Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

“I wanted to believe,” he said, looking down at his bloody hands, caked with rot. “I wanted to.”

  “I know,” Linn whispered, standing slowly. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “But we’ve done something here, at least. Whatever power those things contained, it’s gone.”

  Nathen nodded.

  And then they heard the animal scream return, all trace of Larren Holspahr’s voice torn away in a madness born of a pain that had given way to rage.

  They ran faster than they had any right to, the glow of angry flames lighting their backs as they tore up the stairs and back into the twisting corridors. Sweat poured from them, evaporating before it could roll down their skin.

  Finally, the light of day brought a welcome burn to Linn’s eyes as they spilled into a great hall. The stone tiles underfoot were polished to a mirror sheen in the places that weren’t cracked or overgrown. A white balcony ringed the chamber, and Linn could see avian faces leering at them from the shadowed alcoves above. The carvings were so lifelike as to appear real in the glow of their pursuit, great eagles and hawks with the bodies of men, all armed and armored.

  Linn chanced a look behind and the sight nearly drove what breath she had left from her chest. The Ember giving chase was something born of fire and darkness, its hair a burning mass, spear a length of flame with no haft or tip. Behind it, seated on a turquoise throne, was the statue of a god whose carved feathers and razor beak put the rest to shame.

  “Linn!”

  Together, they cleared the gap and charged out into the open air, clouds wheeling overhead in a frantic and unnatural dance. To the south, the white clouds tore into the black in a battle of elements over the Valley basin.

  Linn turned and fell to her knees as Nathen let out a hacking cough, spitting bloody phlegm onto the rocks.

  The Sentinel stood before them, flames wild, ravenous and intent on them. Its red eyes darted erratically as it tensed to spring, and then it paused, eyes locking on something behind them.

  Linn felt the kiss of heat on the nape of her neck and shuddered.

  Her cry of anguish turned into a disbelieving laugh as Jenk Ganmeer stepped forward, shirtless and red as the rest of them, his sword held alight, flames dancing with poise and fervor.

  The Ember of Last Lake took his stance and kept his eyes ahead as he prepared to face the ghost of Larren Holspahr a final time.

  He could not hope to win, of course, but Linn felt happy to see him. She looked out over the roiling battle in the sky over the Valley below and knew they had done something here.

  As for her, it looked as though she would not die alone after all.

  She closed her eyes as spear met sword in a clash that heralded the beginning of the end.

  “Dakken’s boys know their way around a pike,” Garos said as he and Talmir took a brief reprieve next to the Ember’s glowing brazier.

  Talmir did not disagree. For a group that had always been more about the show than the fight, Dakken’s White Guard had made a difference, bolstering his flagging troops along the South Bend. While Dakken Pyr was somewhat notorious for being a concubine of Third Keeper Misha Ve’Gah, he was notoriously ferocious on the training grounds, and that ferocity was redoubled against the Corrupted. His twin hatchets spun in a constant blur, black limbs flying absent spray. Seeing him in action, one could be excused for thinking him Landkist.

  Jakub had looked profoundly pleased with himself as he witnessed Dakken tear into the first climbers, and that look had turned to disbelief when Talmir sent him away. It was as if he was sending him to bed without milk. But what sort of place was this for an orphan boy?

  Probably the sort of place that makes them.

  “It’s a wonder they were willing to get their armor dirty,” Talmir said, coming back to himself.

  “First time I can recall those boys on the front lines since Pyr’s father fought against the stone-throwers,” Garos said. “Even then, we had to put the lean on them.”

  “They are the sons of merchants, after all,” Talmir said and Garos laughed and clapped him on the back hard enough to make him cough. The First Keeper walked the length of the gate, slapping the backs of the innocent the whole way.

  Talmir studied the black sea before his walls. If it had a tide, it was high, though the Corrupted seemed to be slowing, their attacks guttering like a flame left too long at the wick. The bodies were piled on both sides of the wall, now, their black masks falling away in the rain. There were plenty of his Emberfolk among them, along with the squared jaws of the Rivermen, but most were foreign—pale or swarthy—all innocents in their own way.

