The Night Voice by Barb Hendee Read Free Book Online Page B

opened her eyes to meet Shade’s crystalline, sky blue ones watching her without blinking.
    â€œShow her,” Wynn said, cocking her head toward Wayfarer, “and be nice about it.”
    Shade wrinkled her jowls again as she turned toward the girl.
    Wayfarer backed up against the bedside. “What are you doing?”
    â€œSomething words can’t do as well,” Wynn answered. “Don’t be afraid. Shade has something I want you to see . . . experience . . . and it is nothing frightening, I swear.”
    Shade crept in on Wayfarer and stood waiting. When the girl finally reached to touch the side of Shade’s face . . .
    Wynn couldn’t help but remember once more.
    When she, Shade, and Chane, along with Ore-Locks, had gone to Vreuvillä’s home in the forest, the priestess had stopped and tensed for an instant. A circlet of braided raw shéot’a strips held back her silver-streaked hair. That hair was also too dark for a Lhoin’na, let alone an an’Cróan—just like Wayfarer. She was also deeply tanned from her life out in the wild. Standing there in her pants, high soft boots, and a thong-belted jerkin, all made of darkened hide, she was small for her people. She looked like some wild spirit embodied in the flesh of an elf, neither truly Lhoin’na nor an’Cróan.
    Though there were faint lines in her face, she did not move or act like an old one, yet her very presence carried the weight of long years. One of the pack who flanked her drew near, and in the same instant, she looked down . . . and touched that silver-gray female.
    Vreuvillä’s large amber eyes lifted again, though her long fingers stillcombed lightly between the tall ears of the silver-gray majay-hì—and it followed her gaze. She stared beyond Wynn as her nostrils flared once, as if she were both seeing and smelling something that wasn’t there. Something had passed between the priestess and one of her pack.
    Wayfarer cringed back against the bedside, staring at Shade. And those bright, fearful eyes turned on Wynn.
    â€œWhat—what—,” the girl stuttered.
    â€œOsha isn’t the only one,” Wynn began, “who has a reason to go to the lands of Lhoin’na. You are not as alone—or as ‘lost’—as you thought. That isn’t what that name . . . that other name . . . might mean.”
    Wayfarer peered cautiously at Shade without a word.
    That is enough for now.
    Wynn looked to Chap.
    We tell Shade last, once Wayfarer and Osha accept what they must do. I will see the three of them partway there, and thereby keep our youngest ones out of harm’s way. That leaves us both with one less worry.
    One less but not none, Wynn noted as she thought of whom she had to face now in all of Chap’s scheming. Magiere and Leesil, in being forced to accept Wayfarer’s being sent away, would be only slightly worse than Shade for being sent off with the young pair. And at the thought of dealing with Magiere next, Chap went on . . .
    It will not be your last time. While I am away, it falls on you to keep Magiere and Leesil from recklessness, to keep them safe as long as possible.
    Wynn felt so tired. All she wanted to do was curl up in a bed and sleep, but that was not going to happen.
    What had the Chein’âs really intended for Osha by giving him a weapon of a make from a land halfway across the world? And why in the same place where there was a woman who potentially had the same ability as Wayfarer, who bore a hated name given by ancient spirits of another of the five races? Those thoughts gave Wynn a quick chill.
    In all of this, both Osha and Chane would be away for a long while. She still couldn’t see what to do concerning their feelings for her—and hers for them. At least she could escape that, but not forever. If there was a forever.
    Whatever came in the end,