by Tammy Salyer
He could make out little in the gloom inside. The Glister Cloud was in the dim part of its cycle, and only the flashes of lightning and the illuminated gasses that comprised much of the Cloud gave them any light at all.
“Cote?”
“Here!” His lifemate paced toward him, and Jaemus could have wept with joy.
A particularly fierce flash lit up the interior, and biting wind hurled itself through the hole in the roof, so cold and piercing it felt malevolent. They’d arrived in the midst of a Glister Cloud storm apparently, as strong as, or more so, any he’d ever witnessed. Weeks or even just days left, Eisa said, he thought, and for the first time he believed it not just in his mind but in his bones.
Cote hugged him hard. “You did it, Jae. We’re home.” His eyes rose to take in the stormy sky. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Now then,” Jaemus said, stepping back. “Time to find—wait, where’s Ulfric?”
Suddenly frantic, he scanned the floor near him, but the strobe-like effect of lightning and distracting drums of thunder made seeing much of anything impossible. He reached for the Mentalios lens hanging from his chest—still there, thank the sky sprites, and in one piece—and mouthed the words to illuminate it and shed a more regular light around the ancient decrepit structure.
And light came, but not the kind he was expecting. The next thing he knew, he was lifted off the ground inside a glowing cerulean sphere that sent waves of oddly pleasant vibrations over his skin. The effect was not unlike traveling through a starpath well, but muted and far less discombobulating. I guess you can get used to anything when you’re on a better-than-passing acquaintanceship with the creators of the Cosmos, he realized.
Jaemus knew the sphere for what it was and was relieved, for once, to be engulfed within it—a net of klinkí stones, Ulfric’s most likely. But why Ulfric had him thus encumbered wasn’t immediately clear.
It wasn’t until he noticed the Glisternauts, all but Cote, had scattered that he realized he might be making a mistaken assumption about his predicament and who was causing it.
“Your gramsirene would have been proud of you, Jaemus Bardgrim,” a voice from the gloom said. “She always told me you were destined for more than the Glisternauts. It seems you’ve become a…a Cosmosnaut!”
“Release him, old man,” Cote demanded, holding steady next to Jaemus’s bubble, but not quite touching it.
Jaemus couldn’t see clearly through the wavering blue envelope, but that voice, and the snicker that came after… “Griggory?” he asked. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
Despite being saved the effort of finding the old Vinnric, Jaemus wasn’t confident such a convenience was going to do him any good. The Knight had never seemed the most…balanced of men.
A moment passed, then he was lowered gently back to the floor. The klinkí stone net widened and rose overhead to become a shield to keep out the wind and rain pouring through the roof.
Cote grabbed his elbow. “Are you all right?”
Jaemus nodded and stared toward the doorway. In the wystic stones’ blue shimmer, he could make out the form of Griggory standing before it.
“Master Knight,” Jaemus began, nearly melting with relief, “I can’t believe my luck, but you are exactly who I’m looking for. I don’t think I have time to explain everything, but I came because—”
“You never give up hope,” Griggory cut in. “Like a Knight Corporealis, you keep your faith in the fight.”
He’d always been an odd one, the old man. A friend to Jaemus’s gramsirene Vreyja since Jaemus’s childhood, but reclusive, always shying away from the company of others, sometimes absent for anni-cycles. Jaemus had always thought he was just an unwell hermit his gramsirene pitied, but he’d been there for most of Jaemus’s life, if distantly.
Yet, after the revelations of the last few days, Jaemus had new questions. Had his gramsirene known who—and what—Griggory was? Had she learned everything she’d taught Jaemus, all that forbidden lore and history of the ancient beliefs that could have seen both her and Jaemus charged with crimes against Himmingaze, from Griggory himself? Jaemus had the dawning realization of just how much his life had directed him to this moment, here, now, with this Knight Corporealis from another realm, and prepared him to serve this all-important purpose.
