The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  As Alistair passed her by, Shadow made sure to keep her wisping blade between them.

  “I see why they call you ‘Cordial’, now,” she said, and the Shadow King stopped in his tracks. His eyes shifted her way before his head turned. It was an unnatural movement and one that betrayed him as something even farther from human than she was.

  “Do you, Shadow girl?” he asked with that sick smile before continuing on.

  Shadow watched him pass and hated the shiver that threatened her spine.

  “Don’t we need them alive?” she asked, seeing the unerring purpose with which he walked.

  It was difficult to concentrate on the image of the Shadow King and the struggling forms pinned to the base of the tower. Beyond it, the skies were bathed in crimson and gold, and Shadow walked north to get a view of the Sage and his machinations.

  “Just need them to be warm,” Alistair said. He had sheathed one blade like a scorpion retracts its tail. He used the second to take the complaining throats of the soldiers at the bottom. “Help me,” he said, snatching two by the furs and dragging them out of the tower’s shadow.

  “Curse you.”

  Shadow frowned at the unfamiliar voice as she hooked the next pair, one under each arm, and followed Alistair’s path.

  “Curse you unto the World’s ending, and curse you for it.”

  It was the archer, standing there at the tower’s top. She looked like a figure of legend, and one that would not have an uplifting ending. Seeing the yellow-haired archer staring with such pure hate in her eyes toward the Eastern Dark—the tallest of all the World’s tales and one of the oldest; the subject of so much wrong, now a self-proclaimed champion of right—Shadow almost respected the woman.

  Soft, indeed.

  Shadow deposited the rest of Alistair’s catch in the modest pile of flesh, blood and fur and stood a short distance from the Shadow King, watching the Sage revel in his power. He was almost totally wreathed in flame, now. It danced around him like a shimmering veil with a black border. His eyes were the color of sunset, and she couldn’t see their black centers from here. He stood with those glowing globes of hell hanging by his sides. When he was certain she and Alistair were out of the way—or perhaps he’d have done it even if they were still standing in the shadow of the tower—he brought his palms together and Shadow’s sight was stolen.

  She reeled, and when she heard the tower crack and begin to splinter, she thought the whole of the land beneath her was coming undone and feared being cast into the endless, suffocating depths beneath. When she opened her eyes, she saw that even Alistair seemed impressed at the sight before them.

  The Eastern Dark poured a torrent of shadowfire into the tower that parted like a river around the white spur. The archer at the top was immolated, the last of her life winking out as a brighter nugget at the heart of the amber inferno. The beam was like a shaft of sunlight from a land of darkness, and Shadow wondered if it might be even more powerful than those Rane could call. Impressive as it was, she did not think it quite up to that one’s standards.

  And then the tower fell, collapsing in on itself in a mix of shards and frosted spray. The western sky and the melting ridge were bathed in blue shadows as the torrent ended, and Shadow saw the Sage collapse onto his knees, his swarthy complexion going past pale and landing on white as his chest heaved and his palms looked for purchase in the melt.

  “Testing our limits, are we?” Alistair said, more to himself than her. “It seems he’s found them.” What he thought of that, he did not say, and Shadow wasn’t about to ask.

  The Sage, it appeared, was utterly spent. He looked so exhausted, she thought there was a chance he might actually die, then and there. Of course, she could not have been so lucky, and Valour called out to Alistair as he worked to regain his breath.

  “Do you have all you need?” he asked, to which Alistair nodded.

  “Fetch the one you slew,” Alistair said. Shadow felt as if she had been slapped, but when she looked to him, he did not react with the sneer or knowing grin she had expected. “The sooner you recognize that we’re on the same side,” he said, “the sooner you’ll come to appreciate what me and my brothers will bring with us to the Witch’s door.”

  Shadow spat into the ice that was now covered with an inch of water from the radiant heat of the Sage’s borrowed blast. If seen from a distance, Shadow guessed they would look as if they were standing on the surface of a shimmering lake.

  “You’re not on my side, Alistair,” Shadow said neutrally. “No matter how Cordial you are.” They watched Valour make his way down the ridge that was now a melting slope. He looked old and hobbled, but he was regaining his former measure with each passing step and slide.

  “I don’t care about you or your Sage,” Alistair said. His bluntness surprised her. “Nor do I care for your world. If it sank into the bottom of this frozen sea, it would not trouble me.” He switched his eyes to her, and beneath the red, she saw something else. Something that looked decidedly more human than his outward appearance would suggest. “But I have a world, Shadow. And I do love mine. So long as there is a chance to save it, I’ll do what needs to be done, even if it means allying myself with agents of darkness to do it.”

  Shadow nearly choked on the absurdity of the claim.

  “You call us dark?” she said, feeling a little foolish as his eyes roved over her unnatural black form. “You hail from the World Apart!” Her frustration mounted alongside her confusion.

  “And do you think we call it the same?” Alistair asked. “Each world is separate from another. And there are many, Shadow. Many more than you could fathom.”

  “You know much of the cosmos, then?” she said dryly.

