The Light Templar

Prologue

I AM DEAD.

It is the only thing I know.

Until my eyes open. And my first memory of this life is not the first breath I take, but of being alone.

There is stone. Light. And darkness.

And what I have been left with.

A sword. A shield. A scale.

I have no memory of these things. And yet I know that they are mine.

Chapter One

MEMORY does not return in fragments, but in words.

Sand. Ocean. Sun. Sky.

I know these things as I look at them.

Clouds. Waves. Salt. Air.

Yet I don’t recognize this place. The jagged edge of earth that seems to have punctured through the surface of the ocean. The sliver of sandy shore that wraps around only one curve of the island. The cavern within the rock in which I have awoken in.

I walk the rocky piece of earth from one end to the other. It reveals nothing of itself, other than its endurance against the thrashing waters. And it reveals even less about me. Or what I am doing here.

Sword. Shield. Scale.

That is all I know.

And so I pull my gaze from the horizon and look at the shield in the grip of my left hand as if it were a book. But it is nothing more than wood and iron and faded. Scratches and gouges mar its face, the color once more vibrant than it is now. Each mark tells a story I do not know.

My attention turns to the sword in my opposite grip.

The hilt is worn from time and use, smoothed where my fingers hold it even now. Muscle memory. The blade is rusted and worn and dulled from salt and decay. I draw my gaze along its edge like I can glimpse a reflection of the past within its face. I see nothing.

As I run my eyes down its form, I see something. At the flat of the hilt. An inscription. A name.

Selisara.

Mine.

“Selisara,” I say aloud, though it sounds strange. And my voice even stranger.

I hardly forget about the scale, no longer pressed to my palm, but tucked in the outer seam of my clothing. I pull it free. It is no bigger than my fingernail, yet holds surprising weight to it. The edges are sharp, its body smooth and iridescent, the color and sheen of a pearl. And it yields me even fewer answers or memories than my sword and shield.

I tuck it back into place along the seam of my strange clothing. Leather. Tight and warped from the air. Straps pull my shoulders together. Buckles cinch my waist, the metal rusted. I’m not convinced I can pry them loose. Faded sigils decorate the long leather sleeves. I don’t know the color they once were but now it has turned gray and yellow. My boots reach my knees, but the edges fray and fold away, the laces stiff and brittle, the buckles as rusted as those on my attire.

No jewels grace my fingers or wrists, no necklaces around my neck or earrings in my ears. I run my fingers along my hair, unsure of what I expect to find, but find nothing other than a braided crown, so loose I’m sure it resembles nothing but a nest.

“Selisara,” I say to myself as if I hope to give meaning to the name. Memory. Recognition. As I hold my sword, shield, scale. As I catch wisps of my snow-white hair caught in the breeze. As I feel the leather like a second skin over me.

This is who I am. This is who I was.

And I say it again. “Selisara.”

Chapter Two

I FIND A BOAT. A small vessel with a single sail, not meant to hold more than one person. It bobs in the water within a small rocky alcove—its rope tethering it to the island not frayed, its hull intact, its sail crisp and folded. The sight of it does not only fill me with hope of escape but of knowledge.

I am not alone.

Or, at the very least, I hadn’t always been alone here. Someone left it for me. To find. To use. To leave this tomb. Only, I do not know where to go. Or how.

The ocean stretches endlessly here.

I climb into the vessel anyway. It is a simple thing—a wheel, bench, sail, and two oars. Beside the wheel, embedded in a small wooden post, I find a compass. It does not bear the directions of north, south, east, or west but its thin black needle points in an unmarked direction. I know nothing other than to follow it.

And I will.

I release the tether from the shore, and the boat bobs freely. An oar in each hand, I row out of the alcove, against the waves, the current, the push to keep me here.

My arms find a rhythm. Pull. One-two. Pull. One-two.

It doesn’t take long for my muscles to begin to ache. That ache stretches along my shoulder blades and down my spine. But I keep rowing, as the rocky island falls away beneath the horizon, following the black point of the compass needle that shifts ever-so-slightly as the tide drifts me off course.

There is only sky and ocean now. And me.

I try to remember me.

Selisara.

Someone who wielded a sword and shield. Someone who used them.

Even as I look at them, as I try to remember–there is nothing.

A strange feeling wells inside me. It begins in my chest and tightens, painfully so, then into my throat. My jaw clenches. My eyes burn. And then a droplet escapes me, rolling down my cheek, over my lips. It is salty. Like the air.

