by Barb Hendee
Now, a short way up the peak’s southern side, Leesil glanced over the edge of the deep stone gash in which they hid.
It appeared they had a fairly clear path upward. None of them knew what lay up there or where they might find an entrance . . . if the Enemy was truly inside the mountain.
Leesil dropped back down into hiding. Ghassan knelt beside him with eyes closed in concentration. Chane and Ore-Locks watched the domin as well. Only Brot’an appeared unconcerned, though with his face darkened by soot, it was hard to tell.
“Well?” Leesil whispered to the domin.
He wasn’t certain in the crevice’s deeper darkness, but perhaps Ghassan frowned before opening his eyes.
“I do not sense any sentient presence nearby,” Ghassan answered.
The domin’s abilities had often troubled Leesil but not now, and he signaled the others by gestures to make ready. The bulk of the horde’s encampment below suggested any entrance into the mountain would be straight up from it, and by this time, somewhere near the horde, Magiere should be in place.
Though they hadn’t needed her help to get this far, the rest was something else. They would need as much distraction as possible once they spotted the entrance. There was also the possibility of guards above.
“Watch for movement,” Leesil whispered, “for the sound of anyone or anything above. That could lead us to an entrance, but we can’t get caught out in the open.”
Looking around, he saw no movement at all. Bent, low shrubs and rock outcrops helped to hide them but also obscured his view.
“All of you remain with the orbs while I scout,” Brot’an said, and then pointed at Ore-Locks. “If you hear three clicks in the dark, can you come through stone to the same spot where I am?”
Though Leesil always hesitated at taking Brot’an’s advice, considering the master assassin always had a hidden goal, he couldn’t think of a better option in the moment.
“Yes, I can find you,” Ore-Locks whispered, “so long as you remain where you are.”
“Good, but be quick,” Brot’an acknowledged. “We may need to clear the way.”
Only then did the old assassin look to Leesil, and Leesil nodded his agreement.
Brot’an spun and silently climbed out of the crevice’s upper end. More disturbing was not even hearing him after a single breath.
It wasn’t long before the waiting made Leesil begin to fidget and then to think too much. The latter was never good once a mission like this was in process.
“We take much on faith,” Chane suddenly whispered. “First, that the Enemy is above because the horde is below. Second, that it is inside the peak. Third, that there is an entrance . . . within reach of the horde.”
Leesil bit down against snapping back. The last thing he needed was anyone else, especially Chane, echoing his own worries.
“The Enemy is inside,” Ghassan stated.
“And how do you know this?” Chane challenged.
Ghassan didn’t answer at first. “I know.”
That certainty didn’t relieve Leesil at all.
At a sudden roaring cry echoing up through the dark, Leesil clenched all over. He wanted to rise and peer out of the crevices, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t be able to see anything, but he knew.
Down below, Magiere had shown herself.
• • •
Chap had watched in secret as Magiere worked from one hiding spot to the next.
He watched even as she had stepped into the open.
Magiere—by threat, challenge, or somehow calling the undead—had to lead them away into the reach of Wynn’s staff. Until then Chap could not even risk helping either of them.
His task was to deal with anything that might get away from Magiere or Wynn’s crystal and turn or flee toward the peak. He had to help protect Leesil’s group. He could only hope any living forces would follow once the undead ones took off after Magiere. But there were so many.
Magiere’s savage cry had nearly made Chap sicken with fear. Then the night grew too quiet as the sound faded, and Chap’s thoughts raced over the worst that might come.
If the Enemy could speak to Magiere in her sleep, it could call to its own followers for help if threatened. Or it might call to her.
There was nothing he could do but hope it did neither, at least until too late. Everyone had known though never spoken of this. And because of it, they knew that not all—if any—might live through this night.
Chap hated uncertainty and, as of yet, he had no idea what Leesil would face. They had only one chance to reach the Enemy.
Then he heard something behind him and spun about, silent but with his hackles stiffened.
Out of the dark came a tall, slender form in a long dark robe with a full hood pulled up and forward. Chap immediately snarled and made to lunge.
“Wait, please!”
At both the whisper and the figure’s raised hands, he hesitated. One hand quickly reached and pulled the hood partially back.
Chap froze at the sight of Chuillyon’s large amber eyes barely catching the moonlight. And then came the other cries, howls, and guttural shouts behind him. As he spun back, he knew the battle had begun.
When he glanced back the other way again, Chuillyon was gone.
Indecision froze Chap, for too much might have already gone wrong. He charged out and downward to the side of a rock outcrop and skidded to a stop in shock. Rage and hunger nearly tore a howl from him.
Magiere still stood in the open, but dozens of the horde had begun turning on one another. Through the darkness, he barely saw vampires and ghul assaulting goblin packs, who in turn became frenzied with rage. The undead members of the horde were attacking the living members.
And when Chap looked again, Magiere was gone.
He lunged and leaped to the outcrop’s top in searching for her, but if she had charged into the horde, the fighting was too wild and intense to spot her in the dark. His own rage and hunger grew stronger.
He dove off the outcrop to charge in to find Magiere.
