CLAIM YOUR FREE LANDKIST SHORT STORY

Table of Contents

- Titlepage

- Map

- Copyright

- Chapter 1: The Great Empty

- Chapter 2: The Gap

- Chapter 3: The Hive

- Chapter 4: Caravan

- Chapter 5: Land of Lessons

- Chapter 6: Bloody Teeth

- Chapter 7: The Red Waste

- Chapter 8: Children of the Sands

- Chapter 9: Wayward

- Chapter 10: Gifts

- Chapter 11: Sharing

- Chapter 12: Foxes and Hammerhorns

- Chapter 13: Feast and Fear

- Chapter 14: Mother's Heart

- Chapter 15: The Pale Men

- Chapter 16: Aftermath

- Chapter 17: Blood Magic

- Chapter 18: To The West

- Chapter 19: Waking Nightmare

- Chapter 20: First Runner

- Chapter 21: The Midnight Dunes

- Chapter 22: Into the Black

- Chapter 23: The Desert's Crown

- Chapter 24: Song of the Seers

- Chapter 25: The Night Lord

- Chapter 26: The Eastern Dark

- Chapter 27: Creyath Mit'ahn

- Chapter 28: The Knight

- Chapter 29: Battle of Sages

- Chapter 30: Tethers

- About the Author

- Dear Reader

THE MIDNIGHT DUNES

Copyright © 2017 by Steven Kelliher

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

“Any sign of them?” Talmir asked. He didn’t have to work to keep his voice low. The wind did that for him. There had been plenty of that, if nothing else.

The man beside him was short on words and long on patience. He stayed perfectly flat, as though he had never been more comfortable than he was now, scaling the side of a jagged ridge barely covered by a layer of coarse sand and desert’s spite.

But his eyes betrayed his poise. Talmir took the tense silence as an entreaty to mimic him and tried to keep his sigh silent as he scanned the lower canyon.

It was something he had not expected in a land of sand and dust: ridges and canyons. Already the western deserts of his ancestors held plenty of surprises, even as they seemed barren of anything else. The land alternated almost as readily as the Valley. In the place of grasslands and fields were sprawling expanses of wind-blown dunes and sun-baked eddies. In the place of dense woodlands and towering trees were carved boulders and tooth-like outcroppings.

The land dipped and turned, spun and looped back on itself. In the open, traveling by the Great Star during the day was as easy as the cool stars at night—stars laid bare as he’d never seen them to the south. In the canyons, it was easy to get turned around. The Valley held its own dangers—Talmir supposed every land did, given enough time to show them—but already the deserts had made a mockery of them.

Karin was intent on a southern gap between the red-brown rocky spurs, the dust doing little to strike the clarity from his eyes, which remained unblinking. Talmir’s eyes weren’t near as keen, so he busied himself with what he did best: worry.

He shifted onto his left shoulder and craned his neck to peer down the steep incline, his heart catching despite himself as he noted the pair of wagons nestled at the foot of the masked hill. He tried not to think on the third cart—the one that had fallen into a gap which had opened without warning two days before, soon after they had broken the cracked yellow plains and hit the softer-seeming ground to the west.

He’d sent Jes and Mial, two of his most loyal soldiers, down after the wagon and the supplies it had spilled into the guts of the covetous desert. They did well enough. Mial had spread the first panic through the caravan that night, telling tall tales of the hisses he’d heard in the depths of the pit that was now the wagon’s tomb. Talmir would have laughed them off with the rest; but Jes did not smile, and Talmir couldn’t help but think of the sand as nothing but a snakeskin atop a shifting serpent below, ready to swallow them up at the slightest provocation.

Figures milled just out of sight, but never for too long—Creyath and the soldiers under his command keeping the other members of the caravan as alert as they could under the aching wait.

There was no way to scale the ridge. Not with the wagons and horses. They’d have to go around. They’d have to go through the twisting gap. But even Talmir could see the trail below them was a road too convenient to be seldom traveled.

“You’re thinking too loudly.”

Talmir rolled to the opposite shoulder and ignored the jibe. He followed Karin’s gaze and spied movement in the gap.

“A fox,” Karin answered, and Talmir was amazed at how quickly the First Runner had picked up the details. The fox was thin, its gait more loping than one of the hounds of Last Lake, more considered than one of the red-tails of the Untamed Hills. It entered the gap and paused, looking behind, sleek tail flicking in agitation or warning.

Something else moved, and Talmir raised his brows in surprise as another fox detached itself from the westward dune and joined the first. Following on her tail were a trio of pups. He thought he could hear their yips carry on the wind.

The pair sniffed their way into the steep, packed road between the ridges and paused. The male went rigid, stock-still. He bladed his body before the female, and the pups froze along with him as he scented the breeze. After a smell, the female tore off up the western rise and disappeared over the top, the pups struggling in her wake. The male stood staring in their direction before he, too, gave a final flick of his tail and joined his family.

“There is more life in the deserts than we think,” Karin said, relaxing.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Talmir grumbled, flicking some crawling, snapping thing over the lip of the ledge.

He sat up, easing the tension from his back even as his tailbone pressed against another hidden knob beneath the sand. Karin watched him, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. It was good to see, given the mood he’d been in ever since they’d separated from Kole and the rest in the Barrens.

“No sign of them, then.” Talmir answered his earlier question and Karin’s look shifted a bit, that former concern showing through. “What is it?”

“This is an ideal road,” he said, coming to stand. He looked back down into the yawning gap and followed the windswept spurs from south to north, where they twisted out of sight to the west. “It is strange to see it abandoned.”

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” Talmir reasoned. “Maybe they’re holed up somewhere farther on.”

“Could be.”

Karin didn’t seem convinced, but Talmir could only shrug. “Think we should go around it? Take our chances in the open?”

“We’ll be spotted,” Karin said, shaking his head slowly.

“It’s a wonder we haven’t been already,” Talmir said. “I suppose we have you to thank for that.” He slapped Karin on the shoulder as he adjusted his sword belt and swung back around, taking a sliding step toward the bottom.

“It is,” he heard Karin say at his back.

Talmir knew it was bothering the tracker, but what was he to do? They had seen the nomads twice and then no more since moving farther into the desert. At first, Talmir had reacted as any commander would. He’d ordered the caravan into a defensive formation and awaited word from Karin and the other scouts. It was the First Runner who had seen the men first.

They were strange, he’d said, unable to paint them all in the same image. And they moved with a confidence that could only come from knowing a place well.

Talmir learned what he meant a day later, when he spied a small clutch of them camped below a hill on his nighttime survey. He’d flattened himself against the soft and shifting sand, ignoring the bite of the cold air as it frosted the tip of his nose. Against the ruddy light of their fire, he saw a mix of pale and deep olive skin. He thought the former looked something like the Rockbled. They were tall, but not particularly broad. The latter he took for members of his own tribe. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they had been, once.

He’d stayed like that for a long time before Karin had crawled up beside him and helped him back down. They had carved a circuitous route, cutting farther south than Talmir had intended. The men and women had been armed but unarmored. They wore sashes of silver-white and blood-red. His caravan had the numbers, but Talmir knew better than to court open conflict with natives, no matter where they hailed from.

Still, the men moved with a purpose that seemed to clash with the image of wanderers. They had little in the way of supplies. Even the water skins on their belts were thin. Perhaps there was something to them. Perhaps they were searching, too.

“We won’t be able to avoid them forever,” Karin said.

“Don’t worry on it,” Talmir said as Karin slid down beside him in a lope not unlike the desert foxes’. “We’ll have to speak with them sooner or later.”

“We should have when we had the numbers. When we had the high ground.”

“Maybe,” Talmir allowed. “But then, I wouldn’t take that as a fair greeting, would you?”

Karin was silent, which was answer enough.

The matter of the nomads was troubling him as much as everything else. Talmir felt the guilt at having left his city keenly. He felt it as surely as he felt the bronze star that swung beneath his loose tunic and slapped the slick skin of his chest with every bouncing stride.

What was he doing out here? What was he hoping to find?

He knew the answer. Maybe that was the problem. It was a fool’s errand if ever he’d heard one, and Talmir Caru, brave Captain of Hearth and the man now named after the hunk of metal that hung on the heavy chain around his neck, was one few called fool.

He felt a weight on his shoulder and noticed that he had stopped walking, ankle-deep in sand as he stood on the lip of the small ledge that hung above the makeshift day camp. Karin gripped him, attempting to reassure and doing the opposite.

“They are with you, Captain Caru,” he said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Talmir did not turn to meet the First Runner’s eyes. He hopped off the ledge, landing with a crack on the remnants of last night’s cook fire and scattering the pair of young merchants who still sat beside it with their useless ledgers.

“Did you sign out that water?” Talmir asked, noting the ash-smudged bottle one of them had knocked over in his haste.

“Of course,” the man said, offended. Talmir hadn’t bothered to learn his name. Come to think of it, he didn’t know the names of any of the merchants left in the company, frivolous men following a foolish road to no end.

“Shall I give the order to move out?” Karin called as Jes, Mial and several of Talmir’s soldiers rushed over, intent on the captain’s return.

“We want to be around the westward bend by nightfall,” Talmir said with a nod. Karin moved off to relay the orders.

As he walked between the wagons, Talmir caught sight of Creyath standing on a small rise to the east. His eyes had barely moved from that direction since they’d entered the deserts. He had seen something on the edges of Center, Talmir knew. But Creyath was a man of even fewer words than Karin. If he didn’t volunteer the information, Talmir wouldn’t draw it out.

He let the Ember be. It wasn’t the Second Keeper of Hearth he sought out now; had been seeking out at the close of each day. He passed through the row of tents without stopping.

Talmir almost laughed at the absurdity of it. As Captain of Hearth, he had made a career out of ignoring the advice of sage elders and avoiding the company of Sister Gretti and the Seers. Now, in the wide and wild west, he found himself seeking out the stony presence of Iyana Ve’Ran, a girl less than half his age. The folk of Hearth had plenty to say about the Lakemen, but none spoke poorly of the Faey Mother. If she was gone, it was safe to say her legacy endured.

The sand ran in many colors. Talmir noticed it in the evenings most, and though the day was only just growing late, the sun was hidden behind the great hill he’d just come down from. The bits of earth moved easily underfoot, the yellows giving way to the soft and earthen browns on the second layer. Below, there was a red clay that felt cool to the touch.

He followed an eastern slope and cut north, where he saw the next collection of tents gathered below a smaller rise. The Faeykin had come with them in some number … for them. Four, including Iyana. Though he was thankful for their company, his soldier’s mind considered them a bad omen. What were those who healed hurt if not harbingers of the same? He tried to shake the thought and told himself it had nothing to do with the early wars in the Valley, where the Faey had made their presence known on a few occasions that were a sight more red than most would believe of the gentle Landkist.

The Faeykin here were all born of the Emberfolk, but they held themselves apart, training with the Faey in the eastern woods. And yet, Iyana Ve’Ran held herself apart from them. As the rest began to roll up their bedrolls and pull loose the stakes that held their canvas flaps down, Iyana stood apart at the northern end of the half-bowl, white hair blowing like a wisp of cloud. Her fair skin had a moon-like sheen, and though she bore the same tans and brown smudges as the rest of the traveling company, it could not diminish the glow that hung about her.

He moved up behind her as silently as he was able, clutching his sword and scabbard to his hip to stop it ringing.

“Did you find our hosts?” she asked without turning, and he laughed as he came to stand beside her.

“Hosts, eh?”

She regarded him with those emerald greens, and no matter how many times he met them of late, he felt unprepared each time, stripped bare in a way Rain Ku’Ral could never manage.

“We are in their home,” Iyana said, her tone leaving no room for argument.

Talmir nodded and looked out over the landscape. The ground dropped away to the east, but to the west the buried ridgeline stretched out of sight, carving like a serpent to the horizon.

“We could go around,” Iyana said, reading the thoughts on his face if not in his mind.

“The wind’s been picking up,” Talmir said, trying to convince himself as much as her. “We’ve been lucky so far, I think. Not all in this company are as stout as you.”

She laughed at that, but Talmir didn’t.

“Have you noticed the glow?” she asked, and Talmir strained his eyes.

“Would that I had your sister’s eyes.” He said it as much to gauge her reaction as for the truth of it.

“You don’t need Linn to see the skies,” she said without missing a beat.

Talmir shaded his eyes with a hand and followed the direction of her gaze.

“To the northwest,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, looking earnest, almost hopeful.

He screwed his face up in concentration. “Sunset.”

“No,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Something else.”

He regarded her with a steady expression and she did not wilt under it.

“The secret of the Ember fire?” he asked with a smile, but it fell from his face when she remained stone-faced.

“What we’re looking for, I think,” she said. “In whatever form.”

What are we looking for? He felt the question gnawing at the back of his skull, but he feared to give voice to the words.

Hope. It was a little bird twittering in his west-facing ear. He wondered if she’d put that in. He knew little of the powers of the Faey, aside from the help they’d lent Hearth in their recent hour of greatest need. The same help they’d lent his closest friend when Creyath had fallen against the corrupted beasts of the World Apart.

Talmir swept his gaze around. The Faeykin had packed and were now moving to rejoin the caravan. One lingered, staring in their direction. He seemed young and old at the same time, his long, white-yellow hair framing a face that carried those same green gems as the girl that stood before Talmir, albeit with a darker bent.

“How are you?” Talmir asked as the one known as Sen moved off after the others.

“Fine.”

“You don’t look east,” he said.

“None of us do,” she answered. “We’re on a path, now. Onward is the only way forward.”

“Well said.”

Talmir did look east as he stepped back and began to follow the slope back toward the wagons. The sand appeared blue in the false twilight, but as he watched, a shard of amber carved the eddies there like fins on the water. Iyana lingered for a spell behind him, but he heard her soft footsteps soon enough.

“Do they really know why we’re here?” she asked as they climbed the neighboring rise. She indicated the merchants as they fussed over maps the Seers had drawn based on little more than legends half-told and less remembered.

“Do we?” Talmir meant it as a jest, but he felt his face flush as her eyes bored into his temple.

“We do,” she said. “We know what we’re following, Captain Caru. As for your men and women,” she observed them like she was a mother and they her wandering brood. “They follow you.”

“Power,” he said, spitting. The saliva struck the sand, which accepted the offering gladly. “World has enough of it without us digging up more.”

“We’re digging up the past,” Iyana said, her voice changing. “And a part of the future, I think.”

Karin had told Talmir of Iyana’s impressions. Specifically, the one that had led her here. Talmir had heard of the Faey Mother’s famed visions. As a youth, he’d been quick to toss them aside. But others were not so quick to do the same, even those who counted the tossed bones and rolled dice of the Valley Seers little more than tricks and delusions.

Iyana Ve’Ran was not a displaced youth looking for purpose in the shadow of her sister. She was as much a part of this as he was. More so, he knew, in many ways that had yet to be revealed.

“How are they?” Talmir asked. She adopted a questioning look and followed his as he observed his soldiers barking the twin rows of horses and riders into shape. The merchants sat atop their mules, unsteady and grumbling.

“Hopeful,” she said after a time. “Frustrated.”

It wasn’t a guess. Talmir didn’t pretend to know how she knew it. He didn’t pretend to care.

He saw Creyath detach himself from the rest, his black charger the only thing in the company darker than the Ember himself. His great bow hung loose across his back, the shafts in the oiled quiver thick enough to withstand the heat of his blood long enough to launch.

Talmir waved for the Second Keeper and Creyath turned amber eyes his way, spinning his mount and whistling as he came over. At his command, Mial—the old trickster—brought Talmir’s painted mare at a trot. Talmir greeted the animal warmly and swung up into the saddle as Iyana allowed Creyath to pull her up behind him.

“The gap?” Creyath asked, to the point as always.

“The gap,” Talmir answered. The Ember nodded curtly, which showed Talmir what he thought of it. He bristled and thought to argue the reasons, but he knew the effort would be wasted.

“It is decided,” Creyath said, as close as he would come to placating. Talmir accepted it and moved off, taking Iyana’s smirk with him.

Talmir rode the length of the twisting lines and counted, though he knew none would be out of place. He passed the young soldiers and tried not to think of how foolish they were for following him. At least Mial was an old fool. The scout followed at an easy trot, shouting orders based on Talmir’s silent glances and sharp pulls.

He stopped at the head of the two-breasted caravan and turned to look toward the south. The clouds billowed like plumes of smoke that would not reach this far. The black mountains that sheltered the Valley core stood vigil. Over whom, Talmir was not one to guess.

“Where to, Captain?”

The speaker was the Faeykin known as Sen. He had a habit of riding toward the front, a curious decision given his lack of weaponry. Talmir let him, though a part of him knew it to be irresponsible.

“The gap,” Talmir answered, keeping his voice level. He cursed himself internally, knowing his tone shot down the possibility for an argument—knowing it showed he expected one. Sen merely smiled and inclined his head, his green eyes roving up the shifting wall of sand beside him.

“The nomads haven’t entered, near as we can tell,” Talmir said, fighting the wind, which had picked up in the late afternoon. It seemed to shift direction as quickly as the salt lake to the south. Perhaps all oceans were alike in disposition, be they formed of sand or sea.

He received searching looks. The nomads had been weighing on the minds of all in the caravan. A confrontation was coming. Talmir knew it just as they did. But its nature was still a mystery, as was the time and the place of its happening.

“The gap carves a path due north,” Talmir said, spearing his hand forward before bending it to the right, “and then sharply east. The ground is hard-packed clay. It’ll be easier on the horses. The ridges on either side are full of alcoves and perches. Be wary. The desert hasn’t yet showed us what’s beneath its yellow skin.”

“What’s out there, Captain?”

Talmir searched, and the line bucked and bent to reveal a young soldier he thought he recognized. She worked beneath the White Cliffs.

He thought on the answer for a spell and settled on the hoped-for truth.

“Our homeland,” he said.

It had the effect he wanted. Shoulders that had been slumped perked up. Eyes that had been glazed brightened.

Creyath brought his black mount between the Captain and the rest, and Talmir turned and began to make his way around the steep incline and toward the lower ground.

“To the gap,” Creyath said at his back, and they followed, the wagons’ wheels lurching in complaint as they fought the paste the sand had made of their oiled spokes.

Homeland.

The word seemed a lie, and Talmir did not dare tell them that they followed the fleeting impressions of a girl half the age of any in the caravan. Better that than the promises of old parchment.

“What am I doing?” he whispered under his breath.

“Leading.”

He saw that Creyath had brought his charger up beside him with a silence that belied its bulk and twin burden. Talmir regarded his Ember friend, whose eyes remained fixed ahead. Iyana, however, did meet his stare, the green centering him in a way no words of comfort could.

To the north and to the west. To the Sage of the Red Waste. To a fool’s salvation.

They had told her the desert was a place of extremes, but Iyana never took it to be literal. As the caravan wended its way down the sliding slopes of dry, moving earth, dipping into the twilit shadows framed between ridges, she understood what they meant.

In place of the arid heat of the late afternoon, the gap was cool, the blue shadows matching the mood of the land as the sun set the exposed ridges alight like spurs of Everwood. Moments before, she had cursed her decision to wedge herself between the back of Creyath Mit’Ahn and the radiating heat of the sands below the black charger’s hooves. Now, she was thankful for the Ember’s proximity.

She was thankful for his presence and heat just as she was for his silence. It allowed her to concentrate, and in the lengthening shadows of the premature evening, Iyana began to sway. To an outside observer, her body would be still, but it was the inner self she moved—the self of which Mother Ninyeva had taught her from the time she was old enough to blow green flames to life in the pit of the Long Hall.

Though it was a narrow place relative to the expanse they had just left—a land some in the company had taken to calling the ‘Great Empty’—the gap was still wide enough for the caravan to widen farther than Captain Talmir seemed comfortable with. He spun his painted mare around and rode up and down the twisting lines at even intervals, the soldiers under his command bending back in and straightening in their saddles as he did.

Talmir led by example. His expectations were evident without the words to accompany them, and Iyana knew he held the hearts and minds of the men and women who followed him.

It was the others she wondered about.

Her thoughts became a wash, the shadows of the sheltering ridges framing the perfect canvas for her to do her work. The tethers were fleeting at first—difficult to parse and separate from the errant rays of drifting light. But the longer she looked, the more clearly she saw.

They sprouted from horse and rider alike, waved lazily from the backs of the twin wagons they rode behind and beside. She knew one merchant was dozing without needing to see him, his tether pulsing with a rhythmic, soft light. The soldiers might look the same to a passerby, with their red and black studs and their orange sashes, but their tethers were as varied as the rest.

She saw the telltale greens that marked the other Faeykin as they clustered together on the southern side of the company. There were two tethers, though she knew three were among them. Sen did not have a tether, she had been startled to learn. At least, he did not let it drift on whatever currents it would as the others did—as Iyana herself did.

Though she camped alongside them and rode with them in the day, she felt alien in their company. They spoke little, preferring instead to do as she did now. They saw the others as emotional clusters swinging from the ends of strings, and Iyana thought it strange how easily those who counted healing their specialty could seem so detached from those they helped.

Mother Ninyeva had been different. Growing up at the Lake, Iyana had heard plenty say it, but now she thought she knew what they meant. Her teacher had trained with the Valley Faey longer than any. She was the first of the Emberfolk to be Landkist by the Valley, and while her powers of sight and healing were second to none, it was her empathy that Iyana had taken as her greatest gift, and the one she most wanted to live on.

A glint of deep purple that Iyana first took for a trick of the light betrayed the First Runner of Last Lake, Karin Reyna, as he ranged up and down the steep slopes to either side. It was a marvel how quickly he could move, having left his horse down below. She saw Jes and Mial shadowing him on the lower shelves and giggled as they watched him leap across a span and share a look, all trepidation.

Creyath shifted in the saddle and twisted to get a look at her.

“How does he expect to teach new Runners if they kill themselves following him?” Iyana asked, keeping her voice low.

The Ember smiled, showing his pearly whites. It was a wonder how serious he could seem in one moment and how cheerful the next. But even his happiness was a quiet thing, gentle and firm at once. It was steadying.

“Few things like danger to teach the young,” he said. Creyath spoke in riddles. Talmir had told Iyana as they passed the cracked plains to the east, and she had ridden with the Second Keeper of Hearth the next day to find out.

It was true, she decided. Creyath did speak in riddles. But Tu’Ren Kadeh had told her that riddles often concealed truths dressed in lies. She wondered what truths Creyath hid.

The thought of the First Keeper of Last Lake sent a pang through her heart, the first she had felt in the days since leaving her sister on the lone hill that separated the black fields of the Barrens from the sea of sand they traversed now. She thought of how Tu’Ren must be busying himself in her absence and the absence of his brightest flames, and nearly laughed in a pitying sort of way as she considered the torment he must be inflicting upon Malena Holspahr—one of the new crop of defenders at the Lake.

Would that they proved unnecessary before the Dark Months returned.

A flash of movement to the left had Iyana’s heart catching in her throat. Creyath reacted to her sudden tension, swinging his snorting horse around to face the crumbling ledge on the western side of the narrow canyon.

She felt his heat rise unbidden. The air became milky with it, like a haze, and Iyana coughed as she peered into the gloom.

A questing tether leaked out from a tumble of loose stones, and Iyana had to blink to make out one of the desert foxes she’d counted by the dozen since their arrival.

“It’s nothing,’ Iyana said, sighing.

“Not nothing,” the Ember said. “We are in their land, now. Life is precious here, I think. It should not be counted as nothing.”

Creyath swung his horse back around and they rejoined the line, a few of the soldiers taking up in their wake and throwing glances back at the place they’d stopped. Iyana frowned. She felt scolded, though she knew Creyath enough to know that was not his intent.

“Life is precious everywhere,” she said. He didn’t answer.

They traveled in silence and left the sun behind as they moved deeper into the twisting trail. The sky darkened from blue to the dark of water without moonlight, and the first twinkling stars began to emit their fairy light as Iyana watched in silent fascination.

The longer she looked, the closer the winking lights seemed, though the ridges to either side seemed to creep in at the edges, reaching and grasping to steal what little light they had left to see by. She looked back down and then behind, and saw that they were indeed sinking lower into the heart of the desert, the trail taking them deeper. The wagons began to gather momentum, so a pair of soldiers riding the stoutest steeds tied ropes to the backs and coached them to slow. They didn’t want their water and dried meat joining one of the rocky tumbles.

The thought of water clued Iyana in to the dryness in her throat. She blinked herself clear and found fresh waves of exhaustion she had not noticed while touching the Between. It was a warning Mother Ninyeva had given, and Iyana had to remember to take it well. She reached into the saddle sack and brought out a skin, delighting in the cool kiss of the clear liquid as it splashed over her tongue. She offered it to Creyath and he accepted, the water hissing and producing steam as it touched his lips.

They continued on in that comfortable, easy silence for some time as evening fell, dropping a cool blanket over the company that carried a nip of cold. The wagon wheels protested in a steady monotony as the sandy paste worked itself deep into whatever grooves it could find between wood and iron, whereas the horses’ hooves were quieted by the subtle change from loose sand to packed clay that had a few of them slipping before the ground leveled out.

Whatever sameness the company displayed was not mirrored by the landscape, which continued to bend where she thought it might straighten, to dip before rising. The spurs and ridges that bordered them closed in at times so that they had to go single file, but the gap would always reopen, admitting them into a new basin or starlit canyon. Each dip and eddy was a miniature valley unto itself, and Iyana found herself drifting on thoughts of the one she’d left behind.

She cast about for something to distract herself, and settled to studying the lines carved into Creyath’s Everwood bow. When the darkness stole the details from her, she searched out the higher shelves for signs of Karin and his trailing scouts. But even the foxes no longer stirred. It seemed there was little in the way of life tucked into the crags and crevices, though Creyath had told her he spotted what must have been a hammerhorn bull watching their passage from crags that seemed high enough to flirt with the sky earlier.

Creyath shifted and glanced back at her, his eyes holding an amber glow that was anything but natural. Iyana had thought it strange ever since meeting him. She had only ever seen that glow in Kole’s eyes before a fight, but the Second Keeper of Hearth seemed always to be simmering. She supposed hers were the same. She could even see the green hue reflected off the oiled studs in the saddle.

Maybe that was why the soldiers of Hearth thought her strange. They were used to the green of the Faey signifying aloofness, not compassion. It was a shame that she’d need a tragedy—or something near—to disavow them of the notion.

One of the dozing, travel-stained merchants caught himself before tumbling over the side of his cart, and Iyana let loose a relieved sigh. She would not wish for that.

“What do those eyes see?” Creyath asked, keeping his voice low enough to avoid attention.

“I wish I knew,” Iyana said without thinking, her thoughts drifting in time with the rhythmic steps of the strong charger that carried them.

“Who would know but you?”

There was no accusation in Creyath’s tone, only a calm and leading patience.

“I see the men and women of this company just the same as you,” she said, scanning them. “But I see more. I see their whims and worries laid bare as plain as you see their swords and pauldrons.”

“That is a mighty gift, I think,” Creyath said, nodding slowly.

“Perhaps if I knew what to do with it.” Iyana dismissed the notion. Dismissed herself, which Ninyeva was always fond of reprimanding her for.

“And the others are the same?” the Ember asked. He did not raise his hands from the reins but pointed with his small finger. Iyana followed it and saw the Faeykin bunched up behind Sen near the front of the caravan.

“We are all Landkist by the Valley,” she said as if in answer. It didn’t seem to appease Creyath. He mumbled something unintelligible. “I don’t know, truth be told. I know we hold the same power, or power of the same bent. I know we can heal hurts and feel what others feel—see it, as a matter of fact. Like tethers on the wind.”

“Tethers.” Creyath tasted the word. It struck something in him, but Iyana was left wanting when he failed to elaborate.

“That’s the only way I know to describe it.”

“Then that is what it is,” Creyath said it as if it were law. She thought he’d go silent again, but he spoke, his voice level. “I think you have a power in you, Iyana Ve’Ran. I think you must seek it out. Speak to it. Speak to those who know it better.” He indicated the other Faeykin. “There is more to the Landkist than burning.” He looked around, studying the sheer cliffs and sloped runs of spilled sand. “There is more to this desert than death.”

The words sounded haunting, though Iyana guessed they were meant to bring comfort. Try as she might, she only felt a shiver greet her spine that the Ember’s heat did little to quell.

“What do you see when you look at them?” he asked. He meant the caravan. He meant the soldiers—his soldiers—and the others they’d dragged with them.

“I don’t know how to read all the signs,” Iyana said, sheepish and growing frustrated. “My lessons were never finished.”

“None of us are ever finished with our lessons, unless we close ourselves to them,” Creyath admonished. “What do you feel when you look at the tethers of those around us?”

“I feel hope,” Iyana said, surprising herself with the assertion. She shook her head. “I feel fear and uncertainty. I don’t know which is the more prevalent.”

She felt him laughing. “What is it?” she asked.

“It makes all the sense you think it does not,” Creyath said through a smile. He kept his eyes ahead, scanning for trouble even as his body seemed relaxed. “You cannot have hope without the fear that made it necessary in the first place.”

It seemed such a simple thing. Put like that, it struck Iyana profoundly.

“I think you see more than you know,” Creyath said. He let it hang there, suspended, and Iyana took it and packed it away.

“You saw them, didn’t you?” she asked, changing the subject. She felt him shift. “The nomads, I mean. You saw them with Talmir and Karin.”

“The first time, yes.”

“Talmir said they were not like us,” Iyana said.

“We do not know who they are or are not like,” Creyath said and Iyana shook her head.

“He said they don’t look like us.”

“Ah,” Creyath said. “Their skin, you mean.”

Iyana flushed and was glad of the privacy the night provided. “I suppose.”

“Some of them were,” Creyath said, seeming to consider it for the first time. It was difficult to tell when he was joking, but Iyana didn’t think he was now. “Some were baked in the desert sun so they were as brown as the rest of us—some were near as black as me.”

“And the others?” Iyana pressed.

“Their skin was pink, which is to say, it must have been pale. Like yours, but without the glow of the Faey.”

Iyana did not think the Faeykin had a glow. Given what she’d seen of the Faey themselves, they didn’t either.

“Your skin is like the light of the moon,” he continued unabated. “These men were light like the snow that dusts the Steps at the close of the Bright Days. They were larger than the others, and they wore their skins and furs in a different style. Silver-gray sashes instead of red.”

Iyana thought on it for a time. It was a curious image. The people Creyath described sounded like they belonged to entirely different groups. Perhaps they had, and had somehow come together. She wondered why.

“Captain Talmir won’t mention the Sage,” Iyana said. “He won’t mention the Red Waste.”

Creyath was nodding before she finished. “So you’ve noticed it, too.”

Iyana looked askance at him. “But the men already know, right?” she asked. “They have to.”

“The captain said as much before we left Hearth,” Creyath agreed, though his tone left room for argument. When Iyana did not put one forth, he continued. “Talmir refers to the past, and he does not give form to it.” Iyana frowned. “No matter what they tell you,” Creyath scanned those closest to them, “the men and women in this company are searching for the past, and for the promises of the future it might hold. Giving form to a thing like that invites failure. It invites disappointment.”

“You mean, if we don’t find him,” Iyana said. “They don’t believe he’s alive. Maybe they don’t want to believe.”

“Maybe,” Creyath said with a shrug. “Maybe they merely believe in the captain, and that is good enough for them. Maybe they just wanted to see the World.” He paused. “Talmir knows what’s in a name. He knows how many ways that can go.”

It wasn’t the answer she’d expected, but it made Iyana look at Captain Talmir in a new light. It seemed there were as many ways of looking at the man as there were ways of talking about him. And there were few among them who did not talk, of his exploits and of his failings. Talmir Caru had been one thing, the Bronze Star something else. The man Iyana saw leading the head of the twin columns—the man she spoke with in the mornings and in the evenings before and after making camp—he was the one warring between the two and all the images they called up.

For the first time, she pitied him for it where some might envy him the attention.

They rounded another bend and the ground fell away even more steeply. Creyath tightened his grip on the reins as calls came from the front. Soldiers ventured back to guide the wagons down, and Iyana heard what sounded like Karin calling instructions from a ledge out of sight.

The hill was all soft and shifting clay. Creyath thought it was better if they navigated on foot, so they did, leading the black charger by the bridle. Many of the others did likewise. At the bottom, the sand they had missed for most of the trek was piled thick, having been blown down from the eastern cliffs that curved like fangs over the thinning gap, making the going slower and more deliberate. The merchants grumbled as they were forced down from the cart on which they had dozed while the rest hitched the mounts to help guide the unwieldy things through the thickest mess at the bottom of the hill.

“All they brought is empty boxes,” Iyana said with a derisive laugh. Most of those had been lost when the other wagon had fallen in the gap. Lucky for the company, as their food stores were largely intact. Less so for the young enterprisers.

“What better symbol of hope than an empty box to fill with whatever we find out here?” Creyath said. He said it with a straight face, though it could have been a slight as easily as praise.

Talmir was one of the few who kept his horse, circling back with remarkable poise despite the shifting and uneven surface. He caught Iyana’s eye as he passed and did not linger, moving back towards the front with some haste. Creyath watched him go, considering.

“He seems tense,” Iyana said.

“We are in an unfamiliar land,” Creyath said.

“Is that why we haven’t used torches since we’ve been out here?”

Iyana was having difficulty navigating. Her short stature made for short strides. The desert was not as forgiving as the hard-packed Valley floor.

“We had no need for torches up above. But this place is …” he trailed off, and Iyana found herself staring into the shadows that seemed to leer from every direction.

They continued on foot for some time, stopping to pry the wagons loose on more than one occasion. All the while, things skittered among the crags, sending loose stones down to startle the horses, which snorted and even reared in places. It seemed the night had brought out what creatures the day hid, though Iyana had caught sight of little other than a wisp of tail or flutter of wings.

After a while, the sand was once more buoyed by the harder slate and clay beneath, and the going became easier. The way, however, was less obvious, with smaller trails carving out from the gap like earthen veins. Iyana placed her hand against the muscled flank of the charger as they walked, taking comfort in the animal’s steady strength. Her feet were sore, her heels chafed raw, but it took time to get her energies centered enough for healing, and Talmir seemed intent on keeping the company moving straight through to sunrise.

“You look to the west often,” Creyath remarked, looking down at her from the other side of the black charger. It seemed a silly thing to say, and Iyana guessed the Ember was trying to take her mind off her hurt now that her gait had taken on a lurching limp.

“That is where we are headed,” she said, trying to keep the annoyance from coloring her tone.

“You stare a long while,” he said, refusing to drop the thread.

“Better to look west than east.”

“Ah.”

Iyana stopped and the charger stopped with her. Creyath, oblivious, continued on before his arm was pulled back sharply as the horse tugged, refusing to leave her behind. She had some affinity for the animals. That, or they preferred to reward their lighter burdens with their loyalty.

Creyath turned as the others passed them by, some tossing glances that mixed confusion with offers to lend aid. The Second Keeper of Hearth waved them away and met Iyana’s steady stare, his eyes glowing like blown coals.

“You ask why I look to the west, Creyath Mit’Ahn,” she said, her voice almost startling her in how much it sounded like Ninyeva’s. Even Linn’s. “But now I ask you: why did you come with us? Why did you come west, and not east?”

Creyath continued to stare, unblinking. The horse craned its neck around, its long face and chestnut eyes seeming to look askance at Iyana as the rest of its fellows continued on without them.

“I think your question leans on its second part,” Creyath said. Iyana did not speak, only glared. She’d feel foolish for it later. For now, she let it do what work it would. “I think you mean to ask why I did not join Kole Reyna, Jenk Ganmeer and Misha Ve’Gah on their road to Center. I think you mean to ask why I did not join your sister.”

“I think you’re right.”

Iyana hadn’t truly realized how much the question had been gnawing until she had given voice to it, and the truth of it shocked her even as it rendered other feelings of the previous days more clear. Creyath was a mystery, to her and to most others. But he was a powerful one. The fact that such a power was out here, forging the desert paths to lands unknown to them and to a future uncertain, seemed frivolous.

She knew how it sounded. She knew it was unfair. After all, wasn’t she set on the same path?

Still, she could not help but feel that Creyath Mit’Ahn, the only Ember known to have faced a Night Lord alone and lived—even if it was a sorry perversion of the real thing—should have been with the others of his kind. They moved on Center with the intent of finding the Sage who called it his domain. Intent on confronting the King of Ember, who did not deserve the name but carried all the fire that came with it.

Creyath took a step toward her and she held steady.

“All roads are uncertain, Iyana,” he said. “You look at me and see a power beyond the others—”

“Some believe you’re even stronger than Garos Balsheer,” she argued. “Some even than Tu’Ren Kadeh.”

Creyath laughed, but he did not refute the claims.

“And what difference would my power make at Center?” he asked.

“It could make all the difference—”

“No.” He said it with finality, his eyes taking on a deeper hue than she’d seen before. “No. I think not.”

Iyana waited for him to continue. Something small squealed in the darkness and she shivered anew, suddenly aware of how far the others had got from them. She could see the nose of the caravan passing behind the next bend in the desert’s scar.

“Too much power begets chaos,” Creyath said. “What difference could I make in a company comprised of three Embers, a Rockbled and a woman who carries the latent power of the White Crest—the Sage our Valley counted as guardian against the World Apart? Against the Eastern Dark himself?”

He swept his hand out behind him.

“Out here, my fire can burn freely. If I need it to. If we need it to. Out here, my power is the difference.”

Spoken starkly, it was affecting coming from one whom Iyana knew as anything but the type to boast. She sighed and looked down past her yellowed trousers at her lightly-shod feet.

“They are good questions, Iyana Ve’Ran,” Creyath said. “Do not be ashamed for asking them.” He turned and tugged the horse along with him—or tried to. He let loose a small laugh as the animal pulled back once more. “I think Finn has made his allegiance clear.”

Iyana laughed and walked forward, affecting a dramatically haughty air. Finn the charger followed after, and Creyath followed him.

The sand grew cold enough underfoot that Iyana could feel it through the soles of her shoes. She stayed close to the Ember, keeping within his sheltering aura. Up ahead, the wagons and their trailing mules came into view, and Iyana breathed. She did not want to look up into the cracks and sheer cliffs, which now appeared like black, reaching fingers in the night.

They would not stop before sunrise.

The men thought it was Captain Talmir who kept them marching—no, trudging—throughout the night and into the next morning. In a manner of speaking, it was.

Talmir shouted at the stragglers, pulling on reins and even jumping down from his painted mare to help free the wagons on more than one occasion, when the deep blue night hid the soft sand slides and concealed cracks in the bedrock beneath. The soldiers showed him their respect, though Karin knew there were already the beginnings of a slow and simmering anger their nods and smiles hid. It was the sort of anger that only exhaustion and frustration could bring on, and it was his doing.

The First Runner had expected to feel better—less tense, in any event—when the sun first peeked over the eastern horizon. It warmed his cheek and set the paste of sand and sweat to sparkle in the amber light, but Karin did not feel better.

He paused atop a promontory to observe the scar in the land below and the tiny figures moving through it. It was like a trench in a sea of sand, and Karin tried to shake the thought of the desert folding back in to reclaim it and all who passed through it.

Jes and Mial had stopped trying to climb so high, and had instead taken to navigating the lower shelves closer to the caravan. It was for the better, Karin thought. The two soldiers of Hearth—one young, the other the oldest in the company—had acquitted themselves well, given the circumstances. Given the fact that Karin was no teacher. Sarise had always been more patient in all things but for battle.

He shook that thought too, and continued on, leaping across a narrow span and ignoring the sound the pebbles made as they bounced into the hollow chasms in the rock.

The night had passed them by without any undue distress. No attacks from the desert nomads and no slinking packs of beasts native to this land. The path had sunk deeper—or else the ridges had grown taller—throughout, but in the soft light of dawn Karin could see that their path was nearly at an end. He looked back to the south and east and could not see the beginning of the road they’d taken. Even the peaks of the southern Valley were mere suggestions against the faded blue.

He scanned the opposite ledge and saw nothing to betray danger, heard nothing but the coarse sound of sand sliding over slate and the steady howl of the wind through the gaps and chutes.

All seemed right, but Karin had learned long ago not to ignore his instincts. He was First Runner, and though that term might mean nothing in the wider World, he knew it was not native to the Valley core and the elders who’d settled them there. He knew it had come from this land, and he knew in his bones there were reasons for it, even if he shuddered to guess at what they were.

Talmir’s voice wafted up with the next uptick in the wind, and Karin felt a momentary regret at allowing the captain to shoulder the burden of blame that should have been his. But then, that was the way of leaders, and Karin had never pretended to be anything of the sort. He had no metal adorning his chest or poking holes into the soft cotton of his shirt, and he wanted none.

He tied his hair back in a tail and picked up speed, watching out of the corners of his eyes in a manner that made the sameness of the landscape less likely to trick him.

His boots were light and had fared well in the dryness, with none of the sucking mud or free-flowing water of the south to stymie them. His tight-fitting trousers—black and gray—absorbed the sun rather than reflected it, but Karin didn’t mind the heat. He imagined it felt something like the blood the Embers’ hearts pumped into their iron veins during a fight. He kept his torso bare, with his shirt tied around the waist. It made him easier to spot from down below and allowed his skin to drink in the energy the sun gave. He did not hide from it as so many others did.

As the morning gave way to afternoon, Karin considered going down for a drink. His body—slick with sweat just an hour before—was now dry in the cool cross-breeze coming in from the west. His lips had begun to crack and he tried to keep from licking them. His high road was taking its toll.

The gap had widened considerably. Now, it was more a miniature valley—a bowl carved from the desert’s heart. Either the ridges had sloped steadily downward, or the northwestern winds that blew the black bangs away from his eyes had filled in the section Talmir and the others crossed now.

Karin looked down to them, feeling like an eagle, and saw that all had dismounted. They had broken into pairs and small teams, helping to encourage the animals up the shifting incline. The wagons’ broad wheels—a source of complaint when they had first struck out from Hearth—were now proving a wise decision, as they parted and packed the sand enough to avoid getting mired for long.

He looked to the north and saw a monolith he had somehow missed before. It was a great boulder that seemed to grow out of the rocky base that protruded from the sand, and all around it the land was flat—at least, as flat as the frozen waves of earth would allow. And even beyond it, the ridges formed a half-circle, the lands beyond them giving way to open and even desert once more.

Untying the shirt from around his waist, he held it up as a white flag, waving it for all to see. There was a whistle he took for Mial’s, and he saw Talmir pause up at the front, bowed head tilting up toward the northeast as he shaded his eyes with one hand.

Once Karin had his attention, he retied the sash and framed his body so Talmir could see his profile. He took his hands and laid them horizontal, with just the tips of his fingers touching, then pointed toward the lone spur and signaled the flatness of the land ahead.

He couldn’t tell if the captain nodded from here, but he continued on, his pace picking up along with those who followed behind. Karin could hear voices on the wind and felt another pang at having made them push on through the gap, but there were deep shadows along the boulder, and they still had plenty of water in the oiled drums in the wagons.

As he navigated the crumbling shelves and dusty stone, cutting a jagged path down toward the lower bowl, Karin thought of the tales he knew of this place. The tales he’d grown up on. That they all had. It was at once achingly familiar and frighteningly strange, and he knew it had yet to show him the first of its many secrets, for better or worse.

Mother Ninyeva had told of fresh lakes deep below the surface that the people of the Valley would count as oceans for their size. He doubted if she could truly remember them, but her descriptions had been detailed, and the Faey Mother had never been one to lie. More likely her parents had told her the truths the deserts held, and she had kept them close.

They would have to find a place like that within the week. The desert nomads they had seen twice in as many days seemed to keep no animals for milk, and carried skins as thin or thinner than any among the Valley caravan. They got their water from somewhere. Karin only hoped theirs wasn’t the only place.

Lost as he was in his thoughts, he nearly freed himself of them entirely when a thin outcropping that had appeared much thicker crumbled beneath him. The sheets fell slowly, drifting like leaves and landing with inaudible complaints below, and Karin paused there for a while, his leg dangling in the open air as he tensed and relaxed his muscles, checking for signs of strain.

He rose deliberately and scanned back toward the group. He sighted a pair of glimmering jewels he recognized as Iyana Ve’Ran’s eyes. She had paused at his falling and Karin held no doubts she’d sensed it in ways that had nothing to do with her sight; the more piercing belonged to her wayward sister.

Another thought to toss aside, given what it brought up.

Karin waved to Iyana to let her know he was all right and then continued his descent, picking his way more carefully among the uneven stones as he approached the desert floor.

He rejoined the caravan, which—much to Talmir’s obvious discomfort—had abandoned anything resembling the formation it had held since coming down from the mountains days before. In the place of the twin columns was a hodgepodge of wanderers, the soldiers doing their best to look determined rather than depleted, and the few merchants doing anything but. Even the Faeykin, normally the picture of poise, looked worn, their hair matted and disheveled.

Horses and men alike hit the ocean of shadow provided by the great and lonely spur and rejoiced, sighs and whinnies combining to form a chorus of ecstasy that would have made one of the eastern maidens blush.

Karin walked among them, observing their demeanors. Iyana showed him a tired smile as she passed and Creyath refused to take his eyes from the looming giant of stone before them. Or, not stone, Karin noticed as he turned, but clay.

The structure was massive and seemed to be leaning, its base sloped in places and dipping in others. In the shadows of the southern side it appeared brown, but as Karin let his eyes track upward, he saw red bright enough to look like blood, caked and dried in the sun. Its sides were smooth in places and rough in others, with knobs at uneven intervals and man-sized pits that leered like black eyes tunneling down beneath the surface.

As the wagons pulled up and the men and women began arranging the horses and pulling the water casks free of their bindings from the beds within, Karin swept his gaze out to encompass the bowl with its gray stone borders. The ground was sturdier here, the loose sand having been blown down towards the gap from which they’d crawled as though it was a wound that needed closing. He wondered how deep it might have been.

There were no animals in sight. No desert foxes and no hawks circling on high, which he’d seen frequently to the south and east. He tensed, shielding his eyes from the sun. He thought he had seen a solitary figure breaking the western rise, but now that he looked closer, he saw nothing. Perhaps it had been one of the desert nomads, observing the strangers come into his lands. Perhaps the Red Waste himself, come to see his runaway children returned.

More likely, it was a trick an empty land played on those unused to its ways.

Try as he might, Karin could not shake the feeling of wrongness that had dogged him for a day and more.

“It’s the emptiness,” a voice said, small but firm.

Karin stepped around a brown horse and saw Iyana brushing it on the opposite side. She smiled at him warmly, and he saw that her lips were wet, reminding him of his own unquenched thirst. She frowned up at him.

“You should take water,” she said, nodding toward the wagons.

“Aye,” he said, knowing he sounded distracted and doing little to hide it. He could hear Talmir barking his orders in the back, and to the west, he saw Creyath sitting atop his black charger like a shadowed sigil on a light canvas. “What did you mean?” he asked, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. Perhaps the dryness had got to him.

“You seem bothered,” Iyana said, her hands pausing in their ministrations as she studied him like a young mother might her mewling babe. The horse swung its head around, bumping Karin out of the way as it sought the source of its minder’s dalliance. Iyana laughed and Karin matched her in a softer bent.

“I seem bothered,” Karin said, meeting her emerald eyes. “Seem?”

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t turn it off at will, you know,” she complained. “Just because I’m not floating in the Between right now doesn’t mean I can’t see what you’re feeling—feel how you’re feeling, more like.”

“I wish you could tell me,” Karin said, looking from her back up to their sheltering giant. The wind howled as it raced in from the northwest, carving its way around the monolith and making a strange melody as it snaked its way in and out of the pits and tunnels within.

“Haunting,” Iyana said. “Isn’t it?”

He regarded her and swallowed despite himself. “Yes,” he said. “Very.”

“It’s the lack of life,” she said again, continuing her earlier track. “That’s what’s got you out of sorts. It’s what’s got the lot of them out of sorts, I’d guess.” She indicated the rest of the company as they arrayed themselves beneath and around the mounds and stacks of desert clay, lounging and drinking from their wooden bowls or else standing and staring, aimless as he felt. “We’re not in the Valley anymore. But there is life here.”

Karin tilted a brow at her. “Can you sense it?”

She screwed up her face, considering the question. After a span, she nodded.

“It’s different,” she said. “It’s less the thrum of the Valley and more an echo. But it’s here. It’s all around us.”

Karin did not know whether to feel comforted or disconcerted by the revelation, so he settled for aloof.

“Take rest,” he said, moving to step away. When she opened her mouth to speak, he raised a hand. “And I’ll take water.” He could feel her smile at his back. “I can’t have you worrying over me. Plenty to go around to those who need it more.”

“Like father, like son,” she said, and Karin halted in his steps. “I decide who needs it.”

He smiled and walked toward the wagons and the captain who threaded his mare between them.

“You look as if you’ve stepped out of a furnace,” Karin said as he approached. He tried to say it lightly, but the captain was not amused.

“Perhaps there is a reason the nomads avoid the place,” Talmir said, wiping the sweat from his brow. His sword—hanging free of its sheath so that Karin could better track them from above—caught an errant ray and flashed.

Talmir let the mare wander, put his hands on his hips and surveyed the makeshift camp. Karin watched him, waiting for the inevitable question. Judging by Talmir’s expression, he expected him to ask why he had compelled them to march through the night. His answer would be lacking, he knew: nothing but a Runner’s intuition, Captain.

But the question did not come. Instead, Talmir sighed and then looked Karin up and down.

“Sun’s been kind to you, I see.”

Karin looked down. His bare chest was a shade or two darker than it had been on leaving the Valley, but he felt none the worse for wear.

“It seems we did come from here,” he said with a smirk, noting that Talmir’s blue eyes did stand out a bit sharper from his swarthy skin.

“It’s a wonder the Faeykin don’t burn up the second they touch the bright,” the captain said, and Karin winced at the crassness with which he said it. Still, he knew there was nothing in the words. Talmir stated things the way he saw them, and in Karin’s limited experience, he often saw them clear.

“Come,” Talmir said, clapping Karin on the shoulder. “Take water.”

Karin was glad to acquiesce. He followed the Captain between the wagons and swung around the back, where one of the young soldiers was ladling polished wood bowls full of the gloriously clear liquid.

Talmir offered one to Karin and took the next.

“Doing well, Ket?” he asked, and the soldier nodded too quickly. Talmir placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and then touched his cheek and brow, which were flushed. “Take some for yourself, lad. We need you right. Then pack it away.”

The soldier known as Ket did as instructed, filling the next bowl for himself as Karin and Talmir stepped away from the wagons and deeper into the shadows beneath the sheltering tower of earth.

“Strange thing, isn’t it?” Talmir asked, craning his neck to look up at the towering, rounded cone.

“Very,” Karin said. “I can’t tell if the wind carved it from the base of this bowl or if it was made by something else.”

“Something like man?”

“Doubtful,” Karin said. They rounded the bend, their path taking them up a slope of slipping clay at the base. Something crunched underfoot and both men looked down to see a shining collection of pearly white shards underfoot. Karin bent to retrieve one, blowing the dust from its edges.

“Sea shells?” Talmir asked, standing above him. “They say all lands were beneath the sea, once. That we’re all just floating along its currents on this wayward island.”

Karin shook his head and turned the shard over. It was thin enough to be slate, but there was a yellowed stain on the underside. “Bird’s eggs, maybe.”

“Eggs.” Talmir seemed to relish the word. He kicked at a loose pile and stepped up onto the next rise before turning to survey the wagons below. “Maybe we’ll find some still inhabited.”

Karin stood and brushed the clay from his fingers. He followed the captain and together they passed from the shade of the eastern side into the blinding bright of the north.

They surveyed the land. The gray stone ridges rose a short ride away—roughly the distance from the outer shell of Hearth to the western woods of the Valley. There was a smaller gap between, with the land rising at an easy incline. Beyond it, Karin could see dunes that reminded him of the rolling hills near Last Lake. To the east, the wall was closer, the sides appearing as a series of pillars with a dusting of sand atop them; it was a network of trenches and tunnels Karin had no desire to explore. And to the west, the shelves Karin had traversed earlier merged into mountainous dunes that spilled away to the flat lands.

“An easy land to hide in,” Talmir said, and Karin saw that he was still looking to the north.

“They know we’re here, Captain,” Karin said. “If they meant us harm, I think they’d have brought it already.”

“Maybe,” Talmir said, unconvinced. “Or maybe they’re waiting to see what we’ve come to offer.”

“Can you blame them?”

“Not at all,” Talmir said, matter-of-fact. “Not at all.”

“It’s strange,” Karin started, feeling melancholy. “How we can feel strangers in a land that should be ours.”

“Land isn’t anyone’s,” Talmir said with a snort. “Men, Landkist and Sages besides. Sooner we learn that, the better off we’ll be.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Karin said, and he did, taking a long pull on the cool water that tasted of oiled wood and the river stones of the Fork.

The wind picked up, bringing with it that now familiar, haunting sibilance that reminded Karin of a pit of coiling snakes. But this time, it also brought something else. There was a smell like fresh rot—a sweetness with a sting on the end that had Karin wrinkling his nose.

He looked to the west and saw that Talmir was doing the same. Karin moved past him and stepped up onto the next rise, bracing himself against the clay tower. The ground dropped away steeply, and at the bottom of the rounded shelf the source of the stench revealed itself.

“A horned runner?” Talmir asked from beside him. His voice was muffled as he covered his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Close,” Karin said. He hopped down from the considerable height with no real effort. “One of the hammerhorn bulls, I think.”

He walked forward as Talmir chose to navigate the long way around. The body was wedged between the leaning side of the clay tower and the slope Karin walked on now. Bits of flesh still clung to it in places, and the flies had been at it long enough to give off their sweet smells. Karin had smelled plenty of death, but there was something off about this one.

As he drew closer, the ground beneath his feet grew slicker. The sand was all settled at the bottom of the north and western sides. The smell of rot underwent a subtle turn when he was nearly upon the sorry creature—the slight smell of burning.

“What got at it?” Talmir asked at his back. “Foxes? Wolves?”

Karin moved around the beast cautiously, the hair standing up on the nape of his neck. “Not foxes,” he said, more to himself than the captain. “Something far nastier, I think.”

He knelt, waving the buzzing flies away. The weapon that gave the creature its name met him at eye level: a split spur of bone, bleached by the sun. One side jutted out with a flattened ledge while the top tapered to a sickle. The bone was black at the tip with the blood of whatever had come against it.

“Got itself stuck,” Talmir said, and Karin saw what he meant. The hindquarters had not been devoured. At least, not entirely. Instead, they were wedged inside one of the porous pits in the side of the clay mound.

Karin leaned forward.

“You’re going to catch sick, getting that close,” Talmir said, sounding nauseous.

Karin edged around the swarmed corpse. He could hear the wind sighing through the open pit where the bull’s legs hung above a depth lost to sight. Aside from the blood that speckled the slope, there was another substance—sticky and green. It ran in rivulets down the exposed bones of the beast’s haunches, and Karin thought he saw steam rising from matted hair that was drenched in the stuff.

“Karin? What is it?”

He reached out and touched the sap-like substance, then recoiled with a hiss. He whirled as Talmir shoved his discarded bowl into his hand. Karin plunged his burning hand into the water, cursing and spitting as Talmir stepped past him to peer down at the mess.

“You going to keep that hand?” he tossed back.

Karin spit a few more curses through his teeth before taking his hand, shaking, out of the ruined water. His fingers were red, raw and already blistering, but the burning had stopped. Nothing rest wouldn’t heal. Nothing a Faeykin wouldn’t heal quicker.

“I’ll live,” Karin said.

“Good.”

Karin watched as the captain poked in fascination with his scabbard. It came away smoking.

“Seen anything like this?” Talmir asked.

Karin shook his head. “I’ve heard of snakes that can do it. They spit to blind their prey. Nothing like that in the Valley, though. Could be in the Untamed Hills.”

“Could be anything there,” Talmir said absently. He looked up at the clay tower and Karin followed, for the first time seeing the yawning pits as something entirely different—something forbidding.

“Snakes,” Talmir said. He looked back down at the mess. “Big enough to take town a hammerhorn bull?”

“Whatever took it didn’t eat much of it,” Karin said, and then a sickening thought occurred to him. He swept his gaze out to take in all horizons. Great birds of prey wheeled overhead where before there had been nothing. Their heads were naked, stripped of feathers bright red and blue. On the ridge to the west, he saw what looked to be a pack of desert foxes staring in their direction.

“Captain,” Karin said, drawing it out. He took a step back and Talmir’s look morphed into a strange one.

“Do you hear that?” Talmir asked, tilting his head.

He did hear it. What he at first mistook for the whispering of the wind playing through the grooves of the tortured structure—and it was a structure, he now recognized—Karin now heard the hissing of a hundred tongues.

“We need to get the others,” Karin said. “We need to move.”

It was times like these when Karin cursed himself for never learning to wield more than a short blade, even though he did that better than any—perhaps better even than his son.

Talmir drew his sword and stepped back, keeping his eyes on the gap between the base and the clay hill. “Whatever it is, it won’t make for us when it’s got a meal set and served. Karin?”

“It’s a trap,” he said. “Bait. Clever things.”

“Things?”

The first of the horrors shot out from the trench so quickly it could have been mistaken for one of the twisted Dark Kind Karin had spent half a lifetime avoiding in the deep woods of the Valley.

Talmir swung down even faster, his blade a silver blur that should have sliced right through the lizard’s head. Instead, it rang off a crown as thick as bone, and the hound-sized beast opened a maw ringed with dripping black razors and lunged. Karin darted forward like one of the streaking hounds of Last Lake and speared it in the soft space between crown and ridged neck, and the monster died in a pool of dark red blood, the steaming green mess spilling from its hissing maw.

“Back!” Talmir moved toward the western side of the tower and Karin shadowed him. Instead of a single lizard darting out of the holes there was a steady pour, horrors great and small spilling forward to be lit by the unkind sun at their backs.

“Run!” Talmir yelled, and Karin did, carving a path down the slope. The beasts were spurred on by his flight and the hisses formed a wave that was a macabre wind unto itself. Talmir ran behind him, and Karin tossed a look back to see him leap one of the green-gray crawlers, his blade swinging back to take its eye and send it writhing in the clay, spraying its liquid fire.

Soon enough, they had outstripped the reptiles, but as Creyath Mit’Ahn and his black charger came into view, Karin felt his heart drop as he thought of the wagons and the resting caravan scattered among them.

“Creyath!” he yelled, but Talmir’s voice was the louder.

“Mit’Ahn!”

The Ember swung in his saddle, amber eyes widening ever so slightly to expose crescents of white as he took in the chaos of their retreat. He lifted the great Everwood bow from around his back and ripped free a shaft from the sidesaddle—Karin wondered how many he had stashed there and not in the wagons—and bladed his mount off to the side of the oncoming pack.

Karin skittered past horse and rider, nearly going over as the clay met the first spilling pebbles of sand. He heard a curse and spun, snatching Talmir by the wrist and hauling him back up as the two crashed into view of the caravan. A blast of heat shook them and a hiss of flesh and inhuman mouths went up. Creyath had begun his work.

Creyath’s flames got the party moving faster than any shouts could, and the pack of swarming lizards—charred and smoking though they were—did plenty to spur them on. Of course, it was the Faeykin who were closest, their green eyes showing all the surprise the Ember’s had lacked. Karin snatched Iyana by the wrist and yanked her hard toward the nearest wagon, causing her to cry out.

“Horses!” Talmir yelled, and the soldiers did their best to comply. Karin grabbed a chestnut mare, unloosed its reins from the tresses of the wagon and boosted Iyana up into the saddle.

“North,” he said, slapping the animal on the rear. Iyana was no rider, but she had a poise others her age lacked. She pulled on the reins and swung the beast back around. “Go!” Karin yelled. She pursed her lips, looking beyond him with a searching concern. She wanted to help. “Go,” he said, softer, and she did, wheeling back around and kicking the mare into a trot that became a gallop.

Karin spun to see the first of Talmir’s riders meet the scorched pack of land drakes. He jabbed with his spear, helm still hanging from the saddle. The beasts darted and ducked around the tip. They bit and tore at the legs of the stomping horse, which screamed in pain and rage, frothing as the flesh sizzled above the first joint and brought it down.

The soldier fell, pinned beneath the thrashing mount, and Talmir himself reached in and yanked him free, dragging him away as the reptiles tore into the belly of his steed, the smaller ones charging over the top, drooling acid bile. The soldier came up lame and Karin saw a merchant take up one arm while Ket took the other, dragging him toward the back of the open wagon.

Karin speared another of the creatures with his knife then leapt back as the black and toothy snarls came at him anew. He slid into the sand and found them easier to dodge there, though he took special care to avoid that green spray.

Not all were so lucky. As he leapt the shortest of his assailants and tore toward the east-facing wagon, Karin saw another of the horses go down—an unfortunate sacrifice he recognized as intentional when the soldier who had been riding it snatched one of the Faeykin by the crook of the arm and pulled her back, snatching another horse for them both to flee upon.

Just as another blast of flame from Creyath’s wayward comets struck the clay tower higher up, Karin reached the stamping pair of mules hitched to the wagon.

“Stav!” The young tradesman recoiled, his attention fixated on the blackened earthen tower and now reeling as he imagined Karin as one of the creatures coming to devour them. “Take the cart north and wait at the first dunes.”

“But the captain hasn’t—”

“Now!”

Karin knew he could be authoritative when the need arose. It did the trick; Stav snapped the reins and the mules—the only ones in the whole company of man and beast who seemed entirely unbothered by the current turn of events—took off at a pace that could be generously considered a gallop.

“That’s the water,” Karin said to himself as he turned to survey the battlefield.

He saw Creyath emerge from the westward site, another flaming missile nocked on that shining onyx bow. A few of the lizards gave chase, but they abandoned it soon after breaking the plane from shadow to sun. The Ember’s eyes were up, and Karin followed him to see the image that had frozen Stav in the grip of horrified fascination.

The half-scorched tower of clay—running in places with a mix of melted bile and that stinking, burning ooze—was overrun with more of the things. They poured out like a kicked wasp’s nest, streaming down the uneven, vertical sides like spiders.

“Into the sun!” Talmir screamed, and Karin saw that he had found his painted mare. Karin ran toward him, but the captain caught his eye and jabbed his silver sword. “To the gap and the dunes beyond!”

Karin nodded, though he held steady for a moment longer as soldiers and horses passed him by. The other wagon finally lurched into motion, some of the soldiers fighting with polearms and swords they had yet to unsheathe in the tumult, prying them loose. One woman—Jes, he recognized with a shock—fell back into the bed of the wagon clutching her wrist. He could almost hear the sizzle from here.

He searched frantically for signs of life amidst the killing swarm and saw nothing but two sorry horses, now still.

Creyath thundered past, his black charger stamping the ground in a frothing rage as it sought to crush the scaled creatures underfoot. “Karin,” the Ember said, calmer than he had any right to be. He loosed another burning shaft and a chunk of the clay tower exploded and fell, scattering burning ruin among the moving surface of the desert beneath.

“Up.” The Ember reached down and grasped Karin by the wrist, helping him up behind him, and with a final look at the scored and pitted hell that had so recently been a sanctuary, they were off to the north, the wind whipping in a fury and blowing Creyath’s battle heat back so that it stung Karin’s eyes and dried his lips.

“Any others?” Creyath asked.

“No, I don’t—”

The Ember dug his knees in and slowed the charger. “Karin … ?”

“Is that … ?”

It was.

Ahead, they could see the retreating horses and the wagons. In the distance, Karin could even see the chestnut mare he’d sent Iyana on milling just past the gray stone gate the desert made. But behind, standing in the place before the monolith where the red clay met the dry yellow sand, was one of the Faeykin. He was blond—the one Iyana seemed most wary of, and most interested in.

He stood facing the churning sea of green-black land drakes and stretched a hand out, palm up, unmoving as they came spilling over the red rises.

“Sen!” Karin called, remembering his name. It seemed to snap something, and Sen glanced over at them, his green eyes shining like bright emeralds in the glare.

Creyath did not wait a moment longer. He dug his heels in and set the charger into a full gallop. Karin snatched one of the Everwood missiles absent command and thrust it into the Ember’s waiting hand. Creyath nocked and drew.

“On my command,” he said, and Karin hoped he knew what he meant.

Creyath lit the shaft with nothing more than a thought just as they reached the place where Sen stood, facing the oncoming horde alone. If anything, he seemed more annoyed than relieved at their presence.

Creyath unclenched his thighs and swung himself from the horse, landing in a crouch on the border where the ground changed color and feel. Karin snatched the reins and pulled himself up further in the saddle. He brought the snorting charger back around, heart beating furiously as the hissing reached them.

“Sen,” he said, firm. “Now.”

Sen tossed a strange look at Creyath, who sank to one knee, rooted before the churning pack which waited just on the edges of the dry, sun-baked surface on which he knelt.

Karin took the hand the Faeykin offered and helped him up behind him.

“Go,” Creyath said and Karin did as commanded. He could already feel the atmosphere swelling around them. It seemed to draw in, and he could feel Sen leaning awkwardly as he craned around to get a look at the Ember’s handiwork.

“Forward, Sen,” Karin barked, and he felt the man turn and grip him around the waist. Together they headed for the fleeing caravan, which had already slowed at the foot of the first dunes.

The carrion birds screeched from on high, disappointed so many had made it out, and Karin could feel the eyes of the desert foxes burning into his temple even as he felt the sudden wash of heat from behind. The hissing died, and even the bright of the day seemed stolen for a flash as the light from Creyath’s meteor put it to shame. The soldiers up ahead—those who had stopped and were watching—had looks of pure wonderment and fear in equal measure, and Karin could not say he blamed them.

Karin had seen the Embers do incredible things. He had seen his son fight through a field of demons from another world, burning them up in a torrent of fire. He had seen Garos Balsheer lay low the largest bear the World could ever have known. He had seen Larren Holspahr and Tu’Ren Kadeh at their peaks, though the First Keeper of Last Lake kept his flames well managed.

But Creyath was something different. If he lacked the longevity of combat of the others, he made up for it with something else, a steady smolder that was always ready to light at a moment’s need. Talmir had said as much, and Garos as well. There were Embers who burned longer and fighters—his son among them—who dazzled, perhaps who even held more of the World’s fire in their veins.

None of them lit the sky quite like Creyath Mit’Ahn.

As he reached the lagging wagons and passed between the sand-covered shelves of slate, Karin turned and saw the Ember’s latest masterpiece.

The sky was awash in a haze that had nothing to do with the sun’s heat. And through the shimmering wall, the clay tower had crumbled, laid low by the might of the one who walked toward them—a black figure with his black bow and his calm, measured strides.

Karin felt Sen hop down off the charger and he followed suit. Mial came up at half a run, his white, close-cropped beard caked with sand and sweat—a mixture they were all of them intimately familiar with now.

“Some trick,” the man said. It drew a sardonic, almost breathless laugh from a nearby soldier, and Karin was inclined to agree.

“Some trick.”

It was cool in the shadows of the dunes. The sun was beginning its slow descent, but Talmir’s blood was still up, his anger already starting its change into the acidic guilt he knew too well. It was not so different from the dripping liquid fire of the land drakes and their black razor maws.

He left his mare to wander, knowing she would stay close to the others as the caravan finished setting up yet another makeshift camp. They had traveled for a short time longer, skirting the edges of the smaller hills until they reached one that was set apart from the rest. Here, Talmir could see in three directions. No attacks would come from north, east or south without his knowing of it, and Karin had already taken Mial west, where they would perform the first of many sweeps.

Talmir could still see the smoke rising from the sandy bowl to the south. The clay tower was now half char, crumbling on the edge of a blaze of Creyath’s making. The Ember had come back dragging one of the sizzling husks behind him. At first, Talmir thought he meant to offer it as food, but the Ember was merely a curious type, and it seemed his spirit was shared by more than a few among the company, who gathered around the thing Talmir had ordered dragged back to the edge of the camp.

The carrion birds circled overhead but did not land. They were a patient lot, and Talmir tried to shake the thought that they would just as readily wait for him and his wayward Valley children as the sorry reptiles they’d come across.

He felt a wash of something like heat from within and suddenly lost his horizon, falling in a heap against the side of the dune. He rolled himself over and sputtered, coughing as a portion of the hill tried to force its way down his throat. He cast about and saw that only Creyath had seen him, the wagon wedge having obscured the rest from view. The Ember took a step toward him from the edge of the makeshift camp where Sen, Mial and a few of the older members of the party fussed over the body of the monster, which looked decidedly less threatening now that it was dead.

Talmir held up a hand; Creyath nodded curtly and stayed where he was. Talmir leaned back against the cool, shadowed sand and sighed, closing his eyes as he felt the tiny rivers of earth slide around his neck and greet his shoulders through the collar of his loose-fitting shirt.

The sky had gone from bright to deep blue, reminding him of the lake of the southern Valley. It held the first thick clouds he had seen since entering the deserts, more billowing plumes of ashy gray than wisped tails of white. Perhaps they promised water. Or—like so many things—perhaps they promised nothing. Beyond them, he could see the boldest of the night stars beginning to show themselves while the rest continued to lose their battle with the last vestiges of the afternoon sun.

His heart slowed enough to grant his breath, and Talmir sat up, allowing the sand to run free. He realized dimly that he still clutched the pommel of his sword in his right hand. He laid it across his knees and grimaced at the black smudges that marred its surface. Hopefully the monsters’ spittle would not compromise it when next he needed to parry.

Of course, fighting the beasts the Emberfolk were accustomed to, there was rarely a need for parrying. A part of Talmir longed for another duel like the one he’d waged against the warrior of the Emerald Road; the warrior known as Brega Cohr. The greater part knew the shame at wishing mortal conflict with other men. Better to kill beasts than be killed by them.

Better to not have to kill at all.

He speared his blade into the sand—it plunged below the surface with a pleasant scrape—and looked out over the eastern horizon. The land had grown dark that way, and while the west and north were littered with hillocks great and small like the one he leaned against now, the east was all flat but for the occasional trench—slate scars, smaller approximations of the day-long trail they’d only just come through.

The sky that way dipped into lavender, and Talmir knew Iyana would soon crest the nearest rise to see the purple merge with the western gold.

Talmir sighed and stood, brushing the loose sand from his clothes. He nearly forgot to retrieve his sword and did so grudgingly, his father’s face flashing behind his eyes as he did. He walked toward the wagons, the numbers already rolling through his mind as he did.

Two horses killed. Two. No soldiers.

None.

He paused, a new feeling overcoming him that he rarely let in. He twisted back to the south, eyes wide as he considered the devastation Creyath had wrought.

No soldiers dead. No merchants. Not a one of the Faeykin hurt.

What better fortune could they wish for, given the circumstances?

Talmir turned back toward the lead wagon feeling decidedly lighter than he had moments before. He tried to enjoy it, knowing the feeling wouldn’t last.

He rounded the back of the first wagon and paused, seeing a soldier lying on her back across the wood panel.

“Jes?”

The dark-haired youth sat up with a shock, startling the young Faeykin who sat beside her, that emerald glow lighting the veins of her wrist as much as her eyes.

“Captain,” the young soldier said, nearly breathless. She had a bandage wrapped tightly around her left arm from fist to elbow, and Talmir could see brown stains dying the cloth.

“Apologies,” Talmir said hurriedly, holding up his hands. The Faeykin—a red-haired waif with pale features like the rest—did not look amused, the light flickering almost dangerously behind her eyes. “Take rest, Jes,” Talmir said, calmly at first and then, when she struggled to rise, he repeated it more forcefully. She complied, grumbling as Talmir moved away from the wagon, eager to be gone from the judging gaze of her minder.

The beginnings of a fire had been started in a depression that was little more than shallow pit dug through the first layer of sand.

“Careful with the stores,” Talmir said. The merchants ignored him, while the soldiers nodded deferentially. They had brought several bundles of oak out of the Valley core and had done well conserving it thus far, but the desert nights were cool bordering cold. Talmir shivered to think how bad it would be here during the Dark Months.

“The count?” Talmir asked, drawing their attention back to him.

The young soldier Ket stood to address him, earning a few eye-rolls as he did.

“Twenty-three,” he said quickly, and, when Talmir looked at him expectantly, “twelve wielders of sword, spear and bow; four healers; two traders; three Runners; one Ember Keeper, and one Bronze Star.”

He beamed as he finished and a cheer went up that struck Talmir more for its incongruity in the vast surroundings than for any feelings it might call up of their departure from Hearth. Talmir nodded curtly, letting them have it. He already knew the count, of course, but he wanted the men to know it as well. Wanted them to count each day it stayed the same as a victory.

Hopefully, they had many more to come.

“Captain,” Ket said as Talmir made to walk away.

“What is it?”

“The ground,” he said, pointing toward the pit. The other soldiers shuffled to the side so he could see. The flames had seemed lower than they should have been, and now he saw—or rather heard—the reason. As he leaned over the smoldering pit, he saw sand a shade or two darker than that at the surface. There was a faint hiss, softer and less menacing than the sound the drakes had made, and Talmir now recognized the white smoke drifting from the struggling coals as steam.

“A good eye, soldier,” he said, gripping Ket on the shoulder. “And a good sign.”

“Should we dig?” Canta asked. He was a broad-shouldered brute that reminded Talmir of Baas Taldis.

Talmir swept some of the sand away with his boot. He did it again, carving a groove into the surface of the desert. On the third pass, he was down almost to the heel, and already half the trench had been filled back in.

“Sand’s too loose here,” Talmir said. He caught Ket’s eye before addressing the others, including those leaning against the wagon wheels, eyes drifting closed as they waited their turn at watch. “But it’s a good sign. If the old bags are to be believed, we’re not far from the crags.”

“And what’s that mean?” one of the traders, merchants, treasurers—whatever the annoying hangers-on called themselves—asked derisively.

“It means rock,” Talmir said. “Lots of it. And below, water. The same you see staining the sand this high up rests against the black stone below us. We only need to find the vents, and we’ll find the source.”

“And whoever’s making them their homes,” he tossed back. Talmir shrugged, taking it in stride.

“Afraid of making new friends?” Talmir asked and the soldiers shared a chuckle at the merchant’s expense. He said something under his breath, but Talmir let it go. No harm in airing out a bit of tension after a fight—letting it be aired, in any event.

“Besides,” Talmir said, looking up into a sky that had gone gray quicker than he would have thought, “could be rain coming from the east.”

They followed his gaze and then tracked the smoky clouds back to the east, where they churned as an incorporeal legion above the forest plateau that was lost to sight.

“Keep wary,” Talmir said with a nod as he turned on his heel. He paused and shot them a more serious look. “Not weary.” They shared a laugh at that, but it was a nervous one. Just the way he wanted it. He did not show them his smile as he left them to the guttering flames, though he could feel Creyath’s on his back.

Karin would return from his ranging soon enough, but he was not the one Talmir sought now. He rounded the second wagon and passed a pair of milling horses. One of the other Faeykin, a male with white-streaked black hair, ministered to the burns they’d suffered, his palms glowing in the dusk as he brought the animals a measure of calm while he closed their wounds and patched their tough hides.

“Where is Sen?” Talmir asked, and the man looked up at him, harsh features framing a light complexion.

“That way.” He indicated the north and Talmir nodded and left him to it. He left the mounts behind and passed through a wide gap that separated their dune from another. The golden rays of the dying sun hit him full on, but where the day had been hot to the point of threat, this light held the caress of an old friend saying a last goodbye.

A lone figure stood before him, facing the same sunset over the rolling hills. The tops were splashed with molten gold and the bases crept with shadows that grew long and blue. The desert foxes were out. Talmir could see the hints of them cresting the hills, following tracks and trails only they knew.

The Faeykin still looked strange to him. Not for his obvious differences, but for the sameness he and the others had adopted since joining the caravan. The traveling pants and loose-fitting cotton shirts in the place of dragging robes. The hair bound back in a tail rather than free-flowing.

Talmir took a step toward him. Something tickled at his temple and caused him to look up the southern dune. At the top stood Iyana, white hair billowing as it had been the day before. Only now her eyes were not fixed on the western horizon, nor were they focused on him. They were seeking to pierce the one Talmir sought to speak with now.

He waved up to her and she blinked, waving back. He held up a hand to stay her and then continued on, coming to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the man known as Sen. He was taller than the rest, his body more sturdy. If his skin did not show the same milky hue as the Faey of the Valley, Talmir would have thought him another soldier—a good one. But the eyes gave him away, even if they were a sight darker, a sight less brilliant than those belonging to the one who watched them now.

Talmir opened his mouth to speak, but Sen beat him to it.

“You’re going to ask what I was doing,” he said. His tone did not sound accusatory, nor did it hold the defensiveness Talmir might have expected.

“I was.”

“It’s simple, Captain.” He looked Talmir in the eyes, and try as he might, Talmir could not see a hint of deception held therein. “I was trying to help.”

“By standing stock-still before a pack of monsters while the rest of the company retreated?” His tone lacked all subtlety. He did not like Sen, he decided. He had thought as much, but now he let the truth of it wash over him and accepted it as something that was. “Did you mean to make a noble sacrifice to delay them?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Sen said. He held Talmir’s gaze, unmoving and unblinking.

“You meant to fight,” Talmir reasoned, lowering his chin in a manner he knew was condescending. It couldn’t be helped under the circumstances.

“In a manner of speaking. Yes.”

Talmir sighed and shook his head, kicking one of the tiny, foot-sized dunes over and smoothing it out to form a grooved crescent that caught the sunset.

“Sen,” Talmir started, but again the Faeykin interrupted, and now his tone showed some of the condescension Talmir was about to inject into his own.

“I know what you think of us,” he said, and Talmir nearly took a step back. He quirked an eyebrow. “The Faeykin.” Sen bared his teeth, his demeanor shifting so quickly Talmir nearly made a grab for his blade. And just like that, it blew out, replaced by the calm, serene presence he had affected up to now. Perhaps he had put those empathetic powers to use and had sensed Talmir’s martial intent.

“What do I think of you?” Talmir asked, allowing himself to be led even as he bristled at the man’s tone and bearing. Apparently, he had chosen correctly in approaching him away from the camp. Then again, maybe it was Sen who had seen the conversation coming.

“You think us simple healers.”

“Nothing simple about any of the Landkist, near as I can tell,” Talmir said. He meant it. He touched the silver and black pommel of his father’s sword. “Plenty simple about this. I don’t put the same on you. Believe me.”

Sen considered him for a long moment as if assessing the truth of his words, or the intent behind them.

“There is much more to us than you know,” Sen said after a time. “Much more than she knows.” He gave the slightest of nods—little more than a twitch toward the great wall of sand at Talmir’s back—but he knew whom he meant.

Talmir leaned in, feeling suddenly unnerved, and a fair bit riled. Sen did not step back.

“Whatever your power, SenaFaey—” The emerald eyes widened just a bit to expose the whites. “Yes. I know you. I know your name, at least. I don’t let anyone into my company without knowing it. The Valley has many inhabitants, but not so many, Sen. Not too many for me to know. I don’t know your past, but I know you’ve got one. We all do.” Sen’s tongue worked behind his teeth, but he held it. “No better place for one of those than on the road, in my experience.”

“Why did you let me come?” Sen asked, sounding genuine, if unconcerned. “You must know what the others think of me. You must know I’m not like them.”

“The Faeykin of Hearth are as wary of you as most are of them,” Talmir said. “But superstition has no power over me. I’ve fought against the Dark Kind and their dark captains, as you have. I’ve seen demigods wield fire to protect the heart of our people. There are few things that can surprise me. All power has its uses. Even yours, whatever it may be.” Talmir paused. “And whatever it may be, it’s in addition to what we need you for. You’re still a healer, whatever else is floating behind those eyes. She’s still a healer.”

Sen made as if to speak, but Talmir stopped him.

“I earned one name on the walls of Hearth in recent days,” Talmir said. “Dark days. But believe me, Sen. I’ve earned plenty worse in brighter days than these. Before the Dark Kind came spilling in from the Corruption in the mountains, the Valley knew blood. The Valley knew conflict. A few in this company were in it.”

Sen’s look changed, then.

“I’m older than I look, Captain,” he said, and Talmir believed him. He’d thought there was a slant to the ears he hid beneath his golden hair. Now he knew.

“You don’t look like the Faey,” Talmir said.

“Are we done here?” Sen asked, lips forming a tight line.

“That’s entirely up to you.”

Sen regarded him with a steady smolder. He glanced up and smiled at the place where Iyana watched before meeting Talmir’s eyes.

“We all have secrets, Captain Talmir,” he said. “All you need to know of mine is that you’ve got no place in them. None in this company do. Any who did are lost to us, now. Tragedies, one and all.”

“You sound broken up about it.” Talmir spat into the sand.

“I won’t get in your way again, Captain,” Sen said. “But just remember. The next time this company needs saving, an Ember’s fire might not be the only power about.”

Talmir twisted on his heel and left the man in the sunset gateway between dunes. It felt like defeat, but he was too bothered to care.

He felt Sen’s eyes drift away from him, likely alighting back on the ethereal battle being waged on the western horizon. He looked up as he half-walked, half-crawled up the sheer side of the shifting mound and saw Iyana staring at him.

“Graceful,” she said with a smile as he reached the top. Talmir dusted himself off and turned to look back at the bottom. “He’s gone back to the wagons,” she said, answering his questing expression.

Talmir nodded and looked out over the golden-red hills, avoiding her gaze and the questions that came with it.

“Looks like rain,” Iyana said, noting the drifting clouds.

“This being the desert, I’d say you were wrong,” Talmir said. He leaned back and squinted to the east. “This being the wider World—something I know nothing about—I’d say it looks like rain.”

She laughed and he joined her. It felt as good as the breeze that dried his sweat and jarred the grains loose from his chin and chest.

“Perhaps Linn sent it,” Talmir said, regretting it as the words left his lips. He glanced sidelong at Iyana, but in the place of hurt, he saw a look like pride. It warmed him even as the day grew cooler.

“What was all that, Captain?” she asked and he spat again, though his mouth had gone too dry for it.

“Just a talk,” he said, dismissive. He sighed and shifted. “What do you think of him?” The question surprised him even as it seemed to surprise her.

She was a long time answering.

“I’d like to know him better, I think,” she said. After a moment, she added: “There’s something about him. A different sort of power than mine, I think. The others didn’t even want me to help them with healing the horses. I’m not as experienced, I suppose. But then,” her voice rose with her mounting ire, “I was never trained among the Faey themselves.”

Talmir smiled as her eyes glazed over. She prodded him in the side. “What is it?” she asked.

“Each day, you surprise me more and more,” he said. He looked beyond her, trying to make out the gray smudges in the north. “Be careful with him,” he said. “With Sen, I mean.”

“I know what you mean.”

“He is wise, in a way,” Talmir continued. “I’ve no doubt there’s much he can teach you. But there is a chaos to him. Or, if not chaos—”

“I know,” she said again, and he thought she meant it.

He left it at that, unsure what more to say, and they watched the sun dip below the dunes, which were drenched in blue shadow even as those to the north were dyed deep red and purple. It was a striking color Talmir.

“He is here, I think,” Talmir said after a time. His gaze spanned south to north, and always west.

“The Red Waste,” Iyana said. “I think so, too.”

“That makes two fools in the desert,” Talmir said. “And a score more following them.”

Iyana smiled. “I don’t think you’re a fool, Talmir Caru. I think you’re a hero. And I think you’re an idealist.”

Talmir nearly fell. He imagined himself completing a long and comical slide to the shifting base.

“I have to say, that’s the first time I’ve been accused.” It wasn’t. Rain Ku’Ral had said as much. She’d always said it, no matter how often he tried to forget.

Iyana was silent.

“The truth is,” Talmir said with a sigh, “guilt is my great gift. My curse.” Iyana frowned, and her eyes sparked with a bit of that alien glow as the pang ran through him. It was as if she could feel it as he did. Of course, she could.

“Guilt for leaving,” Iyana said, and he could only nod, though he felt like crying, like wetting this dry land before the clouds above them could.

“I know,” he said before she could speak further. “I know why we’re here.”

“Why?” she asked. He did not know if she was leading him. It didn’t matter.

“To find answers,” he said. “To find power, or a means to end it. To find hope.”

He could feel her smile even if he couldn’t see it. Instead, he watched the sun lose its battle just as he saw two figures detach themselves from the rolling piles beyond—Karin and Mial, back from their ranging.

“We must be desperate indeed,” Iyana said, “looking for hope in a land like this.”

“This is a land of desperation, I think,” Talmir said. “All lands are, in their own way. Besides. If we can survive this, the Dark Months will seem a respite.”

As Karin half-walked, half-slid down the lower dunes before them with Mial struggling to affect the same pace, Talmir thought of the desert nomads. Were they really nomads? Or were the Valley-folk walking uninvited into a kingdom beneath the sands? If so, would they be welcomed as friend or foe?

“If we find him,” Iyana started and then stopped. “When we find him, what makes you think we can trust him?”

“Choice,” Talmir said. “More specifically, the lack of it.” He showed her a smile, but judging by her frown, it was lost in the deepening shadows. “The King of Ember trusted him, back when that meant something.”

“It still might,” Iyana said.

“Maybe. Kole Reyna will be the judge of that, for better or worse.”

He took her silence for agreement.

They waited for Karin and Mial to reach them, and listened to the strange howls the desert foxes made as they mixed and clashed with the campfire songs behind and below.

It was a strange music, and not unpleasant. But the campfire songs would die away well before the break of day while the desert foxes would sing their chorus into the reaches of the night—a night darker than all but those of the recent Valley war, now that the clouds had stolen back the sky.

Mother Ninyeva had said the desert was the land of lessons. Just a week into their trek, and already Iyana knew what she meant.

The sun had beat them to the point of near submission. She remembered how it seared her skin and thought of how that glowing disc—so beautiful as it retreated behind the horizon each night—had forced them to take shelter beneath a nest of scaled and slithering horrors just yesterday. She had expected the coming storm to bring some measure of respite.

She had been mistaken.

Iyana sneezed into the soaked sleeve of her shirt, adding an unpleasant slime to the mix, and shivered as she pulled her hood tighter over her head. Her bangs were plastered in place, and she was nearing the point of wanting to rip them out at the roots. She had rolled her trousers up to avoid them catching and pulling on the larger jagged stones beneath the shifting sands, and now they were caked with a pasty mix of the stuff.

A stab of panic struck her when she realized the footprints she had been following had vanished. She looked up, frantic, and saw nothing but brown mud, the dunes appearing like piles of dung with small rivers running between them. It was like a flat painting, a brown smear that continued up and merged with the ugly gray of the cloud-covered skies.

“This way!”

The voice had come from behind. Or was it above? Iyana twisted and whirled, nearly going over as her boots broke the wet crust of the surface and set her splashing into the dry sand below.

“Iyana.”

Now the voice was closer, the howling wind playing its tricks on her. She saw the old scout, Mial, standing on the side of the dune she stood below. He held out a hand to her, but she grimaced and retraced her steps, following the path he’d taken up a thin bridge of crust that separated two mounds.

“Stay close, young one,” he said as he passed her by. “Easy to get turned around out here.” He said it less with condescension and more with real concern.

As they passed the natural gate formed by the two earthen hills, Iyana saw why. The ground dropped away sharply, the tracks the company had left forming shallow depressions the rain was quick to fill. She saw the twin rivers the wagons had left behind. They looked like gutters running with the same slop she’d seen in the alleys of Hearth or among the fishing houses of Last Lake.

At the bottom, the sand flattened some, appearing similar to the cracked plains they had crossed to the east, closer to the land called Center. Far ahead—or perhaps not so far as she thought—she saw what looked like great gray towers. Squinting, she recognized them as great slabs of stone, not man-made but birthed of nature. They loomed across the horizon, standing as silent sentinels atop the flatlands.

“Come, Iyana!”

Karin was at the bottom, helping to free the cart that always seemed to be lagging behind the other. At least now it had some excuse, the mules unable to extricate it from the deeper trench it dug from the lead wagon’s grooves.

She felt a passing fear seeing how far away they had got—the lead wagon and the main congregation of riders and walkers were nearly to the first of the leaning towers.

Iyana waved to Karin and started down, doing her best to avoid stepping into the sloshing mess to either side. At least she had three sets of traveling clothes stowed away with the rest. And if they had been borrowed, she’d borrow someone else’s. They were a single thing, now. That was what the captain said. The caravan was like a caterpillar moving inch by laborious inch across an unforgiving, sun-bleached land.

What she wouldn’t give to have that sun shining now.

“You drifted.”

She had reached the lower ground without noticing and raised her chin to see Karin staring down at her. He wore a smile, but she knew he was concerned.

“It seems I did,” she said. “Good thing I have the First Runner looking after me.”

His eyes tracked the swelling dunes they’d passed over and around, his look changing into the one she knew came most naturally.

“Do you fear them?” she asked, moving to stand beside him.

“The desert foxes?” She could see a pair making their easy, bounding path over the gate they’d just passed through. One stopped to drink from the trough the wagons had dug while the other stood and stared back at them, red tail flicking. Iyana couldn’t tell if it was a warning or something lighter.

“They are everywhere,” Karin said, his voice sounding distant as he scanned. “I’m past the point of thinking that to be coincidence.”

Iyana had to laugh. It helped her focus less on the wind and driving rain—at least it was keeping her hair out of her eyes at this angle—and more on the obvious tension of the man beside her.

“The others have gone ahead,” she said, touching him on the elbow. He kept his sleeves rolled up, exposing scars she had never noticed before. It wasn’t all about running for him, she knew. The Valley had known plenty of blood and bad before the Dark Kind came in number, and Karin had known plenty of it.

“They’ll stop at the slab,” Karin said absently.

