The Night Voice

Chapter Eighteen

Leesil followed Ghassan down the passage into the mountain by the light of the sage’s cold-lamp crystal. Ghassan gripped the crystal while carrying a single chest, so its illumination wobbled on the passage walls with every labored step. Leesil struggled to haul two chests strung on poles with Brot’an behind him. Chane and Ore-Locks bore the final two chests. Leesil began growing concerned as Ghassan continued glancing into the side tunnels.

Those other passages were obviously dug out long ago. Though the domin paused a few times, he never appeared lost or in doubt. He walked like someone recalling the right route without even thinking. Ghassan had claimed he’d explored places like this in his youth, but it was highly unlikely he had explored this one.

Leesil pulled up short, dropped his ends of the poles before Brot’an halted behind him, and grasped Ghassan’s sleeve.

“What are you looking for?” he demanded.

Ghassan turned, the chest still in his hands. “Pardon?”

“You seem to be looking for something, but if you haven’t been here before ...”

A flicker of surprise on the domin’s face was followed by something else, but Leesil couldn’t tell what.

“Of course I have not,” Ghassan answered sharply. “I am seeking, even guessing at, the best downward path to wherever the Enemy might have sought refuge.”

Leesil had little option but to accept this explanation, though it still bothered him. Simply studying the mouth of a passage wouldn’t reveal where it led. Glancing back, he assessed the others.

Chane had a crystal as well, though it was not glowing right now. Even as an undead, he looked almost as worn as the rest. Whatever Ore-Locks had done to pull down that last locatha had taken something out of him. And no matter what Brot’an said or didn’t say, he was wounded. Leesil’s side still ached, and the ache turned to outright pain when he crouched to lift the poles and chests again.

“Get on with it,” he said.

Ghassan did so as Leesil adjusted the poles’ front ends. Then the domin stalled again, but this time stood staring ahead.

“What is it?” Leesil asked.

“A cavern,” Ghassan whispered, seemingly more to himself than in answer. He moved on. Not far ahead, his crystal’s light exposed a broad widening of the path.

Four pale white men stood in the way, each with a sword sheathed on his hip.

Leesil knew a vampire when he saw one.

Having been so burdened and tired, he’d forgotten to pull out the amulet that would’ve glowed to warn him before now. He dropped the poles in the same instant as Brot’an and heard the same for Chane and Ore-Locks. The impact of multiple chests echoed along the tunnel.

Leesil gripped the handle of one winged blade and drew the weapon from its sheath.

“Wait!” Ghassan hissed under his breath.

The four blocking the way wore matching black clothing—simple pants and shirts. All of them had hair down to their shoulders not quite as black as their attire. None had drawn a weapon. The tallest one stepped forward. He looked first at Ghassan and then the chests. Puzzlement flooded his features.

“Where is Beloved’s child?” he asked, almost as voicelessly as Chane.

Leesil tensed.

“Child?” Ghassan asked dryly.

Leesil already knew whom that meant: Beloved’s child, Magiere.

The Ancient Enemy had plagued his wife’s dreams, tried to lure her in, and now this. Chap had been right never to allow her into the mountain. The undead quartet seemed to have expected her. Worse, they didn’t look one bit surprised by anyone else who’d come.

The tall one’s gaze dropped again to the chests. “We will take the anchors. You will go and bring the child.”

As Leesil took two steps forward, Ghassan set down his chest and straightened.

“Really?” Ghassan answered barely above a whisper.

Doubt made Leesil glance toward the domin.

Ghassan blinked slowly, maybe lazily. Did his lips move in a soundless whisper? He then blinked rapidly and appeared to relax.

The tall vampire leader’s features went slack, and his eyelids drooped. Neither he nor the others moved at all.

“Take their heads off in one strike,” Ghassan ordered. “Preferably at the same time, so as not to arouse the others as one drops.”

Leesil hesitated and looked back to Brot’an.

Brot’an only watched the four intently and did not move. Neither did Chane or Ore-Locks, though Chane wore an angry frown as if he did not care for how easily this had been done.

