The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “For the children,” Iyana reasoned and Ceth frowned.

  “Yes,” he said, watching her closely.

  “But,” she started and then stopped. “The others. Those inside.”

  “Burned,” Ceth said. He said it short and harsh, and then his look seemed to soften a bit as he took in her own. “Kadeh says we will only take the one into the trees. The one who is not from here, but is from where we are going.”

  “We,” Iyana said absently. She saw an image flash of Verna and Courlis burning away, the embers that made them up merging with the morning light.

  Martah looked askance at Ceth, who frowned. Apparently, everyone knew of the plan but her.

  “I am to protect you,” Ceth said. “The road is dark in the Eastern Woods, he said. There are beasts, and the Faey have tricks and can be unkind. I am to kill them if they try—”

  “You are most certainly not to kill them if they try so much as anything, Ceth,” Iyana said, her ire rising. Martah smiled as she looked from her to Ceth, and Iyana blushed as she saw the red-sashes leaning forward enough to cause the barrel to spill them unceremoniously onto the dirt and straw of the courtyard.

  Ceth frowned. He didn’t nod, but rather shrugged, as if he would take Iyana’s order under consideration.

  “You,” Iyana said, recovering some of her former decorum. “You don’t have to come.”

  “I know.”

  They said nothing more, and Iyana was suddenly made painfully aware of the soldiers atop the South Bend and the way they worked to keep their eyes averted, which only served to heighten the sense of unbelonging Ceth and the others must be feeling.

  The sun was high and a slick sheen of sweat had begun to coat her arms and stick the ruffles of her pants to her legs when the red-sashes perked up at the sound of wagon wheels.

  Iyana turned and saw more red and gray, and was surprised to see that some had already shed their colors for the more vibrant yellows, greens and occasional blues to be found among the carts and carriages on Hearth’s central ways. What they had to trade, Iyana couldn’t begin to guess. She hoped it was a sign of Hearth’s changing in the wake of the darkness they had endured so recently, and of the dead they continued to mourn. It was not a sorry thing to be burdened with new arrivals.

  The cover of the wagon had been torn away, and the children bounced and wrestled amidst the rope and sacks, boxes and crates of baubles that stood empty, since they had little but for the clothes on their backs and the pleasure of each other’s familiar company.

  Shadowing the wagon was Tu’Ren, who led Creyath’s black charger. The well-muscled beast snorted at any passers-by who drew too near, and Iyana saw that he was burdened with a package that could not be mistaken for anything but the slumping, covered form of Sen.

  “He looks like a bundle of rice,” Iyana said, earning a sharp look from Ceth. Seeing whatever he did in her face, his own relaxed and when next he looked upon the charger’s burden, he did so with fresh pity.

  “Kenta,” Iyana said.

  The old man she had so recently seen was changed. He looked to be tucking a worn green traveling shirt into brown trousers, and the dark leather belt that held it all together seemed to strain the loops with its elasticity. When he saw her, he smirked and gave a mild shrug.

  “Couldn’t keep this one with the mares,” Tu’Ren said, leading the charger forward. “His blood hasn’t cooled from the desert.” The animal chuffed at Iyana and lowered his great head, pressing his brow into Iyana’s chest. She laid her forehead against the beast’s and stroked his mane, whispering to him.

  “That isn’t it at all, is it?” she asked him, earning a whinny for her attentions. “You’ve lost the same friend the rest of us have. A close friend. You loved him. Creyath Mit’Ahn.”

  Tu’Ren rested his hand against the charger’s flank and breathed out a sigh, then another one of a different make when one of the children set to tugging on his braids from his place in the wagon bed.

  “I’ll not have you lot tugging on my braids all the way to the Lake, hear?” he said, his voice sounding a bit like Garos’s. Some of the desert children shrank back under his firm command, while others merely giggled and made a try for his white mane all over again.

  “I pray that we do not encounter anything half as dangerous as these children out on the dark eastern roads,” Kenta said, coming to stand beside Iyana, Ceth and Martah.

