Knight Redeemed: The Shackled Verities (Book Two) Read online

  A voice, speaking loudly, came from outside the barred door. “No one is to see the—wait—Stop! Stop!”

  There was no mistaking the sound of clashing weapons. Galvanized, Mallich ordered, “Stave, grab Ulfric. Safran, the artifacts—all of them. And draw your klinkí stones. We’ll try to reach the Himmingazians at the base of the citadel and hope Eisa can get to us there.”

  Stave slung Ulfric’s form like a sack over his shoulder. Prepared to do battle, they rushed to the door. Ulfric attempted to follow, but his will, or whatever he still controlled of who he was, was sluggish. He could only turn in a slow revolution as the Knights flung open the door and stepped out. In the agonizing moments it took him to turn, he caught the rapid lights of flying klinkí stones through the corner of his ethereal eye. But by the time he’d made the full turn, he heard the Knights’ footsteps retreating through the antechamber and into the hallway beyond.

  With a monumental effort, he pushed himself toward the doorway, eventually seeing the smattering of bodies they’d left in their wake. The guard, unfortunately, was among them, killed by the attackers, he assumed. There were a half-dozen others. They were clearly Dyrrak, all of them, with the telltale skin markings that denoted their rise through their social caste. But there was more. Their blood had turned from red to a sludge-like gray-black, and their skin had faded to the same gray wanness of the Raveners he’d seen aboard Balavad’s ship.

  It was true. The usurper had found him. And it seemed, through trickery and deception, he had at last won the prize he sought.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Eisa feinted left, then dodged right just before striking the Ecclesium. He stood before Lillias in a wide-footed, bent-kneed pose ready for her, but striking him wasn’t what she meant to do. That would have been stupid, and he should have known better than to expect it of her. She was no First Phase novice or new Conservatum acolyte. Eisa’s only goal was to put him off balance, force him to spin and face her—

  —and then knock out as many of his teeth as she could with the dragør statue she swept up from the foot of Lillias’s seat.

  He grunted heavily and reeled backward into the Speaker, knocking into her hard, one hand covering his jaw. Lillias’s body shifted, her hands falling free to dangle over the chair’s sides. Blood gushed between Starkas’s fingers, glistening like oil in the dim room. Eisa could have finished him off right then but chose to wait and see how he’d react. If Balavad was here, she had questions, and Starkas would answer them before she was through with him.

  He recovered immediately, as she knew he would. Pushing himself off the chair, he bent his knees once more, ready for her next onslaught. Their eyes locked, neither speaking. She was about to tell him her terms, but then he did the last thing she’d have ever in a million turns expected.

  The coward ran.

  He was out the doorway before she could believe what she was seeing. Giving chase instantly, she crossed the room so fleetly it seemed her feet never hit the floor. She hurled herself through the doorway, for once not pausing to ensure she wasn’t flinging herself into a trap.

  It wasn’t a trap. It was worse.

  As her feet crossed the threshold, she did leave the floor. Her body was picked up by an unseen force and flung against the stone wall on the other side of the passageway. She spun halfway around before hitting hard enough to get the wind knocked out of her and landed on her knees. Gasping, she looked up.

  A monstrous being unlike any she’d ever seen stood before her. A woman, the Battgjaldic creature stood easily a foot over her, her black hair a wild tangle that writhed around her head like the smoke of an inferno. Her obsidian eyes were unnaturally large and pulsed with some deep inner glow. Eisa knew this being with unquestioning certainty. This was Balavad in a new Battgjaldic vessel.

  The new vessel the Verity had chosen was obscene, loathsome. No other reaction, not fear, not terror, not even anger coursed through Eisa at the sight of it. Nothing but a disgust so heavy she almost gagged on it. Her hundreds of turns of life had trained her to revere Verities to her core, but it wasn’t in her to revere this one.

  “Knight Eisa Nazaria,” the being said with a voice like embers in her ears. “I know all about you. Your Domine Ecclesium has been very forthcoming.”

