“The World Apart, you mean,” Fennick said, frowning. He didn’t say it doubtfully, though Kole had half expected him to. The wider World was still new to them, and the truth they had been forced to endure and had railed against for the better part of their lives was still a lie to most places, with nothing but the errant Dark Kind—perhaps a rare Sentinel—slipping through the rifts between worlds. Now, a greater darkness was coming, and on the backs of the Sages’ seemingly unending strife. Still, a few were dead … and few remained. Kole found himself licking his lips at the prospect of adding to one number and subtracting from the other.
Fennick looked suddenly like a boy coming face to face with bedtime stories, same as them. Kole had never given much thought to the fact that the Emberfolk had been fighting the stuff of nightmare—the stuff most could only imagine. Still, as Fennick began his stalking slide down the steep and slippery slope, Kole looked out over the vast open; the vast empty.
“They’ve had their own nightmare, here,” he said, and while he earned a few strange glances from his close companions, none asked what he meant. None needed to.
They had seen what the folk of the Emerald Road had been up against: the Willows and the Raiths, the Sage of Balon Rael and all his forged hate they had done nothing to earn and everything to survive. These folk seemed fewer and more spread out, but no less strong because of it. Kole traced the blue and white flatness to the south, trying to imagine the gray stone towers and looming keeps that made the land up—a land that was likely in the midst of a chaos all its own now their Sage was dead and gone and the great and deadly Asha buried beneath the roots of Center.
Baas allowed his weight to carry him down to the base of the slope and the others followed, Linn doing her best to avoid the track the Embers formed as their auras caused the slush to turn into rivers.
At the bottom, a woman with piercing blue eyes and skin lined with age and turned reddish-brown by the reflected sun met them with a steely grace.
“Landkist of the south,” she said, nodding. Jenk reached his hand forward, but she did not so much as twitch in his direction and he stepped back, rubbing the back of his head. The Blue Knights had moved ahead, twisting around the quartz base of the tower. Now that they were close, Kole could see that the sides of the structure bore facets that seemed carved, the sunken lines and raised ridges throwing off the rays of the afternoon sun.
“We won’t be spending the night,” Fennick said, coming back from the small row of sleds they had deposited in the shade of the tower.
“No?”
“The Frostfire Sage wishes to see them, and they wish to see her.”
“Is that so?” She turned back to them, eyed them up and down. She appraised Baas longest and gave him a smirk that Kole took for something other than the Riverman did.
“We’ve come a long way,” Kole said. “Your Sage will want to know what we know. Hear what we’ve seen.”
“The Eastern Dark comes,” the woman said plainly. She did not seem cowed by the prospect, and Kole examined her surreptitiously. She wore chainmail like some of the soldiers of Balon Rael had beneath their black suits, and she showed as much skin as fur—a strange combination that Linn frowned at him noticing.
“And in the company of an Ember the likes of which you’ve never seen before,” Misha said, bristling. The blue eyes swiveled her way and held her, and the woman’s demeanor fully passed from rigid to amused.
“We have never seen any Ember in the far north and east, along the salt mountains of the Endless Sea.” She dabbed sweat that had begun to bead on her brow and gave Jenk a wink. “For what it’s worth, I’m impressed at your heat. You’re like rays of welcome sunshine in the shade.”
“Somehow,” Jenk said with a smile and a blush, “I don’t quite believe you.”
She turned and they followed, Misha elbowing Jenk in the side as she made to follow. Kole felt the wind pick up and eyed Linn, thinking she was trying to warn him of something, but she looked around same as him, searching. Fine white powder blew on the swift currents, and Kole tasted salt on the tip of his tongue. He crouched in the shadow of the Quartz Tower and touched his bare hand to the ice, which hissed and retreated at his attention. He raised his fingers and licked the tips as the others watched him. Shifa padded close, tail wagging excitedly. She licked the ground and regretted it, wiping the taste of the sea on Kole’s black armor.
