The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  I felt more lines of force reaching out, probing. I withdrew behind the wall of Fire, let my control of Erick slip, suddenly afraid, cursing myself for losing control, for lashing out.

  The woman frowned and I suddenly realized she sensed the Fire. She could taste it, as Eryn had tasted it when I’d tried to kill her in the throne room. She could sense it.

  And she recognized it.

  She frowned, the probing tendrils retreating. Erick continued to choke, his vision beginning to blur, to narrow, but then the invisible hand holding him relaxed, lowered him to the deck.

  He gasped as it loosened enough for him to breathe. But it didn’t release him. Instead, it pressed him farther downward, forced him to his knees.

  The woman stared down at him, her eyes narrowed, her frown deepening.

  Behind her, the man who’d threatened Erick earlier took a tentative step forward, said something.

  The woman didn’t answer at first. Then she motioned to the rest of the guardsmen and crew and repeated her earlier command.

  Hatred seized me, and as the crew screamed, guardsmen cursing and diving for their dropped weapons, the blue-skinned men attacked. Blades fell, the night filled with the sounds of death.

  I surged from the Fire again, reached for the river in desperation to stop the slaughter, to save Erick, to save someone—

  But the grip on Erick tightened. With horror, I felt the river gather around the woman, felt it harden into blunt force.

  Before I could react, before I could begin to form a wall to protect myself, to protect Erick, the woman struck.

  I saw the hammer of force fall, felt it shudder through Erick’s body, heard him scream as a horrifying pressure built up behind his eyes, throbbing with his heart. Blood fountained down onto his forehead, ran down into his eyes, filled his ears, his mouth, as he arched back at the pain, as the pressure inside his head increased, as it escalated, until it streamed from his body like sweat, soaked into his clothing like blood—

  Then the world exploded.

  And everything went dark.

  Chapter 10

  Varis.

  I moaned, the pounding in my head somehow more intense than usual. I could feel it radiating outward, sending pain away in waves. I felt as if I were adrift, lost and directionless, tugged here and there by invisible currents, the sensation soothing, like sleep or the sigh of wind through the leaves of a tree.

  Varis. You need to wake up.

  I winced at the voice, tried to shove it away, tried to ignore it. But it was more than a voice, it was a presence, permeating me, surrounding me. It persisted, nudging me, prodding me, the movements becoming more desperate.

  Varis. You’re dying.

  I woke with a gasp. But that wasn’t correct. I became aware with a gasp, as if I’d struggled through water, almost out of air, lungs aching, and had finally reached the surface. I flailed around, felt the comforting eddies and currents of the river surrounding me, felt the presence of the voice—of many voices—hovering just out of reach, watching me carefully, subdued and sad and concerned. Not all of them. A few still wailed at the edge of the Fire, but the majority of the voices were quiet.

  And then I calmed, abruptly, forced myself to remain still, to focus on my surroundings.

  Ocean. Beneath where my consciousness drifted, I could see the slow undulation of waves, lit by fractured early morning sunlight, golden and soft. I could smell it, sharp with salt, damp and heavy, like syrup. It rolled silently below me, a breeze drifting out of the west.

  Where am I? I asked.

  The voices conferred, but it was the voice that had woken me that spoke. Cerrin’s voice.

  You’ve been adrift on the river, he said, his voice still tinged with his usual self-pitying sadness, but with a hint of energy now as well, of renewed purpose. It hurt when he spoke, my head throbbing with a steady pulse, in sync with my heartbeat. The Ochean severed your link to Erick, and in the process knocked you unconscious. You’ve drifted wherever the currents of the river have taken you for the last eight hours.

  Erick! Everything that had happened on the ship came back with the blunt force of a hammer. I suddenly felt his searing pain, felt again the pressure building inside his head, felt the blood pouring down his face as he arched back, mouth open in a blood-chilling inhuman scream.

  I lurched up on the river, sent myself high, began scanning the ocean in all directions. There was no land in sight, nothing but black water rising and falling, the sun a blazing gold on the horizon, the sky a pale cloudless blue above. I spun around again, grew more focused, more frantic, and then I spotted a cold flare of White Fire on the horizon, faint and far away.

  I sped toward it, heart shuddering. Erick’s pain lashed through me again, the river around me roiling at the memory.

  I had to find Erick. I had to save him. He’d gone on the mission under my orders, had risked everything because of me, because of my plan, my idea.

  The White Fire began to draw nearer, but slowly. To distract myself, I asked, The Ochean? I’ve never heard that name before.

  Another whispered conference.

  The blue-skinned woman on the ship who has the Sight, the one who attacked Erick, the one with seven gold earrings in each ear. She’s the leader of those people. They call themselves the Chorl.

  I frowned. I’d never heard of the Chorl, never heard of any blue-skinned people. The Zorelli who manned most of the trading ships were dark-skinned—a deep brown—but they came from the islands to the south. Everyone knew that. The rest of the people I’d seen in Amenkor or had ever heard of had pale skin, white that had been tanned to various shades of light brown. Aside from the Zorelli, everyone on the Frigean coast was pale.

  No one could even remotely be called blue-skinned.

