His people were few, and judging by whatever he had seen from those walls in the hours before now, he knew they were woefully outmatched. Linn could sympathize with him. She remembered what it was like to be surrounded by beings of power and to have little of her own. She swallowed, feeling strange that she was now on the other side.
“Captain …?”
“Yes, Queen Elanil,” he said gruffly. It was a direct tone, and though Linn hadn’t been here long, she did not think it was one he would normally take with the Sage who had ostensibly protected his people, whom his people had fought for, died for against the Sage of Balon Rael and his black-armored brutes.
“Do I have your trust?”
“You have my loyalty, my queen,” he said. “You have fought for us. Just as we have fought for you.”
Linn wasn’t sure how to take that. It seemed the queen wasn’t either. She pursed her lips and looked up at Tundra once more, whose dark look had shifted from Linn to the fur-and ironclad captain of the mountain. If it had not been clear before, it was doubly so now: the queen and her Blue Knights were not the same as the folk of the high passes. They belonged to an older tribe, and one running on its last wick.
“Bring it, Tundra.”
The Blue Knight offered no argument this time. He left the chamber, signaling for one of his four remaining knights to follow. They disappeared through the arch to the northeast, and Linn could well imagine where they were going.
Shouts drifted in from the courtyard, echoing in the great vertical chasm they found themselves in. Linn’s heart quickened, but there were no screams and no clashing of arms. She doubted she would hear the latter this night. The time for armies was gone. There were no forces massing outside the city walls; only another Sage and his followers.
Linn supposed they should have counted today a victory, but Kole’s face flashed in her mind’s eye. His face, and the piece of him Shifa had found. It didn’t feel like victory.
“What are we waiting for?” Linn asked.
The queen pushed herself up to a standing position with some effort. She took a step forward, lurched a bit and then stood a little taller.
“You already know, Linn Ve’Ran,” she said. “I am waiting for my prince.”
“What’s she talking about?” Misha asked. Her tone wasn’t quite accusing, but it wasn’t so far off. “What prince? Linn? What is she playing at?”
Linn held up a hand to Misha. She could almost hear the Ember beginning to boil. More presently, she could see the Sage’s face change at Misha’s words.
“And when he’s here,” Linn said, moving past Misha’s outburst, swallowing as she felt the attention of her fellows at the back of the room. “What then? What do we do about the World Apart? How do we stop the Convergence?”
“We don’t stop anything,” she said, giving Linn a shock. “I do, with Galeveth’s help. He is more versed in the ways of magic than I.” She held up the same hand she had stung herself with just moments earlier. It began to emit a soft blue glow once more. She smiled. “He was a worker of wonders.” She raised both of her hands above her head, wincing with the effort. Her face took on a rapturous quality as she smiled. “We stand in the midst of his creation. This palace. The towers along the edge of the sea. All of it. He was Valour’s first enemy among the Order.” She frowned, a shadow passing over her face. “He will leap at the chance to stop him. To plunge his white blade through that black heart, once and for all. Especially with the form he’s wearing. A pretty bit of poetry, that.”
Linn frowned. “The Eastern Dark says he is trying to stop it as well,” she said. “The Convergence. He—”
“My dear,” the queen clucked. “The place has marked him. I cannot tell you if it is the work of his arrogance, his mania or something else that finally convinced him that the rest of us had to die to put things right, but I know where I fall in my belief. The place has marked him, and when he is dead, it will relent.”
“And if not?”
Elanil’s look changed. It was subtle, but unmistakable. It was cold and fierce, like a winter wolf.
“Then we will beat it back, and whatever it brings with it.” Seeing the effect the words had on Linn and the others, her expression softened ever so slightly. “My children, the worlds are very close now, ours and theirs. The Dark Months will continue to fall. Rifts will open, but the world will go back to the way it was. These will be fleeting, infrequent things. The stuff that make up stories passed down through the generations. It isn’t such a bad thing, to have terrors in the night. Terrors with which to build legends. Get children to sleep.” She paused. “But I promise you, the great scars will not come. The Forever Night will not fall on my lands,” she looked to Fennick, “nor any other. You Emberfolk have suffered greatly under a nightmare that approaches it already. Never again.”
