The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “Bah, but I didn’t answer your question,” Fennick said. He hesitated. “Truth be told, it wasn’t me who brought us down from the vale. Not that I’m saying it was the wrong choice. World’s gone a bit mad—madder than it ever was before. You lot have dealt with your own sort of hell. Of that I’m sure. But we’ve had plenty of it here. No beasts and no clashes with the armored brutes of Balon Rael—not for a long time. If we’d wanted, we could stay in our homeland and watch ages of the World pass by. The Sages and their bickering—”

  He swallowed as he said the last and then seemed to change tack.

  “No, it wasn’t the Dark Kind or one war or the next brought us here, begging the queen’s aid. It was the cold.” He measured their reactions and then laughed to see them. “You wouldn’t think it, right? I wouldn’t have believed it when I was a lad, but then I saw my brothers frozen solid after a hunt in the Dark Months. Always got colder then, but not like this. Hell, when I was a boy, my father took us fishing on these shores, and farther north. The place where we’re standing was all surf and rocky shoals, and beasts longer and more toothy than anything in the jungles of Center. No. No. It was the cold brought us down to warm ourselves beside the crystal hearths of the Frostfire Sage. And for that—for the lives of our children—we’ve helped her out of a bad spot or two in the years since.”

  “And you’re happy with your choice?” Linn asked. Kole saw that some of Fennick’s men had drifted away. Those still hanging close watched him, seeing how he’d answer.

  “Wasn’t much of a choice, either way,” Fennick said with a laugh that didn’t sound as full as it had before. “Die, or don’t. Isn’t that the way of things, though? The choice we’re all confronted with, in one way or another?”

  “Aye,” Baas rumbled, and Fennick gave him a nod. His men seemed, if not satisfied, at least mollified by his response.

  “It doesn’t look so large to me,” Misha said, surprising them with the assertion. They had drawn closer to the palace, and now the frozen sea came up against a tumble of boulders, each of which could have provided the platform for a small village or a keep all its own. “How many rooms? How many of you remain inside?” Seeing the looks of her companions only redoubled her sense of disbelief. “A whole people has settled within these walls, and you don’t mean to ask how?”

  Fennick, for one, seemed less put off than Kole, Linn and Jenk. “I can see how it might look that way from the outside,” he said. “The palace you see above us is only the tip of a land I’d rather you experience than hear of. The queen lives there, and her knights. Some of us patrol its walls and parapets. But no, Ember of the south, we do not live in jeweled towers or royal chambers, and we don’t lament the fact. The earth has treasures, and it protects its own.”

  Kole looked to Baas and saw the Riverman looking from Fennick back up to the palace with fresh eyes. Now that they were more on the eastern side than the southern, they could see a snow-covered stair that had been hidden from them on the flats. It rose up on the southern side of the palace walls and curved up out of sight around a glittering white buttress. As they began to scale it, Kole was taken by the milky surface of the walls, which had looked something like Hearth’s from a distance and now appeared more like the very surface of the expanse they had just crossed.

  He paused at a level spot where the gray stone evened out and walked up to the side, pressed his hand against it. He felt the shock of cold and withdrew sharply and with an intake that had the others pausing on the stair behind and above him. He examined his hand and saw no moisture and no steam escaping. Eyes wide and mouth agape, he reached again for the milky surface, and again was met with a cold so shocking that it felt like fire, or its opposite. He left his hand there as long as he could stand it and watched as the milky surface went from opaque to near translucent as he pressed. Tingling sparks raced up his forearm and caused the hair at his temples to buzz. He pulled back and giggled like a child, not caring how he looked.

  Kole examined his palm and saw that it was pale, almost the color of the snow they stood atop, and as the fire in his blood worked to bring it back, the pain was strangely intoxicating. This must be what cold felt like. It was like a memory returning from a childhood he had left far behind, before his fire awoke. He remembered diving deep off the shore of the lake, meeting the wall of frigid black where the sun’s rays were lost to the depths. He remembered how his chest had squeezed and his heart had quickened, the thrill of fun on the edge of panic.

