Knight Redeemed: The Shackled Verities (Book Two) Page 4

  He took it without question and easily memorized the Elder Veros phrase she taught him that would allow him to focus his mind. Cæcra ad resrs, boromcad bea dord. Kucik kea kesrs, emsu kæ lœkra. Cycle of light, balanced by dark, focus my sight, into my heart.

  He repeated it after hearing it once, and she gave him a knowing grin. “Nimble, as I said. It isn’t the words so much as their resonance that clears your mind and allows you to hone your focus,” she said.

  Then something extraordinary happened. Spoken words, in Safran’s voice, ran through his head, as if he’d thought them himself. Do you hear me?

  His shoulders jerked just a hair. “That’s just…water and lightning! That’s incredible!” he said aloud.

  She held up a hand. Use the lens. Send your voice, your thoughts, into it.

  He cleared his throat, realized how silly that was, and a moment later thought: Having someone else inside my head is a lot like having someone else in my underthings drawer. I don’t really care what you see, but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to like it.

  With a snort, she sent: I can only see into your mind if you leave it unguarded. Learning this will come with practice, like anything. You will get better at it the more you do it. Eventually, you won’t even think about it anymore, it will become natural. Now, I’m going to let the others know you wear a Mentalios as well.

  “Wait. I don’t really think that’s—”

  But Safran was already channeling: Knights, I’ve given Jaemus a Mentalios. From now on, if you send to all of us, think to include him as well. And he’s a very good pupil. He’s already learned the basics. She pointed at him, inviting him to try it out.

  Um, hello? This is Jaemus. He warmed to the experience quickly. Borrowing the words of a famous Himmingazian, let me say, “Even the farthest of friends who knows your mind is closer.” I paraphrased a bit, of course, but the sentiment seems to apply.

  Jaemus Glunt! Stave sent, his rough voice striking inside Jaemus’s skull like a blunt instrument. Time’s right that you’d step up to the Order. I knew you’d become one of us eventually, I did.

  And Roibeard: Welcome, novice.

  Then Ulfric: Take it slow. It can be overwhelming at first.

  He clutched his head in both hands and pressed his eyes closed to block them out. When the Knights stopped speaking, he reached beside him to put a hand against the wall and steady himself. “That was like having a school of fish fighting in my head. How in Himmingaze am I supposed to get used to that?”

  “It gets easier, as I said,” Safran said aloud, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Normally, you wouldn’t receive one until you’d been ordained by the maker herself. But circumstances being what they are… Keep it close. It may seem frivolous or cumbersome to you now, but you never know when you’ll need to warn others of danger. Or be warned.”

  Jaemus forced a smile to his lips that felt as fresh as ten-cycle-old smookshark and grappled with the urge to remove the lens and give it back. His mind was an…active place, and he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea that someone else might be able to explore it without his control. But then, how wonderful was it to be able to speak without being heard by those you didn’t want listening?

  Perks to being a Knight, indeed, he thought and realized Safran had heard it by the way she smiled broadly at him. Oh, this is going to take some getting used to.

  Don’t worry, she sent. It will take some time to learn to manage your thoughts, but I’ll show you how to do it. The interrealm well won’t be done until evening. That gives us a few hours to practice before we travel back to Vigil Tower. First lesson, think of your mind as a kórb fruit where others only see the outer layer.

  “Yes, right. Now, what’s a kórb fruit?”

  Chapter Four

  The words Eisa wanted to scream—You’re a traitor to your Verity!—died on her lips. Griggory was gone. Nothing she said or did would change that. What he’d said, that she needed to restore her own faith, had shaken her, and now the knot in her guts clenched and burned. She knew what he meant: how her rage against the blasphemous Mystae had doomed Himmingaze and its Verity, what she’d done to Lillias…

  But the burning inside would abate, as it always did eventually. She would not fail her own Verity or her people.

  Casting her klinkí stone shield, she strode back to her dragørfly ship, already holding the Scrylle and Fenestros scepter and murmuring the incantation that would bring her back to Vinnr through the starpath well.

