The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  “This was an attack meant to hurt,” a woman’s voice said. Talmir sought out the speaker and saw the young, brown-skinned woman he had spoken with on their trek from the east, over the flat yellow plateau. Her name was Sohr, he remembered. She still bore the darker tracks of tears beneath the red rims of her eyes that matched the sash that hung in a tangle with her black hair. “We are hurt, Pevah.”

  Talmir felt a pang as an image flashed of the small child wrapped in red and gray, the tiny ridge that may as well have been a dune beneath the rippling cloth. He watched the old man, whose face had broken into such hurt that Talmir thought he might fall to pieces on the spot.

  “We are,” he said, nodding. “We are. As we are meant to be.” He took a quick step forward and sank to one knee before her, prostrate as a beggar before a king. He took her dark hands in his own bronze. “But we are here, my girl.” He looked around her. “We are here, and in numbers they could not have guessed.”

  There was a pregnant pause, and Talmir saw the brown and blue eyes of the desert and the northern cliffs turning toward those of the Valley.

  “They mean to draw you out,” Karin said. Pevah regarded him, unmoving. He stood and brushed at the damp that had soaked his cloth at the knee.

  “Yes,” Pevah said. His voice was flat, emotionless. It might have held guilt, but Talmir sensed anger as the Sage turned toward him, brown eyes glinting with the promise of blood. “Those bloody savages believe killing me will free them. End their bondage.” He cast a hand toward the too-slick shore. “Only death can release those whose teeth bleed with the life of their fellows. Only ruin can free the pale men from their pain.”

  “And what of the witches?” Talmir asked. “Why do they seek you so, that they would come against those you protect, and against those who protect you?” He saw Ceth frown behind the old man and Iyana raise her brows.

  “They seek the same as all the rest,” Pevah said with a sick smile. “Power. Only they’re digging in the wrong place.”

  “The Midnight Dunes,” Iyana said. She said it as if she were in a dream, but her eyes were not shining, her exhaustion threatening to overtake her. Talmir wondered how she could remain straight-backed, but then he thought of Linn Ve’Ran and thought he knew.

  “Aye,” Ceth said. His face was hard-set, and where before Talmir had been the recipient of a look that could unsettle a lord among the hammerhorn bulls, now it was turned on the Sage of the Red Waste. The old man felt it on his back and closed his eyes for a moment as if willing it away.

  When he opened them, Talmir forgot all his mounting frustration for the moment. All the helplessness he and his shared was nothing but a shadow in the well of black that this being must know. How much life had he seen pass before its time? How much had he tried to save?

  “That power will doom them,” Pevah said. He did not elaborate, and just as quickly as the sympathy had risen in Talmir and the rest, now it went out in a wisp.

  “That song,” Iyana said, again speaking more to herself than those around. “It was the same that Karin heard before he was attacked. I felt it in the cave of the Mother’s Heart. It felt like death and stank like rot. I felt it in the air. I felt it in my blood.” Her eyes widened in remembered dread.

  The desert nomads regarded her with a mix of sympathy and—Talmir thought—mounting awe. They had seen two like her fall defending children who were not their own. They had seen the aftermath of one who had built a macabre mound of the dead rather than let them in to the nest where the rest huddled, waiting their turn to die.

  “The witches,” Pevah said with a quick nod. “The bloody crones. Seers who are more blind than any well-meaning charlatans in this land or that.”

  The Sage looked down at his feet while Talmir, Iyana and the rest stared at him. Even his own people seemed expectant, and Talmir found himself wondering how much even they knew of this conflict—its beginnings and its imagined end.

  “Who are they?” Talmir asked the question for them. “The witches. The Blood Seers, or whatever they call themselves. Who are they, really, and what is their quarrel with you?”

  Pevah met his eyes, glancing sidelong at those who crowded and squeezed into the alcoves and beneath the pillars and columns.

  “Their quarrel is imagined.” Ceth spoke for him. He walked in front of Talmir and passed before the old man, coming to stand near to him. “And it is not with Pevah alone. It is with us all. All whom they cannot control with their blood magic. All they cannot compel to such rage.”

