The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4)

by Steven Kelliher

  “Never a bad thing to hope for,” Guyy said. “Never a good thing to count on.” He slapped her on the back as he turned back for the hatch.

  “I hope she likes them,” Yana said, surprising herself a bit. She heard Guyy pause behind her. “The Landkist of the Valley. I can’t pretend to know them, but they seemed … good. It’s nice to think there are good people in the wider World. That they aren’t all beasts wearing the skins of men, donning armor to cross the frozen sea to purge us from the land.”

  “As much as we’ve been through, rumor has it they’ve been through worse,” Guyy said.

  “And how many rumors do you get from the southwest?” Yana asked with a sly grin. “Sending falcons to some long-lost love, are we?”

  “A soldier’s business is rumor,” Guyy said. “Doesn’t much matter if they’re made up or not. Maybe you’d look a little less bored if you indulged in a few every now and again.”

  Yana snorted. She saw a tight look cross Guyy’s face and nudged him with her elbow. “What have you heard of the Embers’ war?”

  “That it’s not been one fought man-to-man,” Guyy said. “Not for a long time.”

  “There was a war between the Valley Landkist when I was young, wasn’t there?” Yana asked. She looked in that direction, though she couldn’t see much of anything over the western ridge and the flats that stretched for leagues beyond. It seemed strange to her, how much of the World lay below their gray shelves in the north, and how much had happened there, far from their cares or worries.

  Guyy nodded. “And then it turned to something else.”

  “Something of the World Apart,” Yana said. Guyy paled visibly at the mention. It was a term Yana had heard only in the form of stories when she was a girl, and one that had grown from fanciful to concerning when the Eastern Dark had sent his dogs to strike down the Frostfire Sage and her consort. With the power they had brought to bear against her queen and former prince, there could be no doubting the presence of the World Apart nor its influence on the War of Sages—the war they had been fighting for as long as Yana could remember, and not for themselves.

  She had heard of rifts opening in the south, admitting black demons with red eyes, corrupting the dead and the living and turning them on their former friends and families. The stories had always seemed improbable to Yana, though she had seen what the Sages and Landkist could do to one another on the field of battle. She had never stopped to ask what started it all in the first place. She had never stopped to wonder where the Sages got their power. They had simply always been, and to her young, naïve mind, they would always be.

  But now they were dying. One by one, and while often on the back of one of their former fellows’ intent, rarely by their hand directly. Instead, it seemed the Landkist were doing most of the god-killing these days. Landkist like those the Eastern Dark had sent into the windblown snows a generation before. Landkist like those who had passed through here just the day before.

  “You have to have felt it,” Guyy said. His eyes were wide, and though he looked out at the same expanse she did, he did not see it. “The air in the east. The feeling of another coming close, like a shadow leering over your shoulder.”

  “The queen has been preparing for something,” Yana said, not knowing if they were speaking of the same thing. Guyy nodded. “Something to deal with the Eastern Dark, once and for all.”

  “Maybe,” Guyy said. For a moment, she did not think he would elaborate. “Or perhaps the Eastern Dark has felt it too. Perhaps there is something driving him to the north, after all his time spent hiding.” He turned to her. “Think on it, Yana. Why now? Why do they move with such speed and purpose in this time apart from all others?”

  “They’ve been warring for centuries,” she argued, though it sounded weak even to her ears. “Stands to reason there would be a breaking point, sooner or later.”

  Guyy was shaking his head before she finished. “No. I don’t buy it.” He looked to the east and she followed the direction of his gaze. She had been all the way to the water’s edge, where the frozen mountains began to move again and where the floats cracked and split apart, their torrents powerful as they were unpredictable. Though she knew it was too far to see, she always imagined movement where the frozen sea met the sky.

  She imagined it now. She imagined a black slit parting at the narrowest point of the horizon and stretching apart with a sound that defied sense and so could not be heard. She imagined it pulling everything of her World into a powerful nothing. It was a vivid image, and one that had come to her in dreaming a month earlier, or perhaps less, and one she had been unable to shake since.

