Before Tristan could answer, Brandan—silent until now—stepped forward. “The Chorl. They’ve seized control of Bosun’s Bay and the surrounding area.”
No one in the audience chamber moved. I’d known that the Chorl could not stay on the Boreaite Isles for long, but I hadn’t expected the expansion to the coastline to be so swift. Not after the attack on Amenkor.
But then the full import of what had been said sank in. The Chorl must have seized control of Bosun’s Bay before winter to have halted Avrell’s couriers. They’d already begun the invasion of the coast before coming here, or at least seized enough land to live off of during the winter. I didn’t remember Bosun’s Bay being in the Ochean’s plans when I’d filtered through her memories while she was on the throne. But then I wasn’t focused on what she might have done elsewhere; I was focused on her and what she intended for Amenkor.
Amenkor had been a distraction, the promise of the Fire and the throne’s power too much for her or Haqtl, the leader of the Chorl priests, to resist.
But now, Haqtl and Atlatik, the captain of the Chorl warriors, must have returned to their original plan.
“How far away is Bosun’s Bay?” I said abruptly, breaking the silence.
“A map!” Avrell snapped to one of the guardsmen at the door, “Find Nathem and have him bring a map of the Frigean coast.”
“And find Captain Catrell,” Westen added.
One of the guardsmen nodded and left immediately. Everyone else shifted closer to the table, William moving to my side, close enough I could feel him. I glanced back at Keven, who shook his head grimly.
“How did you find out about Bosun’s Bay?” Avrell asked.
Brandan glanced toward Tristan, who nodded for him to answer the question. He straightened, one hand holding the emblem around his neck. “Lord March noted that a significant portion of our ships were being lost over the course of last summer. He sent out search parties. They discovered the Chorl on the Boreaite Isles and in Bosun’s Bay just before the ocean became too rough to navigate for the winter.”
“And you didn’t send word?” Westen remarked, although it was clear he already understood what had happened.
“Of course we sent word,” Brandan snapped, then stopped himself. His hand had clenched on the disk about his neck, but he forced himself to relax, to breathe. “We sent warning by land. Obviously, the Chorl had infiltrated farther inland than we estimated. They must have stopped our couriers.”
Westen nodded.
“Is that how your ship got damaged?” Eryn asked. “Were you attacked by the Chorl?”
“No,” Tristan said. “The Reliant wasn’t part of the search effort, and we knew enough to bypass Bosun’s Bay on our way here. The trade routes were a little trickier to sail through without meeting up with the Chorl, but we managed.”
“Then where did you get attacked?”
Tristan met Westen’s eyes squarely. “Just south of Temall.”
Avrell swore.
“Did you meet any other ships on your way here?” I asked. “We sent a few trading ships south, with an escort, a few hours before your ship was sighted.”
Tristan shook his head. “No. We didn’t see anyone. But we were staying close to shore because of the damage we sustained. If your ships headed out into the trading lanes, we wouldn’t have met.”
At that moment, Nathem entered, a bundle of rolled parchment in his arms, followed immediately by Captain Catrell.
“Nathem,” Avrell spat, motioning his Second to his side, while at the same time Captain Catrell said, “What’s going on?”
As Avrell and Nathem began sorting through the maps, William leaning forward to help, Westen answered. “The Chorl have apparently taken over Bosun’s Bay, and Captain Tristan here says that he encountered the Chorl as close to Amenkor as Temall.”
Catrell frowned.
And then Avrell cried, “Here,” and slapped a map down on the table.
Everyone leaned forward, Nathem and William placing weights at the corners of the paper to hold it down, Avrell pointing with one hand to a location on the edge of the coast marked with a heavy black dot, script off to one side. “Here’s Amenkor,” he said, to orient everyone. His finger followed the edge of the curve of coastland marked out in black, blue shading to one side for the ocean, greens and yellow to the other. “Here’s Temall, about five days’ south of here by ship. Another three days beyond that is Bosun’s Bay.” Both Temall and Bosun’s Bay were marked with smaller dots.
