by Barb Hendee
Chap had no notion what was happening up on the rooftops. There were at least two archers above, though the second had not fired at him. Two unseen archers could prove devastating with Magiere already wounded. He howled, trying to draw attention, as he closed on Leesil.
Leesil heard Chap coming, but he still couldn’t spot Magiere, and the anmaglâhk in the cutway’s mouth spun around. All Leesil could hope to do was scatter everyone’s attention until Chap reached him. He thrust one foot back between Én’nish’s legs.
He planted it hard, prepared to lurch back into her and twist, and . . .
A tall form appeared too suddenly, too silently from the cutway’s darkness.
It was as if the figure had been there in the dark all along and simply materialized in the passage’s opening. The one anmaglâhk standing before the cutway and now facing Leesil didn’t seem to hear it. Leesil’s senses sharpened as his mind took in the newcomer.
He was taller than any elf in sight and broader of shoulder. Instead of forest gray, he wore a dusky wool cloak with a full hood. His face was lost in the hood’s shadows, though his jaw and mouth appeared to be covered with a black scarf or wrap. But even if he wasn’t dressed like the Anmaglâhk, in his gloved hands were long, silver-white stilettos.
Leesil couldn’t believe how many elves from the eastern continent had been sent so far from home to come after them—after Magiere.
It had been more than two years since they had secured the first orb and fled with it, only to have a pair of anmaglâhk come for them, demanding Magiere release what she had into their hands. The confrontation had ended in bloodshed and death on both sides.
Apparently, it had not ended at all.
Leesil tried to peer beyond the newcomer into the alley. Where was Magiere? There were too many anmaglâhk to fight, even with Chap’s help, if he remained captive. In that racing instant, two things happened.
The wire around Leesil’s neck slid upward along his pinned blade, as if Én’nish were trying to slip it over the blade’s tip to his throat. And the newcomer shouted in Elvish.
“Fhœt’as-na dœrsa!”
The one anmaglâhk before the cutway spun about and then quickly retreated two paces at the sight of the newcomer. The fourth anmaglâhk, creeping in to join his companion, froze three paces off, raising both blades in defense. And the wire stopped sliding up Leesil’s blade.
Leesil couldn’t speak Elvish, and Wynn had told him never to try. He understood the few words she’d taught him, but the newcomer’s command in that guttural, lilting language had come too fast for him to catch anything. He didn’t know what was happening, and he didn’t care. This brief hesitation was all he needed.
Leesil slipped his blade tip out from beneath the garrote. As the wire snapped tight against his neck, he twisted around on Én’nish.
Chap slowed for an instant, startled by a tall form appearing suddenly in the cutway’s opening.
“Fhœt’as-na dœrsa!”
He understood the an’Cróan dialect perfectly: Disable the captor!
The captor . . . not the captive? What was happening?
Then Leesil twisted around on his captor, and the garrote pulled taut against his neck.
Chap forgot everything and leaped from a dead run. He was in the air when he heard the small anmaglâhk shriek. Then he hit her, and they both tumbled along the cobblestones. A sharp pain burned across the side of his head. He scrambled up, ready to rush her again, and then froze.
The small one rolled over, teetering as she stood up. An arrow with black feathers was stuck through her left upper arm, and her silvery stiletto lay on the street.
Leesil ripped the garrote off his throat, but Chap was still stalled, wondering what had just happened. Who had shot the small female? And the voice of the newcomer worked in his thoughts.
Chap knew that voice from somewhere.
Leesil felt the garrote drag and cut across the back of his neck as Én’nish cried out. He stumbled as Chap knocked her clear, and then he ripped the garrote off, looking for the closest opponent, and . . .
The tall newcomer went straight at the anmaglâhk between them.
Both men became almost a blur in Leesil’s sight. Amid the click and screech of stiletto blades, the anmaglâhk that Chap had faced up the street came racing in. Leesil had to turn away. His slash missed as the anmaglâhk passed him, and when he looked for Chap . . .
There was Én’nish, holding her left arm, with an arrow protruding from it. She nearly screamed out in Elvish, and Leesil understood only one word—go!
Everything changed.
