by Tammy Salyer
By the time Mallich returned, Ulfric’s mind was made up.
“So, you saw him again, you did, did you?” Stave asked, shaken but hiding it behind a brow that was creased so deeply in a frown his forehead seemed to have caved in.
Sitting at the base of Vaka Aster’s throne, Ulfric tipped a mug of lind wine over his tongue, feeling its delicious flavor, both hot and cold at the same time and heavily fermented, slide into his stomach. It was a relief to know he could still experience such a pleasant sensation, but he barely tasted the nectar.
He’d clamped down on the despair rushing through him and turned his mind to seeking a new answer. Balavad might say hope was useless, but he knew it wasn’t. Hope was all he had left.
Now wholly focused on how he would get back Symvalline and Isemay, he promised himself he would do whatever he had to. He may not soon be free of this cage he’d created of himself, but they weren’t beyond reach yet. There had to be a way. After all, he was not the only Knight Corporealis in Vinnr who could travel by starpath.
“Yes, Balavad was there,” he said, his throat constricted as he recovered from the ordeal. “Brutal and cold and vicious, like always. He’d have had me if Vaka Aster had not intervened.”
Safran had tucked Balavad’s Fenestrii and Scrylle safely inside their carrying pouch and stood across the chamber near a window. Mallich and Stave sat beside Ulfric in seats they’d pulled up to contemplate their next steps.
You’re sure, Ulfric? Sure Battgjald is no more? Safran sent.
“I couldn’t be more sure if I’d been there myself when it ceased to be.” The closest he’d ever come to such complete negation of a reality was reading Jaemus’s Scrylle map and seeing the missing Fenestros of Himmingaze. It was an odd sensation, like a puzzle piece that lacked a puzzle. Where his mind knew something had to be, there was nothing. And the more he thought about it, the odder, more disconcerting it became. It was beyond what a human mind could truly grasp, even one as stalwart as a Knight’s.
Safran, looking troubled, pressed: But didn’t Vaka Aster tell you the key to undoing this cage was in Balavad’s Scrylle? Can that mean she doesn’t know she destroyed his realm, along with his vessel?
Ulfric wiped his brow with the back of his hand, feeling clamminess. “She must not have before, but she does now.” He didn’t want to entertain the thought, not even for a moment, that she might have let him discover this calamity for himself just to see how he’d react. She might have been removed from their human plights, but she wasn’t malicious. Not in the way Balavad was.
“That puts us in a troubling position,” Mallich stated. “You are vulnerable, and while you are vulnerable, Vinnr is as well.”
“I’m aware,” he replied.
Safran began to pace before the window. I think we now understand better what happened on the warship. While your mind was dark, Ulfric, Vaka Aster chose to destroy Balavad’s vessel in order to stop his assault and the fighting that would surely have resulted in the deaths of every Vinnric and Himmingazian aboard. In doing this, in destroying the vessel, she ended his world with it. It was a matter of him destroying you, or Vaka Aster destroying him. She stopped pacing and looked at them. So does that mean Balavad still has his mind on us, and on Vaka Aster? If he can’t conquer Vaka Aster, will he seek revenge instead?
“It’ll take him time to rebuild his world, more time than any of us will be alive, we can be sure of that,” Stave offered, then looked quickly at Ulfric. “Most of us, anyway.”
Rubbing the nine-pointed star on his chin, Ulfric pondered what it all meant. “He may still have forces or spies in other realms. Those who weren’t there will not have ceased to be when Battgjald was lost. We must be prepared and remain vigilant, but I don’t think we should be as concerned about him as we were.”
That leaves getting you back to yourself, finding a new vessel for Vaka Aster, and bringing back Symvalline and Isemay, Safran sent, already working through the problem. The answer is to find the other Verities’ Scrylles. Ulfric, you said Symvalline and Isemay are in Arc Rheunos. There’s a strong chance they would have attracted the attention of Mithlí’s servants when they were delivered by the starpath and may still be with them even now. If one of us were to go to Arc Rheunos, perhaps we could find them, both Symvalline and the Arc Rheunos Knights. If we can explain our needs to them, and if we are persuasive, they may allow us access to Mithlí’s Scrylle. And since you cannot leave Vinnr, we will bring both what we glean from their Scrylle lore and our sister and your daughter back with us, if they remain there still.
