Once again, she applied strong currents to the balloon.
She had worried that by arriving while there was still daylight, they would be all too visible. But the weather cooperated. A band of rain covered the sky over Ondine Island, eighty miles east of the Domain’s mainland, and they were able to land unseen, on the shoulder of a mountain that thrust up above the clouds.
Iolanthe picked out a message on the typing ball. Then she deflated the envelopes of the balloon and retrieved their emergency bags.
“So we wait?” asked Master Haywood.
“And have some tea.”
The English queen’s tea was quite good, as were her shortbread biscuits. Beneath their feet, the cloud cover extended for miles in every direction, made a warm gold by the light of the westerly sun.
“Remember when we went camping that time in the Siren Isles?” she asked.
They’d spent the night on a great conical peak not unlike this one. At dawn Master Haywood had awakened her to watch the sun rise over an ocean of fog that stretched from horizon to horizon. It had been one of the most indelible memories of her childhood, the beauty of that sunrise—and her complete happiness, to stand at the top of the world with the father figure she adored.
“Yes, I remember. You were five and you’d had your front tooth knocked out a month earlier, playing airframe-jousting with much older children. And you refused to have a cosmetic tooth put in—said the gap made you look scarier when you snarled.”
She smiled a little. Elemental mages were almost always violent and overly energetic as tots, and she had been no exception. One of the older boys she jousted against had suffered a concussion—and had studiously avoided her for months afterward, gap-toothed snarl not required.
“I wonder if there would be time for us to stop by the campus of the Conservatory,” said her guardian.
She sighed. “I doubt it.”
She had very much wished to walk about Eton one last time. To say a proper good-bye to the boys who must still be wondering what had happened to their four friends.
So much of her life had been hasty departures and friends left behind when circumstances suddenly changed. And in the case of the Conservatory, it would be too painful to see the bare branches and fallen leaves, knowing she would never again be there to welcome the arrival of another spring.
She glanced at her guardian. “When we get to the mainland, there is a safe house in the Labyrinthine Mountains. It’s chiseled into the rocks, has a supply of fresh water, and plenty of berry bushes and leafy plants scattered just outside—not to mention a pantry stocked with enough staples to last for years. Will you . . . will you consider staying there?”
Master Haywood’s eyes had lit up as she’d described the safe house. But when he understood that she would not be making use of it, he shook his head.
“I have trained for this,” she reasoned with him. “You haven’t.”
He placed another biscuit in her hand. “That is not entirely true. After Lady Callista asked for my help and before my memories were locked away, I made a rather thorough study of the deadlier archival magic spells.”
Her eyes bulged. His research specialty had been archival magic, which dealt with the preservation of practices that had fallen out of popular usage. And while a good deal of sorcery became obsolete in time due to the development of better, easier, and faster spells, the more dangerous hexes and curses were often abandoned because they had been powered by self-sacrifice, which was no longer considered acceptable in this day and age.
“Besides, my dear, you are assuming that I’m driven by altruism. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m driven entirely by selfishness—I’m coming with you because I won’t be able to bear a life without you. So unless you can guarantee your safe return, there is nothing you can dangle before me to change my mind.”
She bit the inside of her lip and shook her head. But before she could say anything, a man appeared, wand in hand. He was about Master Haywood’s age, a little rotund, yet light on his feet as he moved.
Iolanthe had seen him before and he Iolanthe, though not while she was in human form.
“Master Dalbert,” she said. “A pleasure to meet you at last.”
CHAPTER 15
TITUS FELT AS IF HE were plummeting, the bottom of the abyss rising all too fast.