The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  Talmir took his meaning, then checked to make sure none were asking his attention directly. The desert nomads had followed after the wagon and those who led it, lost pups in a new land, so Talmir left the market and made his way through more narrow and less crowded ways back toward the barracks. Even Jakub left him to it.

  He entered the mess hall and nodded at the aged wall hand who sat stirring some long-ago crusted stew, then took the creaking stairs up into his cool, shadowed chamber. He had to shoulder the door to get it to budge. The room inside was as bare and barren as ever. Motes of dust and ash flitted in the lonely beam of late afternoon sunlight that splashed its judgment on the stone floor.

  He moved past the bureau and the stand with its lone book he’d never bothered to read—some heirloom of a father who’d never bothered with it either—and sat on his bed. It felt warm and Talmir smiled despite his exhaustion. It might have been the work of the morning sun, but he thought his bed had been occupied the night before. He pressed his hand into the indent in the pillow and inhaled, imagining he caught her scent in the damp.

  He went to lie down and heard a scrape and ting as he kicked a metal bucket beneath the bed. Water splashed his ankles and he pulled off his boots, wrinkling his nose at the smell. He let loose a small laugh and pulled the bucket out from under the bed. She had scented it with muskroot. It was an earthy smell with a flowery finish, and he breathed it in deeply and imagined it was her, like fresh rain after a storm. Like dying leaves kicked up in the wind.

  Talmir knelt before the basin, leaning over. He didn’t realize until he saw the reflection staring back at him that he hadn’t removed the medal nor the chain that hung from his neck and now dangled over the surface of the clear water. There was no glow in the thing, now, and Talmir felt a mix of emotions wash over him as he watched it swing and listened to its faint and present hum. He had the sudden urge to rip it free and toss it into the dead ashes in the corner.

  Then he felt shame, and when he closed his hand over it, he remembered all it had done to protect him. When next he opened his eyes, he saw his face behind the Bronze Star. His light brown hair had been bleached a bit under the arid sun and now held white and blond feathers that clung in the dirt, sweat and grime he carried. He even thought he saw a bit of blood that the lake below the sands hadn’t managed to wash away entirely. He did not know if it was his own and did not want to think on it, just as he didn’t want to remember how he’d gotten the new scars along his shoulders and chest.

  He dashed the image by plunging his head beneath the surface. The bucket was deep enough and the barracks tower high enough that he may as well have been at the bottom of the salt lake to the south. Talmir screamed into the close depths and blew out a pittance of the rage he’d amassed. He shook with a fury unbecoming of the Captain of Hearth and cried like a child throwing a tantrum. He came up out of the surf he’d made with breath to spare, but he felt better, lighter and more free as he sighed and settled down onto his heels.

  A creak on the stairs had him turning, bleary-eyed, as he snatched a too-small cloth Rain had left for him on the end of his bed and used it to wipe away the bulk of his grime and the smell that went with it.

  “Come in,” Talmir said, more forceful than he intended.

  The brass knob turned from the outside and the door creaked open to admit a small piece of the bulk of the man leaning on the other side.

  Talmir showed him a smile.

  “Garos,” he said. “I’ve no false modesty before my men, least of all you. Come in, and don’t make me tell you again.” He finished his drying before he went to his drawers to fetch fresh clothes as the First Keeper of Hearth entered the chamber, washing it with the warmth of his presence and the pleasantry of his mood. “If I’d known you were there, I’d have foregone the towel and could have dried myself more thoroughly,” he said without turning as he strapped on the bracers he hadn’t worn since departing Hearth.

  “What, by rubbing against me like a cat?” Garos laughed. “No thanks.” And both men shivered at the image.

  “Such a range of moods out there,” Talmir said as he turned. Garos smiled to see him looking fresh and clean, and Talmir had to admit he felt a good deal more put together than he had before, at least on the outside.

  “How do you mean?” Garos asked.

  Talmir looped on a green belt with one hand and gestured toward the too-small window with the other. “The nomads,” he said. “They see the city with fresh eyes. They look around with wonder—awe in the little ones—as if it’s some mighty thing. Some kingdom fit for emperors and princes of old.”

