I moved a chair a few paces in front of Erick and sat down.
Erick looked at me across the short distance between us. His eyes had hardened, as if he’d steeled himself for some horrible task and wasn’t expecting to survive. “Are you certain this will work?”
I dove beneath the river, felt Erick’s true fear—fear that he was hiding behind a mask of bravado—wash over me, felt Marielle’s more exposed fear behind me. Where Marielle sat, the river felt more dense, as if the eddies and currents had gathered there more closely. She hadn’t constructed the shield yet, was waiting for me to define the boundaries where I would work.
I smiled at Erick in encouragement, then said, “No.”
He frowned in annoyance and darkened his glare, but I felt his amusement.
Shifting my position on the chair, I pushed myself deeper into the river, dove down to the sphere of White Fire at my core, and held there. The voices of the throne behind the Fire were animated, pushing up as close as possible to the flames, but they didn’t feel malevolent, weren’t screaming and thrashing and trying to break free. Instead, they were thronged together like a crowd of gutterscum children surrounding a street-talker telling stories on the Dredge, shoving each other aside for a better position. And they were talking, arguing with each other, scoffing at and berating each other’s ideas. I could smell the unfamiliar spice of Cerrin, could feel his presence at the back of the crowd, standing with five others. Liviann, the older woman who smelled of oak and wine, stood at the forefront, close to the Fire, watching intently but not participating in the conversations of the other voices around her.
These were the Seven I’d witnessed create the thrones when I’d claimed the Skewed Throne. The Seven who had poured their energy—and in the end, their souls—into their creation. I’d felt them die, the demands of the thrones too great to withstand.
The other voices in the throne made way for them, deferred to them. For these other voices, what I was attempting was something new, something the majority of them had never seen before. Some of them wanted me to succeed; others wanted me to fail. I could feel their shifting intents. For now they were mostly curious.
But from the Seven . . .
From the back, I felt Cerrin nod encouragement, felt the same from the rest of the Seven as well.
I shrugged aside their attention, focused on the Fire, on the presence on the river that was Erick. Then I halted.
I wasn’t certain how to do this.
I felt the Fire pulse, felt some of the voices chuckling as they sensed my hesitation. Angry, I reached out and forced the Fire higher, forced the voices to retreat slightly. They hissed in irritation.
I focused again. “I’m ready,” I said, and the river responded as Marielle drew its currents tight, weaving them into a strong shield that enveloped Erick and me where we sat.
Concentrating, I tried to slice a portion of the flame off of the main barrier, tried to use the river as I would my dagger, a sharp blade that could sever and cut. But the Fire bent away from the blade, as if pushed away by the blade-eddy I’d created. The Fire wasn’t rigid enough for the blade to slice into it, too amorphous and flexible for such an attack.
Eryn had been right.
I tried a few more times, using various thrusts and stabs Erick had taught me during my training in the slums, then newer techniques taught by Westen, but none of them worked. The Fire was too resistant.
A few of the voices snorted in contempt and began to wander away, their attention shifting elsewhere. Those that remained began calling out suggestions, some of them trying to help, others jeering and making crude comments.
Cerrin shifted forward as the crowd thinned, coming up to stand behind Liviann, who remained close to the front, still watching intently.
I frowned, let the blade-eddy dissipate back into the general currents of the river.
“What’s wrong?” Erick asked, an edge of tension in his voice. I could taste his sweat, salty and pungent. The inactivity was making him more nervous. His cold, calm bravado had begun to fray.
“Nothing,” I said. “My first attempt didn’t work. I’m going to try again.”
I thought about what had happened when I’d tagged Eryn. Then, I’d been terrified. I’d shoved at the river, pushed it hard, with enough violence that I’d torn a piece of the Fire away. It hadn’t had time to react, to bend and adjust to the currents. And I’d shoved everything away, in a wide wave, with no focus.
Maybe the blade-eddy was too focused.
I shifted so that both Erick and the Fire were in view, then began gathering the river before me, tightening it so I could punch it outward. I could feel the pressure build as I channeled more and more of the river into the punch, heard Eryn’s voice from the training sessions as she explained how to tighten the flows, how to make them more intricate and thus more dense.
“Get ready,” I said, and heard the strain in my voice.
Erick heard it too. “Is this going to hurt?” he asked suddenly.
“Perhaps.”
I was just about to release the energy, felt it pulsing under my control, when Cerrin barked, Don’t!
I staggered, barely kept hold of the pent-up energy before me, then snapped, “What!”
Through the river, I sensed Erick’s confusion, felt Marielle shift forward on the settee in concern.
That won’t accomplish anything. It will only hurt the Seeker.
I pulled back on the energy, allowed some of it to disperse back into the river. “It worked once before.”
I could feel Cerrin’s contempt radiating from behind the Fire. You were lucky before. And Eryn had her own defenses from the Sight. This Seeker has nothing.
His contempt and condescension sparked an anger deep down inside me. Cerrin sounded like Bloodmark, his words harsh and bitter with ridicule.
And yet he’d stopped me from harming Erick. Bloodmark would never have done that.
