bc

Chronicles of the Last Days

book_age0+
detail_authorizedAUTHORIZED
53
FOLLOW
1K
READ
serious
straight
like
intro-logo
Blurb

Myril’s world is sinking before her eyes. Foreign ships flood into the harbor and Anamat’s citizens flee across the sea while the governor helps foreign emissaries steal from the city’s guilds.

The guildmaster enlists Myril to help save the Chronicles of Anamat from the pillagers and their local allies. Her old friend Darna returns to the city strangely pregnant – if that’s what it is. She’s also about to become the ruler of Tiadun. Meanwhile Iola, the ambassadress, is determined to fly to the dragons’ realm again, even if it kills her, and the Defenders have more troubles than they can manage.

Will any of them survive when the waters rise again?

This book concludes the Anamat/Dragonsfall series.

chap-preview
Free preview
Chapter 1-1
Chapter 1It was a perfect late spring day. Scrapplings made their way to Anamat on dusty feet, the wet prows of trading ships plowed into the harbor, and the markets stirred to life again after the long rainy winter. Only Iola, the ambassadress in her high-walled temple, felt a chill as the sun rose, or so she said later. She felt the earth tense beneath her back. Myril, despite her so-called gift of prophecy, felt nothing unusual that morning, though she knew that a change was coming. The dragon Tiada had died, or gone to join the deepest stream, which is what a dragon does when they die to the world on the surface. Myril knew that Salara had changed and become a wild dragon. Those things would surely change human life on the surface of the dragons’ land, as the dragons changed the faces they showed. As the first rays of the sun touched the rooftops of Anamat that morning, golden with thatch and red with shining tiles, Myril did not think so much of the dragons. Soon, the gates would open and the farmers would come to the street where she lived, seeking healers and soothsayers. She was known for her herbs and simples. Bottled cures lined the back wall; the window looked out on the street, quiet in the early morning. Up and down the street, some of the signs advertising cures or fortune-telling were missing, taken down as the trading season came in with more foreigners than ever. Many soothsayers and healers had grown wary, though they were not yet as frightened as the young priestesses in the lesser temples. Some of those were going to Ara’s Landing, hoping to be safe there, safe from the foreign sailors who did not see their dignity. It didn’t take a prophet to see that their refuge could not last. One of the new soothsayers at the top of the hill had taken her sign down the past quarter-moon day, after a Cerean sailor demanded that she spread her skirts for him. She had never even been a priestess. The foreigner came in uninvited, when she was alone. She had a knife on hand and dissuaded him from raping her, but his intrusion left her shaken, as it would anyone. Some go on despite their fears, but that young woman left, gone into the villages or the hills, her freshly carved sign gathering dust in her vacant room. That was even before the change in the face of the earth. Myril shook herself back to the present. The Chronicler had summoned her, and it was time to go, before the streets became too clamorous. Instead of dressing in her usual plain brown tunic, she put on the inky robes of her occasional guild. She latched the door behind her and bound it with a charm. On the street, she kept her head down and her hood up, but it wasn’t enough to block out the clank and clatter, the chatter, the shouting from far away. She took the second-most-direct route to the Chroniclers’ hall, up the hill to the Pentangle, then to the right, back down again along a quiet residential street, and across the canal to the northeast quarter and the guildhall. She was crossing Guild Bridge when the stones faltered beneath her feet. For one glorious moment, there was total silence. The air was empty; she floated free. Myril’s eyes – never as sharp as her second sight – saw a blurry shift in the skyline as she regained her balance. The smell came next, the smell of ash and fire and earth cutting over the familiar wet, green smell of the canal. Then the earth screamed. The sound was far away and so quiet that no one else in Anamat would have heard it, but Myril thought that the earth screamed. Then again, maybe it was only the sound of the dragon Salara exacting revenge as his mountains sheared into the sea. Water came next. Waves crashed on the shore of the harbor, shook the breakwater, and rolled over it as the mountains far away shook like the pebbles. Still, the city stood. Myril could see it holding firm as the earth beneath it shuddered, but a huge wave rolled up from the sea, crashing foamy along the banks of the canal below. Myril sprinted for the shore before it splashed past the bridge. She ran until her bones shook and the sound of the rushing water almost drowned out the shouts and screams around her. At a corner, she stopped, heart thundering, and leaned back against a building to gather her breath. Up above, the sky was still clear blue. Light, white clouds stretched over the mountains, but to the west, one cloud was gray, another fire. She couldn’t see through the haze over Na’s peaks with her ordinary sight, so she knew that whatever was happening sprang from the dragons. Despite Anara’s absence in the sky, Myril had felt that already, but seeing those clouds made her sure. The sound of the waves roared up again, and she felt as if the water was chasing her all the way to the guildhall door. Inside, guild members and the green apprentices hurried in every direction, running to secure the scrolls that had rolled off their shelves. Folios slid across the slippery floor; ink had spilled. The guildhall was on high ground, so the water hadn’t reached it, and the roof and walls still held. It was safe for the moment. Myril went straight to the master’s study, where she found the master of the Chroniclers’ Guild standing still as a statue in the midst of the building chaos, his white beard as unruffled as ever. His eyes flicked to Myril as she entered, but he said nothing at first. “You sent for me?” she said. “Myril,” he said. “Help me put these things back on the shelves.” The ground had quieted. When Myril stopped to listen, she heard only human voices and birdsong in the air and other ordinary sounds along the ground. The faraway earth had stopped screaming. She bent to pick up the fallen scrolls and set them back in their proper places. It didn’t take long to put the study back in some semblance of order. An apprentice appeared at the doorway as she set