Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (13 page)

As she walked among the bodies, Linn noted that the shadows had faded, draining away like ink to reveal the garish faces of men and women beneath. They were not Emberfolk, nor Faey, and they had not the bulk or sinew of the Rivermen. These were foreigners, pale as light and sick with dark. She thought of the red-eyed attacker she had impaled—a Sentinel, she knew—and shuddered when she realized there had been nothing beneath its blackness but thicker shadows.

“Ve’Ran—

She spun toward the harsh whisper, knife whipping, and nearly collapsed when she saw Jenk standing beneath the boughs, light hair crusted with red. He grabbed her by the wrist and led her stumbling through the rolling nettles.

“The others,” Linn managed through a cracked tongue and pounding headache.

“Alive,” he said, though it sounded strained.

“Jenk.”

He glanced at her as he supported her, his skin burning like the blade that still glowed at his hip.

“What happened?”

“We were lucky,” he said, and then, to her continued staring, “I don’t know what they are. But there was a Sentinel.”

“I fought one,” Linn said, stopping and standing still.

Jenk looked stunned.

“How did you survive?”

“Luck.” And she knew it to be the truth.

“Larren was distracted.” He looked at the ground. “He killed it, but it did something to him, left him screaming in the dirt.”

“It seems we picked the wrong time to leave the Lake,” Linn said, but Jenk shook his head.

“Maybe it was the perfect time, Ve’Ran. The Dark Months are ending. The World Apart is too far for chance to send a force like that through. Someone sent those shadows for us, and they came from the north.”

They came to a trench between boulders, the trees silent around them as Baas stood vigil. Kaya clenched a piece of leather between her teeth as Nathen worked over her foot. A spear rested in the crevice, and below it, Larren Holspahr breathed shallow and slow.

She supposed it could have been worse.

K
ole Reyna was strong, but all the strength in the world counted for less than nothing here, in the swirling, burning darkness. At first, he felt the pain. It was constant and unbearable—a pain that threatened to consume him. But slowly, surly, it ebbed away, and the other had made its presence known.

It was not so much a voice as a series of impressions that filled his head, but he knew them to be the work of the Sentinel. It showed him things: there were men falling in the rain, cut down by shadows. As they fell, some rose again, red-eyed Captains bidding them to find homes for their blades in the hearts of their former brothers.

He saw Hearth surrounded, bugles blowing their death knells. There was a mass like ants climbing the walls, piling one atop the other in a leaning tower that bent sickly in the driving wind and rain. A solitary figure climbed to the top, dodging the spears of the defenders or burning them away. The figure stepped over the crenellated walls easily and the Embers of Hearth fell to one of their own.

It was his own face Kole saw laughing amidst the flames.

It was then that he remembered himself. He pushed back and the other was revealed in his mind’s eye, the same black contours, shining red eyes and gaping maw. Kole remembered fighting it beneath the roots of the Blackwoods. He remembered the way its eyes had glowed and its maw had stretched in a silent scream of agony as it had writhed and died in his flames. At that remembrance, it raged, spit, hissed and died all over again, expelled like a cleansing flood.

For a time after, the space between waking and sleep was a gulf of endless depth. When he did wake, he brought only half of his senses, but they were enough to recognize his father and Iyana watching over him.

Kole fell into dreaming, and one was as vivid as a story from the past replayed.

He saw himself as a boy. It was a cold, overcast day, and he was stripped to the waist. He heard the calling of lake gulls and felt his mother’s eyes on his back. Ahead, just above the dark line where the slow waves lapped at the shore, Tu’Ren stood next to a great brazier, his face stern as stone. There were rows of Emberfolk, his people, lining the road to either side of him. Their faces became a blur at the borders of his attention. Behind the brazier, Ninyeva, Doh’Rah and the other elders watched him stoically, but he could feel their hope burning hot, their fear cold kernels of ice.

In the years that followed, Jenk Ganmeer and later Kaya Ferrahl would make the same walk, but Kole was the first. They did not know he would be the first of the last. He wondered if they still would have sung their songs if they had. It was the last good dream on the edge of nightmare, for the Dark Kind had yet to encroach on their peaceful Valley.

“Your hand, Reyna.”

Kole looked up into the face of the First Keeper. He was not frightened of him like the other children were, so he examined him calmly, catching the glowing brazier beside him. He was afraid of that.

The stone thrummed with life. Motes of red flame floated out of the narrow slit, stinging his face as they passed. Kole raised his palm and studied it, committing the lines to memory, and then he offered it to the flames without further hesitation. There was a collective gasp, and even the lake seemed to inhale, dragging the next swell further in anticipation.

He could feel the heat, and even the pain, but in place of a desire to be free, his body sought to drink it in, and the flames responded eagerly. When Kole removed his hand, he brought the flame with it, curling and uncurling his fingers and making the fire dance.

Before he woke, Kole saw the boy he had been walk along the pathways he had known all his life, only he did so carrying a small fire that was the heart of his people, their past and future dancing in his palm. The only face he remembered was his mother’s.

Karin Reyna began the chant that followed him into waking.

“Landkist,” he said.

“Ember,” they answered.

And on it went.

Kole woke and found that he was alone. He enjoyed his first true feeling of clarity in what felt like a month and listened to the sound of the rain as it pattered on the open sill. The muffled talk of the guards flitted up from outside. There must have been a break in the clouds, as a soft beam of sunlight streamed in, and he parted the covers to soak it up with his bare feet, sighing as the energy flowed into him.

Slowly, achingly, he stood, and it was then that Iyana announced her presence with the sound of shattering porcelain. He turned and saw her standing on the hardwood in the doorway, her silver hair bound back in a tail. She ran to him, and they embraced. Iyana’s shoulders did not shake, but she left damp imprints in his shirt nonetheless.

