The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  As Kole stepped forward, prepared to meet the charge of the fighters painted blue and wearing metal that matched the gold of their speckled eyes, the one directly before him extended his hand and called forth a weapon out of thin air. Or not called, but grew, the shining, perfect scythe seeming to be formed from glass or ice that was harder and more true than anything Kole had seen before. Its edges tapered to razors, and when the warrior brought it around before his chest, Kole saw that it was half the length of Misha’s considerable spear.

  The rest followed his lead, conjuring clear blades that shimmered with the freshness and with the reflected light of the lit Everwood blades they raced toward, the translucent shields turning to molten gold as they drank in the light and sent it back.

  They were fearless. They were fast. They were nearly upon them.

  Kole widened his stance, poured more fire into his blades so that they blazed bright enough to make the charging warriors narrow their strange eyes, and leaned forward onto his front leg, preparing to meet the charge with an Ember’s fury.

  “Kole …” Jenk said in a low warning. “What do we—”

  “We fight.” Kole’s concentration was broken by the speaker. Linn stepped forward, and Kole saw the white path before her go black and gray as the snow was swept clean seemingly of its own accord. She held that great silver bow in her left hand, and when the golden-armored fighters were just a few paces away, she shot her right hand forward as Baas had done and two of them flew back, clear blade and glimmering shield soaring up into the heights before they came crashing back down.

  The rest did not slow, and the line of seven met the line of five as Shifa darted out of the elemental fury, knowing the task was beyond her. Kole ducked the clear scythe that hummed as it passed overhead. He brought his right blade across the armored midsection and scored a gash before the soldier planted and launched a backward elbow that smashed into Kole’s nose. He reeled and slid backward, tasting blood and feeling warmth as it leaked from his nose and passed over his teeth, staining them.

  He felt hot and he turned the fear for his friends to an anger that boiled before it simmered. Linn had taken herself up into the air with another gust, this one aimed downward. The sky split with flashing blue that lit the blue-skinned warriors with a white fire. She came down in their midst, silver bow glowing and pulled on the bowstring, releasing a sound like thunder and a shaft like judgment that shattered the golden shell of one and sent her skidding back to smash into the wall Baas had made.

  The Riverman swung his stone shield, bashing aside the clear blades, and with each step, he made cracks that opened beneath those jeweled boots or sent small clutches of stone up to trip the blue warriors. Jenk fought with a pair. One slashed at him with a pair of glittering whiteblades while the other parried his strikes with a shield. They reminded Kole of Taei and Fihn Kane.

  And then there was Misha, who moved her spear in great, sweeping arcs that kept a trio at bay even as one—the tallest and most well-muscled—faced her down with nothing more than his gauntleted fists, which seemed to shimmer with that same white-clear shell the rest had made their weapons from.

  “Your fire!” Kole yelled, darting in at the one who stalked him and surprising him with his speed. “Use your fire!” He shouldered into the center of the warrior’s chest and felt him wheeze. The soldier slid away in the melt too far for Kole to reach him with his blades. He jutted them both forward and concentrated a jet of fire that lanced forward like the breath of a drake from the oldest stories.

  The soldier—a Landkist like the rest, no doubting—brought his forearms up to block and still fell away screaming as that strange ice armor was only half formed over the gold by the time the blaze struck.

  Jenk and Misha followed his lead, Jenk using his sharp yellow crescents to corral the two he fought or else to separate them when they made as if to charge, and Misha using hers to engulf the torso of the hulking brute who made for her as the flanking pair darted in on either side. Misha put her spear into the spin Kole had seen her use to such devastating effect and swept it around, melting the frost below her and turning aside the blades, though she earned a gash on the arm for her efforts that had her wincing.

