Knight Awoken

by Tammy Salyer

  “Fight it, Eisa. You can beat him.”

  “He’s… he’s left… for now.”

  “We have the Vinnr Scrylle, we’ll help you.” He turned his head sharply and yelled to Symvalline, “Bring it to me, now!”

  The ringing in Symvalline’s ears was worsening instead of lessening, but she ignored it. It was the battle and the fear and sadness that they were about to lose a dear companion that was making it worse. So much raw emotion always meddled with perception. She began to scramble over the broken stones and saw Eisa’s hand reach for Roi’s.

  “… can’t,” Eisa murmured, “can’t save me. Take it.” She pulled Roibeard’s hand to her chest and laid it against the gleaming black Fenestros above her breasts. “Give me… freedom.”

  “If I remove it, you could die,” Roi said, and the moisture falling from his cheeks was not battle sweat.

  “It’s my… choice.”

  Symvalline, followed by Griggory, reached them, and they knelt awkwardly in the rubble.

  The Dyrrak Knight’s eyes fell on her. “Symvalline. Tell Ulfric I’m sorry for giving up… on you… for losing my faith.”

  “I…” Symvalline couldn’t speak then, her chest locked against the sob that wanted to break free. The ringing grew louder, enough so that she didn’t hear the scraping of Stave’s and Safran’s boots as they joined them. She only realized they were there when she heard Stave’s gruff voice.

  “You never let me win a fight, Eisa,” he said. “And that made me better than I ever could have been without your teaching. My gratitude to you will outlive us all.”

  “You couldn’t… have beat me if I’d blinded myself and… tied my hands behind my back.”

  The words were spoken like old Eisa, the Eisa before the Cataclysm, wryly amused and teasing. Symvalline could see Stave struggling to smile at her, to show he could take a good ribbing, and somehow he managed it.

  Eisa, through broken lips, grinned back for a moment, then she grimaced and her eyes sought Roibeard’s. “Do it,” she said. “… need it to end.”

  With a nod, but without speaking or looking at Symvalline, Roi reached for the Vinnr Scrylle and Fenestros, and she passed it to him. With his other hand still on Eisa’s chest, he began to speak under his breath, using the power of Vaka Aster’s artifacts to draw Balavad’s from her. But before the deed was done, he stopped, cleared his throat, then looked to Sym.

  With an expression of such profound pain that she could barely meet his eyes, he said simply, “I can’t,” and held out the Scrylle.

  Safran had moved to Roi’s other side. Handing the Himmingazian Scrylle and Fenestros to Jaemus, she looked into Eisa’s eyes, using the Mentalios to say something to only her, and gently pushed Roi’s hand aside. Instead of letting Sym take them, she retrieved the Vinnr artifacts and resumed what Roi could not. With a measured slowness that couldn’t have been anything but agonizing, Balavad’s Scrylle and celestial stone withdrew from Eisa’s chest into Safran’s hand, leaving an open slot in the breastplate armor that had been form-fitted around them. Eisa’s eyes rolled back to show only that dull grayness before the Scrylle and celestial stone were completely free.

  Then it was over. Eisa was dead. Through some Cosmic kindness, the abused flesh the artifacts had withdrawn from knitted together before she drew her last breath, and the toxic elixir that had changed her into a gangly, pale Ravener lost its potency. When Roibeard reached out to close her eyelids, the whites of her eyes, along with the rest of her, had returned to normal.

  They all sat around her body in a vigil for some unknown time. Jaemus was the first to stir, saying, “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but does anyone else hear that?”

  Symvalline was jolted from her grief, realizing he was right. The ringing had reached a pitch that she could no longer tell herself was just in her ears.

  As she opened her mouth to comment, the wall began to vibrate subtly beneath them. Smaller pebbles from the crushed tower bounced atop larger stones, dislodging and rolling to and fro. The Knights rose, not quite steadily. Roi sheathed Ruin Hammer and bent to lift Eisa’s body. “We need to get off the wall,” he said huskily.

  As they searched for a way to access the tower’s stairwell, the vibrating, along with the humming grew continually.

  “What is… what in the wo—” Jaemus began, and Symvalline looked to see him holding the Himmingaze artifacts at arm’s length, staring at them with eyes as round as the moon.

