The Midnight Dunes (The Landkist Saga Book 3)

by Steven Kelliher

  “A storm?” Talmir asked, coming up to stand beside the First Runner. They looked out over the white plains and the sight was even more jarring than Talmir could have imagined. He knew it wasn’t a storm. Knew it in the same bones the sound had shaken moments earlier. But seeing was always a different thing.

  Judging by Karin’s silence, the First Runner was inclined to agree.

  The beast was thrice the height at the chest as the tallest of those that had come against the walls of Hearth were at the crown. Its skin was midnight black. Black enough to appear purple, like ink whose oily dark swirled in the deeper stuff. And the field all around it was ablaze with lavender fire that matched its eyes, which were not pale candles but rather burning pits of hate and rage and all the memory that made them up.

  “The Dunes,” Karin said, and Talmir gave a start. He had been so taken with the sight of what was now here that he hadn’t spared a thought for what was missing. The Midnight Dunes were no more. Only the raised spill of burning pitch that was blackened and charred betrayed the former presence of the towering mounds.

  “It seems we were too late,” Talmir said, sounding as deflated as he felt. He looked at Karin. The First Runner was coated in a sheen of sweat that took on a pink tint as it ran down his arms and the slits in his shirt that exposed the gashes beneath. Talmir knew he must look near as bad, though he hadn’t taken cuts as deep.

  “Maybe,” Karin said. He looked back toward the north and the cave they had come from. There was still an air of dread emanating from the sky there and the things they had done beneath it. “Either way, those crones won’t be troubling Pevah and his folk anytime soon.”

  “Pevah.” Talmir laughed mirthlessly, earning a confused look from the other man. He nodded toward the field of fire. “It’s he and his that have caused things like that to spill into the World. He had another name, once, and likely worse before it.”

  “Men change,” Karin said, his voice oddly distant. “Perhaps Sages can as well.”

  There was a scrabbling like claws in the sand that had Talmir whirling back to the north. He saw streaks of orange and red beneath the pale stars, slipping over the hills and eddies of the still waves of desert sand—the foxes heading south.

  “Loyal beasts,” Karin said, watching them pass. The foxes cut a path directly toward the rise that looked out upon the field of devastation. The place where the Sage and his red- and gray-sashes had been, and the place where Talmir’s people were gathered—those who had been foolish enough to follow him to this strange hell. “If you don’t trust the Sage, Captain Caru, trust the loyalty of a hound.”

  “Fair enough,” Talmir said, but a new flare from the south caught his eye and drew him back. He squinted through the purple, trying to spot the Sage as he battled the Night Lord he had guarded for so long.

  His sharp intake drew Karin’s attention and concern.

  “What is it?”

  Talmir only pointed, his finger shaking, and then another flare went up amidst the dark and purple poison. It was a yellow flame that lit the beast in gaudy daylight for a spell before fading to a deep and striking amber with flecks of red.

  “Oh my,” Karin said, the words seeming a comical understatement.

  “Mit’Ahn,” Talmir said, the name coming out in a sigh that was part awe and wonderment and part horror. Karin bent down to retie his boots, and Talmir saw him wince with the effort, holding his breath as he rose. “Can you move, Reyna?”

  Karin smirked past the pale in his face, and Talmir saw enough light in his eyes to chance it.

  “Come,” he said, tearing off toward the southeast. He fell into step with the tracks the desert foxes had left behind and heard Karin following behind—a rare enough thing. He heard Karin’s breaths coming in short gulps and thought to stop, but all along the way he saw the purple and amber flares and plumes go up, explosions to herald a fight the likes of which he had never seen before, not even on the walls of Hearth when the Second Keeper had slain something like in appearance if not power to the beast he fought now.

  “He’s a hard one to kill,” Karin shouted behind him, hiccupping past the wounds in his side.

  “So are you, friend,” Talmir said. “It’s the others I’m worried about.”