Heavy bootfalls from the front of the hall, and Tundra entered the chamber bearing a tall form wrapped in a shroud. He moved over to the queen and placed the wrapped form on the dais as gently as he seemed capable. The other Blue Knight took the pair of steps in a stride. He brought something to the queen. Exactly what it was, Linn couldn’t see.
“My queen,” the knight prompted, bringing her wide eyes up and away from the still, shrouded form at her feet. He held up a golden chain that looked darker than his armor. There was a medallion hanging from the end of it. It was shaped like a crescent moon, and it looked bronze. It reminded Linn of Captain Talmir’s medal. The one Sister Piell of Hearth had presented to him following the siege. Uncannily like it.
“What is it?” Jenk asked, curious.
“Something to protect me,” the queen said distractedly as she looped the chain over her head and held it in her palm before letting it rest against her armor. Linn blinked. The crescent moon seemed to glow in the mix of torchlight and the blue light that emanated from the walls and pillars, and more. It was as if it held an inner fire.
“Where did you get that?”
In the rush of familiarity, it seemed Misha had entirely forgotten the form lying at the queen’s feet. She strode forward, ignoring the warning look Linn shot her.
“I asked you a question,” the Ember said. Tundra and the other knights stepped forward, responding to her seeming challenge. Misha stood up straighter, lifting the butt of her spear from the ground.
“What is it?” Elanil barked. “What troubles you now?”
“Apart from everything that’s going on here?” Misha asked. She glared sidelong at Linn and then jutted a finger at the queen, and at the pendant she now wore. “Where did you get that?”
“It is a relic from the old World,” Elanil said, frowning. Linn could see her fingers twitching. Her patience was wearing thin. “An object of the ancients. Even before me and mine. It comes from a time when magic was less a matter of happenstance. When it was not of the world’s choosing, or the Mother’s, as you desertfolk call Her, but of ours.”
There was a rumble of laughter, deep and sarcastic. Linn didn’t recognize it until she turned to see Baas shaking his head, Jenk staring up at him from his place against the wall next to Shifa.
“What has you in such a mood?” the queen asked, an edge entering her tone.
“You speak of the Landkist as if they are beneath you,” he said. “You speak of this … old power, this magic,” he spat on the Nevermelt floor, “as if it is a thing to be missed. And yet, look at what the Sages’ meddling cost us. Look at all it has caused. Think on your folly before you speak of the majesty of the past.”
Linn closed her eyes and turned back to the Sage and her knights. For a moment, she worried that the queen might kill him on the spot, or else force Linn, Misha, Jenk and Baas to kill her and half her kingdom before they were brought down.
Instead, the queen’s face went through myriad emotions, most of which didn’t last long enough to settle, and many of which surprised Linn to see. Elanil looked down at the form at her feet with a profound sense of loss. Even regret.
�
�We know of our mistakes, Landkist,” she said, almost too soft to hear. She looked to Fennick before any of the others. “We spent a long time trying to make it right.”
“There is another like it,” Misha said, not losing sight of the object of her concern.
“Yes, Misha,” Linn said. “We know of Caru’s star. It hardly seems import—”
“The Bronze Star?” the queen asked. Misha’s eyes lit up and Jenk stood, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Misha nodded in answer and the queen gave a slight nod. “A mighty thing.” She held up the crescent moon. “And this one’s brother.” She met Misha’s stare. “I should like to see it, Ember. At the end of this.”
She went back to examining the cut of metal. It didn’t look so grand to Linn, or so powerful. But she could not deny the way it glowed. The queen let it drop, where it clanged discordantly against the armor over her chest.
“Move back,” she said. She stepped over the prone form on the dais, the tip of her boot catching on the edge of the rich gray shroud and pulling the corner over to expose the prince’s face.
