by Barb Hendee
Leesil saw nothing but people on their way to somewhere else. They wandered or strode purposefully in and out of shops and stalls along the main way from the gate. But one short figure dodged awkwardly through the others, drawing closer by the moment.
Wynn Hygeorht looked like a younger sister dressed in the oversize hand-me-downs of an elder brother. The heavy sheepskin coat over her short robe was too large for her small frame, and the coat's hood had slipped down. She tried to hold the collar closed with one hand while the other gripped the bunched top of a canvas sack slung over her shoulder. The bouncing bundle threatened to unbalance her small frame as she hopped around puddles. Beside her trotted Chap, breath steaming in the air, paws muddied, and his silver-gray fur damp across his back. The two must have been caught in the morning rain while doing errands.
Street activity increased to a flurry, as if Wynn's passing stirred up an ever-multiplying warren of rabbits. People gathered in clusters, speaking quickly before scampering off to join others. Shopkeepers slipped out their front doors, and hawkers halted their carts. Passersby spoke with them, gestures emphatic, but neither would-be customer nor merchant showed interest in goods or services.
Wynn skidded to a stop before Leesil, and the canvas sack jostled and nearly toppled her into the mud. She caught her footing before Leesil had to grab her. Her round olive-toned cheeks glowed from the cold, and her small mouth was obscured by her hand clenching the coat's collar. Her wide brown eyes blinked rapidly. When she released the collar, Leesil saw the worry on her round face.
"Where have you been?" Magiere asked. "The day was long when you ran off, and now it's all but gone!"
Wynn's mouth gaped. Her strange fright vanished with a clench of her delicate jaw, and she turned on Magiere. Leesil winced before Wynn snapped out her first word.
"You knew it would take time to find a courier! I have to return finished journals to the guild in Bela, and there are few enough caravans on the move in winter. So what did you expect? Not to mention finding any cartographer who could show us a way through the mountains. And I needed more paper, ink, and supplies for my work."
Leesil let out a slow sigh, though the two women didn't notice.
Bitterness had grown between Magiere and Wynn. It started in the Apudalsat forest when Magiere beheaded a vampire named Chane— whom Wynn had foolishly befriended. Since then, Leesil had tried to keep the peace, but sooner or later any "discussion" between these two erupted into petty bickering. Leesil would pull Magiere aside while Chap herded Wynn the other way, but the long trek and deepening winter had worn Leesil's patience thin. Before he could cut loose with a tongue-lashing, Chap shoved himself between the two women, snarling at both.
Near a guards' hut to the street's side, a chattering cluster of city folk fell silent and backed away. Two border guards lowered their spears and took steps toward the dog.
"Enough, Chap." Leesil touched the dog's back and cast a warning glance at Magiere and Wynn. "I think they catch your meaning… or they'd better."
Wynn clenched her lips, eyes closing, as Magiere looked away with a scoff. The two guards returned to their post as Chap settled to a low grumble.
"Did you find us a map?" Leesil asked. "Or some clue to a way through the mountains and into the elven lands?"
Wynn rolled her little shoulders, shaking off anger as well as her sack of acquired goods. The canvas bundle dropped to the ground.
"There is a passage into the lower reaches, but few have gone beyond and none of those have ever returned. The master cartographer let me copy what little there was in her records, since no one ever asks for or commissions a map to a place no one wants to journey."
Wynn pulled a folded parchment out of her coat and handed it to Leesil. He turned it in his hand but didn't open it. Another quarter moon would pass before they needed the map, and judging by Wynn's words, it didn't promise much help.
"That doesn't sound good," Magiere said.
"And?" Leesil replied.
"I'm not saying…" Magiere returned quickly. "I would never—"
"No one before had Chap along to find a way," Wynn offered.
Chap huffed agreement, and Leesil looked down into the dog's crystalline eyes. An old memory from youth surfaced into Leesil's thoughts.
