The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  Iyana cast about, her own heart beating furiously as each shuffling step broke the plane of silence that seemed to fill the whole of the vast, glittering chamber. She thought Sen might be the culprit, but could not see him.

  She closed her eyes and felt the green flare to life within her. It sent a shock of pain into her temples that screamed through her blood and bones. She nearly fell and nearly flew, but managed to keep herself anchored. When she opened her eyes, she saw the figures on the shore beneath their glowing threads. The pale men still bore those purple ropes tinged with black, and the men and women they fought carried the vibrant hues that were theirs alone. Instead of swaying like weeds underwater, the tethers were still, nothing but the occasional pulse and flicker betraying the hearts that beat below them.

  She blinked away the sight of the Between and saw it all with eyes renewed, and now she noted the smaller details that should have betrayed the Sage’s presence and power at the outset. She saw a hand with black claws suspended in midair, the blood it trailed glistening in the thrown light of Creyath’s fire and the whiteness of the place. She saw a hurled stone floating, the red-toothed savage it had struck only just beginning to reel as a gash in his head sprouted without spouting. Rather than the strain and struggle she had witnessed in the forms of the pale men she had held at bay in the tunnels below, none so much as breathed here, and not a single eye twitched.

  But there was one who moved freely. She saw him as he emerged from the southern hall where the children slept. For a moment, she saw him as one of the desert foxes that sang their songs in the sands above. He moved with a calm, considered gait, but as she peered beneath his red hood she saw the strain on his face that seemed a mix of pain and the rage that spilled from it. Gone was the man known as ‘Pevah,’ and in his place was a Sage—one of the five remaining in the World. One of the oldest powers and—if the oldest stories were to be believed—one of the deadliest.

  After all, how did one earn such a name without leaving plenty of red in his wake, deserving or otherwise? How could one be counted good with so much death on his hands?

  Iyana did not notice the low, droning song of the disembodied masters of the pale men and Bloody Screamers until it quieted on the Sage’s entrance, as if the song itself feared him and withdrew. As if the witches hiding in their caves and crevices near or far thought he might trace their singing back and cut their throats with a hard glance.

  He walked between the soldiers of the caravan and stepped over the bodies of Verna and Courlis. His eyes lingered on the form of a child splayed beneath a pale-skinned woman wearing a gray sash. He stopped there, just before the frozen maelstrom on the sloped shelf. When he looked up, his eyes were black as the deepest well. Black like the Dark Kind and the World Apart that was their void.

  Iyana felt the fear radiate so strongly she mistook it for her own before she recognized it as emanating from the painted tribesmen who struggled against their bonds of time. The black orbs shifted beneath the red hood, and the gray shawl fell to the blood-soaked ground and was stained as he opened his arms and arched his back like a creature more than a man. The sleeves pulled back to reveal hands that ended in black points, not unlike the pale men that assailed them, and when he grimaced—or was it a smile?—his teeth were pointed and ashen gray.

  The air shook, the very atmosphere seeming to rebel against his presence and what he brought with him. Iyana took a step toward the shore and felt her foot catch, as if she were pulling tar along with her. She reached her hand out and it felt like dragging iron weights. She turned it over and unfurled her fingers, which moved in the way of dreams. She stepped back and regained her speed, her heart beating furiously as she watched the Red Waste sink into a crouch.

  She thought to call out to him, to scream for him to cease and turn away from whatever it was he was about to do, necessary as it might be. Strangely, sickly, she felt pity for the poor souls in his gaze, though they stood in the gore and ruin of her own people and of those who had taken her in.

  The Red Waste slew them all. He sprang with a roar indistinguishable from the song of the foxes above. He rent them apart, wicked claws ripping throats and heads and the pillars of bone and sinew that held them all up. She tried to turn away but could not, marveling at the ghastly sight of the painted warriors as they stood still—frozen in death, now, in addition to time. She wondered if the pain was held there in that moment of agonizing eternity while he dealt with the rest.

