Knight Redeemed: The Shackled Verities (Book Two) Page 3

  Mylla…

  She had struck him—he would never forget that. He’d gone into the black. Then…?

  He groaned and pulled himself up into a seated position. Of course the vantage was unusual. He’d never occupied this position. None but Vaka Aster, or the vessel the Vinnric Verity inhabited, had.

  The chamber wavered, and he saw the shapes of people around him, his weirded vision distorting and fracturing their forms as if he were looking through a prism. At some point, he’d been given a robe of heavy, pristine wool, the kind that had customarily been draped on Vaka Aster’s vessel. He rubbed his hand against the fiber, carded to a softness that would put a baby to sleep, then pulled the robe open. One of his own drab brown tunics covered his torso. The ceremonial tunic of dark blue and his armor that he’d been wearing when he’d been transported to Himmingaze were missing. This information concerned him. How long had he been here? How long since Symvalline and Isemay had been sent to Arc Rheunos?

  “Ulfric? By the fickle furies of fate, is that you?”

  It was Stave’s voice, and a moment later, his wide form was visible approaching from farther back in the chamber.

  “It is,” he said aloud, then quietly to himself, “and it isn’t.”

  Stave had him by the shoulders, his whiskery face a hand’s-width distant. “Verity’s light, your eyes! Look like bruhawks’ eyes, they do! All swirly and wystic.”

  Ulfric reached up and patted one of Stave’s shoulders. “I know. Believe me.” More figures approached, and he saw Mallich and Safran clearly a moment later.

  “Stallari,” Mallich said and tipped his head while touching his fingertips to the center of the nine-pointed star on his chin.

  Ulfric returned the salute. “Mallich, Safran, you’re well? I’ve missed some things, I know. But you’re all well?”

  We are, Ulfric. And you? Safran sent by Mentalios, projecting for each of them to hear.

  “I’m…” He almost confirmed that all was right with him too but stopped himself. That description didn’t fit, so he finished with. “Back.”

  Mallich asked, “And Vaka Aster?” The man’s topaz eyes didn’t waver, piercing even the fractured chromatism through which Ulfric saw everything.

  He sat silently for a moment, pondering how to answer that. After so many long turns a Knight, and most of those as Stallari, he had developed a default condition that had never yet failed to serve him, though he couldn’t always say it served him well. Blunt pragmatism.

  “Vaka Aster is still shackled, and until that is resolved, nothing else can be. Do we still have Balavad’s Scrylle?”

  Safran sent: We don’t know where Balavad is now, but we were fortunate that the Himmingazian Bardgrim retained his artifacts. We have them with us.

  “That engineer was full of surprises. I’ll . . . miss him,” Ulfric said, realizing he’d grown fond of the precocious stranger.

  “You don’t have to miss him, you don’t,” Stave said. “He’s turning out to be quite the fit among us, even as green as he is. Along with about thirty others like him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Stallari.” The urgency in Mallich’s tone grabbed his attention. “The Vigilance has been destroyed. And our numbers are down to five. We must think critically about where we’ll be safest. We must plan.”

  A great deal of news was coming at him, and he was struggling to fit all the pieces together. But Mallich was wrong about something.

  “Seven, Mallich. We are still seven Knights. Symvalline is not lost to us. She is in Arc Rheunos with my daughter. Vaka Aster showed me. And Eisa is still—”

  Stave cut in, his voice a burning ember. “One other thing we can be sure of, none of this would be happening if Eisa hadn’t betrayed the Order. There is a reckoning coming, there is, if she ever dares show her face again.”

  “No, Stave,” Ulfric said and shook his head. “We don’t know Eisa’s purpose. We can’t until she is found. In Himmingaze, Mylla told me what happened aboard the Vigilance, that she took Vaka Aster’s Scrylle. It was reckless, but I’ve known Eisa longer than any of you. She never acts without purpose.” But is that true? he thought, remembering all he’d read in Lífs’s Scrylle. The doom of Himmingaze, how much was she responsible?

  Safran wrapped a hand around one of Stave’s, halting further arguments from him as a fourth figure approached and squeezed himself between the Knights.