Avrell’s finger halted, but my gaze continued down the coastline, until it came to rest on Venitte, almost the same distance from Bosun’s Bay as Amenkor. And, like Amenkor, it was marked with a large black dot, the city’s name scrawled across the parchment in curved letters. It lay in a jagged cut in the land, like a tear at the edge of the paper, a large island filling up the space left open by the tear. Two channels of water surrounded the island, then sliced inland toward Venitte itself.
I thought about standing on the cliffs above Venitte’s harbor, watching as the Chorl first attacked fifteen hundred years ago, shivered as their ships slid into sight through the channels on both sides of the island. I felt Cerrin’s initial confusion, followed swiftly by horror and rage as the first volleys of fire arched up from the Chorl ships and fell onto the Venittian ships in the harbor and the houses perched on the cliffs.
William brushed up against me. I caught his concerned look, frowned, and shook my head.
“We ran into the Chorl ship just past Temall,” Tristan said, bringing my attention back to the map, pointing to the ocean just to the south of the town. “About here.”
Catrell frowned. “Just one ship?”
Tristan nodded, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. “One was enough to almost take us. If Brandan hadn’t been on the ship . . .” He trailed off, and Brandan straightened slightly.
“I had to use the Sight to force them off,” Brandan explained.
The tension that had spiked and then faded when Brandan had been announced escalated once again. A wariness that I could feel in all of the guardsmen in the room . . . and surprisingly, from Tristan himself.
Tristan seemed to be of higher rank than Brandan, and yet he feared the Servant. A fear that wasn’t evident on his face, but could be felt easily on the river.
“I’m surprised you escaped at all,” Westen murmured. And in his voice I heard the echoes of what Mathew, Erick, Laurren, and the rest of the doomed crew of The Maiden had endured when they were attacked by the Chorl. I’d forced everyone to live through those events using the throne, forced everyone to feel their desperation, their pain, their deaths.
Tristan’s irritation escalated at the suspicion hidden in Westen’s voice, in Catrell’s gaze. A suspicion I felt as well . . . until I realized why Tristan’s ship had survived, why Brandan’s presence had turned the Chorl away when Mathew and his crew had never had a chance.
“Did the Chorl ship have any Servants?”
“What do you mean?” Brandan interjected.
The tension between the two groups heightened.
Drawing in a steadying breath, I said, “We sent out a ship of our own to find out why the trading ships had vanished. It was destroyed, completely, because the Chorl ships it encountered had Servants aboard, women with the Sight who could control fire.”
Tristan’s eyes went wide, and he swore under his breath, his hand making a reverential motion across his chest that reminded me of the Skewed Throne gesture the people of Amenkor used when they saw me.
Brandan rolled his eyes. “No, they did not have any Servants on board.”
“That we know of,” Tristan added more seriously. I’d seen the same reaction at the mention of fire from almost every captain and sailor I’d met on the wharf.
Brandan shifted, his brow furrowed, eyes locked on the map.
&nb
sp; I frowned.
“If they’d had Servants on board,” Eryn said, her voice hard, “they would have used them.”
“It must have been a scouting party,” Catrell said, diverting everyone’s attention back to the map. “They must be interested in Temall.”
“With good reason.” Avrell leaned back from the map, his hand splayed on the table for support. “Bosun’s Bay and the surrounding area may have had enough resources to keep them through the winter, but not through that and the spring as well. It’s not that large of a port. Even if they began farming,” he pursed his lips at this thought, the idea obviously striking an unpleasant chord with everyone from Amenkor, “they’d still need more resources. Temall is the closest option.”
“What do you mean, ‘if they began farming,’” Brandan said sharply.
“The Chorl aren’t here to raid,” I said. “The islands where they come from were destroyed. They need land, a place to live. They’re here to conquer.”