  The white and gold Fenestros of Himmingaze had turned into a mist and was swirling around him like a golden cloud, growing in size at a rapid clip. As she looked, Roibeard and Stave pulled the second and third Himmingazian stones from their clothing, given to them days ago in case of need, and Jaemus scrambled to get the final one from his pocket. Each of the celestial stones transformed into mist as they were retrieved, and the Knights released them into the air. Instead of falling, they simply hovered, growing less and less corporeal.

  Sym glanced at Safran to see the two Fenestrii she held in the Scrylles doing the same. Beyond Safran, the time walker that had held Eisa for a short time had resumed growing and lost the solidity it had started to acquire. It was now, like the other Fenestrii, a miasma of every color and hue, swirling in great tendrils toward the sky like tree branches of unalloyed light. As she watched, they broke through the blanket of smoke hanging over the city, instantly clearing it, and streamed up to the heavens and beyond her sight. And the sonance resonating all around them, now a thundering pure wave of sound, was so loud it seemed to be shaking the whole city—and still it continued to build.

  She’d have cried to the Knights, “Run!” but knew it would do no good. This was the Syzyckí Elementum, and they were all now at its mercy.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  It was the same in every corner of the Great Cosmos. A sonorous, melodic resonance, blanketing every form, every creature, rushing in to fill every space down to a pinhole and tinier, a disembodied power that left nothing untouched by its harmony. The scattered Fenestrii in each of the realms erupted at the melody of the Syzyckí Elementum, and the tessalopes were free at long last to disperse once more into their true essence: time. Bound to a material form no longer, their reach, too, encompassed all things, even eternity, and their threads connected the infinitude once more together.

  In Arc Rheunos, Isemay and Salukis woke in their rooms in Everlight Hall, instantly alert to the crescendoing sound. Dressing quickly, fearing the worst, they met each other in the hallway, then rushed hand in hand to the Verity’s chamber—and saw something they couldn’t understand.

  The colorless woman sat on an ornate wooden chair, motionless. When they pushed the door open, her eyes fell on them, colorless as well, making her appearance ghostlike. But this wasn’t what addled their perception. The five Fenestrii of the realm had transmogrified into great luminescent columns, and the Verity herself shone like a star. The fortress around them began to shake, and Isemay and Salukis grabbed each other in an embrace, the only safety they could feel.

  “Mithlí!” Isemay cried, not daring to approach the woman. “What’s happening?”

  Arc Rheunosians began to gather in the hallway behind them, crying out in fear and concern. The voice that came from the Verity was an octave lower than the boundless, sourceless sound filling the air, though in the same pure tone, when she answered. “The remaking of the unmaking, Archon.”

  She said nothing more for so long that Isemay was about to beg for something more, some greater detail that would explain it. Then Mithlí said the last thing the Verity would ever say to her creations. “You have nothing to fear.”

  The illumination of the room exploded, forcing all in Everlight Hall to squeeze their eyes shut and throw their arms across their faces.

  But, as Mithlí had promised, Isemay was not afraid.

  In Himmingaze, much the same occurred. Vreyja Bardgrim and her friends, who’d never lost their belief in the Creatress, were gathered at the Verity’s shrine on Is
le Stonering. They’d been holding a vigil until Jaemus and the Glisternauts returned. Her son and Jaemus’s father, Jovus, had joined them, having finally come around to accepting what Vreyja had been hinting at all those anni-cycles. Yes, Verities were real. Yes, the realm of Himmingaze had once had a cadre of great warriors and scholars called Mystae, who’d been tasked with serving their Verity the Creatress, but had failed abysmally and nearly doomed the realm to nonexistence. And yes, her grandling and his son Jaemus Bardgrim, with the aid of friends from far-off realms of the Great Cosmos, had saved them all.

  It wasn’t Vreyja, however, who’d finally convinced him, along with the Council of Nine Crests and the rest of the population of Himmingaze, of all these miraculous things. She didn’t even have to try in the end. A slangarook named, of all oddities, Hither, and the entire slangarook shoal had converged on Vann and the many floating cities around the realm and spoken to all the Himmingazians in a manner that none could understand but all finally came to believe was real. The creatures of the Never Sea spoke directly into their thoughts and reminded them of the many wonders they’d for so long denied. Every Himmingazian, young and old, heard the shoal’s voices, and none would ever doubt again what they learned.

