The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “Queen Elanil!”

  Her ear twitched. “Take her, my son,” Elanil said. Tundra blinked, his eyes losing their black, void-filled stare. “Put her in one of the lower chambers. Give her something to sleep.”

  “She was poisoned,” Linn said. Elanil would not let her eyes slide away from the Eastern Dark. She watched him like a hawk watching a burrow.

  “She is strong,” Elanil said. “She will live until I return.”

  The other Sage laughed at that. Once.

  Tundra looked as if he might refuse, and then the queen raised a hand and shooed him away. He turned a hateful stare at Linn as he turned and marched through the field of sickles, breaking them at the stems with errant swipes of his burly blue fists. He bent and scooped the unconscious Gwenithil up, tossed one lingering, hungry look back at the Eastern Dark—and a softer one at the back of the slender, diminutive queen he saw as his charge—and departed in the direction of the crystal palace.

  Linn tried to call the wind to her once more, but it was halting. She pulled harder and the sky seemed to pull back. Her chest burned and her temples throbbed.

  She turned and saw Misha jabbing at Myriel with her spear. Only the tip was lit, now, which meant the Ember was conserving her fire, or running out of it. Their fight had taken them farther away. There were broken craters from Myriel’s attacks, and melted trenches from Misha’s torrents. Baas was lying in a heap a short distance from them, and Linn’s heart caught in her throat before she saw him roll onto his stomach and push himself up, scooping his shield as he went. She saw his short-cropped hair standing on end, spiked and dancing, no doubt an effect of Myriel’s charged blows.

  “I’ll leave you two to it, then,” Linn said without turning.

  “A wise choice,” the Eastern Dark answered.

  She began to move toward the fight. If the wind wouldn’t answer, she had another friend to call. The air was dry, and the sky still bright, but there was always a storm over the next horizon. What better way to fight lightning?

  Linn felt the charge building in the air, buzzing against her ears. She felt the tips of her eyelashes rise, her unbound hair go wavy, as if she were swimming. The sea was not frozen all the way to the north and east, and Linn could feel the billowing plumes there. She called to them, and they raced to answer.

  “Shifa!”

  Kole had lost her again. He reeled his flames back in, ramming his Everwood blades back into the crisscrossed scabbards across his back as he ran. His blood was up, the scales of his black armor shifting over one another, releasing heat in hissing gouts.

  Jenk kept up well enough, but the Blue Knights were finding it more difficult. Still, the terrain was known to them. Kole and Jenk were nimble and strong, but the trenches between the great shelves of blue ice went from rough and salt-frosted to slick at random, dumping them on occasion.

  Kole rounded a bend and nearly collided with a sheer wall. Jenk slammed into his back and Kole spun and grabbed the other Ember to steady him.

  Jenk rubbed at his nose. Behind him, the Blue Knights came into view, their golden eyes gleaming in the gloom; the sun did not reach so easily into every crack and crevice of the frozen sea.

  “Which way?” Jenk asked.

  “She was following the Shadow girl,” Kole said. He pointed to the right, where the ground dropped away three times his height. The slope was steep and pitted, and in the distance, Kole could see the land open up once more, the trenches changing back to a cacophony of frozen waves and the slides and valleys between them.

  “She’s leading us, you know,” Jenk said.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you want to know what she’s leading us to?”

  “Yes, Ganmeer,” Kole said. He was tense on account of losing sight of Shifa. He sighed. “The Eastern Dark is above. Whatever or whoever she’s leading us to can’t be as bad as him.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What do you see?” Pirrahn asked, coming up behind them. Cress passed in front of them and crouched on the lip of the ledge overlooking the slide.

  “Linn’s the one with the eagle’s eyes,” Jenk said. Pirrahn did not know which one he spoke of, nor did she care. The Blue Knights were aloof and strange. Even in the midst of clear danger, they were calm. Kole wondered how old they were, and how many battles they had seen.

  “You know this Shadow creature?” Cress asked without turning. He ran his bare blue fingers through the salt and lifted them to his lips, licking the tips, as if that would tell him something of her origins.

