corner. Unevenly sized jars of herbs lined the shelves.

The moment Mathi turned her back, Titus rendered her unconscious. He caught her with his good arm and laid her down on the cot. Mathi was probably the best healer for miles around, but he still did not want her primitive medicine.

Teeth clenched, he cleaned his wound. Then he took out the remedies and emergency aids he had brought with him, and poured two different vials on his wound and a packet of granules down his throat.

His wound began to close. He threw a battery of spells at his tunic to clean and deodorize it. It would not do to arrive at the Citadel looking and smelling like a massacre.

When he was more presentable, he set a keep-away spell on the dispensary’s door and set out for Helgira’s prayer alcove.

He asked his way toward Helgira’s quarters, using her promise to give him a woman as an excuse. Good-natured winks accompanied his progress for much of the way. Helgira’s handmaidens, however, refused to let him into her personal chambers. So he pulled out his wand and fought his way in.

The prayer alcove was located in Helgira’s bedchamber. He had just crossed the threshold when Helgira crashed in on his heels. There were two alcoves in the bedchamber, both curtained. He had no time to find out which was the prayer alcove, but leaped across her bed to the one that had the more elaborate curtain, muttering the password as he hurtled toward it.

If he chose wrong, he would smash into a three-foot-thick wall and die at the hands of a woman who had Fairfax’s face.

He did not smash into a three-foot-thick wall.

The other end of the portal was, of course, the prayer alcove in Helgira’s bedchamber—in the Citadel’scopy of the Crucible. Had Titus not been running for his life, he would have remembered to be slower and more cautious.

As it was, he flew out of this prayer alcove into the midst of this Helgira’s bedchamber.

This Helgira lifted her wand.

“Watch your feet!” Iolanthe shouted as Wintervale and Kashkari reached the door.

They caught themselves on the door frame and held on as they were bumped from behind by the arrival of Sutherland, Cooper, and Rogers.

But most of the boys had their slippers on and Cooper, who’d come barefoot, had Rogers toss him a pair of the prince’s shoes and trooped in after the others.

Exclamations of disgust and outrage filled the room.

“My God, there is blood,” cried Rogers.

“They’ve injured him,” Iolanthe said. “And I thought it was bad enough they almost brained me.”

More exclamations of disgust and outrage burst forth. “Bastards!” “We are not going to let anybody get away with something like this!” “Did you see who did it?”

“Trumper and Hogg, of course—the prince went after them already,” she said. “They tried to harass me earlier today, but I gave them a sound thrashing.”

“Hear, hear,” said Cooper.

“I’m not going to stand by and do nothing,” said Kashkari, rolling up his sleeves.

As he did so, the tattoo on the inside of his right arm became fully visible. It was not the letter M, but the symbol ♏, for Scorpio, his birth sign in both western and Vedic astrology.

You will best help him by seeking aid from the faithful and bold. And from the scorpion.

Kashkari opened what was left of the prince’s window and hoisted himself onto the windowsill. His action broke the floodgate. Iolanthe had to fight for her turn to go down the drainpipe. Seven more boys followed, two of them climbing out of their own windows; several didn’t even use the drainpipe, but leaped down to the ground, their long nightshirts billowing like sails—before Mrs. Hancock caught someone still on the windowsill.

“Which way did they go?” asked Cooper.

“That way,” said Iolanthe, pointing at a direction opposite the coppice where she had stowed Trumper and Hogg. “Let’s catch them before they get back to their own house.”

Ignoring Mrs. Hancock’s yells for them to come back, she and the boys broke into a run.

When they were some distance from the house, she stopped everyone and divided all the boys into pairs, ostensibly so that they’d have both a greater chance finding Trumper and Hogg and a lesser chance being discovered by the night watchmen.

Kashkari she paired with herself. When she’d sent the other boys into various directions with instructions to wait behind Trumper and Hogg’s house if they could not be located elsewhere, she tapped Kashkari on the shoulder and headed back toward Mrs. Dawlish’s.

“I thought you said they went in the opposite direction,” said Kashkari.

She prayed hard that the Oracle would once again prove herself right. “Long story. Remember when you said if I ever needed help?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“I need your complete discretion. What you do tonight, you will never repeat to another soul. Do I have your word?”

Kashkari hesitated. “Will I harm anyone?”

“No. And you have my word on it.”

“All right,” said Kashkari. “I trust you.”

And I am putting our lives in your hands.“Listen closely. This is what I need you to do.”

Before this Helgira could pulverize him, Titus sank to one knee. “M’lady, I bear a message from my lord Rumis.”

He had studied Helgira’s story closely before he first set out to battle her. Following his ignominious death at her hand, he had tried to forget all about her. Now, however, certain important details dropped back into his head.

Such as that for years, Helgira had carried on a secret, platonic love affair with the great mage Rumis.

Helgira’s expression softened into amusement. “My lord Rumis has quite the sense of humor then, sending his manservant into my bedchamber unannounced.”

“He has an urgent request and no time to lose.”

“Speak.”

“He asks that m’lady outfit me with a steed and send me on my way.”

Since he had entered this copy of the Crucible via a portal, the same rules applied. He must physically travel to the exit. A wyvern would ensure speed.

Helgira sighed. “Tell your master that although his request makes little sense, I trust him too much to delay you with questions.”

“Thank you, m’lady.”

“You may rise. I will have a wyvern waiting for you.” Removing a cuff from her wrist, she placed it around his. “And this token from me will grant you safe passage through my lands.”

Titus came to his feet. “Thank you, m’lady. I take my leave of you.”

As he reached the door, she asked, “Is your master well?”

He turned around and bowed. “Very well, m’lady.”

“And his wife, healthy as ever, I suppose?”

Rumis’s wife was said to have outlived both Helgira and Rumis. “Yes, m’lady.”

She looked away. “Go then. May Fortune be at your back.”

Her expression so reminded him of Fairfax’s that he couldn’t help stare one more moment. “My master sends his most fervent regards, m’lady.”

The wyvern was swift—too swift.

In a few minutes Titus would arrive at his destination. And perhaps in a few more minutes, he would use the execution curse on the Inquisitor.

A ruling prince was required to master the execution curse. If he sentenced any subject to death, he was to perform the deed himself, so that he must look the condemned mage in the face as he took the latter’s life.

Titus had never thought he would use the curse. He was a liar, a schemer, and a manipulator, but not a murderer.

Not like his grandfather.

For Fairfax’s safety, he was willing to give up his life. But was he also willing to give up what remained of his soul?

The wyvern landed on the meadow. He pushed aside his agitation to concentrate on what needed to be done. Under normal circumstances, when a mage exited the Crucible, it did not matter whether he had filled his pockets full of objects from the tales. Nothing could be brought out; the slate was wiped clean. But using the Crucible as a portal changed all the rules. The book would not close, so to speak, if he left with something that belonged inside.