The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  She supposed it was only fair, in some ways. She, who had healed so many hurts without inflicting her own. Perhaps it was time she saw the killing up close. Saw why it was done and who did it and how. She shook her head and spat foam into the sand thin and silky enough to recall gossamer, and Ket tossed her a worried look that she ignored.

  Now that she focused on the west, she could not help but gaze and marvel and slow her steps to let her do both in equal measure. She suspected the same dreadful awe that flooded her from crown to heel was the same that slowed the pace of the others.

  They were closer now than they had been atop the drifts, and the new perspective made her feel very small. The Midnight Dunes did not so much loom before them as tower over them. There were three that could have been four. They melded at the bases only to break apart somewhat near the crown, each tip of sand and gravel and whatever magic held it all up rising as large as any of the gray slabs they had passed in the east. Together, they formed a glowing crown at the crest, an amber and gold light shining like the deepest rays of dusk.

  On the whole, they were nothing close to the height of the peaks of the southern Valley. Yet they seemed greater, the flat lands around them stretching as far as the eye could see and farther, the sand that made up their celestial canvas looking like salt or snow or morning frost. It was a plain of dreams, and she could not tell if the Dunes themselves were benevolent gods or things out of nightmare. Perhaps there was no difference between the two.

  All around the Dunes the land stretched away, and now Iyana knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: lands such as these were not made absent strife, but of it. There was a flatness to it all that the World would not make on its own—a starkness to the way the Dunes rose like a wound, or like some jewel offered up to the stars themselves. This was a land changed, smoothed away by a great battle long ago.

  Her eyes moved back up to the Dunes, tracing the many colors the sand gave off—the light playing out beneath them or atop them whose source she could not begin to guess at. Atop that glowing crown stood the defenders of the desert: those dozen she had seen leaving the obsidian halls to the east not long before. Not a one had fallen, near as she could tell, though some knelt or else held their heads with an exhaustion she could not begin to imagine.

  She followed the direction of the defenders’ gazes to the bottom of the northern slope. There, painted warriors clutched their blades. Even from this distance Iyana could feel their hate emanating strong enough to infect the faint shadows of the tethers that hung and drifted above them. She felt her temples buzz as the Between stole into her, and she let it in.

  If it were possible, the Dunes glowed even brighter under her emerald greens. She saw Sen’s eyes glowing, saw the others around him and between them staring from one Faeykin to the other, torn from the immense sight before them by the closer bright. Hands twitched toward hilts and pommels and faces let awe and wonder fall away to reveal the hardness beneath—looks that could cut.

  She should have felt exposed, but the only man unbowed by the towering mounds of god-stuff before them walked with a measured gait. He seemed taller now, fuller than he had in some time. His red cloak matched the sky, and his steps were more assured even than the stout white knight who walked beside him, gray-blue eyes scanning in all directions.

  “That’s them, then,” Jes said. She held the short yew bow she had brought with her from the Valley core, and Iyana nearly laughed at how slight it seemed in the present circumstances before she remembered she held nothing herself. Nothing but for a power she had no desire to revisit, at least on the terms it required.

  “Aye,” Pevah said. He cut toward the north, circling the base of the Dunes and moving with some speed toward the tribesmen who seemed to be regrouping on the flats.

  Not regrouping, Iyana knew, but waiting. Another song rose and stuck to the bottom of the first. She saw them walking like the pale shadows of men—like memories made of melted mist and neglect. They wavered like ghosts in the imagined mists the dusk made, and even the painted tribesmen turned their eyes north and regarded them like things to be guided but not touched as they made way for them to pass up the shallow trench their feet had made in the slope.

  So intent were they on the defenders at the top, and so intent were the defenders on them, that neither group appeared to notice Iyana’s company at all. Pevah halted them with an upraised hand. He scanned in a manner that reminded her of Ceth and looked from the glowing crowns atop the mountains of sand down to the gathering force at the bottom. She could see the black-and-red coil he counted as a tether creeping inch by inch from the robe that fell loosely about his broad shoulders, just as she felt the crackle of ozone in the dry air as Creyath built his heat to a slow charge in their midst, drawing the eyes of the desert nomads more so than the soldiers of the caravan.

