Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  Kole considered all of this through a haze, dimly aware of his surroundings, until he felt a burning slash across his cheek as a passing arrow cut him almost to the bone.

  “Up!” Linn screamed from her perch, which leaned precariously over the wreckage of the gate. She already had a second arrow nocked, her eyes wide with uncommon fear.

  The rush of pain renewed Kole’s heat, and he gripped his blades tighter, flaring them to life as he rose … and came face-to-face with the demon.

  The writhing mass of undulating darkness crouched before him on bowed legs. It was half as tall as the gate it had brought down, and its eyes were the color of blood, deep and dark and staring—no, they were considering him. The eyes traced the contours of Kole’s face and then moved down, widening ever so slightly as it took in the glow of his living blades.

  Kole’s broken brazier had spilled its guts into the shattered remnants of the gate. The beginnings of a bonfire started in the mud-caked pile, lighting the battle like daylight.

  Linn had gone back to shooting as the Dark Kind made for the gap. Wall hounds and warriors alike clashed with the creatures, and Kole saw Jenk’s flaming sword and Kaya’s blazing staff flashing in the breach.

  The Night Lord loomed over Kole, red eyes shifting like a hawk. And then its head tilted sickly, sharply, as if it heard something he could not. It might have been comical if it weren’t so horrifying.

  For half a breath, he thought the demon might leave them alone. And then the look shifted, the recognition washed away in an instant as it roared and raised a great black fist.

  Kole took his chance.

  As the beast rose up to smash back down, Kole dove for its belly, plunging his blades in as he twisted and landed in the mud. Red-black blood that smelled of fresh rot poured out in steaming gouts, hissing around Kole’s burning blades as he withdrew and came up in a scramble.

  A maddening roar was accompanied by a concussive blast to the chest and Kole was flying for the second time, only now he came up in a roll and weaponless.

  Kole looked up to see the beast being harried on three sides by weapons of fire. Kaya slammed her staff into its hind leg with gusto, and Jenk slashed it on the opposite when it turned for her. Larren faced it down head-on, his spear glowing almost white hot, flames sprouting from its tip as it used the air itself for tinder.

  The beast made Larren the object of its rage—a poor choice, as his spear made a hole in its neck, burning its life away in a single clash.

  The creature fell to join its writhing fellows in the muck, twisting and squelching. It landed on its side with the force of a falling tree. As the rain washed away its corruption, turning the writhing snakes into pools of ink, Kole saw the red eyes fade and turn a pale blue.

  He stood on shaking legs and stepped forward, joining the other Embers in a circle around the great, ape-like body as the battle raged around them. Above, Taei moved to intercept a Dark Kind that had Linn cornered on her perch. He cut it down in a sizzling spray.

  “This one’s come a long way,” Larren said before moving toward the breach, Kaya following after.

  Jenk looked down at the giant, brows drawn. He glanced at Kole, offering him a strange and unsettling look before reigniting his sword and rejoining the fray.

  Despite the chaos, Kole lingered a moment longer, and then he, too, moved off to recover his blades, the gash on his cheek having already scabbed over.

  The First Keeper’s orders echoed in the night, the hounds howled and the Ember blades flared and flashed. All was back to the way it was, but even as he fought into the pre-dawn hours, Kole could not shake the feeling that something else had been looking at him through the red.

  As it turned out, Kole was feeling the effects of his row with the Night Lord keener than he had first thought. Ember blood had a way of masking minor concerns of the body until the fire ran its course. When it did, Kole collapsed.

  Being carried on a litter back through the town he had helped to defend was not Kole’s idea of heroic. But then, nothing about the Dark Months was, not like the stories from the desert he and the other children had been told before bed each night.

  His thoughts drifted as the sorry caravan wended its way down the lichen-choked steps, the wood homes on the outskirts giving way to older, sturdier stone in the basin. The structures here were squat and weathered, pressed into the side of the slope like the mussels clinging to the mud on the beach.

