Knight Awoken

by Tammy Salyer

  “What is it, Venerate Sveinungr?”

  “Our spies from the Ivoryssian capital have not reported in since the advance fleet arrived. We don’t know if this means they’ve been caught or if they’ve simply been unable to meet us as planned without drawing the unworthies’ suspicion. Either way, the chancellor sent me to convey her concerns. She wished it to be known that we no longer have timely information about the Ivoryssians, and we may wish to seek alternative means of assessing their strength before the fleet launches a full attack.”

  The Ecclesium stared at him a moment before turning back to the table and running his long fingers absently across the spine of a book. With a smirk, he looked back. “Does the chancellor really think the Ivoryssians have anything we don’t already know about that could cause our forces to so much as blink? I know Seldeg isn’t losing her nerve.”

  Flatly, Gusun said, “I can only deliver the message I was told to.”

  “And why you?”

  This question caught Gusun off guard. “The chancellor is my commander and has ordered me forth. I don’t question the reasons of my commander, Domine Ecclesium.”

  The Ecclesium paced back to Gusun and fastened him once more with his cold gray eyes. “Yet she specifically requested you be her second on the Gildr.” In a smooth, clipped motion, he raised both hands and beckoned to the Raveners beside Gusun. “Seize him.”

  The mildness of his tone was undercut by the hardness of his words, and a heartbeat later, the squad of Raveners had both Gusun’s arms locked in their grasps, another had an arm encircling his throat, and his glaive had been stripped from the holster at his back.

  Gusun only struggled for a moment, relinquishing to the futility of it quickly.

  “Search his belongings.”

  This was where Ulfric began to panic. The Fenestros, he said to Gusun. Verity’s curses, we shouldn’t have brought it.

  But it was too late for should-haves. Before launching from the Gildr, Ulfric had summoned Yggo and retrieved the Himmingazian Fenestros, counting on it as a source of backup aid if needed. Bringing the celestial stone to Dyrrakium was a gamble, but Ulfric had truly believed the Domine Ecclesium wouldn’t question Gusun’s presence. How could they have underestimated the man so badly?

  The Raveners found the Fenestros in Gusun’s belt pouch quickly. The memory keeper hung around his neck, the chain hidden by the high collar of his leather shirt, and the strap of his glaive holster crossed over the outline of the pendant on his chest, concealing it. For now.

  One of the Raveners carried the Fenestros to the Ecclesium, who held it in his cupped palm. He stared at it for a moment, and for once, his expression changed. When he looked back at Gusun, he said wonderingly, “A Fenestros, but from which realm?” He moved close enough that he could hold the stone before Gusun’s face, almost touching his chin. “You know what I’ll do to you if you lie to me any more, Venerate, but you have no idea what Her Holiness will, and you should be grateful for that. Now speak the truth, where did you get this and what are you planning?”

  Tell him nothing, Gusun, Ulfric said hastily. Stall until I can figure out how to—

  Gusun cut him off. Be ready.

  With a show of strength Ulfric could hardly believe, the Dyrrak yanked both his arms at once, pulling the Raveners holding them off balance. At the same time, his head slammed back into the face of the Ravener who held his throat from behind, and with one arm now freed, he tore the arm of the rearward Ravener from his neck. Then he lunged for the Ecclesium.

  Who had withdrawn a dagger. It slid between Gusun’s ribs, nearly into his heart, like water sliding over a rock.

  NOOO! Ulfric yelled. The man would surely die, and then what would become of Ulfric?

  The Ecclesium pulled his dagger free, slowly, as if savoring the motion, and stepped backward. A splash of Gusun’s blood arced across the floor, then began rushing from the wound in a pulsing stream. Gusun sank to his knees. Around him, the Raveners closed in but seemed unconcerned he had any more fight to offer. The dying man reached for his neck, and Ulfric could feel how difficult lifting his own arm’s weight was, like lifting a tombstone with a single finger. But he managed to hook his thumb beneath the memory keeper’s chain and draw it from his shirt.

  “Your false faith… has… stained Dyrrakium to its core… Ecclesium. But… soon it will be wiped clean.”

