The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  “This is a night of sharing,” the old man said. He spoke low enough to make his audience lean in. “Sharing is not intended for dark talk, but light. It is the Bright Days, Talmir Caru. You are guests. This is not the way things are done.”

  While Pevah spoke, Talmir kept the gray-sashes in his periphery. They were separating from his own men. Pevah might not want violence, but the Northmen were hard to figure out. Perhaps some of them wished for conflict. Perhaps none of them wished against it.

  “We have come a long way,” Talmir said, hating the pleading note he finished with. Pevah’s brows quirked. Talmir thought he saw a slight nod before his chin raised to match a straightened back.

  “That you have,” Pevah said. The wind picked up, sliding through the gathering and kicking loose sand from the blue-black shelf. Talmir had not noticed that the Faeykin had been so tense, but he saw them relax at the edges where the overhang met the open air. They could read the emotions of others as plain as some could read the stars. He should make a habit of looking to them first—of looking to Iyana, who had woke some but still appeared faint and cold.

  “But …” Pevah said, and Talmir did not try to stop the frown from infecting his features once more. “Sharing takes time.”

  “We’ve had plenty of it,” Talmir said. “You and I have had plenty.” Another raised brow and Talmir knew the Sage was surprised Talmir had learned the truth of his gifts, or else guessed them. They had only had three conversations since their first, and each of them had drained Talmir more than he would’ve thought possible. First for their emotion and need, but mostly for their sheer breadth. The Sage of the Red Waste did not seem powerful because his power stretched the very fabric they walked in—lived in and died in. He had something of time in his pocket, thought Talmir doubted if his influence over it extended to mastery.

  “I can see why it would seem so, to you,” Pevah said. He dipped his head and opened his hand toward Talmir in a gesture of offering. “Ask, then.” He swept the same hand out to all the Valleyfolk gathered on the shelf, all of the wayward travelers Talmir had brought along with him on a quest for fools and dreamers—things he despised because he had too many of the qualities of both.

  “I’ll ask the same, again,” Talmir said, settling back onto his heels and bringing his hand away from his sword hilt. He did not know if the gesture put the gray-cloths more at ease or confirmed that a threat had been there, recognized by both sides. Their gray-blue eyes said nothing. “Why do you not act, when the enemy comes against you so brazenly? Why do you sit and feast and tell tales, tall or otherwise, when the very children sitting on the hems of your tattered robes are in danger?”

  “The Blood Seers send their dogs on occasion,” Pevah said. “Trust me when I say, Talmir Caru”—he caught a few more sets of eyes, including those of Karin and Iyana, Mial and Jes—even Ket and Creyath, who were among the few standing— “this is the safest place for them.”

  “Then there is no safe place,” Talmir said.

  “No,” Pevah surprised him by admitting. “There is no safe place here, just as there is no hiding from the Dark Months in the Valley you call home.” He dipped another nod, seeming unable to meet Talmir’s stare. “The latter is not your fault, surely, nor is it the fault of your forebears. They were led—or misled, however you’d like to characterize it. But then,” he locked Talmir with a look that was sharp and full of daring, “we do the best we can with what we are given.”

  “As I am trying to do now,” Talmir said. “I claim inaction.” He swept his own hand across the gathering, including the meat that was now cooled and done sizzling on the shelf. “You claim action.” He pointed at the Sage and through him, toward the place where the sky went from blue-black to lavender. The color of plenty, or poison. It could even have been a fire, like ships burning on a distant sea. “What is it you guard? What is it your men and women die to defend?” Now Talmir did not meet Pevah’s eyes alone, but rather traced the company he kept.

  “We have—” Pevah started before Talmir cut him off.

  “You have a charge,” Talmir said sharply. “Yes. As do I. As do we all.”

  Pevah closed his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth. He did not like the conversation being out in the open—the conflict that could invite more. Of course, that was precisely why Talmir had chosen to bring it up, here and now. That, and he had never been long on patience. Had never been one to accept the way things were simply because they had been. Tradition was a rot, as far as he could tell. Fertile ground to plant seeds of the new.

