The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4)

by Steven Kelliher

  The two stood shoulder to shoulder as the company moved off, following the black stream that soon shone with a silver brilliance as the sun ceased its coyness and announced itself to the retreating night. They were bonded now, Talmir and the First Runner. They had lived through the Valley War, though they had seldom crossed paths in their younger days. They had witnessed the Siege of Hearth—a thing out of nightmare. And they had slain a coven of crones that called to the things that had been the bane of their existence and those of their children for a generation and more. They had killed through it all, and Talmir thought Karin might ask forgiveness for it in the end, even as he knew that he himself would not.

  Talmir broke off from the rest and found his painted mare. The white-and-brown steed had lost some of her fat and picked up a good deal more lean muscle. He patted her flank and stared into her chestnut eyes, knowing he had put her through such a harshness of heat and stinging sand that she might never forgive him. He thought of Creyath. The Ember had always seemed more comfortable among the horses.

  “He knew something of you I do not,” Talmir said. The mare snorted her agreement or annoyance. He swung up into the saddle and gave a start as a swath of silver-gray swept across his line of sight: Ceth coming up to speak with him as the rest moved off in front of and behind the lone wagon.

  “What can I do for you, Ceth?” Talmir asked. He was still uncomfortable around the northern Landkist. Doubly so after seeing him die and then return. A part of him wanted to ask what the man had seen beyond whatever veil he’d passed through. The greater part of him never wanted to know.

  “What dangers lie in the black peaks?” Ceth asked, and Talmir nearly laughed at his bored pragmatism. They were not so different.

  “Once,” Talmir said, pulling the stamping mare into stillness, “those peaks held our protector. Then, the greatest enemy we have ever known.” Ceth’s eyebrows rose. He must be wondering why he had agreed to bring what was left of his mixed peoples down out of the dunes into a place so forbidding. Talmir laughed as he watched the sun carve its bright lines and make its black shadows among the spires and spurs. “Now, I dare say it is safe, but for whatever dangers the World has always held for men in its wilds.”

  Ceth studied Talmir for a moment as if weighing the truth of his words. Satisfied, he turned and moved off. He could have used his strange power to leap over the whole of the snaking caravan. He could have gained the peaks and seen the broken citadel and golden pools at its crest within an hour. Instead, he walked along with the rest, and Talmir noted how he alternated keeping very close and very far from Iyana Ve’Ran.

  He felt a swell, a rushing like that Karin must feel for the girl in the place of the father she had lost so young and the sister so recently, and stamped it down just as his mount stamped the black soil until it began to pool with that mirrored water from the lonely stream.

  The rest of the morning passed with nothing momentous but for the awed looks and shared glances of the desert dwellers as they passed through the natural gate of stone that framed the outer Valley from the barren plains beyond. Talmir found himself focusing on them more than the path ahead. Though he had only trodden its ways once in leaving, Talmir felt a growing sense of home as they traveled. He thought it had to do with the way the new children pointed to wheeling hawks and wandered too close to the rapids of the River F’Rust as it turned in to join them from some unknown place in the deep west.

  They stopped by the bend in the river and drank when the sun was at its zenith. Talmir could taste salt in the water. It would not taste the same once it passed through the labyrinth of falls and tunnels in the dense and spiked peaks the White Crest’s battle with the Night Lords had made.

  Talmir remembered feeling the quaking in the courtyard of Hearth. He had run out among the fields and white stones along with half the city and turned north, thinking the Rivermen had betrayed them by the distant rumble that sounded like thunder underground. Later, others blamed the Faey, thinking they used dark magic to call the World Apart closer when the sky darkened too soon.

  There were flashes of light on the horizon and the wind howled like it never had before. It brought with it fell voices that sounded like thousands screaming in agony from the deepest pits. They had sheltered behind walls and in the sturdiest towers of Hearth. The guards shrank below their squat barriers or clustered beyond the quartz spurs and alcoves of the white cliffs as the storm raged.

