He knew the answer. He knew why he felt nothing ill of will toward her, and it was all wrapped up in the same rain-soaked, lightning-blanched night when he had awoken screaming in a bed wreathed in biting flames.
Vengeance. It was vengeance he was after now, and what he had been after the whole time. As much as he feared to learn the truth of the Eastern Dark’s designs, as much as he feared the implications of a war—and a true one—with the World Apart, Kole feared that any truth those revelations might uncover would doom his quest. Would render his vengeance null and void.
Kole had one enemy, and it was the oldest and the greatest of them all. It was one only Linn knew as well as him—perhaps better.
Kole feared himself, and he knew he was right to.
A tickling sensation greeted the top of his knuckles and Kole pulled himself up over the lip of the ridge. Shifa was waiting for him, worrying at his delay. Kole gave her a reassuring pat behind the ear and let out an amused breath as she gave the pitiful pack that was tightly strapped to the back of his belt a sniff.
“No carrots, girl,” he said, looking down at her fondly. She did not seem impressed. “I see my affections are no longer enough. You expect payment for your service, no?” A bark of affirmation, and without a wag to accompany it. “We’re all low. Nothing much to hunt in these lands. Nothing much growing. Think you could rustle us up a hare, or are you as dead set on an errant Ember-Sage as I am?”
Kole’s stomach growled as if on cue. He squatted down and unlaced the thong to the leather pouch, pulling out a thin strip of dried meat. It was lean, from one of the muscled creatures of the Emerald Road—a parting gift from Maro and his ilk. Kole broke off a piece for Shifa and dabbed it with water from his skin—plenty of that all around, especially with three ready-made walking braziers with which to melt the ice and snow—and fed it to the hound, who made a quick meal of it and spun around, white-tipped tail brushing Kole’s sticky bangs away from his forehead and more fully exposing the scene on the shelf he was only just coming around to noticing.
He paused between chews and stood, warily. He should have wondered why the others had not greeted him or worried over his delay. They stood arrayed around a small, pitted valley of snow. Misha was squatting in its center, where the black rock smoked, dabbing it with her fingertips and bringing them to her nose.
“Sulfur?” Jenk asked, but Baas was already shaking his head. Linn, for her part, had already gained the next shelf—a short hop about twice the height of a man. It looked to be the last shelf for a while. Judging by the way she scanned, it might be the only thing for quite a while.
“What is it?” Kole asked, coming over. His boots crunched in the hardened snow and then slipped as it turned to slush. “A heat vent running from the rock?”
“No openings,” Misha said, frowning. “And before you ask—no, there’s no molten river beneath. We’d be able to feel it. We’d have felt it from half a league away.”
“Baas?” Kole studied the Riverman, whose look mirrored Misha’s, though it was more quizzical and less concerned. “How porous is the stone—”
“It is solid,” he said. “Rock solid. The trenches and cracks,” he pointed a few paces to the east, where the shelf skipped over a foot of open air before another cliff loomed above it, “they are the only passageways. There are few that go into the stone itself. They are like—” He paused, searching for the right word. “Plates.”
“Like the Deep Lands,” Jenk nodded, watching Linn, who had yet to say a word. In Kole’s experience, that was rarely a good thing. Baas merely nodded.
“Something happened here,” Misha said. “Something hot, and something recent.” She eyed Kole. “Very recent.”
He scented the air but could not pick up the familiar ozone that would have signaled the use of an Ember’s fire. Still, the wind was up and had been for some time. Whatever scents it carried must have been far away from here. But the rock held its memories longer.
“Shifa!” Kole called, and the hound, who had been pacing below the ledge on which Linn stood, came bounding back. Kole indicated the bare rock that was just beginning to collect its first shining crystals of snow. She scratched at the surface and looked at him, as if asking for direction.
“Nothing, eh?” he asked. Misha eyed the hound suspiciously, as if she suspected her of lying.
As soon as Kole’s attention flickered away from the hound for a moment, she raced straight back for the sheer cliff and barked for attention. Linn’s ear twitched, but she made no move to turn around, and Kole sighed as he tried to puzzle out the best way of getting the hound to the top.
