Karin suppressed the urge to ask the questions that swarmed his mind. He was close enough, now. Close enough to strike, and close enough to be caught unawares.
When next they spoke, he thought he did see one of their mouths moving. It was difficult to see, but she seemed older than the rest. She held herself slightly apart, away from the black flames. Perhaps she was the leader. Perhaps the voices of her sisters and daughters had been taken as well, and what remained were merely the shells of those who had come before.
“You have chosen a good place for it,” they said, and Karin didn’t like the sounds of it any more than all the rest.
“A place for what?” he asked.
The red-jewel eyes swiveled towards him, as did the heads of those who had faced away, hoods and matted hair indistinguishable in the semidarkness.
“Your deaths.”
The shadow came for him and he saw again the flash of silver that looked like a fish jumping in moonlight. Karin was ready. He ducked down low enough to avoid the strike—just barely, for his assailant was fast—and gave the spindly chest his shoulder, putting a heavy lean into it that stole breath and cracked bones. They fell in a tangle and this time Karin landed on top. He drove the bone blade he held into what soft parts he could find, his hand going slick and making it difficult to keep a hold of the weapon as he pulled it back and drove it down again, over and over until his attacker stilled.
He rolled to his left, away from the pit and its minders, and came up on one knee, red blade held out before him, teeth bared. He heard the foxes howling their complaints or encouragements from the nearby sand. The crones hadn’t moved, but they still watched him, and he saw that Talmir stood over something—the body of the other shadow.
“Talmir?” Karin asked, tensing. He spoke in a harsh whisper, though there no longer seemed any need for pretense or secrecy. “Caru!”
The captain’s posture was rigid. He nearly jumped when Karin barked at him. He stepped away from the body at his feet and allowed the lavender light of the poisoned sky to join with the blue of the embattled moon. The light swam through the song and the darkness within the cave and slid over the smooth ripples in the glass floor. It touched the shadowed feet that Karin half-expected to be black as midnight before they were revealed as pale.
Karin’s heart caught in his throat and he heard the laughter of the witches before it started. The song dipped with it and then took it on, seeming to absorb it into its haunting melody as it snaked its way toward the southwest.
The pale foot was not discolored like the men who marched upon the Midnight Dunes, nor was it half as large. This was the creamy foot of a child unused to life beneath the sun, and Karin looked down at the ruined form below him. He would have retched right there had he not been numb. He smelled it, now that the deed had been done. The sweet tang of fresh blood mixing with the fear the child had left in his final moments—a smell like acid and waste.
Talmir strode toward the crones in their pit and Karin ceased his inspection and packed the guilt away with all the rest. What else was he to do? Let the child slay him? He rose and resumed his advance.
Now the crones stood, all but the eldest one in the far corner. They were taller than Karin would have thought, and he grimaced despite himself as they were revealed in all their grisly, macabre glory, the night’s light streaming in and casting judgment on their immodesty. Those who wore hoods wore only the scraps of once-brilliant garments, the leather and furs stained with the product of their bloody workings. Many wore nothing at all, their breasts sagging or else young and sharp-standing, their ribs protruding like malnourished jackals, necks wrinkled and purpled like vultures’. They clutched bonemetal daggers and bone-handle knives, and they began to circle the pit and the elder who sat there without taking their eyes from the two men who’d come for them like wolves to a flock.
All eyes turned toward the captain of Hearth as he paused before them. It was difficult to tell if they smiled or growled, and Karin guessed there was little difference where creatures such as these were concerned.
Talmir covered the distance remaining with a speed Karin could not match. The witches spun away, cackling, and the song that drifted above them picked up its speed and its volume, finding new ways into Karin’s ears and doing new work on a mind he’d thought was now free of its influence.
They were faster than they had any right to be, but Talmir was faster. He impaled the nearest twirling banshee, breaking the scrawny cage of brittle birds’ bones and driving her back, coming very close to the black swirling pit. She gripped his blade, bloodying her hands as she attempted to pry it free, red eyes gleaming with a mix of pain and ecstasy. Several fell on him and he flung them away, though Karin saw their blades find gaps in his leather armor and make scores along his arms.
