Linn glanced back and smiled wanly at the other woman—and she did seem a woman, now, and not some being of immeasurable power—before returning to her chambers. She saw something in her look that gave her pause.
“What is it?” Linn asked.
“I sense him about you,” she said. She did not step closer, nor did she elaborate, but Linn knew of whom she spoke.
“Uhtren.”
The queen nodded. “There is more of him in you than you know.”
Linn didn’t know how to respond.
The queen smiled in a seeming attempt to put Linn more at ease. “Whatever you think of my kind,” she said, looking up at the white tower that glittered with all its frost beneath the light of the moon that had retaken the sky. “Whatever your companions think, we can be shepherds just as readily as we can be destroyers.”
“But you can be destroyers,” Linn said.
“We.”
Linn swallowed.
“And besides, Linn Ve’Ran,” the Sage said with a pointed look, “you don’t give me enough credit. I’ve seen Embers fight. If ever there was a thing made to destroy…”
She let it linger, but before Linn could turn on her bare, freezing heels and conjure a waiting current to bear her back up to her high balcony, the Sage spoke again.
“Valour is close,” she said. “But he won’t attack yet. He is … waiting for something. Planning something.” She shook what looked to be a chill. “Explore the mountain,” she said. “Speak to the people of this land. Learn their names. If you do not fight for me, perhaps you and yours can take comfort in fighting for them. They are the folk the world over who will fall if the Eastern Dark succeeds.” Linn nodded. “And after that, have Captain Fennick bring you to the training yard.”
Linn made as if to speak. “I would not presume to teach you to fight,” the Sage said. “I know you know that well enough. My knights have told me as much, more in what they haven’t said than in what they have. Tundra in particular.” Linn smiled. “But if we are to turn back Valour and whoever he brings with him, we must learn to fight as one.”
“You speak as if it won’t just be him and the Shadow girl,” Linn said.
The Frostfire Sage wore a curious expression that Linn couldn’t quite read. “We shall see,” she said. “Besides, maybe it will improve Kole’s estimation of me if I give him a shot at a living, breathing Sage.”
“Careful,” Linn said with an easy smile. “The last time he had such an opportunity, he nearly made the most of it.”
The Sage laughed.
“There is, of course, another reason to play a few games of the martial variety,” she said. “What better way for you to learn to use that power you’ve got flowing within you—your real power—than for me to teach you, sister?”
Linn smiled, swallowing past the sudden lump in her throat. “Until tomorrow, then.”
The Sage watched her move back into the center of the frozen yard with its red-leaved trees. She called up the wind, conscious of the Sage’s eyes at her back, but she rode it steadily enough, and let it drop her back onto the inner side of the balcony before dismissing it like a summoned servant. She only knew she had guessed right when she saw her abandoned boots at the foot of the unkept bed and the glint of the great silver war bow leaning against the far wall.
As she lay down to sleep, she didn’t think of the distant, low drone she had heard before, nor the ripping and pulling of that other world next to their own. Instead, she thought of the dead man she had seen in his tomb of Nevermelt. She pictured the iron door as a green one, and wondered what Kole would think if he knew.
The world, Linn knew, was built on choices. Why did the worst ones always come to her?
That is what she will unleash.
The words echoed in Shadow’s mind as she stood a stone’s throw from the melted cave’s entrance, out on the wind-blasted sheets of ice. The direction of her gaze was east. East and north, where she could just make out the shadowed towers of the palace across the drifts and before the swells and crests that marked the frozen waves of the once ocean. The northern mountain range that speared the surface of the world like fangs separated them from whatever barren white nested in the valleys and clung to the cliffs there, where falcons flew.
To the south, the Quartz Tower had been reduced to a jagged tumble of rubble, its defenders reduced to nothing more than black specks in the night that, if they were lucky, might glitter a bit beneath the morrow’s sun. Shadow did not like this place. She did not like this land. It was cold enough to be uncaring, and detached enough not to be cruel. It was a land of false jewels and—if Valour was to be believed—false gods.
