Leesil crept onward behind Ghassan, who still held his glowing cold-lamp crystal while carrying one chest, as they went deeper into a ragged tunnel they’d found in the chasm’s far side. Leesil supported the forward ends of the poles for two chests with Brot’an behind him at the poles’ back ends. Somewhere farther back were Chane and Ore-Locks doing likewise.
They did not go far before Ghassan halted suddenly, and Leesil lurched to a stop.
The domin turned about, set his chest aside, and straightened with a finger over his lips. Leesil quietly lowered his poles and only released and set them down once he felt the chests settle.
Ghassan turned ahead once more, and upon stepping forward, Leesil saw the crystal’s light expand into an immense cavern of walls that all slanted leftward. The domin halted again, and Leesil stepped up beside him. He was too fixed on what he saw to even notice the others gathering.
There were huge bones spread out in the cavern’s rear, as if the creature to which they’d belonged had simply lain down for the last time and never moved again. Nearest was its skull. If he walked up to it, the top would be taller than he was. The rest was just as large.
All of it was darkened and discolored. Some bones glittered, as if ages of dripping moisture had embedded minerals in the crust over its bones.
Fearful of stepping closer, Leesil noticed something else. It had no limbs. Just the spine of bones curled like a serpent too immense to imagine all the way to that skull with three ridges of what might’ve been horns.
The side rows ran around the back from empty eye sockets big enough to crawl into. The much smaller center spikes started near the bridge’s midpoint and ended at the midtop.
“A serpent,” Brot’an whispered somewhere behind Leesil.
“No, gí’uyllæ,” Ore-Locks corrected.
“All-eater,” Chane explained, “or dragon.”
“I have never heard of one so large in any tale,” Ore-Locks added.
Leesil stepped carefully toward it, listening and watching everywhere for anything. More than once he slowed or paused. The skull grew larger in his sight the closer he came to it. Of what teeth were still whole, the longest had to weigh more than two—or even three—of the men who’d come with him. The more he stared at the huge skull, imagining what such a creature would have once looked like, the more his mind rolled backward to a memory.
Below the six-towered castle in the Pock Peaks, Magiere had been caught in a daze when they’d found the first orb, and she had opened it with her thôrhk. In the chaos that followed, as the orb of Water tried to swallow all moisture in that cavern, Leesil had seen an immense shadow coil through the cavern’s upper reaches. Like a serpent bigger than any of the towers, its open maw had come down as if to swallow her.
“What is this?” he asked aloud.
In answer, a hiss echoed throughout the cavern.
—Where is my child?—
Leesil retreated from the skull and pulled both blades. He heard the others spread out as they drew weapons, so they’d heard it too, but he kept his eyes on the enormous skull. Had he really heard those words in his head? Hesitantly, he looked about at the others.
Chane did the same, though he was frowning in confusion.
Leesil thought they’d all pulled their weapons. Not Chane, but he did so upon seeing that everyone else had.
Then Leesil saw Ghassan.
A strange manic look covered the domin’s face. Was it fear, hate, or both? Wide-eyed, his head rolled about, perhaps looking into the cavern’s heights, but then his gaze resettled to glare at those bones.
“It is still here,” he whispered slowly. “The bones do not matter. We will set up the orbs and end it here, now.”
Leesil felt completely at a loss.
End what? There was nothing here but that hiss, whatever it was. From what he’d once seen when the first orb was opened, opening all of them wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t physically here, alive or dead. And the orbs were supposed to be a last resort.
And no one knew for certain what the orbs would do.
—My child ... where is she? What have you ... they ... done with her?—
Leesil went cold.
He knew “child” meant Magiere. This thing—whatever and wherever—might be what had spoken in her dreams, and if so, had it lost touch with her? What had happened to Magiere?
—Then you will serve me a last time—
“Ignore it!” Ghassan ordered. “Get the orbs, quickly, and take off your thôrhks for use.”
Leesil looked around, wondering to whom that voice was actually speaking. Was it to him, someone else here, or all of them?
