The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “I’ve seen it,” Iyana said. “I’ve seen what’s coming. Luna, I have been to the World Apart. More so, I’ve felt the dark intent that propels it. The War of Sages isn’t going to end because one wins, though there are less of them every day—”

  “I suppose we have your Embers to thank for that,” Luna put in. Iyana couldn’t tell if she meant it in a bad way and pushed on regardless.

  “Their war is going to end because the next one is about to begin,” Iyana said. Ceth was leaning forward. He hadn’t touched his cup before, but now he raised it to his lips and drank it in a single swig. “The real one is about to begin. The last one.”

  Luna chortled. It was a rude sound that echoed in the stuffy confines. “Last war. As long as men remain, as long as there’s a sword or pike or Landkist born who learns what his gifts can do when turned on another, there will never be a last war.”

  “Exactly,” Iyana said.

  She left the thought hanging and let the implications wash over them. Even Kenta swallowed, seeming taken aback by the thought, though he had been arguing the same point as her. In truth, Iyana didn’t know what she had seen when she had glimpsed the World Apart in her shared vision with Ray Valour. She didn’t know if she had been there or merely watched from afar. She couldn’t know if what she had seen was real, nor why it was coming. But she knew what she had felt, and fear like that wasn’t born of nothing.

  “You are not here for Sen’s memory alone, then,” Luna said. Iyana hated the look she received, but there it was. Worst of all, it was true. Iyana tried to shake it off and thought about shouting it down, but then, they had come to beg aid, and to demand it if that didn’t work. And they had done it carrying the body of one of their own. Iyana hadn’t considered how that might look.

  She felt sick. It wasn’t true. It was true. It was an inseparable mix of the two, and one Iyana would lose sleep over for months to come.

  “You’re here to recruit for your war,” Luna said. She fixed her accusing gaze on Kenta. “Your last war.”

  “Surely not all of the Faey wish to hide in the woods,” Ceth said. His words may as well have carried blades and flaming pitch. Luna swung her head toward him, but the Northman was uncowed. He didn’t so much as flinch. “Shek, Tirruhn,” Ceth said. “The warriors of your lands seem prepared for a fight.”

  “Prepared to receive one,” Luna said. “Not to seek one out.”

  Ceth’s expression told them he believed her to be mistaken.

  “Recruiting won’t be necessary,” Iyana said and felt like she was lying. “When the war comes, you’ll be in it whether you want to be or not. But we are here to ask your help. There is a great darkness coming. Much greater than we can face alone. Any of us.”

  “Greater than even the mighty Embers can stop?” Luna asked, and Iyana did not like the tone with which she asked it. “Greater than Linn Ve’Ran, she who would be a Sage, can handle?”

  Iyana swallowed. Luna eyed her steadily.

  “Kenta is right,” Iyana said, trying to recover her wits. “You folk do a lot of watching.”

  “That is how one learns, Iyana Ve—”

  “And that is what I’m here to do,” Iyana interrupted. “To learn, just as Mother Ninyeva did before me. Kole, Linn and the others are out there, and they need our help. Maybe they can stop the war from coming. Halt the World Apart in its dark tracks. The Sages started the world on its current path. It stands to reason the way to end it rests with them, and those who are powerful enough to stop them.” She remembered Valour’s words, the Eastern Dark telling her the Sages must die. She believed him, even though a part of her screamed at her not to.

  “Maybe I can help them do it,” Iyana said. “If not, we need to know what we’re up against. We need to know how to stop it. Or—since you seem partial to the strategy yourself—how to endure it.”

  Luna actually leaned back, surprised at Iyana’s words and the barbs they held, but she didn’t seem displeased.

  “And you’ll learn how to stop the Sages, halt the World Apart, plunge the mountains into the sea,” Luna said, “by getting some pointers from old-timers.”

  “Seeing is everything,” Iyana said with a smirk. “That is how one learns, after all.”

  Iyana half expected Luna to bristle, but she smiled instead and Kenta matched her, inclining his head.

