The Night Voice (25 page)

—
Shade must do what I cannot. I had to return to be with the others . . . with you
—

Wynn hung her head and closed her eyes.

Chap desperately needed answers to what had changed since he had left, but he stayed silent in waiting. Without even looking, Wynn slung her arm around his neck and buried her face in it. He envied her in one way.

Wynn might always be closer to his estranged daughter than he could ever hope to be. And now that cost her as well.

—
I am sorry
—

“No . . . no,” she whispered. “I'm sorry. It's just hard.”

He kept still until she sat up and looked at him.

—
And what about Chuillyon?
—

Wynn glanced once toward those nearer the fire, and at the tall elf.

“I believe he somehow uses Chârmun to move between it and its . . . children. Leesil was holding his branch from Roise Chârmune some nights ago, and Chuillyon just appeared.”

Chap's ears stiffened upright at even the possibility.

—
Has he confirmed this?—

“Some—not all—perhaps only enough to make us trust him. I'm half guessing the rest. The last time I was in the Lhoin'na lands and first saw Chârmun . . .
he
was suddenly there. There was no way he could've gotten into that clearing without being spotted.”

—Can he be trusted?—

Wynn snorted. “No! But I think he'd do anything to stop the Enemy from returning. That puts him on our side for now.”

And they turned to more details from Wynn's past. Chap learned of how Chuillyon had more than once foiled an undead wraith's conjury, though most of what he had done was only defensive. That left one other piece to puzzle for another notion developing in Chap's thoughts.

—Where is Leesil's branch?—

“In his pack.”

Chap fell silent while turning over everything that Wynn had related. Some of the others near the fire occasionally glanced their way, for he and Wynn had been off on their own for a while. And when Magiere stared too long . . .

Wynn smiled. “Sorry. We're just catching up.”

Chane then rose and faced her, though he looked right at Chap. “Now that the orbs are gathered and the likely place of the Enemy has been found, what is next?”

Ghassan's irises appeared nearly black in the dark as he answered, “We head east
again.”

L
eesil felt anxious and trapped. All along the journey west to rejoin Chap and Chane, the farther they'd gone, Magiere's dreams had continued to lessen in frequency, until they stopped altogether. This should've come as a relief.

It hadn't.

Back when Magiere had first led him, Chap, and Wynn into the Pock Peaks after the first orb, she'd often awoken in the nights and cried out. That was how everything had started, and here in this foreign land, when they'd turned back along the range, she hadn't made a sound. Not after that night on the stone slab spent waiting out the ghul.

After that, on the trek toward Bäalâle, Leesil wouldn't even have noticed the change if he hadn't awoken one night for no reason. He'd found Magiere sitting up in the night and silently staring back the way they had come. She hadn't even known he'd awoken until he touched her arm. She'd jumped slightly and stiffened as if he'd awoken her.

The farther westward they traveled, the more withdrawn she'd grown.

And then, they'd finally met up with Chap, Chane, and Ore-Locks and turned back eastward once again. All along the way, Magiere had remained
quiet and withdrawn. He couldn't bring himself to ask her what was wrong, partly because he feared the answer.

Now, far to the east again, Leesil crouched on a stone knoll, their camp hidden off behind him in the foothills. Out in the dark stood one peak in the crook of the range's turn along the eastern coast. The only way they even knew it was
the
peak was because of the fires.

Bright spots below his vantage point were scattered at the mountain's base, into its lowest foothills, and out into the open, parched plain. Even the undead valued fire, but so many flicking spots of light told him that a horde had gathered.

—How . . . many?—

Leesil didn't start at Chap's broken memory-words in his head. He rose to his feet as the dog came up beside him.

“At least a hundred, maybe more,” he whispered. “Not a full army but enough.”

They both knew there were too many below to sneak past while carrying five orbs into the mountain, however and wherever they might find an entrance.

Chap peered down over the high knoll, and Leesil wasn't sure what to say.

How many times had the two of them stood like this, trying to find a strategy to succeed and get out? This time they didn't see a way in, let alone an escape.

—Magiere . . . cannot go . . . near . . . the Enemy . . . her maker—

That wouldn't make things any easier, and telling her would be even worse.

“So, what next?”

—The only possibility . . . is to split into . . . two groups— . . . —One . . . to infiltrate . . . the peak . . . the other . . . to draw . . . the horde— . . . —Magiere must . . . lead . . . the second . . . not . . . the first—

Leesil wasn't quite ready to agree, but he hadn't thought of any other options that might work. Anyone who drew the horde's attention stood little chance of survival, even with Magiere. Then again, the first group would be walking into . . . what?