“And it appears,” Westen said quietly, gazing down on the map, at the town of Temall, “that they’re heading north. To Amenkor.”
* * *
North. To Amenkor.
Westen’s words from the night before echoed in my head as I made my way to my chambers to wash after a morning dealing with the daily disputes brought before the Mistress as well as the dispatches Tristan had brought from Venitte, with another visit to Ottul, whose almost daily lessons in the common tongue of the Frigean coast—a task I’d assigned Marielle—were advancing, if at a slow pace, and with training sessions both with Westen and the Seekers as well as Eryn and the Servants. My muscles ached from all the practice, my body weary from the exertion.
And from lack of sleep.
I was still dreaming. Of Cerrin mostly, but occasionally of some of the others of the Seven who had created the Skewed Throne. Not every night, and most not as vivid as that first dream of Cerrin attacking the Chorl Servant outside Venitte in the olive groves and wheat fields. But all of them were emotionally draining. I’d woken numerous times with tears streaking my face, a hard knot of grief buried in the center of my chest. Other times I’d jerked out of sleep in rage, usually after dreaming of Liviann or Garus.
Except they weren’t dreams, I thought as I entered my rooms, pulling off my sweat-dampened shirt, followed by my breeches, using the motions to stretch the tightness out of the muscles in my shoulders and lower back, wincing slightly. I poured water from the waiting pitcher into the basin on the table against one wall, soaked a cloth, and began to wipe the grit and grime from my face and body.
No, they weren’t dreams. They were memories, with the same connection and intensity I’d felt when I’d been bound to the throne, the same realistic feel as—
I halted, washcloth held against my neck, staring off into the middle distance.
They were memories. Memories of the Seven and the Chorl attack on the Frigean coast almost fifteen hundred years before. Memories that, when I’d been connected to the throne, I would have been able to access if I’d wanted.
But the throne was dead. I shouldn’t be able to access any memories now at all, except those that I’d relived while connected to the throne before the Chorl attack. These were new memories. They contained images and places and people and events I hadn’t known about when the throne was destroyed.
But I knew them now.
I tossed the cloth aside, dressed in the breeches and white shirt that had been laid out for me on the bed, and jerked open the door to the outer corridor, startling the guardsmen waiting there.
“Mistress?”
“Come with me.”
I halted before the throne room door, laid one hand on the polished wood between the heavy bands of iron. The room had been closed off since the Chorl attack. I’d come a few times in the days after, to check on the throne, to touch it, to search for the faintest flicker of life in hopes of filling the cavernous hole where the throne had been inside me.
But when there’d been no flicker, no tingling beneath my touch after a few days, I’d abandoned it and hadn’t come back. There had been no reason to come.
I shoved, the heavy doors swinging open, and entered. The long room was dark, the light from the corridor touching the edges of the first set of columns that lined the sides of the walkway, but nothing farther. Guardsmen slid past me and began to light the torches to either side, the candelabra and bowls of oil scattered throughout the room. As flickering orange light suffused the room, I moved down the walkway, to the dais at the far end where the throne sat, a banner marked with the three slashes of the Skewed Throne on the wall above it. Ascending the three steps of the dais, I halted before the throne itself and shuddered.
The room felt . . . empty. The first time I’d entered, I’d been stalked. An energy, a presence, had filled the chamber, prickled against my skin, the voices of the throne manifest, whispering to me, rustling like autumn leaves against stone, unintelligible but there. And on the dais, the throne had shifted, warping from shape to shape, always changing as the multitude of personalities took control, the motion hurting the eyes. I’d hated it, hated the texture of the room, the feel.
But then I’d seized the throne myself, taken control of those voices, become part of that presence that had prickled my skin. Instead of itching, the presence had become a power, a living, pulsing connection that had extended throughout the city of Amenkor, a presence that throbbed in my blood, that I drew in with each breath.
