Knight Exiled: The Shackled Verities (Book Three)

by Tammy Salyer

  Symvalline knew it was a matter of moments until Tuzhazu would be notified, and she’d barely touched food since this “adventure” had begun. She needed to keep her strength up, so she dug in. The stew had no flavors she immediately recognized—unsurprising in a new and different world—but she noted there didn’t seem to be anything that resembled meat within it. Still, it filled a hollow spot within her that she hadn’t noticed, and she felt a hundred times better almost instantly. She would have to remember to be better about taking sustenance.

  She was more hesitant about the drink but eventually decided that if Tuzhazu wanted to poison her, he’d be more likely to force it down her throat than disguise it in beverages at this point. The liquid warmed her insides enough that she only had a few sips. It wouldn’t do to be drunk and malleable when he arrived.

  The door didn’t precisely crash open, but it swung with a power behind it that announced the Archon’s state of mind as clearly as a herald. He strode in and spied the Deathless Guards, who had begun to writhe and flop like angry landed chelbeifin sharks. They started to screech in their ghastly voices, making her wish she’d thought to add gags to the restraints.

  She decided to give an explanation before Tuzhazu asked. “I did nothing but what you asked. The sleeping agent is ready. And I needed to test it somehow, obviously.” Her hands clenched into fists, which she held rigidly to her sides. She didn’t exactly fear him, but no one in their right mind wanted to invite the wrath of someone who observed people suffering with the flat dispassion of a flounder. “It works, by the way,” she added.

  Tuzhazu threw a look over his shoulder at the Deathless and commanded, “Silence!” Then he eyed her, a twitch in the crevasse between his heavy brows. “What happened to your overshirt?”

  Nonchalantly, she pointed to where she’d balled the remains of her tunic and laid them on the worktable. If he picked the bundle up, he’d see it was missing pieces and would probably question her about that. “The guards were less accommodating to my experiments than I was hoping they’d be.” Let him think she’d managed to overpower one, or even both, of his toughest soldiers. That might put him in a contemplative rather than aggressive mood and stave off any attack he might be inclined to.

  “Do you think you’re clever, Vinnric?”

  The hostility in his tone was unmissable. “All I want is my freedom,” she assured him as calmly as she could. “What must I do to attain it?”

  How wrong, dangerously wrong, she’d been to think she could convince him she had that much physical strength. He lunged toward her, and one of his hands circled her throat. Before he could set his grip, she raised both arms and brought her elbows down on his forearms, breaking his hand free. Then she spun, ready to take flight. Her hair, which she’d merely tied into a single loose plait, was her downfall. He grabbed the plait and yanked her from her feet. She landed on her back, the wind knocked out of her, yet still rolled to her hands and knees and scrambled under the worktable. She’d left a bowl of the narcotic powder on the table as evidence of her success. If she could grab it, she might just have a chance of stopping, or at least slowing, Tuzhazu before he wounded her too severely.

  His useless wings served as an advantage for her, making his body too bulky and cumbersome to come under the table after her. She reached the other side and hesitated, watching his booted feet. He remained motionless.

  The sound of him rummaging through the pouch he wore came to her, then the telltale glow of serene blue light filled the room and reached under the table.

  “Verities fury—” she whispered, but her words were cut short by the sudden whip-like streaks of her own klinkí stones surrounding her and creating a net. She heard him speaking under his breath as the net closed, the stones enveloping her in a shroud of blue light. Then she was being tugged from beneath the table as if she were inside a sack, helpless to stop her own Verity weapons from being wielded against her.

  He stepped back as she was pulled out. Though she struggled, she couldn’t seem to penetrate the web of light. At his command, the stones lifted her from the floor and bore her up to float in front of him. In one hand, he held the Fenestros, the conduit through which he controlled her klinkí stones.

  “You are becoming more of a problem than you may be worth,” he stated, then reached his free hand easily between the stones, this time grasping one of her wrists. Within the tight enclosure, she couldn’t move enough to yank it free.

