What good did it do any of the blamers?
Sounds drifted in from the tunnels behind, and for a moment Iyana feared another attack. Then she picked out Talmir’s voice above the others and recognized some quelled argument or another.
“We will leave tonight?” she asked.
“That one can’t wait for much,” Pevah said with a laugh, nodding toward the doorway. “He is near as stubborn as you, I think.”
“More so,” Iyana said, and knew it to be the truth. All in the Valley knew of Captain Talmir Caru. Being with him, Iyana thought him something akin to will itself, with his body and the blade he carried merely an extension of it.
“A good man,” Pevah said, sounding wistful.
“There are many good men and women among them,” Iyana said. “As many among your own, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
Iyana paused but then said it anyway. “A shame.”
“All things die,” Pevah said. “Few get to choose a place for it.” He didn’t look at her as he said it. She thought he might have held his tongue if he had. “Still, little Yani,” he winked and she was too busy wondering where he had heard it—Karin?—to rise to it, “I am here. It could be that I’ve chosen my place, but I don’t intend for the rest to make it theirs.”
“I thought we were through being cryptic,” Iyana said, her firm tone not matching the lightness, even the calm, she felt now.
“Too much gets lost in being direct,” he said and it didn’t sound a jest. “Too much lost.”
They sat there in relative silence for a time. It felt long enough to her that Iyana found herself checking on the motes of dust that swirled in the soft beams that caressed the Everwood tree and its sharp, sheltering branches.
Pevah caught her and smiled. “No tricks,” he said. “I’ve a mind to save them up and show them to one more deserving.”
“I hope you bring many,” Iyana said.
“I’ll bring them all,” he said, his face unable to hold the light for long.
“You’re afraid,” Iyana said.
Pevah was silent for a time.
“When you get to be as old as I am,” he said, “you find out what’s worth being afraid of. Who’s worth being afraid for.”
He met her eyes, his own flashing with some of the red that always seemed to be hiding just below the surface, like a sinking mountain of fire in the ocean depths. Every now and again, Pevah gave hints as to his true name, the one he’d been given in the lines and scratchings of poets alongside his brothers and sisters who had no relation to him but for things done that should not have been. And for surviving longer than any mortal could.
“For me, it’s them,” Pevah said, again nodding toward the dim hall and those who made ready beyond it—ready to die and to say goodbye before doing so. “And I’m lucky to feel it. Some will die so that others will live, as it has always been. The World will be truly blessed if that’s the way it’s allowed to continue.” He looked up, his eyes tracing the contours of the room.
“These halls will be quieter for a while, maybe,” he said. “But not long.” He smiled, but it dropped as his eyes did, and now the dull red was brighter, as if fresh breath had been focused on dying coals. “But the time for melancholy is nearing its end. Fear is a thing, yes, but I’ve got plenty else to join it with.”
“Anger, you mean,” Iyana said, unable to keep the judgment from her tone this time. “And its cousin vengeance, which makes the World turn.” She shared his bitterness. Still, she could not help but feel it was as much a cause as a means to an end. It used to make her sorry when Linn and Kole turned their heartache to anger and balanced it on the point of an arrow or the burn of an Everwood blade. Now, it only made her feel some semblance of the same.
“It can’t be helped,” Pevah said. “The witches have won, at least in the short term. They wanted me out and they’ll get it. Anger is not a vice, Iyana. I know it feels like indulgence, but anger is a length of steel, or iron … even Everwood.” He ran his fingers along the oiled roots that made up his chair. “It can be shaped in an image of its wielder’s will. Work it right, and you may turn up something like righteousness.”
“I’ve seen the attempt more than the success,” Iyana said.
“You’ve known a few heroes,” Pevah said, unwilling to let it drop. “You may yet come to recognize yourself as the same.”
