Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (3 page)

“Never seen one like that,” Kole said, finding more of his voice with each word. An image of the great ape—pale, blue eyes staring at nothing after it had fallen—came up unbidden.

“Wasn’t a Night Lord,” Tu’Ren said. He nodded at Kole’s surprised look. “I know what it must’ve looked like to one as young as you. Hell, I know what I thought when I saw it bearing down on Holspahr. It was something, alright, and there’s only one place a thing like that came from.”

“The Deep Lands,” Kole said.

“Aye. Nothing’s come out of there near as long as I can remember. Then again, the Dark Months get worse each time, more of them finding their way into the Valley. Things must be getting bad out there.”

Their exchange stopped abruptly as they reached the Long Hall, the last pattering rain slowing to a steady mist that carried on the breeze, soothing and cool. Kole was set down in the reeds beside the road and Tu’Ren squatted beside him with a groan.

“Kole!”

“Ah,” Tu’Ren sighed. “There she is. Linn ran off to find her straight away, seeing the state you were in.” He winked. “How you managed to ensnare those two lovelies is beyond me, but now you’ve got a nice scar to show them, eh?” He touched Kole under the cheek, his skin pulling with a pinch at the deep scab.

“It’s going to scar like leather,” Kole said, leaving out that it was Linn who gave it to him. He probably owed her his thanks for that.

“All Embers do,” Tu’Ren said, rising with a few more creaks and cracks than the reeds he stood on. “The fire in our blood cares for closing wounds, not stitching them proper.”

A flash of blue and green and Iyana Ve’Ran was kneeling beside him, the First Keeper moving off with a bowed gait that stood at odds with his reassuring demeanor.

“She was corralling a group of children and elders toward the shoreline,” Linn called over as she crossed the road. “They had boats waiting.”

“You had so little faith in your fearless protectors?” Kole asked, fighting through the fog to lock eyes with Iyana.

“The attacks get worse each time,” she said, squeezing his arm tightly as she closed her eyes and began to concentrate. “Perhaps a little fear would do our protectors well.”

People were forming a crowd outside of the Long Hall. The rest of the fighters must have been up at the wall, manning it in case of another attack, though the light was nearly upon them.

“Fair enough,” he said, smirking at Linn as Iyana bent to her work.

The filtered moonlight merged with the cold rays of the distant sun, casting a silver-blue hue on Iyana’s light hair as Kole studied her. Her ears bore the unmistakable slant of a child of the Valley Faey, though she had been born among the Emberfolk. Young as she appeared—childlike, almost—she was only a Valley bloom Kole’s junior.

Unlike Kole and his Embers, the Faey had a healer’s touch. Like all Emberfolk, Iyana traced her bloodline back to the snaking sands in the deserts of the north, but the land chooses its own, and the Valley had made her only the second from among their people to bestow its gifts. She was one caught between worlds, Kole knew, and though her touch was smooth and caressing as river stones, he marveled at her solidity.

“Ow,” Kole said, wincing as the sting spread through his veins. He struggled to keep from burning her hand as his blood threatened to rise.

“Your blood was thick,” she said, heedless of his complaints. “Something in that beast got into you. But it looks like you burned most of it out on your own.”

“Who said Embers can’t be healers too?” Kole asked, and he was rewarded with a stare even more withering than those Linn could muster.

Iyana pulled a small mixing bowl from some secret compartment in her pack; the stone was greened from frequent use. She withdrew a patch of pungent herbs and set to crushing.

“This will help you get back to yourself quicker.”

“Lovely,” Linn said sarcastically as she watched the crowd passing by, nodding at the elders who thanked her with heads bowed.

Kole followed her line of sight and saw Tu’Ren locked in an argument with another group. Seer Rusul and her crones watched from the shadows with their beady eyes before moving off toward Eastlake.

The Long Hall was raised above the water on wooden pegs. The door opened, spilling an orange glow onto the dusky road, and the press surged inside. Tu’Ren was still locked in verbal combat as he entered.

Kole put some of the paste Iyana gave him under his tongue and she laughed at the face he made.

“I have a feeling that whatever energy you just gave me is going to be sucked out in there.”

“You’re going in?” Linn asked.

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Decisions are going to be made soon, and we’d better make ourselves a part of them.”

Iyana sighed and rose.

