The Night Voice (20 page)

Chuillyon finally stepped out into a broad clearing and idly slipped the crystal away out of sight. Overhead, the forest still roofed the space, but the clearing was covered in a mossy carpet. And there at its center was his old friend.

Chârmun's massive roots split the turf in mounds, some of which would be almost waist high near its immense trunk. Its great bulk was the size of a small tower, and though completely bare of bark, it was not grayed like dead wood. The soft glow seen in the vines and its branches lit the entire clearing with shimmering light.

It was alive . . . because in some ways it was life itself.

“Oh, so good to see you again, as always,” he said softly.

He headed toward the great trunk, as he had done many times before.

“Time for another outing, if you do not mind,” he added with a faint smile.

When he was close enough to touch Chârmun, he pulled his plain robe around himself and began to lower his large hood over his eyes. Still pinching the edge of his hood, he froze in place, staring.

Some new growth to replace the old was to be expected, but such so very rarely had leaves—not on Chârmun. And that was what he stared at now: a new small sprout with leaves. He had not seen such in fifty-seven years, and that last one he had planted in a secret place of the courtyard in the Calm Seatt's third and largest castle.

Chuillyon released the pinch of his hood. He dropped his hand at his side with a moan.

“Do you not have enough children?” he asked in exasperation. “And where am I to hide this one?”

Chuillyon looked up into the canopy above as if searching for a sign. Finally lowering his eyes, he shook his head, muttering like a petulant child . . . of some seventy-plus years. Still no sign of an answer came.

“Very well, be that way!”

He knew this meant he was to take no action yet, so he left the new sprout on the branch where it grew.

“At some point, you will let me know—one way or another—where
this
one is supposed to go.”

It was not a question, though there was no reply.

“And people say I am devious.”

With that, Chuillyon thought of the child of Chârmun half a world away in the land of the an'Cróan. He reached out and placed his fingertips like a feather's touch upon the glimmering tree's trunk.

• • •

After settling Magiere in their tent to rest, Leesil stepped out and crouched before his pack left just outside. Ghassan and Brot'an stood whispering near their own tent, but both glanced his way in a pause. He ignored them and peeked back into his own tent where Wynn was tending Magiere by the light of a cold-lamp crystal.

Magiere was not injured or ill, but her strange collapse and disorientation bothered everyone, especially him. Normally, quelling her rage and hunger was a challenge. Whatever had happened to her near that massacre had flushed them from her.

Before leaving the Suman capital, he'd hidden a pouch of spiced tea in his pack. He hadn't touched it as yet, for water was too precious to lose any in boiling. But Magiere liked spiced tea, and he wasn't certain what else to do for her comfort.

Digging deep into the pack, he tried to find the pouch, and his hand brushed something else. About to ignore this object, he took hold to push it aside, and stalled. Then, he drew it out.

The narrow tube slightly wider than his thumb had no seams at all, as if fashioned from a single piece of wood. It was rounded at its closed bottom end, and its top was sealed with an unadorned pewter cap. The whole of it was barely as long as his forearm, and what it held . . .

Back in the Elven Territories on the eastern continent, Magiere had been placed on trial before the council of the an'Cróan clan elders. Most Aged
Father had denounced her as an undead. To speak on her behalf, as an outsider and half-blood at that, Leesil had to prove he was an an'Cróan.

He had to go before their ancestral spirits for “name-taking,” a custom observed by all of them in their early years before adulthood. From whatever young elves experienced in that ancient, special burial ground, they took a new name. They never shared the true experience from which that came—well, most didn't. At the center of that clearing stood a tree like no other he'd ever heard of, let alone seen.

Roise Chârmune, as they called it, was barkless though alive. It shimmered tawny all over in the dark. The ancestors accepted him, but instead of showing him a vision from which to choose another name, they'd put a name to him:

Léshiârelaohk—“Sorrow-Tear's Champion.”

Among the ghosts he had seen of the an'Cróan's first ancestors—though in that he and Wayfarer seemed the only ones who'd met such—there had been one woman, an elder among those who first journeyed across the world to that land.

