The Frostfire Sage

by Steven Kelliher

  “No,” T’Alon said. “I suppose I can’t. But together, you lot might have a chance.” He turned toward the Eastern Dark, who was caught between looking east and north, one horror and the next. “Isn’t that right, Valour?”

  All eyes turned toward the Sage, who was silent for a time.

  “Take them south,” T’Alon told him. “Take them to the place you would have made your stand against the legions of the World Apart, or your brother and sister Sages—whoever came for you first.”

  Kole tried to meet the Sage’s dark eyes, but he turned away.

  “Take them, Ray,” T’Alon said. “Your road has been a dark one, but you’ve seen what true darkness leads to, and you’ve turned away from it, in your own way. It could be that the others had it in them to change. It could be that some did, before their ends. I’m not better, in that regard.” T’Alon’s eyes switched to Kole and then back. “The sins of the past do not control the future. Take them south, Ray, and let them make an end of it.”

  “He isn’t fool enough to follow,” Valour said, weakly. Defeated.

  “I think he will, once he sees what I can do. Once he sees the threat.”

  “You’re going to set him on us,” Jenk said.

  “I am.” T’Alon managed to say it with a light smile. “I’d suggest you get moving. I’m not sure how much time I can buy you.” He took a step toward the edge of the tower and hesitated. “Do take care of that … scar, as you called it. You said you have enough for that, if nothing else.”

  “Nothing else,” the Sage confirmed in a quiet voice.

  “So be it,” he said. “If you fall, Shadow knows the way.”

  “It won’t work,” Valour said. A great tower of green flame broke the eastern sky, drenching them all in its macabre light. Kole could see the figure in the north coming closer, his armor a melted ruin of silver with black char. “It was meant for you, Rane. You alone. It won’t work with …” He swallowed as he saw Kole and the others staring at him hard.

  “You have three Embers here, and the legacy of Uhtren of the Valley,” T’Alon said. “Enough to make an end of a great many things, I’d imagine.”

  “Not this thing.”

  “Let them decide that,” T’Alon said. “Let them try.”

  “And what of the rest of the World?” Linn asked, and Kole knew she meant the Valley core. Knew she meant Iyana and the others. Kole thought of his father. He thought of all the people of Hearth, Last Lake and the Scattered Villages, even of Deephome, the Fork and the Eastern Woods. How would they stand against the coming tide?

  “Whatever they can do to delay their collective doom,” the Sage said, “they can do it just the same without you.”

  T’Alon smirked as he said it. The Sage was playing along, giving him what he wanted.

  The Sage sighed.

  “Kill him,” he pointed at the Last God, “and you end it.”

  The Last God was close enough now for Kole to see his face. His expression, near as Kole could tell, was a far cry from the pensive look he had worn before, and not quite the animalistic one he had when he had first let his power out. He was growing more comfortable. More confident and more sure.

  “Simple as that,” Misha said.

  “If he’s anything like me—”

  “He is,” Kole said. The Sage ignored him.

  “The energy needed to keep the rifts open is taxing him.” He seemed to consider it for a moment, one final key turning before he made his decision. “T’Alon is right. The only way this World survives is to keep him focused on something else. Something other than his conquest, or whatever it is he’s here to hunt. The rifts he’s opened might remain, but he won’t risk making more. Not if he has something to contend with directly. Not if he has something to fear.”

  “Then let’s face him now,” Kole said. “Now, when he’s weakest.”

  “That is a relative term,” the Sage admonished. “And right now, given the state you’re in, you’ll only get in T’Alon’s way.”

  Kole looked to the other Ember, who averted his eyes and watched the god approach. His eyes widened as he saw the Night Lord, close enough for an arrow to reach, break through another frozen wave and send a green river of flame directly at them.

  It was bright enough that Kole had to shield his eyes. Baas passed in front of them, his shield up, but Kole knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  Luckily, they were too far for the flames to reach, and when the glow faded, the field was burning with a thousand green patches and melting pools, and the beast lumbered onward.

