The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “Your master was a fool to use as much power as he did in the west,” Alistair continued, ignoring the open glare Valour sent his way. Shadow found the fresh dynamic fascinating. Not since Rane himself had someone so openly defied the Eastern Dark, and even that bold, bright Ember had been brought to heel—mostly—in the end. Here he was, kneeling among them, though his soul—whatever had been left of it—had long since departed.

  “No matter,” Alistair said, looking from Shadow to the Sage before squaring himself to the east. “The Frostfire Sage is at work even now, as we speak.”

  “Won’t calling more of your fellows in count to the same ends?” Shadow asked and while Valour’s face started to twitch in annoyance, she saw one of his eyebrows twitch up, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility.

  Alistair made a great show of dropping his bone-laden, gray shoulders. His mouse-colored hair blew in the wind, stringy and macabre, but there was a vitality to the muscle and sinew beneath his skin she could not ignore.

  “Hence the need for hosts, my dearest Shadow,” he said. He craned his neck to take her in, sharing a private smile that stung her in a way she could not explain until the words left his lips. “You should know more than most. I bet you were quite a beauty in your day. Shame you can’t remember.”

  The words may as well have been an arrow that pierced whatever was left of Shadow’s heart and left her writhing, convulsing, retching all the rage she had bottled over the long years spent in the Eastern Dark’s company. In his bondage. She snarled and shook with the need to rise, but Valour reached out and touched a hand to her arm. She tried to recoil and he gripped her tighter, his hand burning with that unchecked Ember fire as he held her back.

  Alistair dropped the smile and looked ahead. He bent his knees ever so slightly and then shot forward with impressive speed. Impressive for anyone, Landkist or not.

  Shadow forgot the hand that gripped her and started forward as Alistair dropped out of sight, his path direct as he made for the tower. She heard the cries as he began his assault. Nothing secret about it. Nothing clever.

  “Shadow …” Valour drew it out, and beneath that burning, something of sickness crept onto her skin. She felt a clammy cold that reminded her of something from long ago. She ceased her pulling and looked down to see the black shell parting around his dark hand. It looked like ink being drained from white parchment, and Shadow turned her eyes up to meet his. She could not hide her fear.

  He released her, his too-long ears twitching as he took in the sounds of battle over the rise. They stared at one another for a moment that stretched.

  “I know how you must hate me,” Valour said, settling back. He stood with a sigh.

  “Do you?” Shadow asked, not trying to keep the venom from her tone.

  “I do.”

  She waited for him to continue. After a time spent watching the archer loose her shafts and frantic shouts into whatever chaos she witnessed below, he did.

  “I am an evil man, Shadow. That I know. There is no denying it. I wanted to, once. I think I wanted to be good. I think I thought I was good, in my own twisted way.” His eyes actually looked to be watering. She heard a faint sizzling and then the imagined tears wafted up into the air like smoke. “I’d love nothing more than to be able to blame my actions over these last centuries on the taint of the World Apart.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I could. It’s as good an excuse as any. Better. But then, I wanted to win, Shadow. I still want to win. No matter my current path, I would like to believe that this is just a game between my former brothers and sisters and I, and with how many souls in the balance?”

  She shook her head and resisted the urge to spit into the melt. Movement up ahead drew her eye. She saw Alistair scaling the tower like a rabid squirrel. He looked to be clutching the body of one of the defenders in one arm and dropped it, bloody and still screaming, almost as an afterthought, before that pesky archer loosed a shaft that forced him to leap away.

  “But I started the war,” Valour said. He was rambling, and she let him. “I went looking where I shouldn’t have. Where the Red Fox told me not to. Where she—most of all, she—told me not to.” He spat. She could not recall him ever having done so before. It was a crass, mortal act. It made him at once more sympathetic and easier to imagine killing. “The World turns on ironies, Shadow. You are one of the smallest and greatest of them.” She screwed her face up as she watched him, but he had already moved on.

