Knight Awoken

by Tammy Salyer

  As Jaemus stared, passengers dropped a ladder inside the structure and began to disembark. Upon realizing his jaw was agape, he closed it with a snap. It was a punishable offense to visit Isle Stonering. As far as he knew, no Himmingazian but he and the Glisternauts of the Bounding Skate who’d come to constrain him had set foot on it for anni-cycles, probably even deca-cycles. Who’d be coming here now, and why?

  Griggory, now at the doorway, turned back. “Come on, Bardgrim,” he called.

  Jaemus tore his eyes from the cargo ship and walked with heavy feet up the steps.

  At the top, Griggory eyed him curiously. “Something troubling you?”

  “Now that you ask, yes. I’m not exactly in a hurry to embark on whatever you meant about dying, which you still have to explain. And we have guests, as you can see, and I can guarantee you, whoever’s in there isn’t going to be in the mood to hear about wystic artifacts and curses and banishments of celestial sprites. We’ll be lucky if we’re not constrained instantly.”

  Griggory stepped back and gripped Jaemus’s tunic, pulling him up to the doorway without another word. Surprised at the sudden aggression, he let himself be hurried along, admitting that the newcomers weren’t likely to change the course they were now hard-set on.

  Everyone turned in surprise as he and Griggory stepped through the broken doors. The temple’s dim interior was illuminated by lights from the hovering ship, and Jaemus was able to see the newcomers clearly.

  “Grandsirene?” he said, his mouth once more gaping. “Is that you?”

  Vreyja, a stately, indomitable woman, stood with the Knights, her shining hair tied in a rope spilling over her shoulder and down the front of her white Himmingazian tunic. Lightning from outside, which was constant now, flashed through the door and off the silver strands.

  Jaemus ran toward his family matriarch, not quite able to believe whom he was seeing. “Grandsirene, what are you doing here?”

  “Vreyja.” Griggory said her name casually as he approached, as if her presence, and that of the others, was as expected and normal as meeting for tea.

  The elderly woman’s face was drawn with worry. Her eyes darted between Jaemus and Griggory for a moment, then settled on Jaemus. “Grandling, I am so, so happy to find you here—though I admit, after you took Griggory’s artifacts, I should have expected it.” She brushed his face affectionately, her fingers already cold from the pelting rain outside. “And you,” she faced Griggory, “please tell me you know how to stop this. The cities are swamped, some may be beyond saving. Our homes are being drowned. We’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to make right with the Creatress what our ancestors did wrong. Tell us you can do it.”

  “Aha!” Jaemus exclaimed, feeling as if he’d just unearthed the final clue to solving a mystery. “So you do believe in the Verities. All that time when I was little, you said you were preserving our history, but this is… is…” He looked around at the other newly arrived Himmingazians, all older, all people he’d seen at one time or another with Vreyja. “Is this some kind of cult?”

  It made utter sense. His grandsirene had never just been a dabbler in the Verity lore. She’d been its curator and, it seemed, a leader of spreading the old beliefs. And how many stalwart believers who would never give up their founding legends and myths had come before her? Jaemus’s gaze lit on Griggory, and he knew: the old Knight had been here all this time, and had likely been responsible for keeping this tiny spark of belief alive.

  His grandsirene gave him that look she’d had since he was a precocious child, the one that was equal parts exasperation and love. “Of course we believe in the Creatress, and all the others. Why wouldn’t we? Besides, Griggory has been in Himmingaze for too many lifetimes for us to believe in anything else.” She said this is if it were an obvious fact that a man who’d lived among the ’Gazian people for over seven hundred of his turns was proof of celestial beings. Jaemus thought it over for a moment, then shrugged. He guessed it kind of was.

  “He’s taught us and many generations before us the truth, even before the truth was forbidden. We knew we’d have to prepare for the Creatress’s return someday, as long as our hope continued and outlasted the fears of those who gave up believing in her. Banning the mere mention of our creator’s existence doesn’t make her cease to exist, grandling. We believed she’d return, and when she does, someone has to be here to make atonement for our ancestors’ wrongs.”