  Kole strained and tilted his chin, attempting to raise his head, but a callused hand pressed it back down. First Keeper Tu’Ren walked beside him, his stern countenance augmented by a white mustache and beard.

  “Lake’ll still be there when you’re at the bottom, son,” he said.

  Kole struggled to speak through a cracked tongue and raw throat, so the other Ember leaned awkwardly as he walked.

  “What losses?” Kole managed to whisper.

  Tu’Ren shook his head, staring off into the distance. “Not what they could have been. More than they should have been.”

  He looked down at Kole, his expression morphing.

  “A fine thing you did.”

  “Holspahr struck the fatal blow,” Kole said.

  “True enough. Still, a fine thing. If you don’t know where to aim—

  “Aim for the gut,” Kole finished weakly, and the First Keeper smirked.

  Closer to the bottom, the path split, and Kole’s bearers turned him right and gave him a view of the lake. Even through the fading morning mist, it shined brightly, fishing boats bobbing, oddly content on their moorings.

  “Never seen one like that,” Kole said, finding more of his voice with each word. An image of the great ape—pale, blue eyes staring at nothing after it had fallen—came up unbidden.

  “Wasn’t a Night Lord,” Tu’Ren said. He nodded at Kole’s surprised look. “I know what it must’ve looked like to one as young as you. Hell, I know what I thought when I saw it bearing down on Holspahr. It was something, alright, and there’s only one place a thing like that came from.”

  “The Deep Lands,” Kole said.

  “Aye. Nothing’s come out of there near as long as I can remember. Then again, the Dark Months get worse each time, more of them finding their way into the Valley. Things must be getting bad out there.”

  Their exchange stopped abruptly as they reached the Long Hall, the last pattering rain slowing to a steady mist that carried on the breeze, soothing and cool. Kole was set down in the reeds beside the road and Tu’Ren squatted beside him with a groan.

  “Kole!”

  “Ah,” Tu’Ren sighed. “There she is. Linn ran off to find her straight away, seeing the state you were in.” He winked. “How you managed to ensnare those two lovelies is beyond me, but now you’ve got a nice scar to show them, eh?” He touched Kole under the cheek, his skin pulling with a pinch at the deep scab.

  “It’s going to scar like leather,” Kole said, leaving out that it was Linn who gave it to him. He probably owed her his thanks for that.

  “All Embers do,” Tu’Ren said, rising with a few more creaks and cracks than the reeds he stood on. “The fire in our blood cares for closing wounds, not stitching them proper.”

  A flash of blue and green and Iyana Ve’Ran was kneeling beside him, the First Keeper moving off with a bowed gait that stood at odds with his reassuring demeanor.

  “She was corralling a group of children and elders toward the shoreline,” Linn called over as she crossed the road. “They had boats waiting.”

  “You had so little faith in your fearless protectors?” Kole asked, fighting through the fog to lock eyes with Iyana.

  “The attacks get worse each time,” she said, squeezing his arm tightly as she closed her eyes and began to concentrate. “Perhaps a little fear would do our protectors well.”

  People were forming a crowd outside of the Long Hall. The rest of the fighters must have been up at the wall, manning it in case of another attack, though the light was nearly upon them.

&
nbsp; “Fair enough,” he said, smirking at Linn as Iyana bent to her work.

  The filtered moonlight merged with the cold rays of the distant sun, casting a silver-blue hue on Iyana’s light hair as Kole studied her. Her ears bore the unmistakable slant of a child of the Valley Faey, though she had been born among the Emberfolk. Young as she appeared—childlike, almost—she was only a Valley bloom Kole’s junior.

  Unlike Kole and his Embers, the Faey had a healer’s touch. Like all Emberfolk, Iyana traced her bloodline back to the snaking sands in the deserts of the north, but the land chooses its own, and the Valley had made her only the second from among their people to bestow its gifts. She was one caught between worlds, Kole knew, and though her touch was smooth and caressing as river stones, he marveled at her solidity.

  “Ow,” Kole said, wincing as the sting spread through his veins. He struggled to keep from burning her hand as his blood threatened to rise.

