The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4)

by Steven Kelliher

  “You missed me, in other words,” Talmir said, smiling at the merchant captain. Yush began to sputter almost immediately, his face turning crimson.

  “What I mean to ask—” Yush started, recovering some of his tired decorum, but Talmir interjected.

  “You mean to ask if it was worth it,” Talmir said. “This trek to the northwest, to the deserts of our ancestors. You mean to ask what I’ve brought back, and to inquire about what I left behind.”

  “Yes,” Yush said without pause. He did not say it with the inflection of an accusation. Talmir knew his tones well. He quirked an eyebrow at the continued lack of aggression from a man he considered as reprehensible as he was diminutive. “That is what we ask.”

  Yush looked around the table. Those gathered, Rain included, dipped their heads slightly in acknowledgement. Even Piell’s moon eyes roved his way, quivering as they took in the hint of his presence, as if she were regarding his aura rather than his physical form.

  So Talmir told them.

  He told them of the march through the Red Gap and the fight with the spitting drakes in their wide earthen bowl. Of the ambush by the Bloody Screamers and their meeting with the northern Landkist they came to know as Ceth. He spoke of the Red Waste and used the name he had come to know him by, and as he spoke of Pevah and his desert children who could have been theirs, scraping a living of peace and white light and radiance beneath the swaying, spilling desert dunes, he felt a painful longing to go back.

  And then he remembered the Pale Men, driven like rabid wolves by the Witches’ song. He remembered the fight by the underground lake, and the way the pillar had shed its illuminating brilliance over a scene of such blood, gore and devastation he had not witnessed since the Valley Wars, when the trenches without Hearth had been slick with red.

  Of the trek to the west and the ensuing fight with the Bloody Seers, he spared the details, but told them he and Karin had slain them, one and all, and ended their macabre song, though it availed them little in the end.

  “No doubt it is a good thing they are gone,” Yush surprised him by saying. The merchant captain swallowed and fidgeted under the sudden attention of the rest. “Continue, Captain Caru.”

  “The Night Lord came,” he said, remembering the way the ground had shaken and dunes near as tall as the lowest peaks of the Valley had broken apart, shattered like the melted plain of glass the titan’s purple fire made of the land. Talmir had seen it even from a league to the north, where he and Karin had finished their fell and noble deed. “Creyath Mit’Ahn took it upon himself to fight the beast, with Ceth beside him. It was … a mighty and terrible thing to see.”

  Talmir paused and swallowed. His eyes flicked to Rain, whose brows were drawn together in a look of such sympathy it nearly broke him all over again.

  “The Second Keeper acquitted himself well,” Talmir said, managing to stop his voice from cracking.

  “And the rest of you,” Rain said. “Those who did not fight the beast—”

  “Were occupied by another.”

  “The Eastern Dark,” Gretti said, and even Piell’s eyes widened at that. Seeing Talmir’s look, Gretti knew it to be true. She leaned forward, the fire framing her outline and turning her black as a silhouette. “So it is true. You fought him.”

  “Not I,” Talmir said. “Iyana Ve’Ran and the Sage of the Red Waste. They matched him blow for blow.”

  “He was not defeated,” Piell said, slowly, as if she were remembering, “but he did not lay you low.”

  “No,” Talmir said, shaking his head slowly. “I only know what I was told. I was fighting with the Sentinels he called in. The ones that possessed the Faeykin Sen, whom they bring to the east now for burial.” He paused, tracing the whorls and rivers in the carved and grainy wood of the table as if they held the memories. “He came with a purpose,” he said. “The Eastern Dark. He came with a purpose and left with the same.”

  He looked up, finally hearing the words Iyana had told him as if for the first time. As if the truth had formed a burning shaft to clear away his fog of grief and reach his mind.

  “He believes he is right to hunt the others,” Talmir said.

  Yush chortled sarcastically. There was an edge to his tone that Talmir understood well. Though greedy and selfish, Yush was of the Emberfolk, and the Emberfolk could not easily suffer the Eastern Dark’s name to pass over their tongues free of scorn.

