The Night Voice

by Barb Hendee

  He was weary of choices like this, and it was so strange that this monster even asked. Then again, was there a difference for how much blood Chane had spilled in his youth versus what Leesil had spilled? Yes, for he hadn’t killed for pleasure. Still, strangely, Chane had asked only him.

  “No,” Leesil finally answered.

  Chane’s eyes widened slightly.

  “Magiere’s not the only one who might be controlled,” Leesil added. That was the true catch for when—if—they got close to the Enemy. For that, it wouldn’t matter if Magiere succumbed or not. They would be ruined if Chane and not Magiere fell under the Enemy’s influence.

  Chane lowered his eyes and nodded. Pivoting on that one knee, he pulled aside the tent’s flap.

  “Chane,” Leesil whispered.

  And Chane froze, turning his head but not fully looking back.

  “If something does happen to us in there,” Leesil began, “and you’re the only one who can’t be influenced . . .”

  Chane turned more and looked directly at Leesil. Nothing more needed to be said, and Chane nodded once. He was gone faster than he’d entered, leaving Leesil alone with his doubts and fears.

  He knew Magiere would be coming to him soon.

  • • •

  “I don’t like lying to our friends,” Wynn whispered after Magiere was gone.

  Chap looked up.

  —We have not—

  “Don’t,” Wynn cut in. “I do not need lies to comfort me.”

  —We simply told each only what they need to know. Some things cannot be shared with the others, for the safety of all—

  Wynn got up and headed off. “That’s a lie as well. And how much have you not told me?”

  Chap followed at her side but didn’t answer.

  When they returned to camp, neither Magiere nor Leesil was in sight. Wynn looked to one tent and knew they were both in there. She couldn’t imagine what they might say to each other, but more than likely Magiere was going at Leesil for his part in what she hadn’t been told until too late.

  Chap stared off between the tents at the chests now covered by a tarp. And when Wynn looked away, she caught Chane watching her.

  He stood as if he were in quiet talk with Ore-Locks, though the young stonewalker appeared to be doing all of the talking. At a sharp word from Ore-Locks, perhaps for being ignored, Chane started slightly.

  As to Ghassan and Brot’an, both were off to either side on their own, one pacing and the other settled cross-legged on the ground as if this were any other night.

  Wynn looked down and found Chap still studying the tarped chests—the orbs. She had no idea what he was thinking, and she knew he’d never tell even if she asked.

  “I’m going for a rest in another tent. Call me when Magiere finishes with Leesil . . . or the other way. And then we will all finish any more talking and planning.”

  She headed off for Chane and Ore-Locks’s tent to be alone, wondering if she even had the strength for more planning after facing down Magiere. Then she heard footsteps come closer outside the tent.

  “Wynn?”

  She closed her eyes. She wasn’t up to a fight with Chane either.

  “What is it?” she asked tiredly.

  Without invitation, he entered, crawling in to sit beside her. She didn’t look over until she heard him fiddling with a pack. It was the second one, the one he never let anyone touch. Whatever he was checking for, he didn’t pull it out.

  “Please don’t start,” she said.

  “What did you and Chap say to Magiere?”

  “We convinced her that she can hold back the horde.”

  “Can she?”

  Wynn didn’t have an answer for that.

  “And you still wish me to go with the team infiltrating the peak?” he asked.

  Wynn’s thoughts turned back to the first time she’d ever seen him at the guild’s annex in Bela, now on the other side of the world. She hadn’t known then what he was and had seen only a handsome, somewhat dour young nobleman hungry for scholarly pursuits. Had she started to fall in love with him even then? Or had it been just a naive infatuation with his attention in a faraway land?

  “I know you would die for me,” she whispered, “but your dying, again, won’t help anything, not even me. So you know the answer, after all the time we’ve been together. We cannot fail now, or nothing else comes after . . . for any of us.”

  Chane remained silent.

  Wynn had a strange feeling his question was only half earnest. Yes, he wanted to stay at her side, but somehow he must have known the answer before he’d asked.

  “Leesil needs your strength,” she added, “and Magiere needs my skills and my staff.” She hung her head, exhausted and drained and desperate.

  Chane still said nothing.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  When she finally raised her head again, he was staring at her without blinking. Then he suddenly twisted away, jerked open that same pack, and wrenched something out.

  In his hand was a widemouthed bottle with a wax-sealed stopper.

  Wynn could smell something familiar, and before she could ask . . .

  “This is a healing elixir,” he said. “I made it from the white Anamgiah petals. Take it with you for whatever you need, for . . . anyone whose life is in immediate danger.” He hesitated. “But do not try it with Magiere. Because of her nature, the part like me, it would be harmful.”

  Wynn shook her head in puzzlement and looked up at Chane. Those going with him might need this as much as she or those with her did.

  “If I cannot protect you myself,” he whispered, “then I will do so in any other way possible.”

  Not knowing what to say, she reached out for the bottle. Instead, she wrapped her small hand across his larger one holding the vessel. And after a moment . . .

  “We need to go out and finish planning.”