  He felt like more was being said than he understood, and it wasn’t a good feeling. “Atonement? Making amends?” Looking to Griggory, he said, “I get the feeling you’re expecting the Creatress to be a touch angry when we fix this. I’m no expert, but that seems like a not-so-good outcome. I’d love to hear how wrong my impression is.”

  He looked from Vreyja to Griggory and back. Neither met his eyes, and, grumbling, he took a step backward and began to run his hand through his hair, at a loss for any words that might resolve this new development. The rest of the Knights looked on inquisitively, listening but not understanding, he realized. He and Vreyja had reverted to speaking Himm.

  Griggory said quietly, “You should not be here, Vreyja. None of you.”

  “Well, we’re here anyway, and we’ll do whatever we can to help. We are all prepared to give our lives if it means saving Himmingaze.”

  “Yes, yes, but it would be death for any Himmingazian to right this wrong. This is my task.”

  “All right, enough with the death-cult references,” Jaemus cut in. “It’s time you all let me in on the big secret. What exactly is going to happen once we start this rite or whatever it is?”

  The two elders exchanged a heavy look, then Vreyja stepped over and embraced the Knight. “I’ve told you a hundred times, I know it wasn’t your fault, and I know it isn’t your sacrifice to make. But we are grateful, Griggory. More than you’ll ever know.”

  He gave her a small grin, then to Jaemus said, “Come with me if you like. Outside, under the Glister Cloud. It’s time.”

  As Griggory turned back toward the doorway, he stopped and gave Roibeard an intense stare. Jaemus had a distinct impression words were being exchanged, though not aloud. After a moment, Roibeard nodded somberly and said, “We too shall do what we can to help, when the time comes.”

  The other Knights nodded in agreement without hesitation. But what they were agreeing to remained a mystery to him. Before he could ask, again, they went with Griggory through the temple’s doors. That, more than anything, got Jaemus moving. He wasn’t going to be left out of this.

  “Wait!” he heard Cote yell. “What’s happening, Jaemus?”

  What was happening? He had a cold feeling inside that had nothing to do with the unfavorable weather, but he didn’t want to worry his lifemate. Cote came up and put a hand on his arm. He took it, pressed it into his cheek for a moment, and made himself smile. “We’re just going to, you know, save the world,” he said. “It shouldn’t take long. Wait here and—no. Everyone.” He raised his voice. “Everyone climb into Matron Bardgrim’s ship. Be ready to head back to Vann when this is through. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but it’ll be better if you’re…”

  “What?” Cote asked softly.

  After a pause, Jaemus shrugged. “Ready,” was all he could say.

  Chapter Seven

  Back in the pouring rain.

  Griggory was seated at the base of the temple’s steps, the four intact Fenestrii surrounding him, the Scrylle held in his hands, and the three broken shards of the final celestial stone on the ground before him. Standing in a semicircle, the Knights observed from a short distance away. At the edge of the shoreline stood the slangarook, the water washing against her in increasingly violent spats and lifting and dropping her many trailing fins in contrastingly graceful undulations around her.

  Going by Griggory’s informal posture, so far, things looked simple enough. Jaemus walked down the steps and asked, “So what are you going to do?”

  Griggory’s ey
es were closed as he spoke, as if he were concentrating. “It’s not possible to explain how it works, but in simple terms, I am calling Lífs back through the Scrylle. It will be as if I and the stones are a lens through which all the celestial energy of the Cloud is conjured. When enough has gathered, the broken Fenestros will be made whole, and the Glister Cloud will once more resolve into the vessel it was. I don’t expect to survive it.”

  Jaemus heard a weak squeaking hiss in his ears and realized it was coming from him.

  “Bardgrim?” Knight Evernal said.

  He coughed, putting a stop to the sudden leak he’d sprung. “That is, er, somewhat unfortunate. I hadn’t really prepared for that kind of outcome, Griggory. Maybe we could look into some alternatives?”

  “There are no alternatives,” the elder Knight said.

  Still, Jaemus wasn’t ready to watch anyone die today. He was going to fight it till—well, till the expected outcome changed or someone shut him up. A new argument occurred to him. “Eisa seemed to feel somewhat strongly about the matter. Perhaps we could see if she has some ideas on other ways to go about this.”