This is exactly what Ulfric had been thinking. He said, his voice stronger now, “Vaka Aster has assured me they are there. When we were on Balavad’s warship, I…spoke to Isemay for a moment.”
Mallich eyed him, waiting for what Ulfric wouldn’t say. Ulfric hadn’t spoken to Symvalline, only to Isemay, because she and Isemay weren’t together, because she may have been in danger. Ulfric didn’t need to say it. The perceptive Knights could read enough from his silence. Knowing what little he did of Symvalline and Isemay’s situation, Ulfric had to admit how tenuous Safran’s idea was. But tenuous was better than nothing.
After a moment, Stave said, “But leaving your side puts you at risk, it does, and our oaths to Vaka Aster are unbreakable…” He trailed off uncharacteristically.
“You won’t be breaking your oaths,” Ulfric said. “Finding a way to release Vaka Aster from this trap I’ve made of myself is fulfilling our oaths. Taking no action is failing them.” He spoke bluntly, but this was no time for nuance. “Yet,” he hesitated, hating to say it, “with only Balavad’s Scrylle, it may not be possible to open a starpath. It’s too dangerous to use.”
“I’ll try it, I will. Let that worm-slurping celestial try to face me,” Stave said.
“No. If I can barely keep my wits while sharing my mind with our maker, not to belittle your sturdiness, Stave, but Balavad might damage your head beyond your spark’s ability to heal.”
Stave sneered. “Blargin’ Eisa, that traitor. If she’d not take Vaka Aster’s Scrylle, we’d have you turned back into your old self by now, we would. When I see her again, I’ll—”
Much as we are all concerned what Eisa’s intentions were, and may yet be, she’s not here now, Safran cut in. And we can only speculate why she did what she did, which gets us nothing at the moment. We must focus.
As it always did, her calmly delivered advice cooled Stave’s less harmonious temperament. He quieted and scratched at his voluminous mutton chops.
Mallich said, “What about Himmingaze’s Scrylle? Could the new novice know something?”
Ulfric nodded. “Actually, I had their Scrylle in my hands shortly after I was sent there, but—wait, the one called Captain Illago. Stave,” he said, excitedly, “can you go and fetch him? The taller one, looks a bit like…just ask Jaemus which he is. He may be able to tell us where their artifacts are.”
“Got it,” Stave said and made off.
While waiting, Ulfric considered Griggory’s account of Himmingaze from the Scrylle. Should he tell the others what knew? He discounted the idea. Safran may be willing to give Eisa the benefit of the doubt, and Mallich would always trust his long-time companion, but Stave was an if. And under the circumstances, further exposure to actions of hers that, by some interpretations, could be considered questionable would not improve things should Eisa reappear.
Besides, many other things required his focus now. Playing mitigator to the Knights’ ire toward their fellow Knight didn’t need to be one of them.
Captain Illago, Jaemus by his side, stepped into the chamber. His gate was slow, as if the stairs to the tower top had tired him. Jaemus, however, was as spry as could be. Ulfric hadn’t known him long enough to judge whether that was just his usual way or if his new ordination was the reason for his gusto.
“Aldinhuus,” the Glisternaut captain said amiably enough. If nothing else, he seemed willing to forgive Ulfric’s threats from their short en
counters on Isle Stonering and his ship, The Bounding Skate.
“Captain, thank you for coming. Please, Jaemus, can you translate?”
“Pleasure,” the engineer replied.
In a few brief words, Ulfric came to learn that after he and Jaemus had made their escape from The Skate, the Illago had taken the remaining celestial artifacts, one of Lífs’s Fenestrii and the Scrylle, and locked them inside a secure box aboard the ship. From there, Ulfric gleaned, the craft had likely been destroyed along with the Knights’ own, the Vigilance, when Balavad’s warship exploded. They are lost now, scattered throughout the Himmingazian ocean no doubt.
He thanked the captain for his information. Illago nodded, and Ulfric could tell from his expression he could see the news hadn’t been what they’d been hoping for. Jaemus was about to leave with him when Stave put a hand on his shoulder.
