“Goodbye, old friend. Until next we meet.”
Even had the storm not made it impossible, Shadow would not have been spotted unless she wanted to be. She never was.
She left the frost-choked pass and traversed the black crags, climbing the trenches and navigating by the scent she had left on her way down. It was impossible to see more than a few paces in front of her, but she could feel his presence up above. Sitting and brooding, planning and scheming.
And what was she in all this? A pawn. Nothing more.
A strong gust of icy wind nearly ripped her from her next perch as she let her focus drift. She flattened herself against the rough rock and waited for it to pass. She did not feel the cold, just as she didn’t feel warmth unless it threatened to consume her, bones and all, but she hated it nonetheless. She hated how slow it made things. She hated that it made the going slippery and steeper than it already was.
They had left the frosted plains behind and the sleeping stones in their crater, carving north as they had rounded the great mountain spurs to the west. The land had continued to rise by aching degrees until at last it made up its mind and left any semblance of flat ground far behind.
This was a land of jagged ladders and shallow ledges, where the wind buried drifts that melted in the afternoon sun just enough to harden into pillars and mounds in the nights. The going had been difficult enough before the storm had worsened. Now, it was a land only she could cross, or so she had thought.
The Sage had sent her out that morning. He felt a presence nearby, he said. A strong one, and he very much wanted to know who and what it was.
Shadow leapt to another outcropping and pulled herself onto the next bit of snow-covered flat as she replayed her angled hunt. She had come upon them in a deep bowl that looked to have no way out until she spied natural stairs. There were half a dozen, but only one had caught her eye, and she suspected it was just the one her master meant.
She lost her own scent and then found it again. It smelled like sulfur and burned salt, and it clung to the places where she had made tracks that had already been buried beneath the blowing snow and freezing clouds.
He was still sitting just where she’d left him, and it still felt strange to her to look upon the form of T’Alon Rane and not recognize anything about the man he had been. She thought, once or twice, that she had seen a familiar twitch, but then, it was a familiar form. It seemed there truly was nothing left of the man beneath. Nothing the Sage hadn’t claimed for himself.
Shadow crept around him, needlessly. She did not ask herself why she went through such trouble to annoy him. Perhaps she wanted it to come to a fight after all, though she knew she had no hope of winning it, compromised as he might be after his trials in the western sands.
“You found them?” Ray Valour said, freezing Shadow in her tracks before she was upon him. He sat with his legs crossed beneath him, his fingers steepled together. He looked strange, what with his black, red-tipped armor, trailing sash and long, warrior’s mane, and sitting like a scholar. Like an old man, or like something that huddles in the damp and dark.
He opened eyes that were a bloodier purple compared to her bright lavenders and did not blink as he swept them over her, dispassionate but for that lonely glint of death.
“I did.”
“How many?”
“Six,” she shrugged. “But only one that really counts.”
“Blue?” the Sage asked, and Shadow creased her brow. Ray sighed. “I asked you to get a close look,” he said.
“Any closer, and she’d have seen me,” Shadow argued.
“Yes,” Ray said. “That was, after all, the point.”
Shadow shook her head. “Blue?” she repeated his question, looking for some direction.
“Was her skin blue? Did she have golden eyes, like an eagle’s?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
He eyed her, steady, and then nodded. “But she was powerful, no?”
“I don’t have the same nose for it as you, great Sage,” she said with a sweeping, mocking bow. “But the men moved about her with something that looked like respect but smelled like fear. They wore silver armor beneath thick fur. They sounded to be carrying many things with spikes and ridges. Shields rattling on their backs.”
“And the woman?” Ray pressed. “Was she armed?”
Shadow frowned and touched her finger to her chin. Ray unlaced his fingers and she took a flinching step back. “No,” she said hurriedly. “No, she wasn’t. Not that I could see.”
Ray nodded as if it all made sense.
“Is she one of the Witch’s Landkist?” Shadow asked, curious. “What can she do?”