  Luna shrugged. “You found them before, did you not? Your sister and her companions. You found them in the Deep Lands.”

  “How—”

  “Did we not just go over this point twice over?” Luna asked playfully. “My own Sight isn’t so great, but the progress of the Faey Mother’s legacy hasn’t gone unnoticed. Not even the elders could see what your champions were up to until the battle was joined in earnest at the peaks. It is no small thing that you reached them. Perhaps you can again.” Iyana smiled and felt her heart swell. “What that will accomplish is better your guess than mine, I suppose.”

  “It’s not all about seeing,” Iyana said. “There is a great power in the Faeykin. Great power within us.”

  “Enough to challenge the legions of the World Apart?” Luna asked, sounding dubious.

  “Maybe. After all, Ninyeva fought against the White Crest himself, and in his true form. I suspect it is only through her intervention that Kole and Linn were able to beat him at all.”

  “Then there was the small matter of the King of Ember joining the fray,” Luna said, but Iyana shrugged it off.

  “I know what I saw. She fought him. She fought him in all his glory. A great beast made of light and vapor. A violent storm that would not pass us by.”

  Luna gave a slight nod, allowing the point. “Ninyeva was not all power,” she said. “And neither are the few Faeykin who have lived to see such advanced age as those you saw today. What you are after is the thing a man like Sen always chased without ever grasping why. What you seek, Iyana Ve’Ran, is control.”

  “Control.”

  “Not of some external power,” Luna said, holding up a finger. “Not of the heavens or the skies or the tethers all around. All things Sen sought, and things that would have doomed him and many others besides had he achieved them. Control of the self. That is what Ninyeva had, and that is what you seek. I do not believe the elders among us can grant you some secrets you seek, just as they couldn’t teach the Faey Mother as much as learn from her. But maybe they can point you in the right direction.”

  It made Iyana happy to hear Luna use Ninyeva’s title, one she had always assumed the Emberfolk had bestowed upon her. It made her proud.

  “She was my teacher too, you know,” Luna said. She said it with a hint of challenge. “I mourned for her when she passed, just as I mourned for all who lost their lives in the last season.” She met Kenta’s eyes as she said it. “I only wish I might’ve known her as well as you.” She drained the last of her tea and set the stone cup down with a rattle before rising and stretching. Kenta and Ceth matched her, so Iyana did the same. They gathered up the packs they had deposited by the door.

  “I’d invite you to sleep in my bed tonight, Griyen,” Luna said, heedless of the way Ceth stared and the way Iyana tried not to, “but I’m angry with you.”

  Kenta laughed and Iyana smiled. It seemed everything Luna said was said plainly—a pleasant departure from the riddles Iyana had expected on coming to the Eastern Woods.

  “Visit the old fool on the morrow,” Luna said to Kenta. “You remember the one. He’ll tell you everything you want to hear. Do me a favor, though,” she said, and Iyana was unsure whether she was joking or not, “don’t tell Shek we’ve got another war coming. She gets excited enough every time the Dark Months close. It’s been disappointing for her to know there might be less of the Dark Kind now that old bird is no longer roosting at the peaks.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be disappointed,” Iyana said. “Not for long.” She said it
lightly and Luna laughed, but there was a silence that stretched longer than it might have otherwise.

  “Let us hope you are wrong and I am right about the wars to come,” Luna said, moving to open the door. “There are few flames left in the Valley.”

  “Then it’s high time we found some more,” Iyana said without hesitation. “Greenfire burns just as brightly as Everwood.”

  “Depends on where you’re looking,” Luna said. Kenta made for the stair, but Luna stepped in front of him, nudging him with her hip. “Lucky you,” Luna said without turning. “I’ve changed my mind. You’re free to stay with me.” Kenta dropped his pack as Luna winked at Iyana.

  “Where—” Ceth started but Luna was already ahead of him.

  “Across the way, you’ll see a well with a missing stone. The home facing that missing gap is empty. It’s small, but plenty large enough for you two.”

