Iyana scoffed and Karin felt the cool kiss of the washcloth against his eyelids again. He sighed and felt her sigh with him. “If you lot learned to heal in the old ways instead of relying on the Between, we’d be a lot quicker about it.”
The silence that followed was a stunned one. Karin waited for the inevitable haughty reply. Instead, he heard a sharp exhale and receding steps.
“Is that you, Faey Mother?” Karin managed through cracked lips and a dry throat. He felt her pull the damp cloth from his brow and opened his eyes. The blur of white and green resolved into the young woman he had known since infancy, her brow locked into that concerned look that never seemed far. She seemed a sight less filthy than she had been before. “I’m joking, Iyana. I know it’s you.” He struggled to sit up and she touched a finger to his chest, gentle but unerringly firm. “I’d know it by the way you spoke even if I forgot the voice.”
She sighed as he settled back with a muffled groan. “I shouldn’t be such a bother with them,” she said. “But if we’re to dip into another realm—another world, for all I know—every time we need to heal some scrapes and bruises, what happens when that power is lost to us? What happens when we’re too weak to close a cut a splinter leaves behind?”
“Who says you’ll lose your power?” Karin asked. His head swam, and though there wasn’t much to see in the narrow confines—they seemed to be in a small and jagged chamber hewn of obsidian—the contours above Iyana’s silver hair shone with the filtered light of the sun above wherever it was they were.
“Here.”
Karin didn’t realize he had closed his eyes again. He gave a start when he felt her firm grip on the back of his neck and realized he did need her help to raise it again. He felt cold stone touch his lips and parted them, delighting in the shock as the water splashed in. He drank deeply, saving his coughing for after the bowl had been drained, and settled back as the liquid moved down his chest and settled in his belly, which began its complaints, reminded of its stark emptiness.
“Cool,” he said.
“In the day,” Iyana said, setting the bowl down with a clatter. “In the nights, this place is like a furnace. It’s as if the desert is protecting its children, keeping them cool in the days and warming them in the nights.” She spoke with an awed sort of reverence, and Karin let his head fall toward her.
“Where are we, Iyana?” he asked. “What happened after …” he trailed off, brow furrowing as he tried to recall but came up empty. He felt the wet as wounds ran on his back, but he knew the Faeykin had done their work. If there had been poison, it had been burned out by the green fire they wielded more carefully than any Ember. If there had been rot, they’d have caught it in time and stamped it out.
“Below,” she said with a small laugh. She looked about, leaning back and watching shadows move outside the open doorway. It sounded like birds twittering, but as they drew closer and then trundled past, Karin recognized them as children. “Beneath the sands.”
“A cave system,” he said, nodding, and despite the mundane nature of the term, he could not help the swelling he felt in his breast or the flush that came to his face. All Emberfolk children had been told of the Black Hearts beneath the sands—the stone wombs of the Mother as she carried her children and protected them from the terrors of the desert night. Before the Eastern Dark had come calling. Before the Dark Kind came in number.
“Oh,” Iyana breathed, shaking her head. She regarded him with a smile that warmed him. “So much more than that. Once you recover your strength, you have to see.”
“I can see now—”
One silver brow tilted up in that warning way of hers and Karin felt cowed like a child might. He laid his head back down with an exaggerated sigh.
“The others?” he asked. “Everyone made it all right?”
“Fine,” she said. “Tired. Captain Talmir is adjusting better than I thought he might, given his lack of control.”
“How do you mean?” Karin asked.
“This isn’t our land,” Iyana said as if it were obvious. “Not really. It might have been, once. Not now.”
Karin considered it through the haze that was fast returning the longer he spoke. He wondered what sorts of poisons the red-toothed tribesmen had introduced to his blood.
“If there is one thing I have learned in all my years of ranging,” Karin said, “it is that the land—any land—belongs to no one, Iyana. We must remember that, I think. In this place, especially.”
Iyana looked worried, so Karin showed her a smile and tried to make it less weak than it felt.