  • • •

  The following midafternoon, Chuillyon planned a brief trip back to the desert. He had traveled with Wynn’s group long enough to know that they would sleep during the day’s worst heat. Still, he had no idea where he might arrive and was relieved to reappear inside a tent.

  Magiere, Leesil, Chap, and Wynn were all sound asleep at his feet where he crouched with his hand touching the branch of Roise Chârmune. Wynn had earlier agreed to leave the branch out all day and into the night, just in case.

  Chuillyon gently touched her shoulder. Her eyes fluttered sleepily and then widened at the sight of him. He quickly put one finger over his lips and then pointed to the tent flap. Slow and silent, they both crawled out of the tent, leaving the others asleep.

  “Is everything arranged as Chap instructed?” Wynn whispered in a half panic.

  He smiled and nodded once. “Either I have not lost my persuasive way, or mention of your name holds more sway than I realized.”

  She did not smile back. “So it’s all set?”

  “Almost.” Reaching into his robe’s pocket, he drew out the new sprout cut from Chârmun. “This is a little something extra.”

  “That’s . . . is that . . . ?”

  “Oh, stop stammering. I will go into the hills between the range and peak and hide it somewhere. From there I can use it to return home—and then back later. But you will not see me again until you and yours act. The timing of this is the real reason I came to you.”

  Her eyes were still on the sprout as she answered, “Tonight at dusk.”

  Chuillyon stalled in a frown; that was sooner than expected.

  “All will be ready,” he replied. “And Leesil has agreed to lead those heading for the peak?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned down closer to Wynn. “Tell him to keep the branch on him at all times, no matter what else happens. Only in that will I be able to reach him a
nd the others, should escape or assistance be needed.”

  Wynn nodded, though the notion brought no relief to her expression.

  Chuillyon smiled wryly one last time, and turning away, he added, “Until tonight, young Wynn.”

  • • •

  That evening, Wynn helped with final preparations. After the orbs in their chests were rigged on tent poles, so that two at least could be carried efficiently by pairs of those going with Leesil, Wynn distributed the orb keys—or thôrhks. Though there were five orbs, only three keys had been recovered whole.

  Wynn gave one each to Ore-Locks, Ghassan, and Chane. Each man hung the thôrhk around his neck. Brot’an received none and did not argue or appear to expect one. Chane had hidden both his packs and his cloak, though who knew if he had stashed anything from those somewhere on himself. He wore only a dark shirt, pants, boots, both his swords, and a coil of rope over one shoulder. Ore-Locks had stripped down to pants, boots, and shirt as well, but he wore his stonewalker daggers in his belt and the sword with a width nearly twice that of Chane’s longer one. Ghassan appeared much the same as always, though he too wore a coil of rope.

  And there was yet one more orb key unlike all the others.

  Leesil was to be given Magiere’s more singular one.

  Back on the eastern continent, Magiere and Leesil had been taken down to the fiery home of the Chein’âs before even finding the first orb. That subterranean race that lived in a realm of Fire made all the weapons and tools for the Anmaglâhk. They gifted Magiere a dagger of white metal and a thôrhk to match, the only other thôrhk in the world that would open an orb.

  Magiere now stood before her husband, wearing her studded leather hauberk. With her falchion belted on her hip, the white metal dagger was once again strapped inverted beneath the back flap of her hauberk. She had pulled her hair into a single thong-lashed tail.

  Carefully, she fit her thôrhk around Leesil’s neck.

  “Bring it back to me,” she said.

  He nodded. He wore his ringed hauberk. His muslin cloth was gone, and his hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck. He had a long rope in a coil loosely over one shoulder and across his chest. Both winged blades were strapped to his thighs, and Wynn knew he had at least one white metal stiletto up his left sleeve.

  Finally, Leesil took the last step that he had prepared for himself and those with him. Soot from the dead campfire had been mixed with a bit of oil and water. This he smeared over his face and neck, having all others going with him do the same, especially Chane with his extra-pale skin.

  When Leesil rose again, Wynn stepped toward him with the branch from Roise Chârmune. She didn’t even ask and grabbed his right wrist, placing the branch on his forearm and lashing it there with bits of leather thongs.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “This way you will not lose it and always have it ready.”

  He scowled at her. “So what are you not telling me this time?”

  “Just keep it there.” She dipped some muck by the dead fire to spread over the branch.

  Leesil sighed, probably tired of so many secrets, but what he did not know could not be taken from him. That branch might be the last way to get to him and the others . . . if anyone else was left alive and the worst came about.

  More than likely, such an option might not matter by then.

  Chap came up beside her.

  Earlier, she had let him know about Chuillyon’s brief return and about the new sprout from Chârmun to be hidden somewhere between the foothills and the peak. This was the only way he would have let Leesil keep the branch.

  —All else is ready?—

  “Yes,” she answered, hoping she was right.

  Leesil and Chane hefted the first two chests on two poles, Ghassan and Brot’an the next pair, and Ore-Locks picked up the final chest.

  Ghassan looked to Wynn. “We depend on the rest of you to distract the horde.”

  Though she nodded, she looked to Chane and found him watching her. They said nothing, for any words at all might be too much like their last.

