The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  “What did you want of me?” she asked, walking a slow circle around the base of the trunk. She ran her fingers along its black skin and thought it wasn’t much different from Creyath’s. It was warm like blood and smooth as oil, though it left no stain nor moisture upon her skin. She stepped over its roots and up onto its raised tangles as it gathered up the rocks and strewn boulders and pulled them close like a drake of myth over its treasures.

  It was a lonely place, but not without beauty, and Iyana felt the presence of many. It felt like memory, only not so distant, and not covered by the aching that accompanies regret or human pains best left among the bones that dreamed them up.

  There was a thicker root with a rounded edge that fit her nicely, so she sat and gazed up into the branches. She thought she saw stars hanging in a black curtain and had to blink to know they were not there. She sighed, and felt a bending in the atmosphere as she did.

  A sense of vertigo hit her as she looked back toward the doorway. Rather than sickness, it felt like an embrace, and rather than pull away from it, Iyana closed her eyes and followed it.

  She had none of the mashings she had brought with her. Most had soured along the way or dried out completely, as if the plants of the Valley rejected the arid air of this place. She had no black roots with orange flesh nor purple tea with stinging mist. She had no cloth to wet and drape over her eyes, and so she sat and rocked, swaying to the sound of a humming she did not recognize as her own voice until she was well onto pathways she had traveled before, and yet never so far from home.

  The Between welcomed her like an old friend. She felt a swelling of something like sorrow before she knew it to be an apology that this other place—this place within and without—accepted gladly and without judgment. She thought of Mother Ninyeva and how she had always equated this place to an ocean unbound by the constraints of the physical, or a realm above the clouds that even falcons could not breach with their razor wings.

  She felt the currents more than saw them as she had in the Valley. There, she could see the lands below stretching out to the far horizon, where the black crags that held her sister prisoner rose against a backlit sky. Now, it was as if she swam through molten rock suddenly quickened and brought to life, and she wondered absently how she had not known the glass walls and eddies in the stone to be the marks of a river, one that split and stretched its inky fingers and warm embrace throughout the west, and even as far as Center.

  Iyana swam or flew and hummed herself along. She thought of turning back once or twice, but something spurred her on. It sounded a little like her own voice tinged with what could only be the Faey Mother—the voice of the Valley itself as far as she was concerned.

  And then there was another sound.

  It started as a buzzing, like a hive of bees brought to anger. They touched her like feelers and withdrew with silent hissing, and she followed, her intent sharpening on the iron center she had always held and rarely used as her sister had. She forged ahead, but the buzzing grew into a steady drone. It sounded like the rumbling chest of a god or a dark giant, and then the one voice broke into many, the drone into the deep and haunting melody of a song her blood danced to back in its lonely cave with the Everwood tree even as her psyche recoiled and her spirit froze.

  She breached the surface of black rock and froze. There, seated around a low-burning fire, were a dozen that sang with the voices of many more. There were old and young in equal measure, with only a few in between, and though their eyes were closed, Iyana knew they saw things.

  The song took on a familiar tone that filled her with dread, soon replaced with anger as her thoughts flashed to the Pale Men and their piling bodies, and those precious few they had buried beneath their melted flesh and black talons. Still, this song was different, and despite never hearing it before, Iyana felt it as familiar. It was like a song from the depths of time, one called up from the desert days before the Emberfolk had gone south with the brightest star this land had ever known. It was a thing twisted and rotted. She could see its stench and wondered how the crones and shrieking charlatans around the red coals could not.

  They were in a cave, and Iyana treaded long enough to be sure she was unnoticed before she drifted around them, stalking like something hunting. The cave was not tall, but stretched far into the reaches of the earth. She heard more than felt the wind at her back, and as she turned in that direction, what breath she might have held was lost to the sight before her.

  The cave mouth opened onto a land of rolling sands. It amazed her how same the desert could be and yet how different it could appear depending on the direction of one’s gaze. In this land, which she somehow knew as north, there were no black shelves or gray slabs breaking any one horizon. Instead, there was only sand, and of a softer bent than that she swayed beneath with the black bark and gnarled trunk. Here, the sand fell in cascades that could be called rivers and streams without blinking. The desert foxes that had once slid down the slopes—along with dark-skinned children free of sashes—no longer did. Nothing moved, and the sky hung blue-black over it all.

  And there, far enough to the south to appear a trick of gods or men, were the Midnight Dunes. She knew them and she knew the fear of what was beneath them as a child knows the fear of a snake or spider. They were glittering jewels that drank light and shed it, and the lands all around them were flat as any plains she had traversed to the east, though she knew the sand that lay atop was less than powder.

  As old as the land before her was, this cave was older, and it was filled with the memory of fire and the one who had taken it for himself. She saw shadows playing across the slopes—shadows in the shape of men and foxes. And she saw darker shapes that clashed with them over the line of dunes that stood as a ward to the south and east and all the dangers both held.

  Iyana caught a whiff of burning metal she recognized as blood, and before she could turn her wandering eye back to the sloped pit and its still crones, she heard voices that curdled her own blood like milk.