“On a sunny day?” Ray mused. “Nothing much aside from turn away a strong blow or ten. Today?” He looked out over the edge of the cliff, where the ground fell away into a faceless and violent gray with white specks. He smiled at her. “Today, I think she’ll be a handful, even for us.”
Shadow waved away his concerns. “They were waiting for someone,” she said.
“The Valley Landkist, no doubt,” Ray said. “They haven’t exactly been making their direction a secret. That’s the trouble with strength. Sometimes it gives one a false sense of permanence.” Shadow could have turned that around. Then again, the Sage had lived a long time. He had come into the World long before his fellows, and it seemed he was determined to be the last to exit it, if he ever did at all.
“I don’t think I can draw them from the spot without engaging,” Shadow said, and a quick look passed over Ray’s dark features. And they were his, at least in part. Whatever his brother had done to him in the west, it had brought back some of his true form. Some of that old, pointy-eared scholar. Rane’s ears had already begun to change shape and his eyes had already morphed in color. His hands were already less tough than the Ember’s had been, and his scars had begun to smooth over beneath the gap where his thin, hard armor came up to his neck.
“Never mind that, for now,” Ray said, not meeting her stare. Shadow fell into a crouch a stone’s throw from him. Far enough to force him to raise his voice to be heard over the raging wind.
“What’s that?” she asked, all innocence.
“Was there anything else about her?” he repeated without delay. “Anything … off?”
Shadow was about to ask what he meant when she remembered. It had started as a scent. Familiar enough: rot and burned ash a few shades more putrid than what she gave off. But then she had seen it as she scrambled away, careful not to jar loose any shale or speckled rock as she withdrew. It was a flicker of light around the hooded leader, whose cloak was much thinner and less cumbersome than those her fellows wore. It was a flicker, not of light, but of its absence. It was a twisting tail of black that had wafted from beneath that hood like a trick, or like a worming eel.
Ray saw her look and nodded. There was a ghost of a smile on his lips, and he rose with purpose, stretching the creaks and cracks from the bone and sinew he wasn’t quite used to.
“She is a clever one, my sister,” Ray said. Shadow took an impression from it that gave her pause. The Sage had always referred to the others as kin. She had heard them do the same. But something in the way he said it now made it feel more true.
“Don’t you see?” he asked, inclining his head toward her and then looking beyond her, seemingly through the sheer cliffs of black and powdered stone to wherever it was they were heading. “She’s already begun it. I was right. She’s taken its power and given it to her knights. Just a bit at first. But then,” he laughed without humor, “isn’t that how it always starts?”
Shadow shook her head and straightened some. “Do you think them foolish enough to be led in their own lands?”
“Not intentionally,” Ray said. She saw his ear twitch beneath that black shock of hair. Shadow threw her hands up, or meant to, but then she caught a glimpse of movem
ent on the ledge above and behind the Sage. She crouched and balled her hands into fists. Black vapors twisted around her like tiny waterfalls of night, and she felt the handles of jagged blades in her hands. She bared her teeth.
“My dear Shadow,” Ray said. “You’ve already done so well. You see,” he turned, “they have already followed you here. Right into our little trap.”
He raised his voice above the driving wind and stinging frost as he said the last. Shadow didn’t much feel like they were the ones doing the trapping. When the Blue Knight stepped forward, hood thrown back to reveal the strange creature beneath, she did not seem concerned in the least.
“I think you are mistaken,” she said, her low voice carrying. Now she was here, Shadow was caught staring at her ethereal form. Her skin was sapphire blue, and it was beset with gold markings that seemed almost to glow as the swirls and jagged lines picked up the filtered rays of the hidden sun. Her eyes were a bright yellow-gold to match, like the petals of a flower, and her chest was bare and barely covered by the threadbare cloak that flapped in the wind. Her feet were shod with nothing but thin sandals with metal straps, and her fingers were adorned with sparkling white gems and bits of ruby.
