“But leading us to her master,” Jenk said, mulling it over.
Kole did not look convinced, but Linn saw that the implications had already begun to worm themselves into his skull.
Could the Shadow girl prove to be an ally after all? Or was this some slow, aching trap that had not yet been sprung upon the foolish Landkist of the Valley?
Or maybe it was simply chaos she was after. Chaos, and a bit of fun. In Linn’s experience, the two weren’t so far apart, at least to the mad.
They rejoined the others on the edges of the shallow bowl and watched the herd roam and graze for a time. They climbed out of the crater, and the wind now carried a nasty bite that made Linn’s teeth chatter. She worked the currents to better suit her in short order, passing the breeze around the Embers—Jenk most of all. He was clad only in cloth and leather, leaving more of his skin to the elements and more of his warmth for the taking. He smiled at her as he felt her current nudge him.
The sun left them behind, passing behind the white-capped peaks to the west, and the land rose before them, steady for leagues until it came to a series of black shelves—a labyrinth of trenches, burrows and caverns to explore and to climb.
Linn kept her eyes ahead. The ground was a patched white that she knew would turn to steady and blank the higher they climbed. Her boots were already beginning to crunch as the melt of the afternoon gave way to the first evening frost. She listened to the faint, droning songs of the stonebacks they left in their warm enclave until the howl of the wind rose to supplant it.
There had been a time not long ago when Linn would have shivered at the very sound. Now, it comforted her. Brought her strength, or else reminded her of her own.
The sky grew darker up ahead, and there was only the faintest hint of the green light that had made such a beautiful ribbon over their heads the night before. Now, the wall of billowing clouds that made up the north and obscured everything below it carried a sickly glow that made her feel ill.
“Looks like we might get a storm tonight,” Kole said.
“Yes,” Linn said a little distantly.
As she always did of late when the World seemed dark and the way lonely, she thought of Iyana. She carried that greenfire with her and left the other kinds to her guiding lanterns.
The sun was just rising when they met Braden Taldis and his Rivermen along the northern side of the Fork. Iyana allowed the friendly stoicism of the gathered company to push the sights and impressions of the previous night to the side, when she had glimpsed shadows creeping from the deep trenches around the River F’Rust, dogging them through the night mists.
It was going to be a clear day, and bright. She could tell by the way the stones beneath the water threw up their many-colored lights. The Rivermen had erected walls as thick as they were high on two sides of the village. There was a gap before a wide wooden bridge that passed over the shallowest part of the river.
“Another month,” Braden was saying to Captain Talmir. “Maybe less. Your Seers say the Dark Months are coming sooner this year. Still, I think we’ll be done in time.” The warriors who were also builders that made up the bulk of the crowd at his back nodded their agreement, their looks reflecting the pride he so clearly held for them.
“You were a help to us in our hour of greatest need,” Talmir said, taking Braden by the wrist. The captain looked like a child in the Riverman’s presence. “We won’t forget it. I’ll have some of the masons take time away from crafting whatever tiles and trinkets they’re worrying over and bolster your own work.” Braden smiled warmly, but the captain’s look shifted.
“What is it?” Braden asked. Iyana remembered how the Rockbled had caught her in the Between. He had built a stone prison in his mind and ensnared her like a moth in a spider’s web. He was wise and knowing in ways most assumed were unique to the Faey and the Landkist dubbed their kin. Iyana knew better, now. She knew not to underestimate the power of the mind, no matter whom it belonged to.
Talmir shifted under the combined attention of their desert company and the Rockbled. The children flitted among both, mixing with a quickness and ease that brought smiles to many a weary face. Already a small Rivergirl had taken one of the desert children by the hand and was leading him from building to building, pointing at the squat stone structures and the budding wall and asking if his caves were the same.
“There may be something to what the Seers say, is all,” Talmir said. He said it through a smile, but it had the opposite effect on those around. The Rivermen saw the remembered fear in the faces of the desert tribesmen and their returned neighbors alike and turned their waiting gazes on Braden.
