The Nameless Knight (Second Novel of the Daemonva)

By Claire Ryan

The forces of the Daeva-Ra have been routed, and the daemons of Halca have become a part of the underground city of Bastion. For many war-weary humanva and daemonva, the future is bright and happy.

But for the meldling Suzanna, there can be no peace.

The sorcerer Dariem still works his evil magic, and scores of unstable meldlings are appearing all across the humanva realm. These twisted, violent creatures, created from a fusion gone wrong of a daemon or daeva with a human, attack with suicidal fury and kill everything in their path.

It falls to her to stop him before his deranged army destroys the fragile peace between the survivors of the daemonva war. But the only clues to his whereabouts lie in the fragmented mind of a daeva meldling, wearing the armor of a knight.

Suzanna must follow the trail to Dariem wherever it leads. The nameless knight will show her the way - but only if he doesn't become an unstable beast first.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claire Ryan
• Release date: Jun 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9780988100831

Claire Ryan

Claire is a writer who produces fantasy adventure, steampunk, sci-fi, genre - basically anything weird. Irish ex-pat now living the Canadian Dream in Vancouver. Web programmer by day. Occasional maker of cloth-based stuff. Longsword fighter.

Book preview

Chapter One

Within Dreams

Suzanna opened her eyes, and let the light of the Night Garden wash over her. The broad boulder beneath her was cold to the touch, but not so cold as to chill her flesh; it was the cool feeling of serenity, of the calm that could only exist deep in the earth, in this cavern below the College of the Sky. All around her, tiny magical wisps of light danced in the carved granite trees, and spun around their inlaid gemstone fruit. Each trunk and spreading leaf canopy mimicked their living counterparts on the surface, but they were gray, immobile, and unchanging. The only sound was the faint drip of water from a single, thin stalactite into the reflecting pool at the center of the Garden, where mages from the College sat and meditated.

Suzanna had come here every morning for months, and sat cross-legged on the rocks. The Garden was always quiet. It was tranquility, untouched by the bustle and hum of Bastion above it, preserved by the might of the College.

She breathed in and out. The air was dry, and smelled of earth and rock. She had been sitting long enough that the sensation of the stone was familiar. It was now a part of her, and part of her rest. She had found her peace, among the undying tress. Every morning, Suzanna came to the Garden, and let the echoes of her former selves sing.

Sunekhar and Jaydanna didn’t speak, not anymore. They were slowly receding, as she built new memories, and their voices had ceased to ring inside her mind. But their feelings still lived, and their memory fragments would never fade entirely from her. The promise had been made—‘Remember us’—and Suzanna honored them with her time in the Garden.

She shook off the lethargy of her meditation. Today she had felt Jaydanna’s quiet pleasure at reading through a new book, and Sunekhar’s busy scrutiny of a battlefield map. She stood up, and stretched up and out for a moment, and her wings flexed around her like a giant shell. She had taken to wearing the traditional tunic of a daemon, which consisted of little more than a long, wide cloth that wrapped around her neck, crossed her chest, passed underneath her wings, and then tied in front of her belly. It left her back exposed and her wings free to move. Her long, flowing skirt was supposedly the latest in humanva fashion. She had wanted to wear something that represented both of the races that had made her.

She slipped away from the large boulder, and walked back to the trod leading up into the College. The ground under her soft boots was hard rock, brushed clear of every pebble and grain of sand. Her footsteps were silent, and even the air displaced by her passage seemed to resist the change. The Garden was eternal, or so the stories went; held timeless by magic as much as by arrangement.

As soon as Suzanna passed through the large archway leading to the trod, the air gained a little more movement. She picked up the pace, and followed the trod as it curved up and around in a spiral, matching the base of the College of the Sky. A pair of mages walked past her, barely giving her a second glance, and she was grateful for their indifference. It brought her some assurance that, even though her kind might never be accepted by all the humanva, she would always have a home here.

She emerged from the trod into the grounds of the College. The land around the College was filled with actual trees, bushes, flowers, and many places where mages could walk, talk and relax. Her skirt swished through the grass, and it felt light and pleasing.

The main road into the College was busy, and here she saw the first signs of nervousness. The white and blue robed mages were not bothered by her presence, nor by that of the few other daemons walking around, but the petitioners who wished to speak to the Council of the Distant Nine still cast fearful glances at her. Outside the College, people still kept their distance, or whispered behind their hands—as if she couldn’t hear them.

Give them time, she kept telling herself. It was only a year since the Battle of Bastion, since the daevas of Avarone had attacked and tried to collapse the city cavern, and since Oshrak had summoned every last able-bodied daemon from Halca in their defense. She still recalled the sight of the commander—now her friend—and hundreds of hardened, battle-worn warriors kneeling before the College of the Sky, officially surrendering to Bastion, and pledging their allegiance to the Council. They had gained a lot of goodwill that day… but it could not overturn generations of conflict and death.

