The Night Voice

by Barb Hendee

  Even in that formless darkness, Chap envisioned the bones in the cavern. Once living, even its unimaginable long life came to an end, for that which consumed was itself consumed.

  Spirit could never end this way. That fragment of it in the dead flesh became something other than life, something opposite: a death that still lived as the first undead. And even so, still it was trapped, enslaved, anchored.

  Anguish turned to hate. From that, came the thirteen Children such as Li’kän, Volyno, and others. They in turn created more of their kind that mingled among the living as the Enemy gathered its forces.

  Lost in the endless memories of Spirit—the Enemy—that voice in eternal night, Chap watched battle after battle. There was nothing else in its memories except for its own anguish and anger. Atrocities of blood and death overwhelmed Chap until he fought and struggled to shut them out.

  From spite, the Night Voice used its own forces and found a way to enslave those who had enslaved it, and it trapped pieces of their essences—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire—within stone orbs. It created a fifth for itself as a way to anchor the others to it.

  But no matter the destruction and suffering, it could not break free.

  It sank into anguish again and slunk away to a hidden place . . . until the next time. And it all began again.

  Memories grew vague, and everything went black. Finally Chap could not take any more. He tried to escape as the memories began again. He heard it whispering once more to its Children after a thousand years.

  Find the anchors . . .

  Chap tried to pull out, to break away, and could not.

  • • •

  Leesil remained still and quiet as he watched Chap. The dog had gone rigid, his crystal blue eyes fixed on nothing, and not once had Leesil heard the hissing voice in his head after that. But the more he watched, the more a soft glow began spreading over Chap’s body.

  Leesil couldn’t hold off any longer. “Chap!”

  His oldest friend didn’t answer. He took a step and then hesitated. What could he possibly do to stop whatever was happening? He glanced to Wynn, but she wouldn’t see any of this, so he turned to Chuillyon.

  “What do I do?”

  Chuillyon was staring wide-eyed at the dog. He started, as if suddenly awakening, and shook his head once.

  “I do not know,” he whispered. “Whatever has taken the majay-hì must be broken.”

  Wynn twisted toward Chuillyon’s voice. She took a sudden step and stumbled. Chane grabbed her arm to steady her.

  “Do not open the orbs!” she cried. “That is what it wants. We cannot destroy it. It has to be trapped, once and for all, somehow. Even Chap would tell you that is more important than saving him.”

  None of this was any help to Leesil in trying to help Chap. And even if he helped Chap, how could he or any of them trap something without a body that could reach across the world to anything unliving . . . undead?

  He was sick to death of death itself. Two had died here in this place, and how many more had died below the mountain?

  “Untie the branch,” Chuillyon instructed.

  Leesil’s mind went blank. He followed the elder elf’s eyes to the branch that Wynn had lashed to his forearm. Yes, of course it had been the way for the others to come here with Chuillyon, but what good was it for anything else?

  It had been given to him by the long-dead ancestors of the an’Cróan when he’d gone for name-taking just to save Magiere. One of those ghosts had given it to him.

  It came from Roise Chârmune in a land where no undead could walk.

  “Plant it there!” Chuillyon whispered harshly, pointing toward the immense skeleton.

  Leesil never had a chance to respond.

  Chap collapsed upon the cavern floor, and Leesil had barely dropped down beside him when he heard the hissing.

  —No! If you wish to end me, open the anchors!—

  Leesil grabbed Chap’s head, trying to see whether the dog was all right.

  Chap pulled his head free and, after one glance at the branch still lashed to Leesil’s arm, he looked up.

  —Set that . . . close to . . . the bones—

  The hiss rose again, this time without words, filling Leesil’s head and the cavern with a sound like a whirlwind.

  Still Leesil hesitated. By his mother’s training as an anmaglâhk, he knew to act instantly. His human half warned caution. Would the branch trap or destroy the Enemy? Was he about to unmake Existence? Had those ghosts known anything when they’d given him the branch and put another name on him?

