The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  And when it felt as if I could no longer contain it, when it felt as if my body would explode with the contained power, I released it toward the gates, toward the Wall, with a wordless roar.

  Chapter 16

  The hammer fell with ponderous and invisible weight, and the gates shattered. Wood beams as thick as a man cracked with a dry snap, like tinder. Metal shrieked as it twisted, wrenched from stone, the torturous sound piercing the shocked cries of the men behind me, blending with my own roar of frustration, of sheer anger.

  But the Wall—Deranian’s Wall—the stone that had stood for thousands of years . . .

  The Wall itself resisted.

  I had enough time to sever the conduits that fed the hammer, enough time to draw in a sharp breath, eyes widening in shock—

  And then the backlash of power from the Wall, a shudder that rippled away from the gates in a wave, struck.

  I flinched, flung my hands up before me, expecting the wave to hurl me backward into the mass of waiting guardsmen, expecting it to suck the breath from my lungs, to hit me with killing force because I hadn’t had time to erect a shield to shunt it to the side. I heard Gwenn shriek, heard Heddan gasp in dismay, felt a dagger of guilt sink deep inside me for acting so rashly, for carelessly wielding a power I’d never controlled before—

  But with cold smoothness a shield appeared, stretching from building to building across the Gutter’s street, the river solidifying in the space of a breath. I felt the wave ripple up the shield’s length, wash past overhead, its horrible, angry weight pressing down on me like heavy cloth, smothering me, crushing me. I heard the horrifying rumble of stone as the buildings to either side took the brunt of the recoil of power and shattered beneath it, splinters of stone hurtling down into the street. I felt a sliver of pain as one nicked my neck, heard screams and groans from behind, tasted blood on the river. Dust filled the air, the grit cloying, and without thought I sucked it into my lungs, instantly began coughing, shielding my eyes against it. . . .

  And saw Ottul, one hand raised, her eyes closed, their corners pinched against the strain of holding the shield as the wave of power washed overhead.

  When the rumble of settling stone faded, she opened her eyes and her gaze fell on me. Lowering her hand, she bowed her head. The gold rings in her ears glinted with the diffuse sunlight. “Ochean.”

  I didn’t respond.

  To one side, dust beginning to settle, someone gasped, “Mistress’ tits.”

  I shot the man a glare, then turned.

  The gates stood open. One side hung by a twisted hinge, skewed inward, its center cracked and indented as if it had been struck with a battering ram the size of a wagon. The other door had been completely ripped free from the stone.

  The Wall itself seemed whole. Only a few cracks had appeared in the outer edges of the arc, a chunk no larger than my head ripped free in one spot. The most serious damage had occurred where the iron of the hinges had been embedded in the wall.

  And to the Gutter’s buildings on either side. The backlash had collapsed the building on the right, and only two walls remained of the one on the left. They’d been reduced to heaps of rock.

  “What happened?” Erick demanded, moving up to my side with Brandan.

  “There’s more to Deranian’s Wall than just stone,” I said flatly. “It protected itself.”

  “I wonder if the Chorl encountered the same thing at the main gates,” Brandan said.

  Erick’s eyes narrowed as he took in the damage, then fixed on something on the far side. “There are bodies.”

  Something twisted in my gut, but before I could react, Erick had motioned the men forward. They surged over the strewn rubble, over the blocks of stone that had skittered out into the street, over the dust and shards of wood at the gate. After a quick glance to make certain that my Servants had survived—my gaze flickering over their somber faces—I followed, close on Erick’s heels.

  The guardsmen fanned out on the far side. In the near distance, horns sounded. I could see the Council chambers, Lord March’s smaller palace behind, the barracks for the Protectorate. Men battled near the main gates, jagged lightning occasionally punctuating the sky. Daeriun’s forces must have hit the gates while we were entering the Gutter. Smoke and dust rose into the air from that direction, and farther away, beyond the Wall to the north, where Lord March battled Atlatik.

  But here, at the Gutter’s gate, everything was quiet.

  Because everyone that had been stationed at the gate was dead.

  “They were killed hours ago,” the commander of Sorrenti’s guard said from where he knelt beside one man’s body. The neatly trimmed beard of the dead man was matted with dried blood, the stain a flaky brown. He’d been stabbed in the neck.

  Sorrenti’s commander leaned back, his eyes flicking over the debris inside the Wall, over the bodies.

  There were at least twenty within sight.

  “I’d say they were killed when the battle first started, when the Chorl made their appearance in the Stone Garden,” he said. Then he caught my gaze, Brandan’s. “The assassinations of the Council members, the appearance in the Stone Garden, the elimination of the guards here—it must have been a coordinated attack.”

  “By who?” Erick asked. “Who killed these men if the Chorl were in the Garden or at the main gates?”

  Standing beside Erick, Baill shrugged. “Does it matter? Someone with forces inside the Wall.”

  “Demasque,” I said, with certainty, with fury, even though I had no reason to believe it. “And Lady Parmati.”

  No one answered. But when a thundering roar echoed from the main gates, followed by battle cries, all of the guardsmen tensed.