Neither did Leesil. Though he knew Ghassan was a skilled sorcerer, somehow what had been done exceeded anything he had seen the domin do before. It was unsettling, and he turned his suspicion on the domin.

Ghassan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Since when have any of you been squeamish at the thought of—”

He broke off, quickly glancing back to his targets.

The one on the rear left shook his head slightly.

The tall leader blinked. His face wrinkled in a silent snarl as he jerked his sword from its sheath.

Leesil saw no choice and rushed in, catching the undead’s sword with his winged blade. The clang of steel pierced his ears—and head—as he shoved with all of his weight to drive back his opponent. He only managed one step, and then Chane was beside him.

Chane rammed the shorter of his two swords through the leader’s rib cage and jerked it back out.

Ore-Locks thundered past at another undead closing in a rush.

Leesil knew any vampire would be stronger than he was, much harder to kill, and the longer this went on, the worse the odds would become.

“Get another one!” he shouted at Chane.

As Chane rushed on, Leesil gripped the back of his one drawn blade with his other hand. He thrust the blade’s broad point into the leader’s other side, levered as it sank in, and heard the muffled crack of ribs. Before his target overcame pain and shock, he shouldered the undead into a retreat, which freed his blade. He slashed the weapon toward his opponent’s throat.

It tore through the side of the vampire’s neck.

Black fluids splattered over Leesil’s arm and onto his face.

Chane went for the next nearest target in the passage’s wider section. Four undeads would think they had an advantage over the living. While those with Chane were worn or wounded or both, it was not this worry that set off the beast inside him. It shrieked in alarm, and his own sense of reason warned him about what was wrong.

These guardians had been expecting them ... and Magiere.

As he closed, his new opponent snarled at him, exposing elongated teeth.

The vampire would not have seen him clearly in the dark tunnel, even with Ghassan’s crystal glowing. And while he wore his “ring of nothing,” these four could not sense him for what he was.

Chane let his hunger rise and answered in kind, exposing his own teeth.

His opponent’s eyes widened in hesitation, and Chane rushed inside its guard, striking with a fist first. Its head whipped rightward with the crack of impact. He followed with his blade.

Steel sank through shirt and flesh, grating along ribs, and shock rather than death stunned the vampire. Chane wrenched out the sword, blackened with its fluids, and struck, aiming for his opponent’s neck. His blade had barely broken through the vertebrae when the vampire’s head began to topple off.

Chane spun before the head hit the tunnel’s floor. He looked quickly among his companions for who was in the worst position.

Ghassan had his back to the tunnel’s left wall, and Leesil had already put down the first, tallest one. Another body could be seen beyond Brot’an, whose right hand and hooked knife were both coated in black fluids.

The last one lay in black-spattered parts at Ore-Locks’s feet. Its upper half still squirmed, but this ended as Ore-Locks’s double-wide sword clanged down through its neck.

For an instant, all of them stood looking from one body to the next. Only the sound of their labored breaths filled the silence. It had all been too easy, and this made Chane suspicious.

“Get the orbs,” Leesil finally commanded, sheathing his winged blade and glancing warily at Ghassan.

Chane also glanced at the domin, not knowing what to think.

Leesil said nothing more as he lifted the front ends of the poles for two chests.

Four vampires had expected their arrival, possibly that of the orbs, and of Magiere as well, as if addressing mere couriers or attendants. Did the Ancient Enemy know they would come?

Still, they could only go onward. Chane hurried to join Ore-Locks as Brot’an grabbed the rear end of the poles behind Leesil. But Chane continued to study Ghassan as the domin lifted his chest and stepped into the lead. It was not long before they stopped again.

“Valhachkasej’â!” Leesil hissed.

Chane stared ahead, at a loss. Though they had stepped into a great cavern, they could go no farther. They stood before the lip of a broad and wide chasm. All of them set down their chests again, and Chane reached the edge just after Leesil.