Then . . . a chorus of howls broke over the chaos and screams, and when he halted, he heard it—them—more clearly upslope behind him. He looked back.
Majay-hì of all tints and tones poured out of the dark. They charged straight at him with teeth bared—and rushed around and past him. He never had a chance to turn, for another pack raced out of the dark from upslope.
Two upright forms ran with several majay-hì coming much slower to stay around them. Wayfarer sprinted behind a huge mottled brown male. Beside the girl came a four-legged black shadow with eyes that sparked—Shade. On the second pack’s far side ran a wild-looking woman who had drawn a long, curved dagger that was almost a short sword.
Chap recognized the priestess called Vreuvillä from when he had gone for Wayfarer in the Lhoin’na lands.
Chuillyon had succeeded in at least one of his secret tasks.
He must have come through via the sprout from Chârmun to check the timing before going back and then sending the majay-hì packs through the same way. How he had managed to get so many through was not a puzzle for now but later—if there was a later.
Chap held his ground and looked toward the battle. As unnatural enemies of the undead, majay-hì leaped without fear into their targets, driving them down, tearing and rending, and the wave of the second pack raced in around him.
This was not how it should have happened; Magiere should have led the undead away already.
Perhaps she could not. Perhaps her own hunting rage had simply inflamed their own. And if even most of them went down while fighting the living—or succumbed to the majay-hì packs—there would still be a mass of living opponents.
Wayfarer slowed and almost stalled, looking his way, and Shade wheeled around him.
Chap saw something in Wayfarer that suddenly frighten
ed him. She no longer showed any of the fear he had so often seen in her. She turned with Shade and ran onward on the tail of the second pack—and he wanted to go after her and his daughter.
Yet, there was only one thing he could do.
Chap spun and raced off where Wynn hid.
The sun crystal, if ignited close enough, might take most of the undead by surprise. And it might also stun the living enough for him to find and get to Magiere, if she still lived. It was the only way to regain control, even briefly.
A shimmering, small form appeared ahead in his way, and Chap stumbled, slowing until he saw what it was: a transparent girl in a tattered nightgown, bloodied at the throat. He had seen her once before in the dank forests of eastern Droevinka—one of Ubâd’s enslaved ghosts.
“Majay-hì!” the ghost girl shrieked at him.
There was too much hate in the voice for one who had died so young. Could this utterance have been instigated by Ubâd himself? That seemed impossible.
Chap had killed the necromancer himself and ripped the old man’s throat to the spine. Before he could even look, two large, heavily muscled men—with dead eyes—stepped out from behind a rock formation. There was something between them, and one of them tilted it.
The wheel cart’s bed rocked forward until its lead end clunked against stone, and lashed to it was a black-robed form held erect by bonds. His hands, folded and bound over his chest, were bare, exposing bony fingers. Where his face should have been was an eyeless mask of aged leather that Chap remembered, and that ended above a bony jaw supporting a withered mouth.
Ubâd’s neck was now wrapped or strapped with something that held his head erect.
Chap snarled, and something like hunger but not filled his gut. The decrepit ghost master had somehow used his own skills upon himself, as he had done with the girl and his corpse guards.
“Kill him,” the ghost girl ordered. “Take his head off!”
Both dead men beside the litter drew curved blades and rushed forward. One passed straight through the girl.
Wynn was waiting somewhere beyond them, and Chap could still hear the battle below in the dark. The first corpse guard swung a blade at his head.
Chap ducked aside and leaped. As the man straightened to right himself, Chap’s front paws struck his target. The guard toppled, hit the rocky ground on his back, and Chap’s following weight came down to crush a weak rush of fetid air out of the walking corpse. With no time to finish with the first, Chap bolted for the second man—but there was the ghost girl in his way.
“Die . . . dog!” she screeched an instant before impact.
Icy cold trapped the air in Chap’s lungs. Everything whitened before his eyes like a flash of light. When his sight cleared amid a stumble, the other corpse attendant had retreated to the litter cart, sword in hand. And the dark around Ubâd’s body began to waver like the heat of the desert under a noon sun.
A translucent soldier appeared as if walking out of a rippling lake. His hauberk and abdomen were slashed open, exposing organs to spill out. At another waver of color forming in the dark, Chap quickly glanced toward the litter cart’s other side.
A short, bony, tattered young woman appeared. The rough line of bruising around her throat showed where she had been strangled. She opened her mouth and exposed her missing tongue. Whispering voices began to grow all around.
Chap flinched away from another ghost suddenly off to his left. A shirtless, scarecrow-thin peasant boy faded in and out. Starvation had left the specter of his ribs and swollen paunch clear to see.
And the second of the corpse guards charged in an amble.
Chap dodged right at the downward hack of a sword, and then the starved boy flew at him . . . through him. Chap’s jaws locked open, but he could not breathe. Cold seemed to rise out of his bones and into his flesh.
“Can you feel your death,” the ghost girl spat, “even before you die?”
The corpse guard swung at him again.
Chap stumbled sideways, now gasping for air as if it were winter. His fright grew.