  “Ah, well,” Guyy said, turning to make for the hatch. “Sages and their meddling. Suppose we should be thankful all we have to do is watch a tower at the edge of the World.”

  Yana went to laugh, but a hint of movement drew her attention to the south. She pressed her hand against the same spire her bow rested against, and she squinted at the angled piece of sky where the white ridge was sharpest.

  “Got you,” she said. She heard the rusted hinges protest behind her and Guyy grunt as he swung his legs around the ladder. “Guyy,” she said, to which he grunted a response as he dragged her stone bowl toward him, muttering to himself about how much she’d regret not finishing it when her stomach began its complaints in the evening hours.

  “Eh?” he asked.

  “I think you can tell our Blue Knight she’s got a fight on her hands,” Yana said. She was smiling as she said it, and when she turned back to make sure Guyy had heard her, she saw his surprise at seeing the look.

  “Beetles?” he asked, not quite believing her.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not beetles. Tell Rika, Guyy. And prepare the men. Nobody gets past this tower. Keep them in front, where I can see them.”

  “How many?” he asked, his voice starting to sound as charged as it should before a fight.

  “I’ve got plenty of arrows,” she said, which seemed answer enough for him.

  “Aye,” Guyy said as he dropped away. “I’ll tell her. Might improve her mood.” His bootsteps echoed as they met the spiral stair, and their pace quickened as they receded. She heard his military voice lose all pretense of gentleness as he shouted for those below.

  Yana lifted her bow and drew an arrow from her quiver. The gray fletchings were frosted and sticking, so she warmed them in her palm as she watched the ridge. The shadow came closer and Yana’s confusion grew. The figure was close enough now that she should have been able to make out the sex and the armor, if not the face. Instead, all she could see beneath the gloomy, moving skies with their patched yellow and lavender rays was a black smudge shaped like a girl. She had short-cropped hair and deep purple eyes that Yana had to blink to ensure she was seeing correctly. She nocked the arrow to her bowstring and raised it in a halfhearted warning. As the shadow withdrew, shrinking back behind the ridge and out of sight, Yana could swear she saw a white, toothy smile break the black.

  She tried not to let her fear show as she called down to the soldiers scrambling into position below.

  She cursed as her insides twisted into knots. She always felt sick before a fight, and Guyy’s fatty stew hadn’t done much to help her now.

  Something was off about this one. Something was very, very wrong. Yana flexed her core and settled down onto one knee, gritting her teeth against the nerves that threatened to overtake her. It always got easier once the shooting started.

  Shadow was satisfied with herself for two reasons.

  To start, she delighted in seeing the look of confusion and covered fear on the archer’s face as she struggled to make sense of the image before her. A lone girl, weaponless and unafraid, standing at the place where the ridge met the roiling sky. Second, Shadow delighted in finding new ways to continually disobey her Sage. She was to get a good view of the tower and of its defenses—count its defenders and its weapons. See how many of the Blue Knights had stuck around as Reyna, Ve’Ran
and the Landkist of the Valley passed them by.

  She wasn’t meant to be seen, but then, Shadow very much wanted to see what this Shadow King could do before they went about recruiting his fellows from the depraved depths of the World Apart.

  “Alistair the Cordial.” She nearly spat it out as she followed her own shallow tracks back down to where the pair of dark masters crouched.

  Valour was speaking to their new companion, intent and focused. The snow was a mix of slush and melt around him, and Shadow shook her head at his lack of control over the heat that must continually be worming its way through Rane’s blood. Alistair, for his part, merely watched her in that cunning, infuriating way of his. His natural armor had grown. Quite literally. It was tight-fitting, with knobs and ridges that made it appear as if it were gray, living bone, and it covered him like a reptile from tail to chest before curling around his shoulders. Part of her expected to see a tail swishing out behind him, but it was not to be. However strange he appeared, he might pass as human from a great distance.

