Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) (32 page)

Ninyeva moved closer, and as she neared, her heart beat faster. A ruby light spilled from the shapes, which she now recognized as great hearts half again as tall as a man. There was a stone slab directly before the alcoves with a shape resting on it, its chest moving up and down. The black tendrils tinged with red snaked around the stone like vines, and now her heart froze.

She felt it. The same presence from before.

Ninyeva was held between beats, caught between the urge to flee and the need to edge closer. As it turned out, the prone figure chose for her, as a blue-white light illuminated its chest. The eyes lit in a blinding flash before resolving into a serpentine figure that floated with crackling energy above the slab. The hearts increased their tempo, the sound of drums echoing off the black walls.

In place of the majesty she had felt upon entering the Valley all those years ago was a hawkish and misplaced fury, erratic and formless. Red light leaked from the corners of the diamonds she took for eyes and the serpent swayed back and forth like a snake readying to strike.

She thought to ask it something, anything, and then she seized upon its dark intent and knew she must go. Ninyeva streaked away and the wraith followed, encasing her in an atmosphere of its own making. But it had underestimated her strength. She tore through the casing and in that moment saw the consciousness of the Sage arrayed before her, an ocean of power whose waves crashed black with red foam, all anger and discord.

Ninyeva felt the Lake pulling her, calling her home. She pushed on, and in the passage between the shattering she glimpsed a strange horizon: there was a figure clad in white and blue—the White Crest as she remembered him—and before him stood a dark man wreathed in flames. Above them both, pulling strings that called back the red-black tethers was a figure blacker than the skies. The peaks collapsed and she was thrust back into herself, the fields passing in a blur below her and the stink of corruption screaming for her blood.

Her return was violent, and she fell back on an invisible current, her chambers coming back to her with sudden ferocity. She retched, all the while trying desperately to hold onto the vision and its portents.

She remembered the Sage, rotting and resting on his slab. She remembered the Dark Hearts drumming in the alcoves, and the red-topped citadel she had witnessed upon fleeing the dark keep. She remembered the sun, which she had not seen in weeks, burning like a half sunk fire over the lands beyond the Valley—lands from which she had come and never returned.

And there was one emotion that followed her faster and farther than any of the others. More than the rage and insanity, she had sensed fear from the being once known as White Crest. Not fear of her. She had been a meadow vole in the gaze of a hawk; this was fear of the other, of the figure wreathed in flame.

It was fear, she thought, of Kole Reyna.

Ninyeva attempted to reorient herself to the World, but it was an agonizing experience, like a star had exploded behind her eyes. She let the veil fall from her head and cast about the chamber, grasping wet roots that she chewed hungrily, squeezing her eyes shut and wishing the pain away.

She had lingered too long. The phlegm had built up and she could not concentrate enough to shift from gifts of sight to healing. Her consciousness was fading, and before she lost it completely, she saw what looked to be a fairy light, green and shimmering. It spoke to her through the veil.

Ninyeva shook her head and the light resolved into the soft visage of Iyana Ve’Ran. Her apprentice helped her to sit with hands far stronger than they appeared, and she felt the warmth of the Faey light moving through her blood, bringing her back.

“I found it,” she said through a cracked throat. “Found him.”

Iyana eyed her with a wild and fearful expression.

“He was so pure, once,” Ninyeva whispered.

“Who?”

“Kole was right. He is not our ally. Not any longer. There is another in him. Infected. Rotten.”

She was rambling and she knew it, but it seemed that Iyana had taken the point.

“He has betrayed us, after all,” Iyana said. She did not sound shocked, but rather resigned.

Ninyeva reached out and took Iyana’s soft hands in her weathered ones.

“He is as much a victim in this as we, I think,” Ninyeva said. “The dark comes for us all.”

“The Eastern Dark,” Iyana offered.

“I can see no other possibility. It seems he has begun his war on the others, starting with our own guardian.”

Iyana stood abruptly and moved to fill a cup with cold tea. She handed it to Ninyeva and adopted the stern, motherly look she wore so well.

“You should not have flown so far, and for so long.”

“And how did you know I had?” Ninyeva asked, amused.

“I felt it,” Iyana said, eyes going distant. “But that’s not why I came.” Her eyes refocused.

Ninyeva took a swallow and looked at her pupil expectantly. Iyana met her gaze, her emerald eyes glowing brighter than usual.

“I found them,” she said. “I found Linn.”

“Where is she?” Ninyeva asked, thoughts racing.

“In the Deep Lands,” Iyana said. “And I saw others. I saw dark figures following them, tracking them from above. One of them looked like Larren Holspahr. But it couldn’t be.”

“Iyana,” Ninyeva said. “You must find her again.”

W
hat at first Linn had taken for a fairy light out of dreaming soon morphed into something else: a feeling that she should follow.

The green bulb buzzed faintly, moving about in circular patterns that alternated between alluring and frantic. Its movements were far too measured to be wild, and the part of her mind given to suspicion wondered if it might be some trick meant to tempt her into the sheltered cove of some deadly denizen of the Deep Lands. She imagined the gnashing beaks and razor claws but knew in her heart that she was safe.

She was taken on a short and winding climb, and she kept the river always on her right. There was a natural stair of sorts, which led to a small plateau. The air here was fresher, more alive. The light flashed and darted to the space between her eyes, causing Linn to reach up instinctively. Before she could grab it, the light streaked into another chamber, and there it stopped.