“One moment, novice. Would you be able to spare me a few minutes after we’re done here?”
“…Sure,” the engineer said. “What about?”
“Just want to get you a bit more acquainted with the Knights, I do.”
Looking dubious, Jaemus rubbed his new chin adornment, then nodded and the two Himmingazians stepped out.
Ulfric looked to the others. Their next step was obvious.
“We must find Eisa,” Mallich said. “And once we do, someone must go to Arc Rheunos.”
Chapter Eight
Being thought of as important had always mattered to Jaemus, but that was when it came to such things as how to keep cities afloat above the thrashing waves of the Never Sea’s endless storms or devising new schemes to penetrate the Glister Cloud surrounding Himmingaze and find the ’Gazian people a new home. The Glisternaut fleet was his second home, and he’d believed he’d never leave it or betray it. To travel the stars and seek a new destiny, these had been his goals, his personal path to prominence.
But he’d always just assumed he would do these things in Himmingaze and his achievements would be for the sake of his own people.
Not here, in this hot, bright, stony world filled with towers and streets and daylight and earth and mountains—all things he’d heard of, read about, but never actually seen on his water-soaked world. Not as a Knight Corporealis. And not for a celestial being whom he’d never even heard of just a few days prior.
Yet, as anxiety-producing as these thoughts were, they were dwarfed by what was coming at him at that moment.
A swinging wooden practice ax being wielded by a Knight who seemed to be more motion than man forced Jaemus to duck, his breath abandoning him like a traitorous scoundrel.
“No! Not that way,” Knight Thorvíl warned, scooting bent-kneed backward and out of range of Jaemus’s wild, unskilled defensive swing with his own practice weapon. “You’re not trying to fell a tree, Bardgrim. I can move; a tree can’t. And I’m fast—see.”
Swooping in, Stave swatted him with the flat of his ax blade across the stomach, then spun away to his unarmed side. Jaemus “oofed” and doubled over, wondering what exactly the properties of a tree were.
“And I’m nimble,” Stave gruffed.
Jumping forward again, the Knight planted his free hand against Jaemus’s shoulder, his right leg behind his, and shoved. Jaemus went down on his back like a bucket of dropped stones.
“But like a tree, I, your enemy, am also incapable of mercy.”
With that, the ax in his right hand plummeted toward Jaemus’s head, then slammed into the sawdust beside it with an ominous thunk.
Standing over him, Stave looked into his horrified face and chuckled. Jaemus turned his head aside and spit blood from his bitten tongue into the dirt.
“Did I hurt you, novice?”
Swiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said, “My tongue may be bloodied, but my pride is most definitely broken.”
“C’mon, up you come.” Stave bent forward and grabbed his hand, hauling him to his feet. “You must remember to think fast and anticipate your foes. Don’t ever be lulled by their words when it’s their weapons you should be watching, it is.”
“Right, right, I’m fine. Just a bit flustered. You know”—he dusted off his legs—“I’m not a man for stabbing and smashing things. I keep telling you that.”
Nothing about Jaemus was warrior-built, not physically, not instinctively. Training him in the ways of the Knights Corporealis had become an obsession for Stave and Safran it seemed since they’d arrived in Vinnr two days ago. First Safran with the Mentalios lens, and now Stave with his blunt instruments. They’d barely let him rest.
To his surprise, though, he’d found he didn’t seem to feel much need to rest, and he’d noticed they rarely seemed to either. An effect, the pale one named Mallich Roibeard had told him, of his Verity-given spark. And though protecting Verities’ vessels was the job of the Knights, Jaemus had not yet decided if this role was one he intended to adopt, short- or long-term. He was still Himmingazian. He still had his own home to one day save.
And it all came down to Verities, it seemed. Which meant, like it or not, for now, he was where he had to be, even if it meant tolerating the bruises and bumps of this crazed ax-wielding Knight while they tried to figure out what had become of this rogue Knight they called Eisa Nazaria.
Jaemus heaved a breath and lowered his arms, practice weapon and all, then leaned up against a stout metal pillar in the midst of the training yard. “I think I’ll take a break now, my dear, sweet, tender tutor. That or simply die.”
