The Immortal Heights

by Sherry Thomas

  “Yes, most grateful,” echoed Fairfax, offering Kashkari her hand to shake.

  They all shook hands, sealing a pact that was a lifetime—and more—in the making.

  “So,” said Kashkari, still looking slightly stunned at what he had got himself into, “how exactly will we go to Atlantis?”

  “Keep in mind that every option going forward will be terrible. My most workable solution right now is a destination disruptor for a translocator at Delamer East,” answered Titus.

  “I’m not sure I’ve heard of such a thing,” said Kashkari. “A destination disruptor, that is. I know Delamer East is a big interrealm hub in the Domain.”

  “A destination disruptor does more or less what you think it does. It plays havoc with a translocator’s route. The translocator my disruptor is tailored for handles a fair bit of transatlantic cargo. I was told that if I managed to get the disruptor to work properly, we might materialize within fifty miles of Atlantis.”

  Once upon a time, mage realms could only be found by those who had seen them with their own eyes. In other words, no outsider, mage or nonmage, could locate a realm without the help of a guide who had already been there. But as commerce and travel between mage realms increased, the ancient system became increasingly unwieldy.

  So a new system was put into place. Under the new system, one only had to know the exact location of a realm and its proper name to be able to make one’s way there. The era of hidden realms was at an end; the age of the worldwide mage community had dawned.

  Then, with the development and explosive growth of instantaneous travel, mages forgot altogether that a global accord ever existed to facilitate the tracking down of distant places—who needed to know how to locate a faraway realm when one could simply step into a translocator and be whisked there in seconds?

  No one had bothered to update the protocol—not even Atlantis—and this meant that Titus, Fairfax, and Kashkari could grope their way to the shores of the Bane’s stronghold, if they had the guts to do so.

  Kashkari blew out a breath. “So we drop into the ocean somewhere around Atlantis—we hope—and then simply . . . approach?”

  The coast of Atlantis was heavily guarded—Titus had heard rumors of floating fortresses that would make run-of-the-mill armored chariots look like gnats. To “simply approach” would give them odds of success roughly the same as those of a nonmage walking into a barrage of gunfire and emerging unscratched on the other side.

  He shrugged. “It is the best plan I have been able to put into place.”

  Kashkari looked at Fairfax, something that was almost outright fear on his face.

  She met his gaze squarely. “If I’ve learned anything since I brought down my first bolt of lightning, it’s that you never need a mythical amount of courage—just enough to get through the day. And I’m fairly certain that today we will not end up off the coast of Atlantis.”

  She turned toward Titus. “If we are to implement this plan of yours, we need to go back to the Domain. I don’t suppose you can send for your valet to come and get you.”

  In the upper reaches of the castle that was Titus’s home, there was a translocator that had been built to resemble a nonmage private rail coach. It was how he always traveled from the castle to their school and vice versa.

  “No.”

  “Then how? The sea route?”

  The summer before, when they had been separated and Fairfax stuck in the Domain, she had left via the old-fashioned method of sailing on a sloop until she came to the nearest nonmage island, where she could catch a steamer and continue her journey.

  “We could if we must, but the sea route takes a long time.”

  Kashkari picked up a handful of sand. “Do I remember you saying once that you must account for your movements every twenty-four hours?”

  “I do, under normal circumstances. But when the war phoenix has been deployed, the rules change: I have seven days before I need to make my location known again. I summoned the war phoenix our first night in the desert, three days ago. So four more days before I must report in.”

  “Atlantis will know where you are then?”

  “Alectus, the regent, will know where I am. And regrettably, as he is Atlantis’s puppet, when he learns my whereabouts, it will be no time before Atlantis does too.”

  “And what if you don’t report in?”

  “The regent assumes the crown. I am not terribly fond of the crown, but there are many advantages to being the Master of the Domain, where our task is concerned. Not to mention Alectus would hand over the reins of government to Atlantis—and it would take many years and many lives to wrestle those back. So for both of those reasons, I do not wish to give up the throne unless I must.”

  “Does that mean we have to succeed in killing the Bane before your four days are up?” asked Kashkari.

  Titus hesitated longer than he wanted to before he said, “More like seven days—four days until I make my location known plus the seventy-two hours’ grace period before Alectus becomes the Master of the Domain.”

  The fire wavered again, a more agitated movement this time.

  Kashkari might not understand it yet, but Fairfax knew what going to Atlantis portended: Titus’s death.

  “There is no absolute requirement that it must be done in seven days,” she said. “And if the crown should go to Alectus because you can’t reveal your whereabouts for a while, well, that can’t be helped.”

  There was a silence.

  “In any case, I must find out more about what is going on. If I can get back to my laboratory, I will be able to access reports from my spymaster and have a better understanding of the situation.”

  It worried him that his allies had revealed their capacity to take down armored chariots from the ground. At the time, of course, it seemed they had no choice but to do so. But now the decision appeared to have been premature.

  In the heat of the battle, the Atlanteans might believe Iolanthe Seabourne to have summoned the kind of lightning strikes armored chariots could not withstand. But in retrospect, they would ask themselves whether the lightning strikes had not been a distraction for a different kind of weapon.

