The great, many-towered palace behind her now shone with a golden brilliance Kole could hardly bear to look upon for longer than a few seconds. It obscured a hulking figure clad in metal that approached them. It could have been Baas, if the Riverman were not seated among them. Instead, Kole swallowed his displeasure as the Blue Knight approached them, wending his way among the stalagmites and not sparing more than a dispassionate glance at the mountainfolk who parted before him or skittered out of his unerring path.
“Company,” Kole said and Linn, Baas, Jenk, Misha and Fennick spun on their bench to see.
Fennick stood as the man approached, nearly tripping himself as his feet became tangled in the wooden supports. “Tundra,” he said, extending his hand. The Blue Knight took his time switching his piercing gold-speckled eyes from Kole and the others to the northern captain. He looked down at his hand as if it were an unwashed wound or some poison, and Fennick withdrew.
“The queen would have you in her company,” Tundra said. His voice was lower than Baas’s, but Kole thought its bitterness clashed with the abject beauty of the being who gave voice to it. There was something very strange about the Blue Knights—this one most of all. They were old, Kole knew. Very old. In a way, they reminded him of the Faey of the Valley, though he had rarely glimpsed them. They reminded him of Iyana, albeit larger, stronger and more war-like.
“Have you word from the Quartz Tower?” Fennick asked, ignoring Tundra’s address. The Blue Knight’s eyes darted back to him so quickly he flinched and nearly took a backward step. Though Kole could see the scars of battle evidenced on Fennick’s face, he feared this Landkist. Kole remembered the fight above the black shelves. Tundra had been formidable, but he guessed the man had kept his best tricks in check, to be used only in a moment of great need.
It was a good thing their company had plenty of fire Tundra and his charges had yet to see. Kole glanced at Linn, who was watching the exchange between Tundra and Fennick wearing a frown, and smiled a private smile. Hers was a quick, blinding fire that Tundra had already seen, and Kole knew now why the Blue Knight’s intimidating gaze had not lingered over her.
“No word,” Tundra said after a long delay, and before Fennick could speak up, he cut him off. “The queen says no party is to leave the walls. Not now.” His gaze swept across the table once more. “Not with enemies so close.”
“May I inquire,” Jenk started, unconcerned, “why the queen has requested our presence?”
“You may,” Tundra said without hesitation. Jenk waited expectantly, but no answer came. Tundra looked to Kole and then flinched as Shifa exploded from beneath the bench, her meal done and her attention now fixed on the new presence in their midst. Tundra let loose a small breath and Kole tried to stifle a laugh as the hound sniffed at his embroidered and metal-studded pants and golden suit with all its jewels.
Tundra’s hand eased downward, and Kole tensed, his fingers sliding back along the table as his thoughts turned to his Everwood blades, always warm and waiting in their tattered, oiled sheaths upon his back. But the Blue Knight did not summon a translucent blade, nor a crushing mace to dash against Shifa’s skull. Instead, he simply rested the palm of his hand on the top of her head between her ears, which flattened and folded back at his touch.
He withdrew, his face not even hinting at a smile, and turned back toward the cave mouth.
“I think we’re meant to follow?” Jenk said, looking askance at the others.
Misha snorted. “I’ve half a mind to show him the end of my spear before I show him obedience.”
“You always have half a mind—” Jenk started.
“More than half a mind, then,” Misha returned before he’d finished.
“We should go,” Linn said, moving to stand. Baas moved to match her without hesitation, while Kole watched her. “We are guests, after all,” she said to the collected Embers in their stubborn seats. “The Frostfire Sage could prove the difference in the battles to come. Better she thinks well of us than not.”
“Do they still think we’re emissaries of the Eastern Dark?” Jenk asked. “Or some displaced lackeys of the Sage of Balon Rael?” He sniffed. “These folk are more paranoid—” He stopped when he noted Fennick standing still just a few feet away, where Tundra had left him.
