The Night Lord’s leathery wings trailed twisting black vapors as it tucked them behind its ridged back and slammed down with those gods’ fists, splitting the desert for half a league in all directions as if shattering a mirror.
Still Creyath came on.
The Ember’s strides lengthened, taking him farther and higher, the fire in his blood pouring into his blade, brightening it until it glowed white-hot. The great black maw opened and in the place of the roar Talmir had expected, the west was bathed in lavender. A roiling river of fire from the World Apart spewed forth, and Creyath plunged into the inferno he couldn’t hope to dodge.
Talmir gasped. He was sure that the Second Keeper was dead there, burned up on the spot as no Ember had been before him. And then he emerged on the other side, glowing like something forged. He swept his blade like a farmer’s scythe, yellow and orange and red parting the purple flames like wheat and chaff. He was very close to the Night Lord, now. Very close to the beast. Close enough to strike and close enough to be struck.
Talmir looked to the north. He could see the figures gathered at the base of the rise. Rather than looking west, toward the most mythic battle he had ever witnessed and ever would, they were gathered around a figure cloaked in brown. The desert foxes had encircled him, while the warriors of the west and of the Valley core made up the other half. A figure glinting silver-white sped toward them all, coming from the west.
“Ceth,” Karin said.
“Who is that?” Talmir asked, looking at the stranger, but Karin had already moved ahead of him.
Talmir followed, moving as quick as tired sinew would allow. Much as he wanted to know what was happening on the eastern rise, he couldn’t help but watch the battle. One he would be foolish to race toward, and one that would surely end before he could.
Creyath had nearly given up when the fire struck him. In the place of burning he felt a sucking cold, as if the Night Lord’s flames sought to snuff out his own. He drew his in tighter, wrapping his fire around him like a cloak, encasing his heart like coals in a ring of stones.
And when the Night Lord quit its spewing long enough to take a breath, Creyath sent his own fire out, cutting through the sea of purple, racing toward his doom and whatever he could bring with him.
He saw the hand streaking toward him and leapt over it. He spied the razor tail shooting under the beast’s hind legs directly toward him and deflected it in a shower of sparks. The Night Lord reared up again, only this time it did not boast or roar or unfurl those mighty wings.
Instead, it spoke, and the sound was jarring enough to stop Creyath in his tracks, where the pain caught up with him—the stabbing, shooting pains in his leaking gut just a garnish atop the searing cold that filled his veins. He had spent too much.
The Night Lord’s eyes narrowed as it awaited his response, but the words had moved over him like rocks grinding over slate. It was all crackle and tumbling air with nothing to latch onto. The beast spoke again, and straightened a bit from its crouch. It brought its right hand in and rapped its knuckles against its chest, jutting its bloody chin out before lowering it and its eyes with it.
If someone else had told the tale, Creyath would not have believed them. But he saw it with his own eyes: a Night Lord of the World Apart, dipping a bow to a worthy foe.
Creyath considered doing the same but thought better of it. He thought of what this god of war would do once he fell and there were none left to challenge it but for those in the Valley core or those out chasing old legends in the east. He thought of the ruin it would bring in its sweeping wake, and though he knew it had been brought here—called here, and likely by the lone figure on the eastern rise—Creyath could not suffer it to live.
He gave it the unearned courtesy of raising his amber blade before him—a gesture of continuing, and the purple fires flared in their pits, all revelry and threat.
Movement to the north and east drew his eye, and Creyath saw two figures running toward the rest, or if not running then limping, falling and rising to do it all again. He saw a glint of muddy gold hanging from the neck of one, who struggled to rise and paused in his march to look his way.
Now Creyath did bow, and he did it low, one hand across his heart. The Night Lord spared him a killing blow and twisted around to see where his respect was turned. When it spied the subject of his gaze, it made a noise that Creyath took for disdain before he recognized it as laughter, low like quaking in the earth.
When the beast turned back toward him, Creyath locked it with his darkest amber stare.
“That is Talmir Caru,” he said. “The best man I’ve ever known.”
