The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  But Ray Valour knew something of the old arts. Shadow had never seen Rane move as such. The Ember had been all speed and raw power, his palms burning away everything before him, his very rage the only armor he needed.

  The Sage might not have full control of the Ember’s deep reserves, nor the mastery over his fiery art, but he had a dancer’s poise. He hooked one glowing palm under the Landkist’s armpit and twisted just out of the killing path of the lower blade. And then he took her skyward and slammed down with a force that sent a crack racing from the struggling pair under Shadow’s feet.

  The Landkist bucked and strained, spitting as the Sage worked to hold her. His palms glowed like sunset and his eyes shifted from purple to red. The Blue Knight seemed the stronger. She began to edge the Sage’s hands away, and Shadow took another step toward them, swallowing to know that, if she didn’t intervene, either the knight would kill her next, or the Eastern Dark would for not helping him see the task done.

  He opened his palms and poured the fire into that blue-and-gold visage, and while the Landkist writhed silently at first, Shadow saw the armor that glittered along the rest of her shimmer and then shatter like glass.

  And then the screaming came.

  As soon as the fire touched the skin beneath, the Sage pulled it back and quenched it. He stood and stepped back and let the woman roll away, clutching her hands to her ruined face and sightless eyes. She cried with rage and Shadow swallowed at the tension as the Sage advanced on his quarry.

  She tried to crawl away like a child from a monster of nightmare, and when the black ridge behind blocked her path, she grimaced through the smoke that drifted up from her bubbling features.

  “You had trouble with me, Dark One,” she hissed through a half-ruined voice that sounded like she gurgled water as she spoke. Or blood. “You cannot hope to beat the Frostfire Sage. She knows your ways.” She spat some of the blood that clogged her throat and pooled beneath her tongue, and Shadow found herself admiring her strength, even in the face of certain and terrible defeat. “You cannot win. You can—”

  He kicked her in the side, rolled her over with his boot and straddled her, pinning her down by the neck. Blackness fell on the shelf. Shadow stepped into it. It was like a globe of night, and she sniffed and scented the rot and ozone she knew well. The scent of the World Apart, or its power.

  “I think you are stronger than most of your kind,” the Sage said, curiosity touching his tone. “Are you not? A captain, perhaps? The captain? And so far from home.” He let up some of the pressure. “Why so far from home? Why not have lesser knights guard this place? Why guard this place at all?”

  At first, Shadow thought she wouldn’t answer, and then she smelled fresh burning and saw the Sage’s hand begin to glow anew. The Landkist gasped, tears streaming. Muscles flexed in agony along her ribs and writhing torso. “She’s expecting you,” she choked out.

  “Maybe,” Ray said, letting the heat go out of his palm. “But I don’t think you did. I think you were waiting for my friends. For those hunting me. It seems your tricks have kept us hidden after all, Shadow.” Shadow winced as the Sage addressed her, though he didn’t look in her direction. “You’re a hard one to find, even for me. Even with my scent a part of you. One of the many reasons to keep you close.”

  He squeezed and the Blue Knight’s struggles grew weaker and more ragged. Shadow felt a fleeting sense of pity.

  “She is expecting me,” he said. “That I believe. But I don’t think she knows quite where I am. Nor does she know quite what I’m doing.” He smiled, wicked and cruel. “But I know what she’s done.”

  Shadow thought it was a sneer of pain or hatred. Perhaps it was, but the woman also managed to choke out something close to a laugh. Valour slackened his grip, looking doubtful for a second.

  “She said you believed yourself to be a savior,” the Landkist said, her laughter taking on a touch of insanity. Valour looked shaken. “I know my queen has fallen far from what she once was.” She locked the one good golden eye on him as the milky one drooped and drifted. “After all you’ve done. After all you are.” She spat in his face, and the spray was thick enough to drip from his eyelids and chin.

  He squeezed, jaw clenched.

  The Landkist struggled for a short while and then was still, though Shadow could see life remained in her as the Sage withdrew his hand and stood looking down at her, chest rising and falling beneath his slashed armor.

