The Night Voice

Chapter Eleven

Magiere walked through the desert foothills—more conflicted than she had ever felt. She couldn’t speak of this to anyone, not even Leesil. Not that he wouldn’t listen or care. Of course he would. It simply wouldn’t do any good. He couldn’t change the situation, and neither could she.

Scouting now seemed futile.

But even if they found the Enemy’s hiding place, her hands were tied until they had all five orbs. So they—she—kept searching for any signs of an undead or other servants of the Enemy that might lead them ... somewhere other than more wandering.

Tonight, the scouting team was larger than normal. Those left behind at camp had become more restless of late. So they’d found a site between foothills with a solid overhang and a deep rear to leave Wynn on her own for a while—at her suggestion. There was little chance she’d be spotted if she kept any light source dim, and she had her sun-crystal staff in case of emergency, though that was good only against the undead.

Magiere now followed Brot’an and Ghassan a short distance ahead, and Leesil strode along beside her. His tan complexion had grown even darker, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him without that muslin cloth tied around his head and draped down his back.

In a sidelong glance, he caught her watching him.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re starting to look like a Suman.”

“What does that mean?”

Magiere shook her head. “Nothing. Forget it.”

Before he could press her further, she spotted Brot’an stopped up ahead. He stood motionless, as if not even breathing. Ghassan had halted as well. Magiere hurried on with Leesil.

An instant later, a familiar hunger built inside her.

Moonlight grew brighter in her eyes. She almost expected Chap to break out in an eerie howl, but he wasn’t here. Thinking became difficult as hunger flooded through her and she heard Leesil’s steps slow. When she glanced over, she found him staring at her.

Even in just the moonlight, he must have seen her irises had gone black.

Without a word, he hooked the leather string around his neck with one finger and jerked out the topaz amulet. It was glowing. At the extra light, Brot’an glanced back.

The first scream tore the silence of the night.

Magiere’s muscles tensed as she was about to charge toward the sound.

Ghassan held one hand up to stop her.

“Wait,” Leesil whispered.

She didn’t know how long she could wait, but then Brot’an and Ghassan both broke into a jog onward. Another scream pierced Magiere’s ears. Her jaws ached as her teeth began to elongate. Leesil grabbed her wrist, and that was all that kept her from bolting past Ghassan and Brot’an as they followed.

Brot’an ran upslope and dropped to his stomach near the crest. Ghassan dropped beside him, and Leesil had to pull Magiere down.

“We cannot interfere,” Brot’an whispered. “We must let this finish and follow them.”

Magiere choked back a hiss when she saw the slaughter taking place at the base of the downslope. Her night sight exposed five figures with near-white skin and filthy hair setting upon a small group of Suman nomads. Throats were ripped under yellowed fangs. Children were pinned to the hillside’s stony exposures. The noise grew as two men with long knives tried to fight back, and both went down quickly. One was torn open at the throat as the other went down, and his scream was cut short in a choke.

Magiere lost all thoughts of anything else. She sprang to her feet, but Leesil grabbed the back of her belt. She barely heard him skid on stone and packed earth as she pulled her falchion and white metal dagger.

Khalidah watched in alarm as Magiere charged, breaking Leesil’s grip on her belt and sending him skidding and tumbling after her. Brot’an was up in an instant. Leesil rolled to his feet and pulled a winged blade as he ran on. Khalidah fixed on the back of Magiere’s head as sigils and signs filled his sight.

If the dhampir and her consort, along with that master assassin, did not kill all targets before any could flee ... there would be a trail to follow. Even if one of Magiere’s companions died in this rash assault, in her current state she might still rush after a fleeing quarry—and she could keep up.

That quarry might lead her straight to Beloved, and all of Khalidah’s delays to gain the orbs would come to nothing. Worse, if she were somehow crippled or even killed, would others continue or turn away?

Khalidah arose as more lines of light spread around his view of Magiere.

Rage consumed Magiere as she ran. Her mind was filled only with thoughts of tearing, hacking, and rending the undead. Her speed picked up in charging downslope, and then her legs shook and buckled for no reason.

