The Immortal Heights (14 page)

CHAPTER
12

TITUS SAILED THE SLOOP SOUTHWARD.
The sea was steel gray and choppy, the spray cold as knives. Kashkari and Amara were huddled near each other toward the aft, but they seldom spoke. Amara, despite the sailing aid Titus had given her, looked as if she were desperately trying not to lose her breakfast.

If he thought about it, it was strange that Amara had tagged along—he vaguely recalled whispered exchanges between Kashkari and her, while they were still in the laboratory. But Titus did not devote much time to the oddity of her choice: everyone who was not Fairfax was free to try his or her luck on Atlantis.

They were all going to die anyway.

It was nearly dark before they sighted land—a rock heap that belonged to the Nereids Isles, one of the Domain's outlying archipelagos. Titus more or less ran the boat aground. They were lucky it did not tip over and injure someone.

Just as he had done with the countries of Europe, Titus had methodically taken himself to many parts of his own realm. He gave Kashkari and Amara each a hefty dose of vaulting aid and vaulted them to a bigger island ninety miles away.

Another hop and they were on a third island, this time before an old temple that had fallen into ruins. In the inner sanctum of the temple, Titus pointed his wand at the floor.
“Aperito shemsham.”

The huge stones receded, leading to a passage down.

“Hesperia,” he said, by way of explanation.

Hesperia the Magnificent had spent a significant portion of her childhood under imprisonment. After she wrested power from the Usurper, she was determined never to lose her freedom again. Everything she ever built had multiple means of escape that led everywhere in the Domain.

The secret chamber beneath the inner sanctum had a portal that led to a similar secret chamber underneath a similarly dilapidated shrine, this time in the Labyrinthine Mountains.

Finding places in the Labyrinthine Mountains was always tricky. Titus asked Kashkari and Amara to remain in the vicinity of the shrine, while he himself vaulted about to see how the mountains had shifted. That is, he blind vaulted—vaulting with his eyes wide open, staring at where he wanted to go, instead of using actual memories of a place that he had visited before. In the Labyrinthine Mountains, where everything moved, vaulting did not work as well as it did elsewhere.

It would have been easier for him to use a carpet and scan the landscape from a higher vantage point, but he did not dare make himself so visible. After his fourth vault, he finally materialized near the safe house: he recognized the sound of the Sonata Stream.

Up close, the Sonata Stream was but another mountain brook, the kind that was everywhere to be found in these parts—clear, cold water, rocky banks, red and gold fallen leaves carried swiftly on the currents.

It sounded ordinary too, the burbling of water, the rustle of tree branches overhead, the chirp of an occasional bird or insect. But if one happened to be at just the right distance, all the commonplace sounds somehow combined to form music. Not figurative music, but literal, as if the stream had learned to pluck lyres and strike tiny triangles to mark the rhythm of its progress.

Whenever he and his mother went on a long walk, she always made sure to pass by the Sonata Stream. This had been their mountain, their playground, their safe refuge from her despot of a father and the attention of Atlantis, circling ever closer. And she had wanted him to feel its magic in his bones, to always hold in his heart a deep well of reverence and wonder.

He allowed himself a minute to listen. This would be the last time he stood upon the loamy soil of his childhood, the last time he breathed in the scent of home.

Then he vaulted back to ferry Kashkari and Amara to the grassy slope beneath a sheer rock face. Behind the rock face was a
surprisingly large living space, room after rough-hewn room, the furniture simple and sturdy, the granite walls faintly reddish in the light of the sconces.

It was where Fairfax would have stayed during the previous summer, if things had not gone ill for them. They had made such plans. Every moment he could have stolen away from the castle they would have spent together, training and strategizing, but also just holding hands and leaning on each other, storing up a reserve of happiness and hope to see them through the darker days to come.

Instead they had spent no time together at all. And as much as Titus wished to draw on the good times they
had
shared to keep despair at bay, he felt like the safe house, full of should-have-beens and little else.

“There is a bath in the back, with hot water,” he told his companions. “Go ahead and make use of it.”

He walked into the kitchen. There were no fresh foods in storage, but a large variety of preserved and dehydrated nutrients. He set a pot of water to boil over a flameless stove and added an assortment of ingredients to make a vegetable potage. As the soup bubbled, he opened several packages of waybread, soaked the brick-like pieces in water, then put them in a warm oven, as per the heating instructions.

When he was done, he leaned against the rough stone counter, more exhausted than he cared to admit. Only the first day of the journey, and already he felt as if he had been traveling for years.
More than anything he wanted to swallow a dose of sleep aid and pass a few hours in blissful oblivion. But first he had to make sure his companions were properly fed. Maybe he ought to put out some dried fruits on the dining table, or—

“Titus,” came Kashkari's voice.

He turned around. “Yes?”

Kashkari stood in the doorway of the kitchen, a copy of
The Delamer Observer
in his hand. The expression on his face made Titus's heart sink even before he said, “I'm afraid I have bad news.”

Titus could scarcely credit what he was reading.
Demolished. Return to service by the beginning of next year.

“Can your disruptor be used on a different translocator?” asked Kashkari.

Titus shook his head. He had not been involved with the making of the disruptor, which he had inherited from Prince Gaius, his grandfather, who had long sought ways to get into Atlantis. But the instruction had been very clear: it would work only on that particular translocator.

Which was the reason translocators 1 to 4 of Delamer East, though becoming obsolete, had never been replaced: it was a security weakness in that particular generation of translocators that the disruptor sought to exploit.

