She turned to her beloved. For the first time since the Bane’s fall, she wanted to celebrate. He was gazing at her too, with wonder in his eyes. They had done what they needed to do and they had survived. Now they would have all the time in the world to be young and frivolous. They would play; they would sit around; they would spend entire days not doing anything useful and not preparing for any great, awful task.
He smiled, he who so seldom had reasons to smile. She grinned from ear to ear. Oh, how lovely it was to be alive—and together.
He leaned toward her, his hand outstretched. The next moment he stiffened, his expression one of pain and surprise. Beyond him, in the firelight, Kashkari’s face filled with horror. Spells that had been distance-cast took a while to reach their targets. And in his jubilation, Kashkari had forgotten to swerve one last time.
Titus fell.
CHAPTER 24
“NO!” WEST SCREAMED. “NO!”
Iolanthe summoned a fierce updraft. I will die by falling, Titus had once told her. And so she had prepared. He was not going to die by falling, not while she was with him, not while she was the great elemental mage of their time.
“West, brace yourself.” With a levitating spell she transferred a flailing West to the vacant spot left on Titus’s carpet. “Kashkari, untether my carpet.”
“Done!” said Kashkari.
She zoomed down to where Titus hovered in midair, kept aloft by her updraft, and pulled him onto her carpet. “Revivisce omnino! Revivisce omnino!”
He showed no reaction; his face still bore that expression of pained surprise. She gripped his wrist—no pulse. She put her ear on his chest—no heartbeat.
She could not believe it. She could not accept it. Surely he had been only stunned, not killed.
“Don’t you dare die! Not now! Don’t you dare, Titus!”
Kashkari, now floating beside her, tried spells of his own. Nothing, nothing at all.
Blood pounded in her ears. They must do something and they must do something fast. The Crucible kept no dead. Titus would be expelled from the Crucible if they couldn’t think of something.
But what? What?
She gripped Kashkari’s arm. “How do distance spells kill? How?”
“By instantly stopping the heart. But I can’t think of any spells that would start the heart beating again.”
Neither did she know of any such spells. Despair swallowed her. Violently she shook Titus by the shoulders—as if that would help. “Come on! Come on!”
“May I—may I offer a suggestion?” said West.
His carpet, still suborned to Kashkari’s, had brought him down. She stared at him. What ideas could he possibly have that would be of any use?
West swallowed. “My father is a professor of biology at King’s College, and he does experiments on the effect of electricity on muscle stimulation. You can command electricity. Can you try and see if that would get his heart muscles to contract?”
Iolanthe stared at him one more moment. What kind of arrant nonsense was that? But beyond that fraction of a second, she did not hesitate.
She gathered a ball of lightning in her hands and aimed the sphere of electricity at Titus’s chest. Once. Twice. Three times.
His tunic smoked. She waved away the smoke and put out the sparks. Kashkari already had his hand on Titus’s wrist, his brows furrowed in concentration.
“There’s a pulse!” he shouted. “Fortune shield me. There is a pulse!”
Now it was Kashkari whom Iolanthe stared at in disbelief. How was it possible? How was that at all possible?
“Don’t just sit there,” Kashkari ordered. “Put some air into him, damn it!”
Of course. Of course. She pried apart Titus’s jaw and forced a current into his windpipe. He coughed and half sat up, a look of utter confusion on his face.
Tears filled her eyes. She kissed him madly, but very, very briefly. “Let’s go. Let’s go!”
The entire world inside the Crucible was burning. They flew through smoke and fire, with Fairfax holding the worst of both at bay.
When they arrived at Black Bastion, its occupants were running about in a frenzy, and they had little trouble gaining access to the portal. They also managed to leave Black Bastion in the monastery’s copy of the Crucible without much ado.
There was the unpleasant question of where they would find themselves once they exited the Crucible, and Titus ought to prepare for that. But he simply could not pull himself out of his utter amazement at being alive.
