“And what must become of my world, demon?”
“Demon.” Alistair tasted the word. “Monster? You call me monster.” He nodded, as if it made sense. “I see why you would think it. But, bright Ember, you must understand this, if nothing else: for one world to live, often another must die. I railed against that truth. Fought against inevitability incarnate. Fought hard, and lost much. Now, I know the truth of it. If we had been different, perhaps we could have avoided what became of our world. If your Sages,” he spat into the salt, “and even your mighty Landkist—as you call them—had been less proud and less prone to war, to killing to serve their ends, perhaps you would have avoided it as well.”
“You speak in riddles,” Kole said. He began to walk toward the ashen man, whose eyes widened. He was surprised.
“I don’t care what happened to your world,” Kole said. “I only care what you plan to unleash on mine.”
“You mistake the source,” Alistair said. He didn’t move from the spot, only watched Kole as he drew closer. “It was not I, nor any of my kind, who set the darkness on you.”
“It was our own Sages,” Kole said. “Yes. I know. We’ve been fighting those beasts my entire life. The Dark Kind. The Sentinels.”
“Sentinels.” Alistair’s face shifted. “Dark Kind. Night Lords. Such trivial names you have given to beings of such former majesty, it puts this frozen waste of a land and all its glittering, once-proud keeps to shame. Only the barest shadows have slipped through the rifts these last centuries. Only hints and shades of the true thing.”
Kole stopped just a few strides from the other man.
“Is that what you are?” Kole asked, nodding at the broken bodies in the bowl. “Is that what they were? The truth of the Sentinels? Proud warriors of your world, changed to slaves of darkness on the passage through?”
“You would dismiss the thought—”
“I don’t care,” Kole said. “I thought I made that clear. I’m not here to help the Frostfire Sage. I’m not here to kill the Eastern Dark—though I will.” Kole ignited his blades, burned them the deepest amber he could muster, head swimming, eyes misting over. “I’m only here to do one simple thing.”
“What’s that?” Alistair sounded interested, but his voice went low with threat.
“To save them.”
“Whom?”
“Whoever’s worth it,” Kole said. “I’ll let others decide on the last. I won’t pretend to know your end, Alistair, except to say that it doesn’t match mine. If your end goal results in bringing whatever Beast features most heavily in your riddles and poems into this world, into mine, then this is where your road ends.”
“Ah.” Alistair grinned wickedly, all white and yellow teeth. “But he is a Beast. All glory. And born of all the sins your kind would commit in turn, given enough time. Just as we had.”
“Raise your sword,” Kole said. “I’d like to tell you it’ll be quick … but that all depends on you.”
Alistair’s smile dropped. “Fair play, Ember, and well met. But I will say, I can make the promise you cannot.”
“Try me.”
“Gladly.”
Alistair was as good as his word. He came on like a wolf, gray bone blade flashing in front of his ashen skin. If Kole hadn’t flooded his own veins with liquid fire, he’d have been killed on the spot. If he hadn’t twisted at just the right angle on the second strike, he’d have been killed on that one.
Kole tried to respond. His warrior’s instincts took over, his martial mind turning from thoughts of who Alistair was and why he had come to survival. Kole had always counted on his offense to get him out of difficult spots. He only had to hope it would again.
Shifa watched from the shadows along the southern end of the bowl while Kole and Alistair fought in the center. They exchanged three times, and all three times, neither of them struck. Even the short crescents of fire Kole trailed from his blades were more an attempt to keep his opponent blinded than to cause injury. On the fourth exchange, Kole met resistance, his left blade cracking off Alistair’s sword. The man was strong—far stronger than Kole had at first thought—and he held his strike there with ease.
Kole’s eyes widened as he remembered Alistair’s opposite hand nearly too late. He broke off from the exchange and darted back as that clawed hand lanced up, fingers pointed. The strike would not have landed even had Kole remained in place, but as he leaned his head to the right, he heard a sharp whistle past his left ear. It was followed by a stinging sensation in his shoulder.
