“Aye,” Fennick said, not catching the impact the term had on Kole. Likely it was more literal in this land—a common name given to messengers rather than a title bestowed upon those who could evade demons as readily as a fox could a pack of hounds. “Could be Yana held him back. Could be she sent him on, and he was taken by the Eastern Dark in the night.”
“Could be he just hasn’t arrived yet,” Linn offered, but Fennick’s nod was distracted. His vacant look returned to Kole some of his former urgency, and he found himself peering through the glare of the cavern mouth to the shining palace, which took on a glow of molten gold not unlike the armor of Tundra and his Blue Knights—the strangest Landkist Kole had yet encountered in the wider world.
“You lot are here to fight him.”
Kole felt Linn’s hand grip his own once more and came back to the conversation. Fennick scanned the table, but seeing the direction of the others’ gazes, settled on Kole. Kole swallowed.
“That is why you’ve come, is it not?” he asked again, his tone taking on the earnest need of a child. “To help the queen turn back this darkness? The others have been speaking of it since you’ve come. They said you’re the ones the queen has seen in her visions. That you lot could be the key to stopping the coming darkness.”
“The World Apart,” Kole said.
“Yes,” Fennick said. “The World Apart. They said it’s coming. They say the queen has been doing everything in her power to hold it back with her magic. That’s why she’s barely left her palace in recent months. I didn’t believe it. We’ve never been bothered by the Dark Kind like the folk have to the south. Like you lot have. But the skies have taken on an amber glow too early for the season. The nights are getting longer and the days shorter. And then there’s that smell to the air, like … like—”
“Rot,” Baas said.
“Death,” Misha intoned.
“Both,” Fennick agreed, nodding rapidly. “Both, and something else besides.”
“Magic,” Linn finished. “And not that of the world. Not that of the Landkist.”
“Nothing close,” Fennick said. He had a wild look that was beginning to make Kole nervous. It was infectious. “But,” the captain leaned in, though there were none close enough to parse words from their exchange, “it is something that could be coming from him. From the Eastern Dark. It was he who first discovered the place, opened the door and all that.” He waved his hand, as if he was relaying half-remembered rumor rather than a cold and constant prophecy that had defined much of Kole’s existence, and that of all people the world over, whether they knew it or not.
Kole was somewhat at a loss for words, which struck him as strange. Normally, he’d have been the first to lend his voice to a chorus denouncing the Eastern Dark, holding him up as everything that was wrong and wicked in the world. Cursing him as the scourge of all living things and the source of all strife between the tribes of men, the cause of the terrible War of Sages that had swept them all up into a bitter conflict whose beginning was lost to the farthest reaches of memory. That nested within the living memories of only a select few.
Like the Witch of the North. The Frostfire Sage. The queen in her crystal palace.
“So we have long believed,” Linn said, answering for Kole. She said it haltingly and without fervor, and for once, Kole couldn’t say he blamed her.
Fennick regarded her with a startled look. He looked at Kole as if waiting for him to bolster her words, reinforce them.
He tried.
“The Eastern Dark is no friend to us,” Kole said, the words sounding a sight less harsh than they could have put another way. “He is our enemy.” Fennick nodded quickly. “We followed him from the heart of our lands to the edge of the world. We passed over the greatest wonders we’ve yet seen and endured horrors. We got ourselves mixed up in yet another war, and I dare say we chose the right side there. We fought with the legacy of one Sage and against the dominating, stagnant presence of another until we helped to bring him down.”
Fennick smiled a wicked smile. He had seen the evil of the Sage of Balon Rael firsthand. If the folk of the north had been fighting him with even half the ferocity of the folk of Center and doubly long, surely his death was cause for celebration. Cause for hope, and Kole was beginning to understand why Fennick’s people looked at them with lingering stares he could not place until now. They were not looks of fear or suspicion, though some of that was no doubt mixed in. Rather, they were looks of covered awe. These were the Landkist of the Valley core. Landkist who had thrown down one Sage who had festered in a deep and dark corruption before destroying another in the heart of Center.
