The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  “It’s weight,” Ceth said. “Solidity.” He shook his head. “I can make myself as light or as heavy as I wish, and I can do the same with the space around me. It must be very close. It must be very quick.” He searched for the right words. “Take the strength of the whole and put it into the part.” He looked at her. “That is what Pevah told me. But it goes both ways.” He turned his hand over. “Make the fist strong and the body is weak for the moment. Leap with the strength of a giant, but take care that nothing hits your chest, lest it crumble.”

  Iyana shook her head in bewilderment, watching his hand as he withdrew it. The blur had faded along with the buzzing. “Such power,” she said. “And from the land itself. It seems strange.” She laughed. “And I thought the Faeykin were strange.”

  “You are,” Ceth said with a smile. “Pevah tried to tell me of your gifts. Healing, I understand. A mighty gift. But,” he raised his opposite hand above his head and waved it in a strange, comical manner. “Tethers and ropes. You see life itself.” His smile dropped and he looked serious for a spell. “Do you see the Embers’ fire when you look at them with those eyes? Do they burn, always?”

  Iyana shook her head. “I can see the fire in their threads,” she allowed. “But it’s more a suggestion. A flicker, like a candle flame. And plenty who don’t have the fire in their blood have it in their tether.” She shrugged. “It’s a string that makes us up, I guess.” Ceth nodded as if he understood, but Iyana only tried to blink past the image of Sen flattened against the sharp black rocks as she wrenched his very life in a way she hadn’t known she could.

  “A mighty gift,” he said, sounding awed.

  “I can’t fell a hammerhorn with my bare hand,” she said. “Can’t change the laws around me to flit on the wind like a feather or crash like a thrown stone.” She smiled as Ceth took it in appraisingly. “You are something. I think Kole would’ve liked to meet you. I think Linn would trust your silence more than most, though you wouldn’t know it by her look.”

  “Your brother and sister?” Ceth asked.

  Iyana opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She smiled. “Yes.”

  Ceth waited for her to elaborate, but she let it stand.

  “And you can show them,” Iyana said, turning back toward the south. “The children your people have begun to make. All red and gray and white and brown.”

  He smiled, though he looked saddened. “The land gives its gifts or it doesn’t,” he said. “Pevah said it. He said your folk know it best.” He kept from looking up at the Red Cliffs again. “Your Embers may be dying out, but I fear the Skyr are gone already, and I’m just the ghost they left behind.”

  “People have been forgotten,” Iyana said. “But not by the World. By those who seek to rule it. By the Sages.” Ceth frowned. “Not all of them are like yours.” He remained silent, and Talmir’s bronze star flashed in her mind. She knew she’d sound like him before she spoke the next. “Time we remind it who we are. Time we remind them, I think.”

  “That’s why you’re here,” Ceth said. “To gain enough power to do it. To remind the Sages who you are. To remind the Eastern Dark.”

  Iyana did not answer, which was answer enough.

  “Your sister,” she started, speaking past the warning in her throat. “You seem to regret her choice to follow a Sage. To get mixed up with them. And yet—”

  “And yet here I am,” he laughed, surprising her. “Perhaps the old man has tricked me.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Perhaps there is nothing beneath the Midnight Dunes but promises that keep us here.” He shook his head. “But I do not think it so.” He met her eyes and held them. “Pevah is not like the others. Wherever he got the name they gave to him, he has left it behind to gather dust. He’s trying to make things right.”

  “How is staying here making things right?” Iyana asked. “How, with so much happening in the World? With the Dark Months coming back, worse every year? With the Eastern Dark sending his champions out against the rest until only he remains?”

  “He will not be the last,” Ceth said, deadly serious. “Not while I stand.”

  Iyana sighed, exasperated and exhausted. “You think Pevah protects you,” she said. “But are you sure it is not you who protects him? You and yours, who fill his empty caverns with warmth and light? Who fill his halls with the sounds of children and family?”

  “Can it not be both?” Ceth asked, and the honesty of the question stunned her to silence.

