“Fear,” Iyana said. “Fear is what I felt from her, the last time I entered the Between.”
“What did you see, Iyana?” Falkin asked. They had come to it, then. “What did you see out on the sands?”
Iyana tried to orient her thoughts. She saw it all now as she had then: a world of black fire and choking ash. A world with rivers run dry and castles that rose from gray cliffs, impossibly high until they were lost in violently flashing clouds. She saw great mountains with iron chairs, and great winged beasts seated atop them, looking down over all their ruined dominion. She saw bright beams of light breaking the deepest blackness between worlds, drawing the glowing eyes of that fell plane. She felt the fear now as she had then, and though she had felt it from the one she had flown beside, she had also felt it from the world itself as its dark cousin came calling.
“I saw the World Apart,” Iyana said, suppressing a shiver. “And when I came back …” She pictured the scars opening on both horizons. She saw the great plateau of Center rent apart under the might of a demon as great as the purple beast Creyath had slain in the deserts. “The lake was burning. The water, it was black and orange. There was death and ruin in all lands, and there was war, or the memory of it. It had been swift and vicious, and we had lost. There was light and then darkness. There was … nothing at the end of it all.”
She looked up at Falkin, hoping to see that easy smile that had already become so familiar to her. In its place, she saw an ashen face, as if she had confirmed the worst of his fears.
“You have seen the end of things, Iyana Ve’Ran,” he said. “You have seen what I have only guessed at, what the Sages should have feared all along, had they the wherewithal to dislodge themselves from their bitter strife over the long years. You have seen the Forever Night.”
Iyana swallowed and looked to Ceth, who seemed unsure how to react. He said nothing and she turned back to Falkin. “But … how can we survive a thing like that?”
“I fear there is no surviving it,” Falkin said. He didn’t seem nearly as put off by the prospect as she was. He smiled. “We must stop it, I think. Yes.” He stroked his chin as if confirming long-held suspicions. “We must stop it happening in the first place.”
Iyana must have looked as dumbstruck as she felt. “But the World Apart has always been—”
“It has always been, yes,” Falkin said, holding up a finger. “But it has not always been coming. Brushing by, maybe. Admitting a few of its denizens through rips and fissures. But no, Iyana, it was not always coming. It was not always close, which means it can be stopped.”
“How?”
“How would I know?”
Ceth chuffed for them. “You seem to know plenty,” he said. “Or to think you do.” He spat on the ground and Iyana frowned at him. “What is all this?” he asked, looking to her and not the other man. “The World Apart. The Forever Night. Storybook terms. Legends.”
Iyana fixed him with the stare she usually reserved for Kole. It seemed to give him pause. “You fought one of those legends very recently,” she said, arms crossed. “Or did you forget the mountainous demon spewing fire the color of amethyst out in the desert sands?”
“A trick of the Eastern Dark,” Ceth grumbled, but he settled back down.
“A mighty trick, then, and one that did not come from here.”
“Quite so,” Falkin agreed, holding his cup and crossing one leg over the other.
“I assume you have a plan, then?” Iyana asked.
“Of course I do,” Falkin said. He seemed to be measuring her reaction. Before she exploded, he said it plain. Too plain for her liking. “There is one who called it in the first place. There is one who knows more of the World Apart than we ever could. Its power and the direction of its gaze. Perhaps how to stop it. To stop the end of times, Iyana, we beg the aid of the Eastern Dark, whom you have known more recently than I.”
Iyana should have been stunned, but somehow she wasn’t. She stared at Falkin long enough to convince Ceth that she thought she has misheard him.
“Your master plan is to reach out to the greatest enemy the world has ever known?” she asked. It sounded ridiculous. It sounded like folly. It sounded like exactly what she had known all along, walking alongside Beast and his terrible, bouncing burden through the glowing ferns and shining streams.
“Who better than he to know how to mend it?” Falkin asked, as if the answer were obvious. “Who better to right old wrongs?” He paused before speaking again, aware of the growing tension in the room, specifically from Ceth. Iyana hadn’t given it much thought before now, but Ceth had his own score to settle with the Eastern Dark.
“Move your minds away from thoughts of hatred and ire, however earned they may be,” Falkin said. His voice, ever-changing, now thickened and grew sturdy, leaving no room for argument. “Move your minds from thoughts of redemption for Ray Valour.” Iyana blinked at the casual mention of the Sage’s true name. “Doomed or redeemed, he is the best path forward, because he is the only path forward.” Falkin set his cup down and folded his hands in his lap, waiting on her reply.
Iyana nearly reached out to steady Ceth, but he had regained his usual composure. She could feel the swell and pull of his energy in the room, drawing hanging threads from the ceiling and causing the mixtures in Falkin’s stone and wooden bowls to lean toward him, threatening to spill.
“Kole and Linn are out there now,” Iyana said, gesturing at the back wall. “In the northeast, trying to hunt him down, to kill him if need be.”
“Him?” Falkin asked, seemingly amused. “Only him?” He leaned forward. “Or all of the Sages?”
“Not many left,” Ceth muttered.
