Traitor to the Blood

by Barb Hendee

  "What nonsense are you suggesting?" Baron Milea interrupted. He looked down at his lady, but her eyes were fixed on Welstiel.

  "You know I am correct," Welstiel said. "They saw its face. They can attest to its strength, as well as the lady. And how else would you explain her throat? Tell me, Lady Progae, how did his touch feel? Cold, perhaps?"

  "It's a winter's night," Tolka insisted, but behind him young Alexi looked more and more unsettled.

  Hedí Progae remained silent a moment. "I will not jump to conclusions, but I admit he was unnatural."

  "What about the other?" Tolka asked. "The tall one fighting with him who scampered off first?"

  "He was trying to help me," Lady Progae said quickly. "Just a passerby who became frightened by so many guards. Focus your efforts on the… this madman before he harms anyone else."

  "They will not find him," Welstiel said with a slow shake of his head. "No one will find him except a hunter of the dead, a dhampir."

  Silence followed. Folklore and superstitions of the undead were not uncommon. Some of Welstiel's listeners might infer his meaning, if any of them had heard tales of such a hunter, let alone a dhampir. Welstiel kept quiet, letting his words sink in. A third guard listening from the archway sighed and stepped nearer.

  "Much as I hate agreeing with the whelp," he said, cocking his head toward young Alexi, "I saw those teeth, too. It wasn't a man."

  Baron Emêl Milea settled down beside Lady Hedí Progae and gently took the cloth she held, lifting it from her throat. Welstiel noted that the white handkerchief was only slightly stained. Chane must have just broken her skin when he was assaulted from above.

  "Are you…" the baron began as he looked up at Welstiel. "Do you know how to hunt such a thing?"

  "No, but there is someone within the city who does," Welstiel replied. "Her services and those of her confederates can be costly, and she requires a free hand. She would need to be retained by the lord of the city before agreeing."

  The baron leaned close to his lady. They spoke softly to each other, and then he returned his attention to Welstiel with a curt nod. "I will try to arrange an audience for tomorrow."

  Welstiel returned a courteous bow. "My schedule will not be free until after dusk. Oh, and city business requires me to change inns. Have word sent to me at the Ivy Vine."

  Polite farewells were exchanged, and Welstiel turned up the stairs toward his room. Finding Magiere would not be difficult armed with the information Chane had given him, and he would soon regain control of her. He almost smiled.

  Chap lay on the thick rug beside Wynn's bed as she slept, and the kittens, Tomato and Potato, were curled around her on the pillow. Their rumbling purrs were louder than Chap thought possible for such annoy-ing little things. Even so, he would not have rested if the room were silent.

  Something had gone wrong in the Droevinkan forest, when he had tried to cleanse wild magic from the young sage. Instead, her mantic sight had merely gone dormant and now began to remanifest in new ways. Though this bothered him deeply, it was not why he remained restless and unable to sleep.

  Each time he closed his eyes, Chap saw images of Nein'a and of her mother, Eillean. And he remembered the name Byrd had used for the elf who had come in the night. The name had been shortened, which was why Chap had not recognized it at first.

  Brot'an. Brot'an'duive acaraj Leavanalhpa En wire gan'Daraglas.

  Like all elvish names, it marked identity, lineage, and place in the world.

  Dog in the Dark… born of Bending Elm (and) Joining Waters… from the clan of the Gray Oak.

  Chap barely remembered the man who had accompanied Eillean when she had taken up a young majay-hi pup as a gift for her half-elf grandson.

  As a pup, Chap had almost forgotten himself in his new existence among the brothers and sisters of his litter. Until his kin came to him, and then he relearned sorrow for the life in the forest he would set aside. His kin whispered into him through a dragonfly's buzzing wings as he chewed on the heads of wild grass beside a rippling stream.

  It is time… the moment for your beginning… to go to the one caught between two peoples, two worlds. You will be with him… guide him… to one day steal the heart of the sister of the dead.

  Chap let go of the grass, though some of its seeds stuck to his nose. He tried to "remember" what more there was behind the words of his kin.