Linn walked over to Misha, who was staring intently at the prince’s body, and laid her hand on the Ember’s, guiding her back toward the wall. Captain Fennick joined them. His face had gone pale. He seemed even less sure of the situation than they were.
“Your people are tucked away, Captain Fennick?” Elanil asked distractedly. The captain nodded but didn’t give voice to an answer. If she saw him, she didn’t acknowledge it, nor did she ask again.
“What’s happening here, Ve’Ran?” Misha half-whispered, half-growled as Linn guided her. Jenk didn’t look nearly as disturbed as the Third Keeper of Hearth, but he watched Linn, waiting for her reply. Baas only rubbed absently between Shifa’s ears as the hound, now sitting up, bandaged and weary though she was, watched the Sage move into the center of the throne room.
“They’ve been fighting the Eastern Dark longer than anyone,” Linn said. “When he’s … back,” she nodded at the prone form of the dead prince, “they’ll be able to stand against him, no matter what he brings.”
“He’s dead, Linn,” Jenk said. “Unless I’m missing something.”
“I know.”
“You knew about this?” Misha sounded more hurt than angry, and Linn felt it like a shard in her heart.
She nodded. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “If Kole found out, he might have acted. He might have started something—”
“He might have been right to do so,” Misha said. Linn looked at Jenk, but the Ember of Last Lake wasn’t willing to defend her actions. Her inaction. Not yet.
“Kole,” Linn started, fighting past the pain, “doesn’t trust himself when it comes to matters of the Sages. He … he left it to me, in so many words.”
“Who left it to him?” Misha asked.
“We all did,” Jenk said. Misha glared at him, but Jenk didn’t back down, only returned it, steady. Linn saw that Baas was nodding without looking at them. Magic of any kind bothered him—even, Linn guessed, his own. Whatever was about to happen here, it had a dark touch to it. Linn wouldn’t deny that. But what choice did they have? What options were left to them?
“Kill her, if you’re so inclined,” Linn said, feeling frustrated and bitter because of it. Misha shook her head and looked back toward the Sage. She seemed to consider Linn’s offer for a moment longer than Linn found comfortable, the Ember’s knuckles blanching as she squeezed her Everwood spear. Ultimately, she let the matter drop, but Linn knew it wasn’t going to take much to get her fire up.
She was counting on it as she watched the Sage stand in the center of the room, eyes downcast, fingers of both hands splayed and palms facing down toward the milky, frosted floor beneath her.
“Why now?” Jenk asked. “Why not sooner?”
“The Convergence,” Linn said. “She needed the World Apart close. Close enough to … augment her power.”
“That sounds—”
“Exactly,” Misha whispered. Linn watched Captain Fennick out of the corner of her eye. He stood on the other side of Baas. He was far enough that he might not have heard them, but Linn thought it unlikely. In any case, he didn’t raise a complaint. “How do we know she didn’t let the Eastern Dark live?”
“What?” Linn screwed her face up. The queen moved back to her place atop the dais and turned to face the front of the hall.
“She said the World Apart is tied to him,” Misha whispered, also watching the Sage closely. “If she killed him, she couldn’t do … whatever it is she’s doing.”
“The worlds are close enough, now,” Linn said. “They were before, I expect. Maybe Valour was waiting for her to start this. To begin this ritual. It would be a perfect opportunity …” She looked around the room, and then up, her eyes working to penetrate the gloom.
“Besides,” Linn said, bringing her eyes back down, “did it look like she was holding back out on the ice?”
“No,” Misha allowed. “No, it didn’t.”
“The Eastern Dark referred to ‘Him,’” Jenk said, voice low. “He warned us she was going to bring Him through. Do you think he was referring to the prince?”
“Prince Galeveth, he called him,” Linn said. “Who else? It stands to reason he wouldn’t want her to do it. He struggled enough with her as it is. Against the lot of us. I can’t imagine he’ll do any better now, especially once we see what this one can do.”
