The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  The foxes loped about the body of the bull and Iyana was surprised to see that they didn’t make for any of the dozen bodies that littered the crater. Their desert hosts assured them the animals were not bound to them like Shifa and the wall hounds of Last Lake, but there was a bond there that had the touch of magic. It was as if they were here as silent judges, to see that the task had been done, and done right.

  Creyath approached Ceth and the hunters. Iyana felt an aching on her arm and looked down to see Karin still gripping fiercely. Seeing her, he pulled his hand away with an inhalation, leaving red blotches.

  “Iyana,” he said. She regarded him, the haze of unreality still clinging like a vapor, though she had not lingered long on the edges of the Between. “Do not do that again.”

  He said it like a father might. It was rare enough for him to adopt that sort of tone, even with Kole, but Iyana and Linn had heard it on occasion. She knew where it came from and swallowed.

  “I’m sorry, Karin,” she said.

  “You don’t have to follow every impression,” he said a little roughly as he stalked past her. Something about the whole situation had irked him, and she could guess at whom his ire was aimed.

  “What was all this?” Karin asked, since Creyath was content to remain silently staring. The hunters regarded the First Runner with veiled expressions they then turned on Ceth, who continued to watch the western ridge as if the judging shadows of the herd were still gathered there.

  “It was a hunt,” Ceth said. He turned, slow as he pleased. Iyana saw Karin’s body stiffen. She could not say she blamed him.

  “A hunt,” Karin said, nodding. He looked to Creyath, who did not remove his amber eyes from Ceth. He looked back to Iyana. She tried to return a sympathetic look. “Why were we sent along, if this was what it came to?” His voice echoed off the brittle, crusted walls of the crater as his anger rose. “You endangered us.”

  Iyana knew he meant to say ‘her’. Ceth had endangered her. She felt her own blood warm under the insult, even if she knew where it came from.

  Ceth looked past Karin and focused on Iyana. Despite his seeming effect on others, she had no trouble meeting those grayish blues.

  “Pevah bid you come,” Ceth said. Karin took another step toward him and the Landkist’s eyes shifted, freezing the First Runner in place. “Why he did, I cannot say. I do not pretend to know his ends. Sometimes, he has none.”

  The young hunters exchanged nervous glances, and Iyana saw Creyath’s left hand brushing his left side, where the long, straight sickle of Everwood hung. He watched Ceth with interest, and Iyana was only just discovering it hinged less on concern and more on curiosity, and of the martial variety. Much as the sight might astound, she had no desire to see an Ember clash with … whatever it was Ceth was.

  “Perhaps,” Ceth said, his blank tone almost insulting in its casual bent, “he wanted you along as witness to a practice the folk of the deserts have held to. Perhaps he wanted to show you what life is like here, where blood must be preserved, and where food comes rarely and only with purpose. Where things are not taken, but offered and accepted.”

  Karin laughed. A harsh sound, like that of the birds Iyana noticed circling overhead. The First Runner inclined his chin toward the once-proud bull, now little more than a small hill of still meat and the bones that held it together.

  “Did the bull offer himself to your judgment?” he asked, his tone making it clear what he thought of it.

  “Yes,” Ceth said. “He was bravest. That is an offer in itself. Brave things die well. They die fast.” There was a threat in the air; Ceth had just given voice to it, and the mood in the crater slipped from tense to deliberate. As the sky to the west took on the deep red glow that preceded the purple of the Midnight Dunes, the shadows lengthened below the crusted ridges, blending with the corpses around them and moving them as if breath still stirred within.

  “Or,” Ceth said, the ghost of a smile tugging the corner of his mouth, “perhaps he merely meant to ask you along for the use of your horses.” He nodded up toward the ridge they had come down from. “This is a lot to carry.”

  Iyana sucked in her breath and looked to Creyath. The Ember’s cheeks stood out with the raised muscles of a rigid jaw. He watched Karin, intent on staying his next action or supporting it. The hunters stepped back from Ember and Runner warily, confident in their Landkist but unsure what the strangers of the Valley could do. Even the foxes seemed caught in the mood, their gaits interrupted by pauses and feints as they scented the need on the now-still air.

