The waves were smaller to the east and the land dropped away. There was nothing for leagues upon leagues. No place to hide. Not from Linn’s sight. She turned and looked to the south, seeing the very sky flicker to the west.
In the distance, she saw the ridge they had come down from just a few days before, along with the place where the Quartz Tower had been. Now, there was only a tumble of jagged stones that could not be seen from the walls of the crystal palace. She scanned the edges, searching for any sign of passage. There was nothing. No tracks that she could see. No figures trudging through the frost.
“Linn,” Jenk said.
She ignored him.
“Linn …”
“What!”
“They need us.”
Linn whirled on him, her breast heaving, eyes burning as tears streaked down her cheeks. Jenk look at her, steady.
“They need us now.” He nodded to the south. “Kole is alive. He must be. You’re right.” He didn’t sound like he believed it himself. Not entirely. “We can set out and spend days searching these barren lands for him. Or,” he jutted a finger to the west, where the storm atop the broken waves and cracking shell on which they stood played itself out below the darkening skies, “we can make someone show us.”
Linn spared one last glance at the ridge. She swallowed, and then her heart went cold as she switched her gaze to the west.
“Grab Shifa,” Linn said without turning. Jenk leapt down into the bowl, leaving Linn alone with the wind and the echoes of the splitting lands. She could not see the Sages’ duel from here. The lands Jenk and Kole had chased the Shadow girl into sat lower than the plateau on which she had been fighting, and the lands between were beset with frozen waves and small mountain ranges made entirely of ice and salt. Still, she could see the lights playing out on the bottoms of the darkened skies. The sun was beginning to sink, darkening the east, and the only fire left was Misha’s … and whatever was left of T’Alon Rane’s.
Jenk landed with a jolt next to her, Shifa letting out a bark as the impact jarred her in the Ember’s grip. It was easy to forget how strong the Embers could be, when they kept their fire from their blades and put it into their sinew instead.
“Sorry, girl,” Jenk said as he moved to set her down.
“No,” Linn said. “Keep hold of her.”
She could feel Jenk’s eyes on her, questioning. But he did just that, rechecking his grip on the bloody hound with one hand as he checked his sword belt with the other.
Linn did not look up. She wouldn’t call the lightning. Not again, and the wind was not up, it was all around them, beckoning her. Waiting to be called. Thirsting to obey.
“You seem drained, Linn,” Jenk warned. “Don’t do anything f—”
“Quiet.”
Jenk fell silent and even Shifa ceased her complaints, though Linn knew the hound was in pain, and not just on account of her wounds. Shifa was a wall hound of Last Lake. She would be loyal to the rest of them. Loyal to the death.
Linn turned to her as she felt the currents shift as if on a sudden whim, racing toward them from the east. She met those chestnut eyes and smiled. “We’ll find him, yet.” And to Jenk, “Hold tight.”
Linn hooked her right arm around his left and bent her knees, and the Ember readied himself for the impact.
The wind struck them harder than Linn had intended. It sent them stumbling, but they kept their grips upon one another, and she forced it down. The river of icy air swept beneath them, scooping them off their feet and bearing them up. Linn bid the air spin, and the roar turned to a howl as the twisting tail churned beneath them like a blast from a bursting mountaintop. She felt Jenk’s hand tighten around her own.
“Easy …” Linn warned, wincing as Jenk’s skin began to burn her own.
“Sorry,” he called over the wind, working to calm himself.
The air grew denser the higher they climbed, the thin air of the northeast having grown misty and stale in the midst of Linn’s conjured storm and the fell magics the Sages had brought to bear. Ahead of them, the battle was on in full, and Jenk sucked in a breath as he witnessed it.
The Sages had only moved from their respective places because the force of their power colliding had made it so. The gap that had separated the two shelves by an Ember’s leap had widened to a distance even an arrow would have trouble crossing. The Sages were beacons on opposite sides of the breach, one wreathed in black shadows and orange flames and the other in white light flecked with crackling blue streaks. The rivers of power that erupted from their palms formed a roiling, whipping, frenzied torrent above the sloshing, rising ocean depths in the trench.