  Ceth shrugged and shouldered his pack and took the short stair back down to the dirt road below. He had to turn sideways to dodge a clutch of children who must’ve been hiding in a patch nearby. Iyana looked from him back to Luna and Kenta. Kenta was having trouble meeting her eyes, but Luna wore a wide grin that stood out more so because of the way it seemed to clash with her ethereal appearance.

  Iyana returned a weaker version of the smile and went to step onto the oak stair, but Luna gripped her by the crook of the arm and pulled her back, leaning down to whisper as Kenta stole into the back of the room and sat with a heavy plop onto the narrow bed.

  “Control is what you seek, Iyana,” Luna repeated her earlier remark. “And it’s exactly what you’ll have to relinquish if you want to find something close to it.”

  Iyana nodded before she had absorbed the words and Luna gave her a gentle shove onto the stair. “Now, I’ve got a fool of my own to catch up with.” She closed the door and Iyana nearly scrambled away from it, uninterested in hearing what that might entail.

  Ceth was waiting for her in the middle of the road. His silver hair shone in the yellow torchlight, so Iyana looked up, finding the stars in a sky that had grown remarkably clear. The black trees that formed the borders of the place made up the edges, shooting up like grasping hands.

  “Watch out.” Ceth pulled Iyana closer to him and she nearly slapped his hand away before she saw the stone well she had nearly walked headlong into.

  He held on to her longer than was necessary, but she didn’t say anything as a home with yellow light in the windows grew out of the shadows before them. Iyana tried to ignore the curious looks of the few passers-by.

  “They must not get many visitors,” Iyana said with a chuckle as Ceth opened the door that hung just above a stone landing.

  It was warm inside. Someone had built a fire for them, which still crackled in the corner of the room. Iyana was drawn to it. She sat before it and Ceth moved to lean on the mantle, both seeming to delight in the heat and quiet.

  What felt like an instant later, she woke with a start, feeling a heavy weight on her chest. She rose, her eyes working to adjust to the dim chamber. It was late and the fire had all but burned out. The weight she had felt revealed itself as a clutch of thick fur-lined blankets. She felt the cold greet her as she swept them away and went to swing her legs over the side of the bed, searching frantically for Ceth.

  Her toes brushed something soft and she looked down to see him rolled onto his side, his ribs moving in a slow, rhythmic pattern.

  Iyana thought of waking him, but Ceth was a man used to hard places. She took the top cover and slid it over him, tensing as his breathing froze for a bare second before he sighed himself back into sleep.

  She laid back and thought of gentle things and felt better for his near company, though he could have been closer.

  Upon closer inspection, the cave city was at once more and less impressive than they had at first thought.

  More impressive because it was a wonder to Kole just how many ways a people could find to fashion structures into what had once been moving rock solidified to crusted obsidian and clay. There was a smithy seemingly built out from a growth of stone whose anvil was indistinguishable from the rest of the vast, interconnected chamber. There were hidden stairways around every corner, natural ladders the masons had helped along with hammer and chisel. There were cooking forges and smaller hearths elders warmed themselves by when the winds blew in from the east and threatened to tear the furs from their backs. There were torches held in sconces, each ruddy flame casting myriad reflections over the melted walls and damp, dripping ceilings. There were men, women, children and elders busy over their private tasks—sewing, hammering, eating, drinking, sweeping—but there were not so many of them as Kole had imagined.

  And therein lay the less impressive part of the place, and the part of it that had begun to infect Kole with a sense of melancholy for a people he barely knew. He sensed that a great portion of them were gone, and he could guess that the Sages’ war—Balon Rael most directly—had played no small role in that.

  “This way here leads up to the sleeping chambers,” Fennick was saying. They had come to the foot of a stairway that was broader than the rest. It was a flight that shot up before darting to the right, where a row of stalagmites hid a walkway that must have been carved from an expanse of solid rock.

