The Night Voice (31 page)

The closest one coming at her was a ghul.

It was instantly swallowed in smoke exploding from its own flesh. Amid wails rising to almost human screams, it fell and began thrashing, trying to burrow into the hardened ground. Two pale-faced figures rounded it, and then staggered as flame sprouted to dance over their exposed hands and faces.

The frenzied terror of so many screams, shrieks, and wails smothered all sounds of battle left behind. Those farther back and too far to see scattered.

Magiere's self-control broke again.

She rushed into the smoke, taking off a charred head, and before it hit the ground, she'd already fixed on her next prey.

• • •

Leesil braced for the charge of the last locatha—or the only one on its feet that he could see. He rolled and flopped aside as it tried to stomp on him. When he tried to push up to all fours, its immense tail came around at his head, and he had to drop again. His right hand was empty. The stiletto was gone, but he still held a winged blade in his left hand.

That scaled appendage whipped across his hair in passing too close.

There was no chance to look for Brot'an or the second guard that he hoped he'd put down. He shoved off, sliding backward, and rolled over to gain his feet.

Leesil pulled his second punching blade, and that thing was still coming.

At a sudden scraping thud, it buckled forward in a lurched stop . . . and turned.

Leesil saw Chane right behind the third locatha with his longsword drawn and double gripped. He—and hopefully Ore-Locks—must have arrived inside the passage and run toward the fight.

Chane's eyes widened in shock as the huge guard spun on him. Leesil didn't see a mark on its back from Chane's strike, and then he spotted Ghassan stepping out of the darkness from beneath the overhang—as if he had gone inside the entrance.

Leesil had forgotten the domin was even with them, but what was Ghassan doing in there?

Another movement pulled his gaze.

Brot'an pushed up off the ground, the first guard lying still at his feet, its face covered in blackish red blood. The second locatha lay still as well. Leesil's stiletto must have driven in deep enough. And just as Leesil quickly looked back to the last guard . . .

Brot'an stumbled.

Leesil flinched at the sight. For Brot'an never stumbled. Then his gaze met Chane's for an instant. Chane's shock vanished, and he raised his sword in a step to strike again. Leesil knew what Chane was doing. Ore-Locks then charged out of the dark and past Ghassan, his broader blade already drawn.

Their weapons weren't going to put that thing down, but they would keep its attention.

Leesil fixed on the locatha's thick, whipping tail. As Chane lunged just before Ore-Locks closed, Leesil knew the creature was still aware of him behind it. He wasn't in a good way, judging by the pain in his side, but when he heard Chane's blade scrape off the scaled hide, he charged.

Everything depended on Chane—and Ore-Locks—so that thing didn't have a chance to turn around. Leesil waited until Ore-Locks swung the heavy blade. He heard it hit, saw the locatha recoil, and he leaped.

His left foot struck the base of its tail. He pushed up and wrapped his left arm, winged blade and all, around its neck below its jaws. Its large hand instantly clamped on his forearm, and even with the winged blade biting its palm, that grip crushed down. Ignoring the pain, Leesil rammed the point of his other winged blade into the side of its right eye.

He almost lost his hold when its head thrashed back.

He had to lean aside or be hit in the face, and he rammed the blade again, this time into the base of its jaw. He didn't even know if Chane or Ore-Locks was still hacking at it until it began to teeter backward. All he could do was throw himself off it.

His side hurt even more when he slammed down and had to thrash over out of the way before it fell on him. When he rolled over, he saw something he'd never expected.

Ore-Locks dropped on top of that thing, or right beside it, and sank into the rocky surface. And as he did so, he wrapped one arm over its bloodied head and pulled the head down—straight through the stone.

The whole scaled body convulsed, limbs thrashing, and then it lay still.

Leesil just stared, not blinking, until Ore-Locks resurfaced partly, but he
didn't come fully out of the ground. By torchlight, he looked utterly strained and weakly reached up with one arm. Leesil tried to scramble toward him.

Chane's sword clattered on stone as he dropped it, grabbed Ore-Locks's arm with both hands, and had to heave to pull the dwarf out atop the stone slope. Ore-Locks half lay there, and Chane snatched up his sword again, raised it, and turned to make certain neither of the other two guards moved at all.

