He rejoined the caravan, which—much to Talmir’s obvious discomfort—had abandoned anything resembling the formation it had held since coming down from the mountains days before. In the place of the twin columns was a hodgepodge of wanderers, the soldiers doing their best to look determined rather than depleted, and the few merchants doing anything but. Even the Faeykin, normally the picture of poise, looked worn, their hair matted and disheveled.
Horses and men alike hit the ocean of shadow provided by the great and lonely spur and rejoiced, sighs and whinnies combining to form a chorus of ecstasy that would have made one of the eastern maidens blush.
Karin walked among them, observing their demeanors. Iyana showed him a tired smile as she passed and Creyath refused to take his eyes from the looming giant of stone before them. Or, not stone, Karin noticed as he turned, but clay.
The structure was massive and seemed to be leaning, its base sloped in places and dipping in others. In the shadows of the southern side it appeared brown, but as Karin let his eyes track upward, he saw red bright enough to look like blood, caked and dried in the sun. Its sides were smooth in places and rough in others, with knobs at uneven intervals and man-sized pits that leered like black eyes tunneling down beneath the surface.
As the wagons pulled up and the men and women began arranging the horses and pulling the water casks free of their bindings from the beds within, Karin swept his gaze out to encompass the bowl with its gray stone borders. The ground was sturdier here, the loose sand having been blown down towards the gap from which they’d crawled as though it was a wound that needed closing. He wondered how deep it might have been.
There were no animals in sight. No desert foxes and no hawks circling on high, which he’d seen frequently to the south and east. He tensed, shielding his eyes from the sun. He thought he had seen a solitary figure breaking the western rise, but now that he looked closer, he saw nothing. Perhaps it had been one of the desert nomads, observing the strangers come into his lands. Perhaps the Red Waste himself, come to see his runaway children returned.
More likely, it was a trick an empty land played on those unused to its ways.
Try as he might, Karin could not shake the feeling of wrongness that had dogged him for a day and more.
“It’s the emptiness,” a voice said, small but firm.
Karin stepped around a brown horse and saw Iyana brushing it on the opposite side. She smiled at him warmly, and he saw that her lips were wet, reminding him of his own unquenched thirst. She frowned up at him.
“You should take water,” she said, nodding toward the wagons.
“Aye,” he said, knowing he sounded distracted and doing little to hide it. He could hear Talmir barking his orders in the back, and to the west, he saw Creyath sitting atop his black charger like a shadowed sigil on a light canvas. “What did you mean?” he asked, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. Perhaps the dryness had got to him.
“You seem bothered,” Iyana said, her hands pausing in their ministrations as she studied him like a young mother might her mewling babe. The horse swung its head around, bumping Karin out of the way as it sought the source of its minder’s dalliance. Iyana laughed and Karin matched her in a softer bent.
“I seem bothered,” Karin said, meeting her emerald eyes. “Seem?”
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t turn it off at will, you know,” she complained. “Just because I’m not floating in the Between right now doesn’t mean I can’t see what you’re feeling—feel how you’re feeling, more like.”
“I wish you could tell me,” Karin said, looking from her back up to their sheltering giant. The wind howled as it raced in from the northwest, carving its way around the monolith and making a strange melody as it snaked its way in and out of the pits and tunnels within.
“Haunting,” Iyana said. “Isn’t it?”
He regarded her and swallowed despite himself. “Yes,” he said. “Very.”
“It’s the lack of life,” she said again, continuing her earlier track. “That’s what’s got you out of sorts. It’s what’s got the lot of them out of sorts, I’d guess.” She indicated the rest of the company as they arrayed themselves beneath and around the mounds and stacks of desert clay, lounging and drinking from their wooden bowls or else standing and staring, aimless as he felt. “We’re not in the Valley anymore. But there is life here.”
Karin tilted a brow at her. “Can you sense it?”
She screwed up her face, considering the question. After a span, she nodded.
