The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  “You fled a Sage,” he said, adding, “or the power of one. I know what happened in the southern Valley. I know about the battle at the peaks. Where are those Ember blades, now? Creyath Mit’Ahn was not among them. Captain Caru was not either. Who are they to challenge the word of a Sage when they were not willing to face down his fallen brother?”

  “Captain Talmir defended a city of thousands from an army of demons numbering as many, or more,” she said, red-faced and fuming. “Creyath faced down one of the Night Lords of the Eastern Dark and prevailed.” She thought to continue, but something had shifted in Ceth’s look.

  “You doubt me?” she asked. “You doubt what we have been through?”

  “No,” Ceth said, his voice soft. “I only doubt if you know as much of the Sages as you and yours think.”

  “And you know more?” Iyana asked, crossing her arms. “Just because you follow one doesn’t mean you know any more of his brothers and sister than us. If you did, you’d know the need to stop them.”

  “There are worse things than the Eastern Dark,” Ceth said. When he saw her lips part, he spoke up. “I have known the horror of the Sages’ war. I have known it in all its bitter embrace. We did not come to this land as willingly as you left it. Me and mine. We came as refugees from a conflict unasked for. We came burdened and we were a burden, but the people of the desert—your forebears or their cousins, perhaps—took us in. And their leader, he has done more to help us than any other ever would. Discovering his true form has no bearing on his true nature.”

  Ceth looked back toward the firelight that was now a soft, pink glow against the open maw of the cavern. “We know who he is, and no matter what he may have done in the past, he is changed. He is ours, and we are his.”

  He turned toward her, and the veil dropped some. “I believe in him, Iyana Ve’Ran.” She thought she saw a glimmer in his eye. “I believe in what I can.”

  Iyana would have chalked it up to the same zealotry she had sensed before. The same she had sensed from the others. But Ceth spoke as one with a will of his own, even if he followed.

  “He,” Iyana started and then stopped. She shook her head as she focused on the western horizon. The distant figures had melded into the landscape, their shadows more suggestion than reality. “Pevah won’t speak of the Midnight Dunes or what’s beneath them. Why? We could help—”

  “Because he feels responsible,” Ceth said. His face changed after he said it, the grimace he had worn morphing into a momentary glimpse of regret, as if he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

  “He has told you this?” Iyana asked, testing.

  “No,” Ceth said with a shake. “But he wears it.”

  She thought to say more and then felt guilty for it, caught between getting as much information as she could to aid their mission and the fear of severing whatever tenuous connection she had made with Ceth. And she had seen it. Pevah might be a Sage and he might wear it differently, but she had seen the look, the way broad shoulders bowed when none were looking, or too many. She had seen it in Tu’Ren Kadeh, who was like a father to her. She had seen it in Karin Reyna, though he wore it differently. She saw it in the way Talmir sought his outlets and raged against circumstance. She had even seen it in the way Kole’s amber eyes reflected his blades.

  “It’s a World of regret,” Iyana said. She felt Ceth’s considering gaze on her as she spoke. She looked down, watching the smaller sand grains glide atop their sisters in the night winds. The wind came down from the north, and Iyana looked up and past Ceth, focusing on the towering ridges that could have been a day’s travel or a week’s.

  “Where are you from, Ceth?” she asked, turning the conversation away from Pevah. Away from the desert and everything in it.

  “You seem to know,” he said, his voice careful.

  “I can guess the direction,” she said. She focused in, trying to pick out something, anything atop the distant cliffs that were the color of blood left to dry. “I can guess a lot of things, including why you’re not there anymore—wherever ‘there’ is. Or you could tell me.” She let her eyes alight on him as she finished, and he seemed taken aback.

  “It looks like a gate,” he said, following her gaze back up. “Doesn’t it? A barrier to something else. Perhaps a land not unlike your Valley home, ringed on all sides by jagged stone giants.”