And now they were here, come to the northern flats and resting in feathered beds in their queen’s white palace. Surely they were here to protect their own and kill the one who hunted her. Surely they were here to stop the Eastern Dark and help her lead her people into a new, bright and shining day.
Surely.
Kole realized he hadn’t truly answered Fennick’s question just as he realized he had no need to. He had said enough to appease the captain. Fennick’s smile had turned inward. It was a private look reserved for one who had lost much in the War of Sages, and who very much looked forward to seeing its ending. Never mind the fact that one Sage had drawn his people into the conflict in the first place. Never mind the fact that the very power who slept in her glittering jewel and set them to mine ore from the bowels of the mountain range had brought them little more than blood as recompense.
“We’re going to give him something to remember,” Fennick said, grinding his teeth. “He’s been hiding for a long time. He’s soft compared to the others. He slinks in the darkness, hides in the bogs. If he’s out now, he must be desperate indeed.”
The same words that seemed to have Fennick excited only called up fresh doubt in Kole’s heart.
Desperate, indeed. And Kole had finally given himself the freedom to wonder why.
Kole felt his bright mood beginning to sour. He felt something wet nudge his hand and looked down to see Shifa staring up at him with those chestnut eyes of hers, white-tipped tail wagging and white-tipped ears pointed up straight as arrowheads.
“Done inspecting the inhabitants?” Kole asked her.
“I don’t think there’s a rear end Shifa hasn’t sniffed since we’ve been here,” Jenk said, laughing.
“How’s the smell?” Misha asked the hound, who tilted her head. The Ember rewarded her with a rare laugh of her own, and Kole wondered if she had gotten into something else besides the clear water Fennick had served them.
Kole took the last few chunks of meat and gristle from the bones on display—they had apparently been ravenous—and attempted to lay them on the stone beneath the bench. Shifa was less patient than she seemed. She snatched the roasted meat and retreated to her place beneath the table, warming Linn’s feet and ankles as she worked over her meal.
Kole felt a pang of guilt seeing the hound’s skin and flattened fur sliding over the exposed grooves her ribs made. But then, they all looked very much the same. Kole could already feel his stomach complaining at the unexpected work it had been called upon to do on such a fresh and bloody meal. He could hear similar complaints coming from the others, the loudest coming from the direction of Baas Taldis.
The Riverman smiled when Fennick raised his eyebrows at him.
Linn nudged Baas in the side with her elbow. “You speaking to the rock, or is that the sound of you being just as human as the rest of us?”
Baas shrugged, but his smile didn’t drop. If anything, it grew to the point of threatening dimples.
“Thank the skies,” Misha said, rolling her eyes dramatically. Baas looked at her quizzically, wondering if she was addressing him. Misha turned a withering look in his direction, telling him he should know exactly what she meant. “You may not give voice to your complaining as readily as Jenk or Shifa,” the light-haired Ember beside her bristled while Shifa chose to ignore the exchange, “but you’ve been in
a mood since we snatched you back from that timber fortress in the west.”
Most at the table laughed, and Kole smiled, but he watched Baas closely. The Riverman took Misha’s jesting in his stride, but Kole could see the tightness beneath the look. In truth, Baas had spent more time with T’Alon Rane than any of them, both being prisoners of the Sage of Balon Rael. He had even fought him in single combat and—to the Willows’ reports—had done more than hold his own. He had fought the Sage before the rest of them, and he had arguably done the most to bring that fell fortress to the ground along with the titan who’d erected it—a rotten perch from which to survey his paranoid campaign and what blood it yielded.
“Baas,” Misha said, her smile dropping as she picked up the same tension as Kole. “I am happy to have helped in the snatching. Center didn’t suit you. This place, though …” She let it hang. Linn and Jenk exchanged glances, while Fennick looked from one of them to the next, unsure how to proceed.
