The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  The archer’s tether was orange, like a burning Everwood blade, and Iyana could see that the man Ceth held in his hand bore a color close enough to be called the same.

  Iyana saw the archer’s eyes narrow as the rest watched, holding their weapons more loosely, though the lot of them were focused on their captive companion. Iyana thought she would have to seize on this one’s thread and wondered if she would come to regret not doing it sooner, but the woman blinked, seemingly in recognition, and just as soon as her murderous intent had come, it seemed to leave.

  She lowered her bow.

  “Griyen?” she asked. Iyana looked to Kenta, whose own tether was flickering under the myriad emotions flitting through his head like the storm clouds she could smell overhead. He frowned at the archer, and then his expression lit up like one of the plants around them, which were still buzzing with excitement.

  “Shek?” he asked, and Iyana saw her eyebrows tilt upward when he said the name. She gave the slightest of nods.

  Ceth’s grip relaxed enough to admit wind back into the breast of the man he held. The sound of the well-muscled Faey choking undid the new calm, and the woman known as Shek frowned and went to raise her bow again.

  “Ceth!” Now Iyana did reach out, ensnaring Ceth’s bright white tether and pulling sharp and quick. Looks of surprise did not come often to the Landkist’s features, but one did now. The blur that coated his straining arms dissipated, as did the constant buzzing that accompanied it. Iyana released him and he released the man he held, who, for all his seeming strength, pulled up the grass below him by the roots as he gasped for air.

  Ceth whirled on Iyana, teeth bared like one of the desert foxes in the north. Seeing her fearful look, he seemed to remember himself. He froze and began a slow, aching survey of their current predicament, which was, in a word, tense.

  Bows and blades remained poised, but the hands that held them veritably shook with anticipation. Iyana watched the warrior Ceth had held cautiously as he rose. His hand twitched toward a hilt that hung from his leather belt, but, to his credit, he let it be. He moved to stand beside Shek.

  Rather than close ranks, the other Faey held their places among the trees and glowing radiance. Iyana had the urge to study them, but there was still a potent threat to the air and she was suddenly grateful for Kenta’s calming presence.

  “You’ve grown,” Kenta said, coming to stand beside Ceth.

  The Faey beside Shek raised an eyebrow, first at Kenta and then at her. Shek eyed Ceth for a spell before lowering her bow and straightening. She raised her chin as she took Kenta in.

  “You’ve shrunk.”

  There was a pregnant pause, and then Kenta began to laugh. Iyana had only known the man a short while, but it seemed a rare thing for him to do. Judging by the expression on Shek’s face as she watched him, it was. It was also infectious. Soon enough, both Shek and her companions were smiling, and Iyana marveled at how quickly the threat of violence could turn for these folk, even the man Ceth had just come an inch from killing, or being killed for.

  When Kenta quieted, Shek looked from him back to Ceth. She gave the slightest of nods, which he returned. And then she looked to Iyana, her eyes widening slightly. Iyana realized with a start that she was using the power of the Landkist native to this land, and in the company of those who had been here far longer than any others. Far longer than she and hers.

  She blinked and when she met Shek’s eyes again, she did not see her amber tether, nor those of her companions.

  Shek gave a nod that could have been a slight bow. “Faeykin,” she said. Iyana smiled and then felt foolish for doing so. When Shek’s eyes rose and fixed on her again, they did so with an intensity that was difficult to parse. Ceth seemed to notice it as well. He took a step closer to Iyana and then froze, cognizant of the fixed attention he still drew from the rest of the Faey.

  “She is a student of the Faey Mother,” Kenta said, indicating Iyana. “The student, really.” Iyana thought she detected a hint of bitterness from Kenta’s tone and filed it away for later. “Iyana Ve’Ran.”

  “Ninyeva,” the taller Faey said. He seemed to see Iyana with fresh eyes. The same could not be said for Shek.

  “Is she?” She asked it in a way that said she had no need of the answer.

  Iyana nodded and smiled sheepishly. Shek suppressed a grimace.

  “And your friend?” she asked, dismissing Iyana as less than important and focusing instead on Ceth.