  “They all believe themselves to be right in this war of theirs,” Rain said, waving her hand dismissively. She picked up a half-drained glass of riverwine and took a long pull, watching Talmir, waiting for him to get to a more salient point. None preferred to discuss Sages and their ends.

  “I saw him wounded,” Talmir said. “Something in the exchange, either with Pevah or with Ve’Ran … it laid him low, or near enough to show fear.” Piell followed him closely, her eyes narrowing as he spoke. “She spoke with him, melded with him in the strange way the Faeykin do. And if she did, it means he has emotions, like a man. He thinks like a man. He is—was—a man, or something like enough to feel righteousness and rage.”

  They regarded him as if he’d gone mad—even Rain, who set her glass down on the oaken table with a hollow sound that echoed in the close and dusky confines. There was a lone window behind her, small, circular and crossed with timbers, and as the sun sank low enough for the teeth of the black peaks to obscure it, it shed an amber light on the table that began to move with the passing of time. Piell, however, looked at him differently.

  “You believe the Eastern Dark has a point,” she said, her voice more clear than it was usually wont to be. More purposeful. “That he may have some role to play in all this, for good or ill.”

  “I do not know what I believe,” Talmir said. He kicked errantly at a strip of wood that pulled loose from the planks of the floor. “I only know that, whatever happened, Iyana saw something in him to give her pause. Enough to make her seek answers for the coming darkness away from him.”

  Talmir sighed, trying to orient his thoughts.

  “For as long as any of us can remember, we have blamed the Eastern Dark for opening the door to the World Apart,” Talmir said. “For admitting the beasts of that fell realm and setting them on us. But what if it was folly and not intent?” He saw the looks they shared, though Piell continued to stare straight at him. “It does not erase his sin, but it does change our aim, does it not? It should change the direction of our thought and our action. If we are to survive, we must know the cause of the Dark Months and all they bring. And the cause, much as we may be loath to admit it, may not rest with the Sage we’ve counted our enemy longer than any other.”

  Rain settled back in her chair. The drink had warmed her enough to relax in the present company, but she looked troubled by Talmir’s words. Gretti looked to Piell, who continued to stare at Talmir, or toward him—her eyes had lost a bit of their steadiness. Yush narrowed his eyes as he regarded Talmir, and it was he who broke the silence.

  “Do you doubt the tales from the desert, Captain?” Yush asked. Again, his tone held no hint of accusation, but Talmir narrowed his own gaze, mistrustful of the direction the merchant captain took. “Do you doubt that the Eastern Dark came west as soon as he learned of the Ember fire? That he sought to use them, to corrupt them and turn them to his own ends, to turn them on the rest of his kind and any who opposed him, just as he did with our Ember king? Just as he did with T’Alon Rane?”

  Talmir thought on it awhile. A while longer than he had any right to, given what he had seen, what he had known as the truth since the day he was old enough to grasp its opposite.

  “No,” he said, and said it with a confidence that surprised him. “No, I do not doubt them. But—” he said before Yush could speak, “that still begs the most important question. The only question.”

  “Why?”

  Rain asked it, and the others turned to face her. She had propped her elbows on the dark wood and steepled her fingers beneath her chin. Her eyes were fa
r away, but her thoughts were close and filled to the point of bursting.

  “Why would he do it in the first place?” she asked. “Why would he need to seek the Ember fire? To fight against the powers that had once been his fellows, if not his kin?”

  “To fight against the very thing he had brought into the World, unwittingly,” Piell said. She said it as if confirming a long-held suspicion, and Talmir could only shrug as the others turned his way. As if he knew. As if he had anything apart from questions.

  “The Eastern Dark will never be a friend to us,” Talmir said. “Nor will he earn forgiveness for whatever part he’s played in laying a darkness upon us that has yet to reach the World without this Valley of ours—”

  He saw eyes widen at that, and thought how strange it was that they would never give thought to the rest of the World. That they would never think to ask if the Dark Kind brought their gnashing teeth and black razor claws out of rifts and tears in the lands of Center, or beneath the towers in the east, or in the sandy bowls between the dunes in the north.

