The Night Voice (22 page)

She brought the blade across, below her last strike.

The glow of the dagger's hair-thin centerline disappeared for an instant as it cut into something solid. And that thing's snarls and shrieks choked off instantly.

All of its flailing stopped. Its grips on her belt and hauberk faltered.

She struck down with her free hand where instinct told her to, and her palm slapped upon its scalp. Her fingers closed instantly on sand-clotted hairs, and she brought her blade back the other way well beneath her grip.

Just before the crackle and sizzle of flesh, she thought she heard scrambling upon the sand to her left. Then the head of her prey came loose in her grip.

• • •

Leesil kicked into the face of the creature scrambling toward him. Its head lashed back, and he rolled back into a crouch. And it still kept coming. He crossed both blades, dropped forward to one knee, and slashed outward high and low as it closed.

One blade's edge sliced across its sunken belly. The other's tip tore through one side of its neck. It lurched back.

When he expected a shriek or gasp, he heard nothing in the dark. He saw its shape crumple upon itself, and he quickly looked for Magiere.

“No, run!” Ghassan shouted again.

Leesil saw something else in the dark scramble across the sand to his right . . . straight toward where he'd last seen Magiere. From the corner of his eye, he saw his own opponent hunch . . . and spring.

• • •

Khalidah watched Leesil stall, and grew furious. And for what was now needed, he could not expend energies on widening his sight to see more clearly in the dark. Thankfully, Ghassan would not dare interfere for what had to be done now.

He dug into his robe, pulled out a sage's crystal, and after swiping it once across his robe, he cast the crystal toward Leesil. Sudden light tumbling through the air distracted the wounded creature scrambling after the half-blood.

Leesil was startled by light and looked back.

In that off-balance instant, Khalidah focused with his will and used his thoughts to wrench the half-blood. Leesil arched backward, landing on his back, and Khalidah quickly wrenched him again. Leesil slid, flipped, and tumbled wide-eyed to the edge of the stone slab.

Khalidah snatched the collar of Leesil's hauberk, and by both will and physical effort, pulled the half-blood onto the stone.

“Do you have a crystal?” Khalidah demanded.

Leesil barely gained his feet. “What . . . what did you—?”

“Answer me, now!”

Light beyond the slab vanished.

Khalidah's head swiveled as he looked into the dark. His crystal was gone, and so was the creature that had come after Leesil. That was expected once that thing understood the light could not affect it.

There were still two more out there in the dark—at least two. When he glanced aside, Leesil at least had a crystal out, and Khalidah did not question where it had come from.

“Light it,” he commanded, “and toss it toward Magiere. We must get her here on the stone instead of the sand.”

That second crystal would not last as long on the sand as his before being pulled down as well. He heard the half-blood swipe the crystal on his thigh.
Light brightened the darkness an instant before the crystal shot out through the air. It landed some thirty paces out, and he spotted a dark-clad figure picking itself up and clutching a dangling object in one hand.

It was Magiere, and the object in her free hand appeared to be a head.

That left only one of the creatures unaccounted for—unless there were more hiding underground.

“What are those things?” Leesil asked.

“Watch the sand around this stone,” Khalidah ordered, and then called to Magiere. “Run to us! Quickly!”

“Magiere, come on,” Leesil called to her. “Get over here.”

Finally she came, and Khalidah got a better look at what she still held. The remaining hair on the severed head meant it was a younger one, or rather that it had been infected and turned less than a handful of years ago.

Magiere's eyes were still fully black, and between her parted lips showed teeth like those of a predator. For an instant, it brought back that terror-filled night of agony when she had torn apart his last host, a'Yamin. He could not help looking down at the white metal dagger in her other hand, and he remembered as well that burned blade cutting him apart.

How fitting it would be if he used that blade on her in the end.

“Back to back,” he ordered harshly, and looked away to where Leesil's crystal had fallen. “Watch in all directions. They cannot come up through stone, so they will have to show themselves first.”

That the second crystal had not been pulled down caused both relief and frustration. Either the last one had fled—if there were only three—or it knew better than to betray its position, now that its prey was aware of it.

Khalidah would have preferred to take one whole. Perhaps in its hunger-maddened thoughts would have been some memory or notion of exactly where it was being summoned. Even so, by this point in their travels, he had his own notion.

