Chap could see Ore-Locks was equally affected, though this was not the first time for him.
Familiarity would never take away the implied horror and madness within this silent place.
“We need to pass through here and out the other side,” Chane said.
Ore-Locks did not move, did not appear to hear, and looked left for one of the great openings into this central place.
“Do you think they will come ... again?” he whispered.
Chap tensed, fully wary, but without understanding, he looked up.
Chane watched Ore-Locks. “Who?”
“Gí’uyllæ ... the all-eaters.”
Chap knew that word from Wynn. In the bowels of this place were immense winged reptiles that ate anything, including stone, and spat fire. And they were called by other names in other cultures, such as “weürms,” “thuvanan,” “ta’nêni” ... “dragons.”
“I do not think so, even if they are aware of us,” Chane answered with less certainty than Chap preferred. “They gave the orb of Earth into your safekeeping, and they know you as the blood defendant of the one who stood with their ancestor in the fall of this place.”
Chap hoped Chane was right.
With a shaky breath, Ore-Locks turned to the pile of supplies and chests. “How far to the exit?”
“Not far by what il’Sänke told me,” Chane answered, pointing across the way to one tunnel. “When he entered from that side, he spent days searching caved-in paths and dead ends to find a way in, but he explained clearly how we can use that tunnel to get out.”
“So that passage leads directly to an exit?”
“Not quite,” Chane answered. “Chap and I will have a good deal of rubble to cross on one side of the passage, and the exit comes out beneath a boulder. As to the supplies and chests, you will have to again bring most of them through stone.”
Ore-Locks nodded, and his gaze wandered for three breaths before he answered. “And what do we do once we are out?”
This much Chap already knew.
“We wait,” Chane said, “and we watch. We would never find the others on our own, so Wynn and I ... and Chap arranged a signal. We will be able to see it at a great distance at night.”
Ore-Locks did not reply at first. He looked about, up and around, his expression turning more grim by the moment.
“Then let us leave this place quickly,” he said.
Chap could not agree more as he huffed once.
Wynn was exhausted as she pressed westward with her companions along the desert edge of the foothills. The previous night, Ghassan informed her that Chane and Chap were closer, though he was uncertain how close they were to Bäalâle.
How many days and nights had they been doing this?
Putting aside hunting for undead to trek westward was not the relief she’d expected. Hopefully, Chane, Chap, and the others would make it out of Bäalâle by the time she got close.
There was so much they needed to discuss.
She put one foot before the other, pushing forward.
There was also a great need for the supplies Chane and Chap had agreed to bring.
She was tired of figs and smoke-dried meats. No matter how much Ghassan spiced and recooked them in sparse water, they were ... horrible. At that thought, she looked at him out in the lead.
“Are we closer?” she asked.
With a frustrated sigh, he answered, “Always.”
Wynn looked back beyond Chuillyon, forced to lead the camels, and beyond Brot’an watching over their “prisoner.” Leesil and Magiere followed last, though there was a time Magiere would have been first going anywhere.
Magiere looked back, walking sideways to do so. Wynn waited for Leesil to grab Magiere’s arm and pull her around again ... and again.
Wynn worried what might happen with Magiere once they all returned eastward.
After the night of the ghul, Magiere had changed. She listened, was coherent, and no longer grew angry at not tracking undead. She had also reverted to a state Wynn had not seen in years.
Magiere was too much like she’d been when they had left the an’Cróan lands in search of the first orb. She was having dreams again ... hearing that voice again. The dreams had become less frequent the farther west they traveled, but this thought brought no relief either.
Wynn was sickened with fright every nightfall, especially when she didn’t see an answering “light” out in the dark. This time, the sun hadn’t even dipped fully below the western horizon when she stopped.
“Ghassan, get out your looking glass.”
He turned in a sharp stop, lifted the front of his hood, and stared at her.
“It is not even dusk yet,” he argued. “They will not see a sage crystal in—”
“Then I’ll use the staff!”
“No!” Ghassan returned. “Even if they see, it is too bright and might—”
“We are far enough that anyone—anything—heading east will not see it.”
At the snuffling of camels, and their smell, Wynn half turned to find Chuillyon watching her. Brot’an closed in.
“Don’t start,” she warned before he could say anything. “I’m doing this, and I’ll do it again after full dark, if need be.”
Brot’an looked ahead and merely nodded once.
“Leesil,” Wynn called, “get up here.”
He already had his cloak stripped off when he approached, and Wynn tugged the sheath off her staff to expose the long sun crystal atop it.
“Everyone look away,” Wynn warned. “I am the only one with glasses. Leesil, grip the staff above my hands so you have a reference point ... without looking.”
Sighing, Leesil did so with his free hand. Wynn didn’t check if the others were ready as she focused. Ghassan stepped back past her in assembling his leather and lenses into the looking glass. As dusk deepened, Leesil whipped his cloak up over the sun crystal.
Wynn no longer even needed to speak the phrases aloud; she needed only to think them, and she held the dark glasses up over her eyes.
... Mênajil il’Núr’u mên’Hkâ’ät.
As those final words flashed through her mind, the sharp and sudden light cleared the pure blackness from her glasses, even with the crystal shrouded by Leesil’s cloak.
“Now,” she commanded.
Three times, Leesil whipped his cloak off and then back over the sun crystal, and then Wynn let the crystal go out. She dropped the glasses to let them dangle on their cord around her neck.
“Anything?” she asked, looking back to Ghassan.
After a long pause, he answered, “No.”
Wynn turned on Leesil. “Again,” she ordered.
And again she lit the staff, and again he flashed it three times.
Wynn didn’t ask again as she watched Ghassan stare ahead through the looking glass. She wasn’t even aware of counting tense breaths until she hit seven. Closing her eyes and slumping, she didn’t look at Leesil and halfheartedly mumbled, “Again.”
“Wait,” Ghassan said.
Wynn looked up.
Ghassan stood perfectly still for two more breaths and then lowered the looking glass to point ahead.
“There! Watch for it!”
Wynn did so ... and she saw the faint triple wink of a light ahead. Her breath stopped completely.
“Let’s go now,” Leesil said.
Wynn grabbed his arm. There was more need to be certain.
“What are you waiting for?” Leesil asked.
With the sun not yet set, Chane would still be dormant. That meant Ore-Locks, or at best Chap, had somehow used a cold-lamp crystal to signal. There was one more step that she and Chap had agreed upon for safety, in case the worst had happened.
The Enemy’s forces could be on the move elsewhere. Wynn had to be certain those other three orbs were in the right hands before she brought two more within reach.