  Karin laughed again, only longer this time and more full, and Iyana sighed into one of her own. Ceth smiled at him and her, and he seemed to mean it. Iyana had no doubt that the man would have accepted Karin’s challenge even if he had not intended to provoke it. She was glad that the First Runner did not offer.

  “It was something to witness, Karin,” Iyana said, moving between them to snap the last straining thread that quivered in their midst. She didn’t need to be Faeykin to see that clear enough. “And we do have horses.” She paused in front of Ceth and turned back toward the eastern cliffs. “I can’t believe we rode that down.”

  One of the young hunters smiled and nodded vigorously. “Ceth took you to the steepest path,” he said and his companion looked as though he wanted to slap him. Ceth did not argue, and Iyana gave the northern Landkist an expectant look.

  “Is that so?” she asked.

  Ceth’s smile had disappeared. He glanced from her to the men at her back, wary of another sudden change. He had pushed, and now that she was pushing back, it seemed he did not want to see it to its ending after all, no matter how curious. Perhaps he knew to fear Pevah’s retribution.

  He indicated the dark-skinned hunters, who could easily have been raised in any of the homes along the lakeshore or nested beneath the white cliffs of Hearth. “They say you are of the deserts, even if you’re not.” He fixed his eyes on Creyath. “You command the fire the desert counts as blood.” He stood square and raised his chin. “I wanted to see that fire, but it seems it only comes out of you at need.” He switched to Iyana. “I saw something of it, though. I did not expect you to follow.” He swallowed, and it seemed as if the next words he spoke were the hardest yet. “I was wrong.” He ended on Karin. “Forgive my arrogance.”

  “I’m sure it’s well-earned,” Karin said too quickly, though Iyana knew him well enough to laugh. Ceth stiffened at his reaction but seemed to relax at hers. “You do need our horses, Ceth,” the First Runner called back as he moved toward the southern incline. “Don’t forget that.”

  It might have been the first genuine smile Iyana had seen on the man’s face. She tried to keep that image in her mind as she passed by the bull he stood over, the half of its face that should have been there little more than a mess of blood and bone and whatever had been inside.

  What sort of power did Ceth wield that could render such strength moot—and so suddenly?

  It was strange that it bothered her so. She had seen Creyath rain fire on a herd that counted these beasts as kin in the east, heard them screaming in a pit Baas Taldis had made to bury them in.

  But those were powers born of the World and made of it. The fires that burned in the heart of the desert they walked now, and the ground that made it all up. Pevah had said Ceth did not wield the wind as the White Crest had, but Iyana thought he might, or something like it. Something of the air itself. Something of the stuff that made it up. Weight. Solidity. The terms meant little in the context of the Landkist power she had come to know, but if one had mastery over them …

  She turned and looked at Ceth with fresh eyes. He stood over the hammerhorn bull like a guardian over a sacred charge. His form was solid, the muscles of his arms lean, and, she noticed for the first time, unmoving. Pevah had called him his knight. In truth, he was the Sage’s sword. That was the power Ceth wielded. She was sure of it even if she had yet to make sense of it all. He had such a striking presence because presence
was what he controlled. The impact he made when floating or falling. The wrath he wrought with little more than a touch. His were hands that could write poetry and violence in equal measure and with startling speed.

  Feeling her eyes on him, Ceth turned to her, and Iyana thought she saw something like fear in his eyes. Fear of judgment. He was right to fear it, even if she felt wrong for showing it.

  Iyana walked a short distance and tracked the progress of Karin and Creyath as they took the long way around to fetch the horses. They were lucky the hammerhorn bulls hadn’t gone that way and she wondered if the herd would return to the crater tomorrow, or if they had had enough of violence. Perhaps this was the way of things. Perhaps they fought until a man who might count himself a god—or something close—came and killed the bravest of them as the rest witnessed. It was strange. But then, so was living in a Valley whose protectors wielded fire as others wield hammers and fishing nets.

