by Tammy Salyer
Ulfric exchanged a glance with Stave, who gave a short nod. The waiting would always be the hardest part of any mission like this, but there was nothing else to do now but wait.
Ulfric considered what came next. It all hinged on him searching Balavad’s Scrylle. He knew it would be dangerous. The last time he’d done it, Balavad had nearly taken control of his mind. But it was the only way he knew to end this catastrophe.
Fortunately, Mallich was back sooner than either expected. Not an hour had passed.
He stepped through the portal, his usually sanguine expression tense. “The gates on the outer wall have been demolished. I didn’t visit every tower, but Vigil Tower itself has been ransacked,” he said simply before Ulfric even had to ask.
“Ivoryssians?” he asked.
“No, I think it was Raveners. I can’t see the people of Ivoryss causing such destruction to a part of their own city.”
“That means the tower isn’t nearly as secure as we would want it, eh?” asked Stave.
Mallich shook his head. “We can still bar the doors, which I did before leaving, but there are plenty of weapons that can get through them if the wielders are determined enough. We’ll need to prioritize shoring up our defenses. And if another flying force arrives…”
Ulfric scratched his chin in thought. “The interrealm well and the catacombs are still accessible to escape if needed.”
“They are,” Mallich confirmed.
“But we don’t know how many other wells remain unbroken or undiscovered.”
“We don’t.”
Safran, listening through the Mentalios, spoke. Should we even risk it?
“We may be safer among the Ivoryssians than out here on our own,” Mallich said. He looked at Ulfric. “But the city of Asteryss…it’s been badly damaged. They will be busy enough restoring it without concerning themselves overmuch with our affairs, or Vaka Aster’s.”
The people of Ivoryss had gone over three hundred turns, many generations, without seeing the living vessel. For many, belief in their maker had gone from strict to tenuous, to, in many cases, outright disbelief. Ulfric thought back to the day this all began and the skepticism he’d seen in the leader of the Dragør Marines, Commander Brun. How far had it spread? Were things different now after what Balavad had wreaked?
Since returning two nights ago, Ulfric had remained secluded inside Mount Omina, unwilling to risk the reactions of the Vinnrics at seeing him in the flesh, no longer the Stallari of the Knights Corporealis, but now the living vessel itself. The Knights, too, had kept their distance, telling the commoners only that the vessel was safe and they needed to return to their homes. Their recent traumas—the transformation into Balavad’s Raveners, the battle for first their city, then their lives aboard his warship—had rendered them pliant, in too much shock to argue with the Knights. But how long would that last?
His companions were waiting for whatever Ulfric advised. Resolute, he gave a curt nod. “We go back to Vigil Tower. At least there we can protect the Himmingazians and provide them with more suitable shelter until we send them home. Have Jaemus prepare them. We’ll go as soon as they’re ready.”
Chapter Six
Pebbles grated beneath boot heels, shattering the silence as loudly as an emberflare petard. From where she sat with her back to the wall, Eisa remained motionless, not even breathing. Someone had entered the chamber. The question was, did they know she was there?
The steps moved quietly, cautiously, toward her. Was it another Knight? No, a Knight wouldn’t skulk in the dark like a rodent.
She said nothing. Perhaps it was an animal. The bears on Mount Omina were five times larger than a person, and this late in the spring, they would be hungry.
She gripped her nine klinkí stones in her left hand, but with her Mentalios engaged by the interrealm well, she couldn’t use them. They were nothing but thumbnail-size rocks now.
Another step, just as cautious, getting closer. Whoever it was hadn’t bothered with a light. Did they think she couldn’t hear them? The careful steps told her that whoever it was, they were as blind as she.
Slag it. She was already bored with this game.
With a lunge, she flung herself forward off the ground, dropping her klinkí stones and yanking free her dagger. Whoever was there threw themselves sideways, but not before her legs and theirs tangled. She went down on her stomach and instantly wrenched her leg free to roll to one side. She heard her enemy do the same, and then it was silent in the chamber again.