  The memory of the warriors streaming up over the side of the ship, their cries piercing the night, sent shivers of horror and revulsion through my skin. Their tattoos, their clothes, their rounded, flattened faces—everything about them was too strange, too inhuman, almost unreal.

  How do you know this? I asked harshly, the horror already edging into hatred. How do you know who they are?

  I felt Cerrin’s presence hesitate. Another voice, a woman’s voice, Liviann’s or perhaps Atreus’, hissed at him sharply, and he grew grim.

  Because we fought them once before when they came to the Frigean coast. We fought them. And when we defeated them, we banished them, sent them back to the ocean from which they came, sent them west. They decimated the coast for the span of five years. We thought we’d never see them again, thought perhaps that they’d died out, but we prepared nonetheless. That’s one of the reasons we created the thrones: to protect the coast from attack.

  Who is this “we”?

  The Seven, Cerrin said, his voice sad again.

  He fell silent, withdrew back into the maelstrom of the voices, back into a pain I didn’t understand.

  I felt a surge of anger, thought about demanding that he answer more questions, but beneath me the color of the ocean had changed, no longer a deep dense blue verging on black. It had lightened.

  Ahead, the White Fire blazed. My heart raced, pulse quickening. Perhaps I wasn’t too late. Perhaps I could still save Erick.

  And then I saw the coastline, saw the rocky shore, saw the arms of land reaching out to embrace the harbor.

  Amenkor.

  The blaze of Fire wasn’t Erick. It was the Fire inside me.

  The revelation was staggering, and I shuddered to a halt outside the influence of the throne, outside the entrance to the harbor, waves crashing into the stone arms of land, spray sheeting up toward the two stone watchtowers at their ends. I spun, searched the horizon to the south and west, desperate. I soared higher, higher still, until the air began to feel thin, until the river itself felt thin, diluted, like the air, and still the horizon was em
pty.

  Damn it! I screamed, frantic. Help me!

  The voices remained silent, withdrew even further, unnaturally quiet. A somber quiet, filled with pain and loss and understanding. A quiet that somehow smothered those that still fought to escape their prison, to seize control. Because those that still fought to escape were so few.

  But I barely noticed, pushed myself higher still. There was no Fire. No tag for me to follow. No way for me to link up with Erick. Which meant—

  I halted, a cold certainty seeping down into my gut.

  I drew in a harsh, trembling breath, held it.

  I scanned the horizon one more time, knowing I would find nothing.

  I felt a pain begin to build inside me, begin to sting at the corners of my eyes. A pain totally unlike that which had racked Erick’s body, had seethed in his veins and shuddered in his heart, had built and built behind his skull. This pain started deep in my chest, swelled and seeped outward, a hot, visceral pain that felt fluid and sick and left me drained and weak and useless. This pain closed off my throat with a hard, nauseating lump. I tried desperately to hold the pain in, the stinging in my eyes increasing, tears beginning to stream down my face. I felt myself shudder with the effort—

  Until I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  I screamed. A raw scream of rage and pain and loss. Of guilt and regret and unfairness. And when that breath had died, strangled into nothingness, I gasped in another breath, the sound ragged and harsh and broken, and I screamed again, so hard it felt like my throat had torn.

  The voices responded. The Seven—as well as those that were now calm, now quiet—shifted forward, reached out through the protective Fire under Cerrin’s guidance, surrounding me, holding me, comforting me. I shut off all consciousness of the river, closed myself off from the world, and surrendered to the fluid pain, let it sear through me. I let the voices protect me as my screams descended into racking sobs and twisted guilt.

  I curled in upon myself.

  And I let myself drift again.

  * * *

  The pain receded like the slow ebb of the tide and my awareness of the river returned. First nothing more than a sound: ocean waves crashing up against a rocky shoreline. It took me a moment to recognize it, for it to seep through the numbness left behind by the pain. But once I did recognize it, my awareness spread, like a drop of oil on the surface of water, or blood seeping into cloth. I smelled the shore, sand and wind and stone. And seaweed drying in the sun.

  I opened my eyes, breathed in deeply, and stared down the length of beach to a rocky crag jutting out into the ocean, the surf pounding into the stone with crashing spray and sparkling mist. I stared at the beach a long moment without thinking, barely aware of the afternoon sun against my face, until I noticed movement.

  A crab scuttled across the sand, heading for the rocky plinth.

  I glanced around, noticed the beach running up to a layer of rocks and driftwood, then a dune with wisps of grass that merged into a bank of pine trees. Behind me, another rocky crag cut off the view of the beach to the north.

  It reminded me of the little cove near Colby, where Eryn had investigated the remains of the shipwreck.

  I turned back to the water, looked out over the waves, to where the sea darkened into true ocean.

  Erick.

  The ache in my chest returned, but it was dull, nothing more than a throb of grief. I was too numbed, too exhausted.

  I reached for the voices of the throne, felt their presences in the background behind the wall of Fire, but none of them came forward. They’d changed. For the first time, that realization sank in. They were no longer fighting among themselves, no longer bickering and biting and seething in a maelstrom of hatred. Instead, they were calm, intent, and focused.

