The Night Voice

Chapter Three

Four nights later, Chane stood on the docks of the Suman Empire’s capital port, preparing to board a ship for a long journey in the company of a majay-hì who hated him. Osha, Wayfarer, and Shade were joining them on the voyage as well, though they would go only partway to another destination. Somehow—and Chane was still not quite sure how—Wynn had convinced Osha to accompany Wayfarer to the forests of the Lhoin’na.

Even on the docks, the hot and dry air was thick with the scents of spice, brine, people, and livestock. Most of the dusky-skinned citizens walking near the piers wore light, loose-fitting cloth shifts or equally loose and light leggings or pants. Wraps in varied colors and patterns upon their heads were done up in short or tall, thick or thin mounds. Some people herded goats or carried square baskets of fowl.

A large Numan vessel waited thirty paces down the dock from where Chane stood. He still could not believe what he had been forced into accepting.

Everyone who would remain behind for the desert search had come to see off the others. This was not a night like any other, past or yet to come.

The decision had been made—or forced—to gather the three hidden orbs. From then on, every spare moment had been filled with preparations. He and Wynn had had no time to speak of anything that mattered to them, to him.

Wynn had soon realized that Chane would encounter issues in communicating with Chap along the way. The only reason that Magiere and Chap could exist in close proximity to Chane was because of the arcane “ring of nothing,” as he called it, that he wore on his left hand. As a dhampir and majay-hì, hunters of the undead, they were driven into a hunting rage if they neared anything undead.

Chane could be seen, heard, and touched by natural means, but anyone with the ability to sense his “unnatural” state could not do so while he wore the ring. Even his thoughts and memories were shielded from invasion. Only the ring kept his nature from breaching the tentative truce with Chap and Magiere.

However, it also kept Chap from speaking to him through memory-words.

Chap could express “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” by a series of huffing sounds. One huff meant “yes,” two meant “no,” and three meant “maybe.” This would hardly be enough for the two of them to create or agree on plans while traveling.

By way of answer, Wynn procured a thick goat hide. She wrote the Belaskian alphabet in the center and then created rows of commonly used words at the top and bottom and down the sides. Chap would be able to point to simple words or spell out more complicated ones, and in this way, they would be able to communicate. Apparently, Magiere and Leesil had used something similar in the past called “the talking hide,” before Chap had learned to call up memory-words.

Chane now carried the new hide in his pack.

Three moderate-sized chests had also been procured to hold the three orbs to be recovered. Passage had been purchased for them to travel north on a route that stopped over at the Port of Soráno, where Wayfarer, Osha, and Shade would disembark to head for the lands of the Lhoin’na.

Chane would sail onward with only Chap.

What little coin was left had been divided two to one, the greater part for himself and Chap.

It was all so cut-and-dried.

Wynn stood facing him on the dock and had not said a word so far. She was so short—or he was so tall—that she had to lean her head back to look up at him. Her pretty, oval face surrounded by wispy light brown hair always made him ponder how much of his existence ... how he had been altered by this woman whom he loved. And now she was sending him away while she went off with Magiere and some of the others to scout eastward into the great desert.

She had done so by playing his love for her against his better judgment. Her words still haunted him.

Please ... do this for us ... for the world.

For “why,” she was right, but for “how,” she was wrong, and he should never have consented. Now it was too late.

Wynn was one of the few who both cared and had placed herself in position to take action against large forces and events almost no one else could foresee. She had asked for his help, and he could not refuse her.

“Chane,” she said, and that one word always left him vulnerable to her.

In her eyes, he saw himself as no else did. He wanted to be what she saw. She did not see him as a killer or a monster, though he had been—perhaps still was—both. To her, he was a companion who had fought at her side. She saw him as strong and resourceful and necessary.

He could do something for her now that no one else could.

Ore-Locks won’t give the orb to anyone but you ... not even me.

Yes, one orb had been left with the wayward stonewalker and his brethren for safekeeping. Perhaps not a friend, but at least a comrade, Ore-Locks was the true inheritor of the orb of Earth. No one else could ever dare ask for it.

“It’s been so long since we were apart,” Wynn said.

Hearing her words took away his own. All he could say was, “Be safe.”

Reaching out, she touched his hand. “I need to tell Shade good-bye.”

He nodded as she turned toward the younger majay-hì.

“Take this.”

The sudden other voice startled him, and he turned his head quickly.

Ghassan il’Sänke held out his hand, and Chane looked down. In the ex-domin’s palm was a tiny nondescript pebble.