  The experience of slipping through stars and realities was bracing, energizing, and she arrived near the top of Mount Omina in what felt simultaneously like a moment and an eternity. The dragørfly ship hit the ground hard, its engine failing, as she’d feared it would. Despite being Knight-made and reinforced with techniques only Knights knew, no nonliving object could travel the starpaths for long before they became crippled and ruined. It had probably been the reason Mylla’s own scout had crashed, stranding her to be done in by those disgusting sea worms.

  Eisa abandoned the ruined ship and surveyed the mountainside—what she could of it, anyway. Complete darkness enclosed her, the hour close to Hallumbrum as she surmised from the stars. With one hand, she launched her klinkí stone shield, and in the other, she held up the Fenestros. With a few whispered words, the celestial stone was illuminated and cast a globe of light around her nearly as bright as day.

  Shadows bounced and skittered from the light, almost as if alive and craven, hiding from her. The effect was far eerier than any Glister Cloud–ridden sky in Himmingaze could be. The place looked blasted and ruined for as far as she could see. The avalanche of a few days ago had ripped away whole trees and sent countless tons of rock skidding down the mountain’s face. Snowbanks looked melted and dirtied, probably from the Raveners’ ships. Down the mountain’s slope lay the avalanche’s path, leading to more darkness where, she knew, it had killed Symvalline and Isemay, Ulfric’s daughter.

  The shadowy slope of devastation held her gaze for a time. As she thought of her fellow Knight buried under hundreds of feet of snow and broken trees and rubble, she suddenly grew woozy, as if all the blood in her body was sinking to her feet. Her vision narrowed, her stomach heaved.

  Almost as if it were happening to someone else, Eisa felt herself fall to a knee, heard a wail escape her lips. The loss of her friends, the loss of Griggory, the loss of another entire world—nothing in all her hundreds of turns had prepared her for this much loss.

  She stayed there for she didn’t know how long, her chin sunken to her chest, eyes closed, the Fenestros and klinkí stones doused as her limp arms hung at her sides, shaking.

  She heard Griggory’s voice in her mind. Faith in the fight, Eisa.

  Yes, there was always a fight. Of that, she would never lose faith.

  With an angry swipe of her wrist across her mouth, she rose. No more weakness. She was a Knight Corporealis, the strongest of the Verity’s creations. She was a Dyrrak, the most faithful of all the people of Vinnr. And she was a Nazarian, the worthiest of the six founding lines of the people of Lœdyrrak.

  The walk to the Knights’ sanctuary would be rough, their paths obliterated by recent events. She started there anyway, at least to be under a roof as the night passed. The skies were clear, with no enemy in sight, and she arrived at the hollowed mountaintop sanctuary not long later.

  The Fenestros cast light around the main chamber. People had been here since she and the other Knights had taken the vessel aboard the Vigilance. Fallen stone and debris had been cleared, signs of a recent fire still lay in the modest hearth. With a sudden suspicion, she hurried to the rear of the main chamber and saw…

  Yes, the interrealm well had been restored. Not just people of Vinnr, but the Knights specifically had been here.

  A sudden burst of excitement filled her chest. This was a clue, possibly a confirmation that they must have survived the usurper! Griggory had seen a starpath open from the usurper’s warship, destroy
ing it in the process. Did that mean all aboard the ship had been destroyed, or had some escaped? If some had, the starpath well might have brought them home. If they interrealm well was fixed, now they were likely back in Vigil Tower.

  And who had opened the starpath? Only two things were possible: either someone on the warship had a Verity’s Scrylle and Fenestros, or a Verity itself had done so. The fact that Vinnr had not been destroyed told her Vaka Aster’s vessel, wherever it was, was still sound and that the fight against Balavad may have gone in the Knights’, and Vinnr’s, favor. With no help from me, she noted, and that knot in her stomach wrenched tight again.

  But how did she know this for certain? How could she? Wasn’t it also possible that Balavad had more than one warship, that his forces even now were rampaging through Asteryss and Magdaster and beyond, taking Ivoryss one city at a time as she suspected they’d done in Yor? Mylla had described the creatures Balavad’s minions were transformed into. When last she’d seen the rest of her Order, they’d been taken captive by the usurper. What was to say they hadn’t become slaves themselves and had simply rebuilt the interrealm well at Balavad’s bidding?

