Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (21 page)

The macabre image did not have the sobering effect it might have just a week earlier, but Talmir let loose an involuntary sigh nonetheless and closed his eyes to offer a silent prayer.

“What is it, Jakub?” he asked, smoothing the edge from his voice as he squatted to the boy’s eye level. A shadow gained the wall and a sword took it in the neck and sent it tumbling back before Talmir could react. He dimly recognized his savior as Karin Reyna and made a mental note to speak with him soon, his third such note in as many days.

“… his bed.”

“Come again?” Talmir shook his head to clear the cobwebs.

Jakub favored him with a withering glare. He was quite adept at those.

“I said, Second Keeper Mit’Ahn is giving the healers trouble. He won’t stay in his bed and is asking where his Everwood is.”

Talmir chuckled despite himself.

“Thank you,” he said. “No, I need—

“That’s not all,” Jakub said, indignant.

“Be quick about it, then,” Talmir clipped, some of the edge returning. “It’s not safe up here.”

“Third Keeper Ve’Gah reports that it’s quiet on the North Walk,” he said. “She’s asking to come here.”

“You were on the North Walk?” Talmir asked, unable to hide his anger. “Jakub, I told you to stay below. The cliffs are steep and the White Guard isn’t quite as accommodating as my men and women here.”

Jakub only stared.

Talmir sighed again. It seemed he had one of those for every word now.

“I need Ve’Gah to keep her section. We knew the North Walk wouldn’t be pressed, but we can’t afford to leave the crags unguarded. The Dark Kind are stout climbers. These Corrupted even more so.”

“Corrupted …” Jakub tasted the word. “They were like us?”

Talmir swallowed, trying not to think of the way the ink bled away when they cut the shadows down. Trying not to think of the pale, innocent flesh beneath. He shook the thoughts away and gripped Jakub’s shoulder, his boney collar feeling like a bird’s wing under his hand.

“After you’ve delivered the message, get yourself to the Bowl.”

Jakub rolled his eyes and turned to leave, but Talmir spun him back around.

“Jakub,” he said, deadly serious, and the boy’s brown eyes widened slightly. “I mean it this time.”

He gulped, turned, and sprinted toward the steep incline that marked the path to the North Walk, dodging the defenders as he went and teetering uncomfortably close to the edge on several occasions.

“He’ll be fine,” a voice said, and Talmir rose and turned to see Karin. The black-haired man was leaning against the parapet and wiping the ink from his blade, a short length of steel that seemed paltry compared to the spinning Everwood staff of Balsheer, which acted as their proxy sun in the gloomy chaos.

Talmir nodded and approached, looking out over the fields. The Dark Kind were pulling back, but it was merely the swell of a tide before the next wave broke. Still, it gave them precious time to change lines, exhausted soldiers being helped down from the South Bend as their moderately fresh replacements rose to relieve them.

The momentary respite allowed him to take stock of the First Runner of Last Lake. Although he had youthful features and long, healthy hair, the marks of tragedy were undeniable. Talmir knew the stories, and although everyone in the Valley had lost, Karin Reyna’s loss had been something more. Without closure, there could be no healing. The man before him looked like a good man who’d been sipping poison for a decade and more.

“I had meant to speak with you sooner,” Talmir said, extending his hand. Karin shook it firmly, displaying more strength than he had expected. “As you can see,” Talmir swept his hand out to encompass the crowded fields beyond the walls, “I’ve been somewhat indisposed. As have you, it would seem.”

“As far as excuses go, I suppose that one’s as good as any.”

“And you fishermen say we’re the stiff ones,” Talmir said. “Come, let’s speak away from the battlements. We’re getting in the way, though I know my soldiers won’t dare say it.” He guided Karin away from the crenellations and winked at a young woman moving past with a fresh cache of pitched arrows.

They stood at the base of the stair, keeping out of the way as wall hands rushed up and down, carrying weapons, water, oil and fuel for Balsheer’s brazier. The sounds of battle were constant. Still, after a week or more of anything, Talmir supposed you learned to adjust.