the last scroll back in its place. “Is there anything you require of us?” he asked the master. The guildmaster shook his head, but his wave of dismissal stopped in midair. His hand trembled slightly. “Secure the hall,” he said. “Admit no one except our own guild members and apprentices. Set everything to rights, then go back to work on the catalog.” The apprentice bowed. “Will that be all?” The guildmaster tipped his head, as if listening. “Tea for myself and my guest, if there’s any to be had.” “Certainly.” The apprentice bowed again and hurried away. The guildmaster sank into his leather-backed chair with a long sigh, like the sigh of the sea running back down the canals outside. There was a long silence before he spoke again. “I will have to go to the palace,” he said, looking down at his folded hands. One of the elder guildsmen peeked in. “Pardon me,” he said. “I thought you should know that the canal water has risen. It’s halfway up the banks.” “Move all of the scrolls from the lower level to the attic, then,” the guildmaster said without looking up. Myril’s guild-fellow nodded and went off, looking distressed. “Will the waters rise higher?” the guildmaster asked. It took Myril a moment to realize that the question was directed at her, in case her other sight had told her anything. “I don’t know,” she said, after a moment’s reflection. “The canals might spill over their banks, but not by much. They won’t go much higher this season, I don’t think. The earth feels quiet now. The waters will keep to their new bounds until the dragons shift the earth again.” “And when will that be?” “I don’t know. They have their own law; they’re not like us, as anyone knows. Midsummer or Midwinter are the likeliest times, but I can’t foresee anything.” “It’s a wonder they’ve taken so long to shake us off,” he mused. “They haven’t shaken us off yet, but –” She shook her head and shrugged. “There’s so little we can do. Why did you call me here yesterday?” “Well, I called you here when I thought that the foreign traders were the worst of our worries. Only earlier this morning, that was the most I was worried about.” He let out a mirthless chuckle. “If the waters rise further and soon, then none of this will matter; the Chronicles of Anamat will be doomed by the dragons themselves.” “Maybe we can still save something?” Myril said. Another head appeared in the doorway. “The lower level is still dry,” a young man reported. “Good,” the guildmaster said. “Clear it anyway.” While the young man’s footsteps padded away, the guildmaster motioned for Myril to close the door. After that, he spoke very quietly. She could hear him well enough, but it was hard to block out the worried voices from outside, both in the guildhall and on the streets. “Are you aware of the emissary from the Cerean king?” he asked her. “Of course. At least, I know of him. I haven’t seen him.” “He’s a fat young man, arrogant and grasping. Girizit, they call him.” The name sounded familiar, but Myril avoided the company of Cereans and of anyone except those who came to her door. She couldn’t possibly know him, could she? “He’s about your age, or even a little younger, quite young to hold such authority to trade on the king’s behalf, but he speaks our language well. Perhaps the king thought it would gain favor with our young governor to see someone even younger than himself, a peer of sorts.” The governor was only a few years older than Myril. His mistress Tiagasa had been initiated as a priestess the year before Myril had been. Tiagasa had never taken a petitioner other than the future governor, despite her ambition to become ambassadress. Life as the governor’s mistress seemed a much better place for her to grasp the power she desired, but she still harbored a grudge against the temple and the Aralel for choosing Iola over her. The guildmaster had fallen into a pensive silence. “Go on,” Myril said. “Apparently, part of Girizit’s task here is to bleed us of what little wisdom we have left. The governor is collecting scrolls and histories, allegedly for the palace library. I believe they will be sent as tribute to Cerea.” The earth had just been shaking beneath their feet. The day before, when that quake had been only the faraway impulse of a provincial dragon, handing over Theranis’s wisdom to Cerea would have been appalling. It still was, but the rising waters made it seem like a much smaller indignity. The whole record of Anamat’s existence could be swallowed up at once if the earth and sea shifted again, and it would; the only question in Myril’s mind was when it would happen. She felt the world sitting unsteady on the backs of the dragons. “What do they want with our histories?” she asked. “Surely, the Cerean king can’t read them.” The guildmaster leaned forward, resting his bearded chin on one hand. “I’m not entirely sure of that,” he said. “The Cereans have a cold understanding of the world. They seem blind to the power of the dragons even as they grasp at it, and yet their rulers display more wisdom than our princes do, or at least more desire for knowledge.” “That wouldn’t be difficult.” Theranian noblemen aspired to a shallow image of manhood. They embraced swordsmanship and hunting, and eschewed the priestessly arts, leaving reading and writing to their secretaries. “The Cereans value learning. They understand that it gives them power, more power than their clumsy swords do. If the Cerean king does not read our language, his scholars, including this Girizit, do.” A chill ran through her. “And what do they do with that knowledge?” “Having killed their own dragons long ago, I believe they mean to chain ours by using the knowledge in our histories, coupled with the dragon stones they’ve already stolen. They want to enslave our dragons.” “As they enslave their women.” “Yes. Exactly.” The guildmaster sat back. “I don’t like to think that they could do it, but if it’s possible – and I’m not saying it is – I don’t want to help them.” “If they try, even if they fail, it will anger the dragons. This rising water, this morning’s quake, will be like nothing,” Myril said. There was a pattern to the change stirring beneath them. She didn’t know quite what it was, but she could feel it gathering. “Meanwhile, they’ll learn that they need priestesses to reach the dragons.”

editor-pick
Dreame-Editor's pick

bc

Bear’s Mate: Shifter Spice

read
22.4K
bc

Wild Heat: A Motorcycle Club Romance Bundle

read
523.8K
bc

Bridgewater County Series Boxed Set: Books 1-6

read
123.3K
bc

Urban Vampire

read
99.0K
bc

The Bear’s Curvy Mate

read
12.6K
bc

Beast

read
9.8K
bc

The Room Mate

read
76.6K

Scan code to download app

download_iosApp Store
google icon
Google Play
Facebook