  “His name is Ceth,” Kenta said. “He is a Landkist of the north—”

  “One of the Skyr,” Shek said, surprising them all, Ceth most of all. “I noticed.”

  “You are too young to know—”

  “Plenty older than me,” Shek interrupted Kenta again. “The Skyr are known to the Faey.” She regarded Ceth, who regarded her back. “They could run on the clouds themselves,” she said. “A mainstay in the wars without our Valley.” She paused, her eyes sending the shaft she had not. “And yet, you use your power to add weight to your blows. To turn your fists into morningstars. You do not soar like your ancestors. You are a far cry from the Skyr of old, Ceth.”

  “Your woodland realm, where you skulk in strange light that may as well be shadow, has little sky to call its own,” Ceth said. He said it calmly, but Iyana did the bristling for him. She stepped forward, ignoring Kenta’s pointed look and the eyes of the Faey, who tracked her among the bright ferns and shimmering bulbs. Beast, the forgotten member of their company, pawed the ground with his weighty strikes, daring any of the Faey to so much as twitch too quickly in Iyana’s direction.

  “We come to the Eastern Woods to honor one of yours,” Iyana said. She gestured back at the charger and the wrapped bundle on the patch of moss behind him, and for the first time, Shek and her hunters looked beyond them. “Sen,” she said, color coming to her face. Where before the air had felt cool and soothing on the edges of the rushing river, now it felt close and stifling.

  Shek’s face seemed to pale at the proclamation. Her lips formed a tight line, and for a moment, she looked as if she might respond, but the taller male beside her stepped forward, brushing by Iyana and ignoring Kenta and Ceth. He walked right up to Beast and Iyana turned to watch him. The Faey bowed his head as he recognized the wrapped form of Sen. When he turned back to his companions, he did so with a grave expression.

  “Three of the Faeykin were training with our own,” the man said without turning. “What became of Sen’s companions? Those from the Scattered Villages?”

  Iyana felt a pang for not knowing Verna and Courlis were not of Hearth. She knew most of the Scattered Villages were to the west, but there were some in the northeast, very close to the Faey tribes.

  “They fell on the same road,” Iyana said. “We burned them at Hearth.”

  He nodded, but made no move to speak again. Not for some time. Iyana watched those on the borders. Some bowed their heads in apparent mourning, while others looked aloof. The majority, it seemed, did not know how they should feel, caught between looking at Shek and the tall hunter who might be their leader.

  “My name is Tirruhn,” he said. “And I welcome you to the East, to lands you have never been before. You are blessed by the Valley, Iyana Ve’Ran. We will not turn you away, no matter how much Shek might wish it so.

  “Come,” he said, turning from Beast. “Sunrise is not so far away. Let us move while the path is lit.” He would have shouldered Shek out of the way had she not moved aside. She looked shamed for a moment, until she felt Iyana’s eyes on her.

  The others began to move off. They were reluctant at first, with more than one casting lingering stares toward Ceth, who remained rooted next to Iyana, waiting on her to make a move. She looked to Kenta, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug before following Tirruhn onto the northernmost path, which straddled the riverside. He took Beast with him and Ceth followed after when Iyana smiled
to let him know she was fine.

  Shek waited for Iyana to pass her by. When she did, she took up her wake. She walked very close to Iyana as they began their trek. Closer than was comfortable, and Iyana felt her stare as a steady smolder.

  “You have the hair all right,” Shek said, going so far as to brush its edges with the tips of her fingers. “My people call it moonsilk, but I’ve always thought it looks more like starlight.”

  Iyana felt strange under Shek’s attention, but she could see by Ceth’s bearing that he was listening to every word. At least, as best he could.

  Iyana turned toward Shek, but came up empty when she went to speak. Shek took the opportunity. “Even without the hair, though,” she said, “I’d have known you had the gift of my people by the way those emeralds shone.”

  She stopped in her tracks and hooked Iyana by the elbow. Iyana stopped as well, doing her best not to call out for Ceth or Kenta, who had disappeared around the next bend in the thickening undergrowth.

