The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “Because of me.” The Sage straightened. There wasn’t a hint of bragging in her tone. She believed what she said. She knew it. “And yet, he is coming. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Because he must,” Linn offered.

  “Desperation is the word,” the Sage said. Her considering eyes slipped down to fall on Shifa. “A desperate wolf is the most deadly of things. Even more than a silver lion with cubs. If Valour is anything, he is a wolf.”

  She blinked away whatever scenes of the past had begun to close in and refocused on them.

  “So,” she said. “Who gets the first try at my champions?”

  Jenk stepped forward. “Not your champions,” the Ember said. “You.”

  The queen smiled. It was a wicked, playful thing, and to his credit, Jenk matched it.

  Jenk flared his Everwood blade to life, the wood crackling in the cold. Jenk’s blade was usually bright yellow and bold, soft like the morning sun. It didn’t burn quite as hot or quite as quickly as Kole’s or Misha’s, but Jenk could wield his own flame longer.

  Today, Kole winced at the color of Jenk’s flame, and at the heat it held. To anyone else—even Linn and Baas—it might seem the same as any other time, but Kole could tell it was different. He could see the worms of amber crawling in the flickering yolk, could hear the crackle of the black wood and char that should have subsided already. Kole glanced at Misha and saw that she was already looking his way, her expression concerned and then guarded as she remembered herself.

  Something about this Sage had Jenk more excited—more perturbed—than even the Raiths of Center, or the beast who wore Larren Holspahr’s skin in the Valley peaks not so long ago. Kole thought to step in, to warn Jenk away from the foolhardy path of challenging a Sage, especially one they were to consider an ally, if not a friend.

  But then, it wasn’t him that dragged the lot of them down into a sheltered cove of clay and brown-black rock, hidden from the wind and prying eyes. It wasn’t Jenk who had first brandished fire or steel.

  Besides, Jenk Ganmeer had acquitted himself well against two Sages, now. Kole had to admit to himself that he was eager to see how he would fare against a third. Assuming, of course, that the Frostfire Sage accepted.

  “Well?” Jenk asked. “What say you?” He levelled his sword directly at the queen, who regarded him coolly, unflinching.

  Tundra took a step toward Jenk and Baas matched him. The three Blue Knights behind the brute dropped their hands to their sides, fingers stretched out and separated. Kole turned toward them, fingers twitching in anticipation as he watched for the faint distortions in the air that would precede the growth of their Nevermelt blades.

  “Stop.”

  All eyes turned to the queen. She held her left hand up without turning, her eyes fixed on Jenk. The three Blue Knights relaxed and stepped back toward the ridged borders of the bowl. Tundra growled like a dog and Shifa echoed the sentiment, but when the queen’s head twitched in his direction, the warrior pulled back, all reluctance.

  Linn, whose attention had been fixed on the tense exchange between Jenk and the queen, turned to face Kole, swallowing her concern.

  “I gladly accept your bold address,” the queen said, dropping her hand back to her side and raising her own blade with the other, point facing Jenk’s neck. Kole thought it was a disconcerting look, more macabre than playful, and Jenk’s grimace seemed to show that he felt the same way. “It has been some time since I’ve been called upon to brandish steel in my own court.”

  “We’re not in your court,” Jenk said.

  “We are in the north,” the queen said without hesitation. “Everything around you, from the mountain ridges to the windblown flats, every grain of salt and shard of ice, melting or eternal, is a part of my court. Now,” she did not take her eyes from Jenk’s, “please ask your less bold companions to step aside.”

  Jenk opened his mouth to do just that, but Linn was having none of it.

  “Remember—” she started but the queen cut in.

  “Worry not, my dear. We are all friends in this fight, but surely you folk have been raised in a theater of war, however far away. In times of strife, the line between battle and games of the same begin to blur. I would see what the great Embers of the south are capable of with my own eyes, and against my own aged hands. I would see if they are worthy of the legacy of the flame. The legacy of Mena’Tch himself.”

