Chap recognized the priestess called Vreuvillä from when he had gone for Wayfarer in the Lhoin’na lands.
Chuillyon had succeeded in at least one of his secret tasks.
He must have come through via the sprout from Chârmun to check the timing before going back and then sending the majay-hì packs through the same way. How he had managed to get so many through was not a puzzle for now but later—if there was a later.
Chap held his ground and looked toward the battle. As unnatural enemies of the undead, majay-hì leaped without fear into their targets, driving them down, tearing and rending, and the wave of the second pack raced in around him.
This was not how it should have happened; Magiere should have led the undead away already.
Perhaps she could not. Perhaps her own hunting rage had simply inflamed their own. And if even most of them went down while fighting the living—or succumbed to the majay-hì packs—there would still be a mass of living opponents.
Wayfarer slowed and almost stalled, looking his way, and Shade wheeled around him.
Chap saw something in Wayfarer that suddenly frightened him. She no longer showed any of the fear he had so often seen in her. She turned with Shade and ran onward on the tail of the second pack—and he wanted to go after her and his daughter.
Yet, there was only one thing he could do.
Chap spun and raced off where Wynn hid.
The sun crystal, if ignited close enough, might take most of the undead by surprise. And it might also stun the living enough for him to find and get to Magiere, if she still lived. It was the only way to regain control, even briefly.
A shimmering, small form appeared ahead in his way, and Chap stumbled, slowing until he saw what it was: a transparent girl in a tattered nightgown, bloodied at the throat. He had seen her once before in the dank forests of eastern Droevinka—one of Ubâd’s enslaved ghosts.
“Majay-hì!” the ghost girl shrieked at him.
There was too much hate in the voice for one who had died so young. Could this utterance have been instigated by Ubâd himself? That seemed impossible.
Chap had killed the necromancer himself and ripped the old man’s throat to the spine. Before he could even look, two large, heavily muscled men—with dead eyes—stepped out from behind a rock formation. There was something between them, and one of them tilted it.
The wheel cart’s bed rocked forward until its lead end clunked against stone, and lashed to it was a black-robed form held erect by bonds. His hands, folded and bound over his chest, were bare, exposing bony fingers. Where his face should have been was an eyeless mask of aged leather that Chap remembered, and that ended above a bony jaw supporting a withered mouth.
Ubâd’s neck was now wrapped or strapped with something that held his head erect.
Chap snarled, and something like hunger but not filled his gut. The decrepit ghost master had somehow used his own skills upon himself, as he had done with the girl and his corpse guards.
“Kill him,” the ghost girl ordered. “Take his head off!”
Both dead men beside the litter drew curved blades and rushed forward. One passed straight through the girl.
Wynn was waiting somewhere beyond them, and Chap could still hear the battle below in the dark. The first corpse guard swung a blade at his head.
Chap ducked aside and leaped. As the man straightened to right himself, Chap’s front paws struck his target. The guard toppled, hit the rocky ground on his back, and Chap’s following weight came down to crush a weak rush of fetid air out of the walking corpse. With no time to finish with the first, Chap bolted for the second man—but there was the ghost girl in his way.
“Die ... dog!” she screeched an instant before impact.
Icy cold trapped the air in Chap’s lungs. Everything whitened before his eyes like a flash of light. When his sight cleared amid a stumble, the other corpse attendant had retreated to the litter cart, sword in hand. And the dark around Ubâd’s body began to waver like the heat of the desert under a noon sun.
A translucent soldier appeared as if walking out of a rippling lake. His hauberk and abdomen were slashed open, exposing organs to spill out. At another waver of color forming in the dark, Chap quickly glanced toward the litter cart’s other side.
A short, bony, tattered young woman appeared. The rough line of bruising around her throat showed where she had been strangled. She opened her mouth and exposed her missing tongue. Whispering voices began to grow all around.
Chap flinched away from another ghost suddenly off to his left. A shirtless, scarecrow-thin peasant boy faded in and out. Starvation had left the specter of his ribs and swollen paunch clear to see.
And the second of the corpse guards charged in an amble.
Chap dodged right at the downward hack of a sword, and then the starved boy flew at him ... through him. Chap’s jaws locked open, but he could not breathe. Cold seemed to rise out of his bones and into his flesh.
“Can you feel your death,” the ghost girl spat, “even before you die?”
The corpse guard swung at him again.
Chap stumbled sideways, now gasping for air as if it were winter. His fright grew.
Below in the battle, he had only seen lower servants of the Enemy. With Ubâd here, what other more powerful servants might have come?
Another—and another—ghost manifested in the dark.
Chap could not survive this alone. Panic took hold, and all he could think of was something that had only worked once long ago.
On a frigid night in the Pock Peaks, in their search for the first orb, Wynn had been lost in the wild amid a blizzard. He had gone out alone to search for her, failed, and in desperation ...
—Come ... find me ... and bring light!—
If only again she could hear him now.
Chapter Sixteen
Chane was crouched near Leesil and Ghassan when he heard the clicks in the dark. Ore-Locks rose and, without a word, ran into the crevice’s stone wall. Somewhere above, Brot’an had found something and signaled for Ore-Locks to come.
Then a wild-sounding cry carried up from below.
“What is that?” Chane rasped.
Leesil had already half risen, as if to peek out of the crevice, but he stopped. The cry lingered but was quickly tangled in sounds of clangs of metal and guttural shouts. Chane rose to look downward. Some campfires appeared scattered by the number of tiny orange glimmers that flickered quickly from many forms rushing about amid screams, snarls, shouts, and more.
Somehow a battle had erupted in the camp, and Wynn was below somewhere with nothing but her staff.
“Magiere and Chap are with her,” Leesil said quietly. “She’ll be all right.”
Chane had no patience for reassuring lies. How had he let himself be talked into this? As he began to glance upslope, a chorus of high-pitched howls exploded in the dark. He twisted back to look down again as he heard more and more of those eerie sounds.
“Majay-hì?” Leesil whispered, rising sharply to follow Chane’s gaze.
Chane turned to Ghassan. “Do you know anything about this?”
The domin shook his head. “No.”
The sound of a soft footfall on stone reached Chane’s ears, and he reached for a sword.
Brot’an stood in the crevice’s top. An instant later, Ore-Locks stepped out of the crevice wall’s stone, appearing less than relieved. Chane did not have a chance to ask anything.
“I found a possible entrance,” Brot’an whispered, “beneath an overhang. But I only suspect so because of the guards present. At a flash of something in the dark, I crawled closer after signaling for Ore-Locks. The entrance is guarded by ... things I have never seen before. I could not count their numbers but saw outlines of at least two the height of myself. Sounds indicated there may be more nearby, so we both returned.”