Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1)

by Steven Kelliher

  “They lost,” Misha said after a time, but her voice had lost much of its solidity.

  “There.”

  They were passing an alley when Misha noted a particularly dense collection of former persons strewn about a northern square. Carts had been overturned to form some semblance of a defense, and they could see the spires of a guard tower that stood in the shadows of the mountains.

  Coming closer, they saw deep grooves in the earth that stretched like snails’ tracks before coming to rest at the bases of great boulders—telltale signs of the final stand of the Rockbled. Kole did not know how many of the stone-throwers remained among the Rivermen, but he knew there were more of them than there were Embers in the Valley.

  He wondered how many had fallen here. He wondered why they had chosen this gate as their final ground.

  And then he saw the tracks leading north, and his heart swelled despite his mind’s warning.

  Talmir did not see Kole Reyna off in person because he knew he would regret letting him go.

  Now, the guilt that had burned at his center had morphed, questions about whether or not he should have allowed the Ember to leave replaced by those demanding to know why he had not done it sooner.

  Looking out over the roiling black waters of the Dark Kind, Talmir knew he had chosen right. He knew that, no matter how brightly Reyna may have burned, all fires would drown in the face of this darkness. Had he not sent him north, the questions would have haunted him unto his dying breath. The more he thought, however, the more he knew that questions over what the Embers would find might do the same.

  In any case, he was resolved not to die. At least not while his city bled.

  Talmir stood on the parapets and looked out over that black sea. The Dark Kind still attacked in mass, but the alleys and trenches were soaked with pitch and oil, the fields burning in defense of the city. Any of the sorry creatures lithe enough to crest the wall were dispatched in short order. But the defenders were only men. And men tired.

  Whenever the Captain needed a morale boost, he would cast his gaze to the north, where First Keeper Garos Balsheer stood vigilant before the stonework, his broad arms soaking in the glow of his brazier.

  Of the Corrupted, Talmir had taken close account of them. While they still approached in a fervor, their bodies had lost much of their substance, their shoulders sagging, chests sunken. Their maws hung ever open as they slogged forward and their black skin cracked and peeled. They seemed to be unending, pouring out of the trees in an endless stream that would make the River F’Rust blush.

  Hearth’s defenders were stronger of body and mind, but the sickbeds had been overflowing for days. Talmir did not know how many soldiers he had lost, but it was too many. He thought of sending for aid from the south, but he knew it was folly, knew that if he were in the position of Tu’Ren and Doh’Rah Kadeh, he would be loathe to send his own to certain death. The Dark Kind would find them soon enough, if they hadn’t already.

  How many arrows did they have left? How many casks of oil?

  “You going to count the rain drops as well?”

  Garos regarded him through half-open lids beneath a half-tilted helm.

  “I really have a counting face?”

  “A man has a face for everything,” Garos said, looking out over the swarm. “Long as you know the man. Women have two faces for everything, and a man can never know both.”

  The hulking warrior bent and stretched, his groans swallowed in a small cacophony of creaks and cracks. Talmir morbidly wondered how much of the miniature concert emanated from the Ember’s armor and how much betrayed the war between tired bone and sinew. The thought that even Garos was beginning to wear down under the steady onslaught was disconcerting, especially with his brazier so near.

  The First Keeper likely guessed the direction of Talmir’s thoughts, as he replaced his strained look with one of the usual bravado.

  “To tell you the truth,” Talmir said, turning toward the field, “I hadn’t noticed the rain until now.”

  “It’s too big a thing for you to notice, I suppose.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re a man of detail, Captain,” he said. “Sometimes the big picture becomes lost.”

  Talmir regarded him.

  “And the big picture is rain?” Talmir asked. “I could be excused for thinking the siege to be more …” he swept his hand out.

  “Pressing?” Garos supplied. He was adjusting the straps on his plate armor, an early model from the same metal smiths Talmir had contracted for Kole and Misha. The First Keeper’s was less flexible than theirs, but unyielding as the walls upon which they stood, much like the man himself.