Braden made as if to speak, but recognized the timing and the circumstances and did a much better job of meaning the smile he returned.
“Will you stay for fish?” he asked, sweeping his hand back to take in the flowing river that sloshed by. A sturdy woman stood on the opposite side of the gap before the bridge, and even Iyana gasped as she stamped her foot in the earth like one of their milling steeds and grew a tower of stone out of a loose tumble from the barrow at her side. She stood back and placed her fists on each hip with a satisfied posture, and Iyana found herself searching out Ceth to see what he made of the Landkist of the River.
His expression, like everything else about the man, was difficult to read.
Braden recognized the desire of the company to continue on, saw the longing looks of the Emberfolk over the sparkling river and wooden bridge. He bid them farewell and made sure to share a smile with each and every man and woman that passed by him. Even the horses seemed to delight in his company. He had a stony presence with none of the cold one might expect from his kind. Baas had taken much of his bearing, if not his personality, and Iyana wondered how the silent and stoic guardian was faring out on the road with such fiery companions as Kole and Linn for company, no matter which of them carried Everwood.
As Iyana passed him, he laid a finger on her shoulder. She saw Karin look back, eyebrows raised. Ceth paused beside the First Runner and frowned, his gray eyes shifting toward Braden with a hint of steel. Iyana waved them away and smiled, though her heart fluttered nervously. Braden removed his hand and stepped back, and the Rivermen around him dispersed, going back to their tasks as the desert nomads gathered up their wayward children and tore them from their new friends, carrying them over the river along with the horses and the lone wagon.
Braden watched them pass and then turned his gaze on Iyana. She did not think he meant to look down on her, but squatting would be condescending. Instead, he showed her a smile, and while he meant this one too, her eyes flashed momentarily as she picked up something behind it.
“I know we haven’t spent a lot of time together, Iyana Ve’Ran,” he said, his voice sounding firm and gentle all at once. “Still, I thought I taught you not to go using those gifts of yours on those unwilling.”
Iyana swallowed and blinked away the drifting impression. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have made an effort of it. I’m tired, is all. And I still catch emotions when they’re not held back. It’s like they’re moths and I’m their waiting lantern.”
Braden smiled. He didn’t seem upset. “Control, Iyana,” he said. “It’s something the Embers have always had trouble with, and it’s something it took me a long time to coach into my Rockbled.” He nodded out at his men and Iyana stole a glance across the bridge. Talmir had halted the caravan a ways ahead, and she was eager to be off, though none of them would make a complaint.
“Your people think it strange that the Landkist among my folk don’t call themselves such,” Braden said, his voice wistful. “Or, at least, they don’t anymore. Not since I took over. There is certainly something to be said for revering the Landkist. For propping up those with power, so long as those who wield flame or stone or green gems for eyes do so on behalf of their people. Still, I have found that it is only in commonality we avoid inner strife. Each must feel a part of the whole, and an important one at that.”
Iyana found herself nodding along with him. She had heard Linn and Kole talk about Baas’s strange relationship with his own power. He regarded Kole, Jenk, Taei and the others as Embers, as something separate from the common man, while he was said to be capable of feats near as grand—more so, depending on who you asked. She had also heard the Rivermen held no love for the Faey.
As she thought the last, she saw a knowing glint in Braden’s eye, and wondered not for the first time if Mother Ninyeva had taught him more than she knew.
“Alas,” Braden said with a modest shrug, “my people have their own scars and their own ways of coping with them. We are as rough and imperfect as the hardened crystals beneath us, stretching out across the breadth and depths of the World like stars in a buried sky.”
Iyana smiled at the image, but she thought Braden meant it more literally than she could ever know.