She stumbled and then toppled as the baked ground and stones vanished before her eyes, as if her night sight had suddenly failed.

Ghassan fought wildly to regain control of his body as he watched Magiere stumble several times and then fall. Leesil dropped beside her and grabbed her shoulders. Brot’an ducked around them both, watching below for any attention that turned their way.

The screaming faded, the last one cut short to silence.

Ghassan’s legs began to move as Khalidah took his body to join the others.

“What happened?” Khalidah asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Leesil answered, sounding panicked. He had dropped his weapon and pulled Magiere up against his chest. “Magiere?”

Her eyes fluttered open, and her irises had contracted to their normal state. She sucked in a loud breath before even seeing her husband.

“What happened?” he asked her.

Magiere blinked several times, looked all around, and ran her hands over her face.

“Perhaps fatigue or disorientation made her lose her footing,” Khalidah suggested, glancing below to see nothing but the mute silhouettes of corpses. “It is too late to do anything. The undead are gone, and we should leave here. Attempting to track them now could only lead us into an ambush. We will wait to pick up the trail at dawn, when most of their kind go dormant.”

Ghassan railed in frustration and impotence. The specter’s concern would sound so rational to the others.

Leesil reached for his fallen blade and drew Magiere up as he rose. “Yes, back to camp ... for now.”

There was nothing Ghassan could do but turn his anger upon Khalidah.

I will see you scattered into nothing.

He heard nothing in reply, not even a snicker in the dark.

It took only a day for Osha—along with Ore-Locks and Wayfarer—to purchase necessary supplies. Not long after nightfall, he climbed into the remaining space in the wagon’s back with Wayfarer, Shade, and Chap. Ore-Locks climbed up onto the front bench. Chane followed him and took up the reins.

“Everyone present?” the vampire rasped.

Chap huffed once to answer, and Chane clicked the reins.

The wagon rolled out of the stable and onto the street. Osha leaned back against a chest to face the wagon’s rear. The others with him here in the back were packed in tight among the three chests, the supplies, and all the other gear.

This was all happening too fast.

Only one night earlier, he had walked into the city with Siôrs while wondering how he would spend his time outside of training. Now he was heading off to find an entrance to a fallen dwarven stronghold.

He had not even had a chance to say good-bye to Siôrs and the others or even pay his due respects to Commander Althahk.

Only one thing brought him comfort.

Wayfarer sat nearby, though she did not lean in upon him as she once had. Shade lay close to her, the majay-hì’s head across her thighs. Chap lay farthest back near the wagon’s rear, his head upon his paws. Wayfarer did not appear daunted by the prospect of another journey through strange places.

This was not the only change he noticed.

In her, Osha now saw ... confidence ... though perhaps it was still tangled in doubts. He understood both personally.

As the wagon neared a southern exit from the city and turned onto a road that still ran through the forest, he studied her whenever he thought she would not notice. She even looked different, though he could not decide if that braided circlet of raw shéot’a strips and soft rawhide clothing were to his liking. He certainly liked the look of her, but at the same time the new attire made her someone he no longer knew.

“Are you sad to leave?” he asked quietly in their tongue, so Chane or Ore-Locks would not overhear or understand.

She cocked her head slightly, watching him. “Not exactly.”

Again, she did not sound like Wayfarer—and certainly not Leanâlhâm of older days. For one, she answered his question directly and did not stare at the wagon bed. He had never heard her speak in such a forthright manner.

And likely that confusion showed on his own face, and so he glanced away.

“I have not learned enough ... I am not ready to leave,” she added. “But I do miss Magiere and Leesil, and it is also good to have you again.”

In a flash of hope, Osha sought to meet her eyes, but found her looking at Chap. The elder majay-hì huffed at her with one switch of his tail.

Osha hung his head.

Strangely disappointed, though he knew not why, he felt the truth of her words.

He did not feel “ready” in what he had learned either, as he had uncovered no connection between himself, the sword, and the Shé’ith, and no reason why fate would link him to them. Was he sad to leave? He could not be sure. Perhaps had he found a new way to live? Perhaps he would miss Siôrs and the others and even En’wi’rên, though he still had bruises from her instruction. But as to all of this and how it had come to him ...

