The Midnight Dunes

by Steven Kelliher

  He tasted salt that must have been tears he did not deserve to shed, and when he was empty, he thought of breathing in, knowing what it would do to him. Knowing what it would do to those who followed him. Those who remained.

  He thought of Rain Ku’Ral, and when he came up, he felt lighter.

  Talmir broke the surface and turned around, walking back toward the shore. His sword shone with the brightest silver, and even as his boots touched the exposed shelf once more, he felt that he had been remade.

  Pevah remained rooted in place, but now his brown eyes tracked Talmir as he approached. The desert nomads saw and edged closer, Ceth cutting short an exchange to approach from the rear, as if fearing that Talmir might attack their protector. Their Sage.

  Talmir stopped when he was nearly nose-to-nose with the old man. He searched him and did not know exactly what he searched for. If he minded, Pevah hid it. He seemed smaller, now, and Talmir could not help but glance down at hands that had only recently been curled into claws longer and sharper than any beast he had seen. Now, he looked so much like the old man he pretended to be—perhaps the one he once had been. But Talmir wondered. He searched those dark eyes and thought he saw the Red Waste looking back, or the creature that had earned the name. He thought the thing they had seen tearing throats and ripping spines was closer to the truth.

  Talmir looked past the old man to Ceth, whose pale face was still spotted with bits of bright red. He and his fellows stood among the soldiers of the caravan, each set looking from one to the other and back to the pair of would-be leaders at the shoreline with a troubling mix of apprehension, fear and—in a few cases—eagerness barely concealed.

  It was difficult to reconcile the image of the bent-shouldered old man before him with a creature that could wield time itself as a weapon, for surely that was what the Sage had done. Talmir knew Sen had trapped an intruder above with some gift of the Faey, and he knew Iyana had done something similar to him in turn. But those were bonds to be railed against. What Talmir had felt was not unlike dreaming, though the scene before him was rendered in such vivid detail it could not be mistaken for anything but reality.

  It was not so much that he couldn’t move, but rather that he could not think to; as if his mind, though seeing, had been frozen there in a space of moments that felt like eternity. Judging by the way eyes on all sides and persuasions shifted toward the robed figure and skittered away, Talmir thought the feeling was shared—and the building hate and fear of it. He wondered how many times the Sage had been forced to use the trick, and how often he could.

  Talmir did not think he could now, for whatever reason. And the recognition—real or imagined—brought a smile to his face as he thought of driving his length of sharpened steel through the old man’s heart if he ever thought to trap him again.

  Pevah’s brow raised in a move Talmir hoped was not recognition.

  “We will speak after we’ve checked the borders—”

  “There are no borders in this land,” Pevah said. He almost smiled. “Know that we are safe. The attack,” he looked down at the pale limbs splayed like fallen dancers, “such as it was, is ended. There will not be another. Not now, at least. Not for some time.”

  Talmir felt anger welling in his core, and Pevah frowned. It took a space before Talmir recognized the look as sympathy.

  “We will talk,” the old man said, speaking softly, though his voice echoed in the silence and the drifting air that was already beginning to take on the slow stench of death. It reminded Talmir of the streets of Hearth, but there was no rain to wash this place out. Only them and their hands.

  Talmir nodded. He raised his voice to be heard by all on the shore and by those in the hall and the rooms beyond. “We will talk,” he said. “Not you and I, but you and all of us. We will have answers from you.”

  Pevah’s lips formed a tight line, and Talmir saw his pupils expand ever so slightly before shrinking back down. “Yes,” he said and Talmir moved past him.

  “Fine,” Talmir said to Jes and Mial, and then to Creyath, all of whom examined him for wounds. “Largely unharmed.” The same could not be said for all, but all things considered, those who stood were largely in the same condition as they had started. The same could not be said for Verna and Courlis, who lay in their own growing pools of red. The child they had died defending—and who had died soon after, just before Talmir and those from above had joined the fray—had already been taken away.