  “You’re coming with us?” Iyana said, glancing sidelong at Ceth, who examined the merchant healer with something a hair below open suspicion.

  “I am,” Kenta said. “Captain Talmir wanted for it to be him. Alas, the Merchant Council won’t release him from his duties so easily. The Dark Months appear to be rushing in rather quickly this year—lending some credence to your fears, I presume. I can’t say I blame them for wanting him on the walls. We’ve lost two of Hearth’s three Embers in the last three months—one to a road we hope to be temporary and the other on a much longer path, and Balsheer is hardly the patient type.”

  Ceth snorted, earning a considered look from the black charger.

  “He is the commander, no?” he asked, looking from Kenta to Iyana and back again. “Talmir Caru is your leader. He should do what he wants.”

  Kenta smiled in a way Iyana was sure he did not mean to be condescending but that didn’t stop Ceth from taking it all the same.

  “Ask him of it, and he’ll likely agree with you,” Kenta said. “But the city is a child, friend. It’s a beating heart, the Valley’s glowing brazier—along with the Lake—and without its stoutest commander here, it is vulnerable. Here, we cannot flee to live another day.” Ceth’s expression changed, as if he suspected Kenta of calling him and his craven. A pair of red-sashed women edged closer, looking to Ceth for guidance. He held his tongue and stayed his hands, but his lips went pale. “You are at the edge of the World,” Kenta said, smiling again. “Perfect place to see the end of it.”

  “And the Merchant Council,” Iyana put in. “They know of your destination.” Kenta nodded. “And they didn’t raise a fuss?”

  Given what she had heard of him, it seemed unlikely. Kenta’s knowing look confirmed it. “Talmir did the bulk of the arguing before I arrived this morning. I’d hazard a guess that Rain had a heavy hand in it as well. Still, your name carries more weight these days.”

  “Linn—”

  “Has something to do with it, no doubting,” he cut in, “but you as well, Iyana. People know it was you who saw that group through the Deep Lands not so long ago. They know it was that group who turned the tide against the White Crest in all his rage and madness. They know you were there when Ninyeva’s leaning tower fell. It is not the name ‘Ve’Ran’ they say. It is ‘Iyana.’”

  Iyana swallowed past the lump in her throat. If only they knew how scattered her mind was of late. If only they knew that the very reason she wasn’t hopping onto the lake-bound wagon with the red- and gray-robed children and donning colors of her own was that she feared she would never leave its timber and salt borders again, they might think differently of her.

  Kenta seemed to be waiting for a response. When he didn’t get one, he showed himself to be astute in more ways than she had recognized.

  “Your Sight is more a weapon than any blade—Everwood or otherwise—we possess. At least, we know it can be.”

  “My sight is weak and unwieldy,” Iyana said.

  “Unwieldy, yes,” Kenta said, direct and seemingly uncaring, though she suspected the opposite to be the case. “But weak? Iyana, modesty is only so becoming as it is apt.”

  She didn’t quite know how to react to that, so she didn’t. Instead, she found herself roving over the faces of the desert caravan as they moved past. She knew hardly any of their names, yet she felt a kinship with them that could only come from the things they’d experienced together.

  Tu’Ren had arranged t
he seemingly unwitting driver of the wagon up below the southern arch. He was pointing sharply at the children leaning over the shallow sides and indicating the old man who sat on the bench in front, likely warning them not to bother him during the ride.

  “No other horses?” Iyana asked, watching as the clutch of desert nomads milled around the brown steeds in front and behind.

  “They prefer to walk,” Kenta said.

  Iyana turned to Martah, who had begun to drift in the direction of the others. “You do not wish to stay in the city?” she asked. Martah looked confused at first, but then she looked beyond Iyana, out at the leaning structures and blowing linens above the streets. She suppressed a grimace.

  “It is a good place, I think,” she said, struggling to find the next words. “But I think the lake sounds better. A calmer place, and more open. The children are used to sleeping beside soft waves and not planks and chimneys.”

