Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (36 page)

Pure sunlight hit them, and what they at first took for the great orb itself eventually resolved into the tunnel’s jagged mouth. When Linn’s eyes cleared enough to draw colors again, she saw the bright blue of the sky. There was not a hint of storm on the horizon.

Nathen nearly sobbed beside her, while Jenk hesitated for only the faintest of instants before running to the opening. He stood there with arms out, chest facing the distant blaze as he drank it in.

Together, Linn and Nathen followed, walking shoulder to shoulder. Roots and vines snaked their way into the black mouth and purple flowers dotted a curtain of moss that framed the hole. But it was the view beyond that took their breath, just as it had yet to relinquish Jenk’s.

It was a field of green with orange fire. From up on their rocky hill, they could see it all: a field of suns—clear pools that drank up the oranges, reds and blues of the sky to create wells of startling beauty. They came in all shapes and sizes and dotted the narrow landscape to the east far as they could see. The ground between them was covered in a carpet of green and purple with black stones jutting up to form a pretty sort of violence.

To the north, the ground fell away, revealing a gorge leagues deep, brown earth with ridges framing the horizon, white clouds snaking around their peaks. In the middle was a great divide, and the silver flow of the River F’Rust slithered through, looking like a tiny serpent in place of the dragon they had come to know so well. Far beyond the natural gate, at a distance only Linn could see, were rolling hills and lush trees melting into the distance.

It was the World, and it was not covered in the darkness that assailed their Valley home. It was nothing like she had expected and everything she had hoped.

“There,” Jenk said, pointing east.

Across the pools, framed against the dark clouds to the south that spilled into the Valley, was a cloister of mountains small enough to look like stalagmites from their vantage. They formed a semicircle around a rocky cliff whose bottom dropped away. Below the tallest stones but above the black cliffs, they could see a ruby-red roof glinting like blood. The structure beneath it was half in shadow. It looked as though the mountains were taking it back.

The mood shifted the moment they spied the keep, and that was fine to Linn. She knew they had grim work ahead.

“If anyone’s home,” Nathen said, “I’d assume we’ve been spotted already.”

“Keep to the shadows just in case,” Jenk said, and they moved off, following a grassy depression that sloped southeast.

“Feels like being an eagle,” Linn said, peering down into the Valley that had ever been her home. “It looks somehow bigger and smaller than I imagined at once.”

There was a labyrinth of smaller, jagged peaks below that framed the ceiling that had hung above them throughout their hellish climb, and she could see the cracks and fissures of the Deep Lands even from this height. Between were the Steps, great shelves of rock that might as well have been plains. Linn could see a glittering lake on the lower-most one and what looked to be green, standing at odds with the barren shelves above it. The clouds had thinned in the north, but darkness still swirled thick in the distance.

Straining, Linn could just make out the white jewel of Hearth standing alone in the Valley’s center. It looked to be choked by black, rotted fields, but she knew the truth of it. She looked to the south, but even her eyes failed to pick out the forests before Last Lake.

“Perhaps we’ve become giants,” Jenk said as they picked their way along the rockier ridges. “Maybe these pools are vast oceans and that keep a house of gods.”

“I have a feeling its occupant thinks so,” Linn said without humor.

“Who’s to say he’s not,” Nathen put in.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t have a chat,” Jenk said.

“We should wait for Kole Reyna,” Nathen said, and Jenk’s expression shifted as Linn watched him. She had told them both of Kole’s approach. Nathen thought it represented a grand opportunity, but Jenk seemed to equate it only to another delay before an inevitable confrontation.

“We don’t know which of the Sages resides there,” Linn said. “If any.”

“Look around,” Jenk said bitterly. “I’ll give you a guess.”

“And if it’s our Sage?” Linn asked.

Jenk was silent for a time.

“Then we’ll talk, and see what he has to say.”

That ended it, and they walked until the cloister loomed above them.

“Damn.”

“What is it?” Jenk and Linn asked in unison.

“No way we make it up there without being seen,” Nathen said from under the next rise.

