that are chiseled in stone are transmitted in visions. The entirety of the future may yet be unwritten, but no one can deny that certain forces and developments are so powerful, trying to stop them would be like a fly getting in the way of an armored chariot.
“But even I, who hold staunchly to the view that no one should try to alter a future that has been revealed, can’t find anything particularly wrong in what Mohandas suggests. After we met again this morning he confessed that he’d lied about having seen you reach Atlantis on your own power and of your own will. Given that, are there actual known visions of you marching onto Atlantis?”
“No,” Iolanthe had to admit.
“Then no one is trying to refute a future that has already been seen.”
Iolanthe set down her empty cup. Something didn’t add up—something one of the mages in the room said or indicated. But she couldn’t seem to think. In fact, she was listing hard to her left.
She clutched at Titus and missed. But his arm banded about her and kept her from toppling over.
“What’s the matter?” came Kashkari’s voice, sounding very distant.
“Iola? Are you all right, Iola?”
Her vision shrank. The last thing she saw was Titus’s eyes, from which all light and hope had fled.
“She is fine,” said Titus, setting her down. “Master Haywood, would you mind getting a blanket from one of the bedrooms?”
Haywood ran out and was back within seconds. Titus tucked the blanket carefully around her. “She will come to on her own in two or three hours, if not sooner.”
He did not need to explain his action any further. He knew Fairfax. She was stubborn and loyal—and she bowed to no prophecies. She would never stand for her friends to brave the perils of Atlantis without her.
So they must leave her behind.
“You will forgive us for not discussing our plans in your hearing, sir,” he said to Haywood.
Haywood nodded—he understood that the moment his ward awakened, she would demand to know where her friends had gone.
“Make sure you build a fire and keep her warm.”
With her falling unconscious, the fire she summoned had dissipated. The grate, the bricks of which still radiated heat, was empty.
Titus looked down at his most stalwart friend for a moment longer, before he made himself head for the laboratory, Kashkari and Amara in tow.
Amara inhaled deeply as she took a seat before the worktable. “What is this lovely fragrance in the air?”
It was from the butterfly tableau of the night before, the scent of a meadow in bloom. He remembered how Fairfax had looked, with both laughter and tears in her eyes.
His heart felt as if it had been branded, a scalding pain through which he could barely breathe. This task was always going to take everything from him in the end—but he always woke up each morning hoping he had at least another day.
After this day, there would be no more reprieve.
“I have more bad news,” he said, ignoring Amara’s question.
When he had come into the laboratory to fetch the “sugar cubes,” he had spied a new message from Dalbert. The first paragraph explained that Dalbert had had some trouble accessing his end of the transmission device, but had since managed to move it to a different spot—and that was the only good news the message contained.
Half of the rest dealt with the massacre in the Kalahari Realm and the threat that had been left for Titus, which was as Amara had reported. The other half conveyed developments that were almost as dire.
“There was a raid last night on the armory underneath the Serpentine Hills—the one Durga Devi was taken to see. All the war engines were destroyed, including a large number of annihilators—the machines that can bring down armored chariots.”
Leaving the Domain defenseless when the forces of Atlantis arrived in six and half days.
This was what Titus had feared: that by tipping their hand in the desert, his allies courted disaster.
Now it became ever more imperative that they succeed in bringing down the Bane.
Without Fairfax.
In the long, dark shadow of her prophesied death.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Amara.
Titus turned to the typing ball and tapped out a message to Dalbert. An answer came almost immediately.
“What more news does he have?” Kashkari’s voice was tense. The way things were going, any news would almost inevitably be bad news.
“I did not ask for further news. I asked whether he had ever prepared a means for me to return to the