“You need to save something to be a hero, Pevah,” she said, growing more sure with each passing word. “And you need to mean to.” Her eyes sparkled and threw off what light they would. She caught him and held him for a change, as if she were the Faey Mother, and as if he were any other. “I hope you mean to.”
He stood, his face unreadable, and she mirrored him. They stood that way, facing each other and sifting through all that stood between them until Pevah’s face hardened. He seemed taller and fuller than he had before, and Iyana had to wonder again what it was about this place within a place that filled him so.
“It’s good that you’ve seen them,” he said as she stepped out of his way. He paused to take her up in his wake and together they stepped up onto the raised pathway back toward the lake. “You can get the measure of someone by how they threaten.” He smiled a wolf’s smile, and Iyana could already see the armor he would wear out in the west beginning to grow.
“They believe in you,” she said as they walked, the voices from down the way growing louder. “Ceth believes in you.”
Pevah sighed as they splashed down into a shallow pool and climbed up onto the rounded stone on the other side.
“Disappointing them is not something I would do lightly, Iyana Ve’Ran,” he said. “Sometimes, all there is to decide something is to be in the place where it’s decided.”
The west, and the Midnight Dunes.
But as they rounded the bend and slipped into the shallows, soaking their clothes to the knees as they splashed into the warm lake, Iyana could not help but think of the east, and of Center.
In the nights, the caverns smelled of salt and brimstone and cooling sweat, the deeper fires that Talmir had not yet seen waking to overtake the heat of the retreating day. Already it was a comforting smell to him, though he and his had only been among the desert people for a matter of days. It felt like home, and the recent attack—the blood of which he hadn’t quite managed to free from beneath his nails—felt like an attack on the same.
He had known it before Pevah had come out of his long tunnel and stolen the time they fought in; frozen them all like fish in a winter’s river. He knew that he would join them on whatever path vengeance led them, and knew it would be a righteous thing whose ending he could not guess.
But then, was that not why he had come? To enact some change or another, if only for the benefit of he and his?
“Pevah knew you’d want to leave tonight,” Iyana said, coming to stand before him. She looked tired but not unwell, and Talmir gave her a smile.
“Rain always told me I was easier to read than words on a page,” he said. “I suppose if you do as much thinking as I do—too much—it starts to write lines.”
“Time for thinking is past, I’d say,” Iyana said.
She sounded so much older than she looked. She had for as long as Talmir had known her, which wasn’t all that long. And though she was unmistakably Ve’Ran, he began to see her as something entirely separate from her older sister by the day. Sometimes he wondered if those in their company followed him or her, and thought it might be better if it was her.
“There they go again,” she laughed, seeing the way his brow furrowed. He shook the thoughts away and straightened from the bottom of the twisted stair that seemed less natural than it had at first. Perhaps Pevah had made it.
“Karin,” Talmir called out, and the First Runner stopped in his tracks. Talmir could see dark red stains on the front of his shirt—a fresh one, by the looks of things—but the man looked fresh and otherwise unbothered. “All is set?”
Karin nodded. “We’r
e ready to move out as soon as you give the order. Mit’Ahn is with Mial and the horses above.”
“Good,” Talmir said absently. “Good.”
He cast about, taking in the members of the caravan who would be joining them, and it looked to be all. The two merchants of Hearth would stay behind with the desert children, along with several of the red-sashes and one gray; the latter group seemed more bent on violence than the former.
“Sen?” Talmir asked, remembering Iyana.
“Coming,” she said, her tone making it impossible to read what she thought of that.
“I see.” Talmir saw a flicker of green from the southern hall that announced the older Faeykin’s presence. He was dressed lightly, with no pack or weapon to speak of. He moved slowly but with a measured grace that made it easy to forget the ordeal he’d just been through, the aftermath of which Talmir had helped to clear away from the choked doorway where he had defended children not his own.
