A Shield of Faith (BOOK 4)

Chapter 42

NEVEN

Irimount's icy grip flowed through his feathers and regulated themselves into flimsy warmth as he paced the old corridors he once tread as a young boy with a dream and a code of honor held by the Knights of the Round. Their tenets echoed out across their plaques. Shield the innocent. Uphold the honor of their ancestor wyverns who flew the skies with Evyriaz, the Ancient Traveller. Sing with heart and soul. Feel the voice of the land, the world. The Navei carved itself into the Knight Valiant's office, a reminder of Irimount's chosen carrier of all the ideals the Knights favored. Whoever sat upon the seat had to hold the tenets of Naveeran valor close, unburied and unfrozen against the blizzard's raucous, empty maw.

His first step, he longed for honesty found within history when it refused to reveal its secrets.

The second, his loyalty to a golden creed.

Third, the valor found in duty.

Fourth, the final, the most important — the song of their faith, a spiral of a rune with three forked points. Xe'tana. Zet'alna. Navei'al. Three precious words. Three truths to his people. As the western winds cry out for the new day, the Snow Prince's crown remains on an icy throne for when Naveera will have need of him again. He repeated the ancient stories over and over until he reached the last step, leaving Maria at the bottom to sort through horticulture books. It led into a circle of rooms, a representation of the table the Knights once sat at. And the last time I was up here... I was giving it all up. I was giving up my name for distant lands I never knew. That I have only heard of in stories about a bright light in the sky emanating warmth. His boots clicked against the cold stone beneath his heel as he stopped in front of the largest, decorated door. Ceremonial glaives sat on hooks between each of the doors of thirteen likenesses. His fingers wrapped around the knob, biting at his skin. Ice danced across his tongue when he slipped it across his lips, and broke the blanket of frozen instability to creak the door open.

Metal hinges squeaked from lack of use, and he let go of the knob. It slid past his fingers, floating on the whispers of old ghosts. Crystals hung off the chandelier in the center of the room. Two small wings went into the Knight Valiant's personal armory and record stores. One hand went to his extra dagger latched onto one of his leather straps when the door clanged against the stone it hit. Pieces of stone clattered from the motion and tumbled to the floor from their precarious position on the fractured wall. The low howl squeezed past the cracks as he took a hesitant step forward, hearing no other noise but Irimount's refrain of grief. In one corner, a Naveeran lute hung on the stand, one of many specialties every knight had to know. Dancing. Music. Fighting. One in the same. One tempo. He curled his fingers aghast the wrapped hilt as he dragged himself to the truth behind the desk.

Another breath hushed down his feathers and through his nose into a plume of excess magick.

The shape's fingers dug into the arms of their chair. Flakes of frost-bitten blue skin peeled off their bones, where their other arm hung off the side, holding a shattered glaive shaft. Its blades sat at their feet, a motion of defense in futility. His knees touched the edge of the desk as the corpse gave no sign of reanimation. Sunken into its skeletal bones, mouth frozen open to reveal chipped fangs. Stains splashed against their scaled armor, leaving a sizable hole in their chest with nothing left behind. Tension sent a wave of energy through his feathers with an added sense of unease as he slowly slipped the dagger out of its sheath halfway.

"You live in a world that doesn't exist anymore, Lotayrin."

His dagger slipped out of his fingers.

"Ser Utovar... Knight-Valiant of Irimount," he whispered out a forgotten name, carried solely by him.

On the name's song, his feathers thinned at the rumbling hiss deep within the belly of death. A rattle of unlife as the fingers unfurled with the name, the last call of memory unreleased to Avae'londu — where the knights awaited the lost. Bones chipped, the seat peeled, stuck and glued. Neven's hand slipped through the focal center of his glyph, a glaive blooming across his palm with icy gold ribbons as the draugr shambled upwards with the continuous rattle. Through the window, the training fields with the frozen over pond, covered with the blanket and several other fallen shapes. His attention drew back to the draugr when it fought against its frozen shackles, slowed by the blizzard.