attack one group, the riders will alert everyone else.”
For the next ten minutes, they discussed various possibilities. But no one could come up with a plausible scenario where the benefits of commandeering a wyvern outweighed the overwhelming disadvantages.
After they climbed back on the carpets again, they had not gone two miles when Amara said, “I hear them again. Behind us.”
There were no perfect hiding places immediately nearby. They took cover in a crease of the ground and hoped that the darkness of the night would safeguard them from unfriendly eyes. A squadron of wyverns shot up from the lowlands. They circled. And circled—right above where Titus guessed the knocked-over pile of bones must be.
“They know we are here,” said Kashkari.
They debated whether to get on the carpets again or to proceed on foot. The question was settled when Amara swore. “They are dropping down hunting ropes.”
As they took to the air again, Titus and Fairfax gripped each other’s hand tight. On the next carpet, Amara and Kashkari did the same.
The end is near.
The next escarpment came all too soon. They tried to find a way up that did not require them to leave the protection of the carpets. Above the openings leading into possible giant serpent lairs, however, the cliffs were as even and vertical as a wall, with barely a toehold for a goat, let alone a full-grown mage. And they dared not use a hunting rope again, for fear it would disturb something far worse than a stack of bones.
“We have to move forward somehow,” said Amara, her face set. “No point going back, and we can’t st—”
Kashkari gripped her wrist and pointed down. From the shadows at the base of the cliffs, almost directly below them, something was emerging. Its head was the size of an omnibus, and its body even thicker around.
In the distance, from beyond the top of the cliffs, came the sound of dragon wings.
Was that what giant serpents ate between long bouts of inactivity? Wyverns—and wyvern riders?
The flapping of dragon wings grew louder. The giant serpent below came to a stop. Titus stared, unable to help himself: the bulbous head, the stillness, the dimly metallic glint of its scales.
He braced himself for the emergence of an enormous forked tongue. It never came. He frowned. The castle in the Labyrinthine Mountain housed a small collection of local reptiles. And every time he saw the snakes, they were always flicking their tongues in the air.
He looked around, hoping not to find any more giant serpents. But what were those things silently slithering up the face of the cliff? Juvenile giant serpents, lured by the scent of a nice, fresh meal? His heart stopped. No, they were long, mechanical claws, far bigger and longer than those extending from the armored pods chasing Fairfax and Kashkari in Eton, but of essentially the exact same structure.
And they came out of the giant serpent.
Which was no serpent, but a mechanical contraption of Atlantis’s. Of course the real giant serpents were already extinct. Of course the Bane would have a counterfeit one. Of course he would want Atlanteans to believe that giant serpents still existed: it became so much easier to not only keep civilians away from his stronghold, but to explain an occasional disappearance, like that of Mrs. Hancock’s sister all those years ago.
“Fairfax!”
Titus barely managed to squeeze the word past his throat. But she had seen and understood. Two great boulders flew up from the plain below and smashed the claws right at their “wrists,” breaking them off altogether.
The claws scraped along the cliff as they fell, and met the hard rock of the plain below with an enormous clamor.
“We have to hide,” said Fairfax, her voice shaking.
Amara was already steering her carpet lower. “Follow me.”
She led them into one of the openings on the face of the escarpment. It was easily the worst hiding place possible, except their only other option was to remain in the open—an unacceptable choice.
Amara listened at the mouth of the cave. “More than just wyverns are coming. I can hear bigger beasts.”
Titus could not hear anything over the frenetic beating of his own heart. He had not wished to meet any giant serpents. But he had trained in the Crucible for battling such straightforward monsters his entire life. The ferocity of a beast was always, always preferable to the cunning and treachery of anything devised by the Bane.
“Is there a back wall to this cave?” Kashkari asked.