The Immortal Heights

by Sherry Thomas

“About Kashkari’s dream . . . remember that he does not take it as the future written in stone.”

  She gazed at him—and turned another page.

  But this time, there was writing on the page, his mother’s familiar, neat hand. “The diary!”

  She looked down, surprised.

  “Let us read that first.” Please.

  She nodded. He sat down next to her, put his arm around her shoulders, and kissed her on her temple.

  31 August, YD 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.

  I laughed. Well, then.

  “We have read this before, haven’t we?” she asked.

  He too recognized the diary entry, a pivotal one that they had read together the night of his Inquisition six months ago. He did not know why, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

  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.

  In the margins of the book, his mother had written, There is no elixir, however tainted, that cannot be revived by a thunderbolt. Nearly seventeen years later, those very lines would spur Fairfax to bring down her first bolt of lightning.

  The one that changed everything.

  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.

  The end of the page. And the end of the record of this particular vision, too, the previous time. But this time, when they turned the page, the writing continued.

  “Abominable book, isn’t it?” said someone.

  I jumped. It was a young man of about my own age, very handsome, with kind, smiling eyes.

  “I am—I am going to buy this book,” I mumbled, thoroughly mortified. Why had I not seen this coming?

  “That will be a much greater crime,” he said. “I cannot possibly permit you.”

  I could not help but smile. “Did they teach you from this book?”

  “We had to bow before it too, as if it were the Epiphanies.”

  My eyes must have bulged. He laughed. “I was kidding. It didn’t become quite that absurd, but the book is atrociously overrated and only good for a stepping stool.”

  “But still, I damaged it. And I should pay for it.”

  “Buy a few good books then, to compensate the bookseller.”

  Struck by divine inspiration, I asked, “Do you have any recommendations for good books?”

  He did. We spent a happy half hour browsing through the aisles. All too soon my pocket watch began to throb, reminding me that it was time I returned to the theater. He helped me carry my books to the counter. Only then did I realize that of course I did not carry any coins on me. Such things were beneath the heir to the throne.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will buy the books for you, if you will buy a cup of tea and a slice of apple cake for me tomorrow at the Wand and the Willow.”

  Tomorrow I have to sit all day with Father and his advisers. We decided on the day after tomorrow at three o’clock in the afternoon—and changed the locale from a busy public establishment to a scenic but rather empty stretch of the coast south of Delamer.

  I cannot believe what I have agreed to, and I cannot wait for the hours to pass.

  2 September, YD 1013

  I was almost half an hour late to the rendezvous. But he waited for me. He even brought apple cake from the Wand and the Willow.

  I had a lovely, lovely time.

  4 September, YD 1013

  He asked me whether Father would approve of my meeting with someone like him.

  Father, of course, would be apoplectic. But I am already in love.

  “It is all right,” I told him. “We will find a way.”

  9 December, YD 1013

  We are so happy I am afraid to write of it.

  10 December, YD 1013

  I should have listened to my own advice. Why did I ever mention our happiness?

  17 December, YD 1013

  It has been a week. I could neither bring myself to record the vision nor say anything to him about it. I love him so fiercely. I dread the future almost as much.

  29 January, YD 1014

  The vision has come true. I am numb with shock and misery. I had not expected it to happen so soon.

  22 February, YD 1014

  I am with child. Overwhelmed with joy, frozen with fear, I do not know what to do.

  Titus shook. Whatever it was that he had expected the diary to reveal, it was not this.

  “Your father,” said Fairfax softly.

  “My father,” he echoed, his chest tight.

  A loud pounding came at the front door of the lighthouse. They both leaped up. It was still dark outside, so it could not be the lighthouse keeper trying to get in, to shut down his machine and record the oil level in the fuel tank.

  “It’s Kashkari. Open the door.”

  “Let me check,” he told her.

  He vaulted to a higher level of the lighthouse and looked out the window. It was indeed Kashkari, and he was not alone. With him were Horatio Haywood and—

  Titus had to squint to make sure he was not seeing things. But standing next to Kashkari, wrapped in a thick coat, was none other than the woman of Kashkari’s dreams.

  Amara.

  CHAPTER 10

  “DURGA DEVI, THIS IS UNEXPECTED,” Titus said coolly.

  Almost coldly.

  He could feel Fairfax’s exasperated glance. So Amara had once entertained the possibility of killing Fairfax rather than letting her be captured by the Bane—was he always going to carry a grudge?

  Yes, he was. He would not forgive Amara for having had the thought, and he would always suspect her of wanting to get rid of the one he loved.

  “It is unexpected for me too, Your Highness,” answered Amara.

  “Do please come in, everyone,” said Fairfax.

  And glared at Titus to move out of the way, which he did reluctantly.