  Iyana nodded, but he couldn’t see her. He stepped around the outcropping and gripped the overhang with his trailing hand, passing around the side and climbing a natural stair carved into the side like a rising trench. Iyana followed him up and onto a higher spot that wasn’t so cramped. The wind buffeted them here, slicing down like blades from the place they watched. Black spurs broke the surface of the sand like great fins that dotted the landscape all the way to the base of the cliffs, and Iyana could see other shelves half-buried and hinting at underground lands like the one beneath their feet.

  “What lies beyond them?” she asked, having to speak up to be heard. She noticed Ceth leaning a bit in the wind and wondered if he had drunk too much, and then he frowned and clenched his fists. She thought he was angry, but the look passed soon enough and he stood unmoving, even the more violent gusts doing nothing to make him lean.

  “Nothing,” he said, and now she tasted bitterness on the wind. “There is no great, vibrant valley beyond the Red Cliffs. It is a high land and it is a barren one. Why any felt it a good place to settle has always been beyond me.”

  “How far does it go?” Iyana asked. She squinted up at the cliff and tried to picture the shelf of rock stretching out like the still surface of a lake.

  “Too far to reach the end and come back,” he said. “Nothing living out there. Not much where we lived, but enough. Things that made their homes in the trenches and scars that made the place up. Good places to raise a brood and wait out the storms, escape the wind.”

  “I’m sure it has its own sort of beauty,” Iyana said. She swallowed, wondering if she had erred, but the hint of a smile touched the corner of Ceth’s mouth.

  “Aye,” he said, quietly.

  “You are Landkist,” she said. He turned a questioning look on her, as if he wondered why she said it. As if he expected blame. “Of a sort I’ve never seen nor heard of.” She tilted her head back toward the glow that had redoubled along with the voices that ringed it. “None of the others are the same as you. Not among your people or the desert folk.”

  Ceth looked in that direction. “We don’t distinguish between the two,” he said.

  Iyana reached out and Ceth shot her a look that stayed her hand, for a moment. He leaned back on his heel and then relaxed, and she touched the gray scarf that hung from his neck and draped around his shoulders like a shawl.

  He smiled knowingly. “Something to be said for history, I suppose.”

  Iyana continued to regard him. She felt sad and he seemed to pick up on it, frowning at her look and the silence it held.

  “You don’t seem to like to talk about what you are,” she said.

  “Do you?” She shrugged and he looked back to the south. “You don’t interact with the others of your kind. The Green-Eyes.”

  Iyana had to laugh at that, but he only watched her. “It’s a simple enough term,” she said, wiping away a tear before the wind could. “Better than the truth.”

  “Faeykin,” Ceth said, surprising her. “Funny, the names they come up with to describe us.”

  “You’re more observant than you let on,” she said. “You’ve been spying? Perhaps asking questions of your own?”

  “Silence has its uses,” he said. He didn’t seem to be joking. “Allows you to listen better.”

  The conversation dropped and the silence, growing tense, rose to supplant it. Ceth sighed as she stared.

  “I am Landkist, yes,” he said. “Much good it’s done.”

  “It fed your people tonight,” Iyana said. “And mine.”

  Ceth waved it away. “One of the hunters could’ve brought the beast down. Not
as quick. Not as painless.” His eyes ran over hers as he turned back to the north. “Still.”

  “I get the impression you’re the last of something, Ceth,” Iyana said. She was speaking more freely than she should have, and she was one of the only people in both companies not to have taken a sip of the sticky cave wine.

  “Your people know of the Sages, yes?” he asked, shaking his head at the stupidity of the question. “Have you heard of the Twins of Whiteash?” He turned to look at her, and Iyana racked her brain. It sounded familiar, like something from one of Ninyeva’s stories.

  “They were not part of the Six,” Iyana said. “Right?”

  Ceth shrugged. “I suppose not. When they lived, there were more.”

  “They were the Sages of your lands?”

  Ceth spat and Iyana had to move to dodge it as the wind picked it up. He did not apologize, only glared hatefully at the northern shelf he’d looked at with something approaching melancholy before.