  This task was part of why he had taken flesh—to steal the sister of the dead from the Enemy—but other memories were hazy and faded. His new flesh, mind as well as body, did not hold all the awareness he had shared as a Fay. Flesh had severed much of the knowing that they shared as one. He had to trust in his kin for what he no longer remembered.

  Bur he understood that they now reminded him of why he had freely chosen to be born.

  Chap scampered back to the glen where his "mother" and siblings roamed the village.

  Few of the elves were about. Most would be busy with the day's labors or out gathering sustenance from the deep forest. In nearly three moons of "life," Chap had learned much of their language. Their strange sounds—words—brought flickering memories with each utterance. It was how he learned their speech, though language seemed such a limited way to share meaning.

  Their domiciles were a mixture of shaped living things. Hollows were nurtured in the growth of massive trees until spaces within their wide trunks formed warm and dry places to sleep. Ivy and briar bushes tangled in low tree branches to create walls for exterior spaces where family and friends rested midday or gathered to share meals. Yellow-green moss covered the grounds within the village, where Chap often lounged or tussled with his siblings.

  He curled up before an arch made of twining primroses that formed an entryway to a cedar with a cultivated hollow. The tree was wide enough that the outstretched arms of a dozen men could not encompass it. The place provided a home for one family. There Chap waited, ignoring the taunts of his siblings wanting him to come play.

  An elder woman came at dusk.

  Her cowl, cloak, vestment, and breeches of soft wool were a deep green that sometimes seemed the charcoal gray of shadow. Her expression was flat and hard. Faint lines around her large eyes and small mouth suggested she was old for her kind, though still shy of a hundred years. Chap looked in her eyes and sensed worry, determination within regret, and scarred-over pain.

  A young elven girl and boy, their hair tucked behind narrow peaked ears, peered out from the cedar tree's hollow.

  "Eillean!" the girl whispered with adoration and awe.

  The woman glanced over at the two children with a soft smile. Chap saw it was only a polite response that hid an inner emptiness.

  A memory surfaced in the young girl, and Chap saw her playing make-believe alone in the forest, mimicking Eillean's imagined exploits. The girl had picked an old oak to pretend at presenting herself to Aoishenis-Ahare, Most Aged Father. She would take up service to her people like the great Eillean.

  It puzzled Chap why anyone would want to be someone other than who they were, which was impossible. He looked at the elder female elf through the girl's surging memories—which told him more than words could. Not just who the woman was, but what she was.

  Anmaglâhk.

  Stealthy warriors, guardians, and agents of Most Aged Father, they sacrificed hearth and home, leaving behind the elven sanctuary in order to keep it safe. A caste unto themselves, separate from the clan structure, they worked in secret within the human lands to ensure nothing there could ever send harm toward their people.

  Before Eillean stopped in the village's open space, the soft sound of her steps upon the moss carried another message from Chap's kin, the Fay.

  This one will take you to the boy.

  Eillean, whose name meant "Sandpiper," watched Chap's siblings tumble about the moss carpet. When her gaze fixed on Chap, a memory from Eillean washed over him.

  He saw a half-elven youth with white-blond hair crouched behind a lakeshore house. Eillean's grand
son, Léshil, whose name meant "Colored with Rain" or "Tint of the World's Tears," had never met his grandmother. When passing through the land where he lived, she stopped to watch for him from across the lake. A stone fortification sprouted from the water, and the boy looked up, quick and furtive, before slipping inside the house.

  Eillean glanced once more at Chap's siblings, then crouched down before him.

  Chap sat up, staring into her large amber eyes.

  His presence brought a childhood memory of her own, watching a yearling majay-hi run through the forest. Chap took that memory and repeated it to her, over and over, alongside the one of the lone half-elven boy. The two memories linked.

  No elf would take a majay-hi from the forest, as they were free-willed creatures of the land. Chap knew he could force her, dominate her will, but he did not.

  Eillean scowled, her eyes narrowing at the small pup before her. The more she stared, the more what she saw began to form a memory.

  Chap saw his own image surface in Eillean's thoughts. He took it and repeated it alongside the one of the boy named Léshil.

