And if he could not strike directly at Beloved ...
At the fringe of the carnage, Sau’ilahk began desperately conjuring another servitor—and another and another.
Leesil gazed across the chasm, at a loss. The presence of those last four vampires told him they were on the right track, but what did that matter?
“Now what?” Chane asked in his irritating rasp.
Panicked frustration overwhelmed Leesil. They couldn’t give up.
Then he thought of what he’d seen Ore-Locks do. He looked left and right below the chasm’s lip, but Ghassan’s light didn’t reach far enough.
The domin’s expression flickered before he turned right and walked along the chasm’s edge.
“There,” he said, pointing off level into the chasm’s darkness.
Leesil hurried over, hearing Chane behind him. He couldn’t see anything at first.
“There is a glint there,” Chane said, pointing.
Leesil saw it, perhaps caused by the crystal’s light reflected off some ore vein. There was a wall in that beyond a stone’s throw, so he hoped, but there was no ledge by which to reach it.
“I can attempt to float us across the chasm, one by one,” Ghassan suggested. “It will take time. And the more exertion, the greater the risk of losing someone, as well as an orb.”
Leesil peeked over the chasm’s edge into the pitch-black below. Half turning, he found Ore-Locks right beside Chane, though Brot’an remained guarding the chests.
“I’m not some bat to go flitting about!” the dwarf growled, and then peered off into rightward darkness. “If there is a true wall back there, I can go through stone to the other side, but only Chane can go with me that way. As to the rest of us ...”
Ore-Locks shrugged, and Leesil didn’t care for Ghassan’s notion. He had another idea.
“Everyone take off any rope you’re carrying,” he said. “Brot’an, get your bow assembled.”
“You have something else in mind,” Chane said. It wasn’t a question.
Leesil nodded. “You and Ore-Locks try to get to the other side with two chests. Once there, Brot’an can attempt to shoot the rope across. If it doesn’t make it the first time, we keep trying. Chane, you stay there to anchor the rope on the other side while Ore-Locks comes back for more chests.”
Chane nodded once, and Brot’an dropped to one knee.
The master assassin began pulling the disassembled pieces of his short bow from under the back of his clothing. Even as Ore-Locks went to the chests, Chane began searching about the open area around the ledge they were on.
“We cannot see what might await on the far side, or farther on if the tunnel continues over there,” he said. “And I see nowhere to anchor the rope on this side. Someone will have to hold it ... and be left behind.”
Leesil clenched his teeth, but everything Chane said was right.
“I will see to the last part.”
Everyone turned at Brot’an’s comment. His assembled short bow lay beside him as he struck a stiletto’s blade against a dark stone in his hand. Sparks flew.
“Begin assembling the ropes,” he instructed. “Tear off strips of cloth from lighter clothing, as many as possible.”
Again, he began digging into his own clothes and produced a small clay vial.
Leesil eyed the aging assassin. Just how many bits and pieces did Brot’an carry hidden?
After the ropes were tied together and a small pile of cloth strips lay before Brot’an, he tied one strip to each of three out of four short arrows. He then tied more strips together and lashed that length around the final arrow and the rope’s end. Last, he poured a sluggish black fluid out of the vial onto the remaining pile of cloth and the strips around the three arrows.
Two strikes of the stiletto against the black stone lit the pile, and Brot’an quickly lit an arrow. Brot’an rose and drew the arrow with one glance at Ore-Locks.
“Go,” Brot’an commanded. “Return once you determine if there is a way to anchor the rope on the far side.”
Chane hefted a chest. Ore-Locks did the same and grabbed Chane’s forearm. Both vanished into the half cavern’s wall, and Leesil had more worried thoughts.
What if there was another passage or space beyond the far ledge? And what if there wasn’t? There had to be. What if something therein heard an arrow strike or spotted its small flame?
Brot’an fired.
Leesil turned, following the flaming arrow’s flicker across the chasm through the dark. It quickly grew small, until he heard it hit. He saw the tiny flicker of flame skitter across stone and then come to a stop. As he was about to turn to Brot’an, another tiny flame followed the first, and then a third one.
Those small flames landing apart showed there was a stone floor on the other side.
They waited and watched for any sign of Ore-Locks and Chane.
However long that was, it was too long for Leesil. If no anchor point was found over there, even with both Chane and Ore-Locks holding on to the rope, there was still the question of who would be left behind. That one had to be strong enough to anchor the rope’s near end. Ghassan could likely cross the chasm his own way, and Leesil had no intention of staying behind.
“Do not be concerned,” Brot’an said quietly.
Leesil looked back and up, but Brot’an merely stared across the chasm. It still unnerved Leesil how often the assassin thought several steps ahead of everyone, but what steps this time?
Chap ranged along the battle’s outskirts. The undead he could now see numbered less than the living—but there were still too many to fix on any one. Their presence ate him inside, and it was hard not to cut loose and hunt the nearest one.
The longer Magiere remained in there, the worse the situation would become, yet he was still uncertain how to stop her. Should he run her down or try to reach her through memories? What if both failed and he was left with only one other choice?
Could he face losing her if he had to take her over completely?
No other options came to him.
He readied for the worst and then heard paws and claws closing behind him. Spinning around, he bared his teeth.
Two majay-hì raced in from the south where he had left Chuillyon and Vreuvillä. He watched as they neared and circled him. The large, mottled male passed close enough to brush his shoulder.
An image of the wild priestess erupted in Chap’s mind.
All he could guess was that she had sent this pair to him. For an instant, he wished his daughter were here. Shade had spent time among their kind and knew better the ways of memory-speak.
Chap huffed once as the speckled gray female came close. In brushing her shoulder with his head, he called up his memory of Magiere fully lost to her dhampir side. Then he bolted off into the battle, looking back once to see that the pair followed him.
He charged into the snarls, screams, and bloodshed, almost deafened by the noise and assaulted by flashes of combatants half lit by scattered fires. With only two unknown majay-hì beside him, there were too many other things all around him.
Chane fell to his knees and dropped his chest as Ore-Locks dragged him out of stone. For an instant, he could not discern on which side of the chasm they had emerged. Though he did not need air, he could not help choking a few times. Then he saw two of Brot’an’s arrows on stone still lit.
Sick, weakened, and embarrassed at having dreaded yet another venture through stone, he struggled to his feet.
“All right?” Ore-Locks asked.
Chane nodded and pointed to the arrows. “Wave two of those to let them know we are here.”
When Ore-Locks did so, Chane saw Ghassan’s crystal light on the chasm’s other side swinging back and forth.