  Valour stood there for a time, eyes closed and chin tilted up at the gray skies. The place looked strange of a sudden. They stood on a smoking black shelf as the wind whipped a violent mist about them, but the drifts of snow were still piled high on the next ridge. Already the shelf was frosting over, the small rivulets of water from the powerful duel slowing to a crawl. There was a hissing sound like a nest of serpents, and Shadow watched the vaporous sweat curl up from the shifting scales in the Sage’s armor.

  Shadow felt a grip that lesser beings might have experienced as the touch of fear as she looked from him to the naked blue form below him. In that moment, at least, all memory of T’Alon Rane fled. The figure standing before her was Ray Valour. More so, he was the Eastern Dark, the name he had earned above all others.

  The Landkist captain still breathed, but it was a ragged, pitiful sound. Her ribs bore pink streaks where the flesh had bubbled, and there was no sign of that strange, translucent armor she had donned, which seemed to have been made from her will alone. Her eyes were open, staring sightlessly, and after the excitement of the clash and the heat and passion of the killing she had done up above—a feeling that was only just beginning to recede—Shadow finally got around to wondering what her Sage was playing at.

  She took a step toward the Sage and Valour’s pointed ear twitched in her direction. He lowered his chin, exhaled with slow deliberateness and seemed to regard his vanquished foe with new eyes. Was that compassion she glimpsed beneath the surface, or just a cold nothing?

  “Did you leave any of the others alive?” he asked, not bothering to look in her direction.

  Shadow blinked up at the windblown shelf. Icicles were already reforming as the steaming water dripped down from the melting blanket there. “No.” She turned her eyes back on him. “Was I supposed to?”

  Valour sighed as if he were dealing with a child. He examined his hands, turning them over. “I suppose I should have made that clear,” he said. He said it distractedly. “Such power you have, Rane. And yet …” he let the thought drift, but Shadow thought she had an idea where he was going. He was unused to the Ember’s form and his power. He had brought some of his own art in, and Shadow was reminded of the strange and expert maneuver he had used to bring the Landkist down. Still, that had been a move of skill and not power. Skill would avail him little against another Sage. Only fire could help. Fire and darkness, and it seemed Valour did not yet trust his mastery of either.

  He began to pace around the prone Landkist, even lifting her shoulder from the black rock with the toe of his boot before letting it fall back down unceremoniously. “Clever thing,” he said. “Have you ever seen anything like it, Shadow?” She frowned. He was talking about the woman as if she were an animal—a thing to be studied. To him, perhaps she was.

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I knew of the knights. The Azuran Guard, they were called. Kept to themselves the last century and more, but I knew of them. Great in battle. Stoic unless pressed, and then vicious as scorpions in a pit. Still.” He squatted down and waved his hand over those sightless yellow-gold eyes, crooking his head. “There’s something more in this one. Something the rest have got in degrees, I think.”

  Shadow grimaced as Valour laid his hand on the woman’s shoulder and then snaked it forward, sliding it across her glistening skin until he pressed lightly upon the place above her heart. He closed his eyes and tilted his chin as he listened for something o
nly he could hear. After a time, the ghost of a smile broke the smoothness of his dark features, and he opened his eyes. Shadow saw a flash of amber that darkened into that familiar and sickly purple. She swallowed as he regarded her and stood.

  “A touch of black,” he said with a self-satisfied nod. He turned and scratched his chin as he examined the shelf and the relative flat of the sheer cliff. “This won’t do,” he said. “No. Others will be along in short order. I’ll need quiet. I’ll need concentration.”

  Shadow gritted her teeth and pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, determined not to aid him if she could help it. Unfortunately, she could not. He seemed to sense her tension and twisted back around. When his eyes fell on her, she felt the threat beneath and the nausea it called up.

