Dog in the Dark

Chapter Fifteen

Returning to the annex, Chap followed Leesil and Magiere through the reception area and up the stairs. As they passed, two sages sat reading in the library, but neither looked up. When they reached their room, Chap paused.

He was too weary with his own burdens and, even though Magiere needed tending, he did not want to spend the night watching Leesil soothe Magiere. When Leesil ushered Magiere in, Chap remained in the hallway. Leesil looked back in puzzlement.

—I will—stay—out here—for a while—

Leesil half turned to Chap but then glanced at Magiere collapsed on the bed. Leesil pursed his lips and was perhaps ready to argue, but instead nodded and closed the door.

Chap looked down the hallway. Both Leanâlhâm’s and Brot’an’s doors were closed. Chap quietly approached the latter and sniffed at the space near the bottom. The scent was faint, but he could tell that the old assassin was inside. It was the only scent he picked up, so Leanâlhâm must be in her own room. And suddenly Chap no longer wanted to be alone.

Leaving Magiere and Leesil to each other, he went to scratch softly on Leanâlhâm’s door. Light footsteps sounded inside, and she opened it and looked down. Her hair hung loose down her back.

“Majay-hì?”

—May I—come in?—

Leanâlhâm blinked, glanced about the upper hallway in puzzlement, and then stepped back.

“Please,” she answered, pulling the door wide for him.

He entered, and after closing the door, she scurried in her bare feet back toward the bed. The book he’d seen her with earlier was lying open and propped up on a pillow.

—Were you—reading?—

“I have been trying, but the pictures keep stopping me. My people do not make drawings like this in their texts unless necessary.”

Chap was slightly taken aback by the ease with which she talked to him. Perhaps having her own space to control made her more comfortable. Anything that made her treat him less like an aberration of her homeland’s sacred guardians was a relief to him.

She clambered up onto the tall bed, settled before the book, and turned a page.

“Are you coming up?”

He leaped up after her, stumbling a bit when his paws sank into the quilt and mattress. He stretched out, and she pointed to an illustration of a young elven female dressed in a sage’s robe and holding an etched wooden plate.

“I think she was doing travels and uncovered artifacts, but I do not know why she was traveling.”

Chap glanced over the story.

—She—was—a journeyor—

Leanâlhâm looked up at him in surprise. “You can read this book?”

—Some— ... —words are—different—for elves—in—this land— ... —I know—only—the way—your people—speak—

Leanâlhâm’s brow wrinkled for a moment at that, and Chap hoped she would not start treating him with awe once again. Thankfully, her curiosity overrode all else.

“What is ... a journeyor?”

—Like Wynn— ... —a rank—among the sages— ... —They go—away—after learning—much—to learn—more— ... —to prove—worth—and bring back—knowledge—to their guild—

“They must be so brave to go to strange places all alone.”

—Not all—journey—like Wynn—did— ... —Most—go to—other—branches—annexes—settlements—in their—region—or—places—to work—

Leanâlhâm grew quiet and still. “She is very brave, and now she will journey again with that other man and your daughter ... and Osha?”

—Hopefully—

It seemed a strange thing to hope for. Chap said nothing about the hope that any of them would survive to return home. Leanâlhâm pulled her knees up against her chest and studied the image of the young elven sage, and Chap dipped lightly into her mind for any surfacing memories.

He—Leanâlhâm—saw Wynn back when the young journeyor had first visited the girl’s land with Magiere, Leesil, and himself. Then came flashes of the moment Osha had arrived with Brot’an ... and Wynn’s journal.

Chap had already been through too much this night. But now he was isolated with a pensive, lonely girl cast adrift without a destination of her own. Another opportunity like this might not come anytime soon.

—Brot’ân’duivé said—Wynn sent—him—a journal—through—Osha—

Leanâlhâm’s gaze turned farther from him. “He told you this?”

—What—became of—the journal?—

She turned fully away from the book and him. “Do not ask me. I cannot break my promise—my oath—to the greimasg’äh.”

The question still worked, though this brought Chap no pleasure and only more guilt and shame in reigniting Leanâlhâm’s painful memories....

In the three days after Osha departed with Brot’ân’duivé, Leanâlhâm hardly left her home. She had no interest in baking grain bread or working on embroidery. It was difficult enough not to weep.

Sgäilsheilleache had gone to the ancestors. It seemed impossible that Léshil would ever return. Now even Osha had been taken from her. She even grew fearful whenever Grandfather, so weary himself, left their home. But she could not bear to go after him and hid away from a world that grew ever smaller with each loss.