  “We must look to the cause,” Talmir said. “To the true threat. The World Apart is coming. Iyana saw it. No more rifts. No more errant floods, and no Corrupted army sent by a Sage turned crazed by powers beyond his control. The source is the thing we must fear, and the thing we must fight against. The thing our wayward champions hope to stop before it comes. But we cannot rely on that. We must prepare, as we have always done. We must prepare to make a stand. A stand unlike any we have made before. And it will take everything we have, everything this Valley holds, to stop the coming tide of night.”

  Talmir was nearly breathless when he stopped. He looked up, refocusing eyes that had glazed over with half-formed images of black fires burning up from the Deep Lands, and of red eyes leering from the thickets and reeds.

  “Karin Reyna, First Runner of Last Lake,” Yush said. “He has gone south again, and taken two of our best soldiers with him, no?”

  “He believes we will need runners in the war to come,” Talmir said. “Given what I have seen of the man, I would trust him to do whatever he feels is in the best interests of this people. “

  “Just as we would trust you,” Yush said, his tone flat enough that Talmir turned his attention to him more directly. Yush winked so that the others couldn’t see, and Talmir actually found himself smiling, if only for a brief moment.

  “Jes and Mial,” Yush said, shaking his head. “Misha Ve’Gah before them. Crey—” He stopped at that and swallowed past the sudden lump Talmir’s quick stare caused. How quickly a good mood could sour.

  “And now Kenta,” Gretti said, ignoring their private exchange. She sighed and then cleared her throat, a sound of frustration.

  “You speak as if they will not come back,” Talmir said, to which Gretti shrugged as if it didn’t much matter.

  “Control,” Talmir said with a sardonic laugh. “It’s the lack of it you can’t abide.” Sister Gretti bristled, but did not lash out, not with Yush being in such a rare agreeable mood. Not with Talmir’s grief so near. “I am charged with protecting this city, and through it, this Valley and everything in it.”

  “You were once charged with fighting others in this Valley,” Gretti put back, even and unflinching. Talmir had to respect that, if nothing else about her. “And now we’ve sent some of our only Landkist off into wilds we do not control, Captain, and for what? To smoke herbs and mash paste, and to enter a warm delirium through which to see a future we cannot prevent in any case?”

  Talmir did not answer, but the words did less than make him angry and more than make him unsettled. Gretti sighed seeing his look, and this time there was no malice in it.

  “We lost much in the deserts,” Talmir said, his voice low and mournful. “Too much. I know that better than most. I know why I receive some of the looks I do. I don’t dismiss them. I understand them. I embrace them. They are a reminder to do better by us next time. To be better for us.”

  “You have nothing to prove—” Rain started but Talmir shook her words off.

  “I’ll not tell that to the ashes of Hearth,” he said. “What we lost in the sands we cannot get back. What we left behind was a life we cannot reclaim. I was there, my friends, and only the ghosts of the Emberfolk remain. What I found, I brought back.” He smiled, a private look he shared with them, and a true one. “But what fire they possess. I tell you, friends. I have seen such courage from them—even the children—that I cannot count them anything other than family.”

  “We are,” Yush started and then stopped. He cleared his throat. “We are glad to have them,” he finished with a sharp nod, as if the words had pained him to say. Strangers from distant lands eating the meats and growth of the Valley’s toil, and with nothing to trade.

  “They are made of strong stuff,” Talmir said. “Callous as it is to say, whatever we have lost in martial strength through recent trials, we may have redoubled with their presence.”

  “With the presence of one in particular,” Rain said. “The Northern Landkist. He is of the Skyr, no?”

  Talmir regarded her with surprise. He dipped a nod. “I heard him referenced as such, yes. He is a strange one, but he will stand with us when the time comes. He has a power that could spell the difference, same as any Ember that remains. I believe that.”

