In short, Pirrahn of the Blue Knights was not ready, and Misha wasn’t in a forgiving mood.
The Ember leveled her spear as if she might throw it, gripping it between her thumb and two fingers and angling her shoulders as her strides lengthened during her approach. Pirrahn recovered some of her wits, enough to call those shimmering Nevermelt weapons out of the moisture in the air itself. As Kole and the others watched, Shifa wagging her tail excitedly, a frosted casing grew from the Blue Knight’s fists. She spread her hands out and gritted her teeth, calling more of her power out. The casings covered her hands, which had been pointed, fingers held tightly together like spear tips, and passed them by, forming twin sickles that could have been swords of glass.
Misha did not care. As the Blue Knight settled into her stance, Nevermelt bladehands angled, one behind, the other in front, Misha shot up … or seemed to. Instead, she rose onto the balls of her feet and then spun, shooting into a slide across the dry clay and bringing her flaming spear around with her. Pirrahn bit on the feint like a floundering trout and rose onto the tips of her toes, crossing her blades out in front of her chest to block a strike that would no doubt burn her anyway. As it stood, she was about to lose both legs in a river of glowing, raging red.
But Misha, it seemed, was full of surprises, and not all of them were bad. Instead of sweeping her spear around and coating the red field in a scythe of red fire, she sent one lancing tail of flame at the Blue Knight’s armored knees. The fire struck with a sound like whistling wind, and the Blue Knight cried out more in surprise than pain—though no doubt there was a bit of that as well—and rolled to the side, landing heavy and awkward on her right shoulder and nearly spearing herself on one of her own blades.
To her credit, she rolled and went to rise, but she winced. There was a black band of char coating the shin guards below either knee, and Kole could see the skin above the pieces already beginning to blister with pink and white strips like fat on the edge of a cut of venison. Her right arm and the blade that coated it quivered, her forced meeting with the ground having done its own damage.
Misha came out of her slide and stood facing the other Landkist. She took a step forward and the Blue Knight showed her teeth, glistening white. Misha smiled, seeming genuine, and strode forward with a confidence that was becoming of her.
Pirrahn did not cry out, but she did lash out, surging forward on burnt legs with one angled blade and then the next. Misha dodged the first with an easy twist, but she was forced to knock the other aside with her spear. The third strike came on the end of a deft pivot and quicker spin than any of them were anticipating, and Misha had to leap back to avoid getting stuck on the tip like an apple core. Now she sank into a crouch, burning spear beginning to twist in slow circles as she raised it above her head.
Pirrahn’s eyes showed a bit of white despite her bravery, and when her front foot stepped backward, Misha’s back foot stepped forward.
“Cress,” Kole heard the queen say, and the male Blue Knight darted forward with some speed. He was smaller than the others—far smaller than Tundra—and he seemed entirely unafraid of the formidable Ember and all her flame. He was also heading straight for her back, his own Nevermelt beginning to form into a long shaft, like a spear taken from the heart of a winter storm.
Kole looked at Baas, who frowned at the sudden change. Linn opened her mouth to shout a warning, but Misha was aware of the charge. She shot straight up as Cress reached her position, thrusting his spear forward. Her spear left a streak of whipping red and a cascade of sparks behind, and when she reached the zenith of her skyward climb—nearly as high as Jenk had jumped—the weapon was a disc of dusklight spinning with enough speed to make the air spark and smell. Kole could hear the atmosphere crackling.
“Looks like you’re not the only one who can summon storms,” Kole said, nudging Linn in the back. She mumbled something but was unable to take her eyes from the spectacle. “Seems Ve’Gah’s been holding out on us.”
Baas nodded his agreement.
When Misha hit the ground between the Blue Knights, she led with that fiery disc. She hit the clay already spinning along with her spear, and the fire she had gathered whipped up in a frenzy around her that became a torrent. The Blue Knights avoided it easily enough, leaping away to either side, translucent blades drinking in the light Misha gave off, but they couldn’t see the Ember at the heart of her red storm. That storm only lasted for seconds, but it was more than enough to do her work, and Kole smiled as he saw it.
