A sigh, a hint of wine and cheese, of desperation. You have to take control. I can’t hold it any longer.
I shuddered. Control of what?
The Skewed Throne.
I don’t understand. The Fire wavered. I flung it back up, tasted more sweat at the effort, salty and sick.
The throne. That’s what this is, Varis. All of these voices, all of these people. They are the men and women who created the throne, the women who have sat upon it since that creation. All of them—all of their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams. They are the throne. But they need someone to control them, someone to order them, keep them in check.
You control them.
A snort, a sigh. That scent of wine and cheese again. I did control them. But not anymore. Something happened. Something happened to the throne when the Fire passed through it. But it was too subtle a change. I didn’t notice it, not until later, when it was much too late. By then, there was nothing I could do. And the other voices—oh, gods. . . .
Dread bled through the Fire, pooling like oil, thick and viscous. I heard sobbing.
You have to take control, Varis. I can’t hold them together any longer. There are too many. Far, far too many! I barely managed to keep control in the throne room tonight.
I was already shaking my head. No.
You have to. And now the voice was harsh again, cold. The voice of a woman used to being obeyed. You have to take my place, become the Mistress, or Amenkor will fall. I’ll destroy it, without knowing what it is I’m doing. I’ll destroy it, Varis, without meaning to. It’s already started. You have to stop it.
No.
Silence. Then you’ll have to kill me.
I winced, felt sweat prick the corners of my eyes. I blinked back tears. And if I kill you, what happens to the city?
A pause. Something beyond the Fire shifted, a shuddering, gathering of forces that was vaguely familiar, something I’d done on the river many times, only this was much more powerful.
The Mistress pushed herself forward, to see what would happen. For a moment, the voices surging all around the Fire quieted, expectant.
The city will survive, the Mistress said with a heavy sigh, the energies shifting back. But barely, and not as it is now, not as Amenkor. It will be changed, completely. And many will die.
The voices hesitated, as if stunned, but then roared back to life.
Why?
Because the city needs a ruler. I’ve done so much damage—
No, I broke in. Why me?
Silence. Because you have the Sight, what you call the river. Because you know how to survive. The woman paused. And because the Fire changed you as well. I felt it before I pushed you onto the throne, but I didn’t recognize it. The Fire is protecting you. I can sense it clearly now. It has to be you, Varis. I don’t think anyone else can handle the throne anymore. It’s too powerful. It will kill anyone else. It has killed everyone else. Avrell tried with others that had the Sight, many times, but the throne overwhelmed them all. It crushed them. Killed them. But you have the Fire to protect you. They didn’t.
Her voice, so soft and clear at the beginning, had become strained.
I’m not going to be able to hold them off much longer, Varis. I felt a surge on the other side of the Fire, like a punch. The voice gasped. Oh, gods! I can’t—
Then the voice was lost, torn away violently. I reached out, tried to hold on to her, my breath caught up short.
At the same time, a shudder ran through the Fire again and I was forced to hold the Fire steady instead. I stood behind it, frozen, feeling suddenly empty, drained, and lost. Abandoned.
Despair washed over me. I was trapped in my own little niche.
And then I thought about the Mistress.
She’d given me a choice.
I listened through the Fire to the voices. Thousands of them, howling and jabbering. Their noise increased, roaring even higher as they assailed the Fire. I felt it beginning to give. They wanted me, needed me. I could feel them pulling, trying to draw me in and consume me.
I shuddered.
Kill the Mistress, or take the throne.
There was no choice. Not in the end. Not if I could save the voice, the woman whose throat had already felt the touch of my dagger. Not if I could save Amenkor at the same time.
I rested my head forward, sighed heavily, then looked out into the black maelstrom that was the Skewed Throne, the thousands of voices that had sat upon it, that had become it. The thousands of voices that could consume me utterly, as they’d consumed the women Avrell and Nathem had tried to place on the throne before me.
