Барб Хенди - The Night Voice

Leesil looked back and up, but Brot’an merely stared across the chasm. It still unnerved Leesil how often the assassin thought several steps ahead of everyone, but what steps this time?

Chap ranged along the battle’s outskirts. The undead he could now see numbered less than the living—but there were still too many to fix on any one. Their presence ate him inside, and it was hard not to cut loose and hunt the nearest one.

The longer Magiere remained in there, the worse the situation would become, yet he was still uncertain how to stop her. Should he run her down or try to reach her through memories? What if both failed and he was left with only one other choice?

Could he face losing her if he had to take her over completely?

No other options came to him.

He readied for the worst and then heard paws and claws closing behind him. Spinning around, he bared his teeth.

Two majay-hì raced in from the south where he had left Chuillyon and Vreuvillä. He watched as they neared and circled him. The large, mottled male passed close enough to brush his shoulder.

An image of the wild priestess erupted in Chap’s mind.

All he could guess was that she had sent this pair to him. For an instant, he wished his daughter were here. Shade had spent time among their kind and knew better the ways of memory-speak.

Chap huffed once as the speckled gray female came close. In brushing her shoulder with his head, he called up his memory of Magiere fully lost to her dhampir side. Then he bolted off into the battle, looking back once to see that the pair followed him.

He charged into the snarls, screams, and bloodshed, almost deafened by the noise and assaulted by flashes of combatants half lit by scattered fires. With only two unknown majay-hì beside him, there were too many other things all around him.

Chane fell to his knees and dropped his chest as Ore-Locks dragged him out of stone. For an instant, he could not discern on which side of the chasm they had emerged. Though he did not need air, he could not help choking a few times. Then he saw two of Brot’an’s arrows on stone still lit.

Sick, weakened, and embarrassed at having dreaded yet another venture through stone, he struggled to his feet.

“All right?” Ore-Locks asked.

Chane nodded and pointed to the arrows. “Wave two of those to let them know we are here.”

When Ore-Locks did so, Chane saw Ghassan’s crystal light on the chasm’s other side swinging back and forth.

“The rope comes next,” he added.

Though he listened and watched for anything that might come, nothing did. There was another deeper darkness at the back to this huge hollow on the chasm’s far side. The distant sound of a bowstring’s thrum pulled him back around.

Both he and Ore-Locks stepped quickly to either side of the half cavern.

Chane listened but heard nothing for an instant. Then came the soft clatter of an arrow and the flop of something far off ... and down in the chasm below. It was not hard to guess.

The rope’s weight had been too much for the shot. Only then did he remember the cold-lamp crystal he still carried.

Chane dug it out and rubbed it between his palms. He heard another bowstring thrum. It took three more shots for the rope-weighted arrow to clear the chasm.

Ore-Locks hooked it with his outstretched sword.

Chane rushed over to pull the arrow free as he gripped the rope.

“Three more chests,” he whispered, and, with a nod, Ore-Locks vanished into stone.

Sau’ilahk’s wounds still burned inside from Osha’s arrows, though he did not know why. He dodged through the chaos as his stick-creature servitors harried and tripped up anything in his way. Another kind of servitor, consisting of gas, wormed through the air above him.

Seeing the battle through the roiling cloud of scintillating mist, as well as with his own eyes, made him nauseated. He had not felt this way in centuries, but this was the only way to navigate and keep his bearings. Somewhere in this madness below the mountain was the reason for why Beloved’s forces turned on themselves. More questions tormented him, and he was exhausted from too many conjuries.

If the creatures in the horde were Beloved’s tools, why had it not seized control of them? Why did it allow them to decimate one another? And why had Khalidah still not answered him?

Perhaps Beloved was not the only one who betrayed him. Whatever caused this chaos was the work of either of his betrayers—or perhaps both. Had Khalidah used him to regain the orbs for Beloved?

And he still had not finished with Wynn Hygeorht.

Through the gaseous servitor’s view, something more bizarre pulled his attention. Three majay-hì wove, snapped, and rammed through the battle, and yet others of their kind were nowhere around him. The only others he had seen had retreated to open ground.

Sau’ilahk hesitated, trying to quell wrath and anguish. Why would these three reenter the battle but not stop to finish off any prey?

As he watched them race onward, two of his stick-creature servitors with glowing eyes tore at a goblin in his way. One tried to get at the beast’s eyes. As that bristling monster wailed in and tore away that one, he hacked into its skull, double-handed, with his sword.

Sau’ilahk thought of those three dogs as he focused upon his spy above.

Follow them!

Leesil settled a hand on the rope pulled across the chasm between Brot’an behind him and Chane and Ore-Locks on the other side. All five chests had been taken through stone, and now Ore-Locks and Chane stood like anchors, holding their side of the rope, ready for Leesil to cross over.

First, Leesil peeked over the nearer side into that endless darkness below, and with some hesitation, he looked back to Ghassan.

“You’re certain you can get across ... your way?”

Ghassan sighed with a roll of his eyes. “Yes, if you will get on with this.”

At that, the domin took hold of the rope in front of Brot’an.

It appeared that only Leesil would have to cross this way, though Brot’an’s way across would be worse. There had been a good deal of arguing about that once he’d finally announced his plan.

How he would survive a swing across, avoid slamming into the far wall, and climb or be pulled up—if he kept his grip—wasn’t imaginable.

“Go,” Brot’an said.

With little choice, Leesil gripped the rope, hooked one leg over it, and reached out along it beyond the ledge. He pulled himself hand over hand, stopping more than once to rest for the span of two breaths. Still, he crawled as fast as possible so the others wouldn’t have to hold him up longer than necessary.

He was never foolish enough to look down.

Looking up into the endless dark above was bad enough. By the time he heard Chane rasp, “You are clear,” he was exhausted.

Leesil unhooked his legs, felt with one foot for solid stone, and dropped to his feet. He quickly took hold of the rope in front of Chane, though they all relaxed for a moment.

Ghassan would cross first—at Brot’an’s previous insistence.

At first Leesil saw nothing in the dark out over the chasm. All of Brot’an’s lit arrows had been extinguished to save them, but Chane had illuminated his own crystal and left that by the edge. Something drew nearer, above in the dark, taking form by the crystal’s light.

Ghassan slowly floated toward Leesil, though higher above, and the domin’s eyes fixed straight ahead. He never wavered or dropped lower or higher, until he began to descend. As he arced down to alight without a sound upon the ledge, it was as if he had simply taken a stroll in midair.