  “Where do we go from here?” Brandan asked.

  I straightened. “The Council chambers.”

  All eyes turned toward the immense building, toward the battle raging in its courtyard, a seething mass of men, indistinguishable from one another at this distance.

  “Then let’s get moving,” Baill said, and I could hear the grim determination in his words, could feel his anticipation of the coming fight on the river. It smelled of old blood, of sweat, and strangely, of fresh earth and loam.

  Erick barked orders—the orders repeated by Baill’s lieutenants at Baill’s nod.

  And then we ran.

  No one spoke, everyone’s eyes fixed on the battle in front of the Council chambers. There was no need to speak. Everyone could see that the plaza in front of the building contained Venittian guardsmen, the Protectorate mixed with one of the Lord’s or Lady’s personal men. I couldn’t tell which Lord or Lady, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the doors to the Council chamber were being defended by the Chorl, the area in front clogged with their brightly colored clothing, their fierce faces, the tattoos bold in the sunlight, their blue skin striking. They fought with a raw intensity, with no mercy, and unlike their attack on Amenkor, they fought in relative silence—no battle cries, no ululations. Because they didn’t want to draw attention to this fight, to this battle. The real battle. Atlatik and the forces outside the Wall—the forces attacking to the north and in the harbor—they were the diversion.

  Haqtl was the true threat.

  If he took the throne, he would take the city.

  And as we drew closer, as the screams and grunts of the men grew louder, clearer, as the clash of swords and armor became sharp and piercing, as the pool in the center of the plaza came into view and I saw it stained with blood and clogged with broken bodies, I realized it was going to be harder to get into the Council chambers than I’d thought.

  Because on the river, power gathered, and fire bloomed, men shrieking as they fell back from the door, those closest to the building twisting as they were engulfed by flames.

  I spat a curse, picked up speed, felt Erick and Baill, my shadows to either side, adjust to the
new pace without thought.

  “What?” Erick gasped. He wasn’t winded, but his voice was tight and clipped with effort.

  I shook my head. “Haqtl has Servants.”

  “Of course he does,” Baill responded, his voice laced with condescension. “They helped take down the gates.”

  I nodded, would have cursed my own stupidity if I hadn’t been focusing on the doorway, on the Chorl, on the ebb and flow of the battle.

  We were almost upon the rear of the Venittian forces. Bodies littered the street, the trampled gardens and grounds to either side.

  Our forces pulled in tight.

  “Straight to the doors,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Whatever the cost.”

  I sensed both Erick’s and Baill’s acceptance, didn’t turn to catch their nods. Reaching for the river, gathering it before me in a wedge shape, I thought of what Baill had said at the Gutter’s gate.

  This was going to be bloody.

  And then we reached the fringe of the fighting force, a battle cry rising from the men on all sides, a warning to the Venittians already fighting, most at the rear clutching wounds, faces haggard with shock.

  I didn’t wait for them to get out of the way. I pushed the wedge on the river forward, thrust the Venittian men to either side, heard them cry out as the wall of force I’d created hit them from behind and shoved.

  My forces plowed into the opening, the Venittians stumbling away to either side, or flung there.

  In the space of one heartbeat, two, I found myself facing one of the blue-skinned Chorl warriors.

  I’d already drawn my dagger, couldn’t remember when. Without stopping, without even slowing my forward momentum, I slashed the dagger across his eyes, felt the blade connect with skin, grate against bone, heard the warrior scream as my other hand connected with his chest, grabbed the colored, silky cloth—purple and gold—and wrenched him out of my path, still alive but blinded. I had no time to think about him, the Chorl crushing forward. I took the next man in the gut, the dagger punching in and out in a single, sharp motion as my hand found the back of his head, pulled his body down and into the thrust and then shoving him down farther, to the flagstone underneath already littered with bodies, the white stone stained black-red. I heard Erick grunt to my left, tasted his blade on the river as it cut, as it slashed, felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into the ebb and flow as my dagger sank into a neck, slipped free smoothly, grated past ribs, pierced armor and cut sinew and muscle on arms, shoulders, faces. To the right, Baill bellowed, his roar filling the plaza, echoing against the walls. An answering roar came from behind, from the Band, from the Venittian guardsmen and the Protectorate, men surging forward. Lightning bit into the Chorl forces, plied by Brandan. I felt it on the river, had sunk so deep the entire plaza had coalesced into a single moving force with its own currents, its own tides. Like the ocean.

  And like the ocean, I felt the Venittian forces behind beginning to swell, to build as they rallied and pushed forward against the Chorl.

  The Chorl began to solidify in reaction. The Chorl Servants began to link, the conduits snapping into place with a visceral shudder.

  Ottul barked out a warning, her voice behind, distant. Marielle shouted, “Mistress!”

  I grunted as I shoved my dagger up into a Chorl warrior’s arm-pit, his sword arm dropping limp to his side as he howled into my face, splattering me with blood and snot. Jerking the dagger free, I stepped back, let him fall, felt Erick take my place without pause, without direction, the motion smooth, practiced.

