The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  And then a coldness gripped her as she remembered the way the girl’s light had been snuffed out, snapped as if from afar. Though she had suspected it in the immediate aftermath, a single look at Sen’s face had showed her he was not the culprit. She had held him fast, and no matter how he had planned to wring what truths or lies he could from the sorry beast, his look had suggested he was as bothered by its sudden departure as she was.

  “These are dark thoughts,” Ceth said, drawing her back. He smiled down at her. He swept his hand back toward the jeweled slab. “And this is a bright room.”

  Iyana nearly returned the smile, but something drew her attention. She frowned and quirked her head to the side and Ceth frowned alongside her. She looked first to the glowing scar in the floor ahead but came away with a shake. It was not another one of the Mother’s sighs brewing. It didn’t come from below, but seemed to emanate from the very walls, and from the deeper pockets in the dark corners the firelight refused to paint.

  Something was wrong.

  “What is it?” he asked, squaring. He followed her darting eyes, which she knew had begun to pulse and glow as she sought out the source of the feeling with her other Sight, careful not to let herself slip fully into the Between. It was like a thrumming that reminded her distantly of the way the Dark Hearts had played their bloody drums in the depths of the northern peaks of the Valley.

  It came strongest from the north, and Iyana took a step in that direction, her eyes now shining bright enough to splash a bit of their own emerald coloring into the amber mix, tinting it gold. In the deepest shadows at the northeast corner of the chamber, she saw curling bits of red and black and deep purple. She blinked, thinking it must be a trick of the light, but the thrumming and beating she heard—felt, as if in her own chest—moved in time with their questing dance as they crept from the shadows. They were dimmer than any tethers she had yet seen. Even the smallest creatures gave off their own bright lights, but these were like threads all covered up with rot, sick with crusted blood and poison.

  “Ceth,” she said, not taking her eyes from the corner. He had stepped in front of her and she could hear the buzzing that signaled the gathering of his own strange power. She saw his balled fist smudge against her vision like a blur as he changed his very presence, his weight and solidity to suit his martial intent.

  “Ceth,” she said again, more forcefully. He glanced back at her. “The tunnel to the south. It leads to the lake, yes?”

  The faintest of nods. Now he could sense something in the deeper dark.

  “Are there other tunnels?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice as solid as she wished she could make hers. “Many.” He shook his head, as if in disbelief. “The ways are too hot. They cannot come through even if they know them. They would be scorched. Blinded, perhaps.”

  If she hadn’t seen the rotted tethers reaching out like macabre hands grasping at the red light, she’d have known it by the smell that assailed them like a delayed portent to Ceth’s words. It was a smell that could only be the result of burnt flesh, and it carried none of the sweet and salted tang of the roast on the shelf above.

  Whatever image she conjured in her mind’s eye was a shadow in the face of the pale horrors that greeted the light that should’ve thrown them back. Iyana stepped back as the first of them broke from the darkness, and even Ceth twitched with the urge to run in any direction but forward.

  The first of them screeched, a sound like torture, and the rest spilled from the shadows at its back, the Mother’s glow washing them like judgment.

  Karin had stayed his instinct for as long as was possible. He had even taken some of the cave wine a young woman offered to smooth the edge that always seemed to be present beneath the ridge of his spine. It tasted of old grapes and sugar sap, and it lent a pleasant buzz to his overactive mind that helped to ease much of the tension brought on by Talmir’s confrontation with the old man.

  He stood with Creyath on the edges of the blaze for a time after Iyana had departed the shelf. They both kept their eyes on her as she picked her way among the moonlit crags up onto the higher ground that overlooked the western sands. She liked looking toward the west at night, and Karin thought to let her. Best to keep her mind off whatever had happened with the intruder.

  That thought brought back the edge he had worked so hard to smooth. Karin was a man of few words, but Creyath was almost devoid of them entirely. If Karin had asked the Ember’s opinion on the attack and the ensuing death of their would-be assassin, he’d likely have gotten an honest nothing as a response. He did not, and so his mind worked over the possibilities.