  Fennick cleared his throat behind him and Kole felt a momentary flush, thinking himself a fool for damaging the queen’s palace before meeting her. He looked back at the place where his hand had been and marveled to see that it was much the same as it had been before, the milky vapors behind the glass-like surface having closed back in. There wasn’t so much as a hint of his heat or a dip in the flat surface of the wall. Jenk moved past him, ignoring the tired groans from Misha and the men who had paused to see what the strange Embers were up to, and mimicked Kole. He, too, gasped before it morphed into a strange mix of pain and exultation, and soon enough, even Misha pressed her hand to the ice that must be made of magic. Her reaction was more even, but she looked up at the sheer walls with some of the awe she’d kept well-hidden before. A shadow passed over her face that Kole counted as fear, though, and as they continued up the stair, he couldn’t entirely dismiss the feeling himself.

  What power did it take to make a thing like this? What sort of frost was cold enough to rebuff an Ember’s heat? He had a strange and sudden desire to draw his blades and send a torrent of orange flame at the buttress they found at the top, to see how long it would take for the carved, jagged tips to warp and melt away. A greater part of him feared to try it—not for any imagined retribution by its keeper, but rather by the prospect that it might not work.

  They rounded the bend and, after going up for a short distance, began to come down on the inside of the wall, which widened as it approached the frozen sea. They took a narrow staircase down between a trench made as much of the strange ice as it was of obsidian and stone, and when the golden-armored knights and Fennick’s fur-clad soldiers spilled out at the bottom enough for him to see, Kole allowed his breath to be stolen again as he witnessed the majesty of a courtyard that could not have been real.

  The whole of it seemed made of dream. There was an oval expanse partially covered by a dusting of snow that painted the surface of gray stones cut into as many shapes as existed. Two more Blue Knights stood framing the entrance to the palace, a doorway that stretched up and up until it was lost to the heights of the tallest tower. Kole looked for the handle of the blue-white door, but saw none, and as he came to stand in the queen’s courtyard, he saw that the doorway was not a doorway at all, but rather a sheer wall he could see within. There were candles dancing on sconces through the glassy surface, stretching far back in a hallway that came up to a white staircase inlaid with gems. It was as if he peered through a mirrored well into another world.

  Another cough from Fennick, and Kole, Linn and the rest turned toward the back of the courtyard. Kole had expected to see another sheer wall separating them from the mountains. Instead, his knees went weak as he saw a great opening like the mouth of the World’s heart. The hall stretched away beneath natural fangs that—though twice again Baas’s height—still hung far above their heads. It was a hollow land that spilled down into a subterranean valley, and its distance was lost to sight.

  There were arches and bridges, spans and twisting stairs, all of it seemingly cut into the surface of the rock itself. Crystals sprouted like patches of moss or grass, coming in every hue, from snow white to blood red and hypnotic lavender. There were people walking in all directions, spilling from homes cut into the edges, doorways that led to unknown halls and networks of tunnels that must spill into every corner and crevice of the land. There were armorers and craftsmen banging hammers on anvils, carts laden with ore, and smoke drifting fr
om ovens that stood in the center of the expansive way, where the people of the Northvale paused to drink from stone mugs or to pull away salted, glistening strips of meat.

  Shifa whined at Kole, twining around his legs. She was as caught up in the excitement of the place as the rest of them, and if the scents of salt, smoke, snow and baked stone overwhelmed him, it must have been a challenge for the hound to stop herself sprinting into the far reaches of the land whose brilliance could not have been overstated.

  Fennick’s men had all bled away, some climbing narrow staircases up onto the palace walls while others walked down into the open maw of the subterranean realm. Tundra and the better part of his company still stood near to them, but Kole thought even that one—bitter and distrustful as he seemed—must take some measure of pride in seeing the effect the sight had on them.