  You cannot surprise Atlantis twice.

  If the rebels lost this element of surprise, they would be deprived of a major advantage. Now more than ever, Titus needed Dalbert as his eyes and ears. Perhaps his lips and tongue, even, to direct those still loyal to the crown when he could not.

  “Where is your laboratory?” asked Kashkari.

  “It is a folded space. There are two access points—one close to Eton, one in Cape Wrath.”

  Kashkari let the sand in his hand slide down, a drizzle of a seemingly random pattern on the ground. “In Cairo there is a one-way portal my brother rigged up that goes directly to Mrs. Dawlish’s. But it might not work if there is still a no-vaulting zone in place at Eton.”

  Titus shook his head. “Obviously Atlantis does not expect us to go back, but I would not be surprised if they still have people watching the place.”

  “And I’d have set a loophole for it in the no-vaulting zone,” said Fairfax. “If you really want to find someone, you don’t eliminate the possibility that they just might fall into your hands.”

  “Then how?”

  “We do not all need to go to Britain.” Titus took out the map from the emergency satchel and laid it on the sand. Their location appeared as a dot in the eastern Sahara. “If we proceed from here at about seventy degrees on the compass, we will reach Luxor some time before noon. You and Fairfax can probably find a place to stay for the day and I will vault to my laboratory.”

  “Scotland is at least three thousand miles away,” Kashkari pointed out, sounding incredulous.

  “I can vault that much in twenty-four hours without killing myself.”

  On the day he had discovered that the Chosen One in his mother’s visions had referred to Wintervale, rather than Iolanthe, he had vaulted four times from Norfolk to Cape Wrath and back, an
d then once more for good measure from Eton, which added up to approximately forty-five hundred miles.

  “Doesn’t mean you should,” said Fairfax.

  Her voice was low and controlled, but the flames before her shot up several inches.

  “I’ll go out and make sure it’s safe to leave,” said Kashkari, with his exquisite sensitivity. “You two can discuss our route a bit more.”

  “Don’t go,” she said as soon as Kashkari had vaulted out. “Don’t go any place where I can’t keep an eye on you.”

  “You know I would do anything not to leave your side, but I must know what is going on. And even if you were in perfect health, you still cannot vault that much distance in a short time.”

  “You don’t need to be in that big of a rush. So what if we take our time getting to the laboratory?”

  She rarely objected to his decisions so vehemently—most of the time she trusted him to look after himself. “What is the matter?”

  She turned her face away, but not before he saw the grimace that she could not quite suppress. He caught her by the chin and tilted her face until she was looking at him again. “Tell me what is the matter, please.”

  “If we only have seven days left, then I don’t want you out of my sight for a second.”

  “We do not know that we only have seven days left. Besides, did you not tell me that you are convinced I will outlive everything that is coming our way?”

  “I did and I am. But . . .”

  He knew what she could not quite bring herself to say. But what if she was wrong and his mother exactly right? And his mother had always been perfectly accurate in what she foresaw—the only mistakes she had made had been in the interpretation of her visions.

  But how many ways were there to interpret death?

  Fairfax closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she was once again in charge of herself. “I’m sorry. You are right. You do need to go and we need all the intelligence you can lay your hands on, if we are to have any chance of success.”

  “Do not apologize. I am flattered: no one else wants to spend time with me.”

  “That’s not true: Cooper does. Desperately.”

  He could not help laughing. Then he kissed her. “I will be very careful, because I want to see you again, with a desperation Cooper can barely conceive of.”

  CHAPTER 5

  TITUS AND FAIRFAX GOT INTO another small disagreement over where to meet again. He wanted her to hide in Luxor and stay out of sight; she wanted to fly to the southern coast of Turkey, to shorten his return journey as much as possible.

  “How about Cairo?” suggested Kashkari. “I’ve done the Luxor-Cairo route a few times. It isn’t that difficult to remain unseen, even in broad daylight, provided we stay some miles from the Nile.”

  Titus grimaced. The longer she flew, the greater the chances of her being spotted by agents of Atlantis. But just as she reined back her desire to have him by her side all the time, he must also keep in check his need to never let her be seen again by anyone except him.

  There was his overwhelming desire to keep his girl safe; but there was also his unwavering respect for the lightning-wielder.

  “All right,” he said.

  “All right,” she also said, “but on the condition that you sleep between here and Luxor—vaulting is more difficult and potentially more harmful if you are severely under-rested. You rest too, Kashkari. I’ll fly us.”

  They did not argue with her. Kashkari had already put away the battle carpets they had flown thus far on and brought out the travel carpets, which were better suited to longer distances. He subordinated his and Titus’s carpets to hers, and she took them a few feet off the ground and started accelerating.

  Steering at such minimal altitudes took more skill and required greater concentration. But by staying low, the undulation of the dunes made it difficult for them to be spotted from a distance—and with the sun soon to rise, it was a far safer way to get to where they needed to go.

  “Wake us up if you need anything,” Titus told her.

  “I will. Sweet dreams, you two.”

