The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

Most likely, there were other creatures that lived inside the shelter offered by the rock formation. Morning dew that gathered on the underside of stones might provide enough moisture to last a well-adapted creature for days. And when there were lizards and tortoises, there would also be scorpions and snakes. Better that he investigate the terrain, to make sure that he would not put her down on top of a nest of vipers.

Leaving Fairfax under a tensile dome, he headed toward the rock formation. His breath steamed. The ground beneath his feet was slippery, a layer of sand on top of hard stone. And above, a spectacular nightscape, the Milky Way slanting across the arc of the sky, a luminous, silver-blue river of stars.

Against this backdrop reared the nearest of the rock columns. At the top of the column rested a bulbous, impossibly balanced boulder. He stopped and squinted. Something seemed to be swaying on the boulder. A snake? A dozen snakes?

His blood ran cold. Hunting ropes. Of course Atlantis would have placed hunting ropes in such a place, in probably all such places in a fifty-mile radius, shelters that he would gravitate toward when he realized how difficult it would be to remain hidden in the open.

He had stopped in the nick of time. The hunting ropes had just begun to stir, sensing his movement. Now he and they were at an impasse. If he moved, they would come after him—and hunting ropes enjoyed speeds far superior to that of a mage on foot. But if he did not move, he and she would both be caught in the glare of the armored chariots’ search lights.

He ran. Behind him, dozens of hunting ropes dropped down, one solid plop after another. His feet pounded; his heavy breaths filled his ears. Yet still he could hear them slithering, far lighter and faster than any real snakes.

He slid into the tensile dome just as they reached him. But his safety was temporary. Already they were digging. The ground beneath the dome was hard and compact, but still, it would only be a matter of time before they came up from under him.

He reached for the emergency bag. As he did so, the edge of his hand brushed against something long and flexible. He jumped, a scream rising to his throat, before he realized that it was the hunting rope fastened to Fairfax’s person, their hunting rope, and not one about to attack him.

A quick untying spell and the hunting rope loosened from Fairfax, separating into three lengths. He took one length and rubbed it end to end three times. “Bring back a scorpion.”

The hunting rope shot out of the tensile dome in the direction of the rock formation. All the other hunting ropes that had been climbing over the tensile dome, or trying to dig underneath, sprinted after it.

What ensued sounded like the ground being whipped with a dozen riding crops.

His hunting rope, while in pursuit, would not stop trying to reach its objective, even if it had been tackled by two dozen other hunting ropes trying to pin it down and tie it up. The hullabaloo should attract all the other hunting ropes in the area, if there were more of them lying in wait, and keep their attention off him.

He gripped Fairfax’s hand in relief.

Only to recoil in alarm as a beam of light came around the rock formation, followed by another, and yet another. Above them, silent and dark, armored chariots cut through the night, like beasts of the deep.





CHAPTER 14


England

IOLANTHE WAS STANDING BY THE window, peeking out from a gap in the curtain, when the prince came into her room.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s possible I saw someone watching the house from behind the trees in the morning. I couldn’t be sure.”

“I would not be surprised. As far as Atlantis is concerned, I am still their sole lead to your whereabouts. If I were them, I too would have me under watch.”

It made sense. She stepped back from the window. “Shall we go then?”

He offered her his arm so she could hitch a vault with him. She bit the inside of her lower lip: she had not touched him since he had broken the news of his mistake in selecting her as his partner.

But this was life: no matter how dramatic the rift, at some point, the daily mundanities took over again, and they must go on living next door to each other, dining at the same table nightly, and even, occasionally, coming into physical contact.

She set her hand on his forearm and he vaulted them to the interior of a small, empty building, a locked brewery on the grounds of a country house. Apparently it wasn’t unusual for the butler of an English estate to brew his own ale, especially as the beverage often figured as part of the servants’ compensation. But the current master of the house was a leader of the temperance movement. As a result, the brewing equipment had been scrapped and the facility shuttered.

Titus gave her the password and the countersign. She turned the handle of a broom cupboard door, and walked back into the laboratory for the first time in months. It looked more or less the same: books, equipment, and ingredients neatly arranged on shelves, with many cupboards and drawers the contents of which she had yet to explore, since she had visited so infrequently.