They moved up behind him. Over the ridge, they could see the keep clear as day. It rested at the top of a crisscrossed series of pathways carved into the steep hillside. They looked like cart paths overgrown after decades of neglect. Linn could make out a wall of green-flecked marble in front of the structure, and the gate in the center of the yard was broken and leaning at the hinges.

“Well,” Linn said, “if it is the White Crest, we probably don’t want to surprise him anyway.”

“Assumptions,” Jenk cursed. “Power corrupts, and it corrupts the mind most of all.”

An image of Kole Reyna was called up in Linn’s mind. She shook the thought away.

The three moved off, wending their way up the zigzagging path as casually as goatherds out for a graze. The dark stones of the citadel loomed overhead, another dark cloud to replace those they had climbed above. Closer now, and the red tiles looked less like jewels and more like rusted, spiteful things full of growth, the curved towers and gaps leering like something sick.

But the nightmare was down below, Linn reminded herself. The nightmare her people were living through, dying through. Whatever she might face in the dusted halls of an old Sage’s keep, she would give as fine an account of herself as she could.

Nathen was the first to see him, sitting on a rounded boulder that must once have been part of the keep but had since broken away. His upper body was stiff, back straight and gaze locked on them as his legs dangled in the wind.

Even from a distance, Linn could see Larren’s bearing, but something had changed about him, seemingly for the second time. In place of the red eyes of the Sentinel from the cave were stones of piercing blue. They tracked their progress with the glacial calm of one who has seen mountains grow and slowly crumble into dust.

None of the three spoke, tensing as if they expected him to leap down on them at any moment. His spear was not in hand, but it leaned against the boulder, and they had all seen Holspahr wield it firsthand. At his peak, he was one of the most formidable warriors among a people whose children now counted themselves as players in a generation of war with the Dark Kind. Though the Larren they knew was clearly gone, Linn did not expect him to be any less potent now.

As they neared, the details of the keep resolved themselves in vivid detail, carved beaks and piercing gazes of birds of war adding their own stone scrutiny from behind their former ally.

They reached the sloped ground before the crumbling gate, the boulder and its keeper seated to their left. Across a small courtyard, the maw of the keep opened wide, doors long since rotted away, the hints of cold statues bedecked in armor that glinted molten in the late afternoon rays of the sun.

It took Linn a moment to register that Nathen was no longer beside them. She tried not to alert the thing on the boulder as she cast about, eyes wide, but the creature wearing Larren’s skin laughed a laugh that boomed like faraway thunder and whistled like the wind between ridges.

“Missing someone?” it asked. “He slinked off into the rocks midway up your climb.” It leaned over the rock and crooked its head, neck contorting in an odd way that gave the impression of an owl. “I must admit, even I lost track of him, and these eyes see quite far.”

Neither of them answered, and that looked to annoy the creature. It sat back with a sigh.

“Come,” it said, “Do not let us be burdened by the loss of friends … however recent their departure.”

Beneath the discordant layers of melody in his voice, Linn could hear Larren bubbling through. She wondered if there was anything left of the Ember.

As if he could read her thoughts, the creature smiled at her in an exaggerated way that exposed teeth whiter than marble, canines filed to points like the Corrupted they had fought in the Valley.

“I like this vessel,” it said. “I sent that other beast out. What have you taken to calling them? Sentinels. Yes.”

Jenk spat, his fingers twitching toward his sword.

“We can’t allow those princes of darkness to ride around in our precious Ember shells, now can we?” it asked, looking at him pointedly. Its smile dropped to a hard hawk’s stare.

Linn remained quiet. She glanced about for signs of movement along the ridges. There were plenty of hiding spots about, but the creature did not seem concerned.

“Are we speaking with the White Crest?” Jenk asked. “Or merely a servant?”

“Both, in a manner of speaking,” and the smile returned. The blue hawk’s eyes swiveled to Linn, making her feel very small. “I wonder if you are the ones I sensed approaching. My Sentinels lost you in the Deep Lands. It is no small thing to come through those catacombs unscathed.”

“Do we look unscathed to you?” Linn was trying to mask her attempts at stalling, but the creature’s ease gave her the distinct impression that they were merely rats in a cage at that moment.

“Are you not the White Crest?” she asked.