Grandfather was also in pain, yet somehow performed his daily tasks. He spoke to other clan members about the weather or goods that had arrived or were sent off for trade. She did not know how to do this, though he would rise from bed the next day to do the same.

She knew that anger was a sign of bad manners, but deep inside she was angry. Not with Osha, who had left her like this, but with Brot’ân’duivé, who had forced him away.

Cuirin’nên’a was the closest thing Leanâlhâm had to another woman in her life, but Léshil’s mother was quiet, guarded ... and cold. She had not loved Sgäilsheilleache and viewed death as a part of life—part of the way of the Anmaglâhk. Leanâlhâm wondered whether the woman even understood grief.

As a result of buried anger and sorrow, Leanâlhâm began doing odd things.

Besides spending most of her days in bed, when she did get up, she carried the bottle with Sgäilsheilleache’s ashes into whatever room in which she settled. Those ashes needed—deserved—to be carried to the ancestors’ burial grounds, but she did not want to let go of that last part of him. While in bed, fearful of falling asleep and losing sight of the bottle, she placed it beside her mat.

On the third day, Grandfather woke her earlier than she wished and would not leave until she rose. He insisted that she bathe and dress, and she could not believe what more he expected of her. He wanted her to attend a celebration.

Reavrahkrijha—Heart of Spring—had arrived, and the Coilehkrotall, like all clans, celebrated the true birth of a new year. A feast would be prepared with smoked fish brought from the coast to be served with the most tender first growths of the harvest and the last of winter’s stores. All in the enclave would sit together at tables upon the green and visit and offer good wishes to one another. This was a common tradition of the an’Cróan; it would be taking place in enclaves throughout their land.

But it did not feel like a day of new beginnings for Leanâlhâm, as she stood in the main chamber of her home with Grandfather under the watchful eyes of Cuirin’nên’a. All she had to cling to was the small bottle of her uncle’s ashes tucked inside her tunic against her stomach.

“Come, my child,” Grandfather said. “It will do you good.”

How could he think this? How could he force her to mingle among people who did not believe she belonged here, who knew Sgäilsheilleache was gone. She had no one but Grandfather now to stand between her and their judgments.

“I do not think—” she began.

“We are going,” he interrupted firmly, and then looked to Léshil’s mother. “And you, too.”

Cuirin’nên’a raised one feathery eyebrow. She had never shown interest in the company of anyone outside this home. Grandfather was head of the household and a clan elder whose presence was required on such occasions. Even Sgäilsheilleache had never dared disobey Grandfather in anything but his caste duties. This was the way of their people.

But Leanâlhâm hoped Cuirin’nên’a would decline. That might give her a chance to do so as well. Instead Léshil’s mother nodded respectfully, and Grandfather shooed them both out and off to the feast.

Everyone was dressed finely, with tiny colored cords of shéot’a cloth woven into their braided hair. Long tables set out were laden to their edges with honey cakes, spring berries, fresh mushrooms, dried fruit stores, and leafy greens. There was barely room for cups, plates, and utensils, and it should have been a pleasant sight.

Leanâlhâm shied away from anyone, from accepting their polite but brief condolences or their well-mannered but halfhearted wishes.

She busied herself at the oven only to carry food to tables and get away from anyone trying to approach her. When there was no more to be done, she sat between Grandfather and Cuirin’nên’a and pretended to eat. Grandfather offered blessings and formal wishes and smiled forcefully and carefully at every jest, friendly chat, or raised cup. After a while he looked at Leanâlhâm sadly.

“Is this so difficult?” he asked.

“Could we go home?” she whispered.

The look on his wrinkled old face, so broken and disappointed, made her regret even asking. But he immediately rose. And even Cuirin’nên’a’s controlled expression betrayed relief as they followed him and left the feast long before anyone else would consider doing so.

They made their way past the other tree dwellings, to the outskirts where their large one awaited. Leanâlhâm ached to rush ahead and return to her room.

A strange birdlike whistle rose sharply out in the forest as she reached the curtained doorway of her home. A chirp followed three times after that.

Leanâlhâm stopped because her grandfather was no longer beside her. She looked back to find that he had turned—and they both stared at Cuirin’nên’a.

She was frozen in place farther back with her head tilting slightly.

Leanâlhâm stiffened as those beautiful but cold eyes suddenly narrowed. She followed that gaze out among the trees but saw nothing.

Cuirin’nên’a rushed straight at Leanâlhâm and snatched her wrist. Before she could even think to resist, she was whipped around away from the doorway and shoved down into the brush at the base of an oak.

