The Immortal Heights Read Free

visible, less exposed.
    But the desert floor seemed to have melted into a sea of glass. Not a single grain of sand leaped into the air at her command. The wyverns pressed in closer. She called for currents of air to push them back. The moment she did so, however, she felt the pressure of countercurrents—Atlantis’s elemental mages were neutralizing her on every front.
    She was not alone in her failure. Titus and Kashkari were trying all kinds of spells to no avail. She didn’t know about Kashkari, but the prince was a veteran of dragon battles—at least in the Crucible, a book of folklore and fairy tales that he and Iolanthe used as proving grounds to train themselves for dangerous situations. But usually, in those stories, the dragons were few in number. And if they should be numerous, as in The Dragon Princess , at least the protagonist had a sturdy defensive position, like a dilapidated but still mighty fort, instead of flying carpets that provided no cover at all.
    â€œCan I vault her into the base, or is that a no-vaulting zone?” Titus shouted the question at Kashkari.
    â€œIt’s a no-vaulting zone!”
    Titus swore.
    Earlier this very night, he had made the two of them jump to the ground from a height of half a mile, with nothing to break their fall but her powers over air, because he hadn’t wanted to risk vaulting her: vaulting so soon after a life-threatening injury could kill her outright.
    Were they truly running out of options?
    An incendiary idea flared to life. She had always called for lightning from above. But in nature, lightning didn’t necessarily originate from the sky. Sometimes balls of electricity wafted from nowhere. Sometimes lightning traveled from the ground to the clouds.
    Could she?
    She aimed her wand downward, feeling as foolish as she had when she first attempted to summon a thunderbolt from above. “Lightning.”
    Nothing happened.
    One particularly large wyvern surged forward and extended a claw—it would grab her off the carpet. The carpet dropped straight down and the claw missed her head by inches.
    Two more wyverns followed the example of the first, attacking her from different altitudes, so that even if she were to drop or rise, she would not be able to evade both.
    She tried again for lightning. Nothing.
    Somehow Kashkari tugged them sideways, with the wyvern’s talons slicing just past the prince’s shoulder.
    â€œDo you want me to vault you to the ground?” Titus yelled.
    He and Kashkari shielded her from either side. Beyond the wyverns, the rebels were trying to break through this siege-inside-a-siege, the light of the war phoenix illuminating the anxiety and panic on their faces.
    The wyverns advanced ever closer. The force of their wingbeats buffeted her from every side. She could see the glint of each individual scale on the nearest wyvern—and the eagerness of its rider, shoulders forward, fingers all but tapping against the reins.
    She had given the wrong answer to the prince’s benediction earlier. She exhaled and recited the correct response: “For I shall bear testimony to the might of the Angels. For I am power, I am mastery, and I am the hammer of immortality.”
    Titus snatched the two remaining hunting ropes out of their emergency satchel. “As the world endures.” He completed the prayer as the first hunting rope left his hand. “As hope abides ever in the face of the Void.”
    The hunting rope caught the outstretched claw of a wyvern and twisted it back.
    â€œHeads down!” Kashkari bellowed as he wrenched them out of the grasp of another wyvern.
    Their last hunting rope shot out and missed the incoming wyvernaltogether—the beast pulled in its legs and swatted the hunting rope out of the way with its wing. You cannot surprise Atlantis twice .
    But the hunting rope wasn’t aiming for the wyvern at all, but its rider, slapping itself around the latter’s wrists