A tear.

More follow.

I release my grip on one oar to wipe the moisture away. I don’t know how to stop them, other than to breathe, to let them fall, to wait for that knot in my chest to loosen enough and take that burn in my eyes with it.

The breeze helps, steadying my breath, drying my face and leaving tightened rivets of skin in its wake.

I hold on to what I know.

I am alive.

My name is Selisara.

I have a sword, shield, scale.

And the black needle that will take me there.

***

The sun never changes its angle. The wind never changes direction. The waves lap and push and guide. Until they don’t.

The world stills to nothing but my breath and heartbeat. Wind ceases to curl through my hair. Sunlight unmoving against the water that has turned still as glass. Even as my oars break the surface, I doubt the boat moves. The compass gives no indication other than to fix to the horizon beyond me.

I look. I see nothing. Only placid water that perfectly mirrors the sky. And I am lost between them, caught in the thin line that separates ocean and air.

I think of rowing back to shore. I know the shore. I do not know this stillness. But the black needle points to the unmoving horizon.

There. There. There.

I row. Because I know nothing waits for me in that tomb. Because I was meant to wake. To cross these waters. To find the other side of the horizon.

I will not find myself here.

There. Where the black needle guides me. There is where I will find myself.

My arms more than ache now. They burn. Incessantly. The muscles in my back tighten to keep me upright. Heat collects beneath my leathers. Damp and irritating. Dripping into my eyes and down my neck. There is no wind to wipe it away. So I let it drip. But I continue to row.

Pull. One-two. Pull. One-two.

The water breaks. A ripple.

I stop.

The water breaks again. Another ripple. Closer.

I wait.

An echo of sound pulses through the water like a heartbeat. I tighten my grip on the oars, but still I do not move. I wait.

A figure moves beneath the surface. Large. Serpentine. Soundless. The water ripples again, then breaks open.

Ocean spills in waterfalls from the great scaled-head that rises high above me. Eyes like two massive pearls, pupilless, and all-seeing peer down at me. Two nostrils flare along its indigo-scaled snout. Its jaw opens, wide enough to reveal the razor-edged teeth beneath.

I do not know this creature. But I know it could devour my boat. And me.

Yet, it looks at me as if to question. To see–me.

“We have waited.”

The voice that hisses through the air is not mine nor does it come from the creature that continues to look. The voice belongs to the being I have not noticed–dwarfed by the overwhelming entity before me.

I do not know what the being is either that shares the same color as the sea. It sits on a ridge of scaled bone at the base of the creature’s skull. Bulbous black eyes, double-lidded as they take me in. The being’s face is narrow, long, pointed at the center, its cheeks gaunt, framed by strands of black hair. It bears no nostrils but gills on either side of its neck and only a small slit for a mouth. The rest of the being is long, gangly, webbed fingers holding to the creature beneath it.

“These waters do not open without exchange.” Its voice breaks the air again. “You carry what is owed.”

I carry very little.

Sword. Shield. Scale.

I offer what I have.

The being does not look at the sword with interest or the shield with any want. But when I slip the scale from my pocket, its slitted eyes widen.

I offer it.

And the being accepts.

The serpentine-creature sinks beneath the water’s surface until only its snout is visible and the being upon its neck is level with my boat.

I place the white scale into the being’s webbed hand. Those blue fingers close around it.

“Come,” the being says.

I obey.

The water does not give as I climb from the boat and onto the scaled creature. Bone and scale make for footholds against the ridge of its spine. I use those to anchor me. One foot then the other. My hands grab onto raised scales that are hard and not nearly as slick as I’d imagined. There is a roughness to its scales that allow for the smallest amount of traction.

The gangly being shifts their weight forward on the creature’s, granting me space against the ridge of spine it sits upon. I reach, grab, and pull myself into the makeshift seat of its bone.

“Hold tightly,” they hiss.

I do. To them. To the creature beneath me. To my breath as the creature dives beneath the still surface.

And I disappear.

Chapter Three

I BREATHE. A choked, wet breath. But breath. My lungs are not meant to hold for so long or to hold beneath such deep waters.

They did so only because I had no other choice.

The air here is cold. Sharp. Not the warmth from the shore that I only now realize was warmth.

It smells different here. Damp. Cold. Earthy.

I rub the water from my eyes and open them.

The creature beneath me is still atop the water that runs narrow and long. The openness of the horizon has been replaced by towering green trees and stone ridges that frame the winding river.

