The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  She watched the silver tether pulsing farther ahead. The whooshing sound she heard had gone away, but now returned, and now that she had left the village behind, she could hear the impacts more clearly. The leaves on the thinner trees shook with each dull thud, and moths with bright, sunburst wings were startled from their bark-laden perches, fluttering before her and tickling the ends of her lashes as she ducked between them.

  It was like a land built of beautiful nightmare, and as she moved through the brush, her eyes glazing over in the haze of color and shadow, her mind traced its way back toward her conversation with Falkin.

  She did not know Falkin well, but she trusted him. Perhaps that was why she found it so difficult to accept what he had told her. She knew, deep down, that no matter how badly she wanted him to be wrong, he likely wasn’t, and she likely was.

  Falkin had not been impressed with the revelations their meeting with the Eastern Dark and his Shadow had produced. The sight of the World Apart—its dark majesty confirmed for Iyana for the first time since she had seized upon the Sage’s tether in the northern sands—had done little more than confirm what the Seer had already known.

  “Then what was the point of going?” Iyana had asked. “Why risk so much, travel so far, converse with the enemy of the world itself, only to shrug our shoulders and remain here, rooted at the edge of the world, forgotten and unwilling to inject ourselves into the larger conflict? The true conflict?”

  “The point,” Falkin had said, “was to know that you were right, and in knowing that, in knowing that the World Apart is coming, and that all you feared will come to pass, that you might accept it, and prepare yourself and your people to defy its inevitability.”

  Iyana had stared at him, dumbfounded. The Faeykin elder seemed drained following their encounter, and Iyana had a fleeting thought that she might have been in grave danger had she met with the Sage alone, without Falkin there to keep her rooted to the Valley.

  “But what of what the Sage said?” Iyana had asked. “What about the Witch of the North?”

  “What of her?”

  “What if he is right, and she has to die to stop the World Apart from coming? What if there is a way to stop it?”

  “Then we hope that it is stopped, and prepare that it will not be, and that we will have to face a darkness unlike any we have faced before.”

  Iyana had stared at him, mouth agape. She had looked to Ceth, who would not meet her eyes. He seemed uncomfortable with the whole exchange, and what had preceded it, and why not? To him, the two Faeykin had merely shut their eyes, swayed from side to side, and taken rest. Minutes later, or possibly hours, they had returned, one looking haggard and the other—Iyana—looking frantic.

  “Let me warn them, at least,” Iyana had said. “Let me warn Linn and Kole. They need to know what they’re—”

  “They are on their path, Iyana,” Falkin said, “just as you are on yours.” He was a patient man. She knew it even though she did not yet know him, but he was tired and his patience was wearing thin. It made Iyana angry.

  “If you do not help—”

  “Do not think to threaten me with vague consequences, child,” Falkin said, deadly calm. His face softened when Iyana swallowed and winced. “The Between is not a safe place right now, not with the way things are, and it grows more deadly by the hour. A convergence is coming, and its consequences will be felt by the Landkist most of all, especially the Faey. Had I not been there, the Eastern Dark would have been free to do with you as he pleased, to rip you away from your mortal shell. To use you in whatever way he saw fit to reach his ends, very likely as some prize for the very brother and sister you wish to reach.” He sighed, seeing her shoulders slump. “The Sage spoke truly, or as much of the truth as he knew. You would have seen it, if you had been able to look past him.”

  “Then Kole was right,” Iyana had breathed. “The Sages must die.”

  “If that is what Kole believed, then it is a thought befitting his role.”

  Iyana looked at him strangely, and Falkin had spared a glance at Ceth, as if granting him an opportunity to intervene. When the Northman said nothing, Falkin continued. “The Embers are mighty warriors,” he said, “blessed with power even the Sages fear. But their gifts are for one thing and for one thing only: destroying, even if it is done in the service of those they love.

  “You are blessed with mighty gifts, Iyana, but yours are made of life and for it—”

  “I’ve seen all the ways even the gifts of the Faey can be turned around,” Iyana said, voice low.