“I must say,” Talmir said, leaning in conspiratorially, “I never thought to see the walls tested like this. The people of Hearth like to cling to the fact that they’ve never fallen like it’s some great thing. The truth is, we’ve never truly been tested, not by a force like this.”

“It is said the white walls were constructed to withstand the Sages themselves,” Karin said, his tone unreadable.

Talmir smirked and issued a laugh.

“Said, no doubt, by its architects. Well, our enemy has not made himself known, but we can guess easily enough. I suppose those claims will be put to the test soon enough.”

Karin nodded and they both looked out over the tents in the courtyard, the torches guttering in the wind.

“It was easier to kill them before I knew what was beneath,” Talmir said, earning a sympathetic look from the other man. “Before they were, well, us.”

“Perspective,” Karin said. “It’s everything, and it’s the one thing we can’t perfect. The Emberfolk have largely come to think of this Valley as something of a prison, a hole to die in. But this is a grand place, with life teaming to the brim. It’s more full than the northern deserts ever were, but ask any here where they’d rather be.”

The main gate shuddered under an impact—a barrel of oil dropped too close—and the iron chains rattled and sent splinters down to wake the soldiers in the tents below.

“I know it isn’t easy,” Talmir said after a time and Karin turned those watchful, tired eyes his way. The Captain regarded him with sincerity. “Fighting away from your home, cut off from your loved ones. You came to warn us, or to report back to the Lake in case your warning came too late.”

“We are all Emberfolk,” Karin said. He looked as though he wanted to say more.

“And we’re running out of Embers,” Talmir said, his tone shifting in a way that caught Karin off guard. “I’ve heard, Karin. I heard about the expedition to the peaks—a fool’s quest with most of the Lake’s brightest stars. And I heard about your son.”

“When I set out,” Karin said, voice barely above a whisper, “he was improving. The Sentinel’s barbs were no longer entrenched so deeply in his mind. He will endure.”

“He’s made of strong stuff,” Talmir said.

“He is his mother’s son.”

There was a silence between them, and even the din of battle seemed to fade, a restless ocean in the background.

“The seeds were sewn with her death,” Karin said, his eyes faraway. “She made for the passes, gained the Steps and sought out the White Crest. She died there, and Kole saw her fall in his dreams, the flames snuffed out in her only to awake in him soon after. For a time, I doubted him and pushed his dreams aside, too lost in my own grief. But then Mother Ninyeva shared her visions with me. They matched his.”

Talmir waited for him to continue. He had only met Sarise A’zu in passing, but her reputation was well earned. When the Dark Kind had first come spilling into the Valley in force, hers was one of the brightest flames holding them back.

“I think,” Karin continued, “I think something changed in Kole after she died. Something changed in all of our children. They’ve grown up in war.”

Talmir could not help but glance at the rushing soldiers under his command, reminded once again how much their stern visages clashed with the soft skin of youth.

“They want something more,” Karin said. “And they want to take it for themselves, even if it means challenging the Sages. Sometimes I think Kole and his own would take on the legions of the World Apart if they could.”

“They may yet get the opportunity,” Talmir said with a bitter laugh. “This has to be something close.”

Karin regarded him, eyes clearing as the haze of memory passed like a spirit.

“The group you speak of must have left shortly after I did.”

“By accounts, Larren Holspahr leads them.”

“No,” Karin challenged, shaking his head slowly, brows knitting together. “No, Holspahr leads in name only. Kole may have inherited something like his mother’s fire, but Linn Ve’Ran is the closest thing I’ve seen to her will.”

“And what of us?” Talmir asked, as much to the swirling gray skies as to the First Runner. “Do we merely sit idle, waiting for our roving band of heroes to bring us the head of one Sage or another and end this blight?”

“There is only one who flirts with the power of the World Apart.”

