The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  Iyana remembered the head of the Crows of Eastlake. She held no love for the woman, but she was made of stronger stuff than Iyana had thought as a girl. Rusul had helped to drag her from the broken wreckage of Ninyeva’s blasted tower when the White Crest had come calling with all his wind, light and fury.

  She nodded.

  “She sees more than her sisters, who see nothing,” Piell said, nodding to herself as she picked up on the thread more clearly, following it as a fisherman follows his line. “She stumbled on the old ways of Sight on her own, I think. I didn’t show her. That much is certain, and Ninyeva never bothered with those bloodier ways from the desert days.”

  Piell laid a hand on Iyana’s shoulder as she faced her fully, locked her in her gaze. “Your Sight is truer than mine, Iyana. It may even be truer than the Faey Mother’s before you.” Iyana blushed at the compliment and bristled at the seeming insult to her teacher. “You are of the Valley, little one. As much of the Valley as the Faey you plan to seek out.”

  Iyana swallowed and glanced behind Piell at the others. She saw Tu’Ren, Ceth and Karin watching from the corners of their eyes as they conversed. Ceth was led away by Kenta and a few of the desert soldiers, most of his people following along behind. He was their leader now, whether the Landkist wanted it or not.

  “I haven’t told anyone of that,” Iyana said. “In truth, I don’t even know—”

  “You know,” Piell said. “It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t. It doesn’t matter who believes you and who does not. What matters is what you’ve seen, and how much of it you believe.” She sighed and brushed an errant white strand from Iyana’s brow. “If you feel that speaking to the strangest folk in this Valley—perhaps in the World—will help you make better sense of things, then that is what you must do.” Her tone was not mocking, but the words left Iyana feeling decidedly less certain of her path, at least for the moment.

  “You believe in me?” Iyana asked.

  Piell smiled, and Iyana thought it was all the answer she would give. Instead, the old woman stepped aside and inclined her chin toward the dying fire. Only Captain Talmir and Rain stood before it, their backs to the rest. Their hands weren’t intertwined, but they leaned each on the other, knees bent and shoulders down.

  “Caru is not our leader—our Bronze Star—because he believes himself to be,” Piell said. “He is our leader because the people believe him to be. They have chosen him, even if they don’t know it. Even if they did not mean to.” She smiled like a mother might, gazing proudly at her grown-up son. “You see, Iyana Ve’Ran, it really doesn’t matter what you think or what you believe. What matters is what they believe.” She turned back toward her, and Iyana was nearly leaning in to hear her next words. She must have had a desperate look about her, but Piell didn’t seem to care. “They believe in you, Iyana. You don’t have to show them why.”

  They stood there in the windy silence as the dusk bled away into the first of the far reaches of night. Piell went to turn away and Iyana hooked her arm on the old woman’s elbow and helped her to cross the slick bridge over the sloshing foam of the trapped river below it.

  “It was a barren place,” Iyana said, picking up on some sharp and fleeting feeling that Piell had unearthed. It had a touch of melancholy and regret. “The desert, I mean. It was hot in the day and cold in the night. But it was beautiful. Full in its own way.”

  Piell nodded once and smiled. Her eyes shone. “All lands have their own beauty,” she said. “Even the land of death, I imagine.”

  Iyana paused and Piell gave her hand a parting squeeze before she struck off to the north and the warm comfort of whatever dusty home she kept. Iyana watched her fade into the ramshackle buildings and swallowed before joining the others.

  The images fled, and Iyana felt her heart quicken as she turned in her sleep, the calmer currents her thoughts had drifted on whipping up in a sudden frenzy. She could hear her own voice as if from a great distance, groaning in her disturbed and now-violent sleep.

  She was out on the black plains. The plains they had crossed in the days before that already felt so long ago. She was alone, with no Embers, captains or red-sashes for company. No stoic Landkist from the northern cliffs. She heard a great tearing that sounded like the snapping of trees or stones and wheeled to the east. She watched in horror as the night sky tore itself apart, opening a gash that drank in the stars and killed them.

