The Immortal Heights (19 page)

Once upon a time they'd had a falling-out because he had not wanted them to act on their feelings for each other—he had thought
love would interfere with their task, would make them weak and indecisive.

Now she wondered whether he hadn't been right after all. Until this moment she had been driven by rage, which was a despot of an emotion: when rage ruled, it ruled alone; the mind was void of everything except anger.

But now that he had defused her wrath, now that he had brought up love, fear came rushing back: fear of loss, fear of dying, fear of failing in the end, after every sacrifice had been made.

She did not say anything. But this time, when he took her hand again, she did not push him away.

CHAPTER
16

THE MEADOW BEFORE SLEEPING BEAUTY'S
castle seemed peaceful enough—they had not been in this copy of the Crucible long enough yet for all hell to break loose. Still Kashkari and Amara, who had borne the brunt of the chaos in the other copy, held their wands tightly and circled again and again before they deemed it safe to land.

“No sign of Skytower, at least,” said Kashkari.

Fairfax and her guardian stood with their hands clasped, their heads bent toward each other, speaking in voices too soft for Titus to hear. They were probably discussing how best to get rid of Aramia without causing the latter grave bodily damage, but the sight of their closeness, their obvious affection for and reliance upon each other, made his heart constrict.

“So where is this copy of the Crucible?” asked Aramia.

No one answered.

“We will be on Atlantis, won't we, once we exit?” Her voice quavered.

Still no answer.

“Fortune shield me.” She bit her lower lip. “And are you planning to leave me behind here?”

“It would be for the best,” said Fairfax.

“Maybe, if you were headed elsewhere. But here it would be a mistake. What do you know of Atlantis?”

Fairfax glanced Titus's way. They had studied, as much as they could, everything about Atlantis that might be relevant to their tasks—he more than she, as he had been at it for far longer. The problem was, the information they had was often out of date.

Atlantis, when it had been poor and on the verge of destroying itself, had been of little interest to the more prosperous and powerful mage realms. And when its fortune had turned, it had likewise shunned close diplomatic ties with the wider world. No doubt the Bane's desire to keep his secret at any cost also played a role—if the rest of the world did not know anything about Atlantis, they would have a much more difficult time coming after him.

Titus had read most of the books and articles about Atlantis that could be dug up and studied the rudimentary maps that the more adventurous mages of yesteryear had made. From time to time, Dalbert, in his unobtrusive way, would present Titus with a report. But even Dalbert could only do so much.

“Aha,” said Aramia triumphantly. “As I thought, you know the depth of your ignorance. But my mother always collected intelligence everywhere she went, and everyone
loved
to confide in her.”

Haywood winced. Fairfax narrowed her eyes at Aramia, who gulped. In the Sahara Desert, Titus had called Fairfax “the scariest girl in the world.” Aramia obviously agreed with him.

But she carried on, if visibly less smug. “It's nighttime outside. Do you know Atlantis has had a curfew in place for decades?”

“Of course,” retorted Amara. “That's common knowledge.”

“So it may be. But do you also know that the towns and cities of Atlantis are brightly lit at night?”

She looked around. This time, no one told her that she was repeating old chestnuts.

“Well, they are,” Aramia continued. “Except for the biggest boulevards, which are continually patrolled, most streets do not have trees, but short, neatly trimmed shrubs that offer very few hiding places. Even the architecture is unfriendly to any illicit activity—there are no narrow alleys between houses where one might hide from the night patrol. And houses with their backs to each other do not share a common garden, as they sometimes do in the Domain. Even with raising land from the ocean, terrain suitable for construction is always at a premium on Atlantis, so their houses and apartment buildings simply back into one another with no spaces in between, and the communal gardens are on the roofs, which, again,
have flowers and shrubs but no trees, making it very easy for patrols to see everything.”

Every word she uttered was unwelcome news. Not that Titus had counted on arriving at night to be an advantage—he too knew about the long-standing curfew and understood movements at night to be potentially troublesome. But Aramia's information revealed just how profoundly uninformed he was about Atlantis as a society—it would be almost impossible for them to be in the open without betraying themselves.

If Fairfax felt as he did, she did not reveal it. “It isn't enough for you to point out what we don't know. What solutions can you offer to help us counter such disadvantages?”

“Obviously I've never stepped onto Atlantis either. But I do know that Atlanteans themselves have found various ways around the curfew. There are mages who have legitimate excuses to be abroad at night: private security guards, late shift workers, or technicians who are summoned for emergency repairs—and I believe it is a fairly common practice to either barter favors with them or bribe them outright for their night passes.”

“And you think we can do that without being immediately reported? Wouldn't most people have already arranged for these night passes before they left their houses in the evening?”

“There are always those who fail to plan ahead. They'll have to pay more, of course.” Aramia looked around at them. “Is this
copy of the Crucible in Lucidias?”

She received no answer, but that was apparently enough answer for her. “My mother knows about the tunnels underneath the city. Roads leading in and out of Lucidias have checkpoints. If we can get into the tunnels, then we can avoid the authorities altogether.”

“How do we get into the tunnels?” Fairfax asked.

“That I cannot divulge until we leave the Crucible. I've seen firsthand how dangerous it can become when it is used as a portal.” Aramia smiled. “Anyway, shall we make our exit? It won't be safe to stay here for much longer.”

The moment Titus left the Crucible—and stepped onto Atlantis—his long-suppressed memory dropped back into his head, piercingly, regrettably vivid. Normal memories faded and distorted over time, but those that had been suppressed always reemerged with perfect clarity and accuracy.

He had been thirteen, in his first Summer Half at Eton, rowing on the Thames River with a scowl. He hated rowing, he hated this school, and he hated England: frankly, there was not a single aspect about his life he did not detest resoundingly.

