Knight Chosen

by Tammy Salyer

  At the table, Eisa brought the conversation back around. “We’ll head to the Dyrrakium once we’ve resupplied.”

  Stave tipped his chair back and remarked, “You think we need to go the exiled empire, take refuge in their treacherous arms, Eisa? As Stallari Regent, that’s your recommendation?” His wooly eyebrows, easily mistakable for the vacation homes of small birds, had a way of saying quietly more than he said aloud. Which was saying something, as the Knight wasn’t known for his shy and withdrawing personality.

  The poisonous fumes Stave had mentioned coming from the usurper’s massive vessel now had a rival in the fumes of mutual dislike billowing between him and Eisa. The two had never mixed half as well as fire and water.

  She stepped back to the table and leaned in. “If I may make a point—”

  Having none of it, Eisa cut to the quick. “When did you start questioning your betters, Stave? Was it when you realized you’d never be a match?”

  “If by ‘better’ you mean better at pretending your head’s big enough to wear a leader’s crown, then I’ve questioned you from day one, I have. On second thought, maybe your head is too big for any crown, except perhaps one of shame.”

  Both Knights pushed away from the table and rose to their feet, nostrils flaring like rams about to lock horns. Before either launched another volley, Roibeard smacked a flat palm against the surface hard enough to make it, and everyone in the hold, jump. He stated evenly, if a touch testily, “An army of flying attack ships, but merely six of us. Seven if we count the Wing.”

  After several heartbeats of silence in which Stave and Eisa exchanged rancid gazes, Eisa recovered with the same swiftness as when she and Mylla had argued. “Five,” she stated. “We can’t expect Ulfric’s return.”

  Havelock, having rejoined the group, interjected, “You should include the remaining Dragør Wings and Marines. If this marauder intends to subjugate Ivoryss, the rest of our fighting force will soon be summoned from Magdaster and other forts around the kingdom. And this time, they won’t be caught by surprise.”

  “And do you recall hearing about the takeover of Yor?” asked Eisa, her tone the lying sweetness of trap bait.

  Havelock opened his mouth but wisely closed it without a word. Mylla had a moment of insight about how Eisa must look to him, and how different. Tall, head shorn except for black banding in the center ending in a braid that fell down her back to her waist, and tattooed features that appeared hewn from heartwood, Eisa had been born into Dyrrakium’s most revered family and didn’t bother to conceal the harshness their warrior-priest culture had bred into her. Mylla shared Eisa’s coloring, her own hair shoulder-length and woven in braids, and nothing else, despite being born a Dyrrak. Eisa was authority, where Mylla was just an outcast orphan rejected by their shared empire.

  She knew what Eisa had meant. There had been no news of a battle for rule of Yor, because none had occurred. The foreign Verity had taken control quietly, insidiously, according to the scant reports that had made it to Ivoryss.

  “A coup, commoner,” the Stallari Regent went on acidly. “Mylla already told us Balavad the usurper has taken Arch Keeper Beatte hostage, or simply killed her. He’s already achieved his goals: subdue the Arch Keeper, subdue the Marines, subdue the city. And finally, subdue the kingdom. The Verity doesn’t need to fight a battle. He merely needs to cripple Ivoryss with fear. If Beatte’s alive, he’ll bend her to her knees with the kingdom watching and bleed resistance dry by making her swear fealty to him publicly. And your Dragør forces, whatever remains of them”—she stared at Havelock, the gray of her eyes glinting—“will follow their Arch Keeper’s orders to stand down.”

  The room grew silent as they all considered her dark words.

  “Eisa,” Mylla said after a pause, “there’s no precedent for this, is there? You’ve read deeper into the Scrylle than anyone except the Stallari. Why would a Verity from another realm do such a thing?”

  Eisa eyed her, seeming to consider if Mylla was up to knowing the answer. “Power is a living thing, novice. It needs to feed and it grows. Its ultimate end is more power. Why would a Verity be any different? A being of all power. What’s left for it to gain but more, and what’s left for it to become but not just a being of power but the all powerful.”

