The Night Voice

by Barb Hendee

Feeling even more at a loss, Chap followed. The entryway was not as large as he had first thought, but it was still immense. Ahead was a vast tunnel with central stone columns so big that two, or even three, people could have hidden behind one. On the right was another opening to another space.

  There were numerous people about, heading this way or that. Most were dwarves in various attire, some in armor and a few with huge dogs that sniffed in his direction. There were some humans among them, and most of these were dressed as prosperous merchants, vessel captains, or other traders a little more wild and rough looking.

  Chane headed for the central tunnel and into that other side archway. As Chap followed, he stopped at what filled his sight.

  Two tunnels, each the width of three roads, ran directly into the mountain. Triple sets of twined steel-lined ruts in the granite floor ran into each of these.

  At the near ends of the ruts stood platforms of stout wood planks and timbers, like the docks of a harbor. One platform was crowded with dwarves and humans jostling to board and find seats in a string of open-sided cars. A half-empty string of the same stretched out beside the other platform.

  “Trams,” Chane said quietly, “to get through the whole mountain to the other two settlements.”

  Those trams of connected cars, constructed of solid wood painted in tawny and jade tones, rode on steel and iron undercarriages. Their wheels were shod with steel. Rows of benches faced ahead inside each car, separated by a narrow walkway down the center. Passengers were protected on the outside by waist-high rail walls. Each car was roofed, but only their fronts contained a full wall and a door, probably to break rushing winds once the tram gained speed.

  The very thought made Chap grow queasy again.

  “Apparently, majay-hì have difficulty with dwarven travel,” Chane said. “Though not quite father like daughter.”

  This time, Chap did snarl.

  A wide, bearded dwarf in a plain leather hauberk stepped to the nearer platform’s edge and cupped his mouth with large, sinewy hands.

  “Maksag Chekiuní-da!” he boomed, and then, in Numanese, “Leaving for Point-Side!”

  After this, he trundled along the platform, shooing lingering passengers into the cars.

  “Not ours,” Chane commented.

  No sooner had the last passenger settled than a cloud of steam billowed around the tram’s lead car, making it impossible to see clearly. Chap barely made out its front, which seemed to end in a point.

  The steam lit up with a bright glow from within. Its front point burned like one of the massive pylon crystals along the main tunnel. Whatever crystal rode on the tram engine’s front had to be so much larger. And its light pulsed in a slow rhythm.

  A sharp explosion of steam belched from the lead car’s undercarriage, and the glow brightened to a steady, hot yellow.

  The tram’s whole chain of cars inched forward with a metallic scrape of wheels along the ruts. In moments, it picked up the speed of a trotting horse. As it bore into the tunnel, the sharp glow in the lead lit the way, and Chap heard its wheels’ rhythm building steadily. Within a few breaths, it vanished from sight.

  Chane stood watching after it as well.

  “Crystal power . . . some kind of arcane engine,” he whispered, and then pointed to the other platform. “That will be ours.”

  Chane stepped ahead, but Chap lingered. This was going to be worse than the lift up the mountainside. Reluctantly, he followed.

  Another stationmaster, a female, walked the platform and herded passengers into the cars. The Cheku’ûn, “Bay-Side,” tram filled quickly.

  “Here,” Chane said, entering a car and dropping onto the nearest empty bench.

  Chap crept in, resisting the urge to growl at other passengers. The female dwarf—still directing people—glanced at him.

  “How long to Cheku’ûn?” Chane asked her.

  “No stops on this run,” she answered in a deep voice, “so by Night-Summer’s end.”

  She went off to the next car in the line, and Chap was left wondering what that time frame meant. He glanced up at Chane.

  “The trip will take about a quarter night,” Chane explained.

  Chap grew even sicker. He had hoped to finish their task here and be gone with the third orb by dawn. That was not going to happen, and he sank onto the tram’s floor as Chane piled his packs and the chest on the empty side of his bench.

  The car lurched, and Chap could not hold back a whimper.

