Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  “What if it’s waiting on the other side of the cog?” Degan asked, clearly unnerved.

  “Then your men will have something to do,” Misha said easily and Degan grimaced. Kole wondered at their history.

  “This is a Night Lord we’re talking about,” he said, and several of his men and women nodded hurriedly, apparently eager to support any argument that might stop the mission in its tracks.

  “It’s a beast,” the Ember answered. “As dumb as any other.”

  “My man Brettin saw it just last night, questing for a way inside.”

  A broad-shouldered man in the company—presumably Brettin—glared daggers at them, daring them to challenge him.

  “Do you follow orders, Degan?” Kole asked, earning a surprised look from Misha and a furious one from the soldier. He looked about to answer when one of his own—a young woman—interrupted.

  “The fire’s waning,” she lamented, clearly not for the first time. “It’s the damn damp. We can’t keep it fed.”

  Misha looked at the girl as though she were daft and Degan looked as if he were about to strike out when the fire flared violently to life, sending soldiers skittering and spears bouncing off of the marble floor.

  Degan whirled toward Kole, who stood staring at the blaze with his hand outstretched, twin fingers rising and falling at a steady cadence with the flames. Misha’s look had changed from curious to decidedly shocked. The hint of a smile played at the corners of Kole’s mouth even as his brow furrowed in concentration.

  “How are you doing that from such a distance?” Misha asked, fascinated as the flames swayed to imitate Kole’s hand.

  Kole let his hand fall to his side, and the flames lost their luster, going back to their fuel.

  “Sorry for the theatrics,” Kole said, ignoring Misha’s question because he had no answer. “But I need to be getting north. I was under the impression you could get me there.”

  Degan had managed to regain much of his former composure, which is to say, not much, and stood taller, adjusting the straps on his breastplate. His bronze helm was still askew, but he did not seem to notice and neither Kole nor Misha pointed it out. He looked to the Ember of Hearth.

  “Seems you’ve dug up quite the firebug,” he said. Misha glanced at Kole, her expression still caught somewhere between concerned and excited. She shrugged.

  “The lever?” Misha asked.

  “Moars!” Degan shouted and the same young woman from before snapped to attention.

  “Right away, Third Keeper Ve’Gah,” and she spun on her heel and made for the trench along the back wall. She turned around with a blush and lowered herself into the channel like a child might.

  Misha sighed and handed her spear to Degan before making her way to the lip of the trench. She hopped down and Kole saw her hair bobbing as she walked along its length in search of the lever that would permit them passage into the marshes beyond.

  Kole felt eyes on him and turned to see Brettin, the stocky man staring with a look that could only be described as hostile.

  “Something on your mind?” Kole asked. He had tired of the entire venture and was keen to be off. Keen to be north.

  “You think you know better than the White Crest,” Brettin said, his voice oddly high-pitched relative to his imposing size. “You think he’s against us.”

  “Most think he’s dead. I’d say my stance is an improvement.”

  Brettin did not look amused. In fact, he was seething.

  “Calm yourself, Brettin,” Degan said, though he eyed Kole sternly. Now he was readily itching to see the Embers out into the marshes and out of his hair. “At least they’ve got the stones to find out what’s going on.”

  Brettin grumbled and moved back into his place.

  He and the rest of them rocked back onto their heels as a boom echoed throughout the chamber. It was followed by a sound like sliding plates. Ahead, Kole picked out the bobbing tail of Misha. The Ember pulled herself out of the trench and hauled the young soldier up with her.

  “Clever thing,” Misha said, coming to stand beside Kole and turning to look back wonderingly at the gray slab of stone, which had just begin to shift on its bearings. “How did they build this?”

  “Rockbled,” Degan said.

  “Ah, yes,” Misha said. “A powerful one.”

  “Why don’t they build such structures along the Fork?” Kole asked.

  “Modesty, I suppose,” Degan said and Misha shrugged.