She angled for Cress first, ducking low and shooting through the curl of orange fire she’d made. Cress reacted too late, and Misha jabbed him, hard, with the butt of her glowing spear, doubling him over. She was back into her fading storm of burnt embers, swirling motes and charred, smoking clay before his knees touched the ground and after his own lengthy weapon fell from his grasp as nothing more than water and frosted steam.
Pirrahn never had a chance. Now that the fire was blowing out, the smoke was thick and obscuring. She crossed her blades in front of her, waiting for the inevitable strike. A rod of orange daylight parted the black smoke and shot up and out of the plume, taking all their watching eyes with it, including Pirrahn’s. The bolt sailed in an arc before landing with a sharp, echoing crack in the clay below the sloped wall of stone to the west. Its glow began to dull almost immediately now that it was cut off from the source of its power.
Linn seemed to see her first. She inhaled sharply as a deeper shadow darted through the smoke, angling straight for the Blue Knight. Misha led with her fist, fording the gap between the knight’s crossed clear blades and rewarding her look of surprise with a crack on the jaw that sent her tumbling. Kole saw the spurt of blood and perhaps a flying white tooth from his place in the shadowed borders of the bowl.
And Misha stood tall, seemingly victorious, while Cress hacked and coughed on the opposite side of her smoky circle of char and Pirrahn stood dizzily, stumbling on shaking legs, her face a mask of red and rage.
Kole could not help but smile. Opponents were often so fixated on an Ember’s fire that they forgot the heat in their blood. Heat that engorged the muscles with a vitality most men only felt at the peak of sexual release or unbridled rage. It was a burst of liquid fire that fueled an Ember’s burst for minutes rather than seconds, and when focused, pushed into a strike as Misha just had, an Ember could strike as hard as any Rockbled with no Everwood to speak of.
Almost any Rockbled, Baas Taldis notwithstanding.
Kole almost felt guilty when his eyes met Queen Elanil’s, whose own look was more measured, though no less surprised.
Pirrahn actually screamed, but the Frostfire Sage held up her hand and the effect was immediate. The Blue Knight dropped her hands to her sides, her blades dissolving in twin puffs that scattered and blew apart in her wake. She passed Misha by with a limp she couldn’t hide, and Kole cringed as he saw streaks of juice dripping from the fresh wounds below her knees. The Ember tensed in case the Landkist’s seeming surrender was a ruse, but no further violence ensued. Pirrahn hooked Cress beneath the elbow and dragged him up to his feet. He shot a glare at Misha that she accepted with a smile and a stiff nod, and the Blue Knights shuffled back toward their queen like whipped dogs.
Shifa barked excitedly, tail up and wagging, and Misha turned from their allies and moved across the smooth red-brown ocean toward her Everwood spear. The weapon still held a bit of a ruddy red glow, and trails of gray snaked up from the spiderweb cracks the tip had made, twining around the smooth handle and kissing Misha’s bare arms and colored tassels. She turned and started back toward Kole and the others, not so much as sparing a glance at the Sage and her fuming, fumbling champions. Misha’s arms, always lean, were bunched, the veins standing out and the cords sliding over one another like fisherman’s knots.
When she reached them and met Kole’s eyes, he expected to see a wide smile. Instead, she looked drained. Her tan skin had paled slightly, making her bright hair stand out all the m
ore. She bore no fresh wounds from the spar—which was more a miniature war that had left a charred circle in the clay—but her face was streaked with ash from the smoke. She was exhausted, having used up a good portion of her heat.
Her long strides turned into haggard steps as she angled toward Jenk, twisted and let her back touch the shelf of stone beneath the cliff walk. She slid down next to the other Ember, who gripped her knee and smiled. She returned it and then let her eyes drift closed, not sleeping but not fully awake as she tried to take in what remained of the day’s fire.
“Some show,” Linn said, and Misha smiled without parting her lips or eyelids.
