When the smoke cleared, the Eastern Dark was standing just a few feet back from where he had been. Linn had inconvenienced him, but she was already forgotten to him. His focus was back on his true enemy. His true prey.
Tundra and Martyr struck and parried to her left, while Gwenithil crawled toward her just ahead. Linn went to her.
“Can you fight?”
Gwenithil opened her mouth to speak, but nothing but thick blood came out. She rolled onto her back as Linn cradled her head, looking toward Tundra. Another blow struck, Martyr’s knife making a thin crack on the back of the Blue Knight’s arm.
“He needs me,” Linn said. “He won’t survive long.” She looked down at Gwenithil, who was pointing skyward.
Linn’s heart quickened as she looked up, half expecting to see a shadow in the shape of Myriel hurtling down toward her. Instead, she saw nothing, just a sky that had grown slightly dimmer than before as the sun raced to rid them of its warmth and grace.
“What is it?”
Gwenithil’s golden eyes flashed with an inner light, and Linn heard a cracking sound in the ice around them. She twisted around, seeing Baas and Misha facing off with the sparking blue beast that had them whirling in a furious attempt to keep her at bay.
Still the cracking continued, and a shape flew up in front of Linn’s face. She winced and then looked up. It was an icy shard, sharp on both sides, spinning in a slow circle above them. She looked down at Gwenithil and saw that she had pressed the backs of her hands to the ice. All around them, javelins of varying shapes and sizes—all of them sharp and glinting—pried themselves free of the ice or else grew like water in the Blue Knight’s open palms. They froze as they elongated, and then those, too, flew up and hovered.
After a short while, there were a hundred or more shafts and shards twirling above them, casting shadows like crows.
Gwenithil shifted her eyes to Linn and tried to choke something out, but nothing came. She turned her head toward the fight between Tundra and Martyr, and Linn thought she understood.
She stood, stepped back until she had a full view of the shaking, hovering shafts. Martyr had yet to notice. He was too busy toying with the brute that was Tundra, dodging his futile strikes and weakening his armor with each successive blow.
Linn breathed in, filling her breast with the refreshing cold. She dropped her bow and reached up with both hands, feeling the wind slide through her fingers. She pulled it, watching the icy shards of Nevermelt shiver as the current passed through them and gathered around them. She concentrated on the pockets between the shards, forming roiling currents. She couldn’t see them but for the faint trails of dusted salt and frost they carried, but she could feel them, like tendrils, like a dozen arms reaching out from her consciousness.
Each time she reached into the sky in an attempt to try something new, it worked. The White Crest had given her a mighty gift. Command of the skies. Command of the storms that split them apart. Her heart hammered in her chest. She was holding the currents too long.
Gwenithil was shaking, the effort of keeping her blades aloft seeming to tax her more than Linn could know.
Linn saw Martyr dancing out of range, wiping a red sash of blood from his brow as the heaving, exhausted Tundra managed to land a blow. The Blue Knight’s skin shimmered like fresh melt … and then went dry.
Martyr smiled, and Linn might have as well.
She felt a wash of heat on her back as Misha let out a roar and sent another blaze at Myriel, and Linn brought her arms down in a slash. There was a moment’s delay, the spinning shards seeming to hesitate. Then the pockets of spinning wind between the shafts gathered them up and sent them screaming down toward the dark-eyed demon.
He was nimble, his eyes widening as he danced between them. His smile turned to a fierce grin, but Linn could see the fear in his eyes. One shard nearly split him in two. He didn’t scream as he dodged the bulk of it, but his arm hung bloody. He dove and rolled to miss the rest. Gwenithil’s shafts were all spent. They littered the field like glittering pillars, and Linn’s wind howled between them like chimes.
When Martyr came up clutching his bloody shoulder, one blade still clenched in his dark fist, his look of victory quickly changed to horror as a shadow fell over him.
Tundra did not hesitate. He reached out, deceptively fast, his great, bunching blue muscles shifting over the solid bones beneath. He slammed his palm into Martyr’s throat so hard the demon lost his knife. He kicked and gurgled as Tundra lifted him, brought him close to his sweating face, grinned a savage grin of his own, and set to squeezing.
