“Northern cousins?” Iyana asked, a bit overwhelmed.
“The Faey originated in the Valley core, or so we believe,” Luna said. “But we didn’t all stay here. Have your folk never spoken of those in the wider world? The wilder tribes of Faey? We like to believe they are responsible for some of the darker tales of the Kin. Still, even those who settled in the far north and farther east had that darkness about them. They built crystalline towers and sat on thrones of mirrored glass, and things like those don’t get built without blood. Lots of it.”
Iyana racked her mind trying to think of everything she thought she knew of the Faey. Stories from childhood. But then, Mother Ninyeva was usually the teller of such tales, and she kept them full of light and life—the gifts of the Faey Iyana had grown up hearing. Now, she thought of the memory of Tu’Ren that she had invaded not so long ago. She remembered feeling what he had felt, forging his way through the dark, damp forests of the southern Valley. He had been afraid, but not of the rebels he was hunting; rather more of those he sought to protect. The Faey.
She had seen a body, the only marker that it had been a resident of Last Lake being the face, which was still intact. The rest of him had been turned inside out, burst like a sick shell, all meat and gristle. One of the Faeykin had turned her gifts against the hunters.
“I saw it in the deserts,” Iyana said absently. She blinked herself back into the present. “I saw hints of that darkness in Sen, and I even felt a bit of it myself, when things got … tense.”
“It is a sorry thing to have to turn the power of the Valley to such dark tasks,” Luna said. “But it is important we remember what we are capable of. Sometimes, it’s important to remind others.”
Iyana didn’t like the thought, but she saw Ceth nodding along. Ceth, the man who had died and been brought back before her very eyes. The miracle had not come by her hand, nor Sen’s, who had been taken by the darkness of the World Apart as much as by his own bitter heart, but rather by one of the Sages themselves and his tricks of time.
“Sen was a restless soul,” Luna said. “The elders say he believed they kept the true arts of the Faey from him. He was right, at least in part. But then, they feared what a mind like his might accomplish without a heart pure enough to wield it properly. Such a power is not to be taken lightly, nor its secrets expressed freely, even to one of our own.”
“Have—” Iyana started and then stopped, but Luna nodded for her to continue. She smiled sweetly, putting Iyana more at ease. “Have you ever been forced to use that power? To cut tethers rather than mend them?”
“Yes,” Luna said. She looked as if she were about to elaborate, but something held her back. Her next sentence became a swallow, and her eyes flickered down toward her empty cup, which she moved to fill. She took a swallow that nearly drained it again, and Iyana could see her eyes water from the heat. “Sen told himself a lie he could never grow into. He thought himself pure, his path righteous, but there was a taint in him. A blackness that might have run soul-deep. He did things during the Valley Wars that few among us could, and at an age most could barely raise a bow, never mind seize the life threads of others and bind them.”
Luna shuddered at the thought, as if having her tether seized was a fate worse than death. Iyana could see why she thought it, and pushed the swell of guilt aside for what she had done in the deserts, needed or otherwise.
“Sen could make a cat claw out its own eyes before he understood enough of the true art to close the thin cut left behind by a thorn or splinter,” Luna said. “But then,” she sighed, “who hasn’t lied to himself? Kenta here was never the soldier he thought himself to be.”
“And you were never the healer,” Kenta said. He shot it back with a bit more venom than Iyana thought he intended. Luna took it in her stride, but her look cooled.
“There comes a time when we all have to stop lying to ourselves,” Luna said, recovering some of her former good humor. “Besides, long as your healing took under my care, I don’t exactly remember you straining to leave that bed.” She raised her eyebrows as she finished, as if daring Kenta to say something to the contrary. He didn’t, even presented the ghost of a smile. Iyana did her best to wipe away its implications.
“The young will ever carry the weight of the old,” Kenta said somberly, and Iyana did not quite understand what he meant by it. “Mother Ninyeva stopped a war with words we’d been fighting for a generation. Makes it all look rather wasteful.”