  The wind had settled some, but the night had grown cool enough to make the gooseflesh rise on her uncovered arms. She rolled her sleeves down. They were crusted with the salted sweat of the day’s events and no small amount of sand. Ceth watched her.

  “Your people will be worried,” he said. “Especially the one who would be your father.”

  “Karin?” she laughed. “No doubt we’re in his sights even now.”

  “He is an impressive tracker?” Ceth asked, scanning the nearby crags, dips and ridges.

  “He is First Runner,” Iyana said, as if that were enough. For Ceth, it appeared to be. He nodded.

  “I thought to speak with Creyath,” he said. “I thought to show him something for the Sharing, but I think he would rather spend tonight with the horses.”

  “What is it?” Iyana asked, curiosity piqued.

  “The Mother’s Heart,” Ceth said. He swept his hand out to the northeast, and Iyana looked back toward the south.

  “Is it close?” she asked.

  “It is the glow that warms the lake and those who sleep beside it,” Ceth said. “It is very close. All of the ways are connected, if you know how to walk the paths.”

  “I think I’d like to see it,” Iyana said. She had had enough of the open air and the Red Cliffs that loomed like a bloody memory to the north. She felt the tinge of purple-red to the west and did not wish to look on it or see the figures walking beneath it.

  Ceth led her along the shelf that bordered the one she, Creyath, Karin and Talmir had stood atop just that morning. Instead of heading in that direction, closer to the firelight that was now clearly visible to her from this vantage, she followed him down a natural trench that scored the rock heading north. The way twisted as they delved deeper into the rocky surface, and Iyana lost sight of Ceth up ahead as he rounded a bend. The sand had pooled to such a depth as to block the way, and the trench was now something close to a tunnel that lost the faint light of moon and stars above.

  She thought to call out to him, but he waited just within sight and waved her on. Now they were in a tunnel, and Iyana stepped carefully lest the smooth, glass-like surface of the floor betray her. The way was warm—uncomfortably so—but Ceth seemed unconcerned, moving with confident steps in the close confines. The tunnel widened a bit further in and she nearly bumped into him as he stopped at a cross-section, where another worm-way bisected theirs.

  Iyana craned around to see his face. He had his eyes closed and his hand to the rock on one side.

  “Keep your head back,” he said, stepping back and forcing her to do the same.

  Iyana did as he said and listened as he listened. She heard it as a rushing, like a river, or as a moaning, like wind between the trees of the southern Valley. As it grew closer, it set the rock walls to thrumming and her teeth to chattering. She looked questioningly at Ceth, who stretched out his left hand as a ward she wasn’t meant to cross.

  The air rushed through the cross-section from north to south like the breath of a drake, or like one of the White Crest’s torrents. Iyana shielded her eyes as the heat flashed against her face. She yelped and heard Ceth make a similar sound, until she blinked in the aftermath and recognized it as laughter.

  The Landkist stepped confidently into the breach, which was now sticky with the moisture the blast had drawn from the stone, and looked after it like it was a beast he tailed. Iyana peered into the tunnel, first looking to the north and the direction the blast came from, and then south, toward what she imagined was the caverns
and twisting ways of the lake-filled expanse the nomads kept as home.

  “Are we above or below?” she asked, trusting Ceth’s lack of concern even as they stood in a position of death. How frequently did the blasts occur? Even as she thought it, she felt another vibration, and though it felt as if it might be a long way off, Iyana stepped gingerly over the uneven surface and entered the east-facing tunnel across the way. She looked back and saw Ceth smiling.

  “Who can say?” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was serious, or if knew the answer and wouldn’t tell her. He stood in the intersection just long enough to make her heart skip a beat as another distant sigh sounded, and then he stepped in after her. She bladed her body to let him pass and lead the way.

  “The Mother’s breath,” he said, more to himself than her, as if nothing had ever sounded so beautiful. Iyana wondered absently if the blast was capable of melting the flesh from her bones like an Ember’s fire and thought that it must be if even Ceth would not stand in its way.