  • • •

  Chane would never admit it, but by the journey’s end, he felt sorry for Chap. As the tram pulled into Cheku’ûn station, Chap was still flattened upon the floor with drool dripping from his jowls. Shade had also grown ill to the point of vomiting during her first tram ride.

  However, she had never urinated all over a lift.

  “It will pass soon,” Chane said shortly, slinging both his packs and then balancing the chest again. “Your daughter suffered worse on these vehicles, but she never left Wynn’s side.”

  Chap looked up in a mix of wariness and puzzlement.

  Chane could not suppress another flash of pity for the majay-hì, but without further comment, he rose and followed other passengers off the tram into another way-station cavern. When he glanced back, Chap was trying to wobble around the thick legs of dwarves hurriedly disembarking. Chane waited.

  Once Chap stumbled down the platform’s ramp, Chane led the way through an arch in the right stone wall, down several crowded passages, and out into the almost impossibly enormous market cavern of the Cheku’ûn. When he paused to check on his companion, Chap’s ears flattened as he stared all around the place.

  A thinned forest of sculpted columns the size of small keep towers rose to the high domed roof of this smoothly chiseled cavern. Even at night, the chaos of vendors, hawkers, peddlers, and travelers echoed as the dome caught all noise and rained it down on everyone.

  All forms of goods were being carted to and from and traded at stalls and makeshift tents. Dwarves and humans of varied shapes and sizes, and perhaps a Lhoin’na quickly lost in the crowd, bartered for everything from meat pies and tea to small casks of ale and sacks of honey-coated nuts.

  In the avenues between columns, large glowing crystals steamed atop stone pylons. Smoke from portable braziers and steam escaping around crystals filled the great cavern with a hazy orange-yellow glow. Directly across the vast place was another opening so tall one could see it clearly over the crowd.

  “There,” Chane said, lifting his chin. “Let us leave this chaos.”

  He stepped off to break through the crowd with an occasional glance back to see that Chap followed. He towered over nearly everyone, even the human merchants and travelers, and more than a few people glanced their way as they passed. Chane ignored them and strode straight for the archway. Once outside in the cool night air, he heard Chap take a deep breath and release it.

  Here, they had a full view of the stone city built on a mountainside. The main road snaked tightly upward between buildings of stone and scant timber. Moonlight barely revealed slate, tile, stone, and a few shakes or plank roofs. Only short and steep side streets aimed directly upward, and most were built of wide stone steps and multiple landings. All of it was behemoth-like—rather like the dwarves themselves.

  Dwellings and inns, smithies and tanneries, and other shops spread out, around and above them in a muddled maze.

  “It can be daunting at first,” Chane said. “I remember my first time.”

  As soon as the words escaped his mouth, he would have flushed with embarrassment if he had had warm, pumping blood to do so.

  Why should he care if the majay-hì was daunted?

  Chane strode up the street’s gradual slant, deeper and higher into Bay-Side and to one of the few places where he was known and welcomed. That in itself was strange for him.

 
; He was rarely welcomed anywhere but the temple of Bedzâ’kenge—“Feather-Tongue.”

  Dwarves practiced a unique form of ancestor worship. They revered those of their own who attained notable status in life, akin to a human hero or saint or rather both. Any who became known for virtuous accomplishments, by feat and/or service to the people, might one day become a thänæ—one of the honored. Though similar to human knighthood or noble entitlement, it was not a position of rulership or authority. After death, a thänæ who had achieved renown among the people through continued retelling of their exploits over decades or centuries, might one day be elevated to Bäynæ—one of the dwarven Eternals.

  These were dwarves’ spiritual immortals, the honored ancestors of their people as a whole.

  Feather-Tongue, their paragon of orators and historians, was the patron of wisdom and heritage through story, song, and poem. From what Chane understood, for as long as any history remembered, the dwarves kept to oral tradition rather than the literary ways of humankind. In that, at least he saw Feather-Tongue as the paragon of paragons.