“We know less than little about these lands,” Kole said, coming to stand. “Even less about their people and what’s afflicted them, come against them. We would hardly be as welcoming as we’d like to think under similar circumstances.”
“Fair enough,” Jenk said. Misha watched Kole, but her eyes focused on Linn. Something wasn’t sitting well with her, and Kole could see that it had to do with Linn. Perhaps how quick she’d been to accept Tundra’s command.
They moved back onto the narrow footing of the path between stalagmites Fennick had taken them on. It was a wonder how close the cave mouth seemed and yet how twisting, circuitous a route one had to take to reach it.
Fennick was left standing with all the tension Kole would expect of him, given his want. Given his need to see after the wellbeing of his men at the Quartz Tower.
“Captain Fennick,” Kole said, standing off to the side so the others could follow the path Tundra had taken. Shifa had already gone ahead, unworried about Kole’s dalliance. “Captain.” Fennick blinked and tried to turn a smile on him, but it came up lacking.
“If we’ve no word by sundown,” Kole said, stepping closer to him and looking about for wandering ears, “we will go out. You and I. You’ll go to Yana, or meet her runner halfway, out on the flats.”
“We cannot—” Fennick started, but Kole stopped him with a stiff shake of his head.
“But we will.”
He turned on his heel, and given the vigor with which he heard Fennick following, he thought he had appeased the man for now. He only hoped he had not made a promise that would doom them both, but the queen’s isolation, her guarded waiting, did not sit well with him either, especially with the Eastern Dark in the vicinity and not all of her soldiers safely behind walls they could better defend than a lone spike on the western horizon.
Kole saw the others gathered at the cave mouth ahead. He nearly missed Tundra, his armor once more lost in the wash of the already-dipping sun. There were three other Blue Knights bedecked in similarly gaudy states waiting before them. They held no weapons, though Kole knew they could arm themselves even faster than he could.
“Well, then,” Misha said. “Where to, your lordship?”
Tundra regarded her blankly while his companions did the bristling for him. They were bald, and none of them wore helms like their commander did. There were two females and one male. They were tall, but Kole could see the contours in the blue limbs that peeked out from beneath the jewel-encrusted plates. The cold greeted them at the mouth of the gargantuan cave, whipping Kole’s hair, which had grown to the length Linn’s had been when they had set out from the Valley.
Kole felt a wash of melancholy as he thought of his home and those who made it up. Those he hoped desperately had made it back from the western sands with something other than disappointment and death at the hands of the Eastern Dark.
“Come,” Tundra said. Kole started toward the front door of the palace, but Tundra moved past him, walking north. There was a frosted stair made of Nevermelt that let up to the palace walls, but Tundra did not take it. Instead, he entered a crack Kole hadn’t noticed at first glance in the space where the mountain rock met the palace walls.
“After you,” Misha said to Linn, who frowned at the attention. She spared an uneasy glance at the Blue Knights that stood beside them and shook her head before following. When she ducked into the trench, Jenk and Misha followed, while Baas hung back, examining the Blue Knights who watched the departing Embers with a hungry interest.
“Go, Baas,” Kole said. The Riverman regarded him coolly for a long moment before offering a slight nod and
following the others. The Blue Knights watched him depart and then turned as one to Kole. One—the male—even took a step toward him, as if trying to cow him into following.
“After you,” Kole said, tossing his head toward the gap.
The male’s eyebrows turned down. His eyes bore the same melted amber-and-gold hue as the rest, though there was a bit of sickly red in their midst, like dripping wax.
“After. You.”
Kole said it slowly, his eyes not moving from the Blue Knight’s. He felt his heat begin to grow, flowing out from the stretched valves of his heart and threading its way into his veins. When it reached his fingertips, he closed his eyes for a brief spell and tried to suppress the tingling feeling. When he opened them, the Blue Knight’s own look twitched. No doubt Kole’s eyes had lit with some of the Ember fire he’d called without meaning to.