“Kole,” she said through tight lips, bright green eyes boring into him as they separated. Those eyes went along with the gifts of the Faeykin, and they could simultaneously entrance, placate and unnerve. It would stand to reason that Kole would be used to their effect by now. He was not.

“What news?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice level. Half-remembered nightmares and the leering face of the Sentinel reared up in is mind.

She hesitated.

“You are back with us,” she said, sighing. “That is good.”

“If that’s the best we have going, I’m not sure I’ll like the rest.”

She eyed him steadily, lips pursed.

“You’re not the only one who’s felt a need to take a stroll through the woods these last days,” she said, accusation barely masked.

Kole’s heart nearly stopped.

“Where is Linn?”

“Everyone’s got it in their minds to save our world,” she said, perhaps a little more biting than she intended. “My sister is the latest. She’s gone north to find one Sage or slay another. And she happened to take most of our best warriors with her.”

Kole swayed unsteadily, and Iyana’s empathetic side took over.

“I think you might like some air,” she said, guiding him by the hand with a grip that was soft and firm.

“Yes,” he said, thoughts reeling.

They stopped at the kennels first to check on Shifa. The hound had improved much more quickly than Kole had, nothing but a hairless patch at one corner of her mouth betrayed her involvement with his flight and ensuing fight. From there, they turned south, moving along Eastlake toward the shore, the threat of storm rumbling in the distance as the rain misted down.

As they walked, Iyana filled him in on all he had missed. The Dark Kind had attacked a final time while he writhed in his tower, but they had been thrown back without much effort. Not long after, word had come from Hearth’s Runners that the northern city was encircled by an army the likes of which the Valley had never before seen. Karin had been dispatched to get a closer look; Tu’Ren was unwilling to send martial aid without knowing the lay of the lands around Last Lake first. Linn’s departure likely played no small part in that decision.

They stopped at the docks and Kole sat on the edge, dipping his bare feet in the water with a pleasant hiss. He knew Iyana’s infinite patience had stretched farther than it had any right to. He had to speak with Ninyeva, Doh’Rah and Tu’Ren before long. But for now, they enjoyed the salt breeze and watched the sun dip behind the black ridges as the dark clouds overhead claimed the sky.

“Did she say anything?” Kole asked. “Before she left.”

“No,” Iyana said. “Though I should have seen it coming. Linn has been quiet lately—more than usual, I mean.”

Kole opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, the words half-formed. Iyana took up the thread anyway, unaware or unconcerned that Kole had not consciously expressed them.

“I know better than to tell you not to blame yourself,” she said. “You know my sister. You know her better than I do, and you know her better than you know me.”

Kole looked at Iyana. There was no accusation in her tone, just a firmness of belief—a statement of things that were.

“What is she trying to do, Kole?”

He swallowed.

“I think she took my words in the Long Hall to heart,” he said, looking back down at the water, which fizzed around his ankles. “Linn has always believed in the power of the White Crest. More than that, she’s believed in his goodness. She thinks he’s alive, and—

“She thinks he’s alive because you told her so. Because you told all of us what you knew to be true.”

Kole merely looked at her, trying not to flinch under that green stare.

“Well?” she asked. “Do you know it to be true?”

“I know what I’ve seen. I know what I feel.”

“And what of the Eastern Dark?” she asked, challenging. “What of our true enemy?”

“A Sage, just like all the rest,” Kole said, voice level. “If he has truly returned, we need to fight him on our own. The White Crest, if he lives, will be no help to us.”

“And you think we can defeat him when another Sage cannot?”

“I do not pretend to know what one Sage or another is capable of,” Kole said. “But I know what the Landkist can do, especially those in this Valley.”

“The Embers, you mean,” Iyana said. “You.”

“Your powers are for mending, Iyana. Mine are for something much different.”

“Guarding—

“Burning.”

There was no arguing with his tone, so Iyana did not. They both looked out on the water for a spell.

“I’ll find her, Iyana,” Kole said after a time.

“I don’t think it makes much difference either way. She has three Embers with her—Larren Holspahr among them—and Baas Taldis. She’s in good company.”

Kole did not look convinced. He did not feel convinced. That black face leered up out of memory, and he pushed it back down.

Dusk fell on a whim and the wind picked up, driving the rain until it had soaked them through. Kole stood and pulled Iyana up next to him, the rain steaming off of him in lazy currents. They walked back toward the shore in silence, watching the fisherman tacking their tarps and stowing their gear. None would venture out onto the water with the skies turning.

There were many Emberfolk at Last Lake, but the folk were a family, tight-knit and protective of their own. As Kole and Iyana walked streets both dirt and cobble, passersby greeted them warmly.

“Seeing is an entirely separate thing from hearing,” Iyana said after one of the elders nearly swooned upon spotting Kole. “They knew you were on the road to recovery, but apparently the words of the Lake’s healers, even a Faeykin like me, are worth little.”

She smirked as she said it, and Kole regarded her with a serious expression. He stopped dead and turned her toward him.

“Thank you,” he said, eyes shining. Iyana smiled, and then the smile dropped, turning to something wrenching and afraid. She nodded and continued on, Kole following after as they traveled the winding roads of Eastlake.

“You know,” he said some time later, “I used to fear the rain, after the fire awoke.”

Iyana looked curious. She touched Kole’s arm, which was bare, the droplets sizzling as they made contact.

“I sometimes wonder if the rain for us feels like burning to you,” he said.

“I don’t think you’d be out in it, if that were the case,” Iyana laughed.

“No,” Kole said, smiling absently. “But I do forget what it feels like to burn.”