Kole stood and nodded. “She doesn’t lie. Tastes as if we’re walking on a still version of Last Lake.” He looked down and felt suddenly as if he weren’t low, but rather high, and immeasurably so.
“How strange,” Jenk wondered aloud as he looked up at the looming tower, “to build such a thing on the ocean.”
“The queen’s people were seafarers,” a deep voice issued, and they looked to see Tundra approaching, his great helm held at his side. Somehow, he looked even larger without the hunk of gaudy metal adorning his face. His blue skull was larger and rounded, his brow flat and his nose wide where the others were thin and elegant. His chin was cut at sharp angles, and the skin of his cheeks was beset with straight white lines that might have been scars, though they seemed too regular to have been earned in battle.
Tundra followed the direction of Jenk’s gaze up to the tower’s top, where a sentry peered over, white bow slung across his shoulder and chest, curious at the new arrivals and intent on the wounded that had been loaded into a doorway on the other side of the smooth stone at the tower’s base.
“Fennick spoke poorly,” Tundra said, and Kole searched for the fur-clad man. He was off with another group, pointing back the way they’d come and gesturing as he issued orders. The Blue Knights stood or leaned against the base of the tower, watching him, disinterested or staring at Tundra as he addressed them.
“How so?” Linn asked, trying to keep her voice level. Tundra switched to her, seeming annoyed though the question was only natural.
“The Quartz Towers never graced the land,” he said, tilting his head. He turned and shot his left hand out at the far expanse of blue and white. Kole thought he could see swells in the distance, but they did not move. “Before they held archers, they held only torchbearers and lightbringers. Sentinels who spent their lives among the waves and spoke only with the starlight they reflected from silver mirrors in the nights.” His voice changed as he spoke, morphing into something not unlike memory but closer to legend. Kole thought to ask how old Tundra was, but refrained. The tale had the feel of one who had been told it before, and perhaps one who had asked for it to be told, and often.
Tundra turned back, and for the first time, his expression was less hard than it had been before. “Lost ships come home,” and then a frown deeper than even Iyana Ve’Ran could show, “or enemies on the horizon. The minders of the towers warned us, and as long as they stood, the Blue Knights of the north were never taken unawares. These shores have been held by us and guarded against anything the other Sages and charlatans sent against us since long before the waves froze. The towers have fallen—all but this one—but the knights remain. We remain.”
His dark eyes passed from one to the next. Seeing that they were uncowed, he wrinkled his face and turned lest they ask any more of him. Kole saw Fennick watching the exchange and noted how close his hand was to the hidden belt beneath his cloak. He relaxed visibly as Tundra walked away, and Kole saw how close the Landkist passed to him without so much as glancing his way.
There was a strange tension to the split company, here. The Blue Knights were not the same as these men and women in fur and iron. Kole wondered if it was the result of their power awakening, much like his had; if the strange shields and blades they made came only after their skin turned the color of sapphires and their eyes mined gold. Or perhaps they were something else entire. Another people, and an old one.
Shifa whined, and Linn was the first to turn back toward the west. Kole smelled it as soon as she did, an
d there was a shout from the top of the tower that had the soldiers pulling swords and axes from hidden folds. The wind howled over the slope they had just come down from and the ice sounded like rustling leaves as it hardened with the fresh cold. The air lost its salt and passed to rot, and Kole nearly gagged. He reached for the hilts of his Everwood blades and paused as the wind changed and Shifa relaxed with it, the raised ridges in her fur smoothing out.
“Anything?” Kole asked and Linn shook her head, though her hand, too, had twitched toward that silver bow. There was a hint of ozone in the atmosphere, and Kole thought he caught a hint of static around her that was lost in the bright of the day.
The soldiers relaxed, but the tension was undeniable, and Kole gave a long look to Fennick and the woman who seemed to be in charge of the place. “Take care,” he said. “The Sage was not far in front of us. I’d guess he let us pass in the night.” Kole thought he had seen Shadow flitting at the corners of his vision, but she was a clever thing that even Shifa had not seen.
