by Tammy Salyer
“So it’s scars that make a man spruce, is it?” she asked, feigning the raptness of an eager pupil. “That must make you the sprucest man alive, then. If by ‘spruce,’ you mean disheveled, loutish, and often perforated.”
“Being the hero of many a battle is what led to these perforations, it is. That smooth-faced pilot of yours doesn’t look old enough to know which end of a sword is pointy. And anyway, Safran’s is the only opinion of me that matters, and she thinks of my scars as marks of dignity and distinction, she does,” he finished, grinning at his mate.
“Safran, is it true?” Mylla asked, enjoying the ribaldry. Among the long-lived Knights, the “youth” of all commoners was simply too easy a mark to ignore. Mylla had learned to laugh along with them instead of taking affront.
Safran’s darker-than-coal eyes widened innocently as she turned to face Stave. Though she had lost the ability to speak aloud some turns ago, her voice in the Mentalios link had lost none of its expressiveness, which at the moment, dripped with sarcasm. I hardly love Stave only for his scars. But I’ll grant that leaves very little else to love.
“What?” Stave argued. “You mean aside from my charm, wit, and great big—”
“Great big what?” Isemay cut in from where she stood behind Ulfric and Symvalline, who’d exited the tower together.
Mylla and Safran tipped their heads and saluted by touching their chin marks, indigo nine-pointed stars, given to them when they’d been ordained Knights. The Stallari returned the gesture, then gave the top of Stave’s head a hard stare. Stave had conveniently remembered he needed to tighten his greaves and had leaned down to do so, avoiding Ulfric. After a moment, Ulfric turned back to Isemay.
“I told you—” he began, but she cut in.
“I know, Da, but I’m only standing here. I’m staying, I swear!” She waited a beat, but Ulfric’s admonition didn’t come, so she finished with a mischievous grin, “What was that again, Stave?”
The Knight stood up, cleared his throat. “My collection of axes. All great and big and much-loved by my darling Safran. And sharp as a rook’s beak too, they are,” he finished proudly.
The six of them broke into laughter, even Ulfric and Symvalline. Safran’s amusement was silent but no less animated. Ulfric’s was short-lived, though, and Mylla noticed his gaze shift toward the peaks of the Morn Mountains.
Beyond the shadows of the great columns of Vigil Tower, the day was so clear that they could see the distant range fringing the eastern horizon. Mount Omina, nestled among them, would be free of snow now, though the Knights had still been forced to tramp through winter pack a thirty-night ago when they’d secreted the vessel of their maker there. No living commoner had been granted an audience with Vaka Aster since she’d ceased being animated some hundreds of turns prior. Now they simply made due by paying homage to the shrine in Vigil Tower, and few even came to visit that anymore. No one would know the Knights had taken the real vessel away, as Ulfric intended.
To Mylla’s surprise, she caught Ulfric’s thoughts in their Mentalios link. Stay vigilant, Eisa, Mallich.
“They always are,” she commented. The two Knights he referred to had stayed with the true vessel at their secret cave in Mount Omina to keep watch.
He turned to look at her, seemingly as surprised as she that she had caught his thought. Much was riding on his shoulders today. She hardly blamed him for this slip in Mentalios discipline. If ever a day or a reason existed when his mind would be scattered, it was this day, this reason.
Because, if Ulfric’s suspicions proved true, today brought the unprecedented—and time would tell if also unwelcome—visit by another celestial like their maker. Another Verity, who called himself His Holiness. And with Vaka Aster’s celestial presence so long absent, only the Knights were left to protect her inert vessel, if protection was required. Though they’d discussed it at length, none of the Knights could guess why another Verity might visit the realm of Vinnr, and so they had hidden the vessel from the world. Just in case.
We’ll know soon if the Stallari is right, Mylla thought and wasn’t quite able to stop herself from another reflexive adjustment of her baldric.
Underneath this, she wore her ceremonial breastplate with a dragørfly centered over a nine-pointed star, Vaka Aster’s symbol, engraved in the metal. Ulfric’s armor sported considerably more dents and scrapes, given its age, though its sheen was prismatic beneath Halla’s midmorning rays. All the assembled Knights carried sheathed weapons at their waists, and the crystal Mentalios lenses of their Order hung from copper cuffs around their necks, Mylla’s and Ulfric’s beneath their armor.