  “Not all of them. Not even close, my child. I have lived a long time. A long time.” His eyes glazed with time and the memories it brought with it. “And even I fear I have not seen everything that can be done with the simple seizing of one tether or the next, with the changing of life-giving to life-taking. Still,” he met her eyes, “the Faeykin are made to heal and meant for it. All gifts can be abused. All power can corrupt. All men are capable of wrong. But the gift itself—ours is a thing to make better. To mend.”

  “That’s it, then,” Iyana said, sitting back in the small wicker chair. She crossed her arms unconsciously, feeling like a petulant child for it. “We stay here. We wait for the World Apart, and for whatever it is that dark realm brings with it—something even the Eastern Dark fears enough to seek our aid, to seek the help of those who have it in mind to kill him and end his scourge—to come and wipe us out.”

  Falkin had actually smiled at her as she finished. Iyana did not think it was meant to insult, but how could it not? She bristled.

  “There is nothing left to do,” Falkin said. “Not out there, on the frozen wastes, caught in the midst of a disagreement that predates us all—that may even predate everything but the stones that make this Valley up. But do not think there is nothing left for you to do. No, no. Do not for an instant think your road has reached its end.”

  Iyana had opened her mouth to speak, but she settled, seeing something in the elder’s tired green eyes. Eyes that reminded her of Ninyeva. Eyes that reminded her of the Valley in which she sat, the land that had taken so much from her, and the same land that had given her all she had ever had. It was a glimmer of hope.

  “You have seen the war to come,” Falkin said. “The last war, perhaps. And we have confirmed you have seen the truth of it, that you have seen more of it than even the Sages, who quarrel and squabble to try to prevent it. The war for the Soul of the World. The Forever Night.”

  Iyana frowned.

  “Do you not see now that you have been chosen?” Falkin asked. “We cannot see the future, Iyana. Though blessed with the greatest burden of sight of any folk in any land, the Kin of Faeyr cannot see endings. No more than the red-robed, red-dyed and blood-scented Seers of the Lake, or the bone-casters of the northern sands. But She can. She can see it, and She has seen fit to show it to you.”

  “She?” Iyana had asked. She had known the answer even before he gave it. Some part of her had known it, that the elders—that Ninyeva and Doh’Rah and all those before them, who had not been too far jaded by the horrors of the Valley Wars, who had accepted the coming of the Dark Kind and stood to protect their children from it—had always taken on faith.

  Falkin smiled. “The world, Iyana. The world has seen this. She fears it. And she has chosen you, and a few others, to show that fear to.”

  Iyana thought of Talmir Caru. Iyana had been to the World Apart. She had invaded the mind of the Eastern Dark and had been there. But the Captain of Hearth, who was not Landkist and who had never before had the gift of Sight, had been shown a scar opening in the east. He had been shown it in a dream. Could he have been chosen, too? To fight against it? To endure, and to lead his people to do the same?

  The pieces were beginning to slide together. Iyana had a surreal sensation as she imagined the world itself—the pulsing heart at its core—seeking out Her champions and Her her
alds, those with which She meant to rail against the coming darkness. How quickly and easily they could accept the birth of the Landkist—herself included. How mundane such power seemed in a world of Sages and Ember kings. And never more than a fleeting thought or a mindless mention of where that power came from.

  The Emberfolk did not believe in gods, other than the sun and the sand. They did not believe in magic, other than the fire their Embers bore, which could change mountainous dunes to glass and repel beings whose power could unmake the world itself. They believed in the land. The believed in what it gave them.

  But in Iyana’s short life that already felt so long, she had never truly embraced the origins of such power. She had never truly believed that the mother their ancestors spoke of—that their elders still referenced—could be real, despite all the signs around her.

  Or perhaps she had known it all along, and had refused to accept it, if only because of how much had been taken from her.

