The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

She said instead, “It’s harmful, isn’t it, to suppress memories for so long?”


“Depends on how you do it. See those dots?” The dots were black in color and floated above the timeline. The first one coincided with the color change of the timeline, the rest were distributed at three-month intervals. “They show how often that particular memory is allowed to surface in my mind. The color and shape of the dots assure me that the exact same memory is excised again each time, and that nothing else has been tampered with.”

“You worry about people tampering with your memories?”

“It is almost impossible for that to happen without my full consent—the heirs of the House of Elberon are protected by many hereditary spells to make sure they do not become unwitting puppets in the hands of others. But I can do it to myself. This tool reassures me that I have not been persuaded to tamper with my own memories and then forget about it.” He waved away the memory line. “Would you like to see the state of your memories?”

“You believe my memories have been tampered with?”

Her question seemed to surprise him. “You do not think so? Your guardian is an expert. The memory keeper is another expert. They had a huge secret to protect in you. Between the two of them, it would be almost impossible for you to come through unscathed.”

For the longest time she had not known that she could control air, but she had thought her ignorance the result of an otherwise spell. Could it have been caused by memory magic instead?

“Show me, then.”

He pointed his wand at her. She gasped: the representation of the state of his memories had been a simple line, but hers was an entire mural. There was almost no part of the nearly seventeen-year-long timeline that had not been tampered with. It showed white for only the first few months of her life. Then all colors of the rainbow appeared, some in several gradations. Above the timeline were not only dots, but triangles, squares, and pentagons—all the way to dodecagons. And whereas on the prince’s memory line, the dot that represented his suppressed memory stayed the same size, on her line, the shapes kept increasing in size at every iteration.

Her mind is not quite her own. Master Haywood had said that a long time ago, about the elderly mother of one of his colleagues. Iolanthe never thought that could apply to her, but it did. Her memory was riddled with holes.

The prince peered at the timeline. “They are all compound events.”

“What is a compound event?”

“When my suppressed memory is allowed to surface, and then resuppressed, I remember the surfacing, I just do not remember what surfaced. But for you, every time your memories are allowed to surface, all the memories around the surfacing are also suppressed. So that you do not realize that there are things about yourself you cannot recall.”

She examined the pattern of the resurfacing. “Every two years.”

“Two years is at the very edge of the margin of safety.”

So the memory keeper didn’t want to corrupt the health of her mind, but she also didn’t want Iolanthe to remember more often than she absolutely must. “The next time I will remember is in the middle of November, if the pattern holds.”

“Your birthday.”

Her birthday, during the meteor shower, which in the end had portended no greatness. The trickery by the memory keeper, the sacrifices on the part of Master Haywood—they were all ultimately meaningless.

“They could have saved themselves a great deal of trouble,” she said, her tone harsh. “Master Haywood threw away his entire life.”

The prince looked down, closed his mother’s diary, and said, “Let us go. The physician for Wintervale should arrive any moment now.”





CHAPTER 15


The Sahara Desert

THE ARMORED CHARIOTS WERE ADVANCING all too quickly.

Despite the frigid night air, Titus perspired. Fairfax could not be vaulted. He would not manage to levitate her again so soon. Hiding inside the rock formation was not an option: at least half of the hunting ropes he had just diverted would come after them en masse. And there was not even enough sand underfoot in which to bury themselves, just a scant half inch that was no help whatsoever.

He murmured a prayer, slipped out of the tensile dome, and blind vaulted toward the western horizon, materializing halfway up a massive dune. Pointing his wand skyward, he sent up a silver-white flare that burst midair into an intricate pattern he could not recognize from where he stood.

He blind vaulted again, northward this time, and sent up another flare, hoping it would appear to be an answering signal to the first one, which not only still hung in the air, but had expanded to remarkable dimensions, bright and huge against the starscape—a phoenix, its wings lifted high.