Karin barked to draw their attention his way and drove in, slashing and punching as they fell on him like pecking hens with wolves’ fangs. He felt the sting of their blades but gave more than he got. When his arms were cut and bleeding, he spun and lanced the kicks he remembered from his younger years, each sound of crunching bone and expelled breath and wheezing respite a confirmation that a blow had met its mark.
There might have been a dozen, and they might die in the effort, but together, they would win. Karin knew it. He felt it, but it did nothing to assuage his mounting fear as he felt another fire creeping below the rush of battle and the heat of killing. It started near the cuts that already oozed and festered along his arms and shoulders. It burned like only poison could, and his vision began to swim along with his thoughts. He killed three of the witches or else ruined them enough to keep them from standing, but those who remained laughed without losing any of their former gusto or dark delight.
He slipped in the slickness he and Talmir had made of the crones, and another blade sank deeper into his side than the others. He went down and the witch came down on top of him. They wrestled, and he nearly forgot to finish the job when he found a grip on her neck. He squeezed until he felt a pop and squeezed a bit more until no breath escaped, and when he came up again the whole scene before him was changed.
Where before there had been a dozen trimmed to half, now there seemed a limitless horde of the unclothed horrors. They swayed before him, yellow teeth pulled back, and Karin fought the fear that welled up in him at the sight. He raised his bone blade only to find that he had lost it in one of the bodies. He felt a coldness in his chest that he resolved and turned to stone, and he tried to make peace with dying ugly in a lonely place filled with frightful things.
In his hazy confusion, he saw the dark song like something real, a purple-black smoke that crept along the pitted ceiling and spilled out through the toothy maw of the cave. He saw it undulating with the fresh panic it leeched from the witches they slew, and from the eldest among them who now screamed and bade her sisters and daughters finish the job. She chanted and the song obeyed, reaching down with questing fingers as it sought to rattle the men who fought below it.
Karin tried to escape its grip but found himself caught and held fast as the lanky, boney creatures advanced on him, wide-eyed and wild. He saw the cave now as something else, somewhere else, and recognized it as a piece of the Valley he had left behind, the black crags and wind-swept peaks. The sky flashed and the rain picked up, and Karin saw shadows all around, red-eyed and reaching. He saw a figure with crackling blue eyes sitting on a lonely stone above the throng, its gaze buzzing with captured lightning, and he saw the black veins that crept down its neck and filled it with suspicion that was not its own.
He recognized it as the White Crest, and when he looked down to find the bloody bone blade he saw slender hands, weathered but strong. They gripped the jagged pommels of blades that had broken or burned away from heat bright enough to turn Everwood to ash.
“Sarise,” Karin said, halting. He heard his own voice as if from a great distance, saw a bit of red clouding his vision that he at first took for blood before he recognized it as the hai
r of the woman he had loved, the woman who had left him to mete vengeance upon the Sage who’d done the same. She screamed as the White Crest—a shadow of what he had been—stood atop his promontory and reached a skyward hand, which the black sky met with a shock of blue-white light that formed a spear.
“Sarise!” Karin screamed. He felt the heat of her fire as it wreathed her, felt the rage as she burned away the shadows all around, no Sentinel able to stand before her fury. She leapt and raced forward like a streaking star, and the Sage looked down with a momentary sorrow that was lost behind a wall of blinding, lancing light.
Iyana watched the scene atop the mountainous dunes with a tenseness that began to send lancing pains through the muscles of her arms. She clenched her fists so tightly they would have blanched had she the complexion for it. It was a wonder she didn’t score deep cuts into her palms, though a month spent traveling the rough and wind-blown ways of the west had worn her nails down to smooth polish over cracked skin.