  Going to Leesil, who gripped two pole ends, Magiere grabbed his neck and pressed her forehead to his. When she let go, that was all, and Leesil led the others out into the growing darkness.

  —And now we hurry—

  After giving this command, Chap stalked off another way. Wynn gripped her staff and followed with Magiere at her side, both of them watching the sparking of campfires below at the peak’s base . . . where the undead were already rising.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Magiere followed Wynn and Chap down through the foothills toward where the Sky-Cutter Range met the mountains running along the eastern coast. She tried not to let herself think or feel anything. The three of them made certain to remain unseen. Down near the base, they were not on sand but rough, hard-baked earth, and there they split up.

  Wynn headed off slightly south and east into the southward range’s foothills. She needed to find a vantage point that would allow her quick access into the open should Magiere lead or drive the undead toward the sun-crystal staff. She already had specially made dark-lensed glasses dangling freely around her neck.

  Chap went north in case any stragglers from the horde went that way or swerved back toward the peak to threaten exposing Leesil and those with him. As the dog faded away in the deepening darkness, and Magiere could no longer see him, she had a feeling he would not go far.

  And there she stood, all alone.

  Her right hand dropped to the hilt of her falchion, as if needing reassurance it was there. Unlike most weapons, its blade could inflict pain and wounds on the undead. Besides her Chein’âs dagger, it was the only weapon she’d ever seen leave scars on any undead who survived its strike.

  She looked toward the peak that Leesil and the others crept toward, even now. The campfires out in the open and partly up the slopes were easier to see. There was even a hint of vegetation low on the craggy rise, if firelight was enough to show such.

  Magiere slipped toward the lowest campfires on the baked plain, and residual heat from the day still rose around her. She slowed when she began hearing grunts, hisses, and guttural words she didn’t understand, and she veered more eastward toward broken ground and any stone outcrops.

  Hunger rose inside her; it burned up her throat from her gut.

  Points of firelight brightened in her widening sight as her irises blackened and expanded.

  She looked again toward the upslope of the peak, but there was no real hope of spotting Leesil’s group in the dark. Creeping up behind a rock formation, she peered around it for her first clear glimpse of the horde.

  Leesil had been right. There were a hundred or more at a guess. As her jaws began aching and her nails began to harden, she fought to keep her wits.

  Among the Enemy’s gathered servants, she saw many faces pale and glistening by firelight. Those—the vampires—stood mainly erect in their tatters of clothing, mostly the long robes of desert dwellers, likely scavenged off their prey along the way.

  There were other creatures in the dark. Some with gray-white skin had to be ghul, though there were not many.

  She spotted another type of hulking beast. They walked on twos and fours in mismatched armor and carried scavenged weapons from swords to crude clubs to other things she couldn’t make out. She knew them from when she’d traveled north in the frozen wastes to hide two orbs. They were the goblins.

  There were more goblins than vampires within sight, and that wasn’t good, for she wouldn’t be able to influence them—as they were not undead. Each looked like a twisted cross between a huge, overfurred ape and a dog with a short, broad muzzle below sickly yellow eyes. Longer bristles sprouted around their heads and in tufts on peaked ears.

  They moved in small packs, clambering about, and then made teasing feints at the vampires, w
ho snarled or lunged one step to drive them off. Any ghul nearby vanished or scuttled off, likely looking for softer ground in which to burrow.

  There were other creatures she didn’t recognize, including some who appeared almost normal but stood staring in one direction, never blinking. Looking at one, she saw its skin looked nearly as pale as that of a vampire. But upon closer study, the skin was somehow sickly and shriveled on its face, exposing the contours of bone beneath.

  Rage and hunger grew in Magiere, and she had to close her eyes to hang on to awareness and conscious thought. She had become a victim of fate, as had Leesil, though both of them had denied and evaded it for so long. Now it was he, and not she, who would face the Enemy.

  She had to draw the horde away from him somehow.

  Even Chap hadn’t known exactly how she was to do this. There was only what he’d speculated.

  —The Enemy can . . . find . . . call . . . its servants— . . . —The undead . . . we know . . . for certain— . . . —You can track . . . those . . . with hunger— . . . —Start . . . there—

  Magiere stopped struggling to hold down her rage and hunger. She let it rise up until the light from the campfires burned her eyes and her jaws would barely close against her elongated teeth. Pulling her falchion while she still had the wits to do so, she rushed into the open.

  Someone else was waiting . . . somewhere. She had to draw them . . . to that one.

  It was so hard to think, to remember, that Magiere fought to choke down the first shout until she could.

  Wynn . . . it was Wynn who was waiting . . . ready.

  Magiere let go with a snarling, enraged cry from the back of her throat.

  All motion in the camp stopped, and all she heard was the distant crackle of the campfires. So many eyes—some sparking from the light of the flames—turned her way.

  • • •

  Leesil and the others skirted the peak’s base at the southern side.

  In creeping wide to the desert fringe, they had often crouched low, dropping the chests and drawing weapons at any sudden sound. Only when nothing came at them out of the dark or when Ghassan assured them that he sensed nothing nearby had they moved on.