The chasm was so deep that Ghassan’s light did not reach the bottom. The same was true for the heights above, as if this gash within the mountain rose upward as well. It did not go straight down for what they could see. Its sides were twisted and jagged, as if it had been torn open ages ago by something immense ripping wide the insides of the peak. As Chane looked to the far side, he barely made out the black outline of another wound in the mountain’s stone.

There was no bridge to that other side.

He turned to Leesil. “Now what?”

Sau’ilahk ran into the battle—or what was left of it—to escape any pursuit or those arrows that had burned like acid upon penetrating his flesh. Along the way, bodies half charred or utterly blackened littered the plain. Soon, the sounds of the battle surrounded him.

Now there were more bodies scattered in red or black pools and stains, either whole or torn apart.

He slowed to a halt and looked behind him.

There was no sign of pursuit, on foot or horseback. Turning back to the battle, he second-guessed his choice to hide in this chaos or lure into it any who came after him. Then he heard the sounds of howling and cast about for its source.

Two forms on all fours raced along the battle’s westward edge toward him.

He knew those were majay-hì. Whether they knew what he was or not, they would when they neared. There was not enough time to conjure anything to defend himself, and he would need his reserves for something else.

He pulled his sword, though he had little skill with it, and fled farther into the battle. He went only far enough to be out of sight and then swerved eastward. Whatever might have been on the arrowheads that struck him still burned within the wounds in his shoulder and face. After centuries of lost beauty, damage to his appearance simply added salt to his wounds.

He wove through combatants tearing at one another, from goblins still much like those of his living days to at least one locatha set upon but unvanquished by three Shé’ith. One majay-hì in the fray spotted him; it was turned aside by a half-charred, half-naked vampire with manic, feral features. Among all of this were ghul tearing and biting at anything living, and other things he did not recognize.

Only twice did he have to strike awkwardly at something as he raced to the battle’s eastward fringe. There he paused, looking both ways, caught amid indecision.

Sau’ilahk saw majay-hì ranging north and south along the fifty yards of open space to the edge of the craggy foothills. He did not know what was happening with Khalidah and Beloved, and everything here had gone wrong. In this chaos, Beloved would soon have little or no army, but while that remained, the battle was the only place he could hide.

Wynn and her companions had once again lost the element of surprise, but what if Khalidah failed in that as well? Grabbing the medallion around his neck, Sau’ilahk focused his thoughts.

Khalidah! Answer me!

Again, no reply.

Rage and frustration overwhelmed him. The dhampir—the “child”—had to be in here somewhere amid the slaughter. Why else would every other witless, undead tool of Beloved not flee for its own survival? It had to be she who had sparked this frenzy.

And if he could not strike directly at Beloved ...

At the fringe of the carnage, Sau’ilahk began desperately conjuring another servitor—and another and another.

Leesil gazed across the chasm, at a loss. The presence of those last four vampires told him they were on the right track, but what did that matter?

“Now what?” Chane asked in his irritating rasp.

Panicked frustration overwhelmed Leesil. They couldn’t give up.

Then he thought of what he’d seen Ore-Locks do. He looked left and right below the chasm’s lip, but Ghassan’s light didn’t reach far enough.

The domin’s expression flickered before he turned right and walked along the chasm’s edge.

“There,” he said, pointing off level into the chasm’s darkness.

Leesil hurried over, hearing Chane behind him. He couldn’t see anything at first.

“There is a glint there,” Chane said, pointing.

Leesil saw it, perhaps caused by the crystal’s light reflected off some ore vein. There was a wall in that beyond a stone’s throw, so he hoped, but there was no ledge by which to reach it.

“I can attempt to float us across the chasm, one by one,” Ghassan suggested. “It will take time. And the more exertion, the greater the risk of losing someone, as well as an orb.”

Leesil peeked over the chasm’s edge into the pitch-black below. Half turning, he found Ore-Locks right beside Chane, though Brot’an remained guarding the chests.

“I’m not some bat to go flitting about!” the dwarf growled, and then peered off into rightward darkness. “If there is a true wall back there, I can go through stone to the other side, but only Chane can go with me that way. As to the rest of us ...”

