Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  And there was one emotion that followed her faster and farther than any of the others. More than the rage and insanity, she had sensed fear from the being once known as White Crest. Not fear of her. She had been a meadow vole in the gaze of a hawk; this was fear of the other, of the figure wreathed in flame.

  It was fear, she thought, of Kole Reyna.

  Ninyeva attempted to reorient herself to the World, but it was an agonizing experience, like a star had exploded behind her eyes. She let the veil fall from her head and cast about the chamber, grasping wet roots that she chewed hungrily, squeezing her eyes shut and wishing the pain away.

  She had lingered too long. The phlegm had built up and she could not concentrate enough to shift from gifts of sight to healing. Her consciousness was fading, and before she lost it completely, she saw what looked to be a fairy light, green and shimmering. It spoke to her through the veil.

  Ninyeva shook her head and the light resolved into the soft visage of Iyana Ve’Ran. Her apprentice helped her to sit with hands far stronger than they appeared, and she felt the warmth of the Faey light moving through her blood, bringing her back.

  “I found it,” she said through a cracked throat. “Found him.”

  Iyana eyed her with a wild and fearful expression.

  “He was so pure, once,” Ninyeva whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Kole was right. He is not our ally. Not any longer. There is another in him. Infected. Rotten.”

  She was rambling and she knew it, but it seemed that Iyana had taken the point.

  “He has betrayed us, after all,” Iyana said. She did not sound shocked, but rather resigned.

  Ninyeva reached out and took Iyana’s soft hands in her weathered ones.

  “He is as much a victim in this as we, I think,” Ninyeva said. “The dark comes for us all.”

  “The Eastern Dark,” Iyana offered.

  “I can see no other possibility. It seems he has begun his war on the others, starting with our own guardian.”

  Iyana stood abruptly and moved to fill a cup with cold tea. She handed it to Ninyeva and adopted the stern, motherly look she wore so well.

  “You should not have flown so far, and for so long.”

  “And how did you know I had?” Ninyeva asked, amused.

  “I felt it,” Iyana said, eyes going distant. “But that’s not why I came.” Her eyes refocused.

  Ninyeva took a swallow and looked at her pupil expectantly. Iyana met her gaze, her emerald eyes glowing brighter than usual.

  “I found them,” she said. “I found Linn.”

  “Where is she?” Ninyeva asked, thoughts racing.

  “In the Deep Lands,” Iyana said. “And I saw others. I saw dark figures following them, tracking them from above. One of them looked like Larren Holspahr. But it couldn’t be.”

  “Iyana,” Ninyeva said. “You must find her again.”

  What at first Linn had taken for a fairy light out of dreaming soon morphed into something else: a feeling that she should follow.

  The green bulb buzzed faintly, moving about in circular patterns that alternated between alluring and frantic. Its movements were far too measured to be wild, and the part of her mind given to suspicion wondered if it might be some trick meant to tempt her into the sheltered cove of some deadly denizen of the Deep Lands. She imagined the gnashing beaks and razor claws but knew in her heart that she was safe.

  She was taken on a short and winding climb, and she kept the river always on her right. There was a natural stair of sorts, which led to a small plateau. The air here was fresher, more alive. The light flashed and darted to the space between her eyes, causing Linn to reach up instinctively. Before she could grab it, the light streaked into another chamber, and there it stopped.

  Linn guessed her position to be directly above the sleeping heads of Jenk and Nathen.

  “What now, little bug?” Linn asked, feeling immensely foolish. Maybe she was beginning to lose her mind in this place of ever-present darkness.

  The light burst in a shower of green and white sparks. There was no sound, but Linn was rendered blind in the searing bright. She fell to her knees, feeling about for purchase, and the throbbing slowly ebbed away from the backs of her lids. Had she not already fallen, the sight that resolved itself before her now surely would have done the trick.

  Where the fairy light had been, Iyana now stood, her brows turned down in the concerned way only she could manage. Tears stung the corners of Linn’s eyes and left their tracks in the pits of her hollow cheeks.

