Knight Exiled: The Shackled Verities (Book Three)

by Tammy Salyer

  Urgo was too high to make her words out, but Ulfric heard the tones of her speech to Tuzhazu. The Archon reined his urzidae short before her, still holding Balavad’s Fenestros in his outstretched hand. Fighters all over the field disengaged. The Zhallahs who still could retreated to form a semicircle behind Deespora, and those who couldn’t were assisted or carried.

  As one, Ulfric and Urgo peered at the scene, on tenterhooks.

  It was all over so quickly Ulfric couldn’t even cry out.

  Tuzhazu yelled to his mount, and the urzidae charged Deespora. Ulfric watched her crumble beneath the beast and become engulfed completely by the inky vapor.

  Struck with a profound horror, he quailed inwardly. But no matter what, he couldn’t let Tuzhazu get those artifacts. They were his and his family’s only way out of Arc Rheunos.

  Dive, Urgo, dive! he commanded, and Urgo did.

  They rocketed toward the earth at such a shattering speed that Ulfric lost all sense of time and space. The world became nothing but an immense vacuum pulling at the speed of a comet, and he couldn’t help but hold his ephemeral breath. The nearest he’d ever experienced to this was when barreling through the Cosmos by starpath. He feared at this velocity that Urgo would never be able to stop in time before hitting the ground and obliterating them both.

  He shouldn’t have doubted. Urgo was, after all, endowed with the same Verity spark he was.

  The bruhawk’s trajectory wasn’t directly into the fray where Deespora went down, but farther off toward the south. His descent shifted suddenly from straight down to an angle, and a heartbeat later they’d begun a glide toward where she’d fallen. Through Urgo’s enhanced eyes, the white light of Mithlí’s Fenestros shone through the murk like a beacon, and Urgo’s claws wrapped around both the stone and Deespora before anyone on the field could react. Before another breath, the bruhawk was again flapping rapidly to gain loft.

  No Deathless could have reacted to that, Ulfric thought with relief, happy at least that he’d salvaged the artifacts and, Verities willing, the Archon as well.

  A sharpness like icicles shot into his, or rather, Urgo’s wing an instant later. Urgo gave a screech that could split eardrums and listed heavily toward his right, momentarily dizzying Ulfric. From the corner of his vision that still peered through the memory keeper, he saw something off to the left, something falling. Deespora!

  But Urgo was wounded. He couldn’t turn back for the Archon.

  What, what is it, Urgo? Where’ve you been hit?

  Then his senses picked up the piercing sting of a blade in the bird’s right wing. He didn’t think it was lethal, but it was deep enough and painful enough that Urgo was searching for a safe place to land on the far mountainside, away from the fracas.

  And now, Deespora was gone, the Zhallahs were left leaderless, and the Deathless had proven the greater force in Minoth.

  We’ve lost, Ulfric thought.

  Yggo swooped in from the side, though the Deathless who’d attacked had already fallen far behind, Yggo grabbed his wings. Without losing momentum, she bent her neck and sunk her razor-like beak into the soldier’s neck, ripping it outward. The hawk let go of the bloody, shredded mass, and the soldier was quickly lost in the day’s waning blue-red haze below.

  In moments, Urgo and Yggo found a perch on a wind-bitten ledge to set down and catch their breath. Yggo tended to Urgo and yanked the Deathless’s dagger from his wing with her beak. She would not leave his side, protecting him as well as Ulfric. They’d lost Deespora and the Scrylle, but Urgo had managed to salvage the Everlight’s Fenestros, still attached to Deespora’s staff.

  It was a small thing, and Ulfric wasn’t sure what he could do with the celestial stone while sharing Urgo’s form, who was now too wounded to fight.

  Yggo gave a gentle squawk, pulling Urgo’s and Ulfric’s attention to the horizon. A form was flying at them, a Minothian or a Zhallah. Yggo wasn’t alarmed, though, as if she recognized a friend rather than foe.

  In a moment, Ulfric did too. It was the young man, Salukis, flying swiftly and gracefully, as if he’d never been wounded. If there was any mercy in the Cosmos, the other wounded Zhallahs would recover so well.