Ore-Locks shrugged, and Leesil didn’t care for Ghassan’s notion. He had another idea.

“Everyone take off any rope you’re carrying,” he said. “Brot’an, get your bow assembled.”

“You have something else in mind,” Chane said. It wasn’t a question.

Leesil nodded. “You and Ore-Locks try to get to the other side with two chests. Once there, Brot’an can attempt to shoot the rope across. If it doesn’t make it the first time, we keep trying. Chane, you stay there to anchor the rope on the other side while Ore-Locks comes back for more chests.”

Chane nodded once, and Brot’an dropped to one knee.

The master assassin began pulling the disassembled pieces of his short bow from under the back of his clothing. Even as Ore-Locks went to the chests, Chane began searching about the open area around the ledge they were on.

“We cannot see what might await on the far side, or farther on if the tunnel continues over there,” he said. “And I see nowhere to anchor the rope on this side. Someone will have to hold it ... and be left behind.”

Leesil clenched his teeth, but everything Chane said was right.

“I will see to the last part.”

Everyone turned at Brot’an’s comment. His assembled short bow lay beside him as he struck a stiletto’s blade against a dark stone in his hand. Sparks flew.

“Begin assembling the ropes,” he instructed. “Tear off strips of cloth from lighter clothing, as many as possible.”

Again, he began digging into his own clothes and produced a small clay vial.

Leesil eyed the aging assassin. Just how many bits and pieces did Brot’an carry hidden?

After the ropes were tied together and a small pile of cloth strips lay before Brot’an, he tied one strip to each of three out of four short arrows. He then tied more strips together and lashed that length around the final arrow and the rope’s end. Last, he poured a sluggish black fluid out of the vial onto the remaining pile of cloth and the strips around the three arrows.

Two strikes of the stiletto against the black stone lit the pile, and Brot’an quickly lit an arrow. Brot’an rose and drew the arrow with one glance at Ore-Locks.

“Go,” Brot’an commanded. “Return once you determine if there is a way to anchor the rope on the far side.”

Chane hefted a chest. Ore-Locks did the same and grabbed Chane’s forearm. Both vanished into the half cavern’s wall, and Leesil had more worried thoughts.

What if there was another passage or space beyond the far ledge? And what if there wasn’t? There had to be. What if something therein heard an arrow strike or spotted its small flame?

Brot’an fired.

Leesil turned, following the flaming arrow’s flicker across the chasm through the dark. It quickly grew small, until he heard it hit. He saw the tiny flicker of flame skitter across stone and then come to a stop. As he was about to turn to Brot’an, another tiny flame followed the first, and then a third one.

Those small flames landing apart showed there was a stone floor on the other side.

They waited and watched for any sign of Ore-Locks and Chane.

However long that was, it was too long for Leesil. If no anchor point was found over there, even with both Chane and Ore-Locks holding on to the rope, there was still the question of who would be left behind. That one had to be strong enough to anchor the rope’s near end. Ghassan could likely cross the chasm his own way, and Leesil had no intention of staying behind.

“Do not be concerned,” Brot’an said quietly.

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.

The domin was about to step into the lead in gripping the rope, but Leesil waved him farther back, wanting to stay at the lead himself as Brot’an made his leap. At one quick whistle in the dark from the chasm’s far side, Leesil tensed.

“Brace,” he said, tightening his own grip.

The rope went slack, and Leesil’s hands clenched even tighter. He watched as the rope dropped down over the edge and suddenly shifted a bit to one side. It then lurched taut in his hands under a sudden sharp weight.

Brot’an must have run to one side and jumped at a tangent, trying to arc around through the chasm to keep from slamming straight into its nearer side.

“Don’t pull unless I say,” Leesil ordered the others.

If the rope frayed on the ledge, better that it did so in only one spot so that it could be cut and retied. They would need as much of its length as possible—if any of them survived to leave this place.

Weight on the rope increased rapidly in an instant. Likely Brot’an had used his arc to neutralize the collision and was running along the chasm’s wall.