Everything seemed so quiet for so long.

Leesil didn't even hear the distant sounds of battle over his own labored breaths.

Another flash of light below the mountain made everyone turn. Leesil stared down the mountain. The light did not go out this time, but it remained like a beacon in the distance.

“I apologize for not assisting,” Ghassan said, breaking the silence.

“Where were you?” Leesil panted out.

“As I said, I could do nothing against these creatures,” the domin answered, “so I scouted the path inward for anything else in our way.”

Leesil eyed Ghassan, not certain how much he believed in those words. Brot'an was on his feet, seemingly whole and steady again.

“We need light,” Leesil said, going to retrieve his fallen stiletto.

Ghassan took a crystal from his pocket. “I will lead the way.”

“Not yet,” Chane said. “We had only brought two orbs through when we saw what was happening. They are not far inside, but Ore-Locks left them hidden in stone. As soon as he is able, we will bring the others.”

Some small part of Leesil was almost relieved at the short delay, and he simply sheathed his weapons and dropped down again. It didn't matter how Brot'an looked or acted; Leesil knew he was injured. And what else waited for them inside the mountain? A few outer guards wouldn't be the only ones, not in this place and not even after a thousand years.

Leesil glanced back toward the entrance, thinking on his wife. There was no way to know the fate of Magiere and those with her.

• • •

Chap went numb, watching the carnage.

Wynn clutched the still-ignited staff, but Magiere was a good distance away on the edge of the light's reach, and she had lost herself completely. She charged, hacked, or struck at one after another through smoking carcasses until she had nearly reached the battle's fringe once again.

Part of him feared getting near her, the same part that shrank from what might be necessary, more so with every moment. All that stopped him from acting to stop her was the memory of the guide he had left for dead in the wastes.

Could he bear to look into her vacant eyes, staring up at nothing like an empty husk?

Magiere had barely regained herself to seek out Wynn and the crystal's light, as she should have done at first . . . but now?

One thing gave him hope.

There were riders charging through what was left of the horde.

They raced through the chaos in twos and threes. Chuillyon had succeeded in bringing Shé'ith along with the majay-hì packs. At least the chaos that Magiere had caused put those two factions at the advantage, for the moment.

Osha had to be one of those riders, still one of them, or so Chap hoped.

And where were his daughter and Wayfarer?

So long as Wynn was exposed, Chap could not even search for them, let alone rush at Magiere. Wynn was the only one besides Ghassan who could use the staff, so Chap feared leaving her unprotected.

Indecision crushed him—until he saw a black four-footed form run around the fringe of the chaos. Others of its kind were around it.

Chap howled loudly at the sight of Shade. The black form veered off, racing toward him, and Chap sprang forward as he called into Wynn's mind.

—Stay back until I call . . . or until you have to escape—

How many times would necessity force him to leave behind the ones he
most wished to protect? Even as he and Shade closed on each other, he could not help looking for Wayfarer, hoping she had not followed the packs into the bloodshed.

Shade closed on him and shot past to wheel around. He slowed only until she caught up at his side. Though she must have wanted to race back to Wynn, he might need her to help stop Magiere.

The only other option for him would leave Magiere as an empty husk—and leave him with one more sin he could not bear.

Now that he knew memory-words would work with Shade, it took only one glance.

—Come—

As they closed in, he saw the bodies, mangled, bloodied, and broken, as the living and undead stepped upon them in tearing at one another. One he feared was an elven rider, for it was draped over the still bulk of a butchered horse. Another was clearly a majay-hì torn almost in half. There were more of the goblins than any other, but also humans—either living or not before they went down.

Far more numerous were those still fighting, among them majay-hì of varied hues launching at what had to be undead. They only turned on living enemies when they had to do so.

Two riders pounded and trampled through others toward a huge form Chap had never seen before. It was taller than any an'Cróan or Lhoin'na and was covered in scales.

Chap's focus shifted to Magiere still ahead in the chaos, and again his doubts took hold. In her current state, she was the greatest threat to any undead present. Should he stop her now or wait and let her continue? He veered off toward the east, holding his distance from her, until he was near the fringe of the foothills . . . and too far away from Wynn.