“It’s far—”

Iyana started and stopped as she turned to look. She had only walked a short distance since cresting the rise Karin examined now, but already the leaning stone appeared much closer than she had thought, the desert playing its tricks in a way she didn’t mind now. And it wasn’t the one slab, she saw now, but a cloister with a spur that looked like a fin. There were similar cloisters beyond it, and she could see the wagons pulling in behind their mules, the riders stepping down from their horses as the caravan made camp beneath sheltering stones that could house giants.

There was a howl or a bark, and Iyana spun back toward the south. The foxes had been joined by another pack. They now numbered nearly a dozen, and they planted their feet and joined their voices to the wind. They sounded like adolescent hounds, but there was a certain beauty to it that Iyana was beginning to appreciate despite the way it roused the hairs on her arms and along the nape of her neck.

“A challenge?” she asked. But already the largest of them had moved off, scaling the dunes. The pack followed, tails flicking.

Karin smirked, but she felt a twinge beneath it that made her own heart beat faster. She thought to dip into the Between and see his tether thrumming, but tossed it aside. Even as her strange sight became clearer, its uses seemed less so. What was the point of seeing such things, like life threads twisting up out of sight?

“Are we followed?” Iyana asked.

“Of course,” Karin said. “That doesn’t concern me.” He wiped his black bangs away from his face. It still amazed her that no silver had yet to settle there. “I’d be following strangers come to my lands. It’s only dutiful.”

“We’re not strangers,” she said, and firmer than she had expected. He met her eyes, brows tilting.

“Tell that to them,” he said.

“I will.” And she meant it. “They haven’t attacked us. They haven’t tried to frighten us off or intimidate us.”

He smiled, then, and there was something in it that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. The wind picked up and the rain with it, and there was a distant peal of thunder.

“That’ll come closer,” Karin said. “Come. Let’s get dry. Or stop getting wet, at least.”

They began to walk toward the leaning slab and the company beneath it. Iyana could smell the ozone as Creyath worked over the makeshift fire pit the soldiers had dug, trying to get the damp wood lit.

“Why did you react that way?” Iyana asked, slowing as they passed under the the great shelf where the mules milled among the horses that would have them as company. The animals chuffed and twitched their tails as they passed, likely thinking they had come to hitch them back to the wagons and drive them out into the storm.

“There are many ways to intimidate and to threaten,” Karin said. “It’s true that the folk of the desert—wherever they’re from, truly—have not come against us openly. Perhaps they cannot, yet. Maybe they’re gathering even now to do so. But they have made themselves seen. And they’ve made themselves unseen in ways only I can see.” He shook his head and then wrung the water from his hair. “For all we know, they led us into that gap knowing right where it would put us.”

“You said you saw one of them,” Iyana said. “Or thought you did, on the edges of the bowl.”

“I saw him.” Karin spat. It was strange to see him do it. “They’re no different than those desert foxes, always on the periphery. Always watching. Close enough to strike and far enough to run.”

It made sense that Karin would see it that way, but Iyana wasn’t so sure.

“Or,” she started as she passed further under the half-arch, “perhaps they’re simply scared, or wary.”

A grunt was the only reply, and Karin moved off. He did his thinking on the move. Much as he might like to be dry, he’d have the whole place paced backward, forward and side-to-side by the time night fell.

As for the place, Iyana was pleasantly surprised, all things considered.

The shelf, which loomed nearly half the height of the rocky cliffs above Westhill, leaned in such a way that the worst of the pour was kept off them, the rain forming rivers on the underside that ran in the wrong direction and glowed in the reflected yellow light that burned below it. She followed the golden river down to where the base of the stone met a confusion of jagged rock. These were darker of hue, more blue-black than the obsidian of the southern Valley. They sparkled, and as she drew closer, Iyana saw that it was not merely the work of water and flickering flame, but rather that of myriad white chips that shone through the translucent surface like a canvas of tiny stars.

“Least we’ve refilled our skins and casks.” She recognized Talmir’s voice and turned to see him staring at her. He nodded curtly. “You can remove your hood, now, Iyana.”

She did, flushing. Around her, the party members finished spreading feed for the horses and arranged themselves between the wedge the wagons formed and as close to the licking flames as they could. Most were bare-chested. Even the few women among them had stripped to match them. Jes leaned against a wagon wheel, as she was wont to do, holding her bandaged forearm. Iyana saw the red-haired Faeykin climbing into the back of the covered wagon. Verna. She tried to keep the name committed. The older one followed her, and Iyana was caught between wanting to follow and wanting to do anything but.

The fire was warm against her shin, so she bent and rolled the cloth up tighter. She’d change soon enough, when the rain relented. Now, she concentrated on warming herself as she found a place next to the young soldier named Ket. He scooted to the side, glancing at her sheepishly. He offered a small wooden bowl, which she took graciously and drank from.

“Venison?” he asked, holding up a cut of dried and salted meat.

“Later,” she said with a smile. She saw some of the other soldiers glancing their way with smirks and knowing smiles. She looked at Ket with renewed interest, but he blinked away from her bright eyes and she flushed because of it.

Creyath stared at her over the open flame, his eyes burning with an inner fire the pit could not match. There was a time not long ago when Iyana might have felt uncomfortable under that amber stare. Now, it warmed her. It felt solid and strong. A thing known in a land that was anything but. He looked back down into the blaze with the hint of a smile.

A flash of lilac lit the underside of the slick gray stone and drenched them all. A few men scrambled, and more than a few horses, though Creyath’s black charger stayed rooted. Iyana sighed and watched the sky over the animal’s profile, delighting when the next spider web of purple light arced across it, splitting the plane in all directions before fading. There was no crash to signal the lightning. It was a storm of silent fury, and they watched it like children, regaled for as long as it lasted.

Even Karin stopped his pacing awhile to look, and for something other than danger for a change.

“Perhaps the rain was worth it,” Iyana said. That drew a laugh, and even a halfhearted cheer from the place Jes rested. Iyana felt a pang for her. She thought to offer help, but the stubborn scout had refused further attentions by the party’s healers.

The thought prompted a new question and a new swell of panic as Talmir finally sat down among them.

“Where is Sen?” Iyana asked. Talmir cast about and some of the soldiers did as well, though their search was halfhearted. The captain sighed and made to stand, but Iyana stayed him. “I’ll go.” He frowned, but she didn’t give him a chance to raise further complaint, making for the north-facing wagon.

She knocked on the upraised board and felt a fool for doing so. After a moment, the older Faeykin with silver streaks in his black hair parted the canvas flap. “Trying on clothes?” Iyana asked, cursing herself inwardly as her joke was rewarded with a flat look. She peered behind him and saw Verna locked in some form of meditation. Her hands hovered over one another, and she could see the beginnings of a pulsing yellow-green light gather between them.

“Yes?” the Faeykin asked, impatient. Courlis. That was his name. She didn’t like him, and now she remembered why.

“I was looking for Sen.” A blank stare. “Do you know where he is?”

“Around back,” Courlis said, nodding sharply behind her. He withdrew, pulling the canvas down rather than letting it drop on its own, and Iyana was filled with that stony rage only the Ve’Ran name could call up. She closed her eyes and counted, clenching and unclenching her fists. She knew she was more frustrated by the exclusion than the rudeness. She could abide strange. Landkist were meant to be strange. But how was she ever going to learn more than the Faey Mother had taught her if her own kind considered her too low to turn their noses at?

Frustrated, she turned away from the wagon, peering through the shadows of the partial cave in the direction Courlis had indicated. At first, she saw nothing. Then, as she scanned to the left, she saw the beginnings of what looked to be a natural stair. Or, if not a stair, then a tumble of loose stones that resembled the fangs of some long-dead beast. It wound around the side of the leaning slab, up behind the base and—she guessed—into the open.

Iyana followed it, thankful no one tried to stop her. Rolling her sleeves up, she navigated the slick stones carefully and ducked under the slanted stone, wincing when she found the sky brighter through the heavy cloud cover than she had expected.

She stood still and steady for a beat, and then another. She tickled the Between and it tickled back, and when she opened her eyes she saw everything in much the same way as she had before, save for one small difference.

Ahead, where the toothy, rooted tumble curved to the right, she saw a slab far smaller than the great one and larger than those that formed the walled trench around her. It formed a tunnel of sorts—a cave at the back of the lonely spur, and in its shallow depths, she saw a green light emanating.

“Sen?”

The light flickered and swelled, and Iyana walked forward, emboldened.

She had to duck her head to dip into the cavern, but once inside, she was surprised at how far it went. It seemed the spur concealed the entrance to some deep chasm. To her right, the cave came up against the sheer wall the great slab made. To her left, it sloped down, the ground covered by hundreds of loose rocks before dropping away into a black and endless depth.

Sen was there, glowing green with that form-fitting aura that was unlike anything else she had seen. He was fussing over something, and she crouched and moved forward to see what. She edged around his right side and nearly gasped.

Below him and above the chasm of untold depth was a shallow depression in the cliff face. In its center was a loose circle of black stones ringed by a pool of water. And atop the jagged pedestal was a purple flower, deeper than midnight—dark and bright all at once. It had sharp petals that cut the darkness and seemed to call out a challenge to the deep lands below, and at its center was a red tongue with tiny wings that reminded her of a dragonfly.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Sen said, his voice carrying clear in the green- and purple-lit dark. “How life can cling, given the chance.”

Iyana looked from the flower up to Sen. His eyes, so much like hers, were piercing instead of soft. He studied the flower in fascination, but she wondered what he saw in it.

“Beautiful,” she said. His eyes flicked her way before settling back, and he ran his green-glowing hand just around the edges of the bloom, careful not to touch.

“You’ve been avoiding me, Iyana Ve’Ran,” he said. It did not sound like an accusation, just a statement of fact. But it felt like one, and Iyana knew it was the truth.

“Your fellows don’t make it easy,” she said, lowering herself into a seated position among the loose stones. She should have felt frightened, perched so close to the edge of the chasm, but the little flower wasn’t, so what right did she have?

“I am not them,” Sen said.

“And what are you?” Iyana asked, her tone showing that she was through with his riddling ways. He paused his examination of the desert flower and seemed to weigh the question.

“I am life,” he said. “Just the same as you, but not the same as they.” He tossed his head toward where the caravan sat gathered around their yellow fire.

“They are life as well,” Iyana said. “So is that.” She nodded at the flower.

“Yes,” he said. “But they do not wield it like we do. Bend it.” As he spoke, he passed his hand around the purple head. It followed him like a snake might, dancing in a bobbing pattern as he pulled it along.

“Strings,” he said, almost absently.

“Tethers,” Iyana said. He seemed to regard her with a look of appreciation, then.

“No matter what they tell you,” he said, “you are no mere healer, Iyana Ve’Ran. You are a master of life.” It sounded strange to her.

“My lessons with Ninyeva only progressed so far before the end,” she said, trying not to think on it. The images were never far from her mind, but she kept them from the front.

“I hear she battled the White Crest himself before that end,” Sen said, sounding awed. “Before her end, and his. I heard she had a lot to do with the state the Sage found himself in at the end. That it was her hand that weakened the shell enough for the Ember King to crack it.”

“I was there.”

“I know,” he said. “I heard that, too.”

She met his eyes, green on green, looking for a challenge that wasn’t there and apparently raising her own.

“I believe you,” he said. “You mistake me, Iyana. I believed in the Faey Mother as well.”

“Did you know her? You trained among the Faey, yes? You lived among them for a long time. You are not of Hearth, like the others, but from the Scattered Villages.”

Sen was silent for a space too long.

“I knew her, briefly,” he said. “Too briefly.”

“She wouldn’t teach you,” Iyana said, catching an impression. It was strong and sour, and Sen’s eyes flashed. He looked older, then. But the look passed quick enough.

“But she did teach you,” he said, dropping his examination of the flower and letting it droop. It looked more ordinary, now, but still beautiful. A silent sentinel against the dark, and not one sent from the World Apart.

“Not enough,” Iyana said with a sigh. “If you’re looking to learn her secrets from me, you’ll be disappointed. I have little to offer.”

“Now, maybe,” Sen said. He did not sound disappointed. “Perhaps I can teach you, and in so doing, learn.”

Iyana did not know what to say, so she said nothing.

“There are tethers everywhere,” he said, gazing down into the dark. “You know that much.”

“It doesn’t feel like it out here,” Iyana said.

“Oh, but that is where you are wrong.” He sounded firm. “Take this beauty here. Could I have traced its tether among the hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of similar plants in the Valley?”

“I suppose not,” Iyana allowed.

“Out here,” he continued, “life needs to be strong. It needs to last, or else wither.” He passed his hand over the flower again, and again it seemed to follow him.

“How are you doing that?” Iyana asked, unable to keep the question in.

“Tethers can be touched,” he said, and the purple flower bobbed and swayed at his whim. “Pulled.” He jerked his hand and a petal tore free. It went spinning and tumbling into the depths. His brow furrowed in concentration, and the green aura around his hand turned sickly, bits of black and yellow infusing it at the edges like wisps of steam. As she watched, the same coloring tinged the flower from clinging roots to stem before the top went black.

Iyana felt sick, though she knew it was just a flower. Sen watched her.

“Won’t you try to heal it?” he asked. He did not sound mocking. “To put it back together?”

“I can’t.”

He leaned back. “You know you can’t?”

She did.

“That is the power we can possess,” he said. “A hurt there’s no coming back from.”

“It looks like you’ve got it all figured out,” Iyana said. “What would you need Ninyeva’s gifts for?”

“Ah, but this is just a desert flower,” he said. “To bend and break this and things like it—those scaled mongrels from before, beasts and lesser fiends of poor persuasion—that is no gift.” His eyes flashed and his green outline flickered. “But to weaken the White Crest, one of the great powers of the World.” His eyes widened. “That is a power that could threaten the Eastern Dark himself. A power that could stave off the World Apart. A power to protect.”

Iyana regarded him with a sinking feeling that mixed disgust with anger and came up pitying.

“Is that why you keep your tether so close?” she asked. “Why you wrap it about yourself as you do? So that others cannot use it against you?”

His brows drew together. “One can never assume what one might come against. There could be others like us. Lesser, but no less dangerous because of it. You should guard your tether as well, Iyana. I can show you how.”

“Whatever that thread grants me,” Iyana said, “I use it to heal. To mend. You might think it a paltry and misguided effort, but I think it’s the only good thing left to do in a World obsessed with the thing you’re chasing.”

She stood and stepped around him, cutting a wide berth.

“I wish you luck in finding what it is you’re looking for, Sen,” she said.

“There are others in the desert,” he said, stopping her just short of the cave mouth. “Not the nomads. There are others digging in the wrong places. Pulling on the wrong threads, as you think I’m doing. You’ve felt it. I know you have. I’ve seen you staring over the western rises in the nights. I fear Creyath’s flames may not be enough to stop it.”

With that, she left him. He did not try to stop her.

It was brighter outside than it had been, despite the onset of evening. The clouds had begun to lose their battle with the desert dry and were slowly clearing, and the west was again bathed in the golden-purple haze that now reminded her of the flower Sen had ruined.

She thought it looked the color of poisoned blood tonight, and felt sick as she sought out the cleansing warmth of the fire between the wagons.

Karin woke before the others. Well, most of them.

Creyath stood on the edge of the camp, his back to the rest. He stood just outside the shortened shadow of the great slab, out on the ribbed surface of the sand that had changed from muddy brown to patched yellow in the new light of dawn.

The Ember never seemed to sleep. Perhaps it was owing to the ease with which he lived his life. The ease with which he rode his black charger across the wind-swept dunes just as easily as he had over the rock-strewn fields before Hearth. The same ease with which the western rises clashed with the latent power held beneath. Karin had had the privilege of witnessing Creyath’s power firsthand on two occasions now. Neither had been pleasant.

As he rolled up his bedroll—little more than a canvas flap and the thicker shirt he’d brought from home to use as a pillow—and slipped on his black boots, Karin eased the tension that had built in the night. He never slept long, and as each bend in his morning routine elicited a pop or snap, he was reminded why.

Karin moved over the sleeping camp like a ghost might, quieter even than the desert foxes that had been too timid to venture beneath the shaded expanse they sheltered in, though he could see their tracks just outside the crescent. Captain Talmir stirred. He would be waking soon, and Karin meant to be back from his ranging before the caravan had a chance to order itself and break the line of dunes he meant to first.

He sought out the horses, which were collected between one of the wagons and the jagged edges of the tumble beside the spur, and smiled to see that they had finally admitted the merchants’ mules into their esteemed company.

“Not easy, I know,” he said as he stroked a chestnut mare on the snout—the one Iyana tended to ride. His thoughts turned to the two they’d lost to the horrors in the sandy bowl, the first casualties of a fool’s quest if ever there was one.

The first.

He tried to shake the thought and moved away from the animals, the chestnut mare giving him a snort and nudge as he did.

As he rounded the wagon, he peered in through a slit in the canvas and saw Iyana curled on a sack of oats beside the water casks. Her face was locked in a frown, and Karin worried that something was amiss. Until now, she had preferred to sleep out beneath the stars in the company of the horses and other riders—even the Faeykin, who seemed to pay her less mind than they did the rest of the company. She had spoken to Sen, the strangest of the lot, the night before, and Karin felt a fatherly swell that had him considering striking up his own conversation with the man when the opportunity next presented itself.

“Sleep doesn’t agree with you, does it, Mit’Ahn?” Karin said as he stepped up beside the Ember. He delighted in the kiss of the morning light as he broke the plane from shadow to sand, though he knew he would come to loathe it soon enough.

Creyath showed him the smile that was never far from his face, the effect of his orange eyes somewhat dimmed in the bright of day.

“I sleep in pieces,” Creyath said, turning back to the west. He did not elaborate and Karin did not need him to. He could appreciate a man of few words. After all, Sarise had always had plenty for the both of them.

As he did every morning, he closed his eyes and faced the direction of the sun, though it had yet to rise over the great gray stone that had been their silent guardian in the storm. Even still, he knew its arc, and he called up an image of the only woman he’d ever loved. It was never slow in coming, and while the hair had been the thing most had remembered about her, Karin liked her nose best and how it had drawn any observer up to those shocking greens. She always had a different expression when she arrived each morning. Today, she looked concerned, her brows drawn together in a way that mixed frustration with a slow anger like only she could.

And there was a touch of fear to it. A quiver to the lips that gave him pause. But Sarise A’zu feared nothing. She never had. He liked to think that was true right up until the end.

“She was something,” Creyath said as Karin sighed without meaning to.

“Most in the Valley remember her fire,” Karin said, opening his eyes. “It’s the only thing I’d like to forget about her.”

“Ah,” Creyath said, “but in my memory of her—limited though it may be—she was her fire.” Karin would have liked him to explain this time, but let it drop. He might like to think of her, but speaking brought the hurt out, and Karin had enough of that to last a lifetime. He’d seen enough of it on the face of his son, heard it deep into the nights for years on end, as if Kole was burning up along with her right up until his own fire woke.

Something of prophecy, Doh’Rah had said. There was something of prophecy to that boy and his mother. And though Tu’Ren’s father had been the one to say it, it was the way Mother Ninyeva had stayed quiet that Karin remembered. Her silence spoke. It said plenty.

Karin tucked his loose black shirt into his matching, tight-fitting trousers and checked his belt. He pulled his long knife free from its sheath with his left hand and held it at eye level. He kept it horizontal and then tilted it, bringing it close. Its edges were clean, the oil in the leather doing its work well despite the sand and coarseness of the land they now found themselves in. Despite the burning ichors it had worn as it exited the skull of the land drake two days before.

He replaced the blade and stepped forward, the wind blowing his black bangs in a reminder that his tie had snapped during their flight.

“Be careful today, Reyna,” Creyath said, and the way he said it had Karin pausing for a moment. He did not turn, but rather waited for the Ember to speak again. Surprisingly, he did. “I have been watching those dunes since the sun rose.”

“And?” Karin asked, staring from west to north, where the other spurs and great gray slabs jutted up like the bones of long-dead titans.

“Nothing,” Creyath said. “There has been nothing, and more of it than in the days prior.”

It was as cryptic as anything else the Second Keeper of Hearth was wont to say, but Karin took its meaning well enough. He moved off at a walk that soon changed into a jog, which became an alternating dash.

Slow-fast-slow. Fast-slow. Up-down-up. Down-side.

It was a cadence he had developed when learning alongside the other Runners during his training on the edges of the Untamed Hills. His teachers had taken the younger scouts to the most densely-forested lands of the southern Valley, their games seeming pointless at a time when the only enemies they had need to fear were imagined. The Dark Kind had not come in years, with no rifts opening in the Valley since Karin was a boy, and even then, never more than a pack.

As he ran, his boots breaking through the thin crust of the undulating desert surface to expose the dust beneath, Karin thought of those early days. He thought of how he had laughed when one of the other Runners had fallen during their many challenges—chasing deer or black hares. He thought of how the same man had fallen years later under the pursuit of a band of Rivermen led by a Rockbled, a brute as impossibly fast as he was strong.

Karin had kept running, then. He had orders. And he had never run so fast. In the ensuing years of conflict—the three tribes of the Valley finding it difficult to coexist through one misunderstanding or another that led to blood and the liberal sharing of it—many Runners fell and less were willing to take up the mantle. Until, when he was old enough and felt wise enough to have a son, Karin was named First Runner.

Until that fateful night he had come upon the Dark Kind, and became the last.

He had run then, too. The Runners knew their code. They knew the twin towns and the Scattered Villages alike had to be warned. They carried out their charge and Karin carried out his. It just so happened that they died doing it. None joined the next wave to call themselves Runners. There was only one.

He had always been fast. Sometimes, he wished he wasn’t.

Before he knew it, Karin had split the first pair of dunes. He was still amazed at the little differences such a land of sameness could display. After all, sand was sand, no matter how you piled it. And yet, the rows and ridges of dunes great and small—hillocks and eddies, pits and burrows—made it a land at once immediate and unknowable to outsiders.

But not to all.

He stopped at the foot of a dune whose sand still ran in small currents, unaffected by the wind that was only just beginning to carry the heat of the day. The desert foxes had been out, their paw prints dotting the rise before him. He looked for them at the top but saw no silhouettes, and as he turned in a slow circle, he saw that he was in the middle of a rounded bowl beset by tall piles on all sides. Each of them ran with its own small rivers of earth, and Karin felt unnerved despite the poise his body displayed.

He crouched as he heard the suggestion of voices on the wind, thinking he had been lured or trapped. A change in the currents of air and he whirled, knife screaming toward the throat of his attacker.

He froze.

Directly before him sat one of the thin canines that had shadowed them throughout their trek. The fox regarded him with speckled eyes; yellow, with flecks of lavender. Karin breathed out slowly and withdrew the knife, straightening as the fox stared, tongue lolling as it panted.

A yip drew his attention upwards. Atop the dune he’d examined moments before, the rest of the pack watched him. These were far more nervous than the one sitting before him. They yipped and barked—seemingly at their fellow more than Karin—pacing and loping in tight, crossing patterns as they made ready to move on from the stranger.

Karin nodded at the one who sat, feeling strange to do it but stranger to not, and turned on his heel, meaning to strike out north before circling back to the east to catch the caravan out on the spur-topped flat. As he did, the fox made a growling sound. It was too high-pitched to threaten like Shifa or one of the wall hounds of the Lake, but it was disturbing nonetheless.

“What?” Karin asked, twisting around to get a look and blading his body in the case of an attack. He kept the pack in his periphery. He didn’t think they’d make for something as big as him or even half as deadly, but this seemed a land that made desperate things.

The fox was standing now. It seemed to be looking beyond him, toward the spurs and rocky rises that merged with the dunes to the north.

Karin took it as a warning, and dipped a bow that did not feel half as foolish as the question he’d asked.

He moved between the dunes, feeling suddenly exposed in the vast closeness. The sand stretched endlessly in every direction, but the rises and falls made for perfect ambush zones. In times such as these Karin trusted his instincts, which always came down to a choice between two extremes: fast, or slow.

Slow.

He crept more than walked, passing between two piles that rose higher than the tallest buildings of Hearth. The foxes were behind him, now, which made the loose slides of pouring sand that fell around him an accident of the wind or anything but. Karin hugged the eastern dune and rounded its base, looking more out of the corners of his eyes than straight ahead.

The next gap opened into a shallow canyon ringed on all sides by sharp-peaked hills of sand that formed a wall more than a row, the crust from yesterday’s rain undisturbed by animal tracks. In the center of the bowl, bits of white flashed as the sun neared its zenith—loose stones unearthed in the wind that carved the place. Or bones.

Karin kept his body side-on toward the center as he half-crept, half-crawled up the eastern wall, which crumbled under his weight and had him sliding as often as climbing. The sand here was different than it had been, the loose stuff beneath the shell thinner than that he’d felt before, less coarse and easier to slip or catch. Heart quickening, he began to scale a more horizontal path, seeking fresh crust with which to climb lest he fall too far. He did not think about going back the way he’d come. He knew better than that.

As Karin neared the top, he froze, hearing something on the wind apart from the howl between the crags just over the next ridge. It sounded like a keening wail, angry and in pain. He renewed his scramble, then froze again, seeing the bright sand around him drenched in a shadow shaped like a man.

Karin did not wait for the stroke to fall. Instead, he planted as best he could in the slipping surface and caught a stone beneath his boot by good fortune. He used it to propel himself back in a desperate fall that was just a hair quicker than the lunge the figure made for him. As the open air greeted his back, he saw the stranger framed against the afternoon sun and the blue skies that ringed it. He was dark of skin—not unlike Karin himself—and mostly bare but for ragged clothes and scales to cover the rest. His eyes were more white than anything else, and crazed, but it was his teeth that stood out. In place of bleached white or yellowed decay, they were red, a color that matched the patterns painted across his skin, dark and rotted in hue.

The bottom of the rounded pit was harder than Karin had anticipated. He landed with a force that jarred him and set him coughing. He only noticed the shards littering his back as he rolled, the sharp pains lancing like glass. He came to stand and whipped his long knife free, and now he heard the chanting renewed and emboldened.

He spun in quick circles as the figures detached themselves from the bright canvas of the sky to ring him atop the deathly canyon. The sounds of crunching beneath his feet dispelled any lingering doubt: this ground had been dug, and the crunching and snapping things beneath him had been trapped as he was now. He did not spare a glance to see if they had belonged to man or beast.

The figures—perhaps a dozen—all appeared in a similar state to the one who’d attacked him. They stood on bowed legs, eyes wild. They were thin and gangly and varied in height, though their complexions were equally matched. Now he saw a bit of yellow pallor beneath the brown. These men and women were sick, and—Karin knew without knowing—beyond saving.

He only hoped the same was not true for him as the chanting rolled in from the north and the blood-toothed savages made for him, beginning their slides as if they’d done it a thousand times before. They rode the sand, clutching their bone-white blades and jagged lengths of obsidian they might have picked up on the way, and they snarled and spat like cats with mange.

The desert foxes voiced their complaints, their howls mixing strangely with the rhythmic chanting and turning it into a discordant sound that seemed to make the red-tooths waver. They expected him to run, as all pack creatures do when they leave an opening, and Karin still had his. He saw the gap through which he’d entered the trap and cursed himself a fool for not recognizing it as the only one.

But he would not run. Despite what his title implied, being First Runner did not mean being the fastest or the most agile. It did not mean endurance or fortitude or will, though it did encompass all those things. It meant, quite simply, knowing when to run, and in which direction.

Karin chose forward.

As the first of the gangly men reached the basin, loose stones tumbling as he worked to steady himself, Karin didn’t let him. He speared forward faster than a wolf—almost as fast as an Ember with hot blood—and in spite of his hatred of killing he took some measure of satisfaction in seeing the man’s eyes widen as Karin’s blade found a path up behind them through his chin.

Before he could fall, Karin spun, flinging the broken dead thing before the path of the next two—snarling, vicious women who clutched blades longer than he wanted to meet. He chose the next in line, and even as he ducked a desperate strike and recognized the lack of martial skill brought against him, he knew he could not win out.

He stabbed this one in the gut and pushed up, putting shoulder to chest with enough force to jar the bones and get the blood pumping—out rather than in—and then leapt past, putting his back to the west-facing slope as ten enemies formed a crescent around him.

One dead and another dying, and now the rest knew his speed and his cunning. Even with the discordant melodies from the northern crags and whatever wild stuff the foxes put up, they would fall on him and rend him apart.

How many would he kill? Less than if he’d been younger.

“Do you speak?” Karin asked. The answer was the next one darting in. He gave her a gash that cut to the bone and her next snarl almost sounded like a word, albeit one of pain and anger. He spun away and the pack adjusted, bending around him, his initial aggression now rewarded by the hesitance wolves showed around a bull elk.

Karin was nearly caught between beats as his attackers proved their cunning. One leaned in with a prod. He carried the longest weapon—a curved spear that looked as though it might be a broken bow with a sharpened edge. Karin dodged, recognizing the feint too late to avoid damage but soon enough to avoid death as another scored a hit that opened a wound along his side to match those screaming across his back. He felt the blood mixing with the sweat and wondered whether the blades or the heat would kill him first.

A sound like the whoosh of wings cut through the chanting, and a shadow carrying a new brightness soared. It was a streaking comet—one of Creyath’s flaming shafts—and it burst in a blinding flare that trailed motes of flame and Everwood and sent the tribesmen scattering, their looks a mix of awe and fear.

Karin did not waste the opportunity. He shot forward, scoring a slice that parted the neck of one even as he ducked a desperate counter from another. He tripped forward, rolled back to standing. Back to running. He only noticed that the conjured sounds of chanting and the foxes’ collective howls had ceased when he reached the gap, only to find it blocked by a form he recognized even if he didn’t know.

He slid to a halt before the man. He was tall and well-muscled. A leaner version of the Rivermen of the south and with a lighter coloring that had been baked red-bronze in the unforgiving sun. They paused there for half a breath and the man—whose eyes were silver—gray—raised his hand too quickly to mean anything but harm.

Karin ducked, heart catching as he rolled. He lanced his leg out, meaning to take the stranger’s feet out from under him, and screamed in agony when his shin met what felt like a mountain face. He rolled away and came up, only to fall back down, and then he saw the mess the stranger had made of the lead savage.

Karin could only guess which of them had been unmade, but the form lying crumpled at the stranger’s feet was missing most of a head and plenty else beside. The stranger’s fist was unmarred; even the blood had strayed away, and its wielder, dressed in simple clothes and bearing a torn scarf that acted as much as a hood as a ragged cape, swept his slow, considered gaze over the nine who remained.

One stayed long enough to show him those bloody teeth, but the pack was gone as soon as they had appeared, and the fell chanting on the wind went with them, back to the north and the gray stones that littered its ways.

Karin’s shin was throbbing. As he straightened, he tested his weight on it and nearly went down in a heap. Broken. No two ways about it.

The gray-eyed stranger eyed the rivulets of sand that betrayed his attackers’ flight and then regarded the mess at his feet with a cold and dispassionate stare.

Karin made as if to speak but found the words lacking. He heard the shouts pour in from his left and cringed as they were sent back in desperate echoes from the pit in which he and the stranger stood. The other man spun and widened his feet, wary of the newcomers’ approach, and Karin heard the thunder of hooves.

“They are friends!” he shouted, reaching his hand out as the stranger tensed to spring. He paused just long enough to see two horses break the plane: the black charger carrying its Ember and the painted mare carrying Talmir Caru. The former clutched the reins in his right hand and had stowed his bow in favor of the Everwood blade that was more a sickle in the left, as yet unlit. The latter held his silver blade aloft, its brightness reflecting off the bronze medal that bounced free from his loose-fitting shirt.

“Wait!” Karin shouted again. Now he addressed his allies, holding one hand toward them as they pulled up, horses’ hooves sliding in the gravel of the narrow gap. Behind them, more riders pulled into view, and Karin saw Jes and Mial among them. Finally, the chestnut mare carrying Iyana Ve’Ran—riding alone and unencumbered—and Karin questioned whether he should give the being beside him the chance to parley after all, given what he’d seen him do.

“What happened?” Talmir asked, urging his mount forward as he held up a hand to those behind. Karin saw Iyana drifting at the back, trying to get a look at him. In front, Creyath kept the stranger in his sights, though Karin saw his eyes switch quickly to the mess behind him.

“Speak!”

Talmir’s shout set the stranger into action. He took two steps forward quicker than the captain expected. The painted mare reared and Talmir brought his saber down, and then the stranger was up in a flash of gray and silver, somersaulting over horse and rider and then, impossibly, higher still. He twirled in a graceful tumble and came down just as quick, landing atop a crest thrice the height of the horses with a heaviness that started a generous pour of sand.

He stayed poised on the balls of his feet, fingers splayed in the sand, and stared with that same strange dispassion, seemingly waiting on the captain to make the next move.

Karin feared he would, the initial shock of the stranger’s leap now replaced by the need to act. Just as Talmir opened his mouth to speak—to give either challenge or orders—another voice rose from behind the newcomer.

“Ceth!”

His gray eyes widened in recognition.

“Ceth! Did you find them?”

It sounded like an old man, and nothing like the mad voices on the wind that had nearly heralded Karin’s death.

The stranger named Ceth rose, slow and deliberate. He kept his eyes on the company caught staring in the maze between dunes and turned toward the sound of the old man’s voice. He leapt, and now Karin’s thoughts spun more, as his arcing flight did little to disturb the sand on which he had stood.

“Captain?” Creyath asked, calm as the rest were nervous.

“Follow,” Talmir said. The others complied as the captain reached down and offered Karin a hand, pulling him up onto the back of the mare. Karin gritted his teeth as the animal lurched forward, his leg bouncing sharply on the side.

“I think he is a friend,” Karin shouted over the wind as the riders left the pit and rounded the bends between ridges in the direction the one called Ceth had gone. They passed the Faeykin—Iyana and Sen regarding them with concern and aloofness, respectively—and kept single-file as they moved.

Shortly after, the hard-packed trail opened up onto a spill that ran up at a slow incline. They took it, the horses slowing as their hooves sunk deeper, and soon they were arrayed in a staggered line atop a plateau of sand that stretched into the distance, a flat-topped shelf bisecting the dunes to the north and south.

Before them, arranged in a similarly haphazard way, was a company that numbered less than half of theirs—if you didn’t count the foxes that ringed the tall figure in front, who was either the Sage they sought or a Landkist of some power.

The leader wore a threadbare shawl that was bright as blood, and his followers wore a mix of matching reds and the silver-grays of the leaping stranger. The latter had silver hair to match Ceth’s. They were taller than the others and lighter of complexion, and their eyes matched their hue. The rest looked like healthier versions of the men who’d attacked Karin minutes before. They were a mix of male and female, and though the lot of them had blades at their belts and bows slung across their chests—all but for Ceth and the old man—they did not look eager to use them.

“I see you’ve met our red friends,” the old man said, his voice full and rich. “They are rather … forward. Wouldn’t you say, Ceth?” He drew out the hiss at the start of the name and slapped the other man on the back.

Ceth stared at Talmir, Creyath and the rest of them as Ket, Mial, Jes with her bandaged hand and the soldiers beside them looked askance at their captain. The old man’s smile disappeared, replaced by what Karin guessed was annoyance. He stood a bit straighter under their scrutiny, and Karin could almost see the intelligence and quick wit in his eyes from here. He had been taller and stronger than Ceth in his youth. Of that, Karin held no doubt. Now, his long, aged face more resembled one of the foxes that sat beside him, gaze forward, eyes looking through rather than at.

“Who are you?” Talmir asked. He asked it of the man called Ceth, but the old man stepped forward.

“You already know his name,” he said. “Would you care for theirs?” He swept his hand out to include the others, who ringed him like protective sons and daughters.

“Fine, then,” Talmir said. “Who are they?”

“They are what you left behind,” the old man said without skipping a beat. His eyes twinkled with a hint of mischief. “They are what you think.” He looked back at a few, especially those who wore their red sashes. “And they are the same.” He pointed at the row of Valley riders without looking.

Karin heard the soft parting of sand between hooves and looked to the right, wincing as the wounds in his back pulsed and throbbed. Iyana pulled up on her chestnut mare, her green eyes focused on him and his hurt despite the circumstances. He smiled to reassure her, but he knew it was weak.

“Not too deep,” he said with a wince as Talmir turned the painted horse, jarring his leg as it slapped against its muscled flank. Iyana frowned.

“And you, old man,” Talmir asked, voice projecting strength that was anything but forced. “Who are you? And no riddles.”

The old man had been looking toward Iyana, his gaze lingering, and on Sen as he pulled up beside her. He switched back to Talmir and smiled.

“I am who you think I’m not,” he said. “What is it you called me when you left? Sandstorm?” He looked to Ceth, who shrugged. He looked at those behind him. Dark and pale, they had no answer. “The Western Watcher. Yes? No.” He saw their blank looks. “The Red Waste, then.” He smiled. “A name never earned, yet widely spread.”

Talmir was too stunned to respond, or too disbelieving. The only sound was the stamp of the horses’ hooves and the faint squeal of the wagon wheels as the merchants, Faeykin and few soldiers left behind worked to maneuver them through the twisted corridors and up the softer stuff of the sandy flat.

“Come along, then,” the old man said, turning. “Leave your wagons. They won’t make it.”

“We need our stores,” Talmir called. The old man waved it away without turning. The others followed without question, while Ceth stood watching. “Plenty where we’re going,” the old man said, his words carrying back on the wind. “Take what you can carry.”

“What of the others?” Talmir sounded desperate. “The savages will be back.”

“No!” the old man yelled, getting farther away. “They’re near as far from where they should be as you lot. They won’t bother. Not with Ceth here.”

Karin did not miss the way the man left himself out. He leaned forward as a wave of nausea nearly overcame him.

“Captain,” Iyana said, worried. “We need to get him somewhere I can work.”

Talmir twisted in the saddle as Karin fought to stay conscious. He sighed, a mix of concern and frustration.

“Sages,” he spat. Then, to the rest: “Go back to the wagons. Take the beasts. Take what you can carry.”

Even two months before, they might have questioned him. Now, they snapped into motion without a word or backward glance.

Talmir Caru had said a thing. They would do it.

Karin smiled as he drifted, the sun and loss of blood doing its work. He felt strong hands grab him as the soldiers helped him down from the captain’s mount and placed him on what felt like a canvas flap. It was cool, and as he closed his eyes and let sleep come to greet him, he saw her face.

The story of her eyes was concern; that of her mouth, relief.

The sun was less kind to them than it had been the day before, and Talmir knew he was not alone in wishing that it had remained hidden behind the storm clouds rather than gracing them with its blinding, beating presence once more. The rolling flat on which they walked—a sandy plateau that seemed to separate the dunes of the south from the rocky crags and jagged spurs of the north—reflected the fire from above like a furnace, or an Ember’s brazier.

Talmir took another drag from his water skin and realized with a swell of panic that it was among the last. As he rode, he observed the men and women under his command, their steady formation having dissolved in the exhaustion of the trek through an unfamiliar land. Beside and behind him they rode, carrying whatever they could, which was decidedly less than they needed to live out the night, never mind the week. Even the mules in front of him and behind the desert nomads—he supposed he’d have to stop thinking of them that way—were weighed down, carrying the traders and their heavy sacks as they dragged Karin on his stretcher fashioned from the poles and canvas tarps of the wagons they’d left behind.

Iyana rode beside him, her eyes darting down toward the First Runner each time his head bobbed or his shoulders jolted. She spoke harshly to the mules and their riders each time it happened, and though they had at first responded lazily, now they did so straight-backed and nodding.

Talmir smiled, happy for a moment until he remembered the rest, and what had put Karin in such a state.

He heard a yip that jolted him, drawing his eyes to the north. He sighed as he saw two of the desert foxes chasing each other up and down the sliding slope. Farther ahead, the old man who claimed to be the Sage of the Red Waste walked, guarded by more of the loping canines than his human followers—though the one known as Ceth was closer than any, man or beast.

“Ket,” he said, or tried to. All that came out was a dry croak despite the swallow he’d only just taken. “Ket,” he repeated, and the young, black-haired soldier eased the reins to the right, taking him back toward Talmir’s mare. The young man was more alert than most of the company, but even he looked tired and slow.

“Yes, Captain,” he said in a whisper.

“No need for secrecy, Ket,” Talmir said. He glanced ahead and saw a few of the darker nomads looking back, curious where the taller, lighter men and women were suspicious. “If they wanted it, the lot of us would be feeding the carrion birds in that dry pit.”

“Speak for yourself,” Creyath said from the opposite side, his stoic presence nearly forgotten. Talmir waved him away and Ket swallowed.

“The caravan has drifted,” Talmir said, leaning until his horse complained with a series of snorts and one stamp that had him straightening with a shake of his head. “Check on Jes. Get Mial and form up tighter. Four-breasted line and staggered. We can’t have anyone falling without another noticing.”

Ket nodded, eager to comply. Talmir liked what he saw in the youth. Come to think of it, he liked what he’d seen in most of the desert caravan since leaving Hearth just a span of days before. They were young, true. But the young of the Valley were not the same as those in the wider World.

These men and women had faced down the legions of the World Apart, pulled in through rifts during the Dark Months for nearly a generation where the scars between worlds appeared less than half as often without. Talmir and the others—elders included—had thought it a scourge affecting all lands, their numbers increasing as the fabric between Worlds frayed year after year, just as it had in the deserts the King of Ember had fled—the very same they revisited now.

And then they learned the truth of it, and it was still almost too much for Talmir to bear. Their guardian had not betrayed them. Not truly. Instead, the White Crest had been perverted by his dark brother, his mortal coil used as little more than the nectar that fed the Dark Hearts, those throbbing blobs of blotched and bloated horror in his once-proud keep. Whatever was happening in the wider World, the Eastern Dark had accelerated it in the Valley core. All, according to Kole, Linn and the champions that had dueled with a god above the Steps, to forge his champions against the night. His Ember warriors, hidden away under lock and key.

But if the Eastern Dark feared the coming tide even as he used its power so liberally, what was to come?

Talmir shook the thought as Creyath spurred his charger ahead, making way for the other riders Ket and Mial had called up. The black steed’s coat carried an oily sheen in the late afternoon sun to match its rider. Aside from the mules, which complained least, the Ember’s mount seemed in the best state, and Talmir was beginning to worry for the rest.

He spurred his own horse forward, rounding the mules and their sorry burden without a backward glance—though he felt Iyana’s eyes on him—until he came up even with the nomads in the rear. They walked as fast as the horses did, their pace seemingly unaffected by the heat, and though they carried skins along their belts or strung over their shoulders, Talmir could not recall seeing any take so much as a sip throughout the afternoon.

“I need to speak with him,” Talmir said, addressing a young woman whose skin matched most in his own company; he had always been a sight lighter than some, a trait that made him stand out even more than he already did in the training yards of Hearth. The woman—girl, really—shook her head in a mix of confusion and annoyance, her tail of raven hair swinging past her rear.

Speak to him, then, the look seemed to say. So Talmir did.

“Old man,” he called up. He felt childish for doing so, but even that did not draw the looks he’d expected. There was no answer from the front. “The horses are tiring. They need water. How much farther?”

The old man who might be a Sage waved at him in a move that, while only done twice in his presence, already struck Talmir as a habit he would grow to hate. Whatever he said was lost to the wind that kicked up dust and had Talmir spitting. Now the nomads looked, the light-skinned silver-cloaks raising brows and shaking heads while the red-sashes—who could have been close cousins to the Emberfolk—smiled.

“What?” Talmir asked, nearly shouting.

The old man half-twisted and let his maroon hood down. “Then unburden them.” He shook his head and picked up his pace. Talmir resisted the urge to set his horse into a charge right there and make him earn the name he’d claimed.

Instead, he took a steadying breath and dropped back to where the mules worked hardest. He already felt foolish for leaving most of their food stores behind with the wagons that would now become another’s bounty—likely the red-toothed savages they’d come across that morning—and now he felt a fool for pushing their animals past anything they might have known in the moist, cool Valley. It was a wonder how quickly the land could change, and the air with it.

Talmir swung his legs over the saddle and plopped down into the sand, stretching the tension from his legs and lower back. He did not ask the rest to mimic him, but they did. Even the young traders unburdened the gray mules and Creyath his black charger, though he knew the animal’s limits far better than the captain. The Faeykin were holding up better than Talmir would have guessed, with Sen still set apart from the rest leading his gray beast while the older male and the red-haired female walked on opposite sides of the big brown they shared.

The yellow brightness gave way to the orange haze that signaled the beginning of the day’s end, and the atmosphere took on a shimmer as the sand gave back the heat it had stored. It made the desert nomads appear as nothing more than one of the mirages the elders of the Valley spoke about from the desert days, though none but Ninyeva had been there.

Talmir matched his company and gave his voice a rest, and his body thanked him for it. The same western breezes that had given him a chill in the nights now felt like a lover’s gentle caress, which made him think of Rain and her namesake. He noticed somewhat absently that one of the red-sashes had drifted closer to the Valleyfolk, glancing at Talmir and at the polished sword that swung from his belt. His eyes were curious rather than covetous, and in the dimming light of dusk, his irises struck Talmir for the flecks of gold he saw in the brown—something he had only ever seen in the Emberfolk.

“Is your leader who he says he is, truly?” Talmir asked as he met the youth’s eyes. It was only just dawning on him how young most of them were.

The young man glanced at his own, none of whom looked back, before meeting Talmir’s eyes. He did not look defiant.

“He is whatever he told you,” he said, and his voice held only the slightest accent that Talmir half-recognized.

Talmir looked to his right, catching the eyes of Iyana and Creyath across the traders and mules. He raised his brows, and while Iyana was too concerned for Karin on his canvas bed to do more than shake her head, Creyath gave him the smile he wanted.

Glancing behind, he saw similar looks of amusement and took heart. Disappointed and lost as he might feel at the present turn of events, Talmir could not let his mood overtake the company. He forced a smile and addressed the youth, who had refocused on the path ahead.

“He told us he was the Sage of the Red Waste,” Talmir said, expectant. The response was not long in coming.

“Then that is what he is.”

Talmir frowned. “You speak as if you don’t know.”

The youth shrugged and Talmir caught the glint of cold obsidian at his waist. This one was a fighter. He supposed they all were, after a fashion and given what they’d seen. Given the savages that had tried to make a mess of Karin and had then been unmade by Ceth. That stoic guardian was the only one in the company who did look back, his dispassionate features coloring for the first time in what Talmir could only presume was annoyance.

“What is his power?” Talmir asked, making a show of it. “He hasn’t told us. Sounds like he hasn’t shown you.” Now a frown. “Does he control foxes?”

“No.”

The speaker was female and had a lilting tone that Talmir found surprising. He let loose some slack in his horse’s reins and stepped ahead of her to get a better look. In the place of the raven-haired girl he had expected, one of the lighter nomads who matched the old man’s guardian examined him as she walked, gray-blue eyes aloof. She was stern and beautiful, and her hair bordered on golden where the others were silver-white like Iyana’s.

“Do tell,” Talmir said, seeing that she did not mean to.

“They are the guardians of this land and its people,” she said as if reciting from a text committed to memory. “They will be here when nothing else remains.”

“Even the people they protect?”

Talmir could not see her over the wall of sun-baked horses’ hair, but he knew the voice and was glad she had taken her attention away from Karin for the moment.

“Yes,” the woman said, sounding melancholy. “Even then.”

Iyana did not respond and though Talmir wanted to, he found the words lacking. He looked at the foxes that stuck closest to the old man—who kept a better pace than the rest—and thought they looked suddenly ghostly in the shimmering curtain of the day’s changing. He shook his head and blinked.

“You could have the nicety to ask me about my power rather than bothering the children,” the old man called back.

“They don’t look like children to me,” Talmir said, meaning to build some bridge to them, some commonality. He only received a frown from the red-sash and nothing at all from the gray with her thin, yellow-white features.

“You’re all children to me,” the old man answered.

“Fine, then,” Talmir said. “What is your power?”

There was a pause and Talmir thought the old man was playing another game with him.

“Given enough time,” the old man said, “plenty.”

It could have been a joke at his expense, but Talmir didn’t think so. The tone the Sage—or whatever he was—had used was at once the same and slightly less than his previous exchanges, as if he knew but feared to tell. It sounded like regret, all told, and for whatever reason, it had the effect of making Talmir trust him more, or at least distrust him less.

They spoke no more and Talmir was glad for it, though he had been the one prodding. As the sun sank lower, parting the high dunes that were far enough to look like anthills, the sand underfoot radiated a warmth that was inviting in the place of its previous oppression.

Now, Talmir could see why Iyana stared this way at this time of dusk, and had done ever since they’d crossed the cracked plains. While Talmir had busied himself with preparations for camp, scheduled watches and rationed firewood, Iyana watched the sun melt into the yellow-brown sea of stillness. More than that, she watched the second glow that rose to replace it.

Now that they were close—or now that he was looking—Talmir could see it too. It was like a purple shroud with a red heart, and it made the sky farther north the color of blood and lilacs. To the south, the colors of the sunset took the sky, the red-gold hue beautiful in its earthly way, but not alien. This other light was different. It was sacred, Talmir knew without knowing. It was a harbinger, though of what, he was uncertain and afraid.

He suppressed a shiver and felt a tingle go up his right side, settling at the temple. He turned to see Iyana staring. She nodded, her face grave and serious, and he did not know how to respond, so he looked beyond her.

The north was now as much rock as sand, the black spurs changing from jagged to smooth. They were lit golden in the dying rays of the sun, and their tops shone like mirrors to the stars that were only now peeking out from the blue-black canopy above. Talmir had never seen anything like them, and as he stared in wonder he saw darker patches that might have been caves and tunnels. He began to take heart in their course, and to think that perhaps they had not been misled after all. His mind worked to recall the tales the elders told of the black caverns beneath the northwest dunes and the heroes that had been born and raised there.

Talmir did not feel the land change until he nearly fell, tripping only to catch himself on the sturdy arm of the light-haired woman he’d spoken with earlier.

“I am Martah,” she said as she lifted him.

“Talmir.” He nodded, steadying himself. She betrayed the ghost of a smirk as he righted himself and then she moved off, leaving him to look ahead.

The plateau had finally ended, with the slow slope making for an easy descent into a bowl that stretched beneath the black shelves and their hidden pathways. For leagues around, the land was carved with great swaths of softness broken up by hard, elongated valleys of sifting sand crafted at the whims and fancies of the winds sweeping down from the north, where he looked next. And there, far past the black shelves and below the winking stars that were growing bolder, he saw the hints of outlines too tall to be anything but mountains, and knew that they made up the desert’s ending.

He wondered what lay beyond.

“You’ll be left behind.”

Talmir blinked and looked ahead. The old man stared at him from the bottom of the rise and Talmir craned around to see that both companies had moved into the curved crescent between the black rocks that now appeared as melted stone in the softer, white light of the moon and stars. One of the foxes—the only one left, Talmir noticed—sat patiently at the old man’s side.

Talmir led his horse up to the pair and waved for Creyath to continue without him. The Ember blinked, his amber eyes glowing like warding torches, and started back up the easy wave behind the rest.

The old man, looking less tired than any—including the young and sturdy of his own twin tribes—took up his wake, while the fox passed under the painted horse and left them, disappearing on the other side of the slope, where it sent up the beginnings of the nighttime song Talmir was starting to think of as a lullaby even as a thought struck him that it might be something else entirely.

He examined the old man, who now walked beside him, and thought he was wrong for thinking him such, though he clearly was. Up close, he seemed more sturdy, more solid than he had at a distance. His strides were long and uninterrupted, and though he looked like one who might carry a walking stick for appearance, he did not. His eyes possessed a sharpness and clarity that would have given Sister Piell a run in her younger years, and his chin was strong and cutting. The chin of a warrior, Talmir thought.

“You never asked us why we came,” Talmir said as he watched the nomads assist Iyana and the other Faeykin in lifting Karin up onto the black shelf that stretched out beneath a darker arch he hadn’t noticed before.

“I know why you came.”

There was no judgment in his words and none of the teasing playfulness Talmir had experienced before. If his face and body displayed none of the wariness he might expect, his tone betrayed its first hints.

“You came seeking power. You came seeking the same thing everyone else does. Power, and with it, the hope for change.”

Talmir thought to defend himself and then realized it was folly. The Red Waste spoke the truth, even if he couched it in generalities. He did not seem to mean it as an accusation.

A pair waited for them at the place where the black rock met the sand like a prow. Ket and Ceth, the former looking distinctly uncomfortable in the stoic presence of the latter.

The old man took Talmir by the crook of the elbow and eased him lightly ahead, motioning in the direction of the overhang and the cavern beneath it where the rest had gone. Now that Talmir looked, he saw just how deep it went. Rather, he could not see, which was all the same. Ket moved closer to him, glancing back suspiciously at the other pair as they spoke in hushed whispers. It was largely the old man doing the talking while Ceth listened with the rapt attention of the converted.

“Don’t worry on it now,” Talmir whispered. “Go. Join the others. Take this one with you. I’ll be along.” He passed the reins to the young soldier, who hesitated only briefly before doing as instructed. Ceth followed and soon passed man and beast by, his pace deliberate.

“Trouble?” Talmir asked as the old man came to stand beside him. He said it distractedly, suddenly struck by the brightness of the stars in their ethereal canvas. The sky seemed rounded out here, as if it were blown glass.

“Never too far,” the old man said. “Come. Let’s find you lot the rest you’re too stubborn to ask for.”

He tried to tug Talmir along, but Talmir stayed rooted and the old man flicked his eyes up to consider him. Seeing them was enough to know he was who he said he was. Talmir would worry on the questions—the implications—of that on the morrow.

“What should I call you?” Talmir asked, and the face before him broke into a smile as wide as it was true.

“Pevah,” he said. “That is what the children call me. I prefer it to the rest, and I recently stopped caring whether or not it was earned.”

It was simple enough to make Talmir laugh. He did, and found that it was as genuine as the smile Pevah had just shown. Together, they walked beneath the arch, the desert songs mixing with the wind they left behind.

The cave mouth was difficult to see until they were nearly upon it, and then it opened wide like the maw of one of Bali Swell’s lake monsters to swallow the company whole. Iyana suppressed a shudder as she walked through the high overhang, the cool air of the desert night giving way to a soft warmth that must have been baked into the rock in the heat of the day.

None of the desert foxes that had been their constant companions throughout the trek joined them, but already she heard their strange and haunting melodies out among the half-covered spurs and sheltered ridges. The sounds carried on the breeze and followed them into the enclosing black.

They left the soft white light of the moon and stars behind, and Iyana considered dipping into the Between to light her private way with the bright tethers of her companions. She saw Sen and the other Faeykin walking in the center and close to the front and knew they already were, their steps confident in the gloom.

Soon enough, the obsidian walls began to give off their own sort of light—the orange glow of a fire banked and burning deeper and farther down the winding throat. At first, the black rock had reminded Iyana of the northern peaks of the Valley. Now that she saw by the light they reflected rather than held, she knew this rock to be living. As she examined the curved walls with their crescents and sharp turns, she saw them as waves caught beneath black skies and frozen in time. She brushed her hand against them and delighted in the smooth sensation and the pleasant shock the heat sent into her palm as she walked.

“This way. Bring the horses. The way below is too steep for them.”

The speaker was one of the darker nomads, and now that she was reminded of the circumstances, the questions that had dogged Iyana throughout the day were recalled. She wanted to know who these people were. She wanted to know where they had come from. Most of all, she wanted to know what they wanted, and why they wanted it.

But the best answers often came of questions that went unasked, or asked at the right time. Another of the Faey Mother’s teachings, and something Iyana hoped those in her company would heed.

The way split, and Iyana saw Ket and Mial help their hosts lead the animals to the left. She thought they might be frightened in the dark, but as they passed the offshoot, she saw that the tunnel only traveled a bit farther before opening into a larger chamber lit by the night sky overhead. There must have been a hole carved or weathered into the top, and beneath the milling steeds, she heard the splash and saw the glimmer of water in a curved basin. She heard Captain Talmir speaking to the old man behind her, but was too caught up in the sights and sounds of newness to look back.

There was a violence to the way ahead, and she heard slow intakes as the company soaked it in, a few sharper ones as a pair of soldiers navigated Karin’s stretcher over the tiny hills. They were closer to the fire, now, and the waves of frozen black were now tinted a deep red. The cavernous tunnel slanted steadily downward and sharply to the right, and the crescents that marred its surface were split and bordered by crests between the eddies that were sharper and more sudden than those above. It smelled slightly of ash and ozone, but that pleasant tang of salt on the desert breeze followed them in, and she could still feel the wind that must have found its way into the network from chutes and natural chimneys.

The company was largely silent, her companions due to a mix of awe and exhaustion while the nomads both light and dark wore it like a comforting shawl. Perhaps this was a land where speaking wasted energy best kept in, or perhaps their hosts did not trust the Valleyfolk come unannounced into lands that were never theirs.

Now the ground sloped down more sharply, and Iyana saw the broad-shouldered man known as Ceth standing just ahead and to the right. Behind him, the cave walls were awash in the reflected amber light, and just behind his heels was open air and a drop she never would have noticed had he not stood just before it, light hair moving in the subterranean currents.

“Take care,” he said without warmth as the soldiers gave him and the chasm as wide a berth as possible. The path was like a spiral stair bordering a chute that could have seen one of the wagons fall into without ever scraping the edges. It was wide enough for three to walk abreast, but the most Iyana saw was pairs. She saw Jes clutch her bandaged arm to her chest and lean her head over the edge—there was no rail—and recoil.

“Far,” Iyana heard her whisper, and she could not suppress the curiosity that welled up and had her peering over the edge as well.

Below, what at first looked to be a bright orange desert flower resolved into a fire that raged more than flickered. Though it was far below, she could feel its heat from here. The walls were baked with it, and the carved chimney around which they walked shone like a cylinder inlaid with jewels. It was mesmerizing, and Iyana only noticed she had been leaning far enough to slip when a steady hand clutched her by the arm and pulled her sharply back.

“Ow!” she said, causing the soldiers in front and a few from behind to pause and look in her direction.

“Sorry.”

She had expected Sen to be the culprit and nearly recoiled in surprise when Ceth released her and moved on without a backward glance, the caravan’s collective eyes tracking his progress.

“It is a new place, Iyana. Do not let it lull you into complacency.”

Now it was Sen who spoke. His hand was out, as if he had meant to pull her back before Ceth had beaten him to it. The others passed by as Iyana eyed the other Faeykin steadily and dispassionately. She recalled the desert flower they had found and the sorry fate it had met at his hands, and though a part of her knew it was wrong to judge him so fully for such a banal act, a deeper part of her knew she was right to fear him.

Judging by the way his green eyes sparkled in the ruddy glow, she thought he caught it and could not tell how he felt about it.

“Are you okay, Iyana?”

“Fine,” she said, smiling up at Creyath as he came down from the upper level. Talmir and the old man who might be a Sage followed behind, and Sen took up the rear as she fell into step beside the Second Keeper of Hearth. She did not peer over the edge again, but rather looked across the chasm and watched Ceth as he rounded the stair and reached the bottom, her own mind working even as his face betrayed nothing, his gray-blue eyes focused ahead.

There was a sweetness to the air as they neared the bottom, and Iyana nearly stuck her tongue out to taste it. Though she could now hear the crackle of logs in the pit and feel the hot kiss of the flames that quested up, she felt the air lighten and take on a pleasant caress. It smelled like water, to her. Or like the shore of Last Lake, and she saw other members of the caravan looking up as they felt the same faint, phantom spray touch their bare arms and necks.

In place of the stoic quiet the desert nomads had affected throughout their journey, the land they entered now was full of the sounds of life. As she reached the bottom of the stair behind the others, Iyana recognized them as the mingled voices of children reunited with the parents that had been sent out to fetch her and hers.

She smiled as the company parted to reveal the myriad reunions, and that smile only widened when she saw the looks of joy and relief plastered across the stern and stoic faces of the nomads who were not nomads at all, their embraces warmer even than the fire in the pit that lit them.

And then she saw beyond them.

Even without her gifts, the shared emotion of the company would have been apparent—that secret sharing that can only come from being a part of something. That can only come from having it taken away. What she and the other Valley children saw now, looking beyond the pairs and trios of father, mother and child light and dark, swarthy and wind-brushed, spoke to a part of them they had left buried here. It spoke to the part of them Captain Talmir Caru had spoken to that night below the unfinished gate and the broken arch of Hearth’s white shell.

She knew it could not be a sea, but even still, the effect was the same. Iyana stepped by the reunions and brushed off the stares of the nomads and their children. She ignored the flicker of the firelight on the black diamond walls that glowed like the eyes of drakes or Night Lords yet somehow looked beautiful. She looked beyond, and in the place of a cave of cowering things, she saw a sparse and sprawling land that may well have been the greatest treasure she would ever know.

The waves lapped at the shore with a cadence that recalled the lake she had grown up above, the swaying pegs of the rotted timbers below her home rocking her to sleep even as a forgotten mother sang rhymes her sister had never committed to memory.

Iyana walked forward, and none tried to stop her. It was all black and blue and startling white, far as the eye could see. The underground lake that could be an ocean stretched for leagues, and she wondered if it could even reach the lands where Linn and Kole were now. She wondered if the shimmering surface of the blue-black swells she stood before fed the roots beneath Center that made the trees there grow taller than should have been possible.

If she had thought the cave mouth and ensuing tunnel had been large, and if she thought the horses in their milling, starlit basin had taken comfort, the land she saw before her stretched enough to suggest a breadth and scope she could scarce believe.

There were islands carved of the same melted rock that made up the borders and the shore. There were great stalagmites and stalactites that joined together and spilled their bases out to cover the water with slow stone in places. She could not see the skylights in the roof but knew them to be there, as the blue-white glow from the starlit canopy high above lanced down and spilled like the water itself, carving edges smooth and jagged.

But it was the columns she truly marveled at. In the center, suspended in time and position, was a tower of rock that joined the roots of the desert to the top. She knew it must be made of the same black melt the rest of the land called skeleton, but its surface was awash in glittering diamond—chipped white stones that grew like armor and emitted a glow like moonlight too close. The same white gems could be seen all around, even clinging to patches on the shallow shore on which she stood now, her boots already soaked through with the water that was as warm as a drawn bath.

Iyana felt the tugs all around and blinked. She turned around and saw the rest of her caravan—her family, as it were—arrayed, and none looked any less awed. Even Sen and the Faeykin, normally so aloof, stood transfixed, green eyes dimming as they left all thoughts of the Between behind, so caught up were they in the here and now. She saw Creyath stepping slowly into the lapping waves until he was knee-deep, the nomads watching the Ember with an intense curiosity, and she saw Talmir standing apart from the old man who’d brought him and who smiled at his back, the bronze star on the captain’s chain the only thing moving in time with his breast.

Behind the caravan, she saw the desert people that might have been their cousins—their brothers and sisters and parents and children in another life—stand or sit before the fire that now seemed a paltry glow. Their eyes shone with a light not unlike the glittering moon stuff she felt on her back now. It looked a lot like pride. Even Ceth stood apart from his fellows and stared at their staring.

But the spell could only last so long, and soon enough, the strangeness set in for both sides—a feeling only the children could ease, and so they did, chittering and twirling between the newcomers as their parents looked on, caught between amusement and the protectiveness all mothers and sires shared.

The old man stepped forward, and the children switched from Talmir, Ket, Mial and the rest of them to ring him like they were his flock and he their shepherd. “Pevah! Pevah!” they called up to him, and he smiled at them each in turn and made them feel special for doing it.

“Some say that is the pillar by which the whole World is held up,” he said, resting his hands on the shoulders of the two youths who hugged his sides. He looked more tired than Iyana had seen him during their trek, and though he had no reason to lie and she had nothing to compare him to but a monster of storm that had taken her teacher before her time, he did not seem Sage-like in the least.

How could this man be of the same ilk as the White Crest? How could this man, stooped and unsteady as he moved to sit on a flat ledge beneath one of the thick pillars, share anything with the Eastern Dark, no matter how removed?

“Come,” he said, waving for them to join him. “Come, come.” Talmir blinked and picked up the pack he’d dropped, and Creyath rejoined them, trailing the hissing remnants of lake water. One by one, the rest complied, moving unsteadily toward the warmth of the fire and picking seats or else standing among the arches, pillars and smooth, carved seats in the cavern floor. They looked as if they were moving through a dream.

Jes and another soldier allowed themselves to be led down an adjoining corridor by one of the red-sashes, their burden the First Runner, pale and lolling. The rest watched them. As the spell dropped and the two companies renewed their acquaintances and their budding suspicions that had settled only long enough to stay violence, tension crept in to the mixed company, and Iyana was sorry to see it.

The old man seemed to sense it as well. He opened his mouth to speak and met as many eyes as he could on both sides, the firelight drawing lines only the children ignored as they moved among both sets as freely as the strange and conjured breeze did.

“As you can see,” he said with a smile, “we mean you no harm.” And then, to Ket’s questioning look, “If we had wanted it, we could have struck the lot of you down dumber than that lovely view there did.”

It was a threat, of sorts, but Iyana smiled as shoulders relaxed on both sides, knowing the truth of it and what it signified.

“We have food, and we have drink,” he went on. “That is a fresh ocean, there,” he waved toward the water at their backs and Iyana found a seat among the children, who giggled and prodded at her dirty trousers. “Though it does tend to get that sulfur taste now and again. A bit burnt on the edges, that stuff.” One of the mothers—a dark one with a red sash tied around her waist—shot forward fast as a striking serpent and snatched one of the children away, doing little to stop the laughter that trailed after.

A young girl who was lighter than the rest sat very close to her. Iyana smiled down at her, but she was too busy touching their forearms together. They were similar enough to be sisters, and now she smiled up, her blue-gray eyes recalling Ceth’s.

Iyana shared the look, but there was something odd niggling at the corners of her mind. She observed the gathering, noting the children flitting from spot to spot, the members of the Valley caravan sitting or standing with more ease with each passing breath, and the warriors that ringed them all or else sat among them before the flames and beneath the arches and melted crescents of obsidian.

So few. There were so few of them. Now that she looked, Iyana could only spot a few faces she had not already met under the bright and blinding light of day. Though she had not spoken with any, she had observed them all, committing their tethers to memory on the long, aching walk through the sun-baked sands. Looking now, it seemed that those who had come to fetch them had been most, with just a few left behind to mind the children.

The old man spoke as the caravan was served with stone bowls of fresh water that ran cooler than that Iyana had stood in moments before. His hands moved along with his mouth as he described their surroundings and explained the way liquid fire had made it all and left its white treasures behind. His own people watched him, expectant, while Iyana’s sat and listened, enthralled and—in more than one case—dozing.

The only sounds other than the conjured stories, the whispered suggestions of the lake at their back and the mix of crackling brush in the pit before them was the occasional whimper of Karin in the alcove they’d placed him in. Iyana looked that way and made to rise, but Creyath caught her eye and shook his head, his calm doing its work on her. She settled with effort and exhaled. She had done everything she could for him today. Any more and they might lose her to an exhaustion a hair below sleep and above death.

“So you see,” the old man was saying, “the desert is not as empty as it might appear. Even the very wood you see burning here was gathered just beyond.” He pointed behind them and Iyana turned to look. She could not see what he meant, but the shining white pillar with all its crusted gems threatened to steal the thought away.

“How?” Ket asked.

“The lake recedes,” the man the children called ‘Pevah’ said. “The Mother pulls it back like an indrawn breath, exposing the bridges and pathways.” He sounded wistful. “There are so many paths. So many nooks and caverns. And so many ways the stars and the light of the day reach down, the Father blessing even the children who hide in Her warm embrace. There are circular chambers that fill completely. You must take care not to be caught in those. And there are those that fill only half and no more. You can survive the night in these. Higher up, there are fertile shelves touched by the sky and all its wind, the soil brought from far away and made rich by worms and insects. And our firewood grows there and reaches up to touch the sky through the web and lattice of melted stone above.”

He went on for some time, and Iyana found herself swaying along to the tune of his voice. The children nestled into the arms of their parents or protectors—it was difficult to tell which was which in such mixed company. After a while, Iyana began to wonder why the old man spoke as he did, and then it struck her.

All the while, both sets eyed one another, and with each passing beat and each pathway referenced—each secret in the caverns beneath the swaying sands above—the tension eased until it passed almost completely. Now when their hosts looked at them, it seemed to Iyana that they truly looked. Creyath smiled in the flickering light, and hosts both young and old—though none approached even Mial in gray, an unhappy reminder of the straits they must have been in—watched him like a myth come real. It made Iyana sad to see it even as she watched the Ember with pride, and as she thought it, she sought out Captain Talmir and was unhappy to see that his look had changed as well.

There was no Ember fire here, despite the warmth. No Embers ushered them beneath their melted halls to show them what secrets they had left buried in the sands. Talmir had the look of a man who realized he had brought more power than he had found.

But the Red Waste was among them. Iyana had to look closely. She had to see beyond the words and easy manner. She had to find his eyes in the ruddy red glow and see the fire that burned behind them. But it was there, and as was the case when she had invaded the mind of Braden Taldis uninvited, the noticing got her noticed.

Pevah stopped talking and switched his eyes to her before she realized she had slipped into the Between. She blinked and breathed out. But now she had the attention of more sets, and she held them all in a pregnant silence. She felt fear being regarded so by a man who had shown nothing but a clever tongue and a welcoming façade. She did not think it a lie, but seeing his look now as her mind had brushed against his, she thought him a dangerous thing, and she thought him something else.

It was then that she knew she sat in the company of a god. He might not call the skies to do battle on his behalf. He might not rage like the tempest he birthed. But the Red Waste had earned another name before he had taken this one. And Iyana found that she both wanted and feared to know how.

The tension had returned quicker than it might between friends, but the old man broke it with a smile.

“No harm, child,” he said, and Iyana had to believe he meant it. She smiled weakly and glanced away from Talmir’s probing look. “No harm at all.” He leaned back as Ceth approached him from the back. The broad-shouldered warrior she knew to be Landkist bent low and whispered to him, and though she could not hear the words, she knew the look.

Pevah whispered back with a smile, and when Ceth raised complaint, he did so again and without one. Ceth rose, stiff and stepped before the old man, who began to question various members of the caravan as to their goals, starting with Ket. The young man sputtered and spat at first, and Talmir urged him to speak truly.

Iyana ignored the empty conversation and watched the Landkist move throughout the company. He touched members of his own clan and did not distinguish between those who bore the swarthy skin of the deserts of the paler flesh of whatever lands he had come down from. One by one, he touched them, and she thought he took special care to circumvent those with children close by or nesting. Their looks—a mix of shame and gratitude—showed her enough about the man.

As he moved off toward the curved stair, those he touched—eight in all—stood silently and moved to join him. Iyana was not the only member of the desert caravan to watch with interest, despite the old man’s prattling and the easy laugher he had managed to draw some of her company into. Creyath’s amber eyes tracked them as well, and Iyana looked from him to Ceth, her eyes going wide as the Landkist touched his hand to the chest of one and then the next, on and on until they nodded their thanks and began the climb.

Ceth stood at the bottom and watched them head for the surface without looking back, his face showing something much like regret. Even anger, slow and simmering.

“Where are they going?”

Iyana did not realize the question had been spoken aloud until all other conversation stopped. She did not realize she had given voice to it until all eyes had turned her way, Ceth’s included. She swallowed.

“They have a charge, child,” Pevah said. He said it with all the hidden guilt Ceth’s face showed plain.

“A charge,” Creyath said as much as asked.

Ceth, uncomfortable under the growing attention, made a sound under his breath and passed through them once more, disappearing down a corridor to the right and away from the place Karin rested.

“You have many questions,” Pevah said. “We have answers, though I fear we may not have as many as you seek. But you are tired. In spite of my sprite and spry demeanor,” he laughed, though it sounded hoarse, “I am as well. Come. Come.” He stood and eased the tension from his muscles. “You are safe. Let us not trouble tired minds with fresh worry. Plenty of that on the morrow.”

At Pevah’s direction, the nomads gathered up the young and brought them down the tunnels to the left. The old man followed and waved for them to do the same, and after many an exchanged glance and a few shrugs, Talmir spoke.

“He’s right,” the captain said. “Take what rest you can. These lands seem well-protected. They would know.”

The men and women under his command—even those who might be more suspicious than most, like Jes and Mial—acquiesced with little resistance.

“Rest tonight. Questions tomorrow,” Talmir said, following the direction of one of the dark women. Most of the company followed, but Iyana stayed behind awhile, watching the embers burn low in their ring of stones as the waves lapped at the shore, the soft and drifting spray cooling her back through her sweat-soaked shirt that was a sight dirtier than anything she owned in the Valley.

“He did not say answers.”

She nearly jumped before she recognized the voice as belonging to Creyath. The Ember still leaned against the pillar, arms crossed. His Everwood bow leaned against his leg, and he stared into the fire as if willing it to last.

Iyana looked askance at him and he turned toward her, his expression unreadable.

“Questions on the morrow,” Creyath said. “Keep watch for answers.”

Her mind repeated it like a mantra that followed her into sleep and left its unsettling echoes upon waking.

There was a burning that had nothing to do with the gashes that scored his back. He felt it in his veins, and though it made him want to rage and scream and thrash and curse, Karin watched it pass through him and go on its way. He hid from it, waiting in the corners of his own heart, whimpering and afraid. The first was like a serpent, its yellow tongue testing the nooks and nests within. It did not find him. It did not choose him.

Karin had had this dream before, and even as the relief he felt at seeing that winged drake pass him by and seek another with which to coil and burn departed, the feeling of loss rose to supplant it.

The fire did not choose him.

There was another sting that felt like a fresh burn before he recognized it as a splash of cold, and Karin started awake, his stitches opening in places as firm hands gripped him and pushed him back down. His first words came out a croak and he tasted blood in his throat. His head pounded like a hammer on an anvil, and though the filtered light was dim it sent lances into the backs of his eyes so that he had to squeeze them shut.

“Not so quickly,” a gruff voice was saying. “Not so cold.”

He thought he recognized it as belonging to one of the members of their desert caravan—one of the Faeykin, perhaps. The one with hair more gray than silver-white.

“He needed to be woken. And now he is awake.”

He knew this voice, and its pleasant lilt brought a creeping smile to his face and a swell of relief that did much to ward off the panic that threatened as memories from the previous day came back in a white-hot rush.

“You should use your tether next time,” the older man said, rising and brushing stray stones from his robes. Some of them landed on Karin’s bare chest and settled there, nesting between the creases in the bandages.

Iyana scoffed and Karin felt the cool kiss of the washcloth against his eyelids again. He sighed and felt her sigh with him. “If you lot learned to heal in the old ways instead of relying on the Between, we’d be a lot quicker about it.”

The silence that followed was a stunned one. Karin waited for the inevitable haughty reply. Instead, he heard a sharp exhale and receding steps.

“Is that you, Faey Mother?” Karin managed through cracked lips and a dry throat. He felt her pull the damp cloth from his brow and opened his eyes. The blur of white and green resolved into the young woman he had known since infancy, her brow locked into that concerned look that never seemed far. She seemed a sight less filthy than she had been before. “I’m joking, Iyana. I know it’s you.” He struggled to sit up and she touched a finger to his chest, gentle but unerringly firm. “I’d know it by the way you spoke even if I forgot the voice.”

She sighed as he settled back with a muffled groan. “I shouldn’t be such a bother with them,” she said. “But if we’re to dip into another realm—another world, for all I know—every time we need to heal some scrapes and bruises, what happens when that power is lost to us? What happens when we’re too weak to close a cut a splinter leaves behind?”

“Who says you’ll lose your power?” Karin asked. His head swam, and though there wasn’t much to see in the narrow confines—they seemed to be in a small and jagged chamber hewn of obsidian—the contours above Iyana’s silver hair shone with the filtered light of the sun above wherever it was they were.

“Here.”

Karin didn’t realize he had closed his eyes again. He gave a start when he felt her firm grip on the back of his neck and realized he did need her help to raise it again. He felt cold stone touch his lips and parted them, delighting in the shock as the water splashed in. He drank deeply, saving his coughing for after the bowl had been drained, and settled back as the liquid moved down his chest and settled in his belly, which began its complaints, reminded of its stark emptiness.

“Cool,” he said.

“In the day,” Iyana said, setting the bowl down with a clatter. “In the nights, this place is like a furnace. It’s as if the desert is protecting its children, keeping them cool in the days and warming them in the nights.” She spoke with an awed sort of reverence, and Karin let his head fall toward her.

“Where are we, Iyana?” he asked. “What happened after …” he trailed off, brow furrowing as he tried to recall but came up empty. He felt the wet as wounds ran on his back, but he knew the Faeykin had done their work. If there had been poison, it had been burned out by the green fire they wielded more carefully than any Ember. If there had been rot, they’d have caught it in time and stamped it out.

“Below,” she said with a small laugh. She looked about, leaning back and watching shadows move outside the open doorway. It sounded like birds twittering, but as they drew closer and then trundled past, Karin recognized them as children. “Beneath the sands.”

“A cave system,” he said, nodding, and despite the mundane nature of the term, he could not help the swelling he felt in his breast or the flush that came to his face. All Emberfolk children had been told of the Black Hearts beneath the sands—the stone wombs of the Mother as she carried her children and protected them from the terrors of the desert night. Before the Eastern Dark had come calling. Before the Dark Kind came in number.

“Oh,” Iyana breathed, shaking her head. She regarded him with a smile that warmed him. “So much more than that. Once you recover your strength, you have to see.”

“I can see now—”

One silver brow tilted up in that warning way of hers and Karin felt cowed like a child might. He laid his head back down with an exaggerated sigh.

“The others?” he asked. “Everyone made it all right?”

“Fine,” she said. “Tired. Captain Talmir is adjusting better than I thought he might, given his lack of control.”

“How do you mean?” Karin asked.

“This isn’t our land,” Iyana said as if it were obvious. “Not really. It might have been, once. Not now.”

Karin considered it through the haze that was fast returning the longer he spoke. He wondered what sorts of poisons the red-toothed tribesmen had introduced to his blood.

“If there is one thing I have learned in all my years of ranging,” Karin said, “it is that the land—any land—belongs to no one, Iyana. We must remember that, I think. In this place, especially.”

Iyana looked worried, so Karin showed her a smile and tried to make it less weak than it felt.

“Try to let yourself be here now, Yani. Plenty of time for hand-wringing and second-guessing later.”

A shadow passed over her face that Karin at first took for the trick of the light. Then she turned and shifted, and Karin blinked, seeing that the squat doorway had been filled by a figure trailing a cape-like shawl.

“Apologies for the narrow confines. Our young healer here thought it best to keep you from the brighter chambers.” The figure spoke as if he truly regretted sequestering Karin here, of having this stuffy, slick chamber be the first thing he saw on waking. He did not know the places Karin had slept in. “But, I am just an old man, and though I’ve a few tricks, I must defer in matters of healing hurts.” He smiled down at Iyana, who continued to stare at Karin. “Now, then. How is our First Runner?”

Karin recognized the speaker as the old man who claimed to be the Sage of the Red Waste. He seemed fuller than he had out in the sands, less bowed and more straight. His voice projected strength and calm in equal measure, and while he had a grandfatherly presence, there was something otherworldly about him. It seemed to make Iyana uncomfortable. She would not meet his eyes for long, though Karin saw nothing untoward about them but for the way they moved a hint too quickly as they shifted between them.

Iyana blinked, a strange look passing over her features. She quirked a brow at Karin and he finally put it together.

“How—” he started but she broke in.

“How did you know he was First Runner?” Iyana asked, and though she knelt in the small confines, she did not seem cowed as she had moments before, curiosity overriding her caution.

“Bah,” the old man said, waving his hand in a way that looked habitual. “You forget yourself, young lady. You forget where you are. Where you came from.” He switched those yellow-brown eyes to Karin, appraising him and coming away seeming satisfied. “I’d know the like anywhere. Been a long time since we’ve had any like him, though. Besides,” he laughed, “who else but a Runner of the Emberfolk would get himself stuck full of bones and stones by the Bloody Screamers? I ask you.”

Karin smiled, though he felt a little sick at the memory of those stretched and bleeding gums, red teeth and the bleached bone blades that flashed in the sun.

“He is brave,” Iyana said, halting and defensive.

“Of course he is,” the old man said, not taking his eyes from Karin. “He is First Runner. We may not have his ilk around these days, with these children.” He paused, his voice changing. “But we’ve got a few like him.”

“I suspect most of your people are Runners, in their own way,” Karin said. He was fighting waves of nausea that had come up unbidden. The pounding in his head resumed, and he saw Iyana’s eyes flash with a hint of that brilliant green as she caught it. She lifted another bowl and leaned forward, helping Karin to drink again.

The old man watched it all with a considered gaze. When Iyana settled back, his eyes settled on her. “You do not dip into it like they do.” He nodded out at the brighter hall. Karin could hear voices echoing off the curved arches.

“There is more to healing than tricks of the Faey,” Iyana said, sounding defiant. The old man nodded.

“The Valley Faey.” He crooked his head as he spoke it aloud, as if confirming some memory. “I seem to remember them having ears more pointed than yours.” He nearly leaned down to check but thought better of it. “Like the other fellow. The one with the yellow hair.”

“Sen,” Iyana said, and the way she said it had Karin looking askance at her. She did not meet his gaze.

“Sen,” the old man said. “A closer thing, I think.” It was difficult to tell what he meant, but Iyana’s face colored. It was obvious even in the shade. The old man, noticing, held up his hands, a smile breaking the crags. “Do not take offense, Iyana Ve’Ran,” he said. “There is a strength in restraint.” Now Karin saw something behind those eyes. Something that recalled the desert dunes at night. “I know this to be true.”

Iyana looked at him—really looked—and after a long moment, she gave a short, sharp nod. The old man’s shoulders relaxed visibly. He looked back to Karin.

“Now, then,” he said, sweeping into a stilted bow. “I had best see what the children are up to. They have quite taken to the young man with the dark hair. The serious one.”

“All too serious, if you ask me,” Karin said in half a whisper.

“Ket,” Iyana said. She wore an admonishing look as she caught Karin’s eye. “And you’re one to talk, Reyna. Like father, like son.”

“Reyna.” The old man seemed to cast the word out as if it were a fishing line. It brought back nothing of note to his features, though he continued to think on it for longer than was comfortable.

Iyana stood and it seemed to jar him back into the present. He smiled.

“Now, then.” His face went from jovial to mockingly grave. “I have been summoned to an audience with Captain Talmir Caru.” He leaned forward conspiratorially and Karin was happy to see Iyana smile at the display. “It is said the bronze star that hangs about his neck traps all mirth and good humor within it. Alas, the man demands to hear and to be heard. And I shall entertain him.” He winked at Iyana. “While our esteemed First Runner who may be the last wallows in his private den away from the bright of day, would you care to join me on a walk, perhaps to prepare me for the questions that will lash my hide like dry whips?”

“I wish you luck,” Karin said, but his words were as spent as he was. He closed his eyes before they had left, and though he fell asleep with a smile, it was not a happy thought he took with him into dreaming. It was a lonely thing, he thought, to be the first who might be the last.

The awe of the place was no less diminished to Talmir with the rising sun. He sat with his back to one of the carved crescents of black rock by the subterranean lake. The water was lower, now, with the miniature islands and melted bases beneath the pillars revealing more of themselves with each passing swell, each pull and eddy and swirl. The mirrored light of the white gems—which grew not only on the great column in the center but also dotted the trails, slabs and bridges alike—was somehow dimmed in trading the moon’s light for the sun’s, but no less brilliant because of it.

But it was the sounds that awoke emotions in Talmir he had not felt in some time. Not the waves on the slick shore, nor the twitter of the birds that made the porous, vaulted ceilings their homes and hideaways. It was the children. Dark or pale, they flitted about the chamber as if they had not a care.

He watched them and smiled when they approached, each daring the others to get closer to the strange captain from the south. He made a grab for a little girl that drew too near and laughed himself breathless as she twirled away and went down on the smooth black stone.

As he wiped away tears, it was not all mirth and good nature. The children also recalled a sadness that he tried to turn away from. Slowly and surely as the strange and mysterious tides below his boots, it reached out and enveloped him with a melancholy, an emotion he had never been fond of despite the poetry it could inspire in greater men. The children reminded him of Jakub and all those like him—youths whose youth had been stolen away by the horrors of the World Apart, and by the things they’d done and been forced to do.

How had they escaped it, up here in the deserts? How had they escaped the wrath and ruin that had plagued his people since they fled these very dunes and the cavernous depths beneath them? Try as he might, Talmir could not keep a hint of that bitterness from welling up, and the bronze star that hung from his neck felt heavier as his mission came clear.

Gripping his sword to his hip, he swung his legs over the side of the rocky outcropping and slid down to the slick shore, careful to keep his footing lest he become the unwilling object of childish mirth. They watched him and backed away, seeking the stony and stolid presence of the adults who were spread throughout the expansive chamber, none of whom remained idle.

Some worked stitching while others set pestle to mortar, crushing roots and herbs—the same as in any other land. There were less of them than there had been the night before. Half a dozen had left, speaking with the strange Landkist known as Ceth before departing. The Landkist had departed as well, though Talmir could tell by his bearing that he had not gone far, and was less happy for it.

He wondered where they had gone, and he wondered when their host would get around to telling them.

Talmir walked back toward the loose fire pit they had gathered around the night before. His company were largely unmoved, some still dozing in corners and beneath arches, swatting away the children who came to bother them like flies at cattle.

“Captain,” Ket said, wiping the sleep from his eyes as he sat up from his bedroll.

Talmir held up a hand to stay him. “Sleep, Ket. We’re not moving yet.”

Ket nodded as if he had been given a mighty charge and rolled over, bumping Jes on the bandaged arm. She groaned in her sleep but looked less pale than she had the previous day, the green fire of the Faeykin undoing whatever liquid burn the land drakes had managed.

Lucky she had made it. Lucky any of them had.

“Ket,” Talmir said, his heart picking up a bit as he surveyed the loose camp. The young soldier sat up, eyes opening on a delay. “The count.”

Ket recited it from memory. He went over the soldiers each by name, the horses in their sky-lit chamber up above, their Ember guardian who was exploring the wider offshoots of their path and the Faeykin who had taken a chamber near Karin’s for themselves. The merchants watched him dispassionately as he spoke. They had come seeking new things, and though they had found plenty to catalog, Talmir took some small measure of victory in the fact that they had not found anything of true worth to bring back—nothing they could peddle in the streets of Hearth.

“Thank you,” Talmir said. Ket had fallen back over before he finished. It was good to know everyone was still about, but Talmir could not keep the sense of uneasiness from him as he paced.

The sound of buckles and harsh grunting announced the presence of Mial. The old scout flushed as he rounded the black bend, coming up from one of the repositories the nomads had shown them.

“Captain,” he said, finishing adjusting his belt. A dagger glinted partially free of its sheath and Mial pressed it back down. “I was off to do some ranging. Had to—”

“No ranging today,” Talmir clipped. “Not until the First Runner is up.” He nodded to Jes. “Not until she’s right.”

Mial’s shoulders sagged and Talmir shared with him a strained smile. “Plenty to explore down here, I’m sure. And I’ve been assured it’s safe.” Mial somehow looked even more disappointed at the revelation. “Perhaps you could confirm it?” Talmir added, brows rising.

Now Mial’s eyes lit up. He straightened. “I’ll do just that,” he said, moving off in the direction of the shoreline. There were several tunnels that split off. Most of them carried the discordant voices of children and birds. No doubt they had been explored—and fully—by the folk who called this place home, but Mial needed something to do and Talmir was only glad to see him off.

“Good luck making sense of the place,” Talmir said, more to himself than to the old scout. Mial picked up a loose and marching caravan of desert children, each of whom trailed bright scarves of silver-gray or red. Now that he thought of it, each of the nomads wore the same. The darker ones that resembled his own people wore the colors of a deep and twilit sunset, while those of a lighter bent wore the colors of the snow-capped Steps. Since he couldn’t tell whom any of the children belonged to, it was impossible for him to know which parent they affected. There was something to it.

A stronger breeze mussed Talmir’s hair. He looked up. The spiral stair looked like the inside of a tower, like those in the stories from the lands of Balon Rael. The wind-polished ceiling far above reflected the light of the day back down at him, appearing as a proxy sun.

Voices drifted down from the corridor. One of them belonged to a man Talmir much wished to speak to.

He watched the Sage of the Red Waste round the bend wearing the same dirt- and soot-stained cloth he had the day before. He had his arm draped around his companion, Iyana, and leaned in to speak with her in a hushed tone. She smiled at him and Talmir relaxed. The Sage withdrew his arm and opened both toward the lake-filled chamber. Iyana stepped away from him as he closed his eyes and breathed in, slow and deep, as if taking in the World itself.

One of the children saw him and rushed over, and Talmir could guess the words before the gathering ring began chanting them. “Pevah! Pevah!” they exclaimed, and it seemed less a prayer and more a game that the old man encouraged or had long ago stopped fighting.

Iyana smiled at Talmir, who found himself smiling back. Even the members of the desert caravan strewn about found it in them to at least smirk in their sleep.

They were sights and sounds of belonging, and as Talmir saw the grave looks turned inward from the mothers and sires—who sat or stood or worked on the edges—his resolve redoubled. Whatever peace and calm had been achieved by finding sanctuary was once more overtaken by the mission. By the need.

“Pevah.”

It sounded crass and strange when Talmir said it. The children froze around the old man, looking at Talmir as if they’d been collectively slapped. Fortunately, one of them began to giggle, and as always with children the sound was infectious, spreading throughout the throng and following them back to their winding tunnel trails, where they would seek out Mial and dog his heels like no hunter could.

“Talmir Caru,” the old man said, bowing. He did not seem mocking, and no one laughed, though Talmir’s soldiers seemed primed to rise to a challenge if given half a chance.

“Shall we?” Talmir asked, nodding up.

“Of course,” Pevah said, winking at Iyana and striding forward.