  “Who’s to say it’s not?” Garos walked in front of the fireplace and kicked absently at the charred remnants. He winked at the pit and Talmir half expected the coals to ignite. He deflated like a child when they didn’t and Garos bellowed one of his quaking laughs. “You still think our fire works that way?” He wiped away tears that had already dissolved into mist. Talmir didn’t know if it was a tic or something he did to make others more comfortable in his hot presence.

  Talmir shrugged as he finished latching the buckle and began pulling on wool socks. There was already a chill to the air as the sun began to fall, and Talmir thought of the dunes—those that still stood—and the desert foxes that would only now be rousing their young to take the day’s milk before the night’s hunting.

  “Besides,” Garos said, returning to the earlier thread, “they don’t seem the only ones come back to us fresh-eyed.”

  “Fresh?” Talmir nearly scoffed, a sound that reminded him not pleasantly of Yush Tri’Az and Sister Gretti. “That’s not the word I’d use.”

  “Good,” Garos said without skipping a beat. “Because I used it.” He adjusted the bare covers on Talmir’s narrow bed and hesitated above it before thinking better of testing his bulk upon it. “You really should get nicer things,” he said, and before Talmir could say anything, he held his hands up and lowered them as if putting out a fire. “I know, I know. It’s just, you’re not the only one who frequents the place. Not sure what your back’s made of, but it’s got to be the most rigid stone this side of the Fork to sleep on that.”

  “I’m surprised the crows haven’t been at me yet,” Talmir said, adjusting the tuck of his dark brown shirt in a mirror that had seen better days, and long before he was born. Come to think of it, Talmir didn’t know of a single thing in the chamber that was truly his, outside of the clothes. Some mix of the captains and keepers before him, perhaps. Maybe a prisoner or two, kept during the Valley Wars when they didn’t have the stone or the workmanship for cells and bars.

  Now it was Garos’s turn to scoff. He sent some spit along with it, much to Talmir’s chagrin. “Bah.” Garos leaned on the dresser Talmir stood before. “Don’t look at me like that.” He leaned back at the hip and Talmir heard a nasty pop that sounded like a rope snapping. The Ember released a dramatic sigh of relief. “Those point-hatted, hook-nosed, book-keeping moneymongers haven’t been at you because Rain’s been at them, I reckon.”

  Talmir could have guessed as much. He nodded and added it to what was likely to be an exhaustive list of all the things he’d owe her for given his time away. “Do you know if she’s killed Gretti yet?” Talmir was only half-joking, but Garos shrugged.

  “Not something I’d know nor much care,” he said, squinting at paintings that hung on the wall and that had long since worn away to smudges of black ash on hide. “I assume Kenta would keep it from coming to that. Then again, he’s a clever one, and with a darker humor than most in the healing arts.”

  “He isn’t even Faeykin,” Talmir laughed and Garos eyed him, searching. Talmir waved it away. “We had a few along with us. They were … interesting,” he said, his voice dropping away as he remembered how they’d died. How all of them had. He felt guilty for making light of it, no matter the intent.

  “Didn’t see any of the green-eyes come back wit
h you,” Garos said, gravelly voice as gentle as it was ever like to get. “I assume they’re among those in that wagon pile? Save for the one; the girl from the Lake.”

  “Iyana Ve’Ran,” Talmir said, wincing.

  “Ve’Ran.” Garos nodded, recognizing the name. “Her sister—” “Yes,” Talmir said. “That one. And I can assure you, the little one’s just as strong, and in plenty more than bearing.” Garos nodded again and crossed his arms. He seemed impressed, if a bit confused. “I can say with a certainty that the Faeykin are much more than we’ve given them credit for. They can heal, yes, but…” Talmir’s head hurt just thinking about it. “So much more,” he nearly whispered.

  “Could’ve told you that after one run-in with the Faey Mother,” Garos said, and Talmir thought he suppressed a slight shiver. Talmir laughed to be polite.

