by Tammy Salyer
“You’ve chosen your fate,” Ulfric snarled.
With a leap backward to gain distance, he extended the hammer with both hands and twisted, winding up like a spring. Throwing his full weight into it, he swung and released the hammer, sending it flying directly into the Flesh Caster’s unguarded belly. The man crumpled like watery hash. Ulfric sprang to his side and straddled his fallen body, gripped the hammer, and swung it again, crushing the man’s head. It wasn’t a beheading, which would ensure the man’s permanent death, but it was close enough. If he could recover from such a blow by way of the celestial spark of his Verity, it would take much more time than Ulfric needed.
He dropped the hammer against the cold floor, sending a metallic echo through the grotto. In the stillness, the troupe of dragørflies alighted on the ceiling, calm now that the Caster was, for the moment at least, dead.
Now, Ulfric thought, to summon Vaka Aster from three centuries of absence and stop her from extinguishing Vinnr from existence.
Of the many ways he could have imagined this day going, some worse and some better, the task that now lay before him had never once crossed his mind. Not for the first time since joining the Order and becoming its leader, he wondered what his life could have been if he’d simply lived as all common men did. Fallen in love with Symvalline, become a father, grown into dotage, died. That’s all he wished for now. But that fate wasn’t to be. Not yet. He could not turn away from this task with more than just honor at stake but also the lives of his family and the world itself.
Before he could begin enacting his plan, the door from the outer chamber slammed open and smashed into the wall, the force halfway buckling the hinges from their fasteners.
Chapter 9
“Oh fury of the Verities, I don’t think I thought this through enough.” Mylla gripped Havelock’s Wing fighter seat back so hard her fingers ached. It wasn’t that she was afraid of flying, exactly. It was putting her life in someone else’s hands, someone who might get them killed in at any second, that gave her second thoughts. But she trusted Lock. Usually.
He responded with something very logical and calming—or would be, if logic could influence fear. “Just hang on and don’t look down.”
Hang on? If she hung on any tighter she’d start extracting juice from his seat like an ong fruit. The Dragør Wing fighter, hawk-like in shape and size, if said hawk were big enough to swallow a Yorish plains ox, had a clear cockpit that gave them a wide outside view.
Just then, something caught her eye. “Lock, we aren’t alone up here.”
He looked to his left, then up, and his eyes began tracking whatever it was. He’d said don’t look down—But up is okay. I can look up. There’s nothing to get smashed flat by up there.
She risked it.
Bad idea. Looking up inspired her stomach to begin to spin. But the next thing that caught Mylla’s eye froze her guts into stillness. “What . . . ?”
“Must be Dyrrak,” he muttered, disbelief plain in his voice. “The Yorish don’t have any craft like that.”
Above and just off their starboard wing flew a thing that neither of them could think to describe as anything but a flying sickle. The craft seemed made of a single continuous ingot of metal, a featureless U-shaped fuselage as dark as forge-blackened iron. From apex to tip, it was only half as long as the Dragør Wing fighter, and each curved end came to a wicked point, gleaming to Mylla’s eyes like a set of terrible black fangs.
“We have to outfly it,” she sputtered, just as a pocket of air gave their fighter a jolt that scared a full turn around Halla off her life—or would have, if she aged like a commoner. Wrestling composure she didn’t feel into her voice, she tried again, “Well, you have to outfly it. I’m just going to hold on and pretend I’m anywhere else.” She’d have given one of her klinkí stones, maybe even two, to be in the pilot’s seat, to be in control.
Without turning around, he reached over his shoulder and gave one of her knotted fists a gentle pat. “As you wish,” he said, and Mylla knew that tone meant she was about to get exactly what she’d asked for. “This is going to be fun.”
The Wing fighter fell into a dive that immediately sent them from falling forward in their seats to being pinned to the backs of them. Much as she tried, she couldn’t ignore the way the sky morphed from a blue background, with distant, discrete clouds, to a streaking, amorphous spilled-paint accident. A scream filled her lungs, but the pressure of the dive kept it lodged there, like an anvil in her chest.
“You call this fun?” she whispered.
