The Night Voice (37 page)

Leesil charged while cocking back one blade.

• • •

Brot'an suddenly found himself in darkness and silence. He felt numb in thought and flesh, as if he had neither, though he could still somehow look about. Darkness—impenetrable shadow—was everywhere, as if he had sunk into it once more in mind and body.

It had taken the whole world as well.

The cavern, his target, the bones, the others . . . were gone. Never in his long life had he ever been so completely without sound.

“Since you took my flesh, it is only fitting that I take yours.” He heard—felt—something barely perceptible shift in the black void.

Someone stepped out of the surrounding darkness into view: a man. He was smallish, bald, and wizened. His eyes were black, and he wore a simple robe. His face shone with hatred.

As that visage closed on Brot'an, he merely waited . . . until it was close enough. The instant was interrupted as something else took form behind the old one out of the pure darkness. Domin Ghassan il'Sänke rushed in without a sound behind the wizened one.

I know you now . . . all that you are . . . by your own thoughts.

Brot'an heard this, though Ghassan's mouth never moved. As their gazes locked, the domin silently clamped his hands over the old one's eyes. As he pulled that bald head back, its mouth opened and its lips curled in a snarl.

“Worm! How did you follow me to new flesh?”

Again, the domin's mouth did not move.
Finish this . . . as only you can.

The old one's hands clamped over the domin's own. “I am done with you!”

White fire flickered on and within those old hands. It quickly spread into the domin's.

Ghassan screamed as those flames illuminating nothing else in the dark spread over him, even to his anguished face.

Brot'ân'duivé lunged in. Without realizing he could, he clamped both hands around the old one's throat. White flame spread onto his own flesh. There was no wound or agony in his life to match this.

Still he tightened his grip.

There was a third shadow beyond that which took mind and body.

Only if spirit remained could one emerge from shadow once more.

This secret was learned—or not—in the first step upon the path of a greimasg'äh, a “shadow-gripper.” Many failed in that moment, which was why so few of them walked among the Anmaglâhk.

Brot'ân'duivé's agony was only a sign that life still remained. Both would end as he let shadow take his spirit and that of all others with him inside his last shadow.

That Léshil—Léshiârelaohk, “Sorrow-Tear's Champion”—survived for their people's sake was all that mattered to the Dog in the Dark.

• • •

Leesil rammed his right blade's spade into Ghassan's chest with all of his force and weight. The tip tore through fabric and sank in nearly to his grip as he rammed the other blade in. He wrenched them both out to strike again.

Ghassan crumpled, as did Brot'an, and the first fell across the second, both on their backs.

Leesil dropped atop them, one knee crushing down into the domin's blood-soaked clothes as he raised his right blade to strike for the throat. He hesitated at the blank eyes staring up at him.

Neither of them blinked—not Ghassan or Brot'an. Both stared up sightlessly into the cavern, their faces slack and expressionless.

Leesil pulled, rolled, and kicked Ghassan's body off.

“Brot'an?” he whispered, and then louder, “Brot'an!”

The master assassin didn't move.

“He is gone.”

At that rasp, Leesil twisted on one knee to find Chane—and Ore-Locks—standing behind him.

“I would . . . know,” Chane added, his gaze locked on Brot'an.

Chane didn't look good. He was shuddering, and his eyes were still colorless. Leesil looked back down.

He didn't know what to think or feel.

Ghassan had turned on all of them, and there was no knowing how or why. Brot'an didn't have any new wounds, and yet he was dead. What had just happened?

—Now you are the only one—

Leesil lurched to his feet, instinctively facing the immense horned skull.

—My death . . . no, my freedom . . . means yours as well—

The Enemy was still here, in some way.

Leesil looked everywhere but saw nothing, not even the shadow of an immense coiled serpent or dragon as in the cavern below the six-towered castle. What little light was present led his eyes to Ghassan's crystal on the cavern floor, likely dropped in the struggle with Brot'an.

He sheathed one blade, grabbed up the crystal, and raised it high, again looking everywhere. Somewhere outside the mountain, the battle went on.

Leesil didn't want to imagine what had happened to Magiere if this unseen thing could no longer find her. Then he felt a light grip on his arm over the branch lashed onto it.

Ore-Locks uttered a sharp exclamation in his own tongue.

“Wynn?” Chane rasped.

Leesil lurched back, pulling out of that grip, and there was a startled Chuillyon quickly raising his hands. Behind the tall elf stood Wynn, still lightly gripping Chuillyon's robe as she looked blankly down at the cavern floor. She had her staff in her other hand.

Chap startled Leesil yet again as he came around from behind Chuillyon.

• • •

—Kin . . . treacherous kin of my kin—

Chap froze just short of Leesil as he heard that hiss. Judging from the way Leesil had turned about, he had heard it as well, as had Ore-Locks. Only Chane did not react, and then Chap saw the bodies.