  “I know something of what haunts it, at least. The power that seeks to lay waste to it. To devour it.” He looked out over their shimmering patch of sea, his eyes picking up the pale yellow of the distant horizon. They stood in a pocket of stormy dusk, but it was still day out over the edges of the land. The rays seemed to be fighting their way back toward them, battling the clouds.

  “My world was never a peaceful place,” Alistair said. “But it was not without its own beauty.” One of his gray fists clenched. “It was not without order.”

  He shook his head and began walking toward the ruins of the tower, and she followed him. He surprised her by scooping up the Blue Knight she had slain and dragging him back the way they’d come, while Valour, lost in his strange daze, stood in the ankle-deep water and surveyed the destruction he had caused. He ran his hands across the jagged surface of the crystalline spurs that were all that was left of the tower.

  At first, Shadow thought he was in awe over his own display of power, and while she knew there was a piece of truth in that, there was something else in his face that she did not want to admit was there. Tragedy. Loss. Valour did not care for the archer he’d slain, or the men and Landkist they had snatched from life for no other reason than to test his power, and perhaps send a warning to the Witch who was all that remained of his kind. It was, rather, the tower itself that affected him so, and Shadow wondered if he had seen this land long ago, when it must have been something different. When it was something to behold.

  They dragged the bodies to a partial hollow not far from where the tower had fallen. The smooth walls of the cave shimmered with the reflected light of the eastern sky. Valour said nothing, only sank down in the corner as Alistair began his macabre preparations.

  Shadow shook her head and Valour’s deep purple eyes tracked her as she moved to the mouth of the cave. She stood there, scanning from south to north, sure that the Witch would send her legions to take vengeance for the fallen tower. But then, they hadn’t left any survivors to spread the word.

  Unless…

  There was a hint of movement in the north, like a rolling pebble breaking the space from white to gray mountain spur. Shadow stepped f
orward, peering as best she could until she was certain.

  The cloud cover was deeper and less flooded with the sun’s light from above as it had been before. She found the shadows that were her namesake willing and eager to accept her into their fold. Shadow collapsed into their cold embrace without so much as a glance back at the Sage or his otherworldly companion. She came up out of the blue-black shade just beside the crawling man. He was old, and while wounded, he shouldn’t have lost enough blood to make him hunker so. He didn’t notice her for a time, so she watched him crawl, flat as he could.

  Suddenly, he froze, just as the black-haired youth had in the shadow of the tower. He did not look toward her, only sighed. It seemed to deflate him, and though she knew he was thick and solid beneath that fur and chain armor, he looked small in the moment.

  “It isn’t personal,” Shadow cooed as she ran her black fingers across the brown fur that once belonged to an innocent beast this man had not even killed himself. Normally, she’d have meant it in a mocking way. Now, she didn’t, but it didn’t stop him from laughing. It was a short, bitter sound.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. She held her hand out and began to call her blade, to make it from that place of swirling black she wished she could join with and never leave. Perhaps all those she killed went there. She often wondered. If so, she supposed she could count this killing a mercy as well.

  There was a grip on her heart that felt like a vise. Shadow felt terror whose origins she could not explain. She shook even as she knelt, and she felt that familiar black stare on her as if from a great distance, though he was not so far behind her now.

  It was the stare of the Eastern Dark, and it was his grip on the barbs and chains he had set around her heart, just as he had done to T’Alon Rane and Brega Cohr. How quickly she could forget one’s true face. Not the angular, pale skin and dark hair of the Faey-like creature he had been long ago. Not the borrowed face he wore now and stained with his long corruption. Rather, the face that had been given a name more frightful than all the rest, and better earned. A face that Shadow had worked to forget after her long years spent in the deepest reaches of the twisted, broken south as she had earned his favor.

  How foolish was she to act so brazen toward one who could challenge gods themselves and win out?

  Let him go. The Witch must know what we have done here. She is foolish when she is angry. This will make her angry.

  Shadow swallowed. She wanted to kill this man, now. Truly, she wanted to do it, where before she had only thought it necessary—a function of his having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  She cares so much for her followers?

  No. But she cared for that tower. The last of its kind.

  Shadow grimaced and lowered her blade, which evaporated. The old soldier surprised her by turning and spearing a short knife toward her. She caught his hand by the wrist and snapped it neatly, delighting in the blood-curdling scream he let out.

  “Thank me for letting you go,” Shadow said. She leaned in very close and felt the barbs around her heart pull tighter, as if she were a fish on a line. “Thank me,” she said through gritted teeth, ignoring the Sage’s threat.

  The soldier grumbled something that Shadow changed to suit her needs. She stood and left him to it, not bothering to tell him he did not have any cause to continue crawling the rest of the way to the north.

  Valour wanted to reprimand her when she returned to their blue-and-white alcove. She could see the need dripping from him, but he refrained, another show of false strength before their new companion and another show of weakness to her.

