Dog in the Dark

Chapter Nineteen

Magiere wasn’t sure what to think while listening to Brot’an on deck. It didn’t surprise her that Leesil focused on his mother.

Nein’a’s situation certainly wasn’t good, but Magiere saw larger issues at stake. Standing behind Leesil, she carefully put her hand on his shoulder and closed it.

“So you started a war, you and Most Aged Father,” she began.

Brot’an shifted his attention from Leesil to her. “Wars begin well before anyone chooses to declare so.”

She wasn’t going to argue with that evasion. “What happened when you got to your people’s port?”

At the sound of a stumbling footstep, Magiere looked back to find that Leanâlhâm had returned. The girl stood outside the aftcastle door with a tray of food in hand. Her eyes were reddened and puffy. Had she been crying?

How long had she been there listening? And Brot’an still hadn’t answered Magiere’s question.

“Are you going to tell them?” Leanâlhâm asked, looking to Brot’an.

It was unusual for Leanâlhâm to speak up like this. Would Brot’an try to worm out of her question, too? Magiere turned to watch him and looked for a crack in his armor.

“Or not, because I am here?” the girl added. “You have no secrets to keep from me in this, Greimasg’äh. I was there!”

Leanâlhâm’s tone surprised Magiere even more, but she didn’t take her eyes off Brot’an. She wished she could’ve, just for a smile and a wink to the girl. It was the most backbone Leanâlhâm had shown in a while—and it was about time.

Magiere was also puzzled. How could Leanâlhâm have been at the port with Brot’an if she’d been stowed away with Urkhar’s people?

—Do not—ease up— ... —You have them—both—ready to—tell all—

At Chap’s instructions, Magiere knew he was right, despite the risk in dredging up more pain for Leanâlhâm. None of them could truly help the girl until they understood more of what had happened to her. Still, Brot’an said nothing—fair enough!

Magiere glanced back at Leanâlhâm. “Why don’t you tell us, if you were there?”

This time she did wink at the girl.

“And you can keep quiet,” Leesil snarled, likely at Brot’an, though the shadow-gripper hadn’t made a sound.

Leanâlhâm swallowed hard. Stepping a little closer, she set the tray atop a water barrel. She hesitated again, watching Magiere with those suddenly frightened, and reddened, green eyes of hers.

Magiere didn’t like having to do this, but she nodded slowly, urging the girl on, and Leanâlhâm began to speak....

It took the girl that everyone called Leanâlhâm almost eight days to reach the coast. She had barely eaten anything. What little food she carried was gone, and she knew almost nothing of how to find more in the wild. Upon reaching the inland outskirts of Ghoivne Ajhâjhe, the one true city of her people, she hung back among the trees.

Cuirin’nên’a must have learned by now of her disappearance. Would Léshil’s mother have guessed where she had gone? Was Cuirin’nên’a already here, somewhere in the shadows, waiting to take her back? The possibility did not seem as unlikely as it once had been.

Exhausted and hungry, with no notion of what to do, Leanâlhâm was certain only that she did not belong among the people anymore. Never having begged for anything in her life, she begged a wheat roll from a small baker’s shop—as she had nothing to barter.

She had never seen anything like this city.

To her knowledge, all inland an’Cróan lived in cultured wild groves of living tree dwellings. This place, which stretched so tall and wide, was made of ornately carved wood, some stone, and other materials she could not name. As she peeked out at the great piers down the beach, wild arrays of structures were spread along the shore above, amid sparse but massive trees. There were even more structures beyond the broad mouth of the Hâjh River spilling into the bay.

She shrank back from this overwhelming sight and realized how little of the world she truly knew outside the limits of the enclave where she had grown up. Then she scurried away, trying to find some quiet corner.

Beyond one living structure, a tree more massive than that of Most Aged Father, with curtained openings into its huge trunk and walkways the size of bridges among its branches, she found an open garden. Settling near its central pool, she looked down to where fish of glittering colors swam in dusky water. After using her cupped hands to take a badly needed drink, she bit into the roll.

