by Tammy Salyer
She glanced sharply backward, having long since drawn Star Spark without a thought. The emberflare cannon, a monstrous contraption inside the bore of which Mylla could easily sleep, was being spun on its base, apparently to try to target the Ravener Knight.
“Get out of here! Run!” Roibeard yelled at the brave if hapless Magdastervians. “That will do us no good up here.”
True enough. Even if they managed to aim it at Eisa, the fallen Knight would hardly stand in its trajectory and wait to be blown to smithereens. With the Magdastervians’ city in ruins, they were now beyond desperate and frightened and had lost their reason.
Mylla saw their faces through slits in the weapon’s shield plate, saw them hesitate, then saw them turn and run, following Roi’s command. Even for men who’d lost their senses, there could be no doubt as Mylla had thought earlier—this was a Knights’ battle.
It was Roibeard who stepped in front to engage their one-time companion. Mylla saw he held one of the Himmingaze Fenestrii, but his hand was lowered unthreateningly. “Eisa, if you’re in there at all, fight. Fight Balavad like only you can.”
The crowing sound that came from her throat was probably a laugh, but it was garbled by so much malignancy that it might as well have been airborne cancer. “Mallich Roibeard, oldest of the remaining Knights except the wandering one. Eisa Nazaria chose this.” The hands that were once Eisa’s held Fate Forger across her body in a combat-ready stance. At those words, she pulled the glaive into her chest, bumping it against the onyx Fenestros embedded there. “Why would she give it up for any of you?” The eyes, gray and dead but still somehow able to pierce like knives, stared at them, burning.
Roi turned his head half to the side, saying to them sotto voce, “Don’t listen to Balavad’s words, and don’t harm her if you can help it.”
“There’s none of Eisa left to hurt, there isn’t,” Stave gruffed.
Mylla, surprising herself, interjected, “She is and ever was our companion. We have to help her if we can.”
“She saved your life not long ago. Don’t make me wish she hadn’t,” Roibeard warned in a voice Mylla had never heard from him before. It was as dark as storm clouds on the horizon, as threatening as a rumbling volcano, and even Stave Thorvíl hesitated at hearing it.
“Aye,” he merely said.
“Come, Knights Corporealis,” Balavad called through the fallen Knight. “Show me your worth and why my quin Vaka Aster chose you among so many other Vinnrics to assist her. I’m not convinced she chose well.”
As the sky overhead blazed with fire and the city below did the same, Roibeard stepped forward. His own greatsword, Ruin Hammer, extended from his free fist, but he did not hold it high. Mylla wanted to warn him not to be so trusting, or so confident in Eisa’s ability to subvert Balavad’s will, but she knew she’d be wasting her words.
“Fight him, Eisa,” Roibeard said. “We’ll keep him busy.”
And with a movement so swift he seemed to be made of smoke, Roi lunged at the fallen Knight, bringing his sword down hard enough to topple Eisa to her back. But he didn’t strike to kill. He’d aimed his blow for the glaive’s haft, where its impact would be easily absorbed.
The fallen Knight leaped to her feet instantly to face him, and he waited. It was the mistake Mylla had been afraid of. If she’d struck with her glaive, he’d have been ready, but the next moment, Roibeard was soaring through the air, propelled by a thin stream of what appeared to be white fire, over the heads of the watching Knights, and slammed bodily into the half-turned bore of the emberflare cannon. He bounced off and came to rest face-up on the wall.
Mylla barely understood what she’d seen, but the glow around Eisa’s abominable Battgjald Fenestros was stronger, and it had pulsed before Roi went flying. Like an invisible battering ram, the embedded artifact was a weapon they had no defense against.
“So much for the oldest,” Balavad said through the fallen Knight. “Who’s next?”
Symvalline ran to Roi. He was getting to his feet, but slowly, like an old man. Alive, thank the— Mylla’s thought broke off when she realized she’d been about to thank the Verities. But at least Roibeard could still move. How many blows like that could a Knight withstand before they were broken beyond repair?
Safran sent, using the Mentalios link, We cannot defeat power like that. We have to find a way to contain it.
“Contain me? Do you mean like your Stallari did with my quin?” Balavad said.