  They didn’t speak in a tongue she knew, but still she knew what the words meant, as if they had set hooks and barbs and climbed into her understanding like pests and draining insects.

  “You are a long way from where you are,” one of them said, and in another voice that could have been the same, “you are a long way from home.”

  Iyana did not answer. She felt her fear as a steel cage, and hated that she could not break the bonds her mind held her in.

  “You are here,” the third voice said that was the same as the first, and another answered, “you will be here forever. You will stay. You are ours.”

  No.

  Iyana turned now and showed them what will she had managed to bring along. As it turned out, it was bright and green and blinding, and the crones that stared with blood-red eyes and wicked grins with too-sharp teeth fell back as if scorched by a cleansing fire. They shrieked and spat and clawed the stone beneath their curled feet, and Iyana felt hate well up in the place of fear.

  “I am here,” Iyana said, or thought. “I am among you and soon will be. You will die, and nothing will be left of you. Not even a memory.”

  It was like a torch to dry tinder. Iyana expected them to fall away, perhaps to die, but they paused in their thrashing as if frozen in Pevah’s stolen time. They were contorted, and now they contorted back like sick dolls animated by something bonded. There was an elder among them, and she was steady where the rest were frantic.

  “You are a long way from home,” she said, and Iyana focused on her, knowing it as a mistake before she did. The old witch sat on the farthest edge of the fire, her black eyes taken with something deeper than night. She was old, Iyana knew. Oldest she had seen. Older than Mother Ninyeva, calling up her face and presence but with a darker bent and a poison disposition.

  She opened her mouth wider than should have been possible and Iyana could not help herself crying out. She felt like a tadpole in a jar with a pulled stopper, the current swirling around her and t
hreatening to drag her down into crushing depths. There was laughter, and the presence of those below, the painted warriors preparing beside their burning fires for the morrow’s battle, and the Pale Men in their dark cloisters whimpering and screaming with the sorrow they could not place and the anger they could not aim.

  Iyana tried to fall back, to remember herself and where she was. But she could not, and knew she would die, here, or else be broken on winds whose consequences she couldn’t begin to guess. Would her body remain while her mind splintered? Would another take on the form she had left behind?

  And then firm hands took her by the arms and pulled her back. There was a rushing as the black river of rock took her back and dragged her down and across leagues into its sheltering depths.

  She screamed when she hit herself and fell, feeling cloth and smelling the must of one she knew but did not call friend.

  “You’re okay,” the voice said, steady and soothing. “You’re okay. They cannot find you here. They cannot come.”

  Iyana remembered to breathe, and felt it as a pain when she did. She sat up and opened her true eyes, the dark room and black branches filling the expanse and the kind, lined face forming before her.

  “Pevah,” she breathed, and he released her. She knew the hands that had pulled her back were not his. Knew it by feel and knew it by the concern evident on his face, as if he had feared her permanent departure.

  There was another presence in the room, and Iyana took it as a threat until her heart slowed its furious beating. She looked up, past Pevah’s tired face and into the twisted tangle of branches above him.

  Pevah smiled and Iyana stood, her body rebelling against its stiffness. She turned toward him and the tree he leaned against and gave both a look of wonder tinged with disbelief. The Sage nodded, all the answer she required, even if her face said otherwise.

  “I won’t pretend to understand it,” he said, looking up at the low-hanging tendrils that were like shadow or ink frozen in the time the Sage bent and pulled. “Some say Everwood was here before the World was.” His smile was rueful, sad, and it made him look human to her. For now, she did not have to work to forget the feral visage and pointed teeth he’d displayed on the shore.

  “How could that be?” Iyana asked, frowning.

  “It could not,” Pevah said. He only switched his considered gaze to her slowly, as if reluctant to pull away from the bark. “And yet, how many things are unknown, even to those who once claimed to know it all?”

  Iyana felt suddenly faint. The light that found its way in through the black rock now snuck and crept more than spilled. She sat with a heavy thud and rubbed at her temples. When she opened her eyes, Pevah regarded her with concern.

  “I saw them,” she said, her voice flat. What could she say that this man—this creature—did not already know of foes that had troubled him for so long?

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Is that why you came here? To save me? Pull me back?”

  “I’ve no power like that,” he said plainly, and Iyana found herself glancing once more at the shadow that hung behind him. She tried to send it feelings of gratitude. It did not feel as strange as she thought it might.

  “Do you want to know?” she asked. “What I saw?”

  “A cave,” he said. “Fire and blood in equal measure, the latter smelling stronger than the former. Old crones with vicious faces, like vultures or twisted hounds. Eyes darker than any of the colors they might hold, and skin gnarled even in youth, callused by dark work.”

  “They were near the Midnight Dunes,” Iyana said. That sparked something.

  “How near?”

  “Near enough that I could see them.” She shrugged. “It seemed night, there, though it couldn’t have been.” His look showed her nothing. “They glowed like coals, and the land all around them was flat for leagues, especially to the west.”

  Pevah sighed. “No matter,” he said. “However close, they are still too far to chance.”