Its crust was hard from having sat out all day, but there and then it tasted like the best thing she had ever eaten. Upon finishing, she returned to the waterfront and walked down the shore toward the beach and the long piers stretching out into the still bay.

The ships of her people were harbored here and there. One of those would be the best way for her to leave, but how would she know whether any of them were sailing into human waters? How could she even gain passage in order to obey the ancestors?

“Are you lost?”

Her breath caught at the voice, and she turned.

A young fisherman with a string of flounder over one shoulder walked toward her. If he noticed her darker hair, her green eyes, he did not show it. Still, she was filthy and tattered and had no idea how to answer.

Lost? She was more lost than anyone could be.

“I ... I need ...” she began, and could not get out anything more.

“A ship? Passage?”

She nodded. “North, and then around to human waters.”

He straightened. “No ships, not even for cargo, go as far as human waters, unless they carry emissaries with clan warriors ... or the Anmaglâhk.”

She looked forlornly about the bay. How was she to ever leave here? She was trapped between mountains on the western and southern sides of the territory and an ocean to the east and north.

“You do not want to go among humans,” he admonished. “My father sells our fish in the city, and we need someone to help clean fish. Do you need dinner and a place to stay?”

He was kind, but he was an’Cróan. She did not belong with his family.

“No. Thank you.”

With a frown, he nodded to her and walked away. She went off the way he had come, up the shoreline and keeping to the rocky slope above the sand so she might not be easily spotted by anyone along the city’s front. The only thing she could think of was to sneak aboard one of the ships, but which one? And what would happen if she was caught? It would have to be a large one, maybe military. That sounded like the only kind that would leave an’Cróan waters, but what did one of those even look like?

The only other way was to cross the mountains, and even from a distance they looked impossible to breach on foot. Desperation made her wonder if she should try. She might have to steal more food, clothing, and possibly a bow, if she could figure out how to use it. The thought of theft, and the shame of it, frightened her too much. When she spotted a small cleft in the rocky slope, she crawled in to hide.

Should she just sleep here? The air began turning awfully cold, and an inbound wind blew straight into the cleft. Her only other choice was the city, and she did not like that place, with its structures of dead wood and stone.

Perhaps she closed her eyes a bit too long while her chin rested upon her pulled-up knees. When she opened them again, night had fallen and ...

A large ship—bigger than anything else in dock—was coming into the harbor. Would a ship of this size be the kind that the fisherman had spoken of, one that would eventually head for human waters?

Crawling from the cleft, she stood watching as the ship settled in near the pier’s end. She wondered about its hkomas—what humans might interpret as a “captain.” If he would give her leave to board, she might soon be away from this land—perhaps by the next dawn, and she would not even have to watch as the coastline faded from sight forever.

Once the vessel docked, a ramp was lowered. Within moments a tall man walked down and onto the long pier. Even from a distance she could see there was something unusual about the way he moved. She could not hear his footfalls upon the planks, and the manner in which his left arm swung with his loose white-blond hair pricked her awareness.

When he passed beneath a lantern along the pier, her breathing quickened.

Strangely, he no longer wore an anmaglâhk’s garb but only the breeches and tunic of a coastal clan. His cloak was brown, and the end of a long and narrow canvas-wrapped bundle, tied to him by a cord, protruded over his shoulder. With his gaze fixed hard upon something beyond the pier’s end, he did not see her until she cried out.

“Osha!”

Magiere stiffened as Leanâlhâm fell silent.

“What?” she asked. “What was he looking at?”

Leanâlhâm pointed to Brot’an without a word, and Brot’an sighed. Magiere could see this was taking its toll on the old shadow-gripper as well.

“What happened?” Magiere insisted.

With a brief pause for another breath, Brot’an picked up where the girl left off....