Ignoring her, Lock muttered, his question not meant for her, “So you know some tricks? Why don’t you show me what else you can do . . .”
“No, no, no, don’t ask it to do that—”
The fighter jilted left so hard her head smacked against the cockpit windscreen. If he does that again, he’ll knock me out, she thought. Great idea, actually. At least she’d be sort of not here. Do it again, Lock!
But his plans didn’t seem to be taking her wishes into account. With a buzz that could have either inspired, intimidated, or utterly shamed the population of an aviary, the fighter sped toward the foothills marking the beginning of the Morn Range. They grew closer and closer to them and didn’t seem to be losing any momentum.
“Lock.” Her voice was barely audible, so she tried harder. “Lock!”
It was as if she weren’t there. They reached the nearest rise at a nerve-wracking speed and, with the smoothness of rolling waves, skimmed up and over it, then down into the valley behind it, blowing the leaves from the tops of the trees.
His eyes roamed the sky, his neck swiveling. “I think it’s gone,” he said, and his voice sounded . . . disappointed?!
What happened next wasn’t the worst thing she could have expected, but it was close enough to make it pointless to split hairs. Suddenly, as if flicked by a finger, their Wing fighter changed course, sheering squarely to the west. It was only after this that she heard a small, hollow tiinggg and a moment later smelled superheated metal. They’d been hit by some kind of weapon.
She cried again, louder this time, “You call this fun?”
“It just got less fun,” he mumbled through a clenched jaw. His hands clasped the controls with a bloodlessness that rivaled her own grip, and his feet warred with the pitch and yaw pedals but seemed to be losing. Badly. “Mylla, hold on, we’ve lost verticality.”
Now that didn’t sound good. And it especially didn’t sound fun.
And it wasn’t.
The flight took on the hue of nightmares as they begin to zig and zag upward and downward, Havelock barely keeping the fighter’s nose from angling either straight into the earth or directly skyward. Fighting lateral forces, she reached out, got a grip on the collar of his leather tunic, pulled herself close to his ear, and groaned, “Maybe we should have walked, Lock.”
He strained against the ship’s controls, unable to do anything but try to soften the crash they both knew was coming. She almost wished it would come, if only to relieve her of the unbearable anticipation.
“If you think,” he wheezed, “all it takes to bring down my Wing is a little tap . . .”
But he didn’t finish the sentence, and their speed began to decrease, the fighter’s erratic flight staunching it. As the bow rose once more, she saw a second sickle-shaped ship bearing down from above while the first came at them from the side, readying for another shot. Please let it be quick, she prayed.
For the first attacker, it probably was.
As she watched, a stream of silvery-white projectiles appeared from nowhere and speared the oncoming ship dead center. Almost too fast for the eye to see, the sickle ship glowed from within like a candle for a moment, then exploded, creating a stream of hundreds of pieces of shrapnel jetting toward them. The resulting force buffeted her and Lock’s fighter, jolting them hard into an acute angle that sent them speeding at a tilt to the ground.
Too panicked at the impending crash to feel anything at al
l, Mylla stared outside the windscreen, wondering where the other sickle ship was and who had caused the first’s destruction. The moment of stability provided by their sharp, straight drop of death allowed her to catch a glimpse of the answer. Of all things, another Dragør Wing fighter. It had the first attacker on the run, the two dancing amid the sky together in death waltz that only one partner would survive.
“Come on, come on, old girl. You made it this far,” Lock coaxed, speaking to the Wing fighter like a loyal friend.
Mylla realized they were close, so close now, to the Knights’ lower landing field on the flank of Mount Omina. Did they actually stand a chance of making it?
Lock slammed the pitch pedal so hard his entire body went rigid, half ripping his pilot’s seat from its bolts, and the fighter leveled off languidly, as if giving the position cautious consideration before committing. They hung in nauseating suspension long enough for Mylla to wonder if some wystic force was holding them aloft. The intrepid pilot took full advantage of the momentary equilibrium and gave the controls as much thrust as he could.