“What sort of game is he playing, I wonder?” the old archer asked aloud. She did not seem overly concerned. Then again, she had never witnessed the power of the Eastern Dark, nor fought against the King of Ember as Kole had. It was still strange to him, the thought that the two were now one and the same. He supposed it had been that way as long as he had known him—at least in part. T’Alon Rane was no more. He had died long before Kole had come into the World.
At least, it was easier to think of it that way.
“He’ll likely try to bypass the tower completely,” Kole said and the woman nodded.
“Not an easy task. We’ve long eyes—those of us who’ve taken care to avoid the glare of the eastern sun long enough to keep them.”
Kole looked to Linn, who raised an eyebrow. “I’m coming with you,” she said. Fennick and the archer looked curiously at her.
“I take it you’re either a good shot or a horrid one, given the size of that bow and the absence of a quiver,” the woman said and Kole delighted in the smirk Linn gave her.
“She commands the skies,” Fennick said. The archer laughed and then quieted when none followed suit, including Tundra, who stood watching the exchange close by. Now it was Linn’s turn to wink.
“Come,” Fennick said, gesturing toward the base of the tower, where the Blue Knights waited. “Our knights are wanted back at court.” He said the last with an odd flourish, and Kole wondered if he said it in jest.
Fennick caught the archer by the crook of the arm as she turned to head back toward the slope, and Kole paused to hear what passed between them.
“Keep close to the tower,” Fennick said. “It might only be a pair that follows, but one is a Sage and the other Landkist.”
The archer shrugged him off and nodded past Kole and his companions. “Can you spare any of the queen’s retinue?” she asked, and again Kole caught an edge to her tone. Baas quirked an eyebrow and Jenk leaned in. “Are we sure these folk are on the same side?” Kole didn’t dare shrug or answer back, not with Tundra watching.
“The one wounded,” Fennick was saying, “and … Tundra!” he called back, and the hulking knight raised his chin, though he did not come any closer. “Can you spare another of yours to help Yana watch the tower?”
Tundra seemed to consider it long enough to make Fennick uncomfortable and Yana frustrated. Finally, he gave a single nod to one of his fellows, who detached himself from the white stone with a sigh and approached. As Fennick passed him, the Landkist gave him a bump on the shoulder that the warrior took in his stride.
“Shall we?” Fennick asked, passing them by. His cloaked fighters were already well ahead, packs shouldered and weapons stowed as they waited for Fennick and his new friends to catch up, keeping a healthy distance from the Blue Knights who now numbered only seven. Kole remembered the one he’d burned and tried to get a look around the base of the tower, but the Landkist had been taken inside, where he hoped he would be tended to.
“How many do we leave behind?” Baas asked.
“Yana and hers are worth more than our weight in armor,” Fennick said.
“Not many, then,” Misha said, examining the glittering tower as they passed it by. “I was hoping they had a garrison inside.”
As they passed beyond the shadowed western side of the structure, the sun struck the north-facing cut and blinded them with its brilliance before Kole’s eyes adjusted. Now, he could see that the facets on the sheer wall were not simply a result of the once-rough stone or of weathering or blown ice and snow, but rather images and symbols carved into the surface.
“Keep your impressions contained,” Fennick said without looking back. “If you think the Quartz Tower impressive, wait until you see what home looks like.”
They spent the better part of the afternoon passing over the frozen blue rivers between the milky blocks of white, and though Kole at first feared falling through, so clear did the barrier appear in places, the heat he, Jenk and Misha radiated was scarcely enough to melt the powder atop the glass out on the open expanse.
