Knight Exiled: The Shackled Verities (Book Three)

by Tammy Salyer

  She found the right books and dove in, focusing for who knew how many hours, not even stopping to eat when food was brought to her. All the while, her tireless sentries watched, motionless. And in the back of her mind, she fretted at the days passing with her daughter unprotected in a hostile realm and the love of her life and her family of Knights fighting a world-scale battle in Vinnr.

  Over the next two days, Tuzhazu made a practice of surprising her with random visits to check on her progress, and, she suspected, to see if he might catch her in the act of sabotage or trying to escape, but Symvalline was ready for such interference. She wouldn’t have trusted her either if the tables had been turned. And his instincts were, of course, on target.

  The irony of the whole situation was that the substance she’d set out to create was the very thing Tuzhazu wanted from her—in a way. Only she had no intention of giving it to him but of using it on him.

  Once she’d found the recipe for wagon driver’s medicine, she researched, extrapolated, and combined several new selections of the substances stocked in the healers chamber to come up with what she hoped was what she needed to not only knock out a Deathless Guard and potentially an Archon, but to knock them out for a very, very long time.

  Time enough to escape this chamber, find Akeeva, and retrieve the Verity artifacts, which she reasoned must be within this fortress and were her best chance of fending off Tuzhazu if he caught her. And of course, she needed them to get herself and Isemay home. A compound to end their lives would have been much more direct and certain, but she didn’t want to kill anyone. It was contrary to her nature as both a healer and a mother. And she’d seen firsthand that those who’d “chosen” to be made Deathless hardly had a choice at all.

  So she did as she had done countless times in her role as healer in Vinnr, and after testing small doses on herself to determine the effects of her new toxin, she was ready to put it to a real test.

  Over the top of a wooden bowl containing a few drams of her concoction, she eyed the Deathless Guards surreptitiously, pondering how to get them to ingest the powder. She didn’t think they’d be gullible enough to be coaxed into drinking it if she mixed it with a liquid, nor would they simply agree to be her test subjects. After rejecting several courses of action, she decided on the most direct.

  Out of their view, she clasped a couple of spoonfuls worth of powder in each fist, then walked out from behind the worktable and announced, “I am leaving this room, guards, and you can’t stop me.”

  Alerted, they closed ranks and took defensive postures. She ran straight toward the left one, Toranzu.

  They’d never been issued weapons, but she didn’t doubt they’d been trained to fight. This didn’t concern her. She just needed to get close.

  Before she made contact, she turned to one side as if to shove her shoulder into the guard’s chest. Toranzu reacted as expected and sidestepped before she hit him. She thumped into the door with her shoulder, her other hand already reaching for Viddzu’s face as he tried to grab her. Her palm smashed into his mouth and nose, and she threw an arm around his neck to hold him close. Toranzu yanked her away by the back of her tunic, ripping it to the waist, and she let go of Viddzu, flung herself around, and heaved her other palm into Toranzu’s face in the same way.

  Viddzu sneezed loudly once, then again, then began grappling her from behind. The two guards seemed ill-equipped for dealing with a woman who seemed to be simply trying to hug them, but it didn’t matter. She released Toranzu and ceased struggling completely, letting Viddzu pull her free. He shoved her toward the ground, and she let herself fall limply to her back, then propped herself on her elbows to see what would happen next.

  They loomed over her, their faces comically dusted with what might have been common bread flour, albeit greenish. Neither made a move to harm her, and she hoped it would stay that way. Tuzhazu had plans for her that required her to be alive, and she wouldn’t have put it past the Minothian to have given orders that the only one with permission to hurt her was himself.

  Toranzu began to sneeze as well, and both men began swiping roughly at their noses, as if gnats were infesting their nostrils. Viddzu was the first to stagger, then he suddenly fell forward, not even trying to catch himself with his arms. Symvalline pushed herself out of the way as he struck the stone floor, and Toranzu followed a breath later.

  She stood up, watching them, breathing in short, sharp gasps of anticipation. When they didn’t wake up instantly, she lunged to the doorway, turned the handle, and pushed.

