“Nothing wrong with a little blubber,” Yana lied.
“No salt to speak of,” Guyy said, the words ringing discordantly in Yana’s mind. Now, she did not try to hide the grimace that marred her face. “Don’t look at me. Tell the lads to stop using it on the walk and stair and maybe we’d have something to eat that would warm our hearts as much as our stomachs.”
“Or maybe we should hire another cook,” Yana said under her breath. She said it just to earn a bit of Guyy’s familiar grumbling, which warmed her more than any stew or piping hearth ever could. He did not disappoint.
“You seemed tense,” Guyy said, watching her take another halting pull on the draught. She raised an eyebrow at him over the white steam.
“Did I?”
“According to the lads.”
“They can see the set of my shoulders from all the way down there, can they?”
Guyy shrugged. “You wouldn’t be surprised, if you’d ever seen the way you sulk.” Yana lowered her bowl, ignoring the hot dribble that ran down her chin.
“Fine,” he said, throwing his thick-gloved hands up, buckles rattling within his cloak. “I’m the one saying it, then.”
“Saying what?”
“That you’re tense!”
Yana shook her head.
“What is it?” he asked, earnest. He had pale blue eyes that Yana imagined must have been quite striking in his day.
“The Embers said they were being followed,” Yana said. “If something is powerful enough to trouble them, what will it do to us?”
“They said they were being followed,” Guyy said. “Not that they were retreating.”
Yana sighed and looked out over the frozen flows. “Call it a warrior’s instincts,” she said. “Something doesn’t feel right. I feel we are … exposed.”
“We always are,” Guyy said. “It is, after all, our duty to be, lest those at home are caught unawares.”
“The towers pass no messages anymore,” Yana said, sounding bitter. “There is only the one. Guarding it is a mark of the queen’s vanity. Nothing more. We might as well be guarding one of her memories. Perhaps she had her first kiss with the prince here.” Guyy swallowed but did not argue.
“Give me the count. Provisions and positions.” Yana said. She sensed the veteran’s discomfort and sought to ease it.
Guyy cleared his throat. “We’re a dozen strong minus three. Morning routes were made in pairs and kept close, on your command.” His tone showed her what he thought of it. Guyy was always one to meet a potential threat in the field rather than wait for it to trouble him on its own terms. “The skies were threatening storm, but I think it’s mostly past.”
Yana looked up. “It has been a strange day.”
Guyy wrinkled his nose. “Something of magic, no doubt. Hopefully coming from our side.”
“We don’t have a side where magic is concerned,” Yana said. She said it without thinking on it, and when she looked back at Guyy, he was regarding her with a strange expression that held an edge of fear. She didn’t like seeing it on his face.
“How is our venerable knight?” she asked.
“The one the Embers burned?” Guyy asked and Yana nodded. “About as well as could be expected. Those ones heal quick. Might not even be any scarring to speak of if it keeps up at the same rate.” He shook his head. “At least that one’s got an excuse for being a little salty.” He smacked his lips. “Speaking of.” He spat over the edge and Yana heard one of the recruits lob a curse back up. “That other one—what’s her name?”
“Rika,” Yana said, not knowing if it was right. One of them had been named Rika. They didn’t talk much and listened less.
“That’s the one,” Guyy said. “No reason for her to act the way she does. Thankless, them Landkist.” He leaned in conspiratorially and wrinkled his nose as the steam from Yana’s bowl wafted toward him. “You ask me, them knights have needed a nice kick in the rear for a while. Been some time since the gray beetles’ve scuttled out from their keeps to make them earn their keep.”
“Technically, we’re in their lands,” Yana said and Guyy waved it away.
“You listen to Queenie, then sure. I still remember a time we weren’t fighting anyone else’s war.” He wagged a finger at Yana and she sighed. “You lot would do well to imagine it.”