“Try to let yourself be here now, Yani. Plenty of time for hand-wringing and second-guessing later.”
A shadow passed over her face that Karin at first took for the trick of the light. Then she turned and shifted, and Karin blinked, seeing that the squat doorway had been filled by a figure trailing a cape-like shawl.
“Apologies for the narrow confines. Our young healer here thought it best to keep you from the brighter chambers.” The figure spoke as if he truly regretted sequestering Karin here, of having this stuffy, slick chamber be the first thing he saw on waking. He did not know the places Karin had slept in. “But, I am just an old man, and though I’ve a few tricks, I must defer in matters of healing hurts.” He smiled down at Iyana, who continued to stare at Karin. “Now, then. How is our First Runner?”
Karin recognized the speaker as the old man who claimed to be the Sage of the Red Waste. He seemed fuller than he had out in the sands, less bowed and more straight. His voice projected strength and calm in equal measure, and while he had a grandfatherly presence, there was something otherworldly about him. It seemed to make Iyana uncomfortable. She would not meet his eyes for long, though Karin saw nothing untoward about them but for the way they moved a hint too quickly as they shifted between them.
Iyana blinked, a strange look passing over her features. She quirked a brow at Karin and he finally put it together.
“How—” he started but she broke in.
“How did you know he was First Runner?” Iyana asked, and though she knelt in the small confines, she did not seem cowed as she had moments before, curiosity overriding her caution.
“Bah,” the old man said, waving his hand in a way that looked habitual. “You forget yourself, young lady. You forget where you are. Where you came from.” He switched those yellow-brown eyes to Karin, appraising him and coming away seeming satisfied. “I’d know the like anywhere. Been a long time since we’ve had any like him, though. Besides,” he laughed, “who else but a Runner of the Emberfolk would get himself stuck full of bones and stones by the Bloody Screamers? I ask you.”
Karin smiled, though he felt a little sick at the memory of those stretched and bleeding gums, red teeth and the bleached bone blades that flashed in the sun.
“He is brave,” Iyana said, halting and defensive.
“Of course he is,” the old man said, not taking his eyes from Karin. “He is First Runner. We may not have his ilk around these days, with these children.” He paused, his voice changing. “But we’ve got a few like him.”
“I suspect most of your people are Runners, in their own way,” Karin said. He was fighting waves of nausea that had come up unbidden. The pounding in his head resumed, and he saw Iyana’s eyes flash with a hint of that brilliant green as she caught it. She lifted another bowl and leaned forward, helping Karin to drink again.
The old man watched it all with a considered gaze. When Iyana settled back, his eyes settled on her. “You do not dip into it like they do.” He nodded out at the brighter hall. Karin could hear voices echoing off the curved arches.
“There is more to healing than tricks of the Faey,” Iyana said, sounding defiant. The old man nodded.
“The Valley Faey.” He crooked his head as he spoke it aloud, as if confirming some memory. “I seem to remember them having ears more pointed than yours.” He nearly leaned down to check but thought better of it. “Like the other fellow. The on
e with the yellow hair.”
“Sen,” Iyana said, and the way she said it had Karin looking askance at her. She did not meet his gaze.
“Sen,” the old man said. “A closer thing, I think.” It was difficult to tell what he meant, but Iyana’s face colored. It was obvious even in the shade. The old man, noticing, held up his hands, a smile breaking the crags. “Do not take offense, Iyana Ve’Ran,” he said. “There is a strength in restraint.” Now Karin saw something behind those eyes. Something that recalled the desert dunes at night. “I know this to be true.”
Iyana looked at him—really looked—and after a long moment, she gave a short, sharp nod. The old man’s shoulders relaxed visibly. He looked back to Karin.
“Now, then,” he said, sweeping into a stilted bow. “I had best see what the children are up to. They have quite taken to the young man with the dark hair. The serious one.”
“All too serious, if you ask me,” Karin said in half a whisper.
