She sighed again and made as if to withdraw back to her feathered bed, but a flash of movement from below gave her pause. At first, Linn thought it was another of the snowy owls streaking across the cold expanse, but as she focused down, she saw the hem of a night robe, translucent white like the faintest snow, and she saw that the armor the queen had worn before had been shed in favor of bare skin.
The queen paused beneath one of the red-leafed trees and motioned one of the owls down, cooing to it softly as it fluffed and clung to her arm with black claws that could not break what looked to be the softest skin.
Linn went down to her.
She did not know which stair led to which and which towers spilled out onto the oval pond below, so she rode the wind down. The northern winds were always close. They were howling and strong where the Valley’s currents were often warm and gentle, teasing more than threatening. Linn liked the northern winds and had made allies of them as she had ridden the jets and invisible streams up through the black shelves to the west.
The queen spun lazily as Linn drifted down, landing in a crouch a little harder than she had intended. She straightened, but the Sage was still locked in some private exchange with the bird of prey, which glanced at Linn stoically at first, and then with a bit of fervor as it glimpsed something it did not expect in her eyes.
The owl flew away, forgoing the blue frosted branches of the frozen garden in favor of the open sky. Linn watched it depart, wondering how long it would take to leave her sight if she continued to stare.
“You’re still in your traveling clothes,” the queen said. Linn had decided to join her on a whim, not considering the potential dangers of startling one of the world’s last great powers.
“I suppose I am,” Linn said, looking down at her threadbare brown pants and white-yellow undershirt that had verged a lot closer to the former than the latter when they had first set out from the Valley. “As least I took the vest off.” She shrugged sheepishly.
“We can have fresh clothes brought to your chambers,” the queen said. “Which one is it, again?”
Linn turned back toward the base of the tower she’d leapt down from and scanned up, only to realize it was much higher—and more beset with windows, ledges and private balconies—than she had first thought. “I … I don’t know.”
The queen laughed. It was loud and could have sounded crass coming from someone else, but the throaty sound felt right with the Sage. She nodded to a shadowed alcove and Linn followed her line of sight, catching a glimpse of one of the fur-clad warriors—or perhaps a servant—disappearing from view.
“No matter,” she said. “We will see you clothed in more appropriate garb for the northern chill.”
“I must say,” Linn offered, “I’ve grown used to it more quickly than I might’ve thought.” She held out a hand, weaving a near-visible swirling current of wind in a knot over her hand. “On the road out of Center, I counted more on the hot auras of my Ember companions. Now that we’re as far east as your frozen sea, however, I feel refreshed.”
The queen smiled. “Do you see anything below our feet?”
Linn looked. Where from above it looked to be a frozen lake, or else gray stone frosted over, now Linn saw that the oval expanse on which they stood was little more than a barrier separating them from a chasm that stretched far out of sight, its blue-white filtered shadows spilling down into a black depth. She had assumed them to be above the throne room where they had first encountered the queen, but she thought that chamber must be behind them.
“Darkness,” Linn said, sounding more afraid than she felt.
“A vent, they call it,” the queen said, tapping her foot to the surface. She had gray shoes on, and now Linn could tell that they were metal, like armored boots. In fact, the only other clothing the Sage wore now apart from the gossamer gown that left very little to the imagination were those same half-formed silver gauntlets that encased two fingers on each hand.
“I do not pretend to know all the secrets the earth holds, but this is one of its many pores,” the queen said, looking down into those endless depths below the glass. “There are several beneath the spine that makes up this mountain range. The last mountain range in the north. The air is not air but more gas and fumes.”
“Vent,” Linn said, trailing off as she tried to stop herself from gazing at the god’s form beneath the threadbare covering. The queen seemed to notice—how could she not?—and quirked her hips slightly, the folds of the robe shifting and the light of the moon overhead shining through more clearly. Now, Linn saw all, and felt her face flush as she tore her eyes away from the canted hips and supple chest to the angled face of one who was not entirely the same as she.
“I appear strange to you,” she said, and Linn nodded slowly before she realized what she was doing. “Still, you have seen my kind before. At least, you’ve seen those who claim to be the same.” She turned and Linn had to work to keep her eyes from drifting as she followed her on a lazy, circuitous route around the courtyard. “The Valley Faey,” she said, brushing the leaves as they passed beneath them. They seemed to curl at her touch, as if they were holding their breath, only to expand as she released them.
“You are one of the Faey?” Linn asked, stopping.
The queen paused and seemed to consider it for a time. “I suppose I am not unlike them, though it has been some time since I’ve seen those folk. Some time.” She drifted, both with her thoughts and feet. “I do not know how much they’ve changed since last I was within that black cloister.”
“You’ve been to the Valley,” Linn said, not caring that she sounded like a child. To one so old, surely she was, though she could not quite rationalize the lithe, graceful and unlined form before her with one who walked in a new Valley, long before the Emberfolk had come down from the north.
The queen laughed again, but this time the sound held a note of sadness.
“I have been,” she said. “Long ago.” She turned and met Linn’s eyes. Her own were yellow as sunbursts, and Linn did not know how she had taken them to be wild and threatening the day before. Then again, a hawk could nest in the same breath in which it could dive and kill.