  “The Forever Night,” Iyana said as if she were coming out of a dream. “You knew of it before we spoke with the Eastern Dark.”

  “I, too, have had dreams,” Falkin said. He shook his head, his eyes widening as he remembered. “I had so little faith in myself, in the truth of what I saw.” The fog seemed to clear as he matched her stare. “Now, I know the truth of what I have seen. Just as I know it cannot be stopped. Just as you know it in your bones.”

  Iyana thought of Kole and Linn, Jenk and Misha, Baas and the loyal hound, Shifa. She didn’t know if all of them still lived, and if so, in what condition.

  “You don’t think they can win,” Iyana whispered. “Kole. Linn. None of them.”

  “What is winning, in this case?” Falkin asked, and though his answer threatened to turn her sour all over again, Iyana forced calm to reign once more. He sighed and leaned back, though he managed to do it without seeming defeated. “No. No, I do not think they can win. Not in the way they hope to. Not in the way we wish.”

  “Then it has all been in vain. Their journey. Their pain. Our most powerful warriors are out at the edge of the world, trying to prevent its ending. Trying to unravel the mystery at the heart of the War of Sages. A mystery that, in your view, matters less than the turning of the tide. It all comes to the same in the end. The World Apart. The Forever Night. The end of things.”

  Somehow, it felt cathartic to say it.

  “Is it vain to try to do a thing, and yet to fail?” Falkin asked. Where before his questions had taken on the tone of statements and had given Iyana the feeling of being led, this one was asked freely and without thought to an answer. He looked to Ceth as well, whose stony face seemed to give his answer.

  “They were chosen, too, Iyana,” Falkin said. “Your sister. The Ember she travels with. All of them. No doubt they have some part to play, and perhaps theirs will win out, and be the greater and the more remembered in the songs to follow in the ages hence. That is not for us to decide. That is not what we have been shown, where we have been led. Your long, winding, tumultuous road has led you back to where you started, and bearing knowledge. Bearing fear, and the motivation that comes along with it.”

  Iyana paused before speaking. She tried to think of all that she knew, all that she had been shown, and with the new knowledge—the new belief—of who had shown it to her. The Eastern Dark might have turned the key, but circumstance had shown her the door. The world had chosen her, just as it had chosen Kole and Linn and Talmir Caru. Just as it had chosen Creyath, and brought him to an ending that had saved them even as it had ended his road. Just as it had allowed Pevah to right old wrongs. Just as it had blessed Sen with gifts he had abused, and ultimately, had turned around in the end.

  She saw a burning lake with ships for coals and a glowing spine at its center, and knew where it was. She saw a city emptied, with nothing but stone and dust and red tiles, but no blood, and she knew where its people had gone. Where she had led them. She saw a black flood, fast-moving and sharp, with white foam that resolved into the teeth and fangs of the beasts the Emberfolk, the Rockbled and the Faey had fought for the better part of a generation. Longer than any other land. And for once, she warred with the poisonous feeling at her core that had always believed the Dark Months in the Valley to be a curse and tried to see them as a blessing given what was still to come.

  Who better to face the tide than they? Who better to turn it back?

  “I don’t know much,” she said, shaking her head as she watched the logs burn in the stuffy confines of Falkin’s home.

  “You know enough,” Falkin said with a confidence she could not explain. “Enough to make a start, or to stop an end.”

  “And what of you?” Iyana asked, trying to keep the accusation from her tone. “What will the Faey do, when night falls?”

  Falkin smiled. “Do you have to ask?”

  Iyana blinked. She found herself in a small patch of woodland that was not lit by bright moss or bordered by a glowing stream. There were no fluttering, bright-winged moths nor buzzing, blinking insects. She was in a glade graced by a shaft of moonlight that she had not seen from farther west. She wondered for a moment if that had been the light she had mistaken for Ceth’s tether, but as she oriented herself back to the present, discarding the day’s thoughts and all the hopes and doubts it had called up in her, she heard a sound like a diving bird.