  “I think I know my fight,” T’Alon said, switching his gaze from the Last God to the Night Lord. He hadn’t so much as flinched in the aura of the green fire. “The Blue Knights are all but spent. The people of the mountain will burn if that beast makes for them. I may not be able to stop him,” he pointed at the Last God, who had stopped a stone’s throw from the fallen tower and was watching the Night Lord’s bright rampage, enamored, “but I’ll slow him down and then spur him on. As for the beast, I’ll make an end of it.”

  “Fire won’t end a thing like that,” Valour said, derisive.

  “No,” T’Alon acknowledged, “but the sea might.”

  He turned one last look upon them.

  “You’ll be stronger where he takes you,” he said. “Stronger than me. Stronger than anything has been before. That’s the hope, at least. I am … sorry I could not be what the stories painted me as. The World is large, but men, it seems, are small. Small enough for a thing like vengeance to drive them, to blind them to all else. If the Sages were here—those who might have been brave and steadfast. Those who might have turned from the error of their ways—”

  “None of it was your doing,” Kole said. He felt tears welling in his eyes. His blood didn’t have the heat to dismiss them to the steam it usually would. “That road he put you on—”

  “Make haste,” he said, biting Kole’s words off. He winced and looked back down at the god he would attempt to kill. “Flee today so that you may fight tomorrow. Have faith in those you’ve left behind.”

  Kole opened his mouth to speak. The Night Lord roared, and Kole saw dark shapes falling from the same black scar it had come through.

  There was a bright flash and T’Alon’s palms glowed molten amber. He breathed in, flexed his core and two roiling balls of flame filled them. Kole could feel the heat. His blood wanted to drink it in, though he knew it would kill him in his current state.

  Down on the frozen sea, the Last God looked up at his challenger, his expression unreadable. He did not look afraid.

  “Close it,” T’Alon said. “Close the rift, Valour. Do what you must.”

  Kole, Linn, Baas, Misha, Jenk and even Shifa the hound looked at the Sage, expectant. He ignored them, walked to the very tip of the fallen tower and spread his arms out to his sides. The air began to warp around him, the colors of his robe bleeding in with the black, red and green canvas of the east.

  “Look out!” Linn yelled.

  Kole saw it too late. The Last God, it seemed, was not going to suffer the Sage to interfere. He raised a hand, almost lazily, and opened his palm. In the place of frostfire or a conjured blade, there was a beam of what could only be described as night. It shot forth with frightening speed, the sound seeming to absorb the roar of the Night Lord.

  T’Alon, however, was ready for it. He brought his palms together with a loud crack, and his own beam of fire—fire Kole had felt the kiss of in the White Crest’s citadel—hit the stream of black and caused a cloudburst of smoke with yellow streaks that knocked all but Baas from their feet.

  T’Alon leapt from the tower, landing before the Last God, and sent another bolt of fire at him. But the prince disappeared, stepping like the Shadow girl did and winking to a place farther east. He raised his palm up toward the Eastern Dark once more, and once more the E
mber king leapt and sent his own burst down, which he was forced to meet.

  Kole was so taken with the sight of the battle—the cloudbursts of black, yellow and amber fire and shadow—the leaping, twisting Ember and the streaking armored prince, that he had forgotten the scene to the east. Likewise, the Night Lord had quite forgotten the figures on the fallen tower. It watched the exchange between T’Alon and the Last God with mindless interest. And then its eyes flashed, and it hurtled toward them both.

  “Now!” Linn screamed. “Valour! Now!”

  The frozen lands to the east were speckled with black shapes—Dark Kind pouring in by the score. Soon, they would be a legion, pouring into every vent and chute in the mountainside, ripping children from their beds, reducing Fennick’s people to the meat that would sustain them until the next settlement. The next fallen kingdom.

  The Eastern Dark had said the scars had opened in places of power. Kole had to hope that it was enough to hold those other lands together, keep them from falling into shadow and blood. For the east, they were all that stood.

