The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4)

by Steven Kelliher

  Talmir raised his eyebrows and Garos smiled broadly.

  “On what account?” Garos asked. “Spit it out.”

  “I am to believe Captain Talmir bested you in combat?” Jakub said, staring wildly at Garos while he jabbed a finger at Talmir. “A regular swordsman against the First Keeper of Hearth?”

  “I wasn’t First Keeper at the time, lad,” Garos said. “That honor belonged to Vennil Cross.” Both Garos and Talmir held a hand over their hearts and dipped a bow to her memory, much as they had hated her in life. Much as Talmir did. “And besides, it wasn’t combat, per se, but sparring. This is the sparring yard, after all.”

  “Wasn’t too far away from combat,” Talmir said. “Tensions being what they were. I seem to recall a bit of your fire making it into the duel.”

  Garos smirked and shrugged it off. “You’ve your swordsman’s tricks,” he said. “I’ve my fire. What’s a poor Ember to do?”

  “What indeed,” Talmir said. His eyes traced from Garos to the space of stone wall the open gate now blocked. Garos followed his gaze and his expression dropped some of its mirth.

  “Boy,” the First Keeper barked. “Drag that gate away from the wall.”

  Jakub didn’t need to be told twice. Perhaps Talmir had been too soft with him, or perhaps a regular swordsman—as Jakub had called him—could never inspire the same sort of quick loyalty as one of the Landkist.

  The boy gripped the timber of the gate, set his feet and put his back into the two-armed pull. The gate lurched back toward the center of the yard, and the hinges complained less this time. The sliver of dusklight shrank to a narrow beam that separated Talmir from Garos. Jakub straightened and examined the section of wall the door had been blocking from view. The training armory was even smaller and more threadbare than Talmir had remembered. Wooden blades—sharp enough to cut but dull enough to make killing a difficult thing—were set into rusted caches or leaned against narrow staffs and double-sided axes with flattened edges. The wood had been dyed black to recall Everwood, though it could never be mistaken for the same, and though the whole of the depression was covered with cobwebs and dust, it did nothing to slow the flood of memories that assailed Talmir with such a wave of emotion his legs shook.

  Though he was older than Talmir by a few years, the effect seemed to be the same for Garos. The Ember stepped around Jakub and patted the boy on the shoulder. He went to the shelves and tested a few of the wooden weapons, laughing to himself privately as he tested their weight. He settled on a staff, one that was too tall to be set into the caches and instead rested against the wall.

  “That one yours?” Talmir asked, watching him.

  “Can’t see how it could belong to any other.” Garos was not a particularly tall man, standing about the same height as Talmir, but he was strong as an ox and his Ember blood made him fast as a wolf. He needed weight in his weapons—even in youth—that Talmir could never wield.

  “Jakub,” Talmir said, nodding at the boy. “Fetch me a blade.”

  “Which one?” Jakub asked, his eyes wide and wild, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He sprang toward the threadbare armory as if Talmir had bestowed upon him a sacred task, his hands roving over the carved pommels of the wooden swords, axes and scythes.

  “Your choice.” Talmir smirked at Garos, who had already moved away from the wall. The keeper practiced easy swings as he floated toward the center of the yard, and as the light came closer to leaving them, Talmir saw his eyes beginning to smolder with a bit of the sunset they were drenched in.

  Talmir felt wood in his hand as Jakub set a sword into it. He undid the clip and buckle and pulled his sword belt off, handing it to the boy, who clutched it to his chest and stepped backward as if in a dream.

  “You will decide the winner,” Talmir said without turning to him.

  “How will I know?” Jakub asked, nervous and excited.

  “Oh,” Garos said, “I think you’ll know.”

  They circled one another like a black tiger of Center and a silver lion of the Untamed Hills, the narrowing band of amber light in the center of the yard the only illusion of separation between them. Talmir often heard other warriors talk about the thrill as something that started at their temples or their chest. For him, it was always the fingers. A tingling sensation, like the electricity that preceded a humid summer storm. His legs felt weighty. They always did before a fight, but he knew enough of himself now to know that they would lighten soon enough. His arms felt weak, but he knew their strength, just as he knew that of the man standing before him.