Linn grimaced as the soft crack echoed over the shelf. Martyr died, his arms going limp, blood already drying into a paste as the northern wind rushed in to cool it. The Blue Knight dropped his lifeless form, turned without offering so much as a backward glance at Linn or Gwenithil, and stalked toward the Sages’ private and silent exchange. Plumes of steam issued from Tundra’s open maw. Linn saw a thin trickle of blood on the back of his arm. Martyr had scored a hit after all, but Tundra did not drop. His eyes changed, going from golden to black, and the Eastern Dark broke his stare from the queen and took in his approach.
He shook his head. “You have imbued your champions,” he said.
“Just the one,” she said. “Tundra is most loyal.”
“You’re even more foolish than I thought,” Valour said. “The power of the World Apart cannot be contained forever. It cannot be controlled. It most certainly cannot be mixed with the blood of our own. Not even the Landkist.”
“What of your Shadow?”
Linn watched for Valour’s reaction. She hadn’t thought of the Shadow creature they had first seen in the White Crest’s citadel, and had later fought amidst the golden, dusklit pools of Center. She looked out over the cracked shelves to the east, eyes scanning for unwanted visitors, reinforcements. Or for the welcome sight of Kole, Jenk and Shifa come back to them having driven them off.
Perhaps there had been more than they thought. As it was, Linn thought things were going rather well here. As well as could be expected.
The Eastern Dark swallowed. “We all make our mistakes.”
“Tundra,” Linn said. The brute did not look at her. “Tundra! Gwenithil is hurt. Your companion needs help.”
Still nothing.
“Queen Elanil!”
Her ear twitched. “Take her, my son,” Elanil said. Tundra blinked, his eyes losing their black, void-filled stare. “Put her in one of the lower chambers. Give her something to sleep.”
“She was poisoned,” Linn said. Elanil would not let her eyes slide away from the Eastern Dark. She watched him like a hawk watching a burrow.
“She is strong,” Elanil said. “She will live until I return.”
The other Sage laughed at that. Once.
Tundra looked as if he might refuse, and then the queen raised a hand and shooed him away. He turned a hateful stare at Linn as he turned and marched through the field of sickles, breaking them at the stems with errant swipes of his burly blue fists. He bent and scooped the unconscious Gwenithil up, tossed one lingering, hungry look back at the Eastern Dark—and a softer one at the back of the slender, diminutive queen he saw as his charge—and departed in the direction of the crystal palace.
Linn tried to call the wind to her once more, but it was halting. She pulled harder and the sky seemed to pull back. Her chest burned and her temples throbbed.
She turned and saw Misha jabbing at Myriel with her spear. Only the tip was lit, now, which meant the Ember was conserving her fire, or running out of it. Their fight had taken them farther away. There were broken craters from Myriel’s attacks, and melted trenches from Misha’s torrents. Baas was lying in a heap a short distance from them, and Linn’s heart caught in her throat before she saw him roll onto his stomach and push himself up, scooping his shield as he went. She saw his short-cropped hair standing on end, spiked and dancing, no doubt an effect of Myriel’s charged blows.
“I’ll
leave you two to it, then,” Linn said without turning.
“A wise choice,” the Eastern Dark answered.
She began to move toward the fight. If the wind wouldn’t answer, she had another friend to call. The air was dry, and the sky still bright, but there was always a storm over the next horizon. What better way to fight lightning?
Linn felt the charge building in the air, buzzing against her ears. She felt the tips of her eyelashes rise, her unbound hair go wavy, as if she were swimming. The sea was not frozen all the way to the north and east, and Linn could feel the billowing plumes there. She called to them, and they raced to answer.
“Shifa!”
Kole had lost her again. He reeled his flames back in, ramming his Everwood blades back into the crisscrossed scabbards across his back as he ran. His blood was up, the scales of his black armor shifting over one another, releasing heat in hissing gouts.
