The Midnight Dunes (The Landkist Saga Book 3)

by Steven Kelliher

“Care yourself,” the old man said, setting her down as if she were one of the children. He smiled at her, but his eyes were searching. She thought she saw the tracks of tears, but saw no moisture. She smiled up at him, sheepish and afraid.

  “Children’s games,” he said, waving to the northern way. “They try to sneak up on me, see what nefarious schemes I’m up to in the dark.”

  “What are you up to?” Iyana asked, cursing herself as the words left her mouth.

  The old man did not speak for a time. Then he smiled. “Come,” he said, turning. He ushered her onto the downward slope and she resisted the urge to cry out and run away from him.

  A part of her expected the chamber to open onto a scene of such horror her mind would mercifully put her under rather than experience. Perhaps he’d simply toss her into a chasm of untold depth so that her screams would echo for hours until the bottom stopped them or the World ended—whichever came first.

  The reality was almost jarring in its normalcy. The tunnel spilled down into a chamber twice the size of the intersection they’d just stood in. It was closed on all sides but for one, and the walls bowed out and narrowed at the top, where the porous ceiling formed a sort of funnel that ran up instead of down. The light came from there, the sun fighting its way down even to these depths.

  In the center of the chamber was a tree that grew at odd angles. A thick trunk broke off into dozens of reaching branches, but no green shoots sprouted along the lengths. No flowers bloomed atop it. The bark looked slick, but the chamber was dry. It was dark enough to flirt with silver as the dust-laden beams played over its surface, making it shimmer like the scales of a snake.

  The sight struck something in her. Exactly what, she was having trouble settling on.

  “We’re below the lake, now,” he said. “One of the coves.” The old man strode into the chamber and walked a slow circuit around its raised center. He stepped gingerly over the roots that spread out in a spiral and ducked one of the branches, trailing his finger on its underside as he did.

  He smiled as he came to stand before her, his eyes shifting to the tree and then back to her. “Familiar?” he asked.

  “Everwood.” She had known it as soon as she had entered, though she had never seen one. In the Valley, the location of the Everwood grove was guarded by Doh’Rah Kadeh, Tu’Ren and Garos Balsheer. Only the First Keepers of Hearth and Last Lake knew the location, though rumors pitted it on the edges of the Untamed Hills. Even Kole, Jenk, Misha and the other Embers had been taken there deprived of sight before being shown how to carve their blades from its trunk without killing it. She wondered if Creyath had undergone the same process.

  “They are rare,” the old man said, wistful. “Perhaps rarer even than the Embers themselves. They predate the Landkist. Silent sentinels whose use the desert Seers discovered, and not by mistake. A gift from the Mother, some say.” He shook his head and pressed a palm to the trunk. “But not me. I say Everwood was the Father’s gift. Seedlings from high above. A conduit for the fire from below.”

  There was a magic to Everwood that had never made sense to her. Now, standing before it, Iyana somehow felt as if she was in the presence of the kingly. Even the divine. She did not think the red tethers had come from this, though, and the resurfaced image had her staring hard at the old man who called himself Pevah.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. He smiled disarmingly, but the smile dropped when hers did not rise.

  He sighed. “Hiding from the captain, in truth.” He sat on a jutting root and ran his left hand absently over the bark as if he and the tree were very old friends.

  “He won’t stop,” Iyana said. “Not until you’ve given him what he wants.”

  The old man’s smile dripped sorrow. He regarded the tree, and Iyana felt as if she were interrupting some private conversation.

  “Do you think Creyath would like to see it?” he asked. Iyana shrugged and sat down on a lip of stone, hugging her knees to her chest. She could remember sitting that way on the edge of the carpet in Ninyeva’s leaning tower as she watched the Faey Mother mix and mash her mixes and pastes. She could sit like that for hours. Silent. Patient.

  “The sight of an Everwood tree bores you,” Pevah said, his tone showing what he thought of that.