“You know about these things?” Leesil whispered from behind on Khalidah's left.

Khalidah hesitated. How much should he say, considering any answer would bring more questions?

“Yes, I have read of them.” He had done more than that. “Old folktales, still told among desert tribes about the eastern provinces before the empire, called them ‘ghul.'”

Khalidah heard a low grating hiss from Magiere who was behind on his right. She had not known of them. That was obvious. They had been used to clear outer sentries when forces first approached to siege the ancient Bäalâle Seatt. He had been the one to lead that siege.

“What are they?” Leesil asked.

“Undead, of course, by what they did here, likely coming in the following night after whatever attacked these nomads first.”

“Why didn't they wait to get the bodies after burial?”

Khalidah scoffed. “Because they eat the living, not the dead. Once life leaves a victim's flesh, there is no life left to feed them. But they are solitary. I have never read of more than one attacking at a time.”

The last part was true, though conjurers under his command had enslaved them in numbers before assaulting the seatt. But any one of his conjurers had been able to control only one ghul. There had been at least three here tonight, possibly working together.

“What about the victims?” Leesil pressed. “Will they . . . get up when the next night comes?”

Khalidah hesitated. Some tales were close to the truth that he knew. They claimed any victim who did not die was possessed by feral demonic spirits with no intellect. And slowly they changed as hunger drove them mad.

Again, close to the truth, but not quite.

“No,” he finally answered. “The process—from what I have read—is not the same as for . . . well, there is no word in my language to match your ‘vampire.'”

Khalidah said no more, though he listened now that Leesil was silent. Between Magiere's labored breaths, he heard not a grain of sand shift. In a
calm night without a breeze, that still did not mean the ghul had moved on. They could not travel at any worthwhile pace underground and never truly did so. To avoid them as with other undead meant waiting for daylight.

When he had said as much and sat down to keep his vigil, Leesil sighed harshly in doing the same. This at least served an additional purpose now that it seemed no true path to Beloved would be found.

None was needed as Khalidah raised his eyes to the starlit, eastern horizon.

It had been a thousand years since he had last come this far, back when he still had his own flesh, but of late, landmarks had been coming back to him. In the dark, clear night to the east, something blotted out the lowest stars for as far south as he could see, just as the so-called Sky-Cutter Range did to the north beyond these foothills.

Another range of mountains marked the continent's far edge, and where the two ranges met a line of peaks. The sight was familiar. Khalidah had wanted to be more certain, to see so himself before turning back for the other three orbs.

Now he was.

But there was a greater concern.

Neither a pack of vampires nor a trio of ghul would have been arranged by Sau'ilahk and Ubâd as bait. How many other of Beloved's servants—undead or not—were headed east?

One dhampir and her followers might not be enough for what was waiting.

It was time to turn back and prepare.

• • •

The dreamer fell through darkness, and without impact suddenly stood upon a black desert under a bloodred sky. Dunes began to roll on all sides, quickly sharpened in clarity, and became immense coils covered in glinting black scales. Those coils turned and writhed on all sides.

“Where are you?” the dreamer called. “Show yourself!”

I have always been here . . . waiting.

The desert vanished.

The dreamer stood upon a chasm's lip. Over the edge, the sides did not fall straight down. The chasm walls were twisted as if torn open ages ago by something immense ripping wide the bowels of the earth. Looking upward, the dreamer saw the same, as if the great gash rose into an immense peak above.

Across to the chasm's other side was another wound in the mountain's stone. It was too dark to know whether that was a mere pocket, a cavern, or just a fracture leading to either deeper beyond the stone wall. There was no bridge to that other side.

Some part of the shadows over there appeared to move, and stone cracked and crumbled under some immense weight.

Come to me, child . . . daughter . . . sister of the dead. Come finish what I started with your birth. And let it all end!

• • •

Magiere choked, opened her eyes wide, and stiffened upright where she sat on the stone slab. She didn't even know she had drifted off, and she shouldn't have. She began shaking when she realized all fury and fire had vanished. And the sky was too light.

She spun where she sat, leaning to look eastward. Dawn had just broken over another line of distant peaks running southward. She looked up to the left, wondering how the mountains could have moved, but there above the foothills was the jagged wall of the Sky-Cutter Range. And when she lowered her eyes . . .