  Leesil . . . Léshil . . . Léshiârelaohk . . . “Sorrow-Tear’s Champion.”

  None of this was enough. There was only one thing he could depend upon now without question—Chap.

  Leesil dropped his blade and unlashed the branch. He sprang at a run toward the bones, not knowing how he could plant a branch in stone.

  • • •

  Wynn, unable to see anything, only heard fast footfalls amid the rushing like a wind from somewhere else, for the air around her felt still.

  “Who has water?”

  She knew that was Chuillyon, but before she could answer, another voice did.

  “I do,” Ore-Locks called.

  “Wynn, I need you to—,” Chuillyon began.

  “I know,” she cut in, and then, “Chane, get out of here.”

  “No, I am not leaving you,” he rasped, lightly gripping her arm. “And there is nowhere to go.”

  “She is right,” said Ore-Locks, his voice now closer, “if I guess correctly at what the elf is up to with the half-blood. Get into the tunnel and stay out of sight of this cavern.”

  Wynn waited, but Chane did not leave.

  “Get out now,” she said, “or you will burn!”

  “I’ll look after her,” Ore-Locks said, then added, “I swear.”

  Wynn felt his large hand press gently against her upper arm, and yet Chane still had not released her other one.

  “Go!” she insisted.

  His hand was suddenly gone, and Ore-Locks’s hand slid around her back. His other arm swept up her legs as he lifted her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “No time for you to stumble about,” he answered.

  “Come quickly!” Chuillyon shouted. Then Wynn was bouncing in Ore-Locks’s arms as the dwarf ran. All she could think of was whether she had the strength to ignite the staff once more. In answer to that, over the sound of the false wind and Ore-Locks’s heavy footfalls, she heard Chap in her head.

  —I am with you, little one.—

  • • •

  With the branch in one hand and the cold-lamp crystal in the other, Leesil vaulted the skeleton’s arced tailbone. As he landed, he felt something like a low shudder building in the cavern’s floor, as if that hiss like a torrent of wind was carried within the stone instead of in the air.

  He ran on, ducked in near the base of the great skull, and then hesitated. He had no idea what he was doing. He laid down the crystal, thrust the broken end of the branch into the stone floor with both hands, and stood watching it.

  Nothing happened—except a crackle and sudden buck of the stone beneath him.

  • • •

  Chuillyon rolled over the tailbone in his long robe, which was not convenient at all. The last time Wynn had lit her staff, it had taken help from the young follower of the priestess to do so.

  It was not enough to simply plant the branch.

  He had placed similar sprouts more than once before at the great tree’s bidding. The branch might hold at bay whatever still lingered in this place, but it could not be held so forever: like its parent—or its grandparent, Chârmun—it had to live and take root.

  As Ore-Locks leaped atop the tailbone, Chuillyon regained his feet and did not wait to ask. Spotting the waters
kin tied at the back of the dwarf’s belt, he grabbed it and jerked it free.

  This was only the first need.

  Then he felt and heard a great crack of stone. He did not want to see from where that came and ran on, following Wynn as the dwarf dropped her on her feet beside the half-blood.

  Chuillyon pulled the skin’s stopper as he came in behind Leesil.

  • • •

  Leesil looked up as the others came in around him, but Chane was missing. For some reason, that panicked him, and he looked back over his shoulder. Ore-Locks dropped Wynn on her feet, blocking his view, and then Chuillyon crouched beside him, a waterskin in his hands.

  “You must want this,” the elder elf nearly shouted, for the noise in the cavern kept growing. “The branch is a living thing, and you are its caretaker. It will know what you feel for it.”

  What in seven hells did that mean?

  Chuillyon shoved the waterskin at him. “Take it, for you must do this! That sprout—that branch—was not bestowed upon me.”