  Kole blinked at the mention. He’d heard the name before. A hero of the western sands who might even have existed in a time before the Sages. He thought Mother Ninyeva had spoken of him, perhaps had even compared Kole to him … or was it his mother, Sarise?

  Of course, many of the Emberfolk believed the Landkist had come about as a result of the Sages’ meddling, either directly or through some ethereal reaction from the world itself, seeking to protect Her children from the corruption they would wreak. Still, some believed the Landkist had always been, in one time or another. That they were part of a cycle scarcely younger than the stars, and that they would come again long after the Sages were dead and gone, and long after the last Ember of Kole’s generation was little more than scattered ashes.

  Linn looked as if she would say more, but Jenk’s pale blue eyes slid toward her and she relented with a forced sigh. The four of them—five, when Shifa followed—stepped back beneath the shade of the cliff that jutted out from the base on which the pale, golden-lit citadel sat.

  “He’ll be fine,” Kole whispered, leaning into Linn’s shoulder as she stroked her tension into the back of Shifa’s neck. “This is the same man who fought the ghost of Larren Holspahr. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

  “I’m not worried about Jenk,” Linn said a little too quickly. Kole looked at her and she swallowed without turning to meet him. “I am. I only mean,” she glanced toward Tundra and his Blue Knights, who watched the silent and still exchange between Jenk and their queen like frothing hounds on chains, “our alliance is not yet fully formed. I’d hate to see it spoiled over little more than a glorified spar.”

  Kole couldn’t say he agreed. In truth, he had been allowing Linn to do the leading when the whole group—Linn included—seemed to think of him as their captain, their fearless, unerring directioner. The idea of helping one Sage against another still did not sit well with him, and he had to admit he was pleased to see that he was not the only one in their company who thought less than the world of their new acquaintance. This northern queen was twitchy and vain, more concerned with her glittering towers and shining knights than she was with the safety and well-being of those who counted these lands their own, scraped a living from rock and clay and the salted, frozen shore.

  Still, he could not deny that she counted the Eastern Dark an enemy, and he could not deny that, while a great part of him looked forward to his eventual clash with that beast, another was concerned that he, Linn, Baas, Misha and Jenk would not be up to the task. Not alone.

  “She thinks she is the one taking our measure,” Kole said, “and perhaps she is.” Jenk began to slide his rear foot toward his lead one, slow and soft as it scraped over the red granules beneath them. “But she isn’t the only one.”

  “Fair,” Linn said, her own attention now fully focused on the pair before them.

  Jenk did not wear the same black, scaled armor that Kole and Misha had been gifted by the smithies of Hearth. Instead, he wore the lighter stuff in keeping with the fishing hulls of Last Lake. A leather vest, many-scarred but not yet torn, which covered a cotton shirt their months of travel had stained a tallow yellow. His pants were loose-fitting, shifting with the flames along the edges of his blade as small gusts of wind curled down into the bowl, and his hands—lighter than the rest of them—bore red scars around the knuckles.

  Kole might have been faster and Misha stronger, but Jenk had always been, if nothing else, deliberate. He was a thinking fight
er in the tradition of Tu’Ren Kadeh and—as far as Kole knew—Talmir Caru.

  When Jenk’s rear boot toe brushed the heel of his front, he flew into motion. He lunged forward, not with his blade but rather with his fire, sending a yellow jet flashing toward the queen.

  The queen, to her credit, was ready. She leaned back, bending at the waist impossibly quickly, her white hair rushing up in a slow dance before falling in a quick cascade to frame wide eyes. She had fallen into Jenk’s first trap. The Ember had used the flare to take the queen’s sight—Kole shuddered to think what would have happened if he had done so literally—and disguise his true attack. He planted with his rear foot and lanced his lead leg forward, angling his foot down into a blade.

  His kick should have struck her in the gut. Instead, the queen kept her backward bend going, planting her swordless palm flat on the clay and lifting her feet from the ground in a maneuver more fit for a dancer than a fighter. She repeated the move three times, her blade held out straight at her side the whole way as she contorted into a spinning wheel that came up level and smiling in the time it took Jenk to regain his footing.