For a moment, I heard those women screaming, so hard their own voices tore their throats. I felt them convulsing, muscles spasming, twisting them, contorting them. I tasted their blood as they bit out their own tongues, gouged out their own eyes, clawed their own faces.
Then I drew in a deep breath, steadied myself, and dropped the shield of Fire, exposed myself completely to the river, to the throne.
I didn’t even have time to gasp. The throne pounced and sucked me in.
It was like the time I entered the tavern behind William. The sensations—the sounds and sights and smells—overwhelming. I thought I would be crushed, but it was infinitely worse. Instead, I was picked up by the maelstrom of voices, tossed about on the wind of their noise, turned and twisted until I was completely disoriented. My breath came in short little gasps and I felt my chest constrict, my throat tighten.
And then the images began. Only they were more than images. They were parts of the voices, parts of their lives.
And I didn’t simply witness them, I was forced to live them.
A scream and I stared across a wide round room made of black stone toward Silicia a moment before she collapsed to the floor, a trickle of blood snaking from her mouth where she lay. But there was no time for concern. The power in the room was too great, shuddering beneath our control. I winced as it stabbed a dagger of raw hate down my left side, the pain visceral, enough to make me stagger, but I held firm. My gaze flicked around the room, toward the five others that still stood with me, encircling the two thrones that stood in the center of the room.
The power grew, surged higher, oppressive and dark, and as one, those of us that remained focused the power on the thrones, concentrated it, wielding it like a sword or hammer.
Sweat broke out on my brow, and another sheeting dagger of pain coursed down my side. I gasped, felt my hands clench into fists, felt my back arch as every muscle in my body pulled taut. But still I forced the power down, compacted it, squeezed it into the granite of the two thrones.
Thunder rolled through the room, vibrated in the obsidian floor. Someone else cried out, the shout cut short. Garus, I thought, my love. A different pain shot through my heart, but I couldn’t turn to see him. Not now. The power was too intense, the construction of the two thrones almost complete. A moment more, just a moment, and we would be finished. . . .
Something slipped, a barrier dropping away as the power culminated, crested, and suddenly it began to funnel into the thrones, fast, faster than we had calculated. Those remaining in the group gasped as one, and through the sudden funneling roar of energy I felt one of the others—Atreus?—struggling, trying to pull herself out of the construct. But it was too late, far, far too late.
The funneling of power increased, surging forward, sweeping down and down until it split into two distinct vortices, one for each throne, the power seeping into the simple stone of the two thrones, saturating them, and still the thrones wanted more.
I began to feel it pulling at me, felt myself caught at its very lip. With a gut-wrenching churn of despair, I knew none of us would escape. The thrones needed too much. But I began to struggle anyway, like Atreus, tried to draw myself up over the edge of the funnel, the whirlpool of energy. New pain shot into my side, paralyzed my left arm with a burning tingle. I collapsed to the floor, juddered there, seizures racking my body. My head pounded into the black st
one. I felt blood seep, felt my hair grow matted, felt warm coppery wetness slip down my back.
Then the funnel took me.
I screamed, my roar echoing in the cavernous room, and for an instant I saw my lifeless body crumbled to the stone, saw my empty eyes, saw my face stained with blood, my silk shirt soaked, the fine yellow stained a deep red.
I had a moment to think, We are the last. What have we done?
And then I gasped, the vision tattering away as I wrenched myself from the maelstrom.
I had time for a single desperate breath, a single desperate thought—Two thrones?—and then
Someone wrapped their thick-fingered hands around my throat from behind and squeezed.
I gagged, hands flying up to scrabble at the heavily-muscled forearms, managed to suck in a strangled, weak sliver of air—
And then the muscles in the arms bunched and the man flung me into the wall to the right. I struck the rough eggshell-colored stone hard, my head cracking against an edge, and then I was falling, slumping downward, my vision spinning.
