The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  Kole saw that the gray swordsman had not escaped their exchanges entirely unscathed. He wore the marks of battle well—pink slashes that were already beginning to bubble—while the bones that made up his natural armor turned the fire aside with little issue.

  “What is what?” Alistair asked.

  Kole allowed his eyes to drift toward the other hand. The one the man let swing by his side, muscles tensed, betraying a poise in the midst of an image of ease. He stepped over the bodies of his fellows—bodies he had made–and his dark eyes reflected the yellow lantern lights that came in from the tunnel Kole stood before.

  “Wind,” Kole said. “Your element is wind.”

  Alistair shrugged, as if it did not matter. “Your Landkist are so named because their power works this way?”

  “Yours doesn’t?”

  “Who can say? No doubt every world has its champions, each with his own secrets.”

  In truth, Kole wanted to believe Alistair controlled the wind, even though everything about the way he moved and the way he fought suggested nothing of the sort—nothing to connect him to Linn. He wanted to believe it, because the only other thing he could think of to explain the invisible scythes he seemed capable of generating spoke to speed. Speed on a scale Kole found difficult to fathom.

  Alistair stopped just a few paces from him, on the northern edge of the bowl. He smiled, as if he could read Kole’s thoughts and liked where they had landed.

  Kole’s vision swam. He tried to remain steady and did a fine job, but too rigid a stance could just as well reveal weakness to a trained enemy, and there was no doubting Alistair’s gifts. Kole suspected the only man he had faced with better skill—even if he had half the speed—was Maro of the Emerald Road. What he wouldn’t give to have that man by his side, and on it, right now.

  If Alistair truly could part the very atmosphere—the fabric of the world—with that left hand, why did he not split Kole on the spot, as he had the twins? Kole watched him. Alistair did not seem to wish to speak. He gave the impression of a cat playing with a mouse, but Kole did not think he would suffer him to live.

  No, there was a reason why he did not flaunt his power. Kole saw a bead of sweat form at the top of that tangled hairline. The drop made its aching way down through the gray, sickly grooves of his alien face, causing his lip to twitch as it rode the upper edges. His veins were standing out on his brow and at his temples. He looked calm, even happy, but he was tired.

  “Tell me,” Alistair said, taking a step forward. “What conclusion have you arrived at? More so,” he continued, “tell me: do you believe it will matter, in the end?”

  Kole gave the best answer he could.

  He shot toward his adversary like a flaming arrow, blades out at his sides. Alistair watched him, steady as a mantis. When he was just a leaping stride away, Kole put a blast into his legs and rose. He slowed, and then hung, suspended in an instant, and turned his eyes down toward Alistair’s.

  The bone sword remained poised, point down, while the left hand twitched. As Kole started down, that hand started up. Instead of bringing both of his burning blades overhead and unleashing a lashing whip of flame that would matter little if that invisible razor thread took his head from his shoulders, Kole sent a crescent of fire with the left and lanced his right hand forward in the hardest throw he could muster. His burning blade parted the space between them and he heard a wet pack as it struck home. He used the momentum of his throw to cut an angle, falling like the sharpened edge of a blade.

  Kole saw the demon’s empty hand carve a swath through his wall of fire, but it was a jagged one, thrown off by the missile Kole had landed. When Kole struck the ice, he sank in, breaking the surrounding ground, and when he charged up through the combusting smoke, ash and trailing motes that had enveloped the visitor from the World Apart, he held his breath and slammed into the boney chest, his armor rattling, teeth cracking and jaw ringing, and bore him down in a burning tangle, grabbing at whatever holds he could manage.

  When the smoke cleared, Kole straddled Alistair. His right hand now gripped the hilt of his own blade, which had sunk into the fleshy part of the space between the other man’s neck and shoulder. The blade was still burning, and Kole put more of his fire into it, causing Alistair to clench his teeth against the pain, though he did not scream.

  Come to think of it, he did not look so defeated after all, and Kole only realized the reason why too late.

