Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  The First Keeper eschewed the comforts of his own home, the protection of his people taking precedence over everything else. It was likely that, as agonizing as the waiting and uncertainty had been for her, it was doubly worse for Tu’Ren. As far as she knew, he had not received word from Hearth for a week and the decision to withhold aid was not one he had made lightly.

  The worn pine door was shut and latched, so Iyana knocked and then rocked from foot to foot under the dripping slats. An archer heard and peered down at her from the raised platform above. Iyana could not make out her features from under her hood, but they were no doubt familiar, as all faces at the Lake were. The guardian lost interest quickly and went back to her bored survey—bored, but disciplined. A wall hound rested at her feet, panting in the humid air.

  Linn’s face flashed in her mind’s eye, bringing with it a pang of longing along with the now-familiar stabs of fear. There was even a little anger she could not quite bury. All of this was forgotten as the door swung open to reveal a grizzled stone of a man squinting down at her.

  “Yani?” he said. “What are you doing out in this mess?”

  Iyana shrugged meekly and blinked up at him.

  Tu’Ren shook his head in the way a disapproving uncle might, but he moved aside and ushered her into the stuffy gatehouse nonetheless. He took the soaked shawl from her shoulders and grumbled as he fished around for a fresh one, settling for a wool rug he had mistaken for a blanket. She accepted it anyway, stifling a laugh as she followed him to the center of the tiny structure.

  Iyana sat on a worn couch as Tu’Ren busied himself arranging fresh tinder in the smoking fireplace. It was a little game they played, seeing who would speak first.

  Tu’Ren was not a quiet man, but he had taught Iyana more of patience than even Ninyeva had. She had long since forgotten when their games had first begun, but she guessed it to be around the time Linn and Kole had begun their training for the garrison. Where Linn went, Iyana followed, and the stern Ember could not help but be smitten with her girlish charm.

  Years later, Iyana had been shocked to learn that Tu’Ren had lost a daughter shortly after birth. She often wondered if she reminded him of her, and sometimes felt strange because of it. She never asked, even though their silent game depended on questions as the only source of consequence.

  Tu’Ren had a miniature mountain of white pine shavings piled in the hearth and now begun the painstaking process of laying a foundation of split oak about it. He would build the framework of a tiny house and continue from there. Iyana knew this because she had watched him do it a hundred times before.

  “I’ve always wondered,” she said, and his ears perked up, “why you insist on building fires the old fashioned way.”

  “Nothing old fashioned about building a fire the proper way,” he grumbled. “If there’s a better way to do it, I’ve yet to meet the man who’s found it.”

  “Perhaps you should ask a woman, then.”

  He smiled.

  “Perhaps,” and he went back to his work. He was tense, but less so than he had been when she arrived. Even if her Faeykin abilities did not allow her to perceive emotions as plainly as others perceived the wind, she’d have seen the hard set of the First Keeper’s shoulders and the haggard look behind those icy blue eyes.

  “You know I hate it when you do that,” he said

  “Do what? Oh, sorry,” she said, color coming to her face. It was a hard thing to turn off.

  Tu’Ren smirked and Iyana cursed, knowing he had tricked her into asking the first question.

  “You would think that famed intuition you women speak about would be enough. But no, you need to go and be chosen as the Valley’s own, blessed with powers of knowing and sight the rest can only guess at. Or maybe you’re all fakers who like to sound right.”

  “A bit of both,” Iyana clucked.

  Tu’Ren grabbed a flint from the windowsill and knelt to strike it.

  “Why do you build it that way?” she asked, her tone shifting.

  “I never asked my question,” he said.

  “Very well,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “Ask away.”

  “This seems an important time for the Valley and everyone in it,” Tu’Ren said, looking at her over his shoulder as he balanced a sharp piece of tinder on the brick.

  “Is that a question?”