  It was a storm of endings, and it heralded the beginning of the longest darkness they would know. It lasted for three days, and when it ended, the skies were quiet.

  And then the peaks had come down. The tallest ones that used to block out the sun as it arced across the blue skies. They broke apart and fell in as many pieces as to appear a black cloud of dust and ash, the remnants blanketing the Steps they had never seen so clearly as they would from then on. The peaks were still tall after that day, but they were never as great. In the place of gods’ towers, they were jagged spurs. In the place of snow-capped heights, they were black diamonds glinting under a harsher sun.

  In the place of a guardian who had watched over them, protected them from the creeping darkness of the worst of his kind, was a sense of nothing, and of doom.

  “Captain.”

  Talmir shook himself from his private reverie and saw Karin regarding him with a curious expression. He blinked and saw that the caravan was now wending its way up the steepest part of the path. The sun was getting low. It now cast the whole of the expanse in a red-gold hue he tried not to think of as blood.

  “It will be good to be beyond them,” Talmir said, not meeting Karin’s worried look as he kicked his mount into motion once more. Karin followed on foot, taking up the rear of the company while Jes and Mial ranged ahead, finding the surest ground by which to heave the wagons up.

  It was harder coming than it had been going, and after dismounting for the third time to unstick the wagon, Talmir found himself longing for the relatively minor fear of navigating the carved paths down into the Steps. When the timber beast lurched into motion once more, one of the packages within dislodged, rolling to the back and striking the wall with a hollow crunch that nearly made Talmir retch, and did make Ket.

  Not there anymore.

  That was how Talmir dealt with it. Told himself the bodies were just empty vessels now. Reminders of the men and women they had been, and sorry ones at that. He saw Ceth and the others sharing strained glances. The Northmen were not so bothered, but the red-sashes seemed on the verge of anger. They quieted, as did their children, who watched the wagon and those worrying over it with a tension picked up from their parents.

  They thought it wrong to leave the bodies so long, Talmir knew. They thought they should be burned and given rest, but the Emberfolk of the Valley would do things their way. These were their people, now, not the desert’s or the sun’s. Perhaps it was covetous of them, but men were strange and always would be, and found each other stranger still.

  It was a cool day and the wind was merciful and refreshing, but not a single one of them was left dry by the time they reached the relative flatness at the top. They stopped to rest again amidst the black spurs and Talmir sat alongside Iyana and Karin as the children splashed along the edges of the pools that shone golden-orange in the dying light of the day. Even their minders seemed taken with the sight, though Karin could only see the place where Larren Holspahr had fallen and where Kole had found something of his legacy and his path.

  None among the Valley company turned to gaze at the broken remnants of the White Crest’s red-topped citadel. It wasn’t the fear. That had all gone out of the place, along with whatever fire the Embers had brought to cleanse it. But there was a sorrow of things lost. Their new companions seemed to pick up on the thread and did not pry. They pulled their children away from those white-flowered paths, though their eyes traced the steep and jagged path up to the black cloister and its bloody pearl.

  Iyana stood and stretched, and then picked her
way from child to child, parent to parent, warning them of the deceptive depths the golden surfaces of the pools concealed. She moved beyond them and Talmir and Karin watched her go, until she stopped before a black spur coated in white-and-purple flowers that hung down over the entrance to a cave overgrown with vines and creepers.

  She stood there for a time but did not break apart the natural barrier and enter. She seemed to sway, and in the dying light, Talmir thought he saw that green glow coloring her white cheek.

  “Where Linn and the others emerged from the Deep Lands,” Karin said to Talmir’s tired, curious look. “Iyana helped them through it.”

  “How?” Talmir asked. He knew he had heard the tale, at least in part. But he had heard it from Kole, who had not been trapped beneath the great black beast they sat atop now.

  Karin let loose a small laugh. “She tethered her soul to a firefly,” Karin said with a shrug. He thought to say more and then let it be, and Talmir laughed, full-bellied and true. He drew stares from the many-colored eyes of both companies as he nearly fell over and did not mind the attention. It felt good to wipe tears of mirth from the cracked bags under his eyes.