“Do you need to leave orders?” Talmir asked. “We should only be gone a short while.”

“Orders?” Pevah laughed. “I think you mistake me for a leader, Captain. I am nothing of the sort.”

Tell that to them. Talmir kept the thought to himself, though he saw the way the nomads looked after them as he followed the old man to the base of the natural stair.

“And up,” Pevah said, and Talmir had forgotten his age until he took that first halting step.

They passed beyond the camp, the wind turning from teasing to blowing the higher they climbed. In the place of the ruddy red glow from the previous night, the shorn walls were lit with a silver-white light, even blue in places, as the sun sent its probes. Talmir kept glancing back down to the burnt circle of the pit and the shadows that moved about it.

“Do not worry,” Pevah said without turning back. “No trouble down there. It’s the Mother’s land. Father was always the one for trouble.”

“And I’m guessing Father means up,” Talmir said.

“Higher up than we’re going.”

Talmir did not ask for clarification and Pevah did not offer. As they walked, the old man’s demeanor changed. In place of the calm, reassuring grandfather, his outer shell seemed to harden the higher they climbed. Talmir wondered if it was owing to his presence.

They reached the top and walked westward, the dips and shelves of the melted cave looking different in the light of day. As they rounded the bend, the stinging light lanced into Talmir’s eyes so that he had to shield them. He could not make out details beyond the yawning mouth and it was some time before he adjusted.

“This way,” Pevah said and Talmir turned to the right, where the air smelled of fresh manure, musk and spring. The horses around their still pool were glad of their company, but Talmir saw that another was already with them.

“I thought the air was warmer this way,” Pevah said and Creyath showed him a smile. The Ember had Talmir’s painted mare by the muzzle and was running his hands through her mane. His own charger stood beside him, waiting patiently for his turn.

Talmir nodded at the Ember as they passed, and Creyath did not ask questions. Pevah’s eyes did not linger on Creyath like those of his people—if a Sage could truly have a people—did. He had seen his like before, Talmir supposed. It was difficult to impress power on that level, even if Talmir had yet to see evidence of it.

The ground sloped up, and Talmir had to take care not to slip. The tunnel walls grew darker; the skylight above the horses’ pool framed their backs and the cavern walls closed in tighter, the sides sharper and more jagged.

“Hold.” Pevah stopped abruptly and pressed his hand to Talmir’s chest, stopping him. The old man sidled to the right and the yellow light of day hit Talmir full, blinding him for a spell and causing him to sniffle and sneeze, a sound that echoed in the tunnels behind and ranged through the wind-blown land before him.

“This way.”

Talmir peeled his eyes from the sight beyond the gap and the sheer drop to the ridges below and followed his guide up a steep stair. The heat turned the air moist and milky as the sun baked the roof of the complex and drew the gathered moisture from the rock that hugged them.

“Here,” Pevah said, heaving himself with effort onto the shelf. As his shadow passed away, the sun’s rays hit Talmir full in the face. He shielded his eyes and followed, climbing up onto a smooth surface of rock. The old man helped him to stand, while the wind found a gap in his shirt and cooled the sweat that stuck the cloth to his chest and back.

Talmir had never been the talkative type, but he was rarely rendered speechless. He doubted if any could talk on seeing the sight, and judging by the knowing smile Pevah turned his way, he was right.

They stood atop the highest of the black ridges for leagues around, though Talmir could see their like sprouting from distant dunes and canyons. He looked south, back in the direction from which they had come, and saw the sun-baked surface of white sand they had crossed shimmering in the day’s heat. Even the mountains were lost to his sight, their suggestions no more than the work of his mind filling in the gap where blue met brown and yellow.

To the west, Talmir saw a sea as wild and wavy as any made of water. The sand ran, blew and crashed against spurs and rocky hillocks, filled the mouths of deep caverns and covered all the secrets beneath. To the west, the sky was tinted just a shade more red than in any other direction. Try as he might, Talmir could not see the cause, though the swells and crests of dry earth rose higher out that way.

“North, Talmir,” Pevah said, guiding him that way.

He saw the great cliffs that had been mere shadows the day before. They painted the horizon until they made the whole thing up. But, tall as they were—tenfold the size of the great peaks that ringed the Valley, at least—Talmir knew they were far enough away that he wouldn’t make it with a wagon full of meat and well water. Not without knowing the pitted and scarred and beautiful lands below.

“That is where Ceth is from,” the old man said, staring as well. “His people are new to the sands, but they’ve known rock and wind all their lives, and in the lives of their ancestors.”

“Ceth,” Talmir said, the name calling him back to the present.

“Gone ranging,” Pevah said, his voice changing oddly. “Though not so far as he’d like. Gone to take his mind off the going, more like.”

A hint of movement down below and Talmir looked back to the west. He saw red streaks and fixed his eyes on the pack of desert foxes that rode the hills and slides like a bird rides the winds. One paused and looked up at them, and Talmir saw the man beside him give the slightest nod that he could swear the creature returned.

“You control them,” Talmir said. Guessed.

“No,” Pevah answered. “Only men and horses can be controlled, Talmir Caru. Dogs, maybe. Perhaps a great many creatures beside. But those shepherds will be here long after we’ve passed on.”

“We,” Talmir said. He said it with a bite he did not intend, but Pevah seemed to expect it, to take it in stride.

“Ask me,” he said, and Talmir turned toward him, the majesty of the landscape left for now.

“Who are you?” Talmir asked, the singular question the pulled stopper that unleashes a deluge. “Your people in the caves. How many are there? Are these the last? Are they like us? And the light ones, like Ceth. Where—”

Pevah smiled sadly and rocked forward onto his toes.

“I am, regrettably, who I told you I was,” he said. “I am the scourge you seek. The same your Ember blades seek to the east. The same that shares a bond, if not a brotherhood, with the shadow that has plagued your people for a hundred years and more. Much more.”

Talmir considered him. He felt a weight drop in his chest and swayed, unsteady. He felt like a boy at the center of a tempest. He felt as powerless.

He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath, and when he opened them, centered, he saw only regret and slow regard staring back at him through eyes he knew were far older than they appeared.

“Are they my brothers and sisters?” Talmir asked, pointing down at the black rock on which they stood. “My cousins and would-be friends?”

“Of a sort,” Pevah said. “There were many tribes in the deserts. Not all of them were blessed by the Mother. Not all were given fire and fight with which to combat the darkness. Not all were Emberfolk, even if they were like.”

“How have they survived?” Talmir asked, hating the arrogance of the question even as he gave voice to it. “Because of you?”

Pevah laughed, and Talmir knew the sound. It was self-deprecating at best and full of hate and loathing at worst.

“The foxes have done more to protect them than I,” he said, and Talmir had difficulty knowing whether he jested. “But no, Talmir. They have been safe—relatively, and only until recently—because you left. Because T’Alon Rane took you and your Embers south, and with them, the threat from the east. For now.”

Talmir shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around it all.

“And Ceth? The pale ones. Who are they?”

“Displaced children, just the same as you,” Pevah said. “From the north.” He turned back toward the distant red cliffs. “From there.” Talmir saw the wind kick up dust, though from this distance, he thought they could be boulders. “A violent land,” Pevah went on. “A land afflicted by the War of Sages before any other.”

“Your war,” Talmir said, and now that its effects were plain, he did not regret it. He felt the slow and simmering rage boil up like the heat from the bedrock below. “You and yours.” He thought to say more, to curse Pevah and his true name, whatever it was, and all that were like him.

The sun caught the bronze pendant that hung suspended over his chest and he remembered himself. He remembered his charge, and he took a slow and steadying breath. Pevah watched him all the while.

“Apologies,” Talmir said, not meaning it. Pevah smiled over the hurt. His face reflected a knowing, as if he had expected nothing less than to be raged against and was at once relieved and disappointed the storm had blown out before it had started in earnest.

“Much has happened,” Pevah said. He stepped past Talmir and stood on the edge where the black shelf met the open air. His shawl lifted and his shoulder-length hair seemed to shimmer between gray and red-brown as the open greeted him. “I’m afraid whatever stories you were told in that Valley we sent you to carry only a smoldering core of truth.” He paused. “I am not blameless, no. But the War of Sages, as it were, was never anything more than a fancy used by the people of this World to explain away conflicts beyond their reckoning. Beyond their control.”

“But there is a conflict,” Talmir said. “It consumed our would-be guardian, just as it’s set to consume the rest. The Eastern Dark found him. Did you know that? He found the White Crest and turned him with dark magic leeched from the World Apart.”

“Yes,” Pevah said. “I know it. I only wish I had known it sooner.”

“Did you know what he sent against us?” Talmir asked, his voice becoming reedy, like a child’s. “Did you know the Dark Kind came against us in numbers apparently unequalled in other lands?” He swept his hands out to encompass it all—the great empty and everything beyond, in all directions.

“They were here before,” Pevah said, moving away from the edge. He met Talmir’s eyes, but his own look seemed distant, glazed by memory and whatever regret it held. “I tried to keep his wandering eye from you. I did my best. I even fought him, and if you had seen the attempt, you’d know how paltry and pathetic that statement is.”

He paused. Talmir waited.

“T’Alon Rane did not come to me, like your stories tell,” Pevah said. It struck something within Talmir he hadn’t known was there, not since Kole, Linn and the others who ventured into the peaks came back bearing the news that their Ember King was alive—a figure of legend made suddenly real. Finally, the Emberfolk of the Valley had someone to blame. Someone living. Someone true.

“You suggested we leave,” Talmir said. Pevah’s look confirmed it.

“The truth, Talmir Caru,” he said, “is that the Eastern Dark has had your bright flames in his sight ever since he went looking where he shouldn’t have. Ever since he tugged on the doorway to the World Apart. Since he saw something that saw him back.”

“Kole,” Talmir said, reasoning it out. “Karin’s son. He said the Embers were to be his last line against the World Apart.” He shook his head. “I didn’t believe it.” He looked at Pevah, at the man who was a Sage, with a pleading expression. “Why would he dip into the very power he seeks to survive?”

“A question we’ve been asking for generations,” Pevah said, and now there as a cold glint to his eyes. Talmir thought it looked like steel crusted over with blood, like one of the bone blades the wild tribesmen had carried. “So far, he’s managed to dodge giving an answer.”

“Then you must make him,” Talmir said. He sounded like Kole and knew it. They were all of them beginning to sound like Kole. Whether that was a good thing or not, he couldn’t know. Now that he was here, standing before one of the great powers of the World, Talmir felt it slipping away from him. What, he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Control, maybe. Hope, probably.

Power, in all its forms, and him carrying less than most.

“These thoughts are not new,” Pevah said. He watched Talmir for a reaction, but Talmir knew he had pushed too far and too fast. He thought to change tack. After all, how could he ask for aid without offering the same?

“The savages who attacked Karin,” Talmir said, his voice lower as he tried to project calm. “Who are they? What do they want?”

Pevah smiled in that forlorn way of his and looked back the way they’d come. Talmir followed his gaze. He could just see the great gray slabs breaking the sameness of the horizon and the threat of storm clouds far off, likely drifting over the land called Center.

“They could have been you, in another life,” Pevah said. “If I hadn’t held myself apart for as long as I have, they might’ve been like those below.”

“Like your people,” Talmir said.

“They are no more my people than they are yours,” Pevah said. “No matter what they think.” There was an anger in his voice, now, but Talmir did not think it was directed at anyone but himself. “I should have been here.”

He sighed and kicked a loose stone underfoot. It skittered to the edge of the shelf, where the wind teased it and made it lean, precarious.

“Now it is I who must apologize,” the old man said, and Talmir saw his age in his bearing if not his face. “It has been some time since I have been … pressed. It is good, I think.”

Talmir said nothing.

“The savages, as your men called them, are merely one of formerly dozens of tribes native to these lands.” He looked back over the west. “In the time of your ancestors, there were as many as forty, though the definitions were threadbare at best. What separated one tribe from another was often as tenuous as a favored hunting ground. Even families crossed over. They had little need of warriors in those days. They had no word for it until the New Men came out of the east. Soldiers of Balon Rael, when that scourge known as the Eastern Dark got his claws in him for a time.” He met Talmir’s eyes. “He was looking for your Embers even then, probing the sands and the tribes within.” He laughed, humorless. “It is one of the great ironies, that it was his probing that might’ve prompted the Mother to ignite the blood of the First Keeper—the first Ember—in the first place.”

His wry smile was wiped away like the thin veneer of sand that rested atop the black shelf.

“When the Embers awoke, they did not spread throughout the deserts,” he said, his voice coloring with a mounting dread. “Some of the farther tribes saw this as an indictment on them. They thought the Mother had abandoned them. Others went further. They thought the Embers were a part of the same power the Sages held—Sages like myself, whom they had only before known as a strange presence in the far reaches they called Wastes. It was quiet there. None but the foxes and the wind. A good land to walk, and rest.”

He sounded wistful now, and then he turned his eyes on Talmir.

“You have Seers in the Valley?” he asked.

“Brought a few along with us,” Talmir said. “Iyana—”

“The Faeykin are not Seers,” the Sage interrupted. “Not in the way I mean. Iyana has some strong stuff to her. The other as well.”

“Sen,” Talmir nodded, unable to suppress the grimace.

“The Faeykin are something else,” Pevah said, turning it over. “Their power is ill-defined. I can’t see its endings. Healing is the least of it, I think. It goes much deeper than that. And whatever sight they have—whatever she has—it’s tied very much to the World, and not, I think, to time.” That seemed strange to Talmir, and he said as much.

“You speak as if you don’t know what they are.”

“Any Sage who pretends to know of the Landkist in any of their forms is a liar or a fool,” he said. “I am many things, and perhaps in the past I have counted myself a fool. But not where power and all its strange persuasions is concerned.”

“Yes,” Talmir said, speeding the thought along. “We have Seers. At least, those who claim to be.”

Pevah nodded. “Assuming they have not lost their touch, they owe their gifts to the wet rituals. Many of the tribes, yours included, frowned upon the practice. Sight demands sacrifice. But they endured, and in the wilder tribes, they came to dominate. They sowed in their warriors and in their hunters and what children they bore the seeds of hatred and deep mistrust. Mistrust of the Sages, yes—a deserved tag—but also of the Landkist, and the Embers most of all.”

Talmir nodded, the beginnings of the picture forming. “They—”

“Are a twisted, misshapen form of what you could have been,” Pevah said. He tapped his light-shod foot on the rocky shelf, and Talmir only now noticed they were bare beneath the hems of his loose-fitting trousers.

“Fine,” Talmir said, trying to sift through it and come to something that stuck. “And why are these tribesmen hunting you?”

“Who said they were?” Pevah asked. He did not seem ready to lie, and Talmir showed his annoyance.

“The patrols,” Talmir said. “I’ve seen your men and women coming and going and bringing nothing back. They aren’t hunting. And the Landkist, Ceth.”

“What of him?”

“He’s upset,” Talmir said. “He thinks you’re making a mistake letting us in. My guess? He thinks we’ve led them right to you.”

Another laugh, but this one short. Talmir was close.

“They won’t come here,” Pevah said. “Fearless as they might be, the bitches who guide them are cunning. Nothing here they’re after.” He frowned as if a sudden thought had occurred to him.

“What is it?” Talmir asked.

Pevah shrugged. “Your Ember friend,” he said.

“Creyath Mit’Ahn.”

“The very same. He could draw them here, if any could.” He paused, turning it over. “If anything, it will only redouble their resolve. Keep them on their current path, however misguided. However dogged.” He showed his teeth as he said it, the last bit coming out in close to a growl.

The Sage of the Red Waste met Talmir’s eyes and then spun back to the west. The sun was not so hateful today as it had been. It wore on Talmir’s skin and turned the horizon to haze, bidding the yellow-brown dunes sway beneath it, a still ocean set in motion.

“I know what you would ask of me, Talmir Caru, and I know why you would ask it.” Talmir thought to speak but bit his tongue. Pevah did not turn. “But we have a charge, and it is out at the Midnight Dunes. They glow like hearts beneath the stars. That is what the witches and their blood-toothed warriors are after. That is what we protect, and that is why, as long as we stay here, we are safe. The children below us are safe.”

Talmir thoughts were spinning. It sounded like nonsense to him. Like poetry.

“These Seers cling to prophecies they think lost and rediscovered,” Pevah said. “They believe the secret to the Ember fire is beneath those dunes, and that I have kept it from them and bestowed it on my chosen children. They seek the fire as if it is something to be taken.”

Like power, in all its forms.

Talmir’s face colored in shame. What was he here to do, if not the same? Talmir shook the thought and cleared his throat.

“What does it have to do with you?” he asked.

“It has everything to do with me, I’m afraid.” He did not elaborate, and Talmir was growing impatient.

“Why guard something that isn’t there?” he asked, stepping forward. “Let them go. What is it, some sort of sacred ground? Let it go.”

Pevah looked down at the lower shelf where the cave mouth opened.

“The Ember fire is not there. But we guard something worse at the Midnight Dunes. Something best left there. Something I have struggled to keep.”

“What is it?” Talmir asked, feeling like a child on the edges of the fire, leaning in to one of Sister Piell’s stories but afraid to lean too far.

Another laugh, this one with just a tinge of mania. The wind picked up and sent a chill down Talmir’s spine despite the warmth.

“They think it’s their Ember god,” he said, seemingly speaking to himself more than Talmir. “No. No, no. It is something older. Something worse.”

“And you are its minders?” Talmir nearly spat. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “That is why you won’t join us. That is why you won’t fight against the others who hold the World—even with its Landkist—under their sway? What will the Eastern Dark unleash if he’s left unchecked? Who will stop him, if not you?”

“They hold less power than they believe,” Pevah said, though he sounded regretful.

“Tell that to the children of the Valley core,” Talmir said. “Tell it to those in the east, who live beneath the gray towers of the tyrant there, the Sage of Balon Rael. I assume he’s real, as well?”

“All too real.” He sighed. “Talmir. I do not have the power you think I do. Whatever I have, it’s needed here. Perhaps T’Alon Rane did.”

“What does whatever’s out there matter if the World ends?” Talmir asked. He sounded frantic, and hated it. “What does it matter if the World Apart keeps coming back every season when the sun sinks below the horizon? When the Dark Kind rip our babes from their beds and tear our lives apart?”

“We have a charge,” Pevah said, and though Talmir wanted to rant and rave, something in the old man’s bearing made him hesitate.

“What can we do?” Talmir asked. He asked it quietly because he did not mean to ask it at all.

“Endure. It is what the Landkist are for, I think. It is what the people of the World were made to do.”

He sounded sick and Talmir felt sick, as if his whole mission—his foolish dream—was crumbling like a castle made all of thatch and loose sticks.

Pevah—who was not Pevah at that time—turned on his heel and stalked past Talmir without meeting his eyes. Talmir nearly reached a hand out to stop him, but something in the look—the intent, or the glint of a steely eye—stayed his hand.

Just before he reached the stairwell, which looked like nothing more than a hole they’d crawled out of, the old man stopped and heaved another sigh that made him smaller.

“Their teeth are stained red because they drink the blood of their own,” he said. “They will win the war of attrition. But not now. Not while I’m here.” He took one step down. “I will not send you and yours home, Talmir Caru. Stay, or go. I say stay, though you must be disappointed.”

Anger was the word, and Talmir would try to stop it spreading to rage. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath as the old man retreated to his cavernous hall beneath the sand. Talmir looked to the west, his eyes straining past the shimmering swells. He could not tell if it was a trick of his mind or of the sun, but the sky looked bloody that way.

Iyana had felt the mood of the captain before he had descended the day before. She could feel it now, coming off him like waves of heat from the sands they’d walked across on the way here. It felt like disappointment, with a touch of loathing. Even without dipping into the Between, Iyana felt it.

She felt the mood of the caravan shift and buckle under the weight of Talmir Caru’s guilt and anger. He did not speak. He did not rage against the old Sage, nor against his charges. He did not express what had been said, but all among them knew what had been refused. They had found what they were looking for when they set out from the Valley core, but it seemed they would return empty-handed and absent news of power moving for them, for a change, and against the Eastern Dark.

Still, it wasn’t all bad.

Karin had made remarkable progress in the days following the attack. The other Faeykin had stopped ministering to him, and though he denied it to Iyana, she knew it was because he had refused them. He still moved about with a halting gait, his wounds stretched tight over skin that was only recently mended. Talmir had given him orders to stay within the complex. He’d given them all the same. Where else they would go, Iyana was not one for guessing. And so, she made the best of it. After a day of the captain’s infectious sulking, the men and women under his command did as well.

The children helped. Iyana watched them play on the edges of the lake at midday. The soldiers had grown bored with their constant chatter and had moved up, seeking out the solace provided by the wind and sun atop the shelves, or perhaps to mind the horses that did not need minding. But Iyana delighted in the sounds, just as she delighted in the laughter that bubbled out of them each time one of the little ones caught her staring in their direction.

She waved at them and they tried to wave her over, but she had found a bit of rock that sat just below a skylight and was loath to move. She looked up and lost her gaze to the brightness, the fury of the sun dampened by the moisture of the cave. The birds twittered and sang as they flew from one nook to the next, and Iyana thought they were similar to the folk who sheltered beneath them.

“What should we do?”

Iyana turned toward the speaker. It was Ket. He sat on the lower stair with Jes beside him. Mial had gone off with Karin, shadowing the First Runner as he set to exploring the various offshoots. Pevah had told them it was safe, though Iyana had tried to forbid it.

Jes ignored Ket because he’d asked the same question twice that morning. He’d been asking it since Talmir had come back, his initial hopefulness turning to a restlessness that grew with each passing hour.

“The captain will try again,” Iyana said. She smiled. “He probably is now, as we speak.” She hadn’t seen Pevah or Talmir since the night before, and imagined they were embroiled in another talk that bordered argument before devolving into verbal warfare. None among the company had actually heard them speak, but they could see it in the way one left and another followed, in the way one returned and the other long after, grumbling words that ran together and whose meaning was clear as the water in the obsidian pools about them.

Ket did not look mollified. If anything, his shoulders sagged a little more, and the sigh he released this time was enough to get Jes up and moving.

“How’s your arm?” Iyana asked her as she passed.

“Fine. Thank you,” she said. “Got to find a tunnel with more air than this one.” Iyana smiled at her back, then briefly turned her gaze to Ket before giving him up as a hopeless cause.

The merchants had stretched out their parchments and canvas wraps and were cataloging their tools—all things they had brought. Things for map-making and for digging. Things for finding new things that they had yet to find. Iyana pitied them, in a way. How disappointed they looked. How forlorn, knowing the older traders of Hearth had been right to warn them of the uncertain road. At the same time, she had to admit a grudging respect that they had come at all. After all, who was she to judge? She, who had never before defended lake or wall from the Dark Kind. She, who had sheltered when her friends and family fought and died.

She pushed the thought aside and tried to find a new one. Each time she looked at one of their hosts—be they red-sashes with brown skin or silver-cloaks with white—she felt a sadness, for something lost and for something never known. Something unspeakable. Neither group could be described as joyful, but the gray moved as if they were in a daze, like hounds awaiting the commands of their master.

But there was something else. The wind Jes had been looking for swept down from one of the alcoves above and brought no birdsong with it. It made her skin prickle, though it was not cold, and Iyana began to sway until she forced herself to stop.

“Why do you stop?”

She whirled, only realizing she had drifted to the center of the open chamber when she noted eyes fixed on her from all directions. The children had stopped their splashing in the shallow water and the nomads watched from their corners and perches. Even her own people frowned, and Ket had half-risen as if he feared for her safety.

Verna stood directly before her, the Faeykin’s pale features striking under her shock of red hair. Her green eyes sparkled with intent.

“Sorry?” Iyana said, fighting with the acoustics of the vaulted ceilings and mirrored black arches to keep her voice low. The eyes turned away—most of them—and left the strange Faeykin to their strange talk.

“Why do you stop?” Verna asked, doing nothing to keep her own voice low. “You began to dip. The others wonder why you fight it. Courlis believes you fear the Between. Sen will not say what he believes, though I know he has spoken with you.”

Was that a hint of jealousy?

“Why would one of the Faeykin fear the Between?” The question was leading, and Verna’s look suggested she knew. Iyana did not answer. “Unless,” Verna purred, her head tilting in a way that was aloof and strange as the rest of her, “you cannot control the paths. I wonder what the old woman taught you?”

Iyana felt her blood near to boiling and worked to cool it. She could have been an Ember in that moment, all rage and spitting fire. As it was, only the slight twitching of a brow betrayed her, though Verna could see it plain enough.

“You remember what they called her, don’t you?” Iyana asked. “You remember what they called the old woman who taught me?”

Verna’s mouth was a tight line.

“The Faey Mother,” Iyana said. She leaned in and showed her teeth, and Verna stepped back. Iyana smiled—the look of a wolf. It was something Ninyeva would have done. “She had more power than any of the strange masters that kept you in the western woods of the Valley. You know why they hated her, Verna? Because she didn’t seek power. She didn’t try to take it. It found her, and it became her.”

Now Verna’s face betrayed her. The eyes in the chamber were fixed on them, or else turned purposefully away. Iyana didn’t mind it. Not now.

“You would equate yourself with the Faey Mother?” Verna said. Iyana smiled wider, and she thought the older woman who was not so much older might reach out and strike her.

“I would,” Iyana said, adding, “I am her legacy, after all. None of you can claim the same.”

Verna made a sound like a hissing cat and turned on her heel, stalking back toward her dimly-lit chamber and its pretentious company with which Iyana wanted nothing to do. Iyana watched her go, red hair trailing like one of the nomads’ scarves. She saw Creyath regarding her with an expressionless face as he chewed on a hunk of dried and salted meat. He gave the slightest of bows that may well have been a victory bell, and Iyana could not help but smile again.

Still, the attention was too much. She felt like a lone desert flower in a storm. The children giggled behind her, the sort of nervous laughter reserved for the silent observation of disagreements between the grown. Iyana spun sharply on them, hands out, and they screamed and slipped from the shelf, splashing and wriggling in the shallows. Iyana gave chase, her heart leaping as it hadn’t in months as they led her in a merry chase through the twisting pathways and filtered, glittering trails beneath the sands.

Soon enough, the chase stopped, and now Iyana followed them as they hopped and skipped, ducked and crept through crevices and sloping ramps.

“Not so far,” she said, feeling strange as they left the sunlit chamber and its lapping lake behind. Her trousers were soaked through from the wading and running, but she was not out of breath. She felt a pride that had as much to do with that as it did the thought of what Ninyeva would have made of her conversation.

Iyana Ve’Ran was no longer merely a Faeykin of the Valley. No longer waiting on the edge of a nightmare to tend to those who fought the dark. She was out in the World, now, and no matter what might come of their path, she counted it a victory, for her if for nothing else.

A stab of panic hit her as she lost the filtered light above, the tunnels and wind-carved paths howling as they moved away from the lake, their bottoms slick but no longer carrying pools of their own.

“Hello?” She had lost the children, though she caught glimpses of them: a flash of red through a gap in the stalagmites and a wisp of silver-gray as one leapt through an errant ray. If they hadn’t been trailing their innocent joviality, they’d have frightened her like the savages Karin had fought.

“Back to the lake with you, now,” she said in a matronly voice that almost had her rolling her eyes at herself. She came to a bend and nearly yelped when she saw the collection of little ones standing in a clutch atop a rounded stone with lavender moss all around it. It was a cross-section of sorts, with passageways forking off in four directions. The children stared down the one she thought faced south.

“What is it?” she asked. Her voice startled a girl in the back, who spun on her only to smile nervously, her pale face coloring.

Iyana hunched down to their level, squeezing in behind them. No birds sang in the deeper corridors, and though he would have been silent even if he were here, she knew Mial had not come this way. The children seemed hesitant to go farther in, as if they waited on the edge of some beast’s lair. The air was warmer, here. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now that the wind and water were behind, the close tunnels felt stifling.

“Pevah.” The little girl she’d startled said it in an awed tone and backed away. The smaller children mirrored her, though those in front, the older ones, stayed rooted for longer, as if on a dare. As a collective, their playful demeanor had shifted, turning to a testing curiosity that was colored by fear.

Iyana felt herself sway and did not try to stop it this time. She had been avoiding contact with the Between ever since Sen’s lesson, if that was what he would call it. She felt somehow infected by his dispassion.

Some of the children moved away from her while others crowded closer. Some regarded her strangely, though not with suspicion, as she began to sing that strange hum she never knew she was making until she was. The boys in front continued to stare down the dim tunnel ahead, which seemed to bend in and expand like the throat of some primordial behemoth.

The lights were comforting as they sprouted and waved around her like the plants that glowed beneath the docks of Last Lake, the children’s tethers bright and swaying in time with each other. Despite their differing hues, there was nothing separating the brown from the white. All of them glowed with a yellow that recalled soft sunlight.

Iyana concentrated on the pathway ahead. She noticed a new glow, and tried to block the rest out. She thought of leaving her body entirely and seeing what she could find on paths she hadn’t traveled since the Valley, but she feared to do so without a guiding hand. She feared to do so without Ninyeva.

“Red.”

The little girl who spoke it was clutching Iyana’s hand with clammy paws.

“How can you see it?” Iyana said distractedly. She was only just beginning to make out the blood-colored wisps that crept around the edges and brushed the black stones.

“Young ones!”

If the shout hadn’t done it, the combined shrieking of a dozen children surely would have. Iyana heard the sound with heightened senses and fell to her knees as the children ran back the way they’d come, trailing their screams and hysterical laughter. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the buzzing as the haze of unreality cleared. It should not have bothered her this much. She had only just touched it—extended her senses and sought the tethers, like standing in the shallows along the shore rather than submerging, but still she felt the waves hit her.

When the sensation finally subsided, she felt a presence and fell back, sliding down the rounded floor before firm hands caught her and hoisted her with inhuman strength.

“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 voice 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.

“It’s all going to come to the same,” she said. “In the end.”

He straightened and seemed to calm some. He set his mouth into a hard line.

“Yes,” he said. “It will.” He walked past her and then turned back. “Do not worry, Iyana Ve’Ran. I may not seek out the Eastern Dark’s war, but it will find me, and I fear it will come to the same end. I’m on the same wheel he is. All that remains is to see which way it turns.”

He raised his chin, indicating the tree she sat beneath. “You come here seeking power and judging it, but you’ve already sent it out into the World. Your Everwood blades are out there even now, hunting the rest of my kind.” He regarded her, and now it was she who felt judged. “The Landkist may be a gift of the World, but there’s no way to know for sure. Power is power, Iyana, no matter its form.”

She thought of Linn and the power she carried. The old man turned to leave, but paused once more at the doorway. “You may take what time you like,” he said. “They won’t have noticed.”

“You underestimate their concern,” she said, feeling insulted.

“No,” he said. “I have enjoyed our talk. I would like to share as many days of conversation with you as I have with your captain. A bold man, but not without virtue.”

Iyana scoffed. “We’ve been here three days. How much could you know of him?”

A smile from the shadows. “Time is a power too, Iyana. Fickle and flowing like a stubborn stream.” He turned and raised a hand toward the Everwood tree, and his eyes went black. As she watched, the light that had dimmed from the alcove brightened. The Sage turned his hand over, and it brightened further still, and as she looked closer she saw the motes of dust slow and slow until they stopped. She stood and reached toward the beam. Her fingers passed through it, and the motes only moved when she brushed against them, like still drops.

The chamber seemed to release a breath she had not known it held, and the dust flowed freely. When she turned back, Pevah’s eyes had regained their color, though they were strained.

“A mighty gift,” she said, shaking her head. “A god’s gift.”

He did not deny it. “Gifts run out.”

With that, he left her with her thoughts, which swirled in the dust that would take a thousand years or more to bury the Everwood tree.

Karin gritted his teeth upon waking, tensing every muscle in anticipation of a pain that did not come. He exhaled, feeling the skin slide across the muscles of his back with only the slightest pull and no threat of tearing.

He sat up from his bedroll and examined his close surroundings. Despite the urgings of Iyana and Pevah to seek out a wider and less stifling chamber, he had grown used to his little alcove by the lake. He looked up, scanning the dark and sparkling stalactites overhead and the gap of filtered light that streamed in. It was a soft, white light. It was early, and Karin smiled, happy to be back to his usual self.

He rose and snatched his shirt—still damp from the night’s washing in the hot lake—and put it on as he stole out into the hall. There were no sounds but for the occasional sigh the water made against the black shoreline. Karin walked into the central cavern and smirked as he saw Iyana mixed in with the soldiers of the caravan, all of them strewn haphazardly about the charred stones below the spiral stair that served as a natural chimney stack. The merchants and the Faeykin had each chosen their own rooms farther in, away from the constant push and pull of the lake. For Iyana, it must have sounded like home. For the soldiers of the caravan, it was the largest and most defensible position.

There was no sign of Jes or Mial. They were likely up above, keeping watch for enemies—more likely getting away from the stale air of the lower caverns and the radiant heat that coated everything in mist. It was pleasant and cool in the first light of dawn, and the warm rocks beneath only seemed inviting when they were cooler than the high noon sun and warmer than the biting nip of frost that coated the dunes in the deep nights.

Of Captain Caru, there was no sign. Nor of Creyath. Nor of Pevah, their host, grudging or otherwise.

As he drew closer to the sleeping caravan, Karin saw Iyana’s brow furrowed, her lips forming a tight line. He sighed and cast about, looking for signs of the desert nomads and coming up wanting. A part of him knew it was strange to think of them like that. Still, comfortable and lived-in as this black complex was, it had none of the markings of home. There was no artwork. No permanent bedrolls or personal touches. No forgotten piles of tools, crates or supplies. This was a land of survival, and Karin knew that the people of the desert—dark and pale alike—were truly here to carry out some mythic purpose. The great charge they spoke of reverently without revealing what, exactly, it was.

They had been here for several days that had blended together, and yet, somehow, it all felt a lot longer. Karin had seen it in the captain’s face—the haggard look he carried as his constant attempts to pry what he wanted from the old man weighed heavier than the bronze that hung from the cord on his neck. He kept it hidden, these days, Karin noticed. He did not want others to see his guilt manifest. To see the fears of the expedition laid bare.

The thought had Karin peering westward, back down the dim tunnel from which he’d come. What could possibly have one of the last remaining powers of the world—a Sage of some power, even if he had yet to show it—so bothered? What did the Blood Seers seek out at the Midnight Dunes? What did the Sage of the Red Waste not want them to find? To unleash, that would keep him otherwise engaged lest he become embroiled in the War he might’ve played no small part in starting?

Karin and Mial had explored deep into the cavernous network by the Sage’s leave. It was a land of untold depth and breadth, with crystal-lined columns more common in the lower tunnels. There were steaming pools and smoky trenches, though none wide enough to fall into without a true attempt or an excess of clumsiness. He had walked the obsidian bridges the receding lake left bare in the nights, passing under the arches and wading through the shallows as the moon and stars lit the translucent stones the land wore as armor. It was beautiful, but already Karin felt his thoughts turning back to the sands. He felt the pull that had earned him his name. The pull to move, to go where he had never been. To see.

“Karin.”

He looked down to see Iyana wiping the sleep from her eyes.

“What time—?”

“Early,” he said in a whisper. Ket stirred beside her and one of the female soldiers murmured in her sleep.

Iyana’s eyes, murky upon waking, now took on that faint green glow as she stared at the shore and the white pillar that still shined its night light on the surrounding slabs. They flicked to Karin. She looked concerned, with that same tired glaze that had set into the captain like a rot. Karin thought it might have to do with that Sen fellow and made a note to speak with him about it, that fatherly fire welling in his gut, though Iyana had never been his.

“Where is the captain?” she asked, coming to stand. Her hair seemed too light to be disheveled, spilling down around her shoulders until she tied it back. She rolled up her canvas and blankets and stuffed them into a rucksack that was larger than any the soldiers carried, and Karin heard the ting and scrape of stone as the mortar, pestles and various mashings shifted within. Things she had no true need of, given her gifts.

“Another meeting with the patron of the establishment, I would guess,” Karin said.

“Not so.”

They both turned toward the stair and saw Pevah coming down, his robes barely touching the stone underfoot as he moved. The soldiers shifted sharply at the sudden sound and woke in various states of distress, but the old man smiled in that devilish way that worked as an apology. They rolled their eyes at him and set to unmaking the ramshackle camp.

“Pevah,” Karin said, dipping a slight bow of greeting. The old man nodded back, but Karin saw that Iyana frowned at the exchange. She had met with him two days before—spoke with him in one of the lower chambers. She brought Karin there the next day, showing him the Everwood tree beneath which they had sat, she and the Sage. She did not tell him what they had discussed. Whatever it was, it had left her colder than before. She now looked at the old man as if he were something else—perhaps exactly what he claimed to be.

“The venerable captain is busy refusing my requests again,” the old man laughed. “He is above, waiting for his next chance to corner me and wring from me whatever it is he wants.”

Karin smiled tightly as Iyana did nothing of the sort. The men and women of the caravan considered the old man with guarded expressions. Some had taken to him, but none had taken to the way he spoke of Talmir. Karin saw it as familiar, even teasing. They would not abide either, even if they liked the man otherwise. They were aimless, Karin knew—waiting on the edge of something they did not understand. And each day, the nights grew longer, the Dark Months approaching like a rolling and unerring tide. And they were far from home.

Seeing their looks, Pevah smiled wide enough to show his teeth and swept his hands out in a disarming motion.

“The caves are protecting,” he said, looking up at the uneven ceiling far above. “But you lot are used to the open air of the Valley bowl, yes? Good. Did you hear the thunder in the night?”

Karin frowned. The old man spoke to them as if they were children. To him, perhaps they were. Still, the effect of his tone was mixed on the company.

“There was no storm,” Iyana said, her voice flat. He regarded her with those deep red-brown eyes, but his smile was fast returning.

“Not a storm, Iyana,” he said with a cluck and an upturned finger. He pointed above. “A thunder of hooves in the shallow sand.” Come to think of it, Karin had heard something in the deep night. He had mistaken it for a dream, or perhaps for some rumble from the vents and fissures in the earth far below.

“A herd,” Karin reasoned. Iyana looked at him with a concerned expression. Judging by the way the rest reacted, they were all thinking along the same lines. Seeing it, Pevah frowned and tilted his chin.

“What disturbs you about a herd of hammerhorns?” he asked.

“We ran into some to the east,” Ket said. He glanced at the others. “They were driven by some magic—a Landkist of the Emerald Road. They tried to kill us.”

“And did they succeed?” the old man asked without missing a beat.

Ket looked unsure how to answer, so he settled for a shrug.

“It seems to me they did not,” Pevah answered himself.

“Killed one.”

The voice came from the back and they turned to see Stav the merchant walking while rubbing the sleep from his eye. He fetched a pail from one of the shelves and drank water that had been sitting overnight. He spat unceremoniously, and Karin glanced back at the old man and saw a glint to those eyes.

“My uncle went down beneath the wagons,” Stav said without looking in their direction. He set the pail down with a clatter. “Hardly a joking matter.” He sounded as despondent as the rest looked, and Karin remembered the image of the man going down beneath the black wings and talons of the crows Brega Cohr had sent against them. He felt a swell of pity for the nephew he had left behind and even regretted his own dismissive feeling toward the pair. The young man tossed a wave at his back and withdrew, going back to the room he shared with his partner.

“A shame,” Pevah said, though Karin did not sense much regret in his tone. “But the news I bring is not of the somber variety.”

Footsteps, and Karin turned back the way the merchant had gone. From the same direction came Sen and the two Faeykin. They moved with grace, and though they had only just emerged, Karin thought they had been awake for some time. He wondered what they did in their meditations as they filtered into the chamber and picked their places from which to observe affairs they rarely involved themselves in. He wondered why they did not associate with Iyana, who was like them, and thought that perhaps it was she who had recused herself from their company.

“What’s so special about a herd?” one of the men asked.

“The hammerhorn bulls rarely come this way,” he said. “We have stretched our provisions, being here so long. It is a blessing. And, since you lot are content—and welcome—to join us, perhaps you’d like to see the land. Perhaps the First Runner,” he nodded at Karin, “would like to run with the guardians and bring down tonight’s feast.”

“Guardians?” Ket asked.

“The foxes,” Karin answered for Pevah, and the old man nodded.

“What’s the occasion?” Iyana asked.

“The occasion,” Pevah said, “is Sharing. First in company and later, perhaps, in common cause.”

“The captain will not stop asking until you agree to help us,” Iyana said, the words sounding like thrown stones in the echoing chamber.

The old man’s look changed, then. It was only for a moment, but it made Iyana twitch and even caused Karin to take a step forward, remembering the knife at his belt. Pevah’s eyes flicked his way and Karin paused, and then that wide smile returned to the old man’s features.

“Too much has been asked for in private,” Pevah said, accusing yet soft. “Too much has been said in small company.” He nodded up toward the surface. “My people have questions of yours. You have questions of them. A coming together is a beautiful thing, and it is best done over meat, in my experience.”

Karin glanced at the Faeykin. The red-haired woman grimaced and paled, while Sen looked blank, considering the old man like a spider considers a fly. Iyana, for her part, looked more suspicious of the man asking than the task he asked for.

“No takers?” he asked, preparing to turn. “No matter. Ceth will be enough for the task.”

“I’ll go,” Iyana said, stepping forward. Karin half expected laughter to greet the proclamation, but it seemed the soldiers of the caravan had learned quickly not to doubt her. At least, not openly.

“Very good,” Pevah said.

“Why would they be out here?” the old Faeykin, Courlis, asked. “The hammerhorn bulls. There is no grass here. No shrubbery. All I have seen is desert flowers, and hardly enough to support a group.”

Iyana winced as he said it and Karin frowned in confusion.

“It is the rut,” Pevah said. “There are no cows and no calves among them. These are the warriors of the tribe. The stoutest and the strongest. They come here once in a cycle to do battle, with the land more than each other.” He looked up, seeming wistful. “You can clear your conscience of the killing. The bulls are here for death. They welcome it. They seek it, and those too strong to find it will produce the next.”

Karin imagined the great gray beasts with their gnarled horns and scarred flanks. He imagined them and tried to look past the poisoned memory from the open road, and tried to see the majesty in it.

“Only a few should go,” Karin said. “I’ll join you, Iyana.” She smiled at him, her first such look of the day.

“Good, good,” Pevah said. “I must prepare things here. And to any staying behind, the children are already off gathering the wine in the southern tunnels, beyond the lake.”

“The wine?” Iyana asked.

“I saw no fruit in the caverns,” Karin said, frowning.

“You were not looking in the right places,” Pevah said. “There are many gems more than the moonlight, here.” He nodded toward the lake. “A trick of the Northmen. The fruit in the deserts is sweeter than the bitter roots they used at the top of the World. It is quite the nectar.”

A land of surprises, indeed. “And what of the rest?” Karin asked, thinking it strange the old man would permit the children to explore the reaches themselves. Then again, he knew better, as would their parents. “What do you require of us?”

Pevah smiled, delighted to be asked. He swept his gaze out to touch each of the Valley caravan.

“Above, my folk prepare for the Sharing,” he said, and Karin realized this was to be more than a simple feast. There was something of ritual in the act. A ceremony, of sorts. Perhaps the captain would get his answers in it. “They have the paint and the sashes. They prepare. Find them and speak with them until they speak back. It is good to make connections before the Sharing.”

The soldiers of the caravan looked to Karin, deferring to the First Runner in the absence of Talmir and Creyath.

Pevah sighed and shook his head. “Make friends,” he said, waving toward the stair. “Or wallow by stale ashes.” He indicated the black stain between the ring of stones they slept around. Then, to Karin: “The herd is not far. Ceth and his hunters will lead you. You should be back before nightfall.” He winked. “There should be some wine left.”

The soldiers dispersed, some quicker than others. Karin doubted if all would seek out the nomads on Pevah’s command. But some would. He could not count that anything but a victory, and thought that was the Sage’s intent. A part of him wondered if this ‘Sharing’ was a thing at all, or some recent invention of the old man his people would play along with.

Pevah moved past Karin and Iyana and past the Faeykin sitting on the shelves. He seemed to sag a bit as he did, his form shrinking, and Karin was reminded how tall he had appeared. He must be going to take what rest Captain Talmir would not afford him. Karin felt a strange swell of pity for the man, then turned his attention to Iyana.

“Now, then, huntress,” Karin said. “What weapon shall you choose for your first hunt?” The Faeykin moved toward the stair, following the departing soldiers. Sen tossed a blank look back at the pair and Karin met it, causing it to flit away like one of the birds in the nests above.

“Hmm,” Iyana said, tapping a finger to her chin. She glanced about dramatically, her eyes passing over spears, swords and a pair of bows that leaned against the arches. She spun back toward Karin, who was checking the blade at his belt and strapping his boots tighter. “I choose you as my weapon,” she said.

“I am no Everwood blade,” he confessed, feeling a pang as he said it that Iyana seemed to mirror. He placed a fist over his heart and swept a bow. “But I shall do my best … to find the herd, or to follow those who know it better. To fell one of the great gray beasts, or else to point out someone who can.” She laughed at him. “Come to think of it, I believe there is an Ember above. A good man to have on a hunt, I think.”

“The day Creyath Mit’Ahn grows restless is the day we’ve lingered too long,” Iyana said.

“Can’t argue with that.”

Karin followed the departing soldiers as they made their way up the spiral and Iyana followed him. It was easy to forget how dry the air was up above, the atmosphere thinning as they climbed. Looking down, Karin could almost see the vapors rising from the warm bedrock and mixing with the cooler currents from the upper vents. The sun was harsh at the surface, but the deepest parts of the desert were the warmest, and Karin was reminded of tales of the hearts beneath the sands of home.

By the time the ground leveled out, Karin had worked up a sweat. He saw that Iyana had as well, her white bangs sticking to her forehead, but those green eyes glinted with a determination he was not surprised to see, even if the soldiers of the caravan had been at first. Iyana had always been the stoutest of the children of Last Lake. She was the legacy of Mother Ninyeva, no matter what her parentage might say.

Ahead, the white light of the day framed the opening, the figures beyond it black smudges as their eyes worked to adjust to the glare. The ceiling and sloped floor, as well as the jagged and wide-cut walls, shone with a subdued brilliance like the sliding path of a jewel-encrusted snake. One of the red-sashed nomads waited by the opening to the northern tunnel where the horses were kept. He met Karin’s eyes and drew him in with the look while the other soldiers continued ahead, packing close together as they wondered how to go about approaching the nomads on the outer shelf, despite having been in their company for a span of days.

“The captain waits for you atop the shelf,” he said. His voice was lighter than his expression, which was as serious as the children below were playful.

“Will you be joining us on the hunt?” Karin asked. That actually drew a smile.

“I am not so brave,” he said. “Give me bloody teeth over hammerhorns.”

He said it lightly enough, but it sounded like foreboding. The look Iyana turned on Karin showed she felt the same.

They passed around the horses and their pool. There were only half a dozen standing in the filtered light below the opening, and Karin guessed the others—Talmir’s painted mare and Creyath’s black charger—were already on the shelf outside. Karin had gone this way before, but he was surprised to see Iyana take the lead, passing in front of him and turning up a narrow corridor that cut upward at a sharp angle so that they were climbing more than walking.

“You’ve been at the top?” Karin asked from behind.

“I’ve had trouble sleeping,” Iyana said. “I came up here in the night …”

She trailed off, and Karin knew she must be looking west, toward that same red-purple haze that lit the horizon even in the deep nights when the stars were out in full. It was a beautiful sight, but it seemed somehow strange, and Karin knew it was the direction the warriors had gone a few nights before. He also knew that an impression had led Iyana on this dogged path, which only Talmir seemed more set on blazing. Others in the Valley might wave such things away, but Karin knew not to doubt it. Whichever direction Iyana stared was the direction to be pointed in, or away from. It remained to be seen which this would be.

Another flare stung Karin’s eyes as Iyana pulled herself up out of the hole. He followed, feeling the sharp grains greet his palms as he pushed himself up, the black rock hot enough to come close to burning. It was windy, but the heat stole the pleasant kiss away from it.

“First Runner,” Creyath said, helping Karin to his feet.

“Second Keeper,” Karin said with a wink. Amber eyes regarded him above that white smile, and the two of them stood shoulder to shoulder. To the edge of the sloped shelf, Talmir Caru stood alongside Iyana, both looking to the west as if they could will its answers to come to them.

Or perhaps there was a more practical reason, today.

“Reyna,” Talmir said without turning. He sounded distracted and Karin saw Iyana shield her eyes with an upraised hand.

“What is it?” Karin asked as he and Creyath moved to join them.

The lower shelf was laid out below them. As Karin had suspected, two horses were there, standing muzzle to muzzle. Red-sashes and gray moved about, some of them carrying plants and bundles Karin could not guess the origins of while the folk of the caravan wandered between them. Ceth and two red-sashes stood on the edge, above the yellow river of sand that separated their complex from the black ridge across the way. They, too, stared west.

Karin half expected to see a great cloud of dust marring the distance—a sign of the herd they were meant to follow. Instead, he caught a spot of black, stark against the wavering outline of the dunes. As he squinted, he counted a second and then a third. They were figures, coming closer, the color of their sashes impossible to make out from the distance.

“They must be the warriors the last group replaced,” Iyana said. The men regarded her, Talmir with a frown.

“If so,” the captain said, “they have suffered losses.”

The figures drew closer, and now they could recognize two as male and one as female. Karin realized the two on the sides supported the one in the middle. How long had they been walking?

“Eight set out two nights ago,” Talmir said. “The group that one,” he jutted his chin toward Ceth on the lower shelf, “wanted to join. Three return. Hardly an even exchange.”

“All for their sacred charge,” Creyath said, and Karin had a hard time knowing if he jested.

“The Midnight Dunes,” Iyana said, her voice taking on a bit of that dream quality that made some uncomfortable.

Talmir nearly spat, and as he turned away from the edge, Karin caught a flash of just how tired he was.

“I heard he’s taking you hunting,” Talmir said, taking Iyana by the wrist in greeting before doing the same with Karin. His shake was loose and betrayed his weariness.

“The Landkist,” Karin said. “The old man sleeps below. It seems you’ve been at him enough to draw blood.”

“Good,” Talmir said with a bit of venom that made Karin wince. “I’ve spoken to him three times, now. Can’t have been more than a few hours, and we’ve been here just a short span, but already it feels like months.”

Iyana opened her mouth to speak and then closed it.

“What is it, Iyana?” Karin asked. She looked from him to Talmir as they waited, expectant. It was clear to Karin that she had the full confidence of both captain and Ember, and him as well. Perhaps it would take some time yet before she would earn her own.

“I spoke with him as well,” she said, halting at first and then more steady. “Pevah, I mean.” Talmir raised a brow at the name but did not interrupt. “There is something strange about him.” Her look recalled the unsettled energy she gave off around Sen and the other Faeykin, and Karin thought he might be wrong in assuming it was the strange healer who had her so rattled—at least, him alone.

“We are in agreement on that,” Talmir said, but Iyana was already shaking her head. “What is it?” he asked. “A concern?”

“For us, no,” Iyana said. “I don’t think so. But it might explain the duress he seems to be under. It might explain why your talks have felt so long. He has a way with time, I think.”

“Time,” Talmir said. He sounded disbelieving, but as he turned it over Karin could see the slight widening of his eyes, as if things were clicking into place.

“Sages,” Creyath muttered. He seemed uncomfortable, a rare enough thing.

Talmir seemed to feed off Creyath’s demeanor. “I thought him a coward at first,” he said. “But there is a strength to him. I’ll give him that.”

“He has given you nothing?” Karin asked.

“Plenty,” Talmir said, disgust evident. “Stories of the past. Stories of us, or who we were. Which is to say, nothing.” He shook his head. “What should keep him here when so much is happening in the wider World?”

“What is great to us may not be to him,” Creyath said. It was the wrong thing to say, but the Ember had ever spoken his mind, when he chose to speak.

“The end of the World, Mit’Ahn?” Talmir said, whirling. “That’s big enough for any.”

Their exchange went from verbal to something else, the amber eyes of the Second Keeper steady under the captain’s ire.

“Talmir,” Karin said, making his concern evident. “Perhaps you should rest. There will be a feast tonight—”

“The Sharing, yes,” he said, too sharply. He sighed, seeming to deflate as he stepped back from Creyath and placed a hand on Karin’s shoulder, squeezing with a bit of his usual firmness. “I am sorry, Karin. And to you as well, Iyana.” He paused and looked back toward the west at the distant figures growing closer. “Perhaps you are right. We are guests, after all, and I fear I have acted in a manner unbecoming.” He withdrew his hand and almost looked to waver a bit. Karin saw Creyath take half a step forward, as if he feared the captain might fall and dash his head upon the rock.

“Retire,” Karin said, injecting warmth into his tone. “Rest. Whatever answers are in these deserts, I don’t think they’re found by pulling or prying. Besides, some meat—and not of the dried and salted variety—might do you well.”

Talmir smiled a tired smile. “You’re as wise as your son is rash,” he said, and Karin had to laugh. Iyana did as well, and Creyath smiled, likely remembering his own run-in with Kole. “It’s a shame you aren’t as powerful, else we wouldn’t have the need to seek out gods from the past.”

“Not even a near thing,” Karin said with a shake.

Talmir exhaled and cast a last look toward the rolling dunes before turning for the stair. He clapped Karin on the shoulder as he passed. “Take my mare,” he said. “And take that Ember as well. He could use something to keep his blood up.”

“Always up, Captain,” Creyath said, but Talmir ignored him.

“And do not misplace my best Landkist,” Talmir said, and Iyana smiled as Creyath crossed his arms.

The captain withdrew. Karin, Creyath and Iyana exchanged concerned glances.

“Rest will do him well,” Creyath said. He sounded hopeful.

“Answers will do him better,” Karin said. “Perhaps the old man doesn’t trust us near as much as he seems to.”

“Maybe.” Iyana said it as if she knew it wasn’t the case. “Or maybe he’s afraid of something.”

“What might the Sage of the Red Waste fear?” Creyath asked. “Aside from one of his fellows.”

“The truth,” Iyana said. “And whatever it calls up.” She looked to the west, and Karin thought the blue in the sky looked different that way—murky and still. Karin and Creyath exchanged glances as Iyana came back to herself.

“Have you tried your Sight?” Karin asked, his memory jogged as her eyes took on that fairy glow. She looked at him quizzically. “Like you did with Linn at the peaks. Have you tried it here? Have you tried to find them in the east? At Center?”

Her concern was evident and Karin thought he might’ve called up something uninvited and unwanted, like a scar. In truth, he tried not to think of Kole and the others often. He was First Runner. He kept his eyes in front and his heels in back. Still, it was difficult not knowing, and Iyana was the only one who might know more than nothing.

“It is beyond me.” Iyana said it like a sigh, like some grave admission. She looked up at Karin, sheepish and ashamed. “I have not tried, but it was different in the Valley.” Karin tried to hold up a hand to stay her, but the thoughts tumbled out regardless. “For starters, it was closer. I know the Valley. Not all of it, but I know its feel. I know how the Between feels there. In all honesty, I thought it was there, in a way. I only learned very recently that its everywhere, even out here.” She almost shuddered. “But there’s something off about it, here. About the sight Ninyeva had. I wonder if she could have used it in a land like this. So full of death. So absent lights and tethers. In a way, I think the very abundance of the Valley fuels the Faey and those like me named their kin. I—”

“Iyana,” Karin said, stepping forward. He laid a hand on her shoulder and she stopped. He did not say any more, but it seemed to appease her. Creyath looked away.

“The warriors return,” the Ember said. “We should be going.”

“Do you wager this hunt is a distraction?” Karin asked. Creyath seemed to consider it while Iyana looked down at the collection of nomads and Valleyfolk as the former moved to greet the weary warriors and the latter gathered around them.

“I’m sure of it,” she said, meeting Karin’s eyes as she passed, heading toward the stair. “Question is, who is it a distraction for? Us, or Ceth?”

“Fair point,” Karin said under his breath. He tossed a last look at the group below and followed the Ember and Faeykin back down into the shelf, delighting in the cool kiss of the shade on his sweat-soaked skin.

The wind had changed, picking up even as they made the short transition from upper shelf to lower. Creyath greeted the horses as Karin and Iyana moved toward the lip where the black rock met the sand. Ceth and a clutch of red- and gray-sashes conversed with their road-weary fellows. The man who could not walk under his own power was still conscious, but his light face and silver-gray hair was crusted with blood and sand. Jes moved forward to take him under one arm as one of the nomads did the other, and together they dragged him up onto the lip and toward the cave mouth at their back. Mial shifted closer, making no pretense about his desire to eavesdrop as Ceth spoke with the man and woman. Though in better shape than their companion, they were not unmarred.

“Were they attacked on the road?” Iyana asked, saying what the lot of them were thinking. Ceth ignored her and spoke louder, while the woman he talked with grew increasingly irritated. Their voices rose, and it took some time before Karin noticed they were speaking another tongue, one that flowed from Ceth’s mouth like water or milk even as it came out jagged and used from the darker woman he accosted.

Soon enough, the other man stepped forward and Ceth quieted for a moment. The man’s curved blade swung precariously from a torn loop on his belt, the tattered remnants of its leather sheath spinning in the wind like it was caught in a spider’s web. He did not speak the strange tongue Karin guessed to be northern, either for lack of ability or in spite of Ceth, who had clearly agitated him.

“We kept to the charge,” he said, speaking it like it was a challenge. It had the effect of silencing Ceth and turning the eyes of his fellows in to the exchange—even those who had ignored it before.

“How many?” Ceth asked, seeming to choose his words more carefully now. “And from which direction?”

“A score. More,” the man said as the smaller woman watched him, bloodshot eyes intense. She nodded sharply. “From the north, and from the west.”

“There is no game in the west to support such numbers,” Ceth said. “It must have been north.”

Karin had to frown. It did not seem there was enough game to support the nomads who hosted them here. Then again, things did grow in the deeper caverns. Fungi and fruit he had yet to see. And though they were difficult to catch, there were birds aplenty, and the ever-present red shadows of the desert foxes seemed to suggest hares and the like.

“How many have you lost?” Iyana asked, and now the red-sashed woman took a step toward her that seemed menacing. Iyana stood her ground and something in the other woman’s face shifted. She was younger than Karin had thought, and she only seemed to realize now how many strangers stood among her people, similar as they might appear.

“Three,” she said. She looked at Ceth, accusation impossible to mistake. The Landkist looked as if he might take a step back, so evident was the guilt.

“He wanted to go,” Iyana said, her voice projecting its own challenge. “Pevah stopped him.”

Karin saw Mial shoot him a warning look and couldn’t blame him. Ket stepped off the lip of the ledge and plopped down into the sand behind Ceth as the soldiers in the caravan watched him, breathless. Karin knew without knowing that the strange Northman could kill them all, if he wanted. He knew it until he felt the familiar heat at his back that betrayed Creyath’s presence.

“Pevah,” the woman spat. She seemed to sway a bit, unsteady, and Ceth reached out a hand to her. She snatched her wrist away and stepped up onto the ledge, allowing some of her less prying fellows to guide her toward the cave mouth. Karin continued to observe the tense exchange between Ceth and the remaining warrior, red sash and gray blowing in the wind.

Ceth looked about to speak, but his eyes darted toward Iyana as she moved in closer. Then the shadow passed from his face and he stepped toward the tall, short-haired man who could have been Karin’s cousin, and embraced him, the other man’s eyes widening before they started to water.

“Brother,” Karin heard Ceth say. He thought the other man might weep, but he only closed his eyes and sighed, and Karin knew the sound well. They all did, even the Faeykin who kept their distance from the press. All on that shelf and the sand directly before it knew what it was to lose, and to be powerless to stop it.

The folk of Valley and desert stepped back to give the pair space, and Karin lowered his eyes as the red-sash passed him by, heading toward the caverns and the children who waited below. He wondered how many of them had parents who would not return from the western dunes. He wondered if that was why few seemed to stay by the same adults. It reminded him of the way the Emberfolk of the scattered villages raised their young in a communal manner rather than familial. There were advantages, Karin thought. He could not say if it was the right choice or not.

“I’ll fetch my horse,” Mial said. “How many do we need for the hunt?”

“No,” Karin said. “Just us.” The old scout-turned-Runner glanced at Iyana with a masked expression she was too busy staring at Ceth to see. “We have an Ember, after all.” Karin smiled and Mial shrugged and moved off.

Ceth appraised Karin, Creyath and Iyana as the other soldiers of the caravan went back to their tasks, which is to say, back to the task of discovering what they might be.

“We are to be your companions on the hunt,” Creyath said, coming to stand beside Karin. His charger snorted as if in the affirmative. Ceth’s gray-blue eyes did not waver but merely slid from one of them to the next, settling on Iyana last.

“You are bringing horses?” he said, judgment evident. “To slay a hammerhorn?”

“Worked well enough the last time,” Karin said. Then, to Ceth’s confused stare, “We ran into a herd in the east, near Center. They were driven against our caravan by a Landkist native to those lands.”

Ceth nodded as if he knew of what Karin spoke, even in the vaguest terms. Still, he did not look convinced.

“This is no herd,” he said. “They are the stoutest of the fighters. They are cunning, and so must we be.” Karin thought to ask if that were true for Ceth, whom he had seen destroy a man in half a breath with little more than his fist. He refrained.

The expressions of Ceth’s fellows were difficult to read. They were young and lean—likely chosen for speed and cunning. They both wore red sashes and carried dark bows with quivers and shafts that might have been more rock than wood—all glinting obsidian but for the blue and yellow fletches that stuck from the ends.

“Perhaps we will learn from watching you,” Creyath said, swinging up into the saddle. “Perhaps you will learn from watching us.” He said it as a joke, and while the two men flanking Ceth took it as such, the Landkist only regarded the Ember with that cold look. Karin made to turn and collect the other horse before he felt a nudge in the back, the captain’s mare having come up unbidden.

“Looks like she wants to run,” Iyana said, joining him back up on the shelf. She pulled herself into the saddle and Karin swung up behind her, surprising her.

“I may have to jump down,” he said. “Better you take the lead. Don’t worry,” he said to her sharp intake. “You’re a natural. I watched the caravan the whole way through the gap, remember?”

Ceth did not look convinced, but he turned and took off, kicking up a surge of stinging gravel that startled the horses and left his companions outstripped at the outset. Karin glanced at Creyath, wondering if the Ember could keep up with the Landkist on foot. Creyath’s look had dimmed. He was not amused.

The two hunters took up Ceth’s wake as Karin guided the mare down from the lowest section of shelf, Creyath following behind.

“Let’s hope the sand is shallow out there,” Karin said as he slapped the mare on the rump, the horse taking off without another word as Iyana clutched the reins. Creyath passed them by and followed the path of the nomads, which took them around the southern spur and away from the west.

“Shallow sand means faster bulls,” Iyana said against the wind.

Karin smiled. “When it comes to killing and dying, Iyana, always choose to do either on solid ground.”

A hint of movement caught his attention and he craned around, looking behind. There, at the edge of the black shelves and their crags, he saw a lone figure with hair like Iyana’s, staring west. It was Sen, and though Karin could not make out his face, he sensed his expression—a searching, serious look—and tried to put it from his mind.

All eyes settled west, these days. Why not Sen’s as well?

Iyana was glad it was Karin riding behind her. Though he gave her the reins, she felt his knees guiding Talmir’s mare whenever she pulled too hard in one direction. The wind whipped as they sliced through the dry air and turned it into a welcome and cooling blast. The caves and caverns beneath the sand were shaded, but there was a heat ever rising from below that did not cook so much as boil. It was a heat that got into the pores and hung, sticky and metallic until the winds of the new day snaked down and laid a welcome freshness over it all.

“Lean right,” Karin said at her back. “Ridges have pockets.”

She didn’t know exactly what he meant, but Iyana had already begun to nudge the horse in that direction. The ground had sloped upward, and Iyana could tell by the forceful jarring of her mount’s gallop that the sand beneath was closely packed, likely covering some great shelf of black rock that could go on for leagues. To the east, jet-black ridges rose like a spine before dropping away into the crescent canyons they had trudged through to get to the nomads’ hideaway. Karin had come to know the land as well as anyone could in a short span. If he feared to stray a certain way, there was a reason.

Creyath cut in front of them with his black charger, its obsidian flanks rippling with an exertion the beast delighted in after spending the better part of three days pacing around a still pool beneath the spur. It could have been carved of Everwood, as could its rider; Creyath wore little but for a thin shirt and a red sash that recalled a smoother, softer version than those of the hunters running alongside him.

And run they did, the two dark-skinned tribesmen keeping pace with the measured gait Creyath set without any seeming undue stress. Iyana knew they could outpace the hunters with ease, if they wanted to. She also didn’t need Karin to tell her how foolish it would be to strike far ahead without them for guidance, lest they run into a herd of feuding hammerhorns without them.

Impressive as the red-sashes were, it was the cut of gray that kept most of her attention. Ceth, the strange Landkist whose power only Karin had witness firsthand seemed to skip across the surface of the sand like a smooth, polished river stone sent across still water. The crests and troughs of the horizontal dunes seemed to propel him more than slow him, and though his back was to them, the muscles of his legs barely bunched as he moved, his ribs expanding only slightly and every so often so that his movement seemed effortless.

Still, there was something strange about his passage. Iyana knew the Embers could cover distance at a quicker speed than most. The heat could be turned inward as readily as out. She had no doubt Creyath could tear through the sands and catch up to the strange Northman quickly enough—maybe even outstrip him for a time. But the Embers flashed and flared. They could not keep pace for long. They might be the most potent of the World’s Landkist—as far as the folk of the Valley knew, which, Iyana was learning, was decidedly less than they thought—but they had limits and tended to reach them quick. Kole had discovered that the hard way.

Watching Ceth run now, Iyana did not think he had the same kinds of limits. She both hoped and feared she would come to learn the truth of it. And though there was a grace—even a beauty—to the way he moved across the fast-flowing canvas beneath him, there was a suppressed violence beneath. Ceth oozed control. But Iyana knew for truth what the others might guess.

There was a fire within the Northman that had nothing to do with his gifts, whatever they might be. The Sage knew it. She’d even sensed a touch of fear mixed with the pride he clearly held for the man he had referred to as his knight—a word from the north and east. A word from a different time and for a different people, but one carrying its own sort of reverence. Iyana had seen the like before. She’d seen it in those closest to her and her sister.

Fire like that had a way of finding a way out, and when it could not, of making one. As she contemplated all the ways that could turn, Iyana thought perhaps she had erred in joining the hunt.

Just as Iyana was about to spur her mount on faster, hoping to match pace with Creyath, Ceth slowed some and angled toward the west, the yellow-brown spray slicing behind him like a current. Creyath turned in and Iyana followed, the captain’s horse following the firm pull on the reins quickly and without complaint. As they turned, she caught a glimpse of colour and glanced back to see the red-sashes carving a wide path. She thought they were looking to the east and wondered if they were looking for signs of pursuit or ambush.

She tried to cast the thought away with the sand they kicked up.

A tug on her right hand nearly had her pulling them off-course—perhaps going over entirely—until it turned to a quick tapping. She realized Karin had spoken and tried to recall what he had said. He pointed past her right ear so she could see without turning, and Iyana followed his finger as it jutted toward Ceth and twitched beyond him.

“Our guides,’ he said, his voice warring with the wind that was now turned against them in full.

Iyana squinted against the glare. Beyond Ceth and his shimmering grays, she saw red of a lighter sort than the deep scarves that trailed behind them. It could have been fire with white-hot tips running across the horizon, but as she peered closer, she recognized the strange, loping run of the desert foxes. There looked to be half a dozen, and Iyana could not help but smile.

“Maybe he truly does control them,” she said, not having to shout, as the wind carried her words back.

“Could be,” Karin said, sounding far from convinced. “Or maybe they know what we’re up to. I’d wager the dumbest fox here to be double as cunning as any of their Valley kin. Have to be, land being what it is.”

And that was changing, and rapidly. They had only been riding for a span of minutes, but already the sand had changed, showing them a new skin that was darker. Iyana couldn’t see the stuff being kicked up under their own mount—she was too busy concentrating on keeping her seat and course to look—but she saw the trail Creyath’s charger left behind. Though coated with the same yellow and white that formed a pale canvas over the whole of the desert, the horse’s hooves picked up clods of dark earth, betraying the presence of soil that had settled onto the black and gray slabs beneath.

Iyana wondered what held it all together when she noted hints of green and yellow that began to disrupt the sameness of the ground ahead. She squinted against the afternoon light and was shocked to discover the presence of green shoots that sprouted to ankle height. It was a sparse field of thick stems, the shoots rounded and stiff, engorged with the water they jealously guarded, and Iyana was reminded of how rare the week’s storm must be in this section of the World, close as it might seem to the jungle of Center.

“It’s like a lattice,” she said, the thought bringing a smile to her face.

“How so?” Karin called up.

“The darker earth below,” Iyana said, nodding as the speckled flat rushed past them. “The roots grip it and keep it all together. The dry sand on top protects it. Those blades might look like solitary towers on the surface, but they must be working together to keep the fertile dirt from blowing away out here. No telling when they’d get it back.” She felt the smile grow and let it. “Life is a thing, isn’t it?”

“That it is,” Karin said, and though he said it soft, she could feel him staring, considering the ground in a new light. Iyana thought about dipping into her other Sight, but she saw Creyath slowing up ahead as Ceth came to a halt before him, his gray sash stealing some of the vibrancy from the picture ahead.

Iyana pulled on the reins, the horse’s turn giving her a view back in the direction they’d come. She saw the red-sashes streaking toward them, looking like two more of the desert foxes from a distance. Behind them, she saw how high they had climbed in relation to the black ridges and unburied shelves they had come from. They had gone farther than she thought and now found themselves atop a leaning expanse of high ground.

“That must be the dunes,” Karin said, and Iyana swung around in the saddle to look. In the distance, peeking out of the light blue, were great hills that could have been mountains, though the red cliffs to the north towered high above them. They were dunes, Iyana could see now, and though she could only just make them out, she thought she saw a strange glow tinting the atmosphere that way, like sunset come too early.

A snort and Creyath was upon them, his black charger able to greet Iyana at eye level.

“Where is the herd?” Karin asked. He swung himself down from the saddle and began to walk toward the rise Ceth crouched atop. Creyath and Iyana watched him go, and now she could see the air turned brown and dusty there, like a wisp of cloud settling in a canyon. When she looked closer, she could see that the ground dropped away there too sharply to be anything but.

“What is it?” she asked, more to herself than to Creyath. The Ember swung himself down as well and Iyana followed suit, brushing the mare on the snout. Creyath had to give his own steed a command to stay, while Iyana’s seemed always to do exactly what she wanted, though she was as new to riding as she was to the desert.

“The Valley of the west, maybe,” Creyath said. She couldn’t tell if he was joking—one never could—but as she drew near to the place where Ceth and Karin crouched, she thought it didn’t much matter.

The land fell away so sharply, Iyana felt a weight drop out of her chest. She felt like falling and nearly did, settling on one knee. Karin had been looking to Ceth, but now his eyes were ahead and down.

“Smart things, eh?” he said, more to himself than the rest, but Iyana saw Ceth nodding. “How do they get down?”

Ceth pointed, but Iyana was too taken with the sights to pay much attention. The ground around them was full of growth, with the sand between the shoots clumped together, the crust unbroken since the rains had passed through. There were even white flowers, dancing and bobbing in the wind like any other, and though it was a shock to see it atop their perch, Iyana could see that the whole of the canyon was full of the stuff, and plenty more besides.

The brown and dusty cloud they had spied was indeed the work of a herd, and though it was a smaller one than that which had come against them in the east, it rumbled with a thunder that recalled and redoubled it, like a black and roiling ocean storm surrounded by a sea of yellow, green and bobbing white. It was a canyon twice as deep as the gap they’d come through upon first entering the west, and its sides were made up more of carved earth and the crust they stood on than the black rocks and ridges the folk of these lands sheltered in. There were crescents and ribs cut into the sides of the sheer vertical bowl like stairs for giants, but Iyana thought they looked more precarious than inviting.

Cracks resounded like small splits of thunder as the hammerhorn bulls ran and came together before breaking off again. Each time, it seemed they left a few beneath their hooves. These went down in tangled heaps and did not rise, and despite the awesome nature of the scene, Iyana felt nauseous watching them kill their own and pass beyond them, continuing their violent dance.

“How many will die?” she found herself asking.

“Half,” Ceth answered without turning. “At least.” He now stood to his full height, taller than Creyath and quite a bit more than Karin, who still crouched. It seemed the Landkist had abandoned all measure of secrecy now that he saw the bulls locked in their combat ritual.

Iyana heard the crust break behind and turned, expecting to see the other hunters coming to join them. She nearly squealed and went over as a pack of desert foxes approached. Seeing her reaction, they shrank back, fur raising.

“Do not mind them,” Ceth said as Karin and Creyath stepped between her and the canines.

“Did Pevah send them?” Iyana asked, fighting to keep her heart level.

Ceth did not answer.

Now that she knew they were no threat, she saw the way they looked, their yellow irises focusing on each in turn. They set to yipping and clipped short barks at one another, none still for long as they twined and milled behind the rise. And behind them, the red-sashed hunters split off, one heading south and the other west.

“Will they join in the hunt?” Karin asked, trying a different tact, and Iyana watched for Ceth’s response. He shrugged.

“If they choose to.” He glanced back at the largest of the foxes, which met his eyes and stepped forward. Something passed between them—almost like Ceth was communing using the same empathic powers that coursed through her veins. But there was nothing tickling the atmosphere, and though she hadn’t dipped into her Sight she knew he was not wielding his tether or touching theirs. This was an understanding brought about by time, and nothing less. It was an exchange couched in silence and between two leaders of tribes, the fox and the strange northern Landkist.

“It seems our party has grown,” Creyath said, amused as he stepped among the rest. The leader watched him as the females and leaner males stepped around the Ember, scenting the air in a way that reminded Iyana of cats, teeth exposed and tongues lolling.

“Perhaps they remember your scent,” Karin said, speaking to Creyath. The Ember squatted before the smallest and stuck his hand out, steady. The leader took a step toward Creyath but made no move to intercede, watching the exchange expectantly. The lean fox stretched out, leaning on its forelegs, and flared its black nostrils over Creyath’s skin. It was impossible to gauge recognition, but the fox did not recoil, and when Creyath stood, it seemed to Iyana that their new companions stood closer to him.

“What’s the plan?” Karin asked. He watched as the other two hunters fanned out in either direction. Iyana was surprised to see the one to the west had already started down, picking his way among the loose and shifting crust, more sliding than skipping as he held the short black bow free, feathered fletches bouncing in the quiver across his back.

“We go down,” Ceth said, again without turning.

“To gather one of the freshly dead?” Creyath seemed disturbed at the thought of it, and while Iyana couldn’t blame him, she knew it made the most sense. Why kill a creature living when they could scavenge like the desert foxes?

“No.” Ceth said it sharply. “Do that, and we’ll have to kill them all.”

“I don’t like our chances,” Karin said. “No matter how good your men are with the bow. Not enough arrows for the herd.” Now Ceth did turn, his gray scarf covering the lower half of his face as the wind shifted. If the bulls weren’t so busy killing one another, they’d have surely caught the hunters’ scents on the breeze. The Landkist looked beyond Karin and Iyana, eyes focused on Creyath. He looked him up and down before turning back to the bowl.

Iyana caught the disconcerting impression that Ceth had not misspoke, and that—whether by his hand or the combined might of he and the Ember they’d brought—they could bring down the herd. Every one.

“The bulls will abandon their fight as soon as they’re attacked,” Ceth said. His eyes tracked the progress of the hunter to the south, who had begun his own sliding descent. “But their blood is up. They are foolish in the rut. That’s why they come to this crater.”

“Crater?” Iyana said, unfamiliar with the term. She looked to Karin and Creyath, both of whom shrugged.

“It’s the word Pevah uses,” Ceth said by way of explanation. He did not elaborate. Iyana looked down into the carved bowl. She might have called it a canyon, but there was something different about it. The walls weren’t solid, though its shape was almost strangely regular. In a way, it looked as though the whole of it had been dug out and planted with the storm’s growth the herd trampled. Across the way, toward the south, there was a scar gouged into it that had turned to a spill. That was where the bulls must have come from. Near as Iyana could tell, it was the only way out, as she did not think even Ceth could climb the crusted and slipping edges that went out from it.

“We cannot take one of the dead, no matter how fresh,” the Landkist continued. “Even if it was not against the way, it would spur the bulls to cohesion. They would join together and see us dead, or them. No matter the cost.”

He spoke of them as if they were people. Iyana met Karin’s eyes. The only hint of what he thought was in the slight raising of his brows. Still, he kept his opinion to himself.

“Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for meat,” Creyath said. “Do you not have enough growing in the caves?”

“It is not a matter of enough,” Ceth said. He shook his head, tiring of explanations. “It is the way of things. Pevah says there must be blood for a Sharing.”

It sounded dark and strange to Iyana, but all lands had their rituals. Even the animals milling and killing and dying below them. Even the foxes that ringed them and stepped among them, yipping and whining. They pawed at the rise and snapped at Ceth’s shins without biting, as if spurring him on.

“When we start down the rise, only ride the crust until you feel the wind sting.” He fixed his eyes on Iyana, his expression intense and unreadable. “When it does, move to the next.”

“What does that mean?” Karin asked. He watched the hunters as they reached the midway point of their respective descents. Though far away, they looked to be moving quickly to Iyana, and their sections weren’t nearly as steep as their own.

“Left,” Ceth said, surprising them by hopping that way. “Or right.” He mirrored the motion on the opposite side. “Otherwise, you will go too quickly and be buried. You must stay atop the crest. The underside is very soft, and very deep.”

Iyana looked back at the horses, standing snout to snout a good distance from the foxes. Creyath’s charger stamped, nostrils opening and closing as it nodded dramatically, likely scenting the scene below. She felt the same way, but while the black charger seemed eager to join in the fray, she was anything but.

“You talk about the sand as if it’s an ocean,” Karin said with a huff. He glanced nervously at Iyana, but she knew he wouldn’t forbid her coming.

“Pevah says the sea used to come here.” They regarded Ceth, whose voice had changed. Now it carried an airiness to it that reminded Iyana of someone speaking through a dream. He sounded disappointed. Even sad. “Not anymore.”

A shrill whistle cut the air and Iyana leaned forward as Ceth waved to the hunter to the west. He was at the bottom, now, down on one knee, his bow held out horizontally before him. To the south, the other was just settling into a similar position, near the broken rise the bulls had made. It looked as if both were trying to avoid notice. So far, they had succeeded. The bulls in the center of the crater formed a spiral that spun outward. Every so often, they would crash back in like a whirlpool, sending up those sharp cracks in the place of white foam. Iyana thought she could see flecks of red.

And each time they clashed, the foxes’ yips turned to longer notes that now rose into something like the nighttime song they filled the yawning gaps and twisting tunnels of the desert with when the tribesmen filled their bedrolls and took to sleep.

“Can you soothe them?”

Iyana did not realize the question had been directed at her until she blinked and saw the men staring, Ceth with that same intensity that made her want to look away.

“The foxes?” Iyana asked, glancing nervously about.

“The hammerhorns,” Ceth said, pointing down into the crater without taking his eyes from her.

Iyana frowned and Ceth mirrored her, while Karin and Creyath looked from one to the other as the foxes whipped themselves into a frenzy that made it hard to concentrate.

“Pevah says you have a strange power,” Ceth said. “He says you can bend emotion.” Perhaps that explained his apparent distrust of her. Then again, Ceth seemed to treat all of them with the same distance and veiled disdain.

“I am Faeykin,” Iyana said. The term meant nothing to Ceth and his look showed it. “No,” she said with a helpless shrug. “I don’t think I can.”

Ceth frowned, but not in a way that seemed angry. It almost looked as if he thought she was lying.

“Pevah doesn’t know everything, you know,” she said, regretting the words immediately. Luckily, Ceth didn’t seem the type to take things personally.

“None do,” he said, gray-blue eyes fixed on the herd below and their cyclone of dust and death.

With that, he vanished. At least, the lip of the sandy ledge on which he stood did. Iyana was too startled to make a sound as Karin and Creyath darted forward and peered over the lip. In a breadth, Karin followed, pulling himself over the crusted edge and sliding down on his backside as much as on his boots. As they looked on, Karin leapt from one crumbling cut of crusted sand to the next, his path erring northward. Ceth—contrary to his own advice—took a path straight down the steep slope, the crust doing little more than shivering as he planted and leapt with that strange, floating weightlessness. He leaned forward, gaining speed with each fall even as his impacts looked to do little more than suggest his presence to the tenuous ground below.

“You don’t have to go,” Creyath said, sounding as if he wanted nothing more than to stay behind. Iyana felt his heat radiate as his blood warmed to the task. Red flashed before her and the foxes started down, slipping and rolling in a controlled tumble behind their leader.

“I’m lighter than you,” Iyana said. She did not wait for the Ember’s response and pulled herself over the ledge. Or tried to. Instead, it crumbled beneath her and landed with a jarring impact on the slope below as Iyana leaned back, the palms of her hands sending up jets of sand that slowed her only enough to avoid going over. It seemed steeper now that she was in it. Much steeper, and much faster.

She half leapt, half rolled to her left as the crust beneath her dissolved. She hit the hard shell, expelling what air she held, and thought she’d continue down the slope that way, tumbling to her unceremonious death. Then the ground shifted, the sheer wall of the crater’s side sliding and stopping her roll as it bore her down under the shifting sea of soft sand beneath.

Iyana’s heart felt like it was clogging her throat. She heard the foxes’ mingled hunting songs as they streaked past her. And she heard another sound, much closer, and rising. She felt tears streaking back from the corners of her eyes and discovered the source of the sound with surprise.

She was laughing.

Nothing in the World had ever given her such a feeling of total abandon. Not even in the Between had she felt so free. Her life was forfeit, and yet, as her jagged ship of hard sand crumbled to powder on reaching the bottom, she was alive. And but for a few scrapes and bruises that would not rise until later, she was also unharmed.

Firm hands lifted her and she leaned into Karin, wiping away tears as she laughed. He shook with concern but showed her a relieved smile as Ceth examined them both. The foxes spilled around them, and then a wash of heat greeted their backs as Creyath tumbled and shook himself at the bottom, his spill coming down with more loose stuff than the rest combined as he righted himself. That made Iyana laugh more. She had never felt such unbridled joy and freedom.

And then she saw Ceth tense and looked to the west, toward a wall of hard-boned fury.

Iyana cursed herself a fool for having come, for endangering those who were better equipped. But then such thoughts fled, replaced with a stunned awe as the masters went to work.

It began with Ceth and then with the desert foxes. The northern Landkist shot forward faster than any Ember Iyana had known. Faster even than Kole. He streaked toward the wall of stamping bulls with their bonemetal horns and their flat cudgels for brows. He seemed to fly over the sand, the foxes trailing him like the white-tipped waves that follow a ship at storm.

“Karin …” Creyath stepped forward and Iyana felt his heat redouble as he looped his Everwood bow from around his back, nocking one of his arm-length arrows to the cord.

“Wait,” Karin said. The First Runner was tense. He still crouched in the same position he had landed, hand outstretched toward the Second Keeper of Hearth. “They know these beasts better than us. We don’t know how they’ll react if you rain fire in their midst.”

“Much the same as any other, I’d guess,” Creyath said.

“No,” Iyana said. “They’re different here. In this place.” She was unable to take her eyes from Ceth as he leapt impossibly high and twirled in midair, coming to land amid the throng of black fur and jagged spikes. There was a boom that sounded like a tower falling; the beasts’ frothing rage turned in to a singular panic that scattered them, though Iyana thought she saw some sent skittering from the place Ceth had landed as if pushed by some great gust.

But Pevah had said Ceth did not wield the winds as the White Crest had.

The wall of hammerhorns turned back into a churning cyclone of hoof and muscled flank, and Iyana could see the gray sash and silver hair darting to and fro in their midst. Twice she saw black horns attempt to spear him. Over and under, he dodged them with ease. He fought like a ghost and he fought without fighting. Though she held no doubt he could have laid the first of them low with ease, so masterful was his control, he opted instead to stir them like an elixir of wild fury before setting them loose on the crater. They spun out like a whirlpool heading in the wrong direction, and the red foxes circled them at a full sprint, nipping and barking them into some semblance of sense only they could see.

One broke off from the rest and headed straight for them, and Karin stood as Creyath took a step forward. A yellow-fletched shaft buried itself in the turf just before the bull’s lead hooves and it turned away, narrowly avoiding being impaled by one of its fellows and crushed beneath the weight of its passing.

Now that she saw them at work—the hunters on the edges shooting their missiles to corral rather than kill, the Landkist in the center of the throng disturbing and provoking rather than destroying—Iyana thought she knew why they could not simply kill one. This was a tribe, of sorts. These warrior males were driven away from their wives and children for no other reason than the ghosts of memory pulling them on. If one fell in a way unbecoming of their charge—their sacred ritual—they would join together in common goal.

Ceth wouldn’t allow that to happen. He flitted like a sparrow and dove like a hawk, and each time he leapt, he seemed to go higher until Iyana was convinced he commanded the air itself, and with no wind to speak of.

“He flies,” Karin breathed.

“He falls,” Creyath said. But it wasn’t so much that Ceth fell, thought Iyana; it was that he floated or crashed. There was no in-between. Either he spilled down like a leaf in a lazy current, or he slammed into the sand and sent up a plume of earth, green shoots and white flowers.

Once or twice, Iyana thought for sure the bulls circling on the edges would come for them, so wide did the spiral of hoof and horn expand. But the foxes turned them back in, some of the more daring members of the pack darting under their black bellies and nipping at their black lips and snouts to turn them away. After a time, Creyath lowered his bow, his heat dissipating as it became clear his fire would do nothing but cause a chaos that would clash with whatever order the hunters had made.

Ceth danced his strange, rhythmic dance in the center of the crater and the bulls spun around him, running and running themselves ragged until they began to funnel out of the bowl, their paths taking them up the spill of sand and gravel on the southern side.

Soon, the dust obscured everything, and Iyana focused on the shadows that passed in the smoky haze like wraiths or spirits—like Mother Ninyeva’s stories come vividly to life.

When the dust cleared, only one bull was left in the crater. At least, only one living, as the corpses of the herd’s own war littered the canyon in every direction. This lone warrior stood and stamped in the center, staring death in the face. Ceth stood directly before it while the desert foxes sat or paced around it, their hunting song quieted now that the killing was all but done. The two hunters and their colored shafts circled in.

“Bravest,” Ceth said, and the bull faced him head-on. It remained still, tail flicking, eyes glaring with an intensity that was not quite hate as it took in the silver hair, loose-fitting clothes and gray sash that billowed before it like a flag of conquest. Seeing the exchange, Iyana had the distinct impression she was witnessing something that bordered on sacred.

The bull Ceth addressed had not been chosen because it was lame. The foxes did not make for it because it would crush them into the dust and dirt and stain it all red. This was a mighty creature, all muscle and rawhide, musk and fury. This was a bull who, though old, had sired many of those who watched him from the western ridge. It had been chosen because it had been the one to stay and fight a Landkist whose power it could not hope to match. And now it would die, and try as she might, Iyana could not find it in her to see the sorrow in it. After all, hadn’t they come here to do just that? To die, or else to see who would live?

“Bravest,” Ceth said again, and the bull snorted and stamped. Ceth took a step forward and the bull stayed still, though Iyana could see the fibers shift beneath its sun-baked hide. The foxes rose and tensed, their role in the hunt finished but their senses keen, yellow eyes watchful for a sudden attack.

Iyana moved forward and Karin reached for her, but did not pull her back. The bull swung its great head in her direction, red-rimmed eyes staring as it expelled a mix of blood, snot and crusted sand from its nose. It stamped again, eyes darting between her, the hunters with their fletched shafts and the desert foxes that encircled it and waited, patient as any.

Now she sensed the fear it had kept well-hidden in the company of its fellows. The beast did not look to Ceth, nor to Creyath—foes Iyana knew it had judged beyond itself.

There was a peal of close-by thunder. Iyana saw shadows moving along the sand. She looked up and saw what she had mistaken for cloud cover to be the shadowed figures of the bull’s companions standing on the western ledge. They did not stamp, knowing the ground might betray them to their deaths. They stood and watched, silent as warriors at a vigil. They wanted to see how their own would choose to meet his end. She knew this without dipping into the Between—or perhaps she had slipped, though she could not see the tethers of man of beast waving in the burnt light of the late day.

Iyana thought of trying to soothe the bull as Ceth had suggested. She thought of working her magic with an intent behind it that she did not use on the horses, though they seemed to respond to her as if she had. The bull stomped and she heard Karin issue a warning low in his throat, only realizing how close she had come to the beast when she saw how far her companions’ shadows were from her. They would not come closer. To do so would be to invite death, most likely her own.

The hammerhorn swung its head back and forth, stomping emphatically. Foam flecked its dripping mouth and black syrup crusted the crevices beneath its eyes. Iyana closed her eyes and ignored the sickening thrum she had felt since coming to the deserts. She moved past it and began to sway. She saw the bull’s bright tether before she opened her eyes. It was bold and blue and striking like a clear sky.

She saw the tethers of those gathered, and the lot of them—even the doomed beast—seemed to stand still as she examined. There was a quiver in the blue that she recognized as fear. She did not know how—the how, as Ninyeva always said, was something to focus on after—but she brushed up against it without moving. Smoothed it away. The bull raised its head and exhaled. It might have been thanks. It might have been a consideration to strike her down then and there, to add her bones to those that would soon litter the canyon—that were likely buried beneath their feet.

Iyana stepped back and watched as the bull turned to meet its fate: Ceth.