  “I saw a cave nearby,” she said, nodding slightly toward the northeast. “Carved into a high place. Nothing much of a shelf on the outside, just a drop. Hard to reach. It was deep—”

  “Excellent,” he said. He bent down and snatched the Landkist by one blue wrist and pulled her up and over his shoulders, lifting her with ease, though she looked to be half again his weight. When he straightened, he seemed pleased with himself. He gave Shadow a wink that made her skin scrawl beneath her black shell. “They say the Rockbled are the strongest of the Landkist. I’ve no doubt.” He bent his knees and straightened, the bald, shining head of the woman lolling and jolting sharply as he did. “But the Embers have some stuff to them I never expected. Plenty of fire within that doesn’t need to be seen to have an effect of its own.”

  Shadow watched him with unconcealed hatred. His look shifted a bit as he recognized it.

  “Lead on,” he said, his tone flat. “Using Rane’s power to this extent requires much of me. I need rest. But first, I’ve something to attend.”

  “And what might that be?” Shadow asked.

  “We’ll soon have a guest,” Rane said, causing Shadow to settle into half a crouch. She scanned their surroundings—the shelf on which they stood and the neighboring cliffs and crags. “Not here,” Valour laughed. “I need to invite him. Preferably before this one comes to.”

  Shadow straightened and cast another glance at the blue warrior and thought that a slim possibility. She was as close to dead as you got without dying. Shadow had a keen sense for death. She had meted out plenty of it on her own, after all. This one wouldn’t last the night.

  Sensing Valour’s shifting patience, she took a step forward and leapt from the shelf, clearing a span three times her length and twice her height with ease. She did not slow as she heard the Sage land in the snow behind her, heavy with his burden, but rather raced through the windblown storm, leaving the whistling on the barren shelf behind. It would be covered afresh with white before the sun left them and the skies turned from gray to black.

  It was fully dark by the time they left the pyre. At least, as dark as it was ever wont to get in the city of Hearth. Iyana found that the unnatural brightness of hung lanterns and amber-lit windows stung her eyes. The desert had had its own sort of nighttime light, even apart from that bloody purple glow in the west, above the Midnight Dunes.

  Out there, the sky never turned black, but rather a deep blue like the ocean. Iyana remembered standing atop that sifting, sliding sand and watching the stars drift and flicker. It was as if she could see the whole of everything from there, and rather than make her feel small and unimportant, it had had the opposite effect.

  She smiled wistfully and wiped an errant tear that made a clean streak through the drifting smoke of Creyath’s last fire. She had not known the Ember well, but she had known him better than she ever could have before their trek and thought herself better for it. He had been a solid and sometimes stolid presence, but always there, immovable as any of the Rockbled and bright as a fallen star.

  He had died in a beautiful way, even if a part of her mind screamed that he had died in vain. What better way for an Ember whose name had built far beyond his time to go than facing one of the great powers from another world? Facing and bringing it down. Creyath Mit’Ahn would be remembered.

  Iyana had stopped looking at Captain Talmir during the silent ceremony. His hurt had been plain for all to see, but it stung her when she let her consciousness drift too close to his bright, moon-white tether. Talmir was as bold and brave as any man she had ever known, and though he did not seem to think it, he was doubly pure. Whatever he shared with the merchant Rain was complicated. Iyana could tell by the way the two hung about each other and drifted in other moments, but there was something between them. Something strong, and something she smiled to think upon.

  Tu’Ren walked not far behind her and Karin was their tailing shadow, but each was lost in his own thoughts. They left each other to the silence of reflection, and listened to the sounds of the city that was the beating heart of this Valley they called home. The streets of Hearth were never empty, and where before Iyana might have felt out of place away from the dirt roads and flatstones of Last Lake, now she felt a part of it.

  She caught sight of a group of red- and gray-sashes milling around a late-night street cook. He was tired, but managed to drum up some enthusiasm for potential buyers. When he realized they had nothing to trade, crestfallen would have made an understatement of his visage. Tu’Ren angled in their direction, and when the cook saw him, he waved him away grumbling and began handing out his grilled goat steaks and orange peppers with melted cheese.