She had to keep that staff lit, and even that would not hold off anything but an undead. He tried to see Magiere more clearly, to get a look at her face, but she charged into another cluster of combatants.

In despair, Chap looked up and down the eastern fringe of the battle. Two forms spun out of the carnage, surrounded in a circle of wheeling and snapping majay-hì. Wayfarer and Vreuvillä backed toward the rise of rocky hills.

A vampire and a ghul on the outskirts of the battle spotted them.

At the sight of this, Chap lost all sense of reason and charged for them.

• • •

As Wynn watched Chap run, she clung to the staff with both hands, and her only thought was to keep the crystal ignited. She'd never kept the light burning for so long, and she was exhausted from her efforts in the battle thus far.

Still, in this moment, she had one task and one task only.

To keep light flowing outward into the night.

W
ayfarer shuddered as she backed away from the battle behind Vreuvillä. She was sick with fear at what she had seen—and where was Shade? They had lost each other in circling around the battle's eastern side as the remainder of one pack dove in and out. Where was Osha?

Yet even all of this worry and confusion could not wipe away one previous, horrifying sight.

A sharp light had risen suddenly to the north, and so she had known Wynn was out there. But by that light, the warrior woman she had come to care for and respect so much was barely recognizable.

Magiere's fully black eyes, like those of some other creatures out here, terrified Wayfarer. She had wanted to run both to and away from the sight, but Vreuvillä had insisted, “Stay close to me.”

The sound of tumbling stones now behind her did not wipe away that vivid memory until she heard them a second time.

Wayfarer twisted around in fright as Chuillyon half slid, half hopped the last steps off the rock slope of a foothill. He slowed and stared out beyond her.

It was the first time she had ever seen him without a half-amused expression
on his long face. She thought he might start to weep in looking to the battle behind her. Vreuvillä fixed Chuillyon with a cold glare.

There was no liking between them and never would be from what little Wayfarer had learned.

Chuillyon's gaze still focused somewhere out beyond the priestess.

Then Vreuvillä spun toward the battle, dropped to a half crouch between two majay-hì, and spread her arms with her long curved blade ready.

When Wayfarer turned, someone grabbed her from behind. Another of the pack rushed in front of her on guard. She heard Chuillyon whispering some chant as his arms closed around her. Two
things
rushed at them over the open ground from the battle's edge.

One had a face as white as a corpse. Human-looking, its irises sparked like colorless crystals in the distant light of Wynn's staff. Flapping shreds of clothes were stained red and black in spatters and smears.

The second one was naked with nearly colorless flesh, even to the slits where there should have been nostrils. All over it, bones showed beneath shriveled, shrunken skin, and it began to outdistance the other one.

A handful of majay-hì rushed for the first attacker . . . just before a huge silver-gray dog came out of nowhere and slammed into the naked monster.

Wayfarer could not help a gasp, cringing back against Chuillyon, as that gray majay-hì tumbled with the creature and came up atop it. It began savagely shredding flesh with it teeth and claws. Amid the growls came that thing's screams. She lost sight of it for an instant, looking to three of the pack that set upon the pale one in shredded clothes. But for the first . . .

She knew who it was.

Wayfarer had seen few majay-hì as large as that one except for Chap.

A pure black majay-hì suddenly charged in to help the gray one, but its prey had already fallen limp and silent.

Chap lifted his head and trotted toward Wayfarer, his muzzle stained with black fluids, but it was Shade who reached her first, brushing her hand
without passing any memories. The pale target of the other three majay-hì somehow broke free and scrambled back toward the chaos.

Wayfarer pulled from Chuillyon's hold and dropped to her knees to grab Shade first, but she then threw one arm around Chap's neck, ignoring the stains that his head smeared upon her shoulder.

He had wanted the majay-hì and the Shé'ith to come here this night. She and Osha had helped make that happen, though Vreuvillä had been reluctant to deal with Chuillyon. None of them could have known Magiere would not gain control over the undead among the horde, or lose control over herself.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

Before Chap could answer, Vreuvillä brushed her free hand over a majay-hì's head. That one wheeled to bump shoulders with another, which in turn did the same, and onward. Whatever message the priestess gave to the first spread quickly as half those nearby dispersed, running off in both directions parallel to the battle's edge.