  Leesil didn’t hesitate, though he wasn’t fully certain what would happen. There was no soil here; only hard, dark stone beneath the branch’s bottom end.

  Chap shoved his head in and looked up at him.

  —Now!—

  Leesil upended the waterskin, pouring its contents over the branch with his other hand.

  Was that all it would take?

  Small root tendrils sprouted from the branch’s base. They curled like animate limbs. The hissing rose to the sound of a hurricane, deafening in Leesil’s ears. A shudder in stone made him lose his footing. He dropped to his knees, holding the branch in place.

  “Wynn—light!” Chuillyon shouted.

  • • •

  Wynn understood without seeing, for she had to. She was exhausted and in pain, and hoped Chane had done as she asked.

  Something damp and long pushed in under her free hand and licked it.

  —I am still here and will grip the staff to do what I can—

  Wynn felt the staff jostle and jerk slightly, and she gripped it with both hands, hoping whatever Chap did might help.

  “Wynn!” Chuillyon shouted.

  She whispered the words aloud, hoping that would help.

  “Mên Rúhk el-När . . . mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ät.”

  • • •

  Chap twisted his head to one side and bit down on the staff. He did not wait for Wynn to begin, and once again called upon all Elements, ending with his own Spirit.

  He heard Wynn’s whisper, and the staff lit up with the strength of the sun. He shut his eyes tight against the glare.

  • • •

  Leesil flinched as the glare washed over him. He had to duck his head and squint as he looked down, and just before he saw, he heard stone crack again.

  The branch’s roots expanded and punched into the cavern’s floor. As stone cracked, he heard the hiss become a wail, tearing at his ears. Those tendrils from the branch coiled and snaked into fractured openings in stone.

  Silence fell so suddenly that every muscle in his body clenched.

  “Less!” Chuillyon shouted, and then lowered his voice. “Too much, Wynn, too much light.”

  Chap appeared at Leesil’s side before the light began to soften, bit by bit, and then he realized the next problem. Wynn could not hold the crystal lit forever.

  —She . . . will not . . . need . . . to do so—

  Leesil looked aside, but Chap was only staring at the branch. Other than rooting by the base and tendrils, it looked much the same. Was it truly still alive? Would it grow to something more that would end everything that started here?

  And exactly how did Chap think the staff’s crystal could go on without Wynn?

  • • •

  Chap turned and was almost blinded by the staff’s crystal. Only Wynn’s eyes were fully open, for she would never see what was done here. For an instant, this pained him more than he could bear, but she was not the one he needed now. Chap dropped his head, half closing his eyes, as he stepped around behind Wynn.

  When he had line of sight to Ore-Locks, the dwarf had one hand raised, shielding his eyes.

  —Can you . . . plant . . . the staff . . . into stone?—

  Ore-Locks’s black-pellet eyes shifted to fix on Chap.

  —The staff . . . must touch . . . the branch . . . forever—

  Then he looked to Wynn, who was always so much easier to speak to.

  —Let Ore-Locks lead you by the staff, but do not let go until I tell you—

  That Ore-Locks—or any stonewalker—was here at all was blind luck. Then again, how much else of what had led them to this moment seemed that way? The dwarf had been gifted an orb by the flesh descendants of “that which consumes” and befriended by one of the Enemy’s tools, an undead. And a half-blood had been given a descendant of “that which nourishes.”

  There were some things even a Fay-descended would never know.

  There were some things he could only hope would work now and forever.

  Ore-Locks carefully led Wynn closer to the branch. Leesil shifted where he knelt but kept his grip as he squinted at Chap. As Ore-Locks knelt and slid his grip on the staff down to its bottom end, Chap looked to Leesil again.

  —Branch . . . and . . . staff . . . together—

  • • •

  Leesil took a loose hold on Wynn’s staff as Ore-Locks set its base against the branch. He watched as the young stonewalker, a guardian of the dead, sank one broad hand into stone along with the staff’s base. Ore-Locks withdrew his hand with an audible sigh.