  He found himself glancing at Sen as their hosts moved around the fire, cutting bits of smoked flesh and drenching them in the same wine they drank liberally as they mingled with the members of the caravan. The Faeykin noticed, and once he held Karin’s gaze, his own greens sparked as if in challenge. Karin looked away.

  “You think he did it?” Creyath asked. He continued to lean against the side of his black charger as Karin stroked absently at the flank of Talmir’s mare. The Ember did not look toward the Faeykin or his morose company but kept his eyes ahead, watching the mirthful figures and looking beyond them into the cave where the Sage had withdrawn. Captain Talmir leaned against the opening. He laughed easily enough when his men and women tossed jokes his way, but mostly he stared into the flames or else looked beyond them, past the ridges across the slow river of sand and toward the orange and pink light of the western horizon.

  “Sen?” Karin asked, coming back to himself. “Think he did what? Killed the sorry thing?”

  “The girl,” Creyath said firmly. “Afflicted, yes. Strange and wild, perhaps. But she was a girl, and I’d venture to guess that she can be counted as much a victim in this land as any.”

  “No,” Karin said. He glanced at Sen once more and saw that faraway look in the Faeykin’s eyes. “I don’t think he did. Whether or not he would is another story entirely.” Creyath nodded.

  Karin had long thought of the Landkist among the Faey as healers, and nothing more. That was all they knew during the early conflicts of the Valley, aside from the occasional rumor—massacres that had never been fully explained. That was all they cared to know. It might’ve paid to know their other gifts. It might’ve paid to know that there were those like Sen, Verna and Courlis among his own people who could have done much more than the vain Emberfolk realized.

  Still, he never thought they could affect the very wills of others. He wondered if Mother Ninyeva had had the gift. He knew now that Iyana did. And as he watched the red-haired woman and the older robed fellow hold themselves apart from Sen on the outskirts of the blaze, he thought they could not.

  Creyath seemed to guess the direction of his thoughts.

  “There is much we don’t know,” the Ember said, and Karin had to laugh. He could have been talking about anything: the World, the deserts they traversed now or the strange lands beneath them. But he thought he meant the Landkist and their many colors and bents, of which he was a part.

  An image flashed of the look Iyana had worn as they had come upon the scene. She had departed for that other plane, and soon after, Sen had fallen. The look the older Faeykin had turned on the younger as he propped himself up on his hands and knees was the closest to fear Karin had yet seen on the man’s face, even including their run-in with the land drakes and all their deadly bile.

  “You know,” Karin said. “I used to envy you and yours.” Creyath regarded him, his eyes seeming to flicker like wind-blown coals. “Even when I was with Sarise, I envied her power … to a point.”

  Creyath straightened and his black charger snorted its complaint. The Second Keeper of Hearth squared his shoulders and placed a hand to his heart at the mention of Karin’s lost love. Karin smiled and meant it.

  Creyath was of the Scattered Villages. Karin often forgot these days, given how synonymous the name had come to be with Hearth’s white walls, but the Ember was of a tribe that�
�while Emberfolk in name—were as varied and tribal as any they might find in the deserts. Strange, how quickly a people had split apart in the midst of a new land. But then, the Emberfolk had never been as unified in the old lands—in these lands—as they were at Last Lake and Hearth. Perhaps that was why Creyath was so at ease in such unfamiliar circumstances. Perhaps everything that seemed strange to Karin, Talmir and the rest felt as natural as the hammerhorn bulls and the foxes that trailed them to the Ember.

  “But not now?” Creyath prompted, bringing Karin back around. Talmir watched them from the opposite side of the shelf but left them to their private exchange.

  Karin blinked and thought to apologize to the Ember, but the other man regarded him steadily.

  “You do not envy us now, Reyna?” he asked. He did not seem to be insulted at the possibility.

  “No,” Karin said with a slow and considered shake. “I saw the way the fire consumed Sarise when she fought.” He swallowed. “I saw the way my son warred with it—along with everything else—since the day that blaze awoke in him.” He looked to the east, over the yawning mouth of the cave and toward the stars that were less sharp that way.