  “Your blood was thick,” she said, heedless of his complaints. “Something in that beast got into you. But it looks like you burned most of it out on your own.”

  “Who said Embers can’t be healers too?” Kole asked, and he was rewarded with a stare even more withering than those Linn could muster.

  Iyana pulled a small mixing bowl from some secret compartment in her pack; the stone was greened from frequent use. She withdrew a patch of pungent herbs and set to crushing.

  “This will help you get back to yourself quicker.”

  “Lovely,” Linn said sarcastically as she watched the crowd passing by, nodding at the elders who thanked her with heads bowed.

  Kole followed her line of sight and saw Tu’Ren locked in an argument with another group. Seer Rusul and her crones watched from the shadows with their beady eyes before moving off toward Eastlake.

  The Long Hall was raised above the water on wooden pegs. The door opened, spilling an orange glow onto the dusky road, and the press surged inside. Tu’Ren was still locked in verbal combat as he entered.

  Kole put some of the paste Iyana gave him under his tongue and she laughed at the face he made.

  “I have a feeling that whatever energy you just gave me is going to be sucked out in there.”

  “You’re going in?” Linn asked.

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Decisions are going to be made soon, and we’d better make ourselves a part of them.”

  Iyana sighed and rose.

  “Go, then,” she said haughtily. “I’ve other wounded to tend to.”

  “Don’t burn yourself out,” Linn said, gripping her sister’s shoulder affectionately. Iyana smiled at her and tossed a different look back at Kole.

  “That’s his job,” and she walked off.

  Linn and Kole were among the last filing into the overstuffed meeting place. Smoke choked the rafters and its trailing vapors mixed with the orange glow of the fire pit, lending the whole affair a hazy, dream-like appeal. The scents weren’t at all unpleasant: burnt lake grass, holly and sage—the last shaken by a pair of elders who made their aching way around the chamber.

  “I imagine that’s supposed to cool tempers,” Linn said sardonically.

  “I imagine.”

  The Emberfolk liked to pretend hierarchy was only enforced among the Keepers, but outsiders would immediately be able to mark the relative import of the assembled by their proximity to the coals burning in the center of the room.

  Kole spotted his father Karin off to the left, his dark complexion making it difficult to read his expression in the smoke. Their eyes met, and Karin’s tired mask fell away in a warm and caring smile.

  “Your father was the one who found you,” Linn said. “You had chased the Dark Kind into the trees. I lost track of you.”

  “What was he doing in the woods?”

  “I imagine he was on his way back from Hearth. He couldn’t well march in while the Dark Kind were at the gates.”

  “How does he avoid them out there?” Kole wondered aloud.

  “He is First Runner of Last Lake,” Linn said, as if that explained it all.

  It was a strange image, Karin Reyna alone in the woods and surrounded by creatures of night and shadow.

  Kole shook himself back into the present. Perhaps Iyana had given him stronger stuff than she had let on.

  An old man sat directly before the coals cross-legged. Doh’Rah Kadeh, father of Tu’Ren and the second oldest of the Emberfolk in the Valley, commanded respect. Kole knew that had not always been the case, particularly among the Emberfolk of Hearth, whom Doh’Rah had split off from decades before.

  Ninyeva sat across from him. The Faey Mother was the only soul older than Doh’Rah among the Emberfolk, and the iridescent green in her eyes only glowed brighter with each passing year. Her standing had been well-earned.

  “What have we done with the beast?” Doh’Rah asked. He was often the one to break the silence.

  “It’s being dragged to Eastlake as we speak,” Larren Holspahr said in the same manner in which he said everything: grim. “The Seers wanted a look at it before we burned it away.”

  “Wholly unnecessary,” Doh’Rah said, and there were murmurs of agreement in the hall. “The beast is no problem we haven’t faced before.”

  “If that ain’t a problem, I’d love to hear your idea of one.”

  Heads tilted and twisted to see Bali Swell, the fisherman. He stood by the door, arms crossed.

  “That thing took out two of our finest lads and carved up a good handful more.”