Wayfarer quickly touched a passing mottled one before it rushed northward. She caught the message passed through the pack via memory-speak.

Chap asked her a question.

—What . . . is happening?—

She was too focused on turning flickering images, smells, and sounds into needed words. And when she did, she hesitated.

“They are to find all of their kind,” she answered, “and pull back to any fringe and out of reach.”

Chap's eyes widened in his stained face. The instant he looked to the priestess, Shade spun as well and snarled, but Vreuvillä had already rushed Chuillyon.

“Heretic!” she accused. “I will cut you for every one of
us
lost because of your deceits—and leave you to bleed out like them!”

Wayfarer rose, fearful of what might happen. Vreuvillä saw herself as one
with the packs, and even Wayfarer had come to feel this in some ways, but she had no chance to intervene.

“I could not have known,” Chuillyon answered, and looked out again toward the battle. “Not that, not this.”

—She is . . . correct . . . for now—

Wayfarer's eyes dropped to Chap.

—Magiere . . . may attack . . . anyone . . . now—

“What is he saying?” Vreuvillä asked, her voice filled with fury.

Wayfarer flinched.

“He says you are right. Keep the packs out of the battle for now.” And then, at more of Chap's memory-words, “Let the undead turn on others in the horde, such as the goblins, and decrease their numbers.”

Wayfarer did not mention Chap's concern about Magiere. In her current state, Magiere might slaughter anything that got in the way of her going after the next undead in her sight.

“Where is that light coming from?” Vreuvillä demanded.

“It must be Wynn Hygeorht,” Chuillyon answered. “And her staff, with a unique crystal.”

“How long can she keep it ignited?”

When no one answered, Wayfarer's fright increased.

Vreuvillä's savage and mournful eyes only looked upon the battle. “You must go! I will stay with our own . . . for changes that may come.”

Wayfarer nearly stopped breathing. “What am I to do?” she exhaled.

“Wish for the light.”

—
What . . . does this . . . mean?
—

Wayfarer could not answer Chap. She had never done what Vreuvillä now asked—a true wish, as some would think of it who did not understand. What if she could not? What if she failed, and Wynn could not hold that light any longer? What if Wayfarer herself could not maintain that “wish” for long enough?

And what if she succeeded at what price?

—You . . . must . . . try—

Wayfarer found Chap watching her. Had he caught what she feared surfacing in her thoughts? Before she asked, his head swung aside, and he huffed at his daughter. Shade circled in, wriggling her head under Wayfarer's left hand.

—Follow—

Shade took off northward, but Wayfarer still stalled as Chap headed for the battle.

“Where are you going?”

He halted, and his stained face swung toward her.

—
To stop . . . Magiere—

In panic, Wayfarer shouted to Vreuvillä, “Help him!”

Wayfarer had to turn away and run at Shade's bark. She followed as Shade veered closer to the foothills and away from the battle's edge. The noise of bloodshed grew less overwhelming, mostly because of her panting breaths at trying to keep up with a majay-hì.

She did not hear the hoofbeats until they were almost at her back.

Wayfarer veered left, screaming, “Shade!”

When she spun to face whatever threat, nothing more would come out.

Osha quickly reined in his horse, or perhaps it pulled up on its own to a stuttering stop. He looked down at her and then back along the edge of the foothills. He suddenly thrust his hand out and down at her.

She knew he had not abandoned the other Shé'ith for her.

There was no time to feel anything even though he had come for Wynn.

Wayfarer took his hand, but she had to jump and wriggle to get up behind him.

“Go,” she shouted around his side, and Shade wheeled and bolted off again.

Osha's mount lunged, and Wayfarer threw her arms around his waist. The farther they raced toward the light, the more they left the sounds of rage and agony behind.

Then an agonized scream carried from something ahead.

The light went out.

• • •

Sau'ilahk lingered in hiding, clutching the medallion around his neck at a loss. Khalidah had instructed him to help distract some of the horde long enough for Leesil's team to slip past—without knowing they had received any help. So Sau'ilahk and Ubâd had split up, each with several plans to distract the horde, and he waited—and waited—for Khalidah to contact him and tell him when to act.