Every other minute he would turn to Fairfax and ask, “Are you sure that I am still on this earth? Are you sure this is not the Beyond?”
She would simply smile and kiss him again. Though around the fifteenth time he asked, she said, “I rather think we’d all be cleaner in the Beyond.”
It was true they were all in a state of appalling grime—the soot on her face had streaked from where her tears had run down. Worse, there was a gash on her arm and another one on her side, and she could not even tell him what had happened—or when.
He turned to West, probably also for the fifteenth time, and said, “If ever there is anything the House of Elberon can do for you, let me know.”
West stammered for a bit, before he cleared his throat and said, “I’d still be stuck in that horrible place if all of you hadn’t come. So I’d say we are even.”
As Sleeping Beauty’s castle—and the moment of truth—drew near, Titus fell silent, wondering if the worst was still to come. Fairfax placed her hand over his. “We’ll get through it.”
He raised her hand to his cheek, beyond grateful—no one who toppled the Bane could be said to have lived anything less than a remarkably full life.
“Look at that!” cried Kashkari.
A few miles ahead, a silver-blue flare shot high in the air. It expanded to take on the shape of a giant phoenix, shimmering against the night sky.
Titus was astonished. “It is the beacon of an ally—an ally of the House of Elberon.”
He rushed to apply a far-seeing spell. Beneath the beacon, on the meadow before Sleeping Beauty’s castle, stood a man, waving.
And that man was none other than one of Titus’s greatest allies, Dalbert.
After Titus’s speech on the balcony of the Citadel, mages had started launching incendiaries at the scores of armored chariots that hovered above Delamer and kept the city in a state of siege. The situation escalated rapidly. After some hesitation, Commander Rainstone, who had led the force that came to Titus and Iolanthe’s aid in the Sahara Desert, decided not to wait anymore before taking down the armored chariots.
As it turned out, the raid on the facility under the Serpentine Hills that had so dismayed Titus had not destroyed the entire cache of war machines. In fact, the raid had been allowed to happen to fool Atlantis into thinking that the resistance had been brought to its knees.
With newer and better war machines that had been hidden elsewhere, mostly in the Labyrinthine Mountains, the Domain’s forces downed the armored chariots and took over the Inquisitory. This last had happened only a few hours ago, and everyone had been waiting, in a state of finger-biting tension, to see what Atlantis’s reaction would be.
The Bane’s demise shifted the advantage decisively to those who had long opposed him, but the situation remained fluid and dangerous. Atlantis had a large standing military and contingents stationed all over the mage world. Who would control that structure in the power vacuum left behind by the Lord High Commander’s death?
“We will need your help in making crucial decisions, sire,” said Dalbert, after he summarized the events of the past few days.
All three copies of the Crucible that Atlantis had confiscated had been kept at the Inquisitory in Delamer—the Bane had not wanted anything that could possibly function as a portal for his enemies on Atlantis itself, but he had not wanted to destroy them in case they could be useful to him. Dalbert had made it a priority to retrieve the copies after the sacking of the Inquisitory an
d had brought them to a villa on the shoulder of the Serpentine Hills, where Titus’s parents had often met during their clandestine courtship.
And so it was that Titus and his friends also found themselves in his parents’ former love nest, a small, airy house with warm cream walls and decor in the colors of the sea. Dalbert had remedies, baths, and nourishment waiting for them, and while they refreshed themselves, he saw to West’s leg.
Titus scrubbed himself clean. Then, in a soft, blue tunic that smelled of cloud pine and silver moss, he sat down in the dining room, next to a busily eating Fairfax.
“Hmm, already frowning,” she said. “I see the joy of being alive doesn’t last very long with you.”
The one he loved knew him all too well. “Unfortunately, it is beginning to sink in that since I lived, I will be expected to actually govern. It almost makes me wish I were dealing with the Bane instead.”
She rolled her eyes. “You idiot. Have you already forgotten what it was like to deal with the Bane? Run your damned realm and be grateful.”