“Why do you hesitate?” Ghassan whispered, rushing two steps toward Leesil. “This is why we came here.”
“What is happening?” Chane rasped, making everyone start.
Leesil twisted about and startled Chane in turn. The vampire watched only Ghassan.
—Open the anchors ... end this now ... and forever—
“Do you not hear it?” Ore-Locks whispered.
In one glance at the dwarf, Chane’s eyes drained of all color, becoming clear in the light of Ghassan’s crystal. Chane turned to Leesil.
“Do not listen to what you think you hear!” he rasped.
Leesil’s every instinct took hold of Chane’s warning.
Whirling in search of the archer, Chap spotted Osha. The young one stood not far off, haloed by Wynn’s distant light. And that light glinted too brightly on the head of another drawn arrow.
Osha’s large amber eyes streamed tears down his long face.
He had shot Magiere, most likely with a white metal arrowhead from the Chein’âs. Chap could not even guess what that had done to her. Osha’s eyes then blinked. Did his aim falter at something else?
Chap quickly looked back.
Sau’ilahk had recovered from shock, and he slammed his hands to the earth again.
Twisting around, Chap shouted into Osha’s thoughts.
—No!— ... —Shoot Sau’ilahk, the duke!—
Osha’s aim shifted instantly, and the arrow released. Chap heard the shriek before he could follow the arrow’s path.
Sau’ilahk reeled back on his knees, mouth gaping. An arrow still shuddered from impact in the center of his chest, and he began to shake. Inky lines spread up into his face from beneath a strapped leather collar and then down into his hands as well. Those lines split and bled as smoke rose from the same cracks. He fell back upon the broken earth.
Sau’ilahk’s wild thrashing was quickly obscured by the increasing smoke, though his wails and screeches still rose in the night.
Chap bolted for Magiere, lying still and prone, and he lunged past her, planting himself between her and the wild thrashing amid the smoke. Uncertain of anything, he watched the broken ground for whatever might still come out of the earth from the conjurer’s touch.
One shriek cut off too suddenly. Not another sound or movement disturbed the billowing smoke.
Chap remained rigid in waiting and watching, even when he heard Osha come running. As the smoke began to thin, he saw something more. The body was still, dead, and the skin was blackened. Chap began to wonder if something more than just Chein’âs metal was at work here. But nothing came out of the earth where Sau’ilahk had crouched a moment ago.
Doubtful relief kept him watching longer. Osha stepped beyond him toward the duke’s finally fallen and charred body, at last the corpse that it should have been. Then the young one turned, looking back beyond Chap.
Osha cringed, back-stepped once in visible anguish, and dropped his bow.
No matter what Chap felt, no matter what he wanted, he had no time for Magiere. She would not be the only one to die if he did not reach Leesil, and there was only one way to accomplish that.
Chap snarled at Osha with a snap of teeth and a short lunge.
—Where is Chuillyon ... where did you part from him?—
Osha back-stepped, looking down.
—Answer!—
“With ... Wynn ... and Wayfarer and Shade,” Osha panted out, pointing toward the light.
Chap could not help glancing at Magiere, lying still and black marked. He gave Osha a final command before bolting toward Wynn’s light.
—Pick her up and follow—
Osha went numb as Chap raced off.
Remaining in place, Osha cringed at the thought of what the elder majay-hì had demanded. He could not bear to look upon Magiere’s remains—upon what he had done.
Slowly, Osha crept toward Magiere’s body but only looked to her nearest hand. There was no smoke rising from it. He did see the lines in her flesh, as if every vein beneath her pale skin had blackened and swelled. But the skin had not split, bled, or charred as with Sau’ilahk’s stolen flesh.
Then Osha’s gaze worked upward, first to the hauberk’s shredded skirt, then to the sword belt nearly severed, upward to the torso, and finally to where that arrow was still embedded in her shoulder.
Osha choked once and stumbled, doubting what he saw. He dropped beside her, putting an ear near her mouth—and heard a shallow breath.