  He struck the flint and the spark took, blazing the fire to healthy life in a heartbeat, washing the chamber in its moving glow. The flames licked and curled at the white pine almost as eagerly as they reached out for Tu’Ren. He reached one hand into the blaze, and no matter how many times she witnessed an Ember do it, it never lost its novelty. He closed his eyes, and she saw the veins bulge and pulse. After a few moments, he withdrew and left the longing fire to its business, crossing to sit next to Iyana on the couch, his heat radiating pleasantly.

  Iyana curled up in her rug-turned-blanket. She remembered touching his bare forearm for the first time as a girl. It had given her the sensation of a black stone left in the sun. Though they were both Ember, the First Keeper’s heat felt different from Kole’s. It was steadier, more frequent but less likely to burn.

  “You haven’t asked your question,” she reminded as they stared into the dancing elements beneath the chute.

  “Ah, yes,” he said a bit absently. “I only thought, in this time above all others, wouldn’t Ninyeva need your assistance? She has much to ponder. Her visions and sights,” he finished, waving his hand in a way she might have found silly if the subject were not so frustrating.

  Iyana frowned and turned away. It was a bad habit and one that made her look so much like the sulky adolescent she had tried for years to leave behind.

  “I think I’ve discovered your reason for coming today,” he said with a smile.

  “If I tell you,” she said, “will you tell me why you build your fires that way?”

  “That is how the game works.”

  “I’ve asked before,” she said without hesitation, and then she turned those piercing green eyes his way. “You’ve never told me true.”

  Tu’Ren blushed and looked away, and Iyana felt shame for the second time that day. After an awkward moment, however, he recovered and boomed with laughter that shook them both.

  “I used to think I had trouble getting anything past my wife,” he said, wiping a tear. “Would that she could have met you.”

  Iyana smiled up at him, feeling his longing like a stab in the heart. It was a sweet thing and not at all bitter.

  “In fairness to her,” Iyana said, “you’ve kept this one so deep even I took time to suss it out.”

  “I’ll tell you true, Yani,” he said, using the rare pet name. He was the only one that could get away with it, and even then on sparing occasion. “But I’m curious. What stands out to you about the way I build my fires?”

  “It’s not the fact that you don’t use your flames,” she said, “though it is odd. For a while, I just assumed you preferred it that way.”

  “And what changed that opinion?”

  “There is something in you when you build a fire that way,” she said, her eye shifting like emerald pools as she looked up at him. “It’s important to you. It awakens something in you, or else keeps something asleep. I feel sorrow and solitude. Most of all, I feel regret. It seeps from you like storm waves from a far-off cove.”

  Iyana came back to herself. She had begun to drift off into a trance. When she looked back at Tu’Ren, the Ember was staring at the flames, his face unreadable and emotions masked, even to her.

  “Even without your gifts, you are wise beyond your years, little Yani,” he said, smiling wistfully. He looked down at her and gave her a small pat on the head before standing and moving to tend the fire.

  “I build fires this way,” he said, leaning on the mantle and staring down, “because it reminds me that I control the flame and not the other way around.”

  When he looked back at her, there were tears gathering round the
rims of his eyes.

  “The price some had to pay for me to learn that truth is something I can never forget. And every time I build a fire, every time I stock my brazier on the wall, I remember. I let it linger. I let it burn.”

  Iyana swallowed as the First Keeper looked away from her, gathering his thoughts as he ploughed the waves of memory.

  “I am a powerful Ember, Yani,” he said. There was no boast, just truth plainly presented. “But whatever Linn, Kole and even Larren have witnessed of me, I can honestly say they have not seen the truth of it. Had Kole and Larren not taken down that beast a moon past, I daresay they may have.”

  Tu’Ren looked at her, his eyes sharper than before.

  “You are studied in the early conflicts of the Valley, are you not? Those between the Emberfolk and the Rivermen?”

  Iyana nodded, enraptured.

  “Those conflicts ended some time ago, long before you were born and long before I became the man I am today. Shortly after they ended, groups cropped up like sullen weeds. They were victims, of a sort—those whose parents or siblings had lost their lives in the battles. They wanted what all victims want: revenge. Closure. When they came upon a group of Faey in the eastern woods during a hunt, they took it, though the woodsmen had done nothing but protect their borders as we clashed with the Rockbled.”