  They would be too crowded in the laboratory, so she ushered the visitors into the parlor of the lighthouse. Titus remained behind to execute a strong keep-away spell for the door; he did not want to be inconvenienced by the lighthouse keeper arriving for his morning duties.

  When he walked into the parlor, Fairfax had already summoned a roaring fire in the grate, put the kettle to boil, and set out a plate of biscuits. Upon his entrance, Haywood rose and bowed. Titus gestured for him to be seated, reddening slightly as he did so. Were it not for Amara’s unexpected a
rrival, he would have gone back to the inn at some point, to keep up the appearance that he had slept there. But now Haywood must have realized that Titus had instead spent the night here.

  And nobody asked whether they ought to worry about those fictional other travelers staying at the lighthouse.

  Fairfax sat down next to her guardian and took his hand in hers. “Allow us to congratulate you on your marriage, Durga Devi.”

  Titus’s surprise must have shown. Fairfax turned to him and added, “I’m sorry we forgot to tell you, Your Highness, what with everything else going on.”

  “Felicitations,” he said curtly.

  “Thank you,” said Amara. “We thought there would be plenty of time for weddings and celebrations after we put away the Bane. But then we realized there is no point waiting.”

  Fairfax passed around the plate of biscuits. “I assume it probably wasn’t your choice to spend your honeymoon here with us. And how did you get here so fast?”

  “Mohandas probably told you that one of our satellite bases has a dry dock that can launch a boat into the Mediterranean. I was taken to the coast of Andalusia and flew the rest of the way.”

  Flying carpets, for all their marvelous uses, could not travel for long distances over water. From Spain to Britain, the only major body of water she had to cross would have been the English Channel, which was narrow enough between Calais and Dover for a well-made carpet to make it across before it started to lose altitude.

  “And as for why I am not enjoying my husband’s company . . .” Amara took a deep breath. “My parents left the Kalahari Realm many years ago, before I could remember. Last night armored chariots paid a visit to the settlement where they once lived.”

  Titus clenched his hand—no good ever came of armored chariots paying anyone a visit.

  “The population of the settlement is about twenty thousand. I am told that at least half of the inhabitants are confirmed dead. Twenty-five percent of the rest are not expected to last more than a few days. And of those who will survive, many will suffer: blindness, lesions on internal organs, the accumulation of fluid in the lungs so that they exist in a constant state of near drowning.”

  The only sound in the room was that of the fire in the grate, leaping and crackling. And then the water, beginning to agitate inside the kettle.

  “You believe the attack was a direct retaliation against you, personally, for the assistance you gave us?” asked Titus.

  Amara shook her head. “If only that was it. The settlement’s elders received a message afterward that said, ‘This will be Delamer in seven days, unless . . .’”

  “Unless what?” asked Fairfax, her voice no more than a whisper.

  “That was all it said, ‘unless . . .’”

  Unless she was handed over to the Bane.

  The kettle hissed. The room seemed to grow darker, a shadow as enormous as the world itself creeping upon them.

  “Do you believe the threat credible?” Titus heard himself speak to Amara, his tone entirely flat.

  “Atlantis has never made idle ultimatums. And the fact that they specified a week lends credence to the threat—even Atlantis needs a few days to stockpile the quantity of death rain necessary to cover all of Delamer.”

  “What . . . what should we do?” came Haywood’s hesitant question.

  Titus could not think. He was responsible for the welfare of his subjects—he could not possibly allow them to die by the hundreds of thousands. On the other hand, he would never voluntarily give up Fairfax, never allow her to be taken by the Bane.

  Fortune shield him. Was that what Kashkari had seen in his prophetic dream?

  As if the thought had occurred to him at the exact moment, Kashkari said, “Could that be what my dream was all about?”

  They looked at each other, aghast.

  Fairfax rose and removed the kettle from the fire. The room was once again dead quiet, so much so that he could hear every wave breaking against the cliffs.

  And then she asked the question he had been dreading. “What exactly did you dream of, Kashkari?”

  Kashkari could not seem to meet Iolanthe’s eyes; instead he turned toward Titus. Her spine tingled with alarm.

  His face ashen, Titus stood in place, a stone statue of a boy.

  “Answer me,” she demanded.

  Another endless moment passed. Titus gripped the top of a chair and at last looked back at her. “He dreamed of your death.”

  “No!” someone shouted. “No!”

  But it wasn’t her. It was Master Haywood, on his feet, pale and shaking.

  She glanced down at the kettle in her hand. There seemed no point in doing anything except pouring out the boiling water. So she did, into the teapot—and only then remembered that she hadn’t put any tea leaves inside.

  She set the kettle back on its hook, which had been swung out of the grate, put down the towel she had used to shield her hand from the heat of the kettle’s handle, and reached for the tin of tea leaves.