It was still because of that sword forced upon him. Could he allow his path to be decided by anything connected to that blade? Finally, he lifted his head to watch the city’s southern gate of massive trees grow smaller and smaller.

As he leaned farther back to find a more comfortable position, he discovered Chap watching him intently.

Osha looked away.

Chuillyon hid in the darker night shadows outside the stable and watched as the wagon rolled away. The dwarf sat up on the bench with the undead while the young would-be Shé’ith, the girl, and both majay-hì were piled in among several chests and sacks of supplies.

What had brought this unlikely group together and brought them here? And why?

He had to know.

He could give them a head start and purchase a horse to follow at a safe distance. This might yield their final destination, at least. But at a distance, he might learn nothing of them or their goals or how such a strange collection of people had drawn together in the first place.

He could go to Chârmun and travel again to Calm Seatt, for though unknown to most, a child of Chârmun grew in the courtyard of its third and now royal castle. From there, he could make a reasonably quick visit to an old friend.

Cinder-Shard might have a few pieces to this strange puzzle.

But Chuillyon had dealt with Ore-Locks and Chane Andraso before. They had even stayed at the Lhoin’na guild branch once—along with Wynn Hygeorht and the charcoal majay-hì. Both the undead and the young stonewalker were tight-lipped and functioned on their own agendas. A trip to Cinder-Shard might prove a waste of valuable time. He might know exactly what Ore-Locks was doing here ... and he might not.

Also, in the end, it was the two younger foreigners who bothered Chuillyon the most. Those two were more likely the crux of this odd puzzle.

One had been welcomed by the Shé’ith without any of the traditional petitions and preliminary testing. The other had been taken in by that annoying, renegade priestess of outdated practice, who had been a thorn under Chuillyon’s robe for decades. Vreuvillä despised the Lhoin’na sage’s guild and all those associated with it. She viewed them as having used Chârmun to give themselves a place of importance in the world. She sneered at the orders of the sages, at their need for ranks and titles.

Why had Vreuvillä accepted the foreign girl?

Chuillyon sighed in frustration; the answer would not be found in Calm Seatt.

That left only his earlier original notion: to visit the world’s far side to snoop upon his people’s backward cousins, the an’Cróan. Those two younger ones had to have come from there.

So he headed off again through the city. He knew the way to Chârmun so well that he paid little attention to his path, but once he drew close, the night was dark enough in the thickened forest that he risked pulling out a small cold-lamp crystal.

He should have given it back to the guild when he was stripped of his rank and cast out ... and he had, actually. That he had an extra one, well, it was not his fault if no one asked about that.

Rubbing it lightly in his hands, he held it loosely in a grip to let only a little of its light escape. If Vreuvillä or her pack were about, he certainly did not need such complications. There had been enough already.

Something stood out in the canopy above him.

Tawny vines as thick as his wrist wove their way through the high canopy, some paralleling his path. They were smooth, perhaps glistening from moisture, but he could see a grain in them like that of polished wood.

As he stepped onward, more vines twisted above him, growing broader and thicker the farther he went. Smaller ones appeared here and there, branching off the larger ones. All were woven into the upper reaches of the trees. Soon, they did not glisten as much as faintly glow, as if catching the radiance of the moon hidden from sight farther above.

He used the soft light of these vines to lead him, for he knew they came from where he now traveled. Branches, trunks, and bearded moss were like black silhouettes between himself and a nearing illumination inside the forest itself.

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.”

Wynn ground her teeth.

Ghassan would never receive any real answer, only politely dry and somewhat snide humor to fend off more questions. Wynn wished she and Magiere could have a little private “talk” with Chuillyon. That would get some answers or confirm her suspicions.

Chuillyon too often appeared—in too timely a fashion—at destinations without sufficient time to have traveled there. Once she had encountered him at Chârmun after last seeing him in Calm Seatt. That was nearly impossible, considering she had used the fastest route by sea and inland from Soráno. And last night, he had been surprised—no, astonished—and then eagerly curious at the sight of Leesil’s branch.

And that had been cut from Roise Chârmune, an ancient “child” of Chârmun.

