The Night Voice

by Barb Hendee

  Both went off.

  “Come on, Chap,” Leesil said, heading for their tent, and then he looked at Magiere.

  She nodded silently and turned to follow. Leesil lifted the flap, Chap crept in slowly, and Leesil looked up. Magiere faltered upon spotting something else beside that tent.

  “In a moment,” she said.

  Leesil frowned but nodded and slipped inside.

  Magiere stood paused over her falchion. There was no other blade like it for what it could do to the undead. She picked it up, began to draw it slowly, and stopped before a three-finger breadth of the blade showed. Then she turned as Chane was about to duck inside a tent behind Wynn.

  “Wait,” Magiere called.

  Chane froze without flinching, though he eyed the sword and then her. Magiere slammed the falchion back into its sheath and threw it at him across the camp. Stunned, Chane straightened in dropping the tent flap as he caught the weapon.

  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 . . .”

  EPILOGUE

  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.

  In the brief moment Wynn’s eyes had opened, they had moved more than once about the chamber.

  She had seen something.

  Her eyes opened again, and he thought she might sicken again. Then she looked up at his face so near to hers.

  “Chane?” Wynn whispered.

  He should have made her stop then and there, but he could not.

  Obviously she had been toying with this in secret whenever he went hunting lizards and desert rodents to supplement their supplies. Or when he was working to improve his meager conjuring, which eventually moved from fire to water for their additional use. Given her loss of sight, he had never thought she would try this, for how could mantic sight work if she could not see?

  But it had, and more than this, she blinked twice. For an instant, her expression cleared of sickness, and she smiled at him. It was not the last time he would have that aching joy. So long as he wore the ring, there was one thing—one person—that did make her head ache in vertigo when she looked upon Spirit or any other elemental component of the world.

  She would see him, only him, as he truly was.

  Even so, he could not stop her from suffering in her tampering. Seeing elemental Spirit in her surroundings was all that she had. How could he deny her those brief moments of independence?

  Now, standing at the near side of the chasm—and in that memory—Chane went numb again, and yet he could not stop remembering.

  Wynn had found a way to see, now and then, and even for the price, she was much happier. She and Chane had a life together.

  At night, they walked out under the moon and stars. In the seasons and years that followed, they studied languages, history, culture, and more from texts she or he requested from visiting sages. They drank tea brought from any corner of the world that sages could reach. They played board games and cards, ones they had always known and even a few new ones.

  There were true visits as well—for more than just assistance in maintaining their vigilant existence.

  Magiere, Chap, and Leesil came once a year, at least, with the aid of the white sages.

  Chuillyon, likely with Leesil’s convincing, had planted his small sprout from Chârmun in the royal grounds of Bela in Belaski on the eastern continent. Both were rather discomforted when asked how, and neither was very forthcoming. It was a short journey up the coast from Miiska to Bela, but this would have to be planned for the right time when the white sages came to the new “branch” of the guild in that city. They were necessary to send anyone else through or send them back.

  On those visits, Wynn was overjoyed to see her three friends. Chane made an effort to be civil, and Magiere reciprocated. Chap ignored him, and Leesil was occasionally sociable.

  After a few years, Chap came less frequently.

  Leesil said Chap—and Shade—had moved on to an’Cróan lands to live full-time with the one they called Lily. Both majay-hì had already been going there regularly before then, though Chap still returned to Miiska as often as he could arrange. Eventually, Chane heard that Osha and Wayfarer had followed that way as well, and on that particular visit, both Magiere and Leesil were distant, as if preoccupied.

  This had left Chane wondering, considering that both Osha and Wayfarer had originally fled their homeland as traitors and outcasts.

  Time changed even more things, though not always purely in partings. A few more years passed to another night that burned into Chane’s memories, never to be forgotten. It had started on the far side of the bridge.

  Chane had been up and about that night while Wynn slept. He had come down to sit near the closest side of the bridge while working on a journal.

  Another visitor came, though at first he had not noticed. He was distracted when one of the cold-lamp crystals on the bridge’s far posts suddenly lit up. It startled him, for it was not time for the seasonal supplies.

  A lone figure stood there between the far bridge posts.

  Likely female by its small stature, it was shrouded in a long robe with a full, draping hood—both a deep forest green. This was the first time he had seen that color of robe.

  With one of his many journals in hand, he snapped it closed and rose to his feet. The figure did not move, even as strange noises echoed faintly out of the passage to the tree’s cavern.

  Those noises quickly turned to a ruckus.

  And still the green-robed figure did not move, even when a tiny furred form raced around it straight onto the bridge. And two more—and another—and another, five in all.

  Chane stood staring.

  The following pair of pups—brown and gray—pounced on and over the mottled one in the lead. He lurched forward a step, fearful that one or more might tumble over the bridge. They did not even slow their raucous, tumbling race until the first skidded onto the landing before him.

  She barely pulled up short before ramming headlong into his boot.

  Wide crystal-blues stared up him, but only for an instant. The second one rammed into and over the top of her, and that one did hit his boot. He was too shocked at the sight of them to even move, though he quickly curled the fingers of his left hand, checking with his thumb that he still wore the “ring of nothing.”

  The rest of the tiny pack followed, including the last: a black male stalking slowly in on him. Its ears twitched, flattened briefly, twitched again, and tiny jowls pulled back in a hesitant growl.

  Chane did not move, even as a cream-coated little female with bark-colored streaks clawed at his shin in sniffing him. A more distant but sharp bark drew his eyes instantly. Halfway across the bridge, a huge black form with crystal-blue eyes led the green-robed sage.

  He would have known Shade anywhere, even for the darkness at the bridge’s center.

  Shade came in growling at the little ones and trying to get them settled. It was hopeless, since she was outnumbered. And the green-robed sage, the first and last visitor among the others, stepped off the bridge, brushing back her hood.

  It was Wayfarer.

  Beneath her dark green robe, long but split down the front like Wynn’s old travel one, the girl was dressed even more like the wild woman, the Foirfeahkan, called Vreuvillä. Multiple tiny braids of hair to either side of her face had strange wooden charms woven into them. Though one-quarter human, she still physically looked the same, as if she had not aged at all since he had last seen her.

  Later would come many questions about green sages—who were not just sages—and how they came to be among the an’Cróan. Part sage by Chuillyon’s outcast meddling, they also practiced what Wayfarer had learned from Leaf’s Heart. But there and then, Chane looked down at one of the few others he had missed for a long time.

  Shade huffed at him and stood waiting.

  With the noise of the five little ones, it was entirely unnecessary for anyone to go and awaken Wynn. This was not the last time Shade would come, and after that, green-robed sages were sometimes the ones to bring supplies. But of all memories in a life with Wynn, that night was forever lodged in Chane.

  Shade had brought her chil
dren to meet her “sister” . . . and Chane himself.

  Where else might a mortal sage and a vampire find peace and contentment without judgment? He did not need to feed, with the orb nearby, and she had everything she required. They had each other most of all.

  More years passed.

  Chane had once imagined a life with Wynn in the Numan branch of the Guild of Sagecraft. This life was close enough—better—but as he now stood staring at the empty bridge, there were other nights he wished to tear out of memory.

  The first had not registered upon him until too late.

  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.