  Chane paused briefly at an intersection. Looking up a stone staircase, he spotted a tan banner hanging above a wide oak door. The banner depicted a map, and the shop was a landmark he remembered.

  “Nearly there,” he said.

  They climbed past the mapmaker’s shop and several others, all the way to the main street’s next switchback. At the next intersecting stairway, Chane turned upward again but stopped halfway to let Chap catch his breath on a landing with a sculpted miniature fir tree in a large black marble urn. He pressed on to the next switchback of the main street.

  Across the way was a familiar structure emerging from the mountainside.

  Its white marble double doors were set back beneath a high overhang supported by columns carved like living trees. He peered up the steps rising to the temple, where its frontage emerged from the mountainside and twin granite columns carved like large tree trunks framed the landing’s front end. Even so, the structure hardly seemed large enough to house its shirvêsh, but he knew this to be an illusion.

  A heavy oblong arc of polished brass hung between the front columns like a gateway. Suspended from the roof’s front by intricate harnesses of leather, its open ends dangled a shin’s length above the landing’s floor. Its metal was formed from a hollowed tube and not a solid bar.

  Chane stepped up to it, grasped a short brass rod from a bracket on the left column, and struck it against the great brass arc. Though he knew what to expect, his whole body clenched as a baritone clang assaulted his ears. He rang twice more as Chap flinched beside him. As the third tone faded, one of the doors began to open.

  A solid, white-haired dwarf leaned out and peered at the duo upon the landing, his face rather flat and wrinkled like a half-dried white grape. Wavy hair flowed down and broke over his wide shoulders, becoming one with his thick beard in front, though no mustache sprouted below his broad nose. He was dressed in brown breeches and typical heavy dwarven boots, and his muslin shirt was overlaid with a hip-long felt vestment of fiery burnt-orange.

  Recognition dawned in the old one’s widening eyes. “Chane Andraso?”

  Chane bowed his head slightly. “Forgive me, Shirvêsh Mallet. I know it is late, but may we enter?”

  “We?” Mallet muttered, glancing at Chap before ushering them both inside. “Where are Journeyor Hygeorht and her charcoal companion?”

  Chane did not know how to answer; the truth would take too long if he dared speak of it at all.

  “She is well but overly occupied,” he answered, hoping it was true as he entered with Chap. “She has sent me here in her place for something important.”

  Glancing down, he found Chap studying the entryway’s mosaic floor. Colored thumbnail tiles created the image of a stout, dark-haired, and bearded dwarf bearing a tall, char-gray or black staff. He wore a burnt-orange vestment like the elder shirvêsh and appeared to step straight out of the floor from the open road leading away from a hazy violet mountain range. This was Feather-Tongue.

  When Chane looked up, he found Shirvêsh Mallet studying him.

  “And why did the young miss send you?” the dwarf asked.

  Time was short, and Chane took the straightforward approach. “I need to speak with Ore-Locks. Would you please send for him?”

  From anyone else, this would have been a shocking request, but Ore-Locks himself had made this arrangement.

  Shirvêsh Mallet blinked twice, frowned, and sighed. “Come to the meal hall. At this time, it is the most private place in the temple.”

  • • •

  Chap grew anxious over lost time after Shirvêsh Mallet finally left them alone in the meal hall. It was nearing the mid of night, and Chap wasn’t certain what to expect next. As Chane dropped his packs, Chap went over and pawed at the one containing the talking hide. Chane knelt to dig and roll it out. Chap began pawing words and letters, but his questions took a while even with the skipping of unnecessary words.

  If stonewalkers in underworld, how long till O comes?

  “A little while,” Chane answered. “I do not know how contact is made, but Ore-Locks will hurry in, knowing I am waiting. He has several . . . ways to do so.”

  Chap pawed again.

  Ways?

  Chane shook his head. “It is easier to wait and see.”

  Growling, Chap was about to argue and changed his mind. Since he had learned to use memory-words to speak to Magiere, Leesil, and some others, the talking hide now felt slow and clumsy.

  Chane rolled up the hide and put it away, and they waited in silence.