  “She piss on the ground or something?” Kole asked. Now Cress did turn, locking him in a steady stare. Kole matched it.

  Kole made as if to stride past him when some errant sound niggled at his ear. He stopped and half turned toward Jenk. The other Ember had also paused, chin tilted.

  A small shock of black and white stole into view at the bottom of the slide. She pawed the ground and lifted her head high, a sign that she had found something. Kole shook his head. “Damn dog.” He leapt onto the top of the slide and allowed it to take him down, watching the walls rush past him on either side and bending his knees to remain upright.

  Shifa did not greet him at the bottom, but rather turned to lead.

  “Wait, girl,” he said, turning back toward the natural chute. Jenk nearly slipped at the top, but otherwise made the trip unharmed, and the Blue Knights followed in short order, their golden armor reflecting images of themselves on the walls they slid between. “Okay.”

  No sooner had the word left his lips than Shifa bounded ahead. Rather than make for another trench between the troughs of the frozen waves, she moved to the left, where the great shelf of ice that formed one of the walls bordering the natural slide rose higher than the tallest buildings of Hearth. Kole followed.

  “Looks like she’s found a passageway,” Jenk said.

  “Where to?” Kole asked. Shifa looked up at him, expectant.

  The crack was more a fissure. Kole would have had to turn sideways in order to get himself in. He leaned forward and peered inside, trying to see what was on the other side. In the place of an endless path, he saw the narrow fissure open up onto flat ice, revealing a sort of chamber with jutting shards that rose from the ground like stalagmites. He couldn’t get a good enough angle to see more.

  “She in there, girl?” Shifa whined, but did not growl. She was acting strangely, as if she did not know quite what to make of the situation, and Kole eyed her.

  “Perhaps the land is playing tricks on her nose,” Cress said. He was facing the north, bracing for signs of ambush.

  “She’s stopped here for a reason,” Kole said. “I hope.”

  He began to wedge his way inside, doing his best to ignore Jenk’s worried look. The Blue Knights milled beyond him, uncomfortable with the present path.

  There was a rumble that sounded like thunder, and Kole felt the air take on a bitter chill. The shadows lengthened. He looked up into the sky and saw deep gray clouds passing overhead.

  “Linn,” Jenk said.

  Kole brought his chin back down and gasped.

  “What is it?” Jenk asked, drawing his black sword.

  Kole did not immediately answer. His heart was beating furiously, and he felt caught like a hare wedged between two hunter’s stones. He peered into the wall of ice in front of his nose. He swore he had seen a face looking back at him; it had been red with white eyes, and certainly not human. The form beneath it had been massive, larger even than Baas and Tundra, all corded muscle and boney ridges.

  Now, there was nothing. Just a deep, shadowed blue that passed away into blackness, like the ocean depths.

  “Thought I saw something,” Kole said. He turned and marked Shifa, who had followed him into the crevice. She looked up at him, tail wagging, as if nothing was amiss. Instead of looking at the wall of ice as he did, she attemp
ted to push past him, eager to reach the room beyond.

  “Something like what?” Pirrahn asked, her voice taking on an edge of fear that Cress did well to hide.

  “Something like a demon,” Kole said.

  He continued to edge his way toward the chamber, his bare hands pressed against the wall in front of him. This was no Nevermelt, the magical, nearly unbreakable glasslike substance the queen and her Blue Knights summoned, but rather ice. It was frozen solid, and likely through magical means, but it still split and protested at the direct touch of an Ember as hot as him. His hands steamed and the wall began to lose its clarity the farther he went, fogging with condensation. Bubbles beneath the surface bunched and popped and slid, and Kole wondered how many of the great mountains of ice sheltered liquid pools in their depths.

  When his hand reached the open air of the western chamber, Kole breathed in deeply, spared another glance at the others—Jenk watching, poised and with his Everwood sword bared—and launched himself to the side. He let himself fall, hitting the hard, frosted ground with his armored left shoulder and rolling. He came up with one blade out, flattened on one knee and up on the opposite foot.