  If she went directly back to Vigil Tower, she could be stepping into a trap. As far as she was aware, she and Ulfric were the only remaining free Knights, and she didn’t even know what had become of him. He’d simply disappeared. Where was he? What was he?

  She pulled her Dyrrak dagger clear of its sheath and flipped it back and forth over her knuckles and around her palm like an allurer lulling her observers, thinking. Nighttime on the mountaintop was a cold, silent affair. Even the wind seemed unwilling to witness the desolation. Her mind was not at ease, and the preternatural quiet wasn’t helping. She would wait until tomorrow morning when Halla lit and warmed the darkness to decide on a reasonable course of action. Until then she would consider: Whom could she trust?

  The answer was simple. The same people she’d always been able to trust. Her own people, the Dyrraks.

  The rest of Vinnr judged them as traitors, but the commoners of the lesser kingdoms were wrong. None were more worthy of Vaka Aster’s favor or more willing to do what was necessary to prove it. The Dyrraks were pure in their devotion, as faithful to the Verity as Eisa was herself. Only once had Eisa’s faith ever been tested, only once had it ever wavered, when her lover Lillias had betrayed her. She’d nearly failed that test, but in the end, it was Lillias and her plot that had failed.

  It was funny in a way that all that had befallen Yor and Dyrrakium all those turns ago, and the doomed realm of Himmingaze, all the suffering of their peoples, could be blamed on her, the beautiful Acolyte Lillias of Yor.

  Lillias…

  Eisa spun her knife faster as she thought of the Yorwoman. If Lillias had never betrayed her, Eisa would never have pushed Dyrrakium to forsake its alliance with Yor and Ivoryss, and she would never have been in Himmingaze, filled with rage and despondency, ready to strike out against anyone who crossed her. And oh how the blasphemous Mystae had crossed her, and how they had paid—not only for their mistakes, but for Lillias’s. Eisa had learned her lesson: commoners were weak, commoners were faithless, and never again would she trust anyone but the Knights and her own people.

  Decided, Eisa abruptly sheathed her dagger, dispelling thoughts of Lillias to the pit of rage deep in her mind, and heart, she always did. When morning came, she would take the well to Dyrrakium and bring an army back to Ivoryss. If the usurper’s forces ruled the city, they wouldn’t for long. The Dyrraks were undefeatable.

  She leaned up against the wall next to the interrealm well. Removing her Mentalios lens from around her neck, she carefully placed it inside the brass ring that made up the well’s center. With it hanging there, no one else could come or go. She let her back slide down the wall and stared into the darkness, her mind as restless as her conscience.

  Chapter Five

  Oh, Mylla, Ulfric thought. Why you?

  For that matter, why did they have to lose anyone to something as unthinkable as a war between Verities? Much less someone who had such promise, such vitality? She, above all the hundreds of Knights he had known in his long service to Vaka Aster, had been special. A star that shone brighter than many others in ways that defied both her youth and her start of life as a Dyrrak exile and orphan. She’d shown an aptitude for the rigors of the Order that surpassed most of her peers, and, above all, an innocence that had endeared her to him as if she were his own daughter.

  Now, gone. Most likely dead.

  In the short time he’d been back in Vinnr, the Knights had filled in the final pieces of what had occurred since he’d caged Vaka Aster. Not only was Mylla gone, Eisa had not returned from whatever inexplicable and unexplained pursuit she’d set herself on either. Yet he didn’t, wouldn’t, believe she’d betrayed them. Her devotion to Vaka Aster came not only from her oath as a Knight but from her heritage as a Dyrrak. Dedicated, devoted, and devout, almost to a fault. There must be more to her actions than they yet knew.

  But he’d learned, hadn’t he, that she had secrets. Such as the chaos she’d caused in Himmingaze.

  Griggory had recorded it all in Lífs’s Scrylle, what Eisa had done to their Order of Mystae, and Ulfric had stumbled across it trying to find the starpath to get back to Vinnr before he and Jaemus had been apprehended by the Glisternauts. Hundreds of turns ago, the Himmingazian Mystae had performed a wicked act of sacrilege to banish their Verity from Himmingaze and take power for themselves. Eisa, because she was Eisa and could not stand for such apostasy, had slain them to the last man. And because of her thoughtless frenzy of punishment, their Scrylle, and thus the way to save Himmingaze, had been lost. Griggory had been there since then, seeking the Scrylle. And Eisa had never spoken of any of it.