  “Splendid,” Iyana droned, feigning indifference. “How many Embers could it support?” His look shifted. “Even if this were the only tree left, it would be too much. More than enough to supply what champions we have left until their dying day. Perhaps this is what I’ll bring back to the Valley. Word of the Everwood trees, and tell that they are buried beneath sands we never should have come back to, along with the bones of the old Sage who slept beneath them.”

  He regarded her with a stony calm she sought to break. She was angry. She hadn’t realized it until the initial fear had passed. She did not think the Sage of the Red Waste meant her harm, but she wouldn’t speak to him as if he were any old man. Not any longer.

  “It seems I have shed one shadow only to pick up another,” he said. Iyana only stared. “We may be sitting here a long time.”

  “I wonder who has more of it,” Iyana said, monotone. “Time, that is.”

  That drew a laugh that carried something else. “You aren’t here for me, Iyana Ve’Ran,” he said.

  “I am here for hope,” Iyana said, trying to keep the pleading sound from her tone. “Whatever form that takes. For whatever reason, Talmir thought it might be you.” She paused and swallowed as Pevah considered her. “Was he wrong?”

  Pevah seemed to consider the question without a hint of irony. When he spoke, she sensed nothing dishonest. Nothing fake. It was all too human.

  “Hope takes many forms,” he said with a shrug that mirrored her earlier one. “To some, that form might be an old, beaten-down man hiding in a cave beneath the sands. They see him as wise, perhaps. They know he is old. Very old, and so they think age and wisdom are somehow intertwined.”

  “The one tends to follow the other,” Iyana said.

  “Think on the aged ones you know,” Pevah said. “Truly think on them. For every great teacher—and I suspect yours was great indeed—how many are … disappointments?”

  Something in the way he said it made Iyana suspicious. “You have plenty here who follow you,” she argued. “Ceth and the others.”

  “I did not say naivety or foolishness were unique to Captain Talmir Caru of Hearth.”

  Iyana had to grit her teeth to keep from snapping. “You care for them,” she said. “You do not send them away. You respect them. You respect Ceth, or think of him like a son.”

  A flicker behind the eyes.

  “I’m sure I am a great many things to Ceth,” he said, his tone even.

  “And what is he to you?”

  “My knight,” he said. “That is what he must be. That is his charge. We all have ours.”

  Iyana studied him. She had opened a few gaps, but they seemed to close as quickly as she moved. She had to choose which points to pry. She knew he was letting her and wondered when he would shut it down.

  “He is not like the others,” she said, testing.

  “No,” Pevah said. “He is not.” He paused. “Though, I wonder how you mean.”

  “He is Landkist,” Iyana said. “Of a sort I’ve never seen.”

  “There are a great many things you and yours have never seen, Iyana Ve’Ran.”

  “The others,” she said. “The lighter ones. They are from the same lands?”

  A nod.

  “What is his gift?” she asked. “Mial said he leapt an impossible height. I couldn’t see it clearly. He is strong?”

  “You could say that,” Pevah said, his smile seeming wicked.

  “He walks light enough that he seems to glide,” she went on. He did not stop her, only watched.

  “You are perceptive,” he said.

  “He controls the wind?” she asked, thinking she had arrived at it. “Like the White Crest. Like your brother to the south.” />
  It did not prompt the reaction she had expected.

  “Not wind,” Pevah said. He stretched his right hand out until it touched the soft, filtered light coming in through the hole. Motes of dust swirled around it. “Something between it. Atmosphere, maybe. The Skyr call it weight, but their meaning stretches far beyond ours.” He withdrew his hand.

  “There are others like him,” she said; then, seeing something in his face, “or there were.” There. A flash like recognition. Discomfort. She’d hit on something.

  “You seem particularly interested in Ceth,” Pevah said.

  “He is a strange fellow,” she said. “He doesn’t talk much.”

  “Have you asked him to speak?”

  She shifted and glanced away.

  “No matter what else he is,” he said, “Ceth is a survivor. He’s faced down red-teeth and black-maws. He’s battled Landkist in the north and east. He fought the Twins of Whiteash and lived to tell of it, though he doesn’t.” He met her eyes. “But he’ll have to do much more before the end.”