  It didn’t move far, and she felt the telltale resistance of a bar locking it closed from the other side.

  Cursing, she rammed the same shoulder she’d hit it with before furiously into the door. It didn’t budge, and she cursed more, this time at herself for her stupidity. Why hadn’t she known there was a bar? She’d never heard it being slid into place, testament alone of how thick the wood was. She’d never break through it, not without her klinkí stones or an emberflare petard.

  She’d have to try her second plan. Materials she’d covertly set aside would when combined and ignited by a rushlight create a heavy spark and sudden blaze—maybe enough to burn through the wood surrounding the door’s hinges.

  She rushed to her worktable to gather them when, from somewhere above her, a child’s high-pitched voice said: “Did you kill my father?”

  Symvalline stopped in the middle of the floor, scanning the space, unable to pinpoint where the voice had come from. “Who’s here?” she asked. There was no response. “If you mean the guards,” she went on, “I haven’t harmed them. I’ve just put them to sleep for a while. They’ll be fine in a few hours.” If even that long, she thought. Gently, she said, “And I won’t harm you either. Where are you, child? How did you get in here?”

  “They said you’re an Archon from another realm…Vinli or Vine. Is that true? Was that Archon wysticism you used on the Deathless Guards?”

  His voice placed him between the ages of six and nine turns, she guessed, noting that the fear she’d heard when he’d first spoken was already being replaced by curiosity. His father…? She shuddered at the thought that the boy was looking at his own kin and glanced about the room in search of him. The Deathless had not stirred, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. She didn’t want a child present to witness what might happen when they did.

  And, if he was in here, that meant there was another way out.

  The chamber’s walls and floor were bare stone and about twenty feet high, with cloudy glass-covered windows on the west side at ground level. She hadn’t tried to climb up to them, but the frequency in which pedestrians passed by outside told her they would be a poor exit. They opened to a courtyard or bailey, and a courtyard of a fortress this size was never without traffic. The windows were still as tightly closed as ever. The child hadn’t gotten in that way.

  A massive hearth, which she hadn’t needed to light, adorned the south wall, near where the pallets of the sick were. Could he have crawled down through the chimney? She stepped closer to examine it, and when she did, a small fall of ash and pebble sifted down from somewhere above, pattering the cold hearth’s floor. The mantel stones formed an arch over the opening whose apex fell several bricks shy of the ceiling. Among those bricks, she finally spotted something. There were darker spots, gaps in the brickwork. They were too far above her head to see inside, but from their vantage, the entire healers chamber would be visible. There must be a space between the outer wall and the chimney, or some kind of alcove inside where the child was perched, watching her. For how long?

  She stopped far enough away that whoever was up there could see her. “That’s right. I am an Archon from the realm called Vinnr. Is your name, by chance, Inder?”

  “How did you know that?” he blurted, caught by surprise.

  Her guess had been right. “Your father, Viddzu, wanted you to know he loves you. He asked Archon Tuzhazu to make sure to tell you before he was…enlisted into the Deathless Guard.”


  “…The Archon never told me. He only said my dad’s great honor would outlive even me.”

  She barely kept her calm at that statement. What a monstrous thing to tell a child whose da was just turned into a monster himself. Every new revelation of Tuzhazu pushed Symvalline’s regard for him further toward contempt. She’d met a few cruel people in her life, but Tuzhazu turned cruelty not just into a practice but nearly into an art form.

  But back to the child and the potential escape he may have to offer. “Inder, Tuzhazu doesn’t want me to leave this room and won’t let me speak to the Everlight. That’s why I had to put your da and his fellow guard to sleep, but the door is barred from the outside. It’s very important that I speak to the Everlight. Vaka Aster, my own Verity, has given me a message to deliver. Can you help me get to Mithlí?”