  He tore through them and left their standing bodies behind, and Iyana saw the light dim in their eyes—even the pale horrors that once were men. When it was done, he had reached the place where the black water slid over the shore, the small waves moving slow as syrup. He heaved and pulled, bowed back rising and black eyes staring out at the white pillar that shone with renewed light from the moon. Iyana thought he was looking at her until she heard the haunting melodies of the desert foxes filter down through the roosting tunnels and musty alcoves—a condemnation or a confirmation.

  He blinked—the first she had seen since his eyes lost their color—and straightened. The water quickened and curled around his feet as recognition washed him. The whole of the place seemed to exhale, to breathe a sigh of relief, and Iyana felt the air drop.

  “Such is power,” the Red Waste said, sweeping one clawed hand back at the maelstrom of flesh behind him that had begun to move as if through a mire. He did not smile, nor did he look ashamed, and when Iyana blinked back at him, she saw that he was once more the old man they had first encountered—the form she now knew was a mask.

  She watched as the pocket of World on the shore righted itself and exposed all the wrong that had been done. The pale men and their painted minders fell, blood spraying from a score of fresh-made fountains that coated the walls and even reached some of the low-hanging stalactites above. Where the blood stuck, the stones ceased to glitter, and where it met the white crystals that clung in the corners, their starlight faded and winked out.

  Karin, Ceth and the warriors of the desert finished their motions and blinked in stunned confusion as their targets fell before being struck down. The soldiers of the caravan slipped and tumbled, forgetting their momentum in their bondage, and Captain Talmir skidded nearly to the water, his sword held up as a ward, and pointed toward the Sage’s back. The place Creyath knelt came alive with the bright flame he had been in the process of calling; he aimed it above the mess and over her head, where it streaked like a star over a shallow black sky.

  Iyana took a step forward and then another, and then she was running toward the shore. She passed the Red Waste as he stared out at the white pillar in its black lake and nearly went down as her boots hit the sliding surface of the fight. She kept her eyes up, focusing on the fighters. Half of them still stared at the old man as if he were a story come to life or a god come down from the stars to smite them, while others looked at the bodies strewn about the shelf with grim faces. A few seemed shocked into presence by Iyana’s agency and moved with purpose, calling out for the wounded and dead.

  There was a sound that might have been the trill of the songbirds in their nests above, but Iyana recognized it as she passed Creyath and stepped over the white robes of Verna and Courlis without slowing.

  “The children,” she breathed, following the sound down the narrow hallway with its many rooms and hollows. There were bodies even here, though not so many, and Iyana’s heart caught in her throat as she rounded the bend and came to a doorway more narrow than the rest—the place where the children slept.

  She slowed as a group pulled up behind her and skidded to a halt, holding out hands to stop the others. The sound of crying could be heard from within, but the doorway was stacked and ringed with the bodies of the pale men and the painted. They were not stabbed or slashed or broken, but turned inside-out, and Iyana smelled the stink of death of a kind she had never seen before.

  Or had she? An image flashed of Tu’Ren’s memory, which she had foolishly invaded. She saw the young hunt
er who had come upon the Valley Faey and slain their wives and children. She saw his face wrenched into a shock of pain above the mess of his body all twisted and splayed—the work of the Faeykin, Landkist of the Valley, whose gifts of healing and ways of Sight were secondary to their power over life itself, and death that was its sister.

  So it seemed to her now.

  One of the gray-sashed women, Martah, shoved past her and stepped over the tangle, calling out some name Iyana didn’t know, though she knew who it must belong to. The rest followed her while others fell to their knees as the cold recognition of all that had happened overtook them. Iyana looked down at them. She laid a hand on one and recognized him as one of the hunters who had joined them that morning. She smiled kindly at him and he looked up through a well of tears that gathered too quick to fall.

  She almost told him it would be all right, but swallowed the words. For all she knew, there was a fresh army of pale horrors and red-toothed tribesmen streaming into the mouth of the cave up above, ready to finish what they’d started. She almost fell to her knees like the rest, the pounding at her temples redoubling in the aftermath.

