“What is it?” Iyana asked.
Luna smiled, and the voice that issued forth as if from her mind sounded like melancholy. “Regrets,” she said. “Memories.” She shrugged. “These are the threads the living leave behind and that only we can see. They cover the mortal form, blanket it. The Emberfolk burn their bodies and in so doing, burn away these threads. The folk of Center bury theirs in the ground, leaving them to lie among them for eternity. But we do not. We sweep away those too brittle to stay, and gather up those strong enough to be kept. The ones worth keeping.”
“What do they do with them?” Iyana asked. It seemed such a strange practice, and yet Iyana accepted it. She supposed she had to, given where they were.
Luna shrugged again. “Who is to say?” She nodded ahead, and Iyana saw the pair of elders complete their patrol. They paused, the male turning to the other, she who held the knot. She placed it on the pyre, folding it beneath Sen’s waiting hands and tucking it there for safekeeping. “What are burials but shows for the living?”
It seemed to Iyana a crass thing to say, and her look showed it. Luna didn’t seem to mind.
“It is the truth, Iyana, and there is no shame in it.” She smiled down at her. “Dying is hardest on the living, after all. We are the ones who must find a way to carry on. Perhaps, by cutting the threads that tied them down in life, we make the journey back to … wherever that much lighter.”
Iyana began to feel a steady drum, like a heartbeat. She looked up into the sky, which came clear now that it had her attention. It was even darker here than it was in the world, and the longer Iyana stared, the more the drumming began to shift and turn, carrying with it a dark intent.
She shook her head and nearly fell over as the brightness of the glade rushed back in and the vibrancy of the crowd came alive once more, their bright threads fading from view. She felt a firm hand holding her up and leaned back, feeling Ceth’s strong form pressed against her.
He released her and she glanced back and nodded a sharp thanks without meeting his eyes. He took a half step away from her, as if embarrassed. No one else seemed to notice.
As they watched, Shek and Tirruhn joined hands and moved out of the circle and away from the pyre. They took the elder female with them, after she finished tucking her tangle of threads the others could not see. She seemed unsteady as her greensight faded, and Iyana was glad she wasn’t the only one. The old man stood over Sen’s head, bowing low.
He scanned the gathered mourners, some of whom were still casting curious stares at the wrapped bundle on the platform, and some of whom, Iyana thought, mixed less pleasant emotions into their looks. Looks like judgment.
“Here burns Senafaey,” the man said. His voice projected all of the strength his body seemed to lack. Even as she looked, he seemed to stand a bit taller. Iyana did not know why she assumed his age. His face was unlined when compared with the elders among her own folk, and Iyana found herself wondering how old he truly was. Old. She knew it in his bearing, and she wondered how many such burials he had presided over in his day.
The Faey kept to their own, and Iyana doubted if even Mother Ninyeva had known how long they lived, not to speak of their Landkist. Landkist like her.
“Senafaey.” The man seemed to turn from addressing those gathered and instead focused on the prone form beneath him. “The Kin of Faeyr welcome you and release you.”
“Kin.” The crowd said the word, once and without gusto, like a sigh on the wind.
Tirruhn stepped back into the circle carrying a torch that burned bright and yellow, reminding Iyana of Jenk Ganmeer’s bold fire. Tirruhn pushed it into the dried brush on the borders of the pyre without hesitation and stepped back, and away burned Sen of the Valley.
The crowd dispersed faster than Iyana found comfortable. There did not seem to be open derision or rudeness in their gaits, but Iyana read dismissal in the language of their bodies. Luna saw her staring after them and laid a hand on her shoulder as they watched the fire take Sen, just as it had taken so many before it. Just as it would take her, if she was lucky.
“Not what you expected?” Luna asked.
Iyana wasn’t entirely sure what she had expected and was less than sure how to answer, so she did not.
“Being thought strange has its advantages,” Luna said. “We’ve received few visitors these last years.” She winked at Kenta, who blushed, but Iyana felt herself match him, though not in embarrassment. She felt anger and couldn’t quite put her finger on why. The elder who had said the words—too few of them—over Sen’s body looked her way and slid his cold stare over Luna before departing.