  The Eastern Dark screamed. It was anger, pain and all manner of things beside. It had a twinge of horror to it, as if he were seeing things he couldn’t escape.

  Kole felt waves in the air. Not wind, but something else streaking out of the east. It made it difficult to think, as if his mind were moving through a mire. He tested the heat in his veins and felt the Everwood across his back react weakly, as if it could barely sense the call.

  “It’s closing!” Linn shouted.

  Kole, Jenk, Misha and Baas watched the eastern sky, and even Shadow had been jarred out of her shocked state enough to react. Sure enough, the black gash above the horizon began to stitch itself back together. Threads of midnight blue passed over the gap, destroying any of the demons they came into contact with. It happened faster than Kole would have thought, and when the scar closed, the shadows that had been swirling at the edges faded, and the stars took back the sky.

  A blast of green and gold lit the sky as the Sage collapsed, and Kole saw T’Alon standing alone on the flats, surrounded by a hundred fires of yellow and emerald. The Night Lord had climbed atop the last of the frozen waves and eyed him like carrion. There was a scorched and melted trail in the blue-white between them.

  Kole cast about for the Last God, fearing he might appear among them, but Linn was intent on something to the north. He followed the direction of her gaze and saw the armored prince rising stiffly from a steaming crater in the frost, hands hanging slack at his sides. He spared a glance at the eastern sky, and Kole could see his anger in his bearing.

  Instead of making for T’Alon, the Night Lord caught sight of the blackened silver armor of the Last God. It leapt high into the air, coming down in the place he’d been with a blow from its horned crown that shattered the land in all directions.

  For a fleeting moment, Kole thought the beast might have killed him, ended all their troubles then and there. All their troubles but for the Night Lord, the other scars that had opened in the wider World … and the swarm of Dark Kind making for their fallen tower.

  The Night Lord flew backward. It was so large and so seemingly powerful that the movement had Kole blinking. Judging by the expressions on the faces around him, he wasn’t the only one.

  The prince stood amidst the shards of ice, his hair dancing on currents that had nothing to do with the wind. The Night Lord slammed into the wall of waves it had just come down from, breaking them with its mass. It lashed out and tore furrows in the ice, sending up a glittering curtain of ice and melt that came down like a sharp hail, with a few pieces even reaching the edge of the tower.

  The Dark Kind came down the white slopes like a black river, but T’Alon Rane was there to meet them. He leapt higher than any but Linn could and landed back up on the tower’s tip, his palms glowing so fiercely they stung to look upon. He looked down at Valour, his eyes glowing deep amber, so much so that their centers were lost to the flame.

  “Take him!” the Ember king said. “Take him and go!”

  He looked down and gave the Dark Kind his regard, pouring the longest and more torrid river of flame Kole had seen an Ember produce. It struck the turf and broke upon the front lines. Kole could see their lashing tails and raking claws writhing in the wall of flame he’d made. These were the Dark Kind he knew well. The Dark Kind he was fond of killing.

  “Kole.”

  Linn beckoned him from the southern edge. Kole looked and saw that Baas had already snatched up the Eastern Dark, flung him over one burly shoulder like a rag. He leapt down, joining Misha and Jenk at the bottom. Shifa stood between Kole and Linn, whining softly.

  “Go,” Kole said, and to her warning look, “I’ll be along.”

  She bent and lifted Shifa in her arms, the hound watching Kole expectantly.

  “It’s alright, girl,” he said, showing her a smile. The hound did not seem convinced.

  “She knows you better than that,” Linn said. Her hair began to dance in the wind she was once more able to call. She bent her knees slightly, and the two flew more than leapt from the tower’s edge, floating down foot by foot until they settled among the group, who began to move south with what speed they could manage.

  Another blast of heat blew Kole’s bangs away from his brow. He felt the sweat clinging to him, along with the melted spray the wind kicked up. He moved up behind T’Alon, who hurled comets of flame down to burst among the Dark Kind.