Guyy walked to the edge of the tower, though he didn’t let the tips of his boots touch the lip. He had complained for years about the lack of parapets and waist-high walls, and no matter how many times Yana had explained to him that the sentry towers had been meant to refract light for passing ships rather than act as a post for archers and aged soldiers, it didn’t stop his grumbling.
The man placed his fists against his hips as he looked out over the swells of the south.
“You think it’s true, what the Landkist of the south said?”
“About Balon Rael?”
Guyy didn’t answer, but she could see in his bearing he was working over the possibility.
“Could be,” she said, setting her half-empty bowl down beside the hatch and wiping her lips. “If it is, things might go back to the way they were before. The way you remember them.” Guyy had a penchant for slipping into foul moods. Yana didn’t mind that. What got her was when he slipped into this one, which wasn’t so much foul as distant. Defeated.
“Ain’t no going back to that,” he said. He blew out a sigh that seemed to make him more rather than less heavy. When he saw the way she looked at him, he smiled and tried to mean it. “Bah, but don’t mind me. I’m old. We always want the World to turn back. Plenty bad about the way things were. Plenty bad.”
“But plenty good as well,” Yana said, turning back to gaze at the blue-gray south.
“Aye,” he said. “Plenty good.”
“Peace,” she said after a while, as if she were testing the word. It tasted strange in her mouth, and she didn’t think it was the work of the frothy residue of Guyy’s soldier stew.
“Never a bad thing to hope for,” Guyy said. “Never a good thing to count on.” He slapped her on the back as he turned back for the hatch.
“I hope she likes them,” Yana said, surprising herself a bit. She heard Guyy pause behind her. “The Landkist of the Valley. I can’t pretend to know them, but they seemed … good. It’s nice to think there are good people in the wider World. That they aren’t all beasts wearing the skins of men, donning armor to cross the frozen sea to purge us from the land.”
“As much as we’ve been through, rumor has it they’ve been through worse,” Guyy said.
“And how many rumors do you get from the southwest?” Yana asked with a sly grin. “Sending falcons to some long-lost love, are we?”
“A soldier’s business is rumor,” Guyy said. “Doesn’t much matter if they’re made up or not. Maybe you’d look a little less bored if you indulged in a few every now and again.”
Yana snorted. She saw a tight look cross Guyy’s face and nudged him with her elbow. “What have you heard of the Embers’ war?”
“That it’s not been one fought man-to-man,” Guyy said. “Not for a long time.”
“There was a war between the Valley Landkist when I was young, wasn’t there?” Yana asked. She looked in that direction, though she couldn’t see much of anything over the western ridge and the flats that stretched for leagues beyond. It seemed strange to her, how much of the World lay below their gray shelves in the north, and how much had happened there, far from their cares or worries.
Guyy nodded. “And then it turned to something else.”
“Something of the World Apart,” Yana said. Guyy paled visibly at the mention. It was a term Yana had heard only in the form of stories when she was a girl, and one that had grown from fanciful to concerning when the Eastern Dark had sent his dogs to strike down the Frostfire Sage and her consort. With the power they had b
rought to bear against her queen and former prince, there could be no doubting the presence of the World Apart nor its influence on the War of Sages—the war they had been fighting for as long as Yana could remember, and not for themselves.
She had heard of rifts opening in the south, admitting black demons with red eyes, corrupting the dead and the living and turning them on their former friends and families. The stories had always seemed improbable to Yana, though she had seen what the Sages and Landkist could do to one another on the field of battle. She had never stopped to ask what started it all in the first place. She had never stopped to wonder where the Sages got their power. They had simply always been, and to her young, naïve mind, they would always be.
But now they were dying. One by one, and while often on the back of one of their former fellows’ intent, rarely by their hand directly. Instead, it seemed the Landkist were doing most of the god-killing these days. Landkist like those the Eastern Dark had sent into the wind-blown snows a generation before. Landkist like those who had passed through here just the day before.