The rope finally centered up over the chasm’s edge.

“Can you hold?” Ghassan asked behind him.

“Yes,” Leesil answered.

The domin hurried around him to the edge and looked down. He quickly straightened and turned around.

“He is on his way up.”

Leesil took a deep breath as he waited and held fast to the rope with the others.

Chap swerved as something gray and shadowy scrambling through the legs of the others tried to grab his foreleg with a bony hand. He barely glimpsed its head when it was suddenly stomped to a pulp under a huge booted foot. There had been no time or chance to see it clearly.

He kept running.

More than once he’d had to ram or brush one of his companions to get the male or female to break off an assault upon an undead. Keeping them with him in all this became harder with each panting breath.

There was only one target they—he—had to find. And his hunger was aroused by all around him, everywhere, with so many undead mixed in the slaughter.

Chap barely hung on to sanity, and that was slipping. His instincts nearly overwhelmed him; time and again he fought against turning on an undead that tried to assault him. Too much hunger and too many screams of fury and terror were coming at him from everywhere. Then he was struck by a hunger greater than the others—a hunger for one target. He fought to keep himself from hunting that one.

Yet when he sensed it, he clung to it and instantly lost himself. He swerved to seek it out as awareness of all else stripped away.

There was now only the hunt, and Chap had only one prey.

Sau’ilahk wove through the battle in a tangent toward where three majay-hì were headed. He had already lost two of his ground-level servitors along the way. Then his watchful one above showed him the large gray dog bolting in a fixed direction. The other two majay-hì fell behind in trying to keep up.

The battleground was thinning as more combatants fell, not all of them dead for a first or second time as they crawled and clawed across the parched ground. In a cluster ahead, one fought amid others all attempting to get at her. When she twisted to strike out at an opponent with hooked fingers, and follow with a wide and long single-edged blade, in the dark he saw her too-pale face curtained in flailing black hair.

Even among the other undead, he felt her most of all.

The urge to go at her with his bare hands was immediate.

Sau’ilahk restrained himself, fighting for self-control. Why did he feel driven with hunger? Something more was wrong about her, and then he sensed her life.

That was impossible for an undead.

Was that why the others went at her with such insane hunger? Her eyes were like nothing living, pure black without pupils, and yet she saw everything.

She had to be the source of whatever had happened to the horde. If so, was this somehow Beloved’s own doing? Who else could have done this, controlled this woman?

She nearly cleaved a ghul in half with her broad blade.

Planned or not, if this was Beloved’s doing, then that was enough for him. Betrayed again and again, if he could not strike down his tormentor of a thousand years, then he would end any of its tools. And by the way he took her life, Beloved would know who had taken her.

The gray majay-hì broke into sight and charged at the woman.

Sau’ilahk stalled again. Was it enough to simply watch Beloved’s tool be destroyed?

No, it was not.

Chap saw only the undead woman; he ignored all others. He broke through a tangle of those killing and those dying and fixed on the one that he hunted.

White face and black eyes were all that he saw. His hackles stiffened upright, his ears flattened, and his jowls pulled back. The need to hunt compelled him. This need fixed upon that one greatest hunger he sensed, even as the tiniest, deepest part within him shriveled in fright of himself.

And still he could not stop.

Some gray thing of slit nostrils and eyes as black as hers split slantwise under the strike of her sword. As its halves fell, he leaped through its spattering fluids and hit her straight on before she recovered from her swing.

In that scant moment, he saw only a tall woman’s pale, feral face, her fangs and distended teeth, and her eyes as fully black as darkness. Everything in the night tumbled as they both slammed down on the parched earth. He righted himself as she came at him on all fours.

Her hand clamped on his throat, choking off his breath.

With a twist of his head, he bit down on her forearm, grinding on flesh.

When that white face came at him with jaws opened wide, he raked it aside with his foreclaws and then tore at her abdomen, trying to rip through studded armor.

Something else slammed into both of them. He heard snarls, snapping teeth, howls, and screeches that were not his own as he tumbled. His head and body pounded on the hard ground again and again under the weight of others.