The Night Lord didn’t care, but it had let him get too close. It shot forward fast as a striking serpent, too close and too personal. Creyath carved a crescent of bright yellow fire before its eyes and eeled his way between the black boulders that were its fists and the anchors that were its claws. He slid below the obsidian chest until he came to a point where a drumbeat sounded like thunder beneath ocean waves.
The beast roared loud before he plunged his blade in and doubly so when he did, the Dark Heart spilling its burning blackness over his arm and chest. He pulled his ruined hand back and stumbled away from the wound as the Night Lord reared back a final time. It brought its wings before its chest like armor donned too late, its purple stare going blue as it began its dying.
Creyath left his Everwood blade behind and regretted it until the Night Lord let its hands drop to its sides. Its wings dissolved and trailed away like smoke on the wind, and the dark mass where its heart had been glowed with the last of the fire he had to give. The Night Lord fell.
Creyath stood a moment longer on wavering legs before he too went over. There was no glass beneath him to be cracked and no shards waiting to greet him. He’d found a bit of powder in the rough, no bones or scorched blood marring it. He looked up into the lavender sky that looked more healthy now than it had before, and he thought he saw a woman’s face staring back at him in all the blinking white and gossamer.
“Mother,” he said, and whether it was the Mother they spoke of in the desert or not, he put his own mother’s face on hers and smiled to see it. He hadn’t seen that face in a long time. Words came back to him in a rush along with the images of a childhood spent out among the fields and trees of the vast and small Valley they’d left this desert to fill. Words his mother sang at him for reasons beyond his knowing.
“I did the best I could,” she’d say, speaking to the father he’d lost too young. “I did the best I could,” she’d say, giving Creyath a mischievous look whenever he’d done something wrong.
“So did I,” he said, and it felt good to say it.
Death didn’t feel as cold as he’d imagined.
Rage came out of the west and its name was Ceth.
Iyana felt it like a lancing shock on the back of her neck. She turned just in time to see the Night Lord fall, and Ceth shot past her faster than any winds the White Crest might’ve birthed at his peak—faster than anything Linn could birth now.
There were shouts and cries as the circle of men and foxes broke with his coming, and Iyana was torn between searching frantically for Creyath Mit’Ahn and seeing what would come when Landkist met Sage. She hadn’t been there in the peaks.
Ceth hit the Eastern Dark with a speed that should have shattered him on the spot. There was an odd delay, as if the World was waiting to make sense of such a collision, and then the Landkist was sent back the way he came with a force that seemed equal to his charge. He convulsed as his back hit the white sands and tore a trench into the turf twenty strides long, and Iyana could see the only thing that had spared his life was the strange armor that was the blur that covered him.
She took a step toward him and halted, seeing him turn over onto his stomach. He braced himself and looked back the way he had come with enough hate to cover the knowing he could not win. As for the Eastern Dark, he looked beyond the newcomer and ignored the milling foxes that now ringed him
in a frothing rage they had yet to actualize.
His eyes sparked with a passion they had lacked as he took in the remains of the great Night Lord, now reduced to a mountain range of smoking obsidian. He did not seem disappointed, but rather awed. It was a strange and human expression for the Sage to wear. Pevah, for his part, had yet to take his eyes from him.
“A pyrrhic victory,” the Eastern Dark said. He shook his head, still wearing that awed look. Iyana despised him for it all the more. “Still, against a Night Lord—and one of the greatest—it should not be qualified as such.”
Iyana’s eyes widened and she turned back toward the west. The purple flames had blown out entirely, and though all the field was smoking and scorched, with shards of glass sprouting like swords across the horizon, she saw a dark figure lying there at the place where sand met sky.
“Creyath,” she breathed. She took a step in that direction and Sen touched her on the arm. She knew his look before she saw it. He was shaking his head, and touched a finger to his bright green eyes. She nodded and flashed her own look, and saw no tether, however faint or dim. Nothing to mark the life Creyath had lived, and nothing to mark the death that had become him.