She felt Karin make a grab for her as the bull exploded into motion, the only warning a premature yip from one of the foxes who must’ve seen the twitch Ceth could not have. The bull moved faster than she would have thought possible, and Iyana feared she had doomed both man and beast as it made for the Landkist.

But Ceth only took in the approach. He spread his stance, feet out in something akin to the forms Larren Holspahr put Kole and the others through in the yard as children. Only he had no fire. She whirled on Karin, meaning to tell him to intervene, but his look told her he would not. She looked to the hunters on either side of the exchange and was disturbed to see their arrow tips pointed down.

It was finished in a strike between blinks. The Landkist pushed the bull aside and straightened as it fell with a thump that was not half as emphatic as a creature of such strange majesty deserved. There was no blood and no weapon to have made it, but Iyana felt she did not want to approach the bull and inspect the side of its skull where Ceth had struck.

Iyana, Karin, Creyath and the red-sashed hunters watched Ceth as he turned to consider his audience on the ridge. The bulls there were still as the crust on which they stood. They looked down with eyes that were veiled in shadow as the sun turned orange and red at their backs, turning their coats the color of blood. Those in back turned and moved off, heading for the flatlands, and the rest rolled away like a slow wave withdrawing.

The foxes loped about the body of the bull and Iyana was surprised to see that they didn’t make for any of the dozen bodies that littered the crater. Their desert hosts assured them the animals were not bound to them like Shifa and the wall hounds of Last Lake, but there was a bond there that had the touch of magic. It was as if they were here as silent judges, to see that the task had been done, and done right.

Creyath approached Ceth and the hunters. Iyana felt an aching on her arm and looked down to see Karin still gripping fiercely. Seeing her, he pulled his hand away with an inhalation, leaving red blotches.

“Iyana,” he said. She regarded him, the haze of unreality still clinging like a vapor, though she had not lingered long on the edges of the Between. “Do not do that again.”

He said it like a father might. It was rare enough for him to adopt that sort of tone, even with Kole, but Iyana and Linn had heard it on occasion. She knew where it came from and swallowed.

“I’m sorry, Karin,” she said.

“You don’t have to follow every impression,” he said a little roughly as he stalked past her. Something about the whole situation had irked him, and she could guess at whom his ire was aimed.

“What was all this?” Karin asked, since Creyath was content to remain silently staring. The hunters regarded the First Runner with veiled expressions they then turned on Ceth, who continued to watch the western ridge as if the judging shadows of the herd were still gathered there.

“It was a hunt,” Ceth said. He turned, slow as he pleased. Iyana saw Karin’s body stiffen. She could not say she blamed him.

“A hunt,” Karin said, nodding. He looked to Creyath, who did not remove his amber eyes from Ceth. He looked back to Iyana. She tried to return a sympathetic look. “Why were we sent along, if this was what it came to?” His voice echoed off the brittle, crusted walls of the crater as his anger rose. “You endangered us.”

Iyana knew he meant to say ‘her’. Ceth had endangered her. She felt her own blood warm under the insult, even if she knew where it came from.

Ceth looked past Karin and focused on Iyana. Despite his seeming effect on others, she had no trouble meeting those grayish blues.

“Pevah bid you come,” Ceth said. Karin took another step toward him and the Landkist’s eyes shifted, freezing the First Runner in place. “Why he did, I cannot say. I do not pretend to know his ends. Sometimes, he has none.”

The young hunters exchanged nervous glances, and Iyana saw Creyath’s left hand brushing his left side, where the long, straight sickle of Everwood hung. He watched Ceth with interest, and Iyana was only just discovering it hinged less on concern and more on curiosity, and of the martial variety. Much as the sight might astound, she had no desire to see an Ember clash with … whatever it was Ceth was.

“Perhaps,” Ceth said, his blank tone almost insulting in its casual bent, “he wanted you along as witness to a practice the folk of the deserts have held to. Perhaps he wanted to show you what life is like here, where blood must be preserved, and where food comes rarely and only with purpose. Where things are not taken, but offered and accepted.”

Karin laughed. A harsh sound, like that of the birds Iyana noticed circling overhead. The First Runner inclined his chin toward the once-proud bull, now little more than a small hill of still meat and the bones that held it together.

“Did the bull offer himself to your judgment?” he asked, his tone making it clear what he thought of it.

“Yes,” Ceth said. “He was bravest. That is an offer in itself. Brave things die well. They die fast.” There was a threat in the air; Ceth had just given voice to it, and the mood in the crater slipped from tense to deliberate. As the sky to the west took on the deep red glow that preceded the purple of the Midnight Dunes, the shadows lengthened below the crusted ridges, blending with the corpses around them and moving them as if breath still stirred within.

“Or,” Ceth said, the ghost of a smile tugging the corner of his mouth, “perhaps he merely meant to ask you along for the use of your horses.” He nodded up toward the ridge they had come down from. “This is a lot to carry.”

Iyana sucked in her breath and looked to Creyath. The Ember’s cheeks stood out with the raised muscles of a rigid jaw. He watched Karin, intent on staying his next action or supporting it. The hunters stepped back from Ember and Runner warily, confident in their Landkist but unsure what the strangers of the Valley could do. Even the foxes seemed caught in the mood, their gaits interrupted by pauses and feints as they scented the need on the now-still air.

Karin laughed again, only longer this time and more full, and Iyana sighed into one of her own. Ceth smiled at him and her, and he seemed to mean it. Iyana had no doubt that the man would have accepted Karin’s challenge even if he had not intended to provoke it. She was glad that the First Runner did not offer.

“It was something to witness, Karin,” Iyana said, moving between them to snap the last straining thread that quivered in their midst. She didn’t need to be Faeykin to see that clear enough. “And we do have horses.” She paused in front of Ceth and turned back toward the eastern cliffs. “I can’t believe we rode that down.”

One of the young hunters smiled and nodded vigorously. “Ceth took you to the steepest path,” he said and his companion looked as though he wanted to slap him. Ceth did not argue, and Iyana gave the northern Landkist an expectant look.

“Is that so?” she asked.

Ceth’s smile had disappeared. He glanced from her to the men at her back, wary of another sudden change. He had pushed, and now that she was pushing back, it seemed he did not want to see it to its ending after all, no matter how curious. Perhaps he knew to fear Pevah’s retribution.

He indicated the dark-skinned hunters, who could easily have been raised in any of the homes along the lakeshore or nested beneath the white cliffs of Hearth. “They say you are of the deserts, even if you’re not.” He fixed his eyes on Creyath. “You command the fire the desert counts as blood.” He stood square and raised his chin. “I wanted to see that fire, but it seems it only comes out of you at need.” He switched to Iyana. “I saw something of it, though. I did not expect you to follow.” He swallowed, and it seemed as if the next words he spoke were the hardest yet. “I was wrong.” He ended on Karin. “Forgive my arrogance.”

“I’m sure it’s well-earned,” Karin said too quickly, though Iyana knew him well enough to laugh. Ceth stiffened at his reaction but seemed to relax at hers. “You do need our horses, Ceth,” the First Runner called back as he moved toward the southern incline. “Don’t forget that.”

It might have been the first genuine smile Iyana had seen on the man’s face. She tried to keep that image in her mind as she passed by the bull he stood over, the half of its face that should have been there little more than a mess of blood and bone and whatever had been inside.

What sort of power did Ceth wield that could render such strength moot—and so suddenly?

It was strange that it bothered her so. She had seen Creyath rain fire on a herd that counted these beasts as kin in the east, heard them screaming in a pit Baas Taldis had made to bury them in.

But those were powers born of the World and made of it. The fires that burned in the heart of the desert they walked now, and the ground that made it all up. Pevah had said Ceth did not wield the wind as the White Crest had, but Iyana thought he might, or something like it. Something of the air itself. Something of the stuff that made it up. Weight. Solidity. The terms meant little in the context of the Landkist power she had come to know, but if one had mastery over them …

She turned and looked at Ceth with fresh eyes. He stood over the hammerhorn bull like a guardian over a sacred charge. His form was solid, the muscles of his arms lean, and, she noticed for the first time, unmoving. Pevah had called him his knight. In truth, he was the Sage’s sword. That was the power Ceth wielded. She was sure of it even if she had yet to make sense of it all. He had such a striking presence because presence was what he controlled. The impact he made when floating or falling. The wrath he wrought with little more than a touch. His were hands that could write poetry and violence in equal measure and with startling speed.

Feeling her eyes on him, Ceth turned to her, and Iyana thought she saw something like fear in his eyes. Fear of judgment. He was right to fear it, even if she felt wrong for showing it.

Iyana walked a short distance and tracked the progress of Karin and Creyath as they took the long way around to fetch the horses. They were lucky the hammerhorn bulls hadn’t gone that way and she wondered if the herd would return to the crater tomorrow, or if they had had enough of violence. Perhaps this was the way of things. Perhaps they fought until a man who might count himself a god—or something close—came and killed the bravest of them as the rest witnessed. It was strange. But then, so was living in a Valley whose protectors wielded fire as others wield hammers and fishing nets.

When they returned, the horses stamping in the presence of death, the sun was sunk low enough to drench them in the beginnings of dusk.

One of the hunters had brought ropes, and Iyana helped secure it to the hooks in the saddles of both horses.

“How do you usually get the beasts out without horses?” Karin asked, incredulous.

“Pevah brings it,” one of the hunters said as if that explained it all. Karin paused only long enough to shake his head and then swung up into the saddle, testing the bull from there. Creyath had been silent since the killing had been done. He seemed the only one among them who still carried some of that earlier tension. Iyana saw Ceth casting him wary looks and could not help but feel a misplaced pride at the effect an Ember had on one who might be counted an equal.

“Sure you can’t just throw it back to the caves?” Karin asked Ceth. The Landkist finished tightening a knot around the horn and stood. He seemed to consider the question in all seriousness, even going so far as to examine his hands as if testing their strength.

“No,” he said, looking up at Karin. Karin raised his brows and tossed Iyana a wide-eyed look. She swung herself up behind him, leaving the steering to him. Now that it was getting late, she felt sick, and thought it only had a little to do with the events of the day. She had touched something when she had dipped into the Between. It had the scent of rot that went beyond smell and settled on taste. It was the same vibration she felt in the deep desert nights—the same sickness she had felt when she watched Sen drain the life from a lone flower in a cave to the east.

She hoped the feeling would dissipate as they made their way up out of the dust-filled crater. The hammerhorns watched their path, their eyes glistening like the black stones of the Fork as the stars winked overhead. To the northwest, little of the sun’s light remained, thrown up at the sky from the Dunes Ceth could not take his eyes from. She couldn’t see them clear, but Iyana knew they were there, the faintly glowing mountains of sand shining like beacons in an empty land.

“When will you go?” she asked the Landkist as he walked beside the horses.

“Next,” he said, not taking his eyes from the place.

Iyana thought to ask more, but there was a buzzing in her head that would not subside. It seemed to get worse as they passed north, and she found herself glancing toward the western light with shaking eyes. She had known there was something there even before she knew it. She would very much like to know what, even if a cold dread bubbled deep within her at the thought of something a Sage known as the Red Waste would fear, or else covet enough to set an entire people to guard.

Dusk hung low over the plain and merged the amorphous sky with the sands below it in a color-blushed glare. As true night fell, the gossamer curtain of stars shone clear to north, east and south. It was a blue-white light Iyana took comfort in; a cold light, but not without presence. Even the strange, foreign light of the western dunes seemed to lose some of its bloody glow as the night deepened, more purple than amber, though she kept from staring at it too long.

The horses did not complain at their burden, happy to be out beneath the sky without the merciless sun beating down on them. Still, the return journey took them much longer, and they traveled in silence but for the haunting melodies the foxes—their red shadows—carried with them.

“Why wouldn’t they take one of the dead?” Creyath asked, the first words he had spoken since departing the crater. One of the young hunters walking beside his midnight charger followed Creyath’s gaze to the nearest of the foxes.

“They know the way,” he said. “They cannot bring down one of the bulls themselves—let alone the bravest. They will be rewarded for their help at the Sharing.”

Creyath’s brow crinkled. “It seems a waste to leave them.”

“They will not be left,” came the answer. “The birds will strip them and the sands will take them back. The Mother will use their marrow for her fire.”

Creyath switched his gaze back to where the ground sloped down, back toward the black spurs the nomads nested in. The youth seemed to want to ask something of Creyath, whose like he only knew from legends—much as Iyana only knew him and his as the same. Memories without faces.

How strange it was, that they had taken the fire with them. Taken it from the deserts and hoarded it in their secret Valley.

Iyana couldn’t focus on it long. Pain hit her full in the temple like a thrown dart, and she let out a small yelp that had Karin twisting in the saddle. She placed a hand to her temple and squeezed her eyes shut against the sting, which felt like a questing needle.

“Iyana?” Karin asked, concerned. “What is it?”

She opened her eyes and glimpsed the cloister of black shelves below the rise on which they stood. There was a fire burning beneath the opening of the cave, making it look like some demon’s maw through the curtain her tears made. She tried to speak but could not, the pain intensifying.

“Stop!” Karin yelled and Creyath halted, the two hunters and Ceth coming over as Iyana made a low moaning sound.

She felt herself falling in both body and mind, and before she realized what she had done, she had blinked into another place that she knew by feel if not sight. She saw herself from above, through a shimmering veil that was like clear milk. Karin had followed her down to the sand, where she writhed and contorted as the others looked on, concerned. Her body thrashed but for one arm, which was rigid and pointing.

East.

Above, drifting on the currents of the Between that ran through all lands, drifting on currents made of thought or dream itself, she looked in the direction her body pointed. The red jewel of the cave breathed in the night to the north, but above it and farther to the south and east, there was another glow. This one was sharp green—a tether, wrapped tightly and pulsing. And as she focused in, there was a dimmer light below it.

Sen!

She meant to fly toward him but found herself falling down—straight down. She crashed into herself with a force that should have broken her like glass, and she came up panting, breaths coming long and ragged as if she had broken the surface from the blackest depths.

“Sen!” She scrambled through hands that sought to press her back down. She rose on legs that felt strong under the beating of her heart and the blood it pumped. The landscape still held that milky haze to her, the yellow sand blending with the black rocks like ink, but she ran toward them and scrambled over them, and the others followed, leaving the horses behind.

She felt heat across her back and thought she was bleeding before she felt Creyath pass her, heading for Sen’s green glow. There were shouts from the north as scouts on the edge of the shelf spied them. Karin called back to them, but she could not stop to listen. A form hurtled over her and crashed down in the still river of sand between the uncovered spines of black rock, joining Creyath. They could see him, now.

“Sen!” Iyana cried, thinking him hurt. And then she reached them, Creyath and Ceth having stopped dead in their tracks.

She squeezed between them as Karin veered off to meet the scouts who’d come out to see what all the fuss was about. She dimly recognized Mial’s gruff voice.

“Iyana?”

Sen regarded her, his eyes glowing a brighter green than any she had seen save for Ninyeva in the depths of her dreaming. His whole form was wrapped in the same glow, his tether—his essence—enclosing him in a way she found disturbing. She did not know if the others could see it. She doubted they could. But the eyes would be enough. They were almost enough to keep her from looking down. When she did, her heart caught in her throat.

Splayed on the black rock at the Faeykin’s feet was a woman wearing nothing but the barest covering of skins and furs. She was bleeding from dozens of cuts that looked like the work of a pack, but though the foxes complained and howled in the crags and crevices around them, none had made for her. She snarled to show teeth that could not be mistaken for anything other than bloody-black and rotten. Her breath stunk like death and her eyes, wide with fear, held a promise to kill.

“What …?” Creyath started, but the feral girl made a try for him. He flared, igniting the Everwood sickle at his side. But the savage froze, caught as if in a spider’s web, or in time itself. Iyana cast about, looking for Pevah and half-expecting the Sage to come walking out of the shadows, eyes glowing red as he bent the real to his will.

But as the feral girl’s eyes twitched toward Sen, Iyana knew it was he who held her fast. And as they watched in horrified fascination, the girl began to contort as the Faeykin’s lips quivered, his right hand balled into a fist as his left stuck out before him as if holding a leash.

“Sen,” Iyana breathed. “What are you doing to her?”

The woman fought the invisible bonds that held her, but now that Iyana looked she saw that Sen had somehow merged his tether with hers. He gripped the pulsing, burning thread between his fingers and pulled back sharply, snapping the woman’s head back and bringing her back down to the rocks with a sickening scrape and gasp.

Ceth looked from the struggle to Iyana and back. He edged forward but seemed caught between attacking Sen and finishing the job he’d started.

“A spy,” Sen said, though he said it through gritted teeth. “I caught her prowling. I thought to make her …” He gagged, like a cat. “I thought she could lead us to the others.” He was not himself.

Karin’s voice sounded from behind. He was climbing the rise and would soon be upon them with whatever company he had gathered. Iyana glanced at the broken and twisted form of the girl at Sen’s feet. And she was a girl. Younger than Iyana. Young enough to be an older sister to one of the desert children that flitted between caverns like the birds in their nests below.

Iyana made her decision. She did not know if she could do it, but she had always been a quick learner. She closed her eyes and opened them all at once, and before she broke his ethereal grip on the girl and laid him low, Iyana saw something like fear in Sen’s wide green stare as she pushed his very essence—his will and his choice—down into the rocks.

She fell to her knees, and as the party fell on the wounded savage—now free—she and the other Faeykin regarded each other in the press. Creyath’s fire burned brighter and closer than that to the north. It was a light like judgment.

Talmir’s sleep was troubled, but it was a paltry thing next to the jarring cacophony of thoughts that assailed him upon waking.

He felt a presence in the room with him. A considering one. Though still reluctant to move, he forced memories from the waking world back and drew up an image of his father’s blade in his mind.

Where had he left it?

He was not so young as he once was, but Talmir Caru had always been faster than appearances would suggest. He’d make a grab—

“Captain?”

“Jes?”

Talmir sat up, feeling the rush drain from his blood even as his heart railed against his chest. He blinked away sleep and wiped hair from his brow, which was slick with sweat and condensation from the rock that surrounded him. A pale blue light illuminated the chamber, the walls of which were pocked with smooth stone bubbles that had burst at the time of melting, however many decades—perhaps centuries—ago.

Jes crouched before him like a cat. Her arm was no longer bandaged, but she still held it close to her chest, the Faeykin—even Iyana—unable to completely undo the liquid fire of the sand drakes.

“Is everything okay?” Talmir asked. He was bare-chested and remembered it, reaching for the same shirt he had worn too many days in a row without washing. He sniffed it and then cast it aside, rising and sifting through his spilled pack for another.

“Jes?”

He turned as he dressed. Jes had not spoken. She was always a quiet one. He liked that about her, but she always responded quickest when asked.

She rose, halting. Behind her, the hallway was dark, with no torches lighting the way back to the great central chamber and its mirrored lake and white crystal towers.

“I think it is, Captain,” she said. “Okay, I mean. I think it is now.”

Talmir felt himself go cold despite the warmth of the place. He bent to retrieve his sword belt but left his armor in its pile along with Mial’s leather. Walking felt like swimming with the air being so moist. So close. So tense.

“What’s happened, Jes? Speak.”

She did, and Talmir tried not to interrupt her, fighting the urge to rush up the spiral stair to the cave mouth above with a speed that might betray him and send him crashing back down. She told him of the intruder Sen had caught, though she did not tell him how he had managed it, or how he had known. She told him of how they had come upon the scene only because Karin, Creyath, Iyana and the hunters had before them.

“Sen was going to kill him?” Talmir asked, placing a hand to his chin.

Jes shrugged. “That is what Ket said. He said there was killing in his eyes. He said they glowed like emeralds. He said that Iyana Ve’Ran matched him and he fell over. Or, not fell …”

“Then what?” Talmir prompted.

“He said he twisted,” Jes said, shaking her head and spreading her hands. “I didn’t see, but Mial confirmed it. He said Sen looked like he was stuck to the rock like an ant in a spider’s web, and that Iyana stood over him.”

“And the intruder? The savage girl?”

“Dead.”

“By whose hand? Creyath? Karin? Ceth?”

Jes shook her head quickly. Talmir let her speak. But she didn’t, only gave him a plaintive look.

“Who killed her, Jes?” Talmir took a step forward, standing over her. He told himself he was not trying to intimidate, but direct approaches had always worked best for him—even if they did cause undue stress to those he confronted.

“I don’t know, Captain Caru,” she said.

“You didn’t see? Then surely Ket, Mial—”

“No.” She shook her head again, more forceful. “None saw. The savage, she attacked, or tried to, but then she fell before the soldiers and Pevah’s hunters could even hold her down. Ket said he saw the light leave her eyes, as if her very soul had departed, or as if she had been struck by lightning. But there was no storm, Captain. No arrows. Pevah hurled no magic that we could see.”

“Pevah.” Talmir did not know why, but the name tasted like ash in his mouth. He straightened and another thought occurred to him, threatening bile. His look must have showed it.

“What is it, Captain?” Jes asked.

“You said Iyana Ve’Ran stopped Sen from killing,” he said and she nodded. “How was he going to do it? I’ve never seen Sen carry a weapon.”

Jes’s brow crinkled in thought, as if she was considering it for the first time. She shrugged. “That’s what Ket said. The Faeykin have more magic than healing. That’s what my Ma always told me. Said they were dangerous.” She looked a little embarrassed, but Talmir was only nodding along.

“That they do,” he said. “That they are. Lucky for us, they’re usually on our side. Iyana certainly is. But I wonder …”

“You think she killed the savage?” Jes asked, her voice rising. “You think she … snapped it, or something, after she stopped Sen? They’re always going on about tethers and threads.” She looked down at her hands as if searching for her own. She sounded horrified and fascinated at the same time. “Maybe she cut—”

“Enough of that,” Talmir said, his voice low and without inflection, which told plenty. He’d speak with Iyana, but the more he thought on it, the stronger he felt that she had nothing to do with the intruder’s death. He doubted if Sen did, for that matter, given the manner in which he had apparently been halted.

“The Sage,” Talmir said, earning a strange look. He had been the first to call him by his chosen name, and the first to abandon its use. “Where is he?”

“Above,” Jes said. “But Captain, we saw no magic—”

“Magic isn’t always as visible as an Ember’s fire, Jes,” he said. “It isn’t always as true.” He went to his boots, ignoring the stink as he pulled them on. He’d worry about washing when he was done sorting through the latest problems that dogged them as readily as any Dark Kind they might’ve faced in the south. At least those he understood. At least those made their intentions plain. Unmistakable.

Talmir was growing tired of the deserts. They were much different than he had supposed. He had begun to think their sameness belied a secrecy—a deception, even—that slithered beneath the sands, nested in the black caves and hid from the heat that baked it all and made a hazy stew of it.

“Captain.” Jes spoke haltingly. She sounded tense, worried. She didn’t move to unblock his path from the darkened hall, and only then did he realize he had his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“What is it?” he asked, trying to put some warmth into his tone as he removed his hand. He failed.

“There is a feast above,” she said. “Maybe it is not the best time—”

“For what?” Talmir asked. “For questions? For answers? No.” He looked up, as if he could penetrate the black rock with his sight. “It’s well past time for those. Besides,” he showed her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “am I not invited?”

Jes moved out of his way with a swallow. She took up his wake as he moved through twisted corridors that had already become familiar. He thought that a bad thing, given the circumstances. It reminded him of dalliance. It reminded him of his mission and its stretched failing. It reminded him of the Sage that sat above, regaling with tales that led nowhere and showing lessons that taught nothing, as if he was one of them. As if they were his.

The central chamber was empty but for a few of the older tribesmen, whose hands were busy with some project or another—sewing, patching, mashing, scraping—but whose eyes were distant and faraway, like ghosts. The children were nowhere to be seen or heard, either above or traversing their secret pathways around and below the subterranean lake Talmir did not look toward, though he felt the bright white light of the crystal columns against his cheek. He heard Jes slow behind him as she was caught in its brilliance like a moth to flame.

“Don’t burn up,” he said under his breath. He did not know if she heard him, but her steps quickened. They took the spiral stair; the flames’ amber light reflected off the melted obsidian above, growing brighter with each step. The breeze that did not reach the bottom greeted him on the way up. It was warm and carried with it the tang of salt and the welcome sting of cooking smoke. There were spices he didn’t recognize and a few he did. Something like pepper, but sharper.

If the smell made his stomach growl and worked to trick him into a state of ease and calm, the sounds did anything but. Merriment was the right word, though Talmir did not recognize any of the myriad voices. His own were quiet, if not sullen, while their hosts—or captors—spoke in animated voices, laughing and singing and cavorting in a way they had not up to this point, drunk and slurring off the strange fruit wine they had brought up from the musty caverns below.

As he reached the top, the sounds and smells reached a crescendo that rattled his ears and set his skull to throbbing. He walked through it, parting it with his steady, forbidding presence. He felt like a ship moving against a storm-threatened sea. He rounded the bend, Jes skipping to keep up with him, and saw the black silhouettes of figures sitting and standing around a roaring fire out on the shelf. And on the other side of it, the red hood, the craggy bronze skin, the sharp eyes that looked black devoid of the soft light of the stars in the dark blue curtain behind. Talmir saw the purple haze infecting the western horizon and saw the Sage framed against it as if born of the same source—as if made from it.

Talmir broke the space from cave to open air, the crackle of a log announcing his presence along with the scrape of his bare blade against an errant buckle he did not try to silence. He must have forgotten his scabbard below. The old man who was a Sage ceased his telling and switched those dark eyes to Talmir with an easy, mocking expectance, and the eyes of his followers turned as well.

“Captain Talmir,” the old man said. “You slept well?”

Talmir ignored him and continued his inspection. His own people were on the edges. He surveyed the scene, noting the pair of horses waiting where the black shelf met the sand with Creyath standing between them, watching Talmir with his orange gaze. Mial stood near him, arms crossed, looking north over the sands.

The rest of the company was in a better mood, some even pausing hushed conversations with their red- or gray-sashed hosts, but Talmir saw Iyana’s sparking greens to the side. She sat beside Karin, knees drawn up close to her chest, staring at the fire but not seeing it. Karin met Talmir’s eyes and gave a slight nod. He made as if to stand but Talmir raised a hand to stay him.

A giggle broke the mood—Talmir’s, at least—and he noticed the children for the first time. They sat between the adults, not bothering to distinguish one tribe from the other, the Valley from the open. The giggle was directed at him, and Talmir only noticed it was a nervous one when he locked eyes on the dark youth who’d let it slip. The young boy turned away from him as if burned and one of the gray-sashes laid a comforting arm around his neck and shoulders.

Sen.

Talmir swiveled, searching. The pale, long-haired man sat on the opposite side, as far from the others as he could go. Nervous glances shot his way. He, too, looked vacant, only he stared down. His two fellows—the older man and the red-haired woman—sat close to him, but not so close. For the first time since Talmir had known them, they seemed unsettled.

“Captain?” the old man said, probably for the third time. He sounded worried, but Talmir read the threat below the tone, which was like honey and milk. Spoiled.

“The hunt went well, I see,” Talmir said, nodding toward the roast suspended above the pit. Much of it had been picked over, and two hunters worked over the rest with moonlit blades, carving the haunches and setting them aside to be cured and saved for later.

“Very,” the Sage said. “It always does.” He looked to Iyana and Karin and then twisted around to include Creyath, whose expression told little. “Your horses helped with the hauling. For that we are grateful.” He turned back to Talmir. “And now, we are sharing.”

“I can see that,” Talmir said. “Plenty of meat for the coming weeks. Glad we could help.”

“More than meat,” the old man said, sweeping one robed arm out to encompass the gathering. He, like the children that hung about him, did not distinguish. “We have shared stories. Your man Creyath even told us his version of the Tale of the First Keeper.” He laughed, making Talmir narrow his eyes. “It was quite close to the real thing, I must say.”

Talmir looked to Creyath, who paused in stroking his charger long enough to give him another nothing look, and perhaps the suggestion of a shrug.

“You knew him?” Talmir asked, his face screwing up in incredulity. The old man made as if to speak but Talmir held up a hand, not caring how rude it seemed. He closed his eyes and shook his head, as if dealing with a child or a senile fisherman from Last Lake. “Where is Ceth?”

“Ah,” he said, leaning back and making a great show of looking around. It drew a few laughs, and not just from those who wore sashes. Talmir tried not to hold it against his men and women. The old man was charming. He wondered if there was any magic in it. “I believe he is doing what he does best after a hunt. And at all other times, really.” He switched back to Talmir quick as a hawk. “Brooding, most likely.”

“Where?”

“In his brooding place.” The old man who called himself Pevah was beginning to drop all pretense. He still smiled, but he showed more teeth as he did. Talmir was pushing, and his look suggested he was going to start pushing back.

So be it.

“I heard there was an intruder,” Talmir said. He saw Jes slide out from under his shadow and creep over to where Ket and the other soldiers sat intermingled with the desert nomads. Some held gourds, and Talmir could see a purple tint to their lips and fingertips. They swayed as they watched the exchange, some of them smiling while those less inclined wore frowns.

“There was,” Pevah said. He inclined his head toward Sen, who did not look up. He looked drained. “Your man here caught her before we did. Held her fast. Some gift.” He shook his head as if he truly was marveling. Pevah shifted onto his other hip and pointed toward Iyana and Karin. Seeing her despondent look, something shifted in his, and he left his next words unspoken. Talmir was glad for it, though it did nothing to quell the bitterness that was now rising like acid in his gut.

“One of the Bloody Screamers, I assume,” Talmir said. Pevah nodded. Some of the children clung to those nearest them, eyes wide. The tribesmen on the edges had begun to break off from Talmir’s men and were inching toward the pit. The meat had begun to burn and the one minding it called for one of his fellows, who ran over and helped him lift the spit and lay it on the edge of the shelf.

“You sit here,” Talmir said, his voice carrying on the light wind, “telling your tales. Regaling us on stories of the past when one of your enemies—the very same you have been fighting for who knows how long—has come against you? Has come against us, in the night?”

Pevah ran his tongue over his teeth. His own were unstained, the gourd beside him shimmering with clear water that reflected the moon.

“I do,” he said, all pretense wiped away.

Talmir had to smile. He swept a mock bow. “Do explain yourself, to my people and perhaps your own.” He did not meet the stares of Pevah’s men and women. The dark ones with red sashes—those he could have called brother and sister—frowned, while those of a lighter bent and with their gray clothes looked near to violence, even if they kept their expressions veiled.

“These things happen, from time to time,” Pevah said. The fire in the pit had shrank some, and the faces on the edges were less illuminated than hinted at, like coals blown by the passing breeze. “You and yours should know. You endured the Dark Kind for generations.”

“We still do,” Talmir said, nodding. “We still will. But we do not revel on the eve of such attacks.”

“No?” Pevah said. “A shame, when you could die on the morrow.”

“Death pales before preparation,” Talmir said, the words called up from the depths of memory. From Vennil Cross, then First Keeper of Hearth.

“Why does it happen?” Talmir asked. “Why do these red beasts that wear the skins of men come here, seeking to purge your people from the sands when they seem to be one and the same?”

There were murmurs at that, mostly emanating from those who wore red sashes and scarves. They did not like being compared to the savages. The Bloody Screamers. But questions were good. Questions raised emotions. Emotions got answers.

Pevah looked around the fire, gauging the reactions of those gathered. He smiled at the children who looked to him, not understanding the cause but noting the tension as clear as any. He glanced over the Valley caravan, and Talmir had a thought that he might be giving some silent command of violence to his own. He nearly brought his sword up, which would have spelled the deaths of many. But better sense took over, and when the old man finished his calm survey, the eyes he turned on Talmir were drenched in what could only be sorrow.

“This is a night of sharing,” the old man said. He spoke low enough to make his audience lean in. “Sharing is not intended for dark talk, but light. It is the Bright Days, Talmir Caru. You are guests. This is not the way things are done.”

While Pevah spoke, Talmir kept the gray-sashes in his periphery. They were separating from his own men. Pevah might not want violence, but the Northmen were hard to figure out. Perhaps some of them wished for conflict. Perhaps none of them wished against it.

“We have come a long way,” Talmir said, hating the pleading note he finished with. Pevah’s brows quirked. Talmir thought he saw a slight nod before his chin raised to match a straightened back.

“That you have,” Pevah said. The wind picked up, sliding through the gathering and kicking loose sand from the blue-black shelf. Talmir had not noticed that the Faeykin had been so tense, but he saw them relax at the edges where the overhang met the open air. They could read the emotions of others as plain as some could read the stars. He should make a habit of looking to them first—of looking to Iyana, who had woke some but still appeared faint and cold.

“But …” Pevah said, and Talmir did not try to stop the frown from infecting his features once more. “Sharing takes time.”

“We’ve had plenty of it,” Talmir said. “You and I have had plenty.” Another raised brow and Talmir knew the Sage was surprised Talmir had learned the truth of his gifts, or else guessed them. They had only had three conversations since their first, and each of them had drained Talmir more than he would’ve thought possible. First for their emotion and need, but mostly for their sheer breadth. The Sage of the Red Waste did not seem powerful because his power stretched the very fabric they walked in—lived in and died in. He had something of time in his pocket, thought Talmir doubted if his influence over it extended to mastery.

“I can see why it would seem so, to you,” Pevah said. He dipped his head and opened his hand toward Talmir in a gesture of offering. “Ask, then.” He swept the same hand out to all the Valleyfolk gathered on the shelf, all of the wayward travelers Talmir had brought along with him on a quest for fools and dreamers—things he despised because he had too many of the qualities of both.

“I’ll ask the same, again,” Talmir said, settling back onto his heels and bringing his hand away from his sword hilt. He did not know if the gesture put the gray-cloths more at ease or confirmed that a threat had been there, recognized by both sides. Their gray-blue eyes said nothing. “Why do you not act, when the enemy comes against you so brazenly? Why do you sit and feast and tell tales, tall or otherwise, when the very children sitting on the hems of your tattered robes are in danger?”

“The Blood Seers send their dogs on occasion,” Pevah said. “Trust me when I say, Talmir Caru”—he caught a few more sets of eyes, including those of Karin and Iyana, Mial and Jes—even Ket and Creyath, who were among the few standing— “this is the safest place for them.”

“Then there is no safe place,” Talmir said.

“No,” Pevah surprised him by admitting. “There is no safe place here, just as there is no hiding from the Dark Months in the Valley you call home.” He dipped another nod, seeming unable to meet Talmir’s stare. “The latter is not your fault, surely, nor is it the fault of your forebears. They were led—or misled, however you’d like to characterize it. But then,” he locked Talmir with a look that was sharp and full of daring, “we do the best we can with what we are given.”

“As I am trying to do now,” Talmir said. “I claim inaction.” He swept his own hand across the gathering, including the meat that was now cooled and done sizzling on the shelf. “You claim action.” He pointed at the Sage and through him, toward the place where the sky went from blue-black to lavender. The color of plenty, or poison. It could even have been a fire, like ships burning on a distant sea. “What is it you guard? What is it your men and women die to defend?” Now Talmir did not meet Pevah’s eyes alone, but rather traced the company he kept.

“We have—” Pevah started before Talmir cut him off.

“You have a charge,” Talmir said sharply. “Yes. As do I. As do we all.”

Pevah closed his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth. He did not like the conversation being out in the open—the conflict that could invite more. Of course, that was precisely why Talmir had chosen to bring it up, here and now. That, and he had never been long on patience. Had never been one to accept the way things were simply because they had been. Tradition was a rot, as far as he could tell. Fertile ground to plant seeds of the new.

“What is your charge, Red?” he asked. “What is your charge?” he asked of those standing around him, of the young hunters who had accompanied Iyana, Creyath and Karin on the hunt. He even asked it of Ceth, who was not among them but who might be listening from some crack or crevice or place on high where only he could reach with his strange gifts. “What is out at the Midnight Dunes?” He stood tall as he could. “I wonder, do your people know? Or the people you claim as your own, though you are something else? Something apart from them.”

Pevah was still. His eyes did not move, remaining rooted on Talmir. For a space of time, Talmir thought he might fall over dead, taking his answers with him. Or that he might lash out, his outward calm shifting like a desert storm to swallow them up—starting with him, for prying where he shouldn’t have. The men and women around him stared at him, looking for some sign, some command to intercede on his behalf. But he was the Sage of the Red Waste. He was their leader, their rock and stone, no matter if the Landkist Ceth was his righteous or terrible hand.

“You are new to the deserts,” Pevah said. He spoke quieter now, so much so that those on the outskirts looked to one another, unable to hear. The old man blinked and spoke up. “You are all new. Yes,” he said, “even those whose grandsires have made the same caves their home.” The red-sashes looked at each other with the dark eyes of those Talmir had grown up with, though his had always been lighter.

The old man ushered some of the children off his too-long robes and stood. It was easy to forget how tall he was and how robust, given how he hunched. Talmir had thought it part of an act when he had first noticed it. Now, he thought it was simply a weight he carried, and a part of him felt guilty for asking what made it up.

“You lot are out here to find a future,” he said, walking a slow path around the fire in the pit. No new logs had been placed atop it and already the flames had burned lower, the light going from bright yellow to dull red to match the hue of the Sage’s cloth. “You have come to the land of your past to do it.” He moved past the stained gourds that leaned half empty, abandoned in the tension and now in the thrall of the Sage’s speak.

“But these people, whom you see as ghosts from a past you left buried,” he paused and Talmir did not think it was for effect, “they have a future as well. Or they might. Believe it or not, they are tied up in the same nightmare as you, even if the Dark Kind come seldom to the deserts these days, with only the occasional rift opening.”

Talmir saw some of the nomads’ noses wrinkle at the mention, while their children and even some of the younger among them looked to them questioningly. The Sage turned to face the west, his hands clasped behind his back. As many looked to him as looked behind him to the purple horizon.

“Our east is to the west,” he said, speaking as if he were lost in a dream, or perhaps in memory. Talmir began to shake his head and one of the silver-haired warriors—the woman he had interacted with on their initial trek to the caves—took a warning step between he and the Sage. “A nightmare that is singular, but no less deadly than anything you and yours have faced in the south. More so.” Talmir saw him tilt his head toward Creyath, whose amber stare was unburdened by the range of emotions racking the rest. “And these,” he tossed his head back at the mix, “have not had your shining Embers to protect them, to fight for them.”

“Plenty who fight in the Valley do it with wood and metal rather than flame,” Talmir said. “So what? So you have an enemy too. Let us work together. Let us help you so that you can help us in turn.” Now he was pleading, hands spread even as he started to boil seeing the old man shake his head slowly before he had finished his remarks.

“There is no beating this,” Pevah said. He sounded firm as he did sorrowful. “There is only delaying. Those who sit atop those dunes even now are only there to prevent others from putting their hands and wild intent where they should not. Those who strike out tomorrow will do the same.” He turned and smiled softly down at a little girl who had ventured closer to him, as if she wanted to gather him like a comforting blanket, though to Talmir he seemed anything but. “And these children will do so after them. It is their charge, as it is mine.” He looked back to the west and Talmir could barely make out his next words over the throbbing in his temples. “It is theirs as long as it has to be, or until it is failed.”

Talmir took another step forward and he saw Pevah’s ears twitch as his boot scraped the sand. Some of the gray-sashes closed in around him, and even the reds—calmer and less aloof—turned their confused or sorrowful looks to hardened ones. They turned them on Talmir and on those who had begun to form around him and on the edges, Valley warriors caught up in the captain’s frustration.

He wanted to rage and spit. He wanted to curse the old man for his riddles and stamp out the fire along with the tenuous friendship his had built with those who’d made it. He wanted to tear the Sharing apart and rend it, to grind it under his heels and leave it in the west to fester. He wanted to send Tu’Ren Kadeh and Garos Balsheer out after Kole in his own war on the Sages, damned if they cleaned this one up at the end. He wanted to burn everything he did not understand, and that last thought blew out all the anger of the rest with its startling and stark reality, its truth laid cold and bare.

“What did you do?” Talmir asked, faint and childlike so that even the children looked to him and each other with strange expressions. How odd it must be to see an adult—and one full of vigor, one who leads—reduced to one who begged for answers.

And begging was the word. “You and the rest?” Talmir felt the tears stinging the corners of his eyes as he focused them on the Sage’s broad back. “You and your brothers and sisters. The War of Sages and all it’s done to the World.” He paused and looked at his own hands as if they were as likely to hold the answers. “What did you do that we must suffer so?”

The old man’s shoulders sagged as Talmir said it, his weight and solidity seeming to deflate with a silent sigh.

“You are not our enemy,” Talmir said through gritted teeth and a throbbing throat. “But perhaps you should be.” They should have attacked him for it but did not, either out of pity or agreement. He didn’t care. “Your guilt radiates like the light on that poisoned horizon. Like the red stains on the teeth of those the Blood Seers send against you. Against all of you.”

Talmir took his eyes from the Sage’s back to see that the rest were standing; all manner, ages and persuasions of cloth and skin; his own people of the Valley and those of the windswept deserts and the strangers from the highlands he would never see, all displaced and aimless as he felt now. Ceth was not listening. If he had been, Talmir would have been struck down. As such, the Sage would not do it, though the look he turned on Talmir might have in another circumstance.

“Whatever you think of me,” Pevah said. He included his own in it. “Whatever any of you think of me, and whatever I might’ve done, it pales in the face of what would happen were I to disappear.” He focused on Iyana, who Talmir noted was the only one left sitting, her green eyes shining as she tapped into those strange gifts that were little understood, even among the Landkist.

The old man pointed to the west without looking. “What we guard there cannot be loosed.” His eyes widened in a mad sort of way, and Talmir caught a glimpse of the fear the Sage kept hidden. Cold dread tickled his spine at the thought of what could inspire it in one who purported to be so powerful and so singular—as if he was the one who kept the west where it was and the rest merely kept him company while he did it. Talmir had the striking impression that it was the truth.

Talmir looked to Iyana and saw her eyes glow bright before fading back to their usual hue, which was striking on the least of occasions. Whatever she had seen in the Sage’s sudden mania had unsettled her. She looked toward the west with a mix of awe and the fear it carried with it.

The old man closed his eyes and lowered his hand. The fire on the shelf had sunk lower and a fresh log was thrown atop it with a crash that sent up motes and flaming tails that framed his bronze face.

“They have come to where we sleep,” he said. “It is true. I will not pretend it isn’t concerning.” He met the eyes of those closest to him before gathering the strength to meet Talmir’s again. “But they will not come against us. Not in force. Not here.” He turned and seemed to catch Creyath by surprise with his attention. “No doubt seeing an Ember in the flesh redoubled their resolve. They believe the source of your fire to be buried out there. But their charge, though opposite in nature from our own, has the same direction and the same ending.”

“West,” Talmir said, his voice calm as he suddenly felt, like a blown candle or a storm having run its course.

“West,” Pevah said. His eyes were wide but no longer wild. “This is the farthest we can go and still keep ourselves fed and watered. To make the trek would doom the children and us as well. And so we wait. We watch, and we guard.”

“You will not fight them,” Creyath spoke up. His words did not carry a tone of accusation, though they might have. Pevah frowned. He looked at his warriors and then at the Valleyfolk around the edges.

“We have never had the numbers,” he said. “And the witches move often.”

“But they are closer, now,” Creyath pressed. He stepped up onto the shelf and away from his black charger, who watched him with interest. “They are more desperate, if they do things now they never have before.” Another frown, but no dismissal. “You said it before.” Creyath pointed east. “They attacked us before they knew of my presence and the fire I had brought. You said they are rarely out that way.”

“They followed us,” Pevah said by way of explanation. “They caught wind of our direction and followed.”

“They should have used the opportunity to strike at the heart of their goal,” Creyath argued.

“It was guarded then as it is now.” Pevah shook his head, but it seemed to Talmir his arguments grew less forceful with each one Creyath put forth.

The Ember met Talmir’s eyes and then Karin’s. He nodded to Mial and Jes and Ket, and to Iyana, who did not meet the stare. He singled out the stoutest soldiers of both sides and all three peoples, and he focused on Sen until the despondent Faeykin returned it, his face tilting up slowly.

“You have the numbers, now,” Creyath said. “You have the power, if I say so myself. You do not have to wait any longer.”

Pevah regarded him with mounting recognition, but Talmir could see the shake before it started.

“It would be murder,” he said. “We cannot—”

“You will lose,” Creyath said. “They will not stop until they have destroyed you or your charge, whatever it may be.” The Ember paused as if gathering himself for his next words. “If we help you do this, then you can help us. If not you, then your people, who could be ours.” He met Talmir’s gaze and nodded. “You are not the only Sage, Pevah whose name we do not know. Yours is not the only charge.”

“You wish to fight the Eastern Dark,” the Sage said with a rueful smile. “Were that you were Mena’Tch or his legacy, Creyath Mit’Ahn. But you are not. Potent as Ceth is,” he shook his head, “I do not think he would leave, even if he could help you.”

“He would if you joined us,” Karin spoke up.

“I cannot—”

“Why?” Talmir asked, exasperated. “If you could stand against the Eastern Dark, what could possibly—”

“I cannot stand against him,” Pevah said, his face flushed as the nomads and their children frowned at him. “I never said I could.”

“But you have,” Creyath said. “We have not been in the Valley so long to forget. Our grandmothers told of your battles with him.”

Pevah sighed. “And where did those lead me? Where did they lead you? A delay. I kept his hands from you for as long as I could. It was your Ember King who defended you most. And it was he and I who doomed you to that cage.”

“The White Crest—” Iyana started.

“Was better than you know,” Pevah said. “At least in intent.” He held up his hands to stay all arguments. He looked to Creyath, considered him and all he had said.

“You lot have had it as rough as any in that Valley of yours,” he said. “Worse, no doubt. But there is a strength to you that has come with enduring. With surviving.” He shook his head. “Powers like that,” he nodded to the west, “powers like the Eastern Dark—they cannot be challenged without courting an ending. Without courting death.”

“Better to do something,” Talmir said. “Anything.”

“Is it?” Pevah asked. His eyes switched to the children, who seemed caught, their usual movement stifled under the oppression of those grown disillusioned about them. “Is it better to do something if it leads to oblivion?”

“Oblivion is coming,” Sen said, and Talmir saw Iyana’s eyes flash toward him. “Whether we court it or not. It’s coming, and you know it because you’ve seen it.”

Pevah swallowed but did not turn toward the Faeykin. Talmir watched him, his spirits—risen on the back of Creyath’s entreaty—deflated once more.

“No,” Pevah said, gathering himself up even as he seemed to shrink. He stalked toward the cave mouth. “We endure.”

Talmir nearly reached a hand out to stop the old man before something like terror gripped him. It froze him in place just long enough for the old man’s robes to brush past him. He would have turned if the glowing coals of Creyath’s eyes had not caught him and drawn him to the smile he wore beneath.

A good start, that smile seemed to say. A good start to an end.

Iyana had managed to keep her mind blank throughout most of the exchange, only entering it toward the end. She was tired. She was irritable. She was sick.

Looking at anything for too long made her dizzy. The smell—salt and smoke and crisp—was tinged with the odor of blood. She could not help but picture the hammerhorn as it had been before Ceth had driven his hand like a hammer into its skull and the soft stuff within. The syrupy wine that dribbled down the chins of their desert hosts carried a sweetness that could easily turn to rot when twisted on the breeze and her foul mood.

Karin sat very close to her, out at the edge of the shelf. She wished he wouldn’t, though she could not bear to tell him. Iyana, who had always preferred the company of others to solitude, now wished to be entirely alone.

She would look up occasionally to see if one of the gray-cloths had moved close enough to Captain Talmir to be considered a threat. The soldiers of the Valley seemed to think so. They had moved to encircle the group around the fire. Those with darker skin and brighter sashes were slower to movement—slower to rile on behalf of the Sage they guarded like wolves—but Iyana could see their tethers take on a red tint as they simmered. Once these were going, it would come to something ill. She knew then that these were indeed the same as the Emberfolk of the Valley, their sires or their legacy.

Twice, she glimpsed Sen staring at her from across the way, his eyes dimmer than they were wont to be. When she raised her own to meet them, they flicked away with something she took for embarrassment at first and later recognized with a cold and creeping certainty to be fear. The bright cloak that usually enveloped him was barely visible. Iyana doubted she’d be able to see it even if she were to dip into the Between. As it was, the incident on the southern spur had left her with the most potent haze she had ever experienced in her short time testing her Sight without Ninyeva’s guiding presence.

Voices were raised and Iyana felt the first stab of panic as her conscious mind caught up to her in her malaise. There was a stink of violence on the air and she thought she might make herself useful trying to stop it. And then the old man withdrew and Talmir let him go, though she knew he wanted to stop him, to reach out and shake him, if not throttle him. He wanted to shout into the Sage’s face and curse him and cast him down. He wanted to blame him for all the wrong that had ever been done to the Valley peoples and any of the free folk in the World they were only just getting to know.

Iyana knew this because she wanted the same. She saw it reflected in the glowing ambers of Creyath just as she felt it in the rigid bearing that was usually so fluid in Karin Reyna. She could see it in the lost and vacant expressions of the desert soldiers, merchants and hopeful travelers now verging on the opposite as they indulged in a Sharing that felt as false to her as her own goodness.

“Iyana?”

She looked up to see Karin standing over her. He held a stone bowl out to her. She took it with a smile she tried to mean and delighted in the cool water as it splashed into her mouth, thankful the First Runner had not brought her blood and death to swallow with all the rest.

Iyana set the bowl down and nodded her thanks, and Karin seemed to think about sitting beside her once more but decided to move over to speak with Talmir instead. He was a good presence to have, Iyana thought. Kole had been right for suggesting he come, though she knew the thought was selfish, since Karin would have been as much a boon to her wayward friends and family beneath the towering trees of Center.

Her thoughts had drifted enough that she came back to the inevitable in due time. She saw the red teeth set into a hard grimace, dried blood stained maroon in a striped mask and fresh red dripping down below the chin as the savage girl had struggled under Sen’s ethereal grip.

Iyana had not known it was possible, but something had clicked in her when she had seen it. It made sense all of a sudden, and she wondered if Ninyeva ever would have shown her even had she known of these dark gifts. Of course the Faeykin could challenge free will. They could push and pull emotion. She had seen the Faey Mother do it, albeit subtly and never through force. She had seen her hold children and elders alike in thrall during the telling of her tales in the Long Hall as the Dark Kind assailed the timber walls. She had only done it to protect them, never to wrench the very being of another, to pin them down, thrashing and spitting.

When she had come upon the scene, Iyana had been brought back to a much more grisly image from a past that was not her own. She saw it again as if traipsing through Tu’Ren Kadeh’s memory for the first time, when the First Keeper-to-be had come upon the horror the Valley Faey had wrought against the rebel hunters, who had gone against them absent command and without the backing of the Emberfolk of Hearth or Last Lake. The Faey had dark gifts as well, Ninyeva had told her, but she had never seen the work such gifts could do until she had seen it through Tu’Ren’s eyes; like a person turned inside-out and made unreal. Like healing done in reverse.

She could not be certain if Sen would have done it, but she had acted without thinking and without knowing how. She had flashed into the Between but kept close to her body, and below her all the tethers shone like beacons brighter than the stars. While most drifted like strings on the wind, one was like a gem in their midst, pulsing with a yellow-green aura. It was the tether Sen kept closely guarded—the one he wrapped around himself so it could not be used against him, as he now used the intruder’s.

Iyana steeled herself and dove down like a bird of prey. She severed the connection between Sen and the intruder and wrapped her own self about it. Try as she might, she still could not remember how she had, but she had gripped Sen’s tether like she was a ball and it the chain, and she had pulled him down and held him there until the others had fallen on both.

She had snapped back into herself and nearly cried out from the sudden pain in her knees. She had fallen, the rough surface of the spur scoring gouges into her knees and palms. Her heart beating furiously, she looked to Sen and saw him regarding her with something well beyond fear and close to terror.

The savage died, and for a space Iyana thought she might’ve done it, or Sen. But she knew she hadn’t, and Sen seemed just as surprised as she was. She dipped back into the Between in a move that nearly made her retch and saw nothing emanating from the intruder’s boney coil—no light to be had at all. It was as if it had been severed from afar, or drained. She thought she heard a humming on the wind, like the cold, bloody song Karin had described on first meeting the Bloody Screamers in their sandy trap to the east.

Iyana had never felt shame like that. As she had looked around at the others—Karin and Creyath included—the feeling had only redoubled. And as she had settled down around the fire on the shelf, gathered around the kill she had observed and in the company of those who had seen her wield the will of another like a horse’s reins, she felt on the verge of retching again.

The argument and its ensuing ending had done little to bolster her mood, and before Ket or Jes or Mial or any other friends new and old could make another try to take her mind off it, Iyana stood and stepped off the shelf onto the soft, cool sand of the desert night. She tossed Karin a look as she did to let him know, and the First Runner nodded, though he looked troubled.

The air had a cool bite that she welcomed, even a short distance from the crackling flames and the resurgent conversations around it. The mood was still tense, but Pevah had put down the argument and Talmir had eventually let him. The others had no quarrel. Iyana had to wonder if their hosts truly wanted them there, or if they had begun to lean a little too heavily on the hospitality of a people who seemed a good sight more desperate than those fleeing their own sort of desperation.

Iyana saw the purple and amber glow to the west and tried to see it for something other than a portent—something apart from an unknown horror lurking below and causing the sands to vibrate with a dark energy that reminded her of the White Crest. It had the stink of Sage magic, and Iyana was beginning to carve an impression of what might be beneath, even if she couldn’t know it for certain.

Tonight, she let the horizon be what it would: beautiful. It was a red-orange jewel or a suggestion of tomorrow thrown up in reverse, like the day retreating and casting a longing goodbye out behind it with the promise of tomorrow’s warmth.

She smiled, leaving her dour thoughts behind and picking her way among the black, shining surfaces of the stalagmites, ridges and pitted mounds that held the sea of sand up in all directions. As she moved, she beheld the northern cliffs that bore only the hint of pink in what light they caught from the Dunes. They were distant, no matter how much they loomed, and Iyana let herself marvel at their impossible heights. She paused in a narrow pocket and looked up at them beneath a black overhang, closing her eyes and imagining the distant howl of the wind through the crags. She wondered what stories that land had to tell. She wondered how far it went.

Even that thought eventually brought its slow and aching way back around to a dark one: that Ceth and his people had come down from those heights for a reason. And as Iyana and her own were well aware, one did not venture far from home unless need or desperation drove him. The War of Sages had claimed plenty in the crossfire between god-like forces. But she thought the true tragedy was in the exploration—the wanderlust—that the conflict had drained from the World’s respective peoples.

Some would blame the Dark Months and the horrors they held for the isolation which other peoples might not feel as keenly as her own. But Iyana knew the same truth all Emberfolk felt at their core, even if tales of the desert days—tales born of the lands she walked now—were sparse on detail. The Dark Months and the Sages were connected. The World Apart, the source of so much strife and so much misery. They were tied together, inextricable as the sand from its many buried crevices and canyons.

Iyana walked between the ridges, the shelves sending up their sharp complaints to the desert curtain above. She walked until she no longer felt the light of the fire on the nape of her neck and climbed atop another shelf that seemed to spill out like a lip between two great slabs. A part of her thought she had gone too far, but she heard the call of the desert foxes and felt comforted by it, though its haunting melody left her tossing and turning upon first coming to these lands.

She ran her hand along the glass-like surface of the rock face and imagined how it was all a singular thing, like a single cut of onyx that ran all the way to the lake far below, which sheltered the desert children and kept them warm and cool at the same time. She let herself drift on currents that had nothing to do with the Between and did not notice the smile that came to her face while she walked, tracing the dips and grooves in the jagged shelf.

She stopped and looked to the west again. She was closer now, the rock having led her out farther onto the sands. She looked to the south and saw the glow of the fire that was not so far, heard the voices drifting on the cool breeze and saw the shadowed hints of the desert foxes sliding between dunes, full on the salted meat they had helped to bring down as they wrestled and rolled and loved in the underbellies of the desert hills that had raised them.

There was a presence she had not noticed before, like a stone dropped into a pool she swam in without making a sound. Iyana felt her heart catch in her throat and froze.

“You are far from the rest.”

She knew the voice but not well enough to attach a face to it until the panic had done its work. She whirled and nearly smashed her nose into the broad chest of Ceth. He stood on the same lip as she, and while she was initially annoyed at his seeming ambush, a look down at his feet demonstrated that he had been here the whole time, and that she was the disturber and not the disturbed. His boots were tucked in a crevice, and one of the gourds leaned on its side. She looked up into his face and saw traces of that sweet-smelling liquid on the corners of his lips. His bangs, sticky with the day’s sweat, had been stuck up by the wind that was stronger here than it had been further in.

His eyes looked strange in the dim half-light, the closest this land came to night. Iyana thought at first that he might’ve partaken in too much wine and then noted the dried salt tracks that rimmed his eyes. Seeing her examination, he frowned, and Iyana took a step back that nearly sent her over into the soft sand and whatever jagged shards lurked just below its surface. Ceth caught her by the wrist and steadied her.

Iyana realized with a start that she had ignored him.

“Yes,” she said awkwardly. She felt strange under his gaze. He watched her closely as she spoke, as if weighing every word and the intent behind them. “I’m not in the mood for sharing, you could say.” She shrugged and knew it sounded pitiful. It was pitiful, but it was the truth.

Ceth only nodded and looked out over the slope. Iyana saw a small clutch of figures moving away from them with packs slung over their shoulders. Some had blades that caught the silver shafts of moonlight that spilled down from above, flashing like fish at the Fork.

Iyana regarded Ceth. She felt like raising some alarm or another, but seeing his look and tracing the source of his recent hurt, she thought this was a known thing.

“Pevah knows,” she said as much as asked. He blinked.

“Of course,” he said. “It is our cha—”

“Your charge,” Iyana finished, only realizing she sounded like Talmir Caru after she had spoken. “The Midnight Dunes.”

“Yes,” Ceth said. He did not say it with a hint of emotion, either positive of negative, but rather with a quiet zeal that reminded her in an unpleasant way of Seer Rusul and her sisters, whom Ninyeva had not-so-affectionately dubbed ‘the Crows.’

“They did not want to disturb the Sharing,” Ceth said and Iyana had to laugh. He turned a questioning look on her, and she thought he even swayed a little as the wind picked up. He frowned and placed a steadying hand against the back shelf.

“I think I did a good enough job of that,” Iyana said, but Ceth was already shaking his head before she finished.

“It was not you,” he said. He grimaced, and it was the most genuine look she had yet seen from him. “They will keep coming.” He looked back to the horizon, and the longer they stared, the more Iyana could see the faint, glowing mounds that broke the flat plains in the distance.

All manner of questions rose in Iyana’s mind and she thought to give voice to them. She thought to ask why. Instead, she sighed.

“You aren’t going?”

Ceth’s silence was deafening. His face contorted and then switched back to its former veiled serenity. He did not meet her eyes when he answered. “Pevah wishes me to stay. For now.”

“For now,” Iyana repeated and Ceth did not nod. He only stared after the departing figures with a look like despair. “The foxes don’t follow them,” she said, frowning as she noted the pack watching the warriors from a raised pile to the southwest.

Ceth shook his head. “They are wise beasts.” He nearly smiled. “Sometimes I think Pevah is right about them.”

“In what way?” Iyana asked, curious.

“That they are the true guardians of this land,” he said, his voice coated in disbelief, or reverence. It was difficult to tell.

“Good,” Iyana said, seizing on the chance, however threadbare. “Then that should free up your Sage to lend what aid he can to our cause.” Ceth did not frown as she had expected him to, nor did he raise an argument or slip away beneath the crags. Instead, he fell back into that blank mask he wore that was like judgment, though the cave wine had done its work. She could see something below the surface, struggling to rise. A reaction. A want to speak and be heard. To make her listen.

“You heard the argument, I take it,” Iyana said. She looked away from him so as not to antagonize. She felt comfortable around Ceth, so much so that it nearly had the opposite effect. Bouts of panic swelled in her chest that were a far cry from butterflies, but then he would speak, and the feeling would go away. Iyana knew she had a tendency to dip into her gifts without meaning to. Ninyeva had warned her about doing so in the presence of Landkist she didn’t know. The Faey Mother had meant the Rockbled like Braden Taldis—or so she thought—but could she have foreseen others out in the wider World? Could she have known?

Iyana thought that Ceth hadn’t answered until she saw him staring at her with an expectant look.

“I said, who could not?”

Iyana blushed. “Yes, well.” She cleared her throat and took a step back from the lip of the ledge, allowing the deeper shadows of the obsidian overhang to envelop her. “Captain Talmir has his reasons for pressing.”

“We all do,” Ceth said. He did not say it in a way that spoke of sympathy. “But Pevah will not leave this land. Not while—”

“You believe in it so much?” Iyana asked, surprising even herself at the quick and sudden ferocity of her tone. “You believe in your charge? His charge? You believe in him?”

Ceth’s expression made it clear what the answer was. Only a single answer, and to all of the questions she’d blubbered out like a fool. It made her angry, and Iyana felt more akin to Talmir Caru than she had in many days. She felt his frustration and she felt his helplessness. And now, she had a target.

“Is it so strange to you people for one to have a purpose?”

Iyana felt as if she’d been slapped, and she nearly returned the favor. She even raised her hand before she noticed she had. She caught herself and felt a stab of fear that rushed up as the anger sank. But Ceth only stared.

“You know nothing of our purpose,” Iyana said, emphasizing every word. “You know nothing of what we have endured. Of what we’ve survived.”

“Of what you’ve fled,” he finished for her. He spoke with an air of disdain, and Iyana resented him for it. He nodded behind her, but she knew he was not indicating anything close; rather the whole of the south, the direction from which they’d come.

“You fled a Sage,” he said, adding, “or the power of one. I know what happened in the southern Valley. I know about the battle at the peaks. Where are those Ember blades, now? Creyath Mit’Ahn was not among them. Captain Caru was not either. Who are they to challenge the word of a Sage when they were not willing to face down his fallen brother?”

“Captain Talmir defended a city of thousands from an army of demons numbering as many, or more,” she said, red-faced and fuming. “Creyath faced down one of the Night Lords of the Eastern Dark and prevailed.” She thought to continue, but something had shifted in Ceth’s look.

“You doubt me?” she asked. “You doubt what we have been through?”

“No,” Ceth said, his voice soft. “I only doubt if you know as much of the Sages as you and yours think.”

“And you know more?” Iyana asked, crossing her arms. “Just because you follow one doesn’t mean you know any more of his brothers and sister than us. If you did, you’d know the need to stop them.”

“There are worse things than the Eastern Dark,” Ceth said. When he saw her lips part, he spoke up. “I have known the horror of the Sages’ war. I have known it in all its bitter embrace. We did not come to this land as willingly as you left it. Me and mine. We came as refugees from a conflict unasked for. We came burdened and we were a burden, but the people of the desert—your forebears or their cousins, perhaps—took us in. And their leader, he has done more to help us than any other ever would. Discovering his true form has no bearing on his true nature.”

Ceth looked back toward the firelight that was now a soft, pink glow against the open maw of the cavern. “We know who he is, and no matter what he may have done in the past, he is changed. He is ours, and we are his.”

He turned toward her, and the veil dropped some. “I believe in him, Iyana Ve’Ran.” She thought she saw a glimmer in his eye. “I believe in what I can.”

Iyana would have chalked it up to the same zealotry she had sensed before. The same she had sensed from the others. But Ceth spoke as one with a will of his own, even if he followed.

“He,” Iyana started and then stopped. She shook her head as she focused on the western horizon. The distant figures had melded into the landscape, their shadows more suggestion than reality. “Pevah won’t speak of the Midnight Dunes or what’s beneath them. Why? We could help—”

“Because he feels responsible,” Ceth said. His face changed after he said it, the grimace he had worn morphing into a momentary glimpse of regret, as if he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

“He has told you this?” Iyana asked, testing.

“No,” Ceth said with a shake. “But he wears it.”

She thought to say more and then felt guilty for it, caught between getting as much information as she could to aid their mission and the fear of severing whatever tenuous connection she had made with Ceth. And she had seen it. Pevah might be a Sage and he might wear it differently, but she had seen the look, the way broad shoulders bowed when none were looking, or too many. She had seen it in Tu’Ren Kadeh, who was like a father to her. She had seen it in Karin Reyna, though he wore it differently. She saw it in the way Talmir sought his outlets and raged against circumstance. She had even seen it in the way Kole’s amber eyes reflected his blades.

“It’s a World of regret,” Iyana said. She felt Ceth’s considering gaze on her as she spoke. She looked down, watching the smaller sand grains glide atop their sisters in the night winds. The wind came down from the north, and Iyana looked up and past Ceth, focusing on the towering ridges that could have been a day’s travel or a week’s.

“Where are you from, Ceth?” she asked, turning the conversation away from Pevah. Away from the desert and everything in it.

“You seem to know,” he said, his voice careful.

“I can guess the direction,” she said. She focused in, trying to pick out something, anything atop the distant cliffs that were the color of blood left to dry. “I can guess a lot of things, including why you’re not there anymore—wherever ‘there’ is. Or you could tell me.” She let her eyes alight on him as she finished, and he seemed taken aback.

“It looks like a gate,” he said, following her gaze back up. “Doesn’t it? A barrier to something else. Perhaps a land not unlike your Valley home, ringed on all sides by jagged stone giants.”

Iyana nodded, but he couldn’t see her. He stepped around the outcropping and gripped the overhang with his trailing hand, passing around the side and climbing a natural stair carved into the side like a rising trench. Iyana followed him up and onto a higher spot that wasn’t so cramped. The wind buffeted them here, slicing down like blades from the place they watched. Black spurs broke the surface of the sand like great fins that dotted the landscape all the way to the base of the cliffs, and Iyana could see other shelves half-buried and hinting at underground lands like the one beneath their feet.

“What lies beyond them?” she asked, having to speak up to be heard. She noticed Ceth leaning a bit in the wind and wondered if he had drunk too much, and then he frowned and clenched his fists. She thought he was angry, but the look passed soon enough and he stood unmoving, even the more violent gusts doing nothing to make him lean.

“Nothing,” he said, and now she tasted bitterness on the wind. “There is no great, vibrant valley beyond the Red Cliffs. It is a high land and it is a barren one. Why any felt it a good place to settle has always been beyond me.”

“How far does it go?” Iyana asked. She squinted up at the cliff and tried to picture the shelf of rock stretching out like the still surface of a lake.

“Too far to reach the end and come back,” he said. “Nothing living out there. Not much where we lived, but enough. Things that made their homes in the trenches and scars that made the place up. Good places to raise a brood and wait out the storms, escape the wind.”

“I’m sure it has its own sort of beauty,” Iyana said. She swallowed, wondering if she had erred, but the hint of a smile touched the corner of Ceth’s mouth.

“Aye,” he said, quietly.

“You are Landkist,” she said. He turned a questioning look on her, as if he wondered why she said it. As if he expected blame. “Of a sort I’ve never seen nor heard of.” She tilted her head back toward the glow that had redoubled along with the voices that ringed it. “None of the others are the same as you. Not among your people or the desert folk.”

Ceth looked in that direction. “We don’t distinguish between the two,” he said.

Iyana reached out and Ceth shot her a look that stayed her hand, for a moment. He leaned back on his heel and then relaxed, and she touched the gray scarf that hung from his neck and draped around his shoulders like a shawl.

He smiled knowingly. “Something to be said for history, I suppose.”

Iyana continued to regard him. She felt sad and he seemed to pick up on it, frowning at her look and the silence it held.

“You don’t seem to like to talk about what you are,” she said.

“Do you?” She shrugged and he looked back to the south. “You don’t interact with the others of your kind. The Green-Eyes.”

Iyana had to laugh at that, but he only watched her. “It’s a simple enough term,” she said, wiping away a tear before the wind could. “Better than the truth.”

“Faeykin,” Ceth said, surprising her. “Funny, the names they come up with to describe us.”

“You’re more observant than you let on,” she said. “You’ve been spying? Perhaps asking questions of your own?”

“Silence has its uses,” he said. He didn’t seem to be joking. “Allows you to listen better.”

The conversation dropped and the silence, growing tense, rose to supplant it. Ceth sighed as she stared.

“I am Landkist, yes,” he said. “Much good it’s done.”

“It fed your people tonight,” Iyana said. “And mine.”

Ceth waved it away. “One of the hunters could’ve brought the beast down. Not as quick. Not as painless.” His eyes ran over hers as he turned back to the north. “Still.”

“I get the impression you’re the last of something, Ceth,” Iyana said. She was speaking more freely than she should have, and she was one of the only people in both companies not to have taken a sip of the sticky cave wine.

“Your people know of the Sages, yes?” he asked, shaking his head at the stupidity of the question. “Have you heard of the Twins of Whiteash?” He turned to look at her, and Iyana racked her brain. It sounded familiar, like something from one of Ninyeva’s stories.

“They were not part of the Six,” Iyana said. “Right?”

Ceth shrugged. “I suppose not. When they lived, there were more.”

“They were the Sages of your lands?”

Ceth spat and Iyana had to move to dodge it as the wind picked it up. He did not apologize, only glared hatefully at the northern shelf he’d looked at with something approaching melancholy before.

“The Sages that held it, more like,” he said, bitterness laid bare. “The Eastern Dark is the one they all fear.” She didn’t know to whom he referred, and didn’t ask. “The Sage of Center might be the strongest in war.” He glanced sidelong at Iyana. “Pevah says the Sage who guarded your Valley could have been the greatest among them. Such was his mastery.” He looked back to the cliffs. “But none were crueler than the Twins. None more vicious.”

There was something in the air that made Iyana’s head thrum as if she were touching the edges of the Between. She checked herself to make sure she wasn’t slipping and then saw what she at first took for light touching the edges of Ceth’s balled fists. As she peered closer, she saw that it was a blur, as if the space around them was tearing and reforming too quickly.

She took a step back and he noticed. He unclenched his fists and exhaled, eyes widening. The thrumming stopped and the blur faded.

“They would not suffer any to have power but themselves,” he said. He laughed—a more bitter sound than the wind, which had taken on a strange howl to fill the void left by the absence of the foxes’ songs. “Ironic, since they were counted among the weakest of the Sages.”

“What happened to them?” Iyana asked, though she feared to know. “Did Pevah fight—”

Ceth shook his head. “Pevah was … sleeping, at that time. Or else not here. He had other concerns in the desert. The Blood Seers—your cousins who did not follow the Ember King out of the desert—began stirring up trouble. He couldn’t have known what happened up there. If he had …” He trailed off, swallowing. She thought he looked as though he wanted to believe something, as if he were trying to convince himself more than her.

He smiled, all teeth. “No,” he said. “We tried to fight them ourselves. The great Landkist of the Red Cliffs. They called us the Skyr, and we were mighty. Even I, who was youngest. Weakest. I could shatter ten men on the spot if I wanted. What difference could a Sage make? Even two?”

Iyana was beginning to feel sick as she had before, though the reasons were all different. She could feel Ceth’s resentment boiling to the surface, could taste his bitterness like a sour grape. If she’d have looked with her Faey Sight, no doubt she’d have seen his tether burning brighter than any fire in the desert. All-consuming. A thing driven and a thing to drive.

“It didn’t go well,” Iyana said, making a mockery of understatement. She nodded when he looked at her. “We had some try, too. One, in any case. Our brightest star, they called her. An Ember whose power could rival the gods. Only we’d never fought the gods, so how were we to know? How was she?”

It seemed to have a calming effect on him. “How were we?” he echoed. He looked down at his hands. “We gave them a fright, no doubt. They responded by killing all but the weakest among us. The Red Cliffs earned their names, but it wasn’t the blood I remembered. It wasn’t the screams or the snaps, the way children howled when they came for the town we’d carved while us champions followed behind, bloody and dragging bloodier.” He swallowed. “No. It wasn’t any of that. It was the way they laughed as they did it, and it was the sounds my sister made as they brought it all crashing down onto the heads of those we’d struck out to defend.”

Iyana found herself looking up at the cliffs again. She saw the stars leering down like judging eyes, heard the howling wind as the screams from Ceth’s memory.

Ceth smiled after that, and Iyana hesitated to find out why.

“But they got the end they deserved,” he said. He looked to her. “I’ve seen an Ember before,” he said. “I didn’t know it at the time. I thought him a Sage like any other, albeit darker. There was a Shadow that followed him, and there were others. I knew these to be Landkist. They walked with a purpose, even as the Twins sat atop their bloody mound with their heads gathered at the base, expressionless. These Landkist with the dark warrior in black and red armor at their head walked toward them as if nothing could’ve compelled them to stop.”

His eyes seemed to glaze over, and Iyana thought for the briefest of moments about following the memory down into its truth. She had only done it once before, with Tu’Ren. The experience had been harrowing enough for her, and doubly so for the man who’d shown it. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with someone she hardly knew, even if that was changing by inches.

“They died,” he said, leaving out all that went with it. “The Twins of Whiteash, who’d lorded over me and mine for generations. They died hard. If they had been noble, you might’ve said they died well.” He shook his head. “There had been a dozen Skyr left when the final fight started. By the end, there were only two: my sister and me.”

Iyana took a step toward him. “And the Ember?” she asked. “T’Alon Rane and his followers. They helped you win the day?”

“They helped themselves,” Ceth said. “Or they helped the Sage who’d sent them. They didn’t get out of it bloodless. Left plenty of their own mixed among ours. Champions from far-off lands. And when they fell, something slid off them. I only remembered it afterwards. I remembered the looks they’d held when they died. Like relief.”

He paused.

“I only learned the rest later, from Pevah. Learned how the Eastern Dark had restarted the killing of the others when the rest had paused for a space of centuries. He didn’t do it himself. No, he had his servants for that. And your Ember King was the prize he’d always wanted from the deserts. He won. The Twins lost, and they weren’t the first to die in the decades that followed and they wouldn’t be the last, far as Pevah can tell.”

Ceth shook his head and smiled again, only this time it seemed like one of disbelief, as if he doubted his own memories.

“Never have seen power quite like that clash,” he said. “Nothing close. And your Ember was at the heart of it, burning like a star. Pity he didn’t aim his flames better.”

Iyana tried to shake the thought of T’Alon Rane burning up friend as well as foe. She tried to shake the thought of her sister that came up unbidden. How could Linn have fought him? How could they be seeking him out now? One strong enough to kill Sages. One who could easily be counted among their number.

And then another thought surfaced, called up from something buried in the rest of Ceth’s account. Something he’d skipped over.

“You said your sister survived,” Iyana said. His look went cold. “What happened?”

Ceth shrugged and sighed. Iyana pretended not to see the tears that welled on the rims of eyes weighted by memory. “I’d thought to go out and find her,” he said. “I wanted to.” He raised a hand and looked it over, front and back. “I’d have been no match for him, of course. Not then.”

“A match for who?” Iyana asked, confused.

“T’Alon Rane,” Ceth said, looking at her as if she knew. “We all saw what he could do with the company he kept. We lost a lot in that fight, Iyana. My sister was just a casualty who left willingly.”

“She joined him,” Iyana reasoned. “She joined T’Alon Rane in his hunt for the rest of the Sages.”

“She joined the Eastern Dark,” Ceth said. “Though she wouldn’t see it that way. ‘What does it matter who’s aiming as long as the arrow finds its mark?’ That was what she told me before she left. I was young.”

Iyana felt a pang.

“What was her name?” she asked. “Your sister.”

“Resh.”

The name didn’t sound familiar, and as far as Iyana knew, T’Alon had only come to the Valley with two allies in tow—a Shadow girl that Ceth seemed familiar with, and the warrior from Center, Brega Cohr. It could be that she was alive. It could be that she should tell him.

“We came here,” Ceth said, sweeping a hand out to the empty expanse. “No doubt we found ourselves in the midst of a conflict between the desert folk and the savages. They were guarding something. We needed a place to stay. We needed food and water, and this is a barren land if you don’t know where to look. Unforgiving to outsiders. To survive here, Iyana Ve’Ran, you need to be one of the desert’s children. You need to be blessed by the Mother’s Heart. We helped the old man we did not know was a Sage. We took on his charge until we believed in it. And now, we’ve a family. We’ve a people, or the beginnings of it.” He looked back to the west and the purple-red skyline. “Even if we lose some from time to time.”

“Your sister must have been powerful,” Iyana said.

“She was smart,” Ceth said. “She was quick. But the Skyr never knew their real strength. It took Pevah to show me mine.” Raised voices rose panic in his eyes, but he settled as the laughter trailed behind it, the fruit wine doing its work in the right way, now. Iyana nearly laughed. She had left the Sharing only to find herself engorged with it to the point of bursting.

“It’s not wind,” he said, surprising her. He turned his hand over and Iyana felt that buzzing start anew. It nearly made her teeth chatter. “It’s not the air, but what’s between it.” The blur started up again, the cream color of Ceth’s skin swirling and going milky like moisture in the sun. He lanced out a strike quicker than Iyana could see and the air broke with its passing. There was a pop that hurt her ears and she heard one of the foxes yelp from a place below them, the pack renewing their complaints.

“It’s weight,” Ceth said. “Solidity.” He shook his head. “I can make myself as light or as heavy as I wish, and I can do the same with the space around me. It must be very close. It must be very quick.” He searched for the right words. “Take the strength of the whole and put it into the part.” He looked at her. “That is what Pevah told me. But it goes both ways.” He turned his hand over. “Make the fist strong and the body is weak for the moment. Leap with the strength of a giant, but take care that nothing hits your chest, lest it crumble.”

Iyana shook her head in bewilderment, watching his hand as he withdrew it. The blur had faded along with the buzzing. “Such power,” she said. “And from the land itself. It seems strange.” She laughed. “And I thought the Faeykin were strange.”

“You are,” Ceth said with a smile. “Pevah tried to tell me of your gifts. Healing, I understand. A mighty gift. But,” he raised his opposite hand above his head and waved it in a strange, comical manner. “Tethers and ropes. You see life itself.” His smile dropped and he looked serious for a spell. “Do you see the Embers’ fire when you look at them with those eyes? Do they burn, always?”

Iyana shook her head. “I can see the fire in their threads,” she allowed. “But it’s more a suggestion. A flicker, like a candle flame. And plenty who don’t have the fire in their blood have it in their tether.” She shrugged. “It’s a string that makes us up, I guess.” Ceth nodded as if he understood, but Iyana only tried to blink past the image of Sen flattened against the sharp black rocks as she wrenched his very life in a way she hadn’t known she could.

“A mighty gift,” he said, sounding awed.

“I can’t fell a hammerhorn with my bare hand,” she said. “Can’t change the laws around me to flit on the wind like a feather or crash like a thrown stone.” She smiled as Ceth took it in appraisingly. “You are something. I think Kole would’ve liked to meet you. I think Linn would trust your silence more than most, though you wouldn’t know it by her look.”

“Your brother and sister?” Ceth asked.

Iyana opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She smiled. “Yes.”

Ceth waited for her to elaborate, but she let it stand.

“And you can show them,” Iyana said, turning back toward the south. “The children your people have begun to make. All red and gray and white and brown.”

He smiled, though he looked saddened. “The land gives its gifts or it doesn’t,” he said. “Pevah said it. He said your folk know it best.” He kept from looking up at the Red Cliffs again. “Your Embers may be dying out, but I fear the Skyr are gone already, and I’m just the ghost they left behind.”

“People have been forgotten,” Iyana said. “But not by the World. By those who seek to rule it. By the Sages.” Ceth frowned. “Not all of them are like yours.” He remained silent, and Talmir’s bronze star flashed in her mind. She knew she’d sound like him before she spoke the next. “Time we remind it who we are. Time we remind them, I think.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Ceth said. “To gain enough power to do it. To remind the Sages who you are. To remind the Eastern Dark.”

Iyana did not answer, which was answer enough.

“Your sister,” she started, speaking past the warning in her throat. “You seem to regret her choice to follow a Sage. To get mixed up with them. And yet—”

“And yet here I am,” he laughed, surprising her. “Perhaps the old man has tricked me.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Perhaps there is nothing beneath the Midnight Dunes but promises that keep us here.” He shook his head. “But I do not think it so.” He met her eyes and held them. “Pevah is not like the others. Wherever he got the name they gave to him, he has left it behind to gather dust. He’s trying to make things right.”

“How is staying here making things right?” Iyana asked. “How, with so much happening in the World? With the Dark Months coming back, worse every year? With the Eastern Dark sending his champions out against the rest until only he remains?”

“He will not be the last,” Ceth said, deadly serious. “Not while I stand.”

Iyana sighed, exasperated and exhausted. “You think Pevah protects you,” she said. “But are you sure it is not you who protects him? You and yours, who fill his empty caverns with warmth and light? Who fill his halls with the sounds of children and family?”

“Can it not be both?” Ceth asked, and the honesty of the question stunned her to silence.

The wind had settled some, but the night had grown cool enough to make the gooseflesh rise on her uncovered arms. She rolled her sleeves down. They were crusted with the salted sweat of the day’s events and no small amount of sand. Ceth watched her.

“Your people will be worried,” he said. “Especially the one who would be your father.”

“Karin?” she laughed. “No doubt we’re in his sights even now.”

“He is an impressive tracker?” Ceth asked, scanning the nearby crags, dips and ridges.

“He is First Runner,” Iyana said, as if that were enough. For Ceth, it appeared to be. He nodded.

“I thought to speak with Creyath,” he said. “I thought to show him something for the Sharing, but I think he would rather spend tonight with the horses.”

“What is it?” Iyana asked, curiosity piqued.

“The Mother’s Heart,” Ceth said. He swept his hand out to the northeast, and Iyana looked back toward the south.

“Is it close?” she asked.

“It is the glow that warms the lake and those who sleep beside it,” Ceth said. “It is very close. All of the ways are connected, if you know how to walk the paths.”

“I think I’d like to see it,” Iyana said. She had had enough of the open air and the Red Cliffs that loomed like a bloody memory to the north. She felt the tinge of purple-red to the west and did not wish to look on it or see the figures walking beneath it.

Ceth led her along the shelf that bordered the one she, Creyath, Karin and Talmir had stood atop just that morning. Instead of heading in that direction, closer to the firelight that was now clearly visible to her from this vantage, she followed him down a natural trench that scored the rock heading north. The way twisted as they delved deeper into the rocky surface, and Iyana lost sight of Ceth up ahead as he rounded a bend. The sand had pooled to such a depth as to block the way, and the trench was now something close to a tunnel that lost the faint light of moon and stars above.

She thought to call out to him, but he waited just within sight and waved her on. Now they were in a tunnel, and Iyana stepped carefully lest the smooth, glass-like surface of the floor betray her. The way was warm—uncomfortably so—but Ceth seemed unconcerned, moving with confident steps in the close confines. The tunnel widened a bit further in and she nearly bumped into him as he stopped at a cross-section, where another worm-way bisected theirs.

Iyana craned around to see his face. He had his eyes closed and his hand to the rock on one side.

“Keep your head back,” he said, stepping back and forcing her to do the same.

Iyana did as he said and listened as he listened. She heard it as a rushing, like a river, or as a moaning, like wind between the trees of the southern Valley. As it grew closer, it set the rock walls to thrumming and her teeth to chattering. She looked questioningly at Ceth, who stretched out his left hand as a ward she wasn’t meant to cross.

The air rushed through the cross-section from north to south like the breath of a drake, or like one of the White Crest’s torrents. Iyana shielded her eyes as the heat flashed against her face. She yelped and heard Ceth make a similar sound, until she blinked in the aftermath and recognized it as laughter.

The Landkist stepped confidently into the breach, which was now sticky with the moisture the blast had drawn from the stone, and looked after it like it was a beast he tailed. Iyana peered into the tunnel, first looking to the north and the direction the blast came from, and then south, toward what she imagined was the caverns and twisting ways of the lake-filled expanse the nomads kept as home.

“Are we above or below?” she asked, trusting Ceth’s lack of concern even as they stood in a position of death. How frequently did the blasts occur? Even as she thought it, she felt another vibration, and though it felt as if it might be a long way off, Iyana stepped gingerly over the uneven surface and entered the east-facing tunnel across the way. She looked back and saw Ceth smiling.

“Who can say?” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was serious, or if knew the answer and wouldn’t tell her. He stood in the intersection just long enough to make her heart skip a beat as another distant sigh sounded, and then he stepped in after her. She bladed her body to let him pass and lead the way.

“The Mother’s breath,” he said, more to himself than her, as if nothing had ever sounded so beautiful. Iyana wondered absently if the blast was capable of melting the flesh from her bones like an Ember’s fire and thought that it must be if even Ceth would not stand in its way.

“That is what they call it?” she asked, glancing behind them as the same porous vents in the ceiling that recalled their sleeping rooms admitted the faintest amount of blue-white light to illuminate their steps.

Ceth nodded, though it was difficult to see. “Wind from below,” he said, his left hand pointing down. “The Mother sends everything from below, they say. Nothing from above.” He paused and looked up, the filtered light from one of the chutes framing his features. He had a faraway look. “The wind is the Father’s.” He looked back at her. “Even my people have known that. The lord of your Valley knew the ways of the wind, Pevah tells me.” He shook his head. “But even he could not birth it. He may have called to the storms, but he did not conjure them.”

Iyana said nothing and he continued on ahead. She thought of Linn and the story of their battle with the White Crest. Her sister had been changed by the experience. Something of the Sage had got into her. If Ceth could meet her, could hear the things she’d done—the comet she’d made of Misha Ve’Gah’s flaming spear—he might not be so certain.

The way grew darker and Iyana felt the floor begin to slope downward. She feared they were straying too far from the camp. Ceth seemed to sense the concern in her silence.

“We are closer to the lake now than we were above,” he said. “And the light.” He bladed his body against the side of the tunnel so she could see. Ahead, the tunnel came to a jagged wall that shimmered like a stone on the edge of a fire. The black, glassy surface danced with many facets that soaked in and threw back whatever blaze raged below. There was no sound of crackling firewood or raised voices in celebration. This was a fire from somewhere else. A fire from below.

“Do you want to turn back?” he asked and she smiled knowingly, though he likely couldn’t see it in the gloom. She moved past him in answer and he followed.

The tunnel was sweating as much as she was as they reached the end, which was like a chimney stack laid on its side. Iyana had thought there was a sheer wall blocking the way, but as they reached the place where the floor and sides fell away she saw that they stood on the lip of a ledge that hung above an open room. The ceiling stretched far above, the floor dropping at a height of four men.

The light of the glass wall across the way was too bright to look upon directly, but already Iyana’s eyes were beginning to adjust, and she felt a swelling in her chest that felt like pride. Ceth watched her reaction and then stepped off the lip of the ledge. She nearly screamed and reached out to grab for him, but then she saw him float. He touched down on the smooth gray stone of the cavern floor and turned back to her, spreading his arms in a welcoming gesture.

Iyana hoped the deep blush she felt was lost in the wash of red and orange light. She leapt without thinking twice and Ceth caught her like gentle branches, setting her down like a parent might a child. Any awkwardness she might’ve felt and any rush at the leap was lost in the majesty of the chamber whose heart she stood within.

“The Mother’s Heart,” Ceth said. He extended his hand toward the shimmering wall before them, but Iyana hadn’t even got to that. She turned in slow circles, noting the way the red light played off the stalactites and stalagmites. There was none of the white quartz in this chamber, but the obsidian seemed fresh-melted. She realized the tunnel they had walked through—which, with its jagged, hard edges seemed perfect enough to be hand-cut—had been carved by liquid fire, as had everything in the chamber, and perhaps everything in the lands below the desert.

And then she did look toward the wall. It may as well have been a moving tapestry of fire. The sight did not steal her breath so much as force it out in sounds of delight and wonder. She looked to Ceth and then back, her eyes tracing the crystalline surface down to a narrow gap at the base that was almost too bright to look upon. As she squinted against the bright, she saw what looked to be steam rising from a smooth scar. And now that she was still and silent, she heard the pop and sizzle that sounded like bacon cooking in grease.

The fire was there, below them. The way its red and amber rays played across the black surface of the place reminded her of Everwood and the Embers who wielded it against the Dark Kind.

“Is this the only one?” she asked, and that question brought a hundred more spilling into the front of her mind.

“No,” he said, and she noted that the wonderment was not lost on him. It infused his voice just as it drenched his face like the same amber glow she felt become her. “There are many scattered throughout the deserts. Pevah says this is one of the most beautiful.” He scanned the arches and pillars. It was like a mosaic of the setting sun. “Not all of them can be entered. Too hot. Too deadly. The Mother’s Heart is far below the sands, but not so far.” He caught her look. “This one is safe.” He smiled and she returned it.

Iyana shook her head in mounting disbelief.

“Do any of the others come here?” she asked.

“Some.” He nodded, hands on his hips, sweat glistening on his brow. It was hot inside the chamber, but not so bad as Iyana might’ve thought. The tunnel they had dropped down from had been hotter. “But you must know the ways. Which vents to avoid and which tunnels get hottest.”

There was a rumble from below like some primordial stomach and Iyana swayed. She looked down and saw small bonemetal pebbles shivering as they slid across the surface of the slate. The blast nearly knocked her off her feet, and for an instant she thought they would be swallowed up or else burned away, but then she withdrew her hand and watched the jet of steam scream up before them like a conjured wall. It was so powerful and so lean that none of it spread through the rest of the chamber, but rather scraped against the back wall like a fast-flowing river over rock. The head of the blast was lost to the dark cloisters and coves between the stalactites above, and as the jet passed, Iyana could see the wall shimmer anew, the fresh moisture making it look as though it renewed its melting before them.

Ceth held up a hand before she spoke. He tilted his chin and looked back at the mouth of the tunnel they’d slipped down from.

Iyana listened. The rushing was farther off, now, but she knew it to be the same torrent they had just witnessed racing back through the cross-section they had passed before. She grinned. “What a land,” she said.

Ceth nodded. He seemed proud.

“I think Creyath would very much like to see it,” she said.