  Marielle reached for me on the river, Heddan stretching out from the opposite side. All of the sessions in the palace garden at Amenkor slid into place as we linked.

  Gwenn began to join the link, from farther back, near where Ottul’s voice had come from, but I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see, blocked her efforts using the river. I smelled her confusion, her disappointment, bitter, like smoke and ash.

  “The Servants!” I shouted, not certain she could hear over the battle, over the screams and the clash of weapons. But her confusion faded.

  Then there was no time. The Chorl Servants’ power escalated . . .

  And released.

  Fire blasted upward, no longer targeted toward a single location. This fire spread out from the Chorl center in a wave, rising high over the Chorl warriors’ heads, arching outward, cresting as the flames reached their peak and began to boil downward.

  Down toward the Venittian forces, toward the Band.

  I gazed up at the falling flames. Not a ball of fire like on The Maiden. A sheet of fire, falling like rain.

  Men to either side screamed as they saw it, began to break the lines, to retreat.

  Brow creasing, I drew from Marielle and Heddan and threw up a shield.

  The fire struck; I gasped as it bore down, sank down to one knee, and gritted my teeth beneath its weight, hands flying up over my head, palms flat, as if I were pushing against the fire myself. It sizzled as it met the shield, hissed in fury as it boiled up its length as the Servants that controlled it sought the shield’s edges, until the entire front ranks of Venittians and the Band were covered in a seething, roaring blanket of fire. Men cried out, first in fear as they had on the practice fields, then in shock and wonder. Heat seeped downward, turned my face waxy, sweat dripping from my chin in a stream. The ranks that had a moment before been on the verge of collapse hesitated.

  And into the hesitation I felt the river form into a scintillant sliver of power, felt the dagger of force release.

  Gwenn.

  A scream erupted from the Chorl forces as the dagger struck. A scream of rage, of pain, and the power that fed the fire overhead jerked as one of the conduits was severed.

  Before anyone could react, two more daggers flew into the Chorl forces—from both Gwenn and Ottul—followed by two more cries of pain.

  The Chorl Servants couldn’t defend themselves. They’d poured all of their strength into the fire.

  The force behind the fire weakened. One Servant dropped out, her conduit cut, the energy shunted into a shield. Another held her conduit tight, in desperation, but another of Gwenn’s daggers took her in the throat.

  The awful weight of the fire overhead lifted. The flames shuddered as the power that fed them began to retreat, to pull back and regroup.

  But they didn’t retreat fast enough.

  Lurching to my feet, I shoved my own shield upward and forward with a growl, tilting it—

  And sent the retreating fire—its strength drained, the power that had controlled it dissipating—cascading down onto the Chorl warriors.

  Screams pierced the plaza, instant and fierce, as fire rained down from above. Half of the Chorl forces were engulfed, the quarters too close and too packed for the warriors to retreat, to flee. They were trapped between the building and the Venittian forces.

  The black smell of burning flesh, of charred, crackling skin, slammed into the river, drove me back a step as the backwash of wind from the feeding fire pushed against my face. Oily smoke rose, and the leading edge of Chorl broke.

  The Venittians and the Band hesitated a heartbeat, two . . . and then surged into the disintegrating line.

  “The doors!” Erick barked.

  I spun, immediately spotting the Council chamber’s open doorway and the relatively clear path the fire had purged to it.

  “Baill!” I barked, but he’d already seen it. With chilling precision, he stabbed the Chorl warrior he fought through the heart, shoved the body off of his blade, and barked, “Warren! Patch!” and nodded toward the door.

  The two men he’d singled out whistled sharply, and suddenly Erick and I were surrounded by twenty bloody, sweating men, all from the Band, all with swords drawn, a few with obvious nicks or wounds, none of them serious.

  “Mistress,” Baill said, gruffly.

 
“Go.”

  The men surged through the break. Erick and I followed, stepping over charred bodies, some still on fire, past the last desperate struggles between the Venittians and the Chorl, past the fallen corpses of two of the Chorl Servants, their green dresses stained black with blood from Gwenn’s daggers.

  We entered the grand foyer and huge inner chamber, Chorl wounded and dead lining the walls. Without asking, moving swiftly, Baill and the members of his Band cut the throats of those still alive, a few struggling to raise their swords, their wounds too grievous for anything but a token defense.

  “Where to?” Baill asked as he cleaned his blade using one of the dead Chorl’s brightly colored shirts.

  I nodded to the inner doors. They’d been closed, but I could feel the power of the throne already, could feel its presence, could hear the faintest of whispers, a hissing of agitated voices, like the skitter of dead leaves across cobblestones.

  I shuddered.

  The Band formed up to either side of the doors. Erick stayed at my side, his jaw clenched, his hand clutching his Seeker’s dagger, the knuckles white. I tried to catch his gaze, but he was too focused on the doors, on the inner chamber.

  At Baill’s nod, Warren shoved against the doors, hard, the cords in his neck standing out with the effort.

  Finally, he gasped and drew back, shaking his head. “It’s barricaded on the inside.”

  Erick’s brow furrowed, but before he could respond, before Baill could even turn, I said, “Allow me.”