The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  Garos backpedaled and then sent his staff into an alternating vertical spin before he came on again. He was nimble for such a large man, and Talmir pictured glowing globes of fire at either end of the weapon, blurring the form behind it like sunset. He felt the kiss of heat as the Ember came in, and thought about charging in before a last-second impression made him leap backward instead.

  A good thing he did, as Garos stopped the showy spin and reversed direction on a whim, bringing his staff down, up and around to land, hard, on the dry patch of dirt Talmir had just been standing on. The staff’s top half shattered, leaving him with the broken haft of a fisherman’s oar, and Talmir felt a stab of worry as he imagined being crushed under the weight of the mighty blow. He paused and regarded the Ember steadily, and when Garos looked up, his wild look changed to a wicked grin. Talmir returned it.

  Garos jutted a hand toward Jakub and caught the next staff he threw, and the two joined in combat once again. Now, it was impossible to wipe the grins from either face, and as much as his shoulders and arms ached and the balls of his feet grew sore beneath the friction of his boots, it was Talmir’s cheeks that pained him more.

  The sun sank low enough to leave them, and they fought under the darkened light of the evening sky until fresh firelight came in to bathe the yard with its orange warding. Talmir hadn’t the time to spare its source a thought until their duel brought him back into view of the front gate. He saw Jakub and more beside him, children and older youths from the surrounding streets. They had come bearing torches, and there was even an old crone holding a trio of candles in a bronze sconce, watching them fight with a look of horror that morphed into sour disapproval.

  But the looks of those children were an odd and intoxicating mix of shock and glee, and Talmir thought it must be like the times he had seen Vennil Cross spar with Jaycen Pyr, whose twin axes had spun in a blur more steady and humming than his late son would ever manage after him.

  Talmir shattered another sword on one of Balsheer’s blocks—or was it the other way around? And Jakub fed him another. Garos used his second until Talmir had torn it near to bits, and one of the other children fetched him that double-bladed axe, which he swept around like a hurricane of timber in the earthen yard. On and on it went, until there were as many splinters littering the yard as there were blades of dry, clinging grass, and until their brows and torsos were as slick as horses fording a river.

  They were too tired to smile, now, their earlier mirth at the rush of competition now faded into a throbbing and pointless need to win.

  They had each other figured out, rediscovered like they had had no need to do since they were both young and fighting each other then as they did now, rather than fighting together, on the same side. In the dusk and the weariness brought on by the length of the duel, Talmir began to see the growing cluster of shadows at Garos’s back like the Dark Kind, or like the Pale Men and Bloody Screamers of the northern dunes. He saw the torches and candles as red orbs of demonic light, and the gasps and inhalations of their watchers as imagined hisses and faint screams, cries of rage and lament.

  Garos seemed to see Talmir’s look change and gave a momentary pause, and Talmir flashed him a smile. Garos returned it, and the two continued their nighttime dance while the torches waved in the hands of children like cattails in the wind.

  Talmir gave up his morbid thoughts of war and turned them to the brilliance of the duel and to the valor he had always searched for and never found to his own satisfaction. This was not an ugly, necessary thing, like the wrath he and Karin had brought upon the Seers in the black caves amidst the sands. This was a pure thing. A fight asked for and given, with nothing to gain and less to lose but for the thrill of it. This was how the warriors of the Valley—of any people across the wide World—could speak without need of tongues. This was what the Sages could never understand. It was a language of souls laid bare, truth uncovered, revealed without judgment or expectation. This was what separated men and women of steel and fire from demons of the World Apart—the will on the backs of which their love and loyalty rested and bloomed.

  Soon enough, they were each down to their last. The weapons in the training yard were spent, broken and shattered like the memories of those days never could be. Garos held his axe, which had bites taken from it by the hungry maw of Talmir’s swordsmanship. Talmir thought he had the Ember burned out.

  He should have known better.

  The air popped and for an instant Talmir thought Garos had ignited the pocket around their duel, but there was no spark to light the blaze, only a crackling, potent heat that stung his skin and dried the glaze on his eyes, tickled the salt on his cheeks. With the heat came a fresh, violent salvo, as Garos abandoned all pretense for weaponplay and did what he had always done best. He came on with abandon that was far from poise and not quite reckless, and Talmir was forced back under the onslaught. It took all he had to dodge and turn aside the chopping axe that was soon a dark blur against the dreamy glow in the yard, and more than once, the dull edges of the weapon clipped one of Talmir’s ears or buzzed over his head with enough intent to turn his skin to gooseflesh despite the warmth.

  Talmir fell back, and continued to do so. He tried to find an opening, but none came. Once, he paused in a moment of indecision as he considered pressing forward. There, he was forced to absorb the full might of a Balsheer swing on the flat of his training sword, which jarred his shoulder in its socket and rattled his teeth in their gums.

  His legs buckled, but he steadied himself, and as Garos pressed more furiously, Talmir eased back like the white sand before a breaking wave. He breathed out, slow and steady, and made his body small. He felt the presence of the stone wall behind him, heard the dry vines snapping and attempting to retreat from the roaring Ember’s heat. Talmir set his back heel against the base of the wall, blinked longer than the situation demanded and longer than any younger, less seasoned man would.