Brot’ân’duivé had been in Ghoivne Ajhâjhe a full day as he waited in the shadows and watched the smaller docks at the mouth of the Hâjh River. His quarry would have taken a barge and most likely had already arrived, but there was always a chance that part of the team had been delayed somehow. He wanted to explore all possibilities before taking action blindly.

If he could put an end to their purpose here, then there would be no need to leave. He could stay to attend to other matters, to finish what he had failed to accomplish: to remove that worm-in-the-wood of his people at any cost. But no anmaglâhk arrived at the barge docks.

The team had already come and gone. His only option was to follow—to track them. As darkness fell, he slipped from cover and went to the harbor to look for any ship he might know with a hkomas who could be trusted for both information and passage.

He kept to the rocky upslope along the shore for its darker cover, far from both the dock lanterns and those along the city’s frontage. It took him a while to spot a suitable vessel, but in that he finally had some luck. His gaze came to rest on a midsized ship in the harbor—with a hkomas who knew him.

Brot’ân’duivé also noticed a larger ship settled in at the longest pier, but he did not give it much thought. He had taken only a step toward the smaller vessel when a tall man disembarked from the larger one.

The way the man walked down the pier gave him away. The smooth gait of an anmaglâhk was broken by a slight awkwardness others would not notice. He did not wear a forest gray cloak, and something long and narrow was lashed over his back with its cord bound across his chest.

Brot’ân’duivé stepped through the sand toward that other pier as Osha, now dressed like a coastal dweller with a traveler’s cloak, neared the shore.

Whatever had been required of Osha by the Chein’âs, the Burning Ones, must have been brief. Even for all the time that had passed, he could not have come all this way otherwise. Why had he not returned to the inlands, to the caste, or even to the ruin of Sgäilsheilleache and Gleannéohkân’thva’s home enclave?

Osha passed beneath a dock lantern. Its brief light exposed his lost, grieved expression.

Then came a sudden change.

His head barely turned, or perhaps it was only his eyes that did so.

Sorrow shifted to anger so spiteful that Brot’ân’duivé knew the young one had spotted him, though he did not know what he had done to deserve such venom. Then a cry broke over the soft lap of water upon the shore.

“Osha!”

Brot’ân’duivé’s gaze shifted to the cry’s source.

Leanâlhâm came out from the shadows of the rock clefts and ran toward Osha.

Brot’ân’duivé stalled where he stood. How could the girl be here? Osha halted, eyes widening at the sight of her, and another movement in the night pulled Brot’ân’duivé’s focus.

Three forest gray forms, nearly black in the darkness, rushed out of the trees between two buildings up the shore. Leanâlhâm was only halfway to Osha when they leaped, clearing the rocks to land upon the sand, and they raced to close in on the girl.

“Leanâlhâm!” Osha shouted.

He glanced once more, accusingly, at Brot’ân’duivé and broke into a run.

Brot’ân’duivé quickly scanned the city’s front.

Only three anmaglâhk were visible, but he had no notion of how many Most Aged Father had sent—as they were no doubt after him. Perhaps upon not finding him, they had instead focused on the girl.

He knew he should flee. He should do anything necessary to remain out of their sight until he caught a ship to pursue his quarry. His purpose was worth more than two lives among the people ... even two lives he knew well.

One anmaglâhk caught Leanâlhâm up in his arms, lifting her off the ground. She kicked and squirmed in fright as Osha shouted something. The other two closed in to cut him off.

Brot’ân’duivé unsheathed a stiletto and palmed it with the blade’s tip between his fingertips and its handle flattened against his forearm.

Brot’ân’duivé paused, looking beyond Magiere and Léshil to Leanâlhâm.

“The rest is yours, if you wish,” he said quietly.

As the girl gazed back at him, some of her tight anger vanished. If nothing else, perhaps speaking the end of it all—for her—might serve more than one purpose here.

Magiere twisted about, taking a protective step toward the girl. Leanâlhâm raised a hand to hold Magiere off.

