Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  “There will always be a need for the Keepers,” the King of Ember said. “So long as the Dark Kind find gates into this World, pockets through which they can sew their disease and discord. But you are not the only ones harried by the World Apart.”

  “You serve their master,” Kole said, the flames twining around his shoulder now. The fires in the chamber shifted and morphed, choosing their alliance carefully.

  The White Crest wheezed out another choking laugh.

  “Master,” he chortled. “The Dark Kind have no master. He merely found them at their source. He knows where to push at the seams, where to let them in. But he’ll push too far and the rip will open too wide to close. He almost did when he sent the Night Lords against me.”

  “Kole slew a Night Lord not a moon past,” Linn said disdainfully, earning another maniacal bout.

  “A Night Lord?” the White Crest cackled. “That ape was not fit to be one of their standard-bearers. It was nothing more than a Corrupted beast from the hills of your own Valley. The Sentinels did their work well.”

  “The problem remains,” Kole said, ignoring him. “You serve our enemy.”

  “I serve mankind, in whichever way I can.”

  “And what of the Landkist at your back?” Linn asked.

  “They follow me.”

  “For now,” Kole said.

  “You’re here for him,” Linn said, nodding at the melted mess of armor and wings. “Then what?”

  “On to the next.”

  “Why is the Eastern Dark trying to eliminate the other Sages?” Kole asked.

  “They have been warring for centuries,” the King of Ember said. “This one held himself apart for a time, but he was not always so innocent. Power breeds envy. Envy breeds contempt.”

  He straightened, raising that glowing palm.

  “No matter. They will pass. Some sooner than others.”

  “I was afraid.”

  The White Crest spoke in half a whisper.

  “Your cowardice has never been in question.”

  “I was afraid,” he said again, the blue orb peering up, surprisingly, at Kole.

  “Did you think he was the chosen one?” the King of Ember asked, voice rising and flames rising with it. He looked from the Sage to Kole. “Did you?”

  Kole shrank back, put suddenly on the defensive.

  “The Line of Mena’Tch,” the King of Ember scoffed, looking down at the White Crest. The blue flared before dying back down. “Is that what you feared? The only power in blood is given by the World, not scratched into cavern walls in the desert.”

  He looked back at Kole.

  “You are powerful,” he said. “To fight a Sage head-on—even one as compromised as this one—it’s not a feat many Landkist are capable of. Maybe none. But you merely wield the flames; you do not become them. I felt your power in the fields from leagues away, as we made our way through the foothills where the Corrupted massed. You can only use your body as a blade for so long without understanding the fire. It is why the Embers have used Everwood for so long as a natural extension, a ward against their true selves.”

  “All but you,” Kole said, looking down at the Ember’s glowing palms.

  “All but me.”

  “I should have known it was you I sensed,” the Sage sobbed. “I should have known.”

  “You see this?” the King of Ember kicked the armored chest and stepped on it, leaning his weight down, the flames along the floor inching close as hungry lions. Beneath the deformed helm and warped beak, the blue brightened with fear.

  Kole felt ill.

  Was this not why he had come? To do the very thing the King of Ember was now?

  “They fear us, as they should,” the King of Ember said, denting the chest plate in with his heel, teeth gritted. “The Sages will die at the hands of their own prophecies.”

  The King of Ember’s palm exploded into a comet, lancing down to shatter the plate, the red tail tracing its path and mixing with the blinding flare of blue that erupted from the open chasm in the writhing Sage’s chest.

  When the light cleared, Kole peered into the fiery maelstrom at the center of the titan’s breast. There was no body within, only a swirling mass of wind and crackling light—and now the flaming heart of an Ember’s fist at its core. The White Crest struggled in vain, but the Ember kept him locked in place, leering down with hateful intensity, his eyes glowing a deep amber that Kole for a second mistook for the ruby red of a Sentinel.

  Linn reached forward, but stopped as the Sage’s shrieking spasms morphed sharply into the most maniacal laughter yet.

  “You think you have free will?” he said, heedless of the burning at his core or driven on because of it. “You think you are your own, just because a Sentinel isn’t driving you? I see the darkness in you. His darkness. You are a pawn on a board of his making. You will never be free of him, no matter your private designs.”

  The flames dipped down all around them, their hunger abating for the moment. The chamber glowed like twilight, and Kole was aware that the sun had dropped below the horizon; he could see starlight shining down from the blasted roof. The faint echoes of battle still rang outside, but they were lesser now, more full of the grunts and commands of the Rivermen than the shrieks of the hawks.

  The King of Ember withdrew his molten hand. He looked down at the Sage, his face blank.

  “His time will come,” he said, softly, as if he were speaking to himself. “Darkness is the absence of light. And there are still bright lights remaining in this world.”

  He looked at Kole as he said it.

  “Are you one of them?” Kole asked.

  “How could he know?” Linn asked, and the amber eyes switched to her, orange lights passing over the surface of his glowing hand.

  “I thought I was protecting you,” he said, eyes glazing in the haze of memories too distant for Kole to imagine.

  “Protecting them!”

  The White Crest was making the most of its death throes.