“It’s different,” she said. “It’s less the thrum of the Valley and more an echo. But it’s here. It’s all around us.”
Karin did not know whether to feel comforted or disconcerted by the revelation, so he settled for aloof.
“Take rest,” he said, moving to step away. When she opened her mouth to speak, he raised a hand. “And I’ll take water.” He could feel her smile at his back. “I can’t have you worrying over me. Plenty to go around to those who need it more.”
“Like father, like son,” she said, and Karin halted in his steps. “I decide who needs it.”
He smiled and walked toward the wagons and the captain who threaded his mare between them.
“You look as if you’ve stepped out of a furnace,” Karin said as he approached. He tried to say it lightly, but the captain was not amused.
“Perhaps there is a reason the nomads avoid the place,” Talmir said, wiping the sweat from his brow. His sword—hanging free of its sheath so that Karin could better track them from above—caught an errant ray and flashed.
Talmir let the mare wander, put his hands on his hips and surveyed the makeshift camp. Karin watched him, waiting for the inevitable question. Judging by Talmir’s expression, he expected him to ask why he had compelled them to march through the night. His answer would be lacking, he knew: nothing but a Runner’s intuition, Captain.
But the question did not come. Instead, Talmir sighed and then looked Karin up and down.
“Sun’s been kind to you, I see.”
Karin looked down. His bare chest was a shade or two darker than it had been on leaving the Valley, but he felt none the worse for wear.
“It seems we did come from here,” he said with a smirk, noting that Talmir’s blue eyes did stand out a bit sharper from his swarthy skin.
“It’s a wonder the Faeykin don’t burn up the second they touch the bright,” the captain said, and Karin winced at the crassness with which he said it. Still, he knew there was nothing in the words. Talmir stated things the way he saw them, and in Karin’s limited experience, he often saw them clear.
“Come,” Talmir said, clapping Karin on the shoulder. “Take water.”
Karin was glad to acquiesce. He followed the Captain between the wagons and swung around the back, where one of the young soldiers was ladling polished wood bowls full of the gloriously clear liquid.
Talmir offered one to Karin and took the next.
“Doing well, Ket?” he asked, and the soldier nodded too quickly. Talmir placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and then touched his cheek and brow, which were flushed. “Take some for yourself, lad. We need you right. Then pack it away.”
The soldier known as Ket did as instructed, filling the next bowl for himself as Karin and Talmir stepped away from the wagons and deeper into the shadows beneath the sheltering tower of earth.
“Strange thing, isn’t it?” Talmir asked, craning his neck to look up at the towering, rounded cone.
“Very,” Karin said. “I can’t tell if the wind carved it from the base of this bowl or if it was made by something else.”
“Something like man?”
“Doubtful,” Karin said. They rounded the bend, their path taking them up a slope of slipping clay at the base. Something crunched underfoot and both men looked down to see a shining collection of pearly white shards underfoot. Karin bent to retrieve one, blowing the dust from its edges.
“Sea shells?” Talmir asked, standin
g above him. “They say all lands were beneath the sea, once. That we’re all just floating along its currents on this wayward island.”
Karin shook his head and turned the shard over. It was thin enough to be slate, but there was a yellowed stain on the underside. “Bird’s eggs, maybe.”
“Eggs.” Talmir seemed to relish the word. He kicked at a loose pile and stepped up onto the next rise before turning to survey the wagons below. “Maybe we’ll find some still inhabited.”
Karin stood and brushed the clay from his fingers. He followed the captain and together they passed from the shade of the eastern side into the blinding bright of the north.
They surveyed the land. The gray stone ridges rose a short ride away—roughly the distance from the outer shell of Hearth to the western woods of the Valley. There was a smaller gap between, with the land rising at an easy incline. Beyond it, Karin could see dunes that reminded him of the rolling hills near Last Lake. To the east, the wall was closer, the sides appearing as a series of pillars with a dusting of sand atop them; it was a network of trenches and tunnels Karin had no desire to explore. And to the west, the shelves Karin had traversed earlier merged into mountainous dunes that spilled away to the flat lands.