Now, I reached out and touched the rough granite . . . and felt nothing. No whispering voices shivering through my skin. No thrumming of life, of the city, beating with my heart. The throne remained a single solid form: rough rock, a stone seat with a rectangular back, unadorned.
Except for a crack.
I reached out, traced the crack with one finger. As long as my forearm, from elbow to the tip of my finger, it cut through the back of the seat like a scar, starting at the top, on the left, and angling downward to its center.
The emptiness of the room hurt, a pain deep and hollow. A pain as deep as what I’d felt when I’d found the white-dusty man’s body on the Dredge, along with his wife, killed by Bloodmark to spite me. The pain trembled, threatened to break free as I pressed my palm to the throne, felt the grit of the stone against my skin, the pocks in its surface. I willed the stone to shift, to shudder, to change—
I felt Eryn enter the room behind me, felt her approach the dais and halt at the bottom of the steps.
“Anything?” she asked, and I heard an echo of my pain in her voice. She’d been connected to the throne far longer than I had.
I let my hand drop, drew in a breath against the thickness in my chest. I shook my head. “Nothing.”
She sighed. “There’s nothing you can do, nothing any of us can do.”
“But I’m dreaming,” I said. When Eryn didn’t respond, I turned, repeated, “I’m dreaming, Eryn. I’m reliving memories from the Seven—Cerrin, Liviann, Garus, Seth, all of them. Memories that, unless I’m still connected to the throne, I shouldn’t have.”
Eryn’s brow creased and she came one step up onto the dais before halting again. “But you don’t feel anything when you touch the throne?”
“No.”
“What about the city? Do you feel anything from Amenkor, any connection—”
“Nothing,” I said, cutting her off. “I didn’t feel anything when I went out onto the jut to the watchtower either, and before, that was at the edge of my limits.”
Eryn remained silent, but I could see her thinking, could see it in her eyes as she held my gaze.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said, breaking the heavy silence.
Eryn drew in a breath, glanced toward the immobile throne, then exhaled heavily. “Unless . . .”
“Unless what?” I said, too sharply.
“Varis,” Eryn said, coming up ano
ther step on the dais, “the Seven created two thrones. You know this, you witnessed their creation. You were there. What if you aren’t getting these memories from this throne, what if the two thrones were connected in some way and you’re getting the memories—”
“From the other throne,” I finished, the idea catching like fire in my mind. If we could find it, if we could use it to replace the Skewed Throne, if we could use it to defeat the Chorl again. . . . “But where is it? What happened to it once the Seven created it?”
I caught Eryn’s gaze, saw her shake her head with regret. “I don’t know.”
I thought about everything I’d experienced while connected to the throne, every memory of the Seven I’d lived through then, or dreamed of since. “It was intended for Venitte,” I said urgently. “It was intended to help protect them from the Chorl—from any attacking force—just as the Skewed Throne was intended to help protect Amenkor.”
“Then why didn’t Venitte use it?” Eryn asked.
I growled in frustration, feeling as if the answer were at the tips of my fingers, that the memories were hovering just out of reach. “I don’t know! Everything I remember of the Seven came from before the thrones were created . . . or from what the Seven experienced through the Mistresses of the Skewed Throne after it came to Amenkor.”
“Because the Seven sacrificed themselves to create the thrones in the first place,” Eryn said, nodding in understanding. “There wouldn’t be any memories in the Skewed Throne for the Seven after that. There would only be the memories of the Mistresses who took control of the throne itself.”
I felt some of my initial excitement dying down, doused by the realization that what I knew of the Skewed Throne wouldn’t help. “So how do we find out what happened to the other throne?”
Eryn sighed. “I don’t know. But there must be some record of what happened to it somewhere. Have Avrell and Nathem start looking through the archives. Perhaps they can find some mention of it in there. And you can ask Captain Tristan or Brandan Vard. They’re from Venitte. If the second throne was truly intended for Venitte, perhaps they will know what happened to it.”
The Throne of Amenkor Page 80