In the place of heartache Iyana felt anger. She felt a buzzing at her temples that had Sen’s touch turn to a firm grip on her arm. She felt the alien pull that was growing more familiar the more she teased it. Felt the tethers of the nomads and Valley soldiers all around. She felt Ceth’s even though it flickered, and she even felt Pevah’s, though he kept it close and guarded. She could snatch them all and lay them low, bring them to heel. But she only had eyes for one.
Sen seemed to guess the direction of her thoughts. His look now was imploring, and Iyana worked to cool her blood and her anger, tried to think clearly in the circumstances. And then she felt two more threads, fainter than the rest and farther away. And now that she felt them, she heard a sound she had never expected to.
She looked to the north and saw Karin Reyna standing on the raised ridge of sand. His tether was faint and coiled. He clutched a hand to his side and even from here she could see his legs quiver. Iyana traced the line of his sight to see Captain Talmir half-walking, half-stumbling as if in a daze. He fell once and then twice and righted himself, but before he had even got halfway to the site of the battle he shielded his face from the waves of shimmering heat that still came off the place. It would not be passable for a man for some time, yet, and so he knelt, and while she did not hear him again, she saw his shoulders racked with a grief she could never have imagined coming from one so seemingly solid.
“I told you,” Pevah said. “You underestimate them.”
“You misunderstand, brother,” the Eastern Dark replied. He pointed with a fervor he hadn’t before. “There lies my vindication. The Embers were always brightest of the Landkist. But I knew they were best. Keep your stone-throwers and beast-tamers. The Witch can have her knights. The Embers were always best.” He looked suddenly overcome with grief, though Iyana guessed it had little to do with Creyath. “Alas, it matters not. It’s all moved too far and too fast. Take my word for it, Fox. Take my word and do not delay.”
“Delay my death?” Pevah laughed. “How can I be blamed?”
“Admit it,” the Eastern Dark said. “You should not have kept them from me. You should not have struck a bargain with the King of Ember. In trying to protect them, you cut them off from the power that could have been theirs for generations hence. We could’ve had our army to turn it back.”
“To turn what back, exactly?” Pevah asked, voice rough. “The dark tide you yourself coaxed out? There would never be enough Embers to turn that back. Better they live away from your dark grasp.” Pevah looked to the south, toward the Valley he had played no small part in dooming them to so long ago. “I only wish our brother had been stout enough of heart to resist you. They deserved better.”
The Eastern Dark’s look could only be described as disgust. Iyana was nearly shaking with it, now, and she was not alone. The Valley soldiers edged closer with each passing riddle between these two storybook figures made real. Made solid. Made mortal. The desert nomads did as well, though seeing Ceth rebuffed so fully had shaken them.
The Sage still looked like any other man, albeit older. There was nothing about him that spoke of threat. And yet, Ceth was only now righting himself for another go, and one of their own now lay dead, seemingly killed by his own dark intent turned back on him.
How did you beat a thing like that? How did you not simply kneel and accept whatever was to come?
“You chose wisest,” Pevah said, his voice dripping scorn. “Much good it’s done.”
The Eastern Dark’s eyes slid like oil over the fighters that ringed him, and Iyana had the impression that it was they who were trapped, no matter appearances. She glanced at Pevah and saw a strange shimmer around him like a cloak of water. He was delaying, she realized. Delaying to gather what power—what time—he could.
“You speak of the Witch’s knights,” Pevah said, and the Eastern Dark turned his eyes back on him. “I haven’t made their acquaintance, myself. But you’ve only just met mine, and he’s not nearly done with you yet. Beware,” he said, sounding wicked as Ceth walked into the circle, his skin a blur beneath the strange power he gathered about him like a god’s armor. “Beware the wrath of one who slew the Twins of Whiteash.”
The Eastern Dark was smashed apart by a blow Iyana didn’t register until it landed, the shock it sent out scattering all but Pevah. And then the Sage was back and solid, and it was Ceth thrown back. He didn’t bleed this time, the strange armor doing its work. The Eastern Dark stood a step to the side. Iyana almost gave in to despair, and then Ceth struck again, and she began to notice little things. Little things that might lead to that larger thing called ‘hope’.