  He did not elaborate.

  “Besides, he is no stranger than the Ember you brought. No stranger than you or your emerald healers who are not healers.”

  She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You do not know how your power works,” he said with a laugh that felt like condescension. “Though I cannot blame you. I cannot blame any of you, in truth. Ceth is no different.” He waved a hand toward the bare rock wall, the root on which he sat bending as he shifted. “You are all so young, like fireflies burning up and winking out below the stars.” He sounded sad as he said it, or bitter. It took a bit of the sting away.

  “How much do you see of the World from your hideaways?” she asked. “How much of the Valley?”

  “Less than some,” he said. “More than most.” He knew he was not giving her much and did not seem to care. Or tried to pretend not to. “You could see more, if you wanted. If you weren’t afraid.”

  Iyana rocked back. She nearly stood and ran from the chamber, but whether in anger or in fear, she couldn’t say. She settled for a glare that put the Ve’Ran stoniness on full display. His smirk showed him it did not go unnoticed.

  “I felt you reaching with that sight like something with feelers just a short while ago,” he said, his eyes betraying little. How quickly he moved between masks. “Why do you fear that power, I wonder? What have you felt in these lands that has you so hesitant to embrace it like the other one?”

  “Sen?” she asked, his name inspiring something like dread.

  “He is a strange one, in every manner of the word,” Pevah said. His voice carried a hint of threat, but Iyana did not think it was meant for her. “Tell me.” He removed his hood to expose the gray beneath, oily and tangled, and rested it against the black trunk. “Why do you fear the Between?”

  “You know it?” She knew how foolish it sounded, to question a Sage, but the Faey had been covetous with their knowledge. Then again, hadn’t the White Crest seen Ninyeva in the Between?

  Pevah smiled. “I know what you call it. I only wonder why you fear to use it here. You are gifted, Iyana. Little good comes from hiding gifts.”

  He was right, of course. She was afraid. Her lesson with Sen had unsettled her, but there was more to it. It was the land itself. It was as if, the farther she got from the Valley core, the less certain she felt dipping into whatever power it had lent her.

  “There is something … red, about this place,” she said, halting. She looked down at the black glass floor, the roots of the Everwood tree looking like coiling snakes to her. “I had an impression. At least, that’s what Ninyeva used to call them.”

  “Ninyeva.” He said it as if he knew, but a crinkling of his brow told her he didn’t.

  “There is a thrumming in the nights,” she said. “I can’t sleep.”

  “The tethers you see,” he said, nodding. “It is how you perceive life threads, I think. There are others like you. Other Landkist. Though, I do not think they are quite the same as those from the Valley. You lot are … potent.”

  “No,” she said and he tilted his head. “Not life. It is a thrumming like death, or rot. I’ve never felt it before.” She shook her head and had to suppress a shiver. “Death shouldn’t feel like that. It shouldn’t feel like anything.”

  His silence seemed an answer, and it was followed by a confirmation.

  “You are right to fear it, Iyana,” he said. “There is a sickness here, and it is your antithesis. It is what you could become, should you follow a different path.” He considered her and she did not try to hide her fear. She could not. “I think you are safe from this. Others, who can say? Those who wield the power over life also wield it over death.”

  “Anyone who holds a sword—Everwood or otherwise—can say the same,” she argued, though it sounded weak even to her ears.

  He smiled ruefully, as if he wished it were so.

  “It’s the Seers, isn’t it?” she asked. “The ones you spoke of. The ones who control the tribesmen.”

  “Blood Seers.” It almost pained him to say it.

  Iyana shook her head. She rose, having had enough of the conversation and its turnings.

  “It is one thing for me to fear them,” she said, feeling flushed. “But you? The Sage of the Red Waste, who allied with the King of Ember himself? Who fought with the Eastern Dark, or else hid from him.” A blank stare. “You fear savages in the deserts and old, displaced charlatans who cast entrails to see their ends?” It was hot in the lower tunnels. The air shimmered with the hint of moisture pulled from the stone underfoot, making the Everwood roots seem to writhe and twist in agony or ecstasy.