“There were so few words,” Iyana said. Seeing that she and Kenta stayed, Ceth remained rooted beside them. No doubt the northern Landkist disagreed with her. She had seen burnings in the desert, and they were accompanied by fewer words even than these.
“What are words, then?” Luna asked. She did not seem as if she were trying to be insulting. Still, as Iyana met her stare, she didn’t think the statement was made absent challenge. “What are words to the dead?”
“Sen had a story,” Iyana said, grasping for something to seize on. She felt fresh wetness on her cheeks and wiped it away. She looked back toward the burning pyre, where Sen’s form was now little more than a smudge of shadow within the bloom of flame.
“Yes, he did,” Luna said. She made as if to speak, but Kenta cleared his throat. Luna frowned and looked from Iyana back to the burning pyre. “Did you know much of his, then?” Kenta seemed taken aback, and for a moment, Iyana felt as if she had been slapped. She took a step toward Luna, who stood her ground. But the longer she stared into eyes that were not so dissimilar to her own, the less scorn she read in them.
“No,” Iyana heard herself say. “No, I did not.” She looked to the pyre, watched the burning bridges collapse inward and the red coals tumble out onto the dark soil and lush grass. “But I wished to.” She said the last and was happy to know that she meant it.
“No doubt you’ve a tale to tell us of Sen’s ending,” Luna said, her voice growing softer as she watched Iyana. “Endings are important, of course, but they only tell part of the tale. What is an ending without a beginning?”
“Did you know him?” Iyana asked. The tears flowed freely now, and Iyana did not stop to wonder why she was so affected by a man she barely knew. An image flashed of the white, moonlit sand, which could do nothing to take away from the silver glow of Sen’s hair. He had looked up at her as she’d cut his life away. It felt like mercy then, and Iyana was glad to know that it still did when she looked back on it. His smile looked like gratitude. She had not imagined it.
Still, there was an ache there that was raw enough to startle. She had held little love for the man, and even a touch of hate. She remembered the purple flower he had poisoned in a black cave for no other reason than because it pleased him to do so, or pleased him to have her watch. But there had been more to Sen of the Valley Faey. Much more, and Iyana thought she had seen some of the rest the instant he died. Such a long instant, like a fragmented shard of mirror out on the plains of time where the Sages had dueled.
“I must confess I did not,” Luna said. “Know him,” she clarified for Iyana’s questioning stare. Iyana shook herself back into the present and allowed herself to be led away from the pyre. Kenta and Ceth gave them space. “Still, I knew the story of Senafaey, just as the rest of us did.”
Iyana let her confusion show plainly as Luna led her through the wide, twisting pathways between the homes within the encircling wall of black trunks. Ceth and Kenta followed. They saw Shek on the road coming toward them, and Iyana found it easier to ignore her sharp and pointed looks with each passing moment.
Luna led them to a small structure that must have been hers. They walked up a small stair into a cozy chamber inlaid with furs. There were paintings on the wall, pastes of green, orange and silver-gray on dried canvas skins. They looked to be the work of children. There were heads on the wall, with horns a
nd fangs and tufts of fur. In all, the scene seemed to stand at odds with everything Iyana knew about the Faey, seeing so much death about. But then, she didn’t know much about them at all.
“Tea?”
They accepted—even Ceth—and sat on the threaded carpet while Luna busied herself over the coals in a circular grate in the center of the room that reminded Iyana of the one in Ninyeva’s leaning tower. She had never thought to wonder why most of the Emberfolk built their fireplaces and chimneys out of brick and kept them at the borders while Ninyeva kept her fire in the center of the room. Now, she thought she knew.
Kenta bent to strike the sparks from the flint while Ceth arranged the tinder and split twigs into kindling. Luna’s eyes lingered on Hearth’s healer, and Iyana caught a mischievous look pass between them that Kenta did his best to cover. Still, Luna’s glance toward the lone bed pressed against the blackwood wall seemed less than conscious, and Iyana did the blushing for them.