  They stood there in a silence that stretched as the narrow beam of white afternoon light narrowed further still, until only a sliver of red-tinged dusk ran over their boots. It reminded Talmir of Misha Ve’Gah. He’d half expected her to be standing atop the gates, or else to have been too busy to bother. She was no stranger to loss, that one. Talmir had seen the closest thing the Third Keeper called a lover rent apart by a great bear in the very courtyard he’d just left. Garos’s thoughts seemed to be running similar roads. He shifted and cleared his throat.

  “You want to ask me,” Talmir said, and it felt like a weight of doom that hung about him as no Bronze Star ever could. He met the Ember’s eyes. “Ask.”

  “Was it worth it?” Garos asked without hesitation. His tone held no judgment, nor did his eyes, but he wanted an answer and he wanted it to be a certain way. A way Talmir couldn’t make it. Not now. Not with everything so fresh.

  “I suppose they’ll all want to know,” Talmir said, looking out at the sky the glare on the angled stones made it impossible to see. “I don’t know, Garos. That’s my answer for them, and I suppose that’s my answer for you.”

  He sighed and looked down at his boots before mustering the strength to look the other man in the eye once more. He did not see what he’d expected. No simmering anger, only melancholy. Only sadness.

  “In truth, I don’t know what I expected to find out there,” Talmir continued, finding the words quicker in coming and more plentiful than he had expected, now that the dam had cracked. “The secret of the Ember fire, perhaps? Our past wrapped up in our future?”

  “An ally,” Garos said. “An ally against the rest.”

  “There are no allies can fight against what’s coming,” Talmir said. When he met Garos’s stare again, he held it steady. “Not even the Sages.”

  Garos swallowed, but Talmir felt the heat in the chamber swell enough to bring beads of sweat to the surface of his skin. They smelled of muskroot with a touch of sand and horse.

  “You found him,” Garos said. He sounded almost reverent. Almost afraid. “You found the Red Waste himself. The one who sent our king south, and our grandfathers along with him.”

  “Aye,” Talmir said. “I found him. I knew him long enough to know what he had become, if not what he might have been.” He shook his head. “Listen to me. I sound as cryptic as any of the old birds we’re always going on about.” Garos laughed, but waited to hear more. Talmir obliged. “I saw him die in defense of us,” Talmir said. He nodded at the window again. “And in defense of them, those we’ve brought along with us.”

  “They are—” Garos started.

  “What we left behind,” Talmir finished. “Yes, I think so. Our cousins, maybe. Could be our sons and daughters.”

  “The ones wearing gray,” Garos said. Talmir knew he was taking pains to avoid sounding crass or unwelcoming, even to him, even in private. That was good. They had come a long way since the Valley Wars.

  “From the north,” Talmir said. “The far north.” He shook his head. “It’s all too much to tell now. Truth be told, I couldn’t tell it all myself because I don’t know it all.”

  Garos nodded his understanding, but he still looked like he’d been left wanting.

  “What happened out there, Caru?” he asked, and Talmir felt very young and very old at once, hearing the way he said it. “What happened with Mit’Ahn?” The Ember’s eyes were chimney stacks, throwing up twisting trails of salt vapor. It broke the thin shell Talmir had made around his heart as he’d watched the desert glass shatter beneath that fiery clash out on the white flats.

  “He died,” Talmir said, choking the words out. “He died, Garos. He may have died better than any of the heroes of yore. He died better than any to come. Better than you or I will. But he died.”

  Garos afforded him the respect or the pity not to ask the obvious question of ‘Why?’

  “When he fell,” Talmir said, “I flew straight past rage and into despair. I fell to my knees. You’d not have believed it if you saw, Balsheer. You’d not have believed my weakness. In the moment, and if there hadn’t been more work to be done to ensure too many others did not follow in Mit’Ahn’s wake, I’d have fallen on my father’s sword, and I’d have died thinking I didn’t even deserve that.”

  Garos opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. His eyes were clearer than they had been moments before, and now his face was tight with what Talmir could only guess was an anger he was trying to keep down. An anger at him, perhaps.

