Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (26 page)

“Enlighten me,” Kole said evenly, and his father gave him a warning look.

“If the White Crest lives, they will beg his aid like children come before an absentee parent,” she said, mocking the very thought. “If they find something else, something decidedly more sinister—a source for this scourge—they will burn it out.”

“You have a problem with either scenario?” Kole asked, unable to help himself.

“Not necessarily,” Rain said, sitting back and raising her brows. “Though, I wonder if you share the same goals. I wonder if you do not have designs of your own in the peaks, no matter what you find.”

“That is completely beside the point,” Talmir intervened before Kole could mount a response. “The question on the table is whether or not Kole should stay here in defense of the city or venture north on some fool’s errand.”

“Should that not be Kole’s to decide?” Kole asked. He was tiring of the games. The reminder of Larren—in actuality Linn’s—journey reignited the spark of urgency within him. He tried not to think on Rain’s unspoken implications.

“And what sort of designs might this Ember pup have with a Sage long dead?” an older, raven-haired woman asked from her place beside Yush. She was bedecked in gaudy jewels and wore far too much paint.

“Please, Sister Gretti,” Rain said, earning a hateful glare from the other woman. “Just because you play the pious one in your fortune telling doesn’t mean we’re going to buy the act now.”

“Pious?” Kole asked, sounding as disgusted as he felt. “For a Sage?”

“What of this group now?” Kenta asked. “Do we know where they are? Do we even know if they live?”

“No to both,” Talmir said flatly, eyeing Kole.

Kenta nodded and steepled his fingers. He was a calculating man, and he calculated now, working over the implications and possibilities. Where the others in the chamber were free flowing with their emotions, Kenta was reserved, controlled. His brow crinkled, as if a sudden thought had occurred to him, some conclusion that Kole was not at all eager to hear.

“You wish for this young man to aid us in the defense of Hearth, no?” Kenta asked, cutting in before the Captain could respond. “And yet, by accounts, he cannot even control the power he wields. Tell me,” he turned his eyes on Kole, “have you been to see your friend? The one your flames nearly consumed?”

The words clattered around the chamber like thrown stones, settling in the deep corners of Kole’s heart and leaving him heavy and speechless. He heard the shouting as his father, Captain Caru and Rain Ku’Ral took Kenta to task. Sister Gretti and Yush came to Kenta’s defense, but even they did so weakly and without fervor.

“Kole,” Talmir said, and Kole did not hear it until his father nudged him in the side. “Kenta has apologized. Do you accept?”

Kole eyed the physician intently. He did not seem sorry; however, he did not seem smug, only resolute.

“It is I who is sorry, Captain,” Kole said, letting his stare linger before switching to Talmir. “But I am not the hero you’re looking for. I still could be to my friends. And I promise you—I promise all of you,” he swept his gaze to encompass the gathering, “that I’ll do my best to bring my flames to bear against whatever has sent this threat against us. The answers may lie in the peaks. They may not. But they certainly aren’t here. Here there is only death. It just hasn’t settled in yet.”

Their expressions ranged from serene to reassuring to suspicious, but it was Captain Talmir Caru who truly looked at a loss. His brow worked, lips moving to form words that would not come. Finally, he blew out a reserved sigh and let his palms relax on the oak table.

“I understand why you would have me stay,” Kole said. “But the city is in good hands. Hands far better,” he glanced at Kenta again, who nodded slightly, “and far more steady than mine. It’s time we stopped enduring. It’s time we started living.”

“You risk much,” Talmir said.

“I risk myself,” Kole answered as his father looked on. Creyath raised his chin, eyes glittering in the dim-lit alcove. “I risk much more by not going. I risk everything. They will not stop,” he swept his hand out at the walls. “Not this time.”

“Young Ember,” the speaker was the other woman beside Yush. Her hair was long, white and tied in a braid. Her eyes had a milky sheen, and for most of the meeting, he had assumed her to be dozing, or else pointedly ignoring the other exchanges. “What do you know that draws you so unerringly toward the peaks? What do you see in the passes?”