  Yggo spread her wings partway, a gesture of welcome, though Ulfric doubted Salukis would know it. Soon, the young man landed on the shelf with them.

  “I’m so glad I found you,” he started, out of breath. “You saw?”

  “Only a bit,” Ulfric responded through the memory keeper. “What’s happened?”

  “The Zhallahs have retreated.”

  “How many were able to get within the safety of the Churss?”

  “Most. The tenders are doing what they can to heal the wounded, but they won’t…they won’t be able to…”

  Ulfric wanted to put an arm around the boy to console him, but that was impossible. He did his best with words. “Those who fell today and are not fated to rise again will live on in the Cosmos. Nothing is ever gone forever. And remember, they chose to make this sacrifice for something they believed in, something that was right. They may not have wished for death, but they faced it on their own terms.”

  The boy’s eye shined, but he didn’t cry. Tougher than I would have thought, Ulfric realized. But I wish neither he nor I had to find out this way.

  “Salukis,” he said, “did you see Deespora? Urgo tried to bring her from the battle, but we lost her. She fell.”

  Salukis shook his head. “No. I can rally a few to start a search, but the Deathless are everywhere. And the Equifulcrum is—” He stopped, shrugging and looking toward the moons.

  Less than an hour. Had Tuzhazu left the field? Was he even now on his way to the Cosmoculous Tower? There was only one more thing Ulfric and the bruhawks could do, and that was meet the Archon at the door and stop him from entering. Whatever it took, even if they made the final sacrifice, Ulfric would risk it if it meant keeping him from reaching Symvalline and Isemay.

  Urgo, he knew, wouldn’t last long against the Archon’s forces. His wing made flight painful and ponderous, and his Verity spark would take too long to heal him. Yggo would take the Archon on alone if Urgo urged her, but even so, what chance did they have? They’d been unable to penetrate Tuzhazu’s personal guard, dozens to one.

  They needed a fresh army, a miracle…

  He looked through Urgo’s eyes to Salukis. Or a trick.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Isemay and Dwoon snuck through the yards of Everlight Hall as cautiously as they could. It was easier to hide beneath his wings on the ground than to remain unseen in the air, so progress took much longer than Isemay’s underdeveloped patience liked. She kept telling herself, Calm down, be careful. Be a Knight. Fortunately, the majority of the fortress’s population were missing, watching or contributing to the battle going on in the distance.

  Dwoon flew them over the wall enclosing the fortress grounds, then back to the earth where they slipped through town. Every window they passed was shuttered, every door closed, as if the whole population was hiding. And the sounds of the melee continued to get louder, the cries of those who were hurt and the ghastly shrieks of the Deathless turning her blood cold.

  She wanted to stuff cotton in her ears. The noise was too horrible. I’ve told mum and da a thousand times I’m not a child anymore, she thought. But I’d rather be one forever than see what’s happening ahead.

  Somehow Dwoon remained steady, and this kept her going. She wondered if he was only continuing forward because she hadn’t stopped, either. Darting glances at him, she guessed he was about her age, though he looked thin for his height. She imagined how overwhelmed with joy Mura and their mum would be when they saw him again, and the thought of seeing her new friend so happy gave her the added motivation she needed.

  “We shouldn’t go down the main road,” she whispered to Dwoon when they were about halfway through the town. “We’ll have to skirt around.”

  He nodded, and they took the first lane to the left they found. The hom
es and businesses of the city were mostly constructed from wood and built two to three stories high. Even with the unique, murky light reflecting from the triple moons, they passed through the town like shadows, and she was certain they weren’t seen. Or recognized if they were.

  “Maybe we should just try finding a flute in one of the houses,” Dwoon whispered as the neared the eastern edge of town.

  She heard the fear in his voice, and in a strange way, it gave her courage to know she wasn’t the only one who was scared. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. If someone catches me, I can’t exactly pretend I’m just a miscreant Minothian. You could, though…” She trailed off, terrified that he might agree and leave her here to fend for herself. She wouldn’t protest, though. That was their mission, after all.

  But he said nothing and kept walking.