  He said it to keep himself from focusing on the man he had called friend before any other. Each flash that lit the sky carried more amber and warmth than the one before. Rather than bringing him comfort, it served only to heighten Talmir’s sense of unease. Creyath was burning a lot of fire. The Keeper of the Valley known most for his control was beginning to lose it.

  Talmir did not want to follow that road through to its ending.

  Talmir rarely got what he wanted.

  Creyath knew he should have died three times over by now.

  At first it had been the Sage’s interference that gave them whatever semblance of an upper hand they could take over a being that was called a Lord of Night. The titan had been slow and sluggish, its rage waking by aching orders of magnitude until the breath that issued from its open maw and the black crags it counted as teeth matched the lonely fire burning in the pits it held for eyes.

  But the Sage’s tricks had ceased. Creyath spun away from the latest collision and spared a glance toward the east. It was difficult to make anything out in clarity over the dancing purple flames that stung him without truly burning, but he saw a new shadow perched atop the rise they had come down from. The painted warriors were all dead, and he guessed they had taken some of his own with them. He felt a pang for it and stole some heat from his blade to replenish that which was beginning to quit his veins.

  “Ember!”

  Creyath leapt higher than any normal man could, but still a section of the black hit him and sent him rolling. He saw the great arm pass beneath him, quenching the purple flames that burned the sand and blood and bones of the Pale Men before the wind of its passing flared them hungrily back to life.

  He landed in a crouch more out of luck than skill but went sliding anyway, the white sand having changed to a scorched sort of glass that cracked under the heat only to reform like ice. Creyath looked up and saw Ceth flying on currents the Night Lord made with its lashing limbs. The Landkist narrowly avoided one swipe only to be taken from the air by a lashing tail the beast hadn’t brought into the fight until now.

  Ceth landed hard amidst a sound of broken glass and screamed as the flames made for him. Creyath lanced his straight, glowing blade toward the place he’d fallen, closing his eyes. He spoke to the fire—even that from the World Apart—and it flowed into his Everwood blade haltingly at first and then hungrily. He cut it off as the weapon threatened to shatter and knew he had somehow insulted his blade, but the flames had died enough for Ceth to take to the sky once more bearing little more than tattered clothes for wounds. He escaped the worst of the flames and landed to the north, out of their reach.

  He nodded at Creyath, but Creyath could see his chest heaving with effort. The strange blur that had coated his fists, boots and much of his form was less milky than before, and Creyath turned back to see the Night Lord crouched atop its mound of sticky sand turned to bones and glass, considering the two of them as a cat considers a pair of particularly pesky mice.

  “Pevah!” Ceth called, a note of panic in his voice. There was no answer from the east, but Creyath spared a glance that way that nearly cost him his life. The Night Lord was clever. It speared a claw forward faster than it had before and Creyath was forced to charge at an angle to dodge, bringing him in line with that open maw.

  It sounded like snapping logs in the largest hearth Creyath had ever known, and the purple light was almost white in its brightness as the Night Lord opened wide and bellowed with cold fury. Creyath was unable to dodge this one fully. He cried out as the beam struck a portion of his left arm and flung himself to the shards, ripping his side as he skidded. He looked behind him.

  Between him and the place Ceth stood, eyes wide and hands shaking, a blackened trench stre
tched all the way to the sandy ridges to the north where Talmir and Karin had gone. As Creyath got to his feet he saw that it was blackened as much by heat as depth. Smoke issued forth, black and full of stuff that would poison this stretch of sky for years to come.

  “Ceth,” Creyath said, but the northern Landkist wasn’t looking at him. His eyes passed over then paused on the demon long enough to share his hate and defiance before he scanned back to the east, his neck lengthening as he sought to penetrate the errant flames that still burned in that direction.

  Creyath sighed. He knew from the look that Ceth was willing to die out here on the now-broken flats. He knew he would, should things keep going, and he knew it would be soon.

  It was, after all, his charge. If the Midnight Dunes were no more, then the thing beneath them must be the same.

  “Ceth,” Creyath said again, stronger now and more forceful. Something in Creyath’s look gave him pause, but Ceth shook his head even before Creyath could say the words. “Go to them.”