“Keep it with you,” il’Sänke said, “on your person at all times.”

Chane’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Likely, none of them would ever return to the ensorcelled sanctuary hidden in the empire’s capital.

“Why?” he asked.

“I am the one who placed the ensorcellment upon it, so that it could be used to open the hidden sanctuary doors. I therefore have a connection to it and will be able to gauge your general distance and direction. It will be easier to find and meet you when you and Chap return to this region.”

Chane still hesitated; he did not like being “tracked.”

Il’Sänke glanced toward Wynn, who was kneeling before Shade. “How else will I—or she—find you along the foothills, mountains, or a vast desert?”

With some reluctance, Chane took the pebble, knowing he was being manipulated.

When Wynn turned from Chane, she forced herself not to look back, or she might say something she’d later regret. There were others watching that she also had to face. All of this was harder than she’d expected.

It could be a whole season—maybe more—before she would again see those who had traveled at her side for so long. Parting with Chane was especially difficult.

There was nothing else to be done. They all had tasks to complete.

Shade stood waiting, eyeing Wynn fiercely with her hackles slightly bristling. Wynn knelt down on the dock and took Shade’s charcoal-colored face in her small hands.

“Please, sister,” she said quietly. “Don’t make this any harder for us both. You have to watch over Wayfarer ... and Osha.”

Shade remained silent for a long moment, and her hackles stiffened upright as she gave a rising growl. One memory-word exploded in Wynn’s mind.

—No!—

Shade pressed her whole head into Wynn’s face.

— ... Not go!— ... —Wynn cannot be ... alone— ... —... unsafe ... dangerous—

Shade’s grasp of words was far less developed than Chap’s, even though she’d been the first to figure how to single out words from Wynn’s memories and use them to “speak.” Unlike Chap, Shade could do this only with Wynn and only when they physically touched.

Wynn had not expected another outright refusal immediately before boarding. She wasn’t angry. How could she be? Shade wasn’t being overprotective here, as she sometimes could be. Of course, Wynn would be at risk without Shade—or Chane or even Osha.

“You must go,” Wynn whispered, glancing at Wayfarer, who was thankfully occupied in checking the contents of her pack. “Wayfarer needs at least one majay-hì who will be on her side, no matter what.”

Closing her eyes, Wynn recalled a night not too long ago, when Wayfarer, Chap, Magiere, and Leesil had been freed from a whole moon’s imprisonment. Upon emerging, the girl had leaned on Chap, unable to walk on her own. In remembering, Wynn reminded Shade of that moment.

“She will need you,” Wynn whispered into Shade’s ear, “as I have needed you ... and your father.”

Shade jerked back with a snarl, but Wynn didn’t let go of her.

Wynn had hoped this journey might bring some understanding in a daughter for why a father had both abandoned her and through her mother sent her away from her home. Wynn said nothing more about it, as it would do no good here and now. As with everything else, she could only hope.

“Take Wayfarer to Vreuvillä,” Wynn added, “and guard her. Only you can do this.”

Shade’s neck muscles tightened under Wynn’s hands, though she did not pull away.

“I will miss you, sister,” Wynn murmured. “Until I see you again.”

She could at least say such things to Shade, if not to Chane ... or Osha. And she rose quickly before any tears fell, prepared to face the last one.

Osha eyed her, his expression full of pain and maybe spite. He turned his back to her and crouched to fuss with the luggage for the journey.

Wynn clenched her jaw, breathing hard to hold back more tears. And when her sight cleared ...

Magiere, farther down the dock, turned to look back, her pale face emotionless.

“Boarding has started,” she called. “Sailors are coming for luggage.”

Leesil stood a few paces short from her and hadn’t said much in the past four days. Chap stood beside him and, thankfully, refrained from any more snarling at Chane. Wynn knew the situation went against all his instincts, but it was his plan.

Three pale-skinned sailors came trotting down the dock.

“Anything else?” the lead one asked in Numanese with a glance at the three chests.

“Just those,” Chane answered, as he always carried his own packs.

Magiere strode over to embrace Wayfarer, whispered something in the girl’s ear, and Wayfarer held on until Magiere had to pull free. Osha came and took Wayfarer’s hand to lead her after the sailors carrying the chests. Chane followed them with a last slow nod to Wynn, which she returned, and he called to Shade.

Shade lingered.

Wynn nodded with a weak wave to push Shade onward and then dropped her gaze. She couldn’t watch any longer.