He laughed. “I deserved that, did I not? ‘Shut up and govern.’”
“Yes, you deserved that.” She shoved a chocolate croissant into her mouth and closed her eyes for a moment in undiluted bliss. “But here’s another thought: you will do very well at it. In fact, someday you might be spoken of in the same breath as Titus the Great and Hesperia the Magnificent—not by me, mind you, just historians who don’t know any better.”
He laughed again, feeling light and blissful.
Outside, the horizon was at last turning a pale shade of fire. The longest night of his life had come to an end. A new day was beginning.
Kashkari had just joined them when Dalbert ushered in Commander Rainstone, who was on their side after all. Titus greeted her warmly and offered both her and Dalbert a seat at the table. Commander Rainstone analyzed the situation in greater detail. Then she said, “Under extraordinary circumstances, the High Council may approve of handing the reins of power to a sovereign who is still underage. These are certainly extraordinary circumstances, and I have no doubt that a unanimous approval will be forthcoming. Have you given some thought, Your Highness, to how best to proceed?”
Titus glanced at Fairfax—they had been talking about it before the other three arrived in the dining room. She nodded. He exhaled. “The Bane had long cut down anyone who might emerge as a threat to him. There is no one waiting to succeed him on Atlantis. It seems to me that the Domain must step in and play a large role in the near future, perhaps in the running of Atlantis itself.
“To do that, we will need, to some degree at least, the consent of the people of Atlantis. I propose that I take responsibility for what happened and provide a detailed narrative of the Bane’s many secrets. It will come as a traumatic shock to most Atlanteans, but truth is the only remedy in a situation like this.”
“I believe Mrs. Hancock has left behind an account of her story—and the evidence she had gathered—in a safety-deposit box with the Bank of England,” said Kashkari. “She was an Atlantean who had lost a sister to the Bane’s practice of sacrificial magic—her words will carry significant weight.”
“Lady Wintervale’s words will also carry a great deal of weight,” added Dalbert.
“Is she all right?” exclaimed Fairfax.
“She is well enough—she was held at the Inquisitory in Delamer. I have spoken to her, and she is more than willing to let the world know what the Bane did to her son.”
“Here comes the more difficult part,” said Titus. “The Bane had many loyalists who benefited greatly from their association with him. And there are Atlanteans who will feel resentful at their realm’s loss of power and prestige. At the intersection of those two groups we may expect to find mages who will be determined to ignore the truth, no matter how well documented. And they will wish to seek vengeance for what they consider an assassination.
“Mrs. Hancock is no more—and she left behind no living family. Lady Wintervale has no one to worry about except herself. What about you, Kashkari, are you prepared to take credit for having killed the Bane?”
Kashkari was silent for a minute. “I know I have done it, and that’s quite enough for me. I’m not willing to endanger my family to be known publicly as the one who accomplished the deed. Fortunately, my contribution in the matter can be obscured easily enough, but Fairfax . . .” He turned toward her. “Your role cannot be covered up.”
“No, indeed,” said Commander Rainstone. “The part of the great elemental mage will have to be told.”
Fairfax frowned.
“Your Highness can extend the protection of the crown to Miss Seabourne,” suggested Dalbert.
Fairfax blinked. “But that would require us to marry, wouldn’t it? We are not even of age.”
Becoming a princess consort, with all its commitments and obligations, was not what Titus wanted for her either. Not now, at least, not when she was at last on the cusp of achieving her dream of attending the Conservatory.
“If I may, I believe I have foreseen the solution,” said Kashkari.
All eyes turned to him.
“Do you remember, Fairfax, when we were on Atlantis, and I thought I had dreamed of your funeral?”
Fairfax nodded.
“You told me then it took place before the great Angelic Cathedral of Delamer, where only state funerals are held.” Kashkari looked around the table. “Since my sister-in-law passed away in Fairfax’s form, why not hold a state funeral for her? The Bane’s loyalists will not hunt for Fairfax if they believe her already dead.”