“Stay!” Cuirin’nên’a ordered in a whisper.

Leanâlhâm cringed, and her wide-eyed grandfather trailed Léshil’s mother in a rush through the curtained doorway. Too much had happened lately that Leanâlhâm did not understand. This time she would not be shut out.

She climbed out of the brush, hurried to follow, and pulled aside the doorway’s curtain. Then she halted, her thoughts blank in confusion.

She barely noticed Grandfather or Cuirin’nên’a, each standing to one side of the doorway and partially blocking it. Leanâlhâm’s eyes fixed on the main chamber of their home, torn apart and in complete disarray. Dishes had been knocked from shelves. Seating mats were cast aside in rumples. Pillows had been shredded or cut open and their grass or feather stuffing scattered about, some still floating on the air. But most of all Leanâlhâm stared at ...

Two tall figures in forest gray, with matching cloaks tied up around their waists, stood at the chamber’s rear. Inside their hoods both wore wraps over the lower halves of their faces. The anmaglâhk on the left, nearest to Cuirin’nên’a’s guest chamber, held something in his hand.

It was the journal.

“Lapdogs!” Cuirin’nên’a spat. “You disgrace a holiday to do his bidding?”

Leanâlhâm was utterly confused. Anmaglâhk protected their people. Why had these two come to destroy her home?

“We are here to serve,” the one with the journal answered. “You will not interfere with our purpose. Step aside, or be proven the traitor that you are.”

Leanâlhâm’s gaze shifted as Grandfather took a step forward. She had never seen him so angry.

“True guardians do not turn on their people,” he accused. “Leave my home and everything in it at once—or face sanction before the elders’ council of the clans.”

The second anmaglâhk, slightly shorter than the first, had eyes so lightly colored that they were nearly yellow. Neither reacted to Grandfather’s demand.

“Step aside,” the first one repeated, tucking the journal into his tunic.

Leanâlhâm grew fearful amid confusion. No one spoke to a clan elder this way. No anmaglâhk was above the people’s ways, not even Most Aged Father.

Cuirin’nên’a became a sudden blur.

Leanâlhâm blinked in a flinch.

When her eyes opened, Léshil’s mother had crossed the entire chamber. The shorter anmaglâhk stepped out to cut her off, and they tangled in a flurry of limbs. It was so rapid that Leanâlhâm could not follow any one movement.

The other anmaglâhk bolted straight for the doorway.

Leanâlhâm lost sight of the room as Grandfather sidestepped in front of the doorway. Almost instantly he was gone, knocked to the floor. The anmaglâhk rushed straight at her, and she froze.

He slammed her chest with one palm.

She went spinning, toppling outside the tree’s entrance. The ground rushed up, and she hit it on her left side. The strike had already taken her breath, and the impact made it worse. She fought to breathe, trying to get up, and then Grandfather stumbled out of their home.

His expression was dark with rage, and he had barely cleared the drape when Leanâlhâm heard a commanding shout.

“Gleannéohkân’thva, no!”

Grandfather did not heed Cuirin’nên’a and rushed by toward the forest’s edge. Leanâlhâm then remembered the strange chirps heard out in the forest. A wave of fear rushed through her.

“Grandfather!” she gasped out, struggling to her feet.

There was no sign of the anmaglâhk who had struck her. There was only a brief sound like someone whipping a stick through the air. And it cut off instantly.

Grandfather halted short of the forest’s edge, and Leanâlhâm swallowed in relief.

All was quiet. Not even the sound of a struggle rose out of her home. Grandfather took a small step back in retreat. He began to fall.

His back hit the turf, his eyes wide, and they did not blink when his head bounced on impact. A short arrow stood erect from the center of his chest.

Leanâlhâm screamed, the sound ripping from her throat as she rushed in.

No matter how she shouted at him or rubbed his face, he would not answer. His unblinking eyes stared upward. She felt no breath from him and grew numb.

Leanâlhâm did not twitch when Cuirin’nên’a suddenly crouched beside her. The woman was stained in spatters of red ... and a blood-drenched stiletto was in her narrow hand. Leanâlhâm looked back only once.

No one else came out of the draped doorway.

She looked down at Grandfather, the last of those who truly cared for her. This could not be real.

“Why?” she whispered.

Cuirin’nên’a did not answer.

In confusion Leanâlhâm grabbed her grandfather’s tunic and tried to drag him toward their home. She could not leave him here, but she barely moved him at all. A slender tan hand closed around her wrist, and something broke inside Leanâlhâm.