There had been painful partings in the past among all of them. Two groups who’d grown to depend upon and trust those with them had been split and mixed in ways that would make trust among some of them almost impossible. More than just sorrow now weighed upon everyone.

It was the worst of partings in Wynn’s whole life.

It will not get better, but you can face it, little one.

Wynn raised her eyes to meet Chap’s. He hadn’t called her “little one” in years.

I trust you most of all. Watch yourself until I find you again, but watch those two most of all.

Wynn looked to Magiere and Leesil.

No ... the other two.

Wynn hesitated but did not turn. Somewhere behind her, Ghassan and Brot’an stood waiting. They were the only two, besides Chane when he was wearing his ring, from whom Chap could never see any surface thoughts.

Chap huffed once at Wynn, and she barely had time for a wave before he trotted up the dock after the others who were boarding the ship.

Khalidah returned to the tenement with Magiere, Leesil, Wynn, and Brot’an. Upon reaching the warped front door, he led the way in without pause and upstairs to the top passage, where he stopped before the paneless window at the far end. Khalidah closed his grip hard on one of Ghassan’s pebbles.

The shadowy form of a heavy door overlay the window.

He twisted its lever handle, and, as he opened it, the door became solid and real to all present. He held it open and ushered everyone else inside.

The first to enter was the dhampir, and he purposefully avoided eyeing her in any conspicuous way. But the last to enter gave him reason for a second glance. Brot’an’s—Brot’ân’duivé’s—first step through the doorway was almost hesitant.

It was so brief that anyone else might not have noticed.

For Khalidah, once leader of the triad called the Sâ’yminfiäl—“Masters of Frenzy”—under Beloved, very little of true use escaped his notice. More so where enemies were concerned. The elder “shadow-gripper” took one quick glance at the door’s frame as he entered. Perhaps a slight frown crossed that scarred face, and his large amber eyes narrowed for an instant.

“Well, it’s done,” Leesil said.

The half-blood and the dhampir both looked drawn and weary as they stepped to the table, but they didn’t yet sit.

“Yes,” Wynn said, “and there’s no turning back.”

She began fussing about for a ladle to dip water from one of the large jugs. The sage would likely be making tea, though no one had asked for such, and it was rather late. Brot’an was the first to settle in a chair, and he sat waiting.

With three people and both majay-hì removed, the main room looked far less overcrowded. Not that Khalidah planned to join them at the moment.

“I must go out,” he said in Ghassan’s voice, and at that he felt the domin squirming in his—their—mind. “I need to report to the prince ... to the new emperor that I will be leaving soon.”

Wynn’s brow wrinkled as she turned. “You haven’t told him yet?”

“No, and I thought to wait until the journey was imminent. You should all rest while you can, and I will let myself back in.”

He left and pulled the door closed before that annoying little sage pestered him even more. The false window overlooking the alley reappeared.

Khalidah strode down the passage, down the stairs, and out into the night streets. Of course he was not going to report to the new emperor. That was simply the most believable excuse for what he must now do.

A different meeting had been arranged.

While he walked the night streets, his thoughts lingered upon one left behind in the sanctuary, the only one who truly troubled him.

Try as he might, not once had he penetrated the thoughts and memories of the scarred greimasg’äh.

That both majay-hì minds had been impervious as well was no surprise, but the elder elf was another matter. Each time he had tried to slip into Brot’an’s mind, he found his efforts obscured by shadows.

It was like knowing there was movement somewhere within a maze of black gauze curtains. Each time he sensed movement therein, and swatted aside another drape of night fabric, he faced only more of the same.

Khalidah was suddenly aware of how quiet and still Ghassan il’Sänke had become.

“Oh, tsk-tsk, my domin,” he whispered inwardly and aloud. “Do you truly think there is some hope in the scarred one? Quite the opposite.”

Walking deeper into the city, he navigated toward a less-populated area composed mainly of shops long closed. There, he slipped into a cutway between an eatery and a perfume shop and stepped out in the back alley for a strange gathering.

Khalidah’s gaze fixed first on a man standing apart, as if pretending he had no connection to the others. He was tall and well formed, and his face was so pale that it appeared to glimmer even in the dark. Except for his head, nothing more of him was exposed, from his black gloves and leather-laced tunic to his dark pants and high riding boots. Oh, and then there was a wide leather collar of triple straps buckled around his neck, as if he needed that extra support to keep his head erect.