  “Had you so much as brushed against my tether, young one,” Shek said, running two fingers along Iyana’s bangs, “I’d have cut your throat with an arrowhead.” She even smiled as she said it, as if it were an afterthought and not a threat to kill. Her eyes went stony as she ended her examination of Iyana’s hair and looked her dead on.

  Iyana felt the fear grip her, but beneath the fear was that ever-present stone of Ve’Ran. It was the same stone her father had, and it was that which Linn had inherited most strongly. But around the stone, burning enough to scald the edges and smooth them in her young years, was a fire that could only come from one born of the Emberfolk. It was the same fire that had awoken in Kole, Jenk and Kaya Ferrahl. It had just chosen to manifest in other ways for her.

  She slapped Shek’s hand away and braced herself for an attack that did not come. Instead, Shek’s alien face—large eyes, a narrow nose and a sharp chin that could cut bark—contorted, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing from one so seemingly small.

  “I am the living legacy of the Faey Mother,” Iyana said. “And I am Faeykin. Both of these things are true.” She did not have to fight to keep her voice level, and some part of her took pleasure in seeing it shock this woman of the Eastern Woods. “But I am also Iyana Ve’Ran of Last Lake.”

  There was hardly any space between them, but Iyana took a half step toward Shek anyway, filling in the narrow gap. “You are young, Shek,” Iyana said. “And unburdened by the abilities of the Landkist. Your Valley did not think to bless you or curse you as it has done me. Blessed to heal hurts and see the lives of others as threads to be tugged, pulled … or cut entirely.” Shek swallowed. “Cursed to feel their hurt as your own, their fear more so.” Iyana looked from one dark blue eye to the other and did not have to light her own to get the desired effect.

  “Do not pretend to know anything of who I am. Do not pretend to know why I have come.”

  Iyana finished and left Shek standing beneath the starry specks of blue and lavender that hung from the vines and furry creepers. When she moved around the bend, she nearly collided with Ceth’s chest. The Landkist was standing in the center of the glowing trail. Iyana looked up at him, and he frowned in confusion at the smirk she still wore. She wiped it away and craned around him to see Kenta standing alongside Beast. Tirruhn stood off to the side. He smiled disarmingly at her and looked away when Shek streaked past her without a word or backward glance, her coldness now anything but indifferent.

  Mollified that nothing untoward would occur now that the two had had it out, at least for now, Ceth allowed Iyana to pass, taking up the rear. When she passed by Tirruhn, the tall warrior fell into step beside her and just behind Kenta and Beast, whose oily black tail swished at the buzzing fireflies. Iyana could still see Shek up ahead. She was not so far as to be out of earshot.

  Tirruhn saw her looking.

  “Ninyeva was a friend to us,” he said. “She did much to bring peace back to the Valley core.”

  Hearing him, Kenta broke off from a short, clipped exchange with Shek and handed Beast’s reins to her. Much to Iyana’s surprise, she accepted the charge without a backward glance, and Kenta slowed his pace to fall in beside them.

  “Some would say she also brought war,” Kenta said.

  “Can’t have one without the other,” Ceth said from behind.

  Iyana bristled at Kenta but he raised a hand in a placating gesture. “Ninyeva was of the desert caravan,” he said. “Before our coming, and before the Rivermen followed the River F’Rust down out of the north, the Faey held this Valley alone.”

  “And am I to believe that the Faey never had war with one another?” Iyana asked. Tirruhn merely shrugged.

  “All peoples war,” he said.

  Kenta, it seemed, was more interested in defending the Faey than Tirruhn was. “War requires opposing sides, Iyana. All peoples are capable of violence, just as all birds, beasts and flitting insects are. But war.” He looked distant. “War is something else entirely. There is an intent to the practice, and one wolves and lions are incapable of mimicking.”

  Iyana shifted her attention back to the trail as she mulled it over. “Tirruhn,” she started and the tall Faey warrior looked down at her. “Do you take offense to being compared to wolves and silver lions?”

  “What is there to take offense to?” he asked. Now that the threat of violence had passed, Iyana noticed the accent he bore. It was covered, and not nearly as potent as she might have expected, but it was there.

