Барб Хенди - The Night Voice

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.

Days slipped into nights, until Chap nearly lost count as various ships carrying him and Chane sailed north up the entire continent. One evening, as the sun dipped lower, he stood on the deck of a small ship in the chill air and looked out at a snow-crusted shoreline.

All land in sight appeared glazed, frosted, or frozen, but he knew where he was, as he had been here before. He focused on a coastal settlement ahead along the shore.

“White Hut!” a sailor called from the bow.

Dusk was near, though the captain would not force him to disembark until Chane awoke. Though it had grated on Chap at first, he had grown reluctantly accustomed to playing Chane’s “dog” after so many days and nights.

In the early part of the journey, he had wondered how Chane would manage long-distance travel since he fell dormant the instant the sun rose. Yet this had proven surprisingly easy. Chane simply told any vessel’s captain that he suffered from a skin condition and could not be exposed to daylight. Odd as it sounded, no one questioned him. Some, such as the first mate of this ship, had even expressed sympathy.

The journey so far had passed without incident. From the Suman port, they sailed directly to Soráno, where Chane had proven useful. He already knew where the caravaners camped beyond the city and quickly found one group loaded up for a journey to a’Ghràihlôn’na—“Blessed of the Woods”—and the central settlement of the Lhoin’na.

Chane had offered both Osha’s and Shade’s services as caravan guards in exchange for passage. He paid Wayfarer’s fee in coin.

While Chap would never admit it, he would not have managed this so easily on his own. After that, all that remained was a somewhat painful good-bye to Wayfarer and to Osha as well. His panic at leaving them to a foreign people and land did not pass quickly. He had to trust that Shade and Osha would guard the girl as much as possible in whatever she would face. He still believed her safer in this than in following Magiere and Leesil.

Parting from Shade had been painful in a different way, and at best civil.

There could be no reconciliation after what Chap had done to his unborn daughter, left behind long ago, and the only glimmer of what little trust might now exist between them was one he had not recognized at the time.

Often during the voyage’s first part, Wayfarer could not stand remaining in the cabin she shared with Osha and Chap himself. Shade always slept in Chane’s cabin. One day, Chap had gone up on deck to find Osha sitting on the cargo hatch’s edge with Wayfarer at the rail nearby.

Shade was there next to the girl.

With her forepaws on the rail as she too looked out over the water, she must have heard or sensed something. Shade glanced back once at Chap and returned to watching the ocean with Wayfarer. At least Shade had accepted the girl as her new charge, but something more did not occur to Chap until later that day.

Shade had left Chane unguarded.

Whether she believed her father would not act against Chane, or that no one would, considering he was now necessary, Chap would never know. Chane did check in with everyone whenever he rose after dusk. Those were tense times at best, but there were others late at night that only Chap noticed.