  Balavad’s new form swept toward Eisa as she rose to her feet and stopped a couple of paces away. Eisa smelled char, a heavy odor that nearly overwhelmed her. It was the smell of worlds burning.

  “And he has been wise. I’ll offer you the same as I offered him, and offered your Stallari before you. Join me in making Vinnr the haven I can promise it will become, and you will be a leader of your world, worshipped and exalted almost as highly as I am to be.”

  She had to swallow before she could respond, and even then her jaw twitched and bunched with fury with every word she spat out. “Vaka Aster will destroy you again, fiend. Go back to your swamp in the Cosmos and corrupt it with your base vulgarity.” It was foolish; she knew it. To challenge and insult a celestial being was a death sentence. But she’d rather be dead than at Balavad’s mercy.

  The Domine Ecclesium stood behind the Verity, his back to the wall, blood running freely down his chin and chest. He caught Eisa’s glance and shook his head as if to say, Don’t damn yourself, Eisa. You have only this one chance.

  Balavad followed her gaze and turned around, and Eisa took it as her opening. She lunged. Again, she was flung backward into the wall, though the Verity had not turned. Heaving to pull air into her locked lungs, she could do nothing else for the moment. Balavad gestured to the Ecclesium, and he pulled Eisa’s klinkí stones from a pouch and handed them over. Balavad faced her again.

  Grotesquely, she smiled at Eisa. Her teeth were spikes. “Your Vaka Aster has already succumbed to my rule. She is shackled, as I intended, and the flesh she wears now belongs to me too. Your Stallari has been consecrated and he is mine. Everything, mine. Except you. But only for a little bit.”

  Balavad flung the stones at her, and she reflexively threw her arms over her face to block them, knowing she couldn’t and this was likely the death she expected to come. Instead, the stones encircled her, holding her in a net that she could not escape. She tried anyway and reached forward, but it was like touching hot, smooth, solid granite.

  With Balavad’s hand outstretched to hold the net, the Verity said to the Ecclesium, “Go, send word to all Dyrrakium that your empire’s time is at hand. Today instead of meeting their new ruler, they shall meet their new Verity.”

  “You slag worm, you won’t get away with this!” Eisa screamed, her voice ringing like a bell inside the net.

  The Ecclesium gave her a final look, then turned and began climbing the stairs.

  Balavad, with the same amused smirk, said, “Nothing outside your new cage can hear you, little bird. Make as much music as you like.”

  The Verity lifted her hand, and a river of black vapor began to filter out of the air like poison being drawn from a wound. It condensed around the blue sphere of Eisa’s prison, blocking her sight from the outside. Eisa stilled as dread wormed through her. Then all at once, the miasma pushed past the net and enveloped her. She could feel it on her skin, like oil the moment it combusts into flame, and she swore at Balavad again.

  As the dark vapor slid down her throat, the net rose from the floor, closing beneath Eisa’s feet and shrinking around her until she was wrapped as tightly as a swaddled infant. Struggling like a worm on a hook, Eisa continued screaming every curse and oath she knew as the usurper levitated her, new prison and all, up the stairwell after the Ecclesium.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Trying to tell himself he was overreacting, Jaemus listened to the footsteps and concluded he’d simply borrow a lamp from whoever was approaching when they got to him. Surely just a group of Dyrraks.

  But that sound he’d heard, that had been no Dyrrak.

  The footsteps were growing closer. No longer hedging, Jaemus did the one remaining thing he coul
d think of. He looked for somewhere to hide. He was running from shadows while practically buried in shadows, though the irony of this did nothing to amuse him.

  He turned to head back up the stairs. Just then, he saw a glow below. It wasn’t the soft white glow of an illuminate orb like there were in other places in the citadel. Rather, the color splashed the walls in a shifty, sickly green, moving in a pattern like water, turning the red ore in the wall an oily purple. His steps faltered at the sight.

