Gods, demons, and even more dragons . . . Jenn Lyons' powerful epic fantasy continues in The Memory of Souls.
The longer he lives, the more dangerous he becomes . . .
The city of Atrine lies in ruins. And now Relos Var has revealed his plan to free the monstrous god, Vol Karoth, the end of the world is closer than ever.
To buy time for humanity, Kihrin and his friends need to convince a king to perform an ancient ritual. The power released would imprison the god for an age to come. But this may come at too high a price for the King of the Vane, as the ritual would strip his people of their immortality. As a result, some will do anything to prevent this ritual – including assassinating those championing this solution.
Worse, Kihrin must come to terms with a horrifying possibility. It seems his connection to Vol Karoth is growing in strength . . . but what does it mean? And how can Kihrin hope to save his world, when he might be the greatest threat of all?
The Memory of Souls is the third book in the thrilling series, A Chorus of Dragons, which begins with The Ruin of Kings. Continue the action with The House of Always.
'What an extraordinary book . . . everything epic fantasy should be: rich, cruel, gorgeous, brilliant, enthralling and deeply deeply satisfying. I loved it' – Lev Grossman on The Ruin of Kings
'Delightful and entertaining . . . it’s a fast, pacey read' - Locus Magazine
‘Lyons raises stakes to a fever pitch' - Publishers Weekly
Release date:
August 25, 2020
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
576
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When the gods descended on the Atrine ruins, they interrupted an assassination.
Thurvishar hadn’t perceived the danger at first. Yes, soldiers had been pouring through the eight open magical portals set up on a small hill next to Lake Jorat, but he’d expected that. A mountain-size dragon had just finished tearing the second-largest city in the empire into rubble and fine quartz dust, with an incalculable body count. Morios had attacked the army right along with the civilian populations—populations now panicked and displaced. Of course there were soldiers. Soldiers to clean up the mess left in the attack’s wake, soldiers to help with the evacuation, soldiers to maintain a presence in the ruined, rubble-strewn Atrine streets. And the wizards? They needed to render Morios’s body into something so discorporate the dragon couldn’t re-form himself and start the whole messy apocalypse all over again.
To add fuel to the fire, the damaged dam holding back Lake Jorat, Demon Falls, had begun to fail. When the dam blew, Lake Jorat would empty out. Millions would die, if not in the flooding itself, then by starvation when Quur’s breadbasket1 found itself twenty feet underwater. The wizards would focus on stopping such a catastrophe.
In hindsight, Thurvishar had been too optimistic; he’d assumed the Quuros High Council would care about saving lives.
Janel’s fury alerted him, furnace hot, a bubbling cauldron usually locked away behind a fiercer will. He felt Kihrin’s anger a moment later, sharp and lashing. Thurvishar paused while discussing spell theory with an Academy wizard and looked up the hill. The same soldiers he’d ignored earlier had set up a defensive formation. They weren’t dressed as normal soldiers. These men wore the distinctive coin-studded breastplates of a particular sort of Quuros enforcer.
Witchhunters. He couldn’t see who they surrounded, but he made assumptions.
Thurvishar debated and discarded opening a portal to their location. That might provoke the very reaction he sought to avoid.
So instead, he ran.
What he found when he arrived qualified as a worst-case scenario. No one tried to stop him from pushing to the front. He was, after all, Lord Heir to House D’Lorus. If anyone had a right to be here, he did. More witchhunters gathered in this one area than he’d ever seen before. They didn’t stand alone either; he recognized Academy wizards in equal number as well as High Lord Havar D’Aramarin and several Quuros High Council members.
All for three people: Kihrin D’Mon, Janel Theranon, and Teraeth. Neither Kihrin nor Janel held obvious weapons, and while one might argue they didn’t need them, with this many people?
The outcome seemed predictable.
“What is going on here?” General Qoran Milligreest pushed aside several witchhunters as he strode into the confrontation’s center.
“It seems our thanks for helping is to be a prison cell.” Janel clenched her fists.
“Vornel, what’s the meaning of this?” Milligreest turned to a Quuros man without acknowledging his daughter.2
Vornel Wenora, High Council member, snorted at the general’s question. “I should think it obvious. We’re dealing with a threat to the empire. Which is what you should have done.”
“Threat to the empire?” Qoran pointed toward the giant metal dragon’s corpse. “That is a threat to the empire. The impending rupture of Demon Falls is a threat to the empire. These are children!”
Thurvishar scanned the crowd. The witchhunter minds stood out as blank spaces, as did some wizards and all the High Council. But where was Empress Tyentso?
Vornel shrugged. “So you say, but all I see are dangerous people who are a grave threat to our great and glorious empire. This is the man who killed the emperor and stole Urthaenriel. Then we have a witch who flaunts her powers in public and a known Manol vané agent. Yet for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, you’ve done nothing to put a stop to them. Why is that, Qoran?”
“Because I understand priorities!” the general replied.
Thurvishar raised an eyebrow at Vornel. While the accusations had merit, they missed the truth by an astonishing margin. Plus, none of the High Council members were giving Thurvishar so much as a glance, when he was the far more appropriate target for their anger. Vornel’s accusations seemed disingenuous, less true outrage than a savvy councilman sensing a perfect opportunity for a power play, and too arrogant, petty, or stupid to temper his ruinous timing.
Councilman Nevesi Oxun, old and thin with silvering cloudcurl hair, stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter, Milligreest. By unanimous vote—”