  Barely a minute later—or so it felt—a hand was gently shaking him on the shoulder. “Titus. Titus,” she called him, first softly, then with greater urgency. “Titus!”

  He turned and sat up so abruptly their heads almost knocked. “What—”

  What is going on? he was about to demand, when he realized that they were no longer airborne. He was still on his carpet, but the carpet was on the hard floor of a dim, stuffy cave. And Kashkari, not far from him, slumbered soundly.

  “We are in Luxor—in the Theban Necropolis,” said Fairfax, as if she had heard his questions. “You and Kashkari were both dead asleep when we arrived. I didn’t want to wake you up to ask where we should stay, so I just came here.”

  Still groggy, Titus rubbed his eyes and made a face. “The mummy hotel?”

  No self-respecting mage community had tolerated burial as a funerary practice after the Necromancer Wars. And the very idea of bodies preserved to last forever, perfect for serving as foot soldiers the next time a twisted archmage decided to reanimate corpses for his or her own nefarious purposes—he grimaced again.

  She laughed softly. “There are piles of pottery deeper in the cave. Maybe they contain embalmed organs.”

  He stretched—the hard ground had made his back stiff. “How did you come across this place?”

  “I knew about it from talking to Birmingham—he had definite plans to excavate here someday. Wait, you were there that day.”

  It took him a moment to remember Birmingham—their former house captain at Mrs. Dawlish’s—and the lovely, lovely days of the latter part of the Summer Half, with the Inquisitor dead and the Bane pondering his options, not yet ready to sally forth again. Life during those miraculously safe weeks seemed to consist entirely of sports, sunshine, and merrymaking. She was never not in the corridor, talking to clusters of boys, either about to set out and do something fun or newly returned from such an excursion.

  And on that particular day, a Sunday, after morning service, when he had gone to his laboratory for something or another, she, Cooper, Wintervale, and Kashkari had come back from a walk in the country with, of all things, a pewter freezing-pot. By the time Titus set foot in Mrs. Dawlish’s again, the house was in an uproar, with boys being sent out to obtain all manners of items, a tub from the laundry room, ice from the nearest ice well, and the cook’s recipe book from the kitchen.

  The Master of the Domain was dispatched to find a gallon of fresh cream at an hour long after the morning’s milk had been delivered. He had somehow accomplished this Herculean task, and that afternoon the boys had flown kites and played tennis while taking turns stirring the cream until it began to congeal.

  A gallon of ice cream was a drop in the ocean where dozens of boys were concerned. By the time she had doled out a serving to everyone, there was barely a spoonful left for the two of them. It had certainly not been the best ice cream he had ever tasted, only the most wonderful.

  And that was when Birmingham had declared that he would be sure to take a freezing-pot with him, when he undertook his future digs in Upper Egypt. Birmingham had gone on to describe what must be this exact place. She had listened attentively, curious as usual about what nonmages did with their lives, but Titus had only looked at her, while terms such as “Temple of Hatshepsut” and “Valley of the Queens” washed in and out of his hearing.

  He reached out and touched her hair, feeling its softness between his fingers.

  “Thinking of the ice cream?” she murmured.

  “Of course,” he said.

  Every bright, beautiful memory was always associated with her. Until she came along, he had never understood the concept of boyhood, of those years in a man’s life that should be full of fun and laughter. Now he only wished he had met her sooner—that they had spent more time together.

  He wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled he
r closer. She gazed at him, her thumb grazing across his chapped lips.

  Kashkari cried out.

  They drew apart, their heads turning in unison toward their friend. He seemed to be still asleep. A bad dream, most likely. They waited a few seconds, glancing at each other, holding back laughter of both frustration and mirth.

  She reached out toward him again.

  Kashkari bolted upright, breathing hard.

  Titus and Fairfax scrambled to their feet. “You all right?” she asked.

  Kashkari looked up at them, blinked, and gasped.

  They both immediately glanced behind. But no enemy was approaching from the outside. All the same, Titus gestured for Fairfax to go to Kashkari while he himself took up a defensive position near the mouth of the cave.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, kneeling down beside their friend.

  Kashkari rubbed his face. “No, I’m fine. Probably got startled by a dream, that’s all. Where are we? And what time is it? How long have I been sleeping?”

  “We are in the hills west of Luxor, across the Nile. And it’s . . .” She hesitated. “It’s sometime past noon.”

  “What?” Titus exclaimed. “How long did you let me sleep? I should have left hours ago.”

  “You needed your rest. A few hours won’t make any difference one way or the other.”

  “They very well might,” he shot back.

  “Let me—let me go outside for a moment,” said Kashkari.

  Titus had already begun to apply cleaning spells to himself as Kashkari slowly got up. As the latter made for the mouth of the cave, he went deeper inside, to a different chamber, and changed into a fresh set of clothes that had been part of the rebels’ battle supplies.

  When he reemerged, Fairfax was waiting. She lifted his tunic from behind and ministered to his back. Then she opened a small jar, also part of the rebels’ kit, and dabbed some balm on his lips. “You never look after yourself,” she said.