“No.” Falkin settled back. “No, there are not. Still, sending the most powerful Landkist of the Valley out on some misplaced errand of vengeance seems …” He swallowed, seeing Iyana’s look. “It could be they succeed, Iyana. But at what cost? You’ve been there. You’ve seen the World Apart and you’ve seen the beams that draw it in like lanterns to sickly moths.”
“Beacons,” Iyana whispered. “The Sages.”
“Power,” Falkin said. “Power in its most corrupt of forms, yes, but power nonetheless.”
“What are you saying?” Iyana asked, guessing the direction but unwilling to lead him there.
“The Landkist are powerful, too, Iyana,” Falkin said. “You are powerful, just like Kole and Linn and all the others.” He eyed her. “If the Sages are truly drawing the eye of that dark realm, then surely your sister is a part of it.” He swallowed again. “Surely she must die, if they must die to prevent its coming. After all, is that not the aim of Reyna and his allies? Has it not always been, since his mother was snuffed out in the passes?”
The silence that followed was a pregnant one. Iyana took a steadying breath, aware that Ceth would act on the slightest provocation. Falkin had a reason for saying what he said. He had a point, and Iyana had to keep herself from dreading that he might be right. Why else had she come, if not to learn from one who saw as she saw?
“You see much in this place, away from the fields of Hearth and the salt of the Lake,” Iyana said. Falkin did not argue, only watched her, unblinking.
“You must separate the self at times, to see most clearly,” Falkin said. “You have put all your faith in those champions of yours, your sister included. You have sent them out into the world to make a choice on Her behalf, to aim their fiery blades and blazoned shields and blinding bolts toward the oldest among us.”
Iyana frowned, confused. “The Sages are our enemies,” she said.
“In a time like this, with what is coming, with what you have seen firsthand, there is no time for enemies. Only friends, grudging or otherwise. Valour knows this. It’s the only reason you lot are still alive, I’d presume.”
“I gave him a run,” Iyana said, hating the way it sounded. She had, though. She had
hurt him. Made him change after seizing his tether and binding it with her own, dragging him unwitting into the World Apart, where they had both gazed upon such a display of chaos and despair that their conflict on the sands seemed meek and, ultimately, meaningless in comparison.
“You know the truth of my words,” Falkin said. “You don’t believe that killing the Sages will stop it. Perhaps it might have, years ago. Even centuries. Valour tried. Oh, yes, he tried. Once he had your Ember king in the yoke, it wasn’t hard to imagine why he thought he could take the rest, snuff out those bright and pulling beacons. But the World Apart had him in its sights already, along with the guilty few alongside him. It is coming, and if anyone knows how it can be stopped, it’s the man who’s been trying longest of anyone.”
Iyana remembered the way he had looked as she studied Falkin. Valour’s ears had been longer, stretching back behind him in a way that looked at once beautiful and comical. His hair had been blacker than Tirruhn’s or Shek’s. Black as Beast’s oiled flanks. His eyes were the color of the Midnight Dunes themselves. He was handsome and frightening to look upon. He was impossibly young, tall and strong. But there was a rot to him, as well. A rot that belonged to one who should have died long ago, and likely a rot that all the Sages shared, moving through the world on their borrowed time, bound together in whatever misdeed had first attracted them to the World Apart and tempted them to wake whatever power nested there.
“What do you know of him?” she asked.
“I know that his power did not originate from that other realm,” Falkin said without hesitation, and Iyana began to wonder how old this Faeykin was. Did he consider himself one of the Kin of Faeyr? Did he walk among them? Those healers and seers from long ago?
“His power is of the world?” Iyana asked. “Our world, I mean?”
Falkin nodded and blew out a sigh. “I fear most forgot, before the end. Some were bright and merciful,” he said. “Some were just. But these are words meant for rulers and kings, and with power like theirs, they should never have …” He trailed off, lost in old memories or stories of the past.
To think that the Sages might have been Landkist, once. That they had very likely started out that way. It was difficult for Iyana to fathom. She shook her head, but the thought wouldn’t give. It made too much sense. Of course they had been Landkist, or something like it.
“Cycles,” Falkin said, speaking almost to himself. “Cycles. On and on it goes. But they broke that cycle. They wanted more. At least, a few among them did, until they realized where it took them. Immortality is a lonely throne to sit upon, with few courtiers to know you.” He smiled wistfully. “Their war was as inevitable as the moontides. Their arguments couldn’t help but spill over and mix with the affairs of men, and those lowly Landkist they used to count themselves among.” Their eyes met, and Iyana’s heart stilled.
“Valour might have started us on the path we’re on,” he said, “but it was he who first sensed the threat, tried to rally the others to his cause. The Sage of Center, whose name has been lost to the leaves and the wind between them, beckoned them to his modest kingdom on the Emerald Road. There, he called on them to discard their shields and draw whatever sword was close at hand, and to plunge the blades into their own breasts, believing that would stop the coming darkness and spare the world.”
Iyana was enraptured. She had no way of knowing if anything Falkin said was true, but it had the feel of it. Staring into his shifting, spinning green facets around that yellow core, she felt that she could see it. They weren’t his memories, but they were true, told to him by one who had stood among them, arguing among the branches and the shining moss carpet underfoot. There were soldiers clad in armor made of bark, black and brown and red in places. And there were archers, thin but strong, wearing little. Their eyes were colorless and they looked at nothing in particular, though their heads shifted with every sound those in the circle could not be bothered enough to hear.
