The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “Shifa does the finding,” Kole said in good humor. “Jenk does the calling.”

  They came to a shallow bowl in the earth ringed by thinner trees. Shifa stood rigid, clawing at a space in the center of the bowl where the nettles had seemingly been piled into a soft bed. Jenk stood over her, frowning down at the hound’s work.

  “Seems we’ve come upon their resting place,” Jenk said as Baas drifted down lazily into the basin. The Rockbled eased the worrying hound out of the way with a gentleness that always astounded Kole and touched his fingers into the dirt. He closed his eyes. Kole, Linn, Misha and Jenk watched while Shifa circled him, tail wagging excitedly.

  “The weight of a man,” Baas said as if in a dream. He nodded slowly. “They were here, and recently.” He withdrew his fingers and then something changed in his face. He pulled them back sharply, as if he’d been burned, and looked from his stained hand to the piece of ground he’d examined. His tension clued Shifa in and she switched from quick-clipped barks to a loud and resounding baying as she pawed at the tiny holes where the Rockbled’s fingers had dug their grooves.

  “Reyna?” Misha asked, looking from the hound to Kole. Jenk and Linn shared a look that mirrored Kole’s concern.

  “She only makes that sound when the Dark Kind are near,” he said, sliding on the loose nettles down into the basin. He knelt beside the hound and stilled her with his presence and his touch, then looked to Baas, who was turning his hand over, seemingly searching for something the others couldn’t see.

  “The Dark Months are a ways off,” Jenk said, but that didn’t stop them peering into the maze of trunks and branches for signs of barbed tails or red-eyed Sentinels. Kole shivered as he remembered the Corrupted that had come against the walls of Hearth and that he had torn through like a flaming tornado in the fields where he’d scorched the white stones black. Dark Kind wearing the forms of men from his lands and those beyond.

  “Not so far,” Baas intoned. He sounded as if he was in a trance, but information was not easily pried from one of the Rivermen, even one they had counted friend for some time and ally for longer. They watched him expectantly. Eventually, he moved his stone-gray eyes from one to the next. “I felt shadows,” he said, shaking his head before Linn could get her question out. “Not the girl. These were different. Violent and strange.”

  Kole stood and met Baas’s stare. The Rockbled seemed cowed, which had Kole nervous. “I never took you for a Seer,” Kole said, frowning.

  Baas seemed only now to realize what he had said. He looked at his hands as if they belonged to a stranger. “I saw …” he started and then stopped. “I felt them. Shadows with red hearts. They were close.” He cast about. “But,” a frown, “I do not think they were here.”

  “The lands have been strange ever since we left the Emerald Road,” Jenk said. “They’ve grown stranger still.” He looked them over and settled on Shifa, who now seemed eager to continue on. “We’ve all seen it. Too-long shadows and a strange flickering in the half-light before dawn and dusk.”

  Misha looked frightened while Linn only hardened.

  “I thought it the work of a tired mind,” Kole admitted and the others nodded. He followed Shifa up out of the bowl and thought he could see an end to the patchwork of trees, just as Linn had said.

  He turned back to them. “The Dark Months are coming again, and soon. And I’d guess that whatever you saw,” he nodded to Baas, “the Eastern Dark has his black hands all over it.”

  “Reinforcements,” Linn said, her voice sounding like a premonition. She swallowed as Misha shot her a questioning look. “Reinforcements for his war with the last.”

  “The Witch of the North is mighty?” Baas asked.

  “As mighty as any of the others,” Jenk reasoned. He smiled over the growing worry. “At least we’ve got our own with us.” He smiled at Linn and she returned it, shakily. There were no secrets left among them, not after what they had seen her do, which was decidedly more than Kole or the others managed against the Sage of Balon Rael, who had used their own powers as a means to increase his own. “And four Landkist to spare.”

  Jenk moved off, brushing by Kole and flaring his heat in a way Kole took for encouragement. Jenk’s fire was always gentle. It was dry and stung like the kiss of the summer sun.