  Or thought he did.

  The sun began its final descent, and the narrow strip of dusk cleaving the yard in two shrank to a spear tip. When it slid lower, racing toward the west and retreating into the gap left by the open gate, Garos launched himself forward with an exhale that worked as a battle cry.

  Talmir shifted with the momentum of Garos’s charge and turned his back foot. He raised his wooden sword in an uphand block, but something in the way Garos’s eyes bulged and the veins stood out on his forearms made Talmir flinch. At the last instant, he twirled away from the almost-clash, angling his sword down to redirect Garos’s overhand swing as he circled out. The blow might have been glancing, but it nearly jarred the blade loose from Talmir’s hand.

  And then there was that speed.

  Talmir was fast. Perhaps the fastest sword in the south, but though Garos would not bring his flames to bear in a spar, there was no stopping that which was in his blood, that which boiled from his heart and poured into every cord and sinew in that barrel torso and those engorged limbs. He turned his staff into a sidehand swipe and Talmir turned that away too, along with the next salvo the Ember launched at him.

  Fighting was all in the feet. That’s what First Keeper Vennil Cross had always said, and so her two brightest students had taken it to heart—the one who had earned her attention before a single deed had been done and the one who had earned it slow, over years and through trials beyond count, until, when he finally had it, he found that he did not care for it any longer. Garos’s great black boots rose and fell, shuffled and shifted, but they did not carry the weight one might expect. Talmir stepped back, angled, redirected. If Jakub were paying attention to the right things, he would be looking at the way their feet moved about each other, judging the momentum of the duel by who occupied whose space and when, how often the one advanced and the other backed away, but more so, which pair of boots moved first and which second.

  It was always said that Talmir Caru had the best feet beneath the best sword in the Valley. Talmir was a humble man at heart, but he was also an honest one, and what they said was true. He moved so sudden and swift that Garos was caught off-balance early on. Only a quick flare of that Ember blood and an unnaturally quick parry with that weighty staff turned Talmir’s training sword aside. Still, when it came to movement, to action and reaction, Larren Holspahr had been the best Talmir had ever seen. He had always regretted not being able to meet that one on the field or in the training yard. He supposed he wouldn’t have stood much of a chance.

  Still. By all rights, he shouldn’t be matching the First Keeper of Hearth blow-for-blow as he was.

  “Gah!” Garos grunted. If Talmir had done the same, they’d have known the Ember’s victory was close at hand. Talmir was a silent fighter. Silent as a scorpion, Vennil had always said. Garos was not. When he got going and when his blood was up, Balsheer was throaty and booming, at turns joyous and full of rage.

  In a word, they were both, each in his own way, exultant.

  Talmir caught a glimpse of Jakub’s dark eyes as he stepped to his right, circling with his back to the eastern wall. Garos stopped circling and stood to face him, his whole form outlined in the final mix of purple and amber that marked the day’s inevitable loss to the coming night. The glance nearly cost Talmir his consciousness, as Garos used the last glare of the sun to disguise his positioning. He slid his feet forward as Talmir looked away and then l
unged without swiping or carving or swinging. Instead, he jabbed with a blunt stab and Talmir sucked in his gut and spread his arms out wide as if balancing on a beam as he dodged backward.

  Garos smiled, white-toothed and raw as he followed his strike in. He pulled the staff back and Talmir followed its path as the Ember spun in. Instead of another jab, which Talmir was prepared to counter, Garos disguised his true intent and led with the shoulder, catching Talmir on his chest and shoulder and turning him aside like a blown leaf in the wind.

  Talmir let out a wheeze as he turned, but used the momentum to switch his blade from right hand to left. He pivoted on his left foot and launched into a spin of his own, twirling like a dancer as he caught Garos on the flat of his back with the flat of his blade with enough force to send him stumbling.