Jenk kept up well enough, but the Blue Knights were finding it more difficult. Still, the terrain was known to them. Kole and Jenk were nimble and strong, but the trenches between the great shelves of blue ice went from rough and salt-frosted to slick at random, dumping them on occasion.
Kole rounded a bend and nearly collided with a sheer wall. Jenk slammed into his back and Kole spun and grabbed the other Ember to steady him.
Jenk rubbed at his nose. Behind him, the Blue Knights came into view, their golden eyes gleaming in the gloom; the sun did not reach so easily into every crack and crevice of the frozen sea.
“Which way?” Jenk asked.
“She was following the Shadow girl,” Kole said. He pointed to the right, where the ground dropped away three times his height. The slope was steep and pitted, and in the distance, Kole could see the land open up once more, the trenches changing back to a cacophony of frozen waves and the slides and valleys between them.
“She’s leading us, you know,” Jenk said.
“I know.”
“Don’t you want to know what she’s leading us to?”
“Yes, Ganmeer,” Kole said. He was tense on account of losing sight of Shifa. He sighed. “The Eastern Dark is above. Whatever or whoever she’s leading us to can’t be as bad as him.”
“Fair enough.”
“What do you see?” Pirrahn asked, coming up behind them. Cress passed in front of them and crouched on the lip of the ledge overlooking the slide.
“Linn’s the one with the eagle’s eyes,” Jenk said. Pirrahn did not know which one he spoke of, nor did she care. The Blue Knights were aloof and strange. Even in the midst of clear danger, they were calm. Kole wondered how old they were, and how many battles they had seen.
“You know this Shadow creature?” Cress asked without turning. He ran his bare blue fingers through the salt and lifted them to his lips, licking the tips, as if that would tell him something of her origins.
“She piss on the ground or something?” Kole asked. Now Cress did turn, locking him in a steady stare. Kole matched it.
Kole made as if to stride past him when some errant sound niggled at his ear. He stopped and half turned toward Jenk. The other Ember had also paused, chin tilted.
A small shock of black and white stole into view at the bottom of the slide. She pawed the ground and lifted her head high, a sign that she had found something. Kole shook his head. “Damn dog.” He leapt onto the top of the slide and allowed it to take him down, watching the walls rush past him on either side and bending his knees to remain upright.
Shifa did not greet him at the bottom, but rather turned to lead.
“Wait, girl,” he said, turning back toward the natural chute. Jenk nearly slipped at the top, but otherwise made the trip unharmed, and the Blue Knights followed in short order, their golden armor reflecting images of themselves on the walls they slid between. “Okay.”
No sooner had the word left his lips than Shifa bounded ahead. Rather than make for another trench between the troughs of the frozen waves, she moved to the left, where the great shelf of ice that formed one of the walls bordering the natural slide rose higher than the tallest buildings of Hearth. Kole followed.
“Looks like she’s found a passageway,” Jenk said.
“Where to?” Kole asked. Shifa looked up at him, expectant.
The crack was more a fissure. Kole would have had to turn sideways in order to get himself in. He leaned forward and peered inside, trying to see what was on the other side. In the place of an endless path, he saw the narrow fissure open up onto flat ice, revealing a sort of chamber with jutting shards that rose from the ground like stalagmites. He couldn’t get a good enough angle to see more.
“She in there, girl?” Shifa whined, but did not growl. She was acting strangely, as if she did not know quite what to make of the situation, and Kole eyed her.
“Perhaps the land is playing tricks on her nose,” Cress said. He was facing the north, bracing for signs of ambush.
“She’s stopped here for a reason,” Kole said. “I hope.”
He began to wedge his way inside, doing his best to ignore Jenk’s worried look. The Blue Knights milled beyond him, uncomfortable with the present path.
There was a rumble that sounded like thunder, and Kole felt the air take on a bitter chill. The shadows lengthened. He looked up into the sky and saw deep gray clouds passing overhead.
“Linn,” Jenk said.
Kole brought his chin back down and gasped.
“What is it?” Jenk asked, drawing his black sword.