  “Your home is a place of beauty beyond words,” Baas said, surprising them with his eloquence. He addressed Fennick, and even dipped the beginnings of a bow that the man waved off.

  “Not my land,” he said, “not really. We lived on the surface of these peaks far longer than we lived under them. Truth be told, I haven’t entirely grown used to being belowground, cozy as it is. No matter how cold and windy it gets out there, I think I’ll always prefer the company of the clouds and sky to sweating stone.”

  Baas gave him the first smile Kole had seen on the man’s face in some time. “This is a treasure, Fennick of the Northvale,” he said. “And I thank you for showing it to me.”

  “Don’t thank me quite yet,” Fennick said, his tone a mix of jest and buried tension, and Kole and Linn shared a look before turning toward the man. “The queen will see you,” he said, gesturing back toward the palace. “Remember, we were sent out to gather you, not as friends, necessarily, but rather as potential intruders to these lands.”

  Misha placed a hand on her hip, red hair blowing along with the tassels on the ends of her elbows and the haft of her great spear. “Intruders, is it?” she said, though Kole saw the beginnings of a smile hiding behind her teeth. “And here I was just beginning to like you.”

  Now Fen dipped into a bow, which he deepened as he switched it to Linn. He came up and nodded to Tundra, a gesture which the Blue Knight did not seem to appreciate. He watched the warrior with a flat, dangerous expression.

  “They’re all yours, General Tundra,” he said.

  “General,” Jenk said, tasting the word as if it were familiar. “A commander of many, yes?”

  Fennick swallowed as Tundra stared a challenge at Jenk. The Ember held his hands up in a placating gesture, but it seemed the Blue Knights did not so easily forget that he had been the one to end the conflict amidst the western cliffs, and under threat of death to one of their own.

  “Once,” Tundra said. “There were many. And … perhaps again.”

  Kole thought to ask if there were few Landkist being born among the people of the northeast, just as it was with the Embers, but refrained. He had at first thought there would be more of the blue-skinned folk about, apart from Tundra and his Landkist, but he saw none, and the Blue Knights were few.

  Kole heard his stomach growl as he turned from the wafting smells and radiant heat of the expansive cave, following Tundra as the armored hulk moved to the edge of the courtyard and came to stand before his fellows. The two knights on either side of the glass barrier held spears that rose even higher than Misha’s, but the Third Keeper of Hearth strode confidently into their midst, very close to Tundra. The Landkist eyed her, but did not let his discomfort show, and Misha turned a smirk back at Kole and Linn, which Jenk shook his head at.

  There was a sound like breaking glass, and a rumbling deep underfoot that Baas reacted to first. The Riverman sank to one knee and pressed his palm flat to the stonework, closing his eyes as if listening. Kole watched him, and then he saw the light shift as the sinking sun caught the shifting edges of the glass before them. The doorway began to split in the middle, its twin sides pulling back like glass curtains to reveal the candlelit hall beyond. Gulls cried as the door’s opening jarred them from their resting places on the spires far above, and Tundra passed through the opening, the dancing fires playing out on the many facets of his brilliant metal and the back of his blue skull.

  Baas stood and gave a slight shake, as if confused at the workings of the palace door. Not stone, then, nor any trick of the earth, but rather something of the queen’s magic, or the palace itself.

  They followed Tundra down a hall that stretched farther than it had looked when peering through the warped surface of the glass. It was wider and less narrow, with the sconces holding as many candles as the chandeliers the merchants of Hearth would sometimes hang in their summer tents. The stair rose onto a blue-white floor that gave Kole the impression of a frozen lake. He half expected to slip walking across it, and even the modest steps gave him a twinge of aching muscle as his body beneath its shifting black scales begged him for rest.

  Ahead, framed between two pillars that were lost to the airy blue heights, was a throne that looked to be carved of bone. It was smooth in some places and rough in others, with spikes ringing the back of the chair and faces seeming to stretch out from the arms. The dais on which it rested was three-tiered, with curved steps leading up to the sheer blue backing.

  “Welcome.”

  They turned as one to the right, where the chamber came up against an angled wall. There stood a woman no taller than Iyana. She even had the same white hair, and while her skin was light, it bore a hint of the blue that Tundra and the others on the grounds bore. She wore form-fitting armor, silver enough to appear almost white, and in the place of a sword or knife at her belt or a bow at her back, her hands were half covered with strange gauntlets that looked more decorative than practical.

  But it was her eyes that struck Kole most. Even from a distance, Kole could see them switching fast as a hawk’s, roving and taking them in, each one from head to toe, and not the group as a whole. She paused briefly on him, lingered on Baas a bit longer than the Embers, but it was Linn who struck her. Those golden eyes were at once beautiful and unsettling to look upon, and the smile she showed them did not reach them entirely.

  “Landkist,” she said, coming closer. She seemed to float, gliding across the glass-like floor so that Kole had the impression of a gossamer gown trailing behind her that wasn’t there. “And something else.” She stopped a foot from Linn, who flinched back slightly and frowned through her smile, creating a muddled effect that gave the queen pause.

  “I am sorry for my presumptuousness,” she said, winking behind Linn to the place where Tundra stood. “I am so used to my close company. It is strange to have visitors.”

  “Visitors, then,” Misha said, her voice echoing harshly in the airy chamber. “And not prisoners?”

  The queen stepped back and placed a hand over her chest as if she’d been slapped. “Prisoners?” She floated toward Misha, who did not flinch but rather set her feet. Kole saw her hand twitching back toward the wrapped haft of her Everwood spear.

  The queen moved strangely. She was strong. Kole could tell by the way she balanced. As she walked, he saw her hair swish to reveal ears that curved back at the tips, similar to the Faey of the Valley. And though her eyes were fixed on Misha, he held the impression that she was still examining all of them, her mind gliding over them, settling on their dispositions and reactions. He liked her even though he did not know her, and that made him uncomfortable.

  “I see no manacles,” she said, reaching for Misha’s hands. The Ember did not refuse or withdraw, for which Kole was thankful. He felt nervous around the queen, remembering that she was, indeed, a Sage, and one strong enough to keep Balon Rael at bay for an untold length of time, and to make the Eastern Dark wait longest before moving against her. “You are guests here, Embers and friends. You are pure. I can see it in your eyes. None of the darkness of the southeast has got into you.”
She flashed a piercing look at Kole. “If it had, you’d have been dead before you crossed the threshold.”

  It wasn’t uttered as a threat so much as a statement of things that were. This was a confident being, whatever she was. Kole would do his best to match her. For now, they were in her thrall.

  “Your palace,” Jenk said, taking the initiative when the others did not, “it is beautiful. And …” He trailed off and let loose a small laugh. “Strange. It looks like—”

  “Like magic?” the queen said. Her smile seemed genuine, now. She released Misha’s hands and Kole saw her rubbing the heat back into them as the queen glided toward Jenk. The Ember blushed. His skin had always been light by the standards of the Emberfolk, similar to Captain Talmir’s, and so he could not so easily hide his reaction when it came to a woman’s attentions. “Ah, but it is, Ember of the south,” she said, taking his hands as well. She looked up and Jenk followed her gaze. They all did.

  Before, they couldn’t see the distant recesses of the vaulted ceiling, but now, something happened in the glass walls. The milky hues cleared some, like clouds passing by, and the deep blue that was dark enough to be black up above changed as well, turning the color of spring pools that reminded Kole of the stonebacks they had come upon several days before. The whole of it was like the spike on a chandelier, shining as the dying sun admitted its golden rays, which mixed with the facets and lit the chamber brightly. Kole stepped into the beam reflexively and inhaled, feeling exultant as the magnified heat poured into him. Jenk and Misha followed him, and Linn stuck her hand in and withdrew sharply while Shifa circled the edges and pawed the ground nervously.