  She sneered at him as she approached, and his responding smile had Valour following the direction of his gaze.

  “What do we face?” the Sage asked.

  Shadow crouched before them, bow-legged. “Nice to see you too,” she said.

  “You’ve been gone a space of minutes,” he said, not amused. He never was. At least Rane had pretended to be to keep her good humor. More likely to keep her from trying to kill him or Brega or Resh on the road.

  “Three of the fur-clad soldiers on the outside,” Shadow said, holding up the requisite number of fingers. “An archer captain at the top with an older fellow. Careful of that one.” She nodded to Alistair. “He’s carrying a piping hot stew with a weighty bowl to match.” The Shadow King frowned in confusion and looked askance at Valour. He was already learning to doubt everything Shadow said. He was a quick study, this one. She very much wanted to see what else he was about.

  “And the Landkist of the north?” Valour asked.

  “One outside, leaning against the north-facing stone,” Shadow said. “A female. All told, less than a dozen. But, if she’s half as potent as the one you killed in the west—”

  “A powerful enemy?” Alistair seemed near the point of drooling.

  “The one we used to host you,” Valour said without taking his eyes from Shadow. “One at the tower. Not enough. Which of your allies is most important to bring in?”

  “No matter,” Alistair said. “The others will do, weak or not. It is less about the body than the mind.”

  Valour looked dumbfounded. “Then why did you have me find the most powerful enemy I could to act as your host?”

  Alistair smiled. “To see that you were worthy of our alliance.” He stood and did not bother brushing the snow from his clothes, ignoring Valour’s murderous look, which shifted from purple to the amber she knew so well from Rane’s stares. “Now, let me show you what I bring.”

  “Why do we not simply call the Sentinels in?” Shadow asked. She didn’t know why she felt so prickly about the whole thing. She should have been eager to see Alistair bend to the task alone and without aid, the better to see what he could do. The better to watch him fail against powers he had not come up against before.

  Alistair actually laughed at her, while Valour grimaced.

  “His eyes are on this World already,” Alistair said. “Thanks in no small part to your master. Drawing any more power from my World absent great need is not worth drawing his attention more fully, more directly. Your Witch is doing that well enough on her own.”

  Shadow frowned and looked from the Shadow King to the Eastern Dark. “His?” she asked, holding up both hands as she crouched. “What in all the many Sages’ names is he talking—”

  “Not now, Shadow,” Valour said. He said it short and clipped, but she knew from the flatness in his tone that he meant it. Shadow thrived on ire, but she knew every beast had its breaking point, and she had no desire to revisit this one’s.

  “Your master was a fool to use as much power as he did in the west,” Alistair continued, ignoring the open glare Valour sent his way. Shadow found the fresh dynamic fascinating. Not since Rane himself had someone so openly defied the Eastern Dark, and even that bold, bright Ember had been brought to heel—mostly—in the end. Here he was, kneeling among them, though his soul—whatever had been left of it—had long since departed.

  “No matter,” Alistair said, looking from Shadow to the Sage before squaring himself to the east. “The Frostfire Sage is at work even now, as we speak.”

  “Won’t calling more of your fellows in count to the same ends?” Shadow asked and while Valour’s face started to twitch in annoyance, she saw one of his eyebrows twitch up, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility.

  Alistair made a great show of dropping his bone-laden, gray shoulders. His mouse-colored hair blew in the wind, stringy and macabre, but there was a vitality to the muscle and sinew beneath his skin she could not ignore.

  “Hence the need for hosts, my dearest Shadow,” he said. He craned his neck to take her in, sharing a private smile that stung her in a way she could not explain until the words left his lips. “You should know more than most. I bet you were quite a beauty in your day. Shame you can’t remember.”

  The words may as well have been an arrow that pierced whatever was left of Shadow’s heart and left her writhing, convulsing, retching all the rage she had bottled over the long years spent in the Eastern Dark’s company. In his bondage. She snarled and shook with the need to rise, but Valour reached out and touched a hand to her arm. She tried to recoil and he gripped her tighter, his hand burning with that unchecked Ember fire as he held her back.

