Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  Kole shook his head, but a snap in the brush had him whirling, the twins fanning out around him. Shifa came bounding into the clearing and greeted him eagerly, tongue lolling. They relaxed.

  “Whatever I found,” Kole said, patting the hound behind one ear, “it’s either gone or buried so deep I haven’t been able to call it up since.”

  “Before we reach whatever end you’re dragging us into,” Fihn said, “you may have to. Hopefully my brother can do the same. You’d think the Ember twin would have the edge in a spar, but I give him bigger fits than I have any right to.”

  That was a rare enough admission.

  “Perhaps we Embers just have the courtesy not to light you on fire during a spar,” Kole said and even Taei smirked. “Now, what’s the word?”

  It was impossible to see the horizon from their vantage and the sky was awash in shadow. Still, through it all, Taei had managed to orient them with rare skill. He was no Nathen Swell, but he was the best they had, navigating by the occasional break in the clouds at night and the direction of filtered sunlight by day.

  “We’re closer to Hearth than I’d have liked to be,” he said soberly.

  Kole noted the look of concern Fihn turned on her brother. The other Ember looked pale, and Kole was reminded of his own flagging reserves. They would still be formidable in a pinch, but with no brazier of stone or sky to bath them in its glow, they would have to tread carefully.

  Shifa complained even as the prickle started up his spine. It was as much the sting of the Sentinel’s probe as it was realization dawning.

  Had they been corralled?

  Noting the tension of Ember and hound, the twins drew their weapons, Taei an Everwood blade and Fihn her steel.

  “We bear west,” Kole said, grabbing Fihn before she could sprint away. “And always north.”

  “How have they found us?” she asked in a harsh whisper.

  Kole shook his head slowly. It was as much a mystery to him as it was to them, and while Taei was more versed in the wilds than he, it was Kole once again who felt the pull of the enemy, the constant threat. The sensation was not as strong as it had been before his first clash with the Sentinel—fainter shadows of the same source.

  “I’m going to cut far out,” Kole said. “I’ll angle north before the river widens. Slow at the pinch and I’ll catch you at the crossing.”

  Fihn nodded and the twins were across the narrow brook fast as forest elk, forking off into the brush at chaotic angles that belied their poise. Kole knew the diverging paths were near to illusion. The twins would never let each other out of earshot. Their seeming solitary paths created attractive opportunities, for their enemies first and for them last. Kole would only disrupt the pattern.

  Shifa whined again, nuzzling his hand with her wet nose. He closed his eyes and tried to wade through the chemicals warring in his blood to trace the kernel of pulsing alarm. He attempted to locate its origin, but he was no Faeykin. His sensitivity seemed more a happy accident than a gift of the land. Perhaps all that were hunted by the Sentinels felt it.

  Kole squatted and met Shifa at eye level, staring into the deep browns. The hair on the nape of his neck smoothed in the wash of heat he released, the cold ridges flattening as he sighed.

  “Good luck, girl.”

  He drew his blades with a dull ring as he rose, the fire scraping at his veins like metal on worn sheaths. He tensed and shot into the neighboring clearing to the west, cutting a swerving line along the narrow river, and Ember and hound carved their own intersecting trails in the trees. Shifa barked and Kole ignited his blades. This was no time for silence. They had been found. Now all that mattered was making sure the finding did not.

  The canopy thickened in patches and Kole saw the shimmering ribbon of orange on the horizon shrink and narrow in the reflection of the rushing stream as the clouds stole back the sky. When the last specs of light faded, Kole heard Shifa howl in the enveloping blue-black curtain. Clutching the Everwood hilts tightly, he sent heat cascading into his legs and felt the muscles bunch and stretch, propelling him onward in great, leaping strides.

  The forest grew eerily silent around him, with nothing but the babbling of the stream and the occasional snap of wood as his feet landed. The babbling soon morphed into a dull roar and creepers crowded the spaces between trees, the white mist of the rapids filtering between the sheets of dry scrub.

