From the bestselling author of Oceanforged: The Wicked Ship, AMELIA MELLOR returns with the next chapter of Cori’s story and her quest for the Oceanforged Armour.

Read on for an extract from Oceanforged: The Silent Island.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Guided by a mysterious message, Cori, Tarn and Jem sail north to meet the secretive Loyalists, who will help them on their quest for the Oceanforged Armour.

Instead, the Loyalists warn of a looming disaster. Unless Cori can master all the powers of the Champions before it strikes, Aquinta will be doomed.

The Loyalists believe that a piece of armour may be hidden in Mutemount. But sea monsters once lurked in those waters, and no one who has travelled near the silent island in the last century has ever returned …

**********

EXTRACT

On the distant horizon, where the rosy clouds met their reflections in the sea, an island had appeared.

Cori squinted at it through the spyglass. The warm breeze whipped her dark hair around her face. Beneath her bare feet, Lucky’s foredeck rose and fell with the waves. The motion made the island hard to focus on, but she kept trying. All day, the world around the houseboat had been little else but sky and water. No white sails had come into view. Turtles and seabirds had passed by only briefly. Most of the time, Cori had felt as if she and her two companions were the only living things in all that bright emptiness.

An island meant safety. That smudge of land on the horizon would give Cori and her companions a place to anchor for the night, protected from the wind and waves. If the island was inhabited, they might have the chance to buy fresh food from the locals. And if it was the right island, then she would finally meet the secretive leader of the Loyalists.

A shiver of excitement crept over her. In the Loyalists’ message twenty days ago, they had called her splendid one. They had told her to sail for Whalehead Island in the Blackrocks region. Now she was almost there.

From the rear deck came a panicked cry. ‘The map!’

Cori glanced back at her companions. Jem, a lanky eighteen-year-old, reached uselessly after a pale shape tumbling away in the wind.

Tarn, a boy the same age as Cori, turned Lucky’s wheel to follow the flying paper. ‘Cori!’ he called. ‘Grab it!’

Far ahead of them, the map flapped merrily above the waves.

Cori was a good deal smaller than Jem or Tarn – but her reach wasn’t limited by her scrawny arms. She stretched out her left hand. The gauntlet that she wore gleamed golden in the evening sunlight. She needed only the right gesture and enough strength to use its magic.

Concentrating on the map, she pinched her fingers together.

The map halted in the air, its edges fluttering.

Cori slowly drew the gauntlet back, imagining that she controlled a giant invisible hand that was pulling the map towards her. She could feel the wind trying to snatch the paper, but a breeze was nothing compared to the power of the gauntlet. Lucky sailed towards the map, helped along by his churning flipper wheels. The map hovered over the waves until it was close enough for Cori to pluck it from the air.

Jem cheered wildly. Tarn said, ‘Nice catch.’

‘You know what?’ Cori shouted. Tucking the spyglass under her arm, she straightened the map of their homeland, showing it to her companions. ‘I just saved Aquinta!’

Jem raised her long arms and bowed deeply to Cori, pretending to worship her. ‘Glory to our Champion! Glory to the saviour of the realm!’

‘Guess the quest is over,’ Tarn said. ‘Let’s go home.’ But instead of turning Lucky around to the south-west, he steered them back onto their course.

Cori chuckled and headed for the rear deck.

The gauntlet was not meant for catching windborne maps and hats and dishcloths, although that was useful with a klutz like Jem around. The gauntlet had been forged five hundred years ago for mighty feats of strength and courage by Ladara the Artificer, the first Champion of Aquinta. It was part of the Oceanforged Armour, a collection of artifices made with glister from Aquinta’s earth, shaped with coals as hot as its volcanoes and quenched with the salt water of its seas. Long ago, the nation’s ruling heroes had worn the armour in legendary battles and daring rescues. It had saved more lives – and conquered more enemies – than Cori could count. And the armour had chosen her to carry on the Champions’ noble legacy.

