Барб Хенди - The Night Voice

He had paid no notice to small lines that grew on Wynn’s oval face or the few strands of gray that appeared in her wispy brown hair. He knew she would age while he would not, but she had barely passed the age of fifty, and there was so much time left for them.

One night, she did not eat.

When he asked, she told him she was not hungry. He should have listened to the way she said this. In the following nights—and days—she barely ate at all.

The look of discomfort, then pain, began to show on her face.

He wanted to take her to a coastal city for a physician. She was too weak for the long journey. He wanted to take her to the tree in the hope that she might be able to call to someone through it for help. She became too weak to walk that far, and then so fragile that he feared carrying her.

He grew desperate to find some help, and so he dressed to shield himself before entering that far cavern alone. Even protected, he felt himself begin to burn. He threw Wynn’s cloak over the crystal for more protection, and then realized he would still have to remove a glove to ...

When he and Wynn had gone among the Lhoin’na, he had not dared to touch Chârmun.

Would its offspring allow him to do so? Would it affect him like touching the white petals he once used in the healing potion that had stopped Magiere? And even if he could touch it, what then?

He was not a white sage, one of Chârmun’s chosen.

By his nature, he was its enemy. If it killed him, Wynn would have no one to care for her.

He stood there in growing discomfort and then in pain, until smoke began to seep out around his clothing. Finally he fled into the passage’s dark, out of reach of the sun crystal’s light. Frustrated panic drove him back to Wynn, and he desperately hoped that someone would soon come to them.

One night, Wynn could not sit up.

That this happened during another supply visit by white sages was pure chance. Even so, Chane knew it would take a long time to get a message to Magiere, Leesil, and especially Chap.

But he sent a message with the sages. He also begged them to send him a difficult-to-obtain ingredient called boar’s bell. They had hesitated to agree until he told them what it was for.

They left.

Chane waited.

Shortly thereafter, Chuillyon arrived and brought two healer sages of the Lhoin’na guild branch. They brought the boar’s bell and more Anamgiah blossoms, but the blossoms did nothing for Wynn, not this time. Chuillyon took the healers back to the tree and sent them home, though he remained awhile longer.

Chane used the boar’s bell to re-create the potion to stave off dormancy that he had once needed to guard over Wynn while they had searched for the orbs. In this way, he could care for her both day and night.

On the sixth following night, just before dawn, Chane lay beside Wynn, their heads on the same pillow. Her eyes were closed, and he thought she was asleep. Then her hand sought out his, though her eyes did not open.

“I would rather have lived my life here with you,” she whispered, “than with anyone, anywhere else, in this world.”

His throat tightened, and he was about to answer, when the bedchamber was suddenly too quiet. Afraid to even shake her, all he could do was whisper her name, over and over, louder and louder, until his rasping voice tore at his own ears.

The silence had come when Wynn stopped breathing.

He lay there all day and through the next night with his face pressed into Wynn’s shoulder. When he finally emerged, Chuillyon was still there in the outer room. The tall Lhoin’na said nothing and only nodded respectfully.

Rather than burn again, Chane let Chuillyon place her body in the cavern with the tree. He gathered stones from outside the peak for the elder sage to mound up her grave cairn. Chuillyon left after promising to look for Magiere and the others himself, though it was already too late for them to come.

Chane now often crossed the bridge to reignite the cold-lamp crystal on the far side—just in case someone arrived. Until tonight, he had not thought of the sword Magiere had thrown at him. Only tonight had he brought it and left it at the chasm’s far side.

It was a warning and an invitation.

He had a “life” because of Wynn, but that life was now over.

And yet he would—could—not die with her a third and final time.

All around him the stench of lamp oil was thick. He had spread so much of it that even the bottomless chasm’s air had not yet dissipated those fumes. It had taken most of the previous night to scavenge enough for his need. But it would not be enough to be certain.

The presence of the orb beneath the tree’s roots would still reach him. Yes, he could have fled the mountain and gotten far enough away that its constant feeding of him could no longer heal his wounds. Even then, he could not be certain that fire would finish him rather than leave him charred to rise yet again.

There was only one way to be certain of following Wynn.

How long did he wait there, sipping from the flask of potion to keep himself awake? How many times did he cross that bridge, now shivering from lack of dormancy, to relight that one cold-lamp crystal at the far side? Was it more than one night, another day, three or maybe four?

In the silence, he heard distant footsteps on stone.

When Chane looked, the cold-lamp crystal at the bridge’s far end had dimmed again, but not enough to hide someone standing near it. That someone finally reached down to grasp the falchion’s hilt and then strode slowly along the bridge.

She no longer wore the studded leather armor, for that had been lost—cut off her—the morning after all had ended outside the mountain. Instead, she wore a plain shirt beneath a dark brown cloak that she flipped back over away from her sword arm.

Magiere stepped off the bridge’s near end. She did not look a day older than the night when she had been struck down by an arrow. Then again, neither did he.

“Wynn is gone,” he said flatly in his rasp.

She had maimed his voice, when she had taken his head with that blade once before. And that was the only way to be certain of a final death. But all she did was look away toward the passage beyond him where his home—Wynn’s now-silent empty home—lay.

Magiere’s eyes turned back on him.

“You knew this would happen eventually,” he said. “So do it ... since this is what you have always wanted.”

She watched him with no emotion on her pale face framed in blood-black hair.

“No.”

Chane flinched at her one word, suddenly panic-stricken in grief. Where was the monster in her, now that he needed it for the monster in him?

“It’s not what Wynn would’ve wanted,” she said, “not for you, not for either of us.”

Chane began to shudder, either from too many nights without dormancy or just the despair of failing to follow Wynn.

“I won’t come back again,” she said. “I am leaving, and I suggest you do the same. That staff will never go out, and now that Wynn is gone ...”

Magiere dropped the falchion. It clattered on stone as she turned away. She was three steps onto the bridge before he lunged after her.

“You had a life because of her,” she said, pausing but not turning back. “Don’t waste whatever’s left. Don’t do that to her. I won’t do that to her ... for you.”

Chane stood there, watching her leave. He took up the falchion, prepared to go after her. She never broke stride and never looked back.

“I am nothing without her!” he shouted. “So let me be nothing!”

“And how’s that possible?” she said. “You came back—twice. Maybe a monster, and maybe something else, because of her. Would she want that wasted?”