  When they returned, the horses stamping in the presence of death, the sun was sunk low enough to drench them in the beginnings of dusk.

  One of the hunters had brought ropes, and Iyana helped secure it to the hooks in the saddles of both horses.

  “How do you usually get the beasts out without horses?” Karin asked, incredulous.

  “Pevah brings it,” one of the hunters said as if that explained it all. Karin paused only long enough to shake his head and then swung up into the saddle, testing the bull from there. Creyath had been silent since the killing had been done. He seemed the only one among them who still carried some of that earlier tension. Iyana saw Ceth casting him wary looks and could not help but feel a misplaced pride at the effect an Ember had on one who might be counted an equal.

  “Sure you can’t just throw it back to the caves?” Karin asked Ceth. The Landkist finished tightening a knot around the horn and stood. He seemed to consider the question in all seriousness, even going so far as to examine his hands as if testing their strength.

  “No,” he said, looking up at Karin. Karin raised his brows and tossed Iyana a wide-eyed look. She swung herself up behind him, leaving the steering to him. Now that it was getting late, she felt sick, and thought it only had a little to do with the events of the day. She had touched something when she had dipped into the Between. It had the scent of rot that went beyond smell and settled on taste. It was the same vibration she felt in the deep desert nights—the same sickness she had felt when she watched Sen drain the life from a lone flower in a cave to the east.

  She hoped the feeling would dissipate as they made their way up out of the dust-filled crater. The hammerhorns watched their path, their eyes glistening like the black stones of the Fork as the stars winked overhead. To the northwest, little of the sun’s light remained, thrown up at the sky from the Dunes Ceth could not take his eyes from. She couldn’t see them clear, but Iyana knew they were there, the faintly glowing mountains of sand shining like beacons in an empty land.

  “When will you go?” she asked the Landkist as he walked beside the horses.

  “Next,” he said, not taking his eyes from the place.

  Iyana thought to ask more, but there was a buzzing in her head that would not subside. It seemed to get worse as they passed north, and she found herself glancing toward the western light with shaking eyes. She had known there was something there even before she knew it. She would very much like to know what, even if a cold dread bubbled deep within her at the thought of something a Sage known as the Red Waste would fear, or else covet enough to set an entire people to guard.

  Dusk hung low over the plain and merged the amorphous sky with the sands below it in a color-blushed glare. As true night fell, the gossamer curtain of stars shone clear to north, east and south. It was a blue-white light Iyana took comfort in; a cold light, but not without presence. Even the strange, foreign light of the western dunes seemed to lose some of its bloody glow as the night deepened, more purple than amber, though she kept from staring at it too long.

  The horses did not complain at their burden, happy to be out beneath the sky without the merciless sun beating down on them. Still, the return journey took them much longer, and they traveled in silence but for the haunting melodies the foxes—their red shadows—carried with them.

  “Why wouldn’t they take one of the dead?” Creyath asked, the first words he had spoken since departing the crater. One of the young hunters walking beside his midnight charger followed Creyath’s gaze to the nearest of the foxes.

  “They know the way,” he said. “They cannot bring down one of the bulls themselves—let alone the bravest. They will be rewarded for their help at the Sharing.”

  Creyath’s brow crinkled. “It seems a waste to leave them.”

  “They will not be left,” came the answer. “The birds will strip them and the sands will take them back. The Mother will use their marrow for her fire.”

  Creyath switched his gaze back to where the ground sloped down, back toward the black spurs the nomads nested in. The youth seemed to want to ask something of Creyath, whose like he only knew from legends—much as Iyana only knew him and his as the same. Memories without faces.

  How strange it was, that they had taken the fire with them. Taken it from the deserts and hoarded it in their secret Valley.

  Iyana couldn’t focus on it long. Pain hit her full in the temple like a thrown dart, and she let out a small yelp that had Karin twisting in the saddle. She placed a hand to her temple and squeezed her eyes shut against the sting, which felt like a questing needle.