At the end of two miles going upstream, they turned around to head for the boathouse. The crew sat with their backs to their destination, so Titus happened to be facing west. For an entire week, it had been drizzly. But now the clouds parted, and the sunlight that
fell upon him had such a rich, saturated golden hue that it took his breath away.

And then one of the other three rowers in the boat, a boy named St. John who also lived in Mrs. Dawlish's house, his mood probably likewise buoyed by the sudden flood of light, said, “Tell me this, who is the greatest chicken-killer in Shakespeare?”

Titus rolled his eyes. He regarded the nonmage boys with whom he was forced to share the school as absolute bumpkins—absolute and incomprehensible bumpkins.

“Who?” asked another boy.

“Macbeth!” St. John cried. “Because he did murder most foul. Get it? Murder most
fowl
?”

The other two rowers groaned. Titus very nearly smiled: he had actually understood the joke and found it rather ticklish.

And when they had pulled the boat ashore and started walking back toward their resident houses, instead of feeling sore and grumpy, as he usually did, he felt strong and . . . almost happy.

The sensation startled him. His mind raced: perhaps being sent to school in a nonmage realm was not the punishment he had always believed it to be. Here he was just another boy, without the tedium of court etiquette or the weight of a country's expectations. And if he tried, he might come to enjoy such an adolescence, far from everything he hated about being the Master of the Domain.

And maybe, just maybe, he could even ignore for a few years the
demands his mother had put on him. After he had thoroughly enjoyed himself, the Bane would still be there. What was the hurry? What was the harm in not spending every spare second preparing himself?

The vista of possibilities that opened before him was dizzying. He could have fun. He could have friends. And he even knew exactly how he would go about making friends—the hot air balloon that Lady Wintervale had told him about, still sitting in the carriage house at Windsor Castle, which would make for a grand eye-opener for the boys at Mrs. Dawlish's house.

His excitement kept building. He never knew he could have this many ideas about having fun. Back at Mrs. Dawlish's, after he had changed and washed, he sat down to imagine some more of this potentially sublime future.

By habit he knocked his finger against the cover of
Lexikon der Klassischen Altertumskunde
and turned the German reference book back to what it really was, his mother's diary. Again by habit, he began turning the blank pages. But his mind was not on the diary: he was already thinking about what he could do to make Wintervale feel included, when the latter would rather jump off a cliff than ride in a hot air balloon.

By chance he looked down and was astonished to see writing on the pages. The diary was the one true link he had to his mother, and its revelations were rare enough that his heart pounded. What did he need to know now?

25 April, YD 1021

The day before she died.

This is the worst yet, a blow so heavy that I am prostrate with grief.

It is a world on fire, everything burning. Somehow I discern figures flying through the storm of smoke. They are pursued urgently, by mages on wyverns towing spell accelerators.

Distance spell-casting can be deadly. Many incantations of the genre mete out mortal damage. And only the best equip themselves with spell accelerators.

I hold my breath. The very sky seems to be aflame. Spells fly. One of the fleeing mages falls. “No!” A scream pierces the night. “No!”

The falling mage does not strike ground. Instead some force breaks his fall twenty feet in the air. A flying carpet zooms down, and the rider pulls his body onto the carpet.

“Revivisce omnino!”
the rider cries hoarsely.
“Revivisce omnino!”

The fallen mage shows no reaction at all. He is dead then.

The spell is a powerful one, but not even the most powerful reviving spells can bring a mage back from the dead.

“Don't you dare die! Not now! Don't you dare, Titus!”

No, not my Titus.

Then I see his face, and it is my child, no older than his late adolescence and already felled.

As the world burns.

The vision has faded, but the damage is done. I have been destroyed.

Only yesterday I made Titus promise that he would do everything in his power to topple the Bane. He did, my solemn child who already had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

And this was his reward for that promise, a brutally short life and a violent death.

I have never hated myself more.

Next to me my son sleeps soundly. I kept him up deep into the night, wanting to spend as much time with him as possible before my execution. And he gamely stayed awake until exhaustion overtook him.

Could I? Could I, when he woke up in the morning, tell him to forget about Atlantis altogether and simply enjoy all the privileges that came with his station in life?

I almost shook him awake to do just that. But with my hand on his shoulder, I could proceed no further. One does not stand in the way of a future that has been revealed, not even if one were a vessel of the Angels.

After a long time of further hesitation, I opened my diary, which hardly leaves my side these days, and recorded this vision, placing it just behind the one in which I saw him moving about surreptitiously in the library of the Citadel, followed by a scene of Alectus and Callista crowded around the Inquisitor. I have not the slightest idea whether these visions form one unbroken thread of the future, but Titus, in the moment of his death, had on a hooded tunic that looked very much like the one he had worn in that vision.

When I am done, I will take my child's hand and rest it against my cheek and I will apologize to him silently, endlessly. It will not make up for what I will take from him, but there is not much else that I can do.

Forgive me, my son.

Forgive me.

Titus could scarcely understand his mother's words—the pages shook badly. And when he set the diary on his desk and clenched his still trembling hands at his sides, he found that he still could not see the letters—not through the moisture in his eyes that blurred and distorted every line.

The last words she had spoken to him, minutes before her execution, had been,
Not all will be lost
. And always he had comforted himself with the belief that she had found some measure of peace and equanimity.

Instead she had gone to her death shattered by what would happen to him.

Tears rolled down his face. He was already an adolescent. How much time did he have left?
How much?
Was it enough to accomplish this great task she had thrust upon him? In the Beyond, when they met again, he would like to reassure her that his years had not been brutally short after all, for no one who toppled the Bane could be said to have lived anything less than a remarkably full life.