Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (48 page)

“The World is much wider than this Valley of yours,” the Ember said. He looked down at the Sage, whose light was dimming even as the flames in the keep brightened. “Friends become enemies.”

He glanced at Kole before settling those orange eyes back on Linn. The darkness that draped him did not touch his eyes. Those were his own.

“Nothing has happened as I wanted it to, but my people endure. You endure.”

“What happened between you?” Kole asked, indicating the pitiful Sage at their feet, though the melted helm still came up nearly to his chest.

“We rode out against the Eastern Dark, fearing that he would open pathways to the World Apart too great to close. I was cast down and he fled back to his mountain hole. The Eastern Dark, too weak to follow, sent his Night Lords. The rest …” he drifted off, staring down at the Sage.

“You can thank your protector here, for corrupting the lands outside of the Valley and bringing the army to your woods and fields.”

“We’ve been fighting the Dark Kind for a generation,” Linn said.

“Waves of them, yes. Enough to keep you strong in the case of his need. To keep you from the wars without. The Eastern Dark witnessed my power first-hand. He knows what potential the Embers possess.”

“You have agents in the Valley,” Kole said and the Ember did not answer.

Kole ignited his blade, drawing a small laugh from the broken Sage.

“Other Landkist,” the King of Ember said. “They are searching. Searching for others that might join—

“None would join you,” Kole said. “None would join him.”

“It is only through him that we end their scourge,” he said, staring balefully at the White Crest.

“Through you, you mean,” Linn said and the Ember did not argue.

“You hate them all,” the King of Ember took a step toward Kole, who took a step back. “You have much to learn—much more than the Embers here can teach you.”

Kole spat.

“How did he break you?”

The King of Ember’s expression was inscrutable, but the flames around him swirled and edged closer. Given what he had seen them do, even Kole feared their touch.

“We grew up on tales of you,” Kole said, refusing to back down. “The great King of Ember, hero of the desert and descendant of the First Keeper, a man that fought against the Dark Kind.”

“The World is large. The World is complicated.”

“You made it small enough for your people,” Kole said, venom rising. “You trapped us at the edge of the World and set one monster to guard us from the rest.”

“The World is full of monsters.” The Ember indicated the Sage at his feet. “It’s time we got rid of the worst.”

“All of the worst?” Linn asked.

“All.”

Those orange eyes did not waver, and Kole swallowed.

“The Dark Kind tore my mother apart,” Kole said. His voice was calm, steady. But the flames snaking from the hilt of his blade up to his elbow were anything but.

“There will always be a need for the Keepers,” the King of Ember said. “So long as the Dark Kind find gates into this World, pockets through which they can sew their disease and discord. But you are not the only ones harried by the World Apart.”

“You serve their master,” Kole said, the flames twining around his shoulder now. The fires in the chamber shifted and morphed, choosing their alliance carefully.

The White Crest wheezed out another choking laugh.

“Master,” he chortled. “The Dark Kind have no master. He merely found them at their source. He knows where to push at the seams, where to let them in. But he’ll push too far and the rip will open too wide to close. He almost did when he sent the Night Lords against me.”

“Kole slew a Night Lord not a moon past,” Linn said disdainfully, earning another maniacal bout.

“A Night Lord?” the White Crest cackled. “That ape was not fit to be one of their standard-bearers. It was nothing more than a Corrupted beast from the hills of your own Valley. The Sentinels did their work well.”

“The problem remains,” Kole said, ignoring him. “You serve our enemy.”

“I serve mankind, in whichever way I can.”

“And what of the Landkist at your back?” Linn asked.

“They follow me.”

“For now,” Kole said.

“You’re here for him,” Linn said, nodding at the melted mess of armor and wings. “Then what?”

“On to the next.”

“Why is the Eastern Dark trying to eliminate the other Sages?” Kole asked.

“They have been warring for centuries,” the King of Ember said. “This one held himself apart for a time, but he was not always so innocent. Power breeds envy. Envy breeds contempt.”

He straightened, raising that glowing palm.

“No matter. They will pass. Some sooner than others.”

“I was afraid.”

The White Crest spoke in half a whisper.

“Your cowardice has never been in question.”

“I was afraid,” he said again, the blue orb peering up, surprisingly, at Kole.

“Did you think he was the chosen one?” the King of Ember asked, voice rising and flames rising with it. He looked from the Sage to Kole. “Did you?”

Kole shrank back, put suddenly on the defensive.

“The Line of Mena’Tch,” the King of Ember scoffed, looking down at the White Crest. The blue flared before dying back down. “Is that what you feared? The only power in blood is given by the World, not scratched into cavern walls in the desert.”

He looked back at Kole.

“You are powerful,” he said. “To fight a Sage head-on—even one as compromised as this one—it’s not a feat many Landkist are capable of. Maybe none. But you merely wield the flames; you do not become them. I felt your power in the fields from leagues away, as we made our way through the foothills where the Corrupted massed. You can only use your body as a blade for so long without understanding the fire. It is why the Embers have used Everwood for so long as a natural extension, a ward against their true selves.”

“All but you,” Kole said, looking down at the Ember’s glowing palms.

“All but me.”

“I should have known it was you I sensed,” the Sage sobbed. “I should have known.”

“You see this?” the King of Ember kicked the armored chest and stepped on it, leaning his weight down, the flames along the floor inching close as hungry lions. Beneath the deformed helm and warped beak, the blue brightened with fear.

Kole felt ill.

Was this not why he had come? To do the very thing the King of Ember was now?

“They fear us, as they should,” the King of Ember said, denting the chest plate in with his heel, teeth gritted. “The Sages will die at the hands of their own prophecies.”