Léshiâra—“Sorrow-Tear.”

She and all those ghosts had tried to fate him, to curse him, and he'd neither wanted nor accepted it. There were few people in this world, mainly one, whom he would ever “champion.” And right then, all he wanted was to make tea for Magiere, but he still remained focused on the tube.

There and then, Leesil sympathized with Osha and his unwanted sword. Perhaps he'd gotten off easier between the two of them. In spite, he gripped the tube's cap and pulled it off, tilted the tube, and its even narrower content slid out into his other hand.

It was the proof he'd once needed to stand before the council on Magiere's behalf. He had taken it from the very hand of a translucent ghost, a warrior and guardian among the ancestors. Tawny, leafless, and barkless, the branch still glistened as if alive, and it glowed faintly . . . like Roise Chârmune.

In the years that had passed, he'd discovered that if left in the tube for
too long, the branch grayed to dried, dead wood. Or so it had seemed. Dropping it accidentally in the snow, while he, Magiere, and Chap had gone to the northern wastes to hide two orbs, he'd bumbled upon another discovery.

Even in that frigid land, the branch had taken moisture and come back to life.

Since then, Leesil took care to pour a little water into the tube now and then. He didn't know why; it just seemed the thing to do. Still holding the branch, he used the tube to push the tent's flap slightly aside and peek in.

Magiere was sitting up and scowling, which was a good sign for her. Wynn offered her a dried fig, and after briefly arguing, Magiere finally took it. As he was about to let the tent flap fall, the light of Wynn's crystal washed out over the branch, and Leesil started slightly.

He rose up, studying the slender branch in his hand, lifting it upright before his eyes. What was that little something on the side of it? Barely a protruding nubbin, but was it trying to sprout something?

Long tan fingers touched the branch's far side—or rather they were just suddenly
there
.

Leesil sucked in a sharp breath as he heard another one. Before him, touching the branch's far side, was a very tall figure in a black robe.

“Oh . . . oh, my . . . this is not right,” someone whispered within that deep, sagging hood.

Leesil jerked the branch away, dropped the tube, and ripped out a winged blade, snapping the tie of its sheath in half. The robed figure lurched back in another gasp as Leesil heard running feet coming fast. The figure's hood whipped toward the sound.

“Wynn, light!” Leesil shouted as he lunged.

“Wynn?” the hooded one whispered, and then shouted, “No, wait, please, she can—”

The voice cut off as someone else—tall and dark clad—slammed into the robed figure and both flopped across the ground in the dark. Another gasp erupted from the hood as Brot'an came up atop his pinned target with
a stiletto poised to strike. Ghassan arrived in that same instant, and then light flooded the camp with the sound of a tent flap swatted aside.

“Magiere, stay there!” Wynn called, and then she was right at Leesil's side.

Brot'an held the robed one pinned with a folded leg across its upper chest. His knee was lodged on the sand with his foreleg pressing near the figure's throat.

“What's happening?” Wynn asked in a hurried voice.

Brot'an wrenched the hood aside.

Leesil was still in shock as to how someone so tall had gotten into the camp—and that close to him—without any of them noticing. He even looked about once before focusing on the intruder's face.

“Where did he come from?” Ghassan demanded.

“I don't know,” Leesil answered. “He just . . . was just there!”

Light from Wynn's cold-lamp crystal revealed the shock-flattened, triangular face and wide,
wide
amber eyes of a mature elven male. It was hard to be certain between night shadows and the harsh light, but maybe there were faint creases around his eyes framing a narrow nose a bit long, even for his kind.

“Chuillyon?” Wynn whispered.

Finally blinking, Leesil looked over and then down. Wynn's features had gone as blank and flat in shock as the intruder's.

“You know him?” he barely asked.

“He-hello . . . again,” the elder elf choked out. “It is . . . is a . . . bit difficult . . . to talk like this.”

“Don't let him up!” Leesil barked at Brot'an, though he still watched Wynn.

The little sage's oval face twisted in fury—and she lunged without warning.