It’s dark, I thought, staring up into the night sky. Through blurred vision, disoriented, I noticed stars, saw the edge of the palace. I recognized the architecture: one of the balustrades before the palace, on the promenade. Flames from the oil sconce flapped raggedly in the wind, like a banner.
Then someone kicked me, the pain sharp, drawing me up out of the daze, and I screamed, the terror I’d felt an hour before as the strange White Fire swept over the city returning. I could feel the city surging in my blood, could feel its terror, and I screamed again as the foot dug deep into my side, rolling me over onto my stomach.
The blood-pulse of the city thrummed in my ears, and beneath that the thousand voices of the throne, all screaming, all horrified. But I still held them under control, still contained them.
Then the hands returned to my throat, crushed it closed. I gagged again, felt the hands shift until only one held me by the neck, fingers large enough to squeeze out all but the barest of breaths. The other hand began tearing at my robes, ripped them back from my shoulders, the man behind me, pressing his weight down hard into my back, grunting with the effort.
The hand at my throat lifted me roughly, my back arching. The other hand reached around and cupped my exposed breast, then squeezed it with bruising force.
“This,” a ragged voice hissed in my ear, spittle flecking my cheek, “is for refusing me.”
My eyes widened in shock as I recognized the voice.
Neville.
Neville twisted my captured breast viciously, then thrust me hard to the stone of the portico above the promenade, hand still tight across my throat.
A fumbling of clothes, a shifting, and I felt night air against my exposed legs. Blind spots began to appear in my vision and I sucked in a hard breath under the grip of Neville’s hand.
And then he thrust, penetrated with a guttural, visceral grunt of pure pleasure, and I screamed, screamed so hard my throat tore, his hand jerking my head so far back I could no longer breathe.
The scream cut short. The blind spots wavered and grew as he thrust again, crying out. Something tore, deep inside, and I felt blood, but the blind spots were widening, reaching out to engulf me. Another thrust, another tearing, and the voices of the throne inside me screamed
I spun away, caught and pulled and throttled by the maelstrom.
Panic began to set in. I felt myself fraying, felt everything I knew—the Dredge, the wharf, Amenkor—losing cohesion, tattering and ripping under the force of the voices.
I was losing myself to the throne. I couldn’t control it.
It was going to win.
I stood on a tower overlooking the night harbor. Light reflected on the water from lanterns on ships. Lights glowed in the windows of the houses below the palace.
A breeze touched my face and I lifted my head to meet it, closed my eyes.
In the darkness of my mind I could hear the throne, could feel the entire city resting below me. It throbbed and flowed, beat with its own pulse. A living thing that I could feel in my blood. Amenkor.
I smiled, drew in a deep satisfied breath of clear, salty sea air.
And then, far out over the sea, there was a pulse of power.
I opened my eyes, the smile fading away. I watched the horizon.
An invisible wave, like a ripple on a pool of water, rushed out from the ocean, brushed past me with a gust that pushed me back a step. I blinked at it, frowned at its taste. Something powerful, something immense. Something greater than the throne itself. Older. Ancient.
I waited. Dread stirred in my stomach, thickened in my throat.
In the back of my mind, the voices of the throne paused.
Some of them recognized the taste of the power, but not what it was for. One of them knew it personally, had seen it before.
It had spelled her doom.
I leaned forward, hands resting on the top of the tower. I waited.
There.
The western horizon was tinged with white, as if the sun were beginning to rise.
But the sun rose in the east.
My hands tightened against the grit of the stone wall.
The white light grew, spread across the sky, a wall of pure white Fire. It swept in from the sea, swift, stretching from the ocean to the clouds, immense and horrifying.
The voice in my head that had seen it once before cowered before it in gibbering fear.
The Fire struck the bay, surged through the harbor, seared its way forward, utterly silent. It swallowed up the ships, swallowed the docks, scorched onto land, up toward the palace, sweeping forward with swift, cold intent.