“It is all right,” she whispered, and just as quickly, she picked up where Brot’ân’duivé had left off....

Running wildly toward Osha, the girl suddenly felt herself whisked off the ground, and impossibly strong arms held her in the air. On instinct, she kicked and struggled, but her captor did not appear to notice.

Panic engulfed her, as she had no idea what was happening ... until she saw Osha nearly flying toward her up the shore. Then she caught a glimpse of forest gray sleeves on the arms pinning her.

The Anmaglâhk were supposed to protect her, protect all of the people. She had no faith in that anymore, not after the loss of Sgäilsheilleache and the way her grandfather had died.

“Let go of me!” she shouted, and then suddenly feared for more than herself.

Osha had no weapon in his hand as he charged in. She caught glimpses of forest gray on each side of her, and realized there were more of them. Without warning, the one who held her suddenly dropped her feet to the ground. She was so shocked that she tried to bolt too late.

One of his arms whipped around her and pinned both of her arms to her sides.

Osha skidded to a stop just out of reach.

Why was he wearing that strange cloak and clothing? Where were his stilettos?

“Release her!” he ordered. “Do you know who you assault? She is kin to the great Sgäilsheilleache.”

“That is why we take her,” a voice answered above her head, “and Sgäilsheilleache is great no more ... not after killing one of his own, a greimasg’äh more honored than ten of him!”

“We will keep her from the traitor,” added the one to her right. “This is the wish of Most Aged Father.”

Lost and terrified, she did not understand any of this. Who was this “traitor” they spoke of?

“Do not ally yourself with him,” warned the one holding her as his grip shifted slightly.

Able to turn her head, she glanced both ways.

Osha did not appear to know the other three, though all had their face wraps pulled down.

The one to her right bore a jagged scar from the corner of his mouth to his cheekbone. The one to her left, unlike most anmaglâhk, had his hair cropped short beneath the upper edge of his cowl. She could not see the one who held her, but judging by his voice above her head, he was quite tall.

She watched Osha, and his brow furrowed in the same confusion she felt. What could Most Aged Father possibly want with her? And who was this traitor?

“So the caste now makes hostages of the people?” Osha nearly shouted back. “Yet you dare claim Sgäilsheilleache has fallen from honor in upholding the people’s way in a sworn oath? You know nothing of what happened at his death ... liar!”

The girl’s fear only grew. She respected Osha, but her uncle had never finished training him. Osha was no match for these three ... but even so, he took a slow step forward.

He spread his arms slightly, as if daring the three to come at him, and the sides of his cloak fell from his forearms. Moonlight, or some lantern at the city’s front, caught on his left wrist. She should have seen a sheathed stiletto there, but instead ...

There was only the sheen from burns on his palms and wrists already beginning to scar. It must hurt even now, though he did not appear to feel it.

She saw something else—perhaps a pain that had nothing to do with flesh—beneath the fury in his eyes. She had suffered enough to recognize that.

“Stand down,” the short-haired one ordered. “Or we take you to have sided with traitors ... and we will kill you.”

“Kill me?” Osha repeated, his voice quiet at first. “Look in my eyes and see if that matters to me anymore. Release her. Now!”

A shadow rose out of the darkness behind him.

She saw it in the last instant only because of the pier’s lantern, and she almost shouted Osha’s name in warning. A scarred face with burning amber eyes inside a cowl appeared over Osha’s shoulder.

Brot’ân’duivé snatched the neck of Osha’s cloak and jerked him back.

The girl felt her captor’s grip tighten as he dragged her a short ways in retreat. The other two anmaglâhk shifted into readied crouches. But from behind the tattered and bloodstained greimasg’äh, a change in Osha’s face caught her gaze.

Osha’s plain, long features twisted in near hatred. He glared at Brot’ân’duivé’s back as if he might strike at the greimasg’äh first of all. Brot’ân’duivé did not notice and stood erect but relaxed, as if disregarding the three anmaglâhk before him.