She pushed the thought away. Sunekhar had caused much of that conflict, in her duties as the General of the Daemon-Ra. Many of those memories were not good ones.

Suzanna followed the road into the College’s great tower, and walked past the large floating disks that carried people up and down its central core. Instead, she unfolded her wings, and leaped into the air. Flying was still her joy, and her privilege, and the freedom of flight would always be precious to her. Besides, it would be unfair to take up a disk when she was perfectly capable of moving around the College under her own steam.

She flapped up through the hollow core. She was not the only daemon here. Inside the tower, there were always a few others moving around. Some daemons had shown a strong affinity to magic and a willingness to learn, and she had been told that one or two could even do some simple spells now. Their training was one of the most discussed topics around the College. A few others—older daemons, who had witnessed a lifetime of war—had simply put down their weapons and armor, sworn a pledge of pacifism, and went to work as farmers, crafters, or whoever would have them. The young and more idealistic had kept their warrior spirit, and become knights; every daemon fortification outside on the surface now answered to the House of Halca. But all of the Daemon-Ra had made the choice to leave their barren home, and become a part of Bastion. Men, women and children, in a grand exodus, had abandoned the garrison camps on the red cliffs above the blood sea. Where the daevas had refused to share the realm of humanva, out of arrogance and hubris, the daemons were happy to give up any semblance of ownership.

For a time, she had been shocked that there were so few of her kind left. The Daemon-Ra had been on the brink of extinction, and the conquest of the humanva realm its final hope. Suzanna had slowly come to learn of the magnitude of Oshrak’s choice, when she swore all her garrisons to the Council of the Distant Nine. She had bet her entire race on Bastion’s goodwill, on the hope that they would be merciful. The gamble had paid off, for now; the Daemon-Ra were recovering, slowly, and it seemed that many now had a wary sense of hope for the future.

Personally, Suzanna had no interest in manual labor, or magic. Jaydanna had known spells of healing and protection, but she could not even recognize the shape of them now. Magic, other than the natural abilities of a daemon, was completely lost to her. She simply wasn’t sure what her purpose should be, now that the war between the daemonva was slowly fading away.

She flew high up the tower, and landed on her own balcony. That had been the one change she had asked for, when Verom offered her a permanent home in the College. She had to have an open balcony, one that would let her come and go as she pleased. The only room available had been quite small, but she was more than happy with it.

Verom and the other members of the Council of the Distant Nine had been kind to her, out of gratitude for her role in the Battle of Bastion. She could not forget that her role had been to end the life of Maransa, the Regent of Avarone. The burden of that death, and the look in his eyes as he had died, still weighed on her mind.

She landed lightly on the balcony, and her wings retracted and shrank. She stretched again; the flight always did her some good, and let her shake out her muscles after the long meditation. Suzanna placed her hand on the handle of the door leading into her room, and quickly stopped when she heard voices.

…no right to say that to me, cousin. She is who she is.

I don’t care. She is still a daemon, and the House agrees with me. You cannot serve a daemon and serve the cause of the knights at the same time.

Lukas. Her beloved, her anchor, her hope and her heart. He had saved her a thousand times over, simply by loving her as he had loved Jaydanna. The other voice could only be Valiant, his cousin and superior among the knights of Bastion. Valiant had hated her ever since she had first met him at the Outpost of the Distant Third. She stayed by the door, listening to their conversation.

The House still has to respect the rule of law, Valiant. They have to give me a chance. You’d have me treat her like an animal to be thrown aside, when the code demands nothing but the highest ideals of respect and honor among us! I don’t have to listen to this, or to you, if all you’re going to do is slander my wife in front of me, and I know you’d think less of any man who’d just stand around and take that.

You do yourself no favors to throw your lot in with a monster, Valiant growled. She is not your wife.

She is if I say she is. Now get out, before I really do throw the code of the knights away and smash your face in!

There were the sounds of a scuffle, and then a door slamming. Suzanna quickly stepped inside, looking around in concern.

There was little more than the large bed, a table and chairs, and an old chest of drawers in the room. It was sparse by design, both due to her preference for simplicity and her companion’s indifference to much of the material world. Lukas faced the door to the interior of the College, his face worried but defiant, and his hand scrubbing through his hair. She went to his side, and at the sound of her approach, he turned and smiled in relief.

Good morning, he said quietly, and the happiness so recently missing returned to him. He hugged her briefly, and gestured to the table.

I heard Valiant, she said, sitting down across from him. I thought he had decided to leave you alone.

His smile faltered. Well… apparently there have been some new developments in the House of Justice. They are discussing if I should be expelled from it for ‘consorting with the enemy’.

But the treaty was signed! The daemons are allies of Bastion now. We’re hardly enemies.

