The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

She had been shocked to see Lady Callista revealed as the memory keeper, but she had not seemed particularly affected afterward, probably because she had always disliked the memory keeper—and probably because all her personal memories of Lady Callista as her mother were still inaccessible.

“There was something she shouted when she was accusing you of being ungrateful,” answered Titus. “I have not been able to get it out of my head.”

Do you have any idea how difficult it was, how frightful, to figure out how to do everything my future self was telling him we needed to do?

He repeated those words aloud to Fairfax. “Notice anything?”

“Yes, I do,” she said slowly. “We have always assumed that the memory keeper had been working against a vision of the future, which was why everything eventually went wrong. But it was the other way around: Lady Callista had done everything in her power to make a vision come true.”

“There is that. And there is the fact that the vision she had let dominate her life was not a vision of action, but one of speech: in that vision, her future self was telling your future guardian what they needed to do.”

Fairfax frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“There has never been agreement on what mages ought to do when they have foreknowledge of events that have yet to transpire. Some feel that as long as one is not trying to prevent that future, nothing more needs to be done. Some feel the opposite: the future had been revealed for those in the present to work toward.

“You mentioned the paradox of created reality some time ago: a future that probably would not have come true, if it had not been revealed and then assiduously brought to pass. Obviously I do not mind a little created reality. But even among mages who believe one should work toward a revealed future, there are huge differences of opinion on just how much should be done.

“For example, my mother saw herself writing There is no light elixir, however tainted, that cannot be revived by a thunderbolt in the margins of a copy of The Complete Potion. There is not much argument there—she should definitely do it when she finds herself in the foreseen situation.

“But what if she had seen herself telling someone that is what she had done? Should she still write about light elixirs and thunderbolts in the potions manual?”

Fairfax blinked. “This could get complicated. Strictly speaking, to fulfill the prophecy she only needs to say the words, no need to actually do the writing.”

“It gets more complicated still. What if she had seen herself telling someone that she plans to write these words inside a copy of The Complete Potion?”

“And you are saying that is the equivalent of the vision Lady Callista worked from, a vision of a plan being spoken aloud.”

He nodded. Just as seers came in vastly different calibers, so did visions. “A vision of someone discussing her plans is far less significant than a vision of actual events. But it is not anything to do with Lady Callista that I am worried about . . .” He almost could not speak the next few words. “It is my mother’s vision that is giving me pause.”

She rose from her seat. “What?”

“My mother’s visions almost always concerned events. My coronation was an event. The Inquisitor’s death, an event. She herself writing the words that would one day inspire you to bring down a bolt of lightning, a series of actions that constituted an event.” He set his hands on top of the diary, which for so long had been his life raft in a sea of uncertainties. “But now I realize that some of my mother’s most important assumptions rest not on a vision of action, but one of speech.”

This then is most likely what Titus is witnessing, the manifestation of the great elemental mage who would be, as he would say in a different vision, his partner for the task.

As he would say.

“Can you ask the diary to show you that vision, so you will know one way or the other?”

“I can, but I am afraid to.” He looked up at her. “Have I told you that she foresaw Baron Wintervale’s death? But she misinterpreted what she saw to mean that Atlantis had been responsible for the execution curse. She was a flawless seer, but she was not infallible in the interpretations of her visions.”

Yet the directions for his entire life had been set down on the strength of those interpretations.

She rounded the table and came to stand next to him, her hand on his shoulder.

He put his hand over hers. “Am I a coward?”

“Because you are afraid? No. Only fools are never afraid.”

He stared at the gilt edge of the diary’s pages. “What if everything changes?”

“Sometimes it does.”

“I hate changes like that.”

“I know,” she said gently. “So do I.”

He inhaled deeply and opened the diary, silently asking to be shown the vision in which he spoke of the great elemental mage who would be his partner for the task.





24 April 1021


Only a few days before Princess Ariadne’s death.