Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  “You’re right about one thing, Linn,” Kole said, unconcerned about Nathen’s presence. Linn stayed quiet, picking her footfalls carefully as the branches grew thicker overhead. “The Dark Kind are getting bolder, the Valley more deadly by the year. We can’t keep waiting at the edge of the World. Either our enemy’s out there or he’s not. It’s time we took control of our destiny rather than waiting for the ghost of a dead king to point us in the wrong direction. He already did it once.”

  “You don’t know that. For all we know, the wider world is completely overrun by the Dark Kind, the Sages dead and gone—all of them.”

  “They’re not gone,” Kole said bitterly. “Powers like that linger.”

  “We need powers like yours to linger here,” Linn said. It was clear she was running out of patience, and Nathen’s nerves seemed about to fray as they reached the darkest parts of the woods that bordered the Untamed Hills. The Dark Kind were the least of their concerns out here.

  “Good as my bow arm might be, Reyna,” Linn said, “it’ll never be able to stop what came through that gate. You and yours are the last Embers born in a generation. Even Ferrahl is someone we can’t afford to lose. Whatever you do, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.”

  The conversation stopped there. And the hunt began.

  Despite the early tension, Kole felt lighter after having it out. He could not say he sensed the same from Linn, but the White Crest had been a revered figure in her household as well as in many others among the Emberfolk—a deity of sorts to replace their lost king. He was a Sage who had turned against his own kind, had sheltered the Emberfolk against the Eastern Dark and had even struck out with the King of Ember to bring him down.

  He had failed on that last count. As far as Kole was concerned, he had failed on all counts. Kole had no way of knowing whether or not the White Crest was dead. He had no way of knowing what had been looking at him through those reds. But it had the stink of magic. If one of them openly flirted with the Dark Kind, why wouldn’t the rest?

  The Emberfolk had put the White Crest on a pedestal polished by memory and fear. Kole had no use for idols. His had burned bright, and her flame had died away, leaving only ashes. He would find the truth, and whichever Sage was at the end of it would rue the day.

  Kole tried to leave the choking thoughts behind as they crossed another brook and approached the final tree line before the first glade. Starlight bounced off of the moon and painted the grassy hilltops silver in an approximation of the capped peaks in autumn.

  The Untamed Hills were a place even the Dark Kind avoided. The creatures there grew tall and fierce, and unlike the rest of the Valley game, the prey there did not hide.

  Linn unloosed her bow from around her shoulders as Nathen readied his own, a shorter and thinner band in keeping with the weapons of the Faey. Linn’s eyes were intent on the first rise, where the hint of outlines shifted in the half-light.

  Kole fished through the pack Linn had given him and withdrew a sling. He picked out several tightly rolled balls of sticky pitch and lined them up on the ground before him, shifting beneath the branches to get a better view.

  Linn nocked an arrow and drew, Nathen doing likewise. She nodded so slightly it could have been mistaken for a twitch, but Kole knew better. With a burst from his fingers, he lit a ball and launched it sky high with a guttering whistle, then did the same with two more in rapid succession.

  The flares punctuated the cool semi-darkness and the tiny comets streaked into the stars, Linn and Nathen following their arcing path as they trended downward. Linn let fly half a breath after each ball struck the turf and announced its presence with a flash that blinded the horned animals gathered there. Their flight tore up clods in the earth as they scattered, but Linn’s arrows caught two clean before they turned, bringing them down in a heap. The third was either lucky or damned, depending on how many legs it would need to live out the week, and Nathen cursed his aim.

  “It changed directions quickly,” Kole said, patting his arm. “The herd will look after it.”

  Nathen forced a tight smile.

  As Linn and Kole stood watch atop the rise, Nathen worked at the bodies of the fallen beasts, removing the shafts with expert precision and saying the words that needed saying. It took some time for them to drag the carcasses back to the trail, where they rested and refilled their skins in the brook. Sitting with his bare toes steaming in the water, Kole watched the last wind-blown embers turn to ash in the breeze, snuffing the orange lights from the field.