“That’s an ingenious idea,” said Dalbert. “No one besides those in this room knows that Miss Seabourne returned from Atlantis, and we will happily hold that secret.”
Iolanthe laid her hand on Kashkari’s arm. “Are you sure?”
He smiled a little. “I will need to consult my brother, of course. But in the main, I believe Amara would have been tickled to have such a grand send-off.”
Kashkari left to write to his brother. Dalbert departed on his many and often mysterious tasks. But Commander Rainstone remained at the table.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Your Highness, Miss Seabourne, what happened to Master Horatio Haywood and Miss Aramia Tiberius?”
“Master Haywood died defending us with a last-mage-standing spell. Miss Tiberius is currently with Atlantean authorities, I believe—she betrayed us.”
Commander Rainstone sucked in a breath. “Oh, that child.”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“So you know that she is indeed Lady Callista’s flesh and blood, sire?”
This caught Titus’s attention. “You know too?”
“After Horatio made the switch, I switched them back.”
Fairfax gasped. “You were the one who switched us back?”
Commander Rainstone sighed. “You probably know that I read Her Highness’s diary, Miss Seabourne, which I did under duress—Callista, my half sister, kept insisting that something terrible might happen to her child if I refused to find out what Her Highness might have foreseen. As it turned out, I read a vision of a man switching the places of two infants in a nursery, on a night during which there seemed to be a steady shower of fireworks outside the window.5
“As I left the hospital, after having been caught snooping by Her Highness herself, I saw the meteor storm overhead and realized that the streaks of falling stars were what Her Highness had foreseen. All at once I understood why Callista had been spending so much time with Horatio, because he knew an orphaned baby girl in that hospital, and because that girl was soon to go to a relative who had never seen her before.
“I made up my mind then that I would not let Callista do this. She would not steal someone else’s child. I reversed the switch.
“I was afraid that Callista might treat her own child as a mere decoy. But that did not happen, as most of the time Callista kept her memories suppressed and didn’t think of Aramia as someone el
se’s child—though she was disappointed that Aramia was neither beautiful nor a born charmer.
“I spent time with my niece when I could. I wanted to be a different kind of influence in her life. And at first she proved to be a very rewarding child, bright, inquisitive, always attentive, and with beautiful manners. But later I saw that she was obsessed with winning her mother’s love, the kind of obsession that didn’t care what it crushed underfoot, or that this mother of hers was made of a monstrous indifference to just about everyone except herself.
“I pulled back my involvement with Aramia, but I must apologize here.” Commander Rainstone bowed her head in Titus’s direction. “Early on I had told her about Validus’s sister wand. She gave the information to Atlantis, when the new Inquisitor wanted to know how he could find Your Highness, after your escape from their bell jar dome in the desert.”
“Did you also tell her about the destination disruptor in my possession?” asked Titus. “The one that would have allowed me to use a translocator at Delamer East to get to Atlantis?”
“No. According to those at the Inquisitory, Aramia told them that it was Prince Gaius who had shown her the disruptor long ago.” Commander Rainstone turned to Fairfax. “Miss Seabourne, please allow me to apologize to you also. I should never have spoken of Validus’s daughter wand to anyone, blood relation or not. I hope you will forgive me for having put your life in danger.”
“Quite to the contrary,” said Fairfax. “I am most grateful to you for not letting me grow up under Lady Callista’s influence.”
They were silent for some time. Commander Rainstone rose and bowed to Titus. “With your permission, sire, I will return to my duties.”
Titus nodded.
As she reached the door of the room, Fairfax stood up. “If you will excuse me, Commander. You and my guardian were friends—very good friends, I believe. Did you ever speak to him about what he had done?”
Commander Rainstone shook her head. “For a time I was as upset at Horatio as I was at Callista. But then, about a year after Aramia was born, I asked to meet with him. He said he was too busy just then. A year after that, he contacted me. But when we met, I realized that the only memory he had of Callista was the first time he saw her.
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