  Eillean frowned, looking troubled, as if what she contemplated were immoral.

  Chap rocked up on his haunches, putting his paws on her knee where she crouched before him. He stuck his nose up at her brown, triangular face and barked once.

  One of Eillean's delicate and slanted eyebrows raised. Chap rolled the memories through her awareness once more with a bark. She lifted him in her slender dark hands.

  Her touch felt cold and betrayed no love or affection. But Chap's memory-play would have worked only if some compassion and warmth were buried deep within her. She pulled up the loose fabric wrap around her neck until it covered her lower face. Chap felt a stab of loss, longing for the touch of his mother's tongue or the press of his siblings at night, as Eillean carried him away from the village.

  She did not go alone. She stopped in the forest and waited. Another came to join her.

  Brot'an'duive.

  "Dog in the Dark" dressed the same as Eillean, and only his large eyes and the bridge of his long nose were visible above his face wrap. Chap saw more of him through Eillean's memory, and his thin-lipped mouth was nearly always held in a stern line. Silvery hair marked him as old, though younger than she was. Standing half a head above Eillean, he was tall even for an elf, and more solidly built than most of his people.

  Chap sensed inner turmoil in the elder male elf, as if he too had grown weary and disillusioned with his place in the world. It made him feel alone among the Anmaglâhk, except perhaps for Eillean.

  Their journey was long, passing through the elven forest and into desolate and cold mountains. Chap's companions spoke little at all along the way. It seemed there was nothing to say, or whatever lay in their thoughts was so akin in guardedness that words were unnecessary. Chap lost count of the days and nights, shivering in Eillean's arms, as at times the snow was too deep for his short legs. On the mountain range's far side they entered wooded foothills, staying clear of roads that appeared now and then. When they finally reached their destination late one night, Chap recognized it immediately.

  The lake and keep within Eülean's memory.

  Bright red-orange fires burned atop its four corner towers, and Chap smelled decay and death for the first time. It stung his insides as well as his nose.

  They circled halfway around the shore, until the keep stood on their left in the lake and the city houses were visible beyond it. Brot'an waited silently as Eillean cradled Chap in one arm and pulled a silver mirror from inside her vestment. She looked up, and Chap followed her gaze to the bright moon free of night clouds.

  Eillean caught the moon's light upon the mirror, then angled the bright surface toward the lakeshore. It seemed impossible to Chap that the moon provided enough light, but she continued flashing the mirror until three answering sparks appeared in one house's upper window. The same house Chap had seen in her memory. Not long after, soft footsteps approached through the forest.

  A young elven woman appeared in dark breeches and shirt beneath a charcoal cloak. Her resemblance to Eillean was clear to Chap. White-blond hair hung loose around her tall, narrow frame. Her amber eyes were as hard as her mother's. Eillean held Chap out, speaking in their native tongue.

  "Cuirin'nen'a, my daughter… for the boy."

  Cuirin'nen'a—"Water Lily's Heart"—took Chap, and he felt a difference in her hands from those of her mother. She pulled him carefully to her chest to warm him. Hidden tenderness in her touch belied her cold gaze, and this tenderness deepened as Chap caught the daughter's memory of her own son. She had another name for the boy—Leesil.

  "Thank you," she said. "A companion may keep him whole in the face of what we must do to him."

  "He has a task ahead in his life," Eillean answered sharply. "One for which he cannot be influenced by our people's ways. This pup is small compensation, but spare Léshil nothing in training. There is no room for compassion if he is to learn the ways of his father and those of our caste."

  Chap's ears perked up. He did not understand what was behind these words. There were images that lashed through Cuirin'nen'a's thoughts, but she crushed them so quickly that Chap saw little. No more than bone, blood, stained blades, and silence in the dark. Chap remained quietly still.

  These three were Anmaglâhk, yet they spoke of a plot unknown to the rest of their own kind. Subversion seemed a strange and unfamiliar thing for the guardian caste of the elves.

  "I am not so certain," Brot'an added quietly.