Leesil grabbed her around the waist, which wasn't easy with the branch in one hand and a punching blade in the other. But he wasn't letting go of either or her. And then he flinched.

There had been a few times he'd heard Wynn slip, usually in Elvish. None of that had ever been like the torrent of foulness that came out of her now. He couldn't even follow half of it. But as to what he did catch, well, he had to resort to dropping on his rump just to pull the thrashing sage down.

“Let go of me!” she shouted, and followed this up with another word in Elvish.

Now that last word he did know, though he couldn't pronounce it himself—and he didn't like it shouted at him.

“Wynn, desist, now!” Ghassan snapped.

“What is going on?”

Ghassan's head pivoted as he looked over Leesil's head.

Leesil almost swallowed his tongue on hearing Magiere right behind him.

How was he going to hang on to Wynn
and
keep Magiere out of this? Magiere wouldn't even second-guess acting on Wynn's reaction. A sharp pain took that thought as Wynn punched him in the thigh.

“Stop!” he shouted, dropping his punching blade to get a better grip on her. “Magiere, you back off too! Brot'an, let him up but watch him.”

Brot'an shifted into his rear folded leg, releasing pressure, though he kept the stiletto poised.

“Wynn, you know this one?” the master assassin asked.

He remained focused on his target. The elder elf half rolled aside and sat up, forcefully clearing his throat and rubbing it as well.

“Oh, yes, I know him!” Wynn shouted.

“So I take it he's sided with the Enemy,” Magiere half hissed, half growled.

When she inched ahead into view, Leesil saw the falchion in her grip. “I said back off!” he warned. “Let Brot'an handle this.”

“Wynn?” Ghassan asked.

“Chuillyon is always on his
own side
!” she answered. “And that's why he is a pain in my—”

Leesil clamped his free hand over Wynn's mouth and got an elbow in his side for it.

“Hardly fair, Wynn,” the mature elf replied hurtfully.

His amber eyes shifted slightly—and widened a bit—as they looked down to Leesil's other arm wrapped around the front of Wynn. And down a little more.

Chuillyon's face again filled with wonder. He blinked slowly, leaning forward in peering . . .

Leesil whipped the branch around his back, out of sight, and that was when Wynn got loose.

• • •

By the next midmorning, Wynn's ire had cooled. No, it was choked off.

She had no proof that Chuillyon had interfered with any of her efforts, but she knew he had just the same. He had a penchant for turning up far too often when it was to his advantage, not hers and not anyone else's. Vreuvillä considered him untrustworthy and self-serving.

Wynn might not know why, but she wholeheartedly agreed.

If Brot'an had not stopped her after she'd broken free of Leesil, she certainly would have punched that interloper right where he sat. She was still thinking about doing so as she paced about the camp.

Chuillyon was now essentially a prisoner, sitting near the dead fire and being closely watched by either Ghassan or Brot'an or both. This gave Wynn only minor satisfaction, for it did not solve the problem of getting rid of him. Magiere and Leesil were both in their own tent, and Leesil had put away the branch.

Wynn could see how that object might interest Chuillyon, but the “why” bothered her more. She kept eyeing him as she paced, and his serene expression gave her no clues.

Brot'an sat outside the other tent, watching, supposedly, though he rarely looked directly at Chuillyon. Then again, there was no place Chuillyon could go, and exactly how had he gotten here?

Ghassan stepped out of the other tent with a cup in hand, which he took to offer to Chuillyon.

“I thank you,” Chuillyon said with such gracious politeness that it soured Wynn's stomach.

“Where are your white robes?” she asked.

He had barely started to sip the water and lowered the cup with a shrug.

“I have given all of that up,” he answered without looking at her.

Oh, that was unlikely. He was too power hungry to ever leave his guild branch—and his special, hidden suborder—by choice.

Ghassan, still standing nearby, raised a dark eyebrow. “How did you arrive here?”

Chuillyon let out a humming sigh through his nose as he looked out across the open desert. “I am not entirely certain, not that the south is without its . . . charm.”