Luna told them of Senafaey as they waited for the tea to steep, filling the squat, ruddy chamber with the familiar woodsmoke that reminded her of the lakeshore. Iyana had known that Sen was not always of the Faey, but that was all she had known. Of his life before coming to them, Luna knew little. She knew his family had died in the Valley Wars and knew the Rivermen—the Rockbled in particular—were the prime object of his blame.
“And perhaps they were to blame,” Luna said. “After all, it was a band of Rivermen who slew them.”
“Why?” Iyana asked. “Was Sen not of the Scattered Villages? I thought the Rivermen would only come against the warriors among the Emberfolk with the threat of violence.”
A different sort of look passed between Luna and Kenta, then, and it was one that Ceth seemed to understand before Iyana did.
“War,” Kenta said, “is a term often used to describe our conflict with the Dark Kind. But war, Iyana, is something committed by men. Something we make, and not something that befalls us. There is nothing of nature in war. There is less of honor, no matter what the stories say.”
Ceth looked as if he wanted to speak, and they waited for him. Seeing Iyana’s face held him back. She meant to ask him why later.
“It is hard to hold any responsible in times such as those,” Luna said, taking a sip from a small stone cup before filling theirs. Kenta did not seem to agree, and Luna sighed as she finished filling his cup. “Fine, then. It is hard to hold any innocent. It comes to the same in the end.” She looked back to Iyana. “Perhaps Sen’s father was bearing arms and passing through lands too close to the Fork,” Luna said. “He never said, as far as I know. Perhaps his mother had gone home and they had followed after.”
“Home?” Iyana asked. She looked to Kenta, but he seemed just as confused as she was.
Luna frowned from one to the other. “You mean you didn’t know?” She set her cup down on the grate with a scrape. “Sen’s mother was of the Fork. She was Rockbled.”
It should not have come as a major revelation to her, but it did. Iyana had known little about Sen. She had assumed him to be one of the Emberfolk. Now that she remembered him, however, called his face and form up in her mind, she saw the little things. A jaw that was more squared than the rest of them, and eyes more rectangular and less oval. His brow had been smooth enough to suggest flatness, and his shoulders, though bony, were wide-set and broad. He was strong. She remembered that. Much stronger than most among the caravan, though the Faeykin usually held the bearing of the Valley Faey, most of whom—Tirruhn being an exception—seemed slender and corded in the place of powerful.
“The Valley Landkist are different from those in the wider world,” Luna said. “For many reasons that you already know, and for one somewhat obvious point you might not have considered.”
“Their appearance,” Kenta said, nodding.
“Of course, we are each blessed with our own brands of beauty,” Luna said, winking at Iyana. “But,” she reached out across the gray smoke and Iyana gave her her hand. “Different shades of milk, no?” Luna pulled her hand back and traced the contours of her angular face. “My cheeks may be a bit more pronounced than yours, my eyes a tad more canted, but a quick glance would sooner have one of your own calling you ‘Faey’ than ‘desert-born,’ no?”
Iyana nodded, absently running her fingers along the tips of her ears. “I never thought of it that way before.”
“Such a thing makes our blood lineage almost impossible to trace,” Luna said, taking another sip. “The Valley Landkist are old. Older than all the rest, perhaps. That’s our best guess. Long before the Rockbled began pulling stones large enough to build towns atop the sucking earth, and before the Ember fire burned in the north …” She included Ceth in her sweep. “Maybe even before the Skyr owned the skies farther on, the Kin of Faeyr were born, and some born gifted.
“I am not surprised Sen didn’t tell you of his mother,” she said, and her look was difficult to read. “It must have been difficult for him to parse on his own, never mind those who might judge his deeds and misdeeds and trace a waiting path to their source. So much comes from a mother’s loss.” She gave a sad shake.
“Kin of Faeyr,” Ceth said, his voice sounding rough from lack of use. He often went so long without speaking that Iyana forgot what he sounded like. Luna regard him expectantly. “I thought you were Faeykin.” He frowned.
“Ah,” Luna said, inclining her head toward the Emberfolk across the grate. “A function of their misunderstanding, I fear. And one we never did much to correct.”
Iyana looked to Kenta, who shrugged, drawing a short laugh from Luna.