“Some of them believe the Mother’s Heart is the secret to the Ember fire,” Ceth said, indicating a dark pathway to the south she hadn’t noticed before. It was tucked between the glittering mounds on the edges, and she could hear the faint sound of passing air or water deeper within. “They say the liquid fire is her blood and the rock her bosom.”

“It’s hard to argue,” Iyana said, almost faintly. Ceth only nodded. “In truth, none of us know where we get these gifts. Mother’s Heart?” She shrugged. “It’s as good a guess as any I’d make.”

Ceth frowned as if an unpleasant thought had occurred to him.

“What is it?” she asked.

He shook his head, unable to bring the words up as he wanted.

“It is … strange,” he said, staring at the wall of reflected fire. “Strange that the only Ember to grace the sands in a century is one who comes as a visitor.” He laughed, a mirthless sound. “I am the last. Creyath Mit’Ahn is among the last.” She heard a hint of that now-familiar bitterness. It reminded her of Talmir when he got going. It reminded her of Kole.

Iyana didn’t know what to say, but a new thought occurred.

“Ceth,” she said. “Up above, Pevah said the savages think the secret of the Ember fire lies buried beneath the Midnight Dunes.”

Ceth’s expression nearly fell back behind that veil that had been absent since coming here. She tried to ease it.

“What do they think of the Mother’s Heart?” she asked. She opened her arms to take in the red-washed chamber. “Is this not magic to them? Do they really think the secret to power lies to the west, if not here?”

Ceth laughed again, and Iyana grimaced. He sounded as if he nearly choked on it.

“You speak of them as if they are the same as us.” He caught her eyes and held them, his own look holding a darkness the fire did nothing to brighten. “As if they are men to be reasoned with, and not beasts of corruption.” He paused. “I wonder how much different they truly are from the Dark Kind that have plagued your lands and may soon invade mine.”

She swallowed. Karin had described them the same. She hadn’t quite believed him, but as she replayed her own run-in with the hissing, spitting intruder from before, Iyana could not say she disagreed. True, the girl had possessed a tether like any other creature of the World, but there was nothing behind the eyes. Nothing of the spirit beneath. Nothing of feeling apart from rage and some need that drove it.

And then a coldness gripped her as she remembered the way the girl’s light had been snuffed out, snapped as if from afar. Though she had suspected it in the immediate aftermath, a single look at Sen’s face had showed her he was not the culprit. She had held him fast, and no matter how he had planned to wring what truths or lies he could from the sorry beast, his look had suggested he was as bothered by its sudden departure as she was.

“These are dark thoughts,” Ceth said, drawing her back. He smiled down at her. He swept his hand back toward the jeweled slab. “And this is a bright room.”

Iyana nearly returned the smile, but something drew her attention. She frowned and quirked her head to the side and Ceth frowned alongside her. She looked first to the glowing scar in the floor ahead but came away with a shake. It was not another one of the Mother’s sighs brewing. It didn’t come from below, but seemed to emanate from the very walls, and from the deeper pockets in the dark corners the firelight refused to paint.

Something was wrong.

“What is it?” he asked, squaring. He followed her darting eyes, which she knew had begun to pulse and glow as she sought out the source of the feeling with her other Sight, careful not to let herself slip fully into the Between. It was like a thrumming that reminded her distantly of the way the Dark Hearts had played their bloody drums in the depths of the northern peaks of the Valley.

It came strongest from the north, and Iyana took a step in that direction, her eyes now shining bright enough to splash a bit of their own emerald coloring into the amber mix, tinting it gold. In the deepest shadows at the northeast corner of the chamber, she saw curling bits of red and black and deep purple. She blinked, thinking it must be a trick of the light, but the thrumming and beating she heard—felt, as if in her own chest—moved in time with their questing dance as they crept from the shadows. They were dimmer than any tethers she had yet seen. Even the smallest creatures gave off their own bright lights, but these were like threads all covered up with rot, sick with crusted blood and poison.

“Ceth,” she said, not taking her eyes from the corner. He had stepped in front of her and she could hear the buzzing that signaled the gathering of his own strange power. She saw his balled fist smudge against her vision like a blur as he changed his very presence, his weight and solidity to suit his martial intent.

“Ceth,” she said again, more forcefully. He glanced back at her. “The tunnel to the south. It leads to the lake, yes?”

The faintest of nods. Now he could sense something in the deeper dark.

“Are there other tunnels?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice as solid as she wished she could make hers. “Many.” He shook his head, as if in disbelief. “The ways are too hot. They cannot come through even if they know them. They would be scorched. Blinded, perhaps.”

If she hadn’t seen the rotted tethers reaching out like macabre hands grasping at the red light, she’d have known it by the smell that assailed them like a delayed portent to Ceth’s words. It was a smell that could only be the result of burnt flesh, and it carried none of the sweet and salted tang of the roast on the shelf above.

Whatever image she conjured in her mind’s eye was a shadow in the face of the pale horrors that greeted the light that should’ve thrown them back. Iyana stepped back as the first of them broke from the darkness, and even Ceth twitched with the urge to run in any direction but forward.

The first of them screeched, a sound like torture, and the rest spilled from the shadows at its back, the Mother’s glow washing them like judgment.

Karin had stayed his instinct for as long as was possible. He had even taken some of the cave wine a young woman offered to smooth the edge that always seemed to be present beneath the ridge of his spine. It tasted of old grapes and sugar sap, and it lent a pleasant buzz to his overactive mind that helped to ease much of the tension brought on by Talmir’s confrontation with the old man.

He stood with Creyath on the edges of the blaze for a time after Iyana had departed the shelf. They both kept their eyes on her as she picked her way among the moonlit crags up onto the higher ground that overlooked the western sands. She liked looking toward the west at night, and Karin thought to let her. Best to keep her mind off whatever had happened with the intruder.

That thought brought back the edge he had worked so hard to smooth. Karin was a man of few words, but Creyath was almost devoid of them entirely. If Karin had asked the Ember’s opinion on the attack and the ensuing death of their would-be assassin, he’d likely have gotten an honest nothing as a response. He did not, and so his mind worked over the possibilities.

He found himself glancing at Sen as their hosts moved around the fire, cutting bits of smoked flesh and drenching them in the same wine they drank liberally as they mingled with the members of the caravan. The Faeykin noticed, and once he held Karin’s gaze, his own greens sparked as if in challenge. Karin looked away.

“You think he did it?” Creyath asked. He continued to lean against the side of his black charger as Karin stroked absently at the flank of Talmir’s mare. The Ember did not look toward the Faeykin or his morose company but kept his eyes ahead, watching the mirthful figures and looking beyond them into the cave where the Sage had withdrawn. Captain Talmir leaned against the opening. He laughed easily enough when his men and women tossed jokes his way, but mostly he stared into the flames or else looked beyond them, past the ridges across the slow river of sand and toward the orange and pink light of the western horizon.

“Sen?” Karin asked, coming back to himself. “Think he did what? Killed the sorry thing?”

“The girl,” Creyath said firmly. “Afflicted, yes. Strange and wild, perhaps. But she was a girl, and I’d venture to guess that she can be counted as much a victim in this land as any.”

“No,” Karin said. He glanced at Sen once more and saw that faraway look in the Faeykin’s eyes. “I don’t think he did. Whether or not he would is another story entirely.” Creyath nodded.

Karin had long thought of the Landkist among the Faey as healers, and nothing more. That was all they knew during the early conflicts of the Valley, aside from the occasional rumor—massacres that had never been fully explained. That was all they cared to know. It might’ve paid to know their other gifts. It might’ve paid to know that there were those like Sen, Verna and Courlis among his own people who could have done much more than the vain Emberfolk realized.

Still, he never thought they could affect the very wills of others. He wondered if Mother Ninyeva had had the gift. He knew now that Iyana did. And as he watched the red-haired woman and the older robed fellow hold themselves apart from Sen on the outskirts of the blaze, he thought they could not.

Creyath seemed to guess the direction of his thoughts.

“There is much we don’t know,” the Ember said, and Karin had to laugh. He could have been talking about anything: the World, the deserts they traversed now or the strange lands beneath them. But he thought he meant the Landkist and their many colors and bents, of which he was a part.

An image flashed of the look Iyana had worn as they had come upon the scene. She had departed for that other plane, and soon after, Sen had fallen. The look the older Faeykin had turned on the younger as he propped himself up on his hands and knees was the closest to fear Karin had yet seen on the man’s face, even including their run-in with the land drakes and all their deadly bile.

“You know,” Karin said. “I used to envy you and yours.” Creyath regarded him, his eyes seeming to flicker like wind-blown coals. “Even when I was with Sarise, I envied her power … to a point.”

Creyath straightened and his black charger snorted its complaint. The Second Keeper of Hearth squared his shoulders and placed a hand to his heart at the mention of Karin’s lost love. Karin smiled and meant it.

Creyath was of the Scattered Villages. Karin often forgot these days, given how synonymous the name had come to be with Hearth’s white walls, but the Ember was of a tribe that—while Emberfolk in name—were as varied and tribal as any they might find in the deserts. Strange, how quickly a people had split apart in the midst of a new land. But then, the Emberfolk had never been as unified in the old lands—in these lands—as they were at Last Lake and Hearth. Perhaps that was why Creyath was so at ease in such unfamiliar circumstances. Perhaps everything that seemed strange to Karin, Talmir and the rest felt as natural as the hammerhorn bulls and the foxes that trailed them to the Ember.

“But not now?” Creyath prompted, bringing Karin back around. Talmir watched them from the opposite side of the shelf but left them to their private exchange.

Karin blinked and thought to apologize to the Ember, but the other man regarded him steadily.

“You do not envy us now, Reyna?” he asked. He did not seem to be insulted at the possibility.

“No,” Karin said with a slow and considered shake. “I saw the way the fire consumed Sarise when she fought.” He swallowed. “I saw the way my son warred with it—along with everything else—since the day that blaze awoke in him.” He looked to the east, over the yawning mouth of the cave and toward the stars that were less sharp that way.

“Iyana didn’t even hurt Sen,” he said, keeping his voice low, though the sounds of a dozen conversations drowned him out regardless. “She looked as if she’d seen a ghost, or made one. She looked like someone disgusted with herself. Disgusted with what she’d discovered.”

Creyath looked past Karin and settled on Sen. The Faeykin seemed to twitch under his scrutiny, though he did not look up, only hugged his knees tighter to his chest and rested his chin atop them.

“Some say fire is the purest way to destroy something,” Creyath said. “To kill.” The words sounded less dreadful than they might coming from another. “No doubt you’ve seen death at the mercy of Everwood, Reyna. You fought in the same trials as me.” He made a soft sound that might have been a sigh. “I don’t think the ones who say it have heard the sounds of those who die in flame. But fire is always honest. It never lies. It must be strange to hold a different sort of fire you cannot trust, that you cannot understand.”

Now Karin turned toward him. Those amber eyes had dulled, the fire within turning to a smolder. His lips were still, his dark features tight. There were jests that had since turned to rumor that Creyath had a bit of the Faey in him. Karin had never heard the Ember dismiss them out of hand.

Karin felt the laughter only as it bubbled out. He attributed it to the lingering effects of the wine. Strong stuff. Creyath raised his brows, his eyes absorbing the fire rather than reflecting it.

Karin laid a hand on his shoulder. It was warm to the touch even through his shirt, like a stone left to bake in the afternoon sun. “I mean no offense, Mit’Ahn,” he said. “It’s just something the captain said about you when I’d first come to Hearth during the siege.”

Creyath adopted a curious expression.

“I’d guess he got it from your man Garos in the first place,” Karin laughed. “He said, ‘Even when he speaks plain, the bards of the Northeast would place Mit’Ahn’s words in rhymes and couplets.’” He laughed again, and let this one out, full-bodied, as Creyath’s lips split to reveal the white beneath.

“I think he prefers it to the bluster of the First Keeper,” Creyath said.

“Aye,” Karin nodded. “I’m sure he does.” They both looked across the fire to where the captain leaned alongside soldiers who now swayed and danced to the rhythmic songs of the desert. Karin tilted his head. There was a melody beneath the hum that reminded him of home. He smiled and saw that Creyath shared it.

Captain Talmir met his eyes from across the smoke and glow. The captain smiled to echo Karin’s, but the look did not quite reach his eyes, and as Talmir swept his gaze out to take in the northern section of the shelf, Karin followed it and saw a stone bowl lying abandoned. He remembered Iyana and peered around Creyath and his towering mount to where the black rock met the soft sand below.

“It’s getting late,” Karin said as Creyath followed his stare. He patted the Ember on the shoulder and stepped past him. “I’ve got a dangerous quarry to track.” Creyath laughed at that.

Karin saw Talmir straighten from his place against the side of the entrance, following his progress. He waved to the captain and motioned for him to stay where he was. Talmir nodded his thanks, and Karin saw his eyes widen as he looked past him.

As he passed out of the glow of the fire and left the milling voices behind, Karin could see why. He felt the light of a second fire greet his west-facing cheek, and as he pulled himself up nimbly among the crags, he paused and regarded the horizon. The sky was always pink and orange that way, but now it held a threat of red, like fresh-drawn blood. Karin squinted at the ribs of the land below it, the rises turning back to uneven dunes that melted into the distance. He thought he glimpsed figures moving among them, and the thought called up an image of the red- and gray-sashes around the flames on the shelf below. There had been less of them than there should be. Karin had thought the rest might be below, minding the children along the lakeshore. Now, he thought he might know otherwise.

He shook his head and moved off, gaining the top of the shelf and moving north. The pups of the desert foxes chased one another up and down the soft inclines, making their tracks that the wind would soon erase. The elders yipped to them, and something in the sound gave Karin the impression of panic. He looked down as he walked and saw a larger male watching him. Where they usually sat still or loped, this one stood and flicked its tail like a cat might. Karin frowned at the display, wondering what had the beast’s blood up. He reminded himself that the foxes of the west, though alike in appearance, were not the same as the canines of the southern Valley.

It didn’t take him long to find them. It wasn’t that he saw them. It wasn’t even that he’d found their tracks. Karin had tried to teach Mial and Jes, his two Runners-in-training, but it seemed tracking was something innate. Karin smiled to himself. Perhaps he was Landkist after all. Maybe he sensed paths traveled like echoes of the past, or of the folk who’d made them.

At first, Ceth’s presence unnerved him. He wondered if Iyana had come upon him or the opposite, but seeing the way they stood on the narrow ledge that hugged the northern shelf, Karin sensed no threat from the man. He stood out of sight for a length of time that began to feel uncomfortable, like he was spying, but as he thought to turn back, the pair moved off along a path he couldn’t see.

Karin cursed into the wind and followed. The two paused atop the next shelf. He could hear wisps of their exchange. Ceth’s voice sounded strange, as if made from wind and rocks. Karin had not heard the Landkist speak as much in the days before, and did not know whether to count it a good thing. As their voices faded, Karin took the natural stair they had traversed and found the top of the shelf abandoned.

He followed and saw a trench cutting down into the east-facing ledge, and as he took a step into it, he heard a scraping like claws over sand and rock. He spun, knife flashing free from his belt and catching the silver light of the moon.

The same desert fox that had watched him before stood in a wide stance, fur up in a ridge.

“What is it?” Karin whispered harshly. The fox straightened and scented the wind. It kept its yellow eyes fixed on him as it circled, and Karin turned to keep it in front of him. It walked to the edge and tore its gaze away, and Karin was surprised to see its pack-mates spread among the shelves near and far, all looking eastward, and all scenting the breeze as if a dark intent rode its currents. There looked to be a dozen of them at least, and none raised a sound.

Karin’s heart hadn’t slowed, even though he knew the fox meant him no harm. He turned with renewed purpose and followed the trench down into a jagged turn that led him into a tunnel some great, primordial worm might’ve made. It was lucky he heard the rushing sound before he’d gone too far, as the blast of wind and steam that shook the walls around him nearly blistered his face as he approached a cross-section in the subterranean network. He fell back with a sharp hiss and thought to call out to Iyana and Ceth.

He swallowed and pushed on as the trailing vapors fell to coat the now-slick chute that ran the opposite way, back toward the southern shelf and the lake that rested beneath it.

There was a ruby-red glow ahead, and Karin found himself moving quicker as he neared it until he was at a full run. He heard voices coming from the chamber beyond and had to blink away the bright that stung his eyes and brought tears to the corners.

His heart, which had been ready to leap into his throat, slowed and ceased its drumming as he came to the edge and saw the sight beyond, and the two figures that stood below and before it. The red-jeweled wall sparkled and moved with a light that seemed to come from within. He thought the whole of it must be some molten core, though a part of him knew they’d have burned up, being so close.

He did not have time to revel in the scene, nor to announce his presence before Iyana shouted a warning meant for Ceth.

They came out of the northeastern shadows in a throng, and Karin’s heart did not renew its hammering but rather slowed to half its usual speed, his blood going cold as his body drained of heat.

The pale horrors some distant part of his mind knew as men stepped into a fiery light that was unkind to them, shining like a hard truth on all their ugly hurt. They were silent but for the breathing of a score of melted mouths. They came naked or half-clothed, their hair sprouting in oiled patches. Their arms were long and their legs bowed, and their skin drooped in some places and bunched around tight, corded muscle in others. They looked as if they were on the verge of death, or had returned from it, and Karin was reminded of the way the storm had stripped the Dark Kind of their black shells before the walls of Hearth not so long ago.

But these were not the Dark Kind, nor were they the same as the red-toothed men and women he had fought to the east, though some of them were painted similarly, and some clutched spurs of bone and sharpened lengths of obsidian.

Karin was so engrossed in the sight that he nearly leapt down too late.

“Iyana!” he shouted. She whirled, and the nearest of the beasts let out an inhuman screech that was a mix of pain and anguish and charged. Ceth move faster than any Ember could, and the first of the horrors—no, the first line of them—were cut down, bursting like boils to expose the flesh and shattered bone beneath as the Landkist used his very fists for clubs.

Karin landed with a heavy thud and rolled. Iyana looked to be in shock, but he knew she was tapped into her power, her eyes shining with a brightness that had nothing to do with the light in the chamber. She stepped toward him as Ceth grunted, and Karin rose and drew his blade—just a short length of steel to hold back the coming tide that Ceth broke like a spur.

And it was a tide.

The pale men streamed from the shadows, scrambled over the stalagmites and melted mounds. They screamed over the great rumble that sounded from the ground below their feet and ignored the great wall of white spray the jagged, glowing scar along the ruby wall made as it released its torrent up into the heights.

Karin darted in front of Iyana and took the hand from one as Ceth turned in with a kick that blasted another to break among the stones and shadows behind them. He carried the spin into a backhand that took the head from one and bent the body along with it in a sickening pull and snap.

Karin did not have time to marvel at the Landkist’s speed and overwhelming force except to notice that Ceth moved like an Ember, only more deliberate. He set his feet and planted, seeming to focus on single strikes rather than on many, and each one he landed split a pale man or crushed him in place. Most fell with looks that showed no recognition of their dying.

Those Karin felled were not as lucky. He was an accomplished killer—most in the Valley were—but Karin had always favored speed and stealth over direct confrontation. His cuts and slashes were deadly, but he aimed for the bloody highways that fed all living things, and so the men fell before him, or slipped in the growing slick his blade helped make.

He stayed behind Ceth and used the man’s swaying gray sash as cover for his strikes, but there were too many. One got around him and Karin cried out for Iyana. And then Ceth was there, leaping high and twisting before landing atop the pale horror with a weight like a hurled boulder, crushing its skull beneath his boot.

It was all Karin could do to defend himself as the throng pressed forward under the weight of their rage and dying. He noticed the smell even in the midst of the chaos: scorched hair and skin, a sweetness like rot and pus. He was pressed back, and back he fell. He feared there was no escape for them and could not take heart that they would kill many—that Ceth would kill most—before they were buried beneath the sands that could have been their home.

“Back!” Ceth yelled and Iyana echoed him. Karin darted back, half-expecting to meet resistance in the form of the pair behind him, but they were not there. He spared a glance behind and saw that the two had made their way to the southern edge of the chamber, where the light of the liquid fire that bubbled from the cracks below and shone from the obsidian glass wall lost its battle with the dark’s many mounds and half-formed pillars.

Ceth’s eyes widened and Karin turned back, gasping and falling back as a human hand with angled claws scored a burning gash in his chest through his thin cotton shirt. Karin fell and scrambled, nearly losing his knife in the process. He looked down and felt a stab of panic as he saw the pale arm and bloody hand, thinking the creature had fallen atop him. He only realized its body had been blown apart by Ceth’s wall of motion and violence when Iyana reached down and yanked it free. She pulled him up and together they edged back as the northern Landkist fought like a cornered wolf.

“Back!” Iyana said again. “Karin!”

He took a step forward, meaning to prevent Ceth from being encircled completely, but even those who sought to streak past him were launched or stopped in place with well-timed strikes even the greatest fighters of the Valley couldn’t hope to match without a blade in hand.

Iyana gripped him by the elbow and pulled him back, and Karin whirled on her and followed her pointing finger as she jutted it toward the back wall. He squinted and tried to focus above the constant screeching and the sounds of cracking as Ceth did his work, and there, in the corner, he saw what looked to be the opening of a side tunnel among the glittering crowd of earthen growth.

“Go, Iyana,” he said, meaning to take another step toward Ceth. The stream of pale men was only growing thicker, and Karin thought he could see some of the painted men and women at the back, the Bloody Screamers spurring them on from the northern tunnel and prodding them from behind. Her grip tightened enough to hurt, and Karin turned on her and was taken aback by the bright glow in her eyes.

“You’re fastest,” she said, releasing him. “The way leads to the lake. You need to warn the others.” Karin thought to argue, but her look was enough to silence him. “The children, Karin.” She stepped around him and dodged his desperate grasp as she moved toward the melee. “I’ll hold them.”

Something stopped Karin in his tracks. It wasn’t fear, but rather a compulsion. He thought to reach out, to grab her by the crook of the arm and drag her kicking and screaming down the narrow tunnel at the back. Only the thought was fleeting and unclear, forming and disappearing faster than he could put it back together. He tried to step forward but found himself teetering back.

Ahead, Ceth disentangled himself from the press, the slick and bloody shelf around him steaming as the red blood turned to syrup. It stank worse than rot. The Landkist turned, eyes widening as he took in Iyana’s approach. She stopped not far from him.

“Back!” she yelled, and he frowned, one of the pale men shattering like an upended sack of raw meat as he tried to cross the Northman’s circle of death.

“Come, Ceth,” Karin said. “We can hold them in the narrows.” He hated to say it, but Iyana wouldn’t have it any other way. “Iyana …” He drew it out and she spared a bright green glare his way, the look softening for an instant.

“I’ll follow,” she said.

Ceth shook his head and leapt back, and the throng surged forward as if he had been a breaker against a storm of rage and flesh and the screaming masters that spurred it on. He streaked past Karin and Karin meant to follow, only he couldn’t. He sighed as the throng focused on Iyana and hesitated only the briefest of moments before making for her. He gritted his teeth and fought the war his body waged with his mind, trying to break through the barrier.

“Back!” Iyana’s voice echoed throughout the chamber as the jagged, glowing scar sent forth another jet of steam that burned up the pale men too foolish to avoid it. And the line stopped before her as if frozen in time. Karin’s breath was taken as his own spell seemed broken. He took a step toward Iyana and then looked at the frozen mass of horror that shook and quivered before her.

The pale men were caught between beats, frozen in mid-reach. Even the painted warriors at the back wore frozen looks that exposed their red teeth, and Iyana stood before them all like a ward. She held one pale hand out, fingers splayed, the other balled into a fist at her side. Karin saw blood leaking from the palm, so tightly did she grip, and the green light of her eyes was visible from behind, even in the wash of red and gold and yellow.

Karin thought he saw fear on the faces of those pale men who still had faces close to human. Now that they were still, he saw that their bodies bore more than burns and mottled dripping; they also carried scars, fresh and pink, like bites. Their necks were littered with them. They looked thin, brittle to the touch, though Karin knew no man could break them apart like the Landkist behind him.

“Karin!” Ceth called. “Iyana! Come!”

Iyana took a halting step back as Karin took one toward her.

“Go!” she yelled, tears streaming, but whether through effort, fear or some mix of the two along with the revulsion that came with what she did, Karin could not say. He cursed and charged to the back of the chamber, leaping over the lower mounds and ducking beneath the dripping cones and stalactites until he came to the place where Ceth stood rooted. He took a step into the tunnel and then turned, watching as Iyana moved toward them with backward steps slow as agony. With each one, her whole body seemed to shake and buzz in a way that was not unlike the strange aura that pulsed from Ceth as he stood with his hands clenched into blurry fists. There was a buzzing that sounded like wasps or the distant build of thunder, and Karin thought he could see the hint of a white glow coming off the man’s body in the darkness, as if he moved faster than was possible even as he appeared to stand still.

The only sounds in the chamber—apart from Ceth’s buzzing as his weight and presence shifted at his command—were the low drone and bubble of the molten river that must move below the place. The shrieks and screams had all but ceased, though Karin could hear a steady hiss building from the back of the pale wave of limbs and the bloody teeth behind them.

Iyana heard it too, her head twitching as she bumped into the first of the mounds, her lead hand shaking as she held it out before her like a green torch, the pale skin reflecting the thrown light from her eyes. Karin wondered how she did it and cursed himself a fool for caring in the moment. Perhaps she had gathered all their tethers and threads and frozen them, or held them fast, like a spider moving on invisible currents.

There was another sound, now. Ceth cursed when he heard it and Karin looked askance at him. He looked frightened, now, for the first time. He looked scared in a way he hadn’t while fighting a hellish swarm of men formed more of the stuff of nightmare than even the Dark Kind Karin had spent the better part of a generation fighting.

“What is it?” Karin asked.

“The Blood Seers,” he said through grit teeth. He looked as if he might charge the throng all over again, but then he spun and looked up the tunnel, as if the sound was a portent.

Now Karin heard it clearer. He did not know if it was the cause or if Iyana’s hold was beginning to slacken, but as she neared them, backing away slowly and carefully through the maze of squat stone towers and sickles, the pale men began to edge forward once more. It was a hum that soon picked up a dreadful melody, and in a moment of horror he couldn’t quite stave off, Karin was brought back to the sandy bowl to the east. He remembered the whistle on the wind that became a keening wail, and he remembered the savages that had come for him with their bleached bones and bloody teeth, their well-worn fangs and too-long nails. It was a witch’s song, like those the children of Last Lake grew up fearing even above the true horrors of their corner of the World, and it rode on currents that had nothing to do with wind, water or all the paths men were wont to tread. It thrummed from the stone around them and infected the heart more than the ears, threading its way into his very sinew.

The effect was compounded on Iyana. By the time she reached them, she shook enough that Karin feared she might drop, her face locked into a horrible grimace. He stepped forward and made as if to touch her, but Ceth held out a warning hand. He saw her face as she edged past them, and in the place of a look of fear he saw a mask of determination that could only be that mythic Ve’Ran stone her sister wore so well.

How many battles was she fighting at once? One with each of the wild wills that came for them out of the gloom of the north, and one with the witch’s song that rode its dark currents and spread its dark designs. It was a song of ending, and Karin took heart from Iyana’s look that she would make them earn it. That they all would.

“Iyana,” he said, careful not to startle her. Her eyes glowed so bright he doubted if she could see anything of her true surroundings. He did not know much of the ways of the Faey, but he knew enough to fear losing her completely to that other realm lest her body drop like a puppet with cut strings.

“They come again,” Ceth said, his words seeming almost comical in their deadpan delivery.

Karin watched the wall of pale men. Their feet remained rooted, but their heads twitched, mouths contorting and fingers clasping and unclasping as they listened to one song and fought against the other. Already the red-toothed tribesmen at their backs had won back control, though they still moved as if wading through a deep swamp of thick, stagnant growth.

“I will hold them here,” Ceth said, and while Karin thought to argue, he knew he would only be doing so out of some sense of honor that the circumstances might call on him to abandon. He was First Runner, after all. Running was what he was good at. But Iyana was not. Karin did not know the way back to the lake, but he hoped that it was close; given the state she would soon find herself in, he did not relish the thought of guiding Iyana with such a pack on their heels.

“You will die,” Karin said. He laid a hand on Iyana’s shoulder. A trickle of blood had started from one nostril and her eyelids twitched. She was trying to come back to them, her lead hand quivering and beginning to drop. The light of her eyes dulled from sunny emerald to jade, and as the first of the pale men won back its steps, the chamber roared with another expulsion of steam that shook the unseen pathways above their heads.

Ceth smiled. “No,” he said. “But many will.”

Karin gave Iyana a shake. “How far is the lake?” he asked Ceth.

“Not far,” the Landkist answered, stepping before them as more of the pale men regained their steps. Some of them opened their maws and let out howls and screams, the sounds charging the others in their own fights against Iyana’s bondage. “Take the path that feels coolest. Away from the Mother’s Heart.”

Karin nodded, though Ceth did not turn to see him.

“You’ll fight them all?” he asked. Iyana nearly faltered and he held her up.

“Enough to start a pile,” Ceth said. “Enough to slow the rest.”

It was a ghastly image, but Karin did not doubt the Landkist had it in mind exactly how he’d do it.

“Good luck.”

Iyana let loose a gasp that sounded like a swimmer resurfacing after too long spent in the depths, escaping the clutches of whatever horrors lurked there. The green light did not fade so much as blink away, and in its place her eyes seemed murky, like algae on top of still water.

“Karin,” she said, breathless. She nearly tripped as she went to move back. He caught her arms and steadied her, and she blinked at him. He feared that she had gone blind until a bit of the former glow returned, and then she sighed and almost smiled. Until the screams redoubled, pain and fear giving way to a wave of rage.

“Go,” Ceth said.

They did, Karin taking Iyana by the hand and pulling her along. The way was dark, with only the slightest pores in the rock above admitting night’s dim glow. Iyana grunted as she banged against the sides that narrowed and then widened at chaotic intervals, and Karin let go of her, trusting that she would follow. He blinked long and slow, testing the air and its slight currents until he felt the cool kiss and pleasant, metallic tang that tasted like water on the air.

“This way!” he said, and Iyana could only breathe some response that was lost in the confines as they raced away from the site of Ceth’s battle.

The screams and howls echoed behind them, ripping off the walls with a sharpness that split the air, but Karin heard more than a few cut short. He heard a rhythmic pounding like drums, though the witch’s haunting song had passed away, and he knew this to be the song Ceth’s fists and feet made as they warred with the sorry flesh of his enemies, the echoes and retorts the feeble resistance put forth by the bone beneath.

“He can’t win,” Iyana managed between breaths. She had fallen behind, and Karin waited for her as the ground leveled off at a cross-section. A part of him feared a random blast of steam from the deep furnace might incinerate them on the spot, but he trusted Ceth not to have pointed them toward such a fate.

“He doesn’t mean to,” Karin said, twisting as he explored the newest options. “He’ll be along. Hopefully not soon—”

Another scream echoed, and this one was followed by a called warning. Karin cursed. They had forced their way in already, which meant Ceth was in full retreat. He chose the way that seemed brightest and pulled Iyana along behind him, hoping her legs wouldn’t give out before they reached the lake.

The tunnels dipped and had them slipping and splashing as often as running. Karin could hear the trickle of water and caught glimpses of dark pools gathered in their ancient chambers and spillways. They were close, now.

“There!” Iyana yelled, pulling back to halt his momentum. Karin skidded to a halt and looked in the direction she pointed. The way was wet, the water rising above knee height, but he could see the walls widen further in.

Iyana led and he followed, tossing a forbidding look at the tunnel they’d come from. He thought he caught a glimpse of silver-gray as he left it behind, plunging into the slow-moving water. It would not do to be caught here, but the lake might slow their pursuers some.

As they moved, the tunnel opened into a larger network of chambers with deep dips and shallow shelves, alcoves and split pillars that exposed parallel paths. It was brighter here, and Karin thought he heard the sharp trill of birds ahead, though it was still too late for them to be active in their nests.

Bright light shone like a star underground, and Karin’s heart leapt as he recognized the curved arches and half-submerged bridges that made up the subterranean lake. They splashed to the shore and stopped, each of them casting about.

“There!” Iyana said, sounding excited before she gasped, a sound like horror dawning. Karin followed her look.

The white pillar and all its crystals flashed, a blinding flare. It dimmed back to its usual moon glow, and Karin’s heart nearly froze in his chest as he saw the battle on the shore. He recognized the source of the flash as none other than an Ember at work, his Everwood blade only rivaled by the curved length of silver that shone like a lancing star where it wasn’t red.

“Creyath and Talmir,” Karin breathed. “We’re too late.”

Now that they were closer, the imagined sound of screeching birds came clear as children screaming. Iyana splashed into the shallows, moving with determined desperation toward the sounds of killing and dying—and there were plenty of both—and Karin followed after, his blood taking on the cold he’d need to die well, or perhaps to live.

The gray-sashes and red spun and darted like wind coated in red fire.

It was already growing slick. Lucky for Talmir Caru, the siege of Hearth had prepared him to fight in such conditions. In the past, he might have tried to block out the truth of what he slipped on, told himself it was the blood of mindless beasts and enemies alone, but he knew the truth of it. He knew there was plenty of red from his own beneath his sodden boots.

He used it to earn back something of the name he’d tried to run away from for most of his life.

Talmir stepped and slid, parried and countered, slashed and stabbed. He took streaking pale hands and the black claws they carried and he took the meat and pumping blood from the throats that screeched like horrors from another world—sounds unlike anything the Dark Kind made. These were beings of the World. They were men, though misshapen and changed, and they fought like animals.

“Down,” he heard Creyath say at his back, voice even despite the circumstances. Talmir felt the heat on his back, flattening his shirt against his soaked skin and drying it instantly. Talmir squatted and the roaring comet consumed half the throng that had begun to force him back.

But there were more, and so Talmir rose along with his father’s blade and gave them the death they so eagerly sought. He did it with a bite, wasting too much energy as he tried to give back some of the hurt the beast-men had doled out at the beginning of the ambush. He earned scores and gashes that would scar ugly and blinked away tears that had nothing to do with his own hurt as he thought of how many they must’ve lost—of how many their hosts had lost.

A night of Sharing, indeed.

The screams had started from below, but Talmir had taken them for a trick of the wind at first. He had been leaning against the side of the cave mouth, watching the last flames sink lower in the ring of stones atop the shelf. He had not partaken in any of the nomads’ bitter wine, but he was tired nonetheless. Tired from his argument with Pevah and tired of waiting for Karin to come back with their wayward Faeykin.

Some of the adults among the desert folk had retired, escorting the children they seemed to share back into the bowels of the mountain like unwilling sheep. Talmir had smiled at their complaints and the way they tried to bribe their way back into the firelight and the stories some of the elders told. They wanted to talk to the strange men, they said, and it made Talmir sad to think they might’ve been family had things gone differently—had the King of Ember made a different choice.

He had taken the first sounds of alarm as little more than the echoing, discordant voices of the particularly stubborn among them, the grunts and sounds of exertion little more than the deception of the undulating surface of obsidian wall, floor and ceiling.

But then a sharp cry had risen above the rest before it was cut short, and Talmir straightened and peered back into the cave, the red light of the fire in the pit below only just visible from outside. The horses raised complaints, both from the shelf and from the moonlit chamber that broke off from the main way.

Talmir had taken one step inside the cave mouth when the first shouts assailed him from behind. He whirled to see one of his soldiers go down in a choking spray of blood as a white-fletched shaft took him in the throat. The image was burned onto the backs of Talmir’s eyelids as Creyath flared a shaft of his own to life, the Ember lighting a length of sand just below the dip that revealed a dozen figures crouched there, bows and bones and stone blades bared along with the red teeth and white-rimmed eyes that looked dried and sunken as demons’.

The soldiers of the caravan scrambled and reached for their weapons. They were a people used to fighting on a change in the breeze and it saved most of their lives as the tribesmen took the shelf, bloody teeth matching the dried stuff they’d covered their faces with. Creyath backed away to the cave mouth as Talmir drew his sword, but another series of sharp sounds from below covered them in fresh dread.

Creyath turned his amber gaze on Talmir as they stood frozen between a fight and a massacre. It was no choice at all.

Talmir spun and charged into the darkness of the cave, heading for the guts while Creyath lit the way. He had abandoned his bow in favor of the straight Everwood sickle and flared it to life, exposing the worry and fear etched onto the faces—swarthy and pale—that ran alongside them with all the budding horror of parents about to encounter the unspeakable.

“Captain!” It was Ket calling from the cave mouth.

“Hold them!” Talmir had shouted back as Creyath put some heat into his legs and outstripped them with ease, rounding the bend like a discharged arrow.

Talmir nearly went down in a heap as he took the turn, and he yelled when he saw Creyath screaming toward the edge of the natural stair and kept going right over it, his legs bunching with sinew that stretched his loose-fitting pants and saw him shoot to the bottom of the shaft like a falling star. Talmir reached the edge and angled left, taking the steps down three at a time as Creyath announced his fiery presence to the press below.

Talmir had not been prepared for the sight. He froze when he reached the bottom and wiped away blown ash from his eyes as the desert nomads shouted and screamed and cried their hysterics and turned it to rage as they unloosed blades and bows and charged into the midst of the pale monsters that were rending their brothers and sisters apart. There were a few children mixed in with the building red, scattered among the slick blood and the scattered coals from the ruined pit, though not as many as he had feared.

And Talmir saw two of the Faeykin—Verna and Courlis—lying still as horrors whose skin matched their white robes rolled over them and laid their melted, bloody grips on those still standing.

Talmir had helped to bring a fury on them that had yet to blow out, and though a few fell, he knew the folk that made this lake and its shore their home would not run out of the same anytime soon. It was the fire. It was in their blood just as much as it was in Creyath Mit’Ahn’s. It possessed their blades, even if they didn’t shine like the lone Everwood blade among them that was like their unifying sigil—their brave and vengeful banner.

He cut down a dozen and then he added a dozen more. His footing worked as expertly as it ever had, like it had in the shallow waters of the Fork when he first saw what a Rockbled could do to a man not possessed of Ember blood. As it had on the training grounds without Hearth as he fought and bested Garos Balsheer in single combat for the first and last time, and followed it up by disarming First Keeper Vennil Cross.

Talmir fought until he was covered in the stuff, and he raged until his own voice mixed and mingled and ultimately supplanted the screeching horrors that enveloped him like a wave of foam. Creyath burned him by mistake and he fought on. His grip slackened in the right when an errant claw found the flesh of his arm and pulled, so he switched to the left. And through it all, he felt that cut of bronze swinging in time with his blade, its spiked edges pricking his chest as he changed his cuts to stabs and his stabs to blocks and redirects. He felt thicker sweat that must have been blood trickling from the nape of his neck down to his chest, coating the Bronze Star in something that would suit it.

Something that suited him.

“The shore!”

Talmir only realized they had pushed the beasts back when he saw Creyath forge ahead of him like a warding torch, his blade moving slower than Talmir’s silver crescent but doing twice the damage as it melted whatever flesh it touched. The Ember jumped over a line of pale men, arcing near as high as Ceth. He came down on one of the largest and drove his shining blade home with a crack like rolling thunder, and the rest turned in on him. There was a sizzling sound that rose to a boil as they piled atop the Ember in the surf where the lake met the slick and sticky shelf, and Talmir shouted and charged in after, the men and women of the desert and the northern cliffs that watched over it taking up his call with their many voices.

They met the wall of pale flesh and parted it, and Talmir pushed in and saw Creyath fighting unbrightened and unequipped as he lashed out with fists. Each body he hit crumbled under the enhanced strength his gifts granted him. He snarled like a wolf, but he was cut and bleeding badly. Talmir let his father’s sword lead with whatever edges it would, and the folk of the desert helped him.

“Duck!” he shouted and Creyath flattened so his chin touched the churning black water, and Talmir squinted as his blade caught the reflected brilliance of the white crystal pillar that stood witness across the way. He set his feet wide. He breathed in and exhaled long and slow as he heaved from side to side with long strokes his allies fled quicker than his enemies. Those pale shadows that did not fall back immediately were carved on the spot, and as Talmir’s breath faded, he saw a sight that made his heart leap until the one behind it stole his courage.

Karin Reyna, First Runner of Last Lake, came on with a speed that would have made any Ember blush. He broke the now-thin line of pale, melted men with little more than his momentum and snatched Creyath under one arm as Talmir switched his blade back to his right and took the Ember up under the other. They dragged him back until he bore his own weight once more, casting about for a new weapon with which to fight despite his wounds.

“Iyana,” Talmir said, nearly breathless as he, Karin, Creyath and the warriors of the glittering depths formed a line against the renewed sea of pale flesh that came for them from the lake itself, as if they had risen from the depths.

“Hiding,” Karin said. “I tucked her in an alcove on the edges.” He stepped before Talmir protectively, and Talmir spared a glance down at his body and winced at the red that was coming as much from him as everyone else.

“Where is the Sage when you need him?” Talmir asked through gritted teeth. He saw some of the warriors around him exchanging glances at the mention. They did not seem to disagree. “Where is your protector?” he asked, meeting the eyes that would meet his in return. “Will he watch this, as he has watched everything else?”

He turned toward the southern hall and the rooms splitting off. There were no more battles that way, though Talmir could still hear sounds echoing from the many rooms and offshoots in the nest beyond. He hoped they were the voices of hiding children and those who watched over them. As he turned back to the white swarm that edged toward them up a darkly glistening shore, a part of him wished the children had perished on the first exchange.

That they might be spared.

Karin let loose a small laugh that Talmir wanted to slap him for. The First Runner pointed to a streaking figure that parted the surface of the lake below him with his passing.

“We may not have the Sage,” Karin said. “But we have his champion.”

Talmir couldn’t quite manage a smile, but he adopted a grim look as he prepared to meet the Landkist in the center of that approaching tide of white hate. Ceth hit them like a portent, and like a judgment. There was a sound like rock warring with itself as the Landkist slammed into those at the back—those in the shallows—with a fist extended like a hammer of doom. Bodies flew and broke apart, and those still alive that soared into the air crashed down and stirred no more. He spun and fought among them, striking and killing with each blow. He was clean but for a bit of red on his face that seemed dark next to the creatures he killed, and there was a blur about him that seemed to drain color.

But there was a sound Talmir hadn’t noticed before that gave him and those around him pause even as they prepared to rejoin the fray. It was a keening whistle, and it seemed to set the very air around them to thrum with dark intent. The color drained from Karin’s face and Talmir knew it was the work of the Blood Seers Pevah had spoken of.

The pale men around Ceth seemed to stand taller as the dark song reached their melted ears. They fell on him with abandon, and sharp as his strikes were, he had not the fire of an Ember nor the strength of a Rockbled. Weighted down, he could not jump. Gripped on all sides, he could not leap and soar and make his weight what he willed it to be, whether it be a feather all the way through or a hammer at the point of the sole of his boot. He screamed in a knowing rage, and Talmir realized he could not bear to see him rent apart.

Talmir charged and speared one of the painted warriors with red teeth who slinked among the horrors. The tribesman died with some curse gone unspoken and Talmir took some measure of satisfaction from that. Karin hit them next, and finally the warriors of this land once again came against their own nightmares and those of their children. In the place of bladework they had intent, momentum. They poured it on and Ceth was freed in time to attempt to die all over again.

“Talmir!” Creyath roared, but the captain had committed to killing in the wrong place even as the red-sashes and the gray cleared around him, Karin diving for the west-facing wall.

A great hot blast sent Talmir flying. He hit a sheer wall on the north side of the chamber, his sword flinging free from his grasp and sliding over the slick shore. He slumped against the wall and tried to rise, but could not.

He focused and saw Creyath on one knee, a young man he recognized as Ket standing beside him, having brought the Second Keeper his bow. The Ember lined up another black arrow and his eyes flashed bright orange like the comet he’d made. He aimed this one more carefully, sending it toward the shoreline, where it burned the horrors there. It was his last shaft, and he laid his bow down and wavered.

The soldiers of the caravan—those who had survived—poured into the cavernous chamber wearing their wounds and carrying their Valley steel. Ket shouted and Jes took up the call, the two youths forming the head as Mial masked his limp enough to put a run into it. Even the pair of merchants were bloody—and Talmir knew not all of it was theirs.

Talmir coughed and sputtered, adding his own blood to the mix. He shifted and felt shards of pain in his chest, and still that warm weight of bronze leaned heavy against his skin. He pushed against it and stood on wavering legs, leaning back against the moist wall. He cast about for his sword and saw it between him and the fight that was more a massacre that hadn’t turned quite yet. He’d keep it from turning a moment longer if he could.

Another red-toothed warrior was sent from the pack like a stone falling in the wrong direction. She broke against the wall not far from him, and Talmir saw the churning sea of pale flesh, red- and grey-sashes and the First Runner close back in around Ceth, whose face was weary.

Talmir took four steps to that discarded blade while Creyath called to him. The Ember had regained his feet and Talmir felt heat wash the chamber as he gathered his stores—as he gathered too much—and Talmir knew the Ember would burn himself out if it meant dying well.

His left hand closed around the sticky hilt, the leather wound tight so many years ago it was a wonder it hadn’t come undone since. He straightened and breathed in, and the white pillar out in the center of the lake seemed to shimmer like the sky’s witness from the world above. He saw Iyana splashing toward them from the shallows at the edge, her white hair matching the luminous glow. He shook his head, wishing she could’ve found a way out.

He sighed. He made his peace and promised to offer none, and then he and Creyath put their wills before them and charged.

Or would have. But it all stopped.

His chest froze, as did his legs. He could breathe, but only barely, and his muscles bunched painfully as he was caught in motion, held fast by some invisible tether. He tried to turn his head, half-expecting Sen to be standing among them wearing some wicked look. Iyana still moved out on the lake, her halting steps the only clear sound apart from the dripping of blood from tired weapons and the crackle of thrown coals in their corners.

The throng in the center was in the same state, and Talmir could see Ceth, Karin and a clutch of red- and gray-sashed warriors form a frozen pocket in the center, blades and steely looks turned out against the pale beasts that were similarly caught fast. Even his Valley soldiers seemed a painting from wars beyond counting, their hair thrown back, motion caught in suggestion.

It was like a dream. And its maker stepped among them from the shadows of the southern hall.

Iyana froze more out of shock than compulsion. Karin had shoved her into a gap along the eastern wall as he raced toward the churning mass of flesh, fire, blades and sashes on the smooth shoreline that no longer glittered under its sticky coat. She had waited for the pale men to pass her by, shrinking into the deepest corner and squeezing her eyes shut tight to avoid the glint of green attracting unwanted attention.

She heard another pass by after the throng of howlers and knew it was Ceth by the sound his presence made against the moist air and black water. She knew she should wait, but crept out as the sounds of screams and screeching and Creyath’s fiery charges dissipated, their echoes dying away completely.

Iyana rounded the curve in the wall and walked out into the shallow center away from the shore. She half-expected to find nothing but a pile of corpses wearing red sashes and gray strewn among whatever horrors they had managed to slay. And while there were some of those, the rest was an image that took several blinks to bring into focus.

The crystal-crusted pillar in the center of the lake threw it all into a ghostly glow that made the whole affair seem ethereal. The mass of bodies was frozen in a press, pale men reaching with clawed hands as Karin, Ceth and a clutch of their desert hosts formed a collapsing center against the nightmare wave. There were painted men and women with red teeth locked in screams on the outskirts, and as she peered into the mix, she saw Talmir, Ket, Jes, Mial and the soldiers of the southern Valley caught mid-stride as they rode the incline of the sticky slope down toward the embattled lakeshore. Even the merchants had taken up what metal they could find and joined the charge, their eyes wide with fear they made no move to hide.

Iyana cast about, her own heart beating furiously as each shuffling step broke the plane of silence that seemed to fill the whole of the vast, glittering chamber. She thought Sen might be the culprit, but could not see him.

She closed her eyes and felt the green flare to life within her. It sent a shock of pain into her temples that screamed through her blood and bones. She nearly fell and nearly flew, but managed to keep herself anchored. When she opened her eyes, she saw the figures on the shore beneath their glowing threads. The pale men still bore those purple ropes tinged with black, and the men and women they fought carried the vibrant hues that were theirs alone. Instead of swaying like weeds underwater, the tethers were still, nothing but the occasional pulse and flicker betraying the hearts that beat below them.

She blinked away the sight of the Between and saw it all with eyes renewed, and now she noted the smaller details that should have betrayed the Sage’s presence and power at the outset. She saw a hand with black claws suspended in midair, the blood it trailed glistening in the thrown light of Creyath’s fire and the whiteness of the place. She saw a hurled stone floating, the red-toothed savage it had struck only just beginning to reel as a gash in his head sprouted without spouting. Rather than the strain and struggle she had witnessed in the forms of the pale men she had held at bay in the tunnels below, none so much as breathed here, and not a single eye twitched.

But there was one who moved freely. She saw him as he emerged from the southern hall where the children slept. For a moment, she saw him as one of the desert foxes that sang their songs in the sands above. He moved with a calm, considered gait, but as she peered beneath his red hood she saw the strain on his face that seemed a mix of pain and the rage that spilled from it. Gone was the man known as ‘Pevah,’ and in his place was a Sage—one of the five remaining in the World. One of the oldest powers and—if the oldest stories were to be believed—one of the deadliest.

After all, how did one earn such a name without leaving plenty of red in his wake, deserving or otherwise? How could one be counted good with so much death on his hands?

Iyana did not notice the low, droning song of the disembodied masters of the pale men and Bloody Screamers until it quieted on the Sage’s entrance, as if the song itself feared him and withdrew. As if the witches hiding in their caves and crevices near or far thought he might trace their singing back and cut their throats with a hard glance.

He walked between the soldiers of the caravan and stepped over the bodies of Verna and Courlis. His eyes lingered on the form of a child splayed beneath a pale-skinned woman wearing a gray sash. He stopped there, just before the frozen maelstrom on the sloped shelf. When he looked up, his eyes were black as the deepest well. Black like the Dark Kind and the World Apart that was their void.

Iyana felt the fear radiate so strongly she mistook it for her own before she recognized it as emanating from the painted tribesmen who struggled against their bonds of time. The black orbs shifted beneath the red hood, and the gray shawl fell to the blood-soaked ground and was stained as he opened his arms and arched his back like a creature more than a man. The sleeves pulled back to reveal hands that ended in black points, not unlike the pale men that assailed them, and when he grimaced—or was it a smile?—his teeth were pointed and ashen gray.

The air shook, the very atmosphere seeming to rebel against his presence and what he brought with him. Iyana took a step toward the shore and felt her foot catch, as if she were pulling tar along with her. She reached her hand out and it felt like dragging iron weights. She turned it over and unfurled her fingers, which moved in the way of dreams. She stepped back and regained her speed, her heart beating furiously as she watched the Red Waste sink into a crouch.

She thought to call out to him, to scream for him to cease and turn away from whatever it was he was about to do, necessary as it might be. Strangely, sickly, she felt pity for the poor souls in his gaze, though they stood in the gore and ruin of her own people and of those who had taken her in.

The Red Waste slew them all. He sprang with a roar indistinguishable from the song of the foxes above. He rent them apart, wicked claws ripping throats and heads and the pillars of bone and sinew that held them all up. She tried to turn away but could not, marveling at the ghastly sight of the painted warriors as they stood still—frozen in death, now, in addition to time. She wondered if the pain was held there in that moment of agonizing eternity while he dealt with the rest.

He tore through them and left their standing bodies behind, and Iyana saw the light dim in their eyes—even the pale horrors that once were men. When it was done, he had reached the place where the black water slid over the shore, the small waves moving slow as syrup. He heaved and pulled, bowed back rising and black eyes staring out at the white pillar that shone with renewed light from the moon. Iyana thought he was looking at her until she heard the haunting melodies of the desert foxes filter down through the roosting tunnels and musty alcoves—a condemnation or a confirmation.

He blinked—the first she had seen since his eyes lost their color—and straightened. The water quickened and curled around his feet as recognition washed him. The whole of the place seemed to exhale, to breathe a sigh of relief, and Iyana felt the air drop.

“Such is power,” the Red Waste said, sweeping one clawed hand back at the maelstrom of flesh behind him that had begun to move as if through a mire. He did not smile, nor did he look ashamed, and when Iyana blinked back at him, she saw that he was once more the old man they had first encountered—the form she now knew was a mask.

She watched as the pocket of World on the shore righted itself and exposed all the wrong that had been done. The pale men and their painted minders fell, blood spraying from a score of fresh-made fountains that coated the walls and even reached some of the low-hanging stalactites above. Where the blood stuck, the stones ceased to glitter, and where it met the white crystals that clung in the corners, their starlight faded and winked out.

Karin, Ceth and the warriors of the desert finished their motions and blinked in stunned confusion as their targets fell before being struck down. The soldiers of the caravan slipped and tumbled, forgetting their momentum in their bondage, and Captain Talmir skidded nearly to the water, his sword held up as a ward, and pointed toward the Sage’s back. The place Creyath knelt came alive with the bright flame he had been in the process of calling; he aimed it above the mess and over her head, where it streaked like a star over a shallow black sky.

Iyana took a step forward and then another, and then she was running toward the shore. She passed the Red Waste as he stared out at the white pillar in its black lake and nearly went down as her boots hit the sliding surface of the fight. She kept her eyes up, focusing on the fighters. Half of them still stared at the old man as if he were a story come to life or a god come down from the stars to smite them, while others looked at the bodies strewn about the shelf with grim faces. A few seemed shocked into presence by Iyana’s agency and moved with purpose, calling out for the wounded and dead.

There was a sound that might have been the trill of the songbirds in their nests above, but Iyana recognized it as she passed Creyath and stepped over the white robes of Verna and Courlis without slowing.

“The children,” she breathed, following the sound down the narrow hallway with its many rooms and hollows. There were bodies even here, though not so many, and Iyana’s heart caught in her throat as she rounded the bend and came to a doorway more narrow than the rest—the place where the children slept.

She slowed as a group pulled up behind her and skidded to a halt, holding out hands to stop the others. The sound of crying could be heard from within, but the doorway was stacked and ringed with the bodies of the pale men and the painted. They were not stabbed or slashed or broken, but turned inside-out, and Iyana smelled the stink of death of a kind she had never seen before.

Or had she? An image flashed of Tu’Ren’s memory, which she had foolishly invaded. She saw the young hunter who had come upon the Valley Faey and slain their wives and children. She saw his face wrenched into a shock of pain above the mess of his body all twisted and splayed—the work of the Faeykin, Landkist of the Valley, whose gifts of healing and ways of Sight were secondary to their power over life itself, and death that was its sister.

So it seemed to her now.

One of the gray-sashed women, Martah, shoved past her and stepped over the tangle, calling out some name Iyana didn’t know, though she knew who it must belong to. The rest followed her while others fell to their knees as the cold recognition of all that had happened overtook them. Iyana looked down at them. She laid a hand on one and recognized him as one of the hunters who had joined them that morning. She smiled kindly at him and he looked up through a well of tears that gathered too quick to fall.

She almost told him it would be all right, but swallowed the words. For all she knew, there was a fresh army of pale horrors and red-toothed tribesmen streaming into the mouth of the cave up above, ready to finish what they’d started. She almost fell to her knees like the rest, the pounding at her temples redoubling in the aftermath.

Instead, she kept moving.

She stepped as much on as over the ruined life below her feet that was now nothing but waste and into the roughly circular chamber beyond. She saw the adults gathered around a clutch of forms in the corner and for an instant thought it was the worst sight she had ever seen until she recognized it as the greatest.

The children were alive. They cried into the shoulders and buried their heads in the scarves of their protectors, who shushed them and rocked them and cried along with them. She smiled as tears stung her eyes, and she sighed in a move that felt like the sweetest relief.

Iyana thought it must have been the Red Waste—that he had joined the battle too slow because he had been here. And then one of the dark-skinned warriors moved toward the center of the chamber and she followed his line of sight. Splayed beneath a spill of filtered moonlight was a figure whose yellow-white hair obscured the face that rested against the warm stone.

“Sen,” she whispered, moving toward him in a rush. She knelt and turned him over. There was no blood marring his face, but his eyes were open and unseeing, the green faded to near-brown. In a moment of disbelief, she looked from him back toward the doorway that was half-filled with bodies and knew it had been his work—that he had held the door and expended himself doing it.

She looked down at him and brushed a strand of hair away from his face. He looked younger, like Kole or Jenk, and his expression was all innocence in a way that reminded her of Nathen Swell. She would have given him up for dead if not for the mist she saw escape his lips, the hint of breath and the clinging life it signaled.

“My pack!” she yelled out, gesturing toward the door. Some of the nomads still clung to the children or stood before them, trying to shield them from the sight of acts they’d witnessed first-hand. One complied, leaping to clear the bodies as he charged into the hall. She heard voices calling commands—Ceth and Talmir and Karin. Order being restored in the wake of bloody chaos.

Iyana breathed out and slowed her heart. She turned her eyes inward and sought out the green fire that was ever there. She began to shake as she dipped into the light she now recognized with sudden clarity as her own tether and placed a hand to Sen’s bare chest beneath his ripped shirt. She called to that light and bid it follow, and it traced a line along the highways of her own blood, though it was something apart, and poured it into him.

“Here!”

The pack landed with a clatter beside her—a good thing, as she had nearly drained herself. She opened her eyes and saw figures short and tall ringing her in concern. She swayed and then frowned and straightened, finding the stone of Ve’Ran that was not a thing and yet was more real than the blood or the light that ran beside it, that spurred it on.

Her lips quivered and she willed them to stillness as she opened her pack and navigated the corks and clutches of tied scrub by feel. She brought out a blue clutch of stems that she held beneath Sen’s nose, causing his nostrils to flare. She drew her mortar and pestle and crushed a black root to expose the orange flesh beneath. Its scent was citrus, like the blood oranges Seer Rusul ate that stained her chin. Iyana poured a stopper of green-tinted water into the mix and ripped a section of sleeve away to soak it up. She laid the wet cloth over Sen’s face.

“Come,” she said, her vision beginning to swim again. If she put any more into him apart from her mashings and plants, she knew she would die. She knew she would have if he hadn’t gasped and sat up in a flailing shock that bloodied her lip. Strong hands rushed in to stay him and to pull her away, and she looked back to see Ket lift her up beside him. Red spots stained the side of his cheek and she laid a hand against it, her thoughts a confused tumble until she reoriented them.

Sen pulled the cloth away from his eyes and cast about in wonderment. He pushed the figures aside and cried out—a cry that stopped when he saw the children staring like startled hares in their corner. They looked at him with a mix of fear and wonder, and Iyana felt a pang for it. But Sen only smiled and fell back into a sleep that was far away from the death all around.

“You saved him,” Ket said. He said it without emotion and left her, stepping back out into the hall.

Iyana thought to follow him, to see what aid she could lend to the wounded. She hadn’t examined them closely in the rush, but she had seen enough to know those who still lived would live on, and those who had been still would remain that way.

She leaned her back against the wall and slid down until she sat. Some of the children scooted near to her while others ventured over to Sen, touching him to check that he still breathed. Others watched the nomads, who had already dried their tears and wiped away the blood that had yet to dry as they began to clear it all away.

Iyana did not watch them. She did not look.

Talmir stood frozen, despite the fact that his will—or else his time—had returned.

He stood amidst the red and clinging gore, the sticky sweat and drifting vapors of the lapping lake and the sounds the wounded made as they were tended to or forgotten for the moment. There were few voices. Those who stood or knelt among the ruined life were too stunned or too tired to speak, and though Talmir had been told by Ket the children were alive and safe—most of them—their songs did not fill the cavernous silence the killing had left behind.

“Caru—”

“What?” Talmir said sharply, knowing he had been addressed several times. He looked to his right and saw Creyath sitting on a slick rock by the ruined fire, the coals having died to black ash. The Ember had plenty of red on him, but he seemed unharmed, though he regarded Talmir through half-closed lids. His amber eyes seemed dimmer, like a fire in sunlight, and Talmir knew he had come dangerously close to spending himself completely during the fight.

During the massacre.

“What is it?” Talmir asked, working to soften his voice and his expression as the red-sashes and the gray stepped among the bodies, turning over those on their side and pushing aside the pale and painted monstrosities that had come against them.

“You should check your wounds,” Creyath said, nodding at him.

Talmir looked down and would have gasped had he the breath to. His shirt had been some shade of white, albeit yellowed by a mix of sun and a week and more of driving sand. Now there wasn’t a spot of it that wasn’t red, the Bronze Star now a painted one that swung beneath the tuck. His arms were made of the color, with splotches of darker matter resting on the webs between his fingers.

His left hand hurt, and he only realized now it was because he still gripped his father’s sword, his knuckles blanched where they weren’t wet and crusted with the proof of his deeds. It took a force of will for him to relax, and though he wanted to, he did not let the blade clatter to the ground at his feet but rather caught a glimpse of his face—a macabre mask—in the bits of silver still shining in the filtered light and let it fall by his side.

Talmir looked around him. He began taking stock, just as he was wont to do following each attack and successful repel of the Dark Kind—habits formed over a generation before the demons had made men their hosts. He hated the part of himself that could reduce lives to numbers, bodies to marks in a ledger. He spat and added a bit of bitterness to the mess before taking a step toward the shore.

He passed by a few of his soldiers—Jes and Mial tossing him worried glances—and then past the old man who stood among the deepest tangle of bodies. The Sage looked out at the shining pillar of moonlit crystal that leered across the way, and Talmir did not wish to look upon his face, though he caught a glimpse of such bare hurt it nearly cracked the building shell around his own heart.

Talmir’s boots broke the surface where the slow river of syrup and sweat met the water and walked without breaking stride. He walked until he went past his waist and kept walking, the red-and-silver blade sinking and now swinging slower at his side as the lake rose to still the glinting bits of the medal that slapped his chest like a reminder—like a constant drum of regret—of what he had done by bringing these loyal souls out into this forsaken land with nothing but the ghosts of the past to hunt and stories of failure to bring back.

He knew how it must look to those on the shore, but none raised a complaint as he let his knees go slack and fell beneath the surface. It was warm and not at all refreshing, more like a wool blanket by the side of a hearth than a shocking bucket.

His knees struck the smooth bottom and his hair danced. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but black all around with the faintest glimmer of distant gray from the shining pillar. He felt a pang of fear as he imagined some savage creature coming for him out of the depths, and then the guilt hit him.

He sighed. The sound his captured breath made as it drifted toward the surface with all the crusted and melted blood attached snapped something in him. He screamed and thrashed and clenched his fists. He screamed so loud his lungs burned and his lips split. A part of him wondered if they could hear him on the shore. If they could hear him in the Valley.

He tasted salt that must have been tears he did not deserve to shed, and when he was empty, he thought of breathing in, knowing what it would do to him. Knowing what it would do to those who followed him. Those who remained.

He thought of Rain Ku’Ral, and when he came up, he felt lighter.

Talmir broke the surface and turned around, walking back toward the shore. His sword shone with the brightest silver, and even as his boots touched the exposed shelf once more, he felt that he had been remade.

Pevah remained rooted in place, but now his brown eyes tracked Talmir as he approached. The desert nomads saw and edged closer, Ceth cutting short an exchange to approach from the rear, as if fearing that Talmir might attack their protector. Their Sage.

Talmir stopped when he was nearly nose-to-nose with the old man. He searched him and did not know exactly what he searched for. If he minded, Pevah hid it. He seemed smaller, now, and Talmir could not help but glance down at hands that had only recently been curled into claws longer and sharper than any beast he had seen. Now, he looked so much like the old man he pretended to be—perhaps the one he once had been. But Talmir wondered. He searched those dark eyes and thought he saw the Red Waste looking back, or the creature that had earned the name. He thought the thing they had seen tearing throats and ripping spines was closer to the truth.

Talmir looked past the old man to Ceth, whose pale face was still spotted with bits of bright red. He and his fellows stood among the soldiers of the caravan, each set looking from one to the other and back to the pair of would-be leaders at the shoreline with a troubling mix of apprehension, fear and—in a few cases—eagerness barely concealed.

It was difficult to reconcile the image of the bent-shouldered old man before him with a creature that could wield time itself as a weapon, for surely that was what the Sage had done. Talmir knew Sen had trapped an intruder above with some gift of the Faey, and he knew Iyana had done something similar to him in turn. But those were bonds to be railed against. What Talmir had felt was not unlike dreaming, though the scene before him was rendered in such vivid detail it could not be mistaken for anything but reality.

It was not so much that he couldn’t move, but rather that he could not think to; as if his mind, though seeing, had been frozen there in a space of moments that felt like eternity. Judging by the way eyes on all sides and persuasions shifted toward the robed figure and skittered away, Talmir thought the feeling was shared—and the building hate and fear of it. He wondered how many times the Sage had been forced to use the trick, and how often he could.

Talmir did not think he could now, for whatever reason. And the recognition—real or imagined—brought a smile to his face as he thought of driving his length of sharpened steel through the old man’s heart if he ever thought to trap him again.

Pevah’s brow raised in a move Talmir hoped was not recognition.

“We will speak after we’ve checked the borders—”

“There are no borders in this land,” Pevah said. He almost smiled. “Know that we are safe. The attack,” he looked down at the pale limbs splayed like fallen dancers, “such as it was, is ended. There will not be another. Not now, at least. Not for some time.”

Talmir felt anger welling in his core, and Pevah frowned. It took a space before Talmir recognized the look as sympathy.

“We will talk,” the old man said, speaking softly, though his voice echoed in the silence and the drifting air that was already beginning to take on the slow stench of death. It reminded Talmir of the streets of Hearth, but there was no rain to wash this place out. Only them and their hands.

Talmir nodded. He raised his voice to be heard by all on the shore and by those in the hall and the rooms beyond. “We will talk,” he said. “Not you and I, but you and all of us. We will have answers from you.”

Pevah’s lips formed a tight line, and Talmir saw his pupils expand ever so slightly before shrinking back down. “Yes,” he said and Talmir moved past him.

“Fine,” Talmir said to Jes and Mial, and then to Creyath, all of whom examined him for wounds. “Largely unharmed.” The same could not be said for all, but all things considered, those who stood were largely in the same condition as they had started. The same could not be said for Verna and Courlis, who lay in their own growing pools of red. The child they had died defending—and who had died soon after, just before Talmir and those from above had joined the fray—had already been taken away.

For a moment, Talmir was caught, frozen in indecision. A light from the hall had him glancing that way and he saw Iyana emerge from the bend, her clothes soaked through and her face drained of what little color it usually held. He saw Karin following behind her and tossing strange glances back the way they’d come. He spoke with Iyana, who did not seem to be listening.

“Ceth,” Talmir said as the Landkist made to step past him holding the body of one of his fellows—one of three Talmir had seen among the dead. He paused and laid those gray-blue eyes on Talmir. “Where—” he started and then stopped, unsure how to say it. He swallowed. “Where do you bury your dead?”

Ceth regarded him with an unreadable expression. He looked behind Talmir as Karin and Iyana approached, and then at his fellows, who were carrying another cloth-wrapped burden between them.

“Come,” Ceth said.

It took them through the night, the work compounded by a mix of exhaustion, hurt and a few less helping hands than there should have been. Talmir and one of the red-sashes dumped a pale horror over the lip of the northern ledge to join his twisted fellows in a depression where the sloped sand met the uneven black rock. The two looked down at the grotesque pile that somehow looked less than threatening in daylight—like a stack of false men the winds would soon cover.

There was a yip that turned to a howl and Talmir saw one of the desert foxes watching the work from atop a neighboring rise. He met Talmir’s eyes and looked down at the pile with nothing approaching hunger or longing and then disappeared, the white-tipped tails of his pack following after.

Talmir and the stranger whose name he didn’t know walked back to the shelf in silence. He might’ve feared a stark separation in the immediate aftermath of the attack and all its horror—he may even have felt it for a moment—but now Talmir was certain any lingering mistrust between the Emberfolk of Valley and desert had dissolved out of necessity.

A Sharing unasked-for but startling in its strength and veracity.

When they reached the shelf, the young man nodded at Talmir and he returned it. There were seven figures arrayed on the ground, lying still. They had been wrapped from head to toe in a mix of the red and gray cloth worn by the folk of this land. One was smaller than the rest, and Talmir knew that another two belonged to the Faeykin they had lost. He worked to suppress another burn of guilt as he considered the implications of losing half of their healers.

The rest stood around them in a loose circle. Talmir counted about a dozen of their hosts and knew there were only a few down below minding the children and those of the caravan too wounded to make the climb. He felt a pang as he recognized how depleted their numbers truly were, and there was no guarantee those who had been sent out to the west would return, and if so, in what condition.

Karin stood alongside Iyana, the First Runner looking from Creyath to Talmir as Iyana stared sightlessly at the wrapped bundles on the shelf. She looked older than Talmir could ever remember seeing her. She also looked more tired, and as he swept his gaze out to encompass the rest of the mixed company that was now whole, he forgot his own hurt, putting aside the questions that welled and the anger that simmered beneath them as the old man they called Pevah stepped into line.

He did nothing to distinguish himself from the rest, and for once, Ceth and the warriors did not make way for him like some god or chosen liege, but rather stood alongside him as a brother, a comrade—even a father who had lost his children, and they their brothers and sisters and newfound friends.

“I am more wont to wax than the rest,” Pevah said, and faces turned toward him, “but …” he swept his hands out and then let them fall to his sides. It was a decidedly human gesture, and it did not ring false to Talmir. “What words can be said that will undo such things? That will make them sit better in the memory of those who witnessed them?” He paused. “What of the children?”

He almost sounded bitter as he said the last, and Talmir frowned as he noted the swallows and shifting feet, the hands that balled into fists and then slackened in despair or lack of strength.

“There is something of beauty in the sight, to me,” Talmir said, as shocked to say the words as those who looked his way were to hear them. “Not of this,” he said, indicating the dead. “Of this.” He nodded to Creyath and Iyana, Karin and Ket, Jes, Mial and the soldiers of the caravan that now counted two bloodied and disheveled merchants among their number. He looked to Ceth and the blonde, blue-eyed woman who stood beside him, her cheeks glistening as the sun caught the errant bits of salt and turned them to a thing of sorrowful beauty. He looked to the dark-skinned nomads who might’ve been his own and the Northmen who never could be, and for once he did not see the sashes they wore.

“The World has always taken from us,” Talmir said, growing into the speech he had not prepared and whose ending he could not guess. “It’s taken from mine and from yours, and no doubt Pevah has seen it take from plenty more besides.” The old man watched him with unmasked grief, and Talmir turned to look past the wrapped bundles and those who stood around them. He sighted the yellow hills and the black shelves that broke them up, the blue sky that hung down like a curtain and the bright that bleached it all, baked it and set it to shimmer with a pleasant radiance before it had time to bake and burn.

“It has taken from the desert foxes and the hammerhorn bulls, from the sand drakes that made for us a week ago and from the things they hunt. It takes from the carrion birds and the hawks who fight them, from the chicks and their nesting cliffs and from the folk who used to live there.” Ceth looked toward the north and Talmir followed before turning back around. All eyes regarded him, and most were shining like jewels in all their varied hues. All beautiful. All full of the life that had been taken from others.

Even from the horrors they had fought against. Things that had been made, and not likely with their blessing or will.

“The World has taken from us,” Talmir said. “We know it just the same as you. But it has given in equal measure, and plenty more. It gave us our Valley home and its sheltering peaks, and the Embers who watch over us.” Creyath smiled. “It blessed us with the green-eyed guardians who heal our hurts and bind our wounds and know our feelings before we share them.” Iyana smirked. “It has given you a champion whose like I have never seen before, even if it has not replaced those we took away.” Ceth’s expression was unmoving, but those around him looked to him with a sense of rediscovered awe.

Talmir looked down at the smallest bundle. He could still see the tiny bump that marked the child’s nose, though he could not picture which of the little birds it might be.

“The World has given us them,” Talmir said. “And all of those who still wait below for their parents to return, to tuck them into beds and tell them stories of how they will protect them from horrors like the ones we just did—from the terrors of the World Apart. A place that does not give and take, but takes only.”

“This World has shown us our darkest fears and the friends who keep them back,” he said, meeting as many eyes as he could. “It has shown us love, and the pain of its loss and leaving.” He paused. “No. The World has not betrayed us. It has laid bare our enemies so that they will know our wrath. And they will.”

There was no raised cheer as he finished an address he had had no intention to make, but Talmir saw the effect in the set visages that looked from one another down to the wrapped bundles on the shelf, the red and gray sashes blowing in the soft wind and tickling sand of the desert morning. Even now, in the pale light, Talmir could see the hint of the red and purple tint to the western sky, whatever fire buried there refusing to sleep. Instead of the deep foreboding he had felt before, however, now the sight only continued to harden the shell that was forming like the rain-crusted armor on the tops of the dunes.

He saw Iyana swaying as the breeze picked up, her bright green eyes seeming to flicker in the glare. Karin regarded her with a worried expression and turned it on Talmir, who issued a curt nod.

“Pevah,” Talmir said and the old man looked up, his brown eyes appearing amber for the moment, the work of new water. “We would have words.”

The blonde woman beside Ceth took a step forward, looking from Pevah to Talmir in a huff. Ceth touched her on the hand and guided her back. He met Talmir’s unwavering gaze, searching him. Whatever he found, he did not say, but the look he gave Pevah seemed to deflate the Sage even further.

“Very well,” Pevah said, shifting. “Yes. Yes, you deserve answers.” He let loose a laugh whose poison Talmir recognized. It reminded him of the way he had laughed into the dripping gutter of Hearth after the siege and the storm that had followed. “You deserve that, at the least.” His people—and they were truly his people—looked to him with a range of sorrowful expressions as he glanced at the prone and covered forms before turning back toward the cave mouth.

“Come,” he said. “Come, and have them from me.”

Talmir nodded, though the Sage was no longer looking. He followed, ushering the Valley soldiers and members of the caravan in before him. He laid a hand on Iyana’s shoulder as she brushed by him, leaning more heavily than usual.

“Take rest,” he said. “We’ll be needing you, Ve’Ran.” She looked up at him sleepily and then back to the shelf behind him. Her eyes grew dark with recognition, but she shook it away and let the cool shadows envelop her as she passed beneath the arch.

Talmir cast one last, long look at the bodies, lingering on the Faeykin who had yet to grow into anything more than strangers from a common land.

A small clutch of reds moved in and knelt before the bundles, saying whatever words came to their lips to ease the passing or the pain of those left behind. They hovered over the child longest before lifting her and striking off toward the north, taking the path Ceth and Iyana had the night before.

“They will give them to the Mother’s Heart.” It was Ceth, coming to stand beside Talmir. The Landkist appeared largely unharmed but bore myriad bruises that Talmir guessed reached to the bone. It seemed his skin was hard to break, but there were plenty of ways for the body to hide its hurt.

Talmir said nothing because there was nothing to say, and together they walked in silence back toward the winding stair. As the air grew thicker down below, Talmir wrinkled his nose at the smell. He heard suppressed coughs and gags from ahead. The smell of death, ozone and broken time were not so easily covered by washrags and the lapping waves of the lake.

As Talmir moved among the travelers of Valley and desert who mingled more freely than they had before, at once stunned and bonded by the attack, he noted that the light of the pillar was dimmed without the moon and stars shining through the nests. It seemed the bright of the day washed out its haunting brilliance. He examined the shelf that sloped down to meet the water’s edge and was glad it wasn’t so bright, glad the rock had been dark long before they got there and dyed it deeper, painted it fresh.

Pevah stood in the dashed remnants of the fire pit Creyath had unmade when he fell like a crashed star. Talmir turned toward him and the mixed company arrayed themselves like children for the telling of some grand tale, only the mood was grim, the reality of the situation hitting home, along with the knowing that something had to be done. For a time, the only songs apart from the muted trill of the birds were the hesitant chirps of the children down the hall. Iyana had begun to venture that way, but then stopped and sat on a lip of stone, her eyes alternately downcast and questing at the Sage who stood before them.

“No doubt you and yours have seen horrors in the Valley,” Pevah said. He spoke quietly, but none had to lean in to hear. The merchants, soldiers and other members of the caravan shared knowing looks. “Here,” he said, “we have been fortunate when it comes to the Dark Kind. They find their gaps during the Dark Months, as they do the World over, but nothing like what your Captain tells me you have endured.”

Talmir eyed the old man with unwavering interest. The stories had it that the Red Waste had been a part of the bargain to send the Emberfolk south, into the Valley that would become an unwitting prison in the century to follow. It was apparent in the present circumstance that not all had heeded his advice, but many had followed the King of Ember. Many had followed T’Alon Rane, whom the Red Waste was said to have called friend, and of whom the Sage had barely spoken since their meeting.

“We have our own troubles,” Pevah continued. He met the gazes of his followers, who might’ve been his subjects had he a more forceful disposition. Who might’ve been his children if he were human. “I will not lie.” He regarded Talmir, Karin, Ket, Creyath and Iyana, settling on her last. “An attack such as this has never figured into my darkest nightmares.”

There were knowing glances from some and confused ones from others. Talmir was among the latter. He made as if to speak, but Pevah held up a hand to stay him.

“I know what it must look like,” he said. “It looks like victory, in a way.” Talmir frowned. That wasn’t at all how he’d categorize it. “After all, why come against us in such numbers? In such force?” He smiled, rueful, wicked. “They knew they could not kill me. They know it is folly to try. But here we stand.”

He swept his gaze around, looking like a hawk for an instant, or an owl. Talmir was unsure whether to feel buoyed or cowed. He settled for a mix.

“We,” he said again. “We. We have survived, and it is more than they thought. Much more, I think.” He looked up into the filtered gloom and cocked his head to the side, as if listening for some argument from the whistling witches without.

“This was an attack meant to hurt,” a woman’s voice said. Talmir sought out the speaker and saw the young, brown-skinned woman he had spoken with on their trek from the east, over the flat yellow plateau. Her name was Sohr, he remembered. She still bore the darker tracks of tears beneath the red rims of her eyes that matched the sash that hung in a tangle with her black hair. “We are hurt, Pevah.”

Talmir felt a pang as an image flashed of the small child wrapped in red and gray, the tiny ridge that may as well have been a dune beneath the rippling cloth. He watched the old man, whose face had broken into such hurt that Talmir thought he might fall to pieces on the spot.

“We are,” he said, nodding. “We are. As we are meant to be.” He took a quick step forward and sank to one knee before her, prostrate as a beggar before a king. He took her dark hands in his own bronze. “But we are here, my girl.” He looked around her. “We are here, and in numbers they could not have guessed.”

There was a pregnant pause, and Talmir saw the brown and blue eyes of the desert and the northern cliffs turning toward those of the Valley.

“They mean to draw you out,” Karin said. Pevah regarded him, unmoving. He stood and brushed at the damp that had soaked his cloth at the knee.

“Yes,” Pevah said. His voice was flat, emotionless. It might have held guilt, but Talmir sensed anger as the Sage turned toward him, brown eyes glinting with the promise of blood. “Those bloody savages believe killing me will free them. End their bondage.” He cast a hand toward the too-slick shore. “Only death can release those whose teeth bleed with the life of their fellows. Only ruin can free the pale men from their pain.”

“And what of the witches?” Talmir asked. “Why do they seek you so, that they would come against those you protect, and against those who protect you?” He saw Ceth frown behind the old man and Iyana raise her brows.

“They seek the same as all the rest,” Pevah said with a sick smile. “Power. Only they’re digging in the wrong place.”

“The Midnight Dunes,” Iyana said. She said it as if she were in a dream, but her eyes were not shining, her exhaustion threatening to overtake her. Talmir wondered how she could remain straight-backed, but then he thought of Linn Ve’Ran and thought he knew.

“Aye,” Ceth said. His face was hard-set, and where before Talmir had been the recipient of a look that could unsettle a lord among the hammerhorn bulls, now it was turned on the Sage of the Red Waste. The old man felt it on his back and closed his eyes for a moment as if willing it away.

When he opened them, Talmir forgot all his mounting frustration for the moment. All the helplessness he and his shared was nothing but a shadow in the well of black that this being must know. How much life had he seen pass before its time? How much had he tried to save?

“That power will doom them,” Pevah said. He did not elaborate, and just as quickly as the sympathy had risen in Talmir and the rest, now it went out in a wisp.

“That song,” Iyana said, again speaking more to herself than those around. “It was the same that Karin heard before he was attacked. I felt it in the cave of the Mother’s Heart. It felt like death and stank like rot. I felt it in the air. I felt it in my blood.” Her eyes widened in remembered dread.

The desert nomads regarded her with a mix of sympathy and—Talmir thought—mounting awe. They had seen two like her fall defending children who were not their own. They had seen the aftermath of one who had built a macabre mound of the dead rather than let them in to the nest where the rest huddled, waiting their turn to die.

“The witches,” Pevah said with a quick nod. “The bloody crones. Seers who are more blind than any well-meaning charlatans in this land or that.”

The Sage looked down at his feet while Talmir, Iyana and the rest stared at him. Even his own people seemed expectant, and Talmir found himself wondering how much even they knew of this conflict—its beginnings and its imagined end.

“Who are they?” Talmir asked the question for them. “The witches. The Blood Seers, or whatever they call themselves. Who are they, really, and what is their quarrel with you?”

Pevah met his eyes, glancing sidelong at those who crowded and squeezed into the alcoves and beneath the pillars and columns.

“Their quarrel is imagined.” Ceth spoke for him. He walked in front of Talmir and passed before the old man, coming to stand near to him. “And it is not with Pevah alone. It is with us all. All whom they cannot control with their blood magic. All they cannot compel to such rage.”

Pevah was already shaking his head before Ceth finished. The Landkist regarded him with that veiled expression Talmir thought was beginning to show some cracks. He was tired. He had fought hard in the mass of pale flesh and black fingers, and judging by the state of him when he had arrived, he doubted if he had not seen similar action in the caverns beneath with Karin and Iyana.

“I am afraid the captain’s fears are well-placed,” Pevah said, and there were looks and nervous glances exchanged between the red-sashes and the gray. Talmir’s Valley caravan merely watched and waited. “His suspicions well-taken.”

Talmir nodded for him to continue.

“The witches of the sands hold me in the lowest contempt,” he said, grinning in a wicked way that reminded Talmir of the sharp points he’d seen beneath those lips just a short time ago. “But have no doubt, were I not here, they would trouble this small tribe just as they have all of the others.” He paused and looked to the people he had taken as his own. “When there were others to take.”

“What is their quarrel with you?” Iyana asked again. “Why do they call you enemy?”

“It is as I have told you,” Pevah said, and Talmir could hear the way he tried to force the calm that usually came easily to his voice. “They seek power, and they think I am a key to it.”

“Are you not?” Creyath asked, and Talmir had to smirk.

“In a manner of speaking,” Pevah said, meeting his amber gaze. “Yes. I am. But they are … unwise to try me, and doubly so to seek what I protect.”

“What your people protect, you mean,” Talmir said. Ceth gave him a warning look, but Talmir was through with half-truths and riddles.

“Their hate is not so different from that which you and your folk harbor for my kind,” Pevah said. Talmir felt the ire that was rising in his gullet turn to fire, but the Sage spoke on. “A hatred of power, and of those who have taken it and used it for ill.” He laughed without mirth. “Such a thing as hate can change those who hold it. Soon enough, a hatred of power can lead to a desire for it.”

Pevah laid those steady browns on Talmir and they seemed to glint red, the color of mulled wine. Talmir thought of Kole Reyna and Creyath Mit’Ahn—the Embers of the Valley who were gifted their power and had wielded it for the good of their people. He thought of their desert path, and what they had truly come out here to find. The very prize who stood before them, dressed in drooping cloth and the aching decay of regret. No matter the old man’s words, Talmir felt only a shadow of the same.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Talmir said. “Why would they provoke you when you could kill them? We saw what you’re capable of. We’ve seen what Ceth is capable of.” He looked around and saw the desert nomads regarding him. “Your people may be few, but they are all hunters. All fighters in their own right.”

“Even patient things run out of it, eventually,” Pevah said. “Time affects all. Contrary to appearances, it affects me as well.”

Talmir thought he saw it in the man’s bearing. He seemed, if not shrunken, then deflated. Less than he had been before the fight in the cavern. He wondered if the Sage’s power might be like the Embers and their heat. Creyath had no brazier to feed him, but the desert skies had kept him robust. Already he seemed fuller than he had an hour before, the fire in his blood returning like the coming dawn.

Pevah looked to Creyath, who remained steady under a gaze that made others shift in something not unlike fear.

“You think I am the cause,” Creyath said as much as asked.

“Cause implies blame,” Pevah said. “No. But you are noticed, as is your company.” He smiled.

“You speak as if that’s a good thing,” Iyana said, her accusation echoing the sentiments of most in the mixed company judging by the way they looked from her to the one she addressed.

“Impatience breeds mistakes,” Pevah said, unmoving. “They have attacked us, and in so doing, they have wasted precious reserves.”

Talmir scoffed. “You sound like one of them,” he said. “Those things were as much victims as those we lost.”

“I speak the truth,” Pevah said. “Those sorry beasts were likely raised in darkness. If it makes you feel any better, we likely granted them a freedom the witches or their painted masters never would have.”

Talmir swallowed.

“They mean to draw you out,” Ceth said. “They mean to strike for the Dunes.”

“They cannot do both,” Pevah said dismissively. “They are not so great as they believe. Their songs are like buzzing flies. Their hymns are old things. Older than they know, and less potent than those who scratched them into the black rocks that were once unburied.”

He spoke as one who had lived a long time, and Talmir tried to picture the world he might’ve come from, a land unburdened by sand deep as the oceans. A land full of black rock, jagged and unkind. A land much like the old man himself, despite the gentleness he had grown into, or else had grown on him like moss to smooth a boulder.

Ceth looked unconvinced, and Talmir could feel the others feeding on his concern as if it were a scent on the breeze. He had to admit, seeing the stoic Landkist so bothered only served to redouble his own resolve. He glanced sidelong at Iyana and saw her green eyes shining with some of their former glow.

“Why not seek them out at their source?” Karin asked. “Send out scouts. Find them in their caves and—”

“And burn them out, like rats in a hole?” Pevah said. Talmir grimaced at the tone. Still, what were they speaking of here if not war? If not survival?

Karin closed his mouth, his lips pursing tightly.

“They move often,” Pevah said, taking some of the edge out of his tone. “Never putting down roots for long. Where they kept such a force, I do not pretend to know. You are First Runner. Perhaps you could find them.” He put a hand to his forehead, as if remembering. “No,” he shook his head. “We cannot risk leaving the children, even if we could find them. We cannot risk losing any more.”

“They will make for the Dunes,” Ceth said, and Talmir could see plain enough that the mood had reached a tipping point. Perhaps their arrival had shifted the weight of events, for better or worse. It seemed that all corners of the World were in a similar state, the Bright Days doing little to ease the different forms of desperation brought on by the Sages and their meddling, however distant. However old.

“Yes, Ceth,” Pevah said. “They will.” He paused and then sighed, seeming to shrink further into himself. “We cannot let them. And yet, to stop them is futile. So long as those hags weave their spells in the dark and bloody caverns of this land’s bones, they will outlast us.”

“You must let me go,” Ceth said. Talmir shifted uneasily as the exchange took on the feel of some old argument, and one meant for in private. In a way, the men—the Landkist and the Sage—moved about each other with the strained affection of father and son. “Pevah. They cannot awaken it. We cannot let them.”

“Awaken what?” Talmir asked. He took a step forward and when Pevah met his eyes, he looked less like the Sage that had torn a score of pale throats and more like the form he wore now.

“Pevah.” It was a familiar voice, and Talmir turned to seek out the speaker. The small collection parted, his own soldiers’ leather and worked metal catching the errant rays from the filtered sun. It was the young woman again, Sohr. Her black hair hung loose and haggard, her eyes tired and lined with worry and mounting grief she had yet to release.

“Tell them,” she said. “Theirs have died, Pevah. Their own. Tell them.”

“What are you protecting?” Iyana asked.

Pevah let loose another laugh without humor. It was sad, in a way. He looked like a shell set to crack, or the crust of wet sand baked in the sun and soon to crumble.

“What lies buried at the Midnight Dunes requires no protecting,” Pevah said. His eyes grew distant, and Talmir could feel the questing pull of curiosity from his own men tinged with the reflected dread of the Sage and his company.

“And yet, you protect it,” Creyath said. The Ember spoke in the same way he moved: steady. Pevah dipped a nod that seemed a bow.

“I keep it,” Pevah said. He included Ceth in his sweeping gaze. “We all do. Would that I did not have to. Would that power such as mine could be used for the ends you seek.” His dark eyes alighted on Talmir and settled there. “Our fight is here, Talmir Caru. Our charge. And it lies in making sure the real fight never happens.”

“The real fight.” Talmir tasted it, working over the implications. He came away with a shake and a sound of frustration that had Pevah raising his hands in a placating gesture.

“Have no doubt, Emberfolk of the Valley, that your enemy and our charge is of the same source,” he said.

“The Eastern Dark,” Ket spoke up, and Talmir thought it strange the looks from the desert nomads that were turned his way. Some glinted with recognition, while others bore only confusion, and all turned back on the Sage as he considered the young warrior.

“Such a name,” Pevah said, smiling in that threatening way of his, though Talmir did not think it was meant for Ket. “A name to inspire fear, I think. A name a coward wears, no doubt. Still, who am I to talk? You must be wondering.” Again, he looked to Talmir, and to Iyana. They did not answer, which was answer enough.

“No,” Pevah said. “No. For the Eastern Dark, I hold on to many things: hate, disgust, even love buried deep, though we were never the brothers the stories would have you believe. But fear is not in that company. Still, the World Apart is something real, and it is something made of things that seem its opposite.” He stepped between and among them, moving over the scattered ashes and black marks the dashed fire had left behind. He met the stares of both companies, though he lingered on those from the Valley core.