A scrape of stone, a swish of cloth—the enemy was moving, circling. She danced with them. A moment later, she knew their back was to the wall she’d been leaning on. Wraith-silent, she lunged again, planning to pin the assailant against the wall with her own body and stab the life from them. They, too, could have a knife, but she could recover from a few wounds, if the enemy was lucky enough to land them.
But they were quick, much quicker than she’d expected. Her dagger arm was parried aside with enough force to slam her wrist into the wall. The dagger’s hilt, adorned by the broken piece of Fenestros, struck the wall too—and a light flashed throughout the chamber, bright enough that it felt like spears thrown into her eyeballs. She disengaged from the attacker, her arm involuntarily flung over her eyes, hearing him cry out too.
Scooting away as quickly as she could, she swiped madly at her eyes, trying to regain her sight before he did. Cracking her eyelids a fraction, she saw nothing but great red and black spots dancing before her. One of the black spots might have been the shadow of a man on the other side of the chamber.
“Whoever you are, I’ll build a cage for your head from your bones and keep it as a trophy,” she warned. “Lay down your arms and drop to your stomach if you wish to avoid such a fate.”
She heard the man’s breath hitch as if surprised. Then a voice that was vaguely familiar called, “Knight Nazaria?”
After blinking hard a few times, she forced her eyes to stay open despite a lingering glare in the room. What was still illuminated? She blinked again and swiveled her gaze around the chamber. There, the center of the brass ring of the interrealm well was emitting a slowly fading glow. It was coming from her Mentalios.
Of course, the fractured Fenestros in her dagger’s hilt must have struck it, the combined energy from it and the wystic interrealm well had been channeled through the lens, creating a spark as powerful as a dozen torches.
Her sight was coming back, and she could clearly make out the figure about twenty paces across from her. Definitely a man, though he was still shrouded in shadow.
“On your stomach!” she demanded.
It was her turn to be surprised. Slowly and without question, he did as told, splaying his arms by his sides, hands empty, but keeping his head up enough to watch her. Without taking her eyes from him, she sidestepped to the Mentalios. When she reached it, the glow had dimmed enough to leave the rest of the chamber in the dark. Only the circle that had been the lens itself still held any light, but she could see the crack that now split the lens in two from top to bottom.
“Oh, you are going to pay for this,” she promised the familiar stranger.
“Knight Nazaria, I didn’t know it was you. It was so dark, I thought all the Knights had left. I would never have fought if I’d realized who you were.”
That voice, now she had it. “Wing Rekkr?”
Relief turned his voice husky. “Yes, it’s me. May I stand up?”
“I don’t think so, commoner.” The light was gone again, the room swathed in blackness that was only broken by the glint of stars through the rent in the chamber’s ceiling. Eisa reached into her bandolier and withdrew Vaka Aster’s Fenestros, enticing it to wash the chamber in a much more tolerable low light. She saw his face clearly now. The Wing Marine who’d helped Mylla recover the final Fenestros after Asteryss had fallen, and her paramour. If Eisa had thought of him at all, she would have assumed he was dead like she’d heard so many others were. “What in the name of Vaka As
ter are you doing here?”
“Scouting,” he answered. “Watching the starpath to see who—and what—might come through. We’re rotating from Asteryss with what’s left of the Dragør Wing Fleet. The other Knights were still here when the Wing I was to relieve left earlier this evening.”
She snorted. “Scouting won’t do much good if you have gaps in your rotation.”
Despite her refusal to permit it, he seemed to be willing to risk his life to stand and rose to his feet slowly. She ignored his indiscretion. There was news to be had—he’d said the other Knights were here. She wanted the full story. If he needed to stand to tell it, she’d let him.
“Tell me, Wing, from the beginning. What’s happened in Vinnr since Mylla left you in Asteryss—or, remind me, was it you who left her?”
Chapter Seven
Within a handful of hours, the Knights and Himmingazians arrived at Vigil Tower.