Linn guessed her position to be directly above the sleeping heads of Jenk and Nathen.

“What now, little bug?” Linn asked, feeling immensely foolish. Maybe she was beginning to lose her mind in this place of ever-present darkness.

The light burst in a shower of green and white sparks. There was no sound, but Linn was rendered blind in the searing bright. She fell to her knees, feeling about for purchase, and the throbbing slowly ebbed away from the backs of her lids. Had she not already fallen, the sight that resolved itself before her now surely would have done the trick.

Where the fairy light had been, Iyana now stood, her brows turned down in the concerned way only she could manage. Tears stung the corners of Linn’s eyes and left their tracks in the pits of her hollow cheeks.

A sensation like touch but fainter tickled her shoulder as Iyana reached out, but Linn knew she was not there, not truly. The green glow was faded now, but it hung about her younger sister like a curtain. Iyana’s eyes shone like burning emeralds, brighter than ever before.

“How?” Linn managed to choke out between wracking sobs. She had not realized how much she had to give until it had been given, collected in her own salt pool in the crevices between the stones beneath her.

“Landkist,” was all Iyana said in response, her face strained with the effort, as if uttering a single word was akin to lifting a mountain. Perhaps it was.

Linn had never heard of the Faeykin projecting themselves, but then, the Landkist of the Valley were not well known to the Emberfolk. Only Mother Ninyeva knew their secrets, and even she doubted if she had them all.

“Linn,” Iyana said, her mouth moving at odds with the words, her voice coming as if from a great distance. “You are not well.”

She had to laugh at that, looking down at arms that had lost much of their color and more of their sinew. Arms that could previously draw the stoutest war bow were now faded to fish bones.

“It has been a hard road,” Linn said, unable to meet her sister’s eyes. Her own glassed over now, recalled to another dark place on the edge of a storm—a cave at the edge of a forest.

Iyana reached out her hand, and though the sensation was only a little more than nothing, Linn’s chest heaved and wracked again, but her salt was all spent. When she was done, the old stone that marked her as Ve’Ran returned, pebble upon pebble filling her breast as she bent back from the breaking.

“Kole is on his way to the peaks,” Iyana said.

“For me?” Linn said, unsure if she was furious or relieved.

Why would he? How could they let him leave Last Lake? Why had she?

“Ninyeva says the White Crest still lives.”

There it was. The truth Kole Reyna had always known, that had driven him in singular purpose as nothing else had.

“I see.”

“But he is not himself.”

“Who is she to judge whether a Sage is or is not himself? Where has he been all this time?”

“Asleep.”

“Asleep?”

It sounded ludicrous.

“He has fallen to the same corruption that plagues the Valley now. There are hearts beneath the keep. The plague is in them, from them.”

Linn looked up, noting something else in her sister’s face, now that they had both settled some.

“What is it, Yani? What else?”

Iyana’s moon face flickered, her energy shifting as she drew a breath from wherever she was—Ninyeva’s leaning tower, most likely.

“There is someone,” she paused, “someone tracking you.”

“I see.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense, Linn.”

“Yani …”

“He can’t be.”

“He is. We were attacked in the western woods. Larren is under their sway now. He is one with the Dark Kind.”

“He’s up above,” Iyana said. “Waiting.”

“Figures,” Linn said, a sardonic laugh escaping her chest.

“Larren is powerful,” Iyana said.

“He is. But he is not himself either.” Linn smiled, trying her best to project a sense of confidence she did not feel. “Lucky for us, we still are.”

Iyana smiled her sweet, knowing smile, and Linn almost hugged her, or tried to.

“I almost forgot you’re not really here.”

“I am here, Linn. And Kole will be, but you cannot wait for him. You won’t last.”

“Wouldn’t want to spend another day longer than necessary here anyway. I assume you’ve found the way out?”

Iyana hesitated. She was growing more faint, as if she were fading.

“Yani?”

“You can find a pathway through the Steps and come back home,” she said. “Back to the Lake. Back to me.”

Linn frowned.

“Kole can do what he likes. We came here to find the source of the scourge. We’re not turning back now. Not after what’s been lost.”

Linn expected Iyana to argue, but she was silent.

“What’s it like up there?” Linn asked. “Above the peaks, I mean. Are the fields golden like the ancestors say?”

“Clear as glass,” Iyana said. “Too high for the wind to reach. But the sun is there, Linn.”

“I know someone who will very much enjoy hearing that.”

Iyana smiled, but it was tinged with sadness, a knowing that Linn did not want to know.

“The Lake still knows peace?”

“For now.”

Linn nodded.

“They’ll need you before the end. Don’t come back looking for me.”

Iyana’s brows drew close together, her lips forming a tight line, but she offered the slightest of nods. She flickered and nearly went out, and Linn’s heart caught in her chest. She did not want her to leave, though she knew she must.

“This tether is failing,” Iyana said, her voice even softer and more broken than before. The tiny firefly could be seen near where her heart would have been, its wings buzzing softly, weakly.

“Show me the way,” Linn said, her resolve strengthening, mind bending to its purpose. She would find the White Crest. She would discover what he was about. And she would do it all before Kole had a chance to become what he most hated and feared.

She hoped.