His kick should have struck her in the gut. Instead, the queen kept her backward bend going, planting her swordless palm flat on the clay and lifting her feet from the ground in a maneuver more fit for a dancer than a fighter. She repeated the move three times, her blade held out straight at her side the whole way as she contorted into a spinning wheel that came up level and smiling in the time it took Jenk to regain his footing.
The Ember recovered and shot in without a moment’s hesitation, carving the place the queen had been and blocking a strike Kole had blinked and missed. Silver steel met Everwood with a dull crack that resounded off the jagged theater the clay basin made. Jenk grit his teeth and put more heat into the blade, flaring it to life so brightly it obscured the dark core that made up its center. Now the queen did blink, and Jenk’s next strike caught her in the gut, his knee bending her double.
It was a brutal hit, or seemed it at first glance, but Kole could see the queen’s smile as she heaved forward over the Ember’s leg. The blow had struck, but not nearly as hard as it had seemed. Jenk knew it, and if the Sage was going to make their contest into a jest, he’d make her pay.
Kole actually cried out as the Ember brought his burning blade rocketing down toward the back of the queen’s neck. Tundra matched him, bellowing, though he knew he was too far to make a difference.
But Jenk smiled. His bright sword stopped a hair’s breadth from the queen’s skull, and she twisted at an awkward angle and spun away, straightening with a look that wasn’t so much fear as outrage. Her silver-white hair fell down before her, and a black curl of smoke twisted up from the bangs on each side. There was a brown streak through it, and the queen wrinkled her nose at the smell of her own burning scalp. She held out a hand toward Tundra and did so with force, not taking her eyes from Jenk, who squared back into his stance in preparation for her inevitable retaliation.
Jenk was facing away from them, but Kole imagined he could see the Ember smiling. It took him back to the training yard at the Lake. He put himself in the place of the Frostfire Sage and could almost hear the bellowing voice of Tu’Ren ringing over the rock-strewn yard as Jenk and Kole faced each other down with dull lengths of unlit oak as the other children watched at the borders, waiting for their turn.
“Apologies,” the queen surprised him by saying. She seemed to mean it, too. “I see I have insulted you. I might have paid for it with my life, had you been less sure of your abilities and more covetous of your pride.”
Instead of attacking with a fury unbecoming of one so seemingly calm, she raised her sword and stretched her feet into a stance of her own. It was one Kole had never seen before, but it was no doubt more martial than her former had been. Instead of seeming like an otherworldly girl at play, she took on a regal air.
“Your name, again, Ember of the Valley?” the queen said, raising her chin to Jenk.
“Jenk,” he said flatly. “Jenk Ganmeer.”
Linn nudged Kole in the side and leaned in for a whisper of her own. “He’d have fainted if we told him he’d have a moment like this when we were kids.”
Kole smiled, but dropped the look quickly as the queen’s façade shifted once more, taking on an edge that hadn’t been there before.
“Thank you, Jenk Ganmeer,” the queen said, her voice clear and much louder than before, though she did not seem to have to work to project it, “for this lesson.”
“My pleas—”
If Jenk was not gifted with Ember blood and what it offered, he’d have been speared on the spot. The queen covered the ground between them in a breath, her sword frozen directly before her and beneath her leaning chin and rounded shoulders. Jenk managed not to fall with his dodge, but before he had recovered, she was on him, and as she changed direction, Kole saw a glimmering veil begin to spread over her skin. The near-invisible armor started at her clenched fingers and leaked up from beneath her breastplate, coating her neck and creeping up her face.
When their blades met again in a shower of yellow sparks, she was clad in Nevermelt, her eyes glowing an ethereal blue that reminded Kole of the White Crest’s hawk-like orbs, leering out from the visage that had belonged to Larren Holspahr. Her skin sparkled when the faint reflected light of the golden palace above struck it, like frost coating a frozen pond.
Jenk had lost some of his confidence, but none of his fight. He spun away from their latest clash and then kept the queen from carving right through his leather armor with an impressive crescent of yellow fire that shot out behind a hearty slash. The Sage was forced to change tack, but instead of going left or right, she leapt clear over the scythe that burned an elongated scar into the clay and landed in the spot Jenk had been with a crash that cracked the ground, sinking her sword in as Jenk tumbled away in a barely-controlled roll.