  “Maybe we just don’t know about them,” Kole put in, answering his own question.

  “Strange,” Misha said, “that one of their own would help design the mechanism meant to help us through a feared siege by his people.”

  “Siege never came,” Degan said. “They certainly thought it would.”

  “The city was not well established at the time,” Misha said. “The walls only half built, and the Emberfolk recently split with the separation of the Lakemen.” She glanced at Kole. “There were sober minds on each side of the conflict.”

  “Aye,” Degan said as the gear shifted and the water began pouring in on the far wall. “Far as I know, they never had cause to use it.”

  “What would be the point of draining the river?” Kole asked.

  “To move supplies in by a back way in the case of a siege,” Degan said.

  The gear jerked and groaned in protest as it rolled to one side. The dark water sparkled in the torchlight, turning from a geyser to a steady fall as the opening grew.

  “Won’t the chamber fill up?” Kole asked, feeling woefully uninformed.

  “I don’t pretend to know the particulars,” Degan said. His soldiers had their bowstrings pulled taut, eyes trained on the growing gap between gear and wall. “This stone is porous. It sweats. The trench will drain into the earth beneath the spur, given enough time.”

  The gruff soldier looked on nervously as the water splashed into the chamber at an alarming rate. To their right, the torrent sloshed by, the fire hissing behind them as a questing spray rose from the moat to challenge it.

  “Now,” he said. “The trench is half full. The river should be low enough for you to cross into the tunnel. Be quick about it. Once it’s full we need to shut it down or we’ll be swimming.”

  He sounded far from convinced, and Kole and Misha exchanged nervous glances. Kole looked at the black waterfall, half expecting some great beast out of nightmare to come crashing through the foam. By the tension in the gathered soldiers’ faces, they were thinking along the same lines.

  “Half!” Moars called out from the lip of the trench.

  “Off you go, then,” Degan said tersely, and Misha broke off at a sprint, Kole fast on her heels as they rushed toward the tunnel to the right.

  Once they were inside, Misha called up a spark and lit a small hand torch she pulled from her belt. The light played off of the glimmering sides of the tunnel in shifting patterns that would have been alluring if they weren’t so unnerving. It was a longer path than Kole was expecting, the floor slick and steep. They relied on carved footholds to find purchase and propel them upward, and all the while the river roared from both ends.

  Finally, mercifully, Misha found the edge and slipped over it, her feet landing with a small splash in the shallow water. Kole was over in a flash and they cut left, running through a much larger cavern with all speed.

  “Some system,” Kole said harshly as they bounded around a bend in the cave. “Obviously not meant for this.”

  The bend straightened and a grinding sound like rock against rock set their teeth to chattering. There was a fork in the tunnel and Kole saw the current being diverted up ahead, but the gear was closing faster than he had expected. They hugged the right-hand wall as they ran, the water rushing near to waist level before they were safely through into the reeds. The water was slower moving here.

  Before the river could have a chance to sweep them back into the filling passageway, they used the choked root system to climb a nearby bank, stopping to
catch their breath and check their gear at the top. Kole was surprised to learn that his chest was completely dry, another marvel of his new armor.

  “It’s a wonder they don’t stock the whole garrison with these,” Kole said, checking the grooves along his torso.

  Misha was busy emptying the sludge from her boots.

  “The couple that made them work on their own time and certainly not for free,” she said.

  “I can imagine.”

  Kole tried to survey their surroundings, but they may as well have been in a forest, the reeds were so tall and closely packed. Below them, the river had regained much of its former strength and the cave opening was completely submerged, invisible to prying eyes. The sky above was gray as ash, but some of the brighter stars were still visible through the veil. To the west, the great white spur curved out of sight, bordered by the twisting network of streams and rivers that were the spawn of the River F’Rust to the north.

  “Shall we?” Misha asked.

  “Lead on,” Kole said. “I want that spear between us and whatever else is out here.”