  Another shake, but Ceth had already taken a step in that direction. His pale eyes widened as they switched to the creature behind him, and Creyath set his feet and sent a jet of flame that was all light and yellow into the face of the Night Lord, as much to disorient it as to scorch. Near as he could tell, it delighted in his flames even as it loathed the one who sent them as a lion loathes a flea atop its mane.

  “Go!” Creyath yelled, putting the amber glow into his eyes he knew could unsettle the bravest and most stoic of men—could unsettle even the Rockbled of the Fork back when they needed unsettling.

  But Ceth was made of something more, and prodding him only seemed to turn his chin up higher, root his feet down deeper.

  “They need you more than I,” Creyath said, a note of pleading entering his tone. He saw Ceth’s expression change, then. Saw it soften. His pale blue eyes flicked from Creyath to the shadow that raged in the smoke and the dying flare from Creyath’s blade, and his shoulders sagged.

  He nodded once and shot away, a shooting star to save the east even if he could no longer help the west. Creyath smiled and turned back to the task at hand, which stretched forward, purple pits burning through the steam and smoke their clash had made.

  “Now, then,” Creyath said, and the Night Lord tilted its mighty crown in something close to understanding. “Shall we begin?”

  He reveled in the look of surprise on the black carven visage even as he covered the distance to that gargantuan head in a blink, having stored up the heat in his legs throughout the length of their exchange. A stab to the lower jaw spilled dark red blood out in a hissing splash.

  The Night Lord reared back and roared again, and Creyath knew if it had spent as much time raging at him as it did at the sky he would surely be dead for the fourth time that day.

  As it was, he was glad to make it angrier still. He lit his blade with all the waiting blood he could find and prayed that his body would not fail it as it drove in behind the glowing length of daylight.

  Iyana heard the roar but did not turn. She stared, as intent as the rest on the Eastern Dark—or the man who was called the same. A man, she now knew, who could kill with a look.

  But if he truly could, why did he not? Surely it wasn’t mercy.

  His uncaring eyes, which had been leading a private and nonverbal exchange between he and Pevah—two Sages still and poised among a pack of tense and circling others—twitched to something behind him. Iyana took it for a trick, but Pevah’s ear twitched as well and she spared a look behind.

  Her heart skipped a beat as she saw the deadly clash between Ember and Night Lord. Then she saw the figure in silver-white racing toward them with great, bounding strides that made small craters in the sand and pops in the sky. His eyes were fixed on the Sage that challenged his own.

  “Ah,” the Eastern Dark said. “Your knight abandons one cause only to seek out another. He knows the Night Lord cannot be stopped. A smart fool, if still a fool. I’m insulted if he thinks me an easier mark.”

  “You underestimate the Ember,” Pevah said, ignoring the rest.

  “No, brother,” the Eastern Dark said, watching the bright clash as if it occupied the whole of his attention, though Iyana knew he was painfully, meticulously aware of the supposed threat that stood arrayed before him. “I do believe I am the only one of us who never has underestimated that particular lot. Still,” he sighed in a way she did not know if he meant as dramatic, “we all meet our match, eventually.”

  His eyes drifted down and stopped on Pevah. Then they began to rove, and Iyana dreaded them landing on her again.

  “Now,” he said, “if you mean to continue this, which of them should end next? Which of them means to die for the Sage of the West as he would never die for them?”

  Pevah didn’t answer. No one did, but Iyana knew Ceth would, for better or worse.

  Creyath didn’t know if he had simply grown tired of dodging or too tired to dodge. Either way, he took the next blow square, and the one after that. The latter sent him skidding once more and cracked something in his chest that would kill him if left untreated, but he kept his feet this time, much to the Night Lord’s dismay.

  There were no roars preceding its attacks now. Creyath held his glowing amber blade before him, watching the shadowed figures on the rise behind the beast and the Landkist who streaked toward them fast as any Ember. They hadn’t much moved, near as Creyath could tell. He didn’t know what to think of that, so he gave up thinking on it.

