The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4)

by Steven Kelliher

  “You have been deceived,” Valour cried. “Just as I was! You have seen what you were intended to see. Whatever end you think you’ll have, I promise you it will not come.”

  He shouted over the raging currents of wind and something else. Raw power, untamed and flowing. Linn couldn’t see it, but it was beginning to distort everything. The very fabric of the air shifted. The light began to bend inward, to split and refract. She could see it. She could see it all with her eagle’s eyes. Here, in their small pocket of being, reality was beginning to break.

  “You choose fear at the wrong time, Valour,” Elanil said, sounding disgusted. “You were boldest when it didn’t suit you. Now, I have found something you have not in those dark depths. I have found it.”

  What?

  Linn wanted to ask it, and the Eastern Dark’s eyes widened and lost their unmatched glow for a breath.

  “Yes,” Elanil said to his questioning, horrified stare. “I have found the key to immortality. The power to reverse death, to remake life. Not by calling Corrupted shells as the Night Lords have. As Uhtren did when you changed him—”

  “I did not—”

  “I have found it, and I will not stop until Galeveth walks among us once more.”

  Linn pictured the fair-haired and alabaster-skinned prince in his stone chamber beneath the palace. She pictured his eyes opening, pictured blackness in the place of golden irises.

  “He will know what to do.”

  “You fool!” Valour screamed, his voice breaking apart on the currents.

  “No more games, now,” Elanil said, her hands twitching, whole body shaking with power. “No more running. Let us decide who is right and who is wrong, the way you always wanted.”

  There was another voice on the wind. Linn’s head was throbbing and her ears ringing, but her instincts pulled her to the south.

  She saw the orange glow of Misha’s spear bathing the pitted surface of Baas’s shield as the Ember flared and ran toward her. In front of them both was a blue blur that came clearer, and Linn’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw the blue streak that was Myriel racing toward her with doom in her fists. The ice broke away where her blinding feet struck, and the air cracked where she passed it.

  Linn did not have time nor energy to summon another blast from the skies. She didn’t have time to aim a current of wind toward her attacker. Instead, she did the only thing she could spare a thought to, and pressed her palms down, squeezed her eyes shut tight and called down as much of the sky as she could. It felt like having an ocean collapse upon her, but the air responded, the wind buffeting her back and striking the cold surface below her hard enough to sweep it clean.

  The force of the blast created a wall of wind that slowed Myriel just enough, but sent Linn skyward. Instead of riding an easy, swirling current up to hovering safety, Linn flew higher than she had intended, and far faster. She spun end over end, her arms pulling at the sockets of her shoulders, vision lost to a blur of the darkened skies, glittering crystal palace and bright horizon.

  She flew eastward, and as she hung suspended and upside down for a long moment over the dark chasm that separated the Sages, she saw them ignite their own clash.

  Elanil brought her palms together and the Eastern Dark matched her. Everything stopped for a brief spell. Linn saw each grain of salt and each spinning shard of ice as tiny stars held in the orbit of the Sages’ disagreement. She saw Misha’s fire and Myriel’s blue glow. She felt the sun’s warmth against her face and saw it out of the corner of her eye.

  She felt the blast—or rather, the wake of it—before she saw it. Frostfire met shadowfire in the emptiness above the gap. The collision broke the land, the percussions playing out like the world’s drums boiling up through the depths far below the frozen tundra. Fissures carved themselves, racing away in all directions faster than Linn flew. Above the chasm, the air flickered in the shape of a world, and then it took on color. It was like a sun, dark and bright all at once, with wisps of black and tongues of orange flame and a blue core. Frost grew along the outside and then shattered, and it burned too cold and too hot to make smoke.

  Below it, the shelves on which the Sages stood broke away, and Linn saw the ocean rush in far below, shooting up toward the Sages in an angry geyser.

  The world sped up again and Linn felt the resurgent panic in her chest as she spun away from the blast, the patched sky above and the frozen waves below looking like the same deadly carpet to her. She began to fall, far too quickly to stop herself, and as she saw a mirrored sheet of glass rushing up to meet her, she brought her arms forward like wings, yelling at the wind to obey.