The pattern repeated, with the queen attacking with furious bursts of speed and Jenk keeping his head through a combination of offensive bursts of fire and defensive scrambles that grew more chaotic as he grew more haggard and drained.
On the fifth exchange, the queen straightened with a blank look of serenity. She watched Jenk like a predator watches prey as the Ember faced her down with his boots spread farther apart than his shoulders, burning blade leveled between his eyes. His sweat formed a steady hiss as it evaporated, coating him in tendrils of gray steam, and his chest heaved, his yellow blade pulsing in time with it, alternately bright and dull.
“He’s used up too much energy,” Misha said, startling Kole. Kole had become so focused on the duel, he hadn’t noticed her come up beside him.
“It’s all those jets,” Kole said, nodding toward the quickly-tiring Ember. “It isn’t like him to use so many. That’s your style.”
“Spear makes it a lot easier,” Misha said. “The momentum of the weapon lets me guide the flame more than he can with that sword.” She looked at Kole, raising one eyebrow. “And much better than you can with those little matchsticks.”
Kole accepted the fact. “She is fast.”
“Faster than you,” Misha said, echoing the more selfish thoughts Kole could feel boiling beneath the surface, along with his warming blood.
“You two need to rein yourselves in,” Linn barked. “You’re burning me up.” Shifa whined as if in affirmation and took a few steps into the center of the yard. The Blue Knights watched the hound, wearing grim looks.
“Shifa …” Kole drew it out and the hound sat emphatically, curling her tail around her rear to betray her nervousness on Jenk’s behalf.
“I swear she worries for you lot more than for me,” Kole said.
“You are the chosen one,” Misha said without humor. She didn’t react to Kole’s questioning, startled look, just continued to watch Jenk and the queen.
Jenk wasn’t going to defeat the Frostfire Sage at the rate things were going, and Kole doubted she had shown even a hint of her true power yet, but Jenk knew he wasn’t going to get any measure of her respect back solely by defending himself from her furious press.
So he attacked.
Jenk charged the queen, who stood watching him as calm as the sea was wild. The Ember stretched his left hand out toward her and brought his burning sword back behind him with the right, gearing up for a powerful swing that all saw coming.
“What is he playing at?” Kole said to himself.
Instead of cleaving the air in front of him or forcing the queen to block another swipe, and instead of beginning another series of fast, cutting exchanges that he would no doubt lose given his dwindling reserves, Jenk put all of his gathered heat into an attack Kole had never seen from him before. An attack he’d never seen from anyone before, come to think of it.
Jenk leapt, and instead of flying to twice the height a man could jump, he soared twice as high as that. As he reached the zenith of his rapid ascent, Jenk put a wash of fire into his Everwood sword and brought it up and over his head, using it to start his fall … and his turn.
As Kole and the others watched with mouths agape, Jenk used his momentum
and more finesse than Kole had even thought he possessed and launched himself into a midair spin that turned him into a wheel of fire, like a human comet speeding toward the Frostfire Sage. No longer did she look on dispassionately, but rather with mounting awe, and—if it were possible—just a twinge of fear she had hitherto kept hidden from them.
It happened in halved time, seeming slow enough for Kole to see each flare and sprouting tail of flame from Jenk’s crackling sword. And then it sped up, too fast for even the queen to dodge without risking leaving an arm behind for the Ember to put that Nevermelt armor to the test.
So she stood. The Witch of the North bent her knees and brought her sword up before her brow, shielding her eyes from the brightness of Jenk’s display. She supported the back of the blade with her opposite hand, and when the wheel of fire Jenk had become struck her, the ensuing flash had more than Ember fire in it. It was bright enough—white, almost—that it forced Kole to cover his eyes. He heard Shifa barking and thought he heard something shatter and hoped it was not the queen’s armored shell.
When his vision cleared, the clay basin was obscured in a cloud of pink and orange dust, and when that cleared, slow as agony and doubly tense since neither they nor the Blue Knights knew what had become of the combatants at the center of the red storm, Kole sighed in relief to see that both still lived. And then his heart froze as the image came clear.
