Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (10 page)

As she touched her bare hands to Kole’s brow—sticky and cold—Iyana pictured him as she had first known him, when the Ember had been an older brother to her. Though he and Linn had been hardened like all in the Valley, they had experienced some semblance of a childhood before the Dark Kind came. Iyana could not say the same. Though her people counted her gifts a blessing in such times, she often wondered if they were not more curse.

It had taken time before the Embers had managed to shield them from the worst of the night. Iyana’s parents had not made it, and she often wondered if she could have made a difference had she discovered her abilities at an earlier age. But then, Ninyeva could not save them, and she had been trained by the Faey themselves. What could Iyana have done?

She felt the pain leaking into her own veins as Kole fought through whatever nightmares assailed him. She gritted her teeth, willing the pain to dissolve and trying to find him in that bitter darkness. Thus far, she had not come close.

There was something else going on, here. Iyana knew it both because of what she felt when she touched him, and by the fact that Ninyeva had been scarce since examining the Ember when he was first found collapsed in the rain beyond the ruined gate. Something about Kole’s state had disturbed her enough to retreat to her own leaning tower. In the days since, she had only left her chambers to walk in the fresh air. According to those that saw her, her pace was furious, her demeanor increasingly erratic.

Kole had encountered something out in the woods, something more sinister than the usual Dark Kind. Whatever war he waged now, Iyana feared he would have to see it through himself.

Karin was dozing off in his seat in the corner. That was good.

When the other healers had told Iyana to rest, she had told them to leave. When Karin told her later, she had listened, taking what rest she could as father watched over son. The screams had stopped shortly after. Perhaps Karin had managed to reach him somehow. Perhaps Kole had given up. It was impossible to know, the relative silence that had at first been welcome was now disturbing in its own way.

And then there was the matter of Linn. Her sister had come every night for the first three, and then nothing. There had been another attack, and Linn had helped to throw the Dark Kind back. The next day, she was gone, along with Larren Holspahr, Jenk Ganmeer and a handful of others. Tu’Ren had visited Iyana before Linn’s flight, but she had not seen him since.

Iyana tried to concentrate on Kole. Whatever troubles her hero sister would find in the northern forests, it was nothing compared to the storm Iyana would unleash when she returned. She kept special care not to allow ‘if’ into her mind. There were enough of those close by.

“His color has returned some.”

Karin’s voice was soft and reassuring, impossible to startle. Iyana welcomed the reprieve.

“I think the worst has passed,” she said, turning a smile. She took care not to include the ‘hope’ that had been tickling the edge of her tongue.

Karin smiled back. He was not convinced, and they both knew it.

The bond between parent and child had grown into something less warm and more poignant after the Dark Kind had come. Death was a constant companion for the Emberfolk. As such, the community took on the roles formerly reserved for family. Still, there was something to be said for blood. Iyana did not remember her own, but watching the ghosts of emotion pass over Karin’s face as he watched his son, she knew that link was something more.

“Thank you,” Karin said, his eyes watering as Kole’s never could. He said it without looking at her, but the pang of its sincerity struck her like a blow and threatened to shatter the thin veneer that was her resolve—threatened, and then made good on its promise. A single tear began a waterfall, and Karin embraced her as she poured the shared pain of herself and Kole into him.

Karin was made of something stouter than iron. He did not wince, though she felt his heart near to breaking.

D
oh’Rah and Tu’Ren argued as only father and son could, and Ninyeva observed with a detachment unbecoming of the Faey Mother.

The first rays of dawn were creeping over the treetops to the north, painting them golden-red like the lit ends of matches. The sun climbed higher each day, but what was usually a time for rejoice was now something else.

In truth, Ninyeva was too spent to involve herself in their quarrel. She had traveled the disorienting roads of the Between twice in the last week, and both journeys had ended with resounding headaches in the place of answers. She knew she should share their concern; a part of her did. After all, Larren Holspahr had apparently gone rogue, taking a handful of Last Lake’s finest north with him.

Of course, Ninyeva knew which of the powerful company had likely engineered the plan, but she kept that to herself. The Dark Months were nearly up, which made the roads to the north safer for traveling. Still, the northern peaks were uninhabited for a reason. The Deep Lands still held residual magic from the White Crest’s fatal clash with the Eastern Dark and his Night Lords, and while Kole Reyna’s condition was improving by the day, his run-in with the Sentinel in the woods had been cause for serious concern.

Word had spread about the young Ember’s condition, and about what had caused it. But only Ninyeva—and by extension the two other men in the Long Hall with her—understood the implications. The Sentinels were no mere foot soldiers from the World Apart, mindless beasts made more of shadow than sinew. These were Captains, cunning and with purpose, and capable of infecting anything with their corruption, even Landkist.

Even Embers.

If Sentinels were in the Valley, they had no doubt been sent. The Eastern Dark had turned his eyes back on them. None of the elders truly believed he had perished in the fight with the White Crest. But his seeming absence had stretched over such a period as to catch Ninyeva in the illusion of permanence as well. Her thoughts kept turning back to Kole Reyna and to his contentious words in the Long Hall the week before.

Reyna was young, but he was a Keeper of the Lake and more powerful than any Ember she had seen at his age, including Tu’Ren Kadeh. Kole had glimpsed something in the red eyes of the Night Lord, and though all signs pointed to the Eastern Dark as culprit, he was as convinced of the White Crest’s presence as he was doubtful of his allegiance.

Could it be so? Could their guardian truly have survived his ordeal? And if so, where had he been?

The memory of Sarise A’zu spinning in her tornado of fire, shadows with red eyes in the passes all around her, was never far from Ninyeva’s thoughts these last days. A vision of death that only one of the Faeykin should have the eyes to see had somehow imprinted on her Ember son. Kole experienced that night in his dreams, and while Ninyeva had done what she could to shield him from their burning reality, he had come through those nightmares changed. He now bore a singular focus. He was bent on the Sages.