  “What are they playing at?” Mial asked. The old scout had ventured up toward the front. He too held a bow, and unlike Jes, he held an arrow ready in his opposite hand. Some of the Valley soldiers gathered around him, readying their own weapons, but Pevah cut them a look that did not belong to the old man they had come to know, but rather the truth that nested just below the surface. Mial swallowed as the Sage looked away, and Iyana could see his tether flicker momentarily.

  Pevah seemed content to watch and Ceth anything but, though she knew the Landkist of the north wouldn’t do anything without his blessing. She could feel the need radiating from him. The need to intercede in whatever it was they were witnessing. For now, he watched, and the rest of them did the same.

  Had there only been the painted warriors—the Bloody Screamers—they might’ve had a chance. Iyana counted just over a score of them. They were strong, their tethers thicker than those they had come across before, more comfortable in the killing. These were soldiers chosen for a purpose, and Iyana guessed there was finality to it. But where the Pale Men that had come for the desert nomads in their tunnels had done so by the score, those who began their lurching, digging strides up the slipping slope now were the first in a two-breasted line that stretched for leagues.

  “Where have they come from in such number?” Creyath asked. Pevah turned toward him, and Iyana nearly had to look away from the strange face he wore. His eyes shifted like an owl’s before a little light came back to him, making him look more like one of the desert foxes he had no doubt sent along with Karin and Talmir.

  “The crones have been preparing for this day for some time,” Pevah said, full of ichors and a disdain that was just a shade away from being the same hate the north sent against them now. The death song that hung over them like a pall struck new chords, and each one seemed to send a lance through the Sage’s chest, his brows twitching along with lips that exposed the sharpened teeth beneath.

  He turned back, his whole form seeming to shake with an anger Iyana was beginning to feel herself. “The Blood Seers have lost the word for innocent, I presume. The Pale Men are the children of their own, burned and tortured. Turned into objects of hate. And for what? To release a power that will only doom them along with the rest.”

  He seemed to be speaking more to himself than the rest of them, but Iyana took the opportunity to move up beside him. He twitched at her close presence and Sen, Ket and even Creyath shot her warning looks as she passed them by.

  She followed the Sage’s gaze and frowned in confusion. She saw the Pale Men moving up the slope, but they did so with a slowness that made them appear as if they trudged through a mire. Even their white, drooping arms swung as if delayed, their melted mouths heaving and pulling with exaggerated effort. She blinked and they sped up for an instant before slowing back down. The painted warriors that spurred them on from below seemed unburdened.

  Pevah seemed nervous. He mouthed something but didn’t put words to it, and she wondered if it was some spell, or a counter to the song they found themselves trapped within. It ate at her temples and wormed its way into her ears, though she kept a clear mind, wary of any attempts from afar.
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  “Pevah.” Ceth broke whatever trance he was in, and the Sage’s eyes widened, breaking into a momentary fear as Ceth stepped forward. Iyana thought he might be shielding the others from the sight of their shaken leader.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “We cannot wait,” Ceth argued. Creyath took a few steps toward the Dunes but stopped when the Sage looked in his direction.

  “We must wait,” he said, but the control he usually held over form and voice eluded him in the moment.

  Iyana felt the restlessness and the fear spread through the company, and it was not reserved for hers alone. All saw the pale procession making its too-slow way up the pitted slope, just as all saw the outnumbered figures waiting at the top. The defenders stood on unsteady legs. They sported wounds Iyana could spot from this distance—deep gouges that leaked onto the glowing sands they stood atop.

  “They won’t hold,” Ceth said. “Not for long.”

  Pevah ignored him and closed his eyes. The air seemed to shift around them, and Iyana found herself looking up to the defenders as they drew their blades for what might have been the hundredth time since they’d come. They turned their weapons over, seeming quicker than the lurching striders that made their way up toward them—impossibly so.

