who had the best night vision. “Not for some distance, at least.”
A good thing, for the unmistakable sound of hundreds of slithering hunting ropes rose to Titus’s ears.
“Can we outrun hunting ropes?” asked Amara.
She meant by going deeper into the cave, into the labyrinth of connected tunnels that the real giant serpents of yesteryear had left behind in the base of the escarpment.
“Maybe not,” said Fairfax. “But I can burn them if they come too close.”
Provided they themselves did not run smack into a dead end. There were so many perils of heading desperately down a path they knew nothing about—
Kashkari swore. “Something is coming from the inside.”
Fairfax, always quick to react, brought down enough rocks to collapse the passage.
They barely had enough time to turn away, to avoid the flying debris brought on by the roof of the passage giving away. They were cornered, with no escape, not even a dark, dangerous, and utterly unfamiliar warren.
The first wave of hunting ropes wriggled up the cliffs. Instead of fire, Fairfax called for a torrent of air to blow them away. But whatever they did now was only stalling for time. Outside the Atlanteans called to one another, advising care as they positioned “cliffwalkers” in place. Titus crept as close to the opening as he dared and saw that cliffwalkers were entities that resembled armored chariots, but had feet that drilled into rock to keep them anchored to the vertical surface—had they been carried up by the bigger beasts Amara had heard?
“Get back here!” Fairfax growled.
Titus made a hurried retreat. Fairfax collapsed the front entrance to the cave. Now they were well and truly trapped. To one side the cliffwalkers were noisily clearing away the rubble blocking the entrance. At the other end of the cave, the unseen entity, either the same counterfeit giant serpent they had seen earlier or a different one, judging by the metallic clangs it made, rammed repeatedly against the rocks in its path.
They had at most a minute or two before their defenses were breached.
A garland of flame came into being, the firelight illuminating Fairfax’s stark but determined eyes. “Looks like this is the end of the road for me. I know Titus cannot bring himself to kill me—and probably not Kashkari either. Will you do me a favor, Durga Devi, and make sure that I am not captured?”
No! No! screamed a voice inside Titus’s head. But he only stood with his hand clenched uselessly around his wand.
“Yes, I will do you a favor,” said Amara, her voice hoarse, yet with a note of triumph. “Just not the one you ask.”
She set her hand on Fairfax. A moment later, two Fairfaxes stood in the center of the cave. The one who was Amara in truth cast aside her thick coat, pushed up her sleeve, and revealed an intricately wrought ruby-studded band.
And on your upper arm you wore a gold filigreed armband set with rubies, Kashkari had said at the lighthouse, as he described Fairfax in his prophetic dream.
But I don’t wear any jewelry, Fairfax had protested. And I don’t have any.
And Amara had been there, sitting quietly among them. Had she felt the metallic pressure of the armband against her skin? The unbearable weight of a future that had been set in stone?
Titus stumbled a step back, shock pounding like a hammer at the back of his head.
The real Fairfax gasped. “You are . . . you are a mutable.”
Kashkari only made small, choked sounds, as if he had been mortally wounded. The one he had seen lying dead in his dreams had not been Fairfax, but Amara in Fairfax’s form.
“The three of you hide in the Crucible,” ordered Amara, a beacon of calm and authority in the rubble heap the cave had become, when everything they had believed about their future had been turned upside down. “I know it might be unstable in there, but you can handle it for a short time. I’ll make sure the book is disguised as a rock.”
“I will come with you,” Titus heard himself say.
“What?” exclaimed Fairfax.
He turned to her, deathly afraid yet strangely elated that he was the one headed to his doom, and not the one he loved. “They know I am here. They will keep searching if they do not find me. But if they capture me, I can convince them that everyone else died in Lucidias. If they believe me, they will be more likely to be lax. A better chance for the two of