  Kole felt the pulse just as the tree line ended. He skidded onto a small rocky shore, sending pebbles up in a cascade as he spun, wavering blades up and ready, the heat washing his face in its amber glow.

  The forest before him was still, and he held the opposite shore in his periphery. A shadow detached itself from the rest and he saw Shifa, tail straight as a rod as she splashed into the shallow water. She stood in the center of the river, rigid and pointing toward the trees before him.

  A familiar blur and the Sentinel came from the side. He was ready.

  In a flash of red-orange flame, Kole met the charge with his blades framed out, stopping the first lashing limb and ducking the next. As he ducked, he rolled under, scoring a blistering slash across the black midsection, which bubbled and spat. This one was smaller than the first and noticeably weaker. It had those same ruby reds, but stood a full head shorter than him. It sported the twisted braids and slender frame of the Valley Faey.

  Ember and demon circled each other like spitting cats. Shifa passed into his field of vision. She made no move to enter the fray and instead stood stock still, looking past the circling pair and into the deeper woods beyond. Kole was glad she did, as the next shadow that came for him would have skewered him on the end of its arm if she hadn’t leapt to intercept it.

  Hound and shadow went down in a tangle and Kole used the distraction to press his advantage. He lunged forward and his quarry took the bait, darting in with another slash. He took that arm off at the elbow as he backpedaled and then used the momentum to spin, burying his other blade into the creature’s skull up to the hilt. The only sound made in its dying was the sizzle of whatever had been in the shell. He flared and made a torch of its head and tried not to think of what it had been before the Sentinel had taken it.

  He moved to assist Shifa, but she had already finished with the other, and Kole sighed in relief as he realized only one of them bore the red glint that marked the Captains of the World Apart.

  “Come,” Kole said, and they splashed into the river.

  No sooner had they crossed to the opposite shore than his fears were realized, the forest coming alive with black pursuit as the fallen Sentinel’s pack descended. Shifa barked as she outstripped him, so Kole pulled some of the flame from his blades, dimming them to a dull blue and sending the energy to liven his legs once more. His blue scythes carved a path through the winding trails left by summer boars.

  Shifa’s barks turned to yelps and had Kole tearing up a rise thick with brambles and lashing spines. The Ember cleared the crest, bursting into the embattled clearing with a brilliant flash. These were the Dark Kind he knew well, the gnashing beaks and whipping tails eclipsing the white patches in the center as the hound fought amidst the talons. His blades knew them as well, and they fell smoking before the next pair of humanoid shadows approached.

  He carved these as well, racing into the next thicket and trusting Shifa to keep up. The forest thinned as narrow rivers became more plentiful, interrupting the mossy plateaus, and he knew before he cleared the final copse that he had erred. Even without the Sentinel to guide them, the Corrupted had herded him farther east than he had imagined.

  The rush of the river before him betrayed its size even before his eyes had mapped its contours over the white foam. The snarl of the Dark Kind mixed with Shifa’s baying as she worked to keep them off Kole. In the distance, across the black and white mix of frothing water, Kole thought he glimpsed the glow of flame. He squinted, recognition dawning as the pale white of Hearth’s walls resolved.

  The image was stolen as quickly as it had arriv
ed, as a much closer glow lit the opposite bank. An Everwood blade announced itself and the shadows there turned in. Shifa streaked into the open air trailing a warning and Kole spun, dodging enough to avoid claw but not bulk as he fell in a tangle, the cold hitting him like a blow as he plunged into pitch darkness.

  He came up hacking and managed to snag the long grass of the opposite bank between his fingers and the steaming hilts of his doused blades. He hauled himself up an embankment and peered over the top. There, he saw twin shadows warding off a swarm of others in the light of Taei Kane’s sword. Shifa scrambled up a smaller rise to the east and raced to join him.

  As Kole rose and worked to reignite his blades, he heard his pursuers clawing their way up the bank. They could not win out.

  There was only Hearth, with its white walls and glowing braziers, its stout defenders and roaring Embers. And the army massing at its base that made their desperate plight seem a skirmish.

  As the black head tumbled down from the spurting stump, mouth agape in that silent scream, Talmir knew they could not win.