  Ninyeva had not attempted to travel the Between since being cast down the first time. It was folly. She knew this without a shadow of a doubt, knew that whatever power she had provoked was well beyond her.

  And yet, she had to do something. She had to get answers.

  She pulled her hood low and began the arduous trek from the Long Hall to her cramped abode. Nervous faces tracked her progress, and she was dimly aware that her frantic mood of late was doing little to east tensions along the Lake.

  As she walked, Ninyeva thought of power and all its permutations. The Faey had no word for power in their native tongue. They thought power came in the seeing, but she wondered what they called it when they turned their gifts of healing to those of destruction. She wondered what they would think if they could have seen Kole Reyna set the fields of Hearth ablaze.

  There was a power in sight, and that was the power of knowledge.

  What good was knowledge without action?

  According to Rusul and her sisters, Kole had set out from Hearth with Misha Ve’Gah just hours before. Near as they could tell, Larren and the others were well into the Steps by now, though they could not penetrate the peaks to see. If she was to be of use to any of them, she had to know what they were up against. She had to know which Sage waited for them, if any.

  There was one constant that had unnerved her above anything else, even more so than the power she had felt among the peaks. It was a sound like drums, and it was a sound beyond hearing. The very peaks themselves thrummed with dark energy. It was not a rift, but something like it. She would find the source, and then, somehow, she would warn them. She knew some of her teachers were capable of projecting their spirits great distances, but they had long since passed on.

  “Faey Mother?”

  Ninyeva turned. Cooper Rhees stared at her from across the lane. He sat bow-legged on a small stool as he leaned over the rim of a barrel. A small boy sat on the front step next to him, looking as bored as unbuttered bread.

  “Yes?” she asked, forcing a tight smile that had all the effect of curdled milk. The boy grimaced and looked away. “What is it?”

  Rhees covered his embarrassment with a smile much more genuine than hers.

  “It’s just,” he started, rubbing the back of his head with the hook of his hammer, “I wondered why you were heading toward the pens.”

  Ninyeva’s brows arched. He was asking if she knew whether or not she had lost her mind. She did.

  She nodded with a curt smile, spun on her heels and spied the shingled roofs further to the north, picking out her lonely leaning tower and its painted balcony. Rhees shrugged and bent back to his work. He had the courtesy not to say anything further.

  Now, she kept her thoughts more focused as she walked, careful not to let them guide her. She thought of the drums and the invisible tethers she felt snaking out of the peaks like tendrils of darkness. Rather than reaching up into the black skies, however, these coiled about the walls of Hearth. She was sure it was the driving force of the Corrupted at the city’s gates.

  As she rounded the bend and picked her way up the slick and rounded cobbles at Westhill, she thought of sending for Iyana, but dismissed it as soon as it surfaced. She would not involve the girl in something so dangerous, no matter the cost to their relationship. Iyana was smart as a streaking star, her healing powers second only to Ninyeva herself—and that was a gap fast closing. But the Between was something else entire. It was a burden to be endured, not shared.

  As it was, Ninyeva was likely the only soul in the Valley—the World, for all the difference it made—capable of navigating those shifting roads.

  Ninyeva was nearly out of breath when she reached the faded blue steps of her tower. She leaned against the worn railing post, the chipped paint rubbing off on her robes, and tried to calm herself. From here, she could see clear down to the docks despite the fog, the sails of the fishing boats bobbing on their moorings.

  With a sigh, she stole into the tower and climbed the creaking, narrow stair to her chambers. The preparations were already made and she settled into her place. She reminded herself that the roots, pastes and powders were aids, not crutches. She brought the mixture to a bubble over the coals in the grate before pouring the thick concoction through a mesh screen. When she was finished, she eyed the translucent purple liquid and steeled herself.