Even as majay-hì and Shé'ith had come out of the foothills, he still waited for a message from Khalidah.

At the bright light appearing twice in the night, going on and on the second time, he knew Wynn Hygeorht was out there to the north with her staff. At first, he had cringed down behind a boulder in fear that it might affect him as normal sunlight did not.

Nothing had happened to him, and he had risen to squint northward.

Still no word came from Khalidah.

His hatred for the wayward little sage grew into satisfaction, replacing frustration. Soon enough, he had to look away, for he now had eyes that could be damaged.

And this thought brought him a smile.

Blocking out the world, he focused inward. Within his thoughts, he stroked a glowing circle for Spirit upon the ground's heat-baked earth. Within that came the square for Earth, and then a smaller circle for Spirit's physical aspect as Tree. Between all of those lines, he stroked glowing sigils with his intention.

Spirit to the aspect of Tree, Tree to the essence of Spirit, and born of the Earth. His energies bled into a pattern that only he could see, and he began trembling in exertion.

A shaft of blood-black barked wood cracked the earth.

It jutted upward, slowly thickening until that limb bent over, somehow suppler than it appeared. Along its length, six tinier limbs sprouted to rip its body from the ground. A small knot of ocher root tendrils twitched around its base as it faced him.

Sau'ilahk bled even more energy into his creation.

Bark peeled back around the root-knot. Tendrils coiled tighter and tighter into a ball, and that sphere took on an inner light.

It
blinked
at him.

A flexing wooden lid of snarled tendrils clicked over a glowing orb for an eye. The newly created servitor then spun away to skitter off into the night.

“No,” Sau'ilahk whispered.

The servitor barely hesitated, and Sau'ilahk reached for the fragment of his own consciousness embedded in his conjured creation. It halted, twitching and fidgeting, until it finally submitted to its creator's will.

“Go to the light,” he commanded. “Attack the one who holds it.”

The servitor skittered away.

Sau'ilahk's eyes hurt too much when he looked toward that glare. And this thought sparked a cruel inspiration.

“Wait,” he said.

The servitor halted.

Sau'ilahk winced and blinked as he looked toward the crystal's light. He did not have to speak and only smiled. The servitor would know his will, and it quickly raced off.

• • •

Wynn struggled to maintain focus upon the sun crystal. She had never before held it alight this long. And worse, its glare and the dark lenses shielding her eyes made it difficult to see anything at a distance.

She knew only that whatever undead had not burned and fallen had fled back toward the horde, and Magiere had followed them. They were all too far off beyond the staff's light to see. She longed to know what had become
of Magiere and Leesil—and Chane—but the staff and keeping the undead in check were her purpose.

She blinked, growing tired, shaky, and weak.

This close to the crystal and under such strain, even the glasses were not always enough. She did not notice something else until she heard it over the distant sound of fighting. Then it was so close, like a broken branch dragged over hard, rough ground.

Click-click . . . click-click
 . . .

It was too rhythmic for a tumbling branch with no wind to drive it.

Wynn looked about through the narrow view of the darkened lenses. She had to turn her whole head. When she spotted something, it did look like a branch—branches—but the color was wrong. The bark was reddish in the crystal's harsh light.

A chill took her as the branch sprang at her, growing too large in her narrow view.

She screamed in pain as it struck her face.

Clutching at it, she released one hand's grip on the staff. The living branch clawed her face, trying to get under the glasses at her eyes, as other parts of it clawed toward the back of her head. One of those legs hooked the cord about her neck. She thrashed, still clinging to the staff with her other hand . . . as the glasses were torn off.

Blinding light filled Wynn's view.

When she clamped her eyes shut, all she could see was white as she fell. Her breaths came too fast for her to cry out, and her eyes felt on fire. She could feel tears on her face as she pushed up, only knowing that she had fallen when she braced both hands on the ground—both hands empty.

She'd dropped the staff.

She heard the skittering sound again, but everything was dark. When she looked about, turning her head toward the distant fighting, she couldn't see even the red spark of fires. The skittering grew nearer, as if coming for her again.

And she still couldn't see it.