  The Ember recovered and shot in without a moment’s hesitation, carving the place the queen had been and blocking a strike Kole had blinked and missed. Silver steel met Everwood with a dull crack that resounded off the jagged theater the clay basin made. Jenk grit his teeth and put more heat into the blade, flaring it to life so brightly it obscured the dark core that made up its center. Now the queen did blink, and Jenk’s next strike caught her in the gut, his knee bending her double.

  It was a brutal hit, or seemed it at first glance, but Kole could see the queen’s smile as she heaved forward over the Ember’s leg. The blow had struck, but not nearly as hard as it had seemed. Jenk knew it, and if the Sage was going to make their contest into a jest, he’d make her pay.

  Kole actually cried out as the Ember brought his burning blade rocketing down toward the back of the queen’s neck. Tundra matched him, bellowing, though he knew he was too far to make a difference.

  But Jenk smiled. His bright sword stopped a hair’s breadth from the queen’s skull, and she twisted at an awkward angle and spun away, straightening with a look that wasn’t so much fear as outrage. Her silver-white hair fell down before her, and a black curl of smoke twisted up from the bangs on each side. There was a brown streak through it, and the queen wrinkled her nose at the smell of her own burning scalp. She held out a hand toward Tundra and did so with force, not taking her eyes from Jenk, who squared back into his stance in preparation for her inevitable retaliation.

  Jenk was facing away from them, but Kole imagined he could see the Ember smiling. It took him back to the training yard at the Lake. He put himself in the place of the Frostfire Sage and could almost hear the bellowing voice of Tu’Ren ringing over the rock-strewn yard as Jenk and Kole faced each other down with dull lengths of unlit oak as the other children watched at the borders, waiting for their turn.

  “Apologies,” the queen surprised him by saying. She seemed to mean it, too. “I see I have insulted you. I might have paid for it with my life, had you been less sure of your abilities and more covetous of your pride.”

  Instead of attacking with a fury unbecoming of one so seemingly calm, she raised her sword and stretched her feet into a stance of her own. It was one Kole had never seen before, but it was no doubt more martial than her former had been. Instead of seeming like an otherworldly girl at play, she took on a regal air.

  “Your name, again, Ember of the Valley?” the queen said, raising her chin to Jenk.

  “Jenk,” he said flatly. “Jenk Ganmeer.”

  Linn nudged Kole in the side and leaned in for a whisper of her own. “He’d have fainted if we told him he’d have a moment like this when we were kids.”

  Kole smiled, but dropped the look quickly as the queen’s façade shifted once more, taking on an edge that hadn’t been there before.

  “Thank you, Jenk Ganmeer,” the queen said, her voice clear and much louder than before, though she did not seem to have to work to project it, “for this lesson.”

  “My pleas—”

  If Jenk was not gifted with Ember blood and what it offered, he’d have been speared on the spot. The queen covered the ground between them in a breath, her sword frozen directly before her and beneath her leaning chin and rounded shoulders. Jenk managed not to fall with his dodge, but before he had recovered, she was on him, and as she changed direction, Kole saw a glimmering veil begin to spread over her skin. The near-invisible armor started at her clenched fingers and leaked up from beneath her breastplate, coating her neck and creeping up her face.

  When their blades met again in a shower of yellow sparks, she was clad in Nevermelt, her eyes glowing an ethereal blue that reminded Kole of the White Crest’s hawk-like orbs, leering out from the visage that had belonged to Larren Holspahr. Her skin sparkled when the faint reflected light of the golden palace above struck it, like frost coating a frozen pond.

  Jenk had lost some of his confidence, but none of his fight. He spun away from their latest clash and then kept the queen from carving right through his leather armor with an impressive crescent of yellow fire that shot out behind a hearty slash. The Sage was forced to change tack, but instead of going left or right, she leapt clear over the scythe that burned an elongated scar into the clay and landed in the spot Jenk had been with a crash that cracked the ground, sinking her sword in as Jenk tumbled away in a barely-controlled roll.