  “The Sages that held it, more like,” he said, bitterness laid bare. “The Eastern Dark is the one they all fear.” She didn’t know to whom he referred, and didn’t ask. “The Sage of Center might be the strongest in war.” He glanced sidelong at Iyana. “Pevah says the Sage who guarded your Valley could have been the greatest among them. Such was his mastery.” He looked back to the cliffs. “But none were crueler than the Twins. None more vicious.”

  There was something in the air that made Iyana’s head thrum as if she were touching the edges of the Between. She checked herself to make sure she wasn’t slipping and then saw what she at first took for light touching the edges of Ceth’s balled fists. As she peered closer, she saw that it was a blur, as if the space around them was tearing and reforming too quickly.

  She took a step back and he noticed. He unclenched his fists and exhaled, eyes widening. The thrumming stopped and the blur faded.

  “They would not suffer any to have power but themselves,” he said. He laughed—a more bitter sound than the wind, which had taken on a strange howl to fill the void left by the absence of the foxes’ songs. “Ironic, since they were counted among the weakest of the Sages.”

  “What happened to them?” Iyana asked, though she feared to know. “Did Pevah fight—”

  Ceth shook his head. “Pevah was … sleeping, at that time. Or else not here. He had other concerns in the desert. The Blood Seers—your cousins who did not follow the Ember King out of the desert—began stirring up trouble. He couldn’t have known what happened up there. If he had …” He trailed off, swallowing. She thought he looked as though he wanted to believe something, as if he were trying to convince himself more than her.

  He smiled, all teeth. “No,” he said. “We tried to fight them ourselves. The great Landkist of the Red Cliffs. They called us the Skyr, and we were mighty. Even I, who was youngest. Weakest. I could shatter ten men on the spot if I wanted. What difference could a Sage make? Even two?”

  Iyana was beginning to feel sick as she had before, though the reasons were all different. She could feel Ceth’s resentment boiling to the surface, could taste his bitterness like a sour grape. If she’d have looked with her Faey Sight, no doubt she’d have seen his tether burning brighter than any fire in the desert. All-consuming. A thing driven and a thing to drive.

  “It didn’t go well,” Iyana said, making a mockery of understatement. She nodded when he looked at her. “We had some try, too. One, in any case. Our brightest star, they called her. An Ember whose power could rival the gods. Only we’d never fought the gods, so how were we to know? How was she?”

  It seemed to have a calming effect on him. “How were we?” he echoed. He looked down at his hands. “We gave them a fright, no doubt. They responded by killing all but the weakest among us. The Red Cliffs earned their names, but it wasn’t the blood I remembered. It wasn’t the screams or the snaps, the way children howled when they came for the town we’d carved while us champions followed behind, bloody and dragging bloodier.” He swallowed. “No. It wasn’t any of that. It was the way they laughed as they did it, and it was the sounds my sister made as they brought it all crashing down onto the heads of those we’d struck out to defend.”

  Iyana found herself looking up at the cliffs again. She saw the stars leering down like judging eyes, heard the howling wind as the screams from Ceth’s memory.

  Ceth smiled after that, and Iyana hesitated to find out why.

  “But they got the end they deserved,” he said. He looked to her. “I’ve seen an Ember before,” he said. “I didn’t know it at the time. I thought him a Sage like any other, albeit darker. There was a Shadow that followed him, and there were others. I knew these to be Landkist. They walked with a purpose, even as the Twins sat atop their bloody mound with their heads gathered at the base, expressionless. These Landkist with the dark warrior in black and red armor at their head walked toward them as if nothing could’ve compelled them to stop.”

  His eyes seemed to glaze over, and Iyana thought for the briefest of moments about following the memory down into its truth. She had only done it once before, with Tu’Ren. The experience had been harrowing enough for her, and doubly so for the man who’d shown it. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with someone she hardly knew, even if that was changing by inches.

  “They died,” he said, leaving out all that went with it. “The Twins of Whiteash, who’d lorded over me and mine for generations. They died hard. If they had been noble, you might’ve said they died well.” He shook his head. “There had been a dozen Skyr left when the final fight started. By the end, there were only two: my sister and me.”

  Iyana took a step toward him. “And the Ember?” she asked. “T’Alon Rane and his followers. They helped you win the day?”

