The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  Linn pulled her arms down from her eyes and blinked. She was in a tunnel. There were glittering and glinting shards of the ceiling she had broken littering the blue cavern floor among mounds of ice that rose from the ground like stalagmites.

  A light-haired man stood over her. His leather vest was scored in half a dozen places, and his left arm was covered in red. His bangs were plastered to his brow, and his Everwood blade burned with a soft yellow light that barely gave off more heat than a campfire. He did not look down at her, but rather out, his eyes roving across the contours of the strange catacombs, alert for signs of some enemy Linn hadn’t spared a thought for.

  She felt the pain clutch her chest as she tried to speak. It sent her into an agonized fit of coughing, and she tasted blood under her tongue. When she quieted, she clutched her arm across her ribs and steadied them.

  “Jenk?” she wheezed.

  He didn’t answer, and now Linn noticed the details she had missed. She was leaning on her right hand, and next to it, she saw blue skin that belonged to a blue hand. She followed it and saw the golden armor and encrusted jewels that betrayed the presence of one of the Blue Knights. Cress lay wedged between two great shelves of ice. He bore no obvious wounds apart from a light trickle of blood that leaked from the corner of his closed mouth, but he was dead.

  Linn felt a coldness come over her. She looked in front of her, beyond Jenk and the wavering light of the blade he held as a ward, and saw Pirrahn impaled on a jagged spire. She had died quick, no doubting, but painful.

  The image brought with it a new series of thoughts that rushed in like an avalanche. Linn looked too quickly, letting out a whimper as she tried to locate Kole among the corpses and refuse. She didn’t see him. Not a hint of black armor or white-and-black fur that would betray the presence of Shifa. She peered into the gloom of the tunnel, but saw nothing apart from the reflected light of Jenk’s sword that made candles dance in the dark.

  Jenk was alone, or had been up until now, and as Linn struggled to rise, she could only lean against the sloped west-facing wall and breathe shallow breaths. It could have been her imagination, but as she looked up at Jenk’s normally-calm face and saw the deep lines and creases, and the gray pallor, she was beginning to feel the gravity of his situation, and now hers.

  She thought she heard something. It was a sound apart from the rumbling in the ice as the Sages’ concussive blast ripped great slabs of the frozen sea apart. It rattled the stalactites and sent some falling down to shatter along the pitted glass of the cavern floor. It sounded like laughter. Like a demon’s laughter. It sent shivers up Linn’s aching spine.

  There was a shadow beyond the wall across the way, but Jenk wasn’t looking there. Linn pointed and Jenk took a step toward it, his blade lighting the surface and revealing nothing beyond it. Linn swallowed, her eyes searching the walls and the slabs of ice that jutted from the ground like mirrors.

  Jenk swung his sword toward one of these, and Linn thought she saw a red image slip away, like a shadow made of blood. She heard the laughter again. It was louder now, and less hesitant.

  “You are tired, Ember,” the low, rough voice intoned. “Your flames are all but spent.”

  They heard a sound and Jenk angled the point of his blade and sent a jet of fire into the tunnel, lighting the melting walls. It burned out quickly, and Linn knew that the beast was right. Jenk was fading, and Linn was nearly spent.

  The white light from above was drenched in gloom, and Linn felt droplets touch her arm. They were warm compared to the icy melt in which she sat. She looked up and saw remnants of the clouds she had pulled in. Her great and fleeting allies.

  Jenk must have noticed them as well.

  “Linn …” he said, eyes roving along the cavern walls.

  “Right.”

  She didn’t know if the skies would answer, and if they did, if her body could take the impact. But what choice did she have?

  Linn closed her eyes and focused. She imagined herself in the heart of the storm. She felt the charge in the clouds above. It had dissipated since they had last spoken, but the sparks were still there, like memories of power. She bid them gather. When she opened her eyes, she saw faint lights dancing along the bottom of the clouds. A thin bolt shot down, struck her palm and infused her, and the cavern was lit brighter than daylight.