  It was then that he realized he hadn’t yet learned what had become of the ill-humored Dyrrak Knight. But when he caught sight of Roibeard’s face, chiseled with resigned sorrow, he decided now wasn’t the time to ask, if there ever would be a time.

  Roibeard, however, caught his glance and said, “Eisa is lost to us.”

  This got Griggory’s attention, and he leveled a resigned gaze on Roibeard. “Lost?”

  “Taken by Balavad. Turned into an abomination. She gave her life to get us here.”

  Nodding gravely, staring at the artifacts scattered around him, Griggory whispered, barely audibly, “Then she has atoned.” Setting the base of the Scrylle on the stony ground, he picked up the three shards of the broken Fenestros and configured them into the orb they should have been, then placed that into the Scrylle’s setting. His eyes flicked to Roibeard. “Remember this, old friend. Don’t let the future Knights make the mistakes of the past.”

  Realizing he was about to start the… whatever, Jaemus gave it one more try. “Don’t do this, Griggory. At least let us try to help. We’re all companions here, all Knights and the various terms meaning the same. Can’t we somehow do this together? Isn’t there some saying about two heads being better than one or something? We have six here. We shouldn’t have any problem handling the summoning of a mere creator of all the Great Cosmos.”

  As if to chide him for belittling the power of a Verity, the sky above them suddenly lit up as bright as Halla. Each of them tilted their head back in wonder, and fear. As they watched, the brightness coalesced into a flaming orange-white ball, easily the size of a small star and high on the horizon. It grew larger and larger, and Jaemus realized it was shooting through the sky, closing on Isle Stonering. It moved so fast that he’d no more than realized it before it was nearly on top of them.

  Without thinking, he fell to the drenched ground, his hands covering his head, and his eyes squeezing shut. This is it, this is the end of Himmingaze. We’re too late.

  The air above and around them began to crackle, like the sound of water thrown on a hot rock. A rumbling noise began to crest, nearly deafening him, and drowned out the pelting drops of rain hitting next to his ears, the crash of waves on rock, even the near-constant thunder. His senses tapered to nothing but boiling heat and roaring sound that crescendoed rapidly overhead—

  —then began to retreat.

  He cracked his eyelids and saw the blazing ball crash into the sea a few miles distant. It had shot right above them.

  Shakily, he pulled himself to his feet. “Everyone okay?” he asked. “Looks like we were lucky.”

  He caught Griggory’s eyes. What he saw made him realize his comment about luck might have been hasty.

  The man’s features were squeezed into a puckered frown, his gaze still on the horizon. Aside from the sparkling bodies and swirls of gases that always spun inside the Glister Cloud, the sky dimmed to purple-black again. Yet, distantly, the lightning reflected off a rising wall of mist where the meteor had struck. Mist and… something else.

  “What in the names of all the celestial sky sprites is that?” Jaemus breathed.

  In a moment, he had it. It was a wall of water, a monstrous wave easily tall enough to submerge the last bit of the island and the temple in the middle of it. And it was moving, inexplicably, toward them.

  It rolled forward slowly, like a behemoth, but inevitably nearer, soon swallowing up the entire horizon. Jaemus could see things like ribbons emerging all along the wave’s surface. Emerging, then diving back inside, as if they were alive. He watched, horror-stricken, unwilling to believe what his eyes were seeing.

  “Fleeches,” he moaned. “That water is filled with them. They’re coming.”

  Griggory bowed his head and stared into the broken Fenestros, and Jaemus realized he was diving into the Scrylle lore. He let hope bloom in him. In moments, Himmingaze would again be what it once was thanks to Griggory. And Griggory, his gramsirene’s oldest friend and the catalyst for Jaemus becoming who he’d become, would be dead.

  It was wrong. Jaemus couldn’t put aside that fact. This was Himmingaze, his home. Wasn’t saving it supposed to have been his destiny? He’d talked about doing it for so long. And here was his chance. Was he ready to let an old man, someone who wasn’t even from this realm, do it for him? Giving Himmingaze a future had always been his goal. And now, it was his duty.

