by Barb Hendee
"Be comfortable," he said. "You are safe and my caste will make certain of it. But do not leave this dwelling without Osha or another I designate. I will send food and drink as quickly as possible."
Leesil stepped toward him, and his mouth was taut in anger. Before he uttered a word, Sgäile cut him off.
"Soon," he said, and his expression seemed troubled. "You will speak to Most Aged Father soon. But heed me, Léshil. Do not leave this dwelling until I come for you."
He released the curtain and was gone.
Magiere put her hand on Leesil's shoulder, then began pulling the chest off his back.
Wynn believed that Sgäile would keep his word, though Leesil's impatience was mounting. No words of comfort from her would do any good, so she looked about their new quarters.
The elm's interior was one room, though larger than the family space in Gleann's home. Soft cushions were stacked to one side along with a rolled-up felt carpet of cerulean blue. The floor was bare earth instead of moss. There were ledges growing from the tree walls for beds or seats with cream blankets of downy wool folded upon each. A wide curtain of gray-green, like the clothes of the Anmaglâhk, hung from a mounted oak rod across the room's back. Wynn pulled it aside and found a small stone tub akin to Gleann's.
"Our guest house has been well prepared," she said.
Leesil's amber eyes flashed as he turned on her. "It's a cell."
By early evening, Leesil paced the tree's interior, berating himself for his stupidity.
Magiere and Wynn were captives, and he had no one to blame but himself. A wooden tray piled with fruit and a water pitcher had been brought, but he didn't touch any of it. There was also a glass lantern, prelit, that sent an aroma of pine needles through their cell. Some of their baggage had been delivered—but not their weapons.
To make matters worse, Magiere watched him with that same silent tension on her face that she'd worn throughout their time in Venjetz. She sat vigil on him, waiting to see if he would lose himself again.
Chap was the only one who could walk out if he wished. No elf so far had interfered with the comings and goings of the majay-. But the dog just lay on the floor with his head on his paws.
Though Leesil seethed over their situation, it was mostly frustration. At least one of his companions might suggest something helpful. Were they any closer at all to finding Nein'a?
"What do you think happens next?" Magiere asked.
She sat on a wall shelf with one leg pulled up, and Leesil's frustration faded.
Magiere was just worried about him—about them all. She looked paler than usual, and the sleeves of her dark-yellow elven shirt were lightly marred from the journey. With her head tipped forward, black hair hung around her cheeks. He reached down and hooked her hand with two of his fingers.
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "Whatever comes, it'll depend on what this leader of theirs wants… this Most Aged Father. He put Sgäile through a great deal to bring us here, so I'd assume this meeting won't wait long."
"He wants something from you," Magiere whispered.
Leesil saw the vicious narrowing of her eyes and wondered if her irises flickered to black for an instant.
"Of course he does," he answered.
She watched him, probably wondering what reckless notion he had in his head.
"And that means he'll pay for it," Leesil added. "Perhaps he wants it badly enough to release my mother. It's been so many days since we left the mountains. I thought surely I'd find her by now… seen for myself that she's all right."
Magiere stood up suddenly, and Leesil flinched, expecting another tongue-lashing.
She slipped her arms around his waist. The studs of her hauberk clicked against the rings on his.
Chap got up with a warning rumble, and the doorway curtain swung aside as Sgäile stepped in.
"Come, Léshil," he said. "It is time."
"Alone?" Magiere said. "I don't think so."
The curtain lifted once more, and another anmaglâhk stood in the doorway without entering. Something about her put Leesil on edge.
She was slender like a willow, with thin lips and a narrow face, but her features were otherwise pure elven. Her hair was like the color of sun-bleached wheat and hung in slight waves.
This one wasn't as adept as Urhkar, or even Sgäile, at hiding her feelings. Her loathing of him was plain to the eyes. Leesil nearly felt it crawl on his skin like dry heat from a weaponer s forge.
It was different from Én'nish's personal and manic hatred. This woman took in the sight of Magiere touching him, and Wynn sitting on the ledge next to Chap, as if she would burn this long-nurtured tree just to cleanse it of any human taint.