Could it be so simple?

Wynn had seen amazing impossibilities in a handful of years. A few included Chuillyon, such as his shielding Princess Reine Faunier-Areskynna, a royal of Malourné by marriage, from conjured fire racing toward her.

“I think you have some way to transport yourself,” she accused, “though maybe it is limited ... to certain marked places.”

Chuillyon straightened, her words taking him by surprise; he calmed and took a sip from his cup. “You have always had an imagination that exceeds your exceptional intellect.”

If possible, Wynn grew angrier. “Do you know where Leesil’s branch comes from?”

For an instant, she thought he might deny such an interest, and then he blinked.

“Do tell,” he replied.

“From Roise Chârmune, the tree of the an’Cróan ancestors.”

His gaze shifted with a slower blink as he set down the cup but kept his eyes on the stark landscape.

“I am sure that means nothing to me,” he said, “but I am curious. Why are you so far east in the desert?” He smiled, still without looking at her. “The possibilities are rather limited.”

Wynn glared at him. It hadn’t taken him long to reason out where he now was, though the answer would be obvious to anyone from this half of the world.

“If you cannot enlighten us,” Ghassan cut in, startling Wynn, “in any way, perhaps another touch of Leesil’s branch will send you back to wherever you came from.”

Wynn wished Ghassan had not jumped to that implied truth. There was as much to learn from Chuillyon’s evasions as from a straight answer. But yes, however Chuillyon had arrived, it had something to do with Leesil’s branch.

Chuillyon smiled broadly. “Do you think you can manage that?”

“Yes,” Ghassan answered. “I can.”

This bothered Wynn. Suddenly she was not so eager to be rid of Chuillyon. The thought of Chârmun, or its offspring, Roise Chârmune ... or Leesil’s branch ... brought something else to mind.

What was little known before the Forgotten History was that Chârmun and the land in which it grew was the only place the Enemy’s undead minions could not go. If it weren’t for Chane’s “ring of nothing,” he couldn’t have even entered there now.

Did Leesil’s branch have such properties in a lesser way? If so, how could that be activated? And there was still Chuillyon’s method of travel to fathom. If he could pass from Chârmun to the branch, reasonably he could go the other way. And being able to take others with him might be useful if the worst came in the end.

There was much Wynn needed to know.

Chuillyon smiled softly as he turned his head, though not toward Wynn. He eyed Ghassan instead. The two obviously had some things in common.

Both were scholars once highly placed in their respective guild branches, one with arcane skills and the other with almost theurgical abilities in nature. Both had fallen and both had been cast out, though the causes for Chuillyon were not clear. Not yet.

“And what are you doing out here?” Chuillyon asked casually. “Perhaps I can be of assistance?”

Brot’an still sat passively cross-legged before the second tent’s flap, but now he gazed intently at Chuillyon. Whether he saw a use for the errant once-sage or simply some reason to get rid of an “unknown variable,” Wynn wasn’t certain. She didn’t trust Chuillyon, but she did believe he would want to stop the Enemy from rising as much as any of them.

Ghassan’s sudden smile was disturbing. “We came out here to hunt undead. I do not see how you could be much help.”

“Oh, I could,” Chuillyon answered, “as Wynn can attest, at least concerning one wraith.”

Ghassan’s smile faded. He looked to Wynn. “He fought Sau’ilahk?”

Reluctantly, Wynn nodded. “Yes.”

Exactly how was unknown. Chuillyon’s influence was more akin to prayers than spells, but he had halted Sau’ilahk several times.

“What else have you done?” Brot’an asked.

Wynn still liked Brot’an more than others did, but his sudden interest after such a long silence chilled her.

At sunset, Magiere insisted they try to pick up the trail of the undead from the night before. Leesil resisted a little, but Magiere still feared they were too late. The undead traveled harder and faster than the living, especially after feeding.

In truth, she didn’t know why she’d collapsed and lost her fury when she’d tried to rush in and stop the slaughter. It shouldn’t have happened. She feared it ever happening again, and what if it did? All she could do was prepare to leave camp.

Leesil stood waiting. The look on his face told her he was still uncertain about her going back out. Maybe he doubted her as much she doubted herself.