Ket moved past him, tossing glances at both, and Jes followed along with the rest making their way up the spiral stair to the shelf atop the yellow sands. It would appear blue, now, as the strange curtain of night fell like a blanket over these lands. Ceth and Pevah were already above, waiting and looking to the west as if they could compel it to heel. If any could, it might be them.
Soon enough, only Talmir, Iyana, Karin and those who would be staying behind remained below. The pillar shone white light on it all, painting its heavenly lines on those who rested in alcoves and between pillars. The children all looked toward them and up at those who would stay behind, blades ready to defend them and boots ready to carry them in the fastest flight, should it be necessary. The merchants knew the way home. Karin had made sure of it. They looked to Talmir with something that might have been shame, and he felt sorry to see it.
“Should they come,” Talmir said, halting. “Should we fail and should there be consequences to follow, take them south. Take them to the Valley.” He paused as he regarded the mix of eyes young and older—though none elderly, for that was not the way of this land in this time. “It isn’t safe. Nowhere is so long as this war rages and that other World waits at the edges of our own. But your people are in the Valley, and they would be your brothers and sisters again, should you have them.”
He thought that changed something for the better in their eyes, and Talmir turned and followed the others.
“You’ve a way with it,” Karin said, and Iyana laughed in agreement as Talmir felt his face flush.
“I say what I feel needs saying,” Talmir said. “I don’t try to put any poet’s touch on it. Nothing of the sort.”
“That’s precisely why they listen,” Karin said.
“Who?” Talmir asked, sarcastic.
“Everyone,” Iyana said, and there wasn’t a hint of the former amusement touching her tone. He looked at her and found her expression rapt and forward, her eyes glowing with that fairy light they seemed to emit in response to her mindset and the emotions of those around her. Now, they suggested resolve, even if there was a slight flicker of fear at the corners.
Good to have both. Good to be realistic.
At least, that’s what he told himself.
The air grew lighter and more quick as they reached the tunnel, and the way grew brighter and more blue than the crystal-white they left behind. Ahead, the sounds of milling men and horses filled the sloped chamber and caressed the pitted walls and obsidian waves, the starlight glinting off any hard edges it could find along the belts of those who waited at the opening.
They spilled out onto the shelf among the desert nomads who had taken them in, and the mood wasn’t so much forbidding as expectant. All eyes looked to the west, where the night sky was tinged with a dusk that would never quit. It looked brighter now, the usual ruddy glow now a striking gash across the horizon, as if a great blaze raged among swaying grasses there, though Talmir knew there were none.
Talmir took stock of those gathered as he checked the saddle on his painted mare. Creyath was already astride his black charger and Karin pulled Iyana up onto a chestnut brown, though Talmir knew the First Runner would have his feet leaving tracks in the dunes as often as he rode the back of the beast.
Pevah turned from his place on the sandy river between the black shelves, brows quirking up as he took in the Valley company pulling their mounts into position.
“Bringing those beasts will doom them,” he said. There wasn’t a hint of scorn in his tone, only a flatness that didn’t suit the land around him. “There isn’t a speck of water for leagues, and our skins won’t last us much longer than the journey back.”
It was good to hear him say the last part, but Talmir cleared his throat to respond.
“How far is it?” he asked. “Surely we’ll be faster with the horses.”
“The sands are soft and slipping on the way to the west,” one of the red-sashes said. Talmir thought her name was Juun. “It is not far, but the horses will die, and in so doing, they will slow us.”
Talmir turned toward Creyath, whose amber eyes glowed softly and without movement. Karin had already hopped down and Iyana followed while the rest awaited his commands, Ket, Jes and Mial frowning as if the nomad’s words were a direct insult to their captain, and by extension them.
“Very well,” Talmir said. “We’d be fools not to listen to folk who’d know.” He swung his leg around and slid down, tossing the woman a nod as he did. Pevah smiled while Ceth regarded the lot of them with pursed lips, as if he had something to say.