  A sensation like touch but fainter tickled her shoulder as Iyana reached out, but Linn knew she was not there, not truly. The green glow was faded now, but it hung about her younger sister like a curtain. Iyana’s eyes shone like burning emeralds, brighter than ever before.

  “How?” Linn managed to choke out between wracking sobs. She had not realized how much she had to give until it had been given, collected in her own salt pool in the crevices between the stones beneath her.

  “Landkist,” was all Iyana said in response, her face strained with the effort, as if uttering a single word was akin to lifting a mountain. Perhaps it was.

  Linn had never heard of the Faeykin projecting themselves, but then, the Landkist of the Valley were not well known to the Emberfolk. Only Mother Ninyeva knew their secrets, and even she doubted if she had them all.

  “Linn,” Iyana said, her mouth moving at odds with the words, her voice coming as if from a great distance. “You are not well.”

  She had to laugh at that, looking down at arms that had lost much of their color and more of their sinew. Arms that could previously draw the stoutest war bow were now faded to fish bones.

  “It has been a hard road,” Linn said, unable to meet her sister’s eyes. Her own glassed over now, recalled to another dark place on the edge of a storm—a cave at the edge of a forest.

  Iyana reached out her hand, and though the sensation was only a little more than nothing, Linn’s chest heaved and wracked again, but her salt was all spent. When she was done, the old stone that marked her as Ve’Ran returned, pebble upon pebble filling her breast as she bent back from the breaking.

  “Kole is on his way to the peaks,” Iyana said.

  “For me?” Linn said, unsure if she was furious or relieved.

  Why would he? How could they let him leave Last Lake? Why had she?

  “Ninyeva says the White Crest still lives.”

  There it was. The truth Kole Reyna had always known, that had driven him in singular purpose as nothing else had.

  “I see.”

  “But he is not himself.”

  “Who is she to judge whether a Sage is or is not himself? Where has he been all this time?”

  “Asleep.”

  “Asleep?”

  It sounded ludicrous.

  “He has fallen to the same corruption that plagues the Valley now. There are hearts beneath the keep. The plague is in them, from them.”

  Linn looked up, noting something else in her sister’s face, now that they had both settled some.

  “What is it, Yani? What else?”

  Iyana’s moon face flickered, her energy shifting as she drew a breath from wherever she was—Ninyeva’s leaning tower, most likely.

  “There is someone,” she paused, “someone tracking you.”

  “I see.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense, Linn.”

  “Yani …”

  “He can’t be.”

  “He is. We were attacked in the western woods. Larren is under their sway now. He is one with the Dark Kind.”

  “He’s up above,” Iyana said. “Waiting.”

  “Figures,” Linn said, a sardonic laugh escaping her chest.

  “Larren is powerful,” Iyana said.

  “He is. But he is not himself either.” Linn smiled, trying her best to project a sense of confidence she did not feel. “Lucky for us, we still are.”

  Iyana smiled her sweet, kn
owing smile, and Linn almost hugged her, or tried to.

  “I almost forgot you’re not really here.”

  “I am here, Linn. And Kole will be, but you cannot wait for him. You won’t last.”

  “Wouldn’t want to spend another day longer than necessary here anyway. I assume you’ve found the way out?”

  Iyana hesitated. She was growing more faint, as if she were fading.

  “Yani?”

  “You can find a pathway through the Steps and come back home,” she said. “Back to the Lake. Back to me.”

  Linn frowned.

  “Kole can do what he likes. We came here to find the source of the scourge. We’re not turning back now. Not after what’s been lost.”

  Linn expected Iyana to argue, but she was silent.

  “What’s it like up there?” Linn asked. “Above the peaks, I mean. Are the fields golden like the ancestors say?”

  “Clear as glass,” Iyana said. “Too high for the wind to reach. But the sun is there, Linn.”

  “I know someone who will very much enjoy hearing that.”

  Iyana smiled, but it was tinged with sadness, a knowing that Linn did not want to know.