  For a moment, Talmir was caught, frozen in indecision. A light from the hall had him glancing that way and he saw Iyana emerge from the bend, her clothes soaked through and her face drained of what little color it usually held. He saw Karin following behind her and tossing strange glances back the way they’d come. He spoke with Iyana, who did not seem to be listening.

  “Ceth,” Talmir said as the Landkist made to step past him holding the body of one of his fellows—one of three Talmir had seen among the dead. He paused and laid those gray-blue eyes on Talmir. “Where—” he started and then stopped, unsure how to say it. He swallowed. “Where do you bury your dead?”

  Ceth regarded him with an unreadable expression. He looked behind Talmir as Karin and Iyana approached, and then at his fellows, who were carrying another cloth-wrapped burden between them.

  “Come,” Ceth said.

  It took them through the night, the work compounded by a mix of exhaustion, hurt and a few less helping hands than there should have been. Talmir and one of the red-sashes dumped a pale horror over the lip of the northern ledge to join his twisted fellows in a depression where the sloped sand met the uneven black rock. The two looked down at the grotesque pile that somehow looked less than threatening in daylight—like a stack of false men the winds would soon cover.

  There was a yip that turned to a howl and Talmir saw one of the desert foxes watching the work from atop a neighboring rise. He met Talmir’s eyes and looked down at the pile with nothing approaching hunger or longing and then disappeared, the white-tipped tails of his pack following after.

  Talmir and the stranger whose name he didn’t know walked back to the shelf in silence. He might’ve feared a stark separation in the immediate aftermath of the attack and all its horror—he may even have felt it for a moment—but now Talmir was certain any lingering mistrust between the Emberfolk of Valley and desert had dissolved out of necessity.

  A Sharing unasked-for but startling in its strength and veracity.

  When they reached the shelf, the young man nodded at Talmir and he returned it. There were seven figures arrayed on the ground, lying still. They had been wrapped from head to toe in a mix of the red and gray cloth worn by the folk of this land. One was smaller than the rest, and Talmir knew that another two belonged to the Faeykin they had lost. He worked to suppress another burn of guilt as he considered the implications of losing half of their healers.

  The rest stood around them in a loose circle. Talmir counted about a dozen of their hosts and knew there were only a few down below minding the children and those of the caravan too wounded to make the climb. He felt a pang as he recognized how depleted their numbers truly were, and there was no guarantee those who had been sent out to the west would return, and if so, in what condition.

  Karin stood alongside Iyana, the First Runner looking from Creyath to Talmir as Iyana stared sightlessly at the wrapped bundles on the shelf. She looked older than Talmir could ever remember seeing her. She also looked more tired, and as he swept his gaze out to encompass the rest of the mixed company that was now whole, he forgot his own hurt, putting aside the questions that welled and the anger that simmered beneath them as the old man they called Pevah stepped into line.

  He did nothing to distinguish himself from the rest, and for once, Ceth and the warriors did not make way for him like some god or chosen liege, but rather stood alongside him as a brother, a comrade—even a father who had lost his children, and they their brothers and sisters and newfound friends.

  “I am more wont to wax
than the rest,” Pevah said, and faces turned toward him, “but …” he swept his hands out and then let them fall to his sides. It was a decidedly human gesture, and it did not ring false to Talmir. “What words can be said that will undo such things? That will make them sit better in the memory of those who witnessed them?” He paused. “What of the children?”

  He almost sounded bitter as he said the last, and Talmir frowned as he noted the swallows and shifting feet, the hands that balled into fists and then slackened in despair or lack of strength.

  “There is something of beauty in the sight, to me,” Talmir said, as shocked to say the words as those who looked his way were to hear them. “Not of this,” he said, indicating the dead. “Of this.” He nodded to Creyath and Iyana, Karin and Ket, Jes, Mial and the soldiers of the caravan that now counted two bloodied and disheveled merchants among their number. He looked to Ceth and the blonde, blue-eyed woman who stood beside him, her cheeks glistening as the sun caught the errant bits of salt and turned them to a thing of sorrowful beauty. He looked to the dark-skinned nomads who might’ve been his own and the Northmen who never could be, and for once he did not see the sashes they wore.

