Linn was shaking her head at the recounting, and the queen noticed and stopped before going further. “You must hate us,” she said, bare and honest in a way Linn found disarming.
“I …” Linn started and then stopped. “I’m not sure, to be completely honest.”
The queen nodded. “I can understand why.” She looked up toward the balcony Linn had floated down from, and though she gave no outward indication, Linn had the impression she was imagining Kole smoldering in his chambers.
“We are full of the same folly as man,” the queen said, lowering her eyes once more. “My kind are not ageless, but we are near enough to think ourselves infallible in one century or the next. When things like that come to disagreement …
“But we have also seen much,” the queen said. “Some of us saw the mistake for what it was at the outset.”
A shadow had fallen over the yard, sliding with a cool swiftness over the frosted glass just as it did over the vapors in the sky above. Unnatural black clouds that reminded Linn of the Dark Months. It cast an ominous mood on their exchange, and the queen seemed to feel it just the same as Linn.
“The mistake,” Linn said, grasping at the thought the Sage had let slip. “It has to do with the World Apart, right? What happened?”
“Surely you know,” the queen said as much as asked. She almost smiled, but then gave a slight shake, as if she stood in disbelief. “You come all this way,” she said. “You cross the black plains to the south and survive the perils of vast and deadly Center, traverse the frosted plains and fly atop the black shelves. You pass beneath the Quartz Tower that is the last of its kind and survive a violent encounter with the Blue Knights—the greatest warriors the world over—”
“I have seen the greatest warrior the world over,” Linn said. “His name is Maro.”
“The Emerald Blade is shattered.”
“If you saw the way he moves, even still,” Linn said, “you might wonder if some of the Sage of Center’s power remains in those veins.”
“The fact remains,” the queen said, her patience seeming to wear thin, “you have come to the edge of the world, as far east as the Endless Sea.”
“We have.”
“With what purpose in mind?”
“To confront T’Alon Rane and learn the truth of his service to the Eastern Dark,” Linn said. “To learn what we could to stave off the devastation that visits our Valley people each and every time the sun forsakes us. To stop it. To stop it all.”
“The Ember king is dead.” The queen’s yellow eyes regained some of their former luster, sparkling like the faces in Tundra’s ornate, well-worn armor.
“Then we will have our answers from the Eastern Dark himself.”
Linn thought she sounded like Kole, bent on a path without knowing its aim—only its direction. Forward. Into the fire. One after the next until the Sage of the East came to heel and undid wrongs she never could.
The queen began to walk a slow, circuitous path around Linn, and Linn felt suddenly like a fox in the steady, warning gaze of a circling wolf. The woman she saw before her—the being—seemed every bit the Sage her followers and enemies alike referred to as ‘Frostfire.’ She was testing Linn. Prodding her. Looking for weakness.
She paused.
“Let us walk,” she said. “There is something I want to show you. Something that I hope you will take as a sign of trust between us.”
Linn cast a lingering look back up at the tower, searching for signs of the others as they rested in their adjoined chambers. She wondered if they had noticed her absence, and what they might think to see her with the queen, walking nearly arm in arm, like one Sage with another.
She sighed and followed.
The queen moved from the oval garden beneath an arch on the northern side. There was a stairwell to the left Linn hadn’t seen at first. She wondered if it had grown at the Sage’s command, and as she followed, she thought the shimmering robe the queen wore grew a little more solid and opaque as they walked. The stair was made of the same strange, cold glass as the rest of the palace. Seeing Linn hesitate at the top, the Sage flicked her wrist and gave a twist with a finger, almost as an afterthought, and the stairs frosted over.
Linn tested them and found their grip to be rough and firm on her bare feet, though colder than before. She felt even more like a fool for not donning her boots than she did for following a Sage down into the bowels of her ancient keep.
“The World Apart is a place of darkness and death,” the queen said, her voice echoing, deep and droning in the narrow, winding stair. The walls, which had grown darker, soon lit with a soft yellow light that could have been coming from above or below; it was difficult to tell by the way the faces and blocks shifted within the walls. It was as if the whole of the palace was an extension of the Sage’s will, and Linn was caught up in the sheer breadth and magnitude of her power. So much so that she nearly collided with her at the bottom landing.
The room was long and had a low ceiling. The blue-white walls shone with the light of a dozen candles on bronze posts that framed a carpeted walkway. The queen took a steadying breath and began to walk forward between the gentle, dancing flames, and Linn took up her wake.
She shook her head as she stared at the walls, which were more jagged here in the depths of the palace. The Nevermelt seemed rough-hewn, or rough-grown, and there were deep blue shadows that rushed overhead. There was a sound that reminded her of the dream that had woken her in the first place and started this whole nighttime adventure. The queen paused before an iron door. There were no guards posted. She reached one hand out toward the handle, hesitated, and withdrew, looking to Linn almost as if she needed support.
“You feel it,” the queen said. She nearly reached out for Linn’s face but refrained.
“What is it?” Linn asked without taking the time to think on what the queen meant.
“It is the World Apart,” she said, grave. “It is very close, now.”