  Gusun fell face-first onto the floor, and Ulfric’s cries for him to fight, not to give up, elicited no response.

  Through his wide, staring eyes, darkness began to tear away Gusun’s vision, but not before he saw the Ecclesium lean down.

  In a low, curious voice, the Dyrrak leader said, “And what is this?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Stripped of all sense, sight, sound, and feeling, Ulfric did the only thing he could: he pushed himself through the memory keeper into whoever may be close enough to host him.

  It was either the best or the worst decision he’d ever made.

  The Domine Ecclesium staggered to one side as he straightened up, the memory keeper held in his grip. His hand flew to his forehead as if it were pierced with pain. Ulfric, disoriented, felt the man’s hand on his own skin, felt the dryness of the air through his nostrils, took in the scent of red dust that permeated all of Dyrrakium, and finally, saw through the Ecclesium’s eyes. It was not Ulfric’s plan to inhabit this traitorous Dyrrak, but there was no doubt it had been Gusun’s. Now Ulfric was going to have to struggle to make it work. He had no other choice.

  “Ecclesium, are you well?” asked the lone non-Ravener Dyrrak who’d escorted Gusun to the planning chamber.

  “Yes,” the Ecclesium answered shortly, though Ulfric could feel the confusion in his mind, the way he was at the same instant trolling his own interior for an answer to what had struck him. The man sensed him in a way none of the others had, his own deep cunning like that of a rat that had outlived every attempt to catch it triggered by the change.

  Ulfric was darkly amused at the comparison to a rat, for that was exactly what the Ecclesium had become. But his amusement quickly dried up when he heard a thought—directed at him.

  I feel you, whoever, whatever you are. I know you’re here with me. Aloud, the Ecclesium ordered, “Throw the venerate’s body to the yorvics. He has betrayed his Line and Dyrrakium and will not lie in the tombs of his family.”

  “What shall I tell his family?”

  The Ecclesium’s brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “Has he any who’ve not been consecrated?”

  “I… I’m not sure, Domine Ecclesium. I’ll seek them out.”

  “It can wait, Fourth Phase. He is merely the first casualty in this war. There are sure to be more, and the dead rolls can be spoken when the final tally is made. Or when it becomes necessary to better motivate anyone who may need it. Dismissed.”

  When the soldiers and Gusun’s corpse were gone, the Ecclesium casually pushed the door of the chamber closed and took a seat at the broad table.

  Calmly, he placed the memory keeper before him and looked into its crystal pointedly. Only then did he speak. “Now, stranger, who are you?”

  Ulfric hesitated, but only for a moment. He knew hiding was no longer an option. “I think you know, Nazarian,” he said, showing himself in the pendant’s crystal.

  “So, we have abandoned titles. Fine. Then shall I call you Aldinhuus, the defeated and dishonored once-leader of the likewise defeated and dishonored Knights Corporealis.”

  “Call me whatever you want. It’s not a conversation I want from you. Take me to Vaka Aster.”

  “Ah. That tells me one thing. Your… bond with our creator has been severed.”

  Ulfric caught his slip-up too late. If he didn’t polish the dullness from his wits, he would give more away. The Ecclesium would see three moves ahead in this game, no matter what Ulfric tried to hide. He was at the mercy of a master politician, whose life was spent outsmarting and outmaneuvering everyone around him. Ulfric would probably lose at a ga
me of wits. Therefore, he knew it would eventually come down to a game of force.

  “Why remain quiet, Aldinhuus? We’ve never formally met, and I have to admit some intrigue at who you are, the things you’ve accomplished in life. Balavad already told me what you did, how you bound our maker in a cage of your own being. A man who could do something like that, a betrayal so antithetical to not only what the Dyrraks believe in but to what even he believed in and swore an oath to keep others from doing, either that is a man with incalculable dedication to an even greater belief or a simple rogue with no beliefs at all. As I said, I don’t know you, but I don’t believe you are the latter.”

  He knew he was being drawn out for the Ecclesium’s amusement, but he couldn’t seem to resist. “If I’m a betrayer of incalculable dedication to my beliefs, what does that make you?”

