The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  Linn thought she was imagining it, until the queen spoke once more.

  “Go.”

  She choked the word out, and Linn released the wind, backing up as Baas shouted for Jenk to follow. Shifa was low to the palace floor, approaching Tundra from behind. She let out a series of barks that had the Landkist turning toward her, and then she and Jenk sprinted in opposite directions as they rounded the chasm and made for Linn, Baas and the unconscious Misha.

  As Jenk passed no more than two strides from where the dead prince strode confidently across the dais, Linn shouted a warning as she saw those blue eyes twitch toward the fleeing Ember’s back. A bright beam of frostfire hit the prince, and this one sent him back with more force than Linn’s blast and Baas’s shield combined. He hit the back wall beside the throne hard enough to send a crack up to the tallest spire, and the queen, bloody mouth hard set, one hand clutched over her red stomach, limped forward under the steady power of the beam she sent with the other hand.

  The dead prince raged as his black blade fell to the ground and disappeared in a wisp of smoke. He brought his palms together and began to drink the frostfire in, or to redirect it to some other place as he had with Misha’s fire.

  “Did you think it was him, truly?” he sneered, his face tight with effort he pretended not to need. “Did you think it was long-lost Prince Galeveth, calling from the great beyond?”

  Elanil screamed and put more energy into the beam. Too much, Linn knew as Jenk caught her by the shoulder as he sheathed his doused Everwood sword. He turned her roughly around, but she spun on her heel near the front arch and watched the Frostfire Sage, frozen tears streaming down her cheeks, fall to her knees, her power all spent.

  When the beam stopped, the stranger wiped spittle from his chin and dislodged himself from the imprint he had left in the wall. He stepped up onto the dais and approached the queen.

  He stood over her with a pose like victory, but as he raised his hand and called forth another burning black blade, the queen raised her head to look at him, and to look beyond him.

  Linn saw a twitch of fear pass across his face as the queen’s white eyes held him. And then she screamed. Louder and longer than anything Linn had heard in her life. It was enough to bring her to her knees, and even Baas moved unsteadily as he snatched her by the back of the shirt and dragged her through the arch toward the courtyard beyond.

  The pillars split, the walls caved, and Queen Elanil brought her throne room down atop the two of them.

  Baas flung Linn out into the yard. She hit hard and rolled, coming up on her knees and elbows next to Misha, whom Jenk was trying to rouse. She cast a bewildered look back at Baas, wondering why he had been so rough, and saw Shifa standing behind the Rockbled, barking at the crumbling tower.

  Linn gasped and drew Jenk’s attention.

  “Oh,” Jenk said.

  The palace and its many spires began to crack and fall, each balustrade sending out shockwaves that shook them and rattled their teeth in their skulls. But while most of it fell inward, the tallest, thickest spire began to sway, and in their direction. It would crush those in the courtyard, Fennick’s soldiers who had not yet cleared the place, and it might bring a good part of the mountain stronghold down atop those who were within.

  Baas Taldis stood before it. He cast his shield aside and stretched his hands out to either side.

  It was difficult to tell in the chaos, when all the World seemed to shiver and shake, but Linn knew to listen for another sort of rumbling sound when Baas went to work. It was the sound of the earth moving underfoot. It was the sound of great boulders grinding, of bones being crushed into dust. It was like a song, and Linn believed that Baas was the greatest singer there was among the Rockbled.

  He let his hands fall to his sides as the tower started its slow, deadly fall. It was a pose that could have been mistaken for defeat, but Linn had faith.

  Baas raised one booted foot, held it still in the air for a brief pause, then brought it down.

  Nothing happened. At least, not at first. But as the rumbling grew into a drone that morphed into a roar, Linn braced herself. A great shelf of black-and-brown rock the size of a mountain spur broke the ground in front of Baas, the miniature mountain rising like one of the frozen waves beyond. It struck the tower partway up and pushed, the sudden shift in momentum causing a great white split to climb from base to spire.

  All in the courtyard—and likely all who could see in the cave mouth beyond—watched with bated breath as the tower paused for an agonizing moment that stretched for an eternity.