“Go, then,” she said haughtily. “I’ve other wounded to tend to.”

“Don’t burn yourself out,” Linn said, gripping her sister’s shoulder affectionately. Iyana smiled at her and tossed a different look back at Kole.

“That’s his job,” and she walked off.

Linn and Kole were among the last filing into the overstuffed meeting place. Smoke choked the rafters and its trailing vapors mixed with the orange glow of the fire pit, lending the whole affair a hazy, dream-like appeal. The scents weren’t at all unpleasant: burnt lake grass, holly and sage—the last shaken by a pair of elders who made their aching way around the chamber.

“I imagine that’s supposed to cool tempers,” Linn said sardonically.

“I imagine.”

The Emberfolk liked to pretend hierarchy was only enforced among the Keepers, but outsiders would immediately be able to mark the relative import of the assembled by their proximity to the coals burning in the center of the room.

Kole spotted his father Karin off to the left, his dark complexion making it difficult to read his expression in the smoke. Their eyes met, and Karin’s tired mask fell away in a warm and caring smile.

“Your father was the one who found you,” Linn said. “You had chased the Dark Kind into the trees. I lost track of you.”

“What was he doing in the woods?”

“I imagine he was on his way back from Hearth. He couldn’t well march in while the Dark Kind were at the gates.”

“How does he avoid them out there?” Kole wondered aloud.

“He is First Runner of Last Lake,” Linn said, as if that explained it all.

It was a strange image, Karin Reyna alone in the woods and surrounded by creatures of night and shadow.

Kole shook himself back into the present. Perhaps Iyana had given him stronger stuff than she had let on.

An old man sat directly before the coals cross-legged. Doh’Rah Kadeh, father of Tu’Ren and the second oldest of the Emberfolk in the Valley, commanded respect. Kole knew that had not always been the case, particularly among the Emberfolk of Hearth, whom Doh’Rah had split off from decades before.

Ninyeva sat across from him. The Faey Mother was the only soul older than Doh’Rah among the Emberfolk, and the iridescent green in her eyes only glowed brighter with each passing year. Her standing had been well-earned.

“What have we done with the beast?” Doh’Rah asked. He was often the one to break the silence.

“It’s being dragged to Eastlake as we speak,” Larren Holspahr said in the same manner in which he said everything: grim. “The Seers wanted a look at it before we burned it away.”

“Wholly unnecessary,” Doh’Rah said, and there were murmurs of agreement in the hall. “The beast is no problem we haven’t faced before.”

“If that ain’t a problem, I’d love to hear your idea of one.”

Heads tilted and twisted to see Bali Swell, the fisherman. He stood by the door, arms crossed.

“That thing took out two of our finest lads and carved up a good handful more.”

“And we carved him up right back,” Tu’Ren broke in.

There were several experienced blades in the room, but none commanded quite the respect as the First Keeper. Tu’Ren had led more defenses against the Dark Kind than any other. Ever since the Breaking of the Valley, when the mountain passes had sealed them in and the horrors started leaking in from other lands, he had been their rock, their flame in the darkness. Breaches like the one that had happened tonight were rare; Kole knew that Tu’Ren took it personally.

Bali nodded in deference, but cleared his throat to say more. There were a few groans at that, but Kole saw that he had the attention of most in the room.

“I heard some calling this one a Night Lord,” he said, and there were a few audible gasps. “Lucky we have Embers like yourself, First Keeper, but how many are there? A dozen, between us and our cousins in Hearth? And when was the last one born? Ten years ago? More?”

There were nine. And Kaya Ferrahl was the last to be born in the Valley, twenty years ago. Kole watched the younger Ember as she leaned against the far wall, not far from Jenk, who was born a year after Kole and before Kaya. He watched the proceedings with far more interest than she.

“Night Lord!” Doh’Rah veritably spat the term. “What, pray tell, is so lordly about a giant ape riddled with sickness? The Dark Kind have ever been a scourge on all lands. That creature was as much victim as foe.”

“That was no average Dark Kind,” Bali said, knuckles going white as he squeezed his forearms. His son Nathen grabbed him on the shoulder, but he shook him off. “I say he’s come back for us, come to finish what he started with our king back in the desert.”