Baas’s face colored. He wasn’t as swarthy as the Emberfolk, but he was darker than Jenk. His face took on the hue of a young plum, and when next he smiled, it was true and Misha’s redoubled to see it.
“It is good to be among friends, here at the end of the world,” Baas said.
Jenk reached over to clasp him on the wrist and came away shaking his hand out. Misha did the same, her face not betraying her own pain despite Baas’s relaxed boulder of a squeeze. Kole took something else from the exchange, particularly from Baas’s words. He looked at the whorls in the wooden table and thought he could see them spinning round the dark knots at their centers. They looked like tears. Like windows into nothing. When he looked up, he saw Linn staring at him.
The great, many-towered palace behind her now shone with a golden brilliance Kole could hardly bear to look upon for longer than a few seconds. It obscured a hulking figure clad in metal that approached them. It could have been Baas, if the Riverman were not seated among them. Instead, Kole swallowed his displeasure as the Blue Knight approached them, wending his way among the stalagmites and not sparing more than a dispassionate glance at the mountainfolk who parted before him or skittered out of his unerring path.
“Company,” Kole said and Linn, Baas, Jenk, Misha and Fennick spun on their bench to see.
Fennick stood as the man approached, nearly tripping himself as his feet became tangled in the wooden supports. “Tundra,” he said, extending his hand. The Blue Knight took his time switching his piercing gold-speckled eyes from Kole and the others to the northern captain. He looked down at his hand as if it were an unwashed wound or some poison, and Fennick withdrew.
“The queen would have you in her company,” Tundra said. His voice was lower than Baas’s, but Kole thought its bitterness clashed with the abject beauty of the being who gave voice to it. There was something very strange about the Blue Knights—this one most of all. They were old, Kole knew. Very old. In a way, they reminded him of the Faey of the Valley, though he had rarely glimpsed them. They reminded him of Iyana, albeit larger, stronger and more war-like.
“Have you word from the Quartz Tower?” Fennick asked, ignoring Tundra’s address. The Blue Knight’s eyes darted back to him so quickly he flinched and nearly took a backward step. Though Kole could see the scars of battle evidenced on Fennick’s face, he feared this Landkist. Kole remembered the fight above the black shelves. Tundra had been formidable, but he guessed the man had kept his best tricks in check, to be used only in a moment of great need.
It was a good thing their company had plenty of fire Tundra and his charges had yet to see. Kole glanced at Linn, who was watching the exchange between Tundra and Fennick wearing a frown, and smiled a private smile. Hers was a quick, blinding fire that Tundra had already seen, and Kole knew now why the Blue Knight’s intimidating gaze had not lingered over her.
“No word,” Tundra said after a long delay, and before Fennick could speak up, he cut him off. “The queen says no party is to leave the walls. Not now.” His gaze swept across the table once more. “Not with enemies so close.”
“May I inquire,” Jenk started, unconcerned, “why the queen has requested our presence?”
“You may,” Tundra said without hesitation. Jenk waited expectantly, but no answer came. Tundra looked to Kole and then flinched as Shifa exploded from beneath the bench, her meal done and her attention now fixed on the new presence in their midst. Tundra let loose a small breath and Kole tried to stifle a laugh as the hound sniffed at his embroidered and metal-studded pants and golden suit with all its jewels.
Tundra’s hand eased downward, and Kole tensed, his fingers sliding back along the table as his thoughts turned to his Everwood blades, always warm and waiting in their tattered, oiled sheaths upon his back. But the Blue Knight did not summon a translucent blade, nor a crushing mace to dash against Shifa’s skull. Instead, he simply rested the palm of his hand on the top of her head between her ears, which flattened and folded back at his touch.
He withdrew, his face not even hinting at a smile, and turned back toward the cave mouth.
“I think we’re meant to follow?” Jenk said, looking askance at the others.
Misha snorted. “I’ve half a mind to show him the end of my spear before I show him obedience.”