  He darted in after him, and Garos’s eyes revealed more white than amber-brown as he turned aside a stab with expert precision, bending his right leg as he took his staff fully into his left hand and went for an uppercut with the empty right. But Talmir knew the technique and used his blade’s miss to bring him in close. He turned his hands over and stepped behind Garos, whipping his left elbow forward and up and catching the Ember on the chin. Garos grunted and spat pink spittle and Talmir winced, wondering if he had cracked a tooth, but when the two finished the exchange and spun to face one another once more, he saw that Garos was grinning broadly.

  The yard was drenched in cool blue shadows, with only the palest yellow light illuminating the clouds over the western wood like a lantern or a pale flower at dawn. Garos was sweating, and as his chest heaved, Talmir noted his shirt clinging to his back and chest. He felt the Bronze Star thrumming with that strange, latent energy and saw Garos’s eyes flicker down toward it, his grin freezing for a moment as he frowned in confusion.

  “Don’t ask me,” Talmir said before leaping in again.

  The sounds of wood clashing against wood increased in tempo and in effect. The circular expanse of the training yard magnified the sounds, sending them out so that all those without the Red Bowl must hear. They parried and struck, heaved and pulled, stabbed and ducked and swiped, turning what had seemed an expansive and daunting domain in youth to a private arena that took Talmir back.

  He remembered that fateful day beneath a high summer sun. Remembered the way the storm clouds had rolled in, patching the yard in shadows when it was still more green than muddy brown. He remembered the way the rain sounded like an egg in a frying pan when it fell down and coated Garos’s bare chest, shoulders and back, and how the Ember had soon appeared to wear a cloak made out of mist. He could not grow a beard at that time, and his hair was long and blacker than river stones, tied back in a tail behind him.

  Talmir had never been one to show fear, and he didn’t that day, standing before the Ember who was the great hope of the Emberfolk of the Valley. The one who would rise up and put the Rivermen in their place. The one who would lead them into the Eastern Wood to find the singers and charlatans crouching beneath the trees, working their spells and fell magics, and who would burn them out. Talmir had not shown fear that day, nor in any of the days that followed when greater men and women than him had feared and feared plain for all to see, but he had felt it.

  Now, he felt only a thrill as more and more of Garos’s heat rose to replace the lost presence of the sun. It felt as if he were teasing it out, little by little, kernel by glowing coal, like a hunter smoking out a hare.

  Talmir leapt up and then landed and delayed his strike, causing Garos to misjudge his footing. He cut when Garos thought he might stab, and tore a gash through the Ember’s shirt. He earned a bruising bash on the shoulder but took it well, and his next overhand chop cause a splintering sound as it bit into the dusty wood of Garos’s staff. The Ember tried to pull the sword away, but Talmir pushed down sharply on the hilt, freeing it from its hold. He sank back into a low stance, sword pointed overhead, lead hand out like a spear toward his opponent, and Garos began to pace.

  The Ember’s path was short, and though he turned as he walked back and forth, Talmir knew better than to attack him. It was bait, carefully laid and cleverly disguised, and he would not take it.

  A shock of white at the edges of Garos’s eyes to match his beard and Talmir swung his sword down and across to meet the spinning staff. His sword shattered into a hail of splinters, one of which sliced his forearm. Another stuck into his collar as he rolled away. He came up on one knee, weaponless, and jutted a hand out toward the gate where Jakub stood as Garos recovered his lost momentum and turned back in.

  “Jakub!” Talmir shouted as if they were in the heat of battle, life and death, and not a simple evening spar.

  Just as all the best did. Just as all the worst.

  He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and spared a half glance as Jakub pried another training sword loose from its catch and sent it end over end toward Talmir. He caught it, rotated on his heels and stayed low as he turned Garos’s next strike aside. He squatted, stomping forward like a cat as he rapped both sides of Garos’s lead knee, earning grunts of pain that sounded like the sweetest music to his trained ears.

  Garos backpedaled and then sent his staff into an alternating vertical spin before he came on again. He was nimble for such a large man, and Talmir pictured glowing globes of fire at either end of the weapon, blurring the form behind it like sunset. He felt the kiss of heat as the Ember came in, and thought about charging in before a last-second impression made him leap backward instead.

