And there was yet one more orb key unlike all the others.
Leesil was to be given Magiere’s more singular one.
Back on the eastern continent, Magiere and Leesil had been taken down to the fiery home of the Chein’âs before even finding the first orb. That subterranean race that lived in a realm of Fire made all the weapons and tools for the Anmaglâhk. They gifted Magiere a dagger of white metal and a thôrhk to match, the only other thôrhk in the world that would open an orb.
Magiere now stood before her husband, wearing her studded leather hauberk. With her falchion belted on her hip, the white metal dagger was once again strapped inverted beneath the back flap of her hauberk. She had pulled her hair into a single thong-lashed tail.
Carefully, she fit her thôrhk around Leesil’s neck.
“Bring it back to me,” she said.
He nodded. He wore his ringed hauberk. His muslin cloth was gone, and his hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck. He had a long rope in a coil loosely over one shoulder and across his chest. Both winged blades were strapped to his thighs, and Wynn knew he had at least one white metal stiletto up his left sleeve.
Finally, Leesil took the last step that he had prepared for himself and those with him. Soot from the dead campfire had been mixed with a bit of oil and water. This he smeared over his face and neck, having all others going with him do the same, especially Chane with his extra-pale skin.
When Leesil rose again, Wynn stepped toward him with the branch from Roise Chârmune. She didn’t even ask and grabbed his right wrist, placing the branch on his forearm and lashing it there with bits of leather thongs.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“This way you will not lose it and always have it ready.”
He scowled at her. “So what are you not telling me this time?”
“Just keep it there.” She dipped some muck by the dead fire to spread over the branch.
Leesil sighed, probably tired of so many secrets, but what he did not know could not be taken from him. That branch might be the last way to get to him and the others ... if anyone else was left alive and the worst came about.
More than likely, such an option might not matter by then.
Chap came up beside her.
Earlier, she had let him know about Chuillyon’s brief return and about the new sprout from Chârmun to be hidden somewhere between the foothills and the peak. This was the only way he would have let Leesil keep the branch.
—All else is ready?—
“Yes,” she answered, hoping she was right.
Leesil and Chane hefted the first two chests on two poles, Ghassan and Brot’an the next pair, and Ore-Locks picked up the final chest.
Ghassan looked to Wynn. “We depend on the rest of you to distract the horde.”
Though she nodded, she looked to Chane and found him watching her. They said nothing, for any words at all might be too much like their last.
Going to Leesil, who gripped two pole ends, Magiere grabbed his neck and pressed her forehead to his. When she let go, that was all, and Leesil led the others out into the growing darkness.
—And now we hurry—
After giving this command, Chap stalked off another way. Wynn gripped her staff and followed with Magiere at her side, both of them watching the sparking of campfires below at the peak’s base ... where the undead were already rising.
Chapter Fifteen
Magiere followed Wynn and Chap down through the foothills toward where the Sky-Cutter Range met the mountains running along the eastern coast. She tried not to let herself think or feel anything. The three of them made certain to remain unseen. Down near the base, they were not on sand but rough, hard-baked earth, and there they split up.
Wynn headed off slightly south and east into the southward range’s foothills. She needed to find a vantage point that would allow her quick access into the open should Magiere lead or drive the undead toward the sun-crystal staff. She already had specially made dark-lensed glasses dangling freely around her neck.
Chap went north in case any stragglers from the horde went that way or swerved back toward the peak to threaten exposing Leesil and those with him. As the dog faded away in the deepening darkness, and Magiere could no longer see him, she had a feeling he would not go far.
And there she stood, all alone.
Her right hand dropped to the hilt of her falchion, as if needing reassurance it was there. Unlike most weapons, its blade could inflict pain and wounds on the undead. Besides her Chein’âs dagger, it was the only weapon she’d ever seen leave scars on any undead who survived its strike.
She looked toward the peak that Leesil and the others crept toward, even now. The campfires out in the open and partly up the slopes were easier to see. There was even a hint of vegetation low on the craggy rise, if firelight was enough to show such.
Magiere slipped toward the lowest campfires on the baked plain, and residual heat from the day still rose around her. She slowed when she began hearing grunts, hisses, and guttural words she didn’t understand, and she veered more eastward toward broken ground and any stone outcrops.
Hunger rose inside her; it burned up her throat from her gut.
Points of firelight brightened in her widening sight as her irises blackened and expanded.
She looked again toward the upslope of the peak, but there was no real hope of spotting Leesil’s group in the dark. Creeping up behind a rock formation, she peered around it for her first clear glimpse of the horde.
Leesil had been right. There were a hundred or more at a guess. As her jaws began aching and her nails began to harden, she fought to keep her wits.
Among the Enemy’s gathered servants, she saw many faces pale and glistening by firelight. Those—the vampires—stood mainly erect in their tatters of clothing, mostly the long robes of desert dwellers, likely scavenged off their prey along the way.
There were other creatures in the dark. Some with gray-white skin had to be ghul, though there were not many.
She spotted another type of hulking beast. They walked on twos and fours in mismatched armor and carried scavenged weapons from swords to crude clubs to other things she couldn’t make out. She knew them from when she’d traveled north in the frozen wastes to hide two orbs. They were the goblins.
There were more goblins than vampires within sight, and that wasn’t good, for she wouldn’t be able to influence them—as they were not undead. Each looked like a twisted cross between a huge, overfurred ape and a dog with a short, broad muzzle below sickly yellow eyes. Longer bristles sprouted around their heads and in tufts on peaked ears.
They moved in small packs, clambering about, and then made teasing feints at the vampires, who snarled or lunged one step to drive them off. Any ghul nearby vanished or scuttled off, likely looking for softer ground in which to burrow.
There were other creatures she didn’t recognize, including some who appeared almost normal but stood staring in one direction, never blinking. Looking at one, she saw its skin looked nearly as pale as that of a vampire. But upon closer study, the skin was somehow sickly and shriveled on its face, exposing the contours of bone beneath.
Rage and hunger grew in Magiere, and she had to close her eyes to hang on to awareness and conscious thought. She had become a victim of fate, as had Leesil, though both of them had denied and evaded it for so long. Now it was he, and not she, who would face the Enemy.
She had to draw the horde away from him somehow.
Even Chap hadn’t known exactly how she was to do this. There was only what he’d speculated.
—The Enemy can ... find ... call ... its servants— ... —The undead ... we know ... for certain— ... —You can track ... those ... with hunger— ... —Start ... there—