“I am a being of light, wind and air,” it said, leaning back and spreading its arms out wide. It breathed in deeply, and a breeze stirred around them, tickling their tattered clothes in an embrace that was part caress and part threat.

“Why?” Linn asked. “Why have you turned against us?”

For all the fury she had built up, she felt somehow deflated upon the realization that Kole had been right, that their Sage was party to all that had come against them. She hated the child’s voice that escaped her, asking questions where no answer could serve.

The creature turned those blues on her, its smile shifting for the barest moment into something that approximated pity. As soon as she saw it, however, the look vanished and turned cold.

“There are many powers in the World, children,” it said, voice melancholy. “Some have been here a long time. Some would seek to challenge the others.”

“We grew up on tales of the White Crest’s bravery,” Jenk said, voice rising. “That you withdrew from the affairs of your kind.”

“That does not mean the others removed their attention from me,” it said, sneering. “One has mistaken my dalliance for weakness. He sent those foul creatures here weeks ago—or was it a generation? Those black beasts, titans from the World Apart.”

The creature tilted Larren’s head.

“No matter,” it said, settling back. “I sniffed out his plan, and now his weapons are my own.” It examined Larren’s hands, calling up a tiny flame between thumb and forefinger that had Linn and Jenk stepping back warily.

“The Embers are not yours to wield,” Jenk said, anger mounting. His hand moved ever closer to the hilt of his Everwood blade.

The flame disappeared, as did the smile behind it.

“All Landkist are weapons,” it said, “put here by the World to challenge us, or to be used. I’ve already teased out more power from this husk than Holspahr could in a lifetime. Would that they still made your kind like they did when I first happened upon you—or when you happened upon me and my Valley—all those years ago.”

“Perhaps they still do,” Linn said, and the blue eyes shifted to Jenk.

“I was your shield,” it said. “Your shield from the terrors out in the World.”

“Until you brought them here,” Linn said.

“The Dark Kind were not my doing. At least, not at first.”

The creature wore a curious expression as its thoughts traced their way back in the far reaches of memory. It looked as though it were fighting through a constant fog. Linn had seen elders possessed of such mannerisms, but she had not expected it from one of the Sages, creatures of immeasurable power and limitless wisdom.

“I …” it paused. “I am not so easily controlled. I found myself in the same darkness as you, and now I’ll fight back with the light. Your light, to be specific.”

It stood Larren up, straight and tall.

“I did not ask for this fight,” it said. “The Eastern Dark thought I could be used, controlled.” It curled Larren’s fists, and Linn winced when she saw the blood running between the Ember’s fingers. “But no longer. I am awake, thanks to one of your own. His plans are nothing but wisps on my winds, now.”

The blue eyes softened, fists relaxing as the blood went dry with a faint sizzle.

“It’s all a bit dark, yes. But then, all magic is.” The blue eyes turned on Jenk. “Even your gifts, born of the land, have a dark bent when led by a vengeful heart. There is nothing separating us in this.”

The veins stood out on the side of Jenk’s neck. His muscles tensed, thickening with fast-flowing blood. The air around them shimmered and Linn broke out in a sweat.

“What of your bargain?” Linn screamed as the wind picked up. “What of the King of Ember?”

“It is forfeit,” the White Crest said. “My hand has been forced. He’ll not have the weapons in this Valley. I’ll no longer be his Keeper. Now then—

A form slammed into him from behind, spearing him over the lip of the boulder and tumbling down the steep ridge. Linn and Jenk sprang into action, sprinting toward the edge of the cliff where the two wrestled. Nathen struggled and spat, hands clamped around Larren’s throat.

Linn was fast, but Jenk shot past her, sword out and catching fire as he leapt high into the air. His arc brought him down, sword angled sharply, curved point lancing toward the skull of the Sage’s host.

A sound like the shriek of an eagle rang in Linn’s ears as she ran. She saw Nathen launched backward, his head cracking in a spray against a nearby spur. He slumped, blonde bangs plastered over unseeing eyes.

“Ahh!”

Jenk’s sword came down in the same instant, but the sudden burst of wind had pushed him off-course. His blade split a rock just behind the prone Ember’s head, sparks flying up around them.