  “I know how you must hate me,” he said, his purple eyes burning with some of that Ember fire as they turned her way. “But in this, if in nothing else, I am right. If we fail in the north, the World dies.”

  “World’s never done much for me,” Shadow sneered.

  “Perhaps it could,” he said, looking back to the Quartz Tower. “Once we’re gone.”

  Shadow liked the sound of that. She liked the sound of it more than she would have liked, and his look told her he knew it.

  “Now, then,” he said. “I think our new ally has demonstrated his prowess, if not his poise, well enough. No use having gone through the trouble of summoning him if the Witch’s knights rip him apart. Shall we?”

  Shadow made a great show of sighing, and it actually drew a laugh from the Sage.

  The ice cracked beneath their feet and the slush beneath soaked her to the knees. “You’re going to need to get a handle on those flames,” she said. She shrank back as he examined his palms and willed fire into them. They were roiling orange globes with shadowy centers, and rather than put off light, they seemed to drink it in, drenching his surroundings in a gray to match the skies.

  “Go,” he said. “I need more time.”

  Shadow smiled. “Is that you taking my orders for a cha—”

  “Go!”

  And she went, slipping away from his violent aura and delighting in the blast of cold as she broke the pocket back into the frozen waste. She ran toward the white ridge, which had begun to glitter as a shaft of yellow sunlight fought its way through the thick clouds above. Her eyes widened and she darted to the side, breaking the rough white crust with her shoulder as one of that damned archer’s arrows shot toward her.

  Shadow came up with a snarl and sighted the woman, who was already lining up her next shot. She looked around, frantic for a place with a bit of black in which she could blend, but there were no trees in the north. Nowhere to hide.

  “So be it.”

  She leapt and broke the crest of the ridge, sliding down toward the bottom. She heard another arrow thud into the ground above her head, sinking in up to the fletchings. As she thought of how best to make her approach, Shadow could not help but be impressed by the scene that awaited her at the bottom.

  Alistair had done his work and he’d done it well. She heard fighting on the other side of the spire. In the front, strewn across the frozen yard, were half a dozen bodies covered in as much gore as fur. It looked like a herd had been massacred by a passing pack of wolves. Shadow supposed the reality was not so different as she skidded to a halt at the bottom.

  One still moved. She approached him—an old man whose salt and pepper resolved into frost as she neared, revealing him to be young. No more than a boy, really. He had dragged himself an impressive distance on nothing but his elbows. Shadow grimaced as she bent over him, seeing the way his boot hung by a single pink thread.

  She cast a shadow over him that made him freeze. He turned toward her, eyes wild and teeth red. Ending him was a mercy, and she made quick work of it.

  Her pity nearly cost Shadow her life.

  As she rose, she saw another shadow moving within the deep blue cast by the crystalline tower. She fell back with a yelp and saw the clear blade catch the distant rays of the embattled sun. Shadow conjured her own blade, seeing the Blue Knight’s nostrils twitch as he scented the rot that came with it. They circled one another and Shadow took him in as they stepped amidst the
shadows and gore.

  The Landkist, though male, was shorter and stockier than the one Valour had fought on the shelves to the west. His face was a mottled mass of burns on one side and glittering, glistening blue on the other. He wore that brilliant golden armor, and though Shadow could see his clear blade shifting and casting bright facets in the gloom, she saw no hint of that invisible armor the other had donned.

  “Had a run-in with one of the Embers, have we?” Shadow purred, her heart bending to the task now that he had made a try for her. In the past, she never had to grow into the killing. Still, once she did, she found it came just as easy as it ever had before. Just as certain.

  The Blue Knight was undoubtedly fast and doubly strong, but he was weak and wounded, and on his first charge, he stumbled. Shadow ducked a swing and could have stuck him on the spot. Instead, she dodged a counter that never came. He spun on her, snarling, and conjured a second blade to join the first. She could see this one more clearly, but those bright blue fists shook and quivered with the clear blades in their grasp, and she saw rivulets of melt streaming down the hilts.