  Pevah was already shaking his head before Ceth finished. The Landkist regarded him with that veiled expression Talmir thought was beginning to show some cracks. He was tired. He had fought hard in the mass of pale flesh and black fingers, and judging by the state of him when he had arrived, he doubted if he had not seen similar action in the caverns beneath with Karin and Iyana.

  “I am afraid the captain’s fears are well-placed,” Pevah said, and there were looks and nervous glances exchanged between the red-sashes and the gray. Talmir’s Valley caravan merely watched and waited. “His suspicions well-taken.”

  Talmir nodded for him to continue.

  “The witches of the sands hold me in the lowest contempt,” he said, grinning in a wicked way that reminded Talmir of the sharp points he’d seen beneath those lips just a short time ago. “But have no doubt, were I not here, they would trouble this small tribe just as they have all of the others.” He paused and looked to the people he had taken as his own. “When there were others to take.”

  “What is their quarrel with you?” Iyana asked again. “Why do they call you enemy?”

  “It is as I have told you,” Pevah said, and Talmir could hear the way he tried to force the calm that usually came easily to his voice. “They seek power, and they think I am a key to it.”

  “Are you not?” Creyath asked, and Talmir had to smirk.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Pevah said, meeting his amber gaze. “Yes. I am. But they are … unwise to try me, and doubly so to seek what I protect.”

  “What your people protect, you mean,” Talmir said. Ceth gave him a warning look, but Talmir was through with half-truths and riddles.

  “Their hate is not so different from that which you and your folk harbor for my kind,” Pevah said. Talmir felt the ire that was rising in his gullet turn to fire, but the Sage spoke on. “A hatred of power, and of those who have taken it and used it for ill.” He laughed without mirth. “Such a thing as hate can change those who hold it. Soon enough, a hatred of power can lead to a desire for it.”

  Pevah laid those steady browns on Talmir and they seemed to glint red, the color of mulled wine. Talmir thought of Kole Reyna and Creyath Mit’Ahn—the Embers of the Valley who were gifted their power and had wielded it for the good of their people. He thought of their desert path, and what they had truly come out here to find. The very prize who stood before them, dressed in drooping cloth and the aching decay of regret. No matter the old man’s words, Talmir felt only a shadow of the same.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Talmir said. “Why would they provoke you when you could kill them? We saw what you’re capable of. We’ve seen what Ceth is capable of.” He looked around and saw the desert nomads regarding him. “Your people may be few, but they are all hunters. All fighters in their own right.”

  “Even patient things run out of it, eventually,” Pevah said. “Time affects all. Contrary to appearances, it affects me as well.”

  Talmir thought he saw it in the man’s bearing. He seemed, if not shrunken, then deflated. Less than he had been before the fight in the cavern. He wondered if the Sage’s power might be like the Embers and their heat. Creyath had no brazier to feed him, but the desert skies had kept him robust. Already he seemed fuller than he had an hour before, the fire in his blood returning like the coming dawn.

  Pevah looked to Creyath, who remained steady under a gaze that made others shift in something not unlike fear.

  “You think I am the cause
,” Creyath said as much as asked.

  “Cause implies blame,” Pevah said. “No. But you are noticed, as is your company.” He smiled.

  “You speak as if that’s a good thing,” Iyana said, her accusation echoing the sentiments of most in the mixed company judging by the way they looked from her to the one she addressed.

  “Impatience breeds mistakes,” Pevah said, unmoving. “They have attacked us, and in so doing, they have wasted precious reserves.”

  Talmir scoffed. “You sound like one of them,” he said. “Those things were as much victims as those we lost.”

  “I speak the truth,” Pevah said. “Those sorry beasts were likely raised in darkness. If it makes you feel any better, we likely granted them a freedom the witches or their painted masters never would have.”

  Talmir swallowed.

  “They mean to draw you out,” Ceth said. “They mean to strike for the Dunes.”