“Tell me,” Ray said, squaring to look the Landkist straight on, “how many of you does she have left?”
A shaft screamed out of the storm above Shadow’s head. She rolled away and cursed as the missile sped toward Ray. She had forgotten about the newcomer’s men in the rush and excitement of seeing her strangeness.
Ray did not so much as twitch, and the arrow burned away.
“Enough to take you down,” the Landkist said, though Shadow saw that the Sage’s trick brought a tightness to her mouth and strained the confidence she carried.
“Not these fools.” Ray shifted his eyes to Shadow and then up onto the ledge. She gave a curt nod and began to creep back toward the cliff directly below where the shaft had come from. The Sage pointed at the Landkist on the ledge. “How many of you does she have left? How many patrol these barren crags?”
“Enough.”
“Excellent.”
Shadow collapsed into the darkness beneath the overhang and climbed out of the pitch black beneath the snow on top. She heard the soft, crunching weight of a boot nearby and reached up through the snow. The man yelped like a woman as she snatched him from his feet and burst up in a shower of white. She fell on him and sent up sparks with her first attempted blow before her next one took him in the eye and rendered him still.
Shadow snarled and peered into the driving wind. It seemed the Landkist hadn’t even heard her first man fall, so intent was she on the Sage standing below her. As Shadow watched her, the tall woman let the cloak fall. She wore nothing beneath, not even a chain or gossamer to make her modest, and as she stepped up onto the jutting stone of her promontory with one leg, her blue skin took on an oily sheen that passed to silvery white, like frosted glass.
Ray’s eyes were hungry and fascinated, though he shifted one leg back to prepare for her lunge. Shadow heard the footstep just in time to dodge the sweeping cut of the axe that made for her head. She rolled beneath it and slashed back, delighting in the bowstring twang as she cut a tendon behind her attacker’s leg and dodged the speeding shaft from his nearby companion at the same time.
Shadow tore the falling man’s throat out with her claws and rocketed toward the place from where the shaft had come. She heard a ringing clash as the Landkist leapt from her ledge and scored a hit on that black-and-red armor, and she felt a wash of heat as the Sage brought his borrowed power to bear. Shadow skidded in the snow and saw the muddled tracks that betrayed the archer’s former presence and looked hurriedly from white patch to gray. She saw figures moving just beyond her line of sight, and felt exposed despite her skill.
A woman’s voice screamed out and Shadow nearly held her ears. She dodged another shaft and made as if to dart in that direction, but reversed and ducked low beneath a chopping blow from one of the archer’s fellows. Shadow shouldered the armored chest with more strength than a mortal could and heard a crack and grunt. She straddled her latest kill and did not have time to let him fear it fully before she made an end of him as well.
The next shaft tore a burning line along her back and Shadow screamed like a jungle cat and rolled away. Another ringing retort from below and what sounded like straining as the Sage grappled with the glittering blue Landkist. Shadow couldn’t see them from here, and she couldn’t well leave these warriors alive.
Lucky for her, the next two came for her, thinking her wound mortal, or grave enough to slow her killing. One carried a spinning flail on the end of a black chain while the other only bore a shield, which tapered to a sharp V at the bottom. Shadow made for him first.
Predictably, he dug his heels in and brought the shield in close, ducking his visored helm beneath it. She lanced out with both feet and hit the polished surface with enough force to make him slide, if not fall, and then launched herself backward, twin blades forming out of nothing but her own stuff as the eyes behind the flail wielder’s own helm widened to expose the whites. Shadow drove the knives into the hollow of his chest before he could bring the spiked ball around, and when she landed, she let the knives disappear and snatched the chain before it struck the ice beneath the snow.
Shadow rolled as a wash of heat sent fire lancing through the dripping blood across her back and eyed the shield bearer as he circled. This one was clever. He kept the shield out farther now, angled it away so she couldn’t use it for her own purposes again.
He circled, hoping to lead her into the line of sight of his hidden companion, who had been holding her string taut a long while.