  Kole cast about the chamber frantically, alert for signs of the Shadow girl’s inevitable ambush. It was darker than it had been on the other side of the trench. Kole had assumed that the chamber had no roof, but as he glanced up, he saw that the sky was obscured by a thin sheet of ice. The chamber floor, on the other hand, was littered with icy mounds and shards with sharp edges. Some were frosted over white, while others were transparent, shining like crystals as the afternoon sun spilled in from the glass-seeming ceiling. Others still were blue, all the colors and hues the land could make.

  There was no sign of the Shadow girl and no sign of any other, and as Shifa followed him into the wide, vaulted cave, she did not immediately raise an alarm. Instead, she began to sniff along the ground, testing the base of each shard and mound, the ridges along the fur of her spine rising and falling at chaotic intervals.

  Kole stood and brushed some of the crystalized dust from his breeches. He kept one blade out and unlit, but left the other in its sheath. He turned to beckon Jenk inside, or else to tell them there was nothing to be found and to stay without, but the Ember was already halfway through the narrow path, and the Blue Knights had stolen in after him.

  Shifa ranged a short ways ahead, but continued to circle back to check on the progress of the others, and Kole rounded the lead shard—a broken wall that showed him his own reflection as he passed. When he got around it, he looked to the north, seeing that the cave went deeper and grew more narrow, the mounds of ice along its floor littering the bottom every step of the way. In the distance, he could see light, either the result of another chamber that admitted the sun, or an open valley among more of the blasted waves that seemed infinite in this place.

  Kole felt a presence and whirled. Shifa edged backward, spooked by his tension. Kole found himself staring back at the slab he had just circled. He squinted into its depths, but only his reflection stared back. Still, he drew his other blade.

  Jenk pulled himself into the chamber, sword still held in one drenched and steaming hand, and Kole could see the shadows of the Blue Knights edging closer through the corner of the block.

  “Anything?” Jenk asked.

  Kole shook his head, unsure.

  He began to walk among the slabs, mounds and jutting shards, always turning his feet, swiveling like a top. The chamber was not so very large, but it seemed so, like a maze of half barriers and refracting colors. A hall of illusion. He focused on each structure as he went, but he concentrated the bulk of his attention to the corners of his eyes, searching for signs of movement. The Shadow girl was clever, he knew. She had nearly killed him at Center. Had nearly killed the lot of them with her dark blade and cunning speed. Kole knew she could turn up at a moment’s notice. Any shadow deep enough for her to count as skin was a potential hiding place. A potential door for her to open.

  There.

  Kole turned again, catching a reflection in one of the slabs of blue ice farther along that he did not think belonged to Jenk. He crept toward it, his eyes locked on it, but his attention focused on the one beside it.

  He flared one blade to life and launched it before his head swiveled toward the mark. The blade struck and shattered the wall, and as it fell, the image he had only thought he had seen was rendered in all its grotesque detail.

  Jenk stepped up next to him, his voice lost as they faced down the great beast. He was red from crown to toe, and his white eyes matched the razor teeth that broke into a wide grin as he took the Embers in. In the place of armor, his chest, forearms and insteps were replete with boney shields, pitted and porous, and his great hands ended in blood-red hooks for fingers.

  He laughed, the sound deep and rumbling, though his mouth did not move and his throat did not quiver. Kole’s thrown blade burned at his feet, but something about the image was off. Shifa growled, but not at him, and Kole kept his ears focused on all the sounds around him, listening for the pop and sizzle that would announce the Shadow’s arrival.

  Jenk ignited his own sword, the yellow flames dancing in the hall of slabs and mirrors. He edged forward, but Kole switched his remaining blade to his right hand and laid the left on Jenk’s arm.

  “Hold.”

  Jenk gritted his teeth, but did as Kole asked. “What is—”

  The other Ember banged into Kole’s shoulder hard and sent him spinning away. Kole turned to see Jenk ram his burning blade through the sheet of ice beside him, shattering it. It had held an identical image of the laughing red beast who still stood over Kole’s guttering blade. The sheet broke apart and collapsed, but the laughter only redoubled.