  She ambled from the group toward the vessel and swept at the dust still powdering it. “Balavad’s power is diminished outside his own realm, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stop coveting it. As for what occurred in Yor, deceit is always easier to wield than swords and wars. But once he finds the vessel, I doubt he’ll wait for deceit and manipulation to bring Ivoryss to heel. He’ll subdue, and as the commoner said, subjugate it with all his force. And we know there’s a countdown. This Syzykí Elementum Ulfric spoke of—Balavad’s countdown. Our countdown—” She stopped brushing away the grit suddenly and murmured, “Something has changed.”

  “What was that, Eisa?” asked Roibeard.

  She turned back to the group and went on without answering him. “It’s the Fenestrii Balavad seeks, a crucial element of this cage he wants to create. For all we know, Ulfric took Vaka Aster’s away to hide them. But without all of them in our possession, the only thing we can do is remain true to our primary duty and protect the vessel. We need to keep it concealed here on the Vigilance. And go as far as we can from where we know our enemy to be. So, to Dyrrakium”—she sent Stave a withering look—“it is.

  “The Scrylle, Mylla,” she finished, and beckoned Mylla.

  Mylla, having doffed her armor and now wearing only her bandolier over her tunic, pulled the wystic cylinder free and passed it to her. Eisa took it wordlessly and opened it. With a gentle tilt, she slid free the parchment inside and placed it flat against the table.

  Mylla watched Lock lean in to get a closer look. He had, she suspected, never seen either the artifact or what it contained. “Are those . . . I don’t recognize the writing. It’s strangely fuzzy,” he said quietly.

  “Elder Veros runes,” Mylla explained. “But different from commoner writing in that they are transmutable.”

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “They change, according to what they say. It’s hard to understand without the proper training.”

  He nodded, not needing to be told in plainer terms that he was out of his depth. A quick learner—Mylla had always liked that about him.

  Eisa, leaning over the parchment, raised her head abruptly. Her eyebrows arched, and she and the other Knights could only look at each other, wonder mixing with confusion in their expressions.

  Where are they? said Safran.

  “With Ulfric, like I thought.” Eisa said the Stallari’s name like a curse.

  Lock continued to whisper. “I don’t understand.”

  Mylla took a moment to absorb what she was seeing, as unbelievable and unprecedented as it was, like so many of the day’s happenings. “The Fenestrii—they’re gone. They’ve just disappeared. The runes are a map, they tell us where the celestial stones are at all times. For them to be missing from the map means—”

  “It means Ulfric has taken them,” Eisa stated again.

  Why would he? Safran said. And to where?

  Eisa gazed at him for a moment, weighing the likelihood, then gave a short nod and began to re-roll the parchment. “If the Fenestrii are gone with him, and they aren’t on the map, that must mean he’s left Vinnr,” she said.

  “Could he do that?” Mylla asked, surprised.

  For the first time, Eisa appeared pensive, worried. “He could have used the Scrylle to open a starpath well. It’s been done before.”

  This was news to Mylla, and she had many questions, but now was not the time. She settled for: “If he did that, why didn’t he take the Scrylle?”

  “He did,” Roi stated matter-of-factly.

  “But . . .” Mylla’s eyes dropped to the table, where Vaka Aster’s Scrylle remained in plain sight.

  “Why would he need Vaka Aster’s Scrylle, when it seems he
has another one?” Eisa looked around the table. “The usurper’s. We can’t even guess what lore it may contain, or what Ulfric intends to do with both our own and our enemy’s artifacts.”

  Mylla didn’t like the implication in her tone. “Perhaps he knows what happened to Symvalline and Isemay and intends to get revenge,” she suggested, grasping for possibilities.

  “Then he has forsaken his duty, and there’s nothing we can do for him now,” Eisa said with finality. “There is only one Fenestros remaining, protected by the Conservatum. We have to get that one before Balavad finds it. We cannot let him acquire the means to create this cage. And we’ll need it to access the Scrylle.”

  So you suspect Ulfric collected Vaka Aster’s Fenestrii, along with those belonging to Balavad and the Battgjald Scrylle, Safran broke in, unwilling to leave off the issue of their Stallari. Perhaps he’s going to try creating this cage himself to capture Balavad.