“Anything further from the bruhawks?” Ulfric asked Safran.
Though the Knights could communicate silently with their Mentalios lenses, pendants crafted using a wystic design that channeled their thoughts among each other, they customarily spoke aloud most often, with the exception of Safran.
Safran grew serious again and sent, It’s the same. Ranks of possible fighters, two deep, line the eastern border of the city, a few hundred of them. Some wear Yorish legion uniforms, others the clothing typical of Yorish citizens. A few hundred wear other styles, some look to be uniforms, but not like any I’ve ever seen.
“Could they be from Dyrrakium?” Mylla asked.
They could. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a Dyrrak. They are most certainly different from Ivoryssian and Yorish. That’s all I know for certain.
It would be as strange as anything else that might happen this day if the unusually clad entourage that had come with His Holiness were from Dyrrakium. The kingdom had cut itself off from the rest of Vinnr several centuries ago. The word Dyrrakium itself was Elder Veros, meaning “exile.” What could it mean if the Dyrraks had abandoned their self-imposed expulsion from the original kingdoms?
“Knight Evernal, say your goodbyes,” Ulfric said. “Stave, Safran, Symvalline, remember what we planned. If you see, hear, or sense anything amiss, don’t waste your time protecting Vigil Tower. Take the Vigilance and rally with us at Mount Omina.”
The three nodded and Ulfric turned to Symvalline. As they spoke quietly together, Mylla exchanged a hug with Safran, who clasped her tightly and sent, I’m looking forward to hearing your stories of the day. When they separated, the tiny crinkle of concern in Safran’s forehead surprised Mylla. She’d never seen her friend anything but composed and confident.
With her lips quirked in a half-grin, she responded, “A day free of Vigil Tower is as much a welcomed adventure as anything. At least one of us will have a story about something more exciting than axes to tell tonight.”
Her attempt at lightening the mood fell flat. Despite the many turns, most shaded in tedium as the Order had stood watch over the vessel of their maker, the possibility of encountering another Verity had never been an anticipated reason for “adventure.” Now that it was, Mylla had to admit she shared more than a little of her friend’s worry.
“Novice,” Stave said, drawing her attention, “this isn’t training. The bruhawks will be watching, they will, but once you enter the keep, you and the Stallari are on your own. Keep your wits as sharp as your weapons, and don’t let anything distract you from your duty. A young mind tends to be a wandering mind, it does.”
She squashed the urge to roll her eyes. “Understood.”
He clapped her on the shoulder as Safran gave a high-pitched whistle. The two silvery bruhawks perched atop the tower leaped clear and dove, streaking downward like stars until the instant before it seemed they would smash into the stone landing. They flared their wings, easily twice as long from tip to tip as an Ivoryssian commoner was in height, and extended their talons just in time to grip the metal perches installed on the landing for them. They came to rest, a few silver feathers alighting and blowing off with the breeze.
Both Mylla and Safran stepped toward them, Mylla with one hand outstretched. The nearest, Yggo, arched her neck forward, inviting Mylla to scratch, which she obliged. Safran bowe
d her head and began the incantation that would be carried to the hawks by way of the Mentalios link: Vesr sraak aak, sraka aak suu kaa. With thine eyes, these eyes too see.
As one, the flying sentries snapped into rigid stances and blinked several times. Mylla withdrew her hand. On the last blink, their bright yellow bird-of-prey irises shifted to a spectrum of color, iridescent greens, blues, yellows, and reds, a swirling mix of hues that mirrored the matching spectrum now swimming in the crystal surface of Safran’s Mentalios. What the ordained bruhawks saw, their Knight cohort also now saw, and what she directed, they would carry out. A useful and symbiotic partnership made possible through the wystic gifts of their celestial maker. Today they would fly as sentinels over the keep while Mylla and the Stallari joined the summit inside.