Kole did not immediately answer. His heart was beating furiously, and he felt caught like a hare wedged between two hunter’s stones. He peered into the wall of ice in front of his nose. He swore he had seen a face looking back at him; it had been red with white eyes, and certainly not human. The form beneath it had been massive, larger even than Baas and Tundra, all corded muscle and boney ridges.
Now, there was nothing. Just a deep, shadowed blue that passed away into blackness, like the ocean depths.
“Thought I saw something,” Kole said. He turned and marked Shifa, who had followed him into the crevice. She looked up at him, tail wagging, as if nothing was amiss. Instead of looking at the wall of ice as he did, she attempted to push past him, eager to reach the room beyond.
“Something like what?” Pirrahn asked, her voice taking on an edge of fear that Cress did well to hide.
“Something like a demon,” Kole said.
He continued to edge his way toward the chamber, his bare hands pressed against the wall in front of him. This was no Nevermelt, the magical, nearly unbreakable glasslike substance the queen and her Blue Knights summoned, but rather ice. It was frozen solid, and likely through magical means, but it still split and protested at the direct touch of an Ember as hot as him. His hands steamed and the wall began to lose its clarity the farther he went, fogging with condensation. Bubbles beneath the surface bunched and popped and slid, and Kole wondered how many of the great mountains of ice sheltered liquid pools in their depths.
When his hand reached the open air of the western chamber, Kole breathed in deeply, spared another glance at the others—Jenk watching, poised and with his Everwood sword bared—and launched himself to the side. He let himself fall, hitting the hard, frosted ground with his armored left shoulder and rolling. He came up with one blade out, flattened on one knee and up on the opposite foot.
Kole cast about the chamber frantically, alert for signs of the Shadow girl’s inevitable ambush. It was darker than it had been on the other side of the trench. Kole had assumed that the chamber had no roof, but as he glanced up, he saw that the sky was obscured by a thin sheet of ice. The chamber floor, on the other hand, was littered with icy mounds and shards with sharp edges. Some were frosted over white, while others were transparent, shining like crystals as the afternoon sun spilled in from the glass-seeming ceiling. Others still were blue, all the colors and hues the land could make.
There was no sign of the Shadow girl and no sign of any other, and as Shifa followed him into the
wide, vaulted cave, she did not immediately raise an alarm. Instead, she began to sniff along the ground, testing the base of each shard and mound, the ridges along the fur of her spine rising and falling at chaotic intervals.
Kole stood and brushed some of the crystalized dust from his breeches. He kept one blade out and unlit, but left the other in its sheath. He turned to beckon Jenk inside, or else to tell them there was nothing to be found and to stay without, but the Ember was already halfway through the narrow path, and the Blue Knights had stolen in after him.
Shifa ranged a short ways ahead, but continued to circle back to check on the progress of the others, and Kole rounded the lead shard—a broken wall that showed him his own reflection as he passed. When he got around it, he looked to the north, seeing that the cave went deeper and grew more narrow, the mounds of ice along its floor littering the bottom every step of the way. In the distance, he could see light, either the result of another chamber that admitted the sun, or an open valley among more of the blasted waves that seemed infinite in this place.
Kole felt a presence and whirled. Shifa edged backward, spooked by his tension. Kole found himself staring back at the slab he had just circled. He squinted into its depths, but only his reflection stared back. Still, he drew his other blade.
Jenk pulled himself into the chamber, sword still held in one drenched and steaming hand, and Kole could see the shadows of the Blue Knights edging closer through the corner of the block.
“Anything?” Jenk asked.
Kole shook his head, unsure.
He began to walk among the slabs, mounds and jutting shards, always turning his feet, swiveling like a top. The chamber was not so very large, but it seemed so, like a maze of half barriers and refracting colors. A hall of illusion. He focused on each structure as he went, but he concentrated the bulk of his attention to the corners of his eyes, searching for signs of movement. The Shadow girl was clever, he knew. She had nearly killed him at Center. Had nearly killed the lot of them with her dark blade and cunning speed. Kole knew she could turn up at a moment’s notice. Any shadow deep enough for her to count as skin was a potential hiding place. A potential door for her to open.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 57