The Midnight Dunes (The Landkist Saga Book 3)

by Steven Kelliher

  She gasped, her mind made up, and just before the moment came true, a hand speared through the assassin from behind, shattering his spine and piercing the front of his bare, painted chest, black tips sprouting like poisoned weeds.

  Iyana fell back and whatever spell had hung about them shattered like a broken globe. The Red Waste threw the painted man aside with a snarl and turned his black eyes in quick jerks, nostrils flaring as he sought out other objects with which to wet his rage along with his slick fingers.

  “Iyana!”

  It was Karin, sporting a fresh sheen of sweat. Her breath came back in rushes and she scrambled to her feet, kicking her canvas and sack and wetting her boots in the newly-bloodied sand on which she had slumbered.

  “Are there more?” Creyath called over, his long sickle glowing but not yet ignited. The red-sashes and the gray were up and alert, and the soldiers of the Valley threw wild looks between Iyana, the dead assassin and the Sage who’d slain him.

  “No,” Iyana said. She met Sen’s eyes and saw that his were glowing, unseeing as he searched roads only they could. After a time, his eyes faded, and he looked toward her in confirmation.

  “How?” Talmir asked, bewildered. He lowered his sword and shook his head, and the Bronze Star that hung from his neck thumped against his chest like shutters in a storm.

  “Clever things,” Pevah said, his face still held in that animal snarl. Iyana felt unsettled looking at him, and more so when she saw the painted man in the center of the camp. His chest heaved once more, heart spilling the last of its charge through the exit the Sage had made, and then he went still.

  There was no more song, and Iyana thought the air seemed clearer than it had before, the haze that had hung about them dissipated in some small way.

  “Iyana,” Karin said, and as her heart slowed its beating she saw the worry warring with fresh regret. “I—”

  “You couldn’t have seen him,” she said, her eyes drawn to the north, unbidden yet unerring. Karin and Talmir followed her gaze. Ket even drew his sword and took a step in that direction before Mial stopped him with a hand to the chest. “He was … hidden, somehow.”

  Pevah made a noise in his chest that struggled to reach his throat. In a blink, he appeared once more as the old, gentle man they had come to know, but Iyana could not let the image of the Red Waste go so easily.

  “The foxes should have,” he started and then stopped, his eyes widening in fear or worry. One of the red-sashes came running breathless from the north. She had a look that mirrored the Sage’s.

  “The pack is moving north,” she said, her shocked expression shifting to confusion. “With speed, Pevah. They have found something.”

  “The Blood Seers,” a blonde-haired woman said—the one Iyana had seen coupled with Ceth. She looked to Pevah, who looked to the west before switching to the jagged ridges that broke the plane from soft sands to black sky in the north.

  “Why did they come for her?” Talmir asked, stepping before Pevah. The old man studied Iyana with a keen and fearful interest. She wanted to run away from that look and all it held. She wanted to run away from the western sand and all its red and purple. But then she felt a weight fill her chest and root her feet. It was like a stone, and it came with being a Ve’Ran.

  “Because they know,” Iyana said, not having to work as hard as she might have thought to keep calm. Pevah was nodding before she finished. “They know I found them; know I know what they’re up to, or at least suspect it. Most of all,” she said, “they learned my intent, or at least my desire for them.”

  “And what is that?” the tall woman asked, her blue eyes piercing in the strange twilight. She kept glancing toward the west, alert for signs of Ceth’s return.

  “Their ending,” Iyana said, growing firmer as she spoke. “Talmir,” she said, turning to him, “the witches must be stopped.” He opened his mouth to speak, brows drawn together in consternation, but she spoke over him. “If I hadn’t known it before, this attack confirms it. I was among them. I do not know where they were but I saw them and they saw me. This is an act of panic, not provocation. They meant to kill me, even as they meant for Pevah to be drawn out and all his warriors with him.”

  She looked about, meeting as many eyes as turned her way—nearly all, save for Creyath, who angled his glowing eyes and glowing sickle toward the place they had to go—at least, that some had to go.

