The Perilous Sea (22 page)

The sight came back to her again, the ship caught like a leaf in an eddy, powerless to escape. “A maelstrom that dines on ships,” she murmured.

A book appeared on the shelf behind the help desk, which must have thought she wanted something on the subject. She pulled it out and absently flipped a few pages.

It was a travelogue written by a mage who sailed with a group of friends from the Domain to Atlantis, to witness the demolition of a floating hotel that had been condemned.

 

On the way into the Bay of Lucidias, we passed near the Atlantean maelstrom, a sight at once terrifying and awe-inspiring. In diameter it was nearly ten miles across, the dark waters churning ceaselessly around a funnel-like center. Overhead circled chariots and riders on pegasi—this phenomenon is as novel and jaw-dropping for Atlanteans as it is for the tourists. And though much of the country is dirt poor, the elites still possess enough beast-power to make the fifty-mile trip from the coast.

No one knows how the vortex came to be. One day it was not there, the next it was. My friends declare it as remarkable a sight as the shifting peaks of the Labyrinthine Mountains, and I must agree.

 

She looked at the front of the book. It was published in YD 853, almost a hundred and eighty years ago. She knew that the stylized whirlpool that was the Atlantean symbol represented a real maelstrom not far from the island, but she did not know that the maelstrom hadn't always been there.

Interesting, but she had come with a different purpose in mind. She put the book back. “Show me everything with this sentence inside:
Oysters give pearls, but only if you are armed with a knife and willing to use it
.”

The travelogue disappeared, to be replaced by hundreds of editions of Argonin's plays.

She modified her command. “Everything that is not a play.”

Still too many books left. “Take away the textbooks and the books of quotation.”

Three books remained. First, perhaps unsurprisingly, was Master Haywood's dissertation. The line was on the final page, with no context or explanations.

The next was the annual compilation of
The Delamer Observer
for YD 1007, six years before Iolanthe was born. The article that contained the quote had for its subject the fancy-dress ball held to celebrate the tricentennial of Argonin's birth—and to mark the start of a year of revival of his plays, major and minor.

 

Most guests came dressed as better-known Argonin characters. A fair number arrived as Argonin themselves—it is always a surprise to some that Argonin was not one, but two writers, a husband-and-wife team. And one young lady, who did not want us to use her name or image, as she was a minor in attendance without permission, rather scandalized in an oyster costume that opened to reveal a large, luminous pearl; together with her friend, who carried a raffish cutlass, they formed a visualization of her favorite Argonin line, “Oysters give pearls, but only if you are armed with a knife and willing to use it.”

 

The last was a feature in the official publication of the Domain's premier school for the training of military officers. Five cadets were featured as the year's most promising graduates.

And the Argonin line was given as the favorite quote of a cadet by the name of Penelope Rainstone.

Iolanthe's heart thumped. Who was Penelope Rainstone?

Her question was easily answered by the resources in the reading room: Penelope Rainstone was the regent's chief security adviser, specializing in external threats to the Domain.

Iolanthe went back to the original article, which painted a glowing portrait of the young Commander Rainstone's loyalty, brilliance, and perseverance. It would seem she had the makings of a perfect soldier, but then in the interview section, when she was asked whether she would ever break rules, she said,
I enjoy order and orderliness as much as the next soldier. But we must remember, rules and regulations are often made for peacetime and typical conditions, whereas we, the future officers of the Domain's security forces, are being trained for war and chaos. In extraordinary circumstances, extraordinary decisions must be made.

In other words, should the need arise, she would not hesitate to break every rule in the book.

Iolanthe's hands clutched the edge of the table. But there was nothing to do but ask the help desk the next logical question. “Show me everything you have of Horatio Haywood and Penelope Rainstone together.”

And there they were, in a special supplementary section to
The Delamer Observer
, posing together at a reception held at the Citadel, for the year's top upper academy graduates from across the Domain.

The caption read,

 

Horatio Haywood, 18, of the Trident and Hippocampus School
on Sirenhaven, Siren Isles, and Penelope Rainstone, 19, of the Commonweal
Academy of Delamer. They are headed to the Conservatory of Magical Arts and Sciences and the Titus the Great Center of Martial Learning, respectively. Though Mr. Haywood and Miss Rainstone met only at the reception, they could not heap enough compliments on each other.

 

The young man and the young woman in the picture were turned toward each other, their faces glowing with pleasure.

Was this it? Was Commander Penelope Rainstone the memory keeper?

Was she Iolanthe's mother?

CHAPTER
19

The Sahara Desert

THE ROAR CAME AGAIN.

Fairfax dove for the satchel. Titus grabbed his tunic and yanked his wand from his boot.

She made a pushing motion with her hand. A noise almost as terrifying as a dragon's roar rumbled through the tent—she was causing an avalanche, meant to startle and distract the sand wyvern outside.

“Stay here,” Titus ordered as he put on the tunic.

He vaulted out—and was immediately buried under a landslide of sand. He vaulted again, toward the top of the high dune, just as a sand wyvern, almost exactly the same color as the Sahara, took to the sky screeching, its wings beating hard.

He knew that sand wyverns were bigger than normal wyverns, but this one was at least three times the size he had anticipated, its wingspan the dimensions of a small manor, and carried two riders, instead of the usual one.

The riders, in Atlantean uniforms, tried to rein in the sand wyvern and point its nose in Fairfax's general direction again. Titus launched a succession of shield-punching spells at the riders, followed by a stunning spell.

