Titus was lifted bodily. The barrel was most likely attached to a cliffwalker. Briefly he felt the chill of the open air before he was set down again, the pressure around his chest easing as he was released from the metallic hold. A door slid shut. A few seconds later the cliffwalker was airborne.
He scooted around in his cell—almost certainly a containment cell—but Amara was not there. A debate raged in his head. Should he try to consciously remind himself that this woman who looked exactly like Fairfax was someone else, or would it be safer for everyone if he stopped the reminders and let his instincts take over instead?
Kashkari’s prophetic dream had not included the real Fairfax. What would have happened to her by the time he, Amara, and Kashkari were together again? Would she be simply a few steps behind Kashkari or . . .
Knowing that Amara was the one in Kashkari’s dream did not eliminate harm to Fairfax. In fact, it took away the one guarantee that she would not be used in sacrificial magic. Now there was no telling what would happen to her. Everything was possible, including the worst failure of all.
All too soon, the door of the containment cell opened and he was yanked to his feet.
A wyvern roared uncomfortably close by. But no flame scalded his skin and no talons hooked into his person—only his nostrils were assaulted by a sulfurous stink.
For a moment his imagination ran wild. Atlantis was the most geologically active of all mage realms, was it not? Who was to say that there was not a volcano nearby? The Bane might mistake it as dead, but it was only dormant, waiting for one with the power to reawaken it. And would that not be a worthy spectacle for the Angels to see the Commander’s Palace engulfed in lava, swallowed by the earth itself?
But no, the smell of brimstone had been stronger in the desert, when he had faced the wyvern battalion. If any volcano slumbered nearby, it slept soundly indeed.
He was marched up a long flight of stairs, and then the faint odor of rotten eggs was completely gone. The air became bracing—the brisk, salty scent of the sea. He wondered whether he was imagining things. But as he advanced, his footsteps and those of a phalanx of guards echoing against high ceilings and distant walls, the scent only became more noticeable.
The Bane had grown up on the coast. When he left Lucidias, he had settled on a different coast. But the Commander’s Palace was far from the sea. And the one who could not leave, the one who must remain hidden, buried in the bowels of this fortress, missed the scent he loved, the scent from the days when he had been whole and free.
It was terrifying to be reminded that the Bane was still human—it made him only more monstrous. What had Mrs. Hancock said? That he had used his first act of sacrificial magic to cure himself of a fatal disease. So he must remember his fear and anguish before that impending death. And yet he could not care less that he doled out such fear and anguish on an industrial scale.
His humanity extended only to himself.
The timbre of the footsteps changed. Titus’s boots had been clacking against hard, smooth stone. But now he was walking across a different material, one that felt and sounded almost like . . . wood.
They came to a stop. Titus’s gag and blindfold were removed. He was in another containment cell, a transparent one that allowed him to see that the floor of the chamber in which he found himself was indeed a fine, golden-hued wood, the rain ebony of the Ponives. And on the walls, instead of paintings, murals, or tapestry, hung enormous carved wooden panels. The coffered ceiling too had been fitted with a latticework of fine wood.
What had Mrs. Hancock said? We never had a great deal of woods on Atlantis, most of the original forest had already been cut down, and importing timber for pyres was beyond the means of all but a few. For the Bane, it was not marble that symbolized luxury, but wood, a costly rarity in his youth.
Titus forgot all about wood when he saw that not far from him, Fairfax lay crumpled in another containment cell.
That is not—
He pushed away the reminder from his conscious mind—instincts would take over. He rushed to the side of the containment cell