  “The journey back to the Valley seemed a long one,” Talmir continued, watching the red-orange shaft of light make its quickening retreat across the chamber floor. “And that wagon bounced along the whole way. I carried the guilt of it, and in some way, I know I will for the rest of my days.” He shook his head as he thought how best to say the next.

  “And then, something came over me as we passed back over the yellow flats and down into the basin of the closer north.” Talmir felt the ghost of a smile creep onto his face. “What would Mit’Ahn have said, seeing me tossing and turning beneath the stars, shouldering blame that was never mine alone and ignoring what we found? How saddened would he be? How angry? How disappointed, Garos, knowing that he had died in vain?”

  Talmir nodded, feeling the truth of the words he had been too afraid, too frozen to speak before.

  “We went,” Talmir said. “We went into the sands, and we gave as good a reckoning as we got. Better. Worse.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, now. What matters is what we took from it. And if all we took was the nomads you saw pass through that gate this afternoon, Creyath would count it a fruitful journey, and one worth taking again, no matter its cost.” Talmir put some fire into his stare. “But that isn’t all we took.”

  “And what else did we take from it?” Garos asked. There was no judgment in his tone. It was flat, overwhelmed or despondent. “What did we take, Caru, that will see us through the coming dark?”

  “I won’t pretend to know the way the World turns any more now than I did before,” Talmir said, “but I saw two Sages fight out there where the sky ended. I saw Landkist fight with them, against them and for them. I saw them rage and rail just as any of us do. I saw them triumph and fall. I saw them fear, Garos. And while it may not have counted for much other than saving our own skin and those of our newfound friends in the short term, I think it says much about the road we’re traveling now.”

  Garos screwed his face up and Talmir shook his head and sighed.

  “I know I’m rambling,” he said. “Iyana could tell it better. If I took comfort in seeing the Eastern Dark fear, in hearing his name spoken aloud,” Garos frowned at that but did not press, “she took something more. Much more. Something that could be the shining hope we’ve been looking for. Our light in the Valley, in any event. It is her we must gather around now, Balsheer. It is her light we must follow, if we’re to make it through this.”

  Garos examined him for a time. He wanted to be content, to be satisfied, but it seemed Talmir’s account had had something of the opposite effect.


  “There will be an end to it,” Talmir said. “To the War of Sages.”

  “Aren’t you afraid we’ll end with it?” Garos asked, sincere.

  “Of course I am,” Talmir said, but he didn’t feel afraid. He didn’t feel the cold and dread he had when he’d ripped the sky open with his father’s blade, the same one that leaned in its dusty corner now. He stepped forward and reached out, laying a hand on one of the Ember’s broad shoulders. “If we lose the coming war, we’re dead. Us, our children, our desert friends, the Faey, the Rivermen. All of it. But if we win, Garos. If we win, we’ll have an end of it. That is what we took from the deserts. That is what Iyana took. An end is coming. The World Apart is coming, and in full, unless Kole and the others can manage to stop it. Unless the Eastern Dark can right his wrongs in time—”

  “You speak of him as if he’s some hero, now,” Garos said, brushing Talmir’s hand from his shoulder. “The Eastern Dark has ever been our enemy. He meant to use us, they say. To use us to keep him safe against the dark he brought along with him from that other realm. There is nothing noble in him. There is nothing of redemption.”

  “No,” Talmir agreed. “No, there isn’t. But why do you think his tactics have changed? Why not gather what Embers and powerful Landkist remain in the World—and there are others, Garos—”

  “The Northman you brought back with you.” Garos nodded. “He’s got a sturdy presence about him. Solid.” He wrinkled his brow and Talmir smirked at how close he’d come to landing on the truth without any way of knowing.

  “The point is, the Eastern Dark has changed his ends because the ends have changed,” Talmir said. “That’s how Iyana put it to me when I was still too drunk off fresh grief and selfish guilt to listen. Now, I think I know what she meant. There’s a reckoning coming. He’s seen it, and he knows it’s not something he can ride out, as we have the Dark Months for all these years.”