  “That will do them well,” Pevah said, and Iyana frowned, catching Sen turning a similar expression her way. Ceth seemed about to argue, until the Sage spoke up, “and you, as well.” He reached out and laid a hand on the Landkist. Iyana felt more than heard a faint popping, though the air around them remained undisturbed. “Hold them from the top,” he said, speaking quietly and then loud enough for all around to hear. “I don’t know what they’re planning, but the zenith is what they’re after, not those who defend it. They are many, but their attention is in the wrong place. Hold them, until it’s time for retreat—them or you.”

  Ceth nearly smiled as he strode forward, his steps taking him toward the base of the Dunes with a confidence Iyana could never have managed in the face of such stacked odds. One of the desert nomads wearing a red sash stepped forward, and Pevah repeated the same maneuver with her. She seemed no different as she took up Ceth’s wake, and one by one they received their strange, popping blessing before making toward the base of the cluster of dunes.

  None of the Valley soldiers ventured near, looking from Creyath to—strangely—Iyana herself as they reeled at the confusing display. The painted warriors had spied them, but seemed intent on keeping their position. Their attention was above, as Pevah said. And below, at the beast that supposedly slumbered beneath the mounds of glowing sand—or else raged against them.

  “Hold them for what? Hold them for how long?” Iyana spoke up as the last of the gray-sashes—Martah—left. Ceth had nearly reached the bottom. For any other, it would have been a significant climb, but the northern warrior merely squatted, tensed for the briefest of moments and rocketed into the air like a bird in flight. He did not seem belabored as the Pale Men were, and as he landed directly above them, midway up the slope between the tortured horrors and the guardians they moved toward, those at the peak sent up a cheer that had them standing straighter.

  “They cannot win!” Iyana cried, but Pevah ignored her, his attention fixed on the first line of Pale Men as they came upon the Landkist.

  Creyath took another step toward them, fearful of the coming clash, but he seemed reluctant to leave his own with the Sage—to leave them unguarded from the painted warriors who eyed them as warily as they eyed the Dunes hungrily.

  Iyana had witnessed Ceth kill many of the Pale Men and a few of the painted warriors. He had done it quickly and with savage force. But now he was outnumbered and alone, the other nomads—above and below—only just beginning to converge on him.

  It didn’t matter. Whatever magic assailed the Pale Men had no effect on him. He parted them from their lives, such as they had been, as neatly as he parted the air around him.

  He killed a pair and then a triad. He killed a dozen and then a score. He fought, but it was more like watching a wolf tear at a flock of flightless birds. His fists broke them apart in red showers. His kicks tore limbs from their clinging roots. The Pale Men swiped at him with strikes that seemed to come from leagues away, and Iyana found herself both horrified and fascinated at the sight.

  “Time is a fickle thing,” Pevah said, speaking barely above a whisper. “But it can be brought to heel.”

  And now she saw.

  It wasn’t that there was a spell on the Pale Men. There was no working Pevah enacted, no flourish that slowed them down and sped up his own. This was a thing that fell over the Dunes themselves, or else seeped up through the crevices and cracks between the grains of glowing sand. It was something from within, something the Sage had put there long ago.

  “The wards you spoke of,” Iyana said, marveling as the rest turned in toward her. “They control time, as you did in the caverns.”

  Pevah nodded, but his attention was firmly fixed on the battle—the massacre—taking place on the north-facing slope. The painted warriors milled at the bottom, working themselves into a lather, and the Sage seemed almost to be compelling them on.

  “Clever,” Pevah said, looking in their direction. Iyana, Sen and Creyath followed his gaze and saw a female holding one of the larger brutes back as she eyed Pevah over the distance that was no so far as Iyana would have liked. Judging by the tensed hands and bared steel of the Valley company, she was not alone in the thought.

  “Why do they not attack us?” Creyath said, looking back at the Dunes. The red- and gray-sashes were finding the going more difficult than Ceth, whose strange gifts were still well beyond Iyana’s understanding, but they were closer, now, the shifting sands unable to stay their rising bloodlust.