It did the trick, and Kole smiled at the Blue Knights’ armored backs as they led the way into the black rocky trench. He thought of Creyath Mit’Ahn’s orange gaze and wondered if his own had grown bright enough to scare.
The way was not so far as Kole had expected. The north-facing wall of Nevermelt rose to their right, but the trench went deeper, sinking until he had to crane his neck and tilt his chin skyward to see the base of the white walls. Kole marveled at the way the towers glowed in the daylight without so much as glistening with a hint of melt.
He was so taken with the sight that he nearly flared his blades to life without drawing as a weight pressed into his chest with the force of a punch. One of the female knights had caught him, stopping him from walking out into open air as the trench ended on the edge of a sheer cliff. The cliff was carved in the midst of the halved mountain on which the palace had been built. Below it, tucked into a natural-seeming jagged bowl, was a flat expanse of red clay that leered up like a blood moon sunken into the earth. There was a pathway cut to the east, wide enough for two to walk abreast. It curled down beneath the palace until it ended on the edges of the oval bowl, and Kole could see the others gathered on the red edges at the bottom.
He saw a figure clad in silver armor that looked dull in the shadows of the bowl, like blackened metal. She had long, white hair and Kole could imagine her strange smile even from here, and she stood in the bowl’s center. He saw a sword at her side and felt a lump form in his throat.
“Quite a place,” he breathed, and the Blue Knight released him without a word of warning, leaving him to catch himself with a jolted step that broke a small sliver of stone off the edge and sent it tumbling down onto the clay, sending up a tiny plume of bloody dust.
The Blue Knight smirked at him in a way that was more playful than cruel, and Kole followed on her heels.
“Your name?” he asked.
The Blue Knight began to turn toward him but caught herself as her fellows reached the bottom and looked up toward them.
“Your name, friend,” Kole said. “You saved me from suffering a nasty bruise.”
She let out a barking laugh. “More than a bruise, I’d say.”
“Why do you say that?” Kole asked, eager to engage in conversation with one of the seemingly silent sentinels. If they were to be allies in the coming fight, it paid to be more friendly than not, in his experience.
“A fall like that would kill most, Landkist or otherwise,” she said.
Kole smirked. “You don’t know much about Embers, then.”
“No.” Now she did turn enough for Kole to catch the pulled corner of her mouth. “Perhaps you’ll show me.”
Kole felt his face flush, unsure how she meant it. When he reached the bottom and saw the tension in the stance of the others as the queen approached, silver sword drawn in that half-gauntleted hand, he thought she might have been more literal than he had guessed. He looked back at the Blue Knight, who showed him an innocent smile.
“At least one of you has a sense of humor,” he said before moving ahead to join the others. His heat had dissipated some on the walk, but now he felt it building again. He didn’t try to stop it this time, and as he stepped past Shifa and her fluffed tail and spiked back, he felt the warm auras of Jenk and Misha mixing with his. It was enough to make Baas wrinkle his nose and Linn wipe a bead of sweat from her brow.
They stood in a loose group facing the slender armored Sage. She looked somewhat childlike, Kole thought. She was small—scarcely taller than Iyana—and her frame looked twice as brittle. Of course, he guessed her magic had formed the glittering structure behind and above them out of little more than her will and whatever art she had taken from the secrets the Sages had uncovered, in their world and beyond. Still, it was difficult to feel the same threat from her that Tundra put off with such ease.
“Welcome,” she said, shining fingers splayed as she stretched her arms out—one of which grasped the silver-and-black hilt of the most brilliant sword Kole had ever seen. It was a masterwork of carved metal made to look like cherrywood with silver fingers curled around its edges. Kole admired the grooves he could see in the blade and the sheen its downward edge gave off, though he thought of Captain Talmir Caru’s sword and thought that one gave off the brighter white. More pure.
“What’s this, then?” Kole asked, and he could tell by their steady stares that his companions echoed the question. Shifa began to growl, and the Sage placed her left hand over the dark-stained silver armor above her heart as she looked at the hound.