Luna took on a wistful look. “Ninyeva could have been buried among us, but she was all fire in the end.”
Iyana remembered her pyre at the lake, and the salt she had shed before it. “We did the best we could,” Luna continued. “All of the tribes. Even the Rivermen.”
Kenta sneered but caught himself as Iyana watched him. He took a hurried sip, seeming embarrassed. It was still strange to her, hearing those of previous generations speak of the other Valley tribes. Iyana had grown up with a Rockbled of the Fork in their midst. He was stolid and stoic, yes, but she held no doubts about his goodness, even before he had played a large role in bringing her sister back down from the White Crest’s bloody citadel.
“He was good in the end,” Iyana said. She felt defensive and certainly sounded it, earning curious stares from the others. “Sen, I mean. And I’ll hold to that,” she said, firm. “Sen knew what he was. He was an arrow poorly aimed and done so with murderous intent, but his soul wasn’t as black as you think. It was bright and beautiful. He showed it in the end. He chose his side, and it wasn’t that of death.”
Luna regarded her for a long minute. She attempted to hide her scrutiny with another sip, but it did little to dull the effect. “I’d very much like to hear the full tale someday—of the desert road. Of the fight with the Eastern Dark.”
“I’m sure your elders were watching,” Kenta said derisively. Luna shot him a glare that he waved off. “Always watching.”
“We’ve endured just as much as you folk have,” Luna said. “The Dark Months have affected us all in this Valley. Uhtren’s corruption doubly so.”
Kenta screwed up his mouth and the tension grew rather than faded. Iyana shifted uncomfortably while Ceth looked from one to the other, eyes a little wider than they had been before.
“You have something to say, Griyen.” Luna said it as a statement of fact rather than a question. Kenta looked at Iyana sidelong and smiled disarmingly at Luna. It was tight. Forced.
“Better said in private.”
“There are no strangers here,” Luna challenged, smooth as milk and soft as silk while Kenta ground his teeth.
“You do realize the Valley corruption was just a piece of a larger whole,” Kenta said harshly. “You do realize we’re now fully caught up in the War of Sages.”
“We’ve been caught up in it ever since Uhtren fell to the darkness,” Luna said evenly. “Ever since he took the Dark Hearts for safekeeping. A thing we did not see, just as Mother Ninyeva did not see it. Not for a long while, while men and women fought and died under the talons of the Dark Kind.” She looked toward the wall Iyana guessed to be facing northwest. “There was a veil on that place. Has been for a long time. The Between was distorted around the peaks. We thought it the work of the Dark Kind. Bloody irony that it was our once guardian.”
“You came out of the Eastern Woods following the Siege of Hearth,” Kenta said. His voice was low, and Iyana could see that he was working to keep control of it. “And we appreciate the aid you lent.”
“But you wanted it sooner.”
“I don’t care about that,” Kenta said, “Not now.” Luna winced. “I care about the path ahead. We’re on it, now. As you know, some of our most powerful Embers are out there now, searching for the Sages to—”
“To what end?” Luna asked. Iyana thought to speak, but Luna continued. “Chasing Sages from one land to the next, casting fire and death in one direction or the other. We survived the siege, Kenta, in case you forgot. Let the Sages burn themselves out in
their private war. Sending the Embers out was foolhardy.”
Kenta was silent for a space, and Iyana saw Luna’s wide eyes begin to twitch, her lips tremble. The woman feared she had gone too far. Said too much.
“You speak of the War of Sages,” Kenta said, his voice even lower now. Considered. Falsely calm. “You speak of the greatest war our world has ever known as if it is a storm you can watch pass by.”
“Aren’t they all?” Luna asked. Now she looked to Ceth and Iyana for support. “Aren’t all wars nothing more than storms of steel and flame?”
“You had no trouble joining in the Valley Wars,” Kenta said, unwilling to drop the subject. “Adding your own steel to that one. Spilling your own blood, no matter your talk of life and healing.”