  Jenk spun, his blade roaring as he called up whatever fire he could still muster into its length. Linn heard a sound like shattered glass just over her head. She felt warm water splash down on her, causing her to shift and making the light wink out. The sparks danced along the hairs of her arms, but she hadn’t called too much, and the lightning mercifully spared her cracked ribs and sore jaw as it faded.

  Jenk was standing over her, his boots rooted, knees bent and shaking. She saw his reflection in the pool of water that had gathered below her. Linn leaned forward and crawled through the slush, pulling herself up by grabbing hold of a frosted mound. She turned herself around and leaned against it, and was almost too tired to feel shock at seeing the demon revealed in all its horrible detail.

  The beast had been hiding in the sheet of ice just above her head. It was huge. Taller than Tundra and broader than Baas. Its mouth was still split in a toothy razor grin, but its eyes were dead. Jenk’s burning blade had found a home in its breast, and as he pulled the blade out with a sucking sound, nothing but red mist came out as the blood cooled before it could spill.

  “And there the beast will stay,” Jenk said. He let his flames go out, the Everwood blade glowing like sunset as the cavern was drenched in shadows once more. “Thank you,” the Ember said, turning toward her. “My guesses were almost spent.”

  Linn showed him a smile he likely couldn’t see in the shadows. Another tremor shook the chamber and had Jenk looking up into the stormy sky. He looked askance at Linn.

  She shook her head. “Not me.”

  “Are we winning?” the Ember asked.

  Linn shrugged and peeled herself off the mound. Jenk caught her as she stumbled, but already she felt better. Her ribs were bruised, but she did not think they were broken, and her legs had been spared the brunt of the fall. It was a good thing she had managed to get the wind to lead her meteor strike into the ice-laden chamber.

  “The Sages are fighting,” Linn said, voice hoarse. “At this rate, they could shatter the whole land.” She looked at her boots. Though she could see nothing below the ice, she imagined the ocean rushing up to reclaim its stolen waves.

  Jenk moved away from her. She followed his progress and saw him kneel beside Cress. He closed his eyes for a moment, and couldn’t quite force himself to look upon Pirrahn.

  “I tried to save them,” he said.

  “I know, Jenk,” Linn said. She meant it. “You always do.”

  Jenk did not look to be grievously wounded, but he stood on shaking legs. His eyes were shining in the damp, picking up the glow of his fading Everwood.

  “Do you think it’ll be worth it, in the end?” he asked. Linn was taken aback. It sounded like something a child might ask, not the brave and bold Jenk Ganmeer.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I only know that whatever happens out here will decide plenty more than we could ever have imagined.” She looked up into the sky, imagining the ball of raw power the Sages made with their furious clash. “This isn’t about killing the Eastern Dark. It’s not about killing the Sages or stopping them. Not anymore. It’s about something bigger. Something darker.” Linn met Jenk’s eyes. “I think we’ve been fighting the real enemy longer than most.”

  “The Dark Kind,” Jenk reasoned.

  “The World Apart.” Linn nodded. “The Sages seem to think its coming is inevitable. The Eastern Dark claims he wants to stop it, but how can we believe him?” Linn was speaking more to herself. She knew what she had heard up on the shifting shelves of ice. She knew how the Frostfire Sage had sound
ed. She had dipped into the very same power her dark adversary had, and Linn had already known it and let it stand.

  If she did not turn it around, aim it back at its source, then they would just have to make an enemy of her. The way things had gone for most, Linn was beginning to think that the Landkist of the Valley—and the Sage girl who walked among them—were the worst enemies one could have these days.

  “Kole …” Linn whispered it at first, but then said it again, louder and with all the worry she had forgotten in the chaos of the red demon’s ambush.

  Jenk pointed his cooled Everwood down into the tunnel at Linn’s back. “He chased the Shadow girl there. Shifa went with him.”

  Linn turned and started in that direction without another word, wincing and clutching at her side as she lurched into motion. She felt the warmth of Jenk’s aura as he joined her.