Mylla’s stomach curdled at the realization that Balavad now had access to their minds, having retained Eisa’s own Mentalios. They’d even lost that small advantage.
“To do that, you’ll need more of these.” The fallen Knight reached inside a pouch hanging at her waist and withdrew the Ærd Fenestros that Mylla had dropped.
Eisa’s dull eyes looked from the Fenestros to Mylla and tightened in studied concentration. “But with this here, that means you have been to Ærd. Come closer.”
The fallen Knight whispered a word in Battgjaldic, and suddenly Mylla was being dragged toward her by an unseen force. The other Knights reached out to stop her. Stave got a grip on her baldric, but the next moment, he too was struck by the white fire. With a garbled curse that nearly rivaled Balavad’s weapon in ferocity, he fell to his knees instead of being launched backward. Safran jumped to his side and gripped his arm to pull him away from the constant stream of thin flame coming from Eisa’s Fenestros. It wrapped around her too, and she cried out voicelessly, her mouth a yawning O of pain.
“Stop!” Mylla yelled, feeling foolish and more impotent than when she’d been a child abducted by mother-murdering bandits.
Presently, the fallen Knight did, not so much heeding Mylla’s plea as seeming to lose interest in those who were no more a threat to her than irritating insects. Mylla was forced toward her with a furious yank. Ready with Star Spark, she swung it and clashed against Eisa’s glaive, then froze there, the two weapons seemingly welded. A hallowed, vessel-destroying weapon wielded by a Knight could fell giants, but against another of its kind, it was no different than any other. Mylla too felt as if she’d been melted fast to the spot. Not a muscle in her body could move, even her heart and lungs sluggish.
The fallen Knight gazed at her with dead eyes. “But you have been to Ærd and are a twice-ordained servant now. I see why the dragørs’ fire could not touch you.”
Mylla gazed back, and it was now equally apparent that Eisa’s corrupted body was just as immune to the fire, for Mylla saw clearly the ordination marks of two Verities on Eisa’s face: her old nine-pointed-star of Vaka Aster on her chin, and also the three chevrons of Balavad’s order of protectors cascading down her forehead. There was one question answered, though it hardly mattered now.
“Not only am I twice ordained,” she whispered, “I’m the last Ærden. You failed even there, Balavad.”
She had no idea why she was taunting the monster, but if her day was to be marked by foolishness, why stop with the simple things like losing the Ærden artifacts?
With a twitch of the lips that would have been a smile had the fallen Knight been capable of mirth, she said, “How nice for you, Knight Evernal.” Though Eisa’s eyes didn’t shift, she spoke this time over Mylla’s shoulder. “Attack me again, Vaka Aster’s creations, and I will tear this one’s eyes from her head and use them to choke each of you slowly to death.”
Mylla’s body was angled enough that she could see from the corner of one eye that the Knights had regrouped, weapons raised, behind her. They’d been on the verge of charging. Her gratitude swelled considerably when they didn’t.
Eisa’s master spoke again. “And for me, now the time has come for me to finish what I began in Ærd.”
The fallen Knight went silent abruptly, and the miasma that had once nearly sucked the life out of Mylla aboard Balavad’s warship erupted like startled bats from a cave around Eisa’s body. Mylla saw it pouring from the celestial stone in her chest, straight at Mylla, then straight into her. Th
e immobility she was experiencing changed. Still she stood frozen in place, and a roiling, oozing sensation began to spread through her. A sick and aberrant feeling, it seemed to sink into her skin and wend around her veins, following their paths and coursing throughout her body rapidly.
She knew what came next. The pain, the nearly unendurable pain. So when it struck, she wasn’t surprised. But this time, somehow, she did endure it.
A million knives all stabbed her at once—or that was what it had felt like before. Now, though, the pain was muted, prickling rather than piercing. She gritted her teeth against it instead of screaming herself voiceless, knowing without a thought that she was now stronger in all ways thanks to Fimm’s spark, asked for or not.
“Is that… the best you… can do?” she taunted again. But this time, she had a reason.