Creyath made his way toward the crest of the tallest dune with a speed that recalled Ceth’s earlier climb, and the Valley soldiers—Ket, Jes, Mial and all those men and women whose names Iyana had not been bothered to learn—followed behind him, ready to throw their lives away in defense of those they did not know any more than they were known by them.
The higher they got, the slower they climbed and Iyana looked worriedly to Pevah, whose eyes were focused on the same place and whose lips moved over a tumble of words she could not guess the meaning of, though she knew the intent. As she watched, Creyath broke free from the malaise and the others followed, and Ceth nearly turned his next crushing blow on the Second Keeper as his glowing blade announced him to the fight. Creyath cut a swath through the line of Pale Men and then smote the very sand, igniting the blood and flesh that nested there and forming a temporary wall of flame that challenged the crown of glowing dunes for supremacy in the strange-lit night.
Ceth made as if to leap over the wall of fire Creyath had made, but the Second Keeper snatched him by the wrist, earning a look of shocked fury Iyana could see from here. Ceth tore his arm free, casting about. He shouted as the red- and gray-sashes allowed themselves to be led away from the hellish clash, but she couldn’t make out the words. He pointed toward the Pale Men who made for Creyath’s flames and shrieked as they burned, and Creyath merely listened, Everwood blade glowing at his side, Everwood bow poised on his straight back.
Iyana heard Pevah sigh in a sound like relief as he watched Ket and the others lead his own down. Most were none the worse for wear, though some were cut and bleeding and all looked exhausted beyond measure. They allowed themselves to be carried in some instances, and the rest slid and tumbled back down toward the flat. It was a wonder how men and women who had just fought with a fury unbecoming of beasts now found it difficult to move.
“Trouble,” Sen said, low. He faced the painted warriors who stayed in their places, but he looked toward the north-facing slope that was made as much of mottled flesh as sand.
Iyana watched as the Pale Men gained a sudden jolt of speed that seemed at odds with their previous gait. No longer did they fight through a magical slowness, and the flames that had before licked lazily now roared before burning out entirely, leaving nothing but a wall of choking red-black smoke behind.
Creyath and Ceth met them, and with neither side slowed it was all the Landkist could do to keep the beasts from bringing them down. They found an upward retreat, Creyath’s bright slashes and blinding flares buoyed by Ceth’s bursts and meteoric impacts, which sent one of the Pale Men back with enough momentum to fell a dozen in his wake.
“Back,” Pevah said harshly, whispering it under his breath. “Back, Ceth.”
Ceth somersaulted up and over Creyath, landing atop the glowing peak as the Ember took the line alone. The northern Landkist tensed as if to spring, but his eyes traced downward, following the retreating forms of his men and the Valley soldiers who had come to escort them before alighting on Pevah. He straightened, his face pained as he looked from them to the one-man line Creyath made as he inched up the slope.
Something in that look changed when Pevah straightened and ceased his intonation, and when next Ceth darted back down toward the swarm, he hooked Creyath under one arm and leapt toward the east, bearing the Ember down with a shared weightlessness that defied all sense. They landed at the base of the Dunes and ran with all speed toward Pevah, Creyath extinguishing his blade and casting glances back for signs of pursuit.
But the Pale Men did not follow. As Iyana watched, they staggered over the blood and sludge and reached the glowing tip of the uppermost Dune. There, they began to spread out, casting not so much as a glance down at the men and women and deadly Landkist who had just slain two score or more of their number. Instead, they scrambled and climbed over the glowing peaks of shifting sand until their very bodies seemed to pulse with the light from below, like living coals atop some ancient furnace.
It was like a disease. A glowing, buzzing hive. Their bodies, which at first obscured the amber glow from the sands, soon took it on and put it out even brighter. Their shrieking ceased, their voices now singing along with the dark song that had reached a fever pitch.
Ceth and Creyath reached them, the former wide-eyed and bloody—though Iyana doubted if much of the red belonged to him—while Creyath turned and gazed in the direction of the horde, aloof as ever, though there was a tenseness to him that Iyana could not ever recall seeing before.