  The stars exploded as they died, the bright, blue-white light of their bursting washing the horizon with a sickly glow. They were silent, but Iyana felt them screaming, and in all the lands she had never seen, she heard the voices of the World’s people carrying their wails and cries and last laments up into a godless sky that would soon devour them.

  Iyana screamed and railed and beat her fists upon the soft dirt until it was hard-packed. But she did not cry.

  Instead, she began to smolder. She looked down at her pale hands in the black soil and curled them into fists. The bright faded enough for her to look to the east again, and a new one rose to take its place. She saw a pillar of the stuff shooting up into the sky where the scar was. When the beam touched the deepest black she had ever seen, it cracked and split the sky apart with its spiderwebs of blue fire. She traced the beam down and squinted. She thought she could see the outline of some tower, or a castle like those from the oldest stories.

  There were banners flapping in the void winds, and though it was impossibly far, she could see figures on the parapets, waving their glinting spears and swords, and then she saw fire among them and her heart raced. She saw storm clouds gathering above the highest towers and heard the rumble of distant thunder. Overhead, the night sky was covered in black and gray as clouds wheeled in, racing toward the confluence from the far corners of the World.

  Iyana began to walk toward that castle and the gathering storm. She knew it might take her a month or more, but she had to get there. She knew Linn was the source of the storm and Kole the fire. She knew they would die if they stayed. Knew whatever had called the void was beyond them.

  Another rip formed above the mountainous green mass of Center. It sucked in trees as tall as Hearth’s white walls and those far taller, ripping them limb from limb as it churned with cacophonous rage. Still Iyana walked on, her tears stinging her as she angled to the east and north, toward the place her sister was and with her, her heart.

  And then she felt a pulling that slowed her before giving her pause. She stopped in her tracks and turned with a slow and dawning dread toward the black peaks of the Valley she stood beyond. She couldn’t see it, but she could hear the same cracking of stone and timber that was like the World tearing itself apart.

  She saw flaming arrows take to the sky, impossibly high, shot from the white walls of Hearth. She heard her people’s throaty yells and warring songs as the denizens of the World Apart poured in on the back of a tide that would wash over every crag and fill every corner, drown every brazier and bury any Ember who stood before it too long.

  Iyana cast a longing look back to that castle in the farthest north and east, then turned with purpose toward her Valley home. It felt like a betrayal. It felt hopeless.

  It felt like the only choice, and Iyana made it.

  She woke with a rush, wide-eyed and clear. She touched her forehead and though she felt hot, she shivered in the draft the open window let in. She felt clammy, and she gave up all thoughts of sleep and swung her legs out over the edge of the bed.

  There were drawers with clothes and wrappings, curtains and silver metal tools. Iyana found a pliable band of twisted yew and used it to tie her hair back. She found clean garments meant for the sick and changed into them, delighting in the cool and breezy feeling the airy threads gave even as they did nothing to eliminate the chill.

  She stepped gingerly out into the foyer, expecting to see Karin and Tu’Ren asleep, but the room was empty. The door was still open, and Iyana hu
gged her arms over her chest. She heard the creak of the decking and saw a great shadow pass over the entryway that at first had her wondering if she was still asleep and then had her smiling as she recognized the gruff mumbling that drifted in with it.

  Tu’Ren had his back to her when she crept out onto the landing. The moon was high and bathed the cobbled street in a pleasant glow, and lanterns lit the way down the bend they had taken from the white cliffs, moon-washed sentinels in the night.

  When the First Keeper turned back on his pacing, he didn’t immediately see her leaning against the door frame, so caught up was he in his private stresses and racing thoughts. When he did, he froze and even twitched a hand toward the sword that was not hanging at his waist but rather leaning as she leaned on the opposite side of the frame. It was as large as her and twice as heavy. Iyana smiled at him and glanced back at it.

  “I remember Kole and Linn challenging one another to lift that blade when they were kids,” she said, turning back to him. His eyes were clear and as awake as her own. His ponytail had grown longer and swung out from behind his back like a horse’s. He rubbed his white beard as he approached. “An Everwood blade,” Iyana said, inflecting her tone with awe. “Weapon of heroes. Weapon of legends. Weapon of Tu’Ren Kadeh, greatest Ember there’s ever been.”