  There weren’t so many of them, now. Not nearly as many as there had been.

  “You will stay, Rane?”

  Kole hadn’t noticed her, but the Shadow girl was the only member of their company still with him and the Ember king atop the broken structure. She asked it with a quiver in her voice, such a far cry from the sadistic, playful thing he had first encountered on the Emerald Road.

  “Go, Shadow,” T’Alon said. “There is nothing but death for you here.”

  “Plenty of that all around, now,” she said.

  He turned, and though his eyes were still lit like burning stars or autumn lanterns, he smiled at her, soft and benevolent as the beasts below were cruel.

  “Have faith,” he said, and Kole saw by Shadow’s reaction that it was something of a private joke between them. “You are with the last Embers. And whether you like it or not, Shadow, there is plenty left for you to do, should you choose to. You’ll find that before the end.”

  Shadow glanced up at Kole. He felt as if he were intruding. It was strange, to witness such a conversation beneath the eastern stars and above a burning sea of green-and-yellow fire, where a half-burned army of Dark Kind screeched their dying songs and where a god from another world warred with one of the titans he had let in.

  “You’re sure?” Kole asked. “Sure you won’t come with us? Whatever it is the Sage has in the south, I’m sure it would go better with you than with me.” Kole raised his bandaged limb. He didn’t feel revulsion upon seeing it. Not like he might have expected. Only fear. The fear of being unable to save the ones he loved.

  T’Alon started to turn more fully toward him, but something from behind triggered his warrior’s instincts. He spun and managed to launch another burst from his palms just before the black beam struck them, and Kole and Shadow were thrown back by the force of the explosion.

  Kole scrambled back to his feet. He thought T’Alon might have been killed on the spot, but when the smoke and ash and sparks cleared, he stood there like a burning sigil against the blue night.

  “I’ll try to make sure he takes his time,” T’Alon said, answering without answering. “He’s new to this realm. He’ll need to recover his strength. Who knows? Maybe I will manage it.” He didn’t turn back to Kole. It hurt him, for some reason. But he thought he understood why he did it.

  “Good luck, my king.”

  Kole thought he might dismiss the title, or cast it off. Instead, h
e seemed to stand a little taller, and though his armor was burned, torn and gashed, the red sash at his waist torn—a part of it now adorning Kole’s arm—he cut a figure. Kole would remember it. He only hoped it mattered in the end.

  Kole moved to the edge of the tower. He paused, extending a hand toward the Shadow girl. She looked down at the frosted Nevermelt instead, tracing lines in the salt. He turned and leapt from the tower, landing on the southern flats with a jolting force. He saw tracks in the frost. They were smeared, unsteady, and he could see blood in the prints and shallow depressions.

  He heard the Dark Kind coming for him. They had curled around the base of the ruins and he didn’t have the energy or the mind to outrun them. As he squared to meet the misshapen, violent beasts, a globe of fire broke the frost in front of him, and he used the chance to do what no Ember enjoyed.

  He ran. He fled. He retreated, and left the east to burn and break under the onslaught of an angry god.

  Rane let the fire drop for a moment. He was burning himself out quickly. Far too quickly to give Kole and the others a meaningful start.

  The irony that he was putting his faith into a paranoid scheme hatched by the Eastern Dark at the height or depths of his depravity was not lost on him. It had to work. No doubt Kole was weakened from the fight, but his fire would return, and there were two other Embers with him. Together, they might stand a chance. The Sage girl, Linn, was powerful. Perhaps more powerful than any of them. Still, he did not know if there was a storm violent enough to slay the Last God.

  T’Alon almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  He watched Kole grow smaller as he fled to the south, leaving behind the charged husks of the Dark Kind T’Alon had made with his latest bolt. Kole’s fellows waited for him on a small rise. They could not linger.

  T’Alon turned back to the north. The Last God had given him ample time, and now he saw why.