  Iyana smiled at them as she passed, and some of the children who hadn’t fallen asleep in the arms of their minders waved at her excitedly, as if she were their aunt. As if she were one of them. The thought filled her with warmth, and she shared a bright and tired smile with Karin, who returned it halfheartedly.

  The merchant Kenta had arranged for them to stay on the lower level of his home, which was nested in a quiet corner on the northeastern side of town, away from the Red Bowl and the late-night sounds of shopkeepers, traders and others who filled it with preparation for tomorrow’s business.

  Tu’Ren sat in an old, cushioned chair before the cold fireplace and Karin leaned against the open doorframe while Iyana withdrew to a back room with a narrow cot. There were stacks of cleaned towels that still bore the stains of Kenta’s work, which relied on stitching and patching. Healing in the old ways. He was said to be good at it, and Iyana yawned and thought about how he might be a good man to learn from. No matter how powerful she got, there were some wounds only thread and needle could patch before her greenfire could do its deeper work, and her hands had not grown to be as steady as Linn’s nor as precise as Ninyeva’s had been.

  Iyana meant to change out of her dusty traveling clothes, but remembered she had left what little she had brought out into the deserts among the barrels and crates in the back of the wagon. She didn’t know where it was tonight and left it for one of tomorrow’s cares before she fell asleep.

  For a time, she slept fitfully. She heard the echoes of distant merriment—either the normal buzz of one of Hearth’s summer nights or the revelry of soldiers welcoming their own back into their hearts and jibes. She heard the first crackle of the fire Tu’Ren must have started in the foyer and smiled in her half sleep as she remembered how long it took him to prepare one in the old way, since he would never use his power to spark the blaze.

  And before she succumbed to sleep completely, she remembered the exchange she had had with Sister Piell, the milky-eyed Seer of Hearth, and one of the oldest figures in this Valley of theirs.

  “You have the eyes of one who has seen,” she had said, pulling Iyana away from the smoldering embers in the scorched field below the cliffs. The air had been shockingly cool away from the blaze and the heat of those gathered around it. Iyana had gripped her shirt more tightly about her, and Piell had draped a bony arm around her shoulders that radiated warmth despite its lack of weight.

  She had turned to face Iyana. She was as tall as she was, or as short, thoug
h Iyana could tell she had stood a full head or more taller in her younger years. It did not seem as though she should be able to make out much with those aged eyes, but they switched back and forth between Iyana’s own with an alert quickness.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding sagely. “You have seen, child.”

  “Lots to see out there,” Iyana said, biting her tongue as Piell twitched at her impatient tone. “Sorry,” she said, shifting her feet nervously. “I’m tired. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  “I can see that,” Piell said. She didn’t say it with any sort of anger, only a calm and steady knowing that went beyond her words. Iyana regarded her with growing interest.

  “Is there something you need to tell me?” Iyana asked. She tried not to make it sound like an accusation.

  Piell frowned. “I am entirely sure that I do,” she said, and then her look lightened a bit. “And I am entirely unsure of what it is.”

  Iyana laughed. Piell watched her with a soft smile, her milky eyes focusing and unfocusing as Iyana’s shoulders bobbed.

  “I saw something out there,” Iyana said. “I don’t know how to explain it. Not really. But I think I know what it means.”

  Piell nodded again, and Iyana did not think it was in a leading sort of way.

  The old woman cast a look back toward the fire and the few who still ringed it. Already Karin, Tu’Ren and most of the others were across the river, milling about and trying not to look as though they were waiting on her. Iyana felt her heart quicken as she remembered her earlier impatience and the dread those fell visions had called up in her. She did not want to feel that now. She did not want to think on it with her tired mind and in such company.

  “It’s not that I couldn’t have taught Gretti the true ways of Sight,” Piell said. Iyana frowned in confusion, but the old woman, while airy, did not seem to be drifting on random currents. She fixed on Iyana again. “You know Rusul, at the Lake, yes?”