  “I don’t think that’s supposed to happen,” Shadow mocked, standing straight up and pointing her own wisping black-and-purple blade forward.

  The knight snarled and thrust forward with one blade. Shadow dodged. He carved straight down with the other and she angled in, and before he could retract for another attack, she took off both his arms at the elbow and silenced his dying scream with a slash to the throat as he fell.

  “I’m going soft,” she said to herself, kicking at him to see how long the Landkist here clung to their lives. “Oops. Maybe we needed that one alive.”

  She saw another Blue Knight skid out onto the flats on the north side of the tower. This one was bleeding from a half-ruined jaw, but she didn’t so much as flinch as Shadow took her in her sights and began her deathly approach. The knight’s attention was fixed on the one who’d been at her like a dog on a carcass.

  There was a blast of heat from behind, and Shadow turned back toward the western ridge. At the top, Valour stood like a picture of legend or nightmare. His fists were now steady comets wreathed in that orange-and-black storm, and she knew by the direction of his gaze that he would soon bring the tower down.

  “Seems a waste to me,” Shadow said. She leapt back and squared herself to the other side of the tower as she imagined movement, then relaxed as she noticed four more soldiers strewn about that side. They were bleeding but undoubtedly alive, and she grimaced as she saw them struggling over the boney spurs—like rough gray iron—that pinned them by the shoulders to the base of the structure.

  One of them noticed her and began to hurl insults. She ignored them and focused on the duel between the Landkist of two separate worlds, for surely that was what Alistair and his brethren must be. Something close, at least.

  The Blue Knight cast a hurried look to the top of the tower behind Shadow, her gold-rimmed eyes widening as she took in the nightmarish orange glow Valour was making of the western sky. She looked to the north, and Shadow followed her gaze. In the distance, across the frozen sheets of salt, she thought she could see a small jewel clinging to the end of the mountain range—a ward at the end of the World. She thought it might be another of the towers, but the longer she stared, the image came clearer. She saw what looked to be spires and even the hint of banners flapping in the storm winds. A castle, then. The queen’s palace.

  Of course, it was much too far to run to. To the Blue Knight’s credit, she recognized this and ceased her fruitless searching. No ally was wont to come streaking out of the mists. And the last of those around her were dead or caught. She set her feet and gritted her teeth, and as Alistair paused a few paces away, the knight closed her eyes, squeezing them shut tightly in concentration.

  Shadow paid attention to her skin, watching the water and sweat mix atop the azure surface, like a frozen pond made of minerals. Again, no conjured armor, and the more of these Landkist they came across, the more certain Shadow became that the first one they had encountered had been of a special make.

  Still, this one seemed determined to win the day. The translucent blade she held began to change, and Shadow could see motes of white snow dust swirling around its wielder. The sword’s hilt—a simple cross—began to grow, encasing her fist and snaking down her wrist. It looked terribly uncomfortable and terribly solid, with the edges of the blade itself frosting over, turning milky white and glittering despite the gloom.

  Her muscles bunched, and in the opposite hand, just below those golden greaves, another weapon began to form as if out of thin air. This one, too, appeared composed of ice, or something like it. In the place of a second sword, the Blue Knight called a gauntlet with more spikes and serrated edges than Shadow could surmise. The effort seemed to pain the creature. She opened her eyes, and Shadow saw blood leaking from the corners.

  Shadow felt her sword arm tensing in anticipation. She felt a thrill and thought to join in the fight herself before she remembered Alistair. The Shadow King, as he called himself, watched the Blue Knight ready herself like a hawk watches a dove from far overhead. It did not seem to be a matter of if the Landkist would die at his hand, but how.

  The Blue Knight attacked, and Shadow was taken aback by her speed, and more so by her cunning. This one was fresher than the wounded male Shadow had just killed. She was faster, stronger. Most of all, she was more skilled.

  Far more skilled.