“The Red Bowl,” she said, as if they should know it.
Kole smiled fondly and Misha actually let loose a small laugh that helped to break up some of the mounting tension.
“We have one of our own,” the Third Keeper of Hearth said. She said it proudly.
“Do you, now?” the Sage asked. She made a show of twisting around, one hand out, fingers gliding through the air, pointing at the obsidian edges as the blade she held—too loosely in Kole’s mind—spun with her in a silver-white blur. Misha grimaced and Jenk tossed a look at Linn, who returned it. Linn opened her mouth to speak but held it as the Sage continued to spin, dancing like a child in a meadow, heedless of their presence or impatience. Her feet, Kole noticed, never threatened to slide or tip, and though her bare fingers along the hilt of her sword waved in the air like warning flags, the armored thumb and lead finger were still as stone, gripping the weapon with a measure of surety that belied her poise.
She stopped her spin, and now the look she wore was mischievous. She was entirely uninterested in what Misha had said, and waited for another question. Jenk obliged her.
“And why are we here?” he asked.
“To fight, of course.”
Jenk smiled, thinking it was a joke. It should have been a joke, said as crass as it was. As unflinching and direct. The Sage merely stared at him, long and unblinking, and Jenk’s smile faded away, to be replaced by a hardened look. Kole had grown up thinking of Jenk as something of a rival at best and a pompous would-be hero at worst. But he had seen the man fight on the walls of Last Lake. He’d seen him forge into the gap before the trees without a thought to his own protection. More recently, he’d seen him fight the vicious, formidable Raiths of Center, and atop the black shelves to the west, just a few days before, it had been the bold, yellow-bladed Ember who had first laid one of the Blue Knights low.
“Oh.” The Frostfire Sage held up a hand to her lips in mock surprise. “You did not think I meant to the death, I hope?” She laughed, but they only stared, Jenk hardest of all. He was not impressed.
The would-be queen sighed at their grim visages. “We are to be allies, are we not?” she asked, her voice growing more solid and more earnest. “Are we not?”
“That’s up to you,” Kole said. He spared a glance at Tundra, who stood closest, and at the Blue Knights behind him. The brute’s expression was predictably unreadable, but the others fidgeted behind him, especially the one Kole had spoken with on the walk.
“Ray Valour is
coming,” the Sage said. “You have seen him, but you have never fought with him.”
“We have fought with the man he has become,” Kole said evenly. “We have faced T’Alon Rane in combat.”
“Your Ember king.” The Sage actually spat on the ground. No dust came up. A gust of wind found its way into the sheltered bowl at the mountain’s base and Kole took a step closer to Linn, wondering if it was her. Her eyes were fixed on the Sage, and when the Sage found hers, her own bearing loosened, as if she had remembered herself.
“Excuse my play,” she said, inclining her head toward Jenk. “Truly. And excuse my direct approach. You are children to me. You must know this. It is not a thing said to make you feel lesser or I greater. It is a thing you should know. You have fought Sages, and through a combination of your own prowess, power, and no small amount of happenstance—”
“Luck,” Misha said. “You think it was luck that saw us triumph over the White Crest, the Emerald Blade and the Sage of Balon Rael?” She crossed her arms. “Quite a run of luck, then. Maybe it’ll keep going.”
“Call it what you will,” the Sage said, her voice growing more firm and unyielding with every word. Her grip tightened on that silver sword, and her black-and-silver boots slid and ground into the hardened rock and clay beneath them. “The fact remains: you have never faced Ray Valour. You have never faced the Eastern Dark. No doubt your stories of him portray a snake, slithering in the shadows and hiding in the bogs. There is truth to every tale, but I ask you, why do you think a power like his retreated into the south? Why do you think he traveled in shadows and through them rather than walking the world’s ways?”
“Because of you, I’m to guess?” Kole said.
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