Kole hit the frost hard on his right and completed a clumsy roll. He came up onto his knees and brought his twin blades together on the flats, points aimed at Alistair. Or he tried to. His right rose first and the jet of red flame Kole had intended flared out, forcing Alistair to dodge. The left was slower, and as Kole got it into the same place, the jet it sent was more a drunken tongue of yellow and orange. He felt a burning in his shoulder, and as he let the flames die down—they left a melted, scorched trail in the frost all the way to the southeastern edge of the bowl—he spared a glance and saw blood leaking from a thin cut in the black armor.
As he turned, he noticed something resting on the ice where he had grappled with Alistair. He squinted, recognizing a missing silver-black length of armor, along with a shock of his own hair.
“What is it, then?” Kole asked, getting to his feet. He shrugged his shoulders up, wincing as his left protested. The gash was deep, but it would soon scab over. He only hoped the sinew beneath would hold together long enough to get him through this fight.
Alistair was circling, curling his way around the bowl toward the north. Kole saw Shifa edging toward him, following in his wake. He held his right hand up to stay her once more, earning a weak growl. She had lost blood. More than him, and she had no fire with which to close wounds that could prove to be fatal if they weren’t addressed soon.
Kole saw that the gray swordsman had not escaped their exchanges entirely unscathed. He wore the marks of battle well—pink slashes that were already beginning to bubble—while the bones that made up his natural armor turned the fire aside with little issue.
“What is what?” Alistair asked.
Kole allowed his eyes to drift toward the other hand. The one the man let swing by his side, muscles tensed, betraying a poise in the midst of an image of ease. He stepped over the bodies of his fellows—bodies he had made–and his dark eyes reflected the yellow lantern lights that came in from the tunnel Kole stood before.
“Wind,” Kole said. “Your element is wind.”
Alistair shrugged, as if it did not matter. “Your Landkist are so named because their power works this way?”
“Yours doesn’t?”
“Who can say? No doubt every world has its champions, each with his own secrets.”
In truth, Kole wanted to believe Alistair controlled the wind, even though everything about the way he moved and the way he fought suggested nothing of the sort—nothing to connect him to Linn. He wanted to believe it, because the only other thing he could think of to explain the invisible scythes he seemed capable of generating spoke to speed. Speed on a scale Kole found difficult to fathom.
Alistair stopped just a few paces from him, on the northern edge of the bowl. He smiled, as if he could read Kole’s thoughts and liked where they had landed.
Kole’s vision swam. He tried to remain steady and did a fine job, but too rigid a stance could just as well reveal weakness to a trained enemy, and there was no doubting Alistair’s gifts. Kole suspected the only man he had faced with better skill—even if he had half the speed—was Maro of the Emerald Road. What he wouldn’t give to have that man by his side, and on it, right now.
If Alistair truly could part the very atmosphere—the fabric of the world—with that left hand, why did he not split Kole on the spot, as he had the twins? Kole watched him. Alistair did not seem to wish to speak. He gave the impression of a cat playing with a mouse, but Kole did not think he would suffer him to l
ive.
No, there was a reason why he did not flaunt his power. Kole saw a bead of sweat form at the top of that tangled hairline. The drop made its aching way down through the gray, sickly grooves of his alien face, causing his lip to twitch as it rode the upper edges. His veins were standing out on his brow and at his temples. He looked calm, even happy, but he was tired.
“Tell me,” Alistair said, taking a step forward. “What conclusion have you arrived at? More so,” he continued, “tell me: do you believe it will matter, in the end?”
Kole gave the best answer he could.
He shot toward his adversary like a flaming arrow, blades out at his sides. Alistair watched him, steady as a mantis. When he was just a leaping stride away, Kole put a blast into his legs and rose. He slowed, and then hung, suspended in an instant, and turned his eyes down toward Alistair’s.