  Whatever the light was, it was too close. If he started running up the stairs, there was no way he’d be unheard. He wasn’t like Eisa or the Dyrraks, fleet footed and silent. Whoever was down there would give chase. He’d be caught. Then what? He found himself uninterested in following that train of thought to its conclusion.

  The light was being cast far enough that he could make out the opening to a secondary passage just a few steps up. Without thinking, he tiptoed to it and diverted inside, moving as silently as possible, seeking any doorway or alcove he could press himself into until the light-bearer passed.

  The passage gave way to a T-junction only a few steps in, and he instantly turned down the left tunnel, walked a few paces, and stopped, listening to the echoing footsteps. The light, though diffused as it slid down his escape passage, was bright enough now that he could see the bumps of frightened flesh on his arms.

  His breath didn’t need to be held. He was too scared to draw one.

  “My newly consecrated Raveners tell me that they haven’t yet acquired the vessel,” a voice said from the main stairway. It was feminine but deep, with a liquid roiling quality that Jaemus recognized not with his mind but with some deep, primitive sense organ that all beings rely on for survival. It wasn’t a Ravener he’d heard after all. This was Balavad’s voice, even if feminine. There was no mistaking it.

  “It will be done, Your Holiness. The rest of the citadel venerates will be brought into your fold easily. Even if the Knights reach the main level, they will not get the Stallari’s body out of the fortress.”

  “When captured, bring my quin outside. You will denounce Aldinhuus to the empire, tell the Dyrrak people his claims to be the vessel are untrue.”

  “It…it is not in the Dyrrak people to lie, Your Holiness.”

  “It is not a lie to show them Aldinhuus’s deceptions. Your people must be led to the truth gently. Tell them only that Vaka Aster has abandoned them. A simple, unaltered truth. When I am ready, I will give the Dyrrak people the Verity they are worthy of. Until Dyrrakium is fully consecrated, it is for their own good that they still believe in Vaka Aster’s invincibility—you don’t want them to believe there can be weakness to their own creator. They will lose hope, and you will lose control of them. Have I made myself clear, Ecclesium?”

  The voices were diminishing, and with a slowness that felt intentional, as if it were waiting for him to reveal himself, the light began to fade up the stairway as well. Jaemus didn’t move until he was in pitch-blackness again and the only sound was his own panicked heartbeat.

  Unless I’ve gone full muddlemind, that was the Ecclesium working hand in hand with Balavad. I need to warn the Knights, he thought.

  Which he couldn’t do without his damned Mentalios.

  After what felt an eternity, a wan kind of bravery compelled him to leave his sanctuary. Grudgingly, he slid his hands along the feeder passage until he was again in the main. He counted back to the last step he’d been on and dropped to a knee, sweeping his hands back and forth across the floor in search of his dropped wystic lens.

  The stones were remarkably smooth, whether by time or by design, he couldn’t tell. And their coolness was considerably unlike the citadel’s upper floors and what seemed like the kingdom’s general climate.

  But it was no use. He’d have to sweep every stone from here to the Speaker’s chamber if he was going to find his Mentalios. And, he realized, why take that time when he knew a faster way? If his recollection of the map was right, though he had to admit after his little moment of excitement that it wasn’t likely to be, he was close to his original destination. Another two hundred yards and one final right fork. Then he’d have the final piece of Fenestros. Even without his Mentalios, he might be able to join the three broken shards and conjure some light from it the way Ulfric was able to.

  What does it matter? You heard Balavad, Ulfric is being hunted.

  But what choice did he have but to go down? If he went up, he could easily run into either the usurping Verity or her minions, and he really preferred to avoid being stabbed again. So, with slow, deliberate steps, he continued down, feeling the edge of each stair with his soft-soled Ivoryssian boots. Not long later, the smell of lamp oil and smoke grew stronger. Then there was light, lamplight rather than whatever Balavad had projected.

  As soon as he realized he was almost there, he stopped again, listening for anything that might be as bad, or worse, than what he’d felt pass earlier. But it was quiet. As a grave.