  The density of buildings was thinning, and they had to switch their direction straight toward the front line or they would run out of cover. After they’d gone a ways, she felt Dwoon’s sharp elbow in her ribs.

  “Look,” he whisper-yelled.

  His head was tilted back, taking in the sky, and she did the same.

  Then she saw it. Dozens and dozens of men aloft, fighting frantically and cruelly against one another. The Minothians were easy to pick out due to their purple and brown uniform, and the Zhallahs—

  She had to look away quickly. She’d gotten to know many of the Zhallahs, and she couldn’t bear to see them get hurt. “Come on,” she choked out through a throat that seemed to be growing narrower. “We have to hurry.”

  They’d only gone a couple of paces when a man fell from the sky and crashed into a building next to them. Neither of them had seen whether he was Minothian or Zhallah. They froze in the narrow passage between two long buildings, storehouses of some sort.

  “We should try to help him,” Dwoon said, doing his best to keep his voice down. “He may be a Zhallah.”

  She nodded hesitantly, knowing she didn’t need to voice what might happen to them if he wasn’t.

  The next second, they heard a door crash open far down the building’s side. A man staggered out, one of his wings bent awkwardly and dragging behind him. From the shadow they stood in, Isemay and Dwoon could see he was a Minothian, one of the Deathless based on his gangly form. He opened his mouth and screech-hissed something that sounded like a mix of rage and pain, and the two youths needed no further confirmation.

  “Shh,” Isemay whispered as low as she could. “Don’t. Move.”

  If the Deathless turned their direction, there was a strong chance he would see them. But they were lucky. He turned back toward the battle and loped off.

  They both sighed and rose from the crouches they’d adopted. “Dwoon,” Isemay said, “we have to hurry.”

  She didn’t tell him, but she knew that the Zhallahs’ chances for victory against troops who could shake off that kind of fall, from that height, were poor at best. The only way they would find a flute is if the Minothians were still fighting, too distracted to notice them. But if the Zhallahs had to retreat—or were all dead—she and Dwoon would stand out like, well, like they were from another world.

  The two broke into a trot, paying less attention to windows and doorways now. They were nearly to the battlefield, and they could see thick gray-black smoke blanketing the ground ahead. She hoped it would help conceal them, though something about the fog made her cringe at the thought of immersing in it.

  Finally, they came to the shadowed edge of the last building and took in the field before them. Isemay didn’t know exactly what she’d expected, but it hardly mattered. Nothing can ever prepare one for the sight of their first battlefield.

  At first, all she saw were the deformed urzidae mounts. There were at least a hundred of them, charging with riders across the open ground, many with spears and other shafted tools poking from them, though these seemed to hardly faze the creatures. Every single one of them was ridden by a Deathless Guard. I didn’t think there were so many. Mum warned me about them, but she said there were only a dozen or so.

  The fighting was so frenetic that she only caught glimpses of individuals locked in hand-to-hand combat. The flocks of men clashing above the field drew her gaze, but not for long. She watched one Zhallah man lose his hand, and the rain of blood from his wound made her feel weak and light-headed. She blinked and refused to look up again.

  Across the teeming mass rose the Churss towers of Maerria. They loomed statue-still, as if to bear silent witness to the atrocity of the battle before them.

  Shaking her head to clear it of the grisly sights and sounds, she wondered, How are we going to find a flute in all this? It horrified her to think they might have to rifle through the garments of the dead or wounded.

  Something shifted in the atmosphere, and a moment later Isemay saw a white light midway between her and Dwoon and the Churss sentinels. The battlefield quieted, the combatants drawing apart. What was it? What was happening?

  Then Deespora’s familiar voice rang out. “Cease this violence, Tuzhazu! One drop of Arc Rheunosian blood spilled is too much! What will it take to make you end this?”

  “Give me the Fenestros and Scrylle, Deespora, then submit. Your birds attacked us first. That’s the only way you will walk away from this field alive.”

  Isemay could make them out midfield, Tuzhazu mounted on an urzidae before Deespora and the white-lit Fenestros she wielded.

  “You can’t hope to rule over the entire realm, turning our people into to these sickly, deformed creatures,” Deespora called, her voice thick and clear in the din. “That isn’t rule. It’s brutality.”