  Except for a few still screaming at the edges, they’d banded together, had united with a purpose. The Seven were keeping those that had not joined them under control themselves, and now they were simply waiting.

  I should have been concerned, should have used the river to renew the net that protected me from them, should have thrown up a second net for additional safety. I shifted uneasily. . . .

  And then I let the concern go. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now.

  Time passed, the sunlight overhead shifting. I did nothing, said nothing, felt nothing.

  And then:

  Varis.

  It was the woman with straight black hair. Atreus. She stood with the rest of the Seven arrayed behind her, Cerrin in the back, his form shifting restlessly, his presence troubled.

  Varis, we need to speak to you. About the Chorl. About the Ochean.

  What? I said.

  You have to understand how dangerous they are, Atreus said. You have to warn Amenkor, warn the entire Frigean coast. If they have returned—

  Garus snorted. They have returned! Open your damned eyes!

  Garus!

  What!

  I focused on the man who’d cut Garus short. He was younger than Garus, had no neatly trimmed beard, was thin where Garus was broad. And I recognized him. I’d witnessed the creation of the thrones through his eyes, felt his pain as the rest of the Seven fell around him, consumed by the raw energies they’d called into existence.

  He leveled a stern gaze on Garus, and the older man backed down with a grumble.

  Thank you, Seth, Atreus said.

  But Garus is right, another woman said. She had straight black hair, just like Atreus, had the same facial features as well—thin face, high cheekbones, fine nose. An older version of Atreus, harsher, her mouth set into a perpetual frown. The Chorl have returned, and you need to know how dangerous they can be. And Cerrin is going to show you.

  All of the voices in the throne turned to Cerrin. He glanced up. Why me, Alleryn?

  Alleryn’s frown deepened. Because yours is the more powerful, more convincing story. And because your story was the beginning.

  Cerrin grimaced, then steeled himself. Without shifting forward, he said, For Olivia, then, and my daughters.

  He reached through the Fire and grabbed me, and before I could draw breath, I was trapped.

  * * *

  Wind blew across the veranda, rustling in the long, thin leaves of the potted plants in urns on the edges of the stonework lining the edge of the patio. The air was raucous with the cries of seagulls and other birds. I moved to the edge of the balustrade, stared down over the cliff into the bay far below.

  Venitte lay spread out before me, the wide bay filled with ships of all kinds, birds wheeling both above and beneath my position, horns and bells joining their cries occasionally. Sails bellied out in the wind, drawing the ships out to one or the other of the two channels that branched north and south around the island that protected the bay from the worst of the winds and the storms. Other boats streamed toward the main wharf farther inland and the domed buildings on the hills behind, or toward the hundreds of jetties and piers that lanced out into the water beneath the cliffs on either side of the bay. On the opposite cliff, white stone buildings with red clay-tiled roofs and lush inner gardens formed a bright mosaic in the sunlight.

  “Do you have to go in to Council?”

  I turned, smiling even before I saw Olivia, her skin dark and vibrant as she exited the shade of the house and came to my side. Behind her, Jaer and Pallin scampered out into the sunlight, laughing. Pallin, seven, reached out to grab her sister, but Jaer—two years younger and much smaller—eluded her, ducking and screaming with delight as Pallin gave chase.

  “You know I do,” I said, taking Olivia into my arms. I kissed the top of her head, breathed in the scent of her hair. “The Council has many important decisions to make.”

  “More important than me?” She said it lightly, mocking me.

  “Hmm . . . you ask dangerous questions. More dangerous than the Council.”

 
She laughed.

  Down on the water, there was a muffled sound, like an explosion, echoing against the cliffs.

  “What was that?” Olivia said. Pulling free from my grasp, she moved closer to the stone balustrade, leaned on it.

  Frowning, I joined her.

  Another muffled whumph, and another, the sound distorted as it bounced against one of the stone walls of the channel.

  Olivia shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s coming from the channel,” I said. I glanced toward the wharf, toward the Council chambers, the largest stone building in Venitte, its spire reaching into the sky, then back toward my wife.

  Olivia turned at the tone of my voice, her eyes flicking toward the children. “Should I . . . ?”

  Before I could answer the unasked question, ships began pouring through the mouth of the channel. Black ships, their hulls glistening in the sunlight as they threw up spume before them. They lanced into the bay, sails all unfurled, bellied out with the wind, moving at a fast clip. First five appeared, then ten, then twenty, spreading out on the bay as they breached the channel. And still more came.

  “Cerrin?” Voice taut, strained, worried. “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The lead ships encountered the first Venittian, and fire leaped out, arched across the water in a sizzling ball and exploded in the Venittian’s sails. Olivia gave a startled cry, the fear tight and hideous in her voice—

  And then suddenly there was fire everywhere, arching up and out from every ship, searing through the sky trailing smoke, striking ship after ship as bells and horns began to blow, as birds scattered with harsh cries, fleeing, the ships in the harbor doing the same, turning ponderously and skimming back toward the inland wharf, toward the city, the Council and the walls that could protect them.

  But the fire wasn’t restricted to the ships. Great sheets of it flew high, bursting with deadly intent in the bright mosaic of houses on the cliffs on the far side of the bay.