  Kole tossed a look back at the others and then followed after Jenk. Shifa bounded along the trails, always first to test them out, intent upon their secrets and ways.

  As he walked, Kole replayed some of the sights he had dismissed out of hand in the previous days. The land they traveled had been strange, no doubting, but he had glimpsed shapes at the edges of his sight. Trees that weren’t really there and eyes watching from shadows they wrapped themselves in like coiling snakes. Dangers as real as any in the teeming lands they walked, but from another place. Dangers normally reserved for the Dark Months.

  He felt a bite in the breeze that must have come down from those high places Linn had seen, and shivered despite the warmth his blessed blood afforded him.

  It was the air that struck Iyana most as they broke the strangely linear barrier between the yellow flats and the black plains. She stopped where the crusted sand mixed with the darker soil underfoot, closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. There was water on the breeze, even if she couldn’t quite taste it. Even if she couldn’t quite see it.

  “Feels like home,” a voice said behind her. She turned to see Karin. He smiled, but his eyes hadn’t lost that tired, sad look that was only the barest reflection of Captain Talmir’s, who had seen his greatest and oldest friend laid low by the power of the World Apart in the dunes to the northwest.

  “Almost.” Iyana smiled back. She nodded toward the south, where the black peaks that had always seemed so distant to her in the Valley now appeared modest.

  She felt the strange buzz as Ceth passed her by without so much as a backward glance. The rest of the red- and gray-sashes followed him, though she knew he wished they would not, just as the Valley caravan followed Talmir. The children they had collected in the caves to the north flitted from rider to wagon, touching everything and marveling at all the new sights.

  Iyana smiled watching them, even as she swallowed down the pang at seeing Talmir take up the rear, his silver sword hanging free of its scabbard by his side. They had washed and rested for several days beneath the dripping stalactites of Pevah’s adopted home after the battle in the west, but none of them were completely clean. Not yet. She hoped putting as much distance between them and those dry desert dunes as possible would help in some small way, even as she knew the scars would never fully heal.

  “We did well, Iyana,” Karin said, following the direction of her gaze. “I know it may not seem it, now. But we did well.”

  The two had taken to walking along with their new companions, while the soldiers—those remaining—and merchants of the caravan rode their horses. The animals scented the same air as she and the same water on it. Their pace quickened even as their riders appeared languid and worn.

  “Did we?” she asked as they watched the wagon trundle past. They had thought the abandoned thing destroyed, but found it half-buried beneath the slow and sandy waves of the north, where the gray slabs rose out of the white flats, and where Iyana had first discovered her fear of Sen, another figure lost before his time to the war—or game—of Sages. Now it bore their macabre treasures, their glorious dead.

  “Whatever you and Pevah did,” Karin continued, “you weakened him. Weakened him enough for it to matter, I think.”

  Iyana should have taken comfort in the words, but all she could do was swallow down the latest geyser of acid guilt that threatened to burn a hole in her throat.

  “What if he’s right?” Iyana asked, speaking the question aloud before she had thought to give it voice. Captain Talmir eyed them with a wasting kindness tinged with worry. As though he was a shepherd and they his flock, he wonde
red why they dallied, but not enough to stop and ask. They were not in such unfamiliar lands, now.

  “The Eastern Dark, you mean?” Karin asked. The two followed Talmir, and Iyana could not help but watch the black charger that walked beside him without a rider. The captain would not have forbidden any from riding Creyath’s noble steed, but none had asked, and none had wanted to burden the animal so—or the captain with having to pretend he didn’t mind.

  “Ray Valour, he said his name was,” Iyana said. It was still strange to her, to give a name to something or someone that had been the longest, deepest shadow to the Emberfolk. The great enemy in all their tales stretching back to the desert days—the days they had left behind and then gone searching for again. The days they now brought with them back into the Valley core.

  Karin spat, and Iyana thought he looked like Kole in the moment.