  His crooning chant began once more, the words spoken quietly with his heavy accent, making them difficult to understand. Not that she would have bothered trying, for the simple fact that she suddenly felt as if she couldn’t draw in enough air. The incantation he was speaking seemed to be not only cutting off oxygen to her lungs but also to her very spirit. An aching weakness dashed through her, filling her with sudden, intense exhaustion. What malevolent wysticism was this?

  Her eyes bulged, and she realized she was no longer even trying to draw breath. Her struggling arms fell limp. Her will to fight began to wither like the fruit of a lind tree in the desert.

  As she began to lose consciousness, he released her from the net, dropping her on the hard floor pavers. She lay there, shrouded in a mist that neither sight nor sound could penetrate. The hollowness food had filled earlier was back, but this time it overpowered her.

  His booted foot slid beneath her shoulder and pushed her over none too gently. She gasped in a breath and stared up at him. His looming shape came into focus, almost as if surrounded by a halo. In his hand was the Fenestros, but to her wavering sight it looked more like a ball of black light—an impossible thing, but it was the only description her mind could conjure.

  “You’ll be easier to control this way,” he mused, allowing the Fenestros to bob back and forth across one of his palms and holding her klinkí stones to hover over his other. He had used the artifact to draw her vitality from her like sucking water from a glass through a reed. It was a tactic she had no counterforce for. He had made it clear: between them, he was the only one with real power here.

  With her breath restored, her senses sharpened a little at a time as he crossed the room and cut through the Deathless’s bonds. They rose, but docilely, without wills of their own, and at his command, they retrieved her and placed her on one of the stripped pallets.

  “Now,” Tuzhazu said, standing over her. “Where is this concoction you’ve created? It may be different from what you brought from your realm, but it should do, and I’ll need a great deal of it.”

  She lay motionless, less from obstinacy than from sheer weakness. He paced to the worktable and looked it over, then glanced around the room. All there was for him to find was the single wooden bowl of the stuff.

  He returned to her side, and his tone was that of a man grudgingly explaining his plans to one he doubted had sense enough to understand them. “I can see you have no fear of the Deathless Guards and likely nothing else in my power. Perhaps what you need is a more persuasive reminder about how fate works here in Arc Rheunos.

  “I want you to imagine this, Knight of Vinnr: I will lead the Minothians and the full might of the forces under my command to subdue the Zhallahs and the traitorous Archon Raamuzi. We will encounter your child, if she even exists.”

  He paused there, letting her fill in the blanks of what he was getting at. A fountain of hate sizzled in her chest, being held back only by the spirit-deep malaise he’d inflicted her with. Feeling as if the rage would tear her apart, she willed herself to concentrate on the deep V-shaped wrinkle between his brows and the blazing green of his eyes that were filled with the promise of death. A promise, she swore to herself, she would keep—to him.

  He smirked at her expression, which was no doubt easy to read, and reached out, sliding his fingers almost gently through a lock of her hair. Its coppery color perfectly matched the striations crisscrossing his forearms. “And instead of simply being subdued, maybe even returned to your own realm, your child, your little girl, will be struck
down. By a sword, maybe, or a cannon. These are the weapons my army will use if you fail to make the substance I seek. Or, maybe she’ll be ripped apart by an urzidae. You saw them, yes? My urzidae mounts, remember? Their teeth are as strong as stone, and their jaws can shut with the force of a mountain coming down.”

  The hand still twined in her hair suddenly yanked, pulling her face closer to his. She blinked at the sharp pain, then opened her eyes and gazed into his, refusing to let him see into her, see the way she quelled inside.

  “Does she also have these tresses?” he went on. “What would it look like, I wonder, her little head crunched inside an urzidae’s muzzle, her blood-colored hair even bloodier? Can you imagine it? Would you avoid that outcome if it were in your power?”