Brot’an offered to remain behind with Wynn and watch Chuillyon, and Magiere agreed.

At the sound of rustling canvas, she turned to see Ghassan emerge from the other tent. Though he was often hard to read, she’d gotten to know his ways well enough to see he was preoccupied.

“What now?” she asked.

He frowned. “I scryed for Chap and Chane’s location. They have left the Lhoin’na lands, heading southward, toward the Slip-Tooth Pass. It will still take many days more before they reach the northside entrance to the tunnel running beneath the mountains into Bäalâle Seatt, but they are en route.”

Magiere stiffened. “What does that mean for us?”

He sighed as if the rest were unpleasant. “Within two days—and nights—we must turn west if we are to meet them within a day or two of their exiting the southern side of the Sky-Cutter Range. They will never find us out here on their own, and they have three more chests—orbs—with no beasts of burden they can bring through.”

Magiere had known this was coming but wasn’t ready. They’d learned next to nothing so far. The Enemy was rising, calling its own to the east, but all that was little more than what her gut had told her. She’d hoped to learn the Enemy’s actual hiding place before meeting up with Chap.

At times it felt like only Wynn was on her side. Brot’an didn’t count, since he’d always pushed for the best tactical choice—and he wanted to meet up with Chap and bring all five orbs together. Ghassan was worse, at times eager to push on and at other times not.

Magiere could feel Leesil watching her; he said nothing, and he didn’t have to.

“A night or two,” she said. “So we keep looking until ...”

Even she heard the overoptimism in that, but Leesil merely nodded. As he and Ghassan gathered what was needed, Magiere stepped off to the edge of the camp. Wynn looked over, and Magiere had only to cock her head.

The small sage got up and came to join her. Magiere kept her voice low as she eyed Chuillyon, who made an obvious point of ignoring everyone.

“See if you can get anything more out of him,” Magiere whispered.

Wynn nodded. “Of course.”

With that, Magiere patted Wynn on the shoulder and headed out with Ghassan and Leesil following. She remembered exactly where to go and strode quickly across the packed sand into the foothills under the endless black sky of winking stars.

Tracking would’ve been easier in daylight, but none of them could last long walking under the fierce sun, especially Leesil. If she got close enough to her quarry, she wouldn’t need tracks to follow.

Before she realized, ahead stood the upslope they had climbed last night.

Magiere rounded it on the desert side instead, steeling herself for what she would find. Spotting the first body, she slowed, and Ghassan and Leesil caught up.

Blood had already dried upon flesh, into the sand and torn clothes, and on weapons still in limp hands or lying nearby. Belongings were scattered from ripped and torn tents. Even three camel carcasses were torn up and lay still in the dark. Gruesome, it was exactly what she’d expected, but the littlest corpses—the children—were the worst.

Nothing could prepare anyone for that.

Even a half dozen undead, if there had been that many, didn’t need to feed this much. And once sated, they’d slaughtered the rest for ... who knew why. Maybe just the pleasure. It was as if they baited her, though they couldn’t have known she was near. It was like what she’d seen from Chane back in her homeland.

No, this was worse.

“Ghassan,” she said.

He stepped ahead and she followed. They stopped beside two half-dug graves with several bodies in pieces with arms and legs gnawed to the bone. She hadn’t seen any of that last night, but it told her something more.

These people had been attacked more than once, and on separate nights.

Magiere’s jaw locked at the sight of a man’s severed head with his face partially torn off. He had to have been digging one grave when he was attacked, but vampires didn’t kill like that.

It made no sense.

Leesil looked down beside her. “What in seven hells hap—”

“Back up, now!”

Magiere stiffened at Ghassan’s command, just before hunger and rage flooded through her. She pulled the falchion without even thinking, spun, looked in every direction, but saw nothing. Her jaws began aching under the change in her teeth.

All she managed to get out was, “What ... here?”

“Move quickly!” Ghassan ordered.

Leesil now had both winged blades in hand. He turned all ways, looking about as he took one back step.

Magiere heard a faint shifting of sand and grit, but it didn’t come from his step. She heard it again, and then the choking stench of carrion welled up around her. It was too strong for even the carnage.