Quickly straightening, again he hesitated, not knowing if he should jerk out the arrow. That might worsen any bleeding and end what little life to which she clung. Rising to his feet, he cast around.
Most of the nearby fighting had scattered, as even the living members of the horde had fled when the nearest undead had run from the light and tore at anything in their way. Fighting was still intense farther south, and he saw one rider among others harrying everything within reach.
Osha put fingers to his mouth and whistled over and over as loudly as he could.
Finally, that one rider clear of the others wheeled its mount his way. At a distance, he could not tell who it was, even as it charged toward him.
Dropping to one knee, he pulled a knife from a sheath at his back and set its edge low against the arrow’s shaft. Using the blade, he snapped the shaft some three finger widths above Magiere’s armor. He then slung his bow and reached down to grip Magiere beneath her shoulders.
He had barely lifted her to sitting in a slump when a horse’s hooves thundered up beside him, and he looked up into the severe eyes of Commander Althahk. The commander of the Shé’ith appeared little better than Magiere, blood marred, torn, and ragged, with his sword’s blade obscured in black and red smears.
“You abandoned your squad!” Althahk shouted at him.
Osha ignored this and pointed down at Magiere. “I must take her north to the light while she still lives. The majay-hì demands it!”
The commander barely noticed the black-haired woman leaning unconscious against Osha’s right leg. A puzzled, confused scowl turned to outright fury.
“We have dead and injured scattered everywhere,” Althahk snarled. “And more if we do not stop it ... and you deserted!”
Osha realized there was nothing he could say that would accomplish what he needed. Then his frantic, wandering eyes fixed on Althahk’s mount. Froth-covered and stained in sweat and blood, En’wi’rên snorted over and over, watching him.
The Shé’ith did not see their horses as mere mounts but as their allies, their battle mates. Could she possibly understand what the commander would not?
He had never learned enough about her kind, but he had no other recourse.
“Please,” he begged. “I must do this ... as the majay-hì commanded.”
That did not even make sense to him. How could anyone—even she—understand what he asked? Or understand how different Chap was from even his own Fay-born kind?
En’wi’rên whinnied—and then bucked and twisted violently.
Althahk’s eyes snapped wide. He dropped his sword to grab for the saddle’s front edge.
Osha almost backed away, but he would not leave Magiere undefended as the horse pranced wildly. The commander’s furious shouts were impossible to follow in his strange dialect. En’wi’rên did not relent until ...
“Bithâ!” Althahk shouted, over and over.
En’wi’rên settled. With a final thrash of her head and a sharp snort, she looked to Osha, and he stared back in disbelief.
“Very well,” Althahk snapped. “Osha, get the woman up and over, behind the saddle.”
Osha quickly put his hands beneath Magiere’s arms. As he lifted her up, he could not help a last glance at En’wi’rên. It was a struggle to get Magiere draped over the horse’s haunches, even with the commander’s help, but as Althahk reached behind himself to grip hold of her belt, Osha stepped back, at a loss.
There was no space for him to mount as well.
“Grab the stirrup’s strap!” Althahk ordered. “And run with her!”
Osha took hold, and En’wi’rên lunged.
Chap’s claws scratched hard ground as he ran for Wynn’s light. The closer he came, the more he squinted, until he finally could not look at it at all. He heard other paws coming toward him, but when he glanced ahead, he almost blinded himself again.
The sun crystal had never been that brilliant before.
Those other paws grew closer.
Shade caught up on Chap’s right side, and he conveyed a message to her with as few words as possible.
—Osha ... Magiere ... behind ... bring—
Without answering, Shade veered off, and he ran onward.
Something broke the light’s glare, and Chap looked ahead. A tall figure in a long dark robe stood too close to the sun crystal to be an undead.
Chap slowed, panting as he approached.
Even with his hood pulled forward, Chuillyon had to squint amid the bright light as he looked down at Chap in stunned silence. Somewhere beyond the tall elf was Wynn with her staff and Wayfarer as well. Chap could not help wondering again how the staff’s crystal had been made so brilliant this time.