  “What is your charge, Red?” he asked. “What is your charge?” he asked of those standing around him, of the young hunters who had accompanied Iyana, Creyath and Karin on the hunt. He even asked it of Ceth, who was not among them but who might be listening from some crack or crevice or place on high where only he could reach with his strange gifts. “What is out at the Midnight Dunes?” He stood tall as he could. “I wonder, do your people know? Or the people you claim as your own, though you are something else? Something apart from them.”

  Pevah was still. His eyes did not move, remaining rooted on Talmir. For a space of time, Talmir thought he might fall over dead, taking his answers with him. Or that he might lash out, his outward calm shifting like a desert storm to swallow them up—starting with him, for prying where he shouldn’t have. The men and women around him stared at him, looking for some sign, some command to intercede on his behalf. But he was the Sage of the Red Waste. He was their leader, their rock and stone, no matter if the Landkist Ceth was his righteous or terrible hand.

  “You are new to the deserts,” Pevah said. He spoke quieter now, so much so that those on the outskirts looked to one another, unable to hear. The old man blinked and spoke up. “You are all new. Yes,” he said, “even those whose grandsires have made the same caves their home.” The red-sashes looked at each other with the dark eyes of those Talmir had grown up with, though his had always been lighter.

  The old man ushered some of the children off his too-long robes and stood. It was easy to forget how tall he was and how robust, given how he hunched. Talmir had thought it part of an act when he had first noticed it. Now, he thought it was simply a weight he carried, and a part of him felt guilty for asking what made it up.

  “You lot are out here to find a future,” he said, walking a slow path around the fire in the pit. No new logs had been placed atop it and already the flames had burned lower, the light going from bright yellow to dull red to match the hue of the Sage’s cloth. “You have come to the land of your past to do it.” He moved past the stained gourds that leaned half empty, abandoned in the tension and now in the thrall of the Sage’s speak.

  “But these people, whom you see as ghosts from a past you left buried,” he paused and Talmir did not think it was for effect, “they have a future as well. Or they might. Believe it or not, they are tied up in the same nightmare as you, even if the Dark Kind come seldom to the deserts these days, with only the occasional rift opening.”

  Talmir saw some of the nomads’ noses wrinkle at the mention, while their children and even some of the younger among them looked to them questioningly. The Sage turned to face the west, his hands clasped behind his back. As many looked to him as looked behind him to the purple horizon.

  “Our east is to the west,” he said, speaking as if he were lost in a dream, or perhaps in memory. Talmir began to shake his head and one of the silver-haired warriors—the woman he had interacted with on their initial trek to the caves—took a warning step between he and the Sage. “A nightmare that is singular, but no less deadly than anything you and yours have faced in the south. More so.” Talmir saw him tilt his head toward Creyath, whose amber stare was unburdened by the range of emotions racking the rest. “And these,” he tossed his head back at the mix, “have not had your shining Embers to protect them, to fight for them.”

  “Plenty who fight in the Valley do it with wood and metal rather than flame,” Talmir said. “So what
? So you have an enemy too. Let us work together. Let us help you so that you can help us in turn.” Now he was pleading, hands spread even as he started to boil seeing the old man shake his head slowly before he had finished his remarks.

  “There is no beating this,” Pevah said. He sounded firm as he did sorrowful. “There is only delaying. Those who sit atop those dunes even now are only there to prevent others from putting their hands and wild intent where they should not. Those who strike out tomorrow will do the same.” He turned and smiled softly down at a little girl who had ventured closer to him, as if she wanted to gather him like a comforting blanket, though to Talmir he seemed anything but. “And these children will do so after them. It is their charge, as it is mine.” He looked back to the west and Talmir could barely make out his next words over the throbbing in his temples. “It is theirs as long as it has to be, or until it is failed.”