  “The Lake still knows peace?”

  “For now.”

  Linn nodded.

  “They’ll need you before the end. Don’t come back looking for me.”

  Iyana’s brows drew close together, her lips forming a tight line, but she offered the slightest of nods. She flickered and nearly went out, and Linn’s heart caught in her chest. She did not want her to leave, though she knew she must.

  “This tether is failing,” Iyana said, her voice even softer and more broken than before. The tiny firefly could be seen near where her heart would have been, its wings buzzing softly, weakly.

  “Show me the way,” Linn said, her resolve strengthening, mind bending to its purpose. She would find the White Crest. She would discover what he was about. And she would do it all before Kole had a chance to become what he most hated and feared.

  She hoped.

  They moved as quickly as the sodden terrain would allow. At first, they did so quietly, but now they made all haste, the booming percussions from the battle to the south punctuating the night and covering their progress. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the vast majority of the Dark Kind were massed outside of Hearth’s walls.

  Kole felt the guilt welling up like acid, the one fire to which he was not immune. Misha Ve’Gah, however, was a pragmatic sort, and though he kept pace with her evenly, she often as not took his silence for dawdling.

  “Since I’m doing all of the navigating,” she said, “the least you could do is keep up.”

  Kole said nothing. He knew the other Ember was merely covering her anxiety. In some ways, she reminded him of the Ve’Ran sisters, albeit a bit more brash. And though she carried her spear with a steady hand, he wondered if she knew how to wield it. He wondered why she had been positioned along the white cliffs, where action was sparse during the Dark Months.

  In truth, Kole said nothing because he was tense, and that tension rode them all the way through the marshes in the shape of reed, rock and root. One great beast was unaccounted for. And it had last been seen in this region. Kole knew the Night Lord had not given up. Misha knew it as well. It had both of them peering around every bend in the slow-moving waters and twitching at shadows between the stalks. Though the land would have been difficult for her, Kole regretted leaving Shifa in Hearth.

  Misha seemed to sense it before he did, her measured strides morphing into a trot that became half run. She looked back, eyes wild to see if Kole was behind her.

  “Go,” he whispered harshly, the back of his neck prickling.

  The spear wielder broke into as close to a sprint as she could in the slop, cutting through swaths of reeds in the choked alleyways. Less experienced soldiers might have felt foolish for having been spooked by something unseen and unheard, but these Embers trusted their instincts.

  Sooner than Kole would have hoped, the whistling spear separated the furry cattails from the final stalks between them and the river, and they let the current help them along as the way grew less choked. They waded forward, not turning back, and Kole could pick out the rough bank ahead by the way the silver light filtering in from the clouds carved stones from the darkness.

  Misha grew taller as she gained purchase on the gravely river bottom, and she must have heard the sound before he felt it. The ripples and waves could have been natural, but he felt the coming of the beast in the undertow, the river pulling at him like an indrawn breath. The loose pebbles underfoot began a rapid slide that threatened to suck his feet out from under him.

  Up ahead on the shore, Misha spun, her bright hair indistinguishable from the flaring tassels on her spear. The air around her grew hazy as she set her weapon into a slow spin that soon became a blur. Her features were obscured behind a whirring of green, red and yellow as the atmosphere turned liquid.

  Kole flushed heat into his legs as he struggled up the cascading shore. He was chest-deep and slipping. One final lunge brought him up to his naval before he heard a hissing streak along the water’s surface. He spun, the bottom betraying him once more in a lucky stroke that spared his life. As he fell, a spray of water hit him like shards thrown from the prow of a windship. The black mass was indistinguishable from the foam, but the red eyes glowed their ruby glow, and he knew the beast had come as he went under.

  The river was cold and black. It enveloped him completely and he tumbled in the wake of the snake’s passing. His fingers scored gashes in the rough sand and he fought to gain a horizon. He did not dare to surface, but rather clung to the bottom and waited.