One rider slumped over. The sand wyvern turned and blasted a stream of fire toward Titus. He tossed up a shield and aimed an attack at the beast's belly. Wyverns—ordinary wyverns at least—had a soft underbelly, the reason they could be caught and tamed by skilled mages.

But the sand wyvern did not even react as Titus's destabilizing spell hit it squarely in the abdomen, except to lunge at him, one enormous claw extended.

Hoping to draw the sand wyvern away from Fairfax, he vaulted toward the top of the next dune—he had set up camp in the narrow valley between two waves of towering dunes that ran close and parallel to each other, hoping for better protection from the heat of the sun during the day. Blind vaulting being what it was, he ended up halfway up the sand slope he had aimed for, instead of at the top, with the sand wyvern already on his heels. Looking down the valley toward the point in the distance where the dunes appeared, he vaulted again.

This time, he rematerialized at least a quarter mile away. The sand wyvern wheeled about and shot toward him. Then in midair it jerked—convulsed, almost—and with a huge roar, turned back toward Fairfax, even though Titus prodded it with several thorn spells.

He swore and vaulted back to the tent—only to find himself completely entombed in sand. Not only was Fairfax gone, the tent, too, was gone. Swearing again, he took himself to a high spot.

Fairfax stood in the valley between the dunes, completely dwarfed by the sand wyvern, no more than twenty feet from her. Her arms were raised, as if she were signaling the beast to stop. And the beast seemed to be cooperating in a most civilized manner, hovering, the tip of its tail almost touching the ground.

Two seconds passed before Titus understood exactly what he was seeing. The sand wyvern was trying to advance, inch by inch, against the headwind Fairfax had created, which sent sand billowing in its path. She shouted. The sand wyvern, with its hundred-foot wingspan, was actually blown back a few yards.

Titus aimed more attacks at the remaining rider on the sand wyvern. But the rider crouched low behind the dragon's right wing, shielded from attacks.

Titus vaulted several times, trying to find a good angle—he hoped the sand wyvern was not accustomed to working so hard for its supper and would gladly leave the uncooperative elemental mage for easier prey if only he could render the rider comatose.

Finally, he found a suitable spot that gave him a relatively unimpeded view. He raised his arm. But what was he hearing? Mixed in with the howling of the headwind, the sand being carried away like sediments of a river, and the beating of the sand wyvern's wings, was there something else?

He vaulted away just as a shock of heat reached his skin.

A squadron of albino wyverns had arrived. He vaulted back to Fairfax. It would still be far too risky for her to vault, but he did not know how else to get her out of this.

He threw up a shield over her, barely in time for a combined torrent of fire from the wyverns. She held out a hand toward the wyverns, redirecting their fire toward one another, forcing them to break formation and disperse.

But with this disruption in her concentration, the air current she had been using to hold back the sand wyvern became less intense. The sand wyvern, still beating its wings mightily, shot past them.

He called for another shield, the strongest one he knew. “If you burrow, the sand wyvern will burrow faster than you. And even if you hold all the wyverns at bay, it would only give time for more reinforcements to arrive.”

And should the riders manage to delineate a temporary no-vaulting zone—one with a ten-foot diameter, doable in fifteen minutes, which would imprison both of them—then even he would not be able to leave.

The only choice left was for him to vault her, a potentially fatal decision that he did not wish to make for her. He took her hand. “Do you want to come with me?”

Her fingertips trembled against his. “What are my chances of survival?”

“Ten percent. At best.”

“I don't want to die,” she murmured. “Or be taken. Are there no other choices?”

His voice shook. “Summon a cyclone. Blow them all away.”

“If only I could.” She sucked in a breath. “Wait a minute, what had my admirer said?
The day we met, lightning struck
. Do you suppose he could have meant it literally?”

That was not possible. “Listen, Fairfax—”

Almost casually, she lifted her free hand toward the zenith of the cloudless sky. Her hand clenched into a fist. And down the lightning came.

He opened his mouth, to gasp or scream he could not tell. But no sounds emerged. He only stared, his eyes watering, as the brilliant comet of electricity hurtled earthward.

As it neared ground, the lightning split into half a dozen offshoots. Each offshoot lashed onto a wyvern. Each wyvern twitched and fell, hitting the desert with thuds that rattled Titus's skeleton.

Blinking, he turned toward her. She looked as flabbergasted as he felt.

“Fortune shield me,” she murmured. “Is this why Atlantis wants me?”

The mention of Atlantis snapped him out of his daze: the lightning would act as a beacon to any and all nearby pursuers. He broke into a run, pulling her with him. “Hurry. Armored chariots will be here any minute.”

The sand wyvern was the only one with a double saddle. He unstrapped and shoved aside the unconscious but still breathing riders, while she searched for tracers—Atlantean steeds usually wore several as part of their tack.

When she had discarded a handful of small disks, he helped her up into the saddle in front of him. Already in the distance he could make out a trio of armored chariots approaching.

She pointed her wand at the sand wyvern.
“Revivisce omnino.”

The beast jerked and wobbled to its feet. Titus flicked the reins. The sand wyvern spread its wings and lurched into a rather drunken flight. A wyvern in peak condition might hold its own with armored chariots for a short sprint, but this one was not in peak condition and they had a long way to go.

He turned the sand wyvern east. “You wanted to head east, if I remember correctly.”

“As far from Atlantis as possible.” She looked north, at the sight of approaching armored chariots. “Should I assume those are built to withstand lightning strikes?”

“Yes, you should.”

She sighed. “Does no one ever think about making things easier for me?” She pointed to the ground below. “Have the wyvern fly between the dunes.”