The Perilous Sea (11 page)

The Sahara Desert

TITUS FELL ONTO THE JAGGED
chunks of rock that littered the bottom of the tunnel. The contact drove flares of bone-scraping pain into his back. He clenched his teeth, hooked his boots with Fairfax's, and yanked her back a few inches. “What is wrong?”

She panted as if she had been very nearly strangled. “I don't know. When I moved forward a moment ago, it was as if . . . as if spikes were being pounded into my ears.”

The kind of levitation spell they used was not one that required constant attention. For it to suddenly fail usually implied that the mage who wielded the spell had lost consciousness. But she had not. He could only imagine what kind of actual agony had caused her mind to recoil like that.

“Are you better now?”

Her voice was unsteady, bewildered. “Much, much better, after you pulled me back. I feel—I feel almost fine.”

Not a timed curse, then, or a reaction to toxic substances in the air.

“Can you widen this tunnel enough for me to get past you? I want to see whether I come across the same thing.”

When she had done as he asked, he maneuvered himself to the spot where she began screaming, then
past
the spot. Nothing at all happened to him.

Thinking perhaps it was because he was feet-forward, he turned around and went head first. Still nothing.

“No?” she asked.

“No.”

Her breaths echoed in the cramped space. “Let me try again.”

“It may not be a good idea.” Though he would have probably chosen to do the same.

Her jaw was set. “I know. And sorry about dropping you on your back earlier.”

“I was fine.”

He made sure he had a hand around her ankle as she crawled forward. The moment she screamed again, he yanked her back. She trembled, her face ashen.

Now he knew why Atlantis was in no hurry. “The one-mile radius is a blood circle.”

“What is that?” For the first time there was fear in her voice.

“Advanced blood magic. It will kill you to venture out of the circle.”

She swallowed. “Then you had better go. Take the water, take—”

He interrupted her. “You forget that I could be the one who constructed the blood circle.”

She blinked. Not cynical enough, this girl. They knew nothing about each other, except that they had ended up in the same place at the same time, with one of them hurt—of course they could be mortal enemies.

“If that is the case,” he went on, “I can break it.”

Mortal enemies or not, she had provided crucial help for him. And he was not about to abandon her in her hour of need.

Perhaps he was not cynical enough either.

Hope flared in her eyes, but extinguished quickly. “Atlantis would have tried much harder if they knew that the blood circle wouldn't be able to pen me in.”

“Maybe they do not know that I am here.”

He clambered back to where the blood circle must be and took out his pocketknife. With a bead of fresh blood in his palm, he thrust his hand at the unseen boundary. “
Sanguis dicet. Sanguis docebit
.”

Blood will tell. Blood will show.

No tingling or sensation of heat on his skin, which he would have expected to feel if he were the one responsible for the blood circle.

“Wait,” she said.

She extinguished the mage light. In the ensuing darkness, something glimmered faintly before his eyes, an almost transparent wall.

“Does that count as a reaction?” she asked.

He drew his hand back; the darkness became complete. He thrust his hand forward; again the wall appeared, a phosphorescent latticework. “I did not construct the blood circle, but it would seem I am related to the person who did.”

Blood magic had first developed to ascertain kinship. Any voluntarily given drop, no matter to what other purpose it had been put, could still attest to consanguinity.

“Does that mean you can still break the circle?” Her voice betrayed a vibration of excitement.

“No, I will not be able to. I might be able to weaken the circle, but that could simply mean you are killed a bit more slowly if you try to breach it.”

In the darkness there was only the sound of her rapid breaths. He called for light. A blue luminescence suffused the length of the tunnel. She sat with her wrists on her knees, her face shadowed.

“It is too early for despair,” he said. “We have hardly exhausted all the options.”

Her teeth sank into her lower lip. “You know more about blood magic than I do. What do you suggest?”

“First I want to see whether you are related to the person who set the blood circle. It would help if that person has no claim of kinship on you.”
7

She extracted a drop of blood and sent it floating toward the blood circle. Whereas his blood had been immediately absorbed by blood circle, the tiny floating sphere of her blood bounced off like a pebble striking a tree trunk.

That he was related to the one who had set up the blood circle and she not at all raised uncomfortable questions. But he did not bother to ponder those questions—it was not as if he was unaware of the possibility that they had wished each other harm before the memory spells had taken away their pasts.

“By the privilege of kinship,” he said in Latin, and offered another drop of his own blood. “I ask that the blood circle harm not one who matters to me.”

It was standard language, yet it felt strangely true: the girl mattered to him.

“That should have reduced the potency of the blood circle somewhat. I can put you under a time freeze, which should further protect you. Is there anything you can do to boost your chances of survival? Any remedies that can counteract traumatic injuries brought on by the mage arts?”

She ran her fingers over the top of satchel, then her expression brightened. “I have panacea in here.”

His eyes widened—panacea was extraordinarily difficult to come by. “Take a triple dose.”

She extracted a vial, counted out three small granules, and swallowed them. “So now that you have weakened the blood circle, you put me under a time freeze, and shove me past?”

“I wish it were that simple. Should you survive, you would still be in critical condition. And I cannot bore through rock, so—”

A loud crack, like a boulder splitting in two. They looked up: the ceiling of the tunnel was fracturing. When she had unknowingly tried to cross the blood circle, she must have signaled her precise position.

And now Atlantis had found her.

“Grab everything,” he shouted, lunging toward her.