  With another shake of his head, this time to clear it, Ulfric at last asked, “Bardgrim?”

  The engineer—as unbelievable as it was that it was him—grinned amiably. “Glad you’re back, Aldinhuus. Er, Stallari rather, is it?”

  Ulfric’s usual composure failed him. At first, all he could think to say was: “Just Ulfric.”

  His Himmingazian companion gave him a quick nod and continued. “I’m sure you’ve all got a lot of catching up to do and you’re looking forward to some home-cooked meals and whatnot. But I need a quick hand with something. Shouldn’t take a moment, given your particular proclivities.”

  Ulfric’s eyes widened as a vague, shadowy memory passed through his mind. Bardgrim aboard the warship, fighting all around, Bardgrim leaping…

  “I know what you’ve done,” he said.

  The way that statement hung in the still air pulled the engineer up short. “…And?”

  “Tell me why.”

  Uncertainly, Bardgrim looked to the others for a clue.

  “You saved me. Saved Vinnr,” Ulfric stated.

  A blush of modesty Ulfric wouldn’t have guessed Bardgrim capable of spread over his face, and he stammered, “If you want to put it that way…you see, well, there was a Ravener—really, it was this Balavad sprite fellow, and he’d somehow gotten control of the Ravener—made the poor sod one of these vessel things, I guess? And he had Knight Evernal’s sword and was about to, you know, kill you. So I…” He shrugged and cleared his throat. “I stopped him with the first thing I had on hand.”

  Ulfric broke into a grin, wide and authentic, and stepped off the platform and over to Bardgrim. He put a hand that felt as hot as if it had recently come from a forge on the man’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze that was hard enough to make Bardgrim wince. “You mean you took the blow that was meant for me. You’re one of the most extraordinary—”

  He cut himself off, his eyes fixed on the man’s face. His chin, the Himmingazian’s chin—it bore the star of Vaka Aster, the star that proclaimed that he was a Knight Corporealis of Vinnr.

  “Extraordinary,” Ulfric repeated quietly, then finished his statement. “One of the most extraordinary Knights I’ve witnessed in my long turns. Truly.”

  Bardgrim continued to look flustered. “Not exactly a Knight, really. See, I haven’t taken a vow of chastity or perpetual irritation, or whatever it is you do.”

  “It’s an oath, Himmingazian, a promise to uphold our duty to protect the vessel from all enemies. And you have been ordained as a Knight Corporealis by Vaka Aster, one of the Five Verities, creators of all things,” Mallich cut in evenly.

  Stave added with a twist of his usual gruffness. “It’s the greatest honor there is in any realm.”

  Bardgrim’s eyes widened a moment as Ulfric observed him digesting this. The Himmingazian was more than changed. Ulfric sensed he was greater in some way, stronger, resilient. A Knight, in other words. And what’s more, he no longer harbored the same fear or timidity, even toward Ulfric, who’d treated him roughly indeed. For that, Ulfric found himself surprisingly grateful.

  “Perpetual irritation, like I said,” Bardgrim confirmed. “Not an oath I’m likely to make. Or is it take?”

  “It’s not something to quip about,” Ulfric started, then put a halt to his shoddy righteousness. Who was he to speak to this man about honor? Bardgrim may have caused him more than a few headaches in the past days, but in the end, he’d been the bravest of them. He’d had no idea what he was involved in, no training or even a basic familiarity with the archaneology of Verities
, just a list of forbidden rumors and whispered half-truths to bring him from disbelief to acceptance of the threats they endured, all in a matter of only a few hours. And he’d stood up to everything they’d faced, coming through it not only with his life but also having been ordained, chosen, by Vaka Aster. What other endorsement could be that resounding? Ulfric would never again have cause to find fault with the Himmingazian.

  “I’m sorry, Bardgrim. I’m not myself and it’s been a difficult few days.” He swept his hand out to encompass the Knights. “There is no word in our realm or any other to express the depth of the Knights Corporealis’ gratitude. Nor of my own.”