A fierce grip latched onto her left boot.

Sand gave way before she could jab her sword down, and a blast of grit and sand shot up, blinding her. Something grabbed her belt and then her sword hand’s wrist as it clawed up and pulled her down in the sand at the same time.

When her sight cleared, she looked down into a gray-white face with a mouth full of distended, yellow, almost needlelike teeth. The creature jerked her downward as the sand seemed to open under her feet. She screamed as jaws closed on her forearm above the falchion.

Magiere felt herself sinking fast. She released the falchion weighing down one arm and struck down into the gray face with her other fist. When its head whipped aside, she groped for the Chein’âs dagger sheathed beneath her hauberk at the small of her back.

When her hand closed on the hilt, she heard Leesil cry out.

At a hiss of sand, Leesil saw something launch out of the sinking ground beneath Magiere’s feet. He pushed off to charge for her, but the sand suddenly gave way beneath his own feet. He sank so fast that his legs became mired. Something sharp raked and stabbed into his left thigh, and he cried out.

He hacked down with his right blade ... and it struck only sand.

A gray-white, bony face jutted out of the sand now past his knees.

Its mouth opened, exposing what looked like teeth but too jaggedly sharp. It eyes were like black pits that swallowed faint moonlight, and where there should have been a nose were collapsed nostrils.

A clawed hand released his thigh—where it had jabbed him—and hooked its fingers higher into the rings of his hauberk. It hissed once before he slammed his punching blade’s outer edge down into its face.

Leesil heard Magiere’s screech shift into a vicious, grating snarl. That was all that told him she still lived.

“Get free and run to me!” Ghassan shouted, now sounding farther off. “More may come!”

Leesil understood that, though he didn’t look for Ghassan. He didn’t have time.

With his blade pressed into the creature’s face, he writhed and wrenched one leg out of the sand. Once he’d kicked down into its face, he pushed to wrench his other calf free. In a roll, he slashed his other punching blade’s tip as that thing crawled out after him.

When he gained his feet to face it down, something latched onto his left ankle.

Khalidah watched from where he had scrambled to a slab of stone rising from the sand.

Magiere rolled, slashed at one burrowing attacker’s face with hardened nails, and then followed with the white metal dagger. Smoke rose amid crackling when the blade split gray flesh down a sunken cheek and into the hollow of a collarbone.

The creature’s screaming wail took another two blinks to come.

All that Khalidah saw then were two obscured figures flailing amid tossed sand and smoke. No, he saw one more thing, off to the left beyond Leesil.

Another spot in the sand began to sink rapidly.

A third one was rising.

“Leesil, run to me, now!” Khalidah shouted.

He had no intention of letting either Magiere or Leesil fall prey to these things. He still needed them to get to Beloved—especially if so many of its undead were gathering to it.

At more screaming and screeching, Khalidah glanced toward where Magiere had been. Still, all he saw were two shadows flailing at each other.

Magiere slashed at her attacker again, barely able to see its shape in the dark through smoke and cast-up sand. Her hardened nails tore through something soft in its face—an eye socket perhaps. At its scream, hunger welled up and burned in her chest and then her throat and finally her mouth.

She brought the blade across, below her last strike.

The glow of the dagger’s hair-thin centerline disappeared for an instant as it cut into something solid. And that thing’s snarls and shrieks choked off instantly.

All of its flailing stopped. Its grips on her belt and hauberk faltered.

She struck down with her free hand where instinct told her to, and her palm slapped upon its scalp. Her fingers closed instantly on sand-clotted hairs, and she brought her blade back the other way well beneath her grip.

Just before the crackle and sizzle of flesh, she thought she heard scrambling upon the sand to her left. Then the head of her prey came loose in her grip.

Leesil kicked into the face of the creature scrambling toward him. Its head lashed back, and he rolled back into a crouch. And it still kept coming. He crossed both blades, dropped forward to one knee, and slashed outward high and low as it closed.

One blade’s edge sliced across its sunken belly. The other’s tip tore through one side of its neck. It lurched back.