  Tu’Ren shook his head at the memory, the knuckles of one hand going white and the fire below him burning a little brighter.

  “The young hunters said the Faey attacked them. Once, I might have believed them, but not after Ninyeva had returned from her time beneath the branches. She learned much from the original Valleyfolk. Enough to know the hunters were lying.”

  Now when Tu’Ren looked at her, she felt the pain coming off of him like fresh agony.

  “You see, Yani,” he said, “something had to be done.”

  Iyana said nothing and Tu’Ren turned back to the hearth.

  “The decision was made by my father and First Keeper Croen Teeh, Jenk’s grandfather. As newly appointed Keeper, I set out with Croen and First Keeper Vennil Cross of Hearth. That was a big deal, since my father’s separation from Hearth was still fresh by a generation. We were to find the runaway hunters and bring them back for a joint trial before the twin Ember settlements and the Rivermen of the Fork. They were a formidable group. Nine hunters, three of them Embers.”

  He paused.

  “Why did only three of you go?” Iyana asked.

  Tu’Ren laughed a bitter laugh.

  “We did not expect them to resist. Alas. Fort’U Reyna, Karin’s mother and Kole’s grandmother, helped us track them. Lucky for her, she largely excused herself from what happened next.”

  The Ember swallowed. He was now deep onto the paths of memory, and Iyana was swept along with him, her eyes glowing almost as bright as the fire in the hearth. She was not there, not truly, but she hovered on the edges with the three Embers as they followed Fort’U through the forested lands skirting the edges of the Untamed Hills. The Dark Months were in full swing, but in those days, there was nary more than a shadow or two to be burned away. Things watched from trunk and burrow, but the Embers kept their blood up and nothing challenged them.

  Tu’Ren continued to speak in the present, but Iyana was in some version of the Between. His younger self—white hair tied back to frame strong, youthful features as he brushed the branches away from his face—mouthed the words. Their direction was staggered and uneven; it appeared to make as little sense to the Embers as it did to Iyana, but Fort’U led them on, and the darkness soon gave way to a ruddy glow.

  The tracker waved them forward and they entered the clearing, looking over what Iyana at first took for the scattered remnants of a camp hastily abandoned. And then she saw the bodies, burnt and twisted, and all of them bearing the pale moon faces of the Faey. They ranged from the very young to the very old, the flames still eating hungrily in places. It was nearly enough to make her sick, and she knew that young Tu’Ren felt the same way.

  The company picked over the scene, finding the body of one of the hunters. Iyana shuddered to think that a Faeykin had done that to him, turning him inside out in a stark reminder of how the healing powers of the Landkist of the Valley could shift to the stuff of nightmare out of necessity.

  Could she do something like that?

  Iyana could still hear Tu’Ren’s words, but they were far away now, much farther than the scene before her. His younger self was in shock, and though Croen and Vennil felt the same way, the older Embers did a better job at hiding it.

  There was something else welling up inside of Tu’Ren, however; it was hotter than the flames in his blood, hotter even than those burning in the clearing and over the mangled bodies of the Faey children.

  It was something much like rage.

  The company moved further west in silence, and Tu’Ren had killing on his mind and in his heart. The scent of ozone tickled Iyana’s nose.

  “Quell your fire, young one,” Vennil said, catching Tu’Ren by the crook of the arm. All she received in reply was a stare like death and she withdrew.

  There was a smaller clearing further ahead. This one had its own fresh flames, which looked gaudy in the unfiltered moonlight. Iyana followed in Croen and Vennil’s wake. Tu’Ren stood within the circle of trees, Fort’U beside him. Below them, the tiny chest of a female hunter heaved and shuddered past the arrow stuck through it. Her eyes quivered with fear and pain, but Tu’Ren did not see it. He only looked past her, seeing the charred remains of the Faey who had sent the shaft.