The air grew even hotter and set some of the bordering mounds to sizzle and steam, and Misha bent her knees and then jumped up beside Linn. Jenk followed, and Baas looked at Kole and then at Shifa, whose complaints had gone from occasional to constant.
“Go on,” Kole told the Riverman, who made for the wall without another word and began to climb. Seeing him do it, Kole marveled as he saw the trick for the first time. Each time Baas planted his hand upon the sheer rock face, ripples seemed to spread about the immediate vicinity. Before his eyes, the rock formed itself into small knobs with hooked handholds, and Baas climbed them slowly, forming them patiently, though not so patiently as he had below, since the fall here couldn’t harm him.
Kole filed the Riverman’s latest trick away for safe keeping and snatched the barking hound from where she stood, quieting her. He moved to the eastern edge of the shelf and craned around to see how far the trench ran.
Far, then.
Their shelf and the one above it where the others stood was bisected by a slice the width of Kole’s shoulders and deeper than he could see. There was nothing in the distance but for a pillar of white light where the trench must open onto another field of white. Kole scanned up and saw that the two plateaus stood at the same height. They were at the top, then. At the top of the land—at least for a time—and perhaps at the top of the World. They had left the northern mountain spur behind, and Kole’s breath came thin and more rapid than it had in the humidity of the lowlands.
“Ready, girl?” Kole asked. Shifa was silent. Kole squinted as a gust of wind spilled some snow down into the wide crevice.
“Right.”
Kole tensed and sprang, his right foot hitting the only jagged spur within reach—the only one that would keep them from falling to their deaths—and bent his knee at the impact, scanning quickly for another path. He shot off like a skipping stone, the way rougher ahead and more easy to find jutting pieces. He felt mad and he felt an exhilarating rush, soaring over the gap on narrow ledges he spied almost as he fell upon them, and ever upward, until his last push brought him up onto the northern plateau, and a stone’s throw from where the others stood in a clutch around Linn, who blinked in Kole’s direction and then traced his path, her face going tight with annoyance or worry.
Kole set Shifa down, who wasted no time in sprinting through the glorious flat and charging up to the group, tail wagging. Kole followed, watching as Misha stared at Linn and jabbed a finger to the east. Kole looked over his shoulder in that direction and saw little but for the same blinding white that stretched for leagues now instead of paces.
“… far,” Misha was saying as Linn squinted into the distance, her eyes wavering as she fought to concentrate. Kole moved out of her line of sight. He suppressed a shiver as he saw the black pits in her eyes go so small as to leave nothing but a startling well of golden-brown behind. How far could she see now, truly?
Misha gave it up soon enough and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. Her yellow, green and red tassels whipped like banners in the wind, while Jenk’s lighter hair waved like sea grass and Baas’s short-cropped hair barely moved. Kole noticed that the Riverman’s face was still smooth as cured leather. Some mark of the Rockbled, perhaps. Kole touched his own chin and felt the sharp spikes. He hadn’t taken
a blade to it since they were far below.
A more violent gust than any they had felt before kicked up, whipping the snow into a moving sheet of stinging frozen fog, and this one was a long time in quitting.
There was something more than the nothing about. Kole thought he saw a shape moving at the edges of his sight, flitting between flakes before melding into the gray. He blinked and it was gone, but that didn’t stop his heat from rising, nor the others from noticing, Shifa most of all.
The hound perked up as the scent of ozone rose, a light steam rising from the exposed bits of skin between Kole’s black armor. He did not draw his blades, but stepped away from the ledge, the others mirroring him. Linn looked in the direction he had been, but even her sight could do little in the present circumstance.
They watched as Shifa leapt from patch to raised hump, jabbing her nose beneath the soft white and coming up snorting, shaking and increasingly agitated. Kole thought for certain he had been mistaken—paranoid in a new land grown increasingly strange—until the hound began to move with a purpose she hadn’t before, her frustration lost in the thrill and poise of discovery.