Én’nish and the one who’d gone after Chap sped back the way Leesil had first come. The one creeping toward the cutway’s mouth backed up and shouted at the last, now locked in battle with the tall newcomer. That last anmaglâhk leaped backward, trying to disengage, and the newcomer matched him like a shadow in flight. One of his blades cut out and up, slashing through that last anmaglahk’s shoulder.
The anmaglâhk didn’t flinch or pause. He twisted away from the newcomer’s next strike and came straight at Leesil, and Leesil took a step to meet him. The anmaglâhk suddenly dropped to the street in midrun.
Leesil felt a foot hook his right ankle, and he careened forward, straight toward the newcomer. Off balance, all he could do was swing on instinct.
The tall newcomer instantly inverted one stiletto and sidestepped.
Leesil’s weak strike met with empty air. Something struck his right temple and the world went black. Through the ringing in his ears, he barely felt the impact as he hit the cobble street.
Everything had gone dark again in Magiere’s sight as she struggled to take up her falchion and rise again. All her wild hunger was gone, and without it, the pain in her thigh nearly made her fall. Her head was ringing and her neck ached from whatever had hit her. When she found herself down the cutway again, she wasn’t certain how she’d gotten there.
The first thing she spotted out of the cutway’s mouth was Leesil in the street, trying to get up. She hobbled along the cutway’s wall, trying to get to him, and then the silhouette of a very tall figure stepped into her view.
The cloaked and hooded man, so overly tall, suddenly turned her way, as if knowing she was there.
A distant street lantern glinted on the thin anmaglâhk stilettos in his gloved hands. The stranger stood over Leesil.
Magiere tried to raise her falchion as she lunged along the cutway’s wall.
That tall, cloaked figure flipped one blade into his other hand with the second weapon. He raised his empty hand, palm out toward her. His hood shifted as if he shook his head slightly.
Leesil regained his feet, but the newcomer remained where he stood, and Magiere hesitated.
She couldn’t see much inside the dark pocket of the man’s hood. With the exception of the dark fabric across his lower face, he wasn’t dressed like an anmaglâhk. He reached down with his free hand and unfastened his cloak’s corners, which were tied up around his waist, like an anmaglâhk would do. She noticed the cloak was brown, like the jerkin beneath it. With his marred, dun-colored pants and worn, soft calf-high boots, he looked like some overly tall, overly weathered traveler.
But not so with those blades in his hand.
Leesil wobbled, blinked, and rubbed his head as if, like Magiere, he’d been struck down. Chap came racing into view from down the street as Magiere reached the cutway’s mouth. His hackles were stiff as he circled Leesil and growled at the stranger. When he caught sight of her, his growl faded.
A rush of memories flooded the forefront of Magiere’s mind.
She saw a grove of trees outside the glade where Leesil’s mother had been imprisoned. A party of anmaglâhk had attacked all of them, and Chap had tried to drive one off, chasing him. This memory replayed several times, and Magiere understood.
The anmaglâhk had fled for some reason. Chap had given chase and then broke off to come back.
The cloaked stranger raised his
head a little, just enough that Magiere thought she saw the spark of amber eyes inside the darkness of his hood. A shrill whistle rose from him as he tucked both blades up his sleeves, waved Leesil forward, and then strode straight toward the cutway’s mouth.
Magiere raised her falchion, and he slowed. Somewhere behind him, Chap began to growl again. The stranger pointed beyond Magiere, down the cutway, and then just walked right past, not even looking at her.
She was exhausted and the pain in her thigh was growing. With one shoulder against the wall, she tried to turn and keep the man in her sight.
Leesil was suddenly at her side. He sheathed one blade and grabbed her arm on the side opposite her wounded leg. Just the sight of his tan face brought her a little relief. They’d survived the Anmaglâhk—again—but the manner in which this had happened left Magiere wary as she glanced along the cutway.
The stranger paused down the dark path between the buildings. Half turning, he motioned for them to follow.
Magiere looked to Leesil, about to ask who the man was. Leesil just shook his head, his eyes unblinking, narrowed, and still fixed on the tall one. He pulled her arm over the back of his neck, and they headed down the cutway with Chap close behind, growling softly.