I let some of my own anger tinge my voice as I asked, “Do you know how to do this?”
I felt his presence pause behind the Fire, felt the oak-and-wine-scented woman’s attention focus on him.
You were always more talented with Fire than the rest of us, she said.
The other members of the Seven had shifted forward as well, the other voices in the throne crowding around them.
She does have more Talent than any of the previous Mistresses . . . at least within the last few hundred years. This from a woman, younger than Liviann, her hair long and black and straight. I remembered her from the creation of the throne, remembered her struggling to get free.
Yes, Atreus, another man said, his voice sharp, his eyes like flint, but she is certainly no Adept.
She’s not an Adept, no, Garus, Cerrin said. But she does have the Talent.
Do we trust her? Liviann asked.
The silence stretched. I began to think Cerrin wouldn’t answer, began to grow irritated, but then:
Yes.
He shifted forward, ahead of the others, moving to the edge of the Fire.
“How do you know how to do this?” I demanded, my irritation at being excluded from their conversation, at only being given half answers both here and on the tower before I Reached for Eryn, coloring my voice.
Because before the Seven created the two thrones, I worked with Fire. That was my strength. That’s why I can escape the net you have placed over the voices, why I could help you earlier when you sparred with Eryn. The net can’t hold me because I can slip through the Fire instead, bypass it.
I drew breath to ask him about the Talent, about being an Adept, about how he could use the Fire to bypass the net—
But I let the breath go with a shudder.
“So how do I tag Erick with the Fire?”
Cerrin hesitated, then said, Like this.
I felt him reach out acros
s the net Eryn had shown me how to use to contain the voices, slip through the protective barrier of the Fire itself, and heard the other voices within the throne gasp. A few tried to take advantage, tried to stretch the same way the man had, reach out from their prison, but they screamed when their reach touched the Fire. The oak-and-wine-scented woman stepped forward but halted, watched carefully but did nothing.
The man’s essence stayed behind the Fire, but as I watched, the river between the Fire and Erick began to change beneath his direction. A whirlpool formed, swirling like a funnel, the mouth at the edge of the Fire, the tail trailing away, snaking back and forth slightly as it elongated, extending out until it reached Erick. I heard Erick gasp as it touched him. But not with pain. In surprise, his body tensing, then relaxing.
Now push the Fire along the conduit, Cerrin said. When I hesitated, he added, Now! I can’t hold the conduit forever.
I let the ball of energy I’d been holding in reserve release, turned toward the Fire and pushed it outward, not with the sharp edge of a blade but like a shield. It flared higher, and a tendril of it coursed out along the conduit, down the funnel.
As soon as it reached the end, touching Erick, who sucked in another shocked breath, Cerrin closed off the mouth of the funnel, neatly cutting through the tendril of Fire. What had been contained in the conduit surged down along the collapsing length until it settled into a steady flame near Erick’s heart.
I felt Cerrin’s reach draw back behind the barrier, felt him beginning to withdraw.
“Wait!” I said, no anger or irritation in my voice now. When he paused, I said, “Thank you.”
He seemed surprised. Then he nodded, eyes closed, the gesture somehow intensely formal, and turned away. As he retreated, the rest of the Seven closed in around him, the other voices surging forward in animated discussion.
I turned to Erick, verified the Fire still burned inside him, although muted as it had been with Eryn here in the city, then pulled myself up out of the river.
Marielle had moved and now stood behind me uncertainly. She’d let her protective barrier drop. “Is everything all right?” she asked when I looked over my shoulder. “Who were you talking to?”
I shuddered, felt exhaustion settle into my muscles. “I had some help from one of the voices in the throne.”
“Something definitely happened,” Erick said. “I felt a tingling sensation, and a bitter cold. But I don’t feel anything now.”
I smiled. “I think it worked. We’ll have to test it tomorrow. Send you out of the city, perhaps to check up on the timber operation to the east.”
“And then what?”
Erick rose when I stood, touching his chest over his heart as if looking for damage.
“Then we talk to Borund about a ship,” I answered.
* * *
Trees. I’d never seen so many, so close together.
They closed in around Erick and his escort of guardsmen as they entered the forest east of the city. As he rode beneath the canopy into the forest’s shadow, I felt the heat of the sun drop, the shadows closing in, and drew in the spicy scent of pine as Erick breathed in deeply and held it. The air was cool and sharp and dark, laced with greenery, with lush earth and sunlit dust motes.
It was a scent I recognized. Cerrin. The elusive incense that I had not been able to recognize before was the scent of the shade of the forest.
Something stung the back of Erick’s neck and he swore, swatting at it. He slowed his horse to a walk, patted its neck as he murmured to it, its ears flicking back in answer. Behind him, I heard the two other guardsmen’s mounts slow as well.
Then, reluctantly, I let the protective Fire within Erick go, pushed myself up on the currents of the river—reduced here so far away from the presence of the throne—until I broke through the tops of the pine trees and could look west, toward Amenkor and the white blaze that would guide me back to myself.
