Knight Chosen

by Tammy Salyer

  What unnatural metamorphosis had happened to these people? What future, endless or not, did they represent?

  At that moment, Ulfric understood there was no choice. He would not become a slave, nor would he condemn his family to that living death. His ruse has failed, and Vaka Aster’s location had been found. His life’s purpose lay in waste, and his reason for living was about to be destroyed on the side of this mountain.

  . . . but maybe there was one hope, only one. I must unbind Vaka Aster. She can save my family.

  He prayed she would.

  “Let me look upon Vaka Aster one last time,” he said aloud, “and I will serve you.”

  He stood once more inside his own flesh in the vessel’s chamber. Symvalline, Isemay . . . He nearly fell to his knees as the greatest fear he’d ever felt pounded into him—that he may never see their beloved faces again.

  The Verity spoke. You may—

  But whatever the usurper meant to say was cut off abruptly as, without a second thought, Ulfric bounded forward, leaped onto the vessel’s dais, and threw his arms into the spinning conflagration of Fenestrii overhead, thrusting the Battgjald Scrylle like a sword into the onrush of Verity stones. Not caring what the usurper could hear, he pleaded with all the force his embattled mind could sustain: Vaka Aster, protect my family!

  Just before his mind blanked, he heard the usurper’s ringing command: KILL THEM ALL!

  Chapter 13

  Cough, cough, cough. The sound hit Mylla’s ears, but seemed to be filtered through wool. It wasn’t a sound she could readily ignore, coming as it did from her own throat and lungs. When she realized it was her, she sat up and hacked out a torrent of cave dust and grit.

  When her voice worked again, she called, “Havelock? Havelock!”

  “Mmpfh.”

  “Rook’s balls, where are you?” Dragging her fingers over the skin of her neck, she traced over her Mentalios chain and followed it down to the lens itself. With a brief chant, she enticed the lens to glow with diffuse light. There he was, lying on his back with a few rocks scattered over his chest and legs, but none large enough to have seriously hurt him. She hoped.

  Scrabbling on her knees, she reached him and wiped dirt and small stones from his eyes and nose. When her palm brushed strands of his hair from his forehead, he jerked, and her hand came away bloodied.

  “Shh, shh,” she soothed as she leaned in and held the lens close to the wound. Tenderly, she pulled more strands free. The gash was the length of her smallest finger but didn’t look too deep. The bleeding was already slow and mostly congealed.

  He blinked, mumbled again, then sat up abruptly, his hands flying out to grip her arms reflexively.

  “It’s okay. You’re fine,” she said, straining to make her voice sound more confident than she felt. “You’ve been hit in the head, but not seriously. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  He coughed, oddly politely, into his sleeve, considered, then shook his head. Unwilling to accept a simple answer, she pulled her forearms free from his grip and clenched the edge of the Mentalios between her teeth to free her hands. She ran them over his neck, arms, and torso, searching for the odd protrusions of broken bones or more wounds. He remained passive under her ministrations, dazed by the circumstances of their predicament as much as by discomfort. Even as she felt for damage under his thick leather Wing uniform, she scanned the area where the cave entrance . . . had been.

  Finding no other injuries on his body, she gripped the lens once more and stated, “We are trapped.” And Symvalline and Isemay are not here with us. The thought seemed to rip vitality straight out of her, and she sagged, still perched on her knees. Her Mentalios fell free and dangled against her breastplate. A noise that might have been a sob if she’d not choked most of it back pushed past her lips.

  “Mylla, there was nothing you could have done.” He seemed to be able to read her mind. “If you’d run back for them, you’d be dead too.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t say they’re dead.” The anger in the glare she leveled on him seemed to confuse him. She sucked in a breath and calmed herself. Of course, he was a mortal man who saw death more often than the average commoner, given his line of work. She, however, passed most of her days among people who lived for hundreds, even thousands of turns. She’d forgotten what death felt like, not to those who died, but to the living who remained behind and had to accept it, the loss, the inevitability of it. It occurred to her that this was why most of her Knight mentors rarely mingled too closely with commoners. Witnessing another’s death was never trivial or painless, especially when you cared for them.

