The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4)

by Steven Kelliher

  A new thought occurred to her as she stole out into the foyer, and she cursed herself a fool as she fought the haze her muddled mind had made of itself with the hotwine’s assistance. She placed both hands to the dips behind her eyes and coaxed the greenfire out until she felt her fingertips thrumming with the fluttering energy of life.

  She never knew how to describe the sensation of using her gifts of healing. The Embers—Kole included—pulled their fire from the blood, with their hearts seeming to act as internal braziers. The fire was in them. Iyana wasn’t so sure her own gifts worked the same way. It never quite felt like the greenfire came from her, and the fact that she had been knitting wounds with little more than her intent and mending bones without breaking the skin since she was twelve did not absolve her of the sense of strangeness that overcame her when she brought the fire out again.

  In some ways, Iyana still felt an imposter in her own skin. Before she was called Faeykin, she had merely been the younger sister of Linn Ve’Ran, she who possessed the keenest eyes and the surest bow in the Valley core even before she had been granted or stolen the power of a Sage. Then, Iyana had been the apprentice of the Faey Mother, a woman the Emberfolk considered as strange and alien as she was familiar and familial.

  Now … now, Iyana was not sure what she was, or who. She had plied long and winding roads into the desert and had brought little back but for an Ember gone and a collection of lives who might’ve preferred to stay buried beneath the sands. She had used her healing little and her more violent, direct power much more than she ever could have thought. As for her Sight, it seemed she only had the fortitude to use it when in the depths of sleep, and then the images were more impressions, the conclusions guesses.

  “I would hope that isn’t all the work of the hotwine.”

  Iyana gave a start and twitched toward the kitchen window, yelping as a sharp pain greeted her tired temples from the quick movement. The thrumming in her fingers stopped, and though she still felt the threat of agony nesting behind her brow, she had managed to stop the pounding some. At least enough to make out the slim figure leaning against the countertop.

  He was an older man who looked younger than he was. Iyana had seen him at the gates, and though she had never met him, she knew he must be the owner of her resting place.

  “Kenta Griyen, I presume?”

  The man nodded. He was thin, but his forearms were corded with tightly-wound muscle. As he moved, he did so with a grace and surety that made him seem larger and more solid than he was. He recalled one of the Faey Iyana had only ever seen on rare occasion, but he did not have the gem-like eyes nor the flat-topped and hard-angled ears of the forest dwellers. His hair, though gray, did not recall her own moon white. He was a healer, this one, but no Faeykin.

  “You are not Landkist,” Iyana said, cursing herself a fool as she did. Kenta gave her a curious look as he strode toward her and reached his hand out. He tilted his head slightly, inquiring.

  Iyana made as if to shake, but he nodded at the empty glass she had placed on a low table that bore as many bandages as salves. She snatched it and handed it to him, and he dipped it into a beaten metal basin and brought it out, handing it back.

  “No,” he said, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “I am not Landkist. But I know more of healing than any of the Faey ever will … doubly so for their Kin.”

  Iyana felt color rise to her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure if it was a result of annoyance or embarrassment. She took the drink he proffered and took a small sip out of politeness before making as if to set it back down. This earned a frown.

  “Water will do more for what ails you than any greenfire or tether-tugging,” Kenta said. He did not say it patiently, though she thought he must be a patient man.

  “One of your hard-won bits of healing wisdom?” Iyana asked, annoyed at herself for the tone she had adopted. She very much wished to crawl back into the bed that wasn’t her own and imagine herself swaying above the floorboards of her dockside abode at Last Lake.

  Kenta raised a brow. “I don’t drink hotwine.”

  Sounds of the waking city filtered in through the open doorway. Carts trundled by. Halfhearted good mornings were sent and received. The grills hadn’t yet been lit, and the smells of morning dew and cool spray from the river below the White Cliffs were the only accompaniment to Iyana’s own bedraggled state.

  “Where is Tu’Ren?” Iyana asked, breaking the silence that had stretched to the point of discomfort. The water was doing its work now, which was to say, it was undoing the work of the hotwine.