  “Iyana didn’t even hurt Sen,” he said, keeping his voice low, though the sounds of a dozen conversations drowned him out regardless. “She looked as if she’d seen a ghost, or made one. She looked like someone disgusted with herself. Disgusted with what she’d discovered.”

  Creyath looked past Karin and settled on Sen. The Faeykin seemed to twitch under his scrutiny, though he did not look up, only hugged his knees tighter to his chest and rested his chin atop them.

  “Some say fire is the purest way to destroy something,” Creyath said. “To kill.” The words sounded less dreadful than they might coming from another. “No doubt you’ve seen death at the mercy of Everwood, Reyna. You fought in the same trials as me.” He made a soft sound that might have been a sigh. “I don’t think the ones who say it have heard the sounds of those who die in flame. But fire is always honest. It never lies. It must be strange to hold a different sort of fire you cannot trust, that you cannot understand.”

  Now Karin turned toward him. Those amber eyes had dulled, the fire within turning to a smolder. His lips were still, his dark features tight. There were jests that had since turned to rumor that Creyath had a bit of the Faey in him. Karin had never heard the Ember dismiss them out of hand.

  Karin felt the laughter only as it bubbled out. He attributed it to the lingering effects of the wine. Strong stuff. Creyath raised his brows, his eyes absorbing the fire rather than reflecting it.

  Karin laid a hand on his shoulder. It was warm to the touch even through his shirt, like a stone left to bake in the afternoon sun. “I mean no offense, Mit’Ahn,” he said. “It’s just something the captain said about you when I’d first come to Hearth during the siege.”

  Creyath adopted a curious expression.

  “I’d guess he got it from your man Garos in the first place,” Karin laughed. “He said, ‘Even when he speaks plain, the bards of the Northeast would place Mit’Ahn’s words in rhymes and couplets.’” He laughed again, and let this one out, full-bodied, as Creyath’s lips split to reveal the white beneath.

  “I think he prefers it to the bluster of the First Keeper,” Creyath said.

  “Aye,” Karin nodded. “I’m sure he does.” They both looked across the fire to where the captain leaned alongside soldiers who now swayed and danced to the rhythmic songs of the desert. Karin tilted his head. There was a melody beneath the hum that reminded him of home. He smiled and saw that Creyath shared it.

  Captain Talmir met his eyes from across the smoke and glow. The captain smiled to echo Karin’s, but the look did not quite reach his eyes, and as Talmir swept his gaze out to take in the northern section of the shelf, Karin followed it and saw a stone bowl lying abandoned. He remembered Iyana and peered around Creyath and his towering mount to where the black rock met the soft sand below.

  “It’s getting late,” Karin said as Creyath followed his stare. He patted the Ember on the shoulder and stepped past him. “I’ve got a dangerous quarry to track.” Creyath laughed at that.

  Karin saw Talmir straighten from his place against the side of the entrance, following his progress. He waved to the captain and motioned for him to stay where he was. Talmir nodded his thanks, and Karin saw his eyes widen as he looked past him.

  As he passed out of the glow of the fire and left the milling voices behind, Karin could see why. He felt the light of a second fire greet his west-facing cheek, and as he pulled himself up nimbly among the crags, he paused and regarded the horizon. The sky was always pink and orange that way, but now it held a threat of red, like fresh-drawn blood. Karin squinted at the ribs of the land below it, the rises turning back to uneven dunes that melted into the distance. He thought he glimpsed figures moving among them, and the thought called up an image of the red- and gray-sashes around the flames on the shelf below. There had been less of them than there should be. Karin had thought the rest might be below, minding the children along the lakeshore. Now, he thought he might know otherwise.

  He shook his head and moved off, gaining the top of the shelf and moving north. The pups of the desert foxes chased one another up and down the soft inclines, making their tracks that the wind would soon erase. The elders yipped to them, and something in the sound gave Karin the impression of panic. He looked down as he walked and saw a larger male watching him. Where they usually sat still or loped, this one stood and flicked its tail like a cat might. Karin frowned at the display, wondering what had the beast’s blood up. He reminded himself that the foxes of the west, though alike in appearance, were not the same as the canines of the southern Valley.