  After a spell, Kole stood, his feet drying before he had taken two steps, and helped Nathen strip the most elastic branches from the boughs overhanging the water. Linn tied the best knots, so they let her secure the poles to the litter before loading their bounty and setting off. Their progress was slow, but they reached the unfinished gates before the moon had finished its slow arc across the night sky.

  Nathen insisted on seeing both animals to the stores and bid Linn and Kole a good day. As he disappeared into the center of town—still bustling despite the recent attacks—Kole could not help but laugh.

  “What is it?”

  “Why that boy isn’t a soldier is beyond me,” Kole said. “Are we sure he isn’t Rockbled? He’s even stronger than he looks, and he looks plenty strong.”

  “People have said that about my eyes since I took up the bow,” Linn said. “But alas, not all of us can be Landkist. Besides,” she shouldered her pack, “we’re all soldiers when we need to be. Some would rather leave it at that, especially when you’ve got a heart like his.”

  Kole nodded and handed his own pack over.

  “My turn at watch,” he said, earning a reproachful glare from Linn.

  “First light is almost upon us,” she said, indicating the lake, which sparkled in the pre-dawn light. “Besides, I may not be as doting as my little sister, but you haven’t really slept in days, and, Ember or not, your mind needs rest as much as your body. If you get any warmer, you’re going to ignite, and I don’t want to be there when it happens.”

  “That bad?”

  “I can smell the ozone coming off of you from here,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It always happens when you’re stressed.”

  “Plenty of reasons to be stressed,” Kole said.

  Linn said nothing. She turned and marked a path toward her lakeside abode. Kole walked her back. Iyana was gone when they arrived, likely more exhausted than any of them as she cared for the wounded.

  Kole sat and watched the gray ash in the hearth swirl in the dying beam of moonlight coming in through the slatted window while Linn washed and changed. He liked being this close to the water, a trait that clashed with his base nature. He thought about the gentle waves as they lapped against the lichen-covered pegs beneath the house. He thought about their moonlit hunt and how the horned runner had cried as it disappeared beyond the rise, and if it really did have a herd to look after it.

  His last hazy thoughts before drifting off were of Linn’s face in the moonlight.

  When she returned, she brushed his dark hair back from his eyes and kissed his forehead before heading out, taking the path north for the wall.

  Kole never slept without dreaming. But tonight’s dream was not in the rain-choked passes, as all the others were. Tonight’s was a dream of beginnings.

  Karin had told Kole of dreams and their power.

  There were dreamers in far-off lands, over mountains and spanning snow-covered fields that held their visions of sleep in higher esteem than the trials of day-to-day living. There were dreamers now passed on that had lived in shimmering jewels in the deepest deserts where now there were only red wastes. To them, a day was merely a dream’s portent. And there were others beside, in the crenellated walls of rain-soaked keeps that felt any vision of the mind was wrought with illusion and deceit, its only outcome desire or despair.

  The Emberfolk held their dreams private, and Kole was no different.

  Now, he dreamed of the fi
rst time his blood had caught fire. He was eleven, and though he acted much the same then as he did now, he carried himself with the wobbling uncertainty of a child freshly bereft of his mother. For his people, it was a rare thing grown commonplace, and about to grow more so.

  He remembered searing pain, as if he was boiling from the inside out.

  Now he saw Ninyeva come to take him, Linn chasing after them while Iyana cried in the back garden. He saw his father wipe the tears from her eyes and sing songs of growing. Kole sat down beside her and listened, trying his best to ignore the wails of his younger self as he was carried away, his father flinching all the while.

  “Just as the seed blossoms into the shoot,” Karin was saying as he ran Iyana’s pale fingers along the green stem, “so a child grows into a little girl.” He pushed her nose like a button, drawing a giggle through the curtain of tears. “And just as all young women flower, so too do the Embers that give our people their name, and their pride.”