Leesil was staring at her over his shoulder.

“What?” he whispered. “What's wrong?”

Magiere peered again at those peaks. Once before, in the beginning, she had heard a hissing voice like windblown sand. It had come to her, dragging her on, in the search for the first orb in the Pock Peaks.

And as then, now all she wanted was to go east.

“It is time to return,” Ghassan said, rising to his feet. “Any ghul still nearby will not come out while the sun is up. And we need to head west to meet the others.”

Magiere was still staring at those peaks when someone roughly grabbed the collar of her hauberk. She flinched before looking into Leesil's bright amber eyes.

And those eyes narrowed.

He knew, and still all she wanted was to go . . . east.

“No!” he whispered at her. “No, not yet.”

A
lthough Chap had a notion of the distance from a'Ghràihlôn'na to the north side of the Sky-Cutter Range, he had not seen a map of the region in quite some time. The distance proved farther than he expected. Once the wagon turned off the eastbound road and entered the Slip-Tooth Pass over bare land, he could hardly make out the high range in the distance.

And the wagon rolled on.

They traveled mostly by night for Chane's sake, though now and then some favored hurrying through part of the days as well. During those times, Chane was forced to lie in his dormant state in the wagon's bed under a canvas.

Along the way, the land around them grew more desolate.

They passed through the foothills, and finally one morning, as the sun rose and Chane fell dormant within a tent, Chap made his way up the tallest hillock and then saw that the mountains were nearly upon them.

“Not far now,” a deep voice said.

Chap looked back to find that Ore-Locks had followed him, but he returned to eyeing the mountains that appeared to stretch to both horizons. It seemed unbelievable—and daunting—that they would pass beneath those to emerge above the vast Suman desert.

“Wayfarer has a pot of herbed lentils on,” Ore-Locks said, and after a pause, he added, “When we last came through, we spent so much time searching for an entrance, we nearly ran out of food.”

Again, Chap craned his neck to study the errant stonewalker.

What was the point to that last comment? Was Ore-Locks reminding Chap that he had a history with Shade and Chane, or perhaps that those two natural enemies had such as well?

He and Ore-Locks had never been talkative, but now that Wayfarer was with him again, he spoke mostly with her . . . in their ways.

Chap turned, trotted past Ore-Locks, and headed down toward camp. Over the long days and nights since leaving the Lhoin'na's one city, he had not ceased to think on Wayfarer and Osha, wondering about their futures, as well his daughter's. Clearly, both Wayfarer and Osha felt their time in the eastern elven lands had been cut short, one perhaps silently frustrated and the other perhaps slightly relieved.

While Chap could not explain why, he felt a nagging doubt. Had it been the right thing to pull Wayfarer and Osha from their time with the Lhoin'na? For those two,
something
seemed unfinished. He did not know
what
, but he could not shake this feeling, and it grew stronger instead of fading. He kept such thoughts to himself, uncertain if he should act upon them. Wynn had been promised that Shade would return with Chap and Chane. Magiere had been promised that Wayfarer would return as well. How could such promises be broken?

After a light meal, everyone rested for the remainder of the day. They packed up as dusk arrived so they would be ready once Chane rose.

Soon enough, Chane was at the reins, and the wagon rolled onward. Halfway through the night, they reached the end of the Slip-Tooth Pass. It was not gradual. They arrived almost at the very base of a mountain, and the wagon could go no farther.

“Start unpacking,” Chane ordered, dropping from the wagon's bench. “We will have to carry what we need in several trips. But there is only one
pump cart available inside the entrance to the pass, and we'll have to pack it carefully.”

Uncertain what the last part of this meant, Chap jumped down from the wagon's bed and looked around, at a loss. He saw nothing that resembled an entrance of any kind. Shade came up beside him, and he started in surprise when she touched her nose to his shoulder. He had no time for shock at this physical contact from her when he saw what she shared.

Image after image flooded through his mind, of Wayfarer in the Lhoin'na forest with the majay-hì and Vreuvillä and then Osha with the Shé'ith trainees. The images ended with three memory-words in Wynn's voice.

—Something . . . not . . . finished—

Chap closed his eyes, realizing Shade had been struggling with the same worries as he had himself.

New images rose up from her, along with a feeling of sorrow and fear.