  The pattern repeated, with the queen attacking with furious bursts of speed and Jenk keeping his head through a combination of offensive bursts of fire and defensive scrambles that grew more chaotic as he grew more haggard and drained.

  On the fifth exchange, the queen straightened with a blank look of serenity. She watched Jenk like a predator watches prey as the Ember faced her down with his boots spread farther apart than his shoulders, burning blade leveled between his eyes. His sweat formed a steady hiss as it evaporated, coating him in tendrils of gray steam, and his chest heaved, his yellow blade pulsing in time with it, alternately bright and dull.

  “He’s used up too much energy,” Misha said, startling Kole. Kole had become so focused on the duel, he hadn’t noticed her come up beside him.

  “It’s all those jets,” Kole said, nodding toward the quickly-tiring Ember. “It isn’t like him to use so many. That’s your style.”

  “Spear makes it a lot easier,” Misha said. “The momentum of the weapon lets me guide the flame more than he can with that sword.” She looked at Kole, raising one eyebrow. “And much better than you can with those little matchsticks.”

  Kole accepted the fact. “She is fast.”

  “Faster than you,” Misha said, echoing the more selfish thoughts Kole could feel boiling beneath the surface, along with his warming blood.

  “You two need to rein yourselves in,” Linn barked. “You’re burning me up.” Shifa whined as if in affirmation and took a few steps into the center of the yard. The Blue Knights watched the hound, wearing grim looks.

  “Shifa …” Kole drew it out and the hound sat emphatically, curling her tail around her rear to betray her nervousness on Jenk’s behalf.

  “I swear she worries for you lot more than for me,” Kole said.

  “You are the chosen one,” Misha said without humor. She didn’t react to Kole’s questioning, startled look, just continued to watch Jenk and the queen.

  Jenk wasn’t going to defeat the Frostfire Sage at the rate things were going, and Kole doubted she had shown even a hint of her true power yet, but Jenk knew he wasn’t going to get any measure of her respect back solely by defending himself from her furious press.

  So he attacked.

  Jenk charged the queen, who stood watching him as calm as the sea was wild. The Ember stretched his left hand out toward her and brought his burning sword back behind him with the rig
ht, gearing up for a powerful swing that all saw coming.

  “What is he playing at?” Kole said to himself.

  Instead of cleaving the air in front of him or forcing the queen to block another swipe, and instead of beginning another series of fast, cutting exchanges that he would no doubt lose given his dwindling reserves, Jenk put all of his gathered heat into an attack Kole had never seen from him before. An attack he’d never seen from anyone before, come to think of it.

  Jenk leapt, and instead of flying to twice the height a man could jump, he soared twice as high as that. As he reached the zenith of his rapid ascent, Jenk put a wash of fire into his Everwood sword and brought it up and over his head, using it to start his fall … and his turn.

  As Kole and the others watched with mouths agape, Jenk used his momentum and more finesse than Kole had even thought he possessed and launched himself into a midair spin that turned him into a wheel of fire, like a human comet speeding toward the Frostfire Sage. No longer did she look on dispassionately, but rather with mounting awe, and—if it were possible—just a twinge of fear she had hitherto kept hidden from them.

  It happened in halved time, seeming slow enough for Kole to see each flare and sprouting tail of flame from Jenk’s crackling sword. And then it sped up, too fast for even the queen to dodge without risking leaving an arm behind for the Ember to put that Nevermelt armor to the test.

  So she stood. The Witch of the North bent her knees and brought her sword up before her brow, shielding her eyes from the brightness of Jenk’s display. She supported the back of the blade with her opposite hand, and when the wheel of fire Jenk had become struck her, the ensuing flash had more than Ember fire in it. It was bright enough—white, almost—that it forced Kole to cover his eyes. He heard Shifa barking and thought he heard something shatter and hoped it was not the queen’s armored shell.

  When his vision cleared, the clay basin was obscured in a cloud of pink and orange dust, and when that cleared, slow as agony and doubly tense since neither they nor the Blue Knights knew what had become of the combatants at the center of the red storm, Kole sighed in relief to see that both still lived. And then his heart froze as the image came clear.