  “They cannot do both,” Pevah said dismissively. “They are not so great as they believe. Their songs are like buzzing flies. Their hymns are old things. Older than they know, and less potent than those who scratched them into the black rocks that were once unburied.”

  He spoke as one who had lived a long time, and Talmir tried to picture the world he might’ve come from, a land unburdened by sand deep as the oceans. A land full of black rock, jagged and unkind. A land much like the old man himself, despite the gentleness he had grown into, or else had grown on him like moss to smooth a boulder.

  Ceth looked unconvinced, and Talmir could feel the others feeding on his concern as if it were a scent on the breeze. He had to admit, seeing the stoic Landkist so bothered only served to redouble his own resolve. He glanced sidelong at Iyana and saw her green eyes shining with some of their former glow.

  “Why not seek them out at their source?” Karin asked. “Send out scouts. Find them in their caves and—”

  “And burn them out, like rats in a hole?” Pevah said. Talmir grimaced at the tone. Still, what were they speaking of here if not war? If not survival?

  Karin closed his mouth, his lips pursing tightly.

  “They move often,” Pevah said, taking some of the edge out of his tone. “Never putting down roots for long. Where they kept such a force, I do not pretend to know. You are First Runner. Perhaps you could find them.” He put a hand to his forehead, as if remembering. “No,” he shook his head. “We cannot risk leaving the children, even if we could find them. We cannot risk losing any more.”

  “They will make for the Dunes,” Ceth said, and Talmir could see plain enough that the mood had reached a tipping point. Perhaps their arrival had shifted the weight of events, for better or worse. It seemed that all corners of the World were in a similar state, the Bright Days doing little to ease the different forms of desperation brought on by the Sages and their meddling, however distant. However old.

  “Yes, Ceth,” Pevah said. “They will.” He paused and then sighed, seeming to shrink further into himself. “We cannot let them. And yet, to stop them is futile. So long as those hags weave their spells in the dark and bloody caverns of this land’s bones, they will outlast us.”

  “You must let me go,” Ceth said. Talmir shifted uneasily as the exchange took on the feel of some old argument, and one meant for in private. In a way, the men—the Landkist and the Sage—moved about each other with the strained affection of father and son. “Pevah. They cannot awaken it. We cannot let them.”

  “Awaken what?” Talmir asked. He took a step forward and when Pevah met his eyes, he looked less like the Sage that had torn a score of pale throats and more like the form he wore now.

  “Pevah.” It was a familiar voice, and Talmir turned to seek out the speaker. The small collection parted, his own soldiers’ leather and worked metal catching the errant rays from the filtered sun. It was the young woman again, Sohr. Her black hair hung loose and haggard, her eyes tired and lined with worry and mounting grief she had yet to release.

  “Tell them,” she said. “Theirs have died, Pevah. Their own. Tell them.”

  “What are you protecting?” Iyana asked.

  Pevah let loose another laugh without humor. It was sad, in a way. He looked like a shell set to crack, or the crust of wet sand baked in the sun and soon to crumble.

  “What lies buried at the Midnight Dunes requires no protecting,” Pevah said. His eyes grew distant, and Talmir could feel the questing pull of curiosity from his own men tinged with the reflected dread of the Sage and his company.

  “And yet, you protect it,” Creyath said. The Ember spoke in the same way he moved: steady. Pevah dipped a nod that seemed a bow.

  “I keep it,” Pevah said. He included Ceth in his sweeping gaze. “We all do. Would that I did not have to. Would that power such as mine could be used for the ends you seek.” His dark eyes alighted on Talmir and settled there. “Our fight is here, Talmir Caru. Our charge. And it lies in making sure the real fight never happens.”

  “The real fight.” Talmir tasted it, working over the implications. He came away with a shake and a sound of frustration that had Pevah raising his hands in a placating gesture.

  “Have no doubt, Emberfolk of the Valley, that your enemy and our charge is of the same source,” he said.

  “The Eastern Dark,” Ket spoke up, and Talmir thought it strange the looks from the desert nomads that were turned his way. Some glinted with recognition, while others bore only confusion, and all turned back on the Sage as he considered the young warrior.