  “Their songs must stop,” Iyana said, trying in vain to keep a note of panic from her tone. “Pevah,” she said, “you know it. As long as they live, you cannot win. You cannot stop what’s coming.”

  “It’s too late,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I’ve felt it since we came. It is too late to stop what’s coming. All that’s left is to face it.”

  Iyana was already shaking her head. “Not him,” she said. “Not … the beast. But the rest. It won’t stop if they survive. They cannot move, for now. I know it. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. The witches are rooted. If we’re to have some victory here, let’s make it last.”

  All were still as they watched the silent exchange. Pevah looked everywhere but into Iyana’s eyes, which told her all it needed to: she was right. No matter what they accomplished at the Midnight Dunes, it would all be in vain if the crones survived in their caves. Whether tomorrow or a decade hence, they would bring their dark gifts to bear once more, and when they did, Iyana had the impression that the desert folk would be without their stoutest protectors, and without their newfound friends.

  “The songs must stop,” she said again, and when Pevah’s eyes finally alighted on hers, they did so without so much as a flicker of doubt.

  “I will go,” Iyana said, steeling herself for the inevitable argument. But when it came, it did not come from whom she expected.

  “No,” Pevah said, not meeting her gaze. He scanned the gathered, and Iyana saw several of the red- and gray-sashed warriors step forward, raise chins and chests and do anything but shirk at the danger inherent in such a trek. The Midnight Dunes were near, and the danger there was real, even if it did seem more a thing from storybooks and fireside tales. But the Seers were holed up in a pit like vipers, a dark way full of blood and bitterness and fermented hate.

  “Pevah,” Talmir said, his light eyes focused on Iyana as he spoke. “You will need as many as you can have in the west. More.” Pevah turned toward him, considering, and Iyana knew the direction the captain’s gaze would turn in next.

  Karin nodded without having been asked and without answering.

  “Ah,” Pevah said, a smirk threatening the corners. “A worthy man for a worthy task, I’d say.” He looked Karin up and down as if seeing him for the first time. “Tell me, Karin Reyna, does the First Runner know his way around a blade—around a neck—the way one used to?”

  It was a morbid thought and Iyana tried not to think on it, tried not to think on Karin as a murderer, no matter how wicked, how deserving the targets.

  Karin’s eyes went darker than Iyana had ever seen them, though he had none of the strange ways of the Landkist in him. The brown seemed to absorb the mood, dipping toward the black he would need to mete out his justice. His hand twitched toward the long knife that was ever tucked in the belt at his side.

  “It’s not a task for one,” Talmir said. His hand rested on the silver-and-black hilt of the brightest sword Iyana had seen outside of an Ember’s blade—perhaps brighter, given the right moon.

  “Captain—” Karin started but Talmir stayed him.

  “Few or many,” he said. “The crones will have tricks. Old women make the stoutest allies,” he smirked, “and the bitterest enemies. Besides,” he smiled, “your blade can only have one conversation at a time.”

  Pevah nodded, satisfied or at least mollified for the moment.

  “Assuming you can find them,” Jes said, coming up to stand beside Ket who had ventured close enough to Iyana to brush against her. She showed him a smile that made him blush and step away. Perhaps she’d put too m
any teeth in it.

  “Karin wasn’t gifted the title he has,” Talmir said. He swept his gaze out. “This land is more vast than the Valley we knew, but each has a way—ways that lead to roads and roads that lead to answers.”

  “The Seers count memory as something to be used,” Pevah said, scanning similarly. His brow was creased, thoughts racing along more avenues than the rest combined. He regarded Creyath with a distant, wavering interest as the Second Keeper of Hearth moved toward them with a calm and poise that made a mockery of the circumstances. The Ember stepped over the dead assassin without a glance.

  “The cave of the First Keeper,” Pevah said, letting loose a laughing breath that had the taste of bitterness. “Of course. There is no true power in the place, but they don’t know that. They know far less than they think. Always have.”