“Ket,” Iyana said. She wore an admonishing look as she caught Karin’s eye. “And you’re one to talk, Reyna. Like father, like son.”
“Reyna.” The old man seemed to cast the word out as if it were a fishing line. It brought back nothing of note to his features, though he continued to think on it for longer than was comfortable.
Iyana stood and it seemed to jar him back into the present. He smiled.
“Now, then.” His face went from jovial to mockingly grave. “I have been summoned to an audience with Captain Talmir Caru.” He leaned forward conspiratorially and Karin was happy to see Iyana smile at the display. “It is said the bronze star that hangs about his neck traps all mirth and good humor within it. Alas, the man demands to hear and to be heard. And I shall entertain him.” He winked at Iyana. “While our esteemed First Runner who may be the last wallows in his private den away from the bright of day, would you care to join me on a walk, perhaps to prepare me for the questions that will lash my hide like dry whips?”
“I wish you luck,” Karin said, but his words were as spent as he was. He closed his eyes before they had left, and though he fell asleep with a smile, it was not a happy thought he took with him into dreaming. It was a lonely thing, he thought, to be the first who might be the last.
The awe of the place was no less diminished to Talmir with the rising sun. He sat with his back to one of the carved crescents of black rock by the subterranean lake. The water was lower, now, with the miniature islands and melted bases beneath the pillars revealing more of themselves with each passing swell, each pull and eddy and swirl. The mirrored light of the white gems—which grew not only on the great column in the center but also dotted the trails, slabs and bridges alike—was somehow dimmed in trading the moon’s light for the sun’s, but no less brilliant because of it.
But it was the sounds that awoke emotions in Talmir he had not felt in some time. Not the waves on the slick shore, nor the twitter of the birds that made the porous, vaulted ceilings their homes and hideaways. It was the children. Dark or pale, they flitted about the chamber as if they had not a care.
He watched them and smiled when they approached, each daring the others to get closer to the strange captain from the south. He made a grab for a little girl that drew too near and laughed himself breathless as she twirled away and went down on the smooth black stone.
As he wiped away tears, it was not all mirth and good nature. The children also recalled a sadness that he tried to turn away from. Slowly and surely as the strange and mysterious tides below his boots, it reached out and enveloped him with a melancholy, an emotion he had never been fond of despite the poetry it could inspire in greater men. The children reminded him of Jakub and all those like him—youths whose youth had been stolen away by the horrors of the World Apart, and by the things they’d done and been forced to do.
How had they escaped it, up here in the deserts? How had they escaped the wrath and ruin that had plagued his people since they fled these very dunes and the cavernous depths beneath them? Try as he might, Talmir could not keep a hint of that bitterness from welling up, and the bronze star that hung from his neck felt heavier as his mission came clear.
Gripping his sword to his hip, he swung his legs over the side of the rocky outcropping and slid down to the slick shore, careful to keep his footing lest he become the unwilling object of childish mirth. They watched him and backed away, seeking the stony and stolid presence of the adults who were spread throughout the expansive chamber, none of whom remained idle.
Some worked stitching while others set pestle to mortar, crushing roots and herbs—the same as in any other land. There were less of them than there had been the night before. Half a dozen had left, speaking with the strange Landkist known as Ceth before departing. The Landkist had departed as well, though Talmir could tell by his bearing that he had not gone far, and was less happy for it.
He wondered where they had gone, and he wondered when their host would get around to telling them.
Talmir walked back toward the loose fire pit they had gathered around the night before. His company were largely unmoved, some still dozing in corners and beneath arches, swatting away the children who came to bother them like flies at cattle.
“Captain,” Ket said, wiping the sleep from his eyes as he sat up from his bedroll.
Talmir held up a hand to stay him. “Sleep, Ket. We’re not moving yet.”
Ket nodded as if he had been given a mighty charge and rolled over, bumping Jes on the bandaged arm. She groaned in her sleep but looked less pale than she had the previous day, the green fire of the Faeykin undoing whatever liquid burn the land drakes had managed.