  “Iyana?” Karin asked, concerned. “What is it?”

  She opened her eyes and glimpsed the cloister of black shelves below the rise on which they stood. There was a fire burning beneath the opening of the cave, making it look like some demon’s maw through the curtain her tears made. She tried to speak but could not, the pain intensifying.

  “Stop!” Karin yelled and Creyath halted, the two hunters and Ceth coming over as Iyana made a low moaning sound.

  She felt herself falling in both body and mind, and before she realized what she had done, she had blinked into another place that she knew by feel if not sight. She saw herself from above, through a shimmering veil that was like clear milk. Karin had followed her down to the sand, where she writhed and contorted as the others looked on, concerned. Her body thrashed but for one arm, which was rigid and pointing.

  East.

  Above, drifting on the currents of the Between that ran through all lands, drifting on currents made of thought or dream itself, she looked in the direction her body pointed. The red jewel of the cave breathed in the night to the north, but above it and farther to the south and east, there was another glow. This one was sharp green—a tether, wrapped tightly and pulsing. And as she focused in, there was a dimmer light below it.

  Sen!

  She meant to fly toward him but found herself falling down—straight down. She crashed into herself with a force that should have broken her like glass, and she came up panting, breaths coming long and ragged as if she had broken the surface from the blackest depths.

  “Sen!” She scrambled through hands that sought to press her back down. She rose on legs that felt strong under the beating of her heart and the blood it pumped. The landscape still held that milky haze to her, the yellow sand blending with the black rocks like ink, but she ran toward them and scrambled over them, and the others followed, leaving the horses behind.

  She felt heat across her back and thought she was bleeding before she felt Creyath pass her, heading for Sen’s green glow. There were shouts from the north as scouts on the edge of the shelf spied them. Karin called back to them, but she could not stop to listen. A form hurtled over her and crashed down in the still river of sand between the uncovered spines of black rock, joining Creyath. They could see him, now.

  “Sen!” Iyana cried, thinking him hurt. And then she reached them, Creyath and Ceth having stopped dead in their tracks.

  She squeezed between them as Karin veered off to meet the
scouts who’d come out to see what all the fuss was about. She dimly recognized Mial’s gruff voice.

  “Iyana?”

  Sen regarded her, his eyes glowing a brighter green than any she had seen save for Ninyeva in the depths of her dreaming. His whole form was wrapped in the same glow, his tether—his essence—enclosing him in a way she found disturbing. She did not know if the others could see it. She doubted they could. But the eyes would be enough. They were almost enough to keep her from looking down. When she did, her heart caught in her throat.

  Splayed on the black rock at the Faeykin’s feet was a woman wearing nothing but the barest covering of skins and furs. She was bleeding from dozens of cuts that looked like the work of a pack, but though the foxes complained and howled in the crags and crevices around them, none had made for her. She snarled to show teeth that could not be mistaken for anything other than bloody-black and rotten. Her breath stunk like death and her eyes, wide with fear, held a promise to kill.

  “What …?” Creyath started, but the feral girl made a try for him. He flared, igniting the Everwood sickle at his side. But the savage froze, caught as if in a spider’s web, or in time itself. Iyana cast about, looking for Pevah and half-expecting the Sage to come walking out of the shadows, eyes glowing red as he bent the real to his will.

  But as the feral girl’s eyes twitched toward Sen, Iyana knew it was he who held her fast. And as they watched in horrified fascination, the girl began to contort as the Faeykin’s lips quivered, his right hand balled into a fist as his left stuck out before him as if holding a leash.

  “Sen,” Iyana breathed. “What are you doing to her?”

  The woman fought the invisible bonds that held her, but now that Iyana looked she saw that Sen had somehow merged his tether with hers. He gripped the pulsing, burning thread between his fingers and pulled back sharply, snapping the woman’s head back and bringing her back down to the rocks with a sickening scrape and gasp.