  “The Everlight’s been too busy to spend time with us kids lately. She’s planning the Feast of Future’s Hope for the Equifulcrum. We’ve been stuck in drills all day long on the proper way to eat and sit and sing, and all that dumb stuff. It’s soooo dull.” He stopped for a moment, and as Symvalline was about to try again, he said in a softer voice. “Tulla was supposed to stand next to me in the choir. I kept telling her she squeaks like a mouse when we were practicing. But she’s gone now, isn’t she?”

  She felt her throat start to tighten at the boy’s obvious pain. “I’m so sorry, child. She has left this world, but her spirit will remain in the Cosmos eternally. No one is ever really gone for good.”

  “Do you think she knew I was only teasing when I made fun of her? I didn’t mean it!”

  “If she didn’t, she does now. And I’m sure she’s forgiven you.”

  He went quiet again, and she could hear him shifting around in the space behind the hearth’s wall. More ash filtered down, reminding her of sands falling through an hourglass and her limited time.

  “I saw what you did for her, how nice you were as she was sleeping. Before her mom, her real mom, not the Everlight, took her and she got the Waste, she cried a lot. She really missed her mom. Some of the kids don’t get to see their folks. But I had my dad here in the hall, so I didn’t cry when I first came here. Do you think Tulla thought you were her mom?”

  Symvalline, seething in anger at how heartless it was for Akeeva to take children from their parents so young, answered slowly, “She was sleeping very soundly, but I have a child too and I tried to comfort Tulla as I would my own little girl. Her name is Crumb, my daughter.” And I should be comforting her right now instead of trapped in these walls of deception and delusion.

  “Crumb? Like a piece of bread? That’s a funny name.”

  “It’s not her real name. Her father started calling her that when she was a little girl.” She got lost in the memory for a bittersweet moment. “He told her his true age—the Knights, or Archons, live an extraordinarily long time—and she laughed and called him a crusty old man. ‘If I am a crust,’ he told her, ‘then you must be just a tiny little crumb,’ and we’ve called her that since then.”

  “Like we all call Mithlí the Everlight.”

  “Yes, just like that.” She spared a glance over her shoulder to check on the Deathless, who were still motionless. But for how much longer?

  “Will they be mad at you when they wake up?” he asked, confirming he could see all she did.

  Symvalline was doing her best to keep up with his constant change of subject, but she worried her patience might not last as long as the sleeping powder at this rate. She had to try to persuade him to help her somehow.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “If I had a place, perhaps, that I could hide if they did get angry, it might help give them time to calm down before they found me. What do you think, Inder? Do you sometimes hide when you’re worried you might get in trouble? Maybe the place you’re hiding now?”

  Much too clever for his own good, he seemed to see what her line of questioning was intended for and responded, “If I show a grown-up the tunnels we use, my friends will be cross with me.”

  The child’s craftiness reminded her, achingly, of Isemay. His mention of “tunnels” was intriguing, though, especially since he seemed to think they were unknown widely among adults, thus well suited for being a means of both escape and evasion. How could she get him to show them to her? Simple bribery usually worked with children. “Would they be cross if you told them I promise to show them some Vinnric wysticism? Do they like to see Archon tricks?”

  “You mean like what they say you can do with those blue stones Archon Tuzhazu has now?”

  Her heart beat harder. “You mean my klinkí stones. Those are gifts from my Verity. Inder, this is important, do you know where they are? And a pendant, a lens set within an eyestone that I wore around my neck?”

  “The Archon keeps them in his chambers. Could you show us how you make them fly around?”

  “I can show you, yes. But”—she didn’t want to dash his hopes but sensed he’d know it if she lied to him—“you have to be an Archon to use them. And I have to get them back first.”

  “…It’s too bad your Archon tricks couldn’t save Tulla.”

  “Oh sweet boy, sometimes it’s time for people to move on, and no tricks can help them.”

  “…I have to go now. Mistress Hertha will swat me if she finds out where I’ve been.”

  “No, wait—”

  “All us kids see the Everlight for evening meal. I’ll find out if she will see you. But don’t worry, Archon, I’ll make sure it’s our secret. Then maybe you’ll show me the blue stones.”