  Eillean turned on him. "I stood for you, when it came time for you to join us in this… to be a part of our plan. We need a better way than that which Most Aged Father demands in his fear. If you had doubts, you should have said as much before we allowed you among us."

  "Mother, enough," Cuirin'nen'a said. "He only voices the doubts we all have at some time. And no matter what the necessity, it is my son we prepare like a tool. I will never stop aching for him."

  Eillean shook her head slowly and gave her daughter no reply.

  "Most Aged Father has waited many years," Brot'an said to Cuirin'nen'a. "He grows suspicious of the reasons we bring him for why you have not dealt with Darmouth by now."

  "My reason remains the same," she answered. "It is true that Darmouth's death would throw his province into turmoil, but the other War-lands provinces still fear facing one another in open war. And open war is what Most Aged Father wants, not just an internal conflict over who will rule in one province."

  "There may come a time when Most Aged Father will not settle for this answer," Eillean said.

  "Then keep him distracted with his plans elsewhere," Cuirin'nen'a replied. "If war among the humans is to be seeded here, then Darmouth must die at a time of unrest throughout the Warlands. Otherwise he will be quickly replaced by one of his own scheming nobles."

  Brot'an shook his head. "We have already counseled this—"

  "Then do so again," Cuirin'nen'a snapped. "Let Most Aged Father continue to think that turning humans upon one another is the only way.

  He is intent upon crippling them, for fear that they will be the waiting forces and minions of this ancient beast he believes will come again."

  "Perhaps he is right," Brot'an added. "I only wonder if a choice between his way or ours is necessary. Weakening the humans might be wise as well."

  "So we hack at an unseen monster's body," Eillean spit at him, "instead of severing its head? We have been over this countless times before you were even among us! We must train Léshil to take that head!"

  "We can see the monster's body," Brot'an replied, "in the human hordes spreading across this world. We have yet to see its head. We know nothing of this ancient adversary Most Aged Father dreams of."

  "Only because he refuses to tell us," Cuirin'nen'a finished. "And the rest of our caste still follow him in blind faith."

  Chap began to tremble. These three planned to kill an unseen enemy from the deep past, though they had no
concept of what they sought. Only that their patriarch feared its return and that the humans would be its engine of war. Chap understood what they toyed with in their ignorance.

  It was the Enemy. Chap had taken flesh to seek out and steal its creation, the sister of the dead. It was now clear he was not the only one trying to use Leesil for a hidden purpose. Perhaps his own scheme would at least save the boy from a hopeless fate at his own mother's hands. Chap squirmed and whined.

  Cuirin'nen'a looked down, folding her arms closely about him.

  "The reason Darmouth still lives remains the same," she said to the others. "It is not the correct time… and Most Aged Father must have enough patience to accept this."

  Brot'an took a slow breath, then finally nodded. Eillean reached out and touched her daughter's cheek in farewell.

  Cuirin'nen'a carried Chap into the stifling city of dark smells and dark corners. She took him to the house on the shore below the stone keep. She fed him goat's milk and shredded partridge. After, he lounged in her lap near the kitchen hearth as she stroked his back. And Chap waited.

  When dawn arrived, a bleary-eyed young Leesil came down into the kitchen and saw Chap in his mother's lap. There was so much delight in his face that he tensed with a shudder, as if such a feeling were rare and startling. Chap forcefully wagged his tail, not allowing mother or son to know that he was anything more than a new playmate. Leesil wrestled with the pup upon the kitchen floor under his mother's silent and watchful gaze. Chap's heart eased a bit. He had not lost a mother and siblings after all. He had a brother to watch over—to guide. And in the years that followed Leesil's flight from home, Chap kept hidden the few hints he had of Nein'a's plans.

  Lying sleepless in Wynn's room, he wondered again at the reappearance of Brot'an. Leesil must never meet this man.

  But Chap also wondered over the fate of the mother who had taken him in.

  Nein'a should not be his main concern, as his own path was crucial to the world as a whole in guiding Magiere and Leesil. But he could not turn from this search, as Nein'a's fate mattered much to Leesil. It mattered to Chap, as well.