The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “And what of you, Valour?” Kole asked, leaving Myriel aside for the moment. “What happens to you, at the end of it?”

  The Sage’s eyes dropped to the floor for a long moment that Kole took in, relished.

  “The Witch has been misled,” Myriel said again.

  “How?” Kole asked without taking his eyes from Valour. “And by whom? The World Apart? The Dark Kind? The mindless Sentinels? Or was it the Night Lords whispering in her ear?”

  “The Last God,” she said. “The Titan. He is wrath incarnate. He is death, and He is coming.”

  Kole frowned. He had heard every legend of the World Apart. They felt like storybook tales, myths and legends, and he could scarcely bring himself to believe them when he spared them half a thought in any direction. He had fought against the Dark Kind for most of his life. He had tangled with Sentinels only this year, and he knew that Creyath Mit’Ahn had fought with one of the Night Lords, or the remnants of their power, in the Deep Lands. And still, he found it difficult to grasp that that dark, tortured realm had anything else to offer.

  “He is real,” Valour said, his voice low, almost shaking. “I have—”

  “Why would she call to Him?” Kole asked, his mind already turning toward the answer Myriel gave.

  “Her consort,” she said. “The Last God has the power to bring him back. Only—”

  “Not in the way she thinks,” Kole finished. He pictured Prince Galeveth on his stone slab. Pictured his eyelids opening to reveal black pits.

  “What happens if He comes in?” Kole asked.

  “We have to stop—”

  “What if we don’t? What happens if this … monster comes in?”

  Myriel sat back. She shook her head slowly.

  “She will open a scar that cannot be closed, for He will not allow it to be,” she said, her voice sounding like a premonition. “The Night Lords—those that remain—will come through. They will make your world suffer, as they will be unhindered by poor passageways and Sages’ tricks.” She looked to the Eastern Dark as she spoke. The Shadow girl had drifted toward the mouth of the cave, but now she inched back, taking in the haunting address.

  “Birds and beasts will pour in, corrupted and changed by the Night Lord Kalem’Tu, who was once a proud and ancient king.” Her eyes glazed over. “And that is just the beginning.”

  “In a way,” Valour said, “you have met that one before.”

  Kole waited for him to continue. He hesitated. “It was his sister-wives and his brother I lured into the deserts of the west in my attempt to defeat Pevah and Uhtren. They were weakened in the passage through. Pevah trapped one beneath the Midnight Dunes. Uhtren killed the others in the battle that shattered the tallest peaks of your Valley home, and it was the Dark Months to come and the horrors that came out of them which bound the folk within that fertile land together.”

  Kole shot him a deadly look.

  “Uhtren was corrupted by the Dark Hearts—the hearts of Kalem’Tu’s wives. You know the rest.” He cleared his throat. “Myriel tells me that the half-dead forces you faced were nothing compared to what he can do.”

  “He can turn friend against friend, foe against foe,” Myriel said as if she were in a dream. “Perhaps, without him, we would have been able to overthrow the ancients. But Kalem’Tu always wins.”

  “And there are others?” Kole was beginning to feel sick.

  “Three others,” Myriel said. “And an endless flood of Dark Kind and Sentinels, twisted forms from my world, which you call Other, or Apart. The dark will come, and this time, it will not pass by in a matter of months. This is the Forever Night.” She met Kole’s eyes and held them steady. “I know this because I have seen it before. It is what happened to us.” She bowed her head, looking shamed. Kole turned to look at Alistair. The other Shadow King had turned his head to the side, his eyes shining. It was difficult to read his expression.

  “We are not called the Shadow Kings because of any force of rule,” Myriel said. “We were named such by Kalem’Tu and his brothers, sons and wives. We were so named because we have only survived the nightmare our lands have become by hiding, and by fighting only at great need, and at greater cost.” She suppressed a shiver, and Kole thought he saw motes of blue light dancing along her lashes and climbing the strands of her hair. “We hide from the Last God’s Sentinels. But they always find us. He always sees us. We have endured. But no longer.”