  “And we carved him up right back,” Tu’Ren broke in.

  There were several experienced blades in the room, but none commanded quite the respect as the First Keeper. Tu’Ren had led more defenses against the Dark Kind than any other. Ever since the Breaking of the Valley, when the mountain passes had sealed them in and the horrors started leaking in from other lands, he had been their rock, their flame in the darkness. Breaches like the one that had happened tonight were rare; Kole knew that Tu’Ren took it personally.

  Bali nodded in deference, but cleared his throat to say more. There were a few groans at that, but Kole saw that he had the attention of most in the room.

  “I heard some calling this one a Night Lord,” he said, and there were a few audible gasps. “Lucky we have Embers like yourself, First Keeper, but how many are there? A dozen, between us and our cousins in Hearth? And when was the last one born? Ten years ago? More?”

  There were nine. And Kaya Ferrahl was the last to be born in the Valley, twenty years ago. Kole watched the younger Ember as she leaned against the far wall, not far from Jenk, who was born a year after Kole and before Kaya. He watched the proceedings with far more interest than she.

  “Night Lord!” Doh’Rah veritably spat the term. “What, pray tell, is so lordly about a giant ape riddled with sickness? The Dark Kind have ever been a scourge on all lands. That creature was as much victim as foe.”

  “That was no average Dark Kind,” Bali said, knuckles going white as he squeezed his forearms. His son Nathen grabbed him on the shoulder, but he shook him off. “I say he’s come back for us, come to finish what he started with our king back in the desert.”

  There were no gasps there, just a palpable silence. Kole felt it like a shadow on the heart. The Dark Kind were a fact of life in all lands, as far as they knew. When the World Apart drifted close enough to touch during the Dark Months, they made their way in through whatever seams they could find. It was not the Dark Kind the Emberfolk had fled when their king led them out of the desert a century and more ago; it was one who spoke to them, commanded them. He was one of the Six—the one all Emberfolk grew up fearing, and the one Kole most wanted to meet.

  Ninyeva unclasped her hands, and even in that small movement she commanded the room.

  “Bali is not wrong,” she said, which caused quite the stir. “The beast was not so unlike a Night Lord, but a sign of our enemy returned this is not. The Night Lords fell in battle against the White Crest, our prot
ector.”

  Her green eyes searched the room, settling on Larren.

  “Capable as our few remaining Embers are, this beast was a pale shadow of the ones that tangled with him in the passes. The White Crest fell that day, but he took those titans with him.”

  “That doesn’t mean he took his brother with him,” Rhees, a blond craftsman a few years older than Kole, put in. “Him that took our king from us.”

  There were half-hearted cheers at that.

  “The Eastern Dark has never been one of the strongest of the Sages,” Ninyeva said. “Quite the opposite. If his servants couldn’t do it for him, I don’t expect he stood much of a chance against our Sage.”

  A woman spit and made for the door.

  “Sages and Wizards and Ember Kings,” she muttered. “Keep your ghosts. I have children to feed.”

  “All due respect, Faey Mother,” Bali said. “But our protector is gone along with our king. If it weren’t for our Embers—like Kole Reyna there—I fear we’d be following in their footsteps.”

  There were cheers at Kole’s name, and his father beamed beneath his bangs, but Kole felt himself blush.

  “For all we know, he fell in battle with the White Crest along with his Night Lords,” Ninyeva said. Kole was happy to have the attention shift away from him.

  Bali looked as if he wanted to speak, but even he could sense when his wick had run. He held his peace.

  “Kole Reyna,” Ninyeva said, and all eyes again turned toward him, including those piercing greens of the Faey Mother. “I wonder what you think of this. It was you who came face-to-face with the beast, was it not?”

  Kole stared at her for a spell until Linn elbowed him in the back. He coughed.

  “Larren saw it plenty up close as well,” he said, and the Second Keeper merely watched him, expression unmoving.

  “Larren’s spear knew the beast longer than he did, and we’re glad of that,” Ninyeva said. “But I wonder what you saw. Do you think you came face-to-face with a Night Lord?”