He grabbed a pair of riding gloves and a saddlebag from the lower drawers of the desk and murmured the necessary words. The next instant he was sliding down a smooth stone chute at a near vertical angle, the acceleration so dizzying
he might as well be in free fall.
He braced himself. Still, the impact of slamming onto Marbles waiting back was like running into a wall. He swallowed a grunt of pain and groped in the dark for the handles mounted on the old girls shoulders. With his knees he nudged her forward.
They were at the mouth of a hidden expedited way cut into the mountain. The moment the invisible boundary was crossed, they hurtled through a tunnel twelve feet in diameterbarely wide enough for Marble to fit through with her wings folded.
The darkness was complete; the air pressed heavy and damp against his skin. They shot upward, so fast his eardrums popped and popped again. Then, a pinprick of light, which grew swiftly into a flood of sunshine, and they were out in the open, above an uninhabited peak well away from the castle.
Marble opened her great wings and slid into a long swoop. The prince closed his eyes and called to mind what he had seen in the field glass: a village as ordinary as a sparrow, and about as small.
It would have been preferable to vault alone. But vaulting such a great distance on visual cue, rather than personal memory, was an imprecise business. And he did not have the luxury of proceeding on foot once he reached his destination.
He leaned forward and whispered into Marbles ear.
They vaulted.
Iolanthe was flat on her back, blind, her face burning, her ears ringing like the bells on New Years Eve.
She must still be alive then. Groaning, she rolled over, pushed onto her knees, and clamped her hands over her ears.
After a while, she opened her eyes to a fuzzy spread of green clothher skirt. She raised her head a little and looked at her hand, which slowly swam into focus. There was a scratch but no blood. She sighed in relief. Shed feared that her ears had bled and that shed find bits of brain on her palm.
But the grass around her was brown. Strange, the moor atop the cliff had recently turned a boisterous green with the arrival of spring. Her gaze followed the expanse of withered grass and
The flagpole had disappeared. Where it once stood, black smoke rose from an equally black pit.
She struggled to her feet, stuck her wand back into her pocket, and tottered toward the crater, feeling as if her legs were made of mush. The smoke made her eyes water. Grass, dry as tinder, crunched beneath the soles of her boots.
The crater was ten feet wide and as deep as she was tall; the flagpole lay drunkenly across the top. This was mad. When the lightning struck, its electrical charge should have safely dissipated into the ground.
Then she spied the cauldron, sitting upright at the very bottom of the crater, filled with the most beautiful elixir shed ever seen, like distilled starlight.
A laugh tore from her throat. For once, Fortune had smiled upon her. The wedding illumination would be perfect. Her performance would be perfectoh, she was going to perform, all right. And Mrs. Oakbluff just might forgive Master Haywood for the prank hed pulled on her, telling herha!that there would be no silver light elixir for her daughters wedding.
A whoosh overhead made her look up. A winged beast, something of a cross between a dragon and a horse, shot past her. It had come from the north, flying with astonishing speed toward the coast. But as she watched, its wings flapped vertically to reduce its forward momentum.
Then it swung around to face her.
The prince could not believe his eyes.
He had vaulted quite close to where the lightning had actually struck, but Marble had shot by too fast for him to get a good look at the mage atop the blackened cliff. But now that he had turned Marble around . . .
The long dark hair, half of it standing up from electrical shock, the ruffled white blouse, the green skirt. There was no mistaking it: the elemental mage who had brought down lightning was a girl.
A girl.
Archer Fairfax could not be a girl. What in the blazes was he to do with a girl?
The next moment the girl was no longer alone. A man in a black robe materialized and sprinted toward her.
Iolanthe stared at the winged beast. It was iridescent blue, with sharp, barely branched antlers on its equine head and a spiked, crimson-tipped tail.
A Barbary Coast peryton.
They were very fashionable in the cities, but not in the hinterlands. What was one doing here, immediately after shed summoned a bolt of lightning?
What have you done?
Master Haywood! His black schoolmasters robe billowed behind him as he raced toward her.
I repaired the light elixir, she said. And you dont need to worry about the crater, Ill take care of itand put the flagpole back where it belongs.
She commanded
earth too, if not quite as well as she commanded fire and waterand lightning.
My goodness, what happened here? Mrs. Greenfield, a villager, also appeared. Are you all right, Miss Iolanthe? You look a fright.