  As the shards fell, Pirrahn was revealed. Her eyes widened in shock as she gazed into the depths of another mound, not on the demon who stood unmoving farther into the chamber. She stuck her hands out to either side and grew clear Nevermelt gauntlets that ended in sickles longer than Kole’s blades. She crossed them before her chest, her look resolved for the coming fight.

  Kole did not want to peel his eyes from the beast that stood above his discarded blade, but Jenk wheeled to meet him, edging closer. Still the beast faced him down, unconcerned. Something was off about the exchange. Shifa did not so much as glance in the demon’s direction. Instead, she spun toward Pirrahn—no, toward the crevice Cress was only just starting to come out of. The hound growled, fur going up in a ridge.

  “Cress!” Kole yelled, igniting his remaining blade.

  The Blue Knight looked at him, confused, and then his eyes widened as he took in the demon who stood just beyond Kole.

  “No!” Kole yelled. “Not there.” He saw the shadow shifting in the slab before Cress like a wraith made of blood. The Blue Knight turned before the end, but it was too late.

  As Kole looked on in horror, a great red hand crashed through the wall of ice and caught Cress by the throat. The Blue Knight kicked and the air went milky along the surface of his palm as he tried to call his Nevermelt spear. The demon’s toothy visage followed, its white hair hanging in tangled, greasy threads. The Blue Knights were strong, but that seemed to count for nothing here, as the beast slammed Cress into the back wall and pressed. Cress couldn’t spare enough voice to raise more than a strangled sob, and then his eyes ran red and his nose dripped the same. There was a sickening crunch and he stilled, and the demon grinned, all fangs, and held him there for a moment.

  Pirrahn let out an anguished cry as she turned and launched herself at the demon. Shifa matched her, flying toward his red arm, but the demon melted away, fading as if he had never been there at all. His laughter filled the chamber, and Kole saw his leering, demented face reflected in every slab, mound and icy boulder that littered the cave. He turned toward his thrown blade and the image of the demon that still stood smiling above it. Image, because the flames of his
blade did not so much as light the red skin or the boney spurs of its armor at all.

  “Jenk …” Kole drew it out as he moved toward the other Ember, who spun in slow circles among the slabs.

  “How do we find him?” Jenk asked.

  Pirrahn fell over Cress as Shifa guarded her. She cradled him, but his head lolled, and soon enough her grief was supplanted by rage. She stood and turned, and then she darted at the shard closest to her that bore the demon’s laughing face and plunged her blade through it, shattering it.

  “There’s one way,” Kole said. He dove toward his other blade and snatched it up. He came up slashing, and when the flaming sword passed through the red brute, it merely smiled and faded like a reflection in the surface of a pond.

  A pop and sizzle, and Kole spun just in time to avoid the smoky black blade of the Shadow girl. He brought his right blade across his body and saw her purple eyes go wide as she rolled away and burst into a pocket of ink that clung to the pillars and stones. The air smelled of rot and smoke, and Kole ignored the leering images of the red beast as best he could, waiting for the Shadow to reappear.

  Kole yelled out as Pirrahn shattered another slab, and another. The demon’s image grew solid in the slab in front of him, shattered it and reached for the Ember with frightening speed. Jenk brought his yellow sword up in a quick strike that had the demon recoiling. Two Nevermelt spears passed through its back and protruded from the front, but came out bloodless as it faded once more.

  Pop.

  Kole was ready. He saw the light warp atop the tallest mound in the chamber and sprinted toward it. When the Shadow appeared, her eyes showed uncommon fear as she took in his approach. She slid down the back side of the mound, black sword only half formed in her outstretched palm, and fled down the tunnel to the north.

  Kole skidded to a halt as he heard another slab crack and shatter behind him, heard Pirrahn roar and then choke out a startled sound. He spun and saw the demon holding her aloft, but Jenk had guessed right this time. The Ember sped in, glowing sword leading, and drove it in. The demon looked annoyed this time as it melted away and let the Blue Knight drop to the cavern floor, where she caught herself and let her gauntlets drop away, splashing the frost with fresh water as she clutched at her throat.