He brushed the fractured bits of roof stones from his trousers and turned around to give the frightened Glisternauts what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “It’s okay,” he said to them. “He’s a Knight. Like Ulfric and the others. Perfectly friendly.” I hope.
Turning back, he said to Griggory, “I won’t argue with that old saw, faith and fights and so on, I guess,” he said. “But listen, Eisa told me everything, and I hope you can help me find the Creatress’s Scrylle because I think we might actually be able to save Himmingaze.” And where is Ulfric? he wondered.
Stepping up to Jaemus, Griggory smiled, his gaunt face and large teeth bathed in a blue glow that gave the illusion he was some vicious sea creature. Jaemus had never seen the man look so wild, almost dangerous. “You are cleverer by far than I’d guessed, Jaemus, though your gramsirene said you were. And with just as much grit as Glint. But I wonder, I do, why have you brought me these?” He reached into his Himmingazian uniform, which was tattered and dripping wet, and pulled free Vaka Aster’s Scrylle, still bearing the Fenestros.
“Erm, well I didn’t exactly. But have them. They’re more yours than mine, anyway.” Jaemus could see he was going to have to get right to the point. If anyone was going to be prone to wandering and losing focus, it wasn’t going to be him, for once. “Master Knight, please listen. There are some…Verity issues in Vinnr we will need to attend to soon, but first, we’re going to find the Creatress’s Fenestrii and bring Himmingaze out of the Cloud for good.”
He began to reach into his pocket for the Scrylle map when the old Knight’s hand darted forward, fast as a fleech. He didn’t even have time to flinch before Griggory’s fingers plucked the Mentalios from his chest and held it up, eyeing Jaemus through it as if it were a monocle. “Young Ulfric made this,” he said. “And you”—his eyes widened—“are ordained!”
Nodding, feeling oddly self-conscious, Jaemus said, “I am, yes. It was kind of an accident. Part of that explanation I don’t think we have time for.”
Griggory dropped the Mentalios again, scowling at Jaemus. “One is not ordained by a Verity by accident, ’Gazian.”
“No, I know, I just meant, it wasn’t something I meant to happen. You see…” Despite his wish for urgency, he clearly wasn’t going to press Griggory to action without some explanation, so he launched into the briefest version of events he could manage. When through, he held his tongue as Griggory rubbed his chin star and paced a short circle, scowling harder, occasionally flicking an unreadable glance at the rest of the Glisternauts.
Finally, the old Knight regathered his klinkí stones and tucked them away, muttering cryptically, “So with Balavad’s realm destroyed, he will be more focused on preventing the Syzyckí Elementum than ever.”
Jaemus started to ask what he meant and where Ulfric was, and whether Griggory had some ideas on how to rescue the Knights—and the rest of Vinnr—from Balavad’s takeover but stopped when a familiar sensation began to whisper along the hairs of first his arms, then his head and eyebrows and eyelashes. That tingling, energetic feeling…
“Get back!” he cried and hooked Cote’s arm. With a leap, he pulled Cote toward the wall of the temple as the beam of a new starpath struck the floor where they’d been standing.
Moments later, three figures fell from above and the starpath disappeared.
As the charged air dissipated, Jaemus looked over the new arrivals. Safran, Stave, and Mallich Roibeard, each with a bizarre metal contraption on their head.
With a wild holler, Stave leaped up. “Slag rotter, get offa me!” He began yanking the metal cage with brute force, and Jaemus worried he’d dislocate his jaw.
“Stave, wait!”
he said and stepped to where the Knight could see him. “Let me see if I can help.”
“Novice?” Stave said, marginally calming down. “You survived? Where are we?”
Roibeard and Safran began to rouse, and Stave rushed to Safran before Jaemus could answer. As he helped her to her feet, Jaemus reached a hand out to Mallich.
“Steady,” he said, pulling the laconic Knight up.
Mallich gave him a nod of thanks, then pressed his hands to the cage enclosing his head, feeling for a release or lock. As he did, he gazed around the confines of the temple. “Himmingaze,” he muttered in a low voice. “Eisa, I don’t know how, but you got us here.” He turned to Jaemus. “Where’s Ulfric?”