She joked with her companions, but she would be the saviour of the realm someday. Guided by the glowing signet stone set into the gauntlet, she would rescue the rest of the armour from hidden vaults around Aquinta. In time, she would have to overthrow the corrupt and useless Prime Council, who had divided the armour in the first place. She would take the throne as the Twenty-Sixth Champion in history and the first one in two centuries. Then, at last, the order and wealth that Aquinta’s people had known in the Age of Glory would be restored.

Or so Cori had been told by a Loyalist witch in the backcountry of the Blackrocks. But judging from the tales of the Champions before her, zany old sages in the wilderness were the experts on the great destinies of chosen heroes. Besides, the gauntlet didn’t give her much of a choice. The moment that she’d first put it on, it had magically bonded itself to her hand.

Cori climbed down to the rear of the boat and returned Jem’s map. Jem sat on the deck, this time holding the map’s edges in place with her feet. In one hand, she held a complicated instrument for navigation. Cori recognised the compass part and the sundial part, but she couldn’t make sense of the curved ruler or the jumble of glass lenses. Sometimes it seemed like Jem couldn’t make sense of them, either.

‘See anything interesting?’ Jem asked, taking back the spyglass.

Cori glanced at the distant island again. The three travellers had spent many nights of their voyage anchored near islets and sandbars. This wasn’t always comfortable, especially in thunderstorms. ‘I think it’s a proper island,’ Cori said. Then she let her hopes get the best of her. ‘It could be Whalehead.’

‘I can’t promise that,’ Jem said, as she made some tiny adjustment to her instrument. ‘But sailing north-east for two days from our last port at Lock Atoll would put us closer to Whalehead than anywhere else.’

Tarn turned to join in the conversation, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. His round face crinkled as he narrowed his eyes against the setting sun. ‘Where else could we be?’

Jem pointed to some scattered specks on the map.

‘If I’ve miscalculated, we could be somewhere among these wild islands. But that would be all right.’ She rubbed the back of her alarmingly pink neck. While Cori’s skin was amber and Tarn’s was a rich brown, Jem was pale, and she sunburned easily. As a witch, she had some knowledge of healing potions and magical preventatives. As a student witch who had been expelled from her training, she didn’t know enough to make her latest sun-protection experiment work. ‘What we don’t want is to sail past Whalehead and end up out here.’ Her long finger circled the northern region of Mutemount on the map. ‘I’d be nervous heading that way in a Council warship, never mind my Lucky.’

Cori traced the signet stone on the back of the gauntlet. It was hard to tell in daylight, but as they had sailed further north, the jewel had begun to glow again. When she’d searched for the gauntlet, its light had been turquoise. Now, when she viewed it at night, it shone orange, like an ember in a fire. Another piece of the Oceanforged Armour might be hidden somewhere in Mutemount, but she agreed with Jem. Sailing Lucky to Mutemount was about as appealing as trying to swim there.

Ever since the Prime Council had divided the armour and ended the Age of Glory, Aquinta had been crumbling.

Almost a hundred and fifty years had passed since anyone had heard from the people of Mutemount. Halcyon in the east had cut off all travel, trade and communication a few decades ago, but sailors could still approach its mangrove-lined shores. When people sailed for Mutemount, they didn’t come back.

And none of theories trying to explain the disappearances made complete sense. If the volcano in the island’s centre had erupted after thousands of cold quiet years, it could have destroyed all life around it – but that wouldn’t have affected everyone who had gone searching for it afterwards. If Mutemount had been invaded by a country beyond Aquinta, then it would be strange for their armies to stop there, instead of expanding into Nexus or the Blackrocks. A pirate fortress was unlikely, because some boastful, bitter or drunken pirate would surely have given up the secret by now. And a sinister plot by the Prime Council was laughable.

They couldn’t pull off a conspiracy if they tried.

Whatever was causing the problem, it would be Cori’s responsibility to deal with it when she took power. It had become her responsibility the moment that the gauntlet had chosen her.

A high-pitched squawk sounded above them. Cori felt a change in the rhythm of Lucky’s rocking as the boat began to turn.

‘Hey, Tarn,’ Jem said. ‘No birdwatching at the wheel.’

‘Sorry.’ Tarn corrected his steering. ‘I thought he might tell us about the island.’

