Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (28 page)

He went to work like one of the Embers of legend. Metal weapons seemed to dull and bend as they came into contact with his own. Their wielders fared no better, as Tu’Ren sent flares far wider than Iyana had known possible, the rays shooting out from the edges of his blade as if shot from a bow.

Soon enough, only the two young Embers remained of the rogue company. Vennil battled both, but a slash to her thigh put her down in a tangle, one axe spinning from her grip along with three fingers.

Iyana was sickly fascinated watching the Embers battle one another. Though they were effectively immune to each other’s flames, they still made use of them, sending flares and crescents to blind and confuse as they danced their deadly dance. It was a tense battle while it lasted, but Vennil had lost, and she would have been cut down for good had Tu’Ren not moved to stand before her, eyes shining like a god’s.

The young Embers withdrew and paced before him like jungle cats. By their movements, Iyana thought them to be brother and sister. By their poise, she thought it obvious they were the leaders of the rogue brigand, the ones most responsible for the trail of garish sights. And now they had slain the First Keeper of the Lake and maimed the First Keeper of Hearth.

The pair came at him mid-stride like bolts fired from a crossbow. Tu’Ren repelled them with a violent gust. The male lost his blade, which embedded itself in the trunk of a nearby tree. As he moved to retrieve it, his sister renewed her assault on Tu’Ren, forcing him back with a blitzing attack. Her fury only served to highlight her desperation.

Her brother had nearly pried his burning blade from the scorched trunk when she was launched into him so forcefully that he was impaled on the dull end of his weapon. The impact resulted in a sickening crunch that ended with a sorry gasp as he died on the still-burning length of Everwood.

Tu’Ren was standing over her when she came to. There was a storm in him, and Iyana knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was far from spent. The Ember—no more than a child, really—glared up at him through dirt-caked tears.

“I can still remember the way she looked at me,” he said, raising his glowing blade and the burning palm behind it. “There was accusation in her eyes. As if I was wrong. As if I was evil. A thing to be feared.”

Despite the circumstances, the girl was beautiful, her face lit orange and blue. Iyana wondered whom her parents had been, if she had loved or been loved. She tried not to look at the prone form of her brother leaning sickly above her head.

“I felt like a passenger to the flames,” Tu’Ren said, and as he did, the girl finally broke, her body wracked with sobs. She looked down at the ground.

Iyana heard rustling and turned to see Fort’U helping a woozy Vennil to her feat, the tracker keeping a weary eye on Tu’Ren all the while. The First Keeper of Hearth reached her maimed hand out toward the still form of Croen Teeh as Fort’U whispered words of comfort, dragging her onto the paths beyond.

“I wanted to ask her why she had done it.”

Iyana turned back to the deadly scene. Tu’Ren’s fist was all blue now, his eyes the yellow of sunlight.

“I wanted to ask if the children of the Faey had whimpered as she did now before she burned them up. Most of all, I wanted to ask how either of us could ever be forgiven.”

The blade became a beam that became an inferno, engulfing the girl, her brother and the tree that marked them in a flash of light so bright in rendered Iyana blind. She screamed for what felt like minutes, the image of the kneeling girl imprinted on the backs of her lids. She was shaking. Or being shaken.

“Yani? Iyana?”

She opened her eyes to see a face lined with care, worry … and regret. It was a face so at odds with the one she had just seen it almost seemed alien.

“I’m … okay,” she said weakly, allowing the Ember to help her into a seated position.

Tu’Ren put a cold cup into her hands and she drank deeply, the shock revitalizing her. Neither of them spoke for a time as the fire turned to coals in the hearth.

“You were there, weren’t you?”

Iyana nodded and Tu’Ren looked as though his heart might break then and there. She laid a hand on his arm, surprised at its coolness.

“Thank you,” she said, green eyes shining. “I know how hard that was. Truly I know.”

Tu’Ren nodded and sighed. He stood and crossed to the window, looking out at the gate beyond.

“I need to get back up there,” he said without turning. “Need to keep up appearances. Make it look like we’re doing something, after all. Something aside from waiting.”

The Ember retrieved his cloak from the rack. He wore no scabbard and instead strapped his great Everwood blade—a different one than that he had burned up in the memory—to his back.

“The reason I build my fires the old fashioned way, little Yani,” he said, standing over her, “is because it reminds me that, though I hold the flame within me, we are separate things. It is a gift from the World. That does not make it a good thing or a bad thing. Just a thing.”

He put a hand on her shoulder.

“The Embers may be more overtly powerful than many of the other Landkist,” he said, “but the World does not bestow any of its gifts lightly. I have to believe that. Explore yours, Iyana, but never let them explore you. Do not become lost from who you are.”

“You never have,” Iyana said. “I know who you are.”

Judging by the look on the First Keeper’s face, it was exactly what he needed to hear.

After he had left, she wrapped the rug tighter around her, watching the sputtering flames in the hearth.

“I know who I am.”

A
s it turned out, the air got no fresher the higher they climbed, the appearance of another arm of the subterranean river proof of how violently and how deeply the River F’Rust had delved in its decades of captivity.

The three of them knew the river completely now: the smell of its waters—metal and gravel mixed—and the cool kiss of its spray. They knew its taste—tin and copper—just as they knew its sound as the roar of the earth itself.

The feeling of elation Linn had experienced upon finding a tunnel that moved up instead of down days earlier had entirely dissipated, leaving her struck with the helpless reality that they were hopelessly lost. Their food stores were nearly depleted and their bodies bore the scrapes and bruises of creatures unused to the darkness of the Deep Lands.

Linn hated the river. She hated it as she had never hated another person. She hated it as she had never hated the Dark Kind. She hated its indifference, most of all. Even as it provided her its lifeblood, she accepted it grudgingly. It felt like drinking poison.