  “Did you not hear what His Highness said?” came Master Haywood’s anxious, high-pitched question.

  “I heard him.”

  But she comprehended nothing—yet.

  She counted out five spoonfuls of tea leaves, one for each person, replaced the lid on the tin, and then put the teapot’s lid back on. “I always forget to warm the pot first,” she said. “His Highness makes a much better cup of tea.”

  “Iola,” said Master Haywood.

  She went to him, eased him back down onto the long, padded chaise, and took a seat next to him. “It isn’t the end of the world—not yet.”

  And wouldn’t be until her shock wore off. “What exactly did you see, Kashkari? I want to hear everything.”

  Kashkari closed his eyes for a moment. “I was riding a wyvern and peering intently ahead. It was dark except for a glimmer of starlight, just enough to give the idea that I was flying above an angular and desolate landscape. And then I saw a pool of light ahead, growing brighter and nearer with every stroke of the wyvern’s wings.

  “At that point my dream, as dreams sometimes do, cut away to a different locale. I was in the air again, on a huge terrace or platform that floated forward, and I was looking down on a floodlit valley surrounded by a jagged rim. There were rings of defenses and dozens of wyverns in the sky.”

  “The Commander’s Palace,” Iolanthe murmured.

  She remembered now that Kashkari had asked her about the Commander’s Palace. He had been trying to understand every detail of his dream, to give it its proper context.

  “Yes, I believe so,” said Kashkari. “At this point my dream jumped forward in time again and I was running across a rubble-strewn floor. But even with the damage I could see the pattern underfoot, a huge mosaic of the Atlantean maelstrom.

  “And—and there was your body, next to a column. His Highness was already there, kneeling by your side, your wrist in his hand. At my approach, he looked up and shook his head.”

  Iolanthe listened carefully—or at least it felt as if she were listening carefully. She could see what Kashkari described, in more detail than she wanted. But still none of it felt real. “You saw my face?”

  Kashkari nodded.

  “You are sure?”

  He nodded again.

  “And I looked the same as I do now?”

  “Exactly the same. Except . . .”

  Her heart pounded. “Except what?”

  “Except your sleeve was torn. And on your left upper arm you wore a gold filigreed armband set with rubies.”

  “But I don’t wear any jewelry. And I don’t have any.” She turned to Titus. “Do you have such a piece in your possession?”

  She knew Master Haywood didn’t.

  Titus shook his head.

  “Then it couldn’t possibly be me. I wouldn’t accept jewelry given to me by anyone except my guardian or the prince.”

  As soon as the words left her lips, she realized how naive—even asinine—she sounded. This was ex
actly how every single dunce tried to reason his way out of his fate, by holding on to some detail that could be vigorously denied. I would never go there. I would never eat that. Why would I meet my end on a mountaintop when I do not even care to climb stairs?

  The future had its way of twisting and turning, so that events that seemed both improbable and perfectly avoidable ended up inescapable, when enough time and circumstances had unspooled.

  Master Haywood took her hand in his. Their clasped hands shook, and she couldn’t tell who was trembling harder. Titus, across the room, seemed to need all his concentration to remain upright. Amara, next to Kashkari, had her head bowed, as if in prayer.

  Only Kashkari leaned forward in his seat. Now that the news had been broken to Iolanthe at last and his dream described at length, he had reverted back to his composed, determined self. “Remember what I told you, Fairfax, that it isn’t necessary to view a future that has been seen in a vision as set in stone, especially not this one.”

  Yet everything he had ever seen had come to pass. Sometimes the true significance of his prophetic dreams had been misunderstood, but what he had dreamed had unfolded exactly as foreseen.

  “How should we view this vision then?” asked Master Haywood, his voice tense yet not without hope.

  “As I told the prince earlier, we should see this as a warning: instead of heading to Atlantis right away, we should—”

  “You were going to Atlantis?” exclaimed Master Haywood.

  It took Iolanthe a long moment to remember that he didn’t yet know about this part of her plan. “I’m sorry. There hasn’t been time to tell you.”

  The lines on his forehead had never appeared so deeply furrowed, or his eyes so sunken. “But that’s mad.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said softly.

  “We live in unhinged times.” The comment came from Amara, who had been silent for a while. “Such times often call for extraordinary measures.”

  A brave statement, but one delivered in a completely flat tone, devoid of any derring-do.

  “So they do, and our decision was to strike at the heart of the Bane’s dominion, in the crypt where he keeps his original body.” Kashkari reached out and poured tea for everyone—tea that Iolanthe had forgotten was steeping in the pot. “Last night I’d suggested to the prince that we should wait for a more opportune time to strike. But the news my sister-in-law brought this morning changes things again.”