Барб Хенди - The Night Voice

She had to keep that staff lit, and even that would not hold off anything but an undead. He tried to see Magiere more clearly, to get a look at her face, but she charged into another cluster of combatants.

In despair, Chap looked up and down the eastern fringe of the battle. Two forms spun out of the carnage, surrounded in a circle of wheeling and snapping majay-hì. Wayfarer and Vreuvillä backed toward the rise of rocky hills.

A vampire and a ghul on the outskirts of the battle spotted them.

At the sight of this, Chap lost all sense of reason and charged for them.

As Wynn watched Chap run, she clung to the staff with both hands, and her only thought was to keep the crystal ignited. She’d never kept the light burning for so long, and she was exhausted from her efforts in the battle thus far.

Still, in this moment, she had one task and one task only.

To keep light flowing outward into the night.

Wayfarer shuddered as she backed away from the battle behind Vreuvillä. She was sick with fear at what she had seen—and where was Shade? They had lost each other in circling around the battle’s eastern side as the remainder of one pack dove in and out. Where was Osha?

Yet even all of this worry and confusion could not wipe away one previous, horrifying sight.

A sharp light had risen suddenly to the north, and so she had known Wynn was out there. But by that light, the warrior woman she had come to care for and respect so much was barely recognizable.

Magiere’s fully black eyes, like those of some other creatures out here, terrified Wayfarer. She had wanted to run both to and away from the sight, but Vreuvillä had insisted, “Stay close to me.”

The sound of tumbling stones now behind her did not wipe away that vivid memory until she heard them a second time.

Wayfarer twisted around in fright as Chuillyon half slid, half hopped the last steps off the rock slope of a foothill. He slowed and stared out beyond her.

It was the first time she had ever seen him without a half-amused expression on his long face. She thought he might start to weep in looking to the battle behind her. Vreuvillä fixed Chuillyon with a cold glare.

There was no liking between them and never would be from what little Wayfarer had learned.

Chuillyon’s gaze still focused somewhere out beyond the priestess.

Then Vreuvillä spun toward the battle, dropped to a half crouch between two majay-hì, and spread her arms with her long curved blade ready.

When Wayfarer turned, someone grabbed her from behind. Another of the pack rushed in front of her on guard. She heard Chuillyon whispering some chant as his arms closed around her. Two things rushed at them over the open ground from the battle’s edge.

One had a face as white as a corpse. Human-looking, its irises sparked like colorless crystals in the distant light of Wynn’s staff. Flapping shreds of clothes were stained red and black in spatters and smears.

The second one was naked with nearly colorless flesh, even to the slits where there should have been nostrils. All over it, bones showed beneath shriveled, shrunken skin, and it began to outdistance the other one.

A handful of majay-hì rushed for the first attacker ... just before a huge silver-gray dog came out of nowhere and slammed into the naked monster.

Wayfarer could not help a gasp, cringing back against Chuillyon, as that gray majay-hì tumbled with the creature and came up atop it. It began savagely shredding flesh with it teeth and claws. Amid the growls came that thing’s screams. She lost sight of it for an instant, looking to three of the pack that set upon the pale one in shredded clothes. But for the first ...

She knew who it was.

Wayfarer had seen few majay-hì as large as that one except for Chap.

A pure black majay-hì suddenly charged in to help the gray one, but its prey had already fallen limp and silent.

Chap lifted his head and trotted toward Wayfarer, his muzzle stained with black fluids, but it was Shade who reached her first, brushing her hand without passing any memories. The pale target of the other three majay-hì somehow broke free and scrambled back toward the chaos.

Wayfarer pulled from Chuillyon’s hold and dropped to her knees to grab Shade first, but she then threw one arm around Chap’s neck, ignoring the stains that his head smeared upon her shoulder.

He had wanted the majay-hì and the Shé’ith to come here this night. She and Osha had helped make that happen, though Vreuvillä had been reluctant to deal with Chuillyon. None of them could have known Magiere would not gain control over the undead among the horde, or lose control over herself.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

Before Chap could answer, Vreuvillä brushed her free hand over a majay-hì’s head. That one wheeled to bump shoulders with another, which in turn did the same, and onward. Whatever message the priestess gave to the first spread quickly as half those nearby dispersed, running off in both directions parallel to the battle’s edge.

Wayfarer quickly touched a passing mottled one before it rushed northward. She caught the message passed through the pack via memory-speak.

Chap asked her a question.

—What ... is happening?—

She was too focused on turning flickering images, smells, and sounds into needed words. And when she did, she hesitated.

“They are to find all of their kind,” she answered, “and pull back to any fringe and out of reach.”

Chap’s eyes widened in his stained face. The instant he looked to the priestess, Shade spun as well and snarled, but Vreuvillä had already rushed Chuillyon.

“Heretic!” she accused. “I will cut you for every one of us lost because of your deceits—and leave you to bleed out like them!”

Wayfarer rose, fearful of what might happen. Vreuvillä saw herself as one with the packs, and even Wayfarer had come to feel this in some ways, but she had no chance to intervene.

“I could not have known,” Chuillyon answered, and looked out again toward the battle. “Not that, not this.”

—She is ... correct ... for now—

Wayfarer’s eyes dropped to Chap.

—Magiere ... may attack ... anyone ... now—

“What is he saying?” Vreuvillä asked, her voice filled with fury.

Wayfarer flinched.

“He says you are right. Keep the packs out of the battle for now.” And then, at more of Chap’s memory-words, “Let the undead turn on others in the horde, such as the goblins, and decrease their numbers.”

Wayfarer did not mention Chap’s concern about Magiere. In her current state, Magiere might slaughter anything that got in the way of her going after the next undead in her sight.

“Where is that light coming from?” Vreuvillä demanded.

“It must be Wynn Hygeorht,” Chuillyon answered. “And her staff, with a unique crystal.”

“How long can she keep it ignited?”

When no one answered, Wayfarer’s fright increased.

Vreuvillä’s savage and mournful eyes only looked upon the battle. “You must go! I will stay with our own ... for changes that may come.”

Wayfarer nearly stopped breathing. “What am I to do?” she exhaled.

“Wish for the light.”

— What ... does this ... mean? —

Wayfarer could not answer Chap. She had never done what Vreuvillä now asked—a true wish, as some would think of it who did not understand. What if she could not? What if she failed, and Wynn could not hold that light any longer? What if Wayfarer herself could not maintain that “wish” for long enough?

And what if she succeeded at what price?

—You ... must ... try—