  Alistair dropped the smile and looked ahead. He bent his knees ever so slightly and then shot forward with impressive speed. Impressive for anyone, Landkist or not.

  Shadow forgot the hand that gripped her and started forward as Alistair dropped out of sight, his path direct as he made for the tower. She heard the cries as he began his assault. Nothing secret about it. Nothing clever.

  “Shadow …” Valour drew it out, and beneath that burning, something of sickness crept onto her skin. She felt a clammy cold that reminded her of something from long ago. She ceased her pulling and looked down to see the black shell parting around his dark hand. It looked like ink being drained from white parchment, and Shadow turned her eyes up to meet his. She could not hide her fear.

  He released her, his too-long ears twitching as he took in the sounds of battle over the rise. They stared at one another for a moment that stretched.

  “I know how you must hate me,” Valour said, settling back. He stood with a sigh.

  “Do you?” Shadow asked, not trying to keep the venom from her tone.

  “I do.”

  She waited for him to continue. After a time spent watching the archer loose her shafts and frantic shouts into whatever chaos she witnessed below, he did.

  “I am an evil man, Shadow. That I know. There is no denying it. I wanted to, once. I think I wanted to be good. I think I thought I was good, in my own twisted way.” His eyes actually looked to be watering. She heard a faint sizzling and then the imagined tears wafted up into the air like smoke. “I’d love nothing more than to be able to blame my actions over these last centuries on the taint of the World Apart.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I could. It’s as good an excuse as any. Better. But then, I wanted to win, Shadow. I still want to win. No matter my current path, I would like to believe that this is just a game between my former brothers and sisters and I, and with how many souls in the balance?”

  She shook her head and resisted the urge to spit into the melt. Movement up ahead drew her eye. She saw Alistair scaling the tower like a rabid squirrel. He looked to be clutching the body of one of the defenders in one arm and dropped it, bloody and still screaming, almost as an afterthought, before that pesky archer loosed a shaft that forced him to leap away.

  “But I started the war,” Val
our said. He was rambling, and she let him. “I went looking where I shouldn’t have. Where the Red Fox told me not to. Where she—most of all, she—told me not to.” He spat. She could not recall him ever having done so before. It was a crass, mortal act. It made him at once more sympathetic and easier to imagine killing. “The World turns on ironies, Shadow. You are one of the smallest and greatest of them.” She screwed her face up as she watched him, but he had already moved on.

  “I know how you must hate me,” he said, his purple eyes burning with some of that Ember fire as they turned her way. “But in this, if in nothing else, I am right. If we fail in the north, the World dies.”

  “World’s never done much for me,” Shadow sneered.

  “Perhaps it could,” he said, looking back to the Quartz Tower. “Once we’re gone.”

  Shadow liked the sound of that. She liked the sound of it more than she would have liked, and his look told her he knew it.

  “Now, then,” he said. “I think our new ally has demonstrated his prowess, if not his poise, well enough. No use having gone through the trouble of summoning him if the Witch’s knights rip him apart. Shall we?”

  Shadow made a great show of sighing, and it actually drew a laugh from the Sage.

  The ice cracked beneath their feet and the slush beneath soaked her to the knees. “You’re going to need to get a handle on those flames,” she said. She shrank back as he examined his palms and willed fire into them. They were roiling orange globes with shadowy centers, and rather than put off light, they seemed to drink it in, drenching his surroundings in a gray to match the skies.

  “Go,” he said. “I need more time.”

  Shadow smiled. “Is that you taking my orders for a cha—”

  “Go!”

  And she went, slipping away from his violent aura and delighting in the blast of cold as she broke the pocket back into the frozen waste. She ran toward the white ridge, which had begun to glitter as a shaft of yellow sunlight fought its way through the thick clouds above. Her eyes widened and she darted to the side, breaking the rough white crust with her shoulder as one of that damned archer’s arrows shot toward her.