Chap did not care for this tall, convenient “savior” who had appeared out of the darkness. Although he had chased the fleeing anmaglâhk as far as he could, they had continuously split up, forcing him into choosing a quarry. He had kept after the wounded female to the last. Even with an arrow through her arm, she’d managed to make a leaping grab at a shop’s awning. She pulled herself out of his reach and was gone across the rooftops before he could see which way.
Now Chap and his two charges followed this unknown, human-garbed savior down a narrow cutway in the night. He had heard only a few words from the man, who had spoken in the an’Cróan dialect of Old Elvish, as Wynn had labeled it. He could not get this newcomer’s voice out of his head. Yet try as he did, he had not heard enough to match the voice to a face. With Leesil and Magiere ahead of him, he did not have a clear enough line of sight to try to dip into any of the stranger’s rising memories.
The slap of stumbling steps sounded behind Chap, and he instantly wheeled in the narrow path.
Another shadowed figure crouched in the cutway behind him, as if it had dropped from above into a poor landing. Even in the dark, Chap spotted the bow in the figure’s hand. He rushed at it, snapping for its face before it could straighten up. It dropped the bow, stumbling back along the wall in a hasty retreat.
“No . . . stop . . . friend! I am friend!”
The words were Belaskian, but the light male voice was thick with an elven accent—an an’Cróan accent.
“Chap . . . what are you doing?” Leesil called from up ahead.
Chap did not take his eyes off this second newcomer. This male wore a tawny brown cloak, and he was almost as tall as their unknown savior, though slighter of build. Strangely, his sleeves were narrow, leaving no room for blades inside them, and his left forearm had an archer’s sheath strapped around it.
Chap crept closer, still snarling.
The slender figure quickly reached up and pulled back his hood, exposing large, slanted eyes with amber irises in the dark-skinned face of a young an’Cróan male. Those eyes were wide in worry, as they should be in facing him.
Chap stalled as he looked closer.
Long, white-blond hair framed long features . . . the kind that Wynn had once called horselike for their slight flatness, even to his long nose.
“Yes . . . yes, me,” the elf said quickly.
Chap stopped growling.
It was Osha, who had accompanied all of them, along with Sgäile, in their search for the first orb.
Indeed, Osha had been a friend, even as an anmaglâhk. He had watched over Wynn as best he could, and stood as Leesil’s witness in marriage to Magiere. Osha had been very fond—possibly more than fond—of Wynn. But the sight of him brought no relief to Chap. Sgäile was dead, and if Osha was here now, then . . .
Chap whirled, a rumble growing in his chest as his hackles rose. His jowls pulled back, baring his teeth, as he raced down the cutway to get past Leesil and Magiere.
He knew who that first tall stranger must be.
Leesil stood in the cutway, holding up Magiere with one winged punching blade in his hand as he looked back. He barely made out someone else in the cutway beyond Chap. In the moment, he was functioning almost on pure instinct, but he didn’t like being forced to accept help from a stranger, especially one who fought like a well-trained anmaglâhk. But Magiere was injured, they were in a foreign city without lodgings, and they’d just barely escaped a surprise attack.
“What’s going on back there?” Magiere whispered, and then gasped in sudden pain. “What’s Chap doing?”
Leesil shook his head and made sure he had a good grip on her. She was bad off if she couldn’t see the other figure beyond Chap. Glancing the other way, he spotted their rescuer farther on, standing where the cutway intersected with a broad alley. But their rescuer was not alone.
A third figure clutching a lantern with an open shutter waited near the intersection’s far left corner. This one was smaller. Though she was fully hooded, Leesil could see a long wool skirt of dark green below the hem of a dull burgundy cloak. Her hands were slender and fragile, and she was more than a head shorter than the tall stranger. He studied her for only an instant, and then his attention dropped to the alley floor at her feet.
Barely two steps from the female’s skirt hem lay a body.
Only the torso of that dead anmaglâhk clad in dark forest gray was visible from where Leesil stood. Its head was twisted around at an impossible angle.
The tall one snapped something in Elvish, flipping one hand quickly toward the lantern. Likely he wanted the small female to close its shutter. She only flinched at his voice, and her hood turned up toward him.