  “The World has always taken from us,” Talmir said, growing into the speech he had not prepared and whose ending he could not guess. “It’s taken from mine and from yours, and no doubt Pevah has seen it take from plenty more besides.” The old man watched him with unmasked grief, and Talmir turned to look past the wrapped bundles and those who stood around them. He sighted the yellow hills and the black shelves that broke them up, the blue sky that hung down like a curtain and the bright that bleached it all, baked it and set it to shimmer with a pleasant radiance before it had time to bake and burn.

  “It has taken from the desert foxes and the hammerhorn bulls, from the sand drakes that made for us a week ago and from the things they hunt. It takes from the carrion birds and the hawks who fight them, from the chicks and their nesting cliffs and from the folk who used to live there.” Ceth looked toward the north and Talmir followed before turning back around. All eyes regarded him, and most were shining like jewels in all their varied hues. All beautiful. All full of the life that had been taken from others.

  Even from the horrors they had fought against. Things that had been made, and not likely with their blessing or will.

  “The World has taken from us,” Talmir said. “We know it just the same as you. But it has given in equal measure, and plenty more. It gave us our Valley home and its sheltering peaks, and the Embers who watch over us.” Creyath smiled. “It blessed us with the green-eyed guardians who heal our hurts and bind our wounds and know our feelings before we share them.” Iyana smirked. “It has given you a champion whose like I have never seen before, even if it has not replaced those we took away.” Ceth’s expression was unmoving, but those around him looked to him with a sense of rediscovered awe.

  Talmir looked down at the smallest bundle. He could still see the tiny bump that marked the child’s nose, though he could not picture which of the little birds it might be.

  “The World has given us them,” Talmir said. “And all of those who still wait below for their parents to return, to tuck them into beds and tell them stories of how they will protect them from horrors like the ones we just did—from the terrors of the World Apart. A place that does not give and take, but takes only.”

  “This World has shown us our darkest fears and the friends who keep them back,” he said, meeting as many eyes as he could. “It has shown us love, and the pain of its loss and leaving.” He paused. “No. The World has not betrayed us. It has laid bare our enemies so that they will know our wrath. And they will.”

  There was no raised cheer as he finished an address he had had no intention to make, but Talmir saw the effect in the set visages that looked from one another down to the wrapped bundles on the shelf, the red and gray sashes blowing in the soft wind and tickling sand of the desert morning. Even now, in the pale light, Talmir could see the hint of the red and purple tint to the western sky, whatever fire buried there refusing to sleep. Instead of the deep foreboding he had felt before, however, now the sight only continued to harden the shell that was forming like the rain-crusted armor on the tops of the dunes.

  He saw Iyana swaying as the breeze picked up, her bright green eyes seeming to flicker in the glare. Karin regarded her with a worried expression and turned it on Talmir, who issued a curt nod.

  “Pevah,” Talmir said and the old man looked up, his brown eyes appearing amber for the moment, the work of new water. “We would have words.”

  The blonde woman beside Ceth took a step forward, looking from Pevah to Talmir in a huff. Ceth touched her on the hand and guided her back. He met Talmir’s unwavering gaze, searching him. Whatever he found, he did not say, but the look he gave Pevah seemed to deflate the Sage even further.

  “Very well,” Pevah said, shifting. “Yes. Yes, you deserve answers.” He let loose a laugh whose poison Talmir recognized. It reminded him of the way he had laughed into the dripping gutter of Hearth after the siege and the storm that had followed. “You deserve that, at the least.” His people—and they were truly his people—looked to him with a range of sorrowful expressions as he glanced at the prone and covered forms before turning back toward the cave mouth.

  “Come,” he said. “Come, and have them from me.”

  Talmir nodded, though the Sage was no longer looking. He followed, ushering the Valley soldiers and members of the caravan in before him. He laid a hand on Iyana’s shoulder as she brushed by him, leaning more heavily than usual.

