The Midnight Dunes (The Landkist Saga Book 3)

by Steven Kelliher

  Another arrow screamed toward the Sage and he raised a hand without looking. The shaft sank in with a spray that coated half his face with red spatter and then stopped, and the woman who’d sent it—one of the gray-sashes—fell clutching her now-bloody hand as Sen rushed to aid her.

  Iyana tried to think through the fear and the pounding in her head. She had seen it again at the moment of the strike. Ceth had barely managed to stand before the Eastern Dark was on him. He struck Ceth in the jaw and broke it, sent him careening, and still Ceth rose, though he did it slower each time.

  “Let me tell you what your Pevah never did, Ceth,” the Eastern Dark said, stalking him like prey. He kicked him and sent him crashing into the side of a low rise that half-buried him. “The Embers wield flame and the Rockbled throw stones. The Raiths bend the minds of beasts and the Willows stretch their sight. The Faey,” he paused for a beat and locked onto Iyana with a wild look the blood only accentuated, “are made for patching, and there are so many more born from our meddling.”

  He knelt before Ceth and cupped his chin in one hand. The Sage looked younger than he had before, well-muscled, albeit lean. His cheeks were boney and raised, not unlike the Faey of the Valley core. Ceth slapped his hand away with his own, but the blur that coated him had faded some, and the Eastern Dark sent him sailing back toward the west, over the heads of the Valley soldiers and Iyana and all the rest—even Pevah, who gritted his teeth but did not strike.

  “The Skyr are something strange, even by the standards of the rest,” he said, parting the crowd of men and foxes like a tide as he stalked toward the shaking Landkist who was now covered in a paste of white sand that obscured the red beneath. “There is a weight to the World, Ceth. Nothing metaphorical. Nothing the bards will tell you. No,” he struck him again and sent him rolling across the flats while the rest watched. “It’s the weight you feel now. It’s the weight the World is made of, the pull that drags everything down.”

  He paused above Ceth as the latter rolled onto his hands and knees. He had grown, and Iyana had no doubt she was seeing him close to his true form. Close to his prime. His ears were pointed. He was tall with jet black hair that spilled down below his shoulder blades. His clothes changed from rags to leather that looked rich as oil. His cloak went from homespun to fur, and it was all inlaid and embroidered with silver lines and lavender accents. His skin was light enough to look like snow, and though she could not see his eyes, she knew those had changed as well. He was not as feral as Pevah looked. He was noble, regal and strange. And all the more unsettling for it.

  Ceth pushed himself up, or tried to, and the Sage placed a black boot square upon his back and pressed him down. Ceth gritted his teeth and growled. The ground on which he knelt was part glass after the fight between Night Lord and Ember had changed the land for a half a league in all directions. The fight that was now forgotten like the husks of the champions that lay not far beyond the fighting pair. The desert floor shattered like a mirror and Iyana felt a tear sting her cheek as Ceth screamed, the sharp edges of the broken plane scoring his wrists and tearing the skin of his arms up to the elbows.

  “There is a weight to the World, Ceth,” the Eastern Dark said again, his voice soft. “You can don it like a second skin, manipulate it.” He pressed him down further and Ceth screamed louder, and then he removed his boot and leaned down, hovering just above Ceth’s silver hair. “And your sister was all the better at wielding it. The best I’d ever seen.”

  Ceth turned a look of such pure hate on the Eastern Dark that Iyana thought for sure it would kill one of them. It took some time, but he rose again, standing nose-to-nose with the Sage in all his glory. And though he was outmatched as clear as could be seen, bloody and torn, Ceth looked summarily unimpressed.

  The Eastern Dark turned back toward the east, his black eyes with their purple pits parting the company and alighting on Pevah once more. He nodded once.

  “Had there been more of his, perhaps we’d revisit the argument over the Embers.” He turned back to Ceth. “Perhaps I would be proven wrong had the Twins not wasted the lot of you in their cruel and needless games. Alas, I got the best of them. Resh did more than her share against the Sages of the East. She did more than her share in helping to secure the King of Ember to my side, however grudging his loyalty.”