  “He could have laid Pevah low during their fight,” Iyana reminded him. “He could have ended the fight before it had even begun.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Karin argued. “Pevah had his tricks of time. And then there was you.” He frowned and moved his hands in a vain attempt to articulate, but gave it up soon enough. “Whatever you did.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I saw something, Karin.” Her voice changed even as she worked to keep it level. He heard, and his concern shown plain. It reminded her of the way Linn used to look at her. For once, she didn’t feel a rousing, bubbling anger at the look, only a wistful sense of loss.

  “When you,” another miming gesture, “tugged on his tether, he showed you his illusions—”

  “It was no illusion, Karin,” Iyana said, her certainty no surprise to him. They said she reminded them more of Mother Ninyeva by the day. She was beginning to believe them. “I saw the World Apart. I was in that hateful place, or between it and our own. And he was with me.” She turned her eyes on him and tried to keep the glow from them. “He pulled me from the shadows, Karin. Ray Valour or the Eastern Dark. Whatever his name is, he pulled me up from the depths and brought me back to myself.”

  Karin made as if to speak. He settled for a small sigh and a shake of his head instead.

  “You think he’s right to hunt down the other Sages, then?” Karin asked, his voice going cold.

  “Isn’t that what Kole’s after?”

  “Kole isn’t hunting them,” Karin said, knowing it was a lie. “He’s hunting the one who is. T’Alon Rane, our absentee king.” He turned to her. “Remember?”

  “I do,” Iyana said, letting the implication linger. “In any event, Linn is with him.”

  Karin nodded but said no more.

  “I don’t know if Valour is right,” Iyana said after a time. “But I know that he believes himself to be. Whatever he’s doing, he believes the World will be lost if he doesn’t succeed.”

  Now Karin couldn’t help but show his frustration, though Iyana knew it wasn’t directed at her.

  “This is the Sage who unleashed the Dark Kind on us a generation ago,” he said, fighting to keep his voice down, though they were some distance from the others. “Corrupted his brother and our guardian after sending the Night Lords for us. The White Crest said it,” Karin said, sounding exasperated. “He said he meant to strengthen his Embers for the coming war. We were never anything but a last resort to him.”

  “And one he knows can never work,” Iyana said. “It’s why he left us to wither. It’s why he’s turned his eyes on the others of his kind.” She sighed and looked up into the sky. Gray clouds swirled overhead and the sun was already beginning to dip, too early for this time of year. Ket had been the first to remark on it, and though Talmir had waved the thought away, it had struck the rest as true enough, and more evident the farther east they got. “Whatever’s coming,” she said, “Valour thinks it’s well beyond us. He thinks it’s well beyond him. That’s why he’s trying to stop it coming in the first place, by whatever means necessary.”

  She tried to meet Karin’s eyes, but she had upset him. He tried not to show it, keeping focused on the road ahead.

  “If the greatest of the Sages fears the power of the World Apart, what are we to do in his stead?” she asked, earnest.

  “Endure,” Karin answered without missing a beat. “As we always have.” He stopped and Iyana stopped with him. Karin had his hands balled into fists at his sides. He seemed angry, and then he squeezed his eyes shut tight as though willing it away.

  “Before we began tangling with these gods made real, and before your visions of a place we’ve only known as a harbinger, we fought, Iyana. First against our neighbors in the Valley we tried to steal, and then against the horrors that other realm sent at us with increasing rage and violence.” He paused and scanned from east to south, fixing on the black peaks. “At first, we asked why. Of course we did. Who wouldn’t? But now that we have answers,” he shook his head, “a part of me wishes we did not. It seems answers these days only call up more questions.”

  He met her stare again and held it.

  “Sages and Ember kings,” he said, recalling that long-ago conversation in the Long Hall, the one after Kole had slain the Corrupted ape on the borders of Last Lake. “What is it but a great game in which we’re the sacrifices?”

  Iyana made as if to speak, but Karin held up a hand to stay her.

  “We’ll fight, Iyana. Whatever’s to come, we’ll fight. Just as Creyath Mit’Ahn fought, just as I have no doubt my son and your sister and all their valiant companions will fight, in vain or otherwise.” He stepped closer to her and laid a hand on her shoulder, and his look softened some. “Your visions can help us, Yani,” he said, “but you found your own truth out among those dunes and wind-blown sands, didn’t you?”