  He knew this just as he knew the sun would rise behind dark clouds again tomorrow. He knew it just as he knew the wars in the other lands would continue unabated until there were none left to tend the gardens of the World but fox and vole. He knew this, and still he fought.

  Down below, huddled behind the timber-and-steel gate on which he stood, the great grandchildren of the desert peoples pressed back at the storm that assailed them. They were his children, mothers, grandmothers. They were his tinkers and greedy merchants, his grizzled smiths and moody cooks.

  The dead had begun to pile on both sides of the wall, though the mounds without still far outstripped those within. It was something to be grateful for, but Talmir did not feel grateful.

  They could not win. They would not win. They had to try.

  The rain had long since abated, but the Captain was still drenched, some red mixing in with the salt that ran off his skin in rivulets as he rushed to and fro behind the great brazier of Garos Balsheer. The First Keeper roared his challenges and made good on every one, but even he was beginning to flag, and the swarm showed no signs of relenting. The distant Sentinels watched from their place along the tree line.

  Talmir felt a tug on his sleeve and spun to see the small boy that had become his messenger frowning up at him.

  “Jakub!” he yelled, glancing around wildly to make sure none of the Dark Kind had gained the walkway. “I swear, if you stood a head taller you’d be missing a head. I told you to pass reports up through Massen.”

  The mousey-haired boy frowned and pointed down to the base of the stair. Talmir saw a pair of soldiers hauling a twisted form—presumably Massen—away from the stonework and up toward the Red Bowl.

  The macabre image did not have the sobering effect it might have just a week earlier, but Talmir let loose an involuntary sigh nonetheless and closed his eyes to offer a silent prayer.

  “What is it, Jakub?” he asked, smoothing the edge from his voice as he squatted to the boy’s eye level. A shadow gained the wall and a sword took it in the neck and sent it tumbling back before Talmir could react. He dimly recognized his savior as Karin Reyna and made a mental note to speak with him soon, his third such note in as many days.

  “… his bed.”

  “Come again?” Talmir shook his head to clear the cobwebs.

  Jakub favored him with a withering glare. He was quite adept at those.

  “I said, Second Keeper Mit’Ahn is giving the healers trouble. He won’t stay in his bed and is asking where his Everwood is.”

  Talmir chuckled despite himself.

  “Thank you,” he said. “No, I need—

  “That’s not all,” Jakub said, indignant.

  “Be quick about it, then,” Talmir clipped, some of the edge returning. “It’s not safe up here.”

  “Third Keeper Ve’Gah reports that it’s quiet on the North Walk,” he said. “She’s asking to come here.”

  “You were on the North Walk?” Talmir asked, unable to hide his anger. “Jakub, I told you to stay below. The cliffs are steep and the White Guard isn’t quite as accommodating as my men and women here.”

  Jakub only stared.

  Talmir sighed again. It seemed he had one of those for every word now.

  “I need Ve’Gah to keep her section. We knew the North Walk wouldn’t be pressed, but we can’t afford to leave the crags unguarded. The Dark Kind are stout climbers. These Corrupted even more so.”

  “Corrupted …” Jakub tasted the word. “They were like us?”

  Talmir swallowed, trying not to think of the way the ink bled away when they cut the shadows down. Trying not to think of the pale, innocent flesh beneath. He shook the thoughts away and gripped Jakub’s shoulder, his boney collar feeling like a bird’s wing under his hand.

  “After you’ve delivered the message, get yourself to the Bowl.”

  Jakub rolled his eyes and turned to leave, but Talmir spun him back around.

  “Jakub,” he said, deadly serious, and the boy’s brown eyes widened slightly. “I mean it this time.”

  He gulped, turned, and sprinted toward the steep incline that marked the path to the North Walk, dodging the defenders as he went and teetering uncomfortably close to the edge on several occasions.

  “He’ll be fine,” a voice said, and Talmir rose and turned to see Karin. The black-haired man was leaning against the parapet and wiping the ink from his blade, a short length of steel that seemed paltry compared to the spinning Everwood staff of Balsheer, which acted as their proxy sun in the gloomy chaos.