  “Resh was her own,” Ceth said, his eyes watering with memories the name called up. Iyana felt his heartache keenly. “Are you?”

  The Eastern Dark seemed taken aback by that. He considered it, walked a slow circle around the Landkist. “I am changed,” he said, nodding as if admitting it for the first time. He smiled. “But then, all power has a price. I paid mine,” he looked again to Pevah, “and now I’ve come to collect from those who have yet to do so.” He paused again before Ceth. “I am not the enemy of the World. Not now. You follow blind leaders. “

  Beyond them, she saw that Talmir had moved from his place, penetrating the smoking flats. He now knelt beside Creyath. She could see the bronze star dangling in the air between them.

  Ceth said nothing more. He raised his chin, content to let death come.

  But the Eastern Dark, for all the fear his name would bring, did not seem one to mete it out himself. Iyana did not believe his intentions to be pure. She didn’t believe anything that came out of his crooked, unlined mouth. That didn’t mean he was wrong.

  The tension was palpable, broken by the sudden complaints of the foxes, who had been quiet since their fellow had been killed. Iyana thought they might ring the Sage once more, threatening him and itching to fight where none of the soldiers would. She thought perhaps they were picking up on the mood of Pevah, who seemed to be growing more into his other name with each passing breath.

  But when she looked back to see what the fuss was about, the only thing more erratic than the noises they made were their movements. They rushed to and fro, scattering sand with raised hackles. They hissed at one another and at the air around them, pawing at lonely patches of sand and occasionally baring their fangs at nomads and Valley soldiers.

  Pevah walked through them all, ignoring men and foxes alike as he followed the same path the other Sage had out onto the flats. The time he’d gathered swirled around him, a gossamer curtain inlaid with jewels and silken threads—each more powerful than anything Iyana had seen. For what was time but power over life and death?

  “Pevah,” she said, reaching for him as he moved past, already bearing himself like a ghost. “Something’s wrong.” He paused and the Eastern Dark stepped away from Ceth to watch their exchange. Ceth, for his part, remained rooted, caught between the need to act and the knowledge that doing so would doom him.

  He seemed to listen to the words but not the warning within them. Iyana could see the emerald light of her stare reflected off the shimmering cloak he wore, but it didn’t reach his understanding or his care.

  “The girl is right, you know,” the Eastern Dark said, and it sounded like a portent.

  The air smelled of rot and burning flesh. It changed sharply, the breeze whipping one way and then the next, and now the men were caught up in the foxes’ mania, even if they remained silent and still. Something was coming. Something was here.

  With a jolt of memory, Iyana looked at the hand that had occupied so much of her attention minutes before. There was no longer a blur around it. Seeing her looking, the Eastern Dark gave her a wave, smiling.

  Pevah stopped as if halted by a line. His eyes went wide and the fur that had been a hood stood up, mimicking his loyal companions.

  “What have you done?” he asked, a note of horror entering his tone.

  “Concessions must be made, Pevah,” the Eastern Dark said, sweeping his hands out to his sides and ignoring the Landkist behind him. The Sage dipped into a mock bow and then rose, his movements alien. He reminded Iyana of the Faey, but much older and more dangerous.

  She felt them and was the first to turn, and the sight nearly took her breath. If she hadn’t just seen a Night Lord
kill and be killed by one of the last Embers, it would have. There were no gasps among the Valley soldiers or desert nomads. Only a hardening that Iyana tried to mimic.

  There atop the rise, standing in a haphazard row, was a collection of man-shaped creatures all in black and all of black. They wore no clothes and they carried no weapons. Their eyes were red, deep and glowing like coals beneath a grate. Some smiled as they took in the force arrayed before them. There were only six. In Iyana’s experience, six would be enough. She knew what these beasts were. She had fought one, in a manner of speaking, helping to purge it from the burning mind of Kole Reyna during the Dark Months.

  Sentinels. Sentinels of the World Apart, and no rift to speak of. No gaping, jagged hole cut into space itself to betray their entry. The Eastern Dark had hidden them. He had let them in.

