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Table of Contents
Titlepage
Map
Copyright
Chapter 1: The Great Empty
Chapter 2: The Gap
Chapter 3: The Hive
Chapter 4: Caravan
Chapter 5: Land of Lessons
Chapter 6: Bloody Teeth
Chapter 7: The Red Waste
Chapter 8: Children of the Sands
Chapter 9: Wayward
Chapter 10: Gifts
Chapter 11: Sharing
Chapter 12: Foxes and Hammerhorns
Chapter 13: Feast and Fear
Chapter 14: Mother's Heart
Chapter 15: The Pale Men
Chapter 16: Aftermath
Chapter 17: Blood Magic
Chapter 18: To The West
Chapter 19: Waking Nightmare
Chapter 20: First Runner
Chapter 21: The Midnight Dunes
Chapter 22: Into the Black
Chapter 23: The Desert's Crown
Chapter 24: Song of the Seers
Chapter 25: The Night Lord
Chapter 26: The Eastern Dark
Chapter 27: Creyath Mit'ahn
Chapter 28: The Knight
Chapter 29: Battle of Sages
Chapter 30: Tethers
About the Author
Dear Reader
THE MIDNIGHT DUNES
Copyright © 2017 by Steven Kelliher
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
“Any sign of them?” Talmir asked. He didn’t have to work to keep his voice low. The wind did that for him. There had been plenty of that, if nothing else.
The man beside him was short on words and long on patience. He stayed perfectly flat, as though he had never been more comfortable than he was now, scaling the side of a jagged ridge barely covered by a layer of coarse sand and desert’s spite.
But his eyes betrayed his poise. Talmir took the tense silence as an entreaty to mimic him and tried to keep his sigh silent as he scanned the lower canyon.
It was something he had not expected in a land of sand and dust: ridges and canyons. Already the western deserts of his ancestors held plenty of surprises, even as they seemed barren of anything else. The land alternated almost as readily as the Valley. In the place of grasslands and fields were sprawling expanses of wind-blown dunes and sun-baked eddies. In the place of dense woodlands and towering trees were carved boulders and tooth-like outcroppings.
The land dipped and turned, spun and looped back on itself. In the open, traveling by the Great Star during the day was as easy as the cool stars at night—stars laid bare as he’d never seen them to the south. In the canyons, it was easy to get turned around. The Valley held its own dangers—Talmir supposed every land did, given enough time to show them—but already the deserts had made a mockery of them.
Karin was intent on a southern gap between the red-brown rocky spurs, the dust doing little to strike the clarity from his eyes, which remained unblinking. Talmir’s eyes weren’t near as keen, so he busied himself with what he did best: worry.
He shifted onto his left shoulder and craned his neck to peer down the steep incline, his heart catching despite himself as he noted the pair of wagons nestled at the foot of the masked hill. He tried not to think on the third cart—the one that had fallen into a gap which had opened without warning two days before, soon after they had broken the cracked yellow plains and hit the softer-seeming ground to the west.
He’d sent Jes and Mial, two of his most loyal soldiers, down after the wagon and the supplies it had spilled into the guts of the covetous desert. They did well enough. Mial had spread the first panic through the caravan that night, telling tall tales of the hisses he’d heard in the depths of the pit that was now the wagon’s tomb. Talmir would have laughed them off with the rest; but Jes did not smile, and Talmir couldn’t help but think of the sand as nothing but a snakeskin atop a shifting serpent below, ready to swallow them up at the slightest provocation.
Figures milled just out of sight, but never for too long—Creyath and the soldiers under his command keeping the other members of the caravan as alert as they could under the aching wait.
There was no way to scale the ridge. Not with the wagons and horses. They’d have to go around. They’d have to go through the twisting gap. But even Talmir could see the trail below them was a road too convenient to be seldom traveled.
“You’re thinking too loudly.”
Talmir rolled to the opposite shoulder and ignored the jibe. He followed Karin’s gaze and spied movement in the gap.
“A fox,” Karin answered, and Talmir was amazed at how quickly the First Runner had picked up the details. The fox was thin, its gait more loping than one of the hounds of Last Lake, more considered than one of the red-tails of the Untamed Hills. It entered the gap and paused, looking behind, sleek tail flicking in agitation or warning.
Something else moved, and Talmir raised his brows in surprise as another fox detached itself from the westward dune and joined the first. Following on her tail were a trio of pups. He thought he could hear their yips carry on the wind.
The pair sniffed their way into the steep, packed road between the ridges and paused. The male went rigid, stock-still. He bladed his body before the female, and the pups froze along with him as he scented the breeze. After a smell, the female tore off up the western rise and disappeared over the top, the pups struggling in her wake. The male stood staring in their direction before he, too, gave a final flick of his tail and joined his family.
“There is more life in the deserts than we think,” Karin said, relaxing.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Talmir grumbled, flicking some crawling, snapping thing over the lip of the ledge.