  Then it fell, and it made the site of its landing east, breaking the walls that still stood and shattering the frozen plains beyond. The palace’s fall sent up a thick cloud of salt, dust and snowy mist that stole the light of the moon and stars from the sky, plunging them into a cold, wet, choking darkness.

  When the dust cleared, only a few leaning torches still burned on the cracked Nevermelt walls that bordered the courtyard. Linn cast about, searching frantically for Jenk and Misha. She saw the former covering the latter with his body. Misha woke with a coughing, hacking jolt and threw Jenk off her, reaching for her discarded spear.

  “Misha,” Linn said, reaching for her arm. The Ember slapped her hand away. “Misha.” She met Linn’s eyes. A trickle of blood stained her chin, standing out starkly in the white powder.

  Jenk struggled to his feet and brushed the debris from his breeches. “So much for thanks.”

  “Thanks,” Misha said. She squinted through the fog, and Linn followed her. Captain Fennick and his soldiers stepped in front of them, moving to the place where Baas had been. Linn stood and the Embers shadowed her as she followed them.

  They found the Riverman on one knee, chest heaving with effort. Shifa was sitting beside him, not a hair left black on her. She looked like a winter wolf, and Linn knelt beside her, running her fingers through her fur.

  The spur Baas had birthed from the ground obscured their view to the east, where the palace’s greatest towers had fallen, but already Fennick dispatched his men and women to climb the rubble, to search for survivors. Linn felt a pang as she saw Gwenithil, bandaged nearly from head to toe, being helped past them. She knelt in front of the broken archway that had been the entrance to the palace and wept, the last of the Azuran Guard spending her salt on the dead, no matter how deserving.

  Linn felt it like a hawk passing beneath the light of the moon. She felt it like a shadow.

  “What have you done?”

  She looked up as Misha and Jenk flared their blades to life. Their weapons lit the courtyard, and the wall to the south. A figure stood atop it. It was the Eastern Dark, wearing his Ember’s shell, his black-and-red armor looking dented, scored and worn. His lavender eyes were looking to the east, where the sky had darkened beyond the veil of night.

  Behind him, a small group stood staring down at them. There was the blue-skinned, bone-armored warrior Linn had fought. The Shadow girl crouched like a cat in front of her, and another man—or beast—with ashen gray skin and bone spikes adorning every limb held himself up on the edge of a crumbling parapet. His throat had been wickedly burned, and his eyes were dull and vapid.

  Last in line, standing on the bottom of the stair, was a young man clad in black armor with silver streaks gashed into it. He looked at once relieved and grave, as if he had seen the World’s ending. Linn smiled at him, her joy overtaking her, until she took in the red-dyed wrapping adorning the place where his right hand had been.

  A single black hilt jutted out behind his shoulder. He looked tired and weak. More so, he looked alive.

  “Kole?” Jenk asked.

  For once, Linn beat Shifa to him, crushing him in her embrace, heedless of the others who stood on either side, below and atop the southern wall. Sages and demons and shadow girls. For now, she allowed herself a moment’s unbridled joy in the midst of chaos.r />
  “Looks like we weren’t needed after all,” Kole said, pushing Linn to arm’s length. Shifa hit him next, and Kole allowed her to bowl him over. He wrapped her in a hug as she licked the salt from his face. Feeling the bandages that bound her chest and ribs, he released his hold.

  “Glad to see you,” he said into those brown eyes. Shifa finally relented enough to let him stand.

  His own companions regarded him with a strange mix of expressions, with disbelief coloring each. He couldn’t say he blamed them, seeing the manner of his arrival.

  Captain Fennick approached and extended a hand, which Kole took. “Welcome back,” he said gruffly. He glanced nervously up at the figures atop the wall and then indicated the cave mouth. Kole could see dirt- and salt-streaked faces peering out from beneath fur-lined cloaks. There were two score soldiers, craftsmen, builders—whoever this sorry, sparse land could muster—each gripping tools or weapons made of iron. They did not look at Kole as if he were a friend, nor the newcomers as if they were saviors.

