Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (40 page)

“The King of Ember was my ally,” it said. “My weapon. He failed to kill the Eastern Dark. You Embers were my charge—fireflies lost at sea with no reed on which to land. I was to cultivate you. That was my charge. But I am awake, now. I am myself. I am, and I will cull his fields to draw him out. I will turn his darkness upon him. You sent your Embers to me and I have turned them or thrown them from the cliffs.”

And suddenly Iyana knew that Linn had failed. She felt cold hands interlaced with her own and turned to see Rusul kneeling beside her, staring ahead with the rapt attention of one kneeling at the foot of some terrible god.

Perhaps they were.

“There is another you have sent,” it said, head menacing. “One whose power I have felt from a long way off. A power I have not felt in a long time. He will be my sword remade against the darkness. My Ember blade. I have seen him in her mind. He will not come against me while I have her.”

Ninyeva stood even taller than before. Blood leaked down her cheeks like the paint of the Faey tribes.

“I had hoped against hope that we might find you dead or gone,” Ninyeva said, spitting with disdain. “And here you are, a thing used. A thing corrupted.”

The beast’s form grew indistinct—all wind, rain and lancing light. The bright orbs dimmed under Ninyeva’s scrutiny and Iyana felt something like shame emanating from it in waves that made her nauseous.

It remembered itself and the orbs brightened once more, the dam breaking. The wind picked up and the water, charged as it was, transformed into tiny arrows. Iyana scanned the rooftops, where the scattered archers were prepared to loose. But what could they do?

An orange blur lit her periphery, and Iyana swiveled toward the wreckage of the Faey Mother’s tower. Tu’Ren stood, his skin set to a pulsing glow, sword held alight before him.

“You know nothing,” the beast said, but its roar turned from fury to pain, and Iyana saw the atmosphere around Ninyeva warp like heat in a clear sky. The Faey Mother’s eyes took on a glow so bright that Iyana could see it even from behind, and the Sage twisted and writhed.

“What is she doing?” Rusul asked in a horrified whisper.

“She found an opening,” Iyana said. She could not explain the battle that raged before them, but she knew of the Faeykin’s darker gifts. It was said they could turn their empathy to whips and lashes, as Ninyeva did now. She remembered the twisted corpse of the hunter from Tu’Ren’s memory.

Ninyeva’s knees began to shake. Lightning split the sky, arcing down and sending the roof of the smithy up in cinders. The archers loosed their burning shafts, which were blown away like matches. The Faey Mother screamed like Iyana would not have thought possible. She collapsed as the White Crest roared.

Iyana broke free from the hands that tried to hold her back and ran. The hounds howled in the darkness, driving her onward, and the air grew thick with water, wind and flame as she waded through the maelstrom, eyes focused on the pile of green and brown crumpled at the foot of the storm.

When she reached her, she was shocked to see that her teacher’s emerald eyes had lost their sheen. They had faded to white, and though Ninyeva still breathed, it was labored, her chest wracking.

“A Landkist seeking to enter my mind!” the beast roared. It sounded manic as the storm it created. “This is not the world of dream, you retch. You escaped last time. Now you lay broken and scattered. Your power is nothing to us.”

“Our power …”

Iyana turned her challenging stare from the maelstrom to her teacher, who struggled to speak. She laid a hand on her cheek and nearly recoiled for the shock of pain she felt. She anchored herself to it, tried to ease it. But there was too much to take. She wept.

Still, Ninyeva breathed a little easier, her voice growing more solid. Iyana pulled her head from the mud, cradling her like a babe.

“Our power,” Ninyeva croaked, eyes unseeing, “is a gift.”

The great break swung toward them, making Iyana flinch. Tears streamed down her face as the White Crest laughed its maniacal laugh.

“A gift,” it mocked, words popping like logs in a hearth. “We brought magic to the World. You and yours are nothing but leeches.”

“You took it,” Ninyeva said through a sigh. “It belongs to a World of which you are no longer part.”