  The Shadow King had arranged the bodies, naked and quite dead, against the underside of the ridge, locking their wrists in place with gray-yellow rings that looked to be formed of the same armor that coated him. Their furs, belts and boots had been piled in the center, and Valour leaned forward and lit them with a glowing palm. Shadow saw that the effort was far greater than it should have been. He had spent himself bringing town the tower, far more than Rane ever would, and he seemed to be taking a longer time recovering. As marriages went, that between the Sage and his Ember host had seen brighter days.

  Shadow settled down with her back to the windy east and prepared to sleep, thinking the ritual would take as long or longer than Valour’s had when he had called Alistair in from the World Apart. Instead, Alistair merely cocked his head, closed his eyes and appeared to listen to voices she could not hear.

  When he opened his eyes, he snapped a finger, simple as could be, and the bodies along the back wall wriggled, writhed and contorted into shapes wider and taller or shorter and thinner than they had been before.

  Shadow had expected them to look like Alistair. One seemed to. She was female, lithe and thick, but with the same pink-red eyes as him. She was naked, but seeing him standing before her, she soon willed the same bone-plate armor to grow and cover her modesty. The other four were far different, though. Shadow supposed they were just varying shades of strange. There was a warrior with red skin and black eyes. He came wearing a flowing cloak and polished armor, and then he seemed to change.

  He clutched his chest and bent double, as if he were going to retch, and the other three—a green and two whites like the snow outside—began to match him.

  “Do not fight it, brothers,” Alistair said. “Do as Myriel has done. As I have done. Let this world make you what it will.”

  “Fascinating,” Valour whispered from the side of the chamber. Shadow looked toward him and saw him leaning onto his knuckles, watching the Shadow Kings convulse and morph until the lot of them bore the same boney, ridged skin and unsettling, sickly eyes as Alistair, along with that natural armor that Shadow now knew could become a weapon at will. “Can you see it, Shadow?” Valour asked. “They cannot bring their full power into this world, as I suspect we could not in theirs.”

  “Our power is not lacking,” the green one said, hate dripping from his moist and open maw. “Only the decor.”

  “These are our allies?” the one called Myriel asked.

  Alistair nodded. “They are more powerful than they appear.”

  “And what,” one of the whites started, “do they know of our quest?”

  “Little,” Alistair seemed to admit. “Little but for that it has the same direction at present, and,” he added to Valour, “the same goal.”

  The large, red one spat. “This is the one who first opened the door,” he said. He licked black teeth and Shadow had the impression he wanted to test Valour’s power for himself.

  “He shared in the folly,” Alistair allowed. “But it is another who is responsible for the strong pull we’ve experienced of late.”

  “A fool,” Myriel said.

  “A bitch,” another said.

  “A powerful one,” Valour said, firm. He stood, and the Shadow Kings took the measure of him.

  Myriel approached him. She was blue, not unlike the knights, and she looked a little more full than the others. She had seemed to fight the transformation least. Her hair was fuller and her skin less mottled and more smooth. She stood just before the Sage and nearly touched him, her hand tracing the outline of his face as he studied her.

  “What do you know of the Last God?” she asked.

  Shadow perked up at that. More so, she perked up at the look that passed over the Eastern Dark’s face. Confusion. Ignorance. Fear.

  Myriel twisted around to regard Alistair. “He must know, if he is to help us stop it.”

  Alistair nodded, reluctant.

  “So be it.”

  Linn rarely dreamed. That was something for Kole. For Iyana. That was something for those who knew who they were.

  She would often watch her sister as she tossed and turned in their lakeside abode. She always thought of waking her, but never did. Perhaps the dreams had meaning to the Faeykin, more so than to anyone else. Perhaps wa
king her would be dangerous.

  Perhaps Linn simply enjoyed the solitude only the late, empty hours could grant her.

  Kole had found sleep difficult for the same reasons they all did. Ever since that fateful night when his mother’s fire had winked out in the northern passes and his had awoken. Still, he slept more than Linn. She remembered watching his window crack with the force of his restless mind as she sat on the roof below the gentle and judging moon after coming down from their battle in the peaks.

  The first of many, and Linn had never pretended to hope for anything different.

  Linn rarely dreamed, but tonight, she did.

  There were no images to speak of. Perhaps a swirling bit of black and red that was a bit lighter than the surrounding ether. The hint of a leering face, black and formless.

  Here, in this void, Linn was without her body, and, she thought for a time, without her strength. And then she felt the currents as she fought to orient herself. The current she felt closest was not an unerring pull, but rather gusts and swift runnings. It was the wind she had been gifted, and here, in this place, it was her and she was it.

  Linn had her mind. She concentrated, forming a body of tangled gusts and chaotic spins. She tried to right herself, but there was no direction here. And just when she thought she was getting a handle on her new reality, the screaming started.

  It was so loud Linn couldn’t hear it. So loud it produced no sound, or else destroyed the possibility of hearing it. If there were words, they were impossible to make out. But Linn felt the accusation and the intent. The void had noticed her, fleeting and falling in all that tumbling darkness. It wasn’t about to let her go.

  Linn was very near to giving up, to letting the darkness rip her apart and cast her into a state and void more peaceful and more true than this one. But she was Ve’Ran, and that meant she would never do anything easy, including giving up.