When he expected a shriek or gasp, he heard nothing in the dark. He saw its shape crumple upon itself, and he quickly looked for Magiere.

“No, run!” Ghassan shouted again.

Leesil saw something else in the dark scramble across the sand to his right ... straight toward where he’d last seen Magiere. From the corner of his eye, he saw his own opponent hunch ... and spring.

Khalidah watched Leesil stall, and grew furious. And for what was now needed, he could not expend energies on widening his sight to see more clearly in the dark. Thankfully, Ghassan would not dare interfere for what had to be done now.

He dug into his robe, pulled out a sage’s crystal, and after swiping it once across his robe, he cast the crystal toward Leesil. Sudden light tumbling through the air distracted the wounded creature scrambling after the half-blood.

Leesil was startled by light and looked back.

In that off-balance instant, Khalidah focused with his will and used his thoughts to wrench the half-blood. Leesil arched backward, landing on his back, and Khalidah quickly wrenched him again. Leesil slid, flipped, and tumbled wide-eyed to the edge of the stone slab.

Khalidah snatched the collar of Leesil’s hauberk, and by both will and physical effort, pulled the half-blood onto the stone.

“Do you have a crystal?” Khalidah demanded.

Leesil barely gained his feet. “What ... what did you—?”

“Answer me, now!”

Light beyond the slab vanished.

Khalidah’s head swiveled as he looked into the dark. His crystal was gone, and so was the creature that had come after Leesil. That was expected once that thing understood the light could not affect it.

There were still two more out there in the dark—at least two. When he glanced aside, Leesil at least had a crystal out, and Khalidah did not question where it had come from.

“Light it,” he commanded, “and toss it toward Magiere. We must get her here on the stone instead of the sand.”

That second crystal would not last as long on the sand as his before being pulled down as well. He heard the half-blood swipe the crystal on his thigh. Light brightened the darkness an instant before the crystal shot out through the air. It landed some thirty paces out, and he spotted a dark-clad figure picking itself up and clutching a dangling object in one hand.

It was Magiere, and the object in her free hand appeared to be a head.

That left only one of the creatures unaccounted for—unless there were more hiding underground.

“What are those things?” Leesil asked.

“Watch the sand around this stone,” Khalidah ordered, and then called to Magiere. “Run to us! Quickly!”

“Magiere, come on,” Leesil called to her. “Get over here.”

Finally she came, and Khalidah got a better look at what she still held. The remaining hair on the severed head meant it was a younger one, or rather that it had been infected and turned less than a handful of years ago.

Magiere’s eyes were still fully black, and between her parted lips showed teeth like those of a predator. For an instant, it brought back that terror-filled night of agony when she had torn apart his last host, a’Yamin. He could not help looking down at the white metal dagger in her other hand, and he remembered as well that burned blade cutting him apart.

How fitting it would be if he used that blade on her in the end.

“Back to back,” he ordered harshly, and looked away to where Leesil’s crystal had fallen. “Watch in all directions. They cannot come up through stone, so they will have to show themselves first.”

That the second crystal had not been pulled down caused both relief and frustration. Either the last one had fled—if there were only three—or it knew better than to betray its position, now that its prey was aware of it.

Khalidah would have preferred to take one whole. Perhaps in its hunger-maddened thoughts would have been some memory or notion of exactly where it was being summoned. Even so, by this point in their travels, he had his own notion.

“You know about these things?” Leesil whispered from behind on Khalidah’s left.

Khalidah hesitated. How much should he say, considering any answer would bring more questions?

“Yes, I have read of them.” He had done more than that. “Old folktales, still told among desert tribes about the eastern provinces before the empire, called them ‘ghul.’”

Khalidah heard a low grating hiss from Magiere who was behind on his right. She had not known of them. That was obvious. They had been used to clear outer sentries when forces first approached to siege the ancient Bäalâle Seatt. He had been the one to lead that siege.

“What are they?” Leesil asked.

“Undead, of course, by what they did here, likely coming in the following night after whatever attacked these nomads first.”

“Why didn’t they wait to get the bodies after burial?”

Khalidah scoffed. “Because they eat the living, not the dead. Once life leaves a victim’s flesh, there is no life left to feed them. But they are solitary. I have never read of more than one attacking at a time.”