  “They have plenty to waste,” Pevah said, though Iyana noted that he seemed concerned. Something about the situation surprised him. Something was not as he had expected it to be. Perhaps the desert savages were not so savage. Perhaps they were more calculating than they had given them credit for.

  As Iyana watched him, Pevah’s face seemed to contort slightly. Almost at the same time, she saw Ceth falter as the nomads from the peak reached him and bolstered his cause. The Pale Men they fought came on with more ferocity than they had before, their black-clawed hands cutting through the air in a way that recalled their attack on the caverns. They shrieked where before they had only lumbered, the scent and sight of their fellows’ blood seeming to spur them on.

  Iyana heard Pevah grunt, his eye twitching. Creyath looked askance at him and drew his Everwood bow from around his back. His Everwood shafts were spent but for two, but he had plenty of oak, their steel tips wrapped with birch and sealed with wax. He could fire them far and fast—faster than any but Linn—and he could put a fire in them that would scatter the Dark Kind or the Pale Men or any of the horrors the World and its neighbor sent against them.

  But there were many.

  Without thinking, Iyana stepped forward and laid a pale hand on Pevah’s bronze wrist. The Sage flinched but then calmed, a serene expression crossing his features as she put a bit of the healing touch into him. A bit of the greenfire. His body drank it in eagerly. He may not appear hurt, but there were more ways than sharp edges to stab and more wounds than skin to knit.

  “Thank you,” he said, turning back toward the Dunes. Sen stepped before Iyana, and she had to peer around him to see that the female warrior was still staring in their direction, her dark eyes fixed on Iyana and the red-robed man. Ket, Jes, Mial and the others formed a semicircle with the swordsmen in front and the half-dozen who carried bows lined up behind them. Creyath had drifted farther toward the dunes, but he held himself back, caught between the need to help Ceth and the need to protect them.

  Pevah closed his eyes and Iyana thought she heard a momentary break in the witches’ dark song. The sting she had grown accustomed to dissipated, the ache leaving her temples, at least for the moment. She began to waver as she poured her light into the Sage
—her fire that did not burn but revived—and as she watched the melee atop the dunes, she saw that the battle had once more turned in their favor.

  The Pale Men were no more encumbered than they had been before, though they still floundered as if battling a haze. But now Ceth and the warriors trailing red and gray sashes whipped and turned, slashed and cut with their usual speed. The Pale Men had no fear, or if they did, they paid it no more heed than they did anything else. They came on and they fell, split apart in Ceth’s whirlwind of lancing flesh or sliced to ribbons by the bronze-skinned hunters. Those who got by them were launched back by the larger Northmen, Martah earning a deep gash across the chest for her efforts that had Ceth shooting skyward and landing with a shock that made a shallow bowl in the sandy slope. Iyana felt the kiss of the warm dust from the expulsion even from afar.

  “Good,” Pevah said, opening his eyes. “Good enough, for now.” Iyana pulled her hand back. Her legs felt unsteady and Sen shot her a warning look. She felt a swelling that might have been gratitude for the way he had positioned himself between her and the painted savages that eyed them like prey.

  Pevah looked from the Dunes to the north, as if expecting Talmir and Karin to appear on the raised blood-colored ledges. Instead, there was only the song that redoubled in potency, assailing their ears and setting a few to waver on unsteady legs. And from the north that white river of marching, lurching flesh came on, its tail twisting to a place out of sight, though Iyana thought she could see its ending. There was a limit to them, she knew. There had to be.

  Much good it would do them.

  “What would you have us do?” Ket asked and the looks of the others reflected his concern. His knuckles were blanched white from gripping his sword.

  “I would have you live, for a start,” Pevah said. He glanced sidelong, feeling Iyana’s eyes burning into his temple. He looked shamed for a moment and his hard look dropped some. “Ceth and the others have the fight in hand, so long as I …” He trailed off, the look of strain returning, and now Sen rolled up his sleeves and took a step forward.