Sau’ilahk eyed Khalidah in turn without a word, both of them hiding in stolen flesh, though at least Khalidah’s own was still alive. Fallen Sau’ilahk had once been first and highest of the Reverent, priests of il’Samar, Beloved, during the Great War. Actually, he and his had been simple conjurers, though he too had been betrayed by Beloved.

Khalidah knew the story, or at least the important parts, which were all that mattered.

Sau’ilahk had begged his god for eternal life; he should have asked for eternal youth instead. Only one would have given him true immortality and kept his beauty unmarred by age. Forced to watch his own body decay and die, he still gained his eternal life, of a sort, as an undead spirit. The wraith, Sau’ilahk, had only regained flesh most recently.

Poor, poor priest, high or not, undone by boundless vanity and assumed synonyms.

Khalidah was careful not to smile. The ex-priest was not to be trusted any more than when they had hated each other in their living days. Now a mutual hate for their god was greater than that, and Sau’ilahk’s hate could be useful.

As to the other one who had come for the gathering, Khalidah’s gaze shifted as a small, semitransparent, and glimmering girl-child in a tattered and bloodied nightshift stepped toward him out of the alley’s darkness.

Light from a streetlamp at the alley’s end both illuminated and penetrated her. Her visage was that of the moment of her death, including her severed throat. She stopped beyond arm’s reach and peered up as if he were an undesirable necessity.

Behind her came a litter with two large side wheels rolled by a pair of muscled men—both animated corpses. At the sight of Khalidah, the men rocked the litter forward until its front end clacked on the cobble. Lashed to the litter was a preserved corpse held erect by straps.

His hands, folded and bound across his chest, were bare, exposing bony fingers and nails elongated by withered, shrinking skin. He was dressed in a long black robe, and where his face should have been there was a mask of aged leather that ended above a bony jaw supporting a withered mouth, likely more withered in death than in his last moment of life.

There were no eye slits in his mask.

Somewhat like that of the ex-priest in stolen flesh, the corpse’s neck was wrapped in hardened leather to keep its head upright. Unlike Sau’ilahk, this creature was from the current era though still pretending to serve Beloved.

Ubâd, a filthy necromancer, could not move and had trapped himself somewhere between life and death. The only way he could speak was through his conjured slave, the ghost girl.

Khalidah knew little more, but he needed to know only that Ubâd had also been betrayed by Beloved. How unfortunate not to see the hate in his face, as in Sau’ilahk’s.

“You are late,” the girl said too articulately for her apparent age. “Do not keep me waiting again.”

Khalidah sighed. “My time is limited.” Raising his gaze to the corpse, he added, “So do not waste it with petulant complaints.”

Slowly, Sau’ilahk stepped nearer. “Why are we here, mad one?”

“To see the end of our beloved affair, of course,” Khalidah answered. “Which has become stale and tasteless ... no, moldy. I guess—I know—it has for you.”

Sau’ilahk remained silent a moment, and then said, “Get to the point.”

Khalidah’s self-satisfaction remained. “I have the dhampir. And even now those who follow her are gathering the anchors of creation.”

He let those words hang to savor his triumph, his superiority.

Sau’ilahk’s expression filled first with shock, and then a shadow of doubt. “Is this true?”

“The vampire and gray majay-hì sailed tonight,” he related. “They travel north to the white wastes of this continent for two orbs. Upon return, they stop at the last seatt of the Rughìr, the dwarves, for the third in hiding. They claim they know the route from the north side of the Sky-Cutter Range that emerges on the south side through—”

“Through Bäalâle,” Sau’ilahk whispered.

Khalidah smiled. “Oh, yes, a great loss in the war that was ... more for me than you. I convinced the dhampir there are reports of undead heading eastward in the great desert. She and those remaining behind will travel there with me, bringing the orbs of Spirit and Air as we ‘scout’ to verify these reports.” He paused for effect. “When the vampire and the elder majay-hì rejoin us, all five orbs will be in my possession.”

Sau’ilahk’s expression hardened. “This vampire ... Is he called Chane Andraso?”

Khalidah shrugged. “Yes.”

Taking a few quick steps closer, Sau’ilahk nearly walked through the ghost girl. “He is mine to kill, as is the small sage!”

“And I take the gray majay-hì!” the ghost girl added, sounding bitter and unhinged.

Khalidah was certain of the necromancer’s and Reverent One’s hate for Beloved, though theirs would never match his. As with the vampire and the two majay-hì—and Brot’an—it had been impossible to read the thoughts of his conspirators. It had not occurred to him that they might harbor petty, personal grievances.

Well, this too could be useful, if it kept them focused and distracted in the end.