  When she settled, Linn landed behind her—the result of another well-timed leap—and angled another invisible shaft straight for the Ember’s back. Kole nearly shouted for her to hold as he pulled his flames back, and then Linn’s eyes glowed blue-white. Instead of a jagged spear of lightning, a raging torrent of wind sliced from her bow, slamming into the back of Misha’s wheel of fire and making a comet of what it caught up in its wake that screamed toward the largest of the warriors like a herald of doom. He dove to the side, and Kole could swear he saw black wisps seeping out from his armor as he cleared the inferno’s path faster than he had seen the others move.

  The fight raged, with the Landkist of the Valley unable to bring any but two of the blue-and-gold warriors down—and those without mortal wounds. They used everything from flame to shaft to the greatest shield the world over to drive them back and turn their colorless blades aside that were now drenched in the yellows, reds and molten golds of the Ember fire they picked up. Night fell and the wall Baas had made crumbled, the ground underfoot cracked and split and the frost all around burned away to leave a smoking expanse full of glinting bits of gold armor.

  Shifa joined the fray as Kole took a turn at the brute, who faced him down and glanced at Baas out of the golden corners of his helm. The hound found a blue ankle that had lost its boot in one of the Riverman’s sharp pits and wrenched its owner from her feet with a snarl that supplanted the yell:

  “Stop!”

  And they did, if only to see what all the fuss was about that their fighting hadn’t solved.

  Kole saw the warrior Shifa had tripped. Jenk stood over her, his yellow blade burning brightly and boldly in the falling night. The shield she held melted and splashed over her face—the result of her panic and pain—and Jenk edged the tip of his blade close.

  It was a risky maneuver. Two of the other Landkist stood a short distance behind him, their eyes switching back and forth between the Ember and their companion. Jenk couldn’t know that they would stop to save the one. For a moment, Kole thought he had erred. He glanced sidelong at Linn, who was on one knee at the edge of the melee. She looked exhausted, her chest heaving with long pulls as Baas stood before her, his great shield a ward against any would-be attackers.

  “Your name, Ember.”

  Kole felt the hair on the nape of his neck stand up. In all the fighting and the threat of the strange Landkist, he had paid no heed to the line of fur-clothed and silver-armored soldiers behind him. He turned toward them and saw that they had moved no closer. A man with short-cropped hair and a black-and-gray beard cut close to his skin stepped forward, his eyes focused on Jenk as the others watched.

  Shifa padded up next to Kole, leaning into his side, and he nearly ran his hand through her fur before remembering his blade. He saw Misha move up on his left, the foot-long tip of her spear guttering in the wind.

  “Jenk Ganmeer, of the Valley core,” Jenk said, his voice loud and clear. Kole was reminded of the times he and Linn would spy on him as a youth, when Jenk would battle with lake reeds and give his speeches.

  “You’re a long way from home, Jenk Ganmeer,” the man said, “and very close to ours.” He swept his gaze to encompass the lot of them, his golden-armored Landkist included. Where their skin was of a richer blue than summer pools, the men before him were lighter, their cheeks bearing a rosy complexion as the wind and cold lashed them. They wore fur over their armor in the place of gold, and they carried iron-handled weapons with gray blades that were rough apart from the glinting edges that had been smoothed and polished under the power of a turning stone.

  The man nodded, once and sharply, and the great brute Kole had faced down—an armored Landkist even taller than Baas, though n
ot as broad—stalked past him close enough to feel the kiss of his heat. Kole watched as the translucent gauntlets melted away, leaving the wet traces of them on the stone underfoot, which was already beginning to frost over now that the Embers had quieted their torrents, crescents and streaking slashes and now that Linn’s windy fury had ceased whipping it all up.

  “Come away,” the man said, “unless you want to lose another of your order.”

  Kole half turned and saw the other Landkist detaching themselves from the remnants of the melee like wolves moving on from a fresh kill-slow and reluctant, twitching to bring more into the martial argument.

  One dragged two of her unconscious fellows along the rubble. Kole recognized one as being the recipient of Linn’s first bolt, and the other struck him as one he and Baas had worked to bring down. Their chests moved, though the effort was great below that gaudy, glittering armor.