“You have to have felt it,” Guyy said. His eyes were wide, and though he looked out at the same expanse she did, he did not see it. “The air in the east. The feeling of another coming close, like a shadow leering over your shoulder.”
“The queen has been preparing for something,” Yana said, not knowing if they were speaking of the same thing. Guyy nodded. “Something to deal with the Eastern Dark, once and for all.”
“Maybe,” Guyy said. For a moment, she did not think he would elaborate. “Or perhaps the Eastern Dark has felt it too. Perhaps there is something driving him to the north, after all his time spent hiding.” He turned to her. “Think on it, Yana. Why now? Why do they move with such speed and purpose in this time apart from all others?”
“They’ve been warring for centuries,” she argued, though it sounded weak even to her ears. “Stands to reason there would be a breaking point, sooner or later.”
Guyy was shaking his head before she finished. “No. I don’t buy it.” He looked to the east and she followed the direction of his gaze. She had been all the way to the water’s edge, where the frozen mountains began to move again and where the floats cracked and split apart, their torrents powerful as they were unpredictable. Though she knew it was too far to see, she always imagined movement where the frozen sea met the sky.
She imagined it now. She imagined a black slit parting at the narrowest point of the horizon and stretching apart with a sound that defied sense and so could not be heard. She imagined it pulling everything of her World into a powerful nothing. It was a vivid image, and one that had come to her in dreaming a month earlier, or perhaps less, and one she had been unable to shake since.
“Ah, well,” Guyy said, turning to make for the hatch. “Sages and their meddling. Suppose we should be thankful all we have to do is watch a tower at the edge of the World.”
Yana went to laugh, but a hint of movement drew her attention to the south. She pressed her hand against the same spire her bow rested against, and she squinted at the angled piece of sky where the white ridge was sharpest.
“Got you,” she said. She heard the rusted hinges protest behind her and Guyy grunt as he swung his legs around the ladder. “Guyy,” she said, to which he grunted a response as he dragged her stone bowl toward him, muttering to himself about how much she’d regret not finishing it when her stomach began its complaints in the evening hours.
“Eh?” he asked.
“I think you can tell our Blue Knight she’s got a fight on her hands,” Yana said. She was smiling as she said it, and when she turned back to make sure Guyy had heard her, she saw his surprise at seeing the look.
“Beetles?” he asked, not quite believing her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not beetles. Tell Rika, Guyy. And prepare the men. Nobody gets past this tower. Keep them in front, where I can see them.”
“How many?” he asked, his voice starting to sound as charged as it should before a fight.
“I’ve got plenty of arrows,” she said, which seemed answer enough for him.
“Aye,” Guyy said as he dropped away. “I’ll tell her. Might improve her mood.” His bootsteps echoed as they met the spiral stair, and their pace quickened as they receded. She heard his military voice lose all pretense of gentleness as he shouted for those below.
Yana lifted her bow and drew an arrow from her quiver. The gray fletchings were frosted and sticking, so she warmed them in her palm as she watched the ridge. The shadow came closer and Yana’s confusion grew. The figure was close enough now that she should have been able to make out the sex and the armor, if not the face. Instead, all she could see beneath the gloomy, moving skies with their patched yellow and lavender rays was a black smudge shaped like a girl. She had short-cropped hair and deep purple eyes that Yana had to blink to ensure she was seeing correctly. She nocked the arrow to her bowstring and raised it in a half-hearted warning. As the shadow withdrew, shrinking back behind the ridge and out of sight, Yana could swear she saw a white, toothy smile break the black.
She tried not to let her fear show as she called down to the soldiers scrambling into position below.
She cursed as her insides twisted into knots. She always felt sick before a fight, and Guyy’s fatty stew hadn’t done much to help her now.
Something was off about this one. Something was very, very wrong. Yana flexed her core and settled down onto one knee, gritting her teeth against the nerves that threatened to overtake her. It always got easier once the shooting started.