Dramatically, he shrugged and spread his hands.

“As you both wish, so long as these desires can wait. Playing my part as the fallen domin is still to your advantage. Wynn Hygeorht trusts Ghassan il’Sänke more than she admits. Where she goes, Chane and both majay-hì will eventually follow. You two will play your parts until I say otherwise.”

Sau’ilahk tilted his head. “And what are our parts?”

“Bait,” Khalidah answered. “The dhampir expects to find undead to the east, though the others each hope in different ways that she will not. I will instruct how you will fulfill that expectation as we proceed.”

As an undead, Sau’ilahk would need to feed as he traveled, though how would be uncertain. There was not much to feed upon in the desert and mountains, as Khalidah knew well, so what was found needed to serve for sustenance as well as another purpose.

“What of Andraso and the gray majay-hì?” Sau’ilahk challenged. “They are beyond being monitored. You have no way to know if they return early, or at all, or with or without the missing orbs until they arrive.”

Khalidah raised an eyebrow. “And what makes you think I have not accounted for that?”

“Have you?” Sau’ilahk pressed.

“I have dealt with it,” Khalidah countered. “I will always know their direction and general distance.”

He was not about to elaborate or share information concerning the ensorcelled pebble he had given Chane Andraso. Better to leave his confederates in the dark—and ignorant of the pebble’s other potential uses. Besides, as Ghassan had ensorcelled the pebble, it was forever connected to his mental presence. So long as Khalidah kept that presence alive and imprisoned, he as well controlled the pebble.

It gave him more power over the pebble’s bearer than Chane knew. Well, if and when the lowly vampire ever removed that irritating brass ring.

The ghost girl eyed him. “Once the orbs are gathered, you know Beloved’s last resting place?”

The answer required great care. He had seen it, and he suspected so had Sau’ilahk, but the range was vast and a thousand years had passed. The images were vague.

“Even if not,” he began dismissively, “once the orbs are gathered, dear Beloved will certainly call us. We, as our god’s most potent—and obedient—supplicants, will bring the anchors to our god. And then ...”

The rest need not be said.

Khalidah knew more than these two about orbs—the anchors. He had learned through success as well as defeat and failure nearly ultimate. As leader of the triad, the Sâ’yminfiäl, whom the dwarves had called the “Eaters of Silence,” he had been at the fall of Bäalâle Seatt in using the anchor of Earth.

He still remembered the roots of the mountain suddenly blowing apart around him. He remembered the agony of being simultaneously burned, torn, and crushed. His last willful act at the instant of death was to tear his own consciousness free.

Neither priest nor necromancer could have done so, yet it gained him too little and too much ... for Beloved abandoned him to his fate. Centuries passed before any living being with the necessary mental capacity had wandered near enough for him to seize, and it was longer still in that longest starvation until he found something else upon which to feed. And then, captivity again by il’Sänke’s hidden sect, trapped in the pure darkness of an ensorcelled, brass sarcophagus for so many years.

Neither of these two corpses in this alley knew such suffering ... or the absolute purity it brought. And Beloved would never expect open betrayal either. His god believed him cowed in fear and reverence.

To kill a god meant to become a god. And again there would be only one, only him.

Oh, but he had savored this too long.

Reaching inside his cloak, he withdrew a medallion hanging on a chain and held it out to Sau’ilahk.

“What is it?” the dead priest asked without taking it.

“A communication device, invented by my current host and his dead peers. I took it off one of them and wear one myself. Wear it against your flesh.”

Sau’ilahk only watched him and did not move.

Further explanation followed another sigh and tsk-tsk. “Anyone with your arcane ... background should have no trouble mastering it. If you feel it grow warm, I am attempting to contact you. Hold the medallion, and my thoughts will reach you. If you wish to contact me, hold it in your hand and focus upon me in your thoughts.”

Sau’ilahk still hesitated. “What do you mean, your thoughts will reach me?”

Khalidah wanted to sigh. “It is much like speaking, though either of us only hears thoughts the other wishes to share. We must be able to locate each other. Take it!”

Sau’ilahk hesitated again but reached out and took the medallion.

Khalidah glanced from the ghost girl to Ubâd. “You will all leave for the desert tomorrow night ... and I will instruct you as opportunity permits.”

A brief silence followed, and the ghost girl answered, “Yes.”

Trapped inside his own body, Ghassan raged in panic, though no one but Khalidah would hear him. The only answer he received was to feel his own face smile softly. Then his body turned and stepped back along the cutway out of the alley.