“An easy land to hide in,” Talmir said, and Karin saw that he was still looking to the north.
“They know we’re here, Captain,” Karin said. “If they meant us harm, I think they’d have brought it already.”
“Maybe,” Talmir said, unconvinced. “Or maybe they’re waiting to see what we’ve come to offer.”
“Can you blame them?”
“Not at all,” Talmir said, matter-of-fact. “Not at all.”
“It’s strange,” Karin started, feeling melancholy. “How we can feel strangers in a land that should be ours.”
“Land isn’t anyone’s,” Talmir said with a snort. “Men, Landkist and Sages besides. Sooner we learn that, the better off we’ll be.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Karin said, and he did, taking a long pull on the cool water that tasted of oiled wood and the river stones of the Fork.
The wind picked up, bringing with it that now familiar, haunting sibilance that reminded Karin of a pit of coiling snakes. But this time, it also brought something else. There was a smell like fresh rot—a sweetness with a sting on the end that had Karin wrinkling his nose.
He looked to the west and saw that Talmir was doing the same. Karin moved past him and stepped up onto the next rise, bracing himself against the clay tower. The ground dropped away steeply, and at the bottom of the rounded shelf the source of the stench revealed itself.
“A horned runner?” Talmir asked from beside him. His voice was muffled as he covered his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Close,” Karin said. He hopped down from the considerable height with no real effort. “One of the hammerhorn bulls, I think.”
He walked forward as Talmir chose to navigate the long way around. The body was wedged between the leaning side of the clay tower and the slope Karin walked on now. Bits of flesh still clung to it in places, and the flies had been at it long enough to give off their sweet smells. Karin had smelled plenty of death, but there was something off about this one.
As he drew closer, the ground beneath his feet grew slicker. The sand was all settled at the bottom of the north and western sides. The smell of rot underwent a subtle turn when he was nearly upon the sorry creature—the slight smell of burning.
“What got at it?” Talmir asked at his back. “Foxes? Wolves?”
Karin moved around the beast cautiously, the hair standing up on the nape of his neck. “Not foxes,” he said, more to himself than the captain. “Something far nastier, I think.”
He knelt, waving the buzzing flies away. The weapon that gave the creature its name met him at eye level: a split spur of bone, bleached by the sun. One side jutted out with a flattened ledge while the top tapered to a sickle. The bone was black at the tip with the blood of whatever had come against it.
“Got itself stuck,” Talmir said, and Karin saw what he meant. The hindquarters had not been devoured. At least, not entirely. Instead, they were wedged inside one of the porous pits in the side of the clay mound.
Karin leaned forward.
“You’re going to catch sick, getting that close,” Talmir said, sounding nauseous.
Karin edged around the swarmed corpse. He could hear the wind sighing through the open pit where the bull’s legs hung above a depth lost to sight. Aside from the blood that speckled the slope, there was another substance—sticky and green. It ran in rivulets down the exposed bones of the beast’s haunches, and Karin thought he saw steam rising from matted hair that was drenched in the stuff.
“Karin? What is it?”
He reached out and touched the sap-like substance, then recoiled with a hiss. He whirled as Talmir shoved his discarded bowl into his hand. Karin plunged his burning hand into the water, cursing and spitting as Talmir stepped past him to peer down at the mess.
“You going to keep that hand?” he tossed back.
Karin spit a few more curses through his teeth before taking his hand, shaking, out of the ruined water. His fingers were red, raw and already blistering, but the burning had stopped. Nothing rest wouldn’t heal. Nothing a Faeykin wouldn’t heal quicker.
“I’ll live,” Karin said.
“Good.”
Karin watched as the captain poked in fascination with his scabbard. It came away smoking.
“Seen anything like this?” Talmir asked.
Karin shook his head. “I’ve heard of snakes that can do it. They spit to blind their prey. Nothing like that in the Valley, though. Could be in the Untamed Hills.”
