“I apologize for not assisting,” Ghassan said, breaking the silence.
“Where were you?” Leesil panted out.
“As I said, I could do nothing against these creatures,” the domin answered, “so I scouted the path inward for anything else in our way.”
Leesil eyed Ghassan, not certain how much he believed in those words. Brot’an was on his feet, seemingly whole and steady again.
“We need light,” Leesil said, going to retrieve his fallen stiletto.
Ghassan took a crystal from his pocket. “I will lead the way.”
“Not yet,” Chane said. “We had only brought two orbs through when we saw what was happening. They are not far inside, but Ore-Locks left them hidden in stone. As soon as he is able, we will bring the others.”
Some small part of Leesil was almost relieved at the short delay, and he simply sheathed his weapons and dropped down again. It didn’t matter how Brot’an looked or acted; Leesil knew he was injured. And what else waited for them inside the mountain? A few outer guards wouldn’t be the only ones, not in this place and not even after a thousand years.
Leesil glanced back toward the entrance, thinking on his wife. There was no way to know the fate of Magiere and those with her.
Chap went numb, watching the carnage.
Wynn clutched the still-ignited staff, but Magiere was a good distance away on the edge of the light’s reach, and she had lost herself completely. She charged, hacked, or struck at one after another through smoking carcasses until she had nearly reached the battle’s fringe once again.
Part of him feared getting near her, the same part that shrank from what might be necessary, more so with every moment. All that stopped him from acting to stop her was the memory of the guide he had left for dead in the wastes.
Could he bear to look into her vacant eyes, staring up at nothing like an empty husk?
Magiere had barely regained herself to seek out Wynn and the crystal’s light, as she should have done at first ... but now?
One thing gave him hope.
There were riders charging through what was left of the horde.
They raced through the chaos in twos and threes. Chuillyon had succeeded in bringing Shé’ith along with the majay-hì packs. At least the chaos that Magiere had caused put those two factions at the advantage, for the moment.
Osha had to be one of those riders, still one of them, or so Chap hoped.
And where were his daughter and Wayfarer?
So long as Wynn was exposed, Chap could not even search for them, let alone rush at Magiere. Wynn was the only one besides Ghassan who could use the staff, so Chap feared leaving her unprotected.
Indecision crushed him—until he saw a black four-footed form run around the fringe of the chaos. Others of its kind were around it.
Chap howled loudly at the sight of Shade. The black form veered off, racing toward him, and Chap sprang forward as he called into Wynn’s mind.
—Stay back until I call ... or until you have to escape—
How many times would necessity force him to leave behind the ones he most wished to protect? Even as he and Shade closed on each other, he could not help looking for Wayfarer, hoping she had not followed the packs into the bloodshed.
Shade closed on him and shot past to wheel around. He slowed only until she caught up at his side. Though she must have wanted to race back to Wynn, he might need her to help stop Magiere.
The only other option for him would leave Magiere as an empty husk—and leave him with one more sin he could not bear.
Now that he knew memory-words would work with Shade, it took only one glance.
—Come—
As they closed in, he saw the bodies, mangled, bloodied, and broken, as the living and undead stepped upon them in tearing at one another. One he feared was an elven rider, for it was draped over the still bulk of a butchered horse. Another was clearly a majay-hì torn almost in half. There were more of the goblins than any other, but also humans—either living or not before they went down.
Far more numerous were those still fighting, among them majay-hì of varied hues launching at what had to be undead. They only turned on living enemies when they had to do so.
Two riders pounded and trampled through others toward a huge form Chap had never seen before. It was taller than any an’Cróan or Lhoin’na and was covered in scales.
Chap’s focus shifted to Magiere still ahead in the chaos, and again his doubts took hold. In her current state, she was the greatest threat to any undead present. Should he stop her now or wait and let her continue? He veered off toward the east, holding his distance from her, until he was near the fringe of the foothills ... and too far away from Wynn.
She had to keep that staff lit, and even that would not hold off anything but an undead. He tried to see Magiere more clearly, to get a look at her face, but she charged into another cluster of combatants.
In despair, Chap looked up and down the eastern fringe of the battle. Two forms spun out of the carnage, surrounded in a circle of wheeling and snapping majay-hì. Wayfarer and Vreuvillä backed toward the rise of rocky hills.
A vampire and a ghul on the outskirts of the battle spotted them.
At the sight of this, Chap lost all sense of reason and charged for them.
As Wynn watched Chap run, she clung to the staff with both hands, and her only thought was to keep the crystal ignited. She’d never kept the light burning for so long, and she was exhausted from her efforts in the battle thus far.
Still, in this moment, she had one task and one task only.
To keep light flowing outward into the night.
Chapter Seventeen
Wayfarer shuddered as she backed away from the battle behind Vreuvillä. She was sick with fear at what she had seen—and where was Shade? They had lost each other in circling around the battle’s eastern side as the remainder of one pack dove in and out. Where was Osha?
Yet even all of this worry and confusion could not wipe away one previous, horrifying sight.
A sharp light had risen suddenly to the north, and so she had known Wynn was out there. But by that light, the warrior woman she had come to care for and respect so much was barely recognizable.
Magiere’s fully black eyes, like those of some other creatures out here, terrified Wayfarer. She had wanted to run both to and away from the sight, but Vreuvillä had insisted, “Stay close to me.”
The sound of tumbling stones now behind her did not wipe away that vivid memory until she heard them a second time.
Wayfarer twisted around in fright as Chuillyon half slid, half hopped the last steps off the rock slope of a foothill. He slowed and stared out beyond her.
It was the first time she had ever seen him without a half-amused expression on his long face. She thought he might start to weep in looking to the battle behind her. Vreuvillä fixed Chuillyon with a cold glare.
There was no liking between them and never would be from what little Wayfarer had learned.
Chuillyon’s gaze still focused somewhere out beyond the priestess.
Then Vreuvillä spun toward the battle, dropped to a half crouch between two majay-hì, and spread her arms with her long curved blade ready.
When Wayfarer turned, someone grabbed her from behind. Another of the pack rushed in front of her on guard. She heard Chuillyon whispering some chant as his arms closed around her. Two things rushed at them over the open ground from the battle’s edge.
One had a face as white as a corpse. Human-looking, its irises sparked like colorless crystals in the distant light of Wynn’s staff. Flapping shreds of clothes were stained red and black in spatters and smears.