“Forgive Sister Piell,” Yush started, but Rain silenced him with a sharp look. It was a stark contrast to the respect she had not afforded Gretti. Perhaps there was something to this old woman after all.

“Whatever it is,” Talmir put in, “let us pray he sees it up close before we’re all dead and gone.” He turned for the door, his steps heavy. Creyath watched him go as Karin turned a look half-pride and half-heartbreak on his son.

The Captain opened the heavy door and pulled it in on oiled hinges that emphasized the silence. He turned and nodded to Kole, who followed without a backward glance. Karin assisted Creyath to his feet and helped him to the door. None of the esteemed Merchant Council of Hearth made a move to stop them, verbal or otherwise.

They took the winding stair silent as shadows, and took up Jakub and Shifa in their wake once they reached the bottom. Kole marveled at the loyalty and patience of both. As Shifa dogged his heels, so did Jakub skirt those of the Captain. Once they were outside and safely out of earshot, Talmir turned, his looked strained, brows furrowed.

“I am no fool, Kole Reyna,” he said evenly. “Though she lapses from time to time, that old woman up there isn’t either.”

Kole tensed and his father did so as well, but the Captain held up a hand.

“I will not stand in your way,” he said. “If you wish to make for the Steps and the peaks beyond, I cannot stop you. But I can ask what you’re really after, besides your friends and fellow Lakemen.”

Kole swallowed. He looked at his father, but Karin’s expression told him nothing. When he turned back to the Captain, he was resolute.

“The White Crest lives,” Kole said. “I have seen it.”

“And yet you are an Ember, not one of the Landkist of the Valley. Were you one of the Faeykin, I might believe you more readily. What could you know that they do not?”

“I can’t explain it,” Kole said. “But I know what I feel. I know what I saw that night,” he looked at his father, whose eyes took on that faraway ghost light. “I don’t pretend to know what the White Crest once was to the Emberfolk, the Rivermen or the Faey. I know what he is now. Whatever’s left of him, that is. He is not our protector. He is our jailor. Now, our executioner.”

There was a silence but for the trundling of carts, the shouted orders and the unsettling drone of the wounded in their tents.

“The Eastern Dark is the Sage we have long counted as our enemy,” Talmir said, speaking slowly, directly. To his credit, he waited on Kole’s response, taking his measure.

“Perhaps he still is,” Kole said. “He is a Sage after all, just as the White Crest is. They are brothers of a sort. Not much to distinguish one from the other.”

“Then why focus on one long thought dead?”

“Are they not both thought as much?”

Kole nodded to the west, toward the sloping roads of Hearth’s Bowl and the unseen walls beyond.

“There are no natural rifts this large to accommodate such a force,” Kole said, his patience wearing thin. “The Dark Months have ended, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I had,” Talmir said. “The Eastern Dark is the only one of the Sages known to flirt with the World Apart. What makes you think—

“It doesn’t matter. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Either way, I’ll find whatever’s causing this and put an end to it.” He was breathing heavy, heat rising. Creyath smiled as he limped before him to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Captain.

“But I know, father,” Kole said, turning to Karin. “I’ve known it since the night Ninyeva came to our door in the rain.”

“Be careful of the truth, son,” Karin said. “Sometimes it can burn you more readily than the flames.”

Kole said nothing.

“Captain Caru,” Karin said, and the Captain turned to regard him. “My son needs a way out of Hearth.”

Talmir sighed and Creyath chuckled.

“Let me see if I can help on that account,” the Ember said with that toothy smile.

Kole returned it, but the beating of his heart felt like a violent drum in his chest.

T
he day was wet and dreary. All the days had been since the sky had darkened. It was scarred, now. Burnt beyond recognition, and what was normally a time for growth and plenty had become an unending nightmare.