Chap smelled—tasted—something that cut through the hunger.

Blood?

Sau’ilahk barely evaded one ghul long enough for his servitors to assault it. When he spun around that tangle, he stumbled into a break in the battle to a sight that froze him.

The woman in studded leather armor rolled across the ground under the assault of two majay-hì, while a third such animal shook itself in trying to rise.

He was close enough to see her more clearly now.

She had the face of an undead—a vampire—lost in a bloodlust madness. But that face was also marred with scratches and claw marks that bled ... red, not black.

All around her lay dismembered bodies of ghul, other white-skinned men and women, as well as once-living things and other humans. The ground itself was soaked dark with blood and other fluids that stained her and the majay-hì as they thrashed and tore at each other.

She was a living woman who acted like an undead caught in maddened hunger.

That thing—she—had to be the one he sought. Given that she was unnatural in both life and death, nothing natural could have made her that way by birth, so she could have only one maker.

And that was the one who had made—tricked—him a thousand years ago with a wish for eternal life.

He saw in her some little part of what Beloved should have given him, instead of eternity as a fleshless spirit. This woman was the tool of his tormentor, his betrayer. But there were still those majay-hì in his way. He could not face all those at once and alone.

Anguish, hate, envy, and spite became one.

He dropped to his knees, slammed his hands down, and ground his fingers into the hardpack. As he bled away what he had left for a last conjury, Sau’ilahk, once the highest of Beloved’s followers, screamed out ...

“You—you caused all of this!”

That shriek of hate cut through Chap’s agony, and he pushed up to all fours with his head aching. He saw a white-skinned woman trying to grab two majay-hì that attacked her over and over. Still he was not certain what he saw. His skull pounded inside, he tasted blood in his mouth, and the scent of it made his head ache even more.

“If not Beloved, then I finish you—tool—to strike our maker!”

This second scream pulled Chap’s full focus. What he saw froze him, and that instant stretched out in his returning awareness.

A young man with blue-black hair, tall and well formed, hunkered on the ground with his fingers grinding into the hard earth. His face had a gash in the right cheek, and a like one bled at his left shoulder.

Chap sensed something more as he stared.

Undead ... another undead.

A memory surged up in the voice of Wynn as his mind replayed something she had told him. That face had a name for a young duke, but someone else hid behind it. Wynn had claimed that Chane destroyed this one, yet here he was.

—Sau’ilahk—, whispered Wynn’s voice out of memory.

How could he still be alive and whole?

Chap saw things scurry in around the man. Small, with single glowing eyes like balls of crude glass, they were half the size of a dog. Spindly like insects, their gnarled limbs looked like darkly stained wood.

And Chap remembered ... the prey ... his prey ... Magiere.

He gagged on the taste of her blood still in his teeth.

“Before dying,” Sau’ilahk went on, “Beloved will suffer as I have, helpless when I take your life. And when you are dead flesh, I will take its precious anchors as well. Tell that to your master when it creeps into your head.”

He sounded as if the Enemy wanted the orbs brought to it.

Chap went still and cold. Over the last season and before, he and those with him had sought to recover the orbs—the anchors. Had they unwittingly served the Enemy’s own wishes? Had he been so easily manipulated?

“Beloved will never be free!” Sau’ilahk hissed.

This recalled the words of Chap’s kin in the Lhoin’na forest.

Leave the enslaved alone.

If the Enemy had called the orbs to itself, was it already bound in some way? Had it never left the mountain in all of these centuries? And how would the orbs free it?

Those questions brought blind panic. Could everything they had done here have been wrong and exactly what the Enemy wanted?

His thoughts raced to what he had seen when he had touched the orb of Spirit.

As with the others he had touched at some time, he had felt a presence inside it. The Enemy—the dragon in that placeless timelessness—was a Fay. So why did it want the orbs, the anchors? Did its greater minions—Sau’ilahk, the specter, and others—seek the orbs for it or against it? Did some of them wish to destroy the Ancient Enemy themselves?