“No!”

She released her hold on Grandfather and struck out at Léshil’s mother.

Cuirin’nên’a’s head snaked aside, and Leanâlhâm’s small fist passed harmlessly away. She was jerked to her feet, and the grip on her wrist released briefly. Cuirin’nên’a’s bloody hand clamped over her mouth.

“Quiet,” she hissed. “We run now!”

Before Leanâlhâm could say a word, she was pulled into the forest at a wild pace, and Cuirin’nên’a dragged her on and on. For how long Leanâlhâm did not know. Everyone who loved her had been taken from her. She wept in flight and was unable to stop, even when Léshil’s mother halted and pulled her up short.

There was a large redwood almost as great as the tree homes of the enclave. Though no Shaper among the people had guided the growth of this tree, there was a natural cavelike hollow between two of its huge roots mounding the forest floor.

Cuirin’nên’a glanced all around. “We are unseen. Get inside.”

Leanâlhâm did not understand.

“In!” Cuirin’nên’a ordered, pushing Leanâlhâm down between the roots.

She shrank back into the dark and dank hollow. The notion of being left here without anyone, even Léshil’s mother, was too much.

“Do not leave me!” she begged.

Again Cuirin’nên’a did not answer. She dropped the stained stiletto and began tearing her own gown apart. She shredded it into strips, which she bound around her legs, arms, and torso. Taking up mulch and earth from the forest floor, she smeared it over her whole lithe body, then dropped to her back to writhe and cover it as well.

“Please,” Leanâlhâm whispered.

Cuirin’nên’a rolled up to a crouch and retrieved the stiletto; leaves and soil now clung in the blood upon it. She wiped the blade clean across her thigh. All of her unsettling beauty was masked, like some creature rising from the dead leaves and needles of the forest floor. All that remained clearly visible were her alluring, beautiful eyes ... coldly fixed upon Leanâlhâm.

“I must get the journal,” the woman whispered.

Leanâlhâm did not know why such a thing mattered. Panic rose at the idea of being left truly alone. She tried to crawl out, and Cuirin’nên’a rushed in on her.

“Stay—and do not step into the open!”

“Please ... no.”

Léshil’s mother grew so still. Her face was too masked by smears to make out her expression. Only her eyes appeared to soften.

“I will return,” she whispered. “Stay where I can find you.”

She lunged off through the forest. No sound carried from a single footfall as she flitted from shadow to shadow and was gone.

Cowering between the roots of the great redwood, Leanâlhâm pulled her knees against her chest. She clamped a hand over her abdomen and pressed the bottle of her uncle’s ashes against her stomach. All she could do in the fear that rose over her grief was to watch the trees and wonder whether the murdering anmaglâhk were near.

To know fear of them was a madness as great as her love for her uncle, Sgäilsheilleache.

And somehow all the horrors of this day had to do with Wynn’s journal.

Somehow Brot’ân’duivé and Cuirin’nên’a were at odds with their caste—and they had gotten Grandfather involved. Even Osha had been taken from Leanâlhâm by the greimasg’äh. Because of Brot’ân’duivé and Cuirin’nên’a, Leanâlhâm was wholly alone in a world with no one to love her, to protect her even from those who were supposed to protect her people.

Afternoon turned to night, and still Cuirin’nên’a did not return.

Leanâlhâm’s thoughts grew dull and tangled. She began to piece together all those times she had been sent away ... whenever the greimasg’äh came to visit. How many times had she returned from little errands she had been sent on, only to find Grandfather whispering with Brot’ân’duivé? And that had only increased after Léshil’s mother came to live with them.

Anger rose again.

Leanâlhâm had no one left to trust, had been intentionally sheltered, kept ignorant of ... things she should have been allowed to know and understand. She looked about the darkened forest. Still afraid, she rose, bracing against the great redwood.

The last time she had seen Sgäilsheilleache, he had promised that he would finally take her to the ancestral burial grounds. All young an’Cróan undertook that journey before reaching adulthood. Sgäilsheilleache and Grandfather had always advised her to wait.

They did not have to say why. She knew it was because of her ... tainted blood. But Léshil had gone there, guided by Sgäilsheilleache. And Léshil had come back.

He had more human blood in him than she did, but, even so, Sgäilsheilleache had guided him.

Leanâlhâm looked about the forest. She knew only that the burial grounds were far north, and then east of Crijheäiche. If that was all she knew, how could she find it on her own? For the first time she almost wished she found majay-hì eyes watching her from the forest—anything not to feel so alone and lost.