“We don't even know how to use the orbs, except to blindly open them all at once. You saw what the orb of Water did in the cavern beneath that six-towered castle.”

Chap didn't reply.

They'd both been there when Magiere used her thôrhk—her orb key—to open the orb of Water where it waited for a thousand years. Instantly, it began swallowing all freestanding moisture. If they'd let it finish with that, would it have done the same to anything living?

—The orbs . . . are a . . . last . . . resort . . . if you find . . . the Enemy . . . fully awake—

Leesil scoffed. “I heard you . . . every other time you said it.”

They had no idea what they would find, what the Enemy really was, or if they could kill it. They only hoped they'd never have to use the orbs. Chap didn't counter his spiteful reply, and this worried Leesil all the more.

“If we have to, do you have any notions about using the orbs?”

Chap turned away.

—
Perhaps—

• • •

Chap returned to camp, taking note of who was in plain sight. They had no fire and used dimly lit cold-lamp crystals only as needed. One tent flap was flipped fully open, and he saw Chuillyon sitting cross-legged within, his eyes closed. Chane sat talking with Ore-Locks on the camp's other side. Ghassan stood silent, head bowed, near the desert side of camp, apparently lost in thought. Magiere sat beside Brot'an. Both were tending and sharpening their weapons in silence. Wynn was nowhere to be seen, so she had to be in the second of now three tents.

Magiere glanced up and spotted him. “Where's Leesil?”

—He is coming . . . soon—

Chap went to the tent he shared with Leesil, Magiere, and Wynn. Shoving through the entrance flap, he found the young sage kneeling between two familiar chests—those for the orbs of Spirit and Air.

Was she sitting vigil? At least she was alone, and she would not question what he asked of her. Wynn trusted him, at least in all greater matters. Upon hearing him, she turned on her knees, and he steeled himself.

—I need you to open the chest for the orb of Spirit—

She blinked. “Why?”

—I need to know more, as much as I can, about the orbs, should they have to be used—

Wynn still studied him, as if measuring his words. Then she opened the left chest, reached in, and pulled back the cloth as he approached.

He remembered all too clearly that when Magiere had opened the orb of Water, he, she, and Leesil had each sensed or seen something different.

He had felt the presence of a Fay, a singular one.

Magiere had sensed an overwhelming undead.

Leesil had seen the head of a great serpent . . . or dragon.

“What are you going to do?” Wynn whispered.

Chap believed one of his kin was inside this orb and perhaps each one of them. Of the Enemy's minions they had encountered, most had been especially obsessed with the orb of Spirit. So it was the logical orb to try.

Lifting a forepaw, he reached over the chest's side and never hesitated as he touched the object's strange smooth but faintly rough surface.

The tent, the chest, and Wynn vanished.

A world—and his life—rushed by, all tangled and obscured in a mist like gray clouds trying to envelop him. In flickers of what he could make out, he thought he saw his own life played out in glimpses, but always moving backward . . . always growing darker . . . until he saw nothing.

A hiss grew in the dark over a scratching on stone so loud and harsh that he then heard crackling, as if the stone broke. A reddish light grew somewhere ahead. For a moment he thought it was flame, though its shape changed to the maw and then the eyes—and then both—of some immense reptile without limbs. But it was not a snake, not even a serpent, judging by those armored scales on its coils.

Was it like what Leesil had claimed to see when Magiere opened the first orb?

Chap could not remember this placeless, timeless moment. As before in the white mist, this time in the black mist, like broken clouds of swirling soot, he saw something . . .

Bodies in strange clothing or armor gathered like ghosts. Their faces and limbs and any other exposed flesh were pale as death. A whisper carried in more than one voice, over and over.

. . . Beloved . . .

Hovering in flickering glimpses behind each figure was the red-haloed shape of that black-scaled dragon. He recognized two of the pale faces.

The first had almond-shaped eyes in a narrow face draped with tangles of silken black hair. Though her irises had been crystalline then, in this vision they were so dark, they might be chocolate, nearly black.

Li'kän had been the mad and near-mute guardian of the first orb, and Chap recognized the other.

Likewise, Qahhar, with his thick eyebrows and shiny, dark locks, looked as Suman as Ghassan. But he was as pale as all the others—thirteen in all.

These were the Children from the poem scroll Chane had brought to Wynn, but Chap never had a chance to see the other faces clearly. They crumpled into the black mists as if dying upon the whisper of . . .
Beloved.