  “I fear what they will do,” he said, his emotions unreadable.

  “You fear they will kill your desert children,” she said, nodding. “You love them. I understand. But you do them no favors keeping them here, setting them to some false purpose.”

  “There is no falsity about it.” He stood, slowly. He looked taller, fuller, but Iyana was too bothered to care. “Our charge is true. We protect the Midnight Dunes. We stop them from digging where they should not.”

  Iyana let loose a barking laugh.

  “Is that how you control them?” she asked, bitter. “Bend them to your will? Fear has ever been an effective tool. The Eastern Dark used it to keep us hemmed in at the edge of the World for a century.”

  “These are a lost people,” Pevah said. “Home is lost to them. They cannot go back. It is ruined. They need me, and I need them here.”

  “We needed you!” Iyana shouted, loud enough that she thought her voice might carry all the way back to the lake and the caravan. She wondered if Karin and the others were missing her yet. Judging by the way the light had dimmed in the chamber, she thought they might. Or perhaps the dark was of a different bent.

  The Sage strode forward, and now she saw that he was the Sage. Pevah was gone, or hiding. The old man was no longer stooped and weather-beaten. She saw a hint of the man he must have been. The King. Not one of men, but of wild places and wild things. He did not look unkind, but she thought mercy had been a foreign thing to those dark eyes when they were not so old.

  “Use that power you fear, Iyana,” he said, a command. “Search out my tether.”

  It sounded like a challenge, and Iyana took it. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the condensed steam mix with sweat as it slid down the cracks in the corners. She swayed the inner self so quickly she almost fell, and she felt the buzzing start in the center of her forehead until it spread throughout her body, reaching to her fingertips and toes.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw with new clarity, and yet, it was obscured. In the place of the old man, or the Sage who had stood before her, she saw a haze of black and swirling red, indistinct and reaching. She saw the same tendrils she had with the children in the corridor, and she tried to keep from recoiling, though she wanted to vomit.

  “What do you see?” he asked, his voic
e holding a deep echo.

  “Darkness,” she said. “Blood.”

  “These are my scars,” he said. “My curse.”

  It was almost too much, and soon it would be. Her heart beat furiously against the cage in her chest. Her eyes quivered. She could see the lights behind them pulse like a warning.

  “This is chaos,” he said. “This is guilt.” He reached out for her. “This is truth.”

  She fell and braced, but did not hit the floor. When she opened her eyes, she expected to see that black-and-red horror pulling her close. Instead, she was nested in the roots of the Everwood tree. Despite its macabre appearance, it felt warm and soft. It felt strong. She sat up and saw the old man sitting on a loose stone an arm’s-length away.

  “How long has it been?” she asked, pressing a hand to her brow.

  “For us, or for them?” he nodded toward the doorway. She shook her head, working to clear the cloud.

  “You did something, didn’t you?” she asked. He did not meet her eyes. “You and the rest of them. You started something.”

  “An ending.” He laughed, but it was a sick sound. “I had my hand in it. The World Apart will be the judge. It was always going to be.”

  “Was it?” she asked. Groggy as she was, she felt that she was close to something. Some answer, or at least the pieces to it, all scattered and floating.

  He shrugged and sighed, and it looked like honesty. Iyana felt pity for him where before she could only manage fear or anger.

  “And what will you do?” she asked. “What will you do to atone for whatever it is you’ve done? Whatever it is you won’t tell me? Where does guilt like that come from?” She nearly retched as she recalled its pervading stench. “Pevah,” she said, “what will you do while the World pays for your mistakes?”

  “I am doing it,” he said. “I’m doing it here, where I can be of use.”

  “You’re needed in the World,” she said, her voice rising again.

  “This is the World!” he shouted, standing. He turned on her, wild, but she held her place. “Their world!” He pointed toward the lake and all its white pillars they could not see from here.