  He followed those dark, dead eyes that now sparkled with a mix of pain and mischief down toward his own left hand. Kole still clutched his other blade, but he had been unable to aim the blow, his shoulder throbbing, blood still leaking due to the heat he’d expended. He had Alistair’s sword hand pressed down, avoiding a lethal stab in the side, but Alistair’s empty hand was very close to his own wrist. He held it there, clenched in something close to a fist, as if he gripped something in it. Something Kole could not see.

  “A good try,” Alistair growled, and with mounting horror, Kole squeezed tighter onto the hilt of the blade that was buried in the other man’s shoulder. He put all his fire into it, feeling the tightening noose around his left wrist as Alistair fought through the pain. It felt like a thread—like an iron cord—tied tightly around Kole’s left wrist, and he knew that if Alistair dislodged him, he would pull on the invisible thread he held and take Kole’s hand with him.

  “Surely …” Alistair choked as Kole growled, straining to keep him down with all the strength he could muster. “Surely you have threads in this realm. Weavers, and the like.”

  Kole thought of Iyana and of Mother Ninyeva. He knew the Faey spoke of threads and tethers, that Iyana could even see them. They were the key to healing, and, some said, the key to life itself. Control the thread of another, and you could control him, body and soul.

  Kole had never known whether or not to believe in it. After all, he could not see his own tether. He couldn’t grasp the threads of others—strange, ethereal concepts that seemed as fleeting as dreams.

  But he knew they were real. Knew it now. And knew that the denizens of the World Apart had something like them.

  “What …” Kole was beginning to lose his grip. He felt Alistair flexing beneath him, his right hand edging upward. Kole felt that sickening pressure on his wrist as it constricted the armored greave that had slipped down to the base of his hand in the tumult.

  “Most are taught to guard their tethers, young Ember,” he said, and though Kole still held a burning Everwood blade in his very flesh, the bulk of his fire was now inward, feeding his straining muscles and pumping his frantic heart. “But these tethers are our strongest parts. They are what make us up, in essence. They feed our power, guide our hearts and minds. Live long enough, and you can dream up all manner of things. I never quite learned how to seize the tethers of friend or foe, but I did learn to conjure mine, to bring it from the half-real, from the realm of thought, into being. It is strong, and sharp, as I am strong and sharp. And now I have you.”

  Kole meant to shout him down, but all that came out was a roar. At least this time Alistair screamed, partly in pain and more in effort. He bucked and Kole felt his weight shift, and then Alistair launched him toward the eastern edge. Kole lost his grip on the right-hand blade but kept it on the left.

  Clutched and burning in the hand he left behind.

  Kole hit the half-melted wall so hard his vision went black. He slid and crashed to the basin, and the jolt jarred him back to life. He scrambled, feeling the burning as it began to set in. His vision cleared some, though he still felt as if he were fighting through a fog, or moving in slow motion, as if the world had been turned to glass.

  There was red all around him. He clutched his left wrist with his right and forced himself to look. The cut had been clean. Clean enough that even now, the burning was all he felt, and even that not so badly. He felt a throbbing as he watched the blood coming out of t
he stump in a sickening spray. It made him retch.

  Shifa raced toward him and framed herself between him and the struggling Alistair, who had gained his knees. He screamed as he tried to pull the red-hot Everwood knife from his collar.

  Kole closed his eyes. He wanted to rage. He wanted to cry. He wanted to wake up.

  The last time he had felt close to death, he had opened his eyes to see his mother’s face, her shocking green eyes vivid against the red curtain that was her vibrant hair. Now, he saw his father’s, and along with him, all those he knew at the Lake and in the Valley. All those who lived, and who he had sworn to protect when he had set out on his foolhardy path all those months ago.