“Kenta was never as fond of listening as he was of speaking,” she said, and Kenta smiled, taking the jibe in stride. “Of course, he is quieter these days.” She looked at Kenta with such a sad fondness that it nearly pulled Iyana from her track.
“I thought the term was one that belonged to all of the Faey,” Iyana said. “Kin of Faeyr.”
“It is,” Luna agreed. “We do not have a name for our Landkist, Iyana, except for the first name.” When she frowned, Luna smiled. “Did you think the term ‘Landkist’ dropped out of the sky? There was always a first, and we named ours thus. Blessed by the World. Chosen. Landkist.”
“I always thought the Sages named—”
Luna nearly spat out her tea and Iyana’s heart skipped a beat. She feared she had insulted the woman, but as her hacking calmed some, it ended with a bitter laugh.
“The Sages—most of them—never even knew how to describe themselves, never mind the champions that grew from the lands they would have ruled.” Her eyes took on a different light, then, and Iyana felt cowed seeing it. “But they never ruled this land. Never. Not even the White Crest, whose name was Uhtren.”
Luna waved a hand, dismissing the topic as less than vital. “Do not bother me with the Sages’ collective folly, and do not bore me to old anger with their ignorance. There were Landkist long before them, and there will be Landkist long after them. It is a fool who discovers such a treasure as power and thinks himself the first to do it.”
“A mighty fool,” Kenta put in, and the look Luna turned on him gave Iyana the impression that it was an old argument, and one that would do none of them well to revisit.
“The Landkist were born in great numbers following the Sages’ folly,” Luna said, her tone brooking no argument. “And I do not think it was Her will that we be used as playthings or soldiers in their private war. A war that will end, just as all of them end.”
“With us doing nothing to help it along to its ending?” Kenta sneered, and Iyana thought she saw some evidence of their split—a willing one, however sad it might have been.
Luna turned another motherly smile on Iyana. “We are all Kin of Faeyr, Iyana Ve’Ran,” she said. “Faeyr means life, literally and in all the other ways that matter and do not. And kin. Well, go back far enough, and we are all family, are we not?”
Ceth seemed uncomfortable with the thought, but Iyana smiled to hear it. They sat in
silence for a time, watching Ceth fuss with the coals below the grate and tilting their chins as children trundled past, running their sticks along the wall boards and giggling as they raced away from the strangers’ imagined rage. There was a high window set above the beams, and Iyana could see that the sky was already darkening. She could see the reflected glow of torches, or perhaps of Sen’s lonely pyre, and felt an inkling of guilt for not standing beside it longer.
“Sen had a darkness in him,” Luna said, following Iyana’s gaze. “Some don’t do well with gifts such as ours. I am sure the same could be said for any among the Landkist of the wider world.” Iyana thought of Kole and tried to wipe it away. She and Linn had taken turns at worrying after him almost as often as he had worrying for them. He had earned the Valley’s debt many times over. Surely, then, he could earn their trust.
“A darkness …” Ceth offered, picking up the thread Iyana had been more than happy to drop.
Luna glanced at Iyana and Kenta before settling on Ceth. “Sen sought to cheat death,” she said. She said it simply and without inflection.
“You are healers, after all,” Kenta offered weakly, but Luna didn’t react. Instead, she focused on Iyana, as if giving her the opportunity to refute what she had said.
“Immortality,” Iyana said in a whisper. “Sen was after immortality.”
Luna’s eyebrows raised, as if she hadn’t quite considered it in those terms.
“Possibly,” she said. “And in that, he would do little to separate himself from the Sages. Still, it isn’t what I meant.”
Iyana and Kenta shared a look, and Ceth frowned in confusion.
“Perhaps ‘cheat’ is the wrong word to use in this case,” Luna said. She set her cup down. “Where it is the responsibility of the Faeykin to close wounds, heal hurts and keep their fellows safe, Sen sought mastery over life’s opposite. After all, things that can grasp onto the very tethers that make up a life should be able to do the opposite. Of course, those of us who fought in the Valley Wars know that fact well enough, but it’s never been something we in the Valley have been proud of. Our northern cousins are a different matter entirely, if the elders are to be believed.”
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 40