“I look forward to yours,” she returned, but Linn wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t happy with the way things had gone here today, and Kole couldn’t blame her. What sort of a sparring session left a queen’s ancient sword shattered and two champions left in states sorry enough that they might need more than a good night’s rest to recover?
He looked across the short span to where their hosts stood clustered and found himself beginning to move in that direction. He had to speak to Elanil before this went any further. He had to apologize, if it came to that, even though a better part of him delighted in the emphatic displays both Jenk and Misha had put on. Embers of the Valley indeed.
“Kole Reyna,” she said in that carrying voice. Kole stopped in his tracks before he had gone much beyond Linn and Shifa. “I believe you are already acquainted with Gwenithil.”
The Sage was watchful, indeed. Kole supposed you didn’t live to be as old as her without being observant. Every detail. Every moment and how it turned.
The Blue Knight who had stopped him falling to the hard clay just an hour before stepped forward, seeming more reluctant than the others. Kole couldn’t say it was fear on her face, but something had her shaken.
“We need to fight as one to stop the Eastern Dark,” Kole said, though he found his legs carrying him into the center of the yard. Gwenithil stayed just a few feet in front of the Sage. “Surely you won’t let Gwen fight an Ember without your support, seeing how the last pair of contests went.”
Tundra stepped forward with an emphatic, almost childlike stomp. To Kole’s surprise, the queen did not stop him. The look on her face had shifted, changing from bemused to tight.
“True enough,” she said, moving between the hulking Tundra and the more slender Blue Knight to form the prow of a three-pointed ship. “Valour has allies.”
“The Shadow,” Kole said. “We know.”
“Boy,” the queen barked it out, and Kole could not help feeling cowed. Her teeth were showing, now. “Allies was the word. Think on it, and think on how you will fare without us beside you on the ice when they come for us.”
“When they come for you, you mean,” Kole replied evenly. He felt his heat rising in spite of his halfhearted effort to stamp it out.
“If I die,” the queen was nearly chewing her lip, “the world dies with me.” Her look softened, too quickly for Kole’s liking, as if she were playing the part of an anger she didn’t feel. “But then, you already knew that, for that is why you have come, is it not? To ensure the Eastern Dark—wicked as he is—does not get what he wants?”
“That’s a part of it, to be sure,” Kole said, leaving out the fact that he hadn’t yet decided if he would kill her as well. He suspected she knew that. There was a reason she hadn’t coaxed him down into the pink-petaled courtyard in the starlit reaches of the night. “I’m under no illusions that we can tackle this threat alone. But,” he nodded at Cress and Pirrahn, “that can be turned around and faced the other way, you see.”
“Let’s see,” the queen said. “Let’s see what the bright and bold leader can do.”
Kole turned to the others. Shifa was standing straight, eyes wide and mouth clamped shut. “Linn?” She blinked at him. “What do you say?”
“It seems your Ember friends hold you in the highest esteem.”
Linn blinked at the queen. It seemed strange to her that she suddenly had a name. Elanil. It hearkened back to a time Linn had never known. A time before the Embers in the Valley.
Then she blinked at Kole. She thought it a jest at first, but Kole continued to eye her steadily, as if there could be no clearer answer than to select her as the leader of their company. She thought there was something else in the move, and searched Kole’s amber eyes in an attempt to discover what it was.
Perhaps he had seen her in the courtyard with the queen, walking hand in hand with the Frostfire Sage, or close enough to it. Maybe he wanted to see how close the two had become in so short a time. Or maybe there was something else. She saw his hands twitching, veins standing out behind the knuckles and one beginning to burrow its way down his temple where his long black hair wasn’t hiding it. Kole wanted to fight. He wanted to fight very badly.
Which was why he was trying to do everything in his power to keep from doing it.
“Fine,” Linn said, stepping out onto the clay with Kole. She faced the queen and her Blue Knights—the two who hadn’t been reduced to shaking heaps leaning on the rock borders at the edges of the bowl. If the only way to end this growing madness was to join it, she would do so.
The queen should know better.