He sat up, easing the tension from his back even as his tailbone pressed against another hidden knob beneath the sand. Karin watched him, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. It was good to see, given the mood he’d been in ever since they’d separated from Kole and the rest in the Barrens.
“No sign of them, then.” Talmir answered his earlier question and Karin’s look shifted a bit, that former concern showing through. “What is it?”
“This is an ideal road,” he said, coming to stand. He looked back down into the yawning gap and followed the windswept spurs from south to north, where they twisted out of sight to the west. “It is strange to see it abandoned.”
“We don’t know how many of them there are,” Talmir reasoned. “Maybe they’re holed up somewhere farther on.”
“Could be.”
Karin didn’t seem convinced, but Talmir could only shrug. “Think we should go around it? Take our chances in the open?”
“We’ll be spotted,” Karin said, shaking his head slowly.
“It’s a wonder we haven’t been already,” Talmir said. “I suppose we have you to thank for that.” He slapped Karin on the shoulder as he adjusted his sword belt and swung back around, taking a sliding step toward the bottom.
“It is,” he heard Karin say at his back.
Talmir knew it was bothering the tracker, but what was he to do? They had seen the nomads twice and then no more since moving farther into the desert. At first, Talmir had reacted as any commander would. He’d ordered the caravan into a defensive formation and awaited word from Karin and the other scouts. It was the First Runner who had seen the men first.
They were strange, he’d said, unable to paint them all in the same image. And they moved with a confidence that could only come from kn
owing a place well.
Talmir learned what he meant a day later, when he spied a small clutch of them camped below a hill on his nighttime survey. He’d flattened himself against the soft and shifting sand, ignoring the bite of the cold air as it frosted the tip of his nose. Against the ruddy light of their fire, he saw a mix of pale and deep olive skin. He thought the former looked something like the Rockbled. They were tall, but not particularly broad. The latter he took for members of his own tribe. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they had been, once.
He’d stayed like that for a long time before Karin had crawled up beside him and helped him back down. They had carved a circuitous route, cutting farther south than Talmir had intended. The men and women had been armed but unarmored. They wore sashes of silver-white and blood-red. His caravan had the numbers, but Talmir knew better than to court open conflict with natives, no matter where they hailed from.
Still, the men moved with a purpose that seemed to clash with the image of wanderers. They had little in the way of supplies. Even the water skins on their belts were thin. Perhaps there was something to them. Perhaps they were searching, too.
“We won’t be able to avoid them forever,” Karin said.
“Don’t worry on it,” Talmir said as Karin slid down beside him in a lope not unlike the desert foxes’. “We’ll have to speak with them sooner or later.”
“We should have when we had the numbers. When we had the high ground.”
“Maybe,” Talmir allowed. “But then, I wouldn’t take that as a fair greeting, would you?”
Karin was silent, which was answer enough.
The matter of the nomads was troubling him as much as everything else. Talmir felt the guilt at having left his city keenly. He felt it as surely as he felt the bronze star that swung beneath his loose tunic and slapped the slick skin of his chest with every bouncing stride.
What was he doing out here? What was he hoping to find?
He knew the answer. Maybe that was the problem. It was a fool’s errand if ever he’d heard one, and Talmir Caru, brave Captain of Hearth and the man now named after the hunk of metal that hung on the heavy chain around his neck, was one few called fool.
He felt a weight on his shoulder and noticed that he had stopped walking, ankle-deep in sand as he stood on the lip of the small ledge that hung above the makeshift day camp. Karin gripped him, attempting to reassure and doing the opposite.
“They are with you, Captain Caru,” he said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Talmir did not turn to meet the First Runner’s eyes. He hopped off the ledge, landing with a crack on the remnants of last night’s cook fire and scattering the pair of young merchants who still sat beside it with their useless ledgers.
“Did you sign out that water?” Talmir asked, noting the ash-smudged bottle one of them had knocked over in his haste.
“Of course,” the man said, offended. Talmir hadn’t bothered to learn his name. Come to think of it, he didn’t know the names of any of the merchants left in the company, frivolous men following a foolish road to no end.
“Shall I give the order to move out?” Karin called as Jes, Mial and several of Talmir’s soldiers rushed over, intent on the captain’s return.
“We want to be around the westward bend by nightfall,” Talmir said with a nod. Karin moved off to relay the orders.
As he walked between the wagons, Talmir caught sight of Creyath standing on a small rise to the east. His eyes had barely moved from that direction since they’d entered the deserts. He had seen something on the edges of Center, Talmir knew. But Creyath was a man of even fewer words than Karin. If he didn’t volunteer the information, Talmir wouldn’t draw it out.
He let the Ember be. It wasn’t the Second Keeper of Hearth he sought out now; had been seeking out at the close of each day. He passed through the row of tents without stopping.
Talmir almost laughed at the absurdity of it. As Captain of Hearth, he had made a career out of ignoring the advice of sage elders and avoiding the company of Sister Gretti and the Seers. Now, in the wide and wild west, he found himself seeking out the stony presence of Iyana Ve’Ran, a girl less than half his age. The folk of Hearth had plenty to say about the Lakemen, but none spoke poorly of the Faey Mother. If she was gone, it was safe to say her legacy endured.
