by Barb Hendee
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 c
ame 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.
“Hold,” a voice commanded.
Wynn froze, listening. Her breaths came and went quickly, and as she looked up, there was no moon, no stars, only more blackness before her pained eyes.
“How good to see you,” taunted the voice. Wynn knew that voice, for it had once belonged to the young duke of Beáumie Keep.
“Though you will never see me . . . even one last time.”
Sau’ilahk was here, and Wynn was blind.
• • •
Sau’ilahk could not recall such contentment, even unto ancient times, when all had looked upon his beauty with awe as the high priest of Beloved.
Wynn Hygeorht had taken nearly everything from him, and now he had her on her knees.
“Where are your protectors?” he whispered in mock concern as he circled her. “How careless of them, especially your favored vampire.” He watched with joy as she twisted in panic toward his voice. “What would pain him more, to find you in pieces . . . or still pretty but lifeless? Or did you think you would be the only one to suffer when I found you again?”
He listened to her racing breaths and watched tears stream from her sightless eyes. He had no control over vengeance against Beloved, but she would be the release for his frustration.
In one rapid step, Sau’ilahk grabbed her by the throat.
Her hands latched onto his wrist, and she clawed at his fingers as she began to choke. That sound was pure joy, and he squeezed his grip slowly tighter and tighter.
No, he would not kill her this way. That she might think so in this moment was only a delicious morsel before feasting on her life.
“Enough!”
Sau’ilahk twisted quickly around at a new voice, dragging Wynn by the neck. He had not heard anyone approach, but five strides away stood a very tall figure in a dark robe and hood. Perhaps it was too tall to be human; that one word had been lightly tainted with a Lhoin’na accent.
“Release her now,” the figure ordered.
Its hands rose slowly to brush back the hood, revealing the face of an aging Lhoin’na.
Sau’ilahk knew this one, who had been in the deep realm of the stonewalkers when he had invaded there to follow Wynn to a lost anchor—an orb.
Chuillyon had worn a sage’s robe then, though it had been white.
A sharp pain exploded in Sau’ilahk’s knee.
When his foot shifted under the impact, and his left leg buckled, he lost his grip on his prey. He glanced down as Wynn scrambled blindly away, not using the hand with which she had punched his knee. Instead, she curled that hand against her chest.
After so many centuries without flesh, physical pain had taken Sau’ilahk by surprise.
It would not happen again.
Chuillyon reached Wynn by the time Sau’ilahk regained focus. The misdressed interloper pulled the miscreant sage to her feet.
Sau’ilahk had dealt with Chuillyon before and knew to be wary. Wynn was now secondary, though protecting her would be the elder sage’s weakness. Then he heard Chuillyon’s whisper.
“Chârmun . . . agh’alhtahk so. A’lhän am leagad chionns’gnajh.”
Sau’ilahk quickly looked for and spotted his stick-creature servitor. “Kill!”
The spindly legged thing coiled and leaped, arching straight for Chuillyon’s head.
The elf neither flinched nor fled and pulled Wynn close in his arms.
Sau’ilahk’s fury chilled, for he had seen this before.
His servitor shattered into loose twigs in midair, coming apart an arm’s length from its target, as if it had struck an unseen barrier. The light of its one orb eye was extinguished.
Sau’ilahk felt his connection to his creation sever.
Dull pieces of wooden branches rained down harmlessly to the
ground around both sages, neither dressed as they should be. Rage returned, and he charged, closing the distance in an instant.
He did not bother drawing a sword and tore the young sage out of the elder one’s arms.
Sau’ilahk latched his right hand around the elder one’s throat. That renegade sage might be able to nullify conjury, but his skills would save him from a physical assault.
And again, Chuillyon did not move. Sau’ilahk would not hesitate to feed on the aging sage, as troublesome as Wynn Hygeorht, and then he could finish her at his leisure.
Something struck his right shoulder, and he lost his grip in agony. Stumbling and tripping in a back step, he saw a black-feathered arrow protruding from his shoulder.
The wound began to burn within.
• • •
Bow still in hand, and its string still thrumming, Osha reached over his shoulder to his quiver for another arrow as he gripped the horse with his knees. Even with Wayfarer clutching his waist, and Shade charging ahead, he knew his target for what it was.
It was not the young duke.
Chane had claimed he destroyed the duke’s body and the foul spirit within it. While Chane might be a dark thing, he was no liar. Somehow, Sau’ilahk had survived in that body seized through the use of an orb.
“Get to Wynn and light the staff,” Osha shouted, not looking back to Wayfarer.
His fingers touched the arrows in his quiver. He quickly found one without threaded ridges, pulled it, and drew it in one motion, not even looking to its white metal tip. He squeezed his knees twice, and the horse slowed. As he felt Wayfarer release his waist and slide off, he saw Chuillyon.
How had that one beaten him here? Wayfarer had said she left the elder sage behind with the priestess.
Sau’ilahk then saw him, and quickly gripped the first arrow to rip it out.
Osha released the bow’s string.
This time, he did not need to tilt the bow’s hidden white metal handle to direct the arrow’s flight. It struck below the half-undead’s right cheekbone.
Sau’ilahk’s head whipped back as he spun off balance. His enraged shriek came late after Osha’s own angry hiss that the arrow had not finished him. Shade charged straight at Sau’ilahk and sprang at a full run. An instant later, Wayfarer reached Wynn’s side, and Chuillyon rushed out after Shade.