Chuillyon crouched down, cocking his head slightly.
—We ... must go to ... Leesil—
Chuillyon’s eyes widened at that demand, hearing the words in his head. In puzzlement, he looked up beyond Chap, perhaps to the mountain.
—Where ... did you ... hide ... the sprout?— ... —We must ... take ... Wynn ... and go there ... now—
“Does Leesil still carry his branch?” Chuillyon asked.
—Yes—
While reaching for the pocket of his robe, Chuillyon answered. “Then we can reach him from here. I have already retrieved the ...” He faltered, looking up.
Chap heard hooves pounding closer behind him, and he spun around.
Khalidah faced Leesil as he heard Beloved speak again.
—Open the anchors and break my bonds. Unmake me and unmake existence. My kin will pay, and I will be free. End my bondage—
Is this what his god thought to do, to unmake existence and be free? That would not happen, though certainly Beloved would die. Any nonsense concerning “kin” meant nothing. A new master would take Beloved’s place, no matter how many else died for him to become a god.
The lines, symbols, and signs of sorcery took shape in Khalidah’s sight.
He turned on Leesil first.
Ghassan heard every word within the prison of his own flesh. He heard the very thoughts of his captor. Wild fear grew in his effort to understand what was about to happen.
The Enemy sought to die and spoke of “kin,” and Wynn had let slip enough references to orbs—the anchors. Perhaps some of that had come from the majay-hì they called Chap. A few times Ghassan had seen strange things concerning that one.
Then there was the other black majay-hì called Shade.
Two descended from a Fay-born race, one little renegade sage, a half-blood, and a dhampir—half-undead—had sought out the orbs. A fallen Lhoin’na sage who traveled via the gift of a fabled tree, supposedly as old as the world itself, had joined them. And along the way there had been too many tenuous connections he had overheard in his prison as those with Khalidah sought to recover all of the anchors ... of Existence.
Ghassan knew theories of the Elements—and there was one orb for each. If they were “anchors,” and even one was opened to free what it anchored ...
Existence itself—everything—would end.
Ghassan had failed so many times against the specter, even to the loss of his own flesh. It had kept him alive within it merely as a resource, if needed. And he knew what had happened to all other such hosts it had taken.
He could not defeat Khalidah, but he would not need to do so.
Leesil heard every hissing whisper of the Enemy, as if those words had been spoken aloud to echo through the cavern. He was left at a loss for their meaning, and he second-guessed opening the orbs, one or all.
Why would something that thought itself a god want to die? Why would it want them to kill it? While Ghassan appeared lost in some seething thought, Leesil looked from one companion to another. There was only one that he could trust now.
Chane hadn’t heard the whisper—because of his ring—and didn’t know what the Enemy wanted.
“Chane,” Leesil whispered, “don’t let ... anyone ... anyone ...”
Suddenly, his voice failed, and he couldn’t make a sound.
Chane stared at him. “What? Do not let anyone what?”
Leesil tried to answer but couldn’t. Both his hands opened of their own accord, and he dropped his winged blades.
He felt a weight lift from around his neck, and as his hand came up, he was holding Magiere’s thôrhk. He didn’t even know he’d removed it until he saw it in his hand. He tried to turn but couldn’t.
He could see Chane looking away, looking at something beyond him, and still he couldn’t turn his head. Instead, he faced the orb chests in the cavern’s entrance. As he took a step toward them, he saw Ore-Locks doing the same. In panic, he struggled to look for Brot’an, and then ...
Chane’s face twisted, lips separating over elongated fangs. He half crouched for a rush, then twisted and stumbled back as if struck by something unseen. Again, and again, and the third time, he wrenched backward, toppling and flipping across the cavern’s rough floor.
Everything around Leesil became fuzzy, like a half-remembered dream upon waking, as he took another step toward the chests.
Brot’an heard Léshil falter in speech and then saw him reach up blindly to remove Magiere’s thôrhk. Instantly, Brot’an fixed on Ghassan, who stood passive, still, and silent. Ore-Locks copied Léshil’s every action, as if he were under the same influence.
