Барб Хенди - The Night Voice

Leesil pulled, rolled, and kicked Ghassan’s body off.

“Brot’an?” he whispered, and then louder, “Brot’an!”

The master assassin didn’t move.

“He is gone.”

At that rasp, Leesil twisted on one knee to find Chane—and Ore-Locks—standing behind him.

“I would ... know,” Chane added, his gaze locked on Brot’an.

Chane didn’t look good. He was shuddering, and his eyes were still colorless. Leesil looked back down.

He didn’t know what to think or feel.

Ghassan had turned on all of them, and there was no knowing how or why. Brot’an didn’t have any new wounds, and yet he was dead. What had just happened?

—Now you are the only one—

Leesil lurched to his feet, instinctively facing the immense horned skull.

—My death ... no, my freedom ... means yours as well—

The Enemy was still here, in some way.

Leesil looked everywhere but saw nothing, not even the shadow of an immense coiled serpent or dragon as in the cavern below the six-towered castle. What little light was present led his eyes to Ghassan’s crystal on the cavern floor, likely dropped in the struggle with Brot’an.

He sheathed one blade, grabbed up the crystal, and raised it high, again looking everywhere. Somewhere outside the mountain, the battle went on.

Leesil didn’t want to imagine what had happened to Magiere if this unseen thing could no longer find her. Then he felt a light grip on his arm over the branch lashed onto it.

Ore-Locks uttered a sharp exclamation in his own tongue.

“Wynn?” Chane rasped.

Leesil lurched back, pulling out of that grip, and there was a startled Chuillyon quickly raising his hands. Behind the tall elf stood Wynn, still lightly gripping Chuillyon’s robe as she looked blankly down at the cavern floor. She had her staff in her other hand.

Chap startled Leesil yet again as he came around from behind Chuillyon.

—Kin ... treacherous kin of my kin—

Chap froze just short of Leesil as he heard that hiss. Judging from the way Leesil had turned about, he had heard it as well, as had Ore-Locks. Only Chane did not react, and then Chap saw the bodies.

Ghassan and Brot’an both lay unblinking with eyes open. Both looked battered, but only the former was bloodied.

Chap looked to Leesil’s stained blade, and yet there was no time to question whatever had happened here.

Chane rushed around him to Wynn. Though she turned at his movement, she did not—could not—look at him.

There was no time for that either.

—And why do my kin send one of their guard ... dogs—

That hiss sounded—felt—somehow familiar. By the light from a crystal that Leesil gripped, Chap studied the skeleton. Dead for so long, those bones might have almost melded with the stone if not for their size. He looked up to Leesil.

—Do ... nothing ... yet—

“Where’s Magiere?” Leesil asked, quick-stepping in.

“She’s with Osha and Wayfarer,” Wynn answered, though her eyes focused on nothing. “With Shade and the Shé’ith commander also; they hid her away in the foothills.”

—Enough ... listen!—

At Chap’s sharp demand, Leesil flinched.

“Wynn?” Chane rasped. “What is wrong? Look at me!”

Before Chap could say anything, Wynn reached out, groping for a grip on Chane’s arm.

“Not now,” she told him.

—So, dog, you have power to command the others—

The tone of that hissing, both in Chap’s ears and in his head, was so disdainful. It was also too much like the chorus of whispers when he communed with his kin, and too much like the voices when he had touched the orb of Spirit, though now there was only one voice.

He answered it.

—No—

The voice then filled with rage or panic or both.

— Open the anchors, whelp, or I will summon even more of my servants. And none of your companions, your wards, will ever leave this place—

Chap tilted his head.

—There is no one left to call, or you would have called them ... called her—

“What’s happening?” Leesil asked. “What did you say to it?”

Chap ignored this distraction. It would not be hard to know to whom the Enemy now spoke, though no one else here could have heard his own answer. No one except perhaps Wynn, and she was wise enough not to let the Enemy know so.

A moment of silence followed, and then ...

—I can call upon hundreds to hunt you for the rest of your short days ... and nights. Oh, yes, especially the nights. Even if you are not found, I remain when you are food for worms and then forgotten dust—

That one word—“forgotten”—lingered in Chap’s thoughts.

How much longer than a thousand forgotten years of history had it been since the Fay, the One and the Many, made a world—an existence—to escape nothingness? How many times had all of this happened before, as one of five among those who had sacrificed for the others sought to be free again?

—Why do you sympathize with those who call you deviant? You and I are not so different in that—

“Chap,” Leesil whispered, “what in seven hells is happening?”

“Leesil, shut up!” Wynn warned.

And yet Chap hesitated.

—Order the mixed-blood to open the anchors ... and free me—

Chap was at a loss. A part of him could feel empathy for the voice, after what his kin had done to him. He no longer believed his losses of memory from his time among his kin had been by his own choice. They had done that to him.

Had they likewise tricked those of their own who had made such a sacrifice for the rest to have an Existence? And still ...

—No—

At his simple refusal, the hiss became pleading in tone.

—I am weary ... and wish to be no more—

After all of the hints that Chap had heard and pieced together, he knew the last of that statement was a lie. Destroying the Enemy would mean removing one of what the sages called the Elements from among the other four. To do so would unmake Existence.

Why would it want such a thing?

Chap ground his paws and claws against the cavern floor’s stone. He called upon the element of Earth first, letting it fill him. From there he reached for Water from any moisture in the cavern. Then Air, and then Fire from the heat of his own flesh.

He asked: —Who—what—are you?—

With that single question, he began to burn in blue-white flame as he added his own Spirit. This time, no one would see this, for Wynn was blind.

Chap launched his thoughts into the dark. His self as a Fay broke loose, and the cave around him vanished. In that darkness, weightless and bodiless, he felt it ... that other timeless presence, so mournful, spiteful, and chained. And through it, he looked back as far as he could and learned much more than he had forced from his kin.

We will create Existence. We will enliven it with Spirit.

Five distinct and separate presences among his kind could be heard: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Spirit. But one of them—Spirit—rebelled, as Chap had in his own way after being born into flesh. It wailed in panic.

Once something is created, there is no power to control it.

Its—Chap’s—kin did not listen.

Existence came to be, time itself formed without beginning or end, and Spirit wailed out again.

Less and less can this be controlled. Undo what we have done.

And again, it was ignored. The other four swarmed upon and subjugated Spirit to “anchor” it among them. Eons passed, a world formed, and the first lives upon it were born.