The King of Ember’s palm exploded into a comet, lancing down to shatter the plate, the red tail tracing its path and mixing with the blinding flare of blue that erupted from the open chasm in the writhing Sage’s chest.

When the light cleared, Kole peered into the fiery maelstrom at the center of the titan’s breast. There was no body within, only a swirling mass of wind and crackling light—and now the flaming heart of an Ember’s fist at its core. The White Crest struggled in vain, but the Ember kept him locked in place, leering down with hateful intensity, his eyes glowing a deep amber that Kole for a second mistook for the ruby red of a Sentinel.

Linn reached forward, but stopped as the Sage’s shrieking spasms morphed sharply into the most maniacal laughter yet.

“You think you have free will?” he said, heedless of the burning at his core or driven on because of it. “You think you are your own, just because a Sentinel isn’t driving you? I see the darkness in you. His darkness. You are a pawn on a board of his making. You will never be free of him, no matter your private designs.”

The flames dipped down all around them, their hunger abating for the moment. The chamber glowed like twilight, and Kole was aware that the sun had dropped below the horizon; he could see starlight shining down from the blasted roof. The faint echoes of battle still rang outside, but they were lesser now, more full of the grunts and commands of the Rivermen than the shrieks of the hawks.

The King of Ember withdrew his molten hand. He looked down at the Sage, his face blank.

“His time will come,” he said, softly, as if he were speaking to himself. “Darkness is the absence of light. And there are still bright lights remaining in this world.”

He looked at Kole as he said it.

“Are you one of them?” Kole asked.

“How could he know?” Linn asked, and the amber eyes switched to her, orange lights passing over the surface of his glowing hand.

“I thought I was protecting you,” he said, eyes glazing in the haze of memories too distant for Kole to imagine.

“Protecting them!”

The White Crest was making the most of its death throes.

“By stocking the Valley with these jewels of the desert? You sealed their fate. You cut them off from the source of their power. You kept them safe from the wars without. Safe in his keeping. Until he had need of them, as he had need of you.”

“We would never join him,” Linn said, though her voice wavered.

“Do you think the sorry souls before the gates of Hearth had a choice when I set the Dark Hearts to calling?”

The blue eye flicked up to the King of Ember.

“This one had a choice.”

“As did you,” the King of Ember said. “And you ran.”

“You do his bidding.”

“I do what I must.”

“By killing the only beings capable of standing up to him?” Linn asked.

“They are all the same. Or they will be, eventually.” He almost looked sad as he considered the broken form at his feet, one who Kole had no doubt projected majesty a century ago. “We could have stopped him that day, you and I. You don’t know what’s coming. I have to do this.”

There was a short silence.

“Step back,” the King of Ember told them, and they did.

Another laugh, but this one was false, a cover for the fear the White Crest felt.

“Always beware the chained hound,” the Sage said.

The light was blinding white, and for a moment, Kole was sure that Linn would burn up. As it dissipated, he realized the blast had been so concentrated that it had immolated the armored form at their feet without so much as an errant mote.

Where the White Crest had been, there was nothing but a smoking ruin.

The King of Ember sighed, sweat standing out on his brow. The darkness seemed to deepen about him, or maybe it was just the absence of his flames. The only light remaining in the chamber came from the stars above and the soft yellow cadence of Kole’s Everwood blade.

Footfalls behind them, and Linn and Kole turned to see the sturdy outline of Baas Taldis against the opening, his shield held out before him. The Rockbled stopped when he saw the light of Kole’s blade and then approached cautiously.

“The others?” Linn asked as he neared. Baas was made of something strong as stone, for he was none the worse for wear, his skin unmarked and the blood already drying beneath his nose.

Baas nodded, his attention caught up by the strange presence of the King of Ember standing over his smoking pit.

A flood of relief washed through Kole knowing that none of the others had perished, a feeling that did nothing to ease the terror that gripped him when the King of Ember uttered a single word at his back.

“N
o.”

The horror that leaked from the word and the veritable god that spoke it cast a dread spell over the company.

The King of Ember was staring up into the starry sky through the gaping hole in the vaulted ceiling. Linn followed his gaze.

There, hanging in the space between roof and sky was a swirling current of air that shimmered and sparked. What at first looked to be two stars in the canopy beyond came clear as the same blue orbs that marked the White Crest’s eyes, the avian head half-formed.

Kole and Baas followed her line of sight, but they squinted against the twilight. Linn had ever been blessed, but this time, the noticing got her noticed.

With a pop and crack that sounded like the breaking of a mountain spur, the spirit morphed from wind to arcing light and streaked down faster than an arrow. Linn brought the silver shaft around as a sorry shield and the King of Ember sent a jet of red fire, but it was to no avail.

“Kole!” Linn screamed, and the Ember’s blade flared brightly. Baas readied his shield and shouldered her out of the way. She fell to the floor with a jolt and recoiled as the spirit dodged Kole’s slash and made for her, unerring.

It slammed into her chest with enough force to drive the air from her lungs and take the sight from her eyes, her vision going white. She felt the arrow snap, the bow digging into her back as she convulsed. The current animated her body like a sick marionette and the pain was beyond reckoning.

She heard shouting—Kole, she thought. And through her pain and thrashing, she felt heat flood the chamber as both Embers brought their power to bear. The great shadow of Baas Taldis passed in front of her, shielding her from their hellish collision.

And then the physical world passed away and the pain with it. There was brief darkness and then light whiter than any she had seen. She could not see the White Crest, but she felt his presence in her mind, his thoughts coming up unbidden as images played before her.