  Kole was reminded of his own exchange with a Sentinel. He remembered the red eyes boring into him. He remembered thinking it was the Eastern Dark he had glimpsed in those bloody wells. Maybe he had known this so-called god after all, albeit a piece of him, and from afar.

  “There are older things than me, Reyna,” Valour said, almost in jest. “And more worthy of fear, and the hate that comes with it.”

  Kole looked from one to the other. “We cannot defeat him?”

  “It isn’t just him,” the Shadow girl surprised him by saying. She was looking out at the stars. “It’s all he is. All he brings with him.”

  Kole looked to Myriel one last time. “What do you get out of helping us? You and yours, who so recently tried to kill us?”

  “You are on—”

  “The wrong side,” Kole finished for her. “The question stands.”

  Myriel looked at her hands and then hugged them to the ridged plates that covered her chest. She looked human and utterly strange all at once. “Ours was a beautiful world, once. With life and death all wrapped up. The ancients slept in the buried tombs we made for them. The gods in their forgotten temples.”

  She opened her eyes and met Kole’s, and he felt he was seeing the collected pain of a people, or an entire kind. “It must have been the war that stirred Him,” she said. “And he roused those forgotten kings, those Titans from another age. He turned them to His purposes, stocked them with rage and hatred and a thirst for death. So much so that they turned on Him, in the end.”

  “Where did He come from?” Kole asked.

  Myriel’s eyes widened to show white at the edges. “Do you not see?” she asked. “Where does your power come from, Son of Fire? Who blessed you so?”

  The implications washed over Kole. He had never been one for deities, for gods or the like. And yet, he believed in the Mother. He believed in her because he had felt her, that day on the salted, rocky shores of Last Lake. The day she had kissed his palms with her fiery touch, had infused his breast with her warmth and protection.

  Mother Sand, to the Emberfolk. Mother Earth, to the Rivermen. Mother Sky, to those who were said to fly among the red cliffs far to the north.

  Kole shook his head. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered, but to stop it.

  “You die at the end,” Kole said. He looked up from the back of his hand and the red and ragged bandage that covered the other limb. “One way or another, you die.”

  Ray Valour met his stare. After a time, he turned himself around and sat beside Shadow, watching the dark. “I expect you’re right.”

  “We should strike out for him,” Linn said. “Find him. He’s hurt. He’s suffering.”

  There was no answer.

  “They wouldn’t have killed him,” Linn said. “They could use him.”

  “Quite right. It is a trap. A trick, child. It will only get you killed, and perhaps many more beside you.”

  Queen Elanil sat on the dais before her empty throne and Linn watched her while the surviving Blue Knights observed from their silent corners and the soldiers of the mountain rushed back and forth, shouting orders and seeing to defenses that had already been seen to.

  The chamber was brightly lit. There were torches set into iron sconces along the walls and on the blue-white pillars, but the place seemed to give off a different sort of light as well. It had a faint blue glow, like a nighttime flower, or like the frostfire the Sage who’d made it wielded
.

  Tundra stood before his liege. The Blue Knight’s armor was still coated in blood. Some of it was his, some belonged to the beast he had killed, the ally to the Eastern Dark, but Linn knew that a great part of it belonged to Gwenithil, whom she did not see. The Landkist looked different. His gold-speckled eyes seemed darker, and his skin had an unhealthy look to it, as if his veins were swollen. The hollows beneath his eyes had sunk, and his hands were raw, cut in a dozen places.

  He watched Linn as if she were his enemy. She felt better having Baas Taldis close by. The Riverman leaned against the wall near the thin hall that ran out to the courtyard before the mountain’s mouth, his great shield by his side. Linn turned toward him. He watched her, but offered nothing. Shifa rested at his feet. She had been bandaged by a young girl Captain Fennick had brought from the mountain. The move had earned him looks, the most pointed ones coming from the last Blue Knights, who had lost two more of their kind today.

  “We’ll need him,” Linn said, hating the pleading tone her voice took on. The queen ignored her.