  And their power.

  Iyana had that uncertain look children get when they’re being led. Karin saw it, so he led her on a walk along the cobbled garden path. She skipped over the sprouting moss between the stones and Kole followed after.

  “This is a proud moment for Last Lake, for all the Emberfolk,” Karin said, inflecting his voice with a sense of awe and wonder, though Kole could see he already bore the deep creases he would come to know so well. “Once his body accepts the change, Kole will be the first Ember to awake in half a decade, since Taei Kane did before him. And he won’t be the last.”

  Just third to last.

  “The Dark Months are coming, and we need our Embers to help protect us.”

  “But the monsters don’t come here,” Iyana said, looking suddenly afraid. “The White Crest protects us.”

  “We do not know where the White Crest has been these last few years,” he said, smiling to reassure her. “But the Emberfolk are strong. We can look after ourselves.”

  They said more, but Kole lost track of the exchange. He felt himself being pulled along, his attention turning and aiming him toward the shore. He stepped tentatively out onto the water and walked across its surface, standing beneath the creaking timbers of the Long Hall.

  He walked further out and looked up into the sky. Clouds circled overhead, darkening the water, which grew violent around him. Kole felt his heart quicken. He spun, looking past the houses and up the hill, past the wall and over the trees. A darkness deeper than black polluted the clouds there. It rushed and scattered like smoke in the wind. It was a wall of night, a portal into the World Apart.

  Anger swelled, mixing with the fear. The surf churned and boiled beneath his feet, steam rising in a torrent as his muscles bunched. The drums rolled and the braziers lit the gloom with a sick glow.

  Kole leapt, leaving a jet of steaming water in his wake, his passing creating a crater on the surface that crashed down like an avalanche. He sailed up and over the Long Hall, past the market, and slammed down before the gate, breaking the earth there and sending up shockwaves that announced his presence to the dark.

  This was how powerful the Embers of old must have felt.

  The darkness receded like an inhalation as Kole rose. And then it came for him, spilling from the trees, an army of lashing talons and red eyes intent upon his blood. Kole had no blades, so he summoned great living weapons of flame—spear and axe. He set to hacking.

  Kole laughed a devil’s laugh as the Dark Kind fell before him, and all around him the forest that ringed his home burned.

  There was a piercing cry. At first, Kole thought it the strangled, inhuman wailing of the Dark Kind, but it soon resolved into a woman’s scream. Kole tried to regain control, to reel the flames in, but they would not be contained.

  He sat bolt upright and fought to orient himself in the momentary panic that comes from unfamiliar surroundings. There was a fire in the grate now, and motes of ash with cinders for tails floated by him. It took him far longer than it should have to notice Iyana’s presence.

  For a sickening moment, Kole thought hers must have been the voice he heard screaming in his flames, but she was unharmed. She sat in a latticework chair with a steaming cup of lemon-scented water clasped neatly in her small hands. Her eyes glowed like green versions of the cinder motes as she studied him.

  And what a sight he must have made, bunched up and steaming as his skin turned sweat to vapor.

  “Hello, Iyana,” Kole said meekly, fighting to suppress the panic that still welled within him. He was used to settling after his dreams, but the settling was taking time.

  “You’ve had quite a time the last few days, Reyna.”

  “I imagine you have as well.”

  She set her cup down. He marveled at how much older she seemed and how much younger she looked.

  “Feeling better since last we met?”

  “Physically.”

  Iyana moved to fill him a cup. The stone was warm and reassuring in his hands and the smell reminded him of the markets of Hearth, all citrus and clove.

  “Maybe you should take some time away from the wall.”

  “We’re nearing the end of the Dark Months,” Kole said, indicating the pink light of dawn, which filtered in through the slatted window. “The days will grow longer and the World Apart will recede.”

  “Until the next cycle,” Iyana said, adding, “During which time we will undoubtedly require your services again.”

  Kole sighed.

  “I’m worried, Iyana,” he said.