  The Captain hoped they were granting mercy. He had to cling to something and the anger had gone out of him. Instead of railing against the Sages and their war, his thoughts turned to questions of why rather than how. One thing had become clear: the army before them was one of endings.

  What had changed?

  It was no secret that the Eastern Dark had long coveted the power of the Embers, but the White Crest had been gone a generation and more. Why had it taken so long for him to come?

  Talmir sighed. He supposed it didn’t really matter.

  The Captain unsheathed his father’s blade and started south, following in Garos’s booming wake, when shrieks that sounded as if from the pits of hell broke the sky. He wheeled toward the west and witnessed the approach of the Captains from the World Apart.

  At the edge of the field, a small host of black figures advanced out of the tree line, the sea of Corrupted parting before them. The red jewels that made up their eyes glittered with a sentience the rest lacked. The one at their head, however, was not made of the same blackness. He sat astride a great black bear with long hair to match.

  “Horns!” Talmir yelled, and the call was taken up the length of the battlements. The signal cracked the air even as a bolt of purple lightning did the same, casting it all in a ghost light.

  The retort had the few soldiers not embattled—and even a few that were—chancing looks at the sky, where the heavens themselves seemed to be warring, white clouds storming in and colliding with the inky black swells that had hung over them for weeks.

  Talmir sensed a quiet desperation, and it was not coming from his side alone.

  There was a faraway sound, a keening wail that drifted above the shrieking of the Sentinels and the crash of thunder. It moved above the clouds, traveling from south to north. For a brief moment, Talmir thought he glimpsed the shadow of a great bird slipping in and out of the roiling vapors trailing static in its wake.

  He had more pressing concerns.

  The steady march of the dozen Sentinels seemed to whip the Corrupted into a frenzy. They scrambled up the walls with renewed vigor that the defenders tried to match, their arrows all spent. The White Guard had more energy than the rest, their halberds rising and falling with a steady and violent rhythm.

  Dakken Pyr sent another falling in a silent scream from the ramparts and moved to Talmir.

  “What is it?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his brow. He sported a fresh gash on his chin but was otherwise none the worse for wear.

  “The cavalry,” Talmir shrugged, looking down at the dark retinue and their beastmaster.

  “Why not send ours out, then?”

  “The ground before the gate is impassable for the horses,” Talmir said.

  Looking out at the approaching Sentinels, Talmir felt the sick swell of certainty that the Captains of the Dark Kind would be decidedly more difficult to add to the piles before the walls. The rider ceased his advance and the Sentinels stopped behind him.

  Dakken propped his foot up on the crenellations, elbow leaning on his knee, the spike of one silver hatchet scraping absently against his front teeth.

  “There is the path beneath the cliffs,” he said. “The one Misha took.”

  “Aye,” Talmir said as if he had not been tossing the possibility around for the last week. “Enough for a single-file retreat, if we divert the river fully.”

 
“That would mean flooding a large portion of Hearth.”

  “I know.”

  “We would have had to start days ago.”

  “Yes.”

  Another kernel of guilt to add to the pile. Another mark of indecision.

  Dakken straightened as Garos approached. The Ember had clearly noted the advance of the Sentinels, but pretended to pay it no mind, laughing his easy, booming laugh.

  “These their champions, then?” the First Keeper asked loud enough for all around to hear. He held up his great staff, the iron-spiked ends going up in popping gouts that made the soldiers flinch back and the Sentinels below turn their ruby eyes up.

  The wild warrior turned his head slowly. A darkness hung about him, obscuring his features, but his eyes were clear, tattoos swirling on his bronze skin. He raised a hand and pointed it like a lance toward the gate, his eyes never leaving the First Keeper. Talmir found himself wishing he still had three Embers at his back, but Misha was gone and Creyath firmly out of commission.