“Follow,” Kole said, nodding after her. “Fan out. Keep your distance from one another.”
They did, Jenk drawing his long black sword but leaving it unlit and Misha bringing her spear around in front. Kole winced as the colors of her tassels flashed in his periphery. How clearly could an enemy see them, even in the midst of a storm?
Baas did not follow the others due north but rather stepped to the east, in the direction they had been heading. He left his shield on its great iron hooks and cut an imposing figure, immobile but ready to move in any direction he was needed. Linn followed Kole, but gave him a wide berth. While he focused on the rooting hound, Linn focused on everything around them. She brought the silver bow down from across her back and glanced up into the swirling gray, and Kole thought he felt a buzz to the air.
“Any bolts near enough to call, should the need arise?” Jenk asked, his voice lower and more serious than usual.
Kole did not hear Linn’s response, but Jenk nodded an affirmation.
Up ahead, Shifa stopped before a raised mound that was somewhat irregular in shape—too sharp to be ice and too random to be a jutting stone. She edged toward it cautiously, her tail puffing up with a mix of anticipation and whatever charge Linn was building in the atmosphere—the same racing tickle Kole felt in his hair and Misha shivered as she attempted to ignore.
“What is that?” Misha asked, and as Kole neared, he saw another pair of oddly shaped mounds just beyond the first … and the glint of metal.
Kole settled into a crouch and hissed for Shifa, the others matching him. Now the charge had built to the point where he could hear it. Now the snow around him—ankle deep in places and going past the knee in others—began to shrink away, folding in on itself as it sought to escape his hazy, fiery aura.
Shifa ignored him and snatched something under the snow. Something gray that seemed to be cloth. She gave a tug and Kole’s heart skipped a beat as the fresh snow fell away from the form—the human form—beneath. The hound dropped the sleeve and the ashen, frozen hand that went with it with a sickening slap, and Kole peered past her to the place that glinted with metal.
“A shield,” Linn said, coming to stand. Kole watched her as she moved forward, striding past the hound, who worried after her. Kole, Misha and Jenk followed, Kole checking back to look after Baas, who watched them calmly through the gray and white mix. He had angled his body toward them but made no move to join, and his head seemed to be tilted, as if he were listening to something.
Kole shook his head and tried to have faith that the Riverman would alert them of any dangers he sensed. For now, those seemed limited to a trio of dead men and a fourth woman.
They spread out among the bodies, which were mostly bloodless. Linn crouched over the man who had dropped his great shield and pulled it away with a sucking, crackling sound to reveal a gaping wound in his chest, but what Kole noticed more than the wound or the lack of blood was the smell. Not ozone alone like his fire or Linn’s lightning, but ozone with the pervading, underlying scent of rot.
Linn held her bow out to the side, covered her nose with the opposite arm and then placed the shield back over the warrior’s split armor, but not before Shifa had a chance to come over and change her soft whines to an insistent growl.
“What is it, girl?” Kole asked, knowing the answer.
“A familiar smell,” Jenk said, standing over the woman he had discovered. He met Kole’s stare. “From the golden pools at Center, where you fought Maro and his Emerald Blade. Do you remember?”
Misha nodded along with Kole. “The Shadow—” they said in unison before a deep rumbling preceded a sharp crack that had Kole reeling, believing Linn had decided on a whim to bring the full fury of the skies down upon them.
He lost his footing and rolled, coming up in a crouch, and followed Linn’s wild look back to Baas. The Riverman was leaning forward, most of his weight over his bent lead leg. His hands were thrust out in front of him, and just ahead, Kole saw a crumbling gray slab that stood twice the height of a man and ran from the gap he had just scaled with Shifa almost to where they stood.
“Baas!” Kole yelled, and the Riverman looked his way slowly. He straightened and blinked in a way that made him look confused. Misha and Jenk had passed in front of Kole and Linn, their Everwood weapons smoking with the threat of ignition. They scanned the top of Baas’s makeshift wall while Kole looked toward the north, where it ended like a statement, looking for any sign of what could have spooked Baas so.