“It is wrong,” Baas said. He didn’t work to lower his voice, and Linn shivered as Tundra—standing just below the dais—stared daggers at him.
Linn couldn’t blame him. It was all wrong. All of it. The dead prince. The Convergence. But then, plenty had been wrong in the world, especially in Linn’s. In the Valley, which had been ravaged by forces of darkness, it seemed the rest of the world had been spared and was teetering on the brink of now.
There was a part of her—a dark part, buried so deep she did not think it could ever rise to the surface—that wanted them to see that darkness. The rest of the world. To experience it, if only to see what horror was. If only to put aside their petty differences long enough to fight a common threat. The Willows and the Raiths of the Emerald Road. Wend’s Gray People and the sycophants who raised their forts below the stone towers of the Sage of Balon Rael. Even in the Valley, the now-peaceful folk of the three tribes had taken to killing one another in numbers Linn did not know and did not want to know before they had true evil to fight.
Perhaps it was better if the Frostfire Sage failed. Perhaps it was better if the Eastern Dark succeeded. Maybe a world at peace was impossible, and maybe the only way to have virtue across all lands was to plunge them into a darkness so cold and complete that they had no choice but to stoke the fire in each other’s hearts.
“What if he was talking about someone else?”
It was Captain Fennick, and their heads and eyes turned toward him as one. He seemed shamed to have spoken, and one of the knights close by gave him a stare that would have frozen the blood of a lesser man.
Linn swallowed. “Then it’s better to have him here in the light than waiting at the edge of things. Here where we can see him.”
“You sound like Kole,” Jenk said. Linn turned a wounded expression on him, though he didn’t seem to mean it in a bad way.
Linn turned back toward the throne, and the silver queen who stood before it over the body of her king. Maybe Linn really did want some great beast to come. Some titan. Something to make sense of all the wrong in the World. Something other than the Sages. The powerful, vain, cruel, petty Sages.
Linn hadn’t quite realized it before now, but as she watched the Frostfire Sage mutter words to some ancient poem—perhaps a spell—glowing palm aimed at the center of the glass floor, she realized that she found them utterly disappointing. Not revolting. Not awe-inspiring. Only disappointing. Less than the stories made them out to be. In her estimation, they were beings unworthy of reverence and unworthy of fear.
The World
Apart, however. The Dark Kind. That was a thing to fear. Those were beings to fight. Beings worthy of hate.
“He should be here,” Linn said.
“Aye,” Baas intoned.
Shifa began to growl. It was a sound others might dismiss out of hand, but not Linn. Not the folk of the Valley. The hounds of Last Lake were immovable. They did not complain. They warned. They threatened.
The floor began to break apart. It was as loud as cracking thunder, and the white splits ran across the surface of the ice near as fast as lightning. The sound of grinding shook the palace, and Shifa went from growling to barking, snarling. Baas squatted down and seized her by the scruff as she attempted to lunge for the Frostfire Sage.
Linn watched her at work. The crescent moon glowed a bit brighter, its imperfections lost in the light it emitted. Her eyes were enraptured, and her form began to glow with an approximation of the power she had unleashed to the east.
The floor began to cave in, the great, jagged slabs of ice falling down into the opening chasm. Linn listened for it, but couldn’t hear them crashing among the rocks below. And on it went, the thick slabs breaking apart and hurtling down into the darkness, until the floor was nearly eaten away, forming a toothy pit.
“We need to go!” Misha screamed. Even the knights looked toward the doorways to the front and back of the chamber.
And then it stopped. The pit ceased its expansion, and the queen dropped to one knee, the pendant on her chest glowing even brighter than before.
The edge was dangerously close. Only a stride from where Linn and the others stood. One of the pillars on the opposite side of the throne room had a crack in it, and Linn could hear the sound of rushing water coming from far below.
Elanil let out something close to a whimper as she leaned over the body of the prince. She turned her palm up and gritted her teeth, as if she were pulling a great weight, and the sound came closer.
The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga Book 4) Page 70