  “Such a name,” Pevah said, smiling in that threatening way of his, though Talmir did not think it was meant for Ket. “A name to inspire fear, I think. A name a coward wears, no doubt. Still, who am I to talk? You must be wondering.” Again, he looked to Talmir, and to Iyana. They did not answer, which was answer enough.

  “No,” Pevah said. “No. For the Eastern Dark, I hold on to many things: hate, disgust, even love buried deep, though we were never the brothers the stories would have you believe. But fear is not in that company. Still, the World Apart is something real, and it is something made of things that seem its opposite.” He stepped between and among them, moving over the scattered ashes and black marks the dashed fire had left behind. He met the stares of both companies, though he lingered on those from the Valley core.

  “You and yours know of the darkness of that land—if you can call it that—better than most,” he said. “Better than any here. Where they have repelled the Dark Kind in ones and twos, you have endured their pouring scourge for generations.” He paused, his eyes glazing. “Had I known …”

  “You’ve expressed your regret on that count,” Talmir said, hating the way his voice sounded. “No doubt it’s sincere.”

  Pevah shook his head and the cobwebs of clinging memory that had threatened to take him. “I wonder.” He turned on Talmir. “Do your tales still hold to the worst horrors of the World Apart? Do you have names for them? The Titans of Shadow? The Kings of Black and Pitch?”

  “The Night Lords,” Karin said, his voice holding a note of the legend, of the fear and the anger such a term inspired among the Emberfolk of the Valley.

  Talmir found himself looking to Creyath, whose amber eyes seemed to dance in the shadows. The Second Keeper of Hearth had never spoken much of his fight with the beast in the Deep Lands. He had always dismissed comparisons to the tales of the White Crest and those beings he had fought in the passes before they had fallen. But from Hearth to Last Lake to the Eastern Woods and the Faey who dwelled there, all knew the story of Creyath Mit’Ahn and the Night Lord he’d slain.

  “Ah, yes,” Pevah said, seeing the looks and their direction. “You brought down one of the great beasts the Corruption sent against you, Captain Caru tells me.” He regarded Creyath without irony or scorn. The Ember did not answer but to give a slight nod that betrayed nothing of his own thoughts.

  “I even hear the one you call Kole Reyna slew a great ape riddled with dark in the deepest south,” the old man continued, regarding I
yana, now.

  “Larren Holspahr struck the fatal blow,” Talmir said. “But yes, Kole fought such a beast. And we repelled four that made for the walls of Hearth.” At this, there were audible breaths—the closest the stoic people beneath the sands came to gasping.

  Talmir felt as if he were being led. It didn’t sit well with him.

  “The Landkist and those who fought our former Guardian in the peaks brought back temperance for those victories already,” Talmir said. He glanced at Karin and Iyana. “We know they were not Night Lords, but rather an approximation. We know the true beasts died against the White Crest—died against your brother and your former ally—soon after we went south with our Ember King.”

  Pevah was nodding before Talmir finished.

  “He was a power,” he said, sounding awed in a way that made Talmir distinctly uncomfortable. He had just seen this man—or whatever he was—stop time itself. If he spoke of the White Crest in such a way, how powerful had their guardian truly been? How powerful had the agents of chaos sent against him, and what might’ve happened if they had made their way into the Valley a century ago? Who could’ve stood against them?

  “Three he fought,” Pevah said, “my brother in white. Three he slew, laid them low beneath the very passes in which he roosted. The White Crest had hidden himself from our … disagreement for some time. No doubt my brother in the East took it as a sign of weakness.” He paused, and now his eyes were near to glowing, the deep black flecked with stars of red, like wine in a well. “The Eastern Dark sent three,” the Sage said, “but he awoke four.”

  Talmir felt a tightness grip his heart that seemed strange to his conscious mind. He had fought against the Dark Kind since he was a young man, and before them, he had fought against the Rockbled and the Faey. He had been fighting all his life. Still, there were always deeper troubles than the ones men knew. There were always older things. Ancient things. The sorts of things legends made their names on before passing into myth.