  Talmir took another step forward and he saw Pevah’s ears twitch as his boot scraped the sand. Some of the gray-sashes closed in around him, and even the reds—calmer and less aloof—turned their confused or sorrowful looks to hardened ones. They turned them on Talmir and on those who had begun to form around him and on the edges, Valley warriors caught up in the captain’s frustration.

  He wanted to rage and spit. He wanted to curse the old man for his riddles and stamp out the fire along with the tenuous friendship his had built with those who’d made it. He wanted to tear the Sharing apart and rend it, to grind it under his heels and leave it in the west to fester. He wanted to send Tu’Ren Kadeh and Garos Balsheer out after Kole in his own war on the Sages, damned if they cleaned this one up at the end. He wanted to burn everything he did not understand, and that last thought blew out all the anger of the rest with its startling and stark reality, its truth laid cold and bare.

  “What did you do?” Talmir asked, faint and childlike so that even the children looked to him and each other with strange expressions. How odd it must be to see an adult—and one full of vigor, one who leads—reduced to one who begged for answers.

  And begging was the word. “You and the rest?” Talmir felt the tears stinging the corners of his eyes as he focused them on the Sage’s broad back. “You and your brothers and sisters. The War of Sages and all it’s done to the World.” He paused and looked at his own hands as if they were as likely to hold the answers. “What did you do that we must suffer so?”

  The old man’s shoulders sagged as Talmir said it, his weight and solidity seeming to deflate with a silent sigh.

  “You are not our enemy,” Talmir said through gritted teeth and a throbbing throat. “But perhaps you should be.” They should have attacked him for it but did not, either out of pity or agreement. He didn’t care. “Your guilt radiates like the light on that poisoned horizon. Like the red stains on the teeth of those the Blood Seers send against you. Against all of you.”

  Talmir took his eyes from the Sage’s back to see that the rest were standing; all manner, ages and persuasions of cloth and skin; his own people of the Valley and those of the windswept deserts and the strangers from the highlands he would never see, all displaced and aimless as he felt now. Ceth was not listening. If he had been, Talmir would have been struck down. As such, the Sage would not do it, though the look he turned on Talmir might have in another circumstance.

  “Whatever you think of me,” Pevah said. He included his own in it. “Whatever any of you think of me, and whatever I might’ve done, it pales in the face of what would happen were I to disappear.” He focused on Iyana, who Talmir noted was the only one left sitting, her green eyes shining as she tapped into those strange gifts that were little understood, even among the Landkist.

  The old man pointed to the west without looking. “What we guard there cannot be loosed.” His eyes widened in a mad sort of way, and Talmir caught a glimpse of the fear the Sage kept hidden. Cold dread tickled his spine at the thought of what could inspire it in one who purported to be so powerful and so singular—as if he was the one who kept the west where it was and the rest merely kept him company while he did it. Talmir had the striking impression that it was the truth.

  Talmir looked to Iyana and saw her eyes glow bright before fading back to their usual hue, which was striking on the least of occasions. Whatever she had seen in the Sage’s sudden mania had unsettled her. She looked toward the west with a mix of awe and the fear it carried with it.

  The old man closed his eyes and lowered his hand. The fire on the shelf had sunk lower and a fresh log was thrown atop it with a crash that sent up motes and flaming tails that framed his bronze face.

  “They have come to where we sleep,” he said. “It is true. I will not pretend it isn’t concerning.” He met the eyes of those closest to him before gathering the strength to meet Talmir’s again. “But they will not come against us. Not in force. Not here.” He turned and seemed to catch Creyath by surprise with his attention. “No doubt seeing an Ember in the flesh redoubled their resolve. They believe the source of your fire to be buried out there. But their charge, though opposite in nature from our own, has the same direction and the same ending.”

  “West,” Talmir said, his voice calm as he suddenly felt, like a blown candle or a storm having run its course.

  “West,” Pevah said. His eyes were wide but no longer wild. “This is the farthest we can go and still keep ourselves fed and watered. To make the trek would doom the children and us as well. And so we wait. We watch, and we guard.”