Ghassan and Brot'an both lay unblinking with eyes open. Both looked battered, but only the former was bloodied.

Chap looked to Leesil's stained blade, and yet there was no time to question whatever had happened here.

Chane rushed around him to Wynn. Though she turned at his movement, she did not—could not—look at him.

There was no time for that either.

—And why do my kin send one of their guard . . . dogs—

That hiss sounded—felt—somehow familiar. By the light from a crystal
that Leesil gripped, Chap studied the skeleton. Dead for so long, those bones might have almost melded with the stone if not for their size. He looked up to Leesil.

—Do . . . nothing . . . yet—

“Where's Magiere?” Leesil asked, quick-stepping in.

“She's with Osha and Wayfarer,” Wynn answered, though her eyes focused on nothing. “With Shade and the Shé'ith commander also; they hid her away in the foothills.”

—Enough . . . listen!—

At Chap's sharp demand, Leesil flinched.

“Wynn?” Chane rasped. “What is wrong? Look at me!”

Before Chap could say anything, Wynn reached out, groping for a grip on Chane's arm.

“Not now,” she told him.

—So, dog, you have power to command the others—

The tone of that hissing, both in Chap's ears and in his head, was so disdainful. It was also too much like the chorus of whispers when he communed with his kin, and too much like the voices when he had touched the orb of Spirit, though now there was only one voice.

He answered it.

—No—

The voice then filled with rage or panic or both.

—
Open the anchors, whelp, or I will summon even more of my servants. And none of your companions, your wards, will ever leave this place—

Chap tilted his head.

—There is no one left to call, or you would have called them . . . called her—

“What's happening?” Leesil asked. “What did you say to it?”

Chap ignored this distraction. It would not be hard to know to whom the Enemy now spoke, though no one else here could have heard his own answer. No one except perhaps Wynn, and she was wise enough not to let the Enemy know so.

A moment of silence followed, and then . . .

—I can call upon hundreds to hunt you for the rest of your short days . . . and nights. Oh, yes, especially the nights. Even if you are not found, I remain when you are food for worms and then forgotten dust—

That one word—“forgotten”—lingered in Chap's thoughts.

How much longer than a thousand forgotten years of history had it been since the Fay, the One and the Many, made a world—an existence—to escape nothingness? How many times had all of this happened before, as one of five among those who had sacrificed for the others sought to be free again?

—Why do you sympathize with those who call you deviant? You and I are not so different in that—

“Chap,” Leesil whispered, “what in seven hells is happening?”

“Leesil, shut up!” Wynn warned.

And yet Chap hesitated.

—Order the mixed-blood to open the anchors . . . and free me—

Chap was at a loss. A part of him could feel empathy for the voice, after what his kin had done to him. He no longer believed his losses of memory from his time among his kin had been by his own choice. They had done that to him.

Had they likewise tricked those of their own who had made such a sacrifice for the rest to have an Existence? And still . . .

—No—

At his simple refusal, the hiss became pleading in tone.

—I am weary . . . and wish to
be
no more—

After all of the hints that Chap had heard and pieced together, he knew the last of that statement was a lie. Destroying the Enemy would mean removing one of what the sages called the Elements from among the other four. To do so would unmake Existence.

Why would it want such a thing?

Chap ground his paws and claws against the cavern floor's stone. He called upon the element of Earth first, letting it fill him. From there he
reached for Water from any moisture in the cavern. Then Air, and then Fire from the heat of his own flesh.

He asked:
—Who—what—are you?—

With that single question, he began to burn in blue-white flame as he added his own Spirit. This time, no one would see this, for Wynn was blind.

Chap launched his thoughts into the dark. His
self
as a Fay broke loose, and the cave around him vanished. In that darkness, weightless and bodiless, he felt it . . . that other timeless presence, so mournful, spiteful, and chained. And through it, he looked back as far as he could and learned much more than he had forced from his kin.

We will create Existence. We will enliven it with Spirit.

Five distinct and separate presences among his kind could be heard: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Spirit. But one of them—Spirit—rebelled, as Chap had in his own way after being born into flesh. It wailed in panic.

Once something is created, there is no power to control it.

Its—Chap's—kin did not listen.

Existence came to be, time itself formed without beginning or end, and Spirit wailed out again.

Less and less can this be controlled. Undo what we have done.

And again, it was ignored. The other four swarmed upon and subjugated Spirit to “anchor” it among them. Eons passed, a world formed, and the first lives upon it were born.

That which grew and that which moved; that which nourished and that which consumed.

The first tree and the first dragon.

So much later came other forms, and then the Úirishg—elves, dwarves, Séyilf, Chein'âs, and the sea-people were born and spread. From their mingling came humans.

But it—Spirit—the Enemy to be—had escaped in part.

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.