“Monsters had faces at that time,” Luna said. “Names and families. It is because of that conflict that we have held ourselves from the larger one this long. We turned our gifts in the direction they should have been all along: inward. That war made Sen and his ilk, and killed plenty more before the world had a chance to make them what She would.”
She paused, and her face changed, her expression morphing into what Iyana could only describe as pleading. “This war has no faces, Kenta. Its ending and beginning span the horizon, too far to see. To join it is folly. To fight it is doom.”
Luna seemed shamed as she finished. She looked down at her cup, or rather at the quivering hands that held it. She took a steadying breath and sighed it out.
“You’re right about one horizon,” Iyana said, halting. Luna turned suddenly tired eyes her way. “We don’t know how far back the conflict between the Sages goes. We just know it is far. Far enough not to matter anymore. But its ending is coming.”
“How can you know that?” Luna asked. She sounded almost broken by the thought of such suffocating inevitability.
“I’ve seen it,” Iyana said. “I’ve seen what’s coming. Luna, I have been to the World Apart. More so, I’ve felt the dark intent that propels it. The War of Sages isn’t going to end because one wins, though there are less of them every day—”
“I suppose we have your Embers to thank for that,” Luna put in. Iyana couldn’t tell if she meant it in a bad way and pushed on regardless.
“Their war is going to end because the next one is about to begin,” Iyana said. Ceth was leaning forward. He hadn’t touched his cup before, but now he raised it to his lips and drank it in a single swig. “The real one is about to begin. The last one.”
Luna chortled. It was a rude sound that echoed in the stuffy confines. “Last war. As long as men remain, as long as there’s a sword or pike or Landkist born who learns what his gifts can do when turned on another, there will never be a last war.”
“Exactly,” Iyana said.
She left the thought hanging and let the implications wash over them. Even Kenta swallowed, seeming taken aback by the thought, though he had been arguing the same point as her. In truth, Iyana didn’t know what she had seen when she had glimpsed the World Apart in her shared vision with Ray Valour. She didn’t know if she had been there or merely watched from afar. She couldn’t know if what she had seen was real, nor why it was coming. But she knew what she had felt, and fear like that wasn’t born of nothing.
“You are not here for Sen’s memory alone, then,” Luna said. Iyana hated the look she received, but there it was. Worst of all, it was true. Iyana tried to shake it off and thought about shouting it down, but then, they had come to beg aid, and to demand it if that didn’t work. And they had done it carrying the body of one of their own. Iyana hadn’t considered how that might look.
She felt sick. It wasn’t true. It was true. It was an inseparable mix of the two, and one Iyana would lose sleep over for months to come.
“You’re here to recruit for your war,” Luna said. She fixed her accusing gaze on Kenta. “Your last war.”
“Surely not all of the Faey wish to hide in the woods,” Ceth said. His words may as well have carried blades and flaming pitch. Luna swung her head toward him, but the Northman was uncowed. He didn’t so much as flinch. “Shek, Tirruhn,” Ceth said. “The warriors of your lands seem prepared for a fight.”
“Prepared to receive one,” Luna said. “Not to seek one out.”
Ceth’s expression told them he believed her to be mistaken.
“Recruiting won’t be necessary,” Iyana said and felt like she was lying. “When the war comes, you’ll be in it whether you want to be or not. But we are here to ask your help. There is a great darkness coming. Much greater than we can face alone. Any of us.”
“Greater than even the mighty Embers can stop?” Luna asked, and Iyana did not like the tone with which she asked it. “Greater than Linn Ve’Ran, she who would be a Sage, can handle?”
Iyana swallowed. Luna eyed her steadily.
“Kenta is right,” Iyana said, trying to recover her wits. “You folk do a lot of watching.”
“That is how one learns, Iyana Ve—”
“And that is what I’m here to do,” Iyana interrupted. “To learn, just as Mother Ninyeva did before me. Kole, Linn and the others are out there, and they need our help. Maybe they can stop the war from coming. Halt the World Apart in its dark tracks. The Sages started the world on its current path. It stands to reason the way to end it rests with them, and those who are powerful enough to stop them.” She remembered Valour’s words, the Eastern Dark telling her the Sages must die. She believed him, even though a part of her screamed at her not to.