He saw again the fiery maw and eyes of the dragon, suddenly smothered to nothing.

In their place came flickers of his own life, his own existence, but again moving backward in time.

Magiere and Leesil discovering the secret that he was Fay.

Living on the road with Leesil after the young half-breed fled the Warlands.

Eillean, Leesil's grandmother, bringing him as a pup to Cuir'en'neina, Leesil's mother.

Being born and then . . . nothing . . . but more whispers that he now felt more than heard.

Nothing . . . no more . . . nothing . . .

Let there be something . . . some . . . thing . . . for us . . .

He felt himself without body, without mind, without anything but thoughts. The overlapping chorus of whispers was so mournful, like ancient, timeless children mourning in the dark.

A chorus of voices whispered in Chap's spirit, like when he had viciously turned on his own kin when last communing with them. Now it was as if he had gone back even further to that time without time when he had existed as one with them.

I—we—must exist.

He felt them—himself, both, one—though no longer with flesh or presence. He felt five pieces of them—of himself—being torn out, though they went willingly for the sake of all . . . of the one.

We will make our existence.

Then there were the many within the one.

He remembered the beginning of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit—the first of any
thing
. Five parts of the Fay—of him and all that was One—sacrificed themselves in separateness. This ended the Fay's nonbeing amid an endless, timeless nothing. There was a
place
and a
time
for it—they—to
be
.

Upheaval quickly followed. He could not remember its cause, what it was, where it started . . . who was its source. Then he was alone, barely aware of his
self
.

Nothing more came to him, and what followed began with a mournful loneliness in isolation. No, that was not from him but from some other, though he felt it now. Was that from all of them or from only another
one
?

It built quickly, making him frantic, then panicked, and finally it became a desperate fury to escape at any cost . . . from what?

He thought he heard distant screaming.

And that
one
of fright and fury died, he could feel it—but it was still there, aware even after its own death. That face of the dragon shaped in fire
winked away, but he could still hear its hiss . . . and the sound of scraping scales on immense coils exploded in another scream.

“Chap . . . please . . .
breathe
!”

He knew this voice, or he should. Not the fiery one that had died and not died. It was another being, but he could not find the name for it.

“Wake up, Chap, please!”

Was someone speaking to him? Was that his name?

“Don't you leave me, don't you dare . . . Magiere, get in here!”

He should know a name for that voice. Then came something else that he
heard
: a rustle, perhaps canvas, and rapid vibrations against his side, his body. Did he have a flesh and form? Footfalls brought another voice.

“Wynn, what's wrong?”

“Magiere, he won't move, won't breathe. His eyes are open but . . . he isn't breathing.”

A hard touch on him pressed and shook him. He had a body, but it was only a shell. He could not move it or escape from it.

“Chap, answer me—
now
,” snarled the second voice. “Wynn, what happened?”

“He touched an orb, only for an instant, and . . . and then he dropped.”

“Move aside,” a third, deeper voice ordered.

“Brot'an, there's no . . . What are you doing? Why'd you bring
him
?”

“Move now,” that third voice repeated, cold and sharp. “Wynn, back away.”

Chap—if that was his own name—felt someone touch him again, perhaps on a shoulder. The following whisper was so close that it blocked all other sounds.

“Time to come back, old guardian. You are not done yet, as a guess.”

Warmth spread from the touch.

A light grew in the complete darkness until a soft glimmer took shape. He vaguely knew the form from somewhere as its glow coalesced into squiggly lines, which became branches, all of which sprouted from a thickening
trunk. It was tawny and warm to the sight, and he had seen it somewhere before.

“A bit longer,” that last, fourth voice added, tainted with puzzling humor. “At least, from what Chârmun tells me.”

He knew that name was for what he saw in the dark. His panicked fury fled from its light. Other shapes began to form in his darkness and as a tree slowly faded from sight. With them came smells thickened inside a dim tent. The only true light now was a cold-lamp crystal lying near his head, between him . . . and Wynn.

She collapsed atop him, sobbing in relief.

Chap rolled his head enough to see the others.

Near where Wynn had knelt, Magiere's eyes half closed as she sagged in a heavy breath. And the one still touching him, Chuillyon, looked down upon him with a wry smile. Behind him, Brot'an was on one knee, ever watchful.

Thankfully, the chest with the orb of Spirit was closed. Wynn must have had the presence of mind to close it.

Ghassan stood in the tent's opening as if he had just arrived . . . with Chane and Ore-Locks still outside but looking in. Leesil was nowhere to be seen.