  Shadow took pleasure in seeing Alistair’s unsettling red-pink eyes widen as he dodged the first salvo. He barely managed to avoid the second, and a piece of his gray stone shell twisted away, landing with a clatter. Alistair forgot it immediately, and as he launched his counter, Shadow noticed that the rough patch on the chest plate it had left behind was already beginning to mend.

  Living armor. Not so different from the Blue Knight Valour had faced on the shelves. Still, that was where the similarities ended.

  The men and women at Shadow’s back had ceased their fruitless writhing and had turned their foolish, doomed minds to hope. They cheered on their champion and cursed her opponent. Soon enough, however, their voices quieted so much so that Shadow actually twisted round to ensure they had not been killed.

  Where the Blue Knight slashed and parried with anger and courage, Alistair moved like a jackal at a wounded bull. He was strong and vital, but he did not put himself in harm’s way. He seemed unwilling to take undue risk, and Shadow could not fault him for it, though her estimation of him was beginning to wane.

  And then she saw his smile. It started as something close to a grimace at the corner of his mouth, but as he fought, it grew until it plastered his gray, wide-nosed face with a maniacal glee that shattered all that was left of the Blue Knight’s resolve. She fought on anyway, but Alistair switched from parrying to countering. He did not wield any weapons and chose instead to turn her frosted blade aside with the flats of his palms. Shadow could see white burns beginning to collect on the Shadow King’s skin, and so he changed tack.

  Alistair leapt back as that spiked gauntlet made a resounding crack in the ice below his feet. He spread his arms out to his sides. At first, Shadow thought it a taunt. Perhaps it was, but it was also another reveal. Another trick. His gray armor began to grow, the plates forming together and elongating into two short, sharp and porous blades that extended beyond the tips of his fingers, which he closed into fists.

  They clashed again, and this time, Alistair gave as good as he got. Far better. Despite the scores and gouges he had received throughout the fight, Shadow saw that not a single attack from the frosted blade or the swinging gauntlet had struck skin or drawn blood. Such was not the case for Alistair the Cordial. For him, each strike was meant to be a killing blow, and each drew enough red to make it so in a lesser being.

  The Blue Knight stayed up longer than she had any right to, and Shadow marveled as she stumbled back, blood le
aking from a dozen gashes. The knight took a halting step forward and her leg quaked. She fell to one knee, and when she tried to brace herself on her left hand, the gauntlet shattered. The atmosphere was warming about them, the skies seeming to grow darker in the east even as they brightened behind her.

  What was Valour playing at? Testing his power? Displaying it for Alistair to see? He could have easily plucked the pesky archer from her perch and smote this Landkist from the spot. Instead, he seemed content to charge his fists, to see what he could bring out of the Ember King’s power.

  “I applaud you,” Alistair said to the Blue Knight, who snarled at him like a beaten dog and spat a wad of bloody phlegm into the snow. He approached her and rewarded her insult with a hard kick that snapped her jaw and sent her tumbling, her crystal sword the latest casualty.

  Shadow approached one of the shards that spun toward her, gliding across the surface of the waste. She bent to retrieve it and winced as the cold bit her fingertips. When she looked up to see the Blue Knight struggling to rise, she did so with a modicum more respect.

  “A worthy contest,” Alistair said, speaking as if he were addressing a friend after an evening spar. The Blue Knight opened her mouth to speak and Alistair leaned forward on one knee to better hear her. Or so it seemed, for as soon as he was close enough, he parted her head from her body

  Shadow felt an odd mix of emotions as she watched it tumble and then slide across the ice trailing a thick red ribbon of gore. The gold eyes were still as brilliant as the armor she had worn when they came to rest, staring in Shadow’s direction. Her last look was not one of defiance like the stories would have one think. More shock than anything, as if she had slipped and forgotten to break her fall.

  Alistair wasted no more effort on the vanquished Landkist. He rose and turned on his heel, marking a path back toward the base of the tower. The soldiers there had recovered some of their former humor. They knew their deaths were at hand and it seemed they had saved their choicest insults for the occasion.