Could this have been a coincidence, the demolition of the translocators when he most needed them to function as usual? And who,
besides himself, Fairfax, and Kashkari, even knew of the existence of the disruptor?

“So what do we do?” asked Kashkari.

Titus threw aside the paper. “We seize an armored chariot and make it do our bidding?”

“You know as well as I do the moment Atlantis realizes the vessel is outside of its control, we'd drop like a rock.”

If they had Fairfax, dropping out of the air would not be a problem. But they did not.

“Will you look after the food?” he asked Kashkari. “I need to track down my spymaster and find out what is going on.”

Titus stood atop the rock face, the edge of his tunic whipping in the gale. The last few scattered rays of light from the sunset were disappearing; the full mantle of night lay upon the mountains.

Why had Dalbert not come to the safe house yet? Before Titus left the laboratory, he had let Dalbert know to expect him in the mountains. He did have a few other way stations, but Dalbert should have understood that he meant to make for the safe house. And Titus would have expected Dalbert, always meticulously organized and prepared, to have arrived well ahead.

He tried to recall the exact words Dalbert had used in his earlier communiqué, but could only remember the gist of it, something about the spymaster not being able to send messages for several days.

What exactly had happened in the castle while Titus had been in the desert? Was Dalbert also on the run—or in hiding, as it may be?

“Your Highness,” came the sound of a familiar voice.

Dalbert stood at the base of the smooth cliff, his round face upturned. He was not a liveried servant, but at the castle he always wore a white capelet, embroidered on the back with the image of a two-headed phoenix, the emblem on Titus's mother's personal standard. This time the capelet was missing and he was in the simple tunic of a woodsman, a worn leather bag slung over his shoulder.

“Dalbert!” Titus was more than glad—he was thrilled. He vaulted down and gripped his valet and spymaster by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”

Dalbert bowed from the waist. “I'm quite well, sire. I had hoped to arrive sooner and have everything in the safe house ready for Your Highness, a meal and a bath in particular.”

Titus waved his hand. “I can see to those myself. Come inside and tell me what is going on instead.”

Amara and Kashkari were setting the table when they walked in. Titus made the introductions, and together they brought all the supper items from the kitchen and sat down.

“Thank you, Master Dalbert,” said Kashkari, “for having the foresight to provide us a translocator.”

“Indeed,” said Titus. “When did you put that in place?”

“After we were informed that Your Highness was expected to attend a nonmage school in England, I was among the mages sent to
Mrs. Dawlish's to make sure the dwelling was sound. I took advantage of that time to examine some locales in London. With every subsequent trip, I did some work on the wardrobe at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was ready to use by your third Half at Eton.”

“Well done, of course. But how did you anticipate that I might require something of the sort?” Titus had never spoken of his mission to Dalbert: his policy had always been secrecy. And yet here he was, finding out that Dalbert had long been implementing emergency measures on his behalf.

Dalbert smiled slightly, a smile with a trace of melancholy. “When I was fourteen, I became a page to Her Highness. After she came of age, she dismissed the personal secretary Prince Gaius had assigned her and entrusted the post to me instead. At the same time she confided in me that she saw visions of the future, and much to her regret, she was eerily accurate in those visions.

“A few years later, she caught Commander Rainstone snooping in her diary, in which she kept a record of her visions. After that, she put a blank charm on the diary, so that even if someone knew the password to the diary, they would still see only bare pages—the touch of her hand was needed to show the contents.

“But when she understood that she would die young, she faced a quandary. Many of her visions concerned you, sire. It was important that you had access to them, but it was also crucial that you not be overwhelmed by everything at once. She didn't have enough time to configure the spells necessary for the diary to only give up what
you needed to see at any point in time. That task was handed to me instead, with the understanding that in the course of fulfilling it, I might come across certain of her visions. I had permission to read those: she charged me to look after her son and I must have the necessary knowledge.”

Titus's brows shot up. “You never told me that—that she gave me into your charge.”

Dalbert bowed his head. “It was a conscious choice on my part, sire. Her Highness had been too trusting by nature. Knowing the mission she had set out for you, I felt that you must hold your cards close to your chest—trust no one, if possible.”

Titus gazed, flabbergasted, at this man he had known all his life. Not so much at what Dalbert said, but because all at once he saw Dalbert's influence on him, something he had been unaware of until this moment.

Trust no one.
He had always believed that he had become as suspicious as he was simply because of his circumstances. But no, there had also been Dalbert's unobtrusive sway at work.

Together they had reinforced his isolation. In isolation there was safety. In isolation no one could betray his trust. He wondered now what Dalbert thought of the companions he had gathered along the way.

And the one he had left behind.

As if he had heard Titus, Dalbert said, “One must be careful to remain alive and free. But the point of staying alive and free long
enough is to tackle the great task—and that cannot be accomplished alone. For that I am beyond grateful that Your Highness has found a fellowship of common purpose.

“I've known for many years that Your Highness has been charged to find the great elemental mage of our time. Like everyone else, I couldn't be entirely sure whether Your Highness had indeed found her. But like Atlantis, after the events of the Fourth of June, I also suspected that Lady Callista might be involved in some way.

“When I heard Atlantis had at last pried information from Lady Callista that she had long hidden about the elemental mage, I wanted to warn you in person, but couldn't as I didn't have authorization to take your personal translocator out of the Domain. When news came that you had disappeared and your belongings had been confiscated, I managed to get that go-ahead by arguing that someone from the Domain should also be on the scene.”