  It was these moments of calm that Talmir held as his close secrets. The space between living and dying, decision and indecision. The moment when the hare freezes rather than bolts and the hawk wheels one final time before diving. The moments that would decide a collision and spell the result of a clash. Talmir was lord of these because he listened to them, gave them their time where others were too panicked or enraged to pay them any heed.

  How else was a mere man to match blades with one of the Landkist, be he a Rockbled of the Fork or an Ember of old?

  The axe sped down and Talmir even heard a sharp breath as Garos thought too late of reversing the strike for fear of splitting his friend in two. He need not have. Talmir twisted both feet perpendicular to Garos. He flipped his wooden sword so it was blade up and made it rise like lightning reversed. Rather than a splintering crack of wood against wood, Talmir’s blade found the hook beneath the notched scythe on the underside of the axe. He stepped away from the wall, turned and turned his sword with it, and cried out as he tore the weapon from the Ember’s steaming grasp and sent it spinning across the yard, where it crashed into the opposite wall.

  He heard the sounds of awe from the little crowd that had gathered and even chanced a smile in their direction as he turned back toward Garos. Jakub’s eyes found his as he did, and Talmir nearly yelped as Garos came on again, now with fists and bulging eyes instead of a wooden blade. Talmir was so taken aback by the unexpected press that he did not attack for some time, only dodged.

  When he gritted his teeth and held his position in the center of the yard, the air went hazy for a space, and Talmir’s heart skipped a beat as the Ember’s eyes flashed the color of blown coals. Talmir brought his sword across his body, aiming for the space where the Ember’s shoulder met his collar—shame on him for attacking, weaponless, should the bone break.

  Garos struck out with his fist, lunging stupidly as far as Talmir could tell. He should have known better. Just before his sword brought its power down on the First Keeper’s
front, Garos pivoted and turned his straight to a hook, his fist to an open hand. He twisted his wrist and brought the flat of his palm in to block, and when the dull edge of ash met his skin, it shattered in a shower of yellow sparks that blinded Talmir.

  The next blow took the wind from his chest and sent him rolling in the dirt. He came up clutching his gut and sank back down onto one knee, panting as his vision cleared. The yard was littered with smaller fires than those the children standing by the open gate clutched, white-knuckled in their brown hands, the splinters and wreckage of their duel having caught in the aftermath of the Ember’s flare.

  Garos stood tall, his chest moving up and down, the light dimming from his eyes as he took in his victory. He kept his hand in the same position, holding it there like a pennant long enough to bring a shred of annoyance in to cover Talmir’s pain and nausea, and then he stepped back and squared his stance, and dipped a bow in the marshal way, one fist meeting the opposite palm, eyes down and crown facing his fallen foe.

  Talmir looked to the gate. Jakub had handed a borrowed torch to one of the other youths and had taken a step forward. His eyes were worried as they took Talmir in, and then shocked and angry as they swiveled to Garos. Talmir frowned at him and stared hard, stopping the boy’s will from leading to foolish action.

  He rose and swayed a bit as he did, doing his best to hide it with a show of brushing the dirt and clinging yellow sparks from his pants. He didn’t realize he still clutched the hilt of the training sword until he extended the hand toward Garos. He tossed it aside and the Ember took his hand, Talmir doing his best not to wince at the heat that was slow to leave it.

  Garos searched his expression for the ire he knew was boiling beneath the surface at the manner in which the duel had turned. Talmir did not give him the satisfaction. If he would take any victory from the spar, it would be that one.

  “Fire to match skill,” Garos said, his face breaking into the smile Talmir had once hated before he had grown to love it.

  The watchers sent up a cheer, and it was only when their voices mingled in the cool night that Talmir noted more adults among them than he had at first thought. The two turned, linked hands and gave a more demonstrative bow this time, and Talmir felt a swell seeing them smile so—all but for Jakub, who only stared with a hungry look.

  Parents nodded at the men—men who were sworn to protect them from the worst horrors of this World and the next, and who had spent the better part of the evening making a show of trying to kill each other in a dusty, forgotten yard tucked into the back alleys of the oldest homes of Hearth—and withdrew, children in tow. From those who lingered, there were cries for more action, “more tricks!” as one little girl put it before her sister pulled her away, but Talmir and Garos were through for the day.

  “I’ll be tired for a week,” Talmir said. “Would that I had Ember blood,” he said for the thousandth time, to which Garos snorted, also for the thousandth.

  “It’s never quite made sense to me,” Garos said, his voice wistful. Talmir regarded him in the near dark, the only light in the yard given off by the red embers scattered about their feet and the candle Jakub had snatched from the old woman’s sconce before she had gone. He waited for the pair just outside the opened gate, and Talmir smiled to himself as he thought that he had regained his impatient shadow.

  “What hasn’t?” Talmir asked, remembering the question as the two walked—floated, more like—up to the place where the yard met the open timber door, its flaking red paint looking black in the light.

  “How good you are,” Garos said. Talmir gave a chortle, but Garos didn’t, and when he looked at the Ember, he found him looking back with a serious expression.