  Though they had sharp fangs and jagged claws not unlike Pevah’s, these stood with a strange sort of elegance. They were not stooped and growling as Iyana had heard them described, and as they examined the men and the foxes they did so with a predatory, calculating grace. The eyes of the one in front went a little wider as he scanned the devastation. He mouthed something in a language she couldn’t understand, and she guessed he had seen the Night Lord.

  Those behind him knelt and bowed their heads, but he only stood and stared at the place where the great titan had fallen. He looked back and picked Iyana from the crowd. He pointed one sharp talon and spoke, and though she did not know the words, she took their meaning.

  “An Ember,” she said, raising her chin high like Ceth had. “Creyath Mit’Ahn, Second Keeper of Hearth. Scourge of the Dark Kind. Slayer of the Night Lord.”

  She half expected a peal of demonic laughter. Instead, she earned that steady smolder. The Sentinel even granted her a twitch of a nod.

  “Don’t speak to them,” Mial said. “They’ll put a curse on you, these beasts.” He snarled like one of the foxes, and the Sentinels looked amused. As one, they stepped forward. Not a single man or woman in the line took one back. These folk had come too far to be cowed, and now they were caught between the Sentinels of the World Apart and the Eastern Dark. What was there to do but fight? What was there to do but die?

  “Don’t look at me that way, brother.” The Eastern Dark’s voice had changed. He was happy here in this lonely chaos at the edge of the World, no matter his seeming stoicism.

  “You let them in,” Pevah said. His voice was savage, scarcely a vestige of humanity left in it. “More.”

  “These Sentinels are not loyal to the Night Lords of their lands.”

  “They are not loyal to any but themselves.”

  Iyana knew this was a standoff that would end in blood. As if to prove her point, one of the Sentinels rolled a dead warrior over—one of the Seers’ painted zealots—and croaked a laugh. One of the Valley soldiers Iyana didn’t know stepped forward, silver blade catching all the light the desert night threw. The Sentinels smiled at him.

  “We have common cause,” the Eastern Dark said, and Iyana thought it less than nonsense. “Consider these nobles. Greater than the savages the White Crest called into that Valley of his. These used to rule the World Apart, or much of it, until the Night Lords grew minds of their own.” He sighed, a dramatic sound that carried. “But then, you never learned as much of that place as I. You never looked long. You never went searching.”

  “Much good it’s done,” Pevah said. “You’ve doomed them. You’ve doomed the World, and you’ll die for it. I’ll see it done.”

  “No, Pevah,” the Eastern Dark said. “My curious eye is the only thing that will stop what was always coming. The Dark Kind would have continued to spill into our lands unabated and unchecked. The Worlds would collide with a fervor that will break them both apart. It wasn’t our search that drew its wandering eye. It was the power we found.”

  Iyana couldn’t help but turn back to the Sages. There wasn’t anything she could do against a pack of Sentinels. She might as well learn what she could before passing on. She tried not to dwell on the despair.

  The Eastern Dark was looking at his counterpart, keeping Ceth between them. The Landkist seemed frozen. He should have fallen from his wounds, but he stayed up, eyes shifting between the Sages as Pevah inched closer, black claws out. She saw a bit of that usual blur concentrated around one fist, which hung at his side, partially obscured by the gray sash that hung in tatters from a bloody shoulder.

  “If there is one truth the tribes have held to that we cannot avoid, it is surely that,” the Eastern Dark said, his teeth an unsettling white. “We took our power, Pevah. We violated some law that even the gods—if they exist—left unchallenged. The World Apart was always there. Its coming, however, was not.”

  “And you think our deaths will stave it off?” Pevah laughed, a bitter sound. “Mine and all the rest?”

  The Eastern Dark’s face went deadly serious. “I know it.”

  “And you,” Pevah said, pointing with a lancing claw. “How will you end, and when?”

  No answer, and now it was Iyana who laughed. The Eastern Dark turned a blank look her way. She saw Ceth’s eyes move quick as a lightning strike. She saw his hand move quicker, feet pivoting in the glass shards.

  “Ceth!” Pevah yelled, leaning in.