“Could be anything there,” Talmir said absently. He looked up at the clay tower and Karin followed, for the first time seeing the yawning pits as something entirely different—something forbidding.
“Snakes,” Talmir said. He looked back down at the mess. “Big enough to take town a hammerhorn bull?”
“Whatever took it didn’t eat much of it,” Karin said, and then a sickening thought occurred to him. He swept his gaze out to take in all horizons. Great birds of prey wheeled overhead where before there had been nothing. Their heads were naked, stripped of feathers bright red and blue. On the ridge to the west, he saw what looked to be a pack of desert foxes staring in their direction.
“Captain,” Karin said, drawing it out. He took a step back and Talmir’s look morphed into a strange one.
“Do you hear that?” Talmir asked, tilting his head.
He did hear it. What he at first mistook for the whispering of the wind playing through the grooves of the tortured structure—and it was a structure, he now recognized—Karin now heard the hissing of a hundred tongues.
“We need to get the others,” Karin said. “We need to move.”
It was times like these when Karin cursed himself for never learning to wield more than a short blade, even though he did that better than any—perhaps better even than his son.
Talmir drew his sword and stepped back, keeping his eyes on the gap between the base and the clay hill. “Whatever it is, it won’t make for us when it’s got a meal set and served. Karin?”
“It’s a trap,” he said. “Bait. Clever things.”
“Things?”
The first of the horrors shot out from the trench so quickly it could have been mistaken for one of the twisted Dark Kind Karin had spent half a lifetime avoiding in the deep woods of the Valley.
Talmir swung down even faster, his blade a silver blur that should have sliced right through the lizard’s head. Instead, it rang off a crown as thick as bone, and the hound-sized beast opened a maw ringed with dripping black razors and lunged. Karin darted forward like one of the streaking hounds of Last Lake and speared it in the soft space between crown and ridged neck, and the monster died in a pool of dark red blood, the steaming green mess spilling from its hissing maw.
“Back!” Talmir
moved toward the western side of the tower and Karin shadowed him. Instead of a single lizard darting out of the holes there was a steady pour, horrors great and small spilling forward to be lit by the unkind sun at their backs.
“Run!” Talmir yelled, and Karin did, carving a path down the slope. The beasts were spurred on by his flight and the hisses formed a wave that was a macabre wind unto itself. Talmir ran behind him, and Karin tossed a look back to see him leap one of the green-gray crawlers, his blade swinging back to take its eye and send it writhing in the clay, spraying its liquid fire.
Soon enough, they had outstripped the reptiles, but as Creyath Mit’Ahn and his black charger came into view, Karin felt his heart drop as he thought of the wagons and the resting caravan scattered among them.
“Creyath!” he yelled, but Talmir’s voice was the louder.
“Mit’Ahn!”
The Ember swung in his saddle, amber eyes widening ever so slightly to expose crescents of white as he took in the chaos of their retreat. He lifted the great Everwood bow from around his back and ripped free a shaft from the sidesaddle—Karin wondered how many he had stashed there and not in the wagons—and bladed his mount off to the side of the oncoming pack.
Karin skittered past horse and rider, nearly going over as the clay met the first spilling pebbles of sand. He heard a curse and spun, snatching Talmir by the wrist and hauling him back up as the two crashed into view of the caravan. A blast of heat shook them and a hiss of flesh and inhuman mouths went up. Creyath had begun his work.
Creyath’s flames got the party moving faster than any shouts could, and the pack of swarming lizards—charred and smoking though they were—did plenty to spur them on. Of course, it was the Faeykin who were closest, their green eyes showing all the surprise the Ember’s had lacked. Karin snatched Iyana by the wrist and yanked her hard toward the nearest wagon, causing her to cry out.
“Horses!” Talmir yelled, and the soldiers did their best to comply. Karin grabbed a chestnut mare, unloosed its reins from the tresses of the wagon and boosted Iyana up into the saddle.
The Midnight Dunes Page 4