  Instead, she kept moving.

  She stepped as much on as over the ruined life below her feet that was now nothing but waste and into the roughly circular chamber beyond. She saw the adults gathered around a clutch of forms in the corner and for an instant thought it was the worst sight she had ever seen until she recognized it as the greatest.

  The children were alive. They cried into the shoulders and buried their heads in the scarves of their protectors, who shushed them and rocked them and cried along with them. She smiled as tears stung her eyes, and she sighed in a move that felt like the sweetest relief.

  Iyana thought it must have been the Red Waste—that he had joined the battle too slow because he had been here. And then one of the dark-skinned warriors moved toward the center of the chamber and she followed his line of sight. Splayed beneath a spill of filtered moonlight was a figure whose yellow-white hair obscured the face that rested against the warm stone.

  “Sen,” she whispered, moving toward him in a rush. She knelt and turned him over. There was no blood marring his face, but his eyes were open and unseeing, the green faded to near-brown. In a moment of disbelief, she looked from him back toward the doorway that was half-filled with bodies and knew it had been his work—that he had held the door and expended himself doing it.

  She looked down at him and brushed a strand of hair away from his face. He looked younger, like Kole or Jenk, and his expression was all innocence in a way that reminded her of Nathen Swell. She would have given him up for dead if not for the mist she saw escape his lips, the hint of breath and the clinging life it signaled.

  “My pack!” she yelled out, gesturing toward the door. Some of the nomads still clung to the children or stood before them, trying to shield them from the sight of acts they’d witnessed first-hand. One complied, leaping to clear the bodies as he charged into the hall. She heard voices calling commands—Ceth and Talmir and Karin. Order being restored in the wake of bloody chaos.

  Iyana breathed out and slowed her heart. She turned her eyes inward and sought out the green fire that was ever there. She began to shake as she dipped into the light she now recognized with sudden clarity as her own tether and placed a hand to Sen’s bare chest beneath his ripped shirt. She called to that light and bid it follow, and it traced a line along the highways of her own blood, though it was something apart, and poured it into him.

  “Here!”

  The pack landed with a clatter beside her—a good thing, as she had nearly drained herself. She opened her eyes and saw figures short and tall ringing her in concern. She swayed and then frowned and straightened, finding the stone of Ve’Ran that was not a thing and yet was more real than the blood or the light that ran beside it, that spurred it on.

  Her lips quivered and she willed them to stillness as she opened her pack and navigated the corks and clutches of tied scrub by feel. She brought out a blue clutch of stems that she held beneath Sen’s nose, causing his nostrils to flare. She drew her mortar and pestle and crushed a black root to expose the orange flesh beneath. Its scent was citrus, like the blood oranges Seer Rusul ate that stained her chin. Iyana poured a stopper of green-tinted water into the mix and ripped a section of sleeve away to soak it up. She laid the wet cloth over Sen’s face.

  “Come,” she said, her vision beginning to swim again. If she put any more into him apart from her mashings and plants, she knew she would die. She knew she would have if he hadn’t gasped and sat up in a flailing shock that bloodied her lip. Strong hands rushed in to stay him and to pull her away, and she looked back to see Ket lift her up beside him. Red spots stained the side of his cheek and she laid a hand against it, her thoughts a confused tumble until she reoriented them.

  Sen pulled the cloth away from his eyes and cast about in wonderment. He pushed the figures aside and cried out—a cry that stopped when he saw the children staring like startled hares in their corner. They looked at him with a mix of fear and wonder, and Iyana felt a pang for it. But Sen only smiled and fell back into a sleep that was far away from the death all around.

  “You saved him,” Ket said. He said it without emotion and left her, stepping back out into the hall.

  Iyana thought to follow him, to see what aid she could lend to the wounded. She hadn’t examined them closely in the rush, but she had seen enough to know those who still lived would live on, and those who had been still would remain that way.