  Talmir dodged an enthusiastic attacker—face melted to ruin—which Dakken dispatched without a backward glance, and examined the entourage more closely. The leader was undoubtedly human. Could he be Landkist? The foreigner was calm where the creatures flanking him were twitchy, mouths working, eyes shifting in agitation. These were not decaying husks like the Corrupted before his walls. These were creatures born in darkness, and made from it.

  “From the Emerald Road, I’d guess,” Garos said, following Talmir’s stare.

  “Done much traveling there?” Dakken asked sarcastically.

  “Heard tell of the men there, is all,” Garos said. “Fits the description.”

  “They all ride bears?”

  Garos ignored him.

  Talmir’s mind worked. He thought of Kole Reyna and how he had supposedly slain two Sentinels, though one of those bouts had put him in a state not unlike death. But Kole was an Ember of rare power, and the Sentinels before the gates numbered more than two.

  Garos bellowed down at the demons, while Dakken spun about, blades a silver blur as he released the Corrupted from their suffering, keeping Talmir free to think. The bear-rider switched his gaze to the Captain.

  “Dakken,” Talmir said as the warrior launched another from the walls. “Take your men and position them atop the gate.”

  “But the South Bend—

  “It’ll hold,” Garos said.

  “I want you in the courtyard with me,” Talmir said to the Ember.

  “The courtyard?”

  “They’re coming in, one way or another. I’d rather them come through the gate than over it. I won’t have the soldiers on the walls flanked.”

  He turned to Garos.

  “You have enough juice?”

  The Ember smirked and gave his spikes a flare.

  “Good.”

  Talmir looked back down, where the rider kept his arm rigid and pointing at the gate, his beast digging great furrows in the scorched earth. His compatriots looked fit to burst, hissing like a nest of snakes. The skies had them uneasy, no matter the mood their leader affected. It was growing brighter, the gloom fading as the sun struggled to take back its domain, and occasional rays of yellow burst through the canopy, splashing the white walls with color and setting the climbers to smoke and char.

  “To join with the Dark Kind,” Talmir said, shaking his head. Dakken spat and then moved off, the armor of his guards glinting in the intermittent beams. Garos headed to the top of the stair.

  A climber crested the wall before Talmir, its skin popping and boiling, and he sent it back down absent head. He met the stare of the rider all the while, who smiled a white smile. He brought his clawed gauntlet slashing down and the Sentinels sprinted toward the gate, some on two legs, others rushing like beasts on the palms of their hands.

  They were fast, and they were angry.

  The great bear began its slow, rumbling, solitary march, and Talmir spun, moving to the stair as Dakken’s soldiers arrayed themselves along the top of the gate, spears angled to throw.

  As he made his way down the steps to the courtyard with a grace he did not feel, Talmir thought of the skies above. Could Kole have gained the peaks already? Could he have succeeded in discovering the source of the scourge? Had a Sage fallen?

  No matter what was happening in the north, Talmir knew the battle on the ground would soon rival that in the air.

  On cue, Dakken Pyr shouted his commands and the whip of missiles issued forth as the White Guard launched their volley. No cheer went up.

  Had they hit a single one?

  Talmir stepped back into the center of the muddy courtyard, leveling his sword alongside a host of displaced cavalrymen Garos had bellowed into loose ranks. The First Keeper brandished his staff of orange and blue, welcoming the coming storm as Talmir only wished he could.

  The wall shook under a sharp impact. There was a sound like scraping, hoes and picks warring with the thick wood on the frame of the gate.

  “Bring it down!” Dakken screamed, hurling a spear of his own. This one did send up a cheer.

  Crashes echoed from the South Bend and Talmir chanced a look. He saw forms falling on the inside of the wall—the wrong side—armor and limbs clattering and snapping on the cobbles of the outer streets. Most of the populace had been moved inward, but a few remained. These took up arms and charged, more concerned with giving object to their rage on the stunned and dying Dark Kind than in assisting the fallen defenders.

  Another crash and splinter and a black claw the size of a cleaver pierce the gate. Two soldiers took up swords and hacked at it, the strikes ringing out and sending up sparks. The claw withdrew and the scraping ceased, leaving the men and women in the courtyard to clench and unclench clammy fists.