Linn stepped forward and jutted her arms forward, palms out. A blast of air swept the red smoke clear and painted the struggling pair in shocking clarity.
“Oh …”
Baas’s statement spoke for all of them, Kole imagined.
In the place of a vanquished queen or a bloody scene was a sight less violent but no less striking because of it. The queen’s sword was broken, the remnants strewn about like bits of stone. It had shattered like a mirror, while Jenk’s Everwood blade—blackened and unlit—hung limp by his side, entirely whole, though no doubt bearing a new notch.
The queen’s skin now shone with a brilliance it hadn’t before, as if the frost had grown thicker, colder and harder. She looked the furthest thing from human in that moment. The furthest thing from merciful. As for the Ember, Jenk was alive and seemingly unharmed, but his primary concern was in keeping the Sage from squeezing the life from him, which accounted for his discarded sword.
Jenk dangled a foot from the clay on the end of the diminutive ruler’s arm. She held him by the throat, and whether or not her muscles strained beneath her shimmering magical armor, she appeared to hold him with the same ease she would hold a kitten. Jenk grasped her icy wrist with both hands, his eyes squeezed shut tight against the pressure.
“My queen,” one of the Blue Knights—the female that had spared Kole a nasty fall—said. There was no reaction, and Kole saw Linn and Misha twitching with the need to act. He heard a distant rumble that startled him before he recognized it as the voice Baas used to call up favors from the earth.
“My queen!” Still nothing, and now Kole’s blood touched its ignition point. He felt his knives thrumming in their sheaths and knew he must draw them lest they scorch his scabbards and the armor beneath.
“Elanil!”
Tundra shouted the last, and that one got a reaction. The queen whose name was Elanil blinked. She seemed to remember herself. She brought Jenk an inch closer to her face, frowned at him as if she couldn’t quite recall who he was or how he’d ended up in her clutches, then tossed him aside, where he rolled and coughed into the disturbed dust.
The shimmering, frosted armor that had coated the Sage’s limbs dissipated, leaving not a trace behind on her fair skin. She surveyed the broken bits of her sword and looked at Jenk with renewed respect.
“A worthy fight, Ember,” she said. Kole felt his heat ebbing away, the scales of his black armor shifting back into place. “A worthy contest.”
Jenk grunted out something unintelligible and waved at her. He struggled to his feet, where he seemed to sway unsteadily for a few moments before he stumbled back over to where Kole and the others stood. Shifa greeted him worriedly and Jenk brushed absently at her. Baas made a grab for him, but the Ember shouldered into the sheer wall of rock behind them and slid down onto his rear, panting. Kole felt his anger growing as he looked at the state of his friend, but Jenk turned a smile his way and seemed to mean it.
“Hopefully that was enough …” Jenk swallowed and then spat. “Enough to earn our liege’s confidence.”
Misha smirked at him, her look of concern shifting to one of amusement, even pride.
“Enough for you, Jenk Ganmeer,” the Sage intoned, adding unnatural hearing to her growing list of abilities. “There is no shame in this defeat, if you can call it such. I knew all the old forms, once, though never as well as the Sage of Center. My husband was closer. Alas,” she fixed her eyes on Linn, “that green blade is gone, along with the man who had become it.” She paused and smiled at Jenk. “I am confident that I have taken the measure of you, my boy. Now, what of your friends?”
Kole could have written the scene himself. He saw it coming, but there was no stopping Misha Ve’Gah when she wanted to do a thing, and so he simply hung back and bit his tongue as she did.
The Third Keeper of Hearth strode forward, red hair blowing as a gust swooped low enough to greet it. Her right hand was already swinging back around toward the great Everwood spear that jutted from behind opposite hip and shoulder like a polished length of solid obsidian. It was the most wondrous weapon in the Valley core aside from the spear of Larren Holspahr, which he’d carved himself, and Kole knew that Misha could wield it well. Better than Jenk could his sword, and with more fire by several orders of magnitude.