  “You-you would die a thousand deaths if you hurt her.” It took what little energy she’d recovered to force the words out, but she’d been more sincere in her life of many lifetimes.

  He watched her steadily for a moment, then released her. “You’ll do as you’re told and cause no more delays, and you’ll cease playing these little games with my Deathless. Or what I described will only be the beginning of the torments to come. Yours, your child’s, and the Zhallahs’. You understand torment, don’t you, Vinnric?”

  He spoke to the Deathless Guards as he exited, and they followed him. Just before shutting the door, he turned back. “Imagine how many will die if you refuse me. The children. Your child.”

  She lay on the pallet long after he was gone, even the weakness that pooled inside her very bones not complete enough to keep her body from shaking in rage and fear. It would take time, but eventually, as long as she stayed fed—and he didn’t suck the life out of her again—she would recover.

  But how much time did she and Isemay have? Whose army was coming?

  Balavad’s, of course.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Along a lightly trodden, little-used footpath beyond the outskirts of Maerria, Isemay sat on a platform of stone high above the Churss forest floor, sullen, frustrated, and most of all, lonely.

  It was evening and the three moons overhead shone with a mixed intensity of pale, red, and blue light that turned the sky and stars into a fluid rainbow nearly too beautiful to look at. They were visibly closer to each other than they’d been on her arrival, some eight or nine days ago. Sleeplessness and anxiety, along with her failing health, made keeping track hard. The magnificence of the foreign sky filled her with both inspiration and anguish at once. She loved the beauty and strangeness of everything she’d seen in Arc Rheunos. But then, every new and amazing thing also reminded her of the fact she was not home and was without even her mum to share the endless fascinations with.

  The memory keeper crystal flashed with a shimmer of red light from Maiztos, the Life Giver, drawing Isemay’s gaze back to her palms where it lay. Again, she’d called to her da this evening. Again, he hadn’t responded. For all the meaning Life Giver might hold to the Zhallah people, the words and the moon meant nothing in the empty face of the crystal. It lay as dormant now as it had since she’d recovered it, neither life nor her father’s face in it.

  Da, why won’t you speak to me? Where are you? A tear hung from her lower lash, but she swiped it angrily away. What am I going to do if you and mum don’t come for me soon?

  By yesterday afternoon, illness brought her near the point of collapse again. She’d hidden her flagging health from everyone, not wishing to be a burden. But she’d fallen to the ground while helping Mura grind grains, and Lysis had summoned several people nearby to carry Isemay back to Deespora’s. The Archon once more used the Fenestros to assist her in recovering. It was very hard to read the unusual older woman, but when Isemay looked into her pale eyes, she thought the pity she saw there was barely masking a growing resolution to send her home. She was an unexpected ward, and, she suspected, becoming an unwanted one.

  But more than anything, she did not want to be sent back to Vinnr. Not without her mum, and not into a milieu of danger she didn’t understand with no idea of what to expect when she got there. Would anyone even find her on Mount Omina? Was there anyone still there?

  So she’d made herself scarce and untroublesome over the past days, lying down but not sleeping much of the time at Mura and her mum’s dwelling and trekking through the nearby Churss, or climbing it. The stone trees seemed to understand when she wanted to get away and subtly created a foothold or handhold wherever she needed them. The Zhallahs had forbidden her from doing anything too strenuous to help them in daily life, knowing every strain and chore further taxed her easily compromised health. It was maddening to want to help but not be allowed to.

  But she’d had to swallow her dissatisfaction and restlessness and be grateful nonetheless. A Knight would control their emotions and do what was necessary, not what she wanted. But she would be slagged if she was going to sit around like a dead, useless log much longer. If she was wearing out her welcome, then she’d have to leave, go find her mum on her own.

  “Thought I’d find you up here.”

