The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

He took her hand. Her pulse throbbed, slow and steady.

The cessation of the sandstorm was as abrupt as that of a summer storm: inundation one moment, clear skies the next. He let go of her hand and listened for a good minute at the opening of the tent before venturing outside to investigate.

Stars were out, bright and innumerable. He squinted, looking for dark moving spots in the sky—without flying sands hitting them and giving away their locations, armored chariots could be descending right above him and he might not know. But for now, no danger loomed overhead.

Their options were remarkably few. She was in no shape to be vaulted—in her current condition, vaulting ten feet could kill her. They had no vehicles and no beasts of burden. Staying in place was out of the question: they were still too close to the blood circle. The farther away they were, the less likely Atlantis would be to find them.

He made ready to walk.



The wind was sharp as icicles. Temperatures had plunged; Titus’s nose and cheeks were numb with cold.

His lightweight tunic, however, kept him warm. The hood of the tunic protected the back of his neck and the top of his head; his hands he kept inside the sleeves, only reaching out occasionally to check Fairfax’s pulse.

She floated in the air alongside him, her hands tucked in to her own sleeves, most of her head covered by a scarf he had found, and a heat sheet wrapped over her trousers and boots, which were not made of mage material. Around her middle was a hunting rope, mooring her to him.

She slept peacefully.

Every minute or so he pointed his wand behind himself to delete his footprints from the sand. Every thirty seconds he scanned the sky with a far-seeing spell. He was headed southwest. The first squadron of armored chariots he spied flew at top speed toward the northeast, away from them. The next squadron was more inconveniently placed several miles to the south. While not exactly in his path, there was a chance that they might circle around and pass overhead.

He had been walking for about three hours when he spied tors erupting from the ground, like pillars of a ruined palace. He veered toward them. Fairfax was beginning to sink, the levitation spell wearing off. The night was moonless, but the mass of stars overhead gave the air a faint luminosity; in the pitch-black shadows of the rock pillars, it would be safe for him to put her down and rest for a few minutes.

Soon his boots no longer sank inches with every step. But his calves protested with a different sort of strain—the land was rising, slowly but unmistakably. And the rock pillars, which from a distance had seemed remarkably straight and uniform, up close resolved into zigzagging, windblown shapes, some with boulder-like tops that balanced precariously on their sand-worn stems.

Fairfax now floated no higher than his knees, the hem of her tunic occasionally brushing against the ground. He wanted her to stay airborne until they were inside the rock formation. But she was sinking too fast to last the rest of the distance. He untied the hunting rope that connected them and set her down.

Her temperature was fine—no hypothermia setting in. Her pulse was also fine, slow but steady. When he coaxed her awake to drink some water, she smiled at him before returning to sleep.

Did she dream? Her breathing was deep and regular. No frowns or fluttering of the eyelids marred the tranquility of her features, almost invisible except for a slight sheen on her cheek and the ridge of her nose. She did not remotely look like a rebel who wanted to topple empires. He would have guessed her to be an upper academy student, the sort whose competence and dedication would annoy her classmates, were it not for her willingness to help them prepare for their examinations.

He turned her hand in his, staring through the dark at her palm, as if lines he could not even see delineated the events that had led her to this time and place. He raised her hand to his lips. The next moment he realized what he was about to do and dropped her hand in a hurry, embarrassed.

Another far-seeing spell revealed that what he had earlier thought to be a single squadron of three armored chariots to the south were actually three different squadrons. Now that he was standing at a much higher vantage point, he could see the light flooding from their bellies, illuminating every square foot of desert in their path as they circled, searching.

They were drawing nearer. He needed to move Fairfax and himself inside the rock formation, or they would be all too visible to that cold, sharp light.