  “Mithlí’s abandonment of us when we needed her most was the brutality!” Tuzhazu yelled.

  Then, as if to prove that deep down Tuzhazu truly was nothing but a monster, he kicked his urzidae and charged the Zhallah Archon, running her down.

  Isemay slapped a hand over her mouth to hold in her cry. Beside her, Dwoon gaped, speechless. Tears spilled from his eyes, unheeded.

  A moment later came a sight so unexpected Isemay thought she had passed out and was dreaming. It was Urgo sweeping from the sky, grabbing the fallen Archon, and just as quickly flapping into the air. He, and Yggo beside him, were gone from her sight almost before she realized what had happened.

  Then the Zhallahs began to scramble for safety, running into the Churss, the Deathless in pursuit. The Churss reacted by shielding the Zhallah and blocking the Deathless. When it seemed the last Zhallah was accounted for, the stone forest closed itself over them, forming a wall of protection no simple battlefield weapon could penetrate.

  In moments, the field was quiet again, only the Minothian fighters remaining. They milled around Tuzhazu, many wounded. They were a huge force, too many. The Zhallahs had been foolish to think they had a chance. And now their leader was…gone. Was she dead?

  They had perhaps two hours until the Equifulcrum.

  Despite the sickness of the heart overtaking her, Isemay drew on a strength that wasn’t her own—she thought of her mum and da, of Safran, Stave, Mallich, and Mylla, even cold and frightening Eisa. The Knights never showed weakness.

  In this moment, neither could she. “Dwoon. Dwoon!” she whispered again when he didn’t answer. “We have to stay hidden. It’s only temporary, the Minothians haven’t won yet. Not if we can free Mithlí.”

  The youth faced her, tears streaking through the dirt on his face. “But Deespora…”

  “Those giant hawks, the ones that took her? They are friends. They rescued her. And remember, she’s an Archon and is gifted with resilience by the Verities. Are you still with me?”

  He nodded miserably.

  “Okay, good. Now, stay here, hide, save your strength. When it’s clear, well, clear enough, we’ll make for the Churss and get someone’s flute.” She took a deep breath, not liking what she had to say next, but knowing it was the right thing to do. “Then it’s going to be up to you, Dwoon. You’re going to have to fly like you’ve never f
lown before to get it back to the tower.”

  His eyes widened. “Do you mean leave you here? Go alone?”

  “No, there are other Zhallahs there. They’ll protect you if they still have some faith left in the fight.” She startled herself. That was her mum and da’s saying. “I’ll tell them what they have to do, and they’ll help. I know it. But me, I’m just dead weight. You’ll be swifter if you don’t have to carry me.”

  Dwoon settled into a thoughtful silence. She could only imagine what he was thinking, but to keep herself from falling into dark thoughts of her own, she peered around the edge of the storehouse to the field.

  And saw the strangest thing.

  Archon Tuzhazu was wandering through the field with a glass vial in his hand. He knelt over the bodies of dead Minothians, holding the obsidian Fenestros out and chanting. As she watched, the Minothians began to transform back into what they’d looked like before, normal Arc Rheunosians. She noted that this reversal did nothing to stanch their bleeding or restore their health. The dead stayed dead. She watched for some time, trying to understand why he was doing this, but came up with no conclusions.

  She looked back to Dwoon. “Are you ready?”

  He nodded, bravely, she thought, despite his clear fright.

  “Okay, let’s—”

  Her words were cut off by the sound of a voice she’d grown more than fond of. He was shouting, “Does a coward who fights from the back of a beast have it in him to face a Zhallah one on one?”

  Isemay’s head jerked up and she stared wildly across the field. Standing amid a ring of Minothian Deathless was Salukis.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  “Salukis,” Ulfric said, “I need your help.”

  The young man’s face was clenched in the hard-to-define expression between defeat and determination. His youthful skin was lined and dirty, sweat streaking down his cheeks and over the bridge of his nose. But his eyes burned with vitality, rage maybe. “What else can I do?” he said. “We’ve lost, I think. If we can’t find a way to beat Tuzhazu…”