  She leaned her back against the wall and slid down until she sat. Some of the children scooted near to her while others ventured over to Sen, touching him to check that he still breathed. Others watched the nomads, who had already dried their tears and wiped away the blood that had yet to dry as they began to clear it all away.

  Iyana did not watch them. She did not look.

  Talmir stood frozen, despite the fact that his will—or else his time—had returned.

  He stood amidst the red and clinging gore, the sticky sweat and drifting vapors of the lapping lake and the sounds the wounded made as they were tended to or forgotten for the moment. There were few voices. Those who stood or knelt among the ruined life were too stunned or too tired to speak, and though Talmir had been told by Ket the children were alive and safe—most of them—their songs did not fill the cavernous silence the killing had left behind.

  “Caru—”

  “What?” Talmir said sharply, knowing he had been addressed several times. He looked to his right and saw Creyath sitting on a slick rock by the ruined fire, the coals having died to black ash. The Ember had plenty of red on him, but he seemed unharmed, though he regarded Talmir through half-closed lids. His amber eyes seemed dimmer, like a fire in sunlight, and Talmir knew he had come dangerously close to spending himself completely during the fight.

  During the massacre.

  “What is it?” Talmir asked, working to soften his voice and his expression as the red-sashes and the gray stepped among the bodies, turning over those on their side and pushing aside the pale and painted monstrosities that had come against them.

  “You should check your wounds,” Creyath said, nodding at him.

  Talmir looked down and would have gasped had he the breath to. His shirt had been some shade of white, albeit yellowed by a mix of sun and a week and more of driving sand. Now there wasn’t a spot of it that wasn’t red, the Bronze Star now a painted one that swung beneath the tuck. His arms were made of the color, with splotches of darker matter resting on the webs between his fingers.

  His left hand hurt, and he only realized now it was because he still gripped his father’s sword, his knuckles blanched where they weren’t wet and crusted with the proof of his deeds. It took a force of will for him to relax, and though he wanted to, he did not let the blade clatter to the ground at his feet but rather caught a glimpse of his face—a macabre mask—in the bits of silver still shining in the filtered light and let it fal
l by his side.

  Talmir looked around him. He began taking stock, just as he was wont to do following each attack and successful repel of the Dark Kind—habits formed over a generation before the demons had made men their hosts. He hated the part of himself that could reduce lives to numbers, bodies to marks in a ledger. He spat and added a bit of bitterness to the mess before taking a step toward the shore.

  He passed by a few of his soldiers—Jes and Mial tossing him worried glances—and then past the old man who stood among the deepest tangle of bodies. The Sage looked out at the shining pillar of moonlit crystal that leered across the way, and Talmir did not wish to look upon his face, though he caught a glimpse of such bare hurt it nearly cracked the building shell around his own heart.

  Talmir’s boots broke the surface where the slow river of syrup and sweat met the water and walked without breaking stride. He walked until he went past his waist and kept walking, the red-and-silver blade sinking and now swinging slower at his side as the lake rose to still the glinting bits of the medal that slapped his chest like a reminder—like a constant drum of regret—of what he had done by bringing these loyal souls out into this forsaken land with nothing but the ghosts of the past to hunt and stories of failure to bring back.

  He knew how it must look to those on the shore, but none raised a complaint as he let his knees go slack and fell beneath the surface. It was warm and not at all refreshing, more like a wool blanket by the side of a hearth than a shocking bucket.

  His knees struck the smooth bottom and his hair danced. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but black all around with the faintest glimmer of distant gray from the shining pillar. He felt a pang of fear as he imagined some savage creature coming for him out of the depths, and then the guilt hit him.

  He sighed. The sound his captured breath made as it drifted toward the surface with all the crusted and melted blood attached snapped something in him. He screamed and thrashed and clenched his fists. He screamed so loud his lungs burned and his lips split. A part of him wondered if they could hear him on the shore. If they could hear him in the Valley.