“Release her,” he ordered, “and walk away.”

“On your word ... traitor?” replied the tall one holding her.

At the greimasg’äh’s silence, waves of sickness swelled in the girl. This would end in more blood and death—and Osha would not back down, either.

“Stand off,” warned the one with the jagged scar. “Killing you would increase our advantage in breaking the rest of your kind. But we are taking the girl either way.”

At first Brot’ân’duivé did not respond in any fashion. Starting with the anmaglâhk on his left, he looked slowly from one opponent to the next and finished with the scarred one.

“In the span of several nights,” he began, dispassionate and clear, “I have been forced to begin killing our own, something unheard of since the first of us took guardianship in silence and in shadow. I have spilled blood all the way to the chamber of Most Aged Father himself.”

He stood as if waiting for a response. His eyes flickered slightly, as if he watched for something, perhaps a move on their part, or as if he was simply noting their positions.

“Stained as I am in their blood,” he went on, “would your stains even be noticed among the others?”

The shorthaired one went for a stiletto up his sleeve.

Brot’ân’duivé lunged in one long step as his right hand whipped up, dragging the edge of his cloak. His opponent jerked backward at some impact she did not see. That anmaglâhk hung in stillness ... and then dropped to his knees.

In the blink that it took him to choke once, Brot’ân’duivé lashed his right hand out.

As if from nowhere, a stiletto shot from his hand toward her legs. She did not have time to pull aside.

She felt no impact or pain, but she heard—felt—the one behind her shudder. She began to topple as her captor stumbled and his weight came forward. She tried tearing away from his grip, but he was still strong and still on his feet.

A narrow white metal blade appeared out of the corner of her eye.

In the hand of her captor, it came around the side of her head and level with her throat, and she was too lost and frightened to cry out.

Another hand latched upon the wrist of her captor, and she later remembered seeing the shiny scars of burns in four lines.

Osha, his face in frightful rage, loomed before her. He wrenched the anmaglâhk’s wrist aside, turning the blade outward, and she saw Osha’s other hand thrust suddenly over her head with thumb and first finger spread wide.

The hand passed so fast that she heard the whip of air from his sleeve.

Her captor’s breath caught suddenly. As he choked, the stiletto fell from his grip. She jerked herself free, ducking around behind Osha.

The anmaglâhk toppled, holding his throat as he gagged for breath. A stiletto like Brot’ân’duivé’s was deeply embedded in his right leg above the knee.

Still hiding behind Osha, she cast her gaze about, looking for the greimasg’äh.

Leanâlhâm fell silent on deck, standing almost directly in front of Brot’ân’duivé now.

“The rest was all yours,” she said quietly.

She was right, and he knew it. Exhausted and drained, Brot’ân’duivé began again where she had stopped ...

As he faced his last opponent upon the beach, he whispered loudly, “One crippled ... one down.”

And the anmaglâhk with the jagged scar struck forward.

A stiletto passed a finger’s breadth before Brot’ân’duivé’s left eye as he lightly turned his head away. Even without a line of sight, he needed only the angle of his opponent’s arm and shoulder.

Brot’ân’duivé rammed the heel of his left palm into his opponent’s jaw before the blade withdrew. The anmaglâhk’s head snapped back. All of them were trained to withstand blunt impact so long as they survived it. At the crack of bone, that one crumbled upon the sand.

But then the short-haired man rolled to one knee and thrust a blade upward toward Brot’ân’duivé’s abdomen. He parried with his empty hand, deflecting the blade. In the same motion, his left hand came back, fingers curling in to pull the leather tie string at his wrist. His other stiletto slipped free of its sheath under the momentum of his arm’s movement, and the blade’s hilt hit his palm.

The short-haired anmaglâhk whirled around on his knee and came back for another thrust.

Brot’ân’duivé steered his opponent’s arm upward and rammed his second stiletto through the man’s wrist.