  It did its best, the scythes of air shattering the deceptively thin sheet below her and slowing her just a hair. Linn twisted before she hit the ground in the chamber below, and when she did, she was sure that she had not gathered enough wind to break her fall, so hard was the impact.

  She coughed and covered her eyes as the rest of the ceiling broke away and rained down atop her. Oddly, she felt a wash of heat and heard shattering as the shards struck the ground around her.

  All was still and silent but for the now-distant raging of the Sages’ clash, the shaking of the frozen lands that were beginning to crack, and the faint crackling that echoed in the cave she had fallen into. Crackling like a fire, and warm like one, even gentle.

  Linn pulled her arms down from her eyes and blinked. She was in a tunnel. There were glittering and glinting shards of the ceiling she had broken littering the blue cavern floor among mounds of ice that rose from the ground like stalagmites.

  A light-haired man stood over her. His leather vest was scored in half a dozen places, and his left arm was covered in red. His bangs were plastered to his brow, and his Everwood blade burned with a soft yellow light that barely gave off more heat than a campfire. He did not look down at her, but rather out, his eyes roving across the contours of the strange catacombs, alert for signs of some enemy Linn hadn’t spared a thought for.

  She felt the pain clutch her chest as she tried to speak. It sent her into an agonized fit of coughing, and she tasted blood under her tongue. When she quieted, she clutched her arm across her ribs and steadied them.

  “Jenk?” she wheezed.

  He didn’t answer, and now Linn noticed the details she had missed. She was leaning on her right hand, and next to it, she saw blue skin that belonged to a blue hand. She followed it and saw the golden armor and encrusted jewels that betrayed the presence of one of the Blue Knights. Cress lay wedged between two great shelves of ice. He bore no obvious wounds apart from a light trickle of blood that leaked from the corner of his closed mouth, but he was dead.

  Linn felt a coldness come over her. She looked in front of her, beyond Jenk and the wavering light of the blade he held as a ward, and saw Pirrahn impaled on a jagged spire. She had died quick, no doubting, but painful.

  The image brought with it a new series of thoughts that rushed in like an avalanche. Linn looked too quickly, letting out a whimper as she tried to locate Kole among the corpses and refuse. She didn’t see him. Not a hint of black armor or white-and-black fur that would betray the presence of Shifa. She peered into the gloom of the tunnel, but saw nothing apart from the reflected light of Jenk’s sword that made candles dance in the dark.

  Jenk was alone, or had been up until now, and as Linn struggled to rise, she could only lean against the sloped west-facing wall and breathe shallow breaths. It could have been her imagination, but as she looked up at Jenk’s normally-calm face and saw the deep lines and creases, and the gray pallor, she was beginning to feel the gravity of his situation, and now hers.

  She thought she heard something. It was a sound apart from the rumbling in the ice as the Sages’ concussive blast ripped great slabs of the frozen sea apart. It rattled the stalactites and sent some falling down to shatter along the pitted glass of the cavern floor. It sounded like laughter. Like a demon’s laughter. It sent shivers up Linn’s aching spine.

  Ther
e was a shadow beyond the wall across the way, but Jenk wasn’t looking there. Linn pointed and Jenk took a step toward it, his blade lighting the surface and revealing nothing beyond it. Linn swallowed, her eyes searching the walls and the slabs of ice that jutted from the ground like mirrors.

  Jenk swung his sword toward one of these, and Linn thought she saw a red image slip away, like a shadow made of blood. She heard the laughter again. It was louder now, and less hesitant.

  “You are tired, Ember,” the low, rough voice intoned. “Your flames are all but spent.”

  They heard a sound and Jenk angled the point of his blade and sent a jet of fire into the tunnel, lighting the melting walls. It burned out quickly, and Linn knew that the beast was right. Jenk was fading, and Linn was nearly spent.

  The white light from above was drenched in gloom, and Linn felt droplets touch her arm. They were warm compared to the icy melt in which she sat. She looked up and saw remnants of the clouds she had pulled in. Her great and fleeting allies.