The questions swirled, and Reyna seemed to be at the center of it all. Even Holspahr’s mission reeked of Linn Ve’Ran’s desire to interfere on Kole’s behalf.

“I swear, that boy reminds me more of his mother by the day.”

Doh’Rah was not a quiet walker; his cane betrayed him at every opportunity, and still she had not registered his approach.

“I see less of myself in him with each argument.”

Of course. He was talking about Tu’Ren.

Ninyeva turned from the railing at the back of the Long Hall and saw that the First Keeper had left, the door still swinging from his abrupt departure. It was unlike him to leave without addressing her. Perhaps he had.

“The rest of us see more than enough of you in his veins,” Ninyeva said, turning back to the lake.

Doh’Rah snorted.

“Your thoughts?” he asked, trying in vein to hide his concern.

“The sun rises higher each day. Holspahr and the others will be as safe now as ever.”

Until they reach the Deep Lands.

“When they reach Hearth,” he said, “they will be turned back by my contacts there.”

“They will not go to Hearth,” Ninyeva said with a small laugh. Doh’Rah frowned.

“You have been to see Reyna,” he said as much as asked.

“He will wake within the week.”

“Do you truly think this to be the work of a Sentinel?”

“I do.”

Doh’Rah sighed, and each time he did, it seemed that a bit of him went out with it. Ninyeva was older, but looking at her friend, she sometimes found it hard to believe.

“What do you think they mean to do?”

“Something, I would guess,” Ninyeva said, and when he looked at her with that confused expression, “something more than nothing.”

“Defending one’s people hardly qualifies as ‘nothing,’” he said, but then he looked out onto the shifting water, the light filtering down from the angled roof of the hall to strike its surface. “Still, I suppose we have grown shorter of sight, more concerned with surviving than living these last years.”

Ninyeva said nothing.

“As a boy,” Doh’Rah said, drawing her attention, “I clung to the image of the White Crest as our fearless and benevolent protector.” He laughed sardonically. “Later, when the denizens of the Valley—I don’t excuse our own people from that—turned to killing one another and he stood by, I thought him merely a barrier to the Sages without.”

He looked at her, and now he did look like the man he had been, the youth who had split off from Hearth and led his people south.

“Now I wonder. Was he ever truly on our side? Did the King of Ember bring us to a paradise, or a prison?”

Ninyeva placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and affected a gentle smile.

“I imagine he did the best he could,” she said. “Just as we have.”

Doh’Rah smiled, and together they looked out on the lake that was their home. As the soft afternoon light touched the furthest waves, Ninyeva thought they looked like the shifting dunes of the deserts she had left.

“The young among us deserve to mark their own path, now,” Ninyeva said after a time. Doh’Rah regarded her. “They were born in a Valley deprived of peace. They deserve better, and they deserve to find it for themselves. I only hope the Eastern Dark has lost some of his potency, if he has returned.”

“Even a Sage such as he must take care when courting the World Apart,” Doh’Rah said with a frown.

“We do not know how the conflict goes with the others of his kind,” Ninyeva said. “He could be growing desperate. Why else would he send his Sentinels now?”

“Why indeed?”

They parted in the soft gravel of the fishing village, sharing nothing else but the bowed heads that come from long understanding and slow regret. Ninyeva navigated the bustling streets and pathways back toward her leaning tower. The gravel roads close to the shore were choked with people, most of them fishermen. The sun provided the means and incentive to strike out for game in deeper waters, and the men took advantage.

As she walked, she replayed her previous attempts to travel the winds of the Between. Where had she gone wrong? For a time, she even considered consulting with Rusul and the Seers of Eastlake, but decided against it. They would likely spend more time judging than assisting, no matter the stakes.

No, she would do this herself. Holspahr and the others needed to know what awaited them in the Deep Lands and beyond. She would worry about how to contact them after she solved the first issue. Perhaps Reyna would get his wish early. The Dark Months were ending, but Ninyeva felt it in her bones that the danger had only just begun.

She still remembered the winged figure standing on the cliffs as their sorry caravan had trundled through the villages of the Rivermen, their gray eyes suspicious. And she remembered the figure in red that had stood beside him, their Ember King, whom they would never see again.

How could any despair when they had such figures—such gods—watching over them?

Ninyeva and hers were refugees, but their children and grandchildren had not chosen to abandon the northern deserts. Their blood was of the sand, but their hearts were in the Valley. Until the Valley betrayed them.

She took a wide berth around the market, unwilling to be clogged in the various choke ways sprouting from the wheel. When she reached the chipped paint of her front door, the sun was high in the sky, but she knew it would not stay there for long.

Once inside, Ninyeva removed her green robe and made her aching way up the stairs, closing the shutters and sliding the thin pine frames shut to block out the light, an irony not lost on her. She lit the candles, dusted the pit beneath the grate and built a fire fit for her purposes. She went to the jars in her cubbies and each contained lifelong friends: there was the blue of sage root, wet and pungent. She took a handful of that and lined a stone bowl with it. Next, she grasped the dry, caked mass of yellow sand nettle, which she broke up and added to the mix. The green grass of the Faey gardens joined it, along with the charred fungi from the Blackwoods, its bright red flesh emerging as the blackened shell cracked and dissolved upon mashing.

The paste churned and as it did the colors turned, affecting a striking hue of orange and purple. The kettle whistled and she added the boiling water with a hiss and bubble that sent up a curling mist thick as cream. Ninyeva allowed herself to drop into the back of her mind and leaned forward, breathing long and deep.