  “Take rest,” he said. “We’ll be needing you, Ve’Ran.” She looked up at him sleepily and then back to the shelf behind him. Her eyes grew dark with recognition, but she shook it away and let the cool shadows envelop her as she passed beneath the arch.

  Talmir cast one last, long look at the bodies, lingering on the Faeykin who had yet to grow into anything more than strangers from a common land.

  A small clutch of reds moved in and knelt before the bundles, saying whatever words came to their lips to ease the passing or the pain of those left behind. They hovered over the child longest before lifting her and striking off toward the north, taking the path Ceth and Iyana had the night before.

  “They will give them to the Mother’s Heart.” It was Ceth, coming to stand beside Talmir. The Landkist appeared largely unharmed but bore myriad bruises that Talmir guessed reached to the bone. It seemed his skin was hard to break, but there were plenty of ways for the body to hide its hurt.

  Talmir said nothing because there was nothing to say, and together they walked in silence back toward the winding stair. As the air grew thicker down below, Talmir wrinkled his nose at the smell. He heard suppressed coughs and gags from ahead. The smell of death, ozone and broken time were not so easily covered by washrags and the lapping waves of the lake.

  As Talmir moved among the travelers of Valley and desert who mingled more freely than they had before, at once stunned and bonded by the attack, he noted that the light of the pillar was dimmed without the moon and stars shining through the nests. It seemed the bright of the day washed out its haunting brilliance. He examined the shelf that sloped down to meet the water’s edge and was glad it wasn’t so bright, glad the rock had been dark long before they got there and dyed it deeper, painted it fresh.

  Pevah stood in the dashed remnants of the fire pit Creyath had unmade when he fell like a crashed star. Talmir turned toward him and the mixed company arrayed themselves like children for the telling of some grand tale, only the mood was grim, the reality of the situation hitting home, along with the knowing that something had to be done. For a time, the only songs apart from the muted trill of the birds were the hesitant chirps of the children down the hall. Iyana had begun to venture that way, but then stopped and sat on a lip of stone, her eyes alternately downcast and questing at the Sage who stood before them.

  “No doubt you and yours have seen horrors in the Valle
y,” Pevah said. He spoke quietly, but none had to lean in to hear. The merchants, soldiers and other members of the caravan shared knowing looks. “Here,” he said, “we have been fortunate when it comes to the Dark Kind. They find their gaps during the Dark Months, as they do the World over, but nothing like what your Captain tells me you have endured.”

  Talmir eyed the old man with unwavering interest. The stories had it that the Red Waste had been a part of the bargain to send the Emberfolk south, into the Valley that would become an unwitting prison in the century to follow. It was apparent in the present circumstance that not all had heeded his advice, but many had followed the King of Ember. Many had followed T’Alon Rane, whom the Red Waste was said to have called friend, and of whom the Sage had barely spoken since their meeting.

  “We have our own troubles,” Pevah continued. He met the gazes of his followers, who might’ve been his subjects had he a more forceful disposition. Who might’ve been his children if he were human. “I will not lie.” He regarded Talmir, Karin, Ket, Creyath and Iyana, settling on her last. “An attack such as this has never figured into my darkest nightmares.”

  There were knowing glances from some and confused ones from others. Talmir was among the latter. He made as if to speak, but Pevah held up a hand to stay him.

  “I know what it must look like,” he said. “It looks like victory, in a way.” Talmir frowned. That wasn’t at all how he’d categorize it. “After all, why come against us in such numbers? In such force?” He smiled, rueful, wicked. “They knew they could not kill me. They know it is folly to try. But here we stand.”

  He swept his gaze around, looking like a hawk for an instant, or an owl. Talmir was unsure whether to feel buoyed or cowed. He settled for a mix.

  “We,” he said again. “We. We have survived, and it is more than they thought. Much more, I think.” He looked up into the filtered gloom and cocked his head to the side, as if listening for some argument from the whistling witches without.