At the widest point, the stone is not stone but figures carved into the gray rock. Four of them—forms half-swallowed by moss and age and the trees.

They resemble the creature that has brought me here—scaled, necks arched, long snouts, pointed faces. And wings. Each bear wings. Flung wide and high as if preparing to take flight.

“Halareth,” the water-being says.

I have no memory of this place. I don’t know if I should.

“The Lorelight River will take you,” the water-being says.

I take that as my cue to find myself back on solid ground. And I do. More gracefully than before.

The blue-scaled creature looks at me one last time with its pearl eyes before sinking beneath the surface. The being upon its spine says nothing, only offers a parting glance I cannot discern as neither kind nor cruel—just there.

The surface barely ripples as the water swallows them under.

I stare for a moment or two longer, not expecting their return but quietly hoping for something. Or perhaps someone.

It’s a strange feeling. I don’t have a name for it. But it burns my eyes all the same and makes my chest feel hollow and full of it.

I don’t allow that burn to turn to tears.

I walk the Lorelight River that will take me. Somewhere.

***

Thirst and hunger. I remember them. The loud emptiness in my stomach. The dry scratch in my mouth and throat.

I learn not to drink the river water—after I have already had many sips. It comes back up and out, leaving me thirstier than before. And exhausted. Another feeling I remembered and learned the shape of.

My tired legs bring me to a small patch of dirt at the base of a very wide tree, its roots like veins along the earth. They cradle me.

I lie there and close my eyes and sleep. Not long. But long enough for my stomach to settle, to reawaken that hunger and thirst, and for the sun to shift its angle in the sky.

When I walk again, I walk with a singular purpose. Need. I need drink and food and someone.

I find no one. Only the river that continues to rush alongside me. It whispers. Follow me. And so I do. I follow. Down the river. Between tall trees. Over fallen log and rock and earth that rises and falls. Always I keep the river to my left. My only guide. My only direction.

South.

Memory continues to return to me in words.

Grass. Mushrooms. Flowers.

I recognize pieces of the world without remembering.

The scent on the air—pine needles.

The moisture that still lingers in the soft soil—rain.

And the hollowed feeling in my chest—loneliness.

I pick the white flowers along the riverbank. Their name comes to me after I’ve collected several of them. Snowbells. And somehow I know they are the first flowers of spring—a season.

I carry them to have something with me. Because they are pretty. They are real. Because I know what I am now. Hungry. Thirsty. Tired. And alone. And these pretty little flowers have grown along the dirt I walk.

They have survived.

And I have to believe so can I.

***

I no longer see the sun. It hangs low, caught somewhere between the trees. The sky bleeds color. I name them.

Pink. Purple. Orange.

Night sweeps the other half of the sky in shades of blue I don’t have a name for. And I realize I have stopped walking. I simply look up at the sky. I imagine myself there, amongst the bruised clouds, looking down, able to see the world and where I am meant to go.

And then I am firmly on the ground.

The force comes from behind–heavy and unmoving. It presses down on all of me, my face in the dirt, my arms and legs pinned against the pressure. A breathing pressure. A warmth. Someone. Their breath falls against the back of my neck. Hands anchor me down.

“Got ‘ya,” they say.

Something tightens around my ankles. Something else at my wrists.

Someone pulls the sword from my hip and the shield off my back. Then I am hauled to my feet–dizzy, my jaw now sore from where it struck the ground.

I can’t see my wrists behind my back but I see my ankles and the chains that bind them, and I know the same chains bind my hands.

A man walks from behind me. He’s shorter than I am, dirtied, clothes tattered. His red beard is unkempt and hair long, barely contained to the fraying twine at the nape of his neck.

He smiles. He’s missing teeth. Too many teeth.

I do not smile back.

“Where do ‘ya fly, rider?” he says.

I do not understand the question. Or the word–rider. The word has no bearing on me. But I try to find where it belongs.

Rider.

Because that is what he calls me. That is what he thinks I am. And it is the first thing anyone has called me.

“I’m talking to ‘ya,” he says.

It’s not his hand that meets the back of my skull but whomever stands behind me.

“Where do ‘ya fly from rider?” he says again. “Where’s ‘ya dragon?”

Rider. Dragon.

I don’t know how to answer. Because I don't know what a rider is. I don’t know what a dragon is. I know so very little.

My name is Selisara.

I had a scale, a shield, and a sword.

I walk the Lorelight River.

And I have snowbells in my pocket.