The Burning Sky

by Shelly Thomas

  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 you not 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.

  This was 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’s copy 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 mast
er 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.

  He had already decided he would keep Helgira’s cuff on his person. Should he escape the library of the Citadel unscathed, he would need a ready steed, and he could not find a better one than Helgira’s. All he needed to do to keep the wyvern in place and waiting, her groom had informed him, was to take the stake at the end of the long chain attached to the beast’s leg and push the stake into the ground.

  The wyvern, however, did not seem to like the spot Titus had selected, on the bank of the stream that bisected the meadow. It bellowed plaintively, its claws clutching at the edges of Titus’s tunic.

  “What is the matter? Do you smell something?”

  Wyverns had extraordinarily sensitive noses and could smell prey from miles away.

  “You cannot be hungry, can you? I thought they fed you fresh meat all the time.”

  The wyvern hissed.

  “I would not worry. Nothing menacing ever comes to the meadow. Not that I have seen, in any case.”

  Then again, he had never before physically inhabited the Crucible and did not know how it behaved in this state. He looked around. Everything was familiar enough, including Sleeping Beauty’s castle on the hill.

  Or was it? The castle glowed not with the usual coppery light of torches and lamps, but with something akin to the blue-green luminescence of deep-sea creatures.