Leave the enslaved alone.

The Enemy had manipulated him to bring the orbs together and had done nothing to stop its own servants from the same purpose and worse. Did the ancient one—the Night Voice—want someone to use those orbs to kill it? Why?

Chap looked around at the carnage Magiere had created. Yet nothing had stopped her or the Enemy’s forces, as if it were all as desired. And Leesil now had the orbs somewhere inside the mountain in seeking out the Enemy.

The implications were beyond any terror.

Chap had seen five Fay who sacrificed to create Existence. Had one of them sought retreat from that? Was the Ancient Enemy one of those five? If so, what would happen if it vanished from existence?

He remembered the presence he had felt when Magiere mistakenly opened the first orb beneath the six-towered castle in the Pock Peaks. Leesil had claimed he saw a shadow in the shape of a massive serpent with a head that Wynn later claimed was a weürm, a serpentlike dragon.

Leave the enslaved alone.

Chap began to tremble. Caught between bringing Magiere back to herself, and pulling Sau’ilahk down, and finding a way to halt Leesil, he was too late in ...

Magiere tore loose from one majay-hì. The other was down and not moving. She charged for Sau’ilahk. The earth cracked around Sau’ilahk’s hooked fingers as something began to emerge.

Snarling, Chap charged on a line between them.

The night suddenly lit up from the north.

Caught in a chorus of screams all around, Chap stumbled, blinded for an instant.

Osha halted short of the battle and quickly unstoppered the small bottle Wynn had forced on him.

It should not be this way. What it held should have been for her. And what she had asked of him should have never been asked.

He pulled the last two arrows with white metal tips and sank each head, one at a time, into the bottle. After replacing the stopper, he tucked the bottle away inside his tunic. Then he rose and nocked one arrow with the other pinched between two fingers of his hand around the bow’s handle.

Still, he hesitated.

If what Chane claimed was true about the fluid affecting the undead ...

If he did what Wynn asked to stop Magiere ...

Osha did not want to think of murdering a friend. He looked toward the chaos before him, not hearing the shouts, raging snarls, growls, and screams. All he heard were his own shallow, quick breaths and the hammering of his heart.

Light filled the dark from behind him.

So many out there scrambled to escape, though the staff was too far to burn most of them. As they scattered, he saw so much more.

Magiere rushed at another target, and even from afar, Osha could see her fully black eyes. This time, Wynn’s light did not bring Magiere back. The dhampir was all that was left of her. As tears leaked from his wide eyes, he wiped his sleeve across them.

Then he raised and drew his bow, knowing he could not miss his target.

As Chap’s sight cleared, his every thought stilled at the sight of Magiere.

She screeched and snarled as one of Sau’ilahk’s small stick-creatures leaped into her face. Even as she clawed the thing off, the large male majay-hì rammed her legs from behind. Magiere toppled back and hit the ground.

“No!” Sau’ilahk screamed out. “She is mine!”

One of those glowing-eyed stick things went at the majay-hì as Magiere thrashed over onto all fours.

The ground around Sau’ilahk’s hooked fingers began to break apart.

Chap howled as he charged at Magiere’s back to stop her before whatever came out of the ground. She spun, and he faltered.

Magiere’s eyes fixed on him as if she had forgotten any other target. There was nothing left of the woman he knew, only the dhampir, only a monster out of his worst nightmare.

All he saw was her, just as he had once seen her in that sorcerous phantasm in the forests of Droevinka where everything living around her died.

Was he to die here at the hands of someone he loved?

She charged, and he set himself, ready to lunge.

Magiere’s snarl twisted into a shriek of rage—and she stumbled and lurched.

An arrow stuck out through her hauberk between her chest and right shoulder.

Chap saw his own shock mirrored in Magiere’s white face.

That face twisted quickly into pain as smoke welled out around the arrow’s shaft. Black lines spidered through her face and then her hands, and she dropped the falchion.

Magiere fell screaming and thrashing upon the ground. And there was Sau’ilahk on his feet, staring in shock.