She stepped toward Linn. Linn thought she should take a step back out of decorum, but resisted out of principle. The Sage seemed to read this. She wore the beginnings of a wry grin as she met Linn’s eyes. She was not tall and regal but rather ordinary, which did nothing to diminish her strange beauty. Linn felt a stab of panic as she wondered if some strange magic was at work. She frowned, and the queen tilted her head as if in question.
The queen reached out and Linn offered her hands as she might to a waiting prince. She did so without thinking, not breaking eye contact with the woman who seemed more wild and beautiful with each passing second. Her fingers tingled and she felt a strange shock as the warmth of the queen’s skin clashed with the stinging cold of the slender fingers encased in metal.
Linn found herself tracing the dips below the queen’s large eyes and riding the hills that were her raised cheeks. She slowed at the dip below her lips, which were thin, but pink and full of life. They broke into a smile and Linn shook her head and took a half step back.
“It is normal, child,” the queen said, placating and giving a gentle squeeze as Linn tried to pull her hands back.
“What is?” Linn asked, feeling as if she were still partially in the grips of a dream, only a more pleasant one. She wondered by aching degrees what had come over her. She had never felt such desire, and for a woman, though the folk of the Valley did not find fault with either bent. Reeds bend whichever way the wind blows, they would say.
“The attraction you feel,” she said. Her voice was low and hauntingly sonorous. “It is normal to feel it in the presence of the eternal.”
That broke the spell, and now Linn did pull away. She felt a stab of regret as she broke contact, the aching she felt dissipating and the flush falling from her face and breast. The queen looked as if she had been slapped. Sh
e stared, wide-eyed and insulted, but soon recovered and forced another easy smile.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to presume.”
Linn searched her and glanced unconsciously at the body beneath its clinging garb. She swallowed. “It’s fine.”
The queen seemed to think about taking another step toward Linn, closing the reopened gap between them, but stopped. There was an earnest vanity about her that Linn did not know whether to find alluring or disquieting. She settled for a mix of the two.
Linn felt awkward of a sudden, though the queen simply went back to examining each of her spiked red leaves in the oval garden. Linn could see that she watched her out of the corners of her eyes, waiting on her to speak.
“Your palace is strangely empty for a place so grand.”
The queen’s hand paused in the path from one leaf to the next, her fingers curling back against her palm. Linn hadn’t meant it to sound as rude as it did, but then, it was strange, and now that she had said it, she felt it all the more.
“Yes,” the queen said. “I suppose it is.” She seemed to gaze around at the towers, spires and hollow windows as if with fresh eyes. There was a sadness there that could not have been anything other than bare truth, and Linn felt shame for having called it out.
“The people of the mountains,” Linn said, trying to forge her way through the sudden and widening divide. “Captain Fennick’s people. They are not allowed in the towers?”
“They have done very well by me,” the queen said. She spoke as if answering an accusation. Linn supposed it was. “Fennick and his men are welcome in this palace. They choose the warmth of the earthen halls instead. It is their choice, and one I do not begrudge them.” She went to reach for one of the branches again, but stopped and let her hand drop to her side. “In a way, this place is a maze of memory. Even sorrow.”
She bowed her head and brought one silver-clad hand up to cover her breast above her heart, closing her eyes as if in prayer or communion. Linn wondered what a Sage would pray to, and thought it could only be the past and the ghosts that drifted through it.
Her eyes flitted up toward Linn before looking behind her, and Linn heard the mild ting of armor settling into its grooves. She turned and saw a suit of gold that looked the color of honey beneath the light of the moon. She smiled, but the Blue Knight—the titan known as Tundra—did not smile back. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the queen, and in that look Linn saw a cold question that set a grip on her heart and caused the air to stir about her.
With a slight nod, he moved off, and Linn heard the queen’s sigh and relaxed some.
“Try not to mind him,” she said as Linn turned back to her, her defenses beginning to swell once more. “It has been a difficult era for my people.”
“Era,” Linn said.
“Not for Tundra and his ilk,” the queen said, “but for his mother and father, and theirs before them.” She had pulled a dry leaf down from one of the lowest branches and twisted it by the stem. She crushed it with a hollow crackle and let the pieces fall to the frozen ground. “We have been fighting the Sage of Balon Rael for some time. The Eastern Dark has long feared me the most, but Balon was the one who acted on it. If Valour feared a thing, Balon knew it must be grave indeed.”
Linn was shaking her head at the recounting, and the queen noticed and stopped before going further. “You must hate us,” she said, bare and honest in a way Linn found disarming.
“I …” Linn started and then stopped. “I’m not sure, to be completely honest.”
The queen nodded. “I can understand why.” She looked up toward the balcony Linn had floated down from, and though she gave no outward indication, Linn had the impression she was imagining Kole smoldering in his chambers.
“We are full of the same folly as man,” the queen said, lowering her eyes once more. “My kind are not ageless, but we are near enough to think ourselves infallible in one century or the next. When things like that come to disagreement …
“But we have also seen much,” the queen said. “Some of us saw the mistake for what it was at the outset.”