Shadow was satisfied with herself for two reasons.
To start, she delighted in seeing the look of confusion and covered fear on the archer’s face as she struggled to make sense of the image before her. A lone girl, weaponless and unafraid, standing at the place where the ridge met the roiling sky. Second, Shadow delighted in finding new ways to continually disobey her Sage. She was to get a good view of the tower and of its defenses—count its defenders and its weapons. See how many of the Blue Knights had stuck around as Reyna, Ve’Ran and the Landkist of the Valley passed them by.
She wasn’t meant to be seen, but then, Shadow very much wanted to see what this Shadow King could do before they went about recruiting his fellows from the depraved depths of the World Apart.
“Alistair the Cordial.” She nearly spat it out as she followed her own shallow tracks back down to where the pair of dark masters crouched.
Valour was speaking to their new companion, intent and focused. The snow was a mix of slush and melt around him, and Shadow shook her head at his lack of control over the heat that must continually be worming its way through Rane’s blood. Alistair, for his part, merely watched her in that cunning, infuriating way of his. His natural armor had grown. Quite literally. It was tight-fitting, with knobs and ridges that made it appear as if it were gray, living bone, and it covered him like a reptile from tail to chest before curling around his shoulders. Part of her expected to see a tail swishing out behind him, but it was not to be. However strange he appeared, he might pass as human from a great distance.
She sneered at him as she approached, and his responding smile had Valour following the direction of his gaze.
“What do we face?” the Sage asked.
Shadow crouched before them, bow-legged. “Nice to see you too,” she said.
“You’ve been gone a space of minutes,” he said, not amused. He never was. At least Rane had pretended to be to keep her good humor. More likely to keep her from trying to kill him or Brega or Resh on the road.
“Three of the fur-clad soldiers on the outside,” Shadow said, holding up the requisite number of fingers. “An archer captain at the top with an older fellow. Careful of that one.” She nodded to Alistair. “He’s carrying a piping hot stew with a weighty bowl to match.” The Shadow King frowned in confusion and looked askance at Valo
ur. He was already learning to doubt everything Shadow said. He was a quick study, this one. She very much wanted to see what else he was about.
“And the Landkist of the north?” Valour asked.
“One outside, leaning against the north-facing stone,” Shadow said. “A female. All told, less than a dozen. But, if she’s half as potent as the one you killed in the west—”
“A powerful enemy?” Alistair seemed near the point of drooling.
“The one we used to host you,” Valour said without taking his eyes from Shadow. “One at the tower. Not enough. Which of your allies is most important to bring in?”
“No matter,” Alistair said. “The others will do, weak or not. It is less about the body than the mind.”
Valour looked dumbfounded. “Then why did you have me find the most powerful enemy I could to act as your host?”
Alistair smiled. “To see that you were worthy of our alliance.” He stood and did not bother brushing the snow from his clothes, ignoring Valour’s murderous look, which shifted from purple to the amber she knew so well from Rane’s stares. “Now, let me show you what I bring.”
“Why do we not simply call the Sentinels in?” Shadow asked. She didn’t know why she felt so prickly about the whole thing. She should have been eager to see Alistair bend to the task alone and without aid, the better to see what he could do. The better to watch him fail against powers he had not come up against before.
Alistair actually laughed at her, while Valour grimaced.
“His eyes are on this World already,” Alistair said. “Thanks in no small part to your master. Drawing any more power from my World absent great need is not worth drawing his attention more fully, more directly. Your Witch is doing that well enough on her own.”
Shadow frowned and looked from the Shadow King to the Eastern Dark. “His?” she asked, holding up both hands as she crouched. “What in all the many Sages’ names is he talking—”
“Not now, Shadow,” Valour said. He said it short and clipped, but she knew from the flatness in his tone that he meant it. Shadow thrived on ire, but she knew every beast had its breaking point, and she had no desire to revisit this one’s.
The Frostfire Sage Page 33