On the Northern Landkist came. Faster and faster, his feet making spirals in the sand as he spun and lanced his kicks and strikes and errant flips. He landed head down, hands in the sand as his legs twirled above him, ringing blows against the figure who should’ve been carved from the World ten times over by now. And each blow that landed only saw the Eastern Dark reappear as if he had never left, his face darkening each time, his eyes narrowing as Ceth drew his grudging attention, if not his fear.
“This one?” he said, dodging the next strike quick as a darting snake. A piece of the sandy rise on which they fought blew away, scattering the foxes that had paced there. “It was T’Alon Rane killed the Twins,” he said. “By my distant hand. It was me killed the Twins.”
“Were you there?” Pevah asked, his voice all silky control, though Iyana could sense the effort behind it. The tension. “Or did Rane tell you the task was done? Did he tell you he killed them, or that they were dead?”
There was no response, and Iyana couldn’t tell if it was because there was none to be given or if the Eastern Dark was too busy blocking, dodging and parrying where before he had stoically accepted whatever Ceth offered, knowing it would be returned in full. She thought either possibility a good one.
“You have never controlled that one so much as you’ve believed,” Pevah said. “Perhaps at first. Perhaps a century ago, when you first sent him out against us. But Rane marches on his own, now. He hunts the Sages—he hunts us—because he has come to believe it is necessary, not because you command it.”
“And why do you think he believes it?” the Eastern Dark said, twirling away, his cloak whipping up a swath of white sand that forced Ceth’s next blow off the mark. “How crude must you think me?”
Pevah didn’t answer, but Iyana found herself smiling. There was something to the way the Eastern Dark fought—or didn’t. Ket gave her a strange and worried look, as if he thought she’d gone mad. Perhaps she had.
“Why does he not stay still?” she asked, more to herself than those around her, but she was heard. “Why doesn’t he let the blows fall? They do more harm to Ceth than him. Could there be a limit?”
Now the stares that switched
from her to the duel had a fresh hunger to them that chased away the sodden despair. The blades they held went rigid with new fervor, the bows pulling taut with a killing lean. Still, they did not strike, and Iyana didn’t blame them. Better to let Ceth weaken the strange armor. She only hoped it would last longer than whatever the Sage had about him.
Her heart froze as the Eastern Dark was caught flat-footed. Ceth went down in a vicious and spinning tumble, righted himself and charged back in, but not before the Sage slid his eyes to her. They sparked with something as they met her flashing greens, and she tried to cover the fear she felt, as if she’d been marked.
Ceth soared high and crashed down, making one of his shallow craters where the Sage had been. When the shower of snow-white sand faded, Ceth stood tall and regarded the Eastern Dark with a dispassion befitting the Sages themselves. The look that was turned back on him might have been respect, but it soon changed to something else.
“Why do you follow him?” the Eastern Dark asked, jutting a hand toward Pevah. “Do you know how he earned his name?”
Ceth did not so much as twitch in the direction of the other Sage. His focus was singular. He sprang up to the side of the Eastern Dark and adopted that strange fighting stance Iyana had seen in the cave of the Mother’s Heart. The Eastern Dark grimaced as he looked the Landkist up and down.
“Do you even know what you are, noble knight?” he asked, all scorn and indignation. It was unbecoming, and Iyana thought the Sage was beginning to unravel. His poise, at least. She did not know if that was a good thing or a bad.
“I am Ceth,” he replied. “I am of the Red Cliffs. And I will see your death.”
Now the Eastern Dark met him directly, striking out rather than accepting the Landkist’s attacks. Both landed, and Ceth was sent spinning with double the force. The Eastern Dark snarled like a wolf and the foxes chose that moment to make for him. He snatched one from the air as another tore the cloak from behind, the buttons ripping free from his chest and floating to the sands. He broke the fox he held over his knee as if it were a twig and Iyana winced as he tossed it aside. The rest of the pack shrank back, growling with fangs bared as he stalked toward Ceth, who rolled over and spilled a thick glob of blood and drool onto the patch beneath him.
The Midnight Dunes (The Landkist Saga Book 3) Page 49