  “He said he would see you off at the south gate,” Kenta said, watching her. “I saw him heading toward the cliffs.”

  Iyana nodded, knowing where he was headed. How strange it must be, to be among the oldest Landkist in the Valley, and yet to be among the last. She shook away the thought.

  “He tells me you mean to seek aid from the Valley Faey,” Kenta said. He did not seem to cast judgment, but rather waited on her response.

  Iyana set her glass down and blew out a sigh.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” she said. She didn’t feel comfortable in the gentle man’s presence, but she felt she could be honest.

  Kenta reached out and took Iyana by the hand, making her flinch. His skin was rough and had splotches among the tan that showed pale, like new skin stretched to cover the old—burns and stinging gashes closed in haste. She looked at him as he looked down, examining her knuckles and the soft white of her skin. Iyana carried few, if any physical scars. As she eyed Kenta, she thought whatever he bore on his skin he carried tenfold beneath.

  “You fought in the Valley Wars,” Iyana said. Kenta’s eyebrows twitched up, but he made no move to answer. “I suppose you all did. Is that where you learned to heal?”

  “There is no such thing as healing for those of us who aren’t blessed or cursed by this Valley of ours,” Kenta said, sounding harsher than he likely intended. “My friends were bleeding in the trenches.” He nodded sharply toward the open road and far beyond it. “Where those shallow streams form veins over the fields of Hearth, there were trenches, and the River F’Rust had yet to seep in. We had to choose what to fill them with, and we chose death and misery for a time.”

  Iyana winced as Kenta gave her hand a squeeze. He frowned and withdrew, and when he met her eyes once more, his seemed to flicker like a shy fire in a cool ring. “The body knows what to do and tries it,” he said. “I close the wounds and let the will do the rest. We’re more knitters and sewers than true healers. That is an art best left to the magic of the World—the truest magic there is. It’s a shame there aren’t more who carry it.”

  Iyana swallowed past the implication that she should not be one of the few to carry the gifts of the Valley—imagined or otherwise—and then frowned as she remembered something Kenta had passed over too quick to pause.

  “You referred to these gifts as a blessing,” Iyana said, “but also as a curse.”

  Kenta smiled softly. It made Iyana sad to see his look, and she thought she saw his eyes well a bit. There was no milk of age to them. They were sharp and clear as any she had seen. “The Embers are our protectors—as are all of the lads and ladies who take up arms to throw back the fell creatures of the night. But it has always been the way of war that the menders work with what’s left behind, and carry the guilt of their failures more truly.”

  Iyana felt a tear fall from her eye unbidden. Images assailed her, and they were much older than anything she had experienced of late, and much more vivid than she would have thought possible. She remembered the rows of wounded in the Long Hall after the first and worst of the Dark Months, when they had not been prepared for a full force of Dark Kind, but rather an errant beast or corrupted hound. Many had died, then, and Iyana had stumbled from blanket to corpse, searching for her mother while Linn did what she could up at the wall. She remembered hating her pale skin after that night for how bright it had made the blood appear. She remembered hat
ing those who had not been in the hall, those who had been fighting when they should have been working to save what could be saved, help what could be helped.

  “I do not think you go to the Faey to learn more of the greenfire,” Kenta said, searching her. “From what the Faey Mother told me, there are no tricks to that gift. You have it, or you do not. No.” He paused. “You go because of those green eyes of yours. Eyes that have the whole city in a frenzy, and those on my council who keep it running in something close to order.”

  Iyana found herself wanting to be rid of the conversation. She felt trapped, as if Kenta were leading her into a dead end.

  “The Merchant Council,” she nearly spat, and Kenta laughed, full-bellied and in a manner that stood at odds with his aloof demeanor.

  “You truly have been spending time with the captain,” he said. “Rest assured, Iyana Ve’Ran, I am no enemy of Talmir Caru. If he believes a thing, I’ll act as if it’s the truth, whether or not it comes to pass.”