“It sounds as if it’s in the very walls,” Linn said, looking around. The chamber seemed darker than it had been before. Or perhaps it was simply her imagination and mood playing tricks on her.
“It will come from the east,” the queen said. “But it will strike all the lands the world over. It will open scars the likes of which even your troubled Valley has never known. The Night Lords will spill in, along with hordes uncounted. Legions of Dark Kind, diseased and enraged.”
“Why would you go calling to a thing like that?” Linn asked, feeling the dread prickle at her spine. She shook her head.
“Power,” the Sage said. And now Linn knew she was speaking to the Witch of the North. She knew it by the way she stood and the place in which they conversed. She knew it by her bearing and by the way her eyes shifted. Calculating, emotional, controlled.
“Of course,” Linn said a little more bitterly than she had intended and a little less bitterly than she wished the Sage to hear. “Isn’t that always the way of things?”
“Have you not used your power liberally, though you have so recently been granted it?”
Linn felt her heat rising once more. “Out of need,” she said, choosing to look at the iron door rather than the regal woman beside her. “Not out of choice.”
“There is always a choice,” the Sage said, harsh and firm. She reached for the handle, this time with more confidence. “Do not think that our folly was mixed up in anything different than that of men. Through the ages, we have all been fallible, corruptible. But, as your Embers have no doubt proven, power has its place, Linn Ve’Ran. And while my dark brother delved too deeply and too foolishly, awakening the World Apart like an engine of dark intent rather than a well of latent power, he was not wrong in all things.”
Linn opened her mouth to speak, but the queen pushed on the door and it banged open. Linn had to shield her eyes from the spear of blue light that blasted do
wn from some skylight on high—perhaps one of the tallest spires of the palace.
They were in a circular chamber with rough-cut walls made of the same Nevermelt as the rest of the palace, albeit darker. Dark enough to appear as obsidian in places. In the center, there was a rectangular dais, and resting atop it was a form that Linn had to blink at to confirm.
The queen watched her from the shadows as she approached, walking around the carved stone and white slab and examining the body that rested on top. If the Frostfire Sage had some qualities of the Faey about her, then the man who lay at rest before her was their embodiment, albeit larger, grander and more regal than anyone Linn had seen before.
He was tall and well-muscled, with pale skin and large, angular ears. His brow was smooth and his mouth hard. His chin was made up of two rounded hills with a trench between them and his nose was narrow without being hooked, more like the beak of an eagle than the razor hook of a vulture. His eyelashes were long and frosted white and his hair was of the same hue, more silver-blue than the white Iyana and Mother Ninyeva possessed. Apart from his bare arms, face and neck, he was adorned in silver armor that put the Blue Knights to shame.
Linn reached out with a shaking hand. She almost brushed her fingertips against the smooth white hairs on his forearm before she remembered herself and looked at the Frostfire Sage. She nodded, and Linn touched him. At first, he was cold, but as Linn’s warmth melted the thin film of frost that coated his entire form, she felt the faintest heat as her own skin made contact with his. She withdrew as if she’d been burned, and when next she looked at the Frostfire Sage, she saw her as the wide and wild-eyed Witch they had been warned of.
“What is this?” Linn asked. She had been made privy to some grand secret, one whose ends she couldn’t begin to guess and whose consequences she feared.
“This is my husband,” the Sage said, stepping up onto the dais. She gazed down at him with such love and longing that Linn imagined him sleeping rather than buried in the depths of a cold and eternal death. But then, his form was intact.
“You’ve kept him …” Linn started, unsure how to say it.
“Preserved?” She laughed, but didn’t take her eyes from her departed consort. “Yes. I suppose I have.” She looked to Linn, and a flash of that wildness returned. “You felt it, yes?” She began to walk around his form without touching him, keeping her eyes locked on Linn the whole time. “You felt the life that still breathes within him.”
Linn swallowed. She looked from the Frostfire Sage to the creature on the slab, at his restful face and stern bearing, even in the appearance of death, and nodded.
“I managed to slow his heart before it stopped,” she said. “When cursed Rane and his Dark Landkist came for us, I never could have expected them to come so close.”
“Rane?” Linn asked. “T’Alon Rane was here, fighting against you?” She thought perhaps she had known it, but then, who knew what to believe with this strange war and all its machinations? Linn, Kole and the rest of them had fallen into it seemingly at the climax, but there was a history there as long as it was bitter, as complex as it was violent.
“They climbed the black shelves just like you,” the Frostfire Sage said. “We met them there, my husband and I. They thought to snuff us out, to eliminate the greatest and most potent of the Sages who opposed the Eastern Dark.” She shook her head but wore a wry smile. “They came close. Far closer than they had any right to.” She looked back at the restful form of her husband. “But we prevailed, didn’t we, dearest? Yes. We prevailed. Many of them fell. Most. Even Rane’s fluttering lover. My husband cast her down, sent her sailing. He’d have finished Rane as well if it weren’t for her. There were many. By my memory, only three made it out.”
It was almost too much for Linn to comprehend. She knew she should have had questions, but they dissolved just as quickly as they formed. She didn’t know where to start.