It was becoming increasingly clear to Jaemus that the leader of the Knights hadn’t made it. Somehow, Jaemus had included the Himmingazians in the starpath but left Ulfric behind. With a sick feeling, he thought hard about whether he’d been in contact with Ulfric’s unconscious form when he’d looked into the Scrylle, but it was all a haze. Either he’d failed the Stallari, or for some reason Vaka Aster had not let Ulfric leave Vinnr.
“I don’t think he’s here,” he said simply.
Roibeard stared at him through the bars of the head cage for so long Jaemus began to wonder if he was going to need to defend himself. He patted his pocket containing his lone klinkí stone and nearly laughed at himself for his foolishness. But before it came to that, Griggory spoke.
“Mallich Roibeard, my old friend and Yorish fisherman of the highest caliber. Never met a chelbiefin shark you couldn’t outswim.”
Roibeard spun toward the old man with wide eyes. “Griggory?” He took a short step toward the old Knight, then stopped. “Is it truly you?”
Griggory stepped forward and lowered his lit wystic stones. When he smiled, it was the first time Jaemus had seen such a genuine expression cross the man’s face. “Hold still now, Roi, let me get that ugly thing off.”
Through the use of the klinkí stone lock-melting technique, like Jaemus had witnessed Ulfric once use, the cages were soon removed from all three Knights. Safran and Stave introduced themselves to the ancient Vinnric. Then the four Knights, five if he counted himself, Jaemus supposed, stood in a circle beneath the battering rain. Is this what warriors do when they’re the last to survive a battle? Jaemus wondered, both loathing the feeling and curiously contented by it at the same time.
“That’s it then,” Roibeard said. “We’ve lost Ulfric and Vinnr. And we’ve lost Eisa.”
Safran sent: And Mylla, Symvalline, and Isemay.
Stave and Roibeard nodded, and Roibeard concluded, his voice an anvil, “We’ve simply…lost.”
Jaemus looked to Stave, who seemed good at offering options, even when they were bad ones, but the gruffest of the Knights remained unusually quiet.
“Wait,” he said, desperate for something to stir up some hope. “We still have Vaka Aster’s Scrylle. That’s a good thing, right? And there are still five of us, plus…” He trailed off, unable to come up with any further items to salve their collective wounds. And he definitely wasn’t going to mention the chance that Himmingaze might be brought back from the brink of doom as the bright side. It wasn’t, not for them.
“The Vinnr Scrylle can’t help us now, Bardgrim,” said Roibeard. “It was Balavad’s that contained the key to unlocking Ulfric and Vaka Aster’s cage, and that Scrylle is empty. Only Mylla and Ulfric ever looked inside it, and if Ulfric didn’t know the way, Mylla couldn’t have either. Not that it matters, given her fate.” He lapsed into silence then, leaving them even grimmer than before.
“Jaemus,” Cote said from beside him, tipping his head to the rest to get their pardon for his interruption. “I can’t entirely understand what’s being said, but we have another concern. The Glisternauts, and you and I, need to get home. We have no ship here, but perhaps he does.” His eyes shifted to Griggory and back to Jaemus. “Can you ask him if he can get word to the Council of Nine at Vann that we’ve…returned?”
Jaemus nodded, glad to have something to do that seemed achievable. But as he turned to speak to Griggory, the Knight began pacing hurriedly toward the temple’s entrance. The doors were askew, the hinges having been bent sometime recently, and a sky-splitting flash of green-white light burst outside, practically on the structure’s steps. Jaemus’s eyelids slammed shut. When he opened them again, the massive head of a sea monster was poking through the opening.
He let out a caw like a wounded raven and backpedaled, too quickly, falling hard on his rear. “Run, everyone!” he wheezed, too frightened to get enough force behind the words to be heard.
But Griggory, instead of running, stood in front of the beast and calmly reached out to pat its snout. “Let’s retrieve her now, shall we, Hither?”