  “Pressing. Yes.”

  A skirmish along the South Bend had been quelled, the soldiers there now falling back into the steady rhythm of poking down at their attackers with rod and spear.

  Talmir surveyed the broken field before the gate, his eyes picking out movement among the wreckage. He tensed, fearing another Night Lord come crashing through the rock-strewn earth. He relaxed when he picked out the diminutive form of a sorry ghoul crawling amidst the char, its progress slow but unerringly forward.

  “You’ve got to admire their determination, if nothing else,” Garos said.

  Talmir could not bring himself to smirk.

  “Never thought I’d live to see the day where I longed for the unthinking beasts we fought in the Dark Months.”

  “Don’t think there’s all that much going on in that one’s mind, Captain.”

  “No,” Talmir allowed. “And even still.”

  “Aye.”

  And Talmir knew the Ember felt it as well. The defenders of Hearth had taken to calling them various names: ghouls, creeps, shades, Corrupted. It all meant the same thing: these had been men and women once. Deep down, they still were.

  The occasional ting of water had increased to a steady patter, painting the white stonework something closer to gray. A thought occurred to Talmir.

  “When was the last time we had rain?” he asked.

  “Ah,” Garos huffed. “Now you’re back on the point.”

  The older man looked toward the sky and Talmir followed his gaze.

  “Notice anything different up there?” Garos asked.

  The sky was still dark enough to feel like the beginnings of dusk or the hunting hours of early dawn. And yet, the clouds were rougher, more patched and less solid. The black was now streaked with gray. It was a silent battle between ashen smoke and swirling vapor.

  “Haven’t had steady rain since the day the dark came back,” Garos said.

  “Sister Gretti told me the clouds were unnatural things.”

  Garos shrugged.

  “The stuff of Sages,” he said, as if no further explanation were needed. Perhaps it wasn’t.

  Could the dark be breaking?

  Talmir rarely dared to hope, but something was happening up there, something that was disturbing the unnatural storm in favor of one from the skies above. The hissing sound picked up as the rain increased, burning up as it touched down on the Ember’s skin next to him.

  “I don’t think those things will fancy a shower in their current state,” Garos said. “Otherwise why cover the sky in the first place?”

  “To block out the sun, I’d guess.”

  “They don’t burn up any more or less readily in my flames than anything else,” Garos said, unconvinced.

  “The sun is a whole other fire. Magic’s a strange thing, especially that which was taken from the World rather than gifted by it.”

  “Magic.”

  Garos heaved an offering of spit over the walls, his bullet landing within splashing distance of the crawling thing beneath them. If it noticed, it paid no more heed to that than anything else as it reached the rough-hewn stones at the base of the gate and started climbing.

  The Ember placed his palm on his stone brazier, the heat building in the atmosphere around him as he drew it in.

  “If only we had mo
re,” Talmir said.

  “More what?”

  “Landkist. Embers in particular.”

  Garos paused.

  “You give thanks for gifts,” he said. “You don’t lament their absence, only what you might’ve done to bring it about.”

  “And what might that be?” Talmir asked a bit more forcefully than he had intended.

  “We left the desert,” Garos said, his tone fatherly and without judgment. “We never went back.”

  The sound of falling pebbles announced the presence of the climber, its brows furrowed in hate or pain. A bowstring went taught, the sound of stretching yew grating on Talmir’s fraying nerves.

  He held up a hand.

  “Don’t waste the shaft, soldier,” he said without turning and the bow relaxed.

  Garos placed a hot palm on Talmir’s shoulder. He could feel the heat through his armor.

  “Don’t pay any attention to me, lad,” he said. “It’s true our people were stronger in the bosom of the desert, but we weren’t strong enough to stop this darkness then, otherwise we’d still be there. Our Ember King fled and took his people with him. This war was a long time coming. Everything up to now has just been testing. Don’t know how I know, but I do.”