  Leesil waited, half looking up with barely open eyes, though he did not look as far as the crystal. Instead, he looked to Wynn’s grip.

  Chap huffed once—and Wynn let go.

  The crystal’s light dimmed to a softer glow and held steady.

  No one said a word. Everything was too quiet until . . .

  “And that is that,” Chuillyon half whispered.

  Leesil wasn’t certain he believed this.

  “What about the orbs?” Wynn asked.

  Twisting about, Leesil looked toward the cavern’s entrance and barely made out the nearest chest. Closer still were the bodies of Brot’an and Ghassan, and somewhere beyond those chests, Chane must have hidden himself in the dark.

  Leesil looked back to Ore-Locks.

  “Can you sink the orbs as well? Hide them in stone?”

  Ore-Locks’s eyes widened. He looked down at the branch resting against the staff, and then up again. He nodded once. “Yes.”

  “Not all of them,” Wynn said. “One . . . you know the one . . . should be placed next to the branch, Spirit trapped forever with Spirit.”

  Leesil didn’t understand that and was suspicious for a moment. Then again, he didn’t really care. So long as the other four couldn’t ever be used again, the one would be close to worthless, and no undead would ever reach it beneath the ignited staff.

  “Then I’m guessing Chuillyon can get us out of here the same way you came in,” he said.

  Chap answered first, before Wynn could speak.

  —Yes . . . he left his . . . sprout . . . with . . . Osha and Wayfarer—

  “We’ll need to throw a cloak over the sun crystal long enough to get Chane out first,” Leesil said.

  No one answered him.

  He rose, looked all around, and listened. Now there was no other sound in this place but his own slow breaths and those of the others. It was too quiet and still after so much and so long. He looked everywhere again for the shadow of a serpent or dragon in the air, but there was nothing.

  All he wanted was to reach Magiere and never see this place again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chane resurfaced at the base of the mountain with Ore-Locks still gripping his arm.
After such a long pass through stone, he instinctively gagged and gasped, though he did not need air. His final exit from the cavern had not gone quite as planned, and his mind was churning with all that had happened there.

  Back when he had first fled the cavern and down the tunnel at Wynn’s insistence, the following moments had been his longest in memory. Fretful for the others’ possible failure, he had done one more thing once out of sight of the cavern.

  He took the orb of Spirit from its chest and carried it all the way to the chasm’s edge. As a result, his hunger vanished, and the beast inside him whimpered back into hiding.

  In this way, if whatever was to happen did not work after Wynn lit her staff, and he had to return, he would not have to retrieve that one orb. All he needed to do was shove it over the edge into the deepest depths.

  When Leesil came looking for him, obviously he had found one empty chest in passing. He was coldly furious and panicked, though Ore-Locks had harassed him along the way, trying to assure him that Chane would not take an orb without good reason. It was not until Chane led them to the chasm’s edge and the orb that Leesil realized and accepted the truth that Chane had been trying to separate the orb of Spirit from the Enemy.

  In turn, Chane did not blame him for the need to take it back once Wynn’s plan for it had been explained. Ore-Locks had already buried the other four orbs in stone where they could never be found or reached. The three of them returned the last orb to the cavern. A cloak had been thrown over the sun crystal so that its light shone downward. Chane was not burned so long as he kept his distance.

  However, even once the orb of Spirit was placed in against the small roots of Leesil’s branch, not everything had gone well.

  Chuillyon found that he could not transport Chane out of the mountain. Yes, he tried, but it did not work. The bodies of Ghassan and Brot’an could be transported, but not that of an undead. Neither the offspring of the first tree, nor Chârmun itself, would allow this, it seemed.

  So Ore-Locks had taken him out through stone.

  And now, here Chane was in the dark beneath the stars, still ill from the long passage. He fell to his knees as Ore-Locks released him and, before the young stonewalker could ask anything, Chane waved him off.