  “You will not fight them,” Creyath spoke up. His words did not carry a tone of accusation, though they might have. Pevah frowned. He looked at his warriors and then at the Valleyfolk around the edges.

  “We have never had the numbers,” he said. “And the witches move often.”

  “But they are closer, now,” Creyath pressed. He stepped up onto the shelf and away from his black charger, who watched him with interest. “They are more desperate, if they do things now they never have before.” Another frown, but no dismissal. “You said it before.” Creyath pointed east. “They attacked us before they knew of my presence and the fire I had brought. You said they are rarely out that way.”

  “They followed us,” Pevah said by way of explanation. “They caught wind of our direction and followed.”

  “They should have used the opportunity to strike at the heart of their goal,” Creyath argued.

  “It was guarded then as it is now.” Pevah shook his head, but it seemed to Talmir his arguments grew less forceful with each one Creyath put forth.

  The Ember met Talmir’s eyes and then Karin’s. He nodded to Mial and Jes and Ket, and to Iyana, who did not meet the stare. He singled out the stoutest soldiers of both sides and all three peoples, and he focused on Sen until the despondent Faeykin returned it, his face tilting up slowly.

  “You have the numbers, now,” Creyath said. “You have the power, if I say so myself. You do not have to wait any longer.”

  Pevah regarded him with mounting recognition, but Talmir could see the shake before it started.

  “It would be murder,” he said. “We cannot—”

  “You will lose,” Creyath said. “They will not stop until they have destroyed you or your charge, whatever it may be.” The Ember paused as if gathering himself for his next words. “If we help you do this, then you can help us. If not you, then your people, who could be ours.” He met Talmir’s gaze and nodded. “You are not the only Sage, Pevah whose name we do not know. Yours is not the only charge.”

  “You wish to fight the Eastern Dark,” the Sage said with a rueful smile. “Were that you were Mena’Tch or his legacy, Creyath Mit’Ahn. But you are not. Potent as Ceth is,” he shook his head, “I do not think he would leave, even if he could help you.”

  “He would if you joined us,” Karin spoke up.

  “I cannot—”

  “Why?” Talmir asked, exasperated. “If you could stand against the Eastern Dark, what could possibly—”

  “I cannot stand against him,” Pev
ah said, his face flushed as the nomads and their children frowned at him. “I never said I could.”

  “But you have,” Creyath said. “We have not been in the Valley so long to forget. Our grandmothers told of your battles with him.”

  Pevah sighed. “And where did those lead me? Where did they lead you? A delay. I kept his hands from you for as long as I could. It was your Ember King who defended you most. And it was he and I who doomed you to that cage.”

  “The White Crest—” Iyana started.

  “Was better than you know,” Pevah said. “At least in intent.” He held up his hands to stay all arguments. He looked to Creyath, considered him and all he had said.

  “You lot have had it as rough as any in that Valley of yours,” he said. “Worse, no doubt. But there is a strength to you that has come with enduring. With surviving.” He shook his head. “Powers like that,” he nodded to the west, “powers like the Eastern Dark—they cannot be challenged without courting an ending. Without courting death.”

  “Better to do something,” Talmir said. “Anything.”

  “Is it?” Pevah asked. His eyes switched to the children, who seemed caught, their usual movement stifled under the oppression of those grown disillusioned about them. “Is it better to do something if it leads to oblivion?”

  “Oblivion is coming,” Sen said, and Talmir saw Iyana’s eyes flash toward him. “Whether we court it or not. It’s coming, and you know it because you’ve seen it.”

  Pevah swallowed but did not turn toward the Faeykin. Talmir watched him, his spirits—risen on the back of Creyath’s entreaty—deflated once more.

  “No,” Pevah said, gathering himself up even as he seemed to shrink. He stalked toward the cave mouth. “We endure.”

  Talmir nearly reached a hand out to stop the old man before something like terror gripped him. It froze him in place just long enough for the old man’s robes to brush past him. He would have turned if the glowing coals of Creyath’s eyes had not caught him and drawn him to the smile he wore beneath.