“Another shouted him down,” Falkin continued. “’Why do we not fight to protect our children?’ he said. ‘What if it is too late? How will they fight a thing like that?’” Falkin paused. “Valour called on them to set aside their centuries-long argument, to join their forces together, to marshal defenses. But others were not as trusting of the Sage. Among the long-lived, old wounds seldom close without scarring, and no matter how wise, the future always seems a long way off to them in the face of a present slight.”
Ceth was leaning forward, and Iyana wondered if he was thinking the same thing as her. That the Sage who had challenged on behalf of his people had been none other than Pevah, the Red Fox. It was impossible to know.
“They might have turned it around on that day,” Falkin said. “But they didn’t, and whatever thoughts of unity Valour had brought with him into that emerald meeting place were dashed. It was then that he turned his thoughts to self-preservation, to marshalling his forces. He turned his red gaze on the World Apart, coaxing more of its power out, drawing it ever closer, hastening its path, or the path of whatever drove it. And then he fixed his eyes on the Landkist none of the other Sages held dominion over. That none of the others could control.”
“The Embers,” Iyana said.
“Bright and bold and burning,” Falkin said. “Dauntless and mighty. The perfect warriors with which to fight the coming darkness.” He took a sip of a drink that had long since cooled. “The days grew shorter and the nights longer. The Dark Months became darker, and rips began to appear in the fabric of our world as the Dark Kind found their way in. Not so many. Not at first.”
Iyana picked up the thread. “And then there was the battle in the deserts,” she said. “When the Red Waste and the White Crest fought him to protect the Embers.”
“And to protect themselves, no doubt,” Falkin said. “Yes. The Night Lords were called, Uhtren was wounded, and the game changed.”
“Uhtren …”
“The White Crest,” Falkin said.
Iyana shook her head slowly. “The White Crest told you all of this?”
“He did,” Falkin said. “Not so long ago. He caught me soaring in the Between, taking roads best left to those more mighty. It was before the battle in the passes, and Uhtren was at the peak of his arrogance. He did not think Valour would come for him there. He was part right. He only sent his Night Lords in. Even they were not enough, but the corruption took our guardian anyway, set him into his throne like a pretender more than a protector. That is when the roads of Sight grew darker for us, more muddled. Even Ninyeva had difficulty learning what was what, and so she turned her intent inward, to the Valley and its people. She left all thoughts of the Sages’ conflict behind, and thought how best to survive the premature night the beasts had set upon her children.”
He sighed and even smiled.
“Not everyone believes that story,” he said. “After all, why not reach out to the White Crest again, if I had met him the once?” His eyes took on a glaze of the past. Regret hung over him like a pall. “Darkness had taken him, and I was not strong enough or brave enough to forge a path through it. Perhaps I could have found him again, before he was taken completely.”
Iyana thought to say something, but came up wanting. Falkin shook himself out of his daze.
“In the end,” he said, “little separates us from the Sages but time. Time and intent.”
“Why?” Iyana asked. So many questions swirled, but she settled on the one that bubbled to the surface. “Why did they seek out more power than they already had? More than the world—more than She had blessed them with?”
“Who can say?” Falkin shrugged. “Sometimes the darkest of roads begin with the brightest of intentions.”
“Valour,” Iyana said. “If you truly believe I should seek him out, surely you can tell me of him.”
Falkin looked at Ceth as if trying to confirm Iyana’s words.
“My child,” he said. “
All I can tell you about the vast ocean that is Ray Valour concerns the surface. It will avail you little to know that he was once like us—”
“One of the Kin?” Iyana asked, not knowing why she felt so desperate to know, to absorb every detail of a man whose name had come to mean wickedness and spite and slow corruption.
“Could be,” Falkin said. “All I have are stories, passed down so long even among my kind that they will do us little good now. The Ray Valour my ancestors knew—or knew of—might have possessed the same soul as the one walking the ways of the world now, but he had a different heart.”
“Maybe he’s just forgotten where he came from,” Iyana said, as if she needed to believe it. She wasn’t afraid of the Eastern Dark. Not anymore. Somehow, she thought that knowing his name had stolen some of that fear away. But what had it been replaced with?
“Maybe.” Falkin did not seem so sure. “But the Kin of Faeyr and their northern cousins are no better than the Emberfolk, the Rivermen or the people of the Red Cliffs.” Ceth straightened a bit in his chair. “Long lives do not exempt us from sin. We pride ourselves on peace and poise, but as much as the Kin know how to create, we have quite perfected how to destroy. The blood doesn’t wash from our hands any easier than the rest.”
He rubbed his fingers together as if feeling old crust beneath the nails.
“I don’t know which of the Landkist among the Kin first discovered that our gifts of healing could be turned around,” he said. “That the tethers of life could as easily be mended as twisted and destroyed. I am sure he regretted it, just as I am sure another would have found out soon enough.”
When Falkin met her eyes once more, he did so with finality.
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