“You and yours know of the darkness of that land—if you can call it that—better than most,” he said. “Better than any here. Where they have repelled the Dark Kind in ones and twos, you have endured their pouring scourge for generations.” He paused, his eyes glazing. “Had I known …”

“You’ve expressed your regret on that count,” Talmir said, hating the way his voice sounded. “No doubt it’s sincere.”

Pevah shook his head and the cobwebs of clinging memory that had threatened to take him. “I wonder.” He turned on Talmir. “Do your tales still hold to the worst horrors of the World Apart? Do you have names for them? The Titans of Shadow? The Kings of Black and Pitch?”

“The Night Lords,” Karin said, his voice holding a note of the legend, of the fear and the anger such a term inspired among the Emberfolk of the Valley.

Talmir found himself looking to Creyath, whose amber eyes seemed to dance in the shadows. The Second Keeper of Hearth had never spoken much of his fight with the beast in the Deep Lands. He had always dismissed comparisons to the tales of the White Crest and those beings he had fought in the passes before they had fallen. But from Hearth to Last Lake to the Eastern Woods and the Faey who dwelled there, all knew the story of Creyath Mit’Ahn and the Night Lord he’d slain.

“Ah, yes,” Pevah said, seeing the looks and their direction. “You brought down one of the great beasts the Corruption sent against you, Captain Caru tells me.” He regarded Creyath without irony or scorn. The Ember did not answer but to give a slight nod that betrayed nothing of his own thoughts.

“I even hear the one you call Kole Reyna slew a great ape riddled with dark in the deepest south,” the old man continued, regarding Iyana, now.

“Larren Holspahr struck the fatal blow,” Talmir said. “But yes, Kole fought such a beast. And we repelled four that made for the walls of Hearth.” At this, there were audible breaths—the closest the stoic people beneath the sands came to gasping.

Talmir felt as if he were being led. It didn’t sit well with him.

“The Landkist and those who fought our former Guardian in the peaks brought back temperance for those victories already,” Talmir said. He glanced at Karin and Iyana. “We know they were not Night Lords, but rather an approximation. We know the true beasts died against the White Crest—died against your brother and your former ally—soon after we went south with our Ember King.”

Pevah was nodding before Talmir finished.

“He was a power,” he said, sounding awed in a way that made Talmir distinctly uncomfortable. He had just seen this man—or whatever he was—stop time itself. If he spoke of the White Crest in such a way, how powerful had their guardian truly been? How powerful had the agents of chaos sent against him, and what might’ve happened if they had made their way into the Valley a century ago? Who could’ve stood against them?

“Three he fought,” Pevah said, “my brother in white. Three he slew, laid them low beneath the very passes in which he roosted. The White Crest had hidden himself from our … disagreement for some time. No doubt my brother in the East took it as a sign of weakness.” He paused, and now his eyes were near to glowing, the deep black flecked with stars of red, like wine in a well. “The Eastern Dark sent three,” the Sage said, “but he awoke four.”

Talmir felt a tightness grip his heart that seemed strange to his conscious mind. He had fought against the Dark Kind since he was a young man, and before them, he had fought against the Rockbled and the Faey. He had been fighting all his life. Still, there were always deeper troubles than the ones men knew. There were always older things. Ancient things. The sorts of things legends made their names on before passing into myth.

He saw it in the way Creyath swallowed as he regarded the Sage. The Ember had not killed a Night Lord in the Deep Lands. Perhaps a remnant of their magic—an echo of that fateful clash—but the hearts Linn Ve’Ran had pierced in the heart of a red-topped keep had been evidence enough of their ending. Theirs was a power even the Sages feared.

“A Night Lord,” Ceth said, surprising Talmir. The northern Landkist stepped in front of Talmir and stood before Pevah. He did not wear a look like challenge, but rather one made of earnest and forbidding question, and a calm that did not fit. “That is what lies buried? A Night Lord from the World Apart, like those from the stories?”

Pevah only nodded, and Talmir thought the Sage had to work to suppress the shiver that threatened his bones. Perhaps he was only projecting his own fears.

“The White Crest defeated three,” Ceth said. “The Sage of the Southern Valley.”

Another nod with a tilt. “He survived,” Pevah said. “But—”

“He took their hearts for safekeeping,” Iyana put in. “He thought to use their power to stave off the Eastern Dark.”

“That,” Pevah said, “or to learn something of the ways of their own realm so that he might survive its coming.”

Talmir shook his head and squeezed his eyes tightly for a moment, willing the sudden throbbing at his temples to subside. It only got worse.

“But there was a fourth,” Karin said. “And you couldn’t kill it.”

“No.” The Sage said it without a hint of the regret Talmir might have expected. “The Eastern Dark knew I had been party to the plot.”

“What plot?” Talmir asked.

“The plot that sent your forebears south, along with a score of Embers—the most potent of the World’s Landkist. No doubt your tales tell as much.”

“No doubt the tales in all Lands tell of their own champions,” Creyath said, as if the implication that he was greatest of a kind who stood well above common man was more a threat than a promise.

“No doubt,” Pevah said. “And no doubt they are mistaken. Though,” he turned those red eyes on Ceth, “we cannot say for sure that we know all of the secrets the land keeps.” He turned back to Creyath. “And no doubt you have seen the range of power your kind is capable of—or not. The presence of power does not signify its mastery. But make no mistake: fire burns brightest.”

“What of it?” Iyana asked, showing the exasperation Talmir was beginning to feel anew. “What of the Night Lords? What of the fourth?”

Pevah swallowed. His face glistened with sweat that made him look sickly—even afraid. He reminded Talmir of one of the desert foxes, panicked and skittish, ready to flee or to bite at a moment’s notice.

“The greatest among those who came through,” he said. “Their leader. Their captain. I do not say it because I could not lay him low. I say it because it is the truth. It is the burden that has kept me a slave to this land—to this charge—for as long as he has raged in the place I’ve kept him. He is … it is awe and death made whole.”

He shook his head again, as if he wished to shake the past and all it held. “Would that I could have come to that Valley of yours,” he said. “Would that I could have tracked down T’Alon Rane and turned him back, or else put him down from the path he’d set himself on. More likely he’d have done it to me, first.” He turned to Ceth and reached out toward the tall, fair-haired warrior, who carried no weapons but for himself. He stopped short, his hand replete with long fingers falling to his side like a chain with a weight on the end. “Would that I could have been atop those cliffs when the Twins came with their dark designs, or noticed the Blood Seers and the entrails they cast, sheltered the children of the tribes before their numbers swelled and ours dwindled.”

He exhaled—a long and mournful sound. Talmir half-expected him to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness. Instead, he clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. There was an odd quickening of Talmir’s own breath. He felt light and airy, his heart racing until the old man steadied himself and the time around him.

“The Eastern Dark’s power lies in believing he is right,” Pevah said. “It lies in the cleverness of a straight and unbending will. He has me trapped here, away from his meddling. Away from his war. The Red Waste, now nothing more than a keeper of an unwilling prisoner, untamable. Perhaps unkillable.”

“Everything can be killed,” Ceth said. He looked to Creyath, to Iyana and Karin. He turned to Talmir and to Ket, to Jes and Mial. He stared a challenge at the blue eyes and gray sashes, and at the brown and red. “We will never be free of it,” he said. He turned back to Pevah, dropping his voice to take on a sympathy Talmir would not have thought him capable of. “But it will be free of us. Won’t it, Pevah? It will be free.”

Pevah sighed, and it was a sound like giving in, or moving on. It was an answer to all the questions any in the twin companies could have. It was a condemnation and a promise.

“You did not have me when you trapped the beast,” Ceth said.

Pevah smiled, but Talmir thought it was a sorry thing. He felt a pang in his chest that reached the tips of the Bronze Star that hung there.

“No,” Pevah said. “No, I did not.” He cast a longing look down at the tunnel as a sound like birds drifted, the children recovering from the horror of the night quicker than any of those who had sired them died defending them.

None spoke. Instead, they watched Pevah as he turned back, and in the place of that aching, suffocating regret was now something like stone. Something like Iyana and the sister she had left in the east, and it was to her the Sage now looked.

“The crones and their sorry charges will make for the Midnight Dunes,” he said, his voice taking on a growing purpose with each passing word. “They are fools, but perhaps not in the way I have thought them.”

“What do you mean by that?” Talmir asked.

“The power they seek will wipe them away like so much of the ash we stand amidst now,” he said. “They believe the truth of the Ember fire lies buried there, but it is nothing less than its opposite. It is hate and strength and wrath embodied. It is great in a way men and Landkist and even Sages can never be. Still,” he looked to Iyana, “perhaps there is more to their bloody songs than I have been willing to grant. I had attributed the weakening of the wards and the warnings of the foxes to my own slow failure. But perhaps they have found a tear and spread it wider—a weak link made weaker. Perhaps I have been blind, and the blood of our protectors has stained the tops of those great mounds like no horizon ever could.”

“Madness is a difficult thing to parse,” Karin said. Pevah seemed to weigh his words as if they were of the utmost importance. He nodded once and then looked away.

“They will get the war they wanted,” Pevah said, his face settling into the hardness Talmir had glimpsed before the haunting transformation had overtaken it the night before. He seemed at once to dread and long for the inevitability of the coming clash. In a way, Talmir could sympathize. “They will get their reckoning.” He looked to Ceth and to the others, his desert children, adopted though they might be. “It will be a night of endings, I think.”

“We’ve had many such nights,” the blonde, fair-skinned woman, Martah, said. “Some very recent. It will be something new to choose a place and time for it.” She smiled, and it was infectious, the collective turning their grief and the anger it called up into a sharpened iron resting in slow-burning coals. Talmir could feel the heat of the rod and knew its dousing would make a blast to remember—a quick and sudden thing of violence and hissing.

“You will go, then,” Talmir said as much as asked. “You will go to the west, to the Midnight Dunes. You will try to slay the beast.”

A shadow passed over Pevah’s face that Talmir recognized as fear, quickly covered. He tried not to dwell on it.

“Aye,” Ceth answered for him. He looked to Martah, and Talmir had the sudden impression that they were a pair in some way. Or had been. The man’s next words carried the fear of one they both protected. Of many. “The children,” he said, his gray-blue eyes holding Talmir as no Sage’s spell could. “Will you take them south?”

Talmir swallowed as all eyes turned his way. He felt a hardening that reminded him of the worst times and the good things he had sometimes managed to make of them.

“The World is a deadly place so long as the Sages’ War continues,” Talmir said. It stood to reason he excepted the Sage among them, but he left it unsaid. “We left our Valley for a reason.” Again, it was Iyana’s greens more than Karin’s deep browns or Creyath’s amber-golds that molded his thoughts into words to fit his intent. “They will be safest if you succeed, I think.”

Ceth frowned, but Talmir cleared his throat to say more. He paused.

Talmir felt the weight around his neck and wondered for the hundredth time why he continued to wear the thing. He turned and met the eyes of all in the caravan. They were tired but clear-eyed, thin but weathered, strong as he could have asked for and unafraid. But what he saw reflected in the eyes of the young and old alike was a want that filled him with a pride he hadn’t felt since he stood on the white walls of his home and shouted into the face of death alongside the glowing braziers and burning hearts of his people. The people he led. The Emberfolk, and he saw their like in the red sashes covering dark skin and in the piercing pale of the displaced warriors of the north. Theirs was a desire that had yet to be sated.

“It seems to me—to us, I gather—that your war is just a part of the one we all face, or that we will face sooner or later,” Talmir said. “The war for the World, and the fight against its neighbor, whatever the cause.” He met Pevah’s eyes as he said it and thought of his true name. The Sage remained steady. His look was a confirmation.

“We will join you,” Talmir said. “Call it a reckoning.”

Talmir hadn’t consulted the rest of them before he uttered words that seemed fateful, but Iyana didn’t mind. As she considered the looks of those gathered—the browns and sunlit reds of the red-sashes, the sky blues and stormy grays of Ceth and his northerners, and the chestnut tans and sparkling yellows of her own company—she knew none of them did. As Talmir had said, the Emberfolk of the Valley had come to do something. That something was more than killing and dying in the caves beneath the sands, than watching their hosts battle to save some semblance of a short-lived future for their young.

She hadn’t considered the one feeling that seeped into the potent mix that had welled in her chest since the fight. She hadn’t been able to put a name to it, but now she thought she could: it was need that drove her, and she saw it reflected in the eyes she caught and that caught hers, but most of all she felt it in the stolid bearings and tilted chins, the clenched fists and silent cloisters. It was the need to act and to be reacted to.

Iyana smiled. Captain Talmir had been right, as he often was when he chanced to give voice to the words behind his heart rather than those born of duty or position—the habit of command. It felt like a reckoning, and though Iyana knew such a thing rode dark paths to dark ends, she thought they had a few bright stars along to light the way.

No commands had to be uttered. The folk who had made this place their grudging home moved with a purpose the Emberfolk mirrored. Ket, Jes, Mial and the warriors of the caravan bent to their tasks, checking gear and stowing it in equal measure, polishing anything that glowed until it shone like the white crystal pillar that watched from its not-too-distance place across the way. Creyath took the winding stair, either to check on the horses or to replenish his stores in the heart of the brightest brazier any Ember had known. Talmir spoke to Pevah and to Ceth, to Karin, who spoke back, defining the where and when, solidifying the why.

But Iyana felt a pull that brought back the pang she had left behind during the Sage’s explanation. She followed it along the airy corridor until she came to the smooth stone door she now knew was as much the work of some long-ago molten river as the winds that cooled them from above.

Sounds of scraping, grunting and clanging followed her, the company sounding larger than it was, but as she entered the small, rounded chamber with its single shaft of lonely light, she heard the twitter of birds.

The children quieted as she entered, and Iyana swallowed as she noted the dark stains in the doorway beneath her feet. They no longer huddled, but rather moved about in clutches, triples and pairs, while Sen sat against the far wall, watching the motes of dust swirl in the center as those he had protected kept as far from him as possible.

“Children,” Iyana said, her voice echoing much louder than she would’ve thought. They froze, their sharp and lilting voices stilling in their throats as they looked to her as if she were a harbinger. “You don’t have to stay in here any longer,” she said.

They looked from her to one another, and a small, dark boy with hair that matched Creyath’s charger stepped forward. His voice was the sound of slate scraping. It reminded her of Jakub, the brave youth of Hearth Captain Talmir had named Runner.

“They won’t come back?” he asked, suspicion evident. He pointed at the dark splotches by the door behind her and Iyana saw Sen wince.

Iyana shook her head, but found the words slow in coming.

“No,” she said after a time and another dry swallow. “No. I don’t think they will. But …” she paused, looking about. She half-expected some of their parents to filter in, but it seemed they were taking their time in saying goodbye, or else were busy arguing over who would stay and who would go.

“You’re leaving,” he said. It didn’t sound like an accusation, but if Iyana felt it as a near thing, she knew those they called mother and father would as well.

“We are,” she said.

“All of you,” he said, nodding at the corridor behind her. “Even Pevah. You’re going out to fight them, aren’t you?”

He sounded both excited and nervous at the prospect, and Iyana saw the younger children behind him switching their glances between him and her. They could have been huddled in the Long Hall, waiting out the latest attack, the screeches and screams of the Dark Kind battling the roar of the storm and winning out.

But then, Iyana and hers had always had the Embers to protect them. They might’ve had the wall hounds and their minders. They had warriors as stout or stouter than any in the World. They had timber walls and flaming pitch, iron-tipped arrows and slender swords that rarely broke. But it was the Embers they looked to when the Dark Months came. It was they who burned brightest and fought longest: Larren Holspahr and Tu’Ren Kadeh and Taei Kane. It was Sarise A’zu before them and Kole Reyna, Jenk Ganmeer and Kaya Ferrahl after them.

These children had only their own, and the weathered, steady hands and the weapons they brandished beneath their red desert sashes. They had their Sage and the tricks he seemed seldom to use, and they had the Landkist of the northern cliffs, with his strange ways and deadly poise. But they did not have their birthright, and Iyana felt a small sting of the great well of bitterness they must hold in the presence of Creyath Mit’Ahn.

Iyana felt an anger at the World, then, and not its dark cousin, for a change. She felt it as a stronger and truer version of the one all Emberfolk of the Valley felt, thinking themselves abandoned. But though their Embers were few and growing fewer, they had new lights to guide them. Lights like Mother Ninyeva. Lights like her. Lights like Sen, who sat overcome by the darkness he’d allowed to be a part of him.

She sighed, realizing she had begun to drift, and the children watched her, wary and tense.

“Very nearly,” she said after a time. “Yes.” She felt a weight lift that could only come with truth laid plain and bare.

She expected them to withdraw or to lash out—perhaps both in equal measure. She thought they might shout her down and spill into the tunnels and wider caverns, looking for familiar folk to blame. Instead, the boy nodded and set his face in a hard way that reminded her of the lighter folk with gray sashes, and she had a glimpse of how new peoples were made by taking from the old.

Iyana stepped away from the open doorway and swept a hand toward it. “Go to them, if you will. Do not let them take the guilt of leaving with them. They do this for you.”

They moved hesitantly at first, but soon enough, they filtered out, their light chittering replaced by a stoic quiet that belied their tender age. When the last of them had gone, Iyana watched the shadows play along the opposite wall without the corridor. She shut her eyes and tensed, and then turned to find Sen regarding her with a look of green heartbreak.

She moved to him and knelt before him, and he looked away in what could only be described as shame. She had not decided yet whether or not it fit and felt strange because of it.

“One of the children died,” he said. He would not meet her eyes.

Iyana knew it. They had all been atop the shelf that morning. She had seen the body out in the hall. It seemed Verna and Courlis had rushed him out, away from the press of pale flesh in the corridor, only to run into more waiting by the winding stair and the sloping shore.

Sen swallowed. “He died with a single word on his lips. I heard him say it even as I seized on the beasts that once were men. He said it over and over until I knew its meaning and until I wished him to silence.” It sounded like a confession, and Iyana felt tears welling, the sorrow the day’s mix had eroded now coming back to the fore with speed.

“‘Pevah,’ he said. ‘Pevah, Pevah.’ He said it even with a slashed throat. ‘Pevah…’”

Iyana shook her head and wiped her eyes, her clothes filthy enough that the grief left behind a streak of clean on her sleeve.

“I tried to turn for him, but I couldn’t let them go,” Sen said. “I began to cut their tethers—to rip them out at the roots. I heard the fighting in the hall. I shouted for Verna and Courlis to take him and run. They did, but the other children stayed behind. A good thing, all told. A good thing for them. A bad thing for those who listened to me.

“Pevah,” Sen repeated, softly, like a child. A tear streaked down his face, painting its own crystalline pillar atop the powder-white. “You’d know what it means if you’d heard the way he said it.” He turned eyes that shone with anything but magic her way. “That wasn’t a boy calling for a Sage, or a god, though that’s the thing that answered.” Sen spat and Iyana recoiled at his bitterness. “The old man took them at the throats as I held them and cut their lives away. He followed the sounds that boy made. I assume you saw what he became?” Iyana nodded quickly and Sen continued. “What he is, more like. He walked with halting steps toward the lake. He wore vengeance for a cloak.”

Sen shook his head and blew out a sigh. “I wondered, as I fell. Am I a monster, too? A monster protecting children from other monsters?”

The silence he left behind was not something easy to fill, but Iyana said the only words that came to her mind.

“If the only monsters in the World were as wicked as you, Sen, I think you’d never have a need to heal or to regret not knowing how.”

His face was blank until the smallest smile broke it. It felt brighter to her than any sun above.

“I have to thank you,” he said, and before she could wave it away, “not for saving me, though that goes without saying. If it hadn’t been for your warning, we would have been caught unawares even worse than we already were.”

Iyana rocked back on her heels and tilted her head.

“Your signal,” he said, waving his hand about his head. He frowned at her reaction. “You didn’t mean to call out?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her mind replaying the events at the Mother’s Heart. “They came for me just as they came for you. I did what I could.”

Sen regarded her with something that skirted by fear and settled on awe. Iyana wasn’t sure which she would have preferred.

“Such a talent,” he said, shaking his head back and forth slowly. “I heard you before I heard the witch’s song. Yours was like a silver bell—or a horn blaring. The others felt it as well—Verna and Courlis. We called out a warning before the first of them broke the shadows in the deeper dark. Those who were not still above atop the shelf and sand already had weapons in hand when the first wave hit.”

Iyana remembered what had felt like a war of wills, her own straining against the conjured, rotted song of the witches in their faraway cave that felt so close. She had screamed in her own head to drown it out. Perhaps that was what Sen and the others had heard. And if they had heard …

She suppressed a shiver, trying not to think on the crones in their bloody caverns.

“You look better,” she said, changing the subject. She swayed a bit and found the Between waiting very close, felt the fire greet her eyes as she looked him over. His own eyes remained dull and his tether was dimmer than usual, the greenish-yellow thread swaying in time with the swirling motes. It was untucked and unbound, riding whatever currents it would.

He met her eyes and shrugged. “Perhaps I’m taking after you,” he said.

She smiled at him. “How do you mean?” She let the vision drop and blinked away the ghost light.

“I’ve long kept my tether guarded,” he said, hugging his knees closer in a way that covered the fresh scars on his neck and made him appear as one of the children. “When I woke, I found myself wondering why. I tried to remember, and while I can’t focus on a single time, I think it started when I discovered what I was capable of.” He could see she didn’t want to guess. He made a pulling motion with one hand and let out a humorless laugh. “When you’ve pulled another, you don’t want to be pulled back.”

She shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe the Faey Mother never told me of this power,” she said. “She taught me to heal—to join my energy to those afflicted and help relieve them. I always wondered why it drained me so. I think I’m beginning to see why.”

Sen watched her, his expression unreadable. “Would that I had spent my time in the pursuit of healing,” he said. “Would that I had not discovered the darker ways the Kin of Faeyr could turn.”

He was tired and he seemed to say it without forethought, but it called up too many questions at once. Iyana settled on a pair. “You cannot heal?” she asked. “And that word: I’ve never heard it said that way.”

He smirked. “The Valley has a name, Iyana,” he said. He did not seem to mean it in a harsh way. “At least, it did, long ago. Long before any kind that made us got there. I think, even by the standards we’ve seen of the Landkist we know—the Embers, the Rockbled, even the man this Sage calls his knight—that Valley has ever been the strangest. According to some of the Faey—elders among the old—they were the first of the World’s Landkist. The rest are just shadows on the wall … and the Embers bright lights that carve them up.”

Sen had not answered the first question, but Iyana let it pass.

“I don’t understand this power,” she said, turning her hands over as if looking might reveal answers. “But for the first time, I think I see how it’s all connected.” She looked up at him, expecting to see that sure, condescending look she had come to expect. Instead, he merely listened.

“The power we have,” she said, hesitant but growing surer as she went, “it’s not the power to heal or the power to kill, though it can be. Maybe it’s what the elders among the old have known all along, but I think, Sen, that these eyes see life itself in a way others cannot. I think these hands,” she took his in her own; they were cold and damp and she tried to warm them. “I think they can push it and pull it, cut it short, help it along. Just as the Embers wield the flame and the Rockbled the earth—and just as Ceth wields his own presence, his weight, like the sharpest and strongest hammer I’ve ever seen—so do we wield the power over the light most never see, even if they know it’s there.”

Sen was nodding along. He had adopted something close to that wild, intense look he had worn in the cave to the east, when he had drained that very light from a desert flower. There was a want coming off him even now that disappointed her even as it horrified her. Only now, she could see the war he fought against it. The war he had been fighting for as long as he had discovered his power. It was a look that reminded her of Kole.

There are many kinds of fire, Ninyeva had said to her once. And no matter its color, fire burns.

“I always felt drained after healing at the Lake,” she said. “Now, I think I finally understand why. It wasn’t that I was pulling some power from another place to knit cuts and soothe burns. I was pouring myself in. I think it’s why I felt sick after holding the Pale Men at bay. There is a joining—of wills, maybe.” She paused. “I never used to see the tethers. Not really. Not until I first searched out my sister in the Deep Lands.”

Iyana was speaking more to herself than Sen, but still he listened, taking in everything he could.

“You know,” he said, “I’m not sure we all see it in the same way.”

She gave him a questioning look.

“Tethers is a word,” he said, “but I’ve always thought of it like a cloak, or a shroud.” He laughed, and this one sounded more genuine than the one before. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter, if it comes to the same. Still, I wonder if we each see that inner light in a different way. I wonder how Mother Ninyeva saw it, and whether she got her hands wrapped up in it like we have.”

Iyana nodded as if it all made sense. She remembered Ninyeva walking toward the heart of a living storm, and thought of how her eyes had glowed brighter than the most blinding flashes of blue-white within it. Did she pull on a tether or strike a thread? It seemed trivial, that a being such as the White Crest would have a puppet’s string like all the rest. And she thought of the old man who was the Red Waste and the tendrils that had come from him in sixes.

“Will is the word,” Sen said. “You said it before, and I think you’re right. At least, I think you’ve a piece of it. After all, what is life if not will and all the things it moves and sets to crash together?”

Iyana heard raised voices as people passed by the doorway, children trailing in their wake. It had the familiar and comfortable sounds of an argument between mother and child. The shaft of light in the room’s center had dimmed somewhat, the sun moving in its slow arc heedless of those below.

“No matter how you did it, or why,” Iyana said without turning back, “you did a good thing, Sen. Children are alive because of you.”

He didn’t answer but stood, slow and halting. She did as well.

“The rest are moving with purpose,” he said, nodding toward the doorway. “Will you truly join them on the road to the west?”

A flash of bloody purple against the horizon. Drums beating in a way that reminded her of the Deep Lands. Mountains of red light and black flames that burned the sand and turned it to glass.

“I haven’t come here to hide from what we might find,” Iyana said. She didn’t mean it as an accusation and Sen’s slow smile showed he knew it.

“And where Captain Caru polishes that silver blade to a mirror sheen and Creyath stokes his fire, what will you do before the morrow?”

The way he asked it was leading. Iyana quirked a brow at him.

“They mean to strike for the Midnight Dunes,” he said. “But you and I both know who the real enemy is. The old man should. I wonder why he won’t make for them. We’ve all heard the songs. We all know who drives the Bloody Screamers and the Pale Men alike.” She made as if to speak but had no answer, unsure what he was driving at. “You can find them, Iyana. The Witches of the Sands. The Blood Seers. You may not think it, but deep down, we both know you’re stronger than me in all the ways that count. You can hold where I can only break, and I was a fool for thinking otherwise. The tethers, shrouds—whatever you want to call them—they break in my grasp. You can find them and I—”

“Can slay them?” she asked, her voice taking on an edge. Sen’s eyes glinted dangerously, then settled.

“Or you can hold them,” he said. “Stop them from whatever it is they’re planning.”

“What do you fear that is?” she asked, unable to keep the suspicion from showing. She was quickly remembering the strange man who had been so alluring to the south, where the Valley had spilled them out into the black plains before Center. And then, how that one had slipped away in short order, revealing something twisted. Something bitter as the dry and sour plants of the desert they found themselves in.

“You see the way the old man speaks,” Sen said. He shook his head in exasperation and Iyana tried to drop the tension from her shoulders. It seemed to calm him. “He knows this is nothing but a fool’s quest, making for the Dunes and what he’s kept there with those songs seeping out of the crows’ mouths.”

Iyana thought of Rusul and her sisters. The comparison was unintentional, but no less apt because of it. Pevah had said the Blood Seers kept to the old ways that the Crows of Eastlake claimed to. Had their forebears never left with the King of Ember and his great caravan a century ago, perhaps they would now be among them—bitter things sowing nothing but pain with their fermented hate.

“We have to trust in them,” Iyana said. “The folk we’re among, and the one who leads them.” She hesitated and he nearly seized on it, but something in her face or tone stayed him. “We are too few.”

“If what he says is true,” Sen said, though his voice had dropped much of its vigor, “about what he harbors beneath those mountains of earth, an army wouldn’t be enough.”

“No,” Iyana said. She said it with a smile. “An army of men and women, perhaps—and maybe even the Landkist among us, ourselves included. But we have a Sage, and the very same who trapped him. What sort of a hunter traps something he can’t later kill?”

“The kind who knows his limits,” Sen said, steady. Iyana shrugged it off and sighed. Sen opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.

“You should take rest, Sen,” she said, meeting his eyes. He frowned at first and then softened at the real concern he saw there. “I mean it.”

“What will you do?” he asked.

“Walk,” she said. “Think. Walk and think, and in tunnels unburdened by the smell. I’ve nothing to polish or sharpen, and sleep won’t find me willing. Not now.” She turned toward the doorway and heard Sen slide back down against the far wall.

In truth, the smell wasn’t so bad out in the hall. The scent of ozone and ash that seemed to seep into the airy caverns from the bedrock was doing its work, and the blistered hands among the desert dwellers and those of the Valley whose blades were ready had cleared away everything but the memory of gore.

Still, it was all too close for her liking. It seemed few among them were willing to climb the stairs or make for the surface and sun, the combination of the heat of the day and the fear of not being present for another assault infecting them all. She passed those who sat or rested in their alcoves and against their pillars, those who moved from task to task looking to make their bodies as busy as their frantic minds. But it was the parents and the children who trailed them, silent or chattering, crying or laughing, that took her heart and alternated between warming it and breaking it.

They were being dressed for travel, she saw, their threadbare clothes being replaced with thicker stuff made for wear. When Iyana and the others returned from the west—if they returned—they would find this place empty. She supposed it made sense. Now that their hideout was known by the enemy, it was no longer safe to linger. And judging by the swiftness with which the nomads bent to the task of preparing to leave, she could see that they had named them aptly. This was no more a home to them than it was to Iyana and the Valleyfolk. The desert was their home as the ocean was to the beasts that dwelled there, its boundaries vast and unchecked.

She passed Talmir as he spoke with Jes, the two going over the best formation for the march while Mial and Creyath watched them. She passed by Ket and looked away from him hurriedly as he smiled. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, just that she wanted to pass what time she had left before whatever was to come in solitude—or as close to it as she could find.

The sloped black shore of the lake, normally full of the sounds of splashing between the lapping, of laughter between the chatter of the nesting birds above, was now mournfully quiet. She thought of going up and felt a cool tickle on the bare skin of her arms, her sleeved rolled high and crusted with the flowing grains of the sands above and the damp of the places below.

As she approached the shoreline, its distant pillar dimmed in the daylight in a way she still found strange, she felt a stab of panic. What if the Pale Men waited in the shadows along the banks and eddies? What if the painted men hung in shadowed alcoves, waiting for another chance to strike?

She shook the thoughts and left her shoes behind, stepping into the water that was warmer than the air above, but no less refreshing because of it. She skirted the eastern edge of the cavern, sinking up to her knees and stepping carefully over the smoothed shelves as the tide receded inch by grudging inch. Her thoughts did not race. She had always been good at calming them, like Linn and unlike Kole. She dipped into a break in the black glass wall and only recognized it as a familiar way when she was well onto the path.

Rounded mounds of dried stone were wetted with her passing and shallow pools greeted her at steady intervals. The filtered light of the late afternoon was the color of yellow-white dust, and it came in through bands and shimmering tongues to light her way. When she climbed a mound that was higher up than the rest, she recognized it as the place she had followed the children a day or two before—time was lost in this place as often as Pevah found it and turned it into something to be used.

Iyana paused there and let loose a sigh she feared might break her. She was away from the others, nothing but the suggestions of their distant voices drowned out by the angled veins of the world below the desert. Even the sounds of striking and hammering didn’t reach her here, and no birds nested this far in—this far from the skies.

The bend was rounded up ahead, and it was dark. Iyana took a steadying breath and slid down the opposite side of the smooth rise on her backside. She took the bend with some speed, forging through her hesitance until she left that behind as well. She followed the light her eyes gave off and the walls reflected like the eyes of some primordial that slithered behind them and slipped beneath the sloping floor.

She was at first surprised by the presence, but she did not feel afraid, and she felt the smile that spread across her face before she had given thought to grow it. She dipped into the sight of the Between, though she knew she would not see the black and red tendrils she had the time before. The way was bare, but it thrummed fainter than the beating heart of an infant—fainter than moth’s wings over the water.

The light of the pillar was behind her now, so she navigated by feel, and soon her hand lost purchase as the close tunnel gave way to an open room whose sides fell away like the buried urn of some long-ago god; perhaps the Mother, whom she did not know and might not believe in, though she had seen one of her many hearts and marveled at it as she never had an Ember.

“Hello, there,” she said, stepping down onto a floor that had been leached of its damp.

She stood before the Everwood tree, and now that she was alone, she knew with certainty that she was not. Not fully. Before, she had given it up as some effect of the Sage and his strange power. Now, she knew it had been the work of the tree itself. It was not sentience she sensed, nor even emotion. She swayed on the edges of the Between, and in so doing, she should have felt intent or its cousin emotions radiating, reaching and attempting to grasp, to be felt and perhaps understood.

“How old are you, I wonder?” she asked, the question coming somewhat unbidden to her mind as she stepped over its roots that were like snakes frozen in time. Where before she had felt some small trepidation, now there was only awe. Now, it was not intent she felt. Not emotion.

It was awareness, however small and however subtle. It was not a fleeting thing like a sting at the end of a needle or the bite in a frosty wind. This was a slow thing, considered and enveloping. Iyana could not have ignored it even had she the will to, and while it did not bend or sway any which way, she felt warm in its presence like she hadn’t before in the brooding presence of the old man—or wizard—who had knelt here.

“What did you want of me?” she asked, walking a slow circle around the base of the trunk. She ran her fingers along its black skin and thought it wasn’t much different from Creyath’s. It was warm like blood and smooth as oil, though it left no stain nor moisture upon her skin. She stepped over its roots and up onto its raised tangles as it gathered up the rocks and strewn boulders and pulled them close like a drake of myth over its treasures.

It was a lonely place, but not without beauty, and Iyana felt the presence of many. It felt like memory, only not so distant, and not covered by the aching that accompanies regret or human pains best left among the bones that dreamed them up.

There was a thicker root with a rounded edge that fit her nicely, so she sat and gazed up into the branches. She thought she saw stars hanging in a black curtain and had to blink to know they were not there. She sighed, and felt a bending in the atmosphere as she did.

A sense of vertigo hit her as she looked back toward the doorway. Rather than sickness, it felt like an embrace, and rather than pull away from it, Iyana closed her eyes and followed it.

She had none of the mashings she had brought with her. Most had soured along the way or dried out completely, as if the plants of the Valley rejected the arid air of this place. She had no black roots with orange flesh nor purple tea with stinging mist. She had no cloth to wet and drape over her eyes, and so she sat and rocked, swaying to the sound of a humming she did not recognize as her own voice until she was well onto pathways she had traveled before, and yet never so far from home.

The Between welcomed her like an old friend. She felt a swelling of something like sorrow before she knew it to be an apology that this other place—this place within and without—accepted gladly and without judgment. She thought of Mother Ninyeva and how she had always equated this place to an ocean unbound by the constraints of the physical, or a realm above the clouds that even falcons could not breach with their razor wings.

She felt the currents more than saw them as she had in the Valley. There, she could see the lands below stretching out to the far horizon, where the black crags that held her sister prisoner rose against a backlit sky. Now, it was as if she swam through molten rock suddenly quickened and brought to life, and she wondered absently how she had not known the glass walls and eddies in the stone to be the marks of a river, one that split and stretched its inky fingers and warm embrace throughout the west, and even as far as Center.

Iyana swam or flew and hummed herself along. She thought of turning back once or twice, but something spurred her on. It sounded a little like her own voice tinged with what could only be the Faey Mother—the voice of the Valley itself as far as she was concerned.

And then there was another sound.

It started as a buzzing, like a hive of bees brought to anger. They touched her like feelers and withdrew with silent hissing, and she followed, her intent sharpening on the iron center she had always held and rarely used as her sister had. She forged ahead, but the buzzing grew into a steady drone. It sounded like the rumbling chest of a god or a dark giant, and then the one voice broke into many, the drone into the deep and haunting melody of a song her blood danced to back in its lonely cave with the Everwood tree even as her psyche recoiled and her spirit froze.

She breached the surface of black rock and froze. There, seated around a low-burning fire, were a dozen that sang with the voices of many more. There were old and young in equal measure, with only a few in between, and though their eyes were closed, Iyana knew they saw things.

The song took on a familiar tone that filled her with dread, soon replaced with anger as her thoughts flashed to the Pale Men and their piling bodies, and those precious few they had buried beneath their melted flesh and black talons. Still, this song was different, and despite never hearing it before, Iyana felt it as familiar. It was like a song from the depths of time, one called up from the desert days before the Emberfolk had gone south with the brightest star this land had ever known. It was a thing twisted and rotted. She could see its stench and wondered how the crones and shrieking charlatans around the red coals could not.

They were in a cave, and Iyana treaded long enough to be sure she was unnoticed before she drifted around them, stalking like something hunting. The cave was not tall, but stretched far into the reaches of the earth. She heard more than felt the wind at her back, and as she turned in that direction, what breath she might have held was lost to the sight before her.

The cave mouth opened onto a land of rolling sands. It amazed her how same the desert could be and yet how different it could appear depending on the direction of one’s gaze. In this land, which she somehow knew as north, there were no black shelves or gray slabs breaking any one horizon. Instead, there was only sand, and of a softer bent than that she swayed beneath with the black bark and gnarled trunk. Here, the sand fell in cascades that could be called rivers and streams without blinking. The desert foxes that had once slid down the slopes—along with dark-skinned children free of sashes—no longer did. Nothing moved, and the sky hung blue-black over it all.

And there, far enough to the south to appear a trick of gods or men, were the Midnight Dunes. She knew them and she knew the fear of what was beneath them as a child knows the fear of a snake or spider. They were glittering jewels that drank light and shed it, and the lands all around them were flat as any plains she had traversed to the east, though she knew the sand that lay atop was less than powder.

As old as the land before her was, this cave was older, and it was filled with the memory of fire and the one who had taken it for himself. She saw shadows playing across the slopes—shadows in the shape of men and foxes. And she saw darker shapes that clashed with them over the line of dunes that stood as a ward to the south and east and all the dangers both held.

Iyana caught a whiff of burning metal she recognized as blood, and before she could turn her wandering eye back to the sloped pit and its still crones, she heard voices that curdled her own blood like milk.

They didn’t speak in a tongue she knew, but still she knew what the words meant, as if they had set hooks and barbs and climbed into her understanding like pests and draining insects.

“You are a long way from where you are,” one of them said, and in another voice that could have been the same, “you are a long way from home.”

Iyana did not answer. She felt her fear as a steel cage, and hated that she could not break the bonds her mind held her in.

“You are here,” the third voice said that was the same as the first, and another answered, “you will be here forever. You will stay. You are ours.”

No.

Iyana turned now and showed them what will she had managed to bring along. As it turned out, it was bright and green and blinding, and the crones that stared with blood-red eyes and wicked grins with too-sharp teeth fell back as if scorched by a cleansing fire. They shrieked and spat and clawed the stone beneath their curled feet, and Iyana felt hate well up in the place of fear.

“I am here,” Iyana said, or thought. “I am among you and soon will be. You will die, and nothing will be left of you. Not even a memory.”

It was like a torch to dry tinder. Iyana expected them to fall away, perhaps to die, but they paused in their thrashing as if frozen in Pevah’s stolen time. They were contorted, and now they contorted back like sick dolls animated by something bonded. There was an elder among them, and she was steady where the rest were frantic.

“You are a long way from home,” she said, and Iyana focused on her, knowing it as a mistake before she did. The old witch sat on the farthest edge of the fire, her black eyes taken with something deeper than night. She was old, Iyana knew. Oldest she had seen. Older than Mother Ninyeva, calling up her face and presence but with a darker bent and a poison disposition.

She opened her mouth wider than should have been possible and Iyana could not help herself crying out. She felt like a tadpole in a jar with a pulled stopper, the current swirling around her and threatening to drag her down into crushing depths. There was laughter, and the presence of those below, the painted warriors preparing beside their burning fires for the morrow’s battle, and the Pale Men in their dark cloisters whimpering and screaming with the sorrow they could not place and the anger they could not aim.

Iyana tried to fall back, to remember herself and where she was. But she could not, and knew she would die, here, or else be broken on winds whose consequences she couldn’t begin to guess. Would her body remain while her mind splintered? Would another take on the form she had left behind?

And then firm hands took her by the arms and pulled her back. There was a rushing as the black river of rock took her back and dragged her down and across leagues into its sheltering depths.

She screamed when she hit herself and fell, feeling cloth and smelling the must of one she knew but did not call friend.

“You’re okay,” the voice said, steady and soothing. “You’re okay. They cannot find you here. They cannot come.”

Iyana remembered to breathe, and felt it as a pain when she did. She sat up and opened her true eyes, the dark room and black branches filling the expanse and the kind, lined face forming before her.

“Pevah,” she breathed, and he released her. She knew the hands that had pulled her back were not his. Knew it by feel and knew it by the concern evident on his face, as if he had feared her permanent departure.

There was another presence in the room, and Iyana took it as a threat until her heart slowed its furious beating. She looked up, past Pevah’s tired face and into the twisted tangle of branches above him.

Pevah smiled and Iyana stood, her body rebelling against its stiffness. She turned toward him and the tree he leaned against and gave both a look of wonder tinged with disbelief. The Sage nodded, all the answer she required, even if her face said otherwise.

“I won’t pretend to understand it,” he said, looking up at the low-hanging tendrils that were like shadow or ink frozen in the time the Sage bent and pulled. “Some say Everwood was here before the World was.” His smile was rueful, sad, and it made him look human to her. For now, she did not have to work to forget the feral visage and pointed teeth he’d displayed on the shore.

“How could that be?” Iyana asked, frowning.

“It could not,” Pevah said. He only switched his considered gaze to her slowly, as if reluctant to pull away from the bark. “And yet, how many things are unknown, even to those who once claimed to know it all?”

Iyana felt suddenly faint. The light that found its way in through the black rock now snuck and crept more than spilled. She sat with a heavy thud and rubbed at her temples. When she opened her eyes, Pevah regarded her with concern.

“I saw them,” she said, her voice flat. What could she say that this man—this creature—did not already know of foes that had troubled him for so long?

“Yes,” he said.

“Is that why you came here? To save me? Pull me back?”

“I’ve no power like that,” he said plainly, and Iyana found herself glancing once more at the shadow that hung behind him. She tried to send it feelings of gratitude. It did not feel as strange as she thought it might.

“Do you want to know?” she asked. “What I saw?”

“A cave,” he said. “Fire and blood in equal measure, the latter smelling stronger than the former. Old crones with vicious faces, like vultures or twisted hounds. Eyes darker than any of the colors they might hold, and skin gnarled even in youth, callused by dark work.”

“They were near the Midnight Dunes,” Iyana said. That sparked something.

“How near?”

“Near enough that I could see them.” She shrugged. “It seemed night, there, though it couldn’t have been.” His look showed her nothing. “They glowed like coals, and the land all around them was flat for leagues, especially to the west.”

Pevah sighed. “No matter,” he said. “However close, they are still too far to chance.”

Iyana opened her mouth to speak but took a steadying breath. She had to remind herself that this was a land she did not understand, its ways and its people even less than the shifts of sand, crescents and black shelves.

“They are preparing for something,” she said, and before he could respond, “something like ending. You know. You said yourself they had never before attacked you so brazenly.”

Pevah did not argue the truth of her words. “We cannot separate,” he said. “There are too few of us already. And whatever the witches are planning, the point is at those dunes, and at those dunes is where we’re best served to be to stop it.”

“What if they don’t give you a choice?” Iyana asked.

“I expect they won’t.”

The dispassion in his tone seemed too intentional, too steady to be true. Iyana thought of looking through it, testing it. Her eyes even began to glow absent true intent, but a quirk of the Sage’s brow told her not to push, no matter how badly she wanted. She quelled that other fire and settled, trying to let the tension diffuse as it would.

“You saw something else,” he said, his brows rising in encouragement. “What was it?”

“Heard, more like,” she said. “Though there were glimpses.” She shook her head as if clearing cobwebs. The haze of unreality stuck, and with none of Ninyeva’s mixtures ready to shock her back, it was taking time to adjust.

“The warriors,” she said. “The painted ones. The Bloody Screamers. They were larger than those we’ve seen. Stronger. More cruel. They were angry. They’re ready for whatever’s coming.”

Pevah snorted as if he had never heard anything more foolish.

“And,” Iyana started, having to stop to suppress the shudder that started up the base of her spine, “there were the others. I only heard them screaming, moaning.”

“How many?” Pevah said, his voice and face showing concern. “How many could they have?”

“Many,” Iyana said, feeling the cold tickle of creeping dread.

Pevah looked anywhere but at her as he processed the news. He took her words as law, unquestioned. It was strange for one so wise to listen to her so completely when her powers were something he only knew from afar.

“What are they?” she asked, afraid of the answer. “Who were they?”

“That, I can only guess at,” he said. “They are something new. The latest perverted trick from the witches of this land, albeit one that has taken some time to perfect, if you can attribute the word to such horrors.” He spat. “My guess? They are the young of the very men and women we’ve been fighting for a generation—or would have been.”

“Their scars,” Iyana said. “They’re bites.”

Pevah nodded. “Bloody teeth are made,” he said, showing her his own, which were white enough to appear quartz.

“Water doesn’t come easy or often to this place,” he said. “Lakes like this one aren’t common, and most can’t be drunk. Too much of what’s below bubbling up into them. Old death buried deep and forgotten until the Mother sends it back.”

The implications were enough to make Iyana feel even sicker than she already did, though she perhaps should have guessed as much.

“They use the Pale Men as blood skins?” she said, aghast.

Pevah shrugged. “They choose their domains in the driest parts of the desert, to the west and north. Farthest from us and closest to the Midnight Dunes.”

“When did they first begin to glow?”

“Eighteen years,” he said without hesitation. “And as many days.”

Iyana couldn’t say for certain, but it sounded close to the time when the Dark Kind had first made for the walls in force in the southern Valley, when the greatest rift they had yet known opened in the passes that had been quiet for so long. She knew because it was a time only slightly younger than she was. She knew because it was near the time her parents had died along with so many others.

“I’d guess there’s plenty more to it than the water that makes them up,” Pevah said. “After all, they’re sorry creatures, misshapen and deranged. They’re men only so far as their births, and even there I can’t be sure.”

Iyana could only shake her head. It was evil unlike anything she had ever known. Even the stories of the desert days had been made up of the same dark, faceless evil as those in the Valley. This was evil of a different sort. Dark and thorough and full of hate rather than the cold and savage dispassion she and all in the Valley had come to know.

“Whatever their original mistake,” Pevah said, his voice going softer, “they cannot be blamed now. I know,” he said to her look, “I know. But cruelty is taught, Iyana Ve’Ran, and not just from mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. The only thing more dangerous than seeking a source of power is finding it, and after T’Alon Rane departed on my advice, those who’d held themselves apart from the Emberfolk went digging. Not with hands and hoes, but with hearts and minds. It is so easy—you would not believe—to feel you are the finder when you are, in fact, the found.”

“The Night Lord,” she said in half a whisper. “They found him.”

“Or he them,” Pevah said. He tossed a black pebble, which clattered onto the moist stone before stilling in a patch of moss at his feet. “The World Apart moves with one voice. Little as I might know of it, I know that much. It is a hive. A swarm. It is legion, and it has many secrets in its depths. None of them worth knowing. None of them free.” He paused and swallowed, his eyes glazing with what could only be memory and whatever regret went with it. “I’ve seen it before, and in those much stronger than the would-be witches of the northern sands. Those who should’ve been able to resist the pull and its temptation.”

Iyana couldn’t help but note how he held himself apart from those of whom he spoke—the other Sages, she guessed. The Eastern Dark and his ilk. It was so easy to cast blame on him and the rest. And why not? Were they not to blame, and for as many ills from any corner of the World as one was wont to bring up?

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’re 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.”

He scanned the rest of them, and Talmir thought his eyes already moved more quickly than they had before, a bit of the feral form he had seen down below coming back to the surface. It was not a threat, but a promise of what he brought with him.

Ceth regarded Pevah with a face of hardened stone, but he otherwise made no further argument.

“How do they plan to do it?” Karin asked. “How do they plan to wake it?”

“Blood magic,” Pevah said with a shrug—an odd reaction to Talmir. “A thing I used to doubt. No longer. If they’re moving with this much purpose and trying to get us to do the same, doubting them will avail us little.”

The Sage made as if to turn again, but he paused and lingered on Karin.

“You are named ‘Runner’,” he said and Karin nodded once. “We have a few of those.” The Sage tossed his head to the west, and they followed. There, Talmir saw the figures he hadn’t noticed before, the red foxes still and silent as shadows among the dips and swaths of the dark sands. “It is a comfort to have you among them.” He smiled and Karin seemed to relax slightly. “These children of the desert have lost the art, I’m afraid. There is much more to running than moving fast.”

If any of his people took offense at the words, they didn’t show it.

“Sad to say,” Karin responded, “but there are few of us left in the Valley as well.”

“None, aside from you,” Mial said gruffly and Karin dipped a modest bow. It was true that he had taken Mial and Jes under his wing since departing the Valley—he had stressed the import of scouts to Talmir before joining him on his wayward road—but neither of them had taken on the title in anything more than name.

“May you be our shadow,” Pevah said. Karin crinkled his brow, but his look was something like memory—of recognition. “May they be yours.” He nodded toward the desert sentinels among their mounds and piles, and Talmir had to blink lest he imagine them nodding back.

There was nothing left to be done but to do a thing, and so they departed. Pevah stepped down onto the narrow river bend, and in place of a considered gait he bent into a lope. The desert foxes hopped and bounced in a strange mania, running toward the group before splitting off and heading for the west. Ceth leapt forward, sailing farther than he should have and letting the light breeze carry him.

And the rest followed, the red-sashes and the gray spilling forth and Talmir and his soldiers following. None tried to keep pace with the northern Landkist who had already outstripped the Sage in front; none save for Karin Reyna, who skimmed the surface of the sand in a way that belied his weight and seemed to suggest it as nothing more than illusion. He ranged north as often as west, and just when Talmir thought he saw him coming up on his right, he would note him on his left and wonder how he had cut paths that intersected their own without breaking stride or even much in the way of sweat.

Their initial energy gave way to a pace Talmir felt they could maintain for some time—a jog that bordered a run without crossing over. He glanced toward Iyana and saw that she had rolled up her pant legs in preparation. Her white bangs had been brushed back from her brow and now stuck against her temples, trailing like bright moonlit streamers behind her ears. Ket ran beside her, close enough to protect without coddling, and behind them the red-sashes kept a healthy distance as they constantly scanned any sloped horizon the First Runner or his streaming foxes might mix.

There was nothing more to be said, and so they said nothing—the men and women, at least. But for the desert foxes there was much to be discussed. The foxes raised their songs, and though Talmir had heard the haunting melodies since first crossing the cracked plains to the east, now they took on a new feeling that was like urgency. It quickened his heart, and his legs’ pace. It rang from the scabbard and its silver blade that bounced against his thigh. And it rang in his ears and vibrated within the confines of his skull, forming granules of resolve that had him thinking of those of the earth beneath his boots.

It felt as if they ran in a dream, following a hooded figure who no longer pretended to be a man. Pevah was gone for the moment, and in the relative silence and anonymity the desert night afforded him, his movements took on the strange and halting grace of something else—something that had earned the name he tried so hard to leave behind, along with whatever else it carried.

None looked back toward the black shelves they left behind, nor the children who sheltered within them. They did not look to one another except to check that all were keeping up—their human pack within the loose and sure embrace of the desert foxes. Three dozen sets of eyes were ahead, and the night sky grew to look more like poison day the farther they roamed.

Soon, the black shelves gave way to thorny spurs, and the dunes ebbed and flowed like lazy and undulating waves. As they put more swells behind them than he could count, the waves grew shorter and the swaths between them shallower—more dips than canyons.

An hour passed and then two, and soon enough the sounds of breath alerted each as to the position of the others now that night had descended in full. Even the ruddy brightness of the west seemed to paint everything else in shadow, the figures ahead recalling the lurching shapes of the Dark Kind. The loose lines they had first formed upon descending onto the sands had spread and broken apart, and Talmir felt the first pangs of worry strike him.

Apparently, his feeling was shared, as the next rise was dotted with waiting figures, Pevah and Ceth first among them.

Talmir slowed his trot to a trudge as he reached the top, and as he looked behind him, he was shocked to see how far the others were spread. He picked out Iyana’s white hair and saw that only Ket remained close to her. Jes hung back with the red-sashes, who had spread far enough apart that he could not make them all out.

Talmir felt a thrumming in his legs that had his thoughts turning into the reaches of memory. An image of Hearth’s muddy training yards came up unbidden, and he could almost hear the sharp and cutting voice of First Keeper Vennil Cross battering him and driving him on like no wind or lashing rain ever could.

“Your people,” Pevah said, “they need rest?” His voice was calm and steady as Talmir’s soldiers turned in and made their aching way toward the summit—seemingly the last of its kind for leagues all around.

Talmir took stock of them. His soldiers looked away as often as they met his eyes, which told him all it needed to. He saw another glint of moonlight and recognized it as Sen coming up behind Mial. The Faeykin looked no paler than usual, which told him nothing. As for the desert folk, they seemed none the worse for wear, and though they did not share disparaging looks regarding the delay, Talmir could feel their attention on the west. It was like a need, throbbing and impossible to ignore.

He met Creyath’s eyes as the Ember found his way back to them. He had drifted to the north, and in his tracks came Karin, hair tied back in a tail, sweat glistening like the obsidian caverns they had left behind.

“How far?” he asked.

Pevah had already turned back toward the west, while Ceth’s eyes had never left the place.

“Not so very,” Pevah said. His voice was strained, though Talmir knew it was not fatigue. There was something in it that was not quite anger, though it carried threat. Was it fear?

Now that he looked—really looked—Talmir could feel it. There was a buzz in the air that seemed to set the stars in their black curtain to shake and blur—and it was black now, with none of the blue or healthy lavender they had spied from the east. There was an intent to it, a power Talmir could not recognize even if some part of him found it familiar.

And if that did not unsettle him enough, Creyath’s expression would have. The Second Keeper of Hearth wore a mask that did not reach his eyes, which flickered like guttering candles each time he followed the Sage’s line of sight. Talmir watched him in his periphery and noted the way the Ember looked to all around him, meeting gazes and sharing those confident, white smiles rather than risk a look toward the place they were heading—the place he could reach in half the time if he had the thought to.

Talmir opened his mouth to speak but Pevah spoke first.

“Rest will do us well,” he said, and Talmir did not take it as the insult some might. The Sage meant it, and he meant it for his own as well as for the Valleyfolk.

“You are sure?” Talmir asked as Karin tossed him an uncertain look.

“There is too much in it,” Pevah said, waving a hand. His sleeve billowed and revealed hands that ended in something close to the tapered black claws Talmir had witnessed in the caverns. “We must be steady.” He turned and nodded toward a few of his own. They took the meaning and split off from the main group, heading out to set their walking borders.

Talmir sighed and nodded. “Make camp, and make it a close one.” They had brought nothing but bedrolls and what weapons they tucked within them, and Talmir heard the canvases roll out over the sand with a pleasant rasp, the metal of blade and pommel scraping the sand as his soldiers settled down to catch what sleep they could.

Talmir stood atop the rise with Pevah and his champion, saying nothing. Creyath’s heat wafted among them like a sweltering breeze while Iyana stepped up between them, her green eyes putting out the only thing close to true light in a land grown strangely hazy.

“Will it be wise to travel these lands by daylight?” Karin said, and Talmir noted his worry as the First Runner swept the horizon. There were no spurs nor shelves to shelter them, and the crags to the north seemed like pitted things, reminding him of the clay mounds that had housed a colony of spitting sand drakes.

Pevah laughed, a humorless sound that had Ceth wincing.

“Look behind you, First Runner,” he said. Karin did, and Talmir followed him. They looked out over the bedrolls and beyond the nomads who stood at the distant edges of their camp with sashes that hung still in a land that had lost its breath.

At first, Talmir did not see anything that might cause untoward alarm. Then his mind filled in the details his eyes were missing. They had run some time, but the black spurs and gray slabs should not have been so far east as to be lost from sight. They were. There was nothing, near as Talmir could tell—at least, nothing but the strange flatness of a land they had run down as often as up throughout the night.

“I don’t—”

“We are west,” Pevah said by way of explanation. “Things are different here, among the Midnight Dunes. Things are … stopped.” His head tilted strangely as he said it, and Talmir felt suddenly dizzy.

He took a step forward—though he could not have said why—and would have gone down in a dangerous slide had Iyana not grabbed him by the crook of the elbow and yanked him back. Ceth turned and then stepped before him.

“This land has tricks,” he said. “It compels you to do things. Things that wouldn’t see you last the night.”

“It is damned?” Creyath said, his voice containing a reedy note Talmir had never heard in it before.

“Broken, more like,” Pevah said. “Ceth is partly right. There are tricks about, though they are not of the land but of the one who rests beneath it.” He nodded toward the horizon and Talmir squinted against the bloody glow that washed the stars out that way. “Take what rest you will, Captain Talmir.” The Sage turned toward them and smiled, though it was unsightly, now, his teeth having elongated, eyes filled with as much black as clay. He did not look at Iyana, as if ashamed to do so. “Do not worry on the coming of the dawn. It will not greet these lands so long as I live. I have broken its time and its way. It is a great sin. It is one I hold and one I would make again to keep what I’ve kept.”

The sky pulsed behind him like a portent, or a silent storm, the blood draining to be replaced by a shocking purple that seemed to swell like an exhalation. Talmir felt himself timing his own breath with it.

“What have you done here?” Iyana asked, her voice shaking.

Pevah did not look at her but turned back toward the west.

“Take rest,” he said. “It will not come again except against your will. And death is not always restful. I will try to keep you from that dark slumber. But you must listen to me in lands like these just as my children do. Even Ceth.”

Talmir glanced at the northern Landkist, but the tall man remained motionless as his eyes, which took in the poisoned sky and imagined what lay beneath it.

“Make sure the way is clear,” Pevah said. He spoke to Ceth, and the man stepped forward, hovering in the air for a moment before dropping to the flatter lands below.

“There is a beauty to them,” Pevah added as Talmir stepped back toward the others. “The Dunes are tall as small mountains, the land about them sunken and soft, like snow.”

“I wish I could say I looked forward to the sight,” Talmir said.

He turned and made his own camp within the sparse one. As he lay down, he chose to look up rather than grace any false horizon in this strange land with his sight. Up, where the stars still shone in a curtain unaffected by the illusion of the east and whatever wall they had passed beyond, and not yet poisoned by whatever corruption the Sage had sown in the west.

Iyana felt the strangeness settle before they had reached the soft ridge. The lands all around seemed bathed in a lavender shadow that had nothing to do with the absence of the sun or the presence of the moon and stars. Even they seemed somehow more distant than they had before, the light emitting a soft iridescence in place of the blue-white beams she had grown accustomed to in the caverns beneath the sand.

She settled and found that the songs of the desert foxes who followed them relaxed her where before they had made her tense. She tried to spot them, but they were far out on the edges, keeping as far from the ridge Ceth had cleared as they could.

She hadn’t meant to, but Iyana saw the tethers of all around her as fainter forms of their usual bright. She had not called to the Between, but it was here, closer than it might have been otherwise. And there was something else between it and within it, like a dark cousin dragging and twisting that other realm she was beginning to know as a part of her. It felt like an infection, and Iyana had no doubt where it was coming from.

She blinked and rubbed at her temples, but still the tethers remained. They glowed brightest among the Landkist—Creyath and Sen chief among them—but all in the two companies that had become one trailed a thread that thrummed with expectation, anticipation—even dread.

Iyana laid down to rest but did not find it easily. She twisted to see Pevah standing alongside Captain Talmir and Karin, their gazes fixed on the lowered shelf and the great mountains of sand that hung beyond the haze.

After a time that felt longer to her than it truly was, sleep found her and embraced her like a long-lost friend. Before she followed those roads to their pleasant endings, she heard the remnants of a familiar purple song. As it bent and tumbled on airs the others could not hear—excepting Sen, perhaps—she felt it go red deep enough to appear as blood, old and crusted.

Time was changed, here. She knew it even in the depths of dreaming—discovered it there, in a way. Tales and flights of fancy that should have wheeled by like comets before waking came clear and slow, unfolding with a patience that comforted before raising alarm. Iyana found herself trying to navigate through a net that seemed to build, one tale atop the next, and all of them with her at the unyielding center.

She saw Karin ranging, catching glimpses of the great mounds to the west. She saw Ceth creeping in the basin, searching for caves and hollows from which ambush might arise. She saw Pevah in his true form; but while his black eyes were fixed on the west, his attention felt pulled in the opposite direction.

The thought of the east brought up images of Linn, Kole, Jenk, Misha, Baas, and even Shifa the hound. She saw them cutting their way through a green land whose lushness covered a murderous intent and was made up of things designed to kill. There was a shadow following and finding, and a green spear of light that raged against the amber the Embers put off before merging into something like sun-yellow. She felt rot and smelled metal, saw the shadowed visages of great armored brutes and a swath of yellow that revealed the mane of one. And beyond them, farther east but not so far as Pevah’s thoughts, was a man sitting on a timber throne, full of fear and arrogance and planning. A man who was a Sage.

There were twin voices calling out to her, and Iyana ignored them for a time, focused on making sense of the slow and disparate images some combination of dream and the Between showed her. One of the voices won out, and she recognized it as belonging to Mother Ninyeva.

Iyana lost the thread she had been following like a moth to flame. There, floating in an ether her mind made, she saw the white hair and lined features of her teacher who had called this land her own. Her face, normally stern or playful, now seemed pulled and worried. Her body was indistinct, but she reached toward Iyana, her hand resolving more clearly with each passing beat.

Iyana smiled and stepped toward her, but frowned as she saw Ninyeva shake her head, slow as regret. Iyana looked down and saw a red dagger clutched in her teacher’s hands. No. Not hers.

“Fight,” she heard. “Fight, Iyana!”

She felt something slam into her chest with the weight of a thrown boulder and tumbled down into a deep darkness before the light found her. She woke with a gasp, the lavender-red light of the western desert enveloping her along with a newfound confusion tinged with panic. But one thing was clear.

She saw the red dagger lancing toward her, real and unimagined. She screamed and flung out a hand toward the one who wielded it—a painted savage whose face broke into a pained grimace as he raged against the unwilling bond she’d forged with his tether.

All around, members of the caravan began to stir. But how could they be so slow in waking? How could this man have stolen through their nets?

The song that curdled blood redoubled, and her assailant leaned his head back as if in rapture. The veins stood out on his neck and his eyes rolled back to reveal the whites lined with worms of sickly red. His teeth, filed to points, dripped with red, and Iyana knew she could either cut the thread she held or lose the fight, so strong was his pull and those who pulled him from afar.

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 many 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.

Something caught his eye—a flash of moon and ghostly white, like a slow river of milk wending its way across that barren expanse. Karin had paused ahead, so Talmir chanced a closer look.

He squinted against the lavender sky that stole over the stars. He saw the great mounds of earth made into shapes like spikes on armor to the south, their tips glowing molten to bend all good sense. Black specks at the top could have been flies or men locked in mortal conflict, but it was the sight below that took the heart from him.

“Ceth was right.”

“What is it?” Karin asked, coming over to stand beside him. Talmir only pointed, not trying to still the quiver that infected his voice and made its quick and aching way down into his hand.

Looking closer, the river resolved into the myriad shapes of men, or things that might once have been them. The Pale Men staggered and lurched, their sightless eyes pointed unerring as their path toward the Midnight Dunes—toward Iyana, Creyath and the clutch of warriors left among their company. There were hundreds, and though they did not walk in rows abreast or time their steps with one another, the bloody song that drifted over all seemed bent in their direction, lashing like the whips of close-by masters growing farther. It spurred them on and caused their heads to tilt and their shoulders to jerk. Talmir could almost see strings streaming behind, clutched in the dark embrace of some god who’d made them.

“Too many,” Talmir said, nearly breathless.

“Means less where we’re going.”

Talmir turned to regard Karin, but the First Runner had already moved off, his boots leaving little more than the hint of tracks as he glided over the next rise. Talmir tossed a last look at the portent the west had become and moved to follow, leaving the soft ridge behind as they crossed into the north, the jagged red spurs of Ceth’s hostile-seeming land looming ahead like unwashed teeth. Teeth that recalled the painted tribesmen and the sharp bones they carried.

Much of the lands behind had been bare. The black shelves had been left to the east and the leaning gray slabs far beyond them. Now, Talmir could see smaller versions of the same looming like pockets—caves and arches rising like fins from the desert’s skin, entryways into the warm veins of the Mother below.

The song grew louder—deeper—the farther they went, and Talmir found himself panting with a fatigue that had nothing to do with the pace Karin set. He shook his head and tried to maintain as straight a path as possible while Karin did anything but. The First Runner gritted his teeth and pulled his cheeks in, but did not slow, and Talmir marveled at him. It was as if the song and all it held did nothing but present him a new obstacle to climb—a new challenge to rise beyond—and Talmir saw something of the son in the father, and knew Kole Reyna as the son of Karin where before he and the rest could only see him as the legacy of Sarise A’zu.

Just when Talmir meant to raise his voice and call for a halt, and just after he fell to his knees and felt them sink into the yielding sands, another song rose to supplant the first—or at least to challenge it. Talmir’s head swam, but he knew before it came clear that this was a song he knew.

He felt hands grip him and shook his head clear as he rose, his vision swimming as he took in Karin’s concerned expression. The First Runner took hold of Talmir’s shirt and ripped, tearing free a small strip that he split again. He rolled each into an approximation of a ball and pointed to his ear, turning so that Talmir could see the stuff that filled his own.

Talmir nodded, swaying unsteadily, and moved to mimic him. He took a step forward and felt more than heard the muffled sound of his boots parting the soft gravel beneath him, but already he felt more clear.

“It seems I’m not cut out for this,” Talmir said, tilting his chin from side to side to get the cloth to settle.

Karin smirked. “I’ve brought you along for what comes next.” His eyes drifted down to the sword the hung from Talmir’s belt.

“The song,” Talmir said, trying to keep his voice low though he wanted to shout. “Is it …”

“Our red friends,” Karin said. He pointed to the northeast, and Talmir squinted. There, sitting atop a modest mound, was one of Pevah’s desert foxes. The animal planted its feet and threw its head back to unleash another howl that sounded more wolf-like than the yips and cackles the creatures usually put out. And as it did, more rose to bolster the claim.

As the foxes howled atop their hillocks, Talmir felt a break in the bloody song of the Seers. Then the dark drone redoubled, and this time it came close to throwing Karin from his feet as well, but the foxes were not cowed. They sang like men and women, like things fighting a battle men could never hope to understand, and Talmir marveled and felt a kinship with the beasts that might hint as to their place with the tribes he and his had left behind so many years ago.

“They would make for good wall hounds,” Karin said, watching the scene play out. The fox quit its complaints and loped down the dune, heading north, and the others gave up their voices as well, advancing as the dark song bent and twisted, seeking new roads to the south and west.

“Aye,” Talmir agreed. “But I’m not sure beasts like these are made for lands that don’t slide as often as shift. As Pevah said, they’ve been here a long time. By the looks of things, they’ll be here a long time after we’re gone.”

Karin nodded. “We’ll just have to give as good an account of ourselves as we can while we’re here,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll make it into the songs these sing to their pups—songs that’ll greet the dunes and roll down to the borders of the Valley for generations to come.”

As quickly as the words left his lips Karin turned back into the shadow he had been, his features shifting, will bending back to the task at hand.

“We’re close,” he said, and Talmir felt his own hand reaching absently for the hilt at his belt.

“Tell me what you need of me,” Talmir said.

“You’ll know.”

Talmir kept his distance as Karin bent back to the task at hand. It wasn’t hard. The First Runner showed his earlier pace to be a lazy form of the one he adopted now. He raced over the dunes and slid down the opposite banks. He ran around the bases as often as he arrowed over the tops, sometimes following the tracks the foxes left and other times making his own that Talmir filled and made deeper with his passing.

There was a short bark that turned into a snarl. Talmir scrambled over the next rise and saw the body Karin had left behind. The painted warrior was broad-chested, his life-blood pumping in spurts from a neck freshly slashed. He had deep gouges in his bare shin, and Talmir looked up to see one of the foxes shadowing Karin as the First Runner crept around the base of the next dune.

Talmir pulled his blade free while Karin crouched and the fox and its fellows slinked with their bellies to the sand. Together, they made a third song to fill the air in the north. It was a song that Karin wrote as Talmir struck the chords with his father’s sword.

They were in the thick of things, now, and Talmir allowed himself to become a hunter like Karin and the beasts they followed. They made the dunes their hunting grounds; used the shadows they sent as hiding places, the dips and crevices as traps they sprung on those who laid in wait for them. They killed a dozen, slashing throats and spearing spines, and all but one died without making a sound.

The foxes started the panic, causing the scouts and posted guards to whirl and spin before Karin sprang with that black hunter’s blade or Talmir leapt with his crescent of silver. Not a one freed a sharpened bone or blade in time to counter. Not a one tested the poise of the First Runner nor the skill of the best sword in the south.

Talmir left all modicum of modesty behind as he bent to the killing, never hesitating over the dying. His was one of the few metal blades to strike fear into the hearts of the Rivermen—first in the hand of his father and then in his. It was not a thing to be proud of, but those had been different times, and each found a reason to give his blade a home in the heart of another. That was a true war, one against men and between them. One fought for honor as much as need, the former of which was difficult to find.

In a way, Talmir knew they had been lucky with the emergence of the Dark Kind: a common enemy to sow common goals and lasting alliances. Still, there was something missing in the way the shadows fell. Some lack of impact or truth as demons withered and died on the ends of swords or Everwood blades. Talmir had never thought himself a good man, but enough time had passed and enough others had worked at it long enough to convince him he was something close.

Tonight, he left it all behind, and he thought the man and beasts around him did as well. They made music together that the witches in their shallow caves couldn’t match, at least for the moment—that the painted warriors and the crouching savages could not stay and could not hear before it was too late. The red teeth broke apart in mouths that ran redder, and the tribesmen of the sands died in ways that made them appear achingly, disappointingly human, washing away whatever fear they might have called up before.

Talmir’s new armor was the sweat the desert coated him in. His blade was red but not crusted. It was too warm and the winds had died away, leaving them and their killing to fill the eternal dusk. It felt like a story, and they the figures dancing across the page, leaving their inky prints for the judgment of those who would come later and see the places where the sand stuck together, where the yellow turned to something deeper.

Karin made a sound low in his throat that even the foxes seemed to heed, and the pack gathered around and crawled on their bellies up the south-facing side of a great rise that must have been the last.

At the top, Karin lay with his side pressed into the dune like the homes in the Red Bowl of Hearth. He pointed and Talmir nodded back, extending his neck inch by aching inch until the top of his face broke the plane.

All had gone silent and all was still. Even the foxes looked from one to another as often as at the men, waiting for some call to action or else unsure of what to do next.

The north side of the dune fell away like a spill, and at the bottom, close enough to hurl a stone at, rested a cave. Alone for leagues around, it was a black thing whose mouth appeared blacker, its half-buried shelf little more than a ledge that stood above the sands at the height of a man. The land around it seemed sunken, as if the rock bore such a weight that it had fallen and pulled the dunes down with it.

To the west was a jagged trail. The Pale Men had come from here, let loose from some deep bowel within the desert dark and released into the world of men.

“It’s quiet,” Talmir said. He watched Karin. The First Runner peered into the cave as if he could see the souls within, his brown eyes lighting with a fire Talmir had never noticed before. He wondered for the first time whether Kole really had got his gifts from the World, or from the mother that had received them first.

He had seen how Karin had earned his title. How the title was as much a part of him as a shield he carried. The other Runners of the Valley were nothing close. Glorified messengers. Talmir saw for the first time how the bright, bold Sarise A’zu would be drawn to this man, who stood as a Sentinel opposite to those the World Apart sent—one who guarded his own from them. One as deadly. One more true.

One of the foxes voiced a complaint, and Talmir thought he saw shadows moving within the opening. The air around them began to shimmer. Talmir’s skin went cold and then hot, alternating between the two with an unnatural quickness that started and stopped him sweating and quickened his heart. His blade scraped as it slid across the loose sand. The foxes’ ears twitched, and Karin stayed him with a sound that wasn’t far from those their red companions produced.

As the air swam like a curtain of clear water, Talmir’s temples began to buzz with the beginnings of that dark song. He checked the cloth in his ears and found it, but still the haunting melody took him. He saw Karin grit his teeth and heard the foxes betray their presence all along the slope as they voiced their counters. But they were discordant, now, as tired from the killing as whatever waited within the cave was solid, together. Ready.

Talmir thought he had been drawn into some vision, some other place, but somehow he knew it as a shadow of the past made suddenly clear. He saw smudges and blurred images resolve into the shapes of men and leaping streaks of orange into the forms of the very beasts that stood with them now, only these were much older.

This was the cave of the First Keeper, Talmir knew, and these imagined scenes were some long-ago fight. Black figures came for them that recalled the Dark Kind and the Sentinels they had faced in the south, red eyes leering and piercing the desert night. And the men and foxes stood and fought with tooth, claw and singing bows to throw them back. There was a light that began as nothing more than the hint of a cinder, burning like a single eye in the center of the cave.

Talmir stood and Karin stood with him, though he lurched as if his own body betrayed him, exposed him. The foxes raised their voices into a keening crescendo as the witches’ song took them and showed them the bright core they gathered around. It was a light that wasn’t here. Not really. But it had been.

They saw the images of the men and women fall beneath the onslaught the night sent after them, the desert foxes torn apart by wolves with barbed tongues and dripping, poisoned teeth. The Dark Kind poured and scrambled over the ledge of slate, and a lone figure stood before a fire growing brighter with each halting breath.

In the swimming image, the figure threw the Dark Kind back with a sudden brightness that recalled the sun in hateful glory. He burned them all away as robed figures huddled and chanted behind him.

The brightness broke the space from past to present, shattering it all like glass, and Talmir felt his knees go weak. He felt a steadying hand on his shoulder as Karin panted beside him. There was a burning at his ankle, and he looked down to see the sand dyed red around him, his blood dripping from the open maw of one of the foxes they now counted as friends, its yellow eyes staring up at him, expectant.

Karin sported a similar wound, and when the two looked back down into the pit and its black cave, the song no longer warped the air around it. There was a light, but it was nothing more than a crackling fire guarded by old and jealous things, figures hidden in shadow whose voices curdled the blood.

And before the lip of the ledge, coming closer on crouched legs and muscled haunches, were painted men and women, all red and blue and glowing green. They ceased their creeping upon being seen. They clutched bones stained brown with old blood or nocked iron-tipped arrows to spindly strings made of sinew.

The foxes hit them with a rage Talmir would not have imagined possible, and he and Karin slid, tumbled and raced toward the bottom, intent on adding their teeth to the mix now that the spell had been broken.

Even as she rode the momentum down the slope Pevah had made through some strange and fortuitous magic, Iyana felt a tug from the north. It felt like a hook dragging at her skin by the ear. It felt like a child mewling for its mother, though Iyana had yet to be blessed as such. She knew it as the consequence of whatever violence Talmir and Karin had found themselves in.

It seemed she was becoming more aware by the day, and yet less sure. Now, she did not have to fall into a trance or inhale lavender smoke and breathe strange powders to greet and be greeted by the Between. Here, in this place and time, it seemed that other realm was never far from her.

In addition to that tug, she heard what the others heard, felt it as none of them could—aside from Sen and likely Pevah—as the witches’ song wafted over the expanse like a swarm of biting, buzzing things that moved as one body. Nothing good could come of such a melody. It was old and stuffy, rotten to the core.

But there was something else within it. Something that had her smiling despite the circumstances, and despite the war her heart waged with the bone wall of her chest. Despite the sweat that poured from her brow and coated her neck, though her throat had gone dry enough to threaten cracking. It was a note of panic, and she thought for a moment how she might feel if two of the Valley’s deadliest came for her and hers as they huddled and chanted around their fiery pit, their entrails and old bones and pots of paint and marrow. The First Runner and the Bronze Star. Heroes’ names, and belonging to those who counted themselves as the furthest thing.

The last cliff of sand turned loose and spilled, and they followed it down to the basin that was more a wasteland. The soldiers of the caravan and the red- and gray-sashed warriors of the desert ranged before and around her, and Iyana could see their tethers flickering out of the corners of her eyes—their hues as varied as the faces that made them up. More varied than the piercing eyes and the dull, and even more different than the many blades and sharp edges the twin companies carried to do their hero’s work.

She gasped as an intense heat washed over her left shoulder, and she turned to see Creyath holding up his hand in apology.

“Trouble in the north?” he asked as she rubbed at the spot he’d grabbed.

“Of course,” she said. She looked back that way, peering into the distance. The great plateau of sand—whiter here in the basin—came up against more crusted ridges in the north. They were higher there than those they had come down from, the ridges carving a crescent path to the north and west. The sky was more blue and black there and with brighter stars than the strange amber and purple glow that hung over them now.

“But that’s why we’re here, is it not?” she asked, brushing past him as she sought out Pevah. “Just about finding the right sort of trouble from here on out.”

“Well said,” Creyath laughed, keeping stride.

In truth, Iyana was nervous enough to feel sick. She had seen violence—had seen it very recently, when the same horrors that spread out before them had invaded the caverns beneath the sands. But she had rarely been a part of it.

She supposed it was only fair, in some ways. She, who had healed so many hurts without inflicting her own. Perhaps it was time she saw the killing up close. Saw why it was done and who did it and how. She shook her head and spat foam into the sand thin and silky enough to recall gossamer, and Ket tossed her a worried look that she ignored.

Now that she focused on the west, she could not help but gaze and marvel and slow her steps to let her do both in equal measure. She suspected the same dreadful awe that flooded her from crown to heel was the same that slowed the pace of the others.

They were closer now than they had been atop the drifts, and the new perspective made her feel very small. The Midnight Dunes did not so much loom before them as tower over them. There were three that could have been four. They melded at the bases only to break apart somewhat near the crown, each tip of sand and gravel and whatever magic held it all up rising as large as any of the gray slabs they had passed in the east. Together, they formed a glowing crown at the crest, an amber and gold light shining like the deepest rays of dusk.

On the whole, they were nothing close to the height of the peaks of the southern Valley. Yet they seemed greater, the flat lands around them stretching as far as the eye could see and farther, the sand that made up their celestial canvas looking like salt or snow or morning frost. It was a plain of dreams, and she could not tell if the Dunes themselves were benevolent gods or things out of nightmare. Perhaps there was no difference between the two.

All around the Dunes the land stretched away, and now Iyana knew beyond a shadow of a doubt: lands such as these were not made absent strife, but of it. There was a flatness to it all that the World would not make on its own—a starkness to the way the Dunes rose like a wound, or like some jewel offered up to the stars themselves. This was a land changed, smoothed away by a great battle long ago.

Her eyes moved back up to the Dunes, tracing the many colors the sand gave off—the light playing out beneath them or atop them whose source she could not begin to guess at. Atop that glowing crown stood the defenders of the desert: those dozen she had seen leaving the obsidian halls to the east not long before. Not a one had fallen, near as she could tell, though some knelt or else held their heads with an exhaustion she could not begin to imagine.

She followed the direction of the defenders’ gazes to the bottom of the northern slope. There, painted warriors clutched their blades. Even from this distance Iyana could feel their hate emanating strong enough to infect the faint shadows of the tethers that hung and drifted above them. She felt her temples buzz as the Between stole into her, and she let it in.

If it were possible, the Dunes glowed even brighter under her emerald greens. She saw Sen’s eyes glowing, saw the others around him and between them staring from one Faeykin to the other, torn from the immense sight before them by the closer bright. Hands twitched toward hilts and pommels and faces let awe and wonder fall away to reveal the hardness beneath—looks that could cut.

She should have felt exposed, but the only man unbowed by the towering mounds of god-stuff before them walked with a measured gait. He seemed taller now, fuller than he had in some time. His red cloak matched the sky, and his steps were more assured even than the stout white knight who walked beside him, gray-blue eyes scanning in all directions.

“That’s them, then,” Jes said. She held the short yew bow she had brought with her from the Valley core, and Iyana nearly laughed at how slight it seemed in the present circumstances before she remembered she held nothing herself. Nothing but for a power she had no desire to revisit, at least on the terms it required.

“Aye,” Pevah said. He cut toward the north, circling the base of the Dunes and moving with some speed toward the tribesmen who seemed to be regrouping on the flats.

Not regrouping, Iyana knew, but waiting. Another song rose and stuck to the bottom of the first. She saw them walking like the pale shadows of men—like memories made of melted mist and neglect. They wavered like ghosts in the imagined mists the dusk made, and even the painted tribesmen turned their eyes north and regarded them like things to be guided but not touched as they made way for them to pass up the shallow trench their feet had made in the slope.

So intent were they on the defenders at the top, and so intent were the defenders on them, that neither group appeared to notice Iyana’s company at all. Pevah halted them with an upraised hand. He scanned in a manner that reminded her of Ceth and looked from the glowing crowns atop the mountains of sand down to the gathering force at the bottom. She could see the black-and-red coil he counted as a tether creeping inch by inch from the robe that fell loosely about his broad shoulders, just as she felt the crackle of ozone in the dry air as Creyath built his heat to a slow charge in their midst, drawing the eyes of the desert nomads more so than the soldiers of the caravan.

“What are they playing at?” Mial asked. The old scout had ventured up toward the front. He too held a bow, and unlike Jes, he held an arrow ready in his opposite hand. Some of the Valley soldiers gathered around him, readying their own weapons, but Pevah cut them a look that did not belong to the old man they had come to know, but rather the truth that nested just below the surface. Mial swallowed as the Sage looked away, and Iyana could see his tether flicker momentarily.

Pevah seemed content to watch and Ceth anything but, though she knew the Landkist of the north wouldn’t do anything without his blessing. She could feel the need radiating from him. The need to intercede in whatever it was they were witnessing. For now, he watched, and the rest of them did the same.

Had there only been the painted warriors—the Bloody Screamers—they might’ve had a chance. Iyana counted just over a score of them. They were strong, their tethers thicker than those they had come across before, more comfortable in the killing. These were soldiers chosen for a purpose, and Iyana guessed there was finality to it. But where the Pale Men that had come for the desert nomads in their tunnels had done so by the score, those who began their lurching, digging strides up the slipping slope now were the first in a two-breasted line that stretched for leagues.

“Where have they come from in such number?” Creyath asked. Pevah turned toward him, and Iyana nearly had to look away from the strange face he wore. His eyes shifted like an owl’s before a little light came back to him, making him look more like one of the desert foxes he had no doubt sent along with Karin and Talmir.

“The crones have been preparing for this day for some time,” Pevah said, full of ichors and a disdain that was just a shade away from being the same hate the north sent against them now. The death song that hung over them like a pall struck new chords, and each one seemed to send a lance through the Sage’s chest, his brows twitching along with lips that exposed the sharpened teeth beneath.

He turned back, his whole form seeming to shake with an anger Iyana was beginning to feel herself. “The Blood Seers have lost the word for innocent, I presume. The Pale Men are the children of their own, burned and tortured. Turned into objects of hate. And for what? To release a power that will only doom them along with the rest.”

He seemed to be speaking more to himself than the rest of them, but Iyana took the opportunity to move up beside him. He twitched at her close presence and Sen, Ket and even Creyath shot her warning looks as she passed them by.

She followed the Sage’s gaze and frowned in confusion. She saw the Pale Men moving up the slope, but they did so with a slowness that made them appear as if they trudged through a mire. Even their white, drooping arms swung as if delayed, their melted mouths heaving and pulling with exaggerated effort. She blinked and they sped up for an instant before slowing back down. The painted warriors that spurred them on from below seemed unburdened.

Pevah seemed nervous. He mouthed something but didn’t put words to it, and she wondered if it was some spell, or a counter to the song they found themselves trapped within. It ate at her temples and wormed its way into her ears, though she kept a clear mind, wary of any attempts from afar.

“Pevah.” Ceth broke whatever trance he was in, and the Sage’s eyes widened, breaking into a momentary fear as Ceth stepped forward. Iyana thought he might be shielding the others from the sight of their shaken leader.

“Wait,” he said.

“We cannot wait,” Ceth argued. Creyath took a few steps toward the Dunes but stopped when the Sage looked in his direction.

“We must wait,” he said, but the control he usually held over form and voice eluded him in the moment.

Iyana felt the restlessness and the fear spread through the company, and it was not reserved for hers alone. All saw the pale procession making its too-slow way up the pitted slope, just as all saw the outnumbered figures waiting at the top. The defenders stood on unsteady legs. They sported wounds Iyana could spot from this distance—deep gouges that leaked onto the glowing sands they stood atop.

“They won’t hold,” Ceth said. “Not for long.”

Pevah ignored him and closed his eyes. The air seemed to shift around them, and Iyana found herself looking up to the defenders as they drew their blades for what might have been the hundredth time since they’d come. They turned their weapons over, seeming quicker than the lurching striders that made their way up toward them—impossibly so.

“That will do them well,” Pevah said, and Iyana frowned, catching Sen turning a similar expression her way. Ceth seemed about to argue, until the Sage spoke up, “and you, as well.” He reached out and laid a hand on the Landkist. Iyana felt more than heard a faint popping, though the air around them remained undisturbed. “Hold them from the top,” he said, speaking quietly and then loud enough for all around to hear. “I don’t know what they’re planning, but the zenith is what they’re after, not those who defend it. They are many, but their attention is in the wrong place. Hold them, until it’s time for retreat—them or you.”

Ceth nearly smiled as he strode forward, his steps taking him toward the base of the Dunes with a confidence Iyana could never have managed in the face of such stacked odds. One of the desert nomads wearing a red sash stepped forward, and Pevah repeated the same maneuver with her. She seemed no different as she took up Ceth’s wake, and one by one they received their strange, popping blessing before making toward the base of the cluster of dunes.

None of the Valley soldiers ventured near, looking from Creyath to—strangely—Iyana herself as they reeled at the confusing display. The painted warriors had spied them, but seemed intent on keeping their position. Their attention was above, as Pevah said. And below, at the beast that supposedly slumbered beneath the mounds of glowing sand—or else raged against them.

“Hold them for what? Hold them for how long?” Iyana spoke up as the last of the gray-sashes—Martah—left. Ceth had nearly reached the bottom. For any other, it would have been a significant climb, but the northern warrior merely squatted, tensed for the briefest of moments and rocketed into the air like a bird in flight. He did not seem belabored as the Pale Men were, and as he landed directly above them, midway up the slope between the tortured horrors and the guardians they moved toward, those at the peak sent up a cheer that had them standing straighter.

“They cannot win!” Iyana cried, but Pevah ignored her, his attention fixed on the first line of Pale Men as they came upon the Landkist.

Creyath took another step toward them, fearful of the coming clash, but he seemed reluctant to leave his own with the Sage—to leave them unguarded from the painted warriors who eyed them as warily as they eyed the Dunes hungrily.

Iyana had witnessed Ceth kill many of the Pale Men and a few of the painted warriors. He had done it quickly and with savage force. But now he was outnumbered and alone, the other nomads—above and below—only just beginning to converge on him.

It didn’t matter. Whatever magic assailed the Pale Men had no effect on him. He parted them from their lives, such as they had been, as neatly as he parted the air around him.

He killed a pair and then a triad. He killed a dozen and then a score. He fought, but it was more like watching a wolf tear at a flock of flightless birds. His fists broke them apart in red showers. His kicks tore limbs from their clinging roots. The Pale Men swiped at him with strikes that seemed to come from leagues away, and Iyana found herself both horrified and fascinated at the sight.

“Time is a fickle thing,” Pevah said, speaking barely above a whisper. “But it can be brought to heel.”

And now she saw.

It wasn’t that there was a spell on the Pale Men. There was no working Pevah enacted, no flourish that slowed them down and sped up his own. This was a thing that fell over the Dunes themselves, or else seeped up through the crevices and cracks between the grains of glowing sand. It was something from within, something the Sage had put there long ago.

“The wards you spoke of,” Iyana said, marveling as the rest turned in toward her. “They control time, as you did in the caverns.”

Pevah nodded, but his attention was firmly fixed on the battle—the massacre—taking place on the north-facing slope. The painted warriors milled at the bottom, working themselves into a lather, and the Sage seemed almost to be compelling them on.

“Clever,” Pevah said, looking in their direction. Iyana, Sen and Creyath followed his gaze and saw a female holding one of the larger brutes back as she eyed Pevah over the distance that was no so far as Iyana would have liked. Judging by the tensed hands and bared steel of the Valley company, she was not alone in the thought.

“Why do they not attack us?” Creyath said, looking back at the Dunes. The red- and gray-sashes were finding the going more difficult than Ceth, whose strange gifts were still well beyond Iyana’s understanding, but they were closer, now, the shifting sands unable to stay their rising bloodlust.

“They have plenty to waste,” Pevah said, though Iyana noted that he seemed concerned. Something about the situation surprised him. Something was not as he had expected it to be. Perhaps the desert savages were not so savage. Perhaps they were more calculating than they had given them credit for.

As Iyana watched him, Pevah’s face seemed to contort slightly. Almost at the same time, she saw Ceth falter as the nomads from the peak reached him and bolstered his cause. The Pale Men they fought came on with more ferocity than they had before, their black-clawed hands cutting through the air in a way that recalled their attack on the caverns. They shrieked where before they had only lumbered, the scent and sight of their fellows’ blood seeming to spur them on.