Linn called to the wind. She had teased it in the courtyard and answered its whispers every hour of every day now, but she hadn’t called it fully in some time—not even when she fought with the Blue Knights above the black shelves. It stirred up the driest clay on the surface and spun it, forming a fine pink mist around her, an approximation of her own Ember fire. The sky was already darkening with the threat of an evening storm, and Linn felt the electricity that had yet to be birthed. All it needed was a little coaxing.
“Impressive control, for one so young,” the queen said, watching Linn’s preparation. Her eyes seemed almost hungry, and though she no longer held the hilt of a steel blade, her right hand was clenched into a fist.
“Just us, then?” Linn asked. She was gritting her teeth in concentration, but the longer she held the swirling swath of earth and air, the easier she felt with it.
“Your friend seems so eager,” the queen said. Tundra slid one of his studded boots forward, his look less hungry and more murderous. Linn felt Kole’s heat tickling the nape of her neck as it mixed with the cloak of swirling wind she’d gathered about her. But it was another who stepped forward to take on the challenge.
“You will not face them again,” Baas said. His voice was flat, almost matter-of-fact. Tundra slid his eyes to the Riverman.
“We have no quarrel.”
“Is that what we’re doing here?” Linn asked, fixing her eyes on the queen. The female Blue Knight, Gwenithil, seemed as uncomfortable as Linn was with the whole affair.
“We are testing—”
“Testing what?” Kole cut in.
“Limits,” the Sage answered without hesitation. “No doom will befall us in this red bowl, among friends. That I promise you. However, if we step out onto those frozen wastes without knowing what each can offer—where each will fail,” she glanced at the seated Misha and Jenk, the former of whom frowned at the slight, “then we may as well watch as the world falls apart. For surely it will, if Valour claims me.”
Baas seemed unconcerned with the Sage’s words. He moved to stand beside Linn, reached up and over his back and lifted that huge stone shield from its metal hooks like Linn might lift a babe. He held it before him and began to walk toward Tundra.
Kole stepped up on Linn’s other side and drew his Everwood knives, and there was a close rumble of thunder Linn hadn’t meant to call, though she knew it was her doing.
“All for one,” the queen said, nodding appreciatively at Baas. She looked to Gwenithil. “Three against three. A fair fight, if ever I’ve seen one.”
Whatever misgivings the Blue Knight held vanished at her queen’s command. She stepped forward, tall and straight, and held out her hand. The air went milky, but instead of forming spiked gauntlets or a long,
shimmering spear, she conjured a sickle, sharp on both ends. It was a crude-looking implement, and Linn did not think it was intended for close combat. She reached around behind her back and touched the silver grain of her bow, bringing it around as she bent her knees and fingered the string.
Tundra’s face, which held a tinge of fear, melted into something much different as Baas’s path showed no signs of slowing. His eyes, Linn thought, went a shade darker, and the atmosphere around him seemed to shift. It was almost imperceptible at first, but it was there, and it, too, seemed darker than the strange shimmering the other Landkist of the north prompted.
Linn heard Shifa growling to the side.
“Stay, girl,” Kole intoned. The hound did as he bade, but did not cease her complaint, which was aimed squarely at the hulking knight in all his golden splendor.
Baas’s slow, steady walk turned into a faster one, and just before he reached the simmering, boiling Tundra, it turned into a sprint. Kole flared his blades to life and darted ahead so fast the flash of it blinded Linn momentarily. She stepped back to catch her bearings, unsure how best to proceed.
She saw Baas reach Tundra, shield covering his lead shoulder and much of his bulk like a battering ram. She thought he would kill the Blue Knight, who had yet to call a weapon of his own. Right before the Riverman struck, the Blue Knight stretched his arms out to his sides, balled his blue hands into fists, and Linn saw that same clear white armor slide over them with impressive speed.
They met with a force that jarred their surroundings, shaking red pebbles on the surface and shaking Kole from his racing path for a moment. Baas’s back was to her, but Linn saw him stopped dead in his tracks. His back tensed and heaved with effort, but his boots began to slide back, digging shallow trenches into the clay as Tundra caught his shield with nothing but his imbued hands and put his unnatural might into a grinding push.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 46