The Falcons have become the empire’s enemy in THE DROWNING SEA, the unmissable sequel to THE BURNING LANDS
Romara Challys and her Falcons are Vestal Knights, who have shed blood to uphold the Triple Empire against the destructive Vyr Rebellion. But now, the Falcons have become the empire’s enemy.
Having learned that elobyne, the magical crystal that empowers the knights, is catastrophically destructive, the Falcons vow to save their world. But speaking truth to power is perilous, and Romara is the empire’s prisoner, facing torture and death at the hands of her former masters. Her comrades, big-hearted Gram, the prodigy Soren, and the erling mage Elindhu, are seeking her rescue, but the forces arrayed against them seem insurmountable.
Meanwhile, her loyal second, Jadyn, and the mercurial thief Aura, are seeking the aegis, an alternative magic, following a path laid down centuries before. But hunting them are Vazi Virago, the Order’s Exemplar, and the fearsome lictor, Yoryn Borghart; who want the aegis for their own devious ends.
The seas are rising, harvests are failing, refugees flooding across borders are sparking wars, and the destructive rebellion threatens civilisation. The End of All Things is coming, the priests and seers say. Coros is doomed.
If the Falcons can’t save their world, who can?
‘Full of nuanced, loveable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with themselves make The Burning Land a compulsively readable adventure not to be missed!’ Sebastien de Castell, author of The Malevolent Seven
Cap San Yarido, Neparia Autumn 1472
It was morning, bright and blue, but all Sier Jadyn Kaen saw was grey. He sat on a boulder beside the sea, beneath an abandoned half- ruined lighthouse on a tiny islet, gazing across the waters at a shabby little port at the southeastern tip of Neparia.
Auranuschka Perafi, his travelling companion, was asleep in the tower. Not long after their arrival via the Shadowland, she’d collapsed on the bed and winked out like a snuffed candle. But Jadyn was too overwhelmed by revelations, impossibilities and loss to sleep.
Their opposite reactions were typical – Aura often felt like another species to him – but now they were bound together by the aegis, the power the ancient Sanctor Wardens had once wielded, even though neither knew what it was or how to use it. He looked again at the note they’d found in the tower above.
To those who follow. If you are a fellow seeker of truth and enlightenment, marked by destiny, as I have been, then you are my soul-kindred, a pilgrim on the road towards revelation.
Journey on, my friend, knowing that I have gone before. We are treading a path laid down long ago by wiser men than me. Perchance, we shall meet along the way.
Seek the Shield of Heaven, where earth kisses sky at the centre of the world.
It was signed by Nilis Evandriel, a man Jadyn had crossed half the known world to find. This was the closest he’d come to the elusive scholar, while he’d lost everyone he loved.
I saw Obanji die; Elindhu and Soren fell into the void, and Romara and Gram are surely prisoners, slated for torture and death.
Going on without them felt impossible, but he was marked for the aegis – by scars burned onto his palms – and so was Aura. There was no going back in any case: the path that had led them here was closed. There was only onwards, and he was increasingly certain that the fate of Coros was at stake.
There’s no doubt any more – elobyne shards are destroying our world, and millions will perish, but our rulers care only about their grip on power and wealth and their own safety.
It was enough to make him weep.
He didn’t, though – Vestal knights were made stoic – so he just stared glassy-eyed at the glistening water, too tired to think. He’d been awake for almost three days, after all.
With a groan, he rose and walked back into the lighthouse.
It was only a short climb, but it felt like ascending the Qor-Espina. At the top he found Aura still dead to the world, sprawled across the only bed. He glanced in the mirror through which they had arrived, which reflected a hollow-eyed man with unruly brown hair, his boyish face too lined for someone yet to turn thirty. His cloak was ripped and bloodstained, his green erling tunic little better.
He unbuckled his shoulder scabbard and propped his two-handed flamberge against the wall, feeling too fragile to deal with any kind of glyma use just now, even to veil himself. It’d break me, the way it broke Romara.
Thinking about her and Gram in captivity was too painful to bear. He replaced Evandriel’s note on the desk where they’d found it, then looked at the sleeping woman. Aura was Nepari, with thick black hair and coppery-olive skin blemished by old nicks and cuts, though she was only about twenty. Awake, she was lively, full of cheek and curiosity, but she’d lived the sort of life that ‘good folk’ deplored, stealing and duping the unwary, even earning money with her body when all else failed. Her morality was not his. Yet fate had thrown them together and her smile sparked something inside him that made him feel like a moth circling her flame. He hoped she might put aside her worst traits and become the person he some-times glimpsed behind her cloak of deviousness.
As if sensing his regard, Aura’s eyes flickered open. For a moment she flinched at waking to find someone looming over her, then her face cleared. ‘Oh, just be Jadyn Knight. Buenos dios. You have sleeped? No?’ She rolled against the wall, leaving room on the narrow bed, and patted it. ‘Come, lie.’
His ingrained decorum and prudery flared up. ‘I can’t.’
She tsked at him. ‘Why? No glyma inside you now, so no danger. Come, lie.’
She was right that he was drained entirely of glyma-energy – and he wasn’t a Knight of the Order of the Vestments of Elysia Divina any more, in any case. But his need to control body and mind remained. Glyma use required total control, and that always failed during sex, with fatal results for the partner. For that reason Vestal knights took vows of chastity. He couldn’t tell if Aura really wanted to bed him or was just teasing, but the loss of Romara and the others was like a stone in his belly. All he wanted was to grieve. Alone.
‘You go back to sleep,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be downstairs. It’s cooler there.’
With that he turned and tramped down the stairs, found a spot against the wall, rolled his cloak into a pillow and closed his eyes. Even though he was drowning in grief, he floated away into the dark.
The Drowning Sea by David Hair is the second book in the Talmont Trilogy and is published by Arcadia in Hardback and audiobook.
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DAVID HAIR is an award-winning writer of fantasy, has been inspired by his travels around the globe. He was born in New Zealand, spent time in Britain, Europe and India. After some years in Bangkok, Thailand, he and his wife returned to Wellington, New Zealand, where they are now settled (for the time being). His epic fantasy sagas THE MOONTIDE QUARTET, THE SUNSURGE QUARTET, THE TETHERED CITADEL TRILOGY and the YA saga THE RETURN OF RAVANA are all published by Arcadia, as is his new fantasy adventure series, THE TALMONT TRILOGY, which started with The Burning Land.
You can find out more about David and his works on his website.