I gasped the moment before it consumed me, stepped back—
And then it filled me, burned down to my core, wrenched me open and exposed me, exposed all of the voices of the throne. For a moment, everything was silent, the voices stilled for the first time since they’d tossed me on the throne to see if I’d survive. I tasted the Fire, felt it burn deep, deeper, felt it judge me.
I felt its purpose. Nothing to do with Amenkor, nothing to do with me. It was residual energy, the remains of an event so powerful it had stretched across the ocean, burned across the sea from a distant land. The consequence of a magic that no one in the throne knew the intent of, that was totally unfamiliar. It was nothing to us.
I felt it beginning to fade, felt the voices of the throne returning to normal.
Then something inside the throne twisted and tore. Pain lanced up from my stomach into my throat and head and the Fire left me, passed on, sweeping across the city behind and onward, toward the mountains. I staggered into the stone wall, felt its rough surface bite into my arms, and almost vomited over the side. Breathing shallowly, I pulled myself upright.
The pain receded, drew away almost as swiftly as it had come.
I frowned, tested the throne, tested the voices. They were quieter than usual, but that wasn’t unexpected. The one that had recognized the Fire was utterly silent.
When I freed her, I found her lying on the steps of the promenade leading up to the palace, her robe torn and ragged about her waist. There were bruises on her neck, on her breasts. And there was blood.
I pushed her back, shuddered at her pain.
The Fire had destroyed her. The guard Neville had raped and killed her over a thousand years before.
I turned and stared in the direction of the mountains. The Fire was a white light beyond their rim, fading even as I watched.
I reached for the city, felt its pulse. I could hear screams already, could see lights appearing in all quarters. The people were panicked, some driven mad. I could feel the disturbance, the throb of the city swift and erratic. It would take time to settle.
But at least the Fire, wherever it came from, whatever it had done, had done no harm here.
I cried out, wrenched myself away from the maelstrom and the memory of the Mistress. My breath came in ragged gasps. More memories surged forward. I saw a
thousand deaths, saw the city burn, the palace gates collapse, walls crumble, the palace rebuilt, the palace expanded, another tier of walls go up, all in a blinding flash. Sunsets roared across my vision, starscapes, gardens, streams, grottoes, storms, lightning flaring sharp and smelling of seared air. I was slapped, choked, knifed, spat upon. I was kissed, hefted up into an embrace, dropped down to a bed, to a rug, thrust to a stone wall, onto the seat of a rattling carriage, onto cool grass. I was held to a wall and lashed, held to the ground and raped as I screamed, moaned and bucked, gibbering in fear. I was tortured, hot iron pressed into flesh, charred and blinded, my toenails ripped out, wood shoved under my fingernails. I was kicked, feet driving into my stomach. I was drowned, water closing up over my head, cold and terrifying and inviting. I heard my mother’s laugh.
I latched onto the memory, onto Cobbler’s Fountain. I latched onto the sensation of water, filling my nose, my ears, muting out the sound of the world, everything collapsing down into a blur of wind, a wash of gray filled with ripples from the surface of the water above. I saw shadowy shapes there, saw sunlight reflected, refracted, dazzling and bright. But that was above the water, removed.
Beneath the water, it was just me. Not the man being sucked into the two thrones at their creation. Not the woman being raped above the steps of the promenade. Not the woman who’d witnessed the Fire from the tower of the palace.
Just Varis.
I felt something else struggling deep inside me, pushing forward. Someone young, no more than six. Someone who had died that day at the fountain, when she had witnessed her mother’s death in the alley at the hands of the red men.
Ash.
The name was no more than a whisper, spoken with my mother’s voice. The name I had been given, that I could not reveal to Erick when he asked. But the little six-year-old girl who had tripped and fallen in Cobbler’s Fountain eleven years before stood beside me now. I could feel her.
We were both drowning. Varis and Ash. We were dying inside the throne, together, as one.
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