  Talmir nodded and approached, looking out over the fields. The Dark Kind were pulling back, but it was merely the swell of a tide before the next wave broke. Still, it gave them precious time to change lines, exhausted soldiers being helped down from the South Bend as their moderately fresh replacements rose to relieve them.

  The momentary respite allowed him to take stock of the First Runner of Last Lake. Although he had youthful features and long, healthy hair, the marks of tragedy were undeniable. Talmir knew the stories, and although everyone in the Valley had lost, Karin Reyna’s loss had been something more. Without closure, there could be no healing. The man before him looked like a good man who’d been sipping poison for a decade and more.

  “I had meant to speak with you sooner,” Talmir said, extending his hand. Karin shook it firmly, displaying more strength than he had expected. “As you can see,” Talmir swept his hand out to encompass the crowded fields beyond the walls, “I’ve been somewhat indisposed. As have you, it would seem.”

  “As far as excuses go, I suppose that one’s as good as any.”

  “And you fishermen say we’re the stiff ones,” Talmir said. “Come, let’s speak away from the battlements. We’re getting in the way, though I know my soldiers won’t dare say it.” He guided Karin away from the crenellations and winked at a young woman moving past with a fresh cache of pitched arrows.

  They stood at the base of the stair, keeping out of the way as wall hands rushed up and down, carrying weapons, water, oil and fuel for Balsheer’s brazier. The sounds of battle were constant. Still, after a week or more of anything, Talmir supposed you learned to adjust.

  “I must say,” Talmir said, leaning in conspiratorially, “I never thought to see the walls tested like this. The people of Hearth like to cling to the fact that they’ve never fallen like it’s some great thing. The truth is, we’ve never truly been tested, not by a force like this.”

  “It is said the white walls were constructed to withstand the Sages themselves,” Karin said, his tone unreadable.

  Talmir smirked and issued a laugh.

  “Said, no doubt, by its architects. Well, our enemy has not made himself known, but we can guess easily enough. I suppose those claims will be put to the test soon enough.”

  Karin nodded and they both looked out over the tents in the courtyard, the torches guttering in the wind.

  “I
t was easier to kill them before I knew what was beneath,” Talmir said, earning a sympathetic look from the other man. “Before they were, well, us.”

  “Perspective,” Karin said. “It’s everything, and it’s the one thing we can’t perfect. The Emberfolk have largely come to think of this Valley as something of a prison, a hole to die in. But this is a grand place, with life teaming to the brim. It’s more full than the northern deserts ever were, but ask any here where they’d rather be.”

  The main gate shuddered under an impact—a barrel of oil dropped too close—and the iron chains rattled and sent splinters down to wake the soldiers in the tents below.

  “I know it isn’t easy,” Talmir said after a time and Karin turned those watchful, tired eyes his way. The Captain regarded him with sincerity. “Fighting away from your home, cut off from your loved ones. You came to warn us, or to report back to the Lake in case your warning came too late.”

  “We are all Emberfolk,” Karin said. He looked as though he wanted to say more.

  “And we’re running out of Embers,” Talmir said, his tone shifting in a way that caught Karin off guard. “I’ve heard, Karin. I heard about the expedition to the peaks—a fool’s quest with most of the Lake’s brightest stars. And I heard about your son.”

  “When I set out,” Karin said, voice barely above a whisper, “he was improving. The Sentinel’s barbs were no longer entrenched so deeply in his mind. He will endure.”

  “He’s made of strong stuff,” Talmir said.

  “He is his mother’s son.”

  There was a silence between them, and even the din of battle seemed to fade, a restless ocean in the background.

  “The seeds were sewn with her death,” Karin said, his eyes faraway. “She made for the passes, gained the Steps and sought out the White Crest. She died there, and Kole saw her fall in his dreams, the flames snuffed out in her only to awake in him soon after. For a time, I doubted him and pushed his dreams aside, too lost in my own grief. But then Mother Ninyeva shared her visions with me. They matched his.”