Over the fallen Knight’s shoulder, a lone Glisternaut ship dove from the sky. Its course was blatant and straight. In mere seconds, Balavad’s stolen body would be smeared to paste along the top of wall. Mylla too, but she was prepared for that sacrifice. What else was this if not her duty? She knew Eisa, the old Eisa, would have agreed.
Chapter Forty-Three
The buzz of the diving Glisternaut ship’s engines cut through the air like the thinnest of knife edges through a soft, ripe fruit. A mere heartbeat before it struck the fallen Knight—and Mylla—Eisa turned, and Mylla was suddenly free from the wystic bindings that held her. Seizing the opportunity, she snatched the Ærd Fenestros from the distracted Knight’s hand and leaped aside before the ship could strike.
Yet, the foremost lesson Mylla was to learn in life over and over was that when it came to conflicts with Verities, nothing ever went right. This moment was no different when the expected impact never came. As the nose of the ship closed in, it was batted away from its target by Eisa’s Fenestros-channeled force with no more pomp than a fly is swatted.
The ship’s momentum carried it forward until it crunched to a dead stop against the wall’s robust northern tower and hung there, embedded. Bent and distorted, Eisa blasted it for several seconds, ensuring it would never fly again, As the wreckage broke under the assault, Mylla scrambled back to the Knights. Her heart twanged for the surely dead pilot, whoever they were.
When the fallen Knight’s interest wore out, she cut off the awesome power of Balavad’s artifacts and eyed the Knights. They faced her, unflinching.
Eisa studied them, then her mouth cracked in a grin that would make birds drop dead from their branches. “Knights,” Balavad said through Eisa’s mouth, “this is the third time we’ve faced each other, and this will be the final time I make you this offer. Become my servants willingly, and be rewarded generously, and I will leave the rest of the Vinnrics as they are—piteous, lesser creations of Vaka Aster. My dominion is already complete, as you must see.” The hand of the fallen Knight swept over the city side of the wall, pulling their attention to the destruction.
Magdaster was indeed a ruin. The fires and falling ship debris had leveled nearly everything that stood taller than a person. What citizens hadn’t already died were all now trapped in whatever spaces they could find to escape the spreading destruction. Even if they could get to the sea, they’d know by now that there was no safety from the crimson dragørs there either. The city walls had withstood a great deal, but even they would eventually crumble under the Raveners’ and dragørs’ onslaught. And Balavad would surely continue this devastation if his demands weren’t met. Then what would be left for them but a dark future as minions of a greedy, corrupted Verity among the blackened bricks of their shattered home?
What the Verity was telling them was the Knights could change that fate with one choice. It was a choice that made Mylla’s blood turn to ash in her veins. No one spoke, all understanding the consequences of either choice in their bones.
“Ouch. The Council is not going to like what we’ve done to the fleet at all.”
The voice came from behind them, so unexpected that even Eisa’s focus was distracted. Jaemus Bardgrim joined them a second later, emerging from a gaping hole in the wrecked Glisternaut ship with, miraculously, only minor abrasions on his head and arms. He’d picked up a sword somewhere, though he held it almost like a garden hoe.
“Novice!” Stave blurted. “I thought you knew how to fly one of those things, I did.”
Bardgrim gave him an unreadable look, but merely said, “So did I. Ahem.” He jerked his chin to indicate Eisa. “Based on that bit of unexpected aerial skylarking, I take it we’re not winning, are we?”
The distraction wasn’t enough to last, and Roibeard’s focus had returned to Eisa. “Your promise is false, Balavad. Even if you don’t corrupt the rest of the Vinnrics with your poison, they will still be no more than slaves.”
Mylla felt a sharp poke in her back and glanced beside her. Symvalline held the Vinnr Scrylle tucked within her sleeve. The Vinnr Fenestros was missing, knocked free when Eisa had struck it from Mylla’s hand, and with a meaningful look at Mylla and a glance toward the Ærd Fenestros she still held, Symvalline pushed the Scrylle toward her.
At first Mylla wasn’t sure what Symvalline wanted her to do, and with Balavad’s access to their Mentalios link, she dared not ask. Then she had an idea—the starpath plan had been to send away the crimson dragørs, but why not start with Eisa? No, that would be pointless. Eisa’s embedded artifacts made her as capable of returning as she seemed capable of all else. But one thing they knew was that she was only controlled by Balavad; she wasn’t Balavad’s vessel. A Verity could only take a vessel from their own creations. Which meant the fallen Knight’s powers were, despite what they seemed, limited. And coming as they were from the Fenestros and Scrylle buried in her chest, then what better weapon against them than another set of the same artifacts?