  He barked out a laugh at that and Iyana winced to hear the bitterness in it. He saw the effect it had and sighed.

  “Sorry, little Yani,” he said, sheepish as he rubbed the back of his head. “It’s just, I fear we may have burned the man that title rightfully belonged to just a few hours ago.”

  “Has it only been hours?” she asked, more to herself than him. They both looked over the tiled roofs to the south and Iyana imagined she could see the tail of the pyre’s smoke curling up under the guard towers on the North Walk, though the ashes had long since cooled.

  “Can’t sleep, either?” Tu’Ren asked. “Or is it my worrying keeping you awake?”

  “Bit of both,” Iyana said with a shrug. She looked around and peered back into the dimness of the foyer.

  “He’s gone back to the Lake,” Tu’Ren said, addressing her next question. “Took Taei and Fihn with him, and a couple of those soldiers from the desert expedition.”

  “Jes and Mial,” Iyana said and Tu’Ren shrugged.

  “Could be.”

  Iyana frowned. “You don’t sound pleased.” He wouldn’t look at her, just stared down the road that twisted up toward the center of the city, toward the Red Bowl Iyana had heard so much about but had never truly explored. “Did you two have an argument?”

  “Not in my estimation.” Tu’Ren’s cheeks were red. Iyana hadn’t noticed it before, but now that he was closer, she wondered how she had missed it. Tu’Ren sighed and acquiesced to meet her steady gaze. “He’ll put the people in a panic if they see him training runners and working the Kane twins into a frenzy of training. You ever seen those two spar?”

  “Sounds like the same old,” Iyana said, examining him. “Better to be prepared, right? You’re the one who taught him that. You were his teacher just as you were Kole’s.”

  “Bah.” Tu’Ren waved it away. “Runners have always been an independent sort. More comfortable out in the wilds than under the sun and attention of the training yard.”

  Iyana raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner and Tu’Ren kicked at a loose sliver of wood in the decking. He looked very young doing it, and Iyana pictured him as a little boy doing something similar as Mother Ninyeva and Doh’Rah played one of their shell games or had one of their polite, lengthy arguments. She laughed, as she couldn’t quite wash his beard from the equation, making for a humorous image that wouldn’t quit.

  Tu’Ren stopped fidgeting and crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for her to regain her breath and some modicum of her composure. When she did, she cleared her throat with drama and mirrored him, crossing her arms and leaning forward. He did the same, and soon enough the two had leaned far enough that they looked like awkward cranes footing their way through the shallows of the Lake.

  Tu’Ren’s face went red and then passed straight through to purple, and Iyana felt her own flushing. Still, she wouldn’t be beaten easily. She had long ago surpassed her master at this particular game, but he gave a good go of it.

  Eventually, he dissolved into a wheezing laugh, his face dimming to a more healthy color before the ruddy tan returned. He slapped the meat of his thigh with his hand and she giggled and didn’t care that she sounded like a little girl in the moment.

  They heard a shutter slam across the way and Iyana put a hand over her mouth, freezing like a mouse caught in the vision of a cat, and Tu’Ren frowned at the rudeness of the stranger.

  “Some hero’s welcome,” he said, jabbing a thumb in that direction.

  “I’m the hero, here,” Iyana said. She meant it as a joke but his look told her he didn’t think it was.

  “Come on, then,” he said, stepping off the porch and onto the cobbled street. “Neither of us seems likely to find sleep tonight. Not here, in this creepy little sickhouse.”

  Iyana shot him a haughty glare and he shrugged it off and turned toward the center of town. “I need an ale, and judging by the way your shoulders keep shaking even when you’re not delighting in my misery, you need some hotwine.”

  “I don’t drink,” Iyana said, fighting to keep her voice low as she skipped off the creaking boards of the porch.

  “Bah,” he said, holding up a dismissive hand as she traipsed behind him like she had as a girl, hopping from puddle to puddle after a fresh rain had passed over the lakeshore. “Hotwine ain’t a drink. Not really.”