  It didn’t take him long to find them. It wasn’t that he saw them. It wasn’t even that he’d found their tracks. Karin had tried to teach Mial and Jes, his two Runners-in-training, but it seemed tracking was something innate. Karin smiled to himself. Perhaps he was Landkist after all. Maybe he sensed paths traveled like echoes of the past, or of the folk who’d made them.

  At first, Ceth’s presence unnerved him. He wondered if Iyana had come upon him or the opposite, but seeing the way they stood on the narrow ledge that hugged the northern shelf, Karin sensed no threat from the man. He stood out of sight for a length of time that began to feel uncomfortable, like he was spying, but as he thought to turn back, the pair moved off along a path he couldn’t see.

  Karin cursed into the wind and followed. The two paused atop the next shelf. He could hear wisps of their exchange. Ceth’s voice sounded strange, as if made from wind and rocks. Karin had not heard the Landkist speak as much in the days before, and did not know whether to count it a good thing. As their voices faded, Karin took the natural stair they had traversed and found the top of the shelf abandoned.

  He followed and saw a trench cutting down into the east-facing ledge, and as he took a step into it, he heard a scraping like claws over sand and rock. He spun, knife flashing free from his belt and catching the silver light of the moon.

  The same desert fox that had watched him before stood in a wide stance, fur up in a ridge.

  “What is it?” Karin whispered harshly. The fox straightened and scented the wind. It kept its yellow eyes fixed on him as it circled, and Karin turned to keep it in front of him. It walked to the edge and tore its gaze away, and Karin was surprised to see its pack-mates spread among the shelves near and far, all looking eastward, and all scenting the breeze as if a dark intent rode its currents. There looked to be a dozen of them at least, and none raised a sound.

  Karin’s heart hadn’t slowed, even though he knew the fox meant him no harm. He turned with renewed purpose and followed the trench down into a jagged turn that led him into a tunnel some great, primordial worm might’ve made. It was lucky he heard the rushing sound before he’d gone too far, as the blast of wind and steam that shook the walls around him nearly blistered his face as he approached a cross-section in the s
ubterranean network. He fell back with a sharp hiss and thought to call out to Iyana and Ceth.

  He swallowed and pushed on as the trailing vapors fell to coat the now-slick chute that ran the opposite way, back toward the southern shelf and the lake that rested beneath it.

  There was a ruby-red glow ahead, and Karin found himself moving quicker as he neared it until he was at a full run. He heard voices coming from the chamber beyond and had to blink away the bright that stung his eyes and brought tears to the corners.

  His heart, which had been ready to leap into his throat, slowed and ceased its drumming as he came to the edge and saw the sight beyond, and the two figures that stood below and before it. The red-jeweled wall sparkled and moved with a light that seemed to come from within. He thought the whole of it must be some molten core, though a part of him knew they’d have burned up, being so close.

  He did not have time to revel in the scene, nor to announce his presence before Iyana shouted a warning meant for Ceth.

  They came out of the northeastern shadows in a throng, and Karin’s heart did not renew its hammering but rather slowed to half its usual speed, his blood going cold as his body drained of heat.

  The pale horrors some distant part of his mind knew as men stepped into a fiery light that was unkind to them, shining like a hard truth on all their ugly hurt. They were silent but for the breathing of a score of melted mouths. They came naked or half-clothed, their hair sprouting in oiled patches. Their arms were long and their legs bowed, and their skin drooped in some places and bunched around tight, corded muscle in others. They looked as if they were on the verge of death, or had returned from it, and Karin was reminded of the way the storm had stripped the Dark Kind of their black shells before the walls of Hearth not so long ago.

  But these were not the Dark Kind, nor were they the same as the red-toothed men and women he had fought to the east, though some of them were painted similarly, and some clutched spurs of bone and sharpened lengths of obsidian.