  “By stocking the Valley with these jewels of the desert? You sealed their fate. You cut them off from the source of their power. You kept them safe from the wars without. Safe in his keeping. Until he had need of them, as he had need of you.”

  “We would never join him,” Linn said, though her voice wavered.

  “Do you think the sorry souls before the gates of Hearth had a choice when I set the Dark Hearts to calling?”

  The blue eye flicked up to the King of Ember.

  “This one had a choice.”

  “As did you,” the King of Ember said. “And you ran.”

  “You do his bidding.”

  “I do what I must.”

  “By killing the only beings capable of standing up to him?” Linn asked.

  “They are all the same. Or they will be, eventually.” He almost looked sad as he considered the broken form at his feet, one who Kole had no doubt projected majesty a century ago. “We could have stopped him that day, you and I. You don’t know what’s coming. I have to do this.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Step back,” the King of Ember told them, and they did.

  Another laugh, but this one was false, a cover for the fear the White Crest felt.

  “Always beware the chained hound,” the Sage said.

  The light was blinding white, and for a moment, Kole was sure that Linn would burn up. As it dissipated, he realized the blast had been so concentrated that it had immolated the armored form at their feet without so much as an errant mote.

  Where the White Crest had been, there was nothing but a smoking ruin.

  The King of Ember sighed, sweat standing out on his brow. The darkness seemed to deepen about him, or maybe it was just the absence of his flames. The only light remaining in the chamber came from the stars above and the soft yellow cadence of Kole’s Everwood blade.

  Footfalls behind them, and Linn and Kole turned to see the sturdy outline of Baas Taldis against the opening, his shi
eld held out before him. The Rockbled stopped when he saw the light of Kole’s blade and then approached cautiously.

  “The others?” Linn asked as he neared. Baas was made of something strong as stone, for he was none the worse for wear, his skin unmarked and the blood already drying beneath his nose.

  Baas nodded, his attention caught up by the strange presence of the King of Ember standing over his smoking pit.

  A flood of relief washed through Kole knowing that none of the others had perished, a feeling that did nothing to ease the terror that gripped him when the King of Ember uttered a single word at his back.

  “No.”

  The horror that leaked from the word and the veritable god that spoke it cast a dread spell over the company.

  The King of Ember was staring up into the starry sky through the gaping hole in the vaulted ceiling. Linn followed his gaze.

  There, hanging in the space between roof and sky was a swirling current of air that shimmered and sparked. What at first looked to be two stars in the canopy beyond came clear as the same blue orbs that marked the White Crest’s eyes, the avian head half-formed.

  Kole and Baas followed her line of sight, but they squinted against the twilight. Linn had ever been blessed, but this time, the noticing got her noticed.

  With a pop and crack that sounded like the breaking of a mountain spur, the spirit morphed from wind to arcing light and streaked down faster than an arrow. Linn brought the silver shaft around as a sorry shield and the King of Ember sent a jet of red fire, but it was to no avail.

  “Kole!” Linn screamed, and the Ember’s blade flared brightly. Baas readied his shield and shouldered her out of the way. She fell to the floor with a jolt and recoiled as the spirit dodged Kole’s slash and made for her, unerring.

  It slammed into her chest with enough force to drive the air from her lungs and take the sight from her eyes, her vision going white. She felt the arrow snap, the bow digging into her back as she convulsed. The current animated her body like a sick marionette and the pain was beyond reckoning.

  She heard shouting—Kole, she thought. And through her pain and thrashing, she felt heat flood the chamber as both Embers brought their power to bear. The great shadow of Baas Taldis passed in front of her, shielding her from their hellish collision.

  And then the physical world passed away and the pain with it. There was brief darkness and then light whiter than any she had seen. She could not see the White Crest, but she felt his presence in her mind, his thoughts coming up unbidden as images played before her.

  She saw a clash of Embers unlike anything she could have imagined. There was Kole, single blade struggling to hold back the torrent the King of Ember sent against him. The latter was trying to get to her, she saw—trying to pry the Sage from her shell. Baas joined the fray, his shield striking out and granting Kole a reprieve. The flames danced their wicked dance, delighting in the chaos of combat, and both Embers drank it in and poured it out in equal measure.

  Linn had thought it impossible for an Ember to be hurt by the fire unless he willed it so, but Kole was burning. She could see the pain etched onto his face. More than that, she could see the desperation, the knowing that he could not win.

  The battle of the present faded and images from the distant past were called up like memories through a faraway fog. She saw bronze-skinned men and women arrayed in staggered ranks, perched among the red rocks of a foreign land. Their wings—white and gray—flapped gently.

  They were Landkist unlike any she had seen or heard of. At their head was a great leader whom she recognized, his crown bedecked in white feathers, body encased in brilliant armor that shone gold and silver in the light.

  There was a great host embattled across the plains before them. The number of combatants was beyond counting, but there was power among them. She saw Landkist of all manner locked in mortal combat. Some rode great beasts with eyes shining like the emerald of the Faeykin, while others turned their skin to armor, shattering weapons on impact. There were stone-throwers that reminded her of the Rockbled and there were archers who guided their shafts with thought alone.