  She set her cup down and put a hand on his knee, flinching slightly at the heat.

  “I’m not sure it’s going to end this time.”

  “What’s not going to end?”

  “The Dark Months, the Dark Kind,” he swept his hand out in a meaningless gesture that was meant to span the whole of everything. “All of it.”

  Iyana stared at him, all concern, but Kole was having trouble meeting those green eyes lately. She took his hands in her own, ignoring the pain it must have caused her.

  “You are Landkist, Kole Reyna,” she said. “Ember-born and chosen of the flame.”

  “And I’m among the last,” he said bitterly.

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “The desert has forsaken us,” he said. “We are not its children any longer.”

  Iyana shrank back a bit and Kole squeezed his temples.

  “I’m sorry,” he started, but she broke in.

  “Our new land has gifts all its own,” she said, fighting to keep a civil tone.

  “They aren’t gifts meant for war,” Kole said, shaking his head.

  “No,” Iyana clipped. “They’re gifts meant for mending. A lot of that goes on in wars, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  There was nothing to say to that, so Kole said nothing. But something in his look must have worried her, because her temper—often hotter than his own—cooled quickly.

  “What is it, Kole?” she asked. “What do you know?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Was it the Night Lord?”

  “Tu’Ren says it wasn’t a Night Lord—not a true one, at any rate.”

  Iyana just looked at him.

  “It’s just a feeling, Iyana,” he said, standing and stretching. “And dreams.”

  “Your dreams are as vivid as Ninyeva’s sometimes,” Iyana sounded concerned.

  “Don’t let it worry you.”

  “It worries you.”

  Kole was silent.

  “Some hold Jenk Ganmeer up as the future hero of our people,” Iyana said. “There are whispers that he will lead us out of the Valley and back into the deserts to reclaim our lands.”

  Kole looked at her, his expression unreadable.

  “But those who count know that it’s you, Kole. Why do you think Ninyeva is allowing you to go where no other has since—

  “Since my mother,” Kole finished, and Iyana fell silent.

  Kole thought to tell her he was sorry, or that h
e knew she was. Instead, he said nothing.

  “Thank you for the drink.”

  He left, feeling those green eyes on his back long after he’d rounded the bend.

  Linn had not gone north after all. Instead, she took a circuitous route through Eastlake. Her watch did not begin for a few hours and she would not be missed as sorely as one of the Keepers.

  Sunrise in the Dark Months was always slow in coming. It painted the stones in the road pink and orange, like coals left on the edge of a fire. The sun would barely rise above the lake, its path more horizontal than vertical as it skirted the edge of the horizon before disappearing a few hours hence, leaving them stranded in darkness once again.

  She turned west, taking a path through the squat homes that ran parallel to the shore. From her vantage, she could see the salt water calm as mirrored glass all the way to the jagged spine of obsidian that broke its surface in the center. Though Last Lake was in the south of the Valley, she felt that she could hit one of the Sage’s peaks in the north with a well-placed shaft on a clear day. Looking south, over the obsidian spires, she could make out only the faintest outlines of the ridges that separated the lake from the mother ocean that ringed it, the salt tunnels breathing like dragons beneath the surface of water and rock.

  Westlake sat on a hill, which was sheltered by a shelf of gray stone that might have been the child of some ancient peak now fallen down. The weak sun rarely marked the roads clearly up here, so lanterns lit her way.

  Linn always focused on her surroundings when her mind was troubled. She saw everything except for what she did not want to see. Sometimes she wished she knew her mind as well as she knew the details of each branch in the woods before the wall. She wondered if Kole knew it better. She did not have to wonder if Iyana did.

  Though she was not sentimental, Linn’s mind wandered this morning. She remembered her moonlit hunt with Kole. She remembered their first faux hunts as children, and then a little older, when they had changed from pretend to real and ended with killing. They had discovered more after that first hunt, lying in the moss by the river after washing. But it seemed those days were behind them.