They rocketed forward gracelessly and started to spin, having left the other Wing fighter and the second attacker far behind. All Mylla could do was close her eyes and hope for a swift end to what she’d forever remember as a flight worse than death.
Chapter 10
Ulfric faced the door, wiping away a speck of blood near the nine-pointed star marking his chin. “If you’d waited any longer,” he said, “I’d’ve had enough time to cook you supper.”
Upon seeing him, Knight Eisa stomped inside, ready to dash any remaining enemies into crushed bone and blood with both her heavy-bladed glaive Fate Forger and her equally perilous tongue. “Stallari, why in Vaka Aster’s name are you here?” Spotting the mangled Flesh Caster on the ground, she added, “And who’s going to clean that up?”
Knight Roibeard entered with his usual circumspect stride, his claymore clenched at-the-ready within the knurled ridges of his knuckles. “We were in the antechamber, and by the noise we thought Vaka Aster had returned.” He fixed his sanguine golden-brown eyes on Ulfric, his warrior’s perception having already measured the danger. “What’s happened, Stallari? Why’ve you come through the well?”
“We’re short on time, Knights,” Ulfric responded. With the speed of thought rather than words, he explained using their Mentalios link all that had occurred, as he stooped over the Flesh Caster. Careful to avoid the spreading blood and gore, he searched the floor for the usurping Verity’s Fenestros and found it near the destroyed well. Raising it toward the glowing ceiling, lit by dozens of luminous now-calm dragørflies, he said aloud, “Do you know what this is?”
The question was rhetorical, and Eisa and Mallich stepped closer for a better look, their initial surprise at news of a foreign Verity’s presence already gone from their faces. Though unprecedented, the Knights had discussed the possibility that the Yorish visitor would turn out to be a Verity, given the rumors, and prepared accordingly. Few other threats, potential or real, could have impelled them to move Vaka Aster’s vessel to the obscurity and safety of the Mount Omina sanctuary. Hesitance, fear—Knights shed these qualities like water from oiled canvas, particularly those as hardened by the lessons of longevity as Eisa and Mallich. Eisa had served with Ulfric for fifteen hundred turns and would be the next Stallari if Ulfric ever resigned his service. The ever-stalwart Mallich, at almost twelve hundred turns a Knight, rivaled mountains with his enduring fortitude.
Until looking into the Battgjald Scrylle, Ulfric would have thought handling the celestial stones of a foreign Verity to also be unprecedented—but what he’d seen there disproved this. He marveled at the gleaming ball hanging on its chain from his hand. Its magnificence made his breath catch. Even Eisa grew uncharacteristically quiet. A thing of unparalleled beauty, its core gleamed with a living light, though its color was oblivion black. Between the metal prongs of the pendant’s Fenestros setting, Elder Veros runes crusted the surface in swirls of smoke-gray, appearing etched into it. Yet the feel of the oculus itself was teardrop smooth. He lifted it up to catch the dragørflies’ glow and noted the way the sigils’ patterns changed as he twisted it to and fro. Each flash of light revealed a new message inscribed thereon, their permutations as limitless as light itself. Spells, written by a wystic hand. He could only imagine what uses the Flesh Casters had made of this Fenestros.
Each Verity had their own Order of Knights to protect their vessels, and each had a Scrylle to serve as limitless repositories for their realms’ vast history, though Ulfric had never in his long life expected to gaze into the Scrylle of any Verity but his own. The Scrylles’ lore was infinite, a history that went back to the first of the first peoples of each realm, filling a space that existed outside of the tangible, which could never be read entirely in one lifetime or even the length of Ulfric’s many. But today he had read some, and he had seen more, he thought, than the foreign Verity had anticipated.
I know the usurper’s plan, he sent to the Knights. Balavad spoke the truth. He can stop the other Verities from reuniting at this Syzyckí Elementum and leading their realities to . . . whatever the Elementum leads to. He intends to shackle them, all of them, by constructing a cage. To do so, he needs four of Vaka Aster’s Fenestrii, and one of his own. He held the Battgjald Fenestros aloft, for emphasis. But first, he must recall Vaka Aster, then ensnare her. He lowered his arm to look fully into their faces, switching to speaking aloud. “And he’s already done it at least once, to Mithlí, Verity of Arc Rheunos. Balavad the usurper will overcome Vinnr and control it like it’s his own puppet show, and the people here his puppets.”