  A weight like a tree trunk slammed into his side and sent him careening end over end. Again, it was luck that saved him. Instead of the beast’s razor teeth, the shallow stones met his brow, leaving their scrapes but sparing him a more ugly fate. Again Kole managed to dig his roots into the sliding silt, scanning the deeper darkness for signs of movement. Just when his lungs were about to quit on him, two red stones appeared in the inky black, and the serpent shot toward him with frightening speed.

  Embers rarely ran from fights. They were more than worth their weight in water, unless they were in water. Kole swam toward the surface. The instant his head broke through, his eyes were stung by a brilliant kaleidoscope of amber, yellow and red.

  Heat that would have killed any other buoyed his lungs and charged his blood with power. He set his feet in the rolling rocks and ran toward the blazing shore, where Misha Ve’Gah strained in the cyclone of flame. Behind him, the crash of the beast breaking the surface was drowned out by its roar of pain as the flames set to eating.

  Kole reached the shallows and spun, drawing his blades as he did and setting the air around him to shimmer as Misha’s flames died out. The serpent surfaced again, its head a smoking ruin, its cry more rage than pain now. It looked like no creature Kole had ever seen, though its body recalled the great burrowing worms of the Untamed Hills, docile creatures that met most challenges with swift retreats.

  The fire distorted the Night Lord’s form, the horns atop its head and the frills of its mane a melted and moving mass of coiling black.

  “Reyna, down!”

  And Kole put the fire in his legs, shooting backward as the serpent lunged for him. A comet in the form of Hearth’s Third Keeper hurtled over him, spinning shaft in hand. The monster was so intent on Kole that it spared Misha no heed, its maw a frothing mess that smelled like death.

  Kole lit his blades and angled them sharply, fearing he would be crushed in the collision. There was a whistling as the spear whirled and then a sharp sound like metal on marble.

  The river stilled.

  As the spray dissipated enough for Kole to see, the beast’s head appeared directly before him and reflex had him stabbing out. He speared one ruby eye, which burst in a shower of hot blood that sizzled along the haft of his blade and coagulated into syrup as i
t rang along his armored forearm.

  There was no cry as the beast died, no animal roar to rival the distant din of Hearth. It had died the instant Misha Ve’Gah’s spear made a hilt of its skull.

  Misha pulled her weapon free with a sucking sound and the Embers walked to the shore as the shallows stilled. Kole marveled at the sinews standing out along the backs of her arms, which were bare, her own armor ending at the shoulders.

  They both looked at the dead creature in silence. As had been the case with the ape Kole had wounded at Last Lake, the ink sizzled and spat, draining into the river and coating the surface in a slick that shone like ice. The worms of the Untamed Hills had no bones, just cartilage beneath their shifting skin. This one’s was gray and very near to rotten, its stench overwhelming enough to compel them onward with nary a backward glance.

  “Not a true Night Lord, after all,” Misha remarked.

  “None of them have been.”

  “Then what are they?”

  “Same as the souls before Hearth’s gates: victims.”

  They followed the river’s snaking progress north, and as they did, Kole thought of the serpent’s eyes. It had the same glint as the ape, the same murderous, intelligent glow as the Sentinels in the woods. He thought he’d like a closer look at whoever had been staring back.

  Though expected, the sight of the abandoned homesteads along the Fork hit Kole like a physical blow. As they crested the rise that looked down on the stout stone structures, he held out hope that they might find some resistance. There was none.

  Kole tried to tell himself that many of the Corrupted before Hearth’s gates were from lands beyond the Valley, but the desolation before them was impossible to ignore. Still, he could not help but feel some modicum of relief that Last Lake still stood, and that ever-present kernel of guilt glowed brighter in his gut as they walked among the empty husks and homes of their Valley kin.

  “They fought,” he said, as much to fill the wind-swept silence as to distract him from the few dead they passed. He could tell which had turned—their eyes were misshapen, limbs elongated—and which had died before the change could take hold. Death was a mercy in this war. How defeating, to wish for the Dark Months in place of this madness.