  She unwound a black cloth and dipped it into the hot mix, careful not to soak her skin. When it was suitably damp, she wrapped it around her forehead, tying it tightly in the back and settling onto her pillows. She pulled the cloth down over her eyes, letting the sodden material touch her lids, and exhaled long and slow.

  The effect was almost immediate. Colored lights played across the black canvas like lightning strikes absent thunder. A steady buzzing started at her temples and set her head to ring. Her skin tingled as her nerves ignited, the sensation moving between pain and ecstasy.

  She hummed to orient herself, and soon the lights faded, to be replaced by the contours of the Valley as seen from the black clouds above. She glided on the currents swift and silent as a crane. She felt the familiar beating and angled up, piercing a particularly dense section of cover and coming out the other side in a swirl of gray smoke. There, she saw a coil like nesting snakes, all red and black. Tendrils reached down through the gray canopy and streaked toward the fields below—the fields of Hearth.

  Ninyeva skirted the edges of the mass and swept around to the back. There, she saw four thick bands angling to the north. These were darker with only the faintest flecks of red, and their pulsing was slower, deeper and more rhythmic.

  She kept her wings close and sharp, diving below the clouds only long enough to glimpse the ground below. The Steps passed beneath her, the great plateaus stretching out like a giant’s staircase. The black tethers drew closer together above the peaks and shot down, and she shot with them, swirling into a cyclone of wind and energy. It was all she could do to keep from brushing against the strands, like a fly fearful of the spider’s web.

  The rushing of wind and buffeting of electricity ceased, and she found herself in a chamber of hewn stone. She was high up, but deep underground. Orienting herself was difficult. Already she felt the pull, saw the edges of her room at Last Lake shimmering on the corners.

  She felt the buzzing overhead and peered up. The black tethers hummed angrily, snaking forward where they separated and disappeared into a series of alcoves that glowed faintly red.

  Ninyeva moved closer, and as she neared, her heart beat faster. A ruby light spilled from the shapes, which she now recognized as great hearts half again as tall as a man. There was a stone slab directly before the alcoves with a shape resting on it, its chest moving up and down. The black tendrils tinged with red snaked around the stone like vines, and now her heart froze.

  She felt it. The same presence from before.

  Ninyeva was held between beats,
caught between the urge to flee and the need to edge closer. As it turned out, the prone figure chose for her, as a blue-white light illuminated its chest. The eyes lit in a blinding flash before resolving into a serpentine figure that floated with crackling energy above the slab. The hearts increased their tempo, the sound of drums echoing off the black walls.

  In place of the majesty she had felt upon entering the Valley all those years ago was a hawkish and misplaced fury, erratic and formless. Red light leaked from the corners of the diamonds she took for eyes and the serpent swayed back and forth like a snake readying to strike.

  She thought to ask it something, anything, and then she seized upon its dark intent and knew she must go. Ninyeva streaked away and the wraith followed, encasing her in an atmosphere of its own making. But it had underestimated her strength. She tore through the casing and in that moment saw the consciousness of the Sage arrayed before her, an ocean of power whose waves crashed black with red foam, all anger and discord.

  Ninyeva felt the Lake pulling her, calling her home. She pushed on, and in the passage between the shattering she glimpsed a strange horizon: there was a figure clad in white and blue—the White Crest as she remembered him—and before him stood a dark man wreathed in flames. Above them both, pulling strings that called back the red-black tethers was a figure blacker than the skies. The peaks collapsed and she was thrust back into herself, the fields passing in a blur below her and the stink of corruption screaming for her blood.

  Her return was violent, and she fell back on an invisible current, her chambers coming back to her with sudden ferocity. She retched, all the while trying desperately to hold onto the vision and its portents.

  She remembered the Sage, rotting and resting on his slab. She remembered the Dark Hearts drumming in the alcoves, and the red-topped citadel she had witnessed upon fleeing the dark keep. She remembered the sun, which she had not seen in weeks, burning like a half sunk fire over the lands beyond the Valley—lands from which she had come and never returned.