The Rockbled patriarch laid that huge, gentle hand on her slim shoulder again and gave a slight squeeze. “My grandson,” he said, keeping his voice low, though Iyana did not have to use her gifts to pick up the twinge of worry. “Have you seen him? Have you seen where they’ve gone?”
Iyana shook her head and saw Braden try to cover the look of disappointment that came so quickly to his lined and craggy face.
“Not since we separated out on the black plains just north of the Valley,” she said. “They went to Center, just as they said they would. I …” She hesitated, searching for words that wouldn’t come out stinking of a lie. “I haven’t seen them. I haven’t seen Linn or Kole, Jenk or Misha. I haven’t seen Baas,” she said. She did not add that she hadn’t tried. Not really. Not as if her life had depended on it. Not as if Linn’s had, as it had when her sister was trapped in the Deep Lands that were not so far from where they stood now.
Braden searched her with interest and she shifted under his steady gaze, unable to meet his eyes for long.
“It is no easy thing I ask,” he said gravely. “Take no guilt from your answer, Iyana.” The words were well enough, but it was the truth behind them that truly relieved her of a guilt she had not realized she had buried deeper than anything they’d found in the northern deserts. She hadn’t tried, not really. Not since Sen had shown her the dangers of stretching her power far, and what it could do to the one who did.
Braden stepped back and went to say something else, but he closed his mouth instead, and looked back in the direction from which they’d come, his gray eyes sweeping across the mist-laden crags of the lower Steps and rising until they lost the peaks to the suggestion of the clouds.
“I’d have felt it, if something had happened,” Iyana said. She said it quietly, and he didn’t look at her right away. “Somehow I know it, Braden. I’d know.”
He smiled with a touch of sadness. “Of your sister’s fate, I have no doubt you’re right,” he said. “Of Baas …” He let it linger and gave a long blink before turning back to her.
Iyana had the sudden urge to tell him everything she’d seen, in this World and their dark neighbor. This man she barely knew but trusted implicitly. She cast a quick and worried look toward the caravan. Creyath’s black charger stamped toward the back of the line. Ket stood patting its muscled flank. He hadn’t looked back toward her, but she knew he wanted to.
“Go,” Braden said. He stepped aside to let a larger woman pass him by carrying a sack of spilling sand. “We’ve plenty of time to talk of what’s to come.”
“Not as much time as you think,” Iyana said without meaning to.
She nearly bit her tongue as he frowned. He dipped a deep bow. “Then I give you my permission, here and now, to seek me out whenever you have need to, and,” he winked, “in whatever way you mean to. We are together in this,” Braden said, nodding across the river. “Your people and mine. Whatever’s to come, we are together.”
Iyana took comfort in it. She bid Braden farewell and moved off toward the bowed wooden bridge. She stopped before the flat stones at the base and turned back. Braden watched her.
“He saved us out on the road,” she said, raising her voice so it carried to him and to all of the others who were listening without making a show of it. “Baas Taldis saved us all. There’s no exaggerating what I saw.” She opened her mouth to say more and then closed it.
Braden went to respond, but apparently found the words lacking. He settled for a curt nod, but as she made her way across the damp planks and passed over the rushing water beneath, Iyana smiled brightly, her heart leaping where before it had threatened to be overcome with the portent of things to come. She had seen the pride in Braden’s eyes and in his bearing. She had said what he’d needed to hear, and it made her glad beyond reason to know that it was true. Every word of it.
Iyana rejoined the company and thought better of making an apology for her delay. They might not be home, in their beds and with their husbands, wives and children around them, but they were in the Valley, now. A big place that felt pleasantly small on returning, and a place Iyana now felt a growing fierceness to defend.
They remounted as the River F’Rust spilled its smaller children into the marshes north of Hearth. Talmir seemed more eager than the rest to be back. He took them by a direct route that only saw the horses’ hooves land without splashing when the city walls were clearly in sight.
And what a sight it was.