  Kole nodded at them, grave, and looked to the east, where the fallen towers of the palace had broken the Nevermelt wall and formed a bridge to nothing but the darkened horizon. Though the sun had fled, dipping below the western sky, the east had a bloody hue to it.

  “Save your congratulations, Ember,” the Eastern Dark said, not taking his eyes from the bridge. “He is far from finished.” He looked at the closer ruins behind the broken arch that led into the throne room. “A gaudy thing,” he said. “Built to remind Princess Elanil of everything she had lost. Pain can be a powerful lesson. She lingered in it too long. It was her doom.”

  His dark eyes found Baas. “Once again, I have underestimated one of your kind.” Baas had fallen to one knee. His chest heaved and pulled, and he braced himself with one hand on the hill of stone he had raised from the earth like the fang of some primordial beast.

  Kole saw Linn take a step toward the wall and gripped her shoulder to stop her going farther. Her eyes were haggard as the rest of them, but intense. She was focused on the Eastern Dark, and Kole nodded to Jenk and Misha, who held their Everwood in loose grips they tried to tighten, staring up at the strange company Kole had come with.

  “We are here in common cause,” Kole said, holding up his left hand to them. “For now.” Jenk only watched him, while Misha pointed the end of her spear at the limb he didn’t raise.

  “Did ‘common cause’ do that to you?”

  Linn looked down at his hand—rather, the place where his hand had been before—as if seeing it for the first time.

  “What happened, Kole?”

  “I—” Kole started and then stopped.

  “Alistair cut off his hand,” Myriel said from above. She stated it matter-of-factly, without boast. She even jabbed a burned thumb back toward her companion, who did his best to straighten under Linn, Misha, Jenk and Baas’s combined scrutiny. Kole did not think he would survive the night, given the wounds he had given him. He had tried to warn the Sage and his Shadow about their new allies. He didn’t trust Ray Valour, but T’Alon Rane was working with him now, and the Shadow girl would do as she was told. But these two—Myriel and Alistair—they were beings from the very realm they sought to stop.

  Linn seemed to think about blasting them away on the spot. Instead, she met his eyes and gave him a stern look.

  “Kole …” she said, speaking in a low voice, though all in the vicinity could hear it.

  “We should prepare,” Valour called over her. He looked down into the courtyard, meeting only the gazes of the Landkist, and of Linn. “He is coming.”

  “The princess you seem to hate so much just buried him under a mountain of palace, in case you didn’t see,” Misha said. “Besides,” she jutted the point of her spear toward the Sage, and Kole sighed as he felt the air begin to shift with her heat, “I don’t recall joining you. Kole speaks for himself, not the rest of us. You are my enemy—”

  “He is coming,” Valour said, his voice icy. Direct. He focused on the brazen Ember before scanning those gathered about her. “And if this World is to survive, its powers must come together to stop him from plunging us into a darkness these folk here could only dream of, and you folk of the Valley only think you know.”

  Despite what she had said, Misha looked to Kole for his response, lowering her spear by half.

  “Is he still talking about Galeveth?” Jenk asked.

  “Fine, then,” Linn said, speaking up. The Sage looked at her, as did the Shadow girl. Myriel and Alistair only watched the eastern sky, which began to shift strangely. “You’ve obviously said something—done something—to get Kole not to kill you.” Valour let out a mirthless bark of laughter, which Linn ignored. “You’ve given us nothing of the sort. Who is this being Queen Elanil called in from the World Apart, and what does he want?”

  “He is the beginning of one World and the end of the next,” Myriel cut in. She spoke with that same rapt, zealous attention—eyes wide—as she had in the blue cave to the south. “He is the Last God. And he has come to claim this place as his own.”

  Linn frowned at her, and looked to Valour for confirmation. The Sage shrugged. “For now, it doesn’t really matter what he is, fair child. What matters is that we must stop him—”

  “And what then?” Linn asked. She balled her hands into fists, and Kole heard the wind whistling atop the western ridge that formed the cap to the subterranean complex Fennick and his people called home. “What of our disagreement?”

  “My disagreement was never with you,” the Sage said, seeming bored with the exchange.