This time, Chap saw image after image of Shade with Wynn, of Wynn petting Shade and mouthing the word “sister.” These were followed by memories of Shade walking beside Wayfarer in the depths of the Lhoin'na forest.

Chap understood.

Shade—as well as Wayfarer and Osha—should not go on. They should never have left in the first place and needed to return and finish what had been started for both of the young ones, for Osha to learn his link to the Shé'ith and for Wayfarer to understand her connection to the ways of the Foirfeahkan. Both would probably resist; Shade herself already suffered for knowing she had to return as well rather than rejoin Wynn.

Chap could think of only one reason why Shade had waited this long; she had expected him, her father, to realize all of this and act upon it. He should have before now, but like her, he had resisted. Now that they had reached the mountains, neither of them could put off what had to be done.

Promises would have to be broken.

Osha would be the most difficult to convince, so Chap decided to start
with Wayfarer. He went to her as she struggled to pull a spare folded canvas out of the wagon's back.

—Put that down . . . and listen—

She dropped to one knee before him. “What is it?”

As gently as he could, he called up memory-words in her to explain what had to be. Their time among the Lhoin'na was not yet finished. As little as he understood why, he put his faith in his daughter's judgment as well as his own intuition in the matter. He had no idea what reaction to expect.

Wayfarer touched his face with a nod and lifted her head to call out. “Osha . . . please come.”

The tall young elf stalled and handed off a trunk to Chane. When he came near, he frowned, eyeing Chap first and then Wayfarer with growing suspicion.

“Do you need help with that canvas?” he asked her.

Wayfarer shook her head and took a deep breath. “Chap believes that we—you and I and Shade—must now turn back to the Lhoin'na.”

Osha's features flattened in shock. At a guess in the dark, he might have paled. Chane dropped a trunk, and even Ore-Locks drew near.

“What?” Chane rasped and glared at Shade. “I promised Wynn to bring you back.” He then turned on Osha. “You are all coming with us. That was the arrangement!”

Chap choked down an instinctive snarl. He would not demand the talking hide to argue with the vampire again. He was in charge here, and Chane was going to learn that for the last time.

Before he could take a step, Shade cut in front of him. She went straight to Chane and huffed softly twice. Once again, Chap was disturbed by how deeply his daughter was connected to that undead.

Chane's brow still wrinkled in anger at Shade, but before he could speak again . . .

“She does not want to go,” Wayfarer said, looking to both Shade and Chane. “Chap does not wish us to leave either, but he believes there is more
for us among the Lhoin'na. It may even have to do with what must be done . . . for where you are going and why.”

Chap studied Wayfarer. She seemed so different. How much more had changed in her?

Osha was less than convinced and, after a voiceless hiss sounding too much like Chane, he stormed off. Wayfarer closed her eyes, dropped her head, and swallowed hard.

“I will talk to him,” she whispered.

The girl rose and went off after Osha, and Shade followed her.

Chap, left alone, looked up into Chane's seething expression.

“And it took you all this time to figure this out?” Chane demanded. “I do not believe that.”

Chap could not restrain a snarl this time, but instead of acting, he looked at Ore-Locks.

—May I . . . speak . . . through you?—

Ore-Locks nodded his consent and turned to Chane, repeating what Chap said in memory-words.

“He did not know whether to counsel us or not,” Ore-Locks told Chane. “Like you, he labored under a promise, unwilling to break it but feeling the need to do so. It was Shade who tipped the balance . . . and made the decision for him.”

At that, Chane blinked in doubt as he looked off after Wayfarer and Shade. Ore-Locks stepped closer to Chane, and it was clear he now spoke for himself.

“You, I, and Chap can travel faster on our own,” he said quietly, “but even after we supply the young ones for a return trip, we will have more than we planned to carry on our own. It is time to get started . . . without any more squabbling!”

With his jaw clenched, Chane looked to Chap one last time. Then he turned away to continue emptying the wagon. Ore-Locks heaved in a deep breath and then exhaled as he too went back to unloading the wagon.

With that, it was decided.

Some things were reloaded into the wagon. Once supplies were sorted out, the younger trio had what they would need to return. The chests with the orbs, the heavy canvas, sacks of food, and flasks of water remained piled on the ground.

Chap had never liked partings that took place in the darkness.