Chane tried to rush Ghassan and was somehow thrown backward.
As Chane’s feet left the cavern’s floor, Brot’an flicked loose the tie holding his left stiletto. The blade’s handle dropped against his left palm as he pulled the bone knife from behind his back.
Ghassan’s head began to turn his way.
Brot’an threw himself back and left over the smaller vertebrae of the skeleton’s tailbone looping toward its skull. He ducked and half crouched against the larger vertebrae near that skull. Inside his mind, he repeated a litany:
The stillness of thought is a silence, unheard and unnoticed.
The silence of flesh leaves only shadow, impenetrable and intangible.
Mind and body but not spirit became one with the shadows, and as Brot’an watched, Ghassan’s expression shifted to shock.
The domin backed away, spun around, and looked everywhere in trying to find his vanished target. He back-stepped even farther and then turned to reacquire his original targets.
Both Léshil and Ore-Locks faltered in shuffling toward the chests. Chane rose, stumbled, and tried to pick up one dropped sword. Again, at Ghassan’s glance, the undead flew backward, and he slammed into the far wall with an audible crack.
Brot’an did not move in thought or flesh. Though shadow held and hid both, spirit alone kept his presence and awareness. Deep within he already knew who had to be saved most of all.
Léshil was somehow the way to kill the Enemy, if it was truly here.
And Brot’an believed it was, for he had finally realized that it had a tool among them. He watched Ghassan without conscious thought. He had set his next action deep within himself before vanishing. He waited in stillness for Chane’s next attack to trigger his own reaction. And when that came ...
Leesil’s forced steps faltered just before he heard someone grunt amid a clatter of something striking stone. That was quickly followed by the rough sound of someone falling on the cavern floor.
For that instant, nothing drove Leesil forward, and he was able to barely turn his head.
He saw Ore-Locks do the same with visible effort. His last clear glimpse of Chane had been of the vampire trying to pick himself up.
Leesil knew Ghassan was still somewhere behind him. His body lurched, his hand clenched tighter upon Magiere’s thôrhk, and one of his feet slid forward. However he and Ore-Locks were being controlled, Chane was not affected. And the one person Leesil hadn’t seen anywhere was Brot’an.
He knew the old assassin’s tactics.
Brot’an must have shifted to the cavern’s far side and melded into the shadows, but if he even moved, the shadows wouldn’t hide him anymore. Unlike Chane with his ring, if the domin fixed on Brot’an, he might be able to use Brot’an against Chane.
There was only one way to give Brot’an an instant to strike.
Chane had to move the other way to draw Ghassan’s attention.
Leesil fought to speak, but only two words came out: “Chane ... orbs ...”
Chane’s head felt as if it had split as he struggled up. He knew he was damaged without feeling for the wound at the back of his skull. The cavern dimmed and blurred again and again, and he struggled to keep his feet. Then he realized both of his hands were empty.
There was something long but blurred near his left foot. That glint had to be his older, ground-down blade and not the mottled steel of his dwarven longsword. When he tried to reach down for it, he nearly lost his balance and stopped.
What had happened with the others?
They had heard something, but he had not. Had it tampered with their awareness? Then Ghassan had focused upon Leesil and Ore-Locks, and both had turned away.
Chane had realized then that Ghassan was the traitor among them. But Brot’an had somehow vanished into the skeleton, and there was no one else left able to stop Ghassan.
When Chane lifted his head, Leesil and Ore-Locks were only blurs in the half-light. Before he had hit the wall, both of them had lurched and shuffled strangely toward the cavern’s entrance. He tried to reach again for one of his weapons and heard ...
“Chane ... orbs ...”
He froze and looked. He still could not see Leesil clearly, but it was the half-blood’s voice that he had heard. What about the orbs?
He thought he understood, though it was a deadly ploy.
What if even one orb was taken away? Could Ghassan accomplish anything if that happened? However, any one of the orbs’ presence had always sated Chane’s hunger.
