Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (49 page)

She saw a clash of Embers unlike anything she could have imagined. There was Kole, single blade struggling to hold back the torrent the King of Ember sent against him. The latter was trying to get to her, she saw—trying to pry the Sage from her shell. Baas joined the fray, his shield striking out and granting Kole a reprieve. The flames danced their wicked dance, delighting in the chaos of combat, and both Embers drank it in and poured it out in equal measure.

Linn had thought it impossible for an Ember to be hurt by the fire unless he willed it so, but Kole was burning. She could see the pain etched onto his face. More than that, she could see the desperation, the knowing that he could not win.

The battle of the present faded and images from the distant past were called up like memories through a faraway fog. She saw bronze-skinned men and women arrayed in staggered ranks, perched among the red rocks of a foreign land. Their wings—white and gray—flapped gently.

They were Landkist unlike any she had seen or heard of. At their head was a great leader whom she recognized, his crown bedecked in white feathers, body encased in brilliant armor that shone gold and silver in the light.

There was a great host embattled across the plains before them. The number of combatants was beyond counting, but there was power among them. She saw Landkist of all manner locked in mortal combat. Some rode great beasts with eyes shining like the emerald of the Faeykin, while others turned their skin to armor, shattering weapons on impact. There were stone-throwers that reminded her of the Rockbled and there were archers who guided their shafts with thought alone.

Wings beat and the ranks of birdmen took off, eager to join the fray. She did not see the clash, but she saw its aftermath, the White Crest’s armor cracked and pitted, feathers red with blood. Behind him, the last of his Landkist perished in the swirling dust and she felt the heartbreak almost as keenly as the guilt that threatened to choke him like so much bile.

Next, Linn saw the Valley that had ever been her home, but she saw it in a different time. She saw the white rocks poking up from the green fields where Hearth would be. She rode on great wings over the shining silver lake, its shores bare but for the moss and stone that littered them, no Long Hall in sight. She saw the children of the Faey duck between the branches of trees at his passing, the Rivermen turn from him in the gap that broke the mountains where his titanic clash with the Night Lords would later cave them in.

Most of all, she felt the loneliness and regret, as well as seeds of anger too deep to contain. She felt fear in the knowledge of the growing threat posed by the Eastern Dark and the tense anticipation of their inevitable conflict.

Finally, she saw Ninyeva standing in the rain, bloody before the wreckage of her tower at Last Lake. She stood taller than she was, casting a shadow against his violent light that frightened him.

And Linn’s heart broke when he struck her down.

She felt his shame, then, and that was what lingered longest as he passed beyond her reach.

But some of him remained.

“He has to die!”

The King of Ember seemed able to fly, jetting around the chamber on blazing trails. He dodged the sorry tongues of flame Kole sent for him from the edges of his blade and absorbed the geysers with his glowing palms.

Kole had been struck twice by the beams those palms produced and the heat of it shocked him, leaving him shaking with an energy that threatened to break him apart. Blood dripped from his nose and burned up in a red mist.

He fought on.

He ducked and dodged, going to work with his blade and infusing his muscles with the fire they needed rather than wasting it on attacks the other Ember rendered moot.

If it were not for Baas, who took the latest beam off the crown of his great shield, Kole would have fallen in the third exchange. As it were, with the combination of his resistance to the fire and Baas’s masterful defense, they were able to keep their adversary away from Linn, whose thrashing had given way to a stillness Kole feared to contemplate.

“Stop this!” Kole screamed, but the King of Ember only brought more power to bear. He sent Baas crashing into the far wall, his leather doublet smoking. Though the Rockbled’s skin was unmarked, the glazed look in his eyes suggested that the heat was taking its toll, leeching the strength from him.

“He must be excised,” the King of Ember said, ducking Kole’s swing and slamming him hard in the side. The percussive blast was accentuated by a crack that had Kole falling to one knee, sword held before him in shaking fingers.

The King of Ember stood over him, comet fists at his sides, eyes glowing molten amber. For a moment, his look softened. He hesitated before a shadow passed over him, darkening his features like smoke.

He raised his hand and Kole tried to rise and found that he could not.

And then the King of Ember vanished, disappearing under the hurtling side of a section of black marble. Kole looked to the right and saw Baas on his hands and knees, chest heaving, face pale. A huge chunk of the keep’s base was missing—a missile of Baas’s make. Framed against the doorway, Kole could see the running forms of the other Rockbled warriors, iron-forged weapons held aloft.

An explosion rocked the gallery and night turned to day. Fragments of stone shot in all directions, embedding themselves in the crumbling soapstone pillars and throwing sparks up as they struck the glowing tiles in the floor. And the King of Ember approached in all his majesty, stepping over the ruins of the throne. Blood caked his forehead and ran hissing down his neck, but he was alive. And he was angry.

“You cannot have her,” Kole said, rising on shaking legs. Two of Baas’s warriors flanked him, weapons ready. Their breath was ragged in the furnace the keep had become, but they stood strong and unmoving.

“They must all die,” the King of Ember said, steady in his approach.

Stones flew at him from each side, two Rockbled calling pieces from the broken floor and whipping them in rapid succession. But the Ember called up his flames and they burned so hot around him that the stones were reduced to ash before they bounced lightly against his red armor.