  “And what of ours with you?”

  “Then we will have words,” he said, raising his voice. “And whatever else we must have to sate your appetite and settle your vengeance.”

  “East!”

  It was Gwenithil, and all eyes turned to look. She was standing atop the broken arch, clutching a blue hand to her side. Her midsection was wrapped in red bandages. She looked as if she had intended to start digging, either for her fallen queen or her buried companions. Now, she stood and watched the horizon.

  Kole and Linn exchanged glances and leapt up onto the wall in front of Myriel and Alistair. Shadow smiled at Linn from her perch atop a glittering white parapet, but she was ignored.

  At first, Kole saw nothing to cause alarm. The eastern sky was dark, as was the fallen tower that stretched all the way to the first of the frozen waves they had fought amongst before. But the longer he looked, the more he saw. The sky’s red glow had obscured it before. There were shadows dancing in the night. Not atop the land, but rather beyond it. It was as if the night sky was a thin veil, and a great swarm buzzed behind it. Shadows and wraiths, some smaller than mites, others greater than mountains, clawing at a canvas that had never been thinner.

  “There.”

  Linn spoke the word breathlessly. She pointed down, beneath the warring sky, and Kole had to squint to see. He focused on the rubble, and just before he blinked, he saw the pile begin to shift. Misha, Jenk, Baas, Fennick and Shifa climbed around the spur of rock Baas had raised and joined Gwenithil on the opposite side of the yard. As they watched, a figure clad in broken bits of silver armor pulled himself free from the wreckage.

  Kole saw the looks that passed over his friends’ faces. They were afraid. The bravest, strongest warriors he knew were afraid of this beast wearing the body of a fallen prince. Kole watched him stagger atop the slide of rubble. He had a mane of long hair that was tangled and torn, and his eyes glowed red, not unlike the Sentinels.

  There was something else about him, or rather, around him. The atmosphere seemed to bend in, the space around him warping, as if he drew it all in. The shadows in the red-black sky seemed to stretch out toward him. Kole blinked, trying to orient himself in the dizzying display, but the image remained the same.

  He reached up toward his shoulder on instinct, trying to gr
ip the hilt that wasn’t there with the hand that had been taken. He heard what sounded like a wheeze of laughter from behind and turned to see Alistair regarding him. His eyes were vacant. He leaned against the wall as if he might topple over and fall down the stone steps to the frozen waste below. He seemed to be the only one in the company who was not frightened of the figure on the horizon.

  Shadow watched him like a cat.

  “Ah,” the Eastern Dark said, “but look at noble Galeveth now.”

  “That’s him, then?” Linn asked. She had to shout to be heard over a sound Kole hadn’t noticed before. It was like the groaning of a giant, or like a chorus of a thousand angry voices from far away.

  “What say you, Myriel?” the Sage said without turning.

  “Yes,” Myriel said, the mighty warrior reduced to a child in the grip of fear. “That is him. He could wear any face, take on any form. Still, I would know his song.”

  If the figure noticed them, he made no move toward them, nor did he retreat. Instead, he leaned back at the waist, throwing his chin up toward the sky and spreading his arms wide, curling his fingers into claws. He went rigid, as if he were held on strings, and opened his maw in a silent scream. The colors of the eastern sky spun and twirled like smoke, and the droning sound grew until it resembled tearing.

  “So be it.”

  Kole reached out for Linn just as he felt the air rush in from behind them. The wake of the blast knocked him into the wall and nearly sent Alistair and Myriel over, and Linn rode it up high as the tower had stood. She arced down to the east and landed on the fallen spire, just a stone’s throw from the lone figure.

  “She won’t be able to call a storm in this mess,” the Sage said. He began to move in her direction, walking steadily over the ruins of the palace, as if he had all the time in the world.

  Kole put what meager heat he held into his legs and cleared Baas’s spur and the arch beyond it in a leap, taking off toward Linn. Misha and Jenk had already started in the same direction, and Baas and Shifa followed, the hound panting, drool falling to the white-dusted shards and slabs beneath her. Gwenithil and Fennick stayed behind, and Kole turned and held up a hand to them.