Барб Хенди - The Night Voice

Wayfarer found Chap watching her. Had he caught what she feared surfacing in her thoughts? Before she asked, his head swung aside, and he huffed at his daughter. Shade circled in, wriggling her head under Wayfarer’s left hand.

—Follow—

Shade took off northward, but Wayfarer still stalled as Chap headed for the battle.

“Where are you going?”

He halted, and his stained face swung toward her.

— To stop ... Magiere—

In panic, Wayfarer shouted to Vreuvillä, “Help him!”

Wayfarer had to turn away and run at Shade’s bark. She followed as Shade veered closer to the foothills and away from the battle’s edge. The noise of bloodshed grew less overwhelming, mostly because of her panting breaths at trying to keep up with a majay-hì.

She did not hear the hoofbeats until they were almost at her back.

Wayfarer veered left, screaming, “Shade!”

When she spun to face whatever threat, nothing more would come out.

Osha quickly reined in his horse, or perhaps it pulled up on its own to a stuttering stop. He looked down at her and then back along the edge of the foothills. He suddenly thrust his hand out and down at her.

She knew he had not abandoned the other Shé’ith for her.

There was no time to feel anything even though he had come for Wynn.

Wayfarer took his hand, but she had to jump and wriggle to get up behind him.

“Go,” she shouted around his side, and Shade wheeled and bolted off again.

Osha’s mount lunged, and Wayfarer threw her arms around his waist. The farther they raced toward the light, the more they left the sounds of rage and agony behind.

Then an agonized scream carried from something ahead.

The light went out.

Sau’ilahk lingered in hiding, clutching the medallion around his neck at a loss. Khalidah had instructed him to help distract some of the horde long enough for Leesil’s team to slip past—without knowing they had received any help. So Sau’ilahk and Ubâd had split up, each with several plans to distract the horde, and he waited—and waited—for Khalidah to contact him and tell him when to act.

Even as majay-hì and Shé’ith had come out of the foothills, he still waited for a message from Khalidah.

At the bright light appearing twice in the night, going on and on the second time, he knew Wynn Hygeorht was out there to the north with her staff. At first, he had cringed down behind a boulder in fear that it might affect him as normal sunlight did not.

Nothing had happened to him, and he had risen to squint northward.

Still no word came from Khalidah.

His hatred for the wayward little sage grew into satisfaction, replacing frustration. Soon enough, he had to look away, for he now had eyes that could be damaged.

And this thought brought him a smile.

Blocking out the world, he focused inward. Within his thoughts, he stroked a glowing circle for Spirit upon the ground’s heat-baked earth. Within that came the square for Earth, and then a smaller circle for Spirit’s physical aspect as Tree. Between all of those lines, he stroked glowing sigils with his intention.

Spirit to the aspect of Tree, Tree to the essence of Spirit, and born of the Earth. His energies bled into a pattern that only he could see, and he began trembling in exertion.

A shaft of blood-black barked wood cracked the earth.

It jutted upward, slowly thickening until that limb bent over, somehow suppler than it appeared. Along its length, six tinier limbs sprouted to rip its body from the ground. A small knot of ocher root tendrils twitched around its base as it faced him.

Sau’ilahk bled even more energy into his creation.

Bark peeled back around the root-knot. Tendrils coiled tighter and tighter into a ball, and that sphere took on an inner light.

It blinked at him.

A flexing wooden lid of snarled tendrils clicked over a glowing orb for an eye. The newly created servitor then spun away to skitter off into the night.

“No,” Sau’ilahk whispered.

The servitor barely hesitated, and Sau’ilahk reached for the fragment of his own consciousness embedded in his conjured creation. It halted, twitching and fidgeting, until it finally submitted to its creator’s will.

“Go to the light,” he commanded. “Attack the one who holds it.”

The servitor skittered away.

Sau’ilahk’s eyes hurt too much when he looked toward that glare. And this thought sparked a cruel inspiration.

“Wait,” he said.

The servitor halted.

Sau’ilahk winced and blinked as he looked toward the crystal’s light. He did not have to speak and only smiled. The servitor would know his will, and it quickly raced off.

Wynn struggled to maintain focus upon the sun crystal. She had never before held it alight this long. And worse, its glare and the dark lenses shielding her eyes made it difficult to see anything at a distance.

She knew only that whatever undead had not burned and fallen had fled back toward the horde, and Magiere had followed them. They were all too far off beyond the staff’s light to see. She longed to know what had become of Magiere and Leesil—and Chane—but the staff and keeping the undead in check were her purpose.

She blinked, growing tired, shaky, and weak.

This close to the crystal and under such strain, even the glasses were not always enough. She did not notice something else until she heard it over the distant sound of fighting. Then it was so close, like a broken branch dragged over hard, rough ground.

Click-click ... click-click ...

It was too rhythmic for a tumbling branch with no wind to drive it.

Wynn looked about through the narrow view of the darkened lenses. She had to turn her whole head. When she spotted something, it did look like a branch—branches—but the color was wrong. The bark was reddish in the crystal’s harsh light.

A chill took her as the branch sprang at her, growing too large in her narrow view.

She screamed in pain as it struck her face.

Clutching at it, she released one hand’s grip on the staff. The living branch clawed her face, trying to get under the glasses at her eyes, as other parts of it clawed toward the back of her head. One of those legs hooked the cord about her neck. She thrashed, still clinging to the staff with her other hand ... as the glasses were torn off.

Blinding light filled Wynn’s view.

When she clamped her eyes shut, all she could see was white as she fell. Her breaths came too fast for her to cry out, and her eyes felt on fire. She could feel tears on her face as she pushed up, only knowing that she had fallen when she braced both hands on the ground—both hands empty.

She’d dropped the staff.

She heard the skittering sound again, but everything was dark. When she looked about, turning her head toward the distant fighting, she couldn’t see even the red spark of fires. The skittering grew nearer, as if coming for her again.

And she still couldn’t see it.

“Hold,” a voice commanded.

Wynn froze, listening. Her breaths came and went quickly, and as she looked up, there was no moon, no stars, only more blackness before her pained eyes.

“How good to see you,” taunted the voice. Wynn knew that voice, for it had once belonged to the young duke of Beáumie Keep.

“Though you will never see me ... even one last time.”

Sau’ilahk was here, and Wynn was blind.

Sau’ilahk could not recall such contentment, even unto ancient times, when all had looked upon his beauty with awe as the high priest of Beloved.

Wynn Hygeorht had taken nearly everything from him, and now he had her on her knees.