It happened so fast that his opponent did not even cry out. The only sound was the wet crackle of cartilage.

“And another hobbled,” Brot’ân’duivé whispered, jerking his blade out.

“Break off!” someone shouted.

Brot’ân’duivé slapped the anmaglâhk away and turned to find that the one who had held Leanâlhâm was limping backward up the shore. Osha had retreated to the water’s edge and was holding the girl behind him.

The one with the scar struggled up as well, shaking his head to clear it. Blood ran freely from his mouth and down his chin. Teeth lay in the sand at his feet.

“Go!” the tall one shouted again.

The short-haired one backed rapidly away, clutching his maimed and bleeding wrist. As all three fled, they did not take their eyes off of Brot’ân’duivé until they had to scurry over the rock slope like so many gray rats. They rushed for the city and vanished between the buildings and into the forest beyond.

Brot’ân’duivé let them go for now.

Let them run in fear, wondering when he would come again. Let them whisper that fear to Most Aged Father. In this, Brot’ân’duivé purchased Cuirin’nên’a time ... until the loyalists learned too late that he was gone. And then would Most Aged Father truly know the worst of fear.

Brot’ân’duivé—the Dog in the Dark—hunted those that the worm had sent out into the world.

He turned to the young pair staring at him, one with fearful green eyes and the other with spiteful hate he did not yet understand. He pointed toward the far pier and the midsized ship that he had sought.

“Go and board. Tell the hkomas there that I sent you. Wait below deck until I come.”

“I am not going anywhere with you,” Osha hissed. “I have lost everything, so it costs me nothing to be rid of you as well.”

Brot’ân’duivé had no notion what this meant. The mere look of Osha—from the young one’s plain attire to his missing weapons and the strange parcel on his back—raised a dozen questions leading to a dozen more.

Brot’ân’duivé did not entertain even one.

“Then you will be dead, if you wish it,” he returned, pointing with his blade at the girl cowering behind Osha. “You will be hunted as much as she is ... more so for having been seen with me. You will be pursued as much as any true dissident.”

That final word did not appear to register at first. Confusion certainly filled the girl’s green eyes. But finally Osha’s features went slack as realization appeared to sink in.

“Yes, I am one,” Brot’ân’duivé confirmed, “and now I am more than that, a traitor. So there is nothing left here for either of you, so long as Most Aged Father lives.”

Osha looked him up and down. “What have you done?”

Brot’ân’duivé closed on him. “Get to the ship—now!”

The girl shrank back.

He had no authority over her. She was not and never had been anmaglâhk, dissident, or loyalist. But she was no longer innocent, whether she wished to be or not. He had done difficult things in recent days, but he could not force her on this journey ... overtly.

“It would be dangerous for you here,” he said to her. “You may stay if you wish to risk it.”

The very words implied that she would be a fool to do so. He could only hope that after all she had been through, she could take the pain of such a hard choice.

She looked up at Osha. “I would go if you will.”

Osha hung his head, and Brot’ân’duivé knew he had them both, whether he wanted them or not. Though a burden to him, they would be safer abroad than they would be remaining here.

Osha turned away, grabbing Leanâlhâm’s hand as he headed toward the piers.

“The rest you know,” Brot’ân’duivé finished, looking at Magiere. “We followed the team hunting you. Once they reached this continent, I began eliminating them at any opportunity until I tracked them to you in Calm Seatt.”

“That’s everything?” Léshil asked.

Before Brot’ân’duivé could reply with a nod—a lie—Magiere came at him.

“No, it isn’t!” she insisted. “What about Osha? In all this time you must have learned something. Why did he run into you at the port? What did they—the Burning Ones—do to him? And why did you cast him out of ... your caste?”

“I did not cast him out,” Brot’ân’duivé answered.

“Then what?” Léshil asked.

“I know far less of what happened to him than you wish,” Brot’ân’duivé replied, “so it is his to tell. I will say no more on that.”