  Symvalline gritted her teeth against the demands she wanted to make of him, but he was gone before she had could have.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After the child Inder had gone, Symvalline was left with a choice: try to find a way into his secret tunnels or remain in place and wait for the Deathless to awaken and Tuzhazu to return. She guessed she had under three hours until the evening meal, where Inder would be able to convey her request to Akeeva for an audience. By now, she knew to expect her own dinner would be brought sometime later, but that didn’t mean Tuzhazu wouldn’t surprise her with a visit.

  One thing that had to be done, and quickly, was binding the two Deathless before they awoke. She couldn’t know how they’d react to what she’d done, and she preferred not to find out the hard way.

  Using strips of cloth torn from the bed linens on the patients’ pallets, she quickly had the guards trussed. They were still alive, she could tell by the movement of their eyes behind their closed lids, like someone in deep sleep. A distant sense of self-satisfaction tickled her thoughts when they didn’t awaken during her endeavors. Whatever else she was, there was no doubt she was a good hand at potion-making.

  What next? Leaving was out of the question. Even if she could access the secret passages, what then? They could be vast or limited, and she had no way to know. If all she ended up finding was a passage to the kitchens, which seemed a likely enough place for children with a taste for sweets to wend their way to, she’d be no better off. And if the tunnels split and multiplied and advanced beyond her own frame of reference, which was cripplingly limited, she could get lost in the fortress walls. Worse, they could be filled with dark shafts or crevasses that would swallow her whole and forever. If she was going to escape that way, she needed a guide. And knowing children as she did, she suspected she hadn’t seen the last of little Inder.

  That left the last option. She would wait for Tuzhazu and face the consequences. Therefore, she needed a good bluff—and a good backup plan.

  Tearing further strips of cloth from the linens, and using pieces from her own now damaged tunic, she created a set of small rags. Once she had a handful, she quickly mixed a bowlful of the ingredients she’d assembled that would create small explosions, took a few rushlights from the collection she’d found for lighting the room, and tied the bundles up with twine with the rushlights sticking free to be used as fuses.

  These primitive petards could be
useful, but not if they were found. Nowhere in the chamber was safe from a determined search by Tuzhazu or someone under his command. Except…

  The hearth gaped wide and rose high over her head. She barely had to duck to step into its cold mouth. Holding up a rushlight, she saw only blackness, the walls caked with soot from untold hundreds of hours of wood burning. Pulling a stool inside, she was able to rise high enough in the chimney to see something flat and square set into the wall over her head.

  Cursing her inadequate height, she pulled a wooden ladder, about six feet tall and used by those without wings to retrieve higher-shelved books, into the hearth, then climbed up, as careful as she could be not to brush against the sooty walls and thereby give away her explorations.

  The thing she saw was a door, really only cupboard-sized, made of a metal that might have been iron, though it was too blackened to really tell, flat and featureless, except for two hinges on the left side. She tried wedging her fingers into the cracks around each side, but even her small hands were too big. The fire poker just barely fit, but she could not get it deep enough to crank against it and lever the door open.

  Pressed for time, she decided to make what use of it she could. Returning to her worktable, she stored all the makeshift petards in a burlap sack, then added a container filled with most of the sedative powder she’d created. She returned to the ladder, climbed up, and tied a loop of the twine around a hinge and knotted it around the mouth of the sack. If Tuzhazu looked up into the chimney with a light, he might see it. But why would he?

  After returning the ladder to the wall and hiding the scuffed, soot-stained side, she then took the remainder of the sedative ingredients and fed them into a firebox, destroying them.

  Then she set herself to the hardest task she had before her yet. Waiting.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The amount of time Symvalline had to wait until Tuzhazu came crashing down on her like a giant wave was mercifully short. A meal was delivered shortly after the rays of the Arc Rheunos daystar dimmed through her windows. The attendant took a single glance at the tied-up Deathless, who had begun to twitch with the first signs of regaining consciousness, said not a single word, and hurried away, leaving a bowl of steaming stew and a cup of something that smelled a bit stronger than Vinnric wine.