  “Come,” he said, and the Night Lord abided.

  Creyath leapt high and slashed, sending a scythe of orange flame that became a wheel that broke, spokes and all, atop the crown of that black skull. The Night Lord passed under him and Creyath snatched the horn Ceth had broken, carrying himself with it and bringing his blade down between the plates on its ridged and cragged back. Even driving with hot blood and a hotter blade, his weapon only sank in halfway, but now the beast’s roar was like the sweetest music, and Creyath leapt down and broke the glass beneath as it spun to meet him, no hint of injury in its movement.

  He was close, now, and as it raised up to smash back down, Creyath saw that deeper patch of black pulsing in its chest, offset from the center. He shot forward as it broke the earth where he had been standing, and in the shadows beneath its great form he saw the remains of dozens of Pale Men leering up out of the sand. It was enough to give him pause, and the pause was enough to see him swatted aside like a mite.

  Creyath came up with his head swimming and his blade missing. He saw the shadow standing tall as if in victory, and where before he had seen a mongrel from some deep chasm or abyss—like the horror he had faced in the Deep Lands as a youth in a tale that had outgrown him—now he saw great black wings with lavender streaks unfurl behind a king of another realm—something feared and something followed.

  As his vision cleared some, he brought his palm down from his slick brow and found that the sweat he had expected was dark red. Too dark to be the work of a shallow cut. He coughed and looked down, and saw a shard in his gut that was made of the desert floor they’d broken. He swallowed and tasted ash and metal and smelled ozone—the latter reminding him of the blade he’d lost in his unwilling flight.

  The blade that still sparked and flared ahead, a patch of vibrant amber in a sea of purple flame. The great shadow stood tall, chest puffed out, stare triumphant and dismissive all at once, daring Creyath to make for his discarded blade.

  Creyath dared.

  Talmir ran until he fell, and then he stood up, ran and fell again. Karin labored behind him, and when Talmir fell the third time, the First Runner caught up with him, bent but not ragged as Talmir was.

  “You’re going to kill yourself before you give that thing a chance to,” Karin warned. Talmir choked a laugh and made as if to rise. His knees were stone, without even the blood to shake. He looked down at the cut of bronze that dangled on its simple chain. He took it in his right hand and held it out before him like a ward or a t
alisman, and felt Karin’s considered gaze on him.

  “You saw it,” Talmir said. “In the cave. You saw it glow.” He did not turn around to see Karin’s look, but he grunted something Talmir took for the affirmative. Of course he had seen it. “Now,” Talmir said, twisting the piece around. He thought of Sister Piell of Hearth and wondered how to make it glow, and when another amber and purple collision shook the westward sky—this one more bright and violent than the rest combined—he let it fall, where it slapped against his chest once and then stuck.

  He stared at the kaleidoscopic colors, mesmerized like a moth before the flames that would consume it, wings and all, and then he reached a hand back, lazily, and Karin took it and helped him to rise.

  “Mit’Ahn …” he said, his voice trailing off. Karin made another sound of affirmation, confirming the vision before his eyes was no spell and no dream.

  The Night Lord had sprouted wings threaded with purple veins that looked like lightning strikes against a black sky. It stood tall, unfurling them like great swaths of cloud, black tail with its serrated spear tip swishing lazily with a force that could bring down whatever towers men built. And before it, the object of its boasting stood. Creyath, a small figure brightened by the yellow and orange flames that ringed the sands around him.

  He walked forward, striding toward the titan that might as well have been a god. His steps were limping, and Talmir squinted to see what was the matter with him. His breath caught as he saw the Ember remove what looked to be a blade from his gut. He tossed it aside and raised his chin.

  And then he began to run.

  He disappeared into the field of dancing purple flames that seemed slow in dying, though they had no fuel to speak of besides the nest of bones on which they’d caught and flared to life. And when he emerged from the inferno, closer now to the Night Lord, Creyath brandished his Everwood blade—that straight and strange sickle that always looked like the broken-off end of a spear to Talmir and now resembled a rod of daylight.