He needed hunger now.
He needed to find a way to call it up.
Chane let himself fall and collapse upon that blur of one sword. As he hunched there, he clawed at it blindly, until he gripped its hilt. He needed to hunt, to feed, and to kill.
Once he had freely reveled in the beast within him—that was him—for the pleasure it had brought. He had given that up, pushed it down, and chained it, in order to be what Wynn might want. Now he had to be that thing—that monster—he never wished to see reflected in her eyes.
And if he did not, and she still lived ...
Chane loosed the thing chained down for so long within him as he held to only one thought—an orb.
Khalidah panicked for the first time since the dhampir had rammed his previous host out of an empty manor’s window back in the empire’s capital. The elder assassin had vanished without a trace.
No matter how much Khalidah probed for any presence, he could not find Brot’an. That was impossible. Even though he could not reach Chane’s mind, he could see that one. All he could do was drive the half-blood and dwarf, but even in that, he had to split his awareness a third way to remain sensitive to other mental presences that might reappear in the cavern.
Brot’an was still here—somewhere—and would never flee, so how did he evade detection? How? This fearful, irate wondering cost him.
“Chane ... get to ... orbs ...”
At Leesil’s stuttered whisper, Khalidah exerted his will to silence the half-blood. He glanced aside, looking for Chane. The undead was on his hands and knees, broken and cowering, so Khalidah looked to the dwarf and then to the half-blood again.
Without warning, Chane lunged from the floor, rushing at the half-blood.
Bending Leesil and the dwarf to his will was nothing to Khalidah, and even splitting his awareness a third time to remain aware for Brot’an was only slightly trying. But Chane, his mind hidden though he remained visible, was another matter.
This time, Khalidah would smash that undead to pulp upon stone.
Chane rushed by the half-blood without pause.
Khalidah flinched at that, focused on Chane ... and inexplicably blinked.
Ghassan felt Khalidah’s shock as Chane rushed for the chests holding the orbs.
Somewhere in the cavern, the elder assassin hid his presence. As Khalidah split his focus again to fix upon Chane, Ghassan struck out with the last of his near-broken will.
All he needed was an instant of control for a breach of focus—just a blink.
When it happened, torment followed with the specter’s outrage.
You ... I am done with you! I no longer need even your memories!
Within the prison of his own mind, Ghassan burned as if set afire. In so much sudden pain, he could not even scream, though none would have heard him.
His suffering ended suddenly.
Ghassan floundered in the darkness, but even then, he tried to reach for and hold on to Khalidah’s presence yet again.
It took but an instant.
At Chane’s lunge and Ghassan’s wayward glance, Brot’an sprang and vaulted the skeleton’s tailbone. He matched every running step to the sound of Chane’s footfalls to mask his approach. In three steps, he reached his target.
There was one strike that might kill quicker than a sorcerer’s thought.
Brot’an wrapped his left arm around Ghassan’s throat as he rammed the stiletto’s tip up into the back of the domin’s skull.
Leesil saw Chane rush by toward the chests, and then he lurched to a sudden halt. He almost fell forward and for an instant didn’t realize he could move freely. Chane’s distraction had worked, and Leesil knew he needed to act quickly.
He dropped Magiere’s thôrhk, grabbed up both fallen winged blades, and spun, ignoring Chane. Again he stalled.
Ghassan stood with eyes wide and mouth slack, a thick arm around his throat. His own hands gripped tightly to either side of that arm’s elbow, but he didn’t move.
“Chane?” Ore-Locks shouted somewhere to the left. “Chane!”
“Stop him,” Leesil ordered without looking. “Any way you have to.”
Ghassan’s head lurched slightly forward, eyes rolling up under his lids. Behind him stood Brot’an with his other hand hidden behind the domin’s head, and Leesil knew what the elder assassin had done.
It was over for the moment. The traitor among them was dead.
Ghassan’s eyes snapped open, narrowed viciously, and his hands released Brot’an’s arm to thrust up and back for the master assassin’s head.
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.
“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 waterskin 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.