  Iyana shook her head and hooked her hand around his elbow. It was as hot as ever, age having done nothing to cool Tu’Ren’s fire, and she nestled her cheek up against the fur of his arm. “Who needs hotwine when I’ve an Ember for company?”

  Tu’Ren was of the Lake, but he seemed to know the city well. He took them on a winding path that seemed no less certain because of it. It seemed to Iyana that Hearth was an impossible place to navigate by anything less than intuition and a bit of chaos turned to luck. She was surprised to see that, late as it was, there were still cooks leaning by their iron bowls up on their copper legs and brimming with coals. Passing soldiers seemed their preferred quarry, as they changed shifts on the surrounding walls full of pent-up energy and empty of stomach.

  Iyana’s mouth watered as she smelled the salt on the air and the sting of spices grown by the farmers in the more fertile grounds in fields on the other side of the Western Woods. Seeds from the Untamed Hills, they said, and Iyana didn’t doubt it. Creyath had been from a village like that. She had always thought it strange, that some of the Emberfolk would take to the vast woods and trails and hidden fields of the Valley when they could have had homes and hearths and guarding Embers at either of the two towns.

  Especially when the Dark Months came, and the Dark Kind stalked the shadows. Still, it was said they never bothered much with the farmers and hunters on their woodland ways. Some thought they were after the Embers in particular, even blamed them as men like Tu’Ren and women like Misha Ve’Gah defended them with their lives.

  Could be there had been something to it, though.

  Tu’Ren stopped and turned, nearly ripping Iyana’s arm from her body as she drifted along in the same direction they had been heading. He caught her and steadied her, looking fearful until she rubbed at her shoulder and gave him a placating smile.

  He relaxed and strode into a squat structure that seemed partially crushed between the weight of all the buildings around and above it, and Iyana stayed behind a moment to put some green into her pulled shoulder without him seeing. She sighed in a strange mix of calm and ecstasy as her fire did its work, and she remembered a time she’d thought that was all the Faeykin were capable of. An image was called up of a purple flower going black and dry in it
s lonely, clinging cave, and she shook it away as Tu’Ren bellowed a greeting to the poor barkeep within.

  The room was warm enough to make her shiver with a pleasant tingle as she trailed her cloak of night air in behind her. The floorboards were washed in bright candlelight from iron sconces, and Iyana looked around in delighted wonder at the dark beams and knotted wood, the plaster ceiling and the brown and green bottles behind the bar that reminded her of the treasures Linn would take her to find on the lakeshore. Later, she learned that the gems and jewels were nothing more than markers of the fishermen’s drinking and littering out on the waters of the wild lake, but it had never done anything to dissuade her of their beauty.

  “Iyana?” She turned and saw Ket sitting in a darker alcove with a few soldiers she didn’t recognize. He had a blush to his swarthy cheeks and his eyes sparkled. She waved at him and he waved back with his good hand, and then the men and women he sat with elbowed him until he coughed up a splash of the foam he drank. She smiled and moved past him, coming up behind Tu’Ren as he turned away from the leaning bar brandishing a copper mug as tall as his forearm was long and a sloshing wooden bowl of red liquid with floating bits of black pepper and orange.

  Tu’Ren ignored the look she gave him and shouldered past an older man who was ambling his own way toward the bar, and Iyana followed after the First Keeper. They settled behind a dusty divider that separated them from Ket’s group. There was a pittance of a fire smoldering at the back of the room, but Tu’Ren gave off enough heat that the few late-night patrons broke into sweats that ran at odds with the cool night.

  Tu’Ren took a long pull on his mug of ale, wiping the foam from his lips.

  “I hear the ale in foreign lands is far better than this stuff,” he said, and Iyana shivered at the way his voice carried in the close and cozy confines. “In the Eastlands, where the towers are tall, gray and dull.”

  “And you’ve been to the Eastlands, have you?” Iyana asked distractedly. One of the women at Ket’s table had got up and was making her noisy way to the bar, banging into every rounded corner and jutting peg in the place and casting a lewd and suggestive look back at Iyana before finishing it with a playful wink.