Symvalline must have seen the spark of the idea in Mylla’s eyes, and she stepped in front her abruptly, letting the Scrylle slide from her sleeve, and with the legerdemain of a practiced illusionist, she swapped the Scrylle for Mylla’s sword and confronted Eisa. “You can attempt whatever you like, Verity—an attempt is all it will be. You’ve forgotten that we are just a few of those who stand against you. Stallari Aldinhuus endures, and Vinnr will never be lost and never surrender while Vaka Aster’s cage can yet be unmade.”
Bardgrim now stood beside Mylla, and as she discreetly attached the Fenestros, she nudged him with her elbow. He saw what she was doing, tucked his sword awkwardly beneath his arm, and pulled the Himmingazian artifacts from a pouch, already joined together. His movements were less polished and secretive, but the action was easy enough.
They looked to each other. Ready? she mouthed.
His expression morphed to puzzlement, and his lips parted as he prepared to ask the question whose answer should have been obvious, but Balavad made his puppet speak first.
“Stallari Aldinhuus should have been one of my own creations. But now he is dead. I crushed his spirit along with that pretty dragørfly bauble he bore. Odd jewelry for a man; it seemed more suited for a child. And now my quin’s tomb is forever sealed.”
Symvalline’s legs seemed to been swept from beneath her, and she would have clattered to the ground if Roibeard hadn’t caught her elbow.
For Mylla, the words were too surreal to believe. So she did as anyone would do when faced with such abominable lies; she ignored them. To the Knights, she cried: “Ready your klinkí stones! Attack now!”
They hesitated, but not much. The Knights were still warriors, and a warrior’s true strength came from being able to fight amid profound suffering, even suffering as profound as losing a leader as loved as Ulfric had been.
The air swiftly filled with the Knights’ cerulean wystic stones, even Roibeard’s, who appeared to have lost all hope that Eisa could be spared. Channeling all the rage in her through the Scrylle scepter, Mylla used its power to direct the cavalcade of stones at the fallen Knight.
Balavad had already outwitted her again, however. Eisa’s own wystic s
tones formed a shield before her, a mushroom-cap-shaped bulge of red that each of their own klinkí stones first struck with an audible thunk, then adhered to like iron to a magnet. The blue glow illuminating their centers began to slowly bleed out and join the red morass of Eisa’s shield, turning it a muddy, bloody magenta.
This time Balavad struck back. The purple-red wall of stones reversed and flew back at them. They would have burned holes through them all if Mylla wasn’t already running full speed at the monster. Snagging her sword from Symvalline, she charged, Scrylle and Fenestros raised like a torch, whispering an enchantment through the celestial stone to screen them all from the oncoming wall of death.
Amazingly, it worked. The klinkí stones struck nothing but stopped midair and clattered to the walkway. Mylla used the force field she’d created to keep running, and behind her, the others joined. The distance was short, only three dozen feet, and she finally caught a break. She saw the surprise on Eisa’s face as Star Spark was driven at her. The reprieve was attenuated, though, by the fallen Knight parrying her sword thrust just before it went through her chest, making a terrible wound through Eisa’s shoulder, but not a lethal one.
She’d driven the sword hilt deep into Eisa, and there Mylla stood, face-to-face, fist to shoulder with her. The monster in Eisa, unbelievably, smiled, showing Eisa’s teeth, which had changed from pure ivory to translucent, like glass. And also like glass, they were now wicked shards, designed for ripping meat.
Stunned, Mylla released Star Spark and fell back a step, waiting for the rest of the Knights to follow her lead and plunge their own weapons into their enemy—yet, they didn’t. She chanced a glance back and saw the klinkí stone wall she thought she had stopped now raised once more and spanning the walkway, hovering between her and her companions. Ominous spikes of blood-colored light rippled and pulsed over the surface facing the Knights, threatening clearly what would happen if they tried to step through.