Shadow listened past the bursting percussions of the fight below and over the crunching footfalls of the armored man that edged closer to her. She listened past the whooshing of the spiked ball on its oiled chain, and then she heard it. A creak that could only have been wood groaning near to the point of breaking.
She leapt, higher than any human could, and she brought the ball and chain with her in her somersault. She saw the glittering shaft pass beneath her as if frozen in time and let her arm extend fully, let the momentum of her fall take her down at an angle. She twisted and snatched the chain in its middle as she spun and launched it toward the space behind the gray smudge that must be her hiding stone and delighted in the sick, wet crunch the weapon made as it found the archer’s flesh.
When she landed, the shield bearer was on her. She dodged and smiled, cackling as he swung and stabbed with nothing but his razor-edged shield. Had he been as strong as the Riverman of the south, or half as quick, he might’ve lived. As it was, he was clever but not limitless of stamina, and soon enough he slowed and slipped in the slush his boots had made, and Shadow ended him.
She remembered her Sage’s plight and wondered with a slow-dawning hope if he had met his end at the hands of the Blue Knight, and then she was forced to shield her eyes from a blinding light that reflected from the myriad flakes in the spinning storm just over the ledge. She grunted and took off at a sprint, leaping from the ledge toward the fight on the shelf below.
Shadow struck the woman in the back with the full force of her falling, her knees jarring painfully on impact. It was enough to dislodge the Landkist from the Sage, whose face showed the strain of using powers foreign to him, and the two of them eyed the blue-skinned warrior as she slid in the wet and caught herself before going over the edge.
She straightened and raised her chin in appraisal, edging one foot forward, toes splayed as she took them in, golden eyes shifting from one to the other.
There was steam all around, white and billowing as the snow and ice on the shelf was washed away on a delay caused by the Sage’s blasts. The blue-skinned Landkist parted the mist in front of her and stepped over the black rock that was becoming exposed as she was. Her form sparkled like a wet, jagged stone in the sun as that str
ange, translucent armor she wore collected the droplets like diamonds.
Shadow’s eyes were drawn down to the woman’s fists. They were clenched tightly, and as she walked, two foot-long blades of glass—or frost or milky steel—grew like limestone from her forearms. They swung at her sides, and the Blue Knight came on, dauntless.
Shadow began to circle to her other side, tossing a sidelong glance at the Sage as he stood his ground, seemingly unafraid. The Blue Knight was not worried about Shadow, and that irked her even as she knew it to be no bluff. Her blades wouldn’t be able to pierce whatever it was that made her up.
“There’s a bit of black on you,” Ray said as the knight came on. He darted back just as she reached him and cleaved the air with a shining strike that was almost too quick to see. The Blue Knight leaped and he rolled away, and she came down with both bladed fists on the spot where he had been. The translucent blades pierced the rock beneath and Valour extended a palm toward her as she worked to yank the blades free, the black rock cracking around her.
His palm glowed and Shadow looked frantically from one to the other, and then he lit the whole place again in a shock as the clouds picked up the brightness and bathed them in it. The torrent of orange fire carried black streaks as they buffeted the Blue Knight’s form, making her glow like a star in the center of a maelstrom.
At first, the Blue Knight didn’t so much as wince. Then, a look of panic crossed her unlined face, her golden markings pulling tight as she gasped and heaved and freed her living blades. She shot from the inferno like a comet and Ray avoided being skewered by a hair’s breadth, angling his chest away as his beam of fire ceased. She scored a silver gash that almost tore the black armor from his chest and twisted to come back in, one blade high and the other low.
Seeing them spin up close, Shadow was struck by how large the Landkist was. She was taller than Rane by a full head. Shadow twitched toward the pair, her mouth hanging slack-jawed as she saw the Landkist bring one glittering blade up in an uppercut as the other changed angles and drove straight for the Sage’s chest.
The Frostfire Sage Page 12