If either Léshil or Magiere thought of forcing the issue, neither did so. What he had said was the truth for the most part. There was much concerning Osha that he did not know or understand. But at least those here were distracted from what more he had left out. He had given only the details that served him and not what had come next.

He did not tell them that he had waited until Osha and Leanâlhâm were safely aboard the ship and then changed his mind concerning one thing. He did not tell them that he had turned his eyes upon the forest as he had run through Ghoivne Ajhâjhe.

Only one survivor need reach Most Aged Father.

The old worm would hear but one voice carrying the fear of three after watching the other two die in the dark. It would be—had been—a long while before anyone knew that Brot’ân’duivé left his people’s land.

Most Aged Father would have a new fear to grow into a new paranoia. But long before that, Cuirin’nên’a would be in hiding with the others.

In silence and in shadow, fear was a weapon of the Anmaglâhk, though none had ever wielded it against their own until Brot’ân’duivé.

Leesil was quiet as every word spoken about his mother stuck in his head. That world was no part of his. He understood it a little because of her, what she had taught him in his youth, and how she had trained him. But he’d never understood her ways, her people, and didn’t want to.

Just the same, he couldn’t stop the guilt over what had happened to Leanâlhâm.

Another innocent was caught in the middle. How many others had suffered because he, Chap, and Magiere—and even Wynn—had passed through their lives? Then it struck him that Chap had been quiet during this entire exchange.

—The girl—went—for—name-taking—

Chap’s sudden words made Leesil feel as if he’d been punched.

“What?” he exhaled, turning on the dog.

—Before—she went to—Edge of the Deep—

It took a moment before that last part made sense; it was the meaning of the name for the an’Cróan’s one city by the bay.

Facing the serpent, the “Father of Poison” guarding the burial grounds, had been a terrifying moment for him—mostly because Magiere’s life had depended on his not failing to get in there.

He turned to the girl. “Leanâlhâm, you went to your ancestors?”

With a sudden expression of horror, she quickly looked at Chap. Then came the panicked anger of her fast breaths.

“What?” Magiere whispered, and then louder, “When?”

Still breathing too hard, the girl looked from Chap to Brot’an, who said nothing. Magiere closed on the girl.

“What were you thinking? Your uncle had his reasons, Leanâl—”

“Do not call me that!” the girl shouted, and backed away. “Do not call me anything. I want no more names!”

Leesil was at a loss as the girl glared at Chap, and there was no awe for him in her face this time. There was only panic amid accusation—but for what? Perhaps all this brought back too many memories from which she’d been hiding. Something had driven her to leave her people after the death of Gleann, her grandfather.

Something to do with the ancestors.

They all knew what the name Leanâlhâm meant: Child of Sorrow. How any mother could do that to her child was beyond understanding. She had lived with that name on top of being one-quarter human among a people who distrusted—or hated—anyone who wasn’t purely an’Cróan.

If she could choose a new one, what could be worse than that name?

To Leesil’s best reckoning, aside from his own experience, all who went for name-taking in the ancestors’ burial ground saw visions by which they chose a name to replace the one given at birth. He hadn’t been so lucky; those damn ghosts had put a name on him.

Leshiârelaohk—Sorrow-Tear’s Champion.

“It is time ... Sheli’câlhad,” Brot’an whispered.

Leanâlhâm stiffened all over and screamed something in Elvish at Brot’an.

“Yes, now,” Brot’an returned flatly. “You can no longer run from who you are.”

Leesil couldn’t possibly pronounce the name Brot’an had just spoken. Out of everyone here, someone else had been holding back, and Leesil turned on Chap.

“Out with it! What do you know about this?”

Chap retreated a step. —Not—my—place—to—

“Don’t give me that,” Leesil cut in. “You’ve been digging around her memories. Now, what did Brot’an call her?”

“To a Lost Way,” Brot’an supplied.