  “How many does it sleep?” Jenk asked as Misha wandered away from them, touching every outcropping of glittering stone and admiring a place that was alien to anything they had come to know in the Valley. Shifa followed her, sniffing each place she touched. They had reclaimed their armor and weapons, much to the chagrin of Tundra and his Blue Knights, but the queen had raised no complaint and Kole was glad of it, lest he be forced to protect Misha from the collected might of the north.

  “Now?” Fennick asked. Jenk only stared, and the gruff soldier’s smile dropped some. “Less than it used to.” He looked up the center stair and waved to a dirty child who sat at the top, peering down at them with forced indifference.

  “The way beyond is vast,” Baas said, his voice seeming to emanate from the stone itself. “There are many rooms beyond. Far too many for the folk we’ve seen.” Fennick winced at the remark, but Baas didn’t notice. He looked straight through the little girl, as if his eyes could penetrate the sheer rock wall behind her. He had moved through the glittering network as if in a dream, with each step bringing a new revelation. Kole noticed that his eyes never widened at the new sights, though he would occasionally pause and tilt his head, as if listening.

  “Now, then,” Fennick said, turning back to the group. He smiled at Misha as she moved to rejoin them. “Care for some hot food?”

  “Never ask Landkist if they’re hungry,” Linn said, which might have been her first words of the day. “The answer will leave your children starved.”

  “Embers command an appetite, I can imagine,” Fennick laughed. “Lucky for you, the Blue Knights take their meals in the palace. They don’t bother with salt and gristle, as least not the stuff we cook. Delicate stomachs, I think. But don’t tell them I said so.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Tundra most of all.”

  “That one was more than happy to see us leave the palace this morning,” Kole said.

  “He’ll be happier when he sees your backs fade from view across the frozen sea,” Fennick said. He seemed to mean it in jest, but none of them took it that way. He cleared his throat to ease the tension and motioned for them to move to the right of the stair, where a large oaken table had been set with a steaming mound of what Kole could only guess to be some approximation of a hog.

  They took their seats along wooden benches, Kole choosing the opposite side, where he could take in a full view of the bright day beyond the yawning cave mouth. He could see the palace glittering beyond the dusted courtyard in the morning light.

  “Dark Months are closing fast,” Jenk said, following his gaze. “Probably just a few hours of daylight left.”

>   “Aye,” Kole said, meeting Linn’s eyes as she sat down across from him. She looked away, trying to make the motion seem nonchalant, but Kole knew when she was uncomfortable.

  They ate the salted red-and-brown meat with their hands and drank cool well water that tasted of metal and minerals. Kole watched Fennick’s people bustle from ramp to trail, mound to platform, carting metals and all manner of stone. Fennick spoke as they ate. He talked about the plans they had for the place, how they would add a second armory to the one they already had hidden in the bedrock. How they would dig deeper into the mountain, down instead of up, in the hopes of unearthing more hotrock, which would keep the children warm in the Dark Months so they didn’t have to resort to long and bitter ranging for timber, or dangerous delving beneath unsteady stone for coal to burn.

  Kole’s eyes flickered to Linn’s as the captain spoke. She nodded slightly between chews, likely thinking along the same lines. Fennick had been friendly when they met him a few days before, but not this talkative. Kole would have liked to think it was their easy company that had brought it out of him, but he knew people better than that. Fennick was nervous. He was sweating, and Kole hadn’t seen him look toward the yawning gap into the bright morning for more than an hour. His mind was elsewhere, and Kole could guess the direction and at least a part of the reason.

  “A lot of industry,” Kole said, tearing a strip from an oily bone. He rocked in his seat, adjusting his tight-fitting armor. Fennick followed the direction of his gaze.

  “War makes miners of us all,” the man said. He pulled the cloak he never seemed to take off open to reveal that gray metal-and-leather armor beneath, along with the dull hilt of a broad sword. “Not easy to maintain buckles and loops in a place like this. Sometimes a button will snap just for the strain the cold puts on it in the nights, or the thaw brings out of it in the morning.”

  “And you need armor and weapons for all the fighting you’ve been doing,” Kole said. It froze Fennick midchew, and Kole showed him a disarming smile.