  “Doesn’t make them any less dangerous, it would seem,” Sen said, staring at the body with more interest than the rest.

  “More so, if anything,” Pevah agreed, though his attention was still north, beyond dunes that sloped upward around the great scar of the west. It curved like a crescent river frozen in time, and Iyana could see the small pits that must have been the tracks of the foxes trailing off into the twilight that wouldn’t quit—wouldn’t leave until the deed was done, one way or another.

  Karin took a step in that direction and Talmir rested a hand on Iyana’s shoulder. “We’ll be back before the worst of it,” he said with a smile he didn’t mean, though it was a worthy attempt.

  “I can help,” Iyana said, and before Talmir could answer, Pevah did.

  “I need you here,” he said, broaching no argument. He eyed Sen, who was steady under his gaze. “I need the Landkist.” Creyath looked from the Sage to his captain, who nodded once.

  “It would seem this is a task for mere men,” Talmir said, addressing Karin, who would not turn. She had seen him do the same with Kole when they had ventured north of the Valley in the weeks that now seemed months ago.

  Talmir caught Pevah and turned him in a way that had some of the desert nomads tensing. “They are Landkist,” he said, nodding toward Iyana, “but they are my children just as the others are yours. I’ll be wanting them back.”

  Pevah raised his brows, which passed close enough to answer for Talmir, who released him.

  Iyana stared at the Sage after Talmir had stepped past him. There was something he wasn’t saying, and judging by the expressions Creyath and Sen turned his way, they knew it as well. He needed them, he’d said, and while it made sense on the surface—considering they could be facing one of the fabled Night Lords before the night was through—she thought there was something else left unspoken. Some expectation. Some trepidation that bordered fear and left it to be confronted later.

  Someone raised the alarm and they turned as one toward the west, blades flashing free of scabbards and Creyath’s heat making small pops and crackles in the dry air around them.

  It was Ceth, having leapt so high none saw him until he landed with a presence light enough to scatter the dust atop the sand. He rose, and his normally stoic face was awash with a mix of emotions.

  “There is,” he started and then stopped, his eyes widening as he took in the body he hadn’t noticed before. “Pevah,” he said, turning toward him, but the Sage held up a hand.

  “It has been seen to,” he said. “Now, what did you see? What trouble greets the west?”

  Ceth swallowed.

  “Fighting,” he said. “There is fighting at the Midnight Dunes.” Pevah nodded as if it had been expected.

  “The painted men,” he said. “How many?”

  “Few,” Ceth said. “Few, but … stout. Stronger. Faster than they have been.” Iyana’s mind took her back to the vision she had ploughed a short time ago. She saw the broad-chested warriors stripped to the waste and covered in scars that were as often gifts and markers as symbols of hardship.

  “How many of ours still stand?” Pevah asked, seeming to dread the answer.

  “All,” Ceth said. “They keep the crest. But not for long, Pevah. We must move.”

  “We will,” Pevah said, nodding even as he waved Ceth’s pleas away. He looked down and began to shift and shuffle while Karin and Talmir swayed, caught in the Sage’s indecision.

  “There is something to it,” Pevah said, seemingly to himself. “Something they want us to do that we’re doing.”

  “We can’t worry about that!” Ceth said. “Pevah. They’re dying.”

  That snapped something within the Sage, or else fused something else, knitted it together like recognition dawning. Like revelation.

  “What else did you see?” Pevah asked, frowning as he peered into a man he called his knight—a man he might’ve called son had the World been something other than what it was.

  Another swallow.

  “The Pale Men,” Ceth said. “They come from the north. They are far, but coming closer.”

  “How many?”

  “… many.”

  Pevah turned toward the west and took the first step. He stopped and resolved something, nodding toward the north. “Go,” he said, and Karin needed no further urging. He sprang forward like one of the foxes whose tracks he’d follow, and Talmir took up in his wake, silver hilt catching what moonlit rays the sundered sky would admit.