If the Shadow Kings spoke truthfully—and Shadow very much doubted they did—there might be a true one heading their way soon enough.
“You’ve been thinking more than usual.”
Shadow did not turn toward the Sage, but rather allowed him to come up next to her, near enough to converse and far enough to dispel any illusion of warmth or comradery. It was these little battles Shadow delighted in winning, even if their worth came to naught in the end.
“Interesting times,” Shadow said. “Boring times.”
Ray Valour looked at her curiously. She did not meet his eyes. It was unpleasant for her to look at him lately. The face she had known as T’Alon Rane’s seemed to fade more each day, the swarthy skin and amber eyes turning a bit more pale and a bit more purple. His ears, which had been small and flat, had elongated. His brow, which had been short and in keeping with his hooked nose, now widened and grew taller, and the tip of his nose was turned up. His hair, which remained jet black, now bore an oily sheen that it hadn’t before. It was as if the two had become one, but the Faey-like creature the Eastern Dark had been appeared to be taking over, and soon, Shadow knew, Rane’s façade would be lost completely.
They stood in a silence only the wind filled as it made chimes of the scattered ice dust and refrozen melt. The sheet beneath their feet was clear as mirrored glass and reflected the stars—a beauty made of the Sage’s destruction. How ironic, that Valour’s fiery missile had made something beautiful. Shadow was nearly moved.
“What of our new companions?” Shadow asked, and now she did turn, her eyes moving past Valour’s and angling back toward the blue cave at their backs. It was dark, with nothing but the suggestion of red in the center that might have been smoldering coals.
“Resting,” Valour said without inflection. “They must recover their strength. I do not know what roads they took from the World Apart to get here, but it wasn’t the work of rifts. They have retained more of themselves than the Sentinels of the past. It is a … curious thing.”
Shadow considered him. He was concerned.
“Is it true?” Shadow asked. Valour regarded her.
“Which part?”
“That the Last God is real? That the Night Lords overthrew him and took that dark realm for themselves?” Shadow sneered. “All the powerful, deadly things you called to in order to sort out the mess you began by opening the door in the first place. You learned to fear the power of the Night Lords early, Valour, as soon as you called them into the deserts to deal with your red brother. Your folly doomed him just as it doomed that falcon in the southern vale. Powerful enemies who could’ve been powerful allies in times such as these.”
The Eastern Dark considered her dispassionately.
“You do listen,” he said, and smiled.
“Always.”
“Such is the way with power, my dear Shadow,” he said. He looked back toward the cave, and it was difficult to read his expression. “I thought I knew of the threats that realm held. I thought I knew the power of the Night Lords, watching them from afar. I thought them mindless beasts, all rage and violence. They are that,” he swallowed, “but they are so much more. I still don’t know how Pevah,” he wrinkled his face at the name Shadow did not know, “managed to ensnare the one, and I’ll never know how Uhtren managed to kill three in the sou
thern passes.”
“The third got the last laugh,” Shadow said. “She corrupted him with the hearts he stole, squirreled away in his tiled citadel—a crime the Embers hold you accountable for still.”
“I am accountable,” Valour said, surprising her. He actually sounded, if not regretful, then displeased. “I didn’t set that darkness on the Valley, but I saw it come about in any event. I saw the opportunity. Cull the wheat from the chaff. Allow the Embers to grow strong so that I might band them together—my bright swords—and use them against the coming darkness.” He cast her a sharp look. “Yes, the darkness I called.”
He sighed. “I did not foresee that Reyna would be among the last, that this cursed world would take its gifts back when they needed them most.”
“What of the Valley Faey?” Shadow asked, and Valour shot her a glare that stoked her already-piqued curiosity. “That land has begun to make new champions of the Emberfolk.”
“The Dark Kind, the Night Lords, the Shadow Kings,” he tossed his head, “and even this god of which they speak—some magician, most likely, no different than I—will always fear a glowing Everwood blade more than a healer’s touch.”