  “Misha and Baas?” he asked.

  “Holding on,” Linn said. “You weren’t the only one to come upon the Eastern Dark’s newest allies.”

  “More like him?” Jenk asked, jabbing a thumb back over his shoulder.

  “More or less,” Linn said.

  Their eyes had only just begun to adjust to the darkness when the gray light of the cloud-streaked eastern sky poured in through the undulating tunnel. Linn quickened her steps. When the stinging in her eyes subsided, she turned her walk into a stumble that was meant to be a run. She saw something in the bowl.

  She caught the toe of her boot on something soft and nearly went over in a heap. Jenk caught her by the wrist and ignited his sword. She hadn’t heard the whimper before, but now that she saw the loyal hound of Last Lake, she wondered how she could have missed it.

  Shifa lay at their feet, her fur wet and matted. Linn knelt beside her as Jenk held his blade aloft. She ran her hands through the hound’s fur and felt spikes. She thought they were shards of ice fallen from the ceiling, but as she pulled one out and turned it over in the flickering yellow light, she could only think of the quill of some beast, or the bone tip of a crude arrowhead.

  The hound seemed to remember herself as she took in Linn’s scent. She stood, somehow, though her thin forelegs shook with the effort.

  “Kole,” Linn implored, pulling another of the spurs out and earning a growl.

  “That sounds more like her,” Jenk said.

  “I don’t think she’s wounded too badly.” Linn cast about. She saw broken chips of ice all around. “She might’ve been hit on the head.” Jenk raised his sword and inhaled. Linn looked up and understood why. The tunnel was warm. Warmer than it must have been an hour before, when Jenk had first begun his fight with the illusory beast, and the stalactites shook and rattled in their holds, dripping and filling shallow pools all around them.

  “Let’s move,” Linn said and Jenk did not argue.

  The wind that greeted them as they exited the cave mouth was bitterly cold. Linn was exhausted, but she managed to harness it enough to turn the strongest currents aside. The air seemed to be rushing in from the east and south, racing in from other lands as if the Sages’ clash was calling to it.

  “What …”

  Linn heard Jenk, but she was only just seeing what he meant.

  They found themselves in a rough-hewn bowl with high borders. The walls were warped and misshapen in places, as if great swaths of fire had come against them. There were red splashes throughout, as if a lazy painter had discarded his brush and flung his paint at random. There were two bodies, pale and fair. They bore similar bone shells to those Linn and Jenk had already fought, and one of them had lost a head. There were boney spurs—likely the same that Linn had just pulled from Shifa’s paws—stuck into the frosted salt, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Shifa limped past them, her steps sure in direction if not in balance. She went to a particular piece of gore. A hand with dark skin. Skin that looked very close to Linn’s. It had already purpled in the cold, and there were bits of black armor with silver streaks strewn around it.

  “No.”

  Linn walked over to the place where Shifa whined. She knelt beside the limb she knew to be Kole’s.

  “Where is he?” Jenk asked. Linn hadn’t even spared the thought that he could be alive, but Jenk was right.

  “No body.”

  “Nothing,” Jenk said. He kicked at something in the frost and bent to retrieve it. Linn saw him come up holding one of Kole’s Everwood knives.

  “Just the one?”

  Jenk nodded, looking grave.

  “They must have taken him,” Linn said. “They must have. If he was dead, he’d be here. Why would they take his body?”

  Linn found a sudden burst of energy that she knew would be fleeting. She used it to gather a whipping current of wind around her and pressed it down into the bowl, lifting herself up and onto the eastern ledge. Jenk leapt up beside her, landing with a thud and then kneeling with the effort.

  The waves were smaller to the east and the land dropped away. There was nothing for leagues upon leagues. No place to hide. Not from Linn’s sight. She turned and looked to the south, seeing the very sky flicker to the west.

  In the distance, she saw the ridge they had come down from just a few days before, along with the place where the Quartz Tower had been. Now, there was only a tumble of jagged stones that could not be seen from the walls of the crystal palace. She scanned the edges, searching for any sign of passage. There was nothing. No tracks that she could see. No figures trudging through the frost.