  “And he believes in what I’ve seen?” Iyana asked, hating the hesitance in her voice. Hating that she needed to hear that, yes, he did believe.

  “He believes in you,” Kenta said, leaving the specific question to the side. “It seems to me he believes it more, perhaps, than you do.”

  “I need answers,” Iyana said, firm.

  “And you believe the Faey have them.”

  “I believe I have them,” she said without missing a beat. “I believe I can, and I believe they can show me how.”

  Kenta switched between her eyes. He was searching for something, but Iyana did not know what. After a moment, his eyes seemed to widen ever so slightly. Enough to reveal a bit of white.

  “You believe we will not survive,” he said. “You believe this season will be our last.”

  Iyana said nothing, which had the same effect.

  “The Eastern Dark is not our friend,” Iyana said, earning a curious expression from the man, “but I’ve seen the same thing as him. I’ve seen the World Apart, Kenta, and when it gets here—if it gets here—there is no fire in all the World that will save us.”

  “And you think you can find the means to stopping it?”

  “No.”

  The admission seemed to surprise him, and for a moment Iyana felt that it was she who was working to reassure him, one of the great leaders of Hearth, one of its immovable stones, and a man who had held the line when the Red Bowl had earned its name, if Karin’s tales from that recent time were even a shadow of the truth.

  “Our fate is out of our hands,” Iyana said. “It is in the hands of Sages and Embers and Landkist the World over, and far from here.”

  “Then—”

  “But we can fight,” she said. She thought of Tu’Ren as she said it, and of Kole. She thought of Talmir Caru. “We can delay. The enemy is coming. That is certain. But it pays to know where, and it pays to know when.” Iyana did not mention her secret hope—that she could learn the very thing she feared she could not. That she could find a way to stop the dark, or reach those who could, no matter how far afield they were, and no matter how few.

  Kenta nodded and stepped back. He seemed as if he wanted to say more but left it and showed her a smile. She did not think many of them reached his eyes and tried not to blame him for it.

  “I would wish you good luck,” Kenta said, “but then, that would be the same as wishing it for me, I suppose.”

  “For all of us,” Iyana said and Kenta nodded.

  “Then I wish you good speed.” A shadow passed over his face and Iyana’s expression must have changed with its coming. “The Eastern Woods are dark, no matter the lights that nest in their center. Take care on your road.”

  Iyana smiled, now. “I have a knight to guide me.”

  The word was an old one, she knew, and it served only to change Kenta’s look from curious to concerned. He let it be and moved toward the door, Iyana following on his heels.

  “You could change, you know,” he said without turning, and Iyana stopped in her tracks as he stole out onto the cobbles. When he was gone, she looked down at the borrowed cloth she wore and laughed at how absurd it looked to travel in. She put on her traveling clothes, ignoring the musty smell that brought back images from the desert. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, and remembered that it hadn’t all been bad, nor dark.

  It took a lot longer to reach the South Gate than Iyana had anticipated—partly due to the twisting alleys, roads and inclines ranging from slight to sharp—and partly due to the fact that she did not know where it was.

  When she reached the smaller courtyard that was less than half the size of the one she had passed through the day before, she was surprised to see Ceth already waiting for her beneath the open arch. The steely gray-eyed woman Martah stood beside him and two of the red-sashes sat on a large barrel by the white wall that was stained darker at the base.

  Iyana approached, feeling nervous despite her familiarity with the nomads.

  “Ceth,” she said. He only stared. She shifted to Martah, who tried to smile but came up with something that passed closer to a grimace. “What are you doing at the South Bend?”

  “Waiting,” Martah said, nodding behind her with a frown.

  “For …?”

  “Your Ember man,” she said. “The big one.”

  “Going to have to be more specific than that,” an old man tossed in as he strode past leading a mule laden with too many satchels and sacks.

  “First Keeper,” Martah tossed back.

  “Still more specific,” he waved back with a laugh and Martah went from annoyed to irate.

  “There are two First Keepers in town,” Iyana said, mollifying. Martah gave her a look that seemed to ask openly if Iyana were lying to her, or leading her into some trap. She came away satisfied enough.