  They watched Iyana make her way back, and Talmir was glad to see a wistful smile spread across her face rather than an aching sorrow and depth of loss, though the two could sometimes be difficult to distinguish.

  He thought of Linn Ve’Ran, Jenk Ganmeer and Nathen Swell in the Deep Lands, living by the light of their lone Ember’s flame, navigating as much by feel as sight and with hope in the place of hungry desperation. And for what? To challenge a Sage wearing the skin of Larren Holspahr.

  What brave things had this Valley made? What brave souls Talmir was privileged to lead and to be counted among?

  Talmir stood and stretched as Karin did the same. The First Runner was lithe as a jungle cat despite being older than Talmir.

  “You’d have made a better sword than I, had you bent that frame to it,” Talmir said as he strapped his sword belt back on, the weapon’s pommel throwing up a glowing gem in the amber sun’s image.

  “I saw you fight,” Karin said. Talmir expected him to follow it up, but the First Runner left him with it. Talmir frowned after him as Karin bypassed the milling horses and rounded the wagon, starting down the surest path to the sprawling Steps below.

  “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” he heard him call back as he passed Ceth and Martah. The two gray-sashes must have been standing on the south-facing ledge for an hour, marveling at the sprawling lands that lay below the clouds.

  Talmir moved to join them. He did not have to tell his men to prepare for the move. Tired as they were, there was a silent agreement among the Valley company not to sleep this night. Not until they were home and among lovers and friends. Not until they had time to separate from one another, to let the horrors and wonders of the deserts fill them with a false longing for that wayward road the Captain of Hearth had taken them down.

  “Your Valley is a jewel,” Martah said and Talmir smiled warmly at her. Ceth said nothing.

  Below the threadbare clouds and wisps of wind that made ghostly trails in the vapors; beyond the great flat stairs that would take them to the basin and beyond the silver-blue ribbon of the River F’Rust as it bubbled up from its black cracks and fissures, was home.

  The Valley was a jewel. It couldn’t be said better. The black trenches were veins bringing water in the place of darkness, the cracked plateaus in the northernmost flats skipping stones for gods. The Fork gave choice. Follow it west to the sparser trails and red nettles of the woods, perhaps all the way to the haunted paths among the Untamed Hills they could not see from here, or travel east into the dense and dark foreboding of the eastern woods and the realm of the Valley Faey.

  Or step beyond it, past the squat homes and modest yards of the Rivermen and onto the sprawling, white-speckled fields about the glittering gem that was Hearth. And much farther than Talmir could see, the brown trail took its traders and wares to the shores of Last Lake, where the stoutest and truest hearts among the Emberfolk had resided since calling this land home.

  Talmir breathed in and closed his eyes, letting the whole of it wash over him. The feeling was pride, and it was of a sort he hadn’t felt since standing atop the scorched and cracked gate of Hearth after the siege they had survived where none should have.

  They would survive whatever was to come. Talmir knew it in his heart even as he doubted it in all other ways. For now, he went with that and pushed the rest aside.

  And as Ceth and Martah turned and rejoined their companions, speaking of his Valley in tones that came near enough to excitement to be rare for them, Talmir watched the dreampaths the currents carved through the floating vapors of dusk and the fairy lights the withdrawn sun played in its million mirrored surfaces. He felt rain on the breeze and thought of her, her raven-black hair and full lips. The quirk of her mouth when she made fun and the same look of a darker bent when she was angry.

  He felt eyes on the back of his head and regathered himself before turning. As was ever the case of late, he saw Iyana staring back. Her eyes were not glowing with anything but mischief. She smiled and passed him by, leading rather than following, and Talmir let her.