  “Linn,” Jenk said.

  She ignored him.

  “Linn …”

  “What!”

  “They need us.”

  Linn whirled on him, her breast heaving, eyes burning as tears streaked down her cheeks. Jenk look at her, steady.

  “They need us now.” He nodded to the south. “Kole is alive. He must be. You’re right.” He didn’t sound like he believed it himself. Not entirely. “We can set out and spend days searching these barren lands for him. Or,” he jutted a finger to the west, where the storm atop the broken waves and cracking shell on which they stood played itself out below the darkening skies, “we can make someone show us.”

  Linn spared one last glance at the ridge. She swallowed, and then her heart went cold as she switched her gaze to the west.

  “Grab Shifa,” Linn said without turning. Jenk leapt down into the bowl, leaving Linn alone with the wind and the echoes of the splitting lands. She could not see the Sages’ duel from here. The lands Jenk and Kole had chased the Shadow girl into sat lower than the plateau on which she had been fighting, and the lands between were beset with frozen waves and small mountain ranges made entirely of ice and salt. Still, she could see the lights playing out on the bottoms of the darkened skies. The sun was beginning to sink, darkening the east, and the only fire left was Misha’s … and whatever was left of T’Alon Rane’s.

  Jenk landed with a jolt next to her, Shifa letting out a bark as the impact jarred her in the Ember’s grip. It was easy to forget how strong the Embers could be, when they kept their fire from their blades and put it into their sinew instead.

  “Sorry, girl,” Jenk said as he moved to set her down.

  “No,” Linn said. “Keep hold of her.”

  She could feel Jenk’s eyes on her, questioning. But he did just that, rechecking his grip on the bloody hound with one hand as he checked his sword belt with the other.

  Linn did not look up. She wouldn’t call the lightning. Not again, and the wind was not up, it was all around them, beckoning her. Waiting to be called. Thirsting to obey.

  “You seem drained, Linn,” Jenk warned. “Don’t do anything f—”

  “Quiet.”

  Jenk fell silent and even Shifa ceased her complaints, though Linn knew the hound was in pain, and not just on account of her wounds. Shifa was a wall hound of Last Lake. She would be loyal to th
e rest of them. Loyal to the death.

  Linn turned to her as she felt the currents shift as if on a sudden whim, racing toward them from the east. She met those chestnut eyes and smiled. “We’ll find him, yet.” And to Jenk, “Hold tight.”

  Linn hooked her right arm around his left and bent her knees, and the Ember readied himself for the impact.

  The wind struck them harder than Linn had intended. It sent them stumbling, but they kept their grips upon one another, and she forced it down. The river of icy air swept beneath them, scooping them off their feet and bearing them up. Linn bid the air spin, and the roar turned to a howl as the twisting tail churned beneath them like a blast from a bursting mountaintop. She felt Jenk’s hand tighten around her own.

  “Easy …” Linn warned, wincing as Jenk’s skin began to burn her own.

  “Sorry,” he called over the wind, working to calm himself.

  The air grew denser the higher they climbed, the thin air of the northeast having grown misty and stale in the midst of Linn’s conjured storm and the fell magics the Sages had brought to bear. Ahead of them, the battle was on in full, and Jenk sucked in a breath as he witnessed it.

  The Sages had only moved from their respective places because the force of their power colliding had made it so. The gap that had separated the two shelves by an Ember’s leap had widened to a distance even an arrow would have trouble crossing. The Sages were beacons on opposite sides of the breach, one wreathed in black shadows and orange flames and the other in white light flecked with crackling blue streaks. The rivers of power that erupted from their palms formed a roiling, whipping, frenzied torrent above the sloshing, rising ocean depths in the trench.

  The collision of energy that had resembled a moon, or perhaps a smoldering black sun, now lost all pretense of form. It shifted chaotically, only maintaining its relative position due to the constant onslaught from the two who had birthed the abomination.