Spirit to the aspect of Tree, Tree to the essence of Spirit, and born of the Earth. His energies bled into a pattern that only he could see, and he began trembling in exertion.
A shaft of blood-black barked wood cracked the earth.
It jutted upward, slowly thickening until that limb bent over, somehow suppler than it appeared. Along its length, six tinier limbs sprouted to rip its body from the ground. A small knot of ocher root tendrils twitched around its base as it faced him.
Sau’ilahk bled even more energy into his creation.
Bark peeled back around the root-knot. Tendrils coiled tighter and tighter into a ball, and that sphere took on an inner light.
It blinked at him.
A flexing wooden lid of snarled tendrils clicked over a glowing orb for an eye. The newly created servitor then spun away to skitter off into the night.
“No,” Sau’ilahk whispered.
The servitor barely hesitated, and Sau’ilahk reached for the fragment of his own consciousness embedded in his conjured creation. It halted, twitching and fidgeting, until it finally submitted to its creator’s will.
“Go to the light,” he commanded. “Attack the one who holds it.”
The servitor skittered away.
Sau’ilahk’s eyes hurt too much when he looked toward that glare. And this thought sparked a cruel inspiration.
“Wait,” he said.
The servitor halted.
Sau’ilahk winced and blinked as he looked toward the crystal’s light. He did not have to speak and only smiled. The servitor would know his will, and it quickly raced off.
Wynn struggled to maintain focus upon the sun crystal. She had never before held it alight this long. And worse, its glare and the dark lenses shielding her eyes made it difficult to see anything at a distance.
She knew only that whatever undead had not burned and fallen had fled back toward the horde, and Magiere had followed them. They were all too far off beyond the staff’s light to see. She longed to know what had become of Magiere and Leesil—and Chane—but the staff and keeping the undead in check were her purpose.
She blinked, growing tired, shaky, and weak.
This close to the crystal and under such strain, even the glasses were not always enough. She did not notice something else until she heard it over the distant sound of fighting. Then it was so close, like a broken branch dragged over hard, rough ground.
Click-click ... click-click ...
It was too rhythmic for a tumbling branch with no wind to drive it.
Wynn looked about through the narrow view of the darkened lenses. She had to turn her whole head. When she spotted something, it did look like a branch—branches—but the color was wrong. The bark was reddish in the crystal’s harsh light.
A chill took her as the branch sprang at her, growing too large in her narrow view.
She screamed in pain as it struck her face.
Clutching at it, she released one hand’s grip on the staff. The living branch clawed her face, trying to get under the glasses at her eyes, as other parts of it clawed toward the back of her head. One of those legs hooked the cord about her neck. She thrashed, still clinging to the staff with her other hand ... as the glasses were torn off.
Blinding light filled Wynn’s view.
When she clamped her eyes shut, all she could see was white as she fell. Her breaths came too fast for her to cry out, and her eyes felt on fire. She could feel tears on her face as she pushed up, only knowing that she had fallen when she braced both hands on the ground—both hands empty.
She’d dropped the staff.
She heard the skittering sound again, but everything was dark. When she looked about, turning her head toward the distant fighting, she couldn’t see even the red spark of fires. The skittering grew nearer, as if coming for her again.
And she still couldn’t see it.
“Hold,” a voice commanded.
Wynn froze, listening. Her breaths came and went quickly, and as she looked up, there was no moon, no stars, only more blackness before her pained eyes.
“How good to see you,” taunted the voice. Wynn knew that voice, for it had once belonged to the young duke of Beáumie Keep.
“Though you will never see me ... even one last time.”
Sau’ilahk was here, and Wynn was blind.
Sau’ilahk could not recall such contentment, even unto ancient times, when all had looked upon his beauty with awe as the high priest of Beloved.
Wynn Hygeorht had taken nearly everything from him, and now he had her on her knees.
“Where are your protectors?” he whispered in mock concern as he circled her. “How careless of them, especially your favored vampire.” He watched with joy as she twisted in panic toward his voice. “What would pain him more, to find you in pieces ... or still pretty but lifeless? Or did you think you would be the only one to suffer when I found you again?”
He listened to her racing breaths and watched tears stream from her sightless eyes. He had no control over vengeance against Beloved, but she would be the release for his frustration.
In one rapid step, Sau’ilahk grabbed her by the throat.
Her hands latched onto his wrist, and she clawed at his fingers as she began to choke. That sound was pure joy, and he squeezed his grip slowly tighter and tighter.
No, he would not kill her this way. That she might think so in this moment was only a delicious morsel before feasting on her life.
“Enough!”
Sau’ilahk twisted quickly around at a new voice, dragging Wynn by the neck. He had not heard anyone approach, but five strides away stood a very tall figure in a dark robe and hood. Perhaps it was too tall to be human; that one word had been lightly tainted with a Lhoin’na accent.
“Release her now,” the figure ordered.
Its hands rose slowly to brush back the hood, revealing the face of an aging Lhoin’na.
Sau’ilahk knew this one, who had been in the deep realm of the stonewalkers when he had invaded there to follow Wynn to a lost anchor—an orb.
Chuillyon had worn a sage’s robe then, though it had been white.
A sharp pain exploded in Sau’ilahk’s knee.
When his foot shifted under the impact, and his left leg buckled, he lost his grip on his prey. He glanced down as Wynn scrambled blindly away, not using the hand with which she had punched his knee. Instead, she curled that hand against her chest.
After so many centuries without flesh, physical pain had taken Sau’ilahk by surprise.
It would not happen again.
Chuillyon reached Wynn by the time Sau’ilahk regained focus. The misdressed interloper pulled the miscreant sage to her feet.
Sau’ilahk had dealt with Chuillyon before and knew to be wary. Wynn was now secondary, though protecting her would be the elder sage’s weakness. Then he heard Chuillyon’s whisper.
“Chârmun ... agh’alhtahk so. A’lhän am leagad chionns’gnajh.”
Sau’ilahk quickly looked for and spotted his stick-creature servitor. “Kill!”
The spindly legged thing coiled and leaped, arching straight for Chuillyon’s head.
The elf neither flinched nor fled and pulled Wynn close in his arms.
Sau’ilahk’s fury chilled, for he had seen this before.
His servitor shattered into loose twigs in midair, coming apart an arm’s length from its target, as if it had struck an unseen barrier. The light of its one orb eye was extinguished.
Sau’ilahk felt his connection to his creation sever.