knew the Bane’s original body had to be completely mutilated. Even so, she gagged. She didn’t know how anyone could be so butchered and still be alive. The body had nothing below the waist. Both arms were gone. Ears, nose, lips, teeth—none remained. Only one eye stared out at her, with loathing, fear, and a covetousness that was a hundred times more vile than any disfigurement.
Titus and Kashkari, too, stared, staggered and repelled.
“Come on. Put it out of its misery!” shouted West.
She glanced toward Titus—he looked as paralyzed as she felt.
“What about you, Kashkari?” begged West.
A muscle near Kashkari’s jaw leaped. He lifted his wand and pointed it at the Bane. As had happened with the ogre in the Crucible, the Bane’s head disconnected from his body with an audible pop and a spurt of blood that sent all three of them scrambling backward.
They waited for a moment. For so long the Bane’s every footstep had made the entire mage world quake. Iolanthe half expected the floor of the caldera to collapse in a cataclysmic convulsion and bury them under millions of tons of volcanic rock. But except for the spurt of blood, the Bane’s death was as ordinary as anyone else’s.
Kashkari dropped to his knees and retched. She hurried to him and dug out a remedy from her bag. Once he’d swallowed the remedy, she wrapped her arm around his shoulders and raised her waterskin to his lips.
Two feet from them Titus knelt next to his father, holding the latter’s wrist in his hand with a grim expression. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, kissed his father on the forehead, and leaped off the dais.
Kashkari got up too. Most of the elemental fire had cleared, but many decorative pieces made of wood were still burning. Through the haze of smoke he tore across the rubble-strewn expanse of the crypt, his feet pounding on the mosaic of the great maelstrom of Atlantis. At his approach, Titus, who was already at Amara’s side, looked up and shook his head.
Iolanthe covered her eyes. Kashkari’s prophetic dream had come true, down to its every last detail.
A hand shook her by the shoulder. “We have to go. Now.”
Titus. They embraced briefly, then busied themselves getting everyone onto carpets, Amara with Kashkari, Titus’s father with him, and West with Iolanthe.
The ruins of the Commander’s Palace burned. The scene above was greater chaos than any she had seen on the meadow of Sleeping Beauty’s castle: wyverns shrieking, armored chariots careening, swords and maces from Skytower whirling about the fortress, a tornado of weaponry.
They darted up to the command deck, put their hands on the Crucible, with Iolanthe’s other hand around Skytower’s helm, and recited the password. As they arrived inside the Crucible, she realized the chaos on the meadow was no less, after all. But since they controlled Skytower, they were above most of the pandemonium, which made it easier to take off on their carpets in the direction of Black Bastion.
Her carpet had been suborned to Kashkari’s, which allowed her to take a look at West’s leg. Something had definitely been fractured, but she could give him no help beyond a full dose of pain-relieving remedy. “As soon as we get to safety, we’ll have a doctor fetched for you.”
But would there be safety at the other end? The monastery’s copy of the Crucible most certainly had fallen into Atlantean hands. Was it in the Inquisitory, or worse, in Lucidias?
She pulled out the two-way notebook Dalbert had given her and wrote, The Bane dead. The prince alive. In the Crucible, headed for the monastery’s copy.
The Bane dead. The prince alive.
It was all she wanted. Yet a black anxiety gnawed at the edge of her heart. Kashkari’s prophetic dream had come true. What about Princess Ariadne’s vision of her son’s death?
She glanced at Titus. He happened to be looking in her direction. It was too dark to see his features clearly, yet she felt the same unease emanating from him.
Let him be safe. Let us outlive this night.
She found some burn potion, gave half to West, and applied the rest to her own blisters.
“That was quite impressive, by the way,” said West. “Lightning bolts—now I’ve seen everything.”
“How are you? Not too shaken up, I hope?”
“Completely shaken up. But we are safe now, right?”
If only she could answer that question with any confidence at all. “Hard to say. The Crucible itself is dangerous, even if—” She looked back and swore. “We are being chased!”