  His throat tightened as the cracked orb atop the Scrylle glowed dimly. He looked out at the stormy Never Sea. The slangarook Hither was still there, crouched in the water and staring at the looming tsunami. The sky’s bursting radiance bounced almost festively off her scales, and her great eyes flicked to Jaemus a little too keenly for comfort.

  His eyes on Hither but speaking more to himself, he said, “It was never going to be easy to be the glint engineer who saves the world, was it?”

  Hither cocked her head as if to say, Why would you have thought differently, silly meatstick?

  He sighed and put a hand on Griggory’s shoulder, giving it a tiny shake. “Stop,” he said.

  Griggory’s eyes shot open, blazing with an inner wystic light that startled Jaemus into taking a step back. “Agh!” Griggory swore. “We have no time for arguing. None!”

  Despite the Knight’s anger, Jaemus’s response was calm. Not numb, precisely, but distanced. He felt… ready. “I know. But this isn’t your task, Griggory. It’s mine. I’ll be the lens or conduit or whatever you called it.” He sat down cross-legged beside the Knight and pulled the Scrylle between them. “You read the Scrylle with me and show me what I’m looking for, then you get out. I’ll reverse the Creatress’s banishment, fussless and mussless, and you can finally go back to Vinnr. You’ve done enough for Himmingaze. But this is a thing that should be done by… well, by a Himmingazian.”

  Griggory’s eyes cleared and widened. Was it admiration, Jaemus saw? Whatever it was, for a moment it made him think his decision was worth it. But only a moment.

  Stave stepped closer. “You sure about this, novice? It’s, mmm…” Completely uncharacteristically, the Knight fell silent, his misshapen eyebrows knitted with concern.

  Jaemus tamped down a waver of unresolve, then cleared his throat. “Yes. I mean, if I was given this ‘gift,’ it must have been for a reason, right? And I hope Cote appreciates the fact that I’ll never steal his pillow again. Someone better tell him what I did.” They didn’t say anything, but he felt their acknowledgment. “Just make sure they name something after me, something big. Bardgrim’s Expanse has a nice ring. Or maybe the Empire of Jaemus.”

  With one final glance at the encroaching wall of water, he closed his hands around the Scrylle and focused on the fractured orb. The words to help him focus played through his mind. Cycle of light, balanced by dark, focus my sight, into my heart…

  Like last time he suddenly felt as if he were yanked into a
tempest, first his feet, then the rest of his body losing touch with any physical sensation of being in the world. He tensed internally, preparing for the firebolt of light to spear his mind, followed by a Cosmos-sized Never Sea crushing him with all the lore of the realm at once. And that shock to his mental senses came, but unlike last time, he didn’t feel his mind splintering and being whipped asunder by the onslaught. And he knew instantly that he wasn’t alone.

  With me, Bardgrim? Griggory said.

  If that’s what you call it, he managed.

  Good. Follow me.

  Follow? he thought. But there was… then he saw the outline, or rather the void of darker space illuminated all around by streaks of lore, like stars whipping past it, leaving long trailing lines of knowledge, wisdom of ages that were transformed into pure lights of all colors. The void was vaguely human-shaped, and Jaemus positioned his ephemeral self behind it, out of the path of those streaking lights, where it was calm. Neat trick, he thought, and moved forward.

  They pushed through the storm for an eternity. Jaemus knew time wasn’t passing in reality the way he felt it here, but before long, floating behind the dark form of Griggory, it began to seem as if he’d never been anywhere but here, as if inside this celestial stream of ages, all of time existed in a single instant, and that instant was his entire life.

  Ahead of him, Griggory stopped moving. The empty space in the shape of his arm rose, cutting through the stream of light, and he pointed to his side. There it is.

  Jaemus looked where he was pointing and saw, of all things, what appeared to be a looking glass. More precisely, a perfectly oval looking glass with several cracks running through it. As soon as his wystic sight fell on it, the light streams of Himmingaze’s lore shifted and began to stream toward the mirror. All of it was channeled around the floating oval, making it look like a circle of smooth calm moving at thousands of miles an hour through the stars.

  When you look through, Lífs will be drawn to look through too, Griggory’s somewhat ethereal voice said.