“Lightning!” she shouted, jabbing her index finger skyward.
Nothing. Not that she’d expected anything on her first try, but still she was a little deflated. Perhaps visualization might help. She closed her eyes and pictured a bolt of sizzle connecting sky and earth.
Again nothing.
She pushed back the sleeves of her blouse and drew her wand from her pocket. Her heart pumped faster; she’d never before used her wand for elemental magic.
A wand was an amplifier of a mage’s power; the greater the power, the greater the amplification. If she failed again, it would be a resounding failure. But if she should succeed . . .
Her hand trembled as she raised the wand to point it directly overhead. She inhaled as deeply as she could.
“Smite that cauldron, will you? I haven’t got all day!”
The first gleam appeared extraordinarily high in the atmosphere, and seemingly a continent away. A line of white fire zipped across the arc of the sky, curving gracefully against that deep, cloudless blue.
It plummeted toward her—searing, bright death.
CHAPTER 2
A COLUMN OF PURE WHITE light, so distant it was barely more than a thread, so brilliant it nearly blinded the prince, burst into existence.
He stood mute and amazed for an entire minute before something kicked him hard in the chest, the realization that this was the very sign for which he had waited half his life.
His hand tightened into a fist: the prophecy had come true. He was not ready. He would never be ready.
But ready or not, he acted.
“Why do you look so awed?” He sneered at his attendants. “Are you yokels who have never seen a bolt of lightning in your lives?”
“But, sire—”
“Do not stand there. My departure does not ready itself.” Then, to Giltbrace specifically, “I am going to my study. Make sure I am not disturbed.”
“Yes, sire.”
His attendants had learned to leave him alone when he wished it—they did not enjoy being sent to clean the palace guards’ boots, haul kitchen slops, or rake out the stables.
He counted on their attention returning immediately to the burning sky. A glance backward told him that they were indeed again riveted to the extraordinary, endless lightning.
There were secret passages in the castle known only to the family. He was before the doors of his study in thirty seconds. Inside the study, he pulled out a tube from the center drawer of his desk and whistled into it. The sound would magnify as it traveled, eventually reaching his trusted steed in the stables.
Next he drew an heirloom field glass from its display case. The field glass pinpointed the location of anything that could be sighted within its range—and its range extended to not only every corner of the Domain but a hundred miles beyond in any direction.
His fingers shaking only slightly, he adjusted the knobs of the field glass to bring the lightning into sharper focus. It had struck far away, near the southern tip of the Labyrinthine Mountains.
He grabbed a pair of riding gloves and a saddlebag from the lower drawers of the desk and murmured the necessary words. The next instant he was sliding down a smooth stone chute at a near vertical angle, the acceleration so dizzying he might as well be in free fall.
He braced himself. Still, the impact of slamming onto Marble’s waiting back was like running into a wall. He swallowed a grunt of pain and groped in the dark for the handles mounted on the old girl’s shoulders. With his knees he nudged her forward.
They were at the mouth of a hidden expedited way cut into the mountain. The moment the invisible boundary was crossed, they hurtled through a tunnel twelve feet in diameter—barely wide enough for Marble to fit through with her wings folded.
The darkness was complete; the air pressed heavy and damp against his skin. They shot upward, so fast his eardrums popped and popped again. Then, a pinprick of light, which grew swiftly into a flood of sunshine, and they were out in the open, above an uninhabited peak well away from the castle.
Marble opened her great wings and slid into a long swoop. The prince closed his eyes and called to mind what he had seen in the field glass: a village as ordinary as a sparrow, and about as small.
It would have been preferable to vault alone. But vaulting such a great distance on visual cue, rather than personal memory, was an imprecise business. And he did not have the luxury of proceeding on foot once he reached his destination.
He leaned forward and whispered into Marble’s ear.
They vaulted.
Iolanthe was flat on her back, blind, her face burning, her ears ringing like the bells on New Year’s Eve.
She must still be alive then. Groaning, she rolled over, pushed onto her knees, and clamped her hands over her ears.