Ulfric and Symvalline stepped apart, and he descended the few steps to the surface skimmer. He didn’t beckon Mylla; he didn’t need to. The burden of duty pulled her along. Before she sat, she caught the level but stern look Symvalline threw Ulfric and didn’t need the Mentalios to know her thoughts. The fate of this world may rest on our shoulders today.
The skimmer, a horseless carriage powered by the harnessed light of Halla, rolled them smoothly over Asteryss’s paving-stone streets. Ulfric would have preferred the dignity of arriving at Aster Keep on horseback, but he reminded himself those days were long past. Advancements are aptly named thus, and though he’d lived enough turns to accumulate all the wisdom and prowess of experience that came with long life, he often felt as if his true self, the man inside the warrior, had not advanced with the times. Maybe he could not.
He brushed that thought aside and looked to his young protégé. Mylla stared at the passing buildings, her eyes seeing things that lay far beyond the city. He thought he could guess what her thoughts were about: love. She and the young Dragør Wing fighter pilot couldn’t hide anything from a man who’d seen as much as Ulfric had. And no sense of duty, no invocation of ambition or honor, no feeling he’d ever experienced held a candle to the overpoweringly potent combination of youth and love. Even the possibility of death fell to a whisper in a mind playing that orchestra. Of all the knowledge he’d accumulated over the millennia, this was a truth he was utterly certain of, which had never changed.
He considered leaving her to her thoughts. Mylla’s scant term of service would hardly matter if their visitor turned out to be another Verity. What could one with so little experience, who’d only met the living Vaka Aster on a single occasion, hope to do if this Holiness’s intentions were malicious? Of course, he wouldn’t, though. Mylla was a Knight first. She’d sacrificed a normal life, as they all had, to get to this station in her life, and in part his own duty was to see to it that she fulfilled hers.
“Mylla,” he said lightly, and she faced him. “Beatte’s court will demand we meet the Arch Keeper and this visitor unarmed.”
Her dark eyes, the irises barely lighter than the pupils, flashed. She had the eyes of a Dyrrak. But when she was alarmed or excited, they stood out strikingly against the paleness of her skin, a Yorish trait. An orphan, no one really knew her lineage. Ulfric had chosen Mylla to fill a gap in the Knight’s Order because of her fine scholarship and high marks in the Resplendolent Conservatum, despite many who grumbled about her Dyrrak blood. And Mylla had never made him doubt or question his choice.
“Why would they?” she asked. “Acolyte Irrick and the Conservatum will vouch for us, even if Arch Keeper Beatte has let skepticism make her forget her own lessons.”
“Beatte has shown very little favor toward our Order during her reign, and the members of the Conservatum grow less and less true to their first precept with every passing turn. It’s a consequence of Vaka Aster no longer walking among us. They no longer think of the creator as their master. They know, or they think they know, where their best interests lie—in the hand that feeds, not the one that travels the stars without a thought for them. Beatte tolerates the Conservatum as long as they don’t annoy her with theology. We’ll find no allies among Aster Keep, and Acolyte Irrick keeps quiet about his arrangement with us. It’s best for him that he does.”
Though she kept her expression level, he sensed what she was thinking. If the Resplendolent Conservatum, the proving grounds for all future Knights and senatorial scholars who chose each successive Arch Keeper, no longer served their Verity, what did that mean for the Knights in the long-term? Does she suspect she’s the last Knight? And on the heels of that: She may well be.
“You have your klinkí stones?” he asked.
“I do, Stallari.” She placed her left palm against her right vambrace where the secret weapon of the Knights remained in place.
“Good. Keep them concealed. Remember, if this Holiness is the Verity we suspect him to be, he’ll be weakened in his sundered form outside of his own realm. Weakened doesn’t mean powerless, though. To fight him would be foolish, and if escape is required, follow me to the well. Our intent is not to engage in battle with a foreign Verity or even a foreign invader, only to preserve Vaka Aster’s vessel from any, and all, threats.”
Chapter 3
A man can live a thousand turns and still have too little time to develop the necessary patience to reason persuasively against the will of a stubborn sixteen-turn-old adolescent. And this was particularly true for Ulfric—because his daughter was exactly like him. Obstinate, intractable, and when pushed downright devilish in her stubbornness. The last thing the leader of the Knights Corporealis of Vinnr needed today was to be upstaged and defied by his copper-ringleted daughter in front of half the realm and its leadership.