He took her by the arm and vaulted just as the top of the tunnel pulverized.

CHAPTER
10

England

SOMETHING WAS WRONG, IOLANTHE WAS
certain of it, the sense of foreboding a hard weight upon her chest.

But
what
was wrong?

On the solid, four-poster bed in Kashkari's room, Wintervale snored softly. Kashkari sat in a chair by the bed, a finger sandwich from the tea tray Iolanthe had asked for in hand, reading a novel titled
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
. He had given a book called
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
to Iolanthe, but she had set it down after the first few lines about a “mysterious and puzzling” phenomenon at sea.

She moved about the room, examining the densely patterned pewter-on-blue wallpaper, straightening the knickknacks on the mantel, and tucking the duvet more securely around Wintervale's feet. His forehead was damp but cool. His eyelids fluttered at her touch, but he slept on.

It always surprised her that Wintervale was not taller than the prince—he seemed to take up so much more room: he never stood in a doorway but with both arms over his head, his hands on the lintel; his speech was always accompanied by a great deal of animated gesticulating; and no matter how much Mrs. Dawlish complained, he continued to slide down banisters and land with huge thumps that reverberated through the entire house.

In a way, he was one of the most rugged, manly-looking boys in the entire school. But at the same time he was also far more childish than the prince, Kashkari, or even someone like Sutherland. Hardly surprising: as long as he remained a child, he wouldn't have to deal with the heavy expectations of being Baron Wintervale's only son.

It had always been there in Wintervale, the fear of being all too ordinary, of being nothing and no one compared to his father. But now he no longer needed to worry. Now he had revealed himself to be a wielder of the kind of elemental powers she could only marvel at.

If only his accomplishment hadn't made Titus, probably the most self-possessed person she knew, act so strange and jittery.

She walked to the window and used a far-seeing spell to scan the gray waters of the North Sea. At the approximate location where Wintervale had created the maelstrom, wreckage bobbed on the choppy waves, but thankfully no bodies—or body parts. And no armored chariots circled overhead, ready to turn their gaze upon the Norfolk coast.

Sea Wolf
. That had been the name of the Atlantean skimmer, painted in Greek—
ΛΑΒΡΑΞ
—white letters against the steel gray of the hull.
8
The ship had gone down so fast; the crew probably hadn't even had time to transmit a distress signal.

A quiet knock came at the door. She turned to see Titus slipping into the room.

“How is he?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” answered Kashkari, setting aside his book. “He said it was something he ate, didn't he? But his stomach doesn't seem to bother him, as far as I can tell. On the other hand he is clammy and his pulse is erratic.”

Titus glanced at Iolanthe and her unease surged. Kashkari might not see it but Titus was shaken. No, stricken. She was reminded of the time the Inquisitor suggested that his mother was but using him to fulfill her own megalomaniacal needs.

Titus took Wintervale's pulse. “You two want some fresh air? We can have a maid come sit with him for a bit.”

“I'm all right,” Kashkari answered. “I can always open the window if I need some air.”

“I'll come with you,” said Iolanthe.

Titus led the way out. They took a path that skirted the promontory to a ledge underneath an overhang, which could not be seen from the house. The sea swelled below—the storm clouds were encroaching upon the coast, the salt-scented wind cold and insistent. Titus drew a double-impassible circle.

Without waiting for her to prompt him, he recounted what had happened to Wintervale in Grenoble: the trap that had been set by Atlantis, the flight from the square, the dry dock that launched a vessel directly into the North Sea, the Atlantean frigate that appeared almost immediately thereafter.

Throughout the recital, his voice remained completely flat. This was not how one told a triumphant story. Wintervale was a sworn enemy of Atlantis, and a boy whose enthusiasm and amiability belied a deep fear of failure. Today, facing the most perilous moment of his life, pursued by the very enemy that had driven his family into Exile, he had risen to the occasion as few could.

Titus should rejoice, to have such a powerful new ally at hand, and yet he looked like a man condemned.

A nameless fear twisted inside Iolanthe.

“Lady Wintervale must have stunned Wintervale in order to send him away for safety,” said Titus. “But Atlantis found him—and the rest you saw.”

“Had I been Lady Wintervale, I would have disabled the distress signal on the lifeboat,” she said, trying to sound normal. “That was probably what allowed Atlantis to track Wintervale down.”

Titus's throat moved. “Would that she had remembered to do so.”

He spoke quietly, but the vehemence in his words was a punch to her gut. She could hold herself back no more. “There is something you are not telling me. What is it?”

All at once he looked haggard, as if he had been traveling on foot for months and months, and could scarcely remain upright. She lifted a hand to brace him before she realized what she was doing.

“Just tell me. It can't be worse than leaving me in the dark.”

He gazed at her a long moment, the way one would at the dearly departed. Dread strangled her.

“When we read my mother's diary after my Inquisition, do you remember the entry that mentioned my standing on a balcony, witnessing something that would shake me profoundly?”

His words seem to reach her from a great distance, each syllable faint and tinny. She nodded, her neck stiff.

His eyes were on the storm clouds that turned everything in their path gray and dreary. “I had always assumed that she meant the balcony outside my bedchamber at the castle. Whenever I was at the castle, after lunch, I would lie down and use the Crucible—because that was what she had seen in the vision, me waking up with my hand on an old book that might be the Crucible. And I always had Dalbert call me at fourteen minutes past two, the time she had specified in her vision.