  “Of course,” Mylla said. “That would be the best way to stop the Verity.”

  “But he’d need Balavad’s vessel,” said Stave.

  “So it’s possible he’s gone to Battgjald,” mused Mylla. “But would he do that, with Ivoryss and Vaka Aster in danger? And by himself?”

  That still supposes the Stallari left of his own free will, Safran said. And we have no way of knowing if that is so. No way at all.

  In the rising uncertainty, the Knights began speaking over each other, their statements slowly spiraling from hypotheses to suspicions to ever more ominous accusations.

  At last, Roi said solemnly, “Too many questions and tis late. We have been drifting west toward Ivoryss since leaving Omina, and so must continue until we acquire the last Fenestros from the Conservatum.” He scratched his neck through his shaggy blond beard. “I think it time to start watch rotation, rest, and regroup when we are fresher and less . . . dismal.” He held Eisa’s eyes steadily as he spoke, deferring to her for final orders.

  The Stallari Regent nodded once. “We’ll hover for the night without landing. We must be ready to move quickly if necessary.”

  She ordered each of them to stations and set the watch rotation. Mylla and Havelock left the hold to be first on bridge watch, where the night air fed the blooms of her dark thoughts. It felt like admitting defeat, but Mylla knew they had no other choice, not with a massive foreign force out there and only the few of them in here. We didn’t even try to recover Symvalline’s and Isemay’s bodies, she thought. We left them behind. If the Stallari is still alive, will he ever forgive us?

  Roi had called them “dismal,” and the word certainly fit. She couldn’t recall a time in her three hundred and some turns around the daystar that she’d felt less . . . well, less. Small, mean, and very, very dismal. From the observation deck, she watched the black sky around them flare in familiar patterns with the lights of all the other stars that brightened Vinnr, and she recalled the words the usurper had spoken to Aldinhuus underneath the keep, the ones she’d heard but not understood. Your kind is coming to an end. We Verities agreed long before we created what you conceive as time, long before we created these realities, that all of these things, and your kind in particular, is merely a . . . trial. A distraction, an amusement.

  If it’s true, she thought, and we are merely playthings for our creators, then we Knights protect the being who has already sentenced us to doom.

  If any duty could be more dismal than that, Mylla couldn’t think what it might be. Nor could she blame Ulfric if he had realized the same—and had chosen to renounce his oath.

  Chapter 18

  If fear had a flavor, it would be the bitter spice of the long-dead Reaper’s Breath flower. Warm and cloying, raw and syrupy, fear would be a taste that drowned its victims as it slid down their throats. Fear is a fate worse than death.

  Regardless, a quick, simple death was all Acolyte Irrick of the Resplendolent Conservatum wished for as he waited in a vast chamber aboard the sky fortress called the Primator. Yet based on the strange artifacts placed around the chamber he and the other Ivoryssian prisoners now occupied, he feared a simple death wasn’t their destiny.

  After the attack on Asteryss and their transport to this immense vessel, Irrick and the prisoners had been positioned in eight lines behind eight alabaster navel-high pedestals. Atop the pedestals rested alabaster bowls, each as flawless and gleaming as a new tooth and filled with clear liquid. They’d been waiting for so long that their initial tears and shrieks and yowls for freedom had died away, leaving the prisoners mute and exhausted. The current of dread had vibrated almost visibly between them as they pondered the reasons for their being here and the meaning of these stone altars. Now, though, Irrick’s only thoughts were of the horror who had just entered and stood towering over them. Standing at an inhuman height at least two heads taller than the tallest man, the desecrator of both Ivoryss and Yor, the Verity known as Balavad stared down at the assembly as if expecting all to cringe like rats at his feet.

  Irrick refused, staring at their captor with as much courage as he could muster. The hours of waiting with no food or water since the campaign against Asteryss had not weakened him so much that his powers of observation failed. Only the skin of the Verity’s face and hands showed, its striking whiteness more like cold stone than the pale dermis of the ill or malnourished. His eyes, all pupil and blacker than the emptiness between the stars, gleamed in their sunken orbits, the bones of the skull they lay in so sharp and prominent they nearly broke through his hard flesh. Crimson hair the hue and vibrancy of a fuel-oil fire cascaded from his head and upper lip in a molten mass, curling here, braided there. An ochre cape of some rough material dragged along the floor behind him in an uneven hem.