  Croen put out a hand, but it was too late. Tu’Ren incinerated the girl so quickly she died without issuing a sound.

  “Kadeh!” the First Keeper shouted, turning Tu’Ren around forcefully. “She was to stand trial. As are the others.”

  The young Tu’Ren looked at his mentor with an odd mix of disgust and confusion.

  Croen opened his mouth to speak again, and an arrow sliced through the night air, parting his tongue and sinking with a squelch into the back of his throat.

  The sudden violence shocked the other three into action, as they spun to meet the charge of the rogue company, which crashed into the clearing with blades held high, spears leveled and flames shooting forth in deadly brilliance. Tu’Ren took a gash in the side, broke the spear at the shaft with a slash of his Everwood blade and snatched the sharp end before it tumbled to the ground. He sank that into the swordsman on the left and grabbed the spear-wielder round the throat, lifting him into the air with ease.

  This one did have time to scream, and he made it count as Tu’Ren’s bare hand burned through his windpipe to the bone.

  Vennil unloosed twin black Everwood axes from her back, ignited them and spun to meet the charge of the Ember triad. Her blades worked furiously, dealing back threefold each wound she received. One of the three died gurgling before the other two could mount a more measured attack on Hearth’s deadly tornado of fire.

  Iyana lost track of Fort’U in the chaos, but a scream that was cut short from the surrounding trees let her know that the tracker had found the archer.

  Through it all, Croen Teeh pitched and rolled on the ground, clutching at the bubbling wound with eyes wide. Somehow, he managed to light his sword and sink it into the calf of a female hunter that got too close to him while circling away from Tu’Ren’s deadly arcs. She fell with a pained yelp and Croen finished her off, sinking his burning blade into her chest and pinning her to the forest floor. Then he lay still.

  Iyana was breathing fast. She knew she was in no real danger but could not help but skitter to the edge of the clearing, putting her back against the trunk of a tree as she watched Tu’Ren advance like a force of nature. His blade glowed so bright she could not make out the wood at its core, blue lines spilling off at the edges.

  He went to work like one of the Embers of legend. Metal weapons seemed to dull and bend as they came into contact with his own. Their wielders fared no better, as Tu’Ren sent flares far wider than Iya
na had known possible, the rays shooting out from the edges of his blade as if shot from a bow.

  Soon enough, only the two young Embers remained of the rogue company. Vennil battled both, but a slash to her thigh put her down in a tangle, one axe spinning from her grip along with three fingers.

  Iyana was sickly fascinated watching the Embers battle one another. Though they were effectively immune to each other’s flames, they still made use of them, sending flares and crescents to blind and confuse as they danced their deadly dance. It was a tense battle while it lasted, but Vennil had lost, and she would have been cut down for good had Tu’Ren not moved to stand before her, eyes shining like a god’s.

  The young Embers withdrew and paced before him like jungle cats. By their movements, Iyana thought them to be brother and sister. By their poise, she thought it obvious they were the leaders of the rogue brigand, the ones most responsible for the trail of garish sights. And now they had slain the First Keeper of the Lake and maimed the First Keeper of Hearth.

  The pair came at him mid-stride like bolts fired from a crossbow. Tu’Ren repelled them with a violent gust. The male lost his blade, which embedded itself in the trunk of a nearby tree. As he moved to retrieve it, his sister renewed her assault on Tu’Ren, forcing him back with a blitzing attack. Her fury only served to highlight her desperation.

  Her brother had nearly pried his burning blade from the scorched trunk when she was launched into him so forcefully that he was impaled on the dull end of his weapon. The impact resulted in a sickening crunch that ended with a sorry gasp as he died on the still-burning length of Everwood.

  Tu’Ren was standing over her when she came to. There was a storm in him, and Iyana knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was far from spent. The Ember—no more than a child, really—glared up at him through dirt-caked tears.

  “I can still remember the way she looked at me,” he said, raising his glowing blade and the burning palm behind it. “There was accusation in her eyes. As if I was wrong. As if I was evil. A thing to be feared.”