The bone sword remained poised, point down, while the left hand twitched. As Kole started down, that hand started up. Instead of bringing both of his burning blades overhead and unleashing a lashing whip of flame that would matter little if that invisible razor thread took his head from his shoulders, Kole sent a crescent of fire with the left and lanced his right hand forward in the hardest throw he could muster. His burning blade parted the space between them and he heard a wet pack as it struck home. He used the momentum of his throw to cut an angle, falling like the sharpened edge of a blade.
Kole saw the demon’s empty hand carve a swath through his wall of fire, but it was a jagged one, thrown off by the missile Kole had landed. When Kole struck the ice, he sank in, breaking the surrounding ground, and when he charged up through the combusting smoke, ash and trailing motes that had enveloped the visitor from the World Apart, he held his breath and slammed into the boney chest, his armor rattling, teeth cracking and jaw ringing, and bore him down in a burning tangle, grabbing at whatever holds he could manage.
When the smoke cleared, Kole straddled Alistair. His right hand now gripped the hilt of his own blade, which had sunk into the fleshy part of the space between the other man’s neck and shoulder. The blade was still burning, and Kole put more of his fire into it, causing Alistair to clench his teeth against the pain, though he did not scream.
Come to think of it, he did not look so defeated after all, and Kole only realized the reason why too late.
He followed those dark, dead eyes that now sparkled with a mix of pain and mischief down toward his own left hand. Kole still clutched his other blade, but he had been unable to aim the blow, his shoulder throbbing, blood still leaking due to the heat he’d expended. He had Alistair’s sword hand pressed down, avoiding a lethal stab in the side, but Alistair’s empty hand was very close to his own wrist. He held it there, clenched in something close to a fist, as if he gripped something in it. Something Kole could not see.
“A good try,” Alistair growled, and with mounting horror, Kole squeezed tighter onto the hilt of the blade that was buried in the other man’s shoulder. He put all his fire into it, feeling the tightening noose around his left wrist as Alistair fought through the pain. It felt like a thread—like an iron cord—tied tightly around Kole’s left wrist, and he knew that if Alistair dislodged him, he would pull on the invisible thread he held and take Kole’s hand with him.
“Surely …” Alistair choked as Kole growled, straining to keep him down with all the strength he could muster. “Surely you have threads in this realm. Weavers, and the like.”
Kole thought of Iyana and of Mother Ninyeva. He knew the Faey spoke of threads and tethers, that Iyana could even see them. They were the key to healing, and, some said, the key to life itself. Control the thread of another, and you could control him, body and soul.
Kole had never known whether or not to believe in it. After all, he could not see his own tether. He couldn’t grasp the threads of others—strange, ethereal concepts that seemed as fleeting as dreams.
But he knew they were real. Knew it now. And knew that the denizens of the World Apart had something like them.
“What …” Kole was beginning to lose his grip. He felt Alistair flexing beneath him, his right hand edging upward. Kole felt that sickening pressure on his wrist as it constricted the armored greave that had slipped down to the base of his hand in the tumult.
“Most are taught to guard their tethers, young Ember,” he said, and though Kole still held a burning Everwood blade in his very flesh, the bulk of his fire was now inward, feeding his straining muscles and pumping his frantic heart. “But these tethers are our strongest parts. They are what make us up, in essence. They feed our power, guide our hearts and minds. Live long enough, and you can dream up all manner of things. I never quite learned how to seize the tethers of friend or foe, but I did learn to conjure mine, to bring it from the half-real, from the realm of thought, into being. It is strong, and sharp, as I am strong and sharp. And now I have you.”
Kole meant to shout him down, but all that came out was a roar. At least this time Alistair screamed, partly in pain and more in effort. He bucked and Kole felt his weight shift, and then Alistair launched him toward the eastern edge. Kole lost his grip on the right-hand blade but kept it on the left.
Clutched and burning in the hand he left behind.
Kole hit the half-melted wall so hard his vision went black. He slid and crashed to the basin, and the jolt jarred him back to life. He scrambled, feeling the burning as it began to set in. His vision cleared some, though he still felt as if he were fighting through a fog, or moving in slow motion, as if the world had been turned to glass.
