Барб Хенди - The Night Voice

For a moment, Magiere couldn’t speak.

“Just in case,” she said finally, “should something come looking for what we left in the mountain. I won’t need that blade anymore.”

Before he could say anything, she turned and swatted her way into the tent.

Inside, with the cold lamp she’d left there now dimming, Leesil lay on his back upon a bedroll with his head propped against Chap’s shoulder. Both had their eyes closed in exhaustion.

If they were actually asleep, she didn’t want to wake them, and if not ...

Magiere dropped and crawled in, putting her back against Leesil’s chest and her head up against Chap. Nothing more needed to be said, though she heard Leesil whisper, whether asleep in exhaustion or not.

“Home ...”

Chane stepped to the chasm’s edge beneath the mountain peak at the easternmost end of the Sky-Cutter Range. Wall-mounted lanterns with alchemically heated cold-lamp crystals lit the half cavern around him. Their light still could not reach the chasm’s far side as he stared numbly along the cable-suspended bridge that spanned the wide breach.

The stench of lamp oil filled the air around him.

On the chasm’s far side, along another hidden tunnel, was another cavern where grew a new child, or grandchild, of Chârmun among a skeleton of huge bones. The bridge was not the only transformation made beneath the mountain over the past thirty years. Other comforts had long ago been arranged for the two guardians who lived here—himself and Wynn.

Ore-Locks with his stonewalker brethren, Chuillyon and several more legitimate white sages, and a select few of the newer green order had all contributed. There were gifts and other support from the small number of allies who knew what had happened here.

Ore-Locks had also seen to safeguards for the way in and out of the peak, and there were now multiple, connected chambers nearby, cut into the mountain’s stone to serve as a home. The youngest stonewalker had been a good friend, the likes of which Chane never thought he would have.

Tonight he stood alone with Magiere’s falchion in hand, staring across the bridge. Since that long-past night when she had tossed this weapon at him, he had never drawn the blade that had once taken his head.

But he did so now and stepped out along the bridge, sword and sheath in his hands.

The rope cabling was inspected and repaired as needed each year. It swayed a little, and yet he did not need to grip the braided rope railings. The earliest nights beneath the mountain were still fresh in his memory, when he had escorted Wynn to check the sun-crystal staff.

On their first visit, she had felt her way onward without him. Without sight, she did not trust just touching the staff to know if the crystal was still lit. She draped her cloak over it and called out to him, and only then did he dare enter.

The sun crystal was still glowing—it was always still glowing.

Over time, they guessed this must have been the influence of Chârmun’s child, tree and sun crystal sustaining each other.

After that first visit, Chane remade some physical protections that he had once used—along with a potion to fight off dormancy—in protecting Wynn during daylight hours. With his body fully covered, he could accompany her to check on the crystal. Once they entered the cavern, she still threw a cloak over the top of the staff, as even his covering would not protect him for long. Although Chane knew they did not need to fully enter the cavern to see that the crystal glowed, Wynn insisted on making a full check of the staff and tree. Perhaps it helped her feel she was fulfilling her duty.

It was several years before Wynn willingly missed even one night’s visit to the tree.

Over time, the new grandchild of Chârmun grew more and more immense.

Chane could imagine it even now, as he walked the chasm’s bridge, though he would not go to see it this night or ever again.

Its branches nearly reached that cavern’s walls, though under the canopy it was difficult to tell if it had reached the ceiling higher above. Even while wearing the “ring of nothing,” Chane had always felt it prodding him, trying to uncover what he was. Through that tree, all but Ore-Locks and his kind visited this place, and others were brought by white sages of Chuillyon’s previous order.

Chane stepped off the bridge into the far half-cavern landing, but he went no farther. Instead, he leaned the falchion and its sheath against one of the bridge’s upright anchor posts. About to turn back, he hesitated, peering toward the landing’s rear. He barely made out the passage leading to the cavern of immense bones caught in the great tree’s spreading roots.

Two cold-lamp crystals were mounted in plain holders on the bridge posts. He took out the nearest above the falchion, rubbed it furiously for light, and replaced it before heading back.

He crossed the bridge again and paused upon reaching the other side, remembering.

In their early time here, going to the tree had always left Wynn somber. On several occasions she had resisted his help in the return and blindly felt for a grip on the braided railing.

Her frustration had grown worse—and dangerous—in that first year after so many visits to the staff. The sun crystal she never saw for herself was what had taken her sight. Perhaps in her blindness, she never knew how much of that he saw in her face.

Chane had not foreseen the lengths to which this would drive her.

Or at least he did not until one night when the white sages had come through the tree to deliver seasonal supplies. As always, they helped him move crates and baskets across the bridge, taking the previous empty containers with them. After a brief parting, he took a moment to assess the stores and discovered a pouch of roasted chestnuts crusted with cinnamon and nutmeg.

At the prospect of anything that might cheer Wynn, he left everything else and hurried off with the pouch.

A short ways up the passage, he had turned into an opening excavated by Ore-Locks and others. Therein were the chambers he shared with Wynn. They were filled with cushioned chairs, a few orange dwarven crystals for heat, a small scribe’s desk for himself and his journals, and shelves with odd things and many books that he read to himself or her. By the end of that first year, they had the comforts of a true home beneath the mountain.

But Wynn was nowhere to be seen that night. Though not exactly worrisome, it was odd. She always settled for the evenings in this outer chamber. He stepped onward toward the back of the room, and as he was about to open the heavy curtain within another opening, he heard the whispers.

Quietly, he pulled the curtain aside.

Wynn knelt on the stone floor at the bed’s foot, having pushed aside a thick rug. By her whispers, he knew what she was doing, but he hesitated at breaking her focus. He feared some worse mishap if he interrupted.

What had she been thinking?

Without true sight, how could her mantic sight ever show her even the Elements within all things? The taint in her from a thaumaturgical ritual gone wrong so long ago could do nothing for a blind woman. He had never felt so restrained in helplessness, waiting for her to fail.

Wynn stopped whispering.

She pitched forward, caught herself, hands braced on the floor, and gagged. Then Chane dropped the pouch as he charged for her.

He dropped to his knees, and she collapsed against him, breathing too fast and hard.

“What are you doing? Why?” he asked softly.

Her head toppled back, struck his shoulder, and her eyes opened wide. He watched those brown irises shift more than once, pause, and shift again about the chamber.

She slapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes clamped shut. Her other hand slammed down on his folded leg, and her small fingers ground into his thigh. He felt nothing in his worry—except shock.