  She swallowed.

  “There comes a time to fight,” Karin said, his voice steady and strong as she knew him to be. “We need you now more than ever. The Valley needs you. Ceth and his wanderers need you.” He smiled. “The World may hang in the balance, it’s true. But think of your world, Iyana. You may not be an Ember, but you are of the Emberfolk. You are of the Valley. And the Valley is where we’ll make our stand. Or it’s where we’ll fall.”

  Ominous as the words were, they filled Iyana with a stony comfort. She had known it. Deep down, she knew she couldn’t affect whatever events the Sages and her sister and would-be brother were involved in half a world away. But there was still plenty she could do. Plenty she had to do.

  “One fight is as important as the next,” she said, and Karin smiled. She went to move off, but he gave her shoulder a squeeze and turned her back. Seeing his look, she felt a swell of concern.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Maybe nothing,” Karin said, struggling to meet her eyes. “It’s just, I can’t help but feel a twinge when you say the name ‘Valour,’” he said, seeming shamed to say it. “Take care with it when we’re home, Yani. To us, he has always been ‘The Eastern Dark,’ and I suspect he always will be, no matter what ends he finds or brings about, for good or ill.”

  “I understand,” Iyana said.

  “Would that we had Shifa the hound to keep us all together,” he said, noting how far the caravan had got. Iyana chuckled. “We should be into the gap by nightfall.”

  “Coming soon,” Iyana said, hating the dread it called up in her that she had only just managed to dispel. Karin said nothing, but she could see by his bearing that he had taken her meaning well enough.

  As the ground grew less solid and more pleasantly soft underfoot, Iyana examined the black plains they had crossed weeks before in what now seemed another life. She heard a crow cawing and tried not to think on the swarm that had come against the Valley caravan. Instead, she picked out the lone hill that separated west from east and remembered saying her goodbyes to Linn and Kole and, yes, Shifa the hound on its promontory. To the northeast, the great plateau called Center rose, a thicket of the talles
t trees the World had ever known.

  She wondered if they were still beneath its branches, or if they had come out on the other side, if there even was one. She wondered if they had found T’Alon Rane and his dark companions, and if they had, what sparks their meeting had sent up to challenge the stars. If it was anything like what she had witnessed in the west, out at the Midnight Dunes, she guessed the whole of Center would remember their coming unto the ending of the World, however near or far that was wont to be.

  They made camp along a small stream, the rainwater having carved a soft path through the black soil from north to south, where it must join with the raging River F’Rust beyond the southern gap. There were no more strangers among this company, even if few knew the names of their new companions, and Iyana was glad to see it.

  The red-sashes and the gray stood and stared out as the Valley soldiers set their watches and arranged their bedrolls. Talmir organized the lighting of a fire and the children followed him, delighting in his sense of purpose and command. Karin took Jes and Mial out ranging, though it was nothing but flat for leagues all around. Iyana guessed it was as much to keep them occupied as him. Ket found a place on the edge of camp and went through his forms. Though he had lost a hand in the deserts, his silver blade made streaks in the space between the starlit sky and the ashen plains.

  Looking over the twin companies become one, Iyana felt a pang as she remembered Sen, Verna and Courlis. Four Faeykin had set out from the Valley core, and only one was set to return. She remembered the look of victory on Sen’s face as he had died, struck down by an arrow shot from a friendly bow. She tried to keep that memory fresher than the rest she had of him.

  “We will be welcome?”

  Iyana gave a start as Ceth settled down next to her. He did not sit on a cloth or bedroll and his gray-white robes were stained with a mix of soil and soot.

  “In the Valley?” Iyana asked. She kept her voice light, asked the question as if it were silly but not foolish. Ceth only regarded her steadily, as humorless as ever and yet somehow more kind than he had been before. Or perhaps she had simply grown used to his specific brand of stoicism. “We were all strangers there, once,” she said and Ceth gave the slightest of frowns.