Stave quirked a wooly eyebrow. “That’s a curious thing to say, that is. You’re a Knight now, novice. You can’t die from a little scratch or two. Will it help if I promise not to hurt you too much?”
“It was a figure of speech,” he said. “What I mean is that training with you is making me feel like death is preferable. Have you ever heard of the theory of ramping up difficulty levels in accordance with a pupil’s development?”
He delivered the words lightly, hoping Stave would take the hint without Jaemus running the risk of irritating him. It was hard enough dealing with the swarthy Knight when Stave was cheery. He didn’t think he would survive him being irritable.
To his relief, it seemed to work. Stave gave a little shake of his head and began walking toward the exit to the arena. Just as he reached the doorway, he turned back. “As a matter of fact,” he growled, “you underestimate just how much pain and suffering you can endure, you do. But we’ll fix that.” He reached toward a two-bladed battle-ax leaning on another pillar—most definitely not a training weapon—and turned, arcing his weapon in a ruthless throw toward Jaemus that was intended to cleave.
And then Jaemus did something that, despite a total lack of intention, remedied his wounded pride. With fleech-fast reflexes he didn’t realize he had, he ducked under the ax as it flew overhead, then, still in a crouch, sprinted toward his attacker, smashing full-bodied into him like a battering ram.
There, he stopped cold. Stave’s physique rivaled an anvil’s and was just as immovable to the comparatively wispy Jaemus. He couldn’t have weighed more than one of Stave’s beam-like legs.
“Get off me, ya mad man!” the Knight said, shoving him in the chest, but his tone was good-natured, even pleased. “See there? You did that right, you did. Thinking on your feet, reacting from your gut. Well done, novice Knight. Well done. Now, when is it that you’ll be taking your oath so you can be a proper Knight Corporealis like the rest of us?” He regarded Bardgrim with mild scrutiny, then added, “As like the rest of us as possible, I mean, being that you’re green like a kórb fruit, you are.”
The training yard’s stout doors opened and Ulfric stepped in. Jaemus could see the lines of care carved on his face. One notable feature was missing. The hollows beneath his eyes that one would expect to see. At some point, Ulfric had replaced the goggles Jaemus had given him (or rather, the ones he’d taken from Jaemus) with something that was his own design. The lenses were thick, dark, and huge, covering from just below his cheekbones to halfway u
p his forehead. His appearance was nearly comical, but the apparatus did conceal Ulfric’s exceptionally strange Verity-enhanced eyes, which Jaemus supposed was the point.
“Ulfric,” Stave greeted. “Come to show the novice a few of the old fighting techniques, did you?”
His voice was slow and heavy when he spoke. “Not at the moment. If you don’t mind, Stave, I’d like the yard to myself for a bit. I need some time to think.”
Jaemus heard what had happened when the Stallari looked into Balavad’s Scrylle. At some point, an entire world had somehow ceased to exist, and now Ulfric’s fusion with their celestial sprite was irreversible. And, worse, it appeared the man’s family was still missing and the means to find them lost. It was no wonder the fellow looked so morose.
And, of course, Jaemus had also learned that he and the ’Gazians were stuck here for the while due to the Battgjald Scrylle’s shocking blankness. Yet, if Aldinhuus did harbor a Verity within, perhaps there were other ways to get back home…
“C’mon, Glunt,” Stave said, slapping him on the back. “Let’s give the Stallari the yard.”
“It’s engineer, and my name is…oh, why don’t you just call me Jae?”
The two brushed by Ulfric, who seemed lost in his own world. When Stave peeled away with a comment about wanting to beat on some metal, which Jaemus took to mean…well, he wasn’t quite sure, he headed up the main tower’s stairs, overwhelmingly happy to have escaped the Knight’s torture, er, training.
Halfway up, though, he paused. Ulfric had largely been absent for the last two days, and Jaemus had decided it was better to let him alone to grieve his family’s loss. But now the man was out and about. It was time to have the chat he’d been putting off. He just hoped what he was planning to ask didn’t wind up leaving him in worse shape than his training time with Stave.