  “Then so do we,” Rain said.

  “Excellent,” Gretti said. “A joy to hear with the Dark Months closing in, and faster than they ever have before. And yet utterly pointless if the Faey devour him.”

  Talmir laughed, but Gretti’s look did not so much as shift. She watched him, unflinching.

  “The same Faey who walked through these very streets,” he gestured toward the amber-lit window, “healing those who could not walk, mending bonds and skin and offering such tender comfort as ours were too beaten to lend.”

  “The very same,” Gretti said, and Talmir could only stare. He did not know much of her past. Come to think of it, long as he had been forced into regular contact with the Merchant Council, he did not know much of worth about the lot of them save for Rain, who came up from the same new-forged gutters as him. The same cobbles and dirt. The same choices.

  He gave it up as pointless and hoped she would let it drop. She did.

  “All of this,” Yush said, “the threat of annihilation, the promise of hope, the path forward. All of it, on the visions of a girl less than half our age, and one who shared visions with the Eastern Dark. One who shared power, if not blood, with our former enemies, the gentle Faey of the Valley core.”

  “Do you doubt her?” Talmir asked.

  Yush regarded him coolly. He did not answer for some time.

  “She is the legacy of the Faey Mother,” he said, and the others—Piell included—bowed their heads for a brief moment as he mentioned the departed Valley legend, one who had held them together through times seeming darker than these. More personal and more close. In a way, it was simple to fight against the dark and all the things it brought.

  Talmir waited for Yush to continue, but apparently that was enough for him, one way or the other.

  “What use is seeing if there is no way to stop it?” Gretti asked, growing exasperated.

  “One can’t divert the future,” Talmir said. “None among us, and none among the Landkist. Still,” he met each of their eyes in turn. “We can move to thwart it, to meet it head-on, but only if we see its coming, its direction and its ending. The Emberfolk of this Valley have long been masters of preparation. We must do so again, and like we never have before. But first, we need to know what we’re up against.”

  Gretti tensed but calmed herself with effort. She was afraid, Talmir now recognized. They all were, and he was unhappy to realize that he was not exempt from their number.

  “Besides,” Talmir said, “we aren’t relying on Iyana Ve’Ran alone.”

  “Who, then?” Yush asked.

  “Our wayward champions,” Rain said, sounding less certain than Talmir would have liked. Sounding
as certain as he himself was these days, with no word from the north or east and no way of getting it outside of Iyana or her ilk. “Kole Reyna and the rest.”

  “Ah, yes,” Gretti said, focusing in. “Some of our most powerful defenders, off roving the wider World in search of a Sage powerful enough to kill them. What has become of them, I wonder? Do they lie dead beneath the roots of Center? Perhaps they have made it to the black fields of the east and found ground soft enough and deep enough to fit them all.”

  Talmir frowned and took a warning step toward the table before he realized what he was doing. Now Gretti did flinch, but the water filling the wells of her eyes and reflecting the dusklight gave him pause.

  “All conflict has a source, Sister Gretti,” Piell said. Her voice was strong and not reedy as it was sometimes wont to be. “All wars a beginning. Ours is in the east.”

  “Ours?” Gretti asked, sounding more like a frightened child than a councilor.

  “We are of the World, are we not?” Piell asked. She switched her gaze to Gretti before she continued. “We must not separate our plight from the rest. We are all at war, child. We always have been. It just so happens that we, in this fertile Valley, have been fighting the true one longer than the rest.” She stopped and looked down, her eyes cast in what could only be described as shame. “Still, we are not free of the sins of our past, wars fought with little reason other than to see whose will was the greater.”

  Yush bristled at that and even Talmir felt his ire rise as images from his youth flashed before him: the speckled blood on his father’s face as he had returned home after the conflict that had started it all in the first place, pitting Emberfolk against Riverman, Rockbled against Faey. An ugly time, and one whose participants, whose sinners great and small, had searched for meaning in the decades to follow and found it fleeting.