  Wings beat and the ranks of birdmen took off, eager to join the fray. She did not see the clash, but she saw its aftermath, the White Crest’s armor cracked and pitted, feathers red with blood. Behind him, the last of his Landkist perished in the swirling dust and she felt the heartbreak almost as keenly as the guilt that threatened to choke him like so much bile.

  Next, Linn saw the Valley that had ever been her home, but she saw it in a different time. She saw the white rocks poking up from the green fields where Hearth would be. She rode on great wings over the shining silver lake, its shores bare but for the moss and stone that littered them, no Long Hall in sight. She saw the children of the Faey duck between the branches of trees at his passing, the Rivermen turn from him in the gap that broke the mountains where his titanic clash with the Night Lords would later cave them in.

  Most of all, she felt the loneliness and regret, as well as seeds of anger too deep to contain. She felt fear in the knowledge of the growing threat posed by the Eastern Dark and the tense anticipation of their inevitable conflict.

  Finally, she saw Ninyeva standing in the rain, bloody before the wreckage of her tower at Last Lake. She stood taller than she was, casting a shadow against his violent light that frightened him.

  And Linn’s heart broke when he struck her down.

  She felt his shame, then, and that was what lingered longest as he passed beyond her reach.

  But some of him remained.

  “He has to die!”

  The King of Ember seemed able to fly, jetting around the chamber on blazing trails. He dodged the sorry tongues of flame Kole sent for him from the edges of his blade and absorbed the geysers with his glowing palms.

  Kole had been struck twice by the beams those palms produced and the heat of it shocked him, leaving him shaking with an energy that threatened to break him apart. Blood dripped from his nose and burned up in a red mist.

  He fought on.

  He ducked and dodged, going to work with his blade and infusing his muscles with the fire they needed rather than wasting it on attacks the other Ember rendered moot.

  If it were not for Baas, who took the latest beam off the crown of his great shield, Kole would have fallen in the third exchange. As it were, with the combination of his resistance to the fire and Baas’s masterful defense, they were able to keep their adversary away from Linn, whose thrashing had given way to a stillness Kole feared to contemplate.

  “Stop this!” Kole screamed, but the King of Ember only brought more power to bear. He sent Baas crashing into the far wall, his leather doublet smoking. Though the Rockbled’s skin was unmarked, the glazed look in his eyes suggested that the heat was taking its toll, leeching the strength from him.

  “He must be excised,” the King of Ember said, ducking Kole’s swing and slamming him hard in the side. The percussive blast was accentuated by a crack that had Kole falling to one knee, sword held before him in shaking fingers.

  The King of Ember stood over him, comet fists at his sides, eyes glowing molten amber. For a moment, his look softened. He hesitated before a shadow passed over him, darkening his features like smoke.

  He raised his hand and Kole tried to rise and found that he could not.

  And then the King of Ember vanished, disappearing under the hurtling side of a section of black marble. Kole looked to the right and saw Baas on his hands and knees, chest heaving, face pale. A huge chunk of the keep’s base was missing—a missile of Baas’s make. Framed against the doorway, Kole could see the running forms of the other Rockbled warriors, iron-forged weapons held aloft.

  An explosion rocked the gallery and night turned to day. Fragments of stone shot in all directions, embedding themselves in the crumbling soapstone pillars and throwing sparks up as they struck the glowing tiles in the floor. And the King of Ember approached in all his majesty, stepping over the ruins of the thr
one. Blood caked his forehead and ran hissing down his neck, but he was alive. And he was angry.

  “You cannot have her,” Kole said, rising on shaking legs. Two of Baas’s warriors flanked him, weapons ready. Their breath was ragged in the furnace the keep had become, but they stood strong and unmoving.

  “They must all die,” the King of Ember said, steady in his approach.

  Stones flew at him from each side, two Rockbled calling pieces from the broken floor and whipping them in rapid succession. But the Ember called up his flames and they burned so hot around him that the stones were reduced to ash before they bounced lightly against his red armor.

  “The good in them is not worth saving in the face of man’s fall,” he said. “The White Crest was good once. So was the Sage of the Waste. It was he who told me of the Valley. It was he who repelled the Eastern Dark for generations, keeping the Night Lords from the cave doors so the Keepers would only have their minions to face.”

  “And you would kill him too? Or have you done it already?” Kole cried.

  “His time will come,” he said. “You of all people know the ruin their magic can bring. How many wars must we fight on their behalf?”

  “A war of which you’re a part!”

  “The final war. A war the Eastern Dark will finish, before I finish him.”

  “He’ll never let you close again,” Kole said, desperate. “He knows your mind.”

  “It won’t save him. It won’t save any of them.”

  The warriors on Kole’s flanks charged. These Rivermen were not Landkist, and Kole screamed for them to stop, but it was too late. With a flare and the smallest of shrieks, they were gone, snuffed out. The Rockbled throwers were themselves thrown back, slamming against opposite walls before falling in dazed heaps.

  The King of Ember stood over him, wreathed in flames. He was like a god to look upon. In that moment, looking up into a face turned golden, Kole knew this man could do anything he said.

  He raised a glowing palm, and Kole braced for a heat unlike anything he had ever felt.