  Linn and Baas came up on Kole’s right, and they stood in a tired, ready line in front of Jenk and his captured quarry.

  “We’ve not come to fight,” Jenk said.

  “Where is Captain Saphyr?” the man asked as his blue Landkist arrayed themselves beside him. There were still seven standing, though their armor had been cracked or scorched, their brows dotted with a slick that had nothing to do with the moisture in the air. Kole knew it would be a close thing if it came to blows again. They had the numbers even if he and his had the spark.

  “Who?”

  “Like them,” the man said, indicating the Landkist. “She is the commander of the Blue Knights of the North. The Azuran Guard, you might know them as. She came here of her own accord, seeking the shadow our queen felt coming out of the humid south.” His face wrinkled in what could only be described as disgust. “She did not come back.”

  Misha doused her blade and Kole followed her lead, though he heard Jenk’s burning the air for tinder behind him above the Landkist’s ragged breaths. “She over there?” Misha asked, nodding behind her and beyond the edge of Baas’s broken wall, where the white started up again and where the dead men in furs and iron lay broken and scattered along with their weapons.

  “Scouts,” he said. “Jeyln, Koga and Bren. And,” he looked at Kole, “our reason for coming against you absent warning.”

  “I had warning,” Kole said, forgetting himself and ignoring the look Linn turned his way. “One of you shouted. You let your anger get the best of you, else I’d never have seen you coming and that strange nothing blade might’ve skewered Baas on the spot.” The Riverman grunted his agreement. He didn’t seem to take offense.

  The man sighed, his eyes tracing up to the largest of the Landkist at his back. He seemed different from the rest. Kole remembered the black wisps he had seen as he had dodged the combined power of Linn and Misha. He scanned the others and thought the same shadow did not hang about them as it did him.

  “Tundra has never been the most subtle of us,” the bearded man said, and the Landkist’s gold-speckled eyes did not so much as quiver as they fixed hard on Kole’s own. “He was trained by Captain Saphyr.”

  “Are you all so aptly named?” Misha asked and Kole winced.

  “Is there another reason for names, other than to mark one for what one is?” one of the female knights asked. Misha spat onto the windswept shelf.

  The sky fell away into dark, but the fog and clouds cleared some, admitting the beginnings of starlight that made the strange shields and swords the Blue Knights held shine with a subtle white brilliance, like diamonds held underwater. There was a hint of green to the north, like the remnants of the ribbon they had seen in the days before.

  “The Eastern Dark is come,” Tundra said, his voice lower than Baas’s but lacking all the kindness that made the Riverman up. “Are you his heralds?”

  Kole held no doubts that he would make for them if they answered in the way he expected.

  “We’ve come seeking the very same,” Kole said. “If anyone knows what happened to your captain, I’d hazard a guess it’s him.”

  “Then she is dead,” Tundra said. He didn’t seem upset at the prospect. He raised his chin, as if daring Kole to disavow him of the notion. He did not.

  The fur-clad man at Tundra’s back cleared his throat. “Is it true you hunt the Sage?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Kole said. He replaced his blades in their oiled sheaths and stroked Shifa behind the ears. “He took our Ember king. Took him, truly, in all the ways a thing like him can. And now he’s headed here, likely to kill the Sage of the North. Your Sage, I’m guessing.”

  Their reactions were plain.

  “We are not enemies of the Northern Sage,” Linn said. “We come in peace.”

  “The Frostfire Sage will be the judge of that,” the man said.

  “We call her the Witch of the North,” Baas said, his tone impossible to read for those who did not know him. Kole didn’t much feel like laughing.

  The man eyed him almost curiously and then gave an appreciative nod. “There are many evils in this World,” he said. “Many more in the other. Our queen is not one of them. Not if you’re on the side you claim.” He turned and the others in his company followed. “Release the knight. We’ve quite a march ahead.”

  The Blue Knights waited behind until Jenk did just that, removing his boot from the blue-skinned woman’s chest and smiling sheepishly as she scrambled to her feet and shot him a glare. He did not douse his own blade until she had rejoined her fellows.