Leesil looked up in bafflement. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It is her name,” Brot’an answered, “rendered in your tongue.”

Leanâlhâm buried her face in her hands, and Magiere grabbed the girl by the upper arms.

“Look at me!” Magiere said, but the girl wouldn’t. “Don’t you listen to those ghosts. There’s nothing in a name, especially from them. You don’t have to be anything—anything—you don’t want!”

The girl wouldn’t lift her head.

“It is her name,” Brot’an said, “given by—”

“Shut up!” Leesil shouted.

This was why Leanâlhâm had run from her people—the ancestors had driven her out. She was lost in a world not her own, lost between a name that cursed her from birth and another that banished her. Yet she was still an’Cróan, a people for whom taking a name meant everything about their identity.

And Brot’an had done nothing for her suffering.

Leesil had to find her a way out quickly, and he turned on Chap again. “You give me something else!”

Chap blinked, looking between him and the girl, and not a word rose in Leesil’s head.

“Don’t play dumb with me, mutt!” he warned. “All those years with my mother, being born among those elves, you speak their tongue as well as they do. Give me something better than Brot’an’s meaning!”

Chap snarled at him, clearly no happier about this, but as much at a loss as Leesil. Something had to be done if Leanâlhâm was to find even temporary peace.

—Way— ... —to—a way— ... —Way—toward—

“What?”

Magiere looked at Chap as her head filled with his fumbling attempt to find another meaning. Then she turned back to the girl and shook her once.

“Listen to me, please,” she whispered.

“No names!” the girl cried.

Magiere knew what it was to be exposed for something she didn’t want to be—that other half inside of her. Even the old word from her land’s folklore revolted her—dhampir.

Everywhere that she went, it followed her. Any stranger who learned of it, and understood it, looked upon her as only that. It was what she saw whenever she glimpsed her own reflection.

She didn’t want this for Leanâlhâm, and “To a Lost Way” was worse than “Child of Sorrow.” But to the an’Cróan, that second name they chose—or had forced upon them, as Leesil had—meant everything about who they became. They couldn’t let go of it.

Like Leesil and then Chap, Magiere wanted some better meaning for a name the girl couldn’t bear or deny. She ran through every name or title she could remember. All she could think of from Chap’s failed suggestions was an old word in Droevinkan, her native tongue. She carefully pulled the girl’s hands down.

“Listen to me ... Chi’chetash,” she whispered.

The girl’s tear-streaked face wrinkled in confusion, but there was still fright in her reddened eyes. Magiere faltered, and then Chap barked.

—Yes but—too—foreign— ... —Simpler—

Magiere kept her eyes on the girl as she explained. “Chi’chetash are wanderers with purpose. They find new or even lost paths ... and some map their travels. They find ways so others do not become lost. They’re way finders ... who can always find their own way home.”

Leesil and Chap were quiet, but Magiere didn’t dare look away. The girl everyone called Leanâlhâm opened her eyes wider, though tears still ran down her tan cheeks.

“Wayfarer,” Leesil said.

Magiere didn’t know that word. At her glance, he nodded, and she hoped her fumbling had led him to something better.

“You’re not lost ... Wayfarer,” Magiere said, still holding the girl’s face. “I will never let that happen ... by any name.”

The girl was still too much an an’Cróan and still too young to see she could make any choice she wanted. She didn’t have to be shackled by a bunch of ghosts, and almost anything had to be better than what Brot’an ... what she had called herself.

“Wayfarer?” the girl whispered.

Magiere grabbed hold of her and pulled her close.

“Yes,” she answered in exhaustion. “Not to a lost way but toward a new one ... that you find for yourself ... starting from me. I am your home now, to always return to.”

Magiere cast a dark glance at Brot’an. All he did was look out over the water rushing by the ship’s hull.

“You will call me this?” the girl whispered. “Only this name?”

“Only this ... Wayfarer,” Magiere assured her.