"You will come," she said in Belaskian. "Now."
"He's not going anywhere," Magiere answered. "Your leader can come here to speak to him."
The look in the woman's eyes almost made Leesil back up and pull Magiere away. She said something to Sgäile in Elvish.
Sgäile stepped close to Leesil, leaning in and speaking softly. "Léshil, you must come. This is Fréthfâre, the hand of Most Aged Father. He cannot come to you, so Fréthfâre carries his… request that you come to him—as a courtesy. All will be made clear."
Leesil only half-trusted anything Sgäile said, for one could bend one's word without breaking it.
"And then I see my mother?" he asked.
Sgäile hesitated. "I cannot say. That is for Most Aged Father to decide."
Chap crossed the room in silence. He stared at this woman, Fréth, for so long that she finally looked down at him. A bit of uncertainty broke through her revulsion.
Chap lifted his head toward Leesil and barked once.
"All right," Leesil said. He ran his hand down Magiere's back. "Stay here and look out for Wynn."
Magiere grabbed his arm so tight it hurt. "No."
"Chap is coming with me," he said. "They won't… can't stop him from doing what he wants. I'll be back when I learn what this is all about."
She was frightened, and a scared Magiere was dangerous. Her fear pulled at him, but he couldn't stop now. If he let her keep arguing, fear would quickly shift to anger. He peeled her fingers from his arm and held her hand for a moment.
Fréth backed out through the curtain as if the sight disgusted her.
Sgäile pulled the curtain back again, waiting. As Leesil turned to leave, Magiere tightened her grip.
"You owe me a promise for a promise," she warned.
Leesil wondered what it meant until he glanced back to find that Magiere's eyes weren't on him. They were on Sgäile.
Sgäile glanced at Leesil and nodded firmly to her. "Always."
Magiere finally released Leesil's hand.
"I'll be back soon," he said, and slipped out.
He emerged on the outskirts of Crijheâiche again. Fréth had already moved off, and Sgäile urged him to follow. He couldn't help but notice how fluidly Fréth moved—just like his mother. She turned in the waning daylight to look down at Chap.
"Majay-hì?" she said. "In Crijheäiche?"
Sgäile spoke something brief in Elvish. Fréth's lips were pursed. His answer did not seem to satisfy her, but she walked on.
Leesil looked about, but there were no other dogs in sight. The majay-hì pack that followed the barge had only appeared now and then, always hesitant to come too close. Perhaps they had lived so long in a land where humans weren't tolerated that they were confused by those who walked with elves. But still, Fréth's question was odd.
Fréth led them away from the riverside, but they continued to pass through populated areas. Many amber eyes watched their passing. Some whispers reached Leesil's ears. He thought he heard someone say "Cuir-in'nen'a." His gaze wandered so much that, when they came upon it, the oak tree seemed to rise out of nowhere in front of them.
Sitting in a wide mossy clearing, it was ringed by other domiciles a stone's throw away. Any one of them would have matched Gleann's home, but compared to the oak at
the clearing's center, they appeared small and stunted. Its roots made the earth rise in ridges spreading out from its base. Its breadth would have matched six men laid end to end. It seemed impossible that it even existed. And its mass of branches and leaves rose beyond sight, nearly blotting out the sky.
Five anmaglâhk stood near it, and one stepped out, exposing himself to full view.
He was taller than Sgäile, with broad shoulders and a build that seemed too heavy for an elf. To Leesil, he looked rather like a human stretched to a height not of his race. But the man was purely elvish, from hair streaked with silver-gray among the whitish-blond to large amber eyes in a triangular face with—
Leesil stopped and planted himself firmly. Anger made his throat go dry.
Four scar lines angled down the man's forehead, jumping his right eye to continue through his cheek to the back of his jaw.
"Brot'an," Leesil whispered to himself. Memories burned inside his head.