“The good in them is not worth saving in the face of man’s fall,” he said. “The White Crest was good once. So was the Sage of the Waste. It was he who told me of the Valley. It was he who repelled the Eastern Dark for generations, keeping the Night Lords from the cave doors so the Keepers would only have their minions to face.”

“And you would kill him too? Or have you done it already?” Kole cried.

“His time will come,” he said. “You of all people know the ruin their magic can bring. How many wars must we fight on their behalf?”

“A war of which you’re a part!”

“The final war. A war the Eastern Dark will finish, before I finish him.”

“He’ll never let you close again,” Kole said, desperate. “He knows your mind.”

“It won’t save him. It won’t save any of them.”

The warriors on Kole’s flanks charged. These Rivermen were not Landkist, and Kole screamed for them to stop, but it was too late. With a flare and the smallest of shrieks, they were gone, snuffed out. The Rockbled throwers were themselves thrown back, slamming against opposite walls before falling in dazed heaps.

The King of Ember stood over him, wreathed in flames. He was like a god to look upon. In that moment, looking up into a face turned golden, Kole knew this man could do anything he said.

He raised a glowing palm, and Kole braced for a heat unlike anything he had ever felt.

It was cold.

The King of Ember’s face contorted, his expression morphing, and Kole felt the heat drain from his body, absorbed into the other Ember’s outstretched palm. His skin turned blue and he felt like death, ice in his veins and heart slowing. He knew what it must be like to freeze and drown all at once.

Just before his vision faded, the sensation ceased, and he crumbled to the floor, his fire snuffed out but his life still clinging.

Linn squeezed her eyes shut tight against the pain as she was thrown back into her body, but all was calm. Her arms felt light as feathers. Her body thrummed with energy, as if the shifting currents in the embattled chamber passed through rather than around her. Her heart beat strong and steady, and with each pulse, there was a buzz like the building charge in a storm cloud.

Most of all, her sight—long the keenest in the Valley—was now truly akin to that of an eagle. Though the vaulted ceiling was too high even to be lit by the clashing Embers before the broken throne, Linn could see the details in the carved obsidian, the tiny motes of ash floating beneath the skylight. She saw far out into the blue-black night sky, and it nearly took her breath away, so clear did it appear, so in reach.

And then she heard Kole’s anguished cry.

Linn went to stand and felt none of the agony she had expected. She brought the bow with her, which had stayed together where the silver shaft had split in two.

Kole cried out again and Linn cursed, snatching up the fletched end and setting it to the string. She settled down onto one knee. The arrow was halved, but the broken end still had enough length to scrape the bow when drawn; it would have to do.

As she aimed, Linn saw the ending of the Embers’ duel in vivid detail. Though they battled thirty strides away or more, she saw the veins standing out in the King of Ember’s hand as he turned Kole’s blade aside and raised that glowing palm.

Kole tried to rise, but he was too weak. A look of pity crossed the King of Ember’s features before his palm began to dull. Kole’s skin turned ashen blue, and as she watched, Linn felt something stirring within her. Her palms tingled, hair waving with a breeze she had not felt moments before. There was an energy about her. It teased the tips of her fingers and played softly along the edges of her lips.

Linn smiled, feeling the storm as the clouds wheeled overhead. The orange and red in the chamber was swallowed by a brilliant blue as the rift in the roof opened further, the force of the passing lightning widening the breach.

It came for her, and this time, Linn did not recoil. She breathed in as the bolt struck, closing her eyes and feeling the electricity infuse her body and charge her heart. And then she harnessed it, passing the lightning through her veins and moving the wind with her will. She directed it all into the missing point of the shaft and let fly, reveling in the look of shock in those amber eyes as they turned her way.

The bolt struck true, blasting the Ember back even as he brought his palms around to block. He screamed out as the shaft went tumbling, teeth clenched as the storm wracked his body.

Linn was standing over him by the time he hit the ground, his red armor blackened and his eyes losing their glow.

“You will not take him from me,” she said.

The King of Ember coughed, spots of blood standing out on his chin.

“I would not kill him.”

“You wouldn’t. But then, you are not truly you.”

He looked up at her with a mix of awe and denial.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “Their war will consume—

Linn knelt beside him.

“Maybe you’re right. But it’ll be us who decide. The Sages are in for a reckoning, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let one of them decide it. There is good to be found in all, even the Sages. I have felt it. Perhaps your master is the exception.”

“The power,” he said, reaching out for her hand, which was orbited by blue motes of light she hadn’t noticed before—remnants of the blast that clung to her protectively. “It will consume you.”

“We’ll see.”

A part of Linn knew she should end it then and there. But she could not. Rather, she chose not to.

“Mother Ninyeva believed in you,” she said in a whisper, eyes watering.

The name seemed to strike something within him. His eyes widened as footfalls broke the silence.

Linn whirled and was relieved to see Misha Ve’Gah and the remainder of the Rockbled enter the moonlit gallery. The Ember had shed her armor and now sported nothing but her leggings and an immodest sash of cloth that she had tied from wounded hip to scraped shoulder. One of the warriors carried Jenk over one shoulder as if he were a child, and another set Nathen down to rest by the doorway before racing to check on Baas, who laid face-down by the blasted hole in the wall.