“I think we should rest here,” Jenk said when they came to a particularly wide berth of the same featureless black rock they had come to loath.

Nathen dropped the small pack that represented their combined possessions and sank in a slouch against the tar-colored wall without a word. His eyes were vacant and his stomach spoke louder than he did.

“Works for me,” Linn said. She leaned against the same wall and watched Nathen out of the corner of her eye. His breathing was slow, deliberate. She worried about him.

Sighing, Jenk stripped off his boots and went to the edge of the platform, sinking his feet into the flowing black water with a sigh. He did this each day they stopped to rest, and each day, the hiss the water made upon contact with his skin grew fainter. He needed light. Needed it badly.

Watching him, Linn had to admit that Ganmeer had surprised her. She had never much liked him at the Lake. But then, she had never truly known him as a separate thing from Kaya. Perhaps he had played at being a hero in the vein of his grandfather long enough in youth that it had come true. His face bore the haggard look of exhaustion, but, unlike Nathen and, perhaps herself, there was no defeat to be found in the Ember.

It was ironic, in its own way. Linn knew that men and women showed their true colors when pushed to the limit, and those colors were rarely bright. Though his heat had cooled, Jenk seemed to be the exception.

A sound that was keener than the low rumble of the river and more muted than the echoes of splashes among the black rocks snaked its way through the chamber. It was a pitiful sound, Linn thought, squeezing her eyes shut. She did not realize it was coming from her until Jenk put his arm around her shoulders and it stopped.

Linn struggled past the lump in her throat. When she finally did, she opened her eyes and saw that Jenk’s own glistened with dew in the darkness, two more sparkling surfaces in the slick caverns.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and the echoes magnified the words. Jenk regarded her with a mix of sympathy and confusion, while Nathen merely adopted the latter.

“I can’t imagine what for,” Jenk said. It could have been a joke for the sharp irony, but he said it with conviction. He meant it.

“All of it,” she said. “For bringing us out here. For Larren. For Baas. For,” her voice broke. “For Kaya.”

“What else were we to do?” Jenk asked, letting his head fall back against the wall with a thud. “We were waiting for our deaths at Last Lake. Might as well take control and choose a place for it.”

“You’d choose here?”

“I don’t plan to die here.”

There was a pause as they all digested the words, worked them over and held them close. Nathen looked a little more awake now, a little less sullen.

“What do we do if we find him?” Linn asked, more to herself than the others.

“The White Crest or the Eastern Dark?”

“Either. They’re both Sages.”

Jenk turned a curious look on her.

“I would hardly compare the one with the other,” he said.

“Kole would.”

“Our people are dying.”

“And we are here, in the Deep Lands.”

“That is why we are here,” Jenk said. “We’ve all become good at killing and better at dying since the Dark Kind started coming in earnest. It’s time we tried something else.”

The Ember sighed as he finished, and Linn was suddenly conscious of how cool it was in the close chamber despite his presence. He looked pale in the gloom. If not for the light trickling in from faraway chutes and chimneys, they would have had to spend him more by relying on his blade to navigate.

“How are you?” she asked softly, putting a hand on his bare arm. He pulled away and tried to affect a smile.

“I’ll live,” he said. “Someone has to answer for all this.”

“That someone being a Sage, most likely,” Linn said. “Unless it’s some general from the World Apart holed up in these mountains.”

“No,” Jenk said. “That’s not how they operate. The Night Lords are their generals, the Sentinels their Captains of corruption. Only the Eastern Dark communes with them, organizes them like this.”

“What if Kole is right?” Linn asked. “What if the White Crest lives?”

“Then I’ll have my answers from him,” Jenk said, the threat of violence lingering. “If he hasn’t intervened on our behalf, as was his agreement with the King of Ember, he’s in no position to stand up to us.”

“To you,” Linn corrected. “Nathen and I are capable, but we are no Landkist. He’ll answer to you.”

Jenk shrugged as if it did not matter, but Linn could feel the atmosphere swell and collapse as he flared.

“Jenk?”

His breathing grew heavy and his eyes fluttered.

“Fine,” he said, but the word drifted as he slumped.

“Nathen!”

The other man was up in a flash that belied his exhausted state. He pulled Jenk away from the wall and laid him down, the Ember’s breaths coming short and fast. Linn rested a hand on his forehead, which was pulsing, alternating between hot and cool before settling to something close to normal. That was not good. Linn had never heard of an Ember dying from lack of sun and flame, but prolonged deprivation could make them seriously ill.

“I’m … fine,” he whispered again and Linn shushed him.

A blanket of calm settled on her. There was something to do and she’d see it done.

“You’re fading, Ganmeer,” she said. “We need a fire.”

“What about his blade?” Nathen asked. “Why can’t he light that and use the flames to charge?”

“Everwood blades are conduits. I don’t understand it completely, but I know they don’t burn so much as come to life. He needs a fire with real fuel.”

“Nothing,” Jenk started, but Linn spoke over him.

“There is,” she said, turning to Nathen. “You remember the last pool we passed? The slow one with foam at the edges.”

Nathen nodded, eyes widening.

“There was debris. Bark or lichen.”

“I remember,” he said, rising to his feet as Jenk tried to grab at him weakly. “It won’t take long.” He walked to the back of the chamber, where the path curved around the river. Linn followed.

When they were comfortably out of earshot, she turned him around.

“You know the way?”

He nodded, looking to their right, where the pathway spiraled down into the deeper darkness. Jenk had been forced to ignite his blade shortly after passing that pool, but Nathen was an experienced hunter; mapping the paths was second nature to him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Back before you know I’m gone.”