  She looked up, and her heart skipped a beat as she saw a blur of silver and gray descend.

  Ceth landed in the glade with a thud that, while strong enough to shake the leaves and make her toes tingle in their shoes, was far softer than should have been possible. The Landkist landed in a crouch with his back to her, his silver hair falling on a delay. When he stood up to his full height, his form seemed to shimmer, that translucent glow that looked like the beating of moths’ wings blanketing him. His own private storm.

  When he turned to her, Iyana saw water gathered in the wells of his steel-colored eyes.

  Iyana parted her lips. She felt the need to say something. Felt that Ceth needed her to or wanted her to. Instead, she looked up. There were wisps of clouds above, faint trails of vapor below the deeper color of the night she hadn’t seen before.

  When her eyes fell back down to meet Ceth’s, he looked different. His eyes no longer watered, and she thought that she had been wrong. It was cold in the high places of the world, and Ceth could go higher than most. Perhaps the wind had stung him and wrung the tears from him, or perhaps he had been looking north, seeking the sands he had left behind.

  “What can you see?” Iyana asked. The question sounded foolish, but Ceth never made her feel that way. He looked up.

  “Your Valley is a beautiful place,” Ceth said.

  Iyana felt a twinge at the way he said it. She thought he meant it, but there was something in his tone that made her sad. She moved closer to him.

  “It’s your Valley, too,” Iyana said, swallowing. “It can be.”

  Ceth met her eyes and it took all she had not to look away. No matter his words and no matter the outer calm, there was always an intensity about his stare that Iyana found took her by surprise. Still, it didn’t unsettle her, as it once did.

  “Can you be of a place you were not born?” Ceth asked.

  “You weren’t born below the desert sands,” Iyana answered. “But you called it home.”

  Ceth frowned as if he disagreed. “My charge was in the deserts,” he said. “By Pevah’s side.”

  “You confuse place with purpose. If you know one, you know the other.”

  Ceth looked down at his hands. They still had that blur hanging about them, and the closer Iyana got, the more she could feel it teasing the hairs on her arms and tickling the worn fabric of her shirt. She had dressed quickly, and loosely. She should have felt immodest, but she didn’t.

  “What is my purpose, then?” Ceth asked. He almost sounded bitter, as if he needed direction, and Iyan
a felt like an imposter for thinking she was the one to give it. “Power will mean little in the war to come, if what you fear is true. Little more than a delay. I can’t stop it. I have brought my people here, to this land of grass and plenty, only to bury them, or to watch them swallowed by a darkness that will consume the world.”

  Iyana went to lay a hand on Ceth’s. As it neared his wrist, she felt the pull stronger, as if the limb had been taken by a rushing current. There was a shock at the contact, but it was nothing compared to the feeling she got when his eyes met hers again. They were very close.

  Iyana’s heart beat faster. She felt her body tensing in response to her proximity to Ceth and the pull about him. A pull he had not thought to relinquish, and seemed no closer to doing so now.

  “A delay is time,” she whispered. “Time with your people. Time with the land. Time with …”

  She trailed off, her eyes moving to Ceth’s lips. They looked softer than she would have imagined. His skin was softer than she would have imagined, for one who came from barren heights.

  Now that she was here, and now that they were, it seemed to Iyana that she had taken Ceth for granted. His stony presence. His steady calm.

  Iyana flashed into her greensight without thinking, seeing the glow reflected off Ceth’s unblinking eyes. She saw the blur around his form pulse and move, like smoke. It took on a ghostly light that was alluring to look upon. She did not concentrate on his tether, which shone above them, brighter than the moonlight that fought its way down through the enclosing dark. She felt her own tether brush against it, felt her body press against his, faster than she had intended.

  She should have released her Sight, which allowed her to feel as he felt. But Ceth didn’t ask her to, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t have to ask if he wanted her. Needed her. She felt it, and it reflected her need. She felt his surprise at recognizing his own desire.