Leesil stiffened as the lantern illuminated the tan face of a young elven woman. But more startling was the spark of her eyes. Not amber, but topaz, leaning almost to pure green. He knew of only one elf . . . one quarter-blood in the world with eyes like that.
“Leanâlhâm?”
Magiere shuddered in Leesil’s hold. “What?”
Before he answered, she peered along his sightline.
Magiere was riveted by the sight of Leanâlhâm, and Leesil hardly knew what to think. He’d not seen the girl in several years, and that had been in the an’Cróan Elven Territories of the eastern continent. She’d been a friend to him, Magiere, and Chap, and to Wynn, as well. What was she doing here?
“Yes . . . yes, me!”
He heard that voice behind him speaking poorly in Belaskian, and looked back. Almost instantly, a snarl sounded in the alley, and Chap came at him at a dead run.
Chap’s fur bristled all over. He bared his teeth as he let out a crackling growl that wouldn’t stop.
Leesil pulled Magiere against the cutway’s wall and out of the way, and Chap bolted straight by them.
What was happening now?
“What is Leanâlhâm doing here?” Magiere asked, her voice growing louder. “Who is that with her?”
When she tried to pull away and head down the alley, Leesil restrained her.
“Watch our backs! Watch behind!” he told her, and then he let go.
Chap hadn’t raised any warning memories for Leesil; he didn’t have to. Leesil suddenly knew who was inside that cloak and hidden beneath that black face wrap. It all came together around an overly tall stranger dressed—disguised—like a human, but who fought like an anmaglâhk and frightened his own kind.
Leesil took off after Chap as he drew his second winged blade.
* * *
Magiere braced against the wall, falchion in hand, as she looked repeatedly up and down the cutway. At the far intersection stood Leanâlhâm, but Chap had raced by in a fury, leaving someone else behind all of them.
She tried to right herself, grippin
g her blade, and call up the hunger to eat away her pain. It barely answered her will, and the lantern in Leanâlhâm’s hand burned her eyes slightly. When she looked back the other way, someone was right on top of her.
Magiere tried to raise her falchion one-handed as she made a grab with her other hand.
“No! No fight . . . We help!”
Magiere froze, stunned, as she stared into Osha’s panicked face. She quickly looked down the cutway to where it met a crossing alley.
Chap threw himself at the tall figure as Leesil grabbed Leanâlhâm and jerked the girl away. The tall man spun out of reach, and Chap bounded off a shop’s back corner. The stranger ducked into where the cutway continued beyond the alley.
Leesil closed behind the dog, shouting at Chap’s target, “You . . . you old butcher! What are you up to now?”
Magiere started to hobble after them, and Osha quickly grabbed her arm to help her along. She tried to shake him off, but he wouldn’t let go. Ahead, Leanâlhâm rushed at Leesil, the lantern rattling in her grip, and grabbed his sleeve.
“No . . . not do this,” she shouted, her words broken in a language she couldn’t speak well.
Leesil jerked free and pushed Leanâlhâm back as Magiere hobbled into the intersection, with Osha still determined to help her. When Leanâlhâm saw Magiere, her eyes widened at the sight of the embedded arrow in Magiere’s thigh. Her cheeks were covered in tears, and she lunged, grabbing the front of Magiere’s studded hauberk.
“Make . . . them stop!” she cried.
Magiere still didn’t know what was going on, but if Chap was angry and Leesil backed him up, Chap had good reason. She pulled out of Osha’s grip and shoved Leanâlhâm behind her as the tall man stepped out of the cutway’s far half.
He held anmaglâhk blades again, but he brushed off his hood with the back of one hand.
“Please,” Leanâlhâm whispered, as she grabbed Magiere’s sword arm.
But all Magiere could do was stare.
By the jostled lantern’s light, four old scars ran at a slant across the tall elf’s deeply tanned forehead. They cut through his right, feathery blond eyebrow, skipped over his hard amber eye, and continued at his cheekbone to disappear beneath the black cloth over his nose and mouth. His long, coarse hair was streaked with gray a tint darker than his people’s natural white blond.