  “Come,” Pevah said, addressing all around. Iyana saw Creyath watching the northern crescent long after Karin and Talmir had passed beyond the distant swells. His left hand was balled into a fist, his need radiating more potently than his heat.

  The Sage stepped forward and Ceth followed as if following a king. Iyana tore her eyes from the north and the dread it called up in her and made as if to step forward when a firm hand held her back. She turned to see Sen staring down at her. He let her go and she twisted away from him, frowning.

  “What you did,” he said, nodding toward the corpse the soldiers of both companies stepped over and around on their way to the land that would decide their fates. “That is control, Iyana. It is a good thing. A thing to carry into a time of death and dying.” He pursed his lips, seeming to weigh his next words carefully.

  “Only take care you don’t let control be the death of you, or of those you purport to protect. You chose to come out here, and you did so to effect change. Change is red, Iyana. It’s red as often as green.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” she said. She tried to believe it as she left him behind.

  The west grew less hazy than it had before, and Iyana heard the Sage’s mumbles up ahead resolve into something like a chant—some spell or dispel that revealed the lands ahead more fully.

  She saw them as she had before, only now they loomed like fires with straight lines, like the tips of arrows heated in braziers until the metal buzzed and glowed with an energy fit to burst.

  There were figures atop them, small shadows fighting in the deepest colors of dusk. They clashed and slid and tumbled, and even from a distance Iyana could see the glowing crests of the cloister that appeared as a jagged crown for some great, primordial beast—or perhaps one the desert wore itself.

  A crown for a queen. A crown for the Mother.

  Pevah reached the edge of the ledge and made it crumble into a slide they followed down without difficulty. And as Iyana walked, passing some and letting others pass her by, she saw dark lines that marred the glowing points and peaks like black veins. They ran in rivulets and any figures that happened across them in their melee slipped or sank.

  Blood. Blood made black atop the Midnight Dunes. And to the north, a great droning that was the sound of a hundred tortured voices raised in a darkness broken by molten flame. The Pale Men and all their bundled hate, unleashed and pointed toward the place they were heading.

  “Blood on the Midnight Dunes,” she said as if in a trance. Sen walked behind her.

  “And more coming.”

  It should have been light by now, but the sky only seemed to take on the mood of those who struggled below it—who ran and
fought and bled and died in colors that acted as complements to the reddish glow the west gave off. It was as if the whole of the land was sick, and while Talmir had at first thought it the work of one of Pevah’s strange Sage spells, now he knew it was something else entirely.

  He looked to the east and saw nothing of sense beyond the hazy shadows of dunes; sandy plateaus that were not so far as to appear as little more than smudges against the backdrop of the starlit sky. Somewhere along the way, they had passed through some barrier. They were in another place now—a place between places. A place in the World, and not quite. He wondered absently if it was at all similar to that other realm Iyana and Sen traveled as often as their own. Judging by their uncertain reactions, it wasn’t.

  Talmir was fast. Faster than he looked and faster than most fighters half his age. Karin was faster. The First Runner streaked across the waves of still sand like a skirting shadow, faster than the red foxes whose tracks they followed and close enough to match the wind that wouldn’t greet these lands. His hand strayed toward the long knife at his belt with each sweeping stride, and his face was set into a hardness that made him appear carved from stone. It was as if Talmir followed a story of the man rather than the true thing, and it was all he could do to keep up, despite the direct path he took compared to his companion.

  The crescent of sand they followed carved a swath from southeast to northwest, growing steeper with each passing partial league. The farther they went, the clearer Talmir heard the distant drone that marked the dark and bloody song the witches sent over sand and shelf—the same he had heard when the Pale Men had come for them in the caverns along the lake.

  To the south and west, the land dropped away, and more than once Talmir skirted too close to the edge, causing the entire shelf to shift and threaten to buckle. It was as if there was no slab of stone nor hard-packed earth beneath it all, holding it up. Talmir might have thought it the memory of an ocean, the flatness ribbed and harder than the slipping waves he rolled across now, but he knew it was more the work of wind and magic than water.