  The others moved in toward Kole, and he and Linn exchanged a long look while Tundra and the Blue Knights looked on, expectant and darkly eager.

  “After you, fearless leader,” Misha said, though Kole wasn’t sure if she addressed him or Jenk. Linn led the way, shouldering her bow. It was a wise move, her leading, as even Tundra flinched as she passed him without so much as a backward glance. Kole tried to hide his smirk as he followed.

  Three Embers, a Rockbled and a woman possessing the power of a Sage. Enough for confidence even in the direst of circumstances.

  Shifa gave a clipped bark as one of the Blue Knights stepped too close.

  “And a hound of Last Lake.”

  Misha and Baas looked askance at him, but Kole kept his eyes ahead, leaving Linn to scan the edges for signs of the Shadow beast that had killed those men and the Sage wearing an Ember king’s skin.

  At first, Shadow thought it was a trick of the wind through the hollows and crags—ghosts the strange, barren lands formed into fell voices that carried for leagues until they could no longer be seen as anything other than the deliverers of lies and once-truths. And then she had crept toward the open maw of the cave and lent her ear more fully to the rushing winds in the trenches. There, she heard the faraway fight. There, she scented ozone on the air and even thought she saw the radiant amber facets of the Embers’ fire in the swirling mists above.

  Though long-lived, she was an impatient thing.

  Shadow cast a look over her shoulder and sighed to see that Valour still sat cross-legged facing the back wall, where the body of his latest victim hung. The cavern was unlit and he had drawn no symbols on the obsidian floor, nor traced patterns in wall or ceiling. He did not cast powders or spill entrails. He did not smear blood or dance in some horrid, humorous way. He sat. He sat and he waited, or he spoke with whatever it was he reached on the other side.

  From behind, he looked more like the being she had known in the south and less like the Ember king whose form he had taken. His ears were pointed beneath his black mane, and above the silver cuts in his black-and-red armor, the skin visible on the nape of his neck where his hair didn’t cover was a lighter splash of bronze than T’Alon’s. Still, seeing what she had seen out on the black shelf, she knew Rane was in there. Knew he still lived, in some way, and that the transformation could never be complete until he had died away completely, like coals turned to ash.

  Shadow took a t
esting step backward, feeling the biting cold of the wind as it buffeted her exposed back. She didn’t like the feel of it, though it couldn’t hurt her. Not really. Not in the way it could something all flesh and blood and bone, all warmth and sinew.

  She looked up from the ledge she stood on. The trench was too wide to cross without leaping, and it was a good sight higher than where she stood. It would mean death to fall, she knew without looking down. Knew by the low moaning the storm made as it passed through and rose, carrying heat from places far below.

  The stars were impossible to see, and as Shadow studied the drifting gray beneath the deepest blue-black, she thought perhaps she had imagined the amber glow in the vapors. And then twin blue rivers of arcing light raced out of the west and split the sky above her, lighting the clouds before fading. The thunder rolled in off its back like a coming tide, and Shadow leapt without another look back at the sitting Sage.

  She willed her black fingers into cat’s claws and broke the black shell of the cliff with ease, climbing with abandon, mouth open and tongue lolling as she tasted the fresh wash of ozone on the violent currents, away from the Sage in his cave. At the top, she rolled herself up and over and flattened herself to the shelf. She half expected an Ember to greet her with lit Everwood—she remembered the bite of their fire and did not want to be reminded—or even one of the Blue Knights come charging, naked but for that translucent armor.

  The wind had swept the edge of the shelf clear, and the snow rose in a drift that made it look like dunes of sand. She rose and peered into the distance, far as her eyes could see, and there, dancing like fireflies, were lights of yellow, amber and hungry red. She knew whom they belonged to. She remembered how each had burned in a different way in the golden pools of Center, and in the late Sage of Balon Rael’s makeshift timber keep.