spun as they slid out from underneath the fortress’s enclosure.
The flying fortress broke apart and plummeted. A tide of debris crashed toward them. Iolanthe called for the strongest shields she knew and sent a strong countervailing current of air—still she had to raise her emergency satchel to her head to shield herself from the smattering of small fragments that pelted down.
Out of the cloud of smoke and dust appeared Kashkari and Titus. But there was no time to inquire after their well-being, not even to catch her breath. Beneath the din of the floating fortress’s destruction there came slithering sounds in the grass. Hunting ropes, hundreds, perhaps thousands in quantity.
Hunting ropes that knew the scents of their quarries, if they had been first taken to Mrs. Hancock’s house. And traveling by flying carpet would not deter the hunting ropes from following their scents.
But hunting ropes, thankfully, had one imperfection: they only worked on dry land.
“To the river. Now!” Iolanthe commanded.
The river was only a stone’s throw ahead. The debris cloud was beginning to clear; Titus called for a large, powerful smoke screen. Under different conditions something like that would have been a dead giveaway of their location. But as it was, their location was already known, and all they needed was for Atlantis not to know their next move.
The river was far more swollen than Iolanthe had anticipated, the currents dark and swift. She inhaled deeply and made a motion with her hand, as if she were yanking apart a stuck window.
The water parted, revealing an irregular-looking riverbed, the kind where there was no good place for setting foot. And while the channel wasn’t too steep, there was a noticeable incline.
“Get down and crouch low.” Due to the slope, the river wasn’t too deep, at most eight feet.
No one looked overjoyed at what she proposed. But they all obeyed immediately. She leaped in after them.
“Wait,” said Titus, as Iolanthe readied an air bubble.
He took out a hunting rope from his own satchel, rubbed it across the back of her hand a couple of times, and then flung it onto the far bank of the river. She hoped his trick would keep the other hunting ropes busy for a while.
Taking another deep breath, she let the river resume its thunderous progress toward the sea. The air bubble she had anchored to the riverbed held, keeping them safely in place.
But staying in place was not their goal. Sooner or later those who sought them would circle back to this spot: they needed to move.
“Put away the carpets,” she said. “Then we levitate one another an inch or two above the riverbed and make our way upstream.”
It would have been far easier to go downstream, but that would only wash them out to sea.
The carpets were put away. Iolanthe and Titus, who each carried an emergency raft, took out the oars that came with the kits. Fully unfolded, the oars would measure six feet in length. But they only let the oars out to eighteen inches or so.
In the Sahara, Iolanthe and Titus had used levitating spells to get through a tunnel she excavated in the bedrock. Here the trick worked again: floating three inches above the riverbed, they each used an oar to push themselves forward.
Iolanthe reduced the size of the air bubble as much as possible without suffocating everyone inside—the more water going over them, the less likely they would be seen. Kashkari coordinated their moves. Titus kept an eye on their speed, altitude, and oxygen supply—reminding her regularly that it was time to bring in some fresh air—as she wrestled with the air bubble, pushing it along the bottom of the river at the rate of their progress.
Amara remained silent, except to ask once, “Is it difficult keeping the air bubble intact?”
“No,” Iolanthe answered. “The hard part is keeping it underwater. This much air exerts a lot of buoyancy.”
And it was a constant struggle to keep the air bubble down and not let it bounce them all up to the surface.
Their progress was slow, torturous—and often taking place completely in the dark. When Titus deemed the water deep enough, he would allow a bare flicker of light. Otherwise they proceeded without any illumination, groping their way forward.
It felt to Iolanthe as if she’d spent her entire life crawling in this cramped and unnatural way, her shoulders aching, the back of her head throbbing, when Titus said, “Our levitation spells are weakening. We might have to stop for a bit.”