His mother sat upon the bedroom window ledge in their house, wrapped in a thick russet dressing gown. Her white-blond hair fell straight and glistening down her back, and she stroked it slowly with a rowan-wood comb. Slender and tall in the evening light, with the forest across a lake in the distance outside, she looked like a young oak growing alone in a barren field far from the other trees.
Nein'a turned, exposing a sleek triangular face with a narrow chin and a caramel complexion deeper than Leesil's own. She raised one feathery eyebrow above her oversize and almond-shaped eyes, like some lithe and long-boned forest creature trapped in the world of humans. Unearthly, large amber irises like coals in a furnace focused upon Leesil as she spoke.
"Léshil?"
Leesil shook himself, clearing Chap's memory play from his thoughts. "I told you never to do that. Stay out of my head!"
Chap licked his nose.
Given all the time since first discovering the dog's true nature, Leesil was certain it was some rude gesture.
"It is his way of communicating," Wynn argued.
"It's far more than that," Magiere grumbled.
Wynn turned another spiteful glare at her. "He is anxious as well to find Leesil's mother!"
Leesil suppressed a groan as the squabbling began again.
If they'd only get the true matter over with, once and for all, though even that might not settle things. They were both stubborn, or perhaps Magiere's pigheadedness had worn off on the young sage. Either way, Wynn was idealistic to the point of delusion. Her deceit over Chane's trailing all of them into Droevinka wouldn't be forgotten by Magiere—or by Leesil.
"It's no surprise," came a deep, gravelly voice. "Except that this time it took so long for them to jump for each other's throats."
The words took Leesil by surprise. He spun about, wondering who in this faraway place knew his companions that well. Neither of the two men was familiar to him.
"But will it spread, Colonel?" the younger man asked the elder.
Both were dressed as Stravinan border guards in crestless white tabards over padded armor. They wore fur-lined capes, vambraces, and metal-scaled gloves, as well as plain polished armor for their shoulders and lower legs. Thin prongs of gold sprouted a finger's length above the noseguards of their fur-trimmed helmets—one for the younger and three for the colonel. The only other distinguishing mark was the elder's blue sash running from his left shoulder across his thick torso. His gray chin-beard was too long to be stylish. The taller and younger one's sandy-blond hair hung long across his shoulders out the bottom of his helmet.
"Unlikely," replied the colonel. "They've been in civil unrest for a century or more. They're no threat to any beyond their borders, unless they cease squabbling and unify… and that's unlikely."
"If war spreads from there," said the younger, with a disgusted shake of his head, "someone else can attend it. Stravina has stood long enough against the Warlands' disorder. Let Belaski face the south, as we've borne enough vigilance for them up here."
"This is what I tried to tell you when I arrived," Wynn said. "Before I was interrupted."
Leesil turned back to her, at a loss to understand the conversation between the two officers.
"War," Wynn explained. Her glance at Magiere was quick and nervous. "Civil war has erupted in Droevinka."
Magiere's expression flattened.
She turned south, as if her gaze could cut through the city and reach all the way to a small village left far behind.
"Aunt Bieja…" Magiere whispered. "Leesil, I know I promised you, but we have to get to my aunt—"
"We cannot," Wynn cut in. "It would take a moon or more to reach Droevinka again, let alone get to Chemestúk amid�
�"
The sages words faded at Magiere's hardened expression. Leesil slipped one shoulder into Magiere's way.
"What's happened?" he asked.
Wynn shook her head. "I overheard but a little while bartering with a wagon master from Vudran, Stravina's capital. The Sclävên allied with several minor houses and put the Droevinkan capital to siege. Another major house may have joined them. Rumors say they may succeed in casting out the Antes and their reigning Grand Prince." Her next words were slow in coming. "It started only days after we fled from Ubâd's forest. We stayed so far from settlements that we missed any word of what was happening. News travels too slowly to know for certain all that has occurred."
Leesil didn't see how their own actions or stealthy flight connected to the outbreak of civil war, but the timing disturbed him. When he said as much, Magiere's panic increased.
"I have to go back," she insisted.
"Wynn is right," Leesil argued. "It won't help. And I'd wager your aunt is already long gone."