At first, Iyana took it for a grimace of pain, but Ninyeva smiled a strained smile and the Sage’s lightning eyes widened once more. The Faey Mother’s eyes were blank, but she stared directly into the storm.

“Your keep lies unprotected, fool,” she said, laughing a witch’s laugh. “Your Dark Hearts will be cured, and then yours will be the only one that remains in this Valley. Soon enough, that will be cured as well. Burned away. Ash on your own winds.”

The storm reared back and unfurled great wings of debris.

“Your Ember hero is still a day’s march from my keep,” it gloated, but there was an edge. “I threw the other from the tallest peak with the hands of one who called him ally. Your sister,” its eyes blinked toward Iyana, its victory infecting her to the marrow, “sits in chains. The woodsman,” it continued, “I shattered his head on the back of a stone. His bones will bleach in the sun you will never see again.”

Ninyeva smiled.

“He lives.”

And Iyana knew that Ninyeva could see him even now. Nathen Swell, alive against all hope and reason.

The beast roared and made as if to take off, its form shimmering in the spray it sent up.

“Tu’Ren!” Ninyeva screamed.

Iyana saw only white like the brightest snow and felt the wash of heat as the First Keeper leapt over them, trails of swirling gold curling in his wake. He slammed into the avian head and their meeting split the atmosphere with a crash not unlike thunder. Although insubstantial, the White Crest roared as Tu’Ren sunk his burning blade home, bringing the storm down in a shower that only flew in one direction.

The Sage gathered itself and hurled its energy back at the Ember, but Tu’Ren Kadeh stood his ground, the wind seeming to feed the flames of his blade.

Iyana was forced to squeeze her eyes shut tight against the clash, and soon the crackle of lightning, the roar of flame and the howl of the wind faded like a memory. The hounds still cried in the distance, and she could now here the echoes of shouts along the walls, bowstrings twanging like harps as the Dark Kind came at them.

She opened her eyes to see the closed lids of Ninyeva, curled in her drenched lap like a sleeping child. Rusul stood on unsteady legs and moved off, swaying like a tree in the breeze. Men, women and children emerged from the shadows of broken frames and leaning piles.

Ahead, Tu’Ren knelt in the mud, his great back heaving with long pulls, smoking sword hissing in the rain beside him and causing a puddle to froth and boil. When he turned toward her, she saw tears mixing with the rain.

“I tried,” Iyana said, holding herself just above the surface.

Tu’Ren rose with a groan and moved to her. All signs of the Sage had passed.

“We all did,” he said, laying a hot hand on her thin shoulder that warmed her to the bone.

“He’s gone.”

“Back to his roost,” Tu’Ren said. “Whatever she did,” he looked down at Ninyeva, “it rattled him enough for me to strike.”

“He is weak now. He spent too much energy coming here.”

“We gave them what chance we could.”

Iyana nodded, wiping the droplets from Ninyeva’s face.

“Now let’s hope they do the same for us,” Iyana said.

The horns went up again along the walls, calling the First Keeper to his brazier. A scout screamed down the road from the north, waving a torch and bellowing.

“First Keeper! You father requests your presence immediately.”

The scout looked at the chaos along the lane that was now a causeway and blinked like a dog.

Tu’Ren lifted Ninyeva’s prone form and stood to face him. Iyana’s thoughts turned to Linn, sitting alone in the dungeon of a Sage’s keep, her closest hero a woodsman whose head had been dashed upon the mountaintop.

L
inn woke in the cold and damp, feeling the moss-covered stones beneath her.

She was cold. She was tired. And everything hurt.

The Sage wearing Larren’s skin had fled and left his shell behind, and the sudden fury of his passing had drawn her from the depths of unconsciousness.

He was heading for Last Lake, she knew. For Ninyeva. For the leaders of the Emberfolk. He was heading for Iyana, and there was nothing Linn could do about it. She would outlive them all in spite of her every foolhardy effort to get herself killed in the mountains.