  This is a reminder, she told herself. This is what you’ll experience if you continue this tryst with Havelock, eventually. Can you really face this pain, face losing him? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply forget him?

  She pushed the thought away. The chaos of their circumstances left no room for her private concerns. “Lock, give me a moment. I’m going to see if I can call to Symvalline. They may have reached safety.” Ignoring his obvious doubt, she put her thoughts through the Mentalios. Symvalline, can you hear me?

  The only consolation she found in the empty silence that returned was that it didn’t surprise her. Accepting death, it seemed, could come more easily than she imagined. The thought made her cold.

  She pulled herself to her feet and reached a hand to assist Havelock. “Come on. The Stallari will still need our help. If those attackers find the cave—”

  The Stallari! She might have slapped herself for not thinking of it sooner and pulled her hand back to reach for the Mentalios, failing to notice Havelock fall back on his hindquarters with the sudden disappearance of her assistance. Stallari, I’m here to help you. Are you there? she sent. The vessel’s chamber could have suffered damage. Even now, Ulfric, Mallich, and Eisa could be dead or injured. But, again, only silence responded.

  They’d tarried too long. They would find torches farther down the tunnel and soon reach the cut-stone stairs leading up—and up, and up—to the vessel’s sanctuary. If there was any such thing as a Verity’s luck to grace them, they’d regroup with the Stallari and the other Knights and devise a plan to keep Vaka Aster from falling prey to the foreign Verity. The Stallari had bought them time at Aster Keep. Now she must face the challenge, show her true worth as a Knight, and ensure her Verity’s—and her realm’s—continued security.

  Havelock fell into step behind her. As they walked, the sound of his breathing brought to mind a new concern. How many air shafts leading from the surface to the bowels of Omina remained? Would their fates be to die from asphyxiation in here, far from light or friends? It would take an untold number of turns of airlessness for death to claim the last of her spark of Verity-given vitality, but Havelock would succumb much quicker. She gripped the thought and strangled it before it could sink cold teeth of fear into her. One worry at a time, Mylla. Keep your faith in this fight.

  They moved as quickly as the torch’s dim light allowed. Once they reached the stairs cut into the mountain’s core, their pace slowed even more. The avalanche had vibrated deep, peppering the steep stairs with chunks of slate, just the right size to slip on and with a seemingly personal malice toward them. More than once she braced herself against the chill walls before her feet could slide off a step and send her, and probably Havelock with her, bumping backward into granite-hard, unforgiving darkness. I would sacrifice a foot if it meant I’d never have to climb another flight of stairs, she thought, her legs still groaning from her escape up the stairs at Aster Keep.

  They couldn’t have been trudging up the interior of the mountain for much longer than it would take her to quaff a pint or three—on a slow night, that was—but it felt like half her life. Ahead, finally, she could make out the landing in the glow of her torch, which had not wavered once. They seemed to be doing fine for air.

  The landing itself was no wider than her arms could reach to either side of her. An iron ladder, bolted into the stone, led to a Mentalios-
locked trap door that opened to the sanctuary chamber above, behind the pedestal where the vessel stood. Just four rungs left before they came to the Stallari’s aid.

  She pulled herself up the iron rungs and set her Mentalios into the metal circlet forming the trap door’s keyhole, then channeled the words to unlock it. Holding the top rung with one hand, she shoved hard against the door, but it wouldn’t move. Frustration forced her to speak through gritted teeth. “It’s jammed or blocked.”

  “Let me try.”

  She hopped down, and he climbed up and pressed his palm into the door and pushed, but still nothing. “Get up here behind me and let me brace against you.”

  Climbing to the second rung, she traced her arms around either side of his legs in a hug and gripped the top rung, creating an envelope to hold him against the ladder. With her cheek pressed into his midback, she mumbled, “Good?”

  “Perfect. I’m going to push hard. Hold on.”