“Their folly,” Shadow said, feigning indifference. “Seems they can do a lot more than that, judging by what the Sage girl said at Center. Judging by what you told her.”
Valour did not answer, nor did he strike her down. Instead, he smoldered, but soon his smoldering cooled. Shadow did not think anything could stay hot in this land. Not even an Ember in all his rage, though she had learned to keep her distance from that. She still remembered the way her skin had popped and sizzled when Kole Reyna had made for her. He was fast, violent. He had a killing mood about him that the others lacked—all but for the spear-wielder. Shadow licked her lips. She looked forward to having another go at them, though she feared that Valour’s new path would sooner have them join forces than continue to fight over misdeeds both sides would do better forgetting.
“How did you not see it coming?” Shadow asked.
She cared, and she hated that she cared. In truth, she was afraid. Not of the World Apart. She thought perhaps she might fit better in that place than in this one. But she hated the Shadow Kings just as much as anything else, and she hated that there were beings with intent in that land of darkness and dread. She thought perhaps she could slip in through one of the rifts Valour opened, or one of the scars the Shadow Kings spoke of. She thought she could climb some obsidian mountain and sit herself in a jagged throne atop the summit, and lord over things more wicked than her and less cunning.
“I did see it coming, Shadow,” Valour said. “I’ve been trying to stop it for a hundred years. More. My first step was to make you.”
She felt something sharp in her chest, like a double-edged blade that threatened to poke her heart and throat at the same time.
Valour did not look at her as he spoke.
“My champions,” he said. “The greatest Landkist of all the wide lands. Resh of the Red Cliffs. Brega Cohr of Center. Muhle of the Bogs. Cristaine of the Stone Towers. T’Alon Rane, the King of Ember …”
Their faces flashed in Shadow’s mind. She remembered them all, and a few more besides. Together, they had hunted the other Sages at the Eastern Dark’s behest. They had killed many. The Twins of Whiteash. The Serpent of the Longmoores. The Bat of Graymount. They had done it all without losing a single member of their company, all of whom—with the exception of Shadow herself—had joined the dark Sage willingly, a shared desire for vengeance on the great and warring powers of the World the only thing binding them together, or else not splitting them apart. They had fought and killed the greatest powers the world had ever known. All until they came here and challenged the Prince and Princess of the Nevermelt. The Frostfire Sages.
A bloody day, and one that did not go their way. The Dark Landkist, champions of the Eastern Dark and forgotten heroes of the world, had lost several of their company when the battle that killed one of the Sages was done. Rane had burned the prince away, but his princess had withdrawn to her frozen palace and declared herself queen. They had left her to war with the Sage of Balon Rael as the three who remained—Shadow, Rane and Brega Cohr—licked their wounds and counted the days until they would earn another try. Shadow looked at Valour’s face and thought it a shame Rane wouldn’t be here to collect his own brand of vengeance for Resh’s death.
A strange mood had come over the Sage in recent days, and one Shadow had never seen before. She had thought it a result of his unwilling merging with the Ember king, but the longer the union persisted, and the less of Rane she saw, the more the sense of brooding—even of melancholy—seemed to weigh the Sage down. Now, standing out on the edges of a frozen ocean, she saw the way he looked to the crystal palace that was only visible as a faint and ghostly outline against the night sky and all its embattled stars. The look was heaviest there.
There was much of the past in this land of frozen memories and wasted lives. Much of Ray Valour’s past, and not the Eastern Dark’s, who had been made in the salted and rotten bogs of the south. A place where snakes slithered, birds seldom flew, and shadows lengthened and became something more. And all, she had thought, because of his meddling in the first place. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Not after what the Shadow Kings had to say. Not after how Valour had reacted, or better yet, how he hadn’t.