  Iyana opened her mouth to speak but took a steadying breath. She had to remind herself that this was a land she did not understand, its ways and its people even less than the shifts of sand, crescents and black shelves.

  “They are preparing for something,” she said, and before he could respond, “something like ending. You know. You said yourself they had never before attacked you so brazenly.”

  Pevah did not argue the truth of her words. “We cannot separate,” he said. “There are too few of us already. And whatever the witches are planning, the point is at those dunes, and at those dunes is where we’re best served to be to stop it.”

  “What if they don’t give you a choice?” Iyana asked.

  “I expect they won’t.”

  The dispassion in his tone seemed too intentional, too steady to be true. Iyana thought of looking through it, testing it. Her eyes even began to glow absent true intent, but a quirk of the Sage’s brow told her not to push, no matter how badly she wanted. She quelled that other fire and settled, trying to let the tension diffuse as it would.

  “You saw something else,” he said, his brows rising in encouragement. “What was it?”

  “Heard, more like,” she said. “Though there were glimpses.” She shook her head as if clearing cobwebs. The haze of unreality stuck, and with none of Ninyeva’s mixtures ready to shock her back, it was taking time to adjust.

  “The warriors,” she said. “The painted ones. The Bloody Screamers. They were larger than those we’ve seen. Stronger. More cruel. They were angry. They’re ready for whatever’s coming.”

  Pevah snorted as if he had never heard anything more foolish.

  “And,” Iyana started, having to stop to suppress the shudder that started up the base of her spine, “there were the others. I only heard them screaming, moaning.”

  “How many?” Pevah said, his voice and face showing concern. “How many could they have?”

  “Many,” Iyana said, feeling the cold tickle of creeping dread.

  Pevah looked anywhere but at her as he processed the news. He took her words as law, unquestioned. It was strange for one so wise to listen to her so completely when her powers were something he only knew from afar.

  “What are they?” she asked, afraid of the answer. “Who were they?”

  “That, I can only guess at,” he said. “They are something new. The latest perverted trick from the witches of this land, albeit one that has taken some time to perfect, if you can attribute the word to such horrors.” He spat. “My guess? They are the young of the very men and women we’ve been fighting for a generation—or would have been.”

  “Their scars,” Iyana said. “They’re bites.”

  Pevah nodded. “Bloody teeth are made,” he said, showing her his own, which were white enough to appear quartz.

  “Water doesn’t come easy or often to this place,” he said. “Lakes like this one aren’t common, and most can’t be drunk. Too much of what’s below bubbling up into them. Old death buried deep and forgotten until the Mother sends it back.”

  The implications were enough to make Iyana feel even sicker than she already did, though she perhaps should have guessed as much.

  “They use the Pale Men as blood skins?” she said, aghast.

  Pevah shrugged. “They choose their domains in the driest parts of the desert, to the west and north. Farthest from us and closest to the Midnight Dunes.”

  “When did they first begin to glow?”

  “Eighteen years,” he said without hesitation. “And as many days.”

  Iyana couldn’t say for certain, but it sounded close to the time when the Dark Kind had first made for the walls in force in the southern Valley, when the greatest rift they had yet known opened in the passes that had been quiet for so long. She knew because it was a time only slightly younger than she was. She knew because it was near the time her parents had died along with so many others.

  “I’d guess there’s plenty more to it than the water that makes them up,” Pevah
said. “After all, they’re sorry creatures, misshapen and deranged. They’re men only so far as their births, and even there I can’t be sure.”

  Iyana could only shake her head. It was evil unlike anything she had ever known. Even the stories of the desert days had been made up of the same dark, faceless evil as those in the Valley. This was evil of a different sort. Dark and thorough and full of hate rather than the cold and savage dispassion she and all in the Valley had come to know.

  “Whatever their original mistake,” Pevah said, his voice going softer, “they cannot be blamed now. I know,” he said to her look, “I know. But cruelty is taught, Iyana Ve’Ran, and not just from mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. The only thing more dangerous than seeking a source of power is finding it, and after T’Alon Rane departed on my advice, those who’d held themselves apart from the Emberfolk went digging. Not with hands and hoes, but with hearts and minds. It is so easy—you would not believe—to feel you are the finder when you are, in fact, the found.”

  “The Night Lord,” she said in half a whisper. “They found him.”

  “Or he them,” Pevah said. He tossed a black pebble, which clattered onto the moist stone before stilling in a patch of moss at his feet. “The World Apart moves with one voice. Little as I might know of it, I know that much. It is a hive. A swarm. It is legion, and it has many secrets in its depths. None of them worth knowing. None of them free.” He paused and swallowed, his eyes glazing with what could only be memory and whatever regret went with it. “I’ve seen it before, and in those much stronger than the would-be witches of the northern sands. Those who should’ve been able to resist the pull and its temptation.”

  Iyana couldn’t help but note how he held himself apart from those of whom he spoke—the other Sages, she guessed. The Eastern Dark and his ilk. It was so easy to cast blame on him and the rest. And why not? Were they not to blame, and for as many ills from any corner of the World as one was wont to bring up?