It was a bittersweet moment for Ulfric. He was, for whatever it was worth, home once more. But what he felt acutely, like an ache in his heart that could not be cured, was that the true meaning of home was out of his grasp as long as his family was not present.
Though the Himmingazians had regarded the journey through the interrealm well back to Vigil Tower with more than a hint of anxiety, Jaemus rallied them quite well, assuring them they would be safe and warm if they trusted the Knights. Now, being once again indoors seemed to relax them more than being at Mount Omina. The Knights found them rooms in the northeast tower that had only suffered minor disorder, and Ulfric wondered how much of their returning calm was based on their particular tower overlooking the Verring Sea. They were a people who lived on water, and he guessed being close to something familiar helped set their minds better at ease. Overall, he was impressed with how readily they seemed to adapt.
After a thorough check to ensure the main tower was free of imposters and the gates and wards of the fortress were as secure as they could be, the Knights and Ulfric now gathered inside Vaka Aster’s erstwhile throne room at Vigil Tower’s peak.
Ulfric reached for the pouch with Balavad’s Scrylle and Fenestros and pulled them out. The touch of them was no different than Vaka Aster’s or Lífs’s. Still, his flesh crept with loathing. So much suffering and harm had befallen this world, and who knew how many others, because of this Verity, this calamity of a celestial, to whom these artifacts belonged. He briefly wondered what would have happened if he’d never looked into Balavad’s Scrylle in the first place, then pushed the thought away. What did it matter? There was no wisdom in looking backward, only lessons. And what he did next would prove whether he’d ever applied wisdom to these events or was simply cursed with foolishness he mistook for wisdom.
“Is this wise, Stallari?”
Ulfric looked up. Mallich stood beside him, and like always, his words were uncannily close to Ulfric’s own thoughts.
“We know what happened when Mylla tried to see into the wicked one’s Scrylle,” Mallich continued. “She was young, her resolve and fortitude still waxing. Do you know what Balavad is capable of if your mind is opened to this?”
He did know, all too well. Inside Vaka Aster’s sanctuary on Mount Omina, when he’d performed the spell to cage her, he’d lost Balavad’s Scrylle in the furor her return from the Cosmos had caused. But then, compelled by Balavad, he’d reopened both it and his mind to the usurping Verity. He could still feel Balavad’s alien voice creeping through his thoughts.
But in the end, he had overcome Balavad’s influence and thrown himself into the cage he’d erected with the Fenestrii. As a result, he’d made himself the thing he’d been trying to unmake. Yes, he knew the dangers of this Scrylle all too well.
Looking from the artifacts in his hands to Mallich, then to his other two companions, he said, “What else can I do? There is only one way to right all these wrongs, and it lies within this Scrylle.”
There was no argument to be made.
The silence in Ulfric’s mind was unnerving after feeling Vaka Aster’s presence whispering at its edges, and sometimes booming through it, prior to their deal to leave him to resolve this problem on his own. The absence of his maker’s intrusion should have been welcome, but in some ways, it wasn’t. Instead, his mind felt hollowed out and drained, like one’s stomach after rejecting something bad. His thoughts, as sharp as always, still carried a burden of knowing too much, of having seen and heard too much for his simple human shell.
He considered calling to her, but decided against it. She could hear his thoughts, he was sure, and knew the danger he now faced. In truth, with her inhabiting his being in this way, did he really have anything to fear?
He looked at his Knights again as if searching their faces for solutions, but their expressions mirrored his own uncertainty. Pacing to the opened window, he took a moment to breathe deeply of the fresh air, feel Halla’s rays on his face again. His heartmatch and daughter awaited him, his freedom awaited him. Hope, perhaps, awaited him.
With Balavad’s Scrylle and one of the pitch-black Fenestrii in his hands, he said, “I don’t know what might happen. Be prepared for anything. Anything at all. If you have to restrain me, do it.”
His fellow Knights glanced at each other uncertainly, and he almost smirked. Within him, after all, was a celestial being. It would take more than a few Knights with ropes to restrain him if Vaka Aster didn’t want him to be.