  Chap had no way to gauge the creep of time. It seemed quite long before he heard heavy booted footsteps echoing in from the outer passage. He barely got up, watching the way in, when three dwarves entered.

  The first was Shirvêsh Mallet.

  The second was a dour stranger. Though his head would only reach Chane’s shoulder, he was nearly twice as wide and three times Chane’s bulk.

  Wild, dark-streaked locks hung to his shoulders, framing the hard line of his mouth within steely bristles of a beard. Over his char-gray breeches and wool shirt, he wore a short-sleeved hauberk of black leather scales, each scale’s tip sheathed in ornately engraved and polished steel. Two war daggers in like-adorned black sheaths were tucked slantwise in his thick belt.

  Then the third dwarf stepped into plain sight.

  Chap had briefly met Ore-Locks Iron-Braid in Calm Seatt before everyone had split up in search of the last two orbs. The stonewalker wore his long red hair tied with a leather thong into a tail hanging over his collar. Unlike most male dwarves, he was clean-shaven. Though he appeared much younger than the dark juggernaut, he too wore the black-scaled armor and two daggers of his caste.

  “I will leave you now,” Shirvêsh Mallet said politely. “I can see you have much to discuss.” With that, he left.

  Chane turned to the elder dwarf in visible surprise and perhaps some anger. “Master Cinder-Shard, I did not send for you.”

  “No,” the dwarf answered. “And yet I am here.”

  Chap was instantly on guard. He’d expected some resistance from Ore-Locks about turning over the orb, but the presence of this other man was completely unexpected.

  • • •

  Chane tensed all over, and then Ore-Locks stepped around Master Cinder-Shard to approach.

  “It is good to see you,” he said, “though I know you would not have come nor called for me without a serious reason.”

  Chane’s tension eased slightly. By shared trials and battles, the young stonewalker had become something close to a friend. And Chane did not have many friends.

  “It is good to see you as well,” he answered, “and I—”

  “Enough niceties!” Cinder-Shard barked. “Why has a . . . Why have you returned here, and how does one of your k
ind hold influence with a head shirvêsh?”

  His gaze flicked toward Chap, and his eyes widened a little.

  Chane followed his gaze. Did Cinder-Shard recognize a majay-hì?

  That stood to reason, considering the master stonewalker was friends with Chuillyon, the white-robed sage of the Lhoin’na . . . and a notorious liar.

  Cinder-Shard’s focus shifted to Ore-Locks. “I hope you had nothing to do with this.”

  Ore-Locks hesitated and then straightened. “Yes, I did.”

  Cinder-Shard’s face tinged red.

  Chane saw no way to be diplomatic. “I need the orb of Earth,” he said bluntly. “And there is good reason.”

  At this, Cinder-Shard’s reddish tinge went gray, and even Ore-Locks was silenced in wary shock.

  Chane had not expected to deal with the master of the stonewalkers, and he felt somewhat blindsided. He had to regain control quickly and raised a hand to forestall outrage or arguments.

  “I will not explain here,” he said, and nodded to Chap. “This majay-hì and I traveled a great distance, and we fear minions of the Enemy could have followed. We need a place they cannot go . . . or hear . . . before anything more is said.”

  Expressing such concerns was risky, and it might simply cause Cinder-Shard to retreat beyond reach and order Ore-Locks to follow. The last time Chane had been here, he, Wynn, and Shade had been followed by the wraith, Sau’ilahk.

  In hunting them and an orb, Sau’ilahk had infiltrated the underworld.

  Although this was not Chane, Wynn, or Shade’s fault, their own actions had led to the havoc and loss caused by the wraith. In the aftermath, further safeguards had been implemented below. The underworld of the dwarves’ most honored dead was still the most secure place in the seatt. It had to be.

  Cinder-Shard’s expression was flat. He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left, and then his left shifted back a few inches and planted. His large right hand rose to settle around the hilt of a battle dagger.

  “You . . . among the honored dead . . . again?” he said. “Your kind . . . with an anchor of creation?”