I’d experimented as Erick rode east, before he’d reached the confines of the forest. I found that I didn’t need to see the Fire itself as long as I was willing to risk Reaching outward into unknown territory, as I’d tried to do on the tower when searching for Corum, before Eryn pulled me back. All I had to do was Reach out until I had the Fire within sight, then I could find my way back.
I streaked toward Amenkor, the world blurring below me, slowed as I entered the city, and felt the power of the throne settling back around me.
As I flew toward the throne room, I spotted another Fire, in the gardens of the palace.
Eryn.
I halted, hovered high over the stone path. Below, Eryn was speaking with Avrell as they moved sedately across the garden, her voice low. Avrell was frowning, his expression dark.
I hesitated a moment. But only a moment.
I dove down and settled into the Fire inside Eryn.
“—she needs to blockade the harbor!” Eryn said. “I don’t understand why she’s not doing anything.”
“Perhaps because she doesn’t feel a few burn marks on a shipwrecked deck is enough to warrant such a course of action,” Avrell answered.
Inside my cocoon of Fire, I stilled, shocked.
Eryn had gone to Avrell after all, even after I’d asked—no, ordered—her not to.
“But it’s more than that,” Eryn continued. “Look at all the ships that have gone missing from Amenkor and the surrounding cities over the last year. Almost a dozen, if your sources can be believed. That’s more than mere piracy and weather. And then there’s the vision.”
Avrell halted. “What vision?”
I hissed, shock changing over into anger. I pushed to the edge of the Fire, willed Eryn not to speak, almost reached out to seize control, to force her not to speak.
“There’s a portion of me still trapped inside the throne,” Eryn said. “That shadow of me showed Varis a vision of the city totally destroyed after an attack.” Eryn turned to face Avrell. “The attack came from the ocean, Avrell. That, along with the missing ships, the fire on the deck, the fact that she sensed the people attacking in the vision were using the Sight. . . . We need to protect ourselves from whatever is out there. That must be why I blockaded the harbor before, to protect the city from an attack.”
Conflicting emotions raced across Avrell’s face. Fear, doubt, suspicion.
In the end, he settled on almost no expression at all, his stance reserved.
“Why hasn’t Varis come to see me about this?” he asked.
Eryn snorted. “Because she’s afraid you’re trying to replace her just as you replaced me.”
“Why would she think that?”
“You had the guardsmen waiting for her inside the throne room before, didn’t you?”
“That was because I didn’t know what was happening!” he spat. “If I’ve learned anything over the last few years it’s that when it comes to the throne you can never be too careful. As soon as I realized that Varis was still in control, I called the guardsmen off!”
“Not soon enough for Varis.”
I drew back from the Fire as the two halted, Avrell’s eyes hard with anger. I felt Eryn force herself to relax, her voice to calm.
Avrell suddenly turned, moving swiftly across the garden, back toward its main entrance.
“Where are you going?” Eryn called after him.
Avrell halted, looked back over his shoulder. “To see the Mistress.”
Eryn stilled, her breath held, her heart stuttering. A moment of panic shivered through her.
Then the anger kicked back in, the certainty that she was right, honed by over twenty years of being the Mistress herself.
She moved to follow.
I pulled myself up out of the Fire, catching one last glimpse of Avrell passing through the archway of the garden into the palace before I sped back to the throne room, the White Fire blazing up around me. I gaspe
d as I reentered my body, felt Marielle’s presence in the throne room, along with the usual four guardsmen. I’d had them wait inside the throne room this time, since Erick wasn’t present.
Marielle took one hesitant step up to the dais where the throne sat, reached a hand out unconsciously before stopping herself. “Mistress? Is everything all right? Did it work?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm, even though it vibrated with underlying anger, with the power of the throne. “Everything worked fine. Erick’s inside the forest.”
I motioned to the guardsmen, the one in charge stepping forward. Before he’d left, Erick had introduced him, had told me he could be trusted.
“Keven.”
“Yes, Mistress?”
“The First of the Mistress will be arriving in a moment, along with the former Mistress, Eryn. I want your men to be on either side of the throne.”
Keven hesitated at the emphasis on “former,” frowned, then said, “Yes, Mistress.” He motioned to the other three guardsmen, ordering two to one side of the throne, the third taking his place beside Keven on the other.
I nodded in approval.
“Marielle.”
“Yes?”
“Stay where you are.”
Marielle turned as the main doors on the far side of the throne room swung open, a guardsman stepping hesitantly inside. He’d been ordered to keep everyone out.
Before he could speak, I said, “Let them in.”
He nodded, then pushed the doors open wider to let them pass.
Avrell came in first, followed almost immediately by Eryn. They moved down the central walkway quickly, coming to a halt just before the dais.
“Forgive me, Mistress,” Avrell said, nodding his head slightly.
“She told you about the shipwreck,” I said without preamble.
Avrell appeared momentarily shocked, but recovered quickly.
I did not watch him. I stared at Eryn, did not try to hide the anger I felt coiling inside me.
“And about the vision of the city burning,” Avrell added.
I stood. The moment my fingers left the throne I felt it begin to twist behind me, reshaping itself into another form. But the sensation no longer crawled across my shoulders, no longer prickled against my skin.
The Throne of Amenkor Page 52