Lucky she had made it. Lucky any of them had.
“Ket,” Talmir said, his heart picking up a bit as he surveyed the loose camp. The young soldier sat up, eyes opening on a delay. “The count.”
Ket recited it from memory. He went over the soldiers each by name, the horses in their sky-lit chamber up above, their Ember guardian who was exploring the wider offshoots of their path and the Faeykin who had taken a chamber near Karin’s for themselves. The merchants watched him dispassionately as he spoke. They had come seeking new things, and though they had found plenty to catalog, Talmir took some small measure of victory in the fact that they had not found anything of true worth to bring back—nothing they could peddle in the streets of Hearth.
“Thank you,” Talmir said. Ket had fallen back over before he finished. It was good to know everyone was still about, but Talmir could not keep the sense of uneasiness from him as he paced.
The sound of buckles and harsh grunting announced the presence of Mial. The old scout flushed as he rounded the black bend, coming up from one of the repositories the nomads had shown them.
“Captain,” he said, finishing adjusting his belt. A dagger glinted partially free of its sheath and Mial pressed it back down. “I was off to do some ranging. Had to—”
“No ranging today,” Talmir clipped. “Not until the First Runner is up.” He nodded to Jes. “Not until she’s right.”
Mial’s shoulders sagged and Talmir shared with him a strained smile. “Plenty to explore down here, I’m sure. And I’ve been assured it’s safe.” Mial somehow looked even more disappointed at the revelation. “Perhaps you could confirm it?” Talmir added, brows rising.
Now Mial’s eyes lit up. He straightened. “I’ll do just that,” he said, moving off in the direction of the shoreline. There were several tunnels that split off. Most of them carried the discordant voices of children and birds. No doubt they had been explored—and fully—by the folk who called this place home, but Mial needed something to do and Talmir was only glad to see him off.
“Good luck making sense of the place,” Talmir said, more to himself than to the old scout. Mial picked up a loose and marching caravan of desert children, each of whom trailed bright scarves of silver-gray or red. Now that he thought of it, each of the nomads wore the same. The darker ones that resembled his own people wore the colors o
f a deep and twilit sunset, while those of a lighter bent wore the colors of the snow-capped Steps. Since he couldn’t tell whom any of the children belonged to, it was impossible for him to know which parent they affected. There was something to it.
A stronger breeze mussed Talmir’s hair. He looked up. The spiral stair looked like the inside of a tower, like those in the stories from the lands of Balon Rael. The wind-polished ceiling far above reflected the light of the day back down at him, appearing as a proxy sun.
Voices drifted down from the corridor. One of them belonged to a man Talmir much wished to speak to.
He watched the Sage of the Red Waste round the bend wearing the same dirt- and soot-stained cloth he had the day before. He had his arm draped around his companion, Iyana, and leaned in to speak with her in a hushed tone. She smiled at him and Talmir relaxed. The Sage withdrew his arm and opened both toward the lake-filled chamber. Iyana stepped away from him as he closed his eyes and breathed in, slow and deep, as if taking in the World itself.
One of the children saw him and rushed over, and Talmir could guess the words before the gathering ring began chanting them. “Pevah! Pevah!” they exclaimed, and it seemed less a prayer and more a game that the old man encouraged or had long ago stopped fighting.
Iyana smiled at Talmir, who found himself smiling back. Even the members of the desert caravan strewn about found it in them to at least smirk in their sleep.
They were sights and sounds of belonging, and as Talmir saw the grave looks turned inward from the mothers and sires—who sat or stood or worked on the edges—his resolve redoubled. Whatever peace and calm had been achieved by finding sanctuary was once more overtaken by the mission. By the need.
“Pevah.”
It sounded crass and strange when Talmir said it. The children froze around the old man, looking at Talmir as if they’d been collectively slapped. Fortunately, one of them began to giggle, and as always with children the sound was infectious, spreading throughout the throng and following them back to their winding tunnel trails, where they would seek out Mial and dog his heels like no hunter could.
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