  The climbing thing had left gouges in the stone that marked its steady progress. Flakes of black skin had peeled from its fingers, leaving the tips red with fresh gore. They could see bits of white flesh through the cracking mask on its face, which was now soaked through with the falling rain. As it drew closer, they saw the angled teeth and the pale tip of a sharp-angled ear that revealed it as one of the Faey, the only one Talmir could recall having seen amongst the horde thus far. He could not help but wonder who she had been, and he was doubly resolved to ensure that none of his soldiers would suffer the same fate.

  It seemed that the Sentinels needed to be close to affect their magic. So far, none had strayed from the trees to the west, making it impossible to guess their number.

  “I’m tired,” Talmir said, low enough so that only Garos could hear.

  Garos grunted.

  “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “she looks dog tired herself.”

  The Ember lifted his great Everwood staff overhead and the air around them grew hot and liquid. The spiked iron ends took on an amber glow.

  “Thing I’ve always loved about fire,” Garos said as he sent his staff into a slow spin, “so long as you feed it, it’ll never run out on you.”

  “Aye to that,” Talmir said, the familiar stone encasing his heart.

  The butt of the staff came down just as the Faey’s head crested the rise, and the angry, sorry visage exploded in sparks that erased the gore, the singed corpse falling away to join the rubble below.

  Talmir was not often accused of being an optimist, but one could be forgiven when standing beside the might of Garos. He drew his sword, curved and folded steel that stood just a pair of hands below his full height. It was an heirloom from his hero father he had never grown into. He signaled the archers along the North Walk and the South Bend alike.

  A streak of lightning split the sky to frame Talmir in a moment that could have been carved into the cavern walls of the northern deserts, his father’s sword lighting up like a rod. He slashed down and the miniature comets streaked out onto the field for the tenth time that day.

  Talmir grinned an animal grin, all full of teeth, his face tightening against the lashing rain, which now came down in buckets.

  This is where we turn it all around, he thought. The sky is reclaiming its domain from the dark, and we’ll follow suit.

  His soldiers took up a cry for the Emberfolk and resumed their slaughter with a gusto that would have disturbed Talmir had it not been exactly what he wanted from them, what he needed from them. The creatures below seemed to respond to the emotional spike, hurling themselves at the walls with renewed vigor, skin flaking away like wet ash. More climbed the gate only to be smashed by the god’s lantern that was Garos’s staff.

  Talmir was about to add his lungs to the chorus along the South Bend when a voice like a flute lilted up from the stairs behind him.

  “Captain Caru!”

  Talmir spun to see Jakub standing at the top, two guards huffing as they caught up with him. They turned sheepish expressions toward the Captain as he stared balefully. The boy had apparently tossed out the satin shirt Rain Ku’Ral had provided for him and replaced it with his usual rags, and Kole Reyna’s hound was at his feet, framing herself between the boy and his would-be captors.

  “What is it, Jakub?” Talmir asked gruffly.

  “I came to help,” the boy said in a tone that suggested Talmir was denser than the walls on which he stood for asking. That earned a bark of laughter from Garos that was well timed with the crack of a splintered skull as another enthusiastic climber met its end.

  Talmir edged closer and squatted down with a sigh. He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder, setting his blade down across the stones with the other. The hound watched him intently but made no move to intervene.

  “I put you in a position to help at the Bowl,” Talmir said. “You were to look after the girl from Last Lake.”

  “The one that Kole burned,” Jakub said.

  “Yes,” Talmir said with a swallow. “That one.”

  “She doesn’t need looking after. Her brother won’t let anybody touch her. Only the Faeykin.”

  Talmir sighed again, trying to keep his emotions in check.

  “He sounds like someone that might need looking after as well.”

  Jakub’s frown deepened, if that were possible. He had a gift for mixing suspicion into nearly every face he made. All of them Talmir had yet seen were of the same mould, but what an expansive mould it was.