  A good thing he did, as Garos stopped the showy spin and reversed direction on a whim, bringing his staff down, up and around to land, hard, on the dry patch of dirt Talmir had just been standing on. The staff’s top half shattered, leaving him with the broken haft of a fisherman’s oar, and Talmir felt a stab of worry as he imagined being crushed under the weight of the mighty blow. He paused and regarded the Ember steadily, and when Garos looked up, his wild look changed to a wicked grin. Talmir returned it.

  Garos jutted a hand toward Jakub and caught the next staff he threw, and the two joined in combat once again. Now, it was impossible to wipe the grins from either face, and as much as his shoulders and arms ached and the balls of his feet grew sore beneath the friction of his boots, it was Talmir’s cheeks that pained him more.

  The sun sank low enough to leave them, and they fought under the darkened light of the evening sky until fresh firelight came in to bathe the yard with its orange warding. Talmir hadn’t the time to spare its source a thought until their duel brought him back into view of the front gate. He saw Jakub and more beside him, children and older youths from the surrounding streets. They had come bearing torches, and there was even an old crone holding a trio of candles in a bronze sconce, watching them fight with a look of horror that morphed into sour disapproval.

  But the looks of those children were an odd and intoxicating mix of shock and glee, and Talmir thought it must be like the times he had seen Vennil Cross spar with Jaycen Pyr, whose twin axes had spun in a blur more steady and humming than his late son would ever manage after him.

  Talmir shattered another sword on one of Balsheer’s blocks—or was it the other way around? And Jakub fed him another. Garos used his second until Talmir had torn it near to bits, and one of the other children fetched him that double-bladed axe, which he swept around like a hurricane of timber in the earthen yard. On and on it went, until there were as many splinters littering the yard as there were blades of dry, clinging grass, and until their brows and torsos were as slick as horses fording a river.

  They were too tired to smile, now, their earlier mirth at the rush of competition now faded into a throbbing and pointless need to win.

  They had each other figured out, rediscovered like they had had no need to do since they were both young and fighting each other then as they did now, rather than fighting together, on the same side. In the dusk and the weariness brought on by the length of the duel, Talmir began to see the growing cluster of shadows at Garos’s ba
ck like the Dark Kind, or like the Pale Men and Bloody Screamers of the northern dunes. He saw the torches and candles as red orbs of demonic light, and the gasps and inhalations of their watchers as imagined hisses and faint screams, cries of rage and lament.

  Garos seemed to see Talmir’s look change and gave a momentary pause, and Talmir flashed him a smile. Garos returned it, and the two continued their nighttime dance while the torches waved in the hands of children like cattails in the wind.

  Talmir gave up his morbid thoughts of war and turned them to the brilliance of the duel and to the valor he had always searched for and never found to his own satisfaction. This was not an ugly, necessary thing, like the wrath he and Karin had brought upon the Seers in the black caves amidst the sands. This was a pure thing. A fight asked for and given, with nothing to gain and less to lose but for the thrill of it. This was how the warriors of the Valley—of any people across the wide World—could speak without need of tongues. This was what the Sages could never understand. It was a language of souls laid bare, truth uncovered, revealed without judgment or expectation. This was what separated men and women of steel and fire from demons of the World Apart—the will on the backs of which their love and loyalty rested and bloomed.

  Soon enough, they were each down to their last. The weapons in the training yard were spent, broken and shattered like the memories of those days never could be. Garos held his axe, which had bites taken from it by the hungry maw of Talmir’s swordsmanship. Talmir thought he had the Ember burned out.

  He should have known better.

  The air popped and for an instant Talmir thought Garos had ignited the pocket around their duel, but there was no spark to light the blaze, only a crackling, potent heat that stung his skin and dried the glaze on his eyes, tickled the salt on his cheeks. With the heat came a fresh, violent salvo, as Garos abandoned all pretense for weaponplay and did what he had always done best. He came on with abandon that was far from poise and not quite reckless, and Talmir was forced back under the onslaught. It took all he had to dodge and turn aside the chopping axe that was soon a dark blur against the dreamy glow in the yard, and more than once, the dull edges of the weapon clipped one of Talmir’s ears or buzzed over his head with enough intent to turn his skin to gooseflesh despite the warmth.