Iyana Ve’Ran walked the muddy streets alone, wearing cotton britches in place of her robes. She navigated the puddles nimbly, finding small patches of soaked earth to traverse. The pressure of her passing left the tiny mounds unstable, to be swallowed up by the groundwater.

It was a miserable experience, but it jogged a half-pleasant memory. Iyana saw Kole and Linn hopping from one stone to another in the deep streams of the wood. She had tried to follow, but she was small and clumsy. She had fallen, floundering in the shallows and sure to drown if Linn had not come back for her.

Her light mood lasted as long as it took a worried soldier to rush past, red-faced and panting, a reminder of the precipice on which they all rested. It was the waiting that was worst of all. Waiting, while Hearth was besieged. Waiting, while Linn and Kole were out there.

Iyana felt vulnerable. Worse, she felt helpless.

She sighed and continued to pick her way up the slope toward the northern section of town. Halfway up, the road split and she turned left, avoiding even a glance at the other road, which led to the leaning tower of the Faey Mother, her teacher. The tower loomed out of the milky haze at her periphery, a reminder that while she hopped between puddles, Ninyeva worked through her dreams and visions, trying to be of use.

Normally, Ninyeva would include Iyana, but things had been different ever since Kole had gone north. She had stopped making sense, at least as far as Iyana could tell. She babbled about a power in the north, one whose face she could not see and whose lair she could not penetrate. And she spoke of a figure wreathed in flame. He was an Ember, but one possessed of a dark and frightening power. Iyana guessed this to be Kole, but when she had said as much to Ninyeva, the Faey Mother had merely waved here away. Iyana wondered if she even noticed her absentee apprentice these last days.

Iyana had been angry at first. But now she knew that the anger had merely been a cover for the fear. Never had she seen Ninyeva so embattled, so confused. She had even taken to meeting with Rusul and the Seers of Eastlake, something Iyana would have scoffed at even a month before, during the deepest days of the Dark Months.

Desperate times, indeed.

Iyana shook thoughts of her teacher away and continued on the northern road. It was strange, she thought, how all paths seemed to be pointing in that direction of late. She supposed it made sense, seeing how their corner of the World was as far south as south went.

She reached the crest before the refinished gate and looked down over her the town that had been her only home. Gray smoke rose from the brick chimneys, mixing with the unnatural fog to form a pleasant curtain that looked far less foreboding than the one hanging over their collective heads night and day.

She turned back toward the gate and noted the gatehouse off to the left, the first puffs of smoke just starting to curl from the bent pipe in the leaning roof. Iyana had not set out with a destination in mind, but she always wound up in the gatehouse with Tu’Ren when she was upset.

The First Keeper eschewed the comforts of his own home, the protection of his people taking precedence over everything else. It was likely that, as agonizing as the waiting and uncertainty had been for her, it was doubly worse for Tu’Ren. As far as she knew, he had not received word from Hearth for a week and the decision to withhold aid was not one he had made lightly.

The worn pine door was shut and latched, so Iyana knocked and then rocked from foot to foot under the dripping slats. An archer heard and peered down at her from the raised platform above. Iyana could not make out her features from under her hood, but they were no doubt familiar, as all faces at the Lake were. The guardian lost interest quickly and went back to her bored survey—bored, but disciplined. A wall hound rested at her feet, panting in the humid air.

Linn’s face flashed in her mind’s eye, bringing with it a pang of longing along with the now-familiar stabs of fear. There was even a little anger she could not quite bury. All of this was forgotten as the door swung open to reveal a grizzled stone of a man squinting down at her.

“Yani?” he said. “What are you doing out in this mess?”

Iyana shrugged meekly and blinked up at him.

Tu’Ren shook his head in the way a disapproving uncle might, but he moved aside and ushered her into the stuffy gatehouse nonetheless. He took the soaked shawl from her shoulders and grumbled as he fished around for a fresh one, settling for a wool rug he had mistaken for a blanket. She accepted it anyway, stifling a laugh as she followed him to the center of the tiny structure.