But there Isemay was, near the front of the crowd, bearing witness to the proceedings with no regard for her father and mother’s instruction to stay away. Her arrival coming so close to his own told him she’d left the tower within moments of his and Mylla’s departure. As he made his way to the keep’s rampart, he saw the look of surprise on her face when she realized he’d spotted her. Defiantly, she held his eyes until he marched past. There will be a reckoning when this was over, Ulfric swore to himself. Daughter or not, he could not protect her if she sought out danger so recklessly. So like her Knight mother. So like her Knight father. Could he even pretend to be surprised?
Once the crowd recognized the Stallari, their rumbling increased, pulling his focus back to the task. Dragør Marine Commander Tannir Brun, dressed in an elegant tunic of indigo velvet bordered with royal-blue piping, marched one step to the right behind Ulfric past the masses gathered outside Aster Keep, the seat of Ivoryss’s leadership. To his left, also one step behind, paced Mylla. The throngs of querying and concerned citizens who’d come to witness this summit hemmed them in from every direction.
Ahead, Ulfric finally spotted the reason for this event: His Holiness. The man stood at least two heads above all others present, though his shoulders were disproportionately narrow, making him look the way a child standing on another’s shoulders might. His crimson hair caught the light, its hue and vibrancy like a fuel-oil fire, and cascaded from his head and upper lip in a molten mass, curling here, braided there. Ornamented epaulets with silver frames polished to a glow sat atop his shoulders and linked in ornate filigrees and decorative scrollwork across his chest to create a ceremonial chain-mail shawl. Near him stood an entourage of six pale soldiers, their uniforms a mix of Yorish and some other design, and three black-robed priests.
It took Ulfric one look at His Holiness and his attending cadre—each priest bearing a mark on his face similar to those carried by Vaka Aster’s Knights—to confirm the thing he had worried about since news of Yor had crossed their borders. Worried about and dreaded. His Holiness was the Verity creator of the realm known to the Knights as Battgjald, there could be no doubt now. Having been touched by a Verity himself gave Ulfric the sight to see through His Holiness’s façade of being an ordinary man.
The Verity waited at the base of the wide alabaster steps leading over the rampart to the keep’s main gate. Lining both sides of the sta
ircase, Dragør Marines kept watch, each man and woman erect and vigilant, their expressions fixed in equal measures of discipline and disdain. The rumors about Yor and how quickly it had come under the sway of this interloper had spread, it seemed, and the small delegation would not leave this place alive if they dared show any aggression here.
The reasons His Holiness had requested this audience had only been explained in vague terms of the usual kind: to discuss diplomacy, trade, borders, contracts, and the like. Arch Keeper Beatte would not suspect another Verity would be walking among them. Yet for Ulfric, why the Verity had also requested Ulfric’s attendance was the only question that mattered. What purpose would a sundered Verity, another of the five, have here in Vinnr, and what did it have to do with him?
The Scrylle of Vinnr, a celestial artifact belonging to the Knights that contained the recorded history, lore, and wystic teachings of Vaka Aster, only made sparse mentions of the other Verities and their realms. And why should it? Other realms did not concern the Knights of Vinnr. Their own world was quite enough. Now here the Verity was, calling himself His Holiness, and walking in the body of a man, hiding his true nature. Why the deception?
Ulfric could not stop himself from looking back over his shoulder into the crowd, searching for his daughter’s bright hair and beloved face. He could no longer see her. Isemay, you should have listened to your da, for once, he thought, unable to hold his growing anxiety in check. He prayed to Vaka Aster that Symvalline would find her in time to get her somewhere safe.
He stopped a stride short of reaching His Holiness, and the intruder spoke.
“Stallari Aldinhuus. Your reputation among the Knights of your Order has reached even me.” His voice—deep, rolling, and hard, like kiln-fired bones—held the authority of ages. “A thousand and more years—or, what is it you call them? Turns, I believe—is a long time among your kind. And I can see”—his cheeks wrinkled upward in a ghastly grin—“you also know who I am.”