But he watched as his daughter and Wayfarer climbed into the wagon's back. Taking the bench, Osha held the reins and said nothing to anyone. Wayfarer looked down at Chap.

“I will see you again,” she almost whispered in a weak voice. Though she tried to smile, the effort was obvious.

Osha flicked the reins, turned the wagon north, and never looked back. In some ways, he had been trapped into this choice. It was clear that he wished to return to Wynn, but he would never leave Wayfarer—and Shade—alone in a foreign land.

It did not take long for the wagon to vanish into the darkness, and once again, Chap found himself alone with a vampire and a dwarven guardian of the honored dead. Chane looked tense and bleak all at once as they turned to preparing their supplies to be hauled into the mountain. Ore-Locks appeared only too willing to assist in moving onward, but they now faced reorganizing supplies for transport.

First, Chane removed the spare clothing from his pack and filled it with apples and onions. In the end, they stuffed as much of the food supplies as they could into any extra space inside the orb chests. While the thought of this bothered Chap, he refrained from protest. They had to reduce the bulk if not the weight of all they had to carry.

Still, even with such condensing, there was much for two people to move in one trip.

Ore-Locks and Chane headed off—heavily burdened—for the first trip.

Chap stood watch over what remained behind, and he waited for quite a while. Finally, the two men returned, and they managed to carry what was
left by tying sacks to each other's shoulders and slinging flasks of water on top. One chest had already been transported, and two remained. Chap was alarmed that they had left an orb unguarded, and he would not have made such a choice. One of them should have remained behind and the other should have made several trips. However . . . Chane had always been overly cautious in this regard, so somehow, he must have felt the orb was safe.

Moreover, there was nothing to be done now, and Chap expressing his anger would only delay them further.

Each of the men hefted a chest, and only then did Chap follow Ore-Locks and Chane up the rocky slope along a winding path and into the dark of the mountain.

A short ways up, Chane said, “Wait.”

Setting his chest down briefly, he took out his cold crystal and ignited it, holding it with two fingers of his left hand as he managed to lift the chest again. By the filtered light, Chap saw something glinting beneath his feet, and he looked down. Illuminated fragments of flat rock, which appeared to have been cut from stone, had somehow been pressed into the steep slope.

Stretching ahead, there were many more.

Chap followed as Chane and Ore-Locks climbed those ancient steps. Soon the fragments became slightly larger, and Chap noticed they formed two straight lines with open ground in between.

“It was laid down long ago by my people's ancestors,” Ore-Locks said quietly.

The path began to curve and snake. They weaved their way through wind-bent trees, jagged outcrops, and rougher terrain, but the path always continued. Finally, like the Slip-Tooth Pass below, the path of rock fragments simply ended at the crumbled side of a cliff covered in heavy brush.

Chap looked to Ore-Locks.

—
Where is . . . the entrance?—

Ore-Locks glanced back, extended a thick finger in his grip on the chest he carried, and pointed toward the brush. He crouched, set down the chest,
pulled some of the brush aside, and sidestepped through while pulling the chest along. In the dark, he appeared to pass into the cliffside itself.

Was this another trick of the stonewalkers?

Chane dropped to his knees, crawling as he pushed his chest along in front of himself. Halfway into the brush, he paused to look at Chap.

“Come,” he said.

Then Chane pushed through and vanished as the brush snapped back into place.

Chap finally followed but did not see the narrow, downward hole until he had wrestled himself halfway in. By the light of a cold-lamp crystal held by Chane, at first all that Chap could see was the undead's backside.

A strange gust of stale air blew over him as they emerged in a more-open area.

Chane held up the crystal. Ore-Locks stood farther in, and the crystal's light exposed a stone archway directly above them. They were in a tunnel.

The ceiling was so low, Chane was not able to straighten up, and he remained buckled over as he lifted his chest.

“Go on,” he told Ore-Locks, and the dwarf led the way.

Chap began to wonder how much farther they would go, when finally, Chane emerged into a large open area. Chap followed as Chane glanced back.

“This was once like the market cavern outside the Cheku'ûn tram station,” he said.

Chap made out large, dead crystals anchored high on the walls. He remembered the station that he and Chane had visited at Dhredze Seatt. Glowing orange crystals above had offered warmth and light amid booths and tents and the scent of roasting sausages. He could barely picture such in this long-dead place.