  Iyana leaned in conspiratorially and Martah matched her. The taller woman had to bend at the waist. “The folk of Last Lake have always agreed.” She winked, and Martah smiled on a delay. “Tu’Ren and his father, Doh’Rah, will see you right at home among the docks. I’m sure the former will have the children practicing with sticks in the yard on the morrow. And Karin is there.”

  “The Runner,” Ceth put in and Martah nodded. “I know him,” she said. “A fierce man.”

  Iyana laughed to hear him described as such, but then, she’d seen the way he and Talmir had moved about each other on the road back to the southeast. She remembered how much red they’d been covered in when they had rejoined the fray against the Sentinels on the white flats near the ruins of the Midnight Dunes.

  “You know the way?” Iyana asked Kenta as Tu’Ren left the haphazard caravan to organize itself in his absence.

  “I know the direction,” he said, unconcerned. “And those there know me, or of me enough not to kill us on the path.”

  He didn’t say it with much conviction, and Iyana felt gooseflesh rise.

  The First Keeper examined the shorter, thinner man. She noticed that he kept from looking too long at Ceth, and felt that the two held a strange energy toward one another. No doubt Tu’Ren had heard from Karin of the Landkist’s deeds in the north, and of his power. No doubt he wished to see it firsthand, but it was not a thing to ask.

  In truth, Iyana feared Ceth’s power more than she feared Kole’s. It was less wild, but it was also less pure. There was something strange and godly in the way he changed his very weight. It was as if he controlled the rules of the World, or how the World reacted to him and the things he did. He might strike soft enough to split a leaf or hard enough to dig a crater in the dry earth, depending on his whim and fancy. The Ember fire was a deadly thing, and beautiful, but it was easy to understand. Fire was the great maker and unmaker all at once. Its wielders were archetypes. There was no mistaking them, just as there was no mistaking what they’d done.

  “Has anyone been there?” Iyana asked, returning to the earlier point.

  “To the realm of the Faey?” Tu’Ren put his hands on his hips and considered the question, looking to Kenta as he, too, turned it over.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “Faey.” Ceth tasted the word. His eyes sought out and settled on the prone, covered form of Sen, and Iyana shook her head.

  “He is—was—Landkist by this Valley, as I have been,” she said. “They dub our kind the Faeykin, but the Faey are something else. They’ve been here a long time. Long before we came. They’re something older than the tribes of men, and because of it, some find them … strange.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Tu’Ren said, earning a slight nod from Kenta.

  “And they are healers,” Ceth said as much as asked, looking from one to the next. “Healers who are dangerous?”

  It was a strange thing to reconcile, Iyana had to admit, and not just for those who had first been Landkist by the Valley.

  “They hold power over life,” Kenta said. “Whoever started calling them healers only saw their later deeds. All things know how to kill. All tribes and all peoples. Some do it more bloody than others.”

  He spoke with barely concealed bitterness, and Iyana worried over the effect it would have on Ceth as they plied the dark ways of woods that were said to be thicker and more tangled than even those to the west, among the great wormroots on the edges of the Untamed Hills. Still, she had to admit, the Faey had always occupied a strange place in her imagination, at once as real and somehow absent as the Rivermen had been only the former. The Dark Kind were the true enemy, and to all, but it had not been forgotten that the Faey had not been so welcoming as their gifts might lead one to believe. They did not request aid from the Emberfolk during the Dark Months, though they were said to keep no walls and build no fortresses, and their weapons were few. There was no surviving a thing like them without violence, without the knowledge and the intent to kill.

  There was a shout from the wagon, and Iyana craned around Tu’Ren’s bulk to see the driver swatting at the children behind him as the wagon started forward, the desert nomads switching between admonishing him and his diminutive assailants. Tu’Ren heaved an exaggerated sigh and laid a hand on Iyana’s shoulder before placing the opposite on Ceth’s. The Landkist eyed him, unmoving, and Tu’Ren made no move to remove the hand. There was a pregnant pause.

  “Do find out what the hell’s going on out there,” Tu’Ren said, looking from Ceth to Iyana. He winked, but Iyana felt the weight of his words and all those who must share the sentiment. “And,” another glance toward Ceth, “do bring her back.”