  As Irrick took this sight in, the retinue of crimson-robed Flesh Casters trailing slowly in the wake of the Verity like drugged flies dispersed and fanned out beside the prisoners. Once positioned, they turned to give Balavad their full attention.

  The Verity spoke, and his words confirmed at least part of Irrick’s fears. “You are all forsaken by your maker. And today, you will all die.”

  Renewed wails and cries for mercy washed through the chamber. Irrick maintained his calm. If their deaths were inevitable, he reasoned, then he had nothing to lose. “To rot with your gimmicks and games, monster,” he cried. “Just make our ends swift.”

  Balavad’s head ticked a few degrees to the side. He smiled a bloated corpse’s humorless smirk. “A brave spirit. A fighting spirit. A Knight Corporealis in training, if I’m not mistaken,” he crooned. “I want to keep this one.”

  His last words were directed at the Flesh Caster next to Irrick, who turned to look at the priest and then back at the usurper. Fear ran amok inside him, but he would not show it.

  The desecrator continued speaking to the congregation as if Irrick hadn’t interrupted. “Your deaths are yours to choose. You can be dead for the rest of eternity, as you call it, by having your throats opened . . .” He paused, allowing time for each of the Flesh Casters to reach inside their robe and withdraw ceremonial daggers the length of candlesticks, no wider than a finger in breadth. The priests held the blades in extended arms, decorated hilts in one hand and tips lying across the knuckles of their opposite hands. “Or you may choose to be consecrated in a new unlife as a soldier among the Raveners of the Tooth, and become one of my own people.”

  The roomful of prisoners gaped, eyes wide and many glistening with fresh tears. Irrick struggled to hold a mindful calm and control his shaking limbs.

  “You will die and be remade, and you will serve me. But I promise, you will rejoice at the things I’ll show you, the worlds you cannot yet imagine, which I will take you to. Your sacrifice of the life given to you by your Verity will be repaid in something more wondrous than life, something only I can give you.” The Verity stared into the room, wearing the passionless grin once more, then gestured toward one of the liquid-filled bowls. “My tears, shed to mourn your mortal weakness and collected within these vessels, will be your resu
rrection. You will become part of me, and I of you.

  “And now, you must choose.”

  Stallari Aldinhuus’s face came to Irrick’s mind, the stern lines that sank to black cracks in his oak-brown skin, his glacial eyes always steady, always certain. He drew strength from the lessons of the leader he had hoped someday to follow. “No Vinnric will ever bow to a fiend like you,” he spat at Balavad.

  This time the desecrator did not look at him but focused his attention on the sound of someone weeping, then glided forward to seek her out.

  A young woman with skin mottled by goose bumps covered her mouth with one hand as Balavad approached. Her wide eyes took over her face. The desecrator stopped beside her and looked at the top of her head. She would not raise her face to his.

  “Why do you cry?” he asked.

  “I’m scared,” she said simply.

  “Of death? Your kind only fears what it doesn’t know, but I have told you all you need to know. You are going to die. What else is there to dread?”

  She sniffled as more tears overtook her, unable to answer.

  The Verity looked over the crowd, and when he spoke next, his voice sounded nearly human, nearly compassionate. “What does anyone here have to fear? You don’t have to be lost to your deaths, a timeless oblivion with no meaning. You can choose the rewards I offer. An easy choice. Its simplicity is merely clouded by your illusions and inability to see the truth as I’ve described it. Your kind is so limited in its grasp, but I assure you, you have nothing to fear. You have only to make the right choice.”

  He looked back to the weeping woman. “Now, creature of Vaka Aster, a maker who has never cared for you, is the matter less frightening?” He reached out and cupped her chin in his bowl-sized palm, the tips of his long fingers caressing her temple, pulling her head up so she couldn’t refuse to stare into his face.

  “Leave her alone!” Irrick cried, this time in pure reflex, and jerked forward to try to come to her aid.