The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

His main anxiety was for his mother and Titus was happy to tell him the truth: there was no news on Lady Wintervale. Wintervale also wanted to know what had happened to all the other mages entrapped by Atlantis that night in Grenoble; on that Titus also let him have the truth, which was that Titus did not really know.

It was when Wintervale asked about the state of the resistance as a whole that Titus fudged his answers. He did not want Wintervale demoralized by the heavy blow Atlantis had dealt the resistance, nor did he want to give the impression that he was personally interested in the developments taking place.

It was six days after Wintervale woke up that he spoke of the future for the first time, two simple, declarative sentences. “I am going to find the resistance. And I am going to join it.”

“You cannot walk on your own.”

The problem baffled Titus. Wintervale could move his toes. His lower limbs most certain had feelings—heat, cold, touch, he felt them all. With support, he shuffled along, effectively enough to reach where he needed to go. But without the strength of another to make up for his own lack of balance, even if he stood with his back against a wall, after a minute or so he would start tipping to one side and not be able to right himself.

They told everyone that Wintervale had badly strained a muscle, keeping the truth hidden as otherwise Mrs. Dawlish would insist on additional medical attention, and Wintervale did not want to be poked and prodded.

“I don’t need to walk to use my elemental powers,” said Wintervale. “They can put me on a wyvern.”

“You have never been on a wyvern.”

“I can learn, after I find the rebellion. You are sure you don’t have any contacts?”

“I am sure.” At least on this front Titus did not need to lie. His mother had died for her involvement with the rebels; he had no plans to repeat that mistake. “Good luck locating the resistance without getting caught by Atlantis.”

The look on Wintervale’s face was not so much disappointment as despair—he had survived being pursued by Atlantis, he had discovered a rare and marvelous ability in himself, and yet he remained stuck at this nonmage school, with no way of finding his mother or contributing to the resistance.

Kashkari came into the room then, Cooper and Sutherland in tow. Titus slipped out, but Wintervale’s distress stayed with him.

By nature and by necessity, he prepared incessantly for the future. After discovering that all along his mother had meant Wintervale, however, he could not think of the next week, or even the next day without some part of himself recoiling—without Fairfax, what future was there?

But he could not allow that dangerous self-indulgence to continue. His personal feelings did not matter—they never had. Only the task was paramount.

What he needed most, obviously, was for Wintervale to recover his balance and mobility. It was impossible for him to drag Wintervale in his current condition across the breadth of Atlantis to the Commander’s Palace in the uplands—or at least extremely inadvisable.

At some point he would have to tell Wintervale everything—or at minimum admit to Wintervale that he, too, was willing to take on Atlantis. But with Wintervale’s history of indiscretion, Titus planned to wait until he absolutely must.

What he could do in the meanwhile, both to prepare Wintervale and bolster the latter’s morale, was to take him into the Crucible. Atlantis already knew about the Crucible. So even if Wintervale inadvertently blabbered about it, he would not alert Atlantis to anything new.

Before he dared show the Crucible to Wintervale, however, he must purge all traces of Fairfax from the book.

He sat down in the laboratory and studied her images for a long time, in the illustrations of “The Oracle of Still Waters” and “Sleeping Beauty.” Without those illustrations, after she left the school, he might never be able to see her again.

He undid the changes he had made and returned the illustrations to their original state.

As he was about to close the Crucible, he remembered to check “Battle for Black Bastion,” Helgira’s story. And there it was, Fairfax’s face. He had added her image to the other two stories, but not this one. A quick scan of the log of modifications that the Crucible kept informed him that the image was altered twenty years ago.

Twenty years ago this copy of the Crucible belonged to his mother.

Do not, he told himself. What did it matter now why Princess Ariadne had made the change?

But he reached for the diary and opened it.





5 February, YD 1011


Many times I see a place in my visions and I have no idea of the location. Not this time. This time I immediately recognize the hulking shape of the Black Bastion, one of the most difficult locales in the Crucible.

It is night, but the fortress is lit with torches. And near the very top of the bastion, upon a balcony that during the day would have a magnificent view, stands a young woman in a white dress, her long, black hair whipping in the wind.