“You always have half a mind—” Jenk started.
“More than half a mind, then,” Misha returned before he’d finished.
“We should go,” Linn said, moving to stand. Baas moved to match her without hesitation, while Kole watched her. “We are guests, after all,” she said to the collected Embers in their stubborn seats. “The Frostfire Sage could prove the difference in the battles to come. Better she thinks well of us than not.”
“Do they still think we’re emissaries of the Eastern Dark?” Jenk asked. “Or some displaced lackeys of the Sage of Balon Rael?” He sniffed. “These folk are more paranoid—” He stopped when he noted Fennick standing still just a few feet away, where Tundra had left him.
“We know less than little about these lands,” Kole said, coming to stand. “Even less about their people and what’s afflicted them, come against them. We would hardly be as welcoming as we’d like to think under similar circumstances.”
“Fair enough,” Jenk said. Misha watched Kole, but her eyes focused on Linn. Something wasn’t sitting well with her, and Kole could see that it had to do with Linn. Perhaps how quick she’d been to accept Tundra’s command.
They moved back onto the narrow footing of the path between stalagmites Fennick had taken them on. It was a wonder how close the cave mouth seemed and yet how twisting, circuitous a route one had to take to reach it.
Fennick was left standing with all the tension Kole would expect of him, given his want. Given his need to see after the wellbeing of his men at the Quartz Tower.
“Captain Fennick,” Kole said, standing off to the side so the others could follow the path Tundra had taken. Shifa had already gone ahead, unworried about Kole’s dalliance. “Captain.” Fennick blinked and tried to turn a smile on him, but it came up lacking.
“If we’ve no word by sundown,” Kole said, stepping closer to him and looking about for wandering ears, “we will go out. You and I. You’ll go to Yana, or meet her runner halfway, out on the flats.”
“We cannot—” Fennick started, but Kole stopped him with a stiff shake of his head.
“But we will.”
He turned on his heel, and given the vigor with which he heard Fennick following, he thought he had appeased the man for now. He only hoped he had not made a promise that would doom them both, but the queen’s isolation, her guarded waiting, did not sit well with him either, especially with the Eastern Dark in the vicinity and not all of her soldiers safely behind walls they could better defend than a lone spike on the western horizon.
Kole saw the others gathered at the cave mouth ahead. He nearly missed Tundra, his armor once more lost in the wash of the already-dipping sun. There were three other Blue Knights bedecked in similarly gaudy s
tates waiting before them. They held no weapons, though Kole knew they could arm themselves even faster than he could.
“Well, then,” Misha said. “Where to, your lordship?”
Tundra regarded her blankly while his companions did the bristling for him. They were bald, and none of them wore helms like their commander did. There were two females and one male. They were tall, but Kole could see the contours in the blue limbs that peeked out from beneath the jewel-encrusted plates. The cold greeted them at the mouth of the gargantuan cave, whipping Kole’s hair, which had grown to the length Linn’s had been when they had set out from the Valley.
Kole felt a wash of melancholy as he thought of his home and those who made it up. Those he hoped desperately had made it back from the western sands with something other than disappointment and death at the hands of the Eastern Dark.
“Come,” Tundra said. Kole started toward the front door of the palace, but Tundra moved past him, walking north. There was a frosted stair made of Nevermelt that let up to the palace walls, but Tundra did not take it. Instead, he entered a crack Kole hadn’t noticed at first glance in the space where the mountain rock met the palace walls.
“After you,” Misha said to Linn, who frowned at the attention. She spared an uneasy glance at the Blue Knights that stood beside them and shook her head before following. When she ducked into the trench, Jenk and Misha followed, while Baas hung back, examining the Blue Knights who watched the departing Embers with a hungry interest.
“Go, Baas,” Kole said. The Riverman regarded him coolly for a long moment before offering a slight nod and following the others. The Blue Knights watched him depart and then turned as one to Kole. One—the male—even took a step toward him, as if trying to cow him into following.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 43