  She felt the power in his body as he wound up, then released, jamming both palms into the door. It flew upward noiselessly, and Havelock pitched backward at the sudden lack of resistance. She gripped harder, blocking his fall and holding the ladder tight enough that her shoulders ached.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  He climbed over the lip of the opening, and she heard him whisper in amazement, “Clip my wings, what . . . ?”

  KILL THEM ALL!

  The words stabbed into her mind like a dozen swords at once, causing her to nearly lose her grip. An instant later, the bluest blinding blue she’d ever seen flooded down from the room above and immersed the landing beneath her in overwhelming radiance. With one hand, she shielded her eyes, and with the other held the rung for all her worth as the air lifted in a swirl and blew around her. Then it stopped and the light outside her tightly closed eyelids returned to a mellow dimness.

  “Havelock?” she said, dropping her hand and blinking.

  No response.

  She retrieved her Mentalios and hustled past the trap door, no longer calm or cautious, and entered Vaka Aster’s chamber.

  Chapter 14

  Brilliant blue light blinded Ulfric and filled the vessel chamber. It thickened and closed around him in a dense blue cocoon, then ripped into him, cleaving more than just his flesh. His bones, his organs, his very being down to the tiniest fragment of corporeality flew apart, shredded and diffused. But he felt nothing, no pain, no heat, no cold, as he turned into formless light, disintegrating and dispersing into waves of phosphorescence that were drawn rapidly up toward the cracked ceiling.

  Stripped of sensation, he no longer perceived either the chamber or his body. Something that surpassed both pulled him away. For a moment, he clung to the idea, the certainty, that Mount Omina and the world lay below him, familiar landmarks to his unfamiliar self. Then Vinnr itself faded, becoming nothing but a distant phenomenon of air, matter, and dust in an interplay with the light of the Great Cosmos. His world, himself, everything—it all expanded into the immensity of everything that could ever be conceived of and more.

  What’s happening to me?

  He no longer recognized a separation between himself and the Cosmos. And why would he? He was the Cosmos. His being had expanded and disintegrated, turning into light and space and energy, both the Cosmos itself and what existed within it. He perceived himself as vastness and potential without limit. He felt himself to be infinite.

  Who are you? The voice, was it his? He could not see any others, so it must be him. Who had he directed the question to? Should he answer? Would someone else answer?

  Time didn’t give him the chance to contemplate these questions before he suddenly started . . . falling?

  And with that thought, whatever was happening to him suddenly stopped. He opened his eyes, which felt bruised and sore, as if he’d been in a boxing match, and saw blue, then gray, then a very hard-looking marble floor. Not the floor in Vaka Aster’s sanctuary on Mount Omina.

  Thuh-clunk!

  He hit it, fully splayed out on his torso and face, his armor absorbing some but not all of the impact. His nose splatted like ripe fruit, sending daggers of pain shooting through his face and head. His thoughts grayed out, and he lost track for a moment.

  I see. It’s you, Stallari. Wake now.

  The voice in his head brought his senses back, and with them, the pain. He rolled over and looked around, realizing in an instant that something was wrong. Very, very wrong. He’d hit his head harder than he realized, apparently. Everything in front of his eyes glimmered and glowed. A tiny touch of light coming from somewhere in his periphery turned into an inferno of many dimensions, each familiar color enhanced a hundredfold. Thousands more colors he’d never seen, never knew he could see blazed there as well. He squeezed his eyelids shut, and still the interaction of color and light and even a sense of warm and cool, which to his eyes were almost colors of their own, muted but did not leave.

  Am I going blind? He didn’t care. Only one thing mattered. “Vaka Aster,” he whispered, opening his eyes and looking up, “if you’re there, please tell me what has become of my family.”

  A shadow fell over him. Ulfric guessed it was a person by the shadow’s shape, but his weirded vision distorted what he saw into shifting hues and depths that revealed more than a physical form. The form spoke, but the words made no sense to his stunned ears.