Affixing the Fenestros to the setting within the Scrylle cylinder, he breathed deep once more and let his eyes fall to the now glowing stone.
Allowing one’s mind to penetrate the lore of a Scrylle wasn’t terribly complicated. He could have done it in his sleep. But as soon as the world within began to spread before his mental sight, claws began shredding his brain, bringing tears to his eyes. His fingertips and the skin of his face tingled, first lightly, then fervidly, as if each tiny fiber of flesh was vibrating faster and faster. Then, unlike any other time he’d peered into a celestial cylinder—save once—a sudden blinding illumination burst inside it, around it, all throughout his mind. He jerked, though he didn’t know if it was his body or just his mind, and realized he couldn’t escape it, he was trapped inside the light
Then, just as suddenly, it shrank into a concentrated beam. With an arrow’s speed, it shot directly to the core of his mind, knocking him backward. His jaw clenched so tightly he felt a tooth crack.
Still gazing into the Fenestros, he concentrated. As if he stared into an optiscope that could view things hundreds of miles distant, his mind’s eye peered through the singular beam to its terminus.
Where he saw absolutely nothing.
The Scrylle was empty, as if it had been reamed out until hollow. Only one thing could cause that. The realm it had belonged to, and everything it had once been a record of, had ceased to exist. The realm of Battgjald was no more.
Which meant—
And here you are, Stallari Aldinhuus, creation of my quin, Balavad said in his thoughts. I wondered if you’d managed to retain my artifacts. You must hope you will be able to use them to unmake the cage you wrought and restore yourself to nothing but a man once more. A frail, weak, trivial creation. You had hope, didn’t you? Hope. One of the many strange things my quins gave their creations. A simple but useless thing.
Overwrought with the realization that an entire realm and all who’d inhabited it had ceased to exist, Ulfric couldn’t speak.
Are you surprised to hear me again? It’s no matter. Your last chance came and went, Aldinhuus. And your actions will not go unpunished, Balavad promised. There will be a reckoning for this breach. Vaka Aster cannot destroy my realm without expecting the same be done to her own.
Ulfric felt something shaking and realized it was him. His body lay writhing and shuddering on the floor in a fit he had no control over. He heard shouting—so far away and all around him. Then the light beam shattered, fragments of it exploding and becoming embedded in the meat of his brain. Vaka Aster’s voice whispered, You cannot take this one, q
uin.
A rushing, pulling sensation erupted behind his eyes, as if his mind were being sucked into a tunnel, then it went black.
“Breathe, Ulfric!” Stave growled. “Just open your eyes and breathe. He can’t get in there, in your head. Not if you don’t let him, he can’t. Open your eyes.”
Stave’s voice came from right by his head. He tried blinking and barely managed it. His body quaked again, but less violently as the shaking gradually subsided.
Mallich crouched beside him. “Stallari?” And through the Mentalios, Is it still you, Ulfric?
His brain was too raw and he jerked, flinging a hand at Mallich to stop him from using the lens to speak again. He couldn’t take another voice in his mind right now.
He tried to speak, but at first his voice would only catch in his throat, like a stuck bone. Mallich pushed him up into a sitting position and thumped his back, as if he were choking on mis-swallowed water. Across the chamber, Safran had spun her klinkí stones into a brilliant blue net that held Balavad’s Fenestros inside, separated from the room and everyone in it. The Fenestros had gone black again, dormant. The Scrylle cylinder itself lay on the dais next to him. A harmless, hollow device now.
With another attempt, he finally gruffed, “Battgjald is gone, completely gone. Destroyed as if it never was. And the Scrylle is empty.”
The others stared at him wordlessly.
“I can’t…” he murmured. “I can’t reach Symvalline and Crumb now.”
While Ulfric caught his breath, Mallich went to the scullery to find something to refresh them. All he knew was that Crumb and his heartmatch were in Arc Rheunos and that Symvalline had “been taken.” What that meant, how dire their situation was, were utterly unknown. And until he was free of Vaka Aster, he could neither learn more about nor intervene in their fates.