  Jenk must have noticed them as well.

  “Linn …” he said, eyes roving along the cavern walls.

  “Right.”

  She didn’t know if the skies would answer, and if they did, if her body could take the impact. But what choice did she have?

  Linn closed her eyes and focused. She imagined herself in the heart of the storm. She felt the charge in the clouds above. It had dissipated since they had last spoken, but the sparks were still there, like memories of power. She bid them gather. When she opened her eyes, she saw faint lights dancing along the bottom of the clouds. A thin bolt shot down, struck her palm and infused her, and the cavern was lit brighter than daylight.

  Jenk spun, his blade roaring as he called up whatever fire he could still muster into its length. Linn heard a sound like shattered glass just over her head. She felt warm water splash down on her, causing her to shift and making the light wink out. The sparks danced along the hairs of her arms, but she hadn’t called too much, and the lightning mercifully spared her cracked ribs and sore jaw as it faded.

  Jenk was standing over her, his boots rooted, knees bent and shaking. She saw his reflection in the pool of water that had gathered below her. Linn leaned forward and crawled through the slush, pulling herself up by grabbing hold of a frosted mound. She turned herself around and leaned against it, and was almost too tired to feel shock at seeing the demon revealed in all its horrible detail.

  The beast had been hiding in the sheet of ice just above her head. It was huge. Taller than Tundra and broader than Baas. Its mouth was still split in a toothy razor grin, but its eyes were dead. Jenk’s burning blade had found a home in its breast, and as he pulled the blade out with a sucking sound, nothing but red mist came out as the blood cooled before it could spill.

  “And there the beast will stay,” Jenk said. He let his flames go out, the Everwood blade glowing like sunset as the cavern was drenched in shadows once more. “Thank you,” the Ember said, turning toward her. “My guesses were almost spent.”

  Linn showed him a smile he likely couldn’t see in the shadows. Another tremor shook the chamber and had Jenk looking up into the stormy sky. He looked askance at Linn.

  She shook her head. “Not me.”

  “Are we winning?” the Ember asked.

  Linn shrugged and peeled herself off the mound. Jenk caught her as she stumbled, but already she felt better. Her ribs were bruised, but she did not think they were broken, and her legs had been spared the brunt of the fall. It was a good thing she had managed to get the wind to lead her meteor strike into the ice-laden chamber.

  “The Sages are fighting,” Linn said, voice hoarse. “At this rate, they could shatter the whole land.” She looked at her boots. Though she could see nothing below the ice, she imagined the ocean rushing up to reclaim its stolen waves.

  Jenk moved away from her. She followed his progress and saw him kneel beside Cress. He closed his eyes for a moment, and couldn’t quite force himself to look upon Pirrahn.

  “I tried to save them,” he said.

  “I know, Jenk,” Linn said. She meant it. “You always do.”

  Jenk did not look to be grievously wounded, but he stood on shaking legs. His eyes were shining in the damp, picking up the glow of his fading Everwood.

  “Do you think it’ll be worth it, in the end?” he asked. Linn was taken aback. It sounded like something a child might ask, not the brave and bold Jenk Ganmeer.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I only know that whatever happens out here will decide plenty more than we could ever have imagined.” She looked up into the sky, imagining the ball of raw power the Sages made with their furious clash. “This isn’t about killing the Eastern Dark. It’s not about killing the Sages or stopping them. Not anymore. It’s about something bigger. Something darker.” Linn met Jenk’s eyes. “I think we’ve been fighting the real enemy longer than most.”

  “The Dark Kind,” Jenk reasoned.

  “The World Apart.” Linn nodded. “The Sages seem to think its coming is inevitable. The Eastern Dark claims he wants to stop it, but how can we believe him?” Linn was speaking more to herself. She knew what she had heard up on the shifting shelves of ice. She knew how the Frostfire Sage had sounded. She had dipped into the very same power her dark adversary had, and Linn had already known it and let it stand.

  If she did not turn it around, aim it back at its source, then they would just have to make an enemy of her. The way things had gone for most, Linn was beginning to think that the Landkist of the Valley—and the Sage girl who walked among them—were the worst enemies one could have these days.