The collision of energy that had resembled a moon, or perhaps a smoldering black sun, now lost all pretense of form. It shifted chaotically, only maintaining its relative position due to the constant onslaught from the two who had birthed the abomination.
Linn felt her chest go tight. How were they to survive it going off once it spun out of control? When one Sage faltered—whichever it was—surely the blast would ignite.
“There!” Jenk yelled over the crackling storm of power.
Linn looked beyond the clash and beyond the shattered waves that separated the glass fields before the crystal palace from the icy plateau on which the Sages fought. She saw tails of fire, whips of burning ash and plumes of smoke lit with flashing yellow motes. Misha spun in the midst of the chaos, her spear forming a wheel of flame as she warded off the charged bolts Linn recognized as the stranger Myriel’s own body as she hurled herself at the Ember headlong.
Misha’s spear was knocked wide by one charge, and as the glowing blue warrior came in from the opposite side, she hit an impenetrable wall formed by Baas’s shield, the sound of the clash traveling up even to their considerable height and continuing on behind them.
Linn spared a look below as she took them high up and over the powerful clash. She could hear the Sages screaming at one another over the breach, their voices augmented by will made mighty. An errant claw of shadowfire screamed up toward them, and Linn only just managed to push them westward so that they felt the shivering heat against their backs as the limb broke upon the clouds above, the vapors charged with dark energy.
She had to go beyond the Sages. She had to go where they could make a difference.
They began to fall on the western side of the split, and now Linn did not complain as she felt Jenk’s skin begin to warm again. Shifa growled and Linn would have smiled at the hound’s dauntless disposition in other circumstances.
“Now!” Linn shouted when they were close enough, and Jenk let go, falling the short distance to the ice below as she continued on a bit longer.
She saw the flash below as the Ember ignited his sword and charged into the drifting ash and smoke, the burnt salt smelling sour as Linn broke the barrier that rose to meet her. She saw Misha’s spear glowing and saw a hulking shadow beside it that must be Baas. Beyond them, flashing like death, was a blue light that was very small but growing larger.
“Baas!” Linn yelled as she skimmed the ground with the tips of her boots, brushing the ash and melted salt away from the pitted ice. “Move! Misha!”
The great shadow darted to the side with surprising speed, while Misha stayed rooted. She put her glowing spear into a spin, raising it over her head, and the wind and fire of its passing parted the smoke around her.
Linn landed with speed, bending her knees as the drake’s tail of wind she had gathered to lift her, Jenk and Shifa buffeted her back. “West!”
Misha responded, spinning away from Linn and angling the wheel of fire in front of her chest, facing the distant palace. The blue light sent out jagged webs of light as Myriel sprinted toward them, fast as a shooting star. She must have run to the base of the Nevermelt walls to have gathered such speed. Linn did not have time to worry over Misha. The Ember of Hearth would stand her ground, and Linn would give her a reason to.
She waited until the last moment. The moment between Myriel
’s deadly strike and the moment when she couldn’t hold the surge at bay any longer. She fell onto one knee and shot her arms forward, her torso shaking with pain that nearly made her heart stop as the force of the blast jarred her bruised bones and stung her bloody arms.
The torrent hit Misha in full, but while the Ember slid, she did not lose her grip on her spear. The Everwood stopped spinning as Misha was forced to hold it, but the fire she had spun ignited like oil, roaring to life and making the ice shine like molten gold as it issued forth. Linn was forced to turn away, losing Myriel in the bright.
The heat was unbearable. Linn couldn’t breathe. She felt Jenk grab her by one arm, but it would be too late. She looked over her shielding forearm and watched in horror as the fiery storm raged out of control. A great part of it became the guiding god’s arrow that blazed a trail west, while the burning fletchings shot back in toward her. In her weariness, Linn had neglected to release her hold on the air around her, and the fire was far from sated.