  With a short forced laugh, the engineer said, “It was nothing, just a tickle and a strange trip through a dimension of space or stars or something I couldn’t describe if I tried, and, you know, here we are. I don’t even have a scar, though it would have been a great story to tell. I’m sure no one back home will believe me now, with—well, anyway, let me get to the point.”

  “Anytime,” Stave grumbled.

  “Send us ’Gazians back home and we’ll call it even. What do you say, Master Knight who became a sprite? Deal?”

  Ulfric glanced at his three companions before answering. “We could use you here, Bardgrim. We are not yet entirely free of this threat.” As he said this, he could read in Bardgrim’s eyes that he’d known what Ulfric’s response would be.

  “Ah, yes, well,” the man jabbered. “Don’t mistake me, I am ridiculously grateful that you and your brighter self brought us—and by ‘us’ I mean me and the crew of the Bounding Skate, do you remember them?—here, obviously, and rescued us from the warship, but all us Himmingazians, we’d really prefer to go home now.”

  “Speaking of going home,” Stave cut in, “Ulfric, we need to discuss getting back to Vigil Tower.”

  One thing at a time, Ulfric thought. I’m not actually the damned Verity, I can’t manage everyone’s fates!

  But he said, “Stop, wait. I need some gaps filled in first. Things that happened on the warship, and what’s happened since. Start from the moment Mylla brained me.” He glanced around, still fighting with his Verity-enhanced eyes. A sudden thought struck him like a blow, making him blink. “Mallich, you said we were still five Knights strong, excepting Eisa and Symvalline. Was that including Bardgrim?”

  Mallich nodded slowly.

  “Then…where is Mylla?”

  The wounded look in Safran’s dark eyes answered him. She sent: She didn’t return with us. Mylla, our sister, was lost in Himmingaze.

  Chapter Three

  Mallich tasked Jaemus with standing at the damaged front entrance to the mountaintop enclave the starpath had brought them to and keeping an eye on the rest of the refugees from Balavad’s ship. Vaka Aster had rescued a few hundred captives and brought them back to Vinnr when she’d defeated Balavad, though only a few were still there now.

  Wasn’t that a fine thing, Jaemus thought, going from being one of the most decorated engineers in Himmingaze to a—what was he exactly? A lookout? What specifically was he looking out for?

  Whatever it might be, the simple fact was that after living his life among nothing but rain and a glittering horizon that was sure to kill him, and everyone else, someday, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the vista that spread before him. He’d never seen so much land. Rocks, dirt, things called trees, they were all nothing but myth in Himmingaze.

  Footsteps sounded behind him and he glanced back. Knight Glór was approaching, and she smiled when he noticed her. She was hard not to look at and not just because she was Vinnric. Her hair was as black as Knight Evernal’s had been, but glossy and straight, and her big eyes, so dark they were nearly black as well, shined playfully. He guessed from the fine lines that swept back beside her eyes and mouth she was older than him by a few anni-cycles, or turns, as they called a long passage of time here in Vinnr. But there was also such wisdom in those lines and the steadiness of her gaze that he instinctively thought of her as ageless.

  She carried a Fenestros and used it to speak to him, her voice like crystal through the stone. “Is all well, Knight Bardgrim? Can I bring you anything?”

  Oh, that’s right, he wasn’t a mere lookout, he was a Knight now. Was that better than being a Glisternaut?

  “I’m fine, I think,” he responded, marveling at just how fine he felt indeed. He wasn’t tired or hungry, and most of all, he was not in any pain after having a sword plunged through him. There were definitely perks to this Knight thing. After all, a Glisternaut couldn’t survive something so, well, hideous. “There’s only one group of Vinnrics left, and I think they’ll be headed down the mountain soon,” he finished, inwardly repeating what he’d just said. Headed down the mountain.

  No Himmingazian in his lifetime, or several lifetimes before his, had ever seen a mountain, much less walked on one. All his home’s mountains stood deep beneath the turbulent waters of the Never Sea now, where no one who didn’t want to become a feast for fleeches dared go.

  Safran glanced over the encampment the Vinnrics had made for themselves. Only a few fire circles remained, all carefully covered with snow to put them out, gathered from the intermittent snowbanks that remained from winter. “Ulfric and Stave are working to repair the interrealm well. We may be back indoors by dinnertime, and then you and your friends will see what the cities of Vinnr are like.”