  There were screams from atop the gate, and then a White Guard fell like a stone, throat slashed.

  And then it was chaos, black figures darting and slashing along the ramparts , some taking up weapons from the fallen. Whether armed or not, they fought like animals, and men and women fell screaming or choking in their fury. Talmir saw Dakken whirling in their midst, hacking at the speedy wraiths with his twin blades.

  Talmir motioned to a squad, shouting at them to make for the stair when the gate shattered as if a ram forged by the gods themselves had come against it. The great black bear looked impossibly large up close. It tore into the first ranks like a badger at a mound. It was no Night Lord, but rather all flesh, fur and unbridled rage, and the shirtless warrior astride it laughed heartily as the gore flew.

  Talmir shouted orders, but his pikemen were already surrounding the beast, corralling it with their halberds. Black blurs came pouring over and through the broken gate, ripping into the soldiers and freeing beast and rider to affect more carnage.

  Talmir could see that his soldiers were caught unawares. They were used to the unthinking mobs they had been fighting for weeks and this was an enemy both fast and lethal, cunning and merciless. One of the Sentinels fell from the top of the wall, a spear stuck through its chest that served as a rod to root it to the courtyard below.

  “See that, men!” Garos bellowed. “They die just the same as you and me. At them!”

  Talmir saw. He raised his sword, silver edge gleaming in the shifting kaleidoscope of light playing through the breaks above. He cried a battle cry, charging into the fray heedless of the soldiers at his back. Corrupted had poured into the breach and made it a deadly press, and Talmir did what he could to tip the killing in Hearth’s favor. He slashed and gutted until his sword rang out against a riposte, a spiked star clutched by a Sentinel that stood half again his height. He had not seen any of them use weapons before now.

  They circled, Talmir prodding as the demon hissed and swung. A pair of female soldiers flanked the Captain, freeing him to focus on his private arena. The Sentinel’s movements were erratic. It snarled, accepting hits and gouges in exchange for pure offense.

  Talmir cut it to ribbons while dodging that streaking sta
r that may as well have been a comet. His blade rattled off of the obsidian shaft and hooked under the glassteel head, and the two were locked in a spitting embrace. The Sentinel leaned over him, but Talmir let the dams break.

  He raged against the World, for being the way it was. He raged against the cowardice of his ancestors, for fleeing the deserts in the north and sentencing their people to a Valley tomb at the edge of the World. He raged because he was angry.

  The Sentinel buckled and Talmir used its momentum against it, releasing his press and letting it fall, shocked, on his sword, the red light leaking from its eyes like spilled wine as he added its shell to the mix.

  A primal scream went up that was part anger, part joy and Talmir looked up to see the rider pointing his way, shouting a challenge in a harsh foreign tongue. The guards threw themselves at him, but the rider dodged their spears and launched himself from the back of his black mount. He soared impossibly high, landing before Talmir in a crouch that accentuated the bunching muscles of his legs and torso.

  A pair rushed him and he left them choking and writhing with bladed gauntlets as deadly as the foot-long claws of the bear at his back.

  Talmir charged anyway, bringing his sword down in an arc. The bronze warrior caught the blade with his jagged claws, polished steel scraping against fire-forged iron. Up close, the blades smelled of sap and rot.

  “Brega Cohr,” he said, spittle flying as he pushed Talmir back. He was shorter than the Captain, but strong as a jungle cat. Behind him, the black bear turned men to mud, its eyes glowing a fierce green that reminded Talmir of the Faeykin of the Valley.

  “Brega Cohr,” he said again, more forceful.

  “Talmir Caru,” the Captain said through gritted teeth.

  “Caru,” the warrior tasted the name.

  Talmir felt a rush of heat and pulled back, bending at the waist in time with Garos’s swing. A flaring arc of orange and blue passed inches above his chin, scorching his lashes as he ducked and rolled. When he came up, he expected to see the charred remnants of the warrior, but he had managed a dodge, squatting to the height of a child and slashing up to score a hit that opened the metal encasing the Ember’s midsection.