Valiant told them all about the time we passed through the Outpost of the Distant Third. He may have convinced the right people that all of that counts as ‘consorting’ before the signing of the treaty, and therefore I am a horrible knight and unworthy of the code. Lukas frowned, and rubbed his forehead. Too many of the Houses still hate your kind, and they listen to Valiant.

Suzanna reached out and took his hand. What will you do, my love? she asked softly.

Nothing. He kissed her fingers, and squeezed her hand. I will do nothing. I have nothing to answer for. No knight has ever been expelled from his House, and if it were to happen, it wouldn’t be done on such a flimsy pretext. Valiant is just old-fashioned, and he doesn’t want to admit that Bastion and the world has changed around him.

Will he come back?

Probably. He seems to think that getting me to renounce any association with you is possible. Lukas smiled to himself. As if that would not be an even bigger breach of the code, and as if I could do that to you.

Thank you, Cedric, she said, and her heart was warm, and settled.

Valiant had made more than a few trips to Bastion to visit Lukas, and most ended with a fight. Lukas was a lord in his own right, and descended from a noble line that had existed since the founding of the city, and he did not have to answer to anyone bar the Knight Concordant of the House of Justice. If he was not worried, then she resolved not to be either.

I got a message while you were out, he said. Verom wants to meet with you today. Apparently Naomee has found something.

Her pulse quickened. That could only mean one thing—the sorcerer Dariem.

She shuddered with the faint, scattered memories of her time in his dungeon. They were fading, as was everything before her rescue by Lukas; she hadn’t had any nightmares in at least two months. The thought of having to face him again brought their flickers back to the surface, and she was instantly afraid.

When? she asked, her voice wavering.

As soon as you returned. He was very insistent. Lukas touched her cheek, trying to be reassuring. Find your strength, Suzanna. I know you have it in you to stop him.

She breathed in and out, smelling the faint hint of roses in the air from the balcony, and Lukas’ earthy scent. This was home, and it was safe. She had spent a long time fearful, terrified even, of everything that Dariem was and everything that he had done. She would not be fearful forever.

I can do this, she said. I have to.

Good. Do you want me to come with you?

No, I’ll just fly to him. I’ll be fine.

She kissed his cheek, held him close for a moment, and let his warmth bolster her resolve. For all her fear of what Dariem could do, she would suffer through all that and more for Lukas.

Suzanna leaped from the balcony again, and rose up through the central core of the tower once more. She went to a far more ornate balcony, lined with large vases—nine, in fact, and each with flowers of a different color. She landed there, and walked through to a much larger chamber with nine chairs placed around a circle with a mosaic of the crest of Bastion. Ahead of her were the double-doors to the study of the Distant Nine; the inner sanctum of the powerful, near-immortal mages that ruled all of Bastion.

Suzanna slipped inside, and was immediately assaulted by the sound of Naomee screeching at the top of her lungs.

Found him! FOUND HIM! Yes, Verom, the twisty little cur that he is, and how he twists and turns and tries to hide from my sight! But he cannot hide his dreams! HIS DREAMS, ALL OF THEM! I have snatched them out of the night and followed them, followed them all back to his mind!

Verom sat at one of the study tables, watching with a mixture of amusement and irritation at Naomee’s antics. The Distant Second danced around the room with surprising agility considering her aged appearance and hunched stature, flinging books around and leaping from chair to table to shelf and back again. The rest of the Distant Nine were absent, and likely off dealing with the care and upkeep of Bastion.

Naomee, can you please stop destroying the furniture and sit down? he said.

No! This is a time to celebrate! I HAVE FOU-

Excuse me! Suzanna said loudly.

Naomee stopped in the action of throwing another book across the room, and instead tossed it over her shoulder. She rushed over to Suzanna and grabbed her hands.

Meldling! I found him! I found Dariem! she cackled. Now, now we can drag that viper out from under the rock he has chosen as his home, and slap the magic from his veins!

She tried to dance around the room with her, and Suzanna let herself be pulled about. Regardless of her anxiety at facing Dariem again, it was hard not to be infected with Naomee’s terrifying exuberance. She looked to Verom questioningly. He was the leader of the Council, and he always had an explanation for her.

Naomee! Sit down for five minutes, please, he said, totally exasperated. Enough of this, please explain yourself.

Naomee finally let Suzanna go, and Verom pulled out a chair for her to sit down. Having a good day? he asked her genially.

More or less. You?

He cast a resigned glance at Naomee. Some are better than others.

Now, now! This horrible little sorcerer, Naomee said, spreading a large piece of paper across the table in front of them. Oh, he was tricky, of course, but he is no match for me. I followed his threads all over the realm, and I found him—HERE!

She stabbed her finger down. Suzanna and Verom leaned over the table.

The paper was completely blank.

Verom looked at Naomee for a moment.