  Kole opened his eyes and made himself look. He took in the blood. Took in the gore and took in the pain, let it flood him. Let it feed the fire that still nested behind his heart. He no longer felt the inviting kiss of Everwood against his bare skin, but he flooded his palm anyway. He felt the fire welling beneath, saw the air distort above it. In the lengthening shadows of the storm clouds Linn had called in like a rallying force, he saw a glow light the skin beneath, and perhaps a flicker above the lines of his palm—the ghost of a flame.

  Before he could think better of it, he rammed the bloody, fatal stump of his left hand into that burning palm. The pain was worse than anything he could have guessed.

  This was the pain of burning. This was the pain of fire. Kole felt a strange and maddening exhilaration at feeling it. His vision wavered, but as the pain reached its zenith, it came clearer.

  He stood, fell and stood again. His feet were unsteady. He smelled burning flesh and it made him nauseous to know that it was his own. Shifa limped between him and his prey, whimpering, for his sake more than her own, he knew.

  Alistair had managed to gain his feet. He had the Everwood blade by the hilt and had begun to work it free. No more smiles. Only pain. When he saw Kole stalking toward him with lurching strides, his eyes widened in a mix of disbelief and fear, however fleeting.

  But Alistair was a wolf, just like Kole. He let go of the black, smoking hilt of Kole’s knife and reached down, grasping for his own discarded blade. Realizing it was too far away, he took hold of the spike that jutted up from the flesh of his knee and pulled it free, the rough sickle passing between his hands as he took in Kole’s approach.

  “Fair play, Ember,” Alistair said, and Kole thought he meant it.

  Fatigue and pain made fools of men—no matter the world—and Alistair swung too soon. Kole had more fire than he had thought, and as the strike passed before his face, the wind of its passing moving his bangs and cooling his watering eyes, he staggered into a run, right hand streaking toward that ashen throat.

  He caught Alistair by the flesh and lifted with all his might. The warrior choked and gurgled. More so, he burned. Kole’s hand began to flicker, the flesh around it bubbling. Alistair’s feet began to swing like a child’s as Kole lifted him from the ground. He remembered the black-armored soldier of Balon Rael he had clutched in his hot grasp in the sweltering, moist jungle of Center. He felt the same heat flooding his veins now.

  Kole became drunk. He focused on Alistair’s eyes as they began to lose what little light they held. His head buzzed like a hive. Alistair had a final crass trick. He brought his left hand screaming in, too fast for Kole to react. The impact sent him sprawling, his chin tearing as he slid roughly through the frost, stinging as the salt got into it.

  He came to a halt on the southern edge of the bowl, looking back behind him, where Alistair crumpled into a heap, unmoving.

  Kole was dimly aware of Shifa padding over to him. The hound licked at his face, and sniffed at his ruined stump, whining, though her own fur was matted with the wounds she had suffered. She left him there, streaking off into the tunnel that now glowed more brightly than it had before.

  Kole kept expecting Alistair to rise, to lurch over like something out of a nightmare, and wrap that invisible thread around his neck, rip his head from his shoulders and carry it back with him like a grisly prize. He didn’t move, though his chest managed to rise and fall in a rhythm that made it impossible to judge the life left within.

  Kole heard thunder roll across the sky, and imagined Linn floating down on one of her conjured currents to spirit him away. His vision faded, and he did not know if it would come back this time.

  Shadow should have thanked the Sage girl. They still should have been in the blinding, cursed light of day. To the east and to the far north, where the frozen waves must eventually give way to their moving brothers and sisters, it was. Blinding and brilliant.

  Here, on the borders of a tense meeting between the final Sages, the ice went from frosted white to deep blue in the gloom Linn Ve’Ran called in from faraway waters, or made out of the moisture in the air.

  Shadow found her deepest brethren in the troughs between waves. She climbed in, plunging into the inky stillness and finding handholds in the shadows to speed her along. In truth, she did not know how she navigated. It wasn’t by sight. It wasn’t even smell or sound or touch. It was, rather oddly, by taste that she moved.

  She tasted the dark like a serpent. To the west, there was fire and stone, and the bitter, acidic taste of ozone, like burnt rain.