  When the melodious sonance erupted, growing louder by the second, most were frightened. Vreyja and her ilk on Isle Stonering, however, were sanguine. Acceptance that the realms were in good hands, those of her grandling, her old and dear friend Griggory, and their companions, buoyed her spirits, and her intrinsic peace spread easily among them all.

  Hither was not among them when the Creatress heeded the call of the Syzyckí Elementum, so no one but the other slangarooks saw the great water dragør erupt into a prism of many colors, which danced off into the Cosmos, leaving Hither as the creature had once been: a powerful, enduring predator, oldest of the Himmingazians, and like the slangarooks’ cousins in Vinnr, the first and favorite creations of their Verity.

  Gentleness was apparently not the Verity’s main consideration when choosing to return Mylla to corporeality, and her body coalesced violently, each and every ingot of her flesh, blood, and bones regaining shape all at once. Chills swept through her as she blinked her eyes, noting in shutter flashes that she was under a sky that was both familiar and foreign, lying on her back on the hard earth. She felt like herself, she realized. Completely normal once more. Nothing at all, in fact, like a Verity, or its vessel, or even particularly like a well-adjusted person.

  Looking into the vast sky overhead, its millions upon millions of glowing stars reminding her just how unremarkable she was, she let herself stay in place and simply be. Just taking it in. This life, long though it was, would continue, and she could finally rest knowing it would continue without the corrupted threat of Balavad. The Verity was no more, or at least, no more what he was. They were reunited as one, and there was no need for them to fight over dominion of any realm, for they were all now one realm.

  She hoped, at least.

  She sat up and took in her surroundings. Star Spark and the Scrylle lay at her side. Chilly wind rushed over a cliff face that was no more than a few paces from where she lay. She gathered the sword and celestial artifact and walked to the edge. Over two hundred feet below, the stars glinted off waves crashing brutally into the cliff wall. A fall from this spot would have been the death of anyone, even possibly a Knight, and she counted herself lucky for having been reanimated far enough from the lip to avoid that fate.

  Still, she thought, spinning the Scrylle contemplatively in her hand, that didn’t change the fact that she was the only living person in an empty world, and now she had no Fenestros to open a starpath, and no Verity to request help from.

  “Well, isn’t this a fine ending,” she said aloud. “I guess Stave was right: no good apple goes unbitten.”

  What are you grumbling about, speck?

  She turned sharply to see Poppy’s Noble Inferno pacing toward her from the gloom on her four stout legs. Mylla had completely forgotten the dragør was there.

  “It’s good to see you weren’t harmed when the fortress was destroyed, Master Inferno. I have some bad news, though.” She waggled the Scrylle. “We have no way to get home.”

  The great beast’s titian eyes flared, then her mouth curled in that oddly smile-like way. You think the starpaths require a Fenestros to travel. Your kind are too… young to have learned other ways. My kind are not so limited. Come, up on my back once more. And hold on tightly. The ride will be chaotic for someone as fragile as you.

  She hesitated, wondering how it could be any bumpier than it usually was, but knew better than to ask for an explanation. If she waited too long, Noble Inferno would probably leave without her. With Star Spark sheathed and the Scrylle tucked into her carryall, Mylla made the now-familiar climb to her new “friend’s” neck, wrapped her arms tightly around one horn, and said, “Ready when you are.”

  Noble Inferno blew a great jet of fire into the empty air. At first, Mylla thought nothing of it. Just another dragør inferno like the many that had filled the skies over Magdaster. But the fire didn’t dissipate or die out like it should have. Instead, it began to swirl, looping itself in a great, fiery ring before them. Distantly, Mylla heard in the back of her mind Noble Inferno saying something, but the words were foreign and lost to her. And frankly, she was too entranced by whatever wysticism was turning the dragørfire into a vortex to bother to pay attention. And tired, so very tired.