  “War is something done between men,” Kenta concluded with a short nod. “And no matter how it starts or why, it takes two sides to keep a thing like that going.”

  “We’re beyond that, now,” Iyana said.

  The trail was closer than those they had passed through on the river’s edge. She could still hear the water rushing by, could still feel the mist drifting through the foliage and coating her arms and neck in a thin film that was pleasant without soaking.

  Tirruhn left them to their own company, and, near as Iyana could tell, left no hunters behind to shadow their steps. It seemed the Faey had taken them at their word, or at least had taken Kenta at his.

  “Shek recognized my power immediately,” Iyana said to Kenta. She tossed a glance back at Ceth, but the stoic warrior was transfixed by the sight of the bright life all around. The deserts had seemed full to him compared to the windswept red cliffs in the far north. How teeming must this Valley seem? How strange?

  “Of course she did,” Kenta said. “For the Faey, the only Landkist they knew directly were their own.”

  Iyana found herself watching Shek as she walked alongside Beast up ahead. Despite her prickly demeanor, she guided the charger gently and patiently over the unfamiliar and sometimes dim terrain.

  “Of course,” Kenta said, “they don’t call them the same thing we do.”

  Iyana looked at him as if he were daft, and when she saw his straightforward expression, she felt a fool for not thinking of it sooner.

  “What do they call them?” she asked. The question had never entered her mind before. She had never thought to question the term ‘Faeykin,’ but, seeing where they were and whom they walked among, and given the way Shek and some of the others had reacted to her, Iyana didn’t much feel like their kin.

  Kenta shrugged and smiled wistfully. “I would say that nobody apart from them knows, but I wouldn’t know if I was lying or not. I’ve always suspected Mother Ninyeva knew. The Rivermen used to call them Greenseers,” he said and then grimaced slightly. “At least, when they were feeling cordial. My mother called them Knitters. A simple name, perhaps, but certainly apt. For a time, all the Emberfolk of the Valley knew of the Faey was rumor. Tribesmen in the trees. Peaceful and aloof, if a little strange. Each land has them, so why not ours?”

  Iyana saw a shadow pass across his face. He saw her looking and seemed to do his best to bury the loo
k and replace it with a lighter one.

  “Of course,” he said, “you’re starting to learn just how many ways their gifts can turn, and after I’d seen the things the Landkist of the Eastern Woods could do, ‘Knitters’ seemed nothing if not morbidly ironic.”

  “Still true,” Iyana said. “A Everwood blade can be used to kill just as easily as it can be used to protect.”

  “Even to heal,” Kenta said, earning a laugh from Iyana that had Tirruhn’s horizontal ears twitching up ahead. Kenta did not laugh, however. “The greenfire can do the deepest healing, no doubt,” he clarified. “But,” he drew a line across his chest and Iyana wondered if he was referring to himself or simply painting an example, “but some wounds are too wide for anything but flame to close.” He wrinkled his nose. “Nasty business. Loud and painful. But it’s the smell that put me off it. I once saw Larren Holspahr close a gash on his thigh you could have threaded a spear through.”

  Iyana shook her head. She tried to remember the Second Keeper of Last Lake and whether or not he had borne a limp. Her memory came up wanting.

  “It’s strange,” Iyana said with another shake, “knowing what I know now of my gifts. Knowing how quickly they can turn. Being Faeykin—or whatever we are—”

  “You are exactly what the Faey Mother believed you to be,” Kenta interrupted. “And you are just as worthy or unworthy of being it as any of the Valley Landkist born among the Faey, the Emberfolk or the Rivermen. Do not let the conventions of naming disavow you of that notion.” He nodded up at Shek, to all of their hosts, who moved like dreaming shadows in the blurry light. “Do not let them tell you otherwise. Ninyeva certainly never did.”

  “I think I would like to meet her,” Ceth said and they both turned to regard him. “This Ninyeva. She was your teacher, yes?” Iyana nodded, and he opened his mouth to speak before closing it and considering.

  “Speak,” she said. “Say what you mean, Ceth. You needn’t keep secrets from me.”