  The Landkist’s fist rocketed toward the Eastern Dark’s back. Iyana saw the passion that the Sage kept veiled as the blow struck and struck through, shattering the spine like any other and coming out the other side.

  All held their breath. A cold wind blew the last of the smoke away and sent white pebbles dancing toward the south. The Sage hung limp, dangling from the end of Ceth’s bloody fist, pale hands clutching, eyes wide with remembered mortality. The tether that had been hidden was now revealed in full to her. It was deep lavender and blue with bits of red, and it flashed like a squid in the deep.

  Iyana nearly cheered, and then she saw Pevah’s face and knew it was for naught.

  With a whispered word, it was all undone and done again. The Eastern Dark stood apart from Ceth, and the Landkist’s look of triumph turned to one of surprise. He looked down and saw the gaping hole in his chest. He looked to Pevah, whose heart broke to see it and to not see its coming fast enough.

  Ceth fell to his knees, wordless, and his chin touched his chest. He was still.

  The Eastern Dark, if it were possible, looked crestfallen in place of relieved. If Pevah’s stare was hate and vengeance, his was resolute. The Sages collided, and the hell that had been building since the Night Lord fell was unleashed, and there was no center to the storm, no eye to wait out its violent wrath.

  Karin had been so taken with the scene out on the flats and its cataclysmic ending, so taken with the grief he witnessed from the Captain of Hearth who ventured out onto that dry and broken waste, that he did not notice the arrival of the Sentinels until the battle had been joined.

  It started with a shockwave that knocked him down—no hard thing, since he could barely stand as it was. The Sages—for that was all they could be—collided with a force that made Ceth’s fight look paltry by comparison. Karin was a stone’s throw from them or a bit more, but he saw the silver-haired Northman kneeling motionless. Then he saw the hole in his chest.

  The air moved about his prone form and his sharp bangs danced with it as if underwater while the gods came together and separated, each clash too quick to see anything but an afterimage like sunspots on the backs of his eyelids.

  Pevah was something changed, closer to the beast he had been in the Eastern cave, no shred of humanity feigned or otherwise left to him. He was coated in the time he kept. Neither he nor the tall, dark and Faey-like figure he fought carried weapons apart from their own forms, but they were formidable. Any blow Pevah landed was given back to him. Gashes appeared on his face and blood soaked his clothes, and each time that liquid armor he wore like a shield shimmered like moonlight glinting and turned it back, unmade it.

  The same could not be said for the Eastern Dark. Where before he h
ad turned back his wounds using whatever magic made him up, now they sprouted. The Sages flew and fell, sometimes too quick to see and others slow as dreaming. The blows were rendered bright in the shimmering time they were caught in as it threaded loose from Pevah and made a mess of the space in which they clashed. Karin was so fixed on the airborne image of their slow dance he did not know it as a thing of the past until their new bout broke out directly before him, collapsing much of the dry ridge he stood upon.

  He dove back, hacking and gasping as he came up spewing sand, and when he turned over he saw the true hell had been joined. The black forms with red eyes streaked quick as Embers, tearing the sashes and guts from the desert nomads and sending buckles and flashing bits of metal shooting from the armor the Valley soldiers wore. The men and women fought like the foxes that made a wilder chaos in the midst, their blades catching bits of the half-dozen but doing little in the way of true hurt to the demons of the World Apart.

  Already three soldiers had fallen, and Karin knew more would follow. He knew they would all die, for there were no Landkist left among them.

  No Landkist but for two.

  His heart pumped what life he needed as he saw Iyana wading in the midst, leaping upon the wounded like the Sentinels leapt upon the living. He saw her eyes glowing along with her palms as she willed one soldier to rise and quit on another, two emerald jewels out of four. But Sen was not using his to heal. Instead, he twisted and turned within the maelstrom of black and flesh, reaching out and tugging on threads Karin couldn’t see. Iyana watched him from her place in a shallow pit, something like recognition dawning as the Faeykin yanked Ket out of harm’s way. A Sentinel went screaming past him trailing a blow that would have been killing.