The children had begun to venture out onto the shelf, their small forms seeming to glow beneath the light of the stars and moon . The horses passed between them, some tossing glances back at their former riders that Talmir tried not to think of as farewells, though the mood was impossible to shake. The desert nomads said their goodbyes with nary a nod. The eyes said enough, and their children were calm, though he could nearly hear their hearts quivering, railing against things that were unfair and against the World that made it so. Iyana’s eyes shone like green lanterns, and Talmir looked away from their wetness lest he be caught in it. Water was not a thing to waste here.
Soon enough, the children went below once more, and the only sound was the eastern wind and the imagined voices it carried.
“We are less than many,” Pevah said, and Talmir was relieved to hear him make the address he had no right to. “We are more than few.” His red-brown eyes scanned the company and made no distinction between the fighters on each side nor the Landkist among them. It was as if they were all his children, now, and Talmir could not help but feel a swell despite his many misgivings about the man who called himself a Sage.
“There will be many at the Midnight Dunes,” he continued. “There will be blood and there will be death. No doubt we’ll mete out more of it. Still, it is no thing to be celebrated. The men that will come for us have been changed. I cannot say against their wills, for they have none. Even the painted warriors have been corrupted.” He flicked a glance at Talmir. “Men can corrupt one another as easily as a Sage, a Dark Heart or a world of darkness. The shame is equal. The pity more.”
He sighed. “No matter how many or how few. No matter what else happens, and no matter what will come, there is one we must fear in order to fight, and see in order to fear.”
“The Night Lord,” Iyana said. “But … we are to prevent his release.”
Pevah smiled, and though he did not mean it in a condescending way, Iyana seemed to take it as such.
‘If only we could,’ that smile seemed to say, and now the swell turned to a sinking feeling in Talmir’s gut. He tried to cover it with purpose. He had always been good at that. They all had.
“What of the Seers?” Talmir asked as Pevah began to turn back toward the rest. He earned glances from the nomads, but it was Ceth who spoke up. Talmir expected the Landkist to steer him off-track or give answer for his leader. Instead, he bolstered Talmir’s stance. He seemed to hold it in even higher import than him.
“The Seers will trouble us,” he said, and Pevah turned a veiled look on him. “We should slay them, Pevah. We should end their scourge. Their warriors will make for the Dunes, seeking to be blessed by the power there. They will be unguarded. Alone. Vulnerable.”
There were a few murmurs of agreement among them, while the soldiers of the Valley caravan remained silent and watchful, letting the internal politics of the nomads play out how it would.
Ceth turned his gray-blue eyes from Pevah to Iyana, who seemed taken aback by his sudden attention. Karin took an unconscious step toward her that only served to heighten the growing sense of unease.
“If you’ve found them,” Ceth said, “tell us where.”
Now Pevah’s face shifted. It was difficult to catch—impossible if one wasn’t looking—but Talmir was, and so he did.
“Enough, Ceth,” Pevah said. “We have spoken of this. The crones can sway and sing in their caves until the sand washes the slate away. We won’t let them, of course. We will come for them. Now, the Midnight Dunes must be our priority. It is—”
“Our charge,” Ceth finished for him, only he didn’t say it the same way Talmir had heard from him before. “They will take revenge.”
Something had changed, and he wondered how much of it had to do with the young woman who seemed to be occupying much of the strange Northman’s attention of late. There did not seem to be much of courtship in it, but the two had been alone before the attack on the complex. They had been gone awhile in the night, and now he wondered what had passed between them.
“It seems we’ve had quite the influence,” Talmir said, tossing a halfhearted smile at Pevah. The Sage did not return it, only swiveled his eyes toward Talmir without turning away from Ceth.
“Just because the enemy expects a thing does not make it wrong to do,” Pevah said. His tone brooked no argument. It was a command, or as close to one as Talmir had heard. “Yes, they will seek revenge. If they do, we will count it a good thing, for it will be proof of our success.”
The Midnight Dunes Page 35