  “They helped themselves,” Ceth said. “Or they helped the Sage who’d sent them. They didn’t get out of it bloodless. Left plenty of their own mixed among ours. Champions from far-off lands. And when they fell, something slid off them. I only remembered it afterwards. I remembered the looks they’d held when they died. Like relief.”

  He paused.

  “I only learned the rest later, from Pevah. Learned how the Eastern Dark had restarted the killing of the others when the rest had paused for a space of centuries. He didn’t do it himself. No, he had his servants for that. And your Ember King was the prize he’d always wanted from the deserts. He won. The Twins lost, and they weren’t the first to die in the decades that followed and they wouldn’t be the last, far as Pevah can tell.”

  Ceth shook his head and smiled again, only this time it seemed like one of disbelief, as if he doubted his own memories.

  “Never have seen power quite like that clash,” he said. “Nothing close. And your Ember was at the heart of it, burning like a star. Pity he didn’t aim his flames better.”

  Iyana tried to shake the thought of T’Alon Rane burning up friend as well as foe. She tried to shake the thought of her sister that came up unbidden. How could Linn have fought him? How could they be seeking him out now? One strong enough to kill Sages. One who could easily be counted among their number.

  And then another thought surfaced, called up from something buried in the rest of Ceth’s account. Something he’d skipped over.

  “You said your sister survived,” Iyana said. His look went cold. “What happened?”

  Ceth shrugged and sighed. Iyana pretended not to see the tears that welled on the rims of eyes weighted by memory. “I’d thought to go out and find her,” he said. “I wanted to.” He raised a hand and looked it over, front and back. “I’d have been no match for him, of course. Not then.”

  “A match for who?” Iyana asked, confused.

  “T’Alon Rane,” Ceth said, looking at her as if she knew. “We all saw what he could do with the company he kept. We lost a lot in that fight, Iyana. My sister was just a casualty who left willingly.”

  “She joined him,” Iyana reasoned. “She joined T’Alon Rane in his hunt for the rest of the Sages.”
/>
  “She joined the Eastern Dark,” Ceth said. “Though she wouldn’t see it that way. ‘What does it matter who’s aiming as long as the arrow finds its mark?’ That was what she told me before she left. I was young.”

  Iyana felt a pang.

  “What was her name?” she asked. “Your sister.”

  “Resh.”

  The name didn’t sound familiar, and as far as Iyana knew, T’Alon had only come to the Valley with two allies in tow—a Shadow girl that Ceth seemed familiar with, and the warrior from Center, Brega Cohr. It could be that she was alive. It could be that she should tell him.

  “We came here,” Ceth said, sweeping a hand out to the empty expanse. “No doubt we found ourselves in the midst of a conflict between the desert folk and the savages. They were guarding something. We needed a place to stay. We needed food and water, and this is a barren land if you don’t know where to look. Unforgiving to outsiders. To survive here, Iyana Ve’Ran, you need to be one of the desert’s children. You need to be blessed by the Mother’s Heart. We helped the old man we did not know was a Sage. We took on his charge until we believed in it. And now, we’ve a family. We’ve a people, or the beginnings of it.” He looked back to the west and the purple-red skyline. “Even if we lose some from time to time.”

  “Your sister must have been powerful,” Iyana said.

  “She was smart,” Ceth said. “She was quick. But the Skyr never knew their real strength. It took Pevah to show me mine.” Raised voices rose panic in his eyes, but he settled as the laughter trailed behind it, the fruit wine doing its work in the right way, now. Iyana nearly laughed. She had left the Sharing only to find herself engorged with it to the point of bursting.

  “It’s not wind,” he said, surprising her. He turned his hand over and Iyana felt that buzzing start anew. It nearly made her teeth chatter. “It’s not the air, but what’s between it.” The blur started up again, the cream color of Ceth’s skin swirling and going milky like moisture in the sun. He lanced out a strike quicker than Iyana could see and the air broke with its passing. There was a pop that hurt her ears and she heard one of the foxes yelp from a place below them, the pack renewing their complaints.