  “Tu’Ren, I assume,” Iyana said and Ceth gave a nod. “You’re going to the Lake?”

  “You are not?” Martah asked. “It is your home within this home, no?”

  “It is,” Iyana said, her voice going low, subdued. She thought of the salt water lapping the coarse coral on the shore, imagined the pink and white bits glistening in the falling sun. The empty home and the ghosts of memory that filled it.

  Martah opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself.

  “The others will be along,” Ceth said. “The children slept. Tu’Ren went to fetch the wagon.”

  “For the children,” Iyana reasoned and Ceth frowned.

  “Yes,” he said, watching her closely.

  “But,” she started and then stopped. “The others. Those inside.”

  “Burned,” Ceth said. He said it short and harsh, and then his look seemed to soften a bit as he took in her own. “Kadeh says we will only take the one into the trees. The one who is not from here, but is from where we are going.”

  “We,” Iyana said absently. She saw an image flash of Verna and Courlis burning away, the embers that made them up merging with the morning light.

  Martah looked askance at Ceth, who frowned. Apparently, everyone knew of the plan but her.

  “I am to protect you,” Ceth said. “The road is dark in the Eastern Woods, he said. There are beasts, and the Faey have tricks and can be unkind. I am to kill them if they try—”

  “You are most certainly not to kill them if they try so much as anything, Ceth,” Iyana said, her ire rising. Martah smiled as she looked from her to Ceth, and Iyana blushed as she saw the red-sashes leaning forward enough to cause the barrel to spill them unceremoniously onto the dirt and straw of the courtyard.

  Ceth frowned. He didn’t nod, but rather shrugged, as if he would take Iyana’s order under consideration.

  “You,” Iyana said, recovering some of her former decorum. “You don’t have to come.”

  “I know.”

  They said nothing more, and Iyana was suddenly made painfully aware of the soldiers atop the South Bend and the way they worked to keep their eyes averted, which only served to heighten the sense of
unbelonging Ceth and the others must be feeling.

  The sun was high and a slick sheen of sweat had begun to coat her arms and stick the ruffles of her pants to her legs when the red-sashes perked up at the sound of wagon wheels.

  Iyana turned and saw more red and gray, and was surprised to see that some had already shed their colors for the more vibrant yellows, greens and occasional blues to be found among the carts and carriages on Hearth’s central ways. What they had to trade, Iyana couldn’t begin to guess. She hoped it was a sign of Hearth’s changing in the wake of the darkness they had endured so recently, and of the dead they continued to mourn. It was not a sorry thing to be burdened with new arrivals.

  The cover of the wagon had been torn away, and the children bounced and wrestled amidst the rope and sacks, boxes and crates of baubles that stood empty, since they had little but for the clothes on their backs and the pleasure of each other’s familiar company.

  Shadowing the wagon was Tu’Ren, who led Creyath’s black charger. The well-muscled beast snorted at any passers-by who drew too near, and Iyana saw that he was burdened with a package that could not be mistaken for anything but the slumping, covered form of Sen.

  “He looks like a bundle of rice,” Iyana said, earning a sharp look from Ceth. Seeing whatever he did in her face, his own relaxed and when next he looked upon the charger’s burden, he did so with fresh pity.

  “Kenta,” Iyana said.

  The old man she had so recently seen was changed. He looked to be tucking a worn green traveling shirt into brown trousers, and the dark leather belt that held it all together seemed to strain the loops with its elasticity. When he saw her, he smirked and gave a mild shrug.

  “Couldn’t keep this one with the mares,” Tu’Ren said, leading the charger forward. “His blood hasn’t cooled from the desert.” The animal chuffed at Iyana and lowered his great head, pressing his brow into Iyana’s chest. She laid her forehead against the beast’s and stroked his mane, whispering to him.

  “That isn’t it at all, is it?” she asked him, earning a whinny for her attentions. “You’ve lost the same friend the rest of us have. A close friend. You loved him. Creyath Mit’Ahn.”