The sun was high and the day was full, and the green stretched out before them vibrant and renewed on their arrival. Birds wheeled overhead, red-feathered hawks and blue sparrows that called out to them. The white stones that broke up the sameness of the fields beyond were made of the same pearly stuff that the walls had been built from, that the white cliffs that made up the city’s northern wall had grown out of.
Iyana found herself riding with a renewed energy. She sought out the eyes of the desert nomads and saw not a single one pretended to be anything but awed. Even Ceth, who rode with one of the red-sashed children in front of him in the saddle, could not peel his eyes from the west.
Great swaths of woodland stretched out to the south and east, and Iyana knew that the salt lake was beyond them and the Untamed Hills the other way. But Hearth was a shining jewel—the Valley’s great treasure, and one made better by the mending of the hearts of its three peoples: the Rivermen who built its walls and the Faey who occasionally walked its streets and cast their strange and powerful blessings on the sick sheltering within.
They passed the last of the silver streams and the caravan split into two columns that went over well-trodden dirt paths the tradesmen used. Ahead, the black gate—new and impressive as it hadn’t been when they had set out weeks before—was open, black metal shining like the obsidian that had made up the caves of the northwest. There were carts and asses, children and farmers from the Scattered Villages.
And though the sun was shining and the birds were calling, and all seemed well with their little piece of the World, Iyana felt those misgivings that bordered dread as she scanned those who stopped and watched them pass by, as she took in the glittering pikes and spear tips atop the white walls that had been scrubbed clean of black ash and blood but couldn’t wipe its memory away.
Ket turned a sunny smile on her that she returned with a swallow. He suppressed a grimace and looked away, eager to find a friendlier face and one less familiar to share his hope with. Iyana noted the bandage covering the stump on one of his hands. How easy it was to forget what some had left behind.
Iyana’s eyes were drawn back to the covered wagon in their midst. She knew the time for closure was near at hand, of ripping the bandage and its sticking scab so that the healing might begin. Though she could not see Captain Talmir from her place at the back, she could picture his bearing and the direction of his gaze. Anywhere but back.
A silver horn blared to announce them and to welcome them, and though they had no towers or citadels that approached the height and majesty of those from the stories—the ones with princes and princesses in many-windowed castles that rested on the edges of the
farthest oceans—Iyana felt a piece of those tales now, a part of them.
They passed beneath the arches and even the horses snorted and whinnied as the delightful courtyard smells filled their nostrils with all the comfort and familiarity the dry wastes and deep pools in the deserts had not. There was a sound lower than the horn but no less pronounced and Iyana could not help but laugh along with the booming belly sound of Garos Balsheer.
The First Keeper of Hearth cut an imposing figure as he stood atop the stair before the black gate, his soldiers—who were truly Talmir’s—arrayed in a bunched crowd around and below him. His great black staff with its iron spikes jutted out from behind one shoulder and the opposite hip, and the air behind him shimmered with heat as his brazier—stocked and burning even in the heights of summer and safety—thrummed its own welcome song.
His white beard made her think of Tu’Ren, though Garos was a barrel of a man where the man who was more an uncle to her was tall, broad and athletic, and she felt a swell that mixed with a bitter pang as she remembered how dearly she missed him.
“Well, lads,” Garos boomed. He needed no horn to get his message heard, and Iyana saw Talmir bring his mount back around the front of the milling caravan as the others either sat in the saddles or dismounted. “Here’s our returned captain. Alive as ever. And now with a tan he never boasted as well as the rest of us before.”
Talmir smirked up at him and Iyana saw the nervous smiles and glances the younger soldiers atop the wall and bordering the courtyard shared as the First Keeper jested.
“The Bronze Star himself!” Garos exclaimed, and in the place of the teasing she had expected, there was only pride and a raised fist to go along with it. The soldiers gave their voices to the air and the buildings around them finished emptying, the cheer carrying as they welcomed their wayward captain and his wayward knights.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 8