Below in the battle, he had only seen lower servants of the Enemy. With Ubâd here, what other more powerful servants might have come?
Another—and another—ghost manifested in the dark.
Chap could not survive this alone. Panic took hold, and all he could think of was something that had only worked once long ago.
On a frigid night in the Pock Peaks, in their search for the first orb, Wynn had been lost in the wild amid a blizzard. He had gone out alone to search for her, failed, and in desperation . . .
—Come . . . find me . . . and bring light!—
If only again she could hear him now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Chane was crouched near Leesil and Ghassan when he heard the clicks in the dark. Ore-Locks rose and, without a word, ran into the crevice’s stone wall. Somewhere above, Brot’an had found something and signaled for Ore-Locks to come.
Then a wild-sounding cry carried up from below.
“What is that?” Chane rasped.
Leesil had already half risen, as if to peek out of the crevice, but he stopped. The cry lingered but was quickly tangled in sounds of clangs of metal and guttural shouts. Chane rose to look downward. Some campfires appeared scattered by the number of tiny orange glimmers that flickered quickly from many forms rushing about amid screams, snarls, shouts, and more.
Somehow a battle had erupted in the camp, and Wynn was below somewhere with nothing but her staff.
“Magiere and Chap are with her,” Leesil said quietly. “She’ll be all right.”
Chane had no patience for reassuring lies. How had he let himself be talked into this? As he began to glance upslope, a chorus of high-pitched howls exploded in the dark. He twisted back to look down again as he heard more and more of those eerie sounds.
“Majay-hì?” Leesil whispered, rising sharply to follow Chane’s gaze.
Chane turned to Ghassan. “Do you know anything about this?”
The domin shook his head. “No.”
The sound of a soft footfall on stone reached Chane’s ears, and he reached for a sword.
Brot’an stood in the crevice’s top. An instant later, Ore-Locks stepped out of the crevice wall’s stone, appearing less than relieved. Chane did not have a chance to ask anything.
“I found a possible entrance,” Brot’an whispered, “beneath an overhang. But I only suspect so because of the guards present. At a flash of something in the dark, I crawled closer after signaling for Ore-Locks. The entrance is guarded by . . . things I have never seen before. I could not count their numbers but saw outlines of at least two the height of myself. Sounds indicated there may be more nearby, so we both returned.”
Chane did not like this. With the exception of Osha, he had never encountered anyone as tall as Brot’an. To face two or more while bearing the chests was not possible. Everyone fell silent, likely contemplating the same thing.
“And,” Brot’an added, “given these are guardians of the Enemy, I suspect mere arrows would not dispatch them. My making such an attempt would only give away any element of surprise in our favor.”
That was worse, considering what Chane had seen of the assassin’s use of the bow hidden beneath his cloak and tunic.
Leesil asked Ore-Locks, “Wynn said you can take Chane with you through stone. Is that true?”
Chane tensed, and Ore-Locks’s brow wrinkled.
“Why?” the dwarf asked.
“We can’t fight while carrying the chests,” Leesil answered. “From here, can you pass through stone and move upward until you reach the passage inside, down a ways from the entrance under the overhang? Can you do it with you and Chane bringing at least two chests at a time?”
Ore-Locks finally nodded.
“Then the rest of us will clear a direct path,”
Leesil added, looking to Brot’an. “Or at least keep the guards distracted while the chests are moved. If the opening is that well guarded, it has to be an entrance.”
Though this sounded risky, Chane could think of nothing better, and they had already lingered too long.
Leesil pushed past everyone to start climbing out of the crevice’s upper end. Brot’an followed, as did Ghassan. And then Chane was alone with his old comrade.
Ore-Locks shook his head. “I have never taken part in anything so haphazard.”
Chane agreed but did not reply. Too much was being planned in the moment, and he could not stop thinking of Wynn, wherever she was. Leaning down, he gripped one of the poles strung between two chests. A sharp rise of noise broke from below.
It repeated like rolling thunder. Ore-Locks rushed past the chests and Chane to the crevice’s bottom end.
“Horses!” the dwarf whispered.
Chane dropped the pole to join him. He had neither seen nor heard horses in the camp, but it was dark for even his eyes. His astonishment bordered on disbelief.
“Elves!” Ore-Locks said. “Never thought I would be glad of them.”
Chane’s night sight widened. He saw tall Lhoin’na riders in dark attire, scattering in a wave as they charged across open ground below at the mountain’s base. The only way that he knew who they were was by the glint of unsheathed swords and light-colored hair pulled up in tails.
Shé’ith riders.
This must be why Chuillyon had left, likely at Chap’s or Wynn’s urging and instructions. Checking on Wayfarer, Osha, and Shade had been an excuse, though how the Chuillyon had brought these forces in was a puzzle.
Chane grew furious, for no one had told him. Now a pitched battle raged close to Wynn. One rider caught his attention, for even in the darkness, he could see that one’s hair was brighter and his attire differed from that of the others.
“Osha!” Chane rasped.
His maimed voice could not carry over the distance. Even so, shouting would reveal their presence. He grabbed Ore-Locks as he pointed.