  Yet still, for the life of him, Ulfric could not figure out why she had sent Mylla there. He sensed the mystery of Himmingaze’s decline went much deeper than he yet knew, but concerning himself or the Order with it now was an impossibility. Balavad could be back, and Vaka Aster was still caged—as was he.

  These thoughts weighed on him as he and Stave finished carving the final sigil into the wall of Mount Omina’s sanctuary. He’d smashed this wystic doorway to the interrealm well on his way through last time in order to keep Balavad from following him to Vaka Aster’s vessel. Now, he reflected darkly, by some twisted irony he was that vessel.

  “Bogtrottin’ slag!” Stave cried beside him and dropped his chisel. He stuck a dirty thumb in his mouth, speaking around it. “You finish that last bit, Ulfric. First thing I’m doing when we get back to my forge is drop this blunt bastirt into it.”

  Tapping gently with his own tools, Ulfric listened to Stave whisper curses at the hapless chisel and reflected, I never knew how much I would miss them, the Knights, until now. But oh Verities, that’s nothing compared to how I already miss Sym, Crumb.

  Thinking of them, where they were, what dangers they may be facing, doused any momentary amusement he felt at Stave’s creative language. He was as trapped like a fox surrounded by hounds with his unsought Verity inhabitant. Freeing himself and Vaka Aster of this predicament as quickly as possible came before all other considerations. He didn’t want to be responsible for a world. He simply wanted his family home again, safe and healthy.

  Getting to Vigil Tower was the first step. The ancient fortress’s stout walls and chambers stocked with weapons and wystic defenses to keep him and the Himmingazians safe were vital. The Vinnric commoners, history had taught, could be unpredictable in times of unrest. Since they’d arrived at Mount Omina, Ivoryssian scouts had been coming and going constantly, and the mountain sanctuary would no longer suffice as a stronghold.

  The final piece of stone crumbled from the wall, leaving behind an ancient Verity rune few but a Knight could read. Ulfric backed up a pace. “Done,” he said.

  Stave looked it over, then gave the wall a smack with the flat of his hand. “That’s that, then. Should get us home, it should. So who goes first?”
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  Ulfric looked around at the bedraggled and mystified Himmingazians resting in the chamber. Though two days had passed, none had yet come fully to grips with the reality of their situation, and he couldn’t blame them. Four spins around Halla ago, the idea that celestial beings were responsible for the creation of all was not only foreign to them but forbidden. And now they lived and died by the whims of two of these Verities that weren’t even their own. He would send them back to Himmingaze if they chose to go once he had the chance to examine Balavad’s Scrylle. It was the only Scrylle now available to them and would be the key to opening a starpath well back to Himmingaze.

  “We can’t send the foreigners until we know it’s safe,” he told Stave, gesturing with his chin at a group. “We need a scout to go ahead and ensure the tower is not compromised.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Mallich, approaching from the chamber’s anteroom.

  Ulfric nodded. “When can you be ready?”

  “The last of the Ivoryssians are walking toward the glades farther down the mountain to meet their retrieval ships. We’re alone here now, so now I’ll go.”

  Stave turned and rummaged amid a pile of weapons and tools that had amassed around him like dunes. He gripped two axes and a rock hammer and said, “I’ll come with you, I will. Safety in numbers.”

  Mallich shook his head. “I’d like to have you, but the numbers need to stay with Ulfric. He’s our duty now.”

  Stave’s heavy eyebrows cocked in annoyance, but he nodded. “Aye.”

  “If I’m not back before High Halls, something’s gone awry. Which means you’ll need to find a way off Mount Omina and go somewhere safer,” Mallich said.

  He paused, knowing, as they all did, that nowhere within a hundred leagues would be safe if the right, or wrong, enemy came looking for Ulfric. Stave handed Mallich one of the axes, and Mallich seated his own heavy claymore, Ruin Hammer, firmly in its scabbard. Without a second glance, he held his Mentalios lens up to the brass ring inset in the wall and spoke the words on the ruins carved around it. The stone face of the wall began to shimmer like Halla light on water, and a moment later, he stepped into the shimmer and disappeared.