  Startled, she jerked around. Salukis had risen through the Churss like a silent bizzle and now leaned carelessly against the tower behind her on the rocky shelf. Despite her embarrassment at the possibility he might have seen her nearly crying, a now familiar spark of excitement whipped up her spine at seeing him. He wore a cheeky half-grin, one she’d grown not quite grudgingly fond of.

  “Pah! I told you not to sneak up on me, Salukis!”

  “My father tells me that if you’re good at something, practice it until you’re the best. Are you asking that I go against the wishes of my father?” he asked, all false innocence.

  “Do you mean go against his wishes this time, or again?” she returned. Of the traits she’d observed in the intriguing Zhallah, a penchant for willfulness and mischief were two of his most pronounced. She imagined her father’s voice saying, Just like you, Crumb. You only do as you’re told when it suits you.

  Thinking of her da, and the fact that he wasn’t here and she couldn’t reach him, sapped the surge of joy at seeing Salukis from her as quickly as a drop of water on a hot pan.

  He must have seen it in her face and asked, “Heyo, you okay?”

  “Just thinking about my da.” She sighed, dropping her eyes back to the pendant.

  He was silent a moment, then after shuffling around with something, he touched her shoulder. “Have you ever heard one of these?”

  When she looked back, he held up an instrument of some kind. It appeared to be a double set of gently curved vines with finger holes, adorned with fine, intricate carvings all along its two hollow bodies. For such a simple instrument, it, like most things she’d seen in this realm, was beautiful. Many of the Zhallahs played instruments of various sounds and styles, usually in the evenings to pass time until sleep after their day’s work. The Churss forest echoed with the warm and inviting tones at night, making her feel as if she’d been taken in by a troupe of traveling minstrels.

  She grasped the bait eagerly, grateful to have something to take her mind off her loneliness. “We have something similar called an aulos. Will you play?”

  He placed the reeds to his lips.

  If the timbre of a soft wind blowing over the swirling riffles of a fast-moving river could be transformed into music, it would sound something likes the tune he began. Melodious, wistful, punctuated now and again with a brisker light-hearted tempo, the song seemed to reverberate in her heart instead of her ears. She listened intently, unwilling to move or even breathe, careful not to offer the slightest disturbance to the music. She didn’t want him to stop. For the first time since coming here, she lost track of the dozens of worries and fears warring within her. As she watched his fingers move lightly over the finger holes, occasionally daring quick glances into his deep brown eyes, which were always lingering on her own, her thoughts turned to the idea of what it might be like to live here among these harmonious, welcoming people, with their wystic forest and peaceful village. With
Salukis.

  Before she was ready, the tune came to a slow, quiet end, clasping hands with a puff of breeze that cooled the perch they sat on and dancing off into the night. She blinked.

  “That was…” she whispered, then with more strength, “Can you teach me to play like that?”

  He lowered the instrument and smiled gleefully. “Of course!”

  Scooting closer to her, he wiped the instrument’s mouthpieces with his sleeve, then passed it over and began explaining the process. The wood of the two bodies was smooth and finished with a mellow gloss. As she got a closer look, she saw the designs better. Tiny facsimiles of five- and nine-pointed stars burst from the reeds down toward the base of each pipe, as if the sky itself was being blown from the user’s mouth.

  After getting the hang of controlling how much air to send through the pipes and how to direct it with her tongue, she tried a simple tune. At first, Salukis attempted to help her by pointing out which holes to cover with her fingers from his seat beside her. She wasn’t a clumsy girl, but she wasn’t picking up the pattern easily, given that his placement of his own fingers to show her was from the front instead of from her own vantage. Realizing this, he pushed himself around to sit behind her, extending his legs on either side of her and reaching under her arms to hold the pipes up to her mouth and guide her fingers as if his and hers were the same. The technique reminded her of how her father had taught her to hold a pen and write when she’d been small.

  Except this wasn’t her da—and everything about the young Zhallah man suddenly had her feeling…quite warm.