There was red all around him. He clutched his left wrist with his right and forced himself to look. The cut had been clean. Clean enough that even now, the burning was all he felt, and even that not so badly. He felt a throbbing as he watched the blood coming out of the stump in a sickening spray. It made him retch.
Shifa raced toward him and framed herself between him and the struggling Alistair, who had gained his knees. He screamed as he tried to pull the red-hot Everwood knife from his collar.
Kole closed his eyes. He wanted to rage. He wanted to cry. He wanted to wake up.
The last time he had felt close to death, he had opened his eyes to see his mother’s face, her shocking green eyes vivid against the red curtain that was her vibrant hair. Now, he saw his father’s, and along with him, all those he knew at the Lake and in the Valley. All those who lived, and who he had sworn to protect when he had set out on his foolhardy path all those months ago.
Kole opened his eyes and made himself look. He took in the blood. Took in the gore and took in the pain, let it flood him. Let it feed the fire that still nested behind his heart. He no longer felt the inviting kiss of Everwood against his bare skin, but he flooded his palm anyway. He felt the fire welling beneath, saw the air distort above it. In the lengthening shadows of the storm clouds Linn had called in like a rallying force, he saw a glow light the skin beneath, and perhaps a flicker above the lines of his palm—the ghost of a flame.
Before he could think better of it, he rammed the bloody, fatal stump of his left hand into that burning palm. The pain was worse than anything he could have guessed.
This was the pain of burning. This was the pain of fire. Kole felt a strange and maddening exhilaration at feeling it. His vision wavered, but as the pain reached its zenith, it came clearer.
He stood, fell and stood again. His feet were unsteady. He smelled burning flesh and it made him nauseous to know that it was his own. Shifa limped between him and his prey, whimpering, for his sake more than her own, he knew.
Alistair had managed to gain his feet. He had the Everwood blade by the hilt and had begun to work it free. No more smiles. Only pain. When he saw Kole stalking toward him with lurching strides, his eyes widened in a mix of disbelief and fear, however fleeting.
But Alistair was a wolf, just like Kole. He let go of the black, smoking hilt of Kole’s knife and reached down, grasping for his own discarded blade. Realizing it was too far away, he took hold
of the spike that jutted up from the flesh of his knee and pulled it free, the rough sickle passing between his hands as he took in Kole’s approach.
“Fair play, Ember,” Alistair said, and Kole thought he meant it.
Fatigue and pain made fools of men—no matter the world—and Alistair swung too soon. Kole had more fire than he had thought, and as the strike passed before his face, the wind of its passing moving his bangs and cooling his watering eyes, he staggered into a run, right hand streaking toward that ashen throat.
He caught Alistair by the flesh and lifted with all his might. The warrior choked and gurgled. More so, he burned. Kole’s hand began to flicker, the flesh around it bubbling. Alistair’s feet began to swing like a child’s as Kole lifted him from the ground. He remembered the black-armored soldier of Balon Rael he had clutched in his hot grasp in the sweltering, moist jungle of Center. He felt the same heat flooding his veins now.
Kole became drunk. He focused on Alistair’s eyes as they began to lose what little light they held. His head buzzed like a hive. Alistair had a final crass trick. He brought his left hand screaming in, too fast for Kole to react. The impact sent him sprawling, his chin tearing as he slid roughly through the frost, stinging as the salt got into it.
He came to a halt on the southern edge of the bowl, looking back behind him, where Alistair crumpled into a heap, unmoving.
Kole was dimly aware of Shifa padding over to him. The hound licked at his face, and sniffed at his ruined stump, whining, though her own fur was matted with the wounds she had suffered. She left him there, streaking off into the tunnel that now glowed more brightly than it had before.
Kole kept expecting Alistair to rise, to lurch over like something out of a nightmare, and wrap that invisible thread around his neck, rip his head from his shoulders and carry it back with him like a grisly prize. He didn’t move, though his chest managed to rise and fall in a rhythm that made it impossible to judge the life left within.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 60