  Then Mylla heard Noble Inferno command Tightly now, and they shot into the center of the fiery ring as if from an emberflare cannon.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Ulfric awoke staring at a strange ceiling. This was the least of disorienting sensations, however. It wasn’t so much the ceiling that was odd; it was the perfectly ordinary sight of it. No glimmers, no waving lines of color, nothing to suggest his weirded eyes, so altered by being made Vaka Aster’s vessel, had ever been different. Along with that unexpected development, the weight of his prone body, settled on something hard and flat, was unmistakable, all two hundred and ten pounds of him. The air was hot and still around him, and from outside came loud voices, yelling. From this height, he couldn’t tell if their cries were alarm, rejoicing, or something else. But at the moment, this didn’t matter to him. He felt, well, he felt himself.

  He drew a great, heaving breath, the first he’d really drawn into his own lungs, not the lungs he shared with his maker, in ages. The air filled his chest like a drowning man’s first full breath upon feeling earth once more beneath his feet.

  I’m me! I’m myself again. How can it—no! Don’t ask the question. Take a moment to revel in this, Ulfric. It may not last, and it is so much better than being a rat.

  He raised his head cautiously, looking down the length of his body to confirm it was real. And speaking of rats, his eyes locked with the beady black orbs of his last host. The creature sat on his chest, staring at him with a level of curiosity that spoke of much deeper intelligence than a human had ever given a rodent credit for before. But then, Ulfric wasn’t surprised about that. He had just, after all, shared this tiny creature’s mind and body.

  The moment came back to him: the Ecclesium’s unmasked intention to trap Ulfric in his own body by smashing the memory keeper, Ulfric’s horror but quick utterance of the incantation to transfer his spirit into whatever living thing was near. And then this small, utterly unprepared rat, which had been innocuously nosing around the chamber’s corners, was suddenly sharing its mind with a foreigner. Through its eyes, Ulfric watched Balavad force the Domine Ecclesium to sever his own throat, then watched the Verity grind the memory keeper he’d made Isemay to bits beneath a booted heel.

  The rat, understandably, had started to panic, and Ulfric had been forced to immediately switch his focus to mastering the beast. He couldn’t let it react, let it show itself, or Balavad would have known Ulfric was still “free,” in a sense. The rodent’s mind was intelligent, but still merely a rodent’s, and Ulfric had been a
ble to overtake it easily and quickly. And like a rodent, they’d skulked deeper into the shadows, waiting for Balavad to be gone.

  The rat’s pink nose twitched at Ulfric’s glance.

  “Thank you, little one,” he offered. “You saved me.”

  The creature’s nostrils flared, a look that seemed to say As if you gave me a choice! Then it jumped from Ulfric’s chest and scurried back to its comfortable hidden home.

  He sat up, swung his legs to the ground, and stood, if a bit shakily. He should have been more cautious, should have been practicing furtiveness and been on alert for danger. But, strangely, he felt no fear. What had happened? Why was he so unconcerned for his own safety? He’d watched the Domine’s life spurting from his cut throat, then seen Balavad’s vessel loom over Vaka Aster like a vulture. The Verity had stood there for quite some time, as motionless as a statue. Ulfric had feared then, believing his enemy to be contemplating destroying Vaka Aster’s vessel at last. Vengeance for Battgjald’s annihilation, while Ulfric was more helpless than ever. He’d only been able to watch and wait for the final stroke of doom to befall his realm.

  What then? He closed his eyes, trying to remember, to dredge the events up as if from a deep swamp. The rat had been a fortuitous host at a hopeless moment, but somehow sharing its body, or more to the point, its mind, had muddled Ulfric’s. There’d been a strange sound, hadn’t there? A noise that he’d first thought was just ringing in his ears, but it hadn’t faded. And the Fenestrii—something had happened. They’d… exploded? No, it hadn’t been that, not exactly. They’d—the only thing his thoughts could come up with was that they’d somehow sprouted, like saplings from the forest floor, but in tendrils of light rather than wood.

  He shook his head, the puzzle too difficult to solve at the moment. Upon looking around, he found not one but two bodies lay in the room with him. The Domine Ecclesium’s corpse, lying in a thickened pool of blood, wasn’t a surprise, although the blood’s color having turned back to its natural dark crimson rather than black was. It was the other corpse that shocked him.