“We had heard of their triumph over the Twins of Whiteash,” the Sage continued. “Violent, sick creatures. Powerful, yes.” She nodded, lost in her own memories. “But nowhere near what we were at our heights.” She laughed again, a sound like a crow gloating. “It was a foolish thing to try. Bold, for Valour.” Another shake. “And he nearly got us.”
“Why?” Linn asked. It seemed the only question to ask. The Sage tilted her head like a dog might. “The Eastern Dark believes killing the Sages will stop the World Apart coming,” Linn said. “He is one of you. If you are to be believed,” the queen’s face shifted a bit, but it was a passing shadow, “then surely he would have to die as well. Does he truly think it will stop what’s coming?”
“Ray Valour always wanted to be a hero,” she surprised Linn by saying. “But he was never cut out for it. There was something in him, even as a youth, that wasn’t in the rest of us. Not even Balon, then a handsome lord from the east before it had the towers he’d later put up. Valour is as selfish as any. He would never do a thing without it benefiting him. If he believes killing me will help him achieve his ends, he will do it, just as he was willing to watch from afar as the Dark Kind plundered your Valley and killed your young and old season after season, year after year, so long as his precious Embers—his last, glowing line—endured and were strengthened.”
“From what we understand,” Linn started, hating the words before she said them, “that was a series—”
“Of what?” the Sage laughed. “Mistakes? Yes, child. Uhtren was Corrupted by the Dark Hearts, but where, pray tell, did he get them?” She raised her eyebrows . Linn didn’t speak. “There was a great fight in the west not long before—or perhaps it was after—Rane came calling on our doorstep. The Eastern Dark himself went to tame the Red Fox. He did not succeed. That one is far more clever than Valour ever gave him credit for. In the fallout, some of the Night Lords got into the Valley—or would have, had Uhtren been made of lesser stuff.” She sighed, but seemed more annoyed than truly disappointed. “Would that he had destroyed the hearts and not taken them for safekeeping. He was always a curious one, though. The only one more so was Valour himself.”
“He alone opened the door,” Linn said. She said it like it could have been a question. When the queen did not immediately offer an answer, she asked it again. “He alone opened the door to the World Apart? Ray Valour?”
“You know he did not,” she said through partially-gritted teeth. “But I did not bring you here to pass blame or shed it,” she said. “I tell you of the World Apart so that you know it is real—”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Linn said. “None of us do.”
The queen smiled in a sad way and stepped down from the dais, moving toward Linn. Linn took a step back, and that only made the look of sorrow deepen on that ancient, impossibly young face.
“The World Apart is the root of our greatest folly,” she said, and then she gazed back at the form on the slab, as if she couldn’t bear to be so far from it. “But it may also be the source of our redemption.”
When she looked back, Linn could not do anything to hide the look of shock and betrayal that must have crossed her own face. The queen watched her.
“We must first understand our enemies if we are to defeat them,” the queen said. Her voice had changed. It was subtle, but it was there. A little deeper. A little more firm. “The Eastern Dark has a name, and now you know it. The World Apart is coming, but it can be stopped.”
Linn perked up a bit at that and the queen saw it. Linn frowned. “And I suppose your methods clash with Valour’s,” she said, sounding doubtful. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say? Given what he believes. Given what he feels has to be done, as it concerns you and,” she nodded toward the form on the slab, “yours.”
The Frostfire Sage only smiled.
“Valour may have opened the door, child,” she said. “But he wasn’t the only one who went digging. It is a place of unparalleled chaos and unchecked power. It is a treasur
e trove of miracles. It runs on an energy that is different from that of this world.” She looked around the kaleidoscopic chamber, as if she could see the entire world through its myriad walls. “In the place of the Landkist, the power there manifests in the form of great titans of fire and shadow. More so,” she focused on Linn’s eyes and held them steady, “titans of life and death. You know of this,” she added. “You faced one of them, or else the barest remnants of her power.”
Linn leaned back against the wall. It was cold in the chamber, and she preferred the shock of it to the sick, unsettled feeling that was beginning to envelop her. She worked the queen’s words over in her mind and tried to think. The leering, red-eyed image of a Sentinel came to her in a rush, snarling in the rain while her slick hands clawed mud and gravel for the broken spoke of a wagon wheel.
“The Corrupted,” she said, recognition dawning.
“Just one of the gifts of the would-be gods of the World Apart,” the Sage said, nodding along with her. “The power to turn death into life.”
“Or some sick approximation of it,” Linn said. She remembered what the rain had done to those black-shelled bodies after the siege of Hearth. She remembered how many had been taken from lands without the Valley and raised up again and sent against a people they might have called friends in another life.
“Fair,” the queen said. “But then, power is not evil or good. It goes in the direction in which it is aimed. I have been to the World Apart, Linn. I have gone where no other has gone, and I have brought back knowledge of how to beat it. More so, I have gained power. More than the Landkist could ever imagine. More even than my fellow Sages—those who remain. More than the Night Lords of the World Apart.”
She stepped forward. Her bearing was strong, rigid. Proud.
“I will turn back the dark tide,” she said. “I will protect this world unto my dying breath.”
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