“I am sorry,” Baas said, shaking his head. He stood straight, shoulders going from rigid to near drooping in front of his pitted shield.
“What was it?” Linn asked, and Kole felt some of the budding electricity clearing the charge from the air around them, though she still clutched her bow with white-knuckled intensity. The flakes of snow seemed to go out of their way to pass around her, swirling behind her like the wake left by a racing ship.
“Nothing,” Baas said, though he still frowned in apparent discomfort. “I only thought that I heard something.”
Jenk looked from Baas to Misha, who passed it on to Kole. Kole drew his Everwood knives and shrugged. “If you won’t trust your instincts, Taldis, then the rest of us will.”
With that, he angled directly for the wall and put some of the fire back into his legs, leaping high enough to clear the top with a steadying grab as he passed over the foot-wide ridge. He landed in a crouch on the opposite side, blades held out wide to either side, scanning the east and north with narrowed eyes. He did not hear Shifa barking on the opposite side of the wall, which either meant she sensed no danger or quite a bit of it—too much to want to alert the enemy as to their position.
Kole stood, slowly. It was still difficult to see far in any direction, but there were no shouts nor signs of attack. Perhaps Baas had been tricked by the wind, or even by the vibrations in the many-shelved lands below his feet. He knew the lands spoke to the Rockbled. That did not always mean they told the truth.
“It’s clear,” Kole called back. He heard Jenk relay the message and heard a cracking as Baas split the section of wall to Kole’s right.
Kole leaned back, meaning to ease some of the tension from his shoulders, and felt a sharp sting greet the back of his hand. He pulled it back sharply and turned, expecting to see an angled piece of the rock wall sticking out at him. Instead, he saw what looked to be a single droplet of red hovering in the air before the wall. He frowned in confusion and squatted down to take a closer look, before falling back onto his rear with a jolt as the hidden sun sent a merciful ray down through the gloom to catch the object and reveal a bit more of its form.
“What …” Kole spoke to himself as the wall split apart to his left, collapsing into a pile that Shifa was the first to climb
over. Once on the other side, the hound ignored Kole and moved straight toward the strange spike, which looked to be an icicle free of imperfections or frosted edges. It was like a clear, glass blade, tipped on both sides. Kole felt a slow and budding panic as he watched his own blood paint more of its eastward edge, and saw the spiderweb cracks in the gray slab that had admitted the bulk of its front.
“What happened to you?” Misha asked as she stepped over the small pile of rubble, Baas, Jenk and Linn following on her heels.
Kole stood and flared his Everwood knives to amber life, which seemed to take the Third Keeper aback. He held one fiery blade forward, moving it under the edged section of the ice spike that had pricked the back of his hand.
“No melt,” he said. Misha gave him a look of dubious indifference that verged on annoyance—as did most of her looks—before she saw the orange fire of his blade distort in the air above it as the clear, double-sided blade picked up the light and drank it in, handle and all.
Misha again brought her spear around and ignited, her tassels billowing in the blast. Linn stepped between them to watch as the Ember touched the tip of her spear to the clear blade. There was a sizzling sound and then, after a few pregnant moments, a crack as the blade split in a jagged line from top to bottom.
Kole straightened alongside Misha and glanced her way, and the two turned toward Baas, who was looking east, along with Shifa and Jenk.
“Baas,” Kole said. “I think you were—”
There was a shout that probably saved them with its arrogance, and Jenk flared his yellow blade to life as Baas brought his stone shield around in front of his chest. Another clear blade struck the stone surface and went spinning away, and then the east came alive with motion.
They came out of the mist and swirling white wearing armor that shone golden bronze, like the star Talmir Caru wore. Their skin was azure blue below their white-plumed helms, and jewels encrusted their thick gauntlets and the insteps of their metal-worked boots. They were staggered in a haphazard line, and while there were only nine that Kole could count, there was another line moving forward in a semicircle behind them—gray-cloaked and silver-armored soldiers wearing fur and clutching weapons of wondrous make. Iron and polished stone. There had to be a score or more.
The Frostfire Sage Page 17