It was flat for leagues around in almost every direction. But to the east, great jagged hills that alternated blue and stark white appeared as waves frozen in time. The smell of salt intensified, and the wind picked up. Kole chanced a look back once the gray mountain’s teeth came clear ahead of them, and saw that the tower was nothing more than a spear of bright that blended into the slope behind it. He tried not to think of who followed. Tried not to think that there were too few to guard the place, and even hoped in secret that the Eastern Dark would pass the structure by on his road to the north, seeking to avoid any fight he had a chance to lose. There might only be one Blue Knight able-bodied and ready to bring his power against the Sage, but Kole knew now what they were capable of.
Linn was the first to see it, of course. She was the first to see everything these days. She pointed, and the structure that had been lost to their sight since coming down from the west that morning now rose startling and clear in the deeper light of late afternoon. The sun no longer hung above the palace, turning it to a diamond too bright to look upon. Now, they marveled at the spires, walls and twisted columns; the spans and bridges, and the crenellations and outcroppings where ice and stone and mountain merged to form a magical whole that would have seemed fanciful if drawn by hand.
The peaks ran down, the teeth smaller and more jagged as they spilled into the place that must once have been the Endless Sea. The palace was built into the mountain spur, like a spear-tip—a ward against the wilds and the unknown. Four staggered towers at its crest formed a cloister that reminded Kole of the obsidian clutch in the northern Valley where the White Crest had made his home. To the east, the waves rose higher, frozen solid in the midst of their crashing against the white walls. They seemed too tall, too chaotic and too threadbare in places to have slowed over time. It had the look of magic, or of magic gone wrong, and Kole wondered if the Sage who nested here had something to do with the frozen sea and the sunken towers, or if some long-ago clash with the Sage of Balon Rael had done it.
Overall, the land and the palace and all its towers gave Kole the impression of a place waiting for something. He examined the men and women who walked in front of and around them, and the armored knights at their head. He thought they seemed the same, as if they were the memory of a people clinging to the rock of the past like the palace they trekked toward now—a barnacle on the edge of an embattled shore.
“It is a sight,” Jenk said. Kole heard Misha grunt an affirmation.
“Land might be empty all around,” Fennick said, “but this treasure will always fill you with plenty after you’ve been away, whether it be on a morning hunt or a years-long campaign in the crags to the south.”
“It’s like the stories of the old World,” Linn said. Kole watched her eyes glitter with a sheen they hadn’t held before. “The stories Iyana always begged of the Fae
y Mother.”
“Must have been an old gal to know those tales,” Fennick said. “This place has stood longer than my folk have been unified enough to be called a folk.”
“And where are your folk from?” Kole asked. “It doesn’t seem you’re from here.” Jenk gave him a warning look, but Kole shrugged it off. He had grown comfortable in the man’s easy presence.
Fennick pointed northwest without turning in that direction. “We come from the Northvale,” he said. “Far over those there peaks. My grandsires’ grandsires knew this place as something different than we do, along with the masters who kept it—of which our queen is close to the last.”
That confirmed Kole’s guess. Fennick and his fur-laden warriors were not of the crystal palace, nor did they walk across the frozen sea. This was a land of gods, or of a people that had counted themselves among them. He had heard of folk like the Faey in the wider World—much wider and farther than his sorry imagination had ever been willing to travel.
“What brought you down into the lowlands?” Linn asked. Some of Fennick’s own had drawn close, as if they wanted to hear him tell it.
“Lowlands,” he laughed as he turned to Linn. “These lands are still higher than anything you’ve got to the west or south,” he said. “Taste the air, and look past the salt. It’s thin. One of the reasons you’ll need far more rest than you think after the travel you’ve had.”
“Plenty of air for me.” Linn smirked, and a gust kicked up a small cyclone of white powder that had a few of the men and women cheering even as Fennick shrank back and glanced toward the Landkist at the front, as if fearing retribution.
“Show-off,” Misha ribbed, and Linn shrugged.
Kole was feeling more tired than he should have, and now he knew why. Still, the sun warmed the nape of his neck with a fierceness it rarely did in the Valley, even so late in the day. Perhaps, being so high, they had drawn closer to the orb that was responsible for replenishing the Embers’ stores when they had no braziers about.
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