There were no gasps there, just a palpable silence. Kole felt it like a shadow on the heart. The Dark Kind were a fact of life in all lands, as far as they knew. When the World Apart drifted close enough to touch during the Dark Months, they made their way in through whatever seams they could find. It was not the Dark Kind the Emberfolk had fled when their king led them out of the desert a century and more ago; it was one who spoke to them, commanded them. He was one of the Six—the one all Emberfolk grew up fearing, and the one Kole most wanted to meet.

Ninyeva unclasped her hands, and even in that small movement she commanded the room.

“Bali is not wrong,” she said, which caused quite the stir. “The beast was not so unlike a Night Lord, but a sign of our enemy returned this is not. The Night Lords fell in battle against the White Crest, our protector.”

Her green eyes searched the room, settling on Larren.

“Capable as our few remaining Embers are, this beast was a pale shadow of the ones that tangled with him in the passes. The White Crest fell that day, but he took those titans with him.”

“That doesn’t mean he took his brother with him,” Rhees, a blond craftsman a few years older than Kole, put in. “Him that took our king from us.”

There were half-hearted cheers at that.

“The Eastern Dark has never been one of the strongest of the Sages,” Ninyeva said. “Quite the opposite. If his servants couldn’t do it for him, I don’t expect he stood much of a chance against our Sage.”

A woman spit and made for the door.

“Sages and Wizards and Ember Kings,” she muttered. “Keep your ghosts. I have children to feed.”

“All due respect, Faey Mother,” Bali said. “But our protector is gone along with our king. If it weren’t for our Embers—like Kole Reyna there—I fear we’d be following in their footsteps.”

There were cheers at Kole’s name, and his father beamed beneath his bangs, but Kole felt himself blush.

“For all we know, he fell in battle with the White Crest along with his Night Lords,” Ninyeva said. Kole was happy to have the attention shift away from him.

Bali looked as if he wanted to speak, but even he could sense when his wick had run. He held his peace.

“Kole Reyna,” Ninyeva said, and all eyes again turned toward him, including those piercing greens of the Faey Mother. “I wonder what you think of this. It was you who came face-to-face with the beast, was it not?”

Kole stared at her for a spell until Linn elbowed him in the back. He coughed.

“Larren saw it plenty up close as well,” he said, and the Second Keeper merely watched him, expression unmoving.

“Larren’s spear knew the beast longer than he did, and we’re glad of that,” Ninyeva said. “But I wonder what you saw. Do you think you came face-to-face with a Night Lord?”

“I can’t speak to that,” Kole said hesitantly.

“But you want to speak to something,” Ninyeva said, green eyes boring in.

Kole cleared his throat, and the whole of the hall seemed to swell in anticipation.

“It was looking at me,” he said after a spell, the words sounding even more foolish spoken aloud than they had in his head.

There was a silence that stretched before Kole broke it.

“I mean to say, whatever it was, it felt like it was really seeing me.”

“And?” Ninyeva prodded. Her eyes were a command unto themselves.

“I felt that someone else was looking at me. Something greater. Something worse.”

Grumbles in the crowd around Bali.

If the room held the mood of a burial rite before, it now exploded into something verging on panic. Accusations were levied and put down, and Kole’s words were thrown in his face only for those around him to lob them back with twice the venom. Through it all, the greens of the Faey Mother never left him. She raised a hand, and either that or the sudden flash from Tu’Ren’s palms got everyone settled back in.

“You never say much, Kole Reyna,” Ninyeva said as the scent of ozone curled throughout the hall. “But you say more than many know. Give us your true feelings. Do you think it was him? Do you think it was the Eastern Dark who glimpsed you and whom you glimpsed behind those eyes?”

“You asked for my thoughts and you have them,” Kole said. Karin had shifted toward him in the crowd, silent as the rest were loud. His father’s presence was as reassuring as Ninyeva’s gaze was unsettling.

“I have a part of them,” Ninyeva said, her tone unyielding. “As a child, you doubted the existence of the White Crest, just as you doubted his dark adversary.”

Kole felt his blood go hot. Karin must have as well, as he laid a hand on his son’s arm.

“I have never seen either of them,” Kole said through a jaw made suddenly stone tight.

“I have never seen the eye of a storm on the lake, as Bali has,” Ninyeva said. The sailor’s demeanor softened at the mention. “I have never seen the far reaches of the Untamed Hills, though I trust they exist.”