Iyana heard Pevah grunt, his eye twitching. Creyath looked askance at him and drew his Everwood bow from around his back. His Everwood shafts were spent but for two, but he had plenty of oak, their steel tips wrapped with birch and sealed with wax. He could fire them far and fast—faster than any but Linn—and he could put a fire in them that would scatter the Dark Kind or the Pale Men or any of the horrors the World and its neighbor sent against them.

But there were many.

Without thinking, Iyana stepped forward and laid a pale hand on Pevah’s bronze wrist. The Sage flinched but then calmed, a serene expression crossing his features as she put a bit of the healing touch into him. A bit of the greenfire. His body drank it in eagerly. He may not appear hurt, but there were more ways than sharp edges to stab and more wounds than skin to knit.

“Thank you,” he said, turning back toward the Dunes. Sen stepped before Iyana, and she had to peer around him to see that the female warrior was still staring in their direction, her dark eyes fixed on Iyana and the red-robed man. Ket, Jes, Mial and the others formed a semicircle with the swordsmen in front and the half-dozen who carried bows lined up behind them. Creyath had drifted farther toward the dunes, but he held himself back, caught between the need to help Ceth and the need to protect them.

Pevah closed his eyes and Iyana thought she heard a momentary break in the witches’ dark song. The sting she had grown accustomed to dissipated, the ache leaving her temples, at least for the moment. She began to waver as she poured her light into the Sage—her fire that did not burn but revived—and as she watched the melee atop the dunes, she saw that the battle had once more turned in their favor.

The Pale Men were no more encumbered than they had been before, though they still floundered as if battling a haze. But now Ceth and the warriors trailing red and gray sashes whipped and turned, slashed and cut with their usual speed. The Pale Men had no fear, or if they did, they paid it no more heed than they did anything else. They came on and they fell, split apart in Ceth’s whirlwind of lancing flesh or sliced to ribbons by the bronze-skinned hunters. Those who got by them were launched back by the larger Northmen, Martah earning a deep gash across the chest for her efforts that had Ceth shooting skyward and landing with a shock that made a shallow bowl in the sandy slope. Iyana felt the kiss of the warm dust from the expulsion even from afar.

“Good,” Pevah said, opening his eyes. “Good enough, for now.” Iyana pulled her hand back. Her legs felt unsteady and Sen shot her a warning look. She felt a swelling that might have been gratitude for the way he had positioned himself between her and the painted savages that eyed them like prey.

Pevah looked from the Dunes to the north, as if expecting Talmir and Karin to appear on the raised blood-colored ledges. Instead, there was only the song that redoubled in potency, assailing their ears and setting a few to waver on unsteady legs. And from the north that white river of marching, lurching flesh came on, its tail twisting to a place out of sight, though Iyana thought she could see its ending. There was a limit to them, she knew. There had to be.

Much good it would do them.

“What would you have us do?” Ket asked and the looks of the others reflected his concern. His knuckles were blanched white from gripping his sword.

“I would have you live, for a start,” Pevah said. He glanced sidelong, feeling Iyana’s eyes burning into his temple. He looked shamed for a moment and his hard look dropped some. “Ceth and the others have the fight in hand, so long as I …” He trailed off, the look of strain returning, and now Sen rolled up his sleeves and took a step forward.

Pevah stayed him with an upraised hand. “Save your strength, Faey,” the Sage said, his lips parting to reveal those angled teeth Iyana had never wanted to see again. His eyes flashed from red-brown to black and then back again. Iyana found herself looking up. She thought for a moment she could see filaments streaking above them, tiny threads like webs catching moonlight. The stuff the song carried, or the stuff that carried it.

“Why time, Pevah?” she asked. Creyath had come over at the Sage’s distress, and both the Ember and Sen shook with tension as the Sage fought with whatever assailed him. This was a battle within, but Iyana had never been one to ignore an impression. She knew she had to keep him here, keep him present.

Some of the color came back into his eyes. He glanced from the battle on the Dunes to her, beads of sweat glistening in the strange dream-light.

“We are each a slave to time,” he said. “We are beholden to it. We think it constant, but it is less a rule and more a river.” His voice nearly broke and she saw his legs quiver. The Pale Men surged forward, stronger now, and then they slowed and Ceth and the warriors of the desert threw them back and cut them down all over again.

One of the soldiers called out a warning and Iyana whirled to see a few of the painted warriors had come closer. The Valley soldiers spread their double line wider, with more than a stride between each of them. For now, the savages remained rooted, but Iyana could see their desire to fight. What sort of a figure must Pevah be to them? What sort of hateful place did he hold in their hearts and minds, these desert children who had been birthed along the red veins of the molten Mother below and given the blood of their own for sustenance, along with whatever dark tales and bloody songs the Seers sang to them?

Pevah did not look to the tribesmen. He paid them less mind than a nipping fly. His eyes were to the west. Iyana thought he watched Ceth and the others paint the Dunes a darker shade of the purple and black that made up their sides until she saw that his eyes were focused higher up, fixed on that glowing and spiked crown. The crown of a king. Or a lord.

“The World Apart is a place of chaos,” Pevah said, speaking more calmly than he had before. He breathed at even intervals, as if timing his breath with whatever stuff he put out to keep his warriors unburdened. It must be strange, to fight against one’s own magic, however long ago he’d laid it here. Iyana wondered if it was a part of him, still, and if that was why he could not use his power as readily or as mightily as some of the other Sages were said to.

She nearly laughed at the absurdity of the thought—that this Sage could seem weaker than the rest because he did not hurl bolts of lightning or command legions of monsters. That he could seem somehow weaker than the champion who flew and leapt over the sands, weightless one moment and heavy as a collapsing star the next as he became the weapon his Sage needed him to be.

“What is the opposite of chaos, Iyana Ve’Ran?” Pevah asked, as if they two were sitting alone in the deep, soft-lit chamber that housed the Everwood tree—the only one left in the west, most likely. As if there were not glowing mountains of sand or legions of pale horrors attempting to crest them. As if there was not a song of death infecting the air for leagues around—infecting all who listened to it against their will, bending them toward killing or the fear of dying.

“Order,” she said.

The soldiers of the caravan glanced over nervously, but kept their blades pointed toward the northwest. The Pale Men moved as one mind, unerring and forward. Up and into the trench they dug deeper, one that now ran with the slick lifeblood of their brothers and sisters who had been murdered or granted mercy.

“And what is time made of, if not order?” Pevah nearly smiled as he said it. There was still a strain on him, like a great pull, and from close by. His face had gone from bronze to ashen gray, and Iyana knew it was no trick of the light.

Sen gasped and Iyana turned toward him, thinking the warriors had had enough of waiting and had made for them after all. Instead, the Faeykin regarded Pevah with a shocked expression, looking from him to the mounds of sand that now seemed to buzz with a latent and building rush that threatened to burst.

“That’s how you did it,” Sen said. Creyath’s eyes flashed with an orange brightness that had Iyana blinking. “That’s how you trapped him. Trapped the Night Lord. Those dunes,” he pointed in a way that reminded Iyana of a child. “You made them, didn’t you? It’s not sand that lies beneath them. Your ward is time itself. The Dunes are merely the armor you’ve coated it with.”

“The desert takes back its own,” Pevah said with a smirk. He seemed proud and sad all at once. “These dunes are new things.” He tilted his chin. “New compared to them.” He nodded toward Ceth, who cut down another pair of horrors with fists gone red as the rest of him. Even the gray-sashes were difficult to tell apart now, nothing but their complexions separating them from the desert folk they fought alongside. Some had slowed in a way that had nothing to do with time or its strange bending, and Iyana guessed these to be the ones who had stood at the crest when they had first arrived.

“Chaos cannot be controlled,” Pevah said, shaking his head. “No matter what my once-brother may have believed.” He spat into the sand, but there was little in it. “He cannot still believe it.” He nearly turned toward the east, as if expecting the enemy of the World—the enemy of the Emberfolk and all Iyana loved—to come swooping on darker winds than those that stirred about them now where before there had only been dead air and dreadful music.

“No,” Pevah continued. “Chaos is not a thing to be controlled. It can only be guided so long. It can only be contained—trapped—so long. Chaos is a thing of fury, and fury is a thing of speed. It is a thing built of quick memory and long, simmering anger.” He smiled again, though he seemed to droop some, to fold in on himself just a bit. He seemed older, now. “And so I beat it the only way I could. I slowed it down. I slowed it to a point just above stopping. I broke time, and with it, I broke the fury that drove the beast.”

He looked up, raising his left hand and running it through the red-purple filaments only he, Iyana and Sen could see. “This is a song of quickening. Of undoing. It is breaking the wards, and in so doing, the bonds that hold the beast. It will remember its purpose and its rage, its fury and its power. It will remember me, and everything I fought to protect, and once it slays me, it will seek out the one who fought alongside me.” He looked to Iyana. “The one your Landkist slew in the south.”

“The White Crest,” Iyana said. It seemed impossible, these figures from stories made real, and all their deeds with them. She knew her sister had fought the White Crest, but that had been a shadow and a corruption of the proud, god-like figure who was said to have wielded the skies themselves. That was the one who had slain the Night Lords that had come against the Valley. That was the one Pevah had fought alongside when he had donned a different name. A name more red and bloody.

“The very same,” Pevah said without humor.

“This was the site of a great battle,” Creyath said as much as asked.

Pevah nodded. “Great is a relative term.” He swept his gaze in all directions but east. He seemed to have given up whatever battle he had fought with the faraway Seers and their drifting, poisoned song. He was saving whatever he had left for something worse. For the inevitable. Iyana felt her shoulders slump even as the Sage’s seemed buoyed beyond all sense. Her heart beat faster, and the aching the song had brought against her skull faded, replaced by a numbness.

“You fought him here, didn’t you?” Iyana asked. Pevah regarded her quizzically, his eyes regaining some of their former light, though there was always a bit of blood in them. Always a bit of the past, and whatever had come with it. “The Eastern Dark. You fought him and his Night Lords.”

“Just the one, at the time,” he said, nodding toward the dunes she now knew to be a prison of his making. “The greatest,” he smirked, “but still just the one. My brother fought three to protect your Valley home. Three lesser he slew, but still; three is a greater number than one, and he’d never have let me forget it had he …” he drifted along with his wandering thoughts. It seemed the past had the same hold on one of the mighty, long-lived Sages as it did on any other, mortal or otherwise. Perhaps more so.

He looked to the south, his eyes seeming to span a distance farther even than Linn’s as he imagined the Valley and the great battle that had waged there. A battle Iyana had come up hearing tales of, even if she never truly believed them.

“The Eastern Dark came here to end our plotting,” Pevah said. “He came to end us, I think. But we gave him a good accounting—far better than he had any right to expect. He was craven then, but not without tricks. He pulled his trump card: the Night Lord we fought for days that bled into a week.

“We trapped him. I trapped him, but the White Crest missed his mark. My dark brother fled back to the east, earning a bit more of his name. He opened one more rift that nearly killed him to admit the other three: the princes to this king.” He shook his head. “Such a place it must be,” he said in awe. “Such a place.”

“The World Apart?” Iyana asked, appalled. He seemed taken aback by her reaction, but then his look changed to one of sympathy, even pity. She hated that even more.

He looked back to the dunes. The battle seemed still to be going in their favor, though even Ceth had slowed some. He was blood-soaked and haggard, and Pevah looked pained to see him so.

The amber glow atop the dunes began to pulse with something close to a heartbeat, and the purple sky above matched it, alternating its rhythm. It was like a nightmare, yet one so beautiful Iyana could not look away. The soldiers of the caravan lowered their weapons and raised their eyes, and even the painted warriors did the same, exposing the whites of their eyes.

“The time that appears so slow to you is magnified within,” Pevah said. He indicated the two-breasted line of pale, lurching figures as they moved with agonizing slowness toward the maelstrom the desert warriors made. “It is a bleed one hundred times faster than what is below. One thousand times.”

“Then Ceth cannot lose,” Iyana said, her voice sounding pleading. “They cannot lose. They are unencumbered.”

Another sad smile. A look of resignation, and a voice to match it.

“Go to them,” he said, nodding toward Ket, Jes and Mial. He met Creyath’s amber gaze. “Please. Get them out. Bring them back here. Bring them east, back the way we’ve come.”

Creyath hesitated and the others watched him, unwilling to make a move without the Second Keeper’s example.

“But the wards!” Iyana shouted. “They’ll dig them up. They’ll break them, and the spell with them.”

Pevah was shaking his head before she finished. She thought of her father’s face she rarely recalled. He often held that look, just as Linn had after him.

“There is nothing to defend,” he said with a certainty she could not dispute. She felt despair.

“Then why have we come?”

“Because I was wrong,” he said. And with each passing beat, he became less sad and less afraid, she thought. He began to grow into the shell he donned as if it were armor. “Whatever they have come to do, they have done,” he said. “The beast is woken. It is coming. It is only a matter of time, I think.”

“But how?”

Even as she said it, Creyath looped his bow across his shoulders and drew the Everwood blade that hung at his side.

“Blood,” Pevah said. “Blood is the key, and our side is making the most of it. They cannot undo the wards, but the Night Lord can. He is strong. He only needs to remember it.”

“He is not the only one,” Creyath said, and with that, he sped toward the Midnight Dunes, his leaping strides taking him across the expanse even faster than Ceth’s.

Iyana switched her gaze to the painted warriors. They watched Creyath and the Valley soldiers like hawks on hares, but they did not move. Their bloodshot eyes swept back and focused on them once more—Iyana and Sen—but Pevah most of all. It seemed to Iyana they had come to witness something, or else to stop it. And whatever it was, it began and ended with the Sage of the Red Waste.

“Don’t listen!” Talmir screamed as they hit the staggered line, but Karin did not need to be told.

The witches’ song issued forth from the cave mouth like the sordid breath of some great beast—dark, bloody and without hope. It pounded his ears and assailed his soul, but Karin was a man of focus, just like the Captain of Hearth who fought beside him. He kept his blade angled along with his attention and gave himself fully to the fight, allowing the killing music to flood his ears but ignoring everything else the song held.

He cut one down—a large male with blue paint covering his face and chest—by slashing him across the neck and then tucked into a roll to dodge a boney scythe that made for his. He came up scattering sand and raised an arm to block another blow that did not fall as one of the desert foxes latched onto the muscled limb that sent it.

Karin was as good at killing as any other. He was not particularly good at fighting. Still, he had learned one thing above all else when it came to living to see the end of such a wild, bloody exchange: movement is key. And so he ran, ducked, dove and skimmed, keeping his boots a constant blur along with the short blade he held as often in one fist as the other and as often in the air between them. He heard the snarls of the red foxes just as he heard the even more animalistic sounds of the men and women they fought. He heard the grunts and sharp inhalations of received wounds just as he heard the short hisses of Talmir Caru, who was as efficient with his movements as Karin was erratic.

There was a beauty to the way the Captain of Hearth fought. Karin had seen him do it in the Valley core, when he had faced down an army of Corrupted. He had even been on-hand to witness his fight with the Landkist Brega Cohr. Talmir’s sword was merely an extension of himself. It wasn’t the way he moved his hands or tucked his chin just as it wasn’t the way he lunged or stabbed or cut and slashed. It was in the feet, and though he kept to one small pocket within the melee he soon commanded the lion’s share of their enemies’ focus, with the painted warriors converging on the silver blade and the Bronze Star that swung behind it.

They had forgotten the fox in the wolves’ midst, and Karin smiled despite himself and despite the circumstances. He charged back in and slid to dodge another wild swing as he was remembered, cutting the bands that held up the legs of two and driving the point in between the shoulder blades of another. His victim fell to her knees without a sound but Karin was forced to spin away, earning another slash for his efforts, the sweat mixing with the blood and making it run faster and slicker as it warmed the underside of his arm and made small rivers down his side.

He danced away, using the darting foxes for cover. The warriors had killed half a dozen, but twice that number remained, and these fought with a savageness reserved for those denizens of the World who fought without the use of blade or worked metal. Their weapons were tooth and claw, and nothing borrowed from the dead they left behind. They leapt and feinted, bit and spat and tumbled. They fought in singles and pairs and small packs, leaping atop any of the Bloody Screamers who lost their footing, and their deaths were not quiet or quick when granted by the desert’s own as they were when Karin or Talmir did the work.

A wave of nausea threatened to overtake him and Karin whirled to see that he had drifted very close to the black mouth of the cave. It loomed over him, suspended above the black ledge that rose above his head. A yip had him turning back and a brute of a male—bleeding from a dozen cuts and one gash down the center that could only have come from Talmir’s blade—barreled into him.

Karin managed to hook an arm and spin, using a trick whose source he did not remember as he twisted and sent them both slamming into the sheer, smooth and unyielding rock face. They went down in a tangle, but the red-toothed warrior was the stronger. He came up punching as Karin tried to kick him off, and they rolled at the base of a slope, tucked between the shifting sands and the corner of the rocky shelf.

They traded blows and curses meant more for themselves than each other, and Karin knew he was not the stronger nor the more clever with his hands. A bright and lancing light had him looking toward the top of the slope as bloody hands clamped tight around his throat, and he recognized the moon sliver as none other than Talmir’s blade. The captain leapt over and spun back, fighting a sliding retreat as a trio of warriors fell on him and a pack of red foxes on them.

Karin tried to cry out, but nothing emerged but a dry and croaking gasp. He saw more warriors pushed back by the pack; one tumbled toward them with frightening speed, sending sand and spray in all directions as the pack gave him up in search of fresh game. Karin saw red with black borders, but he also saw white. Gleaming, moon-washed white in the form of a boney knife the tumbling man had dropped.

With a heave and a bit of the fire he had never had the gift of, he managed to dislodge the brute and rolled over, scrambling up the sliding dune and hacking as he did. He felt a tight grip on his ankle and kicked with both feet as he reached desperately for the length of white, which teetered but did not slide. He gave it up as out of reach, but as he was pulled back, he dug his hands into the sides of the slope and pulled, digging a miniature trough and causing a smaller spill within the larger.

The desert that had been unkind to them since arriving gave its first reward as the white bone blade joined the cascade Karin had begun, sliding and skipping into his waiting hand as the brute climbed him using his pants and buckle for purchase. As he felt a rough hand greet his trailing black hair, Karin spun and drove the point of it up through the hollow in the warrior’s jaw.

Heat splashed into his eyes, mixing with the sand there and causing him to cry out. He heard Talmir heaving and grunting more now as he fought close to him, felt the weight of his attacker leave as he keeled over. He slashed at air with the blade he’d kept and came up in a scramble, feeling the conjured wind of the melee pass him in quick cuts and dying gusts as the red foxes streaked past.

Karin blinked and wiped at his eyes with a sleeve already soaked with the stuff. He saw the tumult through a more apt lens, red and blurred, and moved toward the brightest piece as Talmir brought down another that came for him. Karin tripped over the legs of one and fell atop a still clutch of matted red fur—one of the dead on their side—before regaining his footing.

He grabbed at another softness and heard a screech that warmed his heart for the rage that filled him. He hadn’t felt its like in a long time. He pulled back and brought some of the scalp loose, and tried not to focus on the whites of her eyes as he brought the sharp bone across her windpipe, turning the scream to a gurgle. He cast her aside and helped Talmir bring down the last.

When it was done, Karin fell to his knees and plunged his hands into the loose sand, coating his fingers in the dry powder between the grains. He used it to scrape the blood away from the rims of his eyes and growled at the sting of it, and when he looked up he saw Talmir a bit clearer than he had before. The captain cast about, wild, his light hair matted with blood that had already crusted. He sported a cut below one eye and the other side of his face was purpled and bruised, but otherwise he looked none the worse for wear.

“Dead,” Talmir said, the word seeming to jar something loose in him. He shook his head and let the red tip of his blade sink into the sand at his feet with a dull scrape.

“Don’t listen,” Karin said, his own voice coming out hoarse and unrecognizable. He stood on wavering legs and braced himself against the obsidian shelf beside them. The slope was littered with the dead—warriors whose skill could not match their gusto, and Karin felt a pang as much for them as for the errant desert foxes that lay still among their number. As for the rest of the pack, they gathered around the two men from the Valley, panting and expectant.

Karin allowed Talmir to pull him up to more even footing, and the two turned toward the open mouth of the cave. Somehow, it seemed even darker than it had before, the song—now more a wailing moan or a sick wind—casting the whole of it in a strange haze, like dreaming.

Come.

Karin turned to Talmir, giving him a questioning look that the captain returned.

“What?” Talmir asked.

Karin quirked a brow, his heartbeat slowing but his head still pounding despite the end of the sudden bout of violence.

“Did you hear—”

“The Seers.” Talmir nodded toward the ledge. He shook his head as if trying to clear the haze of sleep or wine and Karin turned back. The foxes had dispersed along the slope, some creeping toward the higher path, tensing and loosening as they looked toward the mouth of the cave as if they intended to leap. They complained in shrill voices while some took up the song Karin had found haunting enough in its own way not long ago. Now, it sounded beautiful—natural like nothing coming from the crooked, musty mouths of dark witches could be. Somehow, their collective desert song seemed to cut through the dark one wafting above them like a rotted stream.

“We need to stop that racket,” Talmir said and Karin only nodded. It sounded simple enough, but as he shared a cautious glance with the captain he knew Talmir felt the same sense of unease as him. They had slain the men and women who had stayed behind and now the witches sat unguarded around their sloped black pit. But Karin had learned long ago to trust his gut, and right now it was twisted into knots beyond counting.

Karin looked toward the south and tugged on Talmir’s formerly white sleeve to turn him in the same direction. The captain’s silence was as telling as Karin’s.

Where before the sky had been filled with a purple-amber glow that could have been beautiful if it wasn’t so wrong, now it moved with a pulsing version of the same. Streaks blinked across it that could have been lightning strikes, only there were no clouds to make them and no moisture for leagues around. Instead, they appeared as veins filled with anything but blood, and the stars that encircled the south seemed dim toward the center, toward the roiling expanse above the Midnight Dunes.

The song that slipped down like a swarm of dead snakes into that flat and endless canyon had no rhythm that Karin could pick out. And yet, looking at the way the sky moved, the dark and pockmarked canvas seeming to stretch and bow in on itself in a way that made his head swim, Karin thought the sky had found what pattern he could not and had been infected with it.

When he turned back to the black ledge and the chasm that hung above it, Karin felt an anger he couldn’t quite place. He thought of the Valley and of the Dark Kind that had long filled it. He thought of the Sage who had sent them and the one who had been set to guard them from the same. He thought of the countless dead he had seen made before their time and tried not to think of those he had added to the mix tonight—men and women whose only crime was to be born under the lordship of those who nurtured hate and bitterness in the place of love and loyalty.

Whatever the Sages might have done and whatever cosmic wrongs had yet to be righted—perhaps never could be righted—these desert witches had done more harm to these lands than any other. They deserved worse than whatever fate might befall them at the end of Karin’s anger or Talmir’s blade. Judging by the look the captain wore as his light eyes plied those same depths, Karin thought they were of one mind.

“Good thing we’re used to working in the dark,” Karin said and Talmir’s lips twitched in what could have been a smirk. The captain wiped the caked mix of sand and gummed blood on his trousers and reached up with one hand, pulling himself up and over the ledge with little difficulty and with no attempt to hide himself from whatever waited inside. He reached back and helped to haul Karin up while the foxes abandoned their pacing and feinted leaps and contented themselves with bearing witness as they belted their melody into the ruined sky.

Karin came to his feet and peered into the inky black, seeing little more than the faint suggestion of poised figures ringing the center. The moon and stars were brighter in the north than they were above the Midnight Dunes, but those pale lights did not dare break the dark curtain of the jagged cave mouth before them. There was a heat and a crackle that suggested fire, but if one burned it gave off no light and no promise of safety. Even the flames Karin imagined looked more like swaying serpents that hung above the pit the witches minded.

The song did not cease, but it dimmed some, fading into the background and setting itself in the reaches like a memory struggling to rise. A new voice rose to supplant it. It sounded like a dozen joined in unison, and it made Karin’s blood go cold and made Talmir’s lighter skin seem as pale as Iyana’s.

“This cave is a special place,” the voice or voices said, and Karin had to work to suppress a shudder. He felt like retching but held himself from it. He saw Talmir swallow as the captain took a step toward the darker patch that hung before them like smoke absent wind. “Do you know why?”

“Don’t know,” Talmir said. “Don’t much care.”

“But you should.”

The voice held some of the bitterness Karin might have expected, but more control—more calm—than he would have liked to hear, given the circumstances. He felt the urge to turn and look out over the sands dyed red with the dead they had made, but resisted. There were few wolves in the Valley, but there were enough things with teeth and the minds to use them. Karin had learned the same as any hunter never to take his eyes from something cornered.

“He came to wash away the dark,” the voice said as Talmir broke the plane and froze there, silver sword held out before him like a ward. “He came to smite the shadows and cast judgment on them in the form of his flames.”

Karin stepped away from Talmir, keeping his eyes wide and locked on the unmoving shadows farther in. He spoke as much to keep them occupied as to keep from focusing on the buzzing song that still hung above this new voice, or below it. The song that ran like a bloody river down to the south, where it compelled the Pale Men to acts not of their own volition, and whose ending might mean the end of more.

“The First Keeper knew this place,” the voices said. “This is the site of your greatest tale, and the one you left behind when you took your fire into the south.”

Karin tried not to focus on the words, but the implications hit him harder than he could have thought possible. He saw the cave with new eyes, the black crags with new interest. He saw a blinding light wash the interior, imagined pictures from the stories of the desert days playing themselves out as if happening before him now.

The First Keeper. Could this have been the place where he had fallen to rise again? Could that have been the pit where he had been blessed with the Mother’s fire?

“We took nothing,” Talmir said, apparently better than Karin at keeping the words from doing their work, though his face was pained as if he warred with the same vision.

“Ah, but you did. The fire was not yours to take.”

Something streaked before Karin as he broke the shadowed plane. He lanced out with the bone blade and then froze as the shadowed figures turned their heads toward him like a clutch of serpents readying to strike.

“It was a gift,” Talmir said, edging forward. If he had seen the same streaking figure as Karin, he made no sign to show it. “Nothing taken that wasn’t given freely.”

A hiss melded with the song Karin could almost see now that they were in the inky black. He took another step forward and felt a rushing. He tensed but did not strike out this time, and no shadow came for him. The figures swayed almost too subtly to see, and Karin did not see a single mouth moving that would explain the eerie music they made.

“Was not given,” the voices said, raised in ire and in threat. “A thing taken. A thing misunderstood. A thing meant for making has been turned. A thing of light changed for dark purpose.”

Karin nearly laughed. Talmir did, a short, harsh bark that fit the song nicely.

“You would take up the cause of the Dark Kind as your own?” Karin asked, hating his curiosity and the sickening feeling it dredged up. “You would ally with the World Apart? Is that where you got whatever it is that coils before you? Is that where your song comes from, if you can call it such?”

The walls of the cavern began to carve themselves from his periphery. They were black with purple veins that threatened red in places, smooth and weathered from untold centuries facing the southeasterly wind. There was an age to the place that had nothing to do with the present company, a feeling of depth that went farther than anything Karin had felt in the caverns they had left to the east. He peered into that deeper darkness and imagined it as the throat of some long-dead drake—a king whose weak spawn had devolved into the bile-spitting lizards they had faced before.

Not unlike the crones before him.

He could see them now, or at least their forms. They ringed a pit that put out the opposite of light. Something swirled in their midst that burned without illuminating. Black fire. It had a familiar stink to it, like the Embers’ ozone mixed with dead things left in the rain. The figures had ceased their swaying. Their attention was fixed, seemingly on him, and he swallowed with a throat gone dry despite the stickiness of the chamber.

“We have taken,” the voices said, a surprising acknowledgement. “We have taken much, but we will give back to the World once we have preserved it.”

“Preserved,” Karin tasted the word, edging in so that his back brushed against the porous, sweating stone. “Not saved.”

“What is in a word?” If things like these had it left in them to laugh, Karin thought they might. He was closer now, but could not make out a single face around the black mass, nor could he distinguish a single voice from the buzzing of the song and attach it to a form.

To his right, Talmir had paused. The captain held his blade horizontal, as if he expected to bring it up in a block before a strike. His eyes were everywhere but on the kneeling figures before them, and Karin wondered if he had seen the shadow or felt its passing.

“And what have you taken?” Karin asked, edging closer. He felt like a hunter cornering a pack of wolves in their own den. He felt foolish, and feeling it made that anger rise just below the surface where it bubbled and spat, aching to be let out. He glanced at Talmir and saw his brow working in the lavender light that leaked in from the desert sky and the blood-soaked dunes that observed them dispassionately.

“Listen,” the voices said, dragging it out like a snake might. “Listen close.” Karin would rather do anything but. Still, he couldn’t help it entirely.

The song drifted over them, the walls of the cavern thrumming with it, bleeding with it. Now that he heard it, he realized why it sounded so different from the crones sitting before him, from the vipers in their dusky pit. The voices in the song were not the same, but he thought he’d heard them before. If not, he thought he’d seen the ones they belonged to. An image flashed of the Pale Men painting a light desert lighter still, like morning frost. His heart rang against his chest and his ears pounded with the blood it sent racing. He stopped dead.

Now, they did laugh, and Karin knew that they had a piece of his thoughts, knew they had played a hand in guiding them.

Karin settled into a crouch. He was close enough to spring, now, and springing was on his mind. He bared his teeth like a hunting cat. Nearly hissed like one.

“What have you taken?” he asked again, growling it out through his teeth.

“They were our children,” they said. “The children of ours. Their hearts were ours to take. Their souls.”

Karin saw the images play out before his eyes. He saw babes torn from their mothers’ grasps in the years immediately following Ninyeva’s Valley migration, or else given freely by the red-toothed savages this tribe had become in later years. These witches had taken everything from their own, propping up the strong with paint and black magic and using the same to take what mattered most from those poor children who would never know anything of love or want or fullness.

They were empty husks, and now Karin knew that they were not burned or scarred from tortures or design. They were things made by their unmaking. They were the bodies left behind once the jackals of the desert got a hold. They had never known anything but, and now they followed their own stolen voices—their souls, as the Seers said—across the leagues and cold, wind-blown miles, seeking to find solace and a place to put their rage, something to fill the great empty that was so much wider and deeper than the place.

Talmir straightened. He was close to them. Closer than Karin by a stride. His face seemed blank and Karin guessed he had been shown the same. His silver blade hung at his side, but not limp or lazy. It was the still tail of a scorpion, and the witches frozen voles in his sights.

“You have done this,” Talmir said, his voice low and level, eerily calm. “You have taken everything from those poor souls, and done it using the power of the World Apart because your Mother left you cold and without fire? You have done this because you want the fire back, and you think it lies beneath the Midnight Dunes?”

No answer. Not immediately, but a feeling of amusement and of calculation. Even anticipation.

“What tall tales the Sage has told you.”

“You would lecture us,” Karin said, “when you serve one among their number? The Eastern Dark. Say it. Say you are his dark servants. His Dark Kind.”

Karin had found the drifting shadow. Some part of him feared it to be a Sentinel. After all, the smell was the same as that which filled the Valley in the Dark Months, he now remembered. It was a close thing to the stench that had hung over the fields of Hearth for weeks after, that would fill the rivers of the Fork for seasons hence.

But this shadow drew breath. It was still, but not completely so, and it wore a wrap to cover its eyes or kept them closed; he could see only the beady reds and bloody browns of the Seers across the nest from which the dark song sprouted.

“Do not let the name he has been given—”

“Earned,” Karin said, edging closer still while keeping his attention firmly fixed on the unmoving shadow. “It is a name earned.”

“The Landkist are a scourge,” the voices said. “An abomination. Unnatural as anything you see before you. More so. They are a reaction to things gone wrong. Not a gift. An infection.”

“One caused by the Sages’ folly,” Karin said.

“Yes,” the voices said in unison. Now that he was closer, they had spread some, and no longer sounded incorporeal or separate. “Yes. The Red Waste is one of them. They broke the World. He is not your ally. They are the enemy. And now, one seeks to make things right. One seeks to break the chain and stop the World Apart closing in.”

“Your master,” Karin said.

“We do not serve him,” they said. “We do not serve the Eastern Dark, though we have known him in times when he was more sure and less … frightened. Less craven.”

“And what do you seek to do?” Talmir asked, his voice oddly dispassionate. Karin eyed him from his periphery. The captain stood as a statue, but his grip had changed slightly. “You said he seeks to stop the World Apart. If you don’t serve him, what do you seek?”

“Nothing of the sort.” One head turned toward Talmir and then settled back on Karin. “We have learned from that dark one enough to trouble his brother, or so he thinks. We will kill the Red Waste and rid our lands of him and his. But we will not join with the Eastern Dark to halt the World Apart from coming. We will bring it here. We have seen its gifts. We know its power. We know the music it makes, and where it leads.”

There was a great sighing like ecstasy and a foul-smelling breeze that went with it. “It was foolish to beckon the World Apart,” the voices said. “It would be less wise to shun it now that it is so close. Close enough to taste.” The bloody eyes seemed to see through Karin. “We know what lies beneath the Midnight Dunes, no matter what those poor fools think. No matter what our painted heroes or the Sage and his followers believe. We have heard his voice, and it is the sweetest music, for it is not his own. He speaks with the voices of the many in that other place. For he is a Lord of the Night. He is power and dread incarnate.”

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 hair 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 pools 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.

“What is this?” Jes asked, whirling on Pevah. She stepped toward him and Ceth stepped in to block her path. Jes struck her arm toward the mountainous dunes. “Explain, Sage! Explain your lands!”

Iyana thought to say something but found that no words came. Mial and Ket moved up on either side of Jes and even Creyath turned toward them, his amber eyes roving between each set and settling on Ceth last. If the Northman noticed the gaze of an Ember upon him, he did not seem to mind.

“It is an awakening,” Pevah said, his voice coming out calmer than the growl it had become. Iyana could not see his face in full behind the folds of his blood-red hood, but she thought she saw the glint of a fang in the dusky light. “It is my failure and it is doom.”

“They’re killing each other,” Ket said.

It might have sounded foolish or needless to say, but no one seemed to think so, not even Pevah, who only nodded, teeth grinding, blood leaking from fresh cuts in his palms he’d made himself. Ceth looked at him worriedly and then back at Jes and the Valley soldiers, even Iyana. His eyes verged on gray more than the blue they had been, now.

“Some victory,” Creyath said.

“For us, or them?” Sen asked.

“Does it matter?”

Pevah looked as if he were about to answer, and then the vibrations began. Iyana had to catch herself on Ket’s arm, the young soldier helping her to steady. She blinked out the sight of the Between and tried to fight the waves of dizziness that assailed her, combining with the newfound tremors they all fought. The sands below them shifted and bounced, and Iyana had the impression that they were merely mites on the surface of some giant’s dusty table.

The Dunes pulsed and though she could no longer see the tendrils of the song that drove the Pale Men to sacrifice and murder of their own, she knew it was there, compelling them to rend each other limb from limb just as it compelled the lands below to crack, bend and threaten breaking.

Compelled what was below.

The crown of the four conjoined dunes spilled along with the bodies of those atop it—the fighters and the dead—and soon the glowing jewels for peaks formed a singular, misshapen mass that oozed with a bright and wet redness that made Iyana want to retch. The slope was now dark with the blood of those atop, their pale forms tumbling and slipping, some sinking into pools the blood of their brothers and sisters had made in the miniature valleys that spread out before them.

“Why?” The voice was earnest and tired in a way Iyana finally thought she understood. The speaker was the yellow-haired northerner she thought Ceth counted as mate, if not lover. Martah’s face was splotched with blood that wouldn’t dry for the heat below her skin. Her lips were cracked and dry, her eyes quivering in the sunken caves exhaustion had made of them. “Pevah. Why? Why do they—”

“Because the only thing that calls a lord of death is death itself,” he said, voice flat, emotionless, though his face told a different story. “Blood signals life, but its smell can only mean its ending. He is trapped beneath the bonds I’ve set him in, his mind caught in the slowness I’ve made. Enough blood, and he’ll remember. Enough death, and he’ll rise. I remember his like. I remember him as he was. This was always going to happen so long as the crones got their way.”

“How did they know?” Iyana asked. “The Blood Seers, I mean. How could they have known? You said they sought the power of the Embers buried beneath.”

“Their followers, maybe,” Pevah said, casting a sidelong glance at the celebrating warriors whose paint had begun to run with the heat of their excitement. “But I think I was blind. I think this one,” he pointed toward the towering mounds of sand and ruined flesh, “was smarter than I thought.”

“How so?” Creyath asked. It was a strange image, the lot of them gathered around Pevah like children waiting on the telling of some tale they wanted to frighten them without it being real. But this was real, and its effects were plain before them, bright and dark at once and impossible not to see.

“He has been whispering things in the dark, I think,” Pevah said, a wry smile creeping onto his face that might even have signified grudging respect. Iyana shook her head, but Creyath merely nodded and turned back toward the Dunes, a rare breeze sweeping down from the north to blow his black braids in a swaying dance.

“The Night Lords are more than kings,” Pevah said, his red-brown eyes focused ahead. He no longer chanted. No longer tried to change the time atop the crest. He was saving what energy he had left, and Iyana held no doubt what for.

“In the World Apart, they are the rulers of lands and black waters that stretch unending,” he said. Creyath regarded him with a keener interest than the rest, which is to say his eyes burned brighter than his arrows ever had. “They are ageless titans, manifestations of whatever nameless horrors and long-ago travesties caused them to be. Perhaps another world such as ours, beautiful in one time and made sick with war in another. Perhaps they were kings themselves, or heroes. Landkist, if all worlds have them as well. It could be they were made by some … folly, or another.”

His voice caught on that and Iyana seized on it and filed it away.

His shoulders sagged slightly. “Or perhaps they simply are, and perhaps their being has no deeper meaning beyond the purpose we’ve assigned to them. After all, what does one do with power like theirs and no soul to guide it?”

“Destroy,” Ceth said.

Pevah did not respond, nor did he nod or give any indication he had heard. Still, it was plain for all to see that Ceth had spoken true, and Iyana saw more than one furtive glance back toward the east, which Pevah laughed away and then seemed shamed to have done so.

“You speak as if you’ve seen the place,” Sen said.

Pevah did look at him, then, and Iyana saw anger replaced by a flash of fear. She had not known the Sage of the Red Waste for long, but she had known him long enough to recognize the look as rare. Judging by the effect it had on his followers, she was right to take some of that fear for herself.

“We need to stop it.” Ceth said it lightly, as if he knew the response would disappoint him. His hands were no longer balled into fists, but hung limp at his sides. He seemed so very tired, and Iyana had the urge to ease it. She held herself back.

“Plenty of blood painting those mountains, now,” Pevah said. “I’ll not add more of yours to the pyre.”

Ceth sighed and it sounded like the lot of them sighed with him, Iyana included.

“I have seen many things,” Pevah said, catching as many glances as he could and holding those that lingered. “Things not meant for me or any other.” He looked as if he would say more, but the witches’ song pitched and rolled like a ship in a wayward sea and he did not waste the effort warring with it.

“The Night Lord comes,” Pevah said. And that was that.

It sounded like something close to acceptance, but it hinged too far on inevitability for Iyana. Her mind raced over the implications and the possibilities. She thought of how they might stop the killing and thus the raising of the beast below, but the song was the key. She knew it in her bones, and she knew the only hope of stopping it was a league or more away, hunting the singers in whatever shallow darkness they hid.

Karin fought against the memory, feeling the sting of another blade as it made a hole in his shirt and the skin beneath. One had climbed his back and snatched him by the hair. He bit down and launched her over, feeling to make sure his neck was untouched. He whirled and lashed out in all directions, feeling weak but angry enough to cast it off. He went down on one knee and shook with the need to rise.

And then he saw Talmir Caru walking amid that dark horde, the Bronze Star that hung on his chest glowing with a light it made—a light that was not borrowed from the sun or moon or stars, nor reflected from a burning pit.

“The fire will never come back for you,” Talmir said. He walked toward the eldest, heedless of the other crones who bared their teeth and grasped for him. And Karin saw that they were not there. Not really. He knew it as the work of the poisons they had given to him, and though he saw the same cuts and gashes leaking along the captain’s arms and neck and scarred cheeks, Talmir Caru was unharmed and undaunted.

“It will not cleanse you from this World because we will do it first,” he said, and now Karin glimpsed the first of fear he had seen on any of the witches’ lined faces as she crouched in the deeper darkness.

“Keep your fire, you folk who would name yourselves ‘Ember,’” she said with the voices she’d stolen. “We’ve no need of its lie!”

The chamber burst into light that only flame could make, the black pit in the center flaring to a blinding sun that had Karin reeling. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, and it was a lucky thing, as he felt the bite of stone and the dull, stinging ring of it greeting the bone of his arm. Not all of them were spent, then, and as he tossed the latest aside the rest fell on him and away from the blinding, glowing pit in the center.

The song seemed to tear itself apart, making a wind rise where before there had been only musty stillness and sticky death. It whipped the yellow flames into a frenzy and scorched the bodies nearest the pit as others crawled away, screaming and raging and seeking a place to put it.

Karin fought against the remaining crones who advanced on him, and the discordant song flooded his ears and infected him to the marrow. But now it had no hold on him, and he found the strength they had taken. He found it in the image of Sarise A’zu and he made her fire his own. He leapt atop them and dashed their heads upon the stone one by one, ignoring the scores he received from those he had left to kill, and all the while Talmir’s silver blade went to work before the miniature sun that hung in a chamber lit like dawn.

He fought for what seemed an eternity. His skin burned but did not peel as he wrestled, thrashed and rolled near the sloped pit. The song became a scream that sounded with a thousand voices—innocents taken from their mortal coils, the voices stolen from the Pale Men and used to lead them—and the noise and pain of it stole all senses from him but for those he needed to complete his dark task.

And complete it he did.

Karin stood on wavering legs. The fire had died down, and in the cool breeze that rushed in from the south the blood on his hands dried to a cracking paste, as if it was reluctant to leave him or absolve him of the guilt he did not yet feel at killing the creatures.

He looked beyond the pit and the naked, pale bodies strewn around it, none of them whole after the work Talmir’s blade had done. Talmir stood with his back to Karin, and though he could not see her, he knew the eldest of the crones had flattened herself against the opposite wall. Now that the fire was dimmed, Karin could see the cave picking up and reflecting the bronze light Talmir’s medal sent out. There was some magic in it after all, and Karin marveled despite his pain and the discordant, wrathful wailing that tried to lay him low.

Karin circled the edge of the pit, holding a hand to his brow to keep the throbbing ache from overtaking him, keeping his eyes clear and dry lest he be thrown back into the depths of some illusion or truth of the past he need not remember here and now.

He saw her now, the witch who had been so brazen and brave. She cowered at the feet of the Captain of Hearth, her nose mere inches from the tip of that silver blade Karin had seen do its work on some of the stoutest warriors in the Valley core back when the tribes therein were less than allies. In the place of fear, he saw only hate, and it was a potent thing.

She rose before Talmir’s steady, merciless gaze and raised her chin toward him. She opened her mouth to speak, and in a movement faster than a hot-blooded slash from an Ember in full heat Talmir parted her head from her boney shoulders.

The skull landed on the black rock with a crack and rolled to land between the two men. The song ceased. Karin fell to his knees in a relief that was almost overwhelming in its peace and Talmir did the same, the two panting as if they had risen from the deepest depths of Last Lake, clawing for breath they did not know they had needed. Karin wondered how long they could have survived in the thick of that dark storm. As he stared at the milky red eyes of the witch’s head, he was glad not to find out.

She gasped. Karin would not have believed it if Talmir’s curses hadn’t confirmed it. The Bronze Star that had dimmed brightened once more, stinging Karin’s eyes. The captain stood as the witch’s head worked its jaw, eyes rolling to expose the whites. He pulled his sword up with him, the metal scraping on the stone like a proclamation, an impending doom.

Spittle and blood leaked from her open maw and dripped from those yellowed teeth. She had no throat to make the sounds, but they came out anyway.

“He is coming,” the witch’s head said. “Coming to finish—”

And before Talmir could do it for them both, Karin found an errant stone and brought it down with a crack and squelch to end it.

“We’ll give him your best,” he said, breathless.

The silence that filled the void the witches left behind was almost overpowering in its magnitude. There was an emptiness to the place, now, and Karin felt the weight of it just as he felt the burn of the poisons in his blood. His vision was blurred, but he had enough of his senses to know he was in no mortal danger. Not now that the crones were dead.

It was fitting, the way they had left them. Fitting for what the witches had done and fitting for the small measure of satisfaction the men had taken from their killing, even if they would never give voice to it.

Still, there was an ache separate from the poisons and the cuts; apart from the thrum the song had left behind and the exhaustion that hit him in full now that he had stopped moving. It speared his heart and threatened to rip it out, and Karin collapsed in a well of his own tears. The salt rivers ran freely, water he did not know he had left spilling onto the still-hot stones to sizzle and steam. His whole form shook with the agony of her loss, as if he felt it now just as he had for the first time. Just as Kole had.

He felt a hand on his back as Talmir knelt to offer comfort.

“I was spared the brunt of it,” Talmir said as Karin emptied it out, feeling dizzy and lighter for it. He regarded the captain and traced a path down to the cut of bronze that stuck to the pink sweat on his chest.

“It seems Sister Piell put some magic in it after all,” Karin said, wiping away the salt that had already begun to crystallize like one of the quartz pillars below the sands.

Talmir smiled. “Perhaps she is what this lot once were, before they went wrong. Before they … soured.” He thought about spitting but held it in, and the two of them looked out toward the south, hoping against hope.

“You’ve done something here, Karin,” Talmir said.

The song was dead and the foxes were already streaking back over the dunes, heading south. They moved with a purpose celebration held no part in, and Karin nodded despite the dread he still felt and the fresh pain of a heart broken all over again.

“You seem set on waiting.”

Sen addressed Pevah as the latter watched the massacre continue atop the Dunes, which were now slick with red and black and all manner of pieces that used to be men. The Sage’s eyes were redder now, and they flickered toward Sen as if he were an errant fly buzzing on the borders of attention.

“What would you have me do?” Pevah asked. The question seemed to take Sen aback. The Faeykin’s mouth worked, but he ultimately settled for a frown. He turned back toward the north, his eyes tracing the same ridges Iyana’s did—intent for signs of Talmir and Karin, or perhaps something worse that heralded their end—before settling on the painted warriors who had changed from milling to pacing on the flats separating the one group from the other.

Iyana watched Pevah just as Ceth and the red- and gray-sashes did. Her own people shifted from foot to foot, unsure whether to stow bows and blades or bare them fresh and full. They looked to Creyath now more than any other, and the Second Keeper had adopted much the same expression as the Sage he stood beside, both staring unerringly west.

The old man was buzzing. Iyana might have put it down to a trick the dark song played out in the contours of her mind, but the longer she stared the more certain she became. He was building to something, preparing in thought and in other ways she could not see even if he appeared to be standing still. Waiting, as Sen said.

Still, whatever the old man was playing at, Iyana was having trouble seeing where they fit in. The Sage did not seem to think they could defeat what was coming any more than they could stop it doing so in the first place. Why, then, did he not ask them to leave? Why did he not compel them?

Iyana shivered at the thought. Could it be that he knew himself doomed, and did not want to meet his end alone? Could it be that he knew running was futile, and that there was no escape for them now?

Or was there something else building below the surface? Below that lined face that should have looked even older. Below that blood-red robe and the striking silver silk she sometimes glimpsed at the hems. Could there be something of hope left in the Sage of the Red Waste? And could they have to do with it?

As she thought on it, Iyana found her gaze drawn to Ceth. The Landkist had expended much of his energy in the melee that had amounted to nothing on the slope—nothing more than an aid for the macabre game the Blood Seers were playing in their dusky caves under the forever night. He breathed shallow and slow, but his eyes flickered back and forth between Dunes, enemies, and the man he might’ve considered a king.

The ground shook and it sounded like rage.

Iyana couldn’t help but glance around to see how plain her fear was. As it stood, she saw the same look reflected in the rest. Ket stood with the more experienced blades between them and the painted warriors. If anything, he looked the least cowed—a sign of inexperience more than bravery. Jes and Mial, stoic as they came even if they were two generations separated, stood very still. The only members of the twin parties who seemed undisturbed were Ceth’s Northmen. If anything, Iyana thought there was an eagerness about them.

She supposed it made sense. After all, Ceth’s were a people who had fought the Twins of Whiteash, the Sages widely considered to be cruelest of the lot even if they weren’t as mighty as some. As for the red-sashes, Iyana felt a kinship with them now that she could only reach at before. Something about the setting and the shared horror of it all. Something about the beast that beat upon its bindings from below called them back to a time when they weren’t separate—back to a time when they shared an Ember King and not simply a memory of him.

The thought of T’Alon Rane had her mind tracing familiar pathways to unfamiliar lands. She thought of Center and the Emerald Road and wondered whether Kole and Linn had found him. She thought of what they might be doing and the roads they might be traveling to keep from wishing for them to be here beside her.

It didn’t help.

And then there was another sound that filled Iyana with dread before it dispelled it. Not a sound, but rather a change in it. She looked up, forgetting for the moment that she had left her better sight behind in the Between. She thought to reach back in to that realm, but a warning look from Sen stayed her. He shook his head slowly, holding a hand toward her as if motioning her back. But he too turned his eyes skyward.

The dark song had become such a part of the environment that its sudden disturbance was jarring. It changed from low and steady moaning like dead wind to a thin shriek that split the purple sky like cracks of thunder before falling to something less than what it had been—something less rhythmic and more discordant.

“There.”

She followed Sen’s pointing finger and tried to swallow past the rising bile as she saw the carnage along the lower slopes. All was still there because all was dead or dying, but farther up, the sight was stranger still. The Pale Men still stood in their scores, but where before they had set upon each other with a fury that put the Dark Kind to shame, now they simply stood, motionless, the stars casting what pale light they could through the lavender murk to light them.

Their heads tilted sickly, sharply, like the heads of owls on strings. A cold wind rose, and even the stench it carried of the massacre could not undo the reprieve it brought in its wake as the last mournful, angry notes of the witches’ song evaporated.

None spoke for a time, and as Iyana looked from the Pale Men standing like unlit candles down to the savage red warriors, she saw understanding dawn on those painted faces that began as fear before switching to fresh anger. They began to shout and motion, gesturing with their sharpened bones and obsidian blades. Some turned to the north, casting worried glances toward the place their dark mothers had hidden like the cravens they were.

Toward the place where they had died.

“They did it.” Iyana breathed it out in relief. She earned confused looks until the Valley soldiers followed her gaze.

“Captain Caru,” one of the women beside Ket said.

“And the First Runner,” Mial added, his voice awed.

Iyana felt the smile touch her face and lost it a moment later as she swiveled toward Pevah. The old man’s face was contorted into something like a scowl but more pained. He too seemed to be listening, and she saw that he had shod his soles and dug his bare feet into the thin layer of white sand.

Another rumble that sounded like a premonition. Iyana swallowed.

“It doesn’t matter?” Ceth said, brows drawn together as he looked from Iyana to Pevah. “Slaying the Seers avails us nothing?”

Pevah blinked as he noticed the sets of eyes turned his way. He offered a smile and a nod that seemed less than pitiful to Iyana.

“A victory, to be sure,” he said. “The crones had to die, and truth be told I feared we’d never get it done.”

“But …?” Iyana led.

Pevah’s red eyes focused on her, and now she could see the black pits at the centers expanding, growing back into those dark pools she had seen before. She did not want to look at the rest of him to see if it would follow suit.

“This is a fight that was always coming,” he said, nodding toward the north. “No matter what bones and entrails they cast. Having them dead is good. It will not save us. Not now.” He turned back toward the west. “Having them dead is good,” he said, nodding to himself.

“Happy to help,” Ket said, his bitterness showing plain where the others kept themselves quiet or aloof.

“I do not ask you to stay,” Pevah said, unwilling to meet Ket’s eyes.

“You don’t ask us to leave, either,” Iyana said.

“No,” he admitted. “No, I do not.” He glanced at Creyath, the Ember’s amber eyes a steady, burning smolder in the night. “I will be vulnerable when it starts,” he said.

“When what starts?” Sen asked and Pevah didn’t answer, though Iyana felt the buzzing start up once more. Now his whole form seemed to blur with it, gathering about him like a shell or a shroud.

Creyath and Ceth both exchanged looks that told her they would be staying no matter what. They all would, but it didn’t change the feeling of despair in the air—a feeling no absence of song could dispel completely. Not when a Sage—one of the great powers of the World—stood in the grip of fear and indecision before them.

Not fear, Iyana knew. Knowing.

There were shouts from the north.

“There it is,” Pevah said, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. As Iyana watched in horrified fascination, the painted warriors began climbing the base of the Dunes. They stepped over the dismembered bodies of the poor wretches they had sent up, their blades lancing down to finish those who still twitched. When they reached the lowest of the still-standing Pale Men they dispatched them as well, their blades making deep cuts in the white necks and announcing their deaths with red ribbons that flashed in the Dunes’ amber glow.

“Pevah?” Iyana said it with a warning tone. She reached out her consciousness and harnessed the tether that was never far—the green, thrumming thread that was as much her as she was it, and which she had never noticed in her years spent merging it with the dimming threads of others she had healed and nurtured. She flashed into the other Sight and picked out the threads of the painted warriors and thought about reaching out for them, ensnaring them. She had held a score or more of the Pale Men, but these were different. Where those tethers had been deep black with purple tendrils, these were brighter reds and oranges and bloody hues—threads with much life and wills bent on killing.

“Leave them,” Pevah said. “They want to meet their Ember god.” He paused, and Iyana should not have been surprised to see his face break into a smile that was more a wolf’s toothy grin. “Let them.”

Iyana felt a numbness steal over her as she watched the warriors do their work. Without the beckoning of the song, the Pale Men had been reduced to staring, listless children, alone and unloved—abandoned by the Mothers that had only ever used them for their blood and the power their suffering produced. She forgave them as they fell, but for the warriors who did the killing now with no dark songs and no lashing whips to drive them on, she felt a cold fire burning deep in her core. Even during the Dark Months she could not recall feeling it so clear and so intoxicatingly potent.

It was hate, and it was a bitter thing to carry. She was loath to let it go.

As the Pale Men fell and joined the mess they’d made of a place that could have seemed beautiful from a distance, the air grew quiet and the ground went still. The painted warriors looked to one another, expectant, exuberant, the presence of their enemies lost in the anticipation of an event that had come to define them—their charge, just as the men and women around Iyana held its opposite at heart.

The ground quaked hard enough to rattle her teeth. Iyana stumbled and nearly went over. Others did, and one atop the Midnight Dunes was buried beneath a slide of heavy, packed and bloody sand.

Now, shouts and screams mixed fear with rapture and the warriors ran and tumbled and slid down the cascades the beast below them made, eager to be free of its path and eager to see it rise. They hit the bottom on the east-facing side and did not put as much distance between them as they should have. Iyana knew it even before the loose mountainside swept out to claim half a dozen, snapping bones and crushing sinew and drowning out whatever cries they sent up.

Sand flew like hail. Iyana shielded her eyes as the dry storm struck her with a sting that ripped the skin from her elbows. She squinted through the dust and caught a glimpse of amber and black—a great, reaching hand, grasping and pulling—before another great gout of earth shot toward them like the tallest wave she had seen.

Iyana was sure they would all die, but just before the torrent hit them Pevah spoke words she could not understand and the storm stopped, or else slowed enough to pass them by without the strength or speed to do them harm. She saw the others marveling with her as the sand passed them like swaths of time, like broken hourglasses spilled underwater. The grains flew like golden beads, and even the bits of blood that trailed between like links in chains appeared as rubies.

When the sand passed them by or touched their skin and fell, the time that held it resumed its former pace. All around them but for the small pocket in which they stood, the land was pitted with fist-sized craters that stretched for half a league to east and south. The beast had sent the sand with such force that it would have ripped them all to shreds where they stood.

It had done that very thing to those who had stood enraptured before it. Another dozen warriors fallen and broken apart while the lucky few had managed to skitter around the base of the dune and find refuge on the northern flats. Some had even nested up beneath the sloped sides, avoiding the spray by being too close, and now they wore a fresh, primal fear that Iyana could not help but delight in seeing.

“Not quite what they imagined,” Iyana said.

“So much more,” Pevah said. He was breathing in long, rasping gouts, his breath steaming in the coolness though he was slick with damp. His hands were curled into an approximation of fists, and his form still wore that blur that seemed to come from within him—the time he had gathered like a weapon and meant to use.

Creyath stepped before them as Ceth walked up next to Pevah. The Ember sank to one knee and closed his eyes, and Iyana felt the heat swirling in the air and making pops in the atmosphere. He set his Everwood blade down and drew the black bow from around his oiled shoulders, the wood already steaming in the damp it made of his evaporated sweat. There were two black shafts in that long quiver, and he drew one and stuck it in the buzzing turf beside him as the next explosion of sand sent a higher shower that pelted them like earthen rain. He held another shaft in his left hand, and Iyana saw the black wood go from dark to amber to gold as the Second Keeper shared his fire with it.

The Midnight Dunes were no more. Where before there had been great mountains of sand whose permanence was just the latest in a land of secrets and lies, now there was a moving maelstrom of black and red. The sky broke and a wave floored all but for Ceth, who stood to face the conjured wind, fists balled at his sides. Iyana stood on quivering legs and then the sound hit them in full as the beast broke free of its bonds and roared.

Now she could see it, and what a mighty thing it was.

The great torso rose, showers and streams of golden-red sand falling around it like a curtain. Its hands could have belonged to an ape or a man or something between the two, and its bowed legs did not lengthen but rather sank into the soft spill it had made of its former prison. Its black skin was covered with a purple sheen that pulsed like the beating of the heart Iyana swore she could see in its chest—a deeper darkness set against the rest.

Its eyes were purple pits that shone like amethysts. Atop its crown were horns that curled like those of the rams Iyana had spied in the Valley during the Bright Days—during the days these were meant to be. Its head was larger than the ape Larren Holspahr had slain at Last Lake, and its open maw was bordered by black fangs that appeared as smaller mountains set against the ridges of its jaw.

It was a beast made of wrath, and it was awesome to behold. Iyana felt a fool for thinking anything the World Apart had sent for them in the grips of the Dark Months could call itself the same.

The beast roared and broke them from their shared shock, but there was another sound beneath it, rising higher with the passing rush the beast’s throat made of the wind and air and desert sky. It was laughter, and it came from the Sage of the Red Waste.

All eyes seemed to bend toward the old man as he cackled with manic glee at the monstrosity before them—the black god who seemed to break the air apart with foreboding and threat. Pevah was no more, and in his place was a creature of bitter madness Iyana was loath to look upon even as she moved closer to him, just like the rest.

The Night Lord’s purple eyes—dark and yet blazing with an inner fire Iyana had no doubt could scald the toughest of hides—fixed on the old man who was now something closer to the frightening, loping figure they had seen carve pale throats beneath the sands to the east.

Iyana had a strange impression as she observed those split lips and needle teeth, the elongated fingers and black claws. She saw a king among the desert foxes, perched atop an Everwood tree. The hunters of this land watched him from afar and dropped to their knees when they passed his ways and used his carven roads. None looked at him directly, for to do so was to court his attention, his mischief and perhaps his ire. He was not benevolent nor was he cruel. He was a being of the west and the west had made him, and now here was another to challenge him … one Iyana held no doubt could do more than that.

“Do you remember me, beast?” Pevah said, his voice carrying across the frozen distance like a thrown stone.

The purple fires in their pits did not flare nor did they flash. They only flickered, deadly and intent. The creature was still but for the strange thrumming, like a blur or a watery haze that hung over its jet-black skin and permeated the contours of muscle that worked on some machinery the World could never make.

Pevah continued to speak to the titan—at least, his voice did, but Iyana felt a tug on her sleeve and saw Sen motioning toward the old man. Iyana looked and had to wipe the confusion from her eyes. His lips were moving, but the sounds didn’t match those that drifted and raced across the white flats toward the Night Lord. Pevah’s voice had been split, and the whispered one was meant for Creyath.

The Second Keeper knelt just a stride before the Sage, his Everwood shaft glowing bright as dawn before him. Iyana saw beads of sweat gathered along his skin that turned to hissing steam that rode the currents of his heat. Ceth watched him closely, looking between the Ember and the old man as he took in their exchange.

Iyana sidled closer to hear it, Ket letting out a low warning that drew her gaze to the north and back to the painted warriors who had survived the summoning that had been their great deed, a deed that had killed their brothers and sisters and doomed their World. They stood, haphazard and crazed, their wide eyes betraying their rapture. They looked like beings intent on proving something to the god they had freed, and Iyana swallowed as she considered what it might be.

“Captain Talmir tells me you have fought against the like,” Pevah was saying as his other voice continued to berate the beast, to remind it of its defeat at his hands—an approach that had Iyana quaking and wanting to grab the Sage and shake sense into him.

“Nothing close,” Creyath said, his voice as stoic as ever.

Iyana had heard of Creyath Mit’Ahn’s deeds. She had heard of how he had stood atop the walls of Hearth as one of the Night Lords—an imitation of the true thing, she knew now—had come against the white stones. He had stood alone and he had broken its skull and taken its life with a single stroke. But his name had been made years earlier, back before she had been born. Then, the Dark Kind were only an occasional scourge, but there were bigger things nesting in the Deep Lands—the lands made by the White Crest’s fateful clash with the true beasts of the World Apart, by those this monster counted as fellows. Creyath had retreated from the Rockbled into one of the deepest, darkest parts of lands that were deeper and darker than any other in the Valley. He had come out changed by whatever he had seen. Whatever he had fought and slain.

Iyana looked at the Second Keeper with the eyes of a child bereft of the wonder such tales could conjure in an unformed mind. She knew Creyath Mit’Ahn as Second Keeper of Hearth. She knew him as the only Ember to slay a Night Lord before they knew the truth of what the beasts were. Now, here he was. Landkist, no doubting, and brave as any other.

But no match for what had come. And no pretending to be.

The warriors of the Valley looked as though their hope had fled, as if they had kept to the belief that Creyath could lay low such a thing—that a single blow from his famed Everwood could undo what one of the gods of the World had been unable to. The red- and gray-sashes watched the exchange with veiled looks.

For his part, Pevah did not look concerned. His blood-red eyes still focused on the beast he had fought a generation before. A beast that was remembering him. A beast that was eerily still and looked ready to explode at any moment.

“You are Ember,” Pevah said, as if that was all the encouragement Creyath needed—as if he was a child being coaxed along by his father. “You will find your fire, and that one will know it soon enough.” He nodded toward the Night Lord, and now the creature threw its head back and opened its maw wide.

At first, no sound came out, but Iyana saw it before she heard it. The atmosphere seemed to warp, the stars in their lavender-blue curtain shimmering as if drowned, and the sound of it was deafening to behold.

“I only have two shafts,” Creyath said, uncowed, but Iyana thought she saw a quiver touch his lips and betray his shoulders. It was the closest to fear she could recall seeing on the man, though she wondered if it might be the strain of building so much heat without letting it out. The shaft in his hand was now too bright to look upon directly, and now it drew the attention of the Night Lord that would be its target. The beast did not seem afraid.

“Then you should make them count,” Pevah said, direct and uncompromising. Iyana shot him a look that was ignored. The Sage looked from the ruined dunes and the black shadow atop them to the painted warriors in the north. He had a killing look and a provoking one. Iyana had the sudden realization that he very much wanted the fight that he had so staunchly avoided for seasons that had bled into years. His wards had been broken and it seemed to her that some of the strength he had forgotten was returned, and with it some of what had given him his name.

Still, there was enough of the old man she had known remaining, and that was the figure she chose to look to as he began to issue commands that somehow sounded like an old man’s gentle suggestions. He spoke to those readying weapons they would finally be tasked with using against those warriors who had betrayed these lands. Sharps against sharps. Muscle against muscle as a Sage and his Landkist prepared to battle a demon the likes of which Iyana had never imagined.

She only had to discover where healers and tricksters like she and Sen fit into the coming madness.

“Our friends will come … presently,” Pevah said, and on they came, shouting and hollering like mad dogs foaming at the mouth. They ran and leapt and sprinted, intent on the Sage and his followers. Intent to give glory to a thing that could never know it and could never appreciate its attempt, or so she thought.

“Ceth,” Pevah said, and the northern Landkist began to move between them, heading for the front of the line where Ket and the other swordsmen and spear-wielders stood. “Ceth, no.” The Landkist turned toward Pevah, who was looking back at the purple-eyed titan of nightmare. Those red eyes turned back, and Iyana saw the regret in them, and the fear.

“You must draw him off,” Pevah said. “Draw his aim and his fury, his rage and foolishness. Draw his ire and in so doing, draw his death.” Ceth nodded, his feet changing direction as quickly as his will, which was as dauntless as any Iyana had known.

The painted warriors were getting closer, carried on the backs of their screams that mixed desperation with wanton need. Iyana swallowed, but in the place of the fear she had felt moments before a strange sort of calm enveloped her. She felt a warmth that had nothing to do with Creyath’s flames, and then she noted Sen standing beside her, noticed the glow her other Sight picked up as his tether brushed against her own. She looked up at him and he smiled back down before stepping toward the line of blades facing the north.

“We stand here.” Pevah extended his palms toward the Night Lord and the crumbled dunes, toward Ceth’s back as the Landkist drifted farther away, his strides lengthening, pace quickening. The purple fire in the Night Lord’s eye-pits watched him approach dispassionately at first, and then with a hatred Iyana could not know but felt all the same.

Ceth’s walk became a trot, which turned to a sprint that was faster than Iyana had seen him move—faster than Kole and faster than any beast she had yet seen. There was an inhalation, like the west itself were taking a deep breath before a plunge, and Ceth launched himself skyward with that strength that belied the weightlessness that would follow.

A great black fist and all its claws swung toward him with shocking speed, and Iyana thought for certain the hero of the deserts would be shattered then and there. Instead, the arm slowed as if passing through a mire, and Iyana recognized the indrawn breath as the work of Pevah, whose arms shook with the effort, palms pulsing with a blur that matched the one still coating the Night Lord’s form.

Ceth flipped up and over the great arm that was thicker at the wrist than he was at the waist. He caught currents she couldn’t feel and slowed only a little when he hit some of the time Pevah had bent. He tumbled over the inner side of the beast’s arm and fell like a flitting leaf below that lavender stare, landing with a shock that formed a crater in the sand and rocked the Night Lord back on its haunches with surprise more than force.

Another roar, and this one scattered the wispy clouds that had begun to form with a strange haste. Pevah panted. He was drenched in sweat, and the Night Lord’s next blow nearly took Ceth’s head from his shoulders. The one behind it would have had Pevah not slowed it again, moving time like it was a blade through a pool of his own making.

The Night Lord brought both its palms down and made craters of its own that tripled Ceth’s height in depth, and the Landkist streaked away like a leaf on the wind. The titan leaned forward like a cat worrying at a rodent’s hovel and let forth a scream that contained the sounds of all those who had died to make it remember. The white sand burned with purple fire whose cold and heat Iyana could feel from a distance.

“Ember,” Pevah said, his voice an entreaty and a warning.

“Ready …” Mial droned out another warning, and Iyana loosed a gasp as the painted warriors slammed into their line with savage abandon.

The melee was wet and violent and too quick to last long, and Iyana fell more from the shock of it than any true danger. Sen waded into the fray without a weapon to his name and the red- and gray-sashes meted out more steel and iron and cut obsidian than they accepted as the armor of Hearth protected those Iyana had grown to know on the journey from home.

She rolled onto her knees and scrambled up, dodging a sharpened spur of bone and then the falling form of one of the painted men, who died gurgling with one of Jes’s knives embedded in its throat. She stood and held her breath as she came face-to-face with a frozen and colorful visage that mixed terror with rage, and saw the telltale glow of green as Sen held the warrior fast with a rope none but she could see.

The warrior struggled and strained and Iyana was caught in indecision. She felt a cold length of steel slide into her open hand—a gift from a passing nomad. She looked down at it and hated to see the quiver in her hand, a shaking that betrayed her as a child among killers, and when she looked up she hated even more to see the fear in the warrior’s eyes change to passionate hate below the blue and red paint. Iyana took the look as a condemnation.

And then the painted face exploded in a shower of red and white, and Iyana saw Sen grimace behind his own shaking hands.

“I couldn’t hold her,” he said, his voice a mix of regret and accusation. He turned to freeze another to make it easier for the rest to kill and Iyana saw Ket, Mial and the others streak before her like wraiths she only dimly recognized. She had lost the blade in the slick, and she had lost the white of her skin to spotted red. Her face was already cracking with the paste the death had left behind, and when she turned back toward Pevah she saw that the Sage stood behind his glowing Ember facing a field of purple fire.

Iyana watched the dream play out behind a half-drowned mind that wanted to fade away into a sleep that might see her forget. She saw Ceth moving like a falcon against the wind, his gray cloak and short white hair streaking like a star before a dark god that broke the trails he passed, carving bits of real with the unreal, struggling against the bonds that held it.

“Ember …” Pevah drew out again, and this time Creyath stood. The Ember set his shaft of sunlight to that black bow and drew on corded muscles that matched the grain. He let loose with a crack and pop, and the meteor carved a bowed path through the lavender field of flame, breaking the duel between Ceth and the Night Lord and streaking straight for the beast’s chest.

It exploded with a flare that lit the western sky and made the night day, and when Iyana lowered her arm from before her eyes she saw that the Night Lord had done the same. Bits of black fell from the pit the missile had made in its limb, and the purple eyes took in the new scar with a smolder that stank of disbelief. It was delicious to her, and she savored it.

The next roar threatened to move the stars, and Iyana wondered if they could hear it to the south along the Fork and atop the battlements of Hearth. She turned and saw the fight renewed in full, the blinding flash only sparing a few scant moments between deaths. One of the red-sashes had fallen and Iyana dimly recognized him as the young man Talmir had spoken with on the road from the east. His eye had been replaced by the hilt of a blade that looked similar to the one she had so recently held. Heat filled her breast and her eyes flashed with light that played off the rising and falling bits of metal and arrowheads.

She reached out and snatched a pair of glowing red tethers, gathering them up in her own. She had an image of severing them like Sen might—like he was with one even now who collapsed in bloody convulsions. Instead she pulled and screamed a sound that could not have come from her throat, and the two warriors fell to their knees as if in prayer.

Ket stood over them and raised his sword high and then took their throats, and Iyana felt sick as if she had swung the blade herself. She saw the other tethers—dozens of them, dancing and swaying above the forms that carried them on the backs of their hate and folly. She traced them down and held the ones she chose. Once still, they did not survive the press long, and with each fallen warrior Iyana felt her greenfire go cold. She knew she would not heal the wounded after this fight. She thought she might not again, as she had turned a gift meant for it into something quite different—into something like Sen, though she did not sever a single cord herself.

She wondered which was worse, even as the two Faeykin snatched the unseen wills that ran between, above and among the leaping and darting fighters like hunting spiders among restless wasps.

They were winning, Iyana knew, and yet they could not win. She knew it more fully than she had ever known a thing.

There was a crack and a muffled sound like a mountain falling underwater, and Iyana turned toward the west. The purple fire had died some, but there was a brightness like a reborn sun. She squinted through it and shook her head at the strangeness of the image, then laughed in a manner not unlike Pevah had moments before.

The Night Lord was, if not frozen again, then slowed to the point of looking the same. The space around him must have been held fast, as Iyana recognized the yellow orb with its growing spikes as the work of Creyath’s second shaft. It was like a starburst, and Iyana thought she might have a glimpse into the nature of the blue-black curtain above and all its winking lights. This one had struck true, and Pevah shook with the effort of containing it in the field of time he had made across the narrow distance. The beast roared and was caught in it, but Iyana knew with a single glance at the Sage that he could not remake the prison, just as she knew Creyath’s bolt had done little more than make a mockery of the creature’s former rage.

Jes dove upon a tribesman that had been intent on her and Iyana spun back around. The scout drove her blade into the painted warrior’s chest, twisted and wrenched. Iyana could have made it easier for her. She could have snatched the man’s tether and wrapped it around her forearm as easily as Nathen Swell did one of his fishing lines. She could have. Instead, she swallowed past the acid guilt and watched them tumble and roll until another finished him off.

Jes pushed the dead man off her and scrambled to her feet, casting a wild look at Iyana as she moved to re-enter the fray. Ket’s face was as red as Iyana’s, and she knew not all of it was borrowed. Mial heaved and pulled, his breath coming out in steaming gouts. He clutched at a wet spot in his side and backed away as one of the gray-sashes stepped in to intercept a blow that would have been fatal had it connected.

Iyana looked beyond the scrum and thought she saw figures on the distant ridge—a pair that should have made her heart swell to see but that only served to deepen her dread.

A blast of conjured wind from the west forced her a step eastward, and when next she looked toward the Night Lord, she saw him moving with a frightening speed.

“Pevah!” one of the red-sashes cried out, pointing toward the black beast as it sent Ceth skidding half a league, a fin of white sand going up in his tumbling wake. Despite her numbness, Iyana felt a pang at the sight and even took a step in that direction before indecision and inability froze her like the Sage’s borrowed time could not.

Pevah was on one knee and Creyath stood before him, his amber eyes watching the duel that was a massacre-in-waiting with a considered expression. Night Lord and Landkist slid across the horizon like twin suns. The old man put a hand on his knee and braced to rise. He extended his hands, intent on giving it another go.

The Night Lord shot into the sky high enough to block out the silver light of the moon. He came down on the place Ceth had fallen, and Pevah’s time hit the spot immediately after so that the crater’s formation was like a slow wave of white sand spreading in a giant ripple. Iyana knew Ceth was dead until she saw him tumbling, seemingly weightless on winds the nightmare’s passing made. He looked unconscious and unaware until she saw him right himself and re-make his weight, landing with speed and solidity.

He should have turned back toward them. He should have bolted from the spot, taken as many as he could and gone back to the depths below the eastern sands. He should have taken the blonde woman who had made a child with him and sheltered under the soft cold light of the crystal pillars that held the desert up, and hoped the Night Lord did not destroy that world once it finished with the one above.

Instead, he ran back in, his powerful strides preparing another leap that took him up and over the dark king who, crouched and tensed as he was, rose higher than the leaning towers of Hearth. Those burning purple pits followed him, the armored crown swiveling on a neck made of something more elastic than obsidian but doubly strong.

“He’s going to die,” Iyana said, and Pevah shot her a wild look that looked more animal than man. The Sage turned back to the flats and sent another wave, but the beast roared a roar that carried words Iyana couldn’t know, and now the slowness was half as strong as before.

Ceth was knocked back by the wave of a passing limb. He flew over a crescent of purple fire, and each leap and daring somersault took him closer to that gaping maw and its crackling blue coals. Each pass tired him more, made him more predictable, the Night Lord more angry. He tugged the demon along on invisible threads of rage and fury, and in the places where the conjured flames died away, the desert sand had been melded into a burnt glass that had it skittering, sliding and striking the surface to crack the desert like an eggshell.

The sounds of fighting had been drowned out by the raging of the titan, but now Iyana knew they had died away completely. She spun back toward the melee and saw the two groups separated once more, the painted warriors having pulled back, keeping the red- and gray-sashes and the Valley armor and swords back as much with those red-toothed smiles as with bared weapons. There were dead between them, and to Iyana’s relief, none among the caravan had yet fallen.

The red-toothed warriors shot nervous and awed looks toward the duel between Night Lord and Landkist. Some seemed angry while others only smiled, knowing the beast could not be beaten by a man, no matter how strong, fast or daring. No matter how weightless or weighty.

“You have more power than that,” Sen said, addressing the old man. His red eyes shifted toward the Faeykin, who was now holding himself apart, wary of the painted warriors who watched him, marking him a particular target among the many.

Pevah did not deny Sen’s claims, which gave Iyana a strange impression. If the Sage had more power hidden away, what was he waiting for? What could give him pause or bring up hesitance in the face of such an overwhelming foe?

“Using it all will kill him,” she reasoned. She spoke in an even tone, and the old man’s swallow told her it was true. Still, it did not seem to be what held him back, and his next words confirmed it.

“I hold no fear of death,” he said, his eyes tracking the duel that was coming closer. Shards of melted desert flew in all directions, panes of mirrored glass large enough to slice a man in two. Gouts of that nightmare flame spiraled out like the petals of a wildflower, recalling the one Sen had slain weeks before, and now the stuff seemed to be coming from more than just the mouth. Iyana peered closer and saw the black skin glowing with a lavender light from within. The purple traced great tubes that must have been veins, the contrast it painted around the beating thing in its breast betraying the one weakness—a Dark Heart like the ones the White Crest had taken for safekeeping and which Linn and Nathen Swell had purged from the south.

But Iyana knew this one was greater than those three. Greater by a margin beyond measure. She wondered dimly, morosely if those the White Crest had slain had been little more than courtiers next to this beast—a king among kings.

The new thought brought up another that was nearly jarred loose when the lines at her back came together with renewed ferocity, metal ringing off bone and sending chips of white and red to join that littering the ground about them.

Iyana fell into her greensight as Creyath began to walk forward. She knew by his gait and by his bearing that he would not stop. Pevah looked as though he wanted to stop him. Looked as if he knew he could not. The Ember held his hiltless blade in his right hand—the simplest length of Everwood Iyana had ever seen, like a spear without a haft. It burst into an amber light that matched its wielder’s stare, and he craned his head around and locked on hers as he moved west like a premonition. He smiled that white smile and then turned back while Iyana’s heart beat faster, her head pounding.

She pierced the purple fire and the flailing black limbs and tried to ignore the speck of silver-white that arced between them. She locked on the black outline at the center—the Dark Heart surrounded by its purple poisoned coils of unlight. She searched and searched but came away desperate. She felt eyes on her and saw Pevah’s red stare. He shook his head once and her shoulders drooped.

“No tether to tie that one to the World,” he said, guessing the direction of her thoughts. His smile was wan, a weaker version of Creyath’s, tragic where the Ember’s was bold—triumphant. “His like is the opposite of life, and those ropes you see are the chutes that feed it.”

Iyana felt tears sting her cheeks and smelled the iron in the blood that renewed its dripping from her chin. Blood that was not her own and perhaps that should have been.

“What can we do?” she asked, more to herself than the Sage. Sen looked from one to the other, his face grim.

“The best we can,” Pevah said, setting his feet. Sen moved toward him and turned to face the fight that had moved farther away, Ket and the Valley soldiers having taken the upper hand.

“Why do you not use your full power?” Iyana asked, hating the desperation that filled her voice. She had seen enough of death in these lands, but so far had not seen it come to those she truly loved.

His face went hard. “There are worse things than even he,” he said, holding the thrashing Night Lord in his sights. “I expect we’ll see soon enough.”

Iyana shook her head, unable to parse the thought. Creyath had turned his walk to a run. He tore through the lavender petals of flame, his own blade flaring as he did. His black skin seemed so much lighter than the beast he approached, his own veins swirling with the colors of the sun instead of something that would snuff it out.

“Creyath!” Iyana called. “The heart!” she cried. “Take his heart!”

If he heard the words he gave no indication, but she saw his true speed then and it was a marvel to behold. He ran toward a being that should have been called a god—that very likely was. A being whose like had coerced the Sages to ply waters they never should have and whose home gave rise to horrors that now infected their own. He raced unerring, forward, leaping and then arcing like one of the shafts he had loosed before.

The purple fires widened as the Ember came down, and he struck with a sound like thunder. When the smoke cleared, Iyana saw a golden firefly darting beneath the great black feet of the Night Lord, striking with flashing cracks, each blow the herald of a new storm while Ceth wheeled overhead, coming down on the crown with that strange and conjured weight that knocked the beast off-balance.

The fear she felt on Creyath’s behalf evaporated as she saw him at work, fighting something he couldn’t hope to beat. Her kin. The Landkist against the titans of the World Apart. It was like a painting from a storybook. It was like Creyath’s legend made real and placed in another time, more impressive and unbelievable than any of the conjured stories or tales that had cropped up in the Valley following deeds he refused to own.

She felt a presence beside her and whirled, expecting one of the painted faces to sneer as the blade rammed home. Instead, she saw Ket with his hair sticking to the sweat and salt and sand that coated a face that already looked older than it had been. Behind him, the fight was done, the warriors that called this land home and this creature god strewn about like dolls as her own came up to watch the fight they could have no part in.

Iyana found herself moving between Sen and Pevah. She glanced sidelong at the old man and saw his eyes shining in a way that made him look more human than his outward appearance would suggest. His hands no longer trembled but were steady, his black nails glistening like blades. There was a strange blur about his red hood, which now had the consistency of fur, and Iyana thought perhaps the Between was showing her a glimpse of the truth beneath—even more than the others saw.

She stood alongside him and looked out over the flat toward the battle that might decide their fates and those of thousands more. A strange sort of calm settled over her like a blanket despite the circumstances. It was a knowing that she had done all she could—that they all had. A feeling that the burden had shifted toward two men who would have wanted nothing more, no matter what they might say.

“Pevah,” she said, sounding the word out as if for the first time. The old man looked at her, and despite his new appearance—his true face—he looked as soft as he ever had before, his sad gaze containing a wisdom that reminded her of Mother Ninyeva. “Pevah …”

She looked at him, bored those red pools that no longer called up blood so much as the red clay and sandstorms of the lands that had made him—lands farther west than here and farther north. Lands that were cold and barren, but not without life. Not without a sparse sort of plenty.

“It means ‘father,’ doesn’t it?” she asked. He smiled and the look seemed to break his heart even as it threatened to do the same to hers. He looked beyond her, his eyes welling as he picked out the red-sashes that had called him so for the century since the Emberfolk had left these lands, and to the gray-sashes who had come down from the cliffs a generation before, bringing a champion and a need for the same.

The Night Lord roared and the sound shook the sky and echoed at their backs as it reached the cliffs. It was an empty sound, no life or want or reason beneath it. But the cracks of Ceth’s fists and the pops Creyath’s blade made against its hide sounded like tolling bells.

They were silent for a time, and each passing beat made it more clear that the Landkist would not win. Still, Iyana did not feel the fear that should have risen in her. She saw the bright tethers of their watching line swaying above them like grass from another realm, and felt a peace knowing she was among them. She had the strange question of where the tethers went when their light was gone, and thought the answer was not one to frighten.

“You fear the Eastern Dark will come,” Iyana said.

“I know he will. I know he is.”

If Ket, Jes and the others heard, they made no move to show their fear at the thought. How could that be worse compared to what they witnessed now?

“Why?” Iyana asked, knowing it was futile to know. “Why would he send this upon the World?” She extended a hand toward the Night Lord. “Does he hate us so?”

Pevah laughed without mirth.

“This was a challenge meant to occupy me and my brother who would be your protector,” he said. “Nothing more. A piece of the conflict I never asked for. The War of Sages, as you call it.” He paused and then shrugged, a human motion that didn’t fit. “It worked. I’ve been tied to these lands ever since, keeping it dormant.” He looked to the north. “I thought the Eastern Dark had planted the seeds in the Blood Seers’ minds, but now I know the beast was more clever than I thought. It has a voice, it would seem. A convincing one. Perhaps this is the one who drew him beyond the curtain in the first place, before he was the Eastern Dark. Ray Valour: a name to inspire many things, but never dread. Not before.”

“Ray Valour,” Iyana said. She said it again. She said it three times and never did it call up the same hate she knew to attach to the name they had called him in the Valley core for her entire life and well beyond that. He should not have had a name. He was the Eastern Dark. His was a name that conjured all the impressions you didn’t need to be Landkist to gather. All the hate and hurt and bile it called up, and all the cold and scary stories from the tales that were never meant to come real to the children who heard them.

But he was real. It was all real. Iyana looked out over the field of white sand and watched a battle of such vibrancy and movement play out before her that it made the rest of the world look dim and lesser because of it. She felt both lucky to see it and doomed to know where it was heading, and for the first time she felt she would rather be holding a sharpened length of steel than the power she had and could do nothing with. Sen ground his teeth beside her, seeming to feel the same.

The Night Lord abandoned the fight for a time and raised up as if remembering. It reared back and let loose another cry that seemed a call, and when it lowered its head and sent that burning gaze forward, it locked on Pevah and narrowed, sinews bunching and land cracking beneath it as it tensed to spring.

Creyath fought his way through the field of purple fire, the stuff seeming to burn him some despite his immunity to the fire of the World. Ceth touched down between the brightest and most wild patches for the briefest of moments before launching skyward once more. He was slowing, but the beast had yet to gain its full speed. Its full power. The northern Landkist landed atop its crown and struck a black horn, breaking it off at the bend, and the Night Lord forgot its new quarry and spun, revealing a barbed tail Iyana hadn’t noticed before that nearly decapitated Creyath, who leapt to clear it.

The red-sashes and the gray crowded behind the man they knew as grandfather to the children who huddled in the darkness to the east or played along the shore of the subterranean lake, not knowing it was a time to be fearful and uncertain.

There was no thought of running in any of them. Their charge had changed form and manner, but it was still clear before them. The beast was loose. The beast had to die or be put back, even if it couldn’t.

The soldiers of the Valley stood with their leather armor and forged weapons, and rather than looking from one to another as they had before, they only watched and waited for that black and bright doom to strike out for them. Iyana felt a pride seeing it, seeing men and women who would die for a cause that came out winless. They seemed almost to wish they had not slain all of the painted warriors now their blades had gone still and grown cold. Some bent to wash them in the dry sand and then gave it up, the surrounding lands having changed into a thin and crusted gum now that the majestic Midnight Dunes had been scattered to the winds.

“What happened, Pevah?” Iyana asked, her voice lilting and seeming to float as if in a dream. “To the World? To us?”

It was a big question asked small, and there was a lot in it—much of guilt and even accusation she tried not to make plain—but she knew he would answer it.

“I tried to stop him,” he said, halting. “I tried to stop them. At least, that’s what I’ve told myself in the years—centuries—since.”

A flare of yellow fire went red as it clashed with a new gout of lavender in the west, and the Night Lord played out behind it, roaring like a shadow made on the wall of a cave. Iyana had never seen an Ember’s flare sent so far and so fully-formed. She knew Creyath was praised for his control, and she wondered if he had been holding a piece of himself in for years—for his whole life, maybe—in preparation for this moment. She tried not to think that he could win and focused on the answers that hadn’t yet come.

It seemed they needed prompting after all.

“Where and what, Pevah?” She turned her emerald greens on him and saw a flicker in the red as he took in her unintentional attempt to coerce and turned it back. Iyana felt a shiver and looked away, but the threat had gone from his eyes.

“The Landkist were not the first powers we knew in the World,” Pevah said. “In that, your stories are true, even if they change from place to place and time to time.”

She knew he spoke of humanity and centuries beyond counting. She knew now he held himself apart and made no attempt to show otherwise. She knew he was the Sage now and had been then, and she could never see him as an old man, but rather as a fox—the first of them who could have been the last—taken on a form he had grown to love and loathe in equal measure.

“Me and mine,” he said. “We went searching. We found power beneath the rules of the World you know. We called it rule and you call it nature. Some call it Mother and others Father. There might be something else to that,” he shrugged, “but if there is, I haven’t been able to know it for certain.”

He sighed as Ceth leapt and shouldered the beast in the chest. It let out a crack of thunder, cleaner than the strikes and crackling, spitting tails and scythes Creyath put out. The Night Lord stumbled back and then landed its second blow on the Landkist. This one was hard, and direct, and Ceth tumbled sickly in a way that froze Iyana’s heart and stopped Pevah’s breath.

Creyath continued the fight as Ceth rolled over and came up, his silver hair catching a shaft of errant starlight and betraying a streak of red they could see from afar. He stood on wavering legs and turned back toward the west, his shoulders slumped, his bearing despondent. His walk became a run and he rejoined the fray, determined, it seemed, to die.

“There are other Worlds,” Pevah said. “One other, at least. It isn’t so much a place as something between places.” He shot a clever look at Iyana that held an unrealized wink. “Not the road you often travel. That is something else entire, and I’ve only known it on the briefest of terms.”

The Between. Iyana marveled that a being as old, wise and seemingly powerful as one who could bend time to his will knew less of her power even than she, and less by far than the old woman who had trained her in its ways, or had started to.

“There was power there, rolled up in all the black and hate,” he continued, his voice taking on an edge. “It was a vast place. It felt empty and full all at once.” He spat, and Iyana saw red in the wet that struck the sand at his feet. “Its seeming emptiness was a ploy, we later knew. The Night Lords and their Sentinels are smarter than we thought. Our delving opened ways they saw plain but did not use until we turned away and went back to our toils in the World. Back to our follies and mistakes, and sometimes,” he tilted his head, wistful, “sometimes our triumphs and great works.”

The horizon lit like dawn, Creyath’s brighter flames winning out the latest clash, and for a spell the sky didn’t look so poisoned.

“We found the rifts and closed them,” Pevah said. “We found the Dark Kind that had spilled in like a plague and smote them. We lost some.” He swallowed. “We left that place and turned away. All but one of us, who kept digging in the graveyard. Kept toiling, plying darker waters and farther shores. All for his betterment he mistook for ours.”

“The Eastern Dark.” Iyana nodded as if she had known it all along.

“Yes,” Pevah said. “Him. The Sage of Center learned the truth first and would not forgive it. He is the one who drove my brother to the east and the south, deep into lands he had changed and made strange, bonding it with the World Apart to make a place we could not travel and maintain our power.”

“But,” Iyana started and then stopped, but Pevah only regarded her lightly. The emotion he had held had gone out. He had grown into the telling and it no longer stung him so. “The War of Sages,” she said. “It is said you all fought amongst yourself. Against one another, and not against him alone.”