A shadow had fallen over the yard, sliding with a cool swiftness over the frosted glass just as it did over the vapors in the sky above. Unnatural black clouds that reminded Linn of the Dark Months. It cast an ominous mood on their exchange, and the queen seemed to feel it just the same as Linn.
“The mistake,” Linn said, grasping at the thought the Sage had let slip. “It has to do with the World Apart, right? What happened?”
“Surely you know,” the queen said as much as asked. She almost smiled, but then gave a slight shake, as if she stood in disbelief. “You come all this way,” she said. “You cross the black plains to the south and survive the perils of vast and deadly Center, traverse the frosted plains and fly atop the black shelves. You pass beneath the Quartz Tower that is the last of its kind and survive a violent encounter with the Blue Knights—the greatest warriors the world over—”
“I have seen the greatest warrior the world over,” Linn said. “His name is Maro.”
“The Emerald Blade is shattered.”
“If you saw the way he moves, even still,” Linn said, “you might wonder if some of the Sage of Center’s power remains in those veins.”
“The fact remains,” the queen said, her patience seeming to wear thin, “you have come to the edge of the world, as far east as the Endless Sea.”
“We have.”
“With what purpose in mind?”
“To confront T’Alon Rane and learn the truth of his service to the Eastern Dark,” Linn said. “To learn what we could to stave off the devastation that visits our Valley people each and every time the sun forsakes us. To stop it. To stop it all.”
“The Ember king is dead.” The queen’s yellow eyes regained some of their former luster, sparkling like the faces in Tundra’s ornate, well-worn armor.
“Then we will have our answers from the Eastern Dark himself.”
Linn thought she sounded like Kole, bent on a path without knowing its aim—only its direction. Forward. Into the fire. One after the next until the Sage of the East came to heel and undid wrongs she never could.
The queen began to walk a slow, circuitous path around Linn, and Linn felt suddenly like a fox in the steady, warning gaze of a circling wolf. The woman she saw before her—the being—seemed every bit the Sage her followers and enemies alike referred to as ‘Frostfire.’ She was testing Linn. Prodding her. Looking for weakness.
She paused.
“Let us walk,” she said. “There is something I want to show you. Something that I hope you will take as a sign of trust between us.”
Linn cast a lingering look back up at the tower, searching for signs of the others as they rested in their adjoined chambers. She wondered if they had noticed her absence, and what they might think to see her with the queen, walking nearly arm in arm, like one Sage with another.
She sighed and followed.
The queen moved from the oval garden beneath an arch on the northern side. There was a stairwell to the left Linn hadn’t seen at first. She wondered if it had grown at the Sage’s command, and as she followed, she thought the shimmering robe the queen wore grew a little more solid and opaque as they walked. The stair was made of the same strange, cold glass as the rest of the palace. Seeing Linn hesitate at the top, the Sage flicked her wrist and gave a twist with a finger, almost as an afterthought, and the stairs frosted over.
Linn tested them and found their grip to be rough and firm on her bare feet, though colder than before. She felt even more like a fool for not donning her boots than she did for following a Sage down into the bowels of her ancient keep.
“The World Apart is a place of darkness and death,” the queen said, her voice echoing, deep and droning in the narrow, winding stair. The walls, which had grown darker, soon lit with a soft yellow light that could have been coming from above or below; it was difficult to tell by the way the faces and blocks s
hifted within the walls. It was as if the whole of the palace was an extension of the Sage’s will, and Linn was caught up in the sheer breadth and magnitude of her power. So much so that she nearly collided with her at the bottom landing.
The room was long and had a low ceiling. The blue-white walls shone with the light of a dozen candles on bronze posts that framed a carpeted walkway. The queen took a steadying breath and began to walk forward between the gentle, dancing flames, and Linn took up her wake.
She shook her head as she stared at the walls, which were more jagged here in the depths of the palace. The Nevermelt seemed rough-hewn, or rough-grown, and there were deep blue shadows that rushed overhead. There was a sound that reminded her of the dream that had woken her in the first place and started this whole nighttime adventure. The queen paused before an iron door. There were no guards posted. She reached one hand out toward the handle, hesitated, and withdrew, looking to Linn almost as if she needed support.
“You feel it,” the queen said. She nearly reached out for Linn’s face but refrained.
“What is it?” Linn asked without taking the time to think on what the queen meant.
“It is the World Apart,” she said, grave. “It is very close, now.”
“It sounds as if it’s in the very walls,” Linn said, looking around. The chamber seemed darker than it had been before. Or perhaps it was simply her imagination and mood playing tricks on her.
“It will come from the east,” the queen said. “But it will strike all the lands the world over. It will open scars the likes of which even your troubled Valley has never known. The Night Lords will spill in, along with hordes uncounted. Legions of Dark Kind, diseased and enraged.”
“Why would you go calling to a thing like that?” Linn asked, feeling the dread prickle at her spine. She shook her head.
“Power,” the Sage said. And now Linn knew she was speaking to the Witch of the North. She knew it by the way she stood and the place in which they conversed. She knew it by her bearing and by the way her eyes shifted. Calculating, emotional, controlled.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 36