  “That is what they call it?” she asked, glancing behind them as the same porous vents in the ceiling that recalled their sleeping rooms admitted the faintest amount of blue-white light to illuminate their steps.

  Ceth nodded, though it was difficult to see. “Wind from below,” he said, his left hand pointing down. “The Mother sends everything from below, they say. Nothing from above.” He paused and looked up, the filtered light from one of the chutes framing his features. He had a faraway look. “The wind is the Father’s.” He looked back at her. “Even my people have known that. The lord of your Valley knew the ways of the wind, Pevah tells me.” He shook his head. “But even he could not birth it. He may have called to the storms, but he did not conjure them.”

  Iyana said nothing and he continued on ahead. She thought of Linn and the story of their battle with the White Crest. Her sister had been changed by the experience. Something of the Sage had got into her. If Ceth could meet her, could hear the things she’d done—the comet she’d made of Misha Ve’Gah’s flaming spear—he might not be so certain.

  The way grew darker and Iyana felt the floor begin to slope downward. She feared they were straying too far from the camp. Ceth seemed to sense the concern in her silence.

  “We are closer to the lake now than we were above,” he said. “And the light.” He bladed his body against the side of the tunnel so she could see. Ahead, the tunnel came to a jagged wall that shimmered like a stone on the edge of a fire. The black, glassy surface danced with many facets that soaked in and threw back whatever blaze raged below. There was no sound of crackling firewood or raised voices in celebration. This was a fire from somewhere else. A fire from below.

  “Do you want to turn back?” he asked and she smiled knowingly, though he likely couldn’t see it in the gloom. She moved past him in answer and he followed.

  The tunnel was sweating as much as she was as they reached the end, which was like a chimney stack laid on its side. Iyana had thought there was a sheer wall blocking the way, but as they reached the place where the floor and sides fell away she saw that they stood on the lip of a ledge that hung above an open room. The ceiling stretched far above, the floor dropping at a height of four men.

  The light of the glass wall across the way was too bright to look upon directly, but already Iyana’s eyes were beginning to adjust, and she felt a swelling in her chest that felt like pride. Ceth watched her reaction and then stepped off the lip of the ledge. She nearly screamed and reached out to grab for him, but then she saw him float. He touched down on the smooth gray stone of the cavern floor and turned back to her, spreading his arms in a welcoming gesture.

  Iyana hoped the deep blush she felt was lost in the wash of red and orange light. She leapt without thinking twice and Ceth caught her like gentle branches, setting her down like a parent might a child. Any awkwardness she might’ve felt and any rush at the leap was lost in the majesty of the chamber whose heart she stood within.

  “The Mother’s Heart,” Ceth said. He extended his hand toward the shimmering wall before them, but Iyana hadn’t even got to that. She turned in slow circles, noting the way the red light played off the stalactites and stalagmites. There was none of the white quartz in this chamber, but the obsidian seemed fresh-melted. She realized the tunnel they had walked through—which, with its jagged, hard edges seemed perfect enough to be hand-cut—had been carved by liquid fire, as had everything in the chamber, and perhaps everything in the lands below the desert.

  And then she did look toward the wall. It may as well have been a moving tapestry of fire. The sight did not steal her breath so much as force it out in sounds of delight and wonder. She looked to Ceth and then back, her eyes tracing the crystalline surface down to a narrow gap at the base that was almost too bright to look upon. As she squinted against the bright, she saw what looked to be steam rising from a smooth scar. And now that she was still and silent, she heard the pop and sizzle that sounded like bacon cooking in grease.

  The fire was there, below them. The way its red and amber rays played across the black surface of the place reminded her of Everwood and the Embers who wielded it against the Dark Kind.

  “Is this the only one?” she asked, and that question brought a hundred more spilling into the front of her mind.