Another smile, and one of a more bitter crook. “Power corrupts,” he said. “And power, Iyana Ve’Ran, is relative.” He flashed a look to Sen that seemed to cow the other Faeykin before the Sage turned back to her. The others had drawn closer, like children around a ring of stones, the fire a strange nightmare one playing out just a few stones’ throw to the west. “Lines were drawn and sides were taken, and abandoned … and taken again. Battles were fought and they became bitter. More died. The Sages dwindled, and those who remained grew fat off the power they stole, or lean and wanting off the guilt of having taken it.”

He looked back to the west and blinked, paling at whatever he saw behind those lined and weathered lids. Iyana tried to bend the shape of her thoughts to include forgiveness for the other Sages—those who stood against him. She tried to imagine what he might have done to call up such a look and thought it better not to dwell.

Apparently, so did he.

“The Landkist were a welcome distraction for some of us,” he said, voice growing confident and calm once more. “A welcome addition to others—pawns to be used on a board not of their making. The War of Sages has continued since your coming and grown more subtle because of it.” He shrugged. “Perhaps that’s better for the World. In the place of armies of men, the Sages who fought in recent centuries did it with smaller groups of the World’s gifted.”

“Where did they come from?” Sen asked, his voice sounding almost childlike. “The Landkist, I mean.” There was a need in the question that Iyana understood as none of the rest could. There would not be another opportunity to learn from someone who had been there. Iyana knew it. They all did, and none seemed to mind that they spent what could very well be their last moments asking questions of an old man at the edge of the desert, so very far from home and yet nested in its bosom all the same.

“That I do not know,” Pevah said, and Sen’s look carried all the disappointment Iyana tried to hide. “But then,” he said, turning to them and then scanning the company behind and around them, “where did men come from? Where did the forests and the trees? The sands and the deserts? The foxes and the voles they hunt?” He smiled at the faces he saw. “Power is power,” he said, “but it does not beget knowledge.”

Sen nodded, regaining some of his former composure. Iyana noticed the blood on his face and wiped at her own, wincing at how quickly her white fingers were dyed with it. Pevah gave her a sympathetic look.

“There is so much more,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “So much that led us to this point,” he looked back to the small war in the west. “Much of it weighs on the collective conscience of my brothers, sisters and me. The Twins may have been the only ones who never cared at the horrors they wrought, but they were a nasty sort who got sorted—one of the few good deeds the Eastern Dark’s dogs did, and for reasons I can’t begin to guess at. Your Ember King was in that company, after he’d turned or been turned to his side,” he said. “Ceth was there the day of the fight that took the Twins down. I don’t think he thanked anyone for it.”

“Perhaps they betrayed him,” Iyana said. “The Twins and the Eastern Dark.”

“Perhaps,” Pevah did not sound convinced. “Or perhaps it’s all wrapped into the same. Into his endgame, whatever it might be.” He sighed again. “He’s never thought himself wrong. At least, he’s never admitted it if he has. He’s always been smart, that one. Smarter than Balon. Smarter than the Twins by far. Smarter than me. But there’s a sickness in him that’s hard to come by. It’s as if he thinks he’s the only one. There was a word for that the old thinkers used to use.” He quirked his head and then shook it, giving the thread up.

“Even now, I’d help him,” he said, seeming surprised by his own admission. “Even now, after all he’s done, I would help him if it meant putting things right.”

“Fear drives a being like that.” The voice belonged to Martah, who watched Ceth fight on his dying winds. “So,” she added, not looking at anyone in particular, “what frightens a man like that?”

Pevah’s eyes widened ever so slightly as he regarded her. When he turned back to the west, he saw the Night Lord with fresh eyes, and then he frowned, the questions he had likely asked himself a thousand times over resurfacing and paving roads both familiar and new.

“I spent a long time with regret,” he said. “I warned your guardian, the White Crest, not to fight him. I warned T’Alon. But what if I had joined them? Could we have done it? Should we have?” The regret showed through even now, but his voice changed, giving way to an acceptance Iyana did not share. “Alas, the wheel is turning. The World Apart is coming closer. Beings like this will come more readily. Perhaps worse.”

“And what do you plan to do about it?” Iyana asked. Pevah didn’t answer, and she saw the flames of lavender and light dancing in his eyes. “The World needs you, Pevah. No matter what you’ve done before. It needs you now.”

He was shaking his head before she was through.

“The World never needed us,” he said, “no matter what we thought and no matter what our egos told us.” He turned to her. “It has you, now. It has the Landkist.” He swept his gaze to encompass those behind her. “They have the Landkist, whether they like it or not. The Landkist will choose the manner of the World’s ending. Just as they will choose the manner of ours.” He turned back. “It will be enough, or it won’t. Our part in it is done, or soon will be.”

She didn’t like the way he said the last, but her response was drowned out by a roar that sounded louder, clearer and closer than any of the previous ones.

“You plan to die,” Sen said, speaking the words she felt. It didn’t come out like a question. “You plan what the Eastern Dark, it seems, has already planned for you.”

“I wonder,” Pevah said, seemingly speaking to himself more than Sen. “I wonder if he will turn the blade on himself in the end.” His looked seemed to suggest he found the possibility doubtful. “Perhaps it will be for the best. Who can know? I’m through trying to see all ends because all ends are the same.”

“I don’t believe that,” Iyana said. “And neither, I think, do you.” There was only the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth, but she thought she had hit on something, there.

“You said he would come back for you,” Sen continued, his voice taking on an edge.

“He has,” Pevah said, and the way he said it sent a cold and creeping dread up Iyana’s spine that Sen seemed to pick up on by extension. The feeling swept through the lot of them like an infection, like a passing frost or a wind that didn’t belong to the season.

“My reckoning is at hand,” Pevah said, smiling as if it could be a joke, though Iyana would sooner retch than laugh. She wanted to curl into a ball and rock herself into oblivion and did not know why. She was the last to turn to the east, and while the sight itself was mundane to the point of being disappointing, the cold and creeping dread it inspired only increased tenfold.

“I heard a bell tolling.”

The man stood atop the rise. He was far away. Too far for his voice to carry as it did. He wore a brown cloak with the hood thrown back. His face was lined, old without being elderly. His eyes, which Iyana could see clear as day, were bright and cold as the starlight hanging behind him, and his hair was salt and pepper, cut rough and blowing in the wind from the fight in the west. He held one hand out to his side, palm open and facing the lot of them. He held it like it was a weapon, though she could see nothing clutched therein and could sense no power apart from that his confidence projected.

“Your bell,” Pevah said, stepping forward. He swept a hand behind him to indicate the Night Lord, which the newcomer watched with the part of his gaze not fixed on Pevah. All of the foreboding their Sage’s prior words contained had blown out, replaced by a sense of expectance—even relief. He moved beyond the red- and gray-sashes and their bared blades, his desert children looking to him for guidance, tense and ready to spring into action should he demand it.

The Eastern Dark made a sound that might have been a laugh, though it ended in a crooked grimace. He gave a single shake that might have been a twitch, and his stare was disgust and disappointment.

“You’ve made a mess of the place,” he said, looking around lazily like a bird scanning a morning field. His eyes slid over the desert nomads and moved slower over the Valley soldiers before stopping on Iyana for a beat longer. She saw something like recognition flash in the look—the work of an upturned brow—but that too passed quickly, and the Eastern Dark looked upon the painted warriors they had slain. She saw his throat move and wondered if the Sage had it in him to feel pity.

She did not think he did.

“The crones have been busy, I see,” he said, and Iyana looked to Pevah. The old man’s demeanor might appear calm but she saw his elongated fingers grow longer still, the black nails turning to talons. His red hood blew in the wind and glinted orange in the light, and where before it had appeared as cloth, now it looked like fur. She thought she saw small bumps and tufts of white that recalled ears, and when he spoke she saw sharp teeth in the place of smooth.

“As have I, brother,” he said. “As have I.”

The Eastern Dark looked as if he might step forward. He even started to, but something in Pevah’s expression stopped him. He quirked his chin and adopted a look of mild surprise that may or may not have been feigned.

“No doubt you and I have an accounting to come,” he said.

“No doubt,” Pevah answered, flat, all his prior humor and calm having dissolved. There was a wash of heat that blew the cloaks and rattled the scabbards on their belts, and Iyana felt it on the back of her neck. It was not a pleasant and comforting warmth like the sun. It was a searing heat drifting on cool winds, too far to hurt and too near not to sting.

“For now,” the Eastern Dark said, nodding toward the western horizon, “should we not see to the matter at hand?”

“Not your matter to see to,” Pevah said, his teeth nearly grinding. Iyana saw his left hand twitching, black talons scraping together like an itch. His legs had bent and he was hunched more than usual, though he seemed larger all the same. His breath came quicker. She could see the steam coming from his mouth in small plumes where before it had in lazy rivers.

“Do you still pretend to know my purpose?” the Eastern Dark said. “Do you still pretend it to be wrong?”

“You unleashed a Night Lord on the west,” Pevah said.

“Four.”

“Three we slew.”

“Not you,” he said. “And not all of them.” His gaze drifted toward the south, and Iyana felt the first beginnings of anger fighting its way through the fear and confusion as his dispassionate eyes touched the dark sky over the Valley core

He looked back.

“He took the Hearts. I knew he would,” he said. “You cannot blame me for what befell him after.”

“I can,” Pevah said, his voice a growl. “I do.”

“Besides,” the other Sage ignored him, his gaze flicking back up behind them, “this one kept you busy for a time. Kept you from making things worse.” Iyana could see his eyes take on a purple sheen as they took in another jet from the beast.

“If you mean to stand in my way—”

“We do,” Iyana said.

His cold eyes found her and held her. Panicked, she surged into the Between and found him following along behind, like a black wraith on cold winds. She cried out and fell to her knees and felt Sen’s hands grip her, and when she looked up, panting, she saw that he had already moved on, their brief exchange nothing but a fleeting and mild curiosity to him.

“I do,” Pevah said, mirroring her words. He did not look at her. He would not take his eyes from the Sage atop the rise. The score or more Valley soldiers and desert nomads began to encircle the rise as the Sage they followed made his intentions clear.

The Eastern Dark considered them. He did not seem disappointed to be challenged, even if his words said otherwise.

“You will not help me in this?” he asked, his left hand rising as if pulled by a string, one finger pointing toward the west. “A beast like that doesn’t belong.”

“It’s being dealt with,” Pevah said.

Now his laugh seemed genuine as his left hand dropped. Iyana noticed that the right hadn’t so much as twitched. She saw Pevah glancing at it, saw the sweat beading on his face.

“I know the power of the Embers more than most,” the other Sage said. “More than all, I’d wager. But that is only one. And that is a Night Lord, ‘Pevah.’” He put a harsh inflection on the name and Pevah cringed at it. “A Night Lord, and not a simple one. You underestimate him.”

“You underestimate them,” Pevah said, and Iyana did not think he meant the Embers alone. She felt a misplaced warmth as she got back to her feet. She waved off Ket’s concerns as he moved toward her, bloody steel bared. He swallowed and switched back to the man on the rise, though he seemed to shake with the need to turn around.

It was strange to be so focused on this seeming non-threat before them when a beast unlike any they’d seen raged behind. But Pevah was old. Even had he not been a Sage, Iyana would know to follow the direction of his gaze and the concern that went with it before any other.

“What have you told them of me, I wonder? What do the newts know of the Eastern Dark?” He smiled without warmth or humor. “A fitting name for blame, don’t you think?” She did not think he was addressing Pevah, and when his gaze went sliding once more, it slid right back to her. This time, she did not recoil.

Pevah, it seemed, was through talking. He was the only one in their company who hadn’t moved. Even Sen was beginning to circle, and Iyana could feel the tug of his tether on hers. He was likely checking on the lot of them, making sure he could reach them should the need arise. Iyana felt her heart hammering in her chest. She wanted to act but did not know how.

She tested the Between, afraid she might fall back into that strange rush, but she didn’t. She looked at the Eastern Dark, at the figure from the darkest and most bitter stories from her youth. She saw nothing. No swirling shadows or dripping red aura. No cloak of purple fire nor leering form that was his true face. Just a man, and no tether to mark his life.

“It’s good to see your face again,” he said, his eyes showing the first flash of intent as they fixed on Pevah. “It’s good to see those claws and teeth. You really should take back your old name. The new one doesn’t suit you.”

“Yours fits just fine,” Pevah said.

The nomads took it as some unspoken sign, two of them shooting forward fast enough to startle those who weren’t prepared. Iyana thought to cry out. She’d seen the Eastern Dark’s eyes widen as they started into motion, but there was no need. They hadn’t gone two steps before they stopped—not of their own volition, but that of the man they leapt forward to defend.

Pevah held one hand out and the air went milky around them. They were caught mid-stride, and even another blast of humid battle-air did nothing to disturb the sashes they wore or the hair that was bound back in tails of black and yellow.

“Ah,” the Eastern Dark said, as if Pevah had just revealed some secret truth he’d known already, or at least had guessed. “You care for them even now. Even when their veins have gone cold. No more fire in the deserts. No more fire in them.”

“That was never why I protected them,” Pevah said, and the Eastern Dark switched his gaze to the Valley soldiers.

“Then why did you?” he asked, not taking his eyes from Jes, Mial and the rest. “Boredom, perhaps? Or—”

The arrow struck him full in the chest with a crunch, the point coming out the other end. Iyana gasped along with the others and Pevah released the time he’d stopped, the two nomads dropping to their hands and knees, panting with exhaustion and the imagined exertion of their captivity.

“No!” Pevah whirled on the Valley archer—Nica—who stared at him with a smug look Iyana couldn’t quite fault him for. She looked from him past Pevah and saw the Eastern Dark looking down at the feathered shaft with a considered expression. He should have fallen over. He should have croaked and gurgled and choked out the last of his life in the sand. The shaft had flown straight and been aimed well. If a heart beat in that ancient chest, it couldn’t now.

The Eastern Dark raised his left hand by aching degrees. He broke the shaft at the point of entry, and while the front of his cloak was stained, it was not a large stain. He yanked at the point from behind and held it up before him, the silver tip dyed red with blood. A good thing to know, but one that did them little good now and did nothing to supplant the horror at seeing a thing live that should be dead.

When the Sage looked up, his eyes met Nica’s. There was no real anger in the look, but Iyana felt it as a passing thing that shot with as much force as the arrow that had caused it. Now she heard the choking she had expected. She turned and saw Nica’s smug look change to one that betrayed his youth and folly all at once. He grasped at his leather just over the heart and stumbled. A bright trickle of blood spilled from his mouth, and his confusion turned to fear as he went ashen. He waved as if shooing flies and fell back, soundless. Iyana rushed to his side.

She placed her hands over his chest and spilled in the greenfire. Normally, she felt either a pull or a push: a pull when the body sought to heal and a push when it had had enough and been filled to the brim—usually the work of infection. Now, she felt nothing. Nica was dead before he hit the ground. It was as if he had been struck more than a minute before. As if he had been struck when he’d first sent the shaft at the Sage, and was only now remembering it.

Iyana ceased her efforts and looked through the Valley soldiers who stared with mouths agape. She focused on the Eastern Dark, who had already forgotten them, and wondered if he had some control of time as well. But no; nothing had changed. There had been none of the haze or strange feeling as when Pevah brought his power to bear. He had only plucked the arrow from his chest and look at Nica, and in the looking, it seemed what should have been done to him had not and had instead been turned around.

But there had been something else. Iyana was walking between this place and the other, and so her Sight was more. She tried to push aside the panic and the anger that rose from the rest like hissing snakes or fire on thatch and navigated the backs of heads and profiles until she saw one looking back her way. Sen gave her the slightest of nods. He had seen the same.

Iyana stood and balled her fists. She peered at the Sage on the rise with renewed interest, and not just because he had killed one of her own. She looked at the air above him, the place where she had seen a momentary flicker of light as the arrow had struck. There had been flecks of black in it, like Pevah’s. She could see the latter’s now, swishing like the tails of the foxes of the west, orange as the fur that rose in hackles along his back.

He had a tether. She had seen. He had a tether, which meant he could be killed, contrary to whatever strange magic she had just witnessed.

“Now,” the Eastern Dark took a step forward and Pevah let out a growl that some of the nomads matched—some of the Valley soldiers Iyana had known for weeks and had never known to make the sound. “They have seen my trick, Pevah.” He stopped midway down the rise, the sands shifting underfoot, the smooth white rivers reflecting the lavender fire raging behind them that must have been winning out over Creyath’s.

He spread his arms out wide—or at least the left. The right he kept at his hip, palm turned out, unmoving and rigid. “Fox of the West,” he said. “The Red Waste,” he intoned. “Pevah,” he mocked, letting that one linger. “You have a choice before you.” Another step forward. “You can die now,” a tilt of the head, “or you can die in a matter of moments, as long as it takes us to deal with that beast over there and come back around to your reckoning.”

Now it was Pevah who laughed, though Iyana did not like the desperation in the sound.

“The only reckoning we’ll have today is yours,” Pevah said. He spread his feet wide, and all pretense of mirth or charm dropped from the faces of both men. The red- and gray-sashes and the Valley soldiers and the Faeykin who should not have been so far from the south ringed them, unsure what to do but sure to do something.

Iyana found her eyes drawn back to that other hand, and saw that Pevah’s gaze was aimed at the same. It was still, but she thought she saw a faint buzzing at the edges, like the lines of one finger bled into the next.

“You’ve still been digging,” Pevah said, nodding toward the limb. “You’ve hurt yourself. Sifting through dangerous waters is bound to get you bitten.”

The Eastern Dark did not refute the claim, only continued to stare, waiting for Pevah to make the choice he already had. His eyes would flick away from his one-time brother and now enemy, but not to the warriors ringing him nor the Faeykin among them. They were far beneath his attention and even further beneath his concern. No, those eyes kept shifting to the west, toward the black and purple and red chaos the field of white sand had become, and Iyana saw a glimpse of the fascination that must have drawn him toward the World Apart in the first place.

The same fascination that the other Sages had shared, at least in part. The same that had doomed her people to fend off the creatures of nightmare and whose brightest stars—the Embers—were just another obsession of the Sage that had started it all. His champions of fire meant to correct his greatest mistake, or else to save him from it.

Iyana wished Kole were here to burn him away. She’d just have to take as clear a picture of his fall as she could. She waited amid shifting boots and panting blades eager to be let loose on a being far beyond them, even as the smaller voice at the back of her mind grew louder.

The voice that said they were fools to try.

At first Talmir thought it was the crack of ozone and peal of rolling thunder; a crack loud enough to split his ears and a roll long enough to send ripples through the threadbare cloud cover overhead. It was loud enough to make his bones rattle and his pounding head quiet, and he stopped running and saw Karin do the same up ahead.

“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 stretched 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 talisman, 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.

The Night Lord’s leathery wings trailed twisting black vapors as it tucked them behind its ridged back and slammed down with those gods’ fists, splitting the desert for half a league in all directions as if shattering a mirror.

Still Creyath came on.

The Ember’s strides lengthened, taking him farther and higher, the fire in his blood pouring into his blade, brightening it until it glowed white-hot. The great black maw opened and in the place of the roar Talmir had expected, the west was bathed in lavender. A roiling river of fire from the World Apart spewed forth, and Creyath plunged into the inferno he couldn’t hope to dodge.

Talmir gasped. He was sure that the Second Keeper was dead there, burned up on the spot as no Ember had been before him. And then he emerged on the other side, glowing like something forged. He swept his blade like a farmer’s scythe, yellow and orange and red parting the purple flames like wheat and chaff. He was very close to the Night Lord, now. Very close to the beast. Close enough to strike and close enough to be struck.

Talmir looked to the north. He could see the figures gathered at the base of the rise. Rather than looking west, toward the most mythic battle he had ever witnessed and ever would, they were gathered around a figure cloaked in brown. The desert foxes had encircled him, while the warriors of the west and of the Valley core made up the other half. A figure glinting silver-white sped toward them all, coming from the west.

“Ceth,” Karin said.

“Who is that?” Talmir asked, looking at the stranger, but Karin had already moved ahead of him.

Talmir followed, moving as quick as tired sinew would allow. Much as he wanted to know what was happening on the eastern rise, he couldn’t help but watch the battle. One he would be foolish to race toward, and one that would surely end before he could.

Creyath had nearly given up when the fire struck him. In the place of burning he felt a sucking cold, as if the Night Lord’s flames sought to snuff out his own. He drew his in tighter, wrapping his fire around him like a cloak, encasing his heart like coals in a ring of stones.

And when the Night Lord quit its spewing long enough to take a breath, Creyath sent his own fire out, cutting through the sea of purple, racing toward his doom and whatever he could bring with him.

He saw the hand streaking toward him and leapt over it. He spied the razor tail shooting under the beast’s hind legs directly toward him and deflected it in a shower of sparks. The Night Lord reared up again, only this time it did not boast or roar or unfurl those mighty wings.

Instead, it spoke, and the sound was jarring enough to stop Creyath in his tracks, where the pain caught up with him—the stabbing, shooting pains in his leaking gut just a garnish atop the searing cold that filled his veins. He had spent too much.

The Night Lord’s eyes narrowed as it awaited his response, but the words had moved over him like rocks grinding over slate. It was all crackle and tumbling air with nothing to latch onto. The beast spoke again, and straightened a bit from its crouch. It brought its right hand in and rapped its knuckles against its chest, jutting its bloody chin out before lowering it and its eyes with it.

If someone else had told the tale, Creyath would not have believed them. But he saw it with his own eyes: a Night Lord of the World Apart, dipping a bow to a worthy foe.

Creyath considered doing the same but thought better of it. He thought of what this god of war would do once he fell and there were none left to challenge it but for those in the Valley core or those out chasing old legends in the east. He thought of the ruin it would bring in its sweeping wake, and though he knew it had been brought here—called here, and likely by the lone figure on the eastern rise—Creyath could not suffer it to live.

He gave it the unearned courtesy of raising his amber blade before him—a gesture of continuing, and the purple fires flared in their pits, all revelry and threat.

Movement to the north and east drew his eye, and Creyath saw two figures running toward the rest, or if not running then limping, falling and rising to do it all again. He saw a glint of muddy gold hanging from the neck of one, who struggled to rise and paused in his march to look his way.

Now Creyath did bow, and he did it low, one hand across his heart. The Night Lord spared him a killing blow and twisted around to see where his respect was turned. When it spied the subject of his gaze, it made a noise that Creyath took for disdain before he recognized it as laughter, low like quaking in the earth.

When the beast turned back toward him, Creyath locked it with his darkest amber stare.

“That is Talmir Caru,” he said. “The best man I’ve ever known.”

The Night Lord didn’t care, but it had let him get too close. It shot forward fast as a striking serpent, too close and too personal. Creyath carved a crescent of bright yellow fire before its eyes and eeled his way between the black boulders that were its fists and the anchors that were its claws. He slid below the obsidian chest until he came to a point where a drumbeat sounded like thunder beneath ocean waves.

The beast roared loud before he plunged his blade in and doubly so when he did, the Dark Heart spilling its burning blackness over his arm and chest. He pulled his ruined hand back and stumbled away from the wound as the Night Lord reared back a final time. It brought its wings before its chest like armor donned too late, its purple stare going blue as it began its dying.

Creyath left his Everwood blade behind and regretted it until the Night Lord let its hands drop to its sides. Its wings dissolved and trailed away like smoke on the wind, and the dark mass where its heart had been glowed with the last of the fire he had to give. The Night Lord fell.

Creyath stood a moment longer on wavering legs before he too went over. There was no glass beneath him to be cracked and no shards waiting to greet him. He’d found a bit of powder in the rough, no bones or scorched blood marring it. He looked up into the lavender sky that looked more healthy now than it had before, and he thought he saw a woman’s face staring back at him in all the blinking white and gossamer.

“Mother,” he said, and whether it was the Mother they spoke of in the desert or not, he put his own mother’s face on hers and smiled to see it. He hadn’t seen that face in a long time. Words came back to him in a rush along with the images of a childhood spent out among the fields and trees of the vast and small Valley they’d left this desert to fill. Words his mother sang at him for reasons beyond his knowing.

“I did the best I could,” she’d say, speaking to the father he’d lost too young. “I did the best I could,” she’d say, giving Creyath a mischievous look whenever he’d done something wrong.

“So did I,” he said, and it felt good to say it.

Death didn’t feel as cold as he’d imagined.

Rage came out of the west and its name was Ceth.

Iyana felt it like a lancing shock on the back of her neck. She turned just in time to see the Night Lord fall, and Ceth shot past her faster than any winds the White Crest might’ve birthed at his peak—faster than anything Linn could birth now.

There were shouts and cries as the circle of men and foxes broke with his coming, and Iyana was torn between searching frantically for Creyath Mit’Ahn and seeing what would come when Landkist met Sage. She hadn’t been there in the peaks.

Ceth hit the Eastern Dark with a speed that should have shattered him on the spot. There was an odd delay, as if the World was waiting to make sense of such a collision, and then the Landkist was sent back the way he came with a force that seemed equal to his charge. He convulsed as his back hit the white sands and tore a trench into the turf twenty strides long, and Iyana could see the only thing that had spared his life was the strange armor that was the blur that covered him.

She took a step toward him and halted, seeing him turn over onto his stomach. He braced himself and looked back the way he had come with enough hate to cover the knowing he could not win. As for the Eastern Dark, he looked beyond the newcomer and ignored the milling foxes that now ringed him in a frothing rage they had yet to actualize.

His eyes sparked with a passion they had lacked as he took in the remains of the great Night Lord, now reduced to a mountain range of smoking obsidian. He did not seem disappointed, but rather awed. It was a strange and human expression for the Sage to wear. Pevah, for his part, had yet to take his eyes from him.

“A pyrrhic victory,” the Eastern Dark said. He shook his head, still wearing that awed look. Iyana despised him for it all the more. “Still, against a Night Lord—and one of the greatest—it should not be qualified as such.”

Iyana’s eyes widened and she turned back toward the west. The purple flames had blown out entirely, and though all the field was smoking and scorched, with shards of glass sprouting like swords across the horizon, she saw a dark figure lying there at the place where sand met sky.

“Creyath,” she breathed. She took a step in that direction and Sen touched her on the arm. She knew his look before she saw it. He was shaking his head, and touched a finger to his bright green eyes. She nodded and flashed her own look, and saw no tether, however faint or dim. Nothing to mark the life Creyath had lived, and nothing to mark the death that had become him.

In the place of heartache Iyana felt anger. She felt a buzzing at her temples that had Sen’s touch turn to a firm grip on her arm. She felt the alien pull that was growing more familiar the more she teased it. Felt the tethers of the nomads and Valley soldiers all around. She felt Ceth’s even though it flickered, and she even felt Pevah’s, though he kept it close and guarded. She could snatch them all and lay them low, bring them to heel. But she only had eyes for one.

Sen seemed to guess the direction of her thoughts. His look now was imploring, and Iyana worked to cool her blood and her anger, tried to think clearly in the circumstances. And then she felt two more threads, fainter than the rest and farther away. And now that she felt them, she heard a sound she had never expected to.

She looked to the north and saw Karin Reyna standing on the raised ridge of sand. His tether was faint and coiled. He clutched a hand to his side and even from here she could see his legs quiver. Iyana traced the line of his sight to see Captain Talmir half-walking, half-stumbling as if in a daze. He fell once and then twice and righted himself, but before he had even got halfway to the site of the battle he shielded his face from the waves of shimmering heat that still came off the place. It would not be passable for a man for some time, yet, and so he knelt, and while she did not hear him again, she saw his shoulders racked with a grief she could never have imagined coming from one so seemingly solid.

“I told you,” Pevah said. “You underestimate them.”

“You misunderstand, brother,” the Eastern Dark replied. He pointed with a fervor he hadn’t before. “There lies my vindication. The Embers were always brightest of the Landkist. But I knew they were best. Keep your stone-throwers and beast-tamers. The Witch can have her knights. The Embers were always best.” He looked suddenly overcome with grief, though Iyana guessed it had little to do with Creyath. “Alas, it matters not. It’s all moved too far and too fast. Take my word for it, Fox. Take my word and do not delay.”

“Delay my death?” Pevah laughed. “How can I be blamed?”

“Admit it,” the Eastern Dark said. “You should not have kept them from me. You should not have struck a bargain with the King of Ember. In trying to protect them, you cut them off from the power that could have been theirs for generations hence. We could’ve had our army to turn it back.”

“To turn what back, exactly?” Pevah asked, voice rough. “The dark tide you yourself coaxed out? There would never be enough Embers to turn that back. Better they live away from your dark grasp.” Pevah looked to the south, toward the Valley he had played no small part in dooming them to so long ago. “I only wish our brother had been stout enough of heart to resist you. They deserved better.”

The Eastern Dark’s look could only be described as disgust. Iyana was nearly shaking with it, now, and she was not alone. The Valley soldiers edged closer with each passing riddle between these two storybook figures made real. Made solid. Made mortal. The desert nomads did as well, though seeing Ceth rebuffed so fully had shaken them.

The Sage still looked like any other man, albeit older. There was nothing about him that spoke of threat. And yet, Ceth was only now righting himself for another go, and one of their own now lay dead, seemingly killed by his own dark intent turned back on him.

How did you beat a thing like that? How did you not simply kneel and accept whatever was to come?

“You chose wisest,” Pevah said, his voice dripping scorn. “Much good it’s done.”

The Eastern Dark’s eyes slid like oil over the fighters that ringed him, and Iyana had the impression that it was they who were trapped, no matter appearances. She glanced at Pevah and saw a strange shimmer around him like a cloak of water. He was delaying, she realized. Delaying to gather what power—what time—he could.

“You speak of the Witch’s knights,” Pevah said, and the Eastern Dark turned his eyes back on him. “I haven’t made their acquaintance, myself. But you’ve only just met mine, and he’s not nearly done with you yet. Beware,” he said, sounding wicked as Ceth walked into the circle, his skin a blur beneath the strange power he gathered about him like a god’s armor. “Beware the wrath of one who slew the Twins of Whiteash.”

The Eastern Dark was smashed apart by a blow Iyana didn’t register until it landed, the shock it sent out scattering all but Pevah. And then the Sage was back and solid, and it was Ceth thrown back. He didn’t bleed this time, the strange armor doing its work. The Eastern Dark stood a step to the side. Iyana almost gave in to despair, and then Ceth struck again, and she began to notice little things. Little things that might lead to that larger thing called ‘hope’.

On the Northern Landkist came. Faster and faster, his feet making spirals in the sand as he spun and lanced his kicks and strikes and errant flips. He landed head down, hands in the sand as his legs twirled above him, ringing blows against the figure who should’ve been carved from the World ten times over by now. And each blow that landed only saw the Eastern Dark reappear as if he had never left, his face darkening each time, his eyes narrowing as Ceth drew his grudging attention, if not his fear.

“This one?” he said, dodging the next strike quick as a darting snake. A piece of the sandy rise on which they fought blew away, scattering the foxes that had paced there. “It was T’Alon Rane killed the Twins,” he said. “By my distant hand. It was me killed the Twins.”

“Were you there?” Pevah asked, his voice all silky control, though Iyana could sense the effort behind it. The tension. “Or did Rane tell you the task was done? Did he tell you he killed them, or that they were dead?”

There was no response, and Iyana couldn’t tell if it was because there was none to be given or if the Eastern Dark was too busy blocking, dodging and parrying where before he had stoically accepted whatever Ceth offered, knowing it would be returned in full. She thought either possibility a good one.

“You have never controlled that one so much as you’ve believed,” Pevah said. “Perhaps at first. Perhaps a century ago, when you first sent him out against us. But Rane marches on his own, now. He hunts the Sages—he hunts us—because he has come to believe it is necessary, not because you command it.”

“And why do you think he believes it?” the Eastern Dark said, twirling away, his cloak whipping up a swath of white sand that forced Ceth’s next blow off the mark. “How crude must you think me?”

Pevah didn’t answer, but Iyana found herself smiling. There was something to the way the Eastern Dark fought—or didn’t. Ket gave her a strange and worried look, as if he thought she’d gone mad. Perhaps she had.

“Why does he not stay still?” she asked, more to herself than those around her, but she was heard. “Why doesn’t he let the blows fall? They do more harm to Ceth than him. Could there be a limit?”

Now the stares that switched from her to the duel had a fresh hunger to them that chased away the sodden despair. The blades they held went rigid with new fervor, the bows pulling taut with a killing lean. Still, they did not strike, and Iyana didn’t blame them. Better to let Ceth weaken the strange armor. She only hoped it would last longer than whatever the Sage had about him.

Her heart froze as the Eastern Dark was caught flat-footed. Ceth went down in a vicious and spinning tumble, righted himself and charged back in, but not before the Sage slid his eyes to her. They sparked with something as they met her flashing greens, and she tried to cover the fear she felt, as if she’d been marked.

Ceth soared high and crashed down, making one of his shallow craters where the Sage had been. When the shower of snow-white sand faded, Ceth stood tall and regarded the Eastern Dark with a dispassion befitting the Sages themselves. The look that was turned back on him might have been respect, but it soon changed to something else.

“Why do you follow him?” the Eastern Dark asked, jutting a hand toward Pevah. “Do you know how he earned his name?”

Ceth did not so much as twitch in the direction of the other Sage. His focus was singular. He sprang up to the side of the Eastern Dark and adopted that strange fighting stance Iyana had seen in the cave of the Mother’s Heart. The Eastern Dark grimaced as he looked the Landkist up and down.

“Do you even know what you are, noble knight?” he asked, all scorn and indignation. It was unbecoming, and Iyana thought the Sage was beginning to unravel. His poise, at least. She did not know if that was a good thing or a bad.

“I am Ceth,” he replied. “I am of the Red Cliffs. And I will see your death.”

Now the Eastern Dark met him directly, striking out rather than accepting the Landkist’s attacks. Both landed, and Ceth was sent spinning with double the force. The Eastern Dark snarled like a wolf and the foxes chose that moment to make for him. He snatched one from the air as another tore the cloak from behind, the buttons ripping free from his chest and floating to the sands. He broke the fox he held over his knee as if it were a twig and Iyana winced as he tossed it aside. The rest of the pack shrank back, growling with fangs bared as he stalked toward Ceth, who rolled over and spilled a thick glob of blood and drool onto the patch beneath him.

Another arrow screamed toward the Sage and he raised a hand without looking. The shaft sank in with a spray that coated half his face with red spatter and then stopped, and the woman who’d sent it—one of the gray-sashes—fell clutching her now-bloody hand as Sen rushed to aid her.

Iyana tried to think through the fear and the pounding in her head. She had seen it again at the moment of the strike. Ceth had barely managed to stand before the Eastern Dark was on him. He struck Ceth in the jaw and broke it, sent him careening, and still Ceth rose, though he did it slower each time.

“Let me tell you what your Pevah never did, Ceth,” the Eastern Dark said, stalking him like prey. He kicked him and sent him crashing into the side of a low rise that half-buried him. “The Embers wield flame and the Rockbled throw stones. The Raiths bend the minds of beasts and the Willows stretch their sight. The Faey,” he paused for a beat and locked onto Iyana with a wild look the blood only accentuated, “are made for patching, and there are so many more born from our meddling.”

He knelt before Ceth and cupped his chin in one hand. The Sage looked younger than he had before, well-muscled, albeit lean. His cheeks were boney and raised, not unlike the Faey of the Valley core. Ceth slapped his hand away with his own, but the blur that coated him had faded some, and the Eastern Dark sent him sailing back toward the west, over the heads of the Valley soldiers and Iyana and all the rest—even Pevah, who gritted his teeth but did not strike.

“The Skyr are something strange, even by the standards of the rest,” he said, parting the crowd of men and foxes like a tide as he stalked toward the shaking Landkist who was now covered in a paste of white sand that obscured the red beneath. “There is a weight to the World, Ceth. Nothing metaphorical. Nothing the bards will tell you. No,” he struck him again and sent him rolling across the flats while the rest watched. “It’s the weight you feel now. It’s the weight the World is made of, the pull that drags everything down.”

He paused above Ceth as the latter rolled onto his hands and knees. He had grown, and Iyana had no doubt she was seeing him close to his true form. Close to his prime. His ears were pointed. He was tall with jet black hair that spilled down below his shoulder blades. His clothes changed from rags to leather that looked rich as oil. His cloak went from homespun to fur, and it was all inlaid and embroidered with silver lines and lavender accents. His skin was light enough to look like snow, and though she could not see his eyes, she knew those had changed as well. He was not as feral as Pevah looked. He was noble, regal and strange. And all the more unsettling for it.

Ceth pushed himself up, or tried to, and the Sage placed a black boot square upon his back and pressed him down. Ceth gritted his teeth and growled. The ground on which he knelt was part glass after the fight between Night Lord and Ember had changed the land for a half a league in all directions. The fight that was now forgotten like the husks of the champions that lay not far beyond the fighting pair. The desert floor shattered like a mirror and Iyana felt a tear sting her cheek as Ceth screamed, the sharp edges of the broken plane scoring his wrists and tearing the skin of his arms up to the elbows.

“There is a weight to the World, Ceth,” the Eastern Dark said again, his voice soft. “You can don it like a second skin, manipulate it.” He pressed him down further and Ceth screamed louder, and then he removed his boot and leaned down, hovering just above Ceth’s silver hair. “And your sister was all the better at wielding it. The best I’d ever seen.”

Ceth turned a look of such pure hate on the Eastern Dark that Iyana thought for sure it would kill one of them. It took some time, but he rose again, standing nose-to-nose with the Sage in all his glory. And though he was outmatched as clear as could be seen, bloody and torn, Ceth looked summarily unimpressed.

The Eastern Dark turned back toward the east, his black eyes with their purple pits parting the company and alighting on Pevah once more. He nodded once.

“Had there been more of his, perhaps we’d revisit the argument over the Embers.” He turned back to Ceth. “Perhaps I would be proven wrong had the Twins not wasted the lot of you in their cruel and needless games. Alas, I got the best of them. Resh did more than her share against the Sages of the East. She did more than her share in helping to secure the King of Ember to my side, however grudging his loyalty.”

“Resh was her own,” Ceth said, his eyes watering with memories the name called up. Iyana felt his heartache keenly. “Are you?”

The Eastern Dark seemed taken aback by that. He considered it, walked a slow circle around the Landkist. “I am changed,” he said, nodding as if admitting it for the first time. He smiled. “But then, all power has a price. I paid mine,” he looked again to Pevah, “and now I’ve come to collect from those who have yet to do so.” He paused again before Ceth. “I am not the enemy of the World. Not now. You follow blind leaders. “

Beyond them, she saw that Talmir had moved from his place, penetrating the smoking flats. He now knelt beside Creyath. She could see the bronze star dangling in the air between them.

Ceth said nothing more. He raised his chin, content to let death come.

But the Eastern Dark, for all the fear his name would bring, did not seem one to mete it out himself. Iyana did not believe his intentions to be pure. She didn’t believe anything that came out of his crooked, unlined mouth. That didn’t mean he was wrong.

The tension was palpable, broken by the sudden complaints of the foxes, who had been quiet since their fellow had been killed. Iyana thought they might ring the Sage once more, threatening him and itching to fight where none of the soldiers would. She thought perhaps they were picking up on the mood of Pevah, who seemed to be growing more into his other name with each passing breath.

But when she looked back to see what the fuss was about, the only thing more erratic than the noises they made were their movements. They rushed to and fro, scattering sand with raised hackles. They hissed at one another and at the air around them, pawing at lonely patches of sand and occasionally baring their fangs at nomads and Valley soldiers.

Pevah walked through them all, ignoring men and foxes alike as he followed the same path the other Sage had out onto the flats. The time he’d gathered swirled around him, a gossamer curtain inlaid with jewels and silken threads—each more powerful than anything Iyana had seen. For what was time but power over life and death?

“Pevah,” she said, reaching for him as he moved past, already bearing himself like a ghost. “Something’s wrong.” He paused and the Eastern Dark stepped away from Ceth to watch their exchange. Ceth, for his part, remained rooted, caught between the need to act and the knowledge that doing so would doom him.

He seemed to listen to the words but not the warning within them. Iyana could see the emerald light of her stare reflected off the shimmering cloak he wore, but it didn’t reach his understanding or his care.

“The girl is right, you know,” the Eastern Dark said, and it sounded like a portent.

The air smelled of rot and burning flesh. It changed sharply, the breeze whipping one way and then the next, and now the men were caught up in the foxes’ mania, even if they remained silent and still. Something was coming. Something was here.

With a jolt of memory, Iyana looked at the hand that had occupied so much of her attention minutes before. There was no longer a blur around it. Seeing her looking, the Eastern Dark gave her a wave, smiling.

Pevah stopped as if halted by a line. His eyes went wide and the fur that had been a hood stood up, mimicking his loyal companions.

“What have you done?” he asked, a note of horror entering his tone.

“Concessions must be made, Pevah,” the Eastern Dark said, sweeping his hands out to his sides and ignoring the Landkist behind him. The Sage dipped into a mock bow and then rose, his movements alien. He reminded Iyana of the Faey, but much older and more dangerous.

She felt them and was the first to turn, and the sight nearly took her breath. If she hadn’t just seen a Night Lord kill and be killed by one of the last Embers, it would have. There were no gasps among the Valley soldiers or desert nomads. Only a hardening that Iyana tried to mimic.

There atop the rise, standing in a haphazard row, was a collection of man-shaped creatures all in black and all of black. They wore no clothes and they carried no weapons. Their eyes were red, deep and glowing like coals beneath a grate. Some smiled as they took in the force arrayed before them. There were only six. In Iyana’s experience, six would be enough. She knew what these beasts were. She had fought one, in a manner of speaking, helping to purge it from the burning mind of Kole Reyna during the Dark Months.

Sentinels. Sentinels of the World Apart, and no rift to speak of. No gaping, jagged hole cut into space itself to betray their entry. The Eastern Dark had hidden them. He had let them in.

Though they had sharp fangs and jagged claws not unlike Pevah’s, these stood with a strange sort of elegance. They were not stooped and growling as Iyana had heard them described, and as they examined the men and the foxes they did so with a predatory, calculating grace. The eyes of the one in front went a little wider as he scanned the devastation. He mouthed something in a language she couldn’t understand, and she guessed he had seen the Night Lord.

Those behind him knelt and bowed their heads, but he only stood and stared at the place where the great titan had fallen. He looked back and picked Iyana from the crowd. He pointed one sharp talon and spoke, and though she did not know the words, she took their meaning.

“An Ember,” she said, raising her chin high like Ceth had. “Creyath Mit’Ahn, Second Keeper of Hearth. Scourge of the Dark Kind. Slayer of the Night Lord.”

She half expected a peal of demonic laughter. Instead, she earned that steady smolder. The Sentinel even granted her a twitch of a nod.

“Don’t speak to them,” Mial said. “They’ll put a curse on you, these beasts.” He snarled like one of the foxes, and the Sentinels looked amused. As one, they stepped forward. Not a single man or woman in the line took one back. These folk had come too far to be cowed, and now they were caught between the Sentinels of the World Apart and the Eastern Dark. What was there to do but fight? What was there to do but die?

“Don’t look at me that way, brother.” The Eastern Dark’s voice had changed. He was happy here in this lonely chaos at the edge of the World, no matter his seeming stoicism.

“You let them in,” Pevah said. His voice was savage, scarcely a vestige of humanity left in it. “More.”

“These Sentinels are not loyal to the Night Lords of their lands.”

“They are not loyal to any but themselves.”

Iyana knew this was a standoff that would end in blood. As if to prove her point, one of the Sentinels rolled a dead warrior over—one of the Seers’ painted zealots—and croaked a laugh. One of the Valley soldiers Iyana didn’t know stepped forward, silver blade catching all the light the desert night threw. The Sentinels smiled at him.

“We have common cause,” the Eastern Dark said, and Iyana thought it less than nonsense. “Consider these nobles. Greater than the savages the White Crest called into that Valley of his. These used to rule the World Apart, or much of it, until the Night Lords grew minds of their own.” He sighed, a dramatic sound that carried. “But then, you never learned as much of that place as I. You never looked long. You never went searching.”

“Much good it’s done,” Pevah said. “You’ve doomed them. You’ve doomed the World, and you’ll die for it. I’ll see it done.”

“No, Pevah,” the Eastern Dark said. “My curious eye is the only thing that will stop what was always coming. The Dark Kind would have continued to spill into our lands unabated and unchecked. The Worlds would collide with a fervor that will break them both apart. It wasn’t our search that drew its wandering eye. It was the power we found.”

Iyana couldn’t help but turn back to the Sages. There wasn’t anything she could do against a pack of Sentinels. She might as well learn what she could before passing on. She tried not to dwell on the despair.

The Eastern Dark was looking at his counterpart, keeping Ceth between them. The Landkist seemed frozen. He should have fallen from his wounds, but he stayed up, eyes shifting between the Sages as Pevah inched closer, black claws out. She saw a bit of that usual blur concentrated around one fist, which hung at his side, partially obscured by the gray sash that hung in tatters from a bloody shoulder.

“If there is one truth the tribes have held to that we cannot avoid, it is surely that,” the Eastern Dark said, his teeth an unsettling white. “We took our power, Pevah. We violated some law that even the gods—if they exist—left unchallenged. The World Apart was always there. Its coming, however, was not.”

“And you think our deaths will stave it off?” Pevah laughed, a bitter sound. “Mine and all the rest?”

The Eastern Dark’s face went deadly serious. “I know it.”

“And you,” Pevah said, pointing with a lancing claw. “How will you end, and when?”

No answer, and now it was Iyana who laughed. The Eastern Dark turned a blank look her way. She saw Ceth’s eyes move quick as a lightning strike. She saw his hand move quicker, feet pivoting in the glass shards.

“Ceth!” Pevah yelled, leaning in.

The Landkist’s fist rocketed toward the Eastern Dark’s back. Iyana saw the passion that the Sage kept veiled as the blow struck and struck through, shattering the spine like any other and coming out the other side.

All held their breath. A cold wind blew the last of the smoke away and sent white pebbles dancing toward the south. The Sage hung limp, dangling from the end of Ceth’s bloody fist, pale hands clutching, eyes wide with remembered mortality. The tether that had been hidden was now revealed in full to her. It was deep lavender and blue with bits of red, and it flashed like a squid in the deep.

Iyana nearly cheered, and then she saw Pevah’s face and knew it was for naught.

With a whispered word, it was all undone and done again. The Eastern Dark stood apart from Ceth, and the Landkist’s look of triumph turned to one of surprise. He looked down and saw the gaping hole in his chest. He looked to Pevah, whose heart broke to see it and to not see its coming fast enough.

Ceth fell to his knees, wordless, and his chin touched his chest. He was still.

The Eastern Dark, if it were possible, looked crestfallen in place of relieved. If Pevah’s stare was hate and vengeance, his was resolute. The Sages collided, and the hell that had been building since the Night Lord fell was unleashed, and there was no center to the storm, no eye to wait out its violent wrath.

Karin had been so taken with the scene out on the flats and its cataclysmic ending, so taken with the grief he witnessed from the Captain of Hearth who ventured out onto that dry and broken waste, that he did not notice the arrival of the Sentinels until the battle had been joined.

It started with a shockwave that knocked him down—no hard thing, since he could barely stand as it was. The Sages—for that was all they could be—collided with a force that made Ceth’s fight look paltry by comparison. Karin was a stone’s throw from them or a bit more, but he saw the silver-haired Northman kneeling motionless. Then he saw the hole in his chest.

The air moved about his prone form and his sharp bangs danced with it as if underwater while the gods came together and separated, each clash too quick to see anything but an afterimage like sunspots on the backs of his eyelids.

Pevah was something changed, closer to the beast he had been in the Eastern cave, no shred of humanity feigned or otherwise left to him. He was coated in the time he kept. Neither he nor the tall, dark and Faey-like figure he fought carried weapons apart from their own forms, but they were formidable. Any blow Pevah landed was given back to him. Gashes appeared on his face and blood soaked his clothes, and each time that liquid armor he wore like a shield shimmered like moonlight glinting and turned it back, unmade it.

The same could not be said for the Eastern Dark. Where before he had turned back his wounds using whatever magic made him up, now they sprouted. The Sages flew and fell, sometimes too quick to see and others slow as dreaming. The blows were rendered bright in the shimmering time they were caught in as it threaded loose from Pevah and made a mess of the space in which they clashed. Karin was so fixed on the airborne image of their slow dance he did not know it as a thing of the past until their new bout broke out directly before him, collapsing much of the dry ridge he stood upon.

He dove back, hacking and gasping as he came up spewing sand, and when he turned over he saw the true hell had been joined. The black forms with red eyes streaked quick as Embers, tearing the sashes and guts from the desert nomads and sending buckles and flashing bits of metal shooting from the armor the Valley soldiers wore. The men and women fought like the foxes that made a wilder chaos in the midst, their blades catching bits of the half-dozen but doing little in the way of true hurt to the demons of the World Apart.

Already three soldiers had fallen, and Karin knew more would follow. He knew they would all die, for there were no Landkist left among them.

No Landkist but for two.

His heart pumped what life he needed as he saw Iyana wading in the midst, leaping upon the wounded like the Sentinels leapt upon the living. He saw her eyes glowing along with her palms as she willed one soldier to rise and quit on another, two emerald jewels out of four. But Sen was not using his to heal. Instead, he twisted and turned within the maelstrom of black and flesh, reaching out and tugging on threads Karin couldn’t see. Iyana watched him from her place in a shallow pit, something like recognition dawning as the Faeykin yanked Ket out of harm’s way. A Sentinel went screaming past him trailing a blow that would have been killing.

Still, Sen could only delay, and the soldiers could only die against the Sentinels. Karin stood on wavering legs, his mind made up. He tore his shirt free and felt a fresh line of warm run down his side. He cleaned it as best he could with water from a nearly-empty skin and tied his shirt around him like a wrap. He closed his eyes and breathed in deep, smelling the ozone that still drifted from Creyath Mit’Ahn’s sacrifice and hearing the pops and cracks from the battle of Sages.

He ran, sprinting fast as a drained body would allow toward the heart of the storm. He saw Iyana’s white hair picking up the light of the moon that was shining brighter now that the Dunes and their amber glow were gone. She looked like a herald the rest rallied around, standing undaunted in a hurricane of demons and flesh, reaching out with both hands as Sen did the same farther back.

Iyana had never felt more useless, diving from body to body and healing those who could be healed only to have them fall once more, beyond her reach and beyond her help. She was locked into the Between, now, and it took nearly all she had to keep from flying away, drifting on those strange winds and following those winding dream-paths to distant ways. She wanted to seek out Linn and bring her stone back with her. She wanted to find Kole and beg his aid, or else tell them she loved them as her body was hacked apart in the far west. She wanted Mother Ninyeva to be here, standing brave in the midst of a Sage’s storm—one that raged behind her on and above the flats as the Eastern Dark and the Red Waste brought their names and all the power that went with them to bear.

She could find nothing like threads coming from the Sentinels. Nothing to pull and nothing to control, while the bright and flickering threads of the desert nomads and her Valleyfolk swayed and danced around her like tall grass.

Sen stood apart from the rest. Iyana thought him afraid until she saw the work he did. He pulled Ket out of the way as a Sentinel went past, and he flattened Jes to the ground as one carved the place her neck had been. He manipulated wills and the bodies that carried them, and for the first time Iyana swallowed the bile the act called up in her and bent to the task herself.

One of the soldiers of the caravan was falling back under the lashing black talons of a Sentinel that had broken off from the pack. His sword was cracked and would break on the next exchange. She seized his tether—sky-blue and pulsing—and moved him enough to see him lose a bit of flesh and not the heart it held as his fellows came in to bear him up and beat the beast back.

But these were clever things, these warriors from the World Apart. One saw her through the mess, focused on her as it tossed a nomad wearing a red sash to fall lifeless in the sand. Its walk became a run she couldn’t hope to outstrip, and just before it reached her it went down in a tangle beneath a quick and clumsy charge as Karin bore it into one of the shallow pits Ceth had made.

Karin was launched back, but the Sentinel was set upon by Mial and one of the Northmen who were fighting with a rage Iyana felt but could not channel quite yet, the shock of it having yet to wear off. She felt a tug on her arm as Karin spun her around and dragged her from the fighting.

“Iyana!” he yelled, desperate as he pulled her up the slope. She dug her feet into the soft sand when she recognized his path. “We must go! Iyana, we must! We cannot win! You’ll die!”

He screamed with the desperation of a father, and though she was not his daughter, she was the closest thing out here in these barren wastes that were still somehow beautiful in spite of it all.

“Stop,” she said, voice level as she fought to keep from drifting. “Stop.”

He did not.

“Stop!”

She pressed him into the slope with his own will until she heard the breath being squeezed from his lungs. She released him. He rolled over, hacking, and she saw red spots in the outline of his form in the white sand. She knelt over him, hands roving until she found the hurt and poured her own fire in. Her head swam. She doubted if she’d feel the pain had a Sentinel chosen that moment to run her through, so caught was she in Karin’s.

His breathing steadied as she finished, and she blinked, letting the green fall away. He looked as if he might seize her again and pull her away, kicking and screaming, but something in her look stopped him. He knew she would not go, and so together they turned and watched the fight on the slope. Shadows passed from soldier to soldier and scrum to scrum while the one who had summoned them fought against the man who had been named after these lands.

Desperate as the fighting was between men and demons, it was nothing compared to the madness behind. Iyana shook her head. It was as if they fought everywhere at once and yet nowhere. She saw still images of the two locked in spitting embraces like tapestries or emblazoned reliefs. Here Pevah mounted the Eastern Dark in the shards of melted sand and there he soared high above the flats, black talons lashing.

Below and between the still images, she saw the true fight joined. Pevah shimmered as if he trailed a cloak of the clearest water. He moved with a fury unbecoming of one so calm, and she realized then where Ceth’s strange style had been born and who had molded it.

“He cannot win,” she heard Karin say behind her. He sounded tired, and she felt a pang for knowing Creyath was dead and another for not having time to feel it. Her heart thudded as she looked at Ceth, hair blowing over a still and forgotten form.

“No,” she said with a nod. Pevah tore the Eastern Dark’s throat out and then bore the wound himself, the clear armor he wore that was time flashing like snow as it undid the damage. “Not alone.”

“Iyana—”

She pointed to silence him. She pointed up above the Eastern Dark, and Karin came up beside her and squinted. There, drifting and translucent, was a thread of lavender and blue and speckled red she had only barely glimpsed before, and with each blow Pevah landed that was turned back on him twofold, the thread brightened until there was little to distinguish it from any of the rest.

“I know how to beat him, Karin,” she said, feeling it as the truth as the words escaped her. “I know how.” She looked to him, pleading, imploring. “I need to get closer.”

Karin’s silence was telling. She saw him examine the melee below and thought again that he would drag her from the place then and there. Instead, his eyes darted, mind working. He was First Runner, and so he looked for a place to run. He came away with a sigh that told her they would both die if he tried it. Told her he would try anyway.

And then a lone figure broke the middle distance, walking toward the battle with an easy gait that was smooth and tired. He held a sword at his side, and though he was marked from whatever fighting he had endured in the north, his path was forward.

“Talmir Caru is the best sword I’ve ever seen,” Karin said in a tone that approached awe. “I’ve seen him best a champion from Center and the Blood Seers of the farthest north and driest west. He’s the best sword I’ve ever seen. But he can’t beat them.”

“I don’t think he means to,” Iyana said. She thought to run to him and put some of her greenfire into him, but there was no way. They would catch her and tear her apart. As it was, one looked in their direction and Karin tensed to die, but Talmir’s cry broke the sky and drew it back.

The Captain of Hearth entered the fray. He ran a Sentinel through and it fell, shockingly, dead. The bronze star that had slipped behind his torn shirt and leather gleamed as he struck. It marked him as something different from the rest. Something to be feared by beings that were not given to fear.

One of the Sentinels fell on Talmir and pushed his sword arm down with impossible strength. Rather than deal a mortal blow, it locked his eyes and stared with those glowing reds, boring in, and Iyana knew what it attempted.

“No!” she screamed as Talmir matched her. Amidst the chaos behind the struggling pair she saw the Sages pause in their spitting embrace long enough to look over.

“Now, Yani!” Karin yelled, sprinting ahead. She followed, not sparing a moment to think. As she followed in the First Runner’s wake, a Sentinel that had been worrying over the body of its fellow gave in and marked her next. Ket stood and blocked the charge, losing a hand in the process as it came up in a lashing rage. Two of the desert nomads took his place as one of the caravan snatched him and dragged him back to a rise where Sen worked over the wounded. Ket did not scream, but Iyana wanted him to.

She looked ahead, always ahead, ignoring the growls and yips of the desert foxes, the men who fought for every inch against them and the animals that had ever called these dunes home. She fixed her eyes on Karin Reyna’s back and allowed his prow to bear her into the west.

And then she was in the flats, far enough from the fight to be forgotten but close enough to fear it still. She turned, panting, and saw that Talmir had regained his feet and his blade. He had cut the head from the Sentinel that had tried to corrupt him and the four that remained had fallen back into a defensive formation, soldiers all around, red and gray sashes swishing as they pawed with their sharps and steel.

It was only a matter of time.

“Clever thing,” the Eastern Dark said. Iyana turned toward him, thinking he addressed her, and saw that he was staring at the glow of Talmir’s pendant and the silver sword he held. “Clever thing.”

Pevah seized on his lack of attention and flung him back, and Iyana saw that his shimmering cloak was less striking now. He was panting, same as her. Worse. He looked more and more like one of the desert foxes with each passing exchange, and all around them the images of his clashes with the Eastern Dark faded like memories scrubbed clean against the backdrop of the desert sky. The flats picked up a bit of amber to go along with the white, and Iyana felt the first warmth of the sun rising in the east.

She smiled as an errant ray touched the prone form of Creyath, who was not so far away, his face already dusted over with a smattering of sand that could have been snow. He had not died ugly, and looking toward the mountain of obsidian the Night Lord had become she knew his memory would outlive them all.

“Your corruption won’t find a home in that one,” Iyana said, beaming at the Eastern Dark. She saw his tether clear now, and it was ugly, streaming up against the stars, pale and split and trailing darkness in its wake.

The Eastern Dark did not smile. He looked, if anything, resolute as he nodded toward the eastern rise. She followed him as Pevah began to walk toward his adversary once more, breath catching, while Karin stood before her, unarmed yet undaunted.

On the rise, the Sentinels tilted their heads as if called from afar. They glanced toward the west and then leapt as one. They landed in a square around Sen and finished the soldier he was attempting to heal. One leapt atop him and bore him down as the other three formed a pack before him. Talmir led those still able to fight and they met those three in a bloody, bitter chaos. They would surely win, and yet it didn’t matter in the least.

When the third Sentinel fell, Talmir kicked the fourth off Sen. It rolled over, black eyes staring sightlessly up at the stars. And a fifth rose wearing the Faeykin’s skin. Sen stood, his green eyes shining, his pale skin showing spots and eels of black beneath the surface. These Sentinels were of a different breed to do the thing so quickly.

Talmir stepped back, blade held before him and other hand held to ward off the rest. The Faeykin blinked at him twice as if clearing a memory. One of the red-sashes raised his bow and pulled a shaft on a taut string, but Sen lanced a hand out quick as a strike and the lot of them froze. Even Talmir, bronze star shining but inert.

Iyana looked to Pevah, who was intent on the Eastern Dark. Karin ground his teeth, rooted in indecision.

“It could be I’ve been looking at the wrong Landkist all along,” the Eastern Dark said, his voice leading.

One by one, the soldiers of the Valley and the nomads of the desert—all the fighters who had come west to snuff out the nightmare here found themselves caught in it. They struggled and spat, chests heaving as they were betrayed by their own forms, pressed into the slope while the foxes threaded between them, confused and agitated.

A few fought it, Talmir chief among them. He kept his feet, but his legs shook with the effort. He tried to bring his father’s sword forward, but even if it reached the Faeykin it would do little more than part a seam from his shirt. The archer was on one knee, but still he held the arrow nocked, his veins standing out with the effort.

Sen looked on with dispassion and Iyana wondered if a part of him delighted in seeing his power brought to bear so suddenly, so widespread. So brutally. Her heart caught as she imagined them all bursting, insides turned out. She knew he could do it. Knew he could cut the threads.

Why did he not?

His face was screwed tight, and Iyana took a halting step toward him. She thought to reach out and make for his own tether, but it was coiled tight as ever, and she knew she was not strong enough. Still, he hesitated.

The Eastern Dark made a sound of surprise, and Sen’s slow-closing fist opened of a sudden, the light fading from his eyes and clearing to reveal a look like relief. A look aimed at Iyana.

Talmir and the rest found themselves unencumbered. They hit the sand and scrambled back to their feet in a wild confusion and the captain stayed his blow inches from the Faeykin’s neck. The red-sash, however, forgot his own, and Iyana heard the bowstring twang and saw the shaft bury itself in Sen’s chest to the fletches.

The Faeykin stumbled and a red line leaked from his lips. He looked to Iyana again, and in the place of heartache and fear she saw triumph. He fell without a sound.

“Pity,” the Eastern Dark said. “Pity all around. Still, the Sentinels are vanquished. Saves me the trouble.”

“You let them in,” Pevah said. He spoke in a tone barely above a whisper. It was a tone of heartbreak, and it was tinged with the need to put things right. Or at least to end them.

“All I have done,” the Eastern Dark said, standing his ground, “and all I will do is necessary, Pevah. If you cared for them like you claim, you would think on it long enough to know the truth. The Sages must die. The stuff that makes us up—our gifts, our power—it is drawing the World Apart here. I didn’t want to believe it.” A note of pleading entered his tone, and Iyana almost believed that he regretted it. “But I have learned its truth, Pevah. The Sages must die. You, Balon, the Witch and whatever’s left of that green beast at Center. Only then will the collision be slowed enough perhaps to stay.”

“You hold yourself apart,” Pevah said, pausing. “Again, you hold yourself separate, now as you did then.”

“I am separate,” he said. “I have severed my connection to the World Apart.” He shook his head. “Had we more time, I could do the same for you without killing. But your gifts don’t work the same as mine.” He held out his hands. “There is nothing to be done but to do it.”

Pevah looked past Iyana and Karin, his eyes skipping over Sen and settling on Ceth, still kneeling like a statue out of legend. She had to squint to be sure, but as he turned back it was clear to Iyana the beads of clear that caught the soft yellow rays were tears.

Seeing it, the Eastern Dark took a step back, and Iyana thought it was more in preparation than fear. “You could have saved him,” he said. “You could have used the time you’ve hoarded.”

“This time is meant for you,” Pevah said, his voice flat as the land around them. He spread his arms and the glass cloak spilled out, expanding farther. Karin reached back and touched Iyana on the shoulder, pushing her away as he stepped back warily, but she shrugged him off.

“I am no Night Lord,” the Eastern Dark said, as if it were a weak thing to be caught so easily. “Even if you managed to ensnare me, your doing so would doom the World and all in it. Look in my eyes, brother. You know it to be true.”

Pevah shot both hands forward, palms facing out, and the shimmering curtain expanded faster than Iyana could react, enveloping the four in a globe. Everything was frozen. There were specks of sand caught drifting on a breeze that wouldn’t stir, and even the lazy beams of the rising sun seemed still, caught and beautiful.

Iyana saw it all, and thought this was how she would die, or else live, caught in eternity until madness reigned.

But something did move. As she looked, the Eastern Dark’s hands began to edge away from his sides. She saw his tether flare and the globe magnified the light like an exploding star that rendered her blind.

When her vision cleared, Iyana fell to her knees and felt Karin do the same. She looked up and saw the Sages eyeing one another across the flat. Pevah seemed farther back than he had been, and the two regarded one another with quick recognition.

She was confused. Judging by Karin’s look, he was putting together the pieces as well. The globe was gone. Everything was as it had been. Exactly as it had been moments before.

“Will we truly play this game, Pevah?” the Eastern Dark asked, looking only mildly perturbed.

They did, and Iyana could not have guessed how long they played.

Pevah flared his conjured time and the Eastern Dark sent it back. The same moment, lived over and over and with no time to do anything different. Iyana’s thoughts became milk swirling like a vaporous cloud. It was like drifting in the Between, in a way, albeit with nowhere new to go. Karin made for the Sages every time, and every time, he got no closer than a step. Still he tried.

Iyana did not know which time it was. Such a concept was less than meaningless. She only knew this time was different. Pevah reached out and the Eastern Dark tensed to send it back with his strange and opposite power, like a shield of unmaking, but the long fingers and black talons paused before their zenith.

Iyana held her breath and sensed Karin itching to break into the charge that had become as much a part of him as anything else. He stopped, looking around in a strange remembering. Iyana remembered her fellows to the east and wondered if they had gone far away, returning to the quartz-laden caves beneath the sands or perhaps back to the Valley itself.

Instead, they stood, watching the exchange. They hadn’t moved from the spot, and Iyana realized no time at all had passed for them, though some wore strained expressions and raised brows. Talmir was busy helping divide the wounded among those who would carry them back. He still clutched his sword, and Sen still lay empty while Ceth knelt in his forever spot.

“I see you’ve rediscovered your good sense,” the Eastern Dark said. “It always came quicker to you than the others. I’m surprised to see you resist it so. But then, there’s always been more of fox than man in you.”

Iyana felt the disgust well up in her gut. She tasted bitterness in the back of her throat. Pevah’s look was defeat. He let his hands fall to his sides, and the shield of time she had come to fear like nothing else flashed but did not fade.

“You will let me die in my own way,” Pevah said. He made as if to turn from the spot, but lingered on the Eastern Dark. After a few tense moments, the other nodded once.

Pevah walked past them without looking back. His eyes were straight ahead, and in her anger Iyana thought him a coward to refuse to meet her own. She looked to the Eastern Dark as Karin stepped between them once more, weaponless hands shaking with fear for her and with the knowledge that he could do nothing against the Sage the Emberfolk had feared before and above all others.

“You’re going to let him go?” she asked, nearly reaching out to snatch Pevah by the crook of the arm. He looked so frail, now, so much more like the old man she had first come upon than the sleek and deadly Fox of the West. He ignored her.

“You mistake the situation, Faeykin,” the Eastern Dark said, and Iyana read mockery in his tone. “It is I who lets him go.” He nodded at his brother’s back. “To die in the way he sees fit.”

The Sage of the Red Waste made his aching way east, toward the bloody rise where his desert children mended their wounds and cried over the dead of both companies and forgot the painted warriors of the north; where Talmir and the Valley soldiers eyed him with suspicion and aimed their blood-crusted weapons behind him toward the Sage he would no longer fight.

“That’s it?” Iyana cried. “The enemy of the World and all in it stands before us, and we’re going to let him go?” She had never felt such cold despair and hot anger, melded into a nauseating whole. She could tell Karin wanted to stop her making a fatal mistake, but he was angry too, his eyes roving and settling on Creyath’s still and already-forgotten form.

The Eastern Dark eyed her with a gentle surprise that held an edge of warning. She didn’t care.

“You think us weak,” she said, stalking toward him. She brushed by Karin and tore her hand from his tired grasp as the Sage squared to meet her. “You think the Embers are the only Landkist in the World that can threaten you.”

That crooked smile she had imagined before came real. The Eastern Dark glanced toward the east. His look would have told Pevah he was about to smite this foolish girl from the flats and all her life with her, if the other had bothered to turn. But on he walked, broken and sad, and on she raged.

She stopped just a stride from the Eastern Dark, and now that she was close to him she could not help but note how striking his features were. He was something old. Older than the Faey of the southern Valley, tall and dark and intelligent. She wondered if he was the eldest of the Sages, and though she had always guessed it to be the case, she knew by looking at him that he was no brother of Pevah and that none save for the Twins of Whiteash had been true kin. They were beings bound in power and in misdeed, not in blood.

She spat and his smile turned to a grimace. His black eyes held specks of white at their centers, glinting like faraway stars. His hair was black, shining and beautiful, like oil on a pond.

“Do you know why Mother Ninyeva never feared you and yours?” she asked, not knowing where the words came from but feeling them as truth. “Do you know why she was willing to walk through the heart of the White Crest’s storm, which you corrupted and sent against us?”

“I did not—”

“Because pride has always been the greatest weakness of them all,” she said, “and you, Ray Valour, have too much of that bitter poison to be the hero you’ve convinced yourself you are.”

His eyes widened but he was too stunned to speak.

“That name,” he said. “How—”

“I’m beginning to know myself,” she said. “And the power the World has given me.” She looked up above his head and he followed her, blinking and confused. He took a step back, seemingly against his will, and when she looked back down to meet his dark eyes she saw the brightness of her own reflected back. “It is writ above you,” she said. “As is your fate.”

She reached out with one white hand and grasped at nothing, her knuckles splitting in the dryness and leaking red over her nails. Her own tether, bright and green-yellow like a gentle dawn over plains, streaked forward like a striking serpent and wrapped itself around that thread of purple-dark and red. It felt like touching death, and as Iyana pulled the knot tight she and the Eastern Dark shared an agonizing vision that made the flats, the white sands, the broken glass and the wheeling stars above fade away, to be replaced by a crushing vision of a sprawling land of half-formed shadows and pressing blackness.

They soared over lands farther than leagues could count and screamed through jagged canyons of the sharpest stuff. Hordes of forms spilled over the crags below, seeing the fleeting birds above and screaming and roaring and giving chase from below. They saw Night Lords sitting on mountaintop thrones and Sentinels standing at attention like ornamental guards of nightmare, their red eyes full of hate and loathing for the ones they served.

There was a peak in the distance that had carven seats of lavender and jade with molten red, and the Night Lords sitting here were kings among kings. Their eyes burned brighter than exploding stars and they locked onto Iyana and the Eastern Dark whose name was now known. Iyana tried to pull away—but this was not the Between, she realized with mounting horror. This was true. They were here, flying on the sulfurous airs of the World Apart. She found herself spiraling down, drawn in by those burning eyes that sparked like jewels below.

And then strong hands grasped her and turned her up, and the sky above was not full of winking stars in a dark blue curtain nor clouds of vaporous fumes and winged terrors. She saw a sprawling plateau turned upside-down, with leagues of green and blue and wisps of white that looked like tiny clouds. Below them, mountains that would fit under her nails raised ridges like the lines in her hands.

It was the World she knew, and the Sage she was tangled with flew up toward it and dragged her with him. She still felt his tether coiled up in hers, or hers in his. She thought to snap it, to break it apart and kill him as Sen had done to the intruder in the east. And the thought of the Faeykin’s last moments made her hesitate. It was her mercy that would doom the World, she thought as her mind spun into a threat of madness.

She hit the melted sand with a gasp and shock. She felt strong arms supporting her and heard Karin’s comforting voice as he spoke to keep her calm. Her heart hammered and hurt. She was hot and cold at once, and she only realized then that she was sobbing, her cheeks wet.

A shadow stole over her, and she tried not to care that her death was at hand but did. She looked up and Karin did as well, but the Eastern Dark was changed. In the place of the Faey-like figure was something closer to the old man that had first appeared on the rise. He looked down at her with gray eyes, and then down at his own hands. She looked above him, but she no longer touched the Between and was too tired to seek it out.

Something about the man had changed. He was not the same as he had been before. She had done something. In his eyes she saw anger change to fear before settling for an odd mix of the two. He shook his head slowly and seemed to consider Karin and the fighters on the rise with fresh eyes. He looked like a god rendered suddenly mortal.

“You saw it,” he said, surprising her. She had expected him to strike her down or to cast her back into that strange and dark hell. Perhaps he still would. “You saw it,” he said again, and she realized with a swimming certainty he was asking as much as telling.

She nodded and Karin looked between them, uncertain.

“What have I done?” she asked, not sure who she was asking.

The Eastern Dark whose name was Ray Valour shook his head and wrinkled his nose. He sighed, a human sound. “What you felt was right, I suppose.”

He set to examining his hands and his form. He touched his face. He touched spaces in the air around him as if testing, and each time he came away disappointed and afraid.

Karin helped Iyana to stand and turned her to the east, keeping his eyes on the Sage as they moved toward the rise. Iyana walked as if drunk, swaying. The tears renewed as they came upon the scene. She saw Sen with a shroud over his face and had to look away, shocked at the pain of it. She saw Ket with the stump of his hand bandaged. He was pale but he still smiled at her while Jes crouched over him like a protective sister. Perhaps she was. Iyana had never thought to ask.

Talmir and the others who weren’t keeping eyes and arrows trained on the Eastern Dark stood around Pevah, who knelt before Ceth, the son he had watched die. The cloak of time still hung about the Sage, but it was fluid now, and its tendrils reached out like grasping threads to the other.

There was a line above Pevah that Iyana hadn’t noticed before but now saw clear. It was bright, and not so much a tether as a beacon. She saw it even as the sun rose higher, the first curve of the red globe coming up to turn the white sands golden. She looked up and stifled a gasp as she saw the pillar of light meet an image of the roiling land of shadows she had left. She blinked and it was gone, replaced by the stars the sky’s blue began to wash away.

“We all do the best with it,” Pevah said. He reached out and touched Ceth on the shoulder, and then he was gone, leaving nothing behind but the time he had given the man who would’ve been his son, and the life that went along with it.

Ceth blinked at them, confused and weary. He looked before him at the place where Pevah had sat, and understanding dawned. He touched the place where moments before or after there had been a gaping hole and now was unbroken cloth and the skin beneath. He cried, falling onto his hands and burying his brow in the soft sand where the Sage had knelt.

Iyana sighed and it felt like relief. She felt tension and looked north to see the Eastern Dark standing close, his gaze sorrowful as he watched the Landkist expel his grief.

“You got what you wanted, Sage,” Talmir said, wiping the blood from his silver blade in the sand with a threatening scrape. His tone was matter-of-fact, as if he held no qualms about challenging one of the great powers of the World to single combat..

“No,” the Eastern Dark said. “I did not.” He looked up into the morning sky, and Iyana felt a kinship with him she hated to feel. The desert foxes watched him but remained rooted and despondent, without the strength or will to sing their mourning songs. “Fen—” he started the Sage’s true name and then stopped. “Pevah died because he had to die.” He turned his eyes their way, and now Ceth’s met him, already drying, mind already working over what he would do. “At least he got to do it for his own reasons.”

“You mean to continue with your hunt,” Iyana said. “To kill the other Sages.” Even without his full power, even changed as he was, she knew they could not stop him leaving, though Talmir looked poised to try.

“You saw what’s coming,” he said, nodding toward the spot Pevah had knelt. “You saw why, even if you’ve convinced yourself you haven’t.” He shook his head. “Sight is a mighty gift, Kin of Faeyr.”

“If the Sages must die to stop it,” Iyana said, “so must you.” And before he could speak, “You aren’t as separate from that realm as you think.”

The Eastern Dark regarded her with suspicion that morphed into something that could have been denial or recognition. It was hard to tell.

“You sent your Landkist out into the World to do the same thing you would condemn me for,” the Sage said, his voice taking on a bitterness she feared might turn to anger. “To kill me and all my kind and to save the World, even if you don’t know why. Spare me your young judgment. Your ignorance.”

“Where will you go?” Karin asked, knowing the answer.

“To Center, first. And then north and east.” He met the First Runner’s penetrating gaze. “Pray that I am not too late.”

“And if you are?” Iyana asked. “If you’re wrong, and if the World Apart was always coming, no matter what the Sages’ collective egos have tricked themselves into believing?” She paused. “What then?”

He seemed to consider it.

“Lock yourself away in that Valley of yours,” he said. “Keep your last Embers close, and pray that the World sends you more. It was my plan before I saw the error of it. The evil of it. It isn’t so bad a plan.”

“If you harm my son—”

“Ah, yes,” the Sage cut Karin off, smiling without humor. “The great Ember hero. I’ve seen his like before. He should go back home. The Sage of Center is dead and gone. Balon Rael in his madness has declared war on the Landkist the World over. He won’t find allies stout as your Red Fox. What happens to him depends entirely on him. I’d suggest he stay out of my way so that I can accomplish the task he’s set himself on.”

“It ends with you,” Talmir said. “No matter what, it ends with you.”

The Eastern Dark did not flinch away from his stare. His eyes traced down and fixed on the bronze star for a space, and then switched to Iyana.

“There is another side to those bright threads of yours,” he said. “Everything has its opposite. Now you have seen the World’s and what it brings. Take care that you don’t press too far, lest you form a beacon of your own. Lest you are marked as we have been marked.” And then he was gone like a trick of the light.

Iyana swallowed and shivered.

“Don’t worry,” Iyana said. “He is not as strong as he would have you believe. Not anymore.”

Karin and Talmir exchanged glances. Ceth shook his head and knelt a while longer. Together, their strange and broken company looked out onto the flats that now shone in the morning glare. It was like an ocean of amber-gold, free from the scar of the Midnight Dunes and their strange and poison light.

There were images caught in the glare. Iyana blinked but they did not wash away. She saw smudges and shadows, here the Sages locked in combat and there a lone and golden figure standing against a great shadow plastered across the horizon, wings unfurled and boasting before its death.

Judging by the indrawn breaths from the others, they could see it too; a function of Pevah’s time and the gifts it left behind, images like memories that would play themselves out at dawn and dusk unto the World’s ending, which could come any day.

They gathered Creyath and wrapped him in one of the red sashes while Talmir wrapped himself in one of the gray, hiding the tears he did not need to hide. Together with Sen and the others they had lost—young warriors whose legends would grow with the telling of what they had fought out here in the west that could never approach the truth—they moved toward the caves and their white quartz and the children who sounded like the birds that still flitted from alcove to alcove.

Iyana wanted very much to hear them. She found herself walking beside Ceth and Martah for a while, the woman she had assumed to be his mate. She walked alongside another of the gray-sashes, and Iyana thought perhaps Ceth was not a father after all, and that the two were not joined. She looked at him and thought to smooth his hurt away as he thought of the father he had lost, but he seemed content in his pain and the love it recalled, and so she let it go.

Her eyes took her over the yellow dunes and orange swells. She saw the foxes in the eddies, making sure their way was clear, though there were no more painted warriors or bloody Seers left to poison the place and make it deadly.

Iyana felt something brush against her. Talmir walked on her other side and Ceth stepped away, giving them space.

“What have we accomplished out here?” he asked, the question direct and uncovering the guilt beneath. Talmir wanted to be blamed. She could see it on his face and in his bearing. She could see it in the way he wouldn’t look at the bundles they carried with them.

“We burned out the corruption in the west like poison from a wound, and saved a people for it, and perhaps a future,” she said. “We brought one of the last Embers, and he slew a Night Lord who could’ve turned half the world to ash.” She nodded toward the east, much farther than they were going. “If the Eastern Dark is not the hero he thinks himself to be, we’ve given Linn and Kole the chance they’ll need to defeat him should they meet.”

“They will,” Talmir said. He seemed mollified for now if not convinced, but he’d have to work through it on his own and in his own way.

Iyana lost herself in her own thoughts as they drifted. She hadn’t said the one truth that niggled at the back of her mind like a parasite. The truth that said the Eastern Dark was right. That the Sages had to die, and that their coming west had doomed one of them and perhaps helped to secure their future because of it.

As they stopped to rest that evening, Iyana did not feel much like turning to look west. She even stopped gazing eastward for a time, wondering about Linn and the rest of their wayward heroes. Instead, she looked south, imagining she could make out the northern peaks of the Valley. It didn’t feel like a prison anymore.

She thought she wanted to go back and live, and tried to push down the thought that it was where she wanted to die, that she felt the World Apart now like a pressing weight growing heavier on the space between Worlds by the day.

The Emberfolk had been made to endure. Endure they would. Whatever was to come, she would make sure of it.

They reached the black shelves near dusk the following day. They were hot from the march and sucked bone-dry, but none had voices left to complain. Their lips were cracked and crusted over, their feet sore and blistered, their dispositions an odd mix of sorrow, relief, and what could only be the last vestiges of clinging awe from the things they had witnessed and done.

The horses greeted them first, and Iyana’s heart nearly broke all over again when she saw Creyath’s black charger led out to soak up the last rays of the dying sun. Its chestnut eyes looked beyond the horizon. Iyana touched the beast, and in the place of agitation and complaint she felt its pain as a sharp thing that would fade with time.

The merchants were glad to see them, and Captain Talmir was surprised to see them, and perhaps a touch annoyed that they had not fled south toward the temporary shelter provided by the Valley peaks.

“How did you know we’d be back?” the captain asked Stav as the two worked to rearrange the stones around the fire pit on the shore of the glittering lake below.

“Didn’t,” Stav said, and Iyana laughed once at that and then again, louder and longer at Talmir’s fresh look of anger.

“It worked out,” Karin said, resting in an alcove tucked beneath the spiral stair, eyes closed and head lolling. “Best as could be expected, given the mix of Sages, Sentinels and the odd Night Lord.”

Talmir had been striking flint to light the kindling in the ring of stones. He stopped as Karin finished, his eyes glazing over. Ceth and the others had offered to bury Creyath and Nica with those they had lost, but Talmir insisted on bringing them back south, to the Valley that was never meant to be their home and now could never be anything but.

None spared glances at the wrapped bundles they had brought back. Iyana didn’t think it was the grief that kept them from it, but rather the knowing that Creyath, Sen, Nica and the red- and gray-sashes that had lost their lives were not defined by the forms they left behind.

Iyana hadn’t noticed she was standing still, watching the children rush past as if nothing had changed, their minders following their progress with tired and—she thought—happy expressions, until Talmir addressed her.

“We’ll stay a few days, Iyana,” he said. “Take your rest.”

She nodded absently and went to do just that, only her tired, aching feet did not take her to one of the quieter chambers but rather through the shallows of the lake and into the darker tunnels the children used to frighten one another. As she walked, she tried not to think of the Pale Men that had chased her through these very halls, reaching with their white hands and terrible black claws.

She thought of Pevah as she came to the end of the line and stepped down into his thinking place. She smiled at the Everwood tree, which seemed to glow with a soft yellow light, the motes of dust swirling around it the only company it might have for a while yet. Not so long in the memory of such a thing. A memory that might have begun before Pevah made these lands and people his own. A memory that included all the voices that had filled these halls for centuries and then passed on. A memory of the World, and all the great and small happenings in it.

The thought jogged a new one, and despite her exhaustion and the dull aching of a heart that had yet to embrace its need to grieve, Iyana gave in to the rising curiosity.

She approached the Everwood tree, stepping gingerly over its snake-like roots and moving beneath the spindly, reaching branches—branches that had pulled her back from the cave of the Blood Seers when she had drifted too far and too fast.

She sat on the same curved nest of trunk Pevah had when first they spoke at length, and she rested a hand on the heart of the stem. She breathed in and closed her eyes, willing something to happen. Some communion. Some sentience.

But the Everwood tree was silent. Iyana sighed and was about to withdraw her hand when she felt something. She quirked her head as if listening, and there, in the deepest dark, she saw a faint flutter that could have been light, or an infant’s beating heart.

As she focused in, the pulsing grew until she felt it in her fingertips. It was warm and it changed until it beat in time with her heart, and Iyana began to sway, feeling that strange familiarity as the Between stole away the World and all her sense of it.

Only she was not alone. She did not soar on airy currents between Worlds, but rather found herself in darkness that didn’t frighten her so much. She was not alone. She was in the heart of the Everwood tree, or else its mind. She had been invited.

“Hello?” she asked. There was no immediate answer. “What is it you wish me to see?”

No answer.

“What is it you’ve seen?”

It seemed the Everwood tree had a literal mind. Where before it had ignored her, or considered her in silence, now it showed her what she asked. Had she been made of weaker stuff, it might have driven her mad.

She saw time as a construct; fluid and moving in a way she could never explain again once the vision faded. She saw a vast ocean that stretched and fell below the horizon, and knew these deserts were once its floor. She saw the red cliffs dotted with growth, thorny trees and bright fruits and lanky beasts moving among them. She saw the sprawling forested plateau of Center, and the misty wetlands to the southeast she would never go. She saw the land rise on a series of steps that could each contain nations to the northeast, where great citadels rose out of the bare rock.

There were men and women and children of all colors and persuasions, in all lands and in all times. Some reminded her of the Valley Faey, of herself, and some she guessed to be very old reminded her of the form the Eastern Dark had taken near the end. They were beautiful. Proud. She saw the beginnings of the doom that would befall them as one fed his need to know all things. His need to see them.

And then she saw the World Apart. It was not so frightening as it had been before. Now, she saw it as if from a great distance, as if looking through a clear pool at a shimmering reflection. She saw it not as another place, but as a shadow of this one, and as the Everwood tree held her back and kept her from crossing that threshold of black and stars, she felt its knowing that the worst was yet to come.

She felt eyes on her that recalled the purple star of the Night Lord Creyath had slain and been slain by. She saw legions of Sentinels and knew that the vain words men of the World had attached to them were nothing close to the truth. She saw leaders and nobles, kings and queens, captains and courtiers. She saw a World desperate to take their own, and fill its light with their darkness.

And she saw the bright pillars drawing them here, linking them inextricably to the World they had always drifted close enough to touch, but never close enough to keep. She saw a great battle in the north, where fire and ice clashed and lightning washed it all with a blinding, righteous fury. She saw mountains crack and heard the war she could not see as the battle for the World went on below. The first of many as the denizens of the World Apart made for all the lands men kept.

Last, she saw the Valley. She saw Hearth glittering like a bit of clay-crusted quartz in its emerald field, and south, she saw the jewel that was the Last Lake with its black spires and distant mountains, and the village that nested on its shore like a bed of mussels.

Iyana heard a voice calling and opened her eyes. She did not know how long she had lingered, or how long the Everwood tree had kept her, but the light was less than it had been before. She exhaled, her chest aching and easing as if she hadn’t done so in hours. She gazed up at the black branches and nodded, once.

“I think I understand,” she said. The silence felt like answer.

She expected to see Karin rounding the bend, or perhaps Captain Talmir. Maybe Ket, come to see why she’d wandered. She felt a pang for his missing hand and pushed it aside, knowing he had been luckier than some.

It was Ceth, the Knight of the West and the last of his kind. He entered the chamber with some speed, his look of worry dropping as soon as he saw her, to be replaced with that stoic mask she had come to know in so short a time that felt like ages.

She smiled at him, knowing why he hid the first look. After a time, he smiled back.

He stepped down and switched his gaze from her to the tree she sat beneath.

“It never spoke to me,” he said, shaking his head slowly. He didn’t sound bitter. “Come to think of it, it never spoke to Pevah either, though he wished it would. I think it might have, long ago. Long before …” He dropped it and Iyana let it fall.

He looked at her with such bare grief she couldn’t help but share it. She thought to reach out and smooth his hurt away with her greenfire, but some wounds were meant to linger. To be felt.

They sat and stood in silence for a time, watching the golden motes turn amber in the dusk light.

“You will go,” Ceth said, or asked. Iyana nodded and smiled softly. He nodded back, but it was short and sharp. He regarded her as if he wanted to say more.

“I would say there is nothing for you and yours here, Ceth,” she said. “But I know what home is, and I know the Valley is ours.” She looked back up at the branches of the tree. “I know what’s coming, and we’ve few fires left to beat back the growing dark.”

“This place was never home,” Ceth said, letting a hint of the bitterness in he had kept back before. “Not really.”

“Perhaps you can make another,” she said. “You and the children.”

“What of the desert foxes?” he asked, and she had to study his face to know that he was joking. Still, he hadn’t said no.

Iyana told herself she wanted him and his to come so they would be safe. She told herself Ceth would prove a valuable ally to the Embers of the Valley, to Hearth or Last Lake, or whichever of the Scattered Villages he made his home.

“You think your champions in the east will stop him? Will stop the Eastern Dark?” Ceth asked.

“I’m not sure they’re meant to,” Iyana said, keeping the second part to herself. The part that said Ray Valour was right. The part that hoped Kole and Linn would listen to him before striking him down.

“The Valley will be safe?”

“It never has been,” she sighed and then smiled. It seemed to confuse him. “But it’s home, Ceth. It’s the home we’ve chosen, and the one we’ll keep.”

“There are few Embers left to protect it,” he reasoned.

“True,” she said, her eyes tracing the oiled bark back down onto the obsidian floor, following the trails until she lost them to the dark. “But there are more flames than them in the Valley. More fires than red.”

Ceth nodded though he did not understand. He hadn’t moved closer to her, but he felt it. She thought to say something and gave it up, leaning back against the trunk and feeling the weight drop away that was made of worries better served for tomorrow.

The desert foxes took up their song above, and while it was a mournful melody that made her cry, she felt grateful to hear it, and in such company.

STEVEN is a fighter turned writer who resides in the Boston area. He wishes all disputes were still settled with a friendly game of hand-to-hand combat, is a fan of awesome things, and tries to write books he’d want to read. He hopes you like them.

You can find him and his musings at his official web site…

STEVENKELLIHER.COM

You finished the book!

Which either means you enjoyed it enough to do so, or wanted to give it every chance to impress you in the end. Either way, your tired eyes are appreciated.

As you’ve probably heard, reviews are something of the lifeblood of many an author. If you enjoyed this book, please do consider rating and reviewing it on Amazon and/or Goodreads. There’s nothing quite like waking up to see another good review from a new reader.

On that note, I’d very much like it if we can continue this relationship. I’ll keep trying to write entertaining, unique fantasy yarns and you can keep on reading them. If you’d like to keep updated on my writing, (and if you didn’t already download your FREE short story,) consider subscribing to my Newsletter. I only send one or two notes per month, and they’re usually chock full of writing updates, genre news and nice deals from my Fantasy friends.

I take my relationship with my readers seriously, and to give back, I plan to offer Loyalty Pricing to everyone on my mailing list, which means you’ll have the opportunity to pick up my latest releases at a premium discount on launch day.

Sign up for my newsletter by entering your email in the form on my official web site.

If you’d like to reach out directly to tell me about your experience with the book or anything at all related to the genre we both clearly love, contact me at author@stevenkelliher.com. I read and respond to every message.