  Sucking in a breath, he took the last few steps. A door stood ajar at the end of the passageway, and the dim, smoky light came from within.

  He paced inside and immediately saw the strange woman. Unlike her rigid, awkward posture from aboard the Gildr, her body was now draped over a formidably built wooden chair, her hands dangling.

  Notably, a black, empty cavity adorned the center of her chest.

  Jaemus could have wept. Eisa had already been here, apparently. The Fenestros shard was gone, and so was she. In addition, Balavad appeared to be loose in Dyrrakium, and Jaemus was for all intents and purposes now buried hundreds of feet underground with no way to warn the Knights. To say the day had taken a turn for the worse was a criminal understatement.

  After a moment, he sighed. “Well, at least this is the worst that can happen. Things really can’t go more wrong. The Knights and Ulfric will simply open another starpath and spirit themselves and the ’Nauts away while I end my days as a puppet for a demented star sprite,” he told himself. “Lucky me.”

  He gazed around the chamber, feeling a helpless malaise settle into him. His eyes were drawn once more to the Speaker. In the flickering oil lamps, another difference about her stood out. Her face, which before had been pale and rigid as if she were in great pain, was relaxed now. Peaceful even. Something about the sight jolted him out of his doldrums.

  Buck up, Jaemus. Stop acting as if you’re dead like her. You’re special, after all, sprinkled with star sprite dust and immortal. Even Mylla didn’t die when Balavad attacked her. Not right away, at least.

  That last thought gave him a shiver, yet he took a resolute breath and considered what to do next. Perhaps Eisa had left him a message? Spinning around in a slow turn, he scanned the chamber, but aside from the chair, some statuettes, and the Speaker, the only other objects in it were the lamps.

  Except…

  He stepped forward and picked up a figurine, about the length of his forearm, that lay on its side near one wall. Turning it over in his hands, he marveled at how similar to a slangarook it was. Except where a slangarook had long, trailing fins and a more fish-like hooked jaw, this had wings and a snout unlike any creature he could identify. And—a spot of dark liquid splattered along one side.

  He dropped the figure. It was blood. He was certain.

  He had to get out now, find his Mentalios. He swept a lamp from its emplacement and took one last look at the Speaker, considering going through her crimson robe to look for anything that might come in handy. Then his eye caught on something shiny lying beside the chair. He hadn’t seen it in the shadows before. A stony object, rounded on one side.

  Was it…?

  He rushed to it and picked it up. Oh sparkling celestials, it was! The last piece of Fenestros shard. Maybe whoever had been fighting in here had knocked it loose, or maybe it was left behind by accident. What was certain was that the time had come to get out of here.

  With too much to lose if he stayed down here, and too much to gain if he didn’t, he tucked the
shard into his satchel with the other pieces of Fenestros and Lífs’s Scrylle map. No time to mess with magic he didn’t yet understand, not when there were lamps available to light his way. With one in hand, Jaemus sped from the chamber and started up the steps to the citadel two at a time.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  No sense of powerlessness, in seventeen centuries, had ever been so burdensome and crushing. Ulfric wanted to throw himself through the window, into a wall, against the floor, whatever he could, just to feel something, just to know he could move, to know he wasn’t eternally trapped in this state of being nothing but consciousness without senses or the ability to affect his world in any way, any way at all.

  He did all he could think of. Willing himself to move, he pushed toward the doorway through what felt, only in his mind, like frozen honey. The drudge of it would have been exhausting if he’d been able to experience it in any kind of physical way—but he couldn’t.

  After what seemed a hundred turns, he finally reached the opening. Looking through the antechamber at the hallway beyond, he lingered on the threshold for a moment as he considered what he would do now. By the time he made it even across the outer room, the Knights and the vessel could be anywhere in the citadel or beyond. If he couldn’t move faster, everything that might be about to happen already will have. It was a hopeless position, and he despaired the way a caged wild animal must the moment before it gives up completely.