“Pevah!” Ceth said, nearly breathless. It was a new thing to see him fatigued, but Iyana did not doubt he could continue fighting that seemingly-endless procession for hours on end. Perhaps for days.
One look from Pevah settled that, and Ceth deflated, his shoulders sagging. She thought he might argue, or else ignore Pevah’s command and make for the Dunes once more. Instead, he took in the sight of the folk gathered around him—his folk, the red- and gray-sashes sitting or squatting or leaning on each other and their newfound friends—and the fight left him.
“What do we do now?” Sen asked. He still hadn’t taken his eyes from the painted warriors who still held themselves apart, staring with intense interest at the Pale Men in their glowing multitudes, their attention similarly focused on the strange and nightmarish sight atop the Dunes they had long coveted—the charge they had long sought to thwart.
And Iyana stood among a people who had made the current situation their life’s mission to prevent. There wasn’t a look to sum up a feeling like that, but she felt it all the same, and the weight of it nearly laid her low.
Pevah hadn’t answered Sen and the Faeykin did not ask the question again. All eyes were on the Midnight Dunes that now looked anything but dark, though the skies above them roiled and rolled like the surface of a storm-tossed lake. Even the stars seemed to wheel in the strange, shimmering light that cast a lavender hue and sparked with an energy Iyana wanted nothing to do with.
The song had risen above the drone it had been and now rang in their ears loud enough to nauseate. Loud enough to sting. Iyana felt the greenfire rising within her and looked upon the dunes with new eyes that sparked with a light all their own. The combined light of the sandy crown and the hundred pale, fleshy bodies feathered atop it dimmed some, while the sky brightened, the dark lavender turning to a lightning purple that felt at once hot and cold. She could feel its arcing veins splitting the air itself and destroying the wisps of cloud that would not gather here again for a time she did not want to consider.
There was something else above the dunes and below the stars, however. Something that slithered across the surface of the sky like a snake with a thousand legs clinging to the surface of some dank and musty cavern. She blinked and saw that Sen followed her gaze, his own eyes flashing with a light not quite so bright, not quite as emerald as her own.
It was the song, she realized. It hung like a vapor, or like a slow-moving river that was birthed in the deepest places of the World, passing through steamy bogs and still po
ols and bearing up all the old, rotten things that nested and multiplied therein. It swirled over the Midnight Dunes low enough to reach its tendrils down like the many legs of spiders.
Iyana realized for the first time that the Pale Men had no tethers to pull, as they had before. They seemed a singular thing, now; a blinking, glowing mass of life; an offer and a promise of things to come, and the tendrils of song reached down eagerly. The fingers quested along the pulsing, shivering backs of these poor creatures who had been deprived of any true life. Each form they struck and snaked around stood rapt and rigid. It continued on like that until the whole mass stood facing nowhere in particular, still enough to threaten death.
And then the killing began, and anything Iyana had seen to this point—even in the caverns to the east and lower on the slopes of these very dunes this very night—paled in comparison to the god’s bounty laid out before her. They fell on one another with a savagery that defied all sense given to mortal men. They rent and tore, and those being torn fought back until their swollen hearts could do nothing more but give in to death.
Pevah growled low in his throat, reminding Iyana of one of the desert foxes, and she saw his fingers curl and uncurl at his sides, his white nails turning darker on digits grown longer and more boney. He tensed and rounded his shoulders, looking as if he might get down on all fours and sprint like a beast toward the massacre.
It should have been a good thing, but Iyana could tell by the Sage’s reaction it was anything but. There was a whooping, hollering sound to the north, the painted warriors there jumping and jeering and encouraging the vermin before them. They waved their weapons in the air and danced bow-legged, some tossing toothy snarls toward Iyana and the others that looked like victory. Some of the gray-sashes angled toward them while the red held them back, and even the Valley soldiers who were caught up in events they had played no part in starting seemed eager to find new homes for their dry blades.
The Midnight Dunes (The Landkist Saga Book 3) Page 42