“Maybe I can help them do it,” Iyana said. “If not, we need to know what we’re up against. We need to know how to stop it. Or—since you seem partial to the strategy yourself—how to endure it.”
Luna actually leaned back, surprised at Iyana’s words and the barbs they held, but she didn’t seem displeased.
“And you’ll learn how to stop the Sages, halt the World Apart, plunge the mountains into the sea,” Luna said, “by getting some pointers from old-timers.”
“Seeing is everything,” Iyana said with a smirk. “That is how one learns, after all.”
Iyana half expected Luna to bristle, but she smiled instead and Kenta matched her, inclining his head.
Luna shrugged. “You found them before, did you not? Your sister and her companions. You found them in the Deep Lands.”
“How—”
“Did we not just go over this point twice over?” Luna asked playfully. “My own Sight isn’t so great, but the progress of the Faey Mother’s legacy hasn’t gone unnoticed. Not even the elders could see what your champions were up to until the battle was joined in earnest at the peaks. It is no small thing that you reached them. Perhaps you can again.” Iyana smiled and felt her heart swell. “What that will accomplish is better your guess than mine, I suppose.”
“It’s not all about seeing,” Iyana said. “There is a great power in the Faeykin. Great power within us.”
“Enough to challenge the legions of the World Apart?” Luna asked, sounding dubious.
“Maybe. After all, Ninyeva fought against the White Crest himself, and in his true form. I suspect it is only through her intervention that Kole and Linn were able to beat him at all.”
“Then there was the small matter of the King of Ember joining the fray,” Luna said, but Iyana shrugged it off.
“I know what I saw. She fought him. She fought him in all his glory. A great beast made of light and vapor. A violent storm that would not pass us by.”
Luna gave a slight nod, allowing the point. “Ninyeva was not all power,” she said. “And neither are the few Faeykin who have lived to see such advanced age as those you saw today. What you are after is the thing a man like Sen always chased without ever grasping why. What you seek, Iyana Ve’Ran, is control.”
“Control.”
“Not of some external power,” Luna said, holding up a finger. “Not of the heavens or the skies or the tethers all around. All things Sen sought, and things that would have doomed him and many others bes
ides had he achieved them. Control of the self. That is what Ninyeva had, and that is what you seek. I do not believe the elders among us can grant you some secrets you seek, just as they couldn’t teach the Faey Mother as much as learn from her. But maybe they can point you in the right direction.”
It made Iyana happy to hear Luna use Ninyeva’s title, one she had always assumed the Emberfolk had bestowed upon her. It made her proud.
“She was my teacher too, you know,” Luna said. She said it with a hint of challenge. “I mourned for her when she passed, just as I mourned for all who lost their lives in the last season.” She met Kenta’s eyes as she said it. “I only wish I might’ve known her as well as you.” She drained the last of her tea and set the stone cup down with a rattle before rising and stretching. Kenta and Ceth matched her, so Iyana did the same. They gathered up the packs they had deposited by the door.
“I’d invite you to sleep in my bed tonight, Griyen,” Luna said, heedless of the way Ceth stared and the way Iyana tried not to, “but I’m angry with you.”
Kenta laughed and Iyana smiled. It seemed everything Luna said was said plainly—a pleasant departure from the riddles Iyana had expected on coming to the Eastern Woods.
“Visit the old fool on the morrow,” Luna said to Kenta. “You remember the one. He’ll tell you everything you want to hear. Do me a favor, though,” she said, and Iyana was unsure whether she was joking or not, “don’t tell Shek we’ve got another war coming. She gets excited enough every time the Dark Months close. It’s been disappointing for her to know there might be less of the Dark Kind now that old bird is no longer roosting at the peaks.”
“I don’t think she’ll be disappointed,” Iyana said. “Not for long.” She said it lightly and Luna laughed, but there was a silence that stretched longer than it might have otherwise.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 41
