When he had said as much and sat down to keep his vigil, Leesil sighed harshly in doing the same. This at least served an additional purpose now that it seemed no true path to Beloved would be found.
None was needed as Khalidah raised his eyes to the starlit, eastern horizon.
It had been a thousand years since he had last come this far, back when he still had his own flesh, but of late, landmarks had been coming back to him. In the dark, clear night to the east, something blotted out the lowest stars for as far south as he could see, just as the so-called Sky-Cutter Range did to the north beyond these foothills.
Another range of mountains marked the continent’s far edge, and where the two ranges met a line of peaks. The sight was familiar. Khalidah had wanted to be more certain, to see so himself before turning back for the other three orbs.
Now he was.
But there was a greater concern.
Neither a pack of vampires nor a trio of ghul would have been arranged by Sau’ilahk and Ubâd as bait. How many other of Beloved’s servants—undead or not—were headed east?
One dhampir and her followers might not be enough for what was waiting.
It was time to turn back and prepare.
The dreamer fell through darkness, and without impact suddenly stood upon a black desert under a bloodred sky. Dunes began to roll on all sides, quickly sharpened in clarity, and became immense coils covered in glinting black scales. Those coils turned and writhed on all sides.
“Where are you?” the dreamer called. “Show yourself!”
I have always been here ... waiting.
The desert vanished.
The dreamer stood upon a chasm’s lip. Over the edge, the sides did not fall straight down. The chasm walls were twisted as if torn open ages ago by something immense ripping wide the bowels of the earth. Looking upward, the dreamer saw the same, as if the great gash rose into an immense peak above.
Across to the chasm’s other side was another wound in the mountain’s stone. It was too dark to know whether that was a mere pocket, a cavern, or just a fracture leading to either deeper beyond the stone wall. There was no bridge to that other side.
Some part of the shadows over there appeared to move, and stone cracked and crumbled under some immense weight.
Come to me, child ... daughter ... sister of the dead. Come finish what I started with your birth. And let it all end!
Magiere choked, opened her eyes wide, and stiffened upright where she sat on the stone slab. She didn’t even know she had drifted off, and she shouldn’t have. She began shaking when she realized all fury and fire had vanished. And the sky was too light.
She spun where she sat, leaning to look eastward. Dawn had just broken over another line of distant peaks running southward. She looked up to the left, wondering how the mountains could have moved, but there above the foothills was the jagged wall of the Sky-Cutter Range. And when she lowered her eyes ...
Leesil was staring at her over his shoulder.
“What?” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”
Magiere peered again at those peaks. Once before, in the beginning, she had heard a hissing voice like windblown sand. It had come to her, dragging her on, in the search for the first orb in the Pock Peaks.
And as then, now all she wanted was to go east.
“It is time to return,” Ghassan said, rising to his feet. “Any ghul still nearby will not come out while the sun is up. And we need to head west to meet the others.”
Magiere was still staring at those peaks when someone roughly grabbed the collar of her hauberk. She flinched before looking into Leesil’s bright amber eyes.
And those eyes narrowed.
He knew, and still all she wanted was to go ... east.
“No!” he whispered at her. “No, not yet.”
Chapter Twelve
Although Chap had a notion of the distance from a’Ghràihlôn’na to the north side of the Sky-Cutter Range, he had not seen a map of the region in quite some time. The distance proved farther than he expected. Once the wagon turned off the eastbound road and entered the Slip-Tooth Pass over bare land, he could hardly make out the high range in the distance.
And the wagon rolled on.
They traveled mostly by night for Chane’s sake, though now and then some favored hurrying through part of the days as well. During those times, Chane was forced to lie in his dormant state in the wagon’s bed under a canvas.
Along the way, the land around them grew more desolate.
They passed through the foothills, and finally one morning, as the sun rose and Chane fell dormant within a tent, Chap made his way up the tallest hillock and then saw that the mountains were nearly upon them.
“Not far now,” a deep voice said.
Chap looked back to find that Ore-Locks had followed him, but he returned to eyeing the mountains that appeared to stretch to both horizons. It seemed unbelievable—and daunting—that they would pass beneath those to emerge above the vast Suman desert.
“Wayfarer has a pot of herbed lentils on,” Ore-Locks said, and after a pause, he added, “When we last came through, we spent so much time searching for an entrance, we nearly ran out of food.”
Again, Chap craned his neck to study the errant stonewalker.
What was the point to that last comment? Was Ore-Locks reminding Chap that he had a history with Shade and Chane, or perhaps that those two natural enemies had such as well?
He and Ore-Locks had never been talkative, but now that Wayfarer was with him again, he spoke mostly with her ... in their ways.
Chap turned, trotted past Ore-Locks, and headed down toward camp. Over the long days and nights since leaving the Lhoin’na’s one city, he had not ceased to think on Wayfarer and Osha, wondering about their futures, as well his daughter’s. Clearly, both Wayfarer and Osha felt their time in the eastern elven lands had been cut short, one perhaps silently frustrated and the other perhaps slightly relieved.
While Chap could not explain why, he felt a nagging doubt. Had it been the right thing to pull Wayfarer and Osha from their time with the Lhoin’na? For those two, something seemed unfinished. He did not know what, but he could not shake this feeling, and it grew stronger instead of fading. He kept such thoughts to himself, uncertain if he should act upon them. Wynn had been promised that Shade would return with Chap and Chane. Magiere had been promised that Wayfarer would return as well. How could such promises be broken?
After a light meal, everyone rested for the remainder of the day. They packed up as dusk arrived so they would be ready once Chane rose.
Soon enough, Chane was at the reins, and the wagon rolled onward. Halfway through the night, they reached the end of the Slip-Tooth Pass. It was not gradual. They arrived almost at the very base of a mountain, and the wagon could go no farther.
“Start unpacking,” Chane ordered, dropping from the wagon’s bench. “We will have to carry what we need in several trips. But there is only one pump cart available inside the entrance to the pass, and we’ll have to pack it carefully.”
Uncertain what the last part of this meant, Chap jumped down from the wagon’s bed and looked around, at a loss. He saw nothing that resembled an entrance of any kind. Shade came up beside him, and he started in surprise when she touched her nose to his shoulder. He had no time for shock at this physical contact from her when he saw what she shared.