“You see, Shadow,” Valour said, not taking his eyes from the eastern horizon, “I built plans upon plans, and my brightest and best—or so I thought—was to shelter the Embers in that Valley core. I allowed Uhtren to seize the Dark Hearts, to weave his own magic through them and so be ensnared. What better way to shake that war-like Valley grown suddenly peaceful? What better way to reignite the Embers’ fire, to restock the veins and manhoods of the desert—”
“To create new Embers,” Shadow said, her voice going soft as the implications washed over her. The Emberfolk had fled the western deserts largely because of Valour’s unrelenting and covetous gaze. He had seen the folly of his tampering with those ancient, foreign powers in the World Apart and had need of more than mere champions. He needed an army. The irony was almost enough to make Shadow laugh.
“Yes. And all to fight against what I called here in the first place.”
It was as close to an admission of guilt as Shadow had ever heard from the Sage. Perhaps more of T’Alon Rane had got into him than he thought.
“She is calling to him and she has no idea,” Valour said. He nodded sharply toward that low mountain ridge and the sparkling towers, like dust glittering atop the melt. “He is drawing strength from this world and through her, all while she thinks she grows stronger. He draws strength from our Worldheart.” He nearly choked on his sardonic laugh. “We never had a name for it before, but the Shadow Kings know of it. It should have been obvious. All of it.” He looked down at his feet. Past them and below them, as if he could see the center of the World. “The Soul of the World, the Landkist call it. I always thought it the work of superstition, falsehoods of belief.”
“Well,” Shadow said, “that’s about as close as I’ve seen to you admitting you were wrong.” Valour turned a questioning look on her, and she felt it safe enough to continue. “The Landkist were right, weren’t they? The Worldheart blessed them with its gifts. And …” her eyebrows quirked up as new implications came to the fore, “I would guess they weren’t the first.”
Valour seemed to consider what she said, and she could see by the subtle turns of those yellow-flecked lavender eyes that he had considered it before, long ago, and that recent events had brought it back up, like sludge on the bottom of a shallow mire.
“The Last God is a parasite,” Valour said, choosing not to answer the seeming accusation. He nodded back toward the blue cave, which had grown dark enough to lose its color with the fading ashes. “He drained their Worldheart. Consumed it completely. No new power in that world on which he can feed.”
“Other than them,” Shadow followed, nodding sl
owly. The picture was coming clearer in her mind. “You would think they’d be thanking the Night Lords for bringing him down.”
“Beasts of chaos,” Valour said sharply. “No doubt some vile perversion—the result of whatever fallout occurred when the Worldheart died.”
“Why would they stop her?” Shadow asked, lowering her voice so as not to be heard. She did not like the way it made her look, but Shadow’s instincts had ever and always pushed her toward survival, and survival was often more than a stone’s throw from courage. “They must know their world is beyond saving. What does it matter if the Last God flees? The Night Lords remain—most of them.”
Valour actually smiled. “We are all playing games, my dear Shadow. The Shadow Kings no doubt hope to introduce this realm to the remaining Night Lords. They haven’t even tried to hide the fact. Likely, they feel they can be defeated, drained as they may be after crossing over.”
“Drained?”
Valour looked at Shadow as if she were daft. “Those Shadow Kings are pale versions of what they should be, and we should count ourselves thankful to have allies whose power only rivals our own and does not dwarf it. No doubt the Night Lords would experience the same.”
It was difficult for Shadow to imagine, given what she knew of the Night Lords. Given how much power they wielded and how even the Sages of this realm feared to fight them. Perhaps, if they had retained their full power, the White Crest would have fallen against one. Instead, he had thrown down three in the northern passes of the Embers’ Valley.
“Would that not also hold true for this so-called god, then?” Shadow pondered. Valour tipped his head to one side and gave a shrug.
“He is cleverer than that, I think,” he said. “Clever enough to gain my notice centuries ago, to turn my gaze in his direction so that I might start his long road toward this world.”
“You don’t know that,” Shadow said, and Valour’s look showed that he did not know what she meant. “You said yourself it was your meddling that brought this about. You and your brethren. The Sages. Perhaps he never would have seen this realm, known of it if it weren’t for you.”
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 38