Leanâlhâm heaved a gasp as she flattened against the tree in terror.

There were eyes watching her—but not those of a majay-hì.

They peered around thickened ivy crawling up the trunk of a gnarled and twisted oak ... but they were green like hers, and not pure crystal-blue. And more, the face around those strange eyes was too pale beneath the leaves.

The eyes shifted, as it began to move.

Leanâlhâm looked about, trying to see which way to run in the night.

Something light in color stepped out around the ivy-shadowed oak ... on long legs that ended in paws. Leanâlhâm stared, her whole mind empty.

There stood a female majay-hì.

Delicate and small boned, it had a coat so pale it looked cream white in the scant moonlight. After a long pause, it padded slowly forward, and Leanâlhâm looked frantically about again.

There was nowhere to run that it could not easily catch her.

The female stopped where the redwood’s huge, long roots sank into the forest’s floor.

Leanâlhâm simply stood there, watching. The longer she looked into this sacred one’s eyes, the more she saw that their color was not truly green. Nearer now, they were more the crystal sky blue that she knew, but with irises that sparkled with hints of yellow.

The female lowered its head slightly, as if it was looking down Leanâlhâm’s body. Its gaze stopped midway. Leanâlhâm had no idea at what it was looking at as she closed her arms around herself, feeling exposed under the scrutiny.

The bottle of her uncle’s ashes pressed firmly against her stomach.

The white majay-hì turned and walked off through the trees to the north. Without knowing why, Leanâlhâm took a step, and the female halted.

The majay-hì looked back at her, then took two more steps and paused again.

Leanâlhâm did not know what to think of all this. Majay-hì always moved in packs, and there were no other eyes out in the forest. She took another step ... and then another for every one the white female took.

At least she was heading the way she thought she needed to go.

Inside Leanâlhâm’s room at the annex, Chap lay upon the bed. He no longer watched the girl, as in the memories she had seen something—someone—he too often had to push from his thoughts.

His own mate, Lily, had come for the girl.

How was that possible? Why had it been Lily? Where was she now? And what of their daughter, Shade, or any of their other children? Chap was so lost in more guilt that he could barely think on anything else he had learned through Leanâlhâm.

Brot’an had taken Osha somewhere. The Anmaglâhk had murdered Gleann, though Nein’a had done all she could to stop them and was likely hiding away among the dissidents. Leanâlhâm had lost everyone who cared for her.

All because of Wynn’s cursed journal, the one she should never have written in the first place.

If only it had never reached the blood-soaked old assassin, let alone Most Aged Father.

“What are you doing?”

That frightened hiss of a whisper roused Chap.

Leanâlhâm, with her legs curled up and clutched to her chest, had scooted back against the bed’s headboard. He had not noticed her move, and at first he didn’t understand her question. But she kept staring at him ... in the same manner she had when he’d peeked in on her in the annex’s little library.

“What were you doing?” she whispered.

Chap stiffened.

No, this was not possible. She could not know he’d touched her rising memories, but it was clear he had pushed her too far. In truth he was uncertain he could handle any more himself.

—Come and—look at—this book—with me— ... —I will help you—read—more—

She hesitated, lost either in the past or some other unexplained fright—perhaps both. Finally she scooted across the bed but still watched him out of the corner of her eye as she pulled the pillow holding the book closer to her.

Chap remembered that she liked learning about the sages.

—If—there is more—about—sages—we can—start there—

Soon she was distracted from the past in reading onward. He clarified what words he could, for the dialect was not the one he knew. When she yawned too many times, he pawed the book closed, and he slept there with her upon the bed. He looked up only once in the night, when Leesil cracked the door to check on them.

The next morning they all headed back to the Cloud Queen and set sail. Captain Bassett declared their next stop was a port called Drist. Even as the ship sailed out of Chathburh, Chap couldn’t stop thinking of Leanâlhâm’s memories from the night before.

He believed Cuirin’nên’a had taken a blade from the anmaglâhk inside the tree dwelling and killed the man with it. What had been the ramifications of that? She had also abandoned Leanâlhâm in the forest and given precedence to recovering the stolen journal.

Gleann died with an arrow in his chest. Had the council of clan elders learned of an anmaglâhk murdering one of them, a healer and onetime Shaper, in cold blood?

For the first time since seeking the truth of what had happened among the an’Cróan, Chap was uncertain of how much to share with Leesil and Magiere—especially Leesil.

And what had become of Chap’s mate, Lily, mother of their daughter, Shade?