“Yes,” Talmir said. “I know. And it’s one they have no hope of defeating. If he’s truly come for us in earnest, then our only hope is to endure.”

“Endure,” Karin mouthed.

The silence had no space to settle this time, as a horn sounded, ripping Talmir from his contemplations and sending icy shards through his blood. They were completely besieged and in the direst of straights. What could possibly be cause for alarm? Could Tu’Ren have come? What of the Rivermen and their Rockbled, or perhaps the Faey?

The horn sounded again as he made his way up the stairs, Karin passing him in two leaping strides. The Captain’s heart was gripped by a sickening combination of dread horror and that more deadly poison: hope. He reached the gate panting and stopped the young lad from putting horn to lips for a third blow. The Dark Kind scrambled up the walls with renewed vigor, the Corrupted souls opening their black maws in those noiseless wails as the clear, echoing notes whipped them into a frenzy.

“What is it, son?” he shouted at the startled scout. “We’re having a hard enough time as it is. What could possibly—

“Oh.”

At first, it looked like a firefly, dancing and buzzing at the edges of a meadow with darkness all around. There were two lights lashing back and forth in sharp arcs, the Dark Kind parting before them before closing back in behind like whirlpools.

“What is it?” Talmir asked, knowing the answer even as he asked.

“Embers,” Karin said. “Embers in the fields.”

The ice settled in thick around Talmir’s heart. There were Embers in the fields. And he could not open the gate.

If Kole was the prow of the ship then the twins were his sails, Fihn’s silver blade the lightning strikes amidst Taei’s red storm. Kole’s twin Everwood blades were a single, whirling thing. He parted the sea of Dark Kind and left the remnants to the allies at his back like flotsam.

Taei and Fihn Kane moved as if in a shared trance, while Shifa was Kole’s constant shadow, the only one not seeking to part his head from his shoulders. When he began to slow, his blades drawing much of his strength, the twins bore him up in their wake, Taei’s flames augmenting his own. They came to a shallow depression in the middle of the field, a trench formed by a dry riverbed, and when they came up on the other side, the twins were in the lead. Kole turned to form the rear guard.

He dared any of the shadow men to make a try for him. Many did.

They splashed into one of the myriad shallow streams and it almost ended there. Taei lost his footing, his blade going out as he fell in a torrent of foam and steam. Fihn reached in to pull him out, cursing all the while, and Kole put his flames into a spirited defense, his legs burning, hands working in a violent blur.

They came up on the other side of the trench and although Taei managed to get his blade going again, it was clear that he was tiring. Shifa was the only one whose pace never slowed.

A horn sounded up ahead. It was a bright, clear note that clashed with the permanence of the ruddy night. It sounded again, and Kole spared a glance. Through the hazy blur of his blades he glimpsed the white shell, silver-tipped spears glittering on the battlements and red-roofed buildings cloistered in their nest. He saw the great black gate that stood stark and knew it could not be opened to them.

Another note sounded, but this one was a yelp of pain. Kole spun to see Taei clutching his side. Blood flowed freely, splashing and bubbling on the torn turf. Fihn stood over him as he dropped to one knee, silver blade going up like a crescent moon.

“Down!” Kole screamed. “Down!”

Fihn lost her sword and clutched her brother in the chaos. Kole shot toward them, his blades sending great arcs of flame out that burned black flesh like birch. The scar Linn Ve’Ran had left him burned on his cheek, and the pain drove him on, his vision blurring red and indistinct. His veins bulged and formed ridges along his arms and neck, the flames dancing along his black blades turning from orange to deep red flecked with crackling blue. The fire spread to his hands and curled around his elbows as he fought.

Some distant part of him heard Fihn crying out, her shielding of Taei changing hands as the wounded Ember wrapped her up and turned away from Kole’s whirlwind. They cowered there before an elemental, and Kole later thought he heard the laughter from his dream. He thought it might have been his own. He tore through the Dark Kind and through the innocent flesh of the Corrupted like a tornado through a fallow mire.