Cori glanced upwards. A white seabird was hovering just above them. ‘How would a bird know if that’s Whalehead or not?’ she asked. ‘You’ve told me that animals don’t use human place names.’

With a shrill cry, the seabird perched at the top of Lucky’s mast.

‘There,’ Tarn said, sounding pleased. ‘He just asked for some fish guts.’ To the bird, he added, ‘We don’t have any, but you can rest up there as long as you want.’

Like the gauntlet on Cori’s hand and the potions Jem brewed in her kitchen, Tarn’s body contained a high concentration of glister. Many people who were raised on soil rich in the magical element gained unpredictable powers as they grew up. Tarn’s was communicating with animals – although what they communicated was often confusing, like the seabird’s request.

‘You say fish guts like it means something,’ Cori said.

‘It means he’s used to people throwing him scraps from boats,’ Tarn explained. ‘And I think people and boats mean we’re nearly there.’

**********

The sky darkened. The moons rose – first the small pink one, then the big yellow one. As the stars came out, lights began to appear on the island. The beam from a lighthouse was soon joined by the fainter twinkles of lamps and lanterns in buildings and streets.

When they were close enough to see ships in the harbour, Cori wrapped a bandage around the gauntlet, hiding the glowing signet stone and the telltale shine of golden metal. As little as she liked having to dampen the gauntlet’s magic, she knew it was best to keep it hidden from everybody but Jem and Tarn. Most people she met would probably not recognise the Oceanforged Gauntlet as a lost treasure of the Champions, but anyone could tell it was a beautiful and expensive artifice. In the southern Blackrocks, she’d escaped from pirates who would have cut off her arm to take the gauntlet for themselves. Other crooks might want to do the same. And if the Council Guards recognised the gauntlet, she was likely to be arrested and imprisoned as a threat to the Prime Council.

On the other hand, what if the Loyalists didn’t recognise her without it?

The thought gave her a feeling like a knotted rope tightening in her stomach. The Champions of the past had mostly been adults. They had been beautiful and dignified – or at least, they’d been painted and sculpted to look that way. They had sailed in magnificent ships with armies at their command, dressed from head to foot in dazzling golden armour. Cori was a scrawny thirteen-year-old with salty hair and a chipped front tooth. She was sailing into town in a ramshackle houseboat with a farm boy and a drop-out witch, wearing only one piece of the Oceanforged Armour. She needed the Loyalists’ help. If she disappointed them, the whole of Aquinta might be doomed.

Jem lowered the speed lever, slowing Lucky’s flipper wheels as she guided him past other vessels towards a long pier. Cori and Tarn climbed up to the foredeck together. They lowered the sails and tied them down neatly, then stood at the ready to help Jem with the mooring.

From the front of the boat, they had a good view of the lively port town. The streets were clean and busy. Music drifted over the water. A curving white structure formed an arch above the pier. Oil lamps lit up the sign that had been etched into it.

Tarn carefully read the sign aloud. ‘Well-comb … is-land … Welcome to Whalehead Island.’

Southbrink Island, where he came from, was small and remote with no school. When Jem had started helping him practise reading from her witchery textbooks, he had only been able to sound out one letter at a time. ‘You’re getting better at that,’ Cori told him.

But Tarn’s troubled frown didn’t shift. ‘Why is it written on a jawbone?’

Read a Q&A with Amelia Mellor about The Book of Lost Magic

Read a Q&A with Amy about Oceanforged: The Wicked Ship

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amelia Mellor is an author, teacher and nature nerd. She is the creator of The Grandest Bookshop in the World, The Bookseller’s Apprentice and The Lost Book of Magic, a multi-award-winning historical fantasy trilogy based in Melbourne where she lives. She holds degrees from Monash University and The University of Melbourne. To find ideas for Oceanforged, Amelia spent three days at sea, swam with sharks, hiked in jungles, got lost in Italy, handled real pirate artefacts and scuba dived on a shipwreck. When she’s not writing or researching, she’s usually tending her collection of tropical fish or attempting a wildly ambitious craft project.

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