  “Kole …” Linn whispered it at first, but then said it again, louder and with all the worry she had forgotten in the chaos of the red demon’s ambush.

  Jenk pointed his cooled Everwood down into the tunnel at Linn’s back. “He chased the Shadow girl there. Shifa went with him.”

  Linn turned and started in that direction without another word, wincing and clutching at her side as she lurched into motion. She felt the warmth of Jenk’s aura as he joined her.

  “Misha and Baas?” he asked.

  “Holding on,” Linn said. “You weren’t the only one to come upon the Eastern Dark’s newest allies.”

  “More like him?” Jenk asked, jabbing a thumb back over his shoulder.

  “More or less,” Linn said.

  Their eyes had only just begun to adjust to the darkness when the gray light of the cloud-streaked eastern sky poured in through the undulating tunnel. Linn quickened her steps. When the stinging in her eyes subsided, she turned her walk into a stumble that was meant to be a run. She saw something in the bowl.

  She caught the toe of her boot on something soft and nearly went over in a heap. Jenk caught her by the wrist and ignited his sword. She hadn’t heard the whimper before, but now that she saw the loyal hound of Last Lake, she wondered how she could have missed it.

  Shifa lay at their feet, her fur wet and matted. Linn knelt beside her as Jenk held his blade aloft. She ran her hands through the hound’s fur and felt spikes. She thought they were shards of ice fallen from the ceiling, but as she pulled one out and turned it over in the flickering yellow light, she could only think of the quill of some beast, or the bone tip of a crude arrowhead.

  The hound seemed to remember herself as she took in Linn’s scent. She stood, somehow, though her thin forelegs shook with the effort.

  “Kole,” Linn implored, pulling another of the spurs out and earning a growl.

  “That sounds more like her,” Jenk said.

  “I don’t think she’s wounded too badly.” Linn cast about. She saw broken chips of ice all around. “She might’ve been hit on the head.” Jenk raised his sword and inhaled. Linn looked up and understood why. The tunnel was warm. Warmer than it must have been an hour before, when Jenk had first begun his fight with the illusory beast, and the stalactites shook and rattled in their holds, dripping and filling shallow pools all around the
m.

  “Let’s move,” Linn said and Jenk did not argue.

  The wind that greeted them as they exited the cave mouth was bitterly cold. Linn was exhausted, but she managed to harness it enough to turn the strongest currents aside. The air seemed to be rushing in from the east and south, racing in from other lands as if the Sages’ clash was calling to it.

  “What …”

  Linn heard Jenk, but she was only just seeing what he meant.

  They found themselves in a rough-hewn bowl with high borders. The walls were warped and misshapen in places, as if great swaths of fire had come against them. There were red splashes throughout, as if a lazy painter had discarded his brush and flung his paint at random. There were two bodies, pale and fair. They bore similar bone shells to those Linn and Jenk had already fought, and one of them had lost a head. There were boney spurs—likely the same that Linn had just pulled from Shifa’s paws—stuck into the frosted salt, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Shifa limped past them, her steps sure in direction if not in balance. She went to a particular piece of gore. A hand with dark skin. Skin that looked very close to Linn’s. It had already purpled in the cold, and there were bits of black armor with silver streaks strewn around it.

  “No.”

  Linn walked over to the place where Shifa whined. She knelt beside the limb she knew to be Kole’s.

  “Where is he?” Jenk asked. Linn hadn’t even spared the thought that he could be alive, but Jenk was right.

  “No body.”

  “Nothing,” Jenk said. He kicked at something in the frost and bent to retrieve it. Linn saw him come up holding one of Kole’s Everwood knives.

  “Just the one?”

  Jenk nodded, looking grave.

  “They must have taken him,” Linn said. “They must have. If he was dead, he’d be here. Why would they take his body?”

  Linn found a sudden burst of energy that she knew would be fleeting. She used it to gather a whipping current of wind around her and pressed it down into the bowl, lifting herself up and onto the eastern ledge. Jenk leapt up beside her, landing with a thud and then kneeling with the effort.