The sand ran in many colors. Talmir noticed it in the evenings most, and though the day was only just growing late, the sun was hidden behind the great hill he’d just come down from. The bits of earth moved easily underfoot, the yellows giving way to the soft and earthen browns on the second layer. Below, there was a red clay that felt cool to the touch.
He followed an eastern slope and cut north, where he saw the next collection of tents gathered below a smaller rise. The Faeykin had come with them in some number … for them. Four, including Iyana. Though he was thankful for their company, his soldier’s mind considered them a bad omen. What were those who healed hurt if not harbingers of the same? He tried to shake the thought and told himself it had nothing to do with the early wars in the Valley, where the Faey had made their presence known on a few occasions that were a sight more red than most would believe of the gentle Landkist.
The Faeykin here were all born of the Emberfolk, but they held themselves apart, training with the Faey in the eastern woods. And yet, Iyana Ve’Ran held herself apart from them. As the rest began to roll up their bedrolls and pull loose the stakes that held their canvas flaps down, Iyana stood apart at the northern end of the half-bowl, white hair blowing like a wisp of cloud. Her fair skin had a moon-like sheen, and though she bore the same tans and brown smudges as the rest of the traveling company, it could not diminish the glow that hung about her.
He moved up behind her as silently as he was able, clutching his sword and scabbard to his hip to stop it ringing.
“Did you find our hosts?” she asked without turning, and he laughed as he came to stand beside her.
“Hosts, eh?”
She regarded him with those emerald greens, and no matter how many times he met them of late, he felt unprepared each time, stripped bare in a way Rain Ku’Ral could never manage.
“We are in their home,” Iyana said, her tone leaving no room for argument.
Talmir nodded and looked out over the landscape. The ground dropped away to the east, but to the west the buried ridgeline stretched out of sight, carving like a serpent to the horizon.
“We could go around,” Iyana said, reading the thoughts on his face if not in his mind.
“The wind’s been picking up,” Talmir said, trying to convince himself as much as her. “We’ve been lucky so far, I think. Not all in this company are as stout as you.”
She laughed at that, but Talmir didn’t.
“Have you noticed the glow?” she asked, and Talmir strained his eyes.
“Would that I had your sister’s eyes.” He said it as much to gauge her reaction as for the truth of it.
“You don’t need Linn to see the skies,” she said without missing a beat.
Talmir shaded his eyes with a hand and followed the direction of her gaze.
“To the northwest,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, looking earnest, almost hopeful.
He screwed his face up in concentration. “Sunset.”
“No,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Something else.”
He regarded her with a steady expression and she did not wilt under it.
“The secret of the Ember fire?” he asked with a smile, but it fell from his face when she remained stone-faced.
“What we’re looking for, I think,” she said. “In whatever form.”
What are we looking for? He felt the question gnawing at the back of his skull, but he feared to give voice to the words.
Hope. It was a little bird twittering in his west-facing ear. He wondered if she’d put that in. He knew little of the powers of the Faey, aside from the help they’d lent Hearth in their recent hour of greatest ne
ed. The same help they’d lent his closest friend when Creyath had fallen against the corrupted beasts of the World Apart.
Talmir swept his gaze around. The Faeykin had packed and were now moving to rejoin the caravan. One lingered, staring in their direction. He seemed young and old at the same time, his long, white-yellow hair framing a face that carried those same green gems as the girl that stood before Talmir, albeit with a darker bent.
“How are you?” Talmir asked as the one known as Sen moved off after the others.
“Fine.”
“You don’t look east,” he said.
“None of us do,” she answered. “We’re on a path, now. Onward is the only way forward.”
“Well said.”
Talmir did look east as he stepped back and began to follow the slope back toward the wagons. The sand appeared blue in the false twilight, but as he watched, a shard of amber carved the eddies there like fins on the water. Iyana lingered for a spell behind him, but he heard her soft footsteps soon enough.
“Do they really know why we’re here?” she asked as they climbed the neighboring rise. She indicated the merchants as they fussed over maps the Seers had drawn based on little more than legends half-told and less remembered.
“Do we?” Talmir meant it as a jest, but he felt his face flush as her eyes bored into his temple.
“We do,” she said. “We know what we’re following, Captain Caru. As for your men and women,” she observed them like she was a mother and they her wandering brood. “They follow you.”
“Power,” he said, spitting. The saliva struck the sand, which accepted the offering gladly. “World has enough of it without us digging up more.”
“We’re digging up the past,” Iyana said, her voice changing. “And a part of the future, I think.”
Karin had told Talmir of Iyana’s impressions. Specifically, the one that had led her here. Talmir had heard of the Faey Mother’s famed visions. As a youth, he’d been quick to toss them aside. But others were not so quick to do the same, even those who counted the tossed bones and rolled dice of the Valley Seers little more than tricks and delusions.
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