In Darmouth's family crypt, Brot'an had whispered to him; he'd told him that the one elven skull among the warlord's bone trophies was his own mother's. Leesil had rushed Darmouth, ramming his curved bone knife through the warlord's throat, and then watched as the tyrant drowned in the blood flooding his lungs.
Brot'an had done it with nothing but Leesil's own guilt, turning it to anguish with a simple lie. Leesil had finished what this anmaglâhk had come to do—assassinate Lord Darmouth and start a bloodbath in the Warlands.
Leesil had taken one more life, just like the weapon he was. The one Brot'an had used.
Chap's rage mounted until it overwhelmed what he sensed from Leesil. Ears flattered, he pulled back his jowls and opened his jaws.
Brot'ân'duivé—Dog in the Dark. Deceiver!
Chap shook under taut muscles with fur rising across his neck.
Brot'an's white eyebrows knitted, bending the scars on his face.
It did not matter to Chap whether this one shared any feeling for Eillean. Brot'an had used Leesil like a tool and brought Nein'a back to be condemned and caged. This much and more Chap had learned when he had dipped into the tall elf's surfacing memories in Darmouth's crypt.
He should have never listened to Magiere—never let this man leave that place alive. He should have torn off Brot'an's scared face, there and then.
And now, here was Brot'an, waiting as Leesil came to the patriarch of the Anmaglâhk. How much had this assassin told his own kind of Leesil and Magiere?
The others near Brot'an moved a few steps toward Chap in surprise. One of them said, "majay-hì?"
Chap reached out quickly from one to the next, searching for any surfacing memory. All he caught were images of majay-hì in the forest mingled with a few from various inhabited settlements.
He had learned from the memories of Lily and her pack that the majay-hi occasionally bore their young among elven communities. They wanted their children to be aware of and accustomed to the elves before they returned to life in the forest. Chap was uncertain why these four and even Brot'an found his presence here so baffling.
Then it struck him. Of all the forest packs these anmaglâhk had witnessed, none had ever seen a majay-hì in this place—in Crijheäiche.
Why?
He heard Fréthfâre's sharp voice but did not catch her words—-all his attention returned to Brot'an.
Let instinct take all reason from him. Here and now, all he wanted was to tear into Brot'an.
But Chap held his ground. Where would that leave Leesil?
Brot'an stood his place with only a puzzled frown on his long, marred features. The four behind him took hesitant steps froward, two shifting to either side of Chap and just out of his lunging reach.
"Greimasg'âh?" one said, looking to Brot'an, but the elder elf gave no reply.
Chap had heard this word, though he did not know its meaning. At the docks, it had been used for Urhkar as well.
Sgäile dropped to one knee before Chap, holding his palms out.
"No," he said in Elvish. "No… violence… here."
He spoke with slow emphasis, as if to make certain Chap understood.
"Léshil, make him understand!" Sgäile added in Belaskian.
Brot'an's eyes shifted with keen interest at this strange demand. Chap held his ground.
"Is this the real reason you took my weapons?" Leesil asked, but it sounded more like an accusation.
"No," Sgäile answered. "But it is now just as good a reason. This is neither the place nor the way for whatever grievance you and the majay-hl have with Brot'ân'duivé."
Reluctantly, Chap agreed. He circled back around Leesil's legs, coming up beside him to face the others. Let the deceiver breathe for now.
As far as Chap was concerned, Brot'ân'duivé was dead, though the man did not yet know it.
An exclamation erupted from one of the other anmaglâhk. Chap followed the man's astonished gaze out between the domicile trees at the clearing's edge.
A white blur darted from one tree to another, reappearing halfway around the next trunk.
Lily peered out at Chap and looked hesitantly at the others.
Chap's rage softened at the sight of her. Without thinking, he yipped, hoping she would join him.
Lily shifted nervously. She took two steps toward him but then backed away, half-hiding behind a domicile tree.
Chap knew her reluctance to be near humans and often sensed her concern and puzzlement that he did so. But as he reached for any memories surfacing within her, an image of the central oak appeared in his mind.
Its doorway was but a dark hollow he could not see into, and the sight of it was coated in Lily's fear.