  In truth, Linn didn’t need her permission to strike out for Kole on the frozen wastes. She didn’t even need her help. Surely she could gather her own—Baas, Jenk and Misha. Shifa might not be able to run in her state, but they could carry her and rely on her nose. Surely she could find Kole, no matter the land. No matter the circumstance.

  Linn wanted the Sage to tell her to go, if only because she wanted it to be the right thing to do. Deep down, she knew it wasn’t. Deep down, she knew that whatever happened in this palace of Nevermelt at the world’s end mattered more. Linn was a being of power now. Her friends and allies were beings of power. Their place was at the center of things. At the turning of great events.

  Or maybe that was just vanity.

  She heard a familiar voice trailing in, riding the sharp contours of the hall behind her and growing on the backs of its echoes as it entered the wider chamber beyond.

  She turned and saw the captain approaching from the courtyard. It was dark, with nothing but the guttering light of candles set in sconces to mark him, but Linn already knew him from his gait. Several figures took up his wake, but Linn couldn’t see them clearly. When they entered the brightly lit chamber, Linn nodded a greeting, feeling relieved as Misha and Jenk took the room. Both looked tired, but Jenk had taken the worst of it. His clothes—unchanged—were ripped, and though he had washed his face and hands and had his gashes stitched haphazardly, there was a bronze tint to his skin that was the result of the blood he’d lost.

  Misha held her spear, much to the chagrin of the Blue Knights, who eyed each other warily. The Ember looked at them dead on, as if daring one to challenge her, but Linn could see the way she leaned. She wasn’t brandishing the Everwood for the show of it. She was using it to support herself—one of the most brilliant weapons in the Valley, perhaps in the world, reduced to a glorified cane.

  Linn turned back and took a step toward the silent Sage, who had not looked at her since she had come to the palace. Since Baas had handed her—had her ripped from his grasp, in truth—to Tundra. The Blue Night shifted his foot and Linn paused.

  The Sage looked as haggard as the rest of them. Those who had made it back from the frozen waves. She leaned on one hand, rested her other hand over her breast where her silver armor—scratched and scoured, no longer brilliant—rested above wounds Linn could only guess at. Her hair hung in tangles, and her supporting arm began to shake and quiver. Linn saw a trickle of bright red leaking from the shoulder plate.

  The queen closed her eyes, her opposite palm glowing blue. She was weak, and Linn could see the strain on her face.

  Her hand began to glow. One might have mistaken her for an Ember, with fire that ran blue. She pressed the glowing hand to her breast, and Linn watched a coating of frost spread over the silver metal. The queen closed her eyes and breathed in, her lungs filling more than they had before. She released her armor and let her hand drop to her lap. Her breath fogged as she recovered from the cold. Linn doubted if she could heal like Iyana and the Faeykin. Perhaps she had simply stopped the bleeding they could not see.

  Linn opened her mouth to speak, but the words caught in her throat as the Sage’s eyes shot up to meet hers.

  “Bring it,” the queen said, her voice stronger than it had been before. It was a commanding voice, and it echoed throughout the chamber. Tundra’s eyes shifted, and Linn followed them to Captain Fennick, who frowned.

  “Tundra,” Elanil said, and the Blue Knight gave a start. “Bring it.”

  The Blue Knight turned toward her. He did not seem agitated so much as concerned.

  “Do you truly trust us so little?” Linn said, unable to stand it any longer. “After all we’ve done? After all we’ve been through, albeit in so short a time?” Both knight and queen watched her. Linn pointed at the throne, and beyond it. “We nearly died out there. Your knights did die out there, fighting the Eastern Dark and his servants.”

  “What is it you wish me to say?” Queen Elanil asked. She seemed, if anything, bored with Linn’s outburst. “We thank you for your help,” she said. “I thank you. But the danger has not close to passed. Ray Valour is a persistent fellow, and a desperate one. He’ll come for us, and soon. We’d best be ready when he does.”

  “Come for you.”

  All eyes turned toward the back of the hall, where Misha leaned on her spear, her expression hard. She hadn’t even gone as far as Jenk had when it came to washing her face. Soot that had collected on her black armor had smeared the tip of her chin, and her hair hung in stiff tangles and matted curls. “When he comes for you, you mean.”