Once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Linn was somewhat surprised to see that her cell was barely a cell at all—more an old wine cellar, broken crates long since rotted to sludge. The barred door was missing most of its bars, and those that remained looked as though a light breeze might crumble them to dust.

She may as well have been at the bottom of the River F’Rust, for all the good it did her. Just at the edge of sight, through the toothy bars and across the dank hall, two red eyes glowed dully in the gloom.

The White Crest was gone and Larren had once more become the shell for a Sentinel, a ghoulish hound set to preside over the damsel in distress.

How strange it seemed to Linn. She had spent most of her life fighting the denizens of the World Apart, but never their Captains. When she was a girl, they told her the Sentinels would never come through unless the Eastern Dark returned. How sickening, that it was a Sage they thought to be their own that had set the beasts on them.

Linn spat, and she could see the hint of a smirk pulling at the edges.

She pulled herself up against the wall, hugging her knees in a futile effort to gather what warmth remained in blood and bone.

For a spell, she assumed the Sentinel was staring at her; perhaps it was, but it was also looking through her, its focus away. She saw those ruby reds pulsing with an odd cadence, a rhythm that matched the beating of drums she had felt since waking. The walls thrummed with it, and the air around her—sticky with age and rot—buzzed on the edge of an explosion.

She looked back at the Sentinel. With each passing hour, it looked less like the Second Keeper of Last Lake. Iyana had told her of the White Crest’s corruption. She had told her of the Dark Hearts. With each pulse of those red orbs, she became more certain they were beneath her, buried in the deep stores of the keep. She wondered if Larren Holspahr still lived in some way, if he was present for what his hands had wrought against Kaya, Baas, Jenk and Nathen—all those foolish enough to follow her.

Linn considered making a run for it, but where would she go?

It was then that her heart, strong as it was, truly broke. It was then that Linn realized she only wanted to run so she could die in the company of those she loved. In a delirium forged by a mixture of pain, exhaustion and starvation, she cried, not caring that the demon watched her from its shadows.

Perhaps Kole would arrive in time to bury her, or else to add his bones to hers. Perhaps he was already dead. All told, Linn thought it might be better that way. She did not want to see the look on his face when he realized he had been right all along. No matter the reason, it was clear that their Sage was now the same as all the rest.

Even after Iyana had told her the truth of it, she had clung to a false hope. How ironic, that Linn—ever the pragmatic soldier—would be proven so naïve.

A small laugh escaped her chest and the Sentinel twitched.

She was so tired.

But she was a Ve’Ran.

“Do you take pleasure in being the Sage’s dog? Even your master has a master.”

Her voice sounded strange to her ears in this alien place, cutting through the constant drone from below. There was a crinkle along Larren’s brow, but the Sentinel made no move.

“Do you have any power of your own? Or must your kind steal all they have?”

Now the Sentinel leaned forward, teeth bared in a wolf’s false smile.

“Have you no voice?”

“Aye,” it said, and though Larren’s throat made the sound, there was an odd croaking that was macabre to listen to. It was as if the spirit was unused to the machinery within.

“You are a slave,” Linn said. “A slave with no shell of your own.”

A frown. It had worked those out well enough.

Linn clutched the sharp stone she had secreted in from the yard, the edge digging into the heel of her hand. She had thought to use it on herself, and then she saw Iyana’s face, her lips forming a tight line, green eyes framed in the pout she knew so well.

Linn’s thoughts turned.

Could a well-placed throw do what an Ember like Jenk Ganmeer could not?

“You are nothing,” Linn said, not having to reach to call up the disgust she felt as close as the damp.

“I am,” it hissed.

“Tell me,” she said, ignoring it. “Where did you go when your master took the shell you’re wearing.”

Confusion replaced anger and the creature leaned back, face working.

“Where were you when the White Crest had him?” Linn pressed.

“Apart,” it said sharply.

“You don’t belong here,” she said. “You are nothing. You belong nowhere. You are less than the rot in this cell.”