  “He’s a coward,” Jakub said, his decision made. He crossed his arms as Talmir rocked back, brows rising.

  “Taei Kane, a coward?”

  Jakub nodded.

  “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “He won’t come out to fight,” Jakub said, accusation dripping.

  “His sister is hurt badly,” Talmir said. His patience was wearing thin. “Besides, this is not a time for judging others. Does Karin know where you’ve run off to? Creyath?”

  Another shrug.

  Talmir nodded. Another climber lost its head in a flash of heat that momentarily dried the skin and armor of all atop the gate. The din of battle intensified to the south, the discordant sounds bouncing off of the Talmir’s skull as he grappled with a child’s problems—unsuccessfully.

  He put a hand to his forehead.

  “Listen, Jakub. It’s not safe here.”

  “It’s not safe anywhere.”

  “Hearth is safe.”

  “Nowhere is.”

  Talmir looked into the boy’s dark eyes. Really looked. After a time, he nodded to the guards and tried his best to ignore Jakub’s screaming protests as they ripped him away from the gate.

  “Caru!”

  It was Garos.

  “What is it?” Talmir asked, running up beside him. He craned his neck to look down before the walls. There were several creatures making their way up one precarious handhold at a time, but not so many as to cause him alarm, never mind the Ember guarding the top.

  “Their faces.”

  Talmir looked closer. The sight before him, coming clearer with each struggling reach, was enough to make his skin crawl. The black masks had begun to fall away in the wash. They looked horrible, the gray skin of death mixed with the rot of decay, flesh peeling and purple with frozen blood. Others looked fresh and powdered as though they were slumbering in moving shells not their own.

  Garos nudged him on the shoulder and Talmir looked toward the South Bend. He heard the gasps and cries and saw the horror etched onto his soldiers’ faces. How soon bravery and bloodlust could turn to terror.

  It seemed that sinking was the only feeling Talmir had time for these days, the former rush having all but gone out of him like a blown mat
ch. The fear and disgust grew along the wall like a living thing, a parasite nestling inside the hearts of his soldiers.

  “Jakub!” Talmir called, rushing to the top of the stair.

  To his relief, the guards had only managed to drag him to the bottom, the hound barking as the boy scraped along the stones and tried to root himself in place.

  “Let him go,” he said, and they did, sharing confused and annoyed glances.

  “I have a job for you after all,” Talmir said, crouching down as the boy reached the top of the steps in bounding leaps, the hound following after.

  Talmir pointed to the north, where the snaking white walls gave way to quartz cliffs. There was a tunnel carved into them that burrowed up to the towers at the crest.

  “Run to the white cliffs. Find me Dakken Pyr and his men, and bring them here. And hurry, Jakub.”

  The boy was off at a sprint before he had finished.

  Talmir closed his eyes and breathed long and deep, loosening and tightening his grip on his father’s blade. He rose, spun toward the south and walked with measured steps.

  It could not be said that Talmir was all pessimism. As he walked the white walls, he knew the elders that had seen them built had been correct. The walls of Hearth would never fall.

  Its people, however, were doomed.

  Luckily, they stumbled upon the tracks before the storm did. When the clouds finally opened, they did so with a sudden fury, the lashing rain making hissing pans out of the Embers’ hot metal suits. The shallow depressions they followed turned to tiny pools, which were soon lost in the wash, indistinguishable from the muck that was all the northern Valley counted as pasture.

  “What I wouldn’t give for the rocky fields of Hearth,” Misha said as her boots squelched through the sodden terrain.

  As was often the case since their meeting, she was annoyed at Kole, although this time she had the decency to blame it on the elements. For the early part of their trek, she had used bursts of heat to dry the land they crossed in order to make the tracking easier. Soon enough, they had discovered other tracks. These were unmistakably human in origin, but they were lurching and accompanied by scores and scratches. The Embers were not the only ones following the Rivermen, and that had put an end to the Misha’s flares. Kole did not want them walking into an ambush.