He turned his attention back to the Anmaglâhk as Brot'an raised an arm toward the tree and stepped out of the way.
"Go inside, Fréthfâre," he said in Belaskian. "Most Aged Father awaits." His face took on a more pleased expression. "Well met, Sgailsheilleache. Your journey was swifter than expected. Come and tell me of it."
Sgäile hesitated. "I have taken guardianship for Léshil and his companions."
"And my word holds all others to your purpose," Brot'an said. "No one will touch him or his. You will come with me."
Sgäile seemed only half-satisfied, but relented. "Yes, Greimasg'äh."
Events were not playing out to Chap's liking, but he saw nothing he could do. He and Leesil were surrounded by their enemies for now. Fréthfâre headed for the behemoth tree, and he nudged Leesil forward, keeping himself between his companion and Brot'an.
Brot'an's head turned sharply and fixed upon a point at Chap's rear. Something sharp clapped on Chap's right hind leg. He whirled to snap but quickly stopped.
Lily held his leg firmly in her jaws. She tugged, trying to pull him, then let go and began barking wildly as she backed across the clearing.
Chap saw the center oak and its black hollow doorway in her thoughts. She wanted him to leave this place, but why? And how could he tell her that he could not do as she asked?
He barked twice at her and trotted toward the oak. Lily did not follow.
Fréthfâre pulled the doorway curtain aside, and Chap entered first into a large empty space within. The only fixture was a wide stairway of living wood to one side, but it led downward into the earth, not up as in Gleanns home.
Chap descended watchfully and emerged into a large earthen chamber. He stood in a hollow space below the massive oak. Thick roots arched down all its sides to support walls of packed dirt lined with embedded stones for strength. Glass lanterns hung from above, filling the space with yellowed twilight. In the chamber's middle was the trees vast center root. As large as a normal oak, it reached from ceiling to floor and into the earth.
Leesil stepped down beside Chap, his tan face paled by the sickly light. Leesil hated not having control, as did Chap, and they had long since lost hold of their own path.
Fréthfâre descended behind them as a thin voice filled the earthen chamber.
"Come to me… here."
It
came from the wide center root.
Chap stepped through the earthen chamber, around the center root, and found an oval opening that at first had been too hard to spot in its earth-stained wood. Leesil hesitated, but Chap inched forward to peer within. He froze at what awaited them.
The oak's vast center root held a smaller room more dimly lit than the outer chamber surrounding it. And its inner walls appeared alive even in its stillness.
Hundreds of tinier root tendrils ran through its curved walls like taupe-colored veins in dark flesh. The walls curved smoothly into a floor of the same make, and Chap was reluctant to even place his paw on its surface. Soft teal cushions rested before a pedestal flowing out of the floor's living wood. The back wall's midpoint flowed inward as well to support it.
Wall and floor protrusions melded together into a bower… or was it more a crude cradle? Among the clumps of fresh moss therein, two eyes stared out from a decrepit form.
Once he would have been tall, but he now curled fetal with his head twisted toward his visitors.
Thin, dry white hair trailed from his pale scalp around a neck and shoulders barely more than shriveled skin draped over frail bones. His triangular elven face was little more than jutting angles of bone beneath skin grayed by want of daylight. Deep cracks covered features around eyes sunken deeply into their large slanted sockets. His amber irises had lost nearly all color. All that remained was a milky yellow tint surrounded by whites with thread-thin red blood vessels. Cracked and yellowed fingernails jutted from the shriveled and receding skin of his skeletal fingers. His once peaked ears were reduced to wilted remnants.
"Father," Fréthfâre said.
She stood away from Leesil, bowing to the ancient elf. The old one ignored her and studied Chap and Leesil.
"Majay-hì," he said in a reedy voice. "I have not had such a visit in long years." He raised a hand to Leesil with slow effort. "Come closer… my son. Let me see you."
Chap reached for the memories of Most Aged Father.
He saw nothing. Not one image rose in the old one's mind. Chap remained poised and focused as he entered behind Leesil, and Fréthfâre followed.