  Chapter 15

  Mylla found Havelock with his back against the vessel chamber wall, his legs splayed out in front of him. He stared at Vaka Aster’s pedestal with an expression that told Mylla the light show she’d witnessed from below was a mere shadow to what he’d seen up here. She pulled herself up and hunched over, still keeping the pedestal between herself and the rest of the chamber—who knew who or what else was present?—and peered about.

  The cavern’s utter stillness rivaled the muted experience of being underwater. Even the usual swarm of dragørflies that lit the interior with an ethereal twinkle was missing, though the gaping rent in the chamber’s roof seemed a likely explanation for their absence. The vessel remained on the alabaster dais, unchanged from the last time she’d seen it when they’d brought it to this sanctuary, other than being covered in layers of dirt and grit from whatever had blown out the roof. The outside light was enough to show her no one else but Lock was present.

  She turned back to the Dragør Wing pilot. “Lock,” she said, “what did you see?”

  “I don’t even know how to explain it.” His voice carried an edge of awe, or disbelief.

  “I need to know.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, usually chestnut colored, now gray-flecked with rock grit. “I saw . . . Aldinhuus, standing there on the other side of the pedestal. His face was stricken with horror. I’ve never seen a person look like that. He held something in his hands, it looked like a shaft of some sort. He was staring at it, and a circle of blue lights was spinning above”—he looked up toward the statue, then back to Mylla accusingly—“that.”

  He didn’t know they’d moved the vessel here. No commoner did. And Mylla realized suddenly that he’d perceive it as a betrayal of sorts that the Knights would presume to remove the vessel of their creator from Asteryss, so no commoner could see her if they wished.

  She’d deal with that later. Reassured Lock was okay, Mylla scooted aside and peered around the dais to look over the rest of the chamber. “He’s not here now,” she said. “The Stallari. Did you see where he went? Was there anyone else here?”

  His mouth opened, and they both jumped when a heavy thud echoed inside the chamber, followed by several smaller thunks, and then shouting. Mylla realized the noise was coming from the wooden door leading to the antechamber.

  “Oh thank the Verities.” It had to be Eisa and Roi. “Lock, help me. I think the doorframe’s buckled.”

  They rushed to it and began sweeping rocks and pebbles clear. The iron hinges were indeed twisted and would never move freely. “Roi, Eisa!” she shouted. “Do you hear me? It’s Mylla
.”

  Silence fell on the other side. Then: Mylla? Eisa spoke through her Mentalios. How are you here? What’s happened?

  I’ll show you. But the hinges are destroyed. We’ll have to break down the door.

  Stand back. This was Mallich.

  Mylla pulled Havelock to the side, well clear of any projectiles that might, and soon would, splinter the slats. The thunking came again, increasing in furor and velocity. Soon, chunks of wood began to split off as the force of the Knights’ klinkí-stone assault took its inevitable toll. In a matter of moments, they reduced the door to kindling and stepped in.

  Mylla greeted them. “Thank Vaka Aster you weren’t harmed.”

  “It was a near thing,” Eisa said. “Where’s Ulfric?”

  “ . . . I hoped you knew.”

  They all fell silent, looking around the small chamber. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere Ulfric could have gone that they could see. The roof was high enough overhead that it wouldn’t have been easy to get out that way, and why would he? Where would he go, with the sky full of attack ships and his companions inside the mountain?

  No answers appeared, and as was natural Eisa took command. “Until he’s found, I’m Stallari Regent.” Her leaden gaze dropped on Havelock. “Why is this commoner here?”

  Mylla hesitated. Knight Nazaria was a mentor to her, a paragon of the virtues the Knights represented. Since Mylla had become an acolyte in the Resplendolent Conservatum, she had looked up to the time-hardened, battle-honed warrior. She wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, but Eisa always had, and likely always would, intimidate her, probably because it was clear Eisa always had, and likely always would, hate her.

  Eisa continued. “Speak up, novice. What is this uninitiated commoner doing in Vaka Aster’s sanctuary?” Eisa took a step toward Havelock with her klinkí stones hovering above her palm.