  The First Keeper of Last Lake turned and made for the caravan that seemed so much smaller and more fragile than the one she had been a part of in the deserts. The Valley was safe, relatively speaking, but Iyana did not feel safe. She had grown so used to having an Ember or two about that she thought perhaps she had begun to take their presence for granted.

  Perhaps they all had.

  “Which way?” Ceth asked.

  Iyana stepped forward, walking under the arch the lake-bound travelers had taken. Of course, she had no idea where to go. Not really, but Kenta spared her the embarrassment of showing it and promptly took the lead as soon as they had cleared the gates and were out onto the rougher road of the southern fields.

  She looked behind and saw a pair of spear-wielders watching lazily beside an old and unlit brazier. She wondered absently which Ember of yore had minded it, and thought she remembered something about Creyath being the keeper of the South Bend. She smiled up at them and one smiled back while the other turned away, and Iyana didn’t know what to take from that.

  They paused briefly while Kenta and Ceth worked to secure the sorry bundle to the black charger’s saddle. Iyana supposed it was in an effort to keep Sen from falling, though she could hardly imagine a more unceremonious mode of travel for a man that had been more genteel—at least on the outside—than anyone she had ever known.

  Tu’Ren’s white ponytail was visible for a stretch, and Iyana winced when the First Keeper did not turn before entering the southern trees and that wooded path that would take them to the timber gate of a home she felt like she hadn’t seen in years. The red- and gray-sashes walked alongside or rumbled along in the wagon, pointing at things that were entirely familiar to Iyana and entirely foreign to them.

  “Even the grass is new to them,” Ceth said. Iyana watched his gaze as he observed the bulk of his people withdraw from the fields of Hearth.

  “Come, now,” Kenta said. He had led the horse and burden to the side of the narrow, rock-strewn road and waited beside the stamping animal. Behind him, stretching out to the west, was a knot of trees that seemed comprised more of ash than pine. The bark had a grayish tint, and the limbs were twisted and slick, like Everwood not yet darkened with age.

  “Ah, yes,” Iyana said with an easy smile as she approached
. “Our trusty guide who knows the direction but not the way.”

  “One could say the same for your eyes, my dear,” the man said, and Iyana stopped in her tracks. When he heard that her footsteps had ceased, he turned to look inquiringly.

  “Is that not why we seek out the Faey? To seek a way where you only have a direction? Or is it the opposite?” There was no hint of judgement in his tone, and Iyana wasn’t sure how that made her feel. She settled for a nod and tried to brush off Ceth’s lingering stare as she followed the healer out onto the root-choked path.

  The sun had just reached its zenith when they entered the Eastern Woods, but its warmth was lost immediately as the thick, low canopy stole the light. Their path was lit by patches of gold that cast a latticework over the forest floor. Iyana could feel the thrumming of tethers, could catch their flicker out of the corners of her eyes from nook and burrow. It had been some time since she had been in a land so full. The deserts held life, and they held beauty for leagues, but the Valley was a place made of it.

  Kenta stopped leading Creyath’s charger when the beast pulled its snout away from him for the third time. The man cursed and waved the horse away, and Iyana smiled as it followed him, keeping a more steady course now that it was the minder of its own pace and direction.

  “The beast wants to follow,” she called ahead, “not to be led,” to which Kenta snorted.

  “Is it strange that he has no name?” Ceth asked. He sounded not unlike a child, but Iyana was struck by the sincerity of the question.

  “I don’t know that he hasn’t one,” she answered, walking beside the Landkist. “I never heard Creyath address him.”

  “Don’t ask me,” Kenta said. “Second Keeper mainly kept to himself. He never seemed the naming type to me, however. I’d reckon the beast has no name.”

  “Beast, then,” Ceth said, and Iyana quirked a brow at him before realizing that he was serious. He blushed under her scrutiny and she smiled disarmingly before stepping closer to the charger and laying a hand on its oiled flank.