Magiere's puzzlement was matched by Wynn's, and Leesil touched Magiere's arm as he confessed.
"The morning we left Chemestúk, I gave Bieja a letter of introduction to Karlin and Caleb back in Müska, with enough coin to get her there. I told her there's a home for her at the Sea Lion tavern with us, though right off she took it as an insult and—"
"Why haven't you told me… in all this time?" Magiere asked, and her tone was disturbingly quiet.
Leesil barely turned his cringe into a shrug, wishing her ire were still aimed at Wynn. "I didn't know if it would lead to anything. The women of your blood are more rigid than a dead deity. But Bieja's cunning. I think she'd follow my advice in the face of what's happening."
"He is correct, Magiere," Wynn added. "Your aunt could well be in Müska by now, or reach there long before you returned to Chemestúk. There is nothing we can do, and your turning back within reach of Ubâd's people will not help her."
"And what if they go looking for her," Magiere replied, "as a way to find me? Ubâd was there at my birth, and if he—"
Chap rumbled so deeply that they all turned their attention downward. His gaze locked only upon Magiere, and she froze for a moment, then flinched. Leesil suppressed an urge to swipe at the dog.
"You stay out of her head as well!"
"No, it's all right." Magiere shivered briefly and swallowed hard. "He's reminding me… of the clearing near Apudalsat. Ubâd probably had my village watched for years and gave up on it long ago. When he learned that I was heading toward him, it's unlikely he'd have told anyone to watch the village again… before he died."
She'd told Leesil what happened in the clearing, from Chap's frenzied slaughter of the necromancer to the massive specter of black coils circling in the forest. In Leesil's own imagining, it was disturbing in many ways how vicious and terrified that apparition had made Chap. In turn, fear for Magiere had ridden Leesil ever since.
Magiere shot him a narrow side glance, and Leesil cringed again.
"I'd appreciate it," she began softly, tone sharpening with each word, "if you would stop keeping these little arrangements to yourself!"
Before Leesil fumbled out another excuse, a bellowing tone carried through the air from behind him. A border guard atop the stone wall to the gate's east side blew two more times upon a curved ashen horn. Beside the man stood several comrades and two figures in pale blue tabards over dark wool robes with full cowls. One cowled figure pointed over the wall to the north.
People nearby drifted toward the gate, and several guards politely urged them to stay back. Leesil pressed forward, his companions close behind him. He saw nothing but the still landscape across the border stream.
"What's happening?" he called to the two Stravinan officers.
The elder colonel ignored him, eyes fixed upon the distant tree line as he uttered low commands to his men. The younger officer looked Leesil over, perhaps appraising him as a stranger. Leesil knew his tan skin and amber eyes were out of place, though his raised hood hid his oblong ears and most of his hair.
"More refugees on their way," the young captain replied. "The Sluzhobnek Sútzits brought word last evening."
Wynn tugged on Leesil's cloak. "I do not understand. Why did he call those robed people 'menials'?"
Belaskian was the most common language, even in Stravina, where its own tongue was used only in remote backlands or by old-blood nobles who thought such things mattered. As much as Wynn had learned the tongue surprisingly well, there were still nuances she didn't catch.
"Not menials," Magiere muttered. "Sútzit—minister or servant."
"The Servants of Compassion," Leesil added with disdain. "Priests."
To Leesil, religion was somewhere between annoying and tyrannical. It was little more than politics shrouded in the trappings of faith and justified by doctrine surrounding a touted deity or patron saint. These "Servants" were the least offensive Leesil knew of, though he couldn't remember their patron's name. Respected healers, they followed the teachings of a long-dead wanderer from a time when only scant settlements across the land marked where future countries would be born. Leesil avoided religious minions and, at the moment, had less tolerance than usual for sermons. He looked back through the open gate, and a flicker of movement near the distant tree line caught his attention.
