Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (6 page)

Anger swelled, mixing with the fear. The surf churned and boiled beneath his feet, steam rising in a torrent as his muscles bunched. The drums rolled and the braziers lit the gloom with a sick glow.

Kole leapt, leaving a jet of steaming water in his wake, his passing creating a crater on the surface that crashed down like an avalanche. He sailed up and over the Long Hall, past the market, and slammed down before the gate, breaking the earth there and sending up shockwaves that announced his presence to the dark.

This was how powerful the Embers of old must have felt.

The darkness receded like an inhalation as Kole rose. And then it came for him, spilling from the trees, an army of lashing talons and red eyes intent upon his blood. Kole had no blades, so he summoned great living weapons of flame—spear and axe. He set to hacking.

Kole laughed a devil’s laugh as the Dark Kind fell before him, and all around him the forest that ringed his home burned.

There was a piercing cry. At first, Kole thought it the strangled, inhuman wailing of the Dark Kind, but it soon resolved into a woman’s scream. Kole tried to regain control, to reel the flames in, but they would not be contained.

He sat bolt upright and fought to orient himself in the momentary panic that comes from unfamiliar surroundings. There was a fire in the grate now, and motes of ash with cinders for tails floated by him. It took him far longer than it should have to notice Iyana’s presence.

For a sickening moment, Kole thought hers must have been the voice he heard screaming in his flames, but she was unharmed. She sat in a latticework chair with a steaming cup of lemon-scented water clasped neatly in her small hands. Her eyes glowed like green versions of the cinder motes as she studied him.

And what a sight he must have made, bunched up and steaming as his skin turned sweat to vapor.

“Hello, Iyana,” Kole said meekly, fighting to suppress the panic that still welled within him. He was used to settling after his dreams, but the settling was taking time.

“You’ve had quite a time the last few days, Reyna.”

“I imagine you have as well.”

She set her cup down. He marveled at how much older she seemed and how much younger she looked.

“Feeling better since last we met?”

“Physically.”

Iyana moved to fill him a cup. The stone was warm and reassuring in his hands and the smell reminded him of the markets of Hearth, all citrus and clove.

“Maybe you should take some time away from the wall.”

“We’re nearing the end of the Dark Months,” Kole said, indicating the pink light of dawn, which filtered in through the slatted window. “The days will grow longer and the World Apart will recede.”

“Until the next cycle,” Iyana said, adding, “During which time we will undoubtedly require your services again.”

Kole sighed.

“I’m worried, Iyana,” he said.

She set her cup down and put a hand on his knee, flinching slightly at the heat.

“I’m not sure it’s going to end this time.”

“What’s not going to end?”

“The Dark Months, the Dark Kind,” he swept his hand out in a meaningless gesture that was meant to span the whole of everything. “All of it.”

Iyana stared at him, all concern, but Kole was having trouble meeting those green eyes lately. She took his hands in her own, ignoring the pain it must have caused her.

“You are Landkist, Kole Reyna,” she said. “Ember-born and chosen of the flame.”

“And I’m among the last,” he said bitterly.

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“The desert has forsaken us,” he said. “We are not its children any longer.”

Iyana shrank back a bit and Kole squeezed his temples.

“I’m sorry,” he started, but she broke in.

“Our new land has gifts all its own,” she said, fighting to keep a civil tone.

“They aren’t gifts meant for war,” Kole said, shaking his head.

“No,” Iyana clipped. “They’re gifts meant for mending. A lot of that goes on in wars, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

There was nothing to say to that, so Kole said nothing. But something in his look must have worried her, because her temper—often hotter than his own—cooled quickly.

“What is it, Kole?” she asked. “What do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“Was it the Night Lord?”

“Tu’Ren says it wasn’t a Night Lord—not a true one, at any rate.”

Iyana just looked at him.

“It’s just a feeling, Iyana,” he said, standing and stretching. “And dreams.”

“Your dreams are as vivid as Ninyeva’s sometimes,” Iyana sounded concerned.

“Don’t let it worry you.”

“It worries you.”

Kole was silent.

“Some hold Jenk Ganmeer up as the future hero of our people,” Iyana said. “There are whispers that he will lead us out of the Valley and back into the deserts to reclaim our lands.”

Kole looked at her, his expression unreadable.

“But those who count know that it’s you, Kole. Why do you think Ninyeva is allowing you to go where no other has since—

“Since my mother,” Kole finished, and Iyana fell silent.

Kole thought to tell her he was sorry, or that he knew she was. Instead, he said nothing.

“Thank you for the drink.”

He left, feeling those green eyes on his back long after he’d rounded the bend.

Linn had not gone north after all. Instead, she took a circuitous route through Eastlake. Her watch did not begin for a few hours and she would not be missed as sorely as one of the Keepers.

Sunrise in the Dark Months was always slow in coming. It painted the stones in the road pink and orange, like coals left on the edge of a fire. The sun would barely rise above the lake, its path more horizontal than vertical as it skirted the edge of the horizon before disappearing a few hours hence, leaving them stranded in darkness once again.