  Linn watched the queen’s expression. Her eyes widened slightly, but she kept her eerie, wolfish calm.

  “Tell me, Ember pup,” she said, her teeth showing in a smile that didn’t spread beyond her mouth, “what do you think happens if he kills me? Do you truly think he’s going to stop the World Apart? Do you think he’ll turn his back on the very place he took his power from in the first place?”

  “Seems to me he wasn’t the only one messing about,” Misha said.

  “Valour put us in quite the predicament.” Elanil nodded. “I won’t argue with that. But there is a difference between he and I.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I am not lost,” she said. Linn didn’t like the way it sounded. She didn’t like a lot of things about the Frostfire Sage. Even still, she couldn’t say she disagreed.

  “Captain Fennick.” The queen turned her eyes on him. Linn could see he was uncomfortable. Though he hadn’t been out on the ice, he was exhausted. He had seen to the defenses, both on the Nevermelt walls of the palace and in every nook and cavern in the mountain’s heart.

  His people were few, and judging by whatever he had seen from those walls in the hours before now, he knew they were woefully outmatched. Linn could sympathize with him. She remembered what it was like to be surrounded by beings of power and to have little of her own. She swallowed, feeling strange that she was now on the other side.

  “Captain …?”

  “Yes, Queen Elanil,” he said gruffly. It was a direct tone, and though Linn hadn’t been here long, she did not think it was one he would normally take with the Sage who had ostensibly protected his people, whom his people had fought for, died for against the Sage of Balon Rael and his black-armored brutes.

  “Do I have your trust?”

  “You have my loyalty, my queen,” he said. “You have fought for us. Just as we have fought for you.”

  Linn wasn’t sure how to take that. It seemed the queen wasn’t either. She pursed her lips and looked up at Tundra once more, whose dark look had shifted from Linn to the fur- and iron-clad captain of the mountain. If it had not been clear before, it was doubly so now: the queen and her Blue Knights were not the same as the folk of the high passes. They belonged to an older tribe, and one running on it
s last wick.

  “Bring it, Tundra.”

  The Blue Knight offered no argument this time. He left the chamber, signaling for one of his four remaining knights to follow. They disappeared through the arch to the northeast, and Linn could well imagine where they were going.

  Shouts drifted in from the courtyard, echoing in the great vertical chasm they found themselves in. Linn’s heart quickened, but there were no screams and no clashing of arms. She doubted she would hear the latter this night. The time for armies was gone. There were no forces massing outside the city walls; only another Sage and his followers.

  Linn supposed they should have counted today a victory, but Kole’s face flashed in her mind’s eye. His face, and the piece of him Shifa had found. It didn’t feel like victory.

  “What are we waiting for?” Linn asked.

  The queen pushed herself up to a standing position with some effort. She took a step forward, lurched a bit and then stood a little taller.

  “You already know, Linn Ve’Ran,” she said. “I am waiting for my prince.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Misha asked. Her tone wasn’t quite accusing, but it wasn’t so far off. “What prince? Linn? What is she playing at?”

  Linn held up a hand to Misha. She could almost hear the Ember beginning to boil. More presently, she could see the Sage’s face change at Misha’s words.

  “And when he’s here,” Linn said, moving past Misha’s outburst, swallowing as she felt the attention of her fellows at the back of the room. “What then? What do we do about the World Apart? How do we stop the Convergence?”

  “We don’t stop anything,” she said, giving Linn a shock. “I do, with Galeveth’s help. He is more versed in the ways of magic than I.” She held up the same hand she had stung herself with just moments earlier. It began to emit a soft blue glow once more. She smiled. “He was a worker of wonders.” She raised both of her hands above her head, wincing with the effort. Her face took on a rapturous quality as she smiled. “We stand in the midst of his creation. This palace. The towers along the edge of the sea. All of it. He was Valour’s first enemy among the Order.” She frowned, a shadow passing over her face. “He will leap at the chance to stop him. To plunge his white blade through that black heart, once and for all. Especially with the form he’s wearing. A pretty bit of poetry, that.”