She heard Jenk screaming, and just before the expanding wall of flame reached her, a shadow fell over her, coating her in welcome cool. She felt a weight against her chest as Baas pressed her against the underside of his shield and hunkered down with her as the raging inferno died around them for an aching moment that felt like eternity.
When the fire ran its course, Baas lifted his shield, and the bright light of the crystal palace stung Linn’s eyes as it drank in the light of the departing sun. All around them, the surface of the plateau was beset by shimmering pools that shook under the quaking of the Sages’ tumult and burning pits of gum as the salt and frost melted and congealed.
Misha stood, unbowed. The green and yellow tassels on her elbows had burned up halfway, but were no less vibrant. Her hair was caked in ash. Her Everwood spear glowed as the wind rushed back in to kiss it. Before her, the frozen waves that remained separating the palace from the wild, frozen sea had either melted or broken apart.
The Ember turned around, her green eyes finding Linn’s. “We really need to come up with a new trick.”
Linn smiled and stood as Misha walked over to her and reached out to clasp her wrist.
“If it works, why change it?”
Misha nodded. She looked up at Baas, who shadowed them both.
“This one’s shield always seems to come in handy, even when there’s no dirt around for him to move,” Misha said. She released Linn and gave the Riverman a punch on the arm. He only grunted, his eyes scanning the edges of the firestorm. White smoke rose from a hundred vents, steam escaping from the ice that was cracking beneath them.
“She’s gone,” Misha said. “Burned up.”
“No,” Linn said, her heart sinking.
She pointed to the northwest and the others followed. There, between the twisting trails of smoke, a blue light flickered. There were pops in the air, and a sound like the buzzing of a hive working itself into a frenzy.
Baas took a step in that direction and planted his shield firmly against his chest, and Misha and Jenk moved to shadow him. They did not light their blades, but the air grew milky around them as they prepared to. Linn felt the wind teasing the nape of her neck. Her whole body felt numb, her heart shocked by the amount of power she had been forced to use, or borrow.
That was the difference between her and them. Where Misha and Jenk held blades that drew upon their very essence, the fire in their blood having nearly run its course, Linn felt as if she were merely a vessel—a conduit through which the skies passed their judgment upon her enemies. Still, how much more could she take? If she called another blast of lightning down, would it shatter her bones? If she birthed another hurricane, would it strip her skin from the flesh beneath?
The smoke began to clear, revealing the state of their enemy, and Linn released the long breath she had held.
Myriel stood facing them. She no longer glowed, though blue sparks still danced along her skin and raced over the bones that made up the natural armor that covered her chest, abdomen and shoulders. She shuddered when the brighter bolts passed between the ridges of her brow, as if she could not control it. As if her power, too, took its toll.
Half of her looked clean, her blue skin standing out stark against the burnt orange and lavender of the western sky. Her right side was another story. It wasn’t so much melted as scorched, a black crust having formed along the exposed bone, melting the skin beside it. Her arm hung, twitching. She worked it into a fist just to see if she could, grimacing against the pain. Her eyes had lost their white glow and now returned to the red they had been before.
“What’ll it be, then?” Misha taunted. “Another go?”
Myriel bared her teeth. She looked from them to the east, and Linn felt another tremor in the ice.
She felt a shock and heard Misha curse, and when she looked back to the spot Myriel had been, she saw nothing but fading motes of blue static trailing in the steam.
“Now, then,” Jenk said. “How do you suppose we deal with that?”
They turned back to the east, and Linn was surprised at the lack of horror the image of the roiling black, blue and orange star called up in her.
Was this what despair felt like?
Elanil stood, lit in terrible white. Her hair whipped so violently it looked as if it might tear free of her scalp. They could not see the Eastern Dark, but Linn imagined that he was in a similar state. She blinked as she saw something else—another figure between them and the Frostfire Sage.
“Oh, Shifa,” Linn whispered, and Jenk looked around them, wild.