She turned west, taking a path through the squat homes that ran parallel to the shore. From her vantage, she could see the salt water calm as mirrored glass all the way to the jagged spine of obsidian that broke its surface in the center. Though Last Lake was in the south of the Valley, she felt that she could hit one of the Sage’s peaks in the north with a well-placed shaft on a clear day. Looking south, over the obsidian spires, she could make out only the faintest outlines of the ridges that separated the lake from the mother ocean that ringed it, the salt tunnels breathing like dragons beneath the surface of water and rock.

Westlake sat on a hill, which was sheltered by a shelf of gray stone that might have been the child of some ancient peak now fallen down. The weak sun rarely marked the roads clearly up here, so lanterns lit her way.

Linn always focused on her surroundings when her mind was troubled. She saw everything except for what she did not want to see. Sometimes she wished she knew her mind as well as she knew the details of each branch in the woods before the wall. She wondered if Kole knew it better. She did not have to wonder if Iyana did.

Though she was not sentimental, Linn’s mind wandered this morning. She remembered her moonlit hunt with Kole. She remembered their first faux hunts as children, and then a little older, when they had changed from pretend to real and ended with killing. They had discovered more after that first hunt, lying in the moss by the river after washing. But it seemed those days were behind them.

They were memories so pure as to be agonizing, and her fondness for them scared her so much that she had hidden them away. She wondered if they both had, and if it was best that way. Still, they cared for each other deeper than knowing.

It was a sad thing that killing had first brought her and Kole together, and it was killing that bound them together now. It was killing out of necessity, but she envied those in the Valley that found ways to avoid it. She passed them on the streets and they thanked her for it with their looks and glances—thanked her for taking the bloody burden. A part of her hated them for it, but it was a small part. It was the part of her that railed silently against the world, and the part she had buried beneath the same hill as her parents.

The truth was that she and Kole knew each other better in those moments than in all the quiet ones in between, the cold efficiency of her work painting a stark contrast to the firestorm that consumed him when his blades were lit. There was a trust at the center of it—a trust she was betraying now.

But she had to protect him. She had to protect Iyana. She would protect them all, Landkist or not.

Linn thought of the difference between secrets and lies as she came to a green door and rapped.

W
hile the homes near the wall were newer, built primarily of wood and thatch, the structures further down the slope took on a more permanent shape. The cobbled streets were overgrown with moss and weeds, wending their way through the market and around the wells before giving way to the gravel where the fishermen kept their cabins.

Although many of these hovels were ramshackle in appearance, they were the oldest at the Lake, having been put up before there was even a true settlement along its banks. Back then, there had been no need for walls; in fact, it was the very decision by the Merchant Council of Hearth to build their own gaudy white barriers that prompted the Emberfolk to fracture, with a great number coming south to the salt and spurs. The strategic advantages provided by the land around Last Lake were more of a happy accident than any genius in engineering. The settlement was protected on three sides by water and rock, and on the fourth by a thick timber wall manned by some of the stoutest warriors in the Valley.

Ninyeva considered how all she now saw before her would have been swept away long ago if not for those warriors—if not for Tu’Ren and his Embers, Landkist much more useful than she.

She rapped gnarled knuckles on the mahogany rail of her leaning tower, looking out over the docks below, the Long Hall a stone’s throw away. These had been her chambers for as long as she had made the Lake her home, which was near as long as any save for Doh’Rah, the man that had convinced her to come in the first place.

What if she had stayed out among the Faey? What more could she have learned from the other Landkist blessed as she was blessed?

But her people had needed her, she supposed. Or thought they needed her, which was as near a thing. Ninyeva was the oldest of the Emberfolk in the Valley and the first to be Landkist by it. To the young and leaderless, this made her wise. For a long time, she felt wise, when the killing and dying had been done on human terms—meaningless conflicts between the three tribes of the Valley. Quelling those conflicts took doing. For Ninyeva, it was all a matter of listening and getting the right ears to listen back.

The Dark Kind had no ears for mercy and no hearts for forgiveness. There was no wisdom could stop a thing like them. They were as inevitable as the Dark Months themselves. The Valley had made her people soft. Try as she might, she could not remember the sting of the sand in her eyes or the sun on her back.

Of course, it was the young and leaderless that guarded them now. They were made of stronger stuff than any that had entered the Valley in the legendary caravan of which Ninyeva was a part. But it was not enough to stop the inevitable.

There was a chill in the room, and if there was one in the Valley who dealt with chills even worse than she, it was Doh’Rah. Ninyeva sighed and turned away from the railing, moving to the threaded carpet in the center. She lifted the blackened grate and slid another stack of scented oak into the sloped pit beneath it, fanning the eager flames back to life. Her thoughts continued to tumble around as she waited—thoughts and their cousin doubts.

Doh’Rah would have news from Hearth and the Scattered Villages. He might even have word from the Rivermen at the Fork. He was well known and respected, if not entirely liked. Ninyeva held the hearts of the Emberfolk of the Lake, but he held their minds.

In the distant past, Ninyeva might have been anxious at his approach. In the not-so-distant past, she would be excited to match wits. Now, she felt neither frayed nerves nor the swell of anticipation. The Dark Kind had come for them every year for the last generation, and they had lost many of their best and most of their brightest. Together, they shared the burden of leadership, whatever good it did their people.