A figure surged across the flat grass field—it was a woman in drab peasant garb. Two smaller forms followed. Judging by their height and the way they shadowed the woman, they were children in her charge. A pair of medium-size figures came next, a boy and girl, who rushed ahead of the others.
The younger officer took a step toward the gate's opening. His colonel clamped a hand on the man's shoulder and pulled him back.
"You will not breach the border, Captain!"
The tall captain jerked away. "Sir… I can't stand by and watch this again."
The old colonel leaned in, growling into his subordinate's face.
"There's war in the south as is, and I won't have you starting one here. This isn't the first time, and it won't be the last, so bite your lip and be still! Until the refugees cross the border, we cannot interfere."
"Interfere with what?" Magiere called out.
The colonel ignored her, but the captain cocked his head. His long face, reddened by the cold, was clenched, showing that it took all his effort to keep silent and obey his superior. Leesil saw the man's left eye twitch before he looked away, snapping orders to guards now gathered beside the gate.
Leesil watched more figures emerge from the distant trees, running as they came. In his youth within the Warlands, he'd seen people reach for a better life. He'd been forced more than once to take it from them. No matter how he'd sympathized with their plight, there was always Darmouth's hold upon him, his mother, and his father. They… he had done things for lord and master that left him with years of nightmares.
"Leesil, what's this about?" Magiere asked.
The first mounted soldier broke from the trees after the escaping prey.
"A slaughter," Leesil whispered.
Chap watched the chase unfold upon the field. Two full-grown men were among the fleeing peasants, bringing up the rear. The rest were women, children, and an elder boy and girl old enough to run ahead of the pack. Five riders had cleared the trees so far and sped after their quarry. Armored in leather and mail, their shields were slung upon the sides of their mounts, and each wielded a long-hafted mace with a narrow iron head.
A gust of wind blew through the city gate.
It struck Chap squarely in the face. He blinked sharply as his spirit shivered with a declaration. His kin—the Fay—spoke into his being through the chill air.
Do not interfere! This event does not bear upon your purpose.
Not so, or should we keep one from the Enemy—Chap looked briefly to Magiere before his gaze fell upon Leesil—only to lose the other to his past?
Leesil stood motionless, staring across the field. The wind pulled at his hood
until strands of his white-blond hair whipped around his face.
If need be, then let it be so. The child of the dead is foremost.
Across the field, the lead rider reversed his mace. He struck down with its butt upon the back of one fleeing man, who tumbled out of sight into the grass.
Chap snarled through clenched jaws, but the sound was lost in exclamations from the loose crowd about him. He turned a tight and agitated circle, and then focused on Leesil's cold expression and unblinking eyes. Chap's awareness caught a memory surfacing in his companion's thoughts. Leesil's shame washed through Chap as he saw into a moment of Leesil's past—saw it through Leesil's own eyes.
A nightfall meeting of tradesmen and townsfolk gathered in the shop room of a local tannery. They muttered curses for their suffering, and it was not long before talk turned to how to end their ruler's tyranny. Leesil looked away from their angry faces and deafened his ears to their frustration. It had taken a whole season to gain the trust of a contact and be invited among them at this meeting. A shuttered lantern in hand, he inched toward the tannery's rear door, watching for anyone who might look his way. When he was certain he moved unnoticed, Leesil cracked the rear door and slipped out into the dark street beyond.
He opened the lantern's shutter, freeing its light, and set it on the ground before turning down the nearest side street. A handful of heartbeats passed before the quickening sound of hooves and footfalls grew louder. No one within the tannery heard the soldiers coming until it was too late.
At the sound of the shattering tannery door, Leesil ducked around a stable, pressing himself flat against its timber wall. Steel clattered and the townsfolk screamed. Leesil did not look back nor move until the night became silent again.
A rumble shuddered in Chap's chest as Leesil's memory faded, leaving only lingering misery. There was so much that Leesil carried within, and Chap feared a return to the half-elf's past might break him. Chap followed his companion's blank stare across the field to the struggling flight of the older boy and girl. And Leesil's guilt lingered in him. Chap flattened his ears as he lashed back at his kin.