The hound was not running. She didn’t have the strength for that. Instead, she merely walked, limping toward certain annihilation because there wasn’t anything else to be done. She had to find Kole, and she had to stop the world ending in order to do it. Facing down the last two titans at the edge of it all must have seemed like the best course to her. The only course.
Linn had to agree.
She began to run. Her legs ached and her ribs hurt, sending jolts of pain that made her vision blur. She expected to hear the others calling out to her, shouting her down. Instead, she felt warmth on either side.
The Embers outstripped her quickly enough, racing toward the hound and soon overtaking her. They flared their Everwood blades to life, and Linn didn’t know if they meant to cut down one Sage or the other, so long as it stopped. She didn’t mean to stop them.
The ground shook as Baas pounded the ice beside her. She looked up at him and saw his ash-streaked face hard set on their path, and on its futility. They hadn’t thought to ask where Kole was, but Linn thought they could guess.
The way things were going, she supposed it didn’t matter much.
Just before Misha and Jenk reached the Frostfire Sage, they were blown back by a force that had nothing to do with the stormy skies. The Sage screamed, her voice seeming to come from all around. She poured all her fury into the beam, changing it from blue with flecks of black to moon white.
“This isn’t about us any more, Valour!” she screamed over the blast. “You went searching, and the World Apart saw you back! But I can do what you could not! I will survive it, as will all who follow me! A shame, that you will not live to see it. Maybe you can find some of the redemption in death you couldn’t come close to in life.”
Linn and Baas reached the Embers, and lifted them. There was a scraping sound close by, and Linn saw Shifa struggling in vain to continue on, her mangy appearance doing nothing to quell the pride that flooded Linn’s breast at seeing her.
Bits of the land began to rip free. Great rocks of ice held in bondage for longer than any of them had lived tore loose and went crashing across the surface of the frozen sea, making sharp, toothy craters where they landed. Water sprayed their faces and coated their travel-worn clothes and leather and metal armor. Linn could see foam sloshing in the pit, pulsing as it was drawn upward by the thrumming black, orange and blue-white star that hung above it.
But it was the sound that worried her most. In the
place of a roar of an Ember’s fire or the grinding of ice, salt and stone underfoot, the Sages’ beams made an orb that seemed to defy the world. It was as if the power could not be contained in the bounds they understood, that even plunging it into the depths of the sea would rock the land to its foundations. It was a faint, keening wail, like the buzzing of a thousand angry wasps and the screaming of a legion of eagles. Linn was reminded of the battle with the winged metal warriors at the red citadel in the northern peaks of the Valley.
Misha and Jenk could go no farther as Queen Elanil put all her might into the blast. The west-facing half of the sphere began to overtake the shadowfire that came from the east. Linn tried to redirect the storm the blast sent back at her, gliding through the chaotic currents rather than opposing them. But soon she, too, was held unmoving. This was magic of the World Apart, she knew. Dark magic, and she did not think all of it was coming from the Eastern Dark.
Baas Taldis made it farthest. He held his great stone shield up in front of his chest and face, placing one thudding boot unerringly before the other. The ice beneath him protested, and as he approached Queen Elanil’s back, Linn had the worrying image of him falling into the violent breach. It was a fall that none of them could survive.
“Die, Ray Valour,” the Frostfire Sage said. She had retaken some measure of calm. It was the calm one exuded in the face of certain victory. Linn did not feel joy at hearing it, only relief.
It seemed all the sound the world had been unable to make sense of before came suddenly to life, as the Frostfire Sage poured her full might into the beam. Where before it had been a steady ray, like thick moonlight streaked with blue and black, now it was a torrent, like a rapid crashing and careening over jagged stones.
Tails of blue-and-white energy leapt out from the Sage’s fingers and gashed trails into the breaking ice. One nearly struck Baas down, but he accepted the blow on his shield, the streak leaving a smoking white trail of frosted spikes that glowed with latent energy.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 63