  “I’m no different from you, Aldinhuus. I believe in devotion and dominion. The principles came to me from my maker, as they did to us all, and I will simply do as I’m made to do. Which Verity I serve is hardly of import, given that they are all One ultimately. It’s principles that define us.”

  “You hold principles to be more valuable than life?”

  The Ecclesium sighed as if bored. “Life is nothing but a process of biology if we don’t make something more of it. Take the Knights, for example. You have all but unlimited life. It would mean nothing, indeed you would probably seek ways to end it sooner, if you did not have a reason to live it. You live to serve. You have created a doctrine, a dogma even, about your role in the Cosmos. Did you think you were the only ones?”

  Ulfric said nothing for a few moments. The truth was, he could find no argument to oppose what the man was saying. In fact, on more than one occasion he’d taken another’s life for the sake of Vaka Aster, though she’d never asked him to do it, and it had always been to ensure her vessel stayed safe. What the Ecclesium was arguing was that the Dyrraks were simply taking a life, or rather many lives, at the behest of another Verity. Did the reasons really matter if it was being done because a Verity deemed it should be? Human principles belonged to humans alone. But Verities were the ones who made humans, and therefore, any principle a human could conceive of was Verity-bestowed as well. Or so the Ecclesium seemed to think.

  He supposed it all came down to one thing: in the end, one could choose to either side with the Verities or side with people. And Ulfric had already made his choice.

  “Enough with your rambling justifications, Nazarian. I made a mistake when I let Balavad twist my will, and I’m here to right it. Take me to Vaka Aster. I’m not going to ask again.”

  “I have never served another man, Aldinhuus, or the avatar of one. And I’m not going to begin now.”

  The battle was underway. To any outside observer, the stillness with which the Domine Ecclesium sat at his planning table would have been akin to observing a statue. No muscle twitched, no lash blinked. The only giveaway that the man had not turned to stone was the swish of blood in the veins that stood out, prominently, on his forehead. His pulse was rapid, though his eyes remained fixed ahead and his breathing slow.

  But inside his mind, a battle was being waged, and Ulfric was not finding it easy to win.

  You shall submit, Ecclesium. You can’t think you’ll best a man who’s lived as long as I.

  If you could take my mind, you already would have, Aldin—ahh!

  Ulfric had blindsided the man with an all-out, furious assault. Like a drill, he’d imagined himself pointed and sharp and pushed himself into the Ecclesium’s pain centers, doing his best to make the man’s mind believe his body had been impaled by a sword, straight through the heart. And for a moment, it worked.

  The Ecclesium clenched his fists hard, and Ulfric felt his hands, felt them as if they were his own. Leaping into the advantage, he willed himself into the man’s forearms, biceps, shoulders, and pushed with all his might up from the table. The Ecclesium fought back, somehow retaining control of his legs, and bent his knees, trying to force his body back into the seat.

  No—you… cannot… he grunted mentally.

  Then Ulfric had an idea. Before them sat the Himmingazian Fenestros taken from Gusun’s bag. If he could get the Ecclesium’s hand on it, it was possible that the Verity spark that bolstered so much of Ulfric’s physical being could still be accessed by his spirit, even through the medium of another man’s hands. If he could touch that celestial stone, his will would be that much strengthened, and he would prevail.

  He reached out with the Ecclesium’s hand. It was like being in a dream. That feeling you had when you held one end of a rope, the other end spilling over the edge of a cliff with someone you loved hanging from it. You had to pull them up or they would fall to their death. You knew in your bones the strength was in you, but somehow, irrevocably, horribly, your dream muscles were failing you—you couldn’t hold the rope. Then, with the feeling of triumph of overcoming a nightmare, with a final heave, Ulfric forced the man’s arm another inch and felt the resistance begin to lessen. He was leaning forward now, reaching out, a finger about to brush the stone’s surface.

  A dagger stabbed through the reaching hand, spearing it to the wooden tabletop.

  “Aahh!” both Ulfric and the Ecclesium cried.

  But worse, his grip on the Ecclesium’s mind came completely loose. The rope slipped, and Ulfric was forced back into a corner of the man’s thoughts once more. The Ecclesium’s self-inflicted pain gave him back his edge, pain bolstering power.