He also knew she lacked the control of the other Ember. Or, if not control, then the will to enforce it. She reminded Kole of himself in that way, and if there was anything Kole feared, it was his own power running away from him.
“I’d like to see what you can do,” Misha said. “If you don’t mind, of course.” She dipped into the slightest bow, twirling her left hand in the air like a courtier, yellow and green tassels streaming from either elbow and painting a stark contrast to the form-fitting black armor that Kole also wore. When she came up, she did so holding her spear out in front of her, brandishing it like a ward against evil. It hung there, suspended horizontally like a challenge and an accusation.
The queen’s face was inscrutable, but she did watch Misha closely.
“But my dear,” she said, sickly sweet, “you have already seen my ‘tricks,’ as you put them.” She didn’t seem to appreciate the term.
“Don’t sell yourself short, your lordship,” Misha said, spear motionless as her body was tense. “I’m sure there’s much more to you than what we’ve seen.”
“Always.” The Sage smiled.
The silence stretched between them until Queen Elanil broke it. “Alas, I must recover my strength.” Kole didn’t think that was true, but he thought it a good thing for the Sage to say it, lest they end up with a real fight on their hands, and one that could not easily be put out.
Misha took a step toward her, clearly unwilling to accept the retreat. “You called us here—”
“To spar,” the queen interjected, her tone taking on some of the tenor that had rung out over the glittering spires and crenellations for longer than the Emberfolk had resided in the Valley core. Since before their grandfathers had been born beneath the hot desert sun. “And spar I have. Now, I am not only trying to get the measure of you so that I can learn how best to combine our powers against the fell forces arrayed against us.” She turned her eyes on Tundra and the Blue Knights, who watched Misha like hungry dogs, or nervous ones. “I have also asked you here to show my Landkist what sort of power they might come against, and soon. After all, Valour has taken the form of an Ember, has he not?”
Misha didn’t answer, only gritted her teeth and shot the Blue Knights a glare.
“An Ember stronger than any gathered here.”
“Ye
s,” Kole put in before Misha could. She was too flustered to curse him for it. “It is true.”
“Very well, then,” the queen said. “Pirrahn.” One of the Blue Knights stepped forward. She was clad in the same golden armor as the rest. She looked younger, though Kole guessed them all to be far older than him. It seemed the Blue Knights hailed from something close to the same creature the Frostfire Sage had once been. They were long-lived things, and apparently grown bitter and terse.
Pirrahn walked out onto the dusted clay as the sun sank a little lower, bathing more of the yard in the shadows of the mountains. She passed the queen, who touched her on the shoulder and trailed her fingers along the gilded metal, running them over the jutting spikes and inlaid jewels as she left the center of the yard and stood on the eastern side, turning around to watch.
Misha’s eyes followed her the whole way. They were green and piercing, though not in a dreamy, ethereal way like Iyana and the Faey. Misha’s were the eyes of a hawk, or an eagle with red-tipped wings. When she turned them on the Blue Knight who stood facing her, Kole thought he saw the other Landkist tense to recover from a flinch.
“Very well,” Misha whispered.
Kole had felt her heat building all the while. It was subtle, but when unleashed, it was a frightening thing, sudden as a storm and more deadly by far. Misha’s spear ignited in a flare of deep orange that bordered red. Kole saw the horizontal scales of her black armor shift and open, the air growing hazy above the tiny vents as her heat found its way out to eat at the open air. She swung the burning spear out to her side, haft touching the sliding plates along her back as the red-hot razor tip pointed toward the queen.
Misha exploded into motion so quickly it seemed to shock the Blue Knight. Pirrahn wore no helm like Tundra, and so her expressions were easy to see. Easy for Kole, and doubly so for the charging Ember.
No doubt these knights had come against much, including the imbued, armored warriors of Balon Rael. Perhaps that was why they had crafted gaudy suits of ridged metal with which to combat the twisted black beetle shells of the south. But this was an Ember of the Valley, forged by fire and hardened by the terrors of the night. She had seen her lover savaged by a bear the size of a hill, seen her people killed only to rise again as part of a Corrupted army of lost, silent-screaming souls. This was an Ember who had battled the Sages themselves and come out on the winning side.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 45