  When she pulled herself from the blackness beneath an overhang and dug her claws into the sheer wall of the trench, she did so with a hunger, wishing to see hurt befall the Frostfire Sage, and wishing to see the same or worse befall her own.

  At the top, she found only disappointment. The Sages still stood on opposite sides of the yawning chasm, staring one another down, lost in their private exchange while the world broke apart beyond them.

  Shadow crouched on the edge. She thought of saying something, of riling one side or the other, but she saw the way the Witch stood rooted, and the way her hair moved like a separate thing from the wind that howled above them and whistled through the gap, shrieked through the cracks and crevices. She saw the darkness gathered around the clenched fists of the Eastern Dark; saw one eye glowing molten and the other the purple of twilight, and knew that she must refrain.

  The Sages would meet their ends on one another’s powers before long. For now, the battle raging just beyond them was a sight to behold.

  There, Linn flew higher than the gulls that had abandoned a place with no life to speak of. She hung, her dark hair whipping behind her. She did not clutch the silver bow Shadow had seen her wield before, but rather held her arms up toward the black clouds above. Flashes lit the undersides of the gray-bellied beasts, and Shadow saw small sparks dancing from the Sage girl’s fingers.

  Below her, the Ember had her amber spear spinning like a wheel of fire, like a miniature sun. It was vibrant to look upon, and the Ember was violent to behold. She leapt toward the glowing blue form that Shadow had to examine closely to mark as Myriel. The Ember’s spear missed her, but each time Myriel shot in, faster than the rest—faster even than Shadow, with all her tricks—a tongue of orange fire beat her back.

  The Rockbled was not in his own element, but he was a strong and hearty threat. He was also faster than he looked, and when Myriel ducked under the Ember’s horizontal slash, which sent a crescent of flame spinning end over end toward the crystal palace, he was there to greet her, his great stone shield slamming into her side and sending her careening across the ice.

  Shadow smiled as Myriel came up, her eyes blinding white, the contours of her skin and the armored plates that covered her breasts and back lost to the buzzing light that surrounded her. Myriel’s head turned toward the Sages, and looked beyond them, seeming to fix on Shadow, gauging whether or not she was a threat.

  Shadow shrugged and pointed up.

  Myriel followed Shadow’s pointed finger. Her white eyes went a little wider as she focused on the Sage girl, hair dancing as if she wallowed in the heart of a hurricane.

  Shadow heard a sound from the east, from the
direction she’d come. It sounded like screaming, like rage. The others didn’t react.

  Ve’Ran’s hands were sparking blue, and when she brought them down, the black clouds turned white, and the land was bleached in daylight, clean and horrible to look upon. All of them looked like shadows in that light, like Sentinels, and Shadow knew that she might have burned away had it been the full might of the life-giving sun, and not the killing light of the death-dealing lightning.

  The light arced down on the back of a crash that shook her from her feet. Even the Rockbled had to slam his shield into the frozen turf in front of him and the Ember. His strong hand snatched her by the crook of the arm and pulled her down beside him as the jagged beam struck the ice and sent up shards that turned to silver mirrors. The beam split as it struck at an angle, and tentacles of burning blue-white leapt out, racing along the ice like thrown chains.

  Myriel did not run. Instead, she set herself into a crouch, fingers splayed on the flat, watching the deadly whips approach. She waited until they were very close and then she pushed hard into the ice, cracking it, and shot through the narrow gap between the rivers of blue fire. Shadow felt her eyes widen, and even the Sages turned to look as Myriel made for the narrowing gap between bolts.

  As she shot between them, the beams sent out blades and flails, reaching for her with hungry intent. Shadow thought it strange for her to avoid them. After all, was her power not born of the same element?

  When one spark met her, it scored a bloody black gash from her shoulder up to her cheek, and sent her down in a tumble a stone’s throw from where the Rockbled and the Ember crouched.

  The bulk of the blast continued on its way, fizzling out in a series of pops and hisses as it broke upon the frozen waves.