  If Ulfric could have been panting in his current state, he would have. I nearly had you, you bastirt.

  The Ecclesium swiped his lip across his shoulder to wipe away the sweat. But you didn’t. If you can use my pain against me, I can use it against you. Remember that. With the slowness of a slime mold, the man rocked the dagger hilt back and forth, sucking air through his teeth in a painful hiss, then pulled it from the table. I would whittle myself to nothing but bones if I had to, to keep you at bay. But I don’t have to, Aldinhuus. You’re nothing but dust in my thoughts. If I can’t sweep you out, I know someone who can.

  “Ecclesium, I heard a yell?” came a voice from the doorway.

  Like a striking snake, Ulfric leveraged the distraction a fraction of a heartbeat before the Ecclesium realized he’d let him. The bloody fist snapped up the Fenestros in a death grip, and Ulfric shouted an incantation in Elder Veros that pulled the celestial stone’s power through the Ecclesium’s body in a shock wave. The Dyrrak’s will was smashed into the corner of his mind and pinned there. Ulfric stretched himself in his new quarters like a man awakening from a deep sleep.

  “Ecclesium?” The Dyrrak venerate had taken a step inside the chamber, his attention sharp.

  Ulfric blinked his new eyes and pushed himself to his new feet. The movement was hardly fluid, more like a doddering elder, but he quickly mastered his borrowed limbs. He’d had practice by now, and the Ecclesium had no advantage that could best the Fenestros.

  He turned to the venerate. “It’s nothing, Venerate. I’m… I do not wish for any further disturbance, am I clear?”

  “But… your hand.”

  “It’s nothing but a test of my faith. Shall I test yours next?”

  “I’ll leave you be, Domine Ecclesium.” The guard retreated without a second glance.

  Ulfric’s new form flushed hot from foot to cheek, the Ecclesium’s rage, and perhaps more than a small bit of fear, coursing through him like fever. What in the five realms do you plan to do, Aldinhuus? My body is no more powerful than your useless pendant against Balavad. You’re nothing—

  Ulfric shut the voice out. Never had he so completely controlled any form like this but his own, and he was not going to waste time letting the betrayer plague him. He sent a summons to Urgo and Yggo, then left the chamber.

  His Verity awaited him.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ulfric could have kicked himself for not asking Gusun and the chancellor who their accomplices in Elezaran were before it wa
s too late. He might have had better luck of accomplishing a discreet getaway with more aid. As it was, the bruhawks would easily be able to carry him as Vaka Aster’s vessel, but they would be slower and more vulnerable guarding such a valuable body of cargo.

  At least, he reflected as he raced up the stairs toward the Verity chamber at the peak of Citadel Suprima, they’ll only have the burden of one body. He planned to shed the Domine Ecclesium’s skin at the earliest opportunity. Despite his brief inhabitations of the Dyrrak Ravener at Udunum Island and, earlier, the Ravener urzidae in Arc Rheunos, Ulfric had not until now experienced what wearing the flesh of a real monster was like. He found it as loathsome as he found the man under normal circumstances.

  And the Ecclesium fought like a monster. His will bashed against the barriers Ulfric erected in the man’s mind to keep him at bay like relentless storm waves against a battered shore. Ulfric couldn’t relinquish his focus on holding the man off for a second. Every step up the citadel’s many stairs, every glance around a corner to see and prepare for whomever he might encounter, every reach to put his hand on a door handle, all were accomplished with the utmost struggle. He could only dedicate a fraction of his concentration to the mundane tasks, performing every movement interminably slowly and deliberately, the bulk of his mental focus taken up with keeping the Ecclesium under control.

  Then an extraordinary turn of luck struck. It occurred to Ulfric to take stock of what weapons he had at his disposal. He’d grabbed a long leather coat from the back of the chair the Ecclesium had sat in and put it on before leaving the planning chamber. Its overlong sleeves helped to hide his wounded hand, which he’d wrapped in a cloth that had been lying on the table. Flowers of blood had spotted the outer layer of the linen, but it was not dripping. He’d sheathed the Ecclesium’s dagger, but only as he walked through the citadel did he think to search the coat’s inner pockets.