I-I must have hit my head when I fell from the starpath, Jaemus told himself. And—was Griggory speaking to the monster? To his clearly starpath-scrambled mind, it appeared Griggory had actually named the thing, not to mention tamed it. What kind of name was Hither, anyway?
The monster’s head withdrew, then Griggory stepped out into the storm after it. Jaemus looked at the Knights incredulously. Each of them shared his expression.
“What in Vaka Aster’s eyes?” Stave asked.
“A slangarook, that’s all. Just a monster that could swallow each of us and have room for another. What, you don’t have these in Vinnr?” Jaemus said lightly, dizzy from having been so close to the terrifying sea monster.
Roibeard lowered a hand this time, and Jaemus took it. Just as he rose, the creature’s head once more filled the doorway. Still holding Roibeard’s grip, he stayed upright this time. Small victories.
Griggory squeezed in the doorway beside its head. “Lay her there, Hither. Thank you.”
And that’s when Jaemus realized the beast carried something, or rather, someone, in its jaws, which it released with an unceremonious thud.
Heedless of the monster, Safran was first to find her feet and ran to the person’s side. Mylla?! she cried, all who wore a Mentalios hearing her.
As Jaemus stared in shock, Safran reached Knight Evernal, who, though drenched and unconscious looked very much, if not alive, at least not dead.
Safran knelt down and scooped Mylla’s head in her arms. A moment later, she looked up at them. She’s breathing! And a smile of equal parts happiness and relief spread across her lips.
Watching another profound impossibility prove that it wasn’t, Jaemus figured surely everything would make sense soon. He’d just ride this latest surprise out and give in to what had been passing for his fate since the day he’d stolen his first celestial artifact. Oh, he thought wistfully, that day had changed many things, everything in fact. And if he was about to be eaten by a giant sea dragør—or not?—and this was the way to save Himmingaze, and maybe Vinnr as well, it could have been worse he guessed. It could have been a fleech.
Afterword
Thanks for reading! Follow Ulfric Aldinhuus and the Knights Corporealis on their quest to save the realm of Vinnr, and the entirety of the Cosmos, in the next book in the Shackled Verities series, Knight Exiled, which you can find here: books2read.com/KnightExiled.
If you enjoyed this story and like to sing the praises of words that moved you, entertained you, or otherwise brought you some good feels, your review on the retailer of your choice or Goodreads would bring me much joy and you my eternal gratitude.
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Now and always, happy reading!
Also by Tammy Salyer
NOVELS
Spectras Arise Series
Contract of Defiance, Spectras Arise Trilogy, Book 1
Contract of Betrayal, Spectras Arise Trilogy, Book 2
Contract of War, Spectras Arise Trilogy, Book 3
Conviction: A Spectras Arise Novella
Spectras Arise Trilogy Omnibus
The Shackled Verities Series
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br /> Knight Chosen: The Shackled Verities (Book One)
Knight Redeemed: The Shackled Verities (Book Two)
Knight Exiled: The Shackled Verities (Book Three)
COLLECTIONS
Forged From The Stars with G. S. Jennsen and E. J. Fisch
On Hearts and Scorpions: Four Twisted Tales of Love and Lust
SHORT STORIES
Artificial Fate
Creepers
No Suede Soles in Hell
About the Author
Tammy is an inveterate verbarian, who spends her days surrounded by the written word, both hers and others’. As an ex-paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, her stories are often as gritty as a grunt’s pile of three-week-old field gear. Her Spectras Arise military science fiction series debuted to acclaim in 2012, and her epic fantasy adventure series The Shackled Verities was launched in 2020. When not hunched like a Morlock over her writing desk, Tammy runs and bikes silly miles with her super-cool weirdo partner in the playground of Southern California and spends an inappropriate amount of time watching Henry Rollins videos on YouTube.
Fantasy, space opera, satire, and snark fans will feel right at home with Tammy. Learn more about her and her books by visiting www.tammysalyer.com. She hopes you enjoy reading her works and welcomes your reviews.