Eisa grunted, the sound a cross between a curse and . . . just a curse really, and hooked her glaive to its harness on her back. The three stood silently for a moment, contemplating the news.
Some wicked thirst for power had overcome the Verity known as Balavad, a trait so human Ulfric didn’t understand how a celestial being, a creator of all things, could succumb to it. His concerns, however, were not why, but how to stop him. And now that they had the usurper’s Scrylle and one of his Fenestrii—he made a decision. “We will use his Fenestros and summon Vaka Aster ourselves, before Balavad can set the snare. We need Vaka Aster here, in Vinnr, to banish the usurper. He is sundered, but we are not up to the task of taking on a Verity.”
A niggling side issue: he had no idea how to persuade Vaka Aster not to abandon Vinnr to rejoin her kind at the Syzyckí Elementum. Balavad had slowed the imminent event by entrapping the other Verity of Arc Rheunos, but that didn’t change the fact that their loyalty was to Vaka Aster, and their duty dictated they stop Balavad from usurping her.
“You look to have a plan, Ulfric. Show us what you want to do,” Mallich said and thumped Eisa on the back in solidarity.
“Eisa,” he responded, “look inside that Caster’s tote for Battgjald’s Scrylle. Mallich, help me prepare the vessel.”
Grim thoughts of what would happen if this plot failed grated the edges of his mind, but he held them at bay and stepped to the rear of the grotto. On a carved stone pedestal stood the statue of the Verity, a human vessel composed of what appeared to be the same white alabaster of much of Ivoryss’s stonework. She was an ancestor of Eisa, a woman from the seventh royal bloodline of Dyrrakium who’d given herself to Vaka Aster before any of them had been born. After two thousand turns, the woman’s flesh had hardened, her spirit long since departed from the vessel to rejoin the Great Cosmos. The statue tinged the cave in a wavering cerulean color from countless glittering crystalline stones veining the inert form, almost as if the chamber were immersed in water. Before Vaka Aster’s celestial form had departed from Vinnr, now more than three hundred turns ago, the statue had been too bright to look upon, seemingly composed not of stone but of celestial light itself.
But now that Vaka Aster had sundered this synthesis, only the vessel remained, a cold reminder of the Verity’s lightless side. With the Verity’s long absence, the majest
y of her role in human affairs had fallen to the fickleness of human memory, and human loyalty, and become an eidolon, an idea with little remaining influence beyond the Knights themselves. The Resplendolent Conservatum continued to teach Verity lore and history and encourage fealty and devotion to their maker, but Ulfric suspected fewer and fewer of the Conservatum acolytes believed these teachings the way they still had when he’d been an acolyte himself. Belief was easier with proof, and Vaka Aster’s unsettling absence from Vinnr made proof impossible.
“Got it,” Eisa called after retrieving the Caster’s satchel. Then she added cryptically, “And more.”
Ulfric bridled. “What else?”
She stepped forward with both hands raised, holding two objects. “Here we have a foreign Scrylle.” She opened her right hand to show them. “And here we have . . .” In her other hand, she brandished another of Vaka Aster’s Fenestrii, as well as another of Balavad’s.
Ulfric was unsurprised. “So this is the reason for the assault on Yor.”
“It would seem,” Eisa said. “But why is that Caster carrying two of Balavad’s Fenestrii?”
“One to use in the Verity cage, the other to read the incantation from the Scrylle.”
She nodded.
Then Mallich voiced what they were each thinking. “And we hold three more here—all the foreign Verity needs to create this cage.”
The Fenestrii of Vaka Aster were distributed by agreement among the Knights and Vinnr’s two ruling kingdoms. The Knights held three. One was kept in Yor under the protection of their branch of the Resplendolent Conservatum, and the last was retained by the Ivoryssian branch of the Conservatum. Whether the keepers of Yor’s Fenestros had given it freely or died trying to protect it, Ulfric couldn’t know.