  “I’m assuming they’ll be on land?”

  She grinned. “On land, yes. And they don’t—how did you describe the Himmingaze cities?—hover.”

  He smiled back. She was, by far, the most amiable of his new companions. Warm, quick to smile. She reminded him of his gramsirene, though she looked far younger. He was having a hard time understanding the match between her and the far coarser Stave. “Tell me what this interrealm well is,” he said. “Is it like the starpath? Much as I want to get home, thinking of being discorporated and blasted through space and time on a beam of starlight again has . . . less appeal than one might think.”

  “Not to worry, Jaemus. They’re like doorways. You simply step through and you’re in the next room. But the room can be a dozen or a hundred leagues distant. Ulfric and Knight Dondrin built them long ago to help the Knights protect the Fenestrii and come to each other’s aid quickly if needed.” She stopped at his look of, what he imagined was, over-rapt fascination. These kinds of wonderous things were the sweetness in his chuffee.

  “A portal, then?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Exactly. A portal only a Knight can open.”

  “And how does it work for those who aren’t?”

  “We’ll take your people through in smaller groups with us. It’s quite simple. They will take one of our hands, then each other’s. Anything touching the Knight who opens the well will be pulled through with them.”

  “That’s a relief,” he commented, not sure if he meant it. There was so much he didn’t understand about this world, its physical properties not the least of them. It would take lifetimes to learn it, if he wanted to. Which they were telling him he now had…

  He heard a familiar buzz in the sky outside and looked out. One of the Vinnric flying crafts, what they called dragørfly scouts, flew overhead, heading down the face of the mountain. Scouts from their capital city Asteryss had found the refugees shortly after their return. Knight Roibeard had spoken with the first scout pilot who landed and learned that they’d been watching the starpath continuously since their city had fallen. Expecting either Vaka Aster—or their final doom.

  The Ivoryssians had steadily been evacuated in small numbers by these crafts and others brought from the city. Jaemus’s mind itched to get a closer look at the scouts, pull them apart and see how they worked. Those among the refugees from Balavad’s ship who’d felt up to the task and didn’t want to wait for a ship that could carry them had started walking back toward their homes and cities, leaving only a handful still at Mount Omina.

  He noted Safran watching the scout closely. When it was out of sigh
t, she sighed. “The Ivoryssians will be happy to return to their homes. And those who survived the Ravener attack on Asteryss will be happy they are back. Despite the many sacrifices and lives lost throughout the realm, Vinnr is fortunate.”

  He glanced at her, wondering if she was attempting to be funny, but saw the seriousness in her firmly set features. Jaemus had heard that the city most of the refugees had come from had been defeated decisively and many taken captive. Before that, another kingdom called Yor, east and north of here, had fallen to Balavad too. If Safran thought that was lucky, he couldn’t imagine how much worse she thought things could have been.

  But that wasn’t true, was it? He’d seen with his own eyes the way Balavad changed and distorted people, turning them into the mindless and marauding Raveners, gangly and hideous. He thought of his friends inside the mountain, Cote and the rest of the Glisternauts, and imagined what they’d be like if that had happened to them. It sent a shudder through him. Safran put a warm hand on his elbow.

  “Don’t worry, Jaemus, I think the worst is behind us. And once we’re back at Vigil Tower and we have a chance to consider all options, I’m sure we’ll get your people back home without further delay. You too. That is”—she caught his eyes with hers—“if you still want to leave.”

  His mouth opened to say the obvious, Of course I do, but something in her gaze stopped him. Don’t I? he thought and closed his mouth again.

  “I have something for you,” she said and reached into a pouch she wore at her waist. She drew out a pendant with a circle of crystal in the center. He recognized what it was instantly. A Mentalios lens, like all the Vinnric Knights wore.

  “We have a few extras of these in case one of us loses ours. This is the last we had here in Mount Omina. The lenses are useful beyond imagining. Well, perhaps you can imagine it. I’ve already seen the nimbleness of your mind.” She handed it to him and gestured for him to put it around his neck. “Let me show you how it works.”