The last part was true, though conjurers under his command had enslaved them in numbers before assaulting the seatt. But any one of his conjurers had been able to control only one ghul. There had been at least three here tonight, possibly working together.

“What about the victims?” Leesil pressed. “Will they ... get up when the next night comes?”

Khalidah hesitated. Some tales were close to the truth that he knew. They claimed any victim who did not die was possessed by feral demonic spirits with no intellect. And slowly they changed as hunger drove them mad.

Again, close to the truth, but not quite.

“No,” he finally answered. “The process—from what I have read—is not the same as for ... well, there is no word in my language to match your ‘vampire.’”

Khalidah said no more, though he listened now that Leesil was silent. Between Magiere’s labored breaths, he heard not a grain of sand shift. In a calm night without a breeze, that still did not mean the ghul had moved on. They could not travel at any worthwhile pace underground and never truly did so. To avoid them as with other undead meant waiting for daylight.

When he had said as much and sat down to keep his vigil, Leesil sighed harshly in doing the same. This at least served an additional purpose now that it seemed no true path to Beloved would be found.

None was needed as Khalidah raised his eyes to the starlit, eastern horizon.

It had been a thousand years since he had last come this far, back when he still had his own flesh, but of late, landmarks had been coming back to him. In the dark, clear night to the east, something blotted out the lowest stars for as far south as he could see, just as the so-called Sky-Cutter Range did to the north beyond these foothills.

Another range of mountains marked the continent’s far edge, and where the two ranges met a line of peaks. The sight was familiar. Khalidah had wanted to be more certain, to see so himself before turning back for the other three orbs.

Now he was.

But there was a greater concern.

Neither a pack of vampires nor a trio of ghul would have been arranged by Sau’ilahk and Ubâd as bait. How many other of Beloved’s servants—undead or not—were headed east?

One dhampir and her followers might not be enough for what was waiting.

It was time to turn back and prepare.

The dreamer fell through darkness, and without impact suddenly stood upon a black desert under a bloodred sky. Dunes began to roll on all sides, quickly sharpened in clarity, and became immense coils covered in glinting black scales. Those coils turned and writhed on all sides.

“Where are you?” the dreamer called. “Show yourself!”

I have always been here ... waiting.

The desert vanished.

The dreamer stood upon a chasm’s lip. Over the edge, the sides did not fall straight down. The chasm walls were twisted as if torn open ages ago by something immense ripping wide the bowels of the earth. Looking upward, the dreamer saw the same, as if the great gash rose into an immense peak above.

Across to the chasm’s other side was another wound in the mountain’s stone. It was too dark to know whether that was a mere pocket, a cavern, or just a fracture leading to either deeper beyond the stone wall. There was no bridge to that other side.

Some part of the shadows over there appeared to move, and stone cracked and crumbled under some immense weight.

Come to me, child ... daughter ... sister of the dead. Come finish what I started with your birth. And let it all end!

Magiere choked, opened her eyes wide, and stiffened upright where she sat on the stone slab. She didn’t even know she had drifted off, and she shouldn’t have. She began shaking when she realized all fury and fire had vanished. And the sky was too light.

She spun where she sat, leaning to look eastward. Dawn had just broken over another line of distant peaks running southward. She looked up to the left, wondering how the mountains could have moved, but there above the foothills was the jagged wall of the Sky-Cutter Range. And when she lowered her eyes ...

Leesil was staring at her over his shoulder.

“What?” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”

Magiere peered again at those peaks. Once before, in the beginning, she had heard a hissing voice like windblown sand. It had come to her, dragging her on, in the search for the first orb in the Pock Peaks.

And as then, now all she wanted was to go east.

“It is time to return,” Ghassan said, rising to his feet. “Any ghul still nearby will not come out while the sun is up. And we need to head west to meet the others.”

Magiere was still staring at those peaks when someone roughly grabbed the collar of her hauberk. She flinched before looking into Leesil’s bright amber eyes.

And those eyes narrowed.

He knew, and still all she wanted was to go ... east.

“No!” he whispered at her. “No, not yet.”