  The pace of the caravan picked up enough to give Talmir misgivings. The way, though not half as steep as it had been on the north side, was steep and turning blue-black with the coming of night. Wisps and fireflies approached them from the borders as the company was enveloped in the thicker clouds below, the Valley’s sights lost to them for the time being, and Talmir thought of the insects as heralds of the land.

  They skirted the Steps, taking the more direct route, one the wagon navigated with more ease than it had before, and when they touched down on the sodden ground north of the Fork and beside the rapids of the emerging River F’Rust, Talmir saw that the brighter lights he had mistaken for flies from up above were torches the Rivermen had left to light their way.

  They picked their way over the narrow gaps between the few trenches the Deep Lands had carved in this place, warning the desertfolk to avoid crossing to the other side of the river, where the gaps widened and the footing was less sure. Talmir heard Jes telling the children tales of the monsters that hid in the depths and wondered if she thought them true.

  “Nearly there, Iyana,” Talmir said. They had each of them left their horses for others to ride and for the children to sleep atop in their sashes and blankets, and Talmir smiled to know that the dead were not the only treasures they brought back with them out of the deserts.

  He only noticed Iyana hadn’t answered when he caught himself from saying something else to her. He regarded her and saw a similar look of fear to the one she had shared with him that morning, before the sun had risen.

  “What is it?” he asked, coming close. Iyana tore her gaze away from the borders of the mist with effort.

  “Nothing.” She sighed. “The shadows. Do you see how they stretch too far? The mist, it clings too thickly.”

  Talmir frowned and began to count the members of the caravan he could see. He even slid his hand unconsciously toward the pommel of his sword, but he felt a firm grip on the back of his wrist and saw Iyana shaking her head and forcing a smile as their tension was noticed by those close behind.

  “No danger,” Iyana said. Talmir searched her to see if she was telling the truth and came away satisfied. “Not now,” she added, undoing much of the work. “We are home, Captain, but home won’t be the same. Not for long. The men should take respite.” She leaned in. “Our new friends should make themselves comfortable. But we have work to do.” Another shake as she kept her eyes ahead. “I have work to do.”

  “What sort of work?” Talmir asked.

  “I need answers,” she said. “My sight is my blade and my questions my arrows. And I think I know just where to aim them.” She frowned. “Though I do not know the way.”

  “The Valley Faey,” Talmir guessed, and Iyana truly looked frightened as she met his considered gaz
e. He nodded, understanding some small part of why they scared her so. It was said even the Faey Mother, whom Iyana had trained under, had been intimidated by their knowledge and put off by their strangeness when she had first gone to them for help and understanding after her power awoke.

  “I think they know what is coming,” Iyana said. “And with the others,” she swallowed, “dead, I don’t know if there are any more remaining apart from that place.”

  “The Faey came to us in our hour of need,” Talmir said. “The Valley Wars were some time ago, Iyana. Besides,” she looked up at him and he saw the girl she tried to hide peek through, the picture of uncertainty, “you won’t be going alone.”

  Linn could see farther and clearer than any but the eagles she glimpsed wheeling amidst the thin mists above. It should have made the World feel smaller and more close, but the farther they got from the Valley, the larger it all seemed. Vast and barren and—for the first time—threatening cold.

  She climbed down from her latest promontory, a sturdy birch tree that was the last significant growth for leagues to the north and east. To the west, the great, rolling plateau of Center—no longer green this far north but rather brown and red and yellow—stretched away, kissing the frost-laden plains they were set to cross but encroaching no farther.

  Something wet touched the back of Linn’s hand and she flinched, then smiled down as Shifa padded up beside her, brown eyes intent and earnest.

  Linn shrugged as she stroked the hound’s winter mane and the two looked out across the ribbed flats. “Your guess is as good as mine, girl,” she said. “I’d say we’re in over our heads, but that’s nothing new. We have been since we stepped out beyond the gap in the first place.”

  Shifa gave a small sound of acknowledgement or complaint and started down the hard-packed, stone-filled slope, snout brushing the yellow scrub that sprouted in whatever patches were not taken with the spiky frost that dotted the landscape all around.