  “No,” he said, and she noted that the wonderment was not lost on him. It infused his voice just as it drenched his face like the same amber glow she felt become her. “There are many scattered throughout the deserts. Pevah says this is one of the most beautiful.” He scanned the arches and pillars. It was like a mosaic of the setting sun. “Not all of them can be entered. Too hot. Too deadly. The Mother’s Heart is far below the sands, but not so far.” He caught her look. “This one is safe.” He smiled and she returned it.

  Iyana shook her head in mounting disbelief.

  “Do any of the others come here?” she asked.

  “Some.” He nodded, hands on his hips, sweat glistening on his brow. It was hot inside the chamber, but not so bad as Iyana might’ve thought. The tunnel they had dropped down from had been hotter. “But you must know the ways. Which vents to avoid and which tunnels get hottest.”

  There was a rumble from below like some primordial stomach and Iyana swayed. She looked down and saw small bonemetal pebbles shivering as they slid across the surface of the slate. The blast nearly knocked her off her feet, and for an instant she thought they would be swallowed up or else burned away, but then she withdrew her hand and watched the jet of steam scream up before them like a conjured wall. It was so powerful and so lean that none of it spread through the rest of the chamber, but rather scraped against the back wall like a fast-flowing river over rock. The head of the blast was lost to the dark cloisters and coves between the stalactites above, and as the jet passed, Iyana could see the wall shimmer anew, the fresh moisture making it look as though it renewed its melting before them.

  Ceth held up a hand before she spoke. He tilted his chin and looked back at the mouth of the tunnel they’d slipped down from.

  Iyana listened. The rushing was farther off, now, but she knew it to be the same torrent they had just witnessed racing back through the cross-section they had passed before. She grinned. “What a land,” she said.

  Ceth nodded. He seemed proud.

  “I think Creyath would very much like to see it,” she said.

  “Some of them believe the Mother’s Heart is the secret to the Ember fire,” Ceth said, indicating a dark pathway to the south she hadn’t noticed before. It was tucked between the glittering mounds on the edges, and she could hear the faint sound of passing air or water deeper within. “They say the liquid fire is her blood and the rock her bosom.”

  “It’s hard to argue,” Iyana said, almost faintly. Ceth only nodded. “In truth, none of us know where we get these gifts. Mother’s Heart?” She shrugged. “It’s as good a guess as any I’d make.”

  Ceth frowned as if an unpleasant thought had occurred to him.

  “
What is it?” she asked.

  He shook his head, unable to bring the words up as he wanted.

  “It is … strange,” he said, staring at the wall of reflected fire. “Strange that the only Ember to grace the sands in a century is one who comes as a visitor.” He laughed, a mirthless sound. “I am the last. Creyath Mit’Ahn is among the last.” She heard a hint of that now-familiar bitterness. It reminded her of Talmir when he got going. It reminded her of Kole.

  Iyana didn’t know what to say, but a new thought occurred.

  “Ceth,” she said. “Up above, Pevah said the savages think the secret of the Ember fire lies buried beneath the Midnight Dunes.”

  Ceth’s expression nearly fell back behind that veil that had been absent since coming here. She tried to ease it.

  “What do they think of the Mother’s Heart?” she asked. She opened her arms to take in the red-washed chamber. “Is this not magic to them? Do they really think the secret to power lies to the west, if not here?”

  Ceth laughed again, and Iyana grimaced. He sounded as if he nearly choked on it.

  “You speak of them as if they are the same as us.” He caught her eyes and held them, his own look holding a darkness the fire did nothing to brighten. “As if they are men to be reasoned with, and not beasts of corruption.” He paused. “I wonder how much different they truly are from the Dark Kind that have plagued your lands and may soon invade mine.”

  She swallowed. Karin had described them the same. She hadn’t quite believed him, but as she replayed her own run-in with the hissing, spitting intruder from before, Iyana could not say she disagreed. True, the girl had possessed a tether like any other creature of the World, but there was nothing behind the eyes. Nothing of the spirit beneath. Nothing of feeling apart from rage and some need that drove it.