  “I went through all the same trials as you,” Garos said, frowning as if he were truly working to understand. “I trained in the same yard.” He looked back at the very one they had just turned into an arena. “I learned the same forms, bowed to the same masters, defeated and lost to the same companions—”

  “Defeated, far as I can remember,” Talmir cut in, but Garos’s look did not change, nor his demeanor.

  “All but one,” Garos said.

  “You defeated me plenty,” Talmir said. “Then as you did now.”

  “But not the once,” Garos said. “Though I cheated, then as I did now, I lost to you the once, Caru, and I still can’t quite imagine why.” He looked down at his gnarled hands. Hands that might be the surest in the Valley, if not the strongest aside from Tu’Ren Kadeh.

  Talmir watched him for some time before the silence stretched. He put his hand on Garos’s shoulder and gave a heartfelt squeeze.

  “Perhaps you only think you tried the same as me,” Talmir said through a smile. “Perhaps you forget the times you and the others left this very yard and I stayed.”

  Garos looked at him with earnest eyes, as if he were weighing Talmir’s words and searching his memory to confirm their truth or expose their folly.

  “Or perhaps,” Talmir said with a wink, “you either have it, or you do not.”

  “Bah!” Garos grumbled and slapped away Talmir’s hand, and Talmir laughed, the move only serving to reinforce his state of exhaustion.

  Talmir made as if to step through the open gate, but Garos caught him by the crook of the elbow and held him back. He lowered his voice and Talmir leaned in to hear, his heart quickening again, as if a new duel might start.

  “How bad will it be?” Garos asked, and when Talmir frowned in confusion, the Ember turned him around and pointed into the eastern sky.

  There, hanging above the twisted treetops of the Eastern Woods, the stars were already hidden behind a blanket of swirling gray clouds. Nothing like the unnatural smog the White Crest had laid over them in the midst of his corruption, but a sign of the changing season, when the air grew thick with moisture and ripe with cold.

  “Bad enough,” Talmir said, “if Seers and Sages are to be believed.” He tried to mean the easy smile he showed his friend, but Garos saw through it.

  “Best prepare, then,” Garos said, slapping Talmir on the back.

  “Ah, yes,” Talmir said with a groan. “The work is never done.”

  “Be thankful we’ve something to do,” Garos said, and Talmir had trouble knowing if he was joking or not. “Men like us. What would we have if not our blades and an excuse to wield them?”

  The First Keeper walked through the gate and nodded to the boy who stood just out of sight. Talmir stood in the yard, staring after him. He stood long enough to make Jakub act on his impatience, and when the boy’s candlelight spilled in through the gate, it lit the silver and black pommel of his father’s sword.

  Talmir smiled at him and scooped it up, belted it on, and tried not to think of what it had done in recent months, and what it might be asked to do in those to come.

  “Just monsters,” he said without realizing it as the two of them passed through the gate, following in the Ember’s footsteps.

  “What?” Jakub asked, sounding concerned. He searched the shadows around them as if a thing with rows of teeth and sharpened claws might leap out at any moment.

  “If you take anything of worth from me, Jakub,” Talmir said, resting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, which had already filled some since last he saw him, “take this: it is always easier to kill monsters than men.”

  The way was difficult, for a time.

  They had camped in the night, setting a fire in the dried hollow beneath a dead tree. The ground had been moist and full of worms and crawling things. Things with more legs than Iyana could count in the scant light of the ruddy flames. Things that bit in the reaches of the night, causing her to fold into herself like a child at the foot of her parents’ bed. Ceth did not seem to mind, though she saw his eyes standing open when she chanced a look, peering up through the canopy that alternated between dense and almost threadbare, searching for familiar stars.


  Kenta got up once or twice to check on Beast, but Iyana knew he was really checking on the fifth member of their company, and the only one without a voice to lend his complaints to theirs. Checking to make sure that no wolf or cat had got to him and ensuring that no crow had made him its gorging perch. Iyana saw them, standing as silent shadows on the branches above. Watching. Always watching.

  In all, the experience had left Iyana feeling so tired when the sun fought its way through the swaying leaves and branches that she wished they had walked through the night. It seemed her companions agreed; after taking a few short breaks throughout the day, none showed any signs of slowing when the sun once more sank into the west, drenching them in a darkness broken up only by the brown of bark and the deep greens of the summer’s growth.

  Iyana was pleasantly surprised by her own fortitude throughout their trek. It seemed her trials in the deserts had not all been about Sages and Pale Men and the powers of the Valley Faey, but also about learning to put one foot in front of the other, time after time, until the leagues passed underfoot and the land changed before and behind.

  With the abundance of plant life came merciful space in which to walk without the fear of snagging thorns or tripping roots. There were natural pathways